Blogs Nosey Parker

This is a mash-up of a couple of pieces I wrote in early 2009. I was trying to track down something else in an old blog post and came across two “Things You Probably Don’t Know” pieces from back then that I found quite interesting — since I had forgotten a lot of the stuff in them. I work on the principle that bits and pieces of information I find interesting might interest other people too, so  I’ve put them all together in this one piece for your perusal.

1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded by Napoleon Bonaparte’s grandnephew.

Charles Joseph Bonaparte was the grandson of Napoleon’s younger brother, Jerome, and American heiress Betsy Patterson. According to the FBI’s official history, he is the only authentic member of royalty to have ever entered American politics.

Charles Joseph Bonaparte

Bonaparte, a long-time friend and colleague of Teddy Roosevelt, entered Roosevelt’s cabinet in 1905, first as Secretary of the Navy and a year later as Attorney General.

While Attorney General, Bonaparte established the Bureau of Investigation in 1908 to pursue cases the Justice Department was prosecuting. That small group of special agents, who originally investigated mainly land fraud cases in the American West and interstate prostitution, quickly grew in size and scope of responsibility as a national U.S. police force.

The Bureau of Investigation was renamed the United States Bureau of Investigation in 1932 before finally becoming the FBI in 1935. J. Edgar Hoover became the first head of the FBI but five other men had preceded him as head of the Bureau of Investigation — the original “G-Men.”

2. Hound Dog was recorded by Elvis Presley on July 2, 1956, and released 11 days later with Don’t Be Cruel (also recorded in the same July 2 session) as the flip side. Hound Dog became the best-selling Elvis single of all time and was also the first song in history to top all three (at that time) Billboard charts — pop, country & western and R&B.

But Elvis wasn’t the first singer to have a hit with Hound Dog. He wasn’t even the second. Or third.

Big Mama Thornton

Written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Hound Dog first became a hit for blues singer Big Mama Thornton in 1952. Hers was a much slower, bluesier version. Within months, the song was covered by a number of country bands.

Freddie Bell and the Bellboys recorded a faster pop version 1955.

To appeal to a broader, crossover market, Bell had changed a number of Big Mama’s original suggestive lyrics about her unfaithful lover coming around for Mama’s treats to something tamer. “You can wag your tail, but I ain’t gonna feed you no more,” for example, became “ You ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine.” (Both good, although I actually think Bell’s lyrics are better.)

Elvis and his band were appearing in Las Vegas in spring 1956 as a lounge act while Freddie Bell and the Bellboys were headlining at another casino down the strip.

Elvis caught Bell’s show many times, loved his version of Hound Dog, and finally asked Bell’s permission to record it.

The rest is history. Thunk ya, thunk ya var much.

3. Just as people are left-handed and right-handed, we are also left-eared and right-eared.

About 60% of people are right-eared. That means we predominantly hear language with the right ear and music and background noise with the left ear. For the other 40% of the population, it’s the reverse.

The finding that the left and right ears process sounds differently is based on a 2003 UCLA study of 3,000 babies.

4. Roswell, New Mexico, was space-age long before the infamous Roswell UFO incident of 1947 and subsequent stories of alien spacecraft and bodies being secretly stored in “Area 51” at Roswell Army Airfield, as it was known at the time.

Roswell got its first space shot in 1930 when American scientist and inventor Robert Goddard moved there. Goddard invented the first liquid-fuel-powered rocket in the 1920s, the basic advance on which all modern rocketry is founded — from intercontinental ballistic missiles to Mars space missions.

Robert Goddard with his first liquid-fuel-powered rocket in 1926

Goddard’s early work was done in his native Massachusetts, but his rocket launches were so noisy and disruptive, he was forced to move to a more remote area — thus his arrival in the dusty little town of Roswell, New Mexico.

Funded on and off by the Guggenheim Foundation, Goddard made enormous strides in his rocket development. Area residents became used to strange, whizzing objects passing overhead.

Goddard worked in isolation in Roswell throughout the 1930s. Repeated attempts to demonstrate the military potential of his rockets were rebuffed by the U.S. Army although the Navy showed some interest.

One person who did take an interest was Werner von Braun, head of Nazi Germany’s rocket development programme. Von Braun used Goddard’s work, as presented in scientific journals, to develop World War II’s terrifying V-2 rockets.

Goddard died relatively anonymously in 1945, two years before the UFO incident put Roswell on the international map. Seized by American forces at the end of the war, von Braun went on to head the NASA space programme that put Americans in space and on the moon.

5. William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy who seized the English crown in 1066, was immensely fat. “Morbidly obese” is the right phrase, since his weight finally killed William in a strange way.

William was a large, tall, commanding presence at the time of the Norman Conquest, but his vast appetites had turned him into a corpulent caricature of the Conqueror in his later years.

