from Bruce
Anecdotes
Olympics
• Strange things sometimes happen to child athletes. When she was nine years old, Russian figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva began to skate in a competition, but she discovered that she could not move her head because she had accidentally zipped her hair in her costume. She had to stop skating so she could unzip her ponytail. As an adult, she won two Olympic gold medals in pairs skating with her husband, Sergei Grinkov.
• As a young gymnast, Dominic Moceanu showed a lot of confidence. While signing autographs before the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta were held, she added to her signature, “’96 gold, for sure.” Her cockiness was justified — the United States women’s gymnastics team, of which Ms. Moceanu was a member, won the gold medal.
• After Dorothy Hamill won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the 1976 Olympic Games, she slept with it under her pillow. The next day, someone asked where she was keeping it. She pulled it from out of her blouse and said, “Right here.”
Parents
• Tara Lipinski is a champion figure skater, but her parents had to sacrifice for her to become a champion. Her father lived in Texas, where his job is, but Tara and her mother lived in Detroit, where she could train with a top coach and skate at a top rink. In addition, her parents refinanced their house and took out a loan to pay for Tara’s skating, coaching, and travel expenses. Now that Tara is an Olympic gold medalist and a professional figure skater, she earns enough money by performing to more than pay for her expenses. (The parents of many other champion sports stars also make these kinds of sacrifices.)
• Zack lives in New Jersey and has same-sex parents — Aimee and Margie. One day, he was talking with his friend Alex and they stopped talking when Zack’s mother and her lover — Zack calls them his two mothers — walked up to them. Curious, Zack’s mother, Aimee, asked what was going on. Alex replied, “I wanted to know if it’s all right if I told someone that you’re a lesbian.” Aimee looked at Margie for a moment, then the two women laughed, and Aimee said, “Sure, it’s all right. We like being lesbians.”
• Parents worry about their teenage children going out on dates, and they want to meet the people their children are dating. A mother was shocked when her daughter said she was going on a date with a boy the mother had not met, so the girl’s mother decided to call the boy’s mother to find out something about him. The boy’s mother stated, “He’s my son, and I love him.” Hearing that, the girl’s mother sighed and said, “Well, that’s fine. I’m sure everything will be all right.”
• Some teachers can get upset with parents. Following one conference with a mother, a Quaker teacher exclaimed, “The only people who ought not to have children are parents!” A former head of Bootham School, a school for Quakers, once said, “There are moments when I feel that in the next world I would like to be Head Master of an orphanage.”
• When Mexican artist Diego Rivera was a small child, he liked to draw on walls and furniture. Of course, his parents didn’t want him to do this, but they did want him to use his creativity, so his father set aside an entire room for young Diego. He covered the entire room with canvas, so Diego was able to draw wherever he liked in that room.
• When children compete at important sports events, their parents react in different ways. When Dorothy Hamill won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the 1976 Olympic Games, her father watched the competition in person, but her mother was too nervous to watch and stayed in her hotel room.
• Etiquette expert Grace Fox knows a family that schedules regular musical or literary nights. On one occasion, the parents tried to turn on their children — metalheads all — to the music of the Beatles and Janis Joplin. (Their children remained metalheads, but everyone had fun.)
• When he was growing up, professional baseball player Harmon Killebrew used to play ball with his brother and father in the front yard. His mother once complained that they were ruining the lawn, but his father replied, “We’re raising kids — not raising grass.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Families — Free Downloads
The Funniest People in Families — Smashwords (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — Apple (Free Download)
Don’t Fear the Reaper — Kobo (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — Barnes and Noble (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — (Read Online Free)
MANY FREE PDFs:
davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
David Bruce at Smashwords (PDFs and Other Formats)
NEW BLOG - davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Track: "Night Surf"
Single: One-Sided Single
Artist: Beach Bomb
Artist Location: Oslo, Norway
Info:
“Black Surf from the cold waters of Norway!”
Beach Bomb has 10 one-sided singles on Bandcamp. Most priced for 3.50 Norwegian Krone (approx. 36 cents in USAmerican money) or Name Your Price (Includes FREE).
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Instrumental Surf.
