week-by-week

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we’ve enjoyed these annual check-ins with author and editor Tom Whitwell (previously) to compare and contrast the fifty-two things highlighted he’s gleaned over the past year. First encountered on Amusing Planet, we’d heard about the egg-based registry of clown make-up and this wide-spread consequence of urban botanical misogyny and appreciated the chance to revisit them and to acquire several more interesting and compelling facts and figures to add to our knowledge base: we especially liked the reinforcement of the outstandingly precipitous drop in coal usage (15), our stereoscopic olfactory sense (37) and from Iris Murdoch, how municipal swimming pools in Victorian England kept frogs on the premises so people might imitate their strokes. Let us know your favourites and some tidbits you’ve acquired this year.

bona dea

A tradition imported from Magna Græcia during the middle Republic period, the good goddess was honoured with a bi-annual celebration, once in May at her temple on the Aventine Hill and then a more exclusive wintertime feast for the real housewives of Rome on this day, hosted by the spouse of the city’s magistrate—or Pontifex Maximus—for invited patrician matrons and their attendants. Both parties were the preserve of women alone and were the two occasions that women were allowed strong wine and blood sacrifices—no boys allowed, and therefore not much is divulged of the mysteries other than the iconography of a snake and cornucopia though the cult itself included men and women of all backgrounds and ranks in society. The most controversial Bona Dea occurred 62 BCE, hosted by Pompeia, third wife of Julius Cæsar, when the party was crashed and scandalised by the figure of Publius Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman with the intent to seduce the hostess. Clodius was a populist politician, street agitator and ally of Cæsar and could raise gangs of thugs to riot against any opposition, which is ostensibly why Clodius was ultimately acquitted during his trial for desecrating the holiday proceedings, a serious crime, and for Cæsar’s subsequent divorce of Pompeia, insisting his spouse must be above rebuke, though she had no control over Clodius’ antics. Though of the eldest gens of Rome, the aristocratic pater familius of the Claudians, Clodius arranged his adoption by someone with obscure roots so he could run and be elected the tribune of the plebians. Pompeia went on to remarry another politician but one of less notoriety and Clodius was ultimately killed during a feud by the bodyguard of a political rival. Clodius’ window, Fulvia, also remarried—taking Mark Antony for a husband after Clodius’ death.

your daily demon: balam

The fifty-first spirit is this infernal king that rules the tenth through fourteenth degree of Sagittarius—from this day through 7 December, and is depicted, according to the Ars Goetia and other sources, as a monstrous entity with three aspects—the faces of a bull, a man and a ram with the tail of a serpent, who sits astride a ferocious bear, with a goshawk born on his forearm.

Giver of good counsel and wit, this figure probably originates (in a less fantastical form) from the magician and diviner called Balaam from Numbers 22, whom the Israelites blame for their difficulties and adjustment issues, characterising him as a charismatic sophist, when they enter into the Promised Land, enticing them into transgressive behaviours, including encouraging sacrifice performed to Baal, and thus the source of a deadly plague visited on the delivered tribes as a result.

number-one daughter

We thoroughly enjoyed reading more about how JarVanka—pre-emptively pardoned or otherwise—are not being welcomed as the social-climbing try-hards back to the  strata that the déclassé couple aspired to and felt entitled to, to a fault for years from the comedic stylings of the duo behind Good Liars, who are wisely already considering relocating once January twentieth arrives. Married to Slenderman? Yes.

larry logo

Via Super Punch, we are introduced to the big boxy mascot with oddly fulsome lips that often from the late 1970s through the early 1980s audited, augmented many celebrity interviews and marched in parades and greeted fans at town fêtes for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Yukon, now under the umbrella service CBC North (ᓰᐲᓰ ᐅᑭᐅᖅᑕᖅᑐᒥ / ᓰᐲᓰ ᒌᐌᑎᓅᑖᐦᒡ). Like the NBC peacock was debuted to highlight the network’s transition to living colour, CBC commissioned Hubert Tison to develop the “cosmic” butterfly symbol (as shown as the face and body) in 1966, a variation of which is still in use today for station identification. No one quite knows what happened to the handmade outfit—the costume was often loaned out for events across the province and it is speculated that one affiliate studio possibly neglected to return Larry Logo and he’s waiting in a broom closet or storage room to be re-discovered four decades on.

watching the detectives

Adapted from the 1929 novel by Erich Kästner with screenplay written by Billy Wilder, the adventure film directed by Gerhard Lamprech Emil und die Detektive opened on this day in 1931 in Berlin at the Kurfürstendamm Theatre. The titular young boy is dispatched by his widowed mother from their provincial home on Neustadt (a generic anytown name, like Springfield, and usually appended to the name of the river it’s on) in the Weimar Republic (see also) to Berlin with a sum of money to deliver to his grandmother and cousin, Pony Hütchen. En route, Emil makes the mistake of accepting candy from a stranger, is knocked out and awakes to find the Marks missing. Emil then solicits help of neighbour youths who style themselves “detectives.” They eventually apprehend the stranger that mugged Emil, who is revealed to be a wanted bank robber and the gang receives a large award for his capture. Remade five times over the decades, the movie established several cinematic tropes including drugged sweets and innovative camera techniques.

a filmation production

The thirteenth episode of the first and penultimate season of The Brady Kids—“It’s All Greek to Me” and featuring the song “In No Hurry”—was first broadcast on this day in 1973, wherein the Bradys along with Wonder Woman disguised as a mild-mannered maths teacher are transported back in time to Ancient Greece by the magic of their mynah bird wizard familiar named Marlon, to meet Euclid and presumably learn about geometry. 

This is notably the premier of the super hero in this format and on television. The animation studio recycled walk cycles, profile pictures and backgrounds from The Archie Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and Jim Henson’s Last Picture Show Babies.

éloi de noyon

Also known as Saint Eligius, the namesake of the hospital of the US television series St. Elsewhere (the nickname being a professional slang term for the practise of diverting less wealthy patients to poorly funded care centres and not in reference to the legendary surgery below), the patron most celebrated as protector of horses and those who work with them is venerated on this day, on the occasion of his death in 660 (*588). Chief counsel to Merovingian king Dagobert I, Éloi rose to prominence through virtuosity demonstrated in metalwork, richly framing members of the aristocracy and sepulchred dead with finery—also earning him the sponsorship of gold- and silversmiths, coin collectors and mechanical engineers—though reportedly eschewed any luxury himself and gave away all his wealth to the poor and used his court favour to distribute more alms. In his capacity as a blacksmith, Éloi once had to shod a recalcitrant horse who refused to cooperate. Convinced the horse was possessed by a demon, Éloi accomplished the task by miraculously dismembering each leg one at a time and reattaching them afterwards.