Happy First Full Day of Summer

For some reason, today is known as Summersgiving!  Be that as it may, today is the 37th annual Mermaid Parade on Coney Island, self described as the 'largest art parade in the nation.' The grand-marshals this year are, King Neptune - Arlo Guthrie, and Queen Mermaid - Nora Guthrie.

The event is meant, in part, to celebrate the beginning of summer so the Mermaid Parade typically takes place on a Saturday closest to the beginning of summer solstice in June. This year, the Mermaid Parade is scheduled for Saturday, June 22, 2019.



The parade begins at Surf Avenue and W 20th Street and travels along Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk to Steeplechase Plaza. It's a beautiful day today, if you can, why not catch the fun by the sea.


If this wasn't enough, today is the anniversary of Cleveland, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969.





If that is too disturbing a holiday to commemorate, it's also National Chocolate Eclair Day.

While the eclair is a delicious dessert, their charms escape me. Maybe it's the fake vanilla pudding most bakeries use rather than Bavarian cream.


June 22, 1946 -
Another of the classic 40s Daffy Duck cartoons, Hollywood Daffy, was released on this date.



The director of the cartoon was an uncredited effort by Friz Freleng.


June 22, 1955 -
Disney's first film about dog breeding, The Lady and the Tramp, was released on this date.



The film's opening sequence, in which Darling unwraps a hat box on Christmas morning and finds Lady inside, is reportedly based upon an actual incident in Walt Disney's life. After he'd forgotten a dinner date with his wife, he offered her the puppy-in-the-hat box surprise and was immediately forgiven.


June 22, 1961 -
A great old-fashion thriller, The Guns of Navarone, was released on this date.



Although Navarone is a fictional place, the novel of the same title is based on The Battle of Leros, in the Dodecanese, the location of the deepest port in the region and coastal battery which defended it.


June 22, 1966 -
Mike Nichol's first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opened on this date.



Mike Nichols later realized that his insistence on location shooting at an actual college campus had been unnecessary. All of the scenes could have easily been recreated on the studio back lot. It was one of many lessons he was to learn as a first time film director. "I was a New York theater director," he said. "I was cocky and I was afraid of Hollywood. I did really stupid things, like shooting the title sequence in Northampton. They tried to tell me I could have done it right on the back lot. But I didn't know anything about movies."


June 22, 1966 -
The first screenplay of Woody Allen that was produced, What's New Pussycat?, starring Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers (and co-starring Woody Allen) premiered in the US on this date.



Peter O'Toole began to roar with laughter while French actor Jacques Balutin was rehearsing his lines. O'Toole asked Peter Sellers to join them, and insisted that he repeat his dialogue. His performance produced the same hysterical effect. Only when both actors stopped laughing out loud did they admit to Balutin his bad pronunciation of "cheat on" made it sound more like "sh*t on".


June 22, 1968 -
This Guy's in Love with You by Herb Alpert topped the charts on this date.



Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968 TV special called The Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the beach in Malibu. The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the TV special, thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced label owner Alpert to release it as a single two days after the show aired.


June 22, 1984 -
Another underdog story directed by John G. Avildsen, The Karate Kid, starring Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, and Elisabeth Shue, was released by Columbia Pictures on this date.



When Mr. Miyagi is drunk and celebrating an "anniversary," he reveals that he served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army. The unit, composed mostly of Japanese Americans (many of whom had been in internment camps), fought in Europe during World War II. It became the most highly decorated unit in the history of the United States military.


June 22, 1984 -
The atmospheric black-comedy, The Pope of Greenwich Village, starring  Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Daryl Hannah, and Geraldine Page, premiered on this date.



Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Geraldine Page was on screen in only two scenes, with a total running time of approximately eight minutes. When Page was Oscar nominated, she became the first woman to receive seven nominations without a win, a feat also achieved by actors Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. She would finally win an Oscar on her eighth nomination the next year for The Trip to Bountiful..

Don't forget to tune into The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


Today in History:
June 22, 1633 -
The Holy Office in Rome strong-armed Galileo Galilei into recanting his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.



This was the second time he was forced to recant Earth orbits Sun by the Pope. Almost immediately, on October 31, 1992, the Vatican admitted it was wrong.


June 22, 1906 -
Billy Wilder was born on this date. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wilder would go on to produce Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, all of whom frolicked giddily on the beach in bikinis. Mr. Wilder, you see, was comfortable in his season.



Not like some people. Some people had to force it. Some people had to prove something. Some people were like Brian Wilson, who was born the day before Summer (June 20) in 1942, and subsequently became a "Beach Boy" and released an album called Endless Summer.


June 22, 1918 -
The worst circus train wreck in history occurred just outside Hammond, Indiana on this date. A seriously over-tired engineer, Alonzo Sargent, fell asleep at the throttle of a trainload of empty Pullman cars and slammed into the rear of the 26-car Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train.



85 of the 400 performers and workers on board were killed. There were no reports on whether or not the crowd at the previous days performance was greater than the gawkers at the scene of the wreck.


June 22, 1940 -
Eight days after German forces overran Paris, France was forced to sign an armistice on this date; hilarity ensues.



Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans. (In a bizarre co-incidence, it was also the anniversary of Napoleon's second abdication in 1815.)


June 22, 1941 -
The German Army invaded Russia on this date, quickly destroying five Russian armies and one fourth of the Red air force. At completion of the war in 1945, nearly 27 million Soviets were dead.



Thus ended the German- Soviet "Peace and Friendship" Treaty.

(Let's not discuss Hitler for the rest of the week.)


June 22, 1949 -
According to our president, one of the most over-rated actresses of her generation, Mary Louise Streep, was born on this date.



She originally applied to Law School but slept in on the morning of her interview and took it as a sign she was destined for other things.

Imagine if she applied herself, how far her career would go.


June 22, 1969 -
The patron saint of perpetual bachelors of a certain age, Judy Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in her London apartment, either by accident or suicide.



Folks, she did not do a header into the toilet and drown.


June 22, 1993 -
I'll have to have a room of my own. Nobody could sleep with Dick. He wakes up during the night, switches on the lights, speaks into his tape recorder....



The patron saint of long suffering political wives and good Republican cloth coats, Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon died on this date.



And so it goes.


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