Happy Birthday Steven Wright

Steven Wright's deadpan delivery and surreal take on life set him apart from the typical 1980s standups, with their recycled jokes about airline food and various skirmishes in the battle of the sexes; in a decade in which every third person seemed to be peaking on cocaine, Steven Wright came across like he was mainlining NyQuil.

Born on this day in 1955, Steven Wright began doing stand up in 1982, and in 1989 won an Academy Award for his short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings; one of the few performers of his era not to have had a network sitcom based on his act, in 2006 he made Steven Wright: When the Leaves Blow Away, his first stand-up special in 16 years.
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Remembering... Agnes Moorehead

Having been a sensation in such acclaimed black & white films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Dark Passage (1947), and Johnny Belinda (1948), not even Agnes Moorehead herself (born on this day in 1900) could have predicted what impact colour would bring to her career... Anyone who doubts it should watch and compare the first season of Bewitched to the second.

Being a serious actress, Moorehead disdained the 'hack' scripts of situation comedy, refusing to see Bewitched for the trenchant social commentary it was. She had a clause in her contract that she would only appear in eight of every twelve episodes filmed long after it was obvious that she was the fan favourite.

In the time-honoured sitcom tradition, though, it was second-fiddle Endora who made that show as great as it was; without her the show would have had no tension - no 'situations' and therefore no comedy - no raison d'etre. Still, comedy is used to getting the short shrift; as important as making people laugh is, too many still consider the considerably easier task of making people cry to be the more important one.

Moorehead's devout Christianity also gave the show a touch of verisimilitude; in any of the scenes she has with Samantha (Elizabeth Montgomery) replace the word 'witch' in her dialogue with 'Christian' or 'Presbyterian' and you'll see what I mean. Endora is the most evangelical of witches, and therefore the most complex character on the show, heart and soul.
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In Memoriam: Ryan White

At a time when AIDS and HIV bore an even greater stigma than they currently do, it took a teenager named Ryan White to dispel many of the myths regarding these infections...

Born a hemophiliac on this day in 1971, in 1984 Ryan White received a tainted batch of Factor VIII; having nearly died from a bout with pneumonia, he was diagnosed with HIV in December 1984 and given six months to live.

The fact that Ryan White lived another five and a half years is fortunate; not only did it give him the chance to finish high school, it also gave him and his mother Jeanne time to battle the school board and the good people of Kokomo, Indiana, who refused to allow his attendance.

Despite the fact that he was thirteen at the time of his diagnosis, many of his fellow students (and not a few of their parents) had subjected him to vicious homophobia, including vandalism of their home; yet Ryan White never turned homophobic - as some hemophiliacs were known to do in the early days of AIDS - nor did he care to think of himself as an 'innocent victim'. In fact, his mother later credited Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City with prolonging Ryan's life by suggesting experimental treatments which were as yet unknown in the Midwest. Eventually Ryan would be allowed to attend Hamilton Heights High School in nearby Cicero, thanks to the school's particularly enlightened principal, Tony Cook, and superintendent Bob G. Carnal.

As is usually the case in these stories, the more the bigots tried to fight, the more attention Ryan's story got, and whenever Ryan White was allowed to speak for himself he usually won the day; his testimony at President Reagan's too-little-too-late AIDS commission in 1988 was the only testimony to receive applause from the committee members.

By the time he died in April 1990 much had changed regarding the public perception of AIDS and the people who live with it; four months after his death, Congress passed the Ryan White Care Act, which today pays for half a million people a year in the United States who would not otherwise be able to afford it to receive treatment for their condition.
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The Halifax Explosion: A Canadian History Minute

The following spot was produced by Canadian broadcasters in an effort to rescue Canada's history from the depredations of deadly dull historians; the Pop Culture Institute celebrates any effort by anyone to make history interesting even if, as is the case with this clip, the events don't quite match the historical record...

Vince Coleman has long been considered one of the heroes of the disaster; had he abandoned his post for safety the death toll could have been much higher. The fact that his post was located in the middle of the railyard, not next to a busy downtown street as is shown here is almost beside the point. Coleman's heroism - as depicted in this Heritage Minute and in the miniseries Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion - was considerable, and he perished when the Halifax Explosion destroyed the city's Richmond Station.
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Pop History Moment: The Halifax Explosion of 1917

Halifax is one of Canada's loveliest cities, but its picturesque harbour, with a quaint blend of old and new, was once the scene of the greatest man-made devastation prior to the atomic age...

