Here's a silver lining to the shutdown

Non-essential federal employees are eligible for a free personal massager from Vibrator.com during the Federal partial shutdown. (Note: Congress Representatives, who voted for the shutdown, are all deemed "essential" so are ineligible.)

(apparently some of you bunkies are not old enough to see a drawing of a personal massager.) It's good to know that people with time on their hands have something to do.


Happy Arbitrary European Explorers Day!



Let's celebrate the only illegal immigrant in history that Republicans respect.


Today is Be Bald and Free Day - show off your chrome dome



Veritably and I show ours off every day, why don't you?


October 14, 1953 -
Possibly the ultimate film noir, Fritz Lang's The Big Heat opens in NYC on this date.



When Lee Marvin first sees Glenn Ford face to face, the music in the background is "Put the Blame on Mame," a reference to Ford's performance in Gilda.


October 14, 1972 -
Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and that infamous stick of butter premiered in New York City, on this date in history.



According to Maria Schneider, the famous "butter scene" was never in the script and improvised at the last minute by Marlon Brando and Bernardo Bertolucci without consulting her. Though the sodomy act was faked, her real tears in the film clearly testify her state of shock.


October 14, 1972 -
The TV-series Kung Fu, starring David Carridine, debuted on ABC-TV on this date.



The set for the Shaolin Temple was originally a set used for the film Camelot that was inexpensively and effectively converted for the Chinese setting.


Today in History:
October 14, 1651 -
Massachusetts passed laws prohibiting the poor from dressing excessively, on this date.

It was felt that persons of limited means should save their money and learn to get by with simple vinaigrettes.


October 14, 1893 -
What you get is a living, what you give is a life - Lillian Gish



Lillian Diana Gish, was born on this date. Although she was the archetypal silent film heroine, she was a star of movies, television, radio, and the stage for nearly all of the 20th century. She closed her career in the 1987 film The Whales of August.


October 14, 1912 -
Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for a return to office, was shot in Milwaukee by a saloon keeper named John Schrank on this date.

What saves Teddy was the bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest only after hitting both his steel eyeglass case and a copy of his speech he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt declined suggestions that he go to the hospital, and delivered his scheduled speech.



He spoke vigorously for ninety minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." Afterwards, doctors determined that he was not seriously wounded and that it would be more dangerous to attempt to remove the bullet than to leave it in his chest. Roosevelt carried it with him until he died.

Schrank was captured and uttered the now famous words "any man looking for a third term ought to be shot."

Teddy Roosevelt, one of America's First Superheroes.


October 14, 1944 -
Field Marshal Rommel (James Mason) of Germany was visited by two of Hitler's personal staff on this date in history.



They informed him that he was suspected of involvement in the July 20th plot to assassinate the Fuhrer and that he would therefore be required either to (a) stand trial and die, or (b) just die. They brought some poison along to facilitate his decision.

Hitler always liked him.


October 14, 1947 -
American pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in a rocket-powered airplane, on this date. Yeager insisted it was already broken and consequently refused to repair it despite repeated admonitions by his mother.



It remains broken to this day. (The sound barrier should not be confused with the Long Island Sound barrier, sometimes referred to as the Throg's Neck Bridge.)


October 14, 1959 -
Omni-sexual actor and Nazi sympathizer Errol Flynn, dubbed "the most despicable human being yet born" (and that was by a friend), died of a heart attack in Vancouver. Flynn reported didn't have a sexual preference, he merely slept with anything with an orifice (and possibly a pulse) including (but not limited to) Truman Capote, Howard Hughes, as well as countless Hollywood starlets.



Presumably, not at the same time.


October 14, 1962 -
The US collected photographic evidence that the Soviet Union had positioned missiles about 90 miles off the US coast, in Cuba. The missiles were capable of transporting nuclear warheads.



The tense situation that arose in the next two weeks would bring the US and Soviet Union the closest the two countries had ever been to nuclear war



And so it goes