Life seems to be passing more quickly

Did you remember to set all of the clocks back?

- the DVD player (I no longer have a VCR,) the microwave, the automatic coffee pot in the kitchen? Don't worry, we'll wait -



If you've already done so, you can watch this and amuse yourself to learn that screenwriters Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar were standing on the set one day when an extra standing next to them said, "I don't know who wrote this stuff but they ought to be arrested...they should be in a different business." Kalmer, who was known as a rational and calm man, said to Ruby, "I'm going over to hit him. Who does he think he is? He's just an extra!" But before fisticuffs erupted, Kalmer and Ruby were informed that Chico Marx had paid the extra to rib the screenwriters, just for the hell of it.


Do you have friend running the NYC Marathon today?



Don't forget to remind them that the first guy who ran one, died at the finish line.


The name November comes from the Latin "novem" which is the Latin for the nine. In the early Roman calendar, it was the ninth month. According to the Gregorian calendar, November is the eleventh month of the year.

Go figure.

The Roman Senate elected to name the eleventh month for Tiberus Caesar and since Augustus time, it has had only 30 days. Originally, there were 30 days, then 29, then 31. This is what comes from too much of a good time - poor calendar making.



(In England it's the first day of the fox-hunting season. Oscar Wilde called fox-hunting ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable’. About 30,000 foxes die each year. Just in case this comes up in conversation.)

November's Birthstone is the Topaz or Citrine.

November's Flower is the Chrysanthemum.



November comes between the fall and winter months. The leaves are almost completely gone from the trees, and the rest have lost most of their color. The Anglo-Saxons referred to November as the 'wind month' and the 'blood month' - probably because this is the month they killed their animals for food.



Lots of activities come to a halt in November. The crops have been harvested and either put in storage, or sent to processing plants or mills. Farmers already know if their year has been successful or not. Football is the main sport of the month. The weather is usually beautiful for this kind of sport.

November is:
Adoption Awareness Month,
Alzheimer's Disease Month,
Apple Month,
Aviation History Month,
Change the Batteries In Your Vibrator Month,
Impotency Month,
Christmas Seals Month,
Denounce your local Rotarian Month,
National Fun with Fondue Month,
Epilepsy Month,
Hospice Month,
Native-American Heritage Month,
Peanut Butter Lovers Month,
Real Jewelry Month (and not Real Jewry Month)
and Movember.



Oh yeah, Thanksgiving occurs during November as well.


Today is also All Saints Day, the feast celebrated on November 1 in Western Christianity, honoring all the saints, known and unknown.

It's also the first day of celebration The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos in Spanish), a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and by people of Mexican heritage (and others) living in the United States and Canada.



The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and relatives who have died. The celebration occurs on the 1st and 2nd of November, in connection with the Catholic holy days of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

All Saints Day is a Holy Day of Obligation. So if you are being observant, put you ass in a pew.


November 1, 1938 -
The Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave premiered in the US on this date.



In order to get a realistic effect, Alfred Hitchcock insisted that there should be no background music except at the beginning and the end. Between those two points, the only music heard is the music sung by the musician outside the hotel, the music tune of Miss Froy, the "Colonel Bogey March" music hummed by Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), the dance music conducted by Gilbert in his hotel room, and the dance music when Iris (Margaret Lockwood) meets Gilbert in the train.


November 1, 1947 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Slick Hare, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.



Caricatures of Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce appear at the Mocrumbo. Pierce is drinking a martini, a reference to his notorious drinking habit.


November 1, 1958 -
The Looney Tunes short, Pre-Hysterical Hare , directed by Bob McKimson and starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.



This cartoon shows a Stone Age Bugs Bunny (Sabertooth Rabbit) and Elmer Fudd (Elmer Fuddstone). This premise of naming characters and events in Stone Age terms was used well over a year before the premiere of The Flintstones, which debuted in (b>1960.


November 1, 1962 -
The musical film (based on the Broadway musical), Gypsy, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden, opened in the US on this date.



