In Memoriam: E. B. White

E. B. White was a hero of mine even before I knew who he was; I was maybe eight or nine years old at the time, and all I knew is that he had written three of my favourite books - which are themselves a trifecta of perfection in the realm of kid-lit: Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan remain the win, place, and show of the genre despite having been written at a time long before there even was such a thing.

Subsequent discoveries regarding his substantial contribution to the world of letters have increased, rather than diminished, my appreciation of this gentle man and his prodigious gifts...

He was, of course, instrumental in establishing the tone of The New Yorker, and since buying 80 years' worth of issues on DVD I have had ample opportunity to learn the fine art of writing casuals and profiles directly from the master*.

Should my problem go deeper than tone I can also refer to The Elements of Style, more commonly called Strunk & White, of which he is the White. This essential tome on the English language and its labyrinthine grammar reminds me to always eschew obfuscation with the single best piece of advice any writer can get: 'omit needless words', which I believe Mr. White later amended to 'omit unnecessary words', semantically not only an improvement but a clarification. It's such great advice, too, which makes it an even greater shame that I never take it.

And finally, in last year's excellent memoir Let Me Finish longtime New Yorker contributor and E. B. White's stepson Roger Angell extolled the man's virtues as gently as he analysed his foibles, resulting in a humanistic portrayal of the shy and retiring New England farmer who long ago ignited my imagination as well as being one of the first to make me want to become a novelist.

*Which emulation I hope has bettered, rather than worsened, the tone around this dump, as least as far as the writing goes.
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Tab Hunter on 'What's My Line?'

Originally aired in February 1957, Tab Hunter's appearance on What's My Line? may or may not have been intentionally laden with innuendo, but the fact that it's there is almost as hilarious as the innuendo itself. To whit: Martin Gabel's question about Hunter's appeal being 'especially to women'. Be that as it may, we now know that women's appeal to him was anything but especial. Another highlight must be the revelation that panelist Arlene Francis (aka Mrs. Martin Gabel) has seen Tab Hunter in a torn shirt... Oh, would that there were photos of that floating around somewhere!

As moderated by the ever suave John Charles Daly, the remainder of the panel consists of Dorothy Kilgallen, and Richard Kollmar - aka Mr. Dorothy Kilgallen!
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Happy Birthday Tab Hunter

In the recent memoir Tab Hunter: Confidential one of the sexiest and most popular of the Fifties teen idols confessed that he is gay. Although he did have two prolonged love affairs with women, for some reason his relationships with Roddy MacDowell, Rudolf Nureyev, and Anthony Perkins seem to inspire greater curiosity. I wonder why that is?

The fact is, these were not well-kept secrets even then; at the height of his acclaim there were enough rumours about his proclivities to have surely shortened his career. That he'd gotten his first break courtesy of super-agent (and super pervy old queen) Henry Willson was the first real big clue; Willson also fostered the career of another uber-straight Fifties hunk, namely Rock Hudson.

Nevertheless, it's the Baby Boomers I feel sorry for. If they grew up in the Fifties, just about everything they were told and thought they knew and took for granted was based on lies. Which is sad, yet also hilarious. Yeah... Gotta love that Gen X humour.
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Pop History Moment: The Burr-Hamilton Duel

On this day in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot and mortally wounded former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey. Burr made the challenge to Hamilton in order to defend his honour against some scurrilous rumours Hamilton was said to be spreading. The precise nature of this rumor has never been substantiated, but it may have contained an allusion to incest committed by Vice President Burr with his sister. Rumour or not, Burr and Hamilton had been far from friendly for years...

Though charged with murder in both New York and New Jersey, Burr never faced trial in either instance. His career in shambles, he ended his life in 'exile', first in South Carolina, then Philadelphia, Missouri, and finally New York City, where he died in 1836.

Following the duel Hamilton was carried to the home of William Bayard, where the next day he died; he was later interred in Lower Manhattan's Trinity Churchyard Cemetery.
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"Luka" by Suzanne Vega

As I previously alluded a few posts back, it's rare enough for a song that isn't about 'love'* to hit the pop charts that the phenomenon is just the sort of thing which calls out for a closer analysis by the Pop Culture Institute; in fact, most of the music I post here I like to be about something, rather than a lot of that ooh baby baby jive. Thanks to my heroic intake of porn, I have nothing but disdain for romance - especially if it's being crooned. Yuck!

One of the finest such songs - a song that's actually about something! - was a monster hit for birthday gal Suzanne Vega in 1987. Luka is the story of a little boy being physically abused in his home, told from the perspective of a neighbour he's befriended. You'd have to be a robot not to be moved by the sweet voice and nimble strumming of Vega, especially when they wrap themselves around a fairytale-like story - all qualities neatly captured by the song's video.

In the video Luka is played by Jason Cerbone, who later grew up to be a professional actor, playing Jackie Aprile, Jr. on the hit HBO series, The Sopranos, who could have presumably then gone back to the old neighbourhood and whacked Luka's old man. Just as a for instance...

*Or sex, as it's better known these days.
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In Memoriam: Therese Casgrain

The first female leader of a political party in Quebec, Madame Casgrain (born Marie Therese Forget on this day in 1896) was a child not merely of privilege but of title - the daughter of Lady Blanche MacDonald and Sir Rodolphe Forget - and the wife of prominent member of the Liberal Party, Pierre-François Casgrain, yet a staunch and thorough-going social democrat from a very young age. Over the course of her life and career she attached herself to such issues as female suffrage and nuclear disarmament, and was even the host of a popular radio show in the 1930s called Fémina.

Although never elected (she was defeated 7 times between 1942 and 1963), it was as head of the Parti social democratique du Quebec (an offshoot of the CCF, itself a forerunner of the NDP) that Casgrain lead the charge against the monstrous tyrannies of Maurice Duplessis.

