Apple #659: Fear of Clowns

For Halloween this year, I dressed up as Raggedy Andy.



Raggedy Ann and Andy were dolls that came to life in books from the 1920s. They had nice little adventures like getting in pillow fights and roasting marshmallows and having the marshmallows get stuck to their soft cotton hands.
(Image from raggedyannandraggedyandy.com)



You could also get soft, stuffed dolls made to look like the drawings in the books. This is a Raggedy Andy doll. 
(Photo from I Found My Childhood on eBay)


My costume was one my mom had and gave to me several years ago. I had worn it once about 10 years ago, and I thought this year, why not break it out again. Nobody I know now has ever seen me wear it, so it will be new to them.

Admittedly, my costume is only an approximation of the original doll. Also, while I remembered there were triangles on the face, I remembered them wrong so when I painted my face, it didn't quite look like Raggedy Andy's. The result was, people assumed I was a regular old clown.

And several people said they were therefore afraid of me--or my costume.


Really? THIS is scary?


The number of people who said they were afraid of my costume was rather surprising. More people said they were afraid of me this year than when I wore the costume 10 or so years ago.

First of all, I personally don't get the whole fear of clowns thing. It's a person wearing make-up and baggy clothes. Wooo, scary. So I'm wondering, especially since more people seem to be afraid of clowns--or more people are saying they're afraid of clowns--is this like bacon? I mean, is fear of clowns increasing the same way love of bacon has become so widespread, if you say "bacon," 15 people will start drooling immediately? Is fear of clowns becoming that pervasive, so now if you were to say, "Hey, a clown," 15 people would duck under a table and another 5 would say, "Totally. Love the bacon. Hate the clowns."

• There is a name for a phobia of clowns. But first, let's get our levels of fear straight.

• There's "I don't think clowns are funny." This is me. Not afraid, but not entertained, either. Clown humor is slapstick. "Oh! Look at my enormous shoes! Oh, I fell down! Oh, I squirted water out of my stupid fake daisy!" To me, slapstick is more annoying than funny. Like America's Funniest Home Videos. Physical humor and nothign more. Boring after about 30 seconds, annoying after about a minute. 

• The next level is, "I don't like clowns." At this level, you just don't care for them. You wouldn't put a clown picture on your wall, you might even be tempted to punch such a picture, but you wouldn't run and hide from it either. 

• Next we have, "I'm afraid of clowns." You see a clown and you get a little heart-poundy, a little nervous. You're not really sure what that clown is going to do, and you don't really want to find out. If you saw a clown in a haunted house, you would get scared, solely by virtue of the fact that it is a clown. 

• Finally we have clown phobia. You see a clown and your heart races. You break out in a sweat, your hands shake, you feel nauseous, you have trouble breathing, you feel panicky. Full-blown, out of control fear. 

(Image posted by BlackTequilaKiss at horror-movies.ca)

• People say the phobia-word for this is coulrophobia. Literally, that means fear of stilt-walkers. Because apparently the Greeks, from whom we get most of our -phobia words, don't have a word for "clown." 

• It isn't a term accepted by any psychological association, nor is it in the DSM-5, nor is it in a lot of dictionaries. Apparently the word has only been around since the 1980s or so -- which suggests to me that this fear of clowns thing may be recent in origin. 

• But for some people, fear of clowns can be quite real. Like a fear of spiders, or a fear of snakes, or any other phobia, it can affect people's lives in very definite ways. Some people will even avoid eating at McDonald's because they don't want to see any images of Ronald McDonald. 

To me, if anything, this is only mildly annoying. But for some people, this instills fear.
(Photo from the Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Four States)

• Very guessy estimates say clown phobia is much more prevalent in Western society, and that anywhere from 5% to 12% of adults have some fear of clowns. 

• People who have studied this say that what instills the fear is the fact that the faces are painted. 

• The reason people -- especially children -- find this disturbing is because even babies know that the painted-on face is not an authentic expression of what the person under the make-up is actually feeling. The children & babies (and adults) are reacting to the fact that the face paint is telling an obvious lie. 

• Because the paint says one thing and the person's demeanor says another, you don't trust them. And since they seem to be trying very hard to tell you they're happy, that makes you even more suspicious. Why the heck do they want so much for you to believe that they're happy? What else are they going to do that I'm supposed to ignore and think that means happiness too?

• So instead of happy giggling children, you get suspicion, distrust, and fear. 

"We found that clowns [were] universally disliked by children," said one researcher who studied whether using clown images to decorate a children's hospital ward would be a good idea. 

Children actually don't like clowns -- something to consider the next time you're planning a child's birthday party.  
(Photo from Rap Genius)

• OK, this is making sense. I'm not going to feel your clown-fear with you, but now I understand where it's coming from. 

• But this raises other questions. Are people just as afraid of sad clowns? Do people think the sad clowns are also lying and are therefore suspicious? Or are they not afraid of fake sadness in the same way they're afraid of fake happiness? 

• (Personally, I loathe sad clown art. Detest it. I don't think you can even call it art.  I think you call it a cultural splinter in the eye. So I am not going to post any images of sad clowns.)

• Some people say they are less afraid of sad clowns than happy ones. But other people say the sad clowns disturb them even more than the happy ones. Still others are not afraid of the happy ones at all, but are only afraid of the sad ones. 

• Thus, apparently it's not just the fake-happy emotions that people distrust, it's any fake emotions. (researchers agree with this).  Perhaps which fake-ness you distrust more may depend on your personal make-up (pun), or perhaps on your own childhood experiences.

I wondered if people were afraid of rodeo clowns too. I thought maybe not, since they help the rodeo contestants. But this guy, Keith Isley, who is a rodeo clown -- they prefer now to be called bullfighters -- said one of the parts of his job is helping people get comfortable with his clown-ness. One of the ways he does that is to let them see him put on his make-up, and even let them put some of it on him themselves.
(Photo by Michael Cavazos at the Longview News-Journal)

• People who treat patients for clown phobias -- I'm talking the debilitating, affects-your-life level of fear -- say that it's similar to lots of other phobias: clown phobia originates at some point in childhood, when the child experienced something negative or traumatic involving a clown. The person never had cause or reason to let go of the fear, so it only intensified over time. 

• The best way to treat clown & any phobia is to bring the person into contact with the feared thing gradually, a little bit more over time. The person can cope with the anxiety at relatively low levels while they learn that the thing they're afraid of won't actually harm them. 

• Popular culture may actually not be helping that effort. 

• There have been lots of happy clowns that people used to like, or seemed to like.  There was Clarabell the Clown, who was Howdy Doody's silent sidekick. (The first guy who played Clarabell was Bob Keeshan, who later became Captain Kangaroo.)

L to R: Buffalo Bob, Howdy Doody, and Clarabell the Clown
(Photo from The Fifties Web)

• There was also Bozo the Clown, who was so popular by the mid-1960s that there was a 10-year wait to get tickets to see his show.

We had a Bozo the Clown show at our local TV station.  One of the meteorologists played him.  I got to be on his show with the rest of my Bluebird troop.  He had a game where a lucky kid from the audience had to throw a ball into one of several circles, with the best prizes in the farthest circle. My friend Jill got to be the lucky kid, and she won a huge container of Tootsie Rolls that lasted her 2 years.  I don't remember anyone ever saying they were afraid of Bozo.

