Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Bob Briggs: Gillette Can Kiss My Smooth Cheeks (Taki's Magazine)
There's no way to figure out what Gillette is asking us to do, and therefore it's pure virtue-signalling without knowing what virtue they're signaling! If the four best examples they can come up with of Bad Male Behavior are: Being nasty online. Letting young boys fight too much. Trying to talk to girls you see on the street. Using the term "sweetie" or being condescending in a business meeting … then Gillette is not exactly calling for Mass Sensitivity Training. We had tougher standards than that in the Boy Scouts.
Paul Waldman: What will Trump offer the voters next year? Probably not much. (Washington Post)
… once you've been in office for a term, suffering the inevitable defeats and compromises that even the most successful presidents have to endure at least in some measure, you can't be so aspirational. You can say "stay the course" if everything's going great, but if the picture is mixed or bad, that's harder to do. And new proposals may be greeted with "If that's such a great idea, how come you didn't do it already?" Which is why most presidents up for reelection run largely negative campaigns, saying, "I may not be perfect, but that guy would be a complete disaster."
Jonathan Chait: The Myth of Bernie Sanders's White Working-Class Support (NY Mag)
Ironically, Sanders supporters have made the same analytic error the Clinton fans made after 2008. They looked at their growing strength among the white working class and saw a future base they could pry away from the GOP, never realizing that the only reason those voters had ever supported them was that they had already lost.
Jason Bailey: Revisiting Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor's Subversively Brilliant Racial Satire 'Blazing Saddles,' 40 Years Later (Flavorwire)
… it's with some care and concern that we take up the topic of one of the great comedy films, Blazing Saddles, which turns 40 years old this week. It is a film that, by almost any reasonable standard, is "politically incorrect". But its genius, then and now, was the manner in which director Mel Brooks and his writers turned a broad Western spoof into what was, for its time, a revolutionary satire of race relations.
Book Excerpt: On the Road with the Ramones (FlavorWire)
In I Know Better Now: My Life Before, During and After the Ramones, Richie Ramone recalls his brief, tumultuous period with the punk greats.
Carla Baranauckas: Taylor Swift Drops In On Engagement Celebration And Serenades Couple (Huffington Post)
Pop star Taylor Swift surprises party guests with a rendition of "King of My Heart."
Linda Levitt: Edward Gorey, Agent of Chaos (PopMatters)
Two recent books on screenwriter, illustrator and author Edward Gorey, Born to Be Posthumous and Gorey's Worlds, are engaging works that show that Gorey's mystique remains safely impenetrable.
Alexandra Petri: Some other things inside your devices we forgot to tell you about, sorry! (Washington Post)
So it has come to our attention that people were annoyed there was a bonus microphone in their Google-owned Nest they had not been told about. First, whoops! We definitely meant to tell people, because there is no reason they would not have been excited by it. That yelling we hear outside our offices is almost 100 percent excitement, we are sure.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
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from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Michael Caine's shortest audition occurred for a movie that starred Alan Ladd, who was short for a leading man. Mr. Caine (six-feet-two) walked into the audition and immediately heard "Next!" He asked, "Can't I audition or do something?" The casting agent said, "No, look at your left." To Mr. Caine's left was a mark on the doorway. Anyone who was taller than that mark was immediately rejected for the role. Mr. Caine says, "It was my shortest audition. You had to be shorter than Alan Ladd." Mr. Caine?knows what it's like when two actors are mismatched in height. He says, "I did a picture with Elizabeth Taylor, and she stood on a box for the whole movie to be level with me, and for three years everybody thought I was five-feet-six because everybody knew how short Elizabeth was." Movie critic Roger Ebert says, "Alan Ladd spent his whole career on a box." When Mr. Ladd made Boy on a Dolphin with Sophia Loren, one scene showed them walking on the beach. A trench was dug in the beach, and Ms. Loren (five-feet-nine) had to walk in the trench during the filming of the scene so that she and Mr. Ladd were matched in height. (Mr. Ladd was five-feet-six.)
• Nate Archibald was six-foot-one, so as a player in the NBA, he was called "Tiny." When coach Bob Cousy drafted Tiny to play for the Cincinnati Royals, he had never seen Tiny play, although he had heard much about his impressive basketball abilities. When Tiny met Mr. Cousy for the first time at the coach's hotel room, Mr. Cousy was shocked by how small he was. Mr. Cousy said, "I knew he was little, but I didn't know he was that little. Or that skinny. Or that baby-faced. I thought he was the bellhop." When Tiny showed up by himself to play the Knicks at the Madison Square Garden, at first the guard at the players' gate wouldn't let him through. Tiny told the guard that he played for the Royals, but the guard replied, "Sure, kid. And I'm the shortstop for the Yankees." Mr. Cousy ended up telling the guard, "He's one of my guys, but I don't blame you for wondering about it. We haven't even got a uniform that fits him yet. His number's stuffed halfway down his pants."
