It’s been 36 years since The Warriors made the rounds in theaters. Some of the cast members are heading to a reunion this Sunday at the Warriors Festival in Coney Island. In addition to reminiscing about old times together, they’ll probably talk about how fantastical the film seems now, because New York City now is nothing like it was in the ‘70s. When they filmed The Warriors on the city streets at night, those streets were anything but safe.  

In the late Seventies, Paramount was notorious for being one of the toughest Hollywood studios to work for; they wanted their films made fast and cheap. To be a Warrior would mean running all night, every night, through the sweltering summer streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. It would mean showing up for work at six in the evening and not wrapping until the crew could see the sun rise over the East River. It would mean hopping subway turnstiles and enduring the taunts of the local street gangs. The line separating art and life would become blurred, the making of the film an adventure in and of itself.

"I was really going to put them through it out there," [director Walter] Hill remembers. "You never quite knew what you were going to run into."

The producers ended up paying various street gangs for enough peace to complete the movie. There were times when the young actors actually had to fight the locals, but some of them were pretty streetwise, having grown up in the same type of culture. And there were plenty of other challenges in bringing The Warriors to the big screen. The Village Voice talked to several actors and crew members about the experience, in an oral history of The Warriors. -via Metafilter

See also: A Documentary About The Real Life Gangs That Inspired The Warriors.

Here's a few tidbits about your favorite authors, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. 

The best-selling fiction author of all time is William Shakespeare. #2: Agatha Christie.

Writer Lewis Carroll coined the word “chortle.” It means a cross between a chuckle and a snort.

It took author J. R. R. Tolkien 12 years to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Author Norman Mailer claimed to have invented thumb wrestling.

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. The name was meant as a tribute to his second cousin three times removed, who was the composer of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

What did the initials in e. e. cummings’s name stand for? “Edward Estlin.” (Or “edward estlin,” if you prefer.)

In 1901 author Jack London ran for mayor of Oakland, California, on the Socialist ticket. He got just 245 votes and beat only the Prohibitionist candidate (60 votes).

After almost being killed by a minivan in 1999, author Stephen King bought the vehicle and beat it with a baseball bat.

Dr. Seuss didn’t become a real doctor until 1955 when Dartmouth University gave him an honorary degree.

Louisa May Alcott was on a committee that banned Huckleberry Finn from the Concord Library in Massachusetts. Of the book and its famous author, she said, “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.”

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

A few facts about butterflies, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. 

People in the Middle Ages in Europe believed that butterflies were fairies in disguise, fluttering by to steal their dairy products.

In the early 1700s, butterfly collector Lady Eleanor Glanville was declared insane after an entomologist testified, “None but those deprived of their Senses would go in Pursuit of butterflyes.”

There are 15,000 to 20,000 species of butterflies in the world— 4,000 are in the South American rain forests alone.

Like bees, butterflies pollinate plants.

Some butterflies have ears on their wings.

Butterflies suck nectar from flowers using their proboscis, which works like a straw. When not in use, it curls up so it’s out of the way.

The scales on a butterfly’s wing overlap like roof tiles.

Lolita writer Vladimir Nabokov was also a compulsive butterfly collector and researcher.

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

A few space firsts, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. 

First person to run the Boston Marathon while in space: NASA astronaut Sunita Williams aboard the International Space Station. She was an official participant, even though she ran on a treadmill. Her time: 4: 23: 10.

First monkey in space: Albert II, a rhesus monkey, on a U.S. rocket, 1949. He died, as did Albert III, IV, and V.

First monkey in space to survive: Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey, 1958. She lived another 26 years after landing. Her companion, Able, also survived the flight, but died three days later during an operation to remove an infected medical electrode that had been implanted for the flight.

First fatalities in space: Soviet astronauts Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov on June 29, 1971.

First haircut in space: American astronaut Paul Weitz got a trim from Pete Conrad in 1973.

First fish in space: A mummichog, 1973.

First e-mail from space: On August 28, 1991, from the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis.

First codger in space: John Glenn, age 77, on October 29, 1998. His space shuttle flight honored his first flight in 1962, when he became the fifth person in space and the first American to orbit Earth. Bonus fact: In 1962 the people of Perth, Australia, turned on their house, street, and car lights to greet John Glenn as he flew over them in the dark. In 1998 they did the same thing.

