When Neatorama reader Yoshi Hashimoto (Thanks yoshi!) submitted this YouTube clip, it was like a blast from the past for me. See, I grew up in Indonesia and what the clip shows is a trained monkey in a traditional (and disappearing) kid's show called "Topeng Monyet."
Topeng Monyet means "Monkey Mask". It's a traveling one-man (and one-monkey) circus show. He yells out "topeng monyet" while wandering the streets in a residential area, and you can call him to perform at your house. In a typical show, the monkey is the star: it rides a wooden bicycle, walks around holding an umbrella, wears a mask, and so on.
Topeng monyet monkey riding a wooden bicycle. Photo: Harisichwan [Wikipedia]
As you'll see in the clip, the bicycle has been "upgraded" to a mini motorcycle. The monkey is even smart enough to wait for a break in traffic before zooming about.
As a kid, it was a neat treat to see a topeng monyet show. Whenever my parents called one, the neighborhood kids would gather around to watch. But looking back on it as an adult, I realized that it was a sad deal for the monkey. I don't know how it was trained, though I suspect with a lot of beatings, and when it didn't perform to expectation, the guy would yank the chain hard. (If you watch the clip carefully, you'll see that the monkey is on a very long chain).
This type of show is disappearing in Indonesia. I don't know the reason, maybe it's harder to get a monkey or maybe the city government frowned on the practice. Maybe it's a health scare (monkeys carry rabies and Herpes B, and they've been known to scratch or bite spectators).
Lastly, here's a clip of a more "traditional" topeng monyet show:
With all this talk of those kids who found the parachute that might be D.B. Cooper's, it's made me think about people who have randomly disappeared. I think it's such a fascinating topic – and other people must too, or we wouldn't still be talking about people such as Amelia Earhart and Mr. Cooper today. In that spirit, I've found (not literally, of course) a few people whose disappearances have kept us guessing over the years. I know there are (sadly) plenty out there, but I tried to pick some of the vanishings I found most intriguing.
Virginia Dare, 1587
Virginia Dare is just one of the many people (87 men, 17 women and 11 children, to be exact) from the island of Roanoke who disappeared without a trace. What's notable about Virginia, though, is that she was the first child of English parents to be born in the Americas. In fact, it is Virginia's grandfather, John White, who discovered that the colony was missing. In 1587, John sailed back to England for supplies and assistance for the colony. When he returned in 1590, everything was gone except for the infamous "CROATOAN" carved on a tree. Virginia is gone but not forgotten, though. Dare County, N.C. is named after her, as is the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge that spans the Croatan Sound. Roanoke Island celebrates Virginia's birthday every year with an Elizabethan Renaissance Fair. Her legend has also been the subject of many imaginative writers – a couple of novels have her meeting Pocahontas and John Smith. The Daughter of Virginia Dare even portrays her as Pocahontas' mother. A 1965 novel titled Dare, Virginia and the other Lost Colonists have all of the Roanoke residents being abducted by aliens and settling on a planet called Dare. In the Buffyverse, Virginia Dare is a vampire slayer known as the White Doe. The T.B. show Freakylinks shows us a demon Virginia who destroyed the other colonists. The picture above, by the way, is a map of the Roanoke area by John White. Can you believe no pictures of Virginia Dare from 1587 exist? (that's a joke)
Theodosia Burr Alston, 1812
Theodosia was the daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr. She led a pretty charmed life until 1812 – prior to that, she was widely known as the most educated American woman of the day, she married a wealthy land owner and politician and had a son named after her father. In 1812, though, Theodosia was exhausted from appealing to people on her father's behalf. He was acquitted of treason but decided it would be best to spend some time in Europe. Theo was arranging for his 1812 return when her son died. She was still recovering from the shock of that when she boarded the Patriot in the Georgetown, S.C. harbor to meet her father in New York. That wasn't to happen, though – after boarding the ship, neither it nor Theodosia were ever seen again. Of course, most theories say that the boat went down in a storm. But some legends say the Patriot was captured by pirates, who made Theo and her shipmates walk the plank. Another version of this is that Theo was forced to become a pirate's mistress. The least believable of the theories, though, is the one that involves a Karankawa Indian chief. He supposedly found a ship wrecked on the shore and found Theo, chained to a bulkhead and naked except for a gold locket engraved with her name. He rescued her and she told him that she was the daughter of a very important man and that if the chief ever came across white men, he should give him the locket and explain what happened. She gave him her necklace and promptly died.
Benjamin Briggs and the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste, 1872
Not that a missing ship is anything to be blasé about, but it wasn't uncommon before modern technology was able to track ships. The Mary Celeste is interesting, though, because the ship was found – minus its passengers. The Mary Celeste might have been cursed from the very beginning - the first captain died on her maiden voyage. She was launched on her last voyage on November 5, 1872, from Staten Island to Genoa, Italy. A month later the captain of the Dei Gratia, who knew Captain Benjamin Briggs, spotted the Mary Celeste drifting along toward the Strait of Gibraltar. Although the ship was just drifting, no distress signals were flying. Some of the Dei Gratia's crew went to the Mary Celeste in a small boat and boarded it. It was wet, but in good condition. The lifeboat was missing and looked like it was intentionally launched. A six-month supply of food and water had been left behind, along with all of the ship's paperwork except for the captain's log. The most plausible theory stems from the cargo the Mary Celeste had on board – more than 1,000 barrels of alcohol. When the abandoned ship was unloaded, nine of these barrels were found empty. The theory is that when the cargo hold was opened, the nine leaking barrels resulted in a rush of fumes that lead the captain to believe the ship was going to explode. He basically freaked out, ordered everyone into a lifeboat and forgot to secure the lifeboat to the ship (or the line broke). Another theory is that the crew drank the alcohol, murdered the Captain and stole the lifeboat to escape.