• Body type is important to ballerinas, and even a great ballerina can lose a role simply because her body type doesn't fit a preconceived conception. Evelyn Hart desperately wanted to dance the role of Juliet in Kenneth MacMillan's production of Romeo and Juliet at the American Ballet Theater; however, although she begged him to let her do the role, he would not, stating that she would be taller than Juliet's mother. Ms. Hart protested that in real life she was taller than her own mother, but this argument had no effect on Mr. MacMillan. Other ballerinas have not had the opportunity to work with accomplished male ballet dancers because of height issues. Mikhail Barynshikov often would find a talented ballerina, but be disappointed because she was too tall to be paired with him.
• Chico and Harpo, two of the famous Marx Brothers, were almost equal in height, but Chico was 1/16 of an inch taller. Occasionally, they would bet $5 on who was taller, with the taller person getting the money, and Harpo always lost. But one day Harpo said, "Fifty dollars says that I'm taller." Chico bet the money, and Harpo was just over an inch taller, even after both brothers had taken off their shoes. Chico paid the money, and he learned later that Harpo had gone to a place that advertised, "Increase your height dramatically!" For several hours, he had been stretched, and for several hours, he was an inch taller, and then he returned to his normal height.
• David Garrick, the famous 18th-century actor, was short, standing only five-feet-four-inches tall. Once, he and Spranger Barry engaged in a theatrical competition. They both played Romeo at two theaters located near each other and tried to attract larger audiences than the other. Garrick's lack of height caused a wit to compose this epigram: "So reversed are the notions of Capulet's daughters, / One loves a whole length, the other three-quarters."
• In Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws, he used a huge mechanical shark. During one scene in which Richard Dreyfuss' character goes underwater in a protective cage, Mr. Spielberg used a real great white shark. The real shark was much smaller than the mechanical shark, so to make the shark appear as big as the mechanical shark, Mr. Spielberg used a little person (aka midget or dwarf) to stand in for Mr. Dreyfuss in the scene.
• At the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Soviet gymnast Polina Grigorievna Astakhova won gold on bars, silver in the floor exercise, and bronze in the all-around competition. For a gymnast, she was tall (five-feet-five). She also had light skin and blonde hair, and she stood very erect. For these reasons, her friends and fans referred to her as "the Russian birch tree."
• Mezzo Mignon Dunn was five-feet-nine, and many of her fellow male opera singers were shorter than she, so on stage she often sang with her knees bent. However, one day director Tyrone Guthrie saw her doing that and asked, "You cow, what on earth are you doing?" Afterward, she sang with unbended knees.
• Russian Svetlana Khorkina is five-foot-five and 105 pounds, making her a giant among elite women's gymnasts. Want to know how to recognize her at a gymnastics meet? It's not difficult. She says, "I'm very easy to see on the podium, because everyone else is small."
• Basketball player Wilt Chamberlain was seven feet tall, and as a Harlem Globetrotter, he traveled to many places where no one had ever seen a person that tall before. While walking down a street in Bologna, Italy, he turned around and saw 300 natives following him.
• Mike Adamle played professional football during the 1970s, despite being very small for a professional football player: five-feet-nine, 188 lbs. Because of his small size, he wore No. 1 - according to Mr. Adamle, this number made him look taller.
• George Balanchine went against custom by choreographing for tall ballerinas. He said, "I like tall. With tall, you can see more; with short, you can see less.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
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Reader Comment
Current Events
As someone pointed out, with Predator out of the country to meet his lover in Vietnam and Pence off god-bothering the Venezuelans, Nancy Pelosi is now the highest-ranking government official!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Little 3.3 earthquake. 2 thumps, followed by a south to north roll. Not large enough to set off car alarms, but enough to get my attention.
Blasts Congress' Inaction
Jon Stewart
Comedian Jon Stewart visited Capitol Hill on Monday to demand lawmakers pass legislation that would permanently finance a federal victims' compensation fund for Sept. 11 first responders and their families.
The former host of "The Daily Show," a longtime advocate for the 9/11 responders, slammed lawmakers for not doing more to avoid a significant funding lapse plaguing the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (VCF).
"Trust me, if the American people in their busy lives had any sense that these shenanigans were going on, they would be outraged," Stewart said at a press conference Monday at the Capitol.
The Justice Department announced last week that a lack of funding for the VCF would lead to compensation cuts as large 50 to 70 percent for first responders who were made sick by toxins they were exposed to during 9/11 rescue and recovery efforts.
