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Fact: Frankenstein’s Creature is a vegetarian

Both Victor Frankenstein and Creature are fictional characters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the classic novel, Creature says, “My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.” This is one of the interesting facts you should definitely share with your vegetarian friends!

Fact: Medical errors are a top cause of death

According to a Johns Hopkins research team, 250,000 deaths in the United States are caused by medical error each year. This makes medical error the third leading cause of death in the country.

Fact: Sloths have more neck bones than giraffes

Despite the difference in neck length, there are more bones in the neck of a sloth than a giraffe. There are seven vertebrae in the neck of a giraffe, and in most mammals, but there are 10 in a sloth’s. While they’re on your mind, here are some adorable sloth pictures you totally need to see.

Fact: Bees can fly higher than Mount Everest

Bees can fly higher than 29,525 feet above sea level, according to National Geographic. That’s higher than Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.

Fact: Ancient Egyptians used dead mice to ease toothaches

In Ancient Egypt, people put a dead mouse in their mouth if they had a toothache, according to Nathan Belofsky’s book Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages. Mice were also used as a warts remedy in Elizabethan England.

Fact: Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch

He’s also been called out for only having the bars of a Navy commander, but the so-called cap’n held his ground on Twitter, arguing that captaining the S.S. Guppy with his crew “makes an official Cap’n in any book!”

Fact: Paint used to be stored in pig bladders

The bladder would be sealed with a string and then pricked to get the paint out. This option wasn’t the best because it would often break open. American painter John G. Rand was the innovator who, in the 19th century, made paint tubes from tin and screw caps.

Fact: Humans have jumped farther than horses in the Olympics

The Olympic world record for the longest human long jump is greater than the world record for longest horse long jump. Mike Powell set the record in 1991 by jumping 8.95 meters, and the horse xtra Dry set the record in 1900 by jumping 6.10 meters.

Fact: The Terminator script was sold for $1

James Cameron is the award-winning director of movies like Titanic and Avatar. In order to get his big break with The Terminator, he sold the script for $1 and a promise that he’d direct it. Of course, this movie has some of the most famous movie quotes of all time in it.

Fact: Pigeon poop is the property of the British Crown

In the 18th century, pigeon poop was used to make gunpowder, so King George I confirmed the droppings to be the property of the Crown.

Fact: Onions were found in the eyes of an Egyptian mummy

Pharaoh Ramses IV of ancient Egypt had his eyes replaced with small onions when he was mummified. The rings and layers of onions were worshipped because people thought they represented eternal life. This aligns with the reason for mummification: to allow the pharaoh to live forever.

Fact: Abraham Lincoln was a bartender

You know that the 16th president of the United States fought for the freedom of slaves and the Union, but what you didn’t know is that he was a licensed bartender. Lincoln’s liquor license was discovered in 1930 and displayed in a Springfield liquor store. According to Wayne C. Temple, a Lincoln expert, Congress wanted to fire Ulysses S. Grant in 1863 because he drank a lot, and Lincoln’s response was to send Grant a supply of whiskey.

Fact: Beethoven never knew how to multiply or divide

The renowned pianist went to a Latin school called Tirocinium, where he was taught some math but never learned multiplication or division—only addition. Once, when he needed to multiply 62 by 50, he wrote 62 down a line 50 times and added it all up.

Fact: Japan released sushi-inspired Kit Kats

For a limited time in 2017, Tokyo’s Kit Kat Chocolatory shop made three types of the chocolate bar that were inspired by sushi but didn’t actually taste like raw fish. The tuna sushi was raspberry, the seaweed-wrapped one tasted like pumpkin pudding, and the sea urchin sushi was the flavor of Hokkaido melon with mascarpone cheese. All were made with puffed rice, white chocolate, and a bit of wasabi.

Fact: An espresso maker was sent into space in 2015

Coffee lovers will appreciate this interesting space fact: Samantha Cristoforetti was the first astronaut to get a warm and cozy piece of home sent to her while in orbit. The Italian Space Agency worked with Italian coffee manufacturer Lavazza to get the coffee capsules into space.

Fact: The word “aquarium” means “watering place for cattle” in Latin

Of course, today’s aquariums aren’t for cows. The first aquarium that looks like what you’d imagine was created in 1921 and opened in 1924 in England.

Fact: An employee at Pixar accidentally deleted a sequence of Toy Story 2 during production

Ed Catmull, the cofounder of Pixar, wrote in his book, Creativity Inc., that the year before the movie came out, someone entered the command ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drive where the files were saved, and scenes started deleting. It would have taken a year to recreate what was deleted, but luckily another employee had a backup of the entire film on her laptop at home.

Fact: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne started Apple Inc. on April Fools’ Day

The three technology innovators signed the documents to form the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. But the company was not fully incorporated until January 3, 1977. Thirty years later, the company was renamed Apple Inc. and is no joke. In 2018, Apple became the country’s first trillion-dollar company.

Fact: The inventor of the tricycle personally delivered two to Queen Victoria

In 1881, Queen Victoria was on a tour on the Isle of Wight when her horse and carriage could not keep up with a woman riding a tricycle. Intrigued by the bike, the queen proceeded to order two. She also asked that the inventor, James Starley, arrive with the delivery. Though you might associate tricycles with toddlers, Queen Victoria made them cool among the elite at the time.

Fact: Your brain synapses shrink while you sleep

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sleep and Consciousness studied mice to observe what happens to their brains while they sleep. Dr. Chiara Cirelli and Dr. Giulio Tononi found an 18 percent decrease in the size of synapses after a few hours of sleep. Don’t worry, though—this nighttime brain shrinkage actually helps your cognitive abilities.

Fact: A waffle iron inspired one of the first pairs of Nikes

Bill Bowerman was a track and field coach in the 1950s who didn’t like how running shoes were made. He first created the Cortez shoe but wanted a sneaker that was even lighter and could be worn on a variety of surfaces. During a waffle breakfast with his wife in 1970, he came up with the idea of using the waffle texture on the soles of running shoes. Waffle-soled shoes made their big debut in the 1972 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon.

