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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

August 28, 1965


This is the final Tuesday of the month of August 2012, so I wanted to make this one very special indeed. It's August 28 today, and I have chosen a subject that is not only inspirational and memorable, but I'll warn you ahead of time...it will be a preview of the Sunday Jukebox entries for the entire month of September.

Intrigued yet? Good. Keep reading. I'll reveal all at the very end of this blog entry.

For now, we have a trip back through time planned, so let's take a look back on August 28th throughout history, shall we?

So, what significant events took place on August 28th? Have a look!

1521 – The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay

1619 – Ferdinand II is elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire

1789 – The Saturn moon “Enceladus” is discovered by William Herschel

1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new locomotive (known as Tom Thumb) races a horse-drawn car, setting the stage for using steam powered trains

1833 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire following the Royal Assent of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833

1845 – The debut edition of “Scientific American” magazine is published

1859 – A geomagnetic storm amplifies the brightness of the Aurora Borealis enough that it could be seen in parts of the United States, Europe, and even Japan

1898 – Caleb Bradham develops a new formula for a soft drink, which would come to be called Pepsi-Cola

1916 – While Italy declares war on Germany during the first World War, Germany in turn declares war on Austria

1931 – The Soviet Union and France sign a treaty of non-agression

1937 – Toyota Motors becomes an independent company

1953 – Nippon Television broadcasts Japan's first television program

1955 – Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi, which galvanizes the nascent American Civil Rights Movement

1957 – The longest filibuster conducted by a U.S. Senator is held this day as Strom Thurmond spent a total of 24 hours, 18 minutes trying to prevent the Senate from voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957

1963 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famous “I Have A Dream” speech

1964 – A race riot begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1968 – During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, riots break out

1979 – An IRA bomb explodes on the Grand Patch in Brussels, Belgium

1988 – Ramstein airshow disaster; 75 people are killed and 346 are injured after three planes collide and crash into the spectators below

1991 – On the same day that the Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party

1996 – The divorce between Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales is finalized

2003 – A blackout causes 500,000 people in Great Britain to lose power

2009 – Adam Goldstein (DJ AM) is found dead in his New York City apartment from a suspected drug overdose, less than a year after surviving a plane crash in September 2008

That's quite a lot of news for August 28, isn't it?

As it turns out, there also happens to be a lot of celebrity birthdays today. Who happens to be turning one year older today? Well there's Ken Jenkins, David Soul, Robert Greenwald, Bob Segarini, Danny Seraphine (Chicago), Hugh Cornwell (The Stranglers), Wayne Osmond, Daniel Stern, Rick Rossovich, Scott Hamilton, Emma Samms, Kim Appleby, Craig Anton, David Fincher, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Priestley, Jack Black, Mary McCartney, Sherrie Austin, Todd Eldridge, Janet Evans, DJ Assault, Carly Pope, LeAnn Rimes, and Kyle Massey.

Oh, and today's blog subject is also celebrating a birthday today.



She was born forty-seven years ago today on August 28, 1965. Which coincidentally happens to be the wedding anniversary of my parents as well, which is why I chose this particular date to focus on. And while her early life and recent hardships could be used as lyrics for a country music song, this woman proved that she could make it big in the world of country music, setting records on the country chart throughout the 1990s alone.

So, who is this person that we'll be focusing on? Well, let's take a look at just one of the songs that helped make her a star.



ARTIST: Shania Twain
SONG: Man, I Feel Like A Woman
ALBUM: Come On Over
DATE RELEASED: March 3, 1999
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #23
PEAK POSITION ON THE COUNTRY CHARTS: #4

TRIVIA: This video was heavily inspired by the music video Robert Palmer filmed for his 1986 smash, “Addicted To Love”.



So, by now, I'm sure you have guessed that Shania Twain is our featured topic for today. Besides the fact that she turns 47 years old today, the reason why I chose Shania as the topic of discussion for today is because she is one of those women who I feel have been thrown dozens of lemons in her lifetime, and she has managed to take those lemons and turned them into delicious lemonade and appetizing lemon meringue pie.

In short, she took all of the bad hands that she was dealt, and made beautiful music out of them.

So, let's start at the beginning and go from there.

Shania Twain was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada on August 28, 1965. But she wasn't known as Shania back then. Her birth name was Eilleen Regina Edwards, if you can believe it. When little Eilleen was just two, her parents divorced, and she, along with her mother and two sisters, moved up north to Timmins, Ontario. Shortly after the family settled down, Eilleen's mother, Sharon married a man named Jerry Twain, and they had a son together. Soon after, Jerry adopted the Edwards girls, and all three ended up taking Jerry's last name. Many believed that Eilleen was descended from the Ojibwa tribe (since Jerry was Ojibwa), but in actuality, Shania's biological father was part Cree.

