Bill Murray and Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors"

The volume's a bit low, but that just means you have to listen more carefully; otherwise I love love love it! Normally when a sadist meets a masochist sparks fly (providing that's what they're into) but as this clip proves, chemistry is no match for dentistry.

Here birthday boy Bill Murray (as patient Arthur Denton) and Steve Martin (another of our favourites around the Pop Culture Institute, playing Orin Scrivello, DDS) yuk it up in the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, while Seymour (Rick Moranis) waits nervously outside the door...
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Happy Birthday Bill Murray

Thirty years at the pinnacle of show business hasn't blunted his sense of humour; in fact, Bill Murray's comedy persona seems to have appeared - fully formed - in 1976, and has only gotten richer and deeper and shinier over the years...

While conducting research for this piece I came across a rare flash of insight in, of all places, a YouTube comment: he did his selling out early, so he's always been able to be genuine.

Well, it certainly involves a great deal of selling out to appear on Saturday Night Live, which is where Bill Murray got his start. But in my humble opinion, though, you can't sell out if you don't buy in, and that's what he's done.

The rumour is he doesn't even have an agent. That doesn't mean much in and of itself - after all, I couldn't get an agent to let me detail their car, let alone find me a job. However, I'm just a blogger and he's a comedy legend - having appeared in such chucklefests as Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Tootsie, and Little Shop of Horrors.

Still, he's no slouch in the drama department either, having garnered rave reviews for performances in films as diverse as The Razor's Edge, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Rushmore, and Lost in Translation.
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POPnews: September 21st

[When it was completed in January 2010, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill had given Dubai not only the biggest erection in the world but the biggest in history; fortunately, since the country is heavily favoured by the Saudi elite, it's unlikely anyone will fly a plane into it.]
454 CE - Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinated his top general Aëtius in the Imperial throne room at Ravenna.

1217 - The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu of Lehola was killed in a battle against Teutonic Knights during the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, at a pivotal moment in the Livonian Crusade.

1745 - At the Battle of Prestonpans (near Edinburgh) a Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope was defeated - in ten minutes! - by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

1765 - Antoine de Beauterne announced that he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan - a claim which was later proven wrong when the attacks resumed.

1780 - Benedict Arnold delivered the plans for West Point to the British; the plot to seize the military academy and it's prime location alongside the Hudson River, however, failed - and his name has been synonymous with treachery in America ever since.

1792 - The French National Convention voted to abolish that country's monarchy.

1827 - According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni led him to a set of golden plates, some of which he later translated with the aid of a seer stone or stone spectacles into The Book of Mormon; the plates were found buried under Cumorah hill in upstate New York - Manchester, to be precise - and are supposedly the chronicle of the prophet Mormon, a Nephrite who, along with his son, visited America in the 4th Century CE.

1897 - Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the New York Sun - better known by its accompanying headline 'Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus' - was published; Francis Pharcellus Church's philosophical response has been a part of Christmas lore ever since.

1898 - China's Empress Dowager Cixi seized power and ended that country's Hundred Days' Reform.

1921 - During what came to be known as the Oppau explosion, a storage silo at a fertilizer plant in that German city exploded, killing between 500 and 600; even though only about 10% of the ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer at the facility was involved, a 90 m by 125 m crater - and 19 m deep - was created at the site, damage to nearby property was immense, and the blast was heard 300 kilometres away in München.

1937 - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published in the UK by George Allen & Unwin.

1938 - The Great Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island, New York, killing between 500 and 700 as it roared up the Eastern Seaboard, before finally dissipating in New Hampshire.

1939 - Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu was assassinated in Bucharest by ultranationalist members of the Iron Guard, apparently on orders from Nazi Germany.

1964 - Malta became independent from the United Kingdom.

1970 - The Cleveland Browns beat the New York Jets at home on the first-ever showing of Monday Night Football.

1976 - Orlando Letelier - a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in September 1973 by Augusto Pinochet - was assassinated in Washington, D.C.

1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment to the US Supreme Court was unanimously approved by the Senate.

