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The Dark Side of Disney
Disney isn’t always the Happiest Place on Earth. The parks sometimes harbor deep, dark secrets – and we’re not talking the Haunted Mansion or the Tower of Terror. Below are a few sinister secrets Mickey doesn’t want you to know about.
Deaths
We’ve all heard the rumors that no one has ever died at a Disney park because Disney has paid officials to refrain from declaring injured or ill people dead until they hit a hospital outside of Disney property. But it’s not true. There are several incidents where the victims were reported to have died at the scene.
In June of both 1973 and 1983, 18-year-old boys drowned in the Rivers of America. Both had stayed in the area when they weren’t supposed to - the incident in ‘73 occurred when a boy and his brother decided to stay in the park after closing and the ‘83 incident happened when a boy capsized a rubber emergency raft he had stolen from a cast-only section of the park.
In 1984, Dollie Young was riding the Matterhorn Bobsleds at Disneyland when her seatbelt became unbuckled. To this day, it’s not known how Dollie fell out of her car, but she did. She fell to the track and was hit by another car, then caught under its wheels and dragged for a bit before the ride came to a stop. She was pronounced dead at the scene due to massive head and chest injuries.
And, of course, there was the infamous “America Sings” death of 1974. An employee named Debbi Stone was working as the hostess to the show one evening when her fellow cast members were alerted to the fact that she was missing. Some reports say they noticed at some point during the evening; other reports say a guest heard Debbi’s screams and immediately told cast members. Either way, by the time she was found, Debbi had been crushed to death between a rotating theater wall and a permanent theater wall; she definitely didn’t make it to a hospital first. Photo from Yesterland.
Ashes
In 2007, a guest alerted cast members at the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction that she had seen another woman sprinkling some sort of a powdery substance into the water, and the Los Angeles Times reports that the ride was shut down the same year when a group of people managed to leave a pile of ashes in the Captain’s Quarters section of the ride.
Hidden Messages
I’ve done it, and I bet a lot of you have done it as well: pausing and rewinding and going frame-by-frame to catch hidden messages or images in certain Disney films. Some of them are really there and some of them are just products of our active imaginations. Here’s the lowdown:
Aladdin does not tell children to take off their clothes in Aladdin. It’s a scene where “Prince Ali” is trying to get up to Princess Jasmine’s room to talk to her when he comes across her tiger, Rajah. The tiger growls at him menacingly, and Aladdin says, “C’mon… good kitty. Take off and go!” while shooing the feline away with his turban. The captioning supports this argument. However, the line is whispered and not enunciated well, and in addition, it seems to be edited poorly. Snopes http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/aladdin.asp says that the same bit of dialogue seems to have been inserted twice, so the whispered line is doubly garbled. Because it was so close on the heels of The Little Mermaid controversy, people heard what they wanted to.
Speaking of which, The Little Mermaid did not contain any sexual images on purpose. There were two issues that concerned the public: first, that artwork for the movie contained a phallic images as part of a castle in the background, and second, that the priest officiating over the wedding scene near the end of the movie seems to get an erection right in the middle of the ceremony. Neither is true, according to Snopes. The phallic image was unintentional and was not drawn in by a disgruntled employee who had recently gotten laid off (the artist didn’t even work for Disney) and the “erection” is actually the priest’s knees.
So what is true? Well, there’s definitely an image of a topless woman in the 1977 movie The Rescuers. And Disney fully admits it. In fact, the image – which is a photograph, not an animated bit, and was clearly intentionally placed in the movie – was basically pointed out to the public by Disney themselves. The image occurs so fast in two single, non-consecutive frames, that a viewer would have to know exactly where to pause the movie in order to even see it. The movie was recalled in 1999 after Disney discovered the image was there; they claimed it must have been inserted in post-production. Photo from Snopes.
One that’s maybe true: Jessica Rabbit going commando in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There’s a scene in the movie where Jessica and Eddie Valiant are thrown from a car, causing her dress to flip up very briefly. It goes fast, but people who have slowed the movie to frame-by-frame say that the way the coloring was done suggests that mischievous animators may have drawn Jessica without any undergarments. However, the coloring, which is darker than the rest of Jessica’s skin, may also suggest underwear.
There are definitely more dark Disney tales – in fact, we could probably turn this into a series! What weird and/or disturbing rumors have you heard about the House of Mouse? Share in the comments, and maybe we’ll investigate for future posts.
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Five Fascinating Flapper Facts
Americans, including myself, seem to be obsessed with flappers -as evidenced with the plethora of flapper costumes seen every Halloween. They were amazingly revolutionary for the time of course and we even learn about them in school. But we don’t learn much about these women in school, here are five fascinating facts about the flappers of the 1920s.
Flappers Completely Changed Social Standards For Women
While many feminists deplore flappers for throwing away all the progress made by the suffragettes, they made quite a bit of progress for women in other aspects. While most people know they were the first women to actually show off their legs, cut off their hair and even wear shorts, they did much more than that. In the Victorian era, it was unheard of for a woman to go to a bar, to drink or to smoke. Bars were places for men to escape their wives.
That all changed in the twenties – and not only because of prohibition. These young women also dated around, something that was unheard of in the past. Lastly, they were some of the first women to drive cars. (Source)
Where Flappers Got Their Name
The name was widely popularized after the release of the 1920’s movie The Flapper, but there are a whole lot of differing stories about where the word came from. My favorite story is also one of the more popular tales of the time, it claims the term came from groups of girls walking around in unbuckled galoshes that flapped around as they walked. For a humorous read on Flapper footwear, you may want to read the 1922 article by The New York Times, “Flappers Flaunt Fads in Footwear.” (Source)
Like F. Scott Fitzgerald? You May Actually Like His Wife’s Writing
While F. Scott Fitzgerald was a great writer, he was not entirely original. In fact, large portions of his books were actually stolen directly from his wife’s diary. In fact, the conclusion of This Side of Paradise has a soliloquy by the protagonist Amory Blaine that is taken word for word from Zelda Fitzgerald’s journal. After their marriage, many things that Zelda said or wrote continued to find their way into Scott’s books, particularly in the Great Gatsby. In a review of The Beautiful and The Damned, she wrote:
“It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.”
Coco Chanel Single-Handedly Made Tans Fashionable
Before Coco Chanel stayed out too long one day while on vacation, fair, paper-white skin was the ideal shade for women. But she was so popular and stylish that after she accidentally received a tan on a 1923 cruise to Cannes, everyone else wanted one too. (Source)
They Weren’t Just American
French flappers outside a cafe Via Vintage Lulu [Flickr]
While commonly considered an American phenomenon, due in part to the rebellion against prohibition, flappers were more of a response to the increased independence gained by women during the first World War. As a result, many countries had flappers, including Japan, Germany, England and France. Obviously these women had far different social norms to rebel against, but the effect was much the same -short skirts, increased independence and a modernized view on sexuality. (Source)
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Movie Trivia: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Did you guys hear that Indiana Jones 5 is apparently in the works? Are you all as horrified as I am? If you’re like me and hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with a passion, then you prefer to dwell on the classics - Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Last Crusade, and yes, even Temple of Doom. Here’s some trivia to remind you of the good times.
The movie was filmed during the summer of 1980.
You’ve probably heard the rumors, and yes, they’re true – Indiana Jones was named after George Lucas’ dog, Indiana. He was the prototype for Chewbacca as well, so his old malamute had a pretty big impact on Lucas’ two biggest series.
“Indiana Smith?” Yep, almost, until Steven Spielberg told Lucas it just didn’t sound right. The equally-generic “Jones” was suggested and flowed much better.
According to George Lucas, almost every studio in town turned down the movie, feeling that it would cost too much money to make.
Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck both tested for Indiana Jones; Karen Allen actually screentested with Tim Matheson. Tom Selleck did very well and was the frontrunner, but had to bow out due to Magnum P.I. Harrison Ford was brought up early in the casting discussion, but George Lucas wanted to avoid casting him since he had already become so closely associated with Star Wars.
The role of Sallah was offered to Danny DeVito - he was Spielberg’s first choice - but was unable to do it because of Taxi. The job went to John Rhys-Davies instead. Picture from BlogCDN.
Indy’s leather jacket looks old and beat up, but in reality, it was brand new - and there were 10 of them. The costume director “aged” each jacket with a metal brush and Harrison Ford’s own pocket knife.
The famous hat is from Savile Row in London, a place called Herbert Johnson. The hat had a very wide brim and the crown was quite high, apparently the fashion Down Under since it was their Australian model. After a couple of fittings, it was declared the Indiana Jones fedora. When the customized hat arrived at the studio, the costume designer rolled it up and crushed it, then various members of the cast (including Harrison) took turns sitting on it to make it look like a very worn-in, well-loved hat.
Someone was actually sent out to find a mountain that specifically looked like the Paramount Studios logo mountain so they could create the opening shot of the movie. I suppose these days Lucas would have just made a CGI mountain…
There was a complication during the scene where Alfred Molina is covered in spiders – they didn’t want to move. They just sat stagnant on him, making the excitement of the scene rather… well, not exciting. They discovered that all of the spiders were male, so a female spider was put on Molina’s chest. It did the trick – the male spiders were immediately more active and started to crawl in the direction of the female.
The golden idol was based on an Incan fertility statue. Photo from FanPop.
The movie was filmed in Tunisia because it was a lot cheaper to shoot there than Egypt, and since the script never called for shots of the Sphinx or the pyramids, so they were able to get away with it. In fact, one of the scenes was shot in the exact same canyon where R2-D2 was stolen by Jawas in Star Wars.
The part where Indy watches a swordsman go through a very elaborate routine with his scimitar only to shoot him at the end of it happened because Harrison Ford really had to go to the bathroom. Indy was supposed to have a huge fight scene using his whip, but a bout of dysentery had left him weak and desperately needing the john. Because of this, someone - reports vary on whose idea it was - suggested that Indy just dispatch the dude like anyone who had a gun in his arsenal would.
Harrison wasn’t the only one who got sick – a majority of the cast and crew found themselves incapacitated at some point during filming in Tunisia. Steven Spielberg didn’t get sick because he ate only canned food from the U.K. Everyone else who ate food in the restaurants or at the hotel got horribly sick at least once during filming.
During the scene where Indy fights while the plane is rolling around, Harrison Ford actually sustained an injury when the wheels of the plane got too close and rolled right up onto his leg. It tore his ACL, but rather than submit to Tunisian hospitals, Ford wrapped it in ice and continued to shoot. He also bruised his ribs during the scene where he is dragged behind the truck.
Unlike his character counterpart, Harrison Ford isn’t afraid of snakes and had no problem working with them during the Well of Souls scene. Precautions were taken anyway - if you look closely, a reflection gives away the fact that a sheet of glass was placed between Ford and the cobra. It was a good thing, too – at one point the cobra actually sprayed venom onto the glass.
Some of the sound effects weren’t fancy at all: the sound of snakes slithering was really just the sound designer squishing his fingers through a cheese casserole, the sound of people getting punched was really a pile of leather coats being hit with a baseball bat, and the lid sliding off of the Ark was a toilet lid being slid off the back of a toilet. The sound designer was having trouble coming up with just the right sound for the rolling boulder at the beginning of the movie and ended up using the sound of a Honda Civic coasting down a gravel hill.
Marion was the writer’s grandmother-in-law’s name, and he had been mulling over a surname for a while when he came across a streetname called “Ravenwood” and loved the way the two names fit together. Photo from TheShadyCat.
The boat was actually the submarine model from Das Boot.
Although most shots were done in four takes or less because Lucas and Spielberg wanted a “quick and dirty” feel to the movie – nothing too perfect – there was one shot that took more than 50 takes. It was the scene where the monkey salutes with a “Heil Hitler” gesture. A grape was attached to fishing line and held just out of reach of the camera shot to achieve the salute, but it took a while to get it just right. It ended up being one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite moments in the movie.
Those of us who like little movie secrets know that George Lucas likes to include a reference to “1138” in all of his movies in homage to his first movie, THX 1138. You’ll find it in Raiders during the Nazi harbor scene if you listen to the numbers being read over the loudspeaker. It’s subtle, though, because the numbers are read in German – “Ein, ein, drei, acht.”
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5 Strangest Products Pitched by Billy Mays
Everybody knows that Billy Mays is TV pitchman for OxiClean ("powered by the air we breathe!) and Kaboom ("tough on grime, easy on you") ... but wait, there's more! Did you know that the loud, bearded uber-salesman also pitched strange products like the Grater Plater and the Hercules Hook? (There's also the Green Now, a spray paint to paint your dead lawn green, but I couldn't find the video for it.)
In memory of Billy Mays, the king of infomercial, here are 5 of the strangest product he ever pitched:
The Grater Plater
What do you get when you combine a cheese grater and a plate? The plate that grates, of course, here's The Grater Plater. (The name alone is golden: Grater. Plater. Grater plater. Gotta love it!)
The Gopher
While my wife likes OxiClean, The Gopher is actually my favorite item Billy Mays had ever pitched (in the words of another late-night infomercial, "I'm not only a blogger, I'm also an infomercial customer!"). It just works well - many years later, I still use mine to grab things too high to reach (saves me from getting the step stool out).
Tool Band-It
The Tool Band-It is another in Billy May's long line of making a product out of two existing ones. This time, it's magnet + armband, to give you a magnetic arm band. Genius!
The AwesomeAuger
I distrust a $20 drill, but the idea behind the AwesomeAuger is pretty solid (I have a similar device - the drill bit alone cost me $20. It works well for boring holes in hard ground for small plants). The only thing that works better is The Garden Weasel's Garden Claw.
Hercules Hook
The Hercules Hook is in a class by itself: here, Billy Mays used his infomercial prowess to sell you a bent pin for hanging stuff on your wall. I myself am a nail-and-hammer kind of guy, but the Hercules Hook does work well (if you don't damage the drywall while you're pushing it in) though I wouldn't use it to hang shelves or anything like that ...
Billy Mays, RIP.
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Five Shocking Celebrity Deaths
Love or hate Michael Jackson, the entire world was stunned by his death yesterday. Although there have been plenty of celebrity deaths, there aren’t that many that have sent shockwaves of this magnitude across the globe. The deaths of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix were all tragic, but with their heavy drug use and hard-living lifestyles, they maybe weren’t so shocking. And we’ve lost a lot of wonderful people to cancer, but since we have generally been aware that those people had potentially terminal illnesses, they weren’t so surprising either. The five deaths below were totally unexpected (to most, anyway) and surprised the world much like Michael Jackson’s death has.
