The Fiestas, “So Fine”

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1950s, Fiestas, Johnny Otis, One Hit Wonder, So Fine

So Fine is a song written by Johnny Otis and performed by The Fiestas. It reached #3 on the U.S. R&B chart and #11 on the pop chart in 1959.  

Jim Gribble is credited as the writer of the song, however, Otis filed a lawsuit claiming the copyright of the song, which had been recorded in 1955 by The Sheiks, a group that included Jesse Belvin. Otis’ side won the case.  

The song was ranked #69 on Billboard‘s Year End Hot 100 singles of 1959. 

 

“Runaway Train”

Tags

1980s, action thriller, Andrei Konchalovsky, Eric Roberts, Jon Voight, Movies, Rebecca De Mornay, Runaway Train

Runaway Train is a 1985 American action thriller film directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts,Rebecca de Mornay and John P. Ryan. The screenplay was based on an original 1960s screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, with uncredited contributions by frequent Kurosawa collaborators Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima. The film was also the feature debut of both Danny Trejo and Tommy “Tiny” Lister, who both proceeded to successful careers as “tough guy” character actors.

The story concerns two escaped convicts and a female assistant locomotive driver who are stuck on a runaway train as it barrels through snowy desolate Alaska. Voight and Roberts were both nominated for Academy Awards. It received generally positive reviews from critics. 

Kurosawa intended the original screenplay to be his first color film following Red Beard, but difficulties with the American financial backers led to its being shelved.

“Hot Buttered Soul”

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1960s, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, creative control, Hot Buttered Soul, Isaac Hayes, Stax Records, Walk On By

Hot Buttered Soul is the second studio album by American soul musician Isaac Hayes. Released in 1969, it is recognized as a landmark in soul music. Recorded with The Bar-Kays, the album features four lengthy tracks, including a 12-minute version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David cover Walk On By (which peaked at #30) and an almost 19-minute long version of Jimmy Webb’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix (peaking at #37); both songs were edited significantly and released as a double A-side single in July 1969.

Hayes’ 1968 solo debut, Presenting Isaac Hayes, had been a poor seller for the Stax Records, and Hayes was about to return to his behind-the-scenes role as a producer and songwriter, when the label suddenly lost its entire back catalog after splitting with Atlantic Records in May 1968. 

Stax executive Al Bell decided to release an almost-instant back catalog of 27 albums and 30 singles at once, and ordered all of Stax’s artists to record new material, encouraging some of Stax’s prominent creative staff, including Hayes and guitarist Steve Cropper, to record solo albums.

After feeling burned by the retail and creative flop of his first album, Hayes told Bell that he would not record a follow-up or any other album unless he was granted complete creative control. Since Bell had encouraged Hayes to record Presenting… in the first place, he readily agreed.

Boglins

Tags

1980s, Boglins, hand puppets, Larry Mass, Mattel, Maureen Trotto, Tim Clarke, Toys

Boglins were a series of toy puppets distributed by Mattel. They were created by Tim Clarke, Maureen Trotto, and Larry Mass, and licensed by Seven Towns. The original run of Boglins was released in 1987, coinciding with a “creatures” craze that included Ghoulies, Critters, and Gremlins. Boglins were goblin-themed hand puppets made of flexible rubber and could be manipulated to represent speech and facial expressions. Several series of large and small Boglins were released until 1994, with additional aquatic, Halloween, and baby themed Boglins released later into the line. Small solid ‘Mini-Boglins’ were also produced, akin to the Kinkeshi figures also from the 1980s.  

Created by Jim Henson Company alumni Tim Clarke, Maureen Trotto and Larry Mass for the Seven Towns company in 1987, Boglins were initially brought to Coleco as a potential addition to their Sectaurs line; but were eventually marketed on their own by Mattel in 1987. The three original large scale Boglins were Dwork, Vlobb and Drool (Vlobb and Drool were called Plunk and Flurp in the UK), and were packaged in unique wooden crate-like boxes with bent plastic jail-bars. Although sporting small arms and a tail, these puppets mostly consisted of a large goblin-like head, drawing some inspiration from the giant Olmec heads of Ancient Mexico. Constructed from an artificial rubber known as Kraton, the initial models also featured glow in the dark eyes, which could be moved using a lever hidden inside the puppets, as well as the ability to wink/blink via a small plastic tab above each eye. Unlike many toylines of the 1980s there was no accompanying cartoon series or comic book for Boglins, with a backstory only mentioned in the “Bogologist Field Notes” on the back of the packaging. The notes establish the science of “Bogology,” detailing how the creatures originated from a “swampy bog that time forgot,” possibly a “missing link” to human personalities. The first release of large creatures were given the species name Boglinus Humungus.