Fact: Boars wash their food

National Geographic reported that at Basel Zoo in Switzerland, zookeepers watched adult and juvenile wild boars pick up sandy apples and bring them to a nearby creek in their environment to wash before eating. Though some items like sugar beets were eaten without the human-like behavior, the boars brought a whole dead chicken to the creek to wash before chowing down. One ecologist called this a “luxury behavior.”

Fact: Baseball umpires used to sit in rocking chairs

People have been playing baseball since the mid-19th century. In the early days, umpires would officiate the games while reclining in a rocking chair located 20 feet behind home plate. By 1878, the National League also declared that home teams must pay umpires $5 per game.

Fact: The first commercial passenger flight lasted only 23 minutes

In 1914, Abram Pheil paid $400 (which would be $8,500 today) for a 23-minute plane ride. The Florida flight flew between Saint Petersburg and Tampa, where only 21 miles of water separate the cities. Pheil, a former mayor of Saint Petersburg, and the pilot, Tony Jannus, were the only passengers. This momentous flight paved the way for air travel as we know it.

Fact: The world’s first novel ends mid-sentence

The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century, is considered the world’s first novel. After reading 54 intricately crafted chapters, the reader is stopped abruptly mid-sentence. One translator believes the work is complete as is, but another says we’re missing a few more pages of the story.

SOURCE: Reader’s Digest: Elizabeth Yuko

Today would have been Hitchcock’s birthday. He was born August 13, 1899 and died peacefully April 29, 1980.  This article from Mental Floss highlights fifteen interesting things about the Master of Suspense.

From Mental Floss:

The shower scene in Psycho. The biplane chase in North by Northwest. The gas station attack in The Birds. They’re some of the most memorable and terrifying scenes in cinema history—and they came from the mind of one man: Alfred Hitchcock. The Master of Suspense, who went by the nickname “Hitch,” is also one of the most recognizable Hollywood icons, and his life was as fascinating as his films. Here are 15 things you might not have known about the legendary filmmaker, who was born in London on August 13, 1899.

1 Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of law enforcement … and breakfast.

Hitchcock’s mastery of thrillers may have earned him the nickname the “Master of Suspense,” but the plucky filmmaker had phobias of his own.

His lifelong fear of police stemmed from an incident in his childhood when his strict father, William, punished him by sending him to the local Leytonstone police station on the outskirts of his family’s home in east London. “I was just sent along with a note, I must have been four or five years of age, and the head of the police read it and then put me into the cell and said, ‘That’s what we do to naughty boys,’” Hitchcock later recalled of the experience.

Also, omelettes were decidedly not his favorite breakfast food. “I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me,” he once said in an interview. “That white round thing without any holes … Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.”

2 Alfred Hitchcock began his work in silent films.

Known for the complex title sequences in his own films, Hitchcock began his career in cinema in the early 1920s, designing the art title cards featured in silent films. The gig was at an American company based in London called the Famous Players-Lasky Company (it would later become Paramount Pictures, which produced five Hitchcock-directed films). As Hitchcock later told French filmmaker François Truffaut in their infamous Hitchcock/Truffaut conversations, “It was while I was in this department, you see, that I got acquainted with the writers and was able to study the scripts. And, out of that, I learned the writing of scripts.” The experience also led Hitch to try his hand at actual filmmaking. “If an extra scene was wanted, I used to be sent out to shoot it,” he told Truffaut.

3 Alfred Hitchcock learned from another cinema master.

In 1924, Hitchcock and his wife Alma were sent to Germany by Gainsborough Pictures—the British production company where he was under contract—to work on two Anglo-German films called The Prude’s Fall and The Blackguard. While working in Neubabelsberg, Hitchcock was taken under the wing of expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau, who created the chilling Dracula adaptation Nosferatu, and was shooting a silent film called The Last Laugh. “From Murnau,” Hitchcock later said, “I learned how to tell a story without words.”

4 Most of Alfred Hitchcock’s early films are lost, but a 1923 silent melodrama was discovered in New Zealand.

Only nine of Hitchcock’s earliest silent films still exist. The earliest surviving film he worked on, a 1923 melodrama titled The White Shadow—about twin sisters, one good, one evil—was thought lost until three of the film’s six reels were found sitting unmarked in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2011. The film reels were originally donated to the Archive in 1989 by the grandson of a Kiwi projectionist and collector. While the film was technically directed by leading 1920s filmmaker Graham Cutts, the 24-year-old Hitchcock served as the film’s screenwriter, assistant director, and art director.

5 Alfred Hitchcock brought sound to British movies.

The 1929 movie Blackmail, about a murder investigation headed up by the murderer’s fiance, was Hitchcock’s first hit film, and also the first “talkie” film released in Britain. (The first full-length talkie, The Jazz Singer, was released in the U.S. in 1927.) While Blackmail was originally conceived and created as a silent film, the final cut was dubbed with synchronized sound added in post-production using then-state of the art audio equipment imported from the U.S.

6 Alfred Hitchcock popped up on screen all the time.

The most constant image in Hitchcock’s films seem to be Hitchcock himself. The filmmaker perfected the art of the cameo, making blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances in 39 of his own films. His trickier appearances include the single-location film Lifeboat, where he appears in a weight-loss advertisement in a newspaper read by one of the film’s characters. The only film he actually speaks in is 1956’s The Wrong Man; his traditional cameo is replaced by a silhouetted narration in the introduction. That replaced a scrapped cameo of the director exiting a cab in the opening of the film.

7 Alfred Hitchcock was as successful in front of the camera on the small screen as he was behind the camera on the big screen.

By 1965, Hitchcock was a household name. That was the same year his long-running anthology TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents—which began in 1955 and was later renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour after episode lengths were stretched from 25- to 50-minute runtimes—came to an end. The series was known for its title sequence featuring a caricature of Hitchcock’s distinctive profile, which was replaced by Hitchcock himself in silhouette. But Hitchcock also appeared after the title sequence to introduce each new story. At least two versions of the opening were shot for every episode: An American opening specifically poked fun at the show’s network advertisers, while Hitchcock usually used the European opening to poke fun at American audiences in general.

