from Bruce
Anecdotes
Problem-Solving
• Actress Madge Titheradge had a reputation for fainting unnecessarily. In Theater Royal, she fainted at the end of the second act. Actress Dame Marie Tempest saw her fall; not being in a mood to tolerate such foolishness, she raised a stick that was part of her costume and was about to hit her — but Ms. Titheradge made a sudden recovery and picked herself off the floor.
• Stand-up comedian Steve Mittleman found an original way to handle a heckler at the Comedy Store. He said, “Sir, I just want to share the fact that I really love you and care about you.” This was not the reaction the heckler had expected, so he kept quiet after that.
• While traveling overseas to perform his magic act, Harry Kellar faced the problem of how to hide his money so it would not be stolen. To solve the problem, he used to hide his gold coins in cans of sticky black material that was used to pave roads.
Puns and Word Play
• At one time, Rachel Heyhoe Flint was the captain of the England women’s cricket team. In a store, she saw a package of frozen custard bearing the label, “Makes a pie for four people, or 12 little tarts.” She said, “I hadn’t realized that it would be such a good opportunity to invite the current England women’s cricket team.”
• Thomas De Quincey once attended a dinner party where an old woman talked on and on. His hostess apologized to him later, saying of the old woman, “She’s practically in her dotage.” Mr. De Quincey replied, “I would call it anecdotage.”
Religion
• Ted Shawn was thinking about creating a solo dance using as inspiration the Hindu god Siva, the destroyer. Thinking that he had taken on a huge task, he told a disciple of the Vedanta cult, named Boshi Sen, “What an awful fool I’ve been. Who am I that I should dare this task that’s beyond human doing?” Boshi Sen replied, “You don’t have to do it. Make your body an instrument and remove your petty self from it, and Siva will use your body to dance through. You will not be dancing, you, the little personal Ted Shawn, but Siva will dance — if you ask him to.” Mr. Shawn did precisely that — after he had choreographed the dance, each time he performed it he asked Siva to take over his body and use it to express Siva’s own being. Mr. Shawn said, “The dance never failed to reach its audience with its power.”
• Some people have a gift for discovering the fossils of dinosaurs. One group of fossil hunters at a quarry were having very little luck finding fossils, but when Robert Bakker arrived there, he quickly discovered a jawbone and other fossils. Mr. Bakker said, “They thought I belonged to a secret religion.”
Royalty
• Following a concert in Manchester, Sir Thomas Beecham saw a woman he realized that he had met before, although he couldn’t remember where and he couldn’t remember who she was. Unable to get past her without her seeing him, he remembered that she had a brother, and so he went to the woman and asked about her brother and whether or not he still had the same job. The woman replied, “He is very well — and he is still King.”
• A ruler pretended to dislike flattery, but one of his subordinates knew that the ruler really liked flattery, so he told the ruler, “All of the other rulers like flattery — you are the only ruler who dislikes it.” The ruler, pleased, asked, “How did you know that I dislike flattery?”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Howlin’ Fever Blues"
Album: Rhythm & Blues EP
Artist: The Beatpack
Artist Location: London, England, UK
Info:
“The Beatpack are London's prime purveyors of brutal 60's garage R'n'B.”
Hugh Dellar - Vocal, Harp
Simon Harvey - Electric\Acoustic Guitars, Vocal
Adrian Smith - Electric\12-String Guitar, Vocal
AJW Bourton - Bass, Organ, Autoharp, Vocal
Charlie Gurney - Drums
Price: £1 for track; £4 for four-track EP
Genre: Rhythm & Blues
Links:
Rhythm & Blues EP
The Beatpack on Bandcamp
The Beatpack on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
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David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
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New Venture
Michael Egan
Reader Contribution
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Spot the Difference
RD
Thanks, R!
Bonus Links
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Shameful that NBC, in it's attempt to further line their pockets, paid tribute to Mr. Potter, and ran tiny, unreadable, NBC-generated bogus end credits (in the wrong font) for "It's A Wonderful Life", supered over NBC promotional crap.
The film has a run-time of 2hours 10min - that allows 50 minutes for advertising over a 3 hour primetime block.
Since 16 minutes of advertising per hour is the norm during primetime, it should add up to 48 minutes overall, but NBC had 50 minutes and it wasn't enough, so they cut the end credits to create additional time for self-promoting advertising (yes, end credits are included in the run-time).
Don't fuck with the Capra-corn!
Royalty Payments Dispute
Spotify
John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart are among the big name comedians whose work has been removed from streaming service Spotify in a fight over royalty payments.
