M Is FOR MASHUP - December 22nd, 2021
Bootie Mashups X 3
By DJ Useo
Bootie Mashup
( bootiemashup.com/ )
has released three great new collections, just in time for Christmas, New Years Eve, & Rodney’s Rave. Big thanks to them for posting
“Bootie Mashup Top Ten December 2021”
( bootiemashup.com/top-ten-albums/bootie-mashup-top-10-december-2021/ )
,
“Best Of Bootie Mashup 2021”
( bootiemashup.com/best-of-bootie/2021/ )
&
“All I Want For Christmas Is Bootie Mashup (Update)”
( bootiemashup.com/mix-tapes/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-bootie-mashup/ )
Each collection features finestkind bootleg mixes selected by the Bootie moderators. You know we’ve all been good this last year, or we’d get lumps of coal chucked at us instead. I’ll let you discover the rest for yourself, as I’m off now to do Christmas shopping. Anyone know where to find a set of digital Lincoln Logs? ;)
ps. Almost forgot to tell you I posted 3 Christmas mashups linked here
( audioboots.org/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/2489/christmas-mashup-trio )
01 - "White Christmas Boten Anna" ( Bing Crosby vs Basshunter )
02 - "Sleigh Ride Because" ( Ella Fitzgerald vs Stolen Mech )
03 - “Hallelujah Enliven” ( Handel vs ECE )
Merry Christmas to y’all - DJ Konrad Useo
groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Do It Yourself
• Many bands, including punk bands, are Do It Yourself. In her book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot GRRRL Revolution, Sara Marcus explains, “DIY was a philosophy and a way of life, a touchstone that set its industrious adherents apart from the legions of Americans who passed their lives — as the punks saw it — trudging from TV set to first-run multiplex, from chain record store to commercial radio dial, treating art and culture as commodities to be consumed instead of vital forces to be struggled with and shaped, experimented with and created, breathed and lived.” An example of a Do It Yourself band was Bratmobile. Quite simply, Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman, and Erin Smith met and started making music. Previously, Erin was interesting in being only a fan: “I had to be the best fan possible; it never occurred to me to be anything else.” But the three met and very quickly wrote a song together. Sara Marcus writes, “The thrill! It could happen! It didn’t even have to be hard! The universe was full of songs, just waiting for you to get some friends together and write them. And then you weren’t just a fan anymore; you were a member of the fellowship of people who made things.” Very quickly, they decided to play their song (“Stab”) in public at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they had gone to see some bands, including Nation of Ulysses. The other bands were very supportive of Bratmobile. Erin remembers, “They were just like, ‘Of course you’re going to play our guitars.’” Bratmobile played their song, but in the middle of performing it they realized that they had forgotten to write an ending for it. Of course, the ending on stage resembled a crash landing, but no matter. Even if some of the non-creating members of the audience were wondering what Bratmobile was doing on stage, Bratmobile heard plenty of cheers from the people who were creators. Bratmobile practiced three more times, and they wrote five more songs, and then they recorded the songs. In DIY, things can happen fast.
Education
• Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was known for his ignorance in general and his ignorance of the arts in particular — a fact that underground humorists used in jokes such as this: When he died, he went to the gates of Heaven, but St. Peter asked him for proof of identity. When Brezhnev asked how he could prove who he was, St. Peter gave a few examples: “If Pablo Picasso came, he could paint a picture. If Arthur Rubinstein came, he could play the piano. If Maria Callas came, she could sing.” Puzzled, Brezhnev asked, “Who are Picasso, Rubinstein, and Callas?” St. Peter laughed, then said, “Now I am sure who you are — you have got to be Brezhnev.
• What counts as a good education varies from culture to culture. The white American settlers once took some youths of the Six Nations and gave them an education, then returned them to the Native Americans. However, the Native Americans were dissatisfied because the youths knew nothing about hunting and trapping, or about making war. Therefore, the Native Americans approached the white settlers to say that if the whites should give them some youths to be educated, they would make sure the youths learned the important things in life.
