POPnews - April 4th

[While there are many iconic images of Los Angeles - from the Hollywood sign to the blanket of lights as observed from the top of Mulholland Drive - oddly enough, its skyline isn't one of them.]
1581 - Francis Drake was knighted by Elizabeth I aboard his ship Golden Hind; Drake had just returned to England, having circumnavigated the globe.

1660 - England's would-be King Charles II signed the Declaration of Breda, which cemented the terms of the English Restoration after the failure of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, as well as spelling out the conditions under which he would agree to accept the throne.

1721 - Sir Robert Walpole took office as the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom under King George I.

1841 - William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia, becoming both the first President of the United States to die in office and the one with the shortest term served.

1850 - Los Angeles was incorporated as a city.

1859 - The theatrical troupe known as Bryant's Minstrels debuted the song Dixie at Mechanics' Hall in New York City during the finale of their blackface minstrel show; it was an instant hit, even becoming a favourite of President Abraham Lincoln.

1866 - Russia's Tsar Alexander II narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at the hands of Dmitry Karakozov in the city of St. Petersburg.

1887 - Argonia, Kansas, elected Susanna M. Salter as the first female mayor in US history.

1939 - Faisal II became King of Iraq following the suspicious death of his father, Ghazi I.

1949 - Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, thereby creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

1958 - The Committee for Nuclear Disarmament's Peace Symbol - designed by Gerald Holtom - was displayed in public for the first time, in London, at a march from Trafalgar Square to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.

1960 - Senegal gained its independence from France.

1973 - New York's World Trade Center was officially dedicated.

1975 - Microsoft was founded as a partnership between Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and the Devil.

1976 - Prince Norodom Sihanouk resigned as leader of Cambodia and was placed under house arrest by the Khmer Rouge on the orders of Pol Pot.

1979 - Deposed Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed at Rawalpindi.

1983 - The Space Shuttle Challenger made its maiden voyage into space, a mission known as STS-6.

1988 - Governor Evan Mecham of Arizona - an eminent sleazebag - was convicted at the end of his impeachment trial and removed from office; as governor he had canceled the state's observance of Martin Luther King Day, making the day* of his final downfall especially apt.

*The anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King.

1991 - Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania and six others were killed when their helicopter collided with a plane over an elementary school in Merion, Pennsylvania; his widow, Teresa Heinz, later married Senator John Kerry.

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Pop History Moment: Dr. King's Final Speech

On this day in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. took the pulpit at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee (at a rally for striking black sanitation workers in that city) and raised the roof for what would be the last time. As good as his speech - now known as I've Been To The Mountaintop - was for those in attendance, it would have been a special honour to be there, to witness a powerful orator at the top of his game and utterly in command of all his powers.

By this point there had been numerous threats against King's life, and he refers to these in the speech as though it were only a matter of time before Fate caught up with him... It did of course; the following day King was assassinated in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Alec Baldwin

There should be no mystery* as to why I've chosen to post a twenty year old picture of Alec Baldwin here on this, his 52nd birthday... Still, having let his looks slide seems to have allowed an even more prodigious talent to emerge - as witnessed by the career resurgence he's gotten from playing Jack Donaghy on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock - which is not a bad trade I guess, as these things go. Anyway, Baldwin's always were the kind of looks that were too 'looky'** for my liking; for all the attention they got him they clearly also made him uncomfortable, or else he'd have found an excuse to hit the gym some time in the last decade in an effort to keep them.

I never knew until today - when conducting the cursory (some*** would say perfunctory) research I generally do for these things - that Baldwin's first job in New York City was as a bus boy at Studio 54 in the late 1970s. Whatever I would have given to be a fly on the wall in that place before I'd read that, well, now I'd double it!

Having appeared on stage in a 1986 revival of Joe Orton's Loot, in Caryl Churchill's Serious Money with Kate Nelligan, and in an acclaimed revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire as Stanley Kowalski; on television in The Doctors and on Knots Landing, as well as hosting Saturday Night Live some 14 times; and in films as diverse as Beetlejuice (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - in a part which playwright David Mamet added to the movie - Baldwin has also weathered a celebrity marriage (to Kim Basinger) and several tabloid scandals (the most famous involving their daughter Ireland) in order to arrive at the utter nadir of his career, being named a Gratuitous Brunette!

