Fun facts!

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Two regarding the movie Bandslam


One) The film was so badly mismarketed (sold as a Highschool Musical tween comedy, in reality the film was more like a coming of age John Hughes film centered around a band) that several heads of distribution and marketing from different studios across Hollywood actually called up Summit Entertainment (the films distributor) and told them how horrible of a job they did, a few even stated it was the worst attempt at marketing a film they've ever seen.

Two) David Bowie's cameo in the final minutes of the film, was his last ever film role. He did it because he loved the directors previous work.
 
The meanings of "world" in the three (major) language branches of Europe:

Germanic "world" and variations come from the Proto-Germanic compound "weraldiz" - "man's life" or "man's age" - composed of "wer" (meaning "adult human male") and "ald" ("old"). I think this is the most poetic etymology, and it's my favorite of the three.

The Latin "mundus" came from Proto-Indo-European root "man," which meant "Humanity," so in the Romance languages the world is "the realm of Men." Very Tolkien-esque. Except in Romanian, where the word is "lume" from the root for "light."

That's because in the Slavic family, the world is some variant of "svet" from their root for "light" or "radiance." So "The Light" or "the realm of Light." I guess because when there's no light, you can't see anything, so it doesn't exist. Apparently Slavs don't stub their toes on the way to the bathroom at night. In Russian, the world is "mir" - also meaning "peace." "The Peace." No war in Russia then.

 
In Victorian England there was a law disallowing a commoner to look directly at the queen, due to the superstition that the poor has the ability to steal thoughts. After decades of Intense scientific contention, It is now believed that less than 3 percent of poor people are able to do this.
 
The infamous slurping scene in The Silence of the Lambs was ad-libbed by Anthony Hopkins. Jodie Foster's disturbed reaction was genuine, and for days after she avoided him during breaks in filming.
 
During the filming of Band of Brothers, real life Easy Company veterans 'Wild Bill' Guarnere and Babe Heffron flew out to England to serve as technical advisors and also appear as extras in the scene where Easy Company liberates a town in Holland. Between them, they ran up a $25,000 tab at a local pub, despite being in their late seventies at the time.
 
Last edited:
The Democratic party uses a donkey as their symbol because someone once tried to get a donkey on the ballot for president as a joke.
 
In the early days of ECW, their arena was next door to a thrift store, and fans would buy things from the thrift store to hand out to their favorite wrestlers to use as weapons - including a vintage Nintendo Entertainment System and a kayak. This ended in 1995, when Mick Foley grabbed what he thought was a cheap aluminum skillet and swung it at at the Sandman's head, only to find out that it was actually cast iron. The ensuing concussion put the Sandman out of action for two weeks.
 
Locked-in syndrome is one of the most nightmarish things I've ever heard of: after a coma, it's possible that you may reawake, fully conscious and aware of your surroundings, but be so paralyzed that you cannot move nor communicate, with your sole means of communication being that you can move your eyes. Wikipedia has a list of known people who've suffered, presented as a collection of mini-stories. Some people have reawoken and gone years before anyone noticed they could respond through their eyes.

What's even crazier, is that one guy with it wrote an entire memoir with one eye, one letter at a time. And then he died, just two days after it was published.
 
The 'Y' in shitty signs like Ye Olde Pub and Ye old Shop, is a defunct letter of old English, called a Thorn, and it is pronounce 'Th' as in, The.

Which means that Ye Old, isn't pronounced 'yee old', it's pronounced The Old.
 
Hot Cup of Joe said:
The 'Y' in shitty signs like Ye Olde Pub and Ye old Shop, is a defunct letter of old English, called a Thorn, and it is pronounce 'Th' as in, The.

Which means that Ye Old, isn't pronounced 'yee old', it's pronounced The Old.
Click to expand...
Old English in general is pretty fun. Most of the letters are pronounced phonetically, so if the word has an "e" at the end, you also pronounce that "e." Same goes for words that would have silent letters in front of them in modern English. Biggest example I can think of is in Monty Python when the Frenchman calls King Arthur's crew "silly English ki-niggits." It's not just a silly joke; he's actually saying the old English word for knight.
 
Hot Cup of Joe said:
The 'Y' in shitty signs like Ye Olde Pub and Ye old Shop, is a defunct letter of old English, called a Thorn, and it is pronounce 'Th' as in, The.

Which means that Ye Old, isn't pronounced 'yee old', it's pronounced The Old.
Click to expand...
More specifically, the Y is actually a stand in for the later lower case thorn, which looks almost identical to “y”. The uppercase thorn began to disappear with the advent of the printing press. While presses were made across the continent, typefaces were primarily made in Germany, which didn’t have some of the runic letters still in use in Middle English. Other Middle English letters, such as wynn and ash also began to fall out of use, as more people were taught to read and write from typewritten documents.
 
When Nickelodeon decided to start making Nicktoons in 1990 they ordered 8 pilots. only Doug, Rugrats and Ren and Stimpy were greenlit. Thunder Lizards, Big Beast Quintet, The Weasel Patrol, The Crowville Chronicles, and Trash were all dumped. All of them either got a negative reception from test audience to being okay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom