Zork is a text-based video game, a genre also known as “interactive fiction,” whose defining feature is the absence of typical video game graphics. Instead, the game’s environments and the actions you take are described for you. For example, the first line of Zork is, “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” Using a series of simple commands, you direct the main character to do something, like “open mailbox.” To which the game will reply, “Opening the small mailbox reveals a leaflet.” Naturally, you would then “take leaflet,” “read leaflet”, and then maybe “walk east” to get to the house. The story unfolds from there as you collect items, like a sword, a lantern, rope, and other adventuring necessities, before entering a vast, underground cave where you’ll face enemies inspired by The Lord of the Rings, like elves, trolls, and the darkness-lurking grue.

How old is Zork?

Zork was written between 1977 and 1979 by MIT students Tim Anderson, Bruce Daniels, Dave Lebling, and Marc Blank. The young geeks got the idea for Zork from the first text-based video game, Adventure (also called Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT, because the computer it ran on could only use so many letters in the command line). Adventure was created in 1976 by Will Crowther, a student at Stanford, as a simulation of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, with a few Tolkien-esque fantasy elements thrown in by fellow Stanfordite Don Woods. The MIT guys weren’t impressed with Adventure’s limited two-word command structure (“kill troll”), so they wrote Zork to understand complete sentences (“kill troll with sword”).

Most people didn’t have computers back then, so who played Zork?

Originally, Zork and Adventure were both written for the PDP-10, a room-sized computer mainframe that was popular with universities in the late-1970s. Adventure was written in a very common programming language called FORTRAN, so copies of the game spread rapidly among mainframe users. Zork, however, was written with MDL, a more specialized language that wasn’t as popular. So, for a while, the only way to play Zork was to log on to the MIT PDP-10 through ARPAnet, an early version of the internet, and run it remotely. Zork was never officially announced to the world; people just heard about it through ARPANet, making it an early viral sensation.

Just as home computers were becoming more commonplace, a commercial version of Zork was released by Infocom, a company founded by Anderson, Lebling and Blank. However, they didn’t initially intend to sell Zork. They set out to create serious productivity software for the home and business market, but when they realized they didn’t actually have any of those programs written yet, they decided Zork sales could fund their future endeavors.

Since the game was too big to operate on these early home computers, they had to break it into three parts: Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980), Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981), and Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982). Although Zork was first released for the TRS-80 computer, it was eventually ported to just about every home computer, like Apple II, Atari Computers, and the IBM PC. It was a pretty big hit, selling over a million copies.

The success of Zork compelled Infocom to forget their original plan of creating business software and focus on text video games throughout much of the 1980s, releasing over 40 games across a variety of fictional genres. Of course some of these games were Zork sequels and spin-offs, like the Enchanter trilogy (1983-1985), Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987), and the prequel, Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988).

What made Zork such a hit?

There are quite a few things that set Zork and other Infocom games apart from the competition. For one, Infocom games had creative, addictive puzzles and mazes that drove players batty. Some gamers even wrote Infocom letters, asking for a hint to help them get past particularly tough brain teasers. This became so common that Infocom created a monthly newsletter for fans, called the New Zork Times, where they doled out clues, but also told players about upcoming games. Later, Infocom sold Invisiclues hint books. The books were printed with invisible ink that could only be revealed with a special marker, so players could get clues as-needed without spoiling anything farther in the game. Apparently comedian Robin Williams, a long-time gamer who named his daughter Zelda after The Legend of Zelda, had a unique way of getting help with the latest Infocom game – he’d call Marc Blank in the middle of the night and beg for clues.

Marketing was also a huge factor in Infocom’s success. In the early 80s, computer games were mainly sold through mail order or at specialized computer stores. Zork and other Infocom titles, though, also graced the shelves of bookstores. Readers weren’t necessarily concerned about the latest whiz-bang graphics, but they did appreciate the deeper storyline, descriptions, and characters available with Infocom titles. In fact, Infocom became so well known for its writing that when Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was approached to adapt his novel as a video game, he said he wouldn’t work with anyone but Infocom. The resulting Hitchhiker’s game, released in 1984, became one of Infocom’s biggest sellers.

Image credit: The Infocom Gallery

Finally, during the development of the 1982 mystery game Deadline, the programmers realized they couldn’t fit everything into the game. So they created a portfolio of physical items, like mock crime scene photos and police reports, and included them in the box with the game’s 5.25” floppy disks. Players remarked that these “feelies,” as they became known, added to the overall game experience, so Infocom started including them with all their titles. Sometimes feelies were useful, like maps and blueprints, while others were simply there for fun, like an empty plastic bag in the Hitchhiker’s Guide game that supposedly contained a microscopic space fleet.

Image credit: The Staging Point

To capitalize on the success of feelies, new editions of the Zork games were released with items like travel brochures to fictional lands, a guide to an underground amusement park, a history of the Great Underground Empire, shares of FrobozzCo stock, and even a Zorkmid coin, the official currency of the Great Underground Empire. As you might expect, many fans purchased the Zork series all over again, just so they could add the feelies to their collection.

Is Infocom still around?

Sadly, no. In 1984 they finally got around to working on serious business software and released a database program called Cornerstone. The company sank a lot of money into Cornerstone’s development, but it wasn’t very well received by consumers. On the verge of bankruptcy, Infocom accepted a buy-out offer in 1986 from Activision, the company behind video game classics like Pitfall and Chopper Command. Unfortunately, due to the increased emphasis on graphics in video games, as well as poor management at Activision, Infocom was shuttered in 1989.

