Bücher von David Bruce

Teachers may find this book useful as a discussion guide for Voltaire's satire CANDIDE Teachers can have students read chapters from the short novel, then teachers can ask students selected questions from this study guide.

This volume is a short biography of Nadia Comaneci, winner of five gold medals at the Olympics. Do you know a language other than English? If you do, I give you permission to translate this book, copyright your translation, publish or self-publish it, and keep all the royalties for yourself. (Do give me credit, of course, for the original book.)

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ Jackie Robinson, the African American who integrated modern major-league baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was an activist long before he became famous. As a boy, he and his friends would sometimes go to the movie theater and sit in the white-people-only seats. When that happened, the police would arrive to get them out of those seats. Later, while he was playing with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, his team's tour bus pulled up at a gas station in Oklahoma. African Americans were allowed to buy gas there, but the men's restroom bore this sign: "WHITE MEN ONLY." Mr. Robinson walked to the restroom, and the gas station owner told him that he couldn't use that restroom. Mr. Robinson then said, "Take that hose out of the tank." The gas station owner did not want to lose any business, so he allowed Mr. Robinson to use the restroom. After that, the Kansas City Monarchs never bought gas at a gas station where they weren't allowed to use the restroom. As Mr. Robinson explained, "This is America, man."¿ After jockey Julie Krone won a race by 10 lengths, competing jockey Miguel Rujano whipped her across the face. With her ear bleeding, Ms. Krone told the bystanders, "Excuse me, I have to go hit somebody," then she punched her attacker's nose. Ms. Krone's assertiveness paid off when she became the first woman to win a Triple Crown race, the Belmont Stakes, in 1993.¿ Walter Payton knew how to motivate the linesmen who blocked for him. When he earned his first 1,000-yard rushing season-the first Chicago back to earn that many yards in a single season since Gale Sayers-he gave each linesman a gold watch that bore this message: "Thanks for the 1,000 yards." In addition, he gave praise to linesmen even when the linesmen felt that the praise was not due. For example, in college Jackie Slater felt sometimes that his block could have been a whole lot better, and that only Mr. Payton's incredible athletic ability had enabled him to get free and get big yardage. However, in talking to the media, Mr. Payton would give the credit to Mr. Slater and say that the block had gotten him loose to go for big yardage. Things like that motivate linesmen to work hard to protect the runner.¿ Gaylord Perry was a great pitcher but not a great hitter. In fact, Alvin Dark (manager for the San Francisco Giants) once predicted that an astronaut would land on the moon before Mr. Perry hit a home run. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon-and 17 minutes later Mr. Perry hit his very first major-league home run.¿ In the early 1980s, the Northwestern University football team was mainly known for its losing seasons; after all, it lost 30 games in a row. In fact, when Doug Single interviewed for the job of Northwestern University athletic director, he saw a highway sign. Underneath INTERSTATE 94, someone had written NORTHWESTERN 0.

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ As a young actress just starting in show business, Eve Arden quickly learned not to be absent minded. She once finished a play's first act, went to her dressing room, took off her costume and removed her makeup, and then left the theater to take a bus home - only to find the theater manager running after her and yelling, "Second act!" She returned to the stage wearing galoshes and no makeup, where she discovered her fellow actors desperately ad-libbing lines such as "I saw her in the garden, I think" and "She'll probably be here any minute."¿ The great American scoundrel and playwright Wilson Mizner heard about a man in Reno who was executed by means of poison gas. When the warden asked him for his last request, he replied, "A gas mask." Mr. Mizner was shocked that a man with a sense of humor like that could be executed.¿ At one point, Lorraine Hansberry's writing of a play seemed to be going nowhere, so she threw the pages into the air, then left the room to get a broom to sweep the pages into the fire. When she returned, she found her husband gathering the pages together and putting them in order. A few days later, he set the pages before her, and she resumed writing the play. In 1959, the New York Drama Critics Circle named the play, A Raisin in the Sun, the Best Play of the Year.¿ A production of Bohème in Hamburg involved nudity. A young woman playing Euphémie, Schaunard's girlfriend, appeared completely nude to model for a picture and donned clothing only when Rodolfo worried that she might catch cold. At a dress rehearsal, things went fine until the nude actress appeared and the members of the orchestra tried to play their instruments in strange positions so they could turn around and look at the nude actress. Of course, this caused havoc with the music. The conductor, Nello Santi, solved this problem by asking the nude actress if she would walk to the end of the stage for a few moments so the members of the orchestra could look at her. She didn't mind, the members of the orchestra got a good look, and then the rest of the rehearsal proceeded smoothly.¿ In England, to "give someone the bird" means to boo them. On the New York opening night of Bitter Sweet, Noël Coward walked into Evelyn Laye's dressing room and presented her with a silver box. When she opened the box, a mechanical bird emerged, flapped its wings, and sang. Mr. Coward said, "I wanted to be the first to give you the bird."

