STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

squishy · Coach

did you know?

Hermes

ooh! I possess so much trivial knowledge, it's hard to pick just one...

hmmm...

especially when I'm not prompted on the subject...

ok, I'll be prompted by TV.

In Germany, there is a game show that pits 2 girls against 2 guys and they both have to put something together with directions - like a piece of furniture that requires assembly. The catch is that they do it naked. They have socks and athletic shoes on, but nothing else. I actually watched this on public TV. And they were'nt much to look at either. It's like Joe six pack or the cat lady down the street participating.

-- Edited by D at 18:32, 2006-11-08

relrel · Marc Jacobs

I love useless trivia/random factoids...in fact, I subscribe to Mental_Floss which is this awesome magazine that is dedicated to useless trivia. Here's a couple tidbits from the latest issue:

On February 28, 1983, at exactly 11:03PM, water use in NYC jumped by several million gallons. Why? The final episode of M*A*S*H had just ended. It was the highest rated television event in US history, with 105 million viewers.

Bob Dylan's song "It ain't me, babe" was written by him about/for Joan Baez. The two dated for about three/four years.

During the orginal screenings of "Psycho", in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock actually forbade movie theaters to admit latecomers to the movie because he was afraid they would miss Lanet Leigh's important shower scene. While waiting in lines, a prerecorded apology from AH played, "You see, "Psycho" is most enjoyable when viewed beginning at the beginning and proceeding to the end. I realized this is a revolutionary concept, but we have discovered that it is unlike most motion pictures and does not improve when run backwards". He was also so paranoid about people ruining the twist ending he actually asks the audience, in trailers, not to reveal the ending to people who have not seen the movie. Also, since Pyscho was a book before it was a movie, AH bought all the copies of the book that he could find and even held auditions for Norman's mother even though the role didn't actually exist.

halleybird · Hermes

John Tester, the would-be senator in the decisive Senate race in Montana, only has 7 fingers.

Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old first cousin when he was 28, and he drank himself to death when she died of tuberculosis.

Fluorescent lighting has been shown to increase cortisol production in the body, which can lead to stress and weight gain.

Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory.

-- Edited by halleybird at 20:23, 2006-11-08

squishy · Coach

relrel wrote:

I love useless trivia/random factoids...in fact, I subscribe to Mental_Floss which is this awesome magazine that is dedicated to useless trivia.

i'm intrigued. is it a print publication or an e-zine? details please!

Hermes

squishy wrote:

relrel wrote:

I love useless trivia/random factoids...in fact, I subscribe to Mental_Floss which is this awesome magazine that is dedicated to useless trivia.

i'm intrigued. is it a print publication or an e-zine? details please!

me too - sounds like fun.

do any of you play NTN? you know, the trivia game you play on a box and view on tv screens in bars? I love playing that...

Aurora · Marc Jacobs

Ok so here is mine. I had to get fingerprinted to get my CPA license today at the police station. Apparently for good, upstanding citizens it costs money (only $10 but thats 2 frappacinos) to get finger printed but its free for criminals. Seems kinda unfair huh??

Oh if you ever do get fingerprinted the tip to get it off in less than 10-15 mins is to wet the fingers (do not rub) and then wet a paper towel (or whatever is by the sink) and rub soap inbetween the towel. Rubbing fingers over the towel as you later it gets the ink off.

relrel · Marc Jacobs

D wrote:

squishy wrote:

relrel wrote:

I love useless trivia/random factoids...in fact, I subscribe to Mental_Floss which is this awesome magazine that is dedicated to useless trivia.

i'm intrigued. is it a print publication or an e-zine? details please!

me too - sounds like fun.

do any of you play NTN? you know, the trivia game you play on a box and view on tv screens in bars? I love playing that...

Mental_Floss is a print publication. It's been around for about five years and was originally started by two college kids. It's a slightly more expensive subscription, at about $25, but my mom always gets all of us a couple subscriptions each year. Here's the product description from Amazon:

Product Description

About this Title
Quick, fun and educational? This magazine blurs the lines between a great education and great entertainment. Packed full with pages of tidbits, quirky facts and history, this delightfully eclectic new magazine teaches you what you should have learned in school - but didn't.

Description
For the record: Mental Floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent. We're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then we part ways. Great times. And you only realize how much you learned from us after a little while. Like a couple days later when you're impressing your friends with all these intriguing facts and things you picked up from us, and they ask you how you know so much, and you think back on that great afternoon you spent with us and you smile.

And then you lie and say you read a lot.

I do highly recommend this mag for all who love useless facts that somehow are extremely pertinent (one of the recent articles was about male birth control pills and a couple months ago they did a story on the United Arab Emirates) yet highly entertaining.

