from Bruce
Anecdotes
Royalty
• James M. Barrie once attended a birthday party for three-year-old Princess Margaret Rose, the daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England. About her favorite present, Mr. Barrie asked, “Is that your very own?” Princess Margaret immediately placed it between Mr. Barrie and herself, and said, “It is yours — and mine.” Later, the princess said about Mr. Barrie, “I know that man. He is my greatest friend — and I am his greatest friend.” At the princess’ birthday party, she spoke some words that Mr. Barrie liked so much that he told her that they would appear in his next play. In addition, he told her that he would pay her a royalty of a penny each time the character spoke her words on stage. Later, King George VI wrote Mr. Barrie and joked that unless he paid the princess her royalties, he would have his lawyers contact him. Mr. Barrie immediately set about acquiring a bag of bright new pennies to present to the princess.
• The British have the reputation of NOT being a passionate people, unlike the French and Spanish. Once while Tallulah Bankhead was shown her suite at a hotel, she was told that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had spent their honeymoon there. Ms. Bankhead felt the bed, then said, “Ah yes, it’s still cold.”
Sex
• At the very beginning of her career, opera singer/actress Grace Moore made the rounds of booking offices, hoping for a job on Broadway. One of the men in charge of casting looked her over, then said, “The voice may be okay, but lift your skirt, girlie, so I can see your legs.” She slapped him, then made her exit as she told him, “I don’t sing with my legs.” In her autobiography, You’re Only Human Once, Ms. Moore later wrote, “Managers seemed never to consider the voice as a separate entity from what went on below.”
• In England, a vicar was on a train with a bunch of actresses who were going to perform in the pantomime Dick Whittington. He gave them pieces of the lemon-flavored hard candy known as acid drops, then began to ask them about the parts they would perform. He asked one actress, “Which part do you take?” She answered, “The cat.” Eventually, he asked, “And which of you takes Dick?” One actress, annoyed by the persistent questioning, replied, “We all do, dear, but not for acid drops.”
• Lesbian playwright Holly Hughes had a very good reason for writing plays — to get girls. She would write a play that starred the girl she was pursuing. Of course, Ms. Hughes would play the love interest of the star. In her introduction to Dress Suits for Hire, Ms. Hughes writes about the difficulty of writing a commissioned play for some people she knew she would not sleep with: “It was hard for me to imagine why someone would go to all the work to write a play if there was absolutely no chance she would get laid as a result. What was the point?”
• Edna Ferber and George Kaufman did much of their writing in Ms. Ferber’s room at the Hotel Algonquin while they collaborated on the play Dinner at Eight. The owner and manager of the hotel was Frank Case, who permitted as little hanky-panky as possible at the hotel. Once, very early in the morning, he telephoned Ms. Ferber and asked, “Do you have a gentleman in your room?” She replied, “I don’t know. Wait a minute, and I’ll ask him.”
• When the future Mrs. Zero Mostel was touring as a chorus girl in vaudeville, she noticed that one particular girl in the chorus — seventh girl from the left — dated trombone players. Never any other kind of musician — just trombone players. Eventually, she discovered why. The vaudeville show traveled with its own music, and on the music for the trombone was handwritten this note: “Seventh from the left f**ks.”
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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: L'Espion Invisible en Vacances” [“The Invisible Spy on Vacation”]
Album: TIKI TWIST EP
Artist: The Dead Rocks
Artist Location: Brazil
Info: “Celebrating 15 years of instrumental surf music.”
Price: $0.99 (USD) for track; $1.99 (USD) for four-track EP
Genre: Instrumental surf music
Links:
TIKI TWIST EP
The Dead Rock on Bandcamp
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Current Events
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In The Chaos Household
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Sells Entire Catalog to BMG
Tina Turner
As music companies continue to court hitmakers for their songs, one of the most celebrated catalogs in pop history is on the move.
Tina Turner has sold her music rights to BMG, the company’s CEO Hartwig Masuch tells Rolling Stone — marking the latest event in the trend of major legacy artists cashing in on their copyrights.
Included in the deal is Turner’s artist’s share for her recordings along with publishing rights, neighboring rights and her name, image and likeness. BMG declined to disclose financial details of the sale, but BMG has bought out all of her rights and calls the deal the single largest artist acquisition the company has ever executed.
As BMG gets Turner’s royalties and assets, Warner Music will still act as her record company. But BMG says it will work closely with Turner and Warner now that it owns the rights in her catalog. Turner — who originally soared to fame through her performing partnership with ex-husband Ike Turner — enjoyed a successful solo career following her divorce and the group’s disbanding, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time on the back of five platinum albums, including the five-time platinum Private Dancer. Among Turner’s biggest hits are “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “The Best” and “Typical Male.”
