The Friday Irregular

Volume 8, Number 10 (TFIr ^#192)

15^th August 2003

TFIr ONLINE

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FAQ: http://gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/scblfaq.htm (last updated 25 May 2003)

UndeadCam: http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/undead/ (last updated 4 August 2003)

Film/TV/CD Archive: http://gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/filmtv.txt & http://gizmo1.demon.co.uk/scblbiog/cd-list.txt - 634 CDs, 2822 films (346 on DVD) and 10180 TV shows (660 on DVD), totalling 13002 items, at 13 August 2003.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 15 August - Macbeth, king of Scotland (r. 1040-57), killed, 1067. Napoleon Bonaparte born, 1769. Sir Walter Scott born, 1771. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) born, 1888. V.J. (Victory over Japan) Day, 1945. Artist Rene Magritte died, 1967. Happy birthday to: actress Natasha Henstridge (29), actor Ben Affleck (31), former Mr J.Lo Cris Judd (34), actress Jenny Hanley (56), jazz musician Oscar Peterson (78), chef Julia Child (91). Today is: National Day in The Republic of the Congo. Liberation Day in South Korea. Independence Day in India. National Day in Liechtenstein. Floating Lantern Ceremony in Hawaii. Assumption Day in Vatican City. Mothers' Day in Costa Rica.

Saturday 16 August - Mathematician Jacques Bernoulli died, 1705. Writer Hugo Gernsback born, 1884. Tate Gallery, London, opened, 1897. Chemist Robert Bunsen died, 1899. The Woodstock festival began, 1969. Elvis Presley died, 1977. Happy birthday to: TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson (36), actor Timothy Hutton (43), actress Angela Bassett (45), Madonna (45), director James Cameron (49), fashion designer Katharine Hamnett (56). Today is: Il Palio in Siena. Bennington Battle Day in Vermont.

Sunday 17 August - Edward V (r.1483) died, 1483. Frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett born, 1786. Actress Mae West born, 1892. Construction of the Berlin Wall began, 1961. Lyricist Ira Gershwin died, 1983. Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hesse died, 1987. Happy birthday to: soccer player Thierry Henry (26), actor Donnie Wahlberg (34), musician Maria McKee (39), actor Sean Penn (43), musician Belinda Carlisle (45), actor Robert De Niro (60). Today is: Independence Day in Indonesia. National Day in Gabon.

Monday 18 August - Genghis Khan, Mongol emperor 1175-1227, died, 1227. Virginia Dare, the first child born in America to English parents, born, 1618. Composer Antonio Salieri born, 1750. Novelist Honore de Balzac died, 1850. Gold discovered in The Yukon, 1896. Humorist Willie Rushton born, 1937. Happy birthday to: actors Malcolm-Jamal Warner (33) & Christian Slater (34), actresses Madeleine Stowe (45) & Carole Bouquet (46), soccer player Peter Shilton (54), director Roman Polanski (70).

Tuesday 19 August - Augustus, Roman emperor 27BC-AD14, died, 14. John Flamsteed, first Astronomer Royal of England, born, 1646. Philosopher Blaise Pascal died, 1662. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright born, 1871. F. Gary Powers convicted of spying by the USSR over the U-2 incident, 1960. Groucho Marx died, 1977. Happy birthday to: actor Matthew Perry (34), actresses Lucy Briers (36) & Kyra Sedgwick (38), actor/director Jonathan Frakes (51), writer Richard Ingrams (66), astronaut Story Musgrave (68). Today is: Independence Day (Treaty of Rawalpindi, 1910) in Afghanistan. Aviation Day in the USA.

Wednesday 20 July - Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US president (1889-93) born, 1833. Raymond Poincare, French president (1913-20) born, 1860. Salvation Army founder William Booth died, 1912. Leon Trotsky assassinated, 1940. Russian tanks entered Czechoslovakia, 1968. Voyager I launched, 1977. Happy birthday to: actress Helen Grace (32), musician Fred Durst (33), actor James Marsters & actress Sophie Aldred (both 41), comedian Joe Pasquale (42), weatherman Al Roker (49). Today is: St Stephen's Day in Hungary.