(Photo from Infinity Dish TV Blog)

• But then came a whole raft of evil clowns.  The first one was the real thing.

• John Wayne Gacy, a real-life guy who dressed up as a clown for children's parties and was also a serial rapist and murderer. 

• Then came the movies:

• Poltergeist (1982) - a boy's clown doll comes to life and tries to drag him under the bed

• It (1986) - Stephen King's Pennywise the Clown is actually a demon who attacks children

• Clownhouse (1989) - escaped mental patients disguise themselves as clowns and murder-slaughter all sorts of people in a rural town

• Batman movies featuring the Joker. Jack Nicholson's Joker looked, to me, like Jack Nicholson with green paint on his face.  Heath Ledger's Joker, on the other hand, is a different story.  He is scary-looking, for sure. (But isn't that what you want in a villain?)

• Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) - OK, really?  Some people include that one their list of scary clown movies?  The thing was a spoof!

Their weapons are popcorn that turn into spider-like insects, and cotton candy that gets spun into a suffocating cocoon of sugar-death. There's also something about the whipped cream pies that I can't remember.
(Photo from Pop-Break)

• This site actually ranks Killer Klowns as the scariest clown movie ever.   It also lists 25 scary clown movies -- which you might be interested in, if you're into that kind of thing.

• But you see the point.  Movies have taken the clowns-can-be-unsettling thing and worked and worked it until they made clowns into fear-worthy icons.

• So I see it as no accident that, with the influx of evil clown movies beginning in the 1980s, that's when we started to see the coulrophobia word appear.  And the people who said they were afraid of my costume?  They were not people who grew up with Howdy Doody, but younger.  People who would have seen those evil-clown movies in the theaters when they came out.

• My final question is this: those of you who are afraid of clowns, are you afraid of KISS too?  Were you afraid of them in their heyday?  Eh, probably the people who are afraid of clowns didn't make it far enough into the entry even to see this question.

KISS: scary clowns or rock icons? They wore white face paint too, you know.
(Photo from Huff Post Entertainment)



Sources
NPR, Fear of Clowns: Yes, It's Real, August 6, 2013
Linda Rodriguez-McRobbie, The History and Psychology of Clowns Being Scary, Smithsonian Magazine, August 1, 2013
Krystal D'Costa, Why Are We Afraid of Clowns? Scientific American, October 31, 2011
Bill Briggs, No laughing matter: Fear of clowns is serious issue, NBC News, April 20, 2012
Joseph Durwin, Coulrophobia & the Trickster, Trinity University
Coulrophobia: the Fear of Clowns
World Wide Words, Coulrophobia
Charles Bryce, 2011 Stock Show & Rodeo: Clowning Serious Business, San Angelo Standard-Times,February 12, 2011

Apple #658: Lou Reed. What Else?

So Lou Reed died today.  71.  Liver disease.  Because I kind of thought maybe he'd never go, it might be the most shocking thing he ever did.

Before I tell you some facts you may or may not have known about Lou Reed, I want to tell you a little story.  You might like to listen to this song while you read.





Once upon a time in college, I used to get weak in the knees over a certain tall, blonde, and self-assured hockey player with a most musical name: Jim Ballantine.  He was a friend and housemate of someone I'd gone to high school with.  Sometimes I'd go over to my friend's house with the hope that a certain hockey-playing heartthrob would be home.

One day, my friend was not there, but this pulse-racing fellow was.  He said I could hang out and wait for my friend, or whatever I wanted to do was cool with him.  I don't think I spoke.  I think I just nodded.  I stood there in the living room, which sported a beat-up red leather couch, and he went into another room and put on some music.  "Do you like Lou Reed?" he called.  "Yeah," I said faintly, "I do."

I wasn't just saying that, either.  I'd recently gotten a cassette of Lou Reed's greatest hits and of his recent New York (it was the early 90s, I was a college student, broke, tapes were what you listened to), and I listened to both over and over in my dorm room.  To my utter delight, as I stood there in the living room of the heartthrob hockey player with the red leather couch, here came the first piano chords of "Satellite of Love."  He turned it up, satisfyingly loud.  As the background singers kicked in, Jim went through the living room to the kitchen for toast & peanut butter, then out to the hallway to collect his leather jacket (be still my heart), then back into the living room again for his books, Lou Reed grooving away the entire time. 

I want to tell you, it was among the most delicious experiences of my decade.

There's more, but first, here are my Lou Reed facts.

• He was born Lewis Allan Reed, in Brooklyn, 1942.  His father was a tax accountant.

• In his teens, he was given "weeks of electroshock therapy" at Creedmore Psychiatric Hospital in Queens.  Some sources say this was because he was "moody and resisted authority."  Others say it was an attempt to "cure" his bisexuality.

Lou Reed's high school senior yearbook photo
(Photo from Wikipedia)

• He went to college and Syracuse, and Delmore Schwartz was one of his English professors.

"I was an English major in college (Syracuse University), for chrissakes," Reed said in a 1992 interview. "I ought to be able to put together a good lyric at the very least. It would be embarrassing if I couldn't. And I really like rock. It's party stuff, dance stuff and R&B stuff that we all grew up on and loved. But I wanted something that would engage you mentally, that you could listen to on another level. I just thought that would be the perfect thing in rock 'n' roll. That 10 years from now you could still listen to one of my albums because it wasn't just a party record, but something that would engage you emotionally, intellectually, if not spiritually, on the level that a novel can."

• He met John Cale after college, and after they formed bands of various combinations, eventually they became the Velvet Underground, named after a book about "practices of nonstandard sexuality."

• The songs he wrote were about drugs, heroin, sex of all flavors, S&M -- the sorts of things suburban lipsticked ladies would call "alternative lifestyles."

• Andy Warhol saw the Velvet Underground performing in Greenwich Village, scooped them up into his traveling performance art, had Nico singing with them, designed the album cover with the banana on it, and it was off to Warhol-fame-land.

"The first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years," said Brian Eno, himself a legendary musician and producer. "I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!"

Lou Reed & Nico, from the Velvet years
(Photo from Flickr)

• But soon Reed left the Velvet Underground, and for two years, he worked as a typist in his father's accounting firm.

• David Bowie really liked the VU, and he offered to help produce Reed's solo album "Transformer," which includes "Satellite of Love." (David Bowie sang back-up vocals).

• That album is also the original home of "Walk on the Wild Side," which is probably the Reed's best-known song -- his only Top 40 hit.  Though a version of the song edited out the reference to oral sex, radio stations were soon playing the original version.  I can't recall ever hearing the song without that line in it.

Candy came from out on the Island
In the back room she was everybody's darling
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"

• He actually got frustrated by how popular "Walk on the Wild Side" became because everybody always wanted him to play that, and he wanted to try other things, play other songs. 

• Though in an interview years later, he said that even his hit song wasn't that big of a hit.

Reed went blonde for a while, in the mid-70s.  
(Photo from Dangerous Minds)

• He dipped his musical fingers into glam, punk, prog-rock (he recorded an album with Yes), alternative, noise, straight-up rock & roll, R&B, heavy metal -- music of all sorts, constantly confounding people's expectations. One could even argue that his 1978 Take No Prisoners was a comedy record.  But through it all, he was always undisputedly cool.

