October 8, 2021 – davidbruceblog #2

Haiku 10/07/21 — Annette Rochelle Aben

Worms do a rain dance
Avid musicians, birds sing
The clouds open up
©2021 Annette Rochelle Aben
https://ronovanwrites.com/2021/10/04/ronovan-writes-weekly-haiku-poetry-prompt-challenge-378-avid-and-worm/
Haiku 10/07/21 — Annette Rochelle Aben

Light energy — t r e f o l o g y

Do you want to know a secret? *** Aside from the three wishes granted me by my Fairy Godmother *** … not a single one of my other wishes has ever come true! *** So, what do you do when all the standard channels of wishing are closed to you? *** What do you do […]
Light energy — t r e f o l o g y

Do you want to

know a secret?

***

Aside from the

three wishes

granted me by

Fairy Godmother

***

… not a single one

of my other wishes

has

ever come true!

***

So, what do you do

when all the

standard channels of

wishing

are closed to you?

***

What do you do

when

it is not your birthday

and you have no

birthday candles?

***

What do you do

if, like me,

you find wish-bones,

kind of

disturbing?

***

I’ll tell you.

***

Did you know

that you can

make a wish on

a cloud?

***

It’s true!

***

“Make a wish on a cloud?”

You say.

“That sounds expensive!”

***

Well you’ll be

happy to know that

it will cost you

almost

nothing.

***

So, go ahead,

find a cloud

and

make a wish!

***

But, remember

it’s a cloud,

so,

it’s probably best

to keep your wish

simple,

or, cloud-related.

David Bruce: The Funniest People in Theater: 250 Anecdotes — Shakespeare, Stages, Telegrams

Shakespeare

• Lesbian comedian Sara Cytron was a class clown. To get her to be quiet during class, her English teacher used to give her five minutes at the beginning of class to recite any Shakespeare monologue in any accent she chose. Her favorite was a monologue featuring Lady Macbeth speaking with a Brooklyn accent.

• Vaudeville comedian Bobby Clark did not believe in the classics. For example, he thought that Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene could be considerably enlivened if the director would put a carnival air blower under her skirts so that they would rise up as do Marilyn Monroe’s in the movie The Seven Year Itch

• The 19^th-century actor Edwin Booth once gave a performance of King Lear in a mosquito-infested theater. On stage as King Lear, he asked the character Edgar, “What is your study?” Edgar replied, “How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin.” Mr. Booth then interpolated, “Skeeters an’ sich?”

• While in high school, African-American actor/singer Paul Robeson played Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The play was much talked about by the students — because the student playing Caesar used lots of ketchup to represent blood in the assassination scene.

• Barbara Feldon, the beautiful Agent 99 on the 1960s TV series Get Smart, is very intelligent. After graduating from Carnegie Tech Drama School, she appeared on the quiz show The $64,000 Question, where she won the top prize by answering a question about King Lear.

• Diana Rigg once played Cordelia to Paul Scofield’s King Lear. After she recited, “Had you not been their father, these white flakes did challenge pity of them,” Mr. Scofield murmured, “Are you suggesting I’ve got dandruff?”

Stages

• Comedian Joey Adams was once part of a troupe that was presenting Tobacco Road at a hotel in the Catskills. For hours, the troupe worked on the stage, getting it just right and carrying in mounds of dirt, small trees, vines and bushes, and everything else it took to make a completely naturalistic stage setting. Finally, everything was perfect, and the troupe went off to relax before the show. When they returned to the stage, every tree, every bush, every vine, and every lump of dirt was gone. The owner of the hotel had walked in, seen the stage setting, figured that one of his rivals was trying to sabotage the new show, and ordered everything cleaned up.

• Dancing can be strenuous. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dance critic Walter Terry practiced dance with Marion Tatum, who frequently tore the soles of her feet practicing fouettés. Twenty years after leaving UNC, Mr. Terry returned to the stage where he and Ms. Tatum used to practice — and her bloodstains were still on the floor.

Telegrams

• Eddie Cantor says that Fanny Brice loved to play cards, but that she took an extraordinarily long time to decide which card to discard. Anyone who played cards with her had to wait and wait and wait for her turn to end. (Occasionally, they would break the monotony of waiting by saying to Ms. Brice, “Well?”) One day Mr. Cantor was playing cards with her when he excused himself, left her hotel, went to the train station, took one train to Chicago, then another train to New York City. In New York City, he sent her a telegram: “WELL?”

• After The Mary Tyler Moore Show ended, Ms. Moore performed on Broadway in Whose Life is It, Anyway?Although Ms. Moore had trained herself as a dancer, her role was that of a quadriplegic, meaning that she had to hold her body still and act with only her face and voice. Ed Asner (who played the character Lou Grant in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) sent her this telegram: “NICE TO KNOW ALL THOSE DANCING LESSONS HAVE PAID OFF AT LAST.”

***

The Funniest People in Theater: 250 Anecdotes — Buy

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Music Recommendation: Los A-Tunes — “Suburban Reverbs”

BRUCE’S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC

Music: “Suburban Reverbs”

EP: EN LATA [IN CAN]

Artist: Los A-Tunes

Artist Location: Zaragoza, Spain

Info: 100% Do-It-Yourself

“First demo recorded by Akademiko Lafu and edited by Grabaciones Morediscos on a Sunday, July 15, 2018, outside somewhere in the outskirts of Zaragoza with a lot of heat and after a first recording made on June 10 and that we had previously posted on YouTube.”

Surf Rock instrumental music band from the city of Zaragoza. More info and contact at: https://losatunes.com/and contacto@losatunes.com