TIL Thread: Today I learned...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:23 am

Whenever my neighbour below me washes their clothes, the washing machine spin cycle resonates with the metal grate in my oven.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Aug 19, 2022 1:51 pm

Resonant frequencies are how drawing tablets communicate with their pens, I think.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Sat Aug 20, 2022 12:45 pm

Well then, TIL a lot of stuff it would seem. :twience:
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Aug 20, 2022 4:26 pm

TIL Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, also had a short-lived show called Fractured Flickers which took old silent films, reedited them, and dubbed joke dialog over them "Abridged Series" style. It ran for only one season, and was hosted by the guy who did the voice of Snidely Whiplash. It currently airs Saturday mornings at 6 AM on the Movies! channel (one of those over-the-air channels that Americans can pick up with a good TV antenna) and has also been released on DVD.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Aug 27, 2022 9:39 pm

TIL that Jeffrey Scott, who wrote a lot of Saturday Morning cartoons (including 1980s "DuckTales", "Captain N", "Muppet Babies", and many more) is a grandson of Moe Howard of the 3 Stooges fame.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:57 pm

TIL Chuck E. Cheese was canonically a rat until 1993, when he was changed to a mouse. And that from 2012 onward, he's been voiced by the guy from Bowling for Soup.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Sep 09, 2022 11:32 am

TIL we are currently on the 12th Rin Tin Tin.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Madeline (?) » Tue Sep 13, 2022 1:15 am

TIL that Jack Kirby started out as an inbetweener at the Max Fleischer studio before he got into comics.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Oct 01, 2022 1:40 pm

TIL about a special called "The Big Stuffed Dog". It's a live-action special about kid with a giant stuffed Snoopy doll. It was written by Charles Schulz, and is technically the only live-action "Peanuts" special, although the only connection to the strip, besides Schulz's involvement, is the Snoopy doll. None of the characters from the strip actually appear


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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by PonyHag714 (?) » Sat Oct 01, 2022 8:29 pm

I remember seeing this.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Oct 08, 2022 2:20 am

TIL the insults and comebacks for the swordfighting minigame in The Secret of Monkey Island were written by Orson Scott Card. What a weird thing to farm out, especially considering how clever the writing in the rest of the game already was. It reminds me of how The Lion King II had a song (just one, out of six) whose lyrics were written by Joss Whedon. Stuff like that makes you wonder how they even got involved in the first place.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Oct 09, 2022 2:50 pm

I think even the most casual comic strip fan knows that "Nancy" originally started out as "Fritzi Ritz", focusing on her aunt (Nancy herself wouldn't appear until a decade later).

And I also knew that, while Ernie Bushmiller created the character Nancy, he did not create Aunt Fritzi (the strip was originally drawn by another guy, but he left 3 years later, with Bushmiller taking over).

But TIL that, even when the main strip became "Nancy", Aunt Fritzi continued to have her own separate Sunday comic strip running concurrently into the 1960s. "Nancy" did get her own Sunday strip, too, but hers actually took over the "Phil Fumble" spin-off strip instead of Fritzi's. When Bushmiller replaced Fumble's Sunday strip with Nancy's, he had Phil become a recurring character in the "Fritzi Ritz" Sunday strip.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Madeline (?) » Thu Oct 13, 2022 7:59 pm

Mr. Big wrote:
Sun Oct 09, 2022 2:50 pm
I think even the most casual comic strip fan knows that "Nancy" originally started out as "Fritzi Ritz", focusing on her aunt (Nancy herself wouldn't appear until a decade later).

And I also knew that, while Ernie Bushmiller created the character Nancy, he did not create Aunt Fritzi (the strip was originally drawn by another guy, but he left 3 years later, with Bushmiller taking over).

But TIL that, even when the main strip became "Nancy", Aunt Fritzi continued to have her own separate Sunday comic strip running concurrently into the 1960s. "Nancy" did get her own Sunday strip, too, but hers actually took over the "Phil Fumble" spin-off strip instead of Fritzi's. When Bushmiller replaced Fumble's Sunday strip with Nancy's, he had Phil become a recurring character in the "Fritzi Ritz" Sunday strip.
This is my TIL fact because I did not know Fritzi Ritz kept her strip! It never comes up in general comic strip histories.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Oct 14, 2022 5:05 am

TIL there's a Broadway musical adaptation of Beetlejuice.

