Should you run out of safe Thanksgiving dinner conversation

A demanding yellow and orange hedonist, with zero qualifications was elected as a protest despite having no experience, no platforms to speak of, no real power — and no opposable thumbs. Mayor Stubbs the cat, was the leader of Talkeetna, Alaska for nearly 20 years (from July 18, 1997 until his death on July 21, 2017.)



Talkeetna lies about halfway between Anchorage and the foothills of Denali National Park, in southern Alaska. A quirky community, the town of Cicely in Northern Exposure was based after Talkeetna.


November 24, 1948 -
Vittorio De Sica's masterful neorealist drama, Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), starring Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola premiered in Italy on this date.



It took careful planning and rehearsing to give the film its realistic look. Crowd scenes were meticulously staged and drilled, including one for which Vittorio De Sica hired 40 street vendors. The Roman fire department provided a "surprise" rainstorm for another scene. In addition, De Sica shot with as many as six cameras at once to get the untrained actors' spontaneous performances from several angles. Although the film looked like a documentary in places, the director's painstaking methods drove him over budget.


November 24, 1958 -
A precursor episode to the science fiction television series The Twilight Zone, The Time Element aired on this date as part of the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse anthology series on CBS-TV.



Though not the pilot episode of Rod Serling's series, The Twilight Zone, it was Rod Serling's production that lead to The Twilight Zone TV series. Because TV viewers at the time were not used to the kind of surprise, twist endings that for which the show ultimately became noted (and which this episode featured), Desi Arnaz appeared on-screen after the episode was finished and offered his "explanation" of what "really happened."


November 24, 1965 -
NBC aired the Frank Sinatra: A Man And His Music to honor Sinatra, on this date.



According to the April 1966 Esquire article Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese, Sinatra was suffering from a cold, when he started recording this special. If you pay close attention, you can see him wiping his nose with his hand while singing.


November 24, 1966 -
Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.

The Star Trek episode The Menagerie, Part II first aired.



(The whole unaltered episode is now behind various pay walls.)

This episode incorporate most of the unseen (at the time) pilot episode of Star Trek, The Cage, featuring Jeffrey Hunter, as Christopher Pike, captain of the USS Enterprise.


November 24, 1968 -
Diana Ross and The Supremes song Love Child hit No.1 on the US singles chart, their 11th No.1 in the US, on this date.



Motown founder Berry Gordy wrote this with staff songwriters Deke Richards, Pam Sawyer, R Dean Taylor and Frank Wilson. Instead of writing about love, they came up with a much more controversial song about a child born to unmarried parents.


November 24, 1972 -
Produced by Don Kirshner, the TV series In Concert debuts on ABC as a competitor to NBC's Midnight Special premiered on this date.



Guests on the first episode include Chuck Berry, Alice Cooper, Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Allman Brothers Band, and Poco. Alice Cooper’s appearance in the show caused the series to have their subsequent episodes sent to the networks in advance for approval before airing because Alice Cooper sort of freaked out the audience during their live performance.


November 24, 1988 -
The first episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Invaders from the Deep, premiered on KYMA, in Minneapolis, Minnesota on this date.



Tom Servo appears as "Beeper", and only Joel and Crow are present during the movie segments. The only broadcast episode in which Beeper is mentioned. He does not appear onscreen and by the next episode he had been modified to become Tom Servo.


November 24, 1996 -
Crowded House played their farewell concert, performing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to a crowd of over 100,000 (with some estimates of 250,000 people in attendance) on this date.



In 2007, they get back together.


November 24, 2012 –
Gangnam Style by PSY became the most viewed YouTube video surpassing 808 million views on this date.



Park Jae-sang is a South Korean singer/rapper, who is better known by his stage name, PSY, which stems from the first three letters of the word psycho. PSY is popular in his home country for the satirical slant of his songs and humorous videos and stage performances.