*It's so not a mystery I don't even need to offer an explanation in my favourite way - namely via a snide footnote!
**Sometimes pretty people are just so pretty you can't help but look at them - rather than, say, listen to them.
***Bitches, mostly.
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POPnews - April 3rd

[After the turbulent reign of his half-brother Harthacanute, that of Edward the Confessor was a comparative dawdle; peace and prosperity, however, come at a price - in this case an erosion of royal authority in favour of the country's three most powerful nobles... So while the power struggles of the Crown with Godwin, Earl of Wessex, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Siward, Earl of Northumbria, may have threatened to tear England asunder they were excellent practice for the greater threats of ongoing Viking invasion (which would be repelled once and for all under Edward's successor Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066) and the Norman Conquest to come - which would not only succeed in bringing the English under foreign rule less than a year after the Confessor's death but also ironically unite them as a people in a loathing for the French that would last for a thousand years...]

1043 - Edward the Confessor, England's penultimate Saxon King, was crowned at Winchester Cathedral.

1287 - Pope Honorius IV died; he was succeeded by Nicholas IV in February 1288 - a papal vacancy or sede vacante of more than ten months. While this was unusual the longest papal conclave in history followed the death of Pope Clement IV in November 1268, and lasted until the election of Pope Gregory X in September 1271.

1559 - The treaty known as the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis - having been signed by representatives of England's Elizabeth I and France's Henri II the previous day - was signed by those of Henri II and Spain's Philip II at Le Cateau-Cambrésis, ending the Italian Wars.

1860 - The first successful run of the Pony Express - from Saint Joseph in Missouri to Sacramento in California - took place; it would be made entirely redundant by the advent of the First Transcontinental Telegraph in October 1861.

1882 - Robert Ford killed the outlaw Jesse James for a $5,000 reward; Ford was recently portrayed by Casey Affleck, who was Oscar-nominated for the same film - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - that starred Brad Pitt as James.

1895 - The trial of Oscar Wilde opened; originally a libel trial instigated by Wilde himself against the frankly loathsome Marquess of Queensberry - father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas - it ended with Wilde's own imprisonment in Reading Gaol on the grounds of homosexuality.

1922 - Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1929 - An order was placed with John Brown & Company by the Cunard Line to build RMS Queen Mary, which would serve as the company's flagship for more than 30 years; retired in December 1967, the Queen Mary is now a major tourist attraction in Long Beach, California.

1936 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

1946 - Japan's Lieutenant-General Masaharu Homma was executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.

1948 - US President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which authorized $5 billion in aid for 16 European countries adversely affected by World War II.

1953 - The first issue of TV Guide (shown, at right) hit newsstands bearing a full-colour image of Desi Arnaz, Jr. - whose own birth coincided with that of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's fictional son, Little Ricky*... TV Guide came about after Walter Annenberg's Philadelphia-based Triangle Publications bought up numerous similar regional periodicals such as TV Forecast, TV Digest, and Television Guide with the aim of going national. At a price of just 15 cents, it quickly became the magazine with the highest circulation in the United States, peaking at around 20 million issues sold weekly in the 1970s. In fact, it would take the advent of cable in the early 1980s to bring about its decline, and even at that it would take twenty years, the Internet, and a 500-channel universe to do it!

*Originally aired on January 19th of that year, the I Love Lucy episode entitled Lucy Goes to the Hospital was watched by some 44 million people, representing 72% of the country's televisions at that time... To put it into perspective, the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower the following day only garnered 29 million viewers! I've said it before and I'll say it again - sitcoms represent the nadir of Western Civilization... But they're so damn funny!

1955 - Apparently the ACLU announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg's Howl in court, where it was facing obscenity charges.

1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech; it would be the last major speech given by the prominent civil rights leader before his assassination.

1982 - A Royal Navy task force left Portsmouth with the intention of retaking the Falkland Islands.

1987 - Jewels belonging to the late Duchess of Windsor fetched top price at an auction in Switzerland; in all the sale netted some $45 million - 7 times the pre-sale estimate - which went to her principal beneficiary, the Pasteur Institute.

1993 - The steeplechase at the Grand National - held annually at Aintree Racecourse near Liverpool - was declared void after a false start.

1996 - The so-called Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was arrested at his cabin in Montana.

2004 - Seven suspects in the March 2004 bombing of Madrid's Estación Atocha committed suicide rather than be captured as police surrounded their hideout in Leganés; one G.E.O. officer was killed and 11 police wounded when the apartment building in which the men were hiding blew up, while between five and eight other suspects escaped in the ensuing chaos.
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"Boulder To Birmingham" by Emmylou Harris

Birthday wishes go out today to Emmylou Harris, the roots country singer-songwriter whose unique voice and striking appearance belie her low-key performance style...

