The limits of multi-tasking

Woman crashes car while shaving bikini area.



NY Post, March 8, 2010. A woman who shaved her bikini area while driving caused a car crash in Florida Keys, prompting police to issue fresh warnings about safe driving, MyFox National reported Monday.

Megan Mariah Barnes, 37, crashed into another vehicle on Cudjoe Key after giving her ex-husband the wheel as she shaved her private parts.

Barnes was driving to meet her boyfriend in Key West and told authorities she wanted to be “ready for the visit,” WJZ.com reported.

I want to thank Megan for everyone - we now have the benchmark to match all of stupid human endeavors.

Today in History - March 9, 1170 -
In Essex, a UFO is spotted over St. Ostwyth, manifesting itself as a "wonderfully large dragon ... borne up from the Earth through the air". The craft kindled the air and destroyed a house.



And all of that was before LSD.


March 9, 1454 -
Amerigo Vespucci was born. He was an Italian explorer who made many voyages to the new world at about the same time as Columbus.



The two continents of the new world were therefore named for him, and it wasn't until the seventeenth century (Greenwich time) that North and South Vespucci were renamed the Americas.


March 9, 1556 -
David Rizzio, the secretary to Mary, Queen of Scots, is stabbed 56 times by a gaggle of Scottish nobles. Her husband Henry Lord Darnley had orchestrated the murder with Mary witnessing, hoping to precipitate a miscarriage.

Isn't love among the royalty grand?


March 9, 1954 -
"No one familiar with the history of his country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."



Edward R. Murrow, cigarette smoking, gin guzzling reporter takes on the cigarette smoking, whiskey drinking junior senator and demigogue from Minnesota, Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare hysteria on his program, See It Now.

Besides being arguably television's finest hour, it clearly demonstrates the powers of gin.


March 9, 1954 -
The first local color television commercial was aired on WNBT television, now WNBC television, in New York. Castro Decorators of New York City, Castro were the folks who made the Castro convertible sofa beds.



The television commercial featured Bernadette Castro opening a big couch into a bed (only the B & W kinescope exists.)

It was so-o-o easy! Let me see you try it.

March 9, 1961 -
Korabl-Sputnik-4, also known as Sputnik 9, was launched with a dog named Chernushka (Blackie) on a one orbit mission. Also onboard the spacecraft was a cosmonaut dummy (whom Russian officials nicknamed "Ivan Ivanovich"), mice and a Guinea pig.

The dummy was ejected out of the capsule during re-entry and made a soft landing using a parachute. The animals were recovered unharmed inside the capsule. Chernushka went on to a successful career as the provincial governor of the Kazakhian region. The Cosmonaut dummy could not be used again as 'Blackie' had spent the entire flight 'having a brief but intense' relationship with the leg of Ivan Ivanovich.


March 9, 1967 -
Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, walks into the U.S. Embassy at New Delhi and asks to defect (some reports have it that she defected on the 6th of March - does it really matter - you don't give a damn.)



Isn't parental love grand?


March 9, 1981 -
Dan Rather succeeds Walter Cronkite as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News.


He was the third person to occupy that seat since the program's 1948 launch. His last broadcast was March 9, 2005.


March 9, 1996 -
Nathan Birnbaum, the comedian Gracie Allen carried around for years, forgot to have his daily martini and died on this date.



Kids, let this be a lesson to us all - not only does alcohol taste good, it's good for you - even if you are 100 years old.


March 9, 1997 -
Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) was killed in a drive-by outside the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles. The murder has never been officially solved, though an ongoing feud with Death Row Records may have had something to do with it.



Are we lucky that most of us aren't hip hop stars.



And so it goes

This is going to end badly

Icelandic voters have voters not to repay their loans to Britain and the Netherlands. Have these people never seen a Guy Richie flick?

So, how did you do in your Oscar Pool?

The Shorts category is always the killer. Nick Park was robbed. The Best Foreign picture was a surprise. And I just couldn't pick Sandra Bullock over Meryl Streep.

It's International Women's Day today. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women.



It's convenient that it occurs during Women's History Month.

March 8, 1945 -
George Michael Dolenz, Jr., actor, musician, director and circus boy was born on this date.




Here is your Today in History -
March 8, 1933 -
The quintessential backstage musical, 42nd Street, premiered in New York City on this date.



... Remember Sawyer, you're going out there a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!


