A delicious way to honor a saint

It's the Feast of St. Joseph, stepdad to Jesus and patron saint of real estate closers (that's why the pastries are for him - he's a closer.)

Remember to go out and have the very delicious Sicilian pastry that bears his name (but get the ones with canolli filling, not the custard.)  It's so good, it brings you that much closer to God.

Also, if you live in Capistrano,



remember the swallows are coming back today, eat you pastries indoors.


March 19, 1921 -
Du mußt Caligari werden!

The German silent film classic, Das Kabinett Des Docktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - wait a minute, I know that title from somewhere), starring Werner Kraus and Conrad Veidt premiered in the US on this date. The film is considered to be the first true horror film ever made.



The final look and feel of the film was based as much on low-budget practicalities as it was on creative inspiration and expressionism. Electricity was strictly rationed in post-WWI Germany at the time the film was being shot, so director Robert Wiene ended the film simply painting light beams on backdrops. Shooting on severely confined sets forced him to use unusual camera angles.


March 19, 1947 -
Another Bob Hope film (at the peak of his career), My Favorite Brunette, opened in Los Angeles on this date.



The film contains a number of in-jokes. Bob Hope's character is just saying that he wants to be a private detective like Alan Ladd - when Ladd appears, playing a private detective. Dorothy Lamour's character looks longingly after Bing Crosby for a moment (in their "Road" movies with Bob Hope, Crosby nearly always got the girl) before Hope wins back her attention.


March 19, 1958 -
The film based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, South Pacific, was released on this date. (Please feel free to sing along with Rossano Brazzi)



Concerned that the film's lush tropical settings would appear unnatural in Technicolor, and partially to cover up the fluctuations in weather during the shoot, director Joshua Logan hoped to soften the effect by filming several scenes through the newly available colored filters. He later indicated he considered this to be the biggest mistake he had made in his filming career. He wanted the filters to be subtler, but he says that the film processing lab had made them more extreme than he liked.


March 19, 1962 -
Luis Buñuel's sacrilegious masterpiece, Viridiana, opened in the US on this date.



The film was initially banned in Spain and completely denounced by the Vatican.  The script was initially approved by the Spanish authorities with a few minor changes. They had no opportunity to view the finished film until it played at the Cannes Film Festival where it won the Palme d'Or. Nevertheless they were sufficiently horrified by what they saw to ban the film.


March 19, 1984 -
CBS TV premiered the midseason replacement show Kate & Allie starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin on this date.



The series was the brainchild of Sherry Coben who came up with the idea for the series while attending a high school reunion. There she noticed that a couple of divorcees who seemed unhappy and dissatisfied found comfort in sharing with each other.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
March 19, 1931 -
Though unregulated gambling had taken place in mining towns all over Nevada, gambling was outlawed in the early 20th century as part of a nationwide campaign against corruption.



The state re-legalized it on this day in 1931, and became the state's primary source of revenue.


March 19, 1943 -
Francesco Raffaele Nitto, better known as, Frank 'The Enforcer' Nitti, one of the top henchmen of Alphonse "Big Al" "Scarface" Capone and later the front man for the mob Capone created, the Chicago Outfit, was having a very bad day. Many top members of the Chicago Outfit were indicted for extortion. The Outfit was accused of trying to strong arm some of the largest Hollywood movie studios. The studios had cooperated with The Outfit to avoid union trouble stirred up by the mob.



The day before his scheduled grand jury appearance, Nitti shared breakfast with his wife in their Riverside, Illinois home at 712 Selborne Road. As his wife was leaving for church, Nitti told her he planned to take a walk. After his wife left, Nitti began to drink heavily. He then loaded a .32 caliber revolver, put it in his coat pocket, and walked five blocks to a local railroad yard. Two railroad workers (William F. Sebauer and Lowell M. Barnett) spotted Nitti walking on the track of an oncoming train and shouted a warning. They thought the train hit him, but Nitti had managed to jump out of the way in time. Then two shots rang out.

The trainmen first thought Nitti was shooting at them, but then realized he was trying to shoot himself in the head. The two bullets went through his hat. Nitti finally sat on the ground against a fence and, with the railroad workers watching from a distance, shot himself in the head on this date.


March 19, 1945 -
The Third Reich's World Tour was drawing to an abrupt close. And the band members were understandably depressed. The ever wacky and truly evil bastard Adolf Hitler issued his so-called "Nero Decree" on this date, ordering the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands.



Albert Speer, gave himself a birthday present today (avoiding the noose at the Nuremberg trials) and does everything he can to stop this from happening, in direct defiance of Hitler. Speer knew he had some precedent, Hitler also had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin the previous summer, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuhrer's order.


March 19, 1953 -
NBC TV aired The Academy Awards on television for the first time on this date.  Though the winners had been announced several months earlier, the program still garnered a lot of attention.



The show was hosted by Bob Hope and Conrad Nagel.


March 19, 1957 -
Elvis Presley was touring and has a vision. Before he immediately act upon it, St. Elvis wolfed down seven fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and agreed to purchase the 14 acre Graceland estate from Ruth Moore for $100,000 on this date.

The place is now his cemetery. Or is it?


March 19, 1982 -
The guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads, died during the Diary of a Madman tour after the plane he is flying in buzzed the band's tour bus and clipped the wing of the plane, crashing into a nearby farmhouse.



Kids, once again, repeat after me, Drugs are bad.


March 19, 1987 -
Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns his PTL ministry after it is revealed he was delivering a little too much spiritual healing to former church secretary and future Playboy playmate Jessica Hahn.



Some $265,000 in ministry funds had been used to keep Hahn quiet about a one-time sexual encounter in 1980. (Given that some unnamed executive paid $130,000 to kept his 'supposed' nine month affair a secret; that was one very expensive tryst.)


March 19, 2003 -
President George W. Bush announced on this date, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a military mission to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The American led coalition began with the launch of U.S. cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs aimed at Saddam Hussein near Baghdad.



The war was internationally unpopular from the start, and lost a lot of popularity in America after Bush's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were found to be unsubstantiated.


March 19, 2005 -
John Zachary DeLorean former American engineer and executive in the U.S. automobile industry, and drug dealer died on this date.



He quit GM in 1973 to launch the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in Northern Ireland. Eight years later, the DeLorean DMC-12 hit the streets.

8,900 cars were built.



And so it goes.


Before you go - Spring starts tomorrow in Northern Hemisphere at 5:58 p.m. EDT,



with the threat of rain later in the week.


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