1. South African model and actress Charlbi Dean (1990-2022) made her acting debut in her homeland in a small role in Spud (2010), a Troye Sivan-toplined adaptation of the boarding school novel Spud (2005) by John van de Ruit.  Soon she decamped to the US and had a recurring role in the Arrowverse as Syonide, a sexy henchwoman of Tobias Whale (who you can learn more about in the next released episode of my podcast). Dean's career would likely have taken a huge step up following her turn as a glamorous influencer in our old friend Ruben Östlund's Triangle of Sadness (2022).  Sadly, in ..read more

1. I've already discussed (here) the backstory of "Whatta Man" (1993) by Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue.  It was only recently, however, that I decided to get to the bottom of some of its lyrical allusions. Now, it's not particularly hard to decode who is being referenced by "smooth like Barry, and his voice got bass/A body like Arnold with a Denzel face."  And as a fan of psychedelic soul, I of course know what it means to be "on Cloud Nine just like the Temps."  But I admit to being to one of those thrown by "... and he knows that my name is not Susan," which — considering all the ..read more

1. Tenskwatawa (c. 1775-c. 1836), aka the Prophet, was born Lalawethika, a younger brother of Shawnee leader Tecumseh.  A wastrel by age 30, he turned his life around following a series of 1805 visions that led him to rebrand himself with a new name and start denouncing White people as enemies of the natives.  (Hard to argue with that.)  He called for a pan-Native-American resistance movement and by 1808 he, his brother, and their followers had created Prophetstown. Tenskwatawa essentially started Tecumseh's War by instigating the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811); the resulting defe ..read more

1. The 7-foot-tall robot Elektro was built by Westinghouse and exhibited at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair alongside a robot dog, Sparko.  Later Elektro depicted "Thinko" in the low-budget exploitation comedy Sex Kittens Go to College (1960), which co-starred Brigitte Bardot('s sister) and featured cameos from Conway Twitty, Vampira, Norm Grabowski, Charlie Chaplin Jr., and Harold Lloyd Jr.  (I guess Buster Keaton Jr. was busy?) In the 1980s, Roy Thomas at DC Comics created All-Star Squadron and retroactively placing them into the universe of Golden Age superheroes.  (Indeed ..read more

1. The Impact typeface was developed by Geoffrey Lee at Stephenson Blake in 1965, but only in recent has its ubiquitous usage in image macros led to it being dubbed "the meme font." 2. Rap duo Blackalicious comprised Gift of Gab (1970-2021) and DJ Chief Xcel.  They had not released anything collaboratively in nearly a decade when in October 2014 Daniel Radcliffe performed his version of "Alphabet Aerobics," a Cut Chemist-produced track from their EP A2G (1999), on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "Aerobics" took the Internet by storm, getting covered by everyone from a random White ..read more

1. Behavioral neurologist Norman Geschwind (1926-84) is the namesake of the Geschwind–Galaburda hypothesis, which attributes sex differences in cognition to levels of lateralization of brain function, and Geschwind syndrome, which describes some not-uncommon symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy: hypergraphia, hyperreligiosity, atypical (usually reduced) sexuality, circumstantiality, and intensified mental life. 2. One of the four "Queens of Crime" from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh), Margery Allingham (1904-66) created gentlem ..read more

1. An upcoming Recreational Thinking episode I recorded with some friends I made while taping Jeopardy! taught me that our old friend Thérèse of Lisieux is not nearly as obscure as I thought. Oh, and a TWB reader sent me this photo of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux dressed up as Saint Joan of Arc Following the taping, Jimmy informed me of something I overlooked: While I was aware that Thérèse was one of five sisters who all became Carmelite nuns (save the one who was a Visitandine nun), and that her sister Sister Françoise-Thérèse (the Visitandine) attained Servant of God status, I hadn't r ..read more

1. Israeli financier Meshulam Riklis (1923-2019) married Pia Zadora (1954- ) in 1977 and began plowing his fortune into exploitation films where the thing being exploited was his wife.  Butterfly (1982) boasted a supporting performance by Orson Welles, an Ennio Morricone score, and an enviable literary pedigree — it was based on a 1947 novel by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941) — but it was nominated for 10 (!) Razzies and won Worst Actress for Zadora. Yet it was arguably not the nadir of Zadora's career; for ..read more

1. Mission: Magic! (1973) was a Saturday-morning cartoon starring Rick Springfield as himself(?) having supernatural adventures with a teacher named Miss Tickle and her students.  Wikipedia notes that it can be considered a forerunner to our old friend The Magic School Bus, as ... Both shows featured red-headed, magic-wielding teachers, with students from diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, and both shows combined entertainment and education. In each weekly episode, both school groups would magically transcend time and space to go on new adventures. ... but it was more directly tied to ..read more

1. Norman Rockwell's granddaughter Daisy Rockwell (1969- ) is a Hindu/Urdu scholar whose 2021 translation of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand (2018) from Hindi to English won the 2022 International Booker Prize. (h/t Nikhil Soneja) She's not the first literary figure in her family.  Thomas Rockwell (1933- ), son of Norman Rockwell and thus presumably her uncle, wrote How to Eat Fried Worms (1973). 2. Although I was never remotely tempted to actually eat insects as a boy, as an inveterate nonconformist I enjoyed not only How to Eat Fried Worms but also Beetles, Lightly Toasted (1987) by Phy ..read more