Blue Man Group is one of those rare acts that lives up to the hype. The first time I saw them in Las Vegas, I was surprised that the act included plenty of humor, impressive messiness, feats of dexterity, and actually good music. That last one was the biggest news for me, since I had never actually thought of Blue Man Group as a band…but of course they are. They’ve released a bunch of albums. They also happen to be into performance art.

Blue Man Group dropped by NPR recently for a Tiny Desk Concert. Using a variety of instruments, both custom-made and off-the-shelf, the concert is a delight. NPR’s Bob Boilen writes:

Every band that plays the Tiny Desk must work within the restrictions of the space. So instead of installing their entire signature PVC instrument, what ended up behind the desk was about a third of it. On the right side of the desk, their Shred Mill makes its internet debut: It’s a drum machine triggered by magnets that changes rhythm depending where they are placed on the home-made variable-speed conveyor belt. They also invented something called a Spinulum, whose rhythmic tempo is controlled by rotating a wheel that plucks steel guitar strings. …

Read the rest for more details on the instruments involved, including a nice writeup of the Chapman Stick. The Stick is usually the weirdest instrument onstage when it appears, but for Blue Man Group it’s probably the most conventional. Enjoy:

We’re all familiar with the most dramatic metamorphosizers of the animal kingdom: butterflies. They go from a tiny egg to an awkward wiggling caterpillar to mysterious pupa to a delicate, colorful winged creature. However, there are many other animals besides butterflies that undergo dramatic transformations from youth to adult. Here are 15 of the most epic metamorphoses seen in nature.

1. LADYBUGS (COCCINELLIDAE)

What’s black, white, and red all over? Mandy ladybugs are—but only in their final stage of life. Turns out these little beetles undergo one of the most epic metamorphoses in the animal kingdom: For most species, after adult female ladybugs mate, they lay a clutch of tiny yellow eggs right in the middle an aphid colony, usually on the underside of a leaf. Eggs hatch in a week, revealing spiky black worm-like larvae that readily gobble up the aphids around them. When a larva is fully grown, it changes into a blob-like yellow pupa. Finally, the black, white and red (or sometimes yellow or orange) insect appears.

2. MAYFLY (EPHEMEROPTERA)

Mayflies, the less-elegant cousins of dragonflies and damselflies, have one of the most unique metamorphoses of all insects. Most insects’ life stages move from egg to nymph to pupa to adult, but mayflies do not have a pupa stage. Instead, it is the only type of insect to undergo a subimago stage, meaning it’s almost an adult in the sense it grows wings … but cannot fly long distances and isn’t yet sexually mature. The mayfly’s final life stage, the fully flighted and sexually mature imago or adult, is extremely short, lasting just a few hours to a few days.

3. PEACOCK SPIDER (MARATUS)

Peacock spiders are tiny, venomous, and beautiful (especially the colorfully rumped males) arthopods native to Australia. Male peacock spiders are so beautiful, in fact, it’s hard to believe that, like all spiders, they go through some not-so-glamorous life stages: egg, egg sac, spiderling, adult. When male peacock spiders reach sexual maturity they try to seduce less-colorful female peacock spiders by performing a showy dance.

4. NUDIBRANCH (NUDIBRANCHIA)

While adult nudibranchs are essentially colorful and ornate blobs of the sea, they don’t start out that way. In fact, after hatching, nudibranch larvae are tiny, plain-looking and have small snail-like shells. Over the course of two months they morph from this plain stage into adults, along the way getting larger and more colorful, losing their shells, and growing gills and feelers, called rhinophores.

5. CROWN OF THORNS STARFISH (ACANTHASTER PLANCI)

Another sea creature that looks completely different as an adult than a juvenile is the crown of thorns starfish. When looking at an adult, it’s easy to see where this creature gets its name: It’s completely covered with dangerous-looking sharp spikes. But after hatching, it looks like not much more than a translucent, floating blob. Over time it grows arms, and later, spikes, then fixes itself to rocks where it feeds on coral.

6. IMMORTAL JELLYFISH (TURRITOPSIS DOHRNII)

The secret to a long and prosperous life, it turns out, is to be a jellyfish. The aptly named immortal jellyfish begins life as an egg, like all other jellies. It then enters the free-swimming larva stage, then settles down into a polyp on the ocean floor, and then finally morphs into a sexually mature jellyfish. Unlike most other jellies, an immortal jellyfish is capable of reverting back into the polyp stage at any time it faces environmental stress, attacks by predators, sickness or old age—essentially being reborn as a young jelly.

7. FLATFISH (PLEURONECTIFORMES)

Think of Pablo Picasso’s most asymmetrically painted human face, stick it onto a fish, and there you have a flatfish. These fish, which include flounder and sole among other species, begin life inside tiny eggs that float up to the surface of the sea. For a few weeks, a larval flatfish swims upright and looks just like a typical baby fish. But after a few weeks its skull bones shift and one eye migrates to the opposite side of its face, forcing the now-lopsided fish to swim sideways. Eventually, when its facial features all move to one side of its face, it changes color and moves to live on the bottom of the sea, its blind side facing down.

8. EASTERN HELLBENDER (CRYPTOBRANCHUS ALLEGANIENSIS)

Also called the snot otter and devil dog, the eastern hellbender is a giant type of salamander not exactly known for being beautiful in its adult form. Slippery, wrinkly and the color of mud, they’re right at home at the bottom of rivers, where they can live up to 50 years. Like all salamanders, hellbenders begin as eggs. From their eggs they hatch, coming into the world small and adorable. As time passes, they grow larger and less cute.

