Pop History Moment: Taco Bell's Big Gamble

Since I am always looking for a bit of variety for my readers, here's what is definitely our (and may in fact be the world's) first-ever pop culture math word problem for you to ponder...

Given that a) the Pacific Ocean has a surface area of 169.2 million square kilometers - give or take - and b) the Mir space station had a living volume of 350 cubic meters, and that c) on this day in 2001 the Taco Bell corporation placed a 144 square meter target in the ocean 15 km off the coast of Australia with the stated aim that if any part of Mir that didn't burn up on re-entry struck the target following its deorbit they would give every American a free taco, what was the chance of them actually having to pay out on their PR stunt?

The odds of this potential occurrence have been calculated by crack mathematicians (or were they mathematicians on crack?) at the Pop Culture Institute as being Not Bloody Likely^shitload*. Then again, math never was our strongest subject - obviously; William Ailor, director of The Aerospace Corporation's Centre for Orbital Re-entry Debris Studies, told the Associated Press at the time that the odds were 'slim to none'. Gee, for a smart guy that doesn't sound very scientific.

Still, as PR stunts go, it was pretty effective; even with a probability of 'Not Bloody Likely to the power of shitload' Taco Bell took out a pretty hefty insurance policy, just in case. After all, 280 million tacos costs a lot of money; not to mention what it would have done to the sales of Charmin. Had Mir hit the target, it would have gone down in the annals - not to mention the anals - of history.

Nevertheless, when Mir made it's run for the border of space it was the largest item in history to have been de-orbited; Skylab's mass was 77,088 kg compared to Mir's 124,340, and when it returned to Earth in July 1979 pieces of it rained down all over the town of Esperance, in Western Australia, the largest one the size of a washing machine. (The town fined NASA $400 for littering - a fine which has never been paid, I might add.) Had Mir struck land the possible fine could easily have bankrupted the Russian government, just as surely as it could have bankrupted Taco Bell's insurer had it struck the target.

*Kudos to regular commenter and Brain Trust member Sr. Mainar for providing some calculation of the possibility of Skylab hitting the target, which sounds pretty accurate to me; check it out in the comment section below.
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"You Might Think" by The Cars

Birthday wishes go out today to Ric Ocasek, one of the lead singers for and founding member of Boston-based New Wave pop group The Cars - along with the late Benjamin Orr, Elliot Easton, Greg Hawkes, and David Robinson.

You Might Think originally appeared on the band's 1984 album Heartbeat City, and it's trippy video with cutting edge special effects won numerous awards for its director, Alex Weil - including the very first Video of the Year at the very first MTV Video Music Awards. The video costars Ocasek and model Susan Gallagher.
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POPnews - March 23rd

[The E.V. Haughwout Building - located at 488 Broadway and the corner of Broome Street in Manhattan's tony SoHo district - was designed by John P. Gaynor to house Haughwout's emporium of fine china, which once attracted such bold-named clients as Mary Todd Lincoln. The building's original Otis Elevator - the first in the world - cost $300 and went the amazing speed of 20 cm (8 inches) per second; it is no longer in place.]
1568 - The Peace of Longjumeau ended France's so-called Second War of Religion when again King Charles IX and Catherine de' Medici (his mother and widow of Henri II) made substantial concessions to the Huguenots.

1708 - James Francis Edward Stuart - son of the deposed James II and VII of England and Scotland, known colloquially as the Old Pretender - attempted to invade England by landing a French fleet at the Firth of Forth; the ships were ultimately driven back by Admiral Sir George Byng.

1775 - American patriot Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech - proclaiming 'give me liberty or give me death' - to the Virginia House of Burgesses at St. John's Church in Richmond, supposedly in the presence of fellow revolutionaries Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Or did he? And was he the first to utter those famous words?

1801 - Russia's Tsar Paul I was struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael's Castle in what was surely one of the most labour-intensive assassinations in history... In the end the Tsar was killed by a group of men led by Levin August, Count von Benningsen and General Vladimir Yashvil.

1806 - After traveling overland through the vast territory encompassed by the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery set out from Fort Clatsop in the Oregon Country to begin their equally arduous journey back to St. Louis.

1848 - The ship John Wickliffe arrived at Port Chalmers carrying the first Scottish settlers for a proposed colony at Dunedin, resulting in the founding of New Zealand's Otago province.

1857 - Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway in New York City.

1889 - The free Woolwich Ferry officially opened connecting Woolwich in the Borough of Greenwich to North Woolwich in the Borough of Newham in the east end of London across the Thames.

1896 - The Raines Law was passed by the New York State Legislature, restricting the Sunday sale of alcohol to hotels, rather than saloons - which anyway soon found a loophole by fitting out 'rooms' in storehouses which later proved highly propitious to prostitutes and their clients. The Raines Law's principal depiction in pop culture remains Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh, in which the saloon room has been outfitted for use as a gambling parlour.

1908 - American diplomat Durham Stevens was attacked while staying at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel by Korean assassins Jeon Myeong-un and Jang In-hwan, leading to his death in a hospital two days later.

1919 - Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement, the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), in Milan; within two years the organization became known as the National Fascist Party.

