POPnews - January 7th

[Is Bill Clinton a liar? It doesn't even matter what your definition of 'is' is - yes, he is. Is lying about adultery grounds for impeachment? Certainly the Pop Culture Institute doesn't think so - at least not compared to lying about weapons of mass destruction in order to provoke a costly foreign war to make your buddies in Big Oil richer than even their greediest imaginations. Just as a strictly hypothetical for instance...]
1325 - Alfonso IV became King of Portugal following the death of his father Denis.

1558 - Calais - a seaport on the English Channel/La Manche which was the final British holding on the Continent - was seized by Francis, duc de Guise, as England's Queen Mary I lay dying in London.

1598 - Boris Godunov seized the throne of Russia.

1608 - Fire destroyed Jamestown, Virginia.

1610 - Galileo Galilei observed the four largest moons of Jupiter for the first time; they were named after the lovers of Zeus (aka Jupiter) - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto - by Simon Marius, but are referred to as the Galilean moons.

1782 - The first American commercial bank - the Bank of North America - opened, at the prodding of Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, having received its charter from the Congress of the Confederation on the last day of December 1781.

1785 - Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries crossed the English Channel from Dover Castle to Guînes (near Calais) in a gas balloon, taking about 2½ hours in which to do it; following their feat of derring-do Blanchard was granted a substantial pension by King Louis XVI.

1835 - The HMS Beagle - with Charles Darwin aboard - anchored off the Chonos Archipelago.

1904 - The distress signal CQD was established - only to be replaced two years later by SOS.

1920 - Republican Speaker of the New York State Assembly Thaddeus C. Sweet refused to seat five duly elected Socialist Party assemblymen - Samuel A. DeWitt, Samuel Orr, Louis Waldman, Charles Solomon, and August Claessens - in direct contravention of the democratic principles he'd only just been sworn to uphold.

1922 - Ireland's Dáil Éireann ratified the Anglo-Irish Treaty by a 64-57 vote.

1924 - George Gershwin completed his famed composition Rhapsody in Blue, which combined elements of classical music and jazz.

1927 - The Savoy Big Five, created by Abe Saperstein of Chicago, played their first game; later that year he changed their name to the Harlem Globetrotters, and a legend was born...

1931 - Guy Menzies made the first solo non-stop flight across the Tasman Sea (from Australia to New Zealand) in 11 hours and 45 minutes, crash-landing near Hari Hari, on New Zealand's west coast - shaving 2½ hours off the time taken by Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm during their historic first-ever trans-Tasman flight on board the Southern Cross in September 1928.

1935 - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval signed the Franco–Italian Agreement.

1959 - The United States recognized the government of Fidel Castro.

1973 - Twenty-three year-old Mark Essex fatally shot 9 people and wounded 13 others at the Howard Johnson's hotel on Loyola Avenue in New Orleans before himself being shot to death by police officers; he did forego killing blacks, though, and allowed several to escape during the rampage. At one time a gentle soul who aspired to the ministry, a two-year hitch in the US Navy exposed him to such graphic racism that he snapped... Yet further proof that racism hurts us all.

1993 - The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings as President.

1999 - The impeachment trial of US President Bill Clinton began.
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Fond Of Blondes: Tara Spencer-Nairn

Like many Canadian television viewers - frequently numbering in the millions! - I first became aware of the charms of birthday gal Tara Spencer-Nairn via the little show that could, namely Corner Gas... As Officer Karen Pelly, Spencer-Nairn was in every way the ideal foil to Lorne Cardinal's Davis Quinton.

A 1996 graduate of Vancouver Film School, the Montreal native is gradually building herself an impressive resume that includes such movies as 1999's New Waterford Girl and on television in shows as diverse as The Outer Limits and Puppets Who Kill.
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"The Hustle" by Van McCoy

One might be forgiven for believing that Van McCoy - who was born on this day in 1940 - was a one-hit wonder; after all, when the song most often identified with you is as popular as The Hustle was in 1975, it can be pretty difficult to top it. Van McCoy, however, was the holder of more than 700 song copyrights, and did much acclaimed work as a producer with such bold-faced names as Gladys Knight and the Pips, Aretha Franklin, and David Ruffin (of The Temptations).

In McCoy's case, though, his legacy was imperiled by his early death, of a heart attack, in July 1979; in lieu of children to act as the executors of his memory, it would take the advent of the Internet age for a website to be built to let the world know of the man's singular achievements in the music industry.
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"Anarchy in the UK" by Sex Pistols

This is the single the Sex Pistols were promoting when they were headed to Amsterdam via Heathrow Airport, and things got a little ugly; two days after the fracas and a month after the Bill Grundy incident - on this day in 1977 - Sex Pistols were fired by their record label, EMI.

