Tag Archives: Throwback Thursdays

Do It Yourself! ► Throwback Thursday

With far too much on my mind this week to properly prepare a Throwback Thursday, I challenge you all to make up your own. 

It’s a point of pride with me that I have no idea what my weekly Throwback Thursday will be when at wake up around 5AM Thursday morning. While sipping my first mug of coffee, I check out the WikiWackyWoo for inspiration. Then I spin out several hundred (or a thousand or two) words on the topic of my choosing.

Now you can do likewise. Here are today’s choices. Have fun.

Events

Births

Deaths

Holidays and observances

Bill O’Reilly and Flavor Flav ► Throwback Thursday

Happy birthday to Flavor Flav, born and named William Jonathan Drayton, Jr., 57 years ago today.

There’s a strange nexus between Flavor Flav and the Fox “News” Channel which requires further explanation.

When I first started writing for NewsHounds — under the nom de blog Aunty Em Ericann — one of the bizarre rumours I heard concerned Flavor Flav and Bill O’Reilly, who would prefer to DO IT LIVE!!!

The crazy rumour was this: That before Maureen E. McPhilmy married Bill O’Reilly — aka Loofah Lad — she once dated Flavor Flav. I know! Right?

This was the kind of job the Not Now Silly Newsroom was made for and I set out to get this wacky story confirmed or denied.

It took a while, but I finally got Flavor Flav ON THE RECORD concerning this rumour. He denied wholeheartedly that he ever dated the ex-wife of the Falafel King, but it certainly made him laugh. It made me laugh, too. Still does.

Florida Joined the Union ► Throwback Thursday

It was probably inevitable — Manifest Destiny, and all that — but on this date in 1845, Florida became the 27th state in the Union.

The first Europeans to set foot in Florida were the Conquistadors, led by Juan Ponce de León in 1513. It is a myth that he was looking for the famed Fountain of Youth.

Of course, long before the Spanish got to Florida, there were aboriginal peoples living all along the peninsula. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

By the 16th century, the earliest time for which there is a historical record, major Native American groups included the Apalachee (of the Florida Panhandle), the Timucua (of northern and central Florida), the Ais (of the central Atlantic coast), the Tocobaga (of the Tampa Bay area), the Calusa (of southwest Florida) and the Tequesta (of the southeastern coast).

The Spanish founded St. Augustine in 1565, making it the oldest continually inhabited city in the U.S. But, St. Augustine has another distinction, so says the Wiki:

Florida attracted numerous Africans and African Americans from adjacent
British colonies in North America who sought freedom from slavery. The
Spanish Crown gave them freedom, and those freedmen settled north of St. Augustine in Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first free black settlement of its kind in what became the United States.[citation needed]

In 1763, Spain traded Florida to the Kingdom of Great Britain for control of Havana, Cuba, which had been captured by the British during the Seven Years’ War. It was part of a large expansion of British territory following the country’s victory in the Seven Years’ War. Almost the entire Spanish population left, taking along most of the remaining indigenous population to Cuba.[14] The British soon constructed the King’s Road connecting St. Augustine to Georgia. The road crossed the St. Johns River at a narrow point, which the Seminole called Wacca Pilatka and the British named “Cow Ford”, both names ostensibly reflecting the fact that cattle were brought across the river there.[15][16][17]

However, England lost Florida back to the Spanish after they lost the Revolutionary War to the insurgent ‘Merkins. 

In 1810, parts of West Florida were annexed by proclamation of President James Madison, who claimed the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase. These parts were incorporated into the newly formed Territory of Orleans. The U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida to the Mississippi Territory in 1812. Spain continued to dispute the area, though the United States gradually increased the area it occupied. 

Seminole Indians based in East Florida began raiding Georgia settlements, and offering havens for runaway slaves. The United States Army led increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory, including the 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminole Indians by Andrew Jackson that became known as the First Seminole War. The United States now effectively controlled East Florida. Control was necessary according to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams
because Florida had become “a derelict open to the occupancy of every
enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other
earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them.”.[23]

Florida had become a burden to Spain, which could not afford to send
settlers or garrisons. Madrid therefore decided to cede the territory to
the United States through the Adams-Onís Treaty, which took effect in 1821.[24] President James Monroe was authorized on March 3, 1821 to take possession of East Florida and West Florida for the United States and provide for initial governance.[25] Andrew Jackson
served as military governor of the newly acquired territory, but only
for a brief period. On March 30, 1822, the United States merged East Florida and part of West Florida into the Florida Territory.[26]

Florida was admitted to the Union as a Slave State on this day in 1845.

