Always look on the bright side of life

It's Earth Day today, everybody goes out and hug a tree. If you don't want to be that familiar with nature, give a warm but firm shake hands to your house plants.



Here's a little poem you can remember to help on this Earth Day -

If it's yellow, let it mellow,
If it's brown, flush it down,
And if it's blue - seek medical attention.


Today is also Good Friday (also known as, Great Friday, Holy Friday or Long Friday)



(In China, the ever literal minded Chinese refer to the day as Jesus' Crucifixion Day)




April 22, 1935 -
Universal Studios released the sequel to the original Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive and Elsa Lanchester was release on this date.



When filming the scene where the monster emerges from the burnt windmill, Boris Karloff slipped and fell into the water-filled well. Upon being helped out, he realized he had broken a leg in the fall. The metal struts used to stiffen his legs (for the famous "monster lurch") helped keep the bones in place until they could be properly set. Not long before filming began, Colin Clive broke a leg in a horse riding accident. Consequently, most of Dr. Frankenstein's scenes were shot with him sitting.


April 22, 1939 -
One of Bette Davis' favorite performances in the film Dark Victory, opened on this date.



Bette Davis pestered Warner Brothers to buy the rights to the story, thinking it a great vehicle for her. WB studio chief Jack L. Warner fought against it, arguing that no one wanted to see someone go blind. Of course, the film went on to become one of the studio's biggest successes of that year.


April 22, 1942 -
One of Hitchcock's brilliant World War II efforts, Saboteur, premiered in Washington DC on this date.



Alfred Hitchcock's original director's cameo was cut by order of the censors. He and his secretary played deaf-mute pedestrians. When Hitch's character made an apparently indecent proposal to her in sign language, she slapped his face. A more conventional cameo in front of a drugstore was substituted.


April 22, 1950 -
Peter Frampton, musician, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, was born on this date.



If you were a teenager in the mid 70's, you were issued your standard copy of Frampton Comes Alive to face your 'awkward' years.


Today in History:
April 22, 1451 -
Isabella I, Queen of Castille, was born. She also became Queen of Aragon in 1479.

She was Christopher Columbus' patron, and must therefore share some of the responsibility for the many thousands of casinos across America.


April 22, 1870 -
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born on this date He later became Lenin, invented the Communist Party in Russia, and made himself first Head Bastard of the Soviet Union.

It's interesting that Alexander Kerensky, the leader of Russia's provisional revolutionary government in 1917 until overthrown by Lenin, was born on the same day as Lenin, only eleven years later.

Well, it's interesting to some people.


April 22, 1904 -
Robert Oppenheimer was born on this date. Mr. Oppenheimer is known as the father of the atomic bomb.



The bomb's mother has never been identified to anyone's satisfaction, which only underscores the lax security at Los Alamos.


April 22, 1923 -
Kinky center fold model Bettie Mae Page born in Nashville, Tennessee.



As she describes herself, "I was never the girl next door."


April 22, 1946 -
John Waters, famed indie film director, was born on this date.



John Waters should appear more frequently on SNL.


April 22, 1964 -
President Johnson opened the New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadow, Corona Park, New York, on this date.



The Fair also is remembered as the vehicle Walt Disney utilized to design and perfect the system of "audio-animatronics," in which a combination of sound and computers control the movement of life-like robots to act out scenes. In the It's a Small World attraction at the Pepsi pavilion, animated dolls and animals frolicked in a spirit of international unity on a boat-ride around the world.



Once the fair was over, Walt feverishly pushed his Imagineers to build him an 'actual' President. Historians argue that this was the beginning of Ronald Reagan campaign for the Presidency.


April 22, 1994 -
Richard M. Nixon suffers a fatal stroke. His body is laid to rest in the unhallowed grounds of his Presidential Library.

His head was severed from his body and wooden stakes were driven through his heart to make sure he is dead.



And so it goes