Tweeting from Lollapalooza!
One of the good things about living in the midwest is that while I may not live in a big city, a bunch of them are within decent driving distance – Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha. Milwaukee and St. Louis aren’t too bad.
Anyway, as such, I’m headed to Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend! And I’ll be Tweeting as I go, so if you can’t be there to enjoy the extremely varied selection of music, you are welcome to live vicariously through me. I’m a little bummed the Beastie Boys won’t be playing, but I totally understand why they can’t be there.
Bands that are definitely on my “To Watch” list include Manchester Orchestra, Heartless Bastards, the Decemberists, the Arctic Monkeys, Animal Collective, Tool, Vampire Weekend, Snoop, the Killers and the Silversun Pickups.
If you have any other recommendations or just want to follow along as we check out cool bands and try to hit up some local culture (the Shedd Aquarium is on our list, as well as the Chicago Art Institute), leave me a Tweet. And if you’re already following me on Twitter, you should probably switch to this new account – the old one got hacked by spammers and was suspended.
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Movie Trivia: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Johnny Depp is everywhere lately, isn’t he? Public Enemies is in theaters now, the trailer for Alice in Wonderland was just released, and now it’s been announced that he is going to be starring in Dark Shadows. I love Johnny Depp (and Tim Burton), so I’m thrilled about all of this. In fact, it made me want to revisit another one of their collaborations.
Check out the costumes the kids are wearing during Willy’s Halloween flashback – three of them are wearing costumes that look like Lock, Shock, and Barrel, Oogie Boogie’s evil helpers in A Nightmare Before Christmas. You have to look quick though – they run by at the very beginning of the scene from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen.
When the gang is riding down the chocolate river just after they see the “Whipped Cream” room, they pass a room labeled “Jelly Beans.” If you pause it and go into slo-mo, you’ll see that the next room is labeled “Beetle Juicing.”
If you love bad puns, you’ll love this one – you probably remember the scene where the group is touring the factory and they make a brief stop at the secretary, who is also an Oompa Loompa played by Deep Roy. The title plaque on her desk says “Taste Accountant.” It’s a silly little reference to the phrase, “There’s no accounting for taste.” Apparently, there is!
In the edible meadow scene, the tube that vacuums the chocolate up from the lake is stuck into a flying saucer-looking thing, which is because it is. It’s actually one of the saucers from Burton’s Mars Attacks.
People who were considered for the role of Willy Wonka: Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, John Cleese, Robert DeNiro (can you imagine?!), Michael Keaton, Marilyn Manson, Leslie Nielsen, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Patrick Stewart, Ben Stiller, Will Smith and Robin Williams.
A bunch of famous T.V. dads were considered for the role of Mike Teavee’s dad – Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson), Tim Allen (Tim Taylor), Ed O’Neill (Al Bundy), Bob Saget (Danny Tanner), and Ray Romano (Ray Barone), among others.
Some of the other buttons in the Glass Elevator: Fragile Egos, Spewed Vegetables, Root Beer Googles, Nice Plums, Secretarial Poodles. Heart-Shaped Lungs, People Poo and Blackberry Sausages.
When Willy and the kids are checking out all of Wonka’s various candy-making rooms, they pass one with a bunch of pink sheep. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Wonka remarks. This is a reference to Ed Wood, another Burton and Depp collaboration – real-life director Ed Wood had a thing for wearing pink angora sweaters.
The actress who plated Grandma Georgina said she had her pick of which grandma to play. After reading the whole script, she picked Grandma Georgina because she’s the one who gets to kiss Johnny Depp. I like the way that lady thinks.
Willy Wonka’s cane is filled with Nerds candy.
The little boy who played Augustus Gloop wore a fat suit for the role.
A bunch of people saw the similarities between Willy Wonka and Michael Jackson after the movie came out. Tim Burton begged to differ. “Michael Jackson likes children; Willy Wonka can’t stand them. To me that’s a huge difference.” Depp agreed and said that his inspiration was somewhere between Howard Hughes in his later years and Mr. Rogers.
Martin Scorsese almost directed the film, but ended up doing The Aviator instead.
Mr. Bucket works for a company that makes Smilex toothpaste, which you can see early on when it shows a shot of him taking the misshapen toothpaste caps from the assembly line. “Smylex” is also the name of the poison the Joker releases on the city in the Burton-directed Batman.
The squirrels in the Nut Room scene are real – at least, 40 of them are. The animals were trained every day for nearly three months so that the close shots in that scene would look realistic. It also provided reality for the kids instead of forcing them to work with a green screen and CGI.
Johnny Depp ad-libbed the line where he’s talking to Mike Teavee about the types of people who would want to have long hair and slips into jive talk. To be exact, it’s “It’s in the fridge, daddy-o! Are you hip to the jive? Can you dig what I’m layin’ down? I knew that you could. Slide me some skin, soul brother!” The first time he did it, the actor who plays Mike looked at him like he was nuts and said, “That’s not in the script.”
Deep Roy is the one who suggested that the Augustus Gloop dance scene be like a big Bollywood musical scene.
The chocolate river was originally going to be CGI, but they tried that and Burton didn’t like the way it looked. So after testing nine different chocolates for their color, 192,000 gallons of it were used to make a real chocolate river. It looks great, sure, but apparently after a couple of weeks it started to smell quite bad.
Johnny Depp tested out Wonka’s slightly lispy, aloof voice on his daughter while they were playing Barbies. She liked it, so he went with it.
What do you like better – this version or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the Gene Wilder version?
Have a movie suggestion, or just want to read my babble? I’m on Twitter.
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What Happened to Jimmy Hoffa?
It was 34 years ago tomorrow that Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. Ever since then, the rumors have been flying about where he might be – he’s almost certainly dead, but who did it and what they did with the body is the mystery at hand. Here are a few of the theories.
His body is under Giants Stadium
A 1993 book written with the cooperation of former mobster “Tony the Greek” alleged that Hoffa was killed by Tony the Greek, Irish mobster John Sullivan and the leader of an Irish American organized crime association, James Coonan. Tony the Greek claimed that the three of them shot and killed Hoffa at a house in Detroit. They then dismembered him and left the pieces in a meat locker in the basement until they could all agree how to best dispose of the body. Apparently after much deliberation, the best they could come up with was to bury the pieces of Hoffa in an oil drum under Giants Stadium. Tony the Greek told Playboy the same story.
The FBI doesn’t buy it, though. As you probably know, Giants Stadium is headed the way of Hoffa – it’s scheduled to be destroyed next year when Meadowlands Stadium opens. When asked if they intended to search the grounds, the FBI said they would if they had a credible tip, but they don’t. Maybe they just don’t care because Mythbusters has already answered the question for them: in 2003, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman searched some of the most popular spots using radar – each end zone, the 50-yard line, the 10-yard line, and seating section 107. They found no conclusive evidence that anything unusual was buried at Giants Stadium. And the vice president of public affairs for the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority agrees, saying, “He ain’t here.”
Photo from NFLteamhistory.com.
He was buried under a horse farm in Michigan
A 2006 tip led officials to dig up parts of a Michigan horse farm just a few years ago. FBI agents, archaeologists, cadaver dogs and anthropologists were all called in to assess the situation, which turned out to be… nothing. But the circumstantial evidence was pretty decent – at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance, it was owned by a Teamsters official by the name of Rolland McMaster. A barn on the property was often used for Teamsters meetings, and the day Hoffa disappeared, there was a lot of unusual activity on the farm – including the use of a backhoe near the barn. However, after spending $250,000 and digging a 50 by 40-foot hole on the property, not a thing was found (aside from some pipes and beer cans).
