This Is Why I’m Hot (American King Music/Capitol, 2007)
This Is Why I’m Hot is a song by American rapper Mims. The song was co-written by Mims and produced by Blackout Movement for his debut album Music Is My Savior. Released in 2007 as the first single from the album, the song reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as #2 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and #1 on the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart, eventually being certified Platinum by the RIAA. The song debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot Digital Songs chart, selling 140,874 downloads. It remained the top-selling digital single for one additional week. Eventually, the success of the song in the United States saw a release in the United Kingdom in May 2007, where the single peaked at #18 on the UK Singles Chart on the week dated June 3, 2007. The song was also featured in the soundtrack of the film Due Date. If we can go back to the success digitally of This Is Why I’m Hot, in March 2007, the online release of the song had propelled it from number 32 to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in one week; this was then the third-greatest rise to number one in the history of the Billboard Hot 100.
Toell the Great (Estonian: Suur Tõll) in Estonian mythology is a great giant hero who lived on the Baltic Sea island of Saaremaa. He lived in Tõlluste village with his wife Piret. He tossed huge rocks everywhere, mostly aiming for his archenemy Vanatühi or other enemies of Saaremaa people. Tõll was king of Saaremaa but he lived as a common farmer. He often visited his brother Leiger on the neighboring Hiiumaa (Dagö) island. He was so tall that he could almost walk there (The distance is something like 5 to 6 km). His walking stick was a 5 fathom spruce tree trunk. Tõll was always kind and ready to help, but very hot-tempered. He loved to eat cabbage, drink beer and go to the sauna (his wife was always busy gathering him sauna stove rocks). When an enemy decapitated him, he put his head on his sword and walked to his grave, which is supposed to be somewhere in Tõlluste. When Tõll died, he promised to rise from grave and help people in case of war. But naughty children made fun of him by yelling “Tõll, Tõll, wake up, there is a war in the yard”. Tõll rose, grew angry and went back to his grave, swearing never to come back.
In 1980, a 14 minute animated short film was created by Tallinnfilm from the Soviet Union. The film was directed by Rein Raamat, and the main artist was Jüri Arrak. Raamat graphically brought the tale to life featuring not only an unflinching look at the hero’s demise but shows such graphic battlefield deaths as soldiers being stabbed through the face. But at the time, it was the nationalist tone of the film instead of the violence that compelled the Soviet Union to withdraw it from circulation.
First Take was the debut album of American soul singer Roberta Flack. It was released in June 1969 and spawned the hits Compared to What (B-side Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye) and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Compared to What had been performed early in the year at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival by Flack’s manager Les McCann and tenor saxophonist Eddie Harris before Flack’s single was released. McCann’s performance ended up eclipsing Flack’s single’s performance, but fate had other plans for young Miss Flack. Her second single, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was a slower paced version of the original Peggy Seeger’s 1957 folk song. Though she was encouraged at the time of recording to speed it up to make it a hit, Flack held strong to her vision and in 1971 it paid off. In 1971, her sensual version was chosen by actor Clint Eastwood for his directorial film debut of Play Misty For Me to play during a love scene between him and actress Donna Mills. When he called to ask permission to use the song, she offered to re-record a faster version. He declined the offer and wanted it as it was. And in 1972, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face topped the Australian, Canadian and American charts, giving Flack her first number one hit and her first international hit single and Flack’s career took off from there.
Sixteen-year-old Italian immigrant Antonio Pasin arrived in New York in 1914 carrying little else than the carpentry skills he had learned from his father and grandfather. His parents had sold the family mule to pay for passage. Working in Chicago as a manual laborer, Pasin bought used woodworking equipment and set up shop in a rented room. Building little red wagons at night and peddling them during the day, he saved enough money to found the Liberty Coaster Company in 1923, naming it after the statue he had admired in New York Harbor. In 1930, he began mass-producing the toys out of stamped metal. He called his new wagon the “Radio Flyer,” another patriotic reference to his homeland, this one after a famous Italian invention, the radio. Intended “for every girl and boy,” the wagons sold for less than $3 each. Even in the depths of the Great Depression, they sold at the rate of 1,500 a day. Radio Flyer designers added high sides for carting kids in 1950s, borrowed bright colors and slick tires from muscle cars in the 1970s, and even created an all-terrain version, the Quad Shock Wagon—to match the SUVs in the 1990s. The Radio Flyer was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.
Steak and BJ Day is a non-official conditional holiday that is celebrated on March 14th and was established as the male version of Valentine’s Day – which is why it’s celebrated exactly one month after this holiday. If you need to know how this holiday is celebrated, then all you have to do is read its title. That’s because the two main components of this holiday is for women to provide steaks and blow jobs to their men. Pretty simple, huh?
Steak and BJ Day was invented in 2002 by Tom Birdsey, a radio DJ who invented the day while on air. The holiday spread thanks to word of mouth (couldn’t resist). First, it spread across the North American continent and then it spread all over Europe. Now it is celebrated by people all over the world.
Steak and BJ Day is a holiday that is based on the assumption that the traditional Valentine’s Day celebration is a day for women. Advocates of this holiday will say that men have no use for candy, romantic dinners or flowers. That the only thing men really want is some fellatio fulfillment and a nice big hunk of meat. However, since Steak and BJ Day is a conditional holiday, guy’s aren’t automatically getting steaks and oral sex on this day. No, it all depends on how well they have taken care of their wives or girlfriends on Valentine’s Day. If guys failed to fulfill their duties on that day – or their women were dissatisfied with their execution of the obligations on that day – then women are not obliged to give guys what they want on this holiday.