Flannan Isles Lighthouse Keepers, 1900
In December of 1900, the lighthouse keepers on the Flannan Isles off the coast of Scotland vanished. It was first noted when a steamer passed the lighthouse on December 15 and noticed the light wasn't working. This was reported, but apparently nothing was done until the relief keeper and a crew with provisions went to the lighthouse on December 26. When no one came out to greet them, they entered the lighthouse and found the entrance gate and main door both closed, the beds unmade, the clock stopped and an overturned chair in the kitchen. The island was thoroughly searched for the men and any clues as to their whereabouts, but the only thing that was found was some damage done by a storm. Although this might seem like a clue, the log left by the keepers showed that it happened before they disappeared. The Northern Lighthouse Board concluded that the men had drowned and been swept out to sea. Rumors, though, had one keeper murdering the other two, then drowning himself out of guilt. A sea serpent was also a possibility, along with the prospect that they had been abducted by spies or attacked by a boat full of ghosts (the lifeboat full of the Mary Celeste crew, maybe?). Photo by Marc Calhoun
Dorothy Arnold, 1910
Imagine the media frenzy if Paris Hilton went for a walk in L.A. and disappeared forever (we can dream, right?). That's just what happened when Manhattan socialite Dorothy Arnold went for a stroll in Central Park (supposedly) on December 12, 1910. Dorothy was the daughter of a wealthy perfume importer and the niece of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Earlier that year, she had spent a week with a man that could have caused some embarrassment to the Arnold family, so instead of reporting her missing, her dad conducted his own investigation through the Pinkertons. Six weeks later, he gave in and called the police. The man she had been seeing, George Griscom, Jr., thought she might have committed suicide after her writing was rejected from a magazine. Friends thought she killed herself because Griscom wouldn't marry her. And her dad thought she had been abducted in Central Park. Another rumor circulated that she had gotten pregnant and died during a botched abortion. So far, no one knows the truth for sure – no evidence of any sort has ever turned up. Photo from PrairieGhosts.com
Amelia Earhart, 1937
Set on circumnavigating the globe, Amelia Earhart took off in her Electra from Miami with navigator Fred Noonan on June 1, 1937. After numerous stops, they ended up in Lae, New Guinea on June 29. They had completed a good chunk of their trip – about 22,000 miles. Only 7,000 miles remained of the fateful journey. On July 2, the pair headed for Howland Island, which is where the trip took a turn for the worse: they fell out of contact and disappeared. Search efforts began only an hour after Amelia's last communication. Obviously, they were never found, despite a huge search effort involving $4 million, the Navy and the Coast Guard. Their efforts included a search of Gardner Island (now Nikumaroro) which had been uninhabited for more than four decades. Since then, artifacts have been uncovered on Nikumaroro including a piece of clear Plexiglass with the exact thickness and curvature as an Electra window and a size nine shoe that looked like the shoes Amelia wore. We have to look at some of the theories surrounding her disappearance – they're pretty interesting. Many thought she was perhaps a spy for FDR and the Japanese had something to do with her disappearance. For instance, in 1966, a CBS correspondent published a book that said Amelia and Fred were captured and executed when they crashed on Saipan Island. Another book was published including a daughter from a Japanese officer who claimed her father had executed Amelia himself. A former Marine said that he and his fellow soldiers had opened a safe in Saipan, only to find Amelia's briefcase. Another Marine said he actually guarded the plane in 1944 and then watched it being destroyed. One author even claimed that Amelia actually completed the flight, returned to the U.S. and began living under an assumed name – Irene Bolam. The real Irene Bolam sued for $1.5 million and swore that she was not Amelia Earhart. Studies since then have shown that she was telling the truth.
D.B. Cooper, 1971
Just in case you haven't heard the D.B. Cooper story, here's a little recap. In November 1971, D.B. Cooper (AKA Dan Cooper, neither of which are his real name) hijacked a plane, demanded a ransom of $200,000, and jumped out of the aircraft after he received it. He has never been found, but a few clues have popped up over the years. In 1980, a little boy found nearly $6,000 in rotting $20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River, which is in the area of where Cooper jumped. In 2007, the FBI announced that they were able to get some DNA from a tie Cooper left on the plane. And, most recently, some kids found an old parachute buried near Amboy, Washington. The FBI doesn't think Cooper survived the flight – when he jumped out, the plane was going through a bad storm with lots of cloud coverage. More than 400 troops from Fort Lewis helped survey the area on foot for any trace of Cooper, but no one found even a shred of evidence. Although the $20 bills given to Cooper were unmarked, the FBI was careful to assign a certain range of serial numbers. A newspaper in Portland offered $1,000 to the first person who could bring in one of these bills, hoping that Cooper was spending them, but not one ever turned up.
Ever heard of Prince Philip? He's the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England. About the only time he makes headline is when he, as one newspaper puts it, "uses his royal status to insult and belittle people." His public gaffes are so frequent that they've earned him the title "The Duke of Hazard." (Photo: NASA/Paul E. Alers [Wikipedia])
To a driving instructor in Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"
To a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: "You look as if you're ready for bed."
On seeing a fuse box filled with wires, during a visit to an electronics company: "This looks like it was put in by an Indian."
To a chubby 13-year-old boy at a space exploration exhibit, pointing to a space capsule: "You'll have to lose weight if you want to go in that."
To a smoke-detector activist who lost two of her children in a house fire: "My smoke alarm is a damn nuisance. Every time I run my bath, the steam sets it off and I've got firefighters at my door."
To members of the British Deaf Association, while pointing to a loudspeaker playing Caribbean music: "No wonder you are deaf."
To a tourist, during a state visit to Hungary: "You can't have been here long, you've not potbelly."
Speaking to British students studying in China: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed."
On the "key problem" facing Brazil: "Brazilians live there."
On his daughter Princess Anne: "If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested."
On seeing a picture once owned by England's King Charles I in the Louvre in Paris: "So I said to the Queen, 'Shall we take it back?'"
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
I had a very exciting experience this weekend that I would recommend to anyone in the Madison, Wisconsin area: I visited the Mustard Museum. It's largely a store full of any type of mustard you can possibly imagine (I bought apple mustard and raspberry mustard), but it does have some very funny exhibits.