7 Alfred Hitchcock literally wrote the encyclopedia entry on how to make movies.

The filmmaker would write (at least part of) the book on the medium that made him famous. Hitchcock personally contributed to writing a portion of the “Motion Pictures, Film Production” entry in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, giving typically cheeky first-hand insight into the fundamentals and technical aspects of filmmaking.

On the practice of moving the camera during a shot, Hitchcock wrote, “it is wrong to suppose, as is all too commonly the case, that the screen of the motion picture lies in the fact that the camera can roam abroad, can go out of the room, for example, to show a taxi arriving. This is not necessarily an advantage and it can so easily be merely dull.”

8. Alfred Hitchcock popularized the MacGuffin.

Even if you don’t know it by name, you know what it is. The MacGuffin is the so-called motivating element that drives a movie’s plot forward. Think: the eponymous statue in The Maltese Falcon, or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or the airplane engine plans in Hitch’s own The 39 Steps.

The term was coined by Angus MacPhail (note the prefix in his surname), Hitchcock’s screenwriting collaborator on films like Spellbound and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Even though such plot details were supposed to be important, Hitchcock didn’t seem to think they truly mattered. “The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. I’m convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others,” Hitchcock told Truffaut in 1962, highlighting how the audience never finds out why the government secrets (a.k.a. the MacGuffin) in North by Northwest truly matter. “Here, you see,” Hitchcock said, “the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!”

9 Alfred Hitchcock scrapped his own documentary about the Holocaust.

Hitch’s films flirted with mentioning the escalating tensions in Europe that would spark World War II, like in the shocking plane crash climax of 1940’s Foreign Correspondent. But the film Hitchcock collaborated on about the explicit horrors of the war would go unseen for decades.

Memory of the Camps, a 1945 documentary filmed by crews who accompanied the Allied armies that liberated those in the Nazi death camps at the end of the war, was stored in a vault in the Imperial War Museum in London until 1985. Originally commissioned by the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information, Hitchcock served as a “treatment advisor” at the behest of his friend Sidney Bernstein, who is the credited director of the film. But the final film was scrapped because it was deemed counterproductive to German postwar reconstruction. The film was put eventually together as an episode of PBS’s FRONTLINE, and aired on May 7, 1985 to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.

10 Alfred Hitchcock didn’t want you to see five of his famous films for decades.

Vertigo may have topped many best-of movie polls, but for over 20 years, between 1961 and 1983, it and four other Hitchcock classics were almost virtually impossible to see. It turns out it was Hitchcock’s fault that Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, The Trouble with Harry, and The Man Who Knew Too Much were purposefully unavailable to the general public.

The filmmaker personally secured full ownership to the rights of the five films per a contingency clause in the multi-film deal he made with Paramount Pictures in 1953. Eight years after the release of each film, the rights reverted back to Hitchcock, which, in the years before Blu-ray and DVD, seemed like a financially savvy move on Paramount’s part. Three years after Hitch’s death in 1980, Universal Pictures acquired the film rights to all five classics, making them available once again.

11 Alfred Hitchcock didn’t want to work with Jimmy Stewart after Vertigo.

Everyman actor Jimmy Stewart worked with Hitchcock a number of times, including as the nosy, wheelchair-bound photographer in Rear Window, and as the dastardly murderer in the “one-take” film Rope. After Stewart appeared in Vertigo in 1958, the actor prepared to appear in Hitchcock’s follow-up a year later, North by Northwest. But Hitch had other plans.

The director felt that one of the main reasons Vertigo wasn’t more of a smash hit was because of its aging star, and vowed to never use Stewart in any film ever again. Hitch wanted actor Cary Grant instead, and, according to author Marc Eliot’s book, Jimmy Stewart: A Biography, “Hitchcock, as was his nature, did not tell Jimmy there was no way he was going to get North by Northwest.” But when Stewart grew tired of waiting, and took a part in the movie Bell Book and Candle instead, “Hitchcock used that as his excuse, allowing him to diplomatically avoid confronting Jimmy and maintaining their personal friendship, which both valued.”

12 Alfred Hitchcock personally funded Pyscho.

When Hitchcock approached Paramount Pictures—where he was under contract—to put up the money to make Psycho, the studio balked at the salacious story. So Hitchcock financed the movie himself, foregoing his normal salary in exchange for 60 percent ownership of the rights to the film; Paramount agreed to distribute the film. To cut costs even more, the filmmaker enlisted his relatively cheaper Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV crew and shot the film on less pricey black and white film. Hitch’s gamble worked: He reportedly personally earned $6 million from Psycho—about $50 million in today’s dollars.

13 Alfred Hitchcock wouldn’t allow theaters to let anyone—not even the Queen of England—in to see Psycho once it had started.

Psycho (1960) has one of the best twists in movie history—and Hitchcock went to great lengths to not only make sure audiences didn’t spoil that twist, but to make sure they enjoyed the entire movie before the twist. Hitchcock attempted to buy all copies of author Robert Bloch’s source novel to keep the twist under wraps in cities where the movie opened. The promotional rollout of the film was controlled by Hitchcock himself, and he barred stars Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins from doing interviews about the movie. He also demanded that theaters in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia adhere to strict theatrical showtimes and not allow admittance after the movie had started.

Marketing materials for Psycho included lobby cards meant to be prominently displayed with the message, “We won’t allow you to cheat yourself. You must see PSYCHO from the very beginning. Therefore, do not expect to be admitted into the theatre after the start of each performance of the picture. We say no one—and we mean no one—not even the manager’s brother, the President of the United States, or the Queen of England (God bless her)!”

14 Alfred Hitchcock loved movies that were not “Hitchcockian.”

The filmmaker had a habit of screening films in his studio lot office every Wednesday, and his daughter Patricia revealed that one of his favorite films—and, in fact, the last movie he personally screened before his death—was the 1977 Burt Reynolds movie Smokey and the Bandit.