9. CHALAZODES BUBBLE NEST FROG (RAORCHESTES CHALAZODES)

Don’t let this lime-green frog’s bright and cheery looks fool you: It lives in only one tiny area in India and is critically endangered, threatened most by an ever-shrinking habitat. These creatures were once believed to lay eggs that developed into tadpoles on pond surfaces like many other frogs. But in 2014, it was discovered that they had a different reproductive strategy: The frogs crawl into a living bamboo shoot that has a hole in it (probably created by insects or rodents) and lay their eggs there. The creatures skip the tadpole stage entirely, hatching as froglets. Because they don’t have a tadpole stage, the species doesn’t require water to lay its eggs.

10. MIMIC POISON DART FROG (RANITOMEYA IMITATOR)

Covered in bright hues spotted, striped, banded, and blotched with contrasting black, the poison dart frog is one of the most striking-looking of all amphibians. Yet they don’t start out that way. After hatching, young mimic poison dart frogs are looked after by their mother, who lays a clutch of unfertilized feeder eggs to provide them with some nourishment (and, at least for some species of poison frog, toxicity). Tadpoles are brown and black, growing more colorful with age until they reach their fantastic adult form.

11. KEA (NESTOR NOTABILIS)

The kea is a large, vulnerable species of parrot native to New Zealand, with green and blue feathers on its back and brown and orange feathers on its underside. While adult keas appear majestic and beautiful, they don’t start out that way. Baby keas retain an alien-like, sparse white hairdo for several months after hatching. Keas are considered a very intelligent species, observed working together and using tools.

12. LAYSAN ALBATROSS (PHOEBASTRIA IMMUTABILIS)

Laysan albatrosses are another species of bird where the babies are very little like their parents. But unlike baby keas, baby Laysan albatrosses hatch as adorable fuzzy gray blobs. As they grow older, the babies slowly grow adult feathers and lose their baby feathers. This leaves them with unique hairdos that sometimes make them look like human celebrities. Ringo Starr, anyone?

13. FLAMINGO (PHOENICOPTERUS)

Unlike keas and albatrosses, baby flamingoes look a lot like their parents, except they’re missing something: color. Flamingo chicks hatch with gray and/or white feathers, over time taking on the same pink hue as their parents, which becomes more intense over time. Why? Well, you are what you eat, and flamingoes eat shrimp and algae rich in carotenoids, the same pigments that cause shrimp to turn pink when cooked.

14. VIRGINIA OPOSSUM (DIDELPHIS VIRGINIANA)

Virginia opossums are scavengers, eating carrion and rotting vegetation, and that helps keep the environment clean. Virginia opossums are native to North America, where they’re the continent’s only living marsupials. This opossums have pouches for carrying their babies, just like kangaroos. Also like kangaroos they give birth to large numbers of navy-bean size babies, which grow inside their pouches. When they’re born, they look more like pink jellybeans than animals. Over the course of three to five months, they mature, growing fur, sharp teeth and long tails.

15. GIANT PANDA (AILUROPODA MELANOLEUCA)

Giant pandas are called giant pandas for a reason: They’re enormous in size, weighing up to 250 pounds. But these bamboo-munching bears don’t start out that way. When born, giant panda cubs weigh just 90 to 130 grams (about as much as a small apple). Besides being way smaller in size, baby pandas are also quite sparsely furred—and so they look very different than what they will as fuzzy black-and-white adults.

As hot summer temperatures give way to cooler air and falling leaves, people around the world celebrate the arrival of fall. Thinking about supplementing your apple picking- and pumpkin carving-routine? Here are 15 international fall traditions you’ll want to adopt.

1. CELEBRATE YOUR ANCESTORS …

During Chuseok, a harvest festival, Koreans spend three days reuniting with family, playing games, and eating songpyeon, rice cakes with a sweet filling. Chuseok generally falls in either late September or early October, and Koreans give thanks to their ancestors by visiting their graves and offering food to their forefathers’ spirits. There are plenty of opportunities to let loose, too: people attend traditional wrestling matches, dances, and, of course, feasts.

2. … OR PRECIOUS WORKS OF ART

El Senor de los Milagros, or the Lord of Miracles, is an annual festival in which Peruvians honor a mural, Lord of Miracles. This mural of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion miraculously survived a 1687 earthquake that destroyed the rest of Lima, Peru. To this day, a huge crowd gathers to carry the mural in the streets as a way of honoring the artwork’s religious and symbolic power over destruction. Peruvians also wear purple—to honor nuns who wore purple robes—and feast on skewers of grilled meat, pastries, and pumpkin fritters.

3. HOST A BONFIRE

In 1605, a group of Catholics conspired to assassinate England’s Protestant monarch, King James I, and install a Cathlolic monarch. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic soldier participating in this conspiracy (called the Gunpowder Plot) to blow up British Parliament and kill the king. But in early November, Fawkes was caught and arrested while guarding a stockpile of gunpowder, and the plot was foiled. So every November 5, thousands of British people celebrate Guy Fawkes Night by lighting bonfires, burning effigies of Fawkes, and watching fireworks.

4. SNACK ON MOONCAKES

For thousands of years, Chinese people have celebrated the full moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival. On the 15th day of the 8th lunar month—usually sometime in September or October—people all over China light incense sticks, spend time with family, and give each other mooncakes (sweet round pastries filled with red bean or lotus seed paste). If you’re not in China but want to celebrate, look for mooncakes at your local Asian bakery.

5. SNAG A PRETZEL (OR SOME ‘WURST)

Oktoberfest is about more than drinking beer. Started in 1810 as a royal wedding celebration for a Bavarian prince and his princess, Oktoberfest has grown into an international fall festival, with events taking place every September to October in cities around the world. In Munich, Germany, Oktoberfest partiers hop between beer tents, watch parades, listen to music, play games, and munch on pretzels and authentic German sausages. No need to book a trip to Germany to get in on the action: you can probably find a smaller event in a city near you. Even vegans in Southern California can join in the revelry at a vegan Oktoberfest in Los Angeles, proving that no matter where you live (or what you eat), there’s an Oktoberfest celebration for you.

