It's a major celebration day, for some people

Breasts are an important feature among mammals. They allow mothers to nurture their young through protracted infancies. No infancy is longer than that of the human species, especially that of the American male, which often lasts until death.




Breasts are more than just moving diner for the young, however. On humans at least, they also have valuable recreational value. Nothing else has the nutrition, entertainment, and sheer jiggle value of the human breast (although Jell-O™ does come close).



Naturally, men couldn't leave anything with the power, appeal, and nutritive value of breasts in the hands of women, literally or metaphorically. From the very dawn of human history, therefore, breasts have been in men's hands.

In 2500 BC, the Minoan women of Crete are believed to have worn a special garment that lifted their breasts entirely out of their clothing. (Like another popular story of ancient Minos, this is believed to be half bull.) By the rise of the Hellenic (Greek) and Roman (Roman) civilizations, however, women were wearing tightly bound breast bands to reduce their busts. This style persisted until 476 AD, rightly referred to by historians as the Fall of Rome.

As history progressed, the popularity of breasts rose and fell, heaved and plunged, lifted and separated. Each new culture found a new way of exalting or obscuring the breast, according to their inclinations. By the nineteenth century in Europe, breasts were being pressed together and thrust upward by means of whalebone-fortified corsets.

The strain was unbearable. Something had to give.



On May 30, 1889, the world’s first bra was invented. To tell you the truth, I’ve lost all track of where I found that date but I do know, however, that corset maker Herminie Cadolle invented the Bien-être in 1889, and that this “health aid” was the first garment to support breasts from the shoulder down instead of squeezing them up from below.

Marie Tucek patented the first “breast supporter” in 1893 (separate pockets for the breasts, with straps that went over the shoulder and were fastened by hook-and-eye closures). Yes, the first documented over the over the shoulder boulder holder.

New York socialite Mary Jacob Phelps invented a modern bra in 1913 (with two handkerchiefs, some ribbon, and a bit of cord) to accommodate a sheer evening gown. Ms. Phelps sold her invention, which she called the brassiere, to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1500 in 1914.

The US War Industries Board encouraged the assimilation of the bra in 1917 by encouraging women to stop buying corsets, thereby freeing up nearly sixty million pounds of the metal used in them.

During the 1920s, a Russian immigrant by the name of Ida Rosenthal founded Maidenform with her husband William. The Rosenthals grouped breasts into cup sizes and developed bras for women of every age.

So it doesn’t really matter what happened on May 30, 1889. It only matters that I’ve gotten you to read the word breast about twenty times in the last several paragraphs.

Hope this makes up for all the emotional turmoil I caused

Remember one of your favorite parental units



The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British version of the day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.



When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.



Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.



So Happy Mother's Day to all you moms

wheeeeeeee!

Welcome to this week's Eagle Brand Soap's Mohammed Radio Hour - The soap more Inuit Moms wash their sassy children's mouths out with.  Eagle Brand, use it, your eagle will thank you.

This week we're going to check out the music of Steely Dan. - well not exactly them but cover versions of their music and a surprise at the end.  But first let's hear from one of our sponsors, Vytautas Mineral Water, it's just that good.

For this first set, let go way back into the vault to hear some cover versions of Early Dan.  First up (hold onto your socks) Barbra Streisand and an early composition of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's I Meant to Shine

(After Barbra and her producers got their hands on the song, the boys have all but disowned this song.)


Here's an incredibly funky version of Do It Again by Charles Mann -

This is an interesting cover version of Dirty Work by the Pointer Sisters

This is where cool intersects with cool, Deodato covers Do It Again

And don't think we don't go all the way back in the vault to find the obscure, here's a Bossa Nova version of Barrytown (in Portugiese) by Mara Amaral

We'll take a break before we fall into a too mellow mood

Welcome back to Eagle Brand Soaps Mohammed's Radio Music Hour - the soap to use when you need to get your eagle's hands clean.  For this section, I thought we listen to some major artists cover some of Steely Dan's tunes.  First up is  Wilco doing Any Major Dude Will Tell You.

A bunch of the songs we're listening to tonight are off of the song track album of Me, Myself and Irene.  Who know the Farrelly Bros. were such major Danfan heads. 


Joe Jackson does a cover of King of the World on his 2000 CD, Summer in the City

listening to this, you almost can imagine that Joe wrote this himself


Not a great stretch for Grover Washington Jr. to give a jazzy interpretation of Time Out of Mind

This is another cover of Barrytown but this time by Ben Folds Five

Let's take a break here and when we come back, we'll listen to some ladies covering the band.


Vytautas Mineral Water!

Welcome back to Eagle Brand Soaps Mohammed's Radio Hour. Your talons would smell too if you spent the day eating raw fish.  The soap more undertakers in Minneapolis use.


First up in this section is the Tori Amos' cover of Do It Again from her album of covers, Sparks -

While working on this show, I found this new album, Fire in the Hole (well, new to me) by this duo, Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Tornqvist.  The entire album are covers of Steely Dan songs (how convenient.)

Go out and buy the album (or download it or whatever you kids do today.)


The next choice was easy, who better to cover a Steely Dan song than the multi-nominationed grammy performer, Rikki Lee Jones

Probably the best Steely Dan cover of the bunch!

Let take a break here and then come back with some songs that sample Steely Dan

Kanye West sampled Steely Dan's Kid Charlemagne on the cut Champion in his 2007 album Graduation.

Del La Soul, the original masters of the sly sample, included Peg in Eye Know from their classic album 3 Feet and Rising.

Interesting aside: both this album, 3 Feet and Rising and Aja were included in the 2010 National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress.


Listen carefully and you can hear Green Earrings sampled inside Walk Into the Sun by Organized Konfusion.

Follow along on this one, Beyonce's song Me, Myself and I was remixed to include a sample of Black Cow

Alright when we come back we have two more tunes before we hit the road

Please don't show Rick Santorum this video

I'm not sure his heart could take it


Here are the last two cover versions, the first is a cover version of the Donald Fagen Song Walk Between the Raindrops from his album, The Nightfly

And our last song for the night is the Duke Ellington playing his East St. Louis Toodle-oo. Steely Dan covered the song on their 1974 album Pretzel Logic.

So that's it for tonight's Eagle Brand Soap's Mohammed's Radio Hour.  Remember to use Eagle Brand Soap and keep looking for Mohammed's lamp.



Goodnight folks.

Remember - don't panic, be deadpan!

April 26, 1956 -

Godzilla debuted in American (Gojira premiered in Japan on November 3, 1954) :



With the ashes of World War II only recently cooled, Japan is plagued by a sudden wave of maritime disasters: Without warning, ships are exploding into flame and sinking beneath the waves. The few survivors are able to shed little light on the situation, as they quickly die from radiation and strange burns. (Hmmm, sound familiar) A group of investigators, including prominent paleontologist Dr. Yamane and American reporter Steve Martin, are sent to Odo Island to investigate. The natives warn that the ships are being destroyed by Gojira (Godzilla), a legendary monster. These claims are verified when a gigantic, dinosaur-like creature comes ashore and demolishes the native village. Dr. Yamane concludes that Godzilla is a prehistoric creature that has been awakened and mutated by atomic bomb tests. It's just the same conclusion you'd come to having just seen the ruins of a Japanese fishing village.




The military decides to use depth charges on the monster. However, the attack is unsuccessful, and Godzilla follows the ships back to Tokyo Bay. (Again, probably just what you would do - annoy a giant radioactive monster.) Coming ashore at night, Godzilla razes Tokyo. The destruction left in his wake is comparable to an atomic bomb. Military firepower proves useless against the monster. It is feared that Godzilla will continue to lay waste to the cities of Japan, and perhaps the entire world.

It is up to Emiko Yamane (Dr. Yamane’s daughter) to convince her former fiancé, Dr. Serizawa, to use his Oxygen Destroyer against Godzilla. Serizawa is skeptical; he fears that this terrible device might be more dangerous than the monster. However, he finally decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to rid the world of Godzilla.


So here in a nutshell, you have the greatest fever dream movie ever re-edited - a very good Sci-Fi film intercut with Raymond Burr, the undisputed king of deadpan delivery and nipple rouge entrepreneur.




(We take Godzilla very seriously in our home.).

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Today's Word: Dionysiac ( die-uh-NIS-ee-ak ), (Latin Dionysiacus, from Greek Dionusiakos, from Dionusios.), adjective 1. Of or relating to Dionysus, the god of wine and of an orgiastic religion celebrating the power and fertility of nature. Of or relating to Dionysia, ancient Greek festivals held seasonally, chiefly at Athens, in honor of Dionysus. 2. Often dionysiac. Ecstatic or wild; Dionysian.

Keep it in mind (we'll come back to it.)

April 24, 1184 BC (this is an approximated date.)
Most of the people who could have verified this date were too busy smearing olive oil on each other and inventing Greco-Roman wrestling in the nude, so the creation of an accurate calendar wasn't a high priority. For years, I have been incorrectly saying this date was 1479 BC, which everyone knows was when Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt.  I have to stop drinking when I blog.

Think Dionysiac

... Is this the face that launched a thousand ships? ....

OK kids, here's your quick Lit Hum course.

Once upon a time, a pretty naked Greek girl was lolling around a limpid pool (lots of pretty naked Greek girls were doing that back then) and she saw a beautiful swan.

Before you could said By Zeus, Leda lays an egg (psst, don't tell Rick Santorum but bestiality was involved) and out pops Helen - another pretty naked Greek girl. But Helen wasn't just any pretty naked Greek girl, she was the MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD.