15 Alfred Hitchcock never won a competitive Oscar.

Hitchcock is in the bittersweet class of venerable filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Ingmar Bergman, and more who never received their industry’s highest honor as Best Director. Hitchcock did get Oscar nominations for directing Rebecca (which took home Best Picture), Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window, and Psycho. But he personally went home empty-handed every time.

When the Academy finally honored him with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1967, his long-time-coming speech was only five words long: “Thank you, very much indeed.”

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

Today is Sam Elliot’s birthday.  He was born August 9, 1944 and I always thought he was an okay guy…till recently when he narrated an ad for the maggot.  But his memes still are funny.  So the heck with the man, let’s celebrate the memes!

In honor of Lucille Ball’s birthday (born August 6, 1911 and died April 26, 1989), I thought we’d look at some interesting facts about her show.

From Screen Rant:

There have been a lot of very important television shows since television was invented, and one of the most important and influential ones has been I Love Lucy. Even though it aired long ago, this series still has an impact on television these days.

The effects of it will probably be seen for many more years, since it was such a game-changer back then. For example, Lucille had a lot of power behind the scenes of the show. That was a groundbreaking thing since women didn’t typically have much control over television shows back then. Here are some other interesting facts about this series that fans probably didn’t already know.

Lucille Didn’t Like Desi Being On The Road

Part of the reason why audiences have been able to enjoy I Love Lucy for so long is because Lucille did not want her husband being on the road all the time. Fans might remember that Desi was part of a band in real life, and that meant that he was spending lots of time traveling, and Lucille was not a fan of that.  The actress wanted her husband to spend more time with her, so that is why she wanted him to play her husband on the series. It’s interesting to think about what the show might have looked like if she did not feel that way.

William Was Not The First Choice For Fred

William Frawley was not the first choice when it came to who was going to play Fred Mertz. Lucille actually wanted someone else to play the part, and that was Gale Gordon. Apparently, she loved the work the actor did on the radio show they starred in together, which was My Favorite Husband.  But that actor ended up asking for too much money, so he was not cast in the role. William heard that I Love Lucy was being created, so he gave Lucille a call to find out if there was a part for him. Some people who worked on the series were reluctant to hire him, but Desi believed he would be great for the role, so they met for lunch, and Desi offered him the role.

CBS Didn’t Want Desi To Play Ricky

It is hard to imagine what this show would have been like if any of the main characters had been played by different actors, but some of the creators of the show were originally not in favor of Desi being cast as Lucille’s husband, despite the fact that they were really together at the time. CBS really liked My Favorite Husband, and they wanted the man who played her husband on that show to play him on television as well.  But, Lucille would only take the role of Lucy if her actual husband was cast as Ricky. The creators didn’t think the audience was going to believe that they could ever be a couple, but history has proved them wrong.

A Dream Pushed Lucille To Take On This Role

Lucille was not sure about whether she should take on the role of Lucy Ricardo or not, but a dream is what convinced her to do it. The actress was very reluctant to join the cast of the show because she was unsure about how the transition from movies to television was going to affect her career, but then she had a dream that pushed her to do it.  In the dream, a deceased friend of hers talked to her. The friend was an actress named Carole Lombard, and if Lucille had not had that dream, television as we know it would certainly look a lot different than it does at the moment.

Vivian And William Did Not Get Along

Lots of shows have had some behind the scenes feuds between the cast members, and even I Love Lucy could not escape that since the people who played Fred and Ethel Mertz never really got along with one another. Part of the reason why they did not like one another is because William was so much older than Vivian (there was 22 years between them) and she did not think anyone would believe she was married to a man who was so much older than she was.  William didn’t have many nice things to say about her, either. He often referred to her as “that old sack of doorknobs.”

Lucille Was Not A Natural Redhead

Lucy Ricardo’s hair was one of her most famous and identifiable features, but the actress who played her was actually not a natural redhead. Another interesting fact is that her hairdresser did not just use any common hair dye to color her hair.  Someone brought the hairdresser a unique mixture that involved hair dye and henna, and that is what was used to create the iconic hair color that I Love Lucy fans are so familiar with. The distinct mixture was locked up in a safe spot when the hairdresser was not using it on the actress, since it was such an important part of her character.

Reruns Are A Thing Because Of This Show

Anyone who loves to watch reruns of their favorite shows are probably very thankful to those who created I Love Lucy. In real life, Lucille and Desi shared two children. Desi thought his wife could use a break from work when she had their second child, so that is when he came up with what audiences now know as a rerun.  The actor suggested that instead of filming new episodes for a bit, the studio could show some of the old episodes that had already proven to be really popular with the shows’ fanbase. This obviously worked out pretty well for them, since fans can still catch reruns of the series on television today.

It Was All Part Of The Script

Every line that was spoken when the show was being filmed was scripted out. That may seem pretty obvious, but there are actually lots of movies and television shows that feature some lines that the actors made up on the spot, since some unexpected things can happen on the set (there is a rumor that a certain scene in The Dark Knight is a perfect example of this).  But some people might be surprised to find out that none of the actors ever said anything that was not scripted when they were creating any of the episodes of I Love Lucy.

There Was One Thing That Only Lucy Was Allowed To Do

Lucy was the only character on the series who was allowed to make fun of Ricky’s accent. Those who have seen the series probably noticed that Ricky has a very thick accent, and they also probably noticed that the only person who ever made fun of him for it was Lucy.  When Lucy did it, the audiences seemed to think it was very funny. But when the series creators attempted to have the other characters do it, things were a bit different. The jokes were not very well-received, so the writers stopped allowing the other characters in the show to poke fun at his accent.

Nearly Everything Shut Down When New Episodes Aired

Lots of businesses closed up shop when new episodes of I Love Lucy aired. These days, there are multiple ways for people to catch episodes of their favorite television shows, even if they have already aired on television before, but things were not always like that.  Back when I Love Lucy was still being filmed, fans could only watch it when it aired live each week (except for when Desi invented the rerun), and that resulted in some businesses closing when they knew a new episode was going to air. Almost everyone loved this show, so it seems that the title was fairly appropriate.