The Mustard Museum
(That's soap in a mustard bottle, which I thought was clever) Photos by Stacy Conradt Mt. Horeb, the town the Mustard Museum resides in, is also the home of trolls. You know, those little dolls with the neon hair that sticks straight up? Apparently they originated there and the residents are quite proud of it. Anyway, the Mustard Museum made me wonder about what other strange museums are out there. I'm always up for detours on road trips. Below are a few that I found interesting - and one that I wouldn't stop at if my life depended on it.
The Museum of Funeral Customs, Springfield, Ill.
As you can tell by my Mustard Museum appreciation, I appreciate a museum with a sense of humor. That's why, strange as it may seem, I would make a stop at the Museum of Funeral Customs. Its slogan is "Death is only the beginning" and the gift shop is where the fun is really at. But I'll get to that. Among the interesting things you'll find at the museum are a recreated 1920s embalming room, a recreated 1870 s funeral parlor, embalming equipment, a full-sized reproduction of Abraham Lincoln's coffin, a scale-sized model of his tomb and railroad coach, and rare books on embalming dating as far back as the 16th century. The Lincoln stuff might seem a little random, but it makes sense - his tomb is in nearby Oak Ridge. But the gift shop is where the fun comes in. Here you can purchase shirts that say "I Dig the Museum of Funeral Customs" or "Everybody's Gotta Go Sometime". Sweet tooth? Dig into a chocolate coffin. Coffin paperweights are also available. Makes me wonder what people at the office would say if you were using one of those to keep your files in order. (Photo by Wikipedia user Mycota)
The Pirate Soul Museum, Key West, Fla.
photo by Wikipedia user Deror Avi Pirate Soul was started by Pat Croce, the former president of the Philadelphia 76ers, Olympic commentator and writer. It boasts a pretty impressive collection of pirate memorabilia, and we're not talking about Johnny Depp (although I would probably visit that museum too). Croce has managed to get his hands on Blackbeard's dinner plate, a real Dutch East India Company cannon, the 1699 Journal of Captain Kidd's Last Voyage, gold retrieved from Blackbeard's warship and one of two authentic Jolly Roger flags left in the entire world. So next time you're in Key West, tear yourself away from Fantasy Fest, Ernest Hemingway's house and Sloppy Joe's Bar and hit up Pirate Soul... arrrrrr!! (sorry, couldn't resist)
Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey, Bardstown, Ky.
Photo by Wikipedia user Bedford I might be embarrassing myself by admitting this, but I do love Jack Daniels. So this museum would be right up my alley. It takes us through the history of whiskey from the Colonial days through the 1960s. Artifacts include Abraham Lincoln's liquor license, prescriptions for the medical use of alcohol and an exhibit on George Washington, who was the federal union's largest whiskey distiller after his Presidential terms were up. The Oscar Getz Museum is just one of the stops on the American Whiskey Trail, which has stops all along the east coast and Kentucky.
The Museum of Bad Art, Dedham, Mass.
Photo by Wikipedia user Sdedeo "Art too bad to be ignored". And with a tagline like that, how could you? This 400+ piece collection is located in the Dedham Community Theater. About 30-40 pieces are displayed at any one time. The piece above is Lucy in the Field with Flowers and it is the art responsible for the birth of this museum. One of the founders of the museum spotted this lovely work in a trash pile on the streets of Boston and decided he had to have it. Actually, a lot of the work acquired by the Museum of Bad Art has been saved from the curb. Another popular scouting spot seems to be the Salvation Army. I can't believe I was in Boston last month and I didn't know this museum existed then.
Spam Museum, Austin, Minn.
Photo by Flickr user thalling55 I'm only a few hours away from the Spam Museum, so it's kind of surprising I haven't hit up this weird spot yet. At the museum, you can try your hand at packaging Spam, see how Spam was used during wars and check out old-school Spam advertising. The Web site also mentions a Spam Spa, but they're kidding... I think. Of course, there's all kinds of Spam memorabilia for you to buy as well. Spam earrings? They've got 'em. Spam flip-flops? Got 'em. Necktie? Yep. Lapel pin, mouse pad, three-legged pig figure, full-sized Spam costume? Yes, yes, yes and yes.
Mütter Museum, Philadelphia, Pa.
Photo by Flickr user John H. Kim I can attest to this one. I lived in the Philly area for about a year and kept putting the Mütter Museum off. The weekend we found out we were moving again, we immediately hit up this Museum of medical oddities. It didn't disappoint. There's all kinds of bizarre stuff, from a tumor removed from Grover Cleveland's jaw to a corpse that turned into soap to a plaster cast of Siamese twins. It's really fascinating stuff. The museum itself is located in a really unassuming building of the College of Physicans of Philadelphia, but it's definitely worth seeking out. Finally, the Museum I will die before I set foot in:
The International Clown Hall of Fame, West Allis, Wis.
Photo from the Clown Museum I have never found anything remotely funny about clowns. They scare me, and not in a good way. But if you're into that sort of thing, you'll find exhibits dedicated to Bozo, Emmett Kelly and Red Skelton, among others. Willard Scott gets a tribute because he played both Bozo and Ronald McDonald before moving on to the Today Show. You'll also find out about the history of clowns and the different categories of clowns. If anyone has been there, let me know if you still have nightmares.
I know, I know, the song is an infectious earwig and you're going to spend the rest of the day cursing me for even bringing it into your realm of thought. But bear with me.
photo by Stacy Conradt
The ride is currently under major renovations at Disneyland, and while I admit it's not one of my favorite rides, I was disappointed that my sister-in-law didn't get to experience it on her first-ever Disney trip last month. And now, she may never get to experience the original World's Fair version that has resided in Fantasyland for the past 40 years. Disney says that the main change is a change of boats, but according to insiders in the know, it's actually going to be much more. We'll get to that in a second. The original IASW is based on the idea of world peace. No, really. Walt Disney attended a conference held by President Eisenhower in 1956 about promoting world peace and cultural understanding through world travel. Inspired, Disney recruited Mary Blair to design the attraction, Marc and Alice Davis to design the scenes and the doll outfits respectively, and Joyce Carlson to design the dolls. At first, the ride included the national anthems of all of the different nations represented, but Disney decided he needed one uniting song. Robert and Richard Sherman wrote the now-famous tune and that was that.
photo from feministJulie on Flickr
A couple of quick facts:
• The attraction debuted at the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York.
