I’m sure you’re shocked! shocked! I say, to find that Disney took artistic liberties in their animated films. They aren’t quite historically correct. I also hear that some of them aren’t even faithful to the original fairy tale they’re based on. Okay, we aren’t all that surprised, but it is neat to find out the details behind those liberties, and what the real story was. John Green fills us in on quite a few of them in this week’s mental_floss List Show.
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In the midst of awards season, you may have missed the Critics Choice Awards that were bestowed last weekend. No worries, here is the highlight of the evening. Jacob Tremblay was named Best Young Actor for his role in the movie Room. He is nine years old.
Tremblay’s acceptance speech is more than adorable. He’s well-spoken, humble, and gracious, and there’s a few points that would only apply to such a young winner, like the microphone being too tall and his plans for the trophy. -via Viral Viral Videos
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
I didn't know it myself, but October 5, 1962 was a hugely significant date in the history of pop culture. It was on this date that the first official Beatles record was released, and also, the first James Bond film Dr. No with the great Sean Connery, was released. Has there ever been a more incredible date in the history of pop culture?
Okay, I like James Bond fine, but I am a layman with 007 and his history, so I’ll write this article about the Beatles, my very favorite pop culture subject.
"Love Me Do" wasn't "technically" the Fab Four's first record. They had made some cheapie recordings in Liverpool and in Hamburg, Germany, where they were a very popular club band in the early '60's, before they became famous.
They made a few recordings as a backing band for a singer named Tony Sheridan, and were billed as “The Beat Brothers" on these records. The then-strange name “The Beatles" was translated in German to "peedles,” meaning the male sex organ, so the "Beatles" name was left off the record label for obvious reasons- “The Beat Brothers" used in its stead.
"Love Me Do" was, by most accounts, a Paul McCartney song, one of his earliest. Oddly though, Paul was later to credit it as "50-50,” him and John Lennon together. Even odder, George Martin, the Beatles producer erroneously credits it as "a John song."
The song was originally supposed to be sung by John, but as John had to play harmonica on it, it was given over to Paul. Paul claims he can still hear the nerves in his voice as he listens to "Love Me Do" to this day.
Oh look! Your brain is back, interrupting your sleep again, in the worst possible way. While you dream, memories that you’ve actively attempted to bury force their way up from the grave to humiliate you once again. It’s been said that dreaming is your body’s way of doing some mental housecleaning. If that’s the way it is, I would rather just get used to a messy house. This is the latest comic from Chaos Life.
Scottish twins Agnes and Margaret Smith were highly educated, wealthy, well-traveled, and spoke a dozen languages between them. Yet they still couldn’t find acceptance into the academic circles of Cambridge because it was the 19th century, and they were women. So they funded their own scholarly pursuits. The sisters followed a tip from a biblical scholar and journeyed to a remote monastery in the Sinai Desert by camel to study ancient manuscripts.
Agnes had been learning Aramaic–a branch of Syriac, and the language Jesus would have spoken–in the six months before the trip. Just as well, because she managed to do what so many male professors and scholars had failed to do in their searches of the monastery–she found what appeared to be an ancient manuscript of the four gospels.
The twins couldn’t be sure of their find, but nevertheless they were convinced enough to use almost all of their film on photographing the palimpsest.
Back in Cambridge, when they tried to show the photographs to the university’s eminent professors, they were ignored as dilettantes...until the professors got a proper look. It looked like Agnes Smith really had discovered something of worth. Yes, the Syriac Sinaiticus dated back to the mid-4th century, and the translation it preserved went back to the 2nd century, very close to the fountainhead of early Christianity.
A most important find, indeed. But the story of how the twins came to be there and what happened after they returned to Cambridge is a testament to how academia regarded women of their time, no matter how talented they were. Read the rest of the story at Atlas Obscura.
Exactly what "folk art" consists of was debated when it arose in the early 20th century, although the simplest definition for the term is art produced by those without formal training. We also don’t know who came up with the term, but two early adopters were Viola and Elie Nadelman, who collected such art and displayed it in their Museum of Folk and Peasant Arts in Riverdale, New York, from 1926 to 1937. The word "peasant" was dropped when it became evident that Americans didn’t like it. "Peasant art" was the European term for objects that were both decorative and functional.
