T.S. Eliot was poised to be the top poet of his generation. But first he had to be rescued from his day job.

(Image credit: Flickr user Seth Anderson)

In 1921, suffering from a “nervous disorder,” T.S. Eliot took a three-month hiatus from his day job. The 33-year-old had been working as a clerk in the London sub-basement of Lloyds Bank for four years. But with the luxury of time, the part-time poet focused his attention on completing his magnum opus, “The Waste Land.”

Released in 1922, Eliot’s haunting and defiantly oblique work is a landmark of modernism; even at its most impenetrable, one reviewer admitted that Eliot’s work possessed “the music of ideas.” Ezra Pound, too, was impressed. Convinced of Eliot’s genius, Pound reckoned that the grunt work was smothering his creativity. “Some of us consider Eliot’s employment in a bank the worst waste in contemporary literature,” Pound bemoaned.

Of course, financing poetry is a problem as old as poetry itself. For Emily Dickinson or Lord Byron, the answer was simple—being born into the right family relieved them of the worry. Others turned to hack writing to stock the till. Walt Whitman penned a temperance tract while guzzling cheap wine. Edgar Allan Poe cranked out newspaper filler like “Why Not Try a Mineralized Pavement?” When William Wordsworth landed a decidedly unromantic job as a tax collector, he could take comfort in the knowledge that Geoffrey Chaucer had been a customs comptroller in the 14th century. “There’s no money in poetry,” Robert Graves once observed, “but then there’s no poetry in money either.”

Roy Blakey spent 15 years as a professional ice skater with various shows, including Holiday on Ice, during its heyday in the mid-20th century. Along the way, he began to collect souvenirs, and now is an avid collector of vintage ice show ephemera. Blakey tells us about the history of ice shows, which took off in the U.S. and spread all over the world.  

Collectors Weekly: Ice shows seem an odd and somewhat cumbersome U.S. export.

Blakey: Well, Morris Chalfen was a genius. He realized ice shows needed no translation; that they would appeal to people all over the world. But the origin of the international shows goes back to the portable ice shows—or tank shows, as we called them—in the U.S., which started with Carl Snyder in 1943. Snyder had been booking bands into hotels when he decided to start producing tank shows. He’d bring a 20-by-20-foot ice rink right into a nightclub or the theater-restaurant of a fancy hotel. The story I heard is that the first one was in Toledo, Ohio, during Christmas and New Year’s, so he called it Holiday on Ice.

Shortly after that, two brothers from Milwaukee named Cal and Emery Gilbert, who owned an ice rink in Toledo called the Ice House, invited Holiday on Ice to perform at their rink. Emery was a brilliant technician, and he figured out how to enlarge Snyder’s portable rink to arena-size. The three became partners, and after a couple of years, Morris Chalfen heard about this little Holiday on Ice company and invested some money in it so they could build several arena-sized, portable ice rinks. That way they could have one rink going in the city where they were performing while another was being set up in the next city for the next show. It made everything more efficient, which was important since by then Holiday on Ice was competing with the Ice Follies, the Ice Capades, and the Hollywood Ice Review, which starred Sonja Henie.

In fact, those three companies had signed exclusives with all of the big arenas, which meant Holiday on Ice was frozen out of places like Madison Square Garden in New York and Chicago Stadium. Holiday on Ice needed its portable rinks, but that turned out to be a big plus for them in that they could go wherever they wanted. They could play on a theater stage, a basketball court, an outdoor football stadium, even a bullring, which they first did in Guadalajara, Mexico.

There’s more to the story, plus we’ll get a look at Blakey’s collection of ice show and skating memorabilia in an article at Collectors Weekly.

This cartogram plots the size of each nation as a factor of its population. It was created by redditor TeaDranks. Each tiny square represents half a million people. You can click the original at imgur to greatly enlarge the map.  

Asia takes up half the world and Canada is reduce to a line. Hawaii by itself gets more squares than Iceland, and Greenland is nowhere to be found (except on the list of squareless nations). The cities of Hong Kong and Singapore now are bigger than Mongolia and New Zealand. If you want to see a big city, check out Mexico City. -via Metafilter

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Jack Storms is a glass artist who doesn’t melt glass. Instead, he cuts and polishes and assembles solid glass into beautiful works of shininess. He says it can take 18 weeks to complete a project, so of course we would wonder what they sell for. You can see some of Storms’ completed works at his website, but you have to make a serious inquiry to get a price quote. That should tell you something. Meanwhile, we can learn about the process of making these cold glass sculptures. -via Digg

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This ad for the French cable channel Canal+ from the ad agency BETC Paris gives a little twist to the old story of why there are no unicorns in existence today. Yeah, the setting is still Noah’s Ark. Read more about this minute-long epic film at AdFreak. About one second of the video may be NSFW, but fine by barnyard standards. I hope that doesn’t give away too much. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

When you’re a webcomic artist, you can take shortcuts by just making something up that will work. The riddle is solved on a technicality! But don’t think you’re so smart -after all, Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx and look where it got him. This comic is from John McNamee at Pie Comic.

Harry Houdini was known as the world’s greatest escape artist. But he was never kept confined as a prisoner of the state, where the stakes are higher. Some folks developed a talent for escaping from real incarceration, because by golly, they kept getting arrested and jailed! There’s the story of Paddy Mitchell, a bank robber who, along with his gang who wore masks of presidents, robbed over 100 banks. Their exploits inspired the movie Point Break. Paddy almost killed himself during his second  prison break.

Now, you probably know from decades' worth of depictions of prison life in the media that cigarettes are as good as gold on the inside, but you probably don't know about something else they're good for -- namely, faking a heart attack, which you can do by simply soaking a cigarette butt in water overnight and then drinking the resulting liquid nicotine goodness (don't try that at home, kids). Mitchell, obviously a big fan of the "more is more" approach, soaked an entire pack of cigs in water, ran three miles around the prison exercise yard, and then drank that refreshing cancer sludge.