• Major themes of the boat ride include Europe, Asia, Africa, Central/South America, South Pacific Islands, the Finale and the Good-bye Scene.
• Throughout your 10.5 minute boat ride, you'll hear the repetitive song in Spanish, French, and Japanese, to name a few.
And now the changes: The changes are going to see the rainforest scene – a really detailed, colorful and innovative representation of Mary Blair's artwork – replaced with a massive "Hooray for the U.S.A." scene. Right now, the only American characters represented are a cowboy and an Eskimo. This might seem like the U.S. isn't very well represented, but when you consider that the point of the ride is to explore other cultures, it makes sense. Another big change is that Disney is going to stick its characters in scenes where they "belong". So you might see the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the France section, Simba and Rafiki in the African section and Ariel with the gurgling mermaids at the beginning of the ride (at Disneyland, not Disneyworld). Commercialism at its worst, I guess. I get that it's Disney and its bread and butter is its characters, but the original IASW was not designed to sell Disney product. Walt himself commissioned it with the idea of promoting global understanding, not global marketing.
photo from Re-Imagineering
I guess I'm torn – I can understand the need to update and improve the ride, but maybe not to the lengths they are going. Can't they up the America factor by adding a few more characters instead of destroying an entire classic scene? And what about subtly putting Disney character references into the ride instead of the actual characters themselves, which won't match the dolls in the rest of the ride? For instance, make one of the French dolls wear the simplistic blue-and-white Belle dress and carry a book. Give one of the mermaids red hair. I think it can be done in a way that doesn't rip the integrity of the original design away.
What do you guys think? Horrible updates, or is Small World long overdue for some modernization?
In the 1960s, some miners put a phone booth in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Long after they left, the booth remained ... waiting for someone to call.
HELLO? ANYBODY THERE?
Miles from the nearest town, the old phone booth stood at the junction of two dirt roads. Its windows were shot out; the overhead light was gone. Yet the phone lines on the endless rows of poles still popped and clicked in anticipation - just as they'd been doing for nearly 30 years. Finally, in 1997, it rang.
The windows were shot out and the overhead light was gone, but the phone worked! (photo: Azfoo.net)
A guy named Deuce had read about the booth and called the number ... and continued to call until a desert dweller named Lorene answered. Deuce wrote a story about his call to nowhere, posted it on his website ... and the word spread through cyberspace. Someone else called. Then another person, and another - just to see if someone would answer. And quite often someone did. Only accessible by four wheel drive, the lonely phone booth soon became a destination. Travelers drove for hours just to answer the phone. One Texas man camped there for 32 days ... and answered more than 500 calls.
REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE
Someone posted a call log in the booth to record where people were calling from: as close as Los Angeles and as far away as New Zealand and Kosovo. Why'd they call? Some liked the idea of two people who've never met - and probably never will - talking to each other. Just sending a call out into the Great Void and having someone answer was reward enough for most. Unfortunately, in 2000 the National Park Service and Pacific Bell tore down the famous Mojave phone booth. Reason? It was getting too many calls. The traffic (20 to 30 visitors a day) was starting to have a negative impact on the fragile desert environment. The old stop sign at the cattle grate still swings in the wind. And the phone lines still pop and click in anticipation. But all that's left of the loneliest phone on Earth is a ghost ring. So if the urge strikes you to dial (760) 733-9969, be prepared to wait a very, very long time for someone to answer.
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
I've been roaming across the States the past few weeks – spent a few days in Boston/Providence and a few days in L.A. Although they're on opposite coasts, the two locations do have one thing in common: residences that make me feel like I live in a shack. A hovel, really. Don't get me wrong, I really do love my house, but how can you compare that with mansions built by the Vanderbilts and the Winchesters? Let's start with the first house that made me feel inadequate.
The Breakers, Newport, R.I.
photo from Stacy Conradt
Believe it or not, this incredible manse is merely a summer home for the Vanderbilts. Cornelius Vanderbilt II commissioned the quaint little cottage in 1893. It cost more than $7 million to build, which is pretty astronomical when you account for inflation – it would be more than $150 million today. The mansion that had previously occupied that spot burned down the year before Vanderbilt had the Breakers constructed, so one of his building criteria was that the building should be as fireproof as possible, including using steel instead of wood wherever possible. The furnace is even located under the street instead of actually inside of the house. If the outside of the house isn't opulent enough for you, venture inside to see vast halls made out of marble from Italy and Africa. The Gold Room was actually build in France, then disassembled and shipped in airtight cases to be rebuilt once it arrived in Newport. When Cornelius died in 1899, he left the house to his wife, Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt. When she died, the house was given to her youngest daughter Gladys because Gladys didn't have any American real estate. In turn, Countess Gladys left the house to her daughter, Countess Sylvia. Countess Sylvia lived there until she died in 1998, but her children, Gladys and Paul Szapary, still summer there. They stay on the third floor, where the 300,000 tourists the Breakers gets every year are not allowed to visit.
The Mansion, Los Angeles, Calif.
photo from LaurelCanyon.org
Now we hop coasts and visit the Mansion, owned by music producer Rick Rubin. The Mansion is supposedly haunted, but that hasn't stopped artists from recording some of their biggest hits there. Just a sample of albums recorded at the Mansion include the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Stadium Arcadium, Jay-Z's 99 Problems and Maroon 5's It Won't Be Soon Before Long. The Chili Peppers' drummer, Chad Smith, was so convinced of paranormal activity within the house that he refused to spend the night there when the band was recording. There is good reason to suspect that the Mansion might be haunted – in 1918, a man fell from a balcony on the house to his death. After that, the house was inhabited by none other than Harry Houdini. The original Houdini Mansion burned nearly to the ground in 1959, but that apparently didn't deter any ghosts from haunting the new structure built in the same spot. The band Slipknot (from Des Moines!!) had numerous supernatural experience there when they recorded Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses). Singer Corey Taylor took pictures that appeared to show two hovering orbs and drummer Joey Jordison had a strange experience in the basement that he won't talk about.
