Get rid of that trash for a better life

Today is the Sixth day of Lunar New Year and the God of Poverty visits each household. The rubbish from the first to the fourth day of the Chinese New Year is considered “wealth”, but after the fifth day, the garbage will turn into a sign of “poverty”. So on the sixth day, people need to clean up all the trash around them in order to get rid of poverty and welcome wealth and fortune.

According to legend, the ghost of poverty is a son of Zhuan Xu (an emperor among the Three Emperor and Five Sovereigns in ancient China).

He was short and weak, and liked wearing ragged clothes and eating poor porridge. Even when people presented him with new clothes, he would not wear it until he ripped it apart or burn it. So, he got the name of “the man of poverty”, and with time passing by, he gradually became the ghost of poverty.



Also, according to tradition, families should clean their toilets because the God of Toilets will come to inspect the cleanliness of your bathroom.

In the agriculture society, before plumbing, Chinese farmers called someone to clean the manure pit every 3 to 5 days. This is the day to clean the manure pit (Man it always sucks when you have to clean the manure pit.)



In the Nüwa legend, today is also the Birthday of the Horse.


We are halfway between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, which is the scientifically correct way of saying it's the middle of winter, such as it is in the Northeast.



I used to hope that by the second half of Winter, we could coast to the start of Spring. Given that we are living through the second year of a pandemic, I'd be happy for just a snow apocalypse or two.


Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand. This celebrates the February 6, 1840 signing of The Treaty of Waitangi by representatives of the British Crown and leading Maori chiefs in Waitangi. The treaty preserved many Maori rights while making New Zealand a British Colony.

Given the confused and confusing state of things, I must recommends that America join her Kiwi friends in celebrating Waitangi Day. There's no particular logic to this, but it's fun to say "Happy Waitangi Day." We could all wear funny hats and buy each other Waitangi presents.



Sound silly?

Just four days ago we were all waiting for a stupid rodent to crawl out of a hole and look for his shadow. In the Southern Hemisphere, Summer is winding down, which might have something to do with why today is Waitangi Day down there.)


February 6, 1921 -
The Kid, starring Charlie Chaplin and 6-year-old Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester), was released in the US on this date.



The off-screen chemistry between Charles Chaplin and Jackie Coogan was just as strong as their onscreen relationship. Every Sunday, during the first few weeks of filming, Chaplin would take Jackie to amusement parks and pony rides and other activities. Some have seen Chaplin's relationship with Coogan as an attempt for Chaplin to reclaim his own unhappy childhood, while others have interpreted Chaplin's attention toward the boy as recasting Coogan into the child he had just lost.


February 6, 1965 –
The Righteous Brothers song You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ hit No. # 1 on the Billboard charts on this date.



According to BMI music publishing, You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' was played on American radio and television more times than any other song in the 20th century. It got over 8 million plays from the time it was released until 2000. Note that this includes all versions of the song, not just The Righteous Brothers'.


February 6, 1981 -
Daniel Petrie's policier, Fort Apache, The Bronx, starring Paul Newman, Ed Asner, Ken Wahl, Danny Aiello, and Pam Grier opened amid much controversy in the US, on this date.



The experiences of real life former NYPD Detectives Thomas Mulhearn and Pete Tessitore served as inspiration for the original screenplay by Heywood Gould. It is reported that Paul Newman spent some time with Mr. Mulhearn, getting into character for Officer Murphy. Thomas and Pete, along with other ex-cops helped add to the authenticity of the experiences documented in the film.


February 6, 1981 -
For some unknown reason, ABC gave the go-ahead for this sequel of The Brady Bunch, The Brady Brides, which premiered on this date. (The show barely lasted a season.)



This was the only Brady show in sitcom form to be filmed in front of a live studio audience.


February 6, 1982 –
The J. Geils Band song Centerfold hit No. #1 on the Billboard charts on this date.



The J. Geils Band signed with Atlantic Records in 1970 and made a name for themselves as a great live act with a blues-based sound. Centerfold was a musical departure for the band - a new wave sound similar to what The Cars and The Police were doing. It was also their biggest hit, earning them a slot touring with The Rolling Stones, the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and heavy rotation on the new cable network MTV with a video showing the band playing in a classroom surrounded by girls in Catholic school uniforms.


Another book from the back shelves of the ACME Library


Today in History:
February 6, 1911 -

That great American, Ronald Reagan, who appeared in such films as Jap Zero, Girls on Probation and Bedtime for Bonzo, was born in Tampico IL on this date.



It should be a national holiday (or a day of great national shame.)


February 6, 1917 -
All my life, I have been a positive thinker... I have always been able to survive by telling myself that no matter how bad things are, they will one day be better. And that out of every event - no matter how tragic - one can always find a way to survive and even, perhaps, to be a little bit happy.



Zsa Zsa Gabor, Queen of Outer Space was born in Budapest on this date. Party girls everywhere are celebrating their patron saint's day. Think of how awkward it must be for her to run into the gaggle of men that were her husbands in the afterlife.


It was on this date in 1919 that the German constituent assembly met in Weimar for the first time to declare itself The Official German Government For The Time Being.



This Weimar Republic, as it came to be known, should not be confused with the Weimar Republic fashion clothing outlet found in many American malls. The former caused an economic depression, Hitler, and the horrors of the Second World War. The latter caused a slight dip in sales at Banana Republic and Old Navy.


February 6, 1928 –
Immigrants from Europe arriving in New York City was nothing unusual in the 1920s, but a young woman calling herself Anastasia Tschaikovsky was different, marking her arrival on US soil with a press conference. She claimed to be the youngest daughter of the murdered czar of Russia and arrived in New York City to receive surgery on her broken jaw, an injury she said she had got from a Bolshevik soldier as she escaped the massacre of her family in Yekaterinburg, nine years earlier.



Controversy swirled around her and her claim that she was Anastasia Romanova, throughout her life until her death in 1984. In 1991, DNA evidence indicated she wasn’t a Romanov, although there are some who question the validity of those results.


February 6, 1937 –
Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?







Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers in California during the Great Depression, was published on this date.


February 6, 1943 -
In like Flynn.

Omnisexual, neo-nazi, actor Errol Flynn was acquitted of raping an adolescent on this date. The woman had actually tried this shakedown with other celebrities and wasn't quite an adolescent despite her testifying with pigtails and a lollypop.


February 6, 1945 -
Today is Bob Marley Day in Jamaica and Ethiopia. Bob Marley, musician, singer-songwriter and Rastafarian was born on this date.



How can your day not be a little brighter.


February 6, 1952 -
Elizabeth II became Queen upon the death of her father George VI (who had been ill for some time and died in his sleep from a coronary thrombosis), on this date (she has been on the job for 70 years.)



At the exact moment of succession, she was in an observation post at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.



Talk about bizarre ways you can land a job - Elizabeth went up a tree a princess and came down a Queen.


February 6, 1971 -
Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the first person to hit a golf ball on the Moon on this date.



Near the end of the second moonwalk and just before entering the lunar module for the last time, Shepard attaches a six-iron to the end of a sample collecting tool and hits two golf balls. The first lands in a nearby crater. He hits the second one squarely, and, in the one-sixth gravity of the Moon, Shepard says that it travels “miles and miles and miles.”



And so it goes