Anyway, Eilleen Twain's childhood was especially rough. Because her parents did not make a lot of money, food was scarce, and reportedly Eilleen brought mustard sandwiches to school for lunch. She knew that things had to change, but she was fearful of telling the school about the situation for fear that her family would be split up. Eilleen also had to deal with the fact that Sharon and Jerry Twain had terrible arguments which sometimes got violent. Things got so bad that Eilleen begged her mother to take them to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance while Jerry was at work. The family would reunite two years later.



When Eilleen was just eight years old, she began singing in bars around Timmins to try and make some extra money for the family. She would make about twenty dollars a night, often performing between midnight and one in the morning. It wasn't exactly the idyllic childhood that an eight year old girl should have been having, and little Eilleen didn't particularly like performing at the bars, but she loved the music, and she stuck with it, reportedly writing her very first songs at the age of ten, and making her first television at the age of thirteen when she performed on “The Tommy Hunter Show” which aired on CBC at the time.

Eilleen also managed to work other jobs in her childhood, including a stint working at her stepfather's reforestation business and fronted a couple of bands after graduating from Timmins High School in 1983. She sang back-up on a track recorded by Tim Denis in 1984, which garnered the attention of Toronto-based DJ Stan Campbell who was blown away by Eilleen's voice. He took her to Nashville to record a few demos, and from there, she met with a regional country singer named Mary Bailey, who also supported the young singer.

Would you believe that if Eilleen had her way, she would have pursued a career in pop music rather than country? That was how she felt back when she was in her early twenties. Following a performance at a fundraiser for the National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation in February 1987, where she sang with such stars as Bernadette Peters, and jazz guitarist Don Ross, she began to change her mind.

Just as Eilleen's music career was just starting out, tragedy struck. On November 1, 1987, Sharon and Jerry Twain were killed in an automobile accident, and a heartbroken Twain was forced to move back to Timmins to help take care of her younger siblings.



It wouldn't be until 1993 that Eilleen Twain would resume her career. Her first step was changing her name from Eilleen to Shania. A common misconception states that the reason she chose the name Shania was that it was an Ojibwa word that meant 'on my way', although it was later indicated that this was merely an urban legend. Whatever the reason, and whatever the meaning, the name stuck, and it ended up being the name she used when she recorded her self-titled debut album later that year. The album initially didn't sell that well, but it did spawn a couple of minor hits with “What Made You Say That” and “Dance With The One That Brought You” in the United States. The album did better in Europe, and Shania ended up winning Country Music Television Europe's Rising Video Star of the Year award in 1994. By the end of 1993, Shania Twain had found love with music producer Robert “Mutt” Lange, and the two tied the knot in December 1993.



This union would also spawn a creative partnership in addition to a romantic partnership, as Lange and Twain worked together on Shania's sophomore album “The Woman In Me”, which was released in 1995. The first single, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” was a modest hit, peaking at #11 on the country music charts. But then her second single ended up becoming her very first number one hit.



Yes, “Any Man Of Mine” is considered to be Shania's biggest breakthrough hit. But there were others from the album that did very well. A total of six singles were released from the album, four of which topped the charts. Shania Twain had arrived on the scene, and she was showing no sign of leaving any time soon.



This was definitely made evident with Shania's third album, “Come On Over”, which was released on November 4, 1997. Nobody knew how huge the album would be when it was first released, but just listen to the statistics surrounding this album.

  • Twelve singles out of sixteen total were released as singles between 1997 and 2000.
  • The album has sold 40 million copies since its 1997 release date.
  • The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard County Music Album Charts, and stayed on top for fifty non-consecutive weeks.
  • The album stayed in the Top 10 for 151 weeks! That's just under THREE years!
  • The album was released in two different versions, one country themed, one pop themed. It was designed to be a country/pop crossover effort for Twain.
  • The album did incredibly well in Australia, reaching 15 times platinum and spending 19 weeks on top of the charts. It remains, to this day, the best selling album in Australia.
  • #1 singles from the album included “Love Gets Me Every Time”, “You're Still The One”, and “Honey, I'm Home”.



  • You're Still The One” ended up becoming Shania's biggest hit on the album. Not only did it become a huge hit on the country charts, but it became her highest charting Billboard 100 single, peaking at #2.


Shania would end up releasing one more album, “Up!” in late 2002, a year after she gave birth to her son, Eja.



But then around 2008, Shania's life would end up becoming a soap opera of sorts. Around that time, Shania's marriage to Robert “Mutt” Lange had collapsed after Twain had found out that he had been cheating on her with a woman named Marie-Anne Thiebaud. To complicate things further, Marie-Anne was the best friend of Shania.

Awkward.



I can only imagine how hurt Shania must have been, but in the end, she ended up holding her head up high as she divorced Lange in June 2010. But just six months later, the story took an interesting twist, suddenly becoming like a country music song coming to life, as Shania had fallen in love with Marie-Anne's ex-husband, Frederic Thiebaud! They ended up getting married New Years Day, 2011 in Puerto Rico.

