Tag: Comic Relief

Mountebanks & Toad Eaters

Post author By Betz
Post date August 18, 2020

Have a drink with: Your Local Mountebank
Healthcare! Fireworks! Toads!

Ask him about: What ails you

We’re all getting a lot of weird healthcare advice lately, and I admit that it’s hard to stomach the idea that our country, which vanquished polio and smallpox with scientific elbow grease, is entertaining the medical expertise of a presidential toady who thinks endometriosis happens when you have a demon boyfriend. But history has long tolerated – and even encouraged – the side hustle of non-traditional medical practitioners, and we continue to use some of their lingo even today.

Tags Comic Relief, Doctor in the House?, Entrepreneurship, Jackassery, Science!, Woo-woo

19th Century

The Stomach Rebellion

Post author By Betz
Post date August 12, 2019

Have a drink at: Your College Dining Hall
Cabbage: now with extra protein!

Discuss: FOOD FIGHT

Today, a college’s dining hall is part of its overall outreach in the competition to attract students, and to keep them happy and achieving while they’re on campus. So much is put into the food and the architecture that travel magazines and college prep companies actually rank colleges by the quality and appeal of their food. This is a far cry from the college dining experience of the nineteenth century: in the summer of 1828, students at Yale College got so upset with their dining experience that they undertook a group protest that came to be known as the “Bread and Butter Rebellion” or the “Stomach Rebellion,” and it got so heated that the university president had to expel everybody to get them to cool the eff down.

You can see why a pasta station may be a better solution.

Tags Angry Mob, Comic Relief, Connecticut, Crime & Punishment, Food & Cooking, Jackassery, New Haven, Yale

20th Century

Astronaut Snoopy

Post author By Betz
Post date July 23, 2019

Have a drink with: Astronaut Snoopy
Houston? How about Petaluma?

Ask him about: Getting NASA to the moon

Tomorrow will mark fifty years since the splashdown of the Apollo 11 lunar mission (it’s easy to focus on the July 20th landing and next-day lunar walk, forgetting that the astronauts had to go through the equally perilous process of getting home a few days later before everyone could really and truly celebrate). This is an ideal time to revisit a post from a few years ago, talking about NASA and how the space agency used its partnerships with Charles Schulz’ comic Peanuts as a way to buoy up the space program during its darkest times. After the disastrous January 1967 Apollo 1 fire, which killed three astronauts during a “plugs-out” test of the space vehicle, NASA was in need of a mascot to lift spirits, continue momentum towards the goal of landing a man on the moon, and emphasize safety in the process.

Snoopy was just the beagle for the job.

Tags Cartoons, Comic Relief, Explorers & Adventure, NASA, Peanuts, Science!, Space travel

20th Century

Bathing Suit Lizards

Post author By Betz
Post date July 18, 2017

Have a drink with: Bathing Suit Lizards
Stockingless bathers!

Ask them about: Beachy fun, pig roasts, union cosplay.

If you’re thinking about ways to enjoy your summer, rest assured: the past can help. As it turns out, just like you, people in the early 20th century spent plenty of time thinking about things like bathing suit fashions, picnic etiquette, kid-friendly outings and water safety.

Bring the Kids!

At the annual Asbury Park Baby Parade in 1919, 75,000 people attended the annual pageant, complete with carriages, floats, pony carts, a Tom Thumb wedding and, for the first time in the history of the parade, an official contribution by New Jersey itself: the state being officially represented by two floats courtesy of the Bureau of Child Hygiene, “one a symbolization of the mother State protecting the children, the other a humorous float depicting ‘A Strike in Babyland.”

Paternalism! Tiny Teamsters! Ponies!

So. On to barbecue?

Tags Celebrate!, Comic Relief, Fashion, Kick-Ass Ladies, Newspapers, Sun & Fun

19th Century

Tom Thumb Weddings

Post author By Betz
Post date July 7, 2017

Have a drink with: General & Mrs. Tom Thumb
Tiny wedding of the century!

Ask them about: Will there be ice cream?

I’m over at Atlas Obscura today writing about the Tom Thumb wedding, an American dramatic tradition in which kids put on elaborate, supremely awkward mock weddings for paying audiences. These plays began in the 19th century as a wink and a nod to the “Fairy Wedding” of celebrity little people Charles Stratton (aka “General Tom Thumb”) and Lavinia Warren, and have been undertaken through history as a fundraiser, a crash course in etiquette and promises, or presumably simply so adults could enjoy their children’s embarrassment over cocktails. Click over to Atlas Obscura for more.