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly’s death in 1982 was a big surprise. The Princess of Monaco, who was only 52 and seemingly in perfect health, suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Princess Stephanie. The timing couldn’t have been worse - it was just as she was driving on the edge of a mountainside, and the stroke left her incapacitated and unable to control the car. It careened off the edge of the mountain and rolled down, flipping over multiple times. Stephanie suffered a cervical fracture and some bruising, but Princess Grace didn’t recover from her injuries. The world was stunned because the reports from Monaco originally said that she had broken her collarbone, a leg and some ribs, but was in stable condition.
Photo from CoverBrowser.com.
Elvis
We know now that Elvis was on more drugs than Anna Nicole Smith, but at the time, it wasn’t widely known that he had a veritable pharmacy in his system. In fact, he had gone to Richard Nixon to complain about the prevalence of drugs in the entertainment industry. Despite a series of kind of crappy concerts - he was out of shape and self-conscious about his appearance, and it showed - he was getting ready to embark on a new tour on August 17, 1977. He didn’t make it. The day before, his fiancee Ginger Alden found him dead on the floor of his bathroom at Graceland.
At first the public was told his death was due to cardiac arrhythmia, which wouldn’t have been too unbelievable giving the amount of weight he had gained; he had also been having some obvious breathing troubles onstage. But it didn’t take long before the truth emerged: his very own Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Nick, had been prescribing massive amounts of pills for a very long time. His autopsy revealed that he had 14 drugs in his system when he died; 10 were in large quantities. They included Morphine, Demerol, the antihistamine Chloropheniramine, Valium, Placidyl, Codeine, Ethinamate, Quaaludes and an unidentified barbituate. It’s rumored that he also had Diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avental, and Valmid in his system. It’s a wonder that he didn’t die sooner, really.
Photo from FrancesEllenSpeaks.
John Lennon
When Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon by shooting him four times at close range, the entire world immediately went into mourning. On December 8, 1980, John and Yoko were coming back to their apartment at the Dakota in New York after an evening recording session. Waiting in the shadows of the building’s archway was Chapman, an obsessed fan who had approached Lennon earlier in the day for an autograph and a photo. Of the five hollow-point bullets Chapman fired, four of them hit Lennon and inflicted severe injuries. At least one of them punctured his aorta.
Lennon managed to get six stairs up to the doorman before he collapsed; the doorman took the gun from Chapman’s hand and covered Lennon with his jacket. Police loaded Lennon in the backseat of the police car and drove him to the hospital immediately and said that acknowledged that he knew who he was and fell unconscious shortly after. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center where the cause was determined to be hypovolemic shock caused by more then 80 percent blood loss.
Crowds gathered in Central Park outside of the Dakota singing and chanting and apparently keeping Yoko Ono awake. She asked them to give her a little peace, but please come back the following Sunday to help her observe 10 minutes of silence for her slain husband. Not only did they come back, the whole world decided to get in on the tribute. More than 100,000 people gathered in Central Park on Sunday, December 14, and 30,000 people in Liverpool followed suit.
Photo from the BBC.
Princess Diana
Princess Diana is the first shocking death I really remember. On August 31, 1997, the Princess and her boyfriend Dodi Al Fayed were being driven in Paris just after midnight. Their driver was trying to evade paparazzi and was driving at speeds much higher than the recommended 30 mph - some reports estimate that he was going at least 65 and others say 90. He lost control of the car in the tunnel and plunged into a support pillar. Al Fayed died at the scene, as did the driver. The other passenger survived.
Diana died of her internal injuries a few hours later at the hospital - the crash had jolted her body so severely that her heart reportedly was displaced to the right side of her chest. Her death was announced at 5:30 a.m. People worldwide were horrified and saddened and more than three million people showed up to mourn her during her Westminster Abbey funeral on September 6. So many flowers and gifts were left outside of Kensington Palace that the public was asked to refrain from bringing any more items because they were becoming safety hazards.
Photo from BiographyAndBiographies.
Dale Earnhardt
While not exactly in the same vein as Princess Diana or Elvis, Dale Earnhardt’s death certainly stunned the sports world. He was just completing the last lap of the Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001, when the left rear corner of his car hit driver Sterling Marlin’s front bumper. This made Earnhardt veer sharply left, then sharply right toward the concrete retaining wall. Just as his car was hitting the wall, Ken Schrader’s car ran into the #3 black Goodwrench car.
To most people, this didn’t seem like such a huge deal - for NASCAR, this was a relatively common accident and they had seen Dale come out unscathed after much worse crashes. The two cars slid down toward the infield grass and Schrader got out of his car, appearing to be completely fine. He walked to the #3 car and looked inside to check on Dale, then immediately signaled for help.
It turned out that Earnhardt died instantly, but wasn’t officially pronounced dead until he was examined at Halifax Medical Center. His injuries included a fatal skull fracture, eight broken ribs, a broken ankle, a fractured breast bone, and collarbone and hip injuries that indicated his seat belts did not fail. Sterling Marlin started receiving hate mail and death threats, Earnhardt’s #3 car was retired, and fans paid tribute to Earnhardt by holding up three fingers for the third lap of every Winston Cup race for the next year (I’m sure some people still do it). Even television announcers stopped commentating for the third lap.
Photo from USA Today.
What celebrity deaths totally floored you? Share your reactions in the comments.
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I Love Teuthology T-Shirt
I Love Teuthology, modeled by Katie
Who doesn’t love giant squids? Whether you are fascinated by Kraken, love reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or you are actually into teuthology (that’s the study of cephalopods), we’ve got you covered!
The super-talented Nathan Mazur of scaredofbees (great stuff there, btw) has designed the perfect T-shirt for you. Here’s the tentacle-y fun shirt from the Neatorama Online Store: Link
More I Love Science designs:
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NEW - I Love Forensics
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I Love Math (now also available in black)
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I Love Science, and others also in Onesie/Kids
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We’re also slowly but surely building the web’s best selection of geekstastic Science T-shirts and cheeky Scientists Do It T-Shirts - so check ‘em out!
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10 Unexpected Merit Badges
There are certain Boy Scout/Girl Scout Merit badges you expect - Archery, Cooking, Camping, Safety, that sort of thing. But the Scouts have a more well-rounded nucleus of merit badge opportunities than you could ever imagine (well, unless you were a Scout). Here are 10 you may not have expected to find on a merit badge sash.
1. Dentistry. The dentistry badge first entered the scene in 1971. To earn the badge, Scouts have to study the tooth structure, write about what causes dental decay, arrange an educational visit to a dentist’s office to help make teeth casts and get experience with some of the instruments, and finally, assist a dentist in performing a root canal. OK, I made that last one up. No root canal required - just an essay on fluoride (or something similar).
2. Cinematography. As you might suspect, this is a fairly modern badge and was introduced to the system for budding filmmakers. To earn this patch for their sash, Boy Scouts have to learn to use a tripod, pan a camera, frame a shot, select an angle and proper lighting, and learn how to shoot a handheld. And, with your parent’s permission, of course, you should try to visit a film set to see how production work is done. Pretty cool!
3. Fingerprinting. Not surprisingly, this one originated in the ’30s, just as Eliot Ness and the Untouchables were making detective work cool. This one, of course, involves taking prints and identifying all of the unique characteristics of each one - loops and whorls and all of that fun stuff. But they also require Scouts to get into the science of fingerprints and why they form the way the form.
4. Nuclear Science. Yep - horsemanship, firebuilding, canoeing and Nuclear Science. The Scouts are seriously sophisticated - and socially responsible (which is a duh statement, I suppose). Scouts dig deep into the effects and dangers of radiation, report on people who have contributed to the field of atomic energy, use a radiation meter, build an electroscope or a build a model of a reactor. That’s some pretty heavy-duty stuff!
5. Railroading. I love this one because my dad’s a railroader and I love that railroads are still relevant to the Scouts when they could be earning badges in aerospace engineering and space exploration. The railroading badge requires being able to differentiate between different types of railroad cars, understand railroad safety, and then complete a project that can include taking a trip on the rails and reporting on what was seen, building a model railroad or visiting a railroad museum and checking out the history. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Or am I just a total geek? OK, maybe don’t answer that.
6. B Extreme! Girl Scout group 24 observed that if a girl was into an extreme sport such as snowboarding or spelunking, she was kind of out of luck when it came to earning a merit badge in that area of interest. So they suggested “B Extreme,” which allows girls to become accomplished in the extreme sports arena, even if they live in the desert and want to learn about white water rafting. Simply researching and reporting on the sport is enough to earn a merit badge. A skateboarding suggestion includes learning the physics behind some of the tricks: “Consider Newton’s First Law of Motion, which states that an object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless the object is acted upon by an outside force. What outside forces are at play while doing an “ollie”?”
7. Couch Potato. This Girl Scout badge might sound like it’s all about watching Gilmore Girls reruns and snacking on Doritos, but it actually can end up being an in-depth analysis of gender portrayals in the media, or a careful consideration of the nutritional value of some of the snacks we mindlessly consume while wondering exactly why we continue to watch The Hills.
8. CyberGirl Scout Badge. OK, minds out of the gutters, this one is actually about Internet safety, among other things. To earn this one, kids can research why they might need to use the Internet with a parent or guardian and an Internet scavenger hunt for the answers to Girl Scout-related trivia. This one is for Girl Scout Juniors - grades four and five.
9. Hi-Tech Hide and Seek. Geocaching - hiding some sort of a treasure in a public place and then giving clues to people over the Internet as to where the goodies can be found - and it has become so popular that it now has its own merit badge. “Letterboxing” is the same thing, except Geocaching makes use of a GPS and the finder usually gets to keep the geocached treasure. The prize in a letterbox is usually just a logbook that people sign when they discover it.
10. Sew Glam. This goes far beyond the simple sewing buttons and darning socks our moms might have earned sewing badges for back in the day. “Sew Glam” introduces girls to the world of creative solutions when it comes to a needle and thread (and glue gun and pinking shears and bleach pens and sequins…). The Required Activity asks Scouts to take a pair of jeans - Target, thrift-store finds, or already-owned ones - and make them their own. No iron-ons are allowed, but basically anything else goes.
Did you get any merit badges that are kind of out of the ordinary? Share in the comments!
Sash photo from Babble.com.
Boy Scout Merit Badge photos from Girl Scout Merit Badges photos from GirlScoutShop.com.
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Movie Trivia: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
I have a feeling I’m going to get mixed responses to this movie trivia post – either you love the stupidity (genius?) of Bill and Ted or you hate it. Me… I love it. I had a massive crush on Keanu Reeves back in his Ted days (which I then revived during his Speed days). Anyway, enjoy the trivia. San Dimas High School Football Rules!
Bill and Ted were originally “Bill, Ted and Bob.” The writers of the movie, UCLA students Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, used to do improv comedy and one of their bits was about a trio of stoners who talked about current events even though they really had no idea what was going on. The third comedian who played Bob lost interest in the whole thing, and thus Wyld Stallyns were born.
In one of the early scripts, Rufus was a 28-year-old sophomore in high school whose van traveled through time. The van idea was thought to be too similar to the DeLorean in Back to the Future, so the phone booth concept was used instead.
The phone booth was given away in a Nintendo Power magazine contest. A kid in Mississippi became the proud owner. Photo from ErrorMacro.com.
Before the actors were chosen, Bill and Ted were supposed to be kind of unpopular guys who got made fun of in school. But the director loved Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves and knew they were perfect for the parts, so the roles were adjusted a little bit to make them regular guys who were pretty likable.
At first, the idea was for Keanu Reeves to play Bill and Alex Winter to play Ted. Neither one of them had a problem with switching roles. The writers didn’t meet the actors who were going to play the title characters until the first day of filming. Right before filming started, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon went to eat at a McDonald’s near location and saw a couple of guys eating there and remarked to each other that those guys should have played Bill and Ted. When they showed up to the set later, they discovered that “those guys” were playing Bill and Ted - it had been Winter and Reeves at McDonald’s.
Originally, the characters Bill and Ted went back and “borrowed” were a little bit different: they included Charlemagne (”Charlie Mangay) and Babe Ruth. Apparently some scenes were actually filmed of Bill and Ted going to prehistoric San Dimas and meeting some cavemen.
The director wanted ZZ Top to play The Three Most Important People in the World, but ultimately decided that rock stars were too hard to work with.
At one point, Bill reads the history assignment to Ted, explaining that the point was to figure out how historical figures would feel about San Dimas, 1988. Do a little lip-reading in this part: Alex WInter actually says “1987,” because that’s when it was filmed. But by the time the film was released (there was a bit of a delay when the film’s first distributor went bankrupt), it was 1989. The line had to be redubbed.
If you’ve ever wondered what’s on Bill’s t-shirt under that vest, here you go: it’s the cover for Van Halen’s “Why Can’t This Be Love” single.
Photo from AlexWinterFansite.com.
Joan of Arc was played by Jane Wiedlin, the rhythm guitarist for the Go-Go’s.
Most of the movie was filmed in Arizona, including the exteriors of the high school, the Circle K scene and the scene were Napoleon goes down the waterslides at Waterloo. The mall scenes were filled overnight at the Metrocenter in Phoenix.
Maybe Ted isn’t as dumb as he appears to be - at the end, after Napoleon finishes up his talk about how much he supposedly loved the waterslides at Waterloo, Ted says, “I don’t think it’s gonna work.” If you check out the maps Napoleon was gesturing to, you’ll see that Napoleon was mapping the Russian invasion, which ended terrible for the little guy.
Photo from BacktotheEighties.Net.
In the movie, Bill and Ted say that Eddie Van Halen would compete Wyld Stallyns. After it was released, Eddie said he would have gladly joined if asked.
A scene was cut near the end where the guys attend prom with the princesses. That’s how the film was supposed to end, but it was decided that the garage ending would keep the focus on Bill and Ted’s music and Wyld Stallyns instead of on the prom.
