Felix, Felix, Felix

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.



Even after more than 70 years after its release, Disney still receives complaints from parents claiming the Night on Bald Mountain sequence terrified their children.


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



This was the only Warner Bros. cartoon filmed in 3D. It was intended for release with House of Wax, which was also filmed in 3D.


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



During the chase, a parked sedan resembling a squad car is seen, briefly raising Dennis Weaver's hopes, but it turns out to be a service car for a pest exterminator named Grebleips... "Spielberg" in reverse.


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 Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section played on this song. They were a group of four musicians who started their own studio - Muscle Shoals Sound - in 1969 after doing sessions at FAME studios for Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and many other popular soul acts. The famous story the musicians tell is that when Stewart arrived at the studios and saw them getting ready, he refused to believe they were the band - he was sure the guys he heard playing on those records were black, and had a hard time accepting that four white guys could deliver so much soul.


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.



Angela Lansbury (Mrs. Potts) thought that another character would be better suited to sing the ballad, "Beauty and the Beast." Directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise asked her to make at least one recording to have for a back-up; that one recording ended up in the movie.


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.


Word of the Day


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 Lauren Boebert mouth.


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, once again, "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 eigthth 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. McDonald's UK released their annual holiday advert, concerning the Fancy a McDonald's this Christmas?.



And the short answer is, No, no thank you.



At least the Amazon commercial is only a minute this year. I still can't imagine Americans sitting for more than a minute for a commercial, even for one from Amazon.

And so it goes