Huey Lewis's "Back To The Future" Cameo!

I might just be the last person alive in the 1980s to learn this!

But do you remember that pivotol scene in Back To The Future, where Marty's band, The Pinheads, is trying out for their school's Battle of The Bands? And they are doing a great cover of Huey Lewis & The News' "The Power of Love"? And the stiff nerdy adult judges stop them to say "it's just too darn loud"?

In case you need a reminder!

As it turns out, the judge with the megaphone is Huey Lewis, my brother informed me on Christmas day! What's a fun ironic part for him.

That movie is brilliant. :)

Original Titles For Classic Novels

Sometimes authors go through several novel names before landing on one. Below are some examples of title "first drafts" of books whose names have become part of our culture.

Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

1. The Strike by Ayn Rand

(Atlas Shrugged)

2. The High-Bouncing Lover by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(The Great Gatsby)

3. Atticus by Harper Lee

(To Kill A Mockingbird)

4. The Last Man In Europe by George Orwell

(1984)

5. Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway

(The Sun Also Rises)

6. First Impressions by Jane Austin

(Pride and Prejudice)

7. Catch-11 by Joseph Heller

(Catch-22)

8. Mistress Mary by Frances Hodgson Burnett

(The Secret Garden)

I would imagine some of our slang would have been much different if some of these titles ended up getting published. Would we call a no-win situation a "Catch-11", you think? :)

[source]

Ann Arbor Karaoke

We're taking a Reader's Digest Break this week - don't worry, though, I have more fun facts to share!

In the meantime (and this may not apply to many of you) I wanted to make a list of places that offer karaoke in the Ann Arbor area, since I am having a very hard time finding that succinctly on the web. Maybe you also have that problem?

Here's what I can find (as of today):
(this does not count the places that only do karaoke: Blue Karaoke, Friends Karaoke, etc)

Mondays

couldn't find any!

Tuesdays

           Aut Bar
           9:30pm

Good Time Charley's
10pm

Wednesdays

Banfield's Westside Grill
9:30pm-1:30am 

            Blue Leprechaun

BTB Cantina
10pm 

Tower Inn Cafe (Ypsilanti)
10pm 

Powell's Pub (Ypsilanti)
9:30pm

Thursdays

The Arena Bar & Grill
10pm-1:30am 

Bel-Mark Lanes
9pm 

Circus Bar & Billiards
10pm 

Fenders Bar & Grill (Milan)
9pm-1am 

Katie's Food & Spirits (Dexter)
9pm-1:30am

Fridays

Bel-Mark Lanes 
9pm

Circus Bar & Billiards
10pm 

Dan's Downtown Tavern (Saline)
9pm 

Hamburg Pub (Hamburg)
9pm-1am 

Thompson's Bar & Grill (Saline)

Saturdays

Bel-Mark Lanes
9pm 

Circus Bar & Billiards
10pm 

Hamburg Pub (Hamburg)
9pm-1am 

Powell's Pub (Ypsilanti)
9:30pm

Sundays

Tap Room (Ypsilanti)
9pm

Places that may have karaoke, but aren't answering their phones:

- Blue Leprechaun
- Rick's American Cafe

Places that no longer have karaoke:

- The Blind Pig
- Conor O'Neill's
- Elbow Room (closed)
- The Heidelburg Restaurant

If you know of any others or changes to this list, please let me know so my list can be more complete!
And please call ahead to make sure this info is accurate for the night you want to go.

Hope this helps all of you brave singers in Washtenaw County. :)

Adele's "Someone Like You" = A Perfect Recipe For A Tear-Jerker

Michaeleen Doucleff, Scientific Editor at the Cell journal, claims that there is a scientific formula for writing songs that are "tear jerkers". A recent Wall Street Journal Article explains her take on why Adele's "Someone Like You" fills people with such deep emotion.

In the 1990s, a british psychologist John Sloboda did a study where he asked people to name parts of songs that affected them or drove them to goosebumps, tears, etc, and then analyzed the properties of that music. He found that 18 of 20 of the songs contained "appoggiatura", defined by the article as:

An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. "This generates tension in the listener," said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. "When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good."

Putting multiple appoggiaturas in a row creates and releases tension in the listener, and may eventually drive them to tears.

Adele's "Someone Like You" has small appoggiaturas throughout, but there is a point in the chorus where she modulates her pitch to create "mini-roller coasters of tension and resolution". Adele also has sincere lyrics and a soulful sound to help, too!

The article is fascinating and has examples of Adele's and other music that does this. To read it: Click here. Maybe you can write your own chart-busting emotional hit!