I happened to catch an art stream where the soundtrack was playing in the background, and I think it's my new favorite. The movie didn't make any kind of impression on me, but between the soundtrack and the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, this seems like it's doing a much better job telling a cohesive story with emotional stakes that matter. There's a lot more focus on Lydia, who gets the big emotional solos, and her singer absolutely nails them. It's funny when it wants to be and serious when it needs to be and... ugh, this is one of those times I wish I was one of those people who could afford to actually go see musicals.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Madeline (?) » Fri Oct 14, 2022 6:28 pm

that sounds pretty cool, and moving more focus onto Lydia makes good dramatic sense.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Oct 25, 2022 1:15 pm

You know the candy bar 3 Musketeers?

Well, TIL that it's called that because it originally came in three pieces with different flavors: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. However, wartime ration forced them to get rid of vanilla and strawberry in favor of the more popular chocolate flavor, although they still marketed the name with the idea that the candy bar is large enough that you could share with two other people.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Oct 31, 2022 8:24 pm

TIL that the guy who wrote the original "Maya the Bee" story (which later became a anime in the 1970s) was an outspoken Nazi.

Welp :-I

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Tue Nov 01, 2022 8:27 am

NOT THE BEES
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Nov 13, 2022 9:02 pm

Anyone remember this scene?



TIL that the words were not something made up by Homer. "Spanish Flea" does have actual lyrics


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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Mon Nov 14, 2022 3:12 am

TBH the lyrics ruin it and I don't wonder why nobody uses them.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Nov 17, 2022 1:41 pm

TIL Art Spiegelman, the author of the comic book Maus, was also the creator of the Garbage Pail Kids. :starity:
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:03 pm

Art doesn't pay bills. Trash does.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Nov 24, 2022 2:17 am

I learned a new linguistic term again today: "garden-path sentence". It's when a sentence starts in a way that tricks you into mis-parsing it until you run into a word that's impossible to connect to what you thought you were reading. Example: "The old man the boat."

Now I know what to complain about the next time I stumble over a sentence that would have been clearer if they'd bothered to put in a comma or two.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Nov 25, 2022 2:07 pm

TIL that Harvey Pekar of "American Splendor" fame absolutely hated Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and wrote scathing comments about it in The Comics Journal.



I only found out because of this tweet, which was posted when a school district banned "Maus" in their library. Jeet said that Pekar was apparently jealous of Maus's success.



I guess Harvey Pekar and Ted Rall have something in common besides both being from Ohio.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Dec 17, 2022 5:42 pm

TIL movie theaters used to keep their curtains closed until the opening credits were over. When movies started getting made that featured more interesting opening credits sequences—like the ones directed by Saul Bass—these films' reels would be shipped with a note to the projectionist saying to open the curtains right at the beginning.

...I wonder if the previews for coming attractions used to come after the movie, then. That would explain why we call them "trailers".
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Dec 29, 2022 5:02 pm

TIL that the Flintstones Vitamins (which came out in 1968) didn't have Betty-shaped pills until 1995, and it only happened because, while Rosie O'Donnell was promoting the 1994 live-action film, she complained that Betty wasn't included in the vitamins. Betty replaced the Flintstones car (yes, the car had a vitamin, but not Betty)
Though there was a small Betty for vitamin movement, including an Atlanta rock band that called itself Betty’s Not a Vitamin, it wasn’t until actress and comedienne Rosie O’Donnell, who played Betty in the 1994 live action film, brought Betty’s plight to the attention of the nation that anything was really done about it. O’Donnell, during a television interview about the film, complained that all the other characters were represented, but not Betty. A savvy marketing agency seized the opportunity to involve the consumer in the direction of the brand and launched a nationwide campaign to determine Betty’s fate. The agency set up prehistoric style voting booths in regional shopping malls across the country, as well as a 1-800 number, to allow consumers to decide whether Betty should be let in the club.

