Month: October 2016

With the growing popularity of online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, brick-and-mortar video stores have, for the most part, become a thing of the past. But those that have managed to endure have developed massive fan bases. In honor of International Independent Video Store Day (tomorrow, October 15), here are 18 awesome video stores that are still open for business.

1. VIDEO FREE BROOKLYN // BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Established in 2002, Video Free Brooklyn offers a diverse selection of movies on DVD and Blu-ray, and also sells used DVDs. Co-owned by film critic Aaron Hillis and his wife, photographer Jennifer Loeber, the video store prides itself on giving something back to its film-loving community. Video Free Brooklyn also has a podcast in a partnership with Oscilloscope Laboratories called “DVD Is the New Vinyl,” which highlights the best new movies of the week, offers staff recommendations, and features special guests, such as singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten and actor Kumail Nanjiani.

2. VIDIOTS // SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

Regularly cited as one of the best video stores in the Los Angeles area, Vidiots almost closed its doors for good after 30 years of business. However, film producer Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures stepped in to save the video store after giving a sizable donation. Vidiots offers a wide array of movies, including great selections of foreign films and documentaries, along with special screening events, which in the past have included Q&As with David O. Russell, Anjelica Huston, and Oliver Stone. The video store also has a podcast to update customers on its latest news and new releases, along with in-depth film discussions.

3. SCARECROW VIDEO // SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Since first opening its doors in 1988, Scarecrow Video has amassed a movie collection that includes more than 120,000 titles, including a number of rare, out-of-print, foreign, and independent films. And if you really want to take it old-school, you can rent laserdisc players, region-free DVD players, and VCRs to play VHS tapes. Scarecrow Video also helps keep the film community in Seattle alive with special film screenings.

4. FACETS // CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Facets first opened its doors in 1975 as a local art house that screened movies in a church in Chicago. Over the years, it has branched out into education, distribution, and, of course, a video store, which offers a very large selection of independent, arthouse, classic, documentary, and experimental films from the likes of Bela Tarr, Jean-Luc Godard, and Miloš Forman. Facets even hosts the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival every year. The late film critic Roger Ebert once called Facets a “temple of great cinema.”

5. VULCAN VIDEO // AUSTIN, TEXAS

With two locations in Austin, Vulcan Video offers many foreign, cult, and classic films, along with more mainstream fare, on DVD, Blu-ray and VHS. The Austin Chronicle frequently names it the best video store in the city, and it counts several A-list celebrities among its fans: Jimmy Kimmel and Matthew McConaughey filmed a TV commercial for the store in a Jimmy Kimmel Live! segment.

6. LOST WEEKEND VIDEO // SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

While Lost Weekend Video has been serving the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 20 years as a video store with over 27,000 film titles on-hand, it also hosts local comedians with Cinecave Comedy. Originally located in San Francisco’s Mission District, Lost Weekend Video recently relocated to the Alamo Drafthouse at the newly-renovated New Mission Theater.

7. THE VIDEO UNDERGROUND // JAMAICA PLAIN, MASSACHUSETTS

The Video Underground prides itself on catering to the film community by urging Boston area filmmakers to make their movies available to patrons. The video store offers a diverse and wide selection of independent, cult, classic, and foreign films, in addition to new releases. They even have separate sections for famous directors, such as Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann, and Akira Kurosawa.

8. FOUR STAR VIDEO COOPERATIVE // MADISON, WI

After changing owners four times since 1985, Four Star Video Heaven was in danger of closing until its employees banded together and acquired the business and turned it into the Four Star Video Cooperative. Their mission is to make “underground, art, foreign, and just plain weird titles available to the public by placing them alongside more mainstream Hollywood films.” The co-op offers straight-up rentals, as well as rental subscriptions where members can watch as many movies as they want for one low price. Four Star Video also boasts “the largest in-store selections of animation, foreign-language, documentary, and independent films anywhere in the Midwest.” They even have a film discussion podcast.

9. MOVIE LOVERS // BOZEMAN, MONTANA

Opened in 1984, Movie Lovers offers nearly 20,000 titles, including independent and foreign films as well as new releases. On the first Monday of each month, the video store also offers all of its customers Late Fee Amnesty Day: Customers can get their late fees wiped clean if they rent three or more movies, giving them a great reason to come back and find more movies.