1931 - Revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged during the Indian struggle for independence, their request to be executed by firing squad having been refused.

1933 - Germany's Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, effectively making Adolf Hitler that country's dictator.

1983 - US President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative, a technology designed to intercept enemy missiles from space.

1994 - At an election rally in Lomas Taurinas, a poor neighbourhood in Tijuana, Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio of the centre-right PRI party was assassinated by Mario Aburto Martínez.

1996 - Taiwan held its first direct elections, choosing Lee Teng-hui as President despite offshore missile tests conducted by China, which were intended as a scare tactic in support of such candidates as Lin Yang-kang, who supported the One-China Policy.

1999 - Gunmen assassinated Paraguay's Vice President Luis María Argaña; no saint himself - he was a high-ranking judge during the regime of Alfredo Stroessner - Argaña's death was thought to have been masterminded by his political rival Lino Oviedo, although no proof one way or the other has ever been found.

2001 - Russia's Mir space station became a 'mere' memory when it was removed from orbit, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

2007 - A pile-up involving three trucks and four cars in Melbourne's Burnley Tunnel resulted in an explosion and fire which rescue crews estimated burned as hot as 1000 °C (1800 °F); three people died, including Commonwealth Games gold medal cyclist Damian McDonald.
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Happy Birthday Reese Witherspoon

Turns out I gotta give mad props to our girl Reese here, for landing - in succession - two of the hottest Y chromosomes in history... If anyone else - and, to be fair, I include myself in this rather large group - had snagged Ryan Phillippe and Jake Gyllenhaal in short order I'd have been the first villager with the largest torch at the head of the angriest mob baying for the blood of the witch.

The secret to her success, however, is right there onscreen, and if anyone is entitled to the moniker of 'America's Sweetheart' right now it's Reese Witherspoon; her role in Pleasantville gave her the chance to display 1950s wholseomeness with 1990s whatever-ness in equal measure, but it was her appearance in Election which proved to be a star turn par excellence. Anyone who could make the ruthlessness of Tracey Flick likable could surely do the same for the airheaded sweetness of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, let alone that of the much-played bundle of contradictions that is Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair.

Which she did...
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"Litany" by Billy Collins

Here then to tap the capper of today's Billy Collins hat-trick oh-so gingerly through the 5-hole is the man himself, reading his poem Litany with the kind of dry wit his ever-growing legion of fans have come to expect from him.
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"Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins

Forgetfulness informs much of what I do...

It takes from me my sacred past, replaces it with movie versions of actual events - as less and less of fewer and fewer of those movies play over and over in my head in their loops, like in a store that sells televisions, until the same few minutes of the same movie is showing on all screens, and the point of my memories isn't to help me be sentimental but to demonstrate relative picture quality. In the present, it gives me my persona, which is less and less that of the desired hipster and more and more that of a befuddled professor, and one who has not only forgotten more than he currently knows at that, but is about to forget even more than that. Besides, it looms over my future, a threat greater than cancer or murder or any other heinous way to die; first helping me forget my life, then making me forget that I am living, then leaving it up to the ages whether anyone else will remember me or not because I've forgotten to ask them if they will...

But also in the present, forgetfulness impels me to write this blog, to scribble out and peck down everything I know - indeed, to learn things I may only know for a day - as if to show those heirs I will have begotten without birthing that I was here, that I did know, that it's as possible for them to know as it was for me, and that I haven't forgotten them even though we've never met because I died years before they were born...
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"The Dead" by Billy Collins

Birthday wishes go out today to two-time US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, the New York City native whose work is accessible and humourous and yet no discredit to the art and craft of poetry for being either.

Here he reads his poem The Dead accompanied by some truly lovely animation, which makes an ideal opening to today's poetry hat-trick...
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In Memoriam: Gabrielle Roy

Canada has a tradition of creating sensitive novelists whose works are innately political yet manage to transcend politics - Stephen Leacock, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Sinclair Ross, Ethel Wilson, and Morley Callaghan to name just a few... On this day in 1909 they welcomed another into their midst - Gabrielle Roy; born in Manitoba's French-speaking enclave at Saint Boniface, Roy originally trained as a teacher, and was an accomplished visual artist as well as an uncommonly gifted writer.

It's no surprise, then, that the picture painted in words of Montreal's hardscrabble Saint-Henri neighbourhood should prove so educational as to be one of the catalysts of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. Bonheur d'occasion (1945) showed Quebec to Quebeckers as few novels written in that province had before, and blazed a trail for social realism that would later be heavily trod by Mordechai Richler; when it was published in 1947 as The Tin Flute it did the same for English Canada, bridging the Two Solitudes as handily as Ottawa's Pont Alexandra Bridge. The novel is half despair, half d'espoir* as it follows its young heroine Florentine through her crucial transition from girl to woman, using adolescence as an allegory for the struggles of Quebec in the post-war era. Never published in an unabridged form in Canada - not to mention sorely in need of a new translation - for all its faults it remains one of the finest novels ever published in this country; the three-quarters of a million copies it sold in the United States are a testament to its universal appeal.

