Skip the mall - Shop Small

It's Small Business Saturday once again - the first one was in Roslindale Village, Massachusetts in 2010 as a counterpart to Black Friday (which features big box retailers, and its anti-consumerist counterpart, Buy Nothing Day targets big business).

American Express used to give their customers discounts or incentives to support small businesses across America. Since AMEX isn't featuring me, you'll need to figure out if your favorite local business is covered.


Today is the feast day of Saint Andrew, older brother of Saint Peter. In the Gospel of Matthew, it is said Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and saw Andrew and Simon Peter fishing and told them to join him and become 'fishers of men'. In many faiths, he is sometimes referred to as, 'first called', as he and his brother became the first apostles of Christ.



St. Andrew is the patron saint of fishermen and singers. He is also the patron saint to several countries and cities including: Scotland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and Patras.


November 30, 1934 -
W.C. Fields was very busy in 1934 - his fifth film of the year, It's a Gift, co-starring Baby LeRoy, premiered on this date.



Harold Bissonette's grocery store sells actual brand-name products of the period, including Kellogg's Corn Flakes and 3-in-1 Oil. This was highly unusual in 1934; most movies avoided showing real products because the studios didn't want to give their manufacturers free advertising.


November 30, 1971 -
The TV movie that makes 'real men' weep unabashedly, Brian's Song debuted on ABC-TV on this date.



Louis Gossett, Jr. was originally cast as Gale Sayers. A few days before shooting began, Gossett tore his Achilles' tendon while working out. Studio executives quickly hired Billy Dee Williams as a replacement, leaving Gossett depressed over missing his "shot". Producer David L. Wolper promised Gossett the first great role that came along. Wolper cast Gossett as "Fiddler" in Roots, the Emmy-winning role that made him a star.


November 30, 1979 -
Pink Floyd released its album The Wall on this date.



Syd Barrett had a great influence on the other band members even after he left.  In the movie The Wall, several scenes are inspired from actual events involving Syd. In the movie, the character Pink shaves off all his facial hair, including his eyebrows - something Syd once arrived to the studio having done himself.


November 30, 1982 -
Michael Jackson’s second solo album, Thriller, produced by Quincy Jones, was released on this date.



Unfortunately for the Jackson estate, The Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which was originally released in 1976, surpassed Thriller as the best-selling album of all-time in the US, with the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) reporting sales of 38 million copies, nationwide. Thriller, meanwhile, is five million behind at a measly 33 million copies.

How will they ever make ends meet.


November 30, 1990 -
Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's thriller, Misery, premiered on this date.



Jack Nicholson was offered the role of Paul Sheldon, but passed because he was not sure he wanted to do another movie based on one of Stephen King's novels, after what he had experienced with Stanley Kubrick on The Shining.


Don't forget to tune into The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


The focus of Today in History on this date should be used as a guide to help you realize the blessings you should find in life:



On November 30, 1935, the German government proclaimed a failure to accept the tenets of Nazism as grounds for divorce.



Be grateful you never married a Nazi.


Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667,



and Mark Twain was born almost 170 years later, in 1835.



Be grateful that not everyone is taking everything so goddamn seriously.


Winston Churchill (one of my favorite American who became British Prime Minister) was also born on November 30, in 1874, in a coat closet of his family home (really).



Be grateful that not everyone was so grateful for Peas In Our Time.


Otherwise, here are some other events that occurred on this date
November 30, 1858 -
The Mason Jar was invented and patented (U.S. patent #22,186) by Philadelphia tinsmith John Landis Mason.

I wonder if he knew his jar would be used as a cocktail glass.


November 30, 1886 -
George Westinghouse opens the first commercially successful alternating current power plant in the U.S. in Buffalo, New York to compete against Edison’s direct current ventures.

Alternating current power can be transmitted much further than direct current power by using transformers at the source for a higher voltage, which decreases the loss of energy.


November 30, 1900 -
Celebrated Irish author and noted card carrying sodomite Oscar Wilde, died in Paris of meningitis on this date. Wilde had been charged three times with indecency, specifically "the seduction and corruption of young men." Evidence admitted against him included testimony about fecal stains on his sheets.



Be thankful that we obviously have better cleaning detergents than the British did back then.


November 30, 1929 -
Dick Clark, the American Bandstander, was born on this date.



Be thankful the few of us are faced with bargaining with Satan for our careers.


November 30, 1936 -
The Crystal Palace, originally built by Sir Joseph Paxton in London's Hyde Park for the 1851 Great Exhibition, burnt to the ground on this date.



It was said that over 75,000 people came to watch the blaze, among them Winston Churchill, who said, "This is the end of an age". The glow was visible across eight counties.

Be thankful that you weren't down wind from this one.


