"The Commendatore Scene" From Mozart's "Don Giovanni" by

On this day in 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni was first performed, at the Estates Theatre in Prague.
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Pop History Moment: The Debut of Asterix

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Happy Birthday Winona Ryder

There was a time, it seems, when she was in every movie I liked; although it was only a span of two years, she appeared in Beetlejuice (1988), Great Balls of Fire! and Heathers (1989), Mermaids, Edward Scissorhands, and Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael (1990)...

Since then, of course, in addition to memorable television appearances (The Simpsons in 1994, Strangers With Candy in 2000, and Friends in 2001) Ryder continued with a string of great movie roles, including The Age of Innocence (1993), Reality Bites (1994), and Girl, Interrupted (1999).

Then came her little mishegas at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills in December 2001; the ensuing show-trial and tabloid maelstrom cost her the better part of her reputation (although, as the photo at right clearly shows, Your Honour, she was desperately in need of coverage). Shoplifting (as I well know) is an affliction which is easily overcome, unlike, say, being a Republican, so despite the scandal she's continued to work, although she's been keeping a much lower profile.

Will Winona Ryder be able to return to the Hollywood pantheon to resume her rightful place there, or will she join the ranks of fallen stars who litter our reality television and infomercial landscape? Only time will tell. So far, though, celebrity astronomers such as myself see the scandal more as a wobble in her orbit and, although it was accompanied by a supernova of publicity, the gravity of her popular appeal should be enough to keep her (and her career) from becoming a black hole.
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"Tidal Wave" by The Sugarcubes

Like the last video, Tidal Wave original appeared on The Sugarcubes' 1989 album Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!; also like the last video, the song relies more on the tortured vocal stylings of birthday boy Einar Örn Benediktsson rather than on the similarly idiosyncratic but considerably less dissonant vocals of Björk.
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Remembering... Gustav V

The life of King Gustav V is one which is not well-known in North America, yet was as exciting and tumultuous as any in the early part of the 20th Century; he presided over Sweden's transition from executive to constitutional monarchy, and managed to remain King (as well as keeping Sweden neutral) as in their turn first the Kaiserreich and then the Nazis engulfed the rest of Europe...

Born in June 1858, he ascended to the throne in 1907, following the death of his father Oscar II, just two years after the Treaty of Separation liberated the country from Norwegian rule. Gustav V was the last King to interfere directly in affairs of state, in 1914, over defense spending; he was also the last King to be Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces. Deeply conservative, he was opposed to various democratizing moves which were afoot in the world at the time, Sweden included.

Despite his conservatism (today we might say because of it) he was involved in one doozy of a scandal during his reign, known as the Haijby affair; often accused of collaborationist tendencies (although, to a certain extent, some of these may be blamed on his German wife Victoria), Gustav V occupies an uncomfortable place in Swedish history.
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Happy Birthday Dan Castellanata

As the voice of Homer Simpson, Dan Castellanata enjoys the best of both worlds: he's both famous and well-paid, but his natural pinky skin tone renders him unrecognizable as a Simpson. Although, frankly, after two decades on the air and dozens of talk show appearances, I think a few people would recognize him as himself.

On The Simpsons, Castellaneta provides the voices for Homer Simpson, Abraham 'Grampa' Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Joe Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Itchy, Kodos, Arnie Pie, Scott Christian and other characters - which takes real genius, let me tell you!
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"Eat The Menu" by The Sugarcubes

Eat The Menu better shows the contribution made to The Sugarcubes by Einar Örn Benediktsson; indeed, many in the music punditocracy credit his distinctive vocals for hurting sales of the album, which was a disappointment after the band's strong debut, Life's Too Good.

The song originally appeared on the band's 1989 album Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!, the title of which was inspired by Mr. Toad, from by Kenneth Grahame's children's classic The Wind in the Willows.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Rufus Sewell

I will confess, I don't know anything about Rufus Sewell except that he's hot, that he was discovered by Dame Judi Dench, and he often plays broody men in British movies. And the thing about Dame Judi I learned last...

