What’s happening via JJ Duling
If you drive a General Motors produced electric vehicle, you’ll be able to charge your EV at Pilot Travel Centers across the country. In partnership with charging network company EVgo, Pilot plans to install chargers at fifty mile intervals across the country.
Once upon a time, getting venture capital for your start-up was a lot like asking your mom for money for the ice cream truck. The Information website is reporting that VCs are paying a lot closer attention to where they put their cash and the return on investment. “2022 has certainly seen the big return of due diligence,” said Matt Turck, a partner at FirstMark Capital. “Frankly, it’s been really refreshing.”
ABC is reporting Amtrak has issued an extreme heat warning for the Northeast region, signaling that trains running between New York and Philadelphia might experience delays. High temperatures cause the rails and overhead wires to expand. The service is affected because the trains have to travel at lower speeds to avoid accidents. While inconvenient, heat warnings are a normal occurrence in the summer, a spokesman said.
Facing subscriber losses as rates increase, Netflix is offering a cheaper, ad supported tier, partnering with Microsoft to deliver customized advertising in the middle of your favorite movies. Netflix vows to protect your privacy even as they use data you provide to target the commercials.
NPR Reports home prices have risen by over 30% over the past couple of years, making home ownership unaffordable for millions of Americans. Rents are rising sharply too. The biggest culprit is this historic housing shortage. Strong demand and low supply mean higher prices.
In the wake of the latest alewife infestation Michigan Radio reports that Great Lakes officials are using a web-crawler to scan the for businesses selling invasive species. When a restricted item is found a letter is sent to the merchant, asking the business not to ship that plant or animal to people living in a Great Lakes state.
A new book compiling interviews with John Lennon gives a tantalizing look at how past music can blend into something new. John says that the 1969 hit, “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” has roots in Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” and the Lennon/McCartney classic, “Paperback Writer.” “The Ballad of John and Yoko” was a huge hit on both sides of the pond, topping the charts both in the US and the UK.
The Premium Beat website spotlights a filmmaker who trying to answer the visual question, “Are Virtual Reality movies the future of storytelling?” Jonathan Griffiths, who shot “Everest VR.” in 2019 says that the 360 nature of the format makes the technical process of film making harder. At Keener we remember visiting the Summit Theater to watch How The West Was Won. The complicated Cinerama format had a brief prime but failed to ignite ongoing audience interest.
Keener Birthdays:
1939 Patrick Wayne
1944 Millie Jackson
1946 Linda Ronstadt
1950 Arianna Huffington
1951 Jesse Ventura
1952 Marky Ramone
1953 Alicia Bridges
1960 Kim Alexis
1961 Forest Whitaker
1963 Brigitte Nielsen
1966 Jason Bonham
1967 Adam Savage
Today in History:
- 1907 Three organizations — the Publishers Press Association, the Scripps-McRae Press Association and the Scripps News Associations — joined to form United Press, which would eventually become United Press International. The wire service started business with 460 newspaper clients, of which 400 were evening newspapers and 60 were Sunday morning newspapers.
- 1912 The U.S. Olympic team, led by all-round athlete Jim Thorpe, took more medals than any other country at the Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden.
- 1952 8 year old Gladys Knight won $2000 on the US television show,Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour, where she sang a tune appropriately titled ‘Too Young’. Knight would make her first record just five years later.
- 1957 Elvis Presley’s tenth UK chart hit, ‘All Shook Up’, becomes his first to reach the top, where it will stay for the next seven weeks.
- 1958 John Lennon’s mother, 44-year-old Julia Lennon, was struck and killed by a car driven by an off-duty policeman while she was crossing Menlove Avenue towards a bus stop. 24-year-old Constable Eric Clague was later acquitted of the offence by a jury who attributed Julia’s demise to ‘death by mis-adventure.’ He was however suspended from duty and later resigned from the Liverpool Constabulary to take a job as postman. John, who was 17 at the time and living with his Aunt Mimi, was overcome by grief and would later say ‘I was in a blind rage for two years. I was either drunk or fighting.’
- 1963 Elvis begins filming the movie Viva Las Vegas with Ann-Margaret. When the wedding scene was filmed, many tabloid magazines published still photos and suggested that Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret really had gotten married. Although critics bashed the film, it finished at number 11 on the list of the Top 20 Movie Box Office hits of 1964. The title track was released as a single, but could only climb to #29.
- 1965 Percy Sledge earned a Gold record for the hit single, ‘When a Man Loves A Woman’. It was his only song to make it to number one and the only one of five chart makers to break into the Top Ten.
- 1965 On tonight’s Where the Action Is, Jan & Dean sing ‘Little Old Lady From Pasadena.’
- 1968 The daytime soap opera One Life to Live premiered on ABC. In its 45-year run, the television series racked up dozens of Daytime Emmy Awards, including six for actor Erika Slezak.
- 1972 Elton John started a five week run at #1 on the Billboard album chart with ‘Honky Chateau’, his first US chart topper.
- 1973 Ray Davies announces he’s leaving The Kinks. His decision is brought on by exhaustion and his wife recently leaving him. He returned to the group within a week.
- 1980 Linda Ronstadt makes her theater debut in ‘Pirates of Penzance’ in New York.
- 1982 Bill Justis died in Nashville at the age of 55. He was best known for his 1957, US #2 instrumental hit, ‘Raunchy’.
- 1985 Nude photos of Madonna taken in 1977 appeared in this months Playboy and Penthouse Magazines.
- 1986 After twenty-eight years and nine Billboard Top 40 hits, Columbia Records announces that it is dropping Johnny Cash from their roster. Johnny would sign with Polygram the next year.
- 1988 MTV bans Neil Young’s video ‘This Note Is For You’, which parodied corporate Rock by showing a Michael Jackson look-alike whose hair catches fire. The ban would soon be lifted and the video was put into heavy rotation, resulting in it eventually winning the MTV Video Music Award for Best Video of the Year in 1989.
- 1989 More than 200,000 people crammed into Venice, a city of 83,000, for a free concert by Pink Floyd. The band performed on a floating stage in the Venice lagoon.
- 1989 The Doobie Brothers return to the US Top Ten for first time in nine years as ‘The Doctor’ climbs to #9.
- 1989 The Rolling Stones reported that they had an intake of over $337 million from the previous two years. The average nightly take on the 147 shows was over $2 1/4 million, as the band played to more than 5.6 million people, selling out all but 20 shows.
- 1992 Aretha Franklin sings the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention in New York City. That same night, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton was nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president.
- 1997 Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot to death in front of his Miami mansion. The prime suspect was Andrew Cunanan, already wanted in four other slayings. He was found dead a week later, an apparent suicide.
- 2009 Paul McCartney took time out from his current tour to stop by The Late Show with David Letterman where he and his band thrilled the crowd by performing at the outdoor stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater.
- 2012 Jon Lord, who founded Deep Purple and co-wrote their biggest hit, ‘Smoke On The Water’, died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 71.
- 2013 Michael Nesmith appeared on stage with The Monkees for the first time since 1997 when he quit after just a handful of European gigs.
- 2015 Neil Young announced on his Facebook page that he intended to remove his music from all streaming services because he was unsatisfied with the quality of the sound. Young said his songs have been ‘devalued by the worst quality in the history of broadcasting.’
- 2017 The first Eagles concert since Glenn Frey passed away in January, 2016, took place at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Detroit rocker Bob Seger joined Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh and Vince Gill for ‘Heartache Tonight’.