Before the decision was made to dub most of her vocals, Rosalind Russell attempted to do her own singing. The results are an extra feature on the soundtrack CD. After Ethel Merman died, a tape of the Russell recordings was found in a box in Merman's closet. Merman, furious that she had not been cast in the film, evidently kept a copy of the Russell vocals as a strange, somewhat vengeful consolation prize.


November 1, 1967 -
Warner Brothers released one of Paul Newman's signature films, Cool Hand Luke on this date.



While passing by the prison camp set, a San Joaquin County building inspector thought it was a recently constructed migrant workers' complex, and posted "condemned" notices on the buildings for not being up to code.


November 1, 1968 –
George Harrison releases Wonderwall Music, on this date, becoming the first Beatle to release a solo album.



It’s a soundtrack to the psychedelic movie Wonderwall. The songs which were mostly Harrison instrumentals, featured Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and an unaccredited banjo contribution by Peter Tork of The Monkees.


November 1, 1969 –
Elvis Presley single Suspicious Minds went to No. #1 on the Billboard Charts on this date. It was his last #1 hit in his lifetime.



This was a big comeback song for Elvis, who hadn't had a US #1 hit since Good Luck Charm in 1962. He had been making a series of unexceptional movies, and his music had lost its luster. Suspicious Minds brought him back to #1 in November 1969, and he was off and running, launching a tour in 1970 (his first in nine years) and becoming a star attraction in Las Vegas.


November 1, 1974 -
The rock horror musical, Phantom of the Paradise, directed by Brian De Palma, and starring Paul Williams, William Finley, George Memmoli, Harold Oblong, Archie Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor, Gerrit Graham, and Jessica Harper, opened in the US on this date.



At several key points in the film - especially during the Swanage audition and "orgy" sequences - the singing and character voice work is provided by Betty Buckley. She originally auditioned for a role in the film and was not cast, but Brian De Palma called on her because of her skill with ADR and voice work.


November 1, 1978 –
The British animated film, Watership Down, directed by Martin Rosen, and featuring the voices of John Hurt, Richard Briers, Harry Andrews, Simon Cadell, Nigel Hawthorne, Roy Kinnear, and Zero Mostel (in his final film role,) opened in the US on this date.



The British Board of Film Classification had received complaints about this movie for over four decades after its release, due to the board's decision to classify it U (suitable for all). The BBFC admitted in 2012 that it had "received complaints about the suitability of Watership Down at U almost every year since its classification." On August 4, 2022, the film was re-rated PG after 44 years. It is still considered to be the most violent animated PG-rated movie ever made.


November 1, 1994 -
The first Nirvana album released following the death of Kurt Cobain, MTV Unplugged in New York was released on this date.



The following week, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 310,500 copies, which was the highest first-week sales of Nirvana's career.


Another album from the discount bin at The ACME Record Shoppe .


Today in History:
November 1, 1512 -
Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) finally stops milking the job and the Sistine Chapel ceiling was finally exhibited to public.



Thus ended the largest padding of a rehab bill since the building of the Taj Mahal.


This was a very big day for William Shakespeare.

On November 1, 1604, his tragedy Othello was first presented.



On November 1, 1611, his romantic comedy The Tempest was first presented.



Unless, Edward DeVere wrote these plays. Then it would have been a big day for him.


November 1, 1800 -
President John Adams became the first US leader to move into the Executive Mansion, which later was called the White House, on this date.



Construction began on the White House in 1792, and it took eight years to complete. And as it has been observed, it wasn't trade unionist who built it.


November 1, 1870 -
In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) made its first official meteorological forecast -



darkness approaching as night falls with a gradual increase of daylight as dawn comes on in the morning.


November 1, 1896 -
A picture showing the unclad (bare) breasts of a (Zulu) woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time,

starting a trend of providing masturbation material to youth for decades.


November 1, 1918 -
The worst accident in the history of the New York subway system - the Malbone Street wreck of 1918, which killed at least 93 people, occurred on this date. Motormen of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers went on strike against the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, the forerunner of the BMT. BRT officials decided to keep the trains running, using nonstriking workers to drive them.