November 30, 1954 -
At 1 pm, an 8.5 pound stone meteorite fell from the sky and struck Ann Elizabeth Hodges from Sylacauga, Alabama.  She was the first reported person in modern times to be struck by an object from outer space.

The housewife was seriously bruised but survived, although the meteorite destroyed her radio.

Oh the humanity!



And so it goes!

417

You can always find something you want.

While you are still digesting last nights meal, you may have to start getting ready for Friendsgiving.





Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.  - Oscar Wilde

As most of you know, the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.



I'm not quite sure you're going to get the best deals in the world today,

so why not sleep in (after you finish reading the blog of course.)


Today is Electronic Greetings Day. So sending your greetings are now just a click away.

The day celebrates the fact that you can send someone a card from one office bathroom to another.


November 29, 1940 -
W.C. Fields at his peak - The Bank Dick, premiered on this date.



Universal's censors initially objected to W.C. Fields' script and demanded many changes. Director Edward F. Cline suggested that Fields should go ahead and film it their way, ignoring the censors' changes, and that the front office wouldn't notice the difference. They didn't.


November 29, 1945 -
Remarkable for it frank portrayal of alcoholism (for it's day), The Lost Weekend, opened in Los Angeles on this date.



Billy Wilder claimed the liquor industry offered Paramount $5 million to not release the film; he also suggested that he would have accepted, had they offered it to him.


November 29, 1950 -
Jean Cocteau's beautifully lyrical, Orphee, opened in the US on this date.



Orphee's obsession with deciphering hidden messages contained in random radio noise is a direct nod to the coded messages that the BBC concealed in their wartime transmissions for the French Resistance.


November 29, 1992 -
U2's first TV special, called U2's Zoo TV Outside Broadcast, aired on Fox-TV on this date.



The show contains footage from their concerts at Yankee Stadium in New York and the Houston Astrodome, earlier that year.


Welcome to the 12th Annual ACME Holiday Celebration.


Today in History:
November 29, 1777 -
José Joaquín Moraga proved that he knew the way to San Jose on this date,

https://live.staticflickr.com/1518/25789913833_c56748c1fa_b.jpg
when he established, for Spain, el Pueblo de San Jose de Guadelupe, the first civil settlement in California.


November 29, 1864 -
The Sand Creek Massacre occurred, on this date, when Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington, in retaliation for an Indian attack on a party of immigrants near Denver, massacred at least 400 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants (mostly children, women, physically- and mentally-challenged, and elders) inside Colorado Territory.


It also generated two Congressional investigations into the actions of Chivington and his men. The House Committee on the Conduct of the War concluded that Chivington had "deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the varied and savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty."

The American Government has so much to be proud of with their dealings with the Native Americans.


November 29, 1924 -
Italian composer Giacomo Puccini died in Brussels before he could complete his opera Turandot. Franco Alfano finished it.



His death marked the end of a 300-year tradition of Italian opera.


November 29, 1929 -
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd (on a break from his experiments with frozen vegetables) radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight with pilot Floyd Bennett, over the South Pole: "My calculations indicate that we have reached vicinity of South Pole."



After briefly loitering around the Pole, Byrd and his crew headed back to their home base, Little America and more intense testing of frozen zucchini.


November 29, 1935 –
Once the cat is in the box, do you know if it really alive, or dead?



Physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.


November 29, 1951 -
The United States set off the first underground nuclear explosion named "Uncle" at Frenchman Flats in Nevada on this date.



It was a great success, except for the giant spiders, ants, grasshoppers and other insects left in the aftermath.


November 29, 1961 -
The US sent the chimpanzee Enos into space, aboard the Mercury Atlas 5 capsule from Cape Canaveral on this date.



Enos returns to earth safely but died less than a year later before he could sign with the William Morris Agency.


November 29, 1972 -
Pong, the first commercially successful video game, was released on this date by Nolan Bushnell (who was also the co-founder of the video game company, Atari.)



Pong is similar to digital tennis or ping-pong, and its great success was a big part of the early beginnings of the video game industry.


November 29, 1986 -
I do not think Cary Grant was a homosexual or bisexual. He just got carried away at those orgies - US congressman Bob Dornan, spoken on the House floor  (I love that quote.)



82 year old Archibald Leach, better known as Cary Grant, died on this date.


November 29, 2001 -
The Beatles will exist without us.



The "quiet" Beatle George Harrison was silenced by cancer on this date.


November 29, 2004 -
Godzilla received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on this date.



In honor of the event, the Toho star was allowed to run rampant through Little Tokyo that afternoon.


And on a personal note:
Oh yeah, millions of years ago (or at least more than half a century ago) the earth cooled and formed a hard crust, huge dinosaurs ruled the land and John was there to see it all. Happy Birthday John.

