Worst That Could Happen is a song with lyrics and music written by singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. Originally recorded by the 5th Dimension on their 1967 album of nearly all-Jimmy Webb songs, The Magic Garden, Worst That Could Happen was later recorded by The Brooklyn Bridge, peaking at #3 in both the U.S. and Canada.
The song tells about a man wishing well to a woman with whom he is still in love, but because the man was unwilling to settle down, she left him and is about to marry someone else who is more stable; the singer accepts the marriage but still feels that it is “the worst (thing) that could happen to (him).” It has been stated that, along with MacArthur Park and By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Worst That Could Happen is about a relationship that Webb had had with a woman named Susan.
The song is noted for the quoting of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March from the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is heard at the end.
The Brooklyn Bridge version appeared on the list of songs deemed inappropriate by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, or simply In the Name of the King, is a 2007 action-fantasy film directed by Uwe Boll and starring Jason Statham, Claire Forlani, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman and Ray Liotta. It is inspired by the Dungeon Siege video game series. The English-language film was an international (German, American, and Canadian) co-production and filmed in Canada. It premiered at the Brussels Festival of Fantastic Films in April 2007 and was released in theatres on November 2007.
Upon its release, the film was a major critical and commercial failure, receiving overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and grossing $13.1 million against a budget of $60 million.
In the kingdom of Ehb, a man known only as Farmer (Statham) is living a happy life with his wife, Solana, and their young son, Zeph, in the town of Stonebridge. One day, the town gets attacked by creatures known as the Krug. The Krug, who are known to be primitive and animal-like, surprise the people by taking up arms, donning armour and are fighting with courage, intelligence and ferocity. It’s all because they’re magically controlled by Gallian, a powerful Magus who has become sadistic and megalomaniacal, and seeks to conquer and rule Ehb.
Despite being considered a bomb, Boll filmed a sequel titled In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds. Filming began on December 1, 2010 and it was released in 2011. The film stars Dolph Lundgren and Natassia Malthe. A third film, In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission, was filmed in 2013 but not released until 2014. The film starred Dominic Purcell, with Boll returning to direct.
Please Mr. Postman is the 1961 studio debut album from Motown girl group The Marvelettes and the sixth album ever released by the company. The focal track is the number-one hit single, Please Mr. Postman. The single was the first Motown song to ever reach the top position on the Hot 100 Singles chart. It also topped the R&B chart. The album notably features cover versions of label mates The Miracles’ Way Over There and I Want a Guy, which was the debut single for fellow Motown girl group The Supremes the same year, and their cover had served as the b-side to Twistin’ Postman the less successful follow-up to Please Mr. Postman. Although the original version by The Supremes flopped, The Marvelettes’ cover became a regional hit.
Other songs on the album include Oh I Apologize, produced by Smokey Robinson, who would produce much of the group’s later material, and Angel, an early lead for Wanda Young who would later take Gladys Horton’s place as the group’s main lead singer.
The album art for Please Mr. Postman did not contain any images of The Marvelettes, because including African-American artists on album covers did not become customary until around 1963.
Please Mr. Postman received mainly negative reviews as it was believed to have been “too rushed” so that the focal track’s success could be capitalized. All of the tracks from the album can be found on the Hip-O Select deluxe compilation CD Forever: The Complete Motown Albums.
What kid doesn’t love a doll that poops? It might seem far-fetched, but the Catalonian people who live in northwest Spain have a tradition of placing caganer dolls in their Christmas nativity scenes. The caganer traditionally wears a white shirt and a Catalan-style hat. More importantly, he’s bare-bottomed, with his trousers around his ankles, as if he’s in the act of, well, going #2. There are competing theories about why this tradition came to be, but hit any Christmas market in the region and you can find both traditional and pop culture-themed caganers.