She would publish 15 more before her death in 1983, plus an autobiography that was more candid than the standard hagiography writers typically give themselves at the point where their living career ends and their legend begins. While none of her subsequent works achieved the fame of that first one, each one exceeds the last in compassion and eloquence.

*Hope
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Pop History Moment: The Conviction of Dr. King

On this day in 1956 civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was convicted of organizing an illegal boycott - the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott - which began with the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white man the previous December 1st; King was fined $500 and a similar amount to cover court costs, although his lawyers immediately gave notice to Judge Eugene Carter of their attention to appeal, at which time the fine became a 386-day jail stay, suspended until the appeal hearing.

I can see it being illegal to incite a riot, but to organize a boycott? That's some hardcore racism, yo... Even worse than Arizona refusing to commemorate his birthday.
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"A Summer Song" by Chad and Jeremy

Birthday wishes go out to Jeremy Clyde, one half of the Sixties folk music duo Chad and Jeremy, whose first foray into public life was as a pageboy at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953*. While not particularly successful in the UK - which spent the Sixties in the thrall of such British Invasion stalwarts as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks - Chad and Jeremy's sound appealed greatly to folk-inclined Americans of the hippie persuasion.

Parallel to their recording and performing career, Chad and Jeremy also made a number of notable television appearances on such shows as the Dick Van Dyke Show and the Patty Duke Show; surely the pinnacle of their joint acting career, at least in pop culture terms, was their appearance on Batman as themselves opposite Julie Newmar as Catwoman. Chad and Jeremy have also been immortalized in Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's comic strip Zits as the names of the teenage and college age sons.

Clyde has also appeared solo in the ITV sitcom Is it Legal? as well as in the BBC's The Alan Clark Diaries as Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken and the police procedural drama Ashes To Ashes.

In the above clip we see Chad and Jeremy reunited; first they are interviewed by Ty Ray on KVOS-TV's Northwest Notebook out of Bellingham, following which they perform one of their classic hits, A Summer Song.

*Clyde is the son of Lady Elizabeth Wellesley.
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POPnews - March 22nd

[Located on the grounds of Bangkok's Grand Palace, the temple of Wat Phra Kaew contains the most precious treasure in Thai Buddhism - namely the Emerald Buddha - which only the King is allowed near.]
238 CE - Gordian I and his son Gordian II were jointly proclaimed Roman Emperor.

1622 - Algonquian Indians massacred 347 English settlers at Jamestown - a full third of that colony's population.

1765 - Britain passed the Stamp Act, which introduced a tax to be levied directly on its American colonies without offering them representation at Westminster; reaction to the legislation was mixed - some colonists were outraged, while others were merely furious - and a new nation was born...

1784 - Thailand's Emerald Buddha was moved with great ceremony to its current place in Wat Phra Kaew.

1849 - Austrian forces commanded by Joseph Radetzky von Radetz defeated the Piedmontese of the Kingdom of Sardinia under Wojciech Chrzanowski at the Battle of Novara.

1871 - Although North Carolina Republican William Woods Holden (shown, at left) was the second governor of a US state to be impeached* he was the first to be removed from office because of that impeachment - which he was for attempting to limit the activities of the Ku Klux Klan who, during Reconstruction, had been denying blacks their right to vote by the various heinous methods they've been known to employ. Despite being defended by well-known attorneys such as Nathaniel Boyden and William Nathan Harrell Smith, the governor's involvement in the Kirk-Holden War left him on the wrong side of victory but on the right side of history**. There's a moral to the story somewhere in there I'm sure...

*Charles L. Robinson of Kansas of course being the first, in February 1862, for opposing the extension of slavery into his state during the tragic series of events known today as Bleeding Kansas.
**How different things were in the olden days, when Republicans were removed from office for fighting the good fight in support of minority rights. Maybe if a modern-day Republican wanted to wrest control of the Grand Old Party back from the Great Big Windbag (uh, Rush Limbaugh!) they could follow the example of these two men rather than the tar-hearted Cheneys and ethically-challenged Roves of the world.

1894 - The first Stanley Cup playoff series was won when Montreal Hockey Club beat the Ottawa Generals, 3–1.

1895 - Auguste and Louis Lumière held a private screening of motion pictures, a prelude to their first public showing in December of that year.

1916 - The last Emperor of China, Yuan Shikai, abdicated the throne and the Republic of China was restored.

1923 - Canada's legendary Foster Hewitt gave the first radio play-by-play in his esteemed career as a hockey announcer, or at least according to his memoirs; nevertheless, there was no scheduled game that day. The actual date of his broadcast debut was likely on February 16th, during a game between the Toronto Argonaut Rowing Club and the Kitchener Greenshirts.

1942 - In the Mediterranean Sea, Britain's Royal Navy confronted Italy's Regia Marina at the Second Battle of Sirte.

1943 - The entire population of Khatyn in Belarus was burnt alive by Nazi occupation forces.

1945 - The Arab League was founded when its charter was adopted in Cairo.

1975 - A fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Alabama, caused a dangerous lowering of cooling water levels.

1978 - Karl Wallenda of the The Flying Wallendas died after falling off a tight-rope strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1979 - Opposition Leader Margaret Thatcher put down an early day motion censuring the government, which led to the defeat of the Labour government of British Prime Minister James Callaghan.

