It's Michaelmas Day

For those of you not near your church bulletin, 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.)


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. Bring in a clean reuseable cup at Starbucks today, and your coffee is free. You're welcome. (Friday is International Coffee Day. The inclusion of alcohol in your coffee to celebrate is between you and your maker.)


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.



Penney Parker beat a then-unknown actress named Mary Tyler Moore for the role of Terry. According to Danny Thomas, the only reason Parker got the part was because he felt Moore's nose looked different enough from his so that nobody would believe she was his daughter.


September 29, 1954 - The movie musical A Star Is Born, (the fourth version of the film, fifth, 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.



Because the role of Norman Maine is that of a has-been actor, it was rejected by Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Ray Milland, Gregory Peck, Tyrone Power, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart and Robert Taylor before being finally accepted by James Mason. Judy Garland did suggest her former The Harvey Girls co-star, John Hodiak, for the role, but Hodiak was unavailable at the time.


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!)



Joseph L. Mankiewicz wanted James Mason, whom he had just directed in Julius Caesar, for the part of the nobleman. MGM executive Nicholas Schenck, who had had a vehement disagreement with the director, would not release Mason for the film. According to Mankiewicz, he ended up with Rossano Brazzi, "who cannot act, cannot be sensual . . . could hardly speak English . . . " Ironically, Rosemary Matthews, who was hired to help Brazzi with his English, and Mankiewicz later married.


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



Later on in life, Robert Mitchum, who was usually indifferent to such matters, said that Charles Laughton was his favorite director and indicated that this was his favorite of the movies in which he had acted.


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.



A pilot for a "Zelda" spin-off starring Sheila James was produced in 1962, but was scrapped after James T. Aubrey, then head of CBS, rejected this. James was told by producer/director Rod Amateau that Aubrey found Zelda "too butch", a critique that deeply worried James, then a closeted lesbian. James, under her real name of Sheila Kuehl, went into law and politics after acting parts dried up, eventually becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California State Assembly and a California State Senator.


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.



Don Grady almost left the show when Tina Cole was cast as Katie. In an interview, Cole revealed that Grady felt she wasn't his type. As it turned out, they eventually fell in love in real life and almost got married not once, but twice.


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



Ray Walston admitted later that he regretted taking the role of Uncle Martin. He took it for the money, and felt that it prevented him from getting substantial roles for many years. He enjoyed working with Bill Bixby, and they became lifelong friends.


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



The Spectrum organizations' radio code SIG stood for Spectrum Is Green (essentially an OK), whilst the less used SIR stood for Spectrum Is Red (indicating a dangerous situation). Both radio codes have been borrowed by American private spaceflight firm SpaceX to describe its readiness for rocket launches, modified to "SpaceX Is Green" or "SpaceX Is Red."


September 29, 1969 -
Paramount Television's anthology comedy series Love, American Style, premiered on ABC-TV on this date.



For several seasons, the show — considered risqué at the time — topped-off a powerhouse ABC lineup on Friday nights with The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple.


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



The series title came from the magazine Amazing Stories that was founded in 1926. The name was licensed, at that time, from T.S.R. Hobbies who were the then owners and publishers of the magazine.


Another failed ACME Product


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