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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Goodnight to the creature who swims in the lake. Goodnight to the killjoys who think she's a fake. Thursday, we noted the anniversary of Route 66, and until the federal government decommissioned it, the various highway departments in the states through which the road ran kept it in good shape. Not every such department is as fastidious, though. For example, there's the Oregon Highway Division, which on November 12, 1970, decided that the best way to destroy a rotting sperm whale that had beached itself before dying was to blow it up, an incident which led to one the greatest memes in Internet history: "the exploding whale." While the whale parts made for a gloppy, smelly mess, the resulting patterns might well have resembled a masterpiece by Sunday's birthday boy, Claude Monet. Born in 1840, Monet was part of the revolutionary school of painting (taking its name - "Impressionism" – from of one of Monet's pictures) that was notable for depicting the effects of light on objects and places and making unique personal statements through their canvases. Friday must be a day for creatures. In 1933, Hugh Gray took the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland. While some deny the existence of "Nessie," we are convinced she is alive and well. Not so benign a creature was Joseph McCarthy, the senator who took paranoia, ignorance, and character assassination to new heights. Sunday would have marked his 102nd birthday. McCarthy was, by all accounts, an unpleasant man, and through his unceasing attempts to smear anyone who opposed him as a Communist, he managed to give his name to both an era and a political tactic. Censured by the Senate in 1954 for his actions, he eventually drank himself to death in 1957. Almost as unpleasant as Sen. McCarthy is Yanni, the New Age musician whose calming tunes are as soporific as the situation comedies of Sherwood Schwartz. Both men celebrate their birthdays on Sunday, so perhaps Mr. Schwartz (responsible for such sitcoms as The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island") and Mr. Hrysomallis (Yanni's real name) will spend the night before their 94th and 56th birthdays, respectively, watching something more energetic, like UFC 122. (The idea of Yanni screaming himself hoarse over wrestlers is pretty delicious.) Of course, it's possible that the men might celebrate with a trip, though we wouldn't suggest one as energetic as that begun on November 14, 1889, when pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) began her successful attempt to travel around the world in fewer than 80 days, in emulation of Jules Verne's Phileas Fogg. Nellie completed the trip in a mere 72 days. An appropriate feat this week especially, as National Geography Awareness Week begins on Sunday. Newspapers around the world covered Nellie's trip, but the BBC couldn't have - because it didn't exist. The venerable network begin its radio service in 1922, some 33 years after her voyage. They've made up for it in the decades since with continuous news and entertainment. One of the stories we're sure they covered was the marriage of actress Carmen Electra and basketball player Dennis Rodman, wed in Las Vegas (where else?) in 1998. Unfortunately, the happy couple couldn't make a go of it, and they were divorced four-and-a-half months later. Something else that couldn't last (in spite of surviving about 500 years) was the Inca Empire, which saw the beginning of its end in 1533, when Francisco Pizarro's Spanish conquistadors arrived in Cajamarca, Peru, to show the natives who the new bosses were - a feat not unlike that performed by single women upon single men on Sadie Hawkins Day, which debuted in Al Capp's comic strip, "Li'l Abner" in 1937. Sadie Hawkins was the "homeliest gal" in Abner's hometown of Dogpatch. When she turned 35, her father declared that there would be a race with all the town's unmarried men being pursued by its unamrried women. Any bachelor who was caught was doomed to matrimony. We end the week by noting that Saturday is World Kindness Day, and noting the 1952 death of a woman who must have been one of the kindest people ever: Margaret Wise Brown. Brown was a writer of children's books, who, in collaboration with such artists as Clement Hurd, turned out such classics as "Goodnight, Moon" and "The Runaway Bunny," which have calmed and enriched the bedtimes of millions of children. Suggested Sites... The Exploding Whale - apparently, it's not just Oregon. Wikipedia: The Loch Ness Monster - all the arguments, pro and con, on Nessie. Edward R. Murrow: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy - Murrow takes McCarthy down. Around the World in Seventy-Two Days - Nellie Bly's charming account of her global adventure. 20 Shortest Celebrity Marriages - compared to some of these, Dennis and Carmen had a golden wedding anniversary.

Directory categories: Whales, Master Painters, New Age Music, Geography, Chiildren's Literature

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UFC light heavyweight champ Chuck Liddell (Photo by Hywel Teague) With the appeal of a barroom brawl, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) showcases shocking one-on-one battles starring the most macho and masochistic men today. But an excess of testosterone isn't the only thing these competitors need to become combat celebrities. Fighters with skills in a gamut of martial arts, like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, shootfighting, and Muay Thai, flock to UFC's octagonal cages to face off in front of thousands of spectators. With limited fighting rules, fighters expect to bear beatings and survive submission holds. While UFC training includes a diverse routine of dieting, striking, and grappling, it's all about learning flying armbars, triangle chokes, and other mixed martial arts (MMA) techniques. Hopefully, their hard work will pay off in events like Saturday's UFC 64 featuring two world championship fights: Anderson "The Spider" Silva vs. the current middleweight champ,  Rich "Ace" Franklin, and Sean "The Muscle Shark" Sherk vs. Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Kenny Florian. We have our bets on super-striking Silva and takedown-tiger Sherk. Suggested Sites... YouTube: The O'Reilly Factor on UFC - Bill O'Reilly battles with the UFC's president and current middleweight champ about fighter safety and motivation. The Ulitmate Fighter - experience the UFC through the lives of 16 fighters in Spike TV's reality show. SherDog - where fight fanatics go to keep updated with MMA competitions.

Directory categories: MMA Fighters, UFC, Mixed Martial Arts

Archived under: Events, Martial Arts, Sports, UFC

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