October 10th in nerd history
Happy National Hug a Drummer Day! Maybe it’s the fact they don’t have a reliable car, or that they quit their 10th band this year and are sad they aren’t in one, or maybe they just can’t nail that one fill they’ve been working on every chance they’ve had for the last 20 years — if you see a drummer today, give ’em a hug. Just watch for signs of spontaneous combustion first.
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October 10 in Nerd History
Here are five things that happened on October 10th at the intersection of nerd and pop culture.
I.
Birthdays of honor: Mario Lopez (1973), David Lee Roth (1954), Chris Penn (1965), Tanya Tucker (1958), Thelonius Monk (1917), John Prine (1946), Ed Wood (1924).
II.
Today in 1986, Peggy Sue Got Married was released, starring Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
It tells the tale that every adult has surely run over in their head at some point — what if I could go back to high school and make a few different choices? For Peggy Sue Bodell (Turner), that wish becomes a reality as she wakes up in 1960 after fainting on stage at her 25th high school reunion.
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The movie made over $40 million domestically, making it a box office hit — which Coppola kind of needed at the time. It was also nominated for three Academy Awards and made Siskel and Ebert’s best of 1986 list.
And 20 years ago today, in 2003, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 came out. The hodgepodge of influences all jammed together somehow worked, and the movie grossed over $180 million against a $30 million budget.
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And perhaps most importantly, gave us the 5,6,7,8’s cover of “Woo Hoo.”
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III.
Today it feels like the music industry has kind of figured things out, and the transition to streaming is finally working.
But in 2007 it was a complete mess, and Radiohead decided to blow things up even more when they released their In Rainbows album as a download where buyers could pay what they wanted — including nothing at all.
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Releasing the album without a major label for the first time, the album went to no. 1 and made more money than the band’s previous album. Some were quick to declare that this was now the new path forward for music, and traditional pricing and album releases were completely dead.
That turned out not to be the case, but it was certainly an interesting experiment that influenced how some artists release and promote their music today — yet didn’t turn out to be the turning point some thought it would be.
IV.
In 1985 the world lost two movie legends when Yul Brynner and Orson Welles died on the same day.
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Welles was one of the most influential personalities in Hollywood’s history, beginning with radio and moving into cinema. He died of a heart attack in Hollywood, California.
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Brynner was a stage and screen actor probably best remembered for his role as the King Mongkut in The King and I. But readers of this newsletter will surely also remember him as an android gunslinger in Westworld and Futureworld. He died from lung cancer in New York.
V.
The world was introduced to Gwen Stefani when No Doubt’s breakthrough Tragic Kingdom was released today in 1995. Initially part of the third wave of ska, Stefani would ultimately become a bona fide pop star.
In other news
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Seinfeld Revival? Jerry Seinfeld Teases That ‘Something Is Going to Happen’
Are Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David taking a second stab at ending Seinfeld?
During a recent stand-up set, Seinfeld told his audience that he has a “little secret” regarding the NBC classic’s controversial series finale, and that “something is going to happen that has to do with that ending.
“It hasn’t happened yet,” he teased a Boston crowd on Saturday night. “And just what you are thinking about, Larry and I have also been thinking about, so you’ll see… you’ll see.”
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10 Seinfeld episodes that kids today wouldn’t understand
As amazing as the show is, and always will be, not every episode is exactly timeless. Call me a gatekeeper if you want, but these 10 Seinfeld episodes are way funnier — and all the more difficult for kids today to grasp — because of that fact.
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