6. ATTEND A REGATTA

Every fall, Cambodians spend three days celebrating the seasonal movement of the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh. After heavy rains back up the river, winds cause the flow of the river to reverse, making the river flood with fish and sediment. The holiday, which usually occurs in early November, brings hundreds of thousands of people together to watch traditional boat races, dance, and set off fireworks.

7. LOAD UP ON GARLIC

On November 30, Scots pay homage to Saint Andrew, the Catholic patron saint of Scotland by eating, drinking, watching live music and dance shows, marching in parades, and attending special events at museums and parks. Because Saint Andrew is also the patron saint of other countries, such as Barbados and a handful of Eastern European nations, St. Andrew’s Day celebrations aren’t limited to the land of haggis and bagpipes. According to Romanian tradition, the night before St. Andrew’s Day should be spent downing a garlic-heavy feast; the seasoning was said to protect the eater from evil spirits.

8. GROW A MUSTACHE

In 2003, two friends in Melbourne, Australia, came up with the idea for Movember over beers. They convinced 30 friends to grow their moustaches out for the month of November to raise money for charity. The next year, almost 500 Australians participated, raising around AU$54,000 for an Aussie prostate cancer organization. Movember then spread to other countries including New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.; to date, millions of people around the world have participated. Today, the resulting foundation raises money for men’s health issues, focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health initiatives.

9. ROAST CHESTNUTS

Don’t wait ‘til December 24 to break out the chestnuts. In Provence’s town of Collobrières, the so-called Chestnut Capital of the World, locals and visitors alike celebrate the annual chestnut harvest every October with a festival devoted to all things chestnut (think: pies, preserves, and marron glacés, or candied chestnuts). What to pair with all those nuts? A glass of the year’s newly-produced wine, of course.

10. HOLD A PROCESSION

Every November 11, Germans celebrate St. Martin’s Day, named after St. Martin of Tours, a bishop and Catholic saint who lived in the 300s CE. On this holiday, which honors St. Martin’s work with the poor, children hold handmade paper lanterns and walk down the street singing songs about the saint. After the lantern procession, both children and adults eat Weckmänner, a German pastry shaped like a gingerbread man.

11. BREAK OUT THE SKULLS

In Mexico (as well as parts of Central and South America), people honor their dead friends and relatives on the first two days of November. Although at first glance, Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) may seem macabre, the festival is actually a fun (and colorful) celebration of life. Mexicans wear bright costumes, dance in parades, and decorate their homes with painted skull figurines. People also pay visits to the graves of long-gone family members, setting up altars and leaving flowers, plates of food, and trinkets as a tribute.

12. BOB FOR APPLES

Every November 1, the Welsh marked Calan Gaeaf, traditionally considered the first day of winter. The night before, however, was devoted to celebrating Nos Calan Gaeaf, or Winter’s Eve. According to legend, this was a night for the restless spirit of a tailless black sow to roam the countryside, seeking out stragglers who had yet to make it home. Before everyone tucked in for the night, however, revelers gathered around bonfires, feasted, and bobbed for apples. Unmarried women would divvy up a porridge made from nine ingredients, with a wedding ring hidden in the pot. Whoever found the ring in her bowl was said to be the next to marry.

13. RELEASE A LANTERN

Each November, Thai people celebrate Loi Krathong, a festival of light in which people release candles on small floating vessels (called krathongs) onto the water. To honor the goddess of water, Thai people offer the krathongs to rivers, lakes, ponds, and even swimming pools, in celebration of hope and light. In Bangkok, you can buy krathongs made of banana leaves, flowers, coconuts, or styrofoam, and fireworks, music, and dance performances give the annual event a festive feeling. People in northern Thailand celebrate Yi Peng, a similar event in which they release floating lanterns into the sky instead of onto the water.

14. SEEK OUT A MIRACLE

In mid-October, millions of Brazilians gather at Belém to honor a statue of Our Lady of Nazareth. The statue, which allegedly performed miracles in medieval Europe, is the center of attention at the festival, and huge crowds try to get as close as possible to it. Hoping to be blessed by the statue’s religious power, Brazilians even try to touch the rope around the statue. They ride in floats to parade the statue between cities and over a river, finally bringing Our Lady of Nazareth to a cathedral. Brazilians also celebrate with fireworks, music, and dancing.

15. LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

As India’s festival of lights, Diwali is a celebration of abundance and light over darkness. For five days in October or November, Hindu Indians (as well as Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists) light oil lamps and candles around their houses, set off colorful fireworks, design vibrant patterns of sand, and shop for gifts. They also pray to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, hoping for good luck and abundance in the year ahead.

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The Hornets were supposed to be the Spirit, while the Grizzlies were almost named the Mounties. Why is a team in Los Angeles nicknamed the Lakers, and what’s a team called the Jazz doing in Utah? Here’s the story behind the nicknames of all 30 teams.

Atlanta Hawks

In 1948, the cities of Moline and Rock Island, IL, and Davenport, IA—collectively known as the Tri-Cities at the time—were awarded a team in the National Basketball League. The team was nicknamed the Blackhawks, who, like Chicago’s hockey team, were named after the Sauk Indian Chief Black Hawk. When the team moved to Milwaukee in 1951, the nickname was shortened to Hawks. The franchise retained the shortened moniker for subsequent moves to St. Louis and finally Atlanta in 1968.

Boston Celtics

Team owner Walter Brown personally chose Celtics over Whirlwinds, Olympians, and Unicorns (yes, Unicorns) as the nickname for Boston’s Basketball Association of America team in 1946. Despite the warnings of one of his publicity staffers, who told Brown, “No team with an Irish name has ever won a damned thing in Boston,” Brown liked the winning tradition of the nickname; the New York Celtics were a successful franchise during the 1920s.

