from Bruce
Anecdotes
Clothing
• Geraldo Rivera once interviewed Holly Woodlawn, who was born male but who looked fabulous in women’s clothing. Mr. Rivera kept asking Ms. Woodlawn nosy questions, and he even wanted to look under her skirt, but she skillfully deflected his questions and declined to let him look under her skirt. Finally, Mr. Rivera demanded, “Please answer me. What are you? Are you a woman trapped in a man’s body? Are you a heterosexual? Are you a homosexual? A transvestite? A transsexual? What is the answer to the question?” Ms. Woodlawn replied, “But, darling, what difference does it make as long as you look fabulous?”
• Honor Blackman wore a lot of leather outfits when she played Mrs. Cathy Gale on the British tongue-in-cheek TV series The Avengers. Her role required a lot of physical activity, as Mrs. Gale never screamed for help when attacked, but instead responded with judo. After splitting her pants in a scene, she knew that she needed stronger costumes to perform in. Patrick Macnee, who played John Steed in the series, suggested leather, and a new fashion statement was born.
• Eve Arden was the star of Our Miss Brooks, featuring a sometimes sarcastic but always loveable schoolteacher. After being criticized for the wardrobe she wore on the TV series — her clothing was way too expensive for a schoolteacher — Ms. Arden started shopping for costumes that a schoolteacher could afford to wear.
• George Lindsey played Goober for a few years on The Andy Griffith Show — a role that has stayed with him. One day, he was walking in the Knoxville, Tennessee, airport while wearing sunglasses, a trench coat, and a mustache — but a boy still spotted him and yelled, “Mama, there’s Goober with a mustache!”
• Reggie Smith was both the prop man on The Andy Griffith Show and a member of a nudist colony. Don Knotts, who played Deputy Barney Fife, once got a laugh by saying on a Friday afternoon, “Everybody’s going away for the weekend, and Reggie’s the only one who doesn’t have to pack.”
Comedians
• Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, decided that he wanted to do something different from the first year’s opening montage of photographs of the cast, so he decided to use Mr. Van Dyke’s gift for physical comedy and keep the audience guessing. Therefore, he had two opening segments for the show filmed. The first shows Mr. Van Dyke tripping over an ottoman in the sitcom living room, while the second shows him deftly sidestepping the ottoman. These opening segments were used randomly on the episodes. A third segment was filmed later; it showed Mr. Van Dyke deftly sidestepping the ottoman, then stumbling.
• Joan Rivers was thin, and she didn’t mind making fun of fat celebrities. Back when Elizabeth Taylor had gained weight, she became one of Ms. Rivers’ favorite comedic targets: “Elizabeth Taylor is so fat, when she pierces her ears gravy comes out.” (Ms. Taylor was a good sport about it.) Roseanne, on the other hand, is fat, and she doesn’t like it when thin people make fun of fat people. She says, “What I would say to Joan is, ‘Yeah, I eat just like you. I just don’t puke when I’m through.’” About herself, Roseanne says, “You’re looking at one happy fat b*tch.”
• Durward Kirby was the announcer on The Garry Moore Show, and he was also a comedian in many of the show’s sketches. Colleagues remember one sketch in which a comic gangster shot his character many, many times with a machine gun, and the character took a long time to fall to the floor and “die.” Later, Mr. Kirby explained that the stage floor had been dirty, and he had simply been looking for a clean spot to die on.
• Fred Allen was amazingly funny on radio, but he was never a hit on TV, which he disliked. A hotel manager once gave Bob Hope a basket of fruit, which Mr. Hope put on top of the TV in his hotel room. Fred Allen walked into the hotel room, saw the basket of fruit, smiled, and then told Mr. Hope, “You know, that’s the best thing I’ve seen on television yet.”
• Arsenio Hall suffered from an attack of the nerves before his first attempt at stand-up comedy. When he heard his name called to go to the stage, he didn’t run up to the stage — he ran out the door.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
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Music: "El Pistolero"
Double-Sided Single: “El Pistolero” b/w “Sea Urchin”
Artist: Frizzbit
Artist Location: Lomas De Zamora, Argentina
Info:
FRIZZBIT are:
Nacho Scordia
Federico Horita
Áxel Papadópulos
Her Cass
Juan Aguilar
Santiago Forzati
Julián Farina.
Price: Name Your Price (Included FREE)
Genre: Spaghetti Western. Surf.
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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
Vinnie the shitten has been extra clingy today.
Refugee Puppet
Little Amal
The trans-European trek of Little Amal has begun its final stage, as the giant puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl reached the UK.
