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Word of the Every So Often

plastron:  (noun)  A plastron is either the protective pad that a fencer wears on his or her breast, or the ornamental front of a lady’s bodice that was fashionable in the late 19th Century, or, I suppose, it could be both. 

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Everyday History

Bram Stoker, the Irish author who gave us Dracula, was born on November 8, 1847, and he was sealed in his coffin on April 20, 1912.  Whether he remains in that coffin is up for grabs.  The idea of Dracula predates Stoker by a few hundred years, all the way back to Vlad the Impaler in 15th century Russia.  You know, some folks are known as “the great,” think Alexander and Catherine, to name a few.  They weren’t necessarily all that great, but we call them that anyway.  The thing is, if the best you can do is “the impaler”... wow.  The idea of vampires goes back a lot further than good ol’ Vlad, though, all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia and Greece and Rome.  You know... way-y-y-y back.  But Stoker... he’s the guy who came up with the name “Dracula” in 1897.  He’s the guy that truly started it all.

 

All told, there are over 80 movies (and counting) based on the premise of Dracula.  The first movie actually called Dracula was the 1933 classic with Bela Lugosi.  The 1922 silent classic Nosferatu, though, is the first vampire movie.  And though the names were changed, they weren’t kidding anybody.  It was based on Stoker’s idea, and the courts agreed.  All copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed because of copyright infringement.  Fortunately, some remained. 

 

So... here’s my question:  Almost every time you see a vampire in a movie, that guy is flawless.  His hair is perfect.  His clothes are perfect.  Think Frank Langella in the 1979 Dracula.  The guy could’ve been on the cover of GQ.  But how is that possible?  Dracula can’t see himself in the mirror.  There.  Now you have something to think about.

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Cartoon of the Week

42 Flies Under the Radar.jpg

Flies Under the Radar

Stuff

The History of the Future:  The End of Sagging

 

It was in the summer of 2032 that the dress fashion known as "sagging" came to an abrupt end.  As one fashion critic stated, sagging, which featured wearing one’s trousers no higher than somewhere well below the crotch, “was just taken too far.”  A group of young men in Detroit began the short-lived fad of “dragging,” which was simply putting only one foot through one’s trousers and then dragging them as one walked. The fad lasted a little over two weeks before others, seemingly all at once, came to the sudden realization of just how fantastically stupid that was.  What followed was the equally sudden realization of just how stupid sagging was, as well.  And that was followed by what became known as “neo retro anti-sagging,” where the trousers were increasingly worn higher and higher in an effort to prove that the wearers definitely were not sagging, and that anybody whose trousers were worn lower than theirs was considered sagging, and that person was therefore what one fashion pundit described as “dweebified.”  Wearing a belt around one’s neck was briefly popular, and surprisingly very few people were asphyxiated.  The fad peaked with the adherents wearing their trousers so high that they had to unzip their flies to see.  A few purists, who became known as “those assholes who keep running into everything,” refused to peek out of the fly, stating that it was demeaning.  The height of one’s trousers suddenly became irrelevant by the spring of 2034, when the craze of church hats – a miniaturized, sanctified steeple that one could wear on one’s head, and thus be in church always – captured the public whim.  See Eldridge’s concise history of fashion, How Dumb Can We Get? (Holy Grail Press, 2034)​

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