Sponsor

2016/05/14

Neatorama

Neatorama

The Future Is Here: Reese's Pieces inside Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Posted: 14 May 2016 04:00 AM PDT

Never mind flying cars. This is what we've all been waiting for. Since the days of the old commercials promoting the idea of blending peanut butter and chocolate, the obvious next step has been to combine Reese's Pieces candies with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

I mean, if you already have a centaur and a pegasus, you might as well cross-breed them and see what happens, right?

So the Reese's candy brand is producing the two treats together. This confectionary pega-taur should be available in stores in July.

-via Foodiggity

The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars

Posted: 14 May 2016 02:00 AM PDT

In the 1960s, the city of Glasgow, Scotland, built new housing projects that were far from the downtown shopping district. With no transportation, the residents bought supplies any way they could. The ice cream trucks that served the neighborhoods began to stock groceries and toilet paper along with ice cream -and eventually drugs and stolen goods, too. In the 1980s, ice cream vendors each had their own territory, and when a new entrepreneur wanted in on the action, it led to violence, while the trucks still played music box tunes and attracted children.   

The ice cream gang wars frequently ended up in Glasgow crime blotters. Even a summer job as a server could put you in danger: On September 9, 1989, The Glasgow Herald reported that while serving ice cream in a van, an 18-year-old was shot in the shoulder and permanently disabled by a 23-year-old ice cream gang member, who felt so guilty he attempted suicide over the incident. In 1986 one ice cream van was robbed by two young men with “a plastic bag of two revolvers in it”; they planned to “damage ice-cream vans in Castlemilk,” a district of Glasgow.

By 1984, the violence had graduated to murder. Ice cream man Andrew “Batboy” Doyle infringed on someone else’s territory, and allegedly refused to back away or sell merchandise for the dominant gang’s vans. Another van company began intimidation tactics against Doyle. When the standard glass-breaking and threats didn’t drive him away, they started a fire at his house that ended in the deaths of Doyle and five members of his family, including an infant.

A police crackdown led to arrests, falsified confessions, prison escape, and even hunger strikes. Read about the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Andy Mitchell)

Penguins Don't Like Opera

Posted: 14 May 2016 12:00 AM PDT


(Video Link)

Nick Allen, a professional opera singer from the UK, performs on cruise ships that visit Antarctica. During a recent trip there, he met a colony of penguins. He gave them a free demonstration of the classical Italian song "O Sole Mio." The penguins, who are clearly uncultured philistines, immediately started running away. The New York Daily News reports:

"You could say they didn't like the sound of his voice," said zoologist Jarod Miller, host of the syndicated TV series "Animal Exploration." "Between his singing and his body language, they likely perceived him as a predator. While they didn’t seem to be fleeing for their lives, they appear to be uncomfortable.” […]

Moving en masse is doing what comes naturally for these beasts, says Miller. “If you’re a flocking or herding animal, you pay attention to your neighbor. So when penguins move, it’s like dominoes.”

-via Antarctic Press

POLL: What kind of music do penguins prefer?

  • Klezmergrass
  • Pirate metal
  • German opera
  • Jangle pop

It’s Over

Posted: 13 May 2016 11:00 PM PDT

All good things must come to an end. Even if you’re on the decade plan, eventually you either graduate from college or permanently discontinue. And as much as we’d like to go back to those relatively carefree days, life will never be that carefree again. But if you’re going to dream, you may as well dream of going back to kindergarten, when life was so much more carefree than you realized when you were five. This is the latest comic from Sarah Andersen, who graduated two years ago.

Man Builds Hidden Beer Fridge in Back Yard

Posted: 13 May 2016 10:00 PM PDT

What do you do if your friends come over and drink all of your beer? You need a hidden supply to keep for emergency purposes.

Peter Götting of Germany is prepared. He built a 3-tiered beer stash of 30 bottles that rises and sinks with the pull of a lever. If you don't know about it, the machine looks like an ordinary garden planter.


(Video Link)

I sense a Nobel Prize in this man's future.

-via Geekologie

Kat Dennings Is The Queen Of Hilarious Tweets

Posted: 13 May 2016 09:00 PM PDT

Kat Dennings is one of my favorite famous people, and not just because she's drop dead gorgeous and wickedly funny.

