I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
One degree of separation in the entertainment world ... is seemingly all it takes ...
SEPARATED at BIRTH - the late Queen singer Freddie Mercury and film star Borat (as portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen) .... and Cohen is still slated to portray Mercury in a biopic some time in the future.
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
ART NOTES - an exhibit of paintings by artist Kadir Nelson about Negro League Baseball is at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts through June 10th.
LEGAL NOTES - a landmark ruling was handed down in Turin, Italy as the owners of a company that made asbestos-based construction materials were sentenced to 16 years in jail and a fine of €200 million.
POLITICAL NOTES - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has defeated Kevin Rudd in a Labor Party internal leadership ballot by a count of 71-31. Rudd had resigned his position as foreign minister, in a bid to regain the post of prime minister from which he was ousted by Julia Gillard in 2010.
TUESDAY's CHILD is Waffle the Cat - a Pennsylvania pootie who won an award at a recent Pittsburgh cat show.
ART NOTES #2 - a museum in England has launched a campaign to buy an 1868 painting by the Impressionist Edouard Manet - to prevent it from leaving the UK.
ART NOTES - two separate exhibits about the painter Frida Kahlo: one a photographic portfolio by Nickolas Muray, the other entitled Frida's Style - which focuses on traditional women's fabrics and costumes from Mexico - are at the Tucson, Arizona Museum of Art through June 3rd.
WHILE THE BAND is not expected to record any new material: the legendary punk rockers The Sex Pistols have signed a deal with Universal to re-release its entire back catalogue, plus any unreleased material which may exist.
FIVE HUNDRED YEARS after the death of the Florentine explorer and chronicler Amerigo Vespucci - and whose name was adapted for two Western continents, not that of Christopher Columbus - his legacy is being given a new look, including an exhibition at St. John's University in New York.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Frankie the Cat - an Australian kitteh who indeed landed on her feet - alas, from a height - but thanks to generosity from many people, her $5,000(Aus) surgery fee (which involved bone grafts) was covered.
COMIC BOOK NOTES - the readers of Comic Heroes magazine voted for Batman - the alias of wealthy Bruce Wayne - as their top comic hero, ahead of Spider-Man and with Superman in third place.
WHILE FIVE YEARS AGO the 12 million Mexicans who live in the US were given the right to vote (for the first time) in its presidential election - this year's July 1st election has only marginally more voters who applied to vote (62,000) than last time due to many hardships: including sending forms by mail and a deadline nearly six months before the election.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - musician Willie Nelson and "Harry Potter" figure Argus Filch (as portrayed by actor David Bradley).
INCREDIBLY the same Italian cruise line whose Costa Concordia was shipwrecked off the Italian coast: had a ship (the Costa Allegra) which caught on fire in the Indian Ocean, though all of its passengers are now safe, and had praise for the captain and crew.
Captain Francesco Schettino ...... call your office.
ART NOTES - a career retrospective of the 80 year-old German painter Gerhard Richter - entitled Panorama - is at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany through May 13th.
IN THE NORTHEASTERN Spanish town of Rasquera - its town government is considering a proposal to grow marijuana for Barcelona's medical users, who have offered to reimburse the town in excess of 1/2 million dollars a year.
YUK for today - back in the late 1970's, one of the American groups in the punk vanguard were the Cleveland band The Dead Boys - whose lead singer was named Steven Bator, but was a/k/a Stiv Bators (who died in 1990).
In 1978, Bators posed for this photo with a young
Brooke Shields - and given that it was at the same time the band released its second album
We Have Come for Your Children - Bators has this
"Where did we go wrong?!?" look on his face.
THURSDAY's CHILD is your next Senator from the Commonwealth of Virgina: as Hank the Cat is running for the Senate seat being vacated by James Webb. His opponents are Democrat (and former governor) Tim Kaine and the former Senator Macaca, trying to win back his old seat.
George Allen responds by saying
Cisco the Cat is his
"Cat coalition co-chair".
But wait .... now there is an attack ad against Hank the Cat .... including the insinuation that Virginians shouldn't vote for a Maine Coon Cat ... so stay tuned, this could be a long, drawn-out campaign.
EACH YEAR there is the much-anticipated Eurovision Song Contest - think of it as "European Idol", with one contestant from each country and voting done Continent-wide. Normally, each nation's competitor tends to be on the young side ... but Britain's entry this year will be the 75 year-old crooner Engelbert Humperdinck - best known for his 1967 hit "Release Me", which kept The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" off the #1 spot in the UK - who hopes to make the final round in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the 26th of May.
POLITICAL NOTES - campaigning as the left's candidate in the French presidential election coming up later this spring, François Hollande visited France's sixth largest city ... London, England with 300,000 French expats.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Weekly World News Quiz from the BBC.
FRIDAY's CHILD was named Allie Cat by an Illinois woman who (on a 125 mile day-trip to Chicago to shop) happened to see a group of stray cats .... and returned the next day to find the one cat ... that she just couldn't get out of her mind all night.
SPORTING NOTES - the veteran Montreal Gazette sportswriter Red Fisher has asked readers to pray for the recovery of the much-admired 80 year-old Hall of Fame hockey player Jean Béliveau - who is in a hospital after suffering a stroke.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose who has died of prostate cancer at the age of 64. Years ago, a reviewer for "Stereo Review" magazine named Larry Klein described listening to many bands including, "something called Montrose". Still, Ronnie left his mark first in Edgar Winter's band (and vocalist Sammy Hagar was a co-founder of the band Montrose).
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Fox anchorman Shepard Smith ...........
........... and
Jean-Claude Van Damme - the Belgian action film star.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... someone whose work as a lyricist was always secondary to a day job (as a teacher and later a Lockheed employee) was John Blackburn who - along with music composer Karl Suessdorf - penned several hits during the 1940's-1950's.
The Massilon, Ohio native started out in regional theatre, winding up as a drama teacher at Bennington College in southwest Vermont for two years. Relocating to the West Coast in the early 1940's, he worked at Lockheed during the day and the Pasadena Playhouse at night, eventually meeting up with Suessdorf when they began writing songs together. "Need You" became a hit for Jo Stafford, and Oscar Peterson recorded their tune "Susquehanna", which led Blackburn to open Independent Selective Records in 1950: the first label to record the R&B group The Hollywood Flames.
But sales were tepid, and John Blackburn wound up working at Rockwell International (contributing to the Gemini and Apollo space programs) by day.
Upon his retirement in 1976, Blackburn - for the first time - devoted his entire efforts to songwriting and regional theatre in the area. He relocated to Oregon in his later years, yet never giving up songwriting even if his salad days were past him.
John Blackburn died in November, 2006 at the age of 93 (his partner Karl Suessdorf had died in 1982 at the age of 61).
By far their best known song was 1944's Moonlight in Vermont that stemmed from recollections Blackburn had from his two years in the Green Mountain State (although a bit faulty: as sycamore trees are not plentiful there).
Nonetheless, this haiku-like tune (without rhyming lyrics) was made famous by Margaret Whiting and has been recorded by a diverse group from Frank Sinatra to Carmen McRae to Captain Beefheart(!) to Linda Ronstadt to Sam Cooke to Willie Nelson. And below you can hear my favorite version (from Sarah Vaughn).
Pennies in a stream
Falling leaves of a sycamore
Moonlight in Vermont
Telegraph cables
they sing down the highway
And travel each bend in the road
People who meet in this romantic setting
Are so hypnotized by the lovely...
Evening summer breeze
Warbling of a meadowlark
You and I
and moonlight in Vermont