10. VIDEO ROOM // NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Video Room is Manhattan’s oldest and largest independent video store. They offer up over 12,000 VHS and DVD titles that range from foreign and hard-to-find movies to new releases, and they have two locations. Video Room also offers Gold and Platinum memberships that include free unlimited same-day home pickup and delivery, which is a must in New York City!

11. RAO VIDEO // LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

Established in 1977 as a small kiosk in a mall, RAO Video in Little Rock is a family-owned business that offers more than 30,000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray, including a number of obscure titles, foreign pulp flicks, and martial arts films (not to mention an adult movie section on the second floor). While RAO Video is primarily a video store, it’s also a vape shop, a beauty parlor, and a computer repair store.

12. VIDEODROME // ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Videodrome boasts a very large selection of movies from obscure and cult films to the latest movies and new releases. It prides itself on its many genre and subgenre categories and sections.

13. CINEFILE VIDEO // LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Considered the edgier version of Vidiots, CineFile Video offers strange and extreme subgenres, such as “Erotikill,” “Swayze Persuasion,” and “Pregnant Men.” The video store boasts more than 42,000 movies “that you simply won’t find online” with memberships and volunteer programs. CineFile Video will also pay you cash for your old DVDs and VHS tapes.

14. THE FLICKS // BOISE, IDAHO

Located in downtown Boise, Idaho, The Flicks is an all-in-one movie theater and video store. It screens the latest in independent, foreign, and arthouse films on four movie screens, while it also offers hard-to-find titles and new releases to rent on DVD and VHS tapes. The Flicks also features a cafe and coffee bar with a garden patio and fountain. It’s even energy-efficient, with newly-installed solar panels on its roof that provide more than 25 percent of the building’s power.

15. JET VIDEO // PORTLAND, MAINE

Not only is Jet Video a video store that offers a wide selection of movies and video games for rent, it’s also a local post office and an ice cream shop, too!

16. VIDEOLOGY BAR AND CINEMA // BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Deep in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Videology Bar and Cinema is not only a video store with a wide selection of movies for rent, it’s also a local watering hole for movie lovers and people who just want a beer or top-notch snacks and bar food. It hosts weekly events like trivia night, pop culture bingo, and special screenings of cult classics.

17. ROSEBUD VIDEO STORE // ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

Rosebud Video is the oldest independent video store in Asheville, North Carolina. It features a large collection of popular, foreign, independent, gay and lesbian, classic, and documentary films, with more than 12,000 titles in stock. Rosebud Video also has standalone sections dedicated to the AFI’s top 100, all of the Academy Award Best Picture winners, and the entire Criterion Collection.

18. CASA VIDEO // TUCSON, ARIZONA

While most video stores just offer thousands of movies to rent, Casa Video in Tucson goes beyond the call of duty and offers free popcorn to everyone who enters. They also offer a mail-order service where you can request titles online and have them sent to you in the mail. You can even rent movies online to pick up in the store, along with your free popcorn.

The video store recently opened a wine and beer bar called The Casa Film Bar on its second floor. It features various draft beers on tap, a number of large movie and TV screens, food, and weekly special events.

Being a vampire isn’t such a bad gig. You get to party all night, wear stylish clothes, and stay young and sexy forever. It’s basically like being Cher—which might explain why the Hollywood icon once co-wrote a song honoring the undead.

The tune is called “Lovers Forever” and, as presented on Cher’s 2013 album Closer to the Truth, it’s a thumping electro-pop banger that makes immortality sound like a clubgoer’s wildest fantasy. “Surrender to me now,” Cher sings with that husky contralto voice she’s been wielding since the ’60s. “And we’ll be lovers for all time / Ageless and sublime / We’ll be lovers forever.”

The song didn’t just materialize out of nowhere. Cher wrote it back in the early ’90s with friend Shirley Eikhard, the Canadian songwriter best known for penning Bonnie Raitt’s 1991 smash “Something to Talk About.” Some 30 years into her career, Cher would’ve been justified in thinking of herself as an eternal superstar, but there’s another reason she had bats on the brain. At the time, she was being considered for the role of Louis de Pointe du Lac in the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire.

