January 2017 – Page 36

January 17, 2017

Newsletter Item for (90662): 50 Sweet Facts About Your Favorite Candies

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50 Sweet Facts About Your Favorite Candies

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Americans eat roughly 22 pounds of candy each year. From salt-water taffy to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, check out these 50 sweet facts about your favorite candies.

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Food

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50 Sweet Facts About Your Favorite Candies

January 17, 2017

Newsletter Item for (90918): Here’s Why Overbooked Flights Are Unavoidable

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Here’s Why Overbooked Flights Are Unavoidable

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Here is why overbooked flights are inevitable.

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Live Smarter

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Here’s Why Overbooked Flights Are Unavoidable

January 17, 2017

Newsletter Item for (90821): Scientists Find More Evidence That Your Appendix Serves a Purpose

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Scientists Find More Evidence That Your Appendix Serves a Purpose

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Scientists have uncovered new evidence that suggests your appendix serves a purpose.

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Medicine

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Scientists Find More Evidence That Your Appendix Serves a Purpose

January 17, 2017

Newsletter Item for (66077): The Lincoln Administration Turned Down a Chance to Populate the United States With Elephants

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Lincoln Turned Down a Chance to Fill the U.S. With Elephants

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The Lincoln Administration turned down a chance to populate the United States with elephants.

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History

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The Lincoln Administration Turned Down a Chance to Populate the United States With Elephants

January 17, 2017

Newsletter Item for (90796): 8 Surprising Facts About the Deepest Part of the Ocean

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8 Surprising Facts About the Deepest Part of the Ocean

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More people have been to the moon than have explored the hadal zone, the deepest part of the ocean. Here are 10 facts you might not know about these extraordinary depths.

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Science

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8 Surprising Facts About the Deepest Part of the Ocean

January 17, 2017

Amazon Is Running Some Great Tuesday Deals

Smart Shopping Team

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As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, January 17.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!

January 17, 2017 – 12:26pm

January 17, 2017

12 Fun Facts About ‘Slap Shot’

Mark Mancini

filed under: Lists, Movies, Pop Culture, Sports

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The definitive hockey comedy, Slap Shot had a biting script, a cast filled with professional players, and more F-bombs than some contemporary movie critics could handle.

1. THE CHARLESTOWN CHIEFS WERE MODELED AFTER AN ACTUAL PRO HOCKEY CLUB.

In Slap Shot, fact and fiction are joined at the hip. The movie was inspired by a down-on-its-luck professional hockey club based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1950, the Johnstown Jets represented their community in three different minor leagues before a rough economy forced the team to fold in 1977—the year Slap Shot came out. For two seasons in the 1970s, the Jets roster included a winger named Ned Dowd. His experiences on that squad were of great interest to his sister, Nancy, who happened to be an aspiring screenwriter.

Fascinated by the pro hockey subculture, Nancy penned an irreverent script about a struggling minor league club in the fictional rust-belt city of Charlestown, Pennsylvania. Titled Slap Shot, the screenplay was picked up by Universal Studios, which put George Roy Hill—the Oscar-winning director behind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting and other classic films—in the director’s chair. Johnstown was then selected as the movie’s primary shooting location, although the road game scenes were filmed in an assortment of other cities throughout Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

2. AL PACINO WANTED THE LEAD ROLE.

The main character in Slap Shot is Reggie Dunlop, the Chiefs’ grizzled player-manager. Although Al Pacino expressed a strong interest in the role, Hill chose Paul Newman instead. In Al Pacino, journalist Lawrence Grobel’s extended interview-turned-semi-autobiography of the actor, Pacino cited Slap Shot as a movie he still wishes he had been able to make. “But because George Roy Hill was doing it, I couldn’t do it,” Pacino explained. “I should have made that movie. That was my kind of character—the hockey player. Paul Newman is a great actor, it’s not a matter of that. I read that script and passed it on to George Roy Hill that I wanted to talk to him about it, and all he said was, ‘Can he ice skate?’ That’s all he was interested in, whether I could ice skate or not. That was a certain kind of comment. He didn’t want to talk about anything else. It was like he was saying, ‘What the hell, it could work with anybody.’ The way in which he responded said to me he wasn’t interested.”

For the record: Newman was a gifted athlete and a confident skater. He ended up doing a lot of his own skating in Slap Shot, although professional hockey player Rod Bloomfield served as his on-ice stunt double in many sequences.

3. TAPE RECORDINGS OF AUTHENTIC LOCKER ROOM CONVERSATIONS PUNCHED UP THE SCRIPT.

While Ned was still playing for the Jets, Nancy gave him a tape recorder and asked him to document some of the colorful banter that his teammates tossed around; Dowd’s fellow players didn’t seem to mind. “He carried it everywhere and he just recorded all of this sh*t that went on,” said longtime Jet John Gofton. “He would send the tapes to Nancy, and Nancy in turn would write.” Gofton ended up getting a small role in Slap Shot: He played Nick Brophy, the Hyannisport Presidents’ intoxicated center.

4. ONE EX-HOCKEY PLAYER CLAIMS HE WASN’T CAST BECAUSE THE FILMMAKERS THOUGHT HE MIGHT BEAT UP PAUL NEWMAN.

Bill “Goldie” Goldthorpe was not a man to be trifled with. Over the span of his near-20-year hockey career, this Ontario-born enforcer earned a reputation as one of the sport’s biggest bullies. Instantly recognizable by virtue of his curly blonde hair, he had a mile-wide mean streak. During his rookie season with the Syracuse Blazers, Goldthorpe got into an altercation with the team’s broadcast announcer—a young Bob Costas—and threatened his life with a hacksaw. He once jumped out of a penalty box to bite an opposing player. And during a different game, he accidentally knocked a man unconscious with a plastic water bottle. By the time he retired in 1984, antics like these had gotten Goldthorpe arrested in multiple cities.

Goldthorpe was also the primary inspiration for Slap Shot’s main villain: the dreaded Ogie Oglethorpe of the Syracuse Bulldogs. Onscreen, it was Ned Dowd who brought this character to life. Oglethorpe’s real-life counterpart could’ve also appeared in the film—if his temper hadn’t gotten the better of him. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Goldthorpe discussed the matter. “You want to know why I wasn’t in the movie?” he asked. “They thought I was too wild and I’d beat up Paul Newman.”

During pre-production, Newman and his brother, Art, would regularly attend Johnstown Jets games. Often, they’d invite a player to join the Slap Shot cast afterwards. One night, they took in a contest between the Jets and the Goldthorpe-led Binghamton Dusters. True to form, the scrapper picked a fight with a fan, earning him one charge of assault. Later, in the dressing room, Goldthorpe erupted. “I had a Coke bottle and I was so angry I threw it at [teammate] Paul Stewart because he wouldn’t shut up,” Goldthorpe told The Globe and Mail. “The bottle hit the wall, and at that moment Newman’s brother walked into the room and got Coke all over him. That was it. They thought I was an undesirable.”

5. TWO OF THE THREE HANSON BROTHERS WERE PLAYED BY REAL-LIFE SIBLINGS.

Slap Shot’s de facto mascots, the bespectacled Hanson brothers, were based on a trio of Johnstown Jets teammates—brothers Jack, Steve, and Jeff Carlson. All three were originally slated to co-star in Slap Shot together, but when Jack was unexpectedly called up by the Edmonton Oilers, he left the project. He was then replaced by yet another Jet: Defenseman Dave Hanson, who supplied the fictitious brothers with their now-famous last name.

6. THE “FINER POINTS OF HOCKEY” BIT CONTAINS A FEW INACCURACIES.

Slap Shot opens with an uncomfortable TV interview between Charlestown media personality Jim Carr (Andrew Duncan) and Denis Lemieux (Yvon Barrette), the Chiefs’ French-Canadian goalie. For the benefit of viewers who might not understand “the finer points of hockey,” Carr asks the athlete to demonstrate some penalty-worthy offenses. On the DVD commentary, Dave Hanson points out that Lemieux rather botched the job. As the scene unfolds, Barrette’s character clearly mistakes hooking for slashing, cross-checking for high-sticking, and butt-ending for spearing. “That’s what happens when you get a goaltender trying to [explain the rules],” Hanson quipped.

7. BEHIND-THE-SCENES PRANKS ABOUNDED.

Hanson and the Carlson brothers would lighten things up via all manner of practical jokes. “We pulled more pranks I think than they ever experienced on a movie set before,” Hanson boasted. “I think because we were three young, tough, carefree, crazy kind of guys they just let us run with things.” On one occasion, the trio surprised Newman by filling his portable sauna with popcorn. The rest of the cast pulled plenty of pranks as well and the group’s shenanigans involved everything from flaming shoelaces to hairdryers that spewed baby powder.

8. LOTS OF ACTORS SUSTAINED INJURIES DURING THE SHOOT.

Even pretending to play hockey can leave you all scratched up. In the above scene, Dunlop and an opposing goalie (portrayed by Christopher Murney) get into a brawl inside the Chiefs’ penalty box. While filming the skirmish, both men injured their groin muscles. Such accidents were commonplace, as Jonathon Jackson revealed in his authoritative book, The Making of Slap Shot: Behind the Scenes of the Greatest Hockey Movie Ever Made.

“Yvon Barrette took a puck off an unprotected part of his leg and wound up hospitalized briefly,” Jackson wrote. “Steve Mendillo [who plays Jim Ahern] suffered a serious cut on his cheek, opened up by a deflected puck during a scrimmage … the cut required 30 stitches to close and Mendillo, accompanied by Nancy Dowd, chose to drive to Pittsburgh to have it sewn up.”

9. SLAP SHOT MAY HAVE COST THE JETS A LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP.

As the movie entered its production period in 1976, the Jets were simultaneously making a North American Hockey League (NAHL) playoff push. All the while, the 11 Johnstown players who joined Slap Shot’s cast remained active members of the roster. So when a rival club eliminated the Jets from the NAHL semifinals, some observers blamed their defeat on the film. In fact, Johnstown’s executive director John Mitchell went so far as to accuse his men of prioritizing Hill’s movie over the team.

Allan Nicholls, who plays Johnny Upton in Slap Shot, believes there could be some merit to this argument. “I would think that having a major film being shot in your city … loosely based around your team, [and] being filmed with your players would cause a distraction,” Nicholls said in retrospect. “I think John Mitchell, being the proud owner that he was, would probably use that as an excuse.”

10. THE NATIONAL ANTHEM SCENE INVOLVED AN ACTOR WHO COULD BARELY SKATE.

One of Slap Shot’s most famous lines comes when a referee played by Larry Block starts lecturing Steve Hanson (a.k.a. Steve Carlson) during the singing of America’s national anthem. Irritated by the tirade, Hanson cuts the man off and screams, “I’m listening to the f*cking song!” According to DVD commentary with Dave Hanson and the Carlson brothers, this brief little moment was surprisingly hard to shoot because Block had difficulty skating over to Carlson—who was standing just a few feet behind him. “Every time he’d turn, he’d fall,” Hanson recalled. Finally, Hill decided to cut the scene in a manner that spared Block from actually having to skate on-camera.

11. SLAP SHOT HAD A DETRIMENTAL EFFECT ON NEWMAN’S VOCABULARY.

The hockey flick’s near-constant use of four-letter words shocked many critics. “There is nothing in the history of movies to compare with Slap Shot for consistent low-level obscenity of expression,” wrote TIME’s Richard Schickel. When ABC created a TV-friendly audio track for the picture, a censor counted no less than 176 F-bombs in the original audio. During a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Newman admitted, “Ever since Slap Shot, I’ve been swearing more. You get a hangover from a character like [Reggie Dunlop], and you simply don’t get rid of it. I knew I had a problem when I turned to my daughter one day and said, ‘Please pass the f*ckng salt.’”

Despite this verbal side effect, the film quickly became one of Newman’s favorite projects. “I’m not usually happy with my work,” he once said, “but I loved that movie. It rates very high as something in which I took great personal satisfaction.”

12. A CURRENT NHL COACH WAS AN EXTRA IN THE MOVIE.

Minnesota Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau is a Slap Shot alum; he portrayed a member of the Presidents in the beloved film. Look for him in the above clip (he’s wearing number seven on his jersey). Boudreau spent a grand total of two weeks working on the film, earning $2600 in the process. “I probably spent it in about two days, but [that] was good money,” he said.

January 17, 2017 – 10:00am

January 17, 2017

“What’s Next?” Lin-Manuel Miranda Dropped an Epic ‘West Wing’ Rap

Jennifer M Wood

filed under: music, Pop Culture, tv

Image credit:

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

It’s hardly a secret that politics and history are intriguing subjects to Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Pulitzer Prize-winning visionary behind Hamilton. So it makes sense that he’d be a superfan of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s iconic—and award-winning—political dramedy, which ran for seven seasons beginning back in 1999.

To prove his allegiance to, and intimate knowledge of, the series, Miranda penned an epic rap entitled “What’s Next,” named for President Bartlet’s favorite query, for The West Wing Weekly podcast, which you can see below.

If you want to download the song, you can choose between an “explicit” or “clean” version. (We promise the former is more fun.)

