Sam Downing

Young Adult is not the zany black comedy suggested by its trailer (which, by the way, basically spoils the entire movie, so you should probably avoid it. Here’s the link!). This is a dark, twisted-and-not-in-that-cute-Hollywood-way portrait of a disturbed woman, but it’s a portrait that doesn’t say enough about its subject.

(Light spoilers ahead.)

The trailer does get the basic plot right: beyond-beautiful Charlize Theron is Mavis Gary, the author of a failing series of young-adult novels who returns to her hometown to reclaim her high-school sweetheart Buddy (Patrick Wilson), who’s now married with a kid.

Soon after arriving in Mercury, a sort of Everywhere/Nowheresville that could stand in for pretty much any small town in America (or Australia, for that matter – the strip mall/fast-food landscape looks the same), Mavis encounters Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former classmate who was brutally beaten and crippled when he was at school. The two bond – who doesn’t love connecting with friends of the jocks who terrorised you as a teenager? – even as Matt tries to talk Mavis out of her ridiculous plans with Buddy.

The problem with Young Adult is that when I ask myself “What is this film about?”, I can’t really come up with an answer. “Continuing to behave like a high-schooler well into your adulthood has bleak consequences.” And… that’s it? The plot doesn’t move beyond that premise; it’s not thoughtful enough to be a character study, too sour to be a comedy.

Mavis sneers at pretty much everyone who enters her field of vision, but I didn’t dislike her because she’s so unlikeable. Unlikeable characters are fine in principle, and it’s not like I hated her: she’s best when her powerful sarcasm is turned up to 11, scoffing when a date boasts about travelling in South-East Asia and rolling her eyes at a stranger’s baby (strangers’ babies are the worst). Nor would Young Adult have been better if Mavis had experienced some vague redemption – that would’ve been way worse, actually – but unlikeable characters still need to offer some reason for us to follow them, and Mavis doesn’t.

She doesn’t feel complicated as much as she feels disparate; she’s mentally ill and an alcoholic and there’s a late reveal about an adolescent miscarriage that probably fuelled her present-day miscarriage, but none of it gels, and some her characterisations are just obvious (the bit where she looks over a chart used to teach autistic kids about emotions, then she remarks that she doesn’t feel any. CLUNK). There’s too little sense of Mavis and what her regular life is like, or how a bitchy high-school prom queen even became a writer in the first place.

(There’s a vague implication Mavis writes young-adult novels because she’s stuck in permanent adolescence herself, which I emphatically reject, and it suggests screenwriter Diablo Cody is pretty ignorant about YA as a whole. It’s not just Sweet Valley High these days.)

It’s not just Mavis who’s so oddly drawn: what is Young Adult trying to say about small-town America? Should we share Mavis’s contempt for Mercury and her classmates who stayed behind? Or come away believing that even escaping your past doesn’t guarantee you’ll escape mediocrity? I have no idea.

Director Jason Reitman offered a better portrait of a stunted adult in Up in the Air. Watch that instead.

Cherie Priest’s novel Boneshaker, the first instalment in her series The Clockwork Century, went heavy on the steampunk and the zombies. You might assume its follow-up, Dreadnought, would do the same, but by doing so you’d make an ass of u and me.

Sure, Dreadnought has elements of steampunk (walking robots appear right at the beginning) and zombies (which appear right at the end), but this is, ultimately, the story of a woman on a train.

Said woman is Mercy Lynch, a no-nonsense nurse working in a Confederate hospital during the Civil War. She learns her father is dying, which raises two problems: first, she hasn’t seen him since he ran out on her and her mother years ago; second, he lives all the way on the other side of the country.

But Mercy is weary of the gore she bandages up every day, and grieving the recent death of her husband, and so embarks on the long journey – travelling via dirigible (hey, another steampunk element!), then riverboat, then train. And what a train! The Dreadnought is a formidable Union war engine, loaded with weapons, carrying a mysterious cargo in the front and an even more mysterious cargo in the back.

Dreadnought is set in the same universe as Boneshaker, and features a handful of the same characters, but it’s a remarkably different novel to its predecessor… which is not a flaw! Once you adjust to Priest’s languid pace - it takes Mercy forever to finally board the eponymous Dreadnought – it’s a pleasure to read.

The American Civil War isn’t my favourite historical period, but Priest mostly makes it interesting – “mostly” because there’s still the odd infodump that I skipped over. The dry, oh-so-American tone is pitch-perfect, though the book’s greatest achievement is Mercy herself: she’s strong and capable and smart, and the best, most memorable thing about Dreadnought.

There is one thing the book is lacking: a map of the US, or at least all the states Mercy passes through on her journey. Most of the time I couldn’t picture her location in my head. My apologies, America, for not knowing exactly how all your states fit together.

Previously: Book review: Boneshaker, Cherie Priest

Here is what I was asked a million times (literally) last year: “Hey have you read Bossypants? Now have you read Bossypants? When are you going to read Bossypants? You should read Bossypants right now. Why haven’t you read Bossypants yet?!”

