POPnews (US) - February 1st

[The summary execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan in Saigon on this day in 1968 - at the start of the Tet Offensive - was taken by AP photographer Eddie Adams; the image helped build opposition to the Vietnam War and earned Adams the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969.]

1856 - Auburn University was chartered as the East Alabama Male College.

1861 - Texas seceded from the United States, but didn't join the Confederate States of America until March 2nd - at which time its governor, Sam Houston, was replaced for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy.

1862 - Julia Ward Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic was published for the first time in the Atlantic Monthly.

1865 - President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which outlawed slavery; it also banned involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Sadly, this highlight of Lincoln's life occurred on the 15th anniversary of the death of his second son by First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, Edward Baker Lincoln.

1893 - Inventor Thomas Edison completed work on the world's first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey; films produced at the facility were supervised by William Kennedy Dickson.

1913 - New York City's Grand Central Terminal - the world's largest train station - was opened.

1922 - Film director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered in his bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments in the Westlake Park area of downtown Los Angeles; so popular in life was he that there were a dozen possible suspects, including his former manservant Edward Sands, his current manservant Henry Peavey, actress (and possible lover) Mabel Normand, Faith Cole MacLean (the wife of actor Douglas MacLean, who were his neighbours), Charles Eyton (General Manager of Paramount Pictures and therefore Taylor's boss), actress Mary Miles Minter (whose career Taylor guided in and out of the bedroom), Minter's mother Charlotte Shelby, and Margaret Gibson - who, on her deathbed in 1964, confessed to having committed the murder. Gore Vidal's 1990 novel Hollywood features a fictionalized account of the Taylor murder, and for those who prefer an even more lurid and yet less accurate perspective, try Kenneth Anger's 1959 book Hollywood Babylon. Despite the impressive line-up of suspects the case remains unsolved.

1960 - Four black students - Ezell A. Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain - staged the first of the Greensboro Sit-Ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

1968 - The New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad merged to form the ill-fated Penn Central Transportation.

1978 - Film director Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled to France following his arrest and guilty plea for the statutory rape of 13 year-old Samantha Gailey.

1979 - Patty Hearst was released from prison, having had her sentence commuted by President Jimmy Carter.

1982 - Late Night with David Letterman began airing on NBC; the show would air for 11 years, after which Letterman - and his show - moved to CBS, where it has been ever since.

1988 - Child actress Heather O'Rourke - famous for portraying Carol Anne Freeling in the Poltergeist film trilogy and for her role on Happy Days as Heather Pfister - died; she was 12. Misdiagnosed with Crohn's disease, she died en route to hospital of a heart attack brought on by septic shock which was itself a result of intestinal stenosis, although at the time it was announced in the press that she'd died of influenza.

1992 - A Chief Judicial Magistrate in India declared Warren Anderson, the ex-CEO of Union Carbide, a fugitive under Indian law for failing to appear in the Bhopal Disaster case.

1996 - Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, protecting Americans from the kind of smut that makes life worth living.

1999 - 22-year-old former White House intern Monica Lewinsky gave a deposition that was videotaped for senators weighing impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton.

2003 - The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts onboard, including Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

2004 - Janet Jackson's breast was exposed during the half-time show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, resulting in US broadcasters adopting a stronger adherence to FCC censorship guidelines; the ensuing shit-storm was just one of the so-called 'scandals' which gave brilliant cover to the ongoing malfeasance of the Bush Administration in its early days.

2009 - The Pittsburgh Steelers won their record sixth Super Bowl with a 27-23 victory over the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII.
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Pop History Moment: Khomeini Returns To Iran

When, in 1964, the Shah of Iran had the chance to kill his most outspoken opponent - Ruhollah Khomeini - he chose the more merciful path, and instead sent him into exile in Turkey; hindsight has shown that while the Shah's decision may have been morally right, it was political suicide.

After a year in Bursa, the exiled Ayatollah made his way to the holy city of Najaf, in Iraq, and from there began to develop his ideas on Islamic government. Both cruel and paranoid, his teachings were recorded on audio cassettes and distributed amongst fundamentalists; in most of them he denounced the Shah as 'a Jewish agent' and 'a snake'. Having already ordered the execution of Iranian Prime Minister Hasan Ali Mansur, by 1979 it was clear that Khomeini would stop at nothing to achieve his delusions.

Although he'd been invited back to Iran, Khomeini refused to return while the Shah was there. When the Shah left at the end of January the stage was set; more than 6 million people attended the homecoming of the Ayatollah just two weeks later, on this day in 1979.

The Iranian Revolution was complete, or so it seemed...

Yet upon his return Khomeini moved swiftly to consolidate his power, first by appointing his own Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan over Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar (who had been responsible for inviting Khomeini back), and then by ordering scores of executions among the old regime, including former Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveida and Bakhtiar himself (who had escaped to Paris) - a number which eventually amounted to more than 60.

In October 1979 the Shah was admitted to the United States for the treatment of his cancer; this act of mercy so outraged certain followers of Mohammed that within a week students belonging to the militant group Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 52 hostages. The ensuing crisis, which lasted 444 days (and remains a contentious issue between the two countries today) was merely the beginning of Khomeini's Cultural Revolution which has left moderate Muslims and Westerners alike fearful of confronting Islamic fundamentalism to this day.
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"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes

I needed a video to fill in this spot, and a cursory search of the name Langston Hughes yielded this exemplary rendition of his 1923 poem The Weary Blues, recited by Harvard professor Allen Dwight Callahan to the accompaniment of Cab Calloway.
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"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?
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In Memoriam: Langston Hughes

As one of the many talented writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was as influenced by his contemporaries as he influenced them, illustrating the kind of cultural foment that was present during that unprecedented era; in many ways, though, Hughes was always slightly out of place. Early in his career he was too proud to be black when most black writers were trying to be white, and during the Black Power movement which emerged towards the end of his life he was too reasonable when those emerging were angry or vindictive.

Born on this day in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was raised far from the lights of Manhattan; after an unsettled childhood spent throughout the Midwest, and a few years of restless travel, he eventually settled for a time in Washington, DC, where he worked as assistant to Carter G. Woodson at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. While there he met the poet Vachel Lindsay who 'discovered' him, on the eve of the publication of his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, in 1926.

Although Hughes briefly attended Columbia, he soon left owing to the bigotry he encountered there; his education continued at Lincoln University. Yet there are those who would say his real education came from the extensive travels he had undertaken before, during, and after his university career. Following on from his restless youth, he was later to see Mexico, Europe (living for awhile in Paris), North Africa, the Soviet Union, central Asia, China, and Japan. Yet despite the terrible racism that'd been visited upon him there, he kept returning to the United States.

Although initially drawn to the promise of change offered by Communism, the closer he got the more illusory those promises seemed; when he was called upon to testify before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations by the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953 like many others whose Depession-era hopes for the Party were soured by the subsequent outrages of Stalinism, Hughes had already soured on his more radical inclinations.

He was one of the grand old men of African-American letters by the time he died in May 1967, having written steadily and in every form for more than fifty years. Since then much of his reputation has rested on his presumed heterosexuality; yet it was and is a false presumption, as his work contains many coded as well as many blatant references to the contrary. Such is the power of the closet, however, that we may never have the full picture of the life of Langston Hughes.
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"Jazz Crimes (Live)" by Joshua Redman

Birthday wishes go out today to Joshua Redman, the internationally acclaimed saxophonist and composer. The son of fellow jazzman Dewey Redman and Renee Shedroff, from an early age he was exposed to a broad gamut of music; these influences are readily evident in his work.

Jazz Crimes originally appeared on Joshua Redman's 2002 album Elastic; it is shown here being performed live, with Redman on tenor sax and with accompaniment by Brian Blade on drums and Sam Yahel on organ - the same personnel, it should be said, who played it on the album.
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What's The Occasion?: Black History Month

Black History Month - that month-long celebration of the culture and achievements of people of African descent - is celebrated in both Canada and the United States in February*. To my mind it always seemed passive-aggressive of white North America to give the descendants of those brought here by force an entire month to celebrate their considerable contributions to the dominant culture, only to give them the shortest month in which to do it...

It turns out that way of thinking is little more than received pissiness, which is so often the case with me. Carter G. Woodson (shown, at left) originally chose the second week in February - which embraced the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln - for Black History Week in 1926; any sinister motives one might ascribe to denying Black History that extra two or three days it might have during any other month says far more about the paranoia of the accuser than it does about the event itself or the motives of its progenitor.