Note: The relationships in this book are of several kinds, not just of Significant Others.¿ When African-American poet Nikki Giovanni was a teenager in Knoxville, Tennessee, people gathered together to protest a hate crime. Nikki's grandmother explained that she and Nikki's grandfather were too old to march in the protest - so to take their place in the march they had volunteered Nikki.¿ While growing up in the 1930s, children's book author Tomie dePaola had two grandmothers and one great-grandmother, all of whom were called Nana. To keep them straight, he referred to Nana Upstairs, because his great-grandmother spent all her time upstairs, and Nana Downstairs, because unless this grandmother was helping Nana Upstairs, she could be found downstairs. There was also Nana Fall River, who lived in Fall River, Massachusetts. Nana Upstairs was 94 years old, and she had to be tied to her chair so that she wouldn't fall off the chair. Young Tomie wanted to be like Nana Upstairs, so when he visited her, he requested that he be tied to his chair, too. Nana Downstairs honored the request, but she always tied the knot in front so that he could untie himself when he wanted to wander around. While wandering around, Tomie looked for and often found candy in a sewing box. One day, no candy could be found, so he looked in the medicine cabinet, where he found what he thought was chocolate, which he and Nana Upstairs ate. Unfortunately, the "chocolate" was actually a laxative, and he and Nana Upstairs made messes. After that incident, Nana Downstairs always made sure that there was candy in the sewing box.¿ In kindergarten, future author Frank DeCaro met a little girl named Heidi who loved to play a joke on her friends. She would say, "Let's see who can hit the lightest." After her friend had lightly tapped her arm, she would hit him as hard as she could, then laugh and say, "I lose." In the first grade, Frank went to the hospital to have his tonsils removed, so Heidi wrote him this note: "I like you and you like me. I will buy you a toy." According to Mr. DeCaro, "At six, that was my idea of love."¿ Texas actor Marco Perella has a lot of respect for Drew Barrymore, with whom he worked in a movie titled Home Fries- he played a bad guy to her good girl. After the filming of the movie was completed, a bouquet of flowers arrived at Mr. Perella's home with a note reading, "Thanks for a wonderful time. Love, Drew." Underneath the signature was a lipstick kiss. Of course, Mrs. Perella was very interested in this bouquet and note, although nothing unprofessional had ever occurred between her husband and Ms. Barrymore. Mr. Perella finally convinced his wife that Ms. Barrymore had no doubt sent flowers and notes to every actor involved in the movie, but he noticed when the movie came out that his wife watched - very carefully - the scenes between him and Ms. Barrymore.¿ In his Answer Man column, film critic Roger Ebert answered a question by Matt Sandler about who was the world's most beautiful woman by saying that she was Indian actress Aishwarya Rai. In a later Answer Man column, a reader stated that Mr. Ebert should have answered the question by saying, "My wife." However, Mr. Ebert had a good reason for not answering the question that way: "Matt Sandler asked about women, not goddesses."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Samo Sample Anecdotes:¿ In 1966, women were not allowed to run in the Boston Marathon. Fortunately, an "uppity" woman did not let that stop her. Roberta Gibb (Bingay) (a rather apt last name) traveled to Boston by bus from California to compete. Of course, she was not allowed to stand at the starting line, so she hid in some bushes near the starting line, and when the male runners raced by, she joined them. At first, she wore a hooded sweatshirt to help disguise her gender, but soon she got too warm and took off the sweatshirt. Ms. Bingay ran the marathon in three hours and twenty-one minutes, finishing 124th in a race in which 415 men competed. Ms. Bingay's running the Boston Marathon had positive results. The following year, another woman ran the marathon unofficially, and in 1972, women were finally allowed to compete officially in the Boston Marathon.¿ A 10-year-old girl, nicknamed Stuffy, lived in Boonton, New Jersey, where she was a fan of the New York Giants football team. She was especially a fan of Y.A. Tittle and was a member of his fan club. At a party she gave for some of the other young members of the fan club, she became so excited that she called Giants Stadium and asked to speak to Mr. Tittle. Sure enough, she was connected with a man who said that he was Y.A. Tittle and talked to her for a while. But later, she wondered whether the man was really Mr. Tittle. A few days later, Stuffy's father took her and her younger sister to a department store where Mr. Tittle was appearing. The younger sister asked Mr. Tittle, "Did you really talk on the phone to Stuffy, my sister?" Mr. Tittle winked and asked, "You mean Stuffy of the Boonton Fan Club?"¿ During his early days in show business, comedian Joe E. Brown had a chance to play for a baseball club. Because the club was just starting, he saw no reason not to ask for his favorite position, so he told the club manager he wanted to play second base and would not play shortstop or third base. This made the manager laugh because - as he pointed out to Mr. Brown - not only was he was the manager, but he also played second base.¿ Jair Lynch says that he became a successful gymnast - he is the first black gymnast to win an Olympic medal and only the second black gymnast to compete at the Games - because of his name. In Senegalese, Jair means "one who sees the light." According to Jair Lynch, "Joe" Lynch would not have become successful.¿ Gene Creed earned the title of Saddle Bronc Champion of the World in 1928, 1932, 1936, and 1938. When she was 16, her older sister was pregnant, and she was sent to her home to help out. However, while traveling to her sister's home, she noticed an advertisement in the Denver Post for a rodeo in Cheyenne. She had always wanted to see that part of the country, so she went to Cheyenne and competed in the rodeo, winning $300 in cash, a $75 Stetson, and a fancy belt bucket. Ms. Creed says, "I never did help my sister with the baby."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ While studying theater at UCLA, Carol Burnett took a course in acting, where she prepared to recite a speech in front of her class. Unfortunately, she didn't recite it very well. For one thing, she didn't bother to read the rest of the play to find out the context of the speech. In addition, she spoke the speech in a low monotone while pantomiming a waitress wiping a table. Her classmates didn't understand the speech and thought that she was pantomiming ironing a shirt. Carol's grade? D minus. Fortunately, a short time afterward, she was given some funny words to say. Her classmates laughed, Carol stuck to funny roles, and she earned an A-minus in the course.¿ Jack Benny used to pretend that his car wouldn't start without a kiss. Of course, after his little daughter gave him a kiss, the car started right up.¿ As a teenager growing up in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Letterman worked in a grocery store. One day, he was ordered to stack up cans in a display. He did stack the cans-all the way to the ceiling, using an arrangement in which if a customer removed one can, the entire stack of cans would fall down. On another occasion, he got on the intercom and announced a fire drill. The customers left the store, and not all the customers laughed when they discovered that the fire drill was a hoax.¿ A cigarette company once wanted to advertise on a radio series that would star humorist Robert Benchley. They wired him: "What do you smoke?" Mr. Benchley didn't want to do the radio series, so he wired back: "Marijuana."¿ Lou Costello preferred playing cards to making movies. Often, he would sit in his dressing room playing cards instead of coming out to perform his scenes. Sometimes, assistant director Howard Christie, who had played football at the University of California, would pick up Mr. Costello and carry him from the card game to the movie set.