An inexperienced strikebreaker drove a train too fast and the train derailed in tunnel underneath Malbone Street in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, shearing off the sides and roofs of four of the five cars. Dozens of passengers died immediately, many of them decapitated or impaled by shards of wood and glass. Rescuers rushed to the station, to help the dazed and injured and to carry away the dead. The power failure in the tunnel posed a problem for rescuers that was partially solved when automobiles pulled up near the entrance to the station to illuminate the ghastly scene.


November 1, 1939 -
The first animal, a rabbit, was conceived by artificial insemination on this date.



History does not record why anyone felt that rabbits needed any help in the procreation department.


November 1, 1941 -
Photographer Ansel Adams took a picture of a moonrise in the half-light between sunset and dark that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography, on this date.



While driving through the countryside, Adams pulled off to the side of Route 84 when he saw a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico. Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, he, his son and another passenger scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. He only managed to produce one exposure before the sunlight lifted from the gravesite’s crosses at 4:49 pm.


November 1, 1950 -
Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola tried to assassinate President Harry Truman while he was residing at the Blair House while the White House underwent renovations on this date. The two assailants were able to walk right up to the front door and open fire.



The President and his wife were upstairs and were not harmed. Torresola was killed by the US secret service during the unsuccessful attack, and Collazo was sentenced to life in prison after President Truman commuted his death sentence.


November 1, 1951 -

US Soldiers were exposed to an atomic explosion for the first time in training exercises, at Desert Rock, Nevada on this date.



Your tax dollars at work in 1951 - Participation was not voluntary and served both to train and indoctrinate.


November 1, 1952 -
The United States successfully detonated the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Ivy Mike,” in the Eniwetok Atoll of the Marshall Islands, on this date. The bomb has a yield of ten megatons, a force a thousand times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.



Eighty million tons of soil were kicked into the air by the blast. The “mushroom” cloud rose to 135,000 feet and would eventually spread to 1,000 miles in width. It was the first time fusion occurred on Earth.


November 1, 1955 -
Jack Gilbert Graham planted a time bomb aboard a United DC-6 airplane, killing all 44 people on board, above Longmont, Colorado, on this date. Graham planted the bomb in his mother's suitcase in an apparent move to claim life insurance money.



After arresting Graham federal agents learned that it was not in fact a federal crime to blow up an airplane. Colorado instead charged the man for the single murder of his mother. Graham was executed in the gas chamber Jan 11, 1957. Remember kids, the wages of sin is death.


November 1, 1975 -
Italian film director, screen writer, essayist, poet, critic and novelist, Pier Paolo Pasolini was violently murdered on this date.

The circumstances surrounding Pasolini's death remain a mystery. A young male prostitute was tried and convicted for the murder in 1976. But it was widely believed that Pasolini was murdered by the Mafia because of his investigation of their involvement in the prostitution business.



And so it goes

If you've got it, haunt it.

Happy Halloween

But remember, Halloween: it's a large secret East Coast syndicate backed primarily by Big Sugar and Dental Schools.



This year I will suggest you go as - the defendants in the Georgia election case - some of them appear to be far scarier that brain eating zombies.



I'd have written more but I'm way behind in adding dead mice and ground glass into kids candy bags.



(For all you parents - if your kids went trick or treating, sort your kids candy later tonight. It is not a crime to save all the good chocolate for yourself. Tell'em you have to test it for the corona virus.)


October 31, 1912 -
The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Elmer Booth, Lillian Gish, Clara T. Bracy and Walter Miller, premiered in the US on this date. The film is thought to be the first film about organized crime.



In a street sequence, a young girl can be seen staring at the camera. This was not a mistake; D.W. Griffith had noticed that, in documentary films, people tended to stare at the camera, and felt that having her do just that would make the scene feel more realistic.


October 31, 1942 -
The Merrie Melodies short, The Hare-Brained Hypnotist , directed by Friz Freleng and starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.



The earlier Bugs appears here, with his more pronounced, wisecracking demeanor, New York City-esque accent, and pinker ears. But he still manages to kiss his enemy, something he'd do throughout his career - along with breaking the fourth wall.


October 31, 1945 -
René Clair's adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic murder mystery And Then There Were None was released in the US on this date.



