"Real Cool (Cool Love)" by Wanda Jackson

When I was researching this post I was thrilled to discover there are so many great clips of birthday gal Wanda Jackson on YouTube, only then I didn't know what to do. Given my proclivity for the obscure, I'm not used to the Internet yielding such an embarrasses des riches. In the end, I chose this one mainly because it's got the best image quality. Plus I love the song...

Cool Love was released as a single in 1957, and appears on Wanda Jackson's 1960 album Rockin' with Wanda.
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Wanda Jackson: The Queen of Rockabilly

My pulse quickens when I hear the open strum, the bouncy beat, the distinctive twang that are all the hallmarks of a Wanda Jackson song... Today the Amazonian brunette with the uniquest twang turns 73.

Discovered while still in high school, Jackson's unique blend of gospel, country, and blues made for a potent new form of music called rockabilly; often called the first female rock star, the one-time girlfriend of Elvis Presley occupies an unparalleled place in pop culture.

I must admit, I was a little leery about posting this, seeing as Ms. Jackson is a born-again Christian; I wouldn't like my enthusiasm for her music and 1950s-era persona to be tainted by anything as boring as homophobia, since Jesus wouldn't have done it either. In the end I decided - as is my wont - to throw caution to the wind, and honour her anyway. Even if, for whatever reason, she can't or won't return the favour...
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In Memoriam: Sir Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren (born in Wiltshire on this day in 1632) was a gifted mathematician and scientist with a relentless curiosity and a polymathic mind, whose work was said to be admired by such contemporaries as Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.

Already noted for his architectural abilities (having built Cambridge's Pembroke Hall and Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre) - not to mention co-founding the Royal Society - when the City of London went up in flames in September 1666, Wren was the first to submit cogent plans for the rebuilding of the City; in 1669 he was named Surveyor-General of the King's Works, with the responsibility of making a modern capital out of the smoking ruins of a medieval maze.

That year he married Faith Coghill; they had two children, Gilbert (who died young) and Christopher Jr., whom Wren began training as an architect from a young age. Wren was knighted in November 1673 by King Charles II.

The first Lady Wren died of smallpox in September 1675; he was remarried less than 18 months later, this time to Jane Fitzwilliam. Again, two children were produced - a girl named Jane who died in 1702 and a son named named William, who was born retarded. The second Lady Wren died of tuberculosis in September 1680.

Although a sickly child, Wren lived to be 90 in an age when it was an achievement to turn 50. He died in London in February 1723, having lived to see it mostly reborn from the ashes of 1666. His tomb within St. Paul's Cathedral is suitably opulent; still, there are those (myself among them) who feel the entire place ought to be considered his tomb. The greatest of the 54 London churches he built, and universally recognized as his masterpiece since its completion on this day in 1708 - Wren's 76th birthday- bears a suitably confident epitaph:


Lector, Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice*
^{*Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.
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"Runnin' Down A Dream" by Tom Petty

Taken from birthday boy Tom Petty's 1989 solo album, Full Moon Fever - the same album that yielded such instant classics as Free Fallin' and I Won't Back Down - it's Runnin' Down A Dream, whose video was directed by Jim Lenahan, and features animation by Winsor McCay based on the classic comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland.
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"The Tortured Heart" by Arthur Rimbaud

My sad heart slobbers at the poop,
My heart covered with tobacco-spit:
They spew streams of soup at it,
My sad heart drools at the poop:
Under the jeering of the soldiers
Who break out laughing
My sad heart drools at the poop,
My heart covered with tobacco-spit!

Ithyphallic and soldierish,
Their jeerings have depraved it!
On the rudder you see frescos
Ithyphallic and soldierish.
O abracadabra waves,
Take my heart, let it be washed!
Ithyphallic and soldierish,
Their jeerings have depraved it.

When they have used up their quid,
How will I act, O stolen heart?
There will be Bacchic hiccups,
I will have stomach retchings,
If my heart is degraded:
When they have used up their quid
How will I act, O stolen heart?

^{Translated by Wallace Fowlie
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Arthur Rimbaud: The Original Angertwink

It takes considerable verve to scandalize the French; that Arthur Rimbaud did it so young and so thoroughly is as much a testament to his dedication as it is to his anarchist spirit...

The writer - most famously of Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) and born on this day in 1854 - was a prolific poet as a young man, although by the time he was 20 he seems to have lost interest in poetry. He may in fact have burned out; he was soon better known as a prolific hellraiser, the quintessential enfant terrible. Even the French found him obnoxious, so you get some idea how fabulous he must have been.

