This Date in History - October 14

 

Happy "Your Life Is Now Ruined" Day, Steve Bartman.   It happened on this date in 2003.  It took until 2016 for the Cubs to get rid of this latest curse.  

222:  POPE CALLIXTUS I IS KILLED BY A MOB IN ROME AFTER A FIVE YEAR REIGN.  HE IS SUCCEEDED BY CARDINAL URBAN I.

Back when the Pope numbers first started.

1322:  ROBERT THE BRUCE OF SCOTLAND DEFEATS KING EDWARD II, FORCING THE LATTER TO ACCEPT SCOTLAND'S INDEPENDENCE.

Hoot man.

1582:  BECAUSE OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR, THIS DAY DOES NOT EXIST IN THIS YEAR IN ITALY, POLAND, PORTUGAL, AND SPAIN.

That had to be a problem for those people who manufacture "This Week At a Glance."

1586:  MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, GOES ON TRIAL FOR CONSPIRACY AGAINST ELIZABETH I OF ENGLAND.

If you're in England, don't ever mess with anybody named Elizabeth.

1656:  MASSACHUSETTS ENACTS THE FIRST PUNITIVE LEGISLATION AGAINST THE QUAKERS, WHO THEY REGARD AS SPIRITUALLY AND POLITICALLY SUBVERSIVE.

Oh, no, not the Quakers!  But who's going to make the oatmeal?

1773:  JUST BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, SEVERAL OF THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY TEA SHIPS ARE SET ABLAZE IN MARYLAND.

Ships?   What ships??

1843:  THE BRITISH ARREST THE IRISH NATIONALIST DANIEL O'CONNELL FOR CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT CRIMES.

Can you imagine what they would do to him if he had actually had?

1863: CONFEDERATE TROOPS UNDER GENERAL LEE FAIL TO DRIVE THE UNION ARMY OUT OF VIRGINIA.

Confederates?   Are we allowed to even talk about this part of history any more?

1884:  INVENTOR GEORGE EASTMAN RECEIVES A US GOVERNMENT PATENT ON HIS NEW PAPER STRIP PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM.

Well, that's not a negative.

1890:  DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER IS BORN.

I like Ike.

1893:  ACTRESS LILLIAN GISH IS BORN.

She made it to 100, dying in 1993.

1894:  POET E.E. CUMMINGS IS BORN.

Mr. "I Can't Be Bothered with Capitalizing Anything."

1908:  THE CHICAGO CUBS DEFEAT THE DETROIT TIGERS, CLINCHING THE WORLD SERIES.  IT WOULD BE THEIR LAST ONE TO DATE.

And may the drought continue another century.

1910:  COACH JOHN WOODEN IS BORN.

And here's another one who lasted a whole century.

1912:  WHILE CAMPAIGNING IN MILWAUKEE, FORMER US PRESIDENT TEDDY ROOSEVELT IS SHOT AND MILDLY WOUNDED BY A MENTALLY-DISTURBED SALOON KEEPER.  HE STILL CARRIES OUT HIS SCHEDULED PUBLIC SPEECH.  

But it probably hurt when he talked.

1926:  "WINNIE THE POOH" BY A.A. MILNE IS FIRST PUBLISHED.

Now where's that honey tree?

1933:  NAZI GERMANY WITHDRAWS FROM THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

See if we care.

1939:  FASHION DESIGNER RALPH LAUREN IS BORN.

His polo shirts fit me very well.

1941:  BASEBALL STAR ART SHAMSKY IS BORN.

A hero of the 1969 World Champion New York Mets and the one person on Earth that I could probably beat in a foot race.

1944:  LINKED TO A PLOT TO ASSASSINATE ADOLF HITLER, FIELD MARSHALL ERWIN ROMMEL IS FORCED TO COMMIT SUICIDE.

To quote my grandmother..."dumkopf."

1947:  CAPTAIN CHUCK YEAGER OF THE US AIR FORCE FILES AN AIRCRAFT FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF SOUND.  

He had...ahem...the right stuff.

1959:  ACTOR ERROL FLYNN DIES.

He died with his boots on.  Maybe.

1964:  MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. RECEIVES THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.

And the cash value is?

1967:  FOLK SINGER JOAN BAEZ IS ARRESTED FOR PROTESTING THE VIETNAM WAR IN OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.

Peace and love and legal fees.

