“The Tomatina”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tomatina.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The world’s largest food fight takes place each year on the last Wednesday in August, when the town of Buñol, Spain, holds its annual tomato festival. Local trucks dump more than 100 metric tons of overripe tomatoes into the streets, and there’s a general free-for-all among up to 25,000 people.

Reportedly, when it’s over, rivers of tomato juice up to 12 inches deep run through the town, and area fire engines hose down the streets.

This has been going on since 1944, and apparently it has no political or religious significance — they do it just for fun.

| Entertainment · Oddities · Society

Black Friday

Famous people born on Friday the 13th:

  • Don Adams
  • Samuel Beckett
  • Steve Buscemi
  • Fidel Castro
  • Julia Louis-Dreyfus
  • Thomas Jefferson
  • Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
  • Georges Simenon

The fear of this date is called paraskavedekatriaphobia.

| Entertainment · Language · Trivia

Things to Come

This will be an eventful century, if our science fiction writers are right. Here’s what to expect:

  • 2008: Jason Voorhees is captured. (Jason X)
  • 2012: Aliens begin to colonize Earth. (The X-Files)
  • 2015: Time travelers Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrive from the year 1985. (Back to the Future Part II)
  • 2019: Former blade runner Rick Deckard agrees to do one more job. Ben Richards is forced to compete on The Running Man.
  • 2022: New York City has become overpopulated, with 40 million starving citizens. (Soylent Green)
  • 2035: Mankind lives in gigantic underground cities. (Things to Come)
  • 2050: Newspeak eclipses oldspeak. (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
  • 2052: New York City launches a giant ball of unwanted garbage into space. Experts warn the ball might return to Earth someday, but their concerns are dismissed as “depressing.” (Futurama)
  • 2053: World War III. (Star Trek)
  • 2062: The Flintstones arrive via a malfunctioning time machine constructed by Elroy Jetson. (The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones)
  • 2063: First contact with Vulcans.
  • 2084: Dancing is outlawed. Flash, Strobe, Laser and Pyro escape Earth to live on Moon Base Alpha to dance in freedom. (Dancemania)

Oh, and in the late 21st century Superman leaves Earth. Better hurry and get that autograph.

| Entertainment · History · Technology

See Other Album

Long song titles:

  • “You Got To Get Through What You’ve Got To Go Through To Get What You Want, But You Got to Know What You Want To Get Through What You Got To Go Through,” The Wildhearts, Coupled With
  • “Some People Know All Too Well How Bad Liquorice, Or Any Candy For That Matter, Can Taste When Having Laid Out In The Sun Too Long – And I Think I Just Ate Too Much,” The Hives, Oh Lord! When? How?
  • “Sir B. McKenzies Daughter’s Lament for the 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat from the Straits of Loch Knombe, in the Year of Our Lord 1727, on the Occasion of the Announcement of Her Marriage to the Laird of Kinleakie,” Fairport Convention, Full House
  • “We Were Stoned When We Thought Up The Title Of This And We Didn’t Want To Give It A Name That We Had To Explain As ‘Oh Yeah We Were Stoned When We Thought Of It’ So We’re Just Calling It Improvisational Jam 11-02-01,” !!!, Brain In The Wire
  • “The Sad But True Story of Ray Mingus, the Lumberjack of Bulk Rock City, and His Never Slacking Strive to Exploit the So Far Undiscovered Areas of the Intention to Bodily From the Opposite Species of His Kind, During Intake of All the Mental Conditions that Could be Derived From Fermentation,” Rednex, Sex & Violins
  • “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them until They Are off Our Lands!”, Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
  • “Regretting What I Said to You When You Called Me at 11:00 on Friday Morning to Tell Me That 1:00 Friday Afternoon You Were Gonna Leave Your Office, Go Downstairs, Hail a Cab, to Go Out to the Airport, to Catch a Plane, to Go Skiing in the Alps for Two Weeks. Not That I Wanted to Go With You; I Wasn’t Able to Leave Town, I’m Not a Very Good Skier, I Couldn’t Expect You to Pay My Way, But After Going Out With You for Three Years, I Don’t Like Surprises. (A Musical Apology),” Christine Lavin, Future Fossils
| Entertainment

Music to the Eyes

Most expensive music videos, as of July 2006:

  1. Michael and Janet Jackson, “Scream,” $7 million
  2. Puff Daddy, “Victory,” $2.7 million
  3. Mariah Carey, “Heartbreaker,” $2.5 million
  4. Busta Rhymes, “What’s It Gonna Be?!” $2.4 million
  5. Backstreet Boys, “Larger Than Life,” $2.1 million
  6. Ayumi Hamasaki, “Fairyland,” $2 million
  7. Madonna, “Bedtime Story,” $2 million
  8. Madonna, “Express Yourself,” $2 million
  9. Will Smith, “Miami,” $2 million
  10. Missy Elliot, “She’s a Bitch,” $2 million
| Entertainment · Trivia

Seeing Things Differently

  • Dan Aykroyd has one blue eye and one brown eye.
  • Gracie Allen had one green eye and one blue eye.
  • Jane Seymour has one green eye and one brown eye.
  • Elizabeth Berkley’s eyes are green, but her lower right eye is brown.
  • Kate Bosworth’s eyes are blue, but her lower right eye is hazel.
  • David Bowie has a permanently dilated left eye that can appear brown or green.
| Entertainment · Trivia