A customer orders one cup but pays the barista for two. This second cup - the "suspended coffee" - is served for free to someone who is down on their luck.
It's Santacon today
I must be on the 'naughty list' this year. I didn't rant about the event because I was happy that the clowns were traipsing through hipster Brooklyn. And what do I get - the amateur drinkers are back in Manhattan this year: worst, they will be in my neighborhood, stating at 10 AM. I will be in cranky old man mood this evening - be warned!
December 10, 1948 -
Another Preston Sturges Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine, Unfaithfully Yours, opened in the US on this date.
At one point the detective mentions "that Italian guy". He is referring to Arturo Toscanini, one of the world's most famous conductors, who at that time led the NBC Symphony Orchestra in weekly concerts on radio.
December 10, 1967 -
Good evening. I couldn't help noticing that you were making an unsuccessful suicide bid.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their first starring comedy, Bedazzled, opened in the US on this date.
Dudley Moore adopted the alias Stanley Moon in this film after John Gielgud wrote him a letter of introduction because he was impressed with Moore's work in the stage revue "Beyond the Fringe". Gielgud obliviously referred to Moore as Stanley Moon in the letter, and an amused Moore adopted the name as an alter ego for the rest of his life.
December 10, 1968 -
A late Carol Reed musical adaptation of the Charles Dicken's classic, Oliver!, starring Ron Moody, Oliver Reed and Mark Lester, opened in the US on this date.
Although Ron Moody had played Fagin to great acclaim on the London stage, he was only allowed to repeat his performance in the film after Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole had reportedly turned down the role.
December 10, 1974 -
Finding dead men like this ought make anyone frightened.
Ed Wood Jr., either the world's greatest visionary director or the worst filmmaker of all time, suffered a fatal heart attack on this date. At the time of his death, the industry newspaper, Variety, failed to run his obituary.
December 10, 1974 –
The classic disaster movie, Towering Inferno, opened in NYC on this date.
During filming an actual fire broke out on one of the sets and Steve McQueen found himself briefly helping real firemen put it out. One of the firemen, not recognizing McQueen, said to the actor, "My wife is not going to believe this", to which McQueen replied, "Neither is mine."
December 10, 1982 -
A paean to B movies, It Came from Hollywood, opened in the US on this date. (Do yourself a favor; find some time today to watch the whole film if you haven't seen it.)
Sadly this was never released on DVD. Paramount had planned to release the film on DVD in 2002. Due to copyright issues with several of the clips featured in the film, the release was ultimately canceled.
December 10, 1984 –
On a very cold night in NYC, 32 years ago, Francis Ford Coppola's Cotton Club opened in NYC. I can remember waiting on line to see the film on the opening day.
The character of Dixie Dwyer is likely based on actor George Raft. Raft grew up dirt poor in New York's Hell's Kitchen. As a young man he worked as a driver/gopher for gangster Owney Madden (also depicted in this film). After his stint working for Madden he went to California and tried his hand at acting, eventually achieving considerable success playing tough-guy roles in various gangster movies, performances he based largely on Madden and Bugsy Siegel, with whom Raft was known to associate.
It been 32 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.
Today's Holiday special: Guest Programmer - The Sequel
Today in History:
December 10, 1520 -
The heretic Martin Luther burnt the papal bull (Exsurge Domine), on this date, issued by Leo X, 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.
Luther went away mad and started his own religion.
December 10, 1830 -
There is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.
Poet Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on this date. Only about 10 of her poems were published in her lifetime, and those were submitted for publication without her permission. After her death in 1886, more than 1,800 of her poems, which she had bound together in bundles, were discovered and published.
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.
December 10, 1936 -
Edward VIII, signed the letter of abdication to the English throne (which took effect on the next day,) to marry the twice divorced, horsey faced (and possibly transvestite) - the woman he loved on this date.
Many in the government are secretly relieved, fearing they may have bet against Mrs. Simpson when she ran at the Royal Ascot.
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.
This is what comes from the laying on of hands with cult members' wives.
December 10, 1967 -
Soul singer Otis Redding plus four members of the Bar-Kays were killed when his airplane crashes into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin on this date.
So, poor Otis was laid out all over the dock of the bay.
December 10, 1993 -
Adolf Hitler was baptized by proxy into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in their London temple on this date. Mormons also continued 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.)
And so it goes.
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