1. Although “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” was the first episode ever aired, it was actually the eighth episode produced. The debut kept getting pushed back, and by the time it was finally ready, it was December 17th (obviously) and it made sense to go with the holiday-themed episode as opposed to the actual first episode. The first episode produced was actually “Some Enchanted Evening,” where the Simpson kids encounter the Babysitter Bandit.

2. Until The Simpsons surpassed them in 1997, The Flintstones was the longest-running prime time animated show. Fred and Barney had a pretty good run of eight seasons.

3. The show has been renewed through 2011, which means it will break Gunsmoke’s record for the longest-running prime time show in history, animated or not, with its 21st season next year.

4. Matt Groening says Comic Book Guy is based on himself. He thinks it’s the way other people see him. Comic Book Guy has a name, by the way – it’s Jeff Albertson.

5. Other characters whose names you may not know: the Crazy Cat Lady is Eleanor Abernathy, Bumblebee Man’s name is probably Pedro (that’s what his bowling shirt says, anyway), Jimbo is actually Corky James, Otto is Otto Mann, and “Squeaky-Voiced Teen” is Jeremy.
6. Because Matt Groening grew up in Portland, Oregon, a lot of the names found in the show were inspired by places and streets in Portland. For instance, Lovejoy, Terwilliger and Flanders are streets in Portland.

7. Homer’s famous “D’oh!” was inspired by Laurel and Hardy. The made-up word appeared in The New Oxford Dictionary of English in 1998, with the definition, “used to comment on an action perceived as foolish or stupid.” It finally made the big guy, The Oxford English Dictionary, in 2001. That definition is a little more detailed:

Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also (usu. mildly derogatory): implying that another person has said or done something foolish (cf. DUH int.).

8. In one episode, Homer created a gossip website that spilled the beans about everyone in town. You can actually go to that website – check out www.mrxswebpage.com.

9. The characters have four fingers, with one exception: God. Anytime God is portrayed on The Simpsons, he has all five fingers. One episode (“Homer the Heretic”) does depict him with four, but this is widely thought to have been an accident.

10. I’ve always been a fan of the clever names and titles on the show. Here are some of them:

BloodBath and Beyond, a gun shop.
Karmaceuticals, new age store.
Repo Depot, a repossession business.
It Blows, an air conditioner store.
Valley of the Dolls, a toy store.
Saks Fifth Grade, a girls’ clothing store.
The Family Jewels, a jewelry store.

Maybe not surprisingly, I appreciate clever store names in real life too.

What’s your favorite Simpsons moment from the last 20 years? Or is it impossible to choose?

1. Elvis Presley’s “White Christmas” (1957)

It seems that every major musical talent falls into the trap of doing a Christmas album, and the King of Rock ‘n Roll was no exception. Elvis’ 1957 Christmas album caused a huge firestorm of controversy for a man who was already in hot water with every decency and obscenity group in the country—and his rendition of Irvin Berlin’s “White Christmas” was at the top of their “To Hate” list. Even Berlin himself, after hearing a recording, ordered that the song be banned from the airwaves. Radio stations refused to play it, and one disc jockey in Portland lost his job for ignoring his station’s “White Christmas” embargo. When asked if he’d play the song, Los Angeles DJ Dick Whittinghill replied, “That’s like having [stripper] Tempest Storm deliver Christmas gifts to my kids.”

2. Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure’s “O Holy Night” (1847)

One of the most sung and universal Christmas carols actually caused quite a stir when it first hit people’s ears around the holidays. Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, a French poet and commissionaire of wines, was asked by his parish priest in 1847 to write a poem for Christmas mass. The poet was so moved by the words that flowed out of him that he decided to set his poem to music, with help from a musician friend by the name of Adolphe Charles Adams. The song gained popularity, but was banned after Cappeau left the church and leaders learned Adams was Jewish. Despite the edict, people in France continued singing the song, and in the mid-1850s, writer John Sullivan Dwight brought it to America.