The name “El Caganer” literally means “the pooper.” The exact origin of the Caganer is unknown, but the tradition has existed since at least the 18th century. According to the society Amics del Caganer (Friends of the Caganer), it is believed to have entered the nativity scene by the late 17th or early 18th century, during the Baroque period. The caganer is a particular and highly popular feature of modern Catalan nativity scenes. Accompanying Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds and company, the caganer is often tucked away in a corner of the model, typically nowhere near the manger scene. A tradition in Catalonia is to have children find the hidden figure.
Possible reasons for placing a figure representing a person in the act of emptying his bowels in a scene which is widely considered holy include:
The Caganer, by creating feces, is fertilizing the Earth. According to the ethnographer Joan Amades, it was a "customary figure in nativity scenes [pessebres] in the 19th century, because people believed that this deposit [symbolically] fertilized the ground of the nativity scenes, which became fertile and ensured the nativity scene for the following year, and with it, the health of body and peace of mind required to make the nativity scene, with the joy and happiness brought by Christmas near the hearth. Placing this figurine in the nativity scene brought good luck and joy and not doing so brought adversity."
Many modern caganers represent celebrities and authority figures. By representing them with their pants down, the caganer serves as a leveling device to bring the mighty down.
As to the charge of blasphemy, as Catalan anthropologist Miguel Delgado has pointed out, the grotesque, rather than a negation of the divine may actually signify an intensification of the sacred, for what could be more grotesque than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, a bloody public torture and execution as the defining moment in the story of Christianity.
In his essay Les virtuts cìviques del caganer ("The Civic Virtues of the Defecator"), American anthropologist Brad Erickson argues that Catalans use the caganer to process and respond to contemporary social issues such as immigration and the imposition of public civility regulations.
Further opinions:
"The caganer was the most mischievous and out-of-place character of the pessebre's [otherwise] idyllic landscape; he was the "Other." with everything that entails, and as the "Other," was accepted, in a liberal vein, as long as he did not aim to occupy the foreground. The caganer represented the spoilsport that we all have inside of us, and that's why it is not surprising that it was the most beloved figure among the children and, above all, the adolescents, who were already beginning to feel rather like outsiders at the family celebration." Agustí Pons
"The caganer is a hidden figure and yet is always sought out like the lost link between transcendence and contingency. Without the caganer, there would be no nativity scene but rather a liturgy, and there would be no real country but just the false landscape of a model." Joan Barril
"The caganer seems to provide a counterpoint to so much ornamental hullabaloo, so much emotive treacle, so much contrived beauty." Josep Murgades
"The caganer is, like so many other things that have undergone the filtering of a great many generations, a cult object; with the playful, aesthetic and superficial devotion that we feel towards all the silly things that fascinate us deep down." Jordi Soler
In this one, a girl is babysitting for a family when she calls the parents to ask if she can cover up a disturbing clown statue in the corner of the living room. The dad tells her very seriously to grab the kids, go next door, and call 911 without any further explanation. Once she is next door and the police are on their way, she calls the father back, who then explains that they don’t have a clown statue. Furthermore, the kids had been complaining about a clown watching them in their sleep, but the parents had written it off as a nightmare. In most versions of the story, the clown turns out to be a midget who had been living in their house for some time undetected. When the babysitter came over, he didn’t have time to escape so he just froze in the corner.
Edward Gates White (August 4, 1918 – December 27, 1992), sometimes credited as Ed Gates or The Great Gates, was an American rhythm and blues singer, pianist and bandleader who recorded in the 1940s and 1950s.
Although some sources claim he was born in Philadelphia, researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc give his birthplace as Alabama. He moved to California in 1932, and established himself as a bandleader. With various bands, credited as the Hollywood All Stars or the Wampus Cats, he recorded sporadically for several labels between the mid-1940s and late 1950s. He also had a radio show on NBC in the mid-1940s, when he was known as “The Man in the Moon.”
His biggest success as a recording artist came in 1949, when Late After Hours on the Selective label, credited to The Great Gates, reached #6 on the R&B chart. In 1952, he recorded in Chicago with bandleader Red Saunders, and later recorded in Los Angeles on the Aladdin, 4 Star and Specialty labels. His last recordings, as an organist, were in 1962, on the Robins Nest label.
American actor Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. He was one of the most popular movie stars of his time, he had a screen career spanning more than three decades. A prominent heartthrob of the Golden Age of Hollywood, he achieved stardom with his role in Magnificent Obsession (1954), followed by All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Giant (1956), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Hudson also found continued success with a string of romantic comedies co-starring Doris Day: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964). During the late 1960s, his films included Seconds (1966), Tobruk (1967), and Ice Station Zebra (1968). Unhappy with the film scripts he was offered, Hudson turned to television and was a hit, starring in the popular mystery series McMillan & Wife (1971–1977). His last role was as a guest star on the fifth season (1984–1985) of the primetime ABC soap opera Dynasty, until AIDS-related illness made it impossible for him to continue.
While his career developed, Hudson and his agent Henry Willson kept the actor’s personal life out of the headlines. In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson’s secret homosexuality. Willson stalled this by disclosing information about two of his other clients. Willson provided information about Rory Calhoun’s years in prison and the arrest of Tab Hunter at a party in 1950. According to some colleagues, Hudson’s homosexual activity was well known in Hollywood throughout his career, and former co-stars Julie Andrews, Mia Farrow, Elizabeth Taylor, and Susan Saint James claimed that they knew of his homosexuality and kept Hudson’s secret for him, as did friends Audrey Hepburn and Carol Burnett.
Soon after the Confidential incident, Hudson married Willson’s secretary Phyllis Gates. Gates later wrote that she dated Hudson for several months, lived with him for two months before his surprise marriage proposal, and married Hudson out of love and not (as it was reported later) to prevent an exposé of Hudson’s sexual past. Press coverage of the wedding quoted Hudson as saying: “When I count my blessings, my marriage tops the list.” Gates filed for divorce after three years in April 1958, citing mental cruelty. Hudson did not contest the divorce and Gates received alimony of $250 per week for 10 years. Gates never remarried.
Unknown to the public, Hudson was diagnosed with HIV on June 5, 1984, three years after the emergence of the first cluster of symptomatic patients in the U.S., and only one year after the initial identification by scientists of the HIV that causes AIDS. Over the next several months, Hudson kept his illness a secret and continued to work while, at the same time, traveling to France and other countries seeking a cure – or at least treatment to slow the progress of the disease.
On July 16, 1985, Hudson joined his old friend Doris Day for a Hollywood press conference announcing the launch of her new TV cable show Doris Day’s Best Friends in which Hudson was videotaped visiting Day’s ranch in Carmel, California, a few days earlier. He appeared gaunt and his speech was nearly incoherent; during the segment, Hudson did very little speaking, with most of it consisting of Day and Hudson walking around as Day’s recording of “My Buddy” played in the background, with Hudson noting he had quickly tired out. His appearance was enough of a shock that the reunion was broadcast repeatedly over national news shows that night and for days to come. Media outlets speculated on Hudson’s health. Day later acknowledged: “He was very sick. But I just brushed that off and I came out and put my arms around him and said ‘Am I glad to see you.'”
Two days later, Hudson traveled to Paris, France, for another round of treatment. After Hudson collapsed in his room at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on July 21, his publicist Dale Olson released a statement claiming that Hudson had inoperable liver cancer. Olson denied reports that Hudson had AIDS and only said that he was undergoing tests for “everything” at the American Hospital of Paris. But, four days later, July 25, 1985, Hudson’s French publicist Yanou Collart confirmed that Hudson did, in fact, have AIDS. He was among the early mainstream celebrities to have been diagnosed with the disease.
Hudson flew back to Los Angeles on July 30. He was so weak that he was removed by stretcher from the Air France Boeing 747 he had chartered, and on which, he and his medical attendants were the only passengers. He was flown by helicopter to UCLA Medical Center, where he spent nearly a month undergoing further treatment. He was released from the hospital in late August 1985 and returned to his home in Beverly Crest, Los Angeles for private hospice care.
