CHUD.com Community › Forums › THE CHEWERS › The Chewers Catch-All › Random Shit You Know
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Random Shit You Know

post #1 of 80
5/11/07 at 8:24pm
Thread Starter 
As film/movie/book geeks, we have a lot of useless information in our heads. A lot. And I'm not talking about the stuff that will one day win you trivia contests. I'm talking about stuff like all the words to the internet flash video "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny," or the ability to rattle off hair bands or name every best picture winner since 1990. These are all things that I've been able to retain, and I'm pretty embarrased about that fact from time to time. What is some of the most random and useless information you've aquired in your years?
Reply
post #2 of 80
5/11/07 at 8:32pm
Ed O'Neill is from Youngtown, Ohio

Tom Dewey was the last major party candidate to have facial hair

Bunny Breckeneridge (The Guy Bill Murray played in Ed Wood) was the grandson of John Breckenridge, James Bucanan's VP and Confederate General.

Matthew Broderick once killed a guy

Van Nuys, CA was the place where some of the special effects for Star Wars was done. The final scene in Casablanca was shot and it was where Nirvana recorded Nevermind.
Reply
post #3 of 80
5/11/07 at 8:36pm
hehe Ultimate Showdown...

I actually knew all the Best Picture winners once, along with most of the best actor and actress categories from about the seventies onward. Actually, I always thought it would get me mad points if I ever got on Jeopardy.

I can tell you how the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs, despite a parsec being a unit of distance and not time. But I can't for the life of me remember when my two brother's birthdays are.
Reply
post #4 of 80
5/11/07 at 9:12pm
I can identify the main title from each of the three original Star Wars films just by listening to the opening crash.

And there was a point where I could recite all the dialog from Star Wars from memory.
Reply
post #5 of 80
5/11/07 at 9:20pm
Thread Starter 
Other random shit I know: All the words to Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction."
Reply
post #6 of 80
5/11/07 at 9:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu
Other random shit I know: All the words to Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction."
Ditto.

I also know the lyrics to multiple songs on the Pac Man Fever album.
Reply
post #7 of 80
5/11/07 at 10:42pm
I know tons of worthless information about 70's/80's sitcoms.

I know way too much about Kristy McNichol.

Star Wars info is a given.
Reply
post #8 of 80
5/11/07 at 10:43pm
I can tell exactly what theater (and sometimes seat) I've seen every movie at with 100% accuracy with the exception of stuff from 76-82 when I was but a youngin. Alot of my close freinds find it pretty amazing which is rather sad, lol.

Friend: "Where did you see the original Batman?"

Me: "At the Century 12, over on Lamb and Sahara. It was playing on the left side and was adjacent to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I sat in the center along the aisle"

Oh and on Thanksgiving Day American's will expel enough gas from the Turkey they eat to fly over 40 Hindenbergs from NY to LA.
Reply
post #9 of 80
5/11/07 at 11:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chowyunfrag

Oh and on Thanksgiving Day American's will expel enough gas from the Turkey they eat to fly over 40 Hindenbergs from NY to LA.
Yeah, yeah, but you were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.
Reply
post #10 of 80
5/11/07 at 11:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu
the ability to rattle off hair bands
Guilty as charged. My knowledge of 80s metal on an across-the-board basis is fucking stupid.

Did you know every member of Testament (nee Legacy) has a matching tattoo on their shoulder?

Did you know Les Claypool played bass for a speed metal band called Blind Illusion?

I can name everyone who was ever a member of KISS and I don't even like them!

Dokken's George Lynch was known as Mister Scary; Great White's Jack Russell was known as Mista Bone.
Reply
post #11 of 80
5/11/07 at 11:27pm
Thread Starter 
I don't know anything about these bands, though, I just know their names, which is kind of why it makes it so sad.
Reply
post #12 of 80
5/12/07 at 12:06am
- The Capybara is the world's largest rodent.

- The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln, not Omaha (thanks, Kentucky Fried Movie!)

- I know all the words to the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere" by heart.
Reply
post #13 of 80
5/12/07 at 12:32am
- Character actor Matt Craven is from a town only about 30 minutes from my town.
Reply
post #14 of 80
5/12/07 at 12:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan
- Character actor Matt Craven is from a town only about 30 minutes from my town.
Terry O'Quinn is from a town about an hour away from my hometown.

EDIT - actually, if anyone reads Hemingway anymore, his hometown is right near the Big Two-Hearted River.
Reply
post #15 of 80
5/12/07 at 12:45am
The square root of 2 is roughly 1.414213562375...

Ben Franklin once saved a man from falling over the edge of a ship and drowning by grabbing him by his hair and pulling him back on board.