While my favourite album of hers remains 2000's exemplary Red Dirt Girl, the more I hear of her earlier work the more I like; that goes very much for Boulder to Birmingham, which first appeared on Harris' 1975 album Pieces of the Sky. The song details her grief following the death of her mentor, Gram Parsons, who died of a drug overdose in September 1973 at the age of 26.
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Happy Birthday Penelope Keith

Most actors would give their eye teeth to be involved in one classic program, let alone two; which makes the career of Penelope Keith all the more extraordinary, since she's had a hand in eight, of which at least three are timeless classics of the Britcom genre...

The first of these was The Good Life, which first aired in 1975, in which she played the hilariously snooty middle-class homemaker Margo Leadbetter. After three series' of that, in 1979 she undertook the role Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, a gentry woman displaced by les nouveau riches in To the Manor Born, which also ran three series. In 1990 she played the more down-to-earth Jean Price, MP, in No Job for a Lady.

In between these came roles in Sweet Sixteen, Moving, Executive Stress (another favourite of ours), Law and Disorder and Next of Kin; she also hosted a panel show on ITV entitled What's My Line?

Since the 1990s Keith has concerned herself more with stage work, and offscreen has served as High Sheriff of Surrey - one of only three women ever to hold that post. Made an OBE in 1989 for her charitable work (as President of the Actors' Benevolent Fund and with the National Trust in southwest Surrey, where she lives), she was elevated to CBE (which she is shown holding at left) in 2007.

The first three series of The Good Life were recently released on DVD under the show's North American name Good Neighbors; since then it's been devoured and enjoyed anew by the Pop Culture Institute's crack team of researchers*, proving that the classics - show and costar alike - never go out of style. Next stop: all three seasons of To the Manor Born, which has also been released on DVD alongside the superlative Silver Anniversary Special first shown at Christmas 2007.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Chris Meloni

If there is one tried-and-true rule in the lawless world of cyberspace it's that mentions of Chris Meloni will bring enough traffic to your site to clog the Holland Tunnel; of course, the same goes for any number of soulless pop tarts and vapid TV starlets whom I'd rather die than mention*, so in this case it helps that Chris Meloni is a) a very talented actor, and b) HOT. Not hot... HOT. Even, dare I say it, HAWT. Did I mention that he's hot? Oh yeah... I did.

A n y w a y... So if we can get past his hotness for a minute - although, frankly, why would we want to - but strictly hypothetically, if we could we'd encounter an actor savvy enough not to be typecast for one.

Consider, if you will, the two roles for which he is best known: police detective Elliot Stabler - the moral compass of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit - and Chris Keller, the amoral serial killer who gives a certain flare to male rape on Oz. That's proper range, yo...

Amazingly, Meloni turns 49 today - every one of those years a good one.

*You know who you are...
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"I Heard A Rumor" by Bananarama

While it's not unusual for me to post a birthday hat trick of videos for a solo artist, I believe this is the first time I've ever done so for an individual member of a band - in this case, Keren Woodward of Bananarama. It's even more unusual in this case, I think, because (unlike Bananarama bandmate Siobhan Fahey, say, or Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go's) Woodward had no solo career to speak of... She did, however, succeed in landing ex-Wham! heartthrob Andrew Ridgeley, which in its way is just as rewarding as a gold record with your own name on it*.

And yet, it's not so unusual when considering a) the ground broken by Bananarama within the music industry itself, and b) the general awesomeness of their music. In fact, I could probably do this for the birthdays of all four members** of the band and never once repeat a video.

I Heard a Rumour was the first single from Bananarama's fourth studio album, Wow!; released in September 1987, it features the Stock Aitken Waterman sound at its peak of freshness. I always liked the song because it reminds me of those first few carefree years after high school, when everything seemed possible because I didn't know better. Good times...

*Especially if you're a renowned star-fucker like me!
**Bananarama always had three members; after Siobhan Fahey left to, you know, marry Dave Stewart of Eurythmics in 1987 and generally exude cool as a member of Shakespears Sister in 1988 she was replaced by Jacquie O'Sullivan (formerly of the Shillelagh Sisters).
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"Shy Boy" by Bananarama

As alluded to in the previous post, it was on this day in 2008 when I first posted the video for Cruel Summer to mark the birthday of Keren Woodward; the following year on the same day I went to repost it and... Unique among all of Bananarama's videos on YouTube, the video existed but without an accompanying soundtrack - not even an record label authorized non-embeddable version!

I have no idea what bug it might have been that crawled up the ass of Gawd knows which record label fucks (from, in this instance, Warner Music Group) but refusing free promotion for 25 year old product at a time when music industry revenues are plummeting seems like the absolute pinnacle of douchebaggery, at least to me. Especially since music videos were originally intended for - get this - promotion! No wonder the major labels are going down faster than a coke-addled starlet in a hip-hop video...