The dispute centers on a group of entertainers who are attempting to be paid a copyright royalty for jokes they wrote when they are played on radio and digital service providers such as Spotify, SiriusXM, Pandora and YouTube.
The effort to win the royalties is being led by global rights administrator Spoken Giants. That organization wants to collect royalties for underlying composition copyrights of spoken-word media. They point to songwriters, who are paid for use of their music and lyrics.
When negotiations broke down, Spotify removed the comedian content.
The Wall Street Journal reported that comics currently are paid as performers on a digital service through their label or distributor and digital performance rights organization SoundExchange. But they aren’t paid as writers of the work, which Spoken Giants calls their literary rights.
Spotify
Auctioning Fonz Jacket
Henry Winkler
"Happy Days" star Henry Winkler is auctioning off a treasure trove of costumes, props and other memorabilia from his acting career, on December 8 in the "TCM Presents ... Hollywood Cool" sale at Bonhams auction house in Los Angeles. TCM is part of Warner Media, CNN's parent company.
Winkler's complete Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli outfit, which includes the Levi's jeans, white T-shirt, black engineer boots and, of course, the iconic leather jacket is expected to sell for between $50,000 and $80,000, according to Bonhams.
The jacket is one of at least seven purchased for the show, according to the auction website. One of the jackets is in the Smithsonian Institution.
The silver Triumph motorcycle "The Fonz" rode throughout the ABC comedy's 10-year run is expected to sell for $80,000 to $120,000, Bonhams said.
The sale also includes one of Greta Garbo's makeup case, four of Dorothy Lamour's evening gowns, and one of Will Ferrell's Buddy The Elf costumes from the movie "Elf."
Henry Winkler
Push To Rename Boulevard
New Orleans
A member of the New Orleans city council is pushing to change a street currently named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and replace it with one the city’s most famous musicians, Allen Toussaint, who died in 2015.
Councilmember Jared C. Brossett introduced an ordinance to rename the street that goes through the northern part of the city near Lake Pontchartrain after Toussaint. Toussaint was a songwriter, producer, pianist and performer whose decades-long career helped make such hits as “Working in the Coal Mine,” and ?Southern Nights.”
“The City of New Orleans should prioritize celebrating our culture bearers, our diversity, and everything that makes our City special, not those who worked to tear us apart and represent a horrible history of racism that we are still dealing with today,” said Brossett in a news release announcing the effort. “Allen Toussaint is a New Orleans native and world-renowned musician. He represents the very best of our city.”
Like other cities and towns around the country and especially the South, residents and officials in New Orleans have worked to remove old vestiges of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow era when Black residents were forced to endure racial segregation. The city has removed a number of prominent monuments honoring Confederate figures including a statue of Lee that stood in a prominent traffic circle. Lee, a leading Confederate general, surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865.
New Orleans
Contract Negotiations Postponed
Animation Guild
The Animation Guild master agreement negotiations, which were originally scheduled to continue only through Thursday, have been paused for the year and are set to pick up again in 2022.
The Animation Guild Writers Twitter account, operated by the Local’s Writers Craft Committee, confirmed the news on Friday. “Animation Guild negotiators are staying strong. Talks will resume at a later date. Thank you all for your continued support. Your posts and well wishes are everything. The fight is not over until we get a #NewDealforAnimation.” A date has not yet been set for a return to the bargaining table. Deadline was the first to report the pause in talks.
The negotiations for the IATSE Local’s new agreement began on Nov. 29, and the union has conveyed that at least two key priorities for members this year include raising animation writers’ minimums to rates comparable to those of Writers Guild of America writers and improving streaming compensation. (The union has kept mum about other matters they will be bringing up with the bargaining representatives for employers, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.)
TAG negotiates separately from the 13 West Coast Locals covered under IATSE’s Basic Agreement, whose latest contract was narrowly ratified by delegates in November after a lengthy and contentious negotiations period.
As part of the campaign, TAG stated that their writers make 26 to 66 percent less per freelance script for a half-hour scripted series than live-action WGA writers and, as of May 1, 2021, made at least around $1,900 to $2,995 less per week as staff writers on half-hour scripted series.
Animation Guild
Bad Airline, Bad Government
Qatar
On October 2, 2020, Mandy was sitting on a plane in Doha, Qatar, to Jakarta when she was asked to get off, escorted by armed guards into an ambulance on the tarmac, and given an invasive gynecological search against her will — all without being told what was happening.
She's now one of multiple women preparing to take legal action against Qatar Airways, Doha's Hamad International Airport, and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority.