After closing Infocom, Activision continued to use the beloved Infocom name and Zork brand to create additional sequels, like Return to Zork (1993), Zork Nemesis (1996), and Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997). These games were a big departure from the original text-only gameplay. The new Zorks featured extensive graphics and even full-motion video scenes starring actors, like Dirk Benedict, Rip Taylor, and Michael McKean. Hardcore Infocom fans generally don’t even acknowledge that these games exist.

What does ‘Zork’ mean?

The word ‘Zork’ doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a nonsense word the MIT guys sometimes used as an exclamation (“Zork!”), but also as a placeholder name for a program that was still being written. However, the game was briefly called Dungeon, until TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, threatened to sue. They reverted back to Zork and the name simply stuck.

Does anyone remember Zork?

Just about anyone who had a computer in the early 1980s played Zork or one of its Infocom progeny. In addition, because of its mainframe origins, it was a big hit with early hackers and programmers, who included references to the game in their own programs. Zork is also a major topic of the 2010 documentary, Get Lamp, an in-depth history of the interactive fiction genre, including interviews with almost all of the major pioneers of text adventures.

Perhaps one of Zork‘s longest lasting legacies is the grue, a “sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth,” whose insatiable appetite for adventurers is only tempered by its fear of light from a lamp. One of the most famous lines from Zork — “It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue” — can be found referenced all over the internet, in old and new video games, and in nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot’s homage to Zork, “It is Pitch Dark” (the music video even has a cameo from Steve Meretzky, one of the lead game designers at Infocom).

Can you still play Zork?

Thanks to the internet, good video games never die. A quick Google search will lead you to hundreds of websites that host an online version of Zork, and some even have it available for download. If you’re a modern gamer with a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, an Easter Egg on the main menu lets you play Zork on your Xbox, PS3, or Wii. (Bonus: If you find it, you’ll get the “Eaten by a Grue” achievement.) You can also play Zork, as well as many new interactive fiction games — yes, people still make them — by downloading the Frotz app for the iPhone/iPad.

Were you ever eaten by a grue? Tell us your favorite Zork memories in the comments below!

More from mental_floss…

6 CES Technologies That Were Ahead of Their Time
*
5 Doctor Who Stories Ripped From the Headlines
*
7 Hollywood Ripoffs With Titles (and Posters, and Plots) You Won’t Believe
*
10 Works of Literature That Were Really Hard to Write
*
9 Very Rare (and Very Expensive) Video Game Cartridges

1. Knife Thrower

Knife throwers and their “impalement arts” cousins—bullwhip crackers, archery experts, and firearm sharpshooters—became popular in the late-1800s as part of circuses and Wild West shows. The knife throwing acts generally consisted of a few standard stunts, like popping balloons, pinning playing cards, slicing through flower stems, as well as the famous “Profile,” in which the thrower embeds 12″ knives along the body of his assistant, known as a “target girl.”

By far the most famous stunt, though, is “The Wheel of Death,” in which the target girl is strapped to a large wooden wheel and then spun around. It’s unknown exactly how old the Wheel stunt is, but it’s widely believed that The Gibsons, a husband and wife act, are responsible for bringing it to America in 1938 as part of the Ringling Brothers Circus. The Gibsons also introduced the most death-defying stunt known, the Veiled Wheel of Death, in which a large sheet of paper hides the wheel from the thrower. The stunt has been performed only by a handful of acts—The Gibsons, The Zeros in the 1940s, The Brumbachs (performed only once in 1978), and the current Guinness Record Holder for Fastest Knife Throwing, David “The Great Throwdini” Adamovich. The Great Throwdini has even taken the stunt one step further by adding a second target girl:

The Great Throwdini performs the Veiled Double Wheel of Death.

2. Lion Tamer

In 1819, Germany’s Henri Martin stood inside a cage with a tiger for four minutes and lived to tell the tale. It was the culmination of many weeks’ worth of acclimation, gaining the beast’s trust by first rubbing the tiger through the bars, and then putting his head and shoulders inside before finally walking into the cage. After forming a friendly bond, Martin soon taught the tiger to do simple canine-like tricks, such as sitting up and lying down on command, thus becoming the first-known wild animal trainer.

Although Martin’s methods were humane, not all trainers have been so kind. Pioneering American trainer Isaac Van Amburgh was the first person to (intentionally) put his head inside a lion’s mouth. Unfortunately, he gained this type of control by savagely beating the animals into submission with a crowbar. Van Amburgh justified his cruelty by citing Genesis, which proclaims man’s dominion over the animals. Even at the time, his methods were controversial, but it didn’t prevent him from performing his show across Europe and America to huge crowds in the 1830s and ’40s.

This “Man vs. Beast” philosophy was also the basis for trainer Clyde Beatty’s act (above), which ran from the 1920s until the early 1960s. Inside the ring, Beatty used a bullwhip and chair to distract the big cats, and he kept a loaded pistol strapped to his side, becoming the epitome of the lion tamer persona that we all know today.

Clyde Beatty performing with his cats.

Sadly, cruelty to circus animals continues even today. Recently, the famous Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus was hit with a $270,000 fine for 27 alleged violations of the Animal Welfare Act, stretching back to 2007.

3. Human Cannonball

Despite the big bang and puff of smoke, human cannonballs are not really shot out of the cannon with gunpowder. In fact, the original design for the catapulting system, created by tightrope walker William Leonard Hunt, used rubber springs for propulsion. The first dedicated human cannonball act was a 14-year-old girl going by the stage name “Zazel,” whose inaugural blastoff occurred on April 2, 1877, in London. Sadly, her career ended a few years later the same way as so many other human cannonballs—she missed the net. Thankfully, though, she only broke her back.