About a decade later, vast plains with wildflowers sprung up and Mary skipped along them all. Happy Birthday Mary.



And so it goes

418

Be thankful for elastic waist bands

Remember, it's about 20 minutes per pound for a frozen turkey and 15 minute for a fresh one.



While you're sitting around the table with your family this Thanksgiving, opine this - Americans eat the weight of Singapore’s population in turkey every year — up to 690 million pounds! The average person eats enough each Thanksgiving to gain 1.3 pounds.


It's National French Toast Day



Eating your French Toast (Pan Perdu) as you are served it, is always the best bet

Enjoy


November 28, 1943 -
Randall Stuart Newman, singer/songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist was born on this date.





Newman has been nominated for twenty Academy Awards, winning twice. He has also won three Emmys, five Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy.


November 28, 1944 -
Vincente Minnelli's gift to his future wife, Judy Garland, the musical film Meet Me In St. Louis, opened in NYC on this date.



The book on which the film is based originally ran as a weekly feature in the New Yorker Magazine in 1942. For the film many of the actions attributed to Tootie were actually done in real life by Sally Benson's sister Agnes. Also in reality, Benson's father moved the family to NYC and they never did come back for the World's Fair.


November 28, 1951 -
The British film Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol,) starring Alastair Sim, Kathleen Harrison, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley, Mervyn Johns, Jack Warner, and Patrick Macnee, premiered in NYC on this date.



Changes to the screenplay from the Charles Dickens book were made, mostly in the Christmas Past sequence. Amongst these changes are: Reversing the birth order of Scrooge and his sister, so as to add that Scrooge's mother died giving birth to him. Creating a character named "Mr. Jorkin", who does not appear in the book. Flashbacks of several incidents in Scrooge's past (his sister's death, meeting Jacob Marley, taking over Fezziwig's warehouse, and Marley's death) which do not appear in the book.


November 28, 1969 -
The Rolling Stones released their eighth British album Let It Bleed on this date.



It is the follow-up to 1968's Beggars Banquet and the last album by the band to feature Brian Jones as well as the first to feature Mick Taylor.


We at ACME hope you and yours are enjoying your holiday meal today (PLEASE keep those less fortunate in your thoughts today.)


Today in History -
Sorry boys and girls but it's not a pleasant day in history today -

November 28, 1942 -
A fire at the overcrowded and sleazy Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, killed 491 people on this date. Flammable artificial palm trees aided the spread of the fire.



The numerous dead were crushed, burnt, and asphyxiated, all within minutes.

There's a lesson here boys and girl - sleazy nightclubs kill!!!


November 28, 1953 -
Frank Olson, government scientist, has a particularly bad dream and jumped to his death from the Statler Hotel in New York City on this date.

It was later revealed in 1975 that Olson had been administered LSD by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb in a CIA experiment.

That really must have been one bad trip.


November 28, 1962 -
I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.



Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, comedian, television host, political satirist and formerly, America's most trusted newscaster, was born on this date.


November 28, 1981 -
A drunken Natalie Wood toppled off her yacht near Catalina Island and drowned. Her husband Robert Wagner and melodramatic friend Christopher Walken, were on board and unaware of her predicament, apparently having some sort of argument in the cabin -



possibly about whether or not a drunken Natalie Wood could float (you know that's still an awful joke.)


November 28, 1994 -
Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death with a broomstick by inmate Christopher Scarver while cleaning the prison bathroom.

(Bunkies, here's a tip from your old pal - don't go poking around for photos about Jeffrey Dahmer, there are some sick pixs out there. I'm going to disinfect my eye balls.)

Dahmer's brain was to be preserved in formaldehyde at the request of Mom, but a court ordered its destruction in late 1995.

There's yet another lesson here boys and girls, dirty prison bathrooms kill!!!



And so it goes

419

Don't forget:

Coming soon to Dr. Caligari's Cupboard

Yes, there is a reason

More alcohol is consumed today, the day before Thanksgiving, than on New Year's Eve or St. Patrick's Day.

Why, (you may ask?) Many college students return home and reunite with their high school buddies. And the crippling anxiety of being surrounded by family drives some to drink.


November 27 is the Feast of St. Josaphat, a Middle Age prince who renounced his wealth to do charitable work.

Well, St. Josephat, turns out to be a Christianized version of a legend about Buddha (yeah Siddhartha Gautama.)

The years slip swiftly by and I can remember some things clearly, others only dimly; I don't remember them telling me about this back at St. John's.

Oh, that wacky Catholic Church!


November 27, 1920 -
United Artists released the silent film The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks on this date. The film will go on to be extremely influential in the world of comics.