Anarchy in the UK originally appeared as the band's first single, and was later included on their only album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, released in 1977; that album, of course, notoriously contained their Jubilee Year hit God Save the Queen.

And how appropriate it should be posted here, 910 years to the day after a previous era of chaos in English life deepened with the coronation of Harold Godwinson...
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Pop History Moment: The Coronation of Harold Godwinson

[Here we see Harold Godwinson as he appears on the Bayeux Tapestry.]
On this day in 1066 Harold Godwinson became the last Saxon to be crowned King of England, when he underwent essentially the same ritual at Westminster Abbey he would today: anointing, swearing an oath under God, inviting all those present to challenge his claim, and finally being invested with coronation regalia as a symbol of his regal authority.

Harold's claim to the throne has been hotly disputed over the past nine centuries; while both he and his successor had been promised the crown by Edward the Confessor, Harold seems to have figured that since he was both a Saxon and present (and since then, as now, possession is nine-tenths of the law) he got the Witenagemot to proclaim him their rightful king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stigand, to crown him over the other claimant - a man whose belief in his own claim would within the year earn him the eternal sobriquet William the Conqueror for his audacious invasion of the island, capture of the throne, and the eventual destruction of England's native Saxon aristocracy...

As Earl of Wessex Harold's claim was supported by most of his fellow peers, including his sister Edith of Wessex, whose sexless role as Queen consort had caused this mess by failing to provide the kingdom an heir; William's claim came from the Confessor himself during a visit William made to London in 1052. Since Edward the Confessor was in many ways a Norman sell-out, but also a scatterbrained if pious man, he may in fact have promised the throne to both of them at different times to save his own hide.

Harold might just have held his throne if not for the Danes... Forced to fight them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, he was then compelled to march his weary men south in just four days to counter the invasion of his rival at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066. There Harold made a brave stand, but died in battle, forever changing the course of English history.
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POPnews - January 6th

[Also known as the Holy Crown of Hungary - making it the only crown in the world to bear the attribute of holiness - the Crown of St. Stephen spent most of World War II in Fort Knox, and wasn't returned to Hungary until the administration of US President Jimmy Carter. After the fall of Communism in 1991, the crown was added to the arms of Hungary as a symbol of the nation's sovereignty, and on New Year's Day 2000 was moved from the Hungarian National Museum to the Hungarian Parliament Building along with the rest of that country's ancient coronation regalia.]
1205 - Philip of Swabia became King of the Romans.

1449 - Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI was crowned at Mistra.

1540 - England's King Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves.

1643 - A cross was erected atop Mount Royal by Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve following the subsidence of a flood which had threatened Montreal; the site is still marked by the presence of the Mount Royal Cross, placed there in 1924 by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

1690 - Joseph, son of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, became King of the Romans.

1759 - George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis.

1824 - The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec was founded in Quebec City by Governor of British North America George Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie; located at the city's Morrin College since 1868, the college has since been taken over by the society and renamed the Morrin Centre.

1853 - US President-Elect Franklin Pierce, his wife, and son Benny were involved in a train wreck on the Boston and Maine Railroad near Andover, Massachusetts; while the Pierces received only minor injuries, Benny was crushed to death before their very eyes.

1893 - Washington National Cathedral was chartered by Congress; the charter was signed by President Benjamin Harrison.

1907 - Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome.

1912 - New Mexico became the 47th US state.

1936 - Barbara Hanley became Canada's first female mayor when she got 13 more votes than Robert Streich to become head honcho of the Ontario town of Webbwood, west of Sudbury.

1941 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his Four Freedoms Speech in that year's State of the Union Address. They are: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship in his own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

1942 - Pan American World Airways' Pacific Clipper - with Captain Robert Ford at the helm - arrived at LaGuardia Field's Marine Terminal in New York City after making the first round-the-world trip by a commercial airplane.

1974 - Canada's Global Television network began broadcasting; established by Al Bruner and Peter Hill, in its early days Global was shown in southern Ontario only - on a six-transmitter relay stretching from Windsor to Ottawa - but went national in August 1997 just in time to become the Canadian equivalent of Fox.

1977 - EMI fired the Sex Pistols.

1978 - The Crown of St. Stephen was returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held after World War II.