A n y w a y... After a period of time too long to mention wasted in searching for a useful version of Cruel Summer I decided to cut my losses and instead found this clip of the trio's first-ever single - Shy Boy (Don't It Make You Feel Good) from their 1983 debut album Deep Sea Skiving; it managed to show the original progenitors of girl power at the height of their girl powers, gave my readers a snippet of the sound of the magical year 1983, and yes, even free promotion for the same people whose sole endeavour in life seems to be thwarting little old me from helping them out*.

In the meantime, today the year came back around again and what should I find? Not one but several high quality clips of Cruel Summer with their soundtrack intact! A true embarrassment of riches! Could it be that my various online screeds have succeeded in drumming some sense into the appropriate heads? I doubt it. But the Interweb gods are smiling nonetheless, so let's just enjoy it while we can, shall we?

*Which, I might add, I do at no cost to them. I don't get free promo stuff like those fat cats in Old Media; whenever I write about something I've bought it with my own hard-earned money! Okay, I'll stop ranting now...
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"Cruel Summer" by Bananarama

Birthday wishes go out today to Keren Woodward, one-third of the groundbreaking all-female pop trio Bananarama...

The song Cruel Summer has been a particular favourite of mine ever since I first heard it in that cruel summer of 1984 - the year after it was released in the UK - and is taken from their eponymous album (named, appropriately enough, Bananarama). For many years its video existed in a peculiar gray area unique to YouTube, wherein the song's vocal track was forbidden due to a specious copyright claim - even though the images were not - and the person responsible for posting the video just left it up sans sound. You can imagine the hilarity that ensued in the comments below!

Well, it's back (for now, at least) and so I plan to take fair use of Fair Use and post it here for you...
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Pop History Moment: Operation Rosario Commenced

It's a safe bet that there were more people in the world who hadn't heard of the Falkland Islands (some exceptions being geography buffs, higher-ups in the Argentinian and British military, and the staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) than would have heard of this remote outpost in the southern Atlantic Ocean before they were invaded by Argentina on this day in 1982 . The assault - codenamed Operation Azul during its planning stage - would henceforth be known as Operation Rosario...

The defense of the islands was mounted by the governor, Sir Rex Hunt, who just two days earlier had received word from the Royal Navy of an impending amphibious assault being mobilized by the Argentine Navy - following their occupation of nearby South Georgia on March 19th. Overall command of the operation was entrusted to Major Mike Norman, also commander of the local garrison, called Naval Party 8901; in all, this force amounted to 68 Marines and 11 sailors - an unusually high number, as the garrison was in the process of changing over - aided by 25 reservists with the Falkland Islands Defence Force. Major Gary Noott assumed the role of military advisor to the governor.

In all 21 Gemini assault craft were deployed by the ARA Santisima Trinidad; under cover of early morning darkness - despite a full moon, it was cloudy - 84 troopers of the 1st Amphibious Commandos Group led by Lieutenant-Commander Guillermo Sanchez-Sabarots had been aiming to come ashore off Mullet Creek but got tangled up in kelp beds, and instead landed near Lake Point. Their stated aim was the capture Government House a short distance to the north in the capital, Stanley. Upon landing they split up; the larger group headed for a British barracks, and the smaller group for the capital.

This first wave of commandos launched a siege on the Moody Brook Barracks, having arrived there shortly after 5:30 AM, a 2.5 mile march from where they'd landed over rough terrain; they fired tear gas into the building, but later discover it to be empty. Half an hour later, on the other side of the island, twenty amphibious armoured personnel carriers came ashore from the ARA Cabo San Antonio at Yorke Bay. During their advance on Stanley they met an exchange of gunfire, with one reported injury on the Argentinian side.

At 6:30 AM the invaders to the north captured the deserted airport; at the same time a 16-man force from the south reached Government House, where they were met by 31 Marines. Three Argentines were injured in this assault, one of whom later died. The British also took three prisoners, although by this point the Islands were in no position to mount much of a defense. Over the next two-and-a-half months military sorties of increasing intensity were interspersed with diplomatic sabre-rattling on the part of Argentina's dictator Leopoldo Galtieri and Britain's Margaret Thatcher (who was no less dictatorial, but at least popularly elected).

Although war was never officially declared, the Royal Navy dispatched a Task Force from Plymouth within days, consisting of HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible (whose crew contained the Queen's second son, Prince Andrew - now the Duke of York). In all, by the cessation of the hostilities 258 British and 649 Argentinians would be dead - mainly in the sinkings of the ARA General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield - by the time the Union Jack was once again raised over Government House in Stanley on June 14th.
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POPnews - April 2nd

[Not that kind of panda crossing, silly!]

