Friday, August 4, 2023

Big Money: Taylor Swift Hands Out Bonuses To Everyone Working Her Tour (plus the Great Raisuli)

The big money is hers but the bonuses are pretty good money.*

From The Independent, August 3:

Taylor Swift hands out bonuses totalling over $55m to everyone working on Eras Tour
Caterers, truck drivers, riggers, dancers and more all reportedly received bonuses

Taylor Swift is reportedly sharing her Eras Tour wealth with those who have helped her put on the show, including caterers, truck drivers, riggers, dancers and more.

The “Anti-Hero” singer, who is gearing up for the final leg of her North American tour, recently gave bonuses totalling over $55m (£43m) to everyone involved with the massive tour, sources told People.

Swift’s recent generosity comes after TMZ reported that she had given each of the truckers moving her sets around $100,000 (£78,600) ahead of her Saturday (31 July) Santa Clara concert....

....MUCH MORE

They go on to say Ms Swift is on track to have the highest-grossing tour in history, beating out Sir Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour's take,  $939m (£725.5m)
*I have to be careful when saying or writing the phrase "pretty good" lest I scare  anyone within earshot with uncontrollable laughter.
Apparently with the activation of Article 50 the Slovaks can no longer use the term "Great Britain."
Henceforth it's "Pretty Good Britain".


From The Slovak Spectator:
Media face fines for improper use of 'Great Britain'....
****
The "Pretty Good" line is not original to me.

Some years ago I worked with a Moroccan guy named Raissoulli and upon meeting him asked if he was related to Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli, the turn of the 20th century kidnapper and brigand known in some parts of the territory between the Atlas mountains and the Mediterranean as "The Great Raisuli".

Raissoulli said yes, he was indeed a great-grandson of Raisuli but sadly he didn't think he had inherited any of the piratical swagger, 
"I'm not the Great Raissoulli, maybe the Pretty Good Raissoulli though".

If interested, the autodidact historian (and two time Pulitzer prize winner) Barbara Tuchman wrote a short account of one of Raisuli's crimes/exploits. It begins:
"Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead"
Barbara Tuchman American Heritage, August 1959
Reprinted in "Practising History", Papermac, 1995

On a scented Mediterranean May evening in 1904 Mr. Ion Perdicaris, an elderly, wealthy American, was dining with his family on the vine-covered terrace of the Place of Nightingales, his summer villa in the hills above Tangier. Besides a tame demoiselle crane and two monkeys who ate orange blossoms, the family included Mrs. Perdicaris; her son by a former marriage, Cromwell Oliver Varley, who (though wearing a great name backward) was a British subject; and Mrs. Varley. Suddenly a cacophony of shrieks, commands, and barking of dogs burst from the servants' quarters at the rear.
Assuming the uproar to be a further episode in the chronic feud between their German housekeeper and their French-Zouave chef, the family headed for the servants' hail to frustrate mayhem. They ran into the butler flying madly past them, pursued by a number of armed Moors whom at first they took to be their own household guards.
Astonishingly, these persons fell upon the two gentlemen, bound them, clubbed two of the servants with their gunstocks, knocked Mrs. Varley to the floor, drew a knife against Varley's throat when he struggled toward his wife, dragged off the housekeeper, who was screaming into the telephone, "Robbers! Help!," cut the wire, and shoved their captives out of the house with guns pressed in their backs.

Waiting at the villa's gate was a handsome, black-bearded Moor with blazing eyes and a Greek profile, who, raising his arm in a theatrical gesture, announced in the tones of Henry Irving playing King Lear, "I am the Raisuli!"...
The story was also made into a movie starring Sean Connery, The Wind and the Lion.
And damn, that Tuchman woman could write.