1994 - Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right leg by Shane Stant under orders from figure skating rival Tonya Harding; although they both went on to compete in the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Kerrigan won a silver medal, while Harding came fourth.

2005 - Edgar Ray Killen was indicted for the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Killen was later convicted on three counts of manslaughter.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Edward the Confessor

For most of us, our death causes a period of grief among a select handful of family and friends, the grief passes, and the survivors move on; there are a thankfully small number, though, whose deaths cause unimaginable suffering, military invasion, and the end of a way of life that had endured for a thousand years.

The death of Edward the Confessor (on this day in 1066) was, naturally enough, of the latter kind. When the son of Ethelred the Unready finally went to his reward, he showed plenty of his father's decisiveness by leaving an unsettled succession; since determining the succession is any dying King's most important job, it's safe to say Edward didn't do his utmost to fulfill his coronation oath - that is, to protect the realm and its subjects.

By temperament and training, Edward had always been partial to Normans, and often favoured them for the Kingdom's top jobs over Saxons; when he chose Robert of Jumièges for Archbishop of Canterbury, well, it's a good thing they didn't have Private Eye in those days, because it was the scandal of the age, seeing as it overrode the express wishes of his own powerful father-in-law, Godwin, Earl of Wessex.

In the end, the Witenagemot chose Harold Godwinson, a Saxon nobleman (Earl of Wessex since 1053, and brother of the Queen) who claimed he'd been promised the throne on Edward's death bed; this rankled the ire of the Duke of Normandy - a man still known as William the Bastard - who had by some means or other extracted the same promise from the feckless, if pious, King (either in 1052 when William visited London, or else in 1064, as a reward for rescuing Edward from a shipwreck).

Then there was a third claim, from King Harald III of Norway... All of which made 1066 a very turbulent year indeed.
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In Memoriam: Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto

When considering the Bhutto family legacy thus far, the most important distinction to make is: is a corrupt albeit democratically elected leader better, the same as, or worse than, a dictator? Certainly the followers of the lying murderer General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq felt the same about Bhutto the father as the followers of equally weaselly General Pervez Musharraf did about his daughter Benazir. So was the voicing of those concerns legitimate worry about widespread corruption in the government of Pakistan, politicking, or merely two-faced scoundrelism on their part? In both cases, though, at least the Bhuttos (and their alleged corruption) had been elected by an expression of popular will, while their harshest critics were (and are) little more than gun-toting thugs.

Bhutto was born on this day in 1928, when Pakistan was still a part of British India; his father, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was prominent in Muslim politics, and served as Prime Minister under the Nawab of Junagadh. Bhutto was one of the wealthiest landowners in the province of Sindh, Western-educated and erudite in the family tradition, as would be his son and grand-daughter.

First a teacher, then a lawyer, in 1957 Bhutto became the youngest member of Pakistan's delegation to the United Nations, and by 1961 was serving as Foreign Minister under President Muhammad Ayub Khan.

Now prominent in the life of Pakistan in his own right, Bhutto founded the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in November 1967. Following massive anti-government protests sponsored by PPP, Bhutto was arrested in November 1968; after his release and the fall of the government, the new President, General Yahya Khan, promised free elections in December 1970, at which PPP won some seats, but in which victory was claimed by the Awami League, with whom Bhutto refused to work. Following the attempted genocide of Operation Searchlight against Bengali nationalism, war with India in December 1971, and the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) Yahya Khan resigned, transferring power to Bhutto.

As President, Bhutto met with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and together they signed the Shimla Agreement; despite his work at peace, Bhutto was also the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, today probably the greatest threat to peace in the world. In August 1973 Bhutto turned over the presidency to Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry, and assumed the title Prime Minister.

By 1977 it was time to hold elections, elections which would prove to be Bhutto's downfall in more ways than one; facing the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), a coalition of parties opposed to Bhutto, the PNA was defeated at the polls, at which time they maintained that the elections had been rigged, and Muslim opposition leader Maulana Maududi called for Bhutto's overthrow. In July 1977 Bhutto and his cabinet were arrested.

In October Bhutto went on trial for the 'conspiracy to murder' Ahmed Raza Kasuri, and in March 1978 he was sentenced to death, a sentence which was carried out the following month, despite international condemnation. Bhutto himself went to the gallows insisting that his death had been ordered by the US government, which threat (he said) was first delivered to him by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, voicing opposition by the US Administration to the nuclear program Bhutto had instigated.

