Kurt Vonnegut set part of his book Breakfast of Champions, or, Goodbye Blue Monday at Crispus Attucks High School, better known by its local nickname “Innocent Bystander High”, where obscure pulp SF author Kilgore Trout came to deliver a speech to the students.
Philip Jose Farmer wrote the novel Venus on the Half Shell using the pseudonym of “Kilgore Trout” with Vonnegut’s permission (though Vonnegut later regretted giving it).
In her 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Farmer introduced the concept of standardized measurements of ingredient quantities in recipes, as well as providing scientific explanations of what happened in various cooking processes. After her death, a candy company in Rochester, still in business today, was named after her, but with her first name respelled as Fanny to keep the lawyers at bay.
Rochester, played by Eddie Anderson, was the valet of Jack Benny. His first appearance was on the radio show when he did a one-time appearance as a rude train porter who claimed he had never heard of Albuquerque (mispronounced “al-barbecue” among other ways) in spite of the fact the train always stopped there, and he was such a huge hit due to his voice and acting that he became a regular.
Jack Kennedy, not long after his first election to the U.S. House of Representatives, was once told by a Capitol policeman, “Those phones are for Congressmen only, sonny.”
Among the Congressmen known as “Sonny” were Salvatore Bono (California 44th District, U.S. House of Representatives, 1995-98) and Gillespie Montgomery (Mississippi 4th District, 1967-73, then 3rd District, 1973-97).
Sonny Bono was mayor of Palm Springs, Calif. before his election to Congress. Although he and Cher had their ups and downs, while married and afterwards, they were good friends by the time of his death, and she attended his funeral.
Santino “Sonny” Corleone was the eldest son of Vito Corleone and took over the family business when his father was shot during a gang war. Although noted for his hot temper and ruthlessness, Sonny exhibited genuine warmth when he convinced his family to take in the orphaned Tom Hagen and raise him as one of the family.
The name of Häagen-Dazs ice cream does not derive from any of the North Germanic languages; it is simply two made-up words meant to look Scandinavian to American eyes (the digraphs “äa” and “zs” are not a part of any native words in any of the Scandinavian languages). This is known in the marketing industry as “foreign branding.” It was thought that Denmark was known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the US and so an outline map of Denmark on early labels was included , as well as the name of Copenhagen, even though it’s always been manufactured in New York, having been started by two Polish immigrants.
EDIT: Well, maybe manufactured elsewhere in the US now too, but originally in the Bronx.
Copenhagen is the home of the second oldest amusement park in the world, the Tivoli Gardens.
“Reptilicus”, about a prehistoric monster who comes to life and stomps all over Copenhagen, including Tivoli Gardens, was filmed and released in otherwise nearly-identical Danish and English versions in 1961 and 1962 respectively (flying scenes were replaced by slime-spewing scenes for the English release). It is credited with being Denmark’s only giant monster movie production, none others apparently being thought necessary.
according to the folks at wikipedia, “slime” is another way to refer to the mucus excreted by our friends the gastropods (snails, slugs) to help them move along.
I didn’t know that “mucous” is an adjective and the noun form is “mucus.” huh.
Roman snails (like many other gasteropods) are true hermaphrodites : they have both sets of sex organs. When a pair of snails reproduces, they each have a male organ inside their partner’s female organ. And there must be much rejoicing, for they are really prolific little creatures.
They can also literally go fuck themselves should they need to, although mating is much more common.
Finally, in case you’re wondering, yes, yes, rule 34 applies. Dear god.
You had to go look, didn’t you?
Hermaphroditus was the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite. Originally male, he merged bodies with a water nymph named Salmacis, in a pool near Halicarnassus, when she asked Zeus that they should never be parted. He is portrayed in Greco-Roman art as a she-male.
The US has won only three gold medals in Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling, by Jeff Blatnick and Steve Fraser in 1984 and by Rulon Gardner in 2000. US wrestlers usually prefer to wrestle freestyle. Greco-Roman wrestling doesn’t allow wrestlers to use holds below the waist.
Olympic wrestler Rulon Gardner has survived a number of brushes with calamity in his life. As a child, he was impaled with an arrow during show-and-tell. In 2002, he was stranded while on a snowmobile trip in the wilderness, and suffered frostbite (he lost a toe). In 2004, while riding a motorcycle, he was struck by a car. In 2007, he survived the crash of a small plane (including having to swim in frigid Lake Powell for over an hour, then spending a sub-zero night with no shelter)(.
Bombardier, Inc., the original and perhaps the best-known brand in the snowmobile business, does not take its name from a cool-sounding bomber crew position but from its founder, J. Armand Bombardier, the 1937 inventor of the snowmobile. Its Ski-Doo brand was intended to be named Ski-Dog, but a painter misspelled the name on the first prototype and Bombardier kept it.
The company now makes the bulk of its income from rail and subway cars and from aerospace, after absorbing the former Canadair, one of the primary manufacturers of regional jets for airlines.
The phrase “23 skidoo” was popular in the U.S. during the first decades of the 20th Century. Although its meaning “to leave quickly” was clear, the origins of the phrase are obscure, with speculation ranging from horse racing to a parody of Charles Dickens to a reference to the Flatiron Building in New York City.
The New York City neighborhood now known as the Flatiron District (after its signature building) contains the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt.
Given Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as one of America’s more badass presidents, it is interesting that he was an unhealthy child, suffering from asthma.