Tag: History

History, Bitter & Twisted October 19

Arrivals:

1937 – Peter Max, a 60s going on 70s artist who put the psycho in psychedelic.  Max’s work uses strong colors, bubble letters, sunshine and rainbows.   Like most artists of the period, he uses American clichés as a backdrop for his art.  He is deeply influenced (“rip-off” is such a 60s word!) by Andy Warhol and he must have seen the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine at least 8 times.  Today, Max’s art seems horribly out of date but he’s still flogging it — mostly to government officials and old company executives who think it’s still cool.  Eventually there will be another 60s revival, and ordinary people will reclaim Max’s art.

1969 – Trey Parker, one half of the geniuses behind the mega-funny TV series South Park.  Parker and his creative partner, Matt Stone have done a lot of other things but none of them is as funny as South Park – except maybe Team America: World Police, which died at the box office.  South Park is so funny that it has angered many members of “Politically Correct,” a special interest group for people born without a laugh track.  They claim that Parker, Stone and South Park have a Hidden Right Wing Agenda.  I’ve seen the show, and they might be right.

—

1453 – French troops recaptured the city of Bordeaux, and so virtually ended the 100 Year War.  This was a war that had everything.  It even lasted longer than it was supposed to –116 years (a great trivia question, by the way.)  It had great battles, Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt (where the obscene middle finger gesture comes from.)  It had fascinating personalities: Edward the Black Prince, John the Fearless, Henry V, running around calling everybody his “Band of Brothers” and shouting “Once more into the breach,” etc. etc.  And everybody’s favourite heroine, Joan of Arc, answering God’s summons to save France and, (when the English burned her at the stake) ending up looking remarkably like Ingrid Bergman.  It started out with glorious knights, in full armour, hacking away at each other in chivalrous individual combat and ended with rows of cannons, dramatically blasting away, in indiscriminate wholesale slaughter.  It would have been a brilliant war except for a couple of minor problems.  One — it started as a family feud when Edward III of England and Philip of Valois both wanted to oppress the French peasants at the same time — not a real good reason to have a war.  Two – it lasted so long that the original arguments between the original combatants were long since gone and forgotten, and you had people’s great-grand-children shooting at each other, for no apparent reason.  And finally three – it irreparably changed the face of warfare.  It’s all well and good to have a couple of hundred noblemen dressing up and playing Capture the Flag, but when you field huge professional armies that spend year after year butchering the civilian population for money and sport – that just gives war a bad name.

1987 – The stock markets of the world unexpectedly crashed on what has come to be called Black Monday.  And they didn’t just collapse, they dropped like they’d fallen down a well.  It was the largest percentage drop in world history (even bigger than the Stock Market Crash of 1929.)  Wall Street alone lost over 20%.  People lost millions in a matter of minutes.  Even the big boys, Gates and Buffett, took a kicking.  Immediately afterwards, economists gathered in Washington, DC, to figure out the cause and future prevention of such a terrible occurrence.  They yipped and chattered, hemmed and hawed and rattled around for about a week and a half, then announced that they had no idea what the hell just happened but they sure hoped it wouldn’t happen again.  It has — several times.

—

Departures:

1745 – Jonathan Swift, yet another witty Irishman.  Everybody knows that Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels about Lemuel Gulliver’s adventures in the land of the Lilliputians (little people) and the Brobdingnagians (giants) but most people never get past that.  Actually, Gulliver travelled to several other strange lands including Laputa, a flying island, Glubbdrubdrib and Japan.  On his final voyage, he goes to the land of the Houyhnhnms where graceful and noble horses rule a race of filthy, stupid men called Yahoos.  When Gulliver’s Travels was published, many people believed that there was a Gulliver and that he did actually travel to those places.  I’m not sure that Swift ever clued some of them in.  Swift also wrote A Modest Proposal in which he advocated poor people selling their children to rich people for food – an interesting concept in 1729.  Once again, many people thought Swift was serious.

