Harlan Ellison was hired as a writer for Walt Disney Studios, but was fired on his first day after Roy O. Disney overheard him in the studio commissary joking about making a pornographic animated film featuring Disney characters.
Harlan Ellison wrote one of the greatest-ever* Star Trek (TOS, The Original Series) episodes called The City on the Edge of Forever. It first aired in April 1967 and guest-starred Joan Collins who at the time was 34 years old. The episode involved a time portal and time travel of, first, Dr. McCoy, and then later Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock who tried to find and return McCoy to the correct time and place.
- – okay, that’s my opinion.
since the episode “Journey to Babel” makes it clear that “Spock” is Spock’s personal name.
Spock’s family name has never been established in canon. The only reference to it in Star Trek: TOS was in the episode “This Side of Paradise,” Leila Kalomi (Jill Ireland) says to Spock, “You never told me if you had another name,” to which he replies, “You couldn’t pronounce it.” D.C. Fontana revealed, in an issue of the fanzine Spockanalia, that she had intended his family name to be “Xtmprsqzntwlfd”, but since this is unpronounceable, there wasn’t really any way to get this said in dialogue during an episode.
The story of the Tower of Babel may have been inspired by actual structures of biblical times, notably the Etemenanki of Babylon, a 91 meter ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk.
“Tower of Babble,” was the musical Godspell’s original opening number, but it is often omitted by many productions. The song consists of the eight disciples (or soloists) acting out as philosophers, each singing about their various philosophies. They grow increasingly more irritated with each other, sing in contradiction, and eventually run out of words. “Prepare Ye” follows this prologue.
In the original productions, the philosophers were Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci, Edward Gibbon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Buckminster Fuller. In the 2001 revival, Luther, Gibbon, Nietzsche, and Fuller were replaced by Galileo Galilei, Jonathan Edwards, L. Ron Hubbard, and Marianne Williamson, respectively. The 2011 revival retains Galilei, Hubbard, and Williamson, but restores Gibbon and replaces da Vinci with Georg Hegel.
I should have added ‘Among those Great Officers of State which are appointed regularly in the United Kingdom’…
In play: Martin Luther King, Jr. was investigated by the FBI for possible communist ties. They recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials. On one occasion they mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
31 October 2017 marked the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses, on 31 October 1517, to the Wittenburg church door.
Singer Luther Vandross’s sexual orientation was a subject of media speculation. Jason King, writing in Vandross’s obituary in The Village Voice, said: “Though he never came out as gay, bisexual, or even straight, you had to be wearing blinders.” According to Gene Davis, a television producer who worked with Vandross, “Everybody in the business knew that Luther was gay”. In 2006, Bruce Vilanch, a friend and colleague of Vandross, told Out magazine, “He said to me, ‘No one knows I’m in the life.’ … He had very few sexual contacts”. According to Vilanch, Vandross experienced his longest romantic relationship with a man while living in Los Angeles during the late 1980s and early 1990’s. In December 2017, his friend Patti LaBelle confirmed that Vandross was in fact gay.
Luther Vandross released sixteen albums over the course of his singing and recording career, from *Luther *(1976) to Dance With My Father (2003). He died in 2005 of a heart attack, age 54.
Luther Vandross was a tenor and he was nicknamed “The Velvet Voice” and he was sometimes called “The Best Voice of a Generation” or “The Pavarotti of Pop”. Accomplished duet singer Mariah Carey stated several times in interviews that standing next to Vandross while recording their duet “Endless Love” was intimidating.
Mel Tormé was a American jazz and pop singer and composer, known for his smooth tenor voice, which earned him the nickname “The Velvet Fog.” He also wrote many songs, most notably “The Christmas Song” – though Tormé said that it wasn’t among his favorite songs, it proved to be a lucrative one.
In the 1980s television sitcom Night Court, the character Judge Harry Stone (played by Harry Anderson) was known to be a big fan of Tormé, which led to Tormé himself appearing in a number of episodes (usually as himself).
Mel Tormé wrote The Christmas Song in 1945 with Robert Wells. According to BMI, Broadcast Music, Inc., it is the most-played Christmas song. Nat King Cole recorded it in 1946, 1953, and in 1961. His 1961 recording is generally regarded as the definitive version, while in 1974 his original 1946 version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Many well-known Christmas songs were written by Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” and Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song”. Probably the most prolific was Johnny Marks, who wrote “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, “A Holly Jolly Christmas”, “Silver and Gold” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”.
Rudolf Island, in the Arkhangelsk Oblast, is the northernmost point in Russia.
gMap: Google Maps
Note that “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” was a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and has been set to music more than once. I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day - Wikipedia
Back in play: The Russian Blue breed of cat is also called the Archangel Cat.
The International Cat Association recognizes 71 different breeds of cats. By contrast, the World Canine Organization recognizes 339 breeds of dogs.
The 2019 World Series Champions are the Washington Nationals!!
Woo-hoo!!
The 2016 World Series winners were the Chicago Cubs, just one year after Back to the Future II predicted it.
Although it appears that Michael J. Fox is actually playing a guitar in Back to the Future, music supervisor Bones Howe hired Hollywood guitar coach and musician Paul Hanson to teach Fox to simulate playing all the parts so it would look realistic, including playing behind his head. Fox lip-synched “Johnny B. Goode” to vocals by Mark Campbell (of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack fame).
Chuck Berry wrote the song “Johnny B. Goode” in 1955, and released it as a single in 1958. It rose as high as #8 on Billboard’s Top 100 chart, and is ranked seventh on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.
Berry acknowledged that the song is partly autobiographical and that the original lyrics referred to Johnny as a “colored boy”, but he changed it to “country boy” to ensure radio play.