Category Archives: From the Wikipedia
If you follow Johan Santana on Twitter — which you should, because it’s Johan Santana — you may have noticed that he recently changed the “name” part of his profile to say “El Gocho believe it!”
Santana also has “El Gocho” embroidered in script on his glove.
So what does it mean? Technically it comes from a word for pig. But a brief Internet search reveals that it was the nickname of former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, and that it is Venezuelan slang for a native of the Andean parts of Venezuela from which Santana hails. In fact, by this list Santana is the only active Major Leaguer from Merida, Tachira or Trujillo, the nation’s Andean states. He comes from Tovar, a town of about 33,000 in Merida.
The term “Gocho” has its own page on the Spanish-language Wikipedia, and using Google Translate reveals it is at least vaguely controversial. Some people believe it has a derogatory connotation and suggests that Andean Venezuelans are less sophisticated than their urban compatriots. Others claim to say it with love.
I guess a decent comp in American English would be the word “hick,” since plenty of people use it dismissively while others proudly self-identify as hicks. Santana probably uses it with a touch of irony, since he’s undoubtedly a smart dude, and you’ve got to be pretty sophisticated to pull off a vest like that.
Another fun fact revealed from a Johan Santana-related Wikipedia tangent? Santana was discovered and signed by Astros scout Chance Partin, the brother-in-law of Cheech Marin.
Tristan de Cunha was in the news a couple of weeks ago due to an oil spill, and my man Ted Burke tipped me off to its Wikipedia page.
From the Wikipedia: Tristan de Cunha.
Tristan de Cunha is the name given to both an archipelago in the South Atlantic and the main island of the group, the only one that is inhabited by people. The “big” island of Tristan de Cunha is nearly twice the size of Manhattan and, with roughly 275 residents, has about .02% of Manhattan’s population. Everyone in Tristan de Cunha lives in the largest city, Edinburgh of the South Seas — known locally as “the Settlement.”
The island is the most remote inhabited island in the world. It lies 1,750 miles west of South Africa and 1,510 miles south of Saint Helena, with which it is linked (along with Ascension Island) as part of a British territory. The territory is called “Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan de Cunha,” which is pretty much the least clever you could possibly come up with for it. It used to be known only as “Saint Helena and Dependencies,” but in 2009 someone determined that the 275 people in Tristan de Cunha and the 880 people on Ascension Island deserved equal footing with the 4,255 people on Saint Helena.
Tristan de Cunha is represented by the governor of Saint Helena, which you figure must be something of a logistical nightmare because Tristan de Cunha is really hard to get to. You can only get to and from the island by boat and you pretty much have to boat to South Africa before you go anywhere. One boat trip a year connects Tristan de Cunha with Saint Helena and Ascension.
Of course, it’s probably not too difficult to govern a population that’s roughly the size of a suburban high school, especially when you figure everybody knows everybody and many of them are related. In fact, residents of Tristan de Cunha have only eight last names, seven of which came from its original 15 settlers. The eighth is Patterson, because a woman from the island left and brought back a husband named Patterson. The Settlement has one full-time police officer and one resident doctor.
The islands were discovered and named in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha. Apparently he also wasn’t particularly clever, though I guess it’s hard to fault someone for naming an island group for himself.
The islands pretty much just sat there until 1810, when a guy named Jonathan Lambert from Massachusetts showed up, claimed all the land for himself and renamed the islands “The Islands of Refreshment,” which sounds like something from a Fruitopia commercial. The Wikipedia does not say how Lambert came to Tristan de Cunha or how many people accompanied him, nor does it provide any detail of the boating accident that killed him two years later in 1812.
It is at least a tiny bit suspicious that in that same year, the United States military began using the islands as a base for the War of 1812, which also lacked a clever name. In 1816, the British formally annexed the islands to prevent the French from using them as a base to help Napoleon escape from his exile on Saint Helena, which, as mentioned, is over 1500 miles away. The Wikipedia does not detail how that would have worked, exactly, nor why the most remote inhabited island in the world would be a significant upgrade from exile.