3. Billy Joel’s “Christmas in Fallujah” (2007)

He had not released an album in 14 years, but Billy Joel returned to the airwaves in 2007 to speak his mind at Christmas time. The artist wrote and produced a rather blunt Christmas tune about U.S. troops stuck in Iraq during the holidays. He told Katie Couric of CBS News that he hoped the Christmas ditty would remind people about the troops and the conflict. Some critics called it an anti-war song and the Pentagon Channel, an Armed Forces TV network, pulled a segment on the song at the last minute for fear of hurting morale. Some individual solders told CBS they didn’t have a problem with it and were even moved by Joel’s lyrics and thoughts.

4. The Charlie Brown Christmas Album (2006 Remix)

The classic Charlie Brown Christmas is so loved and revered that any attempt to alter any portion of it will immediately be met with harsh vengeance. That’s exactly what happened when the Concord Music Group released a remastered version of the famed Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack to the 1965 CBS Christmas special. Fans with mosquito-like hearing noticed some major discrepancies in the tracks, including alternate takes, noise reduction, and outright sound manipulation through digital technology. The backlash became so heavy that CMG offered customers a replacement disc.

5. John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (1971)

John Lennon tried to recapture the spirit of the peace movement with “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” The song, based on a billboard campaign he and his wife Yoko Ono ran around the world, raised some ire for combining anti-Vietnam sentiments with Christmas tunes, but it would later be one of the artist’s last hit singles. Years later, after Lennon’s assassination in 1980, the song made the Billboard chart.

6. Christmas in the Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album (1980)

Maybe not controversial, but we’ve included this entire album for just being awful. If you’re already familiar with the eye-bleeding badness of The Star Wars Holiday Special, then this musical attempt to cash in on Star Wars at Christmas shouldn’t require any personal reviewing to confirm any critique. The album featured such spacey themes as “R2D2’s Sleigh Ride” and “What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)” If the fact that all of the principal members of the original movie’s cast sing vocals on the album doesn’t turn you away from it, then the fact that it features Jon Bon Jovi’s first recorded musical performance might make you wish R2D2 had never stopped that trash compactor in the first place.

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, reporter and humorist living in Texas. He can be found on the web at dannygallagher.net, on MySpace and on Twitter.

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It’s not all srs bsns at the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. The employees of the hospital put together this “Pink Glove Dance” to promote breast cancer awareness. Looks like a lot of fun!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]

“In urban settings all across the country, a growing number of city-dwellers young and old are exploring the wonders of raising and farming backyard chickens. Recently, the photographer Todd Parsons scoured the San Francisco Bay Area for evidence of this burgeoning movement. “

His photos are beautiful, but these are two of my favorites. Of course, I’m not convinced I’m going to start chicken farming in my apartment just yet. I’m more of a shepherd at heart.

You can the full gallery here at the wonderful GOOD Magazine.

“We’re hearing this noise around us and we realize it is pieces of whale blubber hitting the ground around us (from) 1,000 yards away. A piece of blubber the size of a fingernail could kill you if it hit you in the right part of the head, so we ran away from the blast scene, down the dune and toward the parking lot. Then we heard a second explosion ahead of us, and we just kept going until we saw what it was: A car had been hit by this coffee-table-size piece of blubber and had its windows flattened all the way down to the seats.”

The video taken that day is now the fifth most-viewed internet video of all time. Linnman said not a day goes by that someone doesn’t mention the story to him. Link -via Buzzfeed

Previously at Neatorama: The Infamous Exploding Whale.

In addition to the main turkey action, the Turkey Tracker folks are asking viewers to pledge money to the Oregon Food Bank in a style similar to a walkathon, where you pledge a small amount per Turkey Tracker viewer. (Don’t worry, you can limit the pledge total amount in case this thing goes nuts and there are a million visitors.) The money goes directly to the charity, there’s nothing fishy going on here. (Also, they’re giving away an iPod touch to people who donate.)

Here’s a video of Michael Weinberg (the Turkey Master) on “Thanksgiving 2.0,” explaining the Turkey Tracker 2009 project. This is really fun, and includes some shots of “technical difficulties” (involving fire) from last year’s event.

