A better question is, "Do they care?"

It been 26 years since Do They Know It's Christmas the charity single by the all-star group Band Aid, was released.



As of the last check, The Band Aid/ Live Aid initiatives have raised over $200 million dollars. Not bad for basically a very crappy tune.


December 10, 1948 -
Another Preston Sturges Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine, Unfaithfully Yours, opened in the US on this date.



Rex Harrison is simple brilliant but the real find here is Linda Darnell, an incredibly under-appreciated actress of the 40's & 50's.


December 10, 1967 -
Julie Andrews!!!

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their first starring comedy, Bedazzled, opened in the US on this date.



Go back and watch it again, it's even funnier than you remember.


December 10, 1982 -
A pageant to B movies, It Came from Hollywood, opened in the US on this date.



Sadly this was never released on DVD. Due to 'clearance issues' with several clips, Paramount still has no plans on releasing a DVD of this title.

This was the perfect precursor to MST 3000.


December 10, 1974 –
The classic disaster movie, Towering Inferno, opened in NYC on this date.



It was a very fun way to waste an afternoon in your local movie theatre.


December 10, 1984 –
Francis Ford Coppola's Cotton Club opened in NYC. I can remember waiting on line to see the film on the opening day (it was a very cold night in NYC 26 years ago.)



This film had so many extras that I truly believe every actor in NYC had this film on their resume at that time.

Now that the dust has settled, the film can be better appreciated as one of Coppola's better endeavors.


Today in History -
December 10, 1520 -
The heretic Martin Luther burnt the papal bull issued by Leo X, titled Exsurge Domine, demanding an end to his heresies. Luther had published 95 points against the practice of granting indulgences, and the Catholic Church only had 94 points in favor of them.



Although technically he was the winner, Luther was subsequently excommunicated.

Luther went away mad and started his own religion.


December 10, 1848 -
Napoleon III, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), was elected president of France. By 1852, he dismantled the Republic and replaced it with the Second Empire of France, with himself as emperor.

Thank God, Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t gotten this idea into his head.


December 10, 1936 -
Edward VIII, abdicates the English throne to marry the twice divorced, horsey faced (and possibly transvestite) Mrs. Simpson - the woman he loved.

Many in the government are secretly relieved, fearing having to share a bathroom with Mrs. Simpson.


December 10, 1958 -
Krishna Venta (born Francis Herman Pencovic) died in Chatsworth, California in a suicide bombing when two disgruntled former followers (Peter Duma Kamenoff and Ralph Muller) who, although never offering any documentary evidence to support their claims, charged that Venta had both mishandled cult funds and been intimate with their wives.

Venta's remains are only ever identified through dental records.

They blow'd him up real good.


December 10, 1967 -
Soul singer Otis Redding plus four members of the Bar-Kays are killed when his airplane crashes into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin.



So, poor Otis was spread out all over the dock of the bay.


December 10, 1993 -
Adolf Hitler is baptized by proxy into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in their London temple. Mormons also continue to vicariously baptism victims of the Holocaust over the strenuous objections of various Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center (even Simon Wiesenthal has had a baptism performed for himself after his death.)

While this is terribly unfair, please keep this in mind when considering Mitt Romney in 2012.



14 more shopping days until Christmas.

And so it goes.