Okay, so one of those two things does influence my opinion of her quite a bit- the funny.

Kat has a unique sense of humor which she loves to share with the world via her Twitter and Instagram accounts, and if you think a star can't achieve her level of fame and still remain humble read one of her silly tweets.

There's no way the Kim K.s and Gwyneths of the world would ever let themselves be as free as Miss Dennings with their social media posts, mostly because they have people posting for them.

Kat Dennings, on the other hand, does alll the quipping and the posting for herself, so reading her tweets is like peeking through her window and watching a famous person totally winning at life.

Read 12 Kat Dennings Tweets That Prove She's A Glamorous Hollywood Actress here

Cat Reacts to Horror Movie

Posted: 13 May 2016 08:00 PM PDT


(Video Link)

This innocent cat gets an eyeful the first time he watches Alfred Hichcock's Psycho. Just as Hitchcock intended, his tension builds until it explodes.

Andrew Parrish edited this video of his cat, who is actually looking at a toy. He's too young to watch horror movies.

-via Tastefully Offensive

Work - Smarter Than The Average Bear With A Full Time Job In An Office

Posted: 13 May 2016 07:00 PM PDT


Work by Tobe Fonseca

If it weren't for cartoons and puppet based TV programming we humans would never know what bears have to go through to get a job. But ursine royalty such as Yogi, Fozzie and Cleveland's neighbor Tim have shown us that the struggle is real for the furry bears we share our world with- because they often have to shave a tie shape into their fur to appear presentable to humans. The TV adaptations like to soften up the struggle by showing them wearing actual ties, but the real life inspirations for these characters know the truth about bears and neckties...

Make your geeky wardrobe look all spiffy again with this Work t-shirt by Tobe Fonseca, it's the pain free way to show the world how hard it is to be a working class bear.

Visit Tobe Fonseca's Facebook fan page, official website, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more delightfully geeky designs:

WhateverYakuza PandaFeraeVacation

View more designs by Tobe Fonseca | More Funny T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

The Merci Train: 49 Boxcars Filled With Gratitude

Posted: 13 May 2016 07:00 PM PDT

Europe was devastated by World War II, and recovery afterward was slow. Journalist and staunch anti-communist Drew Pearson noticed how grateful the French were for food brought in by the Russians. He knew America could do better, and launched a campaign to send relief supplies to France. Americans responded by shipping 700 boxcars to France on what was called the Friendship Train in 1947. Citizens across the country had donated food, fuel, clothing, and more to fill the cars.  

The following year, Andre Picard, a French railroad worker and war veteran suggested that France reciprocate by sending a gratitude train filled with gifts and mementos from his countrymen. Much of 1948 was spent collecting gifts from individual citizens. They ranged from art, wine, needlework, local specialties, furniture, books, homemade toys and children’s drawings, including a jeweled Legion of Honor medal that reportedly belonged to Napoleon. All in all, over 52,000 gifts were collected. These were crammed into 49 railroad cars, meant to be divided amongst the 48 American states with the remaining car to be shared by Washington D.C and Hawaii. Each boxcar was decorated with a painted 'Gratitude Train' ribbon and with 40 coat-of-arms representing the provinces of France.

A ship arrived in New York on February 3, 1949, with “MERCI AMERICA” painted on its side. Railway companies delivered the cars to each designated state, where grand receptions welcomed them. Forty-three of the cars still exist on display in the states. Read the story of the Merci Train and see pictures of the cars at Amusing Planet.  -via the Presurfer

This Public Library Lets Job-Seekers Check Out Ties

Posted: 13 May 2016 06:00 PM PDT

(Photos: Paschalville Branch/Free Library of Philadelphia)

One of the roles of the public library in American society is to be the source of a Plan B for your life. Have you lost your job? There are books about writing résumés and computers on which to type and print them. Often, there are free workshops on helpful skills, such as succeeding at job interviews.

A couple years ago, one of my patrons needed professional clothes for a job interview. I managed to connect her with a non-profit that provided that service. But what would happen if a library could provide that service in-house?

