courtesy retrojunk.com


I'm learning why broadcasting at PBS is different from other networks. After the programs are approved and sent out from the main office in Washington, the individual PBS affiliate stations are free to stick them where they will. So I'm seeing the premiere times of Click & Clack As the Wrench Turns all over the place.

In the two largest media outlets, WNET New York and KCET Los Angeles, CLick & Clack will premiere this weds July 9th at 10:00PM, right behind a Science documentary on Iraqi bacteria. WGBH Boston at 8:00PM, WETA Washington on the Friday the 11th at 10:30PM. All these channels do reruns during the week as well.

While it certainly raises the bar for success, it will make it all the sweeter if we do "click" with audiences. It reminds me of the first Star Trek season in 1966, which ran at 10:00PM Weds after the Andy Williams Show. My mom yelled at me to go to bed, but I stayed up to watch it anyway. "This is trania..."

Check your local listing!

hmmm..10 o'clock, me play against Daily Show and Colbert...uh ohhh!!!"

Quiz: Why does the eagle in the Seal of the United States hold five arrows in one talon?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is an ftp site?
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History for 7/3/2008
Birthdaze: King Louis XI of France "the Spider King"1423, Franz Kafka, Mr. Preserved Fish -New York Congressman-1819, Dave Barry, Leos Janacek, John Singleton Copley, Ken Russell, Tom Stoppard, George Saunders, Peter Fountain, Tom Cruise is 46

Today is the Feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, “Doubting-Thomas,” the patron saint of architects.

1826- Elderly, dying Thomas Jefferson was drifting in and out of consciousness at his home in Monticello. He would be cognizant long enough to ask “Is it the 4th of July yet?” The author of the Declaration of Independence was grimly hanging on, determined to see one more Independence Day.

1863-PICKET'S CHARGE-CLIMAX OF GETTYSBURG-Robert E. Lee launched his last fresh divisions in a grand frontal attack to win the war. 15,000 Virginians, South Carolinians and Floridians walk across one mile of open ground, while being shot at from the whole Yankee Army. Even against such long odds they almost break the Union center. The entire attack took thirty minutes, German, British and Austrian diplomat observers in full dress uniforms climbed a tree to watch. Picket’s division suffered 50% casualties including all his leading generals. General Lothario Armistead put his hat on his sword point and shouted "Who will follow me?" Lo Armistead’s father had commanded Fort McHenry during the “Rockets Red Glare” British attack in 1814. Armistead reached the union artillery before he was killed. Ironically Armistead and the Yankee commander Winfield Hancock (who was also shot) were personal friends and the last time they were together was for dinner in a little western town called Los Angeles. When one North Carolina flagbearer survived murderous gunfire from all sides and lived to reach the union wall, the men in blue instead of killing him, shook his hand. Strange to modern readers is that Robert E. Lee had behind his position a small marching band playing popular tunes of the day like “Pop Goes the Weazel” and “Listen to the Mocking Bird” above the screams and exploding shells. Finally the Southern assault spent itself and started to recede. Men retreated backwards because they didn’t want to be shot in the back. Lee rode out and told the survivors: “This is my fault. All of this..” That night he wrote his resignation to Richmond. But no fault would stick on their beloved old general.
After the Civil War George Pickett were ostracized by Southern society for daring to criticize Lee’s decision to attack. Pickett bitterly said:" That old man destroyed my division." Picket was family friends with the Lincolns. When Picketts’ son was born Yankee generals sent baby gifts with a white flag through the lines.

Picket's Charge by Belgian artist Paul Philliporteaux. He and his team did 360 degree paintings in a round building called a Cyclorama, an early pre-motion pictures entertainment.I saw this one, and the one at Atlanta and Waterloo.

1916-Hetty Green "the Witch of Wall Street" dies at 80. Her eccentric cheapness created the millionaire-bag lady myth. The richest woman in America, worth around $100 million, she lived in a dumpy apartment in Hoboken, refused to pay for a doctor when her son broke his leg, and stole bread off the tables at restaurants.

1931- The Cab Calloway Orchestra recorded 'The St. James Infirmary Blues."