January 17, 2017 – 9:00am

January 17, 2017

5 Questions: A Show about Nothing

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Kara Kovalchik

6 Awesome Things Bill Murray Has Done

The Not-So-Brief History of Animaniacs

10 Things You Might Not Know About Maurice Sendak

56 Delightful Victorian Slang Terms You Should Be Using

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5 Questions: A Show about Nothing

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Tuesday, January 17, 2017 – 01:45

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January 17, 2017

Al Capone’s Hobby: Songwriting

Mark Mancini

filed under: History

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There weren’t many constants in Al Capone’s rocky life, but the crime boss—who was born on this day in Brooklyn in 1899—had a love of music, and it never wavered. He spent countless hours reclined listening to his phonograph, which cycled through an impressive collection of Italian opera records (Aida by Giuseppe Verdi was a personal favorite). Capone also adored—and more or less controlled—Chicago’s rising jazz scene. Musicians would gravitate toward him, hoping to score a gig at his favorite nightclubs.

In 1926, the mobster’s friends kidnapped jazz star Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller. Holding him at gunpoint, they ordered the terrified artist into the back of their limo. But, to Waller’s surprise, he wasn’t harmed. Instead, he was taken to Capone’s 27th birthday party and politely asked to perform. The shindig lasted for three days, and by the end, Waller had received scores of tips and free drinks from grateful attendees.

Five years later, Big Al’s chickens came home to roost. On October 24, 1931, he was sentenced to 11 years in Alcatraz for having committed tax evasion. While behind bars, numerous attempts were made on his life, including an especially nasty shower room episode in which bank robber James “Tex” Lucas stabbed Capone with half a pair of scissors. “It looks like Alcatraz has got me licked,” Capone famously told the warden.

Things started looking up (if only slightly) when Capone joined the Rock Islanders, Alcatraz’s very own inmate-run band, which threw Sunday concerts. Capone’s instrument of choice was a banjo sent by his wife, Mae—though he eventually switched to the mandolin-like mandola.

Between performances, Scarface could often be found strumming away in his cell. And on Saturdays, he’d speak at length with a special guest: Vincent Casey was a future Jesuit priest whose training involved spiritual visits with Alcatraz detainees. Over a two-year span, he and Capone grew quite close. According to Casey’s son, Mike, “My father spoke very highly of him. It was incredible. This criminal murdered many people, but he told me when you got to know the man in the cellblock on Alcatraz, he was very humble and polite and courteous.”

One holiday season, Casey received an unexpected present: a piece of sheet music. “To my good friend Father Vin Casey,” the accompanying note read, “with the best in all the world for a Merry Christmas always for you. Alphonse Capone.” Entitled “Madonna Mia,” the romantic solo had been penned by the ex-gangster himself, presumably about his faithful Mae.

Here’s how it went:

In the quaint Italian garden
While the stars were all aglow
Once I heard a lover singing
To the one that he loved so.

In that quaint Italian garden
‘Neath the starry sky above
Every night, he’d serenade her
With his tender song of love:

“Madonna Mia,
You’re the bloom of the roses,
You’re the charm that reposes,
In the heart of a song.

Madonna Mia,
With your true love to guide me,
Let whatever betide me,
I will never go wrong.

There’s only one moon above,
One golden sun,
There’s only one that I love,
You are the one.

Madonna Mia,
This I vow here before you,
‘Till the end, I’ll adore you.
Madonna Mia.”

Once again, I see that garden
Many years have hurried by
I can see that sweet Madonna
There’s a teardrop in her eye

For her soldier has departed
Left his loved one with a sigh
She said “I will wait forever”
As he sang this last goodbye:
“Madonna Mia…”

January 17, 2017 – 6:30am

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1. THE CHARLESTOWN CHIEFS WERE MODELED AFTER AN ACTUAL PRO HOCKEY CLUB.

2. AL PACINO WANTED THE LEAD ROLE.

3. TAPE RECORDINGS OF AUTHENTIC LOCKER ROOM CONVERSATIONS PUNCHED UP THE SCRIPT.

4. ONE EX-HOCKEY PLAYER CLAIMS HE WASN’T CAST BECAUSE THE FILMMAKERS THOUGHT HE MIGHT BEAT UP PAUL NEWMAN.

5. TWO OF THE THREE HANSON BROTHERS WERE PLAYED BY REAL-LIFE SIBLINGS.

6. THE “FINER POINTS OF HOCKEY” BIT CONTAINS A FEW INACCURACIES.

7. BEHIND-THE-SCENES PRANKS ABOUNDED.

8. LOTS OF ACTORS SUSTAINED INJURIES DURING THE SHOOT.

9. SLAP SHOT MAY HAVE COST THE JETS A LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP.

10. THE NATIONAL ANTHEM SCENE INVOLVED AN ACTOR WHO COULD BARELY SKATE.

11. SLAP SHOT HAD A DETRIMENTAL EFFECT ON NEWMAN’S VOCABULARY.

12. A CURRENT NHL COACH WAS AN EXTRA IN THE MOVIE.