• Zusia and Elimelekh were brothers and Hasidic masters. After they had become famous, they traveled to a certain town, where a rich man offered them lodging at his mansion. Zusia said to the rich man, “Previously, whenever we traveled to this town, we stayed with a poor farmer who offered us hospitality when you did not. Why do you now offer us hospitality? Is it because of our horses and carriages? Then invite our horses to stay at your mansion — we shall stay with the poor farmer.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Be a Work of Art — Buy
Be a Work of Art — Buy The Paperback
Be a Work of Art — Buy Kindle
Be a Work of Art — Buy Apple
Be a Work of Art — Buy Barnes and Noble
Be a Work of Art — Buy Kobo
Be a Work of Art — Buy Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Blue Sunshine"
Album: POST-PUNK 2021 (FREE Sampler)
Artist: Ghost Twin
Record Company: Artoffact Records
Record Company Location: Toronto, Canada
Info:
“Ghost Twin is a dark synthpop duo from Winnipeg, Canada that combine roaring synthlines, dirty pulsing bass, dreamy guitar, and a haunting vocal dichotomy where Baroque meets Industrial, with live video percussion that feeds cinema through a cut-up technique imbued with occult aesthetics. Their audio/visual performance creates a full sensory evocative narrative of shadowy haunted rooms occupied by astral phantasms and electronic voices from beyond the aether.”
fransstummer, a fan, wrote, “Thanks for the free sampler — it shows the love you have for this music and the bands, and love can build what money can't.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for 15-track album
Genre: Various, Including Pop
Links:
POST-PUNK 2021 (FREE Sampler)
Ghost Twin on YouTube
Artoffact Records on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Dirty Secret
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
I need to retrieve some stuff from the East coast, and sooner rather than later.
My car is too small - there're about 40 old decanters, some glassware, some china, and a painting.
Thought about replacing my little car, but would rather not - a station wagon or van should be adequate.
So, that means:
1. Flying back east (I loathe flying, especially in a pandemic), pick up a rent-a-something in Pittsburgh, find packing stuff there, then drive north, pack up & load up, and return west.
Or
2. Rent-a-something here (avoid the airports altogether), drive east, load up, then drive west. If I drive both ways I can take along the packing stuff and other things that will probably come in handy.
Or
?
Any ideas/suggestions/recommendations?
One suggestion was to take the train, but the nearest stop is in New York state, and it's further than Pittsburgh.
Holiday Season Special
‘In Performance At The White House’
In Performance at the White House will return with a holiday season special to air on PBS on Dec. 21, with the program taped from Dec. 11-14.
Jennifer Garner will host the special, with performances by Andrea Bocelli, Matteo Bocelli, Virginia Bocelli, Camila Cabello, Eric Church, the Jonas Brothers, Norah Jones, Pentatonix, Billy Porter, Northwell Health Nurse Choir, Voices of Service and “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will deliver remarks, and the event, titled Spirit of the Season, will highlight the holiday decor of the White House.
This will be the first In Performance since 2016, as none were held during the presidency of Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up). The special also will be different in that the performances will be taped over a span of a few days, rather than a concert in the East Room, as has been tradition. That is because of Covid-19 protocols.
The In Performance specials began in 1978 with an East Room recital by pianist Vladimir Horowitz.
‘In Performance At The White House’
Di$ney Dominates
2021 Annie Nominations
Fans of animation will probably not be shocked to hear that three of the four most nominated films for this year’s Annie Awards this year hail from Disney. Raya and the Last Dragon leads all nominees with 10 total, followed by Encanto with nine and Pixar’s Luca with eight. However, right on the heels of those films is Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. The Machines with eight nominations, and the streamer also got nods for several of its other popular shows, such as Arcane, Trollhunters, and Castlevania.
For the big prize, Best Animated Feature, those four top nominees—Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto, Luca and The Mitchells vs. The Machines—will compete with Illumination’s Sing 2. Television is a bit different because it’s broken into age groups but for general audiences, the nominees for best TV show are Arcane, Bob’s Burgers, Love, Death + Robots, Star Wars: Visions, and Tuca & Bertie which, again, is kind of a Netflix vs. Disney category with Arcane and Love, Death + Robots coming from Netflix, and Bob’s Burgers and Visions coming from Disney/Fox.