1937- In California the Del Mar Racetrack opened. Part owner singer Bing Crosby personally welcomed the first customers to his track.

1946- Millionaire aviator Howard Hughes crashed an experimental airplane into four homes in Beverly Hills. Hughes had crashed planes before without much injury, but this crash left him near death. His slow recuperation addicted him to morphine and codine.

1969- Brian Jones, having been kicked out of the Rolling Stones just days before -- drowns in his swimming pool. His home was once the estate of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne. To this day, conspiracy theorists still insist foul play was involved. More likely, lots of drugs and depression.

1969- On the same day, John and Yoko are almost killed in a car crash, along with
John's son Julian and Yoko's daughter Kyoko.

1971- Rock singer Jim Morrison 28, found dead of a heart attack in his bathtub in Paris.

1978- The Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s reprimand of N.Y. Pacifica radio station WBAI’s airing of a George Carlin comedy routine called the “7 Deadly Words”, reciting expletives you cannot say on radio or television even today and I can’t write here.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is an ftp site?

Answer: File Transfer Protocol. A site to transfer, store and retrieve large digital files.

Another good review for Click & Clack.

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/07/01/210909.php

now all we need is an audience.


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Quiz: What is an ftp site?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is a full-bird colonel?
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History for 7/2/2008
Birthdays: Bishop Thomas Cranmer (1429) , Christoph Witobald Gluck, Herman Hesse, Medgar Evers, Patrice Lamumba, Thurgood Marshall, Andrez Kertesz, Richard Petty, animator Abe Levitow, Ahmad Jamal, Cheryl Ladd, Jose Canseco, Jerry Hall, Imelda Marcos, Ron Silver, Brock Peters, Larry David, Lindsay Lohan is 22

6BC.-Feast of the Visitation- When the Virgin Mary visited Saint Elizabeth and confided in her that she was pregnant with baby Jesus. The Magnificat is Mary's reply to the Angel of the Annunciation--"Magnicifcat anima mea Dominum..." "My spirit doth magnify the Lord" Many great composers like Vivaldi and Bach wrote choral masses called Magnificats for this occasion.

1776- AMERICAN CONTINENTAL CONGRESS VOTES FOR INDEPENDENCE- Deep into a hot rainy Philadelphia night the delegates finally voted the ultimate break with the mother country. At this time most Americans still referred to England as 'home'. No colony had ever broken away from their mother country and become an independent nation. And as far as the document Thomas Jefferson had written, called the Declaration of Independence, there were 46 separate revisions. The Southern states would not vote until the anti-slavery clauses were dropped. A clause stating New England Protestants objecting to the tolerance of Roman Catholics was dropped. One cancer-wracked delegate rode 80 miles just to be there to effect the vote. The final vote was 12 colonies yay, 0-nay and New York abstaining, "The Business is Done." John Adams said.
Two days were spent cleaning up the documents revisions, and approving the final draft. John Adams always thought the great national celebration should be July 2nd, not the 4th, because to him that was the day the important vote happened.'

1789- Two weeks before the French Revolutionaries storm the Bastille, prisoner the Marquis DeSade was transferred to another jail after he grabbed one old inmates ear trumpet and recited out the window some sexual anecdotes about the warden to the laughing crowd below.

1881-PRESIDENTIAL ASSASINATION. President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau. Guiteau was a demented gov't worker who expected a job when Garfield was elected. He said he believed in "Bible-Communism" and that he worked for "Jesus & Company". When nobody took notice of him Guiteau decided to kill the President, then ask the Vice President Arthur for a job. On a platform at Washington's Union Station Charles Guiteau shot the President in the back, dropped his gun and announced:" I am the last Stalwart. Arthur is now President !" Garfield lingered three months in great pain before he died. Chester Allen Arthur was a political hack who's only job before being president was collector of tolls for the Port of New York. Woodrow Wilson called him" a nothing with whiskers". In fairness to Arthur he did help create civil-service qualifications and eliminate the corruptible spoils system. Standing next to Garfield when he was shot was Secretary of War Robert Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln. Convinced he was bad luck, Robert Lincoln never went near the White House again.

