Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Re: Al Capp from the 'Great Assholes' thread...

Frank Frazetta drew a whole bunch of Lil' Abner comic strips... like thousands of them. News to me.

I also have vague memories of these pairings. In Boston, Diff'rent Strokes was paired with Silver Spoons, and then there was the amazing pairing of Star Blazers with "Force Five", which was a show that featured a different mecha anime on each of the five weekdays:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Five

wow, those last two were simply not on my radar screen. Clearly I missed out on televised awesomeness galore. But it inspires me to add Transformers / GI Joe to my list of pairings.

Anyway. Maybe this is more of a "Things you were shockingly old before you thought very much about," but this review

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/10/metaphysical-animals-review-four-women-who-changed-philosophy

points out that during WWII a whole heck of a lot of college-age British men were someplace else, doing something else. One of the results was an efflorescence of women in philosophy.

I have long been a fan of Iris Murdoch's fiction. I like her philosophical dialogues and writing on Platonic aesthetics (Acastos, The Fire Behind the Sun). I find her book on metaphysics kinda opaque, though. I got some exposure to Philippa Foot in college but don't remember much.

Anyway, I had not considered how much their careers were advanced by the absence of the people who would likely have told them to sit down and be quiet.

The "Soul Train" intro was the signal that Saturday morning cartoons were over.

It was that or "The ABC Weekend Special" that was always some boring ass drama like its cousin, "The ABC Afternoon Special".

That book would open up in the intro and once I saw those two baseball kids pointing at each other, I realized that the fun was over.

Would get so upset when a Cubs afternoon game would preempt Transformers! Which was often, before Wrigley Field had lights.

one thing that happened every day during the Star Blazers/Force Five block, that I was obsessed with even though I never actually got to do it myself, was that they'd have this asteroids-style video game during one of the commercial breaks. It was like targeting crosshairs with asteroids floating around the screen. Kids could call in to a particular phone number, and one lucky kid would get to shout "Fire! Fire!" live on tv in order to shoot the asteroids, and if they shot enough they'd win some sort of prize.

I've heard about that before! That's wild.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3RtR2JVHEA

^ - the NYC WPIX version

Frank Frazetta drew a whole bunch of Lil' Abner comic strips... like thousands of them. News to me.

this is supposedly the only one he drew solo

We had this one in Tasmania but it was never presented quite as entertainingly as this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CIodhrCvg0

that second one may well be the exact same game that I saw

Frank Frazetta drew a whole bunch of Lil' Abner comic strips... like thousands of them. News to me.

I always just assumed that Annabeth Gish was descended from the Gish sisters of Old Hollywood. But I just learned that they are not related.

As the lone voter for Desert Bloom in Grim Scene, Baby, Grim Scene: The Allen Garfield Poll I would have said the same.

Making gravy is easy

had no idea Warren Beaty and Shirley MacLaine were siblings.

Not me, but my wife swears she has a co-worker who up until thought the "use by" date on food meant when you were supposed to start using it.

oh come on, it needs to mature surely. Gaming all your food is going to be the next trend. Much fuller flavour.

Warren Beaty and Shirley MacLaine were siblings.

My child is a theater kid at the high school they attended. Also Sandra Bullock. When you go into the auditorium there are a bunch of their movie posters.

I knew this for a long time but not surprised others don't.

had no idea Warren Beaty and Shirley MacLaine were siblings.

I don't know if I knew this and forgot, but this is blowing my mind.

To me it makes a lot of sense, but again....

I think if you see their faces from certain angles it's a bit visible that there is some resemblance.
Have known for a few decades. Not sure how I found out. Talk show guest appearance or something possibly. Maybe even quiz show trivia.

open question - when did people learn how to properly pronounce Autechre?

I think I probably heard them first on the John Peel show and I think he pronounced it the “right” way (maybe not at first? Can’t remember) so then

Today, I learned that the funny slidey thing at the top of my laptop is to close the camera.

Yes saw you do that.

The English word "compound", when referring to a development in a town, is derived from the Malay word 'kampung'. It entered English via either Dutch or Portuguese. (The Bahasa Indonesia word 'kampong' is still quite well-known in Dutch as a result of our colonial history there).

For more: http://singapurastories.com/kampungcompound-houses/kampungcampongcompound/

The Kennedy kampung

Today I learned that the original Adina Howard version of “Freak Like Me” has an uncensored version where she uses an expletive instead of saying “I need a roughneck brother that can satisfy me.” And I learned this in about the most embarrassing way possible. Thanks a lot, Alexa!

I heard a podcast last week talking about Stalin being a voracious reader who read 100s of pages a day.
Thought he was rumoured to be a thug, can one be both?

the existence of Nolan Thomas’ “Yo’ Little Brother” and its video

Whoa. From the video's comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdQolRb25oM

I went to tbe Laurie Anderson exhibit

Today I learned that the original Adina Howard version of “Freak Like Me” has an uncensored version where she uses an expletive instead of saying “I need a roughneck brother that can satisfy me.” And I learned this in about the most embarrassing way possible. Thanks a lot, Alexa!

Ignore stray first line

o superman
o freak like me
o ruffneck person that can satisfy me just for me

vg+

Just been reminded that the melonfarmer censored version of Repo Man isn't the thetatrical release version.
SO I presumably saw it with the swears in . But that just seems to be a feature of teh film so seems to be what I'd expec of it melonfarmers and flipping.

I always thought Mary's Prayer by Danny Wilson was actually Sailing by Christopher Cross

And the chorus went

"So if I say sailing, sailing..."

Has never realised before today that Nichelle Nichols' brother was a member of the Heaven's Gate UFO cult, and died in the 1997 mass suicide. Or, possibly, transcended to a higher cometary realm, depending on who you believe.

only learned that baby carrots are regular sized carrots whittled down to baby size last week. i don't think i thought something significantly different before... i just never really thought about it at all! baby carrots are extremely weird to think about now though

that it's "anemone" not "anenome"

only got that this year, age 59

Oh no, I've corrected people on that.

I only learned that baby carrots are regular sized carrots whittled down to baby size last week.

i was definitely talking about the baby-cut ones sorry! ive seen the actual tiny carrots before, in fact i think my mom grew em once when i was a kid. i don't think i was under any illusions that that's what the wet bags of orange sticks were made of, but i had never really thought about it. (actually tbh, i ddidn't know the small carrots were even called "baby carrots," so i guess that's two things i learned at a shockingly old age)

Those whittled carrots were invented because carrots often refuse to grow in the nice 'carrot shape' that consumers expect to see and shoppers tend always to reject the oddballs. By whittling the weird-shaped carrots into acceptable little orange bullets the carrot farmers (mostly big agra-businesses) can get a much better price for them than if they sold them for pig feed. Plus they still can sell the leftover shavings to the pig farmers.

not sure I'd realised there were such things as baby-cut carrots. those last few posts were a real rollercoaster for me!

I thought the baby-cut carrots were a special variety bread for sweetness and then whittled down? Also bathed in chlorine

"... By whittling the weird-shaped carrots into acceptable little orange bulletssuppositories ..."

Fixed.