Rimbaud's work defied the poetic conventions of the day (giving rise to both Symbolist and Surrealist movements) which outraged the intelligentsia, his unkempt appearance and penchant for opium and hashish chased with absinthe similarly shocked the bourgeoisie, and his brief, tempestuous love affair with the better-known married poet Paul Verlaine offended just about everyone else.

Their relationship lasted less than three years, taking them finally to London, and ended with Verlaine's arrest in Brussels. While imprisoned at Mons, Verlaine converted to Catholicism; they last met in Stuttgart in 1875 following Verlaine's release.

From 1875 until his death, Arthur Rimbaud seems to have cleaned up his act. Although he continued to explore much of Europe on foot, he also took regular jobs, and even managed to find time to join the Dutch Navy only to desert in Java. While working in Cyprus, Aden, and Ethiopia he seems to have kept only female lovers.

In May 1879 he contracted typhoid fever, but recovered. For Arthur Rimbaud the end of his rambles around Europe came in November 1891 following complications from the amputation of his right leg; he died in great agony at a hospital in Marseilles, attended by his sister Isabelle.
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Happy Birthday Your Imperial Majesty

Even more so than its events, it's the path a life takes that can provide the outside observer with the greatest insight into the person who lived it...

In another life Michiko Shoda - born this day in 1934 - could have married the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, and thus been his widow on the day in November 1970 when he committed suppuku. Instead, she met and married a shy, bookish man who in his own other life would have surely become a scientist instead of Emperor of Japan.

Certainly almost any life would have been easier than that of the first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial Household (or Kunaicho, which she did in April 1959), and almost any other mother-in-law would have been preferable to the formidable Nagako, who since her death in 2000 is known as Empress Kōjun. Though it is largely unknown within Japan, the rest of the world knows well enough how Nagako's constant bullying brought the ebullient young Michiko to the point of nervous breakdown in the early 1960s, and again as late as 1993.

Determined not to be such a dragon lady herself, the Empress has been entirely supportive of Crown Princess Masako throughout her decade-long struggle to adapt to her new life within the entirely conservative Imperial Household.
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"Gin & Juice" by Snoop Dogg

Bizzle wizzle* go out to Snoop Dogg, the West Coast rapper and porntrepreneur who began his career as a humble drug dealer and pimp before figuring out there was ten times the money and a chance to live past forty by going legit. Word!

Gin and Juice was Snoop's second single, and first appeared on his 1993 debut album Doggystyle; both the song and the video are the work of Dr. Dre. The video features early appearances by Lil Bow Wow and Eddie Griffin and cameos by Dre himself, as well as Warren G, Nate Dogg and Daz Dillinger.

*Birthday wishes, fo shizzle!
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POPnews - October 20th

[When HM The Queen of Australia formally opened the Sydney Opera House on this day in 1973 the performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 she attended there was far from the venue's first show; previously Jørn Utzon's impressionistic architectural masterpiece - which dominates Sydney Harbour from Bennelong Point dwarfed only by Sydney Harbour Bridge - had been host to a performance of Sergei Prokofiev's opera War and Peace, in addition to a concert of Wagner favourites featuring soloist Birgit Nilsson, a recital of lieder songs by Nilsson and Geoffrey Parsons, a violin and piano recital by Parsons and Wanda Wiłkomirska, as well as a series of lunchtime performances for the workers, the first of which was given by Paul Robeson in 1960.]
1740 - Upon the accession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne, France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refused to honour the Pragmatic Sanction, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession.

1803 - The US Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

1818 - The Treaty of 1818 settled most of the border between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel.

1827 - At the Battle of Navarino a combined Turkish and Egyptian armada was destroyed by an allied British, French, and Russian naval force at a port now called Pylos on Navarino Bay; the victory marks the end of the Greek War of Independence and the affirmation of an independent, modern Greece.

1883 - Peru and Chile signed the Treaty of Ancón, by which the Tarapacá province of the former was ceded to the latter, bringing an end to Peru's involvement in the War of the Pacific.

1905 - The Turkish football club Galatasaray was founded.

1941 - Thousands of civilians in the Nazi-occupied Serbian town of Kragujevac were killed, in what came to be known as the Kragujevac Massacre.

1947 - The US and Pakistan established diplomatic relations.

1951 - The Johnny Bright Incident enflamed the Oklahoma town of Stillwater.

1952 - Kenya's Governor Evelyn Baring declared a state of emergency and began arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising, including Jomo Kenyatta, the future first President of Kenya.

1955 - J. R. R. Tolkien novel The Return of the King - the last part of The Lord of the Rings - was published.

1967 - A purported bigfoot was filmed by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin.