Throughout the Sixties she also campaigned for an end to nuclear proliferation, and was awarded the Order of Canada in 1967 (upgraded in 1974). In 1970 she was named to the Senate by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, but served only 277 days, at which point she was forced to retire owing to her age.

Casgrain died in November 1981 and in 1985 was honoured by Canada Post with the stamp you see here; in 2004 her image was included on the reverse of the Canadian $50 bill, along with her fellow members of the Famous Five.
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"West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys

I wanted to include the video for Dreaming of the Queen here, since it would have made such a brilliant tie-in to the last post, but no! I never get to do what I want. Either there's no video for it (which I strongly suspect) or it just hasn't hit YouTube yet. So instead of a very lovely song from their 1993 album Very* with which to mark the birthday of Neil Tennant let's go all the way back to the beginning...

West End Girls was the first single from Pet Shop Boys' 1986 debut album Please; it would go on to win the Ivor Novello Award for song of the decade 1985-1994 against some pretty stiff competition. Back in the day I always equated it's moody tone and instrumental variety with the spirit of London itself, and I fully expect to find myself wandering through that city some day only to have this song shuffle itself out of my iPod.

At which point I just know I'll start to cry like a slapped bitch...

*Which was itself very beautifully packaged in an orange Lego jewel case, at least originally.
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Happy Birthday Neil Tennant

I realize this is a rubbish picture of him (since it's more than twenty years old now) but this is how he looked the first time I saw him - in the video for West End Girls - so in a way this is how he will always look to me... That was when, once upon a time in a high school fantasy, I decided I wanted to move to London and marry Neil Tennant.

Of course, having seen Neil Tennant, I immediately thereafter saw Chris Lowe and totally changed my mind; it was only a couple of years later, when I heard them both talking bollocks about the Queen, though, that I moved on. Ah youth... Nowadays, of course, I still harbour fantasies of moving to London, even though I'm not about to let some schoolboy crush keep me from my OBE.

Politics or not, Pet Shop Boys still rock my world, and a great deal of their charm is due to the droll vocal stylings of... Yes, you guessed it! Neil Tennant!
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POPnews - July 10th

[The dashing Howard Hughes, preparing to make history by flying around the world...]

1212 - The most severe of several early fires of London began south of the River Thames in the borough of Southwark; before it was done it had burnt most of the city to the ground including the church of St. Mary Overie, which was later rebuilt by Henry Cardinal Beaufort as Southwark Cathedral.

1460 - Yorkist general Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeated the Lancastrian forces of England's King Henry VI at the Battle of Northampton before taking him prisoner - one of the pivotal moments in England's so-called Wars of the Roses.

1553 - Lady Jane Grey ascended to the throne of England in the chaotic few days following the death of Edward VI; although pursuant to the will of her predecessor - and to the powers-that-be eminently preferable to the Catholic succession of Mary I - the ill-fated Nine Days' Queen was so through no machinations of her own, yet paid the ultimate price for having been so grievously manipulated...

1584 - Dutch King William of Orange - better known as William the Silent - was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard at home in Delft's Prinsenhof, where today the most popular exhibit at the museum there are the three bullet holes Gérard's pistol made on that fateful day.

1789 - Scotsman Alexander Mackenzie became a Canadian hero when reached the Mackenzie River delta.

1806 - The first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company, the Vellore Mutiny resulted in the deaths of 200 British troops; reprisals by the British 19th Light Dragoons under Sir Rollo Gillespie killed between 350 and 800 Indians.

1890 - Wyoming became the 44th US state.

1913 - The highest temperature ever recorded in North America - 56.7 °C (134 °F) - was taken at the Greenland Ranch in California's Death Valley.

1925 - The famous Scopes Monkey Trial began in Dayton, Tennessee; although it was John T. Scopes who was on trial for teaching evolution in contradiction to Tennessee's Butler Act, the whole event was really a showdown between legal powerhouses Willam Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. The trial was later made into a play and several movies under the title Inherit The Wind, the most famous of which starred Spencer Tracy as Darrow.

1938 - Howard Hughes set a new world record by flying around the world in 91 hours in a Lockheed Super-Electra loaded with state of the art instruments and a crew of four (Harry Connor, copilot and navigator; Tom Thurlow, navigator; Richard Stoddart, radio operator; and Ed Lund, flight engineer). The flight took off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York City, visiting Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Fairbanks, and Minneapolis. Total distance flown: 23,612 km (14,672 miles).

1941 - The Jedwabne Pogrom - a massacre of Jews living in and near the Polish village of Jedwabne - was undertaken by the country's Nazi occupiers.

1962 - Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, was launched into orbit.

1966 - The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, held a rally at Chicago's Soldier Field, where as many as 60,000 people came to hear Dr. King speak as well as to witness performances by Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter Paul and Mary.

1968 - Maurice Couve de Murville became Prime Minister of France.

1973 - The Bahamas gained full independence from the United Kingdom within the Commonwealth of Nations.

1976 - Following the Luanda Trial, four foreign mercenaries - one American (Daniel Gearhart) and three Britons (Costas Georgiou, Andy MacKenzie, and John Decker Barker) - were executed in the Angolan capital by the victorious Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) for their activities on behalf of the defeated National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) during the Angolan War of Independence.

1985 - The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk by agents of France's DGSE while moored in the harbour of Auckland, New Zealand.

1997 - Partido Popular member Miguel Ángel Blanco was kidnapped in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests.

2002 - At a Sotheby's auction in London, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Canadian newspaper mogul Kenneth, Lord Thomson. The work was temporarily put on display in that city's National Gallery until its permanent home at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario was completed in 2008. Although it remains the most expensive Old Master painting ever sold at auction, its cost pales in comparison to the US$140 million David Martinez allegedly paid David Geffen for Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948 in 2006.
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"The Hardest Button To Button" by The White Stripes

Birthday wishes go out today to Jack White, of the rock duo The White Stripes; even though it's not her birthday until December, it seems unfair to do so and not mention his bandmate and ex-wife Meg White here as well.

