from Bruce
Anecdotes
Practical Jokes
• After Richard Diamond, Private Eye, Mary Tyler Moore went on to The Dick Van Dyke Show. In real life Ms. Moore never made a secret of her dislike for housework, although she was playing Laura Petrie, a near-perfect homemaker. At a party Ms. Moore and her husband gave for her co-workers, Mr. Van Dyke wrote in the dust on top of her refrigerator, “Needs Soap.”
Prejudice
• Sheldon Leonard was the producer of I Spy in the days when few African-Americans were on TV. He wanted to hire the young black comic Bill Cosby to co-star with Robert Culp, but he worried about whether the NBC network brass would approve the deal. So Mr. Leonard armed himself with arguments why signing Mr. Cosby would not alienate the TV audience, then he went to see NBC President Robert Kintner. He told Mr. Kintner that he had in mind a young comic to co-star with Mr. Culp, but that he hadn’t signed him yet. When Mr. Kintner asked why not, Mr. Leonard replied, “Because he’s black.” Mr. Kintner then asked, “What difference does that make?” Relieved, Mr. Leonard said, “As of this moment, Mr. Kintner, it makes no difference whatsoever.”
• Gay deejay John McMullen of Sirius OutQ Radio occasionally visited the late famous homophobe Fred Phelps in Mr. Phelps’ native Topeka, Kansas. One day, while traveling from San Francisco to New York, Mr. McMullen even turned a half-hour, live-radio visit with Mr. Phelps into a fundraiser, telling his audience that he was taking a Sodom to Gomorrah via Topeka Tour and raising several thousand dollars for a charity that Mr. Phelps did NOT support: the Matthew Shepard Foundation.
• George Takei, who played Mr. Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek TV series, grew up in American internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. He had a teacher who referred to him as “that little Jap boy,” and each morning, he was able to look out the school window and see barbed-wire fences and guard towers as he ended the Pledge of Allegiance by reciting “with justice and liberty for all.”
Problem-Solving
• The opening credits and the exterior shots of early episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show feature a beautiful Victorian house where the characters Mary Richards, Rhoda Morgenstern, and Phyllis Lindstrom are supposed to live. The house really belonged to a humanities professor at the University of Minnesota. Unfortunately, after the series became popular, tourists began to ring her doorbell, then ask to meet Mary. When the MTM production crew arrived to take more exterior shots of the house, the professor declined to give them permission, but they started to take the shots anyway. The professor stopped them by hanging a banner outside Mary Richards’ window. The banner made a demand about a then-current political situation: “IMPEACH NIXON.” In later episodes, Mary Richards moved to a high-rise apartment house.
• This is a story that the late central Ohio sportscaster Jimmy Crum liked to tell: Paul Robinson played for the Cleveland Browns under coach Paul Brown. Once he scored a 55-yard touchdown, but instead of heading straight for the goal line, he ran to the other side of the field, then headed for the goal line. When Mr. Brown asked him later why he had run to the other side of the field, Mr. Robinson explained, “Coach, this game is being televised nationally and my folks are watching. The cameras are over on that side of the field, and I knew they’d see me better if I ran over there.” By the way, according to weatherman Jym Ganahl of Channel 4 News in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Crum used to eat a dozen White Castle hamburgers for breakfast each morning.
• As a young actress newly arrived in New York City, Carol Burnett ran into a problem. She couldn’t get an acting job because she had no experience, and she couldn’t get experience because no one would give her an acting job. She solved the problem by putting on a show with the other young entertainers in her rooming house, which was known as the Rehearsal Club. It worked. Carol and some of the other entertainers got jobs as a result of the Rehearsal Club Revue.
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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
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Beat Street"
Album: BEAT STREET
Artist: Button Up
Record Company: Button Up Records
Record Company Location: Scotland, UK
Info:
Button Up Records release albums by Button Up, Colonel Mustard & The Dijon 5, Connor Fyfe, Daniel Meade and The Bar Dogs.
Price: £1 (GBP) for track; £7 (GBP) for 10-track album
Genre: R&B. Soul.