French King Philip I, William’s enemy, mocked him as looking like a pregnant woman. Even William’s friend and flunky William of Malmesbury conceded “the protrubance of his belly deformed his royal person.”

When William had become so heavy that his favourite warhorse could no longer carry him, the Conqueror decided on a radical diet to lose weight: He locked himself in his bedroom and consumed nothing but wine and spirits for two weeks (Believe me, it doesn’t work.)

I guess he lost enough weight to ride again because, in 1087, he was leading his forces in battle on horseback near Rouen in Normandy. Until the belly strap holding the saddle on his horse broke from the enormous strain caused by William’s weight. Rider and saddle went crashing to the ground, and William suffered fatal abdominal injuries when he landed on the saddle’s large pommel.

It gets worse.

William’s body was carried to a monastery he had erected in Caen, Normandy, for burial. Knights, nobles and senior clery of the land were gathered in the chapel of Abbaye-aux-Hommes as William’s body was placed in the sarcophagus built especially for his funeral.

The body didn’t fit. The sarcophagus was too small to contain his enormous body, now further bloated by decomposition gases. The bishops conducting the funeral pushed and pushed on his body, trying to force it into the burial tomb so the stone cover could be lowered.

The pushing and prodding was too much for William’s bloated corpse. His abdomen exploded, covering the surrounding clergy in noxious body fluids and releasing a stinking miasma that sent the gathered nobility fleeing into the streets for fresh air.

And that’s how William the Conqueror came to his rather inglorious end.

What the hell is “smallenfreuden” and why the hell should you or I care?

Does the current dumb, creepy Visa Canada ad on NHL playoff telecasts make you feel like you’re being beaten over the head with a dead codfish?

Well, that’s the way I feel. I hope Visa Canada is happy I’m mentioning “smallenfreuden” and they’re getting some publicity bang for their advertising buck because I’m going to spend the rest of this blog post crapping all over them for it.

I’m really appalled by the economic arrogance of Visa in ramming this ad down our throats. “They” (“we” actually, because “we” are paying the tab in the end) are spending millions in the current NHL playoff season to run this ad endlessly.

I know, “smallenfreuden” is on billboards and they’re trying to spark a social media viral spiral, but the repetitious TV ads during hockey games are the main thrust of the campaign.

It’s like brainwashing. Do they really think that, if they run the ad often enough, A) We will ever understand what it means? or B) We will ever care? or C) It actually makes the tiniest bit of sense?

I don’t think so. And that includes A) B) and C).

I’m not going to describe the ad because A) if you’ve watched the Leafs-Bruins playoff series at all you’ve seen the ad dozens of times already and B) it’s too cockamammy to bother describing and C) I don’t even know what the hell they’re trying to say.

I think — and this is just a wild guess — Visa is trying to say no purchase is too small or inconsequential or inconvenient to NOT use your Visa card. And they’re somehow trying to make it seem like it’s either green-conscious or micro-economy-friendly or cutting edge to use a credit card to buy a beer at a hockey game. Jeesh. If you use a credit card to buy a beer at a hockey game it just means you’re cash-strapped from paying too much for the hockey ticket.

But mainly the ad seems to be saying you can stick it to your snotty, judgmental, too-big-for-their-britches neighbours by buying your beer or hot dog or sushi or whatever with your Visa card.

That’s why it’s called “smallenfreuden.”

It’s supposed to make us feel hip or smart (or at least smarter than our snotty neighbours) that we understand “smallenfreuden” is a play on “Schadenfreude.”

“Schadenfreude,” of course, is that wonderful German word that means “taking pleasure from the misfortunes of others.” Sort of. “Schaden” means “harm” and “Freude” means “joy.” You get the idea.

How that translates — either literally or figuratively — into “smallenfreuden” I do not know. (Actually, in German, “the joy of small” should probably be “Kleinefreude” but that’s another matter.)

Whatever message Visa Canada is trying to implant in our brains, it’s just a stupid — goofy stupid, creepy stupid — bad ad.

I feel sorry for the actors in it. I recognize a couple of them and they are smart, funny people with (previously) lots of comedy-theatre cred. Now people just avoid them on the street.

Commercial actors in Canada don’t usually get TV residuals so it’s not going to cost the actors a lot when Visa finally bows to something like reality or acceptance and pulls the ads. But I think Visa is going to hang tough through at least the first couple of rounds of the playoffs. They may even have more inter-connected sequel ads to roll out. (Please, God, spare us.)

The biggest problem I have with the stupid ad — apart from the fact that it’s stupid — is that it’s completely contradictory. Everyone knows that ANY drink or food purchase you make at a Toronto NHL game could never possibly be considered “small.” And certainly not a “joy.”

Go Leafs Go!

Gone Leafs Gone