In keeping with the plot of Rice’s 1976 novel, the part ultimately went to a man: Brad Pitt. But in her original draft of the script, which opens in 18th century Louisiana, Rice had the idea of making the character female. Given the long history of homophobia in Hollywood, she figured a story centering on the intimate relationship between two male characters—Louis and Lestat, played by Tom Cruise—would’ve been a tough sell.

“The whole idea was that Louis would be a transvestite woman,” Rice told Movieline in 1994. “At that time in history, you could own your own plantation and run things if you were a man, [but] you couldn’t if you were a woman. It was the French law. So this was a woman who dressed like a man, and otherwise it was exactly the same as Interview With the Vampire.”

At some point in the film’s development, Cher and Eikhard wrote “Lovers Forever.” In its original form, it was a dramatic piano ballad that might have gotten some play on pop radio—circa ’94, Meat Loaf was enjoying a resurgence with similarly styled theatrical ballads. Alas, it wasn’t to be. Cher got nixed from the film and its soundtrack.

“They didn’t love it and there were no other vampire outlets then, so I held it,” Cher told USA Today in 2013, while promoting Closer to the Truth. It was one of three songs she co-wrote for the album, and explaining why she seldom records her own material, Cher described her songwriting as “moody and introspective, a bit dark and very personal.”

“I write about Kurt Cobain’s death and homeless people,” she said. “It’s not for everybody.”

By the time Cher finally got around to releasing “Lovers Forever,” she might’ve had better luck finding a vampire flick to place it in. The late 2000s had brought about a vampire boom, as writer Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series spawned five blockbuster movies, and shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries sucked in viewers on the small screen. This time, though, Cher kept it for herself. She tweeted in August 2012: “Beautiful vampire song that a friend and I wrote for Interview With the Vampire—[my assistant] Jen loves it, brought it out, so I’m going to re-record it with today’s sound! Who knows?”

Production on the retooled dance-pop version was handled by Mark Taylor, who’d worked on Cher’s 1998 chart-topping comeback single “Believe.” Because surely not all vampire songs need to be dark and broody, Taylor took a similar tack with this tune, creating what Idolator called “a swirling Europop anthem with retro Italo disco touches.”

“I thought it was cool that it didn’t work,” Cher told Radio.com of her long-dormant creation, “but now it does.” Perhaps it worked because vampires, like Cher, are masters of reinventing themselves each generation.

Most of the exciting weather that blows across the United States unfolds east of the Rocky Mountains. The West Coast has a reputation for relatively boring, stable weather compared to the endless torrents out east, but every once in a while they’ll get a storm that tears into the coast as hard as a hurricane. This week, the Pacific Northwest will deal with two such storms slamming into the coast, one after the other. The first storm caused some bad weather on Thursday night and this morning, while the second storm is expected to strike tomorrow, Saturday, October 15, with even more ferocity than the one before it.

The story of these two storms is that they’re roughly equivalent to category 1 hurricanes hitting the Pacific Northwest in rapid succession. We spend days and sometimes weeks focusing on much lesser storms spinning around in the Atlantic Ocean, yet large, damaging low-pressure centers swirling on the other side of the country get only a fraction of the attention. Each storm will have similar effects to a hurricane—damaging winds, heavy rain, coastal flooding, and rough seas—and even though neither storm is a hurricane by definition, they should be treated just as seriously.

The first storm approached the Northwest coast on Thursday night and Friday morning, focusing the brunt of its foul weather on Oregon and Washington to end the workweek. The National Weather Service office in Portland, Oregon, collected widespread reports of 55 to 65 mph wind gusts across western Oregon, which is enough to do some damage to trees and power lines. Some of the gusts were even higher—an elevated weather station near the coast in Oceanside, Oregon, measured a wind gust of 103 mph on Thursday night. A few of the thunderstorms in Oregon even spawned tornadoes, one of which hit a small town about 60 miles west of Portland on Friday morning.

