M Is FOR MASHUP - February 23rd, 2022
The Legend Of Agent Lovelette
By DJ Useo
Once upon a time there was a great mashup deejay named “Agent Lovelette”. As I heard it, she was a label artist named CENSORED. At the Get Your Bootleg On mashup forum, Agent Lovelettes’ “true” name was shared around, with many of us believing it.
We were told not to reveal her identity, but you know what big mouths lurk on the net. Soon, she vanished & we told it was because her label objected to the mashups. What a loss she was. Her tracks were true gems & no more were forthcoming.
Recently, I was looking up the source artists of one of the classic Agent Lovelette cuts, when I discovered a wonderful file with tons of her stuff. It’s an amazing assortment, sure to please you. Have fun with the
no-charge file located here
( archive.org/details/mashup_Unreleased_and_rare_Agentlovelette_tracks )
I did some checking with bootleg pals for this article, & found out the entire story of Agent Lovelette was made up. Lol! Well, at least we had fun with it. I’m told “she” was actually a fine bootlegger I’d enjoyed tracks from called
“Sidney Looper”
( sidneylooper.bandcamp.com/ ) .
Well, that’s the way of the net. Fake names, tall tales & false rumors. One thing you can be sure of though, is the Agent Lovelette mashups are great. Here’s a
rare video of a Missy Elliott vs Luke Vibert track
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBpSRZEhzU )
Catch you later.
- DJ Konrad Useo
groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Work
• When young-people’s author Richard Peck was drafted to serve as a soldier during the Korean War (although he actually served in what was then West Germany), he soon discovered the value of literacy. He had a college degree, and he knew how to write and how to type, so he got a relatively cushy job. He says, “If you can type, spell, and improvise mid-sentence, you can work in a clean dry office near a warm stove.” This is, of course, better than being “in a moist foxhole staring through barbed wire at an East German soldier who’s staring back at you.” He got another cushy job by writing sermons. He slipped the first sermon unnoticed under the chaplain’s door. That Sabbath, the chaplain delivered the sermon. The next time Mr. Peck slipped a sermon under the chaplain’s door, he made sure he was caught. The chaplain immediately made him his assistant.
• Authors have many ways to come up with ideas to write about. John Cheever once complained that the tables in a certain restaurant were too far apart. Why was that a problem? He explained, “Now I can’t eavesdrop on any of the conversations.” By the way, being a writer may have saved his life. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1942, the same year that he published The Way Some People Live, his first collection of short stories. A major who was also an MGM executive had Mr. Cheever transferred to another unit where he worked as a writer. The unit that Mr. Cheever transferred out of suffered many, many casualties while fighting in Europe at the end of the war.
• For children’s author Jane Yolen, writing and books can be magical. She was writing one book when a group of elves appeared in her mind. She told them, “No elves in this book. Go away.” They replied, “We’re here.” She says, “I was blocked for three weeks until I figured out why they were there.” A nurse once sent her a letter to say that she had read one of Ms. Yolen’s stories to a young, dying girl. She wrote that “the story had eased the little girl through her final pain.” Ms. Yolen says, “The story did that — not me. But if I can continue to write with as much honesty and love as I can muster, I will truly have touched magic — and passed it on.”
• Like many authors, Dennis Lehane, who wrote Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, both of which became movies, has had many jobs. He has been a counselor for abused children, driven limos, loaded tractor-trailers, parked cars, and — of course — waited tables. He says about his jobs, “Everything was based on the idea of taking the best possible job for me to be a writer with.” For example, “Limos were phenomenal. You drive people somewhere and you wait for them for four hours.” And, of course, while you wait, you write.
• Mario Puzo wrote for men’s adventure magazines before becoming a famous novelist. Once, because he was short of money, he asked Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee if he could write a comic-book story for him. Unfortunately, he came back to Mr. Lee without a story because writing it was too hard. He said, “I could write a novel in the time it would take me to figure this damn thing out.” As if to prove his point, he sat down and wrote The Godfather.
• The home office of children’s author Walter Dean Myers has wallpaper that a child would enjoy — it is decorated with airplanes. In fact, the room used to be the nursery for his son Christopher, but when Christopher became too old for it, Mr. Myers moved out the nursery furniture, moved in the office furniture, hung up a picture of blues singer Billie Holiday, and went to work. The airplane-decorated wallpaper does not bother Mr. Myers.
• Robert Bloch, the author of such books of horror as Psycho, on which the Alfred Hitchcock film is based, actually had a wonderful sense of humor. Early in his career, he published a story in Weird Tales, which paid a penny a word. In his autobiography, Once Around the Bloch: An Unauthorized Autobiography, he writes that he thought “if I could step up my output, perhaps in five or six years I’d make enough money to starve to death.”