Quarks come in 6 flavours: Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strangeness, and Charm.

I can tell you the location where I bought/obtained any CD I've ever owned.

I unfortunately know what the cremated remains of a dead lady tastses like. Salty. Very salty.
Reply
post #16 of 80
5/12/07 at 2:36am
A few days ago I noticed that lyrics from the musical episode of Daria were popping back to the forefront of my mind for no particular reason.
Reply
post #17 of 80
5/12/07 at 2:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8
- The Capybara is the world's largest rodent.
Tick fan, are you?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Happenin
I can tell you how the Millenium Falcon made the Kessel run in under twelve parsecs, despite a parsec being a unit of distance and not time.
I've read somewhere the line was supposed to show Han was prone to making shit up to hustle people, hence the error.
Reply
post #18 of 80
5/12/07 at 2:54am
My youth as a Trekkie has left me with all kinds of vestigial knowledge that I don't really want anymore, but won't go away. Like the fact that the tube Scotty kept getting up in to fix stuff was called the Jefferies Tube, after Matt Jefferies, who designed it and most of the ship. I know that a lot of McCoy's instruments were novelty salt shakers. I know that the episode Assignment: Earth was a pilot for a separate series. I don't need to know these things, but there they are.
Reply
post #19 of 80
5/12/07 at 4:02am
I have a ton of DVDs and CDs(well in the hundreds for both), and I could tell you where I purchased each one. If you gave me an extra moment or two, I could probably tell you how much I paid too.
Reply
post #20 of 80
5/12/07 at 4:29am
Homer J. Simpson stands for Homer Jay Simpson.

Vasquez always thought Gorman was an asshole.

Alaska is roughly one fifth the size of the continental U.S.

The detroit red wings Mikael Samuelson has played 11 game against the San Jose Sharks Goalie Evgeni Nabokov, in those he scored 7 times and had 2 assists.

In Texas Hold 'em, the term being pipped refers to a hand where the value of a player's pocket pair is negated by two higher pair appearing on the board.
Reply
post #21 of 80
5/12/07 at 4:34am
All I know is that the only way to tell the gender of a penguin is by autopsy.

Oh, and that in Spanish, the word "esposa" means both "wife" and "handcuff."
Reply
post #22 of 80
5/12/07 at 4:42am
Squirting female orgasm is achieved by stimulating the inner wall in a hand-gesture not unlike Spidey firing his webshooters.
Reply
post #23 of 80
5/12/07 at 4:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by KaPabLe
Homer J. Simpson stands for Homer Jay Simpson.
Ha! I met a girl the other night whose middle name was Kay, and I told her the story of how Homer figured out what his middle name was (mural his mom painted for him). She thought it was funny, we hit it off, and I got some action.

"She was a demon in the sack!"
"Oh, heard about that, did you?"

Thanks Simpsons!

Quote:
Originally Posted by EdHocken
Matthew Broderick once killed a guy
Really!? Any details?
Reply
post #24 of 80
5/12/07 at 5:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brendan
- Character actor Matt Craven is from a town only about 30 minutes from my town.
Bing Crosby is from my neighborhood (Tacoma, WA).

WayDen, getting action because of the Simpsons should be a crime.
Reply
post #25 of 80
5/12/07 at 5:42am
Ketchup was sold in the US as medicine in the 1830s.

The skin of an adult human body weighs approximately six pounds.

For many years, urine was used as a sterilizing agent for surgical instruments.

President Millard Fillmore's mom thought he might have been retarded.

Malloy wrote Morte d' Arthur while serving time in prison on a rape charge.

When J.F. Kennedy was assassinated, it was not a federal felony to kill The President.

Shakespeare probably never saw a practicing Jew.

Jennifer Love Hewitt loves coloring books.
Reply
post #26 of 80
5/12/07 at 6:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Smeagol
I've read somewhere the line was supposed to show Han was prone to making shit up to hustle people, hence the error.
I've read that the retconned explanation is that the Kessel Run is a very difficult bit of navigation, so difficult that success is measured not by how fast you make it through but by finding the shortest route through it. Therefore, getting through by traveling only 12 parsecs means you cut lots of tight corners and were pretty much flirting with disaster the whole way through.
Reply
post #27 of 80
5/12/07 at 6:49am
I know that the correct pronunciation for Cthulhu, as Lovecraft intended, is khlulhu pronounced from the back of the throat.
Reply
post #28 of 80
5/12/07 at 8:25am
I corrected a friend of mine when he mispronounced The Children of Hurin. It's Hoo-rin, not Hyu-rin.
Reply
post #29 of 80
5/12/07 at 8:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by WayDen
Really!? Any details?
I thought everyone knew that. The popular theory is he was driving on the wrong side of the road...