• He was married to a cocktail waitress, then was "romantically involved" with a transvestite named Rachel [last name uncertain], and for a long time he was married to Sylvia Morales who is often described as a British designer, but who has also been described in more underground circles as a stripper and "part-time dominatrix."  

Lou, from the 70s Transformer era.
(Photo from Cinema Fanatic)

• In several of his songs, he addresses Sylvia directly.  In "My House," Lou and Sylvia use a Ouija board to contact his dead professor Delmore Schwartz.

• Most recently, he was married to musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson.

Lou & Laurie, as seen by Annie Liebovitz
(Photo via the Edwynn Houk Gallery)

• In later years, he became friends with people like Vaclav Havel -- yes, the Czech literary dude who became the first president of the Czech Republic.  Havel said he smuggled a Velvet Underground record into Prague, and that the Velvet Underground was central to the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s.

• Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman loaned his talents on Reed's album/play "The Raven," based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem. (You'll note that Lou and Edgar spell their middle names the same way.)

• In his later years, he got so into Tai Chi, he even had his Tai Chi instructor on stage during concerts in 2008. 

From the 2000s, around the time of his Metal Machine Music release -- which is "kind of, you know, a guitar solo" except chaotically epic.
(Photo from PopMatters)

• Though he maintained steadfastly in interview after interview in the 1970s that he never took drugs, and though he was sober since some time in the 1980s, Reed developed liver disease.  In April (some sources say it happened in May), he had a liver transplant.  But it was pretty much the final effort. Last week, his doctor told him there wasn't anything else he could do for him, so Reed left the hospital for home, in Southampton, NY.

• In a recent review he wrote of a Kanye West album, Reed wrote: “You do [make music] because you like it, you think what you’re making is beautiful. And if you think it’s beautiful, maybe they think it’s beautiful.”

 
And now for my coda.  Jim Ballantine died several years ago.  The last time I saw him, he'd turned up at my friend's house in the middle of the night, by motorcycle, wearing his leather jacket.  No explanation, even though he'd been graduated a couple years, turned pro, and moved well away from college.  He'd just dropped in to say hey.  I was sitting on the couch with my friend, the movie we'd been watching on pause because of Jim's arrival.  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed hello.  Then he went off to see the rest of his friends who lived in the house.

It turned out, he'd been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.  He didn't tell any of his friends.  Nobody knew until a month or two before he died.  The diagnosis might have been why he turned up at the house that night, or he might have just felt like stopping in for a shot and a laugh or two. 

So I want to tell you that every time I hear "Satellite of Love," I remember Jim Ballantine.  And now that Lou Reed has gone to meet his man, maybe the two of them are up there together.  Maybe Lou Reed is playing "Satellite of Love" and Jim Ballantine gets to stand right next to him. 

Satellite's gone
up to the skies
Thing like that drive
me out of my mind

(Photo from the Poetry Foundation)


Sources
Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock & Roll, The New York Times, October 27, 2013
Lou Reed dead at 71, NY Daily News, October 27, 2013
Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71, Rolling Stone, October 27, 2013
Lou Reed, legendary rock pioneer, dead at 71, Chicago Tribune, October 27, 2013
Lou Reed Dead: Legendary Rock Musician Dies at 71, HuffPost Celebrity, October 27, 2013
Looking Back at Lou Reed's Blue Period, New York Observer, 3/15/99
Rock legend Lou Reed dies at 71, CNN, October 28, 2013

Apple #657: Leaves Turning Colors

I have had a request!  Daily Apple reader Marietta wants to know:

Have you done a Daily Apple on leaves and colors? Like why do they turn yellow and red and orange instead of purple and blue and pink? And what dictates to the plant what color it turns? Why are some of my maples red and some yellow and some go from green to orange to yellow, turning color more than once? Just something I was wondering about on my way home tonight. 

An excellent question!  I have seen a few tidbits here and there on this topic lately, but I haven't delved into it.  I am happy to do so now.


Maple leaf changing color.  Once you read this entry, you will know to say, "You can see where the chlorophyll has faded and the carotenoid pigment has become apparent."
(Image from Outdoor Parent)

• So, you know that plants make chlorophyll, right?  That's the chemical that makes the leaves green.

• During spring & summer, as sun shines on a leaf, the chlorophyll in it fades, similar to the way a colored photo fades in sunlight.  So the plant makes more chlorophyll to replace what has broken down.  This process of breaking down & remaking chlorophyll goes on all the time in a plant or tree.

• You might think that, in the fall, when the days get shorter and there is less sunlight, that would mean the chlorophyll wouldn't break down as quickly so there would be more green in the leaves.  But that's not actually what happens.  Because there's another process going on too.

• The reduction in the amount of daylight causes something else to happen in a tree -- certain cells at the base of each leaf start building up like a wall of blocks, or an abscission layer of cells.  These blocks of cells keep essential minerals and carbohydrates from traveling out to the leaves.  Without those necessary ingredients, the plants can't make more chlorophyll.  So the green in each leaf soon fades. 

• As the green disappears, other colors emerge.  Those colors are determined by the presence of other pigments present in the leaves -- and how much of which type.

• Yellow - xanthophylls
• Orange - carotenoids
• Red and purple - anthocyanins
• Brown - tannins

• The reds and purples/anthocyanins come from sugars in the leaf.  Not all deciduous trees make anthocyanins, and the ones that do, don't make these sugars until fall.

• Variations in the reds and purples are determined by pH levels.  The more acidic the sap in a leaf's cells, the more bright red the pigment.  The less acidic, the more purple. 

• Eventually the other colors/chemicals will break down and fade as the chlorophyll did.  The only chemical/color that doesn't disappear is tannins, or the browns. That's why most of the leaves on the ground eventually wind up being brown.  

• The reason the browns don't fade is that tannins are mostly a waste product.  Just as the leaf loses its ability to make more chlorophyll, so also it loses its ability to get rid of wastes.

 

Different types of trees have different levels of the various pigments in them, so you get this kind of color display.

(Photo from Taskeasy, which recommends 10 drives to see autumn leaves) 

• Various species of trees produce different levels of the various chemicals, so they tend to turn more of one color than another: 

• Yellow - Aspens, Yellow poplars, Black maples, Norway maples
• Golden bronze - Hickories
• Dark orange - Sassafrass
• Orange red -  Sugar maples
• Scarlet red - Red maples
• Crimson - Sourwood, Black tupelo
• Purplish red - Dogwoods, Sweetgums, Japanese maple
• Light tan - Beeches
• Red, russet, or brown - Oaks
• Brown - Elms

• For a more complete list of tree species and their fall colors, check out this page from the University of Illinois. 

Uh-oh. This fellow fell before his color changed.  Maybe his abscission layer built up too quickly.  (These are all maples, by the way.  In my opinion, the sugar maples turn the best colors.)

(Wallpaper photo from Layoutsparks)

• Of course no tree's leaves turn all one color all at once.  As the saying goes, "Color is an event."  As you remember from elementary school art class, different mixtures of base colors will result in different new colors.

• Plus, there is a great variation within one tree, even within one leaf, in the amount of the various chemicals/colors present.  Different parts of a tree may also have varying levels of moisture.  The temperature may even vary slightly from, say, the bottom branches to the top branches.  Plus, the sunlight is steadily breaking down the color pigments as time passes.  All of these things will affect what color a given leaf will be at any given time. 