2008 – Mr. Blackwell! Has it come to this?  Richard Blackwell was a very successful fashion designer who made extensive use of television and journalism to promote his designs.  He wrote a fashion column and a couple of books.  His House of Blackwell designed clothes for Jane Russell and Nancy Reagan among others.  He was very good at what he did.  But what is he remembered for?  Blackwell’s Worst-Dressed List, an annual mean-spirited charade that served absolutely no purpose.  The thing ran for over 40 years and just got bitchier and bitchier as it went along.   People ate it up, enthralled with celebrity women getting impaled by Blackwell’s nasty barbs.   It was insult humour for the masses at its best.  Who am I kidding?  I loved it, too.

History, Bitter & Twisted October 15

Arrivals:

1924 – Lido “Lee” Iacocca, an American icon and automobile executive.  Iacocca’s career can be summed up quite nicely as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  The Good – Iacocca was part of the design team that put together the Ford Mustang, a classic automobile, in league with the 56 Chevy and the T-Bird.  The Bad –In 1979, when Chrysler was going broke, he was the first of the Big Car Maker to go crying to the federal government for money.  His extortion knew no bounds when he threatened every single taxpayer in the country with mass unemployment unless he got what he wanted – loan guarantees.  The government caved, and it set the stage for this most recent robbery by Big Auto.  And The Ugly – Iacocca was the executive behind the Ford Pinto, a car so badly designed it burst into flames whenever anybody touched it.

1930 – FM 2030, a futurist from the 70s who legally changed his name to reflect the future when, he believed, titles, gender and ethnic origin would be irrelevant.  Unlike his colleague Alvin Toffler, FM (I guess, to his friends) was long on theory and short on analysis.  He didn’t really spot trends and take them to a logical conclusion so much as just pronounce: this is the way it’s going to be.  He did have some good lines though.  Things like, “I have a deep nostalgia for the future” and “I’ll never eat anything that had a mother.”  He is currently frozen in cryonic suspension, in Scottsdale, Arizona, waiting for the future.

—

1989 – It’s a story that could have been written for Disney.  On the morning of October 15th Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player who ever lived, was on the verge of breaking Gordie Howe’s all-time scoring record.  In fact, he was only one point behind.  That night, Gretzky and his LA Kings were going to play the Oilers in Edmonton.  The Oilers were Gretzky’s old team.  He had played in Edmonton for 9 years, winning 4 Stanley Cups, thrilling the crowds and breaking every hockey record known to man – except one.  Now, Gretzky was back and you could touch the tension as every eye in Edmonton, was focused on Wayne Gretzky one more time.  It was his chance to give his old fans another glimpse at glory, and cool as the other side of the pillow, Gretzky didn’t disappoint them.  At five minutes into the first period, he got an assist: the record was tied.  Then, with less than a minute left to play and the Kings down 2-1, Gretzky whipped a backhand past goalie Bill Ranford to tie the game and break the record.  Gretzky’s hometown fans went mad with delight.  Cue the music?  Cue the credits?  No.  The game went into overtime and Gretzky scored the winning goal just to punctuate his achievement for the fans who had supported him so hard for so long.  Did Wayne Gretzky plan it that way?  Probably.  We don’t call him The Great One for nothing.

1917 – In the spy business, nobody has better brand recognition than James Bond — except maybe Mata Hari.  She is the popular femme fatale in everybody’s fantasy.  In reality, however, she wasn’t much of a spy, if she was a spy at all.  Margaretha (Zelle) Macleod was a Dutch dancer and apparently not a very good one.  She had learned her art in the wilds of Indonesia and her exotic movements were augmented by her inability to keep her clothes on during her performances.  In Paris, in 1905, this got a lot of press.  Very soon, Mata Hari, as she now called herself, was very famous and in demand — not only as a dancer but also a bed partner.   “Promiscuous” is such a hard word, but Ms Macleod took to her newfound celebrity with enthusiasm and spent the better part of the next ten years horizontal.  This is what got her into trouble.  When World War I broke out, Mata Hari remained strictly neutral, sleeping with both French and German officers equally.  The French, never ones to share, thought something nefarious was going on and arrested her for espionage.  The trial was quick, the verdict was a formality, and on October 15th, she was taken out and shot.  It was the making of the girl.  At 41, she was losing her charms and would have simply vanished into history if that French firing squad hadn’t made her immortal.