1995 - The Hindu milk miracle occurred, in which statues of the Hindu God Ganesh began drinking milk when spoonfuls were placed near their mouths.

2004 - Construction of the Burj Dubai (now known as the Burj Khalifa) began.
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Now Showing: "Time in a Bottle" by The Muppets

Since my earlier Jim Croce post was so well-received (thanks Tank!), and since I simply cannot resist The Muppets, I thought what the heck? Why not do another one?

This has to have been the first time I ever heard this song, and I still find it a very moving performance, considering that it stars a lump of foam. Of course, given what most actors are like nowadays...

Time in a Bottle was performed (by Jim Henson himself) on Episode 207 of The Muppet Show - an episode first aired in 1977. No doubt Croce's early, tragic death (on this day in 1973) gives the song an even greater poignance...
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"Operator" by Jim Croce

Jim Croce is one of the most beloved singer-songwriters of all times; a native of Philadelphia, he was instrumental in the development not only of the blue-eyed soul sound for which the city is known but also for the folk-rock fusion that helped define the sound of the 1970s.

When he died in a plane crash on this day in 1973 - the day before his third album was to be released - the music industry lost one of its best voices, not to mention one of its best lyricists. Although his string of hits was a short one, it has endured. Time in a Bottle, Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, and this one, Operator, are some of the most poignant and durable songs of the decade.

Croce's personal motto was: 'If you dig it, do it. If you really dig it, do it twice.' Right on.
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Happy Birthday Sophia Loren

My personal favourite film of hers has to be Ieri, oggi, domani (aka Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) by Vittorio de Sica, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1965; in it Sophia Loren stars with Marcello Mastroianni as three very different characters - one in Naples (yesterday), one in Rome (today), and one in Milan (tomorrow). Sexy as he is, Mastroianni's characters all seem like the same man; cast as a paragon of Italian womanhood in all its variety, Loren triumphs over him as easily as she does completely. After all, it's the role she was born to play.

Not only did that film display her range as an actress, it arrayed her against any number of her homeland's architectural masterpieces - and proved that there isn't a villa, campanile, or cathedral in all of Italy that holds a candelabra to her in the beauty department.

Born on this day in - get this - 1934, the 76-year-old icon is still going strong. In fact, she posed for the famed Pirelli Calendar in 2007; the calendar, which usually features supermodels, just once they thought they should get a goddess - and did they ever!  Even more recently Loren appeared in Rob Marshall's film version of Nine.

Never content just to be a pretty face, Loren is also a savvy business woman, marketing her own lines of eye wear, jewelry, and perfume. Accustomed as she is to being the subject of superlatives, she insists that her greatest achievement is her two sons, Carlo Jr. and Edoardo.

An Oscar winner for De Sica's 1960 masterpiece Two Women, in 1991 she also received an Honorary Oscar for her contribution to world cinema; not only was she on hand to give Federico Fellini his Honorary Oscar in 1993, she also handed one to Roberto Benigni for 1998's bittersweet miracle, Life Is Beautiful. Needless to say, her majestic presence dissolving into girlish glee upon exclaiming 'Roberto!', as much as Benigni's antics upon accepting the award, were the highlight of the telecast.
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In Memoriam: Upton Sinclair

Shit disturbers, malcontents, muckrakers... I love 'em all.

Upton Sinclair was all of these and more, with one crucial difference: he didn't just do it for kicks, but in aid of a cause.

Okay, so the cause he aided wasn't always the cause he set out to aid; he wrote The Jungle, his legendary 1906 novel set in the Chicago stockyards to highlight the drudgery of urban poverty and instead brought about legislation aimed at cleaning up the food supply. 'I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,' he said, a little too ruefully, following its publication.

Still, if you're going to miss one target it helps to be fortunate enough to hit another, even bigger, one. After all, people are conditioned to ignore their hearts, but few can treat their stomachs the same.

