from Bruce
Anecdotes
Audiences
• English entertainer Joyce Grenfell ran into a problem while touring in Australia. There, the custom was to buy a box of chocolates and eat them during the second half of an entertainment. Unfortunately, the chocolates were wrapped in crinkly wrappers that made a lot of noise. Ms. Grenville ignored the distraction for two nights, but on the third night she told the audience that if they ate the chocolates after her performance, they could enjoy both her performance and the chocolates, but that if they ate the chocolates now, she would be obliged to cancel her performance. The audience was shocked for a moment, then put away the chocolates.
• In Olsen and Johnson’s stage show Hellzapoppin’, a gag was that a chorus girl — who had been planted in the audience — would come on stage and “accidentally” step on a blower that would blow her skirt high. During one performance an elderly woman came on stage (Olsen and Johnson used lots of audience participation) and really did accidentally step on the blower. Her reaction to her skirt’s flying in the air was immediate: She used her umbrella to beat everybody in sight. The audience roared with laughter, and Olsen and Johnson kept the bit in the show — but they used a cast member to play the part of the elderly woman.
• James J. Davis was Secretary of Labor early in the 20th century. Previous to going into politics, he worked in an opera house, where he appeared in several Shakespearean plays, including Richard III. In the scene in which Richard III says, “A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse,” Mr. James and the other young actors were battling mightily on stage, with many shouts of “Hey! Hey!” A man from the audience shouted, “Don’t order so much hay, boys, until you see whether he gets the horse or not!”
• Harry Houdini performed many of his escapes behind a screen. He would escape from a seemingly diabolical device quickly, then remain behind the screen and read a book as the members of the audience grew more and more worried about his safety. When the members of the audience started to shout for someone to rescue him, Houdini would emerge from behind the screen, pretending to be exhausted, as if he had been struggling to escape the whole time.
• After a show in Kalamazoo, Michigan, lesbian performance artist Holly Hughes thought that she had “totally bombed.” Afterward, a woman who had been in the audience approached her, and Ms. Hughes looked at her hair — her big hair — and again Ms. Hughes thought that she had bombed. But no — the woman had loved her performance and thought that it was the best thing she had seen since The Love Boat had been cancelled.
• In 1948, Henry Fonda starred in Mister Roberts on Broadway. Opening night was a major success, with the audience members cheering and cheering while standing on their seats. Finally, Mr. Fonda told them, “This is all Tom and Josh [Tom Heggen and Joshua Logan, the authors] wrote for us. If you want, we can start all over again.” Later, a critic wrote, “I hung around awhile, hoping they would.”
• Ancient Roman audiences did not mind leaving in the middle of a performance of a play if they felt that better entertainment was available elsewhere. During a performance of Terence’s Mother-in-Law, the audience left to see some performing ropedancers and boxers nearby. When Mother-in-Law was produced a second time, the audience left to watch gladiators fight.
• Al Jolson was a huge star. While appearing in the musical Big Boy, he once asked the audience, “Do you want me, or do you want the show?” The audience shouted, “We want Al! We want Al!” Therefore, Mr. Jolson let the cast have the night off, and he entertained the audience solo.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "On the Way Down"
Album: WHAT RISES
Artist: Caitlin Kraus
Artist Location: Athens, Ohio
Info:
“Originally from Columbus, OH, Caitlin Kraus is a singer and songwriter living in Athens, OH. Kraus has performed her music solo and with a band over the past decade. Her music is melodic, largely lyric-based, and falls within indie-folk/alternative genres.”
tomriggs, a fan, wrote, “Caitlin Kraus with a full band was bound to be a treasure to behold. This is that. The production flourishes do exactly what they should: take Kraus's music to wonderful heights. Favorite track: ‘On the Way Down.’”
First full-length album
All lyrics & music © 2020 Caitlin Kraus
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $10 (USD) for 13-track album
Genre: Singer-Songwriter
Links:
WHAT RISES
Caitlin Kraus on Bandcamp
Caitlin Kraus Music Official Site
Caitlin Kraus YouTube Channel
Caitlin Kraus: Top Tracks
Caitlin Kraus: Ohio University Adjunct Professor of Music Therapy
Caitlin Kraus Music on Facebook
Caitlin Kraus Music on Instagram
Caitlin Kraus Music on Spotify
Caitlin Kraus on YouTube Music
Caitlin Kraus at Ohio University (Athens, Ohio) Scripps Amphitheater: 9 September 2021
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
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Twofer
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Quiet day at the laundromat-of-the-darned.
Interview To Auction
John Lennon
Half a century ago, four Danish teenagers interviewed John Lennon for their school paper. A cassette tape with a 33-minute audio recording of the chat, which also includes an apparently unpublished song by the late Beatle, will be auctioned in Denmark later this month.
