I know a lot of stuff.
Heck, I’ve been collecting this knowledge for an embarrassing number of
years. Much of the stuff I know was
collected at the trough of the American educational system during a seventeen
year dance that concluded with a bachelor’s degree from a fully accredited public
university. I have to admit, it took me
twenty-one years because I am easily led astray by shiny things. But in the ensuing years, I picked up a
material amount of intellectual flotsam and jetsam disregarded in the halls of
academia. If you are a regular reader of these missives, you have more than
likely been exposed to a few of these gems, especially if you are ambitious
enough to tackle my offerings with a dictionary by your side.
In this week’s posting I am going to offer you some tidbits
of trivial knowledge that will hold you in good stead among drunks and most
probably labeled a bore by the tea-totaling set. This exercise to boost your worth as a
cocktail party guest will require some minimal amount of effort on your
part. I am going to offer you several
pieces of knowledge you should already own but probably don’t, or if you ever
did, have lost along the way. I will pose
questions, give you some relevant information to show how world wise I am, but
not present the answers. However, you need
not do any research. In the last section
of this thesis, I will present the answers to you. Are you ready? I am interested if anyone else knows all of
these answers off the tops of their heads.
Let me know.
Quod Unusquisque Nosse
What are the names of the seven dwarfs? We all know the fairy tale “Snow White”. It was published by
the Brothers Grim in 1812, with their final version completed in 1854. You know
about the magic mirror, the poison apple and the glass coffin. But
interestingly enough, the dwarfs were not named in the original work. They were
first given individual names in the Broadway play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1912). But the names that have become iconic were
invented for the 1937 Walt Disney film bearing the same title. Their names as
given in the play of 1912 are: Blick, Flick, Glick, Plick, Quee, Snick and
Whick.
Who are the Three
Musketeers? This is the best work of
fiction I have read! And that statement
encompasses some of my own arrest reports.
Now considering my disdain for French literature (you know what I’m
talking about if you’ve ever struggled through anything by Victor Hugo) this is quite the endorsement. It is chock full
of adventure, suspense, intrigue, romance and humor… and humor. The story was
first published by author Alexandre Dumas as a serial offering in 1844. We owe credit to Dumas for the trademark
line, “One for all, all for one!” The novel’s setting is the 16th
century court of Louis XIII. Several
movie versions have been produced, but due to the length of the novel, the most
faithful treatment was by director Richard Lester with two movies; The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), distributed
by 20th Century Fox. Your
challenge; name the title characters.
Can you name Santa’s
eight tiny reindeer? Yeah, yeah! We all know Rudolph, but he didn’t make
the scene until 1939 in a booklet written by Robert L. May. But the plank holders of Santa’s flight crew
were first identified in the 1823 anonymous poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. (Yes, yes Virginia, the poem is also
know by the titles: The Night Before
Christmas and ‘Twas the Night Before
Christmas in popular usage, but I have never been particularly popular
myself, so please hold to proper form and use the correct title in public
conversation.) Eventually the authorship was attributed to Clement Clarke Moore
but as with most things literary there is a controversy that assigns it to
Henry Livingston, Jr. As a man who has
spent his life avoiding controversy, I will consistently do so here stating I
have no opinion. Far more important than
assigning credit is acknowledging that this poem is responsible for creating
the first uniform image of the American Santa Claus. Knowing the order in which the reindeer are
named will earn you extra credit.
Name the funniest men
in the history of film. No, Will
Ferrel did not make the list! I am of course referring to the Marx
Brothers. If you are not familiar with
their work, you have been sorely deprived of low humor in its highest form.
What became known as the Marx Brothers was a family on-stage music and comedy
act from New York making their debut in 1905.
Their act transformed from more music to more comedy as they found their
vaudeville and Broadway niche. The film
legacy was introduced in the 1929 Paramount Pictures film The Cocoanuts (my all-time favorite). The films were a collection of skits and gags
from their stage act sewn together with an often nonsensical plot. Five of the
Marx Bros. thirteen feature films were listed among the American Film
Institute's (AFI) top 100 comedies of the Twentieth Century, two (Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera) among the top twelve. The brothers also made the list of AFI’s 100
most significant screen legends, the only group act to be included. If you are new to the Marx Brothers, you will
find as may iconic lines as you will in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I’ll give you a
hint, there are more than three.
And Now… the Answers
The Seven Dwarfs: Doc,
Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey
The Three Musketeers:
Athos, Porthos and Aramis. If you
included d’Artagnan, you weren’t paying attention to the assignment.
The Eight Tiny Reindeer:
“Now!
Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid,
on! Donder and Blitzen;…” (sic)
The Marx Brothers: Chico,
Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo. Zeppo
appeared in only the first five films in relatively minor, straight (meaning
non-humorous, not non-gay… not that there is anything wrong with that) roles. Gummo did not appear as an on screen
personality.
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of
a dog it’s too dark to read.”
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