So while Upton Sinclair's political career can only be described as an utter fiasco, his literary career is without equal, frequently achieving through art what he could not hope to do through politics. Sometimes wordy, often hyperbolic, but always passionate, his novels delivered socialist rhetoric into the hearts and minds of Americans in ways that campaign speeches never could.

Born on this day in 1878, Upton Sinclair died in November 1968, having published more than 90 books during his 90 years on Earth.
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"Common People" by Pulp

As a poor person who's always aspired to be wealthy and powerful, I've never been able to understand these rich people who seem to have a yen for poverty. It's like they think squalor is glamourous or something, and maybe because it's so different from luxury for some people it can be. Well, I'm here to tell you: seediness may be sexy but squalor sucks. Then again, knowing you have an out when it all gets too much might be the necessary ingredient that I'm missing*.

Class Tourism - or, if you're on an old school trip, slumming - is apparently something Pulp frontman and birthday boy Jarvis Cocker obviously knows all too well, as evidenced by the skillful execution of Common People, a pop song which, in the British tradition, is actually about something.

The song is about a classmate of Cocker's at St. Martin's College, one of the most prestigious art schools in the world, who yearned to see how the other ninety-nine percent lived, thanks in part to the greed of her 1%; the video also features an early appearance by tabloid bait Sadie Frost.

*Also, as I've been told - again and again - just because a person has good stuff like money, fame, or looks doesn't automatically make their life better blah blah blah...
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Happy Birthday Cheri Oteri

Funny lady Cheri Oteri hit on the formula for success early on in her tenure at Saturday Night Live: some spot-on impressions (Barbara Walters, Mariah Carey, Robin Byrd and Judge Judy), a few indelible original characters (Collette 'drug lady' Reardon and Nadeen - 'simmer down now!'), a winning personality, and the willingness to put them all across fearlessly.

Oteri was fortunate to be joined in the cast by Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer, but she did most of her funniest work opposite Will Ferrell. Whether as Arianna (one half of The Spartan Cheerleaders) or vapid morning show hostess Cass Van Rye, Oteri benefited at least as much as Gasteyer did from her chemistry with Ferrell.

Despite notable guest appearances in film and on television since leaving SNL in 2000, Oteri has yet to find herself a more permanent roost; Hollywood rumour has it that she's been developing a sitcom idea with J.J. Abrams. Here's hoping it makes more sense than Lost.

It may just be that Oteri's decided to take some time off following the murder of her father in April 2008 by his friend and sometime roommate, country music songwriter Richard Fagan*.

In the meantime, why not enjoy the best of her work from SNL on DVD?

*Google News had no mention of the crime, despite its celebrity connection. What is this world coming to? After a little more sleuthing the story turned up on the blog You Thought So! and in a Nashville Police Department media release...
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"Back In Your Head" by Tegan and Sara

Back in Your Head was released in 2007 as part of Tegan and Sara's fifth studio album, The Con; born on this day in 1980, the Canadian duo is probably the world's only band comprised of identical twin lesbians - and more's the pity I say!

While I am a relatively recent convert to their cult, they are clearly hugely popular in Vancouver since everyone here who isn't a baby dyke is a fan of them (myself included); then again, I like lesbians of every kind, and always have. Just not in a sexual way, like most of you pervs.

Still, wouldn't it be great if they had brothers? Identical twin homo brothers who sing songs this cool? Oh yeah...
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Brian Epstein: The Fifth Beatle?

Over the years numerous men claimed that they were or were purported to be the mythical fifth member of noted four-piece beat combo The Beatles: Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best, George Martin, Derek Taylor and Neil Aspinall are among them. Still, no less a figure than Paul McCartney himself has said: 'If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.' So there you go...

Born on this day in 1934 in Liverpool, Brian Epstein was gifted with two strikes against him (being both Jewish and gay) it was more or less inevitable he would end up in show business, since in those days allegedly respectable people would freely associate with neither, but since actors and their ilk were considered far from respectable (especially amongst themselves) he could easily excel in that milieu without much prejudice.

In November 1961, Epstein - who'd dropped out of Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) after three terms - attended a gig at Liverpool's Cavern Club; there he saw a band who'd been generating a great deal of buzz (especially with the staff of Bill Harry's Mersey Beat magazine) with a fresh sound, each member of which was possessed of immense personal charm, who continued to impress him backstage as they had on it. A month later he proposed managing them, and despite the fact that he had no experience in artist management within six weeks the contracts were signed.

The Beatles went on to enjoy a modicum of success, in large part due to the wheeling and dealing of Brian Epstein, who began by working with the band's wardrobe. He later engineered their cracking of the US market - unleashing the so-called British Invasion there in February 1964 with their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show - all of which went fairly well until the band's outspokenness started to draw controversy. Following the band's last concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in August 1966 and their withdrawal from touring, Epstein's influence over the band waned. Epstein died of a drug overdose in August 1967; whether this was an accident or not has been the subject of considerable controversy ever since.
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In Memoriam: Frances Farmer

That a person's life story later becomes a cautionary tale is seldom much consolation to the one who's had to live it; I doubt Frances Farmer took much solace in the fact that the morass of mental illness she was forced to slog through may have saved others from the same stigma she suffered - anymore than Evelyn Keyes or Carole Landis did - but the fact remains that it did.

Born in Seattle on this day in 1913, Farmer was a precocious child with a pronounced rebellious streak and an instinctive feel for leftist politics in an era when none of these things was likely to win her many friends. While still in high school in 1931 she won $100 for an essay she wrote called God Dies; the reaction to her essay, when it was finally published in Scholastic Magazine, greatly dismayed Farmer - 'for the first time I found how stupid people could be' she later said. Yet it was nothing compared to the crap she was fated to take at the hands of studio executives, critics, and the movie-going public.

Having graduated from West Seattle High School to the University of Washington, Farmer won another contest in 1935 - this time from the leftist newspaper The Voice of Action; first prize this time was a free trip to the Soviet Union. Returning to the US via New York City, it was Farmer's intention to pursue a stage career. Instead she took a screen test, and was offered a 7-year contract by Paramount Pictures talent scout Oscar Serlin.

In short order she was cast in a pair of popular B-movies, married actor Leif Erickson, starred opposite Bing Crosby, and made a sensation in the 1936 film Come and Get It, based on the novel by Edna Ferber; Farmer's unhappiness with the shallowness of Hollywood manifested itself quite quickly, a situation which wasn't helped by her worsening alcoholism. She was first arrested in October 1942, and did not go peaceably; from there things quite quickly went from bad to worse to Hell...

Frances Farmer's mental and emotional deterioration was skillfully and sensitively portrayed by Jessica Lange in the 1982 film Frances. Farmer's undergoing surgery for a lobotomy was later admitted to be 'fictionalized'; despite the fact that she did undergo various radical treatments while committed to Western State Hospital, including electro-convulsive and insulin shock therapy, there's no proof she was ever lobotomized.

Although Farmer attempted a comeback in 1957, the public was more interested in her as a former (and potentially current) nutcase and curiosity than an actress; an appearance on This Is Your Life is as awkward an experience for the viewer as it must have been for Farmer herself. She died of cancer in August 1970, at the age of 56; in the years since she has been memorialized in the Nirvana song Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle, from their 1993 album In Utero, among others.
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"California Earthquake" by Cass Elliot

This is not the song I wanted to play here - that would have been Make Your Own Kind of Music - but such are the vagaries of YouTube that the vid you might be looking for isn't always available when you need it. That was the case, anyway, on this day in 2007 when I first posted this; I have since posted it to mark the July 1974 death of Cass Elliot.

Anyway, this song's good too, and shows both her and her voice to their best advantage. Plus it's obscure, which I personally love; California Earthquake made it all the way to #67 in 1968.
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In Memoriam: "Mama" Cass Elliot

There's a special place in my heart - and thus a place of honour at the Pop Culture Institute - for anyone who defies the prevailing looksism of their times and becomes a success despite it; Cass Elliot - born on this day in 1941 - was one such person.