Links:
“Night Surf”
Beach Bomb on Bandcamp
Beach Bomb on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Cannabis
New Venture
Michael Egan
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
My computer pitched a first-class hissy & not everything is working quite right. Ack.
Better Call Saul
Carol Burnett
The final episodes of Better Call Saul were already going to be a major event, and now they’ve gone and added Carol Burnett into the mix. AMC announced in a press release that Burnett would appear in a guest role during the second half of the show’s final season.
If the news proves exciting to Better Call Saul fans, well, Burnett is right there with you. “I’m thrilled to be a part of my favorite show,” she says in a statement. Her fandom for the series was documented back in 2018, when she told Jimmy Kimmel, “I’m crazy about anything Vince Gilligan writes.” Who knew she was a Breaking Baddie?
In retrospect, the writing for this cameo was on the wall earlier this year, when Burnett appeared in support of Bob Odenkirk’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony alongside a number of the show’s stars, including Rhea Seehorn, Jonathan Banks, Michael Mando, Patrick Fabian, Tony Dalton, Giancarlo Esposito, as well as Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould. As it turns out, she wasn’t just there as a fan, but a co-star in her own right.
Though she’s best known for her comedic performances, she’s done plenty of dramatic TV as well, including roles on Desperate Housewives, Hawaii Five-Oh, and Law & Order: SVU. This isn’t even the first time she’s manifested a part for herself on one of her favorite shows: All My Children creator Agnes Nixon wrote the character of Verla Grubbs for Burnett, who was a lifelong fan of the soap.
Carol Burnett
MSNBC Gig
Alex Wagner
MSNBC on Monday solidified its prime-time lineup by appointing Alex Wagner to fill Rachel Maddow’s time slot four nights a week, Tuesday through Friday.
Wagner, who has worked at CBS News, as a co-host of Showtime’s “The Circus” and as an editor at The Atlantic, is on her second stint at MSNBC. She rejoined MSNBC in February after hosting a show on the network a decade ago.
Maddow will continue to work in her 9 p.m. Eastern time slot on Monday nights, MSNBC said.
A first-generation Asian American whose mother emigrated to the U.S. from Myanmar, Wagner wrote a book about her experiences, “FutureFace: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest and the Secret to Belonging.”
Wagner’s new show will premiere Aug. 16. A continued rotation of anchors will fill in at the 9 p.m. hour until then.
Alex Wagner
Headed to Auction
‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’
An extremely rare copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is headed to Heritage Auctions, taking place on July 9 and 10.
This stereo pressing of Bob Dylan’s second album contains the four tracks that were replaced prior to its official release in May 1963: “Rocks and Gravel,” “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” “Gamblin’ Willie’s Dead Man’s Hand,” and “Talkin’ John Birch Blues.” Its jacket lists the four tracks that ultimately replaced it: “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Bob Dylan’s Dream” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues.”
Original copies of Freewheelin’ are extraordinarily rare; this one is estimated at $60,000. Its matrix numbers are etched on the run-out grooves: Side One is “XSM-58719-1A,” while Side Two is “XSM-58720-1A.” Pressings after that ended in “2A” instead of “1A.”
Heritage will host the auction in Dallas next month, where they’ll also sell gems like Elvis Presley’s “TCB” sunglasses, an Elton John and Bernie Taupin-signed denim outfit, and more.
The news of the Freewheelin’ copy arrives at the heels of another Holy Grail for Dylan fanatics: the lost bootleg of his Salt Lake City, Utah, show on May 25, 1976, which fans are determined to find at the Eccles Theater.
‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’
Interviewing Woody Allen
Alec Baldwin
Alec Baldwin has shared his plan to interview Woody Allen, the scandal-ridden filmmaker who has been accused of sexual abuse by his daughter Dylan Farrow. He plans to conduct the interview on Instagram Live on Tuesday morning.
The actor shared the news in a video posted to Instagram. In the clip, Baldwin holds up and shows off a copy of Allen’s memoir Zero Gravity. He later jokingly whispers Allen’s name, presumably referring to the decision many people in Hollywood have made to distance themselves from the once highly esteemed director. “I love you Woody,” Baldwin muses in the clip.
The video comes alongside a caption daring readers to judge Baldwin for his decision.