Thursday 21 August - William IV (r. 1830-37) born, 1765. Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley born, 1872. Musician Count Basie born, 1904. Artists Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo married, 1929. Princess Margaret born, 1930. Conservationist George Adamson murdered, 1989. Happy birthday to: actress Alicia Witt (28), actor Matthew Broderick (41), tennis player Anne Hobbs (44), actress Kim Cattrall (47), film critic Barry Norman (70), musician Kenny Rogers (65). Today is: Surströmmingspremiär (first day for selling surströmming - fermented Baltic herring) in Sweden.

THE WISDOM OF...

This week, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, who is 53 today (Friday):
Golf seems to me an arduous way to go for a walk. I prefer to take the dogs out.

FILM QUIZ

A mixed bag this week. Answers next week or from the regular address.

Here's to swimming with bow-legged women.

My dear girl, there are some things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That's just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way.

- Man, I can get killed for telling you some of this stuff.
- You can get killed walking your doggie!

Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?

Last issue's criminal lines were:

What is my goal here, to make you a happy, well-adjusted gangster?
-- Analyse This

How do you guys intend to pay? A) credit card. B) cash. C) sneak out in the middle of the night.
-- The Great Muppet Caper

First she steals my publicity. Then she steals my lawyer, my trial date. And now she steals my goddamn garter!
-- Chicago

You're going to jail, Bart. Say goodbye to the wife and Tater Tots.
-- Toy Story

- How do you plead?
- Not guilty?
- I knew you'd say that.
-- Judge Dredd

WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

DUMB CRIMS... If you're going to be an armed bank robber, it's generally a good idea to have a gun - or at least a convincing fake, unlike Missouri resident Jed Stockman, who decided to carve a replica handgun out of wood. From a distance it might have worked, but once inside the bank his confidence had swelled so much that he held the "gun" less than a foot from the teller, who spotted that it was not real and refused to hand over any money. Stockman was arrested outside the building. One general aspect of dumb crimdom is that they usually end up doing bird, but a couple of would-be burglars in Nunthorpe, England, ran into problems with a real bird - a pet parrot. They got into the house and turned on the lights only to hear "Hello, who are you?" When they gave no reply, the parrot squawked "Hey you, come over here!" (as it had been trained to). The intruders, who had already taken a number of power tools from the garage, fled without stealing anything from the house. Leaving the scene of the crime is an important step for most crims, but not for a Dutch burglar who broke into an elderly woman's house during the night, pocketed some jewellery, and then settled down for a nap on her couch, where she found him at 6.00 am. He was still asleep when police arrived to arrest him.

GRAVE MATTERS... Leeds City Council was forced to admit this week that it has sent 200 letters letters requesting that graves and memorial plaques in a city cemetery are tidied up, addressed to the deceased. One was sent to Moira Thoms, asking that two vases, each holding a single white rose, be removed from around the plaque, which commemorates Mrs Thoms who died three years ago and whose ashes were scattered nearby. Her husband complained to the council, noting that he had bought the vases and roses at the cemetery. Although he has received an apology, Mr Thoms told reporters that he could not forgive the council, as "[..] unfortunately this has brought everything back."

THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL... Forty-two years after it was built, and thirteen years after it came down, the Berlin Wall is still causing problems. The few short sections that are still standing have mostly got holes in them from souvenir hunters, Volker Pawlowski, the former East Berlin construction worker who set up a business dismantling sections of the wall and cutting them into small chunks to sell is finding that fewer people want to but the pieces of wall unless they're attractively packaged, and an artist wants to rebuild the 65-mile wall as a massive plastic hoarding to display art on.

