Kids, Rosebud was the damn sled.

Jay Leno admits he wants The Tonight Show back. Conan agrees to be sodomized by NBC for 32 million dollars. And John Edwards finally admits he fathered that baby.

Do you have the stomach to watch 100 of the cheesiest lines in the movies



I will allow you to excuse yourself and run to the bathroom if you need to do so.


January 21, 1966 -
George Harrison married model/actress Patti 'Layla' Boyd whom he met on the set of the Beatles movie, Hard Day's Night.





The couple later divorced in 1974 and she married Eric Clapton (whom she divorced in 1989 .)


Today in History:
January 21, 1793 -
On a chilly Monday, stripped of all titles and honorifics by the republican government, citizen Louis Capet was guillotined in front of a cheering crowd in what today is the Parisian Place de la Revolution. The executioner, Charles Henri Sanson, testified that the former King had bravely met his fate.

An early urban legend has the King months earlier suggesting a slant and beveling of the blade, for better cutting action.

Sometimes, people should just keep their opinions to themselves.


January 21, 1908 -
New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public,



only to have the measure vetoed by Mayor George Brinton McClellan, Jr., two weeks later.


January 21, 1924 -
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Vladimir I. Lenin) driving force behind the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the first great dictator of the Soviet Union dies from a massive stroke on this date.

Lenin, idolized during his life -- an icon after his death, helped along by an unusual effort to preserve his corpse. For decades after his death, Russians lined up in all weather to view Lenin's body on display in a glass container inside a special mausoleum in Red Square. A triumph of the embalmer's art, the corpse was removed on a regular basis for the special top-secret treatments that kept it looking remarkably lifelike.

I'm going to let you sick puppies go on your own to this site - you can enjoy the sight of the nude, mummified corpse of Lenin getting his rejuvenating bath.


January 21, 1957 -
Patsy Cline sang Walking After Midnight on Arthur Godfrey's nighttime television show, quickly launching her career



If only she sang Don't Go Flying in Inclement Weather, things might have been different.


January 21, 1959 -
Former Our Gang child star Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer arrived at Moses "Bud" Stiltz's home in Mission Hills, California, to settle an alleged debt owed to Switzer.

Previously, Switzer had borrowed a dog from Stiltz which was lost, but eventually found, Switzer paying the man who returned the dog $50. Switzer went to Stiltz's house to collect the money "owed" him. He banged on Stiltz's front door, demanding that he let him in, flashing a fake police badge. Once Switzer got inside he and Stiltz got into an argument. Switzer informed Stiltz that he wanted the money owed him. However, when Stiltz refused to hand over the money, the two engaged in a physical fight. Switzer bashed Stiltz in the head with a lamp, which caused Stiltz to bleed from his left eye. Stiltz retreated to his bedroom and returned holding a gun, but Switzer immediately grabbed the gun away from Stiltz, which resulted in a shot being fired but neither man being hit. Then Switzer forced Stiltz into a closet, despite Stiltz having gotten his hands back on the gun. Switzer then allegedly pulled out a knife and was attempting to stab Stiltz with it. But just as Switzer was about to charge Stiltz, Stiltz raised the gun and shot Switzer in the chest. Switzer died of intense blood loss while on his way to the hospital. He was 31 years old.



Switzer's death was largely ignored in the media, mainly because director Cecil B. DeMille had died on the same day.

Kids, never loan a dog to a former child star.


January 21, 1960 -
The Little Joe 1B was a Launch Escape System test of the Mercury spacecraft, conducted as part of the U.S. Mercury program, on this date. The mission also carried a female Rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) named Miss Sam in the Mercury spacecraft. The six pound monkey survived the 8 minute 35 second flight in good condition.

Miss Sam retired from the space program and enjoyed a successfully career in the "Straw Hat" theatre circuit, starring in, among other things, The Little Foxes and A Doll's House.


January 21, 1968 -
A B-52 bomber crashes near Thule Air Base, contamining the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.

If you have the bomb, the US government would be happy to take it off your hands - no questions asked.


And so it goes.

Words to live by ...