***
© 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: "Slaughter on 10th Avenue"
Single: This is a one-sided single.
Artist: Los Surfer Compatres
Artist Location: Monterrey, Mexico
Info:
“One day we decided to learn to play surf music and we agreed to play, and that's it! Together we are The Surfer Compadres!”
Price: $1 (USD) for track; this track is a one-sided single
Genre: Surf. Instrumental.
Links:
“Slaughter on 10th Avenue”
Los Surfer Compatres
Los Surfer Compatres 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
David Bruce's Blog #3
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Reef Ball
Maybe I should become a reef ball when I tip over
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
Quite brisk, with a side of rain.
Slims Down
Oscars
To combat slumping ratings, the Oscars are undergoing a radical slimming down, with eight awards to be presented off-air during next month’s telecast of the 94th Academy Awards.
In a letter sent Tuesday to members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the group’s president, David Rubin, said that the awards for film editing, production design, sound, makeup and hairstyling, music (original score) and the three short film awards (documentary, live-action and animated) will be presented at the ceremony before the March 27 live broadcast begins on ABC.
Now, instead of starting the ceremony and broadcast all at once, the Dolby Theatre ceremony will begin an hour before the telecast does. The presentation and speeches of those early eight winners will be edited and featured during the three-hour live broadcast, which Rubin emphasized would still provide each winner with their “Oscar moment.”
The possibility of pulling some of the Oscars’ 23 categories from the broadcast has long been a matter of debate. In 2019, the academy initially sought to air four categories — cinematography, editing, makeup and hairstyling and live-action short — in a shortened, taped segment. But after a backlash ensued, the academy reversed itself days before the show.
This year, after several host-less Oscars, producers are turning to the trio of Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes to emcee. The show, produced by Will Packer, will also recognize the favorite movie as voted on by fans on Twitter.
Oscars
“Shuna’s Journey”
Hayao Miyazaki
A graphic novel by Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is being released for the first time in the United States, nearly 40 years after it was published in Japan.
Miyazaki’s “Shuna’s Journey,” a 1983 release which contains elements later built upon in his films “Princess Mononoke” and “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,” will be published Nov. 1 by the Macmillan imprint First Second. Alex Dudok de Wit is translating the book into English.
“Fans of ‘Princess Mononoke’ and ‘Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’ — there are millions of us — will delight in finding early hints of these masterworks in gorgeous watercolor pages by Miyazaki’s own hand,” Mark Siegel, editorial and creative director of First Second, said in a statement Tuesday.
Miyazaki, 81, is regarded as one of the world’s greatest animators. His other films include “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and the 2001 release “Spirited Away,” which won the Academy Award for best animated feature. He was nominated for a best animated feature Oscar for his 2013 film “The Wind Rises.”
Hayao Miyazaki
Gay Country Pioneers
Lavender Country
In 1973, amid the growing gay rights movement, a band called Lavender Country recorded a country music album that unabashedly explored LGBTQ themes, becoming a landmark that would nonetheless disappear for decades.
Led by singer-songwriter Patrick Haggerty, the self-titled album was created by a collective of activists, singers and musicians with ribald songs focused on LGBTQ people, like “Back in the Closet Again” and “Come Out Singing,” as well as an explicit song bashing straight men that has since become a cult favorite.
Nearly 50 years later, Lavender Country is back with a sophomore record that connects today’s LGBTQ country musicians to historical roots in activism and social change.
The self-titled album “Lavender Country” had little initial impact outside of the Seattle gay community. It sold about 1,000 copies, Haggerty estimates, mostly by running ads in underground magazines, and he and his friends spent a couple of years doing Lavender Country shows in the area. But after a few years, the album and the group were mostly forgotten.
Around 1999, an editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum discovered Lavender Country and reached out to Haggerty to include the album in a roundup of gay-themed country music. A few years later, even though the original album had been out of print for decades, someone uploaded a copy of one of the original songs to YouTube.
Lavender Country
‘Wendy Williams Show’ Ending
Sherri Shepherd
“The Wendy Williams Show” will end because of Williams’ prolonged health-related absence and be replaced this fall with a show hosted by Sherri Shepherd, the producer of both TV programs said Tuesday.
The new daytime show, crisply titled “Sherri,” will “inherit” the time slots on Fox owned-and-operated stations that have been the backbone of Williams’ nationally syndicated talk show since 2008, producer and distributor Debmar-Mercury said.
