from Bruce
Anecdotes
Advertising
• In April 2012, the Coca-Cola Company put a special Coke machine in Singapore. It looked like a regular Coke machine, but it had the words “Hug Me” written on it in large letters. Anyone who hugged the machine got a reward: a free cold Coca-Cola. Leonardo O’Grady, ASEAN IMC Director, The Coca-Cola Company, said, “Happiness is contagious. The Coca-Cola Hug Machine is a simple idea to spread some happiness. Our strategy is to deliver doses of happiness in an unexpected, innovative way to engage not only the people present, but the audience at large. Whether you were hugging the machine or experiencing the event online, our goal was the same — to put a smile on your face and share that emotional connection. Reactions were amazing … people really had fun with it and at one point we had four to five people hugging the machine at the same time as well as each other! In fact, there was a long line of people looking to give hugs — it was really heartwarming.” Of course, this is good advertising. Louise Kuegler, Regional Business Director at Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific, said, “We’re excited to work with The Coca-Cola Company in delivering what is really a very simple idea. All you need to do is give the Coca-Cola Hug Machine a hug and it will love you back, by giving you a free Coke. Something simple and engaging, that lifts people’s spirits and brings a smile to their face.”
• Magician Herrmann the Great had a knack for publicity. Once, in full view of two police officers, he clumsily picked a handkerchief from the pocket of one of two men. The police officers immediately intervened, and the second man looked in his pockets and discovered that his watch was missing. The police officers asked Herrmann the Great if he had the watch, but he replied that they should look in their pockets. They did, and they discovered both the watch and the handkerchief. By this time, the two men had recognized Herrmann the Great, and they thought the joke was funny. However, the police officers were not amused, and they took the magician to the police station, where they lectured him about respecting the dignity of the police. Of course, the whole affair was written up in the newspapers — exactly as Herrmann the Great had wanted.
• Stan Freberg once parodied soap operas with a skit titled “John and Marsha.” The skit consisted only of the words “John” and “Marsha.” Marsha would say, “John.” John would then say “Marsha.” As they said the words, they went through all of the emotions seen on soap operas — love, passion, anger, etc. To advertise the skit, which appeared on a comedy album, Capitol Records printed bumper stickers. Restaurant owners took the bumper stickers, cut them in half, and put “John” on the door to the men’s restroom and “Marsha” on the door to the women’s restroom. By the way, one of Mr. Freberg’s advertisements claimed, “Nine out of ten doctors recommend Chun King chow mein.” The advertisement showed ten doctors, nine of whom were Oriental.
Alcohol
• Financial writer Andrew Tobias is often frugal. For example, he buys cheap vodka, and then pours it into bottles bearing the label of an expensive brand. According to Mr. Tobias, “When it comes to mixed drinks, vodka is vodka.” By the way, Mr. Tobias knew Bill Clinton before he became President. As a joke, Mr. Tobias once tapped Mr. Clinton on the shoulder and asked, “Now, Bill, forgive me — but where is Arkansas again?” Mr. Clinton didn’t laugh.
• Noël Coward had just finished having a drink with a VIP when a newspaper reporter spotted him. The reporter asked, “Was it just a friendly drink?” Mr. Coward replied, “My dear boy, have you ever heard of people taking unfriendly drinks?” By the way, Mr. Coward once wrote a letter to Lawrence of Arabia — Aircraftsman T.E. Shaw, No. 338171. Mr. Coward began the letter, “Dear 338171, May I call you 338?”
• Filmmaker John Waters once went to the supermarket to buy water, an act that seemed suspicious to a lower-class woman, who wondered why on earth anyone would buy water. She asked Mr. Waters, “What is that sh*t anyway?” He replied, “Perrier. It’s good for hangovers.” Hearing that, she smiled, revealing a toothless mouth, and said, “I’ll have to get me some.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Dick Tracy"
Two-Sided Single: EP
Artist: Atomic Tourists
Artist Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Info:
Surf in Albuquerque.
Phil Tiki - Guitar
Quasar - Guitar
Dickie - Bass
Brian Wilson - Drums
Kahuna Cole, a fan, wrote, “The Atomic Tourists hit the surf running with a couple of nice mellow covers! Surf's Up! Favorite track: ‘Bullwinkle Part 2.’”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Surf Instrumental.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
NYC Marathon
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
POVERTY: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
POVERTY: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER 1: MY MOTHER
Poverty is not a good thing to experience, but poverty exists and we ought to know about it.
