Beach Blanket Babylon, first released in 1974, is a satirical story that follows Snow White as she takes a fast-paced journey around the world in search of her “Prince Charming.” In 2015, a song parodying Peggy Lee’s “I’m A Woman, W.O.M.A.N.” was sung by a man in drag as Caitlyn Jenner was added to the show.
Pat Frank’s 1959 post-nuclear-holocaust novel* Alas, Babylon*, one of the first of its genre, begins with the nuking by the Soviets of Orlando, Florida.
Nebuchadnezzar was King of Babylon who reigned 605-562 BC. Nebuchadnezzar—more properly Nebuchadrezzar—is the biblical form of the name Nabukudur-utsur (Nabu has set the boundary).
Nabu is the ancient Mesopotamian patron god of literacy, the rational arts, scribes and wisdom. Nabu gained prominence among the Babylonians in the 1st millennium BC when he was identified as the son of the god Marduk.
Arthur Meighen, Canada’s ninth prime minister, was the first to hold the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in mathematics. He also had the distinctions of never winning a general election, losing the three he contested, and being the only sitting prime minister who lost his seat twice, in two different general elections.
Graham Chapman, who played King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, had some medical training, and often served as de facto on-set physician for the cast and crew of the Monty Python movies.
Moonlight Graham and Billy Maharg have surnames that are reversals, and both had very short major league baseball careers, and were portrayed post-career in movies. Graham played one inning, and was played by Burt Lancaster in “Field of Dreams”. Maharg played two games-- one of them as an amateur strike-breaker when his team refused to take the field, and another as the team bus driver who was rewarded by being put into a game. He was played by Richard Edson in “Eight Men Out” for his post-career involvement in the Black Sox scandal.
The song Sweet Baby James by James Taylor contains the line “Good night, you Moonlight Ladies”. This line is often misinterpreted, as many listeners are fooled into believing that the Moonlight Ladies are prostitutes. The “Moonlight Ladies” are actually the spirits of the moon, which come out of the sky and shine their lights as the evening darkness falls.
The turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston MA is I-90. It’s about a 2-hr drive, about 130 miles. This, too, was mentioned in Sweet Baby James.
2HR was established as a radio station in Newcastle, NSW, Australia in 1937. It has, over 80 years, gone through several permutations, switrching from AM to FM and is now known by the callsign 2NX. The callsign 2HR stood for Hunter River Broadcasters Pty. Ltd.
The first Starship Enterprise, an NX-class vessel commanded by Jonathan Archer, will have the registration number NX-01, in a different sequence from the future Galaxy-class NCC-1701 Enterprise. Both, along with all other ships of that name, trace their names to the Continental Navy sloop-of-war that served in the American Revolution in Lake Champlain. She was built at what is now Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and was captured in a raid led by Benedict Arnold.
On Happy Days, Pat Morita’s character’s full name was Matsuo “Arnold” Takahashi. Morita left the show to star in the short-lived sitcom Mr. T and Tina, a spin-off of Welcome Back Kotter. He also starred in a subsequent short lived Happy Days spin-off series titled Blansky’s Beauties. In the show, Arnold got married and Al bought out the Arnold’s drive-in he owned.
Masanori Takahashi is the real name of Kitaro, a Japanese recording artist, composer, record producer and arranger noted for his electronic-instrumental music. He has 16 Grammy nominations for New Age albums. He and Randy Miller won a Golden Horse Award in Hong Kong, for Best Original Score for the film Soong Sisters in 1997.
Despite periodic proposals for amendment, Japanese law currently only permits male descendants of the line of the current Emperor, Akihito, to inherit the Chrysanthemum Throne. Akihito has, in recent years, suggested that his age and poor health may lead him to abdicate. The Diet earlier this year passed a law permitting him (but not his successors) to do so.
The Shih Tzu, thought to have been bred in Tibet, is also called the Chrysanthemum Dog for the floral shape of its face. Composer James Mumsford described the Shih Tzu as “… a dash of lion, several teaspoons of rabbit, a couple of ounces of domestic cat, one part court jester, a dash of ballerina, a pinch of old man, a bit of beggar, a tablespoon of monkey, one part baby seal, (and) a dash of teddy bear.”
I still miss you and your barking, dear old Ming the Merciless …
There have been two hit songs titled and sung to Ballerinas. One by Vaughn Monroe in the 19560s, and by Lionel Richie in the 1980s,
We Are the World is a 1985 charity song that sold over 20 million copies and raised funds for African famine relief. The song featured 21 soloists: Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rogers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Willie Nelson, Al Jarreau, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Loggins, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan, and Ray Charles. The following people sang in the chorus: Dan Aykroyd, Harry Belafonte, Lindsey Buckingham, Mario Cipollina, Johnny Colla, Sheila E., Bob Geldof, Bill Gibson, Chris Hayes, Sean Hopper, Jackie Jackson, La Toya Jackson, Marlon Jackson, Randy Jackson, Tito Jackson, Waylon Jennings, Bette Midler, John Oates, Jeffrey Osborne, The Pointer Sisters, and Smokey Robinson.
Dylan Thomas’ most famous poem was a pure villanelle in iambic pentameter. His submission letter closed with
“The only person I can’t show the little enclosed poem to is, of course, my father, who doesn’t know he’s dying”
Pentateuch means the first five books of the Bible. These books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The word Pentateuch comes from two Greek words that mean “five books” or “five scrolls”.
Although Mormon temples commonly have dozens of windows with inverted pentagrams, it is widely accepted that this has nothing to do with devil worship.