The cannon’s design was upgraded in 1922 by Italy’s Zacchini Brothers, who replaced the rubber springs with compressed air. Originally, they suggested the Italian Army use the cannon to send troops equipped with parachutes behind enemy lines, but when the Army said no, they adopted it for the circus instead. Over the course of 70 years and multiple generations, the Zacchinis became the long-standing holders of the world record for distance, and helped popularize the now-common stunt of launching over obstacles, such as buildings or carnival rides.

The modern reigning family of human cannonballs is the Smiths, made up of patriarch David, son David Jr., and one of the few female cannonballers, daughter Jennifer. Over the years, the Smiths have been fired up and over everything from the American-Mexican border to a baseball stadium wall, the first human home run. They also have quite a few world records to their credit. The first was in 1995, when David Sr. broke the Zacchini’s distance record by launching himself 180′. David Jr. upstaged his old man in March 2011, though, when he went 193′. But David Sr. still holds the record for the highest launch at 200’4″, which he set by flying over two Ferris Wheels in 2002.

David Smith, Jr., being fired out of a cannon.

4. Flying Trapeze

In 1859, acrobat Jules Leotard (left) hung trapeze bars over the swimming pool in his father’s gymnasium. He then swung and launched himself from one to the next without fear because, if he missed, he simply landed safely in the water below. A few weeks later, Leotard introduced his 12-minute “flying trapeze” routine at Cirque Napoleon, where he was soon performing to sold-out crowds. Sadly, his reign as king of swing was cut short—he died in 1870 of either typhoid or cholera. However, his legacy lives on as the namesake of the skin-tight leggings he wore for his act, as well as the inspiration for the 1867 song, “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”

While single and double somersaults are pretty standard tricks on the flying trapeze, a triple is so dangerous that Italian fliers once called it solto mortale, “The Deadly Leap.” The danger lies in the fact that the feat must be accomplished at such high speed that the brain loses track of its place in space, making it difficult for the flier to regain their sense and know it’s time to reach out to the catcher. Missing the catcher means dropping into the net (if there is one), which is notorious for breaking the necks of even seasoned fliers if they’re not in the right position. However, this Holy Grail of stunts was performed in 1897 by Lena Jordan, a 4’10″ 18-year-old woman who weighed in at a whopping 94 pounds. After Jordan proved it could be done, more fliers tried it, and soon the triple became the high-water mark of a truly exceptional act.

Of course if the triple was possible, it seemed logical that a quadruple was, too. Many tried, but the quadruple eluded even the most skilled fliers until July 10, 1982, when Miguel Vazquez of Ringling Brothers, spinning at more than 80mph, landed the first in Tucson, Arizona, in front of a crowd of 7,000 spectators. Since Vazquez, the stunt has only been completed by a handful of fliers, most recently in January 2010 by Ivo Silva, Jr., of The Flying Caceres.

Miguel Vazquez performing a quadruple somersault.

5. Tightrope Walker

For hundreds of years, acrobats and jugglers have upped the ante by performing their routines suspended high above the ground on a thin wire. As if the very act of walking on a wire 5/8″ thick at 40′ in the air (minimum) without a net wasn’t dangerous enough, these “funambulists” have continually developed routines that truly defy reason. Perhaps the most famous of these is the human pyramid, wherein two walkers follow each other onto the rope with a balance bar stretched between them on their shoulders. A third walker will then climb onto the bar and the group will make its way across.

But a three-person pyramid simply wasn’t exciting enough for Karl Wallenda. In 1928, his Great Wallendas performed a four-person, three-level pyramid consisting of two men on bicycles, with Karl sitting on a chair on the bar between them, and his wife Helen standing on his shoulders. They performed this act for years under their original name; however, that changed during a performance in Akron, Ohio, when the group lost their balance and fell. They caught themselves on the wire and were unharmed, but a reporter in the crowd said they fell so gracefully that it appeared they were flying. From then on, they became known as The Flying Wallendas.

The family pushed the act to the limit, performing a three-layer, seven-person pyramid: two pairs of men with shoulder beams at the bottom, two more men with a shoulder beam on the next level up, and a woman on a chair like a cherry on top. They performed this stunt (above) without incident from 1948 until January 30, 1962, when, tragically, the performers fell during a show in Detroit. Of the seven, two died on impact and another was paralyzed from the waist down. The rest dangled from the wire, but made it down safely. Convinced that the show must go on, the pyramid was dropped from the routine, but the Wallendas performed again the very next night.

A group practicing the Wallenda 7 act for a production at the Goodman Theatre of Chicago.

The fall in Detroit led some members of the act to retire shortly thereafter. The tragedy had the opposite effect on Karl, though. He practically became a one-man act, performing ever more daring tightrope walks from ever increasing heights and distances. He became famous throughout the 1970s for walking 1,000′ across Tallulah Gorge in Georgia, across the roofs of stadiums like the Astrodome, and between two landmark hotels in Miami Beach. It was during a 1978 daredevil performance in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that the 73-year-old tightrope walker fell 120′ to the concrete parking lot below, live on camera. (Yes, it is on YouTube.) For a man who risked his life for the thrill of the crowd, he probably wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

More from mental_floss…

The Great Gettysburg Reunion of 1913
*
September 11th and the Hospitable People of Gander, Newfoundland
*
Who Wrote the Pledge of Allegiance?
*
Dogs Welcoming Home Returning Soldiers
*
Andrew Jackson’s Big Block of Cheese
*
Glory Day: Lancaster’s Brief Stint as Our Nation’s Capital

Who Comes Up With This Stuff?