Here’s an example of awesome geekiness from the Turkey Tracker 2009 FAQ (emphasis added):

8. How do you track the temperature?

This year, we’re using Type-K thermocouples from Omega Engineering in Connecticut–they’re a provider of industrial sensors and process control equipment. Our ambient and smoker temperature sensors are bolt-on thermocouples with glass-insulated wire rated to 480degC (900degF). The probe for the turkey itself is a custom ordered probe that has a advanced ceramic insulation made by 3M that’s rated to 1200degC (2200degF). The thermocouples generate a current proportional to the temperature, which we amplify with an Analog Devices AD595 chip. The AD595 is then connected to an Arduino microcontroller board that is programmed to output the temperature, in Celsius, over USB. We have a ruby script that collects the data on the serial line and converts it to Fahrenheit. For graphing, we use RRDTool. The data is polled every minute. The steps you see in the graph also depict minute intervals.

Our obsession with high-temperature rated materials is due to events last year that caused us to lose sensors twice during the cooking process in a very dramatic fashion. Besides, we haven’t had a chance to buy export-restricted thermally-insulated sensors before.

How to Track the Turkey

First off, follow @turkeytracker on Twitter. Next, check out the Turkey Tracker website (where you can watch live video, view a temperature graph, check out user-contributed turkey photos from around the world, and chat with other visitors). If you want to pledge to help Oregon Food Bank, there’s a convenient form to help out. Finally, check out the Turkey Tracker Blog which includes this important schedule (times are Pacific Standard Time):

Broadcast Schedule

9 – 9:30 AM: Turkey in the smoker, broadcast starts.
10 AM: Gobble Gobble Hey? – We answer your questions.
11 AM: Turkey Toast & Technocrati Talk – A Discussion of the Technology Behind Turkey Tracker. This hour is sponsored by New Seasons Market.
12 PM: Kevin Ludwig from Beaker and Flask presents a cocktail in honor of Turkey Tracker. (pre-taped)
1 PM: Beers to compliment your Thanksgiving meal. Q&A.
2 PM : Kevin Ludwig from Beaker and Flask presents a cocktail in honor of Turkey Tracker. (pre-taped) followed by dedications.
3 PM: Wines to compliment your Thanksgiving meal. Q&A.
4 PM: Kevin Ludwig from Beaker and Flask presents a cocktail in honor of Turkey Tracker. (pre-taped) followed by more Gobble Gobble, Hey?
5 PM: Parade of Appetizers
6 PM: Kevin Ludwig from Beaker and Flask presents a cocktail in honor of Turkey Tracker. (pre-taped) followed by Prize Drawing.
6:30 – 7 PM: Turkey is done!

See also: coverage of Turkey Tracker from 2008.

In honor of today’s post on the Elliott Smith documentary Strange Parallel, here’s a collection of Elliot Smith playing some of his best songs. Smith died on October 21, 2003, at age 34. Read more about him at Wikipedia.

“Waltz #2 (XO)”

A beautiful performance of one of my favorite songs.

“I’m so glad that my memory’s remote
’cause I’m doing just fine hour to hour, note to note
here it is, the revenge to the tune
you’re no good
you’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good
can’t you tell that it’s well understood?”

“Needle in the Hay”

A rare electric-guitar version of the song from 2000. Most of us know this tune from The Royal Tenenbaums.

“Bled White”

From the same concert as “Needle in the Hay,” this is just a straight-up rocker.

“Ballad of Big Nothing”

Wait through the shot of an empty chair for a killer encore. “You want to hear old songs or new songs?” I guess “old songs” won out.

Here’s a very different version from the Reading Festival in 1998.

“Say Yes”

Apparently recorded on September 19, 2003 — just a month before his death, and his last show.

“Rose Parade”

Recorded in 1999. The Rose Parade is an event held annually in Portland, Oregon (aka the “Rose City”).

“Alphabet Town”

A strange mixture of Sesame Street animation and shots of letters around town.

“Between the Bars”

From the short film Lucky Three.

“The Biggest Lie”

Video from the memorial to Smith erected in Los Angeles the day after his death.