Black History Month was first celebrated in 1976, after fifty years in which Black History Week grew steadily in popularity, among both blacks and whites; whereas in its first year most whites would probably not have known who to celebrate, apart from George Washington Carver, by the Seventies enough consciousness had been raised during the Civil Rights Movement alone to add a few more names to the roster - chief among them Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Dr. King, and Malcolm X. Thirty subsequent years have not seen any abatement of scholarship into Black History but indeed an exponential increase, both by black and white scholars.

Woodson's hope was always that one day his own event would become obsolete; once blacks had been given their rightful place in the history from which they had been excluded, he reasoned, the event would no longer be of need. The Pop Culture Institute whole-heartedly supports this ideal, and strives today as ever to write the people's history by believing in one race - the human race - and in the unity which is possible if we can only learn to embrace our shared humanity.

*The UK celebrates its own Black History Month in October.
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POPnews - February 1st

[Fronted by Lisbon's Tagus River, the Terreiro do Paço was completely rebuilt as part of the Pombaline Downtown after an earthquake in November 1755 ruined the Portugese capital during the reign of José I, whose statue now dominates the square; it was here, on the way home from the Vila Viçosa, that Carlos I was murdered by Alfredo Costa and Manuel Buiça. Of the four royals in the carriage, only Queen Maria Amélia escaped death or injury.]

1327 - England's Edward III was crowned, although it would be nearly four years before the teenaged king would be rid of his regents (his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer) who had already successfully conspired to depose her imprisoned husband Edward II, and were likely plotting his death on that day as well.

1662 - The Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Taiwan after a nine-month siege.

1691 - Pope Alexander VIII died; he would be succeeded by Innocent XII on July 12th.

1713 - The Kalabalik, or Tumult in Bendery, resulted from the Ottoman sultan's order that his unwelcome guest, Sweden's King Charles XII, be seized.

1814 - The Mayon Volcano in the Philippines erupted, killing around 1,200 people; it was the most devastating eruption in the volcano's history.

1880 - The first edition of London's theatrical newspaper The Stage was published.

1896 - Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème premiered at the Teatro Regio Torino conducted by the young maestro Arturo Toscanini.

1908 - Portugal's King Carlos I and his son, Prince Luis Filipe, were assassinated by Republican terrorists in Lisbon's Terreiro do Paço; he was succeeded by his injured son, who became Manuel II, Portugal's ill-fated last king.

1920 - Canada's Northwest Mounted Police and Dominion Police merged to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - better known as the RCMP, or the Mounties.

1942 - Vidkun Quisling was appointed Premier of Norway by the country's Nazi occupiers.

1953 - An unprecedented storm lashed northern Europe, devastating dikes up and down the coast of Holland and wreaking havoc on the coastline of Britain; in addition to sinking the car ferry MV Princess Victoria (under the captaincy of James Ferguson, while en route from Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland, with the loss of 130 lives in one event alone) the North Sea Flood of 1953 would end up claiming 1,835 lives.

1965 - The Hamilton River in Labrador was renamed the Churchill River by Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood.

1968 - Canada's three military services - the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force - were unified into the Canadian Forces.

1974 - A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in São Paulo killed 189 and injured 293.

1979 - The Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran after nearly 15 years of exile.

1982 - Senegal and The Gambia formed a loose confederation known as Senegambia.

1984 - Britain's half penny coin was removed from circulation.

2004 - 251 were trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2005 - Nepal's King Gyanendra dismissed Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba in an attempt to curb a Maoist insurgency in the remote Himalayan kingdom. It didn't work...
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"Stone Cold Sober" by Paloma Faith

Although it's not yet Paloma Faith's birthday - that would be on July 21st - I've posted the video for her debut single Stone Cold Sober (coincidentally from her 2009 debut album Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?) today in honour of Sophie Muller, who not only directed the clip but celebrates another milestone by blowing out candles*.

Muller, of course, is most famous around the Pop Culture Institute (and, possibly, even the world) for the stylish, innovative work she's done with Annie Lennox - both in and out of Eurythmics - as well as some of our favourite bold-faced names including Sade, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rufus Wainwright, Nelly Furtado, and Gwen Stefani; to date her resume includes over a hundred such films, making Sophie Muller a true master of this most modern form of cinematic art.