These days, Shania is busier than ever before. She still has plans to release her fifth album even though it has been a decade since her last album of original material. Until then, she is set to perform a two-year long show in Las Vegas entitled “Still The One”, set to debut in December 2012. She has also started up her own reality program on the Oprah Winfrey Network entitled “Why Not? With Shania Twain”, as well as coming up with her own fragrance line.

She is also one of the few entertainers to have stars on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame (2011) and Canada's Walk of Fame (2003). And in Timmins, Ontario, not only did she receive the key to the city, but she also has a street and a convention center named after her!

Not bad for a gal who started off singing in bars during third grade, huh?

That's our look back on August 28, 1965. Happy birthday, Shania Twain.

And, Mom and Dad...happy 47th wedding anniversary! 


NOTE:  I did promise that there was a precursor to choosing Shania Twain and how it would relate to September's Sunday Jukebox entries.  Well, next month, I'll be saluting the "Women of Country Music", so if you are a country music fan, definitely check this upcoming month out!

Monday, August 27, 2012

Disaster Feature #4 - Unstoppable


I'm about a week late with mentioning this news, but by now I am sure that you have heard about the tragic death of veteran film director, Tony Scott.



Tony Scott took his own life the afternoon of August 19, 2012 by leaping off of the Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles. He was just 68 years old.

At this point in time, it is unclear as to what the motivation was behind Scott's suicide. At first, media outlets had reported that Scott had an inoperable brain tumour, and that it was speculated that he took his own life rather than undergo chemotherapy and radiation to ease his physical pain...an allegation that his widow, Donna, denied was true.

Regardless, a woman is left without a husband, two children are left without a father, and the world was left mourning the loss of a talented director.

Now, Tony Scott's foray into making films wasn't too much of a stretch. His older brother Ridley has been a film director for many years, directing such films as “Alien”, “Blade Runner”, “Thelma & Louise”, “Gladiator”, and “Black Hawk Down”.

And for the final entry for August's Disaster Film month in the Monday Matinee feature, I really wanted to focus on a disaster film that was directed by Tony Scott, not only to celebrate the contributions that he made to the film industry, but to showcase at least one of his works.

The problem that I had to come up with was choosing the movie.

I mean, I had previously done an entry on Tony Scott's 1986 film masterpiece “Top Gun”, so that one was immediately off the table. Besides, it wasn't really what one would classify as a disaster movie. Beverly Hills Cop II was also off the table, as I had previously done the original film a month before. And again, it's not exactly a movie that I would call a disaster movie.

In fact, that seemed to be the case with a lot of Tony Scott's movies. None of them really seemed to fit the disaster movie theme that I wanted to focus on this month. “Days of Thunder” isn't a movie that fits the idea of a disaster film. Nor did “Enemy of the State”, or “Crimson Tide”. Certainly not “True Romance”.

In case you couldn't tell, I was struggling in a big way, trying to choose an appropriate movie to honour Tony Scott, yet keep with the theme.

But then as I was beginning to lose hope, I remembered that towards the end of Tony Scott's career, he had been making movies that could fall under the genre of action thrillers...and I thought to myself...hmmm...some action thrillers could double as disaster films.



And, sure enough, the last two films credited to Scott were perfect. I could choose between 2009's “The Taking Of Pelham 123” and 2010's “Unstoppable”. To help me decide, I flipped a coin.

And it landed tails.

So, because of that coin flip, we're looking at the movie “Unstoppable”, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. I suppose luck was on my side, since reviewers tended to favour “Unstoppable” over the other one.



And what a film “Unstoppable” was. It happens to be a movie about what happens when a runaway train goes out of control, as well as the effort to try and stop it before it causes serious death and destruction.

What makes this movie great is the fact that the plot was based from a real-life event.

The event that the movie is based on took place in the state of Ohio in May 2001. The event was known as the CSX 8888 incident (or the Crazy Eights incident), named after the locomotive that led the runaway train.



On May 15, the train departed from Walbridge, Ohio enroute to Toledo. The train was made up of 47 cars in total, and some of the cars contained gallons of hazardous materials. For the first few miles, the train chugged along towards its destination without incident. But when the engineer of the train climbed out of the locomotive while the train was still in motion to correctly line a track switch, things began to go pear-shaped.

Due to a misaligned switch, as well as a failed attempt to apply the locomotive's dynamic brake, combined with the fact that the throttle was set to 100%, the train accelerated at an alarming rate, rendering the train completely out of control. Fortunately, that incident had a happy ending, as the train was successfully stopped before it derailed, which would have spilled toxic waste all over the ground.

I could go on and on about this incident, but I won't because it's not really what I want to talk about. I was just reiterating the fact that “Unstoppable” was based off of this story. Just click below if you want to read the final report of this incident.


