Weird Holiday of the Day – Ferris Wheel Day

TODAY’S “HOLIDAY” – FEBRUARY 14TH
Ferris Wheel Day

Ride high, high in the sky (within the constraints of a Perspex box attached to a giant wheel); what better way to celebrate Ferris Wheel Day?

If you decide to celebrate today with your special someone in a ferris wheel, they’re probably planning on pushing you out when you get to the top. While it’s not a super-romantic way to spend today’s OTHER HOLIDAY, it’s a great way to pass the time at amusement parks and circuses around the world! My favorite is when you get a group of people inside a single car, and there’s always that one jerk who like to rock the car back and forth as much as they can because they know it will freak out at least one other person in the group. That person is the one who should get thrown out at the top!

What’s your favorite ferris wheel memory? How will you celebrate today’s holiday? Let us know in the comments below!

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a ferris wheel.” ~ E B White

Featured Forum Post of the Day: Watch 100 Year Old BFFs Discuss Pop Culture

Our Featured Forum Post of the Day features two 100 year old women who have been best friends for 94 years! Irene and Alice were recently featured on the Steve Harvey show as they discussed their thoughts on Justin Bieber, twerking and other pop culture “hot topics” of today. You’ll want to check this out!

What do you think? I wonder what living in today will make us think of the world 94 years from now! Make sure you check out this post and so much more in our forum, so you don’t miss gems like this in the future!

Weird Holiday of the Day – Get A Different Name Day

TODAY’S “HOLIDAY” – FEBRUARY 13TH
Get A Different Name Day

Whether you’re having a bit of an identity crisis, or simply fancy confusing your friends, Get A Different Name Day is a chance to throw off the shackles of the norm and adopt a new name!

When I was younger, I wanted to change my name to Steve. I’m not sure why I picked that name, but I thought Steve Sherman had a nice sound to it. Turns out, my dad wanted to name me Steve when I was born, and my mom overruled him and picked Sheldon, based on a name she read in a romance novel. I had never heard that story until years later, but it must have been fate, since I picked that as my fake name for a while. So, for this day only, I shall be known as Steve!

What’s your new name? Let us know below!

“I used to think feminism was a liberating force – now I see many of those people are just censors under a different name.” ~  Lydia Lunch

Webtastic Wednesday: An Entrance Fit For a Bride

Its no surprise that all eyes are on the bride as they walk down the aisle to marry the one they love. Arianna Pflederer, however, decided to have the attention on her grand entrance centered on something different. The newlywed chose to walk down the aisle singing to her husband-to-be and express just what she is feeling through the words of a Carrie Underwood song, “Look At Me.”

This video and grand entrance has garnered so much popularity and picked up so much steam that the track from Underwood’s “Play On” album, released in 2009, skyrocketed to the Top 30 on iTunes Singles chart…and the track was never released as a radio single!

“Look At Me” was originally recorded by Alan Jackson. In a Q&A, Arianna shares that her mother sang to her father when she walked down the aisle and she was just trying to carry on a family tradition.

How did Arianna pull it off? Check out the touching & emotional video below!

Master of Comedy Sid Caesar Dead at 91

From Variety writer Richard Natale:

Sid Caesar, one of the first stars created by television via his weekly live comedy program “Your Show of Shows,” has died at 91. TV host Larry King announced the news on Twitter.

Caesar, partnered with Imogene Coca, is credited with breaking ripe comedic ground with the 90-minute live program: It didn’t rely on vaudeville or standup-inspired material but rather on long skits and sketches written by an impressive roster of comedy writers including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart, Lucille Kallen and Mel Tolkin.

“Your Show of Shows” was “different from other programs of its time because its humor was aimed at truth,” Simon once observed. “Other television shows would present situations with farcical characters; we would put real-life people into identifiable situations.”

Following Caesar’s Camelot-days in the ’50s, however, he made a precipitous decline into alcoholism and barbiturates, a self-described “20 year blackout” from which Caesar finally recovered and subsequently related in his 1982 autobiography “Where Have I Been. “At my worst, I had been downing eight Tuinals and a quart of Scotch a day,” Caesar recalled of his darkest days. “When I was awake I’d think of nothing but ‘I must do it faster, kill myself faster. I’d get up to take pills just to go back to sleep. I had no friends. My life was over.”

