Weekend Open Thread

… a popular satire magazine got in trouble with the U.S. Treasury? In its December 1967 issue, MAD magazine published a picture of a fake $3 bill (which “most of your friends are as phony as”) with its gap-toothed mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, in the spot where a presidential portrait would be. Nobody thought anything odd about it, as it was a joke – except for one thing. That year, the first machines which would take in dollar bills and give back change were being installed in Las Vegas, and some unscrupulous souls discovered that if one cut out and fed the fake bill into the machine, one would get a dollar’s worth of change. Apparently it was the right size and weight to fool the change machine, and that prompted a visit to the office of publisher William Gaines (1922-1992) by agents of the Treasury Department. The magazine staff never did learn its lesson; during the 1970s MAD turned out a parody of Monopoly™ that had a $1,329,063 bill, and later still made another $3 bill which it called “twe dollars.”

… you may be a bibliophage? If you are, you’re in good company, because I’m one too. A bibliophage is a fancy term for a bookworm, someone who loves to read. (Most writers, in fact, are bibliophages. Not that they’d admit it in public, mind you.)

… a famous author once ran for Mayor of New York? In 1969, author Norman Mailer (1923-2007) ran for mayor with a platform that called for the city’s five boroughs – Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn – to secede from the state of New York and form a 51st state. Mailer’s running mate was columnist Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017). New York voters must not have thought much of the idea; Mailer only secured 5% of the primary vote. (Well, it was a thought, anyway.)

… you may know a quakebuttock? If you do, you know someone who is a coward. Quakebuttock was a word used in the 17th Century to signify such a person. (The visuals alone are priceless.)

… the University of Minnesota is older than the state of Minnesota? The university was founded in 1851, while Minnesota didn’t become a state until 1858.

… an off-camera accident changed the course of an episode of The Twilight Zone? The episode “The Silence,” made in 1961, features Franchot Tone (1905-1968) as a member of a club who bets another member, a loudmouth played by Liam Sullivan (1923-1998), half a million dollars that he cannot remain silent for one year. During the filming, Tone was involved in an accident that scraped up half of his face. The producers of the show used that to their advantage, filming Tone standing partially behind open doors and speaking out of one side of his mouth, accentuating the already-nasty character he was playing.

… at one time, doctors thought the color of a room would help prevent disease? During one of the smallpox epidemics of the 1800s, doctors recommended painting rooms red in order to prevent smallpox. (Kind of like painting a room yellow to help with yellow fever, I would suppose.)

Now … you know!

Is that kinda like Juneteenth GB?

Steaming bucket of sh^t?