• On a broader scale, in a given fall season, variations in temperature, the amount of sunlight, and the moisture in the soil affect the strength and duration of the non-chlorophyll colors. 

• Lots of sunlight + low temperatures = chlorophyll/green breaks down faster
• Lots of sunlight + low temps at night = more reds & purples/anthocyanins
• Lost of moisture in summer + sunny, dry, cool but not freezing fall = best & brightest fall colors
• Drought in summer = blocking cells develop early, so leaves may drop before they change color
• Wind or heavy rain in fall = leaves knocked off trees early
• Early frost or freezing temps = production of anthocyanins stops, and the colorful season ends

• Eventually, that wall of blocking cells cuts off all connections between the leaf and the rest of the tree, and soon after that, the leaf breaks away and falls to the ground.

 

For a while, the leaves are just as lovely on the ground as they are on the trees.

(Photo from Inside Gatlinburg) 

• The next question you might ask is Why do the leaves change color?  That, my friends, is a much bigger unknown.  

• Scientists have come up with some theories, but they're not very certain about any of them.  The majority of theories center around why the trees would produce anthocyanins, the reds & the purples, which signal the presence of sugars or carbohydrates in the plant.  Why, just before it loses its leaves, would the plant bother to stock up those very leaves with a bunch of expensive carbohydrates?

• Here are some of those theories:

• Plants that are healthy produce a lot of sugars and therefore reds & purples.  Insects can suck more out of weaker plants, so maybe the colors are a signal to the bugs, don't come around here because I can fight you off, go someplace else where the leaves are more brown and the plant is weaker.

• Perhaps the anthocyanins protect the leaves from too much sunlight, which not only makes the colors fade, but also breaks down other necessary chemicals in the leaf.  With those extra sugars available, therefore, the plant may have more time to absorb more of the necessary nutrients from the leaf before it drops.

• Perhaps the extra carbohydrates act as some kind of insulation to help protect the plant from injury during very cool nights or at the first frost.

• Perhaps the extra carbohydrates help create reserves against water loss during dry spells in fall.

• But again, no one knows for sure why the leaves change color. 

• As usual, science is very good at answering the how, but it sucks at answering the why.

Whoo.  Marvelous.  Sometimes, it's enough to simply enjoy.

(Photo from Pragmatic Obots Unite)

Related entries: How many leaves fall?; Forests

Sources
The United States National Arboretum, The Science of Color in Autumn Leaves
USDA Forest Service, Why Leaves Change Color
Garden Walk Garden Talk, Why Do Leaves Change Different Colors on the Same Tree, November 18, 2010
University of Wisconsin, Chemical of the Week, The Chemistry of Autumn Colors
Howstuffworks, Why do leaves change color and turn red?
Arbor Day Foundation, Top Fall Trees in the United States
Butler University, Friesner Herbarium, Why Leaves Change Color

Apple #656: David Ortiz's Head

I was going to make this entry about Miguel Cabrera, my mom's favorite baseball player.  But after the Grand Slam that David Ortiz hit tonight, it seems more relevant to talk about him instead.

I'll get to Miguel Cabrera.  But for now, Big Papi.

I'm not going to tell you all the batting statistics because you can look those up in a kajillion places.  Instead, I want to find the lesser-known details.  Like, for example, the size of his head.  Every time he comes up to bat, I am stunned by the size of his head.  That thing is enormous!  It barely fits into his helmet!



David Ortiz, right, and 2 of his teammates.  Look how much bigger his head is compared to the other guys'.
(Photo from Getty Images via Zimbio)

• It turns out, hat size or helmet size is a closely guarded secret.  Because apparently, if your hat size expands noticeably after you've gone through puberty, it's generally considered to be a sign of HGH use.  

• HGH thickens the bones in your forehead and jaw, necessitating larger hats, at the very least. 

• So I couldn't find David Ortiz's hat size anywhere.  But maybe I can arrive at a ballpark figure (har har).

• Barry Bonds' hat size increased from 7-1/4 to 7-3/8 (even though he took to shaving his head). That's in the neighborhood of 23-1/2" circumference.  The MLB shop says that's an XL.

You'll notice that Bonds' head, in the more recent photo on the right, seems pretty well packed into his helmet compared to the photo on the left.  More pertinent to us, though, is that in the photo on the right, his hat size is 7-3/8.
(Composite photo from Szyzygeist)



Now, I want you to notice how David Ortiz's helmet barely seems to fit on his head. And it looks bigger than Barry Bonds' head, doesn't it?
(Photo from The Joy of Sox)



Yeah, I'd say David Ortiz's head is bigger than Barry Bonds' (left).
(Photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice, SF Chronicle)

• I don't know how much bigger David Ortiz's head is than Barry Bonds', but I would say it is definitely larger.  Bigger than a 7 3/8, for sure.  How much more, I couldn't say, but almost certainly in the XXL category.

• Just to be clear, I'm not accusing the guy of anything.  I'm not interested in using these statistics as a sign of whether he took something illegal or not.  I just think he has an enormous freakin' head, that's all, and I wanted to see if I could find the number that showed that.

• I'm also not trying to be metaphorical and imply that he has a big ego.  All I'm saying is the guy has a large cranium.

David Ortiz: Yeah, I'm not going to tell you my hat size, but you can bet it's pretty big.
(Photo from ESPN)

• I did find other statistics related to his large physique.

• He's 6'4" and between 255 and 260 pounds.

• In 2007, he said his pant size was 40 x 34 (40" waist and 34" leg). 

• He wears a slightly larger uniform to give himself more room to make a comfortable swing.

• His shoe size: 16.  That's 12.5" long.

• Jersey size: 54.  That's 54 inches around.  That's 4.2 feet, folks.  

Finally, when you have a big dome, you can do things like this, no problem:

Sources
Can Steroids Enlarge Your Head? Slate, November 19, 2007
The HGH Handbook, Men's Fitness, September 2012
Bonds Jury Hears the Science of Steroids, The New York Times, March 24, 2011
Barry Bonds and the Smoking Ballcap, Sun Sentinel, March 29, 2011
The Papi Monologues, Boston Magazine, April 2007
Game Used Authentic, Game Worn Uniforms (this is the sort of link that will disappear in the future, so in case it does, here's what it says: "2007 David Ortiz Game Worn Jersey. Authenticated by PSA/DNA and JSA. Classic Old English 'Red Sox' appears in gentile arch across the chest, fashioned from straight-stitch affixed to front left exterior tail, with a '34 54 07' embroidered swatch denoting uniform number, size and year.")
EBay, RARE Reebok Baseball Softball Cleats Shoes #34 David Ortiz Boston Red Sox Sz 16

Apple #655: How Many Lakes are in Minnesota?

This weekend, I went with my dad and my brother to see the Minnesota-Michigan game.  Before the game, my brother lapsed into one of his behaviors that I remember all too well from growing up with him.  He started asking a whole lot of questions, on this occasion, about lakes in Minnesota.  I'll show you what I mean:

"There aren't really 10,000 lakes in Minnesota.  [I answered no, there aren't, there are more than 10,000.]  How do you know?  Who counts them?  Who decides what's a lake and what's a pond?  Why does the number change?  I've been to Minnesota, and I've flown over it too, and I haven't seen that many lakes.  I don't think they have 10,000 lakes in Minnesota.  Are they cheating and counting some Canadian lakes as theirs?" etc. etc.



