NATIONAL DRY MARTINI DAY

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini? - Robert Benchley

I'd like a dry martini, Mr. Quoc, a very dry martini. A very dry, arrid, barren, desiccated, veritable dustbowel of a martini. I want a martini that could be declared a disaster area. Mix me just such a martini. - Hawkeye Pierce

He knows just how I like my martini - full of alcohol. - Homer Simpson

Today is National Martini Day! Well, sort of. It's debated exactly what day this momentous occasion is actually supposed to occur, but since it's Saturday I'm going to talk about it today.



And unlike James Bond, I don't give a rat's ass if mine is shaken or stirred. It just has to be GIN and bone dry!


June 19, 1954 -
The Tasmanian Devil, Taz, made his debut in the Looney Tunes cartoon, Devil May Hare, on this date.


... All the world loves a lover, but in this case, we'll make an exception.


June 19, 1957 -
The classic 50's teenage-horror film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, starring Michael Landon, premiered on this date.



This was one of the most successful films ever released by American International Pictures.


June 19, 1962 -
One of the great film-musicals from the 60's, The Music Man, premiered on this date.



Robert Preston had never sung professionally until he appeared in the stage version of The Music Man.


Today in History
June 19, 1312 -
Piers Gaveston, close personal friend of King Edward II of England, is beheaded after he attempted to return to Edward's side, having been banished for being too close a personal friend.

After succession to king, Edward appointed Gaveston as Earl of Cornwall for no other reason than being his close personal friend.

And for his troubles, Edward II ends his day with a serious pain in his ass.


June 19, 1623 -
Blaise Pascal was born in France on this date (which worked out extremely well for him as he wanted to grow up to be French.)

At the age of 17 he wrote a paper entitled Essay on Conic Sections, which quickly became the best-selling paper on conic sections in European history and eventually inspired the classic French noir film, Death by Conic Section.

By the age of 22 Mr. Pascal had invented a calculator. Unfortunately he could not invent the battery, so he turned to religion.

And he meant to get around to it right away, but in 1647 he ended up proving the existence of a vacuum. The famous French philosopher Rene Descartes visited Pascal, inspected his vacuum, and bemoaned its lack of attachable hoses. This caused an epistemological split that has endured to the present day.

("The more I see of men," Pascal observed at about this time, "the better I like my dog." This was a famous quotation and can be found on many greeting cards.)

In 1653 he discovered Pascal's Law of Pressure. A year later he was involved in a carriage accident that reminded him he had turned to religion. He turned back to it.

He began work on his famous Pensées ("Blather") in 1656 and worked on it for three years. In the book, Pascal proved that if God didn't exist then believing in Him wouldn't hurt, whereas if He did exist, not believing would hurt like Hell.

It has been observed that if Pascal was wrong, not reading his book wouldn't hurt, and if he was right it wouldn't hurt either.



When he was 39 a malignant growth in his stomach spread to his brain and he died horribly, proving that unbearable pain is unbearable pain whatever you think of God or philosophy.


June 19, 1867 -
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico (Brian Aherne), unwitting stooge for Napoleon III (Claude Rains), is executed by firing squad. Although he bribed the seven riflemen to not shoot him in the head, one did anyway.

Bette Davis somehow figures into this as the Mad Empress Charlotta was just snapped when she returned to France to get help for her beleaguered husband. She lived in her private mad world for over 60 years, dying in the mid twenties of the next century.



So much for the privileges afforded royalty.


June 19, 1934 -
The Federal Communications Commission, perhaps the most wicked body of do-gooders ever to exist in the United States, is created.

These are the clowns that perfected the fine art of capricious and arbitrary.


June 19, 1953 -
Atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are electrocuted at Sing-Sing Prison, becoming the first civilians ever executed for espionage in American history. Five jolts of electricity were required to kill Ethel. Ethel did not succumb immediately and was subjected to two more electrical charges before being pronounced dead. The chair was designed for a man of average size; and Ethel Rosenberg was a petite woman: this discrepancy resulted, it is claimed, in the electrodes fitting poorly and making poor electrical contact. Eyewitness testimony (as given by a newsreel report featured in The Atomic Cafe) describes smoke rising from her head.

