fragile hued beauty
Day: May 27, 2018
Quote of the Week
Sometimes we just have to cut off the dead branches in our life. Sometimes that’s the only way we can keep the tree alive. It’s hard and it hurts, but it’s what’s best.
-Nicole Williams
Haiku: Fragile — Charmed Chaos
davidbrucehaiku: EARTHLY PARADISE
https://pixabay.com/en/orchid-yellow-orchid-flower-plant-3375197/
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EARTHLY PARADISE
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Earthly paradise
Exists in flower gardens
Cultivate your own
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35
Sometimes, loving someone
is about leaving them the way they are.
Not everyone belongs on your to-do list,
not everyone is fit to be fixed.
While we may believe that
we’re meant to leave people
better than we found them,
sometimes, we’re just meant to leave.
If I tried to censor every mouth I met that ever
uttered a nasty word,
I’d be a moth
racing towards every light, enticing,
trying
to kill me.
There is no shame giving up
on someone you just couldn’t save
if it means you save yourself from it, too.
There is courage in continuing to keep the door propped open
even after the bad ones got in.
But there isn’t in sewing yourself up
even when you knew it’d
hurt this much after.
Not everyone can be saved from themselves;
it is not your responsibility to save each one.
Sometimes, loving yourself
is about…
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davidbrucehaiku: Respeito à Vida (I RESPECT LIFE)
https://pixabay.com/en/respect-bike-path-security-298740/
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Respeito à Vida (I RESPECT LIFE)
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Be kind, share the street
Respeito à Vida
Cars can crush bikes, lives
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davidbrucehaiku: PHOTO OF PABLO CASALS
Source: Wiki Commons
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PHOTO OF PABLO CASALS
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“Please be quiet, sir”
Photo of Pablo Casals
“I am listening”
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NOTE: This is a quote by an older gentleman who was looking at (and listening to) a photograph of the famous cellist Pablo Casals.
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***
David Bruce: William Shakespeare’s CYMBELINE: A Retelling in Prose — Act 4, Scene 1
— 4.1 —
Cloten, wearing Posthumus’ clothing, stood near Belarius’ (Morgan’s) cave.
Alone, he said to himself, “I am near the place where Posthumus and Imogen should meet, ifPisanio has mapped the place truly and correctly. How fittingly his garmentsserve me! Why shouldn’t his mistress, who was made byHim — God — Who made the tailor, be fitting for me, too? I fit in Posthumus’ clothing, so why shouldn’t I fit in his wife? Pardon the sexual puns, but it is said a woman’s fitness — readiness for a sexual workout — comes by fits and starts. Therein I must play the skilled workman and make sure that I fit in her.
“I dare to say this to myself — for it is not vainglorious for a man and his mirror to confer privately in his own bedchamber — I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as those of Posthumus’ body. I am no less young, I am stronger, I am not beneath him in fortunes, I am superior to him in having the advantage of social connections, I am above him in birth, I am equally experienced as him in general military services, and I am more remarkable in single combat and duels.
“Yet this stubborn and blind thing — Imogen — loves him instead of me. What a thing human nature is!
“Posthumus, your head, which now is growing upon your shoulders, shall within this hour be cut off. Your wife shall be raped, your garments shall be cut to pieces before her face, and when all this is done, I will kick her home to her father. He may perhaps be a little angry for my very rough treatment of your wife, who is his daughter, but my mother, who has the power to change his testiness, shall turn all his criticisms of me into commendations of me.
“My horse is tied up safely. Out, sword, because I will use you for a grievous purpose! Fortune, put Posthumus and Imogen into my hands! This place matches the exact description of their meeting place, and that fellow Pisanio does not dare to deceive me.”
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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David Bruce: Comedians Anecdotes
In 2007 and in some previous years, Gabe Kaplan, star of Welcome Back, Kotter, considered himself a D-list celebrity. No problem. No one needs to be an A-list celebrity to lead a life of wit and intelligence. When Mr. Kaplan received an e-mail asking him to fight another D-list celebrity in Celebrity Boxing, he knew that he would reject the invitation, but he wanted to do so in a funny way. Therefore, he e-mailed back a list of silly demands that would have to be met before he would fight. For example, he claimed that he had become a Hasidic Jew; therefore, when he fought, he would have to wear a skullcap and a tzitzit, which Mr. Kaplan explains is “a body prayer shawl worn under a shirt so that only the fringes are visible.” To his surprise, his silly demands were taken seriously. This gave him the idea to see what a D-list celebrity could get away with. He contacted a reputable book publisher, claiming that he had broken Wilt Chamberlain’s record of sleeping with 20,000 women. The book publisher took his claim seriously. He contacted the Postmaster General’s office, saying that he was a good candidate to be the first living person whose image would appear on a U.S. postage stamp. The Postmaster General’s office thought he was serious. He contacted Sioux City, Iowa, to see if they would be willing to throw him a gala birthday parade, complete with floats. The good people of Sioux City, Iowa, were willing. Eventually, he got the idea of putting his e-mails and their responses into a book. Most people were good sports and gave him permission—and the good people of Sioux City, Iowa, let Mr. Kaplan know that they were still willing to throw him a gala birthday parade, complete with floats. Therefore, in 2007 Mr. Kaplan celebrated his birthday with a gala parade in Sioux City, Iowa. (By the way, Mr. Kaplan’s book is titled Kotter’s Back: E-mails From a Faded Celebrity to a Bewildered World.)