You can look at the full slate of nominees at this link—and despite the Annie Awards not getting the love of other awards shows, it’s an incredibly stacked and interesting list. For example, there’s a category for Best Character Animation in a Live-Action Movie, which includes nominations for some heavy hitters featuring fully animated CGI characters: Flora & Ulysses, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Suicide Squad, The Tomorrow War, and Y: The Last Man. Yes, Y the Last Man gets a nomination for ILM’s work on Ampersand the monkey. That’s pretty neat.
And despite Disney dominating many of the categories, its other big mainstream animation project, What If...? only got one nomination: Best Editorial for the episode “What if Ultron Won?”
2021 Annie Nominations
Prime Time Nielsens
NFL Football
Football and other forms of televised competition — the season finales of some popular reality shows — dominated the Nielsen company’s weekly list of the most popular shows on television.
NBC’s “The Voice,” CBS’ “Survivor” and Fox’s “The Masked Singer” all crowned winners this past week and had fans tuning in. “The Voice,” with 7.3 million viewers for the first of two parts on Monday, had the highest numbers.
Fox News Channel won among the cable networks, averaging 2.2 million in prime time. ESPN had 1.89 million, Hallmark had 1.48 million, MSNBC had 1.3 million and Paramount had 1.07 million.
ABC’s “World News Tonight” won the evening news ratings race, averaging 8.2 million viewers. NBC’s “Nightly News” had 7.5 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 5.1 million.
For the week of Dec. 13-19, the 20 most popular shows, their networks and viewerships:
1. NFL Football: New Orleans at Tampa Bay, NBC, 18.06 million.
2. NFL Football: Kansas City at L.A. Chargers, Fox, 17.86 million.
3. “NFL Pregame,” NBC, 12.17 million.
4. “The OT,” Fox, 11.18 million.
5. “NFL Pregame,” Fox, 9.26 million.
6. “Football Night in America, Part 3,” NBC, 8.92 million.
7. “FBI,” CBS, 8.31 million.
8. NFL Football: L.A. Rams at Arizona, ABC, 7.97 million.
9. “60 Minutes,” CBS, 7.94 million.
10. NFL Football: L.A. Rams at Arizona, ESPN, 7.93 million.
11. “Yellowstone,” Paramount, 7.74 million.
12. “The Voice” (Monday), NBC, 7.28 million.
13. NFL Football: New England at Indianapolis, NFL Network, 7.26 million.
14. “The Voice” (Tuesday), NBC, 6.98 million.
15. “FBI: Most Wanted,” CBS, 6.86 million.
16. “Survivor,” CBS, 5.61 million.
17. “The Masked Singer,” Fox, 5.08 million.
18. “1883,” Paramount, 4.98 million.
19. “NFL Pregame,” ABC, 4.74 million.
20. “Football Night in America, Part 2,” NBC, 4.73 million.
NFL Football
Nielsen Chart
Streaming
Netflix movie Red Notice held on to the top spot on Nielsen’s U.S. streaming chart, as Prime Video series The Wheel of Time topped 1 billion minutes of viewing to finish No. 2.
The latest numbers capture activity during the week of November 15 to 21. Nielsen tracks viewing of Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney and Hulu via TV sets, issuing the numbers after a month’s delay, by arrangement with streaming providers.
Red Notice, a comedy-laced heist movie, stars Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. It premiered theatrically November 5 and started streaming a week later. Its second-week hold isn’t a fully legit stat given it was streaming for only three days in its first outing compared with the full seven days in Week 2, but it stayed near its opening level of viewing. In its debut week, the film collected about 1.8 billion streaming minutes, dipping to about 1.7 billion in the most recent week. Earlier this month, Netflix said Red Notice had become its most-watched original movie on a global basis, surpassing Bird Box.
Along with Wheel of Time, the two other non-Netflix titles in the top 10 belonged to Disney, with Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings and Jungle Cruise. On Nielsen’s movies-only chart, Disney owned six of the top 10 spots, with the aforementioned pair as well as Home Sweet Home Alone, Home Alone, Luca and Moana.
Here is the full top 10:
Red Notice (Netflix) – film, 1.71 billion minutes of viewing
The Wheel of Time (Prime Video) – three episodes, 1.163B min.
Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings (Disney+) – film, 878M min.
CoComelon (Netflix) – 15 eps., 869M min.
Jungle Cruise (Disney+) – film, 722M min.
Tiger King (Netflix) – 13 eps., 685M min.
Seinfeld (Netflix) – 166 eps., 602M min.
Criminal Minds (Netflix) – 317 eps., 517M min.
The Great British Baking Show (Netflix) – 74 eps., 513M min.
NCIS (Netflix) – 353 eps., 508M min.
Streaming
Nearly $100B Stolen
Pandemic Relief Funds
Nearly $100 billion at minimum has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday.
The estimate is based on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration, said Roy Dotson, the agency's national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, in an interview. The Secret Service didn't include COVID-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.
While roughly 3% of the $3.4 trillion dispersed, the amount stolen from pandemic benefits programs shows “the sheer size of the pot is enticing to the criminals,” Dotson said.
Most of that figure comes from unemployment fraud. The Labor Department reported about $87 billion in unemployment benefits could have been paid improperly, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.
The Secret Service said it has seized more than $1.2 billion while investigating unemployment insurance and loan fraud and has returned more than $2.3 billion of fraudulently obtained funds by working with financial partners and states to reverse transactions. The Secret Service says it has more than 900 active criminal investigations into pandemic fraud, with cases in every state, and 100 people have been arrested so far.
Pandemic Relief Funds
New Contract
Kellogg
A majority of workers at Kellogg Co's breakfast cereal plants voted in favor of a new contract that offers better terms for transitional employees as well as wage increases, Daniel Osborn, president of the local union in Omaha, said on Tuesday.
The new five-year deal ends months-long stalemate between Kellogg and its factory workers in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Tennessee that had prompted the company to warn of permanently replacing striking workers, drawing criticism from President Joe Biden.
The union representing around 1,400 workers said last week the latest tentative deal had showed some progress on a few key issues from the previous proposal, including increases in the cost of living wages and removal of the term "legacy employee."
A union leader had said they could return to work two days after Christmas, nearly three months from when they went on a strike.
Kellogg
Lowest Rate
US Population
U.S. population growth dipped to its lowest rate since the nation’s founding during the first year of the pandemic as the coronavirus curtailed immigration, delayed pregnancies and killed hundreds of thousands of U.S. residents, according to figures released Tuesday.
The United States grew by only 0.1%, with an additional 392,665 added to the U.S. population from July 2020 to July 2021, bringing the nation’s count to 331.8 million people, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. has been experiencing slow population growth for years but the pandemic exacerbated that trend. This past year was the first time since 1937 that the nation’s population grew by less than 1 million people.
“I was expecting low growth but nothing this low,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. “It tells us that this pandemic has had a huge impact on us in all kinds of ways, and now demography.”
In more than two dozen states, most notably Florida, deaths outnumbered births. Deaths exceeded births in Florida by more than 45,000 people, but the state’s saving grace was a migration gain of more than 259,000 people, the nation’s highest.
US Population
Spotted In Massachusetts, Texas, Canada
Steller's Sea Eagle
A rare bird spotted in Massachusetts has birdwatchers wondering how it arrived on the East Coast since the bird, known as a Stellar's sea eagle, is native to Asia.
While some of these sea eagles have appeared in Alaska, the state closest to the bird's home continent, none have been seen in Massachusetts, much less in Texas and in other states.
This eagle was rumored to be visiting the Taunton River in Massachusetts, and as it roamed the area, more than a hundred photographers and birders turned up.
The Steller's sea eagle is one of the largest raptors in the world, weighing up to 20 pounds with a wingspan of up to 8 feet. It is native to China, Japan, Korea and eastern Russia, according to Smithsonian Magazine. You can identify the bird by its yellow beak and white patterned feathers on its wings.
In November alone, the bird is believed to have traveled to Texas and parts of Canada, includingNova Scotia, Quebec and New Brunswick. Andrew Farnsworth, a senior researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told The New York Times for the bird to be so far from home is “mind-boggling.”
Steller's Sea Eagle
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