“Let me preface this by stating that I have ZERO INTEREST in anyone’s judgments and sanctimonious posts here. I am OBVIOUSLY someone who has my own set of beliefs and COULD NOT CARE LESS about anyone else’s speculation. If you believe that a trial should be conducted by way of an HBO documentary, that’s your issue,” Baldwin writes.
Baldwin’s decision to interview Allen comes just days after another (rich, old, white) guy publicly argued that perhaps Allen shouldn’t have it so bad. Last week, author James Patterson explained that he disagreed with a walkout staged at his publisher Little, Brown and Company in 2020 to protest the release of Woody Allen’s memoir.
Alec Baldwin
Recruiting Goals
U.S. Military
Every branch of the U.S. military is struggling to meet its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goals, say multiple U.S. military and defense officials, and numbers obtained by NBC News show both a record low percentage of young Americans eligible to serve and an even tinier fraction willing to consider it.
The officials said the Pentagon’s top leaders are now scrambling for ways to find new recruits to fill out the ranks of the all-volunteer force. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks consider the shortfall a serious issue, said the officials, and have been meeting on it frequently with other leaders.
“This is the start of a long drought for military recruiting,” said Ret. Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank. He said the military has not had such a hard time signing recruits since 1973, the year the U.S. left Vietnam and the draft officially ended. Spoehr said he does not believe a revival of the draft is imminent, but “2022 is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force.”
The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years.
An internal Defense Department survey obtained by NBC News found that only 9% of those young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.
U.S. Military
Targeting Colleges
Pennsylvania
A proposal to require Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities to promise they are not conducting research or experiments with fetal tissue from elective abortions was added to a state budget bill by House Republicans on Monday.
The chamber voted 108-92, with three Republicans crossing party lines, for the amendment to legislation that will send more than $597 million combined next year to Penn State, Lincoln, Temple and Pitt.
The target of the measure is the University of Pittsburgh, which is in line to receive $155 million in the coming year.
The sponsor, Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill, said his goal was to stop the research.
Pennsylvania
The Thin Yellow Line
Uvalde
A mom who was handcuffed after she attempted to rescue her children from a school shooting in Uvalde last month says that she’s now being harassed by local police.
On 24 May, after a teenage gunman opened fire on a fourth-grade classroom and brutally slaughtered 19 children and two teachers, Angeli Rose Gomez made her way down to Robb Elementary School in a valiant effort to save her own two sons, who were still trapped indoors, from the massacre that was unfolding behind the Texas school’s doors.
In a recent interview with Fox 25, the mother of two told the news outlet how she was later able to reason with the officers and convince them that she had calmed down, thus securing her release from the handcuffs.
The Texas mother also suggested during a separate interview with CBS that she was afraid that “someone in law enforcement” was trying to silence her from speaking out about the harrowing day when she was handcuffed while trying to rescue her children from what can only be described as most parents’ worst nightmare.
For their part, the US Marshals agency has denied that parents were handcuffed outside the school, telling the Wall Street Journal that its deputy marshals “maintained order and peace in the midst of the grief-stricken community that was gathering around the school”.
Uvalde
Secret Ancient Passageways
Peruvian Andes
Archaeologists have revealed a complex of hidden passageways and galleries deep inside the ancient Chavín de Huántar temple complex in the Peruvian Andes. The researchers think the network of chambers and galleries was used in religious rituals, possibly involving psychedelic drugs.
It's the first time in about 3,000 years that these particular hidden structures have been explored; some of the dark and isolated chambers may have been used for sensory deprivation, while some of the larger galleries seem to have been used for the worship of idols, said John Rick, a Stanford University archaeologist who is leading the research.
Rick explained that the newly discovered passageways weren't strictly tunnels, because they hadn't been dug into the ground. Instead, they were deliberately constructed inside the mass of the enormous temple complex as it was built in stages between 1200 B.C. and 200 B.C.
Some of the chambers seem to have originally been rooms near the surface that were kept accessible for a time with heavy-duty roofs and extended entrance passages, he said. The passageways are up to 300 feet (100 meters) long, but many are twisting, with right-angled corners and multiple levels.
A total of 36 galleries and their associated passageways have now been found at Chavín de Huántar over 15 years of excavations, but this latest network was detected only a few years ago and was not explored until this year, Rick said.
Peruvian Andes
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