Douglas Fairbanks was looking to try something new from the normal boy-meets-girl romance movies he had been making for the previous few years. This is when the actor came across the story of Zorro - originally published in the magazine All-Story Weekly. Previous to Fairbanks' portrayal, practically nobody had ever heard of the Robin Hood-like hero Zorro.


November 27, 1948 -
You see what some ducks will do for money!



Another (less familiar) Daffy and Porky pairing, Riff Raffy Daffy, premiered on this date.


November 27, 1967 -
The Beatles released Magical Mystery Tour album the US on this date.



Paul McCartney wrote Hello Goodbye, (John Lennon hated the song.)  His friend Alistair Taylor, who was visiting McCartney, asked Paul one day how he wrote his many songs, and how he came up with his ideas. Paul took him into his dining room to give him a demonstration of his hand-carved harmonium. As an experiment, Paul asked Taylor to shout out the opposite of whatever he sang, such as black and white, yes and no, hello and goodbye, etc. From this, the song was born.

November 27, 1979 -
For those so inclined, you could start spending time in the boys locker room of Carrver High School when the White Shadow premiered on this date.



Of the actors playing the Carver players, Nathan Cook was the oldest (28) when the show debuted, only seven years younger than Ken Howard. Timothy Van Patten was the youngest at 19.


November 27, 1980 -
The sitcom Bosom Buddies, staring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



(Yes, I know, this is not the original theme song - the production company lost the rights to the song.) In the summer of 1984 as Tom Hanks was becoming a household name thanks to the movie Splash, NBC bought the rights to the ABC sitcom and re-aired selected episodes to lead off their Saturday night line-up.


November 27, 2013 –
The Walt Disney's film, Frozen, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, went into general release in the US on this date.



The characters of Hans, Kristoff, Anna and Sven are a reference to Hans Christian Andersen, the author of The Snow Queen. Say the names quickly in sequence and hear the similarity.


Another failed ACME product


Today in History:
November 27, 1852 -
Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, was bled to death to cure her uterine cancer on this date. (In a strange coincidence, her father was also bled to death to cure a fever.)



She is often thought of as the world's first computer programmer, due to her interest in mathematics and her work on Charles Babbage's analytical engine.


Alfred Nobel signed his last will, which established the Nobel Prize on this date in 1895. (Yes, this is the second reference to Alfred in the same week.)

Mr Nobel is interesting because his fortune was founded in large part on the commercial success of something he invented in 1866: dynamite. Dynamite proved so lucrative for Mr Nobel that he was able to spend most of the rest of his life blowing things up in the interests of world peace. World peace was not achieved in his lifetime, however, and he therefore endowed a foundation with millions of dollars to give prizes to the men and women of future generations who helped bring the world closer to peace by blowing things up.



Sadly, in recent years the foundation appears to have forgotten its roots and has begun awarding prizes to men and women whose work for peace has resulted in things blowing up.



I encourage you all to write the Nobel Committee to take immediate corrective action, lest they continue to mislead people into thinking that Peace can be achieved by anything other than the blowing up of Evil Bastards.


November 27, 1910 -
Although the Pennsylvania Station had already begun service for the Long Island Rail Road several months earlier (September 8th); it was on this date that trains from the Pennsylvania Railroad entered Manhattan for the first time by way of tunnels under the Hudson River.

The famed station was demolished in 1963, which sparked the creation of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has preserved thousands of historic buildings in New York City and across the country.


November 27, 1924 -
Macy's sponsored its first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade (called Macy's Christmas Parade) in New York City on this date. The three-hour parade is held annually and is the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade along with Detroit's "America's Thanksgiving Parade," which began on the same day.



Three floats (pulled by horses), four bands and zoo animals from the Central Park Zoo - camels, donkeys, elephants and goats - starred in the parade (balloons didn't show up until 1927.)

Santa Claus was last in the lineup, a tradition that continues to this day.

(Yes, yes, I know the parade in Philadelphia is older.)


November 27, 1934 -
Notorious US murderer and bank robber Baby Face Nelson was killed in a gun battle with the FBI on this date.  Known as the Battle of Barrington, the shootout occurred in Barrington, Illinois. Two FBI officers also were killed.



During his criminal career, Nelson, whose real name was Lester Joseph Gillis, killed more FBI agents than any other US citizen in history.


November 27, 1978 -
City Supervisor Dan White entered San Francisco City Hall through an open basement window (avoiding metal detectors), walked into the office of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and shot him dead. Then White went on to kill Supervisor Harvey Milk on this date.



Apparently, Mr. White consumed too many Twinkies.  (Given there has been no noticeable increases in incidents of Twinkie induced rages, the Hostess Company may have changed the formula since their resuscitation.)