In an age of waif-like hippie chicks, Cass was not one; though she exhibited a brave face and a healthy attitude, it had to have hurt to see the men she loved continually pass her over for thinner women, then come crying to her when things didn't work out. I know it's always pissed me off.

Not only was Cass successful with The Mamas & the Papas, she also had a thriving solo career, beginning in 1968. It was not to last. Cass died of a heart attack in July 1974; she did not, according to the popular myth, choke on a ham sandwich.

She is survived by, among others, a sister named Leah Kunkel and a daughter Owen Vanessa Elliot.
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"Cry" by Godley & Creme

Birthday wishes go out today to Lol Creme of Godley & Creme fame, who went solo together after quitting the band 10cc; the song Cry was their biggest international hit, no doubt helped along in part by this startling video, which features a number of interesting faces being morphed together.

Creme, along with Kevin Godley (whom he met in the late 1950s), in fact directed a number of pioneering music videos, including Synchronicity II by The Police, the notorious Girls on Film by Duran Duran, and my personal favourite (of these, at least) Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
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Happy Birthday Fred Willard

My first exposure to all around funny guy Fred Willard was from his appearances on the uncategorizable variety show Real People, which ran on NBC from 1979 to 1984; little did I know then that not only had he been a fixture in American comedy since 1963, but would continue to be watching him to this day...

Willard's first big exposure came through his involvement with famed comedy troupe The Second City; he auditioned for the ensemble alongside fellow legend Robert Klein. Willard's first television break came from sitcom pioneer Norman Lear, who cast him in Fernwood 2 Night, opposite longtime friend Martin Mull. He also hosted Saturday Night Live in 1978, the night the musical guest was Devo. He later guest-starred on Roseanne, playing Martin Mull's husband with his usual dumb, deadpan aplomb.

Lately, when not trading barbs with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, Willard has an enviable position in the company of players lucky enough to work with Christopher Guest, whose films - This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind - are winners all.
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"Rock 'N' Roll High School" by The Ramones

On what would have been the 59th birthday of Dee Dee Ramone, I've decided to post one of my favourite songs by The Ramones; let's face it, it was either this song - 1979's Rock 'n' Roll High School - or The KKK Took My Baby Away, either of which would have done the job.

I chose Rock 'n' Roll High School, though, because it had a) a slightly better video, and b) a tie-in to the 1979 Roger Corman film of the same name, one of that legendary producer's rare forays out of the exploitation/horror genre and into musical comedy. It was followed by a sequel, Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever (1991) which without even having seen it I feel safe in saying wasn't as good as the original, since they never are, are they?

Alas, there will be no sequels of Dee Dee Ramone or indeed of The Ramones either; less than a decade after the band's 1996 break up, three of its founding members - bassist and principal songwriter Dee Dee, lead singer Joey Ramone, and guitarist Johnny Ramone - were all dead.
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In Memoriam: Greta Garbo

So inscrutable was she that no one quite knew for sure what the great Greta Garbo ever wanted, except to be left alone - which she'd said so often to reporters off screen that her screenwriters eventually began writing the line into her scripts...

The taciturn Swede seemed to turn her dissatisfaction with everyone and everything into her stock-in-trade, making herself even more alluring even as she was pushing you away. As such she has become a symbol of ambivalence and antipathy, especially where fame and adoration are concerned.

Born on this day in 1905, she met famed director Mauritz Stiller in 1922; Stiller worked with the girl until she became a woman - if you catch my meaning - before casting her in his 1924 silent film Gösta Berlings saga, based on the novel by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. The brighter lights of Berlin called, and the newly rechristened Garbo went to appear in the 1925 film Die freudlose Gasse, by G. W. Pabst - it's English name, the utterly prescient The Joyless Street.

Shortly thereafter, Garbo sailed to America, with half of that country's news photographers seemingly in tow; her arrival in Manhattan was front-page news around the world, and her train journey across the strange new land in which she found herself was breathlessly covered by all levels of media. She arrived in Hollywood, and thus the brightest lights of all, in September 1925 still aged only 19, at which point she was rushed into production on her first film for MGM, The Torrent.