1453 - Mehmed II began his siege of Constantinople; the city would finally fall on May 29th.

1513 - Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon became the first European to visit Florida; although it's known that he landed on the east coast of the peninsula, owing to shoddy 16th Century record-keeping there is much dispute over exactly where.

1755 - Commodore William James captured the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on India's west coast.

1792 - The Coinage Act was passed, establishing the United States Mint. Mmm... Mint...

1801 - During the Napoleonic Wars, at the Battle of Copenhagen, Britain's Royal Navy under Lord Nelson and Admiral Sir Hyde Parker destroyed the Danish fleet.

1804 - Forty ships in a convoy of 69 led by HMS Apollo were wrecked when they ran aground off Portugal's Cape Mondego.

1863 - During the Richmond Bread Riot food shortages incited hundreds of angry women to riot, demanding the governments of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Virginia governor John Letcher to release emergency supplies.

1917 - Jeannette Rankin became the first woman to take a seat in the US Congress as a member.

1930 - When Empress Zewditu I died suddenly and mysteriously Haile Selassie was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia.

1956 - When As the World Turns and The Edge of Night premiered on CBS-TV, they became the first two daytime dramas to debut in the 30-minute format; while The Edge of Night transferred to ABC in December 1975 and went off the air nine years later, As The World Turns is still airing on CBS after more than 13,000 episodes.

1962 - The first official Panda crossing was opened outside London's Waterloo station, causing chaos.

1972 - Charlie Chaplin returned to the United States for the first time since the 1950s Red Scare forced him into exile in Switzerland; while in the US, he accepted an honorary Oscar for his body of work.

1975 - The CN Tower was completed, apparently.

1977 - Red Rum won the Grand National a record third time, having previously won in 1973 and 1974.

1984 - Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma was launched aboard Soyuz T-11, making him India's first astronaut.

1991 - The first female Premier of a Canadian province took office when Rita Johnston succeeded Bill Vander Zalm, who had resigned as Premier of British Columbia in scandal. In the subsequent provincial election that October Johnston's Social Credit Party was reduced from a majority of 74 seats to third-party status with just 7; she even lost her own.*

1998 - Maurice Papon - Cabinet minister in the government of French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing - was found guilty of war crimes.

2002 - Israeli forces surrounded Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity into which armed Palestinians had retreated following a fire-fight with the Israeli Defense Forces, who'd been carrying out Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank; the ensuing siege lasted until May 10th and resulted in the deaths of 8 militants affiliated with Fatah.

2005 - Pope John Paul II died; he was succeeded by Satan.

*The first and to date only woman to be elected premier of a Canadian province remains Liberal Catherine Callbeck of Prince Edward Island, who broke that barrier in 1993; Nellie Cournoyea became Premier of the Northwest Territories under a consensus government in November 1991, a month after Johnston was consigned to political oblivion.
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Pop History Moment: The Greatest Ever April Fool's Joke

On this day in 1957 the BBC's prestigious and respected current affairs programme Panorama decided to risk a measure of its journalistic prestige and respect in the name of that most favoured of British pastimes - namely, taking the piss...

Probably the greatest April Fools' Day joke in the history of media - itself the brainchild of BBC camera operator Charles de Jaeger - the report on that year's bumper crop of spaghetti narrated by Richard Dimbleby was watched by as many as 8 million, and seems to have fooled quite a fair number of them. Of course, it helps that spaghetti was then an exotic food in the UK, most frequently found in tins.

Some of the accompanying footage was shot at a factory in London, some in nearby St. Albans, and the rest at a hotel in the Swiss resort town of Castiglione.
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Remembering... Eleanor of Aquitaine

Once upon a time, when women were considered empty vessels, little better than furnishings designed for recreation, procreation, and doing all those little things men normally can't be bothered to do (like picking up around the castle) more than a few of them bucked the trend; they were learned, powerful, and far more politically capable than their male counterparts specifically because they had to navigate a seemingly endless shoal of misogyny in order to demonstrate their abilities without being accused of witchcraft or worse - being un-feminine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was one such woman. As one of the richest heiresses in the High Middle Ages, she brought to the throne of France (through her marriage to Louis VII) the duchies of Aquitaine, Gascony, and Poitou. Together they attended the Second Crusade, and while in Jerusalem Eleanor witnessed the coronation of her uncle Raymond of Antioch as King; the affection demonstrated between uncle and niece was very nearly the scandal of the age, and probably would have been if there'd been any media in those days aside from the occasional scribbling monk or wandering minstrel.