And so it goes

You may begin drink at noon today:

it's the start of Thanksgiving weekend

420
 

Today's moment of uninteresting history

November 26, 1346 -      
Charles of Luxembourg was crowned German king, Charles IV, on this date.

He succeeded his father John of Luxemburg as King of Bohemia and Count of Luxembourg and goes on to become a Holy Roman Emperor. But what the hell do you care.


Each year, the president of the U.S. pardons a turkey and spares it from being eaten for Thanksgiving dinner.

The first turkey pardon ceremony started with President Truman in 1947, (however, the Truman Library and Museum disputes the notion that he was the first to do so or even if he pardoned the bird.)  In December 1948, Truman accepted two turkeys and remarked that they would "come in handy" for Christmas dinner.


November 26, 1922 -
The Toll of the Sea, starring Anna Mae Wong, the second two-strip Technicolor feature (it was the first one able to be projected through a normal movie projector and consequently the first to be given a wide release) was released on this date.



The film's story is a variation of Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, which premiered in 1904; except, the film takes place in China and the opera is set in Japan.


November 26, 1934 -
John M. Stahl's adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel, Imitation of Life, starring  Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson, Louise Beavers, and Fredi Washington, premiered on this date.



Although cast as the daughter of Louise Beavers (Delilah), Fredi Washington (Peola,) was in reality less than two years younger than her onscreen mother. She was, however, considerably slimmer than the matronly Beavers, which enabled the pair to "pass" as mother and daughter.


November 26, 1938 -
Michael Curtiz's crime drama, Angels with Dirty Faces, starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and The Dead End Kids, premiered on this date.



To play Rocky, James Cagney drew on his memories of growing up in New York's Yorkville, a tough ethnic neighborhood on the upper east side, just south of Spanish Harlem.. His main inspiration was a drug-addicted pimp who stood on a street corner all day hitching his trousers, twitching his neck, and repeating, "Whadda ya hear! Whadda ya say!"


November 26, 1942 -
One of the classic films of the 40s - Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City, on this date.



Because the film was made during WWII the production was not allowed to film at an airport after dark for security reasons. Instead, it used a sound stage with a small cardboard cutout airplane and forced perspective. To give the illusion that the plane was full-sized, they used little people to portray the crew preparing the plane for take-off.


November 26, 1952 -
In Thrilling Color!

The first modern 3-D movie Bwana Devil, viewed with special glasses, premiered in Hollywood (you will need more that special glasses to see the trailer in color; I could only find a black and white version.)



Arch Oboler traveled to Africa in 1948 to make audio recordings of native peoples. While in Africa, Oboler met William D. Snyder, a 16mm cameraman with his own industrial filmmaking company in Fargo, North Dakota. During their travels throughout Africa, Mr. Snyder shot the African footage that appears in Bwana Devil.


November 26, 1953 -
MGM released the first musical in 3-D, Kiss Me Kate on this date.



The original stage show was based upon the backstage bickering of the illustrious married stage couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne during their 1935 Broadway production of Taming of the Shrew.


November 26, 1988 –
Russian cosmonauts took the Pink Floyd cassette version of Delicate Sound Of Thunder and play it in orbit, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in space.



David Gilmour and Nick Mason both attend the launch of the spacecraft. The cosmonauts had requested the album to listen to as they completed their mission of docking with the orbiting Mir space station. Delicate Sound Of Thunder was also the only Pink Floyd album to receive an official release in the Soviet Union. “To say that we are thrilled at the thought of being the first rock band to be played in space is something of an understatement,” said Gilmour.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
November 26, 1789 -
The first national Thanksgiving Day was observed in the United States in 1789, when recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress on this date, but we spoke all about this the other day.



The holiday wouldn't become an annual event until 1863 and wouldn't be signed into law until 1941 when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it an official, national holiday.


November 26, 1865 -



Oxford Don and nude child photographer, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, sends the manuscript for the psychedelic novel Alice in Wonderland to his 12 year old special friend Alice Liddell as an early Christmas present.



For some reason her parents did not notify the authorities.


November 26, 1965 -
After cleaning a church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where they had Thanksgiving dinner the day before, Arlo Guthrie and a friend clean up the place, but toss the trash down a hill when they can't find an open dump. They are arrested, fined $25 each, and forced to pick up the garbage.



When they return to the church, Guthrie writes Alice's Restaurant Massacree about the incident, embellishing some details. The director of the film, Arthur Penn, who owns a home in Stockbridge where the story takes place, realized it was for the most part based on events that had actually taken place. Therefore, what appears to be a continuity problem is in fact a correct representation of the facts. The movie portrays the actual photos used as evidence at the trial. The real life "blind judge" in Guthrie's song, Judge James Hannon, was played by James Hannon, himself in the film.  Sheriff William Obanhein demanded that he play the role himself. His reason: "If anyone is going to make a fool out of me, it might as well be me!"