The Paschalville Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is moving in that direction. It has a "tiebrary" -- a circulating collection of 48 neckties that patrons can check out for 3 weeks at a time. All of them are in tastefully conservative colors and patterns appropriate for a professional encounter. TakePart quotes branch manager Jennifer Walker:

“The unemployment rate is 18.5 percent. As for education attainment, 25 percent of the working-age population has less than a high school diploma, and another 39 percent has not progressed past a high school diploma. The poverty level is 34 percent,” she said. About 25 percent of the population are also relatively recent immigrants from African nations or from Vietnam, she said.

Getting those community members prepared to enter the workforce is one of the library system’s main priorities. So last year, when Eddy was on a visit to the Queens Public Library in New York City and heard about a small tiebrary operating there, he was intrigued. A tie-browsing session on Amazon earlier this year spurred him to expand the concept to Philadelphia. “I reached out to Queens to see if they wouldn’t mind us replicating the idea. They said, ‘Go for it,’ ” he said. 

Library assistant Omelio Alexander, who is pictured above, made the tiebrary a success:

“Sometimes you have part of the interview outfit but not the whole outfit, and this is an easy way to doctor up whatever you have and make it more professional,” Alexander, who has worked at the Paschalville branch for nearly six years, told TakePart. He turned some clear VHS cases that were collecting dust in a storage area into display boxes for the neckwear. Enabling patrons to check out ties for up to three weeks lets folks use them for more than one interview without having to go back and forth to the library.

-via Amy Duncan

Paul Reubens Shows Off His New Line Of Wigs For Kids On Conan

Posted: 13 May 2016 05:00 PM PDT

Paul Reubens has a rather unusual sense of style and a crazy collection of cool stuff, some of which has been featured in his fantastic films and far out TV show.

(YouTube Link)

He's also a visionary inventor whose creations make the world a much more fun place.

But for some reason Paul doesn't get many chances to promote anything but Pee-Wee when he goes on talk shows, so the unveiling of his line of wigs for kids on Conan is a rare delight.

(YouTube Link)

A beehive hairdo for kids...Paul's gonna make millions!

-Via Laughing Squid

The Hottest Trend in Web Design: Intentionally Making Sites Ugly, Difficult to Use

Posted: 13 May 2016 04:00 PM PDT


(Photo: zenilorac)

Katherine Acrement of the Washington Post calls the style "Web brutalism" after the architectural movement. According to advertising director Pascal Deville, this school of thought takes a radically different approach, if not utter disregard for, user-friendliness and aesthetic appeal:

In 2014 Deville, now Creative Director at the Freundliche Grüsse ad agency in Zurich, Switzerland, founded brutalistwebsites.com. He meant it as a place to showcase websites that he thought fit the “brutalist” aesthetic: Design marked by a “ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy” in “reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of today’s Web design.” (In architecture, brutalism describes a ’70s architectural movement characterized by large buildings with exposed concrete construction.)

The term’s gotten a lot of pick-up in recent weeks, since Deville’s site appeared on Hacker News and promptly went viral. Deville saw unique visitors to his site rise to over 100,000 in 24 hours, with 160,000 page views. And the interest has not slowed since then: Deville now receives over 100 site submissions a day.

“It’s not only what you can see, it’s also how it’s built,” Deville explained, of the submissions he selects as emblematic of the style. “… In the code you can see if it’s really a streamlined application or it’s a very rough, handmade, HTML website.”

Appropriately, Deville's own website cataloging brutalist websites is itself almost painful to look at.

-via Billy Hoya

The Blindfold Mowing Olympics

Posted: 13 May 2016 03:02 PM PDT

Since Detroit is short of funding for city services, a group of volunteers called the Detroit Mower Gang has been taking care of trimming the grass at city parks and playgrounds. Last Wednesday, they staged a competition they called the Blindfold Mowing Olympics. Each mower vied to see who could cut the straightest line while mowing through overgrown Hammerberg Field without being able to see. The competitors were astonished at how crooked their completed lines were. Two of them even crossed each other’s path, but luckily not at the same time.

“Safer than a Blindfold Weed Whacker Competition,” said Stephen Cook of Detroit.