I’m a little shocked that I’ve gone so many years being an Elliott Smith fan, and living in Portland (where it is contractually obligated that you be an Elliott Smith fan), but had never heard of Strange Parallel, a 1998 30-minute documentary on Smith. Directed by Steve Hanft as a promotional film (never released commercially), it’s hard to find — but a copy has popped up on YouTube, and it’s well worth a look if you like Elliott Smith. Part documentary, part experimental weirdness (as in the sequence where Smith contemplates buying a “robot hand” to improve his guitar playing), this is a gem, despite the poor YouTube quality.

Here’s a nice comment from the Wikipedia page by the director, explaining the film:

Director Steve Hanft says this about the film:

“In 1998 I was hired to make a film for the reclusive rocker Elliott Smith. Very excited, I flew to Portland, Oregon, where he was staying and met with him to figure it out before we filmed. At the meeting he explained, in a very quiet voice, with a slight smile, that he didn’t want it to be a straight-up documentary. So I suggested he write down some of his dreams. The next day, we met again, and he began talking a lot, and louder, telling me all about how he “had a fucked up dream last night.” It was very funny when he explained it, everyone in and around the music business he was in was telling him to get a mechanical hand to replace the hand that he’d trained for so long to play guitar. There was also a military recruiter who came into the bar where he was writing a song that would yell at him for no reason, and Satan was there, that kills me. A lot of people who know him from his music don’t understand that he was really funny. So we wrote the dream into the shot list and intercut it into the more traditional music footage. It was hard to get the documentary footage out of him, he hated being interviewed. He was much more into the dream sequence and we had a lot fun shooting it. It was an amazing experience and just knowing a guy like that, so talented and brutally honest, has changed my life. Bless him.”

“QUANTUM SHOT” #596
Link – article by M. Christian and A. Abrams

“Pipe Dreams” with Magnificent Sound: Quite Simply, The Blockbusters of Their Time

Some of the most epic and magnificent music masterpieces were created to be played on a large pipe organ – made even better if listened inside soaring gothic cathedrals with pretty much perfect acoustics. The wonder of such music is certainly timeless, and gets even more amazing when you start to investigate the history, science, and simple magnificence that has gone into the creation of some of the world’s most incredible pipe organs.

(the world’s largest pipe organ console, in Atlantic City, photo via – right: Tokyo pipe organ, built by Marc Garnier from France in 1991, via)

As with a lot of important technological – as well as artistic – achievements, trying to determine who made the first one of these things is a bit fuzzy. Some experts give the ancient Greeks most of the credit – specifically the genius Ctesibius of Alexandria. Those early Greek organs were pretty simplistic, but the basic principle is still the same: force air through a pipe and you get sound. Make the pipe smaller, tighter, and the note that comes out is higher. Make the pipe larger, wider, and the note that comes out is lower.

(pre-organ “instrument”, described by Pretorius in “Syntagma Musicum”, 1615 – right: a mobile organ circa Maximillian times, 1517)

What’s interesting is that portable organs were not just created but common in certain parts of Europe during the Middle Ages. They were probably about as mechanically simple as Ctesibius’s early invention, but it’s still remarkable that the technology was there and transportable by horse and wagon.

Beer Bottle Organ is an obvious idea, that was realized way back in the 1800s. Right image – portable organ from 1750s:

(images via)

But when you want to talk about size – you have to talk about the permanently installed ones.

Size matters, and does increase with the amount of money invested

As with astronomical clocks, large organs quickly became the blockbusters of their time. If yours was a town of any notoriety then you pretty much had to have one – the bigger the better. The fact that they were used by churches, like the aforementioned fancy clocks, couldn’t hurt either, as they had the deep pockets to afford them.

Fantastic ornamental hanging tubes of the cathedral organ in Trier, Germany (left image below) and a strange horizontal arrangement of tubes in Madrid, Spain:

(images via 1, )

(Helsinki Cathedral’s elegant pipe organ, built by E.F.Walcker, 1832 – image via)

(left: Balcony organ in Salzburg, Austria – right: Notre-Dame du Finistere, in Brussels, Belgium – via)

(very elegant organ in Hamburg, Germany – image via)

Here’s a bunch of interesting facts:

The pipe organ created for Halberstadt, Germany was a monster for its time. Its bellows had to be worked ceaselessly by ten men – who were, no doubt, music fans. The technology is impressive today, and was simply astounding when it was created in (ready for this?) 1361. Today it is the site for the Slowest Piece of Music Ever Performed

(the bellows of Halberstadt, Germany, pipe organ – via)

Because the technology of a pipe organ is relatively simple, making them bigger was pretty much a matter of just scaling them up: bigger pipes, bigger air supplies, etc. While there were a lot of monster organs… stop giggling… there are some that took the musical instrument from noteworthy to astounding.