Cousins Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz got the idea for the show when, as two mid-30s dads, they were less-than-enthusiastic about the television shows their kids were watching. It wasn’t that the other shows were bad; they were just boring and sanitized. With their experience as musicians and videographers, Jacobs and Schultz thought they could do something different. So they scraped together about $150,000 and began writing, animating, and shooting demo episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba in their garage. They posted these videos online and Jared Hess, director of Napoleon Dynamite, happened to see them. Impressed, Hess passed the link on to Brown Johnson, an executive at Nickelodeon, who said, “Lordy. Nothing else looks like this on television.” She quickly contacted the duo and, in a risky move that has obviously paid off, gave them complete creative control of their own show on Nick Jr.

Christian Jacobs was a child actor in the 1980s with bit parts on Highway to Heaven and Roseanne. He also appeared in Pretty in Pink and the Christian Slater skateboarding classic, Gleaming the Cube. But his biggest part was as Joey Stivic, the son of Sally Struthers’ Gloria Bunker Stivic, on the short-lived All in the Family spin-off Gloria. More on co-creator Scott Shultz in a moment.

Gabba Gabba What?

According to Jacobs, the name of the show is a nonsense phrase meant to be reminiscent of the first words spoken by a baby. However, that doesn’t mean Jacobs and Schultz aren’t happy the name also pays homage to The Ramones, who used the phrase “Gabba Gabba Hey!” in their song “Pinhead.” But that actually makes it an homage of an homage, as The Ramones were paying tribute to the original source of the phrase, the 1932 cult classic film, Freaks. In the film, “Gabba Gabba Hey!” is part of a chant uttered by a group of circus freaks as they welcome a new member into the fold.

Hot Toys

The Gabba action figures that DJ Lance brings to life at the beginning of each episode were produced by Kidrobot, one of the leading names in the vinyl toy movement, and a branch of W!LDBRAIN Productions. For a brief time in 2007 and 2008, you could buy your own copy of the toys based on the original molds for about $50 each. But because the toys are now out of production, it’s not unusual to see them go for upwards of $275 on eBay.

Theme Song Selection

The show’s intro music seems suspiciously like the intro music from another kinetic kid’s show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Pay close attention to when the trees part on the Pee-wee’s intro and you’ll hear a lot of similarities between the two.

*

Yo Gabba Gabba Theme Song from yogabbagabbafriends on Vimeo.

World Famous

The show is a worldwide phenomenon, currently broadcast in Italy, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada. Check out the French version of “Snacky Snacks” from Tiji, France’s answer to Nick Jr.

Meet DJ Lance

DJ Lance Rock is actually Lance Robertson — and he really is a DJ. Robertson grew up in St. Louis, where he started spinning records in the early 90s before moving to Los Angeles at the age of 29. While in L.A., he played with a band, The Ray Makers, who played a few gigs with a group called Majestic, which counted future Yo Gabba Gabba co-creator Scott Schultz as a member. When the YGG guys were looking for a host, Schultz thought of the outgoing and friendly Robertson. After Robertson signed on, one of the first things he did was suggest they change DJ Lance’s look to the now-iconic orange jumpsuit and fuzzy hat. The original costume included a waistcoat similar to the one worn by Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

The Aquabats

While the other characters were created exclusively for YGG, Muno and Brobee were already around as part of the live show for Christian Jacob’s kid-friendly ska/punk band, The Aquabats. Since shortly after their founding in 1994, The Aquabats have dressed in matching superhero costumes, fighting evil under aliases like The MC Bat Commander (Jacobs), Crash McLarson, Jimmy the Robot, Ricky Fitness, and Eagle “Bones” Falconhawk. The line-up has changed frequently over the years (Travis Barker of Blink-182 was briefly their drummer under the name “The Baron von Tito”), but the band still performs live and releases the occasional studio album. Naturally, they’ve made a handful of appearances on YGG, as well.

The Devo Connection

While most kids only know him as the kookie art teacher on the show, Mark Mothersbaugh was one of the founding members and lead singer of the New Wave band, Devo. Even when he’s not wearing a red terraced “Energy Dome” hat, Mothersbaugh’s career has been prolific as a composer for dozens of TV shows, films, video games, and commercials, including Apple’s famous “I’m a Mac” ads starring Justin Long and mental_floss favorite, John Hodgman.

Let’s All Do It Together With Biz

Gabba fans learn how to beatbox thanks to rapper Biz Markie (born Marcel Theo Hall) and his “Beat of the Day” segment. Biz was initially asked to do a Dancey Dance routine for the show, but he has a bad back, so he offered to teach the kids how to do a beat instead. The producers loved it and it became a staple on the show. Parents know Biz best from his 1989 hit, “Just a Friend,” featuring his unique brand of rapping and “singing.” Shortly after the single reached #9 on the Billboard charts, he released his follow-up album, I Need a Haircut, but ran into legal trouble when he was sued for copyright infringement by singer/songwriter Gilbert O’Sullivan over a track that sampled O’Sullivan’s song, “Alone Again.”

The ruling in the case had a serious impact on the music business, as now any time a musician samples another person’s song, they have to get clearance from the original copyright holder. This usually involves some kind of fee, which makes producing songs with samples much more expensive. In response to the suit, Biz’s next album was called, All Samples Cleared!

Here’s one of Biz’s segments on the show:

When You’re in Trouble, and You Need Help…

The comic book the Gabba gang often reads, Super Martian Robot Girl, is the creation of married underground comic book celebrities Sarah Dyer and Evan Dorkin. Dorkin is the genius behind the small press comic Milk and Cheese about “dairy products gone bad” — a milk carton and a wedge of cheese who love to drink gin and beat people up. Dyer was an influential creator in the 90′s zine scene, where she was one of the few people giving female zinesters a voice with her Action Girl Newsletter, which later paved the way for the similarly-themed Action Girl Comics.

