Happy Birthday Kylie Minogue

For many years Kylie Minogue was as big a pop star in most of the English-speaking world - and a fair share of the rest of it as well - as Madonna, but because she wasn't an accepted presence in the United States, she was something of a secret amongst us Commonwealth cousins (although, to be quite fair, her fame in Canada was very much a gays-only affair); so while the monster success of a little ditty entitled Can't Get You Out Of My Head ruined the secret for all the rest of us, it finally brought her that one crucial market which had eluded her, and how could any of us begrudge her that? Especially after all she'd given us.

It was therefore quite a shock when it was announced in 2005 that she had breast cancer; as has so often happened, it looked like just as she was poised to take on the whole world, she would be taken from it.

Well, if good wishes were chemotherapy - and in a very real way they are - then it's no wonder she pulled through her health scare with flying colours. No doubt every homo from Sydney to St. Ives lit candles and got on their knees in a way they never had before, and can therefore take their share of the credit for her quick recovery.

So loyal are Kylie's fans, in fact, that after it was announced she was breaking up with her boyfriend Olivier Martinez he had to go into hiding owing to a wave of harassment by waiters, shop assistants, and the like; only a press conference by our girl managed to quell the loathing. As terrible as it is, this is the kind of thing I find hilariously funny; they take away our rights left and right and we let them, but one greasy haired Frenchman dumps our diva and suddenly it's every man to the ramparts.

Today is Kylie's 42nd birthday, and it's my sincerest hope that I'll still be here writing about her on her 84th, as she tours the world performing her typically spirited rendition of Spinning Around on a Zimmer Frame.
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"Johnny Come Home" by Fine Young Cannibals

If I never hear the song She Drives Me Crazy again, it'll be too soon; in fact, I have renamed that particular number It Drives Me Crazy, which is how I sing along to it even now, twenty years after its release. Which is not to say that I don't like Fine Young Cannibals or the prodigious gifts of lead singer Roland Gift - whose birthday it is today - merely that the song has been ruined for me in perpetuity by excessive radio play.

That - plus the tendency by me to favour obscurity over ubiquity* - has driven me to choose Johnny Come Home to post here instead; from their self-titled 1985 debut album, the song made it all the way to #8 in the UK, and #9 on the US Dance Chart.

*Not to mention that this particular clip is introduced by a smoking cute VJ.
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Pop History Moment: The Opening of the Chrysler Building

On this day in 1930 construction was completed on the Chrysler Building, the building having been officially opened the day before. Designed by William Van Alen, it wasn't as universally hailed upon its opening as it is now. The New Yorker's famed architectural grumblepot Lewis Mumford sniffed at its 'inane romanticism', 'meaningless voluptuousness', and 'void symbolism'. Indeed, the building is a triumphant celebration of the automobile, and even casts its shadow on Grand Central Terminal, itself the crowning achievement of the age of rail.

The Chrysler Building - located at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue - has the rare distinction of having had no deaths occur as a result of its construction. It was the world's tallest building for four weeks short of a year; the Empire State Building surpassed it on May 1st, 1931. It was, however, the first man-made structure to stand over 1000 feet tall, and remains an elegant Art Deco beacon in the Manhattan skyline.
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POPnews - May 28th

[It's hard to believe in an age when fertility drugs yield such bumper crops as McCaughey Septuplets, the Chukwu Octuplets, and the human Pez dispenser known as the Octomom, but once upon a time the Dionne Quintuplets were a medical marvel - made all the more marvelous by the fact that Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie, and Yvonne were born two months premature. Nevertheless, they were the first such babies born to survive infancy, which made them nearly as famous as their exploitation by the government of Ontario. Alas, the Quints were only five in number for twenty years; the first of the sisters to die was Emilie, who suffocated during an epileptic seizure at the convent where she was a postulant in August 1954.]
585 BCE - A solar eclipse occurred - as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales - while Alyattes was battling Cyaxares during the Battle of Halys, which later came to be known as the Battle of the Eclipse; according to Herodotus, in the midst of fighting the sky went dark, which the combatants took as an omen of divine disapproval of their ongoing 15-year war, following which a truce was hastily arranged. Since eclipses are regular phenomena, this is also one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

1533 - Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.

