Mar 17 : St. James Cagney Day

[O'Blivion]

Mar 17

Today is St. James Cagney Day.

St. James Cagney Day was first celebrated here on
this very raft in 2010.




As St. Philip Chevron explained
to the Irish Times:

TIMES: Please explain the significance of ending the tour on "St. James Cagney Day"
-- not St. Patrick's Day -- on March 17 in New York.

CHEVRON: It was something that started as flippant remark on the Pogues website.
I started calling it James Cagney Day. I was so bored with people celebrating this
wimpy bishop from Wales as the great patron and saint of Ireland. I thought, "It's
not very Irish or diasporan Irish." James Cagney is much more representative of
the nation and the nation's spirit.

TIMES: Cagney billed himself as a song-and-dance man, a line Bob Dylan lifted to
describe himself.

CHEVRON: And Cagney stole it from George M. Cohan, whom he played in "Yankee
Doodle Dandy." ... In my opinion, Cagney was the best dancer in Hollywood. He didn't
do the stuff that Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly did. It was more idiomatically American,
or Irish-American.

TIMES: Are the Pogues song-and-dance men?

CHEVRON: That's precisely what we are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLMbQyk64gQ




Today is also Saint Patrick's Day
(Lá Fhéile Pádraig), colloquially
St. Paddy's Day, an annual feast day
which celebrates Saint Patrick (circa
385–461 AD), one of the patron saints
of Ireland.

The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland,
and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, Montserrat, and the Canadian province
of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the rest of Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia,
the United States and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.


In modern-day Ireland, St. Patrick's Day has traditionally been a religious occasion.
In fact, up until the 1970s, Irish law mandated that pubs be closed on March 17.



As with many Christian holidays, St. Patrick's
Day has roots in ancient pagan rites.

Although it is thought that the "snakes" St. Patrick
chased out of Ireland represented paganism -
specifically Druids - in some senses the pagan
overtones were absorbed by the Christian holy day.


In Egyptian mythology, Osiris was killed on the 17th day of Athyr, the third
month of the ancient calendar.

Considering that the day has become America’s defacto
Bacchanal (which takes us back to Osiris) it’s worth noting
some of the parallels of this day with Solar mythology.


• Osiris was believed to be the source of barley, which was
used for brewing beer in Egypt.



• It’s customary to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day
and Osiris was known as the “Green Man”


• The root word of Patrick is pater, the Latin word
meaning father. Osiris is the father in the Egyptian
Trinity.



For the conspiracy theorists among us, there are indications that St. Patrick's
Day has Masonic origins. 3/17 is a Masonically-created holiday. The story has
it that the holiday was established by high level Freemason, George Washington,
allegedly to reward Irish soldiers in the Continental Army. But “St. Paddy’s” has
traditionally been a very minor Saint’s day in Ireland.



The first celebration in New York City was in 1756, at the Crown
and Thistle tavern. Philadelphia held its first St. Patrick’s Day
parade in 1771. General George Washington issued a proclamation
during the Revolutionary War, declaring March 17, 1780 a holiday
for the Continental Army, then stationed in Morristown, New Jersey,
in honor of the many soldiers of Irish ancestry and those born in Ireland.
It was the first holiday granted the troops in two years. Washington’s
remark that the proclamation was “as an act of solidarity with the Irish
in their fight for independence,” was possibly the origin of St. Patrick’s
Day in America as an expression of Irish nationalism as much as Irish
heritage or of honoring a Christian saint.

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2008/03/n ... ricks.html



Born This Day:

1908 - Brigitte Helm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMj6rzvz7kE


1919 - Nat "King" Cole


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEmnxiUz8w



1937 – Rudy Ray Moore

http://youtu.be/Voxp3ckwJZ0



1938 - Rudolf Nureyev

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag_r-_lPvJ8


1941 - Paul Kantner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrTS7b028A8



1942 - John Wayne Gacy


1944 - Patti Boyd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzkhOmKVW08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3ycKQV_4k


1944 – John Sebastian (front, with the Lovin' Spoonful)

http://youtu.be/94NiuOViR1g


1948 - William Gibson


1967 – Billy Corgan

http://youtu.be/LJ5rIsv7tFw


1970 – Gene Ween

http://youtu.be/KsV8UK0IcfY


1972 – Melissa Auf der Maur

http://youtu.be/K6sjO7L_Gcw


1973 – Caroline Corr

http://youtu.be/Vtp4adNTP0Y


1979 – Stormy Daniels

A group of fans attempted to recruit Daniels, a well-known American
pornographic actress, to run against Republican Senator David Vitter
(who had been involved in a prostitution scandal) in Louisiana in 2010.
The recruitment process was centered around the website DraftStormy.com.
On May 21, 2009, she formed an exploratory committee. Daniels was
unaffiliated with any party until April 2010 when she declared herself
as a Republican. She made several listening tours around Louisiana to
focus on the economy, as well as women in business and child protection
and stated that if elected, she would likely retire from the adult industry.
On July 28, 2009, it was reported that her campaign manager had been
targeted by a car bomb attack. She announced on April 15, 2010 that she
would not be running for Senate, saying she could not afford a run for the
Senate seat and stating that the media never took her candidacy seriously.



Died This Day:

460 – Saint Patrick


1990 – Capucine



1990 – Ric Grech(left, with Blind Faith)

http://youtu.be/mUW1SGF7bR8




1993 – Helen Hayes

http://youtu.be/hP_8LEwfxEk




1994 – Mai Zetterling

http://youtu.be/av8A9SAQ5MI




1995 – Ronnie Kray



1995 - Sunnyland Slim

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obd9YCEb-ac


2010 - Alex Chilton

http://youtu.be/wCyqODUveRI


2011 – Ferlin Husky

http://youtu.be/cH-kykDYQw0

[Phoist]

Ah it's also Evacuation Day in Boston. In 1776(?) the British packed up and left after being besieged by the colonials using guns they dragged from Fort Ticonderoga. Though to be dead honest its probably celebrated because its a convenient way to give city workers St Patrick's Day off.

[philipchevron]

What a delightful and unexpected pleasure to see Saint Jimmy dancing on the YouTube on this great day for the Irish.

The entire scene, which occupies about ten minutes of Yankee Doodle Dandy and includes "Yankee Doodle Boy", "Goodbye Johnny" and "Give My Regards To Broadway", is believed to be a faithful reproduction by director Michael Curtiz of how George M Cohan himself staged it (and starred in it) in 1904's Little Johnny Jones and is considered to be a testament to how Cohan absorbed and expanded the showy stagecraft of the Dublin melodramatist Dion Boucicault.

Strange but true fact: the Broadway revival of Little Johnny Jones [1980?], which closed after just one performance, starred Donny Osmond in the Cohan/Cagney role.

[O'Blivion]

Did you ever sit and ponder,
Sit and wonder, sit and think,
Why we're here and what this life is all about?
It's a problem that has driven
Many brainy men to drink,
It's the weirdest thing they've tried to figure out.
About a thousand diff'rent theories
All the scientists can show,
But never yet have proved a reason why
With all we've thought
And all we're taught,
Why all we seem to know
Is we're born and live a while and then we die.


Life's a very funny proposition after all,
Imagination, jealousy, hypocrisy and all.
Three meals a day, a whole lot to say;
When you haven't got the coin you're always in the way.
Ev'rybody's fighting as we wend our way along,
Ev'ry fellow claims the other fellow's in the wrong;
Hurried and worried until we're buried and there's no curtain call.
Life's a very funny proposition after all.


When all things are coming easy, and when luck is with a man,
Why then life ti him is sunshine ev'rywhere;
Then the fates blow rather breezy and they quite upset a plan,
Then he'll cry that life's a burden hard to bear.
Though today may be a day of smiles, tomorrow's still in doubt,
And what brings me joy, may bring you care and woe;
We're born to die, but don't know why, or what it's all about,
And the more we try to learn the less we know.


Life's a very funny proposition, you can bet,
And no one's ever solved the problem properly as yet.
Young for a day, then old and gray;
Like the rose that buds and blooms and fades and falls away,
Losing health to gain our wealth as through this dream we tour.
Ev'rything's a guess and nothing's absolutely sure;
Battles exciting and fates we're fighting until the curtain falls.
Life's a very funny proposition after all.

[O'Blivion]

[cagliostro]

I believe this also marks my one year anniversary on the raft.

[DzM]

I believe this also marks my one year anniversary on the raft.

And you haven't been "volunteered" for food stock yet. Yay!

[cagliostro]

I believe this also marks my one year anniversary on the raft.

And you haven't been "volunteered" for food stock yet. Yay!

It's because I have a gammy leg.

[lesh]

And hmmm...yesterday the winning numbers in one of the New York daily lotteries were...317.

[cagliostro]

Two years, and still not eaten. Although I've lost the leg.

[Low D]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_x1Pu6dq8s

Cagney & O'Brien 1981, in their 80s, a lovely clip.