During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of South Dakota, under Governor Kristi Noem, had the 2nd worst per capita death rate in the country, and in fact it would be difficult to find anywhere in the world were it was much worse.
South Dakota’s name appears twice on their flag. The flag is all-too-common state seal on a field so the name appears there. It is also written above the seal.
Mount Rushmore is mentioned below the seal on the South Dakota state flag (although having words on flags is generally disfavored these days). The massive outdoor sculpture on Mount Rushmore depicts Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. In Dan Chaon’s 2022 novel Sleepwalk, set in a fraying, near-future America, the monument is mentioned as having been destroyed in a terrorist attack. Chaon has said that he surmises that the monument was destroyed in support of Native American claims to the mountain, but that is not specified in the novel.
Mount Rushmore was named in the Lakota language, the Six Grandfathers Mountain, and it was considered sacred by Plains Indians such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux.
The Six Grandfathers represent the six sacred directions of north, south, east, west, above (sky), and below (earth).
Today it is named for New York attorney Charles Edward Rushmore (1857-1931) who was senior member of the law firm of Rushmore, Bisbee Stern. Rushmore visited the Black Hills of South Dakota and secured mine options during the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1874 to 1879. It was during a visit in 1884 that Rushmore noticed the granite rock rising above neighorboring peaks. South Dakota commissioned Danish sculptor Gutzon Borglum to carve the mountain, and with his son, Lincoln Borglum, they began the work in 1927.
The Borglums hired one artist, Korczak Ziolkowski, to work as an assistant on the mountain. However, Ziolkowski left the project after only 19 days and a heated argument with Lincoln Borglum. Ziolkowski later began another mountain carving nearby, Crazy Horse Memorial, which today is the world’s largest in-progress mountain sculpture.
Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, and his son Lincoln Borglum completed the Mount Rushmore project on 31 October 1941.
Today, over two million people visit Mount Rushmore annually.
Crazy Horse is an American rock band, originally founded under that name in 1969 as a backup band for musician Neil Young. Crazy Horse has collaborated with Young on fifteen studio albums, and eight live albums; they have also released six studio albums without Young. Bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina have been consistent members of the band since its formation.
In the 1997 film Boogie Nights Alfred Molina portrays drug dealer Rahad Jackson, whom lead characters Eddie Adams (aka “Dirk Diggler”) and Reed Rothchild, with associate Todd Parker attempt to sell a kilo of baking soda which they purport is cocaine. The scene ends in a shoot-out where Rahad’s bodyguard and Todd are killed. This mirrors real-life events of Eddie Nash, an LA night club owner and alleged drug dealer, who was robbed by unknown persons who killed his bodyguard before fleeing. Nash accused porn star John Holmes of taking part in the robbery and tortures him until he gives up the names of the other assailants. This lead to them being murdered in their house on Wonderland Avenue in the early morning of July 1, 1981, in Los Angeles.
Actor Robert Reed is the only cast member of The Brady Bunch to miss two episodes.
The first choice to play Mike Brady was Gene Hackman but TPTB decided to go with a better known actor - Robert Reed.
Gene Hackman’s character, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, in the film The French Connection was based on the exploits of real-life New York narcotics officer Eddie Egan. Egan served as technical consultant on the set, as well as a small role as Doyle’s supervisor. After the film’s completion, Egan asked to retire from the force. But he was then “accused of withholding drugs and of failing to appear in court when he was scheduled to testify.” He was dismissed from the NYPD, but later had the dismissal reversed in court after denying the charges.
Popeye was a 1980 musical comedy film, and an adaptation of the long-running comic strip of the same name. Directed by Robert Altman, the film starred Robin Williams (in his first major film role) as Popeye, and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl.
The comic strip Popeye was originally titled Thimble Theatre. It started in 1919. One of its earliest characters Ham Gravy, was Olive Oyl’s boyfriend before Popeye came along.
If you take ham gravy and substitute coffee for the cream, you get red eye gravy.
Red is the traditional colour of the federal Liberal party in Canada. It dates back to the Rouge party in Canada East, which was one of the factions which joined to create the Liberal party after 1867.
Red is the traditional color of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, with blue for the Tory or Conservative Party.
In the movie The Matrix, the red pill and blue pill are presented as such: one pill anchors you to the present reality while the other continues “down the rabbit hole.” Fan theories have suggested that the pills may represent an allegory for transgender people. During the 1990s, a common transgender hormone therapy for trans women involved Premarin, a maroon tablet, while a common antidepressant prescribed to closeted trans women at the time, Prozac, was blue.
The Matrix won four Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing.
In 1972, Limelight won Charlie Chaplin his only competitive Academy Award - for Best Original Score no less. Although released in 1952, for various reasons it did not become competitive for an Oscar until then when it finally met the requirement of playing in Los Angeles.
A Countess from Hong Kong was Charlie Chaplin’s final movie which he directed, wrote, produced and scored. It was also his last credited appearance, in a cameo role.
“The Hong Kong Cavaliers” were a fictional rock band, originally depicted in the 1984 science fiction film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.
In the film, Buckaroo Banzai is a test pilot, neurosurgeon, and physicist, as well as a rock star, and is the band’s leader and singer. The other members of the Hong Kong Cavaliers are also Buckaroo’s trusted friends, and are all (like Buckaroo) polymaths, with a range of skills in music, science, and military operations.
Clancy Brown played Rawhide, one of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, in Buckaroo Banzai. He has also memorably played, among many other roles in his long career, a mean prison guard in The Shawshank Redemption, a badass drill sergeant in Starship Troopers and provided the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants’s tight-fisted cancrine restaurateur Mr. Krabs both on TV and in the movies.