It's a Funny Thing - March 1, 2010

In looking at possible topics to bring you, dear reader, we scour the Interwebs to find the most interesting and relevant things to bring to your attention. Imagine our delight, then, in learning that March 1 begins "International Mirth Month," dedicated to turning stressful moments into happy ones. The idea got us thinking about the things that fill us with mirth and make us laugh. So, as is our wont, we appealed to our fellow Yahoo!s to find out just what it is that fills them with delight. Heather: A friend of mine and I have our own little inside jokes, which always make us laugh. It's fun being able to speak your own version of crazy when no one else can understand you. That, and those stupid LOLcats.   Liz: Usually if I need a laugh, I either watch some standup comedy from Louis CK, or for a quick pick-me-up, the Head Over Heels literal video.   Donnalyn: My sister and I will say the line "the bathroom is that way," from the movie There's Something About Mary to get each other to crack up. Doesn't matter when or where we say it; it works every time. Joel: When I was in college and my friend would work the graveyard shift at the front desk at the dorm, I'd visit him and entertain the foreign exchange students who were also hanging out by running to the door, asking "Guess who's at the door?" When they would reply, "Who?," I would exclaim, "Me!" Sleep deprivation makes everything funnier.   Mike: A few "viral" gems from the Web's past make me laugh out loud (er, excuse me, LOL) every time I watch them: The "Grape Smashing Lady," "Chickety-Chinese Chicken Prank Call," or the shot-by-shot spoof of Journey's cheesy '80s music video for "Separate Ways" -- yes, some are cruel, but boy, do they make me laugh. Jason: Here are a few links that are probably completely inappropriate for your porpoises. Theme: British Comedy Peep Show - funniest show going. "Odd Couple"-theme. Inbetweeners - fish-out-of-water high school comedy. The Office - I don't care what people say, the original still kicks ass over the U.S. version. Extras - Ricky Gervais with guest star David Bowie. Derek and Clive - Utterly NSFW filth from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. (Editor's note: You're on your own for these guys -- funny as they are.)   Adam: Slapstick does it for me every time. That little squirrel trying to get the acorn in the Ice Age movies puts me on the floor in fits of laughter.  Dave: I'm old school. I’d rather watch an old movie than most of what passes for "comedy" nowadays (though I do admit that the film version of The Producers musical puts me into hysterics -- yes, I'm the one…). I still find Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd, the Marx Brothers, and Preston Sturges hilarious, and with all due respect to the above, W.C. Fields's It's a Gift is the funniest movie ever made. Patrick: Being French, I'm expected to like soccer, but no; I love American football instead. And I'd rather drink a Mountain Dew than a glass of wine. However, one small little thing turns me into a complete French stereotype: I think Jerry Lewis is the funniest guy in the world. I can see you shaking your head: "Yep, only the French...." Chris: Flight of the Conchords is huge in my household. My wife became obsessed, then my son, and now that the show is apparently done, the CDs get played all the time. As a parenting bonus, their songs have become an excellent lesson in how to not use swear words even though you now know them. Now you know what makes us crack up. What's the funniest thing in the world as far as you're concerned? Suggested Sites... International Mirth Month - official site from the originator, Allen Klein. Wikipedia: Humour - guess the joke is that they can't spell it properly. Wikipedia: Comedy - this one they get right. Do the French Really Love Jerry Lewis? - Cecil Adams says "oui" and "non." (But what's the French for "Hey, layyddeee!"?) Freud's Theory of Humor - if you have to explain it, it's a lousy joke.

Acting Families - March 1, 2006

The Barrymores: Lionel, Ethel, and John

Acting has been called the world's second oldest profession, so pity the caveman storyteller who was met with, "He's good, but his father was better."  The tradition of acting roles and talent being handed down from generation to generation goes back many centuries. Commedia dell'Arte troupes were composed of extended families, with children growing into roles originated by their parents.  Some Japanese kabuki troupes go back as far as 17 generations, and as performers become more adept at their roles, they are adopted into families to carry on the work -- and the names -- of their ancestors.  In the West, such acting dynasties as the Barrymores, the Redgraves, the Douglases, the Fondas, and the Sheens have kept the family business going for more than a century. Of course, not every family is so fortunate, as Joey Travolta and Frank Stallone can attest.  Will celebrity babies like Apple Blythe Alison Martin, Maddox Jolie-Pitt, or Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette succeed in their parents' trade? Only Thespis knows -- and he's not talking. Suggested Sites... Barrymore Family - from Mrs. John Drew to Drew, all about the most famous name in American acting. Redgrave.com - Lynn Redgrave's official site, with news about the actress and the members of her family. Yardbarker: The Most Famous Acting Families of All Time  - from the Arquettes to the Wayanses.