Minnesota.  My brother would probably say to this, "I don't see 10,000 lakes.  Where are all the lakes?  Are you sure somebody didn't just make that up?"
(Map from Aquarium Pros)


Not having all my resources at my disposal, I could not adequately counter Mr. Annoying Question-Man.  (He didn't really want the answers anyway; he just wanted to be annoying.)  But now that I'm home with my laptop & the internet available, I am going to find the answers to his questions anyway.  So there.

• As of 2013, the Minnesota DNR says there are 11,842 lakes in Minnesota.  These are lakes that cover 10+ acres.

• The Minnesota Historical Society, meanwhile, says that Minnesota has 15,291 lakes of 10+ acres.  Their data is not dated, so I don't know if this is more or less current than the DNR.

This graphic gives you some idea of the number of lakes in Minnesota.  But I can just hear my brother asking about 25 more annoying questions in response to this.  So I'll see if I can find other visual evidence.
(Map from RMB Environmental Laboratories) 



Here's a little slice of Minnesota: the area around Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.  A ton of lakes just in this one area.  I'd like to say, you can extrapolate from this one place to the rest of the state, can't you?  But I know, I know, extrapolation works until it doesn't, as Simpsons fans will recall.
(Map from City-Data.com) 



I can't resist, though.  Here's another slice of Minnesota: area surrounding Pequot Lakes.  Dotted and sprinkled and pock-marked with lakes of all different sizes.
(Map from City-Data.com)


This map shows the 1,029 lakes in Minnesota designated by the Nature Conservancy as priorities for conservation. Sure looks like a lot of lakes, doesn't it?  That's only 1/10 of the total number.
(Map from the Nature Conservancy Minnesota Science Sidebar)

• OK, I'm not finding complete enough visual evidence, so let's go back to that number which seems to be the most reliable:  11,842 lakes of 10+ acres.  Maybe there are other things I can tell you to support that number.

• I don't know who goes around counting the lakes in Minnesota, but people who work for the DNR seems to be the most likely ones, especially since the DNR is currently involved in a project to map all the watersheds for all the 100+ acre-lakes in the state.

• Here are some other facts that indicate there are a crapton of lakes in Minnesota:

• There are so many lakes in Minnesota, many are not named.  Still others have names that are the same as other lakes in the state.  The most commonly-used names of lakes are Long (115), Mud (92), Rice (78), Bass, Round, and Horseshoe.

• The area covered by the 10 largest lakes entirely within Minnesota's borders totals 724,279 acres.  That's about 1,100 square miles.  The entire state is 86,938 square miles.  

• In total, Minnesota has about 2.6 million acres' worth of lakes.

• Only 4 counties in Minnesota have no natural lakes.  

• Otter Tail County, conversely, contains 1,048 lakes, the most of any county in the United States.

• That's a lotta lakes.

• None of them are stolen from Canada. 

Why Does the Number of Lakes Change and Where did They all Come From?

• Setting aside the very likely factor that different people count things according to different criteria, the reason the number of lakes might change over time is perhaps best explained by the State of Washington's Department of Ecology:

Lakes constantly undergo evolutionary change, reflecting the changes that occur in their watersheds. Most lakes will eventually fill in with remains of lake organisms and silt and soil washed in by floods and streams. These gradual changes in the physical and chemical components of a lake affect the development and succession of plant and animal communities. This natural process takes thousands of years. Human activities, however, can dramatically change lakes, for better or worse, in just a few years.

• The human activity that can have the biggest effect on the appearance or disappearance of lakes is the building of dams. I suppose beavers could also have a pretty major effect on the number of lakes, too.

• Minnesota's lakes were originally formed at the end of the Ice Age.  As the glaciers melted and retreated, they didn't do so in an organized fashion.  Big hunks of ice would get left behind, buried under silt and dirt and rock.  When the buried ice melted, the silt dropped down but there wouldn't be enough of it to fill in the hole, or kettle, left behind.  Then when it rained, the kettles filled up with water, and a lake was formed.

• The same thing happened in Wisconsin and Canada, and pretty much all around the Great Lakes.

Kettles left behind after the glacier receded became today's lakes.
(Image from Wikimedia Commons, sourced from Reflections of a Travelinguist)

Minnesota vs. Wisconsin

• Which leads me to another question that my brother didn't ask, but other people do when they talk about the number of lakes in Minnesota: is it true that Wisconsin actually has more lakes than Minnesota?

• Most people from Wisconsin say their state has more, quoting a count of 15,074 lakes.

• However, this number from Wisconsin's DNR includes lakes that "range in size from one- to two-acre spring ponds to [the] 137,708 acre Lake Winnebago."

• In other words, Wisconsin includes in their count a lot of bodies of water that, according to Minnesota's definition of "lake," would not make the cut.

• Wisconsin's DNR doesn't say how many of their lakes are 10+ acres, so it's hard to know how their count exactly compares.  They do say that about 3,620 of Wisconsin's lakes are 20+ acres.  

• (If you want to go through Wisconsin DNR's PDF, copy the by-county lake data, convert it to a spreadsheet, sort by area, and count only those with an area of 10 acres or more, please be my guest and let us know the number you come up with.  And please also tell us how long it took you to do that.)

• Perhaps the best method of comparison is in surface area:  
• Wisconsin lakes: ~ 1 million acres' worth  (1,562.5 sq mi)
• Wisconsin total state size: 65,497 square miles
• Wisconsin lakes / square mile:  ~ 41.92
• Minnesota lakes: ~ 2.6 million acres' worth (4,062.5 sq mi)
• Minnesota total state size: 86,938 square miles
• Minnesota lakes / square mile: ~ 21.40

• According to my math, Minnesota seems to beat Wisconsin on the sheer number of lakes in its borders, and its lakes cover more ground than Wisconsin's do, though Wisconsin packs more water per inch in its smaller-sized state.

• Maybe the conclusive factor is in the names.  "Minnesota" means "Sky-tinted water."  "Wisconsin" means "Grassy place." 

• If your state name literally means water, I think you might win the water fight.

Ignoring the Great Lakes, the lakes in Minnesota look a little more visible.
(Map from Wikimedia)

What is a Lake, Anyway?

• So who is right?  That is, has Wisconsin counted their lakes more correctly, or has Minnesota?  Well, there is no objective definition of "lake."  The distinctions between lake, pond, pool, puddle, etc. are pretty much arbitrary.  The terms date from when white people settled in the area, and they didn't really follow any mathematical formula, they just called 'em as they saw 'em.

• Most people will designate a larger or deeper body of water a lake and a smaller waterbody a pond, but some things that have been called ponds are actually larger than some lakes.  

• You might think that people who study lakes, ponds, pools, etc. might establish criteria to make them distinct from each other.  But because pools, ponds, lakes, and wetlands are in a slow but constant state of flux, one gradually filling becoming another, water-scientists have decided that there's really no point drawing a precise line between the categories.  Nature isn't fixed and numerical like that but is in a constant state of flux.

• The World Health Organization defines a lake as "an enclosed body of water (usually freshwater) totally surrounded by land and with no direct access to the sea." Nothing about size or depth.  