SOURCE: SCREEN RANT

At the surprise party 2 weeks ago for my son, I learned about a new conversation starter: Five Things.  The person in the spotlight has to say 5 things that the others probably do not know about them.  For family members this can be either hard or hilarious.

I’ll start:

ONE:

I cannot throw a frisbee or hula hoop AT ALL.

TWO:

My favorite jello flavor is strawberry.

THREE:

I believe in ghosts.

FOUR:

I once wrote tips and tricks for the game Candy Crush on a website called Crushing Candies.

FIVE:

I do not own a single pair of shorts or flip flops.

So, who’s next???

Sandra Bullock was born July 26, 1964 and I wanted to look at one of her earlier movies—The Net.  Released in 1995, The Net is relevant to today.  (Just as Dave and many other movies seem prescient in their releases, so does The Net.) The following is from the IMDb website:

Synopsis

In Washington DC, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Michael Bergstrom (Ken Howard) commits suicide after being informed that he has tested positive for HIV.

Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer systems analyst in living in Venice, Los Angeles, California who telecommutes to her employment at Cathedral Software based in San Francisco. Her interpersonal relationships are almost completely online and on the phone, with the exception of forgettable interactions with her neighbors and visits to her 60-year-old mother (Diane Baker), who is institutionalized with an early onset type of Alzheimer’s disease and often forgets who Angela is. Angela’s co-worker Dale (Ray McKinnon) sends her a 3.5 inch floppy disk with a backdoor labeled ‘Pi’ that permits access to a commonly used computer security system called “Gatekeeper” sold by Gregg Microsystems, a software company led by CEO Jeff Gregg. Dale and Angela agree to meet, but later that night the navigation system in Dale’s private aircraft malfunctions and it crashes into a tower, killing him.

Angela travels to Cozumel, Mexico for a week-long on vacation, where she meets Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam), a charming English-accent businessman who charms his way into her life. After seducing Angela, Devlin pays a local mugger to steal her purse as they walk along the beach during an after-dinner stroll. He chases the mugger into the foliage, catches the mugger, and roots through the purse to find the disk before shooting the mugger dead. Devlin takes Angela out on his speedboat to kill her as well after sleeping with her again, but she finds his gun and confronts him. While fleeing with the disk and Devlin’s wallet, Angela’s dinghy collides with rocks, destroying the disk and hospitalizing her. She is unconscious for three days.

When Angela wakes up, she finds that all records of her life have been deleted: She was checked out of her hotel room in Cozumel, her car is no longer at the LAX airport parking lot, and all of her credit cards are invalid. When she arrives home by taxi, Angela discovers that her house is now empty and listed for sale. Moreover, because none of the neighbors remember her, they cannot confirm her identity. Things turn from bad to worse when after contacting the police, Angela’s Social Security number is now assigned to a “Ruth Marx,” for whom Devlin has entered an arrest record by hacking the police computer system. Angela is forced to flee for her life. Once on the streets, she steals a cell phone from the real estate agent in her former house and calls her own desk at Cathedral Software, an impostor (Wendy Gazelle) answers and offers Bennett her old life back in exchange for the disk.

Angela contacts the only other person who knows her by sight, psychiatrist and former lover Alan Champion (Dennis Miller). He checks her into a hotel, offers to contact a friend at the FBI, and arranges to have her mother moved for her safety.

Using her knowledge of the backdoor and a password found in Devlin’s wallet, Angela logs into the Bethesda Naval Hospital’s computers and learns that Under Secretary of Defense Bergstrom, who had opposed Gatekeeper’s use by the federal government, was misdiagnosed. Fellow hacker “Cyberbob” connects ‘Pi’ with the “Praetorians,” a notorious group of cyber-terrorists linked to recent computer failures around the country. Angela and Cyberbob plan to meet, but the unseen Praetorians intercept their online chat and relay it to Devlin who is now relentlessly pursuing her. Angela manages to escape from Devlin… who is now revealed to be a contract killer for the cyber-terrorists, but the Praetorians kill Champion by tampering with pharmacy and hospital computer records for his medication.

Angela is forced to steal a car to flee from Los Angeles, but she is chased and arrested by the California Highway Patrol. While in jail waiting trial for a series of false criminal charges, a man identifying himself as Ben Phillips (Robert Gossette), Champion’s FBI friend bails her from jail. While driving, Angela realizes that “Ben” is an impostor after he makes a slip to her about the Praetorians, and escapes again, killing the impostor with his own gun.

Now wanted for murder and thought to be Ruth Marx, Angela hitchhikes to Cathedral’s office in San Francisco where, she triggers a fire alarm to evacuate the building and now using her impostor’s computer, she connects the cyber-terrorists to Gregg Microsystems and uncovers their scheme: once the Praetorians sabotage an organization’s computer system, Gregg sells Gatekeeper to it and gains unlimited access through the backdoor. Angela downloads another 3.5 inch disk and escapes just as the impostor realizes her presence.

Angela escapes from the building and makes her way to the Moscone Center with Devlin and the Bennett impostor in pursuit. After finding a desktop site to log on, she emails evidence of the backdoor and Gregg’s involvement with the Praetorians to the FBI just before Devlin and the Bennett impostor catch up with her. Angela then tricks Devlin into releasing a virus into Gregg’s mainframe, destroying Gatekeeper and undoing the erasing of her identity.

During a battle on the catwalks of the convention center, in which Devlin accidentally kills the Bennett impostor from Cathedral Software (revealed to be the real Ruth Marx), Angela ambushes Devlin with a fire extinguisher, causing him to fall to his death.

At the end, Angela Bennett regains her identity, home, and life. She then reunites with her mother (who still does not remember her) and goes back to her old solitary life. In a series of news reports, the conspiracy is exposed, with Jeff Gregg being arrested by the FBI.

Today would have been Robin William’s birthday (born in 1951 and died August 11, 2014) and I think Good Morning Viet Nam is one of his most memorable movies.  Mental Floss had an article detailing 12 “surprising” things we might not know about him.  

