Aristophanes ........... Ridiculous!

November 13, 1970
On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence; that request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that some day he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his friend, Oscar Madison. - Announcer, The Odd Couple



Felix moves in with Oscar and so the story of the Odd Couple begins on this date.


November 13, 1940 -
Walt Disney's third animated film Fantasia, opened in New York on this date.



Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski considered having fragrances dispersed into the theater at certain points in the movie to heighten the experience. Suggestions included cereus for Claire de Lune, jasmine for the Waltz of the Flowers segment of The Nutcracker Suite, incense for Ave Maria, and gunpowder for The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Disney dropped the idea because of the difficulty of clearing one scent from the theater before spraying in the next one.


November 13, 1954 -
Looney Tunes first 3D cartoon, Lumber Jack Rabbit, starring Bugs Bunny, premiered on this date.



Paul Bunyan's dog, named Smidgen in this cartoon, appears identical (except for his huge size) to the character Frisky Puppy that Chuck Jones had paired with Claude Cat in three previous shorts.


November 13, 1971 -
Steven Spielberg's first full- length film, Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, debuted on ABC-TV on this date.



According to Richard Matheson, he was inspired to write the original short story Duel after an encounter with a tailgating truck driver on November 22, 1963, the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.


November 13, 1975 -
Morris Albert's song Feelings went gold on this date.



In 1987, Morris Albert was found guilty of plagiarism, with a jury finding that this borrowed heavily from a French song from 1956 called Pour Toi.



You can blame me later for this ear worm


November 11, 1976 -
Rod Stewart's Tonight's The Night, with some French cooing by his girlfriend Britt Ekland, hits #1 in America for the first of eight weeks.



The phrase "sex rock" entered the lexicon in 1975, thanks to an article in Time magazine about the rise of songs like this one that are clearly about a seduction. With the genre defined, various groups started protesting it, including Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). This song was a target and used as an example of one that was loosening the morals of young people.


November 13, 1987 -
Sonny & Cher were guests on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and after a short interview the pair agreed to sing I Got You Babe for a delighted audience, on this date.



Clearly extremely comfortable with one another, the divorced pair happily sang together and couldn't hide their glee and they smiled broadly to one another during the entirely of the song.


November 13, 1991 -
The first animated film to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast premiered in Hollywood on this date.



All songs were the last complete works for a movie by Academy Award winner Howard Ashman. Ashman died eight months prior to the release of this movie. This movie is dedicated to Ashman; at the end of the final credits, you can read the dedication: "To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful."


November 13, 1993 -
Kate Bush's musical short film The Line, The Cross & The Curve (an extended music video featuring songs from Bush's album The Red Shoes) starring Kate Bush, Miranda Richardson and choreographer Lindsay Kemp, premiered at the London Film Festival on this date.



The film was released direct-to-video in most areas and was only a modest success. Soon after its release, Bush effectively dropped out of the public eye until her eighth studio album Aerial was released in November 2005.

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


Today in History:
While it is a particularly uneventful day in history, let us opine these words:

"The students are beyond control and their behavior is disgraceful. They come blustering into the lecture-rooms like a troop of maniacs and upset the orderly arrangements which the master has made in the interest of his pupils. Their recklessness is unbelievable and they often commit outrages which ought to be punishable by law, were it not that custom protects them."



People concerned about the pace of change in human affairs can find solace in knowing that these familiar sentiments were expressed about sixteen centuries ago by St. Augustine, who was born on November 13, 354 AD.



Like many other theological luminaries, Augustine began life as a debauched young man who sought his pleasures in wine, women, and song. Augustine admitted in his autobiography Confessions, that as a boy he "told lies to my tutors, my masters and my parents all for the love of games and the craving for stage shows." Eventually he became old and cranky and declared his youth wasted.



All of the things that occurred during the drunken orgies of his youth recounted in his Confessions do not hold a candle to the crap coming out of Marjorie Taylor Greene office.


November 13, 1789 -
Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend in which he said, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."



I would include, "please accept the results of an election when they are certified."


November 13, 1927 -

The New York Holland Tunnel officially opened today, the first underwater tunnel built in the United States, providing access between New York City and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River, ushering in a massive wave of Dutch immigration (and more fools them - The tunnel was named after its chief engineer, Clifford Milburn Holland, who died of a heart attack on the operating table while undergoing a tonsillectomy, as a posthumous honor, starting the trend for the NY/NJ interstate crossings to have names with no relation to their geographic locations).



Although most of the Dutch returned to Holland after learning that New Amsterdam had become New York.


November 13, 1947 -
The AK-47 assault rifle development by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the Soviet Union was completed on this date. The rifle was one of the first assault rifles to be created.



Today, it is the most widely-used assault rifle in the world — more AK-47 models have been made than all other assault rifle models put together.


November 13, 1955 -
Happy Birthday Caryn



Whoopi Goldberg (Caryn Elaine Johnson) actress, comedienne, and television host, was born on this day.


November 13, 1965 -
Appearing on a late night live satire program called BBC3, critic Kenneth Tynan becomes the first man to say “Fuck” on TV.

A national fit of apoplexy follows with one Tory MP suggesting that Tynan should hang!


November 13, 1966 -
Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first astronaut to successfully work in space without tiring, during the Gemini 12 flight. (Previous astronauts suffered from fatigue carrying out tasks during EVA).



Aldrin worked outside the Gemini craft for 2 hours and 6 minutes, demonstrating that astronauts could work outside their transport.


November 13, 1971 -
The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first space probe to orbit another planet when it enters into orbit around Mars on this date. The probe’s mission was to return photographs that would map seventy percent of the surface while conducting a study of the planet’s atmosphere.



Analysis of the data returned by the probe revealed that the planet is covered in dried river beds. Two Soviet probes achieved the same orbit about a month later.


November 13, 1974 -
Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Okla., was killed in a 'car crash' while on her way to meet a reporter on this date.



The Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plants closed in 1975. The grounds of the Cimarron plant were still being decontaminated more than 40 years later.


November 13, 1982 -
Maya Lin's simple yet elegant Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on Veteran's Day to the veterans of the Vietnam War on this date (the memorial was opened to the public a few days earlier.) The memorial was built with polished granite, and it displays the names of over 60,000 veterans.



No federal funds were used to construct the wall. Private contributions from individuals, corporations, veterans and other organizations, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund raised almost $9 million.


It is the sixth anniversary of the deadly Paris attacks, massacring 130 people in the bloodiest terror attack in years.



Please take a moment out of your day to remember the victims and their families.


Before you go - I still don't understand the concept of holiday long-form commercials in England. Aldi, another European supermarket chain, that is somehow related to Lidl but not really worth going into here, has brought back their beloved (?) company icon Kevin the Carrot for their highly-anticipated Christmas campaign A Christmas Carrot featuring Ebanana Scrooge.-



Before I ask this question that is troubling me, allow me to show you another food related commercial - Marks and Spencer Food Court -



Can someone explain to me the bizarre fetish of anthropomorphizing food stuffs and making their greatest desire is to be eaten. And this is somehow tied to Christmas?

This year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will arrive in New York City this morning.

The 79-foot Norway Spruce from Elkton was cut down Thursday morning and loaded on a truck. The spruce made the 145-mile trip from Devon and Julie Price's home in Maryland to Manhattan on the back of a flatbed truck. The official lighting ceremony with be on December 1 - avoid the area at all cost.



And so it goes