If that wasn’t bad enough, another storm is on its way this weekend that looks like it will be even stronger than the first one. This Saturday’s storm, though not an actual hurricane, does have its roots in the tropics. The impending system will gather some of its strength by incorporating the remnants of Super Typhoon Songda, a tropical cyclone that had 150 mph winds out in the western Pacific Ocean earlier this week. As the storm traveled into the higher latitudes, it lost its tropical characteristics and hitched a ride in the jet stream, speeding east across the entire ocean in just a couple of days. The storm will also have ample moisture to work with due to an atmospheric river, or a stream of deep moisture that flows north from the tropics.

As we saw with the storm on Thursday and Friday, strong winds will be the greatest threat this weekend. High wind watches are in effect for coastal and inland areas of northwestern California all the way to the Canadian border in Washington in anticipation of winds that approach hurricane force during the day on Saturday. This includes the cities and suburbs of Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Widespread wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph will knock down trees, sever power lines, and possibly cause damage to buildings. The wind might have an easier time tearing down trees because the soil is wet and many trees still have their leaves, which creates a sort of parachute effect, catching the wind and putting even greater stress on the trees.

Several inches of rain are possible ahead of the system, with higher totals falling in higher elevations. Forecasters don’t expect widespread flooding to be an issue, but some minor flooding is possible as a result of freshly downed leaves clogging up sewage systems and small creeks.

The culprit behind the two hurricane-strength storms is an intense jet stream dipping over the northwestern United States. Winds in the jet stream are screaming along at nearly 200 mph, which creates intense lifting motion through the atmosphere around the jet stream. Air rapidly rises from the lower levels of the atmosphere as a result of this lift, creating a center of low pressure at the surface. The strength of this particular jet stream will allow the low-pressure systems to grow unusually strong, which is why both systems have and will produce such strong winds.

The Pacific Northwest has an ugly history with damaging windstorms. Storms with this intensity occur every couple of years, and the storm forecast to blow ashore this weekend could produce wind gusts on par with some memorable storms in recent years, including storms in December 2006 and December 1995.

When you think about the Vikings, you probably imagine fierce blond warriors clad in metal armor, boasting larger-than-life nicknames. Guess what: This mental picture isn’t 100 percent historically accurate. Here are seven commonly believed falsehoods about the Nordic warriors, debunked.

1. NORSE RAIDERS CALLED THEMSELVES “VIKINGS.”

Today, historians use the word “Vikings” to refer to the seafaring Scandinavians who plundered, explored, and settled much of northern Europe from the late 8th century to the mid-11th century. But when these warriors were alive, they never actually identified by this name—nor did they even consider themselves to be a unified people.

Vikings came from all walks of life and hailed from numerous chieftain-led tribes around modern-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Nobody quite knows how the word “viking” originated, or when we adopted it to describe Nordic raiders as a whole. Historians think “Viking” stems from the Old Norse word vik, meaning “inlet” or “bay,” and that it refers to the pirates who used these bodies of water as raiding bases. Ancient Scandinavians used the phrase “to go viking” to describe the act of going exploring, or searching for an adventure.

2. VIKINGS WERE TRAINED WARRIORS.

Many Vikings had no special combat training or military prowess, and were simply ordinary farmers, fishermen, and peasants looking to make an extra buck. If they wanted to join the roving bands, they were required to supply their own weapons and armor—and since the seafaring pirates typically plundered and raided coastal villages, they didn’t always engage in hand-to-hand fighting.

But there is some truth in this myth: Some Vikings were deadly forces on the battlefield—particularly a sect of fierce, elite warriors called “berserkers,” who worshipped Odin, the god of war and death. These men reportedly fought so hard that they slipped into a trance. Today, the etymology of the English word “berserk” can be traced back to them.

3. VIKINGS WORE HELMETS WITH HORNS.

Contrary to popular belief, Vikings didn’t actually wear helmets with horns. In terms of archaeological evidence, only one surviving Viking helmet is known to exist—and sure enough, it’s a simple piece of iron armor with nary a pointed embellishment.

Experts believe that the Vikings either donned protective head coverings made from leather or iron or simply went without them. (Back then, only the very wealthy could afford to own a helmet.) But during the 1840s, costume designer Carl Emil Doepler created stage outfits for Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (1848), an epic music drama loosely based on Norse and German sagas. He designed helmets with horns, and lo and behold—a new stereotype was created.