Brooklyn Nets

The New Jersey Americans joined the American Basketball Association in 1967 and moved to New York the following season. The team was renamed the New York Nets, which conveniently rhymed with Jets and Mets, two of the Big Apple’s other professional franchises. Before the 1977-78 season, the team returned to New Jersey but kept its nickname. In 1994, the Nets were reportedly considering changing their nickname to the Swamp Dragons to boost its marketing efforts. The franchise relocated to Brooklyn in 2012.

Charlotte Hornets

The three finalists in the name-the-team contest for Charlotte’s 2004 expansion franchise were Bobcats, Dragons, and Flight. Owner Bob Johnson was fond of BOBcats, but some of the league’s players were less than impressed. “It sounds like a girls’ softball team to me,” Steve Kerr told reporters at the time. “I guess it shows there aren’t many good nicknames left to be had.” Perhaps Kerr was right. Bobcats became the Charlotte Hornets in 2014, reuniting the city with its previous NBA franchise’s original nickname.

Where did Hornets come from? In 1987, George Shinn and his ownership group announced that Spirit would be the nickname of Charlotte’s prospective expansion franchise. Fans voiced their displeasure, and it didn’t help that some fans associated the nickname with the PTL Club, a Charlotte-based evangelical Christian television program that was the subject of an investigative report by the Charlotte Observer for its fundraising activities. Shinn decided to sponsor a name-the-team contest and had fans vote on six finalists. More than 9000 ballots were cast and Hornets won by a landslide, beating out Knights, Cougars, Spirit, Crowns, and Stars. Afterwards, Shinn noted that the nickname had some historical significance; during the Revolutionary War, a British commander reportedly referred to the area around Charlotte as a “hornet’s nest of rebellion.”

Chicago Bulls

According to the Chicago Bulls Encyclopedia, team owner Richard Klein was brainstorming nicknames for his new franchise in 1966 and wanted a name that portrayed Chicago’s status as the meat capital of the world. Another theory is that Klein admired the strength and toughness of bulls. Klein was considering Matadors and Toreadors when his young son exclaimed, “Dad, that’s a bunch of bull!” The rest is somewhat dubious history.

Cleveland Cavaliers

Fans voted Cavaliers the team nickname in 1970 in a poll conducted by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. The other finalists included Jays, Foresters, Towers, and Presidents. The Presidents nickname was presumably an allusion to the fact that seven former U.S. Presidents were born in Ohio, second only to Virginia. Jerry Tomko, who suggested Cavaliers in the contest, wrote, “Cavaliers represent a group of daring fearless men, whose life pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds.” (Tomko’s son, Brett, went on to become a Major League pitcher.)

Dallas Mavericks

A Dallas radio station sponsored a name-the-team contest and recommended the finalists to team owner Donald Carter, who ultimately chose Mavericks over Wranglers and Express. The 41 fans who suggested Mavericks each won a pair of tickets to the season opener and one of those fans, Carla Springer, won a drawing for season tickets. Springer, a freelance writer, said the nickname “represents the independent, flamboyant style of the Dallas people.” That’s certainly an apt description for current team owner Mark Cuban.

Denver Nuggets

Denver’s ABA team was originally known as the Rockets. When the team was preparing to move to the NBA in 1974, they needed a new nickname, as Rockets was already claimed by the franchise in Houston. Nuggets, an allusion to the city’s mining tradition and the Colorado Gold Rush during the late 1850s and early 1860s, was chosen via a name-the-team contest.

Detroit Pistons

The Pistons trace their roots to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they were known as the Zollner Pistons. What’s a Zollner Piston? A piston manufactured by then-team owner Fred Zollner, who named the club after his personal business. When the team moved to Detroit in 1957, Zollner dropped his name from the nickname but retained Pistons. The name was fitting for the Motor City.

Golden State Warriors

The Philadelphia Warriors, named after the 1920s team that played in the American Basketball League, won the championship in the inaugural 1946-47 season of the Basketball Association of America. The Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco after the 1961-62 season and retained their nickname. When the team relocated across the Bay to Oakland in 1971, they were renamed the Golden State Warriors.

Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets originally called San Diego home. Rockets was chosen via a name-the-team contest and was a reference to the city’s theme, “A City In Motion.” Liquid-fueled Atlas rockets were also being manufactured in San Diego. When the team moved to Houston in 1971, it made perfectly good sense to keep the name, as Houston was home to a NASA space center.

Indiana Pacers

According to Michael Leo Donovan’s book on team nicknames, Yankees to Fighting Irish: What’s Behind Your Favorite Team’s Name, the Pacers’ nickname was decided upon in 1967 by the team’s original investors, including attorney Richard Tinkham. The nickname is a reference to Indiana’s rich harness and auto racing history. Pacing describes one of the main gaits for harness racing, while pace cars are used for auto races, such as the Indianapolis 500.

Los Angeles Clippers

When the NBA’s Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego in 1978, the owners wanted to rebrand the team with a new nickname. They settled on Clippers, a popular type of ship during the 19th century. San Diego had been home to the Conquistadors/Sails of the ABA during the 1970s. Donald Sterling bought the Clippers during the 1981-82 season and relocated them to his native Los Angeles in 1984. He lost all respect in San Diego but kept the Clippers name.

Los Angeles Lakers

How many natural lakes are there in Los Angeles? The short answer: Less than 10,000. When a pair of investors relocated the Detroit Gems of the National Basketball League to Minneapolis before the 1947 season, they sought a name that would ring true with the team’s new home. Given that Minnesota is “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” they settled on Lakers. When the Lakers moved to Los Angeles before the 1960 season, their nickname was retained, in part because of the tradition the team had established in Minnesota.