Oh, one of the other islands in the Tristan de Cunha group is called “Inaccessible Island.” The Wikipedia entry contains this gem: “Attempts to colonise Inaccessible Island failed.”
Historically, the island has mostly been used for military stuff. Until at least World War II, its currency was potatoes.
One time a prince visited Tristan de Cunha, and Lewis Carroll’s younger brother lived there for a few years. It is not a great place for celebrity spotting.
It is a good place for bird-watching, farming, lobster fishing and philately. The Wikipedia says that the sale of postage stamps to overseas collectors is one of the main sources of foreign income to Tristan de Cunha.
The smattering of people that live on Tristan de Cunha speak a dialect of English. Because three of the original 15 settlers had asthma, many Tristanians suffer from the disease, much in the same way many Amish have polydactyly. Tristan de Cunha’s flag features a rock lobster, which is also the name of a song by the B-52s.
The Knicks are in the playoffs. For insight on that from people who actually have interesting things to say about NBA basketball besides “OHHH!” and “WOW!” and “WHY IS NO ONE PLAYING DEFENSE!?” check out Tommy Dee and his crew at TheKnicksBlog.com.
And if you haven’t used up your allotment of Times articles for April, check out this feature about Walt “Clyde” Frazier’s wardrobe. Sadly, it is shorter than book-length and thus can not portray the full awesomeness of Frazier’s suits. It does have a photo gallery, thankfully.
Fun fact: Per Frazier’s Wikipedia page, he earned the nickname Clyde for wearing hats similar to the one Warren Beatty had in Bonnie and Clyde, which makes sense.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that Fresca was the favorite drink of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk in the White House’s Oval Office which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.
There are a ton of hilarious anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson but this might be my favorite. Dude was way too awesome to pick up the phone or use the intercom or heaven forbid, actually get up and walk out of his office to grab a Fresca. He had a special Fresca button installed so he didn’t have to bother with all that.
Fun fact: Fresca happens to be my favorite soda, too. I stopped drinking soda with sugar in it at some point in high school and by now a full serving of any non-diet soda makes me feel almost sick from the sweetness. I know that diet soda is also not good for me, so spare me the lectures. Fresca is delicious. It’s one of our very few grapefruit-flavored things, and I feel like supporting it is a good way of letting candy-developers everywhere understand that I would purchase more grapefruit-flavored things if they became available.
Also, I like drinking Fresca because it is inherently hilarious for reasons I can’t really define. You’ll have to ask Judge Smalls I guess.
Unfortunately it is surprisingly hard to find Fresca other than in 12 packs in supermarkets, and I rarely find myself moved to buy a 12 pack of soda in the supermarket. The other flavors of Fresca that came out a few years back pale in comparison to the OG Fresca. Don’t water down my grapefruit flavor with peach, please. No disrespect to peach-flavored stuff.
On my campus television show in college we used to say the show was sponsored by Fresca and drink it on air all the time. Often that Fresca was spiked with 99 Bananas, a ridiculous liquor. That was the first but certainly not last time I was scolded for drinking on camera. And I’m really not much of a drinker.
The news about LBJ and Fresca comes via Dan Lewis’ Now I Know newsletter, which you should probably check out.
Most space food, it seems, is pretty bad, and of course the astronauts know this better than anybody, which is why in 1965 John Young smuggled a Wolfie’s corned beef sandwich onto Gemini III to surprise his crewmate Gus Grissom. It was only a 5 hour flight so it must have been done for laughs rather than to whet a jaded appetite, and after two hours Young duly produced his sandwich. That’s John Young, below. We even have the dialogue.
GRISSOM: Where did that come from?
YOUNG: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?
GRISSOM: Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.
YOUNG: It was a thought, anyway.
GRISSOM: Yep.
YOUNG: Not a very good one.
- Geoff Nicholson, Psycho-Gourmet.
If you didn’t have favorite astronaut before, I hope John Young just earned that distinction. He’s got a pretty healthy space resume, too: Dude walked on the moon, piloted the first space shuttle, and was aboard the fastest-moving manned vehicle ever. And he did all that despite a reputation as a renegade after callously sneaking a sandwich into space, perhaps outer space’s first sandwich*.