I’ve lived in Florida for the past 10.5 years and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t like it all that much. 

South Florida is hundreds of miles of continuous suburbia; single family homes and gated communities, between strip malls and gas stations, only interrupted by larger malls, condo complexes, and man-made drainage canals to keep The Everglades at bay. Not to mention Florida Man. And, the never-ending corruption. And, the stifling heat and oppresive humidity.

I agree with Bugs Bunny:

It hardly matters. Florida will be under water soon anyway.

Peter Townshend, Meher Baba, and Me ► Throwback Thursday

Kathy Hahn took this pic around the time I met Pete Townshend

When I first started my writing career, some 40+ years ago, it was to write about the music industry.

A college friend and I started up a small music publication called Zoundz (with a backwards zedd on the end). It was the first music rag of its kind in Toronto, a FREE publication that coud be scored at the cash register of every record store in Toronto, including the big 2: Sam The Record Man and A&A Records, located next door to Sam’s.

Later I started writing for Cheap Thrills, the house organ of Concert Productions International (CPI). It was the biggest concert promoter in the city because it had a lock on Maple Leaf Gardens, the biggest venue in the city.

For both publications I wrote album reviews, critiqued Rock and Roll concerts, and was able to hobnob backstage with some of the greats of the industry. It’s all about reputation, of course. Once I had developed some respectability, promoters and record company reps would call me up to offer interviews with some of their celebrities, which is how I came to interview Peter Townshend, of The Who.

Townshend was a follower of Meher Baba, a spiritual leader who claimed to be the Avatar, defined by the Wiki as: 

In Hinduism, an avatar (/ˈævəˌtɑːr, ˌævəˈtɑːr/;[1] Hindustani: [əʋˈt̪aːr] from Sanskrit अवतार avatāra “descent”) is a deliberate descent of a deity to Earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being (e.g., Vishnu for Vaishnavites), and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation“, but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.[2][3] 

The phenomenon of an avatar is observed in Hinduism,[4] Ayyavazhi, and Sikhism[citation needed]. Avatar is regarded as one of the core principles of Hinduism.[5]

I remember so very little about the interview with Townshend because I was nervous and — after all — it was 40 years ago. I don’t even remember which publication bought this interview (and can’t seem to find it in my archives. Maybe it was a radio interview instead). However, I will never forget the secret code I had to use to get past the front desk at the hotel and the doorkeeper at Townshend’s hotel room:

“Temple, eel, and ocean: Baba rules them all.”

I was already somewhat familiar with the teachings of Meher Baba because my dear friend Kathy Hahn, who I worked with at Island Records Canada, was also a devoté of Baba’s. We were both delighted that Townshend was using a Baba quote as his secret password. 

While you may have not heard of Meher Baba before, you are certainly familiar with his most famous quote:

“Don’t worry. Be happy.”
Today is Meher Baba’s 122nd birthday. He died in 1969, but still has tens of thousands of followers around the world. You can find out more about Meher Baba at these websites:

 …and his many words of wisdom can
be found at Maher Baba Wikiquotes.

Is Ted Nugent Racist? ► Throwback Thursday

For this week’s Throwback Thursday I am — once again — reaching into my vast writing archives. In 2012 I was freelancing for Stones Detroit, a website out of…err…Detroit. This original article was commissioned by my editor.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist?
Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”
OPINION by Headly Westerfield — October 2012

 

The house I lived in on Gilchrist Street

When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5 houses away from David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently, have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his crazy, racist rant earlier this week.

Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

Nice imagery.

Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news. More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?

Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive, there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the ’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism, pure and simple.

At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their neighbourhoods with Black folk.

The racial strife only became worse during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000 Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.

After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things would have been much different.

I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist. The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.

Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post. I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Originally published at Stones Detroit.