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ Norman Mailer was an activist, among his many other activities. During the Cold War, he was arrested in New York for civil disobedience when he appeared with 1,000 other citizens to protest a law requiring people to go to fallout shelters whenever an air raid drill was held. When the air raid drill siren sounded, many of the protesters unfurled umbrellas that bore the legend "Portable Fallout Shelter." Mr. Mailer was also a parent. At the Elliott Bay Bookstore, he once did a reading. Afterward, he signed many books. In line with a parent was a boy. Mr. Mailer talked to the boy and asked him if he could do something for him. The boy replied, "You could help me with my term paper." Mr. Mailer laughed, then said, "Oh, no, my son already asked me, and I told him no, too."¿ Kingsley Amis enjoyed drinking alcohol a lot, and he drank a lot of alcohol. He even wrote three books about alcohol: On Drink, Everyday Drinking, and How's Your Glass? He once attended a stand-up (not dinner) party at which he was offered his choice of red wine or white wine. However, he explained that drinking wine without eating food upset his stomach, but that he would enjoy spirits. Unfortunately, his host said, "Sorry to hear that. I'm afraid there's nothing else in the house." Mr. Amis says, "My stomach took five minutes to change its mind."¿ Maya Angelou needs a place where she can create for long stretches of time without interruption. When she is away from home, sometimes for long periods of time, she will rent a hotel room to use as a writing space. She tells the hotel management not to interrupt her by having someone change the sheets, as she won't be using them because she will be sleeping elsewhere. At 5:30 a.m. she enters the room and works until early afternoon. Sometimes, she will write after dinner until late at night. During one prolonged stint of creativity, the hotel management slipped this note under her door: "Ms. Angelou, please let us get in there and change the sheets. We think they are moldy." She ignored the note.¿ Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French Elle, suffered a massive stroke that left his body almost totally incapacitated although his mind was fine. He was able to control only his left eye, but by blinking he dictated a book to freelance book editor Claude Mendibil, who recited to him the letters of the French alphabet by their frequency of use. When she pronounced the correct letter, Mr. Bauby blinked his left eye. With practice, she was able to guess the word he wanted after learning the first few letters. The title of the book he dictated, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, refers to his life. His mind - the butterfly - was still active, but it was trapped in a body that no longer functioned properly - the diving bell. The book became a best seller, and it was made into a critically acclaimed movie with the same title. The process by which the book was dictated could have been disheartening, but Ms. Mendibil says that she cried only once. It happened when he was dictating a passage about his two young children, Céleste and Théophile. Ms. Mendibil says, "I have a child, and I suddenly realized what it would be to be next to her and not be able to take her in my arms. The tears rose, and I had to go outside for five minutes.". When she returned, Mr. Bauby used eye blinks to tell her, "You look beautiful when you cry."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ Actors often know their own limitations. Early in his career, E.A. Southern tried to act the roles of tragic heroes but discovered that he was not very good at them and so performed other kinds of roles on the stage. He once told theatrical critic John Rankin Towse about a conversation that he had had with fellow actor Edwin Booth: "We were talking, among other things, of Will Stewart, the old dramatic critic, and his capacity for apt and cutting definition. By way of illustration I quoted his remark about my Claude Melnotte, that it 'exhibited all the qualities of a poker except its warmth.'" Mr. Southern then added, "I suppose that my performance was about as bad as anything ever seen upon the stage." Mr. Booth chuckled and then asked, "You never saw my Romeo, did you?"¿ While attending Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, Stephen Wozniak found the electronics classes to be very easy, so his teacher, John McCollum, arranged for him to spend Wednesday afternoons in the computer room of GTE/Sylvania Electronics, where young Steve was able to learn something about electronics. Steve built a computer in a friend's garage. While working on the computer, he and his friend drank quarts of cream soda so they decided to call the computer the Cream Soda Computer. When the computer was built, Steve's mother called a newspaper to come out, take a photograph, and write a story. Unfortunately, when Steve turned on the computer, sparks and smoke filled the air. The story was never published, but Steve didn't mind since he knew the fault was not his. Instead, the disaster occurred because of a faulty computer chip. Later, Mr. Wozniak co-founded the Apple Computer Company.¿ British ballerina Violette Verdy was happy when impresario Paul Szilard managed her financial contracts when she worked as director of the Paris Opera Ballet and then as director of the Boston Ballet. She told him, "I am so happy that you are looking after me, because finally I can fly business class, rather than economy."¿ Dame Edith Evans consistently made the same mistake during rehearsals for Hay Fever, saying, "On a very clear day you can see Marlow." Mr. Coward told her, "Dear Edith, you spoil the rhythm by putting in a 'very.' The line is 'On a clear morning you can see Marlow.' On a very clear morning you can also see both Beaumont and Fletcher."