That must have been a pretty sight.



While her husband Julius was on the Soviet payroll, according to recently released archives, is now clear that Ethel had no involvement in the espionage ring. For that matter, it is unclear how much Julius actually assisted the Soviet atomic bomb effort.

So much for American Justice.


June 19, 1982 -
Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, is found hanging from Blackfriar's Bridge in London. His death is initially ruled a suicide, though it is quite obviously murder; that assessment is later overturned. Calvi may have been killed because of his involvement in the laundering of drug money through the Vatican Bank.

This is part of the back story of Godfather III.

Roberto Calvi's life was insured for $10 million with Unione Italiana, and attempts by his family to obtain a payout resulted in litigation. Following the forensic report of 2002 which established that Calvi was murdered, the policy was finally paid out, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who had incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish that Calvi had been murdered.

So much for Italian justice.


And so it goes.

SpaghettiO's Recalled for Undercooked Meat

Uh-Oh SpaghettiOs! 3 Varieties Recalled (AP)

Campbell Soup Co. is recalling 15 million pounds of SpaghettiOs with meatballs after a cooker malfunctioned at one of the company's plants in Texas and left the meat undercooked.



If I said it once, I've said it a thousand times - you have to really cook that squirrel meat!


June 18, 1942 -
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, entrepreneur, record and film producer, poet, painter, and animal rights activist, was born on this date.



What a freakin' slacker.



June 18, 1969 -
Sam Peckinpah's violent western elergy, The Wild Bunch, premiered on this date.



Supposedly, more blank rounds were discharged during the production than live rounds were fired during the Mexican Revolution of 1914 around which the film is loosely based. In total 90,000 rounds were fired, all blanks.


June 18, 1952 -
Isabella Rossellini, One of Hollywoods' most intelligent and beautiful actresses was born on this date.



Also one of the funniest.


Today in History:
European history would have been dramatically different if only for a higher fiber diet.

One of the most decisive battles in the history of Europe was fought in Belgium on June 18, 1815, as a resurgent Napoleon Bonaparte launched his last military offensive against the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Blücher. Nearly 50,000 men were killed in the battle. Napoleon lost in part due to a case of inflamed hemorrhoids

The battle was commemorated by Swedish sensation Abba in their 1970s hit, Waterloo.



Abba's interpretation of Waterloo's significance has been controversial from the start, as it tended to focus less on the military and political implications of the battle than on the feelings of euphoria typically incited by hormonal rushes of erotic excitement.

On June 18, 1817, Waterloo Bridge was opened over the River Thames in London,

probably in anticipation of the great Abba hit.

June 18, 1900 -
The Empress Dowager of China orders all foreigners killed. Among those meeting this fate are the foreign diplomats, their families, as well as hundreds of Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts.

She was apparently having a very bad day.


June 18, 1940 -
The "This was their finest hour speech" was delivered by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on this date.



It was given shortly after he took over as Prime Minister of Britain on May 10th, in the first year of World War II.


June 18, 1959 -
Based on his erratic behavior, the Governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, is committed to a state mental hospital.



Long responds by arranging for the hospital's director to be fired, and the new director proclaims him perfectly sane. (It is no secret that the man was completely nuts.)


June 18, 1967 -
Famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix burns his guitar on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival.



There had to be a better way to toast marchmallows.


June 18, 1980 -
The Blues Brothers Movie, starring Dan Akwoyd & John Belushi premieres on this date. Ounce for ounce (other than Walt Disney's The Jungle Book,) the most amount of dope is smoked in film history during the production of this film.



... How much for your wife?



Also a very big shout out to Johnny V. Happy Birthday big guy.



And so it goes.

What if ...

Louis Armstrong sang Death Metal



Next up - Julie Andrews does Acid Jazz


June 17, 1950 -
Bugs Bunny recounts his life story to a reporter from Disassociated Press in What's Up Doc?, released on this date.


... but now we have to go.