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

Is Ted Nugent A Racist? Our Stones Detroit Writer Says, “Yes”

OPINION by Headly Westerfield
When I was growing up in Detroit I lived on Gilchrist Street, 5
houses away David Palmer, the original drummer for the Amboy Dukes. When
the Amboy Dukes were rehearsing in Dave’s garage, all us neighbourhood
kids would gather at the end of the driveway and listen, but we’d catch
hell if we took one step onto the property. As a teenager I saw the
Amboy Dukes dozens of times in large and small venues and, consequently,
have followed the career of Ted Nugent ever since, culminating in his
crazy, racist rant earlier this week.
Where to begin? Let’s start with the Vietnam War. Nugent, who is a
long-time board member of the NRA, and brandishes weapons on stage, was a
self-admitted Draft Dodger.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that
day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more
washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris
build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard,
really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’
kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with
nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never
touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the
syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to
the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants
got crusted up.

Nice imagery. Nugent, the coward, also claimed to have snorted
crystal meth just before his physical. However, that’s all old news.
More recently Nugent had to explain himself to the Secret Service for remarks he made earlier this year:

Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama
becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in
jail by this time next year. Being at the NRA event, God Bless ya, good
indicator, but if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to
clean house of this vile, evil America Hating Administration, I don’t
even know what you’re made out of.

This column could be filled with just the incendiary comments he’s
made, like when he called President Obama a punk and suggested he suck on the machine gun he was brandishing on stage. However, I’d much rather deal with the comments he made this week to Brett M. Decker of The Washington Times.

Decker: You and I are Motown soul
brothers, as you’ve put it before. When outsiders visit our hometown
today, the reaction is always the same: This place looks like some
post-apocalyptical disaster area. Once one of America’s richest, most
dynamic business centers, how did the Motor City fall so far and what
lessons can be learned from the demise of Detroit?
Nugent: It is so very true that my birth city of
Detroit was the cleanest, most neighborly, positive-energy, work-ethic
epicenter of planet earth when I was born there in 1948, right on
through to the 1960s. Enter the liberal death wish of Mayor Coleman
Young and a tsunami of negative, anti-productivity policies by liberal
Democrats that put a voodoo curse on our beloved Motor City. When you
train and reward people to scam, cheat and refuse to be productive,
there is only one direction that society can go: straight down the
toilet. It is truly a heartbreaker. Some wonderful people are still to
be found back home, but they are outnumbered by the pimps, whores and
welfare brats that have made bloodsucking a lifestyle. And now we have a
president who is doing everything he can to take the whole country down
that same path. Truly amazing.

This is wrong on so many levels. Let’s count the ways, shall we? To
begin with Coleman Young didn’t become mayor until 1974, well after the
’60s ended. What sent Detroit “straight down the toilet” was racism,
pure and simple.
At a time when Detroit could have become a model for integration, it
was already going the other way and becoming one of the most segregated
cities in the United States. As far back as the 1920s respectable people
like Dr. Ossian Sweet found that Whites were not going to share their
neighbourhoods with Black folk. The racial strife only became worse
during World War Two. Blacks from the south were recruited to help in
the factories of the Arsenal of Democracy, as Detroit was called at the
time. In 1943 Packard promoted 3 Black men to work the line and 25,000
Whites went out on strike.  During the strike one voice was heard on the
loudspeaker to say, “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Nigger.” This was just 3 weeks before the Detroit Race Riot of 1943.
After the war ended and throughout the ’50s, when both Blacks and
Whites had enough money to buy houses, Whites could purchase anywhere
they wanted, but Blacks could not. Properties were “redlined,” in the
vernacular of the day, and Blacks could only buy in certain
neighbourhoods, if they could get bank loans at all. Meanwhile, White
folk started to buy and build in the suburbs beyond 8 Mile Road. White
Flight had already begun in the 1950s, but it truly sped up after the
Detroit Riot of 1967. Had the White folk stayed in the city, things
would have been much different.
I’m not going to mince words: I find Ted Nugent’s comments racist.
The Detroit he remembers was “the cleanest, most neighborly,
positive-energy, work-ethic epicenter.” This was the White Detroit of
Nugent’s halcyon memories. The neighbourhood Nugent grew up in, and the
neighbourhood I grew up in, were all-White. Black Detroit? For Nugent
that’s the Detroit of the “liberal death wish” of Coleman Young, the
Black mayor, who put a “voodoo curse” — a Black curse — on his beloved
Detroit. “Pimps, whores and welfare brats” are all Nugent’s impression
of Black Detroit as well. No one describes White folk that way.
Detroit gets knocked by a lot of people, but to hear Nugent ignore Detroit history to spout racist tripe is beyond the pale.

