from Bruce
Anecdotes
Gays and Lesbians
• Jennie McNulty is both an out comedian and a defensive back for the California Quake women’s football team. She performs at military bases in Iraq and on Olivia cruises for lesbians and at other gay-friendly venues. While performing on military bases, she couldn’t delve deeply into gay matters when the military had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but she found a way to make a point: “I love doing the military shows. I have to do what I call ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ shows, so I just don’t bring up anything relationship-wise, but I’m decked out in rainbow gear from head to toe — Richard Simmons would look straighter than I do performing there.” Fortunately, she comes back to gay-friendly venues, so she says that she goes “from ‘don’t ask’ to ‘tell everybody’!” She loves the Olivia cruises because of all the lesbians who are free to be themselves. Of course, in the big cities gays and lesbians can be out and about, but in small towns, doing that can be much harder. Ms. McNulty says, “On the Olivia trips, you’re dealing with people who live in the middle of the country. I had one woman tell me she and her girlfriend had to practice holding hands, because they can never hold hands when they’re home. Those crowds are so amazing because everyone’s just on cloud nine — they’re totally free to be who they are.”
• On April 30, 1997, Ellen DeGeneres’ character, Ellen Morgan, came out in the one-hour episode of Ellen titled “The Puppy Episode.” The title of the episode was an in-joke: At a meeting to get ideas for episodes of the sitcom, someone suggested that Ellen’s character get a puppy — an idea that was rejected. The real-life Ellen also came out as a lesbian on the April 14, 1997, cover of Time with the words, “Yep, I’m Gay.” Lots of rumors preceded the coming-out, something that Ms. DeGeneres had fun with, at one time saying, “Yes, the rumors are true. We’ll be revealing that my character is Lebanese because she enjoys both baba ganoush and Casey Kasem.” At the time, comedian Rosie O’Donnell had not publicly come out of the closet, and she teased people by saying that she really liked Casey Kasem, and so “maybe I’m Lebanese, too.”
• Lesbian comedian Sabrina Matthews is very out. Sometimes, after watching her act, straight people will tell her, “I never met a gay person before.” Ms. Matthews replies by stating the obvious, “Yeah, you did — you just didn’t know it.” She is also an activist who doesn’t mind scaring straight people when they deserve to be scared. One day, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she noticed a straight family with a father, mother, and young son and daughter. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but this particular father was pointing at and making fun of gay people. Therefore, Ms. Matthews snuck up behind him and whispered ominously in his ear, “How much for the girl?”
• Lesbian comedian Vicki Shaw once appeared in a club where the manager — a gay man — told her not to do jokes about gays, although her jokes were gay friendly. Meanwhile, he had not told the straight male comedians appearing with her not to do gay material, although their jokes were anti-gay. Ms. Shaw told the manager, “If I can’t do gay material, then they can’t do gay material. It’s those jokes that tell the redneck drunk that it’s OK to go out and hunt some queers. … if those rednecks are out in their truck looking for gays to beat up and you and I are walking down the street, guess who they’re gonna pick?” The manager allowed her to do her gay-friendly material.
• British gay comedian Alan Carr’s on-stage persona is very much the same as his real-life off-stage persona. Once, as Mr. Carr was about to perform, someone told him, “So I’ll just leave you 10 minutes so you can get into character.” Mr. Carr replied, “Pardon?” Mr. Carr is an out comedian, but he does not specifically talk about being gay in his act. His gayness is simply there. When he is off-stage, occasionally drivers will yell at him, “Faggot!” Mr. Carr says, “I haven’t been called that since I was at school, so actually I get all nostalgic.”
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Music: "A Walk in the Gully"
Album: IN THE ARMS OF THE EARTH
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Artist Location: Geelong, Australia
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“Finally … after years of fans requesting it, Tim has recorded an album of beautiful slide guitar instrumentals with his distinct sound and style. All 10 tracks were improvised and recorded, live, in a little cottage in the bush of Smith's Gully, Victoria, Australia. “
Price: $10 (AUS) for 10-track album; tracks cannot be purchased separately
Genre: Blues. Instrumentals.
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Toady Barr
The entire article does a great job of slamming Barr. It's quite a fun read:
Former attorney general Bill Barr is currently on a rehabilitation tour where he peddles his new crap book, as well as the farcical notion that he isn’t complete garbage. It’s not going well.
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Looks like I'll be wrangling butterflies shortly.
Telecast Changes
Oscars
Some of Hollywood’s most high-profile filmmakers, including director James Cameron, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Lili Fini Zanuck and composer John Williams have joined the growing chorus of voices asking the Academy to reverse course and present all 23 Oscars on the live March 27 telecast.
In a letter sent today to Academy President David Rubin and obtained by Variety, more than six dozen film professionals, including multiple Academy Award winners, contend that the plan to present eight awards during the pre-telecast hour will “demean” these crafts and “relegate [them] to the status of second-class citizens.”
The eight are original score, film editing, production design, makeup and hairstyling, sound, documentary short, live-action short and animated short. The Academy continues to insist that the nominees in those categories will be announced, and the winner’s acceptance speech aired, in edited form and aired as part of the three-hour ABC show.
They urge Rubin and his colleagues on the Academy awards committee “in the strongest possible terms… to reverse your decision. For nearly a century, the Academy Award has represented the gold standard in recognizing and honoring all the essential crafts in filmmaking. Now, as we approach Oscar’s 100th year, we are deeply troubled that this gold standard is being tarnished by valuing some filmmaking disciplines over others, relegating those others to the status of second-class citizens.
Ninety-year-old composer and five-time Oscar-winner John Williams — who, at 52 nominations, holds the record for the most of any living person — is among the signers. Director Steven Spielberg cited Williams’ “Jaws” score earlier week in his own denunciation of the decision, saying “without John Williams, ‘Jaws’ would wear dentures.”
Oscars
‘Black Panther’ Director
Ryan Coogler
Critically acclaimed Black Panther director Ryan Coogler was handcuffed and detained by police after he was mistaken for a bank robber while attempting to withdraw cash at a Bank of America branch in Atlanta in January.
“This situation should never have happened. However, Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction and we have moved on,” Coogler says in a statement to Rolling Stone after TMZ first reported the incident early Wednesday.
According to the police report obtained by TMZ, Coogler was wearing a hat, sunglasses, and a pandemic mask when he handed a teller a withdrawal slip with a handwritten note on it.
“I would like to withdraw $12,000 cash from my checking account. Please do the money count somewhere else. I’d like to be discreet,” the note purportedly read.
The teller allegedly entered something into a computer that triggered an alert, and police were summoned on suspicion of an attempted robbery. Responding officers handcuffed Coogler and also detained two people waiting for the Fruitvale Station director in an SUV outside.
Ryan Coogler
West Virginia
Bette Midler
West Virginia senators passed a bill Wednesday that would reinstate the state’s film tax credit after one Republican lawmaker spoke against the legislation, saying it benefits Hollywood while “the people of West Virginia are left hanging out to dry.”
“I have a problem that Bette Midler qualifies for millions of dollars in tax credits,” said Republican Sen. Robert Karnes, the only senator to vote against the bill. Karnes said more resources should instead go to support regular people in the state.
“Gavin Newsom’s people are getting a little bit of almost heaven with this bill, but God’s people are basically told to go to hell,” he said.
The bill’s supporters say other states in the region have the tax credit and West Virginia is missing out on projects coming to the state that could bring economic development opportunities to communities.
Bette Midler
Returning To Radio City Music Hall
Tony Awards
In another sign that show business is snapping back to its pre-pandemic rhythm, the Tony Awards will once again take place in June and at a familiar location, Radio City Music Hall.