If you've seen There Will Be Blood, you'll recognize Greystone Mansion (aka Doheny Mansion) as the place where Daniel Day-Lewis uttered the now-famous words, "I. Drink. Your. Milkshake. I DRINK IT UP." And if you haven't seen There Will Be Blood, then you've undoubtedly seen Batman, the Big Lebowski, the Bodyguard, Death Becomes Her, Entourage, Ghostbusters, Indecent Proposal, X-Men or National Treasure. Oh, and the music video for Meatloaf's I'd do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That). All of those movies (and more) were filmed on location at Greystone. The mansion actually has the most in common with There Will Be Blood, though – the house was a gift from oil tycoon Edward Doheny to his son, Ned Doheny. It was built in 1928 and cost more than $3 million, making it the most expensive house in California at the time. Ned didn't get much time to enjoy the house, though – just four months after he, his wife and their five children moved in, he was found dead in his bedroom along with his secretary, Hugh Plunkett. It was apparently a murder-suicide orchestrated by Plunkett.
The Winchester Mystery House, San Jose, Calif.
photo from WinchesterMysteryHouse.com
I've always wanted to visit this house. Sarah Winchester, widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, built this house continuously from 1884 to 1922. That's 38 years that workers were constantly sawing, hammering and building, twenty-hour hours a day. The house stood at seven stories, but the 1906 earthquake claimed three of those stories and today it stands just four stories tall. There are 17 chimneys, 40 bedrooms, two basements, 467 doorways, at least five kitchens, two ballrooms and approximately 52 skylights. Why such a large, distorted house? Sarah believed that the ghosts of all of the people killed by the guns bearing her husband's name were out for revenge. She believed very deeply in the spirit world, so when a medium told her that she needed to build a house to contain herself and all of the restless spirits, she took it seriously. The medium told her that if construction ever stopped on the house, the spirits would claim her. When she died in 1922, construction stopped immediately – nails half-pounded into the wall can be found in the house to this day. There are some odd features in this maze of a house, including doors that lead to nowhere, stairs that lead straight into a ceiling, closets with no floors and numerous secret passageways.
Now that we've visited both coasts, let's check out what's in between. Fair Lane was the home of Henry and Clara Ford and was named for an area in Ireland where Henry's grandfather was born. Ford isn't the only luminary to be involved with the house, though. Frank Lloyd Wright helped draw up the original design for the house before leaving for Europe. And Thomas Edison himself laid the cornerstone of the estate's powerhouse. The top floor of the powerhouse was reserved for Ford's Experimental Laboratory – the place he would go to tinker around with new ideas. Despite Ford's great wealth, the house really wasn't considered that extravagant by the standards of the day, even though it did have an indoor poor and a bowling alley. That's not to say that Fair Lane didn't have it's share of strange extravagances, though. As an avid bird watcher, Ford had a steam-heated birdbath installed to entice birds to make the estate their permanent dwelling as well. Oh, and if Fair Lane sounds familiar, it should – the Fairlane Ford cars were named after the mansion.
Drive just 50 miles away from the sleek, modern skyscrapers of New York City and you'll find yourself at Bannerman's Castle – about as opposite from "sleek and modern" as you can get. Francis Bannerman VI bought the island in 1900 to use as an arsenal. Bannerman bought 90 percent of the U.S. army's leftover supplies from the Spanish-American War and thought that the island would be an ideal place to keep them. He even advertised that fact by having "Bannerman's Island Arsenal" engraved into a wall that faced the eastern bank of the Hudson River. In 1920, the arsenal backfired – literally. Two hundred pounds of shells and gunpowder exploded, destroying a good chunk of the castle and its surrounding buildings. New York State bought the island and all of its buildings in 1967, but after a fire consumed the grounds in 1969, the castle and the island were pretty much abandoned by all. In recent years, tours have been conducted by Bannerman's Castle Trust, but only if tourees consent to wear a hard hat.
3300 BCE: Ötzi the Iceman dies in the Austrian Alps, where his frozen body is discovered by hikers in 1991 CE, making him the world's oldest mummy. His 57 tattoos - straight lines and small crosses, mostly - are believed to be therapeutic, possibly used to treat osteoarthritis.
2800 BCE: The ancient Egyptians: Is there anything they can't do? In addition to inventing writing, surgery, and beekeeping, they also popularize tattooing as an art form, which spreads from Greece to China. (Oh, yeah - they invented the flushable toilet, too.)
921 CE: Islamic scholar Ibn Fadlan meets Viking on a journey from Baghdad to Scandinavia and describes them as vulgar, dirty, and covered from neck to toe with tattoos.
1600: Unlawful intercourse by Indian priests is punished by tattooing. Doesn't sound so bad? Try having a big vagina branded on your forehead for life.
1700: Obeying the letter of the law - if not the spirit - middle-class Japanese adorn themselves in full-body tattoos when a law is passed that only royals can wear ornate clothing.
Omai, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1776). Notice the tattooed arm and hand.
1790: Captain Cook returns from a voyage to the South Pacific with a unique souvenir: a tattooed Polynesian named Omai. He's an overnight sensation in fad-crazy London and starts a tattooing trend among upper-class poseurs. Between passionate declarations that he is "not an animal" Omai also manages to introduce the word tattoo into our Western lexicon, from the Tahitian tatau, "to mark."
1802: By now, tattooing has caught on with sailors throughout the Royal Navy, and there are tattoo artists in almost every British port. Especially popular are Crucifixion scenes, tattooed on the upper back to discourage flogging by pious superiors.