1968 - Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and became the emblematic mega-celebrity of the 1970s known as Jackie O.

1973 - During the so-called Saturday Night Massacre US President Richard M. Nixon fired his Attorney-General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney-General William Ruckelshaus after they refused to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was finally fired by Robert Bork.

1976 - The ferry George Prince was struck by a ship while crossing the Mississippi River between Destrehan and Luling, Louisiana; in all seventy-eight passengers and crew died, while only 18 people aboard the ferry survived.

1977 - An airplane carrying most of Lynyrd Skynyrd crashed in Mississippi; killed were lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, as well as the band's road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.

1979 - The JFK Library opened in Boston.

1984 - California's Monterey Bay Aquarium opened.

1991 - The Oakland Hills firestorm killed 25 and destroyed 3,469 homes and apartments, causing more than $2 billion in damage.
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Pop History Moment: The Arrest of Frances Farmer

On this day in 1942 wild child and Hollywood actress Frances Farmer was arrested in Santa Monica; she did not go peacefully...

Farmer was pulled over by Santa Monica Police, driving with her lights on high despite a wartime blackout; reports have her as being drunk and disorderly at the time, as well as unable to produce a driver's license, at which time she was taken into custody and spent the night in jail. She was eventually fined $500 and given a 180-day suspended sentence; upon payment of half the fine she was put on probation.

Alas, her brush with the law wasn't the wake-up call it could have been, but merely a sign of the worsening of a mental illness (not helped at all by the concomitant abuse of alcohol) that would dominate the rest of her life...

For all its inaccuracies, the 1982 film Frances, starring Jessica Lange, remains the biopic of choice when considering the life of Frances farmer in pop cultural terms.
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A Public Service Announcement by John Lithgow

And finally, a cleansing dose of sincerity...

Birthday wishes to John Lithgow, and a word about a cause near to both our hearts: child literacy.
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"Walk Like A Man" by Divine

This is my all-time favourite Divine song, but until I first posted it here in 2007 I'd never seen the video.  All I can say is, me liiiike...

Of course, now I've seen it dozens of times, approaching what may be a lethal dose - I won't know until I can find the WHMIS sheet - but all I can say about that is 'What a way to go!'

Featuring scenes from Paul Bartel's 1985 epic parody oater Lust in the Dust, Walk Like A Man was written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio and originally recorded by The Four Seasons!  It appeared on Divine's album Maid in England.
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Divine By Name, Divine By Nature

What is it about a person's contradictions that render them most memorable? Is it that complexity breeds fascination, or is it merely that the more varied a person's appeal is the more varied their fan base will be?

Whatever it was, Harris Glenn Milstead (born this day in 1945) had it in abundance. As himself he is inevitably described by those who knew him as gentle, soft-spoken, and unfailingly generous; which makes his appearances as Divine all the more shocking, because Divine is, simply put, the filthiest thing ever seen in the American cinema, bar none*.

Visually, of course, Divine was the creation of John Waters and Van Smith, the hairdresser on many of Waters' earliest and trashiest films. Emotionally - even though the words belonged to John Waters - Divine was all Milstead. As trite as it is, there is truth to the stereotype that even the most sensitive person, when bullied, will act out against ill-treatment given the chance. For that reason alone, Divine ought to serve as a beacon to fat sissy-boys everywhere, as he always has for me...

*And all the more fabulous for it!
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Blast From The Past: John Waters on "Letterman"

John Waters is always hilarious; he's so verbally deft and loquacious, I could listen to him talk all day; if you have a couple of hours to kill one Sunday afternoon, you owe it to yourself to check him out in all his glory - say, on one of his commentary tracks... Try Cecil B. Demented (2000).

You'll learn so much your ears will hurt.

Here then is the man himself, talking with vintage Letterman (c.1986) - back when Dave was still a real prick; watch and marvel as Letterman is manipulated by a better conversationalist. The highlight is their discussion, early in the interview, of Divine.
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POPnews - October 19th

[Napoleon's invasion of Russia didn't go so well - for Napoleon, that is; for Russian culture, though, it proved a boon - being responsible for both Tolstoy's War and Peace and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture plus the above painting of the French dictator's calamitous retreat from Moscow by Adolph Northen.]
1216 - England's King John died; he was succeeded by his 9 year-old son Henry III, whose early reign would be guided by the regency of William Marshal.

1469 - Ferdinand II of Aragon married Isabella of Castile; famed as the sponsors of Christopher Columbus, their marriage would forge the modern nation of Spain under their grandson Charles I of Spain, who later became Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V.

1781 - At Yorktown, Virginia, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis' sword and formally surrendered in person to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, ending the American Revolutionary War.