Let this be the motto of all the soon to be unemployed - I'm Conan O'Brien and I'm three days away from the biggest drinking binge in history. Who knew Conan knows my father-in-law, whose life's motto is, Better drunk and not sick.

It sounds less alcoholic in Italian.


January 20, 1956 -
Bill Maher, actor, comedian, political analyst and professional pot smoker, was born on this date.





Can't wait for the new season of Real Time to begin in February


January 20, 1949 -
Another classic film from the writer/ director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives, premiered on this date.



Although never seen, Celeste Holm's Addie Ross hovers over everything in the film.


Here is your Today in History -
Jimmy Naismith was born in Ramsay township in Ontario, Canada in 1861. He grew up and eventually went to McGill University in Montreal. He became their Athletic Director and in 1891 he moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, to take a post at the YMCA Training School. It was there that he was confronted with the problem of developing a game that could be played indoors and in relatively little space.

On January 20, 1892, with only two peach baskets, a soccer ball, and a hand-written list of 13 rules, Dr. Naismith oversaw the world's first full game of a brand new sport, a sport that took its name from the peach baskets and soccer ball used to play it.

He had finally invented Peach Soccer (as opposed to Peachbasket - see January 15.)


January 20, 1936 -
King George V of England is euthanized with injections of cocaine and morphine, after a painful cancer illness. His final words, a mumbled God damn you!, were addressed to his nurse when she gave him a sedative before his final lethal injection. His physician was motivated not only to ameliorate the king's suffering, but also to break the story in the morning edition of the newspapers, rather than the less appropriate evening journals.

Remember kids - Promptness is the politeness of kings.



At the procession to George's Lying in State in Westminster Hall, as the cortege turned into New Palace Yard, the Maltese Cross fell from the Imperial Crown and landed in the gutter. The new King, Edward VIII, saw it fall and wondered whether this was a bad omen for his new reign.

He would abdicate before the year was out.


January 20, 1920 -
Federico Fellini, director, screenwriter, producer, painter and cartoonist, was born on this date.











My favorite quote about Fellini - comes from his manager and goes something like this - Fellini's going to make the film because he doesn't want to give back the money.



And so it goes.

Please children, schooch closer

While it's no Christopher Walken reading Goodnight Moon - Werner Herzog reads Curious George



If only Klaus Kinski was alive.


January 19, 1952 -
In the first match-up between Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny, Operation: Rabbit, premiered on this date.



Wile E. Coyote speaks for the first time (he describes himself as a "genius"). And remember, Mud spelled backwards is Dum.


January 19, 1949 -
Robert Palmer, blue-eyed soul singer, was born on this date.












Today in History -
January 19, 1809 -
It's the birthday of the poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston. He was the son of two actors, but since he was Edgar Allan Poe, both his parents died of tuberculosis when he was just a boy. He was taken in by a wealthy Scotch merchant named John Allan, who gave Edgar Poe his middle name.

His foster father sent him to the prestigious University of Virginia, where he was surrounded by the sons of wealthy slave-owning families. He developed a habit of drinking and gambling with the other students, but his foster father didn't approve. He and John Allan had a series of arguments about his behavior and his career choices, and he was finally disowned and thrown out of the house. Sometimes, we all make bad choices.

He spent the next several years living in poverty, depending on his aunt for a home, supporting himself by writing anything he could, including a how-to guide for seashell collecting and picking the pockets of the dead at funerals. Eventually, he began to contribute poems, journalism and helpful cleaning tips to magazines. At the time, magazines were a new literary medium in the United States, and Poe was one of the first writers to make a living writing for magazines. He called himself a "magazinist."

He first made his name writing some of the most brutal book reviews ever published at the time. He was called the "tomahawk man from the South." He described one poem as "an illimitable gilded swill trough," and he said, "[Most] of those who hold high places in our poetical literature are absolute nincompoops." He particularly disliked the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Poe also began to publish fiction, and he specialized in humorous and satirical stories because that was the style of fiction most in demand. Once again, remember this is Edgar Allan Poe - so, soon after he married his 14-year-old cousin, Virginia, he learned that she had tuberculosis, just like his parents, and he began to write darker stories. One of his editors complained that his work was growing too grotesque, but Poe replied that the grotesque would sell magazines. And he was right. His work helped launch magazines as the major new venue for literary fiction.