Photo by Paul Sancya/Associated Press, via CBC News.
He was cremated in a trash incinerator
A deathbed confession by a former Teamster and Hoffa cohort Frank Sheeran caused quite the stir in 2004. Francis Sheeran supposedly wrote a letter saying that he shot Hoffa, then drove his body to a trash incinerator and had it cremated. But Sheeran’s daughter said no way – the letter is definitely a fake. “It’s not his signature,” she told the Detroit Free Press. She thinks the letter and signature was forged by the man who was writing Sheeran’s biography – a similar book was scheduled to be published and he thought it would drum up better publicity for his own book. The biographer said it was a genuine confession from Sheeran and sent the letter to Hoffa’s daughter, who in turn notified the FBI. Sheeran’s backyard had been searched previously after it was alleged that a briefcase containing a syringe used to knock Hoffa out was buried there. Again, no evidence was found.
He’s in Brazil, South America
He’s somewhere in Detroit
Another year, another “credible” tip. In 2003, authorities received a tip from an informant who had given them accurate information before: Hoffa was supposedly underneath an above-ground pool near Bay City, Michigan. They dug under the pool, but found nothing. The same year, they dug up the yard of a home in Munger Township and also came up empty-handed. Apparently 2003 was a hot year for Hoffa tips, because in July of the same year, Fox News conducted an investigation based on Frank Sheeran’s confession. They took tile up that had covered the hardwood floors that were present at the time of Hoffa’s death, then sprayed a chemical to detect any traces of blood. And they did find blood, a fair amount of it, in exactly the place where Sheeran said he shot Hoffa. The problem? It wasn’t Hoffa’s blood. By the way, if Sheeran’s stories sound conflicting, that’s because they are – he told various stories to officials over the years and sometimes pled the Fifth. But right before he died in 2004, he said he stood by what he said in his book – he shot Hoffa twice behind the ear in this house and was told the body was later cremated.
He was fed to alligators in the Florida swamp
Photo from National Geographic.
He’s between a couple of dams in Michigan
When convicted murderer Ricky Powell claimed that he knew where Hoffa was, he seemed pretty credible and his story was not any crazier than any of the others floating around. He said that he was the one who dumped the body in 1975, and if anyone was to search the Au Sable River about 175 miles from Detroit, they would find Hoffa’s remains under 30 feet of water. Boating magazine immediately picked up on the story and offered $10,000 to anyone who could find the body in the river and produce evidence. So far, no one has collected the prize.
A few other theories that have so far turned up nothing:
What do you think is the most likely theory?
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Six Repurposed Disney Songs
Poor songwriters – they spend a ton of time writing and composing music for movies, only for a good chunk of their work to be cut at a later date. OK, that probably goes for most people in the movie industry, and songwriters actually have it better than most – with a key change and a tweak to the lyrics, their songs can be repurposed to fit the next big movie… or sit in a vault for 19 years to be pulled out for a television show, as the case may be. Read on!
“Beyond the Laughing Sky”
Alice In Wonderland has some great songs – “The Unbirthday Song” is bound to get wedged in your head if you’re not careful. In fact, the soundtrack consists of 18 tunes, the most number of songs in a Disney film at the time. Some of them are only used for a few seconds here and there, but Disney wanted to try to capture at least some of Lewis Carroll’s quirky little rhymes and verses and felt that song snippets were the way to do it.
But not all of them got included – more than 30 songs were written, including one about the Jabberwock (he ultimately got cut from the movie altogether), a song for the Caterpillar called “Dream Caravan,” a song for the Cheshire Cat called “I’m Odd,” and a song that Alice sang to open the movie called “Beyond the Laughing Sky.” Although “Dream Caravan” and “I’m Odd” never saw the light of day, you might know “Laughing Sky” by a different name – “The Second Star to the Right” from Peter Pan.
The song was cut from Alice because the song was a ballad and was a bit difficult for young Kathryn Beaumont, the voice of Alice, to sing. It was also determined that the slow song might start the movie off a little too slow, so the opening song was replaced with “In a World of My Own” instead – it’s a bit more upbeat and matched Beaumont’s range and style better.
“I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow”
Similarly, Pinocchio had lots of songs that wouldn’t fit into the movie: “Monstro the Whale,” “Turn on the Old Music Box,” “Three Cheers for Anything,” “Honest John” and “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow.” “Honest John” eventually turned up on the 70th Anniversary Platinum Edition DVD that came out just a few months ago, but “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow” was released to the public just seven years after Pinocchio came out. Disney didn’t even have to change the lyrics to this one – they used it as and even had Mr. Cricket sing it in the 1947 package film Fun and Fancy Free.
The movie is really two shorts all rolled into one experience; “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow” appears in the very first one called “Bongo.” It’s about a bear cub who works for the circus but runs away and ends up having all kinds of adventures in the wild. What does this have to do with Jiminy Cricket, you’re probably wondering? Well, he sets up the story of Bongo by strolling through a house, singing this tune. When he gets to the record player conveniently set up in the house, he puts “Bongo” on and the first short officially starts. You’re probably familiar with the second short – “Mickey and the Beanstalk.” Fun and Fancy Free actually takes its name from a line in Jiminy’s song:
“I’m a happy-go-lucky fellow
Full of fun and fancy-free
You can make the whole world seem mellow
If you take it in your stride like me.”
Don’t feel sorry for Jiminy, by the way – although he may have had to wait seven years for this particular song, his ballad from Pinocchio, “When You Wish Upon a Star,” has been one of Disney’s signature songs ever since and was ranked #7 on the American Film Institute’s “Top Movie Songs of All Time” in 2004.
Here’s Jiminy singing “I’m a Happy-Go-Lucky Fellow,” if you’re interested. The song plays throughout the opening credits, but if you want to hear him, he starts chirping around 1:47.
“The Right Side”
“Land of Sand” and “Bobbing Along on the Bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea”
There was also a song for the magical compass sequence called “Bobbing Along on the Bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea” that was later shortened to “The Beautiful Briny” for Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
If it seems like a lot of Mary Poppins songs were repurposed, that’s because they were – the Sherman Brothers once laughingly refused to say what else they had reworked from the movie, saying that people would think all they had done for the past 10 years was shuffle songs around.
“The Morning Report”
Moving on to a more recent film (relatively), The Lion King originally had a song called “The Morning Report” where Zazu delivers a report and Simba fine-tunes his pouncing technique. Although it didn’t make it to the final film and was replaced with a simple conversation instead, it did find a spot with The Lion King musical just a few years later. The lyrics had to be slightly rewritten, but the changes proved successful. “The Morning Report” was a such a hit that the song was animated (it’s believed that it didn’t even make it to storyboards prior to the musical) and added to the 2002 IMAX release of the movie and the Platinum Edition DVD release in 2003.
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Four Scandalous Moments in Baseball
Today marks the anniversary of baseball’s infamous Pine Tar Incident, one of the most notorious cases of rule-breaking in MLB history. But it’s definitely not the only case, not by a longshot. Here are a few controversial moments in baseball (without steroids, no less), starting with the Pine Tar Incident.