Links:
BEAT STREET
Button Up Records
Button Up Records 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
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
Reader Contribution
Surfing Lake Michigan
Autumn surfing on Lake Michigan at Grand Haven, MI...
(Note the catwalk: Yes, waves can wash that high, and higher, over those breakwaters. I was a CG coxswain there)
BttbBob
Thanks, Robert!
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Church of Bacon
Praise Bacon
Are you tired of religious people being seen as morally superior to skeptics & atheists? Of religions getting special privileges in the law, because they’re perceived as better than secular non-profit organizations?
As a protest, a group of skeptic and atheist friends had a fantastic idea in 2010. Let’s start a real, legal church with a funny name, and then demand the same rights as mainstream religions:
• We oppose supernatural claims. We are skeptics and atheists. In our religion, we doubt religion.
• We fight discrimination. Atheists and non-believers are not inferior and should not be hated and marginalized.
• We raise money for charity and are striving to be the most generous church in the world.
• Our officiants perform legal weddings for member’s friends and family and always for free. How joyful!
• We expose religious privileges as silly by claiming the same rights for Bacon.
• Praise Bacon If you prefer to praise Vegetarian Bacon or Turkey Bacon that is fine!
We now have over 25,000 members from around the world and have performed hundreds of weddings. Join us! Raise your voice in protest, and to Praise Bacon!
The United Church of Bacon
David Bruce
Other Links:
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.
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
Wonder if the defective rooster is hitting puberty - his voice is deepening and he's added an extra note.
African-American Museum of Dallas
Mick Jagger
Jennifer Monet Cowley was working at the African-American Museum of Dallas on Monday, hanging an exhibit, when she heard a knock on the front door. It was an older man with a British accent, curious to get a look inside.
"Is the museum closed today?" he asked. It was, the employees told him, as it is every Monday. But this time, they made an exception.
Jagger introduced himself to Cowley as "Mick," and Cowley even thought he looked like Jagger. But no way, right? It couldn't be the Mick, could it?
"My immediate thought was, 'He looks just like Mick Jagger,'" Cowley said. "But was like, 'No, that cannot be.'"
Cowley took Jagger on a tour, and Jagger kept smiling. So Cowley asked him, "What did you say your name was again?
Mick Jagger
Offered Spaceflight
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks was the featured guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Tuesday, during which he said Jeff Bezos originally approached him about flying to space but he turned it down because of the price.
Opening the show, Kimmel asked the 65-year-old actor whether it was true that the Amazon billionaire approached him about a spaceflight before the actor William Shatner, who was launched into space last month by Bezos' rocket company, Blue Origin. Hanks responded: "Well, yeah, provided I pay."
"And, you know, it cost 28 million bucks or something like that. And I'm doing good, Jimmy. I'm doing good. But I ain't paying" $28 million, Hanks added.
Hanks continued to dismiss the idea of flying to space and said anyone could replicate the flying experience themselves.
While Hanks declined Bezos' invitation, he is thought to be among the list of celebrities who have reserved tickets worth up to $250,000 to be in the first waves of space tourists on Richard Branson's commercial space liner Virgin Galactic.
Tom Hanks
Booker Prize
Damon Galgut
South African writer Damon Galgut won the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction on Wednesday with “The Promise,” a novel about one white family’s reckoning with South Africa’s racist history.
Galgut had been British bookmakers’ runaway favorite to win the 50,000-pound ($69,000) prize with his story of a troubled Afrikaner family and its broken promise to a Black employee — a tale that reflects bigger themes in South Africa’s transition from apartheid.
Galgut took the prize on his third time as a finalist, for a book the judges called a “tour de force.” He was previously shortlisted for “The Good Doctor” in 2003 and “In a Strange Room” in 2010, but lost both times.
He is the third South African novelist to win the Booker Prize, after Nadine Gordimer in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee, who won twice, in 1983 and 1999.
For a second year, the coronavirus pandemic has scuttled the prize’s usual black-tie dinner ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall. The winner was announced in a ceremony broadcast live on BBC radio and television.
Damon Galgut
Unpublished Memoir
Paul Newman
A memoir Paul Newman left unpublished in his lifetime will come out next fall.