From Mental Floss:

Robin Williams had a larger-than-life personality. On screen and on stage, he embodied what he referred to as “hyper-comedy.” Offscreen, he was involved in humanitarian causes and raised three children—Zak, Zelda, and Cody.

Since his untimely death on August 11, 2014, HBO has released the documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, directed by Marina Zenovich, which chronicles his rise on the stand-up comedy scenes during the 1970s, to his more dramatic roles in the 1980s and ‘90s in award-winning films like Dead Poets Society; Good Morning, Vietnam; Awakenings; The Fisher King; and Good Will Hunting. In 2018, a mural with Williams’s face on it went up in Chicago, his hometown; that same year, journalist Dave Iztkoff published the book Robin.

Here are some things you might not have known about the iconic funnyman.

1 Robin Williams got his start in comedy at a church.

After leaving Juilliard, Robin Williams found himself back in his hometown of San Francisco, but he couldn’t find work as an actor. Then he saw something for a comedy workshop in a church and decided to give it a shot. “So I went to this workshop in the basement of a Lutheran church, and it was stand-up comedy, so you don’t get to improvise with others, but I started off doing, ostensibly, it was just like improvising but solo,” he told NPR. “And then I started to realize, ‘Oh.’ [I started] building an act from there.”

2 He formed a friendship with Koko the gorilla.

In 2001, Williams visited Koko the gorilla, who passed away in June, at The Gorilla Foundation in Northern California. Her caregivers had shown her one of his movies, and she seemed to recognize him. Koko repeatedly signed for Williams to tickle her. “We shared something extraordinary: laughter,” Williams said of the encounter. On the day Williams died, The Foundation shared the news with Koko and reported that she fell into sadness.

3 He spent some time working as a mime in Central Park.

In 1974, photographer Daniel Sorine captured photos of two mimes in New York’s Central Park. As it turned out, one of the mimes was Williams, who was attending Juilliard at the time. “What attracted me to Robin Williams and his fellow mime, Todd Oppenheimer, was an unusual amount of intensity, personality, and physical fluidity,” Sorine said. In 1991, Williams revisited the craft by playing Mime Jerry in Bobcat Goldthwait’s film Shakes the Clown. In the movie, Williams hilariously leads a how-to class in mime.

4 He tried to get Lydia from Mrs. Doubtfire back in school.

As a teen, Lisa Jakub played Robin Williams’s daughter Lydia Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire. “When I was 14 years old, I went on location to film Mrs. Doubtfire for five months, and my high school was not happy,” Jakub wrote on her blog. “My job meant an increased workload for teachers, and they were not equipped to handle a ‘non-traditional’ student. So, during filming, they kicked me out.”

Sensing Jakub’s distress over the situation, Williams typed a letter and sent it to her school. “A student of her caliber and talent should be encouraged to go out in the world and learn through her work,” he wrote. “She should also be encouraged to return to the classroom when she’s done to share those experiences and motivate her classmates to soar to their own higher achievements … she is an asset to any classroom.”

Apparently, the school framed the letter but didn’t allow Jakub to return. “But here’s what matters from that story—Robin stood up for me,” Jakub wrote. “I was only 14, but I had already seen that I was in an industry that was full of back-stabbing. And it was entirely clear that Robin had my back.”

5 He wasn’t the producers’ first choice to play Mork on Mork & Mindy.

Anson Williams, Marion Ross, and Don Most told The Hallmark Channel that a different actor was originally hired to play Mork for the February 1978 Happy Days episode “My Favorite Orkan,” which introduced the alien character to the world. “Mork & Mindy was like the worst script in the history of Happy Days. It was unreadable, it was so bad,” Anson Williams said. “So they hire some guy for Mork—bad actor, bad part.” The actor quit, and producer Garry Marshall came to the set and asked: “Does anyone know a funny Martian?” They hired Williams to play Mork, and from September 1978 to May 1982, Williams co-headlined the spinoff Mork & Mindy for four seasons.

6 Williams “risked” a role in an Off-Broadway play.

In 1988, Williams made his professional stage debut as Estragon in the Mike Nichols-directed Waiting for Godot, which also starred Steve Martin and F. Murray Abraham. The play was held off-Broadway at Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. The New York Times asked Williams if he felt the show was a career risk, and he responded with: “Risk! Of never working on the stage again! Oh, no! You’re ruined! It’s like you’re ruined socially in Tustin,” a town in Orange County, California. “If there’s risk, you can’t think about it,” he said, “or you’ll never be able to do the play.” Williams had to restrain himself and not improvise during his performance. “You can do physical things,” he said, “but you don’t ad lib [Samuel] Beckett, just like you don’t riff Beethoven.” In 1996, Nichols and Williams once again worked together, this time in the movie The Birdcage.

7 He ushered in the era of celebrity voice acting.

The 1992 success of Aladdin, in which Williams voiced Genie, led to more celebrities voicing animated characters. According to a 2011 article in The Atlantic, “Less than 20 years ago, voice acting was almost exclusively the realm of voice actors—people specifically trained to provide voices for animated characters. As it turns out, the rise of the celebrity voice actor can be traced to a single film: Disney’s 1992 breakout animated hit Aladdin.” Since then, big names have attached themselves to animated films, from The Lion King to Toy Story to Shrek. Williams continued to do voice acting in animated films, including Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Happy Feet, and Happy Feet 2.

8 He forgot to thank his mother during his 1998 Oscar speech.

In March 1998, Williams won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. In 2011, Williams appeared on The Graham Norton Show, and Norton asked him what it was like to win the award. “For a week it was like, ‘Hey congratulations! Good Will Hunting, way to go,’” Williams said. “Two weeks later: ‘Hey, Mork.’”

Then Williams mentioned how his speech accidentally left out one of the most important people in his life. “I forgot to thank my mother and she was in the audience,” he said. “Even the therapist went, ‘Get out!’ That was rough for the next few years. [Mom voice] ‘You came through here [points to his pants]! How’s the award?’”