1891: American Samuel O'Reilly "borrows" Edison's electric pen design to patent a nearly identical machine that tattoos. Its basic design - moving coils, a tube, and a needle bar - is still used to today, so remember kids: That's 19th-century technology they're repeatedly stabbing you with.
1919: The troublemaker protagonist of Franz Kafka's short story "In the Penal Colony" finally gets the law drilled into him - liiterally - by its fatal, 12-hour inscription into his skin.
Robert Mitchum sporting "love/hate" knuckle tattoos in The Night of the Hunter.
1955: Robert Mitchum makes the tattoo cool again in the movie Night of the Hunter, playing a sociopathic traveling preacher with "love" and "hate" inked on his knuckles. Popular modern variants include "rock/roll" and "love/math."
1961: Hepatitis B makes the tattoo not cool again, an outbreak of which is linked to tattoo parlors in New York City. Parlors are outlawed in the Big Apple until 1997.
2005: Popular culture helps tattoos become more popular in the West than at any time in recorded history, with more than 39 million North Americans sporting one. It all comes back to Austrian Ötzi and his 57 tattoos. It might've taken almost 6,000 years but tattooing and the West are in love again.
The article above, from mental_floss' book Scatterbrained. is published in Neatorama with permission.
Be sure to visit mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog!
The stabbing of Kitty Genovese lasted 50 minutes was witnessed by 38 people. Surely someone would pick up the phone and call the police, right? Wrong: here's the infamous story of what happened when good people stood by and did nothing.
Kitty Genovese got home from work very late. As a bar manager, she had to close and clean up before she could head home to her Queens, New York, apartment. Usually her late hours were no problem. But on March 13, 1964, when the 28-year-old, 105-pound (48 kg) Genovese parked her car at 3 a.m., there was someone waiting for her. As Kitty began to walk toward her home, the man waylaid and stabbed her.
A CRY FOR HELP
She shrieked in terror, "Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me!" Genovese's neighbors in the snug apartment complex, many of whom knew her, turned on their lights and opened their apartment windows. One male neighbor shouted from his window, "Leave that girl alone!" Kitty's attacker left. She began staggering to her apartment, bleeding from several stab wounds, while her neighbors shut their windows and turned off their lights. Kitty no doubt thought the worst was over. But her attacker returned and stabbed her again. "I'm dying!" she screamed. Her neighbors threw open their windows again, but nobody came out ot help. Kitty's attacker got into a car and drove away. Kitty crawled into the vestibule of an apartment house and lay there bleeding for several minutes. At this point she might still have lived. But once again her assailant returned. He cut off her underpants and bra, sexually assaulted her, and took the $49 from her wallet before stabbing her one last, fatal time. It was not until 3:50 a.m., a full 50 minutes after the attack began, that a neighbor called police. Two minutes later, police arrived to find Kitty's body.
Crime scene photo showing the first and second attacks of Kitty Genovese
NOT MY PROBLEM
Police questioned Genovese's neighbors and discovered that at least 38 people had witnessed the killer attacking Genovese, yet no one tried to intervene. Only one had called the police - after Kitty was already dead. The public reacted with horror and mystifiction. Why on earth would 38 people, who could easily and safely have picked up the phone and helped, ignored a dying woman's calls of distress? The story caused deep rumbles in the psyche of Americans who were shocked and frightened by the spectre of their own dark sides - and the ultimate in big-city alienation. Would they, in the same situation, have helped? The neighbors offered numerous excuses for their behavior. They hadn't wanted to get involved, they said. They could see that others were witnessing the crime - surely those people were calling the police. Some claimed they feared for their own safety: others worried that their English wasn't up to the job of making a phone call. One heartless soul merely said, "I was tired." Another alleged that she didn't want to interfere in what she thought was a lover's quarrel." Police admitted that there was no law forcing witness to call for help. So the crime that the neighbors were guilty of, if any, was a moral one.
SOME CONSOLATION
The murderer was caught less than a week later. He readily admitted to killing Kitty Genovese, as well as two other local women, claiming he had an "uncontrollable urge to kill." In June 1964, 29-year-old Winston Moseley was found guilty, and he remains in state prison to this day. But Kitty Genovese has not been forgotten. The case has lived on in plays and TV dramas - it even spawned a whole new branch of psychology. When experts refer to the Genovese syndrome, they're theorizing that the neighbors' failure to act was due to "diffusion of responsibility" - there were so many people watching the crime that no one person felt they had any personal responsibility, because they were sure that someone else would do something. The case is still taught in every Psych 101 class in the country. Which is not much of a consolation for poor Kitty.
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again. The book is a compendium of entertaining information chock-full of facts on a plethora of history topics. Uncle John's first plunge into history was a smash hit - over half a million copies sold! And this seque gives you more colorful characters, cultural milestones, historical hindsights, groundbreaking events, and scintillating sagas. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute
Neatorama Note: Though the article outlined the Kitty Genovese story as it is generally accepted, more recent analysis of the case turned up discrepancies, such as a neighbor trying to call the police and was rudely dismissed, and sensationalization of newspaper accounts. For more information, check out: - Kitty Genoves [wikipedia] - Genovese syndrome: Fact or Fiction? - Kitty Genovese, the popular account is mostly wrong at A Picture History of Kew Gardens, NY
Neatorama reader bean and ted lamented that there were no Pavlov and Stephen Hawking Valentine in the Scientist Valentine post. So, because I love you Neatoramaholics, I made 'em just for you (Yes, these are inspired by David Friedman of Ironic Sans blog). And again, yes, I spent waaaay too much time on these!)
You ring my bell! Here's the Pavlov Valentine
Hawking says: let's. make. baby. universes. (No black hole jokes, please, this is a family-friendly blog!)
And just for fun, let's do a couple more. Can you guess who they are?
I'm hopelessly drawn to your large magnetic field.
How much do I love you? Let Amedeo count the ways ...
My heart overflows with love ...
If you have made your own or have suggestions for a geeky Science Valentine, let me know!