1588 - The Spanish Armada - with 130 ships and 30,000 men under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia - set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel intent on the invasion of England in retribution for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots; so vast was the flotilla it took two days for all of its vessels to leave port.

1830 - President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which ordered Indians (especially those of the Five Civilized Tribes) removed to reservations; opposition to the Act in Congress was led by Davy Crockett, and the debate was rancourous.

1863 - The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African American regiment to serve in the War Between the States, left Boston to fight for the Union under the command of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

1864 - Austrian-born Mexican Emperor Maximilian arrived in Mexico for the first time.

1892 - John Muir organized the Sierra Club in San Francisco.

1905 - Near the end of the Russo-Japanese War the Battle of Tsushima ended with the destruction of Russia's Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo Heihachiro and the Imperial Japanese Navy.

1926 - Ditadura Nacional was established in Portugal to suppress the unrest of the First Republic as a result of that day's coup d'état; the resultant Estado Novo would remain in place until the Carnation Revolution of April 1974.

1930 - Manhattan's iconic Chrysler Building officially opened.

1934 - The Dionne quintuplets were born - to Olivia and Elzire Dionne - in the village of Corbeil (near Callender, Ontario) with the assistance of Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe and two midwives, Madame Legros and Madame Lebel; they later became the first quintuplets to survive infancy, at which time they were commercially exploited by the government of Ontario. The whole sordid story is best told in The Dionne Years, by Canada's own populist historian Pierre Berton.

1937 - San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was officially opened to vehicle traffic by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pushed a button at his desk in the White House which turned on the traffic lights.

1940 - Eighteen days after being invaded, the Kingdom of Belgium surrendered to Nazi Germany, at which time King Leopold III of the Belgians was placed under house arrest in Brussels.

1952 - The Memphis Kiddie Park opened in Brooklyn, Ohio; the park's Little Dipper roller coaster would become the oldest operating steel roller coaster in North America, and is still in operation.

1975 - Fifteen West African countries signed the Treaty of Lagos, thus creating the Economic Community of West African States.

1977 - The Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky, caught fire, killing 165 people inside and injuring 200 others just before the early show of headliner John Davidson.

1987 - 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evaded the Soviet Union's air defenses by landing a private plane in Moscow's Red Square; he was immediately detained and later sentenced to four years in prison, although he was released after 432 days following the intervention of Soviet leader Andrei Gromyko.

1999 - After 22 years of work intended to remove centuries of grime and undo the damage caused by previous restorations, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper was put back on display in Milano.

2003 - Peter Hollingworth became the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct.
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"I Got You" by Split Enz

Birthday wishes go out today to Neil Finn, the guitarist and lead singer formerly with New Zealand's pioneering New Wave band Split Enz, also formerly with Crowded House, and currently with himself, recording and touring as a solo act.

Taken from the band's 1980 album True Colours, I Got You was written by Neil Finn and, until the advent of their 1982 single Six Months in a Leaky Boat* was their biggest hit internationally.

*Despite its reputation as a comment against the Falklands War, the song was actually released a month before the outbreak of that particular hostility which, let's face it, no one outside of Casa Rosada saw coming...
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In Memoriam: Dashiell Hammett

Although he only published five novels in his writing career, they are five of the best detective novels in the American canon, and Dashiell Hammett - born on this day in 1894 - is rightly a legend for writing them.

Despite that, his novels are probably better known these days for the movie versions made of them: The Thin Man (1934) starring William Powell and Myrna Loy who played Nick and Nora Charles to giddy perfection, The Glass Key, made twice (first in 1935 with George Raft and again in 1942 starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake) as well as The Maltese Falcon - also made twice - first in 1931 starring Ricardo Cortez, and in a more famous version in 1941 starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade.

The movies are today considered classics of film noir and the novels are even grittier. They are written with a bracing verve that reading them actually got my heart pounding, especially Red Harvest. Only Red Harvest and The Dain Curse have never received the Hollywood treatment, although the latter was made into a mini-series for American TV in 1978, starring James Coburn.

Hammett's reputation today owes as much to his 30-year relationship to Lillian Hellman as his talent. She out-lived him by 32 years, and in that time worked as hard at burnishing his reputation as she did at perfecting her own myth. A 1999 TV movie made by A&E entitled Dash & Lilly memorably starred Sam Shepard and Judy Davis as the literary lovers.
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Pop History Moment: The Death of Nehru

On this day in 1964 Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, died suddenly of a suspected heart attack; he was succeeded on an interim basis by Gulzarilal Nanda until, 13 days later, Lal Bahadur Shastri was elected to lead the Congress Party.