March 8, 1950 -
Marshal Voroshilov announces the existence of the Soviet atomic bomb.

This baffled the western powers, who were sure they had left it somewhere safe.



33 years later, on this date, the ever swift President Ronald Reagan gets around to calling the Soviets, "an evil empire".


March 8, 1959 -
The apex of the golden age of Television was achieved on this date when Groucho, Chico and Harpo make their final TV appearance together.

It was all down hill from here (sorry I could find a clip.)


March 8, 1968 -
The Soviet submarine, K-129, sinks in the Pacific Ocean, killing all 97 crewmembers aboard. Later in the year a U.S. submarine secretly retrieves an encryption machine, codebooks, and nuclear warheads from the Soviet vessel.



A further bold attempt is made in 1974 to bring up the entire submarine using the CIA ship Glomar Explorer, built by Howard Hughes. That mission supposedly fails, and is made public by the Los Angeles Times to the great embarrassment of the Agency.


March 8, 1969 -
Mad Monster Party is released by Embassy Pictures for Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc on this date.



It's the silliest party of the year ... and you're all invited!


March 8, 1999 -
Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

This Just In - Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
www.thedailyshow.com

And did you leave your Mr. Coffee machine on?


And so it goes.

Hey did you know?

The 82nd annual Academy Awards are on ABC TV tonight.







Hopefully, you're not a Cablevision customer in New York.


March 7, 1936 -
Walt Disney's Mickey's Grand Opera, premiered on this date.



I'm not a big Disney fan (especially Mickey Mouse) but this one is pretty funny


March 7, 1962 -
Alain Resnais' enigmatic masterpiece, L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad), opened in the US on this date.



I'll tell you the plot - a man meets a woman at a European spa and tries to convince her (and himself) that they met one year ago. You'll have to see it over and over ago to try to understand it.


March 7, 1964 -
John Frankenheimer's under appreciated almost documentary-like thriller set set during WWII, The Train, premiered on this date.



Burt Lancaster took a day off during shooting to play golf when the shooting was about half completed. On the links, he stepped in a hole and re-aggravated an old knee injury. In order to compensate for the injury, Frankenheimer had Lancaster's character shot in the leg, thus enabling him to limp through the rest of the shooting.


March 7, 1986 -
This was a Red Letter Day for Daniel Day Lewis. The stars somehow aligned for him and both My Beautiful Laundrette and A Room With A View, opened in NYC on this date.





Lewis was relatively unknown in the US at that time and critics raved about how great the range of his talent was to play such vastly different characters. (It's called acting)


Today in History:
The Monopoly board game is 87 years old today. Thank your rich Uncle Pennybags.



(Quite truthfully, the history of the Monopoly game is so complicated, for legal reasons, just go with this date, don't ask about Elizabeth Magie's 'The Landlord Game' and her patent of March 23, 1903).


March 7, 1945 -
Gen. George Patton urinates in the Rhine after the U.S. Third Army takes the bridge at Remagen.


So remember, you can't slap a soldier for cowardice but you can piss in your enemy's river.


March 7, 1955 -
Peter Pan, the first full-length Broadway production broadcast in color, (starring Mary Martin and the show's original cast) was shown on this date.





It was so well received that the musical was restaged again live for television on January 9, 1956. Both of these broadcasts were produced in color, but only black-and-white kinescope recordings survive.


March 7, 1988 -
Transvestite actress Divine, who appeared in several John Waters films, dead from sleep apnea. Divine was about to join the cast of Married with Children when she unexpected died.



The producers of Married With Children sent flowers to the funeral, along with a humorous card that read, If you didn't want to do the show, you could have just SAID something!


The Crazy Mixed-Up Russian Revolution
March 7, 1917 -
Russia's 1917 February Revolution began on March 7, which was then the middle of February, in the city of St. Petersburg, which was then Petrograd, in what was then Russia, but would soon be the Soviet Union.

Tsar (or Czar) Nicholas II of the Romanov (or Romanoff) line had been away from St. Petersburg (or Petrograd) most of the winter, leading his army against the German Empire's Eastern Front (or Russia's Western Front).

Russia's peasants and workers had become exhausted by the war and its attendant famine and were exasperated by the Tsarina's indifference to their suffering. They were furious with the government, which had become two governments and therefore twice as bad. And they were tired of all this nonsense about March being February, St. Petersburg being Petrograd, the Czar being Tsar, and all those crazy, mixed-up fronts.

