Based on a thin outline written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, Best in Show was an improvised mockumentary about five entrants in the fictitious Mayflower Dog Show. Featuring the likes of Guest, Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Michael McKean, Fred Willard, and Jane Lynch, the movie was the second in the streak of Guest-directed improvisational comedies considered to be the standard of the genre, after Waiting for Guffman (1996) and prior to A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). Here are some facts about Best in Show, once you stop naming nuts.

1. EUGENE LEVY DIDN’T THINK IT COULD BE DONE.

Guest—portrayer of Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap (1984) and Count Tyrone Rugen of The Princess Bride (1987)—and his wife, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, had two dogs, leading the writer/director to make frequent trips to the local dog park. “There were people there with purebred dogs, with mutts and so on, and as I mingled with them I started thinking that this might be an interesting idea to explore in a movie,” Guest said in the film’s official production notes. In mid-1998, Guest called Levy with the idea and was told no. Levy was nervous about the third act, not knowing how to make a dog show funny.

2. GUEST AND COMPANY DID THEIR HOMEWORK.

Along with Levy and producer Karen Murphy, Guest spent months attending and researching dog shows. He attended the annual Westminster Dog Show, on which he based the movie’s fictional Mayflower Dog Show. The principal cast all had classes with their respective dogs and Earlene Luke, an all-breed professional handler. The usual eight-week course of Luke’s was compressed into five intensive days.

3. THEY HAD TO MAKE THEIR OWN DOG SHOW.

No actual dog show would allow them to film on site, so they had to create their own.

4. SHERRI ANN’S ORIGINAL POODLE WAS FIRED.

On account of “misbehaving,” a new poodle was hired to portray Jennifer Coolidge’s beloved pooch. Meg and Hamilton Swan (Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock)  initially had a pointer dog, but this was changed to a Weimaraner. When their characters had a pointer, Posey and Hitchcock decided their characters shopped at J.Crew. When they got the Weimaraner, they shopped at Banana Republic. Posey shopped for beige and tan clothes, “because Weimaraners just look so delusional and lost.”

5. POSEY AND HITCHCOCK PREPARED AT STARBUCKS.

Since their characters met at a Starbucks (two different ones, technically), the actors would hang out there figuring out their characters. Guest allowed Posey and Hitchcock to work with the set designer and go through the Sharper Image and Frontgate catalogs to work on the Swans’ home.

6. HAMILTON WANTED CHANDLER BING’S HAIR.

Hitchcock figured that Hamilton Swan would think he looked like Friends‘ Matthew Perry, so told the hairstylists to make his hair look like Perry’s hair during the then-current season of the hit NBC sitcom.

7. JENNIFER COOLIDGE USED A REAL-LIFE ACQUAINTANCE TO HELP DEVELOP THE CHARACTER OF SHERRI ANN.

When Coolidge first got to Los Angeles, she was employed as a babysitter in Beverly Hills for a Sherri Ann type, described by the actress as a “very feminine, very phony” woman. She considered portraying someone like her old employer as “kind of revenge.”

8. JIM PIDDOCK HAD TO SOUND KNOWLEDGEABLE AS TREVOR BECKWITH.

Guest gave Piddock a book called The American Kennel Club, which he had to read for an hour every night while working on a BBC show he co-created called Too Much Sun. He described the book as “not interesting reading.”

9. FRED WILLARD WAS ONLY THERE FOR TWO DAYS.

Willard and Piddock reviewed all of the footage of the dogs for four hours one day, then shot their hosting sequence from dawn to dusk the next, so Piddock could return to England. Murphy said she never saw Guest laugh as hard as he did when watching Willard perform as Buck Laughlin.

