Thanks to some persistent superstition, black cats are believed to be notoriously difficult for adoption agencies and humane shelters to place in homes. That’s why Seattle Humane in Bellevue, Washington is offering free adoptions for inky-black cats this coming Black Friday.
According to data collected by The Huffington Post in 2013, more than a quarter of respondents felt color was “important or very important” when selecting a new cat, while 13 percent of Americans find it unsettling when a black cat crosses their path. Sounds like a bad combination. But in a separate analysis done by the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), researchers found that black cats made up more than 30 percent of overall adoptions—the Society argued that perpetuating the myth only helps reinforce it.
That hasn’t seemed to slow the promotions down, however. Recently, a Nevada shelter advertised them as “mini-panthers” and successfully rehomed 18 of them.
The Seattle shelter plans on being a free black-kitty dispensary from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, November 25. Adoption fees usually range from $25 to $125.
When the newly-married Joe and Tracey Drelick pulled up in front of a house for sale in Harleysville, Pennsylvania in 1998, she thought it was one of the most attractive properties she had ever seen. It was in their price range, well-cared for, and in their preferred neighborhood.
Joe refused to get out of the car.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Are you kidding?”
Joe shook his head. “The castle,” he said. “The castle won’t fit in the front yard.”
For 15 years, Joe’s father, Bill, had been engineering one of the most elaborate and spectacular displays of holiday cheer of any private residence in the country. In addition to a 17-foot-tall castle, there was a church, a nativity scene, tens of thousands of lights, and over two dozen interactive displays. Press a button and an animated Santa would laugh heartily or the Little Drummer Boy would bounce up and down. Press another and tiny figures in the windows of the miniature buildings would dance.
Bill Drelick’s spectacle had attracted thousands of visitors from every state. But Joe knew his father wouldn’t do it forever. The day would come when the Drelick tradition would fall into his hands. And he would need a large enough yard to tend to it.
The couple kept looking. When they found another house, Tracey walked through it with the realtor while Joe stayed outside, measuring tape in hand. He wanted to be sure the spirit of Christmas could fit into 800 square feet.
The Drelick preoccupation with holiday excess began in 1983, the year Joe, then 13, begged and pleaded with his parents to put up a more elaborate display than the spare decorations they preferred. One night, with Bill and his wife at a party, Joe brought friends over and had them help with the lights. When the Drelicks returned, the exterior of the house looked like a Macy’s department store.
“My wife was very upset,” Bill tells mental_floss. “Hollering at him. ‘I’m gonna kill that kid.’ Typical mother.”
Bill convinced her the lights would be a fitting tribute to her father, who had recently passed. She relented. For years, Joe and his mother added to the display, hanging a series of lights until Bill realized he couldn’t watch television because all of that holiday spirit kept blowing fuses.
“That’s when I decided to get involved,” he says.
A facilities manager by trade, Bill had the electrical and carpentry knowledge needed to match his son’s ambition for increasingly involved decorations. “Around 1990, I made a castle out of plywood,” Joe, now 46, tells mental_floss. “Every time the wind would blow, it would fall over. So my father essentially remade it using metal screening so the wind would go right through it. We had little windows with elves in them. And that was really the beginning.”
The activity in the castle’s windows soon began to attract passersby, who would stop and peer out of their cars. “I thought, let’s give them something to really look at and study,” Bill says. “So each window had an ornament, and when you press a button, it would turn on.”
“I equate that to the invention of sliced bread,” Joe says. “It was huge.”
The push buttons gave the Drelick yard interactivity. Soon, dozens of people were getting out of their cars and approaching the residence, marveling at the growing population of plastic reindeer and animatronic figures. Despite $600 utility bills, Bill kept the lights on for hours at a time, setting a curfew only when he realized that people who came later at night had enjoyed a little too much liquid cheer.
“I would have buses from the senior home pull up,” he says. “Some of them were too old to get out and look, so I’d get on the bus and describe everything to them.”
Bill’s neighbors were generally tolerant of the traffic, apart from one resident who had just moved in and never quite acclimated to the goodwill. He had police come out nightly and complained to the township over noise levels, which put Bill on the radar of local electrical inspectors.
“They wanted me to get licensed or something,” he recalls. “But the push buttons were hooked up to a 5-volt battery. It’s no different than holding a flashlight.” Bill finally got an attorney to write a sternly-worded letter, which ended the back-and-forth.
“Still won’t talk to us,” Bill says.
Three generations of Drelicks—Joe, Jacob, and Bill—prepare the castle for display.
By 1998, Joe was out of the house, married and expecting his first child. His own display was comparatively modest, but he’d spend up to eight weeks helping his father get ready for the unveiling of the Ambler display on Black Friday.
“We just enjoyed each other’s company,” Joe says. “I knew he’d retire at some point. He did it until he was 75 years old.”
Bill’s final year as the lead builder was 2010. “I’m 80 now,” he says. “It just got to the point where it didn’t feel right. I’d be out of breath and have to sit down in a chair and burp every 20 minutes.” His retirement was official after both a quadruple bypass and a spill off a ladder. “That had nothing to do with my health, just my own stupidity,” he says. “I was standing on the very top step of a 12-foot ladder, which you should not do. The sun was high and I was trying to see around it. Down I went, brrrrrappp down the steps. They slowed the fall.”
Bill was fine, but done. In 2011, he and Joe began the laborious process of moving over all of his materials 20 minutes away to Joe’s residence in Harleysville, where Joe constructed a shed in his backyard to help contain it all. You could fit three cars in there, Joe says, except it’s full of gingerbread houses. Displays like the castle—which measures 24 feet across—were designed by Bill with storage in mind. The pieces are like Russian nesting dolls, folding into one another. In Joe’s basement workshop, he and his father spend time repairing displays that were pounded by weather the year prior.
“Olaf from Frozen took a beating,” Joe says.
