Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Some Like It Hot, besides being the most famous film made by legendary sex symbol Marilyn Monroe (her signature performance) is a comedy classic in its own right. In 2000, it was voted by the American Film Institute as #1 on its list of the 100 Funniest Movies (interestingly, the #2 choice was Tootsie, making both the #1 and #2 choices cross-dressing films).

Besides the great Marilyn (and Billy Wilder's awesome direction), the brilliant gender-bending performances by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon make it, without a doubt, one of the most entertaining comedies ever filmed. Let's take a look at a few facts you may not know about a truly hilarious movie: Some Like It Hot.

* The "almost cast" list is almost as great as the final choices. Director Billy Wilder originally wanted Bob Hope and Danny Kaye to play the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon roles. Frank Sinatra was another early choice the play the Jack Lemmon "Daphne" role. Perhaps the strangest actor to audition for Lemmon's role was a young Anthony Perkins (rejected. He was to star in Alred Hitchcock's Psycho the next year).

* Jerry Lewis was also offered the role of the zany "Daphne." Lewis turned down the role because he "didn't think drag was funny." Lemmon, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance, sent Lewis chocolates annually in gratitude. According to Jerry, every time he ran into Billy Wilder, Billy greeted him with, "Hello, Schmuck!" Jerry later admitted he regretted his rejection of the role. 

* Actress Mitzi Gaynor was the original choice for the female lead "Sugar Kane" role, but as soon as Wilder found out Marilyn Monroe was available, he offered her the role.

* The film's original working title was Not Tonight, Josephine. * Marilyn wanted the film to be in color (her contract actually stipulated that all her movies be filmed in color), but after looking at Curtis and Lemmon in the color film tests, they were deemed to be too grotesque-looking (they photographed with a green tinge).

Megalonyx jeffersonii

Fossils rarely do scientists the courtesy of showing up intact, so putting them together is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. A tough one. Without a picture on the box to go by. It's no wonder a few old bones have made some of the world's smartest scientists look so stupid.

1. All the President's Sloths

In decades past, American presidents apparently had hobbies other than playing golf and eating at McDonald’s. Thomas Jefferson, for one, was an avid paleontologist. As early as the 1790s (before it was cool), he kept an impressive fossil collection at his home in Monticello. So when a group of confused miners came upon some unidentifiable bones in a West Virginia cave, they sent them to Jefferson. Judging from the long limbs and large claws, the president suspected they belonged to a giant cat “as preeminent over the lion in size as the mammoth is over the elephant” and that the animal might still exist somewhere in the unexplored West.

Jefferson got the size right. The description? Not so much. The animal he named Megalonyx (giant claw) was actually one of the giant ground sloths that very slowly roamed America during the last ice age. And while Jefferson later agreed with this alternative diagnosis, his error wasn’t a complete waste. The Megalonyx marked one of the first important fossil finds in the United States, and it prompted the first and second scientific papers on fossils published in North America. In honor of the president’s contribution, the sloth’s name was later formalized to Megalonyx jeffersonii.

2. A Bone-headed Approach

To this day, the Brontosaurus remains one of the most popular and recognizable dinosaurs in history – an impressive feat for an animal that never existed. The confusion started in 1879, when collectors working in Wyoming for paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh found two nearly complete – yet headless – sauropod dinosaur skeletons. Wanting to display them, Marsh fitted one specimen with a skull found nearby, and the other with a skull he found in Colorado. Voila! – the Brontosaurus was born.

(Image credit: Flickr user yuan2003)

Unfortunately for Marsh, the skeletons were later exposed as adult specimens of a dinosaur already discovered, the Apatosaurus. The error was formally corrected in 1903 by Elmer Riggs of Chicago’s Field Museum, and scientific papers haven’t called the animal Brontosaurus since. Seventy more years passed before researchers determined that the skulls Marsh borrowed really belonged to the Camarasaurus, a discovery of his archrival, Edward Drinker Cope. Pop culture, however, missed the memo altogether.