Bhutto's legacy today is as complicated as the man himself; hailed as a nationalist and Shaheed by his supporters, he continues to be reviled as a corrupt opportunist by his foes.
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POPnews - January 5th

[Engineer Joseph Strauss faced many uphill battles in building his most famous structure, almost none of which were geographical; once construction got underway he was ably aided by Irving Morrow, who designed the towers, and San Francisco city engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy, who named it. It was the city's residents who persuaded them to leave the bridge International Orange, which is the colour of the sealant used.]
1463 - Poet François Villon was banished from Paris and thereafter dropped out of the historical record...

1477 - Charles the Bold was killed at the Battle of Nancy, whereupon Burgundy became part of France.

1527 - Felix Manz, a leader of the Anabaptist congregation in Zürich, was the first person to be executed by drowning under an edict aimed at outlawing adult re-baptism - which is a key precept of his religion.

1675 - At the Battle of Colmar a French army commanded by Vicomte of Turenne defeated Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, who headed a unified force of Brandenburgian and Austrian troops.

1757 - France's King Louis XV survived an assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens - who then went on to become the last person executed in France by the traditional and gruesome form of capital punishment used for regicides and wannabes alike: drawing and quartering.

1895 - In the midst of the Dreyfus Affair French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on French Guiana's Devil's Island following a secret court martial.

1896 - An Austrian newspaper reported that Wilhelm Roentgen had discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.

1933 - Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge - connecting San Francisco to Marin County across San Francisco Bay - began.

1949 - Work began on the foundation of Basildon new town, in the British county of Essex.

1968 - Alexander Dubček came to power at the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, thus beginning the so-called Prague Spring.

1970 - The long-running American soap opera All My Children premiered; the show - created by Agnes Nixon - has since surpassed its 10,000th episode.

1974 - Antarctica's warmest reliably measured temperature, 59°F (15°C), was recorded at Vanda Station.

1975 - The Tasman Bridge - which spans the Derwent River, near the central business district of Hobart, in Tasmania - was struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.

1976 - The Kingsmill Massacre occurred when 10 Protestant textile workers were murdered by the IRA in retaliation for the killing of six Catholic men the previous day.

1981 - Peter Sutcliffe was charged with committing the Yorkshire Ripper murders.

1993 - Washington state executed Westley Allan Dodd by hanging - the first legal hanging in the US since 1965.

1996 - Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash was killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.

2003 - London's Metropolitan Police arrested seven suspects in connection with the Wood Green ricin plot, which had allegedly been organized as an attack against the London Underground.

2005 - Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in our solar system, was discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken in October 2003 at the Palomar Observatory.
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Happy Birthday Dave Foley

For all his excellent work over the years - be it in obscure Canadian movies or the combination cult classic yet simultaneously middle of the road American sitcom NewsRadio - there's really only one reason Dave Foley's birthday is being celebrated here today and that's for his part in the revolutionary sketch comedy program The Kids in the Hall...

From the first time the opening notes of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet's theme Having an Average Weekend played until the final credit rolled away 102 episodes later, I never once encountered a bad moment anywhere in a Kids in the Hall episode - and I've seen all of them, many times over. Quirky without being inaccessible, innovative without being pretentious, respectful of its genre without being derivative, as well as being oddball, surreal, and a laugh-riot, Foley and his castmates - Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson - seemingly did the impossible, by producing a funny Canadian television show and thereby keeping some of this country's burgeoning comedic talent at home before the inevitable brain drain could sweep them inexorably south.

Even their 1996 movie Brain Candy - which suffered somewhat in the transition of their unique skills from sitcom with live studio audience to film - pushed the envelope of what could be done in cinema by having five people playing all the major characters in what would otherwise have been a cast of dozens; following its poor performance at the box office but before its cult status could kick in, the troupe undertook a tour with a live show and an appearance at the 25th Annual Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, as well as pursuing their own careers.

In this instance, Foley could be seen as the early victor, as NewsRadio managed to limp through five seasons despite the network's constant changes to the show's time slot and the devastating loss of the cast's biggest star, Phil Hartman, who my regular readers will remember was murdered by his sick bitch of a cokehead wife in May 1998*; had NewsRadio been on during the Internet era, I feel certain the fans could have preserved it.

In recent years, Foley has appeared in another Canadian sitcom (the tragically short-lived Robson Arms) and turns up regularly on The Late Late Show with TV's Craig Ferguson; he's also had memorable roles on Celebrity Poker Showdown, Blast from the Past, and Sky High - as well as providing his voice to such animated features as South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Pixar's A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Cars. More recently, Foley reunited with his old troupe-mates in an eight-part series on Canadian television, entitled Death Comes to Town.

