Six Awesome Facts!

March 27th 2011

Six Awesome Facts About Evel Knievel!

Evel Knievel was one of the most popular daredevils to ever live. Even though he died in 2007, his amazing legacy has continued to grow. Here are a few facts to add to his legend!

1. If you replace the second “e” in his first name with an “i”, it spells evil. No one is sure if this is intentional or not.

2. In addition to his many world records for jumping things, he also holds the world record for most adorable kittens cuddled in a single evening. (497)

3. Didn’t believe in evolution. Did believe in evelution.

4. He invented the word “croissanwich”, but not the concept of using a croissant to make a sandwich.

5. His successful jump across the Grand Canyon, which resulted in a broken leg, was intended as a metaphorical performance art piece about man facing his fear of his own mortality. The media presented him as a lower class idiot risking death to make a few dollars instead of an artist trying to physicalize his deepest thoughts on man’s place in the universe. This misunderstanding of his work may have been the cause of Evel’s alcoholism and drug use that haunted him for the rest of his life.

6. He wore a sparkling red, white and blue suit with a tiny cape, yet was not gay.

April 04th 2011

Six Awesome Batman Facts!

1. Batman was created by Bob Kane in 1939. His first draft of the character was based on a half-man, half-baseball-bat bat idea, but he was soon convinced by his wife that using the animal version of a bat would make it must more visually interesting. His first long, skinny drawing of the Baseball-Batman was recently sold at auction for over a million dollars US.

2. Over the years, the tone of Batman comics has ranged from as light as the Batman in Hostess Twinkie advertisements to the dark Batman of the late 1980s. That Batman got so depressed that he did nothing but sit at home in his underwear, drink beer and tell Robin how he would never amount to anything. Even the Joker was defeated by this version of Batman when Batman convinced him it wasn’t worth the effort to commit evil acts as nothing mattered in the end anyway. This era ended when Batman finally sought out therapy to deal with issues stemming from his abandonment feelings from the death of his parents.

3. There is rumored to be a lost Batman stories from the 1960s in which Batman hunted down the group that assassinated JFK. It turned out to be a plot by the Riddler and the whole thing was a complicated series of clues to lead Batman to the fact that the Riddler was going to steal the safe from the book depository. The editors thought that making the death of the president a clue to another crime trivialized it and pulled the story at the last second. Thought to be in particular bad taste was a panel with Robin examining clues in Texas and exclaiming, “Gosh Batman, the country needed this like it needed a hole in the head.”

4. During the late 1970s the editorial board of DC comics considered having Batman come out of the closet and admit that he was a homosexual. While this would have resulted in a huge amount of publicity and a burst in sales, it was decided that Batman should continue to keep his homosexuality a secret. Even today his gay proclivities are broadly hinted at, but never explicitly stated.

5. A 1963 issue of Detective Comics revealed that Batman has a Batflap in the back of his costume that allows him to expel bodily waste without having to undress completely. In the issue, the Mad Hatter takes over a Mexican restaurant called The Sombrero and Bruce Wayne goes undercover to eat there with disastrous results.

6. Grant Morrison’s recent run on Batman actually sent Batman back in time and had him live through various eras making his way to the future. The story ended up being so complicated that only three people completely understood it. However, so many people pretended to understand it that it ended up being one of the most popular comic plots of all time! Morrison has promised that his future plans will be so difficult to understand that they will be even more popular.

April 15th 2011

Sherlock Holmes Facts!
Six Facts About Sherlock Holmes

1. When the Sherlock Holmes stories were published in the US, editors tried to Americanize them by turning Holmes into a cowboy detective and Watson into his Native American assistant “Twanto.” They also replaced his morphine addiction with a “strong hankerin’ for salt water taffy”, and the phrase “Elementary my dear Watson” became “Duh, Twanto, seriously duh.”

2. Sherlock Holmes was based on an actual person named Herlock Sholmes. Eventually, author Arthur Conan Doyle disguised this fact by slyly moving the “S” in his last name to his first name, thus avoiding libel. Before he made this clever switch, Doyle was going to call Holmes and Watson by the possibly catchier names Tango and Cash.

3. Discarded story titles Arthur Conan Doyle listed but never used include, “The Tale of the Titillating Turnip”, “The Mystery of the Scarlet Rash” and “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Watson”.

4. “SHERLOCK! the musical” was one of the biggest flops ever on Broadway. The 1962 adaptation included a singing and dancing Sherlock Holmes wearing his traditional deerstalker hat and matching herringbone leotard. The plot revolved around Moriarty stealing the tap shoes from a children’s dance troupe and ended with 50 ten-year-olds tapping to the show’s theme song while Holmes danced victoriously around a fallen Moriarty. Sample lyrics included, “Moriarty needed some tap shoes and now he’s gotsum/it was all quite elementary, my dear Watson” and “Oh my Watson, I used to wonder how it is/that I might be in love with you/but when you’ve eliminated all the possibilities/whatever remains simply must be true!” Some songs from this show were recycled in other show with slightly revised lyrics, the most famous being “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” from “A Chorus Line.”

5. The slang term “getting sherlocked” was used during the late 1890s to refer to being intellectually bested. It is best illustrated in this quote from a Globe story from 1895, “Mr. Brown reported that he first got sherlocked by Mr. Lockhorn in an alley behind the building and then was sherlocked repeatedly after sharing a quiet supper at a dinner club.”

6. Doyle’s relatives were initially against Holmes being played by Robert Downey Jr. in the latest film incarnation because they didn’t want Holmes to be associated with an admitted drug addict.

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