Winston Conrad “Wink” Martindale is probably better known as a game show host. Martindale has hosted numerous game shows, including What’s This Song?, Gambit, Headline Chasers, High Rollers, The Last Word, Great Getaway Game, Trivial Pursuit, Shuffle, Boggle, Jumble, Instant Recall, Debt, and most famously Tic-Tac-Dough. In addition, he was the creator of Bumper Stumpers. Famous for his campy, cheesy personality, Martindale quickly became one of America’s favorite game show hosts and is thought to be the inspiration for the game show host stereotype as it is today. As of today, he is the second television personality to have hosted 15 game shows, behind fellow veteran game show host, Bill Cullen, who had hosted 23, and in front of fellow game show hosts Tom Kennedy, who hosted 13, and Bob Eubanks and Alex Trebek, who both had hosted 9.
His rendition of the spoken-word song, The Deck Of Cards, went to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold over a million copies in 1959. It also peaked at #5 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1963, one of four visits to that chart.
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993)
Born Thoroughgood Marshall in Baltimore, Maryland, he was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court’s first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he successfully argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education.
Marshall graduated from the Howard University School of Law in 1933. He established a private legal practice in Baltimore before founding the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he served as executive director. In that position, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court, including Smith v. Allwright, Shelley v. Kraemer, and Brown v. Board of Education, the latter of which held that racial segregation in public education is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Four years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as the United States Solicitor General. In 1967, Johnson successfully nominated Marshall to succeed retiring Associate Justice Tom C. Clark as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall retired during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, and was succeeded by Clarence Thomas.
Marshall was instilled very early on an appreciation for the Constitution and the rule of law by his parents. His father would take him and his brother to watch local court cases and they would debate what they had seen as well as other current events. Though his father didn’t specifically encourage him to become a lawyer, that is certainly what he ended up turning him into. It’s also no wonder that he opposed segregation from an early age as well. From his first foray into university (Lincoln University) from he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American literature and philosophy, he opposed the integration of African-American professors. He would have gone on to study at his hometown law school of the University of Maryland School of Law, but declined to apply due to the school’s policy of segregation, which was how he ended up at Howard University. His mother had to pawn her wedding and engagements rings to pay his tuition. He graduated from Howard’s School of Law at the top of his class and with an LL.B. magna cum laude.
Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993, at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife (Cecilia Suyat) and their two sons (Thurgood Marshall Jr. and John W. Marshall). Numerous memorials have been dedicated to Marshall. An 8-foot (2.4 m) statue stands in Lawyers Mall adjacent to the Maryland State House. The statue, dedicated on October 22, 1996, depicts Marshall as a young lawyer and is placed just a few feet (a meter or two) away from where stood the Old Maryland Supreme Court Building, the court where Marshall argued discrimination cases leading up to the Brown decision. The primary office building for the federal court system, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., is named in honor of Marshall and contains a statue of him in the atrium. In 1976, Texas Southern University renamed its law school after the sitting justice. In 1980, the University of Maryland School of Law opened a new library, which it named the Thurgood Marshall Law Library. In 2000, the historic Twelfth Street YMCA Building located in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was renamed the Thurgood Marshall Center. The major airport serving Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., was renamed the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on October 1, 2005. The 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church added Marshall to the church’s liturgical calendar of “Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints,” designating May 17 as his feast day. His membership of the Lincoln University fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha was to have been memorialized by a sculpture by Alvin Pettit in 2013. The University of California, San Diego renamed its Third College after Marshall in 1993. Marshall Middle School, in Olympia, Washington, is also named after Marshall, as is Thurgood Marshall Academy in Washington, D.C.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Dvir Publishing House, 2011/Harper, 2014)
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was originally published in Hebrew in 2011 and translated into English in 2014. Written by Yuval Noah Harari, it was based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The book surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences. The book has gathered mixed reviews. While it was positively received by the general public, scholars with relevant subject matter expertise have been very critical of its scientific claims.
In the 1960s, a candy called Hippy Sippy caused quite the stir. The packaging was not only designed to mock drug use in the hippie culture, but looked like a heroin needle, too. The candy’s motto also read, “Hippy Sippy says I’ll try anything!” The candy itself was small, multi-colored pellets (designed to look like pills). As you can imagine, parents were not stoked about the candy, as it could give children the wrong idea. Hippy Sippy was promptly discontinued. Hippy Sippy continued to be remembered due to the cultural shock value.
The Animals of Farthing Wood (European Broadcasting Union, 1992)
The Animals of Farthing Wood is a British-French animated series commissioned by the European Broadcasting Union between 1992 and 1995, and is based on the series of books written by English author Colin Dann. It was produced by Martin Gates Productions (MGP) in association with Telemagination, based in London, and La Fabrique, based in Montpellier in France, but also aired in other European countries. The first countries to air the series were Norway, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom, in January 1993.
The television series followed the basic plots of the series of books, although certain elements were changed. The first series followed the animals of Farthing Wood, who were forced to flee their homes after humans started destroying the wood to build suburban tract houses. Led by Fox, and guided by Toad, the animals left Farthing Wood on a journey to White Deer Park, a nature reserve where they would be protected. The second and third series followed the relationships between the Farthing Wood animals, the White Deer Park animals and outsiders, particularly a blue fox named Scarface, his mate Lady Blue and cub Ranger. The episodes were made in both the UK and France. Because of this, in series 1 traffic is seen driving on the right hand carriageway of the motorway. However, they are briefly seen in series 3 driving on the left hand side. Other than this, the location is generally kept ambiguous, apart from a brief moment in series 2 when a gravestone is visible with French writing on it.