4. VIKINGS WORE CHAIN MAIL ARMOR AND CARRIED SWORDS.

Most movies and TV shows depict Vikings swinging a sword (or magic hammer) on the battlefield, clad in heavy chain mail armor. Some Vikings did wear coats of mail, but it was expensive, and often only given to high-status individuals to honor their service in battle. When raiders wore protective coverings, they were likely made from leather, bones, quilted fabric, or animal hides.

As for weapons, only the wealthiest Vikings owned swords. Their main weapons were spears, short or long axes, long knives, bows and arrows, and wooden or leather shields.

5. VIKINGS WERE DIRTY AND UNKEMPT.

Vikings led a rough lifestyle, but they didn’t let it affect the way they looked (or smelled). Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts like tweezers, combs, nail cleaners, toothpicks, and ear cleaners, indicating that the Nordic raiders had good personal hygiene. They also bathed weekly; styled, groomed, and bleached their hair with lye; and wore eyeliner (yup, even the men).

6. ALL VIKINGS WERE FAIR-HAIRED.

Many blond Vikings lived in Sweden, and Denmark tended to be filled with redheads, but plenty of seafaring raiders had dark hair, too. Nordic raiders took slaves from foreign nations, intermarried with people from (or settled in with) other cultures, and brought people from faraway countries back to Scandinavia with them. This intermingling of ethnicities led to a variety of physical appearances.

7. VIKINGS ONLY HAD FIERCE-SOUNDING NICKNAMES.

Viking sagas are filled with figures whose notorious escapades and bloody battle feats earned them intimidating (if not slightly hyperbolic) nicknames: Thorfinn Skull-Cleaver, Haldar the Unchristian, and Eric Bloodaxe, to name a few. But not all Norse monikers were selected to strike terror into the hearts of enemies. They often described appearances, personalities, and actions—and they weren’t always complimentary.

One (relatively) peaceful warrior was nicknamed “Ǫlvir the Friend of Children” because, unlike his fellow warriors, he refused to skewer captive children on the point of his lance. A famous 11th century Viking king earned the name Magnús Barefoot, or Barelegged, because he traveled to modern-day Scotland, adopted the kilt as his favorite fashion statement, and later introduced the garment to Norway. (Magnús Barefoot’s sartorial statement ultimately killed him when his bare legs received a fatal wound during battle.) And we’ll just have to use our imaginations for Kolbeinn Butter Penis.

Additional Source: Guts and Glory: The Vikings, Ben Thompson

When the National Biscuit Company introduced the Oreo cookie in March of 1912, there was no mistaking its origins. It was a blatant knock-off of Sunshine Biscuits’s Hydrox, a double-wafer chocolate and cream sandwich snack that capitalized on the popularity of a similar home-baked treat that had been circulating since the mid-1800s.

The Hydrox was introduced in 1908. But Sunshine had relatively little of the advertising or production power of Nabisco, which was formed in 1898 as a conglomerate of baking companies: The fact that it beat Oreo to shelves by four years was irrelevant. Consumers largely passed up Hydrox and opted for Oreos, which were sold in bulk for 30 cents a pound.

The two cookies had more in common than a similar taste: Both used cookies that were ornate, with wreaths adorning the outer side. In 1952, possibly in an attempt to further distance themselves from the competition, Nabisco opted to change the Oreo design to a slightly more complex pattern that has invited comparisons to everything from the Knights Templar to the Freemasons.

Were conspiracy theorists focusing too hard on the humble Oreo? Or has the cookie been trying to tell us something all along?

The Oreo wasn’t the only snack Nabisco introduced in 1912. The company also produced Veronese biscuits and Mother Goose cookies, the latter embossed with characters from popular nursery rhymes. As with Hydrox, it had become common to create cookie molds that could imprint a distinctive shape on top of the crunchy wafers. It’s a practice that likely has origins in Europe, where producers of communion wafers used molds to create edible religious symbols.

Mass-market cookie businesses had more cynical motivations. It was in their best interests to create distinctive patterns that helped consumers distinguish one product from another. Nabisco’s Lorna Doone cookies had a vaguely atomic symbol along with the cookie’s name; Hydrox opted for flower petals in addition to wreaths. Even out of the package, it was easy to tell one sugary snack from the other.