November 26, 1976 -
Anarchy in the UK, (as a single) by the Sex Pistols is released.



This was the Sex Pistols' first single, and it caused quite a stir in England with its lyrics advocating violence against the government. Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was not released until a year later, partly because of distribution concerns: after hearing Anarchy In The UK, some organizations refused to ship the album.



And so it goes

421

Stop the Madness

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women Day. The day was established in 1999. The United Nations designated the day partly in reverence to the anniversary of the murder of three sisters in the Dominican Republic.

A report issued from the World Bank a few years earlier stated that about one in four women in the world would be, or had been, raped and that violence against women is as prevalent a cause of death as cancer.

(Let's take a moment and change gears)


November 25, 1933 -
An almost forgotten horror film, The Ghoul, starring Boris Karolff , Cedric Hardwicke, and Ralph Richardson (in his film debut) opened in the U.S. on this date.



For years this was regarded as a "lost film" with no prints or elements known to exist. A nitrate release print was discovered in the Czech National Archives in Prague. This print was a subtitled edited version that was in poor condition and contained numerous splices. Years later, a print of the uncut British version was finally discovered.


November 25, 1937 -
William A. Wellman's wonderful screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred, starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March, premiered in NYC on this date.



Carole Lombard said that this was one of her favorite of her own films. It was also her only Technicolor feature.


November 25, 1940 -
Walter Lantz's introduced Woody Woodpecker with the release of Knock Knock on this date.



Although Woody made his first appearance in this film, he doesn't have a name until his next film, Woody Woodpecker.


November 25, 1942
Raoul Walsh's bio-pix about the boxer, James Corbett,  Gentleman Jim, starring Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, William Frawley, and Ward Bond, went into general release in the U.S. on this date.



Errol Flynn did all of his own boxing stunts in the film, and although production was shut down for a time after Flynn suffered a mild heart attack, he came back and finished the picture without ever using a double.


November 25, 1987 -
The now classic John Hughes' Thanksgiving film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, starring Steve Martin and John Candy, premiered in the US on this date.



No transportation company wanted to appear inept or deficient in any way, so crews had to rent twenty miles of train track and refurbish old railroad cars, construct a set that looked like an airline terminal, design a rent-a-car company logo and uniforms, and rent two hundred fifty cars for the infamous Rent-a-Car sequence.


November 25, 1992 -
Neil Jordan's controversial (for the time) thriller, The Crying Game, starring Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson, and Forest Whitaker, went into limited release in the US on this date.



At the request of Channel 4, who were originally backing the film, Neil Jordan had to write and shoot a different ending for the film, because it was felt that with the original ending the film would be unreleasable. Jordan wrote and filmed this "fake ending" as he refers to it without love or conviction. However, when the film was cut with the fake ending in place, all agreed that it didn't work and the production received the funding to film the ending Jordan had originally written and with which the film was released.


Word of the Day -


Today in History:
November 25, 2348 BC -
According to Biblical scholars, a powerful rain storm began on this date. It rained an inch every ten seconds. Imagine that. An inch every ten seconds. The sheer volume and velocity of the deluge, comparable to rapid-fire artillery, ought to have been enough to kill every living thing on the planet in seconds, and yet it reportedly continued at this rate for a full 960 hours.

The only human survivors were a crotchety six-hundred-year-old man and his family. Fortunately, these sturdy souls had had the foresight to gather up two to seven specimens of every species on the planet (excepting, one assumes, the undaunted creatures of the sea) and load them onto a wooden boat before the storm began.



It may not sound like much, put like that, but considering the far-flung distribution of all the various creatures of the earth, and the difficulty of tracking down, say, all the varieties of paramecium without the benefit of a microscope, or sustaining desert flora on a water-logged ship, it was a considerable accomplishment.



I applaud the foresight, initiative, and ambition displayed by Noah and his family, but remain a little wary of the person or persons behind all that rain.


November 25, 1867 -
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize - George Bernard Shaw



A patent was granted to Alfred Nobel for dynamite on this date.

To quote Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, "May the Lord take a liking to you and blow you up real good!!!"


November 25, 1914 -
Joe DiMaggio was born on this date. In addition to leading the New York Yankees to ten World Series championships, Joe DiMaggio also got to marry Marilyn Monroe.



Be grateful for role models.


November 25, 1920  -
Contrary to popular belief, Macy's didn't host the first Thanksgiving Day parade (Macy's held their first parade in 1924, tied for second in the nation with the J.L. Hudson's Dept. store Thanksgiving Day Parade in Detroit)  - that honor goes to their longtime (and now defunct) rival Gimbel Brothers (Gimbels), in Philadelphia, which started the tradition on this date.



