Things you were shockingly old when you learned

yeah, despite hearing both songs a million times since I was a child, this somehow never occurred to me

Similarly I recently realised that on Money For Nothing, Sting sings “I want my MTV" to the tune of Don't Stand So Close To Me. Is this common knowledge to other people?

Turns out I am entirely deaf to tunes being reused elsewhere. Thanks, these last couple of posts, for blowing my mind.

I had no idea about both “Money For Nothing”/“Don’t Stand So Close” nor “It’s Tricky”/“Mickey” until just now.

It was a dirty trick by Sting, since he later got royalties and songwriting credit for that.

Wikipedia says that Knopfler wrote that line with that melody, thought it would be funny if Sting sung it so he asked him and he agreed.

And MTV used that bit as an ident for I don't know how long. Did they share the perf monies?

Sting blames his publishing company. OK, Sting.

the Wise Man in Army of Darkness is Pitt from Seinfeld

Today I learned that Sting sings the "I want my MTV" parts of "Money For Nothing"

That's shocking.

LOL indeed

I mean, that song is a bit before my time and I never paid much attention to it (I remember seeing and liking the video as a kid though). I guess it would be super obvious and well known to people ~3 years older than me.

i listened to it absolutely loads as a kid and never knew until now!

Sting singing it with Dire Straits at Live Aid kinda spelled it out, but only at the time — it’s not a performance many have regularly referenced or returned to in the years since.

If you listen to the album version, you can hear Sting doing some extremely in character vamping during the fade out.

"Stew Copeland's
An asshole
That prick is
Dead to me"

Willie Nelson’s name is Willie. It’s not short for William or Willard or anything. So that means 90 years ago there was a newborn baby named Willie Nelson. Happy birthday @WillieNelson

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) April 29, 2023

Damn, I did not know that! Thanks Josh and by extension Jason.

One of my childhood friends was named Max (pointedly NOT Maxwell) but he is also a professional actor whose stage name is Maxwell, for sonic reasons.

I love that and Stevie being short for "Steveland" re: Stevie Wonder

ditto Frank Zappa, he thought his name was "Francesco" but it turned out to just be "Frank" on his birth certificate

I love when pretentious people in convo try to be faux-professional and calling celebrities by their perceived full name, only to get it wildly wrong when the celebrity's name either isn't short for anything or isn't short for what they thought it was

Mickstopher Jagger

Pinktopolous McFloydison

I find it funny that songwriter Fred Ebb of Kander and Ebb was just named Fred Ebb. No middle name. Just a seven letter full name.

In the fictional realm, I’ve noticed that Bobby Ewing on Dallas is just a Bobby, no one calls him Robert, and on official documents his name just reads Bobby.

Also J.R.s name was actually pronounced JER

Jerry Tolkien

Pauldo McCartney

Lemmington Kilmister

Hahaha!

I have a friend called Paddy and I always lengthen it to Paddington because that's a way better name than Patrick.

Re: Sting, I can't find evidence for it, but I recall a story wherein Stewart Copeland was venting, in an interview, about how frustrating it was that Sting collected the immense royalties for "I'll Be Missing You" (Puff Daddy) despite the fact that it was Stewart's guitar part that constituted the actual sample. Stewart said, "Sting has his Italian villa. Where is my Italian villa?" Sting's response: "first of all, it's not a 'villa', it's a palazzo"

lmao

I know this seems ridiculous to be shockingly old to learn, but having never owned a pet who has had a litter of anything, I only learned this past week that dogs (for example) typically have a two-month-and-a-bit duration of pregnancy. Being the human-centric shithead I am, I guess I just assumed dogs and cats were, like us, pregnant for nine month periods

Andy Summers wrote the guitar part surely?
also whoever wrote that Crickets song that Leo Sayer covered should get at least a small pension in Italy for the bridge that Sting pinched

Yes, it was Andy Summers.

Yes sorry it was Andy Summers. (I am not a Sting/Police fan in the slightest, my apologies!)

The members of The Police grant their first joint interview since parting ways more than 15 years ago

The bigger the animal, the longer the gestation.

Also, the amount of nipples a mammal has is roughly double the size of the litter, I assume so there's a backup nip in case a milk duct gets clogged or something.

I thought that was just the case with pigs.

Yog-Sothoth took 3 years to deliver their first child. which was shit because the Ancient Ones only get 6 weeks maternity leave

^spoiler alert!

I was dreaming that SHUB Niggurath had played the Mule lub in Brixton when I picked up their Les Morts Vont Vite cd years later. Was that just a dream,
I thought the timeline would about make sense . Great cd anyway.

The hole in the pasta spoon is there so you can measure a single serve of spaghetti.

My day is now complete.

But the problem is, how much pasta do you put in the boiling water? I have ended up using my kitchen scale to measure out about 3 oz or so of dry pasta per person before I cook it

I've served many great meals using this measure. The problem is I end up having a lot of bits of different pasta shapes that are left over to deal with

I just toss in handfuls until it seems about right.

I have never got this right and always end up cooking too much pasta through fear of not having enough. I will try the pasta spoon method tonight.

Dan S, I thnk the hole in the spoon is for one serving uncooked...

Conch is pronounced conk?! Only learned this last month thanks to an episode of naked and afraid