One of the largest is still played today: created in 1911, the Kotzschmar Memorial Organ in Portland, Maine, is a beautiful piece of engineering as well as musical artistry. Although much of its technology is hidden from sight, what is visible is simultaneously elegant and powerful, which also perfectly defines the music of its haunting notes.

(left: Kotzschmar Organ, photo via – right: Wanamaker Organ, photo via)

Another great pipe organ was created in 1904 for the St Louis World’s Fair, the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia is a monster among monsters. Everything about the instrument looks like it was designed not just to make sound but a LOT of VERY BIG sounds: it has not one, not two … but, to get to the point, 28,482 pipes set in 461 rows (more info).

(a very small portion of Wanamaker’s 28,482 pipes: strings section – photo via)

(the organ at United States Naval Academy has 522 registers (controls), image via)

Its keyboard looks more like something used to launch a space shuttle rather than create music. But the organ definitely creates music – on a scale commensurate with its standing as the second largest pipe organ in the world.

Nature Plays Its Own Melody

The Singing Ringing Tree (by Burnleys Panopticon design, architects Tonkin Liu Ltd) is a wind organ sculpture which sings (or moans) with the wind – some say very hauntingly so (watch the video here):

(images via)

Natural “pipe organs” formations can be found in some karst caves – they are eternally silent however, playing “The Sounds of Silence” to an attentive ear. Here is one in Mramornaya cave in Crimea, Ukraine:

(image via)

Which leads us to…

The Great Stalacpipe Organ – the World’s Largest Musical Instrument!

Deep in the Luray Caverns in Virginia… there are sounds that might wake the Old Ones if played properly (or if Pippin drops a bunch of stuff down the hole). It is played by striking huge stalactites all around the cavern with felt hammers, producing sombre, sonorous tones…. (more info)

(images via 1, 2)

The Loudest Musical Instrument Ever Constructed

How would you like to hear something six times the volume of the loudest train whistle? I’d say you should be warned before it sounds so that you could cover your ears.

Next time you’re in Atlantic City, swing on by and check it out in the Boardwalk Hall. Built in 1932, the organ makes that beast in Philadelphia look like a sickly kitten. While the Wannamaker Organ boasts those 28,482 pipes, the Boardwalk Hall organ has – ready for this? – about 33,000 pipes. I say ‘about’ because even the owner/operators of the machine aren’t sure. Even the engineering for the organ looks like something that might have been built to power the Muzak in the Tower of Babylon elevators.

(images via)

The Boardwalk organ holds a total of three Guinness World Records: largest pipe organ in the world, largest musical instrument, and – it must have been a literal blast to have been there when this was set – the loudest musical instrument ever constructed. When asked how he felt about winning this last award, the keyboardist was heard, barely, to answer “what?” See more images here.

Trying to play this beast is a life-time job: there are four manuals, and a full list of “stops” (registers, and also controls that operate this mechanism) is published here. See if you can imagine memorizing this, let alone fluently play it.

(images via)

From “Spitz Flute Celeste” (register 217) to “Tuba d’Amour” (register 231) this fantastic instrument can indeed wake up the dead with celestial music, it seems.

“When all of these stops and pitches are played together, the result has been described as a “wall of sound” that can “move men’s souls like no other organ”. The stops are controlled by 1,235 stop-keys on the main seven-manual console (which is permanently located to the right of the stage) and by 673 stop-keys on a portable five-manual console” (source)

You were ready to hear about the world’s largest organ? (well, hello there, YouTube commenters) Unfortunately – as with a lot of big organ claims — you’re likely to be disappointed. The Boardwalk organ, alas, is largely silent: having been damaged by weather, water, budget cuts, and poor attempts at repair, it can still be heard but at only a fraction of its true potential and power.