In recent years it has come to light that much of Agatha Christie's plot appears to have been inspired by a little-known 1930 play by Owen Davis titled The Ninth Guest, which utilized the same framework of people being brought together by an unknown host who proceeds to kill them one-by-one. Columbia Pictures' atmospheric 1934 movie version, The Ninth Guest, has never been released on home video, but is now in the public domain.


October 31, 1949 -
Cecil B. DeMille's wonderfully campy (although not intentional) version of Samson and Delilah, starring Hedy LaMarr and Victor Mature premiered on this date.



For the scene in which Samson kills the lion, Victor Mature refused to wrestle a tame movie lion. Told by Producer and Director Cecil B. DeMille that the lion had no teeth, Mature replied, "I don't want to be gummed to death, either." The scene shows a stuntman wrestling the tame lion, intercut with close-ups of Mature wrestling a lion skin.


October 31, 1953 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Catty Cornered, directed by Friz Freleng and starring Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, was released on this date.



This cartoon features a forerunner of the Rocky and Mugsy duo.


October 31 1959 -
The Looney Tunes short, A Witch's Tangled Hare, directed by Abe Levitow and starring Bugs Bunny and Witch Hazel, was released on this date.



This was the final Looney Tunes short to star Bugs Bunny and Witch Hazel.


October 31, 1970 -
Led Zeppelin started a four week run, on this date, at No.1 on the Billboard album chart with Led Zeppelin III, the bands second US chart topper.



Although critics were typically confused over the change in musical style and gave the album a mixed response, Led Zeppelin III has since been acknowledged as representing an important milestone in the band's history and a turning point in their music.


October 31, 1986 -
Roland Joffé's powerful historical drama, The Mission, starring, Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Aidan Quinn, and Liam Neeson, premiered in the US on this date.



The film was released four years after its uncredited source book The Lost Cities of Paraguay by Father C. J. McNaspy was published. McNaspy also acted as a historical consultant to the film, which was loosely based on McNaspy's work.


October 31, 1992 -
The Boyz II Men single End Of The Road was the #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for the 12th consecutive week, on this date, breaking the record held by Elvis Presley's two-sided Don't be Cruel/Hound Dog, which was #1 for 11 weeks in 1956.



Boyz II Men's bass singer, Michael McCary, got a spoken interlude on this song where he tells the girl he knew she was cheating but stayed with her anyway because he loved her so much. This section is an homage to vocal groups of the '50s and '60s that would often give their bass singer a similar spoken part.

Don't forget to tune in to a special Halloween edition of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today.


Today in History:
Oct 31, 1517 -
The papacy was earning a good income by the indulgences system that allowed Christians to purchase remission from penance in purgatory. Appalled at the indulgences system, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg Palace All Saints’ Church, on this date.



Although he was a terrible anti-semite, Luther was one of history’s most significant figures, rocking the religious world when he penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His writing signaled the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Protestantism in general, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.


October 31, 1926 -
Harry Houdini died in room 401 of Grace Hospital in Detroit on this date.



The escape artist was killed by diffuse peritonitis, after having undergone an emergency appendectomy.



Contrary to popular belief, the fatal appendicitis could not have been caused by a punch to the stomach.


October 31, 1941 -
The carving of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota, USA was completed on this date after 14 years of construction by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum and 400 stone masons.



The total cost of the project was $989,992.32, and 85 percent of that cost was funded by Congress. Despite the dangerous nature of the job, none of the crew died during construction.


October 31, 1950 -
I thought to myself, Join the army. It's free. So I figured while I'm here I'll lose a few pounds.



John Franklin Candy, the great Canadian comedian and actor, was born on this date.


October 31, 1956 -
Humans set foot at the South Pole for the first time since Captain Robert F. Scott and his team in 1912, when a party led by Admiral George J. Dufek of the US Navy landed there in an R4D-5L Skytrain aircraft, on this date.



The purpose of the flight was to survey the South Pole for the construction of a scientific research station there.


October 31, 1963 -
On Halloween night, hundreds gathered to watch the Holiday on Ice show at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds Coliseum on this date. (Perhaps not how I would be spending my evening, but to each his own.)