The Trophy Case

Yo Gabba Gabba received Daytime Emmy nominations last year for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction/Set Decoration/Scenic Design, as well as their first for Outstanding Pre-School Children’s Series. They already have a BAFTA and a Television Critic’s Award on their mantle, as well as two previous Daytime Emmy nominations for costume design.

Endorsement Deals

Ever wanted to see Foofa pop a wheelie? How about Toodee ride a surfboard? Now you can thanks to a series of videos the Gabba gang shot to promote their line of Vans Shoes, a brand popular among the X-Games crowd. The characters shared the screen with some of the biggest names in the X-Games, like surfers Alex Knost and Jared Mel, skateboarders Bucky Lasek and Christian Hosoi, BMXers Allistair Whitton and Coco Zurita, and motocross stars Dean Wilson and Ryan Villopoto. You can check out the videos at Yo Gabba Gabba‘s official YouTube channel.

On the Road

Yo Gabba Gabba has performed a handful of concerts as part of the “Yo Gabba Gabba Live! There’s a Party in My City!” tour. The live performances are essentially extended episodes of the show, with a lot more musical numbers and special celebrity guests on stage. For the L.A. show in November 2010, quite a few famous folks attended with their kids, including Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Mila Jovovich, Jack Black, and Nicole Richie. Snoop Dogg was a special guest for the Dancey Dance portion of the show and Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys was the DJ. Moby showed up when the tour reached Radio City Music Hall.

Field Trip

The gang invaded the Coachella Music Festival in 2010 where they performed, hung out with celebrity fans backstage, and even showed up to dance with the audience at other musical performances. (I can’t even imagine how hot it must have been inside those suits!) Check out Muno’s behind-the-scenes video for a glimpse:

Celebrity Fans

For Halloween 2009, Brad Pitt donned DJ Lance’s orange jumpsuit and fuzzy hat when he took his kids trick-or-treating. Lance was later quoted as saying that Pitt looked “Awesome” and invited Brangelina and the kids to hang out in Gabbaland anytime.

While most celebrities only come on the show to do a Dancey Dance or Cool Tricks segment, there have been a handful of guests that played a bigger role in an episode. The first was Jack Black, who had an entire episode dedicated to his adventures in Gabbaland after his flying motorbike ran out of gas. He got the gig after his wife emailed the show and practically begged them to let Jack come on because he was such a big fan. Since then, Angela Kinsey from The Office has played a teacher, the Tooth Fairy was played by Amy Sedaris, Mos Def saved the day as Super Mr. Superhero, and hard-edged food critic Anthony Bourdain cameoed as a doctor.

The list of celebrities leading the Gabbas in Dancey Dances or performing Cool Tricks is long, but here are some highlights:

Elijah Wood (Actor)
Sarah Silverman (Comedian/Actor)
Sean Kingston (Singer)
Mya (Singer)
Rahzel (Beatboxer/Rapper)
Sugarland (Country music duo)
Rob Dyrdek (Professional Skateboarder)
Tony Hawk (Professional Skateboarder)
Mix Master Mike (DJ for the Beastie Boys)
Andy Samberg (SNL Actor)
Laila Ali (Boxer and Muhammad Ali’s daughter)
Amar’e Stoudemire (Basketball Star)

Here are some of the biggest bands who’ve performed on the show:

The Shins
The Flaming Lips
The Decemberists
The Roots
Devo
Weird Al Yankovic
Solange Knowles
Taking Back Sunday
Weezer
MGMT
Chromeo
Paul Williams (who sang his most famous song, “Rainbow Connection”)
Jimmy Eat World
Hot Hot Heat
Mates of State
The Ting Tings

More from mental_floss…

Sesame Street International: 9 Notable Muppets From Around the World
*
How Mister Rogers Saved the VCR
*
Way More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Hello Kitty
*
16 Movie Sequels Nobody Has Ever Heard Of
*
22 Fictional Characters Whose Names You Don’t Know

Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Winsor McCay was a revolutionary newspaper comic strip creator, but was also a pioneer in animation, creating techniques and methods that are still in use 100 years later. His first production, Little Nemo, has an impressive two minutes of color animation featuring characters from his Little Nemo comic strip that were set in motion by 4,000 drawings created over a span of 30 days. The artwork is notable for being more refined than earlier animated films, which starred little more than stick figures, setting a new standard for animation that is extraordinary even today.

McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur introduces what many consider to be the first cartoon character. Before Gertie, an ornery Brontosaurus, early animated characters didn’t have much in the way of personality. In contrast, Gertie danced and even scuffled with a mastodon, but McCay also made her part of an expertly timed interactive performance. Standing next to the movie screen, McCay would talk to Gertie, who would react according to his commands. Then, at the end of their schtick, McCay would walk behind the screen, an animated version of him would appear in the film, and the two would ride off into the sunset together. Later versions of the film had McCay’s dialog placed onto title cards and featured additional live-action scenes so the film could tour without being a live show, but it was still as effective for audiences who marveled at the “living” dinosaur on the screen.

Steamboat Willie (1928)

Although most people know Steamboat Willie as the debut film of Mickey Mouse, it’s also notable for being the first cartoon with fully synchronized sound. There had been earlier attempts at synchronized sound cartoons before, but the audio never quite stayed on track with the animation. In fact, the first recording of the audio for Willie didn’t stay perfectly synchronized either, but Walt sold his beloved roadster to fund a re-recording. His sacrifice was worth it – the film became a huge hit and helped kick start the Disney animated empire.

