The Queen is dead. Hope it works out for Charles.
Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The holiday is a parody holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), of Corvallis, Oregon, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.
Nothing says Piracy (or the British Navy) more than Rum, The Lash and Sodomy. So remember: keep plenty of rum, leather belts and ACME's Bung Balm handy today.
And don't forget kids, you can now spend thousand of dollars to become an actual pirate.
September 19, 1931 -
Paramount released the Marx Brother's third film, Monkey Business on this date.
At different times in the movie Chico and Harpo can be heard whistling the song I'm Daffy Over You and Harpo eventually plays it on the harp at Chico's urging. It is also performed by Chico on the piano in their previous film Animal Crackers, the tune of which Groucho had found irritable when Chico couldn't remember its ending.
September 19, 1952 (there is some controversy surrounding this date) –
Emperor Hirohito's favorite television program, The Adventures of Superman, premiered, in syndication, on this date.
John Hamilton, who played Perry White, had trouble remembering his lines. The solution was to film him sitting at his desk, with the desk littered with papers--including the script--so he could glance down to be prompted for his next line.
September 19, 1970 -
The greatest sitcom every produced, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, premiered on CBS TV on this date.
The lyrics to the theme song were rewritten after the first season. The first season's theme song emphasized Mary's challenge of being independent, such as with the line, "You might just make it after all." However, with the series showing that Mary has become obviously successful in her own life, the lyrics reflected that change of tone such as with the line, "You're going to make it after all."
September 19, 1975 -
The British sitcom Fawlty Towers, created by John Cleese, premiered on BBC2 on this date.
John Cleese (Basil Fawlty) and Connie Booth (Polly Sherman) were really husband and wife when they created and wrote the scripts for the first series. By the beginning of filming for the second season their marriage had fallen apart and they had divorced.
September 19, 1981 -
Despite the fact that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had barely spoken to each other in ten year, they reunited on this date to raise funds to renovate Central Park and performed in front of 500,000 people in New York City.
The concert was so successful, the duo decided to embark on a year-long world tour. During the tour, tensions mounted between the pair and they split again after it was completed.
September 19, 1986 -
David Lynch's profoundly unsettling film, Blue Velvet, premiered on this date, (after I saw the movie, I had to go out and have a drink. I know that doesn't seem like a shock.)
Roy Orbison initially rejected David Lynch's request to use the song In Dreams in the brothel scene. Lynch found a way to legally use the song anyway and Orbison did not discover the song was in the movie until Orbison just happened to see the movie in a California theatre. Orbison eventually filmed a video for the song that was produced by Lynch with footage from the movie.
September 19, 1990 -
Martin Scorses's crime drama bio-pix, Goodfellas, (based on Nicholas Pileggi's book, Wise Guy,) starring Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino, premiered in the US on this date.
Martin Scorsese first got wind of Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy when he was handed the galley proofs. Although Scorsese had sworn off making another gangster movie, he immediately cold-called the writer and told him; "I've been waiting for this book my entire life." Pileggi replied; "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life."
September 19, 1997,
Curtis Hanson's crime drama, L.A. Confidential, starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, and Danny DeVito, premiered in the US on this date.
The novelist, James Ellroy describes the character of Bud White as the biggest cop on the Los Angeles force. Noting that he wasn't even six foot, Russell Crowe decided to move into an apartment so small that he had to duck to get into the doorways, and could barely stand up. Crowe said this worked in making him feel like a "giant" by the time he came to the set to shoot.
Word of the Day
Today in History:
September 19, 1692 -
Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft in 1692. This put him in a difficult spot. If he pleaded guilty, he'd be burned alive at the stake. If he pleaded not guilty, he'd have to take a lie-detector test.
One of the primary symptoms of demonic possession was immunity to water, so those who survived the process were rewarded with a warm, dry burning at the stake. Those who drowned, on the other hand, were clearly innocent and received a favorable ruling.