TEMPERATURE TROUBLES... The heatwave that has struck across Europe over the last couple of weeks has caused more problems than just forest fires. In Italy votive candles at the shrine of Saint Anthony of Padua were melting on souvenir stands, a cache of WW2 bombs was revealed when the water level in a German reservoir fell to an all-time low level, a driver in England suffered frostbite on his toes after he took his shoes and socks off and drove with his bare foot too near the air-conditioning vent near the pedals, German brewers publicly reassured the population that they were working around the clock and on triple shifts to ensure that supplies would hold up, Spanish commercial ice-makers unable to keep up with demand. British stores run out of air conditioners, fans and coolers. French bus drivers plan strike over right to wear shorts and sunglasses.

ANIMAL ROUND-UP... While his owner failed a sobriety test after being pulled over for drunk-driving in Koblenz, Germany, a West Highland white terrier performed all the given commands perfectly, including a full 360-degree turn, during which his owner fell over. The supervising doctor could only announce at the end of the test "Man: fail; dog: pass." It's been a good time for wild cats - a remote camera in Borneo filmed a Borneo bay cat, long thought to be extinct, at the end of June, while more evidence for big cats in the wilds of the UK came in with a rambler in Cornwall capturing one on video, a paw print in Northern Ireland thought to be those of a puma, and a spate of sightings of a big cat in Pembrokeshire at the end of last month. Plan to use trained hawks to control pigeon population in Manhattan abandoned after one mistook a pet Chihuahua for a rat and attacked it (the dog suffered gouge wounds but survived its ordeal). Back in TFIr 8.03 we reported on a British racing pigeon that ended up in New York; now a French bird has also gone travelling, this time by getting caught in the radiator grille of a British couple's Citroen C5 in Calais, and thus hitching a ride across the English channel. The bird - which suffered a broken leg and damaged wing, is being nursed back to health by the garage owner who freed it, and his former-veterinary-nurse wife before being returned to his owner. Lost Danish sheepdog survives 68 days down dry well shaft before being rescued. Yet more lobster news - this time a Norwegian aquarium which is offering a bounty for American lobsters caught - dead or alive - in local fjords. The American lobsters probably bred after imported specimens escaped a few years ago, and could overwhelm their smaller local relatives if left unchecked.

WEIRD WAR NEWS... Unnamed 62-year-old Iraqi claims to have been Saddam's personal sorcerer, predicts the former leader is still alive but will eventually be found dead in Dhuluaiyah, a village 55 miles north of Baghdad. OK, it's from an earlier war, but a Russian mother has pleaded with her government not to ask for her son - one of eight Russians detained after the Afghanistan conflict - to be moved from Guantanamo Bay to a Russian jail, as the conditions in Russian prisons are so bad.

STORIES WHICH ALSO CAUGHT OUR EYE THIS WEEK: 91-year-old Texan charged with third bank robbery in five years. Cosmonaut aboard the International Space Station marries his fiancee (who was at NASA's Johnson Space Centre, Texas). 75-year-old Dane sparks major police search after picking up the wrong child from a day-care centre. Swansea cricket club offers UKP100 to the first player to bat the ball into the garden of Catherine Zeta Jones' nearby home. One in ten people likely to be addicted to celebrity worshipping. 2-year-old runs down, kills elderly man with battery-powered toy car. Japanese expedition searching for Yeti. Flash mobs gather to flap umbrellas in Manchester and beat pavement with shoes in Brazil. "Stalin - The Musical" playing at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Man's false leg flies off on Universal Studios rollercoaster. Model plane makes Atlantic crossing.

ENTERTAINMENT BRIEFS

Film: Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" withdrawn from festival screenings. Kevin Smith wants Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck to play younger Chevy Chase in Fletch prequel "Fletch Won" (going on past form, we bet Affleck gets it). Peter Jackson to get US$20m for King Kong remake. Unbelievably, "Star Trek: Nemesis" DVD release sold out after four days in 3 of 4 shops our staff checked. Montreal Film Festival to honour late actress Marie Trintignant. Ben Affleck admits that "Gigli" "wasn't good", but says his performance was OK - radio station offers prizes to anyone who manages to sit through a screening. Mike Newell confirmed to direct fourth Harry Potter film. Richard Curtis' ("Four Weddings", "Notting Hill") "Love Actually" to premiere at Toronto Film Festival. Omar Sharif to receive Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award for his contribution to movies.