But even though his stories sold magazines, he still didn't make much money. He made about $4 per article and $15 per story, and the magazines were notoriously late with their paychecks. There was no international copyright law at the time, and so his stories were printed without his permission throughout Europe. There were periods when he and his wife lived on bread, molasses, and dustbunnies and sold most of their belongings to the pawn shop.

It was under these conditions, suffering from alcoholism, and watching his wife grow slowly worse in health, that he wrote some of the greatest gothic horror stories in English literature, including The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher. Near the end of his wife's illness, he published the poem that begins,

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door....



On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allen Poe was found in a delirious state (Maryland) outside a Baltimore voting place (saloon). Mr. Poe was often found delirious, especially outside voting places, but this time his delirium was serious and he died.


January 19,1953 -
68% of all television sets in the United States are tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth to a baby boy - the same day Ball gave birth to her son, Desi Arnaz Junior.



All the while they couldn't say pregnant on TV or be seen sleeping in the same bed - it appears to be the second virgin birth. The audience for the program was larger than that watching the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower the following day .


And so it goes.

Happy Winnie the Pooh Day everyone!

On January 18th in 1882, A.A. Milne was born.



In case you don't want something so treacly this early in the morning



The horror, the horror ...


I've been hanging around Boingboing.net and found this great cartoon from the 30's



I love the absolute lack of logic and adherence to reality.


Besides being a sales day at the Department Stores, it's Martin Luther King Day. To celebrate the day and the man, I'd like you to once again opine these words from his 1964 Nobel Lecture:

"... Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."

Hopefully your life will be filled with many of these moments.






Today in History:
January 19, 1836 -
Knife aficionado Jim Bowie arrives at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.




On January 18, 1871, while Prussian guns blasted all hell out of Paris, William I was proclaimed Emperor of a united Germany in nearby Versailles.

For this reason the Germans have always had a soft spot for France, and have returned often.


January 18, 1892 -
Oliver Hardy, American comedian, actor and the other half the the world's greatest comedy duo, was born.








January 18, 1903 -
President Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII: the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.

Unfortunately, once again, the ill-chosen "Prince Albert in the can" joke is used - and 'Bertie', the King had already heard the joke ad nauseum (Prince Albert was his father and penis ring wearing enthusiast) and was not amused.


January 18, 1904 -
Cary Grant, noted actor and over the top orgy participant, was born.










January 18, 1990 -
Rusty Hamer, the actor who played Danny Thomas's son on Make Room For Daddy, shoots himself in the head with a .357 Magnum in DeRidder, Louisiana. Rusty was 42 years old.



Uncle Tonoose made him do it.


January 18, 1990 -
Washington DC mayor Marion Barry is arrested on cocaine possession charges at the Vista International Hotel, as he tokes on a glass crack pipe while being videotaped with his mistress Rasheeda.



Kids remember, say no to drugs, especially while being videotaped.



And so it goes

Still Feisty after all these year

It's Betty White's birthday




January 17, 1962 -
James Eugene Carrey, Canadian-American actor and rubber-faced comedian, was born.








Here is your Today in History -
January 17, 1706 -
Benjamin Franklin was born.

The inventor of spectacles and the hundred dollar bill, Franklin was one of Washington’s first celebrated womanizers to avoid conviction. One day Franklin tied a key to the string of a kite that he then flew in a thunderstorm, thus discovering Electrolysis.



Franklin also invented the Post Office, and can be credited with the creation of the first fully functioning disgruntled postal worker.


On January 17, 1806, President Thomas Jefferson's grandson James Madison Randolph became the first child to be born in the White House - his mother was Martha Randolph one of President Thomas Jefferson's two daughters, this was her 8th child. Sadly, no official records have been kept on the more interesting statistics of children conceived in the White House.


Also born on January 17 was Al Capone, in 1899. Chronic self-esteem problems in his early adolescence resulted in his turning to a life of crime in Chicago (where crime had by now trickled down from elected officials to the lower classes).

Capone was such a successful gangster that eventually Robert DeNiro had to play him.