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Neatorama Update: Environmental Graffiti Interview and Twitter
Environmental Graffiti Interview
Karl Fabricius of Environmental Graffiti has just posted an interview with me about Neatorama and how the blog came to be. Actually it’s a story I’ve never told anyone online - so it’s a neat exclusive for Environmental Graffiti. Here’s the interview: Link - Thanks Karl, that was a treat!
Neatorama on Twitter!
A while ago, I posted about Neatorama’s account on Twitter. Long story short, we got the account @neatorama back amicably from a fan (Thanks Mike!) … and now am wondering what we should do with it.
Should we continue displaying Neatorama’s posts (using Twitterfeed?) or should we do Twitter only content (like mini-posts)? Or both? What do you think?
The only thing we’ve decided so far is that we should do twitter-only contests - so if you’re on Twitter, here’s Neatorama Twitter page: Link
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Neatorama Update - June 2009
Time sure flies when you’re having fun (or in my case, buried with work). I’d like to take a minute and give you a State of the Blog update.
Upcoming Queue Top Submitter - May 2009
When we launched the Neatorama Upcoming Queue, we promised to reward Top Submitters. As a token of my appreciation, the top 5 submitters of May 2009 will get a random cool ice tray from our online store:
Ice Invaders, Gin & Titonic, Bone Chillers, and Cool Jazz ice trays
See our complete selection here: Party Ice Trays
You still have a chance to be a Top Submitter for this month (and there’s always next month) - learn more about the Neatorama Upcoming Queue here: FAQ | Tips
Neatorama Facebook Fan Page Hits 1,000 Fans
Thanks to Neatoramanaut Becky, we have a Neatorama Facebook Fan Page - and recently we’ve just hit 1,000 fans! Thank you, guys!
Rogue Ads
It’s taken a lot of work behind the scenes, but I believe we’ve significantly improved the quality of ads on Neatorama - not only are the rogue ads gone, but so are the annoying yellow teeth ads! (Scuttlebutt of the ad industry is that those yellow teeth ads are actually the best performing ads in the history of Internet ads. That’s why you see them everywhere - they’re coming from practically every single ad network on the web. Banning them cost us a pretty penny, but I think we did the right thing).
Running a small blog costs next to nothing (I know, Neato was once very small) but running a large one is actually quite costly. Bandwidth and server costs for Neatorama run in the 5-digits annually and growing. So unfortunately, ads are a necessary evil. Perhaps one day the Neatoama Online Shop is large enough that its revenue could sustain the blog, but for the foreseeable future, ads are our best option.
Because we have to rely on ad providers, sometimes rogue ads slip through - I appreciate everybody’s continued help in spotting them. Please let me know if you see an inappropriate ad, banner that has a self-starting audio, etc., so we can track ‘em down and ban ‘em (my contact info is at the bottom of the blog).
As a final note, I’m trying to find a balance between maximizing ad revenue and minimizing the number of ads that appear on the blog. Many of you probably noticed ads moving/appearing/disappearing starting in the past couple of weeks.
Neatorama Widget
Neatoramanaut Ajan surprised me with an gift: Neatorama’s very own RSS feed widget for Macs. Now, I won’t pretend to understand the mechanics of how it was made (I don’t have a Mac and wouldn’t know the first thing about widgets) - but it looks very neat! If you want one, click here to download it: Link - Thanks Ajan!
From Our Last Mystery Sale
Boobies aren’t the only things that make Neatoramanaut CP smile - he got one of the premium items in our last Mystery Sale. Now, I usually ask recipients of these special items to take a photograph of themselves so I can post it on the blog, but most of them are too modest. Shyness, as you can probably see, isn’t a big part of CP. Congrats, dude!
Note: a while ago, someone asks how to get in on the Mystery Sale and whether there is an email alert or something like that. Well, the answer is simple: visit Neatorama every day (or subscribe to our RSS feed) - the Mystery Sale is never announced beforehand and it only lasts for a short period of time, so you have to catch it when it’s going on (That’s part of the fun!)
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Music Tidbits: Cyndi Lauper
Cyndi Lauper is one of my heroes. I saw her a few years ago and even though she was around 45 at the time, she had the energy of a teenager. Her style has changed over the years, but it is as unique as ever. If you get the chance to see Cyndi live, do it. She’s an amazing performer with an excellent voice.
That being said, I was excited to write about Cyndi for the Music Tidbits today. It’s in a new format that should make it a bit more fun and readable. Hope you like it!
She Keeps it Real
Or at least, her name is real. Unlike other pop stars, Cyndi Lauper was born in New York in 1953 and was named Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper.
Cyndi Does it All
Image Via danorbit. [Flickr]
While she’s best known for singing, she can also play guitar, write lyrics and act. She started writing songs and playing guitar at only twelve years old. She’s acted in quite a few movies and tv shows, including Mad About You, the Ron Howard movie Vibes and Life With Mikey beside Michael J. Fox. Her role in Mad About You almost turned into a spin off, but network executives thought the show concept was too out there.
She’s always Been So Original
When she was only a middle-schooler, she was already dyeing her hair crazy colors and wearing her weird clothing styles she’s known for. Speaking of her wardrobe, it actually became a problem during the1985 taping of “We Are the World,” when a weird clacking noise showed up on the tape. Audio engineers finally tracked the noise down to her jewelry bonking against itself.
Doctors Said She’d Never Sing Again…Then She Did
In 1977, Cyndi severely damaged her vocal cords. Three different doctors told her she would never sing again. But she didn’t give up and started seeing vocal coach Katir Agresta, who helped Cyndi recover by teaching her a series of vocal exercises.
She’s Got High Standards
In 1978, she started a music group, Blue Angel, with saxaphonist John Turi, where they performed original music. When labels started showing interest in Cyndi’s vocal abilities (she can sing in four octaves and has perfect pitch), they wanted to sign her as a solo artist. She refused to sign with any labels until Polydor Records opted to take on all of Blue Angel.
Write On!
Photo Via t_a_i_s [Flickr]
When Cyndi signed as a solo artist with Portrait Records, the label wanted her to sing all only their pre-written pop songs. Cyndi changed most of these songs to suit her personality, which also let her claim co-writer credits and royalties later on. The most well-known song she did this to was “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” which was originally written for a male singer. Cyndi thought the original lyrics were a little misogynistic, as it was all about a woman pleasing a man.
Although the label didn’t trust her writing abilities, the record producer decided they needed one more song on her first album and convinced the label to let her write a song. She co-wrote Time After Time with Rob Hyman. The song ended up being the biggest single of 1985 and has since been covered by over 100 artists. The title came from a 1979 sci-fi movie starring Malcolm McDowell.
Girls Just Want to Have Trivia
Video Link
In the video for “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” Cyndi’s mother was played by her actual mother. Also in the video was Cyndi’s dog and pro-wrestler Lou Albano. Cyndi’s famous red dress in the video was from the boutique she was working at between being signed for Blue Angel and her solo career. The video won the first ever award for Best Female Video at the MTV Music Awards. The album it was on was so popular that she became the first female artist to have four consecutive Top 5 hits from a single album.
The World Wrestling Foundation Loved Cyndi
And vice versa. Aside from having Lou Albano appear in her first video, Cyndi had frequent interactions with the stars of the WWF. Her video for the Goonies included a number of wrestling greats, including Andre The Giant and when she recieved her first Grammy Award, Hulk Hogan appeared with her, pretending to be her bodyguard. She also made quite a few appearances at WWF events, the most famous event was at the Inaugural WrestleMania event. She appeared as the manager of Wendi Richter and entered the area to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
She Hates The Goonies
Or rather, the song she wrote for the album, “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough.” It doesn’t have too much to do with the song itself, she was just traumatized by the physical exhaustion she suffered during the taping of the video. The director was too much of a perfectionist and ran the entire crew ragged. She left the song off of her best of album and only started singing it at concerts again back in 2003.
PeeWee’s Playhouse Lied To You
Cyndi wrote and performed the theme song for PeeWee’s Playhouse, but was credited as Ellen Shaw for some reason. When Cyndi was married, PeeWee (aka Paul Ruebens) was at her wedding, along with Little Richard, John Tuturo and other celebrities. Although Cyndi threatened to show up dressed as a Christmas tree, she wore a traditional white gown.
Cyndi Loves Guest Appearances
Throughout her recording career, Cyndi featured a number of guest stars on her albums, including Billy Joel, The Bangles, Rick Derringer, Bootsy Collins, Eric Clapton, Shaggy, Ani DiFranco, Jeff Beck, Paul Reubens (PeeWee Herman), Sarah McLachlan, The Hives and more. In her recent 2008 tour, she had appearances from Joan Jett, Rosie O’Donnell, The B52’s, Indigo Girls, Regina Spektor, Wanda Sykes, Sarah McLachlan and more. Lastly, although it may not count as a guest appearance, Julia Stiles, appeared as young Cyndi in the video for “Sally’s Pigeons” before she was a famous actress.
She’s Heterosexual, but Once Wished She Was Gay
Lauper is considered a gay icon, but she is heterosexual. Her sister and many of her close friends are gay and she has been performing at gay pride events since 1994. In fact, for a while, she thought herself to be a lesbian. She told The Times, “My sister was gay, my best friends were gay, so I figured I had to be gay. So I did everything they did. I tried kissing girls. But it didn’t feel right for me and eventually I was forced to come out as a heterosexual.”
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Interesting Facts About Beavers
After watching a movie about beavers a few weeks ago, I became highly interested by their strange behaviors. I came to research a bit about the critters and came along some info that may be interesting to all of you readers out there. Personally, I’d like to see a Meerkat Manor-like show based on beaver’s lives. Do you think it would work?
Water is music to beaver ears
Or at least, music they can’t stand. The sound of running water is a beaver’s main motivator in building a dam. A scientist once performed a study where they placed speakers beside a beaver dam that were continually playing the sound of running water. The beavers built up their dams by the speaker until it effectively was silenced. The noise drives them mad. Source
Those darn dams
We all know beavers love their dams. In fact, by building their dams and changing river flows, they are change the world more than any other creature besides man. They’re quite good architects and take water flow into consideration when building, using straight dams on trickling waters and curved dams in raging rapids. They use these dams as protection from predators and as shelter throughout the winter. If a predator destroys part of the dam, it will be fixed overnight.
Also just like men, they won’t stop building until the job is done -resulting in some massively huge dams being built along large rivers. The largest beaver dam was over 2,750 feet long. These dams are the only animal-created structures that can be seen from space. Source
It’s Ok To Eat Beavers on Friday
No, that’s not a naughty sex innuendo. The 17th century Catholic Church actually declared beavers to be a fish according to dietary restrictions, meaning they are ok to eat on both Fridays and throughout Lent. Beaver meat was a common dish by Native Americans and French settlers to America, so the decision was believed to be important to these people’s behaviors. The church decisions are based more on an animal’s environment than their physical characteristics. Source
European and American Beavers Don’t Mix
Because the animals have a different number of chromosomes, they do not cross breed with one another. Russian scientists once tried to breed the two together. In 27 attempted experiments, they only had one semi-success and the baby still came out as a stillborn. Source
They’re Our Only Hope and They’re Terrible Pests
Beavers have an interesting role in the environment. Their dams trap sediments in the water, turning rushing rivers into peaceful wetlands. When the dams break, the sediment stays and rich meadows are formed. Some scientists claim beavers can help prevent drought and that they are our only chance and maintaining our precious wetlands. Source
On the other hand, beavers are notoriously destructive. They cause $100 million in property damage yearly and their re-working of river currents can cause massive floods on our nation’s farms. They have been known to destroy whole forests and one beaver couple almost took out a world-famous cherry tree forest in Washington D.C.. Source
My, What Nice Sex Organs You Have
Beaver sex organs have been used for traditional medicines for centuries. Their testicles and vaginal follicles can actually help with a few conditions, but mostly because the sailicin from the willow trees they eat turns into an aspirin-like salicylic acid with anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties. These same naughty beaver parts are still used in perfume production, you may have some beaver residue on you right now- particularly if you’re wearing any of these brands: Emeraude, Coty Chanel Cuir de Russie, Magie Noire, Lancôme Caractère, Hechter Madame, Carven, Givenchy III or Shalimar. Source
Canada Loves Them…But Almost Killed Them All
Beaver is the Canadian national animal and is depicted on the Canadian five cent piece and their first pictorial stamp issued in 1849. The beavers were highly loved in part due to their fur, which was widely sought after up until the mid-19th century. It was so widely adored that the animal was almost hunted to extinction in Canada. If the fur trade hadn’t stopped when it did, the Canadian national animal might be little more than a memory to its residents. Source
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8 Academic Holidays
Happy Bloomsday, everyone! For those of us who aren’t hardcore James Joyce fans, today is the day that honors the Irish author (we’ll get to that in a second). It’s not an official holiday, but that doesn’t make it any less serious to those who celebrate it. Here are the details behind Bloomsday and seven other academic holidays you can celebrate.
Bloomsday
Picture from JohnMariani.com.
Mole Day
Just about any kid who took chemistry in high school has participated in a Mole Day or two. To celebrate Avogadro’s constant, 6.02×10 to the 23rd power, chemistry teachers across the country make their students roll into school at 6:02 a.m. on October 23 for extra credit. At least, my chemistry teacher did. Avogadro’s constant, by the way, defines the number of particles in a mole, hence Mole Day. What you do to celebrate Mole Day really depends on the teacher - it can be anything from creating a poster for Mole Day to consuming a mole of water to creating cheesy mole jokes (Who was Avogadro’s favorite character on M*A*S*H*? Father Molecahy, of course).
Picture from MoleDay.org.
Towel Day
If you prefer Douglas Adams to James Joyce, you’re out of luck for this year - Towel Day, May 25, has already come and gone. Towel Day is a relative newcomer to the academic holiday scene; the first one was celebrated in 2001 just two weeks after Adams died. Why towels? The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, states that the towel is the single greatest thing an interstellar hitchhiker can bring with him:
You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
Why May 25? It really has no significance to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The reason seems to be that fans wanted to honor Adams shortly after his death the 25th was chosen because it was exactly two weeks later. The date stuck, but TowelDay.org points out this lovely coincidence - “As the universe that Douglas Adams created was full of absurdity and randomness, it may be a fitting choice after all. And if you need an additional reason: if you add the hexadecimal numbers 25 and 5, and convert the result to decimal, you get 42!” Forty two being the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, of course.
Photo from Beny Shlevich.