Sidney Caesar was born of immigrant parents in Yonkers, N.Y. As a youth he aspired to a musical career and practiced the saxophone, which he later studied formally for a brief time (along with the clarinet) at Juilliard. He worked for several orchestras including those of Charlie Spivak, Claude Thornhill and Shep Fields.

After enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard prior to WWII, he wrote sketches for “Six On, Twelve Off,” a Coast Guard musical revue. Then Coast Guard officer Vernon Duke heard Caesar perform one of his foreign-language double-talk monologues (a later Caesar trademark) for the amusement of his fellow mates and hired him for a comic role in another Coast Guard musical, “Tars and Spars.”

It was while performing this show that he befriended producer Max Liebman, who cast him in the Columbia Pictures film version of the musical. After Caesar’s discharge from the armed forces, Col hired him at $500 a week but used him only in one film, “The Guilt of Janet Ames.”

After a year of working in Hollywood, he returned to New York and made his first nightclub appearance at the Copacabana. Joseph Hyman hired him for the Broadway revue “Make Mine Manhattan,” for which he received raves (he was “the most original item on the program,” wrote the New York Times reviewer). And he received a percentage of the show’s profits — almost unknown for a young performer. He won the 1948 Donaldson Award for the musical.

The following year Caesar made his television debut in Liebman’s “Admiral Broadway Revue,” where he met comedienne Coca. He was hailed as the find of the year and earned a princely $900 a week. But the show lasted only 19 weeks, shuttered because of high production costs.

But on Feb. 24, 1950, NBC launched “Your Show of Shows,” a revue of comedy sketches, ballet, modern dance, popular music and operatic selections. Directed and produced by Liebman, the program was broadcast live in front of an audience. Coca co-starred with Caesar, who was then receiving $4,000 a week for his services.

The show was an immediate success and was to become one of the most influential programs in TV’s golden era, launching the careers of Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, as well as the enviable team of writers including Simon, Brooks and Gelbart.

In 1954, when the ratings began to slip, the program was trimmed and renamed “Caesar’s Hour.” Coca was replaced by Nanette Fabray. The change enabled Caesar to last another three years on television. He was nominated for Emmys every year from 1951 to 1958 and won two.

The pressures of a live weekly TV show took its toll on Caesar, however. Success came so fast, he recalled, that “I lived in dread that some night onstage… I would be found out.”

“I know of no other comedian, including Chaplin, who could have done nearly 10 years of live television,” said Brooks. “Nobody’s talent was ever more used up than Sid’s.” Over the years, “Television ground him into sausages…until finally there was little of the muse left.”

For the next few years, Caesar continued to make club appearances, starred in the Broadway musical “Little Me” and toured with Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.” His movies included “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World” and Brooks’ “Silent Movie.”

But his addiction took its toll, and until he came out of it in the late ’70s, Caesar gradually disappeared from the scene. In the early ’80s, he hosted “Saturday Night Live” and toured with Coca in a stage show recalling some of the better “Show of Shows” material.

He also did a considerable amount of work in supporting and guest turns on film and TV. He was in “Grease” and “The Cheap Detective” in 1978, in Brooks’ “History of the World: Part I” in 1981 and he made two appearances on “Love Boat,” to name just a few of his credits from the period.

In 1995 he drew an Emmy nomination for his appearance on Diane English sitcom “Love and War.” He had quite a year in 1997, at age 75: He appeared on “Life With Louie” and “Mad About You” on TV, drawing an Emmy nom for the latter, and in the film “Vegas Vacation,” and he joined fellow TV icons Bob Hope and Milton Berle at the 50th anniversary Primetime Emmy Awards, where the three drew a long standing ovation.

On a 2001 episode of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?,” he reprised his famous foreign dub skit, receiving an extended standing ovation by the crowd as well as a surprise birthday cake from the cast and crew.

In 1985 he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. In 2011 he received a lifetime achievement award from the Television Critics Assn.

Caesar’s second autobiography, “Caesar’s Hours,” was published in 2004.

His reign as the star of “Your Show of Shows” has been fictionally chronicled in the film “My Favorite Year” as well as in Simon’s Broadway comedy “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and explored in the 2001 documentary “Hail Sid Caesar! The Golden Age of Comedy.”

As Coca once observed, “I’m tired of talking about ‘Your Show of Shows.’ But deep inside, I know I’ve done nothing as good since.”

Read More…

Weird Holiday of the Day – Plum Pudding Day

TODAY’S “HOLIDAY” – FEBRUARY 12TH
Plum Pudding Day

Plum Pudding Day is dedicated to a mouthwatering treat that, surprisingly enough, contains no plums! In the 17th century when it was first created, plums were referred to as raisins or any other type of dried fruits. Plum pudding (aka Christmas pudding) is a steamed or boiled pudding usually served during the holiday season. Plum pudding is composed of nutmeg, raisins, nuts, apples, cinnamon, dates, and many other ingredients. In England, it is tradition to have every person a household simultaneously hold onto the wooden spoon together to help stir the batter. As they stir it they also have to make a wish!

I’ve never had Plum Pudding, but I’ve heard it’s good. The ingredients in the holiday dish sound like they might be quite good together, so maybe today is the day to try it for the first time! Plum Pudding Day would be the best time to figure out if this will be a holiday I should participate in every year or not. Also, if I hate it, then I only have to eat it once a year! Yes, I would still eat it! You have to celebrate the holiday after all!!! Have you had Plum Pudding? Do you have a family recipe you want to share? Let us know in the comments below!

“’Make a remark,’ said the Red Queen; ‘it’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!’” ~  Lewis Carroll

The Rise and Fall of Flappy Bird

As you know, Flappy Bird, the amazingly simple, addictive game has been removed from the App Store and Google Play after only 28 days being in the top 10 of the App Store by it’s author, Dong Nguyen. The story surrounding it’s rise to popularity and it’s ultimate demise is truly an interesting one and a must read. One of my favorite sites, Mashable, has so graciously put together a timeline of events leading to the author removing the game and it’s a must read:

From Mashable:

“The story of Flappy Bird — its sudden rise and equally sudden fall — is hard to pin down. That’s partially because Nguyen, overwhelmed by the popularity of the game, has declined press requests for interviews. [Update: Shortly after we posted this story, Forbes tracked down Nguyen in Hanoi, where he revealed that Flappy Bird is “gone forever’ because, essentially, it was addictive.]

Still, using Twitter data from Topsy, Nguyen’s Twitter stream and app-ranking data from App Annie, we’ve managed to put together a timeline of the game.”

CLICK HERE to read more.

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Personally, I just don’t understand it. It’s a GAME. Why was the author so beaten up by the press, by Twitter? If you hated the game, hated the graphics, delete it. Yes, he made a lot of money from the game, as do many others, like say, Candy Crush. Is the difference because he was just one guy in Vietnam rather than a huge company? Is it because the graphics resembled old Nintendo of yore? The only people that should care about that is Nintendo, and as of yet, they haven’t done anything about that. I just don’t understand why people couldn’t just download the game and be happy, or delete the game and be happy, rather than harass this man with questions of why it got so popular, why the graphics are what they are, his formula for success.

Could he have handled it better? Probably. Maybe he just should have left Twitter entirely, used some of the money to hire someone to field questions or the like, but he didn’t. Instead, the game was pulled. Now, people are selling their iphones on ebay for mass amounts of money if Flappy Bird is installed. Crazy! Hopefully, Nguyen will now be able to live in peace. In the meantime, I’m gonna go try and beat my all time high score of 13.

Shirley Temple Black, Dead at 85

Shirley Temple, the child star phenomenon of the 1930s who went on to a career in international diplomacy, died Tuesday in California at age 85.

A statement from her family provided to news organizations said she died at home in Woodside, Calif., of natural causes. “She was surrounded by her family and caregivers,” the BBC quoted the statement as saying. “We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and… our beloved mother, grandmother [and] great-grandmother.”

