It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Ugg Boot

Christmas must see movies:
1. the Lemon Drop Kit with Bob Hope introduced the song Silver Bells to the world
2. Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire introduced the song White Christmas to the world. It was the all time best selling song until Princess Diana's death and the song Candle in
the wind by Elton John.
3. White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye
4. National Lampoons Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase
5. Ernest Saves Christmas with Jim Varney. Gotta see it, knowhatimean?

*Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

*Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to
use the internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

*Some people are like a Slinky...not really good for anything, but you
still can't help but smile when  you see one tumble down the stairs.

*Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in a hospital,
dying of nothing.

*All of us could take a lesson from the weather.  It pays no attention
to criticism.

*Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200 and a substantial tax cut
saves you thirty cents?

*In the 60s people took acid to make the world weird.  Now the world is
weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

*We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among
the millions and millions of cows in America, but we haven't got a clue
as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. 
Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of
immigration.

This is the week that was in matters musical...

1842, formed by a group of local musicians, the New York Philharmonic gives its first concert...

1957, Al Priddy, a disc jockey at station KEX in Portland, Oregon, is fired for playing the Elvis Presley's version of "White Christmas" ... the station had instituted a ban against the song...

1964, original blue-eyed soul singers The Righteous Brothers release the Phil Spector produced-mega-hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" ... besides being deliriously catchy with an instantly memorable melody, the song delivers several firsts ... it is the first four-minute single to hit number one in the U.S. and the first tune produced by Spector to top the charts in England ... Spector refused to cut the song to the under three-minute time required for radio ... instead the last two digits of the running time were reversed to appear as 3:05 ... it took programming directors weeks to discover why shows were suddenly running long ... the trick worked, though, as "Lovin' Feelin'" was already a hit and in demand...

1961, The Beatles sign with manager Brian Epstein...

1964, John Coltrane records "A Love Supreme" with his quartet...

1964, Sam Cooke is shot and beaten to death by a motel manager in Los Angeles ... Cooke was apparently running amok wearing only a sport coat and shoes ... he was chasing a young woman who had fled his room with his clothes after he had assaulted her ... in pursuit Cooke broke open the door to the manager's office door resulting in her shooting him three times and then beating Cooke for good measure ... he is dead when police arrive...

1967, Otis Redding is killed when his tour plane crashes into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin ... the "Love Man" is 26 ... killed with Redding are the pilot and four members of his backup group, the Bar-Kays ... the scheduled warm-up band for Redding's show that evening is a group called The Grim Reaper...

1968, The Rolling Stones film Rock & Roll Circus in front of a live audience in London ... the circus performers include The Rolling Stones, The Who, Marianne Faithful, Jethro Tull, and temporary rock supergroup Dirty Mac, consisting of John Lennon, Mitch Mitchell, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards ... Yoko Ono makes an appearance on one Dirty Mac tune ... the rock-concert extravaganza was intended for broadcast as a television special, but never made it ... the film would not see release until 1996...

1969, Jimi Hendrix takes the stand in the Toronto Supreme Court at his trial for possession of hashish and heroin ... Hendrix testifies that he has smoked pot four times and hashish five times, taken LSD five times, and sniffed cocaine twice but says he has "outgrown" drugs ... the jury finds him not guilty after eight hours of deliberation...

1971, Frank Zappa is pushed off stage at the Rainbow Theatre in London ... Zapp gets the shove from the jealous boyfriend of an ardent young fan ... Frank suffers a broken leg, broken ankle, fractured skull, and crushed larynx, but it's the damage to his spine which keeps him in a wheelchair for most of the year...

1980, John Lennon is assassinated in New York City on the street outside his apartment...

1984, various popular artists, who are part of Bob Geldof's Band-Aid rock charity, release the well-intentioned, but campy, single "Do They Know It's Christmas?"...

1991, Rita Marley is finally awarded Bob Marley's contested estate after years of legal wrangling ... as a result of the verdict famous Marley son Ziggy names his daughter Justice...

1993, Guns N' Roses announce they will keep the song "Look At Your Game, Girl" written by Charles Manson on their album The Spaghetti Incident? ... the band decides to leave the song on the album when they learn the royalties will go to the son of one of Manson's victims...

1998, Cuban-born jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States after a six-year struggle with the Immigration and Naturalization Service...

1998, Frank Sinatra's FBI file is released to the public by the Bureau ... it contains 2,403 pages documenting assorted sordid Sinatra facts like his close connections with organized crime and well-hidden arrest records...

1998, Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs is injured in a brawl outside the Liberty Lunch nightclub ... the band has just finished a show inside the Austin, Texas, club when the singer gets into a fight with one of the club's security guards ... Dulli ends up in the hospital for a few days with a fractured skull...

2000, Metallica sues Neiman-Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and Guerlain, Inc. for trademark infringement ... the three companies are producing and selling a perfume branded Metallica...

2003, Ozzy Osbourne is crushed under the all-terrain vehicle he is riding at his country estate in Buckinghamshire, England ... the accident puts him in the hospital for nearly a month recovering from injuries that include a fractured left collarbone, eight fractured ribs, and crushed neck vertebrae ... he awakes from a coma-like condition with no sense of smell or taste, convinced he has been in a bomb blast in Wales while touring with his band...

2004, Damageplan and ex-Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell is shot to death at a Columbus, Ohio, nightclub ... Damageplan has just started their show when a crazed fan runs onstage and shoots Dimebag ... the shooter then kills a band roadie and two fans ... a hostage situation is ended when a local police officer enters the backstage area and shoots the assailant, killing him...