By the early 1920s, the couple had amassed the country’s largest collection of folk art and set out to establish a museum to house their objects. In 1924, they began cataloging their extensive collection and worked with an architect to construct a building for it on their property in Riverdale. The collection kept growing, so rapidly that they expanded the museum’s building before it was even complete.
Since art-making was Elie’s primary focus, managing the collection became Viola’s passion. The Museum of Folk and Peasant Arts opened in November of 1926 with Viola acting as director and taking on most organizational duties. As Olson and Hofer explain in their book, “the MFPA was not only the first museum in the United States devoted exclusively to folk art, but also the first in the world to demonstrate the European influences on American folk art.”The Nadelmans organized their museum by medium with specific rooms devoted to materials like textiles or ironwork. “You’d have things like the wonderful French-Romanesque lions that are now at the Cloisters in the same room with weathervanes and tools like waffle irons,” Olson says, “and they were all hung in an aesthetically pleasing way.”
The New-York Historical Society has a new exhibit featuring some of the Nadelmans’ collection. The Nadelmans' story is a crucial piece in the history of folk art: how it became not only popular, but a legitimate form of art in the U.S. and beyond. Read about them at Collectors Weekly.
(Image credit: the Whitney Museum of American Art)
Those giant wind socks that look like waving tube men are at just about every car dealer and payday loan shop, especially on weekends. Have you ever wondered about the mind that came up with that idea? Me neither, until now. AirDancers were the brainchild of artist Peter Minshall, who designed them for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Sure, I remember those guys from the Olympics! I had no idea they were a new invention. We’ve gotten quite used to them now. Let’s take a look at what they did at the closing ceremonies in Atlanta.
-via mental_floss
Gavin and Daniel, the Slow Mo Guys, dipped a drill bit in paint and then recorded it on high-speed video to play back slowly for us. It turned out to be a neat effect, even in the first take, when the bit was loose. Learn how to use a chuck, guys!
Not only is it neat to watch, but the white backboard they used is now a work of art, and it comes with unimpeachable provenance. -via Viral Viral Videos
Screen Junkies makes it clear that they would have never done an Honest Trailer for the 1986 film Labyrinth if it weren’t for their desire to pay tribute to David Bowie. As we shall see, he was the only memorable part of the film.
As with many movies and TV shows, your memories are clouded by the fact that you were a child when you saw Labyrinth -if you ever did. I was already too old to be interested in a Muppet film, and we got plenty of Bowie through other channels. This Honest Trailer made it clear that the movie didn’t have much going for it outside of the sexy villain. -via Tastefully Offensive
You remember the Saturday Night Live skits in which a guest host was welcomed to the “Five Timers Club,” an exclusive group of stars who have hosted the show five times. Those began quite a few years ago, in 1990, and the Five Timers Club is now so big that it’s not all that exclusive any more. The most frequent hosts have appeared on the show more than a dozen times! Who are they, and why do they have such power -or good will- to be invited back so many times? Find out who the top six are at TVOM.
(Image credit: SNL)
Television is in a state of flux. Everyone watches, but they also complain about the cost. Some people are surprised that their parents still have cable, while the parents are surprised that the grandparents only watch broadcast TV. And your friend wonders why you pay for a subscription while they just pirate the shows they want. What will people do to watch TV ten or twenty years from now? Paul Tassi lays out several scenarios at TVOM, with their advantages, drawbacks, and odds of becoming the standard for the future of television as we know it.
(Image credit: Zaphod)
Every picture tells a story, don’t it, but this one tells an epic tale. LovelySweet1789 said it’s her favorite picture of her father. Before she was born, the family held a reunion at her grandparent’s farm in Maryland. Dad had a camera with a timer, and thought it would be a great idea to take a group picture from across the pond. He set the timer, but his estimate of how fast he could run around the pond was a little off. It’s a big pond. Everyone else assumed he knew what he was doing, so no one looked at the camera until he was in place -too late. Now, this was before everyone had a digital camera, so they did not know how the photo turned out until all the pictures were taken and a photo lab developed them. The finished product could be the basis for a movie. Someone asked why they didn’t use the flash. The Flash would have made it back to the group in time.