9 He comforted Steven Spielberg during the filming of Schindler’s List.

At this year’s 25th anniversary screening of Schindler’s List, held at the Tribeca Film Festival, director Steven Spielberg shared that Williams—who played Peter Pan in Spielberg’s Hook—would call him and make him laugh. “Robin knew what I was going through, and once a week, Robin would call me on schedule and he would do 15 minutes of stand-up on the phone,” Spielberg said. “I would laugh hysterically, because I had to release so much.”

10 Williams helped Ethan Hawke get an agent.

During a June 2018 appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Ethan Hawke recalled how, while working on Dead Poets Society, Williams was hard on him. “I really wanted to be a serious actor,” Hawke said. “I really wanted to be in character, and I really didn’t want to laugh. The more I didn’t laugh, the more insane [Williams] got. He would make fun of me. ‘Oh this one doesn’t want to laugh.’ And the more smoke would come out of my ears. He didn’t understand I was trying to do a good job.” Hawke had assumed Williams hated him during filming.

After filming ended, Hawke went back to school, but he received a surprising phone call. It was from Williams’s agent, who—at Williams’s suggestion—wanted to sign Hawke. Hawke said he still has the same agent today.

11 He was almost cast in Midnight Run.

In February 1988, Williams told Rolling Stone how he sometimes still had to audition for roles. “I read for a movie with [Robert] De Niro, [Midnight Run], to be directed by Marty Brest,” Williams said. “I met with them three or four times, and it got real close, it was almost there, and then they went with somebody else. The character was supposed to be an accountant for the Mafia. Charles Grodin got the part. I was craving it. I thought, ‘I can be as funny,’ but they wanted someone obviously more in type. And in the end, he was better for it. But it was rough for me. I had to remind myself, ‘Okay, come on, you’ve got other things.’”

In July 1988, Universal released Midnight Run. Just two years later, Williams finally worked with De Niro, on Awakenings.

12 Williams and Billy Crystal used to talk on the phone for hours.

Starting in 1986, Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg co-hosted HBO’s Comic Relief to raise money for the homeless. Soon after Williams’s death, Crystal went on The View and spoke with Goldberg about his friendship with Williams. “We were like two jazz musicians,” Crystal said. “Late at night I get these calls and we’d go for hours. And we never spoke as ourselves. When it was announced I was coming to Broadway, I had 50 phone messages, in one day, from somebody named Gary, who wanted to be my backstage dresser.”

“Gary” turned out to be Williams.

SOURCE: MENTALFOSS.COM

GARIN PIRNIA

A gurn or chuck is a distorted facial expression and a verb to describe the action. A typical gurn involves projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible and covering the upper lip with the lower lip.

The English Dialect Dictionary, compiled by Joseph Wright, defines the word gurn as “to snarl as a dog; to look savage; to distort the countenance,” while the Oxford English Dictionary suggests the derivation may originally be Scottish, related to “grin.” In Northern Ireland, the verb “to gurn” means “to cry,” and crying is often referred to as “gurnin’.” Originally the Scottish dialectical usage refers to a person who is complaining. The term “gurn” may also refer to an involuntary facial muscular contortion experienced as a side-effect of MDMA consumption.

Apparently, this is a big deal and an annual event in the UK.  Enjoy some gurns!

SOURCE: New York Post

Harrison Ford was born today, July 13^th, in 1942 and I thought I’d find some fascinating facts from the Indiana Jones franchise.

From Business Insider:
Tom Selleck nearly played Indiana Jones.

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Harrison Ford donning the fedora and cracking the bullwhip, but the role almost went to Tom Selleck instead. The “Magnum P.I.” and “Friends” star was actually one of the first actors to be offered the role, and even did a screen test alongside “Blade Runner” actor Sean Young as Marion Ravenwood. But as Selleck explained in 2017, CBS wouldn’t let him take the role because he’d already shot the “Magnum P.I.” pilot for the network.

There were around 10,000 snakes in the “Well of Souls” scene.

There are plenty of bugs and reptiles in the whole franchise but the Well of Souls scene is arguably the one that makes many fans squirm because of the thousands of snakes that slither on screen to terrify Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). In a behind-the-scenes featurette, Allen recalled that the original plan was to use “mechanical snakes” but they didn’t look realistic enough. And archival footage shows director Steven Spielberg bringing in numerous snake handlers to fill the set with snakes and glass lizards — which look like snakes. 

Harrison Ford even said: “We were working with, I think, around 8, 10,000 snakes.”

The cobra actually spat venom at Harrison Ford.

Although it sounds wild that there were thousands of snakes on the “Raiders” set, the filmmakers didn’t realize how serious the situation could be until one of them actually spat venom at Harrison Ford. Producer Kathleen Kennedy recalled how the cobra reacted to the actor in the scene where Indy comes face-to-face with the snake. Luckily, there was a sheet of glass separating them. She said: “At one point, it hooded and whipped its head off to the side and literally threw venom all over the glass. So that was something that caused everybody to sit up and take notice and recognize that this was not something to play around with.”

Harrison Ford got run over by a plane filming “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

During the scene where Indy and Marion fight Nazis on the runway, Harrison Ford was actually run over by the plane and tore the ACL ligament in his knee. In a behind-the-scenes documentary, the star recalled: “At a certain point I slipped and fell, and the wheels rode up onto my knee, which resulted in me tearing my anterior cruciate ligament in my left leg in the middle of Tunisia. So rather than submit to any local medical care, we just wrapped it up and put ice on it, and I carried on.” 

It wasn’t the only time that Ford got injured on film sets, as he broke his leg years later filming “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens,” and hurt his shoulder rehearsing a fight scene for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”

Willie Scott was named after Steven Spielberg’s dog.

While Indiana himself is named after George Lucas’ dog, his “Temple of Doom” love interest, Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw), was named after Steven Spielberg’s Cocker Spaniel.  Spielberg explained the name in a behind-the-scenes documentary for the sequel. He said: “Willie was the name of my dog, by the way. ‘Cause, since Indy was named after George’s dog, Indiana, and I had a dog named Willie, and then Short Round was the name of Bill and Gloria’s dog, so Ke was called Short Round. So in that sense, all three characters are named after our house pets.”