The first parade featured 50 costumed store employees leading a fireman dressed as Santa to the store on Eighth and Market Streets. Santa Claus, upon reaching Gimbels, would scale a fire truck ladder to the store’s eighth floor, conveniently the home of Gimbels Toyland themed dept.


November 25, 1963 -
The flag draped coffin containing the purported remains of the man, many Americans believed to have been John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And on November 29, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren the head of a commission to investigate the alleged assassination of the person believed to have been John F. Kennedy.



Be grateful the CIA, the Cuban exile community, the Rosicrucians, extraterrestrials, and the Children's Television Workshop don't give a damn about you.


November 25, 1970 -
Japanese playwright, poet, novelist, nationalist, body building enthusiast and patron of transvestite bars, Yukio Mishima (Kimitake Hiraoka) committed seppuku (self disembowelment) after an aborted coup attempt in Japan on this date.

He had authored over 100 works and was deemed by Life magazine the "Japanese Hemmingway".



One has to ask themselves - why is perfect purity only possible when you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood. (I don't know, maybe you don't ask yourself these type of questions.)


On November 25, 1977, Greece announced the discovery of the tomb of King Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great.

On November 26, 1922, archaeologists Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter opened the tomb of Egypt’s King Tutankhamen.

Be grateful that the high point of your job isn’t digging up people who’ve been dead for thousands of years.


November 25, 1987 -
Fawn Hall, Oliver North's assistant, removes documents from sealed National Security Council offices inside the White House by hiding them inside her skirt, causing President Ronald Reagan to form a task force which eventually put both North and Hall on trial.

Another true American Patriot

And so it goes


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Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear

November 24, 1958 -
A precursor episode to the science fiction television series The Twilight Zone, The Time Element aired on this date as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse anthology series on CBS-TV.



Though not the pilot episode of Rod Serling's series, The Twilight Zone, it was Rod Serling's production that lead to The Twilight Zone TV series. Because TV viewers at the time were not used to the kind of surprise, twist endings that for which the show ultimately became noted (and which this episode featured), Desi Arnaz appeared on-screen after the episode was finished and offered his "explanation" of what "really happened."


November 24, 1966 -
Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.

The Star Trek episode The Menagerie, Part II first aired.



(The whole episode, unaltered episode is now behind various pay walls.)

This episode incorporate most of the unseen (at the time) pilot episode of Star Trek, The Cage, featuring Jeffrey Hunter, as Christopher Pike, captain of the USS Enterprise.


November 24, 1968 -
Diana Ross and The Supremes song Love Child hit No.1 on the US singles chart, their 11th No.1 in the US, on this date.



The song is also notable for knocking off and keeping The Beatles massive Hey Jude off the top spot in the US.


November 24, 1988 -
That's very well lit for the bottom of a crater of a abandoned volcano at the bottom of the sea.



The first episode of  Mystery Science Theater 3000, Invaders from the Deep,  premiered on KYMA, in Minneapolis, Minnesota on this date.


November 24, 1996 -
Crowded House played their farewell concert, performing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to a crowd of over 100,000 ( with some estimates of 250,000 people in attendance) on this date.



In 2007, they get back together.


November 24, 2012 –
Gangnam Style by PSY became the most viewed youtube video surpassing 808 million views on this date.



The song was released on July 15, 2012. The song entered the Gaon Chart singles chart at #1 upon release, spending five weeks at the peak position. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 a couple of months later, giving PSY his first chart hit in America. As of yesterday, it was over 3.4 billion views.


I did not read this book


Today in History:
November 24, 1740 -
William Duell was hanged for rape and murder on this date. A few hours later, whilst being prepared for dissection by medical students, he awakened.

The authorities took pity on him and commuted his sentence to one of transportation to Australia.

Wow that must have freaked him out.


November 24, 1835 -
The provisional government of Texas authorized the creation of the Texas Rangers (Corps of Rangers) police force.

While it's nice to think so, there's no truth to the rumor that Chuck Norris was there at the beginning.


November 24, 1859 -

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species 160 years ago today.



And depending on your point of view, either this is a seminal work in scientific literature and arguably the pivotal work in evolutionary biology or,



you're a monkey's uncle (I certainly am, as my sister's four boys prove, time and again.)


November 24, 1874  -
Joseph Glidden was granted a patent (US patent no 157,124) for barbed wire on this date.

Glidden designed a simple wire barb that attached to a double-strand wire, as well as a machine to mass-produce the wire.


November 24, 1947 -
The House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve citations of contempt against 10 Hollywood writers, directors, and producers. These men had refused to cooperate at hearings dealing with communism in the movie industry held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).



