Neatorama

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• 7 Celebrities Who Made It Big Thanks To Soul Train
• The Last Mud Horse Fisherman
• The End of Kodachrome
• Pool Played with Bowling Balls
• Would The Wonder Years Be a Good Video Game?
• Ski Mask Self-Portrait
• Doctor Who Nesting Dolls
• Adorable Baby Turtles Climbing Vertical Rock Face
• World's Happiest Penguin
• 20-Shot Revolver
• The Last Text
• What Is It? game 158
• The Laconia Incident
• Polar Bears vs. Cameras
• The Best Maru Moments of 2010
• The Secret Life of the Banjo

7 Celebrities Who Made It Big Thanks To Soul Train Posted: 31 Dec 2010 05:03 AM PST Watching old episodes of Soul Train is always a good time. The outrageous outfits, the wonderful and wacky dance moves, the cool music acts and the sweet, soulful voice of Mr. Don Cornelius make up one excellent hour of television. If you start watching the reruns though, you may occasionally find yourself exclaiming "I recognize that person," and you just might be right. A number of celebrities danced on the show before and after they made it big. Here are a few stars you might recognize if you keep your eyes peeled while watching. Rosie Perez Video link After graduating high school, Rosie Perez moved to Los Angeles and started attending LA City College with hopes of becoming a marine biologist. She was a killer dancer though and soon found herself working on Soul Train in the late 80s. After a few seasons, she went on to perform at the club Funky Reggae, which is where she was spotted by Spike Lee who soon cast her in his film Do The Right Thing. She continued working in the dance field and earned three Emmy nominations for her choreography on In Living Color and she choreographed music videos for Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Diana Ross and LL Cool J. Of course, Rosie is best know for her acting, starring in White Men Can't Jump, Untamed Heart, Fearless and more. She's even appeared on Broadway, where she was able to combine her dancing and acting talents. These days, she focuses most of her energies on activism and President Obama even appointed her to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS this year. Sources: Star Pulse, Biography.com, Wikipedia Carmen Electra Born Tara Leigh Patrick, Carmen's parents knew she was destined for fame and they enrolled her in creative and performing arts classes since she was a youngster. Before she was even 18, she had already moved to LA and started dancing on Soul Train in 1991. Her big break came when she snuck into a nightclub and was spotted by Prince, who asked her to audition for a new female singing group he was forming. While she failed that the audition, she soon met Prince a second time and he asked her to be a solo artist on his record label. He also asked her to change her name to something more exotic, suggesting Carmen Electra after Bizet's opera, Carmen, and the Greek princess Electra. Her music career failed, but she was able to land a job on Nickelodeon's All That, and she soon posed in Playboy, which helped her land a role on Baywatch and in MTV's Singled Out. Since then she's starred in a number of TV shows and movies, although these days her biggest roles seem to be in parody films like Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans. Sources: Wikipedia, Hot Carmen Electra Image via Rafael Amado Deras [Flickr] Nick Cannon Nick Cannon started young. He was only eight when he started doing comedy acts and at 11, he was performing his act on public access. At only 15, he moved to Hollywood and joined the cast of Soul Train while performing his comedy routine at night. Like Carmen Electra, he was also recruited for Nickelodeon's All That and he served as the warm up stand up comedian before the sketches were underway. Soon enough, he was added to the cast and the writing crew, making him the youngest staff writer in the history of television at age 17. In 2002, he starred alongside Will Smith in Men in Black II and was soon cast as the lead in Drumline. The same year, he also released his debut album. These days, while still working on movies, music and  his marriage to Mariah Carey, he is also the host on America's Got Talent. Sources: Star Pulse, NickCannon.com Image via Loren Javier [Flickr] Jody Watley and Jeffery Daniel Video link Jody Watley was a Soul Train dancer since she was 14 and was immediately recognized as a trend setter in both fashions and dance styles. Jeffery was a little older when he started on the show, but also was a featured dancer at the very beginning of the show. Dick Griffey, and Don Cornelius wanted to start a disco trio and the two dancers were selected to be part of the new group Shalamar. While the group had a string of hits throughout the seventies and eighties, many of which sold over a million copies, they are best remembered for inspiring Michael Jackson. Michael was a huge fan of Soul Train and of Shalamar and eventually hired Jeffery to teach him some choreography. Jeffery was actually the person who created the moonwalk and you can see the dance move in their 1982 performance on BBC's Top of the Pops, a year before Michael stunned the world by performing it on television. Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3 Jermaine Stewart Video link Before releasing hits like "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off," Jermaine Stewart started his career off as a dancer on Soul Train. He was on the first generation of Soul Train shows from the early seventies, when the show was still filmed in Chicago instead of LA. Stewart soon started doing backing vocals and acting as a dancer for Shalamar and then moved on to doing the backing vocals for Culture Club's Colour by Numbers. He did such a great job that Boy George and the rest of the group helped him land a recording contract with Arista Records. Stewart had a string of hits throughout the eighties, but he slowed down in the nineties, and his last album was never released after the title track single sold poorly. He passed away from AIDs in 1997. Source: Wikipedia Fred "Rerun" Berry You may remember Rerun and his catchphrase "hey hey hey" from the show What's Happening!!, but before he played the iconic seventies TV character, Fred Berry was another dancers on the early Soul Train episodes in Chicago. His excellent dance moves eventually got him a spot in a Los Angeles break-dancing crew called the Lockers, who once appeared on Saturday Night Live. Within a year, he found himself cast on What's Happening!! Berry's character ended up being one of the most popular on the show, which led him to be typecast eternally as Rerun. While the success of Rerun prevented Berry from being able to find other acting gigs, he eventually embraced the character and started wearing his classic red beret and suspenders in public and even legally changed his middle name to Rerun. Since then, he's been hired to do a number of cameos as Rerun in various movies and TV shows. Sources: Answers.com, Wikipedia Do you watch Soul Train? If so, what's your favorite part of the show? I personally love the outfits and some of the outrageous couples dances, but it is always fun to see people you recognize dancing like crazy.

