from Bruce
Anecdotes
Practical Jokes
• Ben Hecht once started a music group called the Ben Hecht Symphonietta. Its members consisted of several of his friends: Charles MacArthur, George Antheil, Charlie Lederer, and Harpo Marx. Groucho Marx was not invited to be a member, and it rankled him. As they were practicing in an upstairs room, Groucho yelled up at them, “Quiet, you lousy amateurs!” A few minutes later, no one could have heard the ensemble due to the vast sounds of music swelling up from the lower floor. Mr. Hecht and the other astonished musicians went downstairs to find the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing — Groucho had hired the entire orchestra to come and disrupt the rehearsal of the Ben Hecht Symphonietta.
• Harpo Marx was a great friend of theatrical critic Alexander Woollcott, and when Harpo announced that he had taken up painting, Mr. Woollcott was enthusiastic and wanted to see some of his paintings. Harpo was willing, and one day Mr. Woollcott walked into Harpo’s art studio. A nude female model was posing, and Harpo asked Mr. Woollcott to wait a few minutes as he put a few finishing touches on the paintings. So Harpo looked at the nude model and painted a little more, and then he allowed Mr. Woollcott to see the painting — which depicted not a nude model, but a banana.
• Oscar Levant once became interested in the daughter of a Los Angeles society family, but she declined to date him until he and a member of his family were introduced to her family. Since no members of his family were in LA, Mr. Levant took along Harpo Marx when he visited her family and introduced Harpo as his uncle. Big mistake. Within five minutes, Harpo had insulted the butler, flirted with the maid, and chased the society woman’s mother through the house. Of course, Oscar and Harpo were thrown out of the house as quickly as possible.
• Comedians tend to play practical jokes on each other. While performing in the Ziegfeld Follies, Eddie Cantor was supposed to lift and carry around two empty suitcases, but during one performance they were enormously heavy — W.C. Fields had filled the suitcases with bricks. Mr. Cantor got Mr. Fields back by inviting him to play a game of golf, a game that Mr. Fields took seriously. But when Mr. Cantor took off his coat upon arriving at the gold course, he was wearing his pajamas and slippers and played the entire game in his jammies.
• Occasionally, practical jokes are played during operatic performances. In a performance of La Bohème in Philadelphia, Frances Alda was surprised when her fellow singers turned toward her on stage with monocles in their eyes. When snow fell on stage, mixed with it were such items as buttons that hit the top of the bonnet she was wearing. A glass of water turned out to be a glass of ink. And when De Segurola put on a hat on stage, he discovered that it was filled with powder that cascaded over his shoulders.
• Phil Silvers once played a joke on Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Mr. Silvers was suffering from insomnia in a hotel and suddenly remembered that the comedy team of Lewis and Martin was performing in the lounge. So he put on slippers and a robe, and walked into the lounge, where Lewis and Martin were in the midst of their wild shenanigans. The famous comedy team saw Mr. Silvers, stopped, and stared. Mr. Silvers said, “Fellas, could you hold it down a little? I’m upstairs trying to sleep.”
• Harpo Marx was always ready to make people laugh on the spur of the moment, and he often poked fun at dignified people. Once a dignified woman (whom Harpo didn’t know) got out of a taxi in front of a hotel, and Harpo picked her up, ran with her to the hotel desk, and told the clerk, “Register us quickly!”
• Practical joker Hugh Troy once heard the owner of a small general store say that he was due to take inventory soon. So Mr. Troy went to another store, bought $20 worth of items that the small general store carried, then smuggled them into the general store and put them on the shelves. Mr. Troy’s name for his action was “Shop-stuffing. Makes a nice change from shop-lifting, don’t you think?”
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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: "Summer Vacation"
Album: 20 ORIGINAL SUMMER HITS
Artist: The Barbecuties
Artist Location: Mannheim, Germany
Record Company: Ramonescore Radio Records
Record Company Location: Florida
Info:
The Barbecuties are:
Rod - vocals, guitar
Sid - vocals, bass
Zap - guitar
Han - drums, vocals
Our discography:
ETERNAL DORKNESS (Monster Zero Records, 2017)
GO DOWN WITH STYLE (Monster Zero Records, 2015)
SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF Me (Bubblegum Attack Records, 2009)
PROMNIGHT HEARTBREAK (2007)
SHOWDOWN D'AMOUR (2005),
PLANET OF THE BABES (2002)
Price: FREE Download
Genre: Pop Punk.