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced Wednesday that the book, currently untitled, will include Newman’s thoughts on “acting, directing, boyhood, family, fame, Hollywood, Broadway, love, his first marriage, his 50-year marriage to Joanne Woodward, drinking, politics, racing, his ultimate ride to stardom, and aging gracefully.”
Newman, who died in 2008, began the book in the 1980s with the help of screenwriter Stewart Stern, who in turn spoke to dozens of Newman’s friends and associates. It was recently found in the Connecticut home where Woodward still lives.
“Through Newman’s voice, and the voices of others, the book captures the paradoxical and unstoppable rise of a star who wrestled with doubts, believing he was inferior to Marlon Brando and James Dean, and yet transcended his “hunk” status to become an Oscar-winning actor, champion race car driver, social activist, and entrepreneur whose philanthropy has generated nearly a billion dollars for charitable causes,” according to Knopf.
Paul Newman
Auction Halted
Tattoo Kit
An Israeli court suspended on Wednesday the auction of a partial tattoo kit billed as having been used on inmates at the Auschwitz death camp, following outcry from Holocaust survivors.
Obtained from a private collector, the eight fingernail-sized steel dies, each lined with pins to form numerals, would have been pressed into prisoners' flesh with ink to brand their serial numbers, according to auctioneer Meir Tzolman.
His website had deemed it "the most shocking of Holocaust items", with a projected sale value of $30,000 to $40,000.
Israel has no law against private sales of Holocaust relics. A court spokesman's statement did not specify the legal basis for Wednesday's injunction.
Interviewed before the court injunction, Tzolman said he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors who had been tattooed. He defended the auction - from which he would take a 25% commission - as a means of ensuring the dies reached "the right hands".
Tattoo Kit
The 'Krill Paradox' Solved
Whales
Scientists have found that large whales eat at least three times as much as previously thought, a discovery which highlights their importance in keeping the oceans healthy.
The study, published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, provides clues as to why wiping out millions of the largest whales on the planet was so devastating to marine environments.
Reestablishing the whale population could do wonders for marine environments and might even help replenish dwindling fish populations, two scientists told Insider.
From 1900 to 1970, industrial whaling wiped out about 1.5 million larges whales around Antarctica.
"The largest whale species on the planet were systematically hunted, which reduced abundances probably greater than 70 percent in many cases," Nicholas Pyenson, an author on the study and curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, told Insider.
Whales
1,200-Year-Old Canoe Found
Wisconsin
Archaeologists uncovered a “significant” artifact Nov. 2 from a Wisconsin lake that predates the arrival of European colonizers into North America.
First discovered in June, a wooden canoe was recovered still intact this week by archaeologists from the bottom of Lake Mendota in southern Wisconsin, according to the state’s historical society. Through carbon dating, officials have determined the canoe is 1,200 years old — used around 800 AD.
“By taking action today to preserve this canoe we are protecting a piece of history for future generations,” said Christian Overland, CEO for the Wisconsin Historical Society in a statement. “The canoe is a remarkable artifact, made from a single tree, that connects us to the people living in this region 1,200 years ago.”
Divers from the Dane County Sheriff’s Office assisted the historical society in raising the canoe to shore as it was 30 feet deep in the water, officials said.
The canoe was taken to Wisconsin’s State Archive Preservation Facility, where it will be protected from physical deterioration, the historical society said. It will take three years to preserve the condition of the canoe.
Wisconsin
Shards of Glass
Atacama Desert
They first came to scientists' attention about a decade ago: A mysterious field of glass fragments, scattered across Chile's Atacama Desert, and aligned in a vast corridor stretching 75 kilometers long (almost 50 miles).
These strange pieces of glass, too many to be counted, are clustered in a number of sites along the desert corridor, and they take a number of shapes, some occurring in large slabs up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) across.
They have both rough and smooth features, and look as if they've been somehow folded and twisted into their current forms, scientists say.
Whatever it was that triggered these violent, messy transformations roughly 12,000 years ago has never been fully understood.
In the new study, the researchers collected and studied over 300 samples of the desert glass, examining them under an electron microscope, and analyzing their chemical composition through spectroscopy.
Atacama Desert
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