In the final minutes of the show, a leaking 100-pound propane tank exploded beneath a seating area. The blast sent spectators and large pieces of debris flying into the air. Seventy-four people were killed and more than 400 were injured. It definitely put a crimp in their evening.


October 31, 1963 -
The Beatles returned to London today in 1963 from a short tour of Sweden, their first outside England. They were greeted at Heathrow airport by photographers, journalists, and hundreds of screaming fans, adding to the growing evidence that Beatlemania was going to be around for more than a few weeks.



Ed Sullivan was there headed back to the States after a vacation, and was impressed. He was fully aware that he had missed out on being the first to put Elvis Presley on television and determined not to repeat the mistake, had his people look into getting them on his show.


October 31, 1984 -
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was not having a good day. Daughter of Nehru, the first prime minister of the newly independent India and fashion plate of the 60s, Mrs. Gandhi was running late for an interview with Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Two Sikh members of her bodyguard, annoyed with her involvement in the storming of the Golden Temple (The holiest of Sikh sites) took this moment to express their vexation with their boss and assassinated her on the spot.



This sparked Hindu-Sikh clashes across the country. Four days of anti-Sikh rioting followed in India. The government said more than 2,700 people, mostly Sikhs, were killed, while newspapers and human-rights groups put the death toll between 10,000 and 17,000.

Once again, people should be checking the references of their bodyguards more carefully.


October 31, 1993 -
Federico Fellini, considered as one of the most influential and widely revered film-makers of the 20th Century, passed away on this date.



An apocryphal story at the time was that River's last words were supposedly, "No paparazzi, I want anonymity", although the quote has become something of an urban legend. In fact, according to witnesses, River stumbled out of the nightclub and fell hard, face-first, onto the sidewalk (experts believed he likely died at that moment) before spasming violently against the pavement for eight minutes, never having uttered a word.


October 31, 1993 -
The young phenom River Phoenix had an unfortunate time at the Viper Room in West Hollywood on this date.



An apocryphal story at the time was that River's last words were supposedly, "No paparazzi, I want anonymity", although the quote has become something of an urban legend. In fact, according to witnesses, River stumbled out of the nightclub and fell hard, face-first, onto the sidewalk (experts believed he likely died at that moment) before spasming violently against the pavement for eight minutes, never having uttered a word.


October 31, 1999 -

Jesse Martin of Australia became the youngest person (at age 18) to circumnavigate the globe, sailing solo, non-stop and unsupported.



He sailed from Melbourne, Australia, on December 8, 1998 (at age 17), sailing south of New Zealand, through the South Pacific, around South America, north on the Atlantic, back south past Africa, through the Indian Ocean and back to Melbourne, and returned on this date, taking 327 days 12 hours 52 minutes.


Before you steal all of your kid sister's Halloween candy, remember -



that Diwali is in 8 days.



that Thanksgiving is in 26 days. Huzzah! Keep checking those store flyers for sales on turkey - who klnows if we will still have a free country by then.



There are 34 days until Hanukkah



There are 55 days until Christmas!



But none of that is in comparison to the fact that the general election is in THREE DAYS! Remember to vote.


Oops, I forgot to mention - Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight -



I'm never sure why you need to save daylight anymore, it seems to come whether or not you call.



And so it goes

Please don't hand these out tomorrow

Surprise, surprise, it's National Candy Corn Day today. The famous candy is said to have been invented in the United States by George Renninger a candymaker at the Wunderlee Candy Company in Philadelphia, in the 1880s and it was originally made by hand.



Nowadays, it's mass produced by Jelly Belly® using a recipe unchanged since about 1900. Candy corn is made from bottom to top. The yellow bit is the top and the white is the bottom.



But remember, I believe they stopped production sometime after the end of World War I and just continued to recycle the remaining uneaten supply. And what ever you do - please don't remind Lewis Black about this.


October 30, 1937 -
A good early Looney Tunes Halloween treat, The Case of the Stuttering Pig, directed by Frank Tashlin, and starring Porky Pig, was released on this date.



When the picture of Uncle Solomon is shown, it's a drawing of Oliver Hardy as a pig.


