from Bruce
Anecdotes
Christmas
• Duke Ellington certainly looked ahead. In early 1974 he went to the hospital because of what was his final illness. In April jazz writer and enthusiast Nat Hentoff received a Christmas card from him. Mr. Hentoff writes, “I was startled but not surprised. He always preferred to look ahead, and in case he wouldn’t be around in December, he was bringing season’s greetings while he could. I was depressed at what I took to be ‘Goodbye.’” On May 24, Mr. Ellington died.
Comedians
• Hollywood comedy writer Barney Dean was on an airplane that took him on a bouncy flight. When the plane landed and Mr. Dean was finally able to get off, he felt nauseous and asked, “You mean to tell me that Phil Harris [who had a reputation for liking alcohol] feels this way every morning?” By the way, Mr. Dean once gave a gold watch to Buddy DeSylva, head of production at Paramount. The watch was engraved: “To Buddy, this is a lot of crap, but when you don’t have a lot of talent, you have to do these things, Barney.”
• One of Fred Allen’s early ad-libs came when he was beginning a career as a juggler. His performance was very bad, and the manager of the theater came on stage and asked him, “Where did you learn to juggle?” Mr. Allen replied, “I took a correspondence course in baggage smashing.”
Conductors
• Sir Thomas Beecham once wanted to use a couple of French singers for a recording; however, they were not allowed to record with Sir Thomas because of the opposition of a Monsieur Hirsch, who was the Director of the Paris Opéra. This upset Sir Thomas, who was, after all, a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, and thus was entitled to 12 rifle shots at his funeral. While complaining to Monsieur Varin, the Cultural Counsellor of the French Embassy, Sir Thomas requested that the 12 rifle shots at his funeral be aimed in the direction of Monsieur Hirsch.
• Charles O’Connell once visited the home of Arturo Toscanini, stayed late, and then telephoned for a taxi to take him home. He told the taxi company to send a cab to the home of Mr. Toscanini, but then felt a tap on his shoulder. The great conductor reminded him, “MAESTRO, not mister.”
Critics
• Stanley Holloway appeared as the First Gravedigger in Alec Guinness’ Hamlet, which was not a success early in its run. Because he was not needed early in the play, he arrived late at the theater. His cabdriver once told him as he was getting out of the cab, “I wouldn’t bother to go in there, if I was you. That got booed something awful on the first night.” Mr. Holloway said that he had to go in the theater, as he was appearing in the play. The cabby replied, “In that case, you have my entire sympathy.”
• John Martin, dance critic for The New York Times, once wrote of Alicia Markova, “She is not only the best living ballet dancer, but probably the greatest who ever lived.” Asked how she felt about such high praise, Ms. Markova replied, “It’s easy to write something like that, but it’s I who have to live up to it. What am I going to do the next day, I ask you? I must work all the harder. The audience is going to expect something after reading that bit. It will be hard lines if I let them down!”
• Peter Wright, the director of the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, and ballerina Galina Samsova staged a new production of Swan Lake in 1981. After the work had been completed, Mr. Wright said, “The thing about the creative process is that you must hide it. You’re tempting fate if you don’t. You must say, ‘Oh well, we’ll slap a bit of paint on that,’ because if you say, ‘This is going to be important, great art,’ God will be listening and He’ll say, ‘And you’ll get it wrong.’”
• Olin Downes, music critic of The New York Times, once objected in a review to mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens’ German in her appearance as Octavian in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Finding herself seated next to Mr. Downes at a dinner party, Ms. Stevens spoke to him in German, forcing him to admit that he didn’t speak German. She smiled, then said, “I do.”
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***
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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
Track: "Eddie Descending"
EP: THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF EDDIE JAPAN
Artist: Eddie Japan
Artist Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Info:
“… a contagious attitude of doing it up, and doing it up right, that you can hear in the carnival swirls of ultra-melodic pop, Latin-flavored bravado and cinematic 1970s UK rock.”
Eric Brosius - Guitars
Emily Drohan - Vocals
Chuck Ferreira - Drums and Percussion
Bart LoPiccolo - Guitars
Charles Membrino - Bass
Aaron Rosenthal - Piano and Keyboards
David Santos - Vocals
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $5 (USD) for five-track EP
Genre: Pop.