Turner, often called the “queen of rock & roll,” was the second artist to ever grace the cover of Rolling Stone, after John Lennon, and the first woman and black artist. More or less retired since 2009, Turner has recently seen a renaissance as the music and entertainment industries celebrate her legacy. She’ll be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist at the end of October — her second induction after getting in with Ike Turner in the Nineties. Tina, the acclaimed musical based on Turner’s early life, will return to Broadway this month after an extended hiatus because of the pandemic. And earlier this year, HBO released an extensive, career-spanning documentary focused on the singer.
Tina Turner
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The upcoming world premiere at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra of a classical music piece inspired by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would probably have been impossible if not for a bunch of lawyers in the Chicago area, a Long Island fine arts foundation and an award-winning pianist and composer who put the deal together.
Even in the best of economic times, finding funders for new orchestral works is typically difficult.
“You’re looking for support for something that doesn’t exist,” said Jeffrey Biegel, a pianist and composer on the faculty of Brooklyn College who has managed to bring together donors and composers to create more than a dozen musical works since 1999. “We have no idea what the first notes will sound like until we have enough money to pay for it.”
Biegel, 60, of Lynbrook, New York, recognized that in order for “Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg” by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich to reach fruition, he needed to approach it differently.
Kim Noltemy, president and CEO of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, said she jumped at the chance to be part of the new Ginsburg piece, which will premiere on Thursday in Dallas, with one of the justice’s favorite singers, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, joining the orchestra in its performance.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Sandro Botticelli
“The Man of Sorrows”
Rare “autograph”-quality paintings by the Early Renaissance painter have become the art trade’s equivalent of London buses. You wait and wait and wait, then four of them arrive one after the other.
First, in July 2019, there were was the speculative “Portrait of a Young Man,” catalogued as “in the style of Botticelli,” which sold at 1,000 times its estimate, at 7.5 million Swiss francs (with fees, around $8 million) at an auction in Zurich. In October, it was followed by Botticelli’s fully-accepted portrait of the humanist Michele Marullo Tarcaniota, offered at the Frieze Masters art fair for $30 million. Then, this January, Sotheby’s sold Botticelli’s “Young Man Holding a Roundel” for $92.2 million.
And now Sotheby’s has announced that it will be selling “The Man of Sorrows,” a half-length panel painting of the resurrected Christ, thought to date from around 1500, which the auction house ambitiously claims is “the defining masterpiece of Botticelli’s late career.”
Scheduled to be auctioned in New York in January 2022, the Botticelli will be unveiled in Hong Kong before a global tour with viewings in Los Angeles, London and Dubai. The painting is certain to sell, courtesy of a pre-auction financial guarantee, and is estimated to raise more than $40 million.
“The Man of Sorrows,” like “Young Man Holding a Roundel,” is an attributional upgrade. The painting, owned by an American collector, last appeared at auction 1963, when it sold for the relatively modest price of £10,000 ($13,600 today). It was listed among the “workshop and school pictures” in Ronald Lightbown’s seminal 1978 catalog of Botticelli’s works, meaning it was thought to have been created by the painter’s students or followers.
“The Man of Sorrows”
Fat Bear Week 2021
Otis
You might not think that being old, comparatively toothless, and showing up late would be the makings of a winner, but for four-time champion 480 Otis these setbacks are no matter when it comes to competing for Katmai National Park and Explore.org's Fat Bear Week 2021 title. While not the largest bear in this year’s running, his #TransformationTuesday clearly won over hearts and minds in the final vote yesterday as he was crowned victor over 151 Walker with a lead of over 6,000 votes.
As a well-known face among Fat Bear Week fanatics, 25-year-old Otis has accrued quite the following in his time but with fame comes great controversy. In spats more commonly associated with the scandalous annual New Zealand Bird of the Year Competition, people took to social media with claims that his title was delivered to him by the “sympathy vote army”.
“He came back to the river later than average for him,” Mike Fitz, creator of the competition and resident naturalist with Explore.org, told the Washington Post. “He was quite thin at that time, but he’s filled in nicely.”
A good thing too, for an elderly bear, as the looming hibernation will be tough on Otis’s body. Reemergence from the annual slumber is never promised for these bears, which is why gorging on the sockeye salmon of KTP is as delicious as it is vital for these enormous animals.