Like, god, I get it, sheez, I need to read Bossypants already. So I did. (It’s such an easy book I finished it in a day. So there’s really no excuse for not having read it. Why haven’t you read Bossypants yet?!)

And it’s great! Is it really necessary to point out that this is a smart and funny book? We all know Tina Fey is a smart and funny woman. We’re all fans of 30 Rock and Mean Girls and Mom Jeans here. (Right? If you answered “No”, GTFO.)

She’s an attractive woman, too, but it feels weird pointing that out for a couple reasons. First: would you point it out in a review of a male comedian-writer-actor’s book? Why must a woman’s achievements still be framed around her appearance? Bossypants is a pretty explicitly feminist¹ book, and Fey raises a lot of questions like these, mostly arguing that institutionalised sexism exists less because everyone is a misogynist and more because it goes unchallenged too often.

The other reason it’s weird to point out Fey’s attractiveness is that she doesn’t seem comfortable with that label. The book is so rife with references to her physical flaws – 30 Rock‘s Liz Lemon is the personification of all those neuroses – that it’d feel like she was exploiting the “I’m so not attractive!” thing, if it didn’t read so genuinely. It’s startling to come to the chapter in Bossypants that documents Fey’s discomfort at photoshoots (fame isn’t as eternally glamorous as everyone makes out?!), and even more startling when she name-drops her own pubic hair (famous women have that?!).

But even as she’s writing about herself there’s an impression that Fey is very guarded, unwilling to open herself up completely for us. There is a genuine sense of her personality revealed in Bossypants, but there’s also a sense of the “real-life” Tina Fey lurking off the page, unseen and unrevealed.

Which is fine! Since when is Fey obliged to offer a reality TV-style, warts-and-more-warts expose of every aspect of her personality? Instead, Bossypants is more akin to a really great stand-up show, in book form. There are a lot of LLOLs (that’s literal laugh-out-louds) in there.

And, unexpectedly, the best and funniest bits are Fey’s recollections of her off-camera life: her awkward formative years, her early dabblings in improv comedy (I admire her unironic, earnest, heartfelt passion for the form), her experiences with marriage and motherhood. I say “unexpected” because much is made of the book’s anecdotes about Alec Baldwin and Oprah and Sarah Palin and who have you, and they’re interesting, but they’re not what makes the book.

So what I’m saying is: why haven’t you read Bossypants yet?!

1. Important note!: “Feminist” is not meant to imply “Overbearingly feminist”! [↩]

Surely there is no one in the world who hates the Muppets. Is there anyone in the world who hates the Muppets? No one in the world hates the Muppets.

But plenty of people don’t care about the Muppets – not really care. People who know their names, and remember the gang with fondness, but don’t think about them much. People like me! The Muppets never went away, because the internet keeps everything going (all those Muppet video parodies went viral for a reason) (at least till everyone got sick of them), but they lost what I guess you’d call relevance.

This isn’t surprising: the Muppets are relics of childhood. You watched their TV show(s) and their movies (even the ones where they all played characters from classic literature for some reason) as a kid. Till recently their last (theatrically released) movie was 1999′s a-bit-of-a-hash Muppets from Space. So it’s a bit like reuniting with an old friend to see them again in The Muppets – note the definite article in the title, declaring this is the big-screen outing that will make them pop-culture fixtures again.

Leading man Jason Segal, who also co-wrote the screenplay, throws himself at the film with charming, catching energy. He plays Gary, a small-town American whose brother Walter (performed by Peter Linz), is a muppet; lower-case “m”, because although Gary is unmistakably Henson-esque he’s not one of the Muppets, though he’s been obsessed with their TV show since childhood.

Gary and Walter travel to Los Angeles to visit the famed Muppet Theatre with Mary (Amy Adams, adorable as always), who’s been dating Gary for 10 years. She’s hoping for a marriage proposal but her relationship with Gary is stuck firmly in platonic territory, thanks to his attachment to, and dependency on, his muppet brother.

Arriving in LA, the trio discovers the Theatre has become a derelict wreck, slated for demolition by oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, whose character is evil because this whole film is anti-capitalist propaganda for children). Gary tracks down Kermit, a recluse since his separation from Miss Piggy, and convinces him to reunite the Muppets and put on one last show to save the Theatre.

The story then works out exactly the way you think it does, with a lot of celebrity cameos thrown in.

But that predictability is okay, because the movie is really, actually funny. The gags are silly and warm, and it’s all so goofy and earnest, and that suits the Muppets perfectly – thank god no one thought it’d be necessary to inject any sass or irony or heavy reliance on pop-culture references. (That said, there are a couple of things that are going to date this movie bad, including a chicken-clucked rendition of Cee Lo’s ‘Fuck You’ and cameos from Selena Gomez and, randomly, the fat kid from Modern Family.)