Memphis Grizzlies

When Vancouver was awarded an expansion franchise in 1994 to begin play the following season, the team’s owners had tentative plans to name the team the Mounties. The Royal Mounted Canadian Police and fans alike objected, so team officials resumed their search for a name. The local newspaper sponsored a name-the-team contest, which club officials monitored before choosing Grizzlies, an indigenous species to the area, over Ravens. When the team relocated to Memphis before the 2001-02 season, FedEx was prepared to offer the Grizzlies $100 million to rename the team the Express, but the NBA rejected the proposal.

Miami Heat

In October 1986, the owners of Miami’s expansion franchise selected Stephanie Freed’s Heat submission from more than 20,000 entries, which also included Sharks, Tornadoes, Beaches, and Barracudas.

Milwaukee Bucks

Despite Wisconsin’s hunting tradition, the most popular entry in the contest to name Milwaukee’s NBA franchise wasn’t Bucks. It was Robins. The judges overruled the public and decided on a more indigenous (and much stronger) name. The choice could have been much worse: Skunks was among the other entries.

Minnesota Timberwolves

The ownership group for Minnesota’s prospective franchise chose Timberwolves through a name-the-team contest in 1986. The nickname beat out Polars by a 2-1 margin in the final vote, which was conducted in 333 of the state’s 842 city councils. Tim Pope, who was one of the first fans to nominate Timberwolves, won a trip to the NBA All-Star Game. Pope submitted 10 nicknames in all, including Gun Flints. “I thought a two-word name would win,” he told a reporter. The most popular entry in the contest was Blizzard, but the team wanted a nickname that was more unique to its home state. “Minnesota is the only state in the lower 48 with free-roaming packs of timber wolves,” a team official said.

New Orleans Pelicans

Soon after Tom Benson purchased the New Orleans Hornets in 2012, the team announced they were going to change their name. According to Yahoo’s Marc J. Spears, they “considered the nicknames Krewe (groups of costumed paraders in the annual Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans) and Brass,” but settled on Pelicans—after the brown pelican, Louisiana’s state bird.

New York Knicks

The term “Knickerbockers” referred specifically to pants rolled up just below the knee by Dutch settlers in the New World during the 1600s. Many of these settlers found homes in and around New York City, where a cartoon drawing of Father Knickerbocker became a prominent symbol of the city. In 1845, baseball’s first organized team was nicknamed the Knickerbocker Nine and the name was evoked again in 1946 when New York was granted a franchise in the Basketball Association of America. Team founder Ned Irish reportedly made the decision to call the team the Knickerbockers—supposedly after pulling the name out of a hat.

Oklahoma City Thunder

When the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City after the 2007-08 season, fans voted on potential nicknames from an original list of 64 possibilities. Thunder was chosen over Renegades, Twisters, and Barons, and the name was extremely well received. The team set sales records for the first day after the nickname was revealed. “There’s just all kinds of good thunder images and thoughts, and the in-game experience of Thunder,” team chairman Clay Bennett told reporters. The SuperSonics had been named for the Supersonic Transport (SST) project, which had been awarded to Boeing. The company has a large plant in the Seattle area.

Orlando Magic

When the Orlando Sentinel sponsored a name-the-team contest for Orlando’s prospective expansion franchise, Challengers—an allusion to the space shuttle that crashed in 1986—was the most popular suggestion. Other entries included Floridians, Juice, Orbits, Astronauts, Aquamen, and Sentinels, but the panel of judges, including Orlando team officials who reviewed the suggestions, decided to go with Magic. The name is an obvious nod to the tourism-rich city’s main attraction, Disney World.

Philadelphia 76ers

The Syracuse Nationals were relocated to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963 and the team was renamed the 76ers, an allusion to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.

Phoenix Suns

General manager Jerry Colangelo, only 28 at the time, settled on a name for his expansion franchise using a name-the-team contest in 1968. Colangelo chose Suns over Scorpions, Rattlers, and Thunderbirds, among the other suggestions included in the 28,000 entries. One lucky fan won $1,000 and season tickets as part of the contest, which included such obscure entries as White Wing Doves, Sun Lovers, Poobahs, Dudes, and Cactus Giants.

Portland Trail Blazers

In 1970, Portland was granted an expansion franchise in the NBA and team officials announced a name-the-team contest. Of the more than 10,000 entries, Pioneers was the most popular, but was ruled out because nearby Lewis & Clark College was already using the nickname. Another popular entry was Trail Blazers, whose logo is supposed to represent five players on one team playing against five players from another team.

Sacramento Kings

The Kings’ royal lineage stretches all the way back to the founding of the National Basketball League’s Rochester Royals in 1945. The Royals retained their nickname after a move to Cincinnati in 1957 and became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings (soon dropping the Omaha) through a name-the-team contest in 1972. The name remained unchanged when the franchise relocated to California in 1985.

San Antonio Spurs

A group of San Antonio investors purchased the Dallas Chaparrals from the American Basketball Association in 1973 and decided to hold a public contest to rename the team. Five thousand entries with over 500 names were submitted. After reconsidering their first decision to call the team the Aztecs (several teams already used that name), the judges (investors and local press representatives) settled on Spurs. It may have just been a coincidence that one of the team’s main investors, Red McCombs, was born in Spur, Texas.

Toronto Raptors

The ownership group of Toronto’s prospective expansion team conducted extensive marketing research across Canada in 1994 and held a nationwide vote that helped team officials come up with a list of potential nicknames. Raptors, which Jurassic Park helped popularize the year before, was eventually chosen over runners-up Bobcats and Dragons.