In the end, Capone was captured by Elliot Ness and his "Untouchables," who got their name from the fact that their busy schedules prevented them from changing their underwear


January 17, 1860 O.S. - which means Julian calendar. We celebrate his birthday on the 29th of January N.S. - which means Gregorian calendar. So it not really his birthday today but he's dead so I don't think he really cares.) -
Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia.

Tragically, a bureaucratic snafu at the Kremlin resulted in Chekhov’s not being told he was one of the Great Russian Writers, so he practiced medicine well into middle life. By then, of course, he was almost good enough to quit practicing, but he’d also made a name for himself as a writer. As a doctor and writer of comedies, Chekhov originated the saying "laughter is the best medicine" (some of his tubercular patients disagreed, but they subsequently died, proving his point).



Chekhov’s greatest work is "The Seagull," in which a young man kills a seagull, making his girlfriend cry and a lot of people with unpronounceable Russian names argue and wave pistols about.



Chekhov should not be confused with Chekhov, who was the security officer of the USS Enterprise,



and neither of them should be confused with Charo.




Thomas Crapper died on January 17, 1910. In popular American folklore, the British Mr. Crapper was the man who invented and gave his name to the flush toilet. Unfortunately, there is little historical evidence to support Mr. Crapper as anything but a friendly British plumber.

I say unfortunately because the world is ambiguous enough as it is, and the toilet is one of a very few things that can be counted on to acquit itself without any ambiguity. Having a toilet in the home improves our quality of life enormously; the contributions of most other appliances pale by comparison. Like other vital but widely available amenities, however, a toilet’s importance is most strongly felt in its absence. Most of us have had at least one experience where we’ve made a hefty contribution to a toilet only to discover afterwards that it won’t flush. Can you not remember the horror as you stared down into the bowl and wondered what to do? Can you not remember the icy panic that gripped you as you noticed that not only wouldn’t the toilet flush, but that the water was rising?

(The Germans have a word for that bone-chilling dread, and it reflects poorly upon us as a nation that we do not. The Germans also have a word for the feeling you get when you notice just as you’re locking your car door that the keys are still in the ignition. Clearly, they have more to offer the world than beer, pretzels, and maniacal plans for world conquest.)



The importance of toilets cannot be overstated, and anything that important deserves a good legend. Thomas Crapper may not have invented the toilet, and his name may not have been the source of our "crap" or "crapper," but that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate the truth. We can choose to embrace the legend of Thomas Crapper.



Thomas Crapper was born in 1839. He became a plumber. He invented the flush toilet, which is why people called it the "crapper," which eventually led to people calling the stuff they put into the toilet "crap."

It’s concise. It’s easy. It’s elegant. Reject the truth, and give thanks this day for Thomas Crapper.


January 17, 1929 -
Popeye the Sailor Man, created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appears in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.



I yam what I yam


January 17, 1977 -
Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States.

Let's do it



And so it goes.

It's Do Nothing Day

This is National Nothing Day, set aside each year for people to sit around for the entire day and just hang out. No celebrating, observing or honoring anything. It was created by newspaperman, Harold Pullman Coffin.

Please do continue read today's postings.


I've been looking for a video like this for a while



In my next life, I want to come back as the band leader of an all-girl accordion band


January 16, 1976 -
Peter Frampton's platinum live album, Frampton Comes Alive, was released by A&M Records.



The double LP soon reached the top spot of the album charts and stayed perched there for 17 weeks. It sold 19 million copies in its first year in the record racks .


Today in History
January 16, 1547 -
Ivan IV was crowned Tsar of Russia. . He is better known by his nickname: Ivan the Terrible. He was the first king of Russia to call himself a Caesar, probably in the hopes that Shakespeare would write a play about him.



He couldn’t pronounce Caesar, however, so he simply called himself "zar," and subsequent arguments over whether that should be spelled czar, tsar, zar, or tzar became so heated that they eventually resulted in Russian History.


January 16, 1908 -
Ethel Merman, actress, singer and the woman who learned love at the hands of Ernest Borgnine, was born on this date.







January 16, 1920 -
Kids, as you begin this long weekend with binge drinking,



save a small set of brain cells and remember that Prohibition went into effect in the U.S. on this date.