First video game advertisement from space: Astronaut Don Pettit catapulted stuffed birds at pigs in the International Space Station in 2012 to promote the Angry Birds in Space game, which had been created in cooperation with NASA.

First woman in space: Russian Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. (Sally Ride didn’t become the first American woman in space until 20 years later.)

First cat in space: Felix, launched by the French in 1963.

(Images credit: NASA)

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The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. Weighing in at over 400 pages, it's a fact-a-palooza of obscure information.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

I read somewhere recently that LOL is not used as much as it was a few years ago. If young folks are saying “ha ha” instead, they are totes rad in my book. Groovy, even. Just like LOL, a ha ha can lighten the mood enough that you can say anything in a text. This is the latest comic from Reza Farazmand at Poorly Drawn Lines.

Right on schedule, as soon as Labor Day is over, we get the first trailer for a Christmas movie. And this year, it’s a horror film!

(YouTube link)

Krampus is coming to ruin Christmas, opening in theaters December 4. I can’t wait to see what our European friends will say about the American horror interpretation. -via Digg

A northern Australian reef fish has been known as the “blue bastard” to fishermen for a long time. The fish changes color as it matures, and is blue as an adult. It is also combative, fiercely fighting other fish of the same species with its jaws and teeth. But it had not been described by scientists as a species separate from the sweetlips until recently. And it’s been given an appropriate name: the Latin equivalent of “blue bastard.” 

Queensland Museum scientist Jeff Johnson, who identified the species from photos taken last year by a Weipa fisherman, has formally christened it Plectorhinchus caeruleonothus – a direct Latin translation of the colloquial name anglers bestowed on a fish famously difficult to land.

“Caeruleo is blue and nothus is bastard. That was the origin of the name applied by fishermen for many years and I thought, why should I argue with that? It seemed like a perfect name for me,” Johnson told Guardian Australia.

“I wondered what the reviewers of the paper would say about it but they both agreed it was quintessentially Australian and we should go ahead.”

I agree it’s a fair dinkum name for a blue Australian fighting fish. -via Arbroath    

(Image credit: Queensland Museum)

Let’s face it, insurance companies wouldn’t be in business if they weren’t making a profit. And the fact that car insurance is a legal requirement gives them carte blanch to make more and more profits any way they can. Also because of the legal requirement to have insurance in order to drive, they don’t even have to be good at what they do- they only have to be slightly more attractive in some way than the next company.  

(YouTube link)

Cracked follows up their parody ad If Car Commercials Were Honest with another transportation nightmare we’ve all been through. With, of course, the same smooth pitch man.

The wife of the president was just that—until a gun-toting geologist named Lou Hoover moved into the East Wing.

In the spring of 1929, the White House was busy preparing for a tea party. This wasn’t some run-of-the-mill White House tea party: It was a top secret shindig, with staffers and the Secret Service under strict orders not to speak of it.

All the fuss was because one of the 15 invitees on the guest list, Jessie DePriest, the wife of Illinois representative Oscar DePriest, was African-American. Not since Theodore Roosevelt had Booker T. Washington over for dinner three decades prior had a black person paid a social visit to the White House. But now, in the height of the Jim Crow era, Lou Hoover, wife of Herbert, was undeterred. She wanted DePriest to come, and her office had drafted and redrafted the guest list to include people who would accept her at the table.

Despite efforts to keep the party under wraps, the press found out, and, sure enough, a furor ensued. Newspapers lambasted the first lady for “defiling” the White House; the state legislatures of Texas, Georgia, and Florida passed resolutions rebuking her. Lou didn’t apologize. Although the reaction bothered her, she refused to acknowledge the controversy publicly. After all, this was nothing compared to the stress she had coolly handled while living in China, where she laughed off death threats during the Boxer Rebellion.

In many ways, Lou Hoover was the first truly modern first lady. She was one of the first first ladies to drive her own car (to the chagrin of the Secret Service), give radio addresses, and create a separate policy agenda for the East Wing. Usually, it’s Eleanor Roosevelt who comes to mind when people think of first ladies who made their own mark. But it was Lou who set an undeniable precedent for Eleanor herself, as well as future first ladies.

