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November 12, 2008 weds.
November 12th, 2008

I want to write some more about directing on Osmosis Jones, but you're going to have to be patient with me. My publisher just cracked the whip and I got to get a good chunk of my manuscript done this week. So,for now I'm chained to me Microsoft Word till further notice.



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Question: What does it mean to “ turn the tables” on someone?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Is Barack Obama a Baby Boomer?
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History for 11/12/2008
Birthdays: Auguste Rodin, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, Bahi-ullah 1817 founder of the Bahii faith, Elizabeth Cadie -Stanton, Cecil B. DeMille, Edward G. Robinson, Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, Shamus Culhane, Charles Manson, Neil Young, Edvard Munch, Al Michaels, Nadia Comenici, Tanya Harding, Dave Brain

1035- Canute the Great died. He was the Viking King of Denmark and England simultaneously. It was Canute who once tried to command the ocean tide to go out.
He got his feet wet.

1792- The Revolutionary French Republic issued a declaration that any other European kingdom that wants to overthrow their king and chop his head off is welcome to come join the fun and France will help.

1859- The first trapeze act was demonstrated at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. The act caused such a sensation that the daredevil was immortalized by his tights becoming a fashion named in his honor- Jules Leotard.

1861- THE CURRAUGH CAMP AFFAIR- When 20 year old Edward the Prince of Wales went to Oxford he was kept on a short leash by his worried parents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They expected his college life to be- well, Victorian. He was to reside off campus, limited his diet to bland foods and seltzer water and absolutely no smoking or carousing with women! This draconian regimen only stiffened Bertie’s rebellious nature.
When attending maneuvers in Ireland, he bunked with a company of hard drinking cavalry officers. Bertie was at last free to go wild. By unfortunate coincidence the gossip about the Prince’s all night drinking binges and bedding actresses reached his father just as Albert was showing the first signs of the typhoid fever that would kill him. For years afterwards Queen Victoria blamed her son for contributing to his father's death by breaking his heart. In his adult years King Edward VII was never without a cigar in his teeth, a girl on his lap and a drink in his hand.

1912- SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC- in the Antarctic this day the frozen bodies of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott and his men were found. He had lost his race to find the South Pole to Norwegian Piers Ammundsen then was stranded by a blizzard only 30 miles from his base camp on the Ross Ice Shelf. His last diary entry ( March 29th ) said "We are showing that Englishmen can still have a bold spirit, fighting it out to the end. This diary and our dead bodies will be the proof. I should like to write more but I haven't the strength..."

1917- At the first meeting of the Russian Duma since the Bolshevik Revolution Lenin and Trotsky revealed their radical plan to reform Russian Society into a Communist Worker’s State dominated by the Soviets -workers and peasants councils.

1918- The day after the Armistice ending World War One, dozens of German army regiments against orders began to march back across their borders in perfect order. Then defying the shouts and threats of their officers the men threw away their helmets and uniforms, disbanded themselves and went home.

1920- In the wake of the "Black Sox" Baseball scandal, the first rigged World Series, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis was elected first Commissioner of Baseball. He ordered all those involved in the scandal including Shoeless Joe Jackson permanently banned from baseball, even though they had been acquitted in a civil trial.

1923- In Clarksburg West Virginia a man shot his wife for smoking a cigarette.

1927- The Holland Tunnel completed. It runs under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey. It’s not named for the Netherlands, but for the engineer Clifford Holland, who died shortly before it’s completion.

1933- Hugh Gray of the British Aluminum Company takes the first photographs of what he claimed was a monster in Loch Ness. He would be the first of many to have claimed to have seen Nessie.

1944- THE BATTLESHIP TIRPITZ is sunk. After the big battle with the Bismarck, Nazi admirals built an even bigger superbattleship, the Tirpitz. The allies however, found out through intelligence work when it would sail and attacked this one as soon as it left it's harbor. They pounded it with bomber and torpedo planes and midget submarines day and night until it rolled over and sank. Survivors recalled as the ship was sinking they could hear through the hull the sound of the doomed sailors singing "Deutschland Uber Alles". This caused a British Admiral to remark:" It's tragic that such men follow such a cause."

1946- Disney's "Song of the South" with William Baskett as Uncle Remus.

1955- This is the date Marty McFly returns to in the film Back to the Future and Back to the Future II.

1975- Portland Oregon had a large dead gray whale on it’s beach. It decided it would be easier to dispose if they blew it up. As an audience watched they stuffed it with half a ton of dynamite. The explosion drew cheers from the audience, then everyone ran for cover as they were showered by chunks of smelly blubber and guts.

1981- The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for the second time. First reusable spacecraft.

1990- Akihito became Emperor of Japan. His father Hirohito had been Emperor since 1927.

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Yesterday’s Question: Is Barack Obama a Baby Boomer?

Answer: Its open to discussion. The post World War Two baby boom is listed by some as lasting from 1946-1964. I always thought of the boom as ending with JFK’s election in 1960. Barack’s parents weren’t the World War Two generation but his grandparents. Still, I’ve heard him officially listed as a Boomer.


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