Amazing Things I Learned Today!

[Nate the Great]

I thought I knew about all the mainline Mario games and their ports, but today I learned about Super Mario Bros. Special.


It's sort of a port of Mario 1 for the PC-8801 (an 8-bit computer made in Japan in the early '80s).



I guess it can stay in the dustbin next to Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement.

[Nate the Great]

Steven Spielberg is making a new version of West Side Story!


I don't know how to feel about this. Was the original movie so good that it can't be improved on? No, of course not. Will Spielberg take the story in new directions that will take it away from the West Side Story identity? I'm afraid the answer will be yes.

[Nate the Great]

You can only survive in a Bag of Holding for ten minutes before you suffocate!


So the D&D nerds have actually discussed what happens if you put living objects in a BOH, or pull one over your head, or whatever.



And they've decided that if you put a BOH inside another BOH you'll create a rift that will suck everything within ten feet into another dimension.

[Nate the Great]

My parents were big fans of MASH, so of course I knew about the spinoff AfterMASH. The amazing thing that I learned today is that Rosalind Chao was one of the stars of it, and she married Klinger!

[DrWho42]

apparently laurie anderson wanted to make an opera based on the thomas pynchon novel gravity's rainbow??

Mister Heartbreak

[Nate the Great]

For some reason Picard has two versions of a Shakespeare omnibus in his ready room.



And he gave one of them to Data only to get it back.

[DrWho42]

amanda palmer covered a momus song.

[Nate the Great]

So I'm a big fan of turn-of-the century alt rock, but today I learned that there's actually a distinct term for this: minivan rock. YouTube playlist.

[DrWho42]

i learned club penguin rewritten exists

[DrWho42]

The Cotard delusion is when someone believes they are dead, do not exist, or lost important internal organs:

Cotard delusion

[Nate the Great]

So I'm watching the CinemaSins review of The Fugitive (one of the few R-rated movies that I've seen, mainly because I didn't know it was R-rated at the time), and this "Sykes" character looked familiar. It turns out I was right, it's the actor (Andreas Katsulas) who played Tomalak. The amazing thing is that he also played G'Kar on Babylon 5!



Granted, I haven't watched much B5, but G'Kar is quite a memorable character. I wonder why I never made the connection.

[Nate the Great]

So I've seen those little gnomes with their hats covering their eyes before, but today I learned that the holiday variety have been deemed "Gonks."



I'm not a fan of them, at least in a holiday context. They're supposed to be simple fanciful creatures, not the sort of thing to be coded "Christmas-themed."



Furthermore, "gonks" already have a meaning: balls of fur with eyes and shoes.



There are more definitions of gonk than I thought. I don't think I've ever used the word before, but if I did I would use it as a synonym for "blockhead."

[Nate the Great]

Brad Jones AKA The Cinema Snob turned 40 on the 20th!


I thought he was years older than me, not mere months.

[DrWho42]

apparently "kiss alien" brings up a funny response in space quest i

[Nate the Great]

Why is the hook on the end of a tape measure always loose?


Today I found out. Consider my mind blown.

[Nate the Great]

How Pokeballs work.


Like many others, I always assume that the things simply held Pokemon in a state of transporter suspension.



But no, the things are just for containment. All Pokemon have the ability to shrink themselves to fit inside.


I understand that the early manga and concept art implied shrunken Pokemon, and there have been times that Pokemon have summoned themselves. But this is still ridiculous.

[Nate the Great]

They actually made a movie out of the webcomic Marry Me starring Jennifer Lopez!


From the Wikipedia summary they changed almost everything except the inciting incident of "guy holds up a 'Marry Me' sign at a concert and the singer accepts." So...was the name "Marry Me" that essential that they had to buy out a webcomic author?



So yeah, won't be watching the movie. I recommend the webcomic though.

[DrWho42]

finally learned what peter coffin is infamous for

[Nate the Great]

There's been a vaccine for chicken pox for over twenty years!


As someone who suffered through it, this is a shock to me.

[Flying Gremlin]

Duolingo has Klingon lessons.

I'm not sure if that bird is less or more scary speaking in Klingon.