In what can only be called a 'spooky coincidence*' The Hardest Button to Button was the third single from the band's fourth album Elephant, while the video was the third of four to date directed for the band by Michel Gondry. Inevitably, it was parodied by The Simpsons, in an episode entitled Jazzy and the Pussycats, from the show's 18th season.

As a pleasant change from a love song - which seemingly three quarters** of songs are - the beat heavy tune with its distinctive jangly chord motifs and abundant fuzz I've selected to accompany these birthday wishes concerns a child's search for normalcy while trapped within a dysfunctional family, which makes it every bit as relatable as a love song minus the sick-making triteness.

*Even though it's far from spooky and not exactly a coincidence.
**A conservative estimate, made by someone (namely me) who's so liberal even his conservative estimates are liberal.
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POPnews - July 9th

[The West front of York Minster remained largely undamaged when the centuries-old Gothic cathedral was struck by lightning and caught fire on this day in 1984 - which is very fortunate indeed, since the large window dates from 1338, and the towers from between 1433 and 1472.]

455 CE - Roman military commander Avitus was proclaimed Emperor of the Western Roman Empire some weeks after the death of his predecessor Petronius Maximus.

1357 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles V assisted in laying the foundation stone of the Charles Bridge across Prague's Vltava River; the date and time - 5:31 AM - had been carefully chosen by astrologers to ensure the bridge's success. So far so good... It's still standing.

1540 - Henry VIII, as head of the Church of England, ended his marriage to Anne of Cleves; their annulment came on amiable terms, and she spent the last 17 years of her life in England.

1793 - The Act Against Slavery was passed by the Council of Upper Canada (Ontario) banning slavery there and prohibiting the importation of new slaves into Lower Canada (Quebec). Slavery wouldn't be truly abolished in Canada until 1833, when it was banned by Parliament in London throughout the British Empire.

1807 - The second signing of the Treaties of Tilsit occurred at Tilsit between Napoleon and Prussia's Frederick William III; two days earlier the French Emperor had signed the first phase of the treaty with Russia's Tsar Alexander I on a raft in the middle of the Neman River.

1815 - Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente became Prime Minister of France.

1816 - Argentina declared its independence from Spain.

1850 - President Zachary Taylor died of acute gastroenteritis only 16 months into his term of office; he was succeeded by Millard Fillmore.

1868 - The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting blacks full citizenship and access to due process under the law. Enforcement is expected to begin any day now.

1875 - The Herzegovinian Rebellion, against the rule of the Ottoman Empire, began.

1900 - The Commonwealth of Australia was created with the royal assent of Queen Victoria, thus uniting Australia's colonies into one nation under a federal Parliament.

1918 - In Nashville an inbound local train collided with an outbound express - both belonging to the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad - killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history.

1922 - Johnny Weissmuller swam the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking a world swimming record and the 'minute barrier'.

1944 - American forces commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith took Saipan - one of the Pacific's Mariana Islands chain - from his Japanese counterpart Yoshitsugu Saito following more than three weeks' fierce fighting during the Battle of Saipan.

1955 - The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was released by Bertrand Russell in London.

1979 - A Renault automobile owned by famed 'Nazi hunters' Serge and Beate Klarsfeld - who were involved in the location and capture of such illustrious war criminals as Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Jean Leguay, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier - was destroyed by a car bomb outside their home in France; a note purportedly from pro-Nazi terrorist organization ODESSA claimed responsibility. No one was injured in the blast, and it failed to stop the couple from continuing with their valuable work.

1984 - Historic York Minster was struck by lightning; the ensuing fire caused considerable damage to the structure, much of which dates from 1080, although the site was first consecrated in 627 CE, having been built to baptize Edwin, King of Northumbria.

1986 - Homosexuality was made legal in New Zealand with the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act.

1995 - The Grateful Dead gave their last public performance, following a 30-year career, at Soldier Field in Chicago. Just a month later, on August 9th, founding member Jerry Garcia was dead, for which no one was grateful.
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Remembering... Dick Sargent

At the risk of offending diehard Bewitched fans - and let's face it, is there any other kind? - I have to say I always kind of preferred Dick Sargent as Darrin Stephens over Dick York, even as a kid. Not that I had any problem with Dick York per se... It's just that there was something about Sargent I liked better*.

In the early 1990s that certain something became clear when Sargent came out of the closet as part of National Coming Out Day in 1991; he was later co-Grand Marshal of the Orange County Pride Parade with his former co-star and one of the loveliest people to have ever appeared on American television, Elizabeth Montgomery.

Although originally cast as Darrin in 1964, Sargent was then unable to get out of an existing contract at Universal, at which time he was replaced by York; the tables turned in 1969 when York hurt his back and was unable to continue as the perennial fall guy (which in many cases involved literally falling in addition to falling victim to Endora's many magical traps or Uncle Arthur's many pranks).

Dick Sargent died on this day in 1994, following a long battle with prostate cancer; he was survived by his longtime partner Albert Williams, despite having appeared on the quiz show Tattletales in the 1970s alongside 'girlfriend' Fannie Flagg, who is herself gay and who has since made something of a name for herself as a novelist. At least all those years of lying to stay in the closet paid off for one of them...

*Even at a young age I knew what I liked best when it came to Dick.
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"Cum On Feel The Noize" by Quiet Riot

Today's birthday boy Carlos Cavazo wasn't one of the original members of Quiet Riot - the LA-based band whose biggest hit (commercially, at least) was 1983's Cum on Feel the Noize - but his brother Tony had been in the band briefly, and suggested his brother as a replacement for the band's former lead guitarist Randy Rhoads, who died in March 1982.