In short, the peasants were revolting. And so these poor bastards began a series of riots and strikes that eventually led to what is now known as the February Revolution.

With her usual delicate touch, the Tsarina tried to assuage the rioters by having them shot, but her soldiers refused to fire on the crowds. She therefore ordered the soldiers to shoot themselves and was disobeyed again.



It was a bleak moment for the House of Romanov, which like most monarchies had endured through the centuries largely as a result of its soldiers' willingness to shoot people.


On March 7, 1918 the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Russian Communist Party.



Bolsheviks is Russian for majority, as opposed to Mensheviks, which means minority. The Mensheviks, however, were in fact the majority party in 1918, and the Bolsheviks the minority, so the name change helped ease the work of journalists, who had become so confused they'd begun writing stories about children and ducks.


And so it goes.

The Dude Abides

March 6, 1998 -
The Coen's Bros. off-kilter take on a Raymond Chandler detective story, The Big Lebowski, opened on this date.



The Dude never actual seen bowling in the movie. (Jeff should be a lock on the Oscar tomorrow.)


It's Dentists' Day today

Dr. John Greenwood, George Washington's personal dentist, constructed the first 'dental foot engine' 0n this date in 1790.



He adapts his mother’s foot treadle spinning wheel to rotate a drill

Today in History -
Michelangelo Buonarotti was born on this date in 1475. He painted and sculpted so much that people finally decided it was time to stop procrastinating and have the Renaissance.



So they did.


On March 6, 1619, Cyrano de Bergerac was born. Mr. de Bergerac was a brilliant French satirist and playwright, a rapier wit, and, from all contemporary accounts, an accomplished musician, an enthralling conversationalist, and a charming ladies' man.



He is best known for his nose.


March 6, 1836 -
Davey, Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. The Alamo was seized by Santa Ana - 3,000 versus 147, it wasn't much of a fair fight. The holdouts suffered unnecessary deaths, disobeying direct orders by remaining, and losing their arms and cannon to the Mexicans. Davy, Pioneer, Patriot, Soldier, Trapper, Explorer, State Legislator, Congressman was one of the last holdouts to die on this day.



Remember the Alamo


March 6, 1965 -
Remember, you're defending this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did!

Margaret Dumont, Groucho's favorite comic foil, died on this date.







Although Groucho used to tell people that Dumont rarely understood the humor of their scenes together and would ask him, Why are they laughing, Julie? - Groucho had a deep affection and respect for her, privately calling her practically the fifth Marx brother.


March 6, 1970 -
In NYC’s Greenwich Village, a townhouse at West 11th St. exploded. SDS Weathermen members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins were killed at the site where a bomb was being manufactured.

Other members went underground and became known as the Weather Underground.


March 6, 1981 -
After 19 years presenting the CBS Evening News, Uncle Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, signs off for the last time.



Cousin Jon Stewart, has now taken on the mantel.



And so it goes.

Kids, remember, gambling is illegal.

For your Oscar pools this weekend: The smart money says The Hurt Locker & Kathryn Bigelow are a lock.


I'm in fierce negotiations to get these guys as my new sponsors



Remember, there's always parking in the back.


I found this wonderful montage of film noir clips



And is was all brought to you in glorious black and white.


March 5, 1978 -
Mae West's final film, Sextette, was released on this date.



I just can imagine this film was ever made - It's just so wrong on so many levels.


March 5, 1954 -
The Classsic B movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon, premiered on this date.



Pop the popcorn.  Turn off the lights. Get comfortable on the couch and watch it (again.)


Today in History -
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five civilians by British troops on March 5, 1770 and its legal aftermath, which helped start the American Revolutionary War. Colonists were already resenting the Townsend Acts, a very early WHO album. Tensions caused by the heavy military presence in Boston led to brawls between soldiers and civilians, and eventually to troops shooting their muskets into a riotous crowd. Among the five killed was an African American sailor, Crispus Attucks.

SO you can see, the tradition of killing innocent black men in American is older than the Republic.


March 5, 1922 -
F.W. Murnau's version of the Dracula story, Nosferatu, premiered in Berlin, on this date.



