Furniture retailer Ethan Allen is officially a Mickey Mouse operation. The brand recently announced a partnership with the Walt Disney Company that’s slated to bring a series of high-end (read: expensive) home decor options accented with some of the most popular children’s characters in the history of entertainment.
In design terms, that means a lot of furniture—including sofas, coffee tables, and ottomans—cut in the shape of, or emblazoned with, Mickey Mouse’s familiar silhouette. A set of coasters will run you $39, while an elaborate character chest is $1599. The full line doesn’t go on sale until November 18, but you can take a look at some of their pre-sale items below.
The storied six-pack—a lean, muscular, and well-defined midsection—is a ubiquitous goal for people who want to get in shape; people like how it looks, all the fittest celebrities have one, and it’s an easy shorthand for describing a particular level of fitness that’s considered an aesthetic ideal.
Louis Sepulveda, a Tier 3 personal trainer at Equinox fitness club in Darien, Connecticut, can testify as much. “Almost every client I have, during their fitness assessment, would mention wanting a six-pack—or at least having a flatter tummy,” he says. But getting that kind of definition isn’t a simple matter of going from fat to fit.
“Everyone, for the most part, is born with the same muscles that make up the ab complex,” Sepulveda explains. “But you need to lose body fat in order for definition to show. For someone who carries more visceral fat—fat stored within the abdominal cavity—having a six-pack can be laborious.”
In other words, thousands of get-ups, planks, or bicycle curls might give you abs of steel, but if you want them to pop out like Brad Pitt’s in Fight Club, you’ll have to eat at a deficit (a diet low in calories and high in protein) until your body has burned enough fat to reveal them. And despite all those internet ads touting “one weird trick to blast belly fat,” alas, says our trainer, there’s no such thing as spot-reducing: “You can’t target a specific area to burn fat.”
And because fat tends to come off in reverse order (the first place you store it is the last place you’ll lose it), if you’re unlucky enough to store extra fat in your belly, you may not be able to achieve that kind of definition without also dropping to a dangerously low level of body fat, something Sepulveda cautions strongly against.
“Having visible abs becomes unrealistic when you’re striving to go below a normal level of body fat,” he says. “As much as everyone hates fat, you need it to live. It’s a source of energy, it supports brain and nerve function. Having very low levels of body fat can become unhealthy.”
In men, extremely low levels of body fat are associated with risks including dangerously low heart rates, a decline in testosterone levels, and poor recovery. For women, too little body fat can result in amenorrhea (loss of menstrual cycles), which in turn is a major risk factor for developing osteoporosis.
And much as we may appreciate the way it looks, the truth is that six-pack abs are actually pretty useless as a measure of fitness. A six-pack indicates absolutely nothing about your speed, your strength, your stamina, your flexibility, or even your level of overall health. All it means is that you have a lean enough midsection for your musculature to show—which is why Sepulveda encourages his clients to focus on goals beyond the coveted six-pack.
“I have my clients strengthen their trunk stability, working all the muscles located in the torso. Adding plank variations, rotations, chops, and lifts to your workout routine will make your abs, obliques, and lower back a lot stronger, not to mention less prone to injury,” he says.
So if it turns out that a visible six-pack is out of reach for you (or if you’re not interested in adopting the kind of restrictive diet it takes to get and maintain one) there are still plenty of good reasons to work that core. Having strong abs will serve you well, both in and out of the gym—and that’s true regardless of whether you ever get lean enough to see them.
If you’ve never enjoyed a beer inside a cave, at a former train station, or while grocery shopping, well, you just don’t know what you’re missing.
1. FLOSSMOOR STATION RESTAURANT AND BREWERY // FLOSSMOOR, ILLINOIS
Built in 1906, this former train station was headed for ruin before the current owners spruced it up and turned it into an award-winning brewpub. Drink a Station Master Wheat, then watch the 5:15 rumble by mere feet away. With the Metra stop just down the street, it’s a great spot for a last-minute drink before catching a train into Chicago.
2. LUCKY’S MARKET // VARIOUS LOCATIONS
Supermarkets have dutifully followed the craft beer revolution, and some like Whole Foods even have in-store bars where you can grab a pint or fill up a growler. But Lucky’s has upped the ante by encouraging of-age shoppers to enjoy a cold one while they shop. The retailer, which has locations in 11 states, sells the brews for just $2, and has outfitted its shopping carts with cup holders, naturally. Suddenly, shopping for kale just got a whole lot more exciting.
3. SISTER LOUISA’S CHURCH OF THE LIVING ROOM & PING PONG EMPORIUM // ATLANTA
Unusual is certainly one way to describe a bar where patrons regularly don choir robes, sing church-organ karaoke, and play ping-pong on a table surrounded by neon crosses. Opened in 2010 by a former divinity student-turned-artist, Sister Louisa’s is pure southern kitsch, and a favorite amongst Atlanta bar-goers. Craft brews are always on tap, but if beer isn’t your thing, you could always try the Spiritual Sangria.
4. FLORA-BAMA // PERDIDO KEY, FLORIDA
Step out of this Florida beach bar, walk a few feet west, and you’re in Alabama. The establishment opened in 1964, and soon, business was booming, thanks to the fact that Baldwin County, Alabama, was dry at the time. Since then, it’s grown into a sprawling roadhouse with numerous bars and live music stages.
You won’t find any trendy craft brews on tap here. But true to its name, The Cave offers a one-of-a-kind venue. Owner Chris Black bought the space, formerly known as Truitt’s Cave, in 2011, after he was convinced the world was about to end. When that didn’t happen, he converted the cavern from a bunker into a bar and restaurant with an outdoor area that frequently hosts live music. Adding to the fun: There’s a herd of goats milling around.
6. SAN DIEGO ZOO // SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
One of the world’s premier zoos just so happens to have an incredible beer selection. Locations throughout the park serve up craft brews, from cafes to specialty stands operated by local brewers like Ballast Point and Sierra Nevada. There are also festivals like a recent beer and wine tasting celebrating the zoo’s centennial. Best of all: You can take your beer with you while you tour the park.
7. REVOLUTION CYCLES // GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA
In a town with its fair share of bicycle shops, Revolution offers a little something extra: several taps of cold craft beer. Owner Watts Dixon installed the bar area two years ago, keen to capitalize on the overlap between cycling and beer enthusiasts. Even if you’re not in the market for a new road bike or a tune-up, you can wander in for a pint of Oskar Blues or Sierra Nevada.
8. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM // NEW YORK CITY
If the thought of viewing fine art while sipping a beer seems like fun, make sure to book a ticket to one of the Guggenheim Museum’s “Art After Dark” parties. In addition to live music and free-roam of the museum’s numerous exhibitions, the event features world-class people-watching from the Guggenheim’s spiral walkway.
This bunker-like bar, formerly a Prohibition-era speakeasy, pays homage to rural Missouri’s drinking past with a lineup of rustic brews. There’s the Ruddy Wheat, a sturdy ale-meets-weiss concoction, and the Rip Van Winkle, first brewed in the early 1900s, when it was billed as “The Richest Bottle of Beer in the World.” Many of the brews come straight from the Weston Brewing Company next door via refrigerated tap lines.
10. UMBRELLA BAR // OLYMPIC VALLEY, CALIFORNIA
From roughly 60 feet underground to high in the mountains: It’s hard to beat the view at this mountaintop bar, perched 8200 feet at the top of the Squaw Valley Resort. With a large hot tub and retractable roof, it’s a popular spot for weary skiers and snowboarders, who can reach the bar from nearby trails. Luckily, there’s also a cable car that provides access for those less inclined to ply the slopes.
This former mortuary did a stint as a nightclub before becoming a craft beer haven—most famously, Bruce Lee passed through the funeral home for his stateside services in 1973. Today, the bar has 30 some beers on tap, a range of dinner and brunch options, and is spending the fall hosting presidential debate watch-parties.
