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Welcome to this the very special Nobel Prize-week edition
of The Spark! Let others bask in the sham glow of the Oscars and Emmys; the Nobels are the Big Prizes -- as we'll see as
we travel through the week. We're too excited to wait, so let's begin!
Monday:
While almost nothing can top the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine, which
will be awarded today, we'd like to think that National Taco Day comes close. Celebrate medicine
by clogging your arteries, we say!
That's not all, though. This week is also World Space Week,
commemorating not only the 1957 launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite, but also
landmarks like SpaceShipOne, which, in 2004, became the first private craft to fly
into space, winning the Ansari X Prize.
And don't forget World Animal Day, a day to celebrate all our furry, feathered, and finned friends. (Many of whom them may be uninvited guests in the athletes' village at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India.
Athletes and animals vying for the same living space seems a scenario
tailor-made for Buster Keaton, whose 115th birthday we note. Keaton was the greatest of
the clowns who populated silent film in the 1910s and 1920s; his physical feats and creativity
were seldom equaled. Even though his personal life hit the skids in the
early '30s, he never stopped working,
and he lived long enough to see his films rediscovered in the 1960s and his genius acknowledged.
Today is also the birthday of writer Damon Runyon (1880), who started out as a street-wise sportswriter, reporter, and columnist in 1920s New York, where he came to know a vast number of
characters from all strata of society, from gamblers and con men to
socialites and evangelists. He portrayed them in a language all his own, in a series of short stories
that paint the Big Apple as a giant amusement park. Those stories were
adapted into the musical Guys and Dolls, which opened in 1950 and became an instant
classic.
For all the characters Runyon described, few had the colorful grotesqueness
of the cast of Dick Tracy, the venerable comic strip that made its debut in
the Detroit Mirror this day in 1931. Created by writer and artist Chester Gould,
Detective Tracy fought such oddities as The Mole, Pruneface, "Itchy" Oliver, and Flattop Jones (not to mention Flattop Jr.). Gould died in 1985, but the
strip continues to this day with its unique mix of grotesque villains who meet
gruesome deaths. Fun for the whole family!
Not as bizarre -- but with as colorful a cast of characters -- was the Orient Express, the luxury train that ran from Paris to Istanbul starting in 1883. In novels and films, the train's passengers are usually portrayed as
committing espionage, blackmail, murder, or any number of other unsavory exploits. While the
original train stopped running in 2009, a private company picked up both the route and the rail cars -- although nowadays the full route is offered only twice
a year.
We were going to remark that, if any of those characters on the Orient
Express gets too nefarious, the Supreme Court is back in session today and could take care of them. But
of course, the Court has no jurisdiction in Europe, so the point is moot.
The Court does have jurisdiction in South Dakota,
where, in 1927, the first carving began on Mount Rushmore. Over the decades, there have been calls for other
presidents to join Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, but those petitioners are out of luck, since there's no
more rock that can be sculpted.
Tuesday:
Today's Nobel category: Physics. Who will follow in the footsteps of Einstein, Bohr, and the Curies?
Today's birthdays: Larry Fine (1902), the most valuable of the Three Stooges, who provided the necessary buffer between Moe and Curly, Shemp, Joe, and Curly Joe. Ray Kroc (also 1902), the milkshake-machine salesman who, became
the head of McDonald's and terrorized untold millions of cows. In 1922,
cartoonist Bil Keane was born. Keane created The Family Circus, and even though the strip has long since been taken
over by Jeff Keane (the red-haired, oval-headed one), it has spawned innumerable parodies and is both loved and loathed by millions.
Not really "birthdays," but also making their debuts today were Monty Python's Flying
Circus (which premiered on the BBC in 1969) and the first of the James Bond films, Dr. No,
which opened in 1962. (Let it be noted that Sean Connery
was not the first Bond, though. Barry Nelson portrayed American secret agent "Jimmy
Bond" in a 1954 television adaptation of Casino Royale.)
