"Six String Orchestra" by Scooter and the Electric Mayhem

On this day in 1992 Richard Hunt died of complications related to AIDS; he was 40...

Among Hunt's more memorable creations as a Muppeteer was Scooter, who performed this charming song - Six String Orchestra - in episode 417 of The Muppet Show, accompanied by Floyd Pepper, Janice, Animal and Zoot of the Electric Mayhem.  In interviews 'Scooter' indicated that this was his favourite among the numbers he'd performed, which is why it's posted here.

In addition to Scooter Hunt performed Beaker, Janice, Statler, Sweetums, Junior Gorg, Don Music and Forgetful Jones, as well as Sesame Street's Sully, Wisss on Saturday Night Live, and Charlie Beaver in Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas; episode 3136 of Sesame Street and the movie The Muppet Christmas Carol were dedicated to his memory.

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Remembering... Zora Neale Hurston

A woman considered among the brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance had almost been entirely extinguished by the time of her death in 1960; in fact, the life and great works of Zora Neale Hurston might never have been revived at all had it not been for an even greater renaissance throughout the 1960s and 1970s - the twin awakenings of Women's and Black Studies which have since added much-needed melanin and estrogen to the all-too pale, male-dominated world of letters.

It is apt that a woman whose work involved folklore engulfed her own life in so many myths of her own; today, we can only be reasonably certain that Hurston was born on this day in 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and as a child moved to the first all-black town in the United States, at Eatonville, Florida. Orphaned by the age of 13, Hurston graduated from Morgan Academy in 1918, which may have been about the time she started playing fast and loose with her own chronology...

Though acclaimed early on as a novelist, Hurston was trained as an anthropologist, receiving her degree from Barnard College and later working with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead; as moving as her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is, her study of voodoo from the same year, Tell My Horse, is just as revealing, although unlike its fictional counterpart, it isn't likely to be made into a Halle Berry movie by Oprah Winfrey with a screenplay by Suzan-Lori Parks. Is all I'm sayin'...*

It is to Alice Walker that credit for the Hurston Renaissance must go, as much as to the timeless vividity of Hurston's own writing; Walker's 1975 article for Ms. Magazine entitled In Search of Zora Neale Hurston had epic repercussions. Hurston had been buried in an unmarked grave; now her home in Fort Pierce, Florida, is a National Historic Landmark.


*Both of these books, plus the 1934 novel Jonah's Gourd Vine are to be found in the collection of the Pop Culture Institute.
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"Our Lips Are Sealed" by The Go-Go's

Birthday wishes go out today to Kathy Valentine, bassist for the pioneering all-female band The Go-Go's, whose contribution to Our Lips Are Sealed (from the 1981 album Beauty and the Beat) is a low-down and funky throb beneath what is an otherwise sunny, breezy song.

The video (which was proudly shown here until it was made impossible by the usual suspects - the embedding disablement Nazis over at YouTube) was a mainstay in the early days of MTV, and for more than 25 years has been a part of the soundtrack of summer for me, even in the dampest depths of a Vancouver winter... This replacement features a live lip-synced performance of the song by the band in 1982 on the Australian program Countdown.

So profound is this censorship that the official video posted by the band's record label isn't even available to me in Canada... Boycott EMI!
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In Memoriam: Princess Charlotte

Amongst counterfactual historians (within whose number I would include myself) one of the greatest of all 'what-ifs' involves Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of the Prince Regent (later George IV) and his despised (by him, at least) wife, Caroline of Brunswick.

Despite the fecundity of George III and his wife Queen Charlotte - they had twelve children survive to adulthood - when Princess Charlotte was born on this day in 1796 the succession was in deep trouble; while his sons had no trouble begetting bastards, finding and impregnating suitable wives was seemingly anathema to them. In order to remedy this dire situation, the King and Parliament offered to underwrite the debts of any Royal Duke willing to do his duty - a considerable expenditure given the profligate ways of 19th Century royalty.

All told, three of them arose to the task: George (then the Prince of Wales) and his younger brothers William, Duke of Clarence, and Edward, Duke of Kent. Clarence's two daughters - Charlotte and Elizabeth - died as infants, while Kent's daughter we will meet later...

Despite the animosity that spawned her - her parents hated each other on sight, and her father had to get so drunk in order to do his constitutional duty it's a wonder he could perform it at all - Princess Charlotte was high-spirited and vivacious, much beloved by the English public at a time when republican sympathies were engulfing Europe (especially France); as a young girl she more or less chose the man she wanted to marry, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and then insisted that he be allowed to court her, despite the fact that he was essentially landless and thus of no strategic or diplomatic value to the Crown. Even if they hadn't been royal, though, Charlotte's father would have still undoubtedly called her princess, so beloved was she by him; a grateful Nation and loving father granted the couple permission to marry, bestowing upon the newlyweds Claremont House as a wedding present.

In an all-too-common tragedy of the times, both Princess Charlotte and her son died in childbirth in November 1817; she was only 21. To put her death into modern context, the death of Diana was a sob compared to the paroxysm of grief that seized Britain as the late Heiress Presumptive's body was conveyed to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where she would lie with so many of her colourful ancestors past and future.

Her husband would later remarry, to Louise-Marie of Orléans, and in 1831 became the first King of the Belgians; among his illustrious offspring was Empress Carlota of Mexico, named for his first wife. Following the death of George IV in 1830, his brother the Duke of Clarence became William IV, and following his death in 1837 he would be succeeded by their niece, daughter of the late Duke of Kent, a serious young woman whose long reign would impose itself in every corner of the globe and who would give her name to the age - Victoria.

But what if all those Victorians had been Charlottians instead? 'What if' indeed...
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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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