New additions are frequent. Last year, Joe built a Philadelphia skyline featuring his beloved Phillies and a silhouette of Rocky Balboa. Two years before that, he constructed an immense clock tower that he had fantasized about crafting since he was a kid.
“It’s 19 feet tall and sits on top of the shed,” Joe says. “Kids look up in awe. It’s like Big Ben.”
Last winter, ABC came calling, wanting to film the Drelick display so they could go up against other light fanatics in a primetime contest special. The Drelicks lost. Sort of.
“Someone left a handmade trophy on our porch shortly after the show aired,” Tracey says. “It came with a note saying, ‘You guys were the real winners.’”
Joe has been a facilities manager for 25 years, which gives him a fair amount of vacation time. He uses 10 days of it every year to help meet the demands of preparing the display, which is sometimes enough to keep him up at night.
“I just want to get it done for Black Friday,” he says. “You hope the weather is good. I always worry about Nor’easters.”
He likes to say he’s happy year-round and Christmas is a time when everyone else catches up. Joe will play Santa at least once this year, handing out stuffed animals and coloring books. When his children were younger, they would play elves. “We have that on videotape,” Tracey says, which sounds vaguely threatening. Their oldest, Jordynn, wrote her college application essay about the display. Jacob, 16, is responsible for carrying parts around.
“It’s coming his way if he wants it,” Joe says. “I’m grooming him.”
Last year, the family received more than 12,500 visitors, with an average night attracting around 500 people. There’s no admission charge, though sometimes people will leave cookies or festive sweaters. Many sign the guestbook, which Tracey and Joe read after the 35,000 lights—mostly LEDs—go out at 9:30 p.m. It’s tangible evidence that their work has brought a lot of people a lot of happiness.
“Reading things like, ‘You have an amazing soul’ can get to you,” she says. Men have proposed to girlfriends in her yard. Young couples who visited Bill’s display in the past now show up with their own children in tow. Local police have told her they’ve driven by the house on nights they need cheering up. It always works.
You can follow the Drelicks’ progress as they set up the lights—and find out how you can visit—on their Facebook page.
When WKRP in Cincinnati aired its seventh episode on October 30, 1978, no one—including creator Hugh Wilson—had any idea the freshman series was about to become part of television holiday special history. And they didn’t even have to use any actual turkeys to do it.
“Turkeys Away,” which was credited to the late writer Bill Dial, was a Thanksgiving-themed entry for the sitcom about an Ohio-based radio station and its eccentric staff. For a holiday tie-in, Wilson decided to use an anecdote he had heard from Atlanta radio executive Jerry Blum: that another station had once arranged a publicity stunt in which a number of turkeys were thrown out of either a helicopter or a truck—the exact details are lost to time—and proceeded to horrify the gathered crowd with an unintended turkey massacre.
Wilson thought this would be a fine premise for a show. As he explained to the Classic TV History blog in 2012, the incident morphed into a plot in which station manager Arthur Carlson (Gordon Jump) arranged for an equally misguided stunt, where broadcaster Les Nessman (Richard Sanders) narrates from the street in a style reminiscent of the Hindenburg disaster. Nessman’s growing horror as the birds fall “like sacks of wet cement” to the pavement below was inspired by watching footage of the accident prior to shooting. (In 1997, Sanders was present for a homage to the episode with WKRQ in Indiana humanely dropping toy turkeys from a chopper that could be redeemed for the real thing.)
You’ll have to watch the complete episode above to fully appreciate the payoff—including one of the most often-quoted closing lines in sitcoms—but know that no turkeys were actually harmed.
Before the advent of IMAX, virtual reality, and immersive theme park attractions, Hollywood was trying its best to pry audiences from the warm glow of their televisions and into theaters. The wide, panoramic aspect ratios used in almost all films today were the result of studios hoping to provide a more immersive experience.
That obviously worked. Most of their other gimmicks didn’t. Take a look at some of the more inventive ways theaters and producers have tried to boost ticket sales over the years.
1. LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES
William Castle (R) with two friends. Getty
The P.T. Barnum of movie salesmanship was undoubtedly William Castle, who bounced from one gimmick to another in the 1950s and 1960s to bolster awareness for his series of B-minus horror pictures. For the 1958 film Macabre, Castle told audiences that their theater tickets would be redeemable for a $1000 Lloyds of London life insurance policy in the event they died of fright. Castle also parked hearses outside theaters and hired women to dress as nurses to roam the aisles. In trade ads in Variety, there were only minimal stipulations: “Not valid for people with known heart conditions or for suicide.”
No one appeared to have died during a screening, a fact that Castle may have considered bittersweet: It would have made for unprecedented publicity.
Fun to say, not so much fun to experience. Preceding such gimmicks as Smell-O-Vision and Odorama, AromaRama introduced an additional sensory stimulant to moviegoers via their nostrils. As opposed to scratch-and-sniff cards, the 1959 innovation promised to “suffuse a theater’s air with recognizable smells … on cue, and clear the air of one odor and substitute another every 90 seconds.”
Curiously, AromaRama debuted with a rather dry documentary about China, Behind the Great Wall, at New York’s DeMille Theater. The New York Timesfound the experience to have only “capricious” odors working in harmony with the visuals and labeled the entire thing a stunt. With expenses running up to $7500 to install the pungent scents and a slightly nauseating deodorant into an air system, few have had the experience of smelling a great film.
How high was the movie industry on Sensurround, a soundtrack that could produce bass so deep that theater seats rattled? In 1974, Universal was bestowed with a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for their work in getting the technology up and running. Roughly 17 theaters across the country were equipped with the necessary woofers and amplifiers for Earthquake, a star-studded disaster movie.