TV: US Game Show Network planning one-off game show based on the Californian gubernatorial race. Film version of cult UK sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf to finally start shooting in October after five years of waiting. TV poll names Sir Isaac Newton as greatest Briton. ITV planning new Miss Marple dramas (or possibly remakes of old ones). UK Channel 4 criticised by Advertising Standards Authority for "Six Feet Under" campaign similar to controversial US campaign featuring range of fake mortuary products. Next season of "Monarch of the Glen" probably the final one. Comedy writers Ray Galton & Alan Simpson ("Steptoe and Son", "Hancock's Half Hour" et al.) criticise lack of political comedy on British TV [Well, there's always the Parliament Channel. -Ed]. UK digital TV audience grew by one million in first half of year. Brad Garrett threat to walk out of sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond" over pay fails as studio writes his character out.

Music & Radio: One True Voice (created on TV show Pop Stars: The Rivals) split up after less than a year, citing poor sales, blame producer Pete Waterman. Speaking of bad music, the dance remix of Cherie Blair singing "When I'm 64" we reported on last week as a probable hoax has actually surfaced in Ayia Napa, and been described as "truly awful [..] a bingy, bongy chill out dance thing. [..] if people are going to enjoy it they have to be incredibly drunk." by a local radio host. Cerys Matthews gives birth to baby girl; Nelly Furtado expecting first child in September (second album due November). Microsoft launching European no-subscription online music service - tracks from 75p to UKP1.99. Mick Jagger, Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Tin Machine, Jay Kay, Bob Geldof, The Doors and Mike & the Mechanics all make Blender magazine's list of worst musical artists of the last 50 years. Sales of singles set to be surpassed by sales of mobile phone ringtones. Massachusetts judge throws out RIAA attempt to force Boston College & MIT to name alleged file-sharing students because subpoenas were issued in Washington DC.

Books: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" knocked off top of best-seller chart after seven weeks by a book about the controversial Atkins Diet. Edinburgh International Book Festival to include Candace Bushnell ("Sex in the City"), John Irving, Ben Okri, Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and Douglas Coupland.

Obits: actor/dancer Gregory Hines (57), Japanese actress turned politician Masoko Yamamoto, aka Tamaki Sawa (66), Basie orchestra leader Grover Mitchell (73), poet/novelist Antonis Samarakis (84).

TECH BRIEFS

MSBlast worm hits web - over 200,000 machines infected so far (at time of writing it's hitting our firewall every 1-3 minutes). Microsoft fined US$520m after losing breach-of-patent case brought over plug-in technology used in Windows-bundled Internet Explorer; still facing monopoly position abuse investigation by European Commission. Thai ISP decides to shut down game server at night after parents complain about their children spending too much time playing. Tony Blair to finally get official email address. AOL wants parent company AOL Time Warner to rebrand as just Time Warner to return AOL name to purely internet-related connotations.

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

We're reading Stephen Levy's "Insanely Great" at the moment here at Lamont Towers - it's the story of the Apple Mac. Although he wasn't significantly involved with its design, this week's site is Apple cofounder Steve "Woz" Wozniak's home page. (For the record, although we use XP and Linux to produce The Irregular we have an old Apple IIe and a Mac Classic somewhere around here...)
http://www.woz.org/

THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:
7, 11, 20, 23, 27 & 29.
You can consult Madame Jennifer online at the Daily Irregular:
http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/

AND FINALLY...

A family of moles had been hibernating all winter. One beautiful spring morning, they woke up. The father mole stuck his head out of their mole hole, looked around and sniffed the air. His nose twitching, he called back down "Mother Mole! Come up here! The bees are buzzing and I smell honey!"

The mother mole ran up and squeezed herself next to him. "That's not honey, that's maple syrup!" she cried excitedly.

The baby mole, still down in the hole, was sulking. "It's OK for you two! I can't smell anything down here but molasses...."