10. BUCK LAUGHLIN WAS BASED ON JOE GARAGIOLA.

Guest sent Willard tapes from past Westminster Dog Shows and asked him to notice the musings of former professional baseball player and broadcaster Joe Garagiola, who had hosted the most prestigious dog show of them all from 1994-2002, despite, as Guest pointed out to Willard, taking “no effort” in learning about dogs. Garagiola himself said he had seen Best in Show in an interview with CNN. “I think he used some lines I wouldn’t use, but he’s a funny guy and, hey, we all have our tastes. I didn’t particularly like the show. I thought the satire went over the top.”

11. IT WAS SHOT ON SUPER 16MM FILM.

Mostly with handheld cameras. It was later blown up to 35mm for theaters.

12. THE NARRATIVE OUTLINE FOR THE FILM WAS ONLY 15 PAGES LONG.

Levy explained the outline and the major improvisation it left room for: “Our outline gives a very solid blueprint to the actors so they know how to get from point A to point B, but how they do it is largely up to them.”

13. 60 HOURS OF FOOTAGE WERE FILMED.

It took Guest eight months to edit it all down to 89 minutes. A lot of the used takes were first takes.

14. MEG’S PILL-TAKING AND POT-SMOKING WAS CUT OUT OF THE FILM.

Because the drug use might have earned them an R or PG-13 rating, it was taken out; Hitchcock claimed he played Hamilton as uptight partially due to his character not liking Meg’s smoking. Also cut was Harlan Pepper (Guest)’s obsession with beach balls.

15. IT CHANGED JANE LYNCH’S LIFE.

The comedic actress met Guest when she did a Frosted Flakes commercial with him. Months later, she was asked to join the Best in Show cast as Christy Cummings. “It opened up a bunch of doors for me,” she told The A.V. Club. “I felt like I fell into a way of working that really suits me. That was another one of those happy accidents that I could’ve never planned for, and it changed my life, really.”

An earlier version of this post ran in 2016.

Meet The Black Mambas, the world’s first all-female anti-poaching unit. According to Slate, its 26 members defy South African gender norms by spending their days patrolling the country’s Balule Nature Reserve—a job that’s traditionally only been held by men.

Balule Nature Reserve is home to many types of animals, but its rhinoceros are particularly vulnerable: Around 80 percent of the world’s wild rhino population lives in South Africa, making the country a magnet for illegal hunters. The animals are prized for their horns, which are sold and used for ceremonial or medicinal purposes in many southeast Asian countries.

The Black Mambas keep an eye out for illegal hunters (and confront them nonviolently), as well as search for trapping devices or rifts in the reserve’s fence. In 2016, filmmaker Dan Sadgrove visited South Africa to document the group in action—and last month, he released a short documentary chronicling their efforts, called The Rhino Guardians.

“The film in the end wasn’t just about the conservation of the rhinos, it was about the Black Mambas breaking away from a patriarchal society and being courageous in the face of fear,” Sadgrove recently told environmental website Mongabay. “[It’s] about them focusing on turning the ship around slowly through educating the youth, hoping they can bring these stories of conservation back into their families and stop poaching from within. I hope these Mambas can inspire other women in their villages to look outside traditional employment.”

You can watch the film below.

[h/t Slate]

Here’s a nice riddle. Three members of a team have been captured. On their way into the prison (guarded by ravenous mutant salamanders), they pass a series of numbered doorways, each with a keypad featuring the numbers one through nine. Each keypad opens with a code…but you have no idea what that code might be. One member will be allowed to try to escape by facing a challenge. Can the remaining two listen in on that challenge, figure out the correct hallway, and figure out the passcode to open it? With some basic math, they can succeed.

Some more details: Zara, the team member participating in the challenge, has a one-way audio transmitter that allows the other two team members to listen. As Zara is led to the challenge through one of the hallways, she is informed that her challenge is to guess the passcode for her hallway based on rules. Zara is told that the passcode will contain three positive whole numbers, in ascending order (like 1, 2, 3—the second number is greater than or equal to the first, the third likewise to the second).

Zara is told that she may ask up for up to three clues about the code—but she can’t say anything else, or else she too will be fed to the mutant salamanders! Through this process of requesting clues and thinking through the problem, Zara implicitly passes information to her compatriots about what the answer is.

Zara asks for the first clue, and is told that the product of the three numbers in the code (x * y * z) is 36. Zara asks for the second clue, and is told that the sum of the numbers in the code (x + y + z) is the same as the number of the hallway she entered. There is a long silence. Then she asks for the third clue, and is told that the largest (greatest) number appears only once in the combination. Shortly after, Zara punches in the code and escapes.

Given that information, can you figure out the passcode? The video below walks through the puzzle and its solution. Here’s the text of the puzzle in its simplest form, transcribed from the video (it helpfully asks you to pause before explaining the solution!):

Find three numbers in ascending order!

1. The product of the three numbers is 36.

2. The sum of the three numbers is the same as Zara’s hallway number, which you don’t know but she does.

3. The largest number must be unique.

4. Zara, a perfect logician, needed clues 1-3 to escape.

Start your figuring!

Then tune in to the video to test your solution:

For a bit more on this puzzle, check out this TED-Ed page, especially the “Dig Deeper” section which contains links to various math resources that you may find useful. (It also includes a link to a puzzle variant that may be interesting after you solve this one.)

How much do you appreciate that special pet in your life? Petcube polled 3771 participants to find out how much affection owners feel towards their non-human friends and how those pets affect participants’ love lives. One finding: 76 percent of the respondents said they found a partner more attractive if they were pet-friendly. Before you change your Tinder picture to one with you and a puppy, check out some more interesting facts about pets and love below.

Images courtesy of Petcube.

On February 10, 1942, Glenn Miller was awarded the first-ever Gold Record, for the song “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” RCA Victor made the record by taking one of Miller’s albums, painting it gold, and framing it. The event celebrated 1,200,000 sales of the single, released on RCA Victor’s Bluebird label in 1941.

“Chattanooga Choo Choo” was a massive hit, and in 1942 Miller was at the height of his career, performing with his orchestra to sold-out houses. It was also the height of World War II. Miller was 38—too old to be drafted—but he volunteered for the Army and was quickly promoted to captain, then major. (Incidentally, he tried the Navy first, but they turned him down.)

Miller’s job in the Army was primarily to provide music to the troops, mainly within the Air Force. In addition to performing, he modernized the Army Band tradition and rewrote a variety of key tunes. After hundreds of performances in the U.S. and abroad, Miller’s single-engine plane was lost in 1944 on a flight from England to Paris. He was 40 years old.

But let’s get back to the good stuff—”Chattanooga Choo Choo” appeared in the 1941 film Sun Valley Serenade, and that performance is a barn-burner. Lasting eight minutes, the “Choo Choo” segment starts with the Glenn Miller Orchestra rehearsing the tune, featuring whistling and singing by Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, and The Modernaires.

Just when you think the song is over, the camera pans to reveal a second, previously unseen set—a train station where Dorothy Dandridge and The Nicholas Brothers appear and perform an exquisite song-and-dance number, while the orchestra continues.

Come for the swing, stay for the tap. (If you just want to see the fantastic dance bit featuring The Nicholas Brothers, I won’t blame you—zip ahead to 4:55.)

For a bit more on Miller and his gold record-winning song, read this Rhapsody in Books blog post. If you’ve never seen The Nicholas Brothers before, watch them perform “the greatest dance number ever filmed.”

(Glenn Miller image, public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Dogs love food. Some love it more than others, and some of those are Labrador retrievers—the bottomless pits of the canine world. Scientists announced today that they’ve found a gene variant in labs that may explain that constant state of “Please Feed Me.” The findings were published last year in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Dog obesity isn’t something we talk about a lot, but there sure is a lot of it. In the U.S. and other wealthy countries, between 34 and 59 percent of dogs are overweight. And yes, fat dogs are cute, but they’re also in danger of some serious health problems. Canine obesity can cause heart disease, strain on a dog’s joints, diabetes, and can even shorten a dog’s lifespan.

