The Milestone Mo-Tel today. Winners get one free night. Losers get two. (That's the second time we've used that joke today.) If the whole world loves a winner, we have a weekend full of love ahead of us. Let's get started! The most obvious winners will be declared Thursday when either Clint Robertson or Brandy Kuentzel wins the right to become Donald Trump's latest Apprentice for one year. (We hope that the loser isn't stuck for two years ...) One of the three remaining teams on "The Amazing Race" will win a million smackers on Sunday. (Perhaps eating that sheep's head may have been worth it.) It's almost guaranteed that none of these winners will make Barbara Walters' list of the year's "Most Fascinating People," (most fascinating to her, anyway ...) but we’ll find out for sure Thursday. (Our guess for #1 on her list? The cameraman who smears the Vaseline all over the lens that photographs her.) And on Friday, they'll be handing out the Nobel Prizes. The Nobels aren't like the Oscars; everyone already knows who won and the winners have actually accomplished something that matters, rather than playing loveable oddballs. Saturday we'll see some sports winners. In the afternoon, someone (Cam Newton? Andrew Luck? LaMichael James?) will win the Heisman Trophy as the nation's finest college football player, and in the evening, either Georges St-Pierre or Josh Koscheck will take the welterweight championship at UFC 124 in Montreal. We assume the combatants will not resort to wheeling around the ring in roller skates, but while it would be appropriate (given that Thursday marks the anniversary of their 1884 patent), we'd have to warn them that such a thing would be just plain dangerous.) Sunday also marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore, which ensured that George W. Bush became the nation's 43rd president. Whether that made the country a winner or a loser, we'll leave up to you. Falling into a similar category is Larry King's retirement from his CNN talk show on Friday. (As with President Bush, we won't say whether that's a plus or a minus.) Weary travelers were winners 85 years ago Sunday, when the Milestone Mo-Tel, the world's first motel (short for "motor hotel"), opened in San Luis Obispo, California. If we stretch the definition of "winner" to include those whose birthdays fall this weekend, then we're lousy with winners. For example, Thursday sees the birthdays of both Margaret Hamilton (1902) and Redd Foxx (1922). Hamilton is best known for her role as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 classic, "The Wizard of Oz." Despite her indelible portrayal of one of the screen's great villains, Hamilton loved children and was a lifelong advocate for charities that benefitted kids and animals. Foxx was someone whose work, on the other hand, was decidedly not for kids. A veteran of the black vaudeville entertainment venues known as the "Chitlin' Circuit," Foxx recorded a series of "party records" in the 1950s that were both filthy and hilarious. He reached a mainstream fame in the '70s when he starred in "Sanford and Son," where his frequent feigned heart attacks were one of the show's running gags. In a supreme irony, he suffered an actual heart attack while rehearsing for another television show, but no one believed was it real until it was too late. Sunday would have been the 95th birthday of Frank Sinatra. The greatest popular singer of the 20th century, Sinatra was also an Oscar-winning actor, starred in numerous TV specials that consisted of nothing but him singing with his guests, and was the biggest attraction in Las Vegas when that title actually meant something. Monday, we celebrate the 192nd birthday of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln who was criticized in her time for her extravagant and spendthrift ways, and committed to a psychiatric hospital by her son Robert. While she was undoubtedly depressed, wouldn't any woman who’d lived through the death of three sons and the murder of her husband (while sitting next to him) feel the same? She was eventually declared competent and released, but her health was broken, and she died three years later. If birthday celebrants are winners, so too are those is show business who meet success, like performers and lovers of country music, who can celebrate the 83rd anniversary of the first broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry on Friday. The Opry has been a staple of radio and television in the decades since it debuted, highlighting the best in country, from Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl to Clint Black and Carrie Underwood. Someone who's appeared at the Opry (but has yet to be inducted into its member ranks) is Taylor Swift. Perhaps the Opry has been waiting for her to turn 21 - in which case, it need wait no longer! The Grammy-winning singer reaches her majority on Monday. Thursday will see the annual airing of the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special, "The Year without a Santa Claus," which features memorable turns by Snow Miser and Heat Miser (who are also not members of the Opry). Friday is also the 55th anniversary of the "Mighty Mouse Playhouse's" television premiere. In TV's early days, broadcasters were desperate for material to air, so old movies and cartoons were natural fodder, and Paul Terry's "Mighty Mouse" cartoons were some of the oddest programs to come to the screen. Mini operatic melodramas, they featured the eponymous rodent singing his was through battles with the villainous Oil Can Harry. Mighty made a brief comeback in the 80s in a brilliant TV series produced by Ralph Bakshi, but he's been in retirement since self-appointed censor Donald Wildmon mistook the mouse's flower sniffing for drug use. (No, really.) Wildmon isn't the only well-intentioned, if-misguided, protector we mention, though, since Thursday is the anniversary of the founding of the John Birch Society, which has been protecting Americans from the Communists lurking under their beds for 52 years. Legitimate do-gooders have something to celebrate this weekend, too. Thursday is the U.N's annual International Anti-Corruption Day, dedicated to wiping out, well, corruption and promoting the rule of law, and Friday is both Human Rights Day and the beginning of Human Rights Week. We end by noting a delightful juxtaposition on Thursday. December 9, 1792, saw the first cremation in America, when statesman Henry Laurens died at his plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, and per his will, his body was burned. On the same date in 1886, Clarence Birdseye, inventor of frozen food was born. We're reminded of the choice Curly Howard was given in a Three Stooges short: to be burned at the stake or to have his head cut off. He opted for the former, on the reasoning that a hot stake's better than a cold chop. Good night! Suggested Sites... NBC: The Apprentice - Trump's hair; you're fired! CBS: The Amazing Race - who will be eliminated -- next? UFC 124 - they're at it yet again. The Very First Motel - the story of the Milestone. Sinatra.com - the Chairman of the Board.