Pi Day
Picture from GJ.
Hobbit Day
Tolkien Reading Day
Yeah, Tolkien’s so important he gets two days. March 25 is known as Tolkien Reading Day, but it’s also the day of the fall of Sauron. The Tolkien Society encourages fans to get together and read out loud while enjoying a hot toasted bun and a warm drink “in hobbitish comfort.”
Picture from TolkienSociety.org.
Square Root Day
Although this is another mathematical day, it’s a bit more rare than the others: it only occurs when the month and day are the square roots of the last two digits of the year. We had one this year - 03/03/09 - but the next one won’t happen on the calendar until 04/04/16. In fact, there are only nine of them every century: 01/01/01, 02/02/04, 03/03/09, 04/04/16, 05/05/25, 06/06/36, 07/07/49, 08/08/64 and 09/09/81 (I know, you could have figured that out on your own. The first one was celebrated on September 9, 1981, created by a high school teacher named Ron Gordon. Nearly 28 years later, he still serves as the national publicist for Square Root Day and suggests that people commemorate the occasion by consuming radishes or other root vegetables cut into squares.
Monkey Day
Monkey Day, December 14, was created just nine years ago by art students at Michigan State. It celebrates exactly what it sounds like it celebrates: namely, simians. What is there to celebrate about monkeys, you might ask? Lots, according to the Monkey Day website. There’s medical research, animal rights, and that whole evolution thing. But mostly, it’s a day to dress up like a monkey, talk like a monkey, and maybe donate some money to your favorite monkey-related charity. And drink, I imagine. Whatever the reason behind El Dia de Mono, it has some pretty powerful fans: Peter Jackson chose the day to release King Kong in 2005.
Picture from MonkeyDay.com.
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10 Notable Diamonds
These days, it’s a big deal when celebs like Jennifer Lopez and Katie Holmes get six and five-carat diamonds in their engagement rings (respectively). But compared to these 10 gems, those trinkets are nothing. Here are the stories behind some of the largest and rarest diamonds ever found.
1. The Eugénie Blue
This Titanic-esque vivid blue diamond is 30.82 carats. It’s called the Eugénie Blue because of an old legend that the sparkly stunner originally belonged to Empress Eugénie de Montijo, the wife of Napoleon III. There is no evidence to support this tale, though, so many people prefer to simply call it “The Blue Heart” instead. The gem was cut into its distinctive shape in 1909 or so (some accounts say it was 1910) and was bought by Cartier shortly thereafter. Since then it has bounced around from a wealthy Argentinian woman, Van Cleef and Arpels, a European family, Harry Winston, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and, finally, the Smithsonian, where The Blue Heart has resided since 1964. And although it may look like it inspired the fictional Heart of the Ocean from the 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio epic, it didn’t - the Heart of the Ocean was actually based on the infamous Hope Diamond.Photo from DiamondArticles.com.
2. The Centenary Diamond
On March 1, 1988, De Beers was having a big bash to celebrate their 100 years in business. Chairman Julian Oglivie capped off his speech with a little tidbit that stunned the crowd - De Beers’ Premier Mine had recently uncovered a diamond that was perfect in color and weighed 599 carats. It had been found nearly two years before; the company kept it quiet for the sole purpose of flaunting it at their 100th anniversary. It didn’t get to keep all 599 of those carats, though - it had to be cut down to remove some cracks around the edges and it took 154 days to cut 50 carats away. That was just the beginning of the stone’s overhaul - when all was said and done, the Centenary ended up weighing 273.85 carats with 247 facets. It was on loan to the Tower of London for a number of years (have any of you seen it?), but it’s rumored that the stone has since been sold. De Beers remains mum on the subject, saying they respect their clients’ anonymity.
Photo from FamousDiamonds.
3. The Cullinan Diamond
At an insane 3,106.75 carats (that’s about one and a third pounds!), the Cullinan is the largest diamond ever found. It didn’t stay that way, though - it was split into nine big chunks, 96 small ones and 9.5 carats of unpolished pieces. So where are those nine big chunks? They’re all part of the Crown Jewels or belong in the private collection of the royal family:
Photo from DiamondArticles.com.
4. The Golden Eye Diamond
As far as we know, this beauty is the world’s largest flawless Canary Yellow diamond. For quite a few years it remained in its original uncut 124.5-carat state. This particular type of diamond - a fancy intense yellow - accounts for less than 0.1 percent of all natural diamonds, so you can imagine how rare one this size is. The gem was cut to a still-huge 43.51 carats and somehow became entangled in a drug dealing and money laundering ring in Ohio, which was busted in 2006. As a result, the unusual jewel became property of the U.S. government. Just as of May 11, 2009, it was declared that the Golden Eye diamond belonged to the government, and in turn, the government announced that it would be auctioning the diamond off. So if you’re looking for a rare yellow diamond in the neighborhood of $15-$20 million, keep your eyes peeled!
Photo from the Israeli Diamond Industry blog.
5. The Koh-i-noor
The Koh-i-noor has a long, storied history and, according to some legends, is more than 5,000 years old. We know for sure it has been around since at least 1526, which is the first time it was identified by name in writing. For hundreds of years it was in the possession of various Indian Emperors and was even installed into the Peacock Throne of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (the guy responsible for the Taj Mahal). But in 1851, it was decided that the bauble would be presented to Queen Victoria, who immediately put it on display at the Crystal Palace Exhibition. After people expressed disappointment at the famous diamond’s lack of brilliance, she ordered it to be recut for a better display. After it was cut down by about 80 carats to its current 108.93 size, the diamond was moved from a tiara to the centerpiece of the Queen consort’s crown (used by both Queen Alexandra of Denmark and Queen Mary of Teck) and finally to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s crown in 1936. It remained there until her death in 2002 and was set in the Imperial State Crown afterward. It’s probably best that it’s now locked up in the Tower of London, because there is supposedly a curse upon it that says, “He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.” Do you think it’s a coincidence that only female members of the Royal Family have worn the gem?
Photo from National Geographic.
6. Spirit of de Grisogono
The largest cut black diamond in the world is also the world’s fifth-largest diamond of any kind, weighing in at 312.24 carats. It was 587 carats before it was cut. The Spirit of de Grisogono is set in a ring that contains 702 white diamonds and is thought to have been sold to a private collector.
Photo from DiamondArticles.com.
7. The Earth Star
When this huge sparkler was found at a South African De Beers mine in 1967, it was a whopping 248.9 carats. As you can imagine, it caused quite the stir in the industry, and not just because of its massive size. It was actually the color everyone was talking about: The Earth Star was brown. The Baumgold Bros. jewelers bought the enormous jewel and cut it into a pear shape that ended up weighing 111.59 carats, which was the largest brown diamond in the world at the time (it’s still the third largest brown diamond… we’ll get to the largest in a minute). It was Baumgold that gave the diamond its name. For more than 15 years, the Earth Star traveled the world in various exhibitions, but it was bought by a private citizen in 1983 for the staggering sum of $900,000.
8. The Golden Jubilee
Sure, the Golden Jubilee is widely celebrated now - it’s the largest faceted diamond in the world. But when it was first discovered in 1985, people in the industry refered to the 755.5 uncut rock as “The Unnamed Brown” and “The Ugly Duckling.” Since it was kind of homely, De Beers decided to let jewel cutter Gabriel Tolkowsky try an experimental method of cutting using some untested tools. They figured if he messed it up, it was no great loss - the thing was going to be unmarketable anyway. Under Tolkowsky’s hands, though, the Ugly Duckling turned into an amazing yellow-brown diamond of epic proportions. It was presented to the King of Thailand for his Golden Jubilee in 1997, which is when it finally received an appropriate name. It’s still a part of the Crown Jewels of Thailand today.
Photo from DiamondArticles.com.
9. The Ocean Dream Diamond
The Ocean Dream may be small - a mere 5.51 carats - but it’s the only diamond in the world of its kind. No other diamond is known to naturally possess a blue-green hue like this one. The color is thought to have come from being exposed to natural radiation in Central Africa for thousands of years. It’s currently owned by the Cora Diamond Corporation, but you might have seen it at the Smithsonian as part of “The Splendor of Diamonds” exhibit a few years back.
Photo from the Smithsonian Institute.
10. The Hope Diamond
That’s how Harry Winston ended up owning it until 1958, when he decided that it belonged to the Smithsonian and sent it there in an uninsured brown paper envelope. It’s still part of the Smithsonian today, and so is the envelope (that’s it above). And if you want to read a list of some of the people supposedly killed off by the Hope’s curse, you can find a few here.
Photos from the Smithsonian Institute.
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Pizza Boss 3000 Pizza Slicer and Other Neat Stuff for Father’s Day Gifts
Pizza
Boss 3000 Pizza Slicer - $14.95
Father's Day is this coming Sunday, and if you're looking for a Father's Day gift, we've got a number of neat items on the Neatorama Online Store. Like this Pizza Boss 3000 above, a pizza slicer shaped to look like a circular saw. Just the thing for your pizza lovin' power tool usin' handyman dad! Link
A few more items from the store:
 Glow-in-the-Dark Zombie Play Set ($15.95) and other weird action figures |
 Warning: Retiree Knows Everything ($9.95) and other funny one liner T-Shirts |
 Bacon Wallet ($10.95) and other funny bacon stuff |
 Stock Market: The Ride ($9.95) and other shirts about the economy |
 Gin & Titonic Ice Tray ($6.45) and other fun ice trays |
 Occam's Razor ($11.95) and other funny science T-shirts |
Your purchase helps support the blog - thank you!
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8 Starship Enterprise Facts Every Trekker Should Know
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), the starship in the original Star Trek TV series
To boldly go where no man has gone before, you'd need a really good starship - and to launch Star Trek, the pop culture phenomenon that entertained and inspired millions, you'd need a pretty darned good one! And that is exactly what the United Space Starship Enterprise delivered. Here are 8 Starship Enterprise facts every Trekker should know:
1. Meet the REAL Enterprise (Several of Them, Actually)
(L) The tenth HMS Enterprise, an Arctic survey sloop (1848), painting
by WH Browne from the National
Maritime Museum online collection;
(R) USS Enterprise at Valcour Island, Lake Champlain, New York (1776)
from Dictionary
of American Naval Fighting Ships
Before Star Trek, there have been many actual ships named Enterprise. The very first one of note was a French frigate L'Enterprise, which was captured by the British Royal Navy in 1705 and renamed as HMS Enterprise. It served as a British gun ship until it was wrecked just two years later. After this ship, there were 14 other HMS also named Enterprise (sometimes spelled Enterprize).
The United States have 8 battleships named Enterprise, including the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the world. The very first one (before the US became a country, so technically it was a ship of the Continental Navy) was an armed sloop on Lake Champlain in 1775 named the United States Ship (USS) Enterprise.
During the American Civil War, aeronaut and scientist Thaddeus S.C. Lowe built a balloon named Enterprise, to be used by the Union Army to perform aerial recon on Confederate troops.
(L) Enterprise, a gas inflated aerostat (1858); (M) Space Shuttle Enterprise; (R) Artist rendering of VSS Enterprise
And who can forget the Space Shuttle Enterprise? It was the very first Space Shuttle orbiter, built for NASA in 1976. The Shuttle was supposed to be named Constitution, but a write-in campaign successfully persuaded NASA to name it after the Star Trek starship. (Interestingly, the fictional Starship Enterprise was a Constitution-class vessel - coincidence? Hm....)
The last actual Enterprise hasn't been built yet but it already has a name: Virgin Space Ship (VSS) Enterprise and yes, it's an homage to Star Trek. It's a suborbital spaceplane being built by Sir Richard Branson of Virgin for the purposes of space tourism.
Ironically, when Sir Richard offered the first flight to William Shatner, the actor declined and revealed that he's actually afraid of space travel, "I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me." Shatner added that he's not entirely against the idea - he just needed some reassurance. "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back." (Source)
2. No Rockets, Jets or Firestreams
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who pitched the TV show as "Wagon Train to the Stars," didn't tell art director Matt Jefferies what Starship Enterprise should look like, instead he told the bewildered art director what he did not want to see. Starship Concept Art has reprint of a nifty article in Star Trek: The Magazine by Jefferies about the design process:
"In my approach to Star Trek I wanted to be as practical as possible," Jefferies says. "I could tell Gene was serious enough, but I really didn't know where to start. I knew the Enterprise was going to be on the cutting edge of the future, but essentially he gave me the job of finding a shape, and I didn't know what the shape looked like." Although Roddenberry knew a lot about his ship, he had never visualized it, and consequently made the situation more complicated since he couldn't give Jefferies a detailed sense of direction. According to Jefferies, Roddenberry was absolutely clear to avoid any resemblance to a 1960's rocket ship. "Gene described the 100-150 man crew, outer space, fantastic, unheard-of speed, and that we didn't have to worry about gravity. He had emphasized that there were to be no fins, no wings, no smoke trails, no flames, no rocket.
After hundreds of drawings, Jefferies came up with this:
Image via Starship
Concept Art
In his honor, the crawl spaces on all of the Starfleet starships on Star Trek are called Jefferies tubes.
3. The Original Name of USS Enterprise
That's
right - the iconic starship wasn't always named USS Enterprise ... in
the original draft, Roddenberry named it USS Yorktown after a World War
II aircraft carrier. The starship was commanded by Captain Robert April,
then Christopher Pike, before Roddenberry settled on James Tiberius Kirk.
By the way, William Shatner was the third choice for Kirk. The role was offered to Lloyd Bridges and Jack Lord, both of whom declined it.
4. The Origin of NCC-1701
How did the famous USS Enterprise get its registration number NCC-1701 is the stuff of legend. There are conflicting stories, including one where 1701 is a tribute to Roddenberry's childhood neighbor's house number or that Jefferies got it from the registration number of his airplane.
Here's Matt Jefferies' explanation when he was asked during a BBC Interview:
NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.
The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don’t think anyone’ll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird.
5. Land the Ship? Too Expensive, Let's Teleport Everybody Instead!
Photo: Rex Features
Originally, Roddenberry envisioned the USS Enterprise to land on various planets, but it turned out to be too expensive as it would require them to build expensive sets. The next idea was to use shuttles - but when filming began, the full-sized shooting model wasn't ready. So, they came up with the idea of "beaming down" the crew via a teleportation device and thus the transporter was born! (Source)
In 1994, TIME Magazine interviewed Star Trek technical expert Michael Okuda about the intricacies of the transporter:
"It should be possible if we decompile the pattern buffer."
