“My postilion has been struck by lightning,” or a variation thereon, is a sentence often used as an example of the kind of bizarre and useless phrases that come up when you’re learning a foreign language. It was a nineteenth- … Continue reading The Night Thread’s Postilion Has Been Struck By Lightning (Sunday Feb. 19)
The Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C., has a kickass collection of pre-Columbian American artifacts. Let’s look at some! Continue reading The Night Thread says more like the COOLarton Oaks Museum (Friday Jan. 27)
Exit 57 was a sketch show on Comedy Central in the mid-nineties, starring Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Jodi Lennon, Mitch Rouse, and Amy Sedaris. Honestly, it was mostly pretty bad, but they had a handful of good sketches. I like … Continue reading Day Thread of This Exit 57 Sketch (Thursday Nov. 17)
I went to the Harvard Art Museums on Sunday. I saw many cool things. Here are a few of my favorites. Continue reading Day Thread of the Harvard Art Museums (Wednesday Nov. 16)
Five hundred years ago in Zurich, Christoph Froschauer served sausages at a party, leading to several arrests. It was Lent, and under Catholic canon law at the time, that meant no eating meat. Froschauer, a printer, was part of a … Continue reading The Night Thread of the Sausages (Wednesday Oct. 5)
Sorry to anyone I threw for a loop by claiming it was Thursday last night. In fact, it was not Thursday, and it is not expected to be Thursday until later this week (details to come). Anyway, hurray for accessible … Continue reading The Night Thread’s Got the Pill (Tuesday Oct. 4)
Native American civil-rights activist and actress Sacheen Littlefeather died yesterday at 75. To most people, she was best known as the speaker sent by Marlon Brando to the Oscars ceremony in 1973 to decline his Best Actor award for The … Continue reading Sacheen Littlefeather Night Thread (Monday Oct. 3)
Lots of spiders spend time on or in the water. Some can swim underwater for long periods to hunt or escape predators, and others have adaptations that let them simply survive underwater long enough to wait out flood conditions. But … Continue reading The Night Thread goes scuba diving with spiders (Wednesday Aug. 10)
A mnemonic device is any technique or trick that helps you retain and retrieve information. Wikipedia has a list of mnemonics, mostly of the first-letter-based variety that we all learned a lot of in school. (Its planet ones are all … Continue reading The Night Thread uses mnemonic devices (Thursday Jul. 7)
Elmer of Malmesbury — also spelled Eilmer and about a million other different ways — was an English Benedictine monk who lived in the 11th century. I’ve probably posted about him here before, because I love him. He made a … Continue reading The June 21 History Thread Celebrates Elmer the Flying Monk
Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal created by Post in 1897. Per their website, Grape-Nuts actually contains neither grapes nor nuts. It’s made from wheat and barley. So, why is it called Grape-Nuts? As with many great emblems in history, there … Continue reading The Night Thread Likes Grape-Nut Ice Cream (Apr. 30)
Is it a good idea for members of the public to learn the symptoms of a stroke so they know to call emergency services as soon as warning signs appear? Sure. Was it necessary for a PSA on the subject … Continue reading The Night Thread acts F.A.S.T. (Feb. 22)
On this date in 1828, the first edition of the Cherokee Phoenix was printed, using English alongside the Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah (who also happened to be featured in today’s Jeopardy! game). A syllabary is a writing system where … Continue reading The Night Thread Writes in Cherokee (Feb. 21)
I was not primed to like this movie or its protagonist. If there’s any trope that dates itself especially badly right now, it’s the “lovable asshole” archetype, the character we’re supposed to admire for being his authentic self even though … Continue reading Late to the Party: As Good As It Gets (1997)
I’m really glad I didn’t grow up in a town where high-school sports were this big a deal. Who is it worse for — the kids whose entire present and future are wrapped up in football, or the ones who … Continue reading Late to the Party: Friday Night Lights
On November 17, 1968, a football game between fierce rivals the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets ran long. Kickoff was at 4 p.m., but a closely fought contest was still going on three hours later, when the television … Continue reading The Heidi Game Day Thread (Nov. 17)
“Everything has two meanings,” thinks Jesus at one point in this film, confronted with two snakes. And that does complicate things. I picked The Last Temptation of Christ as a last-minute sub-in for this feature because I was still in … Continue reading Late to the Party: The Last Temptation of Christ
All good things must come to an end, and so it is with our Night Thread series, this journey we have taken together, Columbo Uses the Telephone. Yes, Columbo would use other telephones at other times, but those are stories … Continue reading Weep Not, Though It Be the Third And Final Columbo Night Thread (10/7)
It’s that time again! 11:00 p.m.! And that means a second installment of the series taking the nation by storm, Columbo Uses the Telephone! Tonight’s offering comes to us from season four, episode one, “An Exercise in Fatality.” Columbo is … Continue reading The Second Columbo Night Thread (10/6)
Avocados, you are blessed. I, My My My, have the Night Thread for three nights in a row. Naturally I wanted to use this opportunity to bring more Columbo into your life. But in what form? I’m glad you asked. … Continue reading The First of the Columbo Night Threads (10/5)
In the fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, there’s a brief, unexplained description of a black man walking the streets of Regency London wearing a hat with a complete model ship on it. The other day this book of … Continue reading The Day Thread Wears a Boat on Its Head (Tuesday Aug. 10)