Harrison Ford taught Ke Huy Quan how to swim on a day off from filming.

Ke Huy Quan’s career has had a resurgence thanks to “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” but many theatergoers know him for his role as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” One of the big reasons why his character works so well as comedy relief in the darker movie is because of the believable familial dynamic he has with Indy, and that comes from how Quan and Ford hung out together on set when they weren’t filming. The actor told The New York Times that Ford taught him to swim on a day off while they were in Sri Lanka. Quan said: “We were just hanging out at the swimming pool in Sri Lanka in our hotel, and he says, ‘Ke, do you know how to swim?’ I didn’t, so he says, ‘Come on, I’ll teach you.'” 

Kate Capshaw had to be taught how to scream for “Temple of Doom.”

“Temple of Doom” sees nightclub singer Willie Scott get swept along in the adventure after meeting Indy in Shanghai, and because she’s not used to the shenanigans that the archaeologist gets involved in, she’s understandably freaked out by all the action. Kate Capshaw had to be taught how to scream on set, as she explained: “I couldn’t scream, so Steven taught me how to scream. I mean, you know, screaming isn’t as easy as it looks.”

Steven Spielberg cut a scary snake scene for Kate Capshaw.

One of the scenes that didn’t make it off the page in “Temple of Doom” saw a snake descend around Willie Scott, but Kate Capshaw was terrified of the creature while filming in Sri Lanka. Capshaw explained that she was incredibly worried about the scene, and producer Frank Marshall took her to see the snake first to try and ease her into it. Capshaw recalled: “I went over and looked at it, and looking at it, I get tears in my eyes and I’m having a hard time breathing and I’m looking… I can almost work myself up right now. And I went over and I put my hand on the snake, and I lost it.” Spielberg added: “She was shaking and she was all white, and you could see right through her makeup. She had lost all of her color. And I said, ‘I’m not gonna put you through this. Let’s cut it out.’ And I cut the whole scene out of the movie. I think she probably years and years later, married me for that!”

The Nazi uniforms in “The Last Crusade” were apparently genuine.

Costume designer Anthony Powell explained in the “Last Crusade” making-of documentary that the Nazi uniforms worn by the hundreds of extras in the film were genuine. He said: “We had a lot of Nazis in the film. All of those uniforms, I think, were genuine ones that I found in Eastern Europe somewhere. Joanna Johnston worked with me on the two last ‘Indiana Jones’ pictures. I’d give her research pictures and sketches and drawings and things, then she’d go out and find it all.”

2,000 rats were bred for just one sequence in “The Last Crusade.”

“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” sees Indy and his father, Dr. Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery), hunt for the Holy Grail, and the search takes the hero to Venice with Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody).  Unfortunately, when they end up in the catacombs, Schneider is confronted with thousands of rats. It turns out that the crew bred 2,000 of the little critters just for that sequence.  In the making-of documentary, Spielberg explained: “In order to have rats that aren’t infected with some virus or disease, you have to basically cultivate them from living births. So our animal handlers gave birth to something like 2,000 living rats. And they were everywhere! The set was half-water, it was like an aqueduct. We had rats walking the very narrow lips of the aqueduct and coming out of holes, rats in poor Alison Doody’s hair.” Thankfully, Ford wasn’t as bothered by all the rats, as he admitted to keeping “black hooded rats” as pets when he was a “nature counselor” as a teenager.

Sean Connery and Harrison Ford filmed a scene together without wearing pants.

Yes, you read that right. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford decided not to wear pants during a conversational scene on the zeppelin in “The Last Crusade.” During the documentary, Connery explained: “The passengers were wearing fur coats and hats, it was supposed to be the wintertime, and I played it without my trousers. Harrison said: ‘You’re not gonna play the scene without your trousers?’ I said, ‘If I don’t, I’ll be stopping all the time because I sweat enormously. I sweat very easily.’ Well, he did the same.” Like father, like son.

Cate Blanchett picked her “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” haircut by looking at high school yearbooks from the 1950s.

Fast-forward to 2008, and a new “Indiana Jones” movie reared its (crystal) head with “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” The film sees the adventurer race against Russian villain Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) to find a mythical city in South America. But when it came to Spalko’s intimidating look, Blanchett got inspiration from 1950s high school yearbooks. She explained in the making-of documentary: “I had a look at yearbooks of people’s high school photos in the ’50s, and I found a couple of photos. One of a Russian girl, and one of an American girl with an incredibly short fringe, and I just thought that really emphasized the eyes, so that’s in the end what we went with.”

“Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” carries on the tradition of including a “Star Wars” Easter egg.

When Steven Spielberg and George Lucas made “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the duo couldn’t resist including a sneaky reference to “Star Wars” on the walls of the Well of Souls scene, with a tile showing R2-D2 and C-3PO.  And production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas continued that tradition in the main temple of Akator in the 2008 film’s climax, with R2-D2 and C-3PO being included on a golden tile. He also took it a step further and included the titular alien from Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”

Shia LaBeouf trained for six weeks to film the bike chase in “Crystal Skull,” but found it hard because Harrison Ford kept moving on the back of it.

Early on in the film, Indy unwittingly meets his long-lost son, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), and they wind up having to flee Marshall University when the Soviets show up. Stunt coordinator Gary Powell explained that they started off with a “smaller bike” before giving the actor the Harley Davidson, and then they practiced the chase scene for six weeks. But LaBeouf found it hard because Harrison Ford kept moving while sitting on the back of the bike.  He said: “The bike was tough, only because when you have somebody moving on the back of a bike. It’s very different than just having someone hold you on the bike. But we’re shooting a movie and Harrison has to animate his character! And we’re on a bike through a lot of it, so a lot of it is the movement. All that stuff was pretty tough.”

SOURCE: BUSINESS INSIDER

Eammon Jacobs