—

Departures:

1930 – Herbert Henry Dow, the guy who started Dow Chemical.  Apparently, according to tons of sources, this is how he turned little itty bitty Dow Chemical into DOW CHEMICAL, a huge international kick-ass company.  It’s long and complicated (and I don’t believe it) but….  In the early 20th Century, Dow discovered a way to produce bromine (don’t ask me what it’s used for) for 36 cents a pound, which he sold in America.  At the same time, a German cartel of companies had fixed the price of bromine in Europe at 47 cents a pound.  They warned Dow not to sell his inexpensive bromine in Europe or they would flood the American market with cheap stuff and drive him out of business.  Dow ignored them, and the Germans retaliated by indeed flooding the market with bromine at 15 a cents pound.  Dow was on the verge of bankruptcy when he came up with a cunning plan.  He bought all the bromine he could, repackaged it and shipped it back to Europe for sale at 27 cents, even lower than his original price.  The Germans never caught on and Dow Chemical made a gabillion dollars.  If nothing else, it’s a cute story.

1964 – Cole Porter, an American song writer from the days of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway theatre.  However, unlike his contemporaries Porter was independently wealthy and so never had to work the music publicizing houses on West 28th in New York.  He spent most of his early years in Paris and only came back to New York when his songs were successful.  Over the years, he wrote some of the most popular songs of the era, including “Night and Day”, “Anything Goes”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, and “Begin the Beguine.”  He also wrote that standard favourite that’s in all the So You Want to Play the Guitar books “Don’t Fence Me In.”  His most successful show was Kiss Me, Kate, a reworking of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew!

History, Bitter & Twisted October 12

Arrivals:

1537 – King Edward VI of England, the long-awaited male heir to the English throne, was a terrible disappointment.  Henry VIII had defied God and the Pope, changed a whole country’s religion and killed at least one wife to get him.  Despite all that Edward never actually ruled England.  He was crowned when he was 9, spent the next few years being sick and finally died in 1553.  The best that can be said about the guy is his half-sister was Elizabeth I.

1875 – Aleister Crowley, a rich Victorian nutbar, the prototype of all nutbars who came after him.  Once called, “the wickedest man alive” the best that can be said of Crowley is that he may have been the “weirdest man alive.”  He loudly proclaimed that he was a warlock and practiced white, black and, probably, after he bought a house in Scotland, plaid magic.  He spent his life travelling the world and indulging himself in sex, drugs and the Edwardian equivalent of rock n’ roll.  He gathered and discarded disciples (mostly upper class women) the way you and I change our socks.  A con artist of the first order, this charlatan didn’t even have the excuse that he was conning people out of their money.  I know I’ve sugar-coated it, but this guy was a git.

—

1492 – Christopher Columbus became the first tourist in North America.  He loved it, even though he’d originally planned to go somewhere else.  He immediately organized a number of excursions to return to what was then called the “New World.”   Everybody loved the place.  Unfortunately, things got out of hand and before anybody in the “New World” knew it, they were being overwhelmed by a couple of hundred years of illegal immigration.

—

Departures:

1978 – Nancy Spungen was the punk wave girlfriend of the absolute Emperor of Punk — Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols.  Nancy was found stabbed to death on the bathroom floor of their Chelsea Hotel room in New York.  There was speculation and rumour, but in the end, it was probably Sid who killed her in a drug-soaked rage.  It was the quintessential punk rock romance.   

In a different time and in a different place (September 5th, 1951 in Mexico City) Beat writer William Burroughs and his common-law wife Joan Vollmer were hanging out, drinking heavily, smoking dope and (likely) doing heroin.  According to one version of events, Joan put an empty glass on her head and Bill tried to shoot it off, William Tell style.  He missed.  Joan died later that day from a gunshot to the head.

Plus ca change…..

2002 – Ray Conniff is still the undisputed World Heavyweight Champion of Elevator Music.  Even as Walmart and Generic Gigantic Mall are turning to less lobotomizing lullabies, Ray and his “Million and One Strings” are still sucking the life out of us, every time we travel vertically through our world.  One of my biggest fears is future historians are going to think we liked this stuff.