Did we mention the drinking commenced after the mowing was done?

Jim Coffman was declared the winner with a crooked line, just not as crooked as the others. Then the entire field was mowed, leaving ten acres that children can now play on. -via Fark

(Image credit: Detroit Mower Gang at Facebook)

Playing Jenga with a Whip

Posted: 13 May 2016 02:00 PM PDT


(Video Link)

When you want to meet a woman who knows how to use a whip, go to April Choi. I mean, she has an entire wall full of whips, some of which she uses while cosplaying as Catwoman. She makes them herself, so you know that you're dealing with an expert.

In this video, Choi demonstrates her remarkable skill. She plays Jenga by slapping one piece at a time out of the stack using just her whip.

-via Jeremy Barker

Mother Goose Summons Cop to Rescue Gosling

Posted: 13 May 2016 01:00 PM PDT

A goose came up to a police car in Cincinnati, Ohio, and started tapping at the door with her beak. Sergeant James Givens and Specialist Cecilia Charron got out and saw the goose walking away, but the goose turned to look at them, so they followed her. The goose led them to a gosling that had become tangled in a string that was tied to a Mothers Day balloon among the litter. The officers called the SPCA, but it would be a while before they could come. So Charon took matters into her own hands and untangled the baby bird while Givens recorded the incident on his phone. The mother goose stood by patiently until the gosling was freed. That was unusual, as Canada geese are normally aggressive around humans, even when they don’t have goslings to protect.  -via Arbroath

This Psychedelic Sex Ed Video Plays Out Like A Bad Acid Trip

Posted: 13 May 2016 12:00 PM PDT

Kids totally trip out when their parents try to teach them about sex, so parents often look for an alternate way to introduce their kids to intercourse.

These scaredy-cat parents love to use eductional books or videos to show their kids the ropes, and sex ed videos don't come much more “alternate” than this bizarre sex ed web series from France called “Baby! Love Your Body!”.

Aside from one NSFW word that rhymes with runt (which apparently isn't a bad word in France) this video is actually made for kids- really, really strange kids who hang out with drag queens and dress like Punky Brewster.

(YouTube Link)

“Baby! Love Your Body!” doesn't really explain sexual reproduction or the ins and outs of intercourse.

But the art collective behind the video The School Of No Big Deal aren't educators- they're just a bunch of good time guys and gals discussing sex in the strangest way possible.

-Via Dangerous Minds

Man Wakes up from Coma, Immediately Demands Taco Bell Food

Posted: 13 May 2016 11:00 AM PDT

(Photo: Wake the Jake)

35-year old Jake Booth of Bonita Springs, Florida developed bronchitis, which turned into pneumonia. While hospitalized for that pneumonia, he had a heart attack, then fell into a coma.

Booth spent 48 days in the coma before becoming conscious again. Doctors were worried that he may have suffered brain damage. But when Booth was able to express himself, the first thing he said was "I want Taco Bell"--a clear sign that he had the full command of his mental faculties.

It would be 22 more days before Booth was allowed to eat solid food. But when doctors cleared him to do so, the first thing he ate was a bag of Taco Bell tacos. USA Today quotes Booth's brother, Jason Schwartz:

“We’d all been waiting an entire month for him to eat those tacos,” Schwartz said. “It was symbolic of the entire thing — more of a metaphor of him having woken up and being given a second chance at life.”

-via Florida Man

A Huge Gallery Celebrating The Magic Of Perfect Penmanship

Posted: 13 May 2016 10:00 AM PDT

(Image Link)

Penmanship is a dying artform, as fonts installed in our computers easily fake fine handwriting, but there are still lots of writers out there who choose to take up a brush, marker or pen and create beautiful letters.

But computers also help keep the love of hand lettering alive, because we're able to share our passion for the written word with people who appreciate how hard it is to render fancy looking letters by hand.

(Image Link)

Reddit is home to the handwritten subreddit penmanshipporn, where scribblers go to show off their skills and revel in the glory of handsome handwriting!