Links:
20 ORIGINAL SUMMER HITS
Ramonescore Radio Records
The Barbecuties on Bandcamp
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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Michelle in AZ
New Venture
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BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Recommended
Ukrainian Anti-War Activists Block Trucks At Polish-Belarus Border (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
'Picking them off': Petraeus explains how Ukrainians are taking out Russian generals (CNN)
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
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In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Extra toasty.
April Headliners
‘SNL’
Saturday Night Live is back with three shows in April with hosts Jerrod Carmichael, Jake Gyllenhaal and Lizzo.
Carmichael, whose new comedy special Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel launches on HBO on April 1, will make his hosting debut on April 2. He will be joined by Gunna, whose DS4Ever album topped the charts, joins as musical guest for the first time.
Gyllenhaal will be making his second hosting appearance on April 9, the day after his latest film, Ambulance, comes to theaters. He will be joined by Camila Cabello, who returns for the second time, the day after her new album Familia is released.
Finally, Lizzo will be pulling double duty on April 16 as both host and musical guest. The Good As Hell pop star will be making her hosting debut and her second appearance as musical guest. Lizzo’s reality series Watch Out for the Big Grrrls launches on Amazon on March 25.
‘SNL’
Downtown Pittsburgh
Tom Hanks
A Pittsburgh-area bride got a huge surprise on her wedding day Saturday when Tom Hanks - yes, the famous actor - walked up to her and her bridal party and asked if he could take a photo with them.
Rachel Rowland, a wedding photographer working that day, said the bridal party was leaving the Fairmount Pittsburgh hotel downtown when they bumped into a surprise.
The bride, Grace Gwaltney, was about to hop in the limo when a familiar face came up behind them and said, "Hey! My name is Tom Hanks - can I take a photo with the bride?"
"We all lost it," Rowland said. "The bridesmaids shuffled out of the limo, and he posed with photos and congratulated everyone, and then as fast as he popped in, he was gone. It was just so sweet and fun!"
Tom Hanks is currently in town shooting the movie "A Man Called Otto." Some scenes were shot in Ambridge, Beaver County.
Tom Hanks
Marilyn Monroe Portrait To Auction
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's iconic sage-blue background portrait of Marilyn Monroe is tipped to sell for a record-breaking $200 million at auction in the spring, Christie's announced Monday.
The auction house said it expects Warhol's 1964 "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" to become the most expensive 20th century artwork when it goes under the hammer in New York in May.
The silk-screen work is part of a group of Warhol portraits of Monroe that became known as the "Shot" series after a visitor to his Manhattan studio, known as "The Factory," apparently fired a gun at them.
Warhol began creating silkscreens of Monroe following the actress's death from a drug overdose aged just 36 in August 1962.
The pop artist produced five portraits of Monroe, all equal in size with different colored backgrounds, in 1964.
Andy Warhol
Rejects Takeover Bid
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen shares tumbled 16% at the opening bell Monday after the TV ratings and marketing data company rejected a $9 billion takeover bid from a group of private equity firms.
Nielsen said that the offer of $25.40 per share “significantly undervalues” the New York City company. It said late Sunday that it had consulted with, among others, its third largest shareholder WindAcre Partnership, which opposed the sale at those terms.
WindAcre said Sunday that it would acquire enough shares to scuttle the deal if the board went further. Nielsen said that shareholder approval was unlikely without support from WindAcre, which already owns a stake of more than 9%.
Nielsen, instead, will begin buying its own shares under a previously approved $1 billion share repurchase authorization.
Media companies have been more vocal recently in their unhappiness with Nielsen, which for decades has had a virtual monopoly on measuring television viewership, statistics used to govern billions of dollars in advertising spending. Critics allege that Nielsen is not equipped to handle the dramatic shift toward streaming services and viewing on a wide array of devices.
Nielsen Ratings
Right Wingers Are Applauding
Russia
Vladimir Putin is ramping up his brutal assault on Ukraine, shelling civilians from Odessa to Kharkiv, and leveling the port city of Mariupol — leading President Joe Biden to denounce the Russian dictator as a “war criminal.” But if the initial days of the war were marked by some conservatives muting their admiration for the Russian state, a spate of notorious right-wing figures are now dropping the mask to defend Putin, and even claim his fight as their own.
Over the weekend, former Trump losing administration adviser Roger Stone, MAGA media maven Cassandra MacDonald (née Fairbanks), and former Staind rocker Aaron Lewis all spoke out to praise Putin, denounce Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky — or both.
In an interview aired on the far-right network Real America’s Voice, former Trump unindicted conspirator's adviser Roger Stone defended Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine. “Putin is acting defensively,” Stone insisted against all evidence. “He’s not acting offensively. But you won’t read that in the mainstream media.”