Utah Jazz

No, Utah isn’t known for its Jazz. The team originated in New Orleans in 1974 and club officials decided to keep the name after relocating to Salt Lake City in 1979. The Jazz nickname was originally chosen through a name-the-team contest, which produced seven other finalists: Dukes, Crescents, Pilots, Cajuns, Blues, Deltas, and Knights. Deltas would’ve translated to Salt Lake City rather well (the airline of the same name has a hub there), while Cajuns may have been even worse than Jazz.

Washington Wizards

In the early 1990s, Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin was becoming frustrated with the association of his team’s nickname and gun violence. After Pollin’s friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, Pollin decided to take action and announced his plans to rename the team. (Though Dan Steinberg of D.C. Sports Bog wrote a very detailed history of the name change, and called into question the impact Rabin’s death had on the decision.)

A name-the-team contest was held and fans voted on a list of finalists that included Wizards, Dragons, Express, Stallions, and Sea Dogs. Not long after Wizards was announced as the winning name before the 1997-98 season, the local NAACP chapter president complained that the nickname carried Ku Klux Klan associations. Previous nicknames for the franchise when they were still in Chicago include Packers and Zephyrs.

The first version of this post was published in 2009.

You may know the sad story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the British explorer who aimed to be the first to reach the South Pole—only to arrive in January 1912 to find a Norwegian flag had been planted by explorer Roald Amundsen five weeks prior. Among other setbacks, the Scott expedition was plagued by technical difficulties, infirm ponies, and illness during their 800-mile trek across the Ross Ice Shelf back to their base camp in McMurdo Sound.

Ultimately, all five men perished before they reached the camp. Petty Officer Edgar Evans suffered a head injury, a serious wound on his hand, and frostbite before dying at a temporary campsite on the return journey. Captain Lawrence Oates, suffering severely from frostbite, voluntarily left the camp one night and walked right into a blizzard, choosing to sacrifice himself rather than slow the other men down. Captain Scott, Lieutenant Henry “Birdie” Bowers, and Doctor Edward Adrian Wilson subsequently died in late March of a vicious combination of exposure and starvation.

The makeshift camp in which the last three men died was only 11 miles from a supply depot. When their frozen corpses were discovered on the ice shelf by a search party the following November, a cairn of snow was built around them, tent and all, as there was no soil in which to bury them. A cross made of skis was added to the top. Before they left, surgeon Edward Leicester Atkinson, a member of the search party, left a note in a metal cylinder at the site:

November 12, 1912, Lat. 79 degrees, 50 mins. South. This cross and cairn are erected over the bodies of Captain Scott, C.V.O., R.N., Doctor E. A. Wilson, M.B. B.C., Cantab., and Lieutenant H. R. Bowers, Royal Indian Marine—a slight token to perpetuate their successful and gallant attempt to reach the Pole. This they did on January 17, 1912, after the Norwegian Expedition had already done so. Inclement weather with lack of fuel was the cause of their death. Also to commemorate their two gallant comrades, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons, who walked to his death in a blizzard to save his comrades about eighteen miles south of this position; also of Seaman Edgar Evans, who died at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. “The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

But something even more curious happened next.

In the century and change since Scott and his comrades died, the cairn-tomb has been slowly moving. That’s because it was erected on top of a 360-foot-thick section of ice—the Ross Ice Shelf, which is constantly fed by glaciers on either side. As of 2011, according to the Polar Record, it was buried under approximately 53 feet of ice, as the surface accumulates more ice and the bottom of the shelf melts and refreezes. Assuming the rate of accumulation has been approximately the same for the last five years, they’re about 55 feet inside the ice by now.

The north edge of the ice shelf also grows and shifts, as the entire plate moves slowly toward the water’s edge. As such, the cairn, the tent, and the corpses have traveled about 39 miles away from their original geographic location, and they’re still on the move. No one seems to have pinpointed exactly where they are, but glacierologists who have weighed in on the topic generally believe the bodies are still preserved intact [PDF].

Within another 250 years or so, the bodies of Scott, Bowers, and Wilson will have at last traveled to the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, where it meets McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea. By then, they’ll be encased in more than 325 feet of ice. The ice is not as thick at the front of the shelf as it is where the cairn began its journey, and so they could be embedded low by the time they get to the water.

It’s tempting to imagine that once the bodies meet the edge of the ice shelf in about two and a half centuries, they’ll just slide out of the melted ice and splash into the ocean. But that’s not quite how it works. As the Ross Ice Shelf advances further out to sea, every 50 to 100 years it can no longer support its own weight and the shelf calves off an iceberg. The particular chunk of the ice shelf holding the remains of Scott and his men is expected to break off into an iceberg (or possibly a mini version called a growler or bergy bit) before they get to the front of the ice shelf at the water. Back in 2011, the Polar Record forecasted that the special day will fall in 2250 or thereabouts.

If all goes as predicted, this means that Captain Scott, Lieutenant Bowers, and Doctor Wilson will then get to ride around the Ross Sea—and later the Southern Ocean—inside of an iceberg about 350 years after their deaths.

Depending on where the berg with the British bodies breaks off from the ice shelf, it will probably stay local and head toward the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands. The iceberg will almost certainly melt someday, be it in a decade or a century. Then, the dead men will be free-floating in the water, where, depending on a host of circumstances, they’ll stay until currents and sea animals have their way with them. Their skeletons are then predicted to wash up somewhere, possibly the South Shetlands—but who can say for sure? All we can really do is keep an eye out for them in the area in about 250 years.

Although the deaths of Robert F. Scott and his team were tragic, it’s possible to imagine that as explorers, they might have approved of the far-out adventure their bodies would endure—centuries after their final one got cut a bit short.

Slim Goodbody had all the superhero staples: a secret headquarters, a robot sidekick, and an identity he kept hidden behind a shimmering outfit. He even had a spandex costume that materialized behind a puff of smoke when he was called to action—though it’s safe to say he was the only superhero of his time that resembled a page from an anatomy textbook.