Twelve Days Of Christmas

A few years ago, I came across a religious interpretation of the popular Christmas song "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

Here are the lyrics:

On the first day of Christmas

My true love gave to me:

A partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas

My true love gave to me:

Two turtle doves and

A partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas

My true love gave to me:

Three french hens

Two turtle doves and

A partridge in a pear tree.

On the forth day of Christmas

My true love gave to me:

Four calling birds

Three french hens...

On the fifth day of Christmas

My true love gave to me

Five golden rings

Four calling birds...

On the sixth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Six geese a-laying

Five golden rings...

On the seventh day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Seven swans a-swimming

Six geese a-laying...

On the eight day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Eight maids a-milking

Seven swans a-swimming...

On the ninth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Nine ladies dancing

Eight maids a-milking...

On the tenth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Ten lords a-leaping

Nine ladies dancing...

On the eleventh day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Eleven pipers piping

Ten lords a-leaping...

On the Twelfth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Twelve drummers drumming

Eleven pipers piping...

And here is a religious interpretation:

1 True Love refers to God

2 Turtle Doves refers to the Old and New Testaments

3 French Hens refers to Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues

4 Calling Birds refers to the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists

5 Golden Rings refers to the first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.

6 Geese A-laying refers to the six days of creation

7 Swans A-swimming refers to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments

8 Maids A-milking refers to the eight beatitudes

9 Ladies Dancing refers to the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit

10 Lords A-leaping refers to the ten commandments

11 Pipers Piping refers to the eleven faithful apostles

12 Drummers Drumming refers to the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

I am too busy wrapping and shopping to look up what the writer's intention was but I found this interesting. :)

Merry Christmas Eve eve!

[image courtesy of this book]

How Did Marvel Comic's Spider-Man Make Webs?

Believe it or not, movies that are based on comic books are not always true to the original story!

Recently, one of my 10-grade students told me that despite what the 2002 Tobey Maguire film showed, comic-book Spider-Man did not receive the ability to shoot webs out of his wrists after he got bitten by the radioactive spider.

He actually used web-shooters which attached to cuffs on his wrists. Here's an explanation of them via Wikipedia:

Peter had reasoned that a spider (even a human one) needed a web. Since the radioactive spider-bite did not initially grant him the power to spin webs, he had instead found a way to produce them artificially. The wrist-mounted devices fire an adhesive "webbing" through a threaded adjustable nozzle...

Spider-Man must steadily replenish his webbing supply, reloading his web-shooters with small cartridges of web fluid... His web-shooters require constant maintenance and on more than one occasion suffer jams or malfunctions...

Occasionally, the web-shooters are modified to expel other liquids.

So, my first question upon hearing this was "What good did come from him being bitten by the spider then?" My student answered with pretty much the same answer as Wikipedia does:

Immediately after the bite, he was granted his original powers: primarily superhuman strength, reflexes, and equilibrium; the ability to cling tenaciously to most surfaces; and a subconscious precognitive sense of danger, which he called a "spider-sense."

I suppose that's enough. :) But I guess that Spider-Man just had to use more ingenuity and engineering in the comic books than in the movie. After all:

Before the radioactive spider bite, Peter Parker was already a gifted academic student with considerable expertise in many fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, and advanced technology. Through these skills he was able to create his artificial web fluid, his web-shooters and other Spider-man equipment. His scientific knowledge has often been used to defeat his adversaries when his powers are not sufficient enough.

Impressive!

Easier said than done, movie Spidey.

Rap Lyrics Explained 3

Here's more from the book Understand Rap, Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You & Your Grandma Can Understand.

This last explanation comes from the Puff Daddy & The Family song, "It's All About The Benjamins (Remix)":

My west coast shorty push the chrome 740

Meaning: "The female I associate with while I am spending time in California is driving a high-end BMW brand automobile, which I may have purchased for or loaned to her, and that has had a special coating applied to give it an extremely bright, silver, mirrorlike finish."

Want more? Click on the title to buy the book!

Rap Lyrics Explained 2

Here's more from the book Understand Rap, Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You & Your Grandma Can Understand.

This explanation comes from the Dr. Dre song, "Forgot About Dre":

I was strapped wit' gats when you were cuddling a Cabbage Patch

Meaning: "When you were still a child and had no concerns other than playing with dolls in the comfort and safety of your home, I was carrying guns around to defend myself in my dangerous urban neighborhood."

Want more? Click on the title to buy the book!

Rap Lyrics Explained 1

My cousin always used to translate rap songs for me into layman's terms, so I was delighted when she got me the book Understand Rap, Explanations of Confusing Rap Lyrics You & Your Grandma Can Understand. I thought I would take the next couple of days to enlighten you with the info I got from this great book!