So when it was time for Helen to marry (at about 12), literally everyone who was anyone wanted to marry her, including Odysseus (who doesn't marry her but Penelope but that's another story), Menestheus, Ajax the Great, Patroclus and Idomeneus, Agamemnon (who doesn't marry her but her sister, Clytemnestra and lives (or dies) to regret it, but that again is another story). It doesn't hurt to mention at this point that her 'father' was the King of Sparta or the fact that he never noticed that she was hatched from a egg.



Yadda, yadda yadda, Helen marries Menelaus. Yadda, yadda, yadda, three more naked Greek goddesses, handsome naked Greek youth named Paris (how the French got into this story even I can't explain) and a golden apple.



Also, I bet you never realized how much nudity plays into this story.

Yadda, yadda yadda, an abduction and a promise extracted - bang zoom, you have the Trojan war. I have just saved you from reading Edith Hamilton's Mythology and most of the Iliad.

The Greek siege of Troy had lasted for ten years with no end in sight. The Greeks devised a new ruse: a giant hollow wooden horse. It was built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors led by Odysseus. Meanwhile, a Greek spy, Sinon, convinced the Trojans that the horse was a gift despite the warnings of Laocoon (who gets to utter the line, "Beware Greeks bearing gifts" moments before being strangled by sea-serpents with his two sons - but that's another story)



and Cassandra (who has the gift of prophecy because of the God Apollo as a token of his love has snakes lick her ears clean but that again is another story) ;

;

Helen and Deiphobus (who won Helen in a game with his brother after the death of Paris but let's stay on course here) even investigated the horse; in the end, the Trojans accepted the gift on this date. In ancient times it was customary for a defeated general to surrender his horse to the victorious general in a sign of respect.



It should be noted here that the horse was the sacred animal of Poseidon; during the contest with Athena over the patronage of Athens, Poseidon gave men the horse, and Athena gave the olive tree. It should also be noted that after living ten years under a siege, one's reasoning seems to go out the window.

The Trojans have a huge orgy, I mean, party (think sodomy but on a grand scale - think dionysiac) to celebrate the end of the siege, so that, when the Greeks emerged from the horse, on this date, the city was in a drunken stupor. The Greek warriors opened the city gates to allow the rest of the army to enter, and the city was pillaged ruthlessly, all the men were killed, and all the women and children were taken into slavery.

And so ends the Iliad. Oh yeah, Brad Pitt ends up dead but Orlando Bloom is alive.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

Today is believed to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England (1564). He was a playwright and poet, and is considered to be the most influential and perhaps the greatest writer in the English language. His tragedies have been celebrated for centuries. For example, there’s the Tragedy of Julius Caesar, in which a Roman general thinks he’d like to be emperor, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is the Tragedy of Macbeth, in which a Scottish Thane thinks he’d like to be king, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is the Tragedy of Richard III, in which a hunch-backed noble thinks he'd like to be king, other people disagree, and everyone dies in the end. There is even the Tragedy of Hamlet, in which a young prince thinks and everyone dies in the end.



(That last is naturally set in Denmark, where the relationship between thinking and dying has been most famously chronicled by Soren Kierkegaard, who called life itself the sickness unto death. He was a very happy fella.)

He gave us many beloved plays, including Romeo and Juliet (1594), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Gay Boys in Bondage (1601), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605). Only a few scattered facts are known about his life. He was born and raised in the picturesque market town of Stratford-on-Avon, surrounded by woodlands. His father was a glover and a leather merchant; he and his wife had eight children including William, but three of them died in childbirth. William probably left grammar school when he was thirteen years old, but continued to study on his own.


He went to London around 1588 to pursue his career in drama (or to sleep with actresses or men who dresses like women) and by 1592 he was a well-known actor. He joined an acting troupe in 1594 and wrote many plays for the group while continuing to act. Scholars believe that he usually played the part of the first character that came on stage, but that in Hamlet he played the ghost.



Some scholars have suggested that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays attributed to him because he had no formal education. A group of scientists recently plugged all his plays into a computer and tried to compare his work to other writers of his day, such as Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and the Earl of Oxford. The only writer they found who frequently used words and phrases similar to Shakespeare's was Queen Elizabeth I, and although Shakespeare had been seen in women's clothing several times, the Queen was eventually ruled out as well.


Shakespeare used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he was the first writer to invent or record many of our most common turns of phrase, including foul play, as luck would have it, your own flesh and blood, too much of a good thing, good riddance, in one fell swoop, so is your mother, play fast and loose, up your nose with a rubber hose, dyn-o-mite, I know you are but what am I and in the twinkling of an eye.


Shakespeare wrote a lot of other plays and died in the end—on April 23, 1616. His accomplishments are all the more remarkable when you consider that he died on the same day he’d been born.

I wish I could be this funny

One of the places I check out weekly is The Young Turks. In a recent posting, they showed an actual video created by the group The American Life Leagues' screed against Planned Parenthood and their nefarious plan to ensnare children into the evils of SEX through the gateway drug of masturbation.



The amazing thing about the actual video, is how howlingly funny it is. It's almost the perfect SNL skit. And you know that the guy in the video is hoping to get some penis cupcakes.