Mandy is British, while the other women are Australians who were on a flight from Doha to Sydney. Mandy requested her last name remain private, but it is known and verified by Insider.
"She checked my genital area and checked to see whether or not that I had actually given birth. It was one of those sort of fight-or-flight situations."
Some of the Australian women behind the lawsuit "compared the violation and humiliation as being a victim of rape" when speaking to Australian police, Sturzaker said in an October 2021 letter to Qatar Airways' CEO.
Qatar
Documentary Film
Penobscots
Most Americans know about atrocities endured by Native Americans after the arrival of European settlers: wars, disease, stolen land. But they aren’t always taught the extent of the indiscriminate killings.
Members of the Penobscot Nation in Maine have produced an educational film addressing how European settlers scalped — killed — Indigenous people during the British colonial era, spurred for decades by cash bounties and with the government’s blessing.
“It was genocide,” said Dawn Neptune Adams, one of the three Penobscot Nation members featured in the film, called “Bounty.”
Both Europeans and Native Americans engaged in scalping, but English colonists greatly expanded the practice when the government sanctioned the effort with bounties, the filmmakers said.
All told, there were more than 70 bounty proclamations encouraging white colonists to kill tribal members in what’s now New England, and another 50 government-sanctioned proclamations elsewhere across the country, the filmmakers’ research found. Colonial governments paid out bounties for scalps of at least 375 Indigenous people across New England between 1675 to 1760, they said.
Penobscots
Mount Vesuvius
Herculaneum
Archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of a man killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, offering new insights into one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history.
The man, who researchers believe was between 40 and 45 years old, was killed just steps from the sea in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum as he tried to escape, Italian news agency ANSA said.
He was carrying with a wooden box containing a ring, which could have been his most prized possession, The Times said.
The remains were surrounded by heavy carbonized wood, including a roof beam that could have crushed his skull, ANSA reported.
Unusually, the skeleton was facing upwards, suggesting that he had turned to face the onrushing cloud of hot gas and volcanic matter.
Herculaneum
Real-Life Moby Dick Spotted
Jamaica
A rare white sperm whale, like the one depicted in the literary classic "Moby Dick," has been spotted off the coast of Jamaica.
Sailors aboard the Dutch oil tanker Coral EnergICE glimpsed the ghostly cetacean on Nov. 29, when Capt. Leo van Toly recorded a short video highlighting a brief look at the white sperm whale near the water's surface. He sent the video to his sailing partner, Annemarie van den Berg, director of the whale conservation charity SOS Dolfijn in the Netherlands. After confirming with experts that the whale was indeed a sperm whale, SOS Dolfijn shared the video on the organization's Facebook page.
In Herman Melville's famous novel, Moby Dick is a monstrous white sperm whale hunted by the vengeful Captain Ahab, who lost his leg to the toothed whale. The book is narrated by the sailor Ishmael, who famously said, "It was the whiteness of the whale that appalled me," when referring to its paleness. Although Moby Dick was fictional, white sperm whales are real. Their whiteness is the result of either albinism or leucism; both conditions impact the whales' ability to produce the pigment melanin, which is responsible for their normal gray color.
"We don't know how rare white sperm whales are," Shane Gero, a sperm whale expert at Dalhousie University in Canada and founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, told Live Science in an email. "But they do get seen from time to time."
Because the ocean is so expansive, scientists are unsure how many white sperm whales exist, Gero said. Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) are also extremely elusive and hard to study because of their ability to dive deep into the ocean for long periods of time.
Jamaica
Real Or Myth
Jackalopes
The jackalope, an animal with the body of a jackrabbit and the antlers of an antelope or deer, is a cultural icon of the American West. The image of the creature is sold on all sorts of knickknacks in the region, from postcards to shot glasses. At one point, tourists could even buy taxidermied and mounted jackalopes for $35 or less.
But is the jackalope real, or is it a myth?
Although no such hybrid animal exists, there's an element of truth in the legend, said Michael Branch, a professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno and author of the book "On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer" (Pegasus Books, 2022).
Rabbits don't naturally grow horns. But the rabbit papillomavirus can make them do so. Papillomaviruses are common in many species, and each type typically infects members of a specific host species, Branch said. A prime example is the human papillomavirus, or HPV.
When the rabbit papillomavirus infects a rabbit, it can cause the growth of a benign tumor out of its face or head that sometimes resembles antlers or horns. Sometimes, the tumor — made of keratin, the same protein that forms fingernails and hair — grows on other body parts, but it's most common on the head, Branch said. The tumors can become malignant in some rabbits.
Jackalopes
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