...end of line

Friday 15 August	-	Macbeth, king of Scotland (r. 1040-57), killed, 1067. Napoleon Bonaparte born, 1769. Sir Walter Scott born, 1771. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) born, 1888. V.J. (Victory over Japan) Day, 1945. Artist Rene Magritte died, 1967. Happy birthday to: actress Natasha Henstridge (29), actor Ben Affleck (31), former Mr J.Lo Cris Judd (34), actress Jenny Hanley (56), jazz musician Oscar Peterson (78), chef Julia Child (91). Today is: National Day in The Republic of the Congo. Liberation Day in South Korea. Independence Day in India. National Day in Liechtenstein. Floating Lantern Ceremony in Hawaii. Assumption Day in Vatican City. Mothers' Day in Costa Rica.

Saturday 16 August	-	Mathematician Jacques Bernoulli died, 1705. Writer Hugo Gernsback born, 1884. Tate Gallery, London, opened, 1897. Chemist Robert Bunsen died, 1899. The Woodstock festival began, 1969. Elvis Presley died, 1977. Happy birthday to: TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson (36), actor Timothy Hutton (43), actress Angela Bassett (45), Madonna (45), director James Cameron (49), fashion designer Katharine Hamnett (56). Today is: Il Palio in Siena. Bennington Battle Day in Vermont.

Sunday 17 August	-	Edward V (r.1483) died, 1483. Frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett born, 1786. Actress Mae West born, 1892. Construction of the Berlin Wall began, 1961. Lyricist Ira Gershwin died, 1983. Nazi war criminal Rudolf Hesse died, 1987. Happy birthday to: soccer player Thierry Henry (26), actor Donnie Wahlberg (34), musician Maria McKee (39), actor Sean Penn (43), musician Belinda Carlisle (45), actor Robert De Niro (60). Today is: Independence Day in Indonesia. National Day in Gabon.

Monday 18 August	-	Genghis Khan, Mongol emperor 1175-1227, died, 1227. Virginia Dare, the first child born in America to English parents, born, 1618. Composer Antonio Salieri born, 1750. Novelist Honore de Balzac died, 1850. Gold discovered in The Yukon, 1896. Humorist Willie Rushton born, 1937. Happy birthday to: actors Malcolm-Jamal Warner (33) & Christian Slater (34), actresses Madeleine Stowe (45) & Carole Bouquet (46), soccer player Peter Shilton (54), director Roman Polanski (70).

Tuesday 19 August	-	Augustus, Roman emperor 27BC-AD14, died, 14. John Flamsteed, first Astronomer Royal of England, born, 1646. Philosopher Blaise Pascal died, 1662. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright born, 1871. F. Gary Powers convicted of spying by the USSR over the U-2 incident, 1960. Groucho Marx died, 1977. Happy birthday to: actor Matthew Perry (34), actresses Lucy Briers (36) & Kyra Sedgwick (38), actor/director Jonathan Frakes (51), writer Richard Ingrams (66), astronaut Story Musgrave (68). Today is: Independence Day (Treaty of Rawalpindi, 1910) in Afghanistan. Aviation Day in the USA.

Wednesday 20 July	-	Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US president (1889-93) born, 1833. Raymond Poincare, French president (1913-20) born, 1860. Salvation Army founder William Booth died, 1912. Leon Trotsky assassinated, 1940. Russian tanks entered Czechoslovakia, 1968. Voyager I launched, 1977. Happy birthday to: actress Helen Grace (32), musician Fred Durst (33), actor James Marsters & actress Sophie Aldred (both 41), comedian Joe Pasquale (42), weatherman Al Roker (49). Today is: St Stephen's Day in Hungary.

Thursday 21 August	-	William IV (r. 1830-37) born, 1765. Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley born, 1872. Musician Count Basie born, 1904. Artists Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo married, 1929. Princess Margaret born, 1930. Conservationist George Adamson murdered, 1989. Happy birthday to: actress Alicia Witt (28), actor Matthew Broderick (41), tennis player Anne Hobbs (44), actress Kim Cattrall (47), film critic Barry Norman (70), musician Kenny Rogers (65). Today is: Surströmmingspremiär (first day for selling surströmming - fermented Baltic herring) in Sweden.