(Image Link)

See 15+ Perfect Handwriting Examples That'll Give You An Eyegasm here

Team Cap - Too Bad Cuteness Isn't A Super Power

Posted: 13 May 2016 09:00 AM PDT


Team Cap by Oneskillwonder

The civil war had barely begun and yet people all across America were already picking sides, declaring their love for Cap or their solidarity for Tony Stark. People were so passionate about their favorite superheroes that they actually started fighting amongst themselves, and those who retained their sanity through it all knew it had gotten out of control when it hit the schoolyard. Soon kids were battling it out to be a part of Team Cap or Team Iron Man, proving that all this conflict was doing far more harm than good and making both sides look like total a-holes.

Show the world you've supported your favorite superheroes since you were young with this Team Cap t-shirt by Oneskillwonder, it's the freshest way to pick a side in the marvel-ous melee called Civil war.

Visit Oneskillwonder's official website, Instagram and Tumblr, then head on over to her NeatoShop for more geek-tastic designs:

23Mess Of A WomanCatch Me If You Can

High Five

View more designs by Oneskillwonder | More Movie T-shirts | New T-Shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

Simon’s Cat on a Field Trip

Posted: 13 May 2016 09:00 AM PDT

(YouTube link)

Field Trip is the newest animated adventure by Simon Tofield! You can take the title literally. Simon’s Cat is in a field, which is quite overgrown. It’s full of hiding places and fascinating moving creatures! But he’s a house cat, and not altogether used to such things. -via Tastefully Offensive

There Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues Like A Funny T-Shirt!

Posted: 13 May 2016 08:00 AM PDT

Melted by Aaron Morales

Summertime is fast approaching, and while some people find the hot weather and longer days appealing most end up with a sweaty case of the Summertime Blues.

But you shouldn't fear the hot summer weather drawing near, because that means it's t-shirt weather.

And nothing spreads smiles quite like a hilarious t-shirt from the NeatoShop, home of the coolest and most clever designs on the Web!

We're already starting to see those summer blockbusters roll out

ALPACALYPSE NOW by Albo

And one comic inspired movie universe has erupted in Civil War

Iron Cat Vs. Captain Americat by LinesXofXfury

But before we can survive the long, hot summer we have to survive Friday the 13th!

Bloody Fryday The 13th by AnishaCreations

Summer means days full of fun and, if you're lucky, some geeky lovin'

Star Love Upgrade by Prime Premne

But not everyone gets excited when the weather turns warm

Hungover Rabbit by Donovan Alex

Some would rather stay in all summer and avoid the sun

Home Is Where The Guac Is by Kellabell9

Watching movies until the weather turns cool again

Alien Story by SEspider

These people need a little time to prepare to go out in the sun

The Pink Panthro by Captain RibMan

Time to get their pasty and pudgy bodies back into swimsuit shape

Evil On Testosterone by AndreusD

So they can let loose at all the fun pool parties happening this summer

Booomb by Legendary Phoenix

But not everyone will give up their favorite foods to get in shape this summer

Faturn by Lili Batista

Some will continue to enjoy those dangerously delicious snacks

Terror Cone by Artistic Dyslexia

And drink those summer blues away with a tall glass of beer

Pint Of Bear by Sophie Corrigan

And while the beer won't help your gut it will help you get along with your family

Man & Woman by Andysocial Industries

But drink too much and you may start seeing underwear gnomes in your house

Keep Calm And Collect Underpants by Fishbiscuit

Don't worry, these effects will fade in time, although your math skills may never recover

I LOVE MATH by Berserk7

So maybe you'd better find something better to do with your time this summer

Killer Skills by DeepFriedArt

Like maybe a road trip through time and space

San Dimas High School by Nemons

Or a trip to find the purr-fect beach for surfing felines

Meowi by Hillary White

Whatever you decide to do this summer you'd better start planning now

A Plan by Karlangas

And make sure you do you to the fullest this summer!

Sun's Out, Gun's Out! by ClayGrahamArt

Summertime is the right time to strut around in a NeatoShop t-shirt, because you'll be stylish and comfortable at the same time.

The NeatoShop is home to thousands of great and geeky designs, and their prints are the best in the biz! So get geared up for summer the right way- by grabbing a new NeatoShop t-shirt today!

