from Bruce
Anecdotes
Education
• Richard A. Watson, a professor of philosophy at Washington University, refuses to have a television set in his home. He relates in his book Good Teaching that this used to upset his young daughter, Anna, because when she said she wanted to watch TV, he told her to go to someone else’s house. However, when Anna became a college student, she began to think that her father had been right to keep TV out of their home. At her university, she discovered that many students were watching TV four to six hours a day, and she wondered when they found time to study.
• The father of Robert Newton Peck, author of such young people’s novels as A Day No Pigs Would Die, was a Shaker — a member of a pacifist religious group who practiced simple living. Robert was the only child to go to school, and actually, his parents didn’t want him to go to school. His teacher realized this, and when she met Robert’s father, she told him, “Thank you for giving me Robert. I shall try to be deserving of your trust.” Robert’s father replied, “Whatever he breaks, I’ll pay for.”
• Richard A. Watson, the author of Good Teaching, has a sister named Connie, who wanted to go to college. Unfortunately, she never managed to go and so ended up in the type of job a high-school graduate usually ends up in. Whenever a college student in the company she works for moans and groans about bad teaching at the university, she looks the student in the eye and asks, “You want to end up at my age with a job like mine?”
• Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, the author of such children’s books as Shiloh and The Agony of Alice, loved making up stories even when she was in kindergarten. One day, her kindergarten teacher asked each of her students to make up a story, which she would write down. Young Phyllis dictated her story, then stood in line again to dictate a second story, then stood in line again to dictate a third story. Finally, her teacher told her that that was “quite enough turns for one day!”
• When Jason, Candy Chester’s son, was three years old, the church they attended began to meet in a local school while waiting to move into a new building. Both the school and the church had folding chairs, so to keep the chairs from being mixed up, church members painted “Jesus” on the church’s folding chairs. One day, Jason said that he could spell the word “chair,” then he spelled “J-E-S-U-S.”
• When he was in the third grade, Newbery Award-winning author Jerry Spinelli wore his cowboy outfit — complete with hat, guns, jodhpurs, and spurs — to school. His teacher took the outfit in stride and asked, “Jerry, would you like to do something for us?” Young Jerry went up in front of the class and sang, “I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle.” As accompaniment for himself, he shook his spurs.
• Even as a 14-year-old youngster, entertainer Jennifer Lopez took her craft seriously. During a dance class, her teacher saw that she looked upset as she struggled during class. Thinking that she had boyfriend trouble, he asked her what was wrong. She replied, “I just want to be better.” Impressed by her seriousness about dance, he replied, “You will.”
• When she was a little girl, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, enjoyed her first day of school, but she was surprised that she had to go back to school — she thought that after she had gone one day, she had finished school and she never needed to go back.
• For a while, computer guru Bill Gates went to an all-boys’ private school named Lakeside. When the school went co-ed, Mr. Gates programmed the school’s computer to give him a schedule that made him the only boy in classes filled with girls.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"
Album: ORCHESTRA PIT'S REVERBERATION
Artist: Frogman
Record Company: Sharawaji Records
Record Company Location: UK
Info: “Classical World music as surf instrumentals.”
zillatonesguit, a fan, wrote:
“A 23-track treat of Classic greats; the consistent musicality is impressive!
Highlights:
“Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy" — A short & sweet surf rock up of Tchaikovsky.
“Troika" — Dramatic musical ride! Featured main theme guitar.
“Three-Horse Driving" — Great mellow mood lounge-y beat.
“Suka Blad Sinfonia" — Beethoven's 5th surf rocked out!
“Molto Allegro Twist" — A nice smooth up-tempo mood.
“Hungarian Dance" — Bouncy romp, many riffs.
Price: $12 (USD) for 23 tracks by various artists
Genre: Surf. Classical.
Links:
ORCHESTRA PIT'S REVERBERATION
Sharawaji Records
Other Links:
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.
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Current Events
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In The Chaos Household
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145,000 Music Copyrights Sold
Concord Music Publishing
The copyright bonanza in the music business continues. On Monday morning, Concord Music Publishing announced the purchase of Downtown Music Holdings’ entire portfolio of 145,000 owned and co-published music copyrights.