Cum on Feel the Noize was a monster hit off the band's 1983 album Metal Health, their version easily besting Slade, who originated the song; its success made Metal Health the first heavy metal album to top the pop charts in the US, and even unseated The Police's Synchronicity from the exalted #1 spot, an event which is today considered a watershed moment in that decade's culture war - the triumph of Heavy Metal over New Wave.
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In Memoriam: Kathe Kollwitz

Throughout her artistic career, Kathe Kollwitz - born on this day in 1867 - concerned herself with the suffering inherent in the human condition. Her works usually depicted the victims of poverty, famine, and war.

After her son Peter died in World War I she spent the next 15 years, wracked by depression, making him a suitable memorial; The Grieving Parents was finally installed at the Belgian cemetery of Roggevelde in 1932, then later moved to the war cemetery at Vladslo, which is also in Belgium.

Though she and her husband were questioned by the Gestapo in 1936, likely because of their socialist leanings, her fame may have saved them. She died in April 1945, just weeks before the end of the war in Europe.
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Pop History Moment: Our Lady of Kazan Was Discovered

On this day in 1579 Our Lady of Kazan, the most venerated of the Russian Orthodox ikons, was discovered by workmen in the city of Kazan - reportedly after the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a little girl named Matrona and directed her to show them where to look for it.

Over the years the ikon has been credited with sparing Russia from various invasions; the ikon was subsequently stolen in June 1904, and has never been recovered, although copies exist in many Russian cathedrals. In an odd twist of fate some might find ironic, a dozen years after its theft Russia was overrun by Bolsheviks, the country's first invasion since the ikon was discovered.
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"Sexxx-laws" by Beck

Birthday wishes go out today to Beck who, despite his membership in a certain pseudo-religion I am hesitant to name*, still manages to interest me - musically at least.

Taken from his 1999 album Midnite Vultures, Sexx Laws manages to combine pointed social commentary with a smoking banjo solo... In other words, it's got everything I'm looking for in a song, and pointed social commentary besides.

The video was directed by Beck himself, and features an early appearance by Jack Black; my first exposure to the song, though, was when it was featured in a dance-off at the end of one of the more bizarre instalments of the bizarre sitcom Strangers With Candy. It's also been featured in an episode of Matt Groening's great animated sitcom Futurama entitled Bendin' in the Wind - an episode in which Beck (or at least his voice) appeared.

*At the risk of offending any Thetans.
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Pop History Moment: St. John's Devastated By Fire

On this day in 1892 the city of St. John's, Newfoundland, was devastated by what came to be known as the Great Fire of 1892. It all began just after 5 PM, when a pipe dropped in Timothy O'Brien's stable at Freshwater Road at the top of Carter's Hill started a conflagration that would eventually destroy most of the buildings in that city from its outskirts to its principal thoroughfare, Water Street.

Among the thousands of homes and shops destroyed that day was the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, shown at the centre of the above photo, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott; believing the churchyard's stone walls to be an effective barrier against the advancing flames, much of the city's aristocracy had sheltered themselves and their belongings in the church, only to later see them destroyed. The city's rival Roman Catholic Basilica of St. John the Baptist survived the fire almost unscathed, mainly due to its location at the highest point of land above St. John's Harbour as well as its more durable* construction and crew of dedicated firefighters.

Despite the fact that St, John's was then (as now) principally constructed of wood, owing to its damp climate and normally cool temperatures the conditions for a fire almost never exist there; they have, however, existed occasionally in the past, and inevitably whenever they have a fire has broken out. On the fateful day in question, a rare wind from the north-west** blew sparks from the O'Brien farm out over the rooftops of the town, where it hadn't rained in a month; while work on the water mains had been completed by 3 PM earlier that day, there wasn't enough pressure in them by the time the fire got out of hand to quell the flames.

By the following morning the fire had run out of fuel, and finally went out; in total, though, less than $5,000,000 of the total estimated losses of $13,000,000 were covered by insurance, compounding the devastation for many of the 12,000 people rendered homeless by the blaze. Much of the city's relief eventually came from an international outpouring of compassion by people from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.

*Stone and brick, rather than wood.
**The city's prevailing wind is from the East, which in this case would have blown the sparks away from populated areas.
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POPnews - July 8th

[Known to the French as Fort Carillon, Fort Ticonderoga* was built at a narrows near the southern end of Lake Champlain where the rapids of the La Chute River empty; strategically placed 6 km (3.5 miles) between Lake Champlain and Lake George, it was used to control crucial trade routes between the English-held Hudson River Valley and the French-held Saint Lawrence River valley, and as such came into play frequently during the French and Indian War and, to a lesser extent, the American Revolution.]
1283 - During the War of the Sicilian Vespers a fleet commanded by the Aragonese admiral Roger of Lauria defeated the Neapolitan navy at Grand Harbour in the Battle of Malta.

1579 - Our Lady of Kazan, a holy icon of the Russian Orthodox Church, was discovered underground by builders in the Tatarstan city of Kazan; the men had been led there by a small girl named Matrona, who claimed to have had a Marian apparition in which the Theotokos directed her to its location.

1663 - England's King Charles II granted John Clarke a royal charter to Rhode Island.

1709 - During the Great Northern War at the Battle of Poltava Russia's Tsar Peter I defeated Sweden's Charles XII, thus effectively ending Sweden's role as a major power in Europe.

1716 - At the Battle of Dynekilen, during the Great Northern War, Danish-Norwegian forces led by Peter Tordenskjold defeated a larger Swedish force under the command of Olof Strömstierna, taking many of the larger ships captive while scuttling others.

1758 - French forces led by Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and Francis de Gaston, Chevalier de Levis held Fort Carillon - at Ticonderoga, New York, during the Battle of Carillon - against the British forces of James Abercrombie and George Howe (who died two days earlier, during the first day of the siege).