• The definition goes on to describe all the variations in types of lakes -- they may or may not have an observable input or output, they can be salty or not, and they may occur in a series linked by rivers so it can be hard to tell the river and the lake apart.  So the whole thing is kind of squishy.  Or muddy.  

The one thing that isn't muddy is that Minnesota does have a ton of lakes, there are more than 10,000 of them, and nobody's lying or cheating about that, they're just rounding off the number.  Geez.



As far as I'm concerned, though, no other lakes can compare to these.
(Image from The Nature Conservancy)

P.S. My brother is a water engineer.

P.P.S. Michigan won the football game.


Related entries: Rivers, Lake Michigan


Sources
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Lakes, Lakes, rivers, and wetlands facts
Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota Facts, Symbols
RMB Environmental Laboratories, Inc. Minnesota lakes trivia, May 2, 2013
Minnesota Geological Survey, Why so many lakes?
State of Washington Department of Ecology, Lake information
FindTheData, Wisconsin vs. Minnesota
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin Lakes 2009
Actuality, Lakes of Minnesota and Wisconsin, August 25, 2010
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, The Spectator, Wisconsin vs. Minnesota - Lakes, March 4, 2010
Wisconsinology, Wisconsin... Land of 15,000 Lakes, February 2, 2008
New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, Lake or Pond - What is the Difference?
World Health Organization, Water Quality Assessments, Chapter 7 - Lakes

Apple #654: Notorious

TMC is showing Hitchcock's Notorious tonight.  I would very much like to go on and on about why I think Ingrid Bergman is so fantastic in this movie.  But I'll try to keep it to a brief intro, for those of you who may not have seen this movie.  (Yes, some Notorious virgins do exist).



One of many movie posters for Notorious
(Image from The Arts Desk)


Most of us know Ingrid Bergman best from Casablanca, where she plays the uber-good, most-sought-after, fighting-on-the-good-side, love-of-two-men's-lives.  Coming from that perception of her, to see her in Notorious, it's kind of a shock.  Because her character, Alicia Huberman, is a bad girl.

When the movie begins, her father has been convicted of being a spy for the Nazis.  She reacts to this information not with the usual, oh-woe-is-poor-dramatic-me Hollywood response, but by getting loopily sloshed.  When was the last time you saw a woman in a Golden Era movie getting bombed on screen?

Not only does she get trashed, she does so with such sarcastic aplomb, the only person who could be her equal would be Cary Grant.  Oh, wait, guess who shows up!

Her performance is so rich and complex--ah, what the heck, I'll just show you what I mean.





Not only is she free with the bottle, she's also had a few, um, boyfriends.  If I understand the above scene correctly, the old guy at the right is proposing to be her sugar daddy, and she's considering it. No pure-as-the-Ilsa-driven-snow here.

The meat of the story is that Cary Grant's character, Devlin, is a government agent and he wants Alicia (Bergman) to spy on her father's Nazi friends in Rio.  Of course when you're a woman, you're not just a spy, you have to be a seductress.  Her main job is to seduce the man leading her father's friends, played by Claude Rains. (You know him from Casablanca, too.  "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment.")

So the government men--and Devlin--are assuming that since she's had a few sexual partners in the past, she wouldn't mind faking it with one more guy.  Except Devlin has already kind of fallen for her.  Nothing like a little high-speed drunk swerving to make you fall in love with a woman.



Bergman also does a stellar hangover.
(Still from The Girl with the White Parasol)


But Devlin also knows about her "seductive" past as well as the seducing she's supposed to do, so he's all bitter and snarky about it. Every time he makes unkind remarks, she smarts but tries not to let him see. This is because she is in love with him and is actually trying to turn over a new leaf after having learned of her father's death.  But since Devlin has told her what her assignment is and says he did not protest to his superiors on her behalf, she's embarked on a self-destructive, why-the-hell-not path.  They both punish each other for the fact that she actually goes through with the plan of seduction.

The result is such wonderfully sarcastic lines from her as: "Every time you look at me, I can see [your mind] running over its slogans: 'Once a crook, always a crook,' 'Once a tramp, always a tramp.' Go on. You can hold my hand. I won't blackmail you for it afterwards."

Also, "When do I go to work for Uncle Sam?" takes on whole new meanings.

OK, that's enough praises.  Now for the facts.


This is the Blu-Ray version from Amazon, but it's also available on plain old DVD & VHS too.
Notorious [Blu-ray]

• The movie is based on a short story called "The Song of the Dragon" by John Taintor Foote that was published in the Saturday Evening Post. The story was published in 1921--before World War II, before anybody knew about Nazis or uranium ore.  

• Much of the plot of the movie was the invention of Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht.  In fact, the atom bomb was dropped on Japan only a few months before Notorious was filmed, so changing the diamonds in the wine bottle to uranium ore was a very timely alteration.

• Foote turned his short story into a novel in 1923, and 4 years later, a silent movie was based on the novel: Convoy.  In that movie, 2 men are in the Navy in World War I.  One man finds out that the other is a secret agent for the Germans, and he tells the German spy's fiancee.  But he tells her to stay with him so she can spy on him.  Among other events in the movie, the woman is arrested as a streetwalker.

• I bet very few people remember the silent movie or the novel or the short story.  But they do remember Notorious.

• The censors' rules at the time said no kiss could last longer than three seconds.  So Hitchcock told Bergman and Grant to kiss for 2 seconds, break apart, and kiss again, and keep doing that.  The results are 3 minutes of standing-up-kissing that looks like something a lot more horizontal.

• That scene also looks seamless, but it actually took many long takes because of the complicated blocking required. The dialogue, though, was largely improvised between Grant & Bergman.

• By the way, that chicken shows up later.  She's trying to cut it up and it's hard as a rock.  She says, half-laughing, "It caught fire once."

• Bergman was 5'9" -- 7 inches taller than Claude Rains.  In scenes with him, she wears flats.  Also, when he could get away with it, Hitchcock had him stand on a box.

• Many people refer to a particular shot as being classic Hitchcock.  The camera pans a large room from an upstairs balcony and then slowly zooms closer and closer until it eventually focuses on a key in Ingrid's hand--the thing which is of greatest importance to her in that entire party.  Thus, people argue, this is an example of how Hitchcock is the master of point of view.  He shows you with this shot exactly what she is thinking, and how nervous she is about it. 

 

How the key-in-the-hand moment was filmed.  Takes some of the romance out of it, doesn't it?

(Photo by Robert Capa, from Vicki Lester's Beguiling Hollywood)

• There's yet another moment when Hitchcock demonstrates his moviemaking prowess.  A cup of coffee features prominently (no spoilers for the benefit of the uninitiated).  The camera stays focused on the cup as it is carried across the room and put on a table next to Ingrid.  A later filmmaker asked Hitchcock how he kept both the cup and Bergman in focus.  He said he used a 3-foot cup of coffee and filmed it from 25 feet away.  The other filmmaker protested that that couldn't be because a person carried the cup to her.  Hitchcock replied that it wasn't a person's hand but a piece of statuary holding the cup.

• 4 years after the movie was released, Bergman was denounced in the Senate for leaving her husband in favor of director Roberto Rossellini.  She was pregnant with Rossellini's child.  The Senator called Bergman "Hollywood's apostle of degradation" and "a powerful influence for evil" and asked that she be barred forever from the country on the grounds of "moral turpitude."

