Spring is the time of plans and projects.

Bunkies, I know for some of you, Winter never really seemed to start this year

but Winter appears to be officially over.



While you are attempting to balance those eggs and brooms today, remember that the Vernal Equinox occurred at 11:06 PM (EDT) this evening.



That means it’s spring. This year, please don't take off your clothes. Cautiously venture outside, come back in and have a nice cuppa.



And avoid opening up a 1,000 year old book while you're on a picnic (if you know what's good for you.)



Also, this is the last time this year that you can call in sick because of your New Year's Eve celebration from the night before; Happy Nowruz or Persian New Year as it is sometimes known as - hopefully this does not put me in the wrong with the NSA.


It's the Feast of St. Joseph, stepdad to Jesus and patron saint of real estate closers (that's why the pastries are for him - he's a closer.)
https://youtu.be/gxOrwT2j5JI?feature=shared

Remember to go out and have the very delicious Sicilian pastry that bears his name (but get the ones with canolli filling, not the custard.) It's so good, it brings you that much closer to God.

Also, if you live in Capistrano,



Remember the swallows are coming back today, eat you pastries indoors.


March 19, 1947 -
Another Bob Hope film (at the peak of his career), My Favorite Brunette, opened in Los Angeles on this date.



Bing Crosby, Bob Hope's long-term co-star and rival in the Road movies, plays an executioner who is livid when he doesn't get to execute Hope's character. Hope fires back saying, "He'll do any kind of role" (at the time, Crosby was a top star - but here he was doing a one-scene cameo.)


March 19, 1958 -
The film based on the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical, South Pacific, was released on this date. (Please feel free to sing along with Rossano Brazzi)



This is the only theatrical film adaptation of a Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II stage show to have all the songs intact, with the addition of the song My Girl Back Home, which was cut from the play before it opened.


March 19, 1962 -
Bob Dylan's self-titled debut album went on sale in the US on this date. Initially, poor sales led the record to be known around Columbia Records as "Hammond's Folly" (John Hammond was producer of Dylan's early recordings and the man responsible for signing Dylan to the label).



The album was praised by Village Voice as an "explosive country blues debut," but it featured only two Dylan original compositions, Talkin' New York and Song To Woody, the rest being old folk standards.


March 19, 1962 -
Luis Buñuel's sacrilegious masterpiece, Viridiana, opened in the US on this date.



After years of living in Mexico, Luis Buñuel was persuaded to make his first film in his native Spain, since 1936 by the vanguard of contemporary young Spanish film-makers who admired his work.


March 19, 1975 -
Columbia Pictures releases Ken Russell's unique version of Tommy, starring The Who, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner, Elton John, and Jack Nicholson, premiered on this date.



According to Pete Townshend, Oliver Reed had incredible problems recording his part of the soundtrack owing to his inability to sing, and he was able to complete it only because his singing parts were recorded in small bits. Because of this frustrating experience, Townshend was extremely suspicious towards Jack Nicholson when he was chosen to the role of the doctor. Townshend, however, finally agreed when he heard Nicholson singing effortlessly.


March 19, 1977 -
It was the end of the road at WJM-TV when the final episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Last Show, aired on CBS TV on this date.



In an interview years later Mary Tyler Moore said that the scene where they embraced and then huddled to the tissues was not in the script, because of the emotion of the final episode the embrace was real and so were the tears. Moore also said when she did the famous 'light off before leaving' scene, they could only do it once as studio lights took forever to come back on.


March 19, 1984 -
CBS TV premiered the midseason replacement show Kate & Allie starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin on this date.



Jane Curtin and Susan Saint James previously starred together in the movie How To Beat The High Cost Of Living.


Today's moment of Zen


Today in History:
March 19, 1931 -
Though unregulated gambling had taken place in mining towns all over Nevada, gambling was outlawed in the early 20th century as part of a nationwide campaign against corruption.



The state re-legalized it on this day in 1931, and became the state's primary source of revenue.