3. Getting Your Head Screwed on Right

Paleontology’s version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, Marsh and Cope had a nasty and long-running professional rivalry. Although they’d actually started out as friends (with each even naming a discovery after the other), by 1870 their relationship had taken a turn for the worse. A year earlier, Cope had assembled a skeleton of the sea reptile called Elasmosaurus. However, in his rush to publish his discovery, he placed the head on the wrong end, giving everyone the impression that the animal had a very long tail instead of a very long neck. Marsh poured ample salt in that wound by making fun of Cope’s error in print (suggesting he rename the animal “twisted lizard”) and constantly ridiculing it at parties and exhibitions. Given the stakes, he might as well have slapped Cope across the face with a glove and insulted his mother. As it was, all Cope could do was try and buy up all the published examples of his posterior-backwards construction.


Incorrect image of Elasmosaurus published by Cope.

The feud only grew from there. The two men fought over allegations that, on a tour of Cope’s digging operations in New Jersey, Marsh bribed collectors to send key fossils to him. And in 1877, a part-time collector in Utah incited a whole new string of cutthroat arguing by trying to sell bones from his site to both of them. Other feud highlights included a series of snippy “he said, he said” pieces in the New York Herald and the time the Smithsonian confiscated much of Marsh’s fossil collection after Cope accused him of misusing tax dollars to hoard fossils for himself.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

The incredibly happy marriage of Wyatt Earp and Josie Marcus.

Wyatt Earp a Jew? Well, no, but he is buried in a Jewish Cemetery. Why? Read on...

In 1867, Josephine Sarah Marcus moved with her observant, immigrant, German-Jewish parents from Brooklyn, New York to San Francisco. She said her prayers every day and was taught a by-the-books good Jewish education. In 1879, young Josie was exposed to the romance of the San Francisco gold rush era.

After seeing the Gilbert and Sullivan play H.M.S. Pinafore at the age of 18, Josie caught the show biz bug. She ran away with a friend and joined the company touring the U.S. When the troupe played Tombstone, Arizona, she fell in love with the corrupt city marshal Johnny Behan. Ironically, it was Behan who introduced Josie to Wyatt Earp.

Josie and Wyatt were to soon fall in deeply in love and be married for some 50 years. The marriage was, by all accounts, a joyous one.

While we know much, factually, of Josephine Marcus, Wyatt Earp, while a true legend, had a checkered, disputed, and much-debated life history. While it is certain that Wyatt, then a U.S. Marshal, participated in the legendary "gunfight at the O.K. Corral" in 1881, the facts of that historic day remain foggy.

Wyatt, along with his brothers Morgan and Virgil and friend Doc Holliday, did participate in the shooting of the Clanton gang. The fight injured both Morgan and Virgil, while three of the Clantons were killed. The Clantons claimed it was a deliberate set-up  and that the Earps waited for them and drew first, while the Earp side claimed the Clantons drew their pistols first.

The highest mountain on earth is Mt. Everest in Nepal at 29,029 feet above sea level. However, it not the point on earth that is farthest from the center of the planet. That honor belongs to the volcano called Chimborazo in Ecuador.

The summit of the Chimborazo is the fixed point on Earth which has the utmost distance from the center – because of the modified ball shape of the planet Earth which is "thicker" around the Equator than measured around the poles.[note 3] Chimborazo is one degree south of the Equator and the Earth's diameter at the Equator is greater than at the latitude of Everest (8,848 m (29,029 ft) above sea level), nearly 28° north, with sea level also elevated. Despite being 2,580 m (8,465 ft) lower in elevation above sea level, it is 6,384.4 km (3,967.1 mi) from the Earth's centre, 2,168 m (7,113 ft) or 2.168 km (1.347 mi) farther than the summit of Everest (6,382.3 km (3,965.8 mi) from the Earth's center).[note 4] However, by the criterion of elevation above sea level, Chimborazo is not even the highest peak of the Andes.