On this day in 1917, the French cargo ship Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian ship Imo laden with relief supplies for Belgium in Halifax Harbour; the ensuing fire on board the Mont-Blanc ignited 2.6 million kilos of explosives in her hold, which just after 9 AM exploded.

The fireball from the explosion rose 1.6 km into the air, raining both hot shrapnel and carbon soot on the city. The force of the explosion swamped the waterfront under an 18m wave, and the force of the blast flattened buildings in every direction in a 1.6 km radius. The blast was felt and heard as far as 360 km away, in Cape Breton, and debris from the Mont-Blanc flew as far as 5.5 km into neighbouring Dartmouth.

The official death toll was 1,950 but could have been much lower; the day after the explosion the area was hit by a rare December blizzard, which brought 40 cm of snow. Untold numbers of people who survived the blast buried under rubble likely perished due to the harsh weather; in all, more Nova Scotians died in this blast than in the combat of World War I. 9,000 people were injured, 6,000 of them seriously - the majority of the injuries were caused by flying debris, and resulted in 600 incidences of partial blindness.

Hugh MacLennan's 1941 novel Barometer Rising is among the first depictions of the disaster in popular culture; a miniseries, entitled Shattered City (2003), has also been made. Of a slew of books written about the Halifax Explosion the best is probably the latest - Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion 1917, by Laura M. MacDonald.
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POPnews - December 6th

[Anyone who thinks the Florida Everglades are safe simply because they've been preserved as a park has clearly a) underestimated the contempt of so-called conservatives for the natural world, b) naively relinquished their grasp on reality in favour of impractical idealism, and/or c) never read the works of one Carl Hiaasen.]
1060 - Béla I was crowned King of Hungary.

1534 - Sebastián de Belalcázar founded the city of Quito in Ecuador.

1648 - Colonel Pride of England's New Model Army purged the Long Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I, in order for the King's trial to go ahead; the event came to be known as Pride's Purge.

1768 - The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published.

1849 - American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery on the Underground Railroad.

1865 - Ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution ended the legal sanction of slavery in America.

1877 - The Washington Post was first published, apparently.

1884 - The capstone was set in place atop the Washington Monument, signifying the end of work; originally begun in 1848, a lack of funds and the intercession of the US Civil War prevented Robert Mills' obelisk from being completed earlier. Dedicated in February 1885 and opened in October 1888, it became the world's tallest structure (after Cologne Cathedral) until 1889, at which time it was surpassed by the Eiffel Tower.

1907 - 362 were killed by an explosion at a coal mine in Monongah, West Virginia.

1917 - Finland declared its independence from Russia.

1920 - The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in London.

1921 - Under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State became a sovereign nation.

1933 - U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey ruled that James Joyce's novel Ulysses was not obscene.

1941 - The United Kingdom declared war on Finland in support of the Soviet Union during the Continuation War.

1947 - Florida's Everglades National Park was established.

1969 - Meredith Hunter pulled out a gun during The Rolling Stones' performance of Under My Thumb at their infamous Altamont Free Concert, and was stabbed by Hells Angel Alan Passaro, who was there acting as security; at his trial Passaro claimed self-defense, and was later acquitted. The event was captured on film, and became a key scene in the documentary Gimme Shelter; it also made the pages of Rolling Stone magazine as Rock & Roll's Worst Day, by John Burks.

1978 - The current constitution of Spain was approved by a national referendum.

1989 - Marc Lépine massacred 14 women in an anti-feminist spree at Montreal's École Polytechnique.

1992 - 200,000 Hindu extremists in India demolished Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya, which had been used as temple since 1949.
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Gratuitous Brunette: Shalom Harlow

Since the early 1990s Canada's own birthday gal Shalom Harlow has become the world's - whether as the face for Chanel's Coco fragrance, co-hosting (alongside pal Amber Valletta) MTV's House of Style, or with appearances in such films as 1997's In & Out among her many credits...

Add to that today's birthday and inclusion among the exclusive ranks of the Pop Culture Institute's Gratuitous Brunettes and that is one very impressive resume indeed!
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Jascha Heifetz performs Mozart's Rondo

Again, I make no claim to being any kind of expert when it comes to classical music; I know what I like (and I like this). I also know that it's high time someone classed this joint up a bit and that I'm sure as shit not the one to do it.