Following his lying-in-state, Nehru was cremated according to Shantivana rites on the banks of the Yamuna River near the capital of New Delhi, a ceremony watched by tens of thousands of mourners. The subject of numerous books and films, he was probably most notably portrayed by Roshan Seth, who played him in Richard Attenborough's 1982 film Gandhi.
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Disney's Silly Symphony: "The Three Little Pigs"

On this day in 1933 Walt Disney (via United Artists) released this little cartoon - actually a cleverly disguised parable of defiance in the face of mass angst brought on by the Great Depression - as part of its Silly Symphonies series; Three Little Pigs also introduced the song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, composed by Frank Churchill, which became something of an anthem for the times. The film was highly popular, running in some theaters for months, and went on to win an Academy Award in 1934 in the category Best Short Subject: Cartoons.

Notable for depicting the way the menaced pigs help each other during a time of financial crisis (especially as it relates to the challenges faced in regards to housing), it's this very tendency which the Pop Culture Institute fears has been bred out of people following thirty years' indoctrination by a neoconservative agenda. Still, the message is apt, even today, when a return to cooperation might be just the thing to help people out of the morass caused by competition.

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POPnews - May 27th

[Among the more bizarre aspects of the Century of Progress Fair included having its lights turned on by the star Arcturus, whose beams had been said to leave their source during Chicago's previous fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. (Although owing to an error in calculation, they would have actually left in 1896... Oops!) Unlike the earlier fair - the so-called 'White City', which was built to a neo-classical Grecian design and featured an all-white colour scheme - this one was both a riot of colour and a triumph of ultra-modern Art Deco. The fair's principal attraction was the Sky Ride, a transporter bridge running parallel to Lake Michigan and designed to ferry visitors from one end of the 171.5 hectare (424 acre) grounds to the other while offering outstanding views of the entire site along the way.]
927 CE - During the Battle of the Bosnian Highlands the forces of Bulgarian Tsar Simeon the Great led by Duke Alogobotur were decisively defeated by those of Tomislav, first King of Croatia.

1153 - Malcolm IV became King of Scotland following the death of his grandfather, David I; the 12 year-old who came to be known as Malcolm the Maiden was crowned at Scone.

1647 - Peter Stuyvesant was inaugurated as Director-General of New Netherland; there might have been a party, but one of his first official acts was closing all the taverns.

1703 - Russia's Tsar Peter the Great founded the city of Saint Petersburg.

1798 - At the outset of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 the Battle of Oulart Hill took place in Wexford.

1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi entered the Sicilian capital of Palermo with his Redshirts as part of his campaign for Italian Unification known as the Expedition of the Thousand, following both a successful siege of the city and a plebiscite by its population to forsake the Kingdom of Two Sicilies for the Kingdom of Italy.

1896 - The F4-strength St. Louis-East St. Louis Tornado struck, killing at least 255 people; it has the distinction of being one of the first tornadoes whose devastation was extensively photographed after the fact.

1905 - The Battle of Tsushima - the last and most decisive sea battle of the Russo-Japanese War - began; Japanese admiral Heihachiro Togo destroyed two-thirds of the Russian Fleet, commanded by Zinovy Rozhestvensky.

1933 - The Century of Progress World's Fair opened at Chicago's Burnham Park.

1937 - San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge - creating a vital link between the city and neighbouring Marin County - was opened to pedestrian traffic by Mayor Angelo Rossi; more than 200,000 people walked across on that day to the lilting strains of the bridge's specially written theme song, There's a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate.

1939 - DC Comics published Detective Comics #27, which introduced Batman - co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger - who went on to become one of the most popular comic book superheroes of all time.

1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk during a fierce fight in the North Atlantic, killing almost 2,100 men - fortunately, all of them Nazis. The event is dramatized in the enthusiastically titled if factually inaccurate 1960 film Sink the Bismarck!, directed by Lewis Gilbert, which was itself based on the book The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck by C. S. Forester.