1968:  THE FIRST LIVE TV BROADCAST BY AMERICAN ASTRONAUTS IN ORBIT WAS PERFORMED BY THE APOLLO 7 CREW.

Performing Stupid Astronaut Tricks.

1969:  THE UNITED KINGDOM INTRODUCES THE BRITISH FIFTY-PENCE COIN, WHICH EVENTUALLY REPLACES THE BRITISH TEN-SHILLING NOTE.

Pence and Shilling.  Two coins that eventually became baseball players.

1977:  SINGER BING CROSBY DIES.

"We're off on the road to Heaven."

1979:  THE FIRST EVER GAY RIGHTS MARCH OCCURS IN WASHINGTON, DC.

And it won't be the last.

1982:  US PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN PROCLAIMS A WAR ON DRUGS.

And he started by emptying Nancy's purse.

1990:  CONDUCTOR LEONARD BERNSTEIN DIES.

From "On The Town" to under it.

1997:  AUTHOR HAROLD ROBBINS DIES.

His last novel could be called "The Undertakers."

2003:  CHICAGO CUB FAN STEVE BARTMAN INTERFERES WITH PLAY AND COSTS THE TEAM A CHANCE TO ADVANCE TO THE WORLD SERIES.

Fitting that it happened on the anniversary of the last time they had previously won in 1908.  

2009:  WRESTLER LOU ALBANO DIES.

He used to drive a cab in my home town of Mount Vernon, New York.

Dinner last night:  Sandwich.

Continuing My Movie Journey

 

I used to go to the movies a lot.   Back in the day, I would try to check out everything.  But then COVID hit and there were less films to see.  Couple that with some movie palace venues closing up and Len finds himself at home.

Because I truly miss the shared community experience of being in an audience, I have pledged to get out more.   As a result, I have been using some flimsy excuses for reasons why I went to see X, Y, or Z.

That brings us to the new movie "Verity."   Why did I go and see this?   Reviews were good.   One critic called it an "erotic psychological thriller."  Okay, those are three words I can get behind.

Plus the film stars Anne Hathaway and I sort of dig her.   Oh, not in a fanboy kind of way.   She never gives a bad performance and easily saunters the roads of both comedy and drama.  And she's kind of attractive.

That, folks, is how I saw "Verity."  And I'm glad I did.

Hathaway plays Verity...duh.   She's a well-known writer who is now in catatonic state after an accident.   And she's a piece of broccoli for most of the movie.  Indeed, her back story is told in flashbacks so Hathaway does have something to do besides drool.

Verity's husband (a wonderfully nuanced performance by the under-rated Josh Hartnett) hires a young writer (also a strong acting job by Dakota Johnson) to finish some books Verity had in progress.  Pretty simple.   Well, the young writer moves into their huge (and gorgeous) house and finds another book in the making...Verity's autobiography.   And she also discovers that one of Verity's two children was killed in a boating accident.

Hmmm.

The drama and mystery is set up perfectly and everything turns out to be not what it appears to be.   I mean, it is erotic and psychological and a thriller.   And, for once  in a movie produced in 2026, the ending that unravels does make total sense.

"Verity" works on a bunch of levels and, if you are restarting your cinematic journey like I am, this movie will be a good road to follow.

LEN'S RATING:  Three-and-a-half stars.

Dinner last night:  Leftover chili.

Monday Morning Video Laugh - October 12, 2026

 This month, we continue to celebrate 75 years of  "I Love Lucy."  Remember the girls from Albuquerque?

Dinner last night:  Home made sausage chili.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - Da Cubs

Now, as a baseball fan, there are many opposing teams in my history that I have grown to hate.    As a Met fan in New York, you naturally had mucho disdain for the Yankees.   For a while there, I totally despised the Atlanta Braves.  As a Dodger fan in Los Angeles, the hatred for the uber-annoying San Francisco Giants is now deeply ingrained.  Right now in my world, the Padres suck.

But there is one franchise that I have hated pretty much my entire life as a baseball fan.   

The Chicago Cubs.   And most notably their obnoxious fan base.  

Okay, you say...how can you hate a franchise that has won just one World Series in 100 plus years?  Have I no compassion for a fan base where there are lifelong Cub fans who were born and died without ever seeing their team in the World Series?  Oh, that poor Ernie Banks.   One of the greatest players ever and he never got a World Series.

Oh, well, I say...it sucks to be them.