F.W. Murnau set out to make a film based on the Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, but was denied the rights to the property by Stoker's estate. Undeterred, however, Murnau merely changed the title to Nosferatu, the name of the title character to Count Orlok.  Murnau found Max Schreck so ugly in real life, he decided the vampire makeup would suffice with just pointy ears and false teeth.


March 5, 1933 -
Germany went on a 12 year drinking binge - the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote in German parliamentary elections, enabling it to join with the Nationalists to gain a slight majority in the Reichstag.

Adolf, Evil Bastard, Hitler had become chairman of the Nazi party in 1921, and two years later he tried to topple the German republican government in the "beer-hall putsch." Nazi storm troopers surrounded government officials during a meeting at a beer hall in Munich. The troopers forced the officials to swear allegiance to the Nazi revolution. But the coup was defeated and Hitler fled, then he was captured and imprisoned. While in prison, Hitler dictated his autobiography Mein Kampf (or, in English, I'm Crazy and I'm Gonna Kill You or How I Intend to Enslave or Kill Millions of People Immediately Upon My Release) to a sympathetic scribe, and the book became important to Nazism.



The failed coup made Hitler famous ( he already began selling the cryptic t-shirt 'World Tour 1939 - 1945'), and the Nazi party capitalized on the economic depression of 1929, as well as the heavy reparations Germany was made to pay for World War I, and they became a powerful force in Germany. In 1932, Hitler ran for president of Germany, but lost. The next year, he became the chancellor. Just before the parliamentary elections in 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, which led to the Reichstag Fire Decree, which rescinded habeas corpus and other protective laws.



The following week, March 5, 1933, the Nazi Party won a slight majority in the elections. Within three weeks, the Nazi-dominated Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial powers and ended the Weimar Republic in Germany.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, beer, Bavarians and the ballot do not mix.


It was on this date in 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, that Winston Churchill made his famous observation that, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent."



The speech was not well received at first, as the people of Fulton weren't sure which continent he was talking about and they didn't care what sort of drapes were fashionable in foreign parts.



Bizarre ironies of History -
On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Josif Stalin, truly Evil Bastard, did not emerge from his room the next day, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.



Although his guards thought it odd that he did not rise at his usual time, the next day they were under orders not to disturb him and he was not discovered until that evening. He died four days later, on March 5, 1953, at the age of 74, and was buried on March 9. His daughter Svetlana recalls the scene as she stood by his death bed "He suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse upon all of us. The next moment after a final effort the spirit wrenched its self free of the flesh." Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after the stroke, gone about "spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him", and then, when Stalin showed signs of consciousness, dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.



His body was preserved in Lenin's Mausoleum until October 31, 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.


The famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev lived in dread fear of getting on the wrong side of Stalin. Always looking to appease the Evil Bastard, he died at the age of 61 from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953 (the same day and even hour and cause that Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin died.)


 Prokofiev had lived near the Red Square and for three days the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin made it impossible to carry Prokofiev's body out for the funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composer's Union. Paper flowers and a taped recording of the funeral march from his Romeo and Juliet had to be used, as all real flowers and musicians were reserved for Stalin's funeral.


Herman J. Mankiewicz, producer and alcoholic screenwriter, best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of Citizen Kane, for which they both won an Academy Award and famously clashed over credit, died of uremia poisoning in Hollywood, CA on March 5, 1953,



the same day as Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev.


March 5, 1963 -
Virginia Patterson Hensley (Patsy Cline), country music singer has an unfortunate close enounter with an airplane on this date.





What was it with singers and small planes in the early 60's


March 5, 1982 -
John Belushi found dead at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood from a cocaine and heroin overdose. A sketchy woman, Cathy Smith, is later charged with administering the fatal injections.



Sorry but there was really nothing funny about that - it was just a waste.


March 5, 1989 -
Darwin Award nominee Michael Anderson Godwin, previously on death row for murder but with sentence commuted to life imprisonment, dies in a toilet-related accident at the Central Correctional Institution in South Carolina. Godwin, sitting on a stainless steel toilet, bit into headphone wires that were connected to his television. He was immediately electrocuted.

[Moral: use a porcelain toilet. And eat more fiber.]



And so it goes

It looks like a class reunion

A very funny video from Funny or Die featuring many former SNL cast members.

Grow a pair and pass this bill


I say it every year but today is my favorite day - March 4th - the day that tells you to do something.

March 4, 1950 -
One of the classics from the Golden Age of Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, was released on this date.