Bath ducks comes in all different shapes in these days. The latest example of this are these cool Blues Brothers rubber ducks, shaped like Elwood and Jake Blues.
The Web is Agreement is a fantastic hand-drawn poster by Paul Downey, created on behalf of Osmosoft for the 2007 BT Open Source Awareness Day.
The poster, drawn in the style of the Lord of the Rings's Map of Middle-Earth, delineates the various pitfalls along the way of creating an open source, creative commons work on the Web.
For example:
Oxymoronic Intellectual Property
Oxymoronic intellectual properties (like trying to patent hyperlinking, for example) and such stupid concepts as preventing deep linking to ensure "rich (read: controlled) user experience." The bugaboo DRM Voodoo also made an appearance here.
Fear Uncertainty Doubt
Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a concept used by IBM and perfected by um, a certain software giant company named Mordorsoft. Beware of the forest of Worms, Virus, Spam and Phishing and don't fall into the Reservoir of Implementations which are filled with such lethal stuff as IE, ASP, ActiveX and COM. And Google's All-Seeing Eye? Creepy in an invasion-of-privacy kind of sense.
But if you persevere, you'll ultimately arrive at:
Openness + Collaboration
The pictures here really don't do Paul's poster justice. So head on to Flickr, where Paul has uploaded a marvelously large 2307x3157. Fantastic stuff! Link
Brains are pretty scary to begin with: they're pinkish gray, they're lumpy, and they blank out at the most inappropriate times. But what would happen if your brain really turned on you?
THAT'S NO FRIEND OF MINE
Do you friends and family feel like strangers? You might be suffering from Capgras' syndrome, a rare condition in which family, close friends, or items of personal significance seem like imposters.
What gives? When you see a familiar face, you don't just recognize the face; you also experience some sort of emotional reaction to it. Capgras' delusion arises when there's a disconnection between these two brain functions. You can identify your father's face and know it's familiar, but since there's damage to the pathway between face recognition and emotional reaction, you experience no jolt of emotion. Since it doesn't feel like your father, the man must be an imposter!
I CAN'T SEE, BUT I CAN SLAM-DUNK
Believe it or not, people with blindsight are blind due to cortical damage, but they can still unconsciously "see" some aspect of their environment.
One famous patient, D.F., couldn't read the big E on the eye chart of identify how many fingers a doctor was holding up right in front of her, but she could put an envelope through a slit in the wall with a high degree of accuracy.
How is that possible? There's more than one way to see. The "what" pathway is responsible for recognizing what an object is - for instance, is it a wolf or a banana? The "where and how" pathway determines where objects are and how to navigate and interact with them. Without visualizing the "what," people with blindsight are still able to figure out the "where."
NOT FOR WEAK STOMACHS
Picture living your life under a strobe light. That's what it feels like to suffer from akinetopsia, or motion blindness. This very rare condition results from selective loss of motion perception because of damage to certain areas of the brain (the temporoparietal cortices). Patients with motion blindness can identify stationary objects and have no problems with other aspects of vision, but moving objects inexplicably seem to appear in one position and then another. For instance, when crossing the street, cars that at first seemed far away could suddenly be very near. And liquid pouring from a pitcher into a cup might look frozen until the cup finally overflowed, allowing the patient to infer that it was full.
BETTER THAN PEYOTE
Can you imagine tasting music or smelling the color red? Most of us can't (or at least don't remember), but those with synesthesia can and do. Just as the word anesthesia means "no sensation," synesthesia means "joined sensation." For some reason, stimulating one sense triggers perception in another sense. For example, a bright light might seem loud, the sound of bagpipe sour, the color after sex a static silver.
No one's sure of the cause, but there are a few hypotheses. Some experts think that crossed wires in the brain cause the problem (the path to the taste buds get hooked up to the sense of hearing path, for example), while others believe that it's a lack of inhibition (the natural pathways that squelch irrelevant sensory input just aren't working properly).
THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE
Prosopagnosics have no trouble recognizing noses, ears, eyes, chins, and so on, but they can't seem to fuse them together into a coherent, whole face. In extreme cases, they can't even recognize their own faces in the mirror. Prosopagnosia results from damage to structures just below the ears, stretching toward the back of the skull (otherwise known as the inferotemporal cortex).
Dr. P., a famous case in the annals of neuropsychology, searched for his hat as he was departing his physician's office only to reach out and grab his wife's head and try to lift it off! Not being able to recognize faces clearly, he apparently mistook his wife's head for a hat.
RENT MEMENTO AND YOU'LL UNDERSTAND
If you haven't seen Memento, check it out. The main character suffers from damage to the hippocampus (one of the memory centers of the brain) and loses the ability to form new long-term memories (his pre-accident memories stay intact, though).
Anterograde amnesiacs live life as though constantly waking from a dream. Leonard, the Memento character, takes to tattooing himself because he can't trust the people around him to tell the truth - even if they did, he'd just forget a few minutes later anyway. Strangely, suffers of this condition can learn new tasks (for example, they improve while taking, say, tennis lessons), but they assume every lesson that it's just beginner's luck.
My husband was sick last weekend - as in, up at 4 a.m. hugging the Porcelain Goddess sick (and not because of alcohol). So we were up at an ungodly time of the morning. He was dying a slow death and I was flipping channels because I couldn't get back to sleep. I have to say, I got sucked into a number of infomericals that were absolutely horrendous. Is there anything Billy Mays doesn't hawk?
One of my favorites is the Magic Bullet. It sounds suspiciously sexual, but it's really like a mini blender. I actually got one for Christmas a few years ago and I loved it - until the motor burned out after a few months. The informercial is positively addicting though. I thought I was the only one who noticed the strange old lady wandering around with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth the whole commercial, but no: there's a whole YouTube video dedicated to the lovely Hazel.
When I was in high school, the ever-present infomercial was the RonCo Electric Food Dehydrator. I always wanted one of those, but alas, I never got one. He just makes it seem so easy to make beef jerky, turkey jerky, dried fruit and MORE!