Links:
THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF EDDIE JAPAN
Eddie Japan on Bandcamp
www.eddiejapan.com
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BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Ukraine
Ukraine War: Russia prepares for 'Victory Day' (Sky News)
Sky’s Diana Magnay has been to Yekaterinburg and spoken to people who have spoken out against the conflict in Ukraine, on the eve of Russia’s annual Victory Day.
Ukraine War: Woman finds her in-laws dead on the street (Sky News)
Sky's Alex Rossi has been to Bakhmut in eastern Ukrainian where residents are coming to terms of the devastating aftermath of a Russian attack.
Anna Myroniuk: “‘Hide the girls’: How Russian soldiers rape and torture Ukrainians” (The Kyiv Independent)
The police did not show Karina’s body to her parents, saying it would be too shocking to see. She was buried in a closed coffin on April 13 in Bila Tserkva in Kyiv Oblast, a day after being identified.
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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
Mostly sunny, but on the cool side.
20 Internet Companies
Affordable Connectivity Program
The Biden administration announced Monday that 20 leading internet service providers have agreed to offer basic low cost plans that will be free for millions of Americans after a refund.
The 20 companies, including AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, cover more than 80% of the U.S. population. They will immediately provide at least one plan that costs no more than $30 a month and provides download speeds of at least 100 mbps.
The White House says that 40% of the U.S. population, about 48 million households, will be eligible to sign up through an existing program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program is aimed at lower income Americans and offers participants a discount of up to $30/month on their internet bill, meaning they’ll effectively get free service if they can get online with one of these participating companies.
Families are eligible for the ACP mostly based on income level. Any household making less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Level — $55,500 for a family of four in the continental U.S. — is eligible. Households can also qualify if they participate in certain government programs like Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income.
The full list of participating companies includes Allo Communications, AltaFiber, Altice USA, Astound, AT&T, Breezeline, Comcast, Comporium, Frontier, IdeaTek, Cox Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, MediaCom, MLGC, Spectrum, Verizon, Vermont Telephone Company, Vexus Fiber, and Wow! Internet, Cable, and TV.
Affordable Connectivity Program
Auction For Opera
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s silver tea set is going to a family with a 5-year-old daughter who once was Ginsburg for Halloween. A medal Ginsburg was awarded when inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame is going to a family that demonstrated recently for reproductive rights. And a drawing of her that hung in her office was a Utah-based scientist’s Mother’s Day gift to his wife.
All told, an online auction of 150 of items owned by the late justice raised $803,650 for Washington National Opera, one of the late justice’s passions. The auction ended in late April, and buyers are now picking up items or arranging to have them shipped to their homes in 38 states, the District of Columbia, Canada and Germany. Winning bids ranged from $850 to $55,000.
Elizabeth Haynie Wainstein, the owner of The Potomack Company auction house in Virginia, said they were “just really blown away by the interest.” A pre-sale estimate was that the auction could raise $50,000 to $80,000.
The auction’s biggest ticket item was the drawing of Ginsburg, which sold for $55,000. The image had accompanied a 2015 article about her in The New York Times. Ginsburg liked it so much she got a copy for her Supreme Court office signed by the artist, Eleanor Davis. The buyer asked that his name not be made public.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Guitar On Block
Kurt Cobain
Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay spent years putting together his expansive guitar collection.
On Monday, he announced one of his prized possessions — the Fender Mustang electric guitar used by the late Kurt Cobain — will be auctioned off to help support the team’s Kicking The Stigma mental health awareness campaign.
Bidding will take place May 20-22 at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City’s Times Square and a portion of the proceeds will go to Irsay’s initiative.
But Irsay, who owns dozens of musical instruments including a drum set from The Beatles and the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” has no intention of losing Cobain’s guitar with an opening bid of $2 million.
Kurt Cobain
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Pentatone Music
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is buying a record label following its acquisition of a management agency.
The school said Monday it had bought Pentatone Music, adding to a portfolio that includes Opus 3 Artists, which it purchased in October 2020.
Pentatone is based Baarn, Netherlands, and will have access to the conservatory’s recording studio in San Francisco. The label will record a performance of the National Brass Ensemble, of which Stull is executive director. The conservatory announced later Monday that San Francisco Opera music director Eun Sun Kim was replacing San Francisco Symphony music director Esa-Pekka Salonen as conductor.