Giles Corey wasn't eager to be burned at the stake, but he wasn't keen on posthumous vindication, either. A plea of guilty meant the stake; a plea of not-guilty meant drowning (or the stake, depending on the results of the lie-detector test). Mr. Corey therefore did what any reasonable person might have done: he claimed his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution and said nothing.
This was a foolish and costly blunder, as the Constitution had not yet been written.
Baffled by the accused refusal to enter a plea, the court pressed him for an answer. Literally. Giles Corey became the first, last, and only American ever to have been pressed to death by his own government, on this date in history.
September 19, 1876 -
Melville Bissell received the patent (No. 182,346) for his invention, a carpet sweeper with revolving brushes which picked up the dust and dirt and deposited it inside the sweeper housing.
It depended on the rotation of the wheels to drive the sweeping mechanism and only removed debris from the uppermost regions of the carpet nap
September 19, 1881 -
The 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield, (shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau,) died from his wounds on this date.
Psst - Guiteau didn't kill the President, his doctors did. Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Garfield's doctors had turned a three-inch-deep, harmless wound into a twenty-inch-long contaminated gash stretching from his ribs to his groin and oozing more pus each day. He lingered for eighty days, wasting away from his robust 210 pounds to a mere 130 pounds.
Alexander Graham Bell had made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the assassin’s bullet with a new metal detection device.
September 19, 1931 -
Adolf Hitler's 23-year-old half niece, Geli Raubal, was found dead in her uncle's Munich apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest on this date.
Oh that Hitler, what a wacky Fuhrer.
September 19, 1934 -
Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby on this date.
We aren't sure if he did it, but he did have $11,000 of the ransom money.
So they fried him two years later.
September 19, 1957 -
The U.S. conducted its first underground nuclear test, code-named Rainier, in the Nevada desert on this date. This caused a major disturbance in the natural order of the fragile desert eco-system,
ultimately resulting in Las Vegas,
and enormous spiders
and oversized seafood.
September 19, 1959 -
In a Cold War setback, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was annoyed to learn that he would not be permitted to visit Disneyland, due to concerns for his personal safety.
This mean, most of the cold war could have been prevented, if we let that fat bald premier ride Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
September 19, 1961 -
Betty (Estelle Parsons) and Barney (James Earl Jones) Hill were picked up near Indian Head, New Hampshire and anally probed by five beings in a flying saucer. The couple later describes the craft as being "banana-like, with pointed tips and windows."
Anyway, that's what Barney told Betty what happened.
September 19, 1991 -
A body was found frozen in a glacier in the Alps between Austria and Italy. A German tourist found the body and called the Austrian police. They tried to free the body from the ice with a jackhammer. It was only when an anthropologist showed up to examine the body that they realized it was a very, very old corpse - 5,300 years old, in fact - of a man between 25 and 35 years old. He was five feet, two inches tall, with hair about three inches long. He had tattoos. He wore an unlined fur robe, a woven grass cape, and size six shoes stuffed with grass for warmth.
He came to be called Ötzi the Iceman, and what made him such a remarkable discovery for anthropologists was the fact that he died while he was out walking on an ordinary day wearing ordinary clothing. He carried a copper axe and a fur quiver for his arrows, the only quiver from the Neolithic period that has ever been found. His arrows had sharp flint points and feathers that were affixed at an angle that would cause the arrows to spin. And he carried mushrooms in his bag that scientists speculate were used for medicine.
It was not until ten years later that a forensics expert noticed in an x-ray that the Iceman had an arrowhead lodged in his back. He had been murdered.
Who murdered the Iceman? Stay tuned to CSI Austria on your local CBS networks.
September 19, 1995 -
The New York Times and the Washington Post published the Unabomber's rambling, 35,000-word anti-technology screed, Industrial Society And Its Future, on this date.
In exchange, he promises to halt his bombing campaign.
And so it goes
2 comments:
pressed to death, indeed
We stayed at a lovely agritourismo called "Tarantola" outside of Alcamo, Sicily, some years ago. There were a few harmless lizards, but no big spiders. The food and wine were excellent.
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