The film has also gained notoriety for never lapsing into the public domain. Oddly, every time Steamboat Willie‘s copyright is about to expire – in 1956, in 1976, and in 1998 – Congress has changed copyright laws to grant extensions for historical works. Whether this is just coincidence or the result of lobbying by Disney is up for debate. Either way, some opponents called the 1998 extension the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act.” Unless another extension is granted, Steamboat Willie will finally pass into the public domain in 2023, nearly 100 years after its debut.

Snow White (1933)

Although Disney’s version of the classic fairytale is also on the Film Registry for being the first American animated feature-length film, this cartoon, starring squeaky-voiced flapper Betty Boop, is included because of its extensive use of rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is a technique where the cartoon images are drawn over individual frames of film from a human actor’s recorded performance, making the animation very fluid and realistic. In this case, a character named Koko the Clown was animated using dance footage of jazz great Cab Calloway, who also provided the voice. The film is also unusual because it’s the work of a single animator, Roland Crandall, who was given the opportunity to make his own movie by Fleischer Studios as a reward for many years of loyal service.

Rotoscoping went on to be used for films like 1978′s The Lord of the Rings and, more recently, Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, which use computer rotoscoping to surreal effect. Of course, rotoscoping is also the precursor to today’s motion-capture technology that helped bring the simian stars of Rise of the Planet of the Apes to life.

Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) and The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)

United Productions of America (UPA) was a little-known but very influential studio in the 1950s and ’60s. Their Oscar-winning short film, Gerald McBoing-Boing, a Dr. Seuss story about a boy who can speak only in sound effects, introduced “limited animation,” a process that uses fewer drawings, simpler character designs, and repetitive, sparse background art. UPA employed limited animation to artistically distance itself from the more realistic style of Disney. However, the technique was widely adopted by television animation studios in the 1960s, most notably Hanna-Barbera for shows like The Flintstones and other cartoon staples, because it was much cheaper to produce than traditional cartoons.

Before The Tell-Tale Heart, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, theatrical cartoons were strictly kid’s stuff. But this 8-minute short, produced by UPA and narrated by James Mason, was deemed so disturbing that it became the first cartoon to be rated X by the British Board of Film Censors. That didn’t prevent the Academy from nominating the film for Best Animated Short, though it lost to Disney’s music education short, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which, oddly enough, uses very sparse and stylized background art like the type typically found in limited animation productions.

Duck Amuck (1953), One Froggy Evening (1956), and What’s Opera, Doc? (1957)

With three famous Warner Bros. cartoons, director Chuck Jones is the most represented single animator in the National Film Registry. The selected shorts aren’t necessarily technically innovative, but there’s no doubt they’re culturally significant.

Duck Amuck is a surreal, Fourth Wall-breaking cartoon of Daffy Duck being agitated by an unseen animator (SPOILER: It’s Daffy’s rival, Bugs bunny). Over the course of the short, his voice changes, the scenery changes, and his physical form becomes everything from a duck to a cowboy to a strange flower-headed creature with a screwball flag for a tail. Jones has said that the film was meant to show audiences how a cartoon can instill a character with personality, changing Daffy in drastic physical measures but never altering the cantankerous wit that he is best known for.

One Froggy Evening tells the story of a frog found inside the cornerstone of a building that is being torn down. The construction worker that discovers him is astonished to learn that the frog is a top hat-wearing, one-amphibian Broadway act… but only when no one else is looking. The cartoon is most likely based on the story of Ol’ Rip, a lizard that was allegedly buried in the cornerstone of a Texas courthouse in 1897, only to be found alive and well when the building was demolished in 1928. (There’s no indication Rip could carry a tune, though.) In the original cartoon, the frog has no name, and the man who provides his “Hello! Ma Baby” singing voice goes uncredited. However, in the years since, Jones named the frog Michigan J. Frog, and the singer is now credited on DVD releases as Bill Roberts, an obscure nightclub singer from the 1950s.

Most people mistakenly think this famous cartoon is called Kill the Wabbit, but its title is actually What’s Opera, Doc? Based upon the works of composer Richard Wagner, the cartoon features Elmer as a Viking and Bugs Bunny disguised as the Valkyrie he is trying to woo. The short didn’t offer much in the way of innovation, but it’s so funny and creative that it’s clearly the work of a director at the top of his game. It’s no surprise this was ranked the best cartoon of all time in 1994 by 1,000 professional animators.

Tin Toy (1988)

Today, Pixar is a household name, but in 1988, only a few animation studios had heard of them. In an effort to sell its new PhotoRealistic RenderMan software, which later became the first computer program to win an Oscar, director John Lasseter created Tin Toy, a short film about a wind-up one-man band trying desperately to hide from its new owner, a destructive baby. In 1989, it became the first computer-animated film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Short, helping put Pixar on the map. After the win, a half-hour TV Christmas special sequel was considered but, at the urging of Disney, Pixar decided to focus on developing a feature length spin-off idea instead. That idea became Toy Story, which was inducted into the Film Registry in 2005.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Aside from being a fan favorite, Beauty and the Beast received six Oscar nominations in 1992, including the first animated film up for Best Picture. That honor wasn’t bestowed on another animated film again until the Academy expanded the field from five to ten nominees in 2010, when Pixar’s Up received a nod. Beauty and the Beast didn’t win the Best Picture that year – 2011 Film Registry inductee The Silence of the Lambs did – but it didn’t go home empty-handed either, winning for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

Bambi (1942) and A computer Animated Hand (1972)

2011 saw the induction of two more animated films, both significant in their own right.

