We do it #ForTheCultrs
Another great retrospective by Toy Galaxy, this time about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, the sequel to 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was a departure from the violence of the first film but cranking up the child/commercial-friendly dial lead to ultimate failure. But hey, we got some cool toys!
Where do villains come from? Or, rather, where does the word for them derive? Merriam-Webster wrote a quick explainer:
Upon being informed that villain is related to a Latin word meaning “inhabitant of a villa,” one might conjure up images of a mustache-twirling villain conniving evilly at his sprawling villa. The history of the word, though, is far more complicated than that.
The story does start with that Latin word. Actually, it’s a Medieval Latin word: villanus. The fact that it’s Medieval Latin matters because although the word villa in classical Latin referred to a large country dwelling, by the time of Late Latin—the 3rd to 6th centuries—the word could also refer more generally to any aggregation of rural dwellings, making it nearly equivalent in meaning to village. Medieval Latin came after Late Latin (Medieval Latin was in use from the 7th through the 15th centuries), making villanus, with its “inhabitant of a villa” meaning, basically a synonym of villager—which doesn’t exactly evoke that evilly conniving villa-abiding villain.
As not to copy and paste the whole thing, I suggest you read the rest to continue the etymological trail. But the root for ‘villain’ has links to some interesting words:
*weik-
Proto-Indo-European root meaning “clan, social unit above the household.”
It forms all or part of: antoecian; bailiwick; Brunswick; diocese; ecology; economy; ecumenical; metic; nasty; parish; parochial; vicinage; vicinity; viking; villa; village; villain; villanelle; -ville; villein; Warwickshire; wick “dairy farm.”
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit visah “house,” vit “dwelling, house, settlement;” Avestan vis “house, village, clan;” Old Persian vitham “house, royal house;” Greek oikos “house;” Latin villa “country house, farm,” vicus “village, group of houses;” Lithuanian viešpats “master of the house;” Old Church Slavonic visi “village;” Gothic weihs “village.”
via Etymonline
Words are fascinating, aren’t they?
I stumbled upon this JSTOR essay named ‘”We Don’t Want Any German Sausages Here!” Food, Fear, and the German Nation in Victorian and Edwardian Britain‘ which explored the anti-German sentiment of Victorian and Edwardian Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the opening weeks of the First World War, German immigrants in Britain faced a series of isolated attacks, mostly focused on German retailers. At the end of August 1914, a more serious disturbance broke out in Keighley, Yorkshire, which resulted in attacks on four German butcher shops. Throughout 1914 and 1915, German butchers in London, Crewe, and elsewhere became targets of anti-German violence. Attacks reached a peak in 1915, as the Germanophobic hysteria that broke out following the sinking of the Lusitania led to riots across Britain. In many cases, violence and property damage focused initially on German butchers because both German food manufacturers and German food offered a visible symbol of Germany and German influences on Britain. In the following year, the Daily Mail explained how certain restaurants had renamed various national dishes so that the “Vienna steak” became the “Belgian steak” and the “German sausage” the “English sausage,” and by 1917, German barrage balloons were being widely referred to as German sausage balloons. War with Germany provided a potent context for Germanophobia, but attacks on German butchers need to be placed within a longer chronology of popular anti German sentiments, representations of the German nation, and growing fears about the dangers contained within German meat products.
Wow. That’s all I have to say.
Sausage related: The Wobble Dog 9003i
Quite a remarkable piece from Gastro Obscura about the federal government’s 560 million pounds of cheese in the 80s:
The Washington Post reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy was costing around $1 million a day. “We’ve looked and looked at ways to deal with this, but the distribution problems are incredible,” a USDA official was quoted as saying. “Probably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean.”
Instead, they decided to jettison 30 million pounds of it into welfare programs and school lunches through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. “At a time when American families are under increasing financial pressure, their Government cannot sit by and watch millions of pounds of food turn into waste,” Reagan said in a written statement. The New York Times declared that the bill would “give poor Americans a slice of the cheese surplus.”