January 16,1939 -
The McClure Syndicate begins distributing a Superman newspaper comic strip, which lasts until 1966.

The strip written by Jerry Siegel had the first use of the name Krypton, and Superman's parents being originally called Jor-L and Lora.


January 16, 1942 -
Raising money for the war, actress Carol Lombard, her mother, 18 passengers and three crew, were killed when their plane crashed into Mount Potosi, 32 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Lombard was much loved for her unpretentious personality and well known for her earthy sense of humor and blue language.


January 16, 1991 -
Operation Desert Storm commences as Baghdad is pummelled live on CNN. Targeted with smartbombs are "command and control facilities" and Saddam Hussein himself.



We seem to miss both, but do manage to kill about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the surreal bombardments that follow.


January 16, 1959 -
Helen Folasade Adu, OBE, singer-songwriter, composer, and record producer, was born on this date.





Her new album, the first in eight years, Soldier of Love is set to be released on February 8th, 2010.


And so it goes.

It was One Year Ago ...

Capt. Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger made his emergency landing in the Hudson.



That wasn't as bad as I thought - Capt. Sullenberger


Once again, I woke up humming a song and I have no idea why



Sorry for the poor quality of the video but it's the only version I could find


January 15, 1971 -
George Harrison unintentionally rewrites the song He's So Fine and releases it as My Sweet Lord on this date .



Silly Beatle.


Here is your Today in History (and it's chock full of history today) -

Most Americans believe that Martin Luther King, Jr, was born on the third Monday in January, but in our eagerness to celebrate the reverend’s accomplishments, we are overlooking two classic icons of American culture whose birthdays occur in the same week. Unlike the venerable Reverend King, these two figures represent not the American Ideal but the American Reality and, as such, deserve our recognition. Therefore, in the tradition of "President’s Day," that floating amalgation of Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays that has at last become a kind of collective presidential birthday, let us choose one day this week to celebrate not only the two individuals whose identities will be revealed in a moment, but everything they represent. Let us take this one day a year to acknowledge all that is great in America, as personified by Charles Nelson Reilly (1/13/31) and Charo (1/15/51).

Why are they important? Because they represent everything magnificent about America in the last century, everything grand and glorious about our unique blend of liberty, commercialism, and shiny red sequin dresses. Charles Nelson Reilly made a career out of a weak chin, a few peculiar facial expressions, and a whiney sound that cannot be done justice on paper (but sounded something like "neeyeh!").



It might be said that Charo made her fame the old-fashioned way, by wriggling around in scanty clothes, but then how does one account for the millions of women who’ve shaken their hoochies and shimmied their coochies before and since with nary a guest appearance on "Love Boat?" No, Charo wasn’t simply a titillating nymphet, but a titillating nymphet who yelped and squealed like a dog in heat.



Very well, you say: maybe Charles Nelson Reilly made his fortune off a weak chin and "neeyeh," and maybe Charo made hers off a yelpy squeal, so what? What’s any of this got to do with America? Who cares?

I cares and you should care. The important thing isn’t that they made their particular fortunes by means of those particular eccentricities, but that they were ABLE to do so. Our nation is great not because people like Charles Nelson Reilly and Charo succeed here, but because they CAN succeed here. It’s important to support the ideals of liberty and justice and equality before the law, but it’s just as important—nay, perhaps more important—to celebrate the reality that we’re more than Democracy’s standard bearer, more than the defender of oppressed peoples, more than the "last best hope"—we are unbelievably silly! We’re sillier than any other nation on the face of the earth, and it’s time to stop being ashamed. It’s time to stand up for silliness, and that is what I believe

(I only wish Adrienne Barbeau had been born on the same week - it would have been the perfect trifecta.)


January 15, 1759 -
The British Museum, one of the the largest and most comprehensive in the world, opened to the public on this date.



Maybe someday they'll return the Elgin Marbles back to the kids in Greece (but that's another story.)


January 15 , 1892 -
A little magazine in Springfield, Massachusetts, first published the rules for a brand new game that involved tossing a ball into a high-mounted peach basket.

This was, of course, the precursor of what is today known as "Peachbasket,"



still as popular as ever in Springfield, Massachusetts.