March 19, 1943 -
Francesco Raffaele Nitto, better known as, Frank 'The Enforcer' Nitti, one of the top henchmen of Alphonse "Big Al" "Scarface" Capone and later the front man for the mob Capone created, the Chicago Outfit, was having a very bad day. Many top members of the Chicago Outfit were indicted for extortion. The Outfit was accused of trying to strong arm some of the largest Hollywood movie studios. The studios had cooperated with The Outfit to avoid union trouble stirred up by the mob.

The day before his scheduled grand jury appearance, Nitti shared breakfast with his wife in their Riverside, Illinois home at 712 Selborne Road. As his wife was leaving for church, Nitti told her he planned to take a walk. After his wife left, Nitti began to drink heavily. He then loaded a .32 caliber revolver, put it in his coat pocket, and walked five blocks to a local railroad yard. Two railroad workers (William F. Sebauer and Lowell M. Barnett) spotted Nitti walking on the track of an oncoming train and shouted a warning. They thought the train hit him, but Nitti had managed to jump out of the way in time. Then two shots rang out.

The trainmen first thought Nitti was shooting at them, but then realized he was trying to shoot himself in the head. The two bullets went through his hat. Nitti finally sat on the ground against a fence and, with the railroad workers watching from a distance, shot himself in the head on this date.


March 19, 1941 -
The Tuskegee Airmen, an elite African-American Army unit —the first to welcome black pilots - was activated on this date.



After two years of training, the Tuskegee Airmen “Red-Tail Angels” were sent to Europe and proved themselves as accomplished battle pilots.


March 19, 1945 -
The Third Reich's World Tour was drawing to an abrupt close. And the band members were understandably depressed. The ever wacky and truly evil bastard Adolf Hitler issued his so-called "Nero Decree" on this date, ordering the destruction of German facilities that could fall into Allied hands.



Albert Speer, gave himself a birthday present today (avoiding the noose at the Nuremberg trials) and does everything he can to stop this from happening, in direct defiance of Hitler. Speer knew he had some precedent, Hitler also had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin the previous summer, but Dietrich von Choltitz thought better of his Fuhrer's order.


March 19, 1953 -
NBC TV aired The Academy Awards on television for the first time on this date. Though the winners had been announced several months earlier, the program still garnered a lot of attention.



The show was hosted by Bob Hope and Conrad Nagel.


March 19, 1957 -
Elvis Presley was touring and has a vision. Before he immediately act upon it, St. Elvis wolfed down seven fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and agreed to purchase the 14 acre Graceland estate from Ruth Moore for $100,000 on this date.



The place is now his cemetery. Or is it?


March 19, 1982 -
The guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads, died during the Diary of a Madman tour after the plane he is flying in buzzed the band's tour bus and clipped the wing of the plane, crashing into a nearby farmhouse.



Kids, once again, repeat after me, Drugs are bad.


March 19, 1987 -
Televangelist Jim Bakker resigns his PTL ministry after it is revealed he was delivering a little too much spiritual healing to former church secretary and future Playboy playmate Jessica Hahn.



Some $265,000 in ministry funds had been used to keep Hahn quiet about a one-time sexual encounter in 1980. (Given that some unnamed executive paid $130,000 to kept his 'supposed' nine month affair a secret; that was one very expensive tryst.)


March 19, 2003 -
President George W. Bush announced on this date, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a military mission to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The American led coalition began with the launch of U.S. cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs aimed at Saddam Hussein near Baghdad.



The war was internationally unpopular from the start, and lost a lot of popularity in America after Bush's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were found to be unsubstantiated.


March 19, 2005 -
John Zachary DeLorean former American engineer and executive in the U.S. automobile industry, and drug dealer died on this date.



He quit GM in 1973 to launch the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in Northern Ireland. Eight years later, the DeLorean DMC-12 hit the streets.

8,900 cars were built.



And so it goes.