Today's explanation comes from the Fabolous song, "Throw It In The Bag":

Bag full of chips -- we ain't talkin' Ruffles

Meaning: "I have a bag that contains a large amount of paper money that I am describing by using a term that stems from the circular disks casinos use as in-house currency, clarifying that it is not a particular brand of thin crinkle-cut potato slices that you may have thought I was referring to."

Consider yourself that much more informed. :)

The Kings Of Leon Brothers

I had to look up the writers/performers of the Kings of Leon song "Use Somebody" for work, and was surprised to see that they all had the same last name. Sure enough, the 4 members of the band contain 3 brothers and their cousin; all members of the talented Followill family.

(Side note: they all go by their middle names and not their first!)

They don't give off the typical pop family-band image, but they could have been one marketing decision away from being one!

So close, yet so far away.

Television Ads Will Have To Keep Quiet!

News from last month's Reader's Digest:

Muffle those TV ads: it's the law

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act was passed by the House and Senate, but the FCC will have a year to mull over regulations another year to enforce them.

What's it mean? It appears that within the next two years, television commercials won't be allowed to blast at a higher volume than the television show itself.

My ears are pretty stoked!

Pirates & Theater

... apparently don't mix well!

I recently visited the "Real Pirates" exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural History. It follows the early-1700s shipwrecked Whydah and its crew. It's very impressive - I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area!

One of the Whydah stories I read was particularly ridiculous, so I decided to share it with you. It was listed as a side note on a "Life on Board a Pirate Ship" banner.

One-Act Plays -- Pirate Style

Pirates even performed plays on ships. The Whydah crew staged a play about a mock pirate trial called The Royal Pirate. A group of crewmembers, the worse for drink, missed the first act. They stumbled in -- clueless that a play was being performed -- just as one of the actors was being sentenced to death for piracy.

Outraged, they leapt to his defense, throwing hand grenades and drawing their cutlasses, breaking the actor's leg, taking the arm off the playwright, and killing a member of the audience.

!!! It really made me appreciate all of the performances that I've been to that haven't involved any unplanned violence!

But I guess what else should we expect from drunken pirates?

What Does "Karaoke" Mean?

I love going to random dive-bars and singing to pre-recorded music in front of a bunch of strangers in the middle of the night. Even though I spend a lot of time at karaoke, I have never really thought of what the word itself means.

But it has for-real origins: it's a blending of Japanese kara "empty" and ōkesutora "orchestra".

Here is also a brief history of karaoke, while we're on the subject:

It's said that karaoke was invented by a musician named Daisuke Inoue in 1971. At parties in Japan around that time, the hosts usually provided some sort of live entertainment for their guests. After he was asked to play music at a bunch of parties so the guests could sing along, he realized there was a market for a machine that could do what he was doing. He loaned his machine ("karaoke box") to people, and they would pay 100-yen per song (the equivalent of a nice dinner). It caught on in Asia.

Since Inoue never patented his invention, a Filipino man named Roberto del Rosario got the patent to the karaoke machine in 1983. He called his machine the "Minus-One" and it used cassette tapes. Filipinos had been immigrating to Japan to become entertainers since the 1960s, and the karaoke machine helped them save a ton of money when they traveled to perform. Plus it was fun for non-entertainers alike.

When the karaoke machines didn't catch on in the United States and Canada in the 1980s, developers turned them into home entertainment stereo systems, with karaoke as a small side feature.

In the 1990s, karaoke became something that American bars offered its patrons. With that, the affordability of small karaoke machines, and the explosion of karaoke home video games (Karaoke Revolution, Rock Band, etc), karaoke has continued to grow in popularity.

Karaoke's come a long way!

Karaoke Studio for Nintendo, 1987

1990's Karaoke Machine

Karaoke Revolution for PlayStation 2, 2003

Thank goodness for karaoke. Seriously.

[source]

Pearl Jam's "Ten"

Why does the band Pearl Jam have a 1991 album named Ten when there are 11 tracks on it?

Well, the members were big fans of the basketball player Mookie Blaylock, so much so in fact that they wanted to name the album after him. They had some intellectual property rights issues in doing that, so they decided just to name the album after his jersey number, 10.

Thanks to my friend Eli for the random trivia!

How Old Was The Cast Of "Grease"?

I caught a little bit of the 1978 musical-movie Grease on television the other day. It's about a bunch of seniors in high school in 1950s California. Since I work with teenagers in my real life, I was surprised at how mature everyone in the cast looked! If you, like I, have ever wondered how old they all were when the movie came out, wonder no more!

In 1978...