1812 - Napoleon retreated from Moscow.

1813 - The Battle of Leipzig concluded, giving Napoleon one of the worst defeats of his military career.

1864 - At the Battle of Cedar Creek the Union Army under Philip Sheridan destroyed its Confederate rival under Jubal Early.

1914 - The First Battle of Ypres began in Belgium during the terrible conflict known at the time as the Great War, which we now know as World War I.

1917 - Love Field opened in Dallas, Texas; the smaller of two airports now serving the city was the only one in town until 1974. Love Field would later become famous for the role it played in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.

1921 - António Granjo, the Prime Minister of Portugal, was one of three politicians killed during a coup in Lisbon, since known as Noite Sangrenta; the other two were Machado Santos and Carlos da Maia.

1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, was isolated by Albert Schatz, a graduate student, in the laboratory of Selman Abraham Waksman at Rutgers University.

1954 - The first ascent of Cho Oyu - the sixth-highest peak on Earth - was made by Herbert Tichy, Joseph Jöchler, and Sherpa Pasang Dawa Lama as part of an Austrian expedition.

1960 - The first partial embargo was put on Cuban goods by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1974 - Niue became a self-governing colony of New Zealand.

1983 - Maurice Bishop, Prime Minister of Grenada, was overthrown and executed in a military coup d'état led by Bernard Coard.

1985 - The first Blockbuster Video opened in Dallas.

1986 - Samora Machel, President of Mozambique and a prominent leader of FRELIMO, died along with 33 others when their Tupolev 134 plane crashed into the Lebombo Mountains.

1987 - On the so-called Black Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%, or 508 points, to 1738.74 in one day.

1989 - The convictions of the so-called Guildford Four were overturned by the Court of Appeal; by then the four - Paul Michael Hill, Gerard 'Gerry' Conlon, Patrick 'Paddy' Armstrong, and Carole Richardson - had already spent 15 years in prison owing to a miscarriage of justice.

2005 - Saddam Hussein went on trial, convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Zac Efron

With each year that passes, I feel less and less pervy about Zac Efron... Which is good, because restraining orders are both a major hassle and entirely ineffective when it comes to a weapons-grade perv like myself.

Anyway, he's over 21 now, which means I now first and foremost respect him as a person and value his insights.

NOT!
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Remembering... Lotte Lenya

As a young girl (born on this day in 1898) it was Lotte Lenya's goal in life to be a dancer; after a few years swinging it around in the chorus-lines of Berlin she met a piano player by the name of Kurt Weill and ended up settling for being a Muse instead. She was cast in his show Die Dreigroschenoper, and a star was born...

The couple married in 1926 and soon became a part of an unparalleled artistic community in Germany in the dying days of the Weimar Republic; by the time Lenya fled the Nazi threat and decamped to Paris in 1933, though, they had become estranged, and she divorced him. Again, though, she found herself singing his songs, this time in The Seven Deadly Sins. In 1935 Lenya and Weill were reunited and together they emigrated to the United States; they remarried in 1937 and would remain together until Weill's death in 1950.

Yet even after Weill's death it is for her performances of his works that she is best-known. In 1956 she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Jenny in The Threepenny Opera, the role that had first made her famous in 1928. A decade later she originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in Kander and Ebb's original Broadway production on Cabaret, whose music was a spot-on homage to that of Brecht and Weill.

Her movie roles proved she had her funny side as well; playing the Contessa in The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961) - based on a novel written by Tennessee Williams, and for which she was nominated for an Oscar - she got a chance to procure young men for wealthy older clients, namely Warren Beatty for Vivien Leigh, as well as be the first person in the American cinema to call herself a 'chicken-hawk'. Though not a comedy the movie is nevertheless a laugh-a-minute. Similarly, as Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love (1963) she's so camp she could have changed her name to KOA.
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In Memoriam: Pierre Elliot Trudeau

Only one Canadian Prime Minister has ever jazzed his potential electorate to such a degree that someone had to append the word 'mania' to his surname to describe the phenomenon, and it sure as Hell wasn't Arthur Meighen...

The year was 1967, and as Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was preparing to leave office, so was Canada preparing to leave the 1950s. Pearson was popular in the way that quiet people often attract quiet admirers - to him a golf clap would have been a thunderous ovation; his Justice Minister was also quiet, but he was quiet in an entirely different way...

Pierre Trudeau's tenure as Justice Minister saw an overhaul the likes of which the country had never seen - laws concerning divorce, homosexuality, and abortion more in line with the times were implemented. It was almost as though, following a century as an Imperial and Commonwealth Dominion, Canada was finally ready to be its own country. Trudeau's omnibus bill, Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, swept away the old so as to usher in the new as easily as would Trudeau's other masterpiece, Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a decade later.