Large classical labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Sony have sharply curtailed new classical recordings in recent decades.
Pentatone Music
Answer Changed
Wordle
The New York Times moved swiftly to change Monday’s answer to its daily Wordle puzzle out of fear that it would be seen as some sort of commentary on the debate over abortion rights.
The game, which became a sensation late last year and was bought by The Times in January, gives users six tries to guess a different five-letter word each day.
Yet The Times scrambled when it discovered that Monday’s word, which had been entered into Wordle’s computer program last year, was “fetus.”
The Times changed Monday’s answer to a different word, and a spokesman said that a “vast majority” of users saw that. But some people who had not refreshed their browsers saw “fetus” instead, spokesman Jordan Cohen said.
Wordle
Pulled After More Plagiarism Found
Plagiarism Essay
An author’s online essay on why she used plagiarized material in a novel pulled earlier this year has itself been removed after editors found she had again lifted material.
Jumi Bello’s “I Plagiarized Parts of My Debut Novel. Here’s Why” appeared just briefly Monday on lithub.com. Bello’s debut novel, “The Leaving,” had been scheduled to come out in July, but was canceled in February by Riverhead Books.
“Earlier this morning Lit Hub published a very personal essay by Jumi Bello about her experience writing a debut novel, her struggles with severe mental illness, the self-imposed pressures a young writer can feel to publish, and her own acts of plagiarism,” the publication announced. “Because of inconsistencies in the story and, crucially, a further incident of plagiarism in the published piece, we decided to pull the essay.”
Lit Hub editor Jonny Diamond said Monday that the plagiarized material concerned passages about the history of plagiarism; several commentators on social media had found similarities between Bello’s writing and work from various previous sources. Bello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In her essay, Bello writes about her determination to finish her novel, about a young Black woman who becomes pregnant. She remembers wanting to add “literary descriptions” of pregnancy, which she had not experienced, and seeking outside material.
Plagiarism Essay
Tell Predators To 'Buzz Off'
Bats
To avoid being snagged in the talons of a ravenous owl, the greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) mimics the intense buzz of an angry hornet and thus scares off its potential predators.
This is the first known example of a mammal (in this case, a bat) mimicking an insect (a stinging hornet) to gain protection from a predator (owls). And "to my best knowledge, ours is the first documented case of acoustic mimicry in a mammal," meaning the bats emulate the sounds made by stinging insects, rather than mimicking aspects of their appearance, said Danilo Russo, senior author of the study and a professor of ecology at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UNINA) in Portici, Italy.
Imitating scarier animals is a defensive strategy seen in a variety of animals, such as an Amazonian bird called the cinereous mourner (Laniocera hypopyrra), whose chicks visually resemble big, hairy, toxic caterpillars commonly found in the forest, according to research published in 2015 in the journal The American Naturalist. Similarly, the milkweed tiger moth (Euchates egle) imitates the distinct, ultrasonic sounds produced by the dogbane tiger moth (Cycnia tenera), a toxic species, in order to ward off hungry bats, researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The new research hints that other bat species, in addition to M. myotis, likely use similar tactics to deter predators, said Mirjam Knörnschild, a senior scientist at the Museum for Natural History in Berlin, Germany, who was not involved in the study. "It makes total sense to me that bats, with their remarkable vocal abilities and sophisticated control over their vocalizations, resort to acoustic means to fool predators," she told Live Science in an email.
Bats
“Shot Sage Blue Marilyn”
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” sold for a cool $195 million on Monday, making the iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe the most expensive artwork by a U.S. artist ever sold at auction.
The 1964 silkscreen image shows Monroe in vibrant close-up — hair yellow, eyeshadow blue and lips red — on a turquoise background. It's also the most expensive piece from the 20th century ever auctioned, according to Christie’s auction house in New York, where the sale took place.
The Warhol sale unseated the previous record holder and another modern master, Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose 1982 painting “Untitled” of a skull-like face sold for a record $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017.
Christie's said an unnamed buyer made the purchase Monday night. When the auction was announced earlier this year, they estimated it could go for as much as $200 million.
Andy Warhol
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