Stewart joined beneficiaries of the VCF on Monday to help a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), introduce the Never Forget the Heroes: Permanent Authorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act.
Jon Stewart
Sues Over '58 Porsche
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld sued a California dealer in classic cars Monday, saying the company has left the comedian stranded in a dispute over whether a 1958 Porsche he sold is authentic.
Seinfeld sought unspecified damages in his lawsuit in Manhattan federal court from European Collectibles of Costa Mesa, California.
The lawsuit said Seinfeld owns one of the world's largest collections of Porsches and had never dealt with the California company before it solicited his agent to propose his purchase of the vintage vehicle.
The suit comes weeks after Seinfeld was sued by a company that says it bought the comedian's Porsche for $1.5 million only to learn it was fake.
In the lawsuit, Seinfeld says he bought the car from European Collectibles for $1.2 million in February 2013. The suit says he relied on the company's certificate of authenticity.
Jerry Seinfeld
"Great Xhosa Phrase"
Trevor Noah
Last night, somewhere between Regina King being deservedly celebrated and Green Book getting begrudgingly acknowledged, Trevor Noah gave a unique introduction to Best Picture nominee Black Panther. The Daily Show host, who was born and raised in South Africa, cheekily referred to his time growing up in Wakanda under the rule of King T'Challa. He then ended on a more sentimental note, delivering a heartfelt message in the Bantu language of Xhosa. At least, that's what he led viewers to believe.
In reality, as a number of outlets have reported, the phrase Noah claimed translates to, "In times like these, we are stronger when we fight together than when we try to fight apart," actually translates to "White people don't know that I'm lying."
Considering very few people in the Dolby Theater audience were fluent in Xhosa, this bit of trolling was more for the benefit of select viewers at home. Or maybe it was just to make Noah himself laugh. Regardless, it's a very good bit and fitting for the ceremony that, again, chose to celebrate the "comforting liberal fantasy" that is Green Book.
Trevor Noah
Newly Discovered Moons Need Names
Jupiter
Now's your chance to name a moon, but don't get your hopes up - Moony McMoonFace is not in the running. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science have implemented some pretty strict rules for their contest asking for the public's help in naming Jupiter's newly discovered moons.
Carnegie scientists first announced the accidental discovery of 12 moons orbiting Jupiter in July 2018. A team of astronomers was looking for a possible "Planet X" or "Planet 9" beyond the orbit of Pluto when the moons were found. Carnegie's Scott Sheppard said 11 of the outer moons are "normal," but one is an "oddball." The discovery brought Jupiter's total number of moons to 79 - the most of any planet in our Solar System. It's largest and most famous moons are named Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
Now, the researchers are asking for help naming five of the 12 moons, but there are some strict guidelines in order to be approved by the International Astronomical Union. The names must be 16 characters or less, cannot be offensive and cannot be too similar to the names of existing moons or asteroids. The moons cannot be named after a living person or anything connoting political, military or religious actives.
There are even more rules. The moons must be named after characters in Roman or Greek mythology who were either descendants of or lovers of Jupiter (Roman) or Zeus (Greek). They both had quite a lot of lovers and descendants, so there are plenty of names to choose from.
Three of the moons are retrograde, meaning they orbit in the opposite direction of the gas giant's rotation. These moons must have names ending in the letter "e." The two moons in a prograde orbit must have names ending in the letter "a." One of the moons is an "oddball" because it orbits among the retrograde moons - but in a prograde direction. The unusual moon has already been named Valetudo.
Jupiter
Kids' Cartoons
YouTube
Tips for committing suicide are appearing in children's cartoons on YouTube and the YouTube Kids app.
The sinister content was first flagged by doctors on the pediatrician-run parenting blog pedimom.com and later reported by the Washington Post. An anonymous "physician mother" initially spotted the content while watching cartoons with her son on YouTube Kids as a distraction while he had a nosebleed. Four minutes and forty-five seconds into a video, the cartoon cut away to a clip of a man, who resembles Internet personality Joji (formerly Filthy Frank). He walks onto the screen and simulates cutting his wrist. "Remember, kids, sideways for attention, longways for results," he says and then walks off screen. The video then quickly flips back to the cartoon.
"I am disturbed, I am saddened, I am disgusted," the physician wrote. "But I am also relieved that I was there to see this video with my own eyes, so that I could take the appropriate actions to protect my family." Those actions included deleting the YouTube Kids app and forever banning it from the house.