Some breeds, like black labs, chocolate labs, and golden retrievers, are more obesity-prone than others. This is likely because, like many of us, they are highly motivated by food. Labs’ human companions learn quickly that a treat is the trick to getting their dog to behave. But those treats add up.

The domesticated dog, Canis familiaris, is a single species with a lot of variations. Great Danes and Chihuahuas are both dogs, but their bloodlines, and therefore their genes, are dramatically different. And all those differences within a single species make dog breeds a great resource for scientists studying genetics.

Researchers recruited nearly 400 adult Labrador participants. Of those dogs, 310 were pets recruited through an email invitation from the UK Kennel Club, and 80 were part of an assistance-dog breeding colony. Some of the dogs were fat, while others were not, but all of them were healthy, with no pre-existing conditions.

First, the dogs were weighed. Then the scientists collected drool samples from 33 of the dogs and sequenced the DNA within. The dogs’ owners then completed a survey about their labs’ eating habits.

As relatives, of course, the labs had a great deal of genetic material in common with each other and with other dog breeds. But they also had one gene variant that stood out: the deletion of 14 base pairs from a gene called pro-opiomelanocortin, or POMC. Previous studies of this POMC variant have shown a relationship with appetite and a feeling of fullness.

Each dog could have one copy of the POMC variant, two copies, or none. The more copies a dog had, the fatter and more food-motivated it was. And about 23 percent of labs are carrying at least one copy of the variant.

“People who live with Labradors often say they are obsessed by food, and that would fit with what we know about this genetic change,” Cambridge University metabolism expert and lead author Eleanor Raffan said in a press statement.

Her co-author, Stephen O’Rahilly of the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Institute of Science, says these findings have implications beyond kibble. “Common genetic variants affecting the POMC gene are associated with human body weight and there are even some rare obese people who lack a very similar part of the POMC gene to the one that is missing in the dogs. So further research in these obese Labradors may not only help the well-being of companion animals but also have important lessons for human health.”

If you’re looking for a classic typewriter with the modern convenience of Internet connectivity, then the Qwerkywriter is the wireless keyboard for you. The elegant, vintage-style keyboard turns any iPad, tablet, or desktop computer into an old-school mechanical typewriter. No Wite-Out required.

Just connect the keyboard via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and your system will read it as if it were any other wireless keyboard. The three-pound keyboard is made from aluminum with “clicky” mechanical key caps and switches. It even features a built-in tablet stand, which mimics a real typewriter’s paper slot, feed rollers, and carriage return. It’s also rechargeable, with up to three months of battery life and standby time. The keyboard is compatible with iOS, Android, Windows 10, and Mac OS X.

The Qwertywriter is now on sale for $279.

[h/t 9 to 5 Mac]

For years, movie critics have been declaring the romantic comedy “dead,” but that hasn’t stopped us from streaming Pretty in Pink again and again. CableTV.com dove into Google Trends across the country to figure out which rom-coms are most popular in each state, at least according to Internet searches. (See a bigger version of the graphic here.)

For most states, the answer is Pretty in Pink. The 1986 John Hughes movie is still a hit more than 30 years later, clinching the top search result in 14 different states. South Carolina and South Dakota are very interested in the surprise-pregnancy humor of 2007’s Knocked Up. But in general, there aren’t a lot of other shared searches between states. People tend to search for movies set in that state—Alabama, unsurprisingly, loves to search for Sweet Home Alabama (2002), while Alaskans search for The Proposal (2009), and Washingtonians search for Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

Since these are just Google Trends, people might not be watching the movies they are searching for. Perhaps Hawaiians just really want to know where 50 First Dates was filmed. But the sheer volume of Pretty in Pink searches can pretty much guarantee that plenty of people do end up watching Andie and Duckie go to the prom.