Lots of great content on this morning’s feed: Remembering Rick Nelson, The New Woodstock, navigating New Year’s Eve, a poignant remembrance of Margot Kidder, celebs in commercials before they were famous, and a quote to inspire you in 2019. Let’s dig in!
Quote of the day: Siri kept calling me Shirley this morning…then I realised I had left my phone in Airplane mode.
On this date in 1985, Rick Nelson & six others died when his charted DC-3 aircraft crashed in Texas. A generation grew up with Rick and his brother David as co-stars on their parent’s television show, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”. When Rick showed interest in music, his bandleader father knew how to capitalize on it. Here’s a 1986 remembrance, courtesy of Popular Culture Classics. Nelson patriarch, Ozzie, died in 1975, mom Harriet in 1994, and older brother David passed away in 2011 at the age of 74. A 1998 documentary revealed a family quite different from what we saw on the small screen, but perhaps more like many real families were, then and now.
A reboot of the famous Woodstock Music and Art Fair returns to the site of the historic 1969 concert for a 50th anniversary event in August of 2019. The original was a money loser, until the 1970 film and double LP brought the event back to the center of the world’s attention. It amplified the carriers of Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Who, Joe Cocker, Jimi Hendrix, Sha-Na-Na, Santana, Richie Havens and others. The lineup for the 2019 iteration has yet to be announced.
Looking ahead to 2019:
Had enough of those sleep deficit inducing New Year’s Eve parties? We talked on Friday about Netflix’s cool way to scam kids into getting into bed early tonight. Here’s an idea from WSJ Columnist Jason Gay on how to pull something similar with those friends who want you to stay up late.
Will the New Year mean a new gig? If you’re over 50, you better have a Plan-B. Research shows that more than half of us in that age bracket are more likely to be pushed out of our job before we are ready to go. Here are some tips on reinventing yourself from our friends at the Harvard Business Review, just in case you need them..
Quick Takes:
The LA Times reports that Rabbit Ears are making a comeback in the era of cord cutting.
More & more retailers are saying, “Your cash ain’t nothing but trash.” Don’t forget that debit card!
Turner Classic Movies remembers those who left us in 2018. The piece was produced before we lost Penny Marshall.
The New York Times does a uniformly excellent job of writing celebrity remembrances. Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s piece on Margot Kidder is a tour de force.
The folks at TED teach us “How to disagree productively and find common ground“. A skill sorely needed in Washington right now.
Check out Robert DeNiro, DustinHoffman & JohnTravolta before they were famous, in these early 1960s TV commercials.
The 1960 version of Oceans Eleven was set on New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas. It remains my favorite version of the franchise. Here’s the original trailer.
The SciFi Channel (now calling themselves SyFi) is running another New Year’s Eve Twilight Zone marathon. Rod Serling‘s daughter, Anne, regularly tweets about her famous father. What’s your favorite episode?
Today’s Birthdays:
Andy Summers (The Police), 1942; John Denver, 1943 (died 1997); Pete Quaife (The Kinks), 1943 (died 2010); Burton Cummings (The Guess Who), 1947; Donna Summer, 1948 (died 2012); Tom Hamilton (Aerosmith), 1951
Here’s last in our series of inspirational quotes to fire you up for 2019:
“You may think that you are completely insignificant in this world. But someone drinks coffee from the favorite cup that you gave them. Someone heard a song on the radio that reminded them of you. Someone read the book that you recommended, and plunged head first into it. Someone smiled after a hard day’s work, because they remembered the joke that got told them today. Someone loves themself a little bit more, because you have them a compliment. Never think that you have no influence whatsoever. Your trace, which you leave behind with every good deed, cannot be erased.”
We put 2018 to bed remembering Natalie Cole, the talented daughter of Nat “King” Cole, who passed away on this date in 2015. Here’s her stunning live virtual duet with dad.