January 15, 1943 -
Just outside of Washington, DC in Arlington , VA, The Pentagon was dedicated as the world's largest office building.

It covers 34 acres of land and has 17 miles of corridors. Think what you could do to the DC sewer system if you could have a co-ordinated flush of all the toilets in the building?


January 15, 1947 -
A passerby spotted the nude body of Elizabeth Short, a 22 year old actress in a vacant lot near Hollywood. Her body, cut in half, was bruised and beaten. Grass had reportedly been forced into her vagina, and she had reportedly been sodomized after death. The case was dubbed The Black Dahlia murder and over the years as manner as 50 men and women have confessed to this gruesome crime yet it has never been solve.

For those of you with stronger constitutions than mine, you may go to -

http://www.bethshort.com

to view truly horrifying actual crime scene photos (you sick puppies)


January 15, 1967 -
The Green BayPackers beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Superbowl I.

Much to the dismay of television historians, all known broadcast tapes which recorded the game in its entirety were subsequently destroyed in a process of wiping, the reusing videotape by taping over previous content.

Oops.


January 15, 1974 -
America once again, found it's thrill, on Blueberry Hill. The first episode of Happy Days (series) airs. Potsie sets Richie up with that Mary Lou slut.



As I'm sure you all remember, the Happy Days Pilot was shown as a segment of Love American Style.


January 15, 1981 -
Hill Street Blues premiered on NBC on this date.



Let's Be Careful Out There


January 15, 1983 -
Meyer Lansky, retired Jewish organized crime genius, (rumored to have photographic proof that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual; conspiracy theorists believed this was the reason Hoover wasn't aggressive in pursuing organized crime), died of a fatal nosebleed at Mount Sinai Hospital.

It is not clear where Lansky's estimated $300 million fortune went.

Once again, what a way to go!


January 15, 2001 -
Happy Birthday Wikipedia. Wikipedia was formally launched on this date, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com (now found at www.en.wikipedia.org.)


And so it goes.

Words to live by

If you work in TV: You can do anything, as long as Jay Leno doesn't want to do it, too - Conan O'Brien

The New York Times published a list of organizations you can donate money to Haitian relief.


An interesting blog about how to choose the right organization to donate money to Haitian relief organization for you.


January 14, 1952 -
Today Show, NBC's news program, premiered with Dave Garroway and Jack Lescoulie on television .



In pre-production, the show's proposed title was The Rise and Shine Revue.


January 14, 1972 -
Sanford and Son, featuring comedian Redd Foxx, whose last name was really Sanford, debuted on NBC television. Demond Wilson starred as Fred Sanford's son.



Quincy Jones composed the catchy theme song .


January 14, 1993 -
Talk show host David Letterman announced he was moving his late-night show after 11 years on NBC to sign a $16 million deal with CBS. Coincidentally, seven years later, on January 14, 2000, he had quintuple bypass surgery.




January 14, 1990 -
The Simpsons episode Bart the Genius premiered on Fox television . This episode was considered the first official episode of the Simpsons, and FOX advertised it as such. The Christmas episode was considered as a special.



This is the first episode with the full intro. The first time we see Maggie scanned, she is worth $847.63.


For those of you not following that new fangled Gregorian Calendar (and still keep stock with the Julian Calendar), it's January 1st. Happy New Year

I bet you were up all night partying like it was 1499.


Today in History
January 14, 1858 -
Emperor Napoleon III (having the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France) and Empress Eugenie escape unhurt after an Italian assassin throws a bomb at their carriage as they travel to the Paris Opera to see Rossini's William Tell, Orsini and his accomplices threw three bombs at the imperial carriage.

The first bomb landed among the horsemen in front of the carriage. The second bomb wounded the animals and smashed the carriage glass. The third bomb landed under the carriage and seriously wounded a policeman who was hurrying to protect the occupants. Eight people were killed and 142 wounded, though the emperor and empress were unhurt. Napoleon, ever the politician, realized that he and Eugénie had to proceed to the performance and appear in their box.

They really wanted to see the opera.


January 14, 1900 -
Speaking of opera, Giacomo Puccini's opera Tosca premieres in Rome.





January 14, 1919 -
Andy Rooney, American humorist, author, television personality and owner of one of the world's largest eye brows, was born on this date.



Did you ever wonder why a cranky old man has still kept his job for so long?


January 14, 1956 -
Womp-bomp-a-loom-op-a-womp-bam-boom!



Little Richard releases Tutti Frutti.



And yet Pat Boone's cover of the song rose higher in the charts on it's initial release.

Stupid record buying public.


January 14, 1957 -
Humphrey Bogart, the Greatest Male Star of All Time, model for the Gerber baby and founding member of the Hollywood Rat Pack (a phrase coined by Lauren Bacall) finally decided to let the world catch up with his three drink lead and succumbs to cancer of the esophagus.



At his funeral, John Huston eulogized that:

Bogart never took himself too seriously—his work most seriously. He regarded the somewhat gaudy figure of Bogart, the star, with an amused cynicism; Bogart, the actor, he held in deep respect…In each of the fountains at Versailles there is a pike which keeps all the carp active; otherwise they would grow overfat and die. Bogie took rare delight in performing a similar duty in the fountains of Hollywood. Yet his victims seldom bore him any malice, and when they did, not for long. His shafts were fashioned only to stick into the outer layer of complacency, and not to penetrate through to the regions of the spirit where real injuries are done.


January 14, 1980 -
The Blues Brothers movie with Dan Akroyd & John Belushi opened on this date.



I know you're going to be shocked, but during filming, John Belushi apparently got drunk, went to a stranger's house, asked if he could have a glass of milk and a sandwich and then crashed on their couch for a couple of hours before the cast and crew found him.



And so it goes

Please keep the people of Haiti in your thoughts

Watch your local news to find out where you can make a donation.


I'm waiting for Conan to just snap on camera and curse out Leno on air.




January 13, 1967 -
The Rolling Stones, whom Ed Sullivan swore would never return to his show, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, on this date.





They were forced to change the lyrics of Let's Spend The Night Together to Let's Spend Some Time Together .


Today in History
January 13, 1832 -
Horatio Alger, Jr., pederast, minister and American children's author (Ragged Dick, Tattered Tom and Julius, the Street Boy out West ) was born, on this date.

Some novels uncompleted at Alger's death include Out of Business and Having to Walk the Streets, Nelson, the Randy Newsboy, Young Captain Jack and the Lonely Sea Men, Jerry, the Barefoot Backwoods Boy (who wore no undergarments under his britches), From Farm to Fortune (with nothing but bacon grease) and Joey, the Ruggedly Handsome Hotel Boy. (Stop snickering.)


January 13, 1862 -
President Lincoln names Edwin M. Stanton Secretary of War. He vigorously pursued the apprehension and prosecution of the conspirators involved in Lincoln's assassination. These proceedings were not handled by the civil courts, but by a military tribunal, and therefore under Stanton's supervision.

Stanton was appointed by President Grant to the Supreme Court, but he died four days after he was confirmed by the Senate, and taking the oath of office on his deathbed, set the record for shortest tenure on the Court.


January 13, 1900 -
To combat Czech nationalism, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary decrees German the official language of the Imperial Army.



This causes all of the Esperanto schools in Austria-Hungarian Empire to close.


January 13, 1910 -
Lee De Forest, the American inventor of the vacuum tube, demonstrates the first radio broadcast, a live performance of Cavalleria Rusticana with Enrico Caruso from the Metropolitan Opera.



The broadcast over a telephone transmitter could be heard only by the small number of electronics hobbyists who had radio receivers or could squeeze into telephone booths. De Forest started regular nightly concerts in 1915, increasing interest in radio receivers, which at the time depended on the vacuum tubes manufactured by De Forest's company.

How convenient.


January 13, 1919 -
California votes to ratify the prohibition amendment.



Much heavy drinking ensues.


January 13, 1919 -
Robert Stack, actor best know for his role as Elliot Ness in the T.V. series "The Untouchables" was born.






January 13, 1962 -
Ernie Kovacs was killed in an automobile accident when he lost control of his Chevrolet Corvair station wagon while turning fast. Crashing into a power pole at the corner of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Boulevards, he was thrown halfway out the passenger side, dying almost instantly from chest and head injuries.