Oh, and D? I play Quizzo in bars, sorta like NTN but with a DJ instead of on a television screen. Friends and I went every Thursday this past summer, partly because it was fun, partly because the bartender/waiter is the hottest thing ever and partly because we always won and the prize was a free dinner (including drinks). Trivia, hot boy with tattoos, and free dinner and drinks!

NCshopper · Hermes

Did you know that Melanie Griffith moved in with Don Johnson when she was 14? He was 22 or 23. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew.

rosie_the_riveter · Gucci

Did you know that the hyoid bone is the only bone that is not articulated to any other bone and is supported by muscles.

I guess TIME Magazine's man of the year in 1938 was Adolf Hitler

http://www.hookedonfacts.com/index.html

whoa! Just saw this one.... If you were to roll a lung from a human body and out flat it would be the size of a tennis court.

-- Edited by rosie_the_riveter at 23:07, 2006-11-08

atlgirl · Gucci

If you were to roll a lung from a human body and out flat it would be the size of a tennis court

Really??? Good grief, that's unnerving. :)

squishy · Coach

relrel, i know what's going on my christmas list now :)

llegs · BCBG

You swallow an average of 3 spiders in your sleep per year. Yummy!

wetbandit42 · Marc Jacobs

The human thighbone is stronger than concrete. (I saw that on a beer commercial though, so...)

halleybird · Hermes

Aurora wrote:

Ok so here is mine. I had to get fingerprinted to get my CPA license today at the police station. Apparently for good, upstanding citizens it costs money (only $10 but thats 2 frappacinos) to get finger printed but its free for criminals. Seems kinda unfair huh??

Oh if you ever do get fingerprinted the tip to get it off in less than 10-15 mins is to wet the fingers (do not rub) and then wet a paper towel (or whatever is by the sink) and rub soap inbetween the towel. Rubbing fingers over the towel as you later it gets the ink off.

Whoa! It costs $50+ to get fingerprinted here, and we have to re-pay every 6 years or so when it expires.

erin · Chanel

i am not full of random (or useful!) knowledge, but my husband is! this thread is really great. thanks for the mag recommendation, relrel! i just got the hub a gift subscription!

crystal · Kate Spade

halleybird wrote:

and we have to re-pay every 6 years or so when it expires.

I wasn't gonna post cuz I don't know any useless facts (I probably do, but not sure if they are well known or not) but I just find it hysterical that a finger print could "expire"!!! I wonder how they came up with the 6 year time frame?!?!?

Jahni · Dooney & Bourke

I love useless trivia. I've been referred to as the girl who knows absolutely everything about nothing you could seriously care about....but hey, I'm great at parties and I DOMINATE at trivial pursuit!

These are practically common knowledge anymore but off the top of my head:

The first music video to air on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star"
It is physically impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
The first toy advertised on tv was Mr. Potato Head
Jeanie on "I Dream of Jeanie" was not allowed to show her belly button on television
While playing Laura Petre on the Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore was only allowed to wear pants in one scene per episode.

Thanks for the magazine recommendation, I'm totally asking for that for Christmas!!

Farrah · Marc Jacobs

I totally loove this thread!! Here are a few that I can think of right now:

The strongest muscle in the human body is the tongue

Chicago was the first city in the world that was built according to a plan - even the cemetaries are planned out

Chicago has a street that runs north, south, east and west (Wacker Dr)

Hugh Hefner decided to start Playboy magazine after he asked his boss at Esquire for a five dollar raise and was denied

relrel · Marc Jacobs

Farrah wrote:

Hugh Hefner decided to start Playboy magazine after he asked his boss at Esquire for a five dollar raise and was denied

I love that! Sorta along the same lines as Ol' Hef is how my school started. I'm here in Philadelphia at Drexel which I like to call the bastard child of the University of Pennsylvania. Penn is an Ivy League school and is all fancy with old buildings and such while Drexel is this much newer, non-Ivy League school. Well, Drexel actually got its start because a wealthy benefactor wanted to donate lots of money to Penn to thier engineering school. For some ungodly reason Penn turned him down (who turns down monetary donations?), and he was all pissed off about it. The benefactor decided to make his own school then and bought up all the land surrounding Penn to build his own school on. How funny is that? My school got its start because Penn pissed some benefactor off.

Also, I'm from Lancaster orginally and this story comes from there. There is a state senator who owns a ton of farm land around the area. A couple of years ago him and his wife spent jillions of dollars building this fancy fancy house. Well, not even a year or so after construction was completed on the fancy house, they divorced. Apparently it was a messy divorce and she ended up with the house and the property on one side of the road. The state senator kept control of the land across the road, right across from the fancy house. I'm not quite sure what the woman did to piss her ex-husband off so much (other than getting to keep the house) but he proceeded to build a huge pig manure processing plant on his land directly across from the house. You can just imagine how aromatic this plant is, right?

So, not quite trivia facts...but two great stories that make me laugh a little everytime I think of them.