It’s hard to sum up a few hundred years of history in a short post.
I’ve written far more extensively about Detroit’s Race Relations on my blog in an essay called The Detroit Riots ► Unpacking My Detroit. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

– See more at:
http://stonesdetroit.com/is-ted-nugent-a-racist-our-stones-detroit-writer-says-yes/#sthash.JbhxdXZB.Tx3mALHp.dpuf

Mighty Mouse ► Throwback Thursday

On this day in 1955 Mighty Mouse Playhouse is first broadcast on tee vee.

Mighty Mouse originally appeared 1942 as cartoon shorts in movie theaters. According to the WikiWackyWoo: 

The character was originally conceived by Paul Terry.[1] Created as a parody of Superman, he first appeared in 1942 in a theatrical animated short titled The Mouse of Tomorrow. His original name was Super Mouse, but after seven films produced with that name from 1942-1943, it was changed to Mighty Mouse for 1944’s The Wreck of the Hesperus, after Paul Terry learned that another character named “Super Mouse” was to be published by Marvel Comics.

Sing along with me:

Mister Trouble never hangs around

When he hears this Mighty sound.

“Here I come to save the day”

That means that Mighty Mouse is on his way.

Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right

Mighty Mouse will join the fight.

On the sea or on the land,

He gets the situation well in hand.


In one of his first appearances on Saturday Night Live,
Andy Kaufman does the Mickey Mouse theme song.

Mighty Mouse moved from movie theaters to television in 1955, where the cartoons lived on for decades, inculcating generations of children with the theme song. Again, according to the WikiWackyWoo: 

Mighty Mouse was not extraordinarily popular in theatrical cartoons, but was still Terrytoons‘
most popular character. What made him a cultural icon was television.
Most of the short film studios, both live-action and animated, were in
decline by the 1950s, pressured both by the loss of film audiences to
television as well as the increased popularity (and financial benefits)
of low-budget, stylized, limited animation.
Most of the studios cashed out of the short-film production business
and began licensing or selling their back catalogs to television. Paul Terry went as far as to sell the entire Terrytoon company to CBS in 1955.[1] The network began running Mighty Mouse Playhouse in December 1955. It remained on the air for nearly twelve years (and featured The Mighty Heroes
during the final season). Mighty Mouse cartoons became a staple of
children’s television programming for a period of over thirty years,
from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Just pretend it’s Saturday morning and you are a kid again. Here’s some Mighty Mouse for you to enjoy:








The Beatles Meet Brian Epstein ► Throwback Thursday

On this day in 1961 The Beatles meet with Brian Epstein to discuss whether he would manage them. And, nothing was ever the same again.

According to This Day In Music:

Brian Epstein invited The Beatles into his office to discuss the possibility of becoming their manager. John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best arrived late for the 4pm meeting, (they had been drinking at the Grapes pub in Matthew Street), but Paul McCartney was not with them, because, as Harrison explained, he had just got up and was “taking a bath”.

McCartney, bathed and dressed, eventually showed up and The Beatles decided to let Epstein become their manager. Over the next few years he helped take them to the “toppermost of the poppermost” as the most successful boy band of all time.

As the WikiWackyWoo tells us:

Epstein first discovered the Beatles in November 1961 during a lunchtime Cavern Club performance. He was instantly impressed and saw great potential in the group.[1] Epstein was rejected by nearly all major recording companies in London, then he secured a meeting with George Martin, head of EMI‘s Parlophone
label. In May 1962, Martin agreed to sign the Beatles, partly because
of Epstein’s conviction that the group would become internationally
famous.[2]

The Beatles’ early success has been attributed to Epstein’s
management style, and the band trusted him without hesitation. In
addition to handling the Beatles’ business affairs, Epstein often
stepped in to mediate personal disputes within the group. The Beatles’
unquestioning loyalty to Epstein later proved detrimental, as the band
rarely read contracts before signing them.[3] Shortly after the song “Please Please Me” rose to the top of the charts in 1963, Epstein advised the creation of Northern Songs, a publishing company that would control the copyrights of all Lennon–McCartney compositions recorded between 1963 and 1973. Music publisher Dick James and his partner Charles Silver owned 51-percent of the company, Lennon and McCartney each owned 20%, and Epstein owned 9%.[4] By 1969, Lennon and McCartney had lost control of all publishing rights to ATV Music Publishing.
Still, Epstein’s death in 1967 marked the beginning of the group’s
dissolution and had a profound effect on each individual Beatle. In
1997, Paul McCartney said, “If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.”[5]

That’s not all that happened to The Beatles on this day. Today in Beatles History gives us the full lowdown:

1938: Marriage of Alfred Lennon and Julia Stanley. After the ceremony, they go to the movies and then to their respective houses.

