A Little Assistance in Keeping Up to Date in Coming Year

It bothers me a little that I recently forgot about National Book Week. Not that I would have done anything much different on those days. I just hate not being on top of things.

If you’re the same way, I thought I’d pass on a reminder of some important dates coming up in 1997, most of them compliments of Chase’s 40th anniversary Calendar of Events. I’ll stop at the first half of the year.

Winter Months: I don’t need to look at Chase’s to remind you that Jan. 8 is the first important date of 1997. That was Elvis Presley’s birthday. (He would have been just 62.) I’m a Midwest baby boomer; growing up, we knew the E’s birthday as well as we did our own.

Jan. 19 begins National Healthy Diet week. There’s reason behind this fewer-calorie madness. The first two weeks of January a lot of people are already eating healthily, because that was their New Year’s resolution to themselves. It’s in mid-January that they start to slip, and need this special reminder.

National Hugging Day is Jan. 21, but Chase’s cautions that, in this politically correct era, it’s best to make sure your target is someone who wants to be hugged.

Feb. 10 is National Clean Out Your Computer Day. The Institute for Business Technology says this has to be an annual event, so we can “scrape the plaque from our information arteries.”

Here’s one that might make you feel good about Utah. On Feb. 12, 1870, it gave women the right to vote--50 years before the 19th Amendment was ratified.

March 5 is Stop Bad Service Day. Consumers are supposed to sit down that day and write to the companies they believe are providing quality service. (Presumably, you could write to the bad ones too.)

National Badminton Day is March 26, worthy of mention because its national championship, which begins then, will be hosted by our own Orange County Badminton Club in Orange.

Spring and Summer: Doris Von Kappelhoff turns 73 on April 3. This is important to note because Von Kappelhoff’s singing “Over the Rainbow” has to rank among the five greatest recordings ever made. OK, she’s better known by her career name, Doris Day. If you’ve gone through life thinking that was Judy Garland’s song, then you’ve missed one of the greatest recordings in American music.

On April 12, David Letterman hits the big 5-0.

And I want to mention National Secretaries Week, April 20-26, because, for my money, secretaries are the most underrated professionals in the workplace.

The 70th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo trans-Atlantic flight is May 20. Amelia Earhart repeated it five years later on the same date.

On June 17 a lot of us are going to wonder how it could possibly be 25 years since the Watergate break-in.

If you’re in Fairbanks, Alaska, on June 20, you can watch the annual midnight baseball game (sans lights) during the summer solstice.

Computer Moon: Recently I wrote about a visit to the new Saddleback Observatory, where astronomy students can track solar activity that sends fire shooting hundreds of miles high off the surface of the sun. You can also catch some spectacular close-ups of the moon. I recently visited again--via computer. You can also find up-to-date solar and lunar images on the web; it’s just great stuff. Here’s the astronomy department’s new web site: www.saddleback.cc.ca.us/div/mse/astro/.

I showed some colleagues of mine, who were very impressed. You can use it to show your youngsters why we sometimes think there’s a man in the moon.

John’s Jack: Former Rams defensive end Jack Youngblood still has many devoted Orange County fans. They’ll be delighted to see he’s just been included in John Madden’s all-time All-Madden team. The popular TV football analyst and former coach tells this story about Youngblood, from his Anaheim days, in the new book “All Madden.”

“Jack best personified the All-Madden team spirit when he suffered a broken leg in a 1979 playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys.”

Doctors told Youngblood his season was over.

Youngblood’s response: “Tape it up. Tape two aspirin to it and let’s go.”

Youngblood was back in the game despite what he described as “pain like a knife stuck in your leg; but it was absolutely worth it. You cannot miss an opportunity to play in the Super Bowl.”

The Rams went on to beat the Cowboys, 21-19, and made it to their one and only Super Bowl, where they lost to Pittsburgh, 31-19.

Wrap-Up: And what are the other four greatest recordings besides Doris Day’s “Over the Rainbow”? I figure if you put a dozen people together to list their top five, you’d probably come up with 60 different ones. But here are my other four:

Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful,” Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” Della Reese’s “Embraceable You” and the late Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

In the spirit of fair play, I asked one of my colleagues, music critic Randy Lewis, who is also one of our Calendar editors, for his top five. Here’s four of them:

“Let’s Dance,” by Benny Goodman; “Such a Night” by Elvis Presley; “Like a Rolling Stone,” by Bob Dylan; and the Beatles’ version of the old Chuck Berry tune, “Rock and Roll Music.” His fifth choice--I rejoiced when I saw it on his list--old Hank’s “I’m So Lonesome” song.

Randy and I agreed later: Classics like that you just don’t come across too often.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823, by fax at (714) 966-7711 or by e-mail at jerry.hicks@latimes.com.