1989 - Goalie Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres suffered a near-fatal injury when another player accidentally slit his throat with a skate blade in one of the most gruesome sports injuries of all time.

1997 - The Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth.

2006 - BC Ferries' M/V Queen of the North ran aground near British Columbia's Gil Island and sank with 101 on board; two passengers remain unaccounted for and are presumed dead. It took two years to determine that human error was to blame.
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"Fool's Overture" by Supertramp

Most of those people whether intimately or tangentially connected to the Pop Culture Institute are an amiable enough lot, more than willing to let mention of their names slip into the occasional post here and there - even if they do occasionally look askance or roll their eyes at the editorial liberties taken therein, and/or at the outrages committed by me against those blameless names... There is one member of the Brain Trust, though, who is a shadowy figure known only to the world as The Broker.

I cannot stress his importance strongly enough; without him this publication simply could not function. His connections are those which best enable us to function intellectually, materially, and even spiritually. I wouldn't dream of crossing him, either, for behind his perennial smirk glint the eyes of a... Well, not a killer as such (nice Broker, ha ha, just kidding...) but someone who in a second could stop selling me obscure comic books from the 1960s like Millie the Model and bound collections of Walt Kelly's Pogo - which might as well be death! And so it is as much through the intervention of this important personage as it is owing to the supreme talent of Roger Hodgson - who was born on this day in 1950 - that Fool's Overture appears here today...

First appearing on Supertramp's 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments, the longer than 10 minute track offered that portion of the population enamoured of symphonic-style progressive rock ample opportunity to lie back and enjoy at the end of what was likewise a thoroughly enjoyable musical journey. Although the song never charted - in contrast to the more popular Give a Little Bit, which went all the way to #15 in North America - its melody has nevertheless insinuated its way into the public consciousness; in Canada, for instance, a snippet of became the theme for the respected television newsmagazine W5, while in the Netherlands it was for many years used during that country's weekly hit parade on the offshore station Radio Veronica as the theme music for the gig guide. Supertramp's hardcore fans, meanwhile, will recognize it as the finale for their monster 1977, 1979 and 1983 tours.
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Pop History Moment: The Overthrow Of Haile Selassie

On this day in 1974 Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, ending nearly 3000 years of monarchy in that country...

Selassie had previously been in exile between 1936 and 1941, of course, during the occupation of his country by Italy following the invasion of Emilio De Bono which precipitated the Second Italo-Abyssinian War; then he and his family had settled at Fairfield House, in the English resort town of Bath. He later donated it to the city for use as a residence for the aged, for which it is still being used today.

Although he was returned to Ethiopia a hero, by the early 1970s a famine in Ethiopia's Wollo region and a shortage of oil worldwide had destabilized Ethiopia enough to allow for the rise of a madman named Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose Derg would succeed in systematically dismantling the longstanding tradition of democracy in the country.

Haile Selassie died in exile in August 1975 in mysterious circumstances; bones said to be His Majesty's were discovered beneath a plain concrete slab on the grounds of the Imperial Palace in 1992, in the year after the fall of the Soviet-backed Derg. He was succeeded as de jure Emperor of Ethiopia by his son, Amha Selassie I, who had briefly served as Emperor previously during a brief period of unrest in 1960.
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"PopoZão" by Kevin Federline

For all that he has been considered a human punchline* it was Britney Spears' extended nightmare of a nervous breakdown that, partially at least, rehabilitated the whack wigga known as Kevin Federline, born on this day in 1978. For the definitive record of their train wreck of a relationship - which many of us have gone out of our way to expunge from our memories - illegally download Britney & Kevin: Chaotic. Even as his ex-wife was struggling to find herself in the conflicting personae her mother and the Disney Corporation attempted to bury her under, Federline assumed responsibility for his sons Sean Preston and Jayden James even to the detriment of his own career as a rapper, which was anyway DOA despite being as legit as any.

Which brings us, inevitably, to PopoZão, the actually not bad Brazilian-esque number (produced by Disco D) which was the high point of Kevin Federline's career as a rapper; having earned a reported $5,000 a week as a nanny to care for his own sons as they traveled the world on The Circus Starring: Britney Spears in 2009, his most recent television appearance was on Celebrity Fit Club, where he appeared alongside (and competed against) his ex-babymama Shar Jackson.

*I personally couldn't wait for Britney and K-Fed to breakup so I could start calling him FedEx.
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Remembering... Pocahontas

It's not known when she was born or even when she died; the only date we have for certain concerning the life and death of Pocahontas is the day she was buried, which was this day in 1617. Even in this there are more questions than answers, for while we know at which church she was buried - Saint George's in Gravesend - it's not known which of the graves in the churchyard is hers.

Still, Pocahontas exerts a powerful pull on the white consciousness; subsequent generations have reinvented her according to their own culture and relative level of white guilt. The consensus of opinion is that she was a beautiful Indian princess who, for some unspecified reason, aided and abetted European settlement on the land of her fathers before converting to the white man's religion and dying of one of their diseases at a tragically young age.