Some sample anecdotes:¿ Many people read and enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and the good guys' fight against the evil of Mordor. Some of those who read it in college are activists. One campus cut down a pleasant grove of trees to make room for an ugly "Cultural Center" made of concrete blocks. Students detested the cutting down of trees, and on the ugly building someone wrote, "Another bit of Mordor."¿ After humorist Art Buchwald's kidneys failed, he decided to enter Hospice and to decline dialysis. He also, however, decided to write a book about dying titled Too Soon to Say Goodbye and was able to continue joking while dying. When his lawyer, Bob Barnett, visited him, Mr. Buchwald told him, "If you can get me seven million dollars for my book like you got for Hillary Clinton, I'll start dialysis."¿ A game that Alistair Cooke and his friends played was trying to tell a person's occupation by looking at their photograph. One friend would cut photographs of people who were not famous from newspapers and magazines. Each photograph was pasted on a piece of paper, and the game players were also given a sheet of paper that listed the occupations of the people in the photographs. As it happened, no one was very good at matching face and occupation - high scores were 20 or 25 percent accuracy. Most of the players felt certain that a person in one photograph was a murderer - he turned out to be a judge.¿ When writer Dick DeBartolo began writing for MAD magazine, he quickly discovered that the employees engaged in a lot of good-natured ribbing. For example, he once brought a comic article to his boss, Nick Meglin, who laughed and laughed while reading the article. However, when Mr. DeBartolo asked which jokes he had laughed at most, Mr. Meglin replied, "None of the jokes. I was laughing at the typos. God, are you an awful speller!" (Don't feel bad for Mr. DeBartolo - for a span of several years, every issue of MAD included at least one article by him.)

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ Edsel Ford of the famous Ford family had the ability to recognize good advertising, and he had the ability to make up his mind quickly. He once read five full-page ads for the Ford Motor Company, then said, "I think they will do all right. I have one change I'd like to suggest. In one of the advertisements, I see you use the word 'perfect.' I think it would be better to say 'correct.' Nothing is perfect." ¿ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) was a Swiss educator and reformer, but he was very careless about the way he dressed. One day, poorly dressed as usual like a beggar, he was arrested by a police officer who thought that he was a tramp and possibly dangerous. The police officer took Mr. Pestalozzi before a judge, who recognized him and greeted him warmly. Of course, the police officer was embarrassed, but Mr. Pestalozzi gave him some money and told him, "You have done your duty."¿ Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman tended to work with the same 18 people over and over, and he always hired a hostess, who brewed coffee and baked pastries and made the set homey. At Cannes, film director David Lean once compared notes with Mr. Bergman, asking him, "How large a crew do you use?" Mr. Bergman answered, "I always work with 18 friends." Mr. Lean marveled, "That's funny. I work with 150 enemies."¿ African-American major league baseball player Bob Gibson's second wife was a white, blonde woman named Wendy. At a gathering of baseball people, Wendy looked around, then told her husband, "We're the only black couple here."¿ When children's book author Verna Aardema was growing up, she would go to her secret place in the cedar swamp in back of her house for two reasons: to escape from having to do the dishes and to make up stories. Her ability to make up stories served her well. When she became the mother of a finicky eater named Paula, she started to make up "eating stories" in an attempt to get her young daughter to eat. She mailed the idea for an eating story to a publisher, and soon she had her first published book. Later in life, when she was really busy she would sometimes disappear into her office after a meal. Her husband calls that "going to the swamp," because he has to do the dishes just as Verna's sisters had to do the dishes when she disappeared into the swamp so she could make up stories.

Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ Simon and Schuster once published a children's book titled Dr. Dan the Bandage Man. As a publicity gimmick, they decided to include a half-dozen band-aids in each book, so publisher Richard Simon sent this telegram to a friend at Johnson and Johnson: "PLEASE SHIP TWO MILLION BAND-AIDS IMMEDIATELY." The following day Mr. Simon received this telegram in reply: "BAND-AIDS ON THEIR WAY. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOU?"¿ The parents of Jerry Spinelli, author of the Newbery Medal-winning Maniac Magee, spent very little money on themselves, but out of love they made sure that their children enjoyed very nice Christmases. One Christmas, Jerry had unwrapped what he thought was his final present. His father told him, "Well, I guess that's it. Looks like you did pretty good this year." Later, Jerry was sent on an errand to the kitchen, and he found his real final present: a Roadmaster bicycle. Mr. Spinelli describes the gift in a memorable way: "Love leaning on a kickstand."¿ When Gary Paulsen wrote his novel Hatchet, which is about a young boy who finds himself alone in the wilderness with only a hatchet when the person piloting the small plane he is in dies of a heart attack, he wanted the novel to be as realistic as possible. Therefore, whatever the hero, Brian, experiences in the novel, Mr. Paulsen also set out to experience in real life. In doing this, he was remarkably successful, even creating fire using a hatchet and a stone. However, he experienced a setback when he attempted to eat turtle eggs. The eggs so nauseated him that he vomited, despite three valiant attempts to eat them. However, his lead sled dog, Cookie, enjoyed eating the eggs - she also enjoyed eating his vomit. Despite his lack of success in eating the turtle eggs, Mr. Paulsen decided to leave the egg-eating scene in his novel - he figured that Brian would be so hungry that he would be able to eat the eggs and not vomit.¿ Dorothy Parker taught at Los Angeles State College, where she discovered that the students were "narrow." She had them read John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, but the students disliked the book, saying it was dirty. However, when Mr. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the students' attitudes changed. According to Mrs. Parker, "After that, they behaved as if they had given it to him."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some sample anecdotes:¿ In 1912, Margaret Higgins Sanger wrote about such topics as conception and sexually transmitted diseases in a series of articles titled "What Every Girl Should Know." These articles were published in the radical newspaper The Call. Unfortunately, the United States Postal Service confiscated the issue of The Call that included the article on sexually transmitted diseases. The next issue of The Call included another article on "What Every Girl Should Know." However, the text of that article stated, "NOTHING, by order of the Post-Office Department."¿ Where some college athletes get their grades can be a mystery. Truett "Rip" Sewell, who later became a professional baseball pitcher, played sports at Vanderbilt, but the academics were too tough for him, and he dropped out. Two weeks later, he ran into English professor Dr. Eddie Mims, who asked how he was doing. Mr. Sewell explained that he had dropped out and hadn't been to class in two weeks. Dr. Mims said, "That's impossible! We had an exam yesterday, and I passed you!"¿ At a hospital in England, nurses lent small children teddy bears for as long as they were in the hospital. However, the teddy bears tended to leave the hospital along with the children, although the teddy bears were supposed to stay behind so they could cheer up other ill children. The nurses found a creative way to keep the children from taking the teddy bears. They put a bandage on each teddy bear and convinced the children that the teddy bears had to stay in the hospital so they could get well.¿ As a very young girl, modern dance pioneer May O'Donnell found confessing her sins a "trial." The problem was not that she had horrible sins to confess. Instead, the problem was that she couldn't think of any sins she needed to confess - so she used to make up sins to confess to the priest.

Some Samples:¿ Rolling Stones Keith Richard and Ron Wood attended a party hosted by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook at the Cobden Working Men's Club in London. The party was upstairs, over a bar, and so when Mr. Richard and Mr. Wood felt like getting a pint, they went downstairs. Mr. Richard talked with some of the people in the bar, and one of them asked, "What do you do?" Mr. Richard replied, "I'm in a band." "Which one?" "The Rolling Stones." "Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of them."¿ Tom Mathers, the founder of the Mathers Fund, learned the hard way the truth of these words: "If you find a great growth company, don't sell it just because it gets a little pricey - you may never get back in again." Back in the 1960s, he and his wife wanted to buy a piano. He owned shares of stock in Disney, and since he thought that the Disney stock was pricey, he decided to sell his Disney stock and use the money to buy the piano. Over the years, of course, the price of Disney stock rose higher and higher and higher, and because he had sold his Disney stock, he lost out on all that growth in the price of Disney stock. As you would expect, he sometimes looks at the piano in his living room and complains, "That's the most expensive d*mn piano on the face of the planet!"¿ Jazz violinist Joe Venuti used to go out with his bassist, Irving Edelman, and eat Italian food with him after they had finished performing. He also played a practical joke on Mr. Edelman by putting a little bag of sand in his bass after each performance, so that the bass got heavier and heavier. Mr. Venuti didn't explain the joke until Mr. Edelman came to him and said that he was going to quit because all the Italian food he had been eating had caught up to him and it was getting too difficult for him to carry his bass.