Another Reason to Drive

Posted: 13 May 2016 07:00 AM PDT

Sean took a video of the security line at Midway airport in Chicago yesterday. He was trying to find the end of the line so he could get in it. The fact that it takes two minutes just to get to the end of the line is telling. But the lines weren’t any better at O’Hare.

(YouTube link)

The comments at reddit are full of TSA horror stories, and speculation on the reasons for the recent longer lines. If you're flying anywhere this weekend, be sure to get to the airport early, or there's a fairly good chance you might miss your flight.

Japanese Travel Agency Offers to Seat You Next to a Pretty Girl during Your Flight

Posted: 13 May 2016 06:00 AM PDT

(Image: IT Media)

Air travel doesn't have to be boring (and, as Louis C.K. famously explained, really shouldn't). The Japanese travel agency H.I.S. offered a service to keep you entertained. For a fee, you could sit next to a pretty young college student. Rocket News 24 reports:

Applications were being accepted to be seated next to one of five young women, ranging from second to fourth-year students of Todai (as the University of Tokyo is populrly called). The profile for each included her field of study, with one literature student, two aspiring engineers, one science major, and finally one pupil from the education department available for in-cabin companionship.

Each also had a suggested conversation topic listed, such as “I’ll teach you about the city you’re traveling to,” “I’ll tell you my favorite architectural structures,” or “I’ll help you with your homework.” There was also one woman with the less scholarly invitation of “Let’s talk about comedians.”

The program was controversial as some people thought it was sexist. H.I.S. has since shut it down.

Uneasy Laughter: The Story of <i>Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman</i>

Posted: 13 May 2016 05:00 AM PDT

How a bizarre 1970s black comedy turned the soap opera inside out.

Mary Hartman was mopping her kitchen floor, staring intently at the TV, when outside, sirens began to wail. Her neighbor Loretta barged through the door with terrible news: The family around the corner—along with their two pet goats and eight chickens—had been murdered. And that’s just the beginning of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, one of the most inventive and funny—yes, funny—television programs to grace the small screen.

The short-lived ’70s sitcom is remembered as a soap opera parody. But it was more than that: It was a sardonic take on modern life. The titular character, a sexually unfulfilled blue-collar suburban housewife from Fernwood, Ohio, played by Louise Lasser, is consumed by television, to the point of being numb to the world. She swallows advertising as wholesale truth, firmly believing TV commercials are there to improve her life. She’s so focused on finding the right homemaking products that when her neighbors are shot and killed, Mary is preoccupied instead with the “waxy yellow buildup” on her kitchen floor.

The show is populated with equally peculiar characters—Mary’s mother talks to plants, while her grandfather is a serial flasher. Her neighbor Loretta is a God-obsessed country-western singer. And the storylines are typical soap opera tropes—adultery, murder, intrigue—dressed in oddball black humor: At one point, a high school basketball coach drowns in a bowl of chicken soup; an 8-year-old evangelist is electrocuted when a television wire falls into the bathtub. The line between funny and dark is cheerfully blurry.

And at a time when television was in practically every home, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was doing something revolutionary: It was using television to criticize the medium itself.

It had been decades since June Cleaver entrenched herself as the archetypal TV homemaker. But by Mary Hartman’s time, things were different from the black-and-white 1950s. The mid-’70s overlapped with feminism’s second wave. A decade earlier, Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique had spoken to just how unfulfilled many housewives were. Since then, the women’s rights movement had made topics like reproductive rights, violence against women, and workplace inequalities part of everyday conversation. By 1975, TIME would name “American Women” its People of the Year.

In Hollywood, women were slowly getting more screen time and more diverse. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, about an unmarried career woman, was groundbreaking. But the state of affairs behind the camera was less progressive; female directors and writers were just north of a novelty.

At the time, producer Norman Lear was enjoying a blessed decade, creating All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, and Sanford and Son, all of which scorched a path up the Nielsen ratings. Unlike the squeaky-clean sitcoms of the ’50s and ’60s, these new comedies didn’t shy away from addressing social issues like race and class inequality.