That kind of sensory assault came at a price: At Mann’s Chinese Theater, the effect was so profound that it literally shook the plaster from the walls, forcing managers to install a safety net over the audience; auditoriums with massive chandeliers and other light fixtures kept their distance, fearing the vibrations could cause a real-life disaster; the vibrations bled into neighboring screening rooms; projectionists popped aspirin because they were subjected to the thudding soundtracks all day long. Sensurround wasn’t a bad idea—it was just too effective for its own good.
4. DUO-VISION
“See the hunter, see the hunted, both at the same time!” Long before picture-in-picture was ever implemented in televisions, MGM had the novel idea to offer audiences more than one visual feed with 1973’s Wicked, Wicked, a trope-filled serial killer thriller. For its entire running time, viewers were subjected to dual frames, with the figures on the left (the victims) oblivious to what was happening on the right (a murderer lurking in the curtains). Only occasionally did the film use the technique to add depth to the story, as in the case of one frame flashing back to a character’s tumultuous past.
Director Richard Bare allegedly got the idea from driving down a highway and becoming intrigued by the dividing line in the road; MGM had originally intended to require theaters to run two 35mm projectors at once before realizing they could just strike both frames on the same print. While other filmmakers have experimented with the technique, split-screen never caught on.
Living down to his reputation as a carnival producer, William Castle continued to stir up publicity for his films by installing theater equipment that he dubbed Percepto for 1959’s The Tingler starring Vincent Price. In what must have been one of the earliest examples of interactive entertainment, a select number of seats were equipped to deliver a vibration when the spine-hugging “tingler” creature invaded a theater onscreen. (The boxes were actually airplane de-icing machines Castle bought at a military surplus.) The only way to fight the parasitic monster was to scream, which the audience did, no doubt egged on by the strange and uninvited motor humming beneath their buttocks.
At a theater in Philadelphia, a truck driver became so incensed by the gimmick that he rose and angrily tore the seat from the floor. Castle never brought Percepto out for an encore.
6. AUDIENCE VOTING
The CD-ROM gaming craze of the 1990s didn’t go ignored by Hollywood, which began to anticipate that audiences would want to exert more control over their entertainment. What if they could choose whether Rocky won or lost a bout, or whether Dorothy stayed in Oz? To test the waters, a production company called Interfilm released the revenge action-comedy Mr. Payback, written and directed by Bob Gale (Back to the Future), in 1995. In 44 theaters, attendees could choose a course of action onscreen by “voting” with colored joystick buttons installed in their armrests. Laserdisc players running in concert would then broadcast their selection with no noticeable delay.
It was not the revelatory experience they had hoped for. Roger Ebert labeled the 20-minute film “offensive and yokel-brained” for being preoccupied with toilet humor. He did not specify which color button he used to later vote it the year’s worst film.
The real secret to huge box office is to convince audiences to see films more than once. That kind of repeat business helped films like Star Wars, Avatar, and Titanic to record grosses. Paramount attempted to cheat the system a bit with 1985’s Clue, a murder mystery based on the board game. Theaters screening the movie would get one of four endings that would reveal a different killer, with the hope being that fans would then see the movie over and over to catch the alternate finales. (After dropping one ending during production, the studio used a letters system—A, B, C,—in newspaper listings so people could keep track of the remaining three.) Unfortunately, most didn’t want to see it even once: it was pummeled by Rocky IV in its opening weekend, ultimately grossing just $14 million.
8. HYPNOSIS
At the height of the gimmick craze of the late 1950s, Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) made the most audacious attempt to date to please audiences by offering—or threatening—to hypnotize them. Dubbed Hypno-Vista, the conceit consisted of nothing more than a prolonged introduction by hypnotist Emile Franchel before the British-produced movie—about a writer hypnotized to become a killer—begins. Producer Herman Cohen later insisted the introduction was taken out of prints sent for television broadcast because it actually did put viewers under Franchel’s influence. Watch a portion of it above, if you dare.
It’s no surprise that the automatic teller machines that dispense money and accept deposits are crawling with bacteria: Their buttons are mashed by hundreds of people daily. But exactly what kind of bacteria they transfer to your fingers depends on where you’re cashing out.
For a study recently published in the journal mSphere, researchers at New York University swabbed 66 ATMs in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Standard skin microbes from the Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria families were abundant in all the samples, as well as food-sourced bacteria from fish, chicken, and mollusks. But keypads in laundromats and retail stores harbored a higher amount, particularly lactic acid bacteria from milk products.
ATMs located in predominantly white neighborhoods in the city contained the foodborne mold Xeromyces bisporus, which is typically found on spoiled baked goods—suggesting that people toting food around might be eating on the go (and that their snacks weren’t terribly fresh).
If the thought of picking up moldy bread germs seems uninviting, there is hope. ATM manufacturer Diebold is teaming with glassmaker Corning for a line of antibacterial touch screens containing ionic silver. The bad news? That money you take out is still probably going to be filthy with germs. A past study by NYU found that bills can actually grow microbes leading to staph infections, acne, and other ailments.
It’s almost impossible to comprehend the amount of human-dispensed plastic that finds its way into the world’s oceans. In 2010, researchers found 2.3 billion pieces of plastic refuse made their way from the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers to coastal waters—all in a matter of days, and all of it degrading so slowly that it poses a tremendous threat to the health of marine life.
Adidas isn’t claiming they can solve the problem, but they are doing what they can. The company is set to release a new sneaker dubbed the UltraBOOST Uncaged Parley that’s made almost entirely from discarded plastic bottles.
Adidas
The shoe is named after Adidas’s partnership with Parley Ocean Plastic, a plastics recycling initiative that collects ocean waste to be repurposed for apparel. Parley acquired the ocean plastic from the Maldives: Each pair uses the equivalent of 11 plastic bottles.
The initial wave of shoes will be limited to 7000 pairs and are set to retail for $220. Adidas has pledged to make one million pairs in 2017, harvesting 11 million plastic bottles in the process.