There were additional lines of small and mini boglins.

 

Charlie No-Face

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Charlie No-Face, disfigured, electrical accident, Green Man, midnight stroll, Pennsylvania, Ray Robinson, TRue, urban legend

Imagine finding yourself outside and alone in the dark on a residential street. You hear footsteps approaching. Suddenly, a man with a misshapen face appears. You run, terrified beyond words. You spread the story of the man with no face throughout Pennsylvania. 

Charlie No-Face (also called the Green Man) was actually a man named Ray Robinson, and he was no figment of anyone’s imagination. Born in 1910, Robinson was disfigured as the result of an electrical accident at the age of 8. He touched active wires, which effectively maimed him. Knowing his appearance could be disconcerting, Robinson took to taking strolls after dark. He often walked a path along Route 351 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. While his intentions were honorable, encountering Robinson in the dead of night inevitably led to spreading stories about a boogeyman haunting the town. Robinson died in 1985. 

Swedish House Mafia, “Don’t You Worry Child”

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#1 single, 2010s, Don't You Worry Child, Grammy nomination, house music, One Hit Wonder, Swedish House Mafia, Until Now

Don’t You Worry Child is the sixth single released by Swedish house music supergroup Swedish House Mafia. It is the last single from their second compilation album, Until Now, featuring vocals from Swedish singer John Martin. In the United States, it is the act’s second #1 single on Billboard‘s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, following Save the World. It is the group’s biggest hit single to date, as well as the final single released before their disbandment in early 2013. It was released to widespread acclaim and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Dance Recording.

In May 2010, songwriters John Martin and Michael Zitron were in the latter’s studio in Stockholm writing material, both recalling their lives when Zitron started opening up his upbringing in a broken home in Stockholm, mentioning the divorce between his parents. The song’s chorus was taken verbatim from Zitron’s father, while the pre-chorus derives from the songwriters’ discovery of young love, inspiring the lyrics “Upon a hill across the blue lake/ That’s where I had my first heartbreak.” Martin and Zitron wound up finishing the song later in the month and recorded a demo of the complete writing product. The song was originally meant to launch their own “electro-pop indie duo”, however Zitron would later send the demo to Swedish House Mafia group member Sebastian Ingrosso alongside a few other demos in December 2010. Ingrosso would later contact the songwriters to help work on what would later become Save the World, which was released over a year prior to Don’t You Worry Child.

The following year in January, while in a Los Angeles music studio with fellow supergroup members Axwell and Seteve Angello, Ingrosso phoned Zitron and Martin to “send [him] those three songs that [Zitron] played to [him] in the studio”. Ingrosso called back Zitron after receiving the files to tell Zitron that Axwell was “lying on the fucking couch, almost crying” after listening to Don’t You Worry Child, before requesting to have the song for themselves. The supergroup then started to become embroiled in a long production process that “revealed personal tensions” as depicted in their 2014 documentary Leave the World Behind.

The song was announced during the Swedish House Mafia’s tour of Australia while they played at Future Music Festival 2012. They say it was made from the inspiration they took from the beauty of Australia. When it was announced that the tour the Swedish House Mafia was about to set on would be their last, a farewell single was also announced – Don’t You Worry Child being that single.   

Elizabeth Montgomery

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actress, Bewitched, Celebrity, coloon cancer, Elizabeth Montgomery, Samantha Stephens

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 – May 18, 1995) was an American actress whose career spanned five decades in film, stage, and television. She portrayed the good witch Samantha Stephens on the popular television series Bewitched.  

The daughter of actor, director and producer Robert Montgomery, she began her career in the 1950s with a role on her father’s television series Robert Montgomery Presents, and she won a Theater World Award for her 1956 Broadway debut in the production Late Love. After Bewitched ended in 1972, Montgomery continued her career with roles in many television films, including A Case of Rape (1974) and The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975).  