The other day it was Maria Callas and a bit of opera, today it's Jascha Heifetz and his fancy fiddle. (And in answer to you longhair types out there, yes, I know it's called a violin... You see, what I was doing there is called a joke. That's something people who don't listen to a lot of classical music do.)
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Requiem for Mozart

In keeping with the times in which he lived, Mozart was no stranger to illness; during his short life he'd been afflicted with smallpox, tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, typhoid fever, rheumatism and gum disease. Yet he was resilient, having beaten them all back in their turn. His final illness, though, proved a little stronger...

Mozart left Vienna for Prague in August 1791 to supervise progress on his latest opera La clemenza di Tito; while there he began to feel ill, although he was well enough upon his return to conduct what would be his final opera, The Magic Flute, at the Theater auf der Wieden on the occasion of its debut performance in September.

By November he was bedridden; although able to complete his Clarinet Concerto, while he continued to work on his Requiem (a commission from Count Walsegg) Mozart was gradually coming to terms with the fact that he was writing it for himself. Whenever his illness manifested itself, though, it did so in horrible ways, leaving him unable to do anything (let alone work) but only suffer: swelling in the hands and feet, immobilization, then sudden vomiting...

Mozart became certain he was being poisoned - but with what and by whom? His one-time teacher, the hapless Antonio Salieri, generally gets the blame - at least as far as Peter Shaffer's 1979 play Amadeus is concerned. Shaffer's slander, though, is far from new; Alexander Pushkin's own play Mozart and Salieri (1830) and the 1897 opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov based on it are the originators of that particular rumour.

The truth is, we may never know what caused the death of Mozart; if it was poison it had an effect unlike any other poison of its day, if it was illness, it's equally unique. Whatever it was that killed him, Mozart finally succumbed to it on this day in 1791, attended by his wife Constanze, her mother and sister; he was 35. Although his Requiem is generally cited as his last completed work, there remains a debate over how much of it was composed by Mozart, and how much, if any, had to be completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr.
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Happy Birthday Your Majesty

Today Thailand's beloved King turns 83, after several years of challenges for His Majesty; with a political crisis in 2005-6, a coup in 2006, and yet another crisis in 2008 who knows what state the country would be in today without the moderating influence of the King who has already been proclaimed Bhumibol the Great.

Then, of course, there was that video that caused so much trouble on YouTube (so much that it caused YouTube to be banned in Thailand) followed by the ill health and subsequent death of his beloved sister, Princess Galyani Vadhana - not to mention an ongoing health crisis of his own.

As usual, though, the King is weathering it with grace and aplomb - and with the serene presence of Queen Sirikit beside him; he even managed to emerge from one hospital stay a fashion plate, making pink pajamas the must-have garment for patriotic Thai men.

Currently the longest-reigning monarch in the world, the ninth sovereign of the Chakri Dynasty ascended the throne in June 1946 following the mysterious death of his brother Ananda Mahidol.
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Margaret Cho Reads The Christianists To Filth

Providing the utmost contrast to the previous post is birthday girl Margaret Cho, whose sermon today is little more than preaching to the queer. Er, choir. Same diff...

A n y h o o... What is there to say about Margaret Cho that she hasn't already said?

Naturally, Mr Barr, Mr Gagne, Mr Davey, Mr Eaton, and myself all love her like lunch; Messrs. Barr and Gagne were lucky enough to see her when the show this clip is taken from - Assassin - blew through Vancouver. Myself, I had to settle for the DVD.
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Lichfield Cathedral Choir performs "In The Bleak Midwinter"

At the risk of turning these proceedings into Songs of Praise* - let alone being all Northern Hemispherist and shit - 'tis totally the season, y'all!

Here we see In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti at its most Anglican, as performed by the Lichfield Cathedral Choir in 1995.

*Albeit the most unrepentantly vulgar edition of that show in its history...
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"In The Bleak Midwinter" by Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

[READ MORE...]
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Remembering... Christina Rossetti

Born on this day in 1830 in London into a creative family - her father was the exiled poet Gabriele Rossetti, one brother the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and cofounder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with her other brother William Michael Rossetti, her sister the author Maria Francesca Rossetti, and her mother Frances Polidori - Christina Rossetti's childhood was shaped by her father's descent into madness; he died in 1854.

Although Christina began writing at the age of seven, she remained unpublished until 1862, when Goblin Market and Other Poems appeared. She published widely thereafter, preferring to write children's and devotional verse; after her death in 1894 Rossetti garnered much posthumous renown for her poem In the Bleak Midwinter, which was later set to music and has been sung as a Christmas carol ever since.
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"Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard

One of Little Richard's biggest hits was also his first; Tutti Frutti first appeared in 1955, at the dawn of the rock and roll era, following a string of poorly received records he'd made at small labels, which he promoted by touring gay clubs throughout the American South. It was producer Robert 'Bumps' Blackwell who first heard the promise in the flamboyant performer's voice, who also saw the potential in his persona; overnight one of Peacock Records' weakest acts became one of Specialty Records' finest, and more than just history was made, possibly even rock and roll itself...