*I'm not over it yet, and I may choose to never get over it.
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Last Of The Summer Wine: "Of Funerals and Fish"

On this day in 1973 began the longest-running sitcom in television history in terms of consecutive years on the air, Last of the Summer Wine; written by comedy legend Roy Clarke - who has to date written all 295 episodes! - Of Funerals and Fish originally aired as part of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse. Set in the West Yorkshire village of Holmfirth, the show concerns a group of late middle-aged eccentrics whose cast has changed over the years as costars have died or otherwise left, even as the antics of their group have remained consistently amusing.



The original trio consisted of Bill Owen as the scruffy and child-like Compo, Peter Sallis* as meek philosopher Clegg, and Michael Bates as authoritarian and snobbish Blamire; they are joined in this episode by Rosemary Martin as Mrs. Partridge, Kathy Staff as Compo's perennial love object Nora Batty, Blake Butler as the librarian Mr. Wainwright, John Comer as Sid, and Jane Freeman as Ivy.



Everything about the show has militated against its success - its un-vulgar humour, its elderly cast, its northern setting, even its low-key music by Ronnie Hazlehurst; clearly the best way to succeed is to try and fail, then, for its 31st consecutive annual appearance aired in 2010, as dark rumours set a-swirling by producer Alan J. W. Bell were later confirmed...  Never ones to let a pesky thing like popularity get in the way of their whim, executives pulled the plug; the show's final appearance, entitled How Not to Cry at Weddings, was aired in August 2010.

*Who went on to greater fame as the voice of Wallace in Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit films.
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Pop History Moment: The Election of Nancy Pelosi

On this day in 2007 Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, was elected Speaker of the House for the 110th United States Congress, making her the first women to hold the post at a federal level*; previously she was the House Minority Leader. Pelosi represents the 8th Congressional District of California, which encompasses San Francisco.

Her appointment came amid disastrous mid-term election results for the Republicans in 2006, and persists as things get even worse for the so-called Grand Old Party, whose attachment to neoconservatism and religious evangelism cost them control of the White House, Congress, and the Senate in 2008. Good times...

Pelosi lost her position after Blue Dog Democrats lost their House majority by turning their back on progressive ideals during the 2010 midterm elections, and is once again the House minority leader, having ceded her position to the sniveling Oompa-Loompa John Boehner.

*Minnie D. Craig, of course, became the first female House Speaker in the US in 1933, fulfilling that role at the state level in North Dakota.
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POPnews - January 4th

[At its apex the Palace of Whitehall was both the largest royal residence in Europe and indeed the largest building in the world, comprising more than 1500 rooms in a hodge-podge of styles; following a fire on this day in 1698 it was reduced to this single structure, the exquisite Banqueting House, built in a revolutionary style inspired by Andrea Palladio. King Charles I commissioned it, at a cost of £15,618; 27 years later he was executed in front of it.]
46 BCE – Titus Labienus defeated Julius Caesar at the Battle of Ruspina.

871 CE - At the Battle of Reading Ethelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred the Great attacked and were defeated by a Danish invasion army.

1698 - Most of the Palace of Whitehall in London, the main residence of the English monarchs through the previous 2 centuries, was destroyed by fire; only Inigo Jones' Banqueting House of 1622 survived.

1854 - The McDonald Islands were discovered by Captain William McDonald aboard the Samarang.

1878 - Sofia was emancipated from Ottoman rule by the Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Turkish War; it was later made capital of the Principality of Bulgaria.

1884 - The Fabian Society - itself an offshoot of The Fellowship of the New Life - was founded in London to advance the socialist cause by gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary means; while it is considered the forerunner of the Labour Party it is still in existence today as its own entity.

1896 - Utah became the 45th US state.

1903 - Topsy the Elephant was electrocuted by Thomas Edison during the War of Currents campaign.

1912 - The Scout Association was incorporated throughout the British Commonwealth by a Royal Charter granted by King George V.

1936 - Billboard magazine published its first pop music charts.

1948 - Burma regained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1958 - The Soviet-built Sputnik 1 - launched in October 1957 - fell to Earth.

1972 - Rose Heilbron became the first woman to preside over a courtroom at the Old Bailey in London.

1973 - The world's longest running sitcom (in terms of consecutive years on the air) Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine was first broadcast on the BBC's Comedy Playhouse and is still running on this, its 37th anniversary; at nearly 290 episodes it is minor league compared to American sitcoms, but in British terms has set a record never likely to be beaten.