Similarly, Trudeaumania shook Canadian society down to its very core, beginning in that centennial year... For many Baby Boomers the election of 1968 was their first chance to vote, and they sure as tooting weren't going to waste it by voting for some square who favoured the status quo. Trudeau was not only the first 20th Century Prime Minister born in the 20th Century (on this day in 1919) he was also the first Prime Minister elected in Canada's second century - single, athletic, and while not traditionally handsome, he was certainly attractive in other ways, as his never-ending stream of pretty dates could attest.

It didn't take long for his opponents to surface; whether the more staid rural Liberals in his own party or Quebeckers expecting one of their own to just hand them their sovereignty, Trudeau fought them all and won. To this day he's still dividing Canadians, who are still trying to come to terms with his legacy, especially as one of his more anodyne successors prepares to hand control of the Natural Governing Party - potentially even to one of Trudeau's sons, Justin, who could potentially become Canada's first PMILF*...

*Duh! What do you think it means?
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Jon-Erik Hexum

There is a substantial amount of footage of Jon-Erik Hexum on YouTube; which is surprising, actually, for someone who was little more than a male starlet when he died, more 25 years ago now. I had the honour to watch most of it in preparation for writing this piece, and all I can say is that my high opinion of him hasn't changed one iota through the years, but has, in fact, increased...

In addition to handsome and charming he is gentle, soft-spoken, and funny - a real gentleman, despite the idiotic questions he's forced to answer, such as in this interview with Merv Griffin, which was so sleazy someone clearly felt the need to do a second one.

Hexum's death, in addition to the personal loss it presented, was also literally a tragedy - in fact, the kind of accident that could only happen on a movie set*.

On October 12th, 1984, while rehearsing a scene for the TV show Cover Up, Hexum accidentally shot himself in the head using a gun loaded with blanks, in front of dozens of shocked onlookers; he was pronounced dead six days later, on this day in 1984, at the age of 26.

* In fact, it happened again - in 1993 - to Brandon Lee.
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Happy Birthday Martina Navratilova

Between 1982 and 1990, Martina Navratilova won at least one Wimbledon's women's tennis title each year, spending a record-breaking nine consecutive seasons as a champion in the hallowed precincts of the All England Club; throughout the same era as she was dominating women's singles she was also a champion in women's doubles as well. Just ask Judy Nelson...

Unlike many professional athletes, who wait until their glory days have passed only to come out afterwards in order to sell more copies of their memoirs, Martina came out in 1981. Through it all she withstood a lot of the kind of sniggering misogyny that used to pass for adult entertainment in the 1980s. Her ploy for dealing with it? Playing better and better despite it....

Anyway, most of that contempt had evaporated by the time she retired; of course, by then she'd well proven herself by winning 18 Grand Slam singles (and 18 runner-ups), 31 Grand Slam women's doubles, and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, in addition to 167 other singles titles, not to mention career earnings of more than $21 million (none of which came from the lucrative endorsements she could have expected if she'd been among the many, many heterosexual women on the pro tennis circuit). It was, by any conceivable standard, one of the greatest careers in the history of professional tennis.

Since hanging up her racket in 2006 Navratilova's golden glow, confident soft-spoken demeanour, and egalitarian compassion have represented a significant line of defense in the War on Gays; whether at an after-dinner lecture or during a chat show appearance the concentration and work ethic she first honed on tennis courts around the world have made her an equally formidable opponent in the court of public opinion as well...

Currently dealing with breast cancer as aggressively as she used to play at the net, the Pop Culture Institute looks forward to wishing her many more happy birthdays in the decades to come.
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Pop Culture In Retrograde: "Daddy" by Julie London

In girl singer terms, it's inevitable that Julie London was always going to be a whole lot more girl than singer; not that she's anything less than a peerless vocalist despite what she herself called 'a thimbleful of voice', just that she's a whole lot more va-va-va-voom, as this video almost - but not entirely - fails to show. Still, you should consider yourself lucky for the paltry baud rate of YouTube, as there's no telling what this performance in hi-def might do your sensitive components*...

As great as this performance is, though, the song leaves me feeling distinctly icky; even watched ironically, I can't help be reminded that this is what today's Republicans have the utter temerity to call 'the good old days', and even 'simpler times'; thank goodness progress is inevitable no matter what obstacles it meets is all I have to say about that. Then again, I've always considered myself a fourth-wave feminist for insisting that women should avail themselves of whatever power they can in whichever way they can, whether in the boardroom or the bedroom - whether as brain or beauty or both** - so what do I know, eh?