Even though Tutti Frutti would become an even bigger hit for the white artists who covered it - namely Pat Boone - it's Little Richard's version we remember today, on the legend's 78th birthday. It's shown here in an excerpt from the 1956 film Don't Knock the Rock, starring Alan Dale and legendary disc jockey Alan Freed.
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POPnews - December 5th

[Ippolit Giliarovsky's refusal to eat maggoty meat during the Russian Revolution of 1905 may have only indirectly led to the Revolution of 1917, but it directly led to the creation of Russian cinema which, in the hands of such visionary filmmakers as Sergei Eisenstein, extended the national knack for storytelling to an entirely new medium.]
1082 - Ramon Berenguer II, Count of Barcelona, was assassinated; he was succeeded by his twin brother and co-ruler Berenguer Ramon II, who may have orchestrated the killing.

1484 - Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputized Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany, leading to genocide, courtesy of one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.

1492 - Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola.

1590 - Niccolò Sfondrati was elected Pope Gregory XIV following the death of Urban VII.

1766 - James Christie held the first sale at his auction house.

1776 - Phi Beta Kappa - the first scholastic fraternity in the United States - was founded in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, by students from the College of William and Mary.

1892 - Conservative Sir John Thompson became the fourth Prime Minister of Canada upon the retiremet of his predecessor, John Abbott; not only was he Canada's first Roman Catholic premier, he was the only one to die at Windsor Castle.

1926 - Sergei Eisenstein's classic film The Battleship Potemkin had its American debut.

1932 - Albert Einstein was granted a US visa, apparently.

1933 - Prohibition was repealed in the United States when Utah ratified the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution, which itself repealed the 18th Amendment, which had mandated Prohibition in 1919 and introduced it in 1920.

1945 - Flight 19 disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

1952 - During what came to be known as the Great Smog, a cold fog descended upon London which, when combined with an inversion layer and the greater burning of coal necessitated by the chill temperatures, caused fatal air pollution which killed at least 12,000 - many of them children, the elderly, and infirm - in the weeks and months that followed. The calamity brought about the Clean Air Acts of 1956, which went a long way to preventing similar conditions from recurring in the future.

For an informative account of the Great Smog, why not visit our blog friend Another Nickel in the Machine?

1958 - Subscriber Trunk Dialling was inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh without first having to go through an operator.

1970 - Dario Fo's play Morte accidentale di un anarchico received its world premiere in the Italian city of Varese.

1979 - Sonia Johnson was formally excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for her outspoken criticism of the church concerning its position on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Because that's what Jesus would have done.

1983 - ICIMOD was established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, and legitimized through an Act of Parliament in Nepal later the same year.

2005 - The UK's Civil Partnership Act came into effect.

2006 - Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government of Fiji.

2007 - Nineteen-year-old Robert A. Hawkins opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Westroads Mall in Omaha, Nebraska, killing eight people and wounding four others (two critically) before taking his own life.
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"My Young Man" by Kate Rusby

The first time I heard Kate Rusby's distinctive, unforgettable voice she was performing The Kinks' classic Village Green Preservation Society under the opening titles of the cult classic Jennifer Saunders sitcom Jam and Jerusalem in 2006; until recently, though, it hasn't been available for purchase... All that's changed with the release of Rusby's 2007 album, Awkward Annie; now if only she can convince Rufus Wainwright to release that version of What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? he did for that Gap ad I'll be a happy blogger.

The Pop Culture Institute sends its fondest birthday wishes today to the Barnsley Nightingale in the hopes that she remains on the high perch she's attained, singing her heart out for many years to come...
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Remembering... Frank Zappa

I can safely say that, while I've long been a fan of Frank Zappa's, I was never a fan of his music until this day in 1993, the day he died; death has a funny way of doing that, bringing a person new fans as a kind of legacy...

That was the day a friend of mine, who was already a fan and had been for years, sat me down and, by way of explanation of his fandom, played me his favourite Zappa songs - among them Help I'm A Rock, Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, Catholic Girls, and Muffin Man, plus the entire 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti.