At the behest of Walt, Bambi was a major shift away from the cartoony artwork Disney Studios was known for to a much more realistic style. This was accomplished by having the animators draw using live animals as models, which were shipped to a temporary zoo at Disney Studios. Unfortunately, it was this realism that hurt the film among critics, who preferred the more fantastic style they were used to. The movie was also a financial flop upon its initial release, most likely because the European markets were closed off due to World War II. it would make its money back with subsequent re-releases, of course, and the critics came around as well, eventually making it one of the most beloved of all of Disney’s films.

The one-minute film A Computer Animated Hand might not seem impressive, but when you consider the technological movement this short clip has spawned, it could be one of the most influential animated films in history. In 1972, two University of Utah students, Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke, made a digital model of Catmull’s left hand, which they were able to manipulate on the screen, creating one of the world’s first 3-D computer animated sequences. Catmull and Parke also later animated a human face using the same techniques to creepy, but similarly groundbreaking, results. After college, Parke became a professor at Texas A&M, while Catmull went on to change computer animation forever by founding a little company called Pixar.

More from mental_floss…

The Stories of 10 People Featured on Historically Bad Album Covers
*
It’s a Steal! How Columbia House Made Money Giving Away Music
*
From North Korean Waitresses to American Bridesmaids: Compulsory Plastic Surgery
*
The Giant Inflatable Union Rat Has a Name—Scabby
*
16 Movie Sequels Nobody Has Ever Heard Of

1. Hair and Nails

When Hananuma Masakichi learned he was dying of tuberculosis, he wanted to give his girlfriend a way to remember him. So he constructed a life-sized and startlingly realistic statue of himself using thousands of strips of wood – some reports say between 2,000 and 5,000 strips, others say as many as 20,000. The strips are held together by glue, dovetail joints, or wooden pegs, and fits so precisely that no seams are visible across the whole figure.

During the construction, Masakichi even sacrificed pieces of his own body to help his wooden doppelganger come to life. He not only pulled out his own fingernails and toenails to attach to the statue, he also allegedly yanked his own teeth for the figure’s mouth. He then painstakingly drilled tiny holes, one for each of his pores, and plucked the corresponding hair from his body to glue it into the same pore on the statue. Yes, he even did this with the hairs under his loincloth.

Masakichi finished his statue in 1885 and put it on display. He stood next to the statue in the same pose, and many viewers couldn’t tell which was the real man and which was made out of wood. Sadly, it was all for naught. The girlfriend left him, he never made any real money from the statue, and some reports say that when he finally died 10 years later, it wasn’t even from TB; apparently he received a bad diagnosis.

When Robert Ripley began collecting the world’s oddities in the 1930s, Masakichi’s statue was one of the first items he acquired, paying a San Francisco saloon-owner $10 for it. Among the hundreds of items Ripley owned over the years, Masakichi’s statue was one of his favorites, often displayed in his museums and even in his own home.

2. Bloody Good Art (#1)

Van Gogh painted some famous self-portraits. Frida Kahlo painted herself into many of her own pieces. Even Leonardo da Vinci drew a nice rendition of himself. But none of those artists have taken self-portraiture to the extreme of Britart star Marc Quinn, with his series of sculptures known as Self. Starting in 1991 and continuing once every five years until 2006, Quinn took a mold of his entire head and then cast it in nearly five liters of his own blood, which he drained over a period of about five months. The blood sculptures are quite fragile and have to be stored in special refrigeration units that keep each head at 10°F (-12°C) to prevent melting.

The first Self was purchased by one of the Britart movement’s biggest early supporters, Charles Saatchi, who paid £13,000 for it. There were rumors that the sculpture had melted in 2003 while Saatchi was having his kitchen remodeled – probably to please his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson. He proved those rumors untrue when he sold Self for £1.5 million in 2005 to an American collector. The final version, Self IV, is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

3. Bloody Good Art (#2)

All artists suffer for their art, but Lani Beloso has made her suffering into art instead. Beloso has menorrhagio, a condition that causes her to have very heavy, very painful menstrual cycles. Wishing to make her suffering worth something, she began collecting her menstrual flow every month and used it for a series of 13 paintings, representing a year’s worth of menstrual cycles, which she called The Period Piece.

For her follow-up, 2nd Period, Beloso has encased her art in two sheets of plexiglass like a slide ready to go under the microscope. The painting is then hung away from the wall so that light shines through, casting an image, creating a second work of art.

4. Urine Trouble

Few pieces of art have evoked emotions like Andres Serrano’s 1987 Immersion (Piss Christ). The photo depicts a plastic crucifix that is submerged in a glass container filled with what Serrano claims is his urine. Serrano intended the piece to be a statement on the commercialism of religion and a reflection on the way Christian symbols are treated in America. Of course this is not how everyone – especially Christians – interpret the work.

After the photo was unveiled in 1989, it was met with a flurry of controversy. The heat grew when it was discovered that Serrano had received $15,000 from the publicly funded National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Politicians were outraged that tax dollars had paid for art from Serrano and other controversial artists who many of their constituents found blasphemous. They moved to have the NEA’s funds revoked, but were ultimately unsuccessful. As a compromise, the NEA no longer provides money to individual artists, but instead supports art projects that take into consideration “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”

Since its debut, prints of Piss Christ have been occasionally attacked by protesters. In 1997, after a failed attempt by the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Australia, to have the photo removed from an exhibit, the photo was smashed by two teens with a hammer. Most recently, in April 2011, members of a French Christian group also took a hammer to the piece, and then used a sharp object to deface the photo. Instead of taking the photo down or closing the exhibit, the gallery reopened the next day with the damaged photo in place “so people can see what barbarians can do.”