His ticker damn nigh exploded. His heart attack symptoms were so real -- because, basically, they were -- that guards rushed him to the local hospital ... where his two partners were posing as emergency room workers. Mitchell made a quick getaway to the Philippines, only returning to the U.S. to pull an occasional bank heist until he was finally caught for good ... 15 years later.

Paddy Mitchell is only one of the five prison escape artists profiled in a list at Cracked.

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Some Facebook etiquette rules are presented here as a 194s-style educational film. The anachronistic idioms are hilarious! Facebook itself is described here as “the electric friendship generator.” But the advice here deals with real-life modern social conventions, and it can be boiled down to “think before you post.” -via Nag on the Lake

Look at these adorable little hedgehogs! Don’t you just want to eat them up? That’s what you do, because they are dumplings, stuffed with sweet cream filling. But they are only available at one restaurant, in the Chinatown section of Yokohama, Japan.

The spiky little treats are available at Yoseigo, a dim sum takeout joint that’s been in business since 1946. If you’re after orthodox fare, Yoseigo has steamed shrimp dumplings, egg rolls, and the like. On the other hand, if you’re in the mood for something sweet, and also a little playful, you can’t go wrong with their hedgehog dumplings.

The palm-sized snacks appear to be steamed first, and then later deep-fried to help give them a more defined shape. This brings us to what might be the only negative point about the hedgehog dumplings. Though they have a pleasantly crisp texture, the “quills” on their spiky backs are indeed a little sharp, so you’ll want to chew carefully to keep from poking yourself.

The dumplings are available individually or in economical herds, er, multi-packs to go. See more pictures at Rocket News 24. -via Nag on the Lake

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It’s true that most cheeses are named after their place of origin, so John Green goes ahead to tell us the story of the cheese’s origin as well. Even cottage cheese was once made in cottages. However, there are some in which the name is a little more complicated, like Monterrey Jack (there is a Jack involved). There’s even a cheese named after another cheese! Learn about two dozen cheese names in this week’s mental_floss List Show.

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You could call them insanely good. This combination extreme sport and art form is called Xpogo, and it looks terrifying. At least these guys are wearing helmets. That only makes sense, as the best practitioners are well aware of how many falls it takes to achieve this level of competence (otherwise they'd be dead). This compilation is brought to you by the folks who do the People Are Awesome series. -Thanks, Dan!  

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It’s a scene that we will never, ever forget. The 1979 film Alien introduced the monster (later known as the Alien Queen or the xenomorph) by having it emerge from John Hurt’s chest where it was apparently incubating. We were shocked by the violent "birth," horrified by the idea of an alien growing inside his body, and also surprised by the death of a major movie star so early in the film. The new series Art of the Scene by Cinefix looks at the nuts and bolts of conceiving, designing, and pulling off the horrific scene in the days before non-stop CGI. -via Laughing Squid

Yesterday, we posted an Oscar story from Eddie Deezen titled The Cruelest Oscar Award Presentation of All-Time. While rounding up photos for the article, I came across another moment from that very same awards ceremony that could be in the running for the cruelest. However, we don’t know that it was intentional, so let’s go with the “most embarrassing.”

When the 6th Academy Awards were presented on March 16, 1934, it had been 17 months since the previous Oscar ceremony, so movies from both the second half of 1932 and the entire year of 1933 were in contention. This was done to standardize the eligibility period to the calendar year. The big winner of the year was the movie Cavalcade, which won the Best Picture Oscar -even though most of the eight other nominated films are considered to be better movies 80 years later.

The ceremony was held during a banquet at the Fiesta Room at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Director Frank Capra, whose film Lady for a Day was nominated for four Oscars, reserved tables for 16 people, although three of them bowed out before the ceremony.

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Fadi Saleh of the YouTube channel baracksdubs has been working steadily to edit the president into singing songs for years now. This time he’s outdone himself, as Obama does the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars song “Uptown Funk.” -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.

“Katharine Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.” This quote, by famed writer-critic Dorothy Parker, was put forth about an early performance of Katharine Hepburn. As a young actress, Kate was also dubbed "box office poison.”

Born and raised to have an independent mind and spirit, young Kate broke the mold of every actress in history. She wore pants and no make-up, and refused to pose for pictures, grant interviews or sign autographs. She wasn't popular or well-liked in Hollywood.

But as we all know, she was, within a few short years, to become one of the most acclaimed and admired actresses in the history of Hollywood and the movies. She is truly now regarded as one of the movies' immortal figures- imitated, studied, and admired by any and every actress, young or old. To put it in simplest terms, Katharine Hepburn was the Meryl Streep of her time.

Katherine Hepburn in Morning Glory.

It was for the 1932-33 Academy Awards that Katharine received her very first Oscar nomination. Young Kate was nominated for her performance as “Eva Lovelace" in the movie Morning Glory. Her nomination was surprising enough, and she didn't even bother to show up for the awards ceremony. (In retrospect, one wonders if she would have found the evening's show amusing.)

Host for the ceremony that year was legendary liberal humorist, Will Rogers. Rogers was quite possibly the most beloved comedian-humorist in American history. He was definitely slanted left as a liberal, but conservatives loved him and were hardly ever offended by his humor. He showed so much common sense in his observations, no one took any offense at his remarks and barbs.

Rogers spent much of the evening making wisecracks about the Republicans, Hollywood big shots and phonies, even Oscars lobbying (this predated Jon Stewart's similar targets in his Oscar hosting stint by 73 years).

His rudest joke, however, was reserved for the awarding of the evening's Best Actress award.