June 17, 1983 -
A late Kubrick masterpiece, Full Metal Jacket, is released on this date.



Vincent D'Onofrio gained 70 pounds for his role as Pvt. Pyle, it took him seven months to put the weight on and nine months to take it off with physical training.


Today in History:
June 17, 1775 -
American forces were defeated by the British at Breed's Hill, near Boston, in the Battle of Bunker Hill, after famously withholding their fire until they could see the whites of their enemies' eyes.

This battle should not be confused with that of Bunker Hill, fought on Breed's Hill, during which the Americans shot like hell at anything that moved.


June 17, 1797 -
Agha Muhammad Khan, Shah of Persia (also a eunuch, but that's another story) ordered his servants to bring him a melon cut into slices. He finished half, ordered the other half to be put away and vowed to his servants, that if even one slice of the melon was missing in the morning, all three servants would be beheaded by him. Later on that night one of the servants forgot and ate a slice. The servants then killed Agha Muhammad Khan with the dagger because they were afraid he would kill them in the morning.

There's a lesson here somewhere - Treat your staff better? Purchase more fruit for dessert? Dare to eat the peach?


The Statue of Liberty, France's gift to the United States marking the Centennial of the American Declaration of Independence arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885 on board the French frigate Isère (only nine years after the gift was offered.)

To prepare for transit, the Statue was reduced to 350 individual pieces and packed in 214 crates. (The right arm and the torch, which were completed earlier, had been exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and thereafter at Madison Square in New York City.)


June 17, 1939 -
In Versailles, Eugene Weidmann becomes the last person to be publicly guillotined.



The "hysterical behaviour" by spectators was so scandalous that French president Albert Lebrun immediately banned all future public executions.

A few people can ruin it for everybody.


June 17, 1968-
Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've got love in my tummy) goes gold.




June 17, 1972 -
Five men broke into the Democratic Party National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington, DC. They had hoped to bug the offices but were arrested before they could release any insects.



President Nixon will later describe as a "third rate burglary." Their arrests ultimately led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.

(Nixon's resignation prior to 1974 is attributed to simple melancholia.)


June 17, 1994 -
Convicted memorabilia thug O.J. Simpson fails to turn himself in to the LAPD at a prearranged time and is later spotted in a white Ford Bronco on a Los Angeles expressway. After a low-speed pursuit through the freeways and streets of Brentwood, O.J. is finally arrested live on television in the driveway of his mansion.



According to one of the defense attorneys who served on O.J.'s "Dream Team," Simpson tried to kill himself in the car, but the gun misfired. The Juice allegedly told him: "I pulled the trigger and it didn't go off."

That would have saved everyone a boatload of trouble.



And so it goes.

Happy Bloomsday

June 16, 1956 -
Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps' Be-Bop-A-Lula, was released on this date.



The song became a hit and launched Vincent as a rock 'n' roll star.


June 16, 1963 -
Valentina Tereshkova, piloting the Vostok 6, became the first woman to travel in space.



With her single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts who had flown before that date.


Today in History -
Jun 16 1750 BC -
King Hammurabi dies in Babylon, and is succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna.

I know you're saying to yourself, "Who cares?". Well, now that you know, you can feel morally superior to the schlub sitting next to you on the subway going home tonight.


June 16, 1904 -
Today is the date on which all the events depicted in James Joyce's famous novel Ulysses take place, even though the book itself was published in 1922 and therefore cannot celebrate a real centennial until my daughters have graduated college. There is probably also a lot of excitement in the sorts of intellectual circles.

And now, you can truly impress your friends by telling them the plot -

Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses, does not have much work to do, so he spends most of his day wandering around Dublin doing some errands. He leaves his house on Eccles Street, walks south across the River Liffey, picks up a letter, buys a bar of soap, and goes to the funeral of a man he didn't know very well. In the afternoon, he has a cheese sandwich, he feeds the gulls in the river, helps a blind man cross the street, and visits a couple of pubs. He thinks about his job, his wife, his daughter, his stillborn son. He muses about life and death and reincarnation. He knows that his wife is going to cheat on him that afternoon at his house. In the evening, he wanders around the red light district of Dublin and meets up with a young writer named Stephen Dedalus, who is drunk. Leopold Bloom takes him home with him and offers to let him spend the night. And they stand outside, looking at the stars for a while. And then Bloom goes inside and climbs into bed with his wife.