That particular video was later taken down from YouTube Kids after the doctor reported it to YouTube. However, parents have since discovered that several other cartoons contain information about how to commit suicide, including the same spliced-in video clip. In a subsequent blog post, pediatrician Free Hess, who runs pedimom, reported another cartoon-this time on YouTube-with the clip spliced in at four minutes and forty-four seconds. That cartoon was also later taken down, but Hess captured a recording of it beforehand, which you can view on the blog.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 10 and 24, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, more youths survive suicide attempts than die. Each year, emergency departments nationwide treat self-inflicted injuries in 157,000 youth between the ages of 10 and 24. Sixteen percent of high-school students reported seriously considering suicide in a nationwide survey.
YouTube
Brazil's Amazon Jungle
Humpback Whale
Brazilian wildlife experts have been left baffled after discovering a dead humpback whale in the Amazon rainforest.
The 10-ton mammal was found in the jungle undergrowth on the island of Marajo, which sits at the mouth of the Amazon River.
Although scientists presume the enormous creature was hurled onshore during a storm, they do not understand how it came so far inland or why it was swimming off the coast in the first place.
Officials from Para state's health, sanitation and environment department said they only found the 11m-long whale after following the birds of prey which were scavenging on its huge carcass.
The remains were deposited in such a remote part of the mangrove swamp in the Amazonian delta that it took two trips for the wildlife experts to reach the site.
Humpback Whale
Climate Change
Clouds
If humanity pumps enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of Earth's most important types of cloud could go extinct. And if the stratocumulus clouds - those puffy, low rolls of vapor that blanket much of the planet at any given moment - disappear, Earth's temperature could climb sharply and radically, to heights not predicted in current climate models.
That's the conclusion of a paper published today (Feb. 25) in the journal Nature Geoscience and described in detail by Natalie Wolchover for Quanta Magazine.
As Wolchover explained, clouds have long been one of the great uncertainties of climate models. Clouds are complicated, small and fast-changing. Computer models that easily capture the complexity and detail of most climate systems just aren't powerful enough to predict worldwide shifts in cloud behavior.
But clouds are important. They dye a wide swath of the atmosphere white, as seen from space, reflecting sunlight away from Earth's surface. And stratocumulus clouds are an important part of that picture; they're those white blankets you might have seen as you looked out the window of an airplane, rolling out below you and hiding the ground. Researchers suspect that certain sudden, past jumps in temperature may have been caused by changes to clouds like these.
For the new research, scientists modeled just a small patch of sky using a supercomputer. They found that if carbon dioxide (CO2) levels reach about 1,200 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere, stratocumulus clouds break up. That's a very high carbon dioxide concentration. Right now, levels have climbed past 410 ppm - already a dangerous shift from the 280 ppm that prevailed before the industrial revolution.
Clouds
Oreo Cookies
'Game of Thrones'
Just when you thought winter was almost over, Nabisco is bringing us back with Game of Thrones Oreo cookies.
While the Oreo Instagram confirmed that the cookies are in fact happening, they didn't provide us with much detail. According to food Instagram account @candyhunting, the themed cookies will be out before the premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones on April 14.
The packaging is as dark as Jon Snow's hair, but the flavor is just the original cookies. They are reportedly not store-exclusive, so we should be seeing them pop up everywhere, and you'll be able to watch the season with the necessary goods.
'Game of Thrones'
Lucky Charms Flavored Beer
"Magically Ridiculous"
The Smartmouth Brewing Company in Virginia says they're creating "the beer of the wonder years" which they claim will taste like frosted Lucky Charms cereal.
The brew called the Saturday Morning IPA is made with a pound of cereal marshmallows along with fruity Calypso hops.
"The result is magically ridiculous," the brewery says on its website.
If you want a taste it you have to travel for it. It's only available in Virginia.
"Magically Ridiculous"
In Memory
Beverley Owen
Beverley Owen, the actress who played the original Marilyn Munster on the iconic 1960s sitcom "The Munsters," has died. She was 81.
Her co-star Butch Patrick, who played half-vampire, half-werewolf child Eddie Munster on the series, confirmed Owen's death in a Facebook post on Sunday.
According to TMZ, Owen's daughter, Polly Stone, said the actress died Feb. 21 in Vermont, after a battle with ovarian cancer. Stone told the outlet that Owen was diagnosed with the disease in January 2017, but had kept it private.
Owen left her role on "The Munsters" in 1964, after the first 13-episodes of the CBS comedy's 38-episode Season 1, to marry writer/producer Jon Stone. She was replaced by Pat Priest, who played Marilyn - the Munsters' beautiful teenage niece, who was an outcast in the unusual family due to her normalcy - for the rest of the show's 2-season run.
She is survived by two daughters, Polly and Kate.
Beverley Owen
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