Mike Bowling had spent nearly 20 years working on a Ford automobile assembly line in Cincinnati, Ohio, never once thinking about inventing toys. During the 1983 holiday season, he bought his daughter a handcrafted doll that she took everywhere and doted on like it was her baby sister. Soon, inventing a toy—one that could be produced with the same efficiency as the cars rolling out of the factory—was all he could think about.
Well over a decade before Beanie Babies caused pandemonium, Bowling issued tiny, pellet-stuffed creatures of his own dubbed Pound Puppies. With droopy ears and wide, expressive eyes, they came in cardboard “crates” and with adoption papers. Despite a total lack of experience in the highly competitive world of kid products, Bowling took his idea and turned it into a brand that would go on to gross hundreds of millions in sales and makeTIME magazine’s list of the world’s top 100 toys.
Because he knew virtually nothing about toy development, Bowling first contacted an intellectual property lawyer, who told him that registering trademarks and filing for patents would help protect his ideas. He went to one designer to have his Pound Puppies template sketched out and another to fabricate the cardboard box that doubled as a carrier.
Armed with a plan and mock-ups, Bowling was swiftly turned down by 14 different companies. One executive huffed that the Puppies were the ugliest things he’d ever seen.
Bowling’s persistence eventually landed him an audience with Irwin Toy, a distributor based in Canada that was still reeling from a partnership with Atari that had recently gone south; the video game craze, which was about to be reignited by Nintendo, had collapsed in a heap and left vendors with piles of unsold cartridges. Eager for a low-risk opportunity, they licensed the Pound Puppies and released them in Canada in 1984.
They were an immediate hit. As Bowling had predicted, children who wanted to nurture something adorable and parents who weren’t inclined to scoop dog poop found a perfect compromise in his plush animals, which came complete with a mock care guide. Walking and exercise were stressed; caregivers were advised that their chosen puppy had “had all the shots they need to stay healthy.” A bath was also recommended. Fortunately, the animals were machine-washable.
By December 1985, Tonka—like Irwin, a company that had been scorched by an ill-fated partnership with a video game company named Sega—was convinced Bowling was on to something, and brought the plush animals to the U.S. The Puppies were selling out across the country, creating a frenzy that had been rivaled in recent memory only by the Cabbage Patch Kids. In 1985, more than 2.5 million puppies were sold at the inflated retail price of $30. If kids wanted stickers and a personalized dog tag, Tonka would mail them both for an extra $3.50.
Like any respectable ‘80s toy craze, Pound Puppies were also awarded their own animated series, which premiered on ABC in the fall of 1986. At the “Wagga Wagga Pound,” a cast of endearing dogs awaited their turn for adoption. Nancy Cartwright, who would soon after become the voice of Bart Simpson, played Bright Eyes. Another one of the dogs was named Whopper, a strange choice considering the Puppies were usually found as a promotional item at Hardee’s. He was a golden retriever who wore a diaper.
As with any retail phenomenon, toy pundits predicted a short shelf life for the Puppies. And while they did eventually fade, it took several years and more than $300 million in sales before kids moved on to other obsessions. Their expected successor, a line of saggy plush dogs dubbed Wrinkles produced by Canadian toy company Ganz, failed to break through.
In 2011, Bowling sold the Pound Puppies IP to Hasbro for an undisclosed sum. Having long since retired from the Ford assembly line, he continues to brainstorm new toy ideas, including a line of plastic mermaids dubbed Splashlings. While they may catch on, it will be difficult to match the success Bowling had in marketing the idea of an imaginary dog adoption. In 2016, the inventor estimated more than 200 million Pound Puppies have been sold—nearly three times as many as there are actual dogs in the United States.
When sports promoter Leo Seltzer got the idea to organize a roller skating marathon in 1935, he probably didn’t expect that his event would provide the basis for a fledgling sport known as roller derby. Those early contests had skaters circling a track for thousands of miles over a period of a month to test their endurance; the current incarnation is more of a contact sport that involves players protecting—or blocking—a player known as a “jammer” who is trying to skate past the opposing team for points.
A popular sport through the 1950s and 1960s, derby briefly lost some of its luster when a bit of the theatricality usually found in pro wrestling made its way to the tracks to bolster television ratings in the 1970s. While today’s derby still maintains some of that showmanship—players often compete under pseudonyms like H.P. Shovecraft—you’d be wrong to characterize its players as anything less than serious and determined athletes. mental_floss asked several competitors about the game, the hazards of Velcro, and the etiquette of sending get-well cards to opponents with broken bones.
1. THERE’S A GOOD REASON THEY USE ALTER EGOS.
Derby players looking to erase the image of the scantily-clad events of the ‘70s sometimes bemoan the continued use of aliases, but there’s a practical reason for keeping that tradition going. According to Elektra-Q-Tion, a player in Raleigh, North Carolina, pseudonyms can help athletes remain safe from overzealous fans. “It’s kind of like being a C-level celebrity,” she says. “Some players can have stalkers. I have a couple of fans that can be a little aggressive. Using ‘Elektra-Q-Tion’ helps keep a separation there. If they know my real name, they can find out where I live or work.”
2. THEY CAN’T ALWAYS RECOGNIZE OTHER PLAYERS OFF THE TRACK.
For many players, derby is as much a social outlet as a physical one—but meetings outside of the track can sometimes be awkward. Because of the equipment and constant motion, it can be hard to register facial features for later reference. “You don’t really get the opportunity to see them move like a normal person,” Elektra-Q-Tion says. “People can identify me because I’m really tall, but if someone comes up and says we’ve played, I have to do that thing where I hold my hand up over their head [to mimic their helmet] and go, ‘Oh, it’s you.’”
3. THEY SUFFER FROM “DERBY FACE.”
Extreme concentration, core engagement, and other aspects of the game often conspire to make players somewhat less than photogenic. “’Derby face’ is common,” says Barbie O’Havoc, a player from the J-Town Roller Girls in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. “You’re pretty focused on trying not to fall over or get beat up.”
