#MikesMerryMovieChallenge

December 11: favorite song in a holiday movie

I’ll be man enough to admit that I get a little misty-eyed once I hear “Christmas Time is Here” from 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” when watching it. pic.twitter.com/J8WDEUDuoh

— filmanthropic (@filmanthropica) December 11, 2021

The song in its original version has nothing to do with Christmas. What you think may be jingle bells are brushes on a snare drum. It's a jazz tune that's quite slow and melancholy. But when we hear it, we know it's Christmas, because "Christmas Time is Here" played through a large part of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the beloved 1965 Peanuts TV special we all know and love.

The song was written and performed by Vince Guaraldi, a jazz musician who'd hit the charts with "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" a few years earlier. Lee Mendelson heard the song and got Guaraldi to do the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Guaraldi constructed a slow jazz instrumental, which was quite innovative for a children's television show at the time. Mendelson thought it needed lyrics, which he wrote and arranged for a children's choir to sing. Even with cheery lyrics, the song makes Christmas seem somewhat sad and disappointing, which is quite in line with the plot of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Read the story of how the song came about and why we automatically get nostalgic when we hear it, at Mel magazine.

400 Betty Whites ago, there were still living Neanderthals.

Between 300 and 130 Betty Whites ago, the first humans reached North America.

100 Betty Whites ago, the last mammoths roamed the Earth.

7 Betty Whites ago, the Aztec Empire rose, only to fall 2.2 Bettys later.

— Yell in a War (@jelenawoehr) December 20, 2021

On January 17 of next year, Betty White will turn 100 years old.

I was about to write "actress Betty White", but that seems like a wholly inadequate description. Betty White is not just an actress. It is best put that Betty White is Betty White in all fullness of the term; a Platonic ideal of Betty Whiteness.

As the world prepares to celebrate, writer Jelena Woehr would like to propose using Betty White as a unit of measurement. Specifically, a Betty White is a unit of time--a lifespan of incredible magnitude. A very long-lived person expresses that events that felt a long time ago were, from a different perspective, very recent. Read Woehr's thread here.

-via Kottke

How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a classic Dr. Seuss story first published in 1957. It was made into a Christmas television special in 1966 and two feature films in 2000 and 2018, among other spinoffs featuring the Grinch. This Honest Trailer is about the 2000 film version starring Jim Carrey as the Grinch. It was a huge hit, and probably the most familiar version of the story to the internet generation. As Screen Junkies reveals, this movie was less Dr. Seuss and more Ron Howard and Jim Carrey. The basic story is there, but stretched out to feature length by adding lots of violence and sexual innuendo. Is it really? I've never  seen the movie. After watching this Honest Trailer, I don't have the desire to, either.

The Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life was released in 1946, and is set on Christmas Eve of 1945. The movie follows the life of George Bailey, who was born in 1907. Bailey and the characters around him experience life in the 20th century just as the 1946 audience would have, without too much explanation. They lived through the Spanish flu epidemic, the crash of 1929, and the World War II draft as a matter of course. No one around at the time had any idea that the movie would became more popular over the next 75 years, and that many folks would have to go to school to learn about the events that shaped their lives. But here we are, with a movie that chronicles a momentous period in history and how it affected everyday people.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History's History Film Forum examines the historical accuracy and value of American films. They recently discussed It's a Wonderful Life and the historical events portrayed in it. The movie was not written as a history lesson, but due to its age and scope, it deserves a deeper look into its contemporary references. For example, the scene in which Mary and George are on the phone with Sam Wainwright is memorable to us for its extraordinary sexual tension, but there is real history behind the conversation.

To help George, who’s at a crossroads in his life, Sam offers them some illegal insider-trading tips as he reminds George of an idea they once discussed to make plastics out of soybeans. This hearkens back to an effort popularized in the 1920s through the early 1940s, most prominently by automotive titan Henry Ford, known as “chemurgy.” According to Landis, an agricultural historian, chemurgy was the “idea [of] taking farm crops and making industrial products out of them ... growing rural America out of the Depression with one foot in industry, one foot in agriculture.”

