It was September 4, 1781 that the city of Los Angeles was founded by 44 Spanish settlers. By September 15th of that year, half of the women in the Spanish settlement had gotten boob jobs and all but one of them had slept with Antonio Banderas’ great great great grandfather, who was the lead in most of the settlement’s plays, but had talked about wanting to direct. By October 1st, five of the original 44 had second homes in Palm Springs to help them unwind and get away from the madness. By Halloween half of the Spanish settlers had moved back to their small towns because Los Angeles was “just too fake.”
It was 55 years ago today that the Ford Motor Company released the Edsel. There have been much bigger flops (many from the city above), but the Edsel has pretty much held them all off and remains the standard bearer for bad ideas. As these things go, the cars are now collector’s items and some mint condition models are worth over $100,000.
What isn’t a flop at all is Google, which was founded 14 years ago today. You’ve already used google 10 times today. Google brings you almost all the information in this post. (Except the part about the older Banderas, I got that from a guy I know who’s brother’s buddy is one of the door guys at Chateau Marmont.) Google was a pretty good idea by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who met at Stanford and are now both worth around 17 billion.
“Beth” was released by KISS on this day in 1976. Written years earlier by drummer Peter Criss, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley were against putting the song on the album “Destroyer”, but the group’s manager insisted. The very un-KISS like song was of course their top climbing single ever, making it all the way to #7 on the Billboard charts.
The Oakland A’s won their 20th consecutive game on this day in 2002. As seen in the movie, “Moneyball“, the A’s blew a 10 run lead before Scott Hatteberg won the game with a walkoff homer in the bottom of the 9th. No word on any “Moneyball 2: Moneyballer” yet, but the current club looks like it’s on it’s way to the playoffs with an even more nondescript roster than the 2002 team. I’m thinking John Cusack for Bob Melvin and Chris Hemsworth for Josh Reddick.
Beyonce turns 31 years old today and her hubby was part of the coolest thing that happened this weekend.
– Bill Hubbell