I'm cheating, though, because we didn't actually see either of those commericials on T.V. at 5 a.m. last weekend. A couple we did see:
The Handy Switch. Just plug in the receiver in any outlet and then plug in the lamp to the receiver. You can stick its corresponding switch anywhere... even in your car so you can turn the lights on when you pull in the driveway! My favorite part is when Billy Mays says how great it is for kids to be able to turn the light off from bed - the infomercial cuts to a little girl in bed with a lamp within arm's reach on a nightstand on one side of her bed and the switch within arm's reach on the other side. She goes for the switch. By the way, the number of products that Billy Mays endorses is insane. Here's a sampling: OxyClean, OrangeGlo, Hercules Hooks, Mighty Putty, Easy Off Bam!, Kaboom! products, Bang! Automotive Dent Remover, Bump Be Gone zit cream, Gopher reaching tool, the Grip Wrench and the Ding King automotive Dent Remover (think the Bang! people were mad?).
Here's Billy Mays falling into a bathtub.
Then there's the Shamwow. It holds 20 times its weight in liquid!! The Web site says you'll never have to use paper towels again - unless you're prone to using them as napkins. But it's not just for spills and car washing, oh no!! You can even use the Shamwow as a towel. Cut it in half and you'll have two towels!! I'm glad they do the math for those of us who aren't so hot at calculations. Shamwow isn't promoted by Billy Mays, so it probably isn't that great.
Feeling sick? It's probably all of those toxins in your body - we all have them. What you need are Takara Detox Foot Patches. You just attach the pads to the bottom of your feet before going to bed and when you wake up in the morning, the pad will be black with all of the horrible toxins it has sucked out of your body. Asbestos? Mercury? No match for Takara Detox Foot Patches.
Yeah. It's a good thing Paul didn't get sick any earlier in the morning, because I would have totally been suckered into buying something if I had been exposed to these much longer. If the food dehydrator commercial had come on, I definitely would have been picking up my phone.
So, on the infomercial topic - what have you tried? What has actually worked and what has been a complete waste of money? Any food dehydrator users??
Lately I've been jonesing for Trader Joe's pretty badly. My husband and I lived just outside of Philly for about a year, where we had our choice of about five TJ's. Now that we're back in Des Moines, the closest Trader Joe’s is now at least three hours away in the Minneapolis area. There are often times I contemplate driving up there and back just for the day so I can get my chile-spiced mango fix or my delicious spicy black bean dip. Or the vodka marinara sauce. Or the gyoza. Or the lime juice popsicles. Or the soycatash. But I digress.
Every time I travel I check Trader Joe’s store locations to see if there’s one close that I can stop at. I have my cousin ship me stuff from New York. I have friends in Minneapolis who keep an eye out for me. One of my best friends drove to St. Louis and I actually made her take a cooler so she could bring me back some frozen food. It’s seriously become an obsession. I went on a trip with some friends last year and the first thing we did after getting our rental car was make a TJ’s pit stop. I figured we would need some snacks for the hotel room, you know? I’m pretty sure they all thought I was insane… except for the aforementioned friend who went to Missouri. She immediately picked up on the allure of Trader Joe’s. I was trying to figure out exactly what makes Trader Joe’s so great, and here’s what I found out during my research:
Trader Joe’s was founded by Joe Coulombe. He was running a number of Pronto Markets when 7-Eleven started to monopolize the market. He had the idea for a grocery store with more exotic offerings but at decent prices. It took off (obviously) and he started converting all of his Prontos into Trader Joe’s. (Photo: Private Label Magazine)
Many of their products are given a quirky name based on their origins – Mexican food is sold under the label Trader Jose’s, Chinese food is sold under Trader Ming’s, Japanese food is sold under Trader Joe-San and vitamins are sold under Trader Darwin’s.
The reason TJ’s can sell good-quality stuff so cheap is because they buy directly from small vendors instead of going through a corporate middle-man. This makes the products cheaper for them, which in turn makes them cheaper for us. What a concept.
Because they keep their products so cheap, you’ll never find anything on sale at Trader Joe’s.
For a grocery store, their benefits and wages are pretty great. Business Week reports that their wages are better than most ($8-$10 an hour three years ago), they give generous bonuses and contribute an extra 15.4 percent of every employee’s gross pay into a retirement plan. They even offer health insurance to part-time workers and their dependents, as long as they work an average of 20 hours per week. My favorite perk is the 10 percent discount. I’d be all over that.
Trader Joe’s is the home of Two Buck Chuck! TJ’s is the exclusive dealer of Charles Shaw wine. It’s technically Three Buck Chuck in some states, but at any rate, it’s worth it. For cheap wine, Two Buck Chuck is pretty darn tasty. It took me a while to figure this one out, though, because in Pennsylvania, it’s illegal to sell liquor in grocery stores. It took a trip to Virginia to finally procure the famous Two Buck Chuck.
The company has a great sense of humor. Exhibit A: one of the questions in the F.A.Q. on the Trader Joe’s Web site: “Will Trader Joe's products turn me into a superhero, a professional athlete or one of the great brainiacs of humankind? Um...well...no. Sorry (seriously, we are because that would be neat). But they will hopefully make your taste buds tingle and leave you with a happy tummy - and wallet. Way better than being a superhero.” Their “Fearless Flyer” is pretty good reading too.
You won’t find any overhead P.A. systems at Trader Joe’s: they operate solely on a bell basis. A huge bell is rung every time something comes up – one bell is to open another register, two bells means a customer has a question and three bells calls a manager over.
If you’re like me and DESPERATELY want a Trader Joe’s within an hour (I’d even take two hours… Omaha would be great) of you, you can go here and request that they come to your area. If there’s already a TJ’s in your area, I’d appreciate it if you went there anyway and requested that they open one in Des Moines. Thanks.
I know there must be some other rabid Trader Joe’s fans out there like me. So spill it: what’s your favorite TJ’s product? What do I need to cart home with me the next time I am in Minneapolis or Kansas City? Better yet, what can I badger my cousin or brother-in-law into mailing me??