The Last Mud Horse Fisherman Posted: 31 Dec 2010 04:54 AM PST A mud horse is a wooden sledge that is pushed by a fisherman across tidal flats. Adrian Sellick of Bridgewater Bay, UK, may be the last man in the world skilled in this fishing technique: Mr Sellick was first taken out on a mud-horse with his father when he was just six-years-old, and he remembers watching him and trying to learn the technique. The mud-horse itself is a hand-built wooden sledge which enables fishermen to navigate his way over the treacherous mudflats of Bridgwater Bay, where the technique was used by many families only a couple of generations ago. This then allows him to slide to the tide’s edge, where stakes are battered into the mud and nets strung between them. After the tide comes in and the waters withdraw, the fish and shrimps appear. The fish will likely be cod and whiting in the winter; skate and sea bass in the summer. Link | Photo: SWNS

The End of Kodachrome Posted: 30 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST After 75 years, the color film Kodachrome is neither sold nor processed. The last place that developed Kodachrome photographs was Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas. Over the past year, photographers from all over the world have brought film to Dwayne’s for developing before it’s too late. Among the recent visitors was Steve McCurry, a photographer whose work has appeared for decades in National Geographic including his well-known cover portrait, shot in Kodachrome, of a Afghan girl that highlights what he describes as the "sublime quality" of the film. When Kodak stopped producing the film last year, the company gave him the last roll, which he hand-delivered to Parsons. "I wasn't going to take any chances," he explained. At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years ago, then the one in Japan and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne's Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye. Today was the final day for Kodachrome processing. So many people wanted the honor of being the last Kodachrome customer that it was decided that the photo shop proprietor Dwayne Steinle himself would shoot the roll of film to be processed last. Link (Image credit: Steve Hebert for The New York Times)

Pool Played with Bowling Balls Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:51 PM PST Steve Wienecke of Fredericktown, Missouri invented a game that he calls “Knokkers”. It’s similar to pool, but played on a surface scaled four times larger than a regulation pool table and with six-pound bowling balls. Wienecke hopes to one day see Knokkers platforms on cruise ships and in amusement parks and restaurants. Link and Facebook Page via Brian J. Noggle | Photo: Rural Missouri Co-op

Would The Wonder Years Be a Good Video Game? Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:56 PM PST (Video Link) In this video, Dan Meth imagines 80s-era Nintendo games based on the Chernobyl disaster, the movie Rain Man, The Arsenio Hall Show, and other icons of the 1980s. If you have any cheat codes for the Baby Jessica Well Rescue, please let me know.