Transporters can send people instantly from one location to another by converting their molecules into energy, then reassembling them. Every living being has a distinct pattern of molecules; the pattern buffer fixes the configuration by adjusting for the Doppler effect -- the apparent change in the frequency of the energy waves caused by motion.
"I'll verify the Heisenberg compensators."
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know a subatomic particle's exact position and its exact direction and velocity at the same time. To transport people you have to know all those things, so the Heisenberg compensator was devised to overcome that problem. It's an attempt by the Trek writers to signal that they are at least aware of the issue. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work? "It works very well, thank you," says Okuda.
6. The Next Gen Enterprise: Hilton in Space
Jefferies
designed the bridge in the original USS Enterprise in the style of a Navy
battleship, with specialized workstations for its crew. When set designer
Richard James updated the bridge for Star Trek: The Next Generation
(restriction: no
purple!), Jefferies was asked about the new look. To which he replied:
Gene asked me how I liked the show, and I said that he had taken the bridge of my ship and turned it into the lobby of the Hilton. And I have just never watched any of them since. I’m lost.
Ironically, Star Trek and Hilton actually did come together to create a theme attraction. Star Trek: The Experience opened in 1998 at the Las Vegas Hilton. It closed in 2008 due to low attendance (though it is due to re-open in a different location in 2010).
7. The Original Star Trek Enterprise Prop
Photo: Carolyn Russo / Smithsonian
If you visit the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian, definitely check out the actual model of the Starship Enterprise used in the filming of the original Star Trek TV show.
The hull and one nacelle of the original Star Trek Starship Enterprise
model as it was received by the National Air and Space Museum from Paramount
Studios on March 1, 1974. Image WEB11192-2009. Photo: Smithsonian
(with permission)
The model of the Enterprise was sent to the museum in crates, donated by Paramount Studios five years after the series ended.
Enterprise during its first Smithsonian restoration. SI Neg #74-3977.
Photo: Smithsonian
(with permission)
The Smithsonian performed extensive restoration to put the starship model back together, and for the first time ever, the photos of the restoration process are available to the public at the museum's blog.
The Museum Registrar Gregory K.H. Bryant has more on this behind the scenes look at the icon science fiction model: Link - Thanks Llori!
8. The Hot-Rod Starship Enterprise
For his movie Star Trek, director J.J. Abrams decided that the USS Enterprise could use a face-lift and worked with artists at Industrial Light & Magic to update the starship - like Roddenberry, he gave a simple directive:
"He wanted a hot-rod type of vehicle, but they also wanted to preserve the Enterprise kind of look," model maker John Goodson said in a presentation at ILM's San Francisco headquarters earlier this month.
"J.J. Abrams kept saying, 'Make it a bigger movie. Make it a bigger shot,'" creative director David Nakabayashi added. "I think that's one thing you see in this film, at least: The stuff I've seen is just everything is big."
SCI FI Wire has the interview with model maker John Goodson and visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett about the new Enterprise: Link
The official website for JJ Abram's Star Trek movie has a nifty 360° panorama of the bridge of the new starship:
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The Stories Behind 10 T.V. Theme Songs
You know them and love them (or maybe you hate them) - those T.V. theme songs that are so catchy they get in your head for days and refuse to leave. But how did they come to be in the first place? Here are the stories behind 10 of the most famous T.V. theme songs of all time. I could do 10 more pretty easily - if I missed your favorite, leave it in the comments and I’ll try to include it next time.
1. "Suicide is Painless" - M*A*S*H*
The
song was written by Robert Altman's son, Mike Altman, when he was only 14
years old. The tune was written by Johnny Mandel, a musician who worked
with Count Basie, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (among others). Mandel sings
the song as well. When Altman wrote the lyrics, he told producer Ingo Preminger
that he just wanted a guitar in return, but Preminger insisted that he be
paid the regular way and set up a contract that would give Altman royalties.
He ended up making more than a million dollars, at least according to his
dad, who directed the movie. Incidentally, Robert only received $75,000
for directing it.
2. "Those Were The Days" - All in the Family
According
to series producer Norman Lear, the reason Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton
sang the theme song themselves was simply to save costs. Although it was
the same thing at the beginning of every episode, there were a few different
versions. In one, Archie hugs Edith at the end. In another, Edith smiles
at Archie and he returns the look with one of irritation. And we shouldn't
be surprised that the lyrics and music were so memorable: songwriting
duo Charles Strouse and Lee Adams were very good at their jobs, having
already won a couple of Tony Awards (Bye Bye Birdie and Applause).
Another interesting tidbit: after the theme song aired for the first few
times, viewers wrote in and complained that they couldn't understand what
the actors were supposed to be saying, especially the line "Gee our old
LaSalle ran great." If you've ever wondered why that line is so clearly
enunciated in the theme song, that's why - Jean Stapleton recorded her
part again and made sure to speak ridiculously clearly during those words.
3. "The Addams Family Theme" - The Addams Family
Composer
Vic Mizzy wrote the theme song, which is pretty well known, but what isn't
as commonly known is that he wrote the theme song for another very popular
sitcom from the same era. "The Munsters?" you might be wondering.
Nope - the other theme song is a true testament to Mizzy's versatility
- it was Green Acres. Mizzy also contributed parts to the Mr.
Ed and Petticoat Junction theme songs. He still receives
royalties every time The Addams Family theme is played, even
when it's on an organ at a baseball game. (Photo from VicMizzy.com)
4. "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" - The Beverly Hillbillies
This
tune joins the elite group of T.V. theme songs that were so popular they
actually ended up on the mainstream music charts. The song was written
and composed by Paul Henning, who was also the series' creator. The man
who sang the song, Jerry Scoggins, was a stockbroker trying to break into
the music business when he landed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." This luck
break paired him with the legendary Foggy Mountain Boys, who played the
music that backed him. The Foggy Mountain Boys, Lester Flatt and Earl
Scruggs, were already well established in the country and bluegrass world
and had been members of the Grand Ole Opry for years... which probably
helped the theme song reach #44 on the charts in 1962.
5. "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" - Gilligan's Island
What
ended up being one of the most recognizable theme songs of all time started
out as a very amateur recording done in a noisy house. Sherwood Schwartz,
the show's creator, couldn't afford to rent a recording studio to get
the theme down, so he called in a favor from a friend with the necessary
equipment. The only day they could all do it in time for the pilot was
a day that his friends were preparing for a big charity event at their
house, so the song had to be recorded when waiters weren't clattering
silverware and plates and serving trays around. It took forever to adjust
the levels just right; they finally got a usable take just as guests were
arriving for the event. It's not exactly the one we know today - Sherwood
had injected a sort of calypso solo that didn't make the cut - but it's
the general theme. And for the first season, the portion of the lyrics
that served as a roll call completely neglected poor Mary Ann and the
professor, saying, "The movie star and the rest, here on Gilligan's Isle!"
Schwartz said he never had an inkling that the professor and Mary Ann
would become such popular characters and therefore didn't think to name
them in the theme song. Although this changed by the second season, Dawn
Wells and Russell Johnson liked to send each other birthday cards and
presents with the signature "The Rest" as a nod to the first theme song.
6. "Happy Days" - Happy Days
For the first two seasons of the show, the theme song was simply an oldie
but goodie - Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." And it
served the purpose just fine - it was so popular, in fact, that the song
recharted after nearly 20 years. After season two, though, they decided
to use an original song instead of Bill Haley's, and fans were already
familiar with it since it was being used as the closing theme music. "Happy
Days" got bumped up from the end of the show to the front, and the song
has been stuck in our heads ever since. It was written by Charles Fox
and Norman Gimbel, who gave us the lyrics and music to a ton of other
memorable theme songs: Laverne and Shirley, Lifestyles of the Rich
and Famous, Wonder Woman and the score for H.R. Pufnstuf.
"Happy Days" was performed by a roster of studio musicians, including
some of the same guys who sang The Partridge Family theme song.
As popular as the Happy Days theme song was, they decided to
record a new version of it for the show's final season. It didn't go over
as well, and I can see why... check it out for yourself:
7. "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" - Cheers
The
famous theme song was nearly just a recycled song from a Broadway musical
called Preppies. The producers of Cheers heard it and
thought it would be perfect for their new show if the lyrics were just changed
up a little. Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, the songwriters, were understandably
thrilled - but the producers of Preppies weren't. They refused
to give up rights to the song. Portnoy and Angelo were devastated, but the
producers of Cheers told them not to worry - they should just take
a shot at writing something totally new. The first version, a pretty blatant
rip-off of their first song, was quickly rejected. After reading a script,
the duo took a third shot, which was closer - the producers loved some of
the lyrics - but still no cigar. Version #3 was rejected. Portnoy and Hart
were getting a little dejected and concerned that they were going to get
fired any second, and to make matters worse, Gary and his girlfriend had
just broken up. This set the mood for version #4, a melancholy little tune
about the Red Sox losing, being too poor to pay the electric bill and needy
girlfriends who wanted to get married. They almost decided it was too depressing
for a sitcom, when they came up with the line "Sometimes you wanna go where
everybody knows your name," and the whole song turned from depressing to
hopeful. The folks at Cheers loved it, but changed the opening
lines from "Singing the blues when the Red Sox lose, it's a crisis in your
life," to the now-famous, "Making your way in the world today takes everything
you've got." The rest is history.
8. "Jeannie" - I Dream of Jeannie
There were three theme
songs composed for the show about a blonde genie and her Master - the first
season featured an instrumental waltz over the opening credits. And no less
than Carole King wrote a theme song for the series, but Sidney Sheldon rejected
it. The winning song that we know as the I Dream of Jeannie theme
song today was composed by Hugo Montenegro. And, believe it or not, there
were lyrics to the song. Written by Buddy Kaye, this gem was never used
for the show:
Jeannie, fresh as a daisy. Just love how she obeys me, Does things that just amaze me so. She smiles, Presto the rain goes. She blinks, up come the rainbows. Cars stop, even the train goes slow. When she goes by, she paints sunshine on every rafter, sprinkles the air with laughter, we're close as a quarter after three. There's no one like Jeannie. I'll introduce her to you, but it's no use sir, cause my Jeannie's in love with me.
9. "Thank You For Being a Friend" - Golden Girls
Unbeknownst
to me, this song wasn't original to our four happening grannies. It was
first recorded in 1978 by Andrew Gold, who hit #25 on the Billboard charts
the same year. Cynthia Fee sang it for the show, though.
The song was later reworked a third time for the opening credits to The Golden Palace. I hate it. But check it out! Don Cheadle!
10. "The Facts of Life" - The Facts of Life
If you didn't already know this, prepared to be floored: Alan Thicke, better known as Jason Seaver to legions of kids who grew up in the late '80s and early '90s, co-wrote "The Facts of Life." He also co-wrote and sang the theme song to Diff'rent Strokes. At the time, Thicke was married to his co-writer Gloria Loring, who sang the "Facts" song you probably remember. There was also an earlier version that featured the cast of the show singing the wise lyrics, but it was only used for the first season.
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15 Off-the-Wall Theme Parks
I’m a huge fan of theme parks. I love roller coasters and costumed characters and all that jazz, but there are some parks that are boring and some that are just plain weird. Personally, I think I could pass on quite a few of these bad parks…others I want to visit just to see that the deal is.
Image Via km33068 [Flickr]
1. Hershey Park, PA -Mmmmm….chocolate! Hooray, kisses! The company that combined the two truly is brilliant, but a theme park in their name? There’s roller coasters, water slides, and, of course, cute little Reese’s and Hershey’s characters wandering. If you were worried about getting your chocolate fix on, don’t worry, there’s plenty of sweet treats at the restaurants throughout the park.
Image Via Andrewds14 [Flickr]
2. Dollywood, TN –Maybe you’re a Dolly fan. Maybe you like the ironic humor of visiting a theme park dedicated to the blonde county bombshell Maybe you just love farms. Whatever your reason for visiting Dollywood, you’re sure to get an earful –of Dolly Parton songs. Enjoy the sights and smells of the Smoky Mountains while speeding through exciting roller coasters.
3. Diggerland, UK –Ever wish you could be a construction worker, but hate sweat and hard work? Finally, you can relax by going to work on backhoes and other digging devices. They even have rides where you get to be inside the digging bucket. Apparently the United Kingdom has a crucial shortage of construction jobs available.
Image Via Hazelisles [Flickr]
4. Limestone Heritage, Malta –What could be more fun than limestone? Why anything of course! This exotic destination located on the island of Malta teaches kids about the fundamentals of limestone. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard to remove the “fun” from “fundamentals.”
Image Via llamnudds [Flickr]
5. Dickens World, UK –Do you have great expectations when it comes to your amusement parks? Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You can finally chill out in downtrodden 19th century England like the characters of Charles Dickens.
Image Via Mukluk Land website
6. Mukluk Land, AK –Alaska isn’t exactly known for being a crazy fun place for children and their amusement park is no exception. Their biggest attraction is the World’s Largest mukluk (a traditional soft boot worn in the Arctic). Aside from that, there is skee ball, mini-golf and big cabbage.
Image Via blatantgizmo [Flickr]
7. Pedro Land, SC –Why is there a Mexican theme park in the middle of South Carolina? Because who better to build a stereotypical amusement park based on the South of the Border than people who know nothing about Mexicans? Pink flamingos, hot tamales and really bad puns, like a mini golf course called the “Golf of Mexico,” run abound in this cheesy park.
Image Via the website Gallery
8. Harry Potter Themepark, FL –This is park may be unfinished, but it is sure to be completed and opened sometime in 2010. It’s going to be part of Universal Studios Florida. Finally you can put away your muggle wears and “let out your inner wizard.”
9. The Ocean Dome, Japan –Ever go to the beach and think, “I sure wish I could be having a simulated beach experience right now?” Here’s your chance. With real sand, manufactured waves, a private rain forest and a simulated volcanic eruption every hour, the Ocean Dome would be a great attraction for landlocked people in Utah. Unfortunately, its actual location lies within 1000 feet of a real beach in Miyazaki, Japan.
