Bill Murray and Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors"

The volume's a bit low, but that just means you have to listen more carefully; otherwise I love love love it! Normally when a sadist meets a masochist sparks fly (providing that's what they're into) but as this clip proves, chemistry is no match for dentistry.

Here birthday boy Bill Murray (as patient Arthur Denton) and Steve Martin (another of our favourites around the Pop Culture Institute, playing Orin Scrivello, DDS) yuk it up in the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, while Seymour (Rick Moranis) waits nervously outside the door...
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Happy Birthday Bill Murray

Thirty years at the pinnacle of show business hasn't blunted his sense of humour; in fact, Bill Murray's comedy persona seems to have appeared - fully formed - in 1976, and has only gotten richer and deeper and shinier over the years...

While conducting research for this piece I came across a rare flash of insight in, of all places, a YouTube comment: he did his selling out early, so he's always been able to be genuine.

Well, it certainly involves a great deal of selling out to appear on Saturday Night Live, which is where Bill Murray got his start. But in my humble opinion, though, you can't sell out if you don't buy in, and that's what he's done.

The rumour is he doesn't even have an agent. That doesn't mean much in and of itself - after all, I couldn't get an agent to let me detail their car, let alone find me a job. However, I'm just a blogger and he's a comedy legend - having appeared in such chucklefests as Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie, and Little Shop of Horrors.

Still, he's no slouch in the drama department either, having garnered rave reviews for performances in films as diverse as The Razor's Edge, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Rushmore, and Lost in Translation.
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POPnews: September 21st

[When it was completed in January 2010, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill had given Dubai not only the biggest erection in the world but the biggest in history; fortunately, since the country is heavily favoured by the Saudi elite, it's unlikely anyone will fly a plane into it.]
454 CE - Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinated his top general Aëtius in the Imperial throne room at Ravenna.

1217 - The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu of Lehola was killed in a battle against Teutonic Knights during the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, at a pivotal moment in the Livonian Crusade.

1745 - At the Battle of Prestonpans (near Edinburgh) a Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope was defeated - in ten minutes! - by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

1765 - Antoine de Beauterne announced that he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan - a claim which was later proven wrong when the attacks resumed.

1780 - Benedict Arnold delivered the plans for West Point to the British; the plot to seize the military academy and it's prime location alongside the Hudson River, however, failed - and his name has been synonymous with treachery in America ever since.

1792 - The French National Convention voted to abolish that country's monarchy.

1827 - According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni led him to a set of golden plates, some of which he later translated with the aid of a seer stone or stone spectacles into The Book of Mormon; the plates were found buried under Cumorah hill in upstate New York - Manchester, to be precise - and are supposedly the chronicle of the prophet Mormon, a Nephrite who, along with his son, visited America in the 4th Century CE.

1897 - Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun - better known by its accompanying headline 'Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus' - was published; Francis Pharcellus Church's philosophical response has been a part of Christmas lore ever since.

1898 - China's Empress Dowager Cixi seized power and ended that country's Hundred Days' Reform.

1921 - During what came to be known as the Oppau explosion, a storage silo at a fertilizer plant in that German city exploded, killing between 500 and 600; even though only about 10% of the ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the facility was involved, a 90 m by 125 m crater - and 19 m deep - was created at the site, damage to nearby property was immense, and the blast was heard 300 kilometres away in München.

1937 - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published in the UK by George Allen & Unwin.

1938 - The Great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island, New York, killing between 500 and 700 as it roared up the Eastern Seaboard, before finally dissipating in New Hampshire.

1939 - Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu was assassinated in Bucharest by ultranationalist members of the Iron Guard, apparently on orders from Nazi Germany.

1964 - Malta became independent from the United Kingdom.

1970 - The Cleveland Browns beat the New York Jets at home on the first-ever showing of Monday Night Football.

1976 - Orlando Letelier - a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in September 1973 by Augusto Pinochet - was assassinated in Washington, D.C.

1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment to the US Supreme Court was unanimously approved by the Senate.

1995 - The Hindu milk miracle occurred, in which statues of the Hindu God Ganesh began drinking milk when spoonfuls were placed near their mouths.

2004 - Construction of the Burj Dubai (now known as the Burj Khalifa) began.
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