The song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” was performed by Thurl Ravenscroft, who was also the voice of Tony the Tiger.
Sorry about getting this one to you at the end of the Christmas season. You’ll just have to strike up conversation about Frosted Flakes, and try to work this one in backwards.
And one more thing…
Mr. Grinch…?
So Grinch was his last name? I guess that makes sense. His first name was “The.”
The cable news channel MSNBC gets its name from a combination of its two owners, Microsoft and NBC.
It’s motto, “Lean Forward,” makes it sound like a channel that should be locked by parental controls.
Often when a radio station changes ownership or format, they use Christmas songs, often out of season, to capture listeners’ interests.
Then the listener can make an active decision to avoid that particular station.
When a movie is aired on a TV station and a curse word is dubbed over with a more appropriate word, the new word is usually not spoken by the actual actor on screen. Just someone that sounds like him. I am doing 20 facts today. So to me, that counts as a fact.
Blue comedy is a type of comedy that is risque, indecent, and often offensive or controversial. This is named after a comedian who claimed to have kept all of his adult jokes in a blue notebook.
If you write “adult jokes” in your special blue notebook, you’re probably not an adult.
The Liberty Bell isn’t all that American. In fact, it was cast in England.
Like the Harry Potter movies.
“Action Man” is the British version of GI Joe.
I guess “Government Issued Joe” wasn’t generic enough already.
The Tetris Effect occurs when a person who devotes such a great amount of time or attention to a single task that it begins to overshadow their thoughts and activities.
People who play Tetris for prolonged amounts of time often find themselves thinking about how shapes in the real world would fit together.
I’d be scared if it was called the Call of Duty Effect, where people think about how to snipe you as they watch you from the coffee shop across the street.
In some religions, including Islam and Judaism, the universe is categorized into seven levels of heaven.
Strangely, the crappy WB show “7th Heaven,” which centered around a Christian reverend and his billion children, had nothing to do with Islam.
Crap! We all better go burn our DVDs of “7th Heaven.” Oh, wait. No one has a DVD of “7th Heaven.”
So we would have to go out and buy a copy of the TV show to burn it. Almost like a redneck and a Qur’an…
More tomorrow.
Cops are sometimes referred to as Five-O because of the TV show Hawaii Five-O. “Five-O” refers to Hawaii being the 50th state.
It also sounds a lot better than “Oklahoma Four-Six.”
According to a series of novels released in the 1960s, Barbie’s full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts. In recent years, Barbie’s slim frame has caused quite the controversy. Some say Barbie’s slender physique will cause young girls to become anorexic. Scientists (with way too much time) have determined Barbie’s measurements relative to a real-life human. According to research by the University Central Hospital in Finland, Ms. Roberts would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to menstruate. According to research done by every 8-year-old boy ever, Barbie lacks any organs that would allow menstruation to occur in the first place.
Thank god.
The MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) is the organization in charge of giving movies their ratings in the US. G- and R-ratings have been in use since 1968, PG since 1972, PG-13 since 1984, and NC-17 since 1990. Over time X-rated movies became synonymous with pornography, even though that wasn’t always the case. For this reason, the MPAA adopted the NC-17 rating so it wouldn’t unjustly associate films with pornography. Though nowadays, X-rated pretty much means pornography.
I remember back in elementary school, when kids used to brag about their parents allowing them to watch PG-13 movies or even R-rated movies. This one girl took things a little further by bragging that her dad let her watch X-rated movies. She may have been cool in 4th grade. But now I just feel creeped out.
From 1968 to 2000, Alan Smithee was the official pseudonym used by film directors who didn’t want their real names attached to a film (perhaps due to disagreeable editing, a loss of creative control, censorship for TV or airplane broadcasts, etc.). If your name is Alan Smithee, it probably means your parents didn’t want to take credit for you.
Harsh.
To boost my own ego, I occasionally like to check out the competition (which sadly gets way more views than SmartestYear.com). There are so many stupid “facts.” Today, we shall discover the truth by recognizing the untruth. I have no idea what I just said. I picked up this little gem on some “Fun Facts” website:
“Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.”
Oh my gosh!!!!
Well, after about 2 minutes of googling, I read that he wasn’t allergic, he just didn’t like carrots. But I learned something even more startling:
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) wasn’t even a real rabbit!!!!
I guess that explains why he didn’t like carrots.
Tell your friends about SmartestYear.com! And tell them not to read this post.
The monster Godzilla first appeared in a 1954 Japanese film called “Gojira.” The name Godzilla is the anglicized form of Gojira, which is a combination of two Japanese words: gorira (gorilla) and kujira (whale). This is fitting because, in the early stages of the film’s production, Godzilla was described as “a cross between a gorilla and a whale.”
A cross between a gorilla and a whale? What an odd and useless creature. I can imagine the script:
Man 1: Watch out for Godzilla!
Man 2: Why?
Man 1: Because it’s a mix between a gorilla and a whale!
Man 2: So…It’s a super endangered species?
Man 1: No, it’s a mix between two giant things.
Man 2: Yeah. But it’s probably extremely awkward and worthless on land and water…Sounds kinda hilarious actually. Let’s go poke it with a stick.