October 30, 1942 -
Rene Clair's second Hollywood film, the delightful romantic comedy, I Married A Witch, starring, Veronica Lake, Fredric March, Susan Hayworth, and Robert Benchley, premiered on this date.



Dalton Trumbo was a contributing writer, but left because his interpretation of the novel differed from that of producer Preston Sturges. Sturges also left the production (and declined onscreen credit) because of artistic differences with director René Clair.



October 30, 1943 -
A very funny war-time Bugs Bunny Cartoon, Falling Hare, directed by Bob Clampett, was released on this date.



In the early 1940s, Walt Disney was developing a feature film based on Roald Dahl's book Gremlin Lore, and asked the other studios to refrain from producing gremlin films. While most of the studios complied, Warner Bros. already had two cartoons too far into production - this cartoon and Russian Rhapsody. As a compromise, Leon Schlesinger re-titled the cartoons to remove any reference to gremlins. The original title was Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin.


October 30, 1948 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Daffy Dilly, directed by Chuck Jones and starring Daffy Duck, was released on this date.



Daffy uses "sufferin' succotash!" here, which would become Sylvester the cat's trademark phrase..


October 30, 1954 -
The Merrie Melodies short, Quack Shot, directed by Bob McKimson and starring Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd, was released on this date.



Many of the sight gags would be reworked in future Roadrunner and Coyote shorts.


October 30, 1968 -
The wonderfully acted treachery among the 12th Century Royals, A Lion In Winter starring Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn and Anthony Hopkins opened in the US on this date.



Although Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole had met several years earlier, and she was a great admirer of his work, she had no intention of putting up with the rather bad behavior he often exhibited on his productions. "You're known to be late", she told him on the first day of work. "I intend for you to be on time. I hear you stay out at night. You'd better be rested in the morning if you're going to work with me."


October 30, 1971 -
Pink Floyd released their sixth studio album Meddle in the US, on this date. The album features One Of These Days and the 23-minute track Echoes which took up all of side 2 on the vinyl record.



The cover image was photographed by Bob Dowling. The image represents an ear, underwater, collecting waves of sound, represented by ripples in the water.


October 30, 1982 -
The first single from Men at Work, Who Can It Be Now?, hits #1 on the Billboard charts, in America.



The song was released in Australia in 1981. It was gradually released around the world, where it got a great reception, but CBS Records in America dragged their feet - they didn't release it in that country until the middle of 1982, by which time the song had already hit #1 in Australia.


October 30, 1987 -
George Michael released his first solo album, Faith, on this date. Packed with hits, the album goes to #1 in both the UK and US, and wins the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.



When the album was released, Michael explained why he chose Faith as the title track, saying: "It represents the way I feel at the moment. It's kind of another word for my hope and optimism. You know, faith to me is just really such a strong word and the more I got into the idea of the song being the single, the more I liked the idea of using it as the title track."


October 30, 2002 –
Warren Zevon was featured on the Late Show with David Letterman as the only guest for the entire hour, on this date.



Zevon performing several songs and spoke about being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.

Kids, "...enjoy every sandwich."


Another unimportant moment in history.


Today in History:
October 30, 1863 -
OK kids, try to follow this ...

Danish Prince Wilhelm was a middle child of very famous siblings.

His older brother was to become the King of Denmark.

His older sister was married to Edward VII, making her the Queen consort of England.

His younger sister was married to the Tsar (czar? csar?) of Russia.

His parents didn't know what to get for him. They thought and thought about it and decided that he should become the King of Greece?



Wilhelm arrives in Athens, changes his name to a good Greek name and assumes his throne as George I, King of the Hellenes, on this date.

As mentioned previously, Wilhelm/ George's grandson was a sailor named Philippos, whose parents were related to themselves and half the other nobility in Europe. Philip had no real prospects of a career, so he did what any blue blooded aristocrat would do with no real prospects, he married up by marrying his second cousin (Elizabeth II of England.)

So remember, Charles is related to all of these people.


October 30, 1888 -
John L. Loud of Weymouth, Massachusetts was granted the first US patent for a ballpoint pen. (US patent 392,046) on this date.