1974 - Serial killer Ted Bundy attacked his first known victim when he entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old 'Joni Lenz' through an unlocked window before viciously raping her; although she survived the attack, because of it she suffered horrific internal injuries and brain damage.

1989 - The so-called Second Gulf of Sidra incident occurred when a pair of Libyan MiG-23 'Floggers' were shot down by a pair of US Navy F-14 Tomcats during an air-to-air confrontation.

1999 - Former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura was sworn in as governor of Minnesota.

2006 - Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a second, apparently more serious, stroke - whereupon his authority was transferred to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

2007 - The 110th United States Congress convened, electing Nancy Pelosi its first female Speaker of the House.
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"Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin

Try as I might to find depth in Led Zeppelin, as often as not the song I'm reading into is about having sex and not much else. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

The same goes for Black Dog, which I so wanted to have folkloric or psychological underpinnings, but turns out has a good beat and you can fuck to it; about all the depth it needs for that is the length of a good cock-stroke. Turns out the black dog in the title refers to an actual black dog who wandered into the studio where the band was recording the then still-unnamed song.

Birthday wishes go out today to Zep's bassist John Paul Jones, who's got his work cut out for him here; fortunately he's more than up to the job. The song, of course, is taken from their 1971 album Led Zeppelin IV while the footage is from the band's legendary gig at Earls Court in May 1975.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Dominic Wood

As if Dominic Wood isn't cute enough on his own, his day job as a TV presenter means he educates kids for a living - if that doesn't add value to the total package I don't know what will...


Best known as one half of comedy duo Dick and Dom (along with Richard McCourt) it seems apt that he's cast a spell on me today, as he was at one time the youngest member of The Magic Circle, an association of British magicians which nevertheless cast an Expelliarmus on him for publishing a book in which the secrets behind various magic tricks were revealed. Frankly, he's lucky not to have ended up a squib...

Of course, the secret to quality kids TV is a host who's young at heart; alas, the old at heart executives who run the business haven't always appreciated his cheekiness. The diminutive stunner was disciplined by the BBC for sporting a t-shirt on air bearing the slogan 'Morning Wood' - a sentiment his core audience wouldn't have understood but one which might have given their minders a bit of a chuckle. Which is yet another secret to good kids TV - if you throw in something for the parents maybe they'll watch it with their kids, instead of merely using the thing as an electronic babysitter.

So what's up next for the award winning Dominic Wood, who's already dom-inated radio, television, and publishing? Well, fatherhood - with his wife Sandi Lee Hughes of the (now defunct) band allSTARS* - for starters; his son Tommy turns 2 next week. Now can you say Dick and Dom in da Bungalow:The Movie boys and girls? I thought you could...

Not that such a thing is in the works, but it never hurts to plant a seed, now does it?
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Gratuitous Brunette: Liya Kebede

Having just returned from the front (ie: Facebook), where I've been treated to a litany of reasons why Hitler's handling of the Jews was not only apt but necessary, I've decided to retreat for awhile to the comparative safety of the Pop Culture Institute, where for the most part the closest we get to current events is a pretty lady having a birthday...

In this instance, my saviour from anti-Semitism disguised as geopolitics is Liya Kebede, the Ethiopian born model who has cat-walked her way from Addis Ababa to Manhattan via the fashion capitals of Europe. Along the way she's accumulated such accolades as an exclusive contract with Gucci (courtesy of Tom Ford) in 2000, having had an entire issue of French Vogue dedicated to her in 2002, and appointment as a WHO Goodwill Ambassador for her work with maternal, newborn, and childhood health. She's also one of only a handful of black women featured on the cover of American Vogue, most of whom are actresses.

Yet she seems aware of the transient nature of modelling, so even while she's still getting bookings - including regular high profile gigs with Estee Lauder - it's relieving the suffering of mothers and children that inspires this mother of two herself...
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Sexy Beijing: Discovering Anna May Wong

Here is Sexy Beijing's take on the woman of the hour: Anna May Wong.
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Remembering... Anna May Wong

One of the reasons I began this blog was to draw attention to those obscure figures from history - regardless of their field of endeavour - whose obscurity I consider unfair; I'd like to think that, fifty or a hundred years from now, some uppity know-it-all will do the same for me...

In many ways, Anna May Wong is the ideal candidate for the Pop Culture Institute treatment; not only was she the first Asian-American actress of any note in the Hollywood cinema as far back as 1921, but until the 1970s almost the only one as well.

