Today is If At First You Don’t Succeed Day…

…honoring Frank Sinatra, whose CBS-TV musical variety show debuted on this date in 1950. The first year, Frank couldn’t compete with Sid Caesar’s "Your Show of Shows."

The second season he couldn’t compete with Milton Berle’s "Texaco Star Theater." In 1957 Frank tried TV again with a variety-drama show, but it lasted less than a year.  Eventually things worked out though.

Steve Pearce, running for his old seat in Congress, stopped by today.  His number one agenda – jobs. 

To listen to the conversation,  click here

Music History 101: on October 7^th, 1967 - Due to a dispute over a hotel bill this rather rotund singer spent the night in a London jail. (Mama Cass Elliot)

The writer and singer of the 101 number one song of the day thought the premise was – to use his words – super-egotistical and pretentious. But when he mentioned the idea, his producer said “it sounds like a number one song” even before it was written. He was a former choir boy from Lubbock, Texas who had written hit songs for Bobby Goldsboro, Elvis, and Kenny Rogers before he got around to writing one for himself. Once he got rolling he landed his own TV show and wound up in featured roles in a number of movies. Here now is the song that was number one in America on October 7, 1972 for Mac Davis (Baby Don’t Get Hooked on Me)

Other stuff:

Charlie, the famous smoking chimp at a South African zoo has died at the age of 52. The zoo said his heavy smoking habit had nothing to do with his death – he actually lived ten years longer than expected. He began smoking when visitors threw cigarette butts into his enclosure. Once he got hooked he started begging smokes from visitors…putting his two fingers to his mouth.

-What surprises me…they have a zoo in South Africa. Aren’t there hippos and gazelles in the front yard already?

There’s a special Barbie doll up for sale at Christie’s Auction House in New York this week. It’s called ‘Diamond Barbie’ – and wears a diamond necklace made with real diamonds – including a one caret pink diamond. They expect it to be the most expensive Barbie ever – hoping to raise $500,000 with the proceeds going to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

-Yeah – and if little brother rips the head off this Barbie…he’s in serious trouble.

England is experimenting with converting human waste into power. They’ve opened a plant that stores human waste for eighteen days – after which it creates enough methane gas to be cleaned and shipped to homes for gas heat. And some of the gas will be used to run a power plant for electricity. They say 200 houses can create enough waste to power themselves for a year.  here’s a picture of the “poop plant.”

-Although it’s kind of embarrassing when you run out of the house because you smell a gas leak…and the gas company tells you it was your husband.

German scientists have created the ‘Intelli-Chair’ – a chair that monitors how you’re sitting in it. The chair makes a noise if you’re sitting in the wrong position or if you’ve been sitting in one position too long. They say they’ll market it first as an office chair to remind workers they’ve been sitting at their desks too long…and they need to get up and move around.  hee’s the massage version-

Hey, when we get to a certain age, we make a noise getting out of the chair.