The 16-year-olds were not star-struck when they did the interview in northern Denmark on Jan. 5, 1970. At the height of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono had “a message of peace, and that was what was important to us,” recalled Karsten Hoejen, who made the recording on a tape recorder borrowed from the local hi-fi shop.
Lennon and Ono were in the Danish region of Thy where Ono’s ex-husband had moved to and brought Kyoko, the couple’s then five-year-old daughter with him. They stayed for about a month and tried to lie low — which worked for about a week.
At some point, “someone ... I cannot recall who ... asked Lennon if could play the guitar for us.” He played and sang with Ono ‘Give peace a chance’ and “then they sang ‘Radio Peace.’” It was made for a radio station in The Netherlands but was never aired, Hoejen said.
The items — the tape, 23 still photos and a copy of the school paper — have been estimated to be worth at least 200,000 kroner (nearly $31,800).
John Lennon
Dismissed'Shamelessness'
Jon Stewart
Comedian Jon Stewart says he missed how former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)'s "ridiculousness" and "shamelessness" made him "dangerous" ahead of the premiere of his new biweekly streaming show on Apple TV+.
Stewart is just now stepping back into the spotlight for the first time since leaving his role anchoring Comedy Central's The Daily Show in 2015 after a blockbuster 16-year run that made him a household name.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Wednesday, Stewart explained what he got wrong when he dismissed Trump's political chances and said at the time Trump was a "gift from heaven" for comedians like himself.
"What I missed there is that his certainty, his ridiculousness, his shamelessness is what made him dangerous. I thought it made him a buffoon, and I thought that's what would disqualify him. What it did is made him the perfect vessel. You have to be shameless to do shameful things," Stewart told the outlet, offering his version of how the mogul and former reality TV star could command so much fealty among Republicans and his MAGA-base even a year after his election defeat.
Stewart added that "the most dangerous figures are the ones that seem comic and absurd," making clear that while he wasn't comparing Trump to those brutal dictators, "Saddam Hussein seems absurd. Muammar Gaddafi would stand in a kaftan and rant like a madman."
Jon Stewart
‘As a Musician, He’s a Shoe Designer’
Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren, who’s about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, doesn’t sound like he hopes to ever see Kanye West joining him there. “I’m one of the few artists not on Kanye’s album,” Rundgren says in a new interview — but it wasn’t for lack of being asked. The rocker says he was invited to participate on “Donda” and even has “three albums’ worth of Kanye stems on my computer,” but finally bowed out after a year of work, with no end and not much valuable input in sight.
“I kept getting called by Kanye to add vocals onto the record,” the artist-producer says in a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock. “When it got into the homestretch in July, I just said, ‘That’s enough for me. I have no idea whether any of this is being used.’ You don’t get much feedback from him regarding what it is.” Not that he had any objections to the tone of the material. “I didn’t mind working on his gospel stuff. If you want to sing about Jesus, go ahead, I don’t care. I’ll help you do it, you know? If you want to sing about your troubles with your wife, go ahead and do it. I don’t care.” But he wasn’t OK with continuing to be “driftwood in the process” without knowing how or even if his work would be used.
After initially telling writer Matt Wardlaw that “I’m one of the few artists not on Kanye’s album,” Rundgren hedged on that a little, saying there might be “a possibility that I’m actually in there somewhere. There’s so much junk in that record! I eventually came to the realization that, as a musician, he’s a shoe designer. He’s just a dilettante at this point,” Rundgren said, citing West having “stupid money” to endlessly toy with his work. “Nobody rents a stadium to make a record in. Nobody flies in the entire world of hip-hop just to croak one syllable, just so you can say that everybody was on it.”
Rundgren says that, listening to “Donda,” he believes West “hurriedly wrapped the whole thing up and put out what is obviously really raw, unprocessed stuff. It’s because Drake was running the whole process.” Afraid of being overshadowed by Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy,” Rundgren maintains, West “hurried up and released the album the weekend before Drake could get his out. And in the end, Drake ate his lunch anyway.”
In a separate Ultimate Classic Rock story, Rundgren talks about how he won’t be showing up for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cleveland Oct. 30, but is willing to pipe in an acceptance speech or other acknowledgement from the concert he’s doing that night in Cincinnatti. He indicates that he wants to avoid outrightly disparaging the hall or letting down his fans who have clamored for years to get in, but adds that he’s “too much on the record about my feelings” about the institution to be too accommodating.
Todd Rundgren
2021 Finalists
Toy Hall of Fame
Cabbage Patch Kids, the rosy-cheeked dolls that left store shelves picked clean during the first big holiday toy craze, are up for a spot in the National Toy Hall of Fame, part of a finalist group announced Wednesday that also includes garden-variety sand and the toy fire engine.
Also among finalists being considered for a November induction are five competitive games: Battleship, Risk, The Settlers of Catan, Mahjong and billiards, as well as the piñata, American Girl Dolls, Masters of the Universe and Fisher-Price Corn Popper.