Happy Bloomsday! the straight-A English majors will greet one another joyously. Yes - yes - yes! they'll titter. It will all be terrific fun.



They'll feel smart and proud and better than the rest of us (and you again can feel morally superior for knowing it), and now you know why.


June 16, 1948 -
In the first skyjacking of a commercial plane, three armed men storm the cockpit of the Miss Macao, a passenger seaplane operated by Cathay Pacific airline.

When the pilot refuses to turn over the controls, he is shot dead and the plane crashes into the ocean. The only survivor among the 27 people on board is the leader of the terrorists.

Oops.


June 16, 1958 -
Imre Nagy, once prime minister of Hungary for all of ten days, is executed by the Soviet Union for attempting to withdraw his country from the Warsaw Pact.



It is said that Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries."

That'll learn em.


June 16, 1959 -
While entertaining friends at his home, George Reeves (Ben Affleck), who played the title character in the original Superman TV series, goes upstairs to his bedroom and commits suicide with a 9mm German Luger.



This has been hotly debated and it is now believe that the irate husband of a B movie actress Reeves was sleeping with, shot the actor in his home.


June 16, 1960 -
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho opens in New York on this date.



One of the reasons Alfred Hitchcock shot the movie in black and white was he thought it would be too gory in color.


June 16, 1976 -
15,000 schoolchildren take to the streets of Soweto to protest South Africa's adoption of bilingual instruction in the Afrikaans language.



The nonviolent march ends abruptly when police and soldiers open fire on the crowd, killing 600 and igniting days of rioting throughout the region.


June 16, 1999 -
The founder of the United Kingdom's Monster Raving Loony Party, one Screaming Lord Sutch (real name David Edward Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow), is found hanged at his late mother's residence. Sutch was the longest lasting party leader in the UK at the time of his death, ruled a suicide.



One of the Loony Party planks was to ask rhetorically, "Why is there only one Monopolies Commission?"





And so it goes.

Happy National Lobster Day

I'm not sure if we're supposed to celebrate this crustacean for its' longevity or its' delicious taste.



Don't forget the drawn butter


June 15, 1960 -
Billy Wilder's next film after Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, opened in New York on this date.



This was the last B&W movie to win Best Picture at The Academy Awards until Schindler's List did in 1994.


June 15, 1967 -
The WWII adventure film, The Dirty Dozen, premiered on this date.



John Wayne was first offered the part of Maj. John Reisman, but he declined and went on to star in and direct another war film (The Green Berets.) The part was then offered to Lee Marvin, who took it.


June 15, 1990 -
Warren Beatty's take on the comic strip detective, Dick Tracy, opened on this date.



Warren Beatty originally wanted Bob Fosse to direct, but Fosse turned him down. Martin Scorsese was also a fan of the comic strip and considered directing at one point, but he lost interest and chose to make Goodfellas. This is the highest-grossing film of Warren Beatty's career to date.


June 15, 1994 -
Disney's 32nd animated feature, The Lion King, opened in limited release in the US on this date.



The last Disney movie to be supervised by Jeffrey Katzenberg before he left to form DreamWorks.


Today in History -
June 15, 1215 -
All the English Barons of the realm gathered with King John at Runnymede and presented him with a little document they'd prepared. They asked him either to sign the document or to specify what they should do with his remains. The king signed.



This was the Magna Carta, and therefore historical.

The terms of the Magna Carta (aka, The Magna Charta, aka The Big Chart) provided that freemen should be free, that freemen should not be put to death, that freemen should be able to get married, that freemen should only be judged by juries of other freemen, and that a measure of wine should be a measure of wine. The only people excepted from these liberties were the People.



(Our own Bill of Rights borrowed heavily from the Magna Carta, although it allowed that the People included people not previously considered the People, except in those cases in which the people were still not People.)