Born in September 1926, Julie London died on this day in 2000, following a career on untold turntables, in smoky bars and on silver screens, and even tricked out in wet dreamy nurse's whites on Emergency!, produced by her ex-husband Jack Webb, (TV's Joe Friday of Dragnet fame).

*So totally a euphemism.
**Or neither, for that matter, although how a dumb ugly broad is gonna be successful I couldn't begin to tell you - I can tell you it probably involves really good management. That or a well-known surname...
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POPnews - October 18th

[The Regency TR-1 was the iPod of its day.]
1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the most important of all Christian churches in Jerusalem, was completely destroyed by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacked the Church's foundations down to bedrock.

1016 - Marauding Danes under Canute the Great, Thorkell the High, and Eiríkr Hákonarson defeated the Saxon forces of English King Edmund Ironside and Eadric Streona at the Battle of Ashingdon, which paved the way for Canute to become King of England.

1081 - The Normans defeated the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Dyrrhachium.

1356 - An earthquake destroyed the Swiss town of Basel.

1386 - The University of Heidelberg opened, making it Germany's oldest such institution.

1685 - Legend has it France's King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected French Protestants from religious intolerance; following the revocation, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled France, causing an early example of brain drain which may have contributed to the French Revolution.

1748 - The signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession.

1775 - African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed herself from slavery.

1851 - Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick was first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley in London.

1867 - The US formally took possession of Alaska from Russia, a deal conducted by Secretary of State William Seward; despite secessionist views held by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, she never did undo the deal.

1922 - The BBC was founded.

1925 - The Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting on WSM, where it's been broadcasting every Saturday night since, making it the longest-running radio program in US history.

1929 - Women were considered persons under Canadian law thanks to the participation of Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney and Irene Parlby - known as the Famous Five - in the Persons Case.

1945 - A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, staged a coup d'etát against then president Isaías Medina Angarita, who was overthrown by the end of the day.

1954 - The first transistor radio - the Regency TR-1 - was announced by Texas Instruments; when it went on sale a month later it retailed for $49.95, and despite the price (akin to $350 in today's money) 150,000 were sold in short order.

1963 - Following the surprise resignation of Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister, Her Majesty The Queen invited Sir Alec Douglas-Home to form her next government; having won the leadership of the Conservative Party over Rab Butler and Quintin Hogg at a raucous convention, under the terms of the Peerage Act 1963 Home was then compelled to declaim his Earldom and other titles, give up his seat in the House of Lords, and contest a by-election in Kinross & West Perthshire in order to reside at 10 Downing Street.

1967 - The Soviet probe Venera 4 reached Venus and became the first human spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

1989 - East German leader Erich Honecker resigned.

1991 - Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Pierre Laporte

On this day in 1970, members of the Chenier Cell of the FLQ announced that their high-profile hostage Quebec Minister of Labour and Vice-Premier Pierre Laporte had been executed; their communique to police referred to Laporte derisively as the 'Minister of Unemployment and Assimilation'. True to their word, Laporte's body was found strangled to death, stuffed into the trunk of a stolen car and abandoned in a wooded area near Saint-Hubert Airport, a few miles south of Montreal.

Members of the Chenier Cell - Paul Rose, Jacques Rose, Francis Simard, and Bernard Lortie - were all arrested on November 6th, at their hideout; all but Lortie escaped, only to be recaptured in St. Luc at the end of December. Though all four were charged with the murder of Pierre Laporte, and in March 1971 each of them were sentenced to life terms for their part in the crime, the last of them had been released into the community by 1982.

In the years since, Paul Rose (who was the cell leader) has tried to run for federal office for the NDP, which caused the national party to sever its ties to the provincial arm in the 1990s*; Rose is still active in the trade union movement and occasionally works as a radio commentator. Jacques Rose is an independent contractor and supporter of the separatist movement. Francis Simard has since written several books on the October Crisis, one of which Pour en finir avec octobre has been made into a movie by Pierre Falardeau. Bernard Lortie has kept a low profile; alas, not quite as low as Pierre Laporte...

*Decimating the gains for that party made there in the 1970s by leader Ed Broadbent.
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"Sikidim" by Tarkan

As I am ever on the lookout for music from around the globe (not to mention super hot guys performing that music!) at some point since I began this blog I stumbled across Tarkan; this song of his has seldom been off my iPod since...

