-
2009: Day 206

From The How'd That Work Out For You? Dept.: (1792) Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and commander of the Allied Army, issued the Brunswick Manifesto, which was essentially a proclamation threatening the people of Paris with physical harm if the revolting citizens (I couldn't resist) acted violently toward the French royal family. The result was rather the opposite of that intended. Basically, it's a bad idea to send word to a dirty mob stewing in the middle of summer that they better not step over the line.

Born Today:
(1870) Illustrator/artist Maxfield Parrish. Here's a gallery of his work.

(1894) Academy Awards-winning character actor Walter Brennan.

(1943) British musician, best known as the drummer for The Yardbirds, Jim McCarty.

(1951) Attorney (former?) and anti-obscenity/violence in video games, broadcast media, rap music, etc., Sandy Vagina Jack Thompson.

(1965) Another of those faces I knew, but not the name, it's Illeana Douglas' birthday.

(1967) Actor Matt LeBlanc.

(1973) TV and film actor David Denham.

(1973) Writer and podcaster Mur Lafferty.

(1978) Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube baby."

Last Gasps:
(1843) Glasgow-born chemist and inventor of waterproof fabrics, Charles Macintosh. The Mackintosh raincoat, despite the alternate spelling, is named for him.

(1982) Cartoonist, creator of Prince Valiant, Hal Foster.

(2003) Iron Butterfly guitarist Erik Brann.

(2003) Director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man, The Believers, among others.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
Insurance Company-Driven Propaganda Storm It's almost heartening to see them go to these lengths - they're getting a little scared - though I worry how many wingnut media outlets will reference the report as if it's substantive..? ( From the Washington Post ) The Insurance Industry's Deceptive Report by Ezra Klein In the hallowed tradition of the tobacco and energy industries, the health insurance industry has commissioned a report (pdf) projecting doom and despair for those who seek to reform its business practices. The report was farmed out to the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has something of a history with this sort of thing: In the early-'90s, the tobacco industry commissioned PWC to estimate the economic devastation that would result from a tax on tobacco. The report was later analyzed by the Arthur Andersen Economic Consulting group, which concluded that "the cumulative effect of PW’s methods … is to produce patently unreliable results.&qu
Read more

The Tease of Things I Don't Need

-
Image
     The lure of things we don't need, could easily find greater needs to apply the cash to, and which we may not even have the space for, is a very First(ish) World Problem, to be sure.        HasLabs is a special projects division of Hasbro, that occasionally pitches large and/or elaborate items - oversized figures and/or vehicles - essentially crowdfunding each project. They set the price, and a funding line - the number of people who need to pledge to buy one (or more -- up to five) at the announced price, then collect the names and information of interested parties for a period of 45 days. Once the number of pledged buys hits the target, the project is greenlit.      A couple years ago there was a HasLabs special build project aiming to fund a production run for an oversized (32" tall), elaborately-articulated action figure of Marvel comics' Devourer of Worlds: Galactus. Back on July 18, 2021 I posted a piece on the project, which at the time was just two days
Read more

Oct.13-19 - More Returns and Changes

-
Image
      Even though I've already watched the pair of debut episodes of Frasier (see next paragraph), and this week's Star Trek: Lower Decks (which continues to do a stellar job of mining  previous Trek series for character, episode and extraterrestrial culture lore and deftly applying them at breakneck speeds), I still have multiple things I'm looking forward to catching up on, including new eps of Gen V (Amazon Prime), Loki (Disney+), and both Archer and Welcome to Wrexham (both on Hulu), along with the first two episodes of a final six for Doom Patrol over on Max... and that's just off the top of my head, so getting this week's streaming post out of the way brings those one step closer for me.       I've watched the two episodes of the new Frasier series that arrived on Paramount+ this week, and while it was a mixed bag it was good to see the character back, with him attempting to move into his third act by returning to Boston, where we first met the ch
Read more