Little Amal was greeted by the actor Jude Law in Folkestone, Kent as part of an initiative to raise awareness of the plight of young migrants.
The project, called The Walk, is from the team that reproduced Calais refugee camp The Jungle on stage.
Little Amal was constructed by the Handspring Puppet Company, which previously made the equine stars of the stage version of War Horse.
It takes three puppeteers to operate Little Amal; a stilt walker who also brings her face to life and one on each of her arms.
Little Amal
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin
Wu-Tang Clan
At the end of July, attorney Peter Scoolidge made his way to the Eastern District Courthouse at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn. The courthouse was hardly an unusual destination for the lawyer, but that day, he had a bizarre assignment: Listen to the lone existing copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album to determine if the material was still intact.
Scoolidge had bought a Discman for the occasion, and he popped in the album under the watchful eyes of around 10 members of law enforcement, representatives from the U.S. Marshals service, the U.S. attorney’s office, and the Department of Justice. “As you can imagine, the tracks have a lot of colorful language on them, [so] there’s a lot of giggling [as] people who are not hip-hop people [are] listening to this stuff,” Scoolidge says. “It was pretty funny.”
Giggling U.S. Marshals is just the latest odd episode in the life of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which was bought by an anonymous entity in July. On Wednesday, a group called PleasrDAO revealed that it was ultimately behind the purchase, which cost the collective $4 million.
Wu-Tang auctioned off the album, which was both lambasted as an elitist stunt-art hoax and embraced as a shrewd protest against digitization’s erosion of music’s value, for $2 million in 2015. The buyer back then was Martin Shkreli, a hedge-fund and pharmaceutical executive who was quickly becoming one of the most reviled men in America. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was subsequently seized by the U.S. government before making its way to PleasrDAO, a group with a passion for buying digital collectibles honoring “anti-establishment rebels” — their previous purchases include NFTs connected to Edward Snowden and the Russian band Pussy Riot. (Nadya from Pussy Riot is now a PleasrDAO member.)
As Once Upon a Time in Shaolin got a new owner, it also gained a new layer of complexity. What was a resolutely physical product — the album comes in an ornate silver box accompanied by a leather-bound booklet — has sprouted a digital component: an NFT deed of ownership. This means the buyer of the album will be memorialized in the blockchain-verse.
Wu-Tang Clan
The Eerie Sounds
Planet Mars
When you think of some of the eeriest sounds on Earth, you’ll probably think of warning sirens, piercing screams, or even John Carpenter’s Halloween theme — but it turns out that Mars has its share of creepy noises that sound like they could be pulled right from a horror movie soundtrack. NASA has shared audio captured by the Perseverance rover just before the spookiest time of year.
Perseverance has been hanging out on Mars since Feb. 18 of this year, and since the rover is equipped with two microphones, it has been perfectly poised to capture hours of audio to send back to Earth. Images and data samples are great, but there’s something about actually hearing the sounds captured on an alien planet that really adds depth to the experience.
You can listen to the audio on NASA’s website. I highly recommend listening to them with some nicer headphones that will allow you to feel the rich bass.
NASA has broken the sounds up into smaller bites, with descriptions of what’s happening. There are clips of the Ingenuity helicopter hovering above Mars, Perseverance driving and capturing laser scans of rocks, and even just wind.
What makes this even cooler is the fact that the microphones used on this trip aren’t anything super special; NASA notes that they can be purchased by anyone. One was fitted to the chassis of the rover while the other was affixed to its mast.
Planet Mars
Leaked Data
Oath Keepers
Over the past dozen years, at least 28 people who currently hold elected office joined or financially supported the Oath Keepers, the extremist group that figured prominently in the violent Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol, a BuzzFeed News analysis of data from the organization shows.
In the months since the Capitol insurrection, as two dozen people linked to the Oath Keepers have been charged with crimes, including conspiracy, for their roles, several of those elected officials have continued to voice support for the organization. And at least two officials — David Eastman and Mark Finchem of the Alaska and Arizona Houses of Representatives, respectively — were in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6 to protest the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. Neither of the men has been charged.
Other current elected officials with ties to the Oath Keepers who were identified by BuzzFeed News said they dropped out of the group long before that day, although some speculated it might just have been the work of a few bad actors.
At a time when the Oath Keepers and other extreme right-wing groups appear more focused on moving into local politics, the accounting gives insight into how much support the group may already have in state and local government around the country. The officials who appear in the group's records range from state senators and representatives to road superintendents, city council members, and sheriffs. Some paid for lifetime memberships, others joined for only a year, and still others donated money to the group but did not become members.