Directory categories: Reality TV, College Football, Al gore, Hotels and Motels, Country Musicians

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Kirk Douglas in 1956. The dimple in his chin is so deep it has its own gift shop. Don't they say that doing what you love keeps you young? If they don't, they ought to, as the lives of some of the celebrities we note this week stand as living proof of the connection between doing what you do and a long lifespan. We'll start with the "babies" of the group, Christopher Plummer and Dick Van Dyke, who turn 81 and 85 respectively on Friday. Plummer and Van Dyke have pretty much done it all in their time, from dramas to farces to musicals Plummer's classical theatre chops are a little more developed, but Van Dyke's sitcom of the 1960s is still recognized as one of the finest and most influential ever, so we'll call it a draw. Next on our list is spring chicken Eli Wallach, who turns 95 on Tuesday. Wallach began his acting career in the 1950s, with a series of performances out of the Method school of acting that so pervaded that decade. The "Method" (which has been over-hyped and misunderstood almost from the beginning) was a school of acting that emphasized personalized and naturalistic behavior on stage and screen, breaking away from the more florid or theatrical styles that had been the norm. Its foremost proponents were actors like Wallach, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, but a modified version of it is still seen in the performances of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino. Getting back to our birthday boy, Wallach is still working, having acted in two movies this year, with (his health permitting) more on the way. The champ, though, is Kirk Douglas, who turns 96 on Thursday. Douglas hit the screen like a thunderbolt in the late 1940s, and for the next 50 years, turned in a series of dynamic and artful performances that have few rivals for energy and power. He's also been outspoken in his politics, breaking Hollywood's blacklist by employing writers who went unhired because of their politics. The stroke he suffered in 1996 has impaired his ability to speak, but he continues to work, and as recently as 2009 appeared in an autobiographical one-man show. Those aren’t the only events of note, of course. Why, Tuesday alone brings us the announcement of Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year (it's New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees), the lighting of the U.S. Capitol's Christmas tree (the White House gets its turn on Thursday, the day after President Obama appears on "MythBusters"), the Luxury Travel Expo in Las Vegas (for those of you who have so much extra money you can't help but spend it on travel), and National Cotton Candy Day. Wednesday is chock-a-block with events, too, particularly with birthdays of artists and humorists. In the former category, we have Diego Rivera (1886), the Mexican painter whose intricate and detailed murals were loaded with historical and political commentary. In the latter, we have two men whose work spans both categories and who were born on the same day in 1894. First, we have James Thurber, whose art defined the cartooning style of "The New Yorker," and whose short stories, including "The Catbird Seat" and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" remain as perceptive and witty as when they were written. 1894's other multi-talented contribution is Elzie Segar, the cartoonist who created Popeye the Sailor. Segar created a unique world of comic adventures and characters that has rarely been equaled. Since his death in 1938, numerous ghosts have tried to keep the wackiness of his comic strip alive, but none have succeeded in finding his balance of thrills and laughs. We close by remembering two tragedies, one markedly larger than the other. Wednesday is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon in front of New York's Dakota Apartments. Lennon was only 40 years old, and was just resuming his music career when he was struck down, forever robbing the world of his humor and songs. The larger commemoration, is the anniversary of the December 7, 1941, bombing of the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, an even which brought the United States into World War II. The sneak attack by the Japanese cost the U.S. more than a dozen ships and 2,042 lives. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress the next morning, he called it "a date which will live in infamy," and it remains a date whose memory still resonates today. Suggested Sites... Dick Van Dyke: Step in Time! - information about Van Dyke's "musical memoir." The Death of Method Acting - film critic David Thomson provides the post-mortem. Diego Rivera Web Museum - dedicated to the painter and muralist. Thurber House - the writer's boyhood home in Columbus, OH is now a museum. John Lennon.com - we still remember.

