Album Anniversary - December 12, 2015

Today is the 35th anniversary of Sandinista!, the fourth album from the Clash.

Video: "Hitsville UK"

Film Anniversary - December 12, 2015

Today is the 35th anniversary of Popeye, the Robert Altman film adaption of the E.C. Segar comic strip, starring Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, and Ray Walston.

Album Anniversary - December 12, 2015

Today is the 40th anniversary of Mothership Connection, the fourth album from Parliament.

Video: "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)"

Today's Words of Wisdom - December 12, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

John Jay (1745 – 1829):

“The wise and the good never form the majority of any large society and it seldom happens that their measures are uniformly adopted.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880):

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

and

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

and

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.”

and

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.”

and

“The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.”

Patrick O’Brian (1914 – 2000):

“We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth.”

Frank Sinatra (1915 – 1998):

“A simple I love you means more than money.”

and

“You only go around once, but if you play your cards right, once is enough.”

Album Anniversary - December 11, 2015

Today is the 45th anniversary of Plastic Ono Band, the recognized debut solo album from John Lennon.

Video: "Mother"

Television Anniversary - December 11, 2015

Today is the 35th anniversary of Magnum, P.I., the private detective show set in Hawaii and starring Tom Selleck.

Film Anniversary - December 11, 2015

Today is the 45th anniversary of the Disney film, The Aristocats. 

Today's Words of Wisdom - December 11, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Jim Harrison (1937 - ):

“Barring love I'll take my life in large doses alone--rivers, forests, fish, grouse, mountains. Dogs.”

and

“Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving

ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing

each other out. We set this house

on fire, forgetting that we live within.”

and

“The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.”

Hector Berlioz (1803 -1869):

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."

Naguib Mahfouz (1911 – 2006):

“It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”

Grace Paley (1922 – 2007):

“The only thing you should have to do is find work you love to do. And I can't imagine living without having loved a person. A man, in my case. It could be a woman, but whatever. I think, what I always tell kids when they get out of class and ask, 'What should I do now?' I always say, 'Keep a low overhead. You're not going to make a lot of money.' And the next thing I say: 'Don't live with a person who doesn't respect your work.' That's the most important thing—that's more important than the money thing. I think those two things are very valuable pieces of information.”

and

“That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.”

and

“Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.”

Thomas McGuane (1939 - ):

“Literature is the ditch I'm going to die in. It's still the thing I care most about.”

and

“By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.”

Jon Brion (1963 - ):

“The feeling that someone really gets you

It's something that no one should object to

It could happen today so I suggest you

Skip your habit of laying low

It's the end of the things you know

Here we go

Because someone can say "Hello,

You old so and so, here we go"

Mos Def (1973 - ):

“Hip-hop is a beautiful culture. It's inspirational, because it's a culture of survivors. You can create beauty out of nothingness.”

and

“Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH”

Today's Words of Wisdom - December 10, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905):

“To try to be brave is to be brave.”

and

“It is by loving and not by being loved that one can come nearest to the soul of another.”

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886):

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”

and

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”

and

“The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS.”

Thomas Lux (1946 - ):

“No poem ever bought a hamburger, or not too many.”

and

“The voice you hear when you read to yourself

is the clearest voice: you speak it

speaking to you.”

Kenneth Branagh (1960 - ):

“One of the things that makes Hamlet unique among Shakespeare's characters is his courage to face up to the darker elements of his personality.”

and

“The elasticity of Shakespeare is extraordinary.”

Today's Words of Wisdom - December 9, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

John Milton (1608 – 1674):

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

and

“Solitude sometimes is best society.”

and

“Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind.”

Dalton Trumbo (1905 – 1976):

“If I were dead and buried

And I heard your voice,

Beneath the sod

My heart of dust

Would still rejoice.”

Joshua Bell (1967 - ):

“I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.”

Tip O’Neill (1912 – 1994):

“A good lesson in keeping your perspective is: Take your job seriously but don’t take yourself seriously.”

Kirk Douglas (1916 - ):

“The learning process continues until the day you die.”