Another failed ACME Product


Today in History:
November 24, 1740 -
William Duell was hanged for rape and murder on this date. A few hours later, whilst being prepared for dissection by medical students, he awakened.

The authorities took pity on him and commuted his sentence to one of transportation to Australia.

Wow that must have freaked him out.


November 24, 1835 -
The provisional government of Texas authorized the creation of the Texas Rangers (Corps of Rangers) police force.

While it's nice to think so, there's no truth to the rumor that Chuck Norris was there at the beginning.


November 24, 1859 -

Charles Darwin was one of the first to formulate an argument for the scientific theory of evolution by means of natural selection, which he wrote about in his book On the Origin of Species. It was first published on November 24, 1859, priced at fifteen shillings with a first printing of 1250 copies.



Though some intellectuals latched onto Darwin's work with great enthusiasm, it generally caused controversy and outrage among Victorian society and he was vehemently attacked and ridiculed by the church.



And depending on your point of view, either this is a seminal work in scientific literature and arguably the pivotal work in evolutionary biology or, you're a monkey's uncle (I certainly am, as my sister's four boys prove, time and again.)


November 24, 1874 -
Joseph Glidden was granted a patent (US patent no 157,124) for barbed wire on this date.

Glidden designed a simple wire barb that attached to a double-strand wire, as well as a machine to mass-produce the wire.


November 24, 1947 -
The House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve citations of contempt against 10 Hollywood writers, directors, and producers. These men had refused to cooperate at hearings dealing with communism in the movie industry held by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).



The Hollywood 10, as the men were known, are sentenced to one year in jail. The Supreme Court later upheld the contempt charges. The fallout resulted in the famous Hollywood "blacklist," which was a list of movie industry professionals suspected of either being communists themselves or supporting communist activities.


November 24, 1963 -

Extra-terrestrials used mass-hypnosis to persuade the world that someone resembling Jack Ruby had fatally shot someone resembling the person alleged to have been Lee Harvey Oswald on this date. This also became the first actual murder captured on live TV.



The next day, November 25, the flag draped coffin containing the purported remains of the man, many Americans believed to have been John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And on November 29, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren the head of a commission to investigate the alleged assassination of the person believed to have been John F. Kennedy.



Be grateful the CIA, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, extraterrestrials, and the Children's Television Workshop don't give a damn about you.


November 24, 1966 -
The smoggiest day in the history of New York City occurred on this date, killing about 400 people.



The thick smog settled into the city, causing deaths from heart attacks and respiratory failure.


November 24, 1971 -
On Thanksgiving eve, DB Cooper boarded Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, and demanded $200,000 with the threat of a bomb. He parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 with the money over the Cascade Mountains near Ariel, Washington, and was never seen again.



No trace of Cooper is found during a massive search. In 1980, an eight-year-old boy will uncover a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington. Cooper left several lasting contributions ... the mystery: why did he do it, did he survive, and if so, where did he go and what did he do with the rest of the money; and a new aircraft design called the 'Cooper Vane,' a device that prevents the tail stairways on Boeing 727s from being lowered while in flight.


November 24, 1974 -
Coincidentally (see Origin of the Species), today should actually be Mother's Day.



An international team of scientists working in northeastern Ethiopia has found the partial skeleton of a three-million-year-old hominid on this date, that it claims is the most complete early man discovery ever made in Africa, the skeleton is better known and referred to as Lucy (after The Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds).


November 24th, 1991 -
Freddie Mercury (45) the lead singer of Queen died, just one day after he publicly announced he was HIV positive.



In 2013, Gigwise readers named Mercury the best frontman ever.



Before you go - Kids, don't let anybody fool you - Turkey is merely the excuse to have delicious stuffing. There are those who will make their stuffing with wild rice, oysters, saltines - I am not here to judge. I will merely present to you the stuffing that has been passed along on my mother's side of the family for more that 60 years - so good or bad, it's fed a lot of very hungry people.

And so it goes