Jan. 13, 1970: Gabby Sosa, Tiny Tim and Cookie Monster Perfectly Align

"Can you tell me how to get... 

how to get to Sesame Street?"

On the morning of January 13, 1970, on television sets all across the United States, Sesame Street episode # 47 aired.  The children's show had just premiered two months before and it was already a huge hit for PBS and the Children's Television Network.  Almost 2 million households, in fact, turned in to watch the show every morning during its premiere season.  (An extremely low quality, very small image from that specific show accompanies this blog as reference.) 

During the January 13, 1970 show, the viewer is introduced to the letter "u".  (Every Sesame Street show has one letter that is the focus of the show.)  In one particularly hilarious skit, Ernie, one of the show's regulars, tells us that "u" is the first letter of the word "ukelele".  He is about to play the stringed instrument when he is interrupted by a fuzzy blue character with goo-goo-googly eyes.  (For a while after the show aired, this character was called "Monster" but his name eventually evolved into the one we recognize today: "Cookie Monster".)  Monster jumps into the scene and screams out the word "UKELELE!"  (Cookie Monster was clearly more brash and outlandish in 1970 than he is today!)  He then grabs the ukelele from Ernie and begins playing a song very popular at the time called "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".  I won't spoil the ending so you can watch it over on youtube here.  (My favorite part is when Cookie Monster pauses near the end and almost imperceptably says to Ernie: "BIG FINISH!" I wonder if the show was as geared for adults at the time as it was for children.  Or perhaps the actors playing the puppets just wanted to "ham it up" and have fun?)

The reason the show's song "Tiptoe" was so popular at the time was that in late 1969 and early 1970 a ukelele-playing musician named Herbert Khaury, aka Tiny Tim, was at the height of his popularity.  His most famous song, "Tiptoe Through the Tulips", was not only his biggest hit - it was his trademark.  (How cool of Sesame Street to pay homage to a folk singer so topical, relevant and popular at the time?!)  Tiny Tim had such a huge cult following in late 1969 that when his marriage to Victoria Budinger aka Miss Vicki was televised as a publicity stunt on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in December of that year, the television show drew 40 million viewers!  Let me repeat that: 40 million viewers!

On Tuesday night, January 13, 1970, reveling in his stardom and success, Tiny Tim showed up at Los Angeles' Troubador Theater to play a sold-out concert   (Photos from the performance are available for purchase here.  An extremely low quality, very small image from that night at the Troubador accompanies this blog as reference.)  Perhaps Mr. Tiny was out partying and performing on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood because he was celebrating his song being lovingly popularized on that morning's hit TV show?!

January 13, 1970 was a huge day for both Ernie and Cookie Monster as well as Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki.

But the story doesn't end here.  With GiftDay, there's always a wonderful gift-related payoff!

Here's why...

January 13, 1970 was also a huge day for my sister-in-law, Gabriella Berk.  Because exactly 40 years ago today, she was born.

GiftDay has a passion for date-relevant gifts so for Gabriella's birthday we're going to burn a DVD copy of her birthdate's Sesame Street performance, buy her a Sesame Street compilation DVD, 40 Years of Sunny Days (so she can watch it with her 6 month old newborn) and a copy of the recently released book called Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street.  (I think both the DVD and the book title are relevantly poetic, don't you think?)

* * *

Give gifts that are poetic and creative and fun and goofy and magical and full of meaning.  GiftDay LOVES to be able to tell you how to get there... 

Today was easy.

We just "told you how to get; how to get to Sesame Street..."

Lucien Wilde Crane: Party with Joan of Arc, Elvis or Nixon?

Greg Crane is a close family friend of my family. I have known him since we were drooling babies crawling around the same crib together. His mother and my parents grew up together so our history goes way WAY back.

We've been facebooking with each other for the past week because Greg's wife Amber has been expecting their second child. Greg has been seeing my facebook postings over the last week referencing GiftDay's current push to create a giant "Calendar of Biographies" for the GiftDay website.

So you're asking... What exactly is a "Calendar of Biographies"?  We're glad you asked...

For every day from January 1 through December 31, GiftDay.com is assigning 365 famous people and their birthdays to each one.  Paul Revere was born January 1 (1735).  Isaac Asimov was born January 2 (1920),  J. R. R. Tolkien was born January 3 (1892) and so on (until December 31 when Henri Matisse was born in 1869). The next step is on our website where GiftDay will recommend a biography of the notable and link to it at Amazon. Biographies, as strange as it sounds, actually make great gifts for newborns.  Hear us out...

The gift makes a good gift; however, if you write a clever and personalized message on the inside flap of the book, the biography makes a GREAT gift.  The message to the baby should tell him or her that the book can be appreciated by the baby when he or she is old enough to read and understand it.

We recommend hardcover books as biography books (rather than paperback) because the hardcover editions are more substantial; plus, they look great on bookshelves.  (Kindle edition books and e-books are good gifts but they are not substantial and they are not GREAT gifts.)  Books would tend not to be tossed out or donated to a library because (a) they have a certain sanctity (b) it would have been a gift (c) the book ties into baby's birthday and (d) the baby's parents have to respect that the gift giver has gone through time and expense and given a very memorable and meaningful GREAT gift!

Greg facebooked me yesterday morning when he thought Amber might be having a baby January 7.  I told him to let Amber know GiftDay felt that she could go ahead and PUSH HARD.  January 7, after all, would make a wonderful birthday because it would be shared with French hero Joan of Arc (born January 7, 1412) - and Joan's got  a great biography we've picked out at Amazon!

January 7 passed however without a little Crane drooling baby so Greg facebooked me again today to let me know that he thought the baby might be born on the 8th (today) or the 9th (tomorrow).

I consulted our "Calendar of Biographies"...

PUSH, I facebooked back in capital letters - January 8 is Elvis' birthday! (That's good!)  But January 9 is Nixon's birthday.  (That's not so good!)  Who wants to read about Nixon when they could be reading about Elvis?

I don't know if Greg took me seriously but all I know is that he facebooked me today to let me know that Lucien Wilde Crane was born January 8 at 2:18 PST.  (7 lb, 10 oz, healthy with all fingers and toes). Thanks god!

We at GiftDay will now be able to officially recommend to a good friend of Greg's a GREAT baby gift for Lucien Wilde Crane - an Elvis biography of course and available here: www.giftday.com/elvisbioforlucien

If you buy the book at Amazon (available for $29.95), make sure to get it first before you give it to the Cranes as a gift...  You'll want to write that note on the inside cover.  Something like...

Dear Lucien,

We look forward to watching you grow old enough so that you can one day enjoy this biography about Elvis.  He was an amazing and talented man with lots of charisma and charm.

Because you share the same birthday with him (exactly 75 years apart - to the day!) we're sure you'll share a lot of the same wonderful attributes (and hopefully none of the bad ones!)

Love,
[Your Name Here]

Congratulations Greg and Amber.  We love you guys!

Why December 31, 2009 is especially important to 200,000 people

http://www.giftday.com/artstore

December 31, 2009 is one of those days when GiftDay has to get up out of its anniversaries and birthdays armchair and call attention to the fact that our planet is aligned today in gorgeous harmony with the sun and moon - and therefore the perfect opportunity to give someone who has a relationship with this date a GiftDay gift!

Yes, GiftDay knows that tonight's night sky will eventually parade a beautiful Blue Moon... but we also know that a partial lunar eclipse is in store for many of us...  a very special, very rare event.

Partial and full lunar eclipses only occur a few times a year.  The last time that a partial lunar eclipse occurred on earth was August 16, 2008.  And the last time a lunar eclipse occurred specifically on New Year's Eve?  We have no idea... because we've only been tracking lunar eclipses for the past 110 years and there hasn't been one in over a century.

So now you're going to ask: What's a lunar eclipse and when does it occur?

During lunar eclipses, the Earth passes between the sun and the moon.  This blocks the sun's light from falling on the moon.  Lunar eclipses only take place during a full moon and only when the Moon passes through a portion of earth's shadow created by the sun.  If the entire moon falls in the earth's shadow, it's a full eclipse.  If only a part of the moon falls in the earth's shadow it's a partial eclipse.


If you live in the Americas, don't expect to witness tonight's eclipse - you won't see it; the lunar eclipse will only be visible in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

No matter though.  GiftDay still appreciates the significance of this date.

If you know anyone who had a baby today, December 31, 2009 - and there were more than 200,000 of them born today on earth, the best gift you could possibly get them (and their parents) would be something that honored this special date in time: a memory of the partial lunar eclipse.

Appropriate gifts?  Telescopes of course.  Or posters of lunar eclipses, or... or... the sky is the limit!  Think outside the box.  Forget the nappies or burp cloths or stroller toys.  Get something that will be appreciated and remembered for its meaning and thought.  Get something remembered forever, not just for the next few weeks or months.

The recipient will remember the meaning behind the gift, the person who gave the gift and the importance of the person who gave the gift.  It will be good gift alignment and harmony for everyone.

And isn't all of this what the best gifts are all about?

Why December 27 Matters to Melissa Steinman and Marlene Dietrich

Facebook: Steinman (left) and Dietrich (right)

Separated at Birth?

Melissa (Landau) Steinman and I were close friends in college. The last time Melissa and I spoke, though, was graduation day almost 20 years ago. It's a shame because Melissa was one of my "go to" friends during freshman year. We lived in the same dorm and had a few classes together. I remember her always with a smile on her face; she had a warm, sweet disposition.

After graduating from college, we lost track. I know Melissa now only through memories created two decades ago and through facebook. After we parted in college, she went on to Harvard Law, antitrust practice, marriage and motherhood. I also know that her birthday is tomorrow, December 27, 2009.

I imagine December 27 means a lot to her. I'd love to check in with Melissa tonight and let her know that I'm thinking about her. It's been a while but year-end holidays always seem to help rekindle connections. As I'm in the midst of writing GiftDay website content this evening, I'm thinking about what type of gift I could recommend to Melissa's friends. Melissa has a lot of them on her facebook page so I imagine one of them needs a good gift idea.

I navigate over to Melissa's profile on facebook and see that she loves movies. I know that she loves the classics because the movies she's listed as her favorites include "any Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movie", "Singin' in the Rain" and "Double Indemnity".

Tonight, I'm working on a calendar of biographies for GiftDay: 365 days of biographies that begin with Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes (Revere was born January 1) and ends with Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse by Hilary Spurling (Matisse was born December 31).

As Melissa loves classic movies I think the definitive biography of a classic movie actress would make an excellent gift. In looking to see what movie actress was born December 27, I score. It's Dietrich.

Marlene Dietrich, in case your living under a rock, was one of the most famous and most talented actresses in movie history. She's also one of the most beautiful. GiftDay.com, in fact, named her as the most beautiful woman (in any film role) in 1935 for "The Devil is a Woman". I think that for a gift, better than a straight biography, would be a book of photographs of Dietrich. Judging from Melissa's facebook updates, it looks like she's busy with family and career and a long book might be a challenge. A coffee table book, especially because it is Dietrich, is clearly the better gift choice. I've selected for a $30 glossy, gorgeous book for Melissa called Marlene Dietrich: Photographs and Memories.

If someone were to buy the Dietrich book for Melissa, I know it would make an impression that would last for her lifetime. And for an extra thoughtful touch, I'd recommend that the gift giver include a personal note inside the book - a note about December 27 and what it means.

It's important and it matters.

Arnold Berk, Lobotomies, a Nobel Prize and 1949

I only have one biological relationship uncle - my Uncle Arnie.  (All of my other uncles are through marriage.)  My father's brother lives amongst the rest of the Berk clan in Los Angeles.  Today, December 23, 2009 happens to be my "blood uncle" Arnie's birthday and he turns 60.

So what's with the biology and blood references above?  I'm glad you asked.

While the family knows Arnie as a sailor, opera buff and wine afficionado, the rest of the world knows him as the eminent Dr. Arnold Berk, one of the most well-regarded biologists in the country.  Arnie is a cancer researcher who literally wrote the book on Molecular Cell Biology.  The textbook is a biology campus "classic" - if you know anyone who has studied molecular biology, I can guarantee you they've read the book (or, at least, the exciting parts of it).

Arnie's resume makes all of us look small and stupid.  He is a Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA.  He's also one of the original discoverers of RNA splicing and mechanisms for gene control in viruses. His lab at UCLA studies "interactions of molecules that regulate transcription nitiation in mammalian cells" (whatever that means).  While I'm not a scientist and understand very little about what Arnie does, I can proudly tell you that if there's a short-list of Nobel candidates in physiology and medicine, Arnie's on it.  Really.  Ask any world-class molecular biologist to name the world's Top 10 smartest micro-biologists.

Being the founder of GiftDay, you'd probably think it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to find a book about physiology for Arnie's 60th birthday.  About that, you'd be right.

I'm curious who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine the year of Arnie's birth so I turn to Wikipedia where I learn that in 1949 Antonio Caetano du Abreu Freire Egas Moniz took home Portugal's first ever Nobel prize for discovering cerebral angiography.  Besides having an incredibly long name to help him, Moniz or Egas Moniz or Caetano, essentially won the prize for his work in "introducing the controversial psychosurgical procedure leucotomy, otherwise known as a lobotomy."