*Candles which have no doubt been exquisitely photographed!
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Gratuitous Brunette: Minnie Driver

Ah, what is there to say about Minnie Driver... After subjecting the sizable portion of my readership who are straight men to a steady parade of hot guys, every so often one feels the need to give them something in return; she seemed like the right woman at the right time, and it is her birthday. I suppose it helps that I've always liked her, so at least I don't feel like a total sell-out...

From the first big notices she got in 1995's Circle of Friends to the antic romp of Grosse Pointe Blank to the Academy Award nomination she received for 1997's Good Will Hunting, from her early appearances on Lovejoy to her portrayal of Lorraine Finster on the classic sitcom Will & Grace to her bravura turn opposite Eddie Izzard in The Riches, Driver has leant her exotic looks and contrasting posh air to everything she's done. She's even played the hilariously over-the-top Carlotta Giudicelli in Joel Schumacher's film of The Phantom of the Opera, making herself a one-woman highlight of that bombastic mess in the process.

Romantically linked over the years to any number of fellow thespians - including John Cusack, Josh Brolin, and Matt Damon, most of them former co-stars - as of September 2008 the most important male in her life is her son, Henry Story Driver.
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Happy Birthday Your Majesty

Born on this day in 1938 at Soestdijk Palace - to Dutch Crown Princess Juliana and Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld - the early life of Princess Beatrix was an uncertain one to say the least, born as she was under the threat of war; joined in the nursery a year later by Princess Irene, as infants the two princesses had to be spirited away out of the Netherlands ahead of an advancing Nazi horde...

They went first to London, where her grandmother Queen Wilhelmina stayed to manage the government-in-exile, and then to Ottawa, where the royal family lived in Stornoway, the official residence of that country's Leader of the Opposition. While in Canada the two sisters were joined by a third, Princess Margriet. Nowadays, each spring the Canadian capital still comes alive owing to millions of tulip bulbs donated by a grateful Dutch people.

The Royal Family returned to Holland in August 1945, and were shortly thereafter joined by yet another sister, Princess Christina, in 1947. Having reigned since November 1890, Queen Wilhelmina abdicated in September 1948, making Juliana the Queen and ten-year-old Beatrix the heiress presumptive.

Beatrix was installed in the Council of State on this date in 1956, her 18th birthday, at which time she began to take on royal duties while pursuing her education at Leiden University, studying the usual mix of history and constitutional law. The education of Princess Beatrix coincided with the move towards independence of many of the Netherlands' overseas possessions, such as Indonesia and Suriname.

About the only controversial thing Beatrix has ever done was to fall in love with Claus von Amsberg, a German diplomat; their wedding day in March 1966 was marred by protests across the Netherlands, where memories of the recent war were still very much fresh. Their procession was picketed by the Provo, who were not content to chant 'Claus, raus!*' at them but also threw smoke bombs at their carriage. Not only was Beatrix given a test of her resolve that day, the country's well-known reputation for tolerance was tested as well; in both instances they passed with flying colours... Over time Prince Claus came to be a well-respected member of both the Royal Family and Dutch society.

Beatrix has seemed at times like a one-woman bulwark against republican sentiment in the tiny European kingdom, with only her personal popularity managing to preserve both the dignity and the reality of the crown. Following the abdication of her mother in April 1980 protests by squatters against the new queen's investiture turned violent, and led to an overhaul of the country's already massive social programs.

The mother of three princes - Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, Johan-Friso, and Constantijn - at the age of 73 Her Majesty shows no signs of slowing down, although given the precedent set by her mother and grandmother she may yet abdicate as a form of retirement. Widowed since the death of Prince Claus in October 2002, in addition to the affairs of state Queen Beatrix manages one of the largest personal fortunes in Europe, much of which takes the form of property and works of art held in trust for the nation.

*Meaning 'Claus, out!' in German; all things considered, rather a witty slogan.
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"My Love" by Justin Timberlake

Just to give you some idea of how much I love this song, it was my ringtone for several months running; which, for someone both preternaturally set in his ways and yet with the attention span of a magpie surely constitutes a major commitment*. To be honest, though, I resisted the charms of birthday boy Justin Timberlake for a long time. Partly it was the boy band thing, although of that ilk 'N Sync was one of the better ones; mainly though it was because I wanted to see if there was more to him than single-digit body fat and the ability to score A-list tail.

Well, dammnit... There was! The first time I heard SexyBack I knew I was in trouble, and by the time My Love came out I was a committed... What? Timberlaker? Good enough!