From one of Turkey's most famous pop singers, Tarkan Tevetoğlu, this song Şıkıdım (Shake) is apparently taken from his 1994 album A-Acayipsin, and also appears on his 2006 English-language debut album Come Closer.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Montgomery Clift

After a decade spent distinguishing himself on the Broadway stage, Montgomery Clift - who was born on this day in 1920 - arrived in Hollywood in 1948 only to distinguish himself there too; his debut in Red River brought a new credibility to Westerns, the acting in which hadn't generally involved any psychological depth up to that point.

Clift's career prior to 1956 combined his angelic looks, massive talent, and inner turmoil to guarantee box-office gold; opposite 19 year-old Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951) they fairly light up the screen, and in From Here to Eternity (1953) he added his considerable skill to what was already a powerhouse ensemble.

It was in May of that year, however, during principal photography for the antebellum epic Raintree County, that Clift was involved in a car accident which left him in chronic pain, his looks shattered... Before long they were calling his 'the longest suicide in Hollywood', as he added addiction upon addiction; while co-starring in The Misfits (1961) with Marilyn Monroe, she was quoted as saying that he was 'the only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.' Yikes!

Well, for what it's worth he managed to outlive her by four years, finally dying in July 1966. Ever since, armchair psychologists have attempted to understand Clift's torment, and most have put it down to his sexuality. Although he had always had affairs with both women and men, those who knew him best (like Taylor) felt that if he could have just found a nice man and settled down, he might have had at least a chance to be happy.

Just his luck, then, to be trapped in Hollywood, where nice men are said to be in as short a supply as quiet lives...
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Happy Birthday Margot Kidder

No matter how boring the movie she's in - and she's been in some real doozies! - you can bet she'll never be boring in it; whether it's because of her charisma or because her sheer viewability rivals that of Christopher Walken, well, who can say? Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Vaulted from obscurity* in 1978 - when she was cast to play Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in Superman - it turns out Margot Kidder really just hated the attention. As her fame grew so did her reputation for being difficult; as her reputation for being difficult grew her fame shrank... Problem solved! Or so it would seem, anyway. After clashing with director Richard Donner during Superman II, for instance, her part in Superman III was cut to less than five minutes. She got considerably more screentime in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, though. For what it's worth...

Whether the demons she's battled were the by-product of fame or within her all along (and whether the fame she found was toxic in and of itself or whether she was merely allergic to it) Margot Kidder is still with us, and therefore still likely to turn up in the strangest places; better yet, she's just as likely to be endearingly kooky - and cussing up a storm - when she does!

*AKA Canadian show business... >shudder<
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"My Oh My" by Aqua

Birthday wishes go out to supercute multi-ethnic pop phenom of yesteryear, René Dif - who was so effective in providing male vocals to Danish pop combo Aqua, and whose growly vocals have been in residence on my iPod ever since they first hit my CD player in the waning years of the 20th Century...

My Oh My was actually released as a single before Barbie Girl made the band an international sensation, owing to the litigiosity and corporate piggery of Mattel, Inc.; since I've already posted Barbie Girl here (on Barbie's birthday, natch!) I thought this video's jaunty pirate motif might make it most ideal to post in this Hallowe'en season. The song, of course, originated on the band's 1997 album Aquarium; although sung by René Dif and Lene Nystrøm Rasted, it was written by their fellow band members Claus Norreen and Søren Nystrøm Rasted. The video, like all five the band made in support of this album, was directed by Peder Pedersen.
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POPnews - October 17th

[Owing to a subway series between the Oakland Athletics and the
San Francisco Giants during the 1989 World Series, Game Three
- scheduled to be held at Candlestick Park on this day in 1989 -
had to be cancelled; it also marks the first time an
American earthquake had been televised.]
1091 - A tornado devastated central London.

1346 - Scotland's King David II was captured by England's King Edward III in Calais following the Battle of Neville's Cross and imprisoned in the Tower of London for 11 years before his country could afford to have him ransomed.

1456 - The University of Greifswald was established, making it only the second oldest such institution in northern Europe.

1604 - German astronomer Johannes Kepler began observing a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus, which later came to be known as Kepler's Star, despite the fact that the spectacular phenomenon had first been observed in northern Italy on October 9th.

1610 - France's King Louis XIII was crowned at the cathedral in Rheims.

1660 - The Regicides who had ordered the death of Charles I in 1649 - among them Adrian Scroope, Thomas Scot, Gregory Clement - were themselves executed at Charing Cross.

1806 - Haiti's despotic Emperor, Jacques I, was assassinated.

1814 - The London Beer Flood occurred at the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road in the London parish of St. Giles, killing nine.

1860 - The first playing of The Open Championship (referred to outside the UK as the British Open) was held at Scotland's Prestwick Golf Club; nowadays, of course, Britain's premier golfing event rotates between nine different courses. For the record, the winner of that first tournament was Willie Park, Snr., who was awarded a championship belt for his efforts.