June 15, 1330 -
King Edward III was a famous English king, celebrated for his invention of manners and discovery of the economy. He played tennis, and once famously rebuked the King of France for having sent him his balls in a box.

King Edward established the Order of the Garter because he was what English nobles referred to as a "leg man." (It was he who also famously remarked, Honi soit qui mal y pense, or Honey, show us some cheesecake.)

King Edward had many sons, one of whom was born on June 15, 1330. This son he named Prince Edward. Though white at birth, he eventually became England's first Black Prince.

Prince Edward eventually married Joan of Kent. In her youth, Joan had been known as the Fairly Made because she was so fat; in later years she was referred to as Chubster and Lardass, though seldom to her face.

At the age of sixteen, Prince Edward and his father the king led the English against the French at Crecy, in order to start the 100 years war. There were many more French than English, but the English had the advantage of the Long Boa. The French were powerless against this innovation. Ten years later, the English and French took the field again, this time at Poitiers. The French had learned from experience, and tried to counter the English Long Boa with their own Very Large Scarf. They failed. The English took France's King John prisoner and ransomed him for half a million pounds (250 tons). Prince Edward was kind to the French king, however, and prayed with him, which proved that the apple had not fallen far from the tree. (Edward was also a legman.)

By now he had become the Black Prince.

In recognition of his prowess, the Black Prince was made the ruler of Aquitaine in 1362. When some of the French rebelled at Limoges in 1370, he had all 3000 inhabitants killed. This resulted in peace. The Black Prince died before he could succeed to the throne, thereby losing the opportunity to become England's first Black King.

Edward and Joan had two children. One was Edward, who died in infancy and was therefore ineligible to be king. The other was Richard, also known as Richard II, who succeeded to the throne only to abdicate in favor of Henry IV, Part 1. Following Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 came Henry V, then Henry VI parts 1, 2, and 3, and then finally Richard III.

They kept William Shakespeare busy for many years.


June 15, 1409 -
Petros Philargos is elected Pope Alexander V by the Council of Pisa. This poses a certain amount of difficulty and increased the amount of Papal Bull, as there already is a Pope in Rome, Gregory XII, and another in Avignon, Benedict XII. Ultimately, none of the three is willing to step down, leading the Chuch into a double schism.

This made papal dispensations a drug on the market.


On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X (no relation to Malcolm or the Generation) excommunicated Martin Luther with a papal bull.

Pope Leo X is famous for his use of bulls, although not quite as famous (and we know it's not true) as Catherine the Great for her use of horses.


Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys, the personal physician to Louis XIV, performed the first blood transfusion in history on June 15,1667. He performed the transfusion on a fifteen year old boy, using blood from a sheep.



The experiment was considered a success (the boy died), although it was clearly a disappointment if you were rooting for the sheep.


On June 15, 1752, Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a thunderstorm to prove his now famous theory that lightning is some powerful sh*t.



The General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by the St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the German district Little Germany, Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years. Over 1,300 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded the General Slocum. It was to sail up the East River and then eastward across Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island. It caught fire and burned to the water line in New York's East River.



More than 1,000 people died in the accident, making it New York City's worst loss-of-life disaster until the September 11, 2001 attacks.


June 15, 1955 -
The Eisenhower administration stages the first annual OPAL exercise. In the Operation Alert drill, air raid sirens blare across America to assess our preparations for a nuclear attack.



Duck and cover, people.


On a personal note:

A friend of mine has been attempting to mount a plaque at Celtic Park, in honor of the Olympic champions of the Irish-American Athletic Club. Yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal's Greater New York section (Monday, June 14), includes an article (When the Irish Ruled New York Sports) about the Winged Fist Organization's attempt.

It's a good read and a good cause



And so it goes.

Happy Birthday to the Donald

June 14, 1946 -
Donald Trump was born on this date.



The thing on his head is of an indeterminate age.


It was on this date in 1777 that the Stars and Stripes was adopted as the official flag of the United States of America.



On June 14, 1877, the first Flag Day observance was held on the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the Stars and Stripes


June 14, 1967 -
One of the iconic films from the 60's, To Sir, with Love, premiered in the US on this date.