4. THEY CAN KISS THEIR FEET GOODBYE.
Hours of practice in skates usually precedes an unfortunate fate for feet. “Your feet become pretty gross,” Elektra-Q-Tion says. “People sometimes say it’s because skates don’t fit right, but it can happen with custom skates. You get calluses, your toenails get worn and fall off, your bones shift, you get fallen arches. One time a doctor thought I had MRSA. He actually recoiled from my foot. I had a blister on my blister.”
5. THEY HAVE TO CONVINCE DOCTORS THEY’RE NOT BEING ABUSED.
Flying, crashing bodies skating at velocity will become heavily bruised, with players sporting black eyes and large-scale blemishes. If they need to seek medical attention when something is broken, those superficial marks often raise suspicion. “The first question people will ask is, ‘Are you okay?’” says Elektra-Q-Tion. “Once, my husband took me to the emergency room because I had broken my hand. The nurse asked him to leave the room and asked me, ‘Did he do this to you?’”
6. THEIR GEAR SMELLS PRETTY BAD.
“Derby stink is very much real,” says Barbie O’Havoc. “It comes down to body chemistry. Some players don’t have a problem. Others can wash their gear all the time and it still stinks. After I sold my car that I used to haul my gear in for years, my sister told me it smelled awful. The entire car.”
7. NO PLAYER WEARS A “1” JERSEY—AND FOR GOOD REASON.
Attend a derby bout and it’s unlikely you’ll see any player sporting a “1” on their jersey. “I’ve always heard you shouldn’t use the number 1,” says Cyan Eyed, a player for Gem City Roller Derby in Ohio. “But not everyone is aware of the 1937 bus crash.” On March 24 of that year, a bus carrying 14 skaters and 9 support staff was driving from St. Louis to Cincinnati when it crashed, killing 21 passengers. Joe Kleats, a veteran player who was riding on the bus, wore the number; when he and the others died, the sport retired it in memory of the tragedy.
8. THEY HAVE SKATE MECHANICS.
The pounding endured by skates, wheels, and bearings often requires attention from someone versed in repair and maintenance work. Enter the skate mechanic, typically an official or significant other of a player who doubles as the team’s wheel-person. “Players are afraid of taking their expensive skates apart,” Elektra-Q-Tion says. But she’d prefer that skaters know how to care for their own wheels. “I don’t like the idea of someone not understanding how they work. What happens if the ref retires?”
9. VELCRO IS THEIR ENEMY.
Much of a derby player’s gear, such as knee and elbow pads, is held in place with Velcro, that useful-but-dangerous adhesion system. “The problem with Velcro is the close contact,” Elektra-Q-Tion says. “If people don’t have it on correctly or part of it is peeling off, they’ll scrape you with it and you won’t realize it until you’re in the shower later and the water hits it, which is a miserable feeling.”
10. THEY TRY TO BE POLITE EVEN AFTER SMASHING SOMEONE.
Injuries are expected in derby, but if you unwittingly broke someone’s nose, it’s considered polite track manners to check up on them later. “I remember seeing a nasty injury and our league sent her flowers and a card,” Barbie O’Havoc says.
11. THEY CAN WATCH OTHER TEAMS PRACTICE.
Good luck allowing members of an NFL team to drop in on an opposing team’s practice. Derby, which prides itself on a communal atmosphere, doesn’t mind opening its doors for visiting rivals. “If I go to, say, San Diego and ask to practice with the local team there, most of the time they would say yes,” Elektra-Q-Tion says.
12. A PENNY CAN SPELL DOOM.
It’s not often something as tiny as a coin can bring a sporting event to a complete halt, but that’s what happens when you’re dependent on skate mobility. Barbie O’Havoc says that although tracks are swept and cleaned before bouts, the odd foreign object can still pop up, causing wheels (and feet) to go flying. “There’s a washer on the toe stop that can fall off,” she says. “And I’ve seen people lose their wedding rings.” Pebbles and other tiny hazards will prompt a time-out until they’re found and disposed of.
13. THEY DISLIKE HOLLYWOOD.
Whenever television crime dramas depict derby, it’s typically presented as a bunch of “bad girls” with sour attitudes and a thirst for blood on the track. “That seems to be very attractive to movie and television people,” Elektra-Q-Tion says. “Usually someone gets murdered.” 2009’s Whip It, a comedy-drama starring Ellen Page and directed by Drew Barrymore, didn’t fare much better in terms of believability—but players will give that one a pass. “Whip It was great press for us. That’s when we had most of our new audience and skaters come in.”
Summer 1978: Over a year after its debut, Star Wars wasn’t through smashing box office records. Ushered back into theaters for a return engagement that July, it made $10 million in just three days. George Lucas had welded mythological structure, pioneering special effects, and a spectacular production design to create a cinematic phenomenon that redefined how studios selected and marketed big-budget spectacles. Movies would never be the same again.
Neither would television. That same month, filming began on The Star Wars Holiday Special, a 97-minute musical-variety show that featured Bea Arthur serenading a giant rat and Chewbacca’s father, Itchy, being seduced by a virtual reality image of Diahann Carroll. Originally, the show was intended to keep the property viable and licensed merchandise moving off shelves until the inevitable sequel. But with Lucas’s focus on The Empire Strikes Back and producers shrinking his galaxy for a television budget, the Holiday Special suffered. So did viewers.
mental_floss spoke with many of the principal production team members to find out exactly how Lucas’s original intentions—a sentimental look at Chewbacca’s family during a galactic holiday celebration—turned to the Dark Side.