Diamonds for Elizabeth - February 27, 2007

Today we honor the birthday of Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky (whew!), and how appropriate is it that her 75th birthday is also her diamond anniversary? 

Elizabeth (not "Liz," if you please; never "Liz") was a star from the age of 9, when she appeared in her first picture, and barely a day has gone by since then when she wasn't in the public eye. 

Despite her ups and downs, she's been the personification of glamour -- and used her notoriety to champion her favorite causes, most notably AIDS research. 

But more than a mere icon, she's an actress of power and grace, being nominated for five Academy Awards (winning two), not to mention being the first actress to earn a million dollars for a film and ranking seventh in a list of the greatest film actresses of all time. We may not be able to give her diamonds, but we'll definitely hoist a piece of chicken in her honor.

Suggested Sites...

Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation - providing critically needed support services for people with HIV/AIDS, prevention services, and education for populations most in need. Kennedy Center Honors: Elizabeth Taylor - it's not like making her a Dame, but it's darn close. Vanity Fair: Elizabeth Taylor's Closing Act - her last days were anything but sedate. The Krupp Diamond - her backup diamond: 33 carats and change. getty images: Elizabeth Taylor - gallery of more than 26,000 images.

Tex Avery and All That Jazz - February 26, 2008

Almost as soon as animated cartoons learned to talk, they learned to combine that talk with jazz. The Fleischer Brothers featured Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway in their films. Warner Bros. composer Carl Stalling was influenced by bandleader Raymond Scott, and every studio referenced such names as Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Thomas "Fats" Waller, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby. With that in mind, it's somehow appropriate that today we note not one, but two anniversaries. Not only was the first jazz recording -- Livery Stable Blues by the Original Dixieland Jass (yes, "jass") Band -- made on this day in 1917, but it's also the 100th birthday of director Tex Avery.  Avery, who worked mainly at Warners and MGM, was known for his broad physical comedy and sight gags, and was instrumental in the development of such characters as Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny (to whom he lent his signature phrase of "What’s up, Doc?"), Droopy, and The Wolf. So why not put some 78s on the ol' Victrola, kick back with a big glass of Jumbo Gro, and toast Tex and the ODJB? Suggested Sites... Don Markstein's Toonopedia: Tex Avery - illustrated biography of the director. A Quickie Look at the Life and Career of Tex Avery - subtlety was always his watchword. The Red Hot Jazz Archive - learn about bands and listen to the music of the Golden Age of Jazz. Original Dixieland Jazz Band - a family operation since 1916. Tunes for Toons - abstracts from Daniel Goldman's book examining the role jazz played in early animation.

The King of Hollywood (Screenwriters) - February 26, 2010

He was born to poor Russian immigrants on the Lower East Side of New York City. He grew up to become a hard-boiled reporter in the Chicago of the 1910s and '20s, in the years when corruption, graft, gangsters, and politicians all went hand-in-hand. He co-wrote one of the most important plays in American history, and by the time he died, he'd written the screenplays for more than 70 films (including the highest-grossing film ever), won two Oscars (including the first one ever awarded for screenwriting), and became known as the man "who personified Hollywood." His name was Ben Hecht, and we note his 116th birthday on February 28.

Hecht's writing reflected the unlikely mixture of his various careers as reporter and scriptwriter. He was a voracious reader of French philosophers, and was friends with such literary giants as Theodore Dreiser, Maxwell Anderson, and Carl Sandburg. His years as a newspaperman introduced him to characters from all strata of society, from murderers to senators. "I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops." he wrote. "I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me."

Spurred by a telegram from screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, ("Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don't let this get around."), Hecht found himself in Hollywood, turning out such screenplays as Underworld (for which he won the Oscar) and Scarface, which set the template for virtually every gangster film that has followed. Like most serious writers of the period, though, he saw screenwriting as slumming.

The big prize for Hecht was Broadway, where such heavyweight playwrights as Eugene O'Neill and Bernard Shaw tackled big ideas. In 1928, he and fellow reporter Charles MacArthur hit the big time with their play The Front Page. Although the play was widely condemned as crude and vulgar, even those who criticized it acknowledged its realism. It marked the first time that Americans were shown on stage as they were in life -- swearing, sweating, spitting -- even using the bathroom. Audiences couldn't get enough of it, and its authors soon found themselves the toast of the town.

Hecht migrated between New York and Hollywood -- where he would stay only long enough to collect the outrageous salaries that would finance his more serious writing the rest of the year. In 1939, he embarked on his most legendary escapade, writing the script for Gone With the Wind. Producer David O. Selznick, frustrated over his inability to get a coherent script out of seventeen writers, locked himself in an office with Hecht and director Victor Fleming -- neither of whom had read the original book. Over the next five days, fueled by only bananas and peanuts, Selznick and Fleming acted out the novel while Hecht batted out the script on a typewriter.

Hecht spent the next 25 years turning out scripts, both credited and uncredited, on such classic films as Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, A Farewell to Arms, Cleopatra, and Casino Royale. But despite his own preferences for the 35 books he wrote, it's his screenwriting, brash, bold, and original, for which he's remembered.

Suggested Sites...

The Remarkable Ben Hecht - the New York Times reviews two biographies of Hecht. Wikipedia: Ben Hecht - details on his life and many, many works. Mythical Monkey: Scarface - the history of the great granddaddy of all gangster pictures. IMDb: Ben Hecht - writing and directing credits. The Atlantic: The Making of Gone With the Wind - five days in Selznick's office.

Dords, Mountweazels, and Zzxjoanws - February 25, 2010

We love a good urban legend. When we're forwarded dubious emails about missing children or political scare tactics and smears, we make a beeline for Snopes. So when we first heard about a mistake that let a fake "ghost word" slip into "Webster's Dictionary" for five years, we smelled a rat.

According to the story, the word "dord" was introduced to dictionary compilers accidentally, with a consultant's note reading "D or d, cont/density" -- meaning that "density" should be added to the list of words that "D" could represent. One misunderstanding and two removed spaces later, and "dord" was a new synonym for "density."

The story of dord is true, and it isn't the only fictitious entry to be found in reference materials. Some words, like zzxjoanw, are hoaxes, inserted for their authors' amusement. Other false entries are intentionally included as copyright traps, so that anyone stealing information will also unwittingly copy the identifiable fictional parts. Copyright traps have long been used by mapmakers to protect their work with made-up streets or even whole fictional towns.

Encyclopedia-makers craft biographies for notable people who have never existed, like the (now) famous Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer and photographer of rural mailboxes whose (fake) name has come to represent the practice of fictitious entries. "The New Oxford American Dictionary" even fessed up to a recent mountweazel: "esquivalience," meaning "the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities."

At the risk of being accused of esquivalience, and no matter what our beloved Snopes might say, we respectfully choose to retain ghost words like dord and zzxjoanw. We find them perfectly cromulent.

Suggested Sites...

• Snopes Fact Check: Language - the scoop on word origins and other language-related urban legends.
• Esquivalience and Other Mountweazels - a look at some common falsehoods in reference materials.
• Copyright Easter Eggs - an overview of copyright traps on maps, with some notable examples.
• Wikipedia: Fictitious Entry - but how do you know this one is real?

The Future Ain't What It Used to Be - February 23, 2009

 

Remember the Future? When everything was going to be clean and bright and efficient? When we'd all be whizzing around in flying cars to supervise our robots or eating meals in pill form. We were reminded of those days that never were when we saw that February 21 was the anniversary of the first test flight of Waldo Waterman's "Aerobile," the world’s first flying car -- in 1937! 1937?! You mean, we've had flying cars more than 70 years, and no one bothered to tell us? And to make matters worse, Glenn Curtis built a flying car in 1917?! (Though, to be fair, that model may not have made it off the ground). Waterman was an aviation genius, but he was never able to make his flying car practical. He built six of them, and only five of those flew -- and only two of those were able to make the first test flight from California to Ohio. Reading about the Aerobile made us wonder if there were any other inventions that were supposed to be parts of the far future, but had actually already existed. Somehow we didn't even notice how big-screen TVs had infiltrated our homes or how computers went from filling whole rooms to fitting on our laps. And robots? Most of us still don't have robots to run our space ships or clean our homes (or do we?), but who knew that the first robots were built in Ancient Greece (!), or that there were human-like robots in movies as early (or as late, one supposes) as 1918, or that they were walking around and smoking cigarettes at the 1939 New York World’s Fair? The more we looked, the more revelations appeared. Personal jet-packs? Done. Death rays? Old hat. Moving sidewalks? Barely worth mentioning. Heck, even Disneyland’s "House of the Future," which showcased such unimaginable gadgets as microwave ovens and PicturePhones became obsolete and was torn down in 1967! While teleportation, human-made food, and interstellar travel still aren’t commonplace, we have to admit we’re glad that such "innovations" as artichoke hair and glass clothing never came to be. Although that head-mounted flashlight does look pretty sweet... Suggested Sites... Wikipedia: Waldo Waterman - the man who invented the Aerobile. Time Magazine's 50 Worst Cars of All Time - really? What's not to like? Wikipedia: Flying Car - a history of airborne autos. Paleo-Future - a look into futures that never were. Popular Mechanics: The Future That Never Was - I have seen the future -- and it didn't happen.