Image Via azkid2lt [Flickr]
10. Grutas Park, Lithuania –Hooray communism. Go USSR. Grutas Park is nicknamed “Stalin’s Word” -and for good reason. This Lithuanian theme park is dedicated to the area’s soviet-occupation. There’s not only a great statue garden of the communist heroes and a zoo, but also a fun gulag experience for all you history lovers out there.
Image Via Theme Park Review
11. BonBon Land, Denmark –Yes the colors and statues look crazy, but the madness doesn’t stop there. One roller coaster peaks with farting sounds being played just as you pass behind Henry Hound’s butt. Vomiting, pooping and breasts are in full force throughout this tasteless park, making it any 13 year old boy’s fantasy land.
Image Via Angie Torres [Flickr]
12. Suoi Tien Park, Vietnam –Sure Buddhism is all about sacrificing material goods and obtaining enlightenment, but roller coasters and water slides are fun too. You know what else is fun? A pond full of 1,500 live crocodiles that you can feed with meat attached to fishing poles. And just in case you really don’t get the message of Buddhism through the tons of golden statues, there is also a fun animatronics ride featuring the 12 torments of fell.
13. Shijingshan Amusement Park, China –If you thought the Chinese bootleg DVDs were a huge source of copyright infringement, just wait until you see the Shijingshan Amusement Park. Despite numerous copyright lawsuits from Disney, blatant knock offs of Minnie Mouse, Cinderella and Donald Duck still roam the park grounds, along with their friend Hello Kitty.
Image Via Semisvetik [Flickr]
14. Love Land, Korea –A lot of the attractions at this park are too adult for the general Neatorama audience. Even so, you’re certain to enjoy this sculpture of dogs making love with while flashing the peace sign. The owner hopes that the park will not only be fun, but be a good-source of education for newly weds.
Image Via San Sharma [Flickr]
15. Neverland Ranch, CA –Lock up your daughters –I mean sons. This park is an American classic, filled with tacky artwork, a zoo and rides. Unfortunately, this is one park that is long gone and will likely never rise again as the attractions have been moved out in the last year. Jackson said he no longer considers this park home since he claims the police officers “violated it.”
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Four Celebs Who Belong to Mensa (and two who don’t)
Update:I originally listed James Woods as a member of Mensa, and although multiple sources corroborated this fact, the Mensa Director of Operations contacted Alex to say that they have no evidence of it. They’ve tried to contact Woods to see what the deal is, but neither Woods nor his publicist have responded. So there you have it! And now we have proof that Neatorama has some very intelligent readers (we already knew that, though).
We all know them - the celebrities who are certainly pretty to look at but would probably be better off keeping their mouths shut lest they expose their stupidity. But they aren’t all that way - here are four famous people who are so smart they belong to Mensa, an international intelligence society that only admits people who score in the top two percentile of their approved intelligence tests (the Stanford-Binet is one, the Cattell is another). Translation: they’re really dang smart.
Asia Carrera
Some of you might be familiar with porn star Asia Carrera and some of you might not be. You don’t have to identify yourselves. But just because she’s in the pornography industry doesn’t mean she’s not smart. As a kid, she got grounded every time she got a “B” in school. Her grades and SAT scores were so high that she got a full ride to Rutgers, but turned to stripping to make some cash during school. She soon found her way into porn and became a big hit in the industry, but I bet you not many other big porn stars learned HTML so they could design and program their own website. Asia did. Her IQ, she says, has tested at 154 and 156.
Julie Peterson
Julie Peterson was the Playboy Playmate of the Month in February 1987, but she’s done a lot since then as well. For starters, she’s now Dr. Julie Peterson and has her own chiropractic practice now. For four years, she had a syndicated radio show for CNN called “Health Watch” that she produced, wrote and recorded. She’s an active member of The Society for Neuroscience. And, obviously, she’s a member of Mensa. But we might have guessed at her intelligence by her Playboy profile - her favorite books include Shibumi, Maia, Ramtha, and East of Eden. To compare, Anna Nicole Smith’s favorite authors were “The people who write my favorite soaps.” I know, I know, that’s not a very fair comparison.
Geena Davis
It’s not enough that she’s gorgeous and a successful actress - Geena Davis is also an accomplished athlete and, yes, a Mensan. She’s fluent in Swedish and her I.Q. has been reported at about 140, which is on par with George Washington. OK, we obviously don’t know Washington’s I.Q. for a fact, but a study was conducted in the 1920s that estimated the intelligence quotient of a bunch of leaders and scholars from the past. And when you think about it, isn’t being the lead actress in Earth Girls Are Easy just as brilliant as developing and leading the United States? (I kid.)
Glenne Headly
Yep, Tess Trueheart is super smart. Glenne is another member of the multiple languages club - she’s fluent in French and Spanish. She’s probably pretty well versed in American Sign Language as well, because she studied it intensely for her role in Mr. Holland’s Opus. Also, this has nothing to do with her intelligence (or does it?), but she was married to John Malkovich for six years in the ’80s. I don’t know about you, but I never would have made that connection.
Sharon Stone
Despite popular belief, Sharon Stone is not a member of Mensa. After she started to get a reputation as a bubbly blonde, Sharon told reporters that she was so smart that she belonged to the society that only admits people who score in the top two percent of their intelligence test. She maintained the story until 2002, when Jim Blackstone, Mensa’s national marketing director, called her out. After admitting that she wasn’t actually a member, she claimed that she did, however, go to a Mensa school. Blackstone says that couldn’t be true either, because no Mensa schools have existed since the early 1960s - Stone was born in 1958. That’s not to say that she wouldn’t qualify for Mensa, Blackstone pointed out - she reportedly has an I.Q. of 156 (higher than Abraham Lincoln’s supposed score).
James Woods
Although James Woods is certainly very accomplished, he is NOT a member of Mensa (see the disclaimer at the beginning of the article). However, his SAT scores put mine to shame (and probably yours, too), coming in at 1580, including a perfect 800 in the verbal section. After high school he moved on to MIT, where he was planning on majoring in political science. He didn’t quite make graduation, though – after joining the school’s drama troupe and acting in and directing a number of plays, James decided to drop out of MIT just shy of graduation to jumpstart his acting career. “It was a very wrenching and painful decision for me–in my senior year at MIT, on high dean’s list and full scholarships–to decide that maybe I wanted to be an artist,” he said. “Whether I’m making 30 grand a day or union scale, I have found something that I truly love, and that is something [my father] would have admired.” He dropped out of school in 1970 and just two years later he had his first major film role in Elia Kazan’s The Visitors. He followed that up with The Way We Were the next year and hasn’t really been hurting for roles ever since, so it looks like his decision to switch careers worked out. We’re hoping to hear his response to the Mensa issue!
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A Little Help: Hunt for Rogue Ad on Neatorama
We noticed a few comments complaining about ads with sound on Neatorama. We’d like to apologize for that and we want you to know that it’s not cool - we don’t purposely run ads with self-playing audio on the blog
Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to find that one rogue ad (I haven’t run across it myself), so we need your help: please let us know which ad is the culprit - and if you could, please include the result of this cookie dump, so we can really track down and ban the bugger: http://ad.yieldmanager.com/cookie (you can email both to alex AT neatorama DOT com, if you don’t want to put that in the comment)
Thank you!
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Wolfram Alpha: Blind to The Blogosphere
Since its debut a little over a week ago, I've been playing with Wolfram|Alpha. For those of you who don't know, it is an ambitious project by Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame).
Wolfram Alpha (I know, technically, it's Wolfram|Alpha, but I don't want to type in that vertical bar all the time) is not a search engine, in a sense that it returns webpages as query results like Google does - rather, it is a "computational knowledge engine." You and I may simply call it an "answer engine," ask it a question and it'll come up with the (usually right on the money) answer.
What is butter? Wolfie knows - it'll display the average nutrition facts. Ask it to convert $1 to British pounds, or the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Who starred in Casablanca? How is the weather in New York on May 26, 1987? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
Impressive, eh?
Now, Stephen is a very smart guy. Indeed, he wrote his first paper on particle physics at the tender age of 16, received a PhD from Caltech at 20, and became a professor there at 21. And to be fair, Wolfram Alpha is very young and heavily geared towards computations. Furthermore, the scope of what the engine "knows" in terms of content is limited to areas covered by trusted sources like reference libraries fed to it by its programmers.
But currently, there's one large gaping hole missing from Wolfram Alpha: it is blind to blogs. Sure it knows about the meaning of life, and it has its own blog, but it knows nothing - nada, zip, zilch - about the blogosphere.
Technorati? Maybe you meant technology instead. According to Wolfie, Gizmodo = komodo (the island, the language, or the movie - but strangely not the animal); Techcrunch = Techuchulco (a city in Mexico). Boing Boing = Boina (a volcano).
Ask it about Neatorama and Wolfie thinks that you mean Panorama (which I learned is actually a city in Greece, that, at the time of my query, has a warm 73°F weather with relative humidity of 50%, wind of 7 mph and few clouds).
At least this blog fared better than Lifehacker, which got "lumpsucker" instead.
Heck, ask what is a blog?, and it'll think you're asking about logarithms:
Still, overall, I think Wolfram Alpha is a brilliant first step towards (dare I say it) an artificial intelligence - a universal computer a la Isaac Asimov's fantastic short story The Last Question. And I'm sure the hardworking people over at Wolfram Research will rectify this oversight soon.
But whatever you do, don't get Wolfie mad. This is what you'll get.
If you don't stop, it'll probably shove you out the pod bay door ...
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Five Other Remembrance Days Across the World
Those of us in the U.S. are celebrating Memorial Day today - a day to honor lost loved ones and soldiers (more on that in a minute). But our Memorial Day is just one of many Remembrance days across the world. Here are the traditions of a few of them (and a little explanation of ours).
U.S. Memorial Day
The U.S. Memorial Day was originally conceived to honor soldiers (Union soldiers, specifically) who had fallen in the Civil War, so you can see it has been a tradition for quite some time. It’s hard to say exactly where it started, because more than two dozen cities claim they originated the day, but in 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson officially declared Waterloo, N.Y., the home of Memorial Day. Although some of us forget what a solemn occasion the day is, at least one group of people remember: the soldiers of the 3rd U.S. Infantry spend the Thursday prior to the holiday placing small American flags at the graves of more than a quarter of a million gravestones in Arlington National Cemetery. They spend the rest of the weekend patrolling the grounds to make sure each and every flag remains upright and flying.
Anzac Day
Every year on the 25th of April, Australia and New Zealand honor their soldiers - the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) - who fought in the Gallipoli Campaign of WWI. Nearly 11,000 soldiers died during the eight-month campaign (and nearly 80,000 died in the war overall). The holiday was officially declared in 1920 and ever since, people have honored some obvious traditions - memorial services, marches and events honoring veterans - and some not-so obvious ones. For instance, some people play two-up, an Australian gambling game, because it was one of the ways soldiers amused themselves. And it’s not uncommon to add a little rum to your coffee that day to honor the “gunfire breakfast” some soldiers used to warm their bellies before battle. Like the United States’ Memorial Day, Anzac Day has now broadened to honor all loved ones who have passed away and not just the soldiers.
Vimy Ridge Day
Dodenherdenking
Volkstrauertag
The German memorial day was proposed in 1919 and was meant to remember those who died in WWI. Some thought it was appropriate and others didn’t, largely due to the fact that there was a dispute over what laws the Reich could enact and what laws the states could enact. It created a lot of confusion (and probably some angry politicians), so it wasn’t really regularly celebrated until about 1934, when the Nazis declared it an official holiday. Except they mangled the meaning all around and called it Heldengedenktag, the Day of Commemoration of Heroes. It’s not a bad idea in theory, but the Nazis turned it into inappropriate (and scary) hero-worship. That version of Volkstrauertag ended in 1945, but in 1948, the country brought back the holiday with its original intent. To commemorate the occasion, two Sundays before Advent, various goverment officials from the Chancellor to the Bundespräsident give speeches and the song “Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden” (I had a comrade) is played. Photo via Reservistenverband.
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Neatorama Mystery Sale Update
Phew! It’s. Finally. Done! It’s Friday before Memorial Day and we’ve packed and shipped out every single orders of the latest Mystery Sale. (Thank you to everybody who participated - You’ve really helped support the blog!)
It has taken us just a little over two weeks to ship, which is a significant improvement over the Mystery Sale back in February. While many of you got your shipments within just a few days, some of you are still waiting. The latest wave of shipments will take a few business days to arrive (a bit longer if you’re outside of the United States because of customs clearance). I appreciate your patience - your packages are on their way! Meanwhile, we’ll continue to work to improve the item selections and shipping time.
I’m sure you’re curious to know about the special Mystery Sale items. Well, here they are:
Many of you have gotten Adam Koford’s latest book, the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out. At the list price of $12.95, it’s a steal! Plus, be sure to check the front jacket - Adam has kindly signed a Neatorama book plate you can affix to the book. It’s surely going to be a collector’s item! 
I’ve been slacking on my posting duties on Neatorama - so, I’m looking forward to getting back on that horse … after I catch my breath!
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Six Roller Coaster Records
I love a good roller coaster. It doesn’t have to have a million inverts and upside downs or be the fastest for me to like it - I mean, I’ll take those too, but I really just enjoy any roller coaster. Here are a few that stand out from the pack for their records in height, speed, or nudity. Yes, nudity. Enjoy!
Oldest Operating Wooden Coaster in the U.S.
Leap-the-Dips at Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was in operation for 83 years before closing in 1985. Many people thought that was the end of Leap-the-Dips, but people rallied to bring the coaster back and managed to raise enough money to have the old girl restored. It re-opened Memorial Day weekend, 1999, meaning that it has now been in operation for a total of 93 years. Leap-the-Dips isn’t going to impress anyone with its speed (the fastest it gets is about 18 mph) or its crazy tricks, but it definitely has the nostalgia factor and people form huge lines just to ride it. Want to give it a shot but doubt you’ll be making it to Pennsylvania anytime soon? Try the virtual experience:
Oldest Operating Steel Coaster
Fellow Disneyphiles already know this - it’s the Matterhorn at Disneyland. It opened on June 14, 1959, about four years after Disneyland first opened its gates. Disney apparently got the idea when he visited Switzerland to film the movie Third Man on the Mountain. Although the Matterhorn has gone through a few renovations over the years, the operating mechanisms really haven’t changed. What was probably the biggest refurbishment took place in 1978 and was really just to theme the ride better. Prior to the renovation, the inside of the ride wasn’t very impressive - it was just barely disguised as rock, but that was about it. The ‘78 redo made the inside look like ice tunnels and caves.
Fastest and Tallest Wooden Coaster
Son of Beast takes both of these title, and it also happens to be the wooden roller coaster with the biggest drop. This makes sense, since the point of the high spots of most roller coasters is to send riders plummeting dramatically. Son of Beast is at King’s Island near Cincinnati and is billed as the sequel to the same park’s “The Beast” rollercoaster, which, incidentally, is the longest wooden roller coaster in the world. Son of Beast reaches a maximum height of 218 feet and drops 214 feet, reaching speeds of up to 78 mph. Not bad! Up until 2006, it was also the only wooden roller coaster in the world to incorporate a loop. The loop was removed in December 2006, ostensibly to ensure that they could use lighter trains. But after an incident that caused 27 injuries to riders just a few months earlier, you have to wonder if the loop was deemed unsafe. Photo via Shawn Kay of Coasterglobe.
Most Inversions
That particular honor goes to the Colossus at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England, with a total of 10 inversions. Well, technically the Colossus is tied for the honor with the Tenth Ring Roller Coaster at Chimelong Paradise in China, but that ride is an exact replica of the Colossus so I’m not sure it counts. Here’s what it looks like if you’re in the front seats:
Most Naked Riders
You gotta love this one, and yes, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed it. In 2004, 32 people consented to ride the Nemesis roller coaster in at Alton Towers in England buck naked. “Why?” would be a suitable question, and it appears the only answer is, “To break the previous record.” Before that, the Nemesis Inferno at Thorpe Park held the record for nude riders with 28. No video of that one… Sorry! Photo via ThemeParkReview.
First Rollercoaster with a Vertical Drop
VERTICAL vertical. Not “pretty straight down,” but literally straight down. This first goes to the Oblivion, also at Alton Towers. The steel coaster opened in 1998, and it’s not the fastest or the highest - at 68 feet tall, it’s a a third of the height of Son of Beast. But what it lacks in height, it makes up for in adrenaline rush. The cars actually plummet into a tunnel into the ground, as you might imagine, but that doesn’t make it any less scary when you’re sitting at the top of the plunge.
What’s your favorite roller coaster? They’re definitely not death-defying, but I love Disney coasters. The zero-to-sixty in less than three seconds of the Aerosmith Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster delights me every time, and Space Mountain is actually terrifying if you’ve ever seen it with the lights turned on - the tracks are so close together it’s a wonder no one has lost a hand from putting their arms in the air during the ride. The only roller coaster to ever make me sick was the Sidewinder at Hersheypark in Hershey, Pa. It sends you backward through some rolls and loops and I just couldn’t deal with the backward motion. Share your experiences in the comments!
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Four Really Fast Runners
I’ve been training for a 20k that takes place at the end of May, and I can definitively say that you will never find me on anyone’s “Fastest Runners” list. “Slowest Runners,” “Saddest Runners,” “Runners with the Worst Form,” “Runners Who Hate GU the Most,” maybe. But not “Fastest Runners.” However, if you’re looking for some inspiration to give your jogs a little boost, here are four guys who should do the trick.
Roger Bannister
Sir Bannister is the first man in history to run a mile in less than four minutes, but he wasn’t the only one in pursuit of the elusive goal: American Wes Santee had been clocking in at 4:02.4 and Australian John Landy was down to 4:02.00. On the magic day, May 6, 1954, Bannister almost scrapped the whole run. It was windy and he preferred to save his energy for another run when the wind wouldn’t ruin his time. But Mother Nature smiled upon him - the winds died down and Roger consented to race. When the announcer took the mic to tell the excited stadium what the final time was, he purposely drew out the announcement as long as possible to tease the masses. When he finally said, “3…” the crowd went nuts and drowned out the rest of the result, which was 3:59.4.
He only held the record for six weeks, though: John Landy surpassed the sub-four-mile mark by just a sliver (3:57.9). On August 7 of the same year, though, Bannister got his chance to win the title back when he and Landy faced off at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Although Landy led for the majority of the race, Bannister came up with his famous “Bannister Burst” in the last quarter of the race and sped past Landy to win. Too bad Landy ended up retaining the record anyway: they both came in at times slower than Landy’s previous 3:57.9. You can watch it here - it’s pretty fascinating. I can’t imagine running a mile in less than four minutes and still losing. The current record of 3:43.13 was set by Hicham el Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999.
Eamonn Coghlan
A sub-four-minute mile is incredibly impressive, no doubt, but it’s even more impressive when you’re over 40. And so far, Irishman Eamonn Coghlan is the only man older than 39 to have clocked 1600 m in under 240 seconds. Ever. Eamonn was no amateur runner - in the ’70s, famous track coach Jumbo Elliott offered Coghlan a scholarship to come run for Villanova. Coghlan accepted, and there he won four NCAA titles. He ran his first under-four in 1975 and has since accomplished the feat 83 times, including his record-setting over 40 run in 1994. He was 41 at the time. Interestingly, a sub-four over the age of 50 has never been accomplished, so maybe we’ll see another record out of Eamonn Coglan yet. And if the name sounds familiar to you, but the sport seems all wrong, that’s because Eamonn’s son, also named Eamonn, is a golf pro in the U.S.
Bill Rodgers
Usain Bolt
I think I’ll do a follow-up on amazing female runners next. If you have some suggestions, leave me a comment and let me know!
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The Many Sides of Shel Silverstein
Most of us are familiar with Shel Silverstein through his amazing works of art and poetry for children. But Sheldon Alan Silverstein was a lot more than that, so to honor the 10th anniversary of his passing, here are a few sides to Shel that you may not be familiar with.
The Playboy Writer and Cartoonist
Shel wasn’t quite in on the ground floor of Playboy, but he probably hit the first floor. He and Hugh Hefner had a lot in common - they both grew up in Chicago, they both served in the army, they were both cartoonists and they both loved women (more on that later). At the time, the magazine was so new that when Shel didn’t hear back from Hef within a month or so of dropping his cartoons off for review, he just assumed that the fledgling magazine had gone under. When he went back to pick up his portfolio, though, Hef personally told Shel that he was buying several cartoons and forked over a check right then and there. But the check was more to Shel than just money - it represented his ability to support himself on his talent, which his dad had mercilessly mocked him about for years. He cashed Hef’s check immediately, went home and threw the money down on his parents’ table and told them he was moving out and was going to support himself as a cartoonist. Shel’s first work for the Bunny Pages showed up in the August 1956 issue. He quickly moved from penning cartoons to doing entire travel articles where he acted as writer, photographer and illustrator; the first one appeared in the February, 1957 issue (”Return to Tokyo”). He did a whole series of travelogues and they became the second-most beloved part of the magazine (I’ll let you guess what takes first place).
The Ladies’ Man
It may well have been his first “real” job at Playboy that shaped his love of women, or maybe it was because he had never had much luck with girls in high school. But Shel loved women and had a voracious appetite for them. But he never lied to them - he was very straightforward that he was all about his career and just wanted to have fun flings, never a relationship. Diane Chandler, the Playmate of the Year for 1966, said Shel had a particular way of shooting down women who had gotten a little too attached to him: “He instantly saw the signs and would say something like, ‘Well, let’s see, where shall I put you on my list?’ to let the girls know that they shouldn’t expect anything from him.” But for the most part, girls were OK with that. Women flocked to Shel by the hundreds and would do just about anything for him. He even had a sampler on his wall done by a Playboy Playmate. It said, “Shel Silverstein told me to make this for him.”
The Dad
We don’t know much about Shel’s relationship with his children, but we know that he had two of them (and given the rate he went through women, maybe more). His daughter, Shoshanna, was born on June 30, 1970. Because of Shel’s nomadic and completely unpredictable lifestyle, she stayed with her mom, Susan Hastings. Sadly, Susan died in 1975 when Shanna was just five, but instead of Shel taking her in, Shanna went to live with her maternal grandparents. Apparently there was no question of Shel settling down to be a full-time dad. Sadly, Shanna died of a cerebral aneurysm just six years later at the age of 11. He dedicated A Light in the Attic to her.
The second, Matt, was born on November 10, 1983. His mom was Sarah Spencer, a woman who drove the conch train in Key West and inspired Shel’s “The Great Conch Train Robbery” song. Shel bought a house in Key West and settled down there - at least “settled” for Shel; he still came and went - and spent much more time with Matt than he had with Shanna. Friends said that though he didn’t discuss it much, one of his biggest regrets was that he hadn’t been a better father to his daughter. Shel dedicated Falling Up to Matt.
The Friend
It seems like creative people find one another - it has happened with countless literary groups for years, from Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald to J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. And it happened with Shel, who was close friends with a number of creative types - Herb Gardner, Lois Nettleton, Bob Gibson and LeRoy Neiman.
He was also very good friends with Jean Shepherd - yep, A Christmas Story Jean Shepherd, who was also published in Playboy. Shel wrote the liner notes and drew the cover for Jean’s 1959 album, “Jean Shepherd and Other Foibles.” He managed to sneak the words “Jean Shepherd is a dirty rotten, one-way sneaky son of a bitch” into the art by spelling it out backward. In fact, it was because of Jean that Shel wrote one of his most famous songs…
The Lyricist
…”A Boy Named Sue.” Yep, Shel was an accomplished songwriter who had several hit songs under his belt, but this one is probably the most beloved. And if you didn’t know that Shel wrote the lyrics, wait until you hear it again - you’ll shake your head and realize that of course he wrote those lyrics. The story goes that he was inspired to write the song after hearing Jean Shepherd frequently recall how much he got teased as a kid for having a girl’s name. He also wrote Cash’s “25 Minutes to Go; “Sylvia’s Mother,” “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” and “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” all originally performed by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show; “One’s on the Way,” performed by Loretta Lynn; and “The Unicorn” by The Irish Rovers. He didn’t find it odd to switch from Playboy to children’s poems to song writing - Shel believed that creative people could move about within their fields pretty easily:
“I think that if you’re truly creative, you can work in certain related fields of creativity, but then there are others that are beyond you. For instance, a man who works well with words might work as a writer and as a poet and as a lyricist. But if he tried to work in sculpture, he might get absolutely nowhere. And a guy who is very visual might easily work in painting and drawing, could also work in costume design, if he leaned that way, could work in stage setting, and in those related fields. I do believe that a person who is truly observant in one of the arts will be truly observant and sensitive in the others as well, but it’s his ability to express these things that would limit him. I believe that a man who is a sensitive painter is sensitive to life, and therefore would be sensitive as a writer or as a storyteller, but having the ability to write is something more than merely seeing. Having the ability to paint is something more than merely seeing the colors, seeking the form. It’s in execution, in skill.”
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The Top Four Deadliest Volcanoes Ever
When we think of volcanic disasters, the first couple that usually spring to mind are the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D. that wiped out Pompeii and the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980. But while these are among the most famous eruptions, they are far from the most destructive in terms of environment, property and loss of human life. Here are the four widely considered to be the deadliest volcanoes ever.
Mount Tambora, 1815
Mount Tambora’s 1815 eruption was so fierce that the world hadn’t seen anything to equal its force since 181 A.D. during the Lake Taupo eruption of New Zealand. We think the Mount St. Helens eruption was pretty bad, but this one had columns nearly three times the height of Mt. St. Helens and topped it by two points on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. We know that 10,000 people died as a direct result of the eruption itself, but long-term implications were even worse: some estimates say another 82,000 perished as a result of agricultural and environmental devastation. Lt. Philips, who reported to British statesman Sir Thomas Raffles, was dispatched to the island of Sumbawa, home to the deadly volcano, to observe the impact. His report said,
“There were still on the road side the remains of several corpses, and the marks of where many others had been interred: the villages almost entirely deserted and the houses fallen down, the surviving inhabitants having dispersed in search of food.”
The effects were seen even as far away as London, although the results there were more aesthetic than horrible: the sunsets and twilights were practically technicolor for a period of time in 1815. It’s also thought to be one of the causes of the Year Without a Summer - It was so cold during the summer of 1816 that ice was found on rivers in Pennsylvania as late as August.
Krakatoa, 1883
Mount Pelee, 1902
Although Krakatoa almost took out a whole island, Mt. Pelee at Martinique really did demolish the entire town of Saint-Pierre, which was the biggest city in Martinique at the time. Although the final blow wasn’t dealt until May 8, signs of impending doom had been creeping out of the volcano since the end of April, when the area around Mt. Pelee was coated with a layer of volcanic ash. By April 27, the whole town reeked of sulfur. Six days later, even the animals knew something was brewing. There were reports of swarms of ants and centipedes leaving the volcano area and invading the town (which sounds like a horror movie from the ‘70s); there were so many venomous snakes in the streets of Saint-Pierre that soldiers had to be called in to shoot them. After a few more days of ash clouds, volcanic lightning and small eruptions, Pelee finally reached the tipping point. Some people had evacuated, but many more stayed because the eruption of the nearby Soufrière volcano convinced people that the worst was over. They were wrong. A pyroclastic cloud – a cloud made up of insanely hot (1830 °F) gases, steam and dust – rushed down over the down and ignited just about everything it came in touch with. People died by breathing in the deadly gas almost instantly; there were only three known survivors of the some 30,000 people who had stayed. Louis-Auguste Cyparis was in jail when the blast happened and the ventilation was so bad that the pyroclastic cloud didn’t have such severe effects on him. He was still very badly burned, though. Another survivor, Havivra Da Ifrile, managed to get in a little boat and row to cave where she played with her friends. She said she heard the hiss of the pyroclastic cloud hitting the cold water and passed out as the water level took her boat precariously closer to the roof of the cave. She was rescued by a French boat after drifting two miles out to sea. The third survivor was Léon Compere-Léandre, a shoemaker who lived on the edge of town. He was with four other people and said he watched them just drop dead even though they weren’t on fire. It’s not actually known how he managed to survive because shortly afterward he dropped out of the public eye. Most speculate that he jumped into the ocean when the pyroclastic flow hit, and although the ocean water was boiling by this point, it wasn’t lethal. Others think he outran the flow, which isn’t very plausible, but he was rescued while running about six kilometers away from his house.