Ford set up laboratories and employed scientists to experiment on crops to determine if he could “grow a car.” After experimenting on everything from cantaloupes to dandelion seeds, the researchers had the most success with soybeans. Though the effort succeeded in creating some plastic components for cars and allowed Ford to swing an ax at the plastic trunk of his personal car for publicity, soybean plastics didn’t result in the success or riches portrayed in the film, but the research did result in a plethora of food products, which in turn pushed soybeans from a marginal crop in North America to one of the largest.

This is just one tidbit from the film forum's discussion. You can read more fascinating bits of history referenced in It's a Wonderful Life at Smithsonian, or if you have time, you can watch a feature-length video of the forum discussion plus the relevant movie clips at the same link.  

Capture the Atlas has announced their 25 winners in the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition. Each of the chosen photographs comes with a great story. The photo above is titled "Santa's Cabin," taken by Olli Sorvari in Levi, Finland. He hiked out to the cabin in a couple of feet of snow without snowshoes to get it, and then it started snowing again. At Instagram, he says, "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire... Didn’t need no water to put it out but sure felt thirsty after the hike🥸"  



The above image was capture by Marybeth Kiczenski on November 4 at Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, on the shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin. She drove eight hours to get out from under clouds to witness the effects of a geomagnetic storm. This view is definitely worth it.

See all 25 winning images with their photographers' stories at Capture the Atlas. -via Everlasting Blort


See also: the 2020 winners.

Krampus is a European Christmas demon that serves as the opposite of Santa Claus. For children, Santa Claus, or Father Christmas or St. Nicholas, was the carrot and Krampus was the stick. But why should kids have all the fun? Krampus was never really much of a thing in the United States, as if we let the legend drop in the ocean as Europeans immigrated to the States. Or maybe the Protestants who didn't celebrate St. Nicholas Day left Krampus behind when they moved the St. Nicholas traditions to Christmas. But most likely, it's just that Krampus wasn't all that well known outside of the Alpine region until relatively recent times. Of course, once we had the internet, the Krampus legend spread and grew exponentially, as anything as weird and fun as a Christmas monster is bound to do.  -via Boing Boing

Read more about Krampus in many previous Neatorama posts.

The documentary series The Beatles: Get Back took a look at the recording of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be. Over about eight hours, we got an in-depth look at how the band wrote and recorded the entire album in three weeks. That feat would not have been possible if the band members didn't know each other thoroughly or hadn't been working together for years. The collaborative process of writing songs worked because of unwritten rules that John, Paul, George, and Ringo, as well as their producers and crew followed. Sure, there was conflict, but not nearly as much as could have been for such a project. Tom Whitwell identified some of those rules from watching The Beatles: Get Back, and explains them for us. The most important is how to get your two cents in without alienating your collaborators.

1. The ‘yes… and’ rule

The first rule of improvisation (and brainstorming) is “yes… and”. When someone suggests an idea, plays a note, says a line, you accept it completely, then build on it. That’s how improvisational comedy or music flows. The moment someone says ‘no’, the flow is broken. It’s part of deferring judgement, where you strictly separate idea generation from idea selection.

As they slog through Don’t Let Me Down, George breaks the spell. Instead of building and accepting he leaps to judgement, saying “I think it’s awful.” Immediately, John and Paul lay down the rules: “Well, have you got anything?” “you’ve gotta come up with something better”.

Don’t judge, build.  

Read all ten rules for productivity and brainstorming in a group at Medium. -via Kottke

The longest place name in the world is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which is a hill in New Zealand. I would guess the sign painter charged an arm and a leg to label it. TikTok member tehamua says he can't pronounce it, but he will try for us, and give us some background, too. According to Wikipedia, the name means "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his kōauau (flute) to his loved one". Most folks just call it Taumata. If you want to hear someone who knows how to pronounce it, weather reporter Oriini Tipene-Leach rattles off the 85-character name of the hill easily. But then she is challenged to pronounce that place in Wales, which trips her up.