Tags Atlas Obscura, Barnum, Comic Relief, Creepy Kids, Theater

19th Century

P.T. Barnum, again

Post author By Betz
Post date May 22, 2017

Have a drink with: P.T. Barnum
The Greatest Showman on Earth

Ask him about: elephant agriculture

Barnum month continues! With the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus performing its last shows yesterday in New York, and first-look pictures of Hugh Jackman’s Barnum musical The Greatest Showman breaking this week, it’s a good day to tip the top hat to Phineas T.

Here are ten things you may not have known about Barnum:

1. He never said “There’s a sucker born every minute.” P.T. Barnum never spoke his most famous words. In the late 1860’s, workers near Syracuse, New York dug up a ten-foot stone colossus, claiming it was archaeological evidence of Biblical giants having lived in the northeast United States. Really the “Cardiff Giant” was a hoax planted by skeptic George Hull, and as it drew thousands of people to see it, the statue made its owners money hand over fist. When the statue’s owners refused to sell to Barnum, the showman simply created his own “Giant,” and claimed the other guys were showing a fake. One version of the tale has angry owner David Hannum spitting out the famous phrase in the resulting legal dispute.

Tags Animal Rights, Barnum, Circus, Comic Relief, Politics

20th Century

Spike Jones

Post author By Betz
Post date December 15, 2016

Have a drink with: Spike Jones
The best offense is a good fart joke.

Ask him about: firearms as percussion instruments

In 1942, New York radio DJ Martin Block sold war bonds on air – to an audience that was under wartime food and gasoline rationing – on the promise that he’d give a free record to any listener who bought a $50 bond. Every time the pledge total went up another $2,500 Block played the single in question on-air, to cheers and peals of laughter.

The song was “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and Block sold $60,000 of bonds inside a week.

Because you can argue, you can petition; you can organize demonstrations and engage in politics; but sometimes the most effective piece of international policy dialogue is a Bronx cheer.

Tags Comic Relief, Mayhem, Music, Politics, Satire, World War II

19th Century

Vinegar Valentines

Post author By Betz
Post date February 10, 2016

Have a drink with: Vinegar Valentines
You’re awful; I love you

Ask them about: Negging in the Victorian era

Is Valentine’s Day not for you? Are you sick to death of hearts and teddy bears? Can Starbucks shove its molten chocolate latte up its molten mermaid tail? Are you looking for something that more befits the holiday in our modern age, but maybe short of actually cheering for gangland murder?

Search no more, for here to the rescue is the heartless Internet troll of the 19th century: the insult comic valentine.

Tags Angry Mob, Comic Relief, Entrepreneurship, Holidays, New England, Slut-shaming, Trolling, Valentines, Victorians

20th Century

Peanuts In Space

Post author By Betz
Post date August 20, 2015

Have a drink with: Astronauts Charlie Brown & Snoopy
Just don’t ask about kicking a football in zero-G.

Ask them about: getting America in the mood to fly again

I’ve got space on the brain. There’s New Horizons doing its Pluto drive-by, and my toddler running around with a plastic pail on her head insisting she’s going into orbit, and a Discovery documentary on TV that convinces me of nothing so much as the plain audacity of the early space program: basically a handful of men trusting to fate whilst strapping themselves to a giant directional bomb.

I am perpetually amazed with spaceflight but also terrified, since I like many others of my age group watched Challenger explode on live television in my elementary-school classroom. In the Challenger accident, NASA lost astronauts for the first time since the Apollo 1 fire of the late 1960’s, in which three astronauts were killed in a launchpad test of their vehicle. In coping with the deep personal, social and institutional trauma of both accidents, NASA went through a very similar process of examination and rebuilding, but that isn’t where the similarities end. In preparing for the return to manned spaceflight, NASA had some trusty allies: a boy and his beagle.

Tags Cartoons, Comic Relief, Explorers & Adventure, NASA, Peanuts, Space travel

20th Century

Dr. Seuss

Post author By Betz
Post date July 30, 2015

Have a drink with: Dr. Seuss
Would you, could you, fight the war?

Ask him about: why Yertle the Turtle just might be Hitler.

We know Theodore Seuss Geisel as a children’s author, a playful champion of absurdity and literacy who gave us green eggs, cats in hats and an absolute lock on what to buy for the high-school graduate in your life.

Because the world seems to love nothing more than the seemingly illicit thrill of getting “secret” material from beloved authors (Harper Lee, what?), there’s been a lot of attention recently to the “new” Seuss book What Pet Should I Get?, produced from a completed manuscript and uncolored artwork found in Seuss’ personal papers.

And this is pretty exciting, particularly since the “inspired by” or “in the style of” children’s literature trend usually serves mostly to illustrate the achievement gap between authors and their posthumous copycats (Seuss and Curious George come to mind). So the thrill of new work from a master is legitimate.

But it isn’t what I love most about Dr. Seuss. That’d be the Hitler cartoons.

Tags Art, Author!, Cartoons, Comic Relief, World War II