Directory categories: Acting, Classic Hollywood Movies, Hollywood Blacklist, Cartoonists, The Beatles

Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1980s, 19th Century, Actors, Aging, American History, Anniversaries, Artists, Arts, Assassinations, Assassins, Athletes, Authors, Awards, Barack Obama, Bereavement, Biographies, Birthdays, CIA, Canada, Candy, Cartoonists, Cartoons, Celebrations, Celebrities, Censorship, Christmas, Coincidence, Comic Strips, Crime, Criminals, Dead Celebrities, Death, Entertainment, Events, Fiction, Food and Drink, Football, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Government, History, Holidays, Hollywood, Humor, In Character, James Dean, John Lennon, Las Vegas, Magazines, Men, Mexico, Military, Movie History, Movies, Murder, Music, Music History, Musicians, NFL, New York, Nostalgia, Performing Arts, Popeye, Presidents, Sports, TV, The Beatles, The New Yorker, United States, WWII, War, Writers, Writing

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HUAC at work in Hollywood, rooting out non-existent Communists Dissent is as American as apple pie. The Founding Fathers even enshrined the idea in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. But about 150 years after them (and 72 years ago this week), the United Stated Congress panicked, started seeing threats everywhere they looked, and established the House Un-American Activities Committee, also known as HUAC. The men who ran HUAC had an ... interesting idea of what constituted "un-Americanism." Committee member John Rankin (of Mississippi, it must be said) refused to investigate the Ku Klux Klan -- saying it was "an old American institution." Meanwhile, the Federal Theatre and such long-dead playwrights as Christopher Marlowe and Euripides were seen as imminent threats to the Republic and democracy. Interning American citizens of Japanese descent in prison camps was just fine, but almost any Communist anywhere had to be rooted out (the notable exception being committee member Samuel Dickstein, who was himself on the payroll of the Soviet Union as a spy). HUAC hit its height (or depth) in the 1940s and '50s, when members became convinced that Hollywood was not only a hotbed of Communist activity, but that writers, directors, and actors were sneaking subliminal messages into films and TV shows that were designed to convert Joe and Jane McDoakes into hardcore Reds. Thanks to HUAC's relentless hounding, the careers and lives of scores of innocent victims were ruined. When Senator Joseph McCarthy's similar smears were finally recognized for the flasehoods they were, HUAC's influence waned -- to the point where, in the '60s, Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman openly mocked the committee when subpoenaed to appear. HUAC was finally disbanded in 1975, but left a decades-long legacy of infectiveness, destroyed lives, and suicides. Suggested Sites... Wikipedia: House Un-American Activities Committee - overview of HUAC and the men who ran it. Blacklist: A Different View of the 1947 HUAC Hearings - history of the Hollywood hearings. Third World Traveler: HUAC and the Rise of Anti-Communism - information about the committee and friendly and unfriendly witnesses. Humphrey Bogart: "I'm No Communist" - Bogie takes to the pages of Photoplay to explain that being anti-HUAC didn't make him anti-American. Seeing Red - the PBS News Hour marks the 50th anniversary of HUAC's Hollywood hearings and the havoc they caused.

Directory categories: House Un-American Activities Committee, Red Scare, Hollywood Blacklist, McCarthyism, Congressional Committees

Archived under: 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Actors, American History, Censorship, Communism, Communists, Entertainment, Fanatics, Government, HUAC, Hollywood, Yippies

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A woman in Málaga, Spain considers Mapplethorpe's photos (Photo by César de la Hoz) His work was controversial, not only in its frank eroticism and challenging subject matter, but more for the argument his images incited: an argument about the difference between "art" and "pornography," and about whether the government should be supporting either. His intention was never to shock: He told ARTnews, "I don't like that particular word 'shocking.' I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before ... I was in a position to take those pictures. I felt an obligation to do them." An obligation fulfilled, we might add, with consummate artistry and sheer technical prowess, for Robert Mapplethorpe was a true master of the lens. His body of photographs, almost entirely in stark black and white, consisted mainly of portraits, floral subjects, nude men and women, homoeroticism, and underground sexuality. There was, in all his work, an undercurrent of sexual freedom coupled with classic technique that proved to be too provocative for some institutions.  Mapplethorpe's images caused minor scandals at Washington D.C.'s Corcoran Gallery of Art and at the University of Central England, but it was his traveling exhibition "The Perfect Moment" in the early '90s that brought national attention to his more explicit work. Partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, "The Perfect Moment" became the target of religious and conservative groups, like the American Family Association, who bristled at the idea of the government supporting work which they deemed to be obscene. A national debate ignited over issues of free speech, whether art should be included in the First Amendment, where to draw the line between art and obscenity, and whether tax dollars should go towards funding either. Mapplethorpe became the poster-boy for a new American culture war -- a war that is still being fought today. Robert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS-related illness on March 9, 1989. He left us a vast and important collection of photographs which are widely exhibited and studied in museums and institutions around the world. But more importantly, like any true artist, he left us with a challenge to view our world and ourselves with new and wondering eyes. He felt obligated to put his unique vision out in the world, and whether you see it as art of the highest form or base obscenity, you can't deny that Mapplethorpe was master of his own truth and beauty. Suggested Sites... Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation - promotes photography, supports museums that exhibit photographic art, and funds medical research in the fight against AIDS and HIV-related infection. Wikipedia: Robert Mapplethorpe - information on the photographer known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers, and naked men. Patti Smith - official site of singer and author Patti Smith, who was a close friend and frequent collaborator of Robert Mapplethorpe. Artcyclopedia: Robert Mapplethorpe - information on various Mapplethorpe works in museums and galleries, as well as links to resources. Mapplethorpe - archive of Robert Mapplethorpe images.