The public didn’t let her down. More than 3,000 kids and their mothers voted in person and more than 17,000 calls were logged, with 91 percent in favor of bringing in Betty. She became a character in December 1995, replacing the Flintmobile.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Dec 30, 2022 1:23 am

Another Flintstones-related TIL: George O'Hanlon, the voice actor for George Jetson, was a writer on the final season of "The Flintstones", writing a couple of episodes for it.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Feb 01, 2023 3:41 pm

TIL that Tony Robbins' grandfather was Charles Shows, who was an early writer for Hanna-Barbera (he wrote the first season of "Huckleberry Hound" cartoons) and on the Bozo the Clown cartoons.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:01 pm

TIL the BB in BB gun doesn’t stand for “ball bearing”, it’s a designation for the size of the shot used.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:12 pm

Not bee bee gun that is shooting shooting bees?
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:40 am

i can't beelieve it
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Feb 24, 2023 8:19 pm

You CAN shoot bees with a BB gun though.

I mean it’s probably unwise but
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Mar 22, 2023 6:57 pm

TIL that Abercrombie & Fitch originally focused on outfits for outdoor hunters and campers before reinventing themselves to preppy teens and young adults.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Apr 07, 2023 1:08 pm

TIL about a mysterious song that appeared on Billboard charts for three weeks, despite never being released, called "Ready 'n' Steady" by the band D.A.

The song was recorded in 1979, but it was never released until 2016, when it was broadcast by a Minnesota radio. More info here

In case you're wondering how a song that never got released got listed on Billboard, the band's publicist pulled some strings with the chart director at the time, Bill Wardlow, who was infamous for manipulating rankings and taking bribes.


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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Apr 09, 2023 12:44 pm

That's got to be one of the funniest devil's bargains ever. Congratulations, you got onto the charts... with a song you still don't have the resources to even get pressed and sold, so you gain neither money nor fame. Just the confusion of music historians until long after you're gone from this world.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri Apr 28, 2023 9:30 pm

You're all familiar with the collective pseudonym Alan Smithee, yes? The name used when directors (and only directors, as per the rules of the Directors' Guild of America) have been denied creative control to such an extent that they want to disavow involvement in the film entirely? TIL its first use was on a film that had two different directors and both wanted their names taken off it because the lead actor basically bossed them around the whole time. Ironically, the film was a commercial and critical success in spite of that, or perhaps because of it.

And the last film to use it before the Guild officially retired the practice was An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, about a director who's so dissatisfied with his own movie that he wants to be discredited, discovers that he can't because Alan Smithee is his actual name, and instead tries to steal the film and burn it before it can be sent to the distributor. That movie was a critical and commercial failure, and—in one of the most deliciously ironic twists I've heard in a long time—was itself credited to Alan Smithee because its director didn't like the way the producer had interfered with production. And as you might have guessed, its subject matter brought the practice out into the open and made it impractical from then on, which is why the Guild retired it.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat May 06, 2023 2:17 am

TIL the "wrong turn at Albuquerque" running gag in Looney Tunes cartoons isn't just a random use of an inherently funny city name (although I'm sure that contributed to it): There's a weird intersection in Albuquerque where Route 66 crosses itself, for... reasons, so anyone traveling to or from the west coast via what was, at the time, the most popular route ran the risk of making a wrong turn at that particular spot.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by PonyHag714 (?) » Sun May 07, 2023 2:04 am

Hmm, interesting.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sun May 07, 2023 3:54 pm

albuquerque is where the blue meth comes from
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu May 11, 2023 10:13 pm

I myself nearly got lost while driving to California because I made a wrong turn in Albuquerque, but that was largely because of my own stupidity, heh.

This is something I learned from Perry. TIL that the original German translation of "Asterix and Obelix" that was done by Rolf Kauka in the 1960s. It was significantly changed so that it was full of right-wing propaganda (Rolf Kauka, who was a popular comic creator in Germany at the time, was a Nazi).

The creators of Asterix found out and promptly revoked the rights after only 4 issues. A new German translation was commissioned that was more faithful to the original (also they began checking all official translations henceforth)

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