Quote
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
William Shakespeare
Joke
Velcro, what a rip-off.
Fun Fact
Octopuses have four pairs of arms.
The six of an octopus’ tentacles serve as arms, while the other two are their “legs.”
They use six tentacles just to eat!
History Fact
Witches Weren't Actually Burned at the Stake In Salem
The witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, lasted between February 1692 and May 1693. Nearly 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, including the homeless, the elderly, and a four-year-old girl. The majority were jailed, and some were hanged. But none of these people ever got burned alive.
Movie/TV Trivia
The Great Gatsby
According to Tom Breen, the owner of property "Breenhold" in the Blue Mountains where a lot of filming took place, there was a huge stuff-up on set by a "private weather guru" who was hired by Baz Luhrmann. Mr Breen claims that on a beautiful spring day, the crew purchased 100,000 litres of water from one of the dams to create the synthetic rain needed for the scene where a nervous Gatsby has Nick Carroway invite Daisy over for tea. It rained for the next 3 days.
Movie/TV Quote
"You're the man now, dog!"
Finding Forrester (2000)
It's tough to explain why "You're the man now, dog" needs to be on this list. For one thing, the movie that the quote springs from, a coming-of-age drama starring Sean Connery as a J.D. Salinger-like literary recluse who mentors a teenage basketball player, is completely forgettable, a sentimental retread of Good Will Hunting from people who should probably know better. (Somehow, it made $80 million at the box office, a sign that the year 2000 really was a different time.) In the context of director Gus Van Sant's career, it's considered a semi-embarrassing speed-bump on the way to more experimental, riskier terrain like Gerry and Elephant. Sure, a grizzled Connery shouting, "PUNCH THE KEYS!" is funny on its own, but the importance of "You're the man now, dog!", which was featured in the trailer for the movie, is rooted in the phrase's digital afterlife. Launched in 2001 with a loop of Connery repeating the line, YTMND became an online community for users creating and sharing low-quality audio-visual jokes with each other, the kind of inexplicable and absurd concoctions internet users now take for granted as the basic language of being a little too online. The site became a pre-Twitter and -Facebook behemoth with four million monthly users at its peak, according to a Gizmodo article about its rise and eventual fall. And it did fall hard, almost disappearing earlier this year after suffering a "catastrophic failure," but the site's influence is massive. Thank you, Sean Connery.
Conversation Starter
How should success be measured? By that measurement, who is the most successful person you know?
Writing Prompt