Dr. Caligari's cabinet is now so crammed that he had to stow stuff in the Cupboard. Time may wound all heels but once in a while you need a cup of tea.
Boston's mayor Michelle Wu will preside of Boston’s signature holiday celebration, the 82nd annual Boston Common Tree Lighting. Here is a video of last year's tree lighting - if you've seen one tree lighting, you've seen them all.
(I urgently warn our Boston friends to avoid the area like the plague. Or at least break out their polo mallets to wade through the crowds.)
Mayor Wu will be joined by Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, marking the 52nd year that Nova Scotia has given a tree to the people of Boston as thanks for relief efforts following the December 6, 1917, explosion of a munitions ship in Halifax Harbor.
Within 24 hours of the disaster, a train loaded with supplies and emergency personnel was making its way from Boston to Nova Scotia.
Today’s second theme – A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss...
No family is perfect - Even kids abused by their domineering father
Today's second Christmas special - A Beach Boys Christmas
Toy Drive Public Service Announcement
Alone on Christmas Day –
The song was intended to appear on the never released 1977 Merry Christmas from the Beach Boys album.
Child of Winter (Christmas Song) –
This song was released two days before Christmas and thus had no chance of commercial success. It is now an almost impossible single to find and was released for the first time on album for the 1998 Ultimate Christmas set, though it was intended for the 1977 Christmas album.
This was written by Walter Kent (music) and James Kimball “Kim” Gannon (words). Though Kent and Gannon collaborated on other songs, none reached the same level of popularity as this song.
Another Christmas song they got around to sing in between the verbal abuse from their father
The Man With All The Toys –
As a single in 1964, the song had limited success (No. 6 on the Billboard Christmas chart), but built sales over successive Christmases and is listed by Billboard in the Top 100 selling Christmas songs in history.
Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit people only once a year.
Today's theme - our first guest programmer, the birthday girl.
This year, she went in a more traditional vein:
Little Drummer Boy-
This Christmas classic was originally a Czech song that Katherine Kennicott Davis translated to English in 1941. Under the title Carol Of The Drum, it was covered by the Austrian Trapp Family Singers (of The Sound Of Music fame) a decade later, but a new arrangement titled The Little Drummer Boy was popularized by the Harry Simeone Chorale in 1958. Simeone is credited as a songwriter on the track, along with Davis and producer Henry Onorati, but one name that is noticeably absent is Jack Halloran, who actually came up with the arrangement and recorded it a year before Simeone released his version.
All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
All I Want For Christmas Is You was not released as a commercial single, serving instead to drive sales of Mariah Carey'sMerry Christmas album. On airplay, the song made #12 US in 1994 when it was first issued to radio stations as a promotional single. It returned to the Airplay chart at #35 each of the next two years, establishing a place on holiday playlists. By 1999, the Hot 100 no longer stipulated that a song had to be sold as a single to be eligible, and with airplay now a factor, All I Want For Christmas Is You made the chart at #83. (What is it with my family and this song. At least one of them always requests it each year.)
Carol of the Bells - The Tabernacle Choir
Most people automatically associate Carol of the Bells with Christmas, but its origins tell a different story. It's actually based on a traditional Ukrainian folk chant that celebrated the season of rebirth and anticipated a prosperous New Year. In 1916, composer Mykola Leontovich borrowed the four-note melody for a new choir song called Shchedryk, which debuted in the US at Carnegie Hall in 1921. When American choir director Peter Wilhousky heard the song, he wrote new lyrics and introduced his version, called Carol of the Bells, to holiday audiences. He copyrighted and published it in 1936.
O Holy NightNat King Cole -
This carol has the distinction of being the first song ever to be played live on a radio broadcast. On December 24, 1906 a Canadian inventor, Reginald Fessenden, broadcast one of the first ever AM radio programs, and the first ever to feature entertainment and music for a general audience, from his Brant Rock, Massachusetts station. After playing Handel'sLargo on an Ediphone phonograph, he proceeded to play O Holy Night on his violin, singing the last verse as he played. He finished the broadcast by reading various passages from the Gospel of Luke, before wishing his listeners a Merry Christmas.
Winter WonderlandThe Eurythmics –
This became one of the most popular holiday songs of all time, but unlike most seasonal favorites, there is no consensus on the most popular version of the song. When the bandleader Guy Lombardo recorded it with his Royal Canadians in 1934, the song was a huge hit. In 1946 Lombardo successfully revived it with a Boogie Woogie arrangement accompanied by the Andrews Sisters, which sold a million copies. Perry Como also successfully recorded it the same year, but the song fell out of favor in the Rock era, and no version has made the Top 40 since the 1955 creation of the Hot 100 chart.
Mary would like to wish all the readers, both old and new, a very Happy Holiday!
Avoid Midtown Manhattan today -
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be lit for the first time this holiday season tonight. Remember to wear a mask and bring a polo mallet with you if you, unfortunately, find yourself in midtown.
Thousands of poor souls will gather for the 92nd annual Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting. Remember to bring a tube sock filled with pennies with you, if you unfortunately, find yourself in midtown
Do you really want to be stuck in the middle of potential Darwin Award winners and their children who should be forced to play in traffic? So once again, I'm giving native New Yorkers a gentle reminder - watch last year's lighting here.
This year, Chloe Bailey, Adam Blackstone, Cher, David Foster, Liz Gillies, Darlene Love, Seth MacFarlane, Barry Manilow, Katharine McPhee, Keke Palmer, Carly Pearce, and Manuel Turizo, as well as, the refugees from overbooked ancient hotels in the holy land are involved this year.