That place is Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, which, at 58 characters, is the second longest place name we know of. It has several shorter versions. And tehamua tries that one, too.

-via Metafilter 

Back in the day, those who made a living hauling goods from the Great Lakes to New York City spent their summers working and the cold winters living on their barges tied to the city's docks. They couldn't afford to rent a house on land, and they formed a community of sorts on the water. It was a life they were used to. In the winter of 1926, around 80 men, women, and children lived in 30-40 barges lashed together at the dock end of 96th street. On Christmas night, a storm blew in while the residents were sleeping and somehow caused the moorings that kept the barges in place to came loose. They silently began to drift down the East River, toward what seamen called "Hell Gate," where currents and tides were particularly dangerous. Two dogs on the barges, named Fanny and Sandy, started barking frantically.

Three blocks away, the city fireboat George B. McClellan was tied up at the foot of 99th Street. Fire Lieutenant John Hughes and his crew of 16 men were below deck. All cuddled up on an old coat on a bench in the McClellan’s cabin was Peggy, a fluffy white spitz dog who served as mascot–not watchdog–of the fireboat.

Hearing Fanny’s barks for help, Peggy awoke from her snooze and sprang from her comfy bed. She leaped through a partly open hatch and landed on the boat’s icy deck.

Peggy responded to Fanny's barks with her own barks, waking the fire crew. She kept barking, pointing her face in the direction of the drifting barges, until Hughes figured out what was happening. The rescue of the barge fleet was complicated, but could have been a huge disaster for the people on them if it weren't for the three dogs that were on alert that night. Read about the rescue and about the culture of the barge colony at The Hatching Cat.  -via Strange Company

What do animals do when their home is falling apart? They have to go somewhere else. When their Arctic ice shelf collapses, a mother polar bear and her cub, wearing lovely knitted sweaters, take a chance and end up as refugees in a world totally foreign to them. While they just want to get on with their lives, the current residents look at them as an invasive species. It turns out they are not alone in their calamity, but that doesn't make the natives any more welcoming.

The award-winning short Migrants was directed by Hugo Caby, Antoine Dupriez, Aubin Kubiak, Lucas Lermytte, and Zoé Devise of the PÔLE 3D Digital & Creative School in France. It wordlessly addresses many subjects: climate change, refugees, xenophobia, deportation, and even littering. -via Laughing Squid

There's a place in many wedding ceremonies where the officiant asks if anyone objects to the joining of these two people. If they show this part in a movie, you know someone is going to say something. In real life, it only happens rarely. But when it does, it's sure to cause drama. In a recent Askreddit post, summeralexander14 asked, "People that have had someone object at your wedding, what happened?"  And the stories came out. While plenty of parents and past lovers made the wedding cringeworthy, some tales stood head and shoulders above the rest.

My dad's seen an objection - he volunteers at a church. The bride and groom were siblings, and their father hadn't told them until he objected (I believe he was estranged to both of them). They already had a kid apparently.

Oops. We don't find out what happened afterward, but it seems like the damage had already been done. Still, that was a horrid way to disclose a secret, in front of a gathering of friends and family. But there are other stories of objections that are remembered years later because they are downright funny.

Priest here. Where I am, the only objection people can make is a legal one. It doesn’t matter if they merely don’t approve.

I had one objection at a wedding, where the person who spoke claimed the groom was already married. That’s enough to stop the wedding. Turned out they were Serbian (which I knew) and didn’t know our legal system. The groom hadn’t realised the church wedding was also the legal wedding, so they’d married each other in a civil ceremony a few days before. That was fun to sort out!

A couple of the stories had to do with children who wanted to fill the silence of the moment. And then there's this.