As Eleanor's French marriage had produced only two daughters, though (and much resultant animosity between husband and wife because of it) it was reluctantly annulled by Pope Eugenius III - since girls then didn't count as people; of course, no one then knew (or would have believed anyway) that it's the father who determines the sex of the babies, not the mother. Eleanor should have been the one to divorce Louis, and not the other way round; nevertheless, however it was done she was glad to be rid of him - it seems his piety got on her nerves in a big way.

She then turned around and married Louis' rival, Henry II, King of England, and proceeded to give him five sons and three daughters (in addition to holdings amounting to one-third of southern France). Louis was now boxed in by forces loyal to England, which was led by a man with access to intimate details of his life and character - a situation that must have rankled him almost as much as the procession of sons she then bore him.

Two of these sons eventually became kings - Richard I (even then better known as Richard the Lionhearted) and John (called 'Lackland', a snivelling weasel best remembered as the villain in the legends of Robin Hood); still, Eleanor's life in England was no less chaotic, coming as it did in tumultuous times. The murder of Thomas Becket by her husband's orders, bad as it was, couldn't have hurt Eleanor as deeply as her husband's open philandering with Rosamund Clifford; it was one thing for a King to have a mistress, but it was quite another to parade her around in the Queen's place, boasting about it. Coming as she did from the court of Aquitaine - the birthplace of courtly love - the coarse manners of her second husband must have seemed no improvement over the pusillanimity of her first.

Eleanor died, on this day in 1204, at the astonishing age of about 82 - having been been held in captivity by her second husband for 16 years of it. She was buried at Fontevraud Abbey - where, in the last years of her life, she'd taken the veil - next to the husband who'd imprisoned her and her favourite son, Richard, who'd released her. All that remains, though, is the tomb - her bones were scattered along with all of the other royal remains in France, during the French Revolution. One of the most widely traveled women of her age, she had seen and done more than many of her male 'betters' but alas, she left no memoirs; what a book that would have been!

Thanks to James Goldman, whose play The Lion in Winter has twice been adapted for film, Eleanor of Aquitaine has been played by Katharine Hepburn (who won her fourth Academy Award for the portrayal) and Glenn Close (who won a Golden Globe for her portrayal in a television miniseries). She's also been played by Rosemary Harris and Stockard Channing on stage. Eleanor is a character in William Shakespeare's play King John, and is somewhat erroneously depicted in Jean Anouilh's play Becket, from whence a film was made. She's also appeared as a character in numerous novels and both histories and herstories.
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"Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds

Jay Livingston and Ray Evans' song Tammy is given the star treatment here by no less of a star than Debbie Reynolds, who sang it in 1957's Tammy and the Bachelor. So effective was Reynolds' rendition that the sweet if slight ditty was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category. The song's success, however, was not limited to awards season; it hit #1 on just about every chart for which it was eligible, and remained Reynold's signature tune for many years.

Also featured in this clip is the esteemed actress Mildred Natwick as Aunt Renie...
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Happy Birthday Debbie Reynolds

There are few people I love more than those great ladies of Hollywood past; one such lady, Debbie Reynolds, is still very much singing and dancing and making us laugh in the present - well into the amazing sixth decade of her career. It is the sincere hope of the Pop Culture Institute that she will continue to do so for many years into the future as well...

Originally from Texas, the Reynolds clan moved to Southern California when little Mary Frances was just seven; fresh out of the Girl Scouts the sixteen year old student at Burbank High School won a beauty contest which can be said to have launched her career since, because of it, she was also awarded a contract with Warner Brothers.

The newly re-christened Debbie's first big movie role, though, came in an MGM picture - Singin' in the Rain, which is the closest to perfect a movie musical ever got. By then, of course, she was already as established a hit-maker as Francesco Nitto, having taken Aba Daba Honeymoon all the way to #3.

Of course, there's more to a show business career than singing and dancing and making people laugh; where Reynolds' celebrity mettle was really tested was in the scandal department. Once married to singer Eddie Fisher - who famously left her for Elizabeth Taylor in 1955 - the petite blonde who was then America's Sweetheart clearly emerged from that one the winner in the public's eyes. Of course, it's the children who suffer in divorce, and this case was no different; both Carrie Fisher and her brother Todd were left more or less fatherless, but worst of all Carrie became a writer, which is surely the worst possible fate to ever befall anyone.

Alas, the wandering eye of Eddie Fisher was the least of Reynolds' problems; the lack of financial acumen displayed by her second husband Harry Karl left her in dire straits following their 1973 divorce, which necessitated a career in the cabarets of Las Vegas. There she not only displayed the traits for which she was by then rightly famous but also demonstrated a flair for mimicry, including (if show business lore is correct - and why wouldn't it be) a dead-on impersonation of her one-time media rival, Elizabeth Taylor.