By all means, please, stop eating or drinking while watching this cartoon, you may injury yourself. Also looking for the rising price of kreplach.


March 4, 1961 -
Michelangelo Antonioni's landmark of European cinema, L'avventura, premiered in the US on this date.



At its premiere at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, this was booed so much to the extent that Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti fled the theater. However, after the second screening there was a complete turn around in how it was perceived and it was awarded the Special Jury Prize


Today in History -
March 4, 1837 -
The "Windy City", "Chi-Town", "Second City," and the "City of Broad Shoulders" - Chicago becomes incorporated as a city.



10,000 extra votes from various local cemeteries were counted that day alone. Remember, vote early, vote often.


March 4, 1861 -
The first official flag of the Confederate States of America, called the Stars and Bars, having seven stars, for the seven states that initially formed the Confederacy, is formally adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

This flag was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the Union flag under battle conditions, so the flag was changed to the Stainless Banner. The union of the Stainless Banner, known as the Southern Cross, became the one more commonly used in military operations. The Southern Cross had 13 stars, adding the four states that joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, and the two divided states of Kentucky and Missouri.

While, the Southern states were adopting their banner, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States on this date as well.

So now you know.

March 4, 1884 -
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson begin their work on the case in A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, on this date (or maybe it didn't. I'm not going to join the massive debate the Holmesians get involved in with the accuracy of this date.)



...There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.....


March 4, 1952 -
Ronald Reagan marries his 'mommy' Nancy Davis, in the San Fernando Valley, on this date.




March 4, 1960 -
Lucille Ball files divorce from Desi Arnaz on this date.



Waaaa, Ricky I don't want to be married anymore to you, you lousy two bit band leader.


March 4, 1966 -
John Lennon claims that The Beatles are "more popular than Jesus", and that "Christianity will... vanish and shrink".



I guess he was wrong about that.


March 4, 1974 -
The first issue of People Magazine featuring actress Mia Farrow, starring in the movie The Great Gatsby, was released on this date.

The duration of your stay in the bathroom has never been the same.


March 4, 1994 -
Comedian John Candy died on this date.



Stuffed cabbage and hot coffee for everybody!!!



And so it goes

This could be momentous

Oxygen-enriched booze makes for less-intense hangover



Ars Technics - New research shows that ingesting oxygen-enriched alcoholic beverages can help the body metabolize them faster than normal drinks, without affecting how well or quickly the body absorbs the drink in the first place. While the process might produce a less-intense hangover, oxygenated drinks that dissipate more rapidly won't exactly help customers get their money's worth.

Write the King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden right now. I sense a Nobel prize groundswell here.


Saw a good clip to that has most of Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearances in his films



How many of them have you seen?


March 3, 1923 -
The first issue of Time magazine, created by Briton Hadden and Henry Luce (the first weekly news magazine in the United States), was published on this date. It featured on its cover, Joseph G. Cannon, the retired Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

It has been suggested that TIME is an acronym, for The International Magazine of Events.


Here is your Today in History -
Russian Tsar, Tzar, Czar Alexander II issued a manifest and ends feudal control of serfs as part of a program of westernization.

The Russian serf lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty. Their oppression, which continued even after their liberation, caused riots, assassinations, and literature. Finally they had the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to make the serfs equal to everyone else, and it worked.

From that point forward, everyone lived a hopeless life of back-breaking labor and desperate poverty.



The American surfdom can only be blamed for the Beach Boys and Annette Funicello.


March 3, 1863 -
The National Conscription Act is signed, forcing all men between 20 and 45 years of age into the draft lotteries. Except for rich bastards, who could buy their way out for $300, or hire another man to serve in his place.



The inevitable result is the week long New York Draft Riots.


March 3, 1887 -
A 21-year-old teacher arrives in Tuscumbia, Alabama to tutor her wild and increasingly uncontrollable 6 year old pupil.



Anne Sullivan was legally blind and Helen Keller was blind and deaf. They accomplished more in their lives than most abled body people.


March 3, 1931 -
An English beer drinking song becomes the National Anthem of the United States. The lyrics to said drink song are -

To Anacreon in heaven where he sat in full glee,
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice, fiddle aud flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name and inspire you to boot!
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus and Bacchus's vine.

I believe drinking heavily is the key here.



I'm not sure if the spitting was in the original version of the anthem.