The word “poor” has two meanings: 1) lacking money (impoverished), and 2) lacking quality. I will be writing about poor people, by which I mean people who lack money. I think we all know that some high-quality people don’t have a lot of money.
My mother grew up poor in Georgia. She and her brothers and sisters ate a lot of lard sandwiches. A lard sandwich is a slice of bread, spread with lard, and sprinkled with a little sugar, if your family could afford sugar. Often, my mother’s parents couldn’t afford sugar, and their lard sandwiches were sprinkled with salt.
We would not call this nutritious food, but fat fills the belly, and lard is 100 percent fat — and it was cheap.
Sometimes, my mother and her siblings would steal vegetables from the next-door neighbor’s garden. He knew they were stealing vegetables, but he never said anything about it.
For a time, my mother had one dress and one pair of underwear. Once a week, she would stand behind the door, as she called it, take off her dress and underwear and wait until her mother hand-washed them and then let the sun dry them on a clothesline.
Georgia is hot, and in the days before air conditioning — and my mother’s family could not have afforded air conditioning even if it had been invented back then — every door and every window was open.
One day when my mother was standing behind the door, her boyfriend came to visit. How old was my mother? Old enough to be embarrassed.
As an adult, one of my mother’s first jobs was working in a store that sold clothes, including baby clothes. One day, a woman walked in with a baby. The woman was not well dressed, and the baby was wearing rags. The woman set the baby down on a table displaying baby clothes, stripped the baby, and started putting new clothes on the baby. My mother looked at the woman and knew that she would not be able to pay for the clothing. But my mother helped her dress the baby and then watched as the woman carried the baby out of the store without paying for the new clothing.
One way out of poverty is to marry someone with a job, and my mother got out of poverty by marrying my father.
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Rick Suggests
Veterans Fishing Licenses
Hey Marty,
We've put together a complete article detailing all the states that offer free or discounted fishing licenses for veterans:
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Order of the Companions of Honour
Elton John
Elton John has no doubt been a member of many exclusive clubs over the decades, but probably nothing quite as exclusive as the one he formally joined on Wednesday.
In an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, Prince Charles anointed the musician and charity patron as a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour.
It is one of the highest awards that can be bestowed by Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to citizens in Britain and across the Commonwealth. The 95-year-old monarch is also a member of the order.
Current members include British environmentalist David Attenborough, Canadian author Margaret Atwood and one of Britain’s greatest-ever athletes Sebastian Coe.
The group, which in the past has included British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill and scientist Stephen Hawking, can only number a maximum of 65, excluding the sovereign, at any one time.
Elton John
Pulls Out of Cambridge Union Talk
John Cleese
Celebrated “Monty Python” and “A Fish Called Wanda” actor and writer John Cleese has pulled out of an upcoming talk at the Cambridge Union on Friday, citing concerns over “woke rules” and an Adolf Hitler impersonation he had famously done on the “Fawlty Towers” series decades ago.
Cleese, who is a Cambridge alumnus, was responding to a decision by the Union, which is a debating society, to blacklist art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. The historian had performed a mock impression of Hitler ranting, during a debate last week on art and good taste at the Union. Subsequently, Union president Keir Bradwell informed members that Graham-Dixon was banned from speaking there.
“I was looking forward to talking to students at the Cambridge Union this Friday, but I hear that someone there has been blacklisted for doing an impersonation of Hitler. I regret that I did the same on a Monty Python show, so I am blacklisting myself before someone else does,” Cleese tweeted.
“I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply,” Cleese added.
John Cleese
Sells Visual Effects Studio
Peter Jackson
Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, in addition to the mountains of cash he’s received from his many film endeavors, will add a whopping $1.6 billion to his pile with the sale of his visual effects studio Weta Digital to video game software developer Unity. Unity is known for games such as Fall Guys, Pokémon Go, and Call Of Duty: Mobile.
In a statement shared by Unity on Tuesday, it’s been revealed the company will purchase Weta Digital’s “tools, pipeline, technology, and engineering talent.” The six-time Academy Award winning studio has aided in the creation of films and series such as Avatar, Black Widow, Game Of Thrones, Lord Of The Rings, Planet Of The Apes, and The Suicide Squad.
In the exchange, Unity will acquire Weta’s 275 engineers that are known for architecting, building, and maintaining Weta Digital tools and core pipeline; tools such as Manuka, Gazebo, Barbershop, Lumberjack, Loki, Squid, Koru; a foundational data platform for interoperable 3D art creation, and a library of thousands of assets.