Within that description is much of the bias upon which European culture (and especially its fairytales) is based. Certainly she wasn't a Princess in the typical manner, except that she was daughter of a powerful chief, Wahunsunacock (better known as Powhatan) of the Powhatan Confederacy. Even as a putative Princess, naturally, she had to be beautiful, otherwise why bother? Certainly any relationship with John Smith other than the platonic was fabricated, although her love for John Rolfe seems to have been sincere enough.

As for her conversion to Christianity, having seen and heard the thunderous brimstonery of white missionaries often enough, it's safe to say that any canny young girl such as her could see what lay ahead for those who didn't embrace the alleged God of love who seemed to do nothing but punish people - even (and often specifically) the best ones.

In the end it was the newly christened Rebecca's public relations junket to England, intended to drum up colonists and much-needed support from the Crown, which proved her end. As unaccustomed to Europe's pollution as she was to its bacteria, she fell ill and died even before the ship bringing her home was out of the Thames estuary. Not even the means of death has been recorded; some reports have it as tuberculosis, others as smallpox.

As is so often the case, since nothing could have saved her in life, some quality or other managed to save her in death, for she lives still in our collective memory; Disney's Pocahontas (1995) is pretty but inaccurate, and even Terrence Malick's 2005 film The New World (featuring Q'Orianka Kilcher as the woman herself) ends up derailing from the historical record into romantic bunkum fairly early on. Then again, if John Smith had looked anything like Colin Farrell, perhaps history would have turned out quite differently.
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Pop History Moment: Who Shot J.R.?

A remarkable example of the unifying potential of television occurred on this day in 1980; in the finale of the second season of Dallas - an episode ironically entitled A House Divided - J.R. Ewing, the oiliest oilman who ever fueled the lingering death of the planet (played brilliantly by Larry Hagman) was shot. Instantly, the phrase Who Shot JR? was on everybody's lips; a cultural phenomenon (and its attendant merchandising frenzy) was born. A House Divided had unwittingly spawned a world united, mainly with glee at the potentially fatal wounding of a greedy capitalist oligarch.

Owing to an actor's strike it would be nine months to the day before anyone would know who had actually shot the character everybody loved to hate, by which point the revelation was almost a let-down. The episode for which a record-breaking audience of some 83 million had waited and waited was entitled Who Done It?, but could just as easily have been called Who Gives A Crap?

After months of rampant speculation routinely fed by the publicity machine of CBS-Television, almost every fan of the show had their own pet theory, and my bet is that the dullest of them was better than the one cooked up by the show's writers. In the end it was revealed that, even though every character on the show (with the possible exception of Miss Ellie who was, after all, his own mother) would have gladly given him an enema with a rifle, it was J.R.'s humped and dumped sister-in-law Kristin Shepard (played by Mary Crosby) who had done the deed. In order to preserve the secret, many of the show's characters were filmed shooting him, with only the producers knowing for sure which one would be used.

For all that, the episode changed television; suddenly every season ended with a cliffhanger, and by the end of the 1980s, almost every episode was ending with a cliffhanger as well. Which, while it undoubtedly made TV more interesting, also created a very blase audience out of it. In TV terms, Who Shot JR? was little more than a gateway drug, giving viewers the greatest high they'd had to date, and making them hungry for ever higher highs, which pushers - I mean producers - like Aaron Spelling dutifully sought to provide.
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"Pieces" by Sum 41

Birthday wishes go out today to Deryck Whibley, vocalist and front man for Canadian pop-punk phenoms Sum 41, who are part of a new generation of musicians whose mashups of various musical genres are defining a new sound by defying such limiting notions as genre.

Pieces was the second single from the band's 2004 album Chuck, and is said to bear a striking resemblance to the Coldplay song The Scientist... Why not watch and compare?
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POPnews - March 21st

[Scheduled to be held at Cleveland Arena on this day in 1952 the first Moondog Coronation Ball - organized by promoter Lew Platt and Alan Freed, the man who coined the term 'rock and roll' - was something of a fiasco. As many as 20,000 tickets (many of them counterfeit) were sold for an event whose venue had a capacity of 10,000; after one song by Paul 'Hucklebuck' Williams authorities shut it down. Now an annual event for the nostalgia minded, run in conjunction with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the city's Quicken Loans Arena, things go a little more smoothly.]
717 CE - At the Battle of Vincy Austrasian forces led by Charles Martel were victorious over Frankish King Chilperic II and his mayor of the palace Ragenfrid.

1413 - Henry V became King of England following the death of his father Henry IV.

1556 - Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake at St. Mary's Church in Oxford; Cranmer had played a pivotal role in the English Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI, but was found guilty of heresy for his troubles by their staunchly Catholic successor Mary I. He was succeeded by Reginald Cardinal Pole.

1788 - The Great New Orleans Fire destroyed 856 of the 1,100 buildings in that city.

1800 - With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict with Napoleon, Pius VII was crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché, the original - along with his papal predecessor Pius VI - having been pilfered by the French.

1801 - The Battle of Alexandria was fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis in Egypt.

1804 - The Code Napoléon was adopted as the basis of French civil law.

