What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Today, I found out that, contrary to popular belief, the vocoder wasn’t invented by Wendy Carlos for A Clockwork Orange, but actually has a history longer than that. Hell, ACO wasn’t even the first Best Picture nominee to use it. There are a few instances of its use in A Letter to Three Wives. While I haven’t found clips of the relevant scenes on Youtube, here’s a page about it with audio of the scenes in question.

The first use of the vocoder (then known as the Sonovox) in film? Right here:





There’s also a 1939 newsreel of Lucille Ball, of all people, demonstrating the Sonovox, and it’s a positively surreal experience to hear the sound of Hell itself coming out of the mouth of Lucy Ricardo.

Today I learned that, in 1939, Lucille Ball was a slamming hottie.

Damn.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

If you were alive to remember music in the early 2000s, you almost certainly know "Who Let the Dogs Out?" Reading a Cracked article, I discovered that there's a lot of unexpected history to this song.

If you ever wondered who actually let the dogs out or why you should care, Anslem Douglas, who wrote the song originally, explained it, and it makes a lot more sense.

"It's a man-bashing song. I'll tell you why. The lyric of the song says, 'The party was nice, the party was pumpin'.' When I said the word 'party' I was being metaphorical. It really means things were going great. The 'Yippie-Yi-Yo,' that's everybody's happy, right? 'And everybody was having a ball.' Life was going great. 'Until the men start the name-callin' / And then the girls respond to the call.' So the men started calling the women 'skank' and 'skettel,' every dirty word you can think of. The men started the name-calling and then the girls respond to the call. And then a woman shouts out, 'Who let the dogs out?' And we start calling men dogs. It was really a man-bashing song."

Doesn't explain why anyone thought a song like that would be appropriate for a Rugrats film, but the story gets significantly stranger. Apparently, a hairdresser started talking about the music he discovered during a trip to the Caribbean to one of his clients. Said client? Jonathan King.



Yes, it does sound like crap. Also, if the name sounds familiar, well, it turns out Jonathan King, in addition to recording hundreds of UK hit singles under multiple names,

---

is Patient Zero for British musicians who turned out to be perverts, being tried and convicted for assaulting five 14-to-15-year-old boys over a decade before Jimmy Savile was outed as possibly the most prolific sex offender to not be a Roman emperor. (Also, he made a fucked up film called Vile Pervert: The Musical trying to clear his name/justify his crimes/combine new music with crappy flash animation I'm fairly certain I saw on AlbinoBlackSheep over a decade ago, and also proclaiming the innocence of Harold Shipman. It's on Youtube, and I'm fairly certain I can't post it here, though I do recommend the film to anyone who wants to A: wrap their head around how he can live with himself, or B: wants to cringe nonstop for 95 minutes.)

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Jonathan King gave it to producer Steve Greenberg, who gave it to the Baha Men, and, once he figured out its success in the UK didn't translate to the US, he took a brute force approach to it, licensed it to Nickelodeon for Rugrats in Paris, and marketed it to damn near every sporting event for the next couple years after it.

And that's why, odds are, most of you will think "Goddammit, Rye, I've wanted so badly to forget that song for two decades" and not "Why is Rye talking so much about an obscure novelty song and the pederast who made a recording of it?"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

When Sean Connery began making noises about leaving the Bond franchise, Albert Broccoli offered the role to Adam West (yes, THAT Adam West).  West turned it down, saying that Bond should only be played by an Englishman.  So the producers went with George Lazenby, an Australian.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just found out I'm a Nazi. Quelle surprise.

[Duty]

That flirting with shop assistants can become awkward when a contactless card payment is declined and you say "I'll need to insert it."  

[Rev. Rye]

That apparently, the Snyder cut of Justice League actually does exist.



And it's apparently 214 minutes long. It's not totally finished, and, odds are, if people threw bitch fits over the unfinished CGI in Cats, it's probably not ready for primetime just yet. And, given the nature of Snyder's other DCEU films, I'm not holding out hope that it's going to be a good movie. Admittedly, it's not unheard of for a movie to turn from a turkey to a masterpiece with a new cut that's 90 minutes longer, but then again, Zack Snyder ain't Sergio Leone. He's competent, but his films are generally considered the second-weakest link in the DCEU films so far.

[brewer]

I was told that I need to be ready when jesus comes to call.

[arewethereyet]

I was told that I need to be ready when jesus comes to call.

What do you need to do to be ready?  Is there appropriate attire?  Are you to have water available to turn into wine?  What is the correct preparation for a visit from JHC?

[Fireball]

I was told that I need to be ready when jesus comes to call.

What do you need to do to be ready?  Is there appropriate attire?  Are you to have water available to turn into wine?  What is the correct preparation for a visit from JHC?

A new kite.

[brewer]

I was told that I need to be ready when jesus comes to call.

What do you need to do to be ready?  Is there appropriate attire?  Are you to have water available to turn into wine?  What is the correct preparation for a visit from JHC?

I think it might be a bridge and three questions kind of thing.