In 1924, Nabisco made a slight alteration to the Oreo, adding turtle doves on either end of the cookie’s name and enlarging the font. It remained unchanged for nearly 30 years, until 1952, when a former Nabisco mail room employee named William Turnier was tasked with building a better cookie.

Turnier had arrived at the company in 1923, running correspondence for executives before he befriended workers on the food engineering side of their headquarters in New York City. At night, he pursued his GED: Turnier had dropped out of school over bullying he had experienced as a result of being afflicted with polio.

“He was about 18 months old when he got it,” Bill Turnier, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina and the late designer’s son, tells mental_floss. “He was a very bright guy and should’ve gone on to college, but people made fun of his limp and he couldn’t take it. Bullying is nothing new.”

Shadowing creative employees, Turnier developed a new skill set—industrial engineer—and was eventually hired on to revamp Nutter Butter as well as their line of Milk-Bone dog treats.

It’s not known what direction, if any, Turnier was given when it was time to give the Oreo a facelift. The only thing he kept was the cookie’s name in the center. In place of the wreaths, Turnier positioned an array of four-petal flowers. Surrounding the word “Oreo” was a colophon, or emblem, that was a circle with two crossed lines at the top. It was the same design Nabisco had been using to adorn its company logo.

“That was his idea,” Turnier says. “That design goes back to monks who used it on the bottom of manuscripts they copied in Medieval times. It was a sign of craft—saying they did the best they could. Nabisco really liked that.”

Satisfied with Turnier’s blueprint, which allowed the company to create dough molds to his specifications, the Oreo underwent its cosmetic change in 1952; Turnier continued to work for Nabisco until retiring in 1973. It was unlikely he had any awareness that his design for the Oreo would become a kind of Rorschach test for snack lovers, with people finding subversive messages in the way he illustrated the cookie.

In theories that have become easier to disseminate with the advent of the internet, some Oreo observers have noted that Turnier’s four-leaf flower looks remarkably like a cross pattée, a symbol that the Knights Templar carried into the Crusades in the 12^th century. The two-bar cross could be construed as the Cross of Lorraine, also from the Knights Templar. Alternately, both could be a subtle nod to the Freemasons, a secret society that functions to this day.

How much of this is inferred and how much did Turnier intend? According to his son, the elder Turnier’s choices were aesthetic in nature. “He just liked the look of the flowers. He could never understand when people would locate him demanding some kind of explanation. ‘Why did you use a four-petal flower? There aren’t any!’ Here’s a man in his 80s, and he’d call me up quite distressed.

“And of course, there is a four-petal flower, the fireweed. We had some when I was growing up in our backyard.”

Likewise, there was no meaning to the number of ridges—90—that surround the cookie’s margin. “He said he probably used a compass to make sure they were evenly-spaced,” Turnier says. The smaller triangles near the word “Oreo” were probably inserted to avoid having any empty space on the cookie’s face.

While Turnier believes his father was not inclined to reference religious iconography, he does note that one member of his family held an intriguing position. “My grandfather was a Freemason,” he says. “But my dad was Catholic.” Though he was probably exposed to Freemason imagery during his life, Turnier had no intention of delivering a secret handshake to cookie lovers.

Nabisco has never offered an official explanation for the design. They do not, in fact, fully acknowledge Turnier had anything to do with it, insisting that their records don’t account for who was responsible for the cookie’s alteration in 1952—only that Turnier worked as a design engineer during that period of time.

Turnier, who keeps a copy of his father’s original 1952 blueprint hanging in his Chapel Hill, North Carolina home, believes the Oreo was simply adorned with easy-to-replicate designs that were possible thanks to the cookie’s durable texture. “The dough dictates what you can do with the cookie,” he says. “The dough for Oreo, you could almost make a coin out of it. You can insert a lot of detail. And then people look for meaning.”

The elder Turnier died in 2004. In contrast to the theories and mystery that have surrounded his work, the etching on his tombstone is unmistakable: Set in the upper right corner just above his name is a fully adorned Oreo cookie.