The way people interpret a word can totally change depending on the context. The very first story in this video illustrates that: Because Bugs Bunny used a fairly unfamiliar word, it must be an insult. And it's been considered so ever since. There are plenty of terms that have gone through a change, for many different reasons. Language evolves quickly, even in one lifetime. You'll be surprised by some of what you'll learn in the latest episode of the Mental Floss List Show.
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What we have here is a heavy metal Disney tune sung by Tom Selleck, as Dave Letterman plays drums. Or not. Last night, Dave Grohl guest-hosted the TV show Jimmy Kimmel Live, dressed in his Halloween costume as Letterman. His guest Kristen Bell was Tom Selleck/Thomas Magnum, complete with chest hair. They both have daughters who are big fans of the movie Frozen, so they performed the song "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" mashed up with Metallica's "Enter Sandman."
The band was appropriately dressed for the occasion as various musicians. A good time was had by all. You can see more clips from the show at Laughing Squid.
The 1982 film Poltergeist was terrifying. Written and produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, it starred Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, so it was a guaranteed hit from the get-go. But we most clearly recall the adorable Heather O'Rourke as the youngest child of the family who moved into a cursed house. If you were impressed by Poltergeist, you'll want to learn what went on behind the scenes.
5. Out of all the scary scenes only one really got to O’Rourke.
She didn’t mind anything except the scene in which she had to hang from her headboard as a giant fan pushed everything into her closet, meaning the scene in which the poltergeists were trying to take her again.
4. The skeletons in the pool were real.
Nobody told JoBeth this until afterwards. Some people even thought that the cast was cursed after the use of real skeletons since the eldest daughter was killed after the films release and O’Rourke passed away several years later.
Read more trivia about Poltergeist at TVOM.
Tom Hanson owned a few Pizza Man restaurants and a few KFC outlets in southern California in the 1960s. But what he really wanted to do was get into the movie business, just like millions of other people who moved to Los Angeles from elsewhere. Hanson had done some bit parts, but in 1971, he jumped into film production with both feet -to solve a crime. The Zodiac Killer had been menacing L.A. for a couple of years by then, but no one knew who he was. Hanson spent $13,000 to make a movie about the crimes, rented a theater to show it, and set up surveillance to see who attended. He was sure that the Zodiac Killer could not resist seeing a movie called The Zodiac Killer.
On the last night of the engagement, Hanson interrupted his surveillance for a bathroom break. “I was standing at the urinal and thought I heard the door open,” he says. “I turned around but didn’t see anyone.”
Without a sound, a man had materialized at the urinal next to Hanson’s, remarking about a graphic scene in the movie and how “real blood” wouldn’t come out of a body like that. “I zipped up, turned, and saw the same face that was on the wanted poster. Same eyes, nose, mouth, hair, everything. I thought, 'Son of a bitch, it’s him.'"
Tom Hanson talked to Mental Floss about his movie and what happened during its initial run at the RKO Theater.
The handbell choir at my church has been shorthanded since my kids left for college. Last week they were down to four people, and the pastor jokingly called them a quartet. They played a simple song, nothing like the Hallelujah Chorus. The Forté Handbell Quartet shows that it can be done, if you are in good physical condition.
The Forté Handbell Quartet adapted Michael R. Keller’s arrangement of the piece to fit in with their strap-line ‘Rethink Possible’ – a mission to test boundaries and question the norms around classical music.
Weaving between each other, darting here and there to grab the correct handbells, the Forté Handbell Quartet do just that.
Besides the running and risking knocking each other down, there's the difficulty of not seeing the sheet music as you scramble for the next note. I am impressed. -via Metafilter
The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!
Items that merit an extra look
compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff
Damm: Piggish Lounge Preferences
“Sow Preferences for Walls to Lean Against When Lying Down,” Birgitte I. Damm et al., Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 99, nos. 1–2, 2006, pp. 53–63. (Thanks to Nick Wills-Johnson for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Frederiksberg and several other institutions in Denmark, report:
Sows showed no preferences for three types of sloping walls.
Lizards: Lively TV
“Interactive Video Playback and Opponent Assessment in Lizards,” T.J. Ord and C.S. Evans, Behavioural Processes, vol. 59, 2002, pp. 55–65.
Carp and Chords
We learned in elementary school that we should eat liver and spinach, because the hemoglobin in our blood needs the iron (thank goodness for fortified foods). And we older folks know about "iron-poor tired blood." So how much iron is there inside us? Would it react to a magnet? How about a huge super magnet? Braniac75 does the experiment to found out. He is kind enough to give warning to the squeamish when the blood appears.
On the way to the answer, we see some really neat stuff, like the chemical structure of hemoglobin, and a super magnet picking up burned matches. Who knew that could happen? -via Boing Boing
Next time you moan about the return of winter, remember that cold weather is what keeps a host of unpleasant critters away. Vampire bats currently range from Mexico to Argentina, but that could change in the next few decades. As climate change brings the tropical zone further north into the United States, tropical flora and fauna is expected to come with it. And moving is easier for animals that fly.
New research indicates that the bats’ population is on the rise at the northern edge of their range, and they may even return to the United States as climate change renders parts of Texas and Florida hospitable once more. “They’re very social and gregarious animals that have coexisted with humans for a really long time,” says coauthor Antoinette Piaggio, a molecular ecologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “We’re not trying to portray these animals as something we should all be scared of.”