Garbo made a few hugely successful silent films before the silent cinema died the death it had coming to it; as one of the few silent stars to make a successful transition to sound, however, her star rose even higher. 1930's film version of Eugene O'Neill's Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie was trumpeted with the tagline 'Garbo Talks', and audiences were enthralled by what they heard. Although the film is clunky to watch, and even the best-restored extant prints of it aren't in the best of shape, Garbo's serious performance is almost as compelling as Marie Dressler's comic one, despite its low-key nature; for all its faults the film, naturally, has pride of place in the collection held here at the Pop Culture Institute.

Once they got Garbo talking, however, they had difficulty shutting her up; since the studios were making oodles off her, they didn't even mind the increasingly exorbitant paycheques she was demanding. Despite the relatively short duration of her career (which she called a halt to in 1941) her filmography is jam-packed with classics: Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933), Anna Karenina (1935), Camille (1936), and Ninotchka (1939). It all ended with George Cukor's Two-Faced Woman, the only one of her films that could be considered a flop.

Following her departure from Hollywood Garbo mainly lived in New York City, in a habit of increasing reclusion; her last onscreen appearance as such was in Sidney Lumet's 1984 film Garbo Talks, in which she did not appear in the least, except as a kind of phantom on whom all the action was centred. Greta Garbo died in Manhattan in April 1990, and her ashes were interred in Sweden's Skogskyrkogården Cemetery; her estate, estimated at $20 million US, went to her niece Gray Reisfield.
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Remembering... Ernie Coombs

Seeing as most of us Generation X-ers were virtually raised by television, I would be remiss if I failed to observe the anniversary of the passing of one of my favourite babysitters growing up, Ernie Coombs. Alongside gender ambiguous tyke Casey and mute dog Finnegan, Coombs entertained and educated several generations of Canadian children. For five years at least his show Mr. Dressup was appointment television for little me; even when I was an older kid, if I found myself home sick from school and channel surfing, I would stop and watch what was going on in that lovely, calm world of his - even if, following the retirement of Judith Lawrence and the inevitable disappearance of Casey and Finnegan with her, there was for me an insurmountable emotional void in the show.

Although born in Maine in November 1927, Coombs moved to Canada after understudying another famous children's entertainer Fred Rogers; it's a little-known fact that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was developed in Canada before moving to PBS. The two giants even worked together from 1964-7 on a CBC show called Butternut Square, before Rogers relocated his neighbourhood south and Coombs took on his more famous persona. In no time at all, Canada embraced Coombs as one of its own, and he officially became a citizen in 1994, which he was when he died on this day in 2001.

Many of my lifelong manias developed as a result of Mr. Dressup, including creative play, wearing stylin' outfits, a fondness for puppetry, and the desire to live in a treehouse.
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Samuel Johnson: My Word!

For anyone whose stock in trade is words - even a blogger - Samuel Johnson is a towering figure. If all he'd ever done was compile a Dictionary of the English Language he'd have earned his place in history; as it is, he was also journalist, poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, and editor. So prolific and admired was he that his biography, James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, is either a consummate tribute to a man of enviable accomplishment or else something of an epic reacharound, depending on your point of view.

Born on this day in 1709, Johnson was a precocious child who rose above his humble beginnings - writing for the yellow presses of London's Grub Street - having already overcome scrofula (for the treatment of which he received the royal touch at St James's Palace by Queen Anne herself in March 1712 - unsuccessfully it turns out) and despite a lifelong battle with what has been posthumously diagnosed as Tourette syndrome.

Given that Boswell's biography of him is essentially a phone book, I doubt Blogspot has the bandwidth* to let me replicate it here; suffice it to say, Johnson was more than a man of letters - he was a celebrity, and this was back in the days before every third person was a celebrity!

Samuel Johnson's pop culture presence reached its apex when he was portrayed by Robbie Coltrane in the third series of Blackadder, in the episode entitled Ink and Incapability in September 1987.

*And I know I don't have the stamina.
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