Just like that I was hooked. Not only did I like Zappa's voice (an essential component of musical enjoyment for me) but I can safely say I'd never heard anything like his music, either. Suddenly all the print and TV interviews of his that I'd read and watched made sense; Zappa had always been an advocate for free speech, which led me to begin following his career in the 1980s, but to hear even some of the work he and his band The Mothers of Invention did in the 1970s made me eager to hear every last note.

In all, Frank Zappa wrote 75 albums of music (18 of them released posthumously); even given a certain amount of overlap between studio and live performances, this is a massive body of work for one person to produce. It'll probably take me to the end of my life to hear it all, but then again, it's a good thing I like a challenge.
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A Requiem for Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten's particular contribution to the arts is the English-language opera; his weren't the first nor were they the last, but their appearance at the middle of the 20th Century helped to revitalize classical music in the UK nonetheless.

Most of Britten's works were written to suit the voice of his lover, Peter Pears, whom he'd met in 1936 and with whom Britten lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life. Their collaboration is considered unique in the history of music, both for its singer/composer dynamic as well as its all-male ramifications.

Paul Bunyan, an operetta with libretto by W. H. Auden*, appeared in 1941 during their wartime exile in America; Peter Grimes followed in June 1945. In 1948 Britten (along with Pears, and librettist Eric Crozier) founded the Aldeburgh Festival, due in part to the frosty reception his work received in London, but also to give the English Opera Group, which he also founded, a home.

Britten's most famous work, Billy Budd, premiered in 1951, followed by the coronation-inspired Gloriana in 1953, and the well-received The Turn of the Screw in 1954. Throughout this time he continued to compose popular works other than operas, including piano pieces for chamber orchestra and his famous War Requiem among many others.

Britten's last two works were Owen Wingrave in 1971, and Death in Venice in 1973. Suffering from ill-health for most of the past decade, Britten died on this day in 1976, and as befitting Lord Britten of Aldeburgh (as he'd become just months before his death) he is buried in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul's Church in Aldeburgh, where in April 1986 he was joined by his life's companion.

*Who was something of a notable whoopsie himself...
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POPnews - December 4th

[It was Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle who pioneered the field of the celebrity mugshot with this particularly sombre example; his acquittal - on this day in 1921, for the murder of Virginia Rappe - was the third of three.]
771 CE - Austrasian King Carloman died, leaving his brother Charlemagne sole ruler of the now complete Frankish Kingdom.

1783 - At New York City's Fraunces Tavern US General George Washington formally bid his officers farewell at the end of the American Revolution - an event commemorated there since 1976 by a plaque.

1791 - The world's first Sunday newspaper, The Observer, was first published in London by W. S. Bourne.

1872 - The American brigantine Mary Celeste was found - crewless and adrift in the Strait of Gibraltar - by the British crew of the Dei Gratia; the vessel had been abandoned for nine days when it was discovered, but the fate and whereabouts of the crew remains unknown.

1875 - Notorious New York City politician and Tammany Hall sachem Boss Tweed escaped from prison and fled the US, first to Cuba, then later to Spain.

1881 - The first issue of the Los Angeles Times rolled off the presses.

1918 - Woodrow Wilson sailed for Europe, the first serving US President to do so: his first stop was London, then it was on to Paris for the Peace Conference at Versailles - the events of which are thrillingly described in Margaret Macmillan's landmark book Paris 1919.

1921 - Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's third and final trial for causing the September death of starlet Virginia Rappe ended in a hung jury; despite an unconditional acquittal, Arbuckle's once-envied career was in ruins. He died of a heart attack in June 1933 on the eve of his comeback.

1943 - FDR shut down the WPA... OMG, WTF!

1954 - The first Burger King opened in Miami.

1956 - The Million Dollar Quartet made their legendary recordings.

1969 - Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party were killed in their sleep during a raid by 14 members of the Chicago Police Department.

1971 - A fan who brought a flare gun to a Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland somehow managed to burn the place down; it has since been rebuilt. The event is immortalized in the Deep Purple song Smoke on the Water.

1977 - President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic proclaimed himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire.

1978 - Dianne Feinstein was sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco to replace the assassinated George Moscone; she was the first woman to become mayor of that city, a post which she held for a decade before her election to the US Senate.

1979 - The Hastie Fire in Hull, set by serial arsonist Bruce George Peter Lee, killed 3 schoolboys.

1980 - Led Zeppelin formally announced its breakup following the September death of founding member and drummer John Bonham.

1991 - Journalist Terry Anderson was released from captivity in Beirut; he'd been held there for seven years by members of Hezbollah.

1998 - The Unity Module - 2nd phase of the International Space Station - was launched.
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