Needless to say Reagan had more than a cheese problem during his presidency.
More on cheese: Chiyo Shibata and her Japanese cheese, moose cheese, and pule cheese: the world’s most expensive cheese made from donkey milk
You know the phrase “all roads lead to Rome”? Well, with OmnesViae, you can see which roads they are. It’s a route planner that takes inspiration and directions from Tabula Peutingeriana (or the Peutinger Map), a proxy for a ‘road map’ of the Roman Empire. Big Think dug a little deeper into the concept:
Whatever its ultimate age, the shape of the Tabula — about a foot high and 22 feet long (33 cm by 6.75 m) — tells us that it cannot be topographically accurate. Instead, it focuses on presenting road corridors and connectors, with a few branches forking off through Persia all the way to India. By sacrificing topographic accuracy for network connectivity, the Peutinger Map is strangely reminiscent (or should that be “predictive”) of the London Tube map and other modern metro maps.
A tube-style map of the Roman Empire? It’s been done.
Sometimes I forget how much I loved 60s Batman as a kid. I remember I was out with family and it was getting late and I was eager to get home asap so I could watch the “latest” episode (this was the 90s and it was in syndication—I’m not that old!)
In the video above, we see Bruce Wayne (played by Adam West) in a unique conversation with Batman (also played by Adam West) as they tried to hash out a plan to thwart Mr Freeze’s plan. As one commenter put it:
Every new actor who plays Batman should have to audition with this scene.
Jim Murphy
Ironically, I read this on a beautiful summer’s afternoon last week, sat on a bench without a care in the world or an eye on my watch. But Joe Zadeh’s piece on ‘the tyranny of time’ opened my eyes to how much of a chokehold clock time has on us in the West:
We discipline our lives by the time on the clock. Our working lives and wages are determined by it, and often our “free time” is rigidly managed by it too. Broadly speaking, even our bodily functions are regulated by the clock: We usually eat our meals at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are hungry, go to sleep at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are tired and attribute more significance to the arresting tones of a clock alarm than the apparent rising of the sun at the center of our solar system. The fact that there is a strange shame in eating lunch before noon is a testament to the ways in which we have internalized the logic of the clock. We are “time-binding” animals, as the American economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin put it in his 1987 book, “Time Wars.” “All of our perceptions of self and world are mediated by the way we imagine, explain, use and implement time.”
Until I read this, I used to have alarms set on my phone to go off every 2 hours on the hour between 10am-8pm. I thought they helped to ground me and keep me “in the moment”. Since turning it off I’ve not noticed a difference. Funny, that.
The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Amy Tan and released in 1989. It recounts the stories of four Chinese-American immigrant families in San Francisco, who start a club known as The Joy Luck Club. For AAPI Heritage Month, Rui Zhong, her sister, and her mother started a podcast to talk about the novel and its legacy in Asian American history.
Listen via Anchor or any of your favourite podcast platforms. Or stream the first episode below.
It’s not all sunshine and smiles making Disney movies and the story of The Emperor’s New Groove is a great example of that. Bilge Ebiri ran through an oral history of the Disney film and how it was almost three different movies. Here’s an excerpt describing the first one:
First, there is The Kingdom of the Sun, an epic tale incorporating Inca myths, which was to be directed by The Lion King’s Roger Allers and would have starred Owen Wilson as a lowly llama herder bound to switch lives with a selfish, vain prince voiced by David Spade. The soundtrack was set to feature a whole series of songs written by Sting. The legendary Eartha Kitt would be the voice of a villainous sorceress determined to blot out the sun.