After a botched attempt at starring in her own show, The Debbie Reynolds Show - which NBC pulled from the air in 1970 after Reynolds objected to its being sponsored by a tobacco company - she managed a fair number of appearances on other shows, including a memorable turn in a two-part episode of The Golden Girls, and a recurring role on Will & Grace as the diva-esque mother of Grace Adler, which was surely a stretch for her to play*.

*Seeing as she had no real-life experience as the mother of a bundle of neuroses with a penchant for becoming romantically entangled with gay dudes... Much.
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Pop History Moment: Charles Dickens Published "Hard Times"

On this day in 1854 Charles Dickens sought to give his weekly newspaper Household Words a boost in circulation by serializing his tenth novel Hard Times within its pages; in the weeks that followed readership more than doubled, and by the time the serialization had run its course on August 12th the author had another fat* hit on his hands, despite the fact that it's the most incongruous of all his works...

In part a specific critique of utilitarianism** (rather than a general criticism of socioeconomic conditions), Hard Times eschews the London setting of all his other works in favour of the fictional Coketown - which was based, in part, on such northern mill towns as Preston. It also, interestingly, was not illustrated - although the illustration, shown at right (of the novel's protagonist Mr. Gradgrind, apprehending his children Louisa and Tom from the circus) was made by Harry French to accompany the serialization in Household Words.

Wildly popular with the reading public at the time, Hard Times has been receiving mixed reviews with critics ever since it first appeared; John Ruskin loved it, while Thomas Macaulay branded it 'sullen socialism', and George Bernard Shaw seemed to want it both ways by declaring it a 'passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world'***. Dickens, of course, valued people over profits, and for this reason in general - as much as for his experimental zeal in this work specifically - Hard Times remains a stalwart of the stacks at the Pop Culture Institute.

*110,000 words, in fact!
**A typically harsh political ideology for the times, which was as antithetical to Dickens' nature as neoconservatism is to my own.
***Shaw's criticism, true to type, was eminently fair; he felt Dickens failed to grasp the reality of trade unionism in that era, inventing a typically middle-class bogeyman in the character of union leader Slackbridge which Shaw felt was inaccurate. That unions could be as heartless and rapacious and even corporate as those they were intended to rein in, however, wouldn't have occurred to Shaw.
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"The Bottle" by Gil Scott-Heron

Birthday wishes go out today to Gil Scott-Heron, the musical visionary who is credited as one of the fathers of spoken word poetry as well as a gifted musician in the jazz and soul idioms...

Best known for such deservedly incendiary works as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Whitey on the Moon (both taken from his 1970 debut album Small Talk at 125th & Lenox) The Bottle originally appeared on Scott-Heron's third album, Winter in America, from 1974. A trenchant commentary on alcohol abuse, The Bottle has been something of an underground hit ever since its release, although it did reach the #15 spot on the R& B Chart in America; its also been sampled by such diverse hip hop artists as De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Rachel Maddow

Not having access to MSNBC - since I, of all people, don't have cable television - I have come to rely upon sources like YouTube and Facebook for my occasional fixes of those powerful antidotes to the right-wing blowhards of cable media, namely Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow...

Olbermann, of course, has been fighting the good fight for some time now, doing more to disperse bilious gas (as emitted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly) than Febreze; Maddow is something of a Jane-come-lately to the profession of battling the dragons of the fascist press, being a protegee of Olbermann's. Recently she's taken to scrapping with Scott Brown, the pretty boy/empty suit elected to replace Massachusetts' long-time senator Ted Kennedy, who died in August 2009.

Born on this day in 1973*, Maddow was the first openly gay American to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship; in addition to her TV gig, The Rachel Maddow Show, she also hosts a radio show, creatively entitled The Rachel Maddow Show, which is broadcast on Air America Radio.

*She's half-Newfie on her mothers' side, dontcha know?!
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POPnews (UK) - April 1st

[The BBC's long-running current affairs programme Panorama risked its considerable credibility to take the piss out of a whole nation on this day in 1957 with an elaborate April Fools' Day prank; as narrated by Richard Dimbleby, 8 million British viewers were treated to images of a bumper crop of spaghetti, owing (it was said) to an unseasonably warm winter and the eradication of the spaghetti weevil. Oh... My sides... Ow...]

1293 - Following the death of John Peckham his successor Robert Winchelsey left England for Italy, where he would eventually be consecrated as Archbishop of Canterbury at Aquila by Pope Celestine V in September 1294.

1854 - Charles Dickens began serializing his novel Hard Times in his magazine Household Words; the final installment was published on August 12th.

