Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Isn't Life Strange

For days, the song This Guy's in Love with You by Herb Alpert has been playing in my head. I just read that it topped the charts on this date in 1968.



Alpert sang this to his first wife in a 1968 TV special called The Beat of the Brass. The sequence was taped on the beach in Malibu. The song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the TV special, thousands of telephone calls to CBS asking about it convinced label owner Alpert to release it as a single two days after the show aired.


It's National Chocolate Eclair Day. While the eclair is a delicious dessert, its charms escape me.

Maybe it's the fake vanilla pudding most bakeries use rather than bavaran cream.


June 22, 1949 -
Possibly, the most talented actress of her generation, Mary Louise Streep,was born on this date.



Streep has received 16 Academy Award nominations and 25 Golden Globe nominations (winning seven), more than any other person in film history. Her work has also earned her two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, four New York Film Critics Circle Awards, five Grammy Award nominations, a BAFTA award, and a Tony Award nomination.

Imagine if she really applied herself to her craft.


June 22, 1946 -
Another of the classic 40's Daffy Duck cartoons, Hollywood Daffy, was released on this date.



...What's Errol Flynn got that you haven't got? Don't answer that!

June 22, 1961 -
A Great old-fashion thriller, The Guns of Navarone, was released on this date.



Despite the narrated prologue setting the "historical background", this is a work of fiction. There was no such mission, because there never were any guns of Navarone.


June 22, 1966 -
Mike Nichol's first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, opened on this date.



According a 2005 interview with Edward Albee, the writer of the play which the film is based, producer Ernest Lehman hired himself to write the screenplay for $250,000. Also, Albee says that when director Mike Nichols and stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor read the script, they hated it so much that, unknown to Lehman, they changed all of the dialog back to Albee's play save two lines: "Hey, let's go to the roadhouse!" and "Hey, let's come back from the roadhouse!" Albee said, "Two lines for $250,000, $125,000 a piece. That's pretty good."


Today in History -
June 22, 1633 -
The Holy Office in Rome forces Galileo Galilei to recant his scientific view that the Sun, not the Earth, is the center of the Universe.



This was the second time he was forced to recant Earth orbits Sun by the Pope. Almost immediately, on October 31, 1992, the Vatican admitted it was wrong.


June 22, 1906 -
Billy Wilder was born on this date. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wilder would go on to produce Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, all of whom frolicked giddily on the beach in bikinis. Mr. Wilder, you see, was comfortable in his season.



Not like some people. Some people had to force it. Some people had to prove something. Some people were like Brian Wilson, who was born the day before summer (June 20) in 1942, and subsequently became a "Beach Boy" and produced an album called Endless Summer.


June 22, 1933 -
German chancellor Adolf Hitler banned every political party except his own Evil Nazi Bastards from winning elections.



The Evil Nazi Bastards swept the next elections, demonstrating the public's strong support for this measure.


June 22, 1940 -
Eight days after German forces overran Paris, France is forced to sign an armistice; hilarity ensues.



Adolf Hitler forces the instrument of surrender to be signed in the very railcar in which the French inflicted the humiliating World War I Treaty of Versailles upon the Germans.


June 22, 1941-
The German Army invades Russia, quickly destroying five Russian armies and one fourth of the Red air force. At completion of the war in 1945, nearly 27 million Soviets were dead.



Thus ended the German- Soviet "Peace and Friendship" Treaty.

June 22, 1969 -
The patron saint of bachelors of a certain age, Judy Garland died of a barbiturate overdose in her London apartment, either by accident or suicide.



Folks, she did not do a header into the toilet and drowned.


June 22, 1993 -
The patron saint of long suffering political wives and good Republican cloth coats, Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon died on this date.

I have sacrificed everything in my life that I consider precious to advance the political career of my husband ...


And so it goes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Daffy Duck is in a way, like Antonio Villas Boas. While Daffy Duck kisses the star while the others stars vanish, Antonio Villas Boas had romantic relationships with a female alien and the female alien vanishes without a trace. Villas Boas would have said in Portuguese, “Sufferin Succotash! She’s beautiful!”

Kevin said...

Wow, I wish I knew about Antonio Villas Boas before. He deserved an entry in the blog.

Thanks for bringing him up.