Author Archives: dcaligari

December 29, 1967 – Star Trek first aired The Trouble with Tribbles episode – arguably one of their most famous episodes – on this date. To create the one tribble moving on its own, the prop supervisor bought a battery powered toy dog and stripped it down to the mechanical works. Once recovered with furContinue reading “I believe everyone has seen this episode”

December 29, 1933 –One of their best remembered films, Laurel and Hardy’s Sons of the Desert, premiered on this date. During the shooting, Stan Laurel was also seeing someone else, Virginia Ruth Rogers, even though his divorce from his first wife was not yet final. Rogers even filled in as a crowd scene extra andContinue reading “Are you a member?”

Tonight’s the third night of Kwanzaa. The principle celebrated is Ujima (oo-JEE-muh) or collective work and responsibility. That means to build and maintain the community together and take on the community’s problems and to solve them together. Hope you’re having a good Kwanzaa.

It’s the Fourth day of Christmas and you’ve just received four calling bird, sometimes know as colly birds or collie birds (which are actually blackbirds). Today’s score: you currently have 22 gifts – four calling birds, six French hens, eight turtledoves and four partridges in their respective pear trees (when do these trees become aContinue reading “Allow the appropriate spacing for the cages”

December 28, 1958 – Toho Company Ltd. released Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, (Kakushi Toride no San Akunin) starring Toshiro Mifune and Misa Uehara to theaters in Japan on this date. Akira Kurosawa was depressed after the lack of success of his last two films which he deemed heavy and tragic, he decided to takeContinue reading “It should remind you of Star Wars”

December 28, 1994 – The Madness of King George, film based on the play by Alan Bennett, directed by Nicholas Hytner, starring Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren opened in the US. on this date. Many historians believe that George III’s mental state was caused by porphyria, a metabolic imbalance that can cause blue urine. However,Continue reading “The Madness of King George premiered”

December 28, 1985–Eddie Murphy’s single Party All The Time goes to #2 in the Billboard Charts, on this date. The song was written and produced by Rick James, it charts higher than any other James composition.

December 27, 1961 –Tony Bennett, playing in the Venetian Room of the San Francisco Fairmont Hotel, made his first solo public performance of I Left My Heart in San Francisco, on this date.  The song was written by George Cory and Douglass Cross in 1954 (Cory wrote the music and Cross wrote the lyrics) andContinue reading “The rest, as they say, was history.”

December 27, 1941 –20th Century Fox released John Ford’s film, How Green Was My Valley, starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara and Roddy McDowall on this date. Sara Allgood was the only actor who gave John Ford any trouble. At one point, she complained that a scene they were about to shoot wouldn’t play. Ford calledContinue reading “How Green Was My Valley premiered”

December 27, 1947 –Hey kids, what time is it? A bleary eyed world, fresh from the horrors of a second World War awaken to the sight of a freaky marionette on NBC – Howdy Doody premiered on this date. This was the first nationally televised American children’s television show.