Friday, December 27, 2024
I never knew that Time magazine was in the business of naming “Top Ten Alaskans”, but in 2009 the Iñupiaq actor Ray Mala (Ray Agnaqsiaq Wise, 1906-1952) made the list. The son of a I�…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:29AMBorn 200 years ago, 19th century demi-mondaine Céleste Mogador (Élisabeth-Céleste Vénard, countess of Chabrillan, 1824-1909). A native Parisian, as a girl Mogador had suffered at the ha…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 06:29AMThursday, December 26, 2024
December 26, 2004 (20 years ago today) was one of the worst days in human history in terms of loss of life. Nearly a quarter of a million people were killed when a massive offshore earthquak…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:34AMThe news biz would seem to be outside our beat here at Travalanche — and yet is it? Throughout the television era, broadcast news has steadily been adulterated with entertainment values, o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:09AMWednesday, December 25, 2024
Today (Christmas, 2024), I’m pretty sure, marks the 50th anniversary of my participating in my boyhood church’s annual Christmas pageant. It wasn’t my first public performance (that wa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:50PMIt’s tempting to lay the tone of the entire 1970s at the feet of writer Eric Monte (Kenneth Williams, born Christmas Day, 1942). I was a child throughout that decade, and Monte’s creatio…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:05AMBrass bands and military marches have not been America’s favorite form of music for over a century, so perhaps contemporary folks can be forgiven for not knowing a name that in his own tim…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:59AMTuesday, December 24, 2024
I’m a little stymied as to how I have not yet done a post on the great Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood songwriter Harry Warren (Salvatore Antonio Guaragna, 1893-1981). My best guest is I skipp…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:53AMMike Curb (b. 1944) turns 80 today. Folks in the music biz will know the name. I hadn’t particularly noted it until I came across it when researching TV variety shows. His outfit The Mike …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:03AMMonday, December 23, 2024
99.99999% of the time I adamantly resist the despised designation “the most famous [x] you never heard of”, mostly because young writers and editors seem to assign it to EVERYBODY, and a…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:48AMSunday, December 22, 2024
Depicted above is the dig site at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, the remains of which is thought to be one of the oldest manmade religious structures in the world, dating to about 9500 B.C. I tell…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:12PMSaturday, December 21, 2024
To be more precise, one of my two Godmothers has passed. My parents assigned my sister and I two sets of Godparents, both of whom we both share theoretically, though it’s been many a decad…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 04:54PMThe son’s in town and yesterday we thought we’d note the upcoming holiday by making a pilgrimage to the incredible Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum, with all of its hand-covered…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:32AMFriday, December 20, 2024
1924 was the year James E. Strates (1893-1959) bought out his partners to become sole proprietor of his traveling carnival midway; December 20 was his birthday. Strates was a Greek immigrant…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:18AMThursday, December 19, 2024
Phil Ochs (1940-1976) is often (maybe usually) spoken of in relation to Bob Dylan, and that’s unfortunate. Not because Dylan is such a giant that anyone else suffers in comparison, which i…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:36PMWednesday, December 18, 2024
Friends have been circulating a petition to block plans by developers to build a hotel/casino/retail complex in Coney Island. Based on the rendering above I would have to join my voice to re…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 02:42PMMany lovers of vaudeville are also lovers of Yiddish theatre and culture, so I take the liberty of plugging these upcoming presentations by some friends and colleagues. This year, the first …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 01:36PMDecember 18 was the birthday of the great comedy writer Danny Simon (1918-2005). The success of Simon’s younger brother Neil as a Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter has tended …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AMTuesday, December 17, 2024
I’m quite confident in asserting that Wes Studi (b. 1947) has had the most enviable career of any Native American actor in the history of motion pictures in terms of plum assignments. Afte…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMBorn of a December 17, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). Whittier is the fourth of the so-called Fireside Poets I have treated of here, the others being Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Willia…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 07:24AMMonday, December 16, 2024
We fudge this a little bit so HOLD YER HORSES, all ye Warner Brothers cartoon expert varmints. While it’s true that the official introduction of the Yosemite Sam character didn’t make hi…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:36AMSunday, December 15, 2024
December 15, 1974 was the release date of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Very often, I cite Young Frankenstein as my favorite Mel Brooks comedy, but I actually have three, because Brooks …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMThe date December 15 has a dual significance; it was the birthday of actor and playwright John Augustus Stone (1801-34) and it was also the date of the premiere of his best known play by far…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMSaturday, December 14, 2024
December 14 has been designated Monkey Day, and who am I to argue? By now I have done many designated posts on various animals, mostly ones known to have performed in circuses and vaudeville…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:42AMFriday, December 13, 2024
In celebration of National Day of the Horse, we add to our existing store of equine related posts with this little gallery of top eight horse stars of the days of silents, serials, and kid o…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 05:24PMIt’s been a joy assembling all the various pieces of the multipartite career of producer Lou Adler (b. 1933) who managed to remain on the leading edge of pop culture for a quarter of a cen…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 10:54AMThursday, December 12, 2024
I’d like to have more to tell about character actress Evelyn Sherman (Eva Mae Spear, 1882-1974), but I consider that what is known is of sufficient interest to rate a post here. Sherman wa…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 09:42AMI’m pretty sure I’ll never undertake a single comprehensive post about Francis Albert Sinatra (1915-1998). The idea of writing a piece that includes all of his hit songs and all of his m…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:18AMWednesday, December 11, 2024
We got a triple whammy of death notices yesterday. Typically when we learn of a death and we’ve already written about the subject, rather than penning a new obit I’ll go ahead and share …
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMTuesday, December 10, 2024
This post on Scottish author and clergyman George MacDonald (1824-1905) may be a Travalanche first: a post about an artist whose work I don’t know it all. We take the risk on account of th…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 08:32AMMonday, December 9, 2024
I don’t know who needs this information (it certainly slipped by me) but this morning I accidentally stumbled across the intel that so-called “midget wrestling”, which had been declini…
SOURCE: Trav S.D. at 11:48AM 