Aside from the classic ‘The Muppet Show Theme’ – that’s a great bit of music, isn’t it? It rivals The Simpsons‘ theme tune for its chaotic energy – there’s some terrific original numbers, many of them penned by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie. The standouts are the super-catchy ‘Life’s a Happy Song’ and ‘Man or Muppet’ (whose performance is accompanied by one of the movie’s best surprise cameos).

It’ll give you the warm and fuzzies – warm and Fozzies? – to watch Kermit and Piggy and Gonzo and the rest together again. The Muppets‘ biggest achievement is the nostalgia is arouses.

But that’s maybe its biggest problem, too: this film wants to make the Muppets relevant again, but it attempts to do so by reminding us that the Muppets used to be relevant. There’s a lot of scenes where everyone sits around reminiscing about the Muppet heyday that won’t mean much to viewers – especially really young viewers – who aren’t as enamoured with these characters as Segal is. Sure, by the time it ends there’s no question that the Muppets were awesome. But the film doesn’t do a great job convincing us they’ll be awesome again, or that they deserve to be.

But it’s not like you’ll leave with the sense that they’ll never be awesome again. It won’t be a shock if the Muppets return to TV with a new variety series in the next couple of years. And there, in a format that’s their natural heartland, where all the characters can be properly re-explored instead of trotted out for brief appearances, they might really earn their place in modern pop-culture again.

The best argument against the existence of the supernatural is this: if all that stuff was real, someone would exploit it for profit. (There’s a great xkcd comic about it.) In Holly Black‘s series The Curse Workers, magic is real – and it’s exploited for profit.

Curse workers – those who possess the ability to alter memories, invade dreams, transform one thing into another, or other fantastic powers – rule New Jersey’s organised crime. Think The Sopranos with magic, but instead of a focus on Tony Soprano our hero is Cassel Sharpe, the youngest member of a worker family tangled up with a powerful mob syndicate.

White Cat, the first Curse Workers instalment, detailed Cassel’s discovery of his place within his family and the worker world. It was a great book, honestly, but felt light-weight despite its heavy themes – high on set-up, low on plot. But! All that establishment in White Cat means we know the rules coming into its sequel Red Glove, freeing Black up to get into the meaty stuff. And she gets right to the meaty stuff.

(Some spoilers ahead for White Cat.) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a looooong time between instalments, but Scott Westerfeld‘s Leviathan trilogy wraps up with a sterling conclusion in Goliath. Probably the best word to describe the third and final part of the series is “cracking”… which is also the best word to describe the series as a whole.

Minor spoilers ahead for Leviathan, Behemoth and Goliath.

So! Fresh off their adventures in Constantinople, our heroes Alek – secretly a prince – and Deryn – secretly a girl – venture to Siberia, Japan and then New York City in the flying warship Leviathan. On their quest the duo encounters several historical figures – including Nikolai Tesla, William Randolph Hearst and Pancho Villa – and finally confronts the romantic tension that’s been brewing between them the past two books.

Alek and Deryn are terrific characters, but Westerfeld’s greatest accomplishment is the world he’s built: set in the lead-up to World War I, the Leviathan trilogy pitches “Darwinists” (roughly equivalent to the Allied powers, who genetically engineer animals into terrifying war beasts) against “Clankers” (the Central powers, who battle with colossal hulking machines). There’s a lot going on here. It might’ve been laboured, or too complicated. But Westerfeld handles it all so cleverly!

Grown-ups will get into Goliath but be aware it falls squarely into the YA camp (never a bad thing, but some adults are weird about reading books “for” teens). Know a smart kid who you want to indoctrinate into the awesomeness of steampunk and alternate history and science-fiction? Give them this whole series.

If there’s a problem with Goliath, it’s that the story hints – and Westerfeld’s afterword makes it explicit – that 20th century history turns out very different because of Alek and Deryn. Their actions basically stop a world war. And that’s only a problem because World War I is this huge terrible epic thing, and the threat of it looms over all three books, but then it… doesn’t happen (or at least, happens on a much smaller scale than in our timeline). Which, on the one hand: yay, WWI averted, millions of lives spared. But on the other hand, from a narrative perspective, the climax loses some of its oomph.

But it’s a minor quibble. Especially since I don’t think this is the last we’ve seen of Alek and Deryn – or at least, not the last we’ve seen of the Darwinist/Clanker universe. With an entire century of history ready to be rewritten, Westerfeld’s got loads of territory left to explore. (Also, I want to see the perspicacious loris Bovril talking for reals.)

Lastly, major credit must go to Keith Thompson’s beautiful, lively illustrations, one of the true delights of all three books.

Previously: Book review: Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld, Book review: Behemoth, Scott Westerfeld

See #6

1. ‘Winter Wonderland’. The bridge of the song contains the following lyrics: “In the meadow we can build a snowman,/then pretend that he is Parson Brown./He’ll say ‘Are you married?’ We’ll say ‘No man,/but you can do the job when you’re in town!” In the period when this song was written, parsons (now known as Protestant ministers) often travelled among small rural towns to perform wedding ceremonies for denominational followers who did not have a local minister of their own faith.
2. Caganer. A caganer is a figurine appearing in nativity scenes in Catalonia and neighbouring areas with Catalan culture… The figure is depicted in the act of defecation.
3. Zwarte Piet. During recent years the role of Zwarte Pieten has become part of a recurring debate in the Netherlands. Controversial practices include holiday revellers blackening their faces, wearing afro wigs, gold jewellery and bright red lipstick, and walking the streets throwing candy to passers-by. Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, often experience culture shock upon encountering the character.
4. Reindeer in Christmas. According to the British comedy panel game QI, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all of Santa’s other reindeer must be either female or castrated, because male reindeer lose their antlers during winter. (Snopes has a bit more on this.)
5. Christmas Eve. In [several European countries], Christmas presents are opened mostly on the evening of the 24th – this is also the tradition among the British Royal Family, due to their mainly German ancestry.
6. Santa Claus. Images of Santa Claus were further popularized through Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising in the 1930s. The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was invented by The Coca-Cola Company or that Santa wears red and white because they are the colors used to promote the Coca-Cola brand. Historically, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising. (Coca-Cola’s official website does claim the ads influenced Santa’s look, though.)
7. Jesus’ year of birth. Although Christian feasts related to the Nativity have had specific dates (eg, December 25 for Christmas) there is no historical evidence for the exact day or month of the birth of Jesus.
8. ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’. A bit of modern folklore claims that the song’s lyrics were written as a “catechism song” to help young Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practising Catholicism was criminalized in England (1558 until 1829). There is no primary evidence supporting this claim, and no evidence that the claim is historical, or “anything but a fanciful modern day speculation.” The theory is of relatively recent origin.
9. Three wise men. The Gospel of Matthew, the only one of the four Canonical gospels to mention the Magi, states that they came “from the east” to worship the Christ, “born King of the Jews.” Although the account does not tell how many they were, the three gifts led to a widespread assumption that they were three as well. In the East, the magi traditionally number twelve.
10. Boxing Day. The exact etymology of the term “boxing” is unclear and there are several competing theories, none of which is definitive.
11. Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, according to which the Virgin Mary was conceived without any stain of original sin. It is completely distinct from the virgin birth of Jesus, though it is a popular mistake to confuse them.
12. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. May considered naming the reindeer “Rollo” and “Reginald” before deciding upon using the name “Rudolph”.

And here’s the whole collection of interesting Wikipedia articles.

Remember that feeling after you finished school or university or college or whatever but before you got moved out into the Real Adult World? That feeling of being surrounded by an overwhelming number of opportunities, of being paralysed by the dread of choosing the wrong one, of not really being sure what was going to happen next, of wondering if this is really what life is meant to be like for the rest of forever, of not wanting to move forward but not forward but not wanting to stay? The Magician King is about that feeling. And magic.

(Some spoilers ahead for the prequel, The Magicians.)

Quentin Coldwater is a king of Fillory, the magical land from a series of books he adored as a child, which he discovered was real in the previous instalment. He’s growing fat and comfortable.

But Quentin being Quentin, he’s still unhappy. He wants more, and he gets it when he ventures out on a seemingly straightforward tax-collecting mission in Fillory’s farthest-flung tropical corners: circumstance tosses him and his co-royal Julia – his childhood friend who, you’ll remember, failed the entrance exam to magic academy Brakebills in The Magicians – back into the real world, where they stumble into a quest to save Fillory and magic itself.

The synopsis reads like standard magical-fantasy-land stuff, but Lev Grossman is awesome at blowing up your expectations of those kinds of stories. In Magicians he turned “boy finds out he’s magical, is educated in the ways of magic” tropes on their head. In Magician King he does the same for “boy finds out he must save the world”.

These books also address the realities of fantasy, as dumb as that sounds. If your teenage fantasies came true as an adult, you would probably be ultimately disappointed, as Quentin is. And, like Quentin, you’d soften the blow with layers of hip, disaffected cynicism and knowing pop-culture references. (You wouldn’t see Hermione using as iPhone, as King‘s Australian witch Poppy does)

And this attitude is important because, you know what, fantasy – if taken literally – is kind of lame. Grossman’s writing recognises this, which stops his work from falling into the twee trap of the classics he’s working with.

The Magician King, unlike its predecessor, is not just about Quentin. Julia’s desperately sad, compelling backstory unfolds in tandem with the A-plot: these flashbacks to her magical education tell a dark, grimly satisfying tale with a devastating climax. Julia’s magic is old and dangerous, nothing like Harry Potter or even grown-up stuff like True Blood: magic is barely under human control, and there are consequences to using it. It’s just fascinating.