1760 - In a last ditch effort to keep its North American colonies following the country's defeat in the French and Indian War France sent the frigate Le Machault (along with five merchant vessels) to relieve New France, where instead they were defeated by the Royal Navy's John Byron at Chaleur Bay following the 5-day Battle of Restigouche.

1853 - Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay's Uraga Harbor with the intention of opening up Japan to Western trade; after meeting with officials of the Tokugawa Shogunate he was directed to Nagasaki, which at the time was the only Japanese port open to trade with foreigners.

1859 - Sweden's King Charles XV (also known as Norway's Karl IV) ascended to the throne of Sweden-Norway.

1864 - The Shinsengumi sabotaged the Choshu-han shishi's planned attack on Kyoto at Ikedaya, an event known as Ikedaya Jiken, which saved the city from certain destruction.

1874 - The North West Mounted Police began their famous March West, in a group commanded by Col. George Arthur French and comprised of 22 officers, 287 men – called constables and sub-constables – 310 horses, 67 wagons, 114 ox-carts, 18 yoke of oxen, 50 cows and 40 calves. Also along was the artist Henri Julien, working for the Canadian Illustrated News, who sketched the trek from Dufferin in Manitoba to Fort Whoop-Up in western Alberta.

1889 - The first issue of the Wall Street Journal was published.

1896 - William Jennings Bryan delivered his Cross of Gold speech (advocating bimetalism) at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

1898 - The shooting death of crime boss Soapy Smith released Skagway from his iron grip.

1932 - Apparently the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest level of the Great Depression, bottoming out at 41.22.

1966 - King Mwambutsa IV Bangiriceng of Burundi was deposed by his son Prince Charles Ndizi.

1982 - Several members of Iraq's Dawa Party attacked the presidential motorcade in an assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein in Dujail.

1999 - Allen Lee Davis became the last person executed by electric chair in Florida for the May 1982 murder of Nancy Weiler, her unborn child and two daughters, Kristina (9) and Katherine (5).

2004 - American Marine Michael Brown was convicted on Okinawa for 'attempting an indecent act' and 'destruction of property', and was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years, for the attempted rape of a Filipina bartender named Victoria Nakamine.

*With which I am clearly obsessed, having last posted a picture of Fort Ticonderoga here on May 10th.
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Mo Collins Tries Out Bob Newhart's New Therapy

Now I can almost hear some of you raising your hackles at Newhart's methodology, but I've been using his program for months now and I've never felt better. It's amazing, but to a hardcore neurotic just not doing those things that drive yourself and those around you crazy just never seems like an option for some reason...

Birthday wishes go out today to Mo Collins, the MADtv funny lady whose most famous creation is arguably Doreen Larkin, the screechy-voiced mother of man-boy Stuart; here, though, she's teamed up with comedy legend Bob Newhart, who trades in his normally genial persona for one more in keeping with the show's usual tone.
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Pop History Moment: Howard Hughes Crashed And Burned

On this day in 1946 eccentric industrialist and zillionaire Howard Hughes nearly died when the XF-11 spy plane prototype he was piloting plummeted into a Beverly Hills neighborhood shortly after 7:20 in the evening; having developed a technical difficulty during the flight, Hughes had been aiming the doomed plane for the golf course at the Los Angeles Country Club to minimize damage to both the aircraft and surrounding properties, but fell about three hundred yards short, crashing into three nearby homes.

The first of these - at 802 North Linden Drive, belonging to Dr. Jules Zimmerman, the 'dentist to the stars' - had its red-tiled roof sheared off; the second, belonging to film star Rosemary DeCamp and her husband Municipal Justice John Astin Shidler, sustained damage to its master bedroom and lost both its garage and a row of poplar trees. The third home - at 808 North Whittier, belonging to Lt. Col. Charles A. Meyer, known for his role in the Nuremberg Trials - was destroyed by a subsequent fire (caused by the explosion of the plane's fuel tank). Amazingly, no one was killed in the accident.

It was actor Dennis O'Keefe who summoned the police and fire department to the scene, although no one had to summon the crowds of eager on-lookers who themselves came from miles around to survey the devastation. Hughes was rescued from the wreckage by Master Serjeant William L. Durkin, of the US Marine Corps, and later taken to Good Samaritan Hospital where although he survived his grievous injuries his life definitely took a turn for the worse; friends and family later cited this event as to blame for his morphine addiction and well-documented freakiness later in life.

The entire scene was re-enacted in Martin Scorsese's 2004 biopic The Aviator, in which Hughes was of course played by Leonardo DiCaprio.
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In Memoriam: Virginia Rappe

Despite her thin biography it's pretty obvious that Virginia Rappe - born on this day in 1891 - was a level-headed, mature young woman. She'd approached her career as an actress with determination, starting as a model at the age of 14 she later found work as a dress designer while rising steadily through the ranks; at the age of 26, she got her first big break in movies opposite Harold Lockwood in Fred Balshofer's Paradise Garden.

All of which makes whatever she got up to in Room 1220 at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel on one particular Labour Day weekend in 1921 all the more tragic; not only was the poised, vivacious starlet denied the chance to see her own life played through to the last reel, but today she is more remembered as a footnote in the story of a much bigger star, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, whose career pretty much ended at the same moment her life did.

That three subsequent trials absolved Arbuckle in the death of Rappe did not satisfy the public, nor would they have satisfied Rappe, whose last words before she died a few days after a sexual assault left her fatally injured were reportedly 'Get Roscoe'. Whether or not you believe his account, Kenneth Anger paints a pretty lurid picture of Rappe's final scene inside the St. Francis in his salacious, invaluable book Hollywood Babylon.
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"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd

The song Shine On You Crazy Diamond was first composed by Pink Floyd for their 1975 concept album Wish You Were Here; it was intended as a tribute to founding member Syd Barrett - whose life had gone awry thanks as much to his inability to cope with fame as to his heroic appetite for LSD - and whose struggle provided the album's thematic basis. The accompanying video is derived from the band's 1995 film Pulse. While Barrett officially left the band in 1968, he contributed with his old bandmates Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason, and his replacement David Gilmour (et al.) on this, their first notable reunion since going their separate ways.