1942 - During Operation Anthropoid a combined Czechoslovakian-British effort to assassinate Reichssicherheitshauptamt Chief Reinhard Heydrich carried out by Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík near Bulovka Hospital in Prague failed to kill him on that day, although he did die eight days later of blood poisoning. As for the assassins, they committed suicide three weeks later during a siege on Prague's Church of St. Cyril and St. Methodius rather than surrender.

1957 - Toronto's 1050 CHUM AM became the first radio station in Canada to broadcast a Top 40 rock n' roll format.

1960 - In Turkey, a military coup led by General Cemal Gürsel removed President Celal Bayar and the rest of his democratically elected government from office.

1967 - The US Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy was christened by his widow Jacqueline Kennedy and their daughter Caroline at Newport News, Virginia.

1980 - During the Gwangju Massacre, airborne and army troops retook the South Korean city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207.

1995 - Actor Christopher Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse Eastern Express (eerily nicknamed Buck) during the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association finals at the Commonwealth Park equestrian center in Culpeper, Virginia.

1998 - Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the Oklahoma City bombing terrorist plot.
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Happy Birthday Your Royal Highness

One would think that writing about royalty would be easy; given that royal lives - whether they be English, Dutch, or Danish - are so similar, so prescribed, so much the property of the state that despite world travel and easy access to the best and brightest of their respective nations the only differences between them would be in their scandals.

This is where I am thwarted; the eldest son and heir of Denmark's Queen Margrethe II and her consort Prince Henrik is a conscientious, shy man without so much as a speeding ticket to his name, at least as far as my research can uncover. I actually typed 'Crown Prince Frederik scandal' into Google while conducting my research into this piece and it laughed at me; if you've never been laughed at by Google, let me tell you it's a humiliating experience. Just to see what it's like try typing in 'michael sean morris dating' and wait for hilarity to ensue!

A n y w a y... About the only untoward thing the Prince has ever done is to court and then wed an Australian named Mary Donaldson, whom he married at Copenhagen Cathedral in May 2004 (as previously reported by the Pop Culture Institute). In the commission of said courtship he wrote her some rather florid poetry - and that is the extent of it. Despite what could have been a really ripping scandal - even knowing what little I do about sheilas* - Ms. Donaldson has proven to be an exemplary princess-in-training, giving birth to Prince Christian in October 2005 and Princess Isabella in April 2007.

Today is His Royal Highness' 42nd birthday, and a biography of him (cleverly entitled Frederik – kronprins af Danmark) was recently published which relates the whole completely seemly and utterly unlurid story. Written by Gitte Redder and Karin Palshøj, whose previous work was a similarly unauthorized look at the life of Crown Princess Mary, as far as I can tell there are no plans to publish it in English, and since I have no plans to learn Danish the situation remains at an impasse...

*Australian slang for women.
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"Leaning On A Lamppost" by George Formby

One of the most popular figures of British entertainment during the middle years of the 20th Century was George Formby - who was born in Wigan on this day in 1904...

Often found strumming on his ukelele singing the slightly racy songs associated with the British music hall, Formby excelled in films as well as on records*. His death in March 1961 came before the current plague of cynicism afflicted England, and as such he was sorely missed (rather than mocked as an anachronism, say, which he would have been only a few years later).

*Cumbersome forerunners of the CD, made of black vinyl, and much favoured as collector's items by neo-Luddites today for the space they take up and the ease with which they are damaged.
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Pop History Moment: Europe Gets Its Own Flag

On this day in 1986 the European Union adopted its flag.

On a more personal note, I think the EU is great; after a thousand years of Germany and France killing all their young men and laying waste to the countryside in an effort to control each other, they've finally agreed on a formula to own Europe that keeps people snug in their beds and all those lovely castles and cathedrals standing in beautifully landscaped settings, instead of in piles of rubble.

Plus, England gets to keep its place as the fulcrum of power between the two. Win-win-win...
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"Mr. Cab Driver" by Lenny Kravitz

Birthday wishes go out today to Lenny Kravitz, whose 1990 album Let Love Rule yielded the funky anti-racist screed Mr. Cab Driver; the song's video, directed by Geoff Barish, offers an obvious homage to Lou Reed and features images which are easily as gritty as its subject matter.
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POPnews - May 26th

[Currently housed in the cathedral at Monza, the Iron Crown of Lombardy was already ancient when it was used in the coronation of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800 CE; not merely regalia but a reliquary as well, it is reputed to have been fashioned in part out of one of the nails from the cross upon which Christ was crucified.]
451 CE - The Battle of Avarayr took place near Vaspurakan between Armenian rebels led by Vartan Mamikonian against their overlords the Sassanid Empire of Yazdegerd II; while the Armenians were defeated militarily they were subsequently guaranteed the freedom to openly practice Christianity.