Stone rattled off a winning BINGO card’s worth of Kremlin-friendly talking points and conspiracies. He denounced Zelensky as undemocratic for having “shut down three television stations that were critical of the government.” (That decision rightfully inspires debate, but context here is also important. Stone failed to mention that those stations had broadcast Russian propaganda, and were run by mogul Viktor Medvedchuk, who is so tight with the Kremlin that Putin is literally his daughter’s godfather. Mevedchuk was hit with U.S. sanctions in 2014, described as Putin’s “long-time proxy and close personal friend.”) Stone then rehearsed the MAGA canard that concern over Ukrainian borders is misplaced as long as America’s are overrun by “millions of illegals … bringing disease.”
Stone kept twisting and twisting the facts until he snapped into Putin’s paranoid worldview — that Ukraine is a dangerous aggressor that must be stopped: “Ukraine is not even remotely [about] what they’re telling us it’s about,” Stone claimed. “The Ukrainians have used their soil to place dual-launch missile pads, missiles that will be aimed at the Soviet Union [sic].” Stone closed out his pro-Putin rant by citing the latest right-wing conspiracy theory about U.S.-funded biolabs. “There are in fact biolabs that are funded by our tax dollars, cooking up who knows what pestilence to dump on the Russian people,” Stone claimed.
Russia
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha
Marsha
The confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson began on Monday and, as expected, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were a little concerned about President Biden’s pick to replace Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) went so far as to suggest to Jackson, a Black woman, that white privilege doesn’t exist in America, a country where of the 114 justices to have been confirmed to sit on the highest court in the land, only two have been Black.
“You serve on the board of a school that teaches kindergartners, five-year-old children, that they can choose their gender, and that teaches them about so-called white privilege,” Blackburn said after bashing the “radical left.”
Blackburn continued to drill down on critical race theory, the GOP’s culture-war topic du jour. “You have praised the 1619 Project, which argues the U.S. is a fundamentally racist country, and you have made clear that you believe judges must consider critical race theory when deciding how to sentence criminal defendants,” she said. “Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into our legal system?”
Blackburn wasn’t the only Republican to touch on race on Monday. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Narnia) spent most of his opening statement whining about Democrats’ treatment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh after they wanted to question the then-nominee after he was credibly accused of rape, but he also echoed widespread GOP concern that Jackson’s skin color had more to do with her nomination than her credentials. “I want the Supreme Court to look more like the country, but I want it to operate within the confines of the Constitution,” he said.
Marsha
Spotted For First Time
Quantum Boomerang
For the first time, physicists have confirmed a weird quantum phenomenon in which tiny particles, when nudged out of place, will snap right back to where they came from.
The strange behavior, called the quantum boomerang effect, had been predicted for more than 60 years. Now, a new experiment published Feb. 23 in the journal Physical Review X shows that the effect is real: When particles in disordered systems are kicked out of their locations, they will fly away briefly. But, most of the time, instead of landing somewhere else, they will zip right back to their starting positions.
The strange effect cannot be explained by classical, deterministic physics; instead, it is a consequence of the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. When atoms exist not just as particles but simultaneously as waves, these waves can interfere with each other, adding together in some places and cancelling out in others to cause all kinds of strange behavior we wouldn't expect to see.
American theoretical physicist Philip Anderson first laid the groundwork for the prediction of the quantum boomerang effect in 1958. In the quantum world, objects behave both as discrete particles and waves at the same time, with the amplitude of these waves in any given region of space being tied to the probability of finding a particle at that location.
Anderson realized that disorder, or randomness (like the random defects in a material's structure) can make a particle's probability wave cancel itself out everywhere but one tiny region of space. Rooted in place, and unable to move, change states or share energy with its surroundings, the particle becomes localized.
Quantum Boomerang
Weird New Tetragonal Phase
Water Ice
A new crystalline form of water ice has been discovered in fleeting transitions between phases at high pressures.
It's called Ice-VIIt, and it takes place as the substance slides between two already known, cubic arrangements of molecules. Although it's unlikely Ice-VIIt would naturally appear on Earth's surface, it could reveal more about how water behaves on massive alien worlds.
We might think it commonplace, but water is actually pretty weird compared to other liquids we know. The arrangement of molecules within water's frozen form – ice – can vary significantly, depending on the conditions around it.
We know of at least 19 of these solid phases of ice, some of which occur naturally, some of which have only been seen in laboratory conditions.
The ice you see in the freezer, or falling from the sky as snowflakes or hailstones, is the most common natural ice on Earth. It is called Ice-I, with oxygen atoms arranged in a hexagonal grid. The structure is, however, geometrically frustrated, with the hydrogen atoms hanging about in a disorderly fashion.
Water Ice
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