The 2021 finalists were pulled from the thousands of nominations the National Toy Hall of Fame receives each year. Anyone can nominate a toy and a panel of experts, along with input from the public, votes in the three to be inducted. The 74 previous honorees have run the gamut from the simplest cardboard box and stick to the the groundbreaking Atari 2600 Game System and universally known Checkers, Crayola crayons and marbles.
To be inducted, toys must have withstood tests of time and memory, changed play or toy design and fostered learning, creativity or discovery.
The three toys that receive the most public votes will be submitted as one ballot to be counted with the 22 other top-three ballots submitted by the National Selection Advisory Committee, effectively making the public one member of the committee.
Toy Hall of Fame
Sweaty Wrestler Finally Settles
Hastert
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Sweaty Wrestler) and a man who accused him of child sexual abuse reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Wednesday over Hastert’s refusal to pay the man $1.8 million — the outstanding balance in hush money that the Illinois Republican agreed to pay the man in 2010.
Lawyers would not release details of the settlement, arrived at just days before a civil trial in the case that was set to start. It would have focused on a novel legal issue about whether Hastert’s verbal agreement to pay $3.5 million to buy the silence of a man he abused as a teenager amounted to a legally binding contract.
The hush-money deal would eventually lead to a federal criminal case against Hastert five years later and to public disgrace for the a GOP stalwart who, for eight years as House speaker, was second in the line of succession to the presidency. In the federal case, prosecutors said Hastert sexually abused at least four male students between the ages of 14 and 17 throughout his years at Yorkville High School. Hastert was in his 20s and 30s.
Federal prosecutors said during criminal proceedings that the hush-money deal was voluntarily entered into and that the victim never sought to blackmail Hastert that he’d go public about the abuse. The abuse happened when the victim was a high school wrestler and the now 79-year-old Hastert was his coach.
Hastert admitted in his criminal case that he abused the man and other athletes, though in some filings in the civil case he sometimes appeared to be backing away from that admission.
Hastert
Lawsuit Proceeds
E. Jean Carroll
A U.S. judge on Wednesday said former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) cannot delay a lawsuit accusing him of defaming former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll after she claimed he raped her in the mid-1990s.
In a one-sentence order, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan refused to put the case on hold while Trump appeals an earlier ruling he made.
The order could let Carroll obtain documents and other materials from Trump during the appeal. Her lawyers have said they also want a DNA sample from the former president.
Kaplan's denial was without prejudice, meaning Trump can renew his request. Trump can also ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan for a stay.
Oral arguments are scheduled for during the week of Nov. 29.
E. Jean Carroll
90% Vaccinated; Holdouts Tested Daily
Rupert Corp.
Fox Corp., which earned a shout-out from President Joe Biden for its firm Covid-19 policies, will now require daily tests for the “small number” of its employees who remain unvaccinated.
In a company-wide memo obtained by Deadline, HR chief Kevin Lord said more than 90% of full-time Fox employees have been vaccinated. He wrote that the company is “pleased” with that tally and views it as “important information” in planning for the future, particularly office arrangements and the return of workers.
He also announced daily testing for those who have not been vaccinated or have declined to disclose their vaccine status. Details about the protocol will be shared with “relevant employees” in the “near future,” he added.
At the same time the parent company is keeping the workforce accountable, Fox News, particularly in its nightly opinion blocks, has aired a considerable amount of vaccine skepticism. Over the summer, Sean Hannity and other personalities caused waves by affirming their support of “the science” and vaccination. At the same time those testimonials aired, however, the channel was continuing to air segments in which skeptics expressed a negative outlook on vaccination.
Rupert Corp.
Fossilized Skin
Carnotaurus
Carnotaurus was an oddity among dinosaurs, with strange horns and tiny forelimbs that made even T. rex's look useful. However, its discovery came with something that could shed light on many other carnivorous dinosaurs – fossilized skin. It's taken a surprisingly long time for this skin to get the analysis such an unusual find deserves, but now it has finally happened.
In 1984 a remarkable skeleton was discovered in Chubut Province, Patagonia. The new species of therapod was named Carnotaurus sastrei, (Sastre's meat-eating bull after the farm's owner) representing a genus with some distinctive features. However, the most remarkable part of the specimen was easily the best-preserved therapod skin ever found.
Surprisingly, studies of this skin have been very incomplete. Dr Christophe Hendrickx of Unidad Ejecutora Lillo and Dr Phil Bell of the University of New England (Australia) have rectified this in Cretaceous Research.
“By looking at the skin from the shoulders, belly and tail regions, we discovered that the skin of this dinosaur was more diverse than previously thought, consisting of large and randomly distributed conical studs surrounded by a network of small elongated, diamond-shaped or subcircular scales,” Hendrickx said in a statement.
“Contrary to previous interpretations, the feature scales are randomly distributed and neither form discrete rows nor show progressive variations in their size along parts of the body,” the authors add.
Carnotaurus
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