~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
October 14, 2011

★~ Todays’ Quote: Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. e e cummings

★~ Be Bald and Be Free Day:

Do bald people have bad hair days. Of course one would assume not . . . but I’m sure the bald head has rough spots on occasion or patches of fuzz that refuse to be tamed. Would those be bad bald days? If you are bald, today is  the day to go shiny and be proud; and if you are not, just tell someone their bald head looks especially beautiful today

★~ National Dessert Day:

May I suggest something with honey? In honor of Winnie-the-Pooh, that silly old bear?

On this day in 1926, A. A. Milne’s book Winnie-the-Pooh was published. The story begins: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, ‘But I thought he was a boy?’

‘So did I,’ said Christopher Robin.

‘Then you can’t call him Winnie?’

‘I don’t.’

‘But you said —’

‘He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what “ther” means?’

‘Ah, yes, now I do,’ I said quickly; and I hope you  do

too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.”

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1954 – Talk about screen credits! With a cast of 25,000, the C.B. DeMille epic, The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston, began filming in Egypt. Incidentally, Heston’s name was mentioned waaaaaay at the top in big letters. After the film became a smash, DeMille issued Commandment Eleven: Thou shalt not use 25,000 extras ever again in the making of a major motion picture.

♥~ 1964 – The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the youngest person to ever receive the $54,000 award. He donated the money to a tcivil rights group.

♥- 1972 – Michael Jackson went to No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Ben’, his first solo No.1. A No.7 hit in the UK

♥~ 1979 – Hockey Hall-of-Famer Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers scored the first of his record 894 goals in a home game against the Vancouver Cancucks.

♥~ 1984 – George ‘Sparky’ Anderson’s Detroit Tigers walloped the Padres 8-4 amd Anderson became the first baseball manager to win 100 games and a World Series in both leagues.

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1894 – e e cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings) poet, playwright: Him, Santa Claus; writer: The Enormous Room; died Sep 3, 1962

♥~ 1939 – Ralph Lauren (Lifshitz) fashion designer: Polo clothes, cologne, linens, etc.

♥~ 1946 – Justin Hayward guitarist, singer: group: The Moody Blues: Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon, Question, Your Wildest Dreams; solo: Forever Autumn, LP: Songwriter, Moving Mountains, Other Side of Life, Sur la Mer

♥~ 1958 – Thomas Dolby, solo, (1984 UK No.17 single ‘Hyperactive’), Also member of Camera Club, Lene Lovich band, as a producer worked with Joni Mitchell, Prefab Sprout.

★~ Did You Know:  

♥~ Up until the release of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, The Ten Commandments was the highest grossing religious epic in history, earning over $65.5 million in 1956. (This translates into $446 million $446,000,000 numerically, in current figures and inflation, throughout the years.)

♥~ Produced at a then-staggering cost of $13 million, the film went on to become Paramount’s biggest-grossing movie to that time. For years it ranked second only to Gone with the Wind as the most successful film in Hollywood history.

♥~ Charlton Heston was chosen for the role of Moses by Cecil B. DeMille because he bore a resemblance to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses in Rome. Heston later played Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy.

♥~ DeMille cast Yul Brynner’s as Ramses the same year he had shaved his head for the Siamese King role in the King and I,  he kept it that way the rest of his career with only a few exceptions.

♥~ Charlton Heston’s newborn son plays baby Moses in the opening scenes

♥~ The close-up illusion of the Red Sea parting was achieved by using the same technique perfected for DeMille’s silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923): two blocks of gelatin were placed side-by-side, melted with blow-torches and shot in extreme close-up, and the footage was then seen in reverse.

♥~ There is a longstanding rumor that future Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is an extra in this film, possibly playing a soldier. In her book “My Lucky Stars”, Shirley MacLaine recalls asking Castro if he indeed was in the film, and receiving an ambiguous answer.

♥~ Considerable controversy exists over who supplied the voice of God for the film, for which no on-screen credit was given. The voice used was heavily modified and mixed with other sound effects, making identification extremely difficult.

♥~ Decades later, some of the props used in this film – in particular cups, glasses and tableware – turned up in an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987) called “Tapestry”.

♥~ According to Charlton Heston‘s autobiography, the filming of the orgy scenes was so grueling, it prompted one female extra to exclaim, “Who do I have to f**k to get OUT of this movie?”

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Big Day for Cole and I — the new i-Phones will be delivered to our door step today. I sold our “outdated” i-Phones on eBay, which allowed us to update for free and make enough of a profit to buy cases. One buyer is from Japan and the other buyer is from Italy. It is a bit of a pain to ship international, but I do enjoy messaging back and forth with the buyers after the sale is complete. They are always so nice.

Goodbye sucks. My mom will board Amtrack and head back to Albuquerque today. From apple orchards to browsing through the mall, we had such a good time. Her dear boy (as she calls her grandson) has been spoiled by regular meals. I kept telling him not to get used to it, but you know how kids are. In the paraphrased words of one of my favorite authors (Dr. Seuss): I will probably cry because her visit is over and then smile a little later because it happened. After all, we will have our new I-Phones.

♥
Kb