1890- The Sherman Anti-Trust Act passed. This law forbids business monopolies. J.P. Morgan said:"Trying to break up trusts is like trying to unscramble eggs!" It was invoked to break up Standard Oil (Exxon), Hollywood Studios in 1948, the ATT/Bell Telephone System and in 2000 against Bill Gates and Microsoft.

1900- THE FIRST MAN POWERED FLIGHT- No, not the Airplane, the Zeppelin. Count Von Zeppelin’s creation the LZ-1 made it’s first flight. The LZ-1 carries gently several passengers and mechanics 30 miles from Frederichshaven on Lake Constance to Immenstadt, making perfect time. By the time of the Hindenberg disaster there was a regular zeppelin service between Europe and Buenos Aires for years and it considered much safer than airplanes. But after the Hindenburg and the United States embargo of strategic helium Nazis Reischmarchal Herman Goring scraped what was left of the Zeppelin fleet in 1939.

1912- The First Automat restaurant.

1914- Under interrogation the 3 other Bosnian-Serb conspirators to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassination in Sarajevo confessed that they were members of the Black Hand, a terrorist group organized and paid covertly by the chief of Serbian intelligence. Scholars agree that if Austria had declared war on Serbia immediately no other nation would have intervened and World War One may not have had to happen. But because Austria prevaricated for weeks and insisted Germany had to help and provoke Russia, they began the tumbling of the great house of cards that caused the global disaster killing 22 million and contributing to a flu epidemic that killed a further 21 million. A popular best selling book of the time was called the Grand Illusion. It’s premise was that all the new networks of global finance and global diplomacy had made any new wars virtually impossible. After the war filmmaker Jean Renoir called his bitter anti-war film The Grand Illusion.

1927- The film Flesh and the Devil established a new star named Greta Garbo.

1934- Twentieth Century Fox signed a movie contract with child star Shirley Temple.

1937-AMELIA EARHART DISSAPPEARED. Over the Pacific near Howland Island the Coast Guard cutter Ithaca received the last radio signals from aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan. …."One half-hour fuel and no landfall in sight. We are in position….." Then nothing. They disappeared never to be found. There were all sorts of rumors, even that she was doing espionage for Washington and had been executed by the Japanese. In 1992 a scientist claims to have found 1930's era plane wreckage on a small waterless island near Java but the mystery is still considered unsolved.

1941- JAPAN OCCUPIED VIETNAM-When Germany defeated France in Europe, the French colony of Tonkin-Indochine stood alone in confusion. Should they take orders from Vichy or the Free-French exile government? Ignoring the protests of Britain and the United States the Japanese Army invaded Indochina. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto was a leader of the peace party with Prince Konoye trying to prevent the coming conflict. When he was told what the army had done without consulting the opposition parties, he just shrugged. He knew this would provoke America past the point of no return so he must start planning for a war with America.

1946-The Peace Treaty of Beverly Hills- SAG president Ronald Reagan brokers a labor settlement between the two rival Hollywood Unions, IATSE vs. CSU., temporarily ending a violent Hollywood strike. At this time Reagan went to work every day with a 32 mm Smith & Wesson under his coat.

1955-The Lawrence Welk T.V. Show debuts. wannaful,wannafull !

1961-In the foyer of his home in Ketchum Idaho, Nobel Prize winning writer Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. He blew most of his head off just leaving his lower jaw and some cheek. Papa Hemingway was always haunted by the suicide of his father. He was receiving electro-shock treatments at the Mayo Clinic for depression and alcoholism. He lived for awhile in Cuba and his office in Cuba is still kept by Fidel Castro the way he left it, even protecting the hordes of cats sired by Hemingway's original pair. In 1996 his granddaughter supermodel Margaux Hemingway committed suicide almost to the day.

1992- THE GREAT FLYING LAWNCHAIR- San Pedro resident Larry Walters flew 16,000 feet in the air in his lawnchair. He strapped 45 helium weather balloons to his chair and took along a sixpack of beer, a sandwich and a pellet gun. After his two hour flight he got entangled in some power lines. He was later fined by the FAA for violating LAX commercial airport airspace.

