If you can't control your peanut butter ....

... you can't expect to control your life. - Bill Watterson


According to the Nation Peanut Board, Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches are good for the planet.



It takes fewer than five gallons of fresh water to produce one ounce of peanuts, and peanuts add beneficial nutrients to the soil.

Today is Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Peanut Butter and Jelly Day celebrates the most popular sandwich in America! Studies show that there is a 75% chance that if you drop a slice of peanut buttered bread, it will fall face down.



Enjoy every sandwich kids.


On this day, April 2, 1902, Tally's Electric Theatre was established in downtown Los Angeles as the first theater built only for motion pictures.

Moving pictures had been seen in France and other parts of the U.S., but the Electric Theatre was the only theatre dedicated to showing moving pictures exclusively.


April 2, 1942 -
One of the (in)famous 'censored' Looney Tunes, Any Bonds Today?, was released on this date.



This movie stands as a testament to the rapid rise in popularity of Bugs Bunny. Only a year and a half earlier, Bugs had been introduced to the public in A Wild Hare and already the Treasury Department had commissioned a special Bugs film to sell war bonds.


April 2, 1948 -
I Taw a Putty Tat, another classic Sylvester and Tweety cartoon, premiered on this date.



Look for the first appearance of Hector the Bulldog.


April 2, 1966 -
The film based on Sister Luc-Gabrielle, a Belgian nun who had a #1 US hit with the French language song Dominique, The Singing Nun, starring Debbie Reynolds, opens in theaters.



Unfortunately, the lovable nun was a one-hit wonder whose life did not continue happily after her brief blush of chart success. After leaving the church for a full-time music career, she ran into heavy financial problems and eventually took her own life.


April 2, 1968 -
Stanley Kubrick's influential science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, premiered in Washington D.C. on this date.



Stanley Kubrick calculated that it would take one person 13 years to hand draw and paint all the mattes needed to insert the assorted spacecraft into the starry backgrounds. Kubrick hired 12 other people, and did the job in one year.


Pink Floyd was at one point approached to perform music for the film. However they turned it down due to other commitments. Yet they retain a connection with the film: much like The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon, it is said that Pink Floyd's song Echoes from the album Meddle can be perfectly synchronized with the Jupiter & Beyond the Infinite section of the film.

You figure out how much dope you have to smoke in order to make that work out.


April 2, 1971 -
The last episode of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which aired on ABC-TV, was shown on this date.



Due to the grueling five-shows-a-week schedule, the expense and the difficulty of video editing in those days, most scenes were shot in a single take. Actors and actresses routinely flubbed their lines and searched for the teleprompter, set pieces collapsed, props malfunctioned, crew members walked into shots, microphones and secondary cameras got in the way, and it all wound up being preserved, because the production team figured each episode would only be seen one time. Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds are the only actors to appear in both the first and the last episodes of the series.


April 2, 1978 -
The popular series Dallas premiered on CBS-TV as a five week mini-series, on this date.



Most of the cast wore their own clothes during the pilot episode and subsequent installments of the first season instead of clothing from the studio wardrobe department.


April 2, 2006 -
Gnarls Barkley's Crazy makes history by becoming the UK's first-ever #1 single to top the chart solely on download sales.



Gnarls Barkley is producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and vocalist Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway). Danger Mouse produced The Gorillaz album Demon Days; Cee-Lo was in Goodie Mob. The name "Gnarls Barkley" is a play on "Charles Barkley," who is a Hall Of Fame basketball player and an outspoken commentator. The moniker came up in a conversation between Danger Mouse and some of his friends when they were throwing out weird ideas for band names.


Today's moment of Zen


(Unfortunately, I am running around with a work project this week, so today, and probably the rest of the week, will be abbreviated postings)
Today in History -
Back in the eighth century, countries had not yet been formally invented. That part of western Europe known today as France was simply called Frankland. This helped distinguish it from neighboring areas, such as Georgeland to the north and Hansland to the east. The Franks had allowed themselves to be ruled for several generations by the Merovingians. The Franks hoped that the Merovingians would someday make them a country, preferably France.

Unfortunately the Merovingians had names like Merowig, Dagobert and Childeric, and were therefore unlikely to produce a serious nation, such as France, but more likely Luxembourg or Liechtenstein.

Working directly beneath the kings of the Merovingian line, however, was a family that had been increasing its power and influence in the Frankish court for several generations. These were the descendants of Arnulf, and they were much more serious than the flaky Merovingians.

The Arnulfians were all named either Pepin or Charles, and they all served as Mayors of the Palace. It wasn't much of a title, but it let them siphon power from the Merovingians until the kings had no power left at all.

The last Merovingian king was Childeric III. When he realized he was finally powerless, that the office of the palace mayor had usurped all the power of the monarchy, he became upset and refused to trim his whiskers.

He was shaved, and sent off to live in a monastery.

The first Arnulfian king was Pepin the Short, son of Charles "the Hammer" Martel, son of Pepin the Easily Confused. Pepin the Short had two sons, Charles and Carloman. The boys were too young to have acquired official nicknames, but were almost certainly referred to affectionately as Chuckie and Carlo, possibly in that order.

King Pepin got the Pope's approval to be king, and immediately afterward began exterminating Saracens. This was a favorite recreation of European royalty at the time. History is ambiguous about these so-called Saracens, who afflicted southern and eastern Europe during this period. They may have been an aggressive species of deer, fierce carnivorous birds, or even swarms of disease-carrying rodents. Some historians call them "Mussel-men"--presumably half-mussel, half-man: such a monster is too terrible to imagine, especially if you like seafood. We know only that it was necessary to kill them, and that Pepin did this admirably.

Finally he died.

Chuckie and Carlo divided the Frankland between them until Carlo died, at which point Chuckie became king of everything.

It seemed inappropriate to call him Chuckie from that point forward, and so he came to be known as Big Chuck. As he got older, he became Charles the Great, and eventually, of course, he turned out to be Charlemagne.



He conquered a lot of territory, killed a lot of Saracens, and is often credited with the invention of France, or at least something that closely resembled it.

He was born on April 2. I forgot to mention that.


April 2, 1513 -
Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon landed on the coast of Florida on this day looking for the fabled "Fountain of Youth," (Fountains of Wayne hadn't formed as a group yet, so tickets would not have been on sale.)



The Captain exclaimed that he had discovered a new land and claimed it for Spain. This annoyed the native population almost immediately and Leon and his explorers made a hasty retreat to Cuba, though the territory remained officially the property of Spain until the 1800s.


April 2, 1917 -
The world must be made safe for democracy

104 years ago today, President Woodrow Wilson, delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress and recommended that a state of war be declared between the United States and the imperial German government.



Congress granted the request four days later, and the US entered World War I. Luckily, Mr. Wilson hadn't had his debilitating stroke yet - Mrs. Wilson was still working on throwing her voice.


April 2, 1992 -
The head of the Gambino crime family, John Gotti (known as the "Teflon Don" for his ability to avoid conviction,) was finally convicted on 13 counts that included murder and racketeering on this date.



Gotti was found guilty on all counts, and served out the rest of his life in jail.

Remember kids - For the wages of sin is death.


Before you go - If you're around Westport CT the next few days,

Why not check out VersoFest - I'll be there, (working).



And so it goes.