“People ask me if I’ll renounce my membership,” said Chad Christensen, a Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives who joined the Oath Keepers in 2012, sells insurance for State Farm, and also owns a private detective agency. “I tell them there’s no way.”
Oath Keepers
L’Anse aux Meadows
Vikings
Vikings were active at a Newfoundland settlement nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, new research suggests.
On the northernmost tip of the northernmost peninsula of Newfoundland, Canada, is a prehistoric Viking settlement known as L’Anse aux Meadows. The site has been explored by archaeologists since the 1960s, but a firm date for the settlement has proven elusive.
New research published in Nature is adding some much-needed clarity to the issue. A team led by archaeologist Michael Dee from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands provides new evidence showing that Vikings were active at L’Anse aux Meadows by 1021 CE—exactly 1,000 years ago. In an email to Gizmodo, Dee said his team’s findings represent the “first, and only, known date for Europeans in the Americas before Columbus,” who crossed the Atlantic in 1492 CE.
That Vikings were capable mariners is no secret. Norse settlers are believed to have reached Iceland by the late 9th century and North America by the 11th century, though the exact timing of the latter event has remained a matter of debate. I asked Dee why it took so long for archaeologists to date the site.
To date the site, Dee and his colleagues analyzed three pieces of wood gathered from the site, all of which came from different trees. These pieces of wood were leftovers from the chopping of wood and associated with Viking activity at L’anse aux Meadows; the distinctive chips showed signs of cutting and slicing and were clearly produced by metal tools, which the indigenous people living in the area at the time were not known to possess.
Vikings
Tipped on Its Side
Earth
We know that true polar wander (TPW) can occasionally tilt whole planets and moons relative to their axes, but it's not entirely clear just how often this has happened to Earth.
Now a new study presents evidence of one such tilting event that occurred around 84 million years ago – when dinosaurs still walked the Earth.
Researchers analyzed limestone samples from Italy, dating back to the Late Cretaceous period (100.5 to 65.5 million years ago), looking for evidence of shifts in the magnetic record that would point towards an occurrence of TPW.
Bacteria fossils trapped in the rock, forming chains of the mineral magnetite, offer some of the most convincing evidence yet of true polar wander in the Late Cretaceous – and it may help settle a scientific debate that's been going on for decades.
"This observation represents the most recent large-scale TPW documented and challenges the notion that the spin axis has been largely stable over the past 100 million years," the researchers explain in their paper.
Earth
Trapped In Amber
Dinosaur-Era Crab
Once upon a time, during the Cretaceous period, a tiny crab wandered out of the water onto land and somehow got trapped in amber, which preserved it for 100 million years. At least that's what a team of scientists hypothesize might have happened in a new paper announcing their discovery of the oldest known modern-looking crab yet found in the fossil record. The paper was published in the journal Science Advances.
This new type of "true crab" (aka a brachyuran) measures just five millimeters in leg span and has been dubbed Cretapsara athanata. The name is meant to honor the period in which the crab lived and Apsara, a South and Southeast Asian spirit of the clouds and waters. "Athanatos" means "immortal," a sly reference to the fossilized crab being frozen in time.
It's rare to find nonmarine crab fossils from this era trapped in amber; most such amber fossils are those of insects. And the previously discovered crabby fossils are incomplete, usually consisting of pieces of claws. This latest find is so complete that it doesn't seem to be missing even a single hair. The find is of particular interest because it pushes back the time frame for when nonmarine crabs crawled onto land by 25 to 50 million years—consistent with long-standing theories on the genetic history of crabs—and offers new insight into the so-called Cretaceous Crab Revolution, when crabs diversified worldwide.
The amber in which this crab was found is part of the collection at the Longyin Amber Museum in China. The museum purchased it in 2015 from local miners in Myanmar. (The paper includes the authors' assurances that their research has been limited to items predating 2017, when hostilities resumed in the country.) Luque, who has been studying the evolution of crabs for over ten years, heard about the specimen and became "obsessed" with it.
Thus began an international collaboration that includes researchers from Harvard, the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Yale University, the University of Alberta, UC Berkeley, Yunnan University, and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Co-author Lida Xing of the China University led the team that took micro-CT scans of the fossil to reconstruct a 3D model. The reconstruction is so finely detailed, it enabled the scientists to observe not just the crab's body but also soft tissues like the antennas, large compound eyes, and mouthparts—including the fine hairs lining those parts.
Dinosaur-Era Crab
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