Later space sandwich experiments apparently went over better, as the post includes this photo:
*- Presumably if there are other advanced carbon-based life forms in the universe, they’ve figured out sandwiches too. If basically every culture on earth could develop some sort of protein wrapped in some sort of starch, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t happen in outer space too. It’s one of the hallmarks of civilization.
Link comes via Twitterer @kmflemming.
Because it exists.
From the Wikipedia: Burj Khalifa.
Burj Khalifa is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. At its highest point, it is 2,717 feet tall, just shy of 1000 feet higher than the next tallest building in the world. By architectural detail (ie not including antennae), it more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. Burj Khalifa is named for UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who lent support to the project when the economy went south. It is a mixed-use building, with a hotel, residences and corporate suites.
The building opened on Jan. 4, 2010. When it did, it became the tallest skyscraper ever built, the tallest structure ever built, the tallest extant structure, the tallest freestanding structure, the building with the most floors and the building with the highest occupied floor — the 160th. Burj Khalifa can boast the world’s highest mosque, the world’s highest swimming pool, the world’s highest nightclub, the world’s highest restaurant, and, I like to imagine, the world’s highest guy, a bit lost and just sort of stumbling around all like, “bro, this is a really tall building.”
The Wikipedia says Burj Khalifa was built “to put Dubai on the map with something really sensational,” and that makes sense. Obviously this and this and this weren’t going to cut it.
The tower was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which is basically the Yankees of architectural firms. It is reminiscent of The Illinois, a mile-high building proposed for Chicago by Frank Lloyd Wright when he was an old-ass man and everyone figured he had lost his mind. Its design is also supposedly derived from elements of Islamic architecture and inspired by the Hymenocallis flower. Basically, Burj Khalifa is a prism through which you can see pretty much anything you want; that’s what happens when you build something so tall the human eyes and brain can’t really process it. (I assume. Man, I really need to get to Dubai.)
Obviously a building of this magnitude requires quite a feat of window-washing. Burj Khalifa has a horizontal track at levels 40, 73 and 109 that holds a bucket machine that moves horizontally and vertically. There are $8 million worth of Australian robots to clean to top 27 tiers and the glass spire. It takes 36 workers three-to-four months to clear the entire facade of Burj Khalifa.
Outside Burj Khalifa is a fountain that shoots water 490 feet into the air. There was a sweet fireworks show when Burj Khalifa opened. People like to BASE jump off Burj Khalifa.
Originally posted March 18, 2010.
I like nature as much as the next guy, but I’m not generally one to get all broken up about extinct animals because, you know, survival of the fittest and all. But I do always wonder what those extinct animals would have tasted like.
The subject of today’s From the Wikipedia was almost certainly delicious. In fact, it was partly our ancestors’ ravenous consumption of the species that led to its demise, because our forefathers lacked the foresight to leave even a few of them behind for us to breed and subsequently barbecue.
From the Wikipedia: The Great Auk.
The Great Auk was a species of flightless bird that lived on islands off eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain up until the 19th century. It stood about 30-33 inches high and vaguely resembled a penguin. Under its down, it had a thick layer of fat, which served the dual purpose of protecting it from the cold Northern air and preventing its meat from drying up when cooked over an open fire.
Besides its deliciousness, the Great Auk’s most notable characteristic, by far, was its naivete. For some stupid reason, it was not afraid of humans, even though it clearly should have been.
In fact, on a 1622 expedition to Funk Island — which is not nearly as awesome a place as it sounds — a British crew was able to drive the succulent poultry right up the gangplanks and onto their boat. Sir Richard Whitbourne described it, “as if God had made the innocency of so poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sustenation of man.”
But man, being man, was obviously not an admirable instrument for the sustenation of so poore a creature.
Hint to animals: Fear humans or figure out how to make humans fear you. Otherwise, you’ll endure species-wide humiliations like the ones that eventually spelled the demise of the Great Auk.
As long ago as 2000 B.C., someone was buried in Newfoundland wearing a coat made of 200 Great Auk skins with the heads left on for decoration. The Great Auk jacket was the O.G. mink coat.