Now, let's take a look at the plot of “Unstoppable”...or, at least the first part of it, since as you know, I never reveal movie endings, to see where the similarities between the two incidents occur.



When the film begins, we are immediately introduced to two men who work for the Allegheny and West Virginal Railroad (AWVR). We meet veteran engineer Frank Barnes (Washington) who is training the newest conductor, Will Colson (Pine) as both of them use AWVR locomotive #1206 to pick up a few train cars near Stanton, Pennsylvania. It goes well until the two men realize that they picked up five extra cars. Will suggests that they back up the train to uncouple the extra cars, but Frank decides to continue ahead with the extra train cars.

At the same time, near the town of Fuller, two more employees of AWVR are ordered to move another freight train off of the track it is sitting on to clear a pathway for an excursion train, carrying dozens of school-aged children.

The locomotive of the train happens to be #777...you see a similarity here?



Anyway, the two men, Dewey (Ethan Suplee) and Gilleece (T.J. Miller) perform the task, albeit with lots of shortcuts. Dewey is especially negligent with his duties, instructing Gilleece to leave the hoses that helped operate the locomotive's air brakes disconnected, as the trip would be short. Then, while the cab is in motion, Dewey leaves the cab to throw a misaligned switch along the train's path, but because the train's throttle jumps from idle to full power, Dewey is unable to climb back on, setting the stage for disaster.

Dewey does report the incident to Fuller yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson), who orders Dewey, Gilleece, and Ned Oldham (Lew Temple) to intercept the train at a siding, but when they arrive at the siding and no train passes through, the trio quickly realize that the train controls have defaulted to full throttle, and is now speeding out of control on the main line.



An attempt is made to stop the train by Connie, who manages to successfully divert the excursion train to a side track, reporting the runaway train to Oscar Galvin (Kevin Dunn), the vice-president of train operations for AWVR. With Connie working with local police to ensure that all train crossings on the train's path are secured, it becomes clear that stopping the runaway train is top priority, especially after safety inspector Scott Werner (Kevin Corrigan) informs the team that the train contains molten phenol that could potentially kill thousands of people if the train derailed and spilled its contents. Connie comes up with a plan to derail the train in an area of isolated farmland to minimize the casualties, but Galvin rejects the plan, believing that they can stop the train before. But when one attempt to do this causes an explosion that kills an engineer, the situation gets shifted into seriousness.



At this point, the runaway train is splashed all over the news, so it's only inevitable that Frank and Will soon hear about the train, and are actually fairly close to where the train's path is. They are warned about the train, and make an attempt to stop the train using the siding plan, but because of the five extra cars that Will added onto their train, they are forced to head onto a longer Repair-in-Place track further north. They make it onto the track just as the runaway train speeds by, destroying the rear car of Frank and Will's train. Despite this, the train still continues on, but Frank notices that the rearmost car of the speeding train is equipped with an open coupler. Frank also learns of Galvin's plan to stop the train, which is to use derailers to stop the train. It's a plan that Frank knows will not work, instead instructing Will to help him with unhooking the cars from locomotive #1206 and runs it long hood forward to catch up to the #777 from behind. Despite Galvin's insistence that he will have the jobs of both Frank and Will if they continue with their plan, Frank pays no attention, revealing that he had already been forced into early retirement by AWVR. Connie and Scott are also on the side of Frank and Will, going against Galvin to support the two men in their pursuit of the train.

Really, this film is a thriller right from the very beginning, and the sub-plots (Will and his wife being separated for instance) help us get to know the characters better. I know when I was watching the film, I was actively rooting for the good guys of the film, and the character development was quite good (well, at least in my opinion anyway). You'll just have to watch the movie for yourselves to see what I mean.

If anything, “Unstoppable” was Tony Scott's last great film, and despite the fact that the movie's title is sadly ironic given Scott's ultimate fate, it is a credit to all of Tony Scott's films. They were action oriented movies that really fleshed out character development. Is it any wonder why his films are usually held in such high regard?



Rest in peace, Tony Scott.  

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Fly Me To The Moon, Mr. Armstrong




By now, I am sure that you have all heard the latest news regarding Neil Armstrong, who passed away yesterday at the age of 82.

I decided that I would dedicate this entry in memory of Armstrong, and talk a little bit about his life and times before going ahead with the scheduled blog topic, because he really did a lot for NASA, and opened up a universe of opportunities, showing the human race that they didn't have to be any limitations for how far we could explore.

Neil Alden Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio. From the age of two years old, Armstrong developed a love of flying. Around that time, his father had taken him to the Cleveland Air Races, which likely kickstarted Armstrong's desire to fly. When he was six years old, he ended up experiencing his first airplane ride. He ended up taking flying lessons at a local airport when he was just a teenager, and by the time he was fifteen, he had already earned a flight certificate. I bet he was one of the few people in the world who learned how to fly an airplane before he learned how to drive a car!