According to onetime Lucasfilm marketing director Charles Lippincott, CBS approached Star Wars distributor 20th Century Fox in 1978 to propose a television special. Fox had seen a boost in box office returns after several aliens from the Cantina scene appeared on Donny and Marie Osmond’s variety show; CBS figured the success of the film would translate into a ratings win; Lucasfilm and Lippincott though it would be a good vehicle to push toys.
With all parties motivated to move forward, two writers—Leonard “Lenny” Ripps and Pat Proft—were brought on to write a script based on an original story by Lucas.
Leonard Ripps (Co-Writer): Pat and I spent the entire day with Lucas. He took out a legal pad and asked how many minutes were in a TV special. He wrote down numbers from one to 90. He was very methodical about it. He had at least a dozen stories he had already written, so we were just helping to fill in a world he knew everything about. His idea was basically for a Wookiee Rosh Hashanah. A furry Earth Day.
Pat Proft (Co-Writer): Wookiees played a big part of it. Stormtroopers were harassing them. I don’t have the script. It sure as [hell] wasn’t what it ended up being.
Ripps: Pat and I had written for mimes Shields and Yarnell, which is why we were brought on. We had written lots of non-verbal stuff. The challenge was how to get things across. Wookiees aren’t articulate. Even in silent movies, you had subtitles. Whatever we wrote, it wasn’t tongue-in-cheek.
Proft and Ripps delivered their script several weeks after the meeting. It focused on a galactic holiday celebrated by all species, with the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk selected to host the festivities that year. Chewbacca’s family—father Itchy, wife Malla, and son Lumpy—were introduced, with the writers leaving gaps for executive producers Dwight Hemion and Gary Smith to insert celebrity guest stars and musical acts. For the latter, Hemion and Smith turned to producers Ken and Mitzie Welch to arrange original songs and enlist talent.
Elle Puritz (Assistant to the Producer): I was working for the Welches at the time. I remember hearing, “OK, we’re going to do a Star Wars holiday special,” and everyone laughing about it. I thought it was a terrible idea.
Miki Herman (Lucasfilm Consultant): Lippincott requested I be involved with the special. I did a lot of ancillary projects. I knew all the props, all the actors. I hired Stan Winston to create the Wookiee family. [Sound effects artist] Ben Burtt and I were there to basically provide authenticity, to make sure everything was kept in context.
George Lucas (via Empire, 2009): Fox said, “You can promote the film by doing the TV special.” So I kind of got talked into doing the special.
Ripps: Lucas told us Han Solo was married to a Wookiee but that we couldn’t mention that because it would be controversial.
Herman: I do remember Gary Smith saying they wanted to have Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ann-Margret involved, high-caliber people that were popular.
Puritz: Ken and Mitzie called Bea Arthur. They wrote a song with her in mind.
Ripps: It never occurred to us to get Bea Arthur. We spent just that one day with Lucas, then got put in touch with [director] David Acomba. Our notion was Acomba was very much Lucas’s guy, so he spoke for Lucas.
Acomba was a Canadian filmmaker who had coincidentally gone to the University of Southern California around the same time as Lucas, though the two never crossed paths at the time. Lippincott knew him, however, and hired him to direct the special in keeping with Lucas’s spirit of finding talent outside the Hollywood system.
Larry Heider (Camera Operator): David came out of a rock ‘n’ roll world, a documentary world. Smith and Hemion had three different projects going on at the same time, so I think they felt they wouldn’t have time to direct just this one thing.
Puritz: David wasn’t used to shooting television. Using five cameras, everything shooting at the same time. He was very indignant about his own lack of knowledge, and he did not get along with the Welches.
Ripps: I got the impression it was not what he wanted, and had turned into something he didn’t want to do. I don’t want to say he was overwhelmed, but it would’ve been overwhelming for anyone.
With a budget of roughly $1 million—the 1977 film cost $11 million—The Star Wars Holiday Special began filming in Burbank, California in the summer of 1978 with a script that had been heavily revised by variety show veterans Bruce Vilanch, Rod Warren, and Mitzie Welch to reflect the Smith-Hemion style of bombastic musical numbers and kitsch. Chewbacca was now trying to race home in time for “Life Day,” with his family watching interstellar musical interludes and comedic sketches—like a four-armed Julia Child parody—on a video screen.
Ripps: Lucas wanted a show about the holiday. Vilanch and everyone, they were wonderful writers, but they were Carol Burnett writers. In the litany of George’s work, there was never kitsch. Star Wars was always very sincere about Star Wars.
Herman: Personally, I was not a fan of Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur, or Art Carney. That wasn’t my generation. But they had relationships with Dwight Hemion and the Welches.
Heider: Bea Arthur was known for being a little cold and demanding. When she was asked to do something a second time, she wanted someone to explain what was wrong. When the script wasn’t making sense for her to say something, she had a hard time translating all of that. She was pretty much [her television character] Maude.
Bea Arthur [via The Portland Mercury, 2005]: I didn’t know what that was about at all. I was asked to be in it by the composer of that song I sang—”Goodnight, But Not Goodbye.” It was a wonderful time, but I had no idea it was even a part of the whole Star Wars thing … I just remember singing to a bunch of people with funny heads.
After shooting the Cantina scene, it became apparent that Acomba was an ill fit for the constraints of a television schedule.
Heider: David was used to a single camera—run and gun, keep it moving, a real rock ‘n’ roll pace. This show was anything but. There were huge sets, make-up, costumes. It was slow-paced, and it got to him.
Ripps: I didn’t go down for the filming, but Pat went down. He has a story.
Proft: Took my kid for the Cantina scene. All the characters from the bar were there. However, they forgot [to pump] oxygen into the masks. Characters were fainting left and right.
Heider: Characters would walk around onstage with just their shirts on to stay cool. We were shooting in a very warm part of the year in Los Angeles, and it was difficult, especially with the Wookiees. They took a lot more breaks than they had calculated.
Ripps: I knew how frustrated David was. It wasn’t his vision. He phoned me up and said, “I’m not going to be working on this anymore.”