Directory categories: Robert Mapplethorpe, Photographers, Photography, Erotic Photography, National Endowment for the Arts

Archived under: Art Museums, Artists, Arts, Censorship, Photography, Scandals, Sex and Sexuality

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It's neither stately nor plump, but there's a lot inside Imagine giving yourself the most scandalous novel of the century as a birthday present. That's what James Joyce did on February 2, 1922, when "Ulysses" was published. Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, and showed a precocious talent for literature, writing a poem about the death of Irish politician Charles Parnell at the age of nine. At University College Dublin he studied English, French, Italian, and the theatre, and following a brief attempt to study medicine in Paris, he returned to Dublin, where he combined bouts of heavy drinking with writing. On June 16, 1904 (remember that date), he went on a first date with a chambermaid by the unlikely name of Nora Barnacle, who would eventually become his wife. For the rest of his life, Joyce mainly lived in Zurich and Paris, teaching English, dodging wars, and working on various stories and novels. In 1914, he published "Dubliners," a collection of short stories depicting life in and around the Irish capital, followed in 1916 by "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," which follows Joyce's alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, as he discovers his artistic identity. The book was ranked the third-greatest novel of the 20th century, thanks to such then-innovative techniques as stream of consciousness narration and interior monologue. In 1922, after seven years of struggle, he finally finished "Ulysses," a massive novel weaving the stories of Stephen Dedalus and advertising salesman Leopold Bloom as they make their way through Dublin on June 16, 1904. Joyce was meticulous in his settings for the novel, remarking that if the city were somehow destroyed, it could be recreated from the book. Mirroring the mythical journey of the Greek Odysseus, Joyce used virtually every literary technique available -- from stream of consciousness to poetry and play scripts to the Catholic catechism and parodies of cheap romance novels -- to paint a portrait of the two men and their city. "Ulysses" is simultaneously scholarly, hallucinogenic, and (what might seem shocking for such an important work) hilariously funny. Unfortunately, the earthiness of the novel, with its frank descriptions of sex -- alone and with others -- made it ripe for censorship: it was banned in both the United States and Great Britain. About the only way to read it was to travel to Paris and purchase a copy from Sylvia Beach's tiny English-language bookstore, Shakespeare & Company, and smuggle it home. Finally, in 1933, Random House publisher Bennett Cerf arranged to have a copy seized by customs officials in New York in order to test the obscenity ban in court. The judge ruled that it was not pornographic, and in 1934, the first American edition was published to acclaim that has never ceased. In the decades since, "Ulysses" has provided a cottage industry to academics, either trying to bring out "definitive" editions (the manuscript was plagued by typos from the beginning) or explaining and simplifying the forest of references, allusions, and puns planted by Joyce. And, every June 16, Joyceophiles around the world celebrate "Bloomsday," dedicated to reading, discussing, and celebrating what many consider the greatest literary work of the 20th century. While tackling such a monumental work may seem daunting, if you get the chance to read it -- or even to attend a Bloomsday event -- your response should be "yes I said yes I will Yes." Suggested Sites... James Joyce Centre - promoting an understanding of the life and works of James Joyce. The Novel of the Century - information and images about the creation and publication of "Ulysses." How to Read James Joyce's Ulysses - first step: open the book. The Literature Network: Ulysses - read the book, then discuss it with others. Joyce Images: Ulysses - gallery of photos and images of people, places, and things mentioned in the novel.

Directory categories: James Joyce, Ulysses, Bloomsday, Dublin, Irish Authors

Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, Anniversaries, Authors, Birthdays, Books, Censorship, Dublin, Ireland, James Joyce, Legal Cases, Literature, Mythology and Folklore, Ulysses, Writing

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