The holiday season is once again upon us and with the month nearly being over, we here at ACME are proud to bring you the Sixteenth Annual Holiday Video Festival. This week could be the start of the holiday season for some people (most of the staff of ACME start working on the holidays well before Thanksgiving but after Halloween; we're not insane,) and you may be decorating the house this week.
Ike was absolutely correct, we truly need to beware ‘the military-industrial complex.’ I had been highly suspicious of the follow statistic – the US has been involved in some form of ‘armed military‘ conflicts 228 out of the 245 years of it’s existence. But I’ve tracked it across a number of different sources, for example 1, 2 & 3, and a consensus seems to be that we are a very war-like nation. So it is very easy to see how the true reason for the holidays is lost in the fog of war –
The Christmas Truce on the Western Front of 1914 –
Winter WonderlandThe Andrews Sisters -
World War II Christmas Radio broadcast 1942
Christmas in Korea 1950 -
Goodbye Maria I'm Off To Korea -
Christmas in Viet NamJohnny and Jon -
7 O'Clock News/Silent Night Simon & Garfunkel –
What set the Christmas songs of the Vietnam War apart was their naked honesty concerning the plight of the soldier. These guys weren’t very happy to be there – at least, they didn’t stay that way very long after going “in country.”
Bob Hope USO Christmas Special from the Persian Gulf –
Christmas in FallujahBilly Joel –
Christmas Day from Afghanistan 2016 –
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) –
Remember to pace yourself we have a month of celebrating to do.
Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1955 Dime To Retire, (co-starring Porky Pig,) and directed by Robert McKimson.
Porky paid $5.00 for the cat to get rid of the mouse, $10 for the dog to get rid of the cat, $26 for the lion to get rid of the dog, $72 for the elephant to get rid of the lion and $666 for the mouse to get rid of the elephant making a total of $779.00
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour has once again been checking out the very funny website, Letters Live, (where actors read actual letters from famous and not so famous people.) We stumbled upon this one, so lets watch it -
>
We could hear Stephen Fry read IKEA instructions and we would be enthralled
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1965 exprtimrental film Vinyl, directed by Andy Warhol and starring starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, and ,Tosh Carillo,. Believe it or not, this is Andy Warhol’s screen adaptation of Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Despite following no rules, we follow the story, come to know the characters, and use our imaginations to construct their world. Warhol has given us a completely original way to show a story on film. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and watch Vinyl
Ike looked it up - he really didn't have the authority to pardon barnyard animals. The Secretary of the Interior got the honor of ritualistically strangling the bird and they all enjoyed wild turkey that day.
Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Merrie Melodies cartoon, the 1955 This Is a Life?, (co-starring Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Yosemite Sam,) and directed by Friz Freleng.
This is the first time in which June Foray voices Granny. She would go on to voice the character up until 2014.
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour has once again stumbled upon a great super cut video from the folks at Burger Fiction - Do You Know The Secret Word? So let's check it out -
Unfortunately Groucho is no longer around to give you a 50 if you say it.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1965 exploitation film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, directed by Russ Meyer and starring Tura Satana, Haji, Lori Williams and Susan Bernard. The film was a commercial and critical failure upon its initial release, but it has since become widely regarded as an important and influential film. Writer-director John Waters stated in his book Shock Value that "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made." It's hard to root for anyone in this cynical free-for-all, but the characters' collective evil only partially obscures their thwarted humanity. Tura Satana's jaded Varla goes for broke and winds up broken, like Theodore Dreiser's Clyde Griffiths and F. Scott Fitzgerald'sJay Gatsby, another flawed hero destroyed while grabbing for her share of the American dream. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and watch Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
The film's lead actress, Tura Satana, legally owned her image and likeness. So, whenever Russ Meyer wanted to change the artwork on any of the film's posters or re-release the film, he had to get her permission to do so and sometimes pay her royalties all over again.
Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1955 Sahara Hare, (starring Bugs Bunny) and directed by Friz Freleng.
Although the desert location is never clearly revealed, a sign inside the fort says "For rent or lease, call MOrocco 41311."
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour has once again been checking out the very funny website, Letters Live, (where actors read actual letters from famous and not so famous people.) We stumbled upon this one, so lets watch it - -
We have felt a special affinity to Laurence since Apocalypse Now
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1965 Shakespearean drama Chimes At Midnight, directed by Orson Welles and beside Orson, starring Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Marina Vlady, and Keith Baxter. The film is based on five of Shakespeare's plays; primarily Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, but also Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Initially dismissed by most film critics, Chimes at Midnight is now regarded as one of Welles' highest achievements, and Welles called it his best work. Despite the notable cast, the budget for Chimes at Midnight was a modest $1 million. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and watch Chimes at Midnight.
Despite portraying Falstaff as a grossly obese man, Orson Welles actually had to diet to slim down for the role. This is purported to be Orson Welles' favorite of his movies.
Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with a classic Daffy Duck Merrie Melodies cartoon, the 1955 Stork Naked, and directed by Friz Freleng.
The stork's first stop is the apartment of Mr. & Mrs. Pierce. This is a reference to longtime Termite Terrace veteran writer Tedd Pierce.
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour found this interesting video about the history and background of the humble ramen noodle, so lets watch it -
Upon its initial airing on television in Belgium, the film was overall poorly received by local critics and audiences, who criticized the film for its long-windedness and Beata Tyszkiewicz's performance. After it received wide acclaim internationally over the following year, the film was reappraised by the Belgian press, culminating in being awarded the Grand Prix at the 7th Belgian Film Festival.