The main mission of the “Superhero of Health” wasn’t fighting bad guys (though he did that as well); it was teaching kids to understand and care for their bodies. John Burstein, the man responsible for bringing Slim Goodbody to life, didn’t initially intend to make a career out of the character. “When I was younger my goal was to be a Shakespearean actor,” he told mental_floss. Burstein studied drama at Hofstra University, and in 1973 the 23-year-old took a job as a performer aboard the Floating Hospital in New York City. Playing guitar in front of audiences was something he had been doing since age 13. Using his musical talents, he was able to present health concepts to children in an engaging package.

The response to his songs was so positive that Burstein felt inspired to devise a character to go along with the act. “I wanted to do a body suit but I didn’t want it to be gory,” he said. “I wanted it to be superhero-esque.” To create the style he was going for, he started with a leotard purchased from a dance supply company. An artist painted organs onto the suit (with him in it) and set the design through a special heating process (without him in it). The result was Slim Goodbody, possibly the only character in history capable of pulling off the skinless look.

From there, his one-man show moved beyond the Floating Hospital. He began performing at local schools, and in 1976, he landed the gig that would launch his television career. On Captain Kangaroo, Burstein played Slim (alter ego: Chief Hale and Hearty) in biweekly installments of “The Adventures of Slim Goodbody in Nutri-City.” Slim Goodbody and his friends fought to uphold the laws of good health and protect the citizens of Nutri-City from villains like the mind-controlling mad scientists Sarah Bellum and Lobe. His four-year stint on the show proved to viewers and networks alike that health-centered programming didn’t have to be bland. Burstein’s work caught the attention of PBS, and in 1980 they offered him his own series titled The Inside Story With Slim Goodbody.

If Captain Kangaroo introduced Slim Goodbody to kids at home, Inside Story brought him into their classrooms. Teachers loved the show for its information-packed episodes told through catchy musical numbers. But unlike other mnemonic devices meant to remind students which parts go where, the songs in Inside Story made biology feel personal. During “The Smart Parts: The Inside Story of Your Brain and Nervous System” Slim walks through a tinsel-like webbing of nerves, singing: “You couldn’t laugh, read, think, dance, dream, have fun, or sing. Without your brain you couldn’t do anything.”

And during the tune “Down, Down, Down: The Inside Story of Digestion,” he tells the viewer: “When you were a baby your body was smaller, now you grow bigger and very much taller. Because your body takes food you chew and changes some of it into you.” Slim was the face of the show, but by placing the wonders of the body center stage, any kid watching could feel like they had a starring role.

In addition to Inside Story and Captain Kangaroo, Slim Goodbody made appearances on Nickelodeon, Good Morning America, The Richard Simmons Show, and various other talk shows. By 1985 he told The Morning Call that “millions, maybe tens of millions” of children knew him by sight.

Even after making it big on TV, John Burstein never abandoned Slim’s live performance roots. Over the past four decades he’s played the character everywhere from school assemblies to symphony shows. The 66-year-old continues to get on stage today, albeit much less often than he used to (for him that means 10 to 12 shows a year). He still performs to sold-out theaters of students, thanks in part to the teachers who grew up watching Slim when they were kids.

Burstein’s act has evolved since the 1970s: The visuals he incorporates into the show now include computer animation, and his songs have been remixed to sound “a little hipper.” His body suit, originally a glorified art project, has been upgraded several times over the years. Slim’s latest outfit comes from the same costume designers behind Star Trek: The Next Generation and is worth roughly $4000.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the message Burstein hopes to impart on his young audience. According to him, the purpose of Slim Goodbody is to create “some positive feeling about what it means to be a human being.” When asked what he wishes kids to get out of his shows, he said, “I hope they take away a sense of how wonderful they are, how wonderful the body is, and that possessing a body that’s so wonderful means there’s something marvelous about themselves.”

Being the first black woman to serve on Congress would be a significant enough accomplishment for a lifetime, but it wasn’t good enough for Shirley Chisholm. Three years after she arrived in Washington, D.C., Chisholm became the first woman to run for president for the Democratic party. When announcing her intention to seek the nomination in 1972, she stated, “I’m a revolutionary at heart now and I’ve got to run, even though it might be the downfall of my career.” Though her campaign was controversial at times, it wasn’t the downfall of her long and noteworthy career. Here are a few things to know about this bold educator-turned-politician.

1. SHE HAD INTERNATIONAL ROOTS.

On November 30, 1924, Shirley Anita St. Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York to Ruby Seale and Charles St. Hill. Her mother was a domestic worker who immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados; her father, a factory worker, was originally from Guyana.

2. SHE WAS BORN IN BROOKLYN, BUT SHE DIDN’T HAVE A NEW YORK ACCENT.

In 1928, Chisholm and her two sisters were sent to live with their grandmother in Barbados, while her parents stayed in New York and worked through the Great Depression. Chisholm attended a one-room schoolhouse on this island in the West Indies. In addition to receiving a British education, she picked up an accent, which remained slight but noticeable throughout her life.

3. EDUCATION HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON HER LIFE …

Chisholm returned to the U.S. in March 1934 at age 9 and resumed with a public-school education. Following high school, she studied sociology at Brooklyn College and earned her BA in 1946. (She was a prize-winning debater in college, a skill that would serve her well throughout her political career.) She continued her education at Columbia University and earned an MA in early childhood education in 1952. While she was still a student at Columbia, she began teaching at a nursery school and married Conrad Chisholm in 1949. They would later divorce in 1977.

4. … SO MUCH SO THAT SHE BEGAN HER PROFESSIONAL CAREER IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION.

After working at the nursery school, Chisholm worked her way through the teaching ranks and by 1953 was the director of two day care centers, a position she held until 1959. Her expertise and experience led to her role as an educational consultant for New York City’s Division of Day Care from 1959 through 1964.