• Some years before that scandal broke, she was quoted as saying, ''I cannot understand why people think I'm pure and full of nobleness. Every human being has shades of bad and good.''  Knowing that is probably a large part of why she was such a skilled actress.

• She did leave the United States and gave birth to three children with Roberto--including Isabella.  It wasn't until 1955 when Darryl Zanuck asked her to be in Anastasia and after being on the Ed Sullivan show that she began to be welcomed by the U.S. public again.  Eventually, she did return to the United States, and she was awarded an Oscar for her performance in Anastasia.

• She reclaimed her position in the hearts of the public to such an extent that in 1972 a different Senator read into the Congressional Record an official apology for the previous attack on her in the Senate.

• She died of breast cancer on her 67th birthday in London, 1982. 

• "'I have had a wonderful life," she said during a press conference in 1956. "I have never regretted what I did. I regret things I didn't do. All my life I've done things at a moment's notice. Those are the things I remember. I was given courage, a sense of adventure and a little bit of humor." 

Ingrid. Notorious. Fantastic. Worth Watching.
(Photo from Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Stars)

Sources
IMDb, Notorious
AMC filmsite, Notorious (1946)
Frank Cottrell Boyce, My favourite Hitchcock film: Notorious, The Guardian, June 16, 2012
Jasper Rees, The Hitchcock Players: Ingrid Bergman, Notorious, The Arts Desk, August 7, 2012
Turner Classic Movies, Trivia: Notorious
Film and Literature: Page to Screen, Hitchcock's Use of Editing Techniques: Notorious
Silent Hollywood.com, Convoy, 1927
Emanuel Levy Cinema 24/7, Oscar Scandals: Ingrid Bergman
The New York Times, On This Day, Ingrid Bergman, Winner of 3 Oscars, Is Dead, August 31, 1982

Apple #653: Uncles

I found out today that my uncle died.  I haven't seen him in quite a few years, but I'm having trouble thinking of much else.  When I was little, our families used to get together pretty often, especially in the summer time.  Us cousins -- there were a lot of them in that family -- would do the usual kid things, like going swimming, playing board games, playing with Legos, stuff like that.  My parents & my aunt & uncle played cards, most especially Setback.



Our two families when we got together looked something like this: lots of cousins all in one place.  Now mentally insert two sets of parents, transport this image to the 1970s, and add two dogs.
(Photo from Eating Our Way Around DFW)


Over time, my cousins came to be like a second set of brothers & sisters, and my aunt & uncle were sort of like an alternate set of parents.  Then my cousins (all older than me) got married and had children of their own, and we didn't really get together much.  But I still feel that connection with their family.

So I'm sad that my uncle died.  Sad that I didn't get to go to the funeral.  Just sad.



My uncle always had a leather chair and ottoman, similar to this. He also wore a certain kind of cologne -- no idea what it was -- but his cologne and the smell of his leather chair was the scent of my uncle.
(Photo and chair & ottoman from Decorium Furniture)


Here are some things about uncles. 

• "Uncle" comes from the Latin avunculus, which is a diminutive meaning "little grandfather."  Some people speak with a kind of teasing ridicule about their uncles, but someone who was like a grandfather, maybe not in terms of age but in terms of connection, seems very appropriate to my uncle.

• Among Irish Catholic families, before a child is baptized, the child's uncle is often asked to be godfather.  Depending on how old-school the family was, the uncle/godfather would be the child's go-to man for advice or help in dealing with difficult situations. 

• The phrase "cry uncle" meaning "I give up" is one of those things that nobody's entirely sure where it came from.

You know, like when that kid Farkus from A Christmas Story used to beat them up until they said Uncle.
 (Photo from someplace on a real estate site called KISS Flipping)

• There is some speculation that it comes from an Irish word anacol, which sounds like uncle, but means "mercy, safety, protection."  The theory is that Irish immigrants used to say anacol when they got in fights and people mis-heard them and thought they were saying uncle.  This theory is among the less-favorites, but I like it anyway, for my own reasons.  I like the connection between one's uncle and the concept of mercy and safety.

• The more widely accepted theory is that the practice goes all the way back to Ancient Roman days, when people who were faring the worst in a fight said Patrue, mi patruissime, or "Uncle, my best uncle."

• You might be wondering why they said patruus as opposed to avunculus.  Both words mean "uncle," but a patruus is your father's brother, while the avunculus is your mother's brother.  Since males ruled the day back then -- and often now as well -- the father's brother had higher standing than the avunculus.  So to give over to someone you're willing to call equal to your father's brother means you're giving them quite a lot of respect.

• So I think the phrase itself provides the answer: when someone has bested you in a fight, the way to get them to stop is to acknowledge that they've beaten you.  To admit, however much you may not want to, that they're better (at least in this fight) than you are.  The short way to say this is to say, "You are like my uncle to me."

• There's also some stupid story about a parrot that everyone, well, parrots.  It doesn't tell you anything about why the word uncle was used, it's just a dumb joke from 1891 that has the word uncle in it, and everybody keeps telling it as if its existence explains anything.  It's not even a very good joke.  If you want to read it, here it is, but I give it no thumbs up for any reason whatsoever.

• In The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the acronym stands for "the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. U.N.C.L.E. is an organization consisting of agents of all nationalities. It's involved in maintaining political and legal order anywhere in the world."  Sort of like the uncle of the world.

(Image from FizX Entertainment)


OK, my uncle didn't look like either of these guys.  He also didn't carry a gun like that.  But he did fight in World War II.
(Image from What Culture!)

• Uncle Buck, the messy, inappropriate, unemployed bachelor uncle played by John Candy is another famous uncle.  Perhaps the only thing he and my uncle had in common is they both did care about the kids.  John Candy was also considered to be one of the few genuinely nice people in Hollywood. My uncle was a genuinely nice guy -- when he wasn't pulling your leg about something.

• There's also Uncle Fester from the Addams Family, but my uncle was definitely nothing like him.  The guy who played Uncle Fester, Jackie Coogan, was more in my uncle's wheelhouse.  Coogan was a child actor in movies with Charlie Chaplin, among others.  During World War II, Coogan enlisted and served in the Air Force, where he flew troops to various campaigns, including behind Japanese lines in Burma.  For a while, he was married to Betty Grable, the actress who became the famous GI pin-up during the war.

Jackie Coogan and Spencer Tracy from, I think, The Actress, which was made in 1953.
(Photo from Classic Movie Kids)



Jackie Coogan and Betty Grable on a date in 1936.  My uncle loved to be tan.  He used to get his radio, set either to news talk radio or to a 40s jazz station, and bring it out to one of those folding lawn chairs and sit by the lake and soak up the sun.  Surprisingly, it was not skin cancer that killed him.
(Photo from flickriver)



Good-bye, Uncle Larry.  From me and Uncle Buck.
(Photo from Odios Obvios)


Sources
World Wide Words, Say (or cry) uncle
The Word Detective, Say Uncle
Wordorigins.org, say uncle
Man from U.N.C.L.E. Background and History
IMDb, John Candy Trivia
Biography.com, Jackie Coogan

Apple #652: Pupal Soup

So I've been listening to a book on CD that I bought from the Friends of the Library for $1.  The US title is, unthrillingly, The Sister.  The UK title is The Behavior of Moths. The main character/narrator of this novel is a 60-something-year-old woman who was "quite a famous lepidopterist" and who learned the science from her father.  There is more to the novel than that, including some suspicious deaths which may or may not have been murders, but for the purposes of this entry, I'll just talk about the moths.