The second single from his 2006 second album FutureSex/LoveSounds, My Love still lives on my iPod, where it's been since that first day. As for me, I await with bated breath what he might do next...

*I mean, first I had to take my existing ringtone off; then I had to stick with the new one for months. Since I only change the wallpaper on my laptop three times a year, that's epic!
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In Memoriam: Tallulah Bankhead

In an age of enforced propriety, Tallulah Bankhead was a committed vulgarian; that many of her most notorious comments couldn't be repeated in mixed company for decades after she uttered them has ensured her reputation as a cult figure in perpetuity. Today, in an age when minding your tongue is as old-fashioned as hoop skirts and seemingly as irrelevant as Republicans, the husky-voiced actress from Alabama is long overdue for rediscovery...

Born on this day in 1902, the daughter of future US House Speaker William Brockman Bankhead, her mother Adelaide Eugenia Bankhead died of blood poisoning shortly after Tallulah's birth; an overweight child, frequently described as 'homely', Tallulah was virtually destined to become an entertainer.

She overcame her homeliness early enough that by 15 she had won a movie magazine beauty contest, at which time she moved to New York City. Almost instantly she became famous for being famous, dwelling as she did on the fringes of the Algonquin Round Table. In 1923 she made her debut on the London stage and fortunately was possessed of immense talent, after which she would be as famous for her talents onstage for the rest of her life as she was for her talents in the bedroom, on the back seat, or sprawled across a restaurant banquette.

Bankhead's movie career was skimpy, but her influence over American cinema was immense nonetheless... Frequently the roles she played on Broadway would make their way to Hollywood played by Bette Davis, most notably when she originated the role of Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. She did, however, manage to commit the full range of her talents to celluloid while she was at her loveliest in Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat.

She died in December 1968 of complications arising from emphysema, which was the official cause; her fellow sybarites know, however, that having always lived her life to the hilt she'd simply lived herself to death.  What a way to go!
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POPnews - January 31st

[As seen from the air the island nation of Nauru doesn't look like much - and it isn't; still, the once-rich island, famed for its phosphate, remains a tropical paradise, and despite rudimentary health care and reticent locals it's still a better bet to visit than a lot of places I could name, but won't.]
314 CE - The papal reign of Sylvester I began; he succeeded Pope Miltiades, who'd died on January 10th.

1606 - Guy Fawkes was executed for his role in the Gunpowder Plot.

1746 - The first clinic specializing in the treatment of venereal disease was opened at London Lock Hospital.

1814 - Gervasio Antonio de Posadas became Supreme Director of Argentina.

1846 - Following the Milwaukee Bridge War, Juneautown on the east bank of the Milwaukee River and Kilbourntown on the west were united as Milwaukee.

1919 - The Battle of George Square occurred in Glasgow between the Scottish TUC and Clyde Workers' Committee and City of Glasgow Police over the forty-hour work week; despite many injuries (some to women and children) no fatalities were reported, and afterwards workers were granted a 47-hour work week.

1929 - The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky to Alma Ata (now in Kazakhstan); he would be expelled to Turkey in February 1929, accompanied by his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov.

1930 - 3M began marketing Scotch tape.

1936 - The Green Hornet debuted on the NBC Blue radio network.

1958 - The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit made the first space age discovery when Explorer 1 was used by James Van Allen to discover the Van Allen radiation belt.

1961 - Ham the Chimp traveled into outer space on board the Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket as part of NASA's Project Mercury.

1966 - The Soviet Union launched its unmanned Luna 9 spacecraft as part of the Luna program.

1968 - Nauru declared its independence from Australia.

1969 - The body of nursing student Gail Miller was discovered by Larry Fisher; she had been raped then brutally murdered before being dumped in a Saskatoon alley. Arrested for the crime was a lodger of Fisher's, 17-year-old David Milgaard, who was convicted one year later to the day. Milgaard served 23 years in jail before his release in 1992; in 1997 he was exonerated by DNA evidence, and Fisher himself was convicted of the crime after more than 30 years.

1971 - Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off aboard a Saturn V rocket as part of the Apollo 14 Mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

2001 - In the Netherlands a Scottish court convicted one Libyan and acquitted another for their part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which caused a December 1988 crash at Lockerbie, Scotland.

2003 - The Waterfall rail accident occurred near the Australian town of Waterfall, New South Wales.