March 3, 1931 -
On the same day President Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act adopting The Star-Spangled Banner, as the national anthem, Cab Calloway recorded the classic Minnie The Moocher.



It became the first million-selling jazz album.

...Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie....


March 3, 1934 -
John Dillinger escapes from an escapeproof jail in Crown Point Indiana, using a wooden pistol he carved himself. It's his second escape.



Remember, J. Edger is just months away from slicing up the corpse of Dillinger for his own personal collection.


March 3, 1959 -
An embittered and confused Lou Costello rouses himself from his hospital bed to mutter, Fuck you Abbott, Who's on first now, coughs up bloody phlegm and dies.



Bud Abbott, ten years older than Lou, smiles to himself, lights a cigars and live another 15 years to spite his former partner.


March 3, 1991 -
Los Angles Police officers are filmed beating black motorist Rodney King with nightsticks. Television news stations repeatedly air the film nationwide.



Four whites are charged with the beating on March 15, and when they are found not guilty, Los Angeles erupts in riot.


And so it goes.

Boy, I'm getting old.

Everybody is up in arms about the Post Office cutting Saturday delivery. I can remember when the Post Office delivered the mail TWICE a day.

The Fine Bros. are back and not a moment too soon



Remember, the Oscar are on Sunday on ABC.


My joy is complete. Another story read by Werner Herzog.



I can barely see the computer screen from my tears of laughter.


March 2, 1900 -
Kurt Weill, composer, Brecht collaborator, was born in Dessau, Germany.







... It is the hope that is in every human heart The deliverance we await for tomorrow ...


March 2, 1944 -
Lewis Allan Lou Reed singer, songwriter, poet and guitarist was born (on the wild side.)







Ya should have seen them go,go,go...


Today in History -
When he was a young man, no one knew for sure if Nicholas I of Russia, the son of Paul I, was Czar, Tsar, or Tzar. It was hard to know anything at all about someone whose last name was a vowel, especially when he lived in a hermitage. Nicholas was therefore as confused as he was powerful, which inevitably led to his becoming an Evil Bastard.

He didn't realize what an Evil Bastard he'd become until he lost the Crimean War, however, at which point he discovered that in addition to being Evil he was also an Incompetent Bastard. This made him Autocratic and he therefore died on March 2, 1855.

His first son Alexander, was left to ponder all of this when he became Alexander II on the same day.


On March 2, 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev was born with a big red splotch on his head, so he got right into politics. Mr. Gorbachev was the last Evil Bastard to reign over the Soviet Empire. Fortunately, he was also Bumbling Bastard, and his invention of glasnost and perestroika accidentally made walls fall down in Germany.

This caused Boris Yeltsin to ride on top of a tank and was therefore historical.


On a less Russian note, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born more than 100 years ago today, on March 2, 1904. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and is one of only a few men in history to have written illustrated books in verse about a pedophiliac cat.



You can hardly blame the guy for changing his name.


March 2, 1939 -
Howard Carter dies of King Tut's curse.



But dammit remember there is no mummy's curse.


March 2, 1944 -
A train of mixed military/civilian passengers stalls inside a tunnel outside Salerno, Italy, asphyxiating 426 from fumes. Authorities question Mussolini on the necessities of have trains run on a timely basis to meet ones death in such an unpleasant manner.

But he was having his own problems at the time.


March 2, 1968 -
Syd Barrett leaves Pink Floyd, after melting his mind with various extremely dangerous drugs. He spends the following years mumbling about pork chops and refrigerators.



Come on you raver, you seer of visions, Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

March 2, 1982 -
Science fiction author Philip K Dick dies of a stroke in Santa Ana, California. Since 1974 the author had been possessed by a superalien who arrived in his head via a beam of pink light.



It has been suggested that Mr Dick and Mr Barrett had been in regular communication via the pork chops in his refrigerator.

March 2, 1997 -
Don P. Wolf and a team of researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center announce that they had produced rhesus monkeys from cloned embryos, the first successful use of cloning-related technology in primates.

Isn't this how the whole the Planet of the Apes begins.


Speaking of monkeys, The film King Kong opened today in 1933. In the original film, the character's name is Kong -- a name given to him by the inhabitants of "Skull Island" in the Indian Ocean, where Kong lived along with other over-sized animals such as a plesiosaur, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs. 'King' is an appellation added by an American film crew led by Carl Denham, who captures Kong and takes him to New York City to be exhibited as the "Eighth Wonder of the World".