First wedding in Vegas, found a homeless guy to be a witness in exchange for a sandwich from subway, objected because it didn’t have olives like he wanted.

Read 30 such stories, ranging from horrific to a cherished memory, at Bored Panda.

We know how mining towns in the US worked during the gold rush era in the US. Someone found something valuable, a town sprung up to exploit it, and when the resources played out, the town died off. That didn't happen in Kiruna, Sweden. The iron mine only was very successful, and the town thrived. The mine expanded to follow the iron vein. What could possibly go wrong?  

When the underground mining threatened the stability of the town, something had to be done. Kiruna had been there in northern Lapland for more than 100 years, and has 17,000 residents. The solution? Move the buildings and the people three kilometers east. The current plan is expected to take at least ten years to complete, and by then there will be more areas that need to be saved. You can read more about the moving project at Wikipedia. The last minute of the video is an ad. -via Digg

For 10 million dollars I’ll stand on your front lawn myself in a white bathrobe with a big hose, smoking a cigar and drinking a beer. This is a special discounted limited one time offer good til Christmas Day.

— Randy Quaid (@RandyRRQuaid) December 17, 2021

1989 delivered to world one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We, the audience, get to experience the horrors of a family reunion at Christmas time through the eyes of Clark Griswold. One of the most famous scenes in that film shows Eddie, a distant relative who lives in a run-down motorhome, emptying his RV's brown water tank into a storm drain.

Content warning: NSFW language.

Randy Quaid, who played Eddie, now offers his adoring fans the opportunity to live out Clark Griswold's experience themselves. There will be a small fee for this service.

I found this tweet through David Burge, one of Twitter's greatest treasures, who quips:

hell, I'll do it for $10https://t.co/Eq9ZWBJLp3

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 17, 2021

Every year since 1966, the residents of Gävle, Sweden, erect a giant goat made of straw for Christmas. Why a goat? Why not? The Gävle Goat (previously at Neatorama) is a beloved tradition, which comes with a not-so-beloved custom of burning it down before it can be dismantled in the new year. Despite security measures such as cameras and guards, arsonists have burned down the goat in at least 35 of those years. However, the last time the goat was torched was in 2016. That's enough to make one think that the would-be arsonists may have had a change of heart. But no. On Friday, the 42-foot-tall Gävle Goat was destroyed by fire.



Police say they have arrested a man in his 40s who was observed acting suspiciously before the fire started. Here's where we would normally say "This is why we can't have nice things," but in the case of the Gävle Goat, you can be assured that the people of Gävle will try again next year. Read more on the 2021 Gävle Goat at Reuters. 

BTW: The comments under the YouTube video are 99% happy that the goat was burned. They say it signals a return to normalcy.

What kind of saint would you assign to be the patron saint of nuclear weapons? What could possibly be in such a person's life that would make sense of such a designation?

Russian mystic and visionary Prokhor Moshnin was born in 1754. He joined a Russian Orthodox monastery and quickly rose through the ranks to become a leader. By then he was known as Seraphim of Sarov. Then while still a young man, he became a hermit and lived a mostly secluded life for the next thirty years. Eventually, he opened his doors to those who would come to find his wisdom. Seraphim died in 1833, leaving evidence of his mystic powers like unopened letters that he had already answered. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized Seraphim of Sarov, making him St. Seraphim, in 1903 in a ceremony attended by Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra.

However, the rise of the Soviet Union meant the Church was subsumed by the power of the state. The USSR developed a nuclear weapons program following World War II. With the fall of the Soviets in the 1990s, the Russian Orthodox Church came out of the shadows, and nuclear warheads (as well as nuclear submarines, tanks, and other nuclear devices) were blessed by a sprinkling of holy water in the name of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. Of course, Seraphim knew nothing of these weapons in his life. How in the world did he become associated with these things? Read the story of the patron saint of nuclear weapons at Esoterix. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Violette79)