5. HER POLITICAL CAREER—WHICH STARTED AT THE NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATURE—WAS REVOLUTIONARY FROM THE BEGINNING.

Chisholm was a member of the League of Women Voters and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League before she ran for the New York State Assembly in 1964. When she won, Chisholm became the second African-American woman to serve on the state legislature. From 1965 to 1968, Chisholm served as a Democratic member and focused on unemployment benefits for domestic workers and education initiatives.

6. REDISTRICTING INSPIRED HER RUN FOR CONGRESS.

Chisholm set her sights on Congress when redistricting efforts gave Brooklyn a new congressional district. Not one to shy away from the public, Chisholm used to drive through neighborhoods while announcing, “This is fighting Shirley Chisholm coming through.” She defeated three candidates in the primary election, including a state senator, before defeating well-known civil rights activist James Farmer in the general election. This victory made her the first African-American woman elected to Congress, and she would go on to serve seven terms.

7. SHE HAD A WAY WITH WORDS AND ESTABLISHED HERSELF AS OUTSPOKEN AND READY FOR CHANGE EARLY IN HER FIRST TERM.

She was known for her bold declarations. After her upset victory in the congressional election, she boasted, “Just wait, there may be some fireworks.” And she delivered on that promise. Given her campaign slogan “Unbought and unbossed,” it should come as no surprise that Chisholm quickly made her presence known in Congress. She spoke out against the Vietnam War within the first few months of her arrival and said she would vote against military spending. When she was initially relegated to the House Agricultural Committee, she requested a new assignment, claiming that she didn’t think she could best serve her Brooklyn constituents from that position.

After directly addressing House Speaker John McCormack on the matter, she was reassigned to Veterans’ Affairs, and then moved to the Education and Labor Committee in 1971. True to her desire to bring about change, Chisholm hired all women for her office, half of whom were African-American. She was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the National Women’s Political Caucus.

8. HER PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN WAS UNEXPECTED AND HISTORIC.

Chisholm formally announced her intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in January 1972, making her the first African-American to run for a major party and the first woman to vie for the Democratic nomination. During her speech, which she delivered in her hometown of Brooklyn, Chisholm said, “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that…I am the candidate of the people of America, and my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history.”

Although her campaign wasn’t as well-funded as her competitors’, Chisholm did get her name on the primary ballot in 12 states and won 28 delegates in primary elections. She received about 152 delegates at the Democratic National Convention, coming in fourth place for the party.

9. THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL WAS FULL OF CHALLENGES.

Chisholm likely expected challenges during her campaign, and she certainly encountered a fair amount. She received multiple threats against her life, including assassination attempts, and was granted Secret Service protection to ensure her safety. Chisholm also had to sue to be included in televised debates.

There was even controversy where there could have been encouragement. Her decision to run for the Democratic nomination caught many members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) off-guard, and they weren’t happy that she acted before a formal and unified decision could be made. But Chisholm was done with waiting; when the subject of the CBC came up on the night she announced her campaign, she told the crowd, “While they’re rapping and snapping, I’m mapping.”

10. SHE HAD AN UNLIKELY SUPPORTER IN GEORGE WALLACE.

Chisholm was well aware that her biggest source of support came from women and minorities and often advocated on their behalf, so it shocked many of her supporters and constituents when she visited political rival George Wallace after an assassination attempt sent him to the hospital—and ultimately left him paralyzed—in 1972. Wallace, who was governor of Alabama, was known for his racist comments and segregationist views, but Chisholm checked on him. She said she never wanted what happened to him to happen to anybody else.

Ultimately, their friendship benefited the public when Wallace came through for Chisholm on an important piece of legislation in 1974. She was working on a bill that would give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage. Wallace convinced enough of his fellow Southern congressmen to vote in favor of the bill, moving it through the House.

11. FOLLOWING RETIREMENT, CHISHOLM DIDN’T SLOW DOWN.

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982, but leaving the political arena didn’t mean she was done making a difference. Although she planned on spending more time with her second husband, Arthur Hardwick Jr., she also returned to teaching at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and continued to speak at colleges across the country.

Chisholm passed away on January 1, 2005 at age 80 in Ormond Beach, Florida. She is buried in Buffalo, New York, and the inscription on the mausoleum vault in which she is buried reads “Unbought and Unbossed.”

12. SHE CONTINUES TO GARNER ACCOLADES FOR HER TRAILBLAZING WORK.

Chisholm was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2014, the U.S. Postal Service debuted the Shirley Chisholm Forever Stamp as part of the Black Heritage Series. A year later, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and there is talk of a movie being made about her life. But Chisholm never doubted what legacy she wanted to leave behind, once saying, “I want history to remember me…not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.”

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

1. VIDEO FREE BROOKLYN // BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

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

2. VIDIOTS // SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

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

3. SCARECROW VIDEO // SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

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

4. FACETS // CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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

5. VULCAN VIDEO // AUSTIN, TEXAS

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

6. LOST WEEKEND VIDEO // SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

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

7. THE VIDEO UNDERGROUND // JAMAICA PLAIN, MASSACHUSETTS

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

8. FOUR STAR VIDEO COOPERATIVE // MADISON, WI

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

9. MOVIE LOVERS // BOZEMAN, MONTANA

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

10. VIDEO ROOM // NEW YORK, NEW YORK

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

11. RAO VIDEO // LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS

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

12. VIDEODROME // ATLANTA, GEORGIA

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

13. CINEFILE VIDEO // LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

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

14. THE FLICKS // BOISE, IDAHO

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

15. JET VIDEO // PORTLAND, MAINE

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

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

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

17. ROSEBUD VIDEO STORE // ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

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

18. CASA VIDEO // TUCSON, ARIZONA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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