Now Lear was percolating on a project that would acknowledge women’s changing place in society. He’d been stewing for years on an idea for a late-night Monday-through-Friday soap opera. “I wanted to do a show about a woman who had been affected by the media, whose mind was shattered by television, magazines, radio—especially television,” he told the Archive of American Television in a video interview. “And I wanted it to be wild.” He wrote down a few ideas, including kicking off the series with a mass murder.

Oh, and he wanted it to be a comedy.

Lear approached a dozen writers, men and women alike, including the masterminds behind I Love Lucy. Most were appalled by the premise. “How are you going to get laughs from the slaughter of a family?” they asked. Finally, one of them understood the dark humor. Ann Marcus, who had credits with Dennis the Menace and Lassie, would become the show’s lead writer, helping to pen the first two pilots.

For the director, Lear tapped Joan Darling, a writer who’d been pitching a biopic about Israel’s first female prime minister. Darling was surprised to be asked. She had never directed before. But Lear handed her the two pilot scripts and told her to think about it. The writing was unlike anything Darling had ever read. “I don’t know what this is,” she recalled thinking in a recent interview with John D’Amico. “This is neither fish nor fowl.” Still, she took the job.

Darling spent the next eight weeks assembling a cast. At the center of it was 36-year-old Louise Lasser. The product of an upper-middle-class household in New York City, Lasser had racked up appearances on Mary Tyler Moore and The Bob Newhart Show and in Woody Allen’s Bananas. When she read for the part, Lear was elated. “I supplied the character,” Lear wrote in his autobiography, Even This I Get to Experience, “but Louise brought with her the persona that fit Mary Hartman like a corset.”

The finished pilot was utterly fresh. The show had all the hallmarks of a soap opera—cheesy organ music, extreme close-ups—but the tone was distinct. There was no laugh track. And it wasn’t melodramatic either. The humor was bone dry. When Mary learns about the murder down the street, she asks, “What kind of a madman would shoot two goats and eight chickens?” She pauses, looking away blankly. “And the people. The people, of course.”

When the networks saw it, they immediately turned it down.

This kick in the teeth made headlines. Lear was a regular Emmy winner. If anyone could get away with something edgy, it would be him. But the Big Three— ABC, CBS, and NBC—wanted nothing to do with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. CBS, the very network that had fronted Lear $100,000 to make the pilots, thought the five-day-a-week format was a bad idea: “It’s tough enough to come up with 20 [episodes] a year for a prime-time series,” head of daytime programming Bud Grant told the Associated Press. “To come up with 260 is almost an impossible task.”

Today, Lear still doesn’t buy that excuse. “They were all doing well with the Jack Paars and the Johnny Carsons and so forth,” he says. “They didn’t get it. Or they didn’t think the American public would get it.”

Lear and Al Burton, who helped develop the show, believed that network executives were afraid of the program’s subversive tone and topics. After getting rebuked by the big guys, they hatched a plan to sneak it onto the air: They would take Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman to the little guys.

Lear hit the road, traveling city by city to visit individual TV stations. Syndication had been around for years, but for someone of Lear’s stature to employ this tactic was unusual. Lear also flew people from 23 independent TV stations to his home in Brentwood in an effort to convince them to broadcast the show. The executives— attracted, perhaps, by the show’s inexpensive price tag combined with Lear’s clout—ate it up.

The unorthodox moves paid off. When it premiered in January 1976, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was on more than 50 stations. By season’s end, that number had ballooned to 100. In its first six months, the show was on the covers of Newsweek, Rolling Stone, People, and The New York Times Magazine. The pilot earned Marcus and her cowriters an Emmy. Mary, the Times said, had become “the country’s most talked-about housewife,” and the viewers loved her.

In many ways, Mary Hartman was a caricature. Lasser’s homemade costume—a frumpy mini dress with puffy sleeves, topped with a wig of tightly braided pigtails—made her look like a life-size Raggedy Ann. But she also perfectly embodied a particular mid-’70s moment. As the old expectations for women started to fray, in their place was a vacuum, which Mary filled with TV. Mary has internalized commercials so fully that her emotions are muted. When she’s asked by police to communicate with the neighborhood murderer, she becomes obsessed with dissecting the flaws in the brand of walkie-talkie they hand her. The show, Lear says, was “mirroring the confused American housewife getting battered on all sides by the commerciality of our time. She was witness and subject to citizens becoming consumers.”