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some Sample Anecdotes:¿ John Steinbeck always toasted Ava Gardner whenever he began to drink. Here's the story: While Mr. Steinbeck was in Hollywood working as a scriptwriter, he got a call from Nunnally Johnson's wife inviting him to a party and asking if he would escort Ava Gardner. Mr. Steinbeck was agreeable, but he later received another call saying that Ms. Gardner was ill and could he escort Ann Southern instead. Once again, he was agreeable, and so he escorted Ms. Southern and her chaperone, Elaine Scott, to the party. Mr. Steinbeck and Ms. Southern dated a few times, but one night Ms. Southern was busy and so she asked him to take care of Elaine. Mr. Steinbeck took Elaine out, discovered he really liked her, and he later married her. That's why he always began his drinking by saying, "Here's to Ava Gardner."¿ Briefly, comedian Jay Leno was a member of the Boy Scouts. His scoutmaster was determined to get parents involved in the organization, although many of them did not want to get involved. The scoutmaster even gave Jay's father a bunch of merit badges and asked for help in administering tests and giving the merit badges out to the scouts. Reluctant to be involved, Jay's father asked the scouts, "What kind of tree is that over there?" Because apples were hanging from the tree's branches, they quickly identified the tree, and Jay's father started handing five or six merit badges to each scout - including merit badges that had nothing to do with tree identification. When the scoutmaster saw the merit badges being worn by the scouts, he angrily started ripping them off the scouts' uniforms. Shortly thereafter, Jay stopped being a scout.¿ Sometimes, homosexuals are accepted by people who seem unlikely to accept them - even people they have been warned not to come out to because it might kill them. A gay man from an Italian Catholic family was visiting his 81-year-old grandmother while she was watching soap operas, and suddenly she pointed to an actor and said, "Isn't he beautiful?" He looked surprised, so she said, "I'm not stupid, you know. I know you don't like girls." Then she smiled and added, "I watch all of the talk shows. I know what's going on in the world." Finally, the gay man was able to say, "Grandma, I'm gay, and I was afraid to tell you." She told him, "When you get to be my age, a lot of things don't bother you that used to bother you. You realize that a lot of things aren't important enough to get upset over. What's important is that people are happy."¿ Columnist Ann Landers once asked her female heterosexual readers whether they preferred cuddling to the act of lovemaking. A majority preferred cuddling. Curious, writer Gail Sausser asked a lesbian friend whether she preferred cuddling to the act of lovemaking. The friend was shocked by the question: "What do you mean? Cuddling is part of the act - sex is affectionate!"

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Samples:¿ Songwriter Steve Earle also occasionally acts. To prepare for a role as a recovering junkie in the HBO TV series The Wire, he allowed his hair to grow long and he didn't shave. The preparation worked well. Although he was staying at a swanky hotel in London when The Times' Stephen Dalton interviewed him in August of 2007, he looked very much like a homeless person. In fact, he said, "The other day I noticed the homeless guys that pick up the tin cans on my street, before the recycling people come, they started protecting their cans as I walked past. They thought I was competition."¿ Early in their career, the Ramones played in London on July 4, 1976. Some cool kids who called themselves The Clash hung around during a sound check before the concert and talked to the members of the band, mentioning that they played music, too, but weren't good enough to play in public. Johnny Ramone told them, "Are you kidding? I hope you're coming tonight. We're lousy. We can't play. If you wait until you can play, you'll be too old to get up there. We stink, really. But it's great." (Of course, this is a great example of punk rock's DYI - Do It Yourself - attitude.) The concert made headlines. A tabloid used the headline "Glue Sniff Shocker" because one Ramones' song was titled "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." This amused bass player Dee Dee Ramone, who said, "I hope they really don't think we sniff glue. I quit when I was eight."¿ Country singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill became attracted to each other while performing in their Spontaneous Combustion tour in 1996. Right before going on stage, Tim proposed to Faith, who didn't answer right away. But when Tim returned to his dressing room after singing on stage, he found Faith's answer written on his dressing room mirror: "YES!"¿ Giacomo Puccini enjoyed hunting pheasant. While living in the country so he could work on composing a new opera, he used to hire someone to go to his composing room and play the music he had written so that his wife would think that he was working on the opera when he was really out hunting.