And there’s nothing funny about an organ that isn’t operating at full capacity.

Something that looks like a giant mobile pipe organ, but is definitely NOT

These are the acoustic locators in Japan in the 1930s. The Japanese emperor Horohito check out the AA guns intended to be used in conjunction with the sound locators (more info)

CONTINUE TO “UNUSUAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS” ->

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1. Tom Landry
The dapper former Dallas Cowboys coach saw some serious action in the Army Air Forces during World War II. As a second lieutenant, Landry served as the copilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress in Europe and completed 30 combat missions. On one mission Landry’s plane ran out of fuel, and the future Hall of Famer had to make a crash landing in Belgium.

2. George Halas
The man who owned the Chicago Bears and coached the squad from 1922 to 1967 was quite an athlete in his own right. He was the MVP of the 1919 Rose Bowl while playing for a team representing the Great Lakes Naval Training Station; the big win earned everyone on the team discharges from the military. After getting out of the armed forces, Halas picked up baseball and bounced around the minors for a bit before eventually getting called up to play for the New York Yankees.

A hip injury cut his big-league career short after just 12 games, but baseball probably didn’t lose a future star. Sure, it’s a small sample, but Halas only squeaked out two singles in 22 at-bats during his MLB career, good for a less-than-sterling .182 OPS.

3. Buddy Ryan
The former NFL head coach and brilliant defensive coordinator served in the Army during the Korean War before getting into coaching. He rose to the rank of Master Sergeant. How did the service affect the coach? His son Rex, the current head coach of the New York Jets, once said of his father, “I don’t pretend to be as tough as he is. I didn’t grow up in the same fashion. He was a master sergeant in the Korean War when he was 18 years old.”

4. Mike Holmgren
After playing quarterback at USC, Holmgren went on to become a history teacher/football coach at his alma mater, San Francisco’s Lincoln High School. The Big Show spent nine years teaching high school before he took a college coaching job at San Francisco State in 1981.

5. Vince Lombardi
Football almost didn’t get one of its legendary coaches. When Lombardi was 15 he enrolled at Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception; if he had finished the six-year program, he would have become a Catholic priest. Lombardi eventually left the school, though, and after earning his spot in college football history on Fordham’s “Seven Blocks of Granite” offensive line, he got a gig teaching Latin, chemistry, and physics at St. Cecilia, a Catholic school in New Jersey.

6. Bob Stoops
Oklahoma’s head coach became a graduate assistant at Iowa after finishing his playing career as a four-year starter for the Hawkeyes. While he was learning to work the sidelines, Stoops had another gig, too: he was a volunteer firefighter.

7. Brian Billick
The former Baltimore Ravens head coach has spent most of his life in football, but he did find a way to earn a little TV face time in 1977 when he was a contestant on the Match Game.

8. Lou Holtz
When Holtz was a struggling young coach he got a job selling cemetery plots to pick up a little money on the side—despite his wife’s warnings that he couldn’t sell anything. Holtz later joked, “She was wrong. By the end of the summer, I’d sold our stereo, our car, and our television.”

9. Pete Carroll
USC’s coach has only had one non-football job in his life: after failing to catch on with any pro teams after college, he took a job selling wood products for CertainTeed, a building materials manufacturer. Carroll later told the Orange County Register, “It didn’t last long. It wasn’t because my heart wasn’t in it. It was because I botched it up so bad that I didn’t have any future in it.”

10. Marv Levy
The hard-luck coach who lost four Super Bowls with the Buffalo Bills played college football at Iowa’s Coe College, but he didn’t immediately head into the coaching world. Instead, he earned a masters in English from Harvard before working his way up the coaching ladder.

11. Paul Brown
The offensive genius and longtime coach of the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns was a sharp guy, too. Brown actually won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1930 but decided to stay home and take a job as a teacher and coach at a prep school to support his wife.

12. Marty Schottenheimer
After a six-year career as a linebacker for the Bills, Patriots, and Colts, Schottenheimer retired from football in 1971 and switched to a very different industry: real estate. The swap didn’t last long, though, as he got back into football in 1974 as the linebackers coach for the World Football League’s Portland Storm.

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