Here are just some of the stars with songs included in the deal: Adele, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé, Blake Shelton, Bruno Mars, Carrie Underwood, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, the Grateful Dead, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Maroon 5, Marvin Gaye, Mary J. Blige, Mos Def, Mötley Crüe, New Order, Rage Against the Machine, Ray Charles, Santigold, Sam Smith, Stevie Wonder, and The 1975.
To be clear, the aforementioned artists didn’t sell their whole catalogs directly — as the likes of Steve Nicks and Bob Dylan have recently done. Downtown owns specific copyrights and also represents songwriters. Ryan Tedder, who co-wrote Beyonce’s “Halo,” and Anthony Rossomando, who co-wrote Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow,” are signed to Downtown’s publishing arm. So the company would have sold those rights to both of those songs to Concord.
Other hits highlighted in a press release include Booker T. & the M.G.’s “Green Onions,” Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets,” Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home,” Eric Clapton’s “Change the World,” Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” and Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me.” Financials of the deal were not disclosed, but Music Business Worldwide estimates the transaction in the realm of $400 million.
Also unaffected by the transaction is Downtown’s complete roster of publishing administration clients, including the estate of George Gershwin, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Miles Davis, John Prine, Wu-Tang Clan, and Ryan Tedder/OneRepublic.
Concord Music Publishing
Oldest Actor To Win An Oscar
Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins just scored a shock Best Actor win at the Oscars, and he made some history in the process.
Hopkins on Sunday won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Father. At 83, he becomes the oldest actor to ever win a competitive Oscar. He was also the oldest person to ever be nominated for Best Actor.
Prior to Sunday's ceremony, the late Christopher Plummer had the distinction of being the oldest winner of a competitive acting Oscar, having won Best Supporting Actor for Beginners when he was 82. In the Best Actor category specifically, Henry Fonda was previously the oldest winner, as he was 76 when he took the award for On Golden Pond.
Hopkins' win was notable for another reason, though, as it was also a huge upset. Chadwick Boseman was widely expected to posthumously win Best Actor for his performance in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the final film he completed prior to his death, after being previously honored at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Along with Olivia Colman's shock 2019 Best Actress victory for The Favourite, Hopkins' win will surely be cited as among the Oscars' biggest surprises for years to come.
Anthony Hopkins
Lawsuit Tossed
Michael Jackson
A judge on Monday dismissed the lawsuit of a man who alleged that Michael Jackson sexually abused him as a boy.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark A. Young granted the Jackson estate's request to dismiss the suit brought in 2013 by Wade Robson. The judge said two Jackson entertainment corporations targeted by the lawsuit had no legal duty to protect Robson from Jackson.
“There is no evidence supporting plaintiff’s contention that defendants exercised control over Jackson,” the judge wrote. “The evidence further demonstrates that defendants had no legal ability to control Jackson, because Jackson had complete and total ownership of the corporate defendants."
The dismissal came after the judge dismissed a similar lawsuit in October by James Safechuck. Both men made their allegations in the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.”
Another judge previously dismissed the lawsuits by Robson and Safechuck in 2017, finding the statute of limitations had expired. But an appeals court revived the legal actions in 2019 after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law giving those who allege childhood sexual abuse longer to file lawsuits.
Michael Jackson
Ratings Plummet
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards television audience plunged to 9.85 million viewers on ABC, less than half of the Oscars’ previous low and continuing a startling trend of viewer tune out for awards shows.
The Nielsen company’s preliminary estimate shows that the audience who watched “Nomadland” win best picture on Sunday was 58% below last year’s tally of 23.6 million, which had set the previous record for least-watched Oscars telecast.
Following a year where movie theaters were mostly closed due to COVID-19, people were unexcited about or unfamiliar with movies they primarily streamed at home. Producers tried to fight through pandemic fatigue with a hostless program and a small, socially-distanced audience that didn’t wear masks during the broadcast.
The event drew mixed reviews, and renewed questions about the types of movies the industry makes and wants to honor.
The Oscars do best in years when popular movies are up for awards — the telecast drew 55 million viewers when “Titanic” won best picture in 1998 — but no movie came close to that impact. As a result, viewers sat through “long acceptance speeches from people you don’t know in movies you never heard of,” Berman said.
Academy Awards
False Narrative Spread
Climate Plan
On Sunday afternoon, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Bullshit Artist) tweeted out a Fox News graphic about President Biden proposing a reduction in red meat consumption. “Not gonna happen in Texas!” proclaimed the Republican, who serves nearly 30 million constituents.