TRIVIA: Neil Armstrong made the Boy Scouts of America a huge part of his life. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout while he served in the Boy Scouts, and as an adult he was given both the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and the Silver Buffalo Award.

In 1947, Armstrong enrolled at Purdue University in the field of aerospace engineering, and was awarded a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering in 1955.

The reason why it took so long? Well, Armstrong was enrolled in the Navy between 1949 and 1952, assisting in the early stages of the Korean War. During his time serving in the Navy, he ended up flying a total of 78 missions over Korea for a combined total of 121 hours in flight.

I suppose you could say that all of this training would help him in his future career endeavours. After graduating from Purdue, Armstrong found work as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base.



So, how did Armstrong end up becoming an astronaut?

It all began around 1958, when Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man In Space Soonest program. Two years later, he was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane. In 1962, he was named as one of the six pilot engineers who would fly the plane as soon as it got off the drawing board.

During this time, Armstrong began to express interest in NASA's Apollo program, and he had sent in an application to NASA to become a part of the second group of new astronauts. Unfortunately for Armstrong, his application arrived at least a week past the deadline. But in Armstrong's case, he also had a sort of guardian angel watching over him named Dick Day. Day had worked with Armstrong at Edwards, and managed to slip Armstrong's application into the pile of applicants discreetly. That move helped secure Armstrong's place in the space program.

(I love stories like that!)'

On September 13, 1962, Armstrong was accepted into the NASA Astronaut Corps as one of the “New Nine”, and he ended up participating in several space missions including being aboard Gemini 8 and Gemini 11.

But it wouldn't be until July 1969 that Neil Armstrong's name would be linked with one of the most extraordinary events ever recorded in world history.



On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11, carrying Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (Michael Collins, the third crew member stayed in lunar orbit while the other two went ahead with the moon exploration mission) landed atop the surface of the moon at approximately 8:17pm UTC with Armstrong reporting back to Mission Control stating the following; “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Shortly after that, the whole world watched as Armstrong stepped outside of the Apollo Lunar Module, and saw the following.



Now here's an interesting thing about Neil Armstrong's speech. You know, the one where he says “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? Apparently there was supposed to be an “a” in between the for and man. Even 43 years after the moon landing, people still misquote that iconic line. Armstrong always insisted that he did say the line as he had intended it to be said (with an added “a”), but static cut it out.

Regardless, Neil Armstrong made history that day, becoming the first human to walk on the surface of the moon, where an estimated 450 million people either watched the landing on television or heard the news via the radio.

I just wish that I could have been alive at the time to witness this spectacle, but alas, I was born 12 years too late. And, I know that some people have the belief that the moon landing was nothing more than an elaborate hoax. But to me, Neil Armstrong will forever be remembered as an iconic hero in American history, and I don't think anything will ever take away from that.



Rest in peace, Neil Armstrong. You may have been the first man on the moon, but you'll forever be a star to so many people.

And now for today's Sunday Jukebox entry, which is also moon-themed.



ARTIST: Frank Sinatra
SONG: Fly Me To The Moon
ALBUM: It Might As Well Be Swing
DATE RECORDED: June 9, 1964

The song was originally written by songwriter Bart Howard in 1954, and was originally titled “In Other Words” when it was introduced by Felicia Sanders in cabarets. The song was first recorded by singer Kaye Ballard in 1954, and since then several other artists have covered this song.

Some of these artists included Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee, Shirley Bassey, Perry Como, Doris Day, Tony Bennett, Marvin Gaye, Diana Krall, and Rod Stewart.

Of course, Frank Sinatra's version was the most well-known, and therefore, it is the version that I have decided to focus on.

After all...I couldn't think of a better song to commemorate the life and times of the late Neil Armstrong than this classic.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Disney's Recess




When I was in elementary school, I had a love/hate relationship with recess.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the term “recess” (as some of you reading this blog might be from outside of North America), a recess is a portion of the school day which serves as a break from instruction and lessons.  During a recess period, children were sent outside to go play on the schoolyard equipment, sign out sports equipment to play a quick game of basketball, or build sand castles in the sandbox.

If I remember correctly, up until seventh grade, my school had two fifteen-minute recesses, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. 

Now, why would I have a love/hate relationship with recess?  I’ll explain.

There were a lot of perks when it came to school recess.  For one, it gave all of us kids a chance to go outside and get some fresh air, and for another reason, it gave all of us a chance to recover from the killer math lessons just before recess began.

On the minus side, I didn’t particularly like recess because I didn’t really have anyone to play with.  I basically kept to myself and watched everyone else have fun.  And, it didn’t really help matters much that on the occasional recess, I would often be beat up by bigger kids in the back corner of the school playground.

(Let’s put it this way...I actually wished during my school years that it would rain every day during recess period so we could just stay inside.)

So that’s why I loved recess, yet hated it at the same time.