BONUS: CP BREWERY AT BREWS AND CUES // PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII
Drinking a micro-brewed beer is nothing unusual. But drinking a beer micro-brewed on one of America’s most storied military bases? That’s something special. The CP Brewery turns out a limited quantity of ales and IPAs on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor-Hickham military base, and offers them at the Brews and Cues bar located in the base’s common area. There’s just one catch: Access is limited to military personnel and acquaintances.
If you’d like to experience the public art of the Soviet Union, there’s no need to travel to Eastern Europe. In Seattle’s artsy Fremont neighborhood, there’s a monument to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. Despite efforts by its owners to sell it off, it’s been in Washington since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (first in Issaquah, before moving to Seattle in 1995).
Considering Lenin’s legacy of oppression and mass executions, the 16-foot, seven-ton bronze statue doesn’t sit well with all residents. It was originally brought to Seattle by Lewis Carpenter, a Washington resident who saved it from the scrapyards of Poprad, Slovakia. Arguing that it was a work of art that deserved to be preserved, he purchased it and brought it back to the U.S.
Carpenter died in 1994, not long after shipping the statue to Issaquah, Washington, where he planned to install it in front of a restaurant he was set to open. A year later, it made its way to Seattle, where it was displayed as a piece of public art, just one block south of the Rocket, another Cold War relic-turned-artwork. Carpenter’s family still owns the statue of Lenin, but would love to get it off their hands. There’s an entire Facebook page devoted to tearing it down, and it’s regularly vandalized by people who paint the statue’s hands blood red.
In 1995, the statue was put up for sale for $150,000, with the proceeds scheduled to benefit a local arts organization, but no buyer came forward. By 2015, the price had been raised to $250,000—or best offer, as the The Seattle Times reported. Whether it will actually ever be sold is another question.
“Who can say for sure if the community would accept a check for the sale of Lenin if offered? The sculpture has found a home in Fremont,” the Fremont Arts Council’s Barbara Luecke told mental_floss in an email. However, if anyone did actually want to pay the $250,000 that an art appraiser decided the statue was worth, “any proceeds from its sale would help with the maintenance of the various art projects around the neighborhood,” she says.
Until then, the statue serves as a handy guidepost for local directions (“keep going until you see Lenin” cannot be misunderstood), and occasionally gets new additions, like a tutu for the annual gay pride parade or a tinfoil-wrapped burrito to hold as an advertisement for the nearby Mexican restaurant.
One-third of humanity (including 60% of Europeans and 80% of North Americans) live in such light polluted areas that the Milky Way is not visible at night.
The eternal flame at Bullhead City, Arizona, only lasted until city officials received a US$961 gas bill. It has been relighted after complaints by veterans groups.
While most movie fan theories are outrageous and unbelievably bizarre, there are a few that have turned out to be true. Here are nine of them.
1. THE GENIE AND THE PEDDLER ARE THE SAME CHARACTER IN ALADDIN.
Since the release of Disney’s Aladdin in 1992, there’s been a very popular fan theory that suggests the Peddler who opens the film and the Genie are the same character. There are a number of clues that support this fan theory, namely that both characters are voiced by the late Robin Williams and are the only ones who address the audience directly. In an interview in 2015, co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker confirmed the truth about the Peddler and the Genie.
“I saw something that speculates that the peddler at the beginning of Aladdin is the Genie. That’s true,” Clements revealed. “That was the whole intention, originally. We even had that at the end of the movie, where he would reveal himself to be the Genie, and of course Robin did the voice of the peddler. Just through story changes and some editing, we lost the reveal at the end. So, that’s an urban legend that actually is true.”
The original workprint ending of Aladdin (above) included an additional scene of the Peddler revealing his true identity.
2. ROBOCOP IS A CHRIST STORY.
After the release of RoboCop in 1987, many fans speculated about the film’s hidden themes of Christianity and Jesus Christ. After all, the sci-fi movie follows a man who is brutally executed, then comes back from the dead to save the city of Detroit from evil. In 2010, director Paul Verhoeven confirmed the RoboCop as Jesus Christ theory.
“The point of RoboCop, of course, is it is a Christ story,” Verhoeven said. “It is about a guy who gets crucified in the first 50 minutes, and then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes, and then is like the supercop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.”