Abbott was retweeted by fellow Republican Gov. Brad Little (R-Aptly Named), who said, “Idahoans also have beef with this agenda and for dinner!” The two governors followed in a line of conservative politicians, pundits and news outlets who spent days proudly stating their opposition to a provision of Biden’s climate plan that doesn’t exist.
The false narrative stems from coverage of Biden announcing his new climate goals last week in honor of Earth Day, including cutting U.S. carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 over 2005 levels. The plan drew immediate Republican condemnation, but the beef-specific narrative stems from a Thursday article in the Daily Mail, a conservative British tabloid. The lengthy headline reads, “How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs.”
The piece cites a University of Michigan study that analyzes what different changes in the U.S. diet could mean for greenhouse gas emissions. This was translated into the Fox News graphic shared by Abbott and others, which stated that the Biden proposal would cut 90 percent of red meat from Americans’ diet, allowing them a maximum of 4 pounds per year and one burger a month.
The Daily Mail’s detachment from reality did not stop the false narrative from spreading. On Friday, former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow elevated the claims on his Fox Business show.
Climate Plan
Right To Lands
Sinixt
For decades the Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada.
But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.
On Friday, Canada’s highest court agreed, ruling that Desautel and the 4,000 other members of the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state were successors to the Sinixt – and as a result, that they enjoy constitutionally protected Indigenous rights to hunt their traditional lands in Canada.
The closely watched court decision settled longstanding questions over the status of the Sinixt, but it also has the potential to affirm hunting rights in Canada for tens of thousands of Native Americans living in the US dispossessed of traditional territories by an international border drawn hundreds of years ago.
The court concluded that “Aboriginal peoples of Canada” refers to the modern-day successors of Indigenous societies that occupied Canadian territory during European contact, even if those societies and their members, including the Sinixt, are now located outside Canada.
Sinixt
‘Skull’ Painting At Auction
Jean-Michel Basquiat
In a sign that the art market is flush with cash, a rare skull painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat is being auctioned by Christie’s with an estimate of more than $50 million.
The painting will be the centerpiece of Christie’s sale of 21st century art in May in New York. Christie’s 20th century and 21st century auctions will also feature a Pablo Picasso estimated to go for more than $50 million and other trophy works by Claude Monet, Mark Rothko and Vincent Van Gogh — a sign that lofty prices are enticing sellers to part with major works.
Christie’s doesn’t have an official estimate on the Basquiat work, called “In this Case,” but the auction house is telling collectors upon request that the estimate is over $50 million. Dealers said it could go for twice that.
The piece is one of a trio of “skull” paintings Basquiat made. In 2017, another sold at a Christie’s auction for $110 million. Dealers said “In this Case” — with its even more dramatic red and yellow color palette — could fetch more.
While Christie’s won’t comment on the identity of the seller, dealers say it is a European collector, and they expect bids from around the world.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Internet Outage in Canada
Beavers
Rascally beavers took down internet service for about 900 customers in a remote Canadian community this weekend after gnawing through crucial fiber cables, the Candian Broadcasting Corporation reported Sunday. The outage, which has since been resolved, also affected 60 cable TV customers and disrupted local cell phone service, according to a statement from the area’s provider, Telus.
Tumbler Ridge, a tiny municipality in northeastern British Columbia with a population of about 2,000 people, lost service for roughly 36 hours in what Telus described as a “uniquely Canadian disruption!”
“Beavers have chewed through our fibre cable at multiple points, causing extensive damage,” said Telus spokesperson Liz Sauvé in an email to Gizmodo. “Our team located a nearby dam, and it appears the beavers dug underground alongside the creek to reach our cable, which is buried about three feet underground and protected by a 4.5-inch thick conduit. The beavers first chewed through the conduit before chewing through the cable in multiple locations.”
After going down early Saturday morning, service was restored just before 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, Sauvé confirmed. In its statement, the company said crews worked “around the clock” to address the issue and determine how far the damage continued up the cable line. Telus brought in additional equipment and technicians to tackle “challenging conditions” due to the fact that the ground above the cable is partially frozen this time of year.
The beavers seem to have been scouting for materials to build their home. A photo taken of the site shows that they used fiber marking tape, usually buried several feet underground, as part of their dam, CBC reports.
Beavers
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