And not exactly a "debut," but something to be noted is that
October 5 is the most common birthday in the United States. That makes sense,
since it would mean that most of those children were conceived on New Year's Eve. (We'll let you do the rest of the math ...)
All those children need education, so it's appropriate that Tuesday is also World Teachers Day.
Wednesday:
This time of year, it's hard to not think of baseball,
especially with the Major League playoffs beginning today, so it's fortunate that there are two
baseball-related events. In 1880, the Cincinnati Red
Stockings were kicked out of the National League for selling beer. (Hard to imagine any franchise today
going without beer sales.) Speaking of "going without," in
1945, restaurateur Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat were
ejected from Chicago's Wrigley Field
during Game 4 of the World Series.
Sianis took the occasion to curse the team, which went on to lose the Series -- to which the team
has never since returned. (The Cubs, of course, won their last world
championship in 1908.)
A winning team needs chemistry, which is perhaps why the Nobel Committee
chose today to award the prize for that
discipline. (We're hoping to win the Nobel
for strained transitions.)
For those not so interested in baseball, but who are still looking for a
pastime, we offer Balloons Around the
World, dedicated to those artists who
twist and sculpt inflated rubber bladders. If balloons don't tickle your
fancy, you might head to Dallas, where the Fall Toy Preview opens, giving consumers and retailers a clue as to what
will be the hot toys this holiday season. We have to wonder what will be this
year's Cabbage Patch Kid, the red-hot can't-get-it doll that debuted 27 years ago
tomorrow.
If toys and balloons aren't your speed, you might screen The Jazz Singer, to commemorate its 1927 opening. The film wasn't
the first talking picture by any means, but the combination of Al Jolson and its story proved a powerhouse that was the
death-knell for silent movies. If musicals aren't your speed, how about a
movie starring Bette Davis? Davis may well have been the greatest actress in the
history of the movies, garnering 11 Academy Award nominations (winning two), and whose career spanned the decades from 1931
until her death on this day in 1989.
Davis did a couple of Broadway musicals (which is unfortunate, given her
overall lack of a voice), but neither of their scores made the "Great American Songbook," so you’ll have to depend on Michael Feinstein, whose PBS series on the Songbook begins airing tonight.
Thursday:
Birthdays of the day:
1859: Thomas J. Wise, one of England's foremost bibliographic
experts, who made a fortune selling rare books and first editions for
outrageous prices. The books Wise sold were indeed rare and first editions, but not
in the way he alleged; the problem was that he forged most of them. (None of
them, of course, would have been alleged to be by the winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature, which will be announced today.)
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin turns 58 today. We assume he'll pose shirtless and perform
feats of strength, as is his wont. We further
assume he won't don a black t-shirt and try to make his biceps look huge, as does today's
other birthday boy, Simon Cowell, born in 1959.
And please, if you would, take a moment on this, the ninth anniversary of the
U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan, to reflect on all the lives lost
and changed forever.
Friday:
The late Harvey Pekar would have turned 71 today. His comic series American Splendor gave new life to the independent comics movement,
as he turned his mundane daily life into art.
Not so arty are the books of R.L. Stine, who was born in 1943. Stine and his innumerable ghost
writers have turned out scores of young adult horror novels designed to scare
the beejeezus out of kids and throw parents into throes of agony because their children aren't
reading better books.
In movies, actress Sigourney Weaver turns 61 (and it's a damn fine-looking 61, we may add),
and the biopic of Secretariat opens, just four days after the 21st anniversary of his
death. Secretariat was probably the greatest racehorse of all time, whose athleticism and personality won him millions of fans -- and many of whose racing records still stand, decades after they were set.
One of the few awards Secretariat did not receive was the Nobel Peace Prize, which will be announced today.