The film did so unexpectedly well in America that Columbia Pictures did market research to find out why so many people had gone to it. Their answer: Sidney Poitier.


June 14, 1985 -
One of John Houston's last films, the black comedy Prizzi's Honor, opened on this date.



Anjelica Huston is magnificent in this film


Today in History -
June 14, 1648 -
Midwife Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft on this date.

It is the first such execution for the Massachusetts colony, but not the first in the colonies.


June 14, 1940 -
Rick and Elsa have a quick drink as they plan to leave Paris ahead of the Nazi invasion. Little does Rick know that Elsa does not plan to join him (but that's another story.)



Paris falls to the Nazis. Marshal Philippe Petain became the head of the French government and sued for peace. Gertrude Stein translated Petain’s speeches and hailed him as a hero of the French nation.

And sometimes, a rose is just a collaborator.


June 14, 1949 -
The wonderful black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, starring the ever present Alec Guinness, was released on this date.



Thankfully, plans for a remake starring Will Smith and Robin Williams has been shelved.


June 14, 1954 -
At the Lincoln Memorial, President Dwight Eisenhower signs a law inserting the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. Eisenhower declares: "From this day forward, the millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty." Precisely which Almighty is left to the listener's imagination.

I would like to think that Ike was thinking about the Canaanite god - Baal.


June 14, 1961 -
1980s pop music star Boy George is born in Kent, England.



As he later comes to describe his childhood, "I had five brothers and I was brought up drinking the same water and being fed the same doctrine as my brothers, but somehow I turned out to be a fabulous homosexual."


June 14, 1962 -
Albert DeSalvo murders Anna Slesersby by strangling her with the belt from her robe. She is only the first victim of The Boston Strangler.



Or did he?


June 14, 1966 -
The Vatican announces the abolition of its Index librorum prohibitum (Index of Prohibited Books), originally instituted in 1557 by Pope Paul IV. Notable novelists on the list were Laurence Sterne, Voltaire, Daniel Defoe, Honoré de Balzac, Jean-Paul Sartre.

If you are ever in doubt of what to read - check out the Index.


June 14, 1976 -
The Gong Show debuts on NBC. People with dubious talents perform their acts before a celebrity panel of judges, who are free to eject the performer at any time by banging a large gong. The best non-gonged performer each night wins $516.32.



During the time the show is on the air, it's creator, Chuck Barris, suffered a complete mental breakdown, he says from the stress of being a secret CIA hit man.

No really, I'm not kidding you.


June 14, 1989 -
Zsa Zsa Gabor is arrested for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer and driving with an expired license. Afterwards Zsa Zsa complains to the press that the handling she received from the BHPD "was like Nazi Germany."



Ultimately, Gabor is convicted and sentenced to 72 hours in jail. Francesca Hilton, Zsa Zsa's daughter, is Paris and Nicky Hilton's aunt.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.


And on a personal note:

Dear Nephew Irving,

Happy Birthday. Tante and I send you a million hugs and kisses. Once again, another year has gone by and we haven't seen you. Tante no longer believes herself to be the Empress Eugenie but Johnny Mathis. Thank goodness, we get better seating at the early bird dinners. We will just die quietly, we know that we are old and a great embarrassment to you. You should live your life, we don't want to be a bother. You should be happy on your birthday.


And so it goes.

How far the mighty (or not so mighty) have fallen

Jamiroquai hawking Ramen cup o noodles



Well, I guess it's not as bad as Tom Waits selling dog food.


June 13, 1952 -
The seventh collaboration of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Pat and Mike, was released on this date.



Of the nine movies she made with Spencer Tracy, this was Katharine Hepburn's favorite.


June 13, 1962 -
Stanley Kubrick's take on Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita, premiered on this date.



The famous heart-shaped sunglasses that Lolita wears appear only in publicity photos; Lolita wears cat eye sunglasses in the movie.


June 13, 1967 -
Sean Connery's fifth appearance as James Bond - You Only Live Twice, opened in the US on this date.