This is a retelling of Margaret Cavendish's THE UNNATURAL TRAGEDY. This play has three plots: One: Monsieur FRERE pursues an incestuous relationship with his sister, Madame SOEUR. Two: The sociable VIRGINS discuss intellectual and social topics. Three: Monsieur MALATESTE, who is married to Madame BONIT, is pursuing an affair with the maid NAN.Do you know a language other than English? If you do, I give you permission to translate this book, copyright your translation, publish or self-publish it, and keep all the royalties for yourself. (Do give me credit, of course, for the original retelling.)I would like to see my retellings of classic literature used in schools, so I give permission to the country of Finland (and all other countries) to give copies of this book to all students forever. I also give permission to the state of Texas (and all other states) to give copies of this book to all students forever. I also give permission to all teachers to give copies of this book to all students forever.Teachers need not actually teach my retellings. Teachers are welcome to give students copies of my eBooks as background material. For example, if they are teaching Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, teachers are welcome to give students copies of my Virgil's Aeneid: A Retelling in Prose and tell students, "Here's another ancient epic you may want to read in your spare time."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK (humor is hard!), but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends.Anecdotes are retold in my own words to avoid plagiarism.Most of these anecdotes are meant to be funny, but some are meant to be thought-provoking.Some Samples:¿ Johnny Brewton is the creator behind the zine X-Ray, each issue of which consists of 226 copies, each one at least slightly different. It was definitely an artistic project, and lifetime subscribers included the J. Paul Getty Museum, the rare book department of S.U.N.Y. at Buffalo, and the University of Wisconsin. One contributor was Hunter S. Thompson, who helped create the cover of X-Ray #4 by putting on lipstick and kissing a few copies and by shooting a bullet through every copy. (The cover was a photograph of Marilyn Chambers holding a box of Ivory Snow.) Another contributor to X-Ray was Charles Bukowski, who impressed Mr. Brewton with his work ethic: Mr. Brewton wrote Mr. Bukowski on a Monday requesting some poems, and by that Saturday - not even a week later - he received an envelope containing some poems. Mr. Brewton says about Mr. Bukowski, "I was amazed at how generous he was - he really gave back a lot and supported small presses; he taught me a lot about professionalism and deadlines. He was always on time." Yet another contributor was Timothy Leary. Mr. Leary's publicist, however, in a phone conversation told Mr. Brewton, "Mr. Leary has to charge one dollar per word for articles and stories. Are you sure you want to do this?" Because the zine made basically zero money, Mr. Brewton sarcastically replied, "That fits my budget perfectly! I'll buy one word." The publicist asked, "Which word do you want?" Mr. Brewton replied, "I don't know. Have Mr. Leary decide." The publicist spoke to Mr. Leary, and Mr. Brewton overheard Mr. Leary say, "That's great! Yes! I pick the word 'Chaos' - that's my piece!" Mr. Brewton titled the work "A One Word Dosage from Dr. Timothy Leary" and put a card saying "Chaos" inside a pill envelope - each of the 226 copies of the issue contained the one-word contribution.¿ In her autobiography, I'm Not Making This Up, You Know, Anna Russell writes that sometimes during performances she used to wear a gown that had "a big pouffe of tulle at the back of the skirt, making a little train." During an appearance in San Francisco, her accompanist accidentally stepped on the train, pulling out the long length of tulle. Much later, during an appearance in London, Ms. Russell was wearing the same dress, but she had a new accompanist, whom she forgot to warn about her train. Once again, her accompanist accidentally stepped on her train, pulling out the long length of tulle. After the performance, an American sailor came backstage and said that he enjoyed her work, but he especially enjoyed the part at the end, when her accompanist stepped on her train. Ms. Russell explained that that had been an accident, not part of the show, but the sailor replied, "The h*ll it was an accident. I saw you do it in San Francisco."¿ American dance pioneer Ted Shawn came up with an original way to stop obesity in the United States. Simply require everyone to stand for one hour per year naked in public - vanity would soon make obesity vanish.

This book contains 250 anecdotes, including these:¿ George Jessel was known as the Toastmaster of the United States because he spoke at so many dinners and gave so many elegies at funerals. He once observed a number of veterans at a dining room in a hotel. They had fought together, and some had been injured in battle, including a man who could no longer speak. At the table was an empty chair for one of their fellows who had been killed in battle. One by one they made a toast to their fallen comrade and drank. When it was his turn to make a toast, the veteran who could not speak stood up, raised a glass to the empty chair, then sat down, and all drank. Mr. Jessel says, "It was the most eloquent toast I've ever witnessed."¿ Syndicated columnist Connie Schultz, who lives in Ohio, remembers a group of children who attended a school near where she then lived. Each day after school they visited an orange cat named Tim-Tom. One day, Tim-Tom was not in his owners' driveway - he had died. His owners, Marianne and Paul Carey, saw the children looking for Tim-Tom, and so they posted his picture and obituary on a lamppost: "We would sadly like to let the neighborhood know that our dutiful Tim-Tom passed away on Sat. at age 18 years and 2 months. He is peacefully resting in our garden." The children wrote letters of condolence and left them under the lamppost.When Sam Kinison died, lots of comedians showed up at his funeral and talked about him. Richard Belzer emceed, and Pauly Shore talked about how Sam used to be his babysitter. Comedian (and Sam's best friend) Carl Labove had been with Sam when he died, and he spoke-but briefly, as he started to cry. Mr. Belzer helped him from the podium and led him to a chair, but suddenly Mr. Labove broke away from Mr. Belzer, ran back to the podium, and announced, "By the way, I'll be at Iggy's all week! Two shows Friday, three Saturday!" I'm sure that Sam would have loved it.Donald Ogden Stewart once told a harrowing story to a society lady about how his sloop had been capsized and he had to struggle for his life and was in danger of drowning near the Clews' house-at this point the society lady interrupted by asking, "How are the Clews?"