The Sister
I very much recommend the audio version because the woman who reads it is really a talented actor, and she makes the narrator come to life.


Many parts of the novel deal with the habits of moths or the study of moths.  While the moths are actually quite an ingenious, ongoing, and complex metaphor--one that the narrator isn't entirely aware of--the facts about the moths I found interesting in and of themselves.  The main one is that, while inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar breaks down entirely into what the narrator's father calls "pupal soup"--nothing but goo.  The caterpillar completely dissolves into this primordial goop inside the chrysalis and a few weeks later, emerges as a butterfly.

Astounding.  I knew the basic things you're taught in elementary school, caterpillar, pupa in the chrysalis, butterfly, but I never heard of this pupal soup business.  No one ever told me the caterpillar turned into a liquid.


From caterpillar to butterfly -- includes a liquid phase?
(Photo from Fairchld Tropical Botanical Garden)


Now, this is described in the novel as research the father & daughter were doing in the 1950s & 1960s.  So I wondered, is it true about pupal soup?  I mean, does the caterpillar dissolve completely into liquid, only to emerge, totally rebuilt as another creature entirely?  In other words, I found this information so stunning and wonderful, I had to know more. Especially since this is the time when Monarch butterflies will soon be emerging all over the place.

• The short answer is, it's mostly true, but it's more complicated than that.  

• So, you know the part about how the caterpillar eats and eats and eats non-stop.  The way caterpillars were described to me is that they are basically eating machines disguised as tube socks.  Uncomplicated, nothing much going on in there except a lot of eating and digestion.

• Well, my friend, the truth about caterpillars is they have a lot more happening in there than just eating.

Yes, a caterpillar is an eating machine--and more.
(Photo from WDW, via Science Buzz)

• First, everything about their development is regulated by hormones.  There is one hormone, referred to as "juvenile hormone" that keeps them in the caterpillar stage. As long as the juvenile hormone is active, the insect will stay a caterpillar.

• There's another hormone, called ecdysone.  This one is kind of like the change signal.  A little burst of this, and the caterpillar has a growth spurt and molts.  The caterpillar goes through several rounds of ecdysone burst/molting.  But that juvenile hormone is still active, so it stays a caterpillar.

• Finally, when the caterpillar reaches a certain size--has taken in enough food to last it through the metamorphosis--the amount of juvenile hormone drops so that at the next ecdysone burst, the caterpillar doesn't just molt, it starts becoming a chrysalis.

• Yes, I said that correctly.  The caterpillar doesn't create a chrysalis that it climbs into, its skin becomes the chrysalis. Some caterpillars will spin a protective cocoon first, but that outer casing which is the chrysalis--that is a new skin that the caterpillar has grown.  A new molting, if you will.

You can kind of see here how the chrysalis of this Monarch caterpillar looks like a new skin.
(Photo from Shea in Michigan on Flickr)

• Once it's safely enclosed within its new skin that is the chrysalis, the caterpillar releases a batch of enzymes.  These are digestive enzymes.  Which means that the caterpillar is effectively digesting itself. Thus turning itself into pupal soup.

• So, yes, that novel was correct about that soup business.  But what we've learned since the 1950s and 1960s makes it more complicated.  If you were to cut open a chrysalis, caterpillar goo would spill out.  It would look like it's only liquid.  But in fact, there is actual structural stuff still lurking within the goo.

• Some muscle tissue breaks down but the cells remain intact and persist in clumps. Organs such as the breathing tubes and the guts also stay intact; they grow larger or reconnect things in slightly different ways. How these structures remain even though all appears to be soupy, I'm not sure.  I can only tell you what the researchers have reported.

Micro-CT imaging was used to see inside a chrysalis as the caterpillar re-forms into a butterfly. This is a painted lady butterfly chrysalis.  The breathing tubes have been colored blue and the guts red.
(Image from the University of Manchester, via National Geographic)

• But everything else about the insect--the exoskeleton, the many little feet, the head--all that gets completely reorganized and turns into wings! A head with an enormously long tongue suitable for collecting nectar!  Very long thin legs!  How does this happen?

• Well, there's still more besides hormones and enzymes inside a caterpillar. In addition to those crucial fluids, they also have things called imaginal discs, or imaginal cells.  These exist in a caterpillar and develop to a certain point and then stop, waiting for go-time.

• Once the caterpillar is in the chrysalis, the imaginal cells go into action. They work a lot like our stem cells do and develop into new body parts. 

• The discs shift from being flat into a concave dome, then elongate into a sock shape.  The pointy end of the sock gets further defined as the disc eventually becomes some feature of the butterfly or moth--a wing, a leg, an antennae.

• Four discs contain the DNA information to become 4 wings. Other discs become legs. Other discs become antennae. If one disc that was supposed to become a wing for some reason does not, the remaining 3 discs will adapt on the fly (pun) to form bigger wings to compensate.

The blue circles at the top are the imaginal cells of the Drosophila, another insect that undergoes complete metamorphosis.
(Image from Georgia Tech's Developmental Biology Initiative)

• Meanwhile, much of the rest of the goo in the chrysalis is literally food.  It is a nutrient-rich soup that feeds the insect as it undergoes this remarkable change. If you weighed a chrysalis after it first formed and then weighed the newly-formed adult after it's emerged and its wings have dried, the weight would have dropped by about half. The majority of that missing weight is the food the moth/butterfly consumed during its transformation.

• Here's another remarkable thing: scientists also have reason to believe that the neurons present in the caterpillar's admittedly small brain survive the self-digestion process and continue to function in the adult butterfly or moth.  Which means that they "remember" things about being caterpillars. 

• That isn't just a nice little turn of phrase or metaphor; researchers at Georgetown University have proven that "moths retain at least some of the memories they had as caterpillars." The memories they've shown that the caterpillars-turned-moths retain are mainly scent memories. But still. That's pretty impressive.

• OK, now, one final factoid to blow your mind.  9 out of 26 orders of insects undergo this sort of complete metamorphosis. That may not seem like very many, but those 9 orders include butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, bees, wasps, and ants.  Which is, in fact, the majority of insects.  Which is, in turn, the majority of all animals.

So simple, anyone can do this, right?  Sheesh.
(Photo via University of Miami Department of Biology)


Related entries: Monarch butterflies; White caterpillars;  Woolly Bear Caterpillars

Sources
Devin Hiskey, Caterpillars "Melt" almost Completely before Growing into Butterflies in the Chrysalis, Today I Found Out, October 28, 2011
Ferris Jabr, How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly? Scientific American, August 10, 2012
Tracy V. Wilson, How Caterpillars Work, howstuffworks
Dr. Lincoln Brower, Inside the Chrysalis, Monarch Butterfly Journey North
Richard Jones, How does a caterpillar turn into a butterfly? Discover Wildlife, September 15, 2012
Ed Yong, 3-D Scans Reveal Caterpillars Turning Into Butterflies, National Geographic Phenomena, May 14, 2013