1931 - Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion, apparently.

1933 - Albert Einstein, fleeing Nazi Germany, arrived in Princeton, New Jersey.

1956 - The world's first commercial nuclear power station was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II at Sellafield, in the English county of Cumbria; when it was finally shut in March 2003 the main reactor had been in continuous operation for nearly 47 years.

1961 - As many as 400 Algerian protesters were massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the city's Prefecture of Police.

1965 - The New York World's Fair closed after two years.

1967 - The musical Hair began its long run off-Broadway at the Public Theater.

1979 - Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1980 - Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to be received at the Vatican when she visited Pope John Paul II.

1989 - The San Francisco Bay Area was badly shaken by the Loma Prieta earthquake, a 7.1 magnitude reminder of the Earth's power which occurred at 5:04 PM local time, during that day's rush hour.

2005 - Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report debuted.
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"Higher Ground" by Red Hot Chili Peppers

Birthday wishes go out today to Michael 'Flea' Balzary - bassist and founding member of the LA-based noise makers Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose original instrument was the trumpet, and whose original aspiration was to play jazz. Taught to play bass by his friend (and future Pepper) Hillel Slovak, Flea was a member of Slovak's band Anthym for a time, before quitting in favour of punk combo Fear; in 1983 he united with Anthony Kiedis and Jack Irons and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were born.

Higher Ground is of course one of many huge hits popularized by Stevie Wonder, appearing first on his 1973 album Innervisions; RHCP's version gave the band the breakthrough it needed in 1989, when it was released along with their album Mother's Milk. As per usual, in lieu of the original video - unavailable for the same reasons as always* - I've posted a clip of the band performing the song at Woodstock 94.

*The damn suits!
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In Memoriam: Eugene O'Neill

The works of Eugene O'Neill are not merely renowned but acclaimed for their bitterness and cynicism; his characters are generally downtrodden, prone to the abuse of alcohol, and generally speaking something of a sorry lot. This is probably why I have always studiously avoided them, and him. After all, it should come as no surprise to even the most casual observer of the Pop Culture Institute that its author is rather obsessed with comedy, and the reason why ought to be obvious even to the most glib of pop psychologists.

Nevertheless, his is a name which recurs rather too often in the course of my research - especially since it so often appears in conjunction with other bold-faced names of 20th Century entertainment - and so for the sake of this blog I've decided to finally man up and face what amounts to one of my demons: the professional tragedian.

Born on this day in 1886 in a room of the Barrett Hotel in New York City's Times Square, as a child he was sent to Catholic boarding school, where naturally he found no solace in religion but plenty in books. A lengthy sojourn at sea ended when he contracted tuberculosis, following which he turned to writing to make his convalescence more bearable. A Greenwich Village bohemian long before it was a pose, in 1916 O'Neill discovered the Provincetown Players while on vacation in New England, and a memorable partnership was born...

At a time when the American theatre was still rather plagued by melodrama, O'Neill's stark realism was both a breath of fresh air and a challenge to the ruling orthodoxy - which simultaneously made him a bold innovator and a major threat. His first Broadway show was 1920's Beyond the Horizon, and its timing was propitious; as a nation embittered by its involvement in a European war entered the hedonistic Jazz Age and its government swore everyone off alcohol (wink, wink) O'Neill's dissipated vulgarians became contemporary archetypes seemingly overnight.

Many of Eugene O'Neill's plays were hugely successful both on Broadway and in repertory; a fair number were made into movies. The highlights of his literary career include The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness! (his only attempt at comedy), The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Given the lack of good examples from his life and the challenges he faced thanks to booze, it should be no surprise that Eugene O'Neill was never going to be either husband or father of the year; both husband and father of three, not only did his marriages scandalously overlap but his eldest son committed suicide, his middle child became a heroin addict (and also committed suicide), and his daughter Oona he disowned when she was just 18 for marrying 54 year-old Charlie Chaplin.

O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds; in life, O'Neill had been close friends with John Reed (and even closer to Reed's wife Louise Bryant, if you know what I mean). Reed, of course, was played by Warren Beatty and Louise Bryant by Diane Keaton. Both his Connecticut home (Monte Cristo Cottage) and his home in California (Tao House) have been designated national landmarks; even the site where he was born - at the epicentre of American entertainment, Times Square, now home to a Starbucks - is marked by a plaque. In addition to his numerous awards - including various Pulitzers as well as the Nobel Prize - The Eugene O'Neill Award named for him has been handed out annually in Sweden since 1956.

He died in November 1953.
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