1844 - This, the original date predicted by William Miller for the return of Christ, came and went without incident.

1871 - Otto von Bismarck was appointed Chancellor of the German Empire, the first ever to hold that post.

1913 - Over 360 were killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio.

1952 - Disc jockey Alan Freed presented the Moondog Coronation Ball - considered to be the first rock and roll concert - in Cleveland, Ohio.

1960 - During what came to be known as the Sharpeville Massacre, South African police opened fire on a group of unarmed black demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180. The day is now commemorated as Human Rights Day in that nation; the event was pivotal in South Africa's removal from the Commonwealth of Nations in May 1961.

1963 - Alcatraz - the famed Federal Penitentiary located on an island in San Francisco Bay - closed.

1965 - NASA launched Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes, at the close of its Ranger program.

1970 - The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.

1980 - President Jimmy Carter announced a US boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, something a certain previous President didn't have the stones to do in regards to the 2008 Summer Olympics and its host country's ongoing theft of Tibet.

1985 - Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen began his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.

1989 - Sports Illustrated first reported allegations tying baseball player Pete Rose to gambling on the sport, which would eventually spoil his chances of ever entering the Hall of Fame.

1990 - Namibia became independent after 75 years of South African rule.
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"Rumble in Brighton" by Stray Cats

Birthday wishes go out today to Slim Jim Phantom, drummer for the American neo-rockabilly act Stray Cats, whose 1981 song Rumble in Brighton was soon over-shadowed by the huge fame the band would garner the following year with such hits as Rock This Town and Stray Cat Strut - not to mention 1983's pervo classic (She's) Sexy + 17*.

Rumble in Brighton appeared on the band's self-titled debut album, re-released the following year in the US as Built for Speed; it refers to a period of civil unrest between mods and rockers beginning in 1964 and continuing well into the Thatcher Era, at which time the Iron Lady gave the two sides a common enemy. The conflict is best documented in the 1974 film Quadrophenia, which starred members of The Who and was based on the 1973 album of the same name.

Phantom briefly courted the tabloid limelight in 1984 when he married famed movie strumpet Britt Ekland; their marriage ended in 1992, having resulted in the 1988 birth of their son T. J.

*The title of which looks too much like an algebra equation for my liking...
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Spring Photo Essay: Tulips

This is the time of year when Vancouver enters into its greatest period of floral profusion. Over the next two months there will be daffodils and crocuses, even grape hyacinths will linger in some sheltered places; meanwhile, cherry and apple blossoms fill the air with both colour and perfume as rhododendrons begin their season, and everywhere else there are tulips.

Even the dandelions have begun to run riot. It's crazy, not to mention crazy beautiful.

So why not celebrate springtime? This is my longest photo essay to date - nine images! - all of tulips. I must warn you, though, I break the rules. The standard rule of photography is to never show an even number of things in a picture. This despite the fact that springtime is all about pairings. Since I never met a rule I didn't want to break, a pair of these pictures even feature a pair of tulips! If seeing the rules broken bothers you, I just have one question: what the Hell are you doing here?

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Pop History Moment: Princess Anne Foils Own Kidnapping

On this day in 1974 Princess Anne and her new husband Captain Mark Phillips escaped an attempted kidnapping unharmed while returning to Buckingham Palace from a charity film screening; it remains the only attempted royal abduction in modern times, and resulted in increased security around the royals.

In all, four people were hurt in the attack, which took place in The Mall; the Princess' Personal Protection Officer Inspector James Beaton was most seriously injured, having been shot in the head and chest. He'd been the first to respond when the royal car was forced to stop by a light-coloured Ford Escort. The driver of the limousine and long-time member of the royal household, Alex Callender, was also shot early in the attack.

A journalist named Brian McConnell happened upon the scene and he too was shot, which is when the assailant, a mentally unstable man named Ian Ball ordered Her Royal Highness out of the car. 'Not bloody likely!' she is said to have exclaimed as she dove out of the opposite side; she was then escorted from the scene by another passerby named Ron Russell, but only after he'd punched Ball in the back of the head. One police officer named Michael Hills attempted to arrest the assailant, but was shot; as Ball tried to flee the scene another officer, Peter Edmonds, gave chase and managed to capture him without incident. The Princess' Lady-in-Waiting Rowena Brassey was also present; history does not record any action or reaction on the part of Mark Phillips.

Beaton was awarded the George Cross for his heroism; Alex Callender, Brian McConnell, Ron Russell, PC Michael Hills, and DC Peter Edmonds were all awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal. Ian Ball was sent to Broadmoor Hospital, where he remains to this day, maintaining his innocence via his own website, despite the fact that a note demanding £3 million in ransom was found in his car. In 2006 Granada Television produced a docu-drama entitled To Kidnap a Princess - directed by John Alexander - which related the events of this incident.
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Now Showing - "The Ballad of John and Yoko"

Released by The Beatles in May 1969 - just two months after the marriage of its protagonists - The Ballad of John and Yoko tells the story of the affair and marriage of John Lennon and Yoko Ono leading up to and including their famous Bed-In at the Amsterdam Hilton during their honeymoon. Recorded without the benefit of George Harrison or Ringo Starr*, its pared down sound is the perfect showcase for Lennon's other important partnership at the time, namely the one he shared with Paul McCartney.