5. Really Crappy Art

Many artists find family members are their harshest critics. Such was the case for Italian artist Piero Manzoni, whose father declared, “Your work is shit.” With his father’s words as inspiration, Manzoni decided to make a statement about the art world’s willingness to buy anything as long as it’s been signed by a famous artist. To that end, Manzoni filled 90 tin cans with his own excrement. This must have made the old man proud, considering the senior Manzoni owned a canning factory. The artist then sealed the tins, signed them, and printed a number on each one, indicating its number in the limited series. The tins were called Merda d’artistal, or Artist’s Shit.

Manzoni sold each tin, which weighed about 30 grams (or just over an ounce), for the going-rate of gold, allowing the price to fluctuate with the precious metals market. At the time, in 1961, his tins sold for about $37 each; in today’s market, they’d go for about $1800. But, as if to prove his point, the tins currently sell for many times that at auction. The Tate Modern Art Museum in London spent £22,300 for one of the tins in 2000. Just seven years later, one sold at Sotheby’s for €124,000.

Merda d’artista was part of a series by Manzoni, including Fiato d’artista, or Artist’s Breath – balloons filled from his own lungs. He also planned to make Sangue d’artista, or Artist’s Blood, but that project never got off the ground. Maybe he just wasn’t willing to bleed for his art.

6. Is That Hair Gel?

Marcel Duchamp is best-known for his “Readymade” art projects, as well as a definitive Cubist piece, Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2. However, he is also well-known for Paysage fautif, or Faulty Landscape (some prefer Wayward Landscape), created in 1946 as a gift for Maria Martins, a woman he loved but could not have. The piece (at left) consists of a Plexiglas-like sheet called Astralon, backed with black velvet, and mounted in a simple wooden frame. It wasn’t until 1989 that the art world’s suspicions were confirmed by genetic testing: the “paint” used for the piece is in fact Duchamp’s own seminal fluid.

7. Nope. Not Hair Gel.

Although Duchamp might have pioneered this most unusual medium, he was not the last. German artist Martin von Ostrowski’s most ambitious (and undoubtedly tiring) work to date has been a series of 30 self-portraits that he has painted with his own semen.

This isn’t Ostrowski’s only example of using his body for artwork – he is also famous for using his own feces to paint portraits of Hitler and other German leaders.

8. Limited Edition DNA

For many artists, the most personal stamp they put on a piece is their signature. Barry Freedland, on the other hand, uses his identity to create most of his art. Freedland has designed, built, and programmed robots that can draw beautiful, complex shapes by repeatedly stamping out a copy of his thumbprint. He has also equipped bots with a plaster cast of his own hand holding a graphite pencil, so even though he’s not technically drawing the artwork, he still has his “hand” in the proceedings. But perhaps most interesting of all is Freedland’s work with his own DNA.

His Battle of Barry Pills is a large pharmaceutical container filled to the brim with small plastic pills. Inside each pill is a photo of the artist, as well as a sample of his DNA. If you want something more collectible for your money, you can also buy not lithographs, but “lickographs” – small cards that Freedland has licked, thus passing on his DNA. The cards are sold from a stamp vending machine (at left) and are available in three different versions: 25 cents buys you a simple DNA sample; 50 cents buys you a signed DNA sample card; and for 75 cents, you’ll have your very own signed, limited edition sample.

More from mental_floss…

Do Not Touch: 8 Times Museum Patrons Mangled Works of Art
*
11 Sounds Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard
*
16 Movie Sequels Nobody Has Ever Heard Of
*
9 Really Dangerous Pieces of Art
*
8 Shameless Abuses of Diplomatic Immunity
*
The FBI Plot Against “Louie Louie”

Svetlana Alliluyeva was born in 1926 to Nadezhda Alliluyeva and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. She was the youngest of Stalin’s three children and his only daughter. Her mother died under suspicious circumstances when Svetlana was only six years old, leaving her in the care of nannies for much of her childhood, and only receiving occasional visits from her busy father.

While the two were never close, Stalin still had a forceful hand in his daughter’s life, especially her love life. Although it wasn’t the official reason, it’s believed that Svetlana’s first love was sent into exile because of their relationship. She later married another man, but even after the couple had a son and named him after Stalin, the Premier refused to meet his son-in-law.

She married again two years later, to Yuri Zhadanov, son of Stalin’s second-in-command, Andrei Zhdanov, but the marriage didn’t last. She met her next love, Brajesh Singh, in 1963, 10 years after her father’s death. Although the two were never allowed to marry, they often referred to each other as husband and wife. Singh died three years later due to complications from various ailments, and Alliluyeva was allowed to take Singh’s ashes to his family in New Delhi, India. With her first taste of freedom, Svetlana went to the United States Embassy and asked for political asylum.

After moving to America, she wrote her autobiography, Twenty Letters to a Friend, denouncing her father’s regime and the Communist way of life. While here, she married William Wesley Peters, a top apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the couple had a daughter. Svetlana started going by the name Lana Peters. After this marriage also ended in divorce, she and her daughter moved to the UK, then later back to the Soviet Union, where they were both, surprisingly, granted citizenship. However, they left again and bounced between the UK and the US throughout the 1980s and 90s.

She lived in obscurity until 2007, when filmmaker Lana Parshina tracked her down to record a series of interviews, resulting in the 2008 film, Svetlana About Svetlana. She passed away on November 22, 2011.

More from mental_floss…

The Last King of New Jersey: The Suburban Life of Napoleon’s Brother
*
Operation Barbarossa: The Biggest Military Adventure in History
*
17 Vowel-Free Words Acceptable in Words With Friends
*
14 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent
*
The Best and Worst Political Campaign Songs (But Mostly the Worst)
*
Pizza for Reading: Pizza Hut’s Book It! Program