But for the children that you’re about to meet in this blog entry, they were kids who lived for that wonderful period known as recess.  In fact, some might even say that these kids were a little bit obsessed with recess, and treated recess as if it were as important as working a full-time job!

In fact, today’s blog topic is all about...”Recess”!



Yes, we’re taking a look back at Disney’s cartoon series “Recess”.  The show was created by Paul Germain, Joe Ansolabehere, and Mike Berenstain.  Debuting on ABC’s “One Saturday Morning” line-up on August 31, 1997, the program ended up running new episodes until November 2001.  The show proved to be so successful that three full-length films were released between 2001 and 2003.

Anyway, the show depicts the lives of six students in Miss Grotke’s fourth grade classroom, and the various adventures that they happen to experience during Third Street Elementary School’s recess period.

TRIVIA:  Miss Grotke was voiced by Allyce Beasley, famous for her role in “Moonlighting”.


So, I suppose that you would like me to introduce you to these six children, wouldn’t you?  All right, I will. 


First, we have the leader of the group.  Theodore Jasper “T.J.” Detweiler (Ross Malinger/Andrew Lawrence/Myles David Jeffrey) is a stocky kid who is rarely seen without his trademark red baseball cap, usually worn backwards.  He appears to give off the impression that he is nothing more than a troublemaker, as he often pulls pranks on teachers, especially the recess monitor, Miss Finster (April Winchell).  However, T.J. does have a heart inside of him, and he often is the first one to stand up for the rights of the other kids in the school playground.



There’s Ashley Spinelli (Pamela Segall Adlon), a tomboy who would rather be called by her last name, as she has the unfortunate distinction of having the same first name as a group of snobbish girls who hang out in the playground (we’ll talk more about them later).  She won’t admit it, but she does have a bit of a soft spot for Miss Finster, and Miss Finster often gives her advice on how to deal with various problems.  And while Spinelli would rather use her fists rather than calmly solve a problem, she has shown that she can dress girly if she feels like it, and she does have a keen eye for art.



Gretchen Grundler (Ashley Johnson) is the brainiac of the group.  More often than not, she’ll be the one in the group who speaks completely in monosyllabic words and phrases.  Known for having a brain as large as her glasses, she is nicknamed “Smart Girl” by her peers.  Despite her high intelligence and superior book smarts, her street smarts are lacking, and she sometimes appears naive, and trusts people a little bit too much.  She is rarely seen without her “Galileo” (a device similar to a calculator/smart phone), and although her best friends don’t share her scientific intellect, she can’t imagine not having them in her life.



Vince LaSalle (Rickey D’Shon Collins) is the jock of the group.  He plays every sport possible in the school playground, and he usually wins at every sport as well.  The tradeoff of this is that he sometimes exhibits a huge ego when he brags about his accomplishments.  However, when he does get in a situation where he is taken down a few pegs, he does have his friends to help build him back up, and he is usually remorseful.  He can usually be found as T.J.’s right-hand man during his schemes, and unlike Gretchen, Vince has the street smarts necessary to help talk the group out of trouble...well, most of the time, anyway.



Mikey Blumberg (Jason Davis) is the biggest, tallest kid of the group, so he certainly sticks out.  But don’t let his intimidating size scare you...he’s really a softy on the inside.  He writes poetry, dances ballet, and is probably one of the most philosophical ten-year-old boys who have ever existed.  Really, Mikey is a kid that could be considered a gentle giant...well, unless you take advantage of him, then he goes all “Incredible Hulk” on you.

TRIVIA:  On a couple of episodes, Mikey performed a song or two.  The person who provided his singing vocals?  Robert Goulet!



Finally, we have Gustav Griswald...otherwise known as Gus (Courtland Mead).  He doesn’t appear in the first couple of episodes, as he is introduced in the episode “The New Kid”.  He’s a military brat, who ended up attending a dozen different elementary schools by the time he was ten. For the most part, Gus is considered to be the geeky and unpopular kid.  However, if he gets pushed, he ends up showing great leadership skills...sometimes rivalling T.J.’s personality!  He is a fairly good dodgeball player, and he has played the guitar.  But the fact that he is the new kid means that he isn’t exactly up to speed with the hierarchy of the playground.

That’s right.  That’s the secret of the Third Street Elementary’s recess period.

You see, the television show “Recess” had the school playground running almost entirely on a microcosm of traditional human society.  In fact, one could say that the whole playground is run on a monarchy, with a sixth-grade student named Bob serving as its king.


(No, seriously, he really does go by King Bob.)

The playground ends up running on a series of rules that emphasize rigid values and social norms, and it is expected that every student at the school playground conforms to these rules, or face the consequences.

The playground has its own set of unwritten rules and a class structure.  The lower the grade a student is, the lower the class structure.  And to me this made a lot of sense in my own life and times, as I enjoyed recess more as a sixth grader than I did as a second grader.