British music-hall comedian Ken Dodd made people laugh for over 50 years, debuting in 1954 and still entertaining at the end of 2007. Unfortunately, he did get in trouble with the tax people in the late 1980s because of £700,000 in 20 offshore bank accounts—which he had not declared. Of course, because he is a comedian, his trial (which ended with him being declared not guilty) had some light moments. For example, at one point the judge asked him what £330,000 in a suitcase felt like. Mr. Dodd replied, “The notes are not heavy, m’lud.” Mr. Dodd is a gifted comedian. One of his best jokes is this: “Men’s legs have a terribly lonely life—standing in the dark in your trousers all day.”
Eli Wallach once remarked to Ernest Truex, with whom he was acting in the play Androcles and the Lion, “I sure got a great laugh on my last line out there.” Mr. Truex asked, “You did?” The very next performance, Mr. Wallach said the line, waited for the laugh, and heard only silence. After the play was over, Mr. Truex explained, “You’re not the only one onstage when you get your laugh. Your laugh came about because there are other actors skillfully setting up the situation for you.” Mr. Wallach considers this one of his most important lessons in acting. He made peace with Mr. Truett and started getting a laugh on the line again.
Comedian Joey Bishop was quick with an ad-lib and with a joke. One evening he was performing in a nightclub when glamorous actress Marilyn Monroe came in wearing very expensive furs. Mr. Bishop said to her, “Marilyn, I told you to sit in the truck.” And after he got a small part in the movie The Naked and the Dead, he told an audience, “I played both parts.” Mr. Bishop didn’t mind making fun of his good friend Frank Sinatra, who did mind when people other than Mr. Bishop made fun of him. Mr. Bishop once said about his good friend, “Frank regularly calls Dial-A-Prayer to pick up his messages.”
Early in Lucille Ball’s career, she had a small role in a movie titled The Kid from Spain that starred comedian Eddie Cantor. In the film, Mr. Cantor ducked and one of the glamour girls behind him got hit with a pie that had been meant to hit him. Lucy is the glamour girl who volunteered to get hit with the pie—none of the other glamour girls wanted to do the job. Later, Mr. Cantor told celebrity interviewer Joe Franklin that he knew on that day in 1932 that Lucy would go far in the business. Why? He explained that Lucy “wasn’t afraid to be outrageous.”
Between 1935 and 1940, Buster Keaton was making sound films in foreign countries. Movies had sound then, so he recorded the movies in various languages, learning a sentence in one language and recording it, and then learning that sentence in another language and recording it, and so on. For one movie, he recorded the dialogue in French and in Spanish, and he did OK. But his German language instructor noticed a problem with his German: “Oh, I understand him very well, only he’s speaking with a French-Spanish accent.”
Fred Weintraub owned the Bitter End, a club where many comedians plied their art and became famous. He listened to the audience and let its reaction decide whether he should keep an act. If the audience hated an act, he kept it. If the audience loved an act, he kept it. If the audience members said after a performance, “That’s a nice act,” he dropped that act. According to Mr. Weintraub, the one thing he did not want was for an audience to be indifferent.
Starting out as a stand-up comedian can be tough. Dallas comedian Sherry Belle remembers getting laughs her first time on stage; unfortunately, the audience was laughing at all the wrong places. For example, she finished a joke, but the audience didn’t laugh, so she said, “That was the punch line.” That made the audience laugh.
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Edgar Lee Masters: The Town Marshal and Jack McGuire (Spoon River Anthology)
THE Prohibitionists made me Town Marshal
When the saloons were voted out,
Because when I was a drinking man,
Before I joined the church, I killed a Swede
At the saw-mill near Maple Grove.
And they wanted a terrible man,
Grim, righteous, strong, courageous,
And a hater of saloons and drinkers,
To keep law and order in the village.
And they presented me with a loaded cane
With which I struck Jack McGuire
Before he drew the gun with which he killed me.
The Prohibitionists spent their money in vain
To hang him, for in a dream
I appeared to one of the twelve jurymen
And told him the whole secret story.
Fourteen years were enough for killing me.
Jack McGuire
THEY would have lynched me
Had I not been secretly hurried away
To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,
Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
When Logan, the marshal, halted me
Called me a drunken hound and shook me
And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
With that Prohibition loaded cane—
All this before I shot him.
They would have hanged me except for this:
My lawyer, Kinsey Keene, was helping to land
Old Thomas Rhodes for wrecking the bank,
And the judge was a friend of
Rhodes and wanted him to escape,
And Kinsey offered to quit on
Rhodes for fourteen years for me.
And the bargain was made.
I served my time
And learned to read and write.
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