1963: Concert at the Guild Hall, Portsmouth (‘The Beatles Autumn Tour’) (postponed 12 November).

1964: Brian flies from Los Angeles to London.
1964: Appearance on BBC-TV’s ‘Top Of the Pops’.

1965: Start of UK tour, with the Moody Blues and The Kobbas & Beryl Mardsen. Concert at the Odeon Cinema, Glasgow.
1965: UK single release: ‘We Can Work It Out’/’Day Tripper’. First single officially released as double A side.
1965: UK LP release: ‘Rubber Soul’.

1966: ‘Yesterday’… And Today’, 24th week in the Top 200 (Billboard).

1971: UK LP release: ‘Fly’.

1977: Start of ‘London Town’ LP sessions at AIR London Studios.

1980: John and Yoko’s apartment, Dakota Building. Photographic session of John and Yoko, with Annie Leibovitz.

1988: 10th episode of a BBC series, essentially based on ‘The Beatles At The Beeb’ collection.

1993: Paul’s concert at the Pacaembu Stadium, Sao Paulo, Brazil (‘The New World Tour’).

The Gettysburg Address ► Throwback Thursday

On this day in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, considered one of the greatest speeches ever given in English.

A mere 271 words, the Gettysburg Address followed the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery by Edward Everett. That speech must have exhausted the crowd. It lasted more than 2 hours and contained more than 13,600 words.

Lincoln’s short speech lasted only a few minutes, but has gone down in history as one of the greatest of his career.

As the WikiWackyWoo explains, Lincoln was under the weather at the time:

During the train trip from Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg on November 18, Lincoln remarked to John Hay that he felt weak. On the morning of November 19, Lincoln mentioned to John Nicolay
that he was dizzy. In the railroad car the President rode with his
secretary, John G. Nicolay, his assistant secretary, John Hay, the three
members of his Cabinet who accompanied him, William Seward, John Usher and Montgomery Blair,
several foreign officials and others. Hay noted that during the speech
Lincoln’s face had ‘a ghastly color’ and that he was ‘sad, mournful,
almost haggard.’ After the speech, when Lincoln boarded the 6:30 pm
train for Washington, D.C., he was feverish and weak, with a severe
headache. A protracted illness followed, which included a vesicular rash
and was diagnosed as a mild case of smallpox. It thus seems highly likely that Lincoln was in the prodromal period of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg address.[10]

The Hay version of the speech

Yet, there’s no agreed upon text of the speech:

Despite the historical significance of Lincoln’s speech, modern
scholars disagree as to its exact wording, and contemporary
transcriptions published in newspaper accounts of the event and even
handwritten copies by Lincoln himself differ in their wording,
punctuation, and structure.[16][17]
Of these versions, the Bliss version, written well after the speech as a
favor for a friend, is viewed by many as the standard text.[18]
Its text differs, however, from the written versions prepared by
Lincoln before and after his speech. It is the only version to which
Lincoln affixed his signature, and the last he is known to have written.[18]

Here is the text that every grade school child memorized:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate,
we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The Expoding Whale ► Throwback Thursday

It hardly seems like 45 years ago, but November 12, 1970 was a whale of a day.

It happens all the time: a dead whale washes up on shore, threatening to stink up the joint unless something is done. But what?

When a a sperm whale washed up on the beach at Florence, Oregon, the authorities sprung into action. As the WikiWackyWoo explains, they left it up to rank amateurs:

All Oregon beaches are under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department,[3]
but in 1970, Oregon beaches were technically classified as state
highways, so responsibility for disposing of the carcass fell upon the
Oregon Highway Division (now known as the Oregon Department of Transportation, or ODOT).[4] After consulting with officials from the United States Navy,
they decided that it would be best to remove the whale the same way as
they would remove a boulder. They thought burying the whale would be
ineffective as it would soon be uncovered, and believed dynamite would
disintegrate the whale into pieces small enough for scavengers to clear up.