The Hollywood 10, as the men were known, are sentenced to one year in jail. The Supreme Court later upheld the contempt charges. The fallout resulted in the famous Hollywood "blacklist," which was a list of movie industry professionals suspected of either being communists themselves or supporting communist activities.


November 24, 1963 -
Extra-terrestrials used mass-hypnosis to persuade the world that someone resembling Jack Ruby had fatally shot someone resembling the person alleged to have been Lee Harvey Oswald on this date. This also became the first actual murder captured on live TV.



The next day, November 25, the flag draped coffin containing the purported remains of the man, many Americans believed to have been John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And on November 29, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren the head of a commission to investigate the alleged assassination of the person believed to have been John F. Kennedy.



Be grateful the CIA, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, extraterrestrials, and the Children's Television Workshop don't give a damn about you.


November 24, 1966 -
The smoggiest day in the history of New York City occurred on this date, killing about 400 people.



The thick smog settled into the city, causing deaths from heart attacks and respiratory failure.


November 24, 1971 -
On Thanksgiving eve, DB Cooper boarded Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, and demanded $200,000 with the threat of a bomb. He parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 with the money over the Cascade Mountains near Ariel, Washington, and was never seen again.



A packet containing $5,880 of the ransom money was found in 1980 on the north shore of the Columbia River, just west of the Washington city of Vancouver, but he's still is missing.


November 24th, 1991 -
Freddie Mercury (45) the lead singer of Queen died, just one day after he publicly announced he was HIV positive.



In 2013, Gigwise readers named Mercury the best frontman ever.

(a brief aside - this was taken from a 1903 Ad. There is nothing that says Thanksgiving to me like a sociopathic child and his two murderous cub friends torturing a wild turkey moments before it's horrific death.)

And so it goes


Before you go - I didn't get a chance to post the most recent Puddles Pity Party last week -



This is one of my favorite American Standards (even though it's a French song) and it's delivered here just perfectly.


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Happy National Eat a Cranberry Day

Eat a Cranberry Day is celebrated this date each year. It was created in order to promote the health benefits of cranberries. (I have no idea why.)



Cranberries are ingredients in more than 1,000 food and beverage products. One of those beverages is the Cosmopolitan.


For those of you so inclined, today is Fibonacci Day.

Once again, I suggest celebrating by eating Fibanachos!


Today is the birthday of both Boris Karloff (1887)



and Harpo Marx (1888).



And that makes this a good day.


November 23, 1959 -
American International Pictures released one of the Classic 'B' movies of the late 50s, The Angry Red Planet, in the US on this date.



The 40-foot alien monster was actually a marionette about 15 inches high. It was essentially a combination of a rat, bat, spider, and crab.


November 23, 1963 -
The first episode of Doctor Who, The Unearthly Child, premiered on the BBC, on this date.



When this episode was first aired, parts of Britain were suffering a power failure. It was also the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. Both of these factors meant the program was only seen by a disappointing 4.4 million people. When repeated a week later, it was watched by 6 million.


November 23, 1969 –
The Rolling Stones made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, which aired on this date, singing  - Gimme Shelter, Love In Vain, and Honky Tonk Woman. They were promoting their latest album Let It Bleed.



This was their sixth and final appearance on the show.


November 23, 1983 -
James L. Brooks adaptation of Larry McMurty's novel, Terms of Endearment, starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Danny Devito, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow, opened in limited release on this date.



Debra Winger behaved erratically on the set of this film because she was trying to get over a severe cocaine addiction. At one point, she and Shirley MacLaine got into a shoving match.

Don't forget to tune into The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour today


Today in History:
November 23, 1499 -
A young man claiming to be the son of Edward IV landed in Cornwall, England, and declared himself King Richard IV. Unfortunately England already a king, the young man wasn't really the son of Edward IV, and his name wasn't Richard.

He was in fact Perkin Warbeck, and was therefore hanged to death on this date (as opposed to having been well hung.)


November 23, 1910 -
English murderer Hawley Crippen an American physician was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, England, after he was caught aboard the SS Montrose attempting to escape to Britain, on this date.

It was the first use of wireless radio for the apprehension of a criminal.


November 23, 1936 -
The first edition of Life, the picture magazine created by Henry R. Luce, was published on this date.

It was an immediate sellout.


November 23, 1976 -
Jerry Lee Lewis had been a bad boy again. On this date, he was arrested in front of Graceland in Memphis for public drunkenness, and carrying a chrome plated .38.



Looking to touch Elvis, I bet.


November 23, 1990 -
MTV banned Madonna's video Justify My Love due to its sexually-explicit content on this date.



Oh, do you remember when television was this quaint,



or Madonna was this relevant?



And so it goes

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