Like The Magicians, The Magician King meanders all over the place: Quentin visits Venice and talks to a dragon, then the underworld. He meets a sloth called Abigail. It’s dreamlike, patched together, and it suits the story wonderfully.

I guess with sequels there’s always the question: is The Magician King better than The Magicians? But I don’t think the question even matters. One is foundation, the other is build. Magicians is startlingly fresh, but Magician King enriches what we already know.

Grossman has confirmed there’s a third book coming (yay!) – he’s created too rich a universe not to explore further, and the end of King leaves Quentin’s story wide open. Like the magic in his books, the potential of Grossman’s fantasy world is near-limitless.

Previously: Book review: The Magicians, Lev Grossman

See #76

1. Floating timeline. On The Simpsons Bart Simpson has stayed in the fourth grade and Lisa Simpson in the second grade for the show’s entire run, and baby Maggie has never aged.
2. Mad scientist. Perhaps the closest figure in Western mythology to the modern mad scientist was Daedalus, creator of the labyrinth, who was then imprisoned by King Minos. To escape, he invented two pairs of wings made from feathers and beeswax, one for himself and the other for his son Icarus.
3. Automatic writing. Psychology professor Théodore Flournoy investigated the claim by 19th-century medium Hélène Smith (Catherine Müller) that she did automatic writing to convey messages from Mars in Martian language. Flournoy concluded that her “Martian” language had a strong resemblance to Ms. Smith’s native language of French.
4. Megacorporation. Almost all depictions of a megacorporation show them as amoral (unconcerned with using ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in their decision-making process) operating purely out of a desire to achieve productivity, profit and efficiency as a machine would.
5. Corporatocracy. “Wall Street, you know, you could say… runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government.”
6. Ancient astronauts. In Hindu mythology, the gods and their avatars travel from place to place in flying vehicles (variously called “flying chariots”, “flying cars” or Vimanas). There are many mentions of these flying machines in the Ramayana.
7. Dendera light. The sculpture became notable among fringe historians because of the resemblance of the motifs to some modern electical lighting systems.
8. Phantom island. Some “errors” were later thought to be intentional. Lake Superior’s Isles Phelipeaux and Pontchartrain, which appeared on explorers’ maps for many years, were named for Louis Phélypeaux, marquis de La Vrilliere, comte de Pontchartrain. Phélypeaux was a government minister influential in allocating funds for additional voyages of exploration.
9. Out-of-place artifact. The term is used to describe a wide variety of objects, from anomalies studied by mainstream science to pseudoarchaeology far outside the mainstream, to objects that have been shown to be hoaxes or to have mundane explanations.
10. Shakespeare Apocrypha. A late sixteenth-century writer, Francis Meres, and a scrap of paper (apparently from a bookseller), both list Love’s Labour’s Won among Shakespeare’s then-recent works, but no play of this title has survived.
11. Sigil. The magical training books called grimoires often listed pages of such sigils. A particularly well-known list is in the Lesser Key of Solomon, in which the sigils of the 72 princes of the hierarchy of hell are given for the magician’s use. Such sigils were considered to be the equivalent of the true name of the spirit and thus granted the magician a measure of control over the beings.
12. Anthropodermic bibliopegy. “The bynding of this booke is all that remains of my deare friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632. King Btesa did give me the book, it being one of poore Jonas chiefe possessions, together with ample of his skin to bynd it. Requiescat in pace.”
13. Book of Life. Only those whose names are written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, and have not been blotted out by the Lamb, are saved at the Last Judgment; all others are doomed.
14. Necronomicon. In 950, it was translated into Greek and given the title Necronomicon by [a scholar from Constantinople[. This version “impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts” before being “suppressed and burnt” in 1050.
15. Rongorongo. As with most undeciphered scripts, there are many fanciful interpretations and claimed translations of rongorongo. However, apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to have to do with a lunar calendar, none of the texts are understood.
16. Pseudoarchaeology. Pseudoarchaeology has been motivated by racism, especially when the basic intent was to discount or deny the abilities of non-white peoples to make significant accomplishments in astronomy, architecture, sophisticated technology, ancient writing, seafaring, and other accomplishments generally identified as evidence of “civilization”.
17. New South Greenland. Doubt was cast over the existence of New South Greenland when, in 1838, the French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville sailed over the position of Morrell’s “north cape”, but saw no indication of land.
18. List of mythological places. Thule is an island that was supposed to have existed somewhere in the belt of Scandinavia, northern Great Britain, Iceland, and Greenland.
19. Lost city. In 1911, Melchor Arteaga led the explorer Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley.
20. Maine penny. The penny’s coastal origin has been offered as evidence either that the Vikings travelled further south than Newfoundland.
21. Kensington Runestone. When the original text is transcribed to the Latin script, the message becomes quite easy to read for any modern Scandinavian. This fact is one of the main arguments against the authenticity of the stone.
22. Ahnenerbe. Ahnenerbe’s goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan race, and later to experiment and launch voyages with the intent of proving that prehistoric and mythological Nordic populations had once ruled the world.
23. Stone spheres of Costa Rica. The culture of the people who made them disappeared after the Spanish conquest.
24. List of largest monoliths in the world. A monolith is a large stone which has been used to build a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. In this list at least one colossal stone over ten tons has been moved to create the structure or monument.
25. Jack the Ripper. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were “The Whitechapel Murderer” and “Leather Apron”.
26. Empusa. The empusae were sent by Hecate (also the goddess of roadsides) to guard roads and devour travellers. According to Philostratus, empusae ran and hid, uttering a high-pitched scream, at the sound of insults.
27. Marree Man. “In honour of the land they once knew. His attainments in these pursuits are extraordinary; a constant source of wonderment and admiration.”
28. Vela Incident. Some specialists who examined the data speculated that the double flash, characteristic of a nuclear explosion, may have been the result of a nuclear weapons test.
29. 1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision. The Air Force determined that it was prudent to leave the bomb covered in mud at the bottom of the sea floor rather than disturb it and risk the potential of detonation or contamination.
30. Blue Peacock. One particularly remarkable proposal suggested that live chickens should be included in the mechanism. The chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water; they would remain alive for a week or so. The body heat given off by the chickens would, it seems, have been sufficient to keep all the relevant components at a working temperature. This proposal was sufficiently outlandish that it was taken as an April Fool’s Day joke when the Blue Peacock file was declassified on April 1, 2004.
31. Person from Porlock. Thus “Person from Porlock”, “Man from Porlock”, or just “Porlock” are literary allusions to unwanted intruders.
32. Eternal flame. Eternal flames are most often used as a symbol to acknowledge and remember a person or event of national significance, or a group of brave and noble people connected to some event, or a goal such as international peace.
33. Mojave phone booth. The phone became a sensation on the Internet in 1997… Soon, fans called the booth attempting to get a reply, and a few took trips to the booth to answer, often camping out at the site.
34. The man on the Clapham omnibus. It is possibly derived from the phrase “Public opinion … is the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus”… Clapham in south London at the time was a nondescript commuter suburb seen to represent “ordinary” London.
35. Prometheus (tree). The tree, which was at least 4862 years old and likely approaching or over 5000 years, was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel for research purposes. They did not know of its world-record age before the cutting.
36. Green Man. Robinson was so badly injured in a childhood electrical accident that he could not go out in public without fear of creating a panic, so he went for long walks after dark. Local residents (who would drive his road in hopes of meeting him) called him The Green Man or Charlie No-Face, and they passed on tales about him to their children and grandchildren.
37. Emperor Norton. When Norton returned to San Francisco from his self-imposed exile, he had become completely disgruntled with what he considered the inadequacies of the legal and political structures of the United States. On September 17, 1859, he took matters into his own hands and distributed letters to the various newspapers in the city, proclaiming himself “Emperor of these United States”.
38. Joseph Jagger. In 1873, Jagger hired six clerks to clandestinely record the outcomes of the six roulette wheels at the Beaux-Arts Casino at Monte Carlo, Monaco. He discovered that one of the six wheels showed a clear bias, in that nine of the numbers (7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28 and 29) occurred more frequently than the others. He therefore placed his first bets on 7 July 1875 and quickly won a considerable amount of money.
39. James Joseph Dresnok. Unwilling to face punishment, on August 15, 1962, while his fellow soldiers were eating lunch, he ran across a minefield in broad daylight into North Korean territory.
40. Jim Corbett. Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and shot a documented 19 tigers and 14 leopards — a total of 33 recorded and documented man-eaters. It is estimated that these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children.
41. Man-eater. While only a very few species of snakes can swallow a human, the technicality regarding a snake swallowing its prey head first, prevents it from preying on adult human beings. Quite a few claims have been made about giant snakes swallowing adult humans, although convincing proof has been absent.
42. Just-world hypothesis. In another study, female and male subjects were told two versions of a story about an interaction between a woman and a man. Both variations were exactly the same, except at the very end the man raped the woman in one and in the other he proposed marriage. In both conditions, both female and male subjects viewed the woman’s (identical) actions as inevitably leading to the (very different) results.
43. Humanzee. For geneticists, “Chuman” therefore refers to a hybrid of male chimpanzee and female human, while “Humanzee” or “manpanzee” refers to a hybrid of male human and female chimpanzee.
44. Old Man of the Lake. In his work, Diller briefly describes a great stump in the lake that he had found six years earlier. Thus, in 1896, The Old Man floated just as it does at present, giving it a documented age of more than one hundred years.
45. Alexamenos graffito. The image depicts a human-like figure attached to a cross and possessing the head of a donkey.