2007 - Under the aegis of Operation Gamble, eight suspects (including mastermind Parviz Khan) were arrested in Birmingham, accused of plotting the kidnap, holding, and eventual beheading of a serving Muslim British soldier in Iraq. Khan would eventually be sentenced to life in prison for his role in the plot.

2009 - At least 113 people were killed and over 200 injured in Kenya following an oil spillage ignition in Molo, days after a massive fire at a Nakumatt supermarket in Nairobi killed at least 25 people.
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Pop History Moment: The Beatles' Rooftop Concert

On this day in 1969 The Beatles held their final concert, on the roof of Apple Records at 3 Savile Row in central London; the event was filmed for their documentary Let It Be, which would record their eventual break-up. Opening with Get Back, the first part of the film also includes Don't Let Me Down, which were played three and two times respectively.



Despite having drifted apart emotionally and artistically, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr managed to 'come together' one last time (with Billy Preston on electric piano) to perform the impromptu gig, the second part of which features I've Got a Feeling and One After 909.

Their final stadium gig - in August 1966 at San Francisco's Candlestick Park - had come at a time when John Lennon had mistakenly told the truth to the American press, bemoaning the fact that the Beatles had become 'more popular than Jesus now', at which point the good Christians of that country reacted by going into a frenzy of forgiveness, burning albums and memorabilia in bonfires coast to coast.



By the third part of this video Metropolitan Police have begun gathering, as have an equal number of fans and tutters in Savile Row below. There was just enough time for Dig a Pony, followed by a reprise of Get Back, before the cops pulled the plug. (They also played a brief version of the British national anthem, God Save the Queen and a brief rehearsal of I Want You (She's So Heavy) while second engineer Alan Parsons was changing tapes. These performances were omitted from the film.) Lennon's closing salvo was: 'I'd like to say 'thank you' on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition!' By the time the album Let It Be was released in May 1970, the band was no more...

Homage was paid to the Fab Four's Rooftop Concert by another fab four, namely U2, who recorded the video to Where the Streets Have No Name on the rooftop of the Republic Liquor Store at East 7th Street and South Main Street in Los Angeles in March 1987.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Christian Bale

At this time in 2009 the blogosphere was buzzing about a certain expletive-laden rant delivered by Christian Bale to Shane Hurlbut on the set of Terminator Salvation...

The matter - according to Bale, at least - was thoroughly resolved, and in the spirit of magnanimity which has recently defined my outlook on life I've decided to make Bale our Gratuitous Brunette again on this, the occasion of his 37th birthday.
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Happy Birthday Your Royal Highness

Only his royal status kept me from making Felipe, Prince of Asturias, a Gratuitous Brunette today; despite his fitness for the Pop Culture Institute's single most dubious honour, I simply couldn't objectify the the third child and first son of King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía of Spain in that way... Still, all the elements are there, and who in their right mind could deny the charms of a statuesque Spaniard - especially one who will one day be King over all of them? Not a smarmy ass-kisser like me, that's for sure...

In addition to Prince of Asturias, a title borne by every Spanish heir apparent, Prince Felipe is Prince of Viana, Prince of Girona, Duke of Montblanc, Count of Cervera, and Lord of Balaguer; the tradition of over-titling royal babies is consistent with the tradition of over-naming them, as his full name is Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos los Santos de Borbón y de Grecia.

Yet in spite of such a complex entitlement, His Royal Highness seems to have escaped the worst ravages of the entitlement complex. He even went so far as to marry a commoner - and not one of those snooty commoners either, like the daughter of a nobleman, but an honest-to-goodness, went to state-funded schools, lived paycheque to paycheque kind of commoner. More or less...

For all that, though, Letizia, Princess of Asturias is far from common, possessing beauty and brains in equal measure. Married in May 2004, together they have two children: the Infantas Leonor (born in October 2005) and Sofía. Despite having himself bumped his own sisters, Infantas Elena and Cristina, out of the line of succession, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 may be altered to allow his own daughters to inherit even if a new Prince should subsequently appear. In which case, Infanta Leonor would become the first Queen Regnant of Spain since Isabella II abdicated in September 1868.
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"Looking For A New Love" by Jody Watley

I tried - oh, how I tried - to find another video by birthday gal Jody Watley that I liked better than this one; on the off chance that some of my readers might think I'm sending subliminal choices via the videos I post*, I was reluctant to even type in the words of the title here, choosing instead to cut and paste them.