The pen uses a revolving spherical marking point held in place by three smaller anti-friction bearings, which are held in place in turn by a spring-loaded rod.


October 30, 1938 —
The War of the Worlds was the Halloween episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. Directed by wunderkind Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s classic novel The War of the Worlds (1898).



Welles's adaptation is arguably the most well-known radio dramatic production in history. Both the War of the Worlds broadcast and the panic it created have become textbook examples of mass hysteria and the delusions of crowds.



It has been suggested in recent years that the War of the Worlds broadcast was actually a news report of the Red Lectroids invasion of Earth by Orson as fact retracted as fiction. Another conspiracy theory has the Rockefeller Foundation funding the broadcast as a test to gauge the public's reaction.



There has been continued speculation that the panic generated by the broadcast inspired officials to cover up unidentified flying object evidence, to avoid a similar panic. Indeed, U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote in 1956, "The [U.S. government's] UFO files are full of references to the near mass panic of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles presented his now famous The War of the Worlds broadcast."

It’s also possible, of course, that the aliens hypnotized Welles and caused him to present the broadcast as a drama—when it was, in fact, real.

You never know.


October 30, 1952 -
Clarence Birdseye sold first package of frozen peas on this date.



After his death, Birdeye was not frozen, as you might have incorrectly assumed but cremated and had his ashes were scattered at sea off Gloucester, Massachusetts.


October 30, 1961 -
The Soviet Union tested the largest nuclear device ever created (the Tsar Bomb) on this date. The nuclear test took place on the islands of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean.



The bomb was 4,000 times stronger than the atomic bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima.

It went BOOM and blowed up real good.


October 30, 1968 -
Silent film star, Ramon Novarro was brutally beaten and left for dead by his assailants, on this date. Novarro's life ended when two brothers, Tom and Paul Ferguson (if you're a very sick puppy, there are nude photos of Paul on the internet but I'm not going to link to them), whom he had paid to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex, murdered him.



According to the prosecution in the Novarro murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro's house. The prosecution accused them of torturing Novarro for several hours to force him to reveal where the nonexistent money was hidden. They left with a mere twenty dollars they took from his bathrobe pocket before fleeing the scene.

Novarro died as a result of asphyxiation, choking to death on his own blood after being brutally beaten. According to filmmaker and scandal monger, Kenneth Anger, Navarro actually died after suffocating on a wooden (or silver or lead) dildo (a non-existing gift from Rudolf Valentino) the two brothers crammed down his throat.

A very unpleasant end, indeed.


October 30, 1974 -
Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held their Rumble In the Jungle boxing match in Zaire on this date.



Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title, that was taken from him for refusing military service. This fight has been voted by sports writers as the greatest sporting event in the 20th Century.


October 30, 1975 -
President Gerald Ford, on October 29, 1975, gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York from bankruptcy. The front page of The Daily News the next day read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”



While Mr. Ford never explicitly said “drop dead,” (though in essence, it's what his speech was about,) those two words would cost him the presidency the following year, after Jimmy Carter, nominated by the Democrats in New York, narrowly carried the state.


October 30, 1990 -
Joseph W. Burrus, an aspiring magician, died while attempting a "buried alive" stunt. He was contained inside an acrylic glass clear box,or coffin, of his own construction. Lowered into a hole, his crew began filling the hole with dirt and cement around the coffin.



Apparently, Burrus didn't calculate the correct force the weight of the wet cement had on this coffin - he had only practiced the trick with soil. At some point, the crew realized the concrete had crushed the box, and when they pulled him out, he was dead. Oops (probably non-union help.)

Folks, when you're being buried alive, spend the extra bucks and go labor!


October 30, 2013 -
Norwegian town of Rjukan experienced a winter sun for the first time after giant mirrors were installed around the town on this date. Citizens celebrated by wearing their sunglasses and gathering in the town center



Rjukan, surrounded by mountains, does not get any direct sunlight for about seven months out of the year, and the idea to use mirrors to bring sun to the town center was proposed around one-hundred years previously.


Once again,

It's tomorrow folks, get it together



And the election is in four days



And so it goes