Category: Uncategorized

Time Flies September 24

Arrivals:

1936 – Jim Henson, the alter-ego of Ernie and Kermit the Frog.  He began using puppets on TV while he was still in college and incorporated a bunch of his creations into Muppets Inc., in 1963.  It was Sesame Street, in 1969 that brought his work to a national audience, and at one time Big Bird was getting more fan mail than any other TV personality.  His other television show The Muppets produced one of the greatest love stories of all time: alter-ego Kermit and ultra-ego Miss Piggy.

1959 – Steve Whitmire, who took over the personalities of Ernie and Kermit the Frog after Jim Henson passed away suddenly in 1990.  Whitmire and Henson were born on the same day.  Coincidence?  I hope so.

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1947 – The fictitious date of the fictitious memo supposedly signed by President Truman to create a secret government committee in response to the fictitious alien landing at Roswell in July of 1947.  According to the memo, the committee was called Majestic 12.  The original purpose of Majestic 12 was to coordinate all the alien stuff that the government was hiding from us, but since the memo was a fake in the first place, Majestic 12 has since become the cornerstone of a boatload of UFO conspiracy theories.

1979 – Pioneer computer company CompuServe introduced the first consumer Internet package which included electronic mail.  No! there is no connection between the first e-mail and a fake memo about aliens.

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Departures:

1991 – Theodor Seuss Geisel, an author and illustrator.  Dr. Seuss, as he is commonly called, began writing children’s books in 1937.  He has written over 60 of them — about such impressive characters as Horton who heard a Who, the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas and Sam I Am.   His most delightful character, The Cat in the Hat, was created in response to a Life Magazine article about child illiteracy in 1954.  It was published in 1957 and is still a favourite even though it was totally screwed up in the movie.  Seuss is also credited with coining the word “nerd” in his book If I Ran the Zoo.

1994 – Jeff Moss, a composer and lyricist for Sesame Street.  He wrote such classics as “I Love Trash,” “Who are the People in your Neighbourhood,” and “Rubber Duckie.”

Time Flies September 23

Arrivals:

 Even if you don’t believe in astrology, you’ll have to admit that the musical planets are somehow aligned on September 23rd.  Ray Charles was born on this day in 1930.  Like him or don’t, Julio Iglesia was also born on this day in 1943, as well as Bruce Springsteen in 1949 and Ani Difranco in 1970.  Pretty darn strange and — OMG — Ani DiFranco is 40!

1806 – Lewis and Clark arrived back in St Louis after a two year journey to explore the west (recently purchased from Napoleon by Thomas Jefferson) and find the Pacific Ocean.  The Pacific Ocean had always been there, and all the people they encountered didn’t realize there had even been a real estate deal.  Anyway, they found the Pacific, which they inexplicably named Cape Disappointment, and returned home safely.  This was mainly because they had with them the very first, truly portable GPS – a young Shoshone woman named Sacajawea.

1952 – Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon went on national television to deliver the first in a series of “I am not a crook!” speeches.  He had been accused of keeping a slush fund and was there to deny it.  The press called it the “Checkers Speech” because Nixon tear-jerked the audience with an anecdote about his children’s dog, named Checkers.  From there Nixon went from failure to failure until he was finally elected president in 1968.  In 1972, the Watergate break-in revealed he was presiding over the second most corrupt organization in North America and he resigned.

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Departures:

1939 – Sigmund Freud, the first guy to tell us we had a brain.  He then proceeded to tell us it didn’t work.   Thousands of psychiatrists have followed in his footsteps, telling us how to fix it, and, of course, just how much money it’s going to take to do that.

1987 – Bob Fosse, primarily known as a choreographer.  He won 8 Tony Awards for choreography in his career, but he was also a pretty good director.  In 1973, he was the first — and so far the only — director ever to win a Tony, (Pippin), an Emmy, (Liza with a “Z”) and an Oscar, for (Cabaret) — all in the same year.

Time Flies September 22

Arrivals:

1885 – Erich von Stroheim, an actor and director much honoured and wildly overrated (mostly by people who’ve never seen his work).  He was the persona of evil as a Hollywood German in films made during World War I and he was really good in Sunset Boulevard but that’s it — the rest is reputation.   He was however, the first actor to be referred to as “the man you love to hate” and the quote “In Hollywood…you’re only as good as your last picture.”

1903 – Joe Valachi, a cheap crook in an expensive suit.  It was Joe Valachi’s testimony before Congress in 1963 that confirmed what everybody already knew – that there was a socio-economic group in America called the Mafia and that they were mad, bad and dangerous to know.  He was lionized by Peter Maas in his book The Valachi Papers and nobody really knows why he suddenly decided to rat out all his old buddies.

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1957 – The cowboy world was turned upside down when Maverick premiered on ABC.  The show was full of Old West faux pas.  First of all, Bret Maverick (James Garner) showed up wearing a black hat, a good guy no-no in 1957.  A self-confessed coward, our hero was more apt to talk his way out of trouble than shoot it out with the bad guys.   Worse he didn’t even appear in every episode!  He was often replaced by his brother Bart (Jack Kelly).  Despite all this, the show was incredibly successful — even when it committed the ultimate frontier sin and permanently replaced Bret with his cousin Beau — Roger Moore (with a heavy English accent).

 1927 – One of the greatest controversies in 20th century sports is the famous Jack Dempsey – Gene Tunney “Long Count” Heavyweight Championship boxing match at Soldier Field in Chicago.  The fight was literally the event of the decade.   There was coast-to-coast radio coverage, newsreel cameras and gate receipts that totalled more than two million dollars.  There were even rumours of an Al Capone fix.  Long before instant replay and video review the controversy was fuelled around the world because it was against the law to transport boxing films across state lines.  So if you didn’t live in Illinois you never saw the fight.  Today, we don’t have that problem, so just go to YouTube and make up your own mind.

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Departures:

1989 – Irving Berlin, the greatest American songwriter of all time.  He started in Tin Pan Alley where he wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” in 1911 – an instant success.  Over the next 4 decades he wrote more than 1,500 songs including “Blue Skies,” “What’ll I do,” “There’s no Business like Show Business,” “Happy Holidays,” “White Christmas” and “God Bless America,” and on and on.  No other songwriter even comes close.  Oddly enough Berlin could neither read nor write music.

2007 – Marcel Marceau, a world famous French entertainer who had one serious drawback: he was a mime.  All of his acting was done in mimodramas (that’s a real thing), like The Glass Cage, Walking against the Wind and Climbing a Rope.  He is still considered without peer in mimedom, and legend has it that when he died, mimes all over the world honoured him with a moment of noise.