“Since Wendy is still not available to host the show as she continues on her road to recovery, we believe it is best for our fans, stations and advertising partners to start making this transition now,” company co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein said in a statement.
The company declined to comment further on her recent health issues, which Williams herself has not discussed other than in generalities.
“The Wendy Williams Show” has relied on a string of guest hosts, Shepherd among them, since the start of its 13th year last fall. Built on Williams’ popularity as a brash radio host, the show has been a success for Lionsgate-owned Debmar-Mercury.
Sherri Shepherd
Not Deposition
DNA
A lawyer for a woman who accused (the) former President Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s and then filed a defamation lawsuit against him said Tuesday she will not seek to depose Trump the loser prior to trial because it would cause unnecessary delay, but added that a DNA sample was still being sought.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan first made the revelation in Manhattan federal court during a pretrial hearing before explaining the decision to reporters outside the court as her client, E. Jean Carroll, stood by her side.
A deposition, Kaplan said, would “inevitably result in an inordinate amount of delay.”
“We want the case to go forward,” she said.
Attorney Alina Habba, who represented Trump the known liar at the hearing, said outside court that she had not previously heard that Carroll’s lawyers did not want a deposition, a proceeding in which lawyers in civil cases question likely witnesses under oath prior to trial.
DNA
Razzaza Lake
Iraq
Iraq’s Razzaza Lake was once a tourist attraction known for its beautiful scenery and an abundance of fish that locals depended on. Now, dead fish litter its shores and the once-fertile lands around it have turned into a barren desert.
One of Iraq’s largest lakes, the man-made Razzaza is seeing a significant decline in water levels and has been hit by pollution and high levels of salinity.
Razzaza Lake is the latest victim of a water crisis in Iraq, known as the “Land Between the Two Rivers” — the Tigris and the Euphrates. Upstream dams in Turkey, Syria and Iran have shrunk the rivers and their tributaries, seasonal rainfall has dropped and infrastructure has fallen into disrepair.
Razzaza Lake, also known as Lake Milh, Arabic for Salt Lake, is located between Iraq’s governorates of Anbar and Karbala. It's the second largest lake in Iraq and is part of a wide valley that includes the lakes of Habbaniyah, Tharthar and Bahr al-Najaf.
The lake was constructed as a measure to control floods in the Euphrates and to be used as huge reservoir for irrigation purposes. Iraqis and tourists frequented the lake as a recreational spot to cool down during Iraq’s hot summers.
Iraq
Neolithic Campsite
Jordan
A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists said Tuesday that it had found a roughly 9,000-year-old shrine at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert.
The ritual complex was found in a Neolithic campsite near large structures known as “desert kites,” or mass traps that are believed to have been used to corral wild gazelles for slaughter.
Such traps consist of two or more long stone walls converging toward an enclosure and are found scattered across the deserts of the Middle East.
“The site is unique, first because of its preservation state,” said Jordanian archaeologist Wael Abu-Azziza, co-director of the project. “It’s 9,000 years old and everything was almost intact.”
Within the shrine were two carved standing stones bearing anthropomorphic figures, one accompanied by a representation of the “desert kite,” as well as an altar, hearth, marine shells and miniature model of the gazelle trap.
Jordan
Meteorite Dagger
Tutankhamun
An iron meteorite dagger gifted to the ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun has undergone chemical analyses in a new study to unravel the mystery of how it was forged. Results show that its construction included techniques that weren’t common in Egypt at the time, potentially supporting the interpretation of a letter that indicates the weapon was gifted to King Tut’s grandfather from abroad.
Scientists traveled to the Egyptian Archeological Museum in Cairo, Egypt, in 2020 to carry out their investigations, the results of which are published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. They fired x-rays at the ancient blade to get a better idea of the concentrations of different elements it contained and how it was made.
While this revealed a mixture of iron sulfide (among other elements), it was the distribution of its constituents that proved to be most fascinating. The meteorite blade had a cross-hatched texture known as the Widmanstätten Pattern, something that – alongside iron sulfide – is seen in the iron meteorite octahedrite.
That this pattern was preserved in the forging of the knife, alongside preserved deposits of troilite, indicates it was made using a low-temperature technique heated to less than 950 degrees Celsius (1,742 degrees Fahrenheit).
Moreover, the study results point to an unclear origin for King Tut’s space blade, which was laid to rest alongside him and later discovered within his tomb’s spoils. Its gold hilt appears to have been crafted using lime plaster, an adhesive material that wasn’t used in Egypt until much later but was being used elsewhere.
Tutankhamun
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