The Pine Tar Incident
On July 24, 1983, the Royals were losing to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, 4-3 at the top of the ninth with two outs and a runner on first. Much to the chagrin of the Yankees, George Brett hit a home run and turned the tables so that the Royals were now a run ahead of the Bronx Bombers. Except there was a problem: Yankees Manager Billy Martin sprinted out of the dugout to confer with the home plate ump before Brett had even completed his run. After some debate, the umpire laid the bat across home plate, seeming to confirm something, then pointed at Brett with the bat and signaled that he was out. Brett burst out of the dugout “like his pants were on fire,” according to MLB.com (he totally does – check out the video below) and had to be physically restrained from tackling the umpire.
It turned out that he had used an excess of pine tar on his bat. Pine tar is allowed – it’s sticky and allows for better grip – but only up to 18 inches from the end of the bat. Any more than that is illegal, but that rule is very seldom invoked – it’s kind of like those silly, obscure laws in small towns that declare things like, “Llamas are not allowed in bars after 1 a.m.” The rule, apparently, has less to do with batter advantage and more to do with the fact that the pine tar would mess up the ball if the two came into contact, causing too many balls to be used per game. It was a rule nonetheless, and Brett was called out, nullifying both runs and giving the win to the Yanks. The Royals protested and the A.L. President decided to overturn the out. On August 18th, the game resumed with the score 5-4, Royals, in the top of the ninth. No miracles occurred – the next batter struck out, and then the Royals’ pitcher struck out all three Yankees who tried to hit off of him in the bottom of the ninth. The game ended with the Royals win and the infamous bat now rests in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Here’s that video – it’s dispersed throughout the 37-second clip of George Brett moments, but you’ll have no problem discerning which clips I’m talking about.
Photo from Jamestown Distributors
The Black Sox Scandal
Now we travel way back to the 1919 World Series. Well, let’s travel back to just before the 1919 World Series. The Chicago White Sox were the best team in baseball at the time – or at least in the top two. However, they were also some of the worst-paid players. Charles Comiskey was notoriously stingy with his bankroll – he even promised the Sox a “big bonus” if they won the pennant, and when they did, he gave them a “bonus” of a case of crappy champagne.
After making some extra money by giving insider tips to a small-time gambler named Joseph Sullivan, Sox player Chick Gandil decided to really supplement his meager salary by offering to throw the World Series for $100,000. It wasn’t too difficult for Gandil to recruit other players for the scheme – many of them held personal grudges against Comiskey, not just for the small paychecks, but for reneging on bonuses and promises as well. In the end, at least eight White Sox players were in on the deal: Eddie Cicotte, Oscar “Happy” Felsch, Arnold “Chick” Gandil, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Fred McMullin, Charles “Swede” Risberg, George “Buck” Weaver and Claude “Lefty” Williams. But things went awry, as they tend to in schemes like this. The gamblers didn’t pay the amounts they were supposed to pay after the Sox lost the first couple of games, and the players began to wonder if they had been had. It made sense to them that they should play to win the Series, because if they won, they would at least receive a $5,000 bonus from Comiskey. The Sox won the third game, but then lost the fourth and fifth. By today’s standards, four wins for the Reds would equal a title, but in 1919, the World Series was best out of nine games, not best out of seven. The Sox weren’t down and out just yet. They rallied to win games six and seven, giving them three wins and the Reds four. This greatly angered Arnold Rothstein, a gambler who had invested quite a bit of money on the Sox losing. He sent one of his “associates” to scare a little sense into Sox pitcher Lefty Williams. He said if Lefty didn’t start doing his part to throw the games, he and his wife were going to run into a little trouble. This threat was sufficient enough to scare Lefty into submission, and he made sure to throw poor and mediocre pitches all night. The Reds won handily, 10-5, and took the Series.
An investigation of the allegations got under way in September 1920 and two players, Eddie Cicotte and Shoeless Joe Jackson, confessed that they had helped throw the games (they later took back their confessions, and the signed documents ‘mysteriously’ disappeared). The eight players who were implicated were banned from baseball for life. The players who were found innocent were awarded $1,500 checks from Comiskey in the fall of 1920, which must have been quite the kick in the teeth to those who had participated in the scandal because he wasn’t paying them fairly.
Shoeless Joe Jackson’s level of involvement in the whole thing has since been disputed – he recanted his confession and maintained for the rest of his life that he was innocent. All of the players involved backed him up, saying that he had never attended any of the logistics meetings and refused to take the initial payment to entice him to throw the games. It’s still highly debated to this day. Photo from PascalMarco.com.
Pete Rose Gambling Scandal
Joining Shoeless Joe Jackson on the Banned from Baseball List is Pete Rose. After an impressive, record-setting career as a player, Pete Rose took a job managing the Cincinnati Reds from 1985 to 1989. In February 1989, Rose was questioned by the baseball commissioner in regards to some rumors that he had been illegally betting on baseball games. Rose vehemently denied the accusations, but lawyer John Dowd was brought in to conduct an in depth investigation on the matter. By May of the same year, Dowd had compiled a huge list of Rose’s wrongdoings, including statements from Rose’s bookies and bet runners and details such as how many games he bet on and what amounts he wagered. Rose continued to deny, deny, deny, even when he was permanently placed on the ineligible list. For 15 years he denied that he had ever bet on baseball during his tenure as a player and a manager, even when some other suspicious activity came to light: in 1990, he was found guilty of income tax evasion. Rose had failed to report income from selling autographs, memorabilia, and –yes- gambling. He served several months in prison, paid his back taxes, and agreed to perform 1,000 hours of community service.
Finally, in his 2004 autobiography, Pete admitted that he had, in fact, bet on sports – including baseball – while he played and managed. He swore that he had never bet against the Reds and only bet on them because he loved the team so much and loyal and believed in his team. He has applied for reinstatement, but to no avail so far.
Photo from Inside Athletics
The Black Mist Scandal
Corrupt players isn’t just an American trend. From 1969-1971, it was revealed that several really big Japanese baseball stars had accepted bribes from an organized crime family to throw various games. On October 7, 1969, somebody blew the whistle on Nishitetsu Lions pitcher Masayuki Nagayasu, who, as it turned out, had been purposely throwing easy pitches to opposing teams. Nagayasu sang like a canary, telling officials that not only did he take the bribes, the three other pitchers on the team took bribes, and so did the catcher and two infielders. All of them were suspended from play with two of them eventually being reinstated; Nagayasu was banned from the game for life.
Then, in April of 1970, an auto racer let it be known that a few prominent men had been in on a scheme to try to fix auto races: pitchers from two baseball teams and a member of the yakuza (organized crime). Another investigation was soon undertaken, which unearthed all sorts of dirty little secrets: by the end of the year, at least three more players had been banned for life, several had been arrested for the auto-racing incident, and more had received suspensions or benching for illegal gambling, driving without a license and having suspiciously close relationships with the yakuza. This whole series of incidents was known as the Black Mist that fell over Japanese baseball.
Drug busts of the ’80s? Corked bats? Women’s fertility drugs? What do you think is the most scandalous baseball moment? Share it in the comments!
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Movie Trivia: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Just in case you haven’t had enough of Harry Mania this week, I thought we’d travel back to when the whole movie craze started. Enjoy, Muggles!
Other actors who auditioned for the role of Harry: William Moseley, who eventually got the role of Peter Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia. Liam Aiken also auditioned and later went on to star as Klaus in another hit based on a hugely popular children’s book – Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Cody Linley was in fifth grade when he auditioned for the role of the Chosen One, but obviously didn’t make the cut. He is probably best known now for portraying Jake Ryan, Miley Stewart’s sometimes-love interest on Hannah Montana.
According to NotStarring.com, M. Night Shyamalan turned down directing the movie because he preferred to devote his time to Unbreakable. It’s likely – he has also expressed interest in directing the final film, saying his version would be exceptionally “dark and twisted.”
Rupert Grint, AKA Ron Weasley, got the part when he sent in a video of himself rapping about why he was perfect for the role.
Richard Harris, who played Dumbledore until his death in 2002, almost didn’t take the part. His granddaughter changed his mind, insisting that she would never speak to him again if he didn’t take the part.
Hagrid’s portrayer, Robbie Coltrane, was the only actor J.K. Rowling insisted on. Well, not insisted on, but suggested. Director Chris Columbus asked her if she had any actors in mind for any of the characters and, according to her, she said “RobbieColtraneforHagrid” all in one quick breath. Robbie Coltrane says the producers called him and said, “You’re playing Hagrid, and we’re having no arguments about it.” Luckily, he was already a fan of the books from reading them to his son and immediately agreed to the part.
Rik Mayall, whom children of the early ‘90s will remember as Drop Dead Fred, was cast as Peeves the Poltergeist. Sadly, his scenes were eventually cut from the film.
Gringotts Bank can be found on the Strand in London; it’s called the Australia House and it masquerades as the building for Australian muggles’ state and federal government agencies in the U.K.
It’s rumored that Rosie O’Donnell offered to play the part of Molly Weasley for free because she loved the books so much. She was turned down because J.K. Rowling very strongly wanted the cast to be primarily British.
Daniel Radcliffe has to wear contact lenses to portray Harry because his eyes are actually blue. Seems like a minor detail, but as any fan knows, Harry’s green eyes end up playing an important part in the series. However, sometimes the lenses bothered his eyes and the color had to be added by computer after the scenes were filmed.
Drew Barrymore, a Potter fan, was supposed to have a cameo in the film, but it was cut after the first draft of the script.
Three different birds portray Harry’s Snowy Owl, Hedwig. Their names are Gizmo, Ook and Sprout, but the one with the most screen time is Gizmo.
Steven Spielberg had his hat in the ring to direct, but ended up choosing A.I. with Haley Joel Osment instead. There was a rumor that Spielberg wanted to make a Toy Story-esque movie with Osment as the voice of Harry and that idea alienated him from the rest of the team who was already on board to do the movie. Producer David Heyman insists that wasn’t the case, however.
Check out the portraits on the moving staircase – one of them is Anne Boleyn. She was beheaded because of her attempts to use sorcery on Henry VIII (that was his excuse, anyway), so her likeness on the wall at Hogwarts is quite appropriate.
In a bit of foreshadowing, one of the trophies in the trophy cabinet (it’s to the right of the Quidditch trophy) called “Service to the School” is engraved with the name “Tom M. Riddle.”
The actor who ended up playing Professor Lupin, David Thewlis, auditioned for the part of Professor Quirrell. I’d say he got the better deal, wouldn’t you? And completely unrelated to the movie, Thewlis is in a relationship (and has a baby) with Anna Friel, better known to people in the U.S. as Chuck from Pushing Daisies. Also, he turned down the role of Simon Gruber in the Die Hard: With a Vengeance, which would have made him the onscreen brother of Alan Rickman, who played Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard.
The movie’s budget was an astronomical $125 million, but it made that back many times over: the worldwide gross was $976,475,550.
Daniel Radcliffe’s voice changed while they were filming, but the movie was shot in sequence so it just gradually gets deeper throughout the film instead of being at different octaves here and there.
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Seven College Pranks
You know all about student pranks – greased pigs in the cafeteria, cows being led upstairs, all of that juvenile stuff. Maybe you’ve even heard about the more complicated college stunts – when M.I.T. students erected a police car on the top of the school’s Great Dome, for example. Its license plate number was pi. Anyway, here are a few lesser-known student stunts. If you’re, um, “inspired” by some of these, I claim no fault… but be sure to take pictures.
Harry Potter and the Scheming Students
In 2007, M.I.T. students pulled two pranks of smaller proportions to commemorate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Since we’re just a couple of days away from the latest movie, I thought it would be appropriate to mention them. The first appeared a couple of days before the final book came out: a broomstick parking area, complete with broomsticks and appropriate signage, appeared in the Student Street area of the Strata Center. Then on the day of the actual release is my favorite: the Death Eaters acknowledged their presence at the school by setting off an eerie, glowing green Dark Mark on the roof of the Student Center. Awesome. This gives me an idea for Halloween… Photo from Eric Schmiedl.
Screwy Scoreboards
Caltech is M.I.T.’s biggest rival in pranks, despite being located at opposite ends of the country. They often take potshots at one another and are especially prone to pranks at football games. Although the Great Rose Bowl prank is pretty well known, another football stunt occurred when Caltech wasn’t even playing. During the 1964 Washington vs. Illinois Rose Bowl game, the audience of 100,000 was rather bored by a somewhat lackluster game. That is, until they looked up and realized that someone had changed the electronic scoreboard to make it appear as if Caltech was putting the hurt on M.I.T. It happened again in 1984 – although the teams were UCLA and Illinois (again), it appeared as if Caltech was stomping M.I.T., 31-9.
“We Suck”
During the Harvard-Yale game of 2004, some students took the Great Rose Bowl Prank to the next level. In case you didn’t click the Rose Bowl Prank link above, the story goes something like this: Caltech students handed out a bunch of colored placards to the opposing team and told them that when flipped over at a specified time, it would spell out the name of their team. It didn’t, of course, it spelled out “Caltech.” Yale students repeated this stunt by handing out similar placards to a group of Harvard students and alumni. When they flipped the cards, which they thought would say “GO HARVARD,” it actually spelled out “WE SUCK.” Photo from Yale Daily News
In Cod We Trust
Another one from our friends over at the Museum of Hoaxes – the theft of the Massachusetts Sacred Cod. Yes, Massachusetts has a sacred cod, and they really refer to it as such. The pine likeness is about five feet long and can be found hanging over the entrance to the House of Representatives chamber in the Massachusetts State House – at least, that’s where it is usually found. In 1933, staff at the Harvard Lampoon decided that the fish was theirs. They simply walked into the State House with clippers and a flower box, snipped the Cod down when no one was looking, hid it in the flower box and strolled on out of there like they owned the place. After a couple of days of drama – allegedly the river was even dragged – the Harvard Chief of Police received a tip that he should show up on a certain road at a certain time and follow a certain car. He did, and when the car pulled into a forest, two disguised men jumped out, handed him the Cod, and fled. Photo from MassMoments.org
Rooftop Ride
Pranks aren’t limited to U.S. schools, of course. In June of 1958, Cambridge, England, woke up to find an Austin Seven sitting on top of the Senate House like it was in the middle of a skyward road trip. It took a week for firefighters, police and civil defense units to figure out how to get the thing down – in the end, they decided just to take it apart piece by piece. And the really great thing about the whole prank is that the perpetrators were never caught. That is, until 2008. Fifty years later, 9 of the 12 guys who participated in the prank had a reunion dinner and told the press how they did it. In the middle of the night, they hitched it up to the roof using a makeshift crane of steel cable and scaffolding pieces. Although they had never revealed their identities, the then-Dean suspected the group of men and had a case of champagne sent to them to congratulate them on such an amazing prank. Click the link for a diagram of how they pulled the stunt off. Photo from the Daily Mail.
Rice Gets More Comfortable
In 1988, a group of students at Rice decided that the 2,000 pound statue of William Marsh Rice would probably prefer to face the library instead of having his back to it. So, obviously, they moved it. After a couple of botched attempts, the pranksters got serious. They got plans of the statue from the library to figure out the exact weight, then built some A-frames with one-ton hoists on either side. After practicing with a Toyota a couple of times, they got the hang of things and headed to campus to give Mr. Rice a better view. They were caught moving the A-Frames across campus by some cops, but managed to convince them that they were part of a senior project. They successfully moved the statue, but one of them, Patrick Dyson, was caught and made to pay the cost of moving William back to his rightful position, which for some reason was going to cost up to five times as much as it cost to get him in the new spot. Students rallied behind Dyson, designing t-shirts that said “Where there’s a Willy, there’s a way,” and raised more than enough money to turn Rice back around. Photo from Rice.edu.
Fictional Facebook Fox
Here’s a prank in keeping with our social media-obsessed society. There’s a moral to this one too, if you’re inclined to find one. In 2006, USC basketball player Gabe Pruitt (he’s a Celtic now) was the star during a game against UC Berkeley. He had been cultivating a, um, “relationship” with a girl named Victoria from UCLA – he met her over Facebook and not face to face, but they had been IMing and she sent him pictures. The only problem? She wasn’t real. When Pruitt got up to shoot a free throw, Cal fans started chanting, “Victoria! Victoria!” and promptly followed that up with Pruitt’s personal cell phone number, which he had given to the fictional Victoria. They kept it up for the whole game and Pruitt ended up shooting 3 for 13. There are nine other college sports pranks over at SI.com if you’re interested, including the somewhat sordid history of poor Tommy Trojan over at UCLA.
Photo from BigGreenMachine.
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Five Historic Train Robberies
They make train robberies look so easy in the movies, don’t they? You jump on to a train with guns a-blazin’ and a bandana covering your face, rob the safe and jump off, never to be caught. But in real life, the gangs who robbed trains were almost always caught and brought to justice. Here are a few of their stories.
Jesse James’ First Train Robbery
On July 21, 1873, Jesse James and the James-Younger Gang robbed their first train in Adair, Iowa, of all places. They managed to derail the Rock Island train, turning the train on its side, killing the engineer and injuring a lot of its passengers. But that wasn’t enough terror for the passengers – the James-Younger Gang, clad in Ku Klux Klan garb, went up and down the length of the overturned train confronting them and demanding their watches and valuables (although some reports say they stole only from the men). They threw it all in bags along with the money from the train’s safe and ended up getting about $3,000. This was a bit unusual for Jesse James and his crew; after that they mostly stuck to robbing the express safe in the baggage car and left the passengers alone. Even though the gang killed the engineer of the train and wounded several passengers, Adair doesn’t hold it against him – every July, they have “Jesse James Days,” where they reenact the train robbery and celebrate with a parade and other festivities.
Photo from History of the James-Younger Gang
The Great Gold Robbery of 1855
One of the biggest train robberies of all time took place not in the American Old West, but in London, England. On May 15, 1855, three boxes of gold were put on a car on a South Eastern Railway train headed from England to Boulogne, France. The boxes were sealed, shut with iron bars, and locked with locks which had keys held by only a few trusted people. The problem? When the boxes reached their destination, one of them was a lot lighter than it should have been. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that somehow, someone had substituted lead shot for gold.
Police had no clue what had happened and a two-month investigation ensued. Hundreds of people were questioned without any hope of a lead, but by August, suspicion fell on Edward Agar. Agar was sent to prison for passing a fake check, but wanted to make sure that the mother of his child had money to provide for the young one. He informed her that she would be receiving £7,000 from a colleague of his, and when the money didn’t show, he blew the whistle on the whole operation. He and the colleague, William Pierce, had hatched a complicated plot to steal the gold years earlier. They involved a clerk in the railway office when they found out that he briefly had possession of the keys that locked the boxes the gold was sealed in; the clerk was able to get the keys to Agar who made an impression of them in wax and later had the keys replicated.
There was a second key to the safes that wasn’t quite as easy to get. Agar ended up sending a £200 box of bullion on the same route (under an assumed name, of course), then showed up to collect it and watched the clerk carefully to see where he got the second key to the safe. Turned out it wasn’t quite as complicated as they thought – the key was simply stored in a cupboard that wasn’t very well guarded at all. When the time came, Agar and Pierce strolled right into the office when it was unoccupied and made a quick wax imprint of the key.
They brought the lead shot onto the train in carpet bags; Pierce got into a first class carriage and Agar boarded with the train’s guard, James Burgess, who was in on the whole thing. Agar took the iron bars off with a mallet and chisel, replaced the gold bars with lead shot, replaced the iron bars and stuck a new wax seal on the box to make it look like it had never been tampered with.
When Agar turned Pierce in, police recovered about £2,000 of the £12,000 worth of gold stolen.
Michael Crichton later based his novel The Great Train Robbery on the incident, which was turned into a movie starring Sean Connery as William Pierce. (pictured)
Photo from MGMHD.
The First Known Train Robbery in the U.S.
On October 6, 1866, the Reno brothers jumped onto an Ohio and Mississippi Railway train in Indiana and emptied one of the safes. They tossed another one out the window so they could take it with them, and then they jumped off of the train, completing the first train robbery in the United States. It was definitely a catching trend – in the two weeks following the Reno brothers’ first moving holdup, two more trains were robbed. A passenger testified that he saw the faces of two of the robbers from the first holdup, but after he was shot and killed, other passengers clammed up and none of the burglars were charged. At least, not at that time. After their fifth robbery a couple of years later, the Pinkertons finally caught up with the Reno brothers. Ten agents were waiting on the train to bust the boys, and although most of them escaped, they were arrested the next day.
Some members of the gang were hanged, but a lynch mob got to the others before official justice could be served.
The Great Train Robbery of 1963
The ’60s in England – you think of the Beatles and Twiggy, not train robberies, right? But one of the biggest train robberies in the history of the U.K. actually took place on August 8, 1963. A gang consisting of 15 guys hijacked the Royal Mail train going from Glasgow to London and stole the contents of the High Value Package – a carriage containing registered mail with cash contents. The robbers planned this carefully; normally the HVP carriage only carried about £300,000, but since there had been a bank holiday and this was the first shipment following it, the amount was much more than usual – about £2.3 million. They did so with no weapons other than an iron bar, which was used to hit the driver of the train on the head.
They didn’t pull it off, though – the gang left the train rife with fingerprints, and left all kinds of evidence littered about the farmhouse they took refuge in for five days in Buckinghamshire. Not only were fingerprints found, they were allegedly found on a Monopoly board that the robbers had used to amuse themselves with while they were holed up. They used real money, of course.
13 of the gang members were eventually caught (that’s a few of them in the picture), although at least one of them didn’t stay caught for long. Ronnie Biggs escaped about 15 months into his prison sentence and moved to Paris, where he had plastic surgery. Then he moved to Australia and lived under the radar for quite a few years, until his identity was exposed, forcing him to move to Brazil. He lived there until 2001, when a series of strokes made him want to return to England to buy a proper pint before he died, although most people suspect he wanted the healthcare. He was returned to jail to finish out his sentence and is still there – Biggs was just denied parole on July 2 because the Justice Secretary felt that “Mr. Biggs is wholly unrepentant.”
Photo from HowStuffWorks
The Train Robbery that Brought Down George Parrot
Big Nose George Parrot sounds like a character on Sesame Street or something, but he was the furthest thing from it. Big Nose George was a train robber who didn’t mind killing to get what he wanted. He had done just that in 1878 – after a botched train robbery, Parrot and his gang killed two men – a Union Pacific detective and the Wyoming deputy sheriff. The gang then robbed the corpses of their two victims, including one of their horses, and took off. Word of the double murders got around fast and a $20,000 reward was offered for apprehending the killers. They were, indeed, apprehended. Big Nose George Parrot was supposed to be hanged, but after he tried to escape, a lynch mob hunted him down and strung him up themselves. “It’s a lynch mob,” you might be thinking, “They’re prone to extreme behavior.” But the doctors weren’t any better – Parrot’s skull cap was sawed off and given to the doctor’s 15-year-old assistant, Lilian Heath. Throughout her life she used it as a pen holder, a doorstop and an ashtray. The doctor made a pair of shoes and a medical bag out of Parrot’s skin and he allegedly wore the shoes to his inaugural ball a year later when he was elected the first Democratic Governor of Wyoming. You can still see the shoes – they’re on display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, Wyoming.
Photo from Sunderland Echo.
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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 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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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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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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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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Movie Trivia: Mary Poppins
I’m kind of a Disney freak, so it’s hard for me to pick one favorite Disney movie. But Mary Poppins is definitely in my top five – it’s such a classic. And there’s no shortage of trivia about it, so I had to pick some of my favorites. If you want more, I suggest buying the 45th anniversary DVD – it’s packed full of behind-the-scenes information, deleted bits, commentary and pop up facts. But in the meantime, this should tide you over!
After being rejected by P.L. Travers for more than 20 years, Walt finally paid a visit to P.L. in person to convince her to let him make her books into a movie. It was the personal visit that convinced her – she described Walt as the friendly old uncle type who hypnotized you with his gold pocket watch. Not exactly a compliment, but she gave him the rights nonetheless.
Mary Martin, Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury were considered for the role of Mary Poppins. Casting directors saw Julie Andrews singing Camelot’s “What do the Simple Folk Do” on the Ed Sullivan Show and immediately knew that they had to have her for Mary Poppins. They told Walt, who flew out to New York to see Julie sing her part on Broadway, and that was that. Andrews still had to pass muster with P.L. Travers, though, but it didn’t end up being a problem – Travers adored her.
Travers wrote to Walt Disney to suggest Karen Dotrice for the role of Jane Banks, but Walt had already cast exactly that actress in the part. At least they agreed on one thing!
Julie Andrews almost didn’t take the role – she was actually holding out for the Eliza Doolittle part in My Fair Lady that eventually went to Audrey Hepburn. Andrews had played the part on Broadway and loved it. Audrey may have played Eliza, but Julie Andrews was so brilliant in Poppins that she beat Audrey for both the Best Actress Golden Globe and Academy Award.
The actors who played Jane and Michael had already starred in a movie together - The Three Lives of Thomasina – and went on to do another one together post-Poppins: The Gnome-Mobile.
Matthew Garber was afraid of heights, so the crew paid him an extra dime every time he had to go up on the wires for the scenes where the kids are floating in the air. But they weren’t always on wires – Disney didn’t want people to look at the scene and go, “Oh, they clearly used wires for that,” so sometimes wires were used, sometimes teeter totters were used, and sometimes they flipped the set on its side or upside down and filmed that way.
Next time you watch the movie, check out the queue of nannies lined up to interview for the nanny position – a bunch of them are actually men.
When the kids look surprised at all of the stuff Mary Poppins pulls out of her carpet bag, that was genuine shock. They couldn’t see what was being fed to the bag from under the table, so when she pulled hat stands and huge potted plants out of that regular-sized bag, the kids were completely stunned.
Dick Van Dyke freely admits that his cockney accent was awful and in fact kind of gets a kick out of it.
Lots of the actors played multiple roles: Dick Van Dyke played Bert, of course, and also played Old Mr. Dawes the banker. Other than the title role, Julie Andrews also provided her own whistling accompaniment when Mary Poppins sings with the robin during “Spoonful of Sugar” and was also one of the Pearly ladies in “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” David Tomlinson, AKA Mr. Banks, was also the voice of Mary’s umbrella when it talked and one of the jockeys in the animated horse race scene. In addition, he dubbed the voice for Admiral Boom’s first mate.
A bunch of songs were deleted from the movie. A few include “The Chimpanzoo,” which you can now hear on the 2004 special anniversary edition DVD; “Practically Perfect,” which ended up being the music for “Sister Suffragette”; “Admiral Boom” which was to be Admiral Boom’s theme song; and “Measure Up,” which Mary Poppins was going to sing while measuring the kids with her magical tape measure. One song was actually repurposed for Bedknobs and Broomsticks and was called “The Beautiful Briny” in it.
Elsa Lanchester, who played the childrens’ former nanny Katie Nanna, was previously best-known for her role as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Mary Poppins’ sets often ended up being used for other Disney productions. One episode of The Wonderful World of Color featured a haunted house, which was actually the Banks house covered with cobwebs and dust.
The Bird Woman is played by Jane Darwell, whom Walt Disney cast after remembering her amazing performance as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. He made sure she was given the full-out star treatment and was brought to the set in a limo and treated with great respect. It was to be her last film performance.
The “Chim-Chim Cheree” and”Step in Time” sequences are my favorites, I think. The background of the London rooftops is actually matte paintings done on glass. The “smoke” staircase was actually made out of sponge because it was assumed that if you were walking on smoke, it would have a bouncy feeling to it. The “Step in Time” dance had to be filmed twice because the film the first version was on got scratched. And I guess I’m not alone in loving the “Step in Time” scene – Walt enjoyed it so much he would come to watch the daily dance rehearsals and told the choreographers to go nuts and have fun with the steps.
Every member of the crew – not the cast, mind you, the crew – asked for a copy of the soundtrack.
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Total Eclipse of the Heart: the Literal Video Version
I looked back through the archives and I don’t think this is a repost, but even if it is, it’s probably worth it. It’s Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart” but with lyrics that describe what’s going on in the video. And, wow, I had never seen this actual video. I had no idea “Total Eclipse of the Heart” had such a pedophile theme going on.
Other literal videos include Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”, A-Ha’s “Take On Me”, and Starship’s “We Built This City,” but I think Total Eclipse is definitely the best.
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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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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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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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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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The Hindenburg – What Happened?
It was 72 years ago today that the Hindenburg caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 36 people (35 onboard and one on the ground). So why did it catch fire in the first place? Nearly three-quarters of a century later, we still don’t know. But there are some theories out there, and here are a few of them.
Sabotage
This one is for all of the conspiracy theorists out there, but it was widely believed to be the culprit at the time thanks to three pretty credible believers in the theory: Hugo Eckener (pictured), who used to be the head of the Zeppelin company; Charles Rosenthal, commander of the Lakehurst Naval Air Station; and Max Pruss, the Hindenburg’s commander.
When Eckener heard the zeppelin had “exploded,” he immediately thought that someone had intentionally destroyed the airship. Pruss found it hard to believe that something as petty as static would ignite the fabric of the Hindenburg; he said he personally had piloted airships through thunderstorms and that they had even been struck by lightning with no ill effects.
So who would have done such a terrible thing? A couple of books have named the zeppelin’s rigger, Eric Spehl. The fire started in an area that he and his fellow riggers had exclusive access to, and another rigger reported seeing a flash like a flashbulb just before the whole thing went up in flames. Spehl’s hobby – amateur photography – made it seem likely that he knew which types of flash could serve as an igniter.
Another suspect was a passenger named Joseph Späh, a German acrobat who was traveling with his dog, Ulla. He drew suspicion because of his many trips to the freight room by the ship’s stern, supposedly to feed his dog. Stewards said he seems particularly irritated that the flight was running late, and others speculated that his acrobatic career would make it easy for him to climb around in the catwalks to plant a bomb. Späh was cleared and Spehl died in the fire, so we’ll never know if one of them was responsible. One rumor even said that Hitler ordered the disaster because Hugo Eckener was anti-Nazi.
Why the theory is probably wrong: Even Eckener changed his mind: when he later watched the tapes and learned that the ‘Burg had burned, not exploded, he reversed his theory to the static spark theory (see below). And no evidence of a bomb was ever found in the wreckage. They did find some yellow substance originally believed to be sulfur, which can ignite hydrogen, but it was later determined that it was probably just residue from a fire extinguisher, and none of the residue was found anywhere near the stern of the ship.
Static Spark
You know how when it’s particularly dry, you can shuffle along your carpet and shock the crap out of someone sitting on the couch? Same theory, but bigger. The Hindenburg was really behind on its flight schedule – more than 12 hours, in fact. To try to make up for lost time, they flew directly through a storm front with lots of humidity and electrical charge. Between that and a light rain falling at Lakehurst, the mooring lines probably got a bit wet. When they touched down to land, the lines would have grounded the frame they were connected to, but not the fabric stretched around the frame. So when the static electricity sparked, the fabric went up in flames.
Another sub-theory is that hydrogen gas was in the air, perhaps due to a leak, and the static spark ignited the gas. Both of these seem pretty plausible when you consider that historian Douglas Robinson recorded an eyewitness account from one of the passengers saying that he saw St. Elmo’s fire just before the fire fully broke out. Not the ‘80s movie starring Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, the actual electrical weather phenomenon. He had enough time to tell his wife, “Oh, heavens, the thing is afire,” and showed her where the St. Elmo’s fire was occurring before the fabric ignited.
Lightning
Coming from such a credible source – the former director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center – this one seems like it could be true as well. He says it’s not the fact that the ship was struck by lightning that was its downfall – the ship had been struck before and it was fine. It’s because it was landing as it was hit. As it landed, the Hindenburg dispelled hydrogen to lessen its weight and land. The hydrogen mixed with the oxygen in the air and the lightning ignited the fumes.
Why it could be wrong: The fire appeared in a wave motion, which Eckener believed was more apt to happen with a static spark than a lightning bolt.
Incendiary Paint
Mythbusters tackled this one and declared it Busted, but I’ll tell you the theory anyway. The fabric (pictured) around the Hindenburg’s frame had been painted with what they called “dope,” a substance that made the fabric stiff and airtight. However, the substances it was made of were highly flammable in liquid form and still pretty unstable even when dry. The Incendiary Paint Theory says that the volatile substances reacted and caused the spark.
Why the theory is probably not true: The “dope,” which is actually cellulose acetate butyrate, is classified as burning easily if it catches fire, but it doesn’t actually ignite easily and will self-extinguish if there isn’t an external source keeping it burning. Some of the fabric survived the fire, which leads experts to believe the fabric didn’t actually start the fire. The Mythbusters test found just that – while the stuff used to paint the skin was definitely flammable, it wasn’t enough to ignite and destroy the Hindenburg all on its own.
Puncture Theory
It’s easy enough to believe: one of the bracing wires came loose, snapped, and punctured one of the internal gas cells. This would have caused the hydrogen leak believed to have happened in other theories. Then the static spark theory would have happened, igniting the fumes from the punctured cell. It’s also thought that when the wire struck the cell, it caused a spark which ignited the fire.
The Indiana Jones Theory
Turns out this guy didn’t have a ticket, and a fight ensued, and in the melee a gas tank got punctured. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
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Eyeglasses Piercing
I guess this is one way to get rid of sunglasses lines from being out in the sun too long. But the future mom in me is saying, “You’re going to get those caught on something and rip them right out of your face.” They’re made by the Pierced Glasses company, if you’re looking to get a pair for yourself.
Link Original Link via Geekologie (who also put the photo montage together so you can see the before and after)
Update 5/5/09 by Alex – I’ve replaced the linkjacked article with the original link. Shame on you chooseurfun, you’re officially in my sh*tlist now – Thanks (and sorry) Shannon!
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A Tasty Treat for Graduates
How cute are these? If you’re attending a graduation party (or throwing one), the lovely Bakerella shows you step-by-step how to make these mouthwatering mortarboards. Reese’s cups and Godiva squares? Yes, please! If you’re feeling particularly saucy, you can skip the peanut butter cups and make her cake bites instead. More work, definitely, but I can tell you from experience that the cake bites are delish. I don’t think you can really go wrong either way.
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Movie Trivia: Clue
I took to Twitter to ask for suggestions on my latest movie trivia post but made the stipulation of no ‘80s movies. I think I’ve done too many of them lately. But then skyesblue said, “I’d vote Clue, but you vetoed that,” and I was hooked, just like that. I love me some Curry – Tim Curry, that is, and Madeline Kahn was beyond wonderful as always. So, Clue it is, and I promise no ‘80s movies next week.
First, a quick reminder of who’s who:
• Professor Plum – Christopher Lloyd
• Mrs. White – Madeline Kahn
• Mrs. Peacock – Eileen Brennan
• Miss Scarlet – Lesley Ann Warren
• Colonel Mustard – Martin Mull
• Wadsworth – Tim Curry
• Mr. Green – Michael McKean
When moviegoers purchased their ticket to see the movie, they also received a slip of paper just like the one that you use to keep track of the people, places and weapons in the game.
Jane Wiedlin of the GoGos played the Singing Telegram Girl. She was also Joan of Arc in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Tim Curry says each of the principal cast only received $100,000 for the film, and they all had teeny-tiny trailers. So there were definitely no ego-trippers among them.
Clue was the first movie ever based on a board game, but it’s certainly not the last – Universal Pictures signed a deal with Hasbro last year to develop films based on Monopoly, Candy Land, the Ouija Board, Battleship and Magic: the Gathering. Stretch Armstrong was also included in the deal.
And, brace yourselves, there’s actually another Clue in the works. It was announced in February that Gore Verbinski has signed on to make another version of the board game-based movie for Universal. Ugh. Although… Johnny Depp as Wadsworth…? Anyone…?
Check out the floor in the Hall – it’s no coincidence that it looks an awful lot like the parquet floor on the original Clue game board.
It looks like an awesome old Gothic Mansion, doesn’t it? It’s quite convincing. But nearly all of the scenes were shot on a soundstage, except for those in the ballroom and the driveway gate scene. Sadly, the mansion used for the driveway scene burned down, so picture-hunters can’t even pose next to the big gate.
To make the set look authentically mansion-y, 18th and 19th century furniture and décor was borrowed from all over the place, including the estate of Theodore Roosevelt.
Each character drives a car the color of their name.
Keep your eye on Tim Curry whenever he’s in a scene with Eileen Brennan – he said he could barely hold a straight face around her becuase she was so hysterical. This is especially evident, he says, in the scene where she says “Hold out the gun.” He claims his shoulders are actually shaking from trying to hold in his laughter.
The movie took about two and a half months to make.
Three different endings to the movie were shot, and all of them were used! Imagine the confusion if a friend went to one theater and you went to another – “Wasn’t that great when it turned out that Mr. Boddy was actually the Butler?” “What do you mean, Mr. Boddy was the Butler?” OK, that probably wouldn’t have happened… it was well known that there were three endings, and newspaper listings even told you when each ending would be shown. The DVD shows you all of them, but you can also tell it to pick a random ending for you. The part where the movie splits into the three different endings is right after Wadsworth cuts the power.
Here are the endings:
• Ending A: The killer? Miss Scarlet. Yvette the maid used to work for her as a call girl and helped her murder Mr. Boddy and the cook. Miss Scarlet killed the rest of the victims herself. But, she’s busted: Wadsworth secretly works for the FBI and reveals himself just as the police show up to escort her to jail.
• Ending B: The killer? Mrs. Peacock, who single-handedly killed everyone. Again, Wadsworth the FBI agent busts her, and although she escapes by holding the survivors at gunpoint, the police are waiting when she gets outside.
• Ending C, my personal favorite: The killer? Everyone. But Wadsworth isn’t Wadsworth – he’s really Mr. Boddy. The man everyone thought to be Mr. Boddy (you know, the corpse) was actually the butler. Wadsworth had been working with each of these people in his extortion scheme and figured they would all kill each other off if given the right circumstances, and they did… except for Mr. Green, who is the undercover FBI agent this time, and he kills Wadsworth and has the rest of the guests arrested.
• Ending D, which was scripted and shot but never released: Wadsworth admits that he killed Mr. Boddy, and now he has killed all of them, too: he poisoned everyone. Except the police show up and disarm Wadsworth, who then goes through the whole exhausting confession that he already gave to the guests, running around the house and reenacting the whole scenario. When he tells the part about meeting Col. Mustard at the front door, he steps outside and locks everyone in, then makes off in the police car… except there’s an angry German Shepard in the back seat.
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Five Familiar Actresses in a Different Light
The announcement of Bea Arthur’s death today made me think about actresses that we think of as kind of grandmotherly types. Obviously, they didn’t always look like nanas. Here are five ladies that we know and love(d) for their portrayal of older women, but I think the pictures will make you see them in a different light. They made me see them in a different light, at least!
Betty White
Betty White has been on the screen – small and silver – since 1945 when she had a part in Time to Kill, a George Reeves movie. But she was modeling before that, which I totally believe looking at that picture. Who knew Betty White was such a stunner? By the mid-50s she had her own sitcom called Life With Elizabeth (clip below) and ever since then she’s been in high demand, starring in shows such as Date with the Angels, Mary Tyler Moore, The Betty White Show, Mama’s Family, and, of course, Golden Girls. Her latest work is The Proposal, a movie due to be released in June starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock.
Angela Lansbury
Anyone who associates Angela Lansbury with Jessica Fletcher – and let’s face it, who doesn’t? – is probably pretty shocked by how gorgeous she was in her younger days. I know I was. She and her mother and brother moved to L.A. in the early ’40s when her mother, actress Moyna Macgill, decided to seek work there. A former resident of England, Angela’s mother often held parties and get-togethers for British actors and actresses who had come to L.A. to make it big just like she had. It was at one of these little shindigs that she met an actor who introduced her to a casting director who ended up putting Angela in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gaslight. Both performances earned her Oscar nominations, so Angela was a sought-after actress right from her debut in Hollywood. Since then she’s done everything from playing a singing baker who specializes in people pies (Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd) to voicing an animated tea pot (Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. And there’s obviously her Murder She Wrote streak – 12 Emmy noms in as many years. The picture is from 1943’s Samson and Delilah, which starred Hedy Lamarr. She would have been 18 or 19 at the time.
Jessica Tandy
I’ve only ever known Jessica Tandy for her roles as elderly women – Fried Green Tomatoes and Driving Miss Daisy to be exact. I love Alfred Hitchcock films and have been enjoying The Birds for years without realizing that she played Lydia Brenner – I didn’t recognize her at all. But I really didn’t recognize her in this amazing picture from Life magazine. She was only 16 when she started acting in London, starting her career out with the likes of Laurence Olivier. But when she and actor Jack Hawkins divorced, she picked up and moved to the U.S. to pursue a career there instead. She won a Tony for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, but lost the movie role to Vivien Leigh. Convinced her movie career wasn’t really going to pan out, she mostly stuck to Broadway for the next 30 years or so (except for couple of movies here and there, like The Birds). She returned to movies in the ’80s and started working with her husband, Hume Cronyn. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1989 for playing Miss Daisy Werthan – she was 80 at the time, making her the oldest actress to ever win an Oscar. She was also nominated for Fried Green Tomatoes in 1991 but was beaten by Mercedes Ruehl for The Fisher King. Jessica died in 1994 at the age of 85.
Gloria Stuart
These days, 98-year-old Gloria Stuart is best known for playing the older version of Rose in 1997’s Titanic, but she made her movie debut more than 60 years earlier. She graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1927 and immediately took up at the Pasadena Playhouse, where she was “discovered.” She was selected as a WAMPAS (Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers) Baby Star in 1932 along with Ginger Rogers. She played Flora Cranley opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man (and received top billing!) and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. By the end of the ’30s she had been in more than 40 films and was ready for a break; she took up oil painting and was good enough to book one-woman shows in galleries in New York. Gloria didn’t come back to the industry until the 1975 made-for-TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden – the one with Elizabeth Montgomery as Lizzie. It wasn’t until she played Rose in Titanic, though, that she really came back to light as an actress. She became the oldest person to ever be nominated for a non-honorary Oscar, but she lost out to Kim Basinger for L.A. Confidential. She’s still around today and is good friends with Olivia de Havilland – she, Oliva, Joan Fontaine, Shirley Temple, Maureen O’Hara, Deanna Durbin and Luise Rainer are the last of the big female stars from the ’30s.
Rue McClanahan
We can’t forget the other surviving Golden Girl, Miss Blanche Devereaux herself. Rue hails from Healdton, Oklahoma, and headed to New York to make her name on Broadway after she graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1957. She starred in a couple of B movies during the ’60s but really gained notoriety as Caroline Johnson on Another World in 1970. She and Bea Arthur first teamed up in 1972 on Maude and was on the first few seasons of Mama’s Family with Betty White, the Girls were all familiar with one another by the time Golden Girls rolled around in 1985. She’s still quite active today, appearing in various Broadway roles and TV guest spots. And she’s still pretty!
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