Kovacs may have lost control of the car while trying to light a cigar. A photographer managed to arrive moments later, and morbid images of Kovacs in death appeared in newspapers across the United States. An unlit cigar lay on the pavement, inches from his outstretched arm. (I'm not posting the photo - you google it.)

Kids - smoking kills.


And so it goes.

2009 Word of the Year

According to the American Dialect Society is:

Tweet: noun, a short yet meaningless message sent via the Twitter.com service about navel gazing, and verb, the act of sending such a meanless message.

Other winners this year -

Word of the Decade: google as a verb

Most Useful: fail (Usually written as FAIL!)

Most Creative: Dracula sneeze

Most Unnecessary: sea kittens fish (according to PETA)

Most Outrageous: death panel

Most Euphemistic: hike the Appalachian trail

Most Likely To Succeed: twenty-ten (a pronunciation of the year 2010)

Least Likely To Succeed: Any name of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties, Oughties, etc.


Here is your Today in History -
If you were ever an alter boy or ever took Latin, I don't need to tell you what jacta alea est means. But if you're like most Americans, to whom Latin is about as familiar as Urdu, let me translate: it means the die is cast. At least that's how it's usually translated. Back in the early days of English, when the phrase was first translated, that's how they would have said "the dice are thrown."

This Latin snippet is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly because it demonstrates the popularity of gambling with dice in the ancient world, which is an important bit of trivia for keeping wayward adolescents interested in the classics; secondly because it's a short little Latin phrase you can drop into conversation to impress snobs; thirdly because the event of its utterance changed the course of western civilization for ever.

The line was uttered by Julius Caesar on this very date in 49 BC. Caesar and his army had just crossed the Rubicon, a little stream in northern Italy. The Roman Senate had long ago established a rule that Roman citizens should be forbidden from crossing the the Rubicon with their armies, since they figured anyone coming south toward Rome with an entire army probably wasn't up to any good.



(If the Roman Senate had really wanted to play it safe, maybe they should have designed the infrastructure of their empire so that all roads didn't lead to Rome—but that's beside the point.)

You may be wondering why Caesar would set out to break the law this way. He had, after all, been a popular and successful general and had been governor of Gaul for some time. But that's exactly why he decided to cross the Rubicon: he had become so popular and so powerful that the Roman Senate ordered him to disband his army and give up Gaul. Which has always made me wonder why the Roman Senate didn't say jacta alea est after issuing their demands. Maybe they were just too eager to get back to their dice.

Anyway, by crossing the Rubicon Caesar had officially committed treason and launched the Roman Civil War. I've also saved you several hours of watching HBO series Rome. Except for the naked parts.

The rest is history.


January 12, 1865 -
General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Order No. 15, entitling the household of each freed slave "a plot of no more than forty acres of tillable ground" along the Carolina coastline between Charleston and Jacksonville.



After the Confederate surrender, the Johnson administration makes a halfhearted attempt to follow through on the acreage, but all efforts to parcel out the land in question are abandoned just a few months later.


January 12, 1944 -
Probably Alfred Hitchcock's most underrated film, Lifeboat, opened in NYC on this date.



During filming, several of the crew members noted that actress Tallulah Bankhead was not wearing underwear. When advised of this situation, director Alfred Hitchcock observed, "I don't know if this is a matter for the costume department, makeup, or hairdressing."


January 12, 1965 -
Hullabaloo, a musical variety show, premiered on NBC on this date.



The Hullabaloo Dancers - a team of four men and six women - appeared on a regular basis. Two of them - Michael Bennett and Donna McKechnie - went on to achieve considerable fame on Broadway.


January 12, 1966 -
Holy homoeroticism!!!



ABC premieres the brightly colored underwear wearing, perfectly genitally arranged comedy Batman today.


January 12, 1971 -
Oh Geez, stifle yourself. The first episode of All in the Family made television history by broadcasting the sound of a toilet flushing.



This is not, however, the first time a toilet tank is seen on television.



That honor goes to Leave it to Beaver premiere episode, "Captain Jack" back in 1957.



And so it goes.