1637 - During the Pequot War a combined force of English colonists and Mohegan led by German Captain John Mason attacked the Pequot village of Misistuck in Connecticut, massacring approximately 500 Native Americans.

1647 - Alse Young became the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies when she was hanged in Hartford, Connecticut.

1736 - At the Battle of Ackia British and Chickasaw soldiers repelled a French and Choctaw attack on the Chickasaw village of Ackia, near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi; the French, under Louisiana governor Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had been seeking to link Louisiana with Acadia and the other northern colonies of New France.

1805 - Napoléon I assumed the title of King of Italy and was crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano.

1828 - Mysterious feral child Kaspar Hauser was discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg.

1857 - Dred Scott was emancipated by his owners, the Blow family.

1868 - The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended, with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote.

1879 - Russia and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Gandamak, establishing an Afghan state.

1896 - James Dunham murdered six people in Campbell, California; following the slayings of his wife, her family and their servants Dunham disappeared, and was never seen again. Only his infant son and a farmhand survived the massacre.

1906 - London's Vauxhall Bridge was opened by The Prince of Wales, the future George V.

1913 - Emily Duncan became Britain's first woman magistrate.

1917 - A powerful F4 tornado blew through Mattoon, Illinois, killing 101 people and injuring 689; for the record books, it was the world's longest tornado, lasting for over 7 hours and traveling 293 miles, spreading death and destruction along its path.

1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceased manufacturing the Ford Model T and began to retool their plants to increase production of the Ford Model A.

1966 - British Guiana gained its independence from the United Kingdom, becoming Guyana; representing The Queen (who had visited the country the previous February aboard the HMY Britannia) at the ceremony were the Duke and Duchess of Kent.

1972 - Australia's Willandra National Park was established.

1977 - George Willig climbed the South Tower of New York City's World Trade Center.

1992 - Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, Inc., was kidnapped at gunpoint from the company's parking lot in Mountain View, California, and held hostage for $650,000 at a rented house in Hollister, an hour's drive away; the FBI rescued him four days later.

2004 - US Army veteran Terry Nichols was found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.
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POPnews (US) - May 25th

['...I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.' With these words, President John F. Kennedy extended the space race begun with the October 1957 launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union.]

1738 - A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ended the Conojocular War with the settlement of a boundary dispute and an exchange of prisoners.

1787 - Delegates convened a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to write a new Constitution for the United States, with George Washington presiding.

1865 - 300 people were killed when an ordnance depot exploded in Mobile.

1925 - John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection in violation of Tennessee's Butler Act, precipitating the Scopes Trial.

1935 - Within a 45 minute period Jesse Owens of Ohio State University set three world records and tied a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor - completing the 100 yard dash in ­ 9.6 seconds, the 220 yard dash in ­ 21.0 seconds and making a long jump of ­ 24 feet 10 inches - an event rightly commemorated by the US Postal Service. Not allowed to live on campus with his team mates and unable to eat or stay with them while on the road, Owens worked part time to put himself through school because he was also ineligible for scholarships. Despite this, his was a work ethic and competitive nature which enabled him to rise above such a disgusting level of racism.

1936 - The Remington Rand strike, led by the American Federation of Labor, began.

1953 - At the Nevada Test Site, the US government conducted its first and only test of nuclear artillery.

1955 - A night time F5 tornado struck the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273, making it the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in US history.

1961 - President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a 'man on the moon' before the end of the decade.

1966 - NASA launched Explorer 32 from Cape Canaveral; its purpose was to study the Earth's upper atmosphere.

1979 - At Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, American Airlines Flight 191 crashed during takeoff, killing 271 on board and two people on the ground.

1999 - The US House of Representatives released the Cox Report which detailed China's nuclear espionage against the US over the prior two decades.

2001 - Boulder's Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
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"Heart" by Pet Shop Boys

It may not feature at the top of his resume, but birthday boy Sir Ian McKellen appeared in this Pet Shop Boys video, released in 1988 and based on the 1922 film Nosferatu; the song is called Heart, and was the fourth and final single from the pop duo's second album Actually.

