The Cher Show was a popular musical chronicling the life and career of Cher, featuring three actresses playing her at different stages in her life. It featured many of her hit songs, and ran on Broadway from late 2018 to August 2019.
Fun Home is a semi-autobiographical musical about Alison Bechdel, in which different actresses portray Alison at different stages of her life, while an actress portrays Present Day Alison, who provides narration.
Alison Bechdel, like me, is a graduate of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Other notable Oberlin grads (no, I’m not notable) include Peter Baker, Michael Barone, Eric Bogosian, Avery Brooks, James Burrows, Tracy Chevalier, Marc Cohn, Michael Dirda, Lena Dunham, Jim Fixx, William Goldman, Erwin Griswold, John Gutfreund, Richard N. Haass, Charles Martin Hall, Walter Heller, Ed Helms, Donald Henderson, Bill Irwin, John Mercer Langston, Carl T. Rowan, Roger Wolcott Sperry, Corey Stoll, Lucy Stone, Julie Taymor, Geoffrey Ward and Katharine Wright (sister of the Wright Brothers).
Jim Fixx was a magazine editor and reporter, who took up running in his mid 30s, in an effort to improve his health, as well as due to concerns about his family history of heart disease.
Fixx’s 1977 book, The Complete Book of Running, in which he discussed both the physical and psychological benefits of running, became a best-seller, and was a key factor in the growth of the sport among Americans in the late '70s and '80s. Fixx died of a heart attack at age 52, in 1984, ironically during a run; it turned out that not only did Fixx have a genetic predisposition to heart disease, but his health habits as a young adult (he was overweight, and a heavy smoker, before he took up running) likely also played a role.
The British band The Fixx was huge in the U.S., with three #1 singles, but they were unknowns in their native U.K., where they failed to chart. Lead singer Cy Curnin joked that they could openly walk through the streets of London and not be recognized, but they needed security in New York.
Denton “Cy” Young (1867-1955) is baseball’s all-time wins leader with 511 victories (nearly 100 more than any other pitcher), and he also holds records for innings pitched (7,356) and starts (815) over a 22-year career. Nicknamed “Cyclone,” he pitched in both leagues, threw the first modern perfect game in 1904, and is honored by the MLB award in his name, established in 1956 for the best pitcher each year.
Former MLB pitcher Roger “The Rocket” Clemens holds the record for most Cy Young Awards with seven; fellow pitcher Randy Johnson is second, with five. Clemens won his seventh Cy Young at age 41, in his 18th year.
On March 24, 2001, during a spring training game, pitcher Randy Johnson, then playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks, threw a fastball which struck a dove that flew into the path of the pitch. The bird died instantly, in an explosion of blood and feathers, and the incident became one of Johnson’s best-known moments.
After retiring from baseball, Johnson became a professional photographer, and in a nod to the now-infamous bird incident, professional logo features a dead bird.
Did the ball make it into the catcher’s glove? If so, was it a strike?
No, it ricocheted to the backstop.
The Dead Boys were an American punk rock band from Cleveland, OH. Active on and off from 1975 to the present day, they were best known for their outrageous live shows at CBGB in New York City. The band recorded their first album, Young, Loud, and Snotty in 1976 on Sire Records. They broke up following the release of their second album in 1978, when Sire pressured them to become “more mainstream.” Since then, the band has reunited and broke up several times.
The Dead Milkmen are a satirical rock band, originally founded in Philadelphia in 1983. They are best known known for their songs “Bitchin’ Camaro” and “Punk Rock Girl” (the video for which received extensive MTV airplay).
Thanks, Railer13. Poor bird.
In play:
Cherelle Parker, a Democrat, is the first woman to serve as Mayor of Philadelphia. She took office on Jan. 1, 2024. She formerly served on City Council and in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
The House of Mystery, also known as the Oregon Vortex, is a popular tourist attraction in southern Oregon. It consists of a number of interesting effects, which are gravity hill optical illusions, but which the attraction’s proprietors propose are the result of paranormal properties of the area. The house is a former gold assay office built in 1904 that slid off its foundation a few years later, abandoned but then rediscovered in 1914 by a prospector who claimed it to have supernatural qualities.
Near Wisconsin Dells once stood a tourist attraction that purportedly violated the laws of physics. The Wonder Spot, as it was called, was actually based on optical illusions. It’s the same optical illusion that gives rise to local legends here and there of a Ghost Hill or Mystery Hill, where a car in neutral will appear to roll uphill (as if pushed by ghosts), or water will appear to flow uphill even though it’s actually flowing downhill.
That’s my home area – I was born and raised in La Crosse, about eighty miles west of there. Visited there once with my parents when I was just Tricycle Bill.
However, as the Dells became more waterpark/go-cart oriented, things like the Wonder Spot, Fort Dells, and Storybook Gardens, just to name a few, saw declining attendance and eventually closed. Opened originally in 1952, the Wonder Spot’s last season was in 2006 after which the land it was sited on was sold to the village of Lake Delton as part of a road construction/expansion project.
-“BB”-
1952 was Harry Truman’s last full year as President of the United States. He could have chosen to run for another term, under the terms of the just-passed 22nd Amendment (which has, uh, been in the news again recently), but chose not to after doing poorly in the New Hampshire primary on March 11 of that year.
“Harry Truman” is a 1975 song by the rock group Chicago. The song was written by the band’s keyboardist, Robert Lamm, just after Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation, and was also sung by Lamm; its lyrics are a tribute to Truman (who had passed away in 1972), and a call for a return to his straightforward honesty, in an era of corrupt politicians.
The song was a hit in the U.S. (#13 on the Billboard Hot 100) and in Canada (#16).
Harry R. Truman was the owner and caretaker of the Mt St Helens Lodge at Spirit Lake, at the base of Mt St Helens. He became a celebrity for refusing to leave his home and business when park officials and state and federal geologists declared the area unsafe for human activity due to the possibility of an impending major eruption of the mountain. On Sunday, May 18, at 8:32 AM, Mount St. Helens erupted; Truman and his 16 cats were presumed dead, likely from the initial heat shock in under a second and unlikely to have experienced pain. The eruption collapsed the entire northern flank of the mountain, effectively re-establishing the size, shape, and location of Spirit Lake.
“Spirit in the Sky” is the name of a song written and performed by singer/songwriter Norman Greenbaum. Released in December of 1969, the song rose as high as #3 on the Billboard charts, and lasted for 15 weeks on the Top 100.
Greenbaum had only one other single release that charted on Billboard, a 19 70 song called “Canned Ham” that made it to #46 on the Top 100. By 1972, Greenbaum had left the music business and returned to his dairy farm in California.