1873 - En route from Liverpool to New York City during her 19th voyage, the steamer SS Atlantic of the White Star Line sank after striking an underwater rock called Marr's Head 50 metres from Meagher's Island off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing 547.

1918 - The Royal Air Force was created by merging the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.

1946 - Uniting the Malay States and the Straits Settlements - but excluding Singapore - the Malayan Union was formed as a successor to British Malaya to unify the Malay Peninsula under a single government so as to simplify administration; the first governor was Sir Edward Gent and the capital was located at Kuala Lumpur.

1957 - A prank broadcast by the BBC had many Britons convinced that, among other things, spaghetti grew on trees in Switzerland.

1969 - The first Harrier jets entered service with the RAF.

1976 - The Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect was first reported on the BBC by astronomer Patrick Moore.

1990 - 1,000 prisoners at HM Prison Manchester, better known as Strangeways, rioted to protest overcrowding; actually a series of riots, the violence began in the prison chapel, spread to the roof, and eventually lasted 25 days, making it the longest prison riot in British history. During the hostilities one prisoner was killed and 47 others as well as 147 prison officers were injured.

2000 - The Enigma Machine was stolen from Bletchley Park; it was returned, anonymously, to BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman the following October with some of its crucial parts missing and a note demanding random. Antiques dealer Dennis Yates was later arrested, charged, and imprisoned for his part in the theft.

2006 - The Serious Organised Crime Agency, dubbed the 'British FBI', was created.
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"Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye

In previous years this video has been unavailable to me, and so I've had to make do with various live performances to commemorate this, the anniversary of Marvin Gaye's murder; today though - no fooling! - I found the actual video to his final hit, 1982's Sexual Healing, which had been intended as his comeback. The video itself was filmed at Casino-Kursaal in Ostend.

Gaye's death, at the hands of his father, shocked the entertainment industry; even more shocking were revelations which surfaced later, namely that the younger Gaye had been suicidal in the days and weeks leading up to his unfortunate death on this day in 1984 - the day before his 45th birthday - and that the murder weapon had actually been a gift from son to father.
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POPnews - April 1st

[Today - as millions of machines built under the malign influence of Bill Gates ruin millions of perfectly good days - we the righteous celebrate the technical savvy and creative genius of Woz and the Dear Leader, whose machines are simply better. Sure, there are fewer of them, but that's because the vast majority of people are drama queens, who seem to enjoy spending a portion of every day trying (and ultimately failing) to get their ugly terminals and crappy software to function properly. 'To each his own' we say, as we snicker behind our hands, gloating...]
1340 - Niels Ebbesen killed Gerhard III of Holstein in his bedroom, ending an interregnum in Denmark which had begun in 1332.

1572 - During the Eighty Years' War, the Watergeuzen captured Brielle from Spain, gaining the first foothold on land for what would eventually become the Dutch Republic.

1789 - In New York City, the US House of Representatives attained its first quorum and elected Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.

1857 - Herman Melville published The Confidence-Man, which would be his last novel-length work of fiction.

1891 - The Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago.

1924 - Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in jail for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch; he served just nine months, during which time he wrote Mein Kampf.

1939 - Francisco Franco declared an end to the Spanish Civil War after the last Republican forces surrendered.

1946 - A 7.8 magnitude earthquake off the Aleutian Islands created a tsunami that struck Hawai'i near Hilo, killing 159 there and six in Alaska and causing $26 million in damages including the destruction of the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island.

1948 - Faroe Islands received their autonomy from Denmark.

1949 - The Irish Free State became the Republic of Ireland.

1967 - The United States Department of Transportation began operations.

1970 - President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States to begin on the first day of 1971.

1973 - Project Tiger - oddly enough, a tiger conservation project - was launched in India's Corbett National Park.

1976 - Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

1979 - The Shah of Iran was deposed and the Islamic Republic was declared.

1996 - Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality was created.

1999 - The Canadian territory of Nunavut was created.

2001 - The Netherlands became the first country in the world to recognize same-sex marriage.

2004 - Google introduced its Gmail product to the public; the launch was met with scepticism on account of the date.
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Pop History Moment: The Dalai Lama In Exile

On this day in 1959 Tibet's spiritual leader Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, crossed the border into India after an epic 15-day journey on foot over the Himalayan mountains... His Holiness' exile came after a failed uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March of that year during which thousands of civilians were slaughtered by the Chinese military.

Once settled in Dharamshala (known today as 'Little Lhasa' as much for his presence as for that of the 80,000 refugees who followed him into exile there) the Dalai Lama established the Government of Tibet in Exile; also established were the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, which is the foremost institution of higher learning for Tibetans in exile in India.
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