Weta Digital’s visual effects teams will continue to exist as a standalone entity called WetaFX, which Jackson will maintains majority ownership over.
Peter Jackson
Over 200 Musical Artists
‘Event for the Environment’
More than 200 musical artists will perform next month as part of an online fundraiser for the environment that will be shown on YouTube.
Black Pumas, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, the Lumineers, Rhiannon Giddens, Cat Stevens, Taj Mahal and Rosanne Cash are among the musicians that have signed on for “Peace Through Music: A Global Event for the Environment,” organizers said on Tuesday.
The organization Playing for Change is putting on the event in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund. The concert will be shown on Playing for Change’s YouTube channel on Dec. 15 starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
Other participating artists include Keb’ Mo’, Mickey Hart, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Sara Bareilles, Slash, the Pocket Queen and Giovanni Hidalgo. More participants will be announced.
‘Event for the Environment’
Call For Censure
Gosar
Ten House Democrats, led by the co-chairs of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said Wednesday that they will introduce a House resolution condemning Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., for tweeting a video that included altered animation showing him striking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., with a sword.
In a statement, the 10 Democrats said Gosar’s posting “goes beyond the pale” and called it a “clear cut case for censure.”
“As the events of January 6th have shown, such vicious and vulgar messaging can and does foment actual violence,” the Democrats said. “Violence against women in politics is a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from seeking positions of authority and participating in public life, with women of color disproportionately impacted.”
The Democrats, including DWC co-chairs Jackie Speier of California and Brenda Lawrence of Michigan, said they will introduce the censure resolution Friday.
In a tweet Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., referred to Gosar as “a creepy member I work with” and said he “shared a fantasy video of him killing me.” She added that Gosar would face no consequences because Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “cheers him on with excuses.”
Gosar
Lousy Streaming Numbers
Di$ney
While the ultimate judgment of history on Facebook remains, let’s say, murky — with questions like “How many cute cat pictures make up for skewing elections into the control of extremist uncle-types?” hanging eternally over the service’s head—the company’s work in the field of techbro distraction is far closer to unimpeachable.
Certainly, Disney is indebted to its old pal “Meta” today, as CEO Bob Chapek attempted to draw focus from the bad news at a corporate earnings call by touting the idea that Mickey et al. would soon have a “metaverse” of their own.
Chapek was talking to investors at Disney’s Q4 earnings call today, revealing that streaming service Disney+ had logged its slowest growth this quarter since it first launched back in 2019. Specifically, the company has added about 2.1 million subscribers over the last three months—a number that was something like a fifth of what Wall Street had been predicting for the massive entertainment giant.
Perhaps sensing his own blood in the water, Chapek said the things CEOs usually say in these circumstances: That the dip in growth was expected (at least in part due to COVID-related content delays) and that a bounce back was expected soon. All of which was then followed by sudden, unexpected promises that Disney is totally getting into this whole “metaverse” thing we’ve all been hearing about ceaselessly for the last week.
And, really, you can tell this is the good metaverse shit, because we not only have no idea what Chapek is talking about, but also no idea of how it would actually connect to the company’s current products or plans. (“Ah,” no one ever thought, “A version of Disney+ where I have to walk an avatar across a room to watch The Simpsons.”)
Di$ney
Japanese-Korean-Turkish Language Group
Ancient China
A study combining linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of the family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in northeastern China about 9,000 years ago.
The findings detailed on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km).
The findings illustrate how humankind's embrace of agriculture following the Ice Age powered the dispersal of some of the world's major language families. Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.
There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as: various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.
This language family's beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across northeastern Asia, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago over thousands of years.
Ancient China
Track Your 'Invisible Presence'
Cats
While you're rummaging through cabinets and crevices trying to find your cat's new favorite hiding spot, cats may be keeping mental tabs on you, too.
A new study out of Japan found that a stationary cat can track its owner's location using audio cues — specifically, the owner's voice.
Saho Takagi, first author of the study and a doctoral student at Kyoto University, said she has always been interested in cats' hearing abilities. She's a cat person all around, but said her favorite part is their ears. Cats have sensitive ears that can move in different directions.
The study, which took place in a home setting and at a cat café, observed how cats would react to their owners' voices without visual cues by using speakers that played a recording of owners saying their cats' names. The researchers placed the speakers apart from each other, out of the cats' sight, to see how the cats would respond to the sounds, especially if the owner's voice appeared to teleport from one location to another. Another group of people, who were not animal behavior experts, rated the cats' level of surprise from a scale of 0 to 4, based on behaviors like ear and head movements.
Cats
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