T-Birds

Jeff Conaway (Kenickie) was 28

Barry Pearl (Doody) was 28

Michael Tucci (Sonny) was 32

Kelly Ward (Putzie) was 22

Pink Ladies

Stockard Channing (Rizzo) was 34

Didi Conn (Frenchie) was 27

Jaime Donnelly (Jan) was 31

Dinah Manoff (Marty) was 20

Scorpions

Dennis Steward (Leo) was 31

Annette Charles (Cha Cha) was 30

John Travolta (Danny) was 24

Olivia Newton-John (Sandy) was 30

A little far from typical 17-18 year-old seniors in high school. Although, it's not unusual for Hollywood to cast young adults as teenagers (I would imagine it'd be hard to find the talent that young?), but it seems like 1978 standards were a little looser than 2010!

Take, for example, a sampling of the cast of the 2008's High School Musical 3: Senior Year:

In 2008...

Zac Efron (Troy) was 21

Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella) was 20

Lucas Gabreel (Ryan) was 24

Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay) was 23

Corbin Bleu (Chad) was 19

Monique Coleman (Taylor) was 28

I guess the talent's getting younger? Or it could have just been a directorial choice to have such "adult" looking high schoolers for Grease, I suppose!

Laverne & Shirley Theme Song Meaning

Classic!

Those of us who watched television or reruns in the 1970s, 80s, or 90s probably are all familiar with the "Laverne & Shirley" show's theme song:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight!

Schlemiel! Schlemazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

We're gonna do it!

But what on earth does it mean?

Maybe the definitions will help:

Schlemiel: n, an unlucky burglar; chump; clumsy person (Yiddish)

Schlemazel: n, a very unlucky or inept person who fails at everything (Yiddish)

Hasenpfefffer: n, a highly seasoned stew made out of marinated rabbit meat (German)

Maybe the only ones who would try to start a rabbit stew company would be a couple of inept people?

Actually, the first two lines of the theme song are said to be from a Yiddish-American children's hopscotch chant. As we know from our childhood playground chants (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, et al.), sometimes they are just nonsense. This one in particular, though, is reported to be one that Penny Marshall (who played Laverne) used to chant on her walk to school as a kid.

That's my best answer. :) At the very least we learned what the meaning of the words are!

(via m-w.com, thefreedictionary.com, and reference.com)

Happy World Kidney Day!

Here are some facts about kidneys from Grizz and Dotcom, two of our favorite entourage members on NBC's "30 Rock":

Please help them raise awareness of kidney disease! The more you know.

Lady Gaga's Old Job

Before Lady Gaga became a household name singing her own songs, she used to be a songwriter for other artists.

She wrote "Elevator" for the Pussycat Dolls, for instance. What fascinated me more, however, was that she wrote at least one song for Britney Spears, "Quicksand"... and she's rumored to have written for Christina Aguilera, Chris Brown, and New Kids on The Block!

I guess it just goes to show how versatile her writing abilities are!

Yes, they may both be pop stars, but with fairly different styles I'd say!

The Simpsons' Platinum Anniversary!

I saw on a commercial last night that "The Simpsons" was celebrating its 20 years of shows! Although their shorts started appearing on the Tracy Ullman show in 1987, their first full-length episode aired on December 17th, 1989, on Fox. Unbelievable!

Other shows that beat 21 seasons are mostly news shows, sports programming, talk shows, soap operas, game shows, children's programs, and variety shows.

21 seasons puts "The Simpsons" in a league with "The Real World" (22 seasons), "Lassie" (20 seasons), "Gunsmoke" (20 seasons), and "Bodies In Motion [with Gilad]" (24 seasons). The typical long-running shows we think about don't come very close: "ER" (15 seasons), "Bonanza" (14 seasons), "Dallas" (13 seasons), "NYPD Blue" (12 seasons). And notice none of those are sitcoms! In that category, "The Simpsons" wins by far!

Congrats to our lovably dysfunctional animated family!

We've all come a long way in 20 years together, haven't we?

Avoiding 3-D Movie Headaches

In case any of you are spending your holiday vacations at the theater, lifehacker gives some good advice for moviegoers who get headaches while watching 3-D films:

When watching a 3D movie, whatever is right in front of you and in-focus is what you want to be paying attention to—focusing on the background details for too long triggers headaches and disorientation.

According to the lifehacker article, because of 2-D movies, we're conditioned to constantly scan the movie screen, even looking at the parts of the image that aren't in focus (especially during action movies-- what's lurking in the background?). 3-D movies weren't made to be watched that way, so as long as you watch on what's in the foreground (whatever is in-focus), you should be fine. :)