Sunday, June 23, 2013

It beats measuring out life with coffee spoons

Vlogger Ze Frank takes a deeper look into the meaning of life using jelly beans.  He counted out over 28,000 beans, one for each day the average Americans will live for.



To paraphrase Warren Zevon, "enjoy every jelly bean."


June 23, 1955 -
Walt Disney's 15th animated feature, Lady and the Tramp, the first animated feature filmed in CinemaScope, opened in theaters on this date.



Peggy Lee helped promote the film on the Disney TV series, explaining her work with the score and singing a few numbers. Peggy Lee later sued Disney for breach of contract claiming that she still retained rights to the transcripts. She was awarded $2.3m, but not without a lengthy legal battle with the studio which was finally settled in 1991.


June 23, 1965 -
One of Frank Sinatra best performances on film, Von Ryan's Express, premiered on this date.



The leather jacket that Frank Sinatra wore in Von Ryan's Express, was later worn by Bob Crane in Hogan's Heroes. It was later worn by Greg Kinnear in Auto Focus.


June 23, 1989 -
Tim Burton's dark and brooding retelling of Batman, was released on this date.



Michael Keaton casting as Bruce Wayne/Batman caused a controversy amongst comic book fans, with 50,000 protest letters sent to Warner Bros. offices. Bob Kane, Sam Hamm and Michael E. Uslan also heavily questioned the casting.


June 23, 1994 -
Life may or may not be a box of chocolate but Forrest Gump premiered in Los Angeles, on this date.



Tom Hanks signed onto the film after an hour and a half of reading the script but agreed to take the role only on the condition that the film was historically accurate. He initially wanted to ease Forrest's pronounced Southern accent, but was eventually persuaded by director Robert Zemeckis to portray the heavy accent stressed in the novel and patterned his accent after Michael Conner Humphreys (young Forrest) who actually talked that way.


Today in History:
June 23, 1611 -
The mutinous crew of Henry Hudson's fourth voyage sets Henry, his son and seven loyal crew members adrift in an open boat in what is now Hudson Bay; they are never heard from again.

So much for loyalty.


June 23, 1894 -
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, briefly Edward VIII, King of England and later to be known as the Duke of Windsor (making him both brother and uncle to successive monarchs), who abdicated his throne to marry American divorcee (and possible transvestite) Wallis Simpson, was born on this date.



Sometimes, it's very complicated to be the king.


June 23, 1965 -
One of the classic Motown singles, Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, was released on this date.



Smokey Robinson had the music Marv Tarplin wrote on a cassette, but it took him about six months to write the lyrics. The words started coming together when he came up with the line, "Take a good look at my face, you see my smile looks out of place." From there, it was a few days before he got the lines, "If you look closer it's easy to trace... my tears."


June 23 1979 -
The rock group, the Knack releases My Sharona on this date.



In an interview with the Washington Post, Doug Fieger said: "I was 25 when I wrote the song. But the song was written from the perspective of a 14-year-old boy. It's just an honest song about a 14-year-old boy."


And on a personal note:
Happy Birthday David



and so it goes.

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