Quote:
Originally Posted by wikipedia
In 1987, Broderick was involved in a controversial car accident while driving in Ireland with Jennifer Grey (his fiancée at the time). The accident killed a woman and her daughter. Broderick (who fractured his leg and a rib) was cleared of all charges but paid a fee of $175 to the victims' family. Drinking was not involved in the crash. Martin Doherty, the elder victim's son, was quoted by Bill Hoffman in 2002 saying "I would like to reassure him that there are no bad feelings from us." The accident occurred close to the US release of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Reply
post #30 of 80
5/12/07 at 3:45pm
Thanks for the info!

$175 for two deaths? I think he would have to add some zeros onto that if it happened in the US....
Reply
post #31 of 80
5/12/07 at 5:46pm
I can look at any hologram and tell you whether it was shot using a dot matrix, hi-res, or electron beam laser. I can also tell you that counterfeiting is a billion-dollar global business, with much of it occurring in China, and that cigarettes and tax stamps are perhaps the most counterfeited products on the planet.
I also know the names of every superhero figure produced by Mego in the '70s, damn near anything you'd care to know about Spider-Man, the band Rush, Suzanne Vega, Carl Sagan, how Cheetos are made, tuxedo (Jellicle) cats, and how to tie my own shoes.
Reply
post #32 of 80
5/12/07 at 5:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson
I've read that the retconned explanation is that the Kessel Run is a very difficult bit of navigation, so difficult that success is measured not by how fast you make it through but by finding the shortest route through it. Therefore, getting through by traveling only 12 parsecs means you cut lots of tight corners and were pretty much flirting with disaster the whole way through.
I've heard that too, but I prefer the hustler explanation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by stelios
I know that the correct pronunciation for Cthulhu, as Lovecraft intended, is khlulhu pronounced from the back of the throat.
According to Wikipedia, Lovecraft said you say it with the tip of your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, and then saying "Kloo-loo". Even that is just the closest a human can come to pronouncing his name.

EDIT: Smeagol here. Sorry.
Reply
post #33 of 80
5/12/07 at 5:59pm
Not really knowledge, but a sage observation -- David Tennant played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in which he trapped Mad-Eye Moody in a box that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. He then went on to play Doctor Who, who travels around in a box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Reply
post #34 of 80
5/12/07 at 10:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Kimbell
A few days ago I noticed that lyrics from the musical episode of Daria were popping back to the forefront of my mind for no particular reason.
For a song that a) came out in 1997, and b) I don't even fucking like and never went out of my way to listen to, I sure know an awful lot of the lyrics to "Just the Two of Us" by Will Smith.

"101 Dalmatians on mah CD Rom
A CD-ohm
Tryin' to pretend I know
On my PC
Where dat CD go
A-ha!"
Reply
post #35 of 80
5/12/07 at 10:22pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Dickson
Not really knowledge, but a sage observation -- David Tennant played Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in which he trapped Mad-Eye Moody in a box that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. He then went on to play Doctor Who, who travels around in a box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Roger Ebert had a whole column dedicated to connections like this. The one I remember is Sam Neill in The Hunt For Red October, whose dying words were "I wish I could have seen Montana," going on to play a Montana rancher in "The Horse Whisperer."
Reply
post #36 of 80
5/13/07 at 12:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu
Roger Ebert had a whole column dedicated to connections like this. The one I remember is Sam Neill in The Hunt For Red October, whose dying words were "I wish I could have seen Montana," going on to play a Montana rancher in "The Horse Whisperer."
And digging up dinosaur bones in Montana...

Or was that Utah?
Reply
post #37 of 80
5/13/07 at 1:16am
He was digging up bones in Montana.

Plus I always thought it was weird we had a Chief Justice named Earl Warren and then right after him was a man named Warren Earl Burger.

Also, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust was written in English first before being translated into Japanese.
Reply
post #38 of 80
5/13/07 at 2:23am
Most of the random things I can think of that I know are actually useful bits of trivia for my job, but seem random to others. For example, horses can't vomit, and they don't get frost bite of their feet.

I do have a huge amount of random trivia in my brain. Not movie trivia, just random information.
Reply
post #39 of 80
5/13/07 at 4:07am
I think I've read every entry on snopes.com.
Reply
post #40 of 80
5/13/07 at 4:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 70sCinema
I thought everyone knew that. The popular theory is he was driving on the wrong side of the road...
Ferris Bueller's 100% Death Proof.
Reply
post #41 of 80
5/13/07 at 8:44am
While everyone knows that Jean Harlow died of kidney failure at age 26, here are some really nasty facts about her death in particular:

Apparently, when she was 14, she developed scarlet fever, which destroyed most of her kidney function, but was never diagnosed. Due to her mother's religious beliefs as a Christian Scientist, no doctor ever examined her.

