THE MORON’S ALMANAC © 1999, JustMorons.com
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Almost as reliable as the Farmer’s Almanac®, but without all that crap about farming.
(See the web version of the Moron’s Almanac for links and photos, and, starting this week, a jaunty little soundtrack.)
New installments of The Asinine Prophecy: A Moronic Adventure are posted every Thursday night. But you knew that.
*** Volume 1, Number 11 ***
*** Sunday, March 21 through Saturday, March 27 ***
--- MORONIC TRIVIA ---
(Answer Below)
On March 21, 1989, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke wept on television as he admitted to gross personal misconduct. What had he done?
---THIS WEEK’S VITAL MORONIC INFO---
March 21 is Independence Day (1990) in Namibia
March 21 is Human Rights Day in South Africa
March 22 is Nevruz Day in Albania
March 23 is Pakistan Day in, uh, Pakistan
March 25 is Independence Day in Greece (1821)
March 26 is Independence Day in Bangladesh (1971)
March 27 is Resistance Day in Burma
--- STAR POETS ---
Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Stephen Sondheim, and Andrew Lloyd Webber were all either born or died this week, and they’re all pretty good poets. But I’d like to direct your attention to one of the greatest poetic souls of our time, born on March 22, 1931.
I’m talking about a man named William Shatner.
Listen to him singing, "It Was a Very Good Year." [Link available on the web version.] Listen to him recite a few pentameters of Shakespeare. [Link available on the web version.] Watch any episode of Star Trek you want. Can you doubt for a minute that this man doesn’t know what he’s doing?
William Shatner is the greatest satirist of our age, our laughing social critic, and his satire is so incisive and subversive that two generations of his fans may have missed it completely. His exuberant laughter reverberates with Rabelaisian glee, his sly sarcasms are on a par with those of Cervantes. Mr. Shatner has transformed his entire life into spontaneous and satiric free verse (or, by its proper name, vers libre, which is like a Cuba Libre but without as much rum), and we are in danger of letting him leave our midst unacknowledged.
Fate herself conspired to give Shatner everything he needed to achieve this pre-eminence, conspiring exactly four days after his own birth to provide him with the perfect sidekick: a Sancho to his Quixote, a Vergil to his Dante, perhaps even a Salt to his Peppa. Yes, just four days after Mr. Shatner was born, Leonard Nimoy was brought into the world. (On March 26, 1931, in case you don’t have a calculator handy.)
Mr. Shatner recorded an LP ("The Transformed Man") that the public mistakenly took seriously, without registering the multifaceted layers of self-parody. Nimoy, the faithful second, recorded one of his own ("Spock Sings"). As exuberant as Whitman, as hopeful as Frost, as inventive as Ferlinghetti, as playful as Sondheim, as sweeping as Webber, Shatner’s verse is too grand for any page, too rambunctious to be confined by any meter: he has made his life one long satiric sonnet, and surely it is time we gave William Shatner his due.
About those other poets... Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, and Andrew Lloyd Webber was born on the same day in 1948, which is just a bizarre coincidence. But no more bizarre than Robert Frost being born on March 26, 1874, and Walt Whitman dying the same day in 1892.
Mr. Whitman is best known for having given his name to the high school in the groundbreaking television series "Room 222" (i.e., "Walt Whitman High School"). Mark Hamill appeared on one episode, and later went on to play Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars," which made him a science fiction hero almost on a level with William Shatner.
--- THIS WEEK IN HISTORY ---
March 21 is Nau-Roz Bayram in the Azerbaijan Republic, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikstan, Turkmenistan, and Ollieandstan.
On March 23, 1919, Benito Mussolini founded his own party in Italy. (He had tried all the other parties, but he was an awkward young man and had a hard time getting to know people.) The "Fasci di Combattimento" became an extremely popular party, and got so out of hand that eventually the neighbors started complaining, and that just ended up starting a big fight.
On March 23, 1985, Billy Joel married supermodel Christie Brinkley in New York. It was unbelievable. It was so exciting. Here was this rich but kind of funny looking musician marrying this beautiful, wealthy model... no one had ever seen anything like it before. It changed everything.
On March 23, 1925, Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution in schools. Teacher John Scopes couldn’t think of anywhere else to teach evolution, so he ignored the ban and was later prosecuted in what became known as the "Scopes Monkey Trial," which resulted in an Oscar for Spencer Tracy.
On March 24, 1401, Tamerlane conquered Damascus. Tamerlane (Timur the Lane) was a descendant of Ghenghis Khan, and one of the greatest Tater leaders ever, expanding the Mongol empire from the Pacific to the Meditterranean. Tamerlane is best remembered for having built pyramids out of human skulls, owing to a faulty understanding of architecture which no one (understandably) ever had the courage to correct.
On March 25, 1982, "Pac Man Fever," by the powerhouse duo of Buckman & Garcia, topped national music charts. The song’s success prompted a copycat recording of "Space Invaders" (unless it was "Space Invaders" that inspired "Pac Man Fever"), but either way you’ve got to be grateful that Celine Dion’s "Minesweeper Mania" never saw the light of day.
On March 26, 1997, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found dead after a mass suicide that was supposed to unite them with aliens following the Hale Bopp comet to paradise, but united them instead only with millions of other idiots following lunatics to the grave.
--- OTHER BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK ---
March 21: Gary Oldman (1958), Modest Mussorgsky (1839), J.S. Bach (1685)
March 22: William Shatner (1931), Stepehen Sondheim (1930), Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948), Bob Costas (1952), Orrin Hatch (1934), Marcel Marceau (1923)
March 23: Joan Crawford (1908), Chaka Khan (1953), Akira Kurosawa (1910)
March 24: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919), Normal Fell (1924)
March 25: Anne Brontë (1820), Aretha Franklin (1942), Elton John (1947), Howard Cosell (1920)
March 26: Leonard Nimoy (1931), Robert Frost (1874), Tennessee Williams (1911)
March 27: Sarah Vaughan (1924), Gloria Swanson (1899), Quentin Tarantino (1963)
--- ASTROLOGICAL OUTLOOK ---
(You can get your personal moronic horoscope at JustMorons.com each Wednesday night. This week’s guest astrologist: Marcel Marceau)
It’s a bad week for that visit to Belgrade.
--- LINK OF THE WEEK ---
See the online version of the almanac for a link to the "Singalong with Kirk" web page, the Church of Shatnerology website, the President of Albania’s homepage, a video of clip of Heaven’s Gate leader "Do," and much, much more. Trivia solution: C. He’d had an extramarital affair.
--- THIS WEEK’S FARMING TIP ---
There are not now nor have there ever been farming tips. Weekly farming tips appear in the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is not the Farmer’s Almanac®. This is the Moron’s Almanac. Please try not to get us mixed up again: it confuses us and embarasses the farmers. Thanks.
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