But after years of production snafus — of doubt-filled meetings and catastrophic screenings and arguments — Kingdom of the Sun was, in a stunning move, shelved. In its place came The Emperor’s New Groove, a raucous comedy directed by Mark Dindal, starring Spade as a selfish, vain emperor who involuntarily transforms into a llama and winds up befriending a kindly peasant, this one played by John Goodman. Eartha Kitt remained as the villain, now joined by a delightfully conflicted henchman voiced by Seinfeld’s Patrick Warburton. New Groove would ultimately feature only two songs written by Sting — one, a Vegas-style number performed by Tom Jones, and the other, a closing credits song performed by Sting himself (for which he was nominated for an Oscar). Racing against an impossible deadline rumored to be imposed by an impending Happy Meal deal, the final film was, in the words of one its co-creators, the result of the “funniest writers’ room you could possibly have. A table of people who had nothing to lose.”
Disney history related: A brief history of DisneyQuest, the history of Walt Disney Home Video, Defunctland on the history of Captain EO
I love memes on Instagram and I enjoy skateboarding content. But together? *chef’s kiss*
shrimpdaddy is the moniker of Marque Cox, a video editor and skateboarder from Los Angeles with a penchant for the absurd, which he briefly mentioned in this 2016 interview:
A lot of the video is quite trippy, with weird angles, slo-mo, going upside down. Where did you get the inspiration to go in that direction with the filming?
About a year ago, while filming for Shrimpdaddy1, I started filming at 240fps and I think slow-motion changed my whole way of making videos. I consider myself to be a strong editor. When I would bring home footage I would start piecing my video together little by little and I would show my friends the edit, and I would get the most reactions from the trippy, weird clips. I’ve been filming with the guys in my video for years, so they are all really cool about helping out with my experimental projects.
What I love about Marque’s work is his splicing of skating fails with pop culture references. The video above is my favourite one (and I ended up finding the movie it referenced—it’s A Low Down Dirty Shame btw).
In their own words, “A mind-bending collection of imagery showing retro and vintage-futuristic content.”
Now you can recreate Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night with LEGO.
Created in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, the 2,300-piece set not only does the painting justice, but adds dimensionality, making it come to life in fascinating ways.
We love the way the swirls and stars pop against the sky, with the buildings adding a whole new mood to the painting. A Van Gogh minifigure completes the scene, on a swiveling pedestal.
(via Moss and Fog)
Shout out to Zito for tweeting about this. Serpent d’océan is a sculpture by late Chinese–French artist Huang Yong Ping. His sculpture is of a 425ft-long sea serpent skeleton (that’s about 130m) and is situated outside of Nantes in France.
Jessica Stewart wrote about it in 2018 for My Modern Met:
Astonishingly, given its size and sturdiness, Serpent d’océean (sic) is filled with movement. Its skeleton terminates in a thin, whip-like tail that cuts gracefully through the water, seemingly propelling the serpent’s body toward the shoreline. The work continually reveals itself in different guises depending on the time of day, both due to the changing tide and the light’s reflection. And interestingly, over time, as algae begins clinging to its surface, the work takes on more meaning by showing the cycle of life and nature.
[…]
The powerful serpent changes appearance according to the environment, giving a powerful message about life and nature.
Check out this Colossal article showing more incredible photos of the sculpture.
I don’t know if the stars rule the world
Or if tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything.
I don’t know if the rolling of dice
Can lead to any conclusion.
But I also don’t know
If anything is attained
By living the way most people do.
Álvaro de Campos
(from a poem dated January 5, 1935)
(h/t Zito)
Daffy Duck places 4th in my all-time duck list and a lot of that is due to this one cartoon. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery tells the story of Daffy on a farm, waiting for his latest Dick Tracy comic. When the mailman delivers it, he reads and imagines a life as Dick Tracy before knocking himself out with his own fist and living the fantasy out in his unconsciousness.
It was a surreal experience watching this as a child but I thought it was cool enough to remember it for the rest of my life. There were pigs (including the titular piggy bank and Porky Pig in a silent cameo) and a host of wild rogues, gangsters, and other criminals including Rubberhead, an eraser-headed gangster; Bat Man, an anthropomorphic baseball bat; and 88 Teeth, a parody of 88 Keys from the Dick Tracy comics but with piano keys for teeth.