Throughout her career, Montgomery was involved in various forms of political activism and charitable work. 

In 1954, Montgomery married New York City socialite Frederick Gallatin Cammann; the couple divorced less than a year later. She was married to actor Gig Young from 1956 to 1963 and then she was married to director-producer William Asher from 1963 until their divorce in 1973. They had three children: William, Robert and Rebecca. The latter two pregnancies were incorporated into Bewitched as Samantha’s pregnancies. During the eighth year of the show, Montgomery fell in love with director Richard Michaels. Their resulting affair led to the end of both of their marriages, as well as the end of the series. They moved in together when shooting ended in 1972; the relationship lasted two and a half years. On January 28, 1993, she married actor Robert Foxworth, after living with him for nearly twenty years. They remained married until her death in 1995.

Montgomery suffered from colon cancer. She ignored the influenza-like symptoms during the filming of Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan, which she finished filming in late March 1995. Due to the late diagnosis, the cancer metatasized from her colon to her liver.

With no hope of recovery and unwilling to die in a hospital, Montgomery chose to return to her Beverly Hills home that she shared with Foxworth. She died on the morning of May 18, 1995, at the age of 62, surrounded by Foxworth and her three children. 

 

“Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”

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2000s, analysis paralysis, Blink, Books, Malcolm Gladwell, psychology, science, thin slicing, unconscious

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) is Malcolm Gladwell’s second book. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious: mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgment, and its pitfalls, such as prejudice and stereotypes.  

The author describes the main subject of his book as “thin-slicing:” our ability to use limited information from a very narrow period of experience to come to a conclusion. This idea suggests that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. To reinforce his ideas, Gladwell draws from a wide range of examples from science and medicine (including malpractice suits), sales and advertising, gambling, speed dating (and predicting divorce), tennis, military war games and movies and popular music. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people’s experiences with “thin-slicing,” including our instinctive ability to mind-read, which is how we can get to know a person’s emotions just by looking at his or her face.  

Gladwell explains how an expert’s ability to “thin slice” can be corrupted by their likes and dislikes, prejudices, and stereotypes (even unconscious ones). A particular form of unconscious bias Gladwell discusses is psychological priming. He also discusses the implicit-association test, designed to measure the strength of a person’s subconscious associations/bias.  

Gladwell also mentions that sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, or a doctor’s diagnosis. In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis. This is commonly called “analysis paralysis.” The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information. The other information may be irrelevant and confusing. Collecting more information, in most cases, may reinforce our judgment but does not help make it more accurate. Gladwell explains that better judgments can be executed from simplicity and frugality of information. If the big picture is clear enough to decide, then decide from this without using a magnifying glass.  

The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. For example, Gladwell claims that prejudice can operate at an intuitive unconscious level, even in individuals whose conscious attitudes are not prejudiced. One example is the halo effect, where a person having a salient positive quality is thought to be superior in other, unrelated respects. The example used in the book is Warren G. Harding. Henry Daugherty was impressed by Harding’s appearance of respectability, and helped him become president of the United States of America, though Harding did nothing extraordinary for his political career.  

Gladwell uses the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, where four New York policemen shot an innocent man on his doorstep 19 times, as another example of how rapid, intuitive judgment can have disastrous effects. 

Slo Poke Caramel Pop

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1920s, candy, Caramel Pop, discontinued, Food, Holloway Candy Company, Slo Poke

A real old-timer, the Slo Poke Caramel Pop was first introduced in 1926 by the Holloway Candy Company. The company, rectangular caramel lollipop could either be sucked or chewed. 

Pasapalabra Shazam Cheater

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Adriana Abenia, game show, Music, Pasapalabra, Shazam, Spain, TV

Adriana Abenia, a Spanish actress and TV presenter, was accused of cheating on the game show after she was discovered trying to use an app to find out the answer to a question. 

According to Metro newspaper, Abenia intended to use the phone app Shazam, which records songs and tells the user the song title and artist, to win. She was found out after the phone lit up between her legs and began vibrating during the taping. Abenia was caught before she was able to use the app to cheat her way to the answer.  

“To be honest I think she deserves a special prize anyway because, in seven years of organizing this TV contest, nobody has ever done anything like this and certainly not quite as brazenly,” the show’s host, Christian Galvez.