The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing announced Wednesday that the awards will be handed out June 12 and aired on CBS, but instead of a three-hour presentation, producers are adding an extra hour ahead of the telecast that will stream only on Paramount+. The broadcast will be live across the country, starting at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT), and the main event will be live at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT).
There was no word on a host.
The Tony Awards eligibility cut-off date for the 2021-2022 season is April 28 for all Broadway productions which meet all other eligibility requirements. Nominations for the 2022 Tony Awards will be announced May 3.
Tony Awards
On His Parents’ Cell Phone Plan?
Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller, the former adviser Trump adviser known for pushing the administration’s family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, is suing to block the Jan. 6 committee from obtaining his phone records. The suit argues that the phone records requested contain sensitive family information, and notes that Miller is still on his parents’ T-Mobile cell phone plan.
The Jan. 6 committee initially subpoenaed him in November, noting that Miller pushed disinformation about election fraud following the 2020 election. Miller took issue with this, as well. “There are no facts that show that Mr. Miller had any role in what happened there or otherwise engaged in any unlawful efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration,” the suit reads.
The family-plan phone records the committee is seeking is technically owned by a limited partnership, Carron Drive Apartments LP (also named as a plaintiff in the suit), and the filing states that the plan is used by Miller’s mother and father, Miriam and Michael, as well as their children.
“Mr. Miller is, and has been, the user of a cell phone number assigned by T-Mobile (and previously by Sprint Communications) to the Carron Drive’s Family Plan Account for at least the last 10 years,” the lawsuit states. The filing later acknowledges that, yes, Miller “used the phone number assigned to his Family Plan Account for personal and business communications during the period indicated by the Subpoena” (specifically, Nov. 1, 2020 through Jan. 31, 2021).
Stephen Miller
Endurance Found
Ernest Shackleton
Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history.
A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.
Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading “Endurance” still affixed to the stern and the ship’s lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at any time.
“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, the director of the exploration. Bound noted the wreck is still upright, clear of the seabed “and in a brilliant state of preservation.”
The combination of deep, dark waters — no sunlight penetrates to 10,000 feet — frigid temperatures and sea ice have frustrated past efforts to find Endurance, but also explain why the wreck is in such good condition today.
Ernest Shackleton
Meteorite Crater
Greenland
An immense crater in northwestern Greenland, buried under a thick sheet of ice and first spotted in 2015, is much older than previously suspected - formed by a meteorite impact 58 million years ago, rather than 13,000 years ago as had been proposed.
Scientists said on Wednesday they used two different dating methods on sand and rock left over from the impact to determine when the crater - about 19 miles (31 km) wide - was formed. They found that the meteorite - roughly one to 1.25 miles (1.5-2 km) in diameter - struck Greenland about 8 million years after a larger asteroid impact at Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula wiped out the dinosaurs.
The crater lies beneath Greenland's Hiawatha Glacier, covered by an ice sheet six tenths of a mile (1 km) deep. It had remained undetected until airborne ice-penetrating radar data tipped off scientists about its existence.
It is one of Earth's 25 largest-known impact craters. Over the eons, Earth has been hit by space rocks innumerable times, though gradual changes in the planet's surface have erased or obscured many of the craters.
Greenland
Long-Standing Rumor Proved Wrong
Sharks
It's been rumored that sharks don't sleep at all; the fact some sharks must stay on the move to facilitate their breathing has contributed to this idea.
A new study, however, finally confirms what anecdotal evidence and other research have long suggested – these animals do slumber, just as we do.
"We have provided the first physiological evidence of sleep in sharks," the team writes in their paper, led by ecophysiologist Michael Kelly from the University of Western Australia.
Two sleep phases are well known in birds and mammals, and even octopus – suggesting each stage plays an important role in our physiology, but little is known about this process in cold-blooded back-boned animals.
So the team investigated signs of sleep in the draughtsboard shark (Cephaloscyllium isabellum), which they'd previously discovered are nocturnal animals.
Sharks
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