When she became ill at 26, no one ever knew that from age 14, she had been functioning on about 10% of one single kidney for the past 12 years. Since these were the days way before kidney transplants and dialysis, she went pretty fast.

Something particularly gruesome that I read in a biography about Clark Gable. He and Carole Lombard went to see Harlow on her deathbed, basically to say good-bye to her. He later said that he bent over to kiss her cheek, and when she breathed on him, he could smell urine on her breath, and he could smell it on her skin, too. Her kidneys had failed so completely that her body was trying to excrete the waste in any way it could - through her exhaling breath and through the pores of her skin.
Reply
post #42 of 80
5/13/07 at 11:39am
Most of the random information I Have in my head pops up in conversation, buthere are some things off the top:

John Glenn's wingman in Korea was Ted Williams the baseball player and the last player to ever hit .400.

My high school's mascot was designed by Walt Kelly who created Pogo. The high school is the same one attended by Harry Connick Jr, Will Clark, and Jay Thomas.

And something more recent, most of Bug was shot in the gymnasium of Grace King High School in Metairie, La.
Reply
post #43 of 80
5/13/07 at 11:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by India7
Something particularly gruesome that I read in a biography about Clark Gable. He and Carole Lombard went to see Harlow on her deathbed, basically to say good-bye to her. He later said that he bent over to kiss her cheek, and when she breathed on him, he could smell urine on her breath, and he could smell it on her skin, too. Her kidneys had failed so completely that her body was trying to excrete the waste in any way it could - through her exhaling breath and through the pores of her skin.
That's just typical of anyone dying of kidney failure. The uremia is pretty obvious at that point.
Reply
post #44 of 80
5/13/07 at 12:17pm
The look of Santa Claus was created for Coca Cola. And the name Santa Claus is just a mispronounciation of Saint Nicholas's name - Sant Niklaus.

The reindeers were first named in that song.

The story of Dracula is an amalgamation of the stories of the Hungarian despot Vlad Dracul (in fact, "Dracula" means son of Dracul) and Elizabeth Bathory.
Reply
post #45 of 80
5/13/07 at 1:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Belethedheliel
That's just typical of anyone dying of kidney failure. The uremia is pretty obvious at that point.
Yeah, I know now. But at the time that I read that, it was the first I'd ever heard of it, and it completely freaked me out.

I have to run some errands, but later I'll post more useless tawdry crap about the death of 1940s screen actress Lupe Velez. You probably already may know it, but it's one of those stories where you aren't quite sure whether to laugh or cry.
Reply
post #46 of 80
5/13/07 at 1:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chavez
Guilty as charged. My knowledge of 80s metal on an across-the-board basis is fucking stupid.
.
I was watching Vh-1s "Metal Mania" last night and the number of bands I could name at least 1/2 the members of was embarrassing.
Reply
post #47 of 80
5/13/07 at 2:01pm
I oddly am incapable of forgetting this number -

92631043

I won't say where it's from, because I know at least one of you bastards remembers it, too. It's probably the most trivial bit of movie trivia I know.
Reply
post #48 of 80
5/13/07 at 2:23pm
Richard Burgi was on Seinfeld, so was Tom Towles.
Reply
post #49 of 80
5/13/07 at 2:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gio Angles
I oddly am incapable of forgetting this number -

92631043

I won't say where it's from, because I know at least one of you bastards remembers it, too. It's probably the most trivial bit of movie trivia I know.
You just made me remember "Ghost".

I've got some stuff, but I'll wait until later.
Reply
post #50 of 80
5/13/07 at 3:21pm
Tommy Lee Jones was Al Gore's Roomate in college.

Word had it at the time that the creators of Back to the Future wanted Ronald Reagan to play the Hill Valley Mayor in 1885. Reagan did in fact consider it before declining the offer.

The Solicitor General is the #3 man in the Department of Justice and is responsible for arguing the government's case before the Supreme Court. Te position is to be considered the highest position for a lawyer. It requires a distinct outfit including a waistcoat and vest. No word as to what a woman would wear because there never has been a female Solicitor General.

In England, lawyers are either solictors or barristers and only barristers do arguing in court. Solicitors are the lawyers who do the contracts and other office related stuff.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: The Chewers Catch-All
CHUD.com Community › Forums › THE CHEWERS › The Chewers Catch-All › Random Shit You Know