Imagine that! Link -via reddit

This dessert looks creepy, but it's actually delicious cake with brain-shaped frosting and a bit of raspberry jelly for blood, all stuffed on a jar. The instructions for making your own are at Living Locurto. Link -via Everlasting Blort

(YouTube link)

Relax, the video is only a few seconds long. Five minutes is the subject matter. A reporter covers a building demolition, but failed to synchronize his watch. -via The Daily What

Once again, it's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Do you know what the pictured item is? Can you make a wild guess?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: No one guessed the correct answer for this one! According to the What Is It? blog, this is a raisin seeder. How effective it was in real use, I do not know. Most raisins these days are made from seedless grapes. As for the funniest answer, Thomas said this is a pair of salad tongs designed by M.C. Escher for his 'Relativity' salad. If you noticed the odd way the ends of this thing would match up, you'd think that, too! So Thomas wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

In the New York Times Magazine, 72-year-old fitness guru Jerome I. Rodale had declared proudly sand defiantly: "I'm going to live to be 100, unless I get run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver." The very next day, the confident health guru made an appearance on the then-popular TV talk show The Dick Cavett Show. The date was June 5, 1971 and I repeat (with apologies) "health fitness guru" Jerome Rodale was chatting amiably in front of a studio audience with the always clever host, Dick Cavett.

If a comedy writer was writing a sketch for a sitcom, and he or she wanted to write about the funniest, most ironic person who could possibly die in the middle of a talk show, what profession would they write the character in as? Hmmm ...a health expert? The gods, merciless as they apparently are, must indeed have a sense of humor. Obviously, no man's death is funny or amusing, but "Tragedy plus time equals humor." (I once politely argued with Tim Conway over whose quote that was: I said it was Steve Allen's, but Tim said it was Carole Burnett's. Whoever.)

Rodale was a slight man, he looked like Leon Trotsky with a goatee. He was extremely friendly with host Dick Cavett for a half-hour, chatting about health foods, and soon he offered Cavett some of his special asparagus, which he said was "boiled in urine." Cavett, always a ready wit, remembers asking, "Anybody's we know?" Cavett enjoyed the interview and made a mental note to invite Rodale back. The next guest came out: Pete Hamill, a columnist for The New York Post. It was during the interview with Hamill that Rodale suddenly made a snoring sound, which got a laugh from the audience. (Comics sometimes make this sound sarcastically, as if the other person talking is dull or tedious.)

by Jennifer A. Zimmerman Psychology Department Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York This study investigates what effect, if any, watching television has on people’s sexual behavior.

Left: Figure 1. A page from the survey form that was given to male participants.

The Population Problem

For populous countries such as China and India, population growth is seen as a major and vexing problem. The governments of these nations worry that soon there will be more people than the land can support.

The Chinese Crisis

Chinese officials are developing elaborate, expensive plans for more effective family planning, including the development and delivery of better birth-control services. The Chinese State Family Planning Commission recently announced a series of new scientific and technological projects for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). These include the production of 15 new contraceptives and abortificant medicines. The technologies under consideration in China have serious drawbacks. They are costly, and are likely to be implemented inefficiently. It could take many years -- perhaps decades -- before their intended effects reached a satisfactory, or even noticeable level. Some different, better method is sorely wanted.

The Indian Innovation

This past year, an official in India proposed that televisions be given to the nation’s citizens, because televisions are an effective form of birth control. The official explained that people would rather watch television than engage in sexual intercourse:

In a mark of frustration over India’s perennially stalled family planning efforts, the country’s health minister has come up with a somewhat Orwellian proposal: distribute telvisino sets to the masses to keep their minds off procreation.... Chandreshwar Prasad Thakur suggested last month to the Indian parliament that "entertainment is an important component of the population policy." To drive down birth rates, he said, "we want people to watch television." Population experts, meanwhile, say the minister’s proposal betrays the false assumption that India’s poor breed merely because they have nothing better to do. [Science, vol. 293, September 14, 2001, p. 1987.]

Perhaps for political reasons, the proposal was received with skepticism.

To Test the Television Theory

(YouTube link)

German aquaculturist TCHelmut put a glass observation tower in his koi pond. The fish get a good view of their surroundings and people get a good view of the fish! There are more videos at his YouTube channel, including the installation of the tower and how it looks at night. -via The Daily What

These specimens in jars look pretty nasty, and the labels make them seem even worse. But believe it or not, they are all not only edible, but tasty! They contain unfamiliar fruits, or foods cut into odd shapes. Your Halloween guests will be delighted, if they can get over the willies and try them out. Get the recipes at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Link -via Buzzfeed

It’s that time of year, when we look to graveyards for tales that scare the Dickens out of us. You've read about 9 Creepy Places to Visit for a Good Scare and you've seen lists of haunted houses. Now how about cemeteries? These six stories don't all contain ghosts -some are about vampires, poltergeists, and unidentified flying objects! Shown here is Chesnut Hill Cemetery in Rhode Island, the site of a vampire exhumation in 1892.

Chesnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island is reported to be haunted by a vampire named Mercy Lena Brown. She was preceded in death by her mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis, and Mercy would often visit their graves. In January 1892, 19-year-old Mercy herself fell to tuberculosis and was interred with her family members. Mercy’s father George claimed she haunted him every night, complaining of hunger. His son Edwin fell sick, also with tuberculosis, but as he experienced visits from Mercy, the family and townspeople considered the cause of his illness to be the restless dead. George Brown, with the help of others, dug up the graves of his wife and two daughters on March 17, 1892. Only Mercy, who died in January, was free of decomposition. This led George to believe she was a vampire.

Read what happened then, and other tales, at mental_floss. Link

(YouTube link)

YouTube member cmtification wore this Luxo Jr. costume for Halloween last year. The only information I can find out about him/her is that cmtification is 16 years old, that he/she made the costume him/herself. -via The Frogman

A post at reddit asked a hypothetical question: could a modern US Marine infantry battalion defeat the legionnaires of the Roman Empire if they traveled back in time? Member Prufrock451 offered a scenario covering a week of such a story in a series of well-received comments. Here's a sample:

DAY 1 The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.

The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot - nearly all of the MEU's vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.

Nelson's men soon report a complete loss of all communications, including GPS and satellite radio. Nelson now believes something more terrible has occurred - a nuclear war and EMP which has left his unit completely isolated. Only a few men have realized that the rest of Bagram has vanished, but that will soon become apparent as the transport helos begin circling the 35th's location.

Within an hour, the 2,200 Marines have regrouped, stunned. They are not the only moderns transported to Rome. With them are about 150 Air Force maintenance and repair specialists. There are about 60 Afghan Army soldiers, mostly the MEU's interpreters and liaisons. There are also 15 U.S. civilian contractors and one man, Frank Delacroix, who has spoken to no one but Colonel Nelson.

OK, here's where it gets interesting. Adam Kolbrenner from Madhouse Entertainment read the story on reddit and contacted the author, James Erwin, about developing the idea. Warner Brothers bought the story, now called Rome, Sweet Rome, and is making plans to film it. Link -via reddit

(Image source: Rome, Sweet Rome Facebook page)

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Tattoos. Nowadays, we see them everywhere we look. Movie stars, athletes, singers, and even (albeit rarely) the occasional politician proudly sports his or her special "tats."

In 1862, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), the son of Queen Victoria, became the first "famous" person to receive a tattoo. The prince's tattoo was a Jerusalem Cross he got when he visited Jerusalem. It is rumored that even Queen Victoria may have had one (heaven forbid!).

Even some of our US presidents have been tattooed. Although no president has been "officially verified," both Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt reputedly had tattoos of the Roosevelt family crest on their respective persons. Various sources say George W. Bush has a tattoo, either on his arm or his back.

Probably the most popular tattoo for Hollywood celebrities (especially women) is the "star" tattoo. Drew Barrymore, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Hudson, Pink, Kelly Osbourne, and Britney Spears all have stars (Bruce Willis has one, too). OK, let's take a look at 16 other people who had or have tattoos

Thomas Edison "The Wizard of Menlo Park" had three dots tattooed on his right hand, in the form of the dots on the face of a die. Edison also invented electric tattoo pens in 1876, under the official name "Stencil-Pens." It was the predecessor to the later "tattoo machine."

Winston Churchill Sir Winston proudly sported an anchor tattoo on his right arm. And why not? His mother, Jennie Churchill, had a snake tattoo encircling her wrist.

John Wilkes Booth When John Wilkes Booth was a young man, he gave himself a homemade tattoo. Young John drew his initials "J.W.B." on his right hand with a strong Indian ink. The initials remained on his hand for the rest of his life. When Booth was shot on April 26, 1865 after assassinating president Abraham Lincoln, his body was identified and verified by the tattooed initials.