This is the first film in the series where James Bond does not wear his trademark tuxedo.


It's the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua. One of the most beloved of saints, his images and statues are ubiquitous. Proclaimed a Doctor of the Church on January 16, 1946, he is sometimes called the Evangelical Doctor.

He is especially invoked for the recovery of things lost; as well as against starvation, barrenness; patron of amputees, animals, boatmen, Brazil, diocese in Beaumont, Texas, domestic animals, the elderly, expectant mothers, faith in the Blessed Sacrament, Ferrazzano, fishermen, harvests, horses, lower animals, mail, mariners, oppressed persons, Padua, paupers, Portugal, sailors, scholars, sterility, swineherds, Tigua Indians, travel hostesses, travellers, and watermen.

Do you think Marcel Proust prayed to him while writing?


Today in History:
June 13, 323 BC (or June 11, who's to say) -
A youthful Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell or Richard Burton, take you pick) died in Babylon (NOT Long Island). The precise cause of his death has baffled modern science for thousands of years. Many historians believe he died of either malaria or hybris, also known as Syphilis or the Greek Fire.



Alexander had a horse named Bucephelas, and is best known for having devoured the Gordian Nut.


In the village of Maidstone, Kent, there lived a Pheasant (or Villain) whose daughter was about fourteen years old. The day the Taxman came around to collect, the Villain was away. Only his wife and daughter were home. The Taxman didn't believe that the girl was less than fifteen. She and her mother insisted that she was. At last the Taxman tore the girl's clothes off to see for himself.

After stripping her, he quickly determined that a more tactile examination would be necessary. When she resisted, the situation took a violent turn—and at that volatile moment, the girl's father came in and saw what was going on. Like any good father, he crushed the Taxman's skull and stomped on his brains.

News of the event spread. The Pheasants (Villains) of southeast England rallied to the father's support. They began Wat Tyler's Rebellion on June 13, 1381.

They made the skull-smashing father their leader because his name was Wat Tyler. Over the next few days, Wat Tyler led the Pheasants (Villains) against the government, burning the Archbishop of Salisbury at the Stake (whence the expression "Salisbury Steak").

The purpose of this rebellion was to secure a pardon for having rebelled. When Wat Tyler confronted King Richard II in Smithfield, he voiced this demand and was consequently stabbed to death, by the Lord Mayor of London (something you just can't imagine Mayor Bloomberg doing.)


Upon Wat Tyler's death, of course, it was no longer possible to have Wat Tyler's Rebellion, so everyone else went home (hence "Pheasants coming home to roost").

Many of them were later killed.


June 13, 1865 –
"...And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures in 20th century literature, was born on this date.



He was brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats, the son of John Butler Yeats, and along with J. M. Synge and Sean O'Casey, was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival. Together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn he founded Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright.


June 13, 1886 -
The bodies of Bavaria's mad King Ludwig II and his physician, Dr. Gudden, are discovered floating face-down in Lake Starnberg.



The recently-deposed monarch who wasn't so much mad as gay, had been under house arrest ever since his uncle, Prince Luitpold von Bayern, staged a coup a few days earlier.

It's alway a problem when you're the King of Bavaria and your family can't accept that you're gay.


June 13, 1917 -
18 German Gotha bomber planes flew over London in the first aerial bombardment in history (not counting Zeppelins). They were met by over 90 British fighters, but not one Gotha was brought down. This bombing raid caused 162 deaths.



On June 13, 1944, Germany commemorated the anniversary by launching the first of its V-1 flying bombs, also called the doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), on southern England. Only one of the four missiles London saw that day caused any casualties, but a steady stream of V-1s causing severe damage and casualties fell on London in coming months.



On June 13, 1990, East Germany began tearing down the Berlin Wall. The date apparently has some significance in the Teutonic psyche.

Be gentle with men in lederhosen.


June 13, 1920 -
The United States Postal Service rules that children may not be sent via Parcel Post. Before that, children had been clogging the mail chutes of America.

Dammit, there going my holiday travel plans.