Underneath the psychodrama and dark humor, the show touched on a laundry list of taboo topics: exhibitionism, masturbation, menstruation, homosexuality, and anti-Semitism. But foremost it provided a withering commentary on the role TV had started to play in American lives. As Darling put it, Mary showed how “television would make us a nation of empty dead people.” And as Robert Craft wrote in the New York Review of Books, “No program has gone so far as this one in ridiculing the medium, as well as in warning of its power to reduce its habitués to followers of herd philosophies.”

The point was driven home when, at the end of the first season, Mary has a nervous breakdown and winds up in a psychiatric institution. There, as she and her fellow patients crowd around a television, Mary notices a small mechanism above the box: It’s the device used by Nielsen to measure television ratings. Even locked away, she can’t escape it.

As the show progressed, some of the networks’ concerns crystallized. To deliver five episodes a week, Mary Hartman was produced at a breakneck pace. The team shot a new episode nearly every day, and this quickly took its toll. There was so little free time that Lasser often couldn’t change out of her costume before her thrice-weekly psychiatrist visits. “So I have to walk down the street in Beverly Hills in my little Mary Hartman outfit, with the sleeves all puffed out and the gingham dress, and I think that everybody’s staring at me,” she told The New York Times.

As time wore on, Lasser found it more difficult to step away from her character. “I was gradually morphing into her,” she later said. The second season was brutal and dark, on and off screen. Mary spends two months in a psychiatric hospital, while Lasser, by her own admission, was also depressed and exhausted. So, after filming 325 episodes, she quit.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman lasted only two seasons, but the effects of its boundary pushing— on screen and behind the camera—still resonate. Soap operas have a long history of addressing social concerns—an All My Children character was an antiwar protestor during Vietnam; in the 1990s, General Hospital had an AIDS storyline. But in its critique of the medium itself, Mary Hartman went even further, raising questions that wouldn’t enter the mainstream for years to come. What is television doing to our brains? And to our culture? “I think it’s still ahead of its time,” Lasser says. “If you look at people’s top 10 lists, we’re never mentioned. It never bothered me. I think of it as a badge of honor.”

That doesn’t mean it didn’t influence later shows. If you squint, you can see shades of Mary Hartman in the oddball soapiness of Twin Peaks; it’s in the uncomfortably funny DNA of Girls (on which Lasser has appeared three times). And you could argue that in a sense, its depiction of the blue-collar household paved the way for Roseanne.

It may have been both wholly of its time and somehow ahead of it, but Mary Hartman could not seem more relevant right now. The ubiquitous but quaintly stationary television has been eclipsed by a multiplying array of portable digital screens. Our dependence on technological distractions has surged accordingly. Mary Hartman asks us to take a pointedly critical—but at the same time not too serious—look at our relationship with media. There’s a lesson to be learned from a show that loved to hate television but created a cult of viewers who, night after night, couldn’t turn away.

__________________________

The above article by Elon Green is reprinted with permission from the June 2015 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Don't forget to feed your brain by subscribing to the magazine and visiting mental_floss' extremely entertaining website and blog today for more!
@

No comments:

Post a Comment

Keep a civil tongue.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Label Cloud

Technology (1464) News (793) Military (646) Microsoft (542) Business (487) Software (394) Developer (382) Music (360) Books (357) Audio (316) Government (308) Security (300) Love (262) Apple (242) Storage (236) Dungeons and Dragons (228) Funny (209) Google (194) Cooking (187) Yahoo (186) Mobile (179) Adobe (177) Wishlist (159) AMD (155) Education (151) Drugs (145) Astrology (139) Local (137) Art (134) Investing (127) Shopping (124) Hardware (120) Movies (119) Sports (109) Neatorama (94) Blogger (93) Christian (67) Mozilla (61) Dictionary (59) Science (59) Entertainment (50) Jewelry (50) Pharmacy (50) Weather (48) Video Games (44) Television (36) VoIP (25) meta (23) Holidays (14)

Popular Posts (Last 7 Days)