A true single, the song was released as such immediately before recording commenced on the band's legendary Abbey Road album; it was later released as part of the album Past Masters, Volume Two (1967-1970), as well as on the latter-day smash compilation 1.

*Harrison was on holiday and Starr was filming The Magic Christian.
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Queen's Message To The Commonwealth, 2010

Today’s societies are constantly seeking ways to improve their quality of life, and science and technology play a vital part in that search.

Experimentation, research and innovation, mean that more opportunities for improving people’s lives exist today than ever before. Take long distance communication, where the obstacles of time and geography have been dramatically reduced: people can now use mobile phones to be in instant contact virtually anywhere in the world, be it with a medical centre in the Himalayan mountains in Asia, a Pacific island school, a research facility at the South Pole, or even the international space station, beyond this planet altogether.

Advances in modern telecommunications are also having a marked economic effect on people from developing nations in the Commonwealth, helping to transform small to medium-sized businesses. The internet is playing an important part in helping to nurture these fledgling markets but, as yet, it still remains an unaffordable option for too many of our Commonwealth citizens.

Progress in the fields of healthcare, manufacturing, and education have, for the most part, helped improve people’s lives throughout the world. In the health sector, the Commonwealth has shown how collaborative schemes can successfully assist member states to fight pandemics and diseases.

In making these advances the Commonwealth recognises that the best forms of innovation are those that unite, and help build resilient partnerships and better societies as a whole.

This is particularly important for the more than half of the Commonwealth citizens who are under 25 years of age. It is vital that their potential to build on the exceptional scientific expertise that exists in member states is also fully supported through education and social development. The Commonwealth understands this, and should continue to aid and encourage our young people to participate in the exciting new opportunities that lie ahead, in the knowledge that progress is something which must be sustained and shared by all.
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Jules Feiffer: 'Television'

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By way of explanation, I recently bought and was reading Explainers (1956-66) - the first of four scheduled volumes of the collected works of legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer, published by the darling folks at Fantagraphics Books - when I came across this little gem of insight. It occurred to me that a) to my cynical eye, at least, not much has changed in television over the exactly fifty years since this was first printed*, at least not from an executive standpoint anyway, and b) since I was so taken by its form and content what better an example to publish here and thereby justify the cost of the book? I mean, it's not even his birthday or anything!

Wondering if there was possibly some way to translate a strip which was initially horizontal in two lines into one which is vertical in one, I set up my scanner to work with my laptop, then set out with the aid of a photocopier and scanner to attempt just that... This is the result.

Aside from a slight lopsidedness near the top (owing entirely to my lack of technical acuity**) I think it translates well. I may, in fact, return to it at a later date and repair my own error. Then again, I probably won't; two years ago I published a Peanuts cartoon with a scan warp that I have yet to fix. One thing is for certain - I will be posting more items like this as I come across them... I had completely forgotten how much fun one can have with a scanner!

*In New York City's pioneering alternative weekly The Village Voice.
**Either that or one of my eyes is in crooked!
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Blast From The Past: The Queen Mother At Work

It was fifty years ago today Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother took a tour of the Heinz factory at Kitt Green near Wigan in Lancashire, as this excellent bit of video from YouTube's The Royal Channel so amply demonstrates; then in operation just five weeks, the plant was turning out some half a million tins of pork and beans a day.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited the factory this past May 21st in order to mark the 50th anniversary of the facility.
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Breaking News: Chastity Bono To Drop The 'Tity', Become Chaz

Speaking as a professional smart-aleck, sometimes the jokes just come to me; I certainly don't mean to be offensive or cruel by them when they do. Like the headline above, for example: it just popped into my head as I was typing something more pedestrian. To my mind it would be wrong of me not to use it, since to do so would mean censoring myself, and censorship is never justified (especially when self-inflicted). I've always used comedy to help me come to terms with just about everything*, and I always will. I mean, I think I try to be sensitive far more than most - certainly more than 99% of the blogosphere - when I do, I really do. But unfunny people just don't get, during times of personal or cultural tragedy - or else, like this, times when sensitivity and taste are called for - how difficult it is, and how hard some of us have to bite on our fists and just keep our tacky mouths shut until it's no longer 'too soon' for everybody else...

Not that today's announcement that Chastity Bono - eldest child of the late Sonny Bono and Cher - will be undergoing gender reassignment surgery in the near future is anything like a tragedy, you understand. It's just that an earnest expression and an understanding nod would be far more appropriate in this instance than a joke about breasts whose days are numbered. No, the only tragedy in a situation like that of Chaz Bono is in having to live the lie of a body that doesn't match who you are in your mind. Fortunately for him - see, it's not so hard to switch a pronoun here and there, is it? - there are clinical options; not even the platoon of charlatans who came so close to turning Michael Jackson into Diana Ross could correct my mind-body dysphoria by turning me into Hugh Grant.

On a more personal note, I don't think it'll come as any surprise to my regular readers, since I've openly discussed it on here before, but back when I was a little kid (or a 'pre-blogger', which is my preferred term) I was inordinately fond of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. My favourite part of the show - and this is saying something, because how do you pick a favourite part of anything that fabulous? - were the appearances by Chastity; I had a wicked crush on her back in the day, and even told my mother I'd some day like to marry her.

After she came out as a lesbian, I assumed that was the affinity I'd been sensing all those years before; after all, I've always been drawn to the little culture-fucking rule-breaker that is a tomboy. Well, it turns out it went much deeper than that. Anyway, best of luck to you man as you embark upon your journey into the world of the male mysteries... The Pop Culture Institute will always have your back.

*Everything, in fact, except the death of Princess Diana... Ain't no smiles in that.
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Wednesday Wallpaper: May 13th

The last place I wanted to be that morning was on the platform of the Main Street SkyTrain station; tired after having just gotten off work, my shoulder sore and as overburdened as the knapsack it held, eyes both cloudy with fatigue and sticky from the canned air I'd just left.

And yet... The sun was warm on my face and for some reason cleared my vision enough to behold the above scene as a dolphin-like smiling face passed through the clouds overhead.

(If you would like a large-sized file of this image to use for your computer's wallpaper, email me at michaelseanmorris@gmail.ca and indicate which image you'd like, either by date or description or by cutting and pasting the link to this post into the body of your email. Or, if you're in the mood for supporting an artist who receives no public funding, contact me about purchasing a print. ~ MSM)

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Princess Eugenie Robbery Drama

The Queen's grand-daughter Princess Eugenie, the 19 year-old daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, has been involved in an attempted purse-snatching while visiting the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh as part of her gap year...

Available accounts say that the attack took place two weeks ago, and was thwarted by officers of the Royal Protection Squad, who also succeeded in retrieving the handbag in question. Although the pair of detectives had tackled and pinned the mugger, an accomplice pelted them with rocks, at which time they released their captive; the tactic, known as 'de-escalation', was undertaken in consideration of the Princess' safety. Neither she nor her two traveling companions were hurt, and they decided not to curtail their vacation because of the incident.

Although most of the media have pointed out that this is the first time in more than a decade that members of SO14 branch have had to defend a royal from harm, it's unlikely given the circumstances that her assailants even knew who she was, and in fact a royal source has pointed out that it wasn't even Princess Eugenie herself who was mugged. Buckingham Palace, therefore, has refused to comment on the story.

Her Royal Highness conducts no business as yet on behalf of the Royal Family and, while well-known enough in the UK, still travels by Tube when in London and otherwise conducts a largely private life. Of course, that hasn't stopped the British Press from taking an interest in her anyway; a cover appearance on Tatler magazine in April 2008 set tongues a-wagging, and a much-publicized nude frolic on the grounds of posh Marlborough College two months later did more than that.
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The Pop Culture Institute: A State Of The Blog Address

[Compared with the same map of the entire year ending October 26th, 2008 - located behind this image - the first half of this year looks very strong indeed.]
Back in the olden days (I'm talking 2007 here - which is so long ago to the modern mind it might as well be the Renaissance - I mean, it was before Twitter even!) it was fairly common for me to occasionally lift the veil of secrecy that shrouds the activity behind the scenes at the Pop Culture Institute. It was my intention in doing that to try and foster a kind of community surrounding this blog without setting myself up as a kind of wicker man in the service of a personality cult...

Well, after a very stressful couple of months - February, March, and especially April - I've come to the conclusion that a community (like a person) cannot be fostered until it is born; in those terms the Pop Culture Institute is still a fetus. Oh, it's a late-term fetus to be sure, but whether second or third trimester, well, who can say? Especially not me, since you've just discovered the utmost extent of my knowledge regarding obstetrics and therefore the limit to the metaphor. The point is, it has yet to be born, and so still is what it is in a self-enclosing way that yields few comments, virtually no discussion, and worst of all zero feedback.

Of course, no news is good news, so the anxiety I feel over the lack of feedback is merely a manifestation of my own insecurity; it's to be trapped in a corner and beaten until dead like the disease-bearing vermin it is...

As shown by the bar graph above, my stats were strong for the first three weeks of April - with no one day falling below 120 page views, although four of them came dangerously close. One day, the 13th, soared to 209 - second place in terms of busiest days ever*. Why they fell so sharply from the 21st to the 22nd is anybody's guess... The weather certainly improved, but also the Conficker virus activated itself - both of which could have caused a decrease in all computer activity and therefore in my traffic. While the traffic seems to be improving now

What it means is that I was deprived of twelve straight months of steady growth in traffic - April's total falling just 8 page views shy of March's record; had the stats not dropped for the five days they did I would have surpassed it by at least 48, and possibly even cracked the 4,500 mark as well.

Still, the 'disappointing' 4,328 does represent a three-fold increase over this time last year, and even though the current stats indicate a plateau is coming, I would be thrilled to see a similar pattern of growth over the next 12 months. Despite the loss of the Brain Trust and the help they gave me, I feel certain that the brain I can best trust - my own - will continue to fumble its way through to the next Beltane just fine.

*The busiest day ever was 225 in February 2009.
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