Arnie's birth year, ironically enough, 1949, was a banner year for lobotomies.  More lobotomies were performed in 1949 than in any other year.  It was in medical vogue and the Nobel Committee decided that it needed to keep up with the times.  (Certainly if the Nobel Committee were around in AD 180, they would have awarded the prize to Claude Gallen, a prominent Roman physician and researcher, specifically for his work in "blood-letting".)

Looking back now 60 years later we recognize that lobotomies have been "deplored by many as brutally arrogant".  Wikipedia tells us that "collateral derision has been directed specifically at Moniz as the operation's innovator."

Digging a bit deeper though it appears for all intents and purpose that Moniz was unfairly labelled by history as a blood-letting quack; that it was doctors like Walter Freeman who sought to aggressively promote lobotomies "which led to its being performed in large numbers of cases now considered inappropriate."

I find the whole subject fascinating and head over to Amazon where I find dozens of books about lobotomies.  There are dozens to choose from.  But the book that grabs me more than any of the others is a book by Howard Dully called, appropriately enough, My Lobotomy.


According to Amazon: "At age 12, Dully received a transorbital (or ice pick lobotomy) from Dr. Walter Freeman, who invented the procedure, making Dully an unfortunate statistic in medical history—the youngest of the more than 10,000 patients who Freeman lobotomized to cure their supposed mental illness. In this brutally honest memoir, Dully describes how he set out 40 years later to find out why he was lobotomized... He also investigates the strange career of Freeman—who wasn't a licensed psychiatrist—including early acclaim by the New York Times and cross-country trips hawking the operation from his Lobotomobile."

Arnie is a well-read and thoughtful guy who appreciates a meaningful book.  This GiftDay gift really is a "no-brainer".

Sorry for the sloppy joke Arnie.  Happy Birthday anyway...

Much love,
Your Blood Nephew,
Jeffrey

December 19, 1969: World meets Kristy Swanson and the Jackson 5

One of my first jobs in the movie business was working as a coordinator on the movie "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer".  The film starred Kristy Swanson as Buffy, student by day and vampire killer by night.  Almost 20 years later, Kristy and I have kept in touch and remain friends.

I noticed on my calendar that Kristy turns 40 tomorrow.  Cool.  As I run GiftDay, a company that specializes in meaningful and thoughtful gifts built around dates, I knew that I'd need to find something special for Kristy.

Apple formalized a marketing arrangement with GiftDay yesterday so I thought it would be appropriate to jump over to iTunes to find something meaningful for Kristy.  With more than 10 million songs available worldwide, it'd be impossible not to find an item date-relevant to Kristy.  And in Kristy's case, December 19, 1969 would be the date-relevant date - the day she was born!

I immediately got to work...

With the help of Wikipedia, I discovered within a few minutes of searching that the very first Jackson 5 album, "Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5", was released the same day Kristy was born.  Perfect!  I know Kristy likes Michael Jackson so this gift purchase is a no-brainer.

Later tonight, I'll buy and download the Jackson 5 album and burn it to CD, print some personalized cover art on it, write a provenance and then drop it off to Kristy on Saturday.  (Although by the time she gets the gift it will no longer be a surprise since I'll likely post a link to this blog on a social networking site... or two.)

Hi Kristy, Happy Birthday.  Sorry to go public on you but I gotta shamelessly promote GiftDay!  (We actually just had our own company birthday/anniversary last week.)  What are friends for, right?  Sorry to see you leave the hood.  How's the new digs?  Talk soon.  Enjoy your birthday weekend!

That was kind of lame I realize but when you're shamelessly promoting... you've gotta be shameless.

So back to The Jackson 5 album.  According to Wikipedia, the album was called "Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5".  Diana Ross?  Huh?  Wikipedia though goes on to heed my raised eyebrows by telling me that Ross was nothing more than a marketing gimmick.  She neither discovered the band nor actively sought to promote the band without some ulterior gain.  Motown apparently asked Ross to help them sell Jackson 5 records.  The marketing plan worked.  The album was a huge success...

According to Apple's review of the album: "For all intents and purposes, this dozen-song disc introduced the world to the sibling talents of Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and most significantly of all, a prepubescent powerhouse named Michael Jackson."

How perfect that Kristy and the Jackson 5 were introduced to the world on the same day!

The gift will sell itself.  Clearly.  While it didn't take me long to hunt down this gift, I know it will mean something to Kristy.  She's someone who've I known for a long time and who will appreciate being thought about and fussed over.  She deserves a meaningful, thoughtful gift.  Everyone, in fact, deserves to be treated like a movie star on their birthday.  Even movie stars.