Today, scientists are keeping an eye on Mt. Pelee – it’s one of the most active volcanoes in that part of the world and has a high likelihood of erupting again.
Mount Ruiz, 1985
Mount Ruiz in Colombia is the most recent eruption on our list, exploding just 24 years ago. It’s a lot like a modern-day Pompeii – most of Armero, the city it destroyed, is still buried under mud and ash and debris. But it wasn’t the eruption that killed the city, it was all of the things that happened as a result of it. The main culprits were the megatsunami and the lahars (a kind of volcanic mudflow). It’s estimated that the megatsunami was moving faster than 300 miles per hour when it hit the town and immediately blasted it into non-existence; it took less than 15 minutes from the time the volcano erupted to the near-total disappearance of Armero. A 13-year-old girl named Omayra Sanchez became the face of the disaster when photographer Frank Fournier took her picture (be warned: it’s haunting) as she was trapped in concrete and rubble. Rescue teams tried to save Omayra, but she was so entrenched in debris up to her neck that there was no way to get her out without killing her. She survived for three days while people around her just watched and tried to comfort her. She finally succumbed to gangrene and hypothermia on November 16, but not until after the world had learned of her plight. Omayra was just one of 23,000 victims of the Mount Ruiz eruption.
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Movie Trivia: Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
I haven’t seen the original Ocean’s Eleven (blasphemy, I know), but I know I like this one quite a bit, even though it’s not the type of movie I would normally gravitate toward. Before we get to the trivia, we’ll do a quick cast recap:
Danny Ocean - George Clooney
Rusty Ryan - Brad Pitt
Frank Catton - Bernie Mac
Reuben Tishkoff - Elliott Gould
Virgil Malloy - Casey Affleck
Turk Malloy - Scott Caan
Livingston Dell - Eddie Jemison
Yen - Shaobo Qin
Saul Bloom - Carl Reiner
Linus Caldwell - Matt Damon
Basher Tarr - Don Cheadle
Tess Ocean - Julia Roberts
The casinos all gave the cast and crew more or less free reign of when and where they could shoot in the casinos. The exception, of course, were the money vaults and any behind-the-scenes corridors and things like that. Those were shot on a soundstage. It was a particularly big deal that Caesar’s Palace allowed them to film a scene depicting a robber being shot directly in front of their place (during the flashback scenes of previous Vegas heists at the beginning). Steven Soderbergh credited this entirely to Jerry Weintraub’s Vegas connections.
Carl Reiner accepted his role just five days before the first scene with his character was scheduled to be shot. Alan Arkin was supposed to play Saul but had to drop out at the last minute.
Brad Pitt is wearing a very large ring shown prominently in the scene where Rusty cons the young stars. He later mentioned that it was given to him by his wife and making sure it was caught on camera was his little to wink to her. At the time, his wife was Jennifer Aniston.
Matt Damon was such an adept pickpocket that the part near the beginning where he steals the wallet from a man on the el actually had to be slowed down so viewers could catch what he was doing.
Shaobo had never acted before. He didn’t speak much English but was very adept at understanding when his lines were and had a natural knack for timing (according to Steven Soderbergh).
Rusty Ryan is always eating because, basically, Brad Pitt thought it would be funny and appropriate - since these guys are always on the go in the movie, he thought that they would probably be eating on the go as well. It became a running joke to pick out and incorporate food for each of his scenes.
The directors, set designers and writers all purposely stayed away from obvious Rat Pack and Sinatra references. They wanted the movie to stand on its own and didn’t want to make the characters complete cliches.
The movie’s whole premise - that casinos have to keep enough money in their vaults to cover every chip currently in play on the floor - is a lie. In reality, casinos try very hard to keep the amount of extra cash in their vaults down to a minimum.
It’s commonly believed that Ben Affleck has a little cameo somewhere in the movie - after all, his best friend and brother were two of the Eleven. Although he did come to set, he is never actually in the movie. Director Steven Soderbergh and Producer Jerry Weintraub have cameos, though. Soderbergh is part of the group that bombs the vault at the beginning and Weintraub talks with Saul before Saul goes to talk with Terry Benedict.
This tidbit is lifted directly from TV Guide, but it’s too interesting to not include: When Rusty runs through the list of scams the group is going to have to pull, the names he gives them aren’t just random. The quote: “Off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking at a Boeski, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.”
And the explanation from Steven Soderbergh:
“First of all, [screenwriter] Ted Griffin and I completely made the terms up. We felt we had to come up with some funny, Damon Runyon-esque turns of phrase that weren’t arbitrary we did sit down and think them out. So, Carl Reiner is the Boesky, as in Ivan, the powerful, rich magnate, inside kind of guy. Jim Brown is the confrontation Bernie Mac has with Matt Damon the ‘don’t mess with me or you’re in for it’ moment. The two Jethros are Casey Affleck and Scott Caan, the idea being ‘we’re going to need gear heads, car fanatics…some people who are total hillbilly under-the-hood guys.’ A Leon Spinks is the disruption of the boxing match: A sporting event with some controversy to it that’s what Leon Spinks means to me. The Miss Daisy association is driving; that was the SWAT van, a ruse involving transportation. The Ella Fitzgerald is the tape of the fake vault, which they’re going to play back and have [Andy Garcia's character] Benedict think it’s live. ‘Is it live, or is it Memorex?’”
There are at least a couple of points in the movie where Steven Soderbergh didn’t want to meticulously arrange 11 actors, so he gave them the freedom to go where they wanted within the shot and do what they thought their characters would do. The first is when Danny Ocean is explaining the whole scam to them - Soderbergh told the actors to just position themselves wherever they wanted to in the room. The second is at the end when they are all standing in front of the Bellagio reveling in their accomplishment. He told them all to wander away from the fountain as they felt it was appropriate and gave them no timeframe or order to work with.
Warren Beatty, Ralph Fiennes and Michael Douglas were all considered for the part of Terry Benedict. Ewan McGregor was considered for Basher, Don Cheadle’s character. Mark Wahlberg was originally supposed to play Linus, Matt Damon’s role.
When Brad Pitt plays the doctor that come to the rescue of ‘Lymon Zerga,’ he’s wearing a wig that Mike Myers used to rehearse for Austin Powers. Brad was so unrecognizable when he put the wig and the glasses on, he wandered around the casino for a good 20 minutes just enjoying his anonymity.
Julia Roberts only spent two weeks on set.
Speaking of Julia, watch for her name in the credits. Her credit reads, “And introducing Julia Roberts as Tess.”
Don Cheadle was originally not listed in the credits. When asked why, he said that some things went down on the set behind the scenes that he didn’t like, so he told the producers to just take his name off. But it must not have been too bad - he appeared in both Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen.
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Neatorama Update - May 12, 2009
Hello everybody - I'd like to take a minute and give you an update on all things Neatorama.
Mystery Sale - Thank you to everyone who participated! We've been working hard to improve the turnaround time. The first wave of shipment has started - we will be sending out packages for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don't know whose packages will be shipped when. We'll have another update soon!
Upcoming
Queue - We continue to be pleased with your submissions to the
Neatorama Upcoming Queue.
As a token of our appreciation, the top 5 submitters (well, 6 actually
since the last position is a three-way tie) of April 2009 will get free stuff from
the store (oh, let's pick one: the Ice
Invaders Ice Tray).
We will continue to reward top submitters of the UQ. As the feature is still new, you stand a very good chance in being a top submitter (For hints on how to get your posts promoted to the front page, please read the UQ FAQ and Tips).
Round Up - We've never really done any weekly round up summarizing the neatest and greatest posts on the blog, and I think it's time that we start doing that. Since the beginning of May, we've done 155 posts on Neatorama. That's a lot of posts to keep track, so here are a few noteworthy ones in case you missed them:
- Neatorama's Facebook Fan Page - I don't know what you guys do at Facebook (I'm a luddite that way), but thanks to Neatoramanaut Becky, we now have a Facebook Fan Page. Becky told me that right after the post, the page got 300 fans. It's at a little above 800 fans the last time I checked. Plus all those nice comments on the "Wall." Maybe I should join Facebook after all ...
- Most controversial: Churchgoers Are More Likely to Support Torture
- WTF-iest (is that a word? It should be!): Meet the Woolies
- Cutest: Sonya Loves Her Nom Noms (though I did get emails chastising me about allowing such a post on Neatorama as it legitimizes/will-only-serve-to-encourage people to get slow lorises as pets)
- Best UQ post: America's First Face Transplant Patient Hopes Her Story Teaches People Not To Judge, submitted by Geekazoid
- Mea culpa: Cab Driver Becomes Star For Good Deed - in this UQ frontpaged post, we painted Argentina with a too-broad-of-a-brush. My apologies to our neighbors to the South (See what you did, baiwabel ;) )
- Neatest exclusive posts on Neatorama: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Emoticons :) | The Hindenburg - What Happened? | Music Tidbits: Perry Farrell
- ... and my favorite post: 200 New Frog Species Found: Madagascar Shut. Down. Everything!! (Though to understand it, you have to have played Pandemic 2 or be up with the Web shenanigans)
What do you think? Should we do a weekly round up of sorts?
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Five New York City Riots
On May 8, 1970, construction workers clashed with students and anti-war protesters in New York in what became known as the Hard Hat riot. But it’s far from the only riot to ever happen in New York City (as I’m sure residents can attest to). Here are a few of them big enough to get their own titles.
The Hard Hat riot
It was four days after four students were fatally shot at Kent State and the country was in a state of unrest. In New York, several hundred protesters gathered at Broad and Wall Street to hold a vigil for the slain students. By noon, more than 1,000 people had gathered and the vigil had escalated to a rally, and about 200 construction workers had had enough. They made signs reading things like “America, Love it or Leave it” and got right up against the police line that separated them from the students. They obeyed it for a few minutes, but the tension got to be too much and the construction workers started chasing the students through the street, beating some of them severely with fists, clubs and crowbars. The construction worker mob fought their way into City Hall and demanded that the flag be raised to full mast again - it had been lowered to half mast to honor the dead at Kent State. Fearful of further damage from the mob, the Deputy Mayor ordered the flag to be raised. The riot eventually fizzled out on its own. Six arrests were made and more than 70 people were injured. When mayor John Lindsay accused the police of standing idly by and letting the riot happen, thousands and thousands (some reports claim up to 150,000 while others say only 60,000) of construction works and other blue-collar workers peacefully protested by marching through Manhattan on May 20. Photo via Five Feet of Fury
The Flour Riot of 1837
Picture the outrage that people experience every time the price of a barrel of gas goes up, then throw in extreme poverty and unemployment - up to a third of the working population was jobless. That’s basically what happened in 1837 when the cost of flour went up from $5.62 a barrel to a whopping $12 a barrel. The price of everything was skyrocketing and it was sending people to the poorhouse. People organized and decided to meet at City Hall to rally against people who were price-gouging - everyone, they said, from landlords to flour merchants. Then someone started naming names - Eli Hart was allegedly hoarding flour, and the crowd was in the mood to do something about it. Hundreds of people stormed down Broadway to Washington Street and forced their way into the building. Attempts to control the mob were completely useless and the mayor ended up fleeing while the crowd tossed barrels of flour out of the windows so people could scoop it up in boxes and pails. The flour, it is said, was nearly a foot deep in the street. The riot only died out when backup police and militia arrived. By this time, Hart’s flour had been cleaned out and the crowd had started to loot other flour dealers.
The Tompkins Square Riot
Apparently things weren’t much better even 40 years later. On January 13, 1874, thousands of unemployed immigrant workers and Socialist obtained a permit to have a mass meeting in Tompkins Square. They wanted the mayor to establish a program that would create jobs. Despite having all of the legal papers necessary to hold the demonstration, the city decided that having thousands of upset people meet to discuss the mayor maybe wasn’t the best idea and revoked the permit. It didn’t matter: more than 7,000 people showed up the next day anyway. Police didn’t give them a chance to have a peaceable meeting; they immediately dispersed the crowd by beating people with clubs. Samuel Gompers recorded the events and said that police on horseback were attacking anyone they could reach, even women and children. He called it “an orgy of brutality.” Photo by R. Wampers
Tompkins Square Riot, Part Deux
More than 100 years later, there was more unrest in the East Village. Apparently Tompkins Square Park had become a haven for the homeless and “rowdy youth” and neighborhood residents were sick of it. The Community Board eventually decided that it would enact a 1 a.m. curfew to try to curb some of the late-night gatherings that were going on in the park. Some people definitely didn’t support this decision, including anarchists who were protesting in defense of the homeless and some citizens who felt that the police were trying to take the park away from the public. A rally was organized for July 31, but the police were tipped off and a small riot occurred, resulting in four arrests and injuries to at least 10. Another rally was planned for August 6, and the police showed up in droves this time. A bloody riot ensured; a New York Times reporter referred to the place as a “bloody war zone.” By dawn, more than 38 people were injured, nine people were arrested and six complaints of police brutality had been filed. Rightly so, it seems: it was later determined that the police charged the crowd unjustly. Allen Ginsberg said the police were beating up bystanders who weren’t even involved and another witness said he saw a couple who merely came out of a grocery store get clubbed down for no apparent reason. One man trying simply to hail a taxi was beaten by an officer and the whole thing was caught on tape. Photo via Blog Blabbin
Harlem Riot of 1935
On March 19, 1935, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican kid was caught shoplifting a penknife worth 10 cents from a five-and-dime store across from the Apollo. He was caught by an employee at the store who threatened to take the kid down to the basement and “beat the hell out of him,” so the kid bit the employee in the hand. The police were called and an ambulance showed up to treat the bite (which must have been a heck of a bite). Thanks to a woman who had witnessed the threat on the shoplifter, a crowd gathered outside of the building and assumed that the ambulance was for the shoplifter. When, by coincidence, a hearse parked outside of the store, the rumor started to swirl that the kid had been beaten to death. And thus started the first recorded race riot in Harlem’s history. Things escalated so that by the early evening of the same day, the front window of the five-and-dime store had been shattered by rocks and looting started to happen in stores surrounding it. Stores in the area started to post signs stating that they employed all races, hoping to deflect some destruction. The rioting continued into the early morning, when the shoplifter was photographed standing next to a policeman so his picture could be circulated to convince the rioters that he was totally fine. Photo via BlackPast.org
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