It could be that an infusion of blood-sucking bats will not even lead to a noticeable rise in rabies in the United States. Still, scientists must prepare for a possible vampire bat invasion. They are trying to predict where the bats will arrive, what the consequences will be, and how to prevent vampire bat-borne rabies from spreading into new places.
Even if the invasion of vampire bats pose no big threat to humans, any introduction of new species into an area can wreck the existing ecosystem. Read more about vampire bats at Popular Science. -Thanks, Walter!
(Image credit: Uwe Schmidt)
Imagine walking on the street in New York and seeing Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia driving by in one of those levitating speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi! YouTuber Jesse Wellens (previously at Neatorama) and model Carmella Rose took a ride around New York in their Star Wars Halloween costumes and delighted everyone with their speeder bike.
Well, everyone except a stormtrooper (Casey Neistat) who thought they were going too fast. And then a NYPD officer. Oops. See how the speeder bike was built in this video and how the stunt was filmed in another video. -via Tastefully Offensive
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) begins today and runs through Thursday (October 31-November 2). The Mexican holiday has its origins in Aztec rituals for honoring deceased ancestors, but has incorporated Christian traditions over time, including moving the dates to coincide with All Saint's Day, the same way Halloween has moved away from its Celtic origins. As far as celebrating Día de los Muertos, we are familiar with sugar skulls, but there are other foods associated with the holiday, like Pan De Muerto.
This traditional, sweet "bread of the dead" is one of the most important recipes for celebrating Día de los Muertos. It's made to look like a pile of bones and is brought along by families visiting the graves of their loved ones.
You'll find the recipe here, and a list of other foods to try for Día de los Muertos (with recipe links) at Buzzfeed.
(Image credit: Ian McEnroe/Yes More Please)
It's Halloween on the internet, so it's time to watch the Skeleton Dance and enjoy a roundup of skeleton memes! Skeletons are a natural for comedy, since they can be made to look like and act like people without being identified as any particular person. They also symbolize death, whether it's death from time, boredom, or some weird curse. And you have to admit that seeing a skeleton trying to perform some human action that requires flesh is inherently funny. While skeleton humor goes back to ancient times, a link-heavy post at Motherboard begins their timeline of internet skeleton memes at 1996. One image contains possibly NSFW text. -via Digg
Pairing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as brothers was a premise so ridiculous it had to be made into a movie. And so we got the 1988 film Twins. But if things had gone a little differently, Twins might have been made with other actors (try to imagine that). Let's learn a little more about the movie Twins.
10. Schwarzenegger made more off of this movie than any of the Terminator movies.
He made 20 percent from the profits and also made thousands from the international sales of the movie. It’s more than he would have made by just taking a flat salary.
4. Schwarzenegger started getting more comedy scripts sent his way after this film.
He’d never done a comedy before and as a result people started thinking that maybe he’d found a different role that he could cultivate. It was a new side of Arnold that most people hadn’t realized was there.
Read more trivia about the movie Twins at TVOM.
You were expecting maybe a riddle? If people actually fell into easily defined categories, we could use our logic skills to figure them out, but the world is a lot messier than that. It's not logic, it's just life. And no one can figure groups of people out with simple logic. This is the latest from Zach Weinersmith at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Antoine Bizet participated in the 2017 Red Bull Rampage, which I assume is a bike race, with a GoPro on his helmet. The course looks completely insane from this angle. It packs in quite a few terrifying moments in little over a minute. Make sure you have something to hold on to while you watch.
You couldn't pay me enough money to try biking down such a narrow trail at that speed. But Bizet flips, he jumps, he flies through the air, and he won the People's Choice Award for his run. -via Geekologie
Atlas Obscura asked readers to share their worst nightmares. The ones that stuck out in people's minds, that they remembered years later, are pretty strange. The unconscious mind can come up with scenarios and plots that easily outdo popular fiction. Here's a sample.
Walked into my house and about half a dozen hairy black spiders the size of dishwashers were arguing (in English) over the remote control. TV was on in the dark room casting blue light over everything. It also wasn’t anything like my actual house. They chased me out and just as one was about to catch me I woke up.... I think that means I died. —Rosie Bright
Scariest dream I ever had happened in my 40s. I walked into a grocery store, bought some stupid thing (not important), and went to the cashier to pay for it. They looked at me and said they needed exact change. I smiled, said, “No problem,” and pulled a shotgun out from under my long coat and pulled the trigger. When it went off I woke up in a pool of sweat. I could still feel the recoil of the shotgun in my shoulder and hands.
—David Davis
Someone wheeled a metal gurney onto a stone bridge in a park. My body had been barbecued, and it was laid out on its back on the gurney. My skin was crispy and covered with BBQ sauce. I was told to carve up my body as the main course for a catered picnic in the park. I hesitated for a minute, and someone whispered over my shoulder, “It’s much easier after you remove the hands and head.” So I cut off my own hands and my own head. The advice was right. It was much easier to carve up the rest of my body after that. I served up the slices to the people at the picnic but I didn’t eat any of it.
—Guy Bocchino
Read a bunch more of these memorable and/or persistent nightmares at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Neal Fox)
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