Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Someday, a cure for happiness

Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19 - in the June 1992 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, a clinical psychologist proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder.



The article argues that happy people suffer from impaired judgment that prevents them from acquiring a realistic understanding of their physical and social environment.


Today is International Workers' Memorial Day.  The day is a day set aside to remember all of those people who have been injured or killed on the job.



Each year, more than two million women and men die as a result of work-related accidents and diseases.


April 28, 1939 -
Cecil B. DeMille
brought the Western into a new realm when Union Pacific, premiered in Omaha, Nebraska on this date.



Robert Preston, who appeared in several Cecil B. DeMille productions, not only disliked the director personally but felt he was inept at directing actors. The scene where Preston, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea are trapped in the boxcar took two weeks to film and, according to Preston, DeMille had nothing but "Action," "Cut," and "Print" to say to the actors. He didn't seem to care about scenes that did not include action or spectacle. When Preston became a bigger star, he turned down offers to appear in other DeMille films and avoided any relationship or contact with him.


April 28, 1965 -
Barbra Streisand's
first television special, My Name is Barbra, premiered on CBS-TV, on this date.



The audience segments were filmed in a small TV studio in New York City just down the street from where Barbra Streisand was performing in Funny Girl. The audience consisted of about 200 members of Streisand's fan club.


April 28, 1975 –
Tom Snyder
interviewed ex-Beatle John Lennon on The Tomorrow Show.



At the time, no one knew then that John Lennon would be taking an extended hiatus from public life, taking time to raise his son and live a less public life. The interview Lennon gave Tom Snyder in 1975 revealed he had tremendous humility and an affecting sense of humor.


April 28, 1979 -
The first of their four chart-toppers, Blondie's Heart Of Glass hits #1 in the U.S. on this date.



Blondie members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein wrote the first version of this song in early 1974, shortly after they first met. They didn't have a proper title for the song, and would refer to it as "The Disco Song."


April 28, 2011 -
Universal Pictures
mega-hit comedy Bridesmaids, starring Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph. Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Rebel Wilson, Matt Lucas, Michael Hitchcock, Jon Hamm, and Jill Clayburgh, premiered in the US on this date. (This film is my daughters' favorite comedy.)



The cast spent about two weeks improvising with each other, a lot of which was incorporated into the movie.


April 28, 2012
The Gotye song (featuring Kimbra), Somebody That I Used to Know hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart on this date.



The song was a commercial success, topping the charts in a number of countries including Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. It was the second best selling single of 2011 in Australia.


Today's moment of Zen.


Today in History:
April 28, 1789
-
In the middle of the South Pacific, the crew of the HMS Bounty, led by either Clark Gable, Marlon Brando or Mel Gibson mutinied, setting Charles Laughton, Trevor Howard or Anthony Hopkins and 18 other crewmen adrift in an open boat, so they can hang out with topless Tahitian teens.



Sometimes history is very confusing.


April 28, 1881 -
Billy the Kid
escaped from a New Mexico jail, killing jailer Bob Ollinger and a fellow prisoner in the process. Billy survived for another three months before Pat Garrett finally killed him.

Somehow Bob Dylan, Paul Newman, Dracula and Jane Russell's braless bodaeous ta-tas are involved in this story



Once again, history is exceedingly confusing.


April 28, 1910 -
In England, Claude Grahame-White became the first person to pilot a plane at night on this date.

The landmark flight came during the 1910 London to Manchester air race.


April 28, 1941 -
... Ever since I was four years old, I loved making people smile, making them think, making them feel good, feel some kind of emotion
.





Ann-Margret Olsson, actress, singer and dancer, was born on this date.


April 28, 1945 -
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisan fighters and executed (castrated and hung upside down on a meat hook - well, Mussolini had his junk removed - Clara, well, she just got hung.)



Just because you can get the trains to run on time does not mean that the voters love you (it should be a motto every politician has tattooed to their ass.)


April 28, 1947
-
Sailing from Peru on the balsa-raft Kon Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl began his six-man, 101-day expedition across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.



Heyerdahl's expeditions were spectacular and caught the public imagination. Although much of his work remains unaccepted within the scientific community, Heyerdahl increased public interest in ancient history and anthropology.


April 28, 1967 -
Muhammad Ali
refused to be inducted into the army because of religious reasons on this date, and was stripped of his boxing titles and sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for draft evasion.



The conviction was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court



Before you go - One of the most intelligent and entertaining people in the world, Stephen Fry, discusses the future of the Coronavirus pandemic.



The video strangely made me think of "Finland , Finland , Finland. The country where I quite want to be ..."



And so it goes


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