About a year ago, we posted the Rules for Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, taken from Chuck Jones’ autobiography. It’s a list we could all understand, because we all grew up watching Roadrunner cartoons. But how accurate is it? Albert Burneko sat down to watch the entire catalog of Jones’ cartoons featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, focusing on the nature of the jokes. He was blown away by the ingenious details, the classic humor, and the anarchy. But he also discovered something more -that the entire series, taken as a whole, mirrored the very definition of a joke. See, humor comes from setting up expectations and then suddenly turning those expectations on their heads. He leads us to this conclusion by analyzing several cartoons, including Fast and Furry-ous from 1949.
With each set piece, Fast and Furry-ous has invoked a notion of what you’re watching—an idea of what this is, and what it’s about, and why—and then destroyed it. It started small, defying the rhythm of the chase cartoons that preceded it. Next, with the rocket, it blew a raspberry at the more basic structure of those cartoons: This is not a contest between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner at all. Now it’s pulling back farther, to show you that this isn’t a comic study of a hapless, self-defeating boob, either. The forces at work against him clearly go far beyond his own internal inadequacy.
This is to say that so far, every system of understanding either the audience or Wile E. has tried to deploy has been revealed as a joke. If you’re starting to think that the heart of this is about the folly of the search for discernible order in the chaotic universe or some bleak thing ... well, keep watching. The very next gag has something to say about that.
The upshot of the piece is that the "rules" don’t always hold up. The rules are a set-up. They give us expectations of how the two characters interact, and the meta-humor comes from breaking the very rules that Jones gave us. Along the way, we get a deep look into the funniest jokes of the cartoon series, with video evidence. It’s a great read, at The Concourse. -via Digg
Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.
For manchildren of a certain age, the Game Genie opened up a new world of opportunity for boring games—and had a profound effect on copyright law.
(Image credit: Evan-Amos)
For kids of a certain age, the Game Genie was a life-changer. Literally. It could change the number of lives you had in whatever cartridge you put it on, as well as do a bunch of other crazy things to the game you were playing. It provided a thrill that we've kinda gotten away from as video games have grown more complex, but the device leaves behind a rich legacy. Today's Tedium looks at the riches of Game Genie, a quarter-century after it entered our lives.
How the Genie Came to Be
"We didn’t have a license to create Nintendo games so we found a way of bypassing Nintendo’s lock-out chip and released games that way. We had an idea of placing a switch on the cartridge to add extra lives, weapons and things like that. Then we made the mental leap of saying that if we could do this with our own games, then maybe we could build an interface for other people’s games too. It was a game that morphed into an industry."
— David Darling, one of the founders of Codemasters, the British gaming company that first created the Game Genie in the late 1980s, discussing how the device came to be. Darling, who produced dozens of games over the years—most notably the Fantastic Dizzy series—eventually licensed the idea to Galoob, a major American toy company that started selling the NES version of the device in mid-1990. They eventually turned the hacky device concept into a $140 million cottage industry. For creating the Game Genie and helping develop the British gaming industry, Darling and his brother Richard were made Commanders of the Order of the British Empire back in 2008. See, even the queen noticed!
Why the Game Genie mattered
Mysterious Poe Toaster Returns To Baltimore https://t.co/xEW4fbxR38 pic.twitter.com/8Xosqyh5X3
— Baltimore Maryland (@BaltimoreMdRR) January 17, 2016
The Poe Toaster was a mysterious man who came to Edgar Allan Poe’s grave at Westminster Hall in Baltimore on January 19th, Poe’s birthday, every year to leave a toast of cognac and three roses. The last year he showed up was in 2009, and by 2012 we’d given up on him ever appearing again. Many believe he died. But there’s a new Poe Toaster! The Maryland Historical Society held auditions and selected a new, still anonymous, person to carry on the tradition. He made his first appearance on Saturday for Baltimore’s Poe Appreciation Day ceremony. A crowd of about 100 people attended.
After saluting Poe with apple cider and the raffling off of a themed cake, the group headed outside to watch the arrival of the new toaster.
The bearded figure emerged from beneath the hall playing Camille Saint-Saëns' distinctive Danse Macabre on a violin. He marched up to the grave with a white scarf draped loosely across his shoulders.
Some things remain the same: The inheritor of the tradition toasted with cognac and left red roses. Some things are different: The violin was the new toaster's addition, and the ritual was performed in daylight rather than the dead of night.
The toaster rested the violin and bow on the stone monument and intoned a tribute in Latin. He yanked the cognac from his coat pocket and drank. He set down the roses, nodded to Poe and left.
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