Today is the International Day Of Awesomeness -

It's a day for celebrating all things awesome, and everything awesome that you, your friends, and everybody else does.



It's also the birthday of Chuck Norris



Anyway that's what I read on the interweb.


March 10, 1938 -
Bette Davis won her second Academy Award and re-ignited her sagging career when Jezebel, premiered in New York City on this date.



Following a quarrel with William Wyler, with whom she was having an affair, Bette Davis embarked on an affair with Henry Fonda that greatly increased tensions on the set. After a phone call from Fonda's pregnant wife, she called things off.


March 10, 1972 -
Universal Pictures released the science fiction film Silent Running, directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Bruce Dern, on this date.



To keep costs down, Douglas Trumbull hired college students for modelmaking and other such special effects work. One of them, John Dykstra, went on to a distinguished special effects career of his own.


March 10, 1983 –
Despite the production value and Michael Jackson's star quality, MTV didn't play the video Billie Jean until the song was already a #1 hit. Les Garland, who ran the network at the time, claims that they loved the video and played it as soon as they could, but interviews with executives at Jackson's record company and with others familiar with the matter suggest otherwise. In the book I Want My MTV, multiple sources who worked at MTV claimed that the network wanted to air the Beat It video first, because Eddie Van Halen played on it and the song fit their format. Walter Yetnikoff, who was head of CBS Records (Jackson's was signed to its subsidiary, Epic), recalls threatening to pull all CBS videos from MTV if they didn't play Billie Jean. He says he threatened to bring Jackson's producer Quincy Jones in on it as well, and the network acquiesced. MTV broadcasted the video of Michael Jackson’s song Billie Jean for the first time, on this date.



When MTV started playing the clip, it was first put in medium rotation, then promoted to heavy rotation when viewers loved it. The video for this song is often credited with breaking the color barrier on MTV. When the video for Beat It was delivered, that one also went into hot rotation. For a two-month stretch in the summer of 1983, both videos were getting constant airplay, establishing Jackson as a video star. His next video effort was for Thriller, which revolutionized the form.


March 10, 1989 -
Terry Gilliam's fourth film, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, starring  John Neville, Eric Idle, Uma Thurman, and a whole bunch of other people, premiered on this date.



A moon city set was to have been built at Pinewood. However, since there was no money left to do this, Terry Gilliam took the sketches of the designs, and stuck them to a board. The 2D buildings were then moved forwards/backwards and left/right. The result is bizarre and effective. 


March 10, 1994 -
The surprise Australian independent hit, Muriel's Wedding, starring Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, and Bill Hunter went into limited release in the US on this date.



The writer/director P.J. Hogan wanted to use the music of ABBA in the film. At first, permission for the music to be used was denied. When the director promised to fly to Europe to plead his case to the founders of the band, permission was granted, as long as the band received a percentage of the film profits. The film turned out to be a big international hit, and thus helped inspire the very successful Broadway show which became the movie Mamma Mia!.


March 10, 1997 -
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon and starring Sarah Michelle Geller premieres on WB Television Network on this date.



The entire first season was filmed before the first episode went to air, giving them the opportunity to go back and re-shoot various scenes. The scene in the library where Buffy states "it's my first day..." was actually filmed on the last day of shooting, after they decided her original performance was too forceful and aggressive. Another scene added to the pilot (to fill in time, as it was shorter than expected) was the infamous "you have something in your eye" scene, where The Master blinds a vampire who had failed him.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
March 10, 1876 -
It was on this date in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell (Don Ameche) conducted the first successful experiment on a radical new technology. He put a "transmitter" in one room of his home and a "receiver" in another. He connected them with wire. He then shouted into the mouthpiece of the transmitter, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you."



A moment later, his assistant, who had been waiting in the room with the receiver, came into Bell's room and said he had heard and understood everything.



When Alexander Graham Bell finished his invention of the telephone, he noticed he had two missed calls from Chuck Norris.



The invention didn't enjoy much commercial success because the market for persons with out-of-earshot assistants named Watson was not as large as Bell had hoped, but it did serve as a major stepping-stone to one of Bell's most significant inventions, the Watson Detonator.


March 10, 1948 -
The State owned Communist newspaper reported that the Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk was thrown from a window at his apartment in Prague under mysterious circumstances on this date.

Authorities rule his death was a "suicide" and then decide to rule the death as accidentally because he seems to have "fallen while sitting in a yoga position on a window sill to combat insomnia". But most likely he was suffocated first, judging from the fact that he had lost control of his bowels and the deep nail marks on the window sill.

I hate when that happens.


March 10, 1948 -
...By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future....

Author and artist, Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at Highland Hospital, NC, along with eight other inmates on this date.



She was locked in on the 3rd floor while undergoing insulin-induced coma therapy.

I really hate when that happens.


March 10, 1951 -
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover announces that he has turned down an offer to become commissioner of baseball on this date.

The governor of California, Earl Warren, (and soon to be proponent of 'The Magic Single Bullet Theory',) had previously rejected an offer to become baseball's leader. Think how the nation would be different if baseball was able to fit Hoover with a pair of high heel cleats.


March 10, 1974 -
Second Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army surrenders to Philippine authorities on this date. He believed World War II was still underway and continued a 30 year guerrilla battle with other islanders. His final capitulation came when his senior officer, Maj. Taniguchi, ordered his surrender.



Upon return to the Japanese homeland, Onoda was treated as a hero, but had difficulty coping with his "postwar" life. Mr. Omoda died on January 16, 2014.


March 10, 1977 -
Roman Polanski gave a 13 year old girl Quaaludes and has sex with her during a photo shoot at Jack Nicholson's home on this date. He later fled the country to avoid statutory rape charges.

He would currently be living in Los Angeles (and probably having more fun) if he just went into the bathroom and auditioned his hand puppet alone.


March 10, 1977 -
Astronomers James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham and Douglas J. Mink discover rings around Uranus on this date.

Allow yourself to titter and guffaw like a school boy.


March 10, 1980 -
Jean Harris shot and killed her unfaithful lover, cardiologist Herman Tarnower, co-author of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet in his Purchase N.Y. home on this date.



She was granted clemency on December 31, 1992 by Governor Mario Cuomo after she served 12 years of a 15 year sentence. Harris was released in January 1993. Mrs Harris died in December 2013.

Sometimes, diets make you a little hangry



And so it goes.


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