Ski Mask Self-Portrait Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:44 PM PST Last year, we featured Andrew Salomone’s portrait of Bill Cosby in Jello shots. More recently, he used an electronic knitting machine to make a self-portrait in the form of a ski mask: The balaclava is knit from cotton yarn and the design is from a bitmap file, in which pictures of my head from every angle were photoshopped together into a single rectangular image. I used the same images to make the bitmap file as I did for the original ID-Preserving Balaclava project. Link via Make | Photo: Andrew Salomone

Doctor Who Nesting Dolls Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:37 PM PST Molly Lewis made these nesting dolls as a present for her boyfriend. They depict all eleven Doctors from Doctor Who and a TARDIS. Link via Technabob

Adorable Baby Turtles Climbing Vertical Rock Face Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:32 PM PST (YouTube Link) YouTube user kakashi Julia spotted these baby turtles at a shopping mall in Malaysia. They’re remarkably agile climbers. via Geekosystem

World's Happiest Penguin Posted: 30 Dec 2010 03:40 PM PST (YouTube link) While some complain about the snow, this little guy dances for joy! Or maybe he just really likes the song “Auld Lang Syne.” It’s a Happy Feet New Year! -Thanks, özi!

20-Shot Revolver Posted: 30 Dec 2010 11:41 AM PST This is a unique single-action revolver patented by Henry S. Josselyn in 1866. Information on this gun is scarce, but it would appear to fire twenty rounds without reloading simply by cycling a new round on the flexible chain after each discharge. At least one example of this firearm is retained by the Smithsonian Institution. Link | Patent Information | Photo: American Heritage Magazine

The Last Text Posted: 30 Dec 2010 08:31 AM PST (YouTube link) AT&T produced this documentary about what happens when overconfident drivers think they can multitask -sending text messages while driving. It’s not worth it. -via Metafilter

What Is It? game 158 Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:37 AM PST It’s time for our giveaway collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog! Can you guess what this object is? Or maybe you know and don’t have to guess! Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you’d like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don’t include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts? For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Have fun!

The Laconia Incident Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:27 AM PST What happens in war when an enemy rescues endangered civilians? In 1942, a German U-boat sunk a ship carrying 400 Allied troops, dozens of civilians, and (unknown to the Germans) 1800 Italian POWs. The attack left a couple of thousand survivors floating in lifeboats or treading water in the ocean. The survivors faced a certain and protracted watery death. Then, the U-Boat commander Werner Hartenstein (left), made an extraordinary decision that went beyond all protocol. He ordered the U-boat to surface he ordered his submariners to save as many of the marooned survivors as possible. This act of humanity would save the lives of many hundreds of people.  Yet the tragedy of the Laconia was not over yet. A U-boat cannot accommodate so many people. What happened to the survivors of the RMS Laconia is the subject of discussion even today. Read the whole story at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer

Polar Bears vs. Cameras Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:24 AM PST (YouTube link) The only safe way to film polar bears is by remote control cameras, but curious bears are onto the trick! The BBC aired footage of the mayhem last night. Link -via reddit

The Best Maru Moments of 2010 Posted: 30 Dec 2010 06:22 AM PST The author of Catsparella sifted through a year of Maru’s blog and excerpted some of the best photographs and videos of 2010. Each entry has a link to the original blog post. I particularly liked Maru’s response to YouTube in gratitude for another trophy. But of course, nothing beats Maru’s love of boxes! Link -via Buzzfeed

The Secret Life of the Banjo Posted: 30 Dec 2010 05:02 AM PST If you’re like most Americans, you probably picture one of two things when you hear the banjo -Kermit the Frog strumming away in the swamp or the inbred boy from Deliverance. How can one instrument conjure up images both so sweet and so repugnant? The answer lies in the history of the banjo, which stretches from Africa to Hollywood, with an extended stop in Appalachia. Centuries ago, somewhere in West Africa, the banjo was born on the knee of griots -storytellers who improvised their lyrics as they performed. Almost like forerunners to today’s hip-hop artists, griots interacted with their audiences using call-and-response patterns to liven up the crowd. Their instruments -strings and animal skins tacked across hollowed-out gourds- are considered the first banjos. The earliest versions were easy to make and easily portable, so when Africans were forced aboard slave ships, they brought their banjos with them. Once in America, slaves had no trouble recreating the instruments wherever they went. The banjo spread across Appalachia, but it was quickly pigeonholed as a black instrument. THE JIM CROW SHOW Big changes were in store for the banjo, though. In the mid-19th century, the newest and most popular form of entertainment was the minstrel show. White men and women toured the nation dressed in blackface while singing and dancing in a manner that mocked black people. And because they were lampooning all aspects of African-American culture -particularly African dance and music- the banjo was at center stage. Minstrel shows also meant change for the instrument itself. The early “minstrel banjo” was a fretless, four-string instrument with strings crafted from animal intestines. But metal strings soon replaced those, and then a minstrel named Joel Walker Sweeney (aka the Banjo King) popularized the fifth string, which became the defining characteristic of the modern instrument. During the next 50 years or so, a strange thing happened to the banjo. Although minstrel shows poked fun at black people, they made the banjo immensely popular among white people in the process. In turn, African-Americans increasingly wanted to distance themselves from an instrument that had come to represent oppression and bigotry. In the early 1900s, the banjo only played a small part in new forms of African-American music, such as blues, gospel, and jazz. Meanwhile, it was becoming all the rage in white communities, especially in Appalachia. HILLBILLY HILARITY The 1930s saw the rise of the banjo in Appalachian country music, thanks to the Grand Ole Opry. A Saturday night variety show performed in Nashville and broadcast live on the radio, the Opry spread “hillbilly” culture over the airwaves. The banjo played a central role in this, accompanying the antics of comedians such as David “Stringbean” Akeman and Louis Marshall “Grandpa” Jones, both of whom became even more famous later on the TV hit Hee-Haw. The banjo might have remained an instrument of redneck comedy forever if it hadn’t been for one man -Earl Scruggs. Born in 1924 in rural North Carolina, Scruggs grew up listening to the Opry and became convinced that the instrument could do more than accompany stage acts. By inventing the jangly, three-finger technique of banjo-picking -the trademark of today’s bluegrass music- Scruggs used his fast-paced twangy style to prove beyond a doubt that banjo pickers could be virtuoso musicians. Of course, the trend has lived on. Modern-day banjo masters like Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka, and Bill Keith all play with as much technical precision as concert violinists. Ironically, Scruggs also recorded the soundtracks for Bonnie and Clyde (ever wonder why high-speed getaway music is always played on the banjo?) and TV’s The Beverly Hillbillies. Both projects probably maligned the banjo’s image as much as Scruggs earlier work had innovated it, though not everyone in the music industry agrees. In fact, Julliard-trained banjo legend Eric Weissberg thinks the soundtracks brought bluegrass into the lives of many people who would have otherwise never heard it. Until the 1960s, bluegrass wasn’t really played outside of Appalachia. And because it was considered regional music, record companies didn’t distribute it nationally. But in 1963, Weissberg recorded an album with his friend Marshall Brickman called New Dimensions in Banjo & Bluegrass. The record didn’t generate much attention at first, but five years later, the hills came alive with the sound of banjos when director John Borman wanted the song “Dueling Banjos” for his new movie Deliverance. Weissberg happily recorded a new version with musician Steve Mandell, and it turns out the song shouldn’t have been called “Dueling Banjos” at all. It’s actually a duet between a banjo and a guitar, but listeners didn’t seem to care. The new cut was played as the background music in the movie’s radio ad, and all of the sudden, all over the country, disc jockeys were answering phone calls from people who wanted to know where they cold get their hands on the song. In lieu of a soundtrack album, Warner Brothers added two Deliverance songs to the material from New Dimensions and released it in 1973 as Dueling Banjos. Weissberg, Brickman, and Mandell became rich overnight, and Deliverance’s depiction of rural Appalachian life -with that foreboding, nine-note banjo melody -was burned forever into the American psyche. SIX DEGREES OF MARSHALL BRICKMAN By the time Marshall Brickman received his $160,000 royalty check for Dueling Banjos, he’d already left the musician life to write scripts for The Tonight Show and Candid Camera. He began working alongside up-and-coming filmmaker Woody Allen, and together they wrote he Academy Award winning screenplay for Annie Hall in 1977. In Hollywood, Brickman became the missing link in the “Dueling Banjos”-to-Kermit-the-Frog axis of American pop culture. With his buddy Jim Henson, he wrote the script to a TV special that was later fine-tuned into The Muppet Show. In Brickman’s opinion, Kermit just wouldn’t have been Kermit without the banjo. “I try to picture it quickly -Kermit with another instrument- and I can’t,” Brickman says. “Not only figuratively, but literally, that banjo is nailed to his hand.” __________________________ The above article was written by Robbie Whelan. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine. Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

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