The venom started gathering in my body way back when I was a kid.   The lowly Mets were finally good and they were, for the first time ever, battling for a pennant.   The team ahead of them was the Cubs.   And they were led by my very first baseball villain.   

Ron "Rat Bastard" Santo.   He's not with us any more so I suppose I should not speak ill of the dead.

I make one exception always.  This guy was a jerk and any Met fan still curses him to this day.

You see, when the Cubs were sailing to that pennant, Santo liked to rub victory in the face of his opponents by doing this at the end of every game...

Just seeing it again makes my skin boil.   His antics were considered bush league by everybody but those assholes in the Wrigley Field bleachers.  Met manager Gil Hodges quietly walked over to Santo one day and told him, in a very nice way, that he was being immature.   Santo kept doing it.

For years, this moron was a darling of the Cub faithful.  He got his uniform retired.  He wound up doing their radio color commentary and could be audibly heard on the air moaning and crying when the Cubs would lose a big game.

I've always said that God indeed likes to toy with the Cub fans who keep subscribing to some silly notion that their team is cursed because of some incident with a billy goat.   There may be some validity in that.  Because, at the end of his life, Santo was a double amputee.   And, effectively, God took away his ability to do that heel click ever again.  Poetic justice.

I told you this was going to be nasty today.

Years later, I wanted to be this bastion of baseball...Wrigley Field...for myself.   I had heard it was the best baseball stadium ever with its ivy-covered outfield walls and close proximity to the field.  My college roommate and I would follow the Mets there every season for about five years.   Yes, the ballpark is nice.  But quaint?   

Um, no.

I found it cramped, riddled with ads, and, from what I can see now on TV after their renovation, totally corporate.   What the hell is Nuveen and why do you see its billboard in every camera shot?

Moreover, when I was going to Wrigley, I noticed something else about the crowd which was shocking for a city in an urban market.

Not only was the crowd lily white, but they were a J Crew catalog on steroids.   Hmmm, I said at the time.

The fans there were raucous and not accepting of fans from other teams.   As the Old Style flowed and they got drunker and drunker, the obnoxiousness just soared.

But then there was the seventh inning stretch.   Everybody up so announcer Harry Caray can sing.   And, a one and a two.   It looked like some of the fans around me were here just for this.   What baseball game?

Meanwhile, here's another rat bastard that the Cub fans took to their bosom.   A drunk who slurred his way through most games.   A guy that was run out of St. Louis years ago because he was fucking the Cardinal owner's wife.   

Oooh, how small town.   How heart warming.

Phooey.

The good news is that there are many indications that God himself does join me in this dislike for the Cub fan.   

For instance, this happened to knock their team out of the playoffs in 1984.

And then this happened to kill their spirits in 2003...

Bwwwhaaaaa!

This last one got Cub fans so nuts in their pastel pullover sweaters that they drove this poor schmuck out of town.  Forget the fact that the game was lost by their shortstop and their manager Dusty Baker, who swallowed so many toothpicks as a result that he shit out Pinocchio.

It goes all to the alleged badge of honor that Cub fans proudly wear.   They still think they won the pennant against the Mets.   They did not.   They still think they went to the World Series in 2003.  They did not.  Yeah, you won in 2016.   

What have you done since then?  Plus you now have another dirtbag to hate.

Yes, I'm talking about you.  Pete Crowe-Armstrong.

Dinner last night:   Buttered popcorn at the movies.

Classic Newsreel of the Month - October 2026

 It's a baseball theme this month.

Dinner last night:  Pasta with meat sauce.

Retro Shopping

 

Dinner last night:   Grilled sausage.

I Wonder Why...

 

Riddle me this, Baseball Batman.

Watching the MLB playoffs the other day, we are presented once a game with their ultra annoying war whoops and chops.  I've always thought this was stupid, but everybody is invited to their own level of stupidity.

Now you may remember about a decade ago, we all were forced on a journey to make reparations to the American Indians who, despite being killed off by John Wayne in dozens of movies, have become quite successful owning casinos.   Yet, we had to be sensitive to their heritage.   As a result...

No more Cleveland Indians.

No more Washington Redskins.

No Cherokee anything.

Okay, I assume it made all the bleeding hearts in this country feel a little better when they can't beat the Blackjack dealer at Morongo.

But Len has a question.   Why do the Atlanta Braves still exist?  Why is their mind-numbing chop still allowed?  How do they get a hall pass?

If you have an answer to this, please send up a smoke signal.

Dinner last night: Sandwich.