Most of the episodes of the series deal with the struggle that the main characters have to deal with.  Do they go with the flow and follow the unwritten rules to be like everyone else?  Or do they risk getting in trouble or beat up by other kids to do their own individual thing?  I admit that for me, it is a tough choice.  With teachers like Miss Finster, and Principal Prickly (Dabney Coleman) sticking their noses in and threatening to take things away during the recess period, T.J. and his friends needed to stay strong to stick to their own guns.


Of course, it wasn’t easy, as the adults weren’t the only ones to worry about.  You had Miss Finster’s sidekick, Randall J. Weems, who proved to be just as obnoxious as Miss Finster, if not more.  There were the stuck-up snobby girls who called themselves “The Ashleys” (seriously, all the girls were named Ashley, which explains why Spinelli was ashamed of her first name).  There were The Kindergartners, who were a large group of five and six year old students who were decked out in war paint and tribal feathers.  They are seen as the most uncivilized students at the school and have even attempted to EAT the other kids!!! 

Yeah, Third Street Elementary was not your typical school.

Some kids even had their own personal arch-enemies.  T.J. and Vince, for example, had a rivalry with Erwin Lawson.  Gretchen has had scuffles with the organization obsessed Menlo.  And of all the Ashleys, Ashley Quinlan is the one who gets under Spinelli’s skin the most.

But, you know what?  I think in some ways, I can relate to every single situation that the “Recess” kids had to endure.  Because while my recess experiences weren’t as fun as the ones that these cartoon characters had, I did have similar classmates.

My school playground had a “King Bob” in it.  In my case, it was a kid that was in the fifth grade when I was in grade one.  Although now I can see that he was a complete jerk, when we were kids, we had to listen to him and his cronies...or else we would have our faces shoved into the sand or snow (depending on what season it was outside).



You know the snobbish group in “Recess” known as the Ashleys?  We had one...only at my school, they were called the “Jennifers”.  Funnily enough, I ended up becoming friends with one of them because once I got to know them, they were quite kind. 

The kindergarten kids at my school never resorted to attempted cannibalism.  But I can definitely remember being in sixth grade, looking at kindergarten students and thinking they were some of the wildest, most out-of-control kids in the world.  Demon children they were.

(Now I realize that these demon children are 23-24 years old, and suddenly I feel really ANCIENT!)

But that’s the point.  We all likely had similar recess experiences.  And we survived them all the best way we knew how.  I think that’s a great thing!

I survived my recess experiences...and now I can look back on them fondly knowing that others went through it too.

Even though they were fictional characters.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Bosom Buddies


Do any of you have any idea how tough it is to find a place to call your own?

I'm not just talking on an emotional level either (though admittedly, I still struggle at times with that one). I mean physically speaking.

The quest to find the perfect home is one that millions of people have embarked on. Some have been lucky and have found their dream home on the very first try. Other people have had to wait for years. I myself am still struggling to find a home that I absolutely adore...preferably one where I don't have nosy neighbours wanting to know what exactly I had for breakfast the morning of October 28, 2010.

The point I'm trying to make is this. Finding the right home can be a really difficult challenge. And some people will do almost anything to rise above that challenge.

They might take on a temporary second job to raise the money to afford it. They might move in with a few roommates to save money. They might put on a girdle, lingerie and a blonde wig and pretend to be a woman in order to live at a hotel which charges an insanely low price for accommodations.

What? You're telling me that last scenario is one that ISN'T normal? Hah. Try telling that to Kip Wilson and Henry Desmond!



And, who are Kip Wilson and Henry Desmond? Why, they happen to be the two main characters in the sitcom that we'll be discussing in today's blog entry.



Yes, boys and girls. Today's blog topic is on the short-lived ABC sitcom, “Bosom Buddies”. The sitcom, which ran from November 27, 1980 until May 27, 1982, and starred Tom Hanks as Kip and Peter Scolari as Henry.



Now, if that theme song music sounds familiar, but not quite right, there is a reason for it. Yes, the song in the credits is this 1978 hit single by singer/songwriter Billy Joel.



But as some of you with a keen set of ears may have quickly realized, that is not Billy Joel singing the song. A different artist re-recorded the theme, which served as the original theme for the show's original run. But when the show became syndicated in 1984 and ran in reruns on NBC, a different song which was written by showrunner Chris Thompson was used in place. You can also hear the second theme song if you pick up the DVD releases of both seasons.

Anyway, “Bosom Buddies” was a show that was created by Thompson, Thomas L. Miller, and Robert L. Boyett. If those last two names seem at all familiar, it's because the Miller-Boyett team produced dozens of sitcoms during the 1970s and 1980s including “Happy Days”, “Laverne and Shirley”, “Full House”, “Family Matters”, and “Perfect Strangers”, amongst others. In fact, initially Miller and Boyett had wanted to come up with a sitcom similar to “Laverne and Shirley” only with male stars in the lead roles instead of female stars. 