June 13, 1934 -
Two months before becoming Fuhrer, Hitler meets Mussolini in Venice. Unfortunately, Mussolini refuses to have an interpreter and his German is not good, so neither man can understand the other.



Unimpressed, Mussolini gathers a general impression of the German as "a silly little monkey."


June 13, 1970 -
The Beatles had there last number one song The Long and Winding Road on this date.



I hope they were able to make a living after this.


June 13, 1971 -
Next to the White House wedding photo of President Nixon's daughter Tricia, the New York Times runs its first story on the Pentagon Papers, a top secret DoD analysis authored by the RAND Corporation detailing every mistake and deception made during the 30-year history of the Vietnam War.

Attorney General John Mitchell manages to block any further publication of the embarrassing documents, but the court order is countermanded two weeks later in a Supreme Court decision.



And so it goes.

Show some love to your local Grease Monkey

June 12th is Automotive Service Professionals Day. Give a hearty handshake to the men and women who keep your car running and on the road (and give you estimates that are less than meaningless.)



On second thought, wash you hands thoroughly after greeting them.


June 12, 1950 -
Elia Kazan's film-noir thriller, Panic In The Streets, opened on this date.



This film was Jack Palance's feature film debut.


June 12, 1968 -
Roman Polanksi horror classic Rosemary's Baby, premiered on this date.



This was Roman Polanski's first American film.


June 12, 1982 -
The largest anti-nuclear protest , with some one million anti-nuclear demonstrators rallied in Central Park, NYC on this date.



It was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history.


Today in History -
In early 1381 England imposed a new tax, which was called the "Pole Tax" because everyone got the shaft.


The Swiss Army Knife was patented on June 12, 1897. It was the fruit of centuries of Swiss research, development, and testing. Its release was heralded as the dawn of a golden age of Swiss technology.



Switzerland may not have won a war since, but they've never been caught without a corkscrew.


June 12, 1942 -
For her thirteenth birthday on June 12, 1942, a young girl living in the Netherlands received a book which she had pointed out to her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white plaid cloth and with a small lock on the front, Anne had already decided she would use it as a diary. She began writing in it almost immediately, describing herself, her family and friends, her school life, boys she flirted with and the places she liked to visit in her neighborhood. While these early entries demonstrate that, in many ways, her life was that of a typical schoolgirl, she also refers to changes that had taken place since the German occupation. Some references are seemingly casual and not emphasized. However, in some entries she provides more detail of the oppression that was steadily increasing. For instance, she wrote about the yellow star which all Jews were forced to wear in public, and she listed some of the restrictions and persecutions that had encroached into the lives of Amsterdam's Jewish population.



The diary, which was given to Anne Frank on her thirteenth birthday, chronicles her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. It was published as The Diary of a Young Girl and eventually translated from its original Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's most widely read books. There have also been several films, television, theatrical productions, and even an opera based on the diary. Described as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation and in hiding; through her writing, Frank has become one of the most renowned and discussed of Holocaust victims.

So parents, chose wisely when giving your children birthday gifts.

June 12, 1963 -
Civil rights leader - NAACP official - Medgar Evers was fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by the KKK.



An informant in the KKK, Delmar Dennis, later served as a key prosecution witness in convicting Byron De La Beck with for the slaying. Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison; he died in 2001 at age 80.


June 12, 1963 -
The four-hour film spectacle Cleopatra debuts, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, premieres in New York City, on this date.



Adjusting for inflation, this is one of the most expensive movies ever made. Its budget of $44 million is equivalent to $297 million 2007 dollars.


June 12, 1978 -
David Berkowitz is sentenced to 365 consecutive years in prison without the possibility of parole. Berkowitz killed six New Yorkers between 1976 and 1977, known collectively as the Son of Sam murders.

Harvey, Sam Carr's dog, was not charged with any crime.


June 12, 1981 -
Hard to believe but Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1 and Lucas/ Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark both premiered on this date.





These are two film you never think of together.


June 12, 1987 -
U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.



Although there is some disagreement over how much influence, if any, Reagan's words had on the destruction of the wall, the speech is remembered as an important moment in Cold War history.



And so it goes.