The phrase Wish You Were Here took on a deeper meaning on this day in 2006, which was arguably the second time Syd Barrett died; while I would never suggest to anyone that they should drop a hit of acid, I might say that if they're Pink Floyd fans they should remember him today in whatever way they feel is appropriate, and that if it involves the taking of drugs then to please use them in the least Syd Barrett-y way possible. Thanks.
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Pop History Moment: London Was Bombed (Yet Again)

Not for the first time and not for the last, on this day in 2005 London was rocked by bombs; as these things go, London gets bombed more than Phil Mitchell, and Londoners carried on with life just as they've always done. Something tells me if Hitler couldn't get the best of them by raining tons of ordnance on their heads almost every night for months, Osama's got no chance even getting a reaction out of that jaded lot with an occasional firecracker.

Terrorists Mohammad Sidique Khan*, Shehzad Tanweer, Germaine Lindsay, and Hasib Hussain targeted 3 Underground trains within 50 seconds of one another just after 8:50 AM and a bus an hour later, at 9:47 AM; two of the three bombs on the Tube were on the Circle Line with the other on the Piccadilly Line while the bus exploded near Tavistock Square. The attacks occurred over a fairly wide area just to the north of central London.

The blasts killed 52 commuters (plus the four suicide bombers) and injured 700, disrupted traffic throughout the city, and much less importantly violated just about every tenet of their religion. So much for those 72 virgins in Heaven, boys...

*Whose wife, Hasina Patel, miscarried their child the following month - leaving even more blood on his hands.
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"What A Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

Of him, Dizzy Gillespie once said: 'he was born poor, died rich, and made no enemies along the way'; I can think of no better epitaph with which to honour Louis Armstrong today.

When he died on this day in 1971 it was a loss acutely felt by the many millions of people who'd been touched by his music and its inherent humanitarianism; besides which, after the last post, I figured my readers would appreciate something (not to mention someone) whose message was entirely positive.

It's so easy to look at the world as a vast pit of entropy; the harder thing is to look at the beauty that's still there, to take pleasure in those people and even things in the world you love, and wherever possible continue to find new challenges and fresh vistas. Most difficult of all is to try and keep an unjaded perspective on it; if you can do that, only then can you sincerely agree with the message of the song - What a Wonderful World.
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It's My Birthday Today... Who Am I?

• Every company I ever ran went bankrupt, including the United States, which racked up a trillion dollar debt on my watch.


• I wanted to be commissioner of baseball, but my mother told me I should run for Governor of Texas instead so I did, because I always do what my mommy tells me.
  


• I executed more teenagers, retards, and women than any other governor in the history of my state.


• I let my campaign tell outrageous lies about my nearest opponent so I could win the pivotal South Carolina primary.


• I let my cronies steal the election for me because I knew my opponents would play fair.


• I never left the United States until after I was 'elected'.


• I sat on my ass reading a children's book when my country was under attack because that's what I was told to do.


• I declared war on a sovereign nation based on a lie so that the Pentagon could burn off its surplus of five year old ordnance.


• I staunchly defend the criminals I choose to serve under me.


• I take more vacations than the past three presidents combined, one of whom is my Daddy.

Can you guess whose birthday it is today, boys and girls?
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In Memoriam: Frida Kahlo

It's hard not to admire the scrappy surrealist Frida Kahlo - born on this day in 1907 - who, despite being a woman of her times as well as crippled by both illness and injury, painted with such honesty and verve; because her principal subject matter was often herself, her cult is still thriving today, as witnessed by the extraordinary success of the 2002 film Frida, which starred Salma Hayek as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as her husband Diego Rivera, with whom she had a famously stormy relationship.

This particular painting Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird depicts its artist as the Aztec Earth Goddess Coatlicue arriving at the opera; it was made in 1940.
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Brian Posehn on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien"

Comedian Brian Posehn - born on this day in 1966 - is an actor and stand-up comedian who has parlayed his geeky fanboy image into a bonafide archetype; in sitcoms such as Just Shoot Me!, Mr. Show, and The Sarah Silverman Program, Posehn became known for affecting a deadpan demeanour, but as the clip shows in person he is far from it. An outspoken fan of comic books and heavy metal music, Posehn has also expressed a fondness for marijuana.

Here's a clip from Late Night with Conan O'Brien - actually Posehn's first appearance on the show - in which he and host Conan O'Brien amusingly discuss many hilarious issues of the day, circa 2004.
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The History of Sex: Porfirio Rubirosa

Aside from having one of the best names in history - a name so sexy not even an unaccented voice like mine can wreck it, so you can imagine how hot it would sound whispered in your ear by a Hispanic gigolo - Porfirio Rubirosa had a highly publicized reputation as a lothario; in his hey-day, which likely began in his early teens and continued until his death, Rubirosa bedded some of the most famous and beautiful women in the world, many of whom were both.

Born in January 1909 in the Dominican Republic, Rubirosa's climb began when he climbed into the bed of Flor de Oro Trujillo, daughter of Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo, in 1934; although soon divorced (on account of Rubirosa's numerous infidelities), he remained in the service of his country and his ex-father-in-law as "Ambassador plenipotentiary" until Trujillo's assassination in May 1961.

What we all really want to know about though, is his cock. Within his lifetime, pepper grinders the world over were nicknamed "rubirosas" in his honour by his jet-set buddies. No less a penis expert than Truman Capote described it thusly: "an 11-inch cafe au lait sinker as thick as a man's wrist", which makes my mouth water just thinking about it. Length and girth - a deadly combination...