Today, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest-reigning British monarch in history, and the longest reigning woman monarch of any nation. Queen Victoria reigned from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22, 1901. That was 63 years and 216 days.

The folks at reddit are doing image memes based on places. It’s a twist on the old “come for the ____, stay for the _____” slogan. It started off with Arkansas. Colbert did that one long ago.

Shortly afterward, Minnesota joined in. The Minnesota karma train roared through the discussion.

Chicago was mentioned in the comments under the Minnesota post.

Then there was Nashville. As in the other posts, opinions were divided as to the city’s advantages and drawbacks.

North Dakota is currently the highest-ranked post of this kind. There may be more coming.

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington is restoring the 11-foot model of the USS Enterprise that was used in the TV series Star Trek from 1966 to 1969. It was donated to the Smithsonian in 1974, and was on display until 2014. But the ship doesn’t look the way it did when the series first aired in 1966, and the museum wants your help to make it so.  

The ship has been modified eight times since it was built in 1964. But the studio model's 1967 appearance in the episode “Trouble with Tribbles” was the last time the Enterprise was modified during the original "Star Trek" television series.

Fans are encouraged to submit firsthand, original images or film of the ship under construction, during filming or on public display at any time before 1976. For more information about submitting material, contact StarshipEnterprise@si.edu and look for updates about the project on social media channels using #MilestonesofFlight.

The plan is to put the restored Enterprise back on display in 2016 in the new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall.

(Image credit: Flickr user Paolo Rosa)

Pee-wee’s Playhouse was a TV show unlike anything before it. If you grew up watching it, you were dazzled by the silliness of it all. If you were an adult who couldn’t stop watching, like me, you were impressed by the show’s outrageous creativity. With a show that wacky, it had to have a great opening sequence. Who can forget the claymation beaver and monkeys, the zoom to the sphinx, the pterodactyls, and the wacky dance Pee-wee did to introduce the characters? The inside story of how that intro was done comes to us in an oral history form from Paul Reubens, Senior Animation Producer Prudence Fenton, and Animation Director Phil Trumbo. Here’s a snippet:

Phil: Another thing that people don’t really talk about much is that Paul is originally from Florida, where they have things like snake farms and alligator ranches, these like roadside attractions. I’m from Virginia, and I think Ric and Gary are both from Texas. Wayne’s from Tennessee — home of the schmaltzy Smoky Mountains. In the south you have these bizarre pop art museums and stuff. Civil War battlefields, mini-golf. There’s this giant fireworks stand called South of the Border in South Carolina, and it looks like Pee-wee’s playhouse. It’s just this grotesque thing.

In California you have the giant donut, those stores and stuff like that. There’s a lot of roadside attraction, feeling like a kid in a car, driving by these giant fibreglass dinosaurs for Dino Land, and you want to stop. Pee-wee’s Playhouse is where you can stop at every roadside attraction in the world.

The story of the Pee-wee’s Playhouse opening sequence is accompanied by behind-the scenes photographs and video footage, in a fascinating article at The Art of the Title. -via Digg

There are all kinds wedding cakes that incorporate the couple’s favorite geek interest, from comic book superheroes to TV shows to movies to video games. But what if you like them all? Here’s a cake, which may have been for a pre-wedding event, that splits open to show a variety of fandoms inside. There’s Batman, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, and …please help me out with the rest. This lovely cake from Divine Cakes was featured in Cake Wreck’s Sunday roundup of beautiful and well-made cakes, this week called Geek Chic Wedding Cakes. The rest of the cakes are pretty neat, too!

The word you see here is rendered in Conveyor Belt font. If you can’t read what it says, go to the generator page for Conveyor Belt Font. Still can’t read it? Then click the box that says "show belt," and it will all become clear. Conveyor Belt is just one of many mathematical and puzzle fonts that are generated from data of all kinds. They can be really maddening to decipher, yet they are wonderful to read about. For example, one is generated by imagining glass rods arranged in a pattern of each letter, then twisted and seen from the side. See quite a few of these odd fonts, and links to their explanations.  -via Metafilter