Shirley Temple was a child prodigy with a non-stop movie hits starting with “Little Miss Marker” in 1934. She went on to entertain America and the world during the Depression keeping 20th Century Fox alive and well. At just 10, Shirley Temple was one of the nations top wage earners. By 1938 she was making $10,000 a week, a staggering sum in those days.

Unfortunately, Temple was not going to survive the transition to adult performer like others and her acting career would come to a grinding halt. Instead, she focused her efforts on Government. She unsuccessfully ran for Congress, but became a U.S. representative at the United Nations, ambassador to Ghana, U.S. chief of protocol under President Gerald Ford and President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

But in her heyday, Temple was a national treasure and an American icon, as big a star around the world as Greta Garbo or Charlie Chaplin. And though, except for a brief TV stint in the late ’50s, Temple was never onscreen after the 1940s, subsequent generations grew up with her films on television and video.

According to Variety:

“In 1958 she appeared on television as host and occasional actress in NBC fairy-tale anthology series “The Shirley Temple Storybook.” It lasted a year.

Another effort, “The Shirley Temple Show,” in 1960, was similarly unsuccessful, but Temple Black made guest appearances during the early 1960s on programs including “The Red Skelton Show” and “Sing Along With Mitch.”

In January 1965, she starred in the sitcom pilot “Go Fight City Hall,” in which she portrayed a social worker, but the show never went to series.

What began as volunteer charity work and a commitment to environmental causes led to Temple running for Congress in 1967. She lost to Pete McCloskey. Active in Richard Nixon’s 1968 election campaign, she was rewarded by the president with an appointment as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations. Her work led to her appointment as a delegate to the International Environmental Council in 1972.

That year she underwent a mastectomy to remove a malignant tumor. She received 50,000 letters of sympathy and went on to speak publicly about breast cancer, which at the time was not discussed widely.

Temple Black sat on the boards of corporations and organizations including the Walt Disney Co. and the National Wildlife Federation.

In 1974, President Gerald Ford appointed her ambassador to Ghana and in 1976 he brought her back to Washington as the first woman chief of protocol.

After Ford lost the 1978 election, she returned home. A decade later, George W. Bush named her as ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

In 1999 Temple Black hosted AFI’s “100 Years… 100 Stars” special on CBS.

Her autobiography, “Child Star,” was published in 1988, and in 2001, she served as a consultant on an ABC telepic adaptation called “Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story.”

Temple received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the Screen Actors Guild’s life achievement award in 2005.

Black and Temple remained married until his death in 2005.”

Weird Holiday of the Day – Satisfied Staying Single Day

TODAY’S “HOLIDAY” – FEBRUARY 11TH
Satisfied Staying Single Day

“No one to walk with, but I’m happy on the shelf”, sang Fats Waller. If that’s you, there’s a perfect day to celebrate. And you don’t have to be “through with flirting”, either…

Seen by many as the antidote to Valentine’s Day, the international day of the singleton may be a strange occasion to mark. But Satisfied Staying Single Day, or S3, is less about chasing a dream of happily-ever-after, and more about living life in the moment – a cause that even couples can embrace. And unlike St Valentine, with his cutesy satin hearts and overpriced roses, S3 remains reassuringly un-commercial.

Above all, S3 is an excuse for a good party. People around the world celebrate their freedom by meeting up with friends for an evening in or out. However, you have to wonder about the logic behind “Satisfied Staying Single Speed-Dating Night”…

Being single three days before Valentine’s Day is not a problem. If you’re happy being single, then this is the holiday for you! My good friend and I enjoy spending Valentine’s Day together where we can relax at home, not worrying about getting a restaurant reservation, spending way too much money on extravagant gifts for each other, or the awkward (and sometimes forced) way to “end the evening.” Are you single? Loving it? Share your story below!

“All sincere boys fall in love with stupid girls, all sincere girls fall in love with stupid boys, I am neither stupid nor sincere, that’s why I am ‘single’.” ~  Abhishek Tiwari