As to its victims, they included Dolores Del Rio, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Soraya Esfandiary, Veronica Lake, Kim Novak, Eva Peron, Doris Duke, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Barbara Hutton, and Danielle Darrieux among many hundreds of others; while in most cases these relationships ended badly, while they were going they went exceptionally well, since he was reportedly an expert swordsman as well, which well-endowed men often aren't*.

The death of a truly exceptional cock is always a tragic one; the end came for Rubirosa's when he crashed his Ferrari in the South of France on this day in 1965. Clearly, he'd been reaching for the gear shift and missed - an honest mistake - and realized his error too late, by which time all the blood had rushed out of his brain. Thanks to gossipy women and the gay dudes who love them, however, the name Porfirio Rubirosa will continue to resonate forever as one of the greatest lovers in the history of sex.

*Because they don't need to be!

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"If This Is It" by Huey Lewis and the News

Birthday boy Huey Lewis and his distinctively raspy voice were a regular fixture on the pop charts in the early 1980s, thanks in large part to songs like this one (not to mention videos, which traded on his lean good looks); Huey Lewis & The News scored a massive hit in with the album Sports - released in October 1983 - which was second only to Michael Jackson's Thriller as the best-selling American album of 1984.

If This Is It became the fourth of five singles from Sports, and easily cracked the Top Ten with its easy-going Fifties-inspired pseudo-doo wop sound; the song was later spoofed by the band when they made an uncredited cameo appearance in the 1987 film Amazon Women on the Moon.
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Remembering... Carole Landis

Like many beautiful young people running after the fame and adulation promised by Hollywood, Carole Landis was also running from something much worse - namely her own past. As hard as it may be for those who believe in the power of beauty to comprehend, beauty is as much a curse as it is a gift - which is a lesson Carole Landis would spend her entire life learning the hard way.

Born in Wisconsin on New Year's Day 1919, Landis never knew the man she thought was her father, Alfred Ridste, who walked out on the family before Carole was born; the man who actually might have been Carole's father, Charles Fenner, eventually became her stepfather. The youngest of five children, two of Carole's brothers died in childhood - one was scalded, the other shot - which may have had something to do with the climate of abuse in the household. Landis herself was molested from an early age, likely by one of a series of putative 'uncles' courting her mother.

With her sunny good looks and friendly disposition, Landis alternated between winning beauty contests and making feminist statements as a teenager, such as trying to start a girls' football team at her high school. By the mid-1930s she'd escaped (or thought she had) and found herself singing in nightclubs in San Francisco; her first film appearance came shortly thereafter in 1937, although like fully half of the entries in her filmography, she was unbilled for her performance.

Unsatisfied with just being a pretty girl in a sweater*, Landis managed to get a contract with 20th Century Fox, and not just because she was sleeping with Darryl F. Zanuck either, although after their relationship ended the good parts she'd gotten in the early 1940s evaporated, and she was back to making B-movies. Having dated a string of Hollywood notables - Franchot Tone, Charlie Chaplin, and George Montgomery to name just three - Landis threw herself into the war effort, even travelling overseas to perform for the troops; during one trip she nearly died of amoebic dystentery and malaria. She later wrote a book about her experiences, which was later made into the movie Four Jills in a Jeep, which costarred such other USO notables as Mitzi Mayfair, Kay Francis, and Martha Raye.

By the early-1940s it might have seemed like Landis had finally beaten back her demons; depression, though, is a wily foe. Treating it is as individual as those who live with the condition, a concept scarcely given credence today, and one which certainly wouldn't have occurred to anyone then. Landis had previously attempted suicide in 1944 and 1946, and her attempt on this day in 1948 might have failed as well if only her then-boyfriend Rex Harrison hadn't wasted so much time attempting damage control. When he found her she was still alive, albeit with a weak pulse; by the time he'd wasted half an hour looking through her address book for the phone number of her doctor the Seconal she'd taken had done their work, and she was gone.

Carole Landis was buried at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles, and was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In pop culture terms, though, her most enduring memorial came when Jacqueline Susann based the character Jennifer North - from her 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls - on Landis; in the 1967 movie version Jennifer North was played by another Hollywood beauty with an entirely different tragedy on her horizon, Sharon Tate.

*Despite being awfully good at it, as the photo shows.
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Happy Birthday Bill Watterson

Even though Bill Watterson only drew Calvin and Hobbes for ten years, what a decade it was!

At a time when the comics page was at its most moribund* the antics of bratty six-year old Calvin and his imaginary friend/stuffed tiger Hobbes could be counted on to brighten any day. The amusing scrapes they frequently found themselves in were belied by their philosophical perspective on them; small wonder, since Watterson named Calvin for John Calvin and Hobbes for Thomas Hobbes, both of whom were philosophers.

Watterson cited Charles Schulz as among his prime influences, and there is definitely some similarity between the combination of antics and angst found in Calvin and Hobbes in Peanuts as well; unlike his idol, though, Watterson refused to allow Calvin to exist in any other medium - no Saturday morning cartoon, no Happy Meal Toys, major motion pictures, or television ads. In fact, Watterson has never had kind words for fellow cartoonist Jim Davis, who whored his strip Garfield out to such an extreme that it probably did, in the end, lessen the strip's impact.

Still, for someone with a major knick-knack fetish like myself, a few Calvin and Hobbes figurines would fit nicely into my menagerie of Peanuts, Muppets, and Smurfs. Nevertheless, I appreciate his decision, and turn to the books again and again whenever I'm in need of the wisdom of a little kid with a big imagination. In fact, one of these days I may even take the plunge and splash out on The Complete Calvin and Hobbes - a 10.2 kilo (22.5 pound) behemoth containing every single strip.

*Which is, let's face it, more often than not.
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"Cabo Verde" by Cesaria Evora

In honour of Cape Verde's independence day*, the Pop Culture Institute is proud to feature the work of one of that tiny country's greatest exports: Cesária Évora. The song she sings here, Cabo Verde, is from her 1991 album Mar Azul, and its video shows images of both Évora and her stark homeland.