The Beothuk people of Newfoundland made pudding out of Great Auk eggs. (It should be noted, here, that the last surviving Beothuk died about 15 years before the last Great Auk, so the Great Auk had the last laugh in that storied rivalry.)
But more than anything, it is the treatment of the last few Great Auks that underscores humanity’s lack thereof.
By the turn of the 19th century, after centuries of being hunted for its meat, eggs and down feathers, the Great Auk was nearly extinct, and in 1794 it became illegal to kill Great Auks in England.
That didn’t stop the 75-year-old Scotsman who caught the last Great Auk ever seen in the British Isles, though. He tied the bird up for three days then beat it to death with a stick. Why? Because he thought it was a witch, obviously.
The last remaining colony of about 50 Great Auks lived on an island inaccessible to humans until 1830, when the island submerged and they were forced to move to another island that was barely accessible to humans.
Just accessible enough, it turned out, for preservationists — I kid you not — to kill the remaining birds for displaying their skins and eggs in museums.
In July, 1844, the last pair of Great Auks sat incubating an egg, still somehow not fearing humans even though humans had killed all the other Great Auks. Three humans approached and the two Great Auks just sat there on the egg, so two of the humans strangled the Great Auks while the third smashed their egg with his boot.
That was all for the Great Auk.
At Madison Square Garden a couple weeks ago, Prince pulled a beautiful young woman up on stage and serenaded her with “I Love U But I Don’t Trust U Anymore.” The song featured an alto saxophone solo by Maceo Parker, throughout which Prince kept asking the woman if she knew who the saxophonist was, and she kept nodding as if she did even though it was clear from her eyes that she didn’t.
It turns out the woman was Leighton Meester, from the Matt Cerrone-favorite show Gossip Girl, which I have never seen. Anyway, I really hate it when people find out you’ve never heard of something and then act incredulous and make you feel stupid. That’s not what Prince did, but it’s something that comes up all the time, especially in music.
You’ll be talking to someone and they’ll be like, “You’ve never heard of HAWKWIND!? How can you even call yourself a music fan you poser!” Well, sorry but I haven’t. I’m confident in my base of knowledge, and I’m sure there are plenty of bands I’ve heard of that you haven’t. For example, I had no idea who Leighton Meester was, which might surprise and for some reason bother fans of contemporary pop culture and the show Gossip Girl, but I did very much know who Maceo Parker was. And I think sharing knowledge is more productive than mocking someone for lacking it, so this is for Ms. Meester and anyone else who doesn’t know about Maceo, because you should.
From the Wikipedia: Maceo Parker.
Maceo Parker is a funk saxophonist. Nay, Maceo Parker is the funk saxophonist. His Wikipedia page says he plays the tenor and bari saxes, but he is mostly associated with the alto sax. He grew up in North Carolina playing in church, and got his big break when James Brown recruited Parker’s brother Melvin to play drums in his touring band. Brown agreed to take on Maceo as well, beginning a rocky association that lasted a quarter of a century.
Maceo would ultimately serve as Brown’s band leader in some of his most popular bands. He played the classic sax line on the recorded version of “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Like many of Brown’s recruits, he left the band multiple times over disagreements with the notoriously rigid Brown. He played in multiple iterations of Parliament-Funkadelic and on numerous projects with funk heroes (and fellow former James Brown bandmembers) trombonist Fred Wesley and bassist Bootsy Collins.
There isn’t much about Parker on his Wikipedia page that’s not about music, and that seems reasonable because he probably doesn’t have much time to do anything else. According to the page, he has played as a sideman on 88 albums since 1964 and recorded 15 of his own. His resume includes gigs with the Brown, P-Funk, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, De La Soul, the Dave Matthews Band, Prince, 10,000 Maniacs, Color Me Badd and Keith Richards.
During the Prince concert, Prince would just occasionally call out for Maceo and Maceo would just walk on from offstage and rip into a sax solo. This is notable because I’ve seen this happen in multiple shows with multiple bands in various venues. I think Maceo Parker might just sort of show up places with his saxophone then stand offstage and assume people will call him on to jam, which they should because he’s awesome.
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