They had intended to pitch the series as a straightforward buddy comedy, but when executives at ABC pressed further, they described their outline as similar to the 1959 film “Some Like It Hot”, which featured Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressing up in drag to get closer to Marilyn Monroe. And for whatever reason, ABC executives loved the idea. They were prepared to greenlight the series on one condition...that they had the male characters dressing up in drag at least once in every episode.

It was a real curveball for Miller and Boyett because they had never intended for the show to progress in THAT way. They were starting over from square one. Fortunately, the duo brought aboard Chris Thompson as showrunner, and Thompson wrote the pilot by himself, setting the stage for the show to debut during the 1980/81 television season.

But for whatever reason, the show worked...at least at first. Thompson would later recall that working on “Bosom Buddies” was one of his most favourite experiences in his whole career because for the most part ABC did not meddle in the creative process. The producers and cast were free to experiment, which meant a lot of improvisation between Hanks and Scolari.

The basic plot of the story was this. Kip and Henry were living in an apartment which had extremely low rent. This was great for the two men, as both were basically living from pay week to pay week. But when their apartment building is torn down, both men are left homeless.

Struggling to find another place to live, Henry discovers that there is a hotel in the area named the Susan B. Anthony Hotel, which has a going rate that is so low, even Kip and Henry are able to afford it.

There's just one problem. The Susan B. Anthony Hotel happens to also be restricted to male guests. The only way that they could move into the hotel is if they dress up in women's clothes and pretend to be women.

Immediately, Kip is unsure of participating in such a plan, believing that it would never work. But once he meets a woman named Sonny Lumet (Donna Dixon) who also happens to be living at the hotel, he changes his mind, and the two men go ahead with the plan.



By day, they were Kip and Henry, two men who worked for an advertising firm. By night, they had transformed into the (lovely?) Buffy and Hildy, so they could continue living at the hotel. Take a look at Buffy and Hildy in action below.
Now, I should state that while they were keeping their real identities a secret from the outside world, a few people ended up figuring out who they were. From the very beginning, Kip and Henry's secret was kept by their co-worker and resident of the hotel, Amy Cassidy (the late Wendi Jo Sperber). Of course, Amy had an ulterior motive for keeping the secret...she had a crush on Henry and she believed that if she kept the charade up, she and Henry would eventually be a couple. 




Later on in the series, their secret was exposed and Sonny found out about the ruse. She was initially hurt by the deception, but eventually found it in her heart to forgive both of them. Also in on the secret was the hotel manager for the second season, Isabelle Hammond (Telma Hopkins), who had dreams of becoming a singer. Once Isabelle was aware of the situation, she agreed to let Kip and Henry stay in the hotel, and the dynamic of the show focused less on the dressing in drag and more on the buddy comedy aspect.

Other characters included the original manager of the hotel, Lilly Sinclair (the late Lucille Benson), who left the series after season one, as well as Kip and Henry's boss, Ruth Dunbar (Holland Taylor), who owned the advertising firm that the men worked at. Later on, in season two, Kip and Henry left Ruth's company to start their own advertising firm, “Sixty Seconds Street”. But to keep Holland Taylor on the series, Ruth Dunbar became a partner in their firm.

TRIVIA:  Tom Hanks actually met his future wife, Rita Wilson, on an episode of the show!  Here's the proof!




I was admittedly too young to appreciate “Bosom Buddies” when it first aired (I was born in between the first season finale and second season premiere), but watching old episodes of the series, I can see how the plot kind of worked. There were quite a few plot holes in the development of the series (I never did quite figure out how the men could start up their own firm, but still not have enough money to get out of that hotel, but then I suppose you wouldn't have much of a show if that were the case, would we?)

...oh, right. I'm rambling, aren't I? I'll stop that.

Anyway, as I was saying, the show may have had some plot holes, but the message behind it was cool. Not so much the deception part, but more along the lines of the resourcefulness that Kip and Henry exhibited during the whole series. At no point did they feel that they were in too deep. They were going with the flow at first, seeing how long they could keep up the charade...but the more time that passed, they more they realized that they really could have a life at the Susan B. Anthony Hotel. It became their home. It was where all of their friends were. More importantly, when the ruse was exposed, the friends they had made never went away. In fact, I believe that the experience made them closer than ever before.

It's unfortunate that the show only managed to run for two seasons (although the second season was plagued with time changes and people did not care for the reworking of the show). When the show re-aired on NBC in 1984, it generated a renewed interest, and the possibility of the show being renewed two years after its cancellation was sparked. But with Peter Scolari a regular cast member on “Newhart” at the time, and Tom Hanks filming “Splash” with Daryl Hannah, the idea of “Bosom Buddies” coming back never happened.

I often wonder what might have happened had it been revived though.