Thus, half a ton of dynamite was applied to the carcass. The engineer
in charge of the operation, George Thornton, stated—on camera, in an
interview with Portland newsman Paul Linnman—that he wasn’t exactly sure
how much dynamite would be needed. (Thornton later explained that he
was chosen to remove the whale because the district engineer, Dale
Allen, had gone hunting).[5][6]

WATCH THE FUN:

As it happened, there was an expert on the scene, but no one listened:

Coincidentally, a military veteran from Springfield with explosives
training, Walter Umenhofer, was at the scene scoping a potential
manufacturing site for his employer.[1]
Umenhofer later told The Springfield News reporter Ben Raymond Lode
that he had warned Thornton that the amount of dynamite he was using was
very wrong—when he first heard that 20 cases were being used he was in
disbelief. He had known that 20 cases of dynamite was far too much
dynamite to be used. Instead of 20 cases they needed 20 sticks of
dynamite. Umenhofer said Thornton was not interested in the advice. In
an odd coincidence, Umenhofer’s brand-new Oldsmobile was flattened by a
chunk of falling blubber after the blast. He told Lode he had just
bought the Ninety-Eight Regency at Dunham Oldsmobile in Eugene, during
the “Get a Whale of a Deal” promotion.[1]

You can’t make this shit up, even tho’ some people accuse Wikipedia of doing so.

Meanwhile, exploding whales are not that uncommon. Watch:

Nat Turner Sentenced To Be Hanged ► Throwback Thursday

Benjamin Phipps, a local farmer, accidentally
discovers Nat Turner almost 2 months after the revolt

On this day in 1831, Nat Turner was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged as leader of the slave revolt of two months earlier.

Turner believed his revolt was ordained by God. According to History:

He was born on the Virginia plantation of Benjamin Turner, who allowed him to be instructed in reading, writing, and religion. Sold three times in his childhood and hired out to John Travis (1820s), he became a fiery preacher and leader of African-American slaves on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighbourhood, claiming that he was chosen by God to lead them from bondage.

Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the Sun (1831) that the time to rise up had come, and he enlisted the help of four other slaves in the area. An insurrection was planned, aborted, and rescheduled for August 21,1831, when he and six other slaves killed the Travis family, managed to secure arms and horses, and enlisted about 75 other slaves in a disorganized insurrection that resulted in the murder of 51 white people.

Afterwards, Turner hid nearby successfully for six weeks until his discovery, conviction, and hanging at Jerusalem, Virginia, along with 16 of his followers. 

Racist cartoon depicting the revolt

If Nat Turner thought his revolt would lead to freedom for slaves, he was sadly mistaken. In fact, as the WikiWackyWoo tell us, it got worse for all Black folk, Free Black and slave alike.

In total, the state executed 56 blacks suspected of having been
involved in the uprising. But in the hysteria of aroused fears and anger
in the days after the revolt, white militias and mobs killed an
estimated 200 blacks, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion.[32]

[…]

The fear caused by Nat Turner’s insurrection and the concerns raised
in the emancipation debates that followed resulted in politicians and
writers responding by defining slavery as a “positive good”.[34] Such authors included Thomas Roderick Dew, a William and Mary College professor who published a pamphlet in 1832 opposing emancipation on economic and other grounds.[35]

Fears of uprisings polarized moderates and slave owners across the South. Municipalities across the region instituted repressive policies against
blacks. Rights were taken away from those who were free. The freedoms
of all black people in Virginia were tightly curtailed. Socially, the
uprising discouraged whites’ questioning the slave system from the
perspective that such discussion might encourage similar slave revolts. Manumissions
had decreased by 1810. The shift away from tobacco had made owning
slaves in the Upper South an excess to the planters’ needs, so they
started to hire out slaves. With the ending of the international slave
trade, the invention of the cotton gin, and opening up of new territories in the Deep South,
suddenly there was a growing market for the trading of slaves. Over the
next decades, more than a million slaves would be transported to the
Deep South in a forced migration as a result of the domestic slave
trade.

Nat Turner was hanged on November 11, 1831, just 6 days after he was tried, convicted, and sentenced.