Kong escapes and climbs the Empire State Building (the World Trade Center in the 1976 remake) where he is shot and killed by aircraft. Nevertheless, "it was beauty who killed the beast", as he only climbed the building in the first place in an attempt to protect the lead female character Ann Darrow.


And so it goes.

Did you get your Pig a card today?

Today is National Pig Day honoring the porcine fellow. According to one of the holiday's creators, the purpose of National Pig Day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals."



Everybody should go wallow in the mud and kiss a pig (or not.)


Happy March folks.

I can't remember the old saying, March comes in like a killer whale and goes out like an accident victim.

The name of March comes from ancient Rome, when March was the first month of the year and called Martius after Mars, the Roman god of war. In Rome, where the climate is Mediterranean, March is the first month of spring, a logical point for the beginning of the year as well as the start of the military campaign season. The numbered year began on March 1 in Russia until the end of the fifteenth century. Great Britain and her colonies continued to use March 25 until 1752, the same year they finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. Many other cultures and religions still celebrate the beginning of the New Year in March.

Among the things we celebrate this month are:
* Cataract Awareness Month
* Hemophilia Month
* Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Awareness Month
* Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month (Please stay out of Katie Couric's butt!)
* Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month (Please no joke or I'll have Sarah Palin up my butt.)
* Rosacea Awareness Month
* Deaf History Month
* Feminine Empowerment Month
* Foot Health Month
* Frozen Food Month
* Humorists Are Artists Month
* International Hamburger & Pickle Month
* Irish-American Heritage Month (Please don't let the Catholic High Schools know that St. Patrick's Day can be celebrated all month long.)
* Professional Social Work Month
* Red Cross Month (Hopefully they'll catch a break and there'll be fewer disasters this month.)
* Talk with Your Teen about Sex Month



* Social Worker's Month (If you don't talk to your kids about sex.)


Today in History:
March 1, 1810 -
Frédéric François Chopin, one of the best-known and best-loved composers of the Romantic period, was born on this date.



Chopin’s entire musical output was devoted to his favorite instrument, the piano.


March 1, 1932 -
A man, most likely not the convicted and executed Bruno Hauptmann, climbs a makeshift ladder to the 2nd floor of Charles Lindbergh's New Jersey home and snatches his twenty-month-old son, Charles Jr. Whoever took the baby left behind a poorly-written ransom note demanding $50,000 in small bills.





Interesting aside, leading the investigation for the New Jersey state police was Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, father of the Gulf War hero, “Stormin Norman,” who shares his name.


March 1, 1954 -
The first hydrogen bomb is detonated at Bikini. Even though the bomb was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded there in 1946, no islanders were evacuated this time. Almost 300 people suffered radiation exposure. The test was so successful that it blew the once happy island into tiny bits that came to be known collectively as the Bikini Atoll.



Shrewd fashion moguls in France put two and two together and invented bell bottoms.


About four hundred years earlier--on March 1, 1562--Jason and his thousand Huguenots were at prayer in Vassy, France, when they were suddenly massacred by Catholics. Huguenots and Catholics subsequently fought The Wars of Religion for over three decades to settle the question of Best Religion Ever. Unfortunately the Edict of Nantes granted religious tolerance in 1598 and the question was never settled to anyone's satisfaction.

As a result, billions of human beings continue to honor the wrong religion to this very day. I truly hopes God is grading on a curve. . .


March 1, 1969 -
While performing with the Doors at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, the formerly svelte, now tubby alcoholic Jim Morrison asks the audience Do you wanna see my cock? then exposes himself briefly on a Miami stage.



For thus showing his peepee, Morrison received a sentence of six months hard labor.

Mr. Mojo Rising indeed.


March 1, 1971 -
You may not need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows but... The radical group Weather Underground explodes a bomb in a restroom of the U.S. Capitol building, causing significant damage. The bomb exploded after an intensive search of the building yielded no results.



Nobody is ever convicted of the attack.


March 1, 1978 -
The body of Charlie Chaplin is stolen for ransom by Galtcho Ganav (Bulgaria) and Romnan Wardas (Poland) from a cemetery in Corsier, Switzerland. The actor's corpse is recovered two months later.

One can only hope the little tramp was properly embalmed.


And so it goes.