46. ETAOIN SHRDLU. It is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language.
47. As Slow As Possible. The current organ performance of the piece at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.
48. Elm Farm Ollie. Elm Farm Ollie (known as “Nellie Jay” and post-flight as “Sky Queen”) was the first cow to fly in an airplane. On the same trip, she also became the first cow milked in flight.
49. Demon core. The test was known as “tickling the dragon’s tail” for its extreme risk.
50. A. J. Raffles. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes — he is a “gentleman thief,” living in the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries.
51. Homunculus. Spermists held the belief that the sperm was in fact a “little man” (homunculus) that was placed inside a woman for growth into a child. This seemed to them to neatly explain many of the mysteries of conception. It was later pointed out that if the sperm was a homunculus, identical in all but size to an adult, then the homunculus may have sperm of its own. This led to a reductio ad absurdum with a chain of homunculi “all the way down”.
52. Paracelsus. Many books mentioning Paracelsus also cite him as the origin of the word “bombastic” to describe his often arrogant speaking style.
53. Psychogeography. “The sectors of a city…are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents”.
54. Globster. Some globsters lack bones or other recognisable structures, while others may have bones, tentacles, flippers, eyes or other features that can help narrow down the possible species.
55. Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic. Although natural windshield pitting had been going on for some time, it was only when the media called public attention to it that people actually looked at their windshields and saw damage they had never noticed before.
56. Pit of despair. After 30 days, the “total isolates,” as they were called, were found to be “enormously disturbed.” After being isolated for a year, they barely moved, did not explore or play, and were incapable of having sexual relations. When placed with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied. Two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
57. London Stone. The London Stone was for many hundreds of years recognised as the symbolic authority and heart of the City of London. It was the place where deals were forged and oaths were sworn. It was also the point from which official proclamations were made.
58. Impostor. Many women in history have presented themselves as men in order to advance in typically male-dominated fields. Not all were transgender in the current sense.
59. David Hempleman-Adams. He is the first person in history to reach the Geographic and Magnetic North and South Poles as well as climb the highest peaks in all seven continents.
60. Explorers Grand Slam. In 2011, former Wales rugby union international Richard Parks became the first person ever to complete the Grand Slam within a single calendar year, doing so within seven months.
61. Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? Farmer attempted to climb the tree to investigate. As he was climbing, he glanced down into the hollow trunk and discovered a skull, believing it to be that of an animal. However, after seeing human hair and teeth, he realized that he was holding a human skull.
62. Penitent thief. In the Gospel of Nicodemus and Catholic tradition the name Dismas is given to the thief. He was never canonized by the Catholic Church but is venerated as a saint by local traditions as Saint Dismas.
63. Impenitent thief. According to the Gospels, he taunted Jesus about not saving himself.
64. Rocket mail. It has been attempted by various organizations in many different countries, with varying levels of success.
65. Michael Malloy. On February 22, after he passed out for the night, they took him to Murphy’s room, put a hose in his mouth that was connected to the gas jet, and turned it on. This finally killed Malloy, death occurring within minutes.
66. Georgia Guidestones. The structure is sometimes referred to as an “American Stonehenge”.
67. Saint Ursula. It has also been theorised that Ursula is a Christianized form of the goddess Freya, who welcomed the souls of dead maidens.
68. First flying machine. The 9th century Muslim Berber inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas covered his body with vulture feathers and ‘flew faster than a phoenix” according to a contemporary poem.
69. Manhattanhenge. The same phenomenon happens in other cities with a uniform street grid.
70. Brazen Head. A prophetic device attributed to many medieval scholars who were believed to be wizards, or who were reputed to be able to answer any question. It was always in the form of a man’s head, and it could correctly answer any question asked of it.
71. Therianthropy. Lycanthropy, the transformation into a wolf, is the best known form of therianthropy, followed by cynanthropy, or transformation into a dog, and ailuranthropy, or transformation into a cat.
72. Water memory. The concept was proposed by Jacques Benveniste to explain the purported therapeutic powers of homeopathic remedies.
73. Sandman. He opens the doors without the slightest noise, and throws a small quantity of very fine dust in their eyes, just enough to prevent them from keeping them open, and so they do not see him.
74. Tepui. They are typically composed of sheer blocks of Precambrian quartz arenite sandstone that rise abruptly from the jungle, giving rise to spectacular natural scenery.
75. Iron pillar of Delhi. The pillar has attracted the attention of archaeologists and metallurgists and has been called “a testament to the skill of ancient Indian blacksmiths” because of its high resistance to corrosion.
76. Bélmez Faces. Some investigators believe that it is a thoughtographic phenomenon unconsciously produced by the owner of the house, María Gómez Cámara.