Originally appearing on her 1987 debut album Jody Watley, it's Looking for a New Love; despite being a monster hit, with massive radio and club play, the song was to be kept out of the top spot on the charts first by Cutting Crew's (I Just) Died in Your Arms, and then by U2's With or Without You.

*Just for the record, I am not looking for a new love, an old love, a green love, or a blue love, although I am looking to listen to One Love - only that's another story altogether.
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Pop History Moment: The Mayerling Incident

One possible explanation for the durability of conspiracy theories is that they are usually more interesting than the truth; raised as we are on made up plots, it seems only natural the human mind would want to embroider the facts a little, especially if it helps to make events suit our own agenda or prejudices, and truth be damned...

One of the first events in modern times* to invite a rash of conspiracy theories is known as the Mayerling Incident, which occurred on this day in 1889. Involved were Crown Prince Rudolf (shown at left) - heir to Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria and King of both Hungary and Bohemia - and Rudolf's mistress**, Baroness Mary Vetsera (shown below right). As the most accepted version of the story goes, when forbidden by the Emperor to see each other again - owing to the fact of Rudolf's marriage to Stephanie, mother of his daughter Elisabeth - Rudolf and his mistress stole away to Rudolf's hunting lodge in the village of Mayerling (shown, at top) where he shot her in the head before taking his own life.

The other reason for the preponderance of conspiracy theories seems to be the willingness of officialdom to lie, especially in difficult circumstances, which only seems to add fuel to the fire; in circulating the story that during a hunting trip Rudolf suffered a heart attack and died while the Baroness, a notable figure at court and the daughter of a well-known diplomat besides, merely disappeared without a trace, must have set that pack of gossips all a-twitter***. Had they simply told the truth the story might have gone away, but in lying (and in telling such a bad lie at that) officials set off every finely-tuned bullshit detector in the palace.

Anyway, the story went fallow for awhile, as such things will; it wasn't until the end of World War II, when the monastery where Mary Vetsera was buried in Heiligenkreuz was shelled by the Soviets, that her remains were able to be examined. No bullet hole was found in her skull...

Alas, the Mayerling Incident is among the coldest of all the cold cases, and so we may never know what really happened on that night. Certainly, their relationship had been not only an open secret but practically de rigeur for the times, and would have borne no stigma for either of them. The possibility that Rudolf might have contracted venereal disease seems quite likely, and so he may have killed himself to spare the torment of going slowly mad; he may have even killed her - by strangulation, say - and then turned his gun on himself in a fit of madness brought on by syphilis. Then again, it may have been the Austrian secret police who topped him for his pro-Hungarian sympathies. The point of the story is, we will likely never know now, although I guess the ultimate point of this post is that it's still fun to speculate.

What we do know of the incident we know from the media it subsequently inspired; the 1936 film Mayerling - directed by Anatole Litvak, starring Charles Boyer as Rudolf and Danielle Darrieux as Mary - is probably the most famous of these, although a TV version from 1957 also called Mayerling - again directed by Anatole Litvak but this time starring Audrey Hepburn as Mary and Mel Ferrer as Rudolf - has its own charms. A lavish 1968 version, once again called Mayerling - directed by Terence Young, starring Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, and Ava Gardner - is likewise noted for its design and production elements, if not its accuracy.

*Post-Industrial Revolution.
**Or was she?
**And this in those halcyon days before Twitter!
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Happy Birthday Brett Butler

Birthday wishes go out today to Brett Butler, still one of my favourite comedians and at one time the star of the very funny sitcom, Grace Under Fire. I also greatly enjoyed her autobiography, Knee Deep in Paradise, mainly because it didn't seem to be covered in some ghost-writer's grubby fingerprints. Then the show went off the air and she seemed to vanish... Rumours began swirling of her unprofessional behaviour on the set, but I always wondered if that means she was really being that way or merely insufficiently female and therefore deferential to be considered professional.

In fact, I was just about to report her to the Department of Where Are They Now* when my research yielded up just the news I'd been looking for - namely that she's been back on TV again, playing Joy's mother on My Name Is Earl... And then there's always this clip of her from Late Show with David Letterman circa 2003!

*Not that it would have stopped me posting this, since I do love me some obscure celebrities!
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