1998- In Paris during World Cup soccer, Mexican fan Rodrigo Rafael Ortega was arrested for drunkenly urinating on the eternal flame in honor of Frances Great War dead. The eternal flame had burned continuously since 1921, even the Nazi occupiers left it alone. Ortega was the first to ever put it out. Once again international soccer proves its ability to bring peoples together.
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Yesterdays’ Quiz: What is a full-bird colonel?

Answer: In the U.S. Army, the insignia for a colonel is an eagle symbol. The rank above Lieutenant Colonel and below Brigader General is a full Colonel, or in the slang term, a full bird colonel.

Today, one of the most popular articles on Yahoo news is about our Click & Clack show.




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080630/ap_en_ot/ap_on_tv_click___clack;_ylt=AtEXKhge9TX1O4RBv_7xcKgDW7oF

My entry is below- check 1945...
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Quiz: What is a full-bird colonel?

Yesterday’s Quiz answered below: What is bilge?
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History for 7/1/2008
Birthdays: Louis Bleriot, Tommy Dorsey, George Sand, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Princess Diana, Twyla Tharp, Carl Lewis, Jamie Farr, Sidney Pollack, Wally "Famous"Amos, Olivia DeHavilland is 92, Estee Lauder, Debbie Harry is 63, Genevieve Bujold, Karen Black, Leslie Caron is 77, Dan Ackroyd is 56. Andre Braugher is 46, Pamela Anderson is 41, Liv Tyler is 31

Welcome to July named for Julius Caesar. Before that the Romans called it month number five- "Quintilicus". They had a ten month calendar and ran out of names after Juno (June). So thank Julius Caesar that you don't have to celebrate the Fourth of Quintilicus.

1851-Painter James MacNeil Whistler applied to West Point Military Academy. After failing entrance exams he washes out and concentrates on becoming one of the most celebrated artists of the century. He later joked:" If silicon was a gas I’d be a major general by now!"

1858- Charles Darwin does a public reading of his theories on Evolution to the Linean Club in London.

1863- GETTYSBURG- the most famous battle ever fought on U.S. soil.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to invade north into Pennsylvania and hopefully by threatening Philadelphia and Washington force peace talks. Union General Meade shadowed his movements. With all their cavalry away chasing each other the two large armies groped around blindly through the backwoods of Lancaster County. Rebel General Henry Heath stopped in the little crossroads town of Gettysburg to get shoes for his men. While there he ran into some blue uniforms up the street. "Go on boys, that's jes some Pennsylvania militia." Heath said. Actually it turned out to be the Yankee's elite "Iron Brigade". A nasty firefight brewed up and both armies started to boil into each other like a slow motion trainwreck. Union General Winfield Scott Hancock drew up his cannon in a hilltop cemetery for defense. The battle would last three days and Lee's defeat would be the turning point of the Civil War.
Through the screams and gunsmoke one could read a little sign on the Gettysburg Cemetery gate: " The Carrying or Discharge of Firearms on these Premises are strictly Prohibited".

1867-HAPPY CANADA DAY- By treaty Her Majesties North American Colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, Maritimes, Prince Rupert Land and diverse other holdings are incorporated as the Autonomous Dominion of Canada. This master plan to consolidate the British Empire's colonial administration was invented by Lord Caernarvon, who Queen Victoria nicknamed "Twitters."

1898- THE CHARGE UP SAN JUAN HILL. Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders take the Spanish fortifications on the two hilltops above the harbor of Cuba's second city, Santiago. His main attack was actually up Kettle Hill and the Rough Riders were on foot, and Teddy was not in charge, but it made great hardcopy. Roosevelt"s superior was elderly former Confederate General Fightin' Joe Wheeler, who occasionally mixed up calling the Spaniards-"Yankees". Teddy was so excited about being under fire that at one point he stopped before a trooper dying of a terrible abdominal wound, shook his hand and said: " Isn't this just a splendid day ?!" Equally engaged in the fighting was the U.S. Ninth Cavalry, the famed Buffalo Soldiers led by Lt. John Pershing, who because of his affinity for his black troops was already referred to as Blackjack Pershing. Artist Frederick Remington was there as a news correspondent as was author Stephen Crane and William Randolph Hearst. On the Spanish side was a young soldier named Pablo Castro, who’s son would be Fidel Castro.