77. Nensha. There are three well-known individuals involving thoughtography or the research of same, all of which have been decried at one point or another as fraudulent.
78. Stone Tape. It speculates that inanimate materials can absorb some form of ially during moments of high tension, such as murder, or during intense moments of someone’s life.
79. Lady Wonder. Over 150 thousand people came to consult the horse at the price of three questions for one dollar.
80. Chair of Death. Those who have supposedly died because of the chair include Paul Kimmons, a former curator… A ghost known as Amanda or Amelia entices people to sit in the chair.
81. The Ghost Club. Since its founding in 1862, the Ghost Club has welcomed many luminaries to its membership. The list includes Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
82. Psychic staring effect. Sixty percent of subjects reported being stared at when being stared at, and 50 percent of subjects reported being stared at when they were not being stared at… this suggested a weak sense of being stared at but no sense of not being stared at.
83. Oak Island. There is a story that, like most others regarding the island, lacks adequate archival sources, or any quoted sources at all, which places the priceless jewels of Marie Antoinette on Oak Island.
84. Bible code. Another example of an alleged prediction coded in the text of the Bible… concerns the hanging of 10 Nazi leaders on 16 October 1946 following the Nuremberg Trials.
85. Disciple whom Jesus loved. A major difficulty in supposing that the Beloved Disciple was not one of the Twelve Apostles is that the Beloved Disciple was apparently present at the Last Supper which Matthew and Mark state that Jesus ate with the Twelve. Thus the most frequent identification is with John the Apostle.
86. Sidney Leslie Goodwin. The sailors aboard the Mackay-Bennett, who were very upset by the discovery of the unknown boy’s body, paid for a monument and he was buried on 4 May 1912 with a copper pendant placed in his coffin by recovery sailors that read “Our Babe.”
87. Catastrophism. Modern theories also suggest that Earth’s anomalously large moon was formed catastrophically… thus explaining the Moon’s lesser density and lack of an iron core.
88. Angel hair. Some types of spiders are known to migrate through the air, sometimes in large numbers, on cobweb gliders. Many cases of angel hair were nothing other than these spider threads and, in one occasion, small spiders have been found on the material.
89. Piri Reis map. The historical importance of the map lies in its demonstration of the extent of exploration of the New World by approximately 1510, perhaps before others.
90. Mokele-mbembe. Some legends describe it as having an elephant-like body with a long neck and tail and a small head, a description which has been suggested to be similar in appearance to that of the extinct Sauropoda, while others describe it as more closely resembling elephants, rhinoceros, and other known animals. It is usually described as being gray-brown in color.
91. Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine. According to many versions of the tale, the mine is either cursed, or protected by enigmatic guardians who wish to keep the mine’s location a secret.
92. Naga fireball. Local villagers… believe that the balls are produced by a mythical snake, the Naga or Phaya Naga, living in the river.
93. Chase Vault. According to the story, each time when the vault was opened to bury a family member, all of the extremely heavy coffins but one had changed position – despite the vault being sealed shut each time it was closed.
94. Crown Jewels of Ireland. The jewels were discovered missing on 6 July 1907, four days before the state visit of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The theft is reported to have angered the King, but the visit went ahead.
95. Kappa. Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers. Their pranks range from the relatively innocent, such as loudly passing gas or looking up women’s kimonos, to the malevolent, such as drowning people and animals, kidnapping children, and raping women.
96. Heikegani. The crabs with shells resembling Samurai were thrown back to the sea by the fishers on respect to the Heike warriors, while those not resembling Samurai were eaten, giving the former a greater chance of reproducing.
97. Kasa-obake. Karakasa are spirits of parasols (umbrellas)… They are typically portrayed with one eye, a long tongue protruding from an open mouth, and a single foot.
98. Tsukumogami. Though by and large tsukumogami are harmless and at most tend to play occasional pranks on unsuspecting victims… they do have the capacity for anger and will band together to take revenge on those who are wasteful or throw them away thoughtlessly.
99. Nuppeppo. The Nuppeppō is passive and unaggressive. The body odor is said to rival that smell of rotting flesh. Other theories claim that the Nuppeppō is actually decaying flesh. There is a rumor that states that those who eat the flesh of a Nuppeppō shall have eternal youth.
100. List of legendary creatures from Japan. Aka Manto is a malicious spirit who haunts bathrooms and asks the cubicle occupants if they want red or blue paper.

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If a man at a public pool is wearing the following kind of swimwear, he is:

Red Speedos: hot.

Black Speedos: unimaginative.

Navy Speedos: conservative.

Green Speedos: Brazilian, probably.

Yellow Speedos: trying too hard.

White Y-fronts: ESL.

Expensive swimwear brand (worn by young, fit guy): a model.

Expensive swimwear brand (worn by young, flabby guy): aspirational.

Expensive swimwear brand (worn by old, flabby guy): deluded.

White, almost see-through Speedos: creepy.

Loose, clingy football shorts with nothing worn underneath: from a less prudish European country.

Board shorts: self-conscious.

Tight mid-thigh-length swimming trunks: a proper swimmer who will overtake you constantly.

Tight blue skimpy swim shorts: James Bond

(Source: every visit to a public pool ever)