Saturday:
Something for everyone today. It's the birthday of Lt. Col. Alfred Dreyfus (1859), the French Army officer who was falsely convicted
of treason, and whose imprisonment on Devil's Island sparked international outrage and exposed a vast strain
of anti-Semitism running through France's government and society.
For the more sensationally-minded, it's the 120th birthday of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. "Sister Aimee" was a circus in herself,
exhibiting equal measures of religious fervor and a genius for self-promotion
-- to the point where she faked her own kidnapping in 1926. Over the decades,
though, her fame faded, and she died of an accidental overdose of Seconal in
1944. (And, coincidentally, a television film was made about her fake kidnapping that starred Bette
Davis as her mother.)
As loud and boisterous as McPherson was, Jacques Tati (1909) was silent. Tati was a French
writer/actor/director who achieved worldwide fame with his comedies featuring
himself as the befuddled Monsieur Hulot, a gentle and quiet man who was baffled by the modern
world. In December, The Illusionist, based on an unproduced screenplay of his, will
open in the U.S. -- starring a animated version of Tati.
For the adventurous, Kona, Hawaii, will today feature the Ironman Triathlon World Championships, wherein competitors will take on a 2.4-mile swim, a
112-mile bike race, and a 26.2-mile run -- and then ask for more.
If that sounds too strenuous, you might want to take a trip to Manhattan, where the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center will open. Seems a bit early to be taking part in winter
sports, but we suppose anything is possible in New York.
Of course, even skating may seem a bit much for some, so we'll just remind
them that it's Moldy Cheese Day, devoted to the tasting and enjoyment of smelly fromage
-- the smellier and moldier, the better.
Lastly, we note with sadness that, had history run a different course, we'd
be celebrating the 70th birthday of the late Beatle John Lennon and the 30 years of music we've been robbed of because of
his untimely murder.
Sunday:
To end the week, we suggest you dig out your fancy duds to celebrate Tuxedo Day, which marks the anniversary of the tuxedo dinner jacket
making its debut in New York City in 1886. The coat got its origins when the
members of the exclusive Tuxedo Club in Tuxedo Park, NY (and you wondered how the coat got its name ...) began
looking for a new style of jacket that was less formal than a cutaway but was
still dressy.
If you’re in a mood to travel, you might take your tux and head to London for the grand reopening of the Savoy Hotel, which originally opened in 1899 and was the last word in luxury and opulence,
featuring electric lights and elevators, and bathrooms with hot and cold
running water inside most of the rooms. The hotel's been closed since 2007
while it's undergone a $350 million renovation, which promises to bring it
into the 21stst century and beyond.
If London sounds a bit expensive, you might try traveling to Pyongyang to celebrate North Korea's
Party Foundation Day. After all, it's the 65thth anniversary of the founding of Workers Party of Korea. If you run into Kim Jong Il, you might give him a lovely cake (since it's National Cake
Decorating Day) -- though you might likelier be
reminded that it's World Mental Health Day. But the Dear Leader isn't the only reminder of the
varying degrees of mental well-being. For example, today would have been the
86th birthday of film director Ed Wood, who is generally considered to be the worst director who ever
lived, and his masterpiece, Plan 9 from Outer Space, is thought to be one of the worst movies ever
made. (We've seen worse,
personally.) Wood was less mentally unstable than he was incompetent, so who
else might we think of when speaking of poor mental health?
How about the good citizens of Lake Havasu City,
AZ, who bought and dismantled London Bridge,
moved it to their desert town, and reopened it on this day in 1971? Or the
well-meaning folks who'll be traveling to Ashton, England, for the World Conker Championships? "What is conkers?",
you may ask. It's a game where two players take horse-chestnut seeds, run strings
through them, and then swing them at an opponent's conker. The first player
to break the other's seed wins. We don't get it, but they love it.
Our final note for the week is to call attention to the day's date: 10/10/10.
10+10+10=30, and "-30-” is the old newspaperman's code for the end of a story,
which we'll take as our cue.
See you next time!
-30-
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