I had the pleasure of seeing her perform this, and many others besides, live at the Vancouver Jazz Festival in July 2000. It was an evening both electric and laid-back; normally, the elaborate interior of the Orpheum sends me so spinny you could run a generator off me, but that night I kept my cool and was rewarded in kind with an evening of sweet dusky vocals that are themselves the essence of cool. So carried away was I that when, in the middle of the show, the Barefoot Diva took her trademark smoke break onstage I found myself, along with the rest of the capacity crowd, applauding her despite how I feel about cigarettes**.

Some five years later our paths crossed again when she was a guest in the hotel where I was working; I'm ashamed to say the couple of times I found myself in her presence I just stood there grinning like a dumb-ass. I don't know if she's been back since, but if she hasn't I'm sure it's my fault. I imagine she still has nightmares about the enormous grinning bellhop; I know I would.

*Today!
**I don't like them.
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Pop History Moment: John Guy Sails For Newfoundland

On this day in 1610 John Guy sailed from Bristol* with 39 colonists, intent on creating the first permanent colony and plantation in Newfoundland on behalf of Britain's Society of Merchant Venturers. He'd already received his charter from James I in 1607, and explored the coastline of Conception Bay - scouting for a town site - in 1608.

The colonists arrived in August, too late in the year to do much but build their homes and ride out the winter, but survive it they did; in fact, Cuper's Cove was only the second New World colony (after the Jamestown Settlement) to survive for more than a year after its establishment. It was also there where, in March 1613, the first white baby in Newfoundland was born to the wife of Nicholas Guy.

Steadily occupied for the rest of the century, the site was abandoned early in the 18th Century; today a village known as Cupids - home to some 800 people - stands near where Guy's original colony stood.

*Where he'd once served on the Common Council and as sheriff before being named Governor of Newfoundland by the London and Bristol Company.
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POPnews - July 5th

[Although she lived just six years, Dolly the sheep's brief life raised all sorts of ethical questions about cloning, in addition to raising hopes that such a technique might one day be used to bring species such as the Pyrenean ibex back from extinction - which in itself is bound to raise a whole other set of issues... Aside from that the only ethical issue I have with Dolly is in regards to her name; since the cell used to replicate her was taken from a mammary gland, the first cloned mammal in history was named after the famously busty entertainer and humanitarian Dolly Parton - which I think says more about Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and their colleagues at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute than I dare to!]
1687 - Isaac Newton published his three-volume Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which he'd written over the previous two years.

1775 - The Second Continental Congress adopted the Olive Branch Petition, a letter written to George III in a last-ditch effort to prevent bloodshed in the looming American Revolution; it was sent three days later, and when it was received by the King six weeks after that it was discarded and its requests ignored.

1809 - The Battle of Wagram began, near Vienna, pitting the Duke of Teschen against the Corsican Over-Compensator himself; when it ended the following day it had become the largest battle yet of the Napoleonic Wars, and ended the War of the Fifth Coalition.

1811 - Venezuela's Congress declared independence from Spain by ratifying a document written by Juan Germán Roscio, precipitating the Venezuelan War of Independence, which lasted until the Spanish were soundly defeated by José Prudencio Padilla at the Battle of Lake Maracaibo in July 1823. Today is celebrated as Independence Day in Venezuela.

1814 - During the War of 1812 American Major General Jacob Brown defeated British General Phineas Riall at the Battle of Chippawa.

1830 - France invaded Algeria, thereby inflicting 132 years of French colonial rule on that North African country.

1833 - Admiral Charles Napier defeated the navy of the Portuguese usurper Dom Miguel at the third Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

1934 - At an incident which came to be known as Bloody Thursday police opened fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco, killing Nicholas Bordois and Howard Sperry.

1937 - Spam, the luncheon meat, was first offered for sale by the Hormel Foods Corporation.

1946 - The bikini was introduced during a fashion show at Piscine Molitor in Paris; allegedly invented by engineer Louis Réard and designer Jacques Helm, there are depictions of similar garments from Ancient Rome.

1947 - Larry Doby signed a contract with Bill Veeck and the Cleveland Indians, making him the first black player in the American League... Unfortunately for Doby Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League just 11 weeks earlier, which pretty much stole all of Doby's thunder. Doby was, however, the first black man to hit a home run during a World Series game - which he did in 1948, the year Cleveland trounced the Boston Braves. Previously a member of the Newark Eagles of the Negro Leagues, Doby ended his American playing career in June 1959 with the Chicago White Sox, passing through the locker room of the Detroit Tigers along the way; following his retirement from the majors state-side, Doby played with the Chunichi Dragons of Nippon Professional Baseball in Nagoya, Japan. He also coached for the Montreal Expos and the Indians, and later served as manager for the White Sox in 1978 - ironically making him the second black manager in the majors, following a different Robinson (Frank Robinson) into the record books! Doby was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.

1950 - The Knesset passed the Law of Return, granting all Jews the right to immigrate to Israel.
1954 - India's Andhra Pradesh High Court was established.

1962 - Following the Algerian War of Independence that country declared its own independence from France, two days after French President Charles de Gaulle had declared it for them and 132 years to the day after the French initially invaded.

1970 - During a stopover en route from Montreal to Los Angeles Air Canada Flight 621 crashed near Toronto International Airport, killing 109 people.

1975 - Cape Verde gained its independence from Portugal following the fall of the latter's dictator António de Oliveira Salazar - whose hardline approach to the independence of Portugese colonies caused the majority of them to be lost anyway following his ouster.

1977 - During a military coup in Pakistan, that country's first democratically elected Prime Minister - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto - was overthrown.

1989 - Oliver North was sentenced by US District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service for his part in the Iran-Contra Affair.

1996 - Dolly the sheep became the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
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