Instead of concocting a lot of BS to make myself look smarter than I am - which, I must confess, I do enjoy, even though it gets tiring - I'll just stare at his picture until you leave your comments about him; which will be no burden to me as I could look at this picture for days.
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Happy Birthday Madam President

Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed in my job I consider what Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's job entails - namely, bringing democracy to Africa - and suddenly I feel a whole lot better.

First elected to the Presidency of Liberia in November 2005, she quickly earned the nickname 'Iron Lady', which is just as well; given the obstacles she's facing (not to mention the grenades, bullets, and landmines she'll have to face in order to face those obstacles) iron is preferable to even Kevlar.

35 years in the government of Liberia (save for 5 years when, after criticizing the government of former President Samuel Doe, she went into exile in Kenya) will have given her some insight into how that government works (or doesn't work) and her role as the chair of Liberia's Commission on Good Governance immediately prior to her election as President shouldn't hurt either.
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"Coldsweat" by The Sugarcubes

Birthday wishes go out today to Einar Örn Benediktsson, co-vocalist and trumpeter for Iceland's pop pioneers The Sugarcubes; the band owes its unique sound as much to the participation of female vocalist Björk as it does to the contrast between their two voices. Then, of course, there's the Iceland Factor*...

Coldsweat first appeared on The Sugarcubes' 1988 album Life's Too Good, but had been released as a single in the previous year, just like the band's breakthrough single Birthday.

*The so-called Iceland Factor - initially isolated and identified by Mr. Gagne when I first posted "Glósóli" by Sigur Rós - is the subject of much research here in the Applied Pop Culture Laboratory at the Pop Culture Institute. In brief, it posits that music from Iceland is usually all trippy and shit, and seeks to understand why...
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POPnews - October 29th

[For years the Kray Twins terrorized the hard men of London's gangland, until such time as they began to feel they were above the law; from there it was a short while til a long fall brought Ronnie and Reggie under the law again.]
437 CE - Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III married Licinia Eudoxia - daughter of his cousin Theodosius II, Eastern Roman Emperor - in Constantinople, thus unifying the two branches of the House of Theodosius.

1268 - Conradin - the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors - was publicly executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Sicily's King Charles I, a political rival and ally to the Roman Catholic church. The 16-year-old Conrad and 19-year-old Frederick were executed for having fallen in love...

1618 - Adventurer, writer, courtier, and former favourite of Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James VI & I of Scotland and England.

1787 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Don Giovanni was first performed, at the Estates Theatre in Prague.

1792 - Oregon's Mount Hood was named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.

1901 - Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of US President William McKinley, was executed by electrocution at Auburn Prison in Upstate New York.

1923 - Under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey became a republic following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, with its capital at Ankara.

1929 - The New York Stock Exchange crashed for the second time in a week on 'Black Tuesday' in what would soon be called the Crash of '29, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

1956 - Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula and pushed Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal, precipitating the Suez Crisis.

1960 - In Louisville, Kentucky, local fighter Cassius Clay - who later took the name Muhammad Ali - won his first professional fight.

1967 - London criminal Jack 'The Hat' McVitie was murdered by the Kray Twins, leading to their eventual imprisonment and downfall.

1969 - The first-ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET, and the Internet was born.

1989 - After years of delays, the 63rd Street Tunnel opened for service, the first expansion of the New York City subway system since 1967.

1991 - The American Galileo spacecraft made its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, making it the first probe to visit an asteroid.

1992 - The Food and Drug Administration approved Depo Provera for use as a contraceptive in the United States.

1994 - Francisco Martin Duran fired over two dozen shots at the White House; Duran was later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton.

1998 - The Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off on mission STS-95 with 77-year-old John Glenn aboard, making him the oldest person to go into space; previously, he had been the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962, and later a Senator (D-Ohio).

1998 - Hurricane Mitch, the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, made landfall in Honduras.

2005 - Three bombs directed at the transit system of Delhi killed more than 60 and injured nearly 200.
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