It’s fitting, then, that in what has been a difficult year for many, we’re reminded of the power of perseverance as even an elderly bear considered to be the “underdog” by some strolled in late and took the title. In true Fat Bear Week style, Otis’s victory was marked with some alliteration to end all alliteration from the KTP socials.
Otis
Identified By Cold-Case Task Force
Zodiac Killer
A cold-case task force led by former FBI agents and retired law enforcement officials claims they have finally uncovered the identity of the mysterious Zodiac Killer.
The arch criminal terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s in a series of random murders, but grew in notoriety because of his cryptic notes to authorities and media. He has never been identified by authorities, who only recently cracked the code on one of his letters.
Investigators with the task force known as the Case Breakers told Fox News that the group has identified the killer as Gary Francis Poste, who died in 2018. The Zodiac Killer has been linked to five murders in 1968 and 1969 in the San Francisco area by the FBI. The Case Breakers also tied Poste to a sixth murder in Southern California.
The Zodiac Killer has been a popular culture inspiration in books, music, television,, and films for many years. Beyond examinations of the actual events in the Bay Area, such films as Clint Eastwood’s 1971 Dirty Harry and the TV series American Horror Story have used the character as the basis for their fictional stories.
Zodiac Killer
Captured, Killed or Compromised
Informants
Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.
The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.
The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.
Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”
The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.
Informants
Walks and Flies
Creepy New Drone
A newly developed bipedal robot can seamlessly switch between walking and flying, and it’s the combination of these two skills that really sets this futuristic machine apart.
Introducing LEONARDO, or LEO for short. The name is an acronym for LEgs ONboARD drone, which nicely but insufficiently describes this robot. The Caltech engineers who built LEO didn’t just slap a pair of robotic legs onto an aerial drone—they had to design the bot with both walking and flying in mind and develop specialized software to integrates its various components.
LEO is still a prototype—a kind of proof-of-concept to see if a bipedal flying robot can perform tasks that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for ground robots or aerial drones to accomplish on their own. In the future, a full-fledged version could be tasked with difficult or dangerous jobs, such as inspecting and repairing damaged infrastructure, installing new equipment in hard-to-reach places, or attending to natural disasters and industrial accidents. Eventually, a LEO-like robot could even transport delicate equipment to the surface of a celestial body, such as Mars or Saturn’s moon Titan. More ominously, the agile bipedal flier could be used in defense or warfare.
LEO weighs just 5.7 pounds (2.58 kg) and stands 2.5 feet (75 cm) tall. Like a bird, the robot uses its slender, multi-jointed legs to push off the ground and provide an assist during takeoff. LEO’s tilted electric thrusters—the four propellers—are synched to these jumps. LEO walks as if on high heels, but these heels allow for balanced standing; should the conditions warrant, however, LEO’s propellers could always kick in to ensure further stability. Batteries, sensors, and the required processing power are packed into the robot’s torso, allowing for full autonomy and no clunky wires.
Creepy New Drone
Pithekoussai, Greece
Nestor's Cup
An ancient Greek cremation burial dating to nearly 3,000 years ago was more crowded than expected, scientists recently discovered. The tomb was thought to hold a single occupant — a child — but new analysis of the tomb’s bones revealed that it instead held the remains of at least three adults.
This could help to explain a longstanding mystery: the presence in the tomb of a cup with a racy inscription that seemed out of place in a child's grave.
The clay vessel, known as Nestor's Cup, bears a three-line boast ending with a promise that whoever drank from the cup would be smitten with desire for Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. Experts have long puzzled over why such a message would be preserved in the burial of a child, and the recent findings may help to explain it, scientists reported in a new study.
The burial is part of an ancient site called Pithekoussai, an ancient Greek city and necropolis on the island of Ischia in Italy. It dates to the eighth century B.C., and archaeologists excavated approximately 1,300 tombs there between 1952 and 1982. One of the tombs, identified as "Cremation 168," is more widely known as the "Tomb of Nestor's Cup" after an inscribed vessel for drinking wine, known as a kotyle, that was discovered there. The cup bears one of the oldest surviving examples of Greek writing, the study authors reported Oct. 6 in the journal PLOS One.
In the epic Greek poem "The Iliad," Homer described a beautiful golden cup that only its owner, the hero Nestor, could lift. According to legends of the time, adventurers would drink a fortifying beverage from its depths. By comparison, the clay vessel found in Tomb 168 is a simple cup. But its inscription claims otherwise in a nod to Nestor's mythical goblet, according to the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Nestor's Cup
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