The video - directed by Jack Bond, who also helmed their 1987 film It Couldn't Happen Here - features Neil Tennant as the groom, Danijela Čolić as the bride, Chris Lowe as the super-hot chauffeur*, and the birthday boy himself as the surprisingly camp vampire (a camp-ire?) desperately in need of a dental plan - not to mention a manicure; it was shot in the Slovenian castle of Grad Mokrice, which is a resort where you yourself could stay, were you in the mood for the ultimate pop culture vacation.

*He could drive me anywhere! Badump-tish!
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Happy Birthday Sir Ian MacKellen

Sir Ian is well-known to Vancouverites; all of the X-Men movies have been shot here, and while here shooting them he has also performed his one-man show A Knight Out for the city's rapt audiences. Though never closeted in his personal life, when he finally decided to come out in 1988 following the passage of Clause 28 it was scarcely the de rigeur thing it is today, and there were those who said it would kill his career...

Not only has it not done that, if anything, coming out professionally has improved both his career and his life. When he was knighted by the Queen in 1991 he was the first openly gay person to be so honoured - plus, he's been made a member of the Companion of Honour - and thanks to Peter Jackson's obscure Lord of the Rings trilogy he's become the eminence grise of the movie world for playing Gandalf.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Demetri Martin

Demetri Martin's deadpan delivery often features the glimmer of a cheeky grin he is unable conceal; this is a combination I've always found very endearing, probably because the contrast is so delicious. It's not unlike watching Jerry Seinfeld anticipating the next funny line on his own show, and Jimmy Fallon is also guilty of it - usually right before he totally loses it and breaks the scene by cracking himself and his costars up.

Maybe it's no coincidence, then, that all three of them have been Gratuitous Brunettes; in addition to the fact that their looks thrill me beyond all comprehension, they also all seem... Playful. I like Demetri Martin so much, in fact, that even the fact he looks good in orange doesn't make me want to hate him.

Given that people in show business are often jaded - usually because they're compelled to be totally cool and above it all the time - I've always found it refreshing when someone seems to be enjoying the act of performance, or finds the act of amusing others so amusing in and of itself. Show business, of course, is a heart-breaking circus of cruelty and masochism brought on by the desire and even need to perform, for which those with that desire and need must be subjected to untold heartbreak, rejection, and savagery in order to pay for the privilege; anyone who manages to ignore, overcome, or otherwise transcend this emotional siege is pretty special in my opinion.

Demetri Martin - born on this day in 1973 - broke out of the stand-up scene when he scored a sweet gig as 'Senior Youth Correspondent' on The Daily Show; he made further progress in his career with an appearance as a keytar player named Demetri on Flight of the Conchords and with a starring gig in Comedy Central's Important Things with Demetri Martin. Only time will tell where we'll see that charming insouciance of his in the years to come...
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"Rock You Like A Hurricane" by Scorpions

Birthday wishes go out to Klaus Meine, founding member and lead singer of German stadium rockers Scorpions, whose anthemic classic Rock You Like a Hurricane (which first appeared on their 1984 album Love at First Sting) is here given the full bombast with the assistance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2000.

Yet it almost never happened... In 1981 Meine lost his voice so thoroughly while touring and recording the band's album Blackout that even his speaking was compromised; doctors even suggested he try a different line of work. Following speech therapy and surgery on his vocal chords, not only did he regain his distinctive wail, Meine and the band's former drummer Herman Rarebell went on to write what would later become their biggest hit.
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Pop History Moment: "Star Wars" Was Released

On this day in 1977 a certain low budget movie entitled Star Wars was released; it went on to be somewhat successful. (In fact, if you ever want to know what a zillion dollars looks like, go to George Lucas' house and rummage around in the cushions of his couch. That's where he keeps paltry sums like that.)

Though the film only opened in 32 theatres, it broke box office records wherever it was shown, going on to make US$6.8 million in its first week of wide release, and over US$300 million in its initial domestic release. This is in 1977, mind you...

As for my 7-year-old self, I don't think I was ever the same after seeing it. I went into the theatre that summer quite a contented little Earthling and walked out unspeakably bored by this dull little planet we live on.

The real kicker: its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was even better.
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