There was also a spike in the criminal class of dogs

Other things to occupy your mind with other than COVID-19 - Belgium once tried using cats to deliver mail.

In the 1870s, the town of Liège came up with the idea of employing 37 cats as their new mail couriers. The mail was loaded into waterproof bags that were tied around the kitties’ little collars and they were sent to their destination. However, this was quickly dropped as the cats proved slower and more unreliable than human post couriers. Who knew.


Today is National Coffee Day. If you love coffee (I don't), there are a bunch of places you can score free or very low cost cups of joe!

If you're passing by a McDonalds, Krispy Kreme, or Dunkin Donuts today and see what their special deal for the day is. (Buy a large coffee at Starbucks today, using your app, and your next coffee is free. You're welcome.)


For those of you not near your church calendar, today is the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. It's also known in England as Michaelmas Day. St. Michael is the patron saint of the sea and maritime lands, of ships and boatmen, of horses and horsemen. He was the Angel who hurled Lucifer down from Heaven for his offenses against God.

There’s a legend concerning Lucifer falling into a blackberry bush after being expelled from Heaven by St. Michael and spitting on the blackberries to make them bitter so that they cannot be picked after Michaelmas.

So kids, unless you want a mouthful of Satan's saliva, don't eat those blackberries tomorrow (unless you're into that.)

September 29, 1948 -
Laurence Olivier's powerful interpretation of Shakespeare's melancholy Dane, Hamlet premiered in New York City on this day.



This is the only movie version of Hamlet that entirely omits the characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Laurence Olivier was severely criticized for leaving them out of the movie, as they provide many opportunities for Hamlet to behave in a sarcastically humorous way toward them, and many felt that Olivier probably would have played these moments brilliantly. However, Olivier did retain a few of Guildenstern's lines ("put your discourse into some frame", et cetera) and gave them to Polonius.


September 29, 1953 -
The family comedy Make Room for Daddy, starring Danny Thomas, premiered on ABC TV on this date.



Danny Thomas was forced against his will to have Jean Hagen as his television wife. He could not stand her attitude, or what he considered her slovenly appearance. During one rehearsal, he is said to have have shouted, "For God's sake, Jean, put on a little lipstick." She left after the third season, and at the beginning of the fourth season, to assure that she could not come back, he had her character die.


September 29, 1954 -
The movie musical A Star Is Born, (the third version of the film, fourth, if you count What Price Hollywood) starring Judy Garland and James Mason, had its world premiere at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood on this date.



George Cukor offered Marlon Brando the role of Norman Maine on the set of Julius Caesar. "Why would you come to me?" asked Brando. "I'm in the prime of my life... If you're looking around for some actor to play an alcoholic has-been, he's sitting right over there"- pointing at his costar James Mason, who got the part.


September 29, 1954 -
United Artist released the Joseph L, Mankiewicz film, The Barefoot Contessa, starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart on this date. (If you haven't seen this movie, seek it out!)



The character of Maria Vargas is said to be based on Rita Hayworth, who was actually offered the part. Hayworth was a Latina who later married a prince, Prince Aly Khan. However, some elements were taken from Ava Gardner's life as well. The stormy relationship between Maria and tycoon movie producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) is based on Gardner's own relationship with billionaire film producer Howard Hughes.


September 29, 1955 -
The only film Charles Laughton directed, The Night of the Hunter opened in New York City on this date.



Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when he described the character as "a diabolical shit" Mitchum promptly answered, "Present!"


September 29, 1959 -
One of the first series that featured the lives of American teenagers, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, starring Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver and Tuesday Weld premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



The pilot for this series was the first professional acting job for Bob Denver, who had been a grade school teacher and postal worker before joining the cast. Denver's sister was a casting agent's secretary, and had his name added to the audition candidates for the role of Maynard G. Krebs.


September 29, 1960 -
We were all welcomed into the Douglas household when My Three Sons, starring another of TV favorite alcoholic dads, Fred McMurray, premiered on ABC on this date.



The show was originally going to be named The Fred MacMurray Show, but Fred MacMurray didn't like the idea.


September 29, 1963 -
My Favorite Martian, starring Ray Walston and Bill Bixby premiered on CBS-TV on this date.



Uncle Martin's Martian name was Exigius 12½.


September 29, 1967 -
Gerry Anderson's supermarionation take on superheroes, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons premiered on this date in the UK.



The face and voice of Captain Scarlet were both based on Cary Grant. In fact, Captain Scarlet's voice artist, Francis Matthews was chosen to voice the character based on the fact he could do a Cary Grant impression. In fact series creator Gerry Anderson came close to moving heaven and earth to get Matthews who had been either unintestered or unavailable. Anderson managed to convince Matthews to divide his time between onstage appearances in Noel Coward's play Private Lives and the Captain Scarlet voice recording sessions.


September 29, 1985 -
The Sci-Fi anthology series created by Steven Spielberg, Amazing Stories, premieres on NBC-TV on this date.



In the opening credits, the cave people and the twentieth century family watching them on television are played by the same actors and actresses.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
September 29, 1399 -
... For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings...



Richard II was deposed on this date,which only served him right for having posed in the first place. He was succeeded by Henry IV Part I.


September 29, 1513 -
Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, on this date (although he may have discovered it four days earlier - I'm not sure what the Spanish Navy's stance was on the the whole rum ... question.)

How something that covers roughly a third of the earth's surface could have been lost for so long is a question that stumps historians to this day.


It's Miguel de Cervantes' birthday today. Born in 1547, Cervantes is best known as the author of Don Quixote, a cunning satire on mental illness. The work is an epic treatment of the perennial question, "wouldn't the world be better off if we were all crazy?"

The answer from the novel is a qualified yes: the story supports the premise, but its length and lucidity suggest that the author himself was not crazy, which contradicts the premise.



Ever since the publication of Don Quixote, the idea of improving through world through mental illness has taken root in the popular culture of the west. From the good soldier Svjek and Prince Myshkin to Chauncy Gardener, Elwood P. Dowd and Forrest Gump, western readers and filmgoers have a galaxy of benevolent lunatics to show them the way to a better, purer existence. Grand mal seizures, delirium tremens, and hallucinations are merely the price of admission to their wistful world of blissful ignorance.



The sane and hard-working do not come off nearly so well in film or literature. In fact, sane and hard-working people seldom even appear in film or literature. No one wants to read about them, or spend good money to watch them go about their plodding lives, because most of us are surrounded by sane and hard-working people already and know what they're like—they're just like us, only less so.



Early to bed and early to rise may make a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise, but it won't do a goddamn thing for his Nielsens. In fact, if you're healthy, wealthy, wise, and well-rested, you're only going to piss the rest of us off. Lighten up, slack off, drink up, and spend plenty of quality time with imaginary friends.



That's the real road to happiness—or at least our acceptance, without which you have no right to be happy.


September 29, 1957 -
An explosion at the Chelyabinsk-40 complex, a Soviet nuclear fuel processing plant, irradiated the nearby city of Kyshtym with strontium-90, cesium-137 and plutonium on this date.



This accident releases twice the radioactivity of the Chernobyl incident.

Oops


September 29, 1976 -
At his birthday party, musician Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally shoots his bass player Norman Owens twice in the chest, trying to open a soft drink bottle with a .357 magnum. Owens survived and files a lawsuit.

Now don't you wish you were at that party !!!


September 29, 1988 -
Stacy Allison was one of several female mountaineers who took part in a competition to see who could be the first to climb Mount Everest.



After harsh weather conditions forced the other participants to turn around midway through their climb, Allison surprised many (including herself) by reaching the peak of 29,000 feet, being the first American woman to do so on this date.


September 29, 1989 -
Zsa Zsa Gabor, a person famous for no apparent reason and with no visible means of support (It's too weird to think that Zsa Zsa and her sisters were the original Kardashians, without the sex tapes), was convicted of slapping a Beverly Hills police officer on this date.



Gabor later complains that she was denied a jury of her peers, saying "It was not my class of people, There was not a producer, a press agent, a director, an actor."



And so it goes.


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