Acomba left after only shooting a handful of scenes. A frantic Smith phoned Steve Binder, a director with extensive experience in television—he had overseen the famous Elvis ’68 Comeback Special—and told him he needed someone to report to the set the following Monday morning.
Steve Binder (Director): I was between projects and got a call from Gary basically saying they had completely shut down in Burbank and there was talk of shutting it down for good. The first thing I realized was, they had built this phenomenal Chewbacca home on a huge film stage, but it was a 360-degree set. There was no fourth wall to remove to bring multiple cameras into the home. I would think it would be impossible for a crew to even get into the set to shoot anything.
Puritz: I think David was part of that plan.
Heider: I remember when that happened. I don’t think it was David’s idea. It was the way it was conceived by producers on how to make this look really cool, but it didn’t work. You have no lighting control. Steve got it. He’s really a pro. There’s no ego.
Binder: They FedExed me the script. The first thing I looked at was, the first 10 minutes was done with basically no dialogue from the actors. It was strictly Chewbacca sounds. The sound effects people would use bear sounds for the voicing. It concerned me, but there was no time to start changing the script.
Ripps: We had concerns about that. But George said, “This is the story I want to tell.”
Binder: The Chewbacca family could only be in the costumes for 45 minutes. Then they’d have the heads taken off, and be given oxygen. It slowed everything down. The suits were so physically cumbersome and heavy. The actress playing Lumpy [Patty Maloney], when she came in, I don’t think she was more than 80 or 90 pounds and she a lost tremendous amount of weight while filming.
In addition to guest stars Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman, and Art Carney, Lucasfilm approached most of the principals from the feature for cameo appearances. Feeling indebted to Lucas, they agreed to participate—reluctantly.
Puritz: They had made this big movie, and now they’re doing a TV special. Carrie Fisher did not want to be there.
Herman: They didn’t love doing TV. At that time, movie actors didn’t do TV. There was a stigma against it.
Heider: Harrison Ford was not happy to be there at all. Carrie Fisher, I think part of her deal was she got to sing a song, and that was her draw to it. Because Lucas was involved, and if another movie is coming out in two years, there’s pressure to keep going. So they showed up, on time. Mostly.
Binder: My recall with the whole cast was that there was a little mumbling going on with a few of the actors who felt they should’ve been compensated more for the movie. I think Lucas did do that after the special, giving them small percentages.
Heider: We were doing a scene where Ford was sitting in the Millennium Falcon and he just wanted to get his lines done and he made that very clear. “Can we just do this? How long is this going to take?”
Harrison Ford (via press tour, 2011): It was in my contract. There was no known way to get out of it.
Heider: Mark Hamill was a good guy. He just had that normal-guy-trying-to-work vibe.
Mark Hamill (via Reddit, 2014): I thought it was a mistake from the beginning. It was just unlike anything else in the Star Wars universe. And I initially said that I didn’t want to do it, but George said it would help keep Star Wars in the consciousness and I wanted to be a team player, so I did it. And I also said that I didn’t think Luke should sing, so they cut that number.
Herman: I worked with the actors on a lot of the ancillary stuff. Honestly, they were just all so dopey.
Before Acomba departed the production, he and Lucas reached out to a Canadian animation company, Nelvana, to prepare a nine-minute cartoon that would formally introduce one of the characters from The Empire Strikes Back: Boba Fett. The bounty hunter originated from a design for an unused Stormtrooper by production designers Joe Johnston and Ralph McQuarrie; he was intended to make public appearances in the interim between films, initially popping up at the San Anselmo County Fair parade in September of 1978.
Michael Hirsh (Nelvana Co-Founder): David knew me personally. Lucas watched a special of ours, A Cosmic Christmas, that was just coming on air at the time. He asked people on his crew, including David, who we were. David said, “Oh, I know these guys.” We were not a well-known company at time.
Clive Smith (Nelvana Co-Founder, Animation Director): Lucas supplied a script that he wrote. I think I probably had about two weeks to storyboard, then start character designs.
Hirsh: Frankly, I think the cartoon was more along the lines of what Lucas wanted to do in the first place—if he did the special, there was a possibility Fox and CBS would fund Star Wars cartoons. The variety show itself wasn’t something he was particularly interested in.
Smith: We ended up shooting slides of each storyboard frame. There must’ve been 300 to 400 frames. I loaded them up, put myself on a plane, and went down to San Francisco and did a presentation with a slide projector. I was in this room of people who were absolutely silent. Things that were funny, not a whimper or murmur. But at the end, George clapped.
Hirsh: CBS wanted him to use one of the L.A. studios, like Hanna-Barbera, who did most of the Saturday morning cartoons. But Lucas, from the beginning of his career, had a thing for independent companies, people who weren’t in L.A. The style of animation was modeled after [French artist] Jean “Moebius” Geraud, at Lucas’s request.
Smith: A lot of the designs and characters were inspired by Moebius, who did a lot of work for Heavy Metal magazine. We thought it was a good direction to point ourselves in. At the time, there was no Star Wars animation to follow.
Hirsh: There was a big deal made about the introduction of Boba Fett.
Smith: We needed to design Boba Fett, and all we had was some black and white footage of a costumed actor who had been photographed in someone’s backyard moving around. We took what was there and turned it into a graphic idea.
Hirsh: I directed the voice sessions. Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) had the most dialogue, and the other actors came in for short sessions. Harrison Ford and the other performers generally came in and nailed lines, whereas Mark Hamill was anxious to try different things. [Hamill would go on to a successful career in voiceover work.]
Herman: Michael got upset when I told him Princess Leia wore a belt. It was part of her costume, and they didn’t have it. Redoing it was going to cost them a lot of money.
Hirsh: That’s possible. Lucas was happy with how it turned out. After the special, we stayed in touch and we were developing a project with Lucasfilm and the Bee Gees. Nothing ever came of it.