3. DUMBLEDORE IS DEATH IN THE HARRY POTTER SERIES.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermoine tells Harry “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” a fable that explains the origins of the Deathly Hallows. The story follows three brothers who come across Death while trying to cross a river. Death felt cheated that the brothers used magic to cross because people would normally drown in the water instead, so he congratulated them for tricking him and gave them gifts for their cunning.
The oldest brother asked for a powerful wand, which he was murdered for once he reached town. The next brother asked for a stone that gave him the ability to bring back his dead lover, whose ghost disappeared as soon as she was brought back from the dead. This led the second brother to kill himself to join her in the afterlife. The youngest brother, who was humble, asked Death for an invisibility cloak to hide from him until it was time to die as an old man. Once it was time, the youngest brother revealed himself to Death and willingly went with him as an old friend.
A theory emerged that the three brothers represented characters in the Harry Potter series: Voldemort is the first brother, who died for power; Severus Snape is the second, who died for his long lost love; and Harry Potter is the third, who “greeted death like an old friend” later in The Deathly Hallows. So who is Death? One fan theory suggested that Dumbledore Is Death, because he ends up meeting Harry in the afterlife and possessed the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak throughout the series.
Eventually, Harry Potter creatorJ.K. Rowling chimed in:
For more than 30 years, fans argued about whether Deckard (Harrison Ford) from 1982’s Blade Runner was a Replicant or not. There are a number of clues that support both arguments, but director Ridley Scott confirmed the truth for fans: Deckard is, indeed, a Replicant. In the interview above, from 2002, Scott revealed the truth about Deckard’s origins.
5. JESUS CHRIST WAS AN ENGINEER FROM PROMETHEUS.
Ridley Scott’s vision for Prometheus was something much more than a prequel to Alien. Scott conceived the idea that the Engineers created humanity on Earth and when mankind devolved into endless war and chaos, they sent another Engineer, Jesus Christ, to make things right again. However, instead of making a better world, humanity crucified him.
But as it turned out, the fan theory—which started on LiveJournal—is true. Scott just opted to make the Christ analogy more ambiguous than originally conceived because he believed it was “a little too on the nose.”
“If you look at it as an ‘our children are misbehaving down there’ scenario, there are moments where it looks like we’ve gone out of control, running around with armor and skirts, which of course would be the Roman Empire,” Scott told Movies.com. “And they were given a long run. A thousand years before their disintegration actually started to happen. And you can say, ‘Let’s send down one more of our emissaries to see if he can stop it.’ Guess what? They crucified him.”
6. FROZEN AND TARZAN TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.
While Rapunzel and Flynn from Disney’s Tangled appear briefly in Frozen, there is a rumor that suggests Disney’s Tarzan is also linked to Anna and Elsa. As the fan theory goes, the princesses’ parents were the same two people who were shipwrecked on a jungle island at the beginning of Tarzan. This would make the King of the Jungle the baby brother of Anna and Elsa.
During a Reddit AMA, Frozen co-directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck (Buck also directed Tarzan), jokingly added fuel to the fire and confirmed the fan theory. “According to Chris, they didn’t die on the boat. They got washed up on a shore in a jungle island. The queen gave birth to a baby boy. They build a treehouse. They get eaten by a leopard,” said Lee.
A year after appearing on Reddit, Buck double-downed on the theory in an interview with MTV News. “I said, ‘Of course Anna and Elsa’s parents didn’t die,'” he continued. “Yes, there was a shipwreck, but they were at sea a little bit longer than we think they were because the mother was pregnant, and she gave birth on the boat, to a little boy. They get shipwrecked, and somehow they really washed way far away from the Scandinavian waters, and they end up in the jungle. They end up building a tree house and a leopard kills them, so their baby boy is raised by gorillas. So in my little head, Anna and Elsa’s brother is Tarzan—but on the other side of that island are surfing penguins, to tie in a non-Disney movie, Surf’s Up. That’s my fun little world.”