Born in Los Angeles on this day in 1905 (her family having settled in the US in 1855), Wong's first film role was in the Alla Nazimova silent The Red Lantern (1919). Despite the clout a friendship with such an august presence ought to have given her, Wong struggled. This wasn't due to any lack of parts for exotic temptresses, but rather to anti-miscegenation laws in the US; she could have had her choice of parts if only they didn't require her to be romantic which, let's face it, meant that as a romantic leading lady she remained underemployed.

She did act, though, here and there: in The Toll of the Sea (1921) opposite Kenneth Harlan, in the British silent Piccadilly (1929), most famously with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932), and opposite George Raft in Limehouse Blues (1934). However, when she was offered the villain's part in The Good Earth (1937), and it became obvious she would be the only Asian in the cast, she balked. One of her final film roles was in the camp classic Impact (1949).

Despite romantic entanglements with director Marshall Neilan and writer Eric Maschwitz - who apparently wrote his famous song These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You) about her - she never married; interestingly, another of Hollywood's pioneering Chinese was her cousin, famed cinematographer James Wong Howe. (For obvious reasons, he did better at the studios than she did.)

Anna May Wong died in 1961, but has since been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; as well, Frosted Yellow Willows - a documentary by Elaine May Woo and narrated by Nancy Kwan - which had its American debut in January 2008, in Los Angeles, and The Anna May Wong Society, not to mention two new biographies, have done their part to rescue her from the footnotes of Hollywood history and restore her to her rightful place among the industry's pioneers. Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work was written by Philip Leibfried and Chei Mi Lane and Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend is by Graham Russell Gao Hodges.
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The House of Grimaldi: The Death of Louis I

It would be just my luck that the first entry in this new ongoing series of posts on the House of Grimaldi would concern one of history's least written about - not to mention least portraited - Princes of Monaco, Louis I. Despite being Europe's oldest royal family, tracing its lineage back to Grimaldo - who served as the consul of Genoa beginning in 1162 - a highly acquiescent Monegasque press has been as scrupulous in its protection of the Grimaldi's privacy as the neighbouring French media has been fervent in reporting it. Either that or yet again my fondness for the obscure has rendered the vast content of the Internet as puny as this picture...

Born in July 1642 to the ill-fated Prince Hercule of Monaco and Aurelia Spinola, the man who would succeed his grandfather Honoré II to become the second Prince of Monaco first served France's King Louis XIV as an ambassador; while at Versailles with his lusty wife Catherine-Charlotte de Gramont*, whom he married in May 1660, the princely couple threw themselves into the social whirl of court, which essentially involved throwing themselves into other people's beds. His brother-in-law, the well-rounded debauché the comte de Guiche, scored the one-two punch of sleeping with both halves of one married couple - Philippe I of Orléans and Henrietta Anne Stuart - so you get some idea of what a fun place it was.

The so-called 'glorious and avaricious Italian' Duc de Valentinois ascended his throne as Louis I in 1662; despite his newly assumed princely status, and a lovely hillside domain where he could reign supreme, he and his wife preferred to spend most of their time at Versailles. In all the couple had six children: his heir, who succeeded him as Antonio I, Maria Teresa Carlotta, Anna Hippolyte, François Honoré (who became Archbishop of Besançon), Giovanna Maria, and Aurelia.

Louis I died in Rome on this day in 1701, but was buried in Monaco's St. Nicholas Cathedral, ensuring he'd more than make up for all the time he should have spent there as prince and ruler rather than wallowing in the fleshly pleasures of the French court.

*The daughter of Marshal Antoine III de Gramont, who was the King's mistress between Louise de la Vallière and Madame de Montespan, and described by Madame de Sévigné as 'greedy for pleasure'.
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Ben's Tours: The Brooklyn Bridge

From Ben's Tours, it's a glimpse at the modern-day Brooklyn Bridge...
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"To Brooklyn Bridge" by Hart Crane

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.

O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,--

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
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Pop History Moment: Building The Brooklyn Bridge

Connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan over 486.5 m of swirling water where the East River meets New York Harbour using the relatively new technology of the suspension bridge was never going to be an easy task, but fortunately when its construction began on this day in 1870 it was being handled by the nation's foremost builder of such spans...

The bridge was designed by John Augustus Roebling, who was injured during the survey of the site; his foot crushed, he later died of tetanus, and work had to be completed by his son, Washington Roebling. In addition to its designer, construction on the bridge claimed 27 lives, and nearly killed his son as well; while constructing the caissons, the younger Roebling developed the bends, and thereafter his wife Emily Warren Roebling acted as his go-between.