Nelvana had a relatively smooth journey to the finish line compared to the live-action production team. By the time Binder was prepared to shoot the climactic “Life Day” celebration with the entire cast and a group of robed Wookiees, there was virtually no money in the budget left for a large-scale spectacle.
Binder: No one ever mentioned there was no set for the closing. I was told by the art director we had no money for it in the budget. So I said, “No problem, just go out and buy every candle you can find in the store.” We filled an empty stage with candles. I had experimented with this on another special, maybe a Victor Borge ice skating show. Candles in a dark environment give off an incredibly creative effect.
Herman: The sad truth is, everyone was so overwhelmed. Ken and Mitzie knew that last scene was a disaster. They came to me saying, “Help us.” But George was out of the picture. It was a runaway production.
Ripps: Acomba and Lucas had walked away from it. They weren’t there to fight for anything.
Lucas: It just kept getting reworked and reworked, moving away into this bizarre land. They were trying to make one kind of thing and I was trying to make another, and it ended up being a weird hybrid between the two.
Heider: They were spending a lot of money for stage rental, lighting, a TV truck, and everyone was putting in really long hours. It translated into a big below-line budget problem.
Herman: Honestly, a set wasn’t going to save that scene. All the Wookiees were wearing [consumer licensee] Don Post masks.
Premiering November 17, 1978, The Star Wars Holiday Special was seen by 13 million viewers, a significant but not overly impressive audience for the three-network television landscape of the era. It came in second to The Love Boat on ABC for its first hour, with a marked drop-off following the conclusion of the cartoon at the halfway point. Gurgling, apron-clad Wookiees, low-budget Imperial threats—they do nothing more sinister than trash Lumpy’s room—and an appearance by Jefferson Starship proved too bizarre for viewers.
Binder: I felt you have to open with a bang, really grab the audience, make it worth their time to sit and watch. The opening scene going on as long as it did was a killer for the TV audience.
Ripps: I had no idea what had happened to it. When it was broadcast, I had a party at my house and ordered catering. After the first commercial, I turned it off and said, “Let’s eat.”
Binder: The day I finished shooting, I was on to other projects. It’s the only show I never edited or supervised the editing of. The Welches had the whole weight of the unedited special in their hands, and I questioned how much experience they had at that given they were songwriters.
Heider: Somebody made choices in terms of how long each scene would be on TV, and it’s really painful.
Herman: I remember I was moving to Marin County the next day. I was staying at a friend’s house, and their son was a Star Wars fan. I had given him all the toys. Watching him watch it, he was really bored.
Binder: What I realized was, the public was not told this wasn’t going to be Star Wars. It was not the second movie. It was going to be a TV show to sell toys to kids. That was the real purpose of the show. It had nowhere near the budget of a feature film. [Lucasfilm and Kenner produced prototype action figures of Chewbacca’s family; they were never released.]
Heider: I didn’t watch it when it was on, but I do have a copy I bought several years ago on eBay. It’s not a great copy, but it’s enough to show how it was cut together. I haven’t been able to sit through whole thing at one time.
Herman: George hated it, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
Binder: I never met Lucas, never got a phone call, anything. Which was disappointing to me. It was his show, he developed it. To totally walk away from it and critique it negatively was, I felt, not cool.
Ripps: One of the reasons I took the job was I thought it would be an annuity. Every year, I’d get a check for Star Wars.
Hirsh: I did watch it. I was happy with our contribution. It was a phenomenal opportunity for our little company. We got to work on the Droids and Ewoks animated shows later on.
Ripps: I still go out to dinners on the stories. Once, at a dinner party, one of the waiters had Star Wars tattoos up and down both of his arms. When he found out I wrote the special, we got better service than anyone in the restaurant.
Lucas: I’m sort of amused by it, because it is so bizarre. It’s definitely avant garde television. It’s definitely bad enough to be a classic.
Herman: The interesting thing is, the day after the special aired was the day of the Jonestown Massacre. It was just a bad time for everyone.
Dwight Hemion (via NPR, 2002): It was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever done.
Art authentication can be a tricky business. Seasoned experts can be fooled by forgeries or miss important clues that could cement the authorship of a particular piece. At stake: reputations of museums and millions of dollars.
The art world’s latest controversy arrived Tuesday, when two prominent scholars of Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh declared that a 65-page sketchbook passed down as a family heirloom in France was once owned by the uni-eared painter.
Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, however, fired back with an open letter claiming the sketchbook was not the genuine article. Using their library of more than 500 van Gogh drawings as a reference, museum staffers wrote that the illustrations aren’t indicative of the artist’s development circa 1888 and that the brown ink used was inconsistent with his preference of black or purple ink.
It’s believed that van Gogh gifted the proprietors of a hotel in Arles, France with the sketchbook after he had been remanded to a mental institution after slicing off his ear; van Gogh had asked his doctor, Felix Rey, to pass it along to the Ginouxs, who welcomed the artist as their guest and had given him a ledger in which to draw. The museum argues that Rey had left Arles by then and had never come to visit him.
One of the scholars endorsing the work as genuine, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, is a highly-respected van Gogh expert who has just issued a book titled Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, featuring commentary and reproductions of select illustrations. Welsh-Ovcharov spent three years researching the sketches after discovering them in 2013. The book, she said, was in the Ginoux family for decades before it came into the possession of a neighbor, who was unaware of its significance. The neighbor’s daughter thought little of it until a friend suggested she show it to an art historian.
Welsh-Ovcharov maintains that an entry in the hotel’s 1890 date book supports her version of events. In it, an employee of the Ginouxs wrote: “Monsieur Doctor Rey left for M. and Mme. Ginoux from the painter Van Goghe [sic] some empty olive boxes and a bundle of checked towels as well as a large book of drawings and apologizes for the delay.”