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Some samples:1) Blues singer Muddy Waters first heard his voice on a recording in the early 1940s. His impression of his voice was positive; afterward, he said, "I thought, man, this boy can sing the blues. And I was surprised because I didn't know I sang like that."2)At age 13, William F. Buckley was sent to an English boarding school, where his piano teacher offered to teach him the first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." However, William's old piano teacher had warned him that playing the "Moonlight Sonata" before one was ready was simply wrong; therefore, he wrote her for permission to learn to play its first movement. Quickly, he received a letter from her in reply, and she did not give him permission to learn the first movement. She explained that if one was unable to learn the third and difficult movement, then one should not learn the first movement. She also explained that the first movement required a "maturity" that William was too young to have acquired. Mr. Buckley writes that this letter helped teach him that "good music is a very serious business."3) Herman's Hermits was a very popular pop group in the 1960s, recording such hits as "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter," "Dandy," and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am." These days, they perform before nostalgic audiences often consisting of women in their 40s and 50s. According to lead singer Peter Noone, "Girls used to throw underwear at us. We still get some, but it's bigger than it used to be." 4) World-renowned conductor Pierre Monteux was once denied a room at a hotel, but when the manager discovered that Mr. Monteux was famous, he said that he could arrange a room for him because Mr. Monteux was "somebody." Mr. Monteux refused the room and departed, saying, "Everybody is somebody."

This is a short, quick, and easy read.Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK (humor is hard!), but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends.This book contains 250 anecdotes, including these:¿ 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.¿ While working at Darmstadt, Rudolf Bing knew a comedian who was completely bald, but had three wigs with different lengths of hair. The comedian would wear the short-haired wig for a while, then the medium-haired wig. When he finally put on the long-haired wig, he would tell everyone he needed a haircut. Whenever the comedian began to wear the short-haired wig again, everyone complimented him on his haircut.¿ Between 1935 and 1940, Buster Keaton was making 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."¿ As a boy, W.C. Fields had a unique way of peddling newspapers. He juggled the folded newspapers, and he yelled out teasers about the stories inside the newspapers. However, he ignored regular news stories and instead boosted unusual stories, such as "Bronislaw Gimp acquires license for two-year-old sheepdog. Details on page 26."

This is a short, quick, and easy read. Most of these anecdotes are probably just OK, but there should be at least one or two that you will want to tell your friends. Anecdotes are retold in my own words to avoid plagiarism. Most of these anecdotes are meant to be funny, but some are meant to be thought-provoking. ¿ In 2006, South Dakota instituted almost a total ban on abortions. Bill Napoli, a South Dakota State Senator, supported this ban, saying that women should not be allowed to have abortions even if they get pregnant for "simple rape." (He did say that he would make an exception for a religious virgin who gets pregnant from a brutalizing rape.) Cartoonist Stephanie McMillan saw Mr. Napoli's words as expressing a belief that women shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for themselves, so she created a cartoon in which a woman character telephones Mr. Napoli when she is asked to make a decision about which salad dressing to use - the character asks Mr. Napoli, "Roasted pepper vinaigrette or honey mustard?" The cartoon included Mr. Napoli's work and home telephone numbers, which many other women used to call him. One woman asked him whether her bra and panties should match; another woman asked him whether she should use tampons or pads. ¿ After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which destroyed most of the city, architect Julia Morgan was hired to rebuild the Fairmont Hotel, in part because of her expertise in reinforced concrete, which was at that time a new material. Women architects were rare, so a woman reporter inspected the Fairmont Hotel, then asked the foreman, "Is the building really in the charge of a woman architect?" The foreman replied, "This building is in [the] charge of a real architect, and her name happens to be Julia Morgan." After the building was completed, another woman reporter came to see it. Standing in the dining room, which was decorated with gold, gray, ivory, and scarlet, she said to Ms. Morgan, "How you must have reveled in this chance to squeeze dry the loveliest tubes in the whole world of color!" Ms. Morgan replied, "I don't think you understand just what my work here has been. The decorative part was done by a New York firm. My work has all been structural." ¿ One of the ways that comedian Whoopi Goldberg knew that she was beginning to make it big was that caricaturist Harry Hirschfeld worked his art on her in The New York Times while she was appearing on a one-woman show on Broadway. Mr. Hirschfeld traditionally hides his daughter's name - Nina - in his caricatures, and in his caricature of Ms. Goldberg he wrote "Nina" 40 times. Ms. Goldberg was so pleased with Mr. Hirschfeld's caricature that she sent him flowers.