Plagued by difficulties throughout its construction, the Brooklyn Bridge was finally opened in May 1883; it is not only still standing, but the iconic structure was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964, a National Historic Engineering Landmark in 1983, and was scheduled to receive a $725 million facelift in 2009.

There are two very different books in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute which (naturally) give two very different impressions of the construction of such an important span...  One is The Great Bridge, by the popular historian David G McCullough, which traces the elder Roebling's career from its earliest beginnings to its greatest posthumous triumph; the other is Brookland, a novel by Emily Barton, which isn't really about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge at all but rather about its unrealized predecessor Thomas Pope’s Rainbow Bridge and yet in an illusory way exclusive to fiction sort of is anyway.
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Stars Come Out For The March Of Dimes

In the course of my research for posting on this blog I occasionally come across a hidden gem or two, and it makes my day in a way which is borderline erotic; then there are those times when I do a face plant into a treasure trove worthy of any pirate, a transcendant experience the likes of which cannot be explained to non-bloggers. This is one such time...

While looking for something to post on the March of Dimes, I found a series of public service announcements from the 1950s featuring some of the biggest names of our times, all united behind the common cause of relieving the suffering of children. The worst part of it was choosing only three, meaning I had to pass up those made by Ella Fitzgerald, Gogi Grant, Roy Campanella, Hazel Scott, and Cecil B. DeMille among many others.



Here we see the multi-talented Sammy Davis, Jr. demonstrate even more of his talents in 1955, by singing My Romance as a raft of mid-century celebrities, including Jimmy Cagney, James Stewart, Cary Grant, Edward G. Robinson, and himself, as well as both halves of the then-ubiquitous comedy duo Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.



Sitcom legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz used their fame to attract attention to the elimination of childhood illness in 1954, by introducing their real-life Little Ricky to television audiences - Desi Arnaz, Jr. - in addition to their daughter Lucie Arnaz. Their message came in 1954, just a year before the introduction of the Salk Vaccine.



And finally, sultry songstress Eartha Kitt has long been one of our favourite people here at the Pop Culture Institute, and this clip shows why; while she could deliver a song as freighted with innuendo as Just An Old-Fashioned Girl - as she did here in 1957 - she could just as easily transition into the sincerity necessary for a charitable appeal. Thanks to the efforts of millions of people - some of them famous but most of them not - not only was polio defeated by the March of Dimes but who knows what affliction they might eliminate next?
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FDR and The March of Dimes

The March of Dimes was established on this day in 1938, during the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and was named by popular entertainer Eddie Cantor as a spoof on The March of Time series of newsreels.

The thought was that the donation of a single dime by everyone in the country could make the research possible to relieve the suffering of millions. Originally created to assist those with infantile paralysis (or poliomyelitis) it was later expanded to include all childhood illness once the Salk Vaccine had eradicated polio after 1955.

FDR contracted what was thought to be polio as an adult in 1921, although recent evidence suggests that diagnosis may have been mistaken; for his efforts, FDR's portrait was put on the American dime following his death in April 1946.
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Christopher Durang Explains It All For You

It's the playwright Christopher Durang; having turned the tables on himself, here he plays Victor J. Fleck, an advocate of the lie-detector test, on Al Franken's short-lived* sitcom LateLine. Appearing also are Alan Dershowitz (as himself), Robert Foxworth (doing the interviewing), and Miguel Ferrer (in the booth). Did anyone follow that?

*19 episodes on NBC from March 1998-9 - 7 of them unaired - and all now available on DVD!
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Happy Birthday Christopher Durang

From the wildly absurdist imagination of Christopher Durang (born on this day in 1949) comes the plays Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1979) for which he won an Obie Award, Beyond Therapy (1981), Baby With the Bathwater (1983), and Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge (2002).

Durang's works are frequently mounted in regional theatres across the US and Canada, but he hasn't allowed any of them to be adapted for the movies since Robert Altman savaged Beyond Therapy in 1987.

Durang's work often explores the cognitive dissonance between what the Catholic Church says (ie: the teachings of Christ) and what it does (the exact opposite of what it says); one of the first playwrights to show gay men being sensible (as opposed to walking punch-lines), of course Durang is gay himself, having lived with his partner John Augustine for more than 20 years.

Durang continues to write, and is co-chair of the playwriting program at Juilliard.
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