At around 9:00 a.m. on the morning of October 2, 1985, Hudson died in his sleep from AIDS-related complications at his home in Beverly Crest at the age of 59, less than seven weeks before what would have been his 60th birthday. He was one of the first major celebrities at the time to have died from AIDS. Hudson requested that no funeral be held. His body was cremated hours after his death and a cenotaph later was established at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, California. His ashes were scattered in the channel between Wilmington, Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Hudson was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (located at 6116 Hollywood Blvd). Following his death, Elizabeth Taylor, his co-star in the film Giant, purchased a bronze plaque for Hudson on the West Hollywood Memorial Walk. In 2002, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.
Irene Iddesleigh is a romantic drama novel written by Amanda McKittrick Ros. Its publication in 1897 was financed by Ros’s husband as a gift on their tenth wedding anniversary. The plot centers around the complicated love life of a Canterbury lady named Irene. It is widely considered one of the worst books of all time, and has been panned by critics for its use of purple prose and poorly-constructed plot.
Don’t be fooled by the romantic name… it’s actually horse meat. Found on dinner tables in Japan, the meat has higher hemoglobin levels than that of other animals, meaning it turns a much deeper red hue (which explains the cherry blossom name). Not only is horse meat higher in protein than beef, it’s also lower in fat and calories. It can be grilled or served sashimi style with soy sauce for dipping.
My Little Margie is an American television situation comedy starring Gale Storm and Charles Farrell that alternated between CBS and NBC from 1952 to 1955. The series was created by Frank Fox and produced in Los Angeles, California, at Hal Roach Studios by Hal Roach, Jr., and Roland D. Reed.
My Little Margie premiered on CBS as the first summer replacement for I Love Lucy on June 16, 1952, under the sponsorship of Philip Morris cigarettes (when the series moved to NBC for its third season in the fall of 1953, Scott Paper Company became its sponsor). In an unusual move, the series—with the same leads—aired original episodes on CBS Radio, concurrently with the TV broadcasts, from December 1952 through August 1955. Only 23 radio broadcasts are known to exist in recorded form.
Set in New York City, the series stars Gale Storm as 21-year-old Margie Albright and former silent film star Charles Farrell as her widowed father, 50-year-old Vern Albright. They share an apartment at the Carlton Arms Hotel. Vern Albright is the vice-president of the investment firm of Honeywell and Todd, where his bosses are George Honeywell (Clarence Kolb) and Westley Todd (George Meader). Roberta Townsend (Hillary Brooke) is Vern’s girlfriend, and Margie’s boyfriend is Freddy Wilson (Don Hayden). Mrs. Odetts (played by Gertrude Hoffmann on TV, Verna Felton on radio) is the Albrights’ next-door neighbor and Margie’s sidekick in madcap capers reminiscent of Lucy and Ethel in I Love Lucy. When Margie realizes she has blundered or gotten into trouble, she makes an odd trilling sound.
Other cast members include Willie Best, who plays the elevator operator, Dian Fauntelle, and silent film star Zasu Pitts. Scottish actor Andy Clyde, prior to The Real McCoys, appears in the 1954 episode, “Margie and the Bagpipes.”
My Little Margie finished at #29 in the Nielsen ratings for the 1954–1955 television season and, even more impressively, at #6 in Nielsen’s radio estimates for the 1954–55 season. Despite this success, the series was canceled in 1955. Gale Storm went on to star in The Gale Storm Show which ran for 143 episodes from 1956 to 1960. Zasu Pitts joined Gale Storm in this series too, originally entitled Oh! Susanna.
The show has been compared with two other 1950s sitcoms which aired at the same time, I Married Joan and Life with Elizabeth. All three programs were inspired by the success of I Love Lucy, but despite their own merits, have fallen into obscurity only to gain some popularity after entering the public domain. I Love Lucy, however, is still under copyright in the United States.