7. SPIRITED AWAY IS AN ALLEGORY FOR THE SEX INDUSTRY.
While many people see Spirited Away as a children’s movie about a young girl who learns to embrace the spirit world to return to her parents, some fans view Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning film as an allegory for prostitution in Japanese society during the 19th century. The film’s protagonist, Chihiro, is forced to work in a bathhouse for an evil witch after her parents foolishly ate food that was meant for the gods, which turned her mother and father into pigs. Chihiro works as a “yuna,” which is Japanese for “a woman who works with bathers,” or a bathhouse prostitute. According to Miyazaki, “I think the most appropriate way to symbolize the modern world is the sex industry. Hasn’t Japanese society become like the sex industry?”
Studio Ghibli also wrote one Spirited Away fan a lengthy letter explaining why Chihiro’s parents turned into pigs and what their transformation represents which, according to Miyazaki, is a metaphor for greed and materialism.
8. PRINCESS MONONOKE IS ABOUT LEPROSY.
YouTube
There is a longstanding urban legend in Princess Mononoke (1997) that suggests the workers covered with bloody bandages at the factory in Irontown have leprosy (or Hansen’s disease). In its original Japanese version, the characters are described as “gyobyo,” which means “incurable disease” or “suffering the consequences” in English. The word “leprosy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the original Japanese version, but the fan theory grew in popularity.
“While making Princess Mononoke, I thought I had to depict people who are ill with what’s clearly called an incurable disease, but who are living as best they can,” Hayao Miyazaki said during a conference for World Leprosy Day. He also met with patients at a hospital in Tokyo that treated people with Hansen’s disease during the film’s production.
9. ALL QUENTIN TARANTINO MOVIES TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.
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For years, fans would speculate about how Quentin Tarantino movies were connected. Aside from Red Apple Cigarettes appearing in almost all of the director’s movies, several of his characters share the same last names and traits: Sergeant Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) from Inglourious Basterds and Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) from True Romance are related, while Pete Hicox (Tim Roth) from The Hateful Eight and Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) from Inglourious Basterds are also related.
In an interview on Australian TV, Tarantino admitted that all of his movies belong in a shared universe, but in a different way than you’d expect. “There are actually two separate universes,” Tarantino said. “There’s the realer than real universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there’s this ‘movie’ universe, so From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill take place in this special movie universe. Basically, when the characters from Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction go to the movies, Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn is what they go see.”
As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, October 3.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
When it comes to scientific research, creature comforts matter, even if the subjects are rodents. A 2016 review found that experiments on mice in warmer or colder temperatures can lead to significantly different results, impacting studies on cancer, obesity, and other diseases. And cold labs probably aren’t the only uncomfortable situations that are impacting basic research.
With this in mind, a team at Georgia Tech is engineering a better rat cage that can allow rodents to move more freely while attached to sensors and electronic devices.
“Anything that is abnormal or unnatural may bias the experiment, no matter what experiment in any field,” explains Maysam Ghovanloo, the creator of the EnerCage, a system designed to improve scientific data gathered from moving rats. “That includes grabbing the animal to attach or detach wires, change batteries or transferring it from one cage to another.”
The clear cage is wrapped in strips of copper foil that can power electronics and sensors that are implanted or attached to the rodents’ bodies, instead of loading the rodents with bulky batteries or attaching a bunch of wires. It’s also capable of sending researchers data about the rats’ behavior wirelessly, so that the rats’ behavior isn’t impacted by people handling them or hovering over them.
Resonating copper coils create a magnetic field within the cage, and another resonator is attached to the rat’s head. A Kinect motion-sensing camera installed above the cage takes 2D and 3D images in infrared and visible light of the rat’s location and posture, and there are four microphones to pick up any sounds. With algorithms that can identify the rats’ various postures and activities (sleeping, standing, sitting, grooming, eating, etc.), the system can monitor rat behavior without introducing a human element.
The EnerCage is still in the early phases, and the Georgia Tech team is currently working on developing a network of multiple cages to house and study several animals at the same time—since no studies use only one rat. They are also designing implants that would be able to deliver drugs to the animals inside the cage without human interference.
