Damn... Damn... Damn!!!

Happy Birthday, Esther Rolle!

Esther Rolle (b. Nov 8, 1920 - d. Nov. 17, 1998), was an American actress best known for her role as Florida Evans on the 1970s sitcom, Good Times.  A spin-off of Maude (itself a spin-off of All in the Family), Good Times is viewed as a ground breaking work in television as it featured an almost exclusively black cast and told the surprisingly upbeat story of an African-American family living in the ghetto (a Chicago apartment project, inspired by the famous/infamous Cabrini Green.)  Although the show became a vehicle for the mugging of it's breakout star Jimmie "J.J." Walker, in the decades since, the program has become primarily remembered for three things: the gospel choir tinged theme song, launching the career of Janet Jackson, and the off-screen death of a major character which lead to one of the most iconic and histrionic moments ever seen on sitcom television, which came courtesy of Ms. Rolle.

See the inspiration for the title of today's post, Aid and Abet a Punster, and read more about today after the jump:

This Vichyssoise of Verbiage Veers Most Verbose

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Also known as Gunpowder Day, November 5th is celebrated in England for the failed attempt by religious terrorists to take out the entirety of British Government that happened on this day in 1605.

The Gunpowder Plot, was a conspiracy that rumbled just beneath the surface of the conservative Protestant culture that came to the forefront of British politics and society with the crowning of King James I in 1603.  Having rented the storage room beneath the House of Lords, a group of Catholics, led by nobleman Robert Catesby, filled the cellar with explosives with the intent to detonate them during an address to be made by James before a joint session of Parliament.

Responding to an anonymous tip, authorities searched the Parliament building in the early hours of the day the address was to take place and discovered Guy (aka Guido) Fawkes, a former mercenary who fought for Spain in the Eighty Years' War, babysitting 36 barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes was arrested, tortured, and was to be executed by the state - a sentence he avoided by jumping off the gallows he was to be hung from, breaking his neck in the fall, killing himself.

Read more about Guy Fawkes in Jacobean and Modern popular culture, go Back... to the Future!, bear witness to a strange connection between disparate pop stars, and learn more about today after the jump:

He Gave His Life for Tourism

Happy King Tut Day!

On November 4th, 1922, while exploring Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter and his team of grave robbers discovered a step that would, weeks later, lead them into the burial chambers of King Tutankhamun, an Egyptian Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. A boy king who spent very little time on the throne, Tut's true cultural significance is that his tomb went essentially untouched for over 3 millennia allowing the modern world the most complete view of Egyptian burial practices, as well as the most complete set of Egyptian burial tchotchkes which have since toured the World numerous times over.

Watch Steve Martin walk like an Eqyptian (and as a bonus, a surreal, fascinating, yet relatively lame Heckle & Jeckle cartoon), celebrate Teela's birthday, and read more about today after the jump: