Today is Bugs Bunny Day. On April 30, 1938, Bugs made his debut in a cartoon called “Porky’s Hare Hunt,” entertaining movie theater audiences awaiting the feature presentation.
Bugs finally shared his true identity in the credits of January 1941’s tour de force, “Elmer’s Pet Rabbit,” perhaps at the urging of his costar, Elmer Fudd.
You go, Bugs! We love you! Happy Bugs Bunny Day!
Today is Scrabble Day. It celebrates the birth in 1899 of Alfred Mosher Butts, inventor of the game the world knows as Scrabble.
Butts lost his job in the early 1930s; there wasn’t much call for an architect during the Great Depression. He worked to develop a board game that would emulate games of chance with its random choice of letters while testing the skill of its players with its elements of anagrams and crossword puzzles.
He called the game Lexiko and attempted to find a buyer, but was rejected by every company he visited. He later changed the name to Criss Cross Words and tried again but still had no luck. It seemed the game would remain a pastime for Butts, his wife—who he admitted was a better player than he—and their friends.
In 1948, he sold the rights to friend James Brunot in exchange for a small royalty on each set sold. Brunot made a couple of minor changes, tweaking the design and simplifying the rules. He renamed it Scrabble, trademarked it and set up a factory in an old schoolhouse.
He lost money until 1952 when, according to legend, a Macy’s executive played the game while on vacation and decided to sell it in the department store. Soon the orders grew too large for Brunot to fill and he sold the game to Selchow & Righter, a company that had passed on it years earlier.
Butts continued to receive royalties of about three cents per set for many years, telling a reporter, “One-third went to taxes. I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life.” He died on April 4, 1993, at the age of 93.
Happy Scrabble Day!
Today is International Louie Louie Day and celebrates the birthday in 1935 of Richard Berry, the composer and singer of one of the most-recorded songs of all time.
Berry took inspiration from the rhythm of “El Loco Cha Cha” when writing his tune. He and his band, Richard Berry and the Pharoahs recorded “Louie Louie” in April 1957 as a calypso doo-wop B-side to “You Are My Sunshine.”
The Kingsmen recorded the version most of us know in 1963. Singer Jack Ely’s unintelligible shouting—crappy microphones and Ely’s braces certainly didn’t help—led many to suspect the lyrics had been altered and must be “dirty.” Imaginations ran wild; teenagers invented ever more titillating interpretations.
It was rumored the record had “off-color lyrics which could be detected when the 45 r.p.m. platter was played at 33⅓ r.p.m.” Attorney General Robert Kennedy and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover received letters from anxious parents. One mother wrote that it didn’t matter what the words were if they were intended to sound obscene.
An investigation was launched in February 1964. Agents played the song for several months before finally giving up and filing the following report, available thanks to the Freedom of Information Act:
Investigations of the record were started by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Post Office and Justice Departments after complaints were received from about a half dozen persons, including Indiana governor Matthew E. Welsh.
All three governmental agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were even after listening to the records at speeds ranging from 16 rpm to 78 rpm.
Oddly enough, all those ears missed the only actual obscenity. It occurs at about 54 seconds in when Lynn Easton drops a drumstick and yells, “F**k!”
In 2015, VH1 chose its top 11 covers of “Louie Louie,” and gathered the videos, including ones by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Iggy Pop. John Belushi’s performance in National Lampoon’s Animal House cemented the song’s status as a frat party anthem.
Happy International Louie Louie Day!
Can’t talk…Spanx…too tight.
Today is International Talk Like William Shatner Day (ITLWSD). In 2009, Maurice LaMarche and Doug VanHorn bumped into each other on Facebook while each was attempting to have March 22nd–Shatner’s birthday—designated as ITLWSD. Though initially sworn enemies locked in a Lazarus-like battle over who’d thought of it first, the men eventually joined forces to promote the brash, percussive vocal stylings of Shatner.
If smooth jazz and slam poetry had a baby, then gave him up to be raised in a nunnery next door to the Playboy mansion, the conditions might be right to forge another Shatner-class individual. But in our opinion, it can’t be done. Shatner didn’t just break the mold: he smashed his way out and pulverized it with his pudgy newborn fists. Does any of this describe the man? Is the real Shatner somewhere in that bouquet of imagery? Who knows? That’s the mystery of Shatner. He runs too deep to plumb.
Maurice LaMarche is a voice actor known for his work on Futurama, The Simpsons, Pinky and the Brain, Team America: World Police and Frozen, among many others. If you play Six Degrees of Separation with him, you’ll be done after one. We’ve all heard his voice in something. (Take that, Kevin Bacon.) Mr. VanHorn’s personal Facebook page points out that Donald Trump looks alarmingly similar to an Oompa-Loompa. Look it up; the resemblance is astonishing.
In this inaugural video from 2009, LaMarche sets the stage with a lesson on the basics of talking like Shatner. A few days before the second annual ITLWSD, he and Kevin Pollak impersonate Shatner with lines from Sh*t My Dad Says, a short-lived sitcom.
Leonard Nimoy impersonated Shatner and his Star Trek 2 eulogy: “Of all the souls I have met in my travels, his was the most human.”
Here’s a fantastic standup Shatner bit by Pollak. Seth MacFarlane does Shatner on Bill Maher’s show. Watch John Belushi as Shatner in this classic Saturday Night Live sketch.
Of course, it is his day, too, so we’ll let the birthday boy have the last word.
Happy birthday, William Shatner! Happy International Talk Like William Shatner Day!