1933- Scarface Al Capone got his start in the crime from New York mobster Frankie Yale. But when Yale started to get inconvenient for Big Al, he didn’t have any problem with having him killed this day.

1941- Animation director Tex Avery stormed out of the Looney Tunes Studio when Jack Warner ordered cuts in the first Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare. Boss Leon Schlesinger put him on a four week suspension without pay, but Avery had already lined up a gig at MGM.

1941- THE FIRST TV COMMERICAL -During the live coverage of a Brooklyn Dodgers-Philadelphia Phillies baseball game the first FCC sanctioned television commercial aired. It was for the Bulova Watch Company.

1945- Bill Mauldin's wartime comic strip "Willie & Joe' ends it's run along with the European front line edition of Stars and Stripes magazine. Mauldin wanted to draw the foibles of the American fighting man as he really saw them. He was once chewed out by General Blood & Guts Patton for making his GIs so slovenly and cynical. He felt it was a negative image of the American Fighting Man. Patton threatened to "throw your ass in jail!" But Willie & Joe stayed as is. Mauldin said "the quickest way to become a pacifist is to serve in the infantry."



Here is one of my favorites" Hello Artillery? I have a target for you, but you are going to have to be patient..." Mauldin had an great black & white technique. Look at the complexity of his brushwork and realize he did a lot of his work away from an office, in the field with his subject, the soldiers. He is the only cartoonist I can think of who worked even while under enemy fire. He was wounded during the invasion of Anzio and was awarded a Purple Heart. He was given a jeep and roamed the front line, turning out six cartoons a week. He had the most rudimentary of tools, a pencil, a brush, a little bottle of ink, at times using the dashboard of his jeep as a drawing table, yet did such so much with them.



Charles Schulz said no one could draw mud like Bill Mauldin. I always wanted to meet this cartoonist who so influenced Schulz, Mort Walker and Pat Oliphant. But when I finally met him at a NCS party in San Antonio, he was not very well. His age and hard living had caught up with him, he was developing Alzheimers and he listless and sullen. Schulz and his wife Jean had to complete his sentences. He died a year later. I wish I had known him in his prime, I heard he was quite something.

1945- NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia read the Sunday comics section over the radio because of a newspaper strike.

1946- The first peacetime A-Bomb detonated in the Bikini Islands. The army wanted to study the effects of the bomb so they parked old German warships, buildings and dummys around it, as well as chained down animals. They soldiers nicknamed the bomb 'Gilda' after the Rita Hayworth movie. When Ms. Hayworth heard her name was being used to incinerate 1,500 innocent sheep, horses and elephants she collapsed in shock. The inhabitants of the island were removed and to this day the islands are uninhabitable. A cloud of radiation also killed the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in the area. But the island's name gave a neat idea to French designer Jacques Clauzel what to call his daring new ladies’ two-piece swimsuit.

1963-U.S. POST OFFICE introduced Zip Codes. Remember Mr Zip?

1970- Hanna & Barbera’s primetime animated series "Where’s Huddles?"

1981- The Wonderland Murders. Notoriously over-endowed porn star Johnny Holmes was implicated in a gangland murder. In a Los Angeles home known to be involved in drug dealing. four people were found beaten to death with a steel pipe. Holmes was picked up and tried as an accomplice but was acquitted. Hung jury. -I’m sorry, I just had to say it! His fate hung in the balance! Okay, I’ll stop.

1996- the movie Dinosaur Valley Girls premiered.

1998- Barbara Streisand married James Brolin.
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Yesterday’s Quiz: What is bilge?

Answer: The lowest part of the bottom of the ship, where the two sides meet at the keel. In the old days leaking water, fuel oil, waste and other indescribable liquids would gather at the bottom- Bilge Water, and have to be pumped out- A Bilge Pump.