1. The show was created by producer Jay Ward and cartoonist Alex Anderson, who had worked together on the Crusader Rabbit series. Their initial vision was a show called The Frostbite Falls Revue about a group of animals running a TV station, but the project never got beyond the proposal stage. The next attempt at a new series began with the pilot Rocky the Flying Squirrel. General Mills came on as a sponsor and Rocky and His Friends was born.

2. Instead of hiring animators when production of Rocky and His Friends got rolling, Ward convinced some friends at Dancer, Fitzgerald, & Sample, an advertising agency that had General Mills as a client, to buy the Mexican animation studio Gamma Productions so he could outsource the animation. The plan saved money and the Mexican studio churned work out quickly, but quality was an issue. In early episodes of the show, it’s not uncommon to see characters’ facial hair, costumes and skin tone change color.

3. Bullwinkle is named after Jay Ward’s friend Clarence Bullwinkel, a Berkeley landlord and owner of an Oakland Chevrolet dealership.

4. The name of the time machine featured in “Peabody’s Improbable History” is sometimes incorrectly written out as the “Way Back Machine,” but the correct name is the WABAC machine, a play on early computers like UNIVAC,

5. Rocky and Bullwinkle live in the town of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. The population of Frostbite Falls is variously given as 23, 48, 29, 31.5 and 4001 over the course of the series.

6. Bullwinkle is originally from the state is Moosylvania, a small island in the Lake of the Woods, and is actually its governor. The ownership of the state is the subject of dispute between the United States and Canada, with each country claiming it belongs to the other. As a publicity stunt, Ward and Bill Scott, the show’s head writer and voice of Bullwinkle, bought a small island on a Minnesota lake, named it Moosylvania and started a national tour and petition drive to campaign for Moosylvania’s statehood. After visiting 50 cities and collecting signatures, they went to Washington to present President Kennedy with their petition. At the White House gate they declared, “We’re here to see President Kennedy. We want statehood for Moosylvania.” They were escorted from the property at gunpoint and didn’t learn until days later that they had shown up during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On the show, Rocky and Bullwinkle had much better luck getting their petition delivered.

7. Rocky and Bullwinkle share the middle initial “J,” but their middle names are never revealed. Matt Groening gave the three male members of the Simpson family –- Bartholomew J., Homer J. and Abraham J. –- the same initial as a tribute to Rocky and Bullwinkle.

8. There’s really no difference between Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show. When the show moved to NBC in 1961, the network simply wanted it retitled and the new series continued where Rocky and His Friends, left off. Many of the syndicated packages, as well as the official DVD release, contained cartoons from both original network series.

9. The features of Fearless Leader, the dictator of Pottsylvania (who was known to carry the entire Pottsylvanian treasury on his person at all times), were inspired by World War II anti-Nazi propaganda posters.

10. Pottsylvanian spy Boris Badenov—whose surname is a play on 16th-century Russian Tsar Boris Godunov—was revealed in an advertisement as an active member of Local 12 of the Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union.

11. Aside from their gift for puns, Rocky and Bullwinkle each had talents that served them well in their adventures. Rocky, a flying squirrel, could glide, hover and carry objects through the air. He honed these skills at the Cedar Yorpantz Flying School. Bullwinkle possessed superhuman strength, referred to as his “mighty moose muscle,” and the ability to remember every single thing he ever ate.

1. Earlier this decade, I had an interview with a big PR firm. The first person I met with asked me where I got my news—I think her exact question was, “What newspapers do you subscribe to?” I told her I read the New York Times and New York Post online. This immediately put me on her “no” list. “You can’t trust what you read online,” she told me. I stressed again that I was reading the same articles she was reading in the printed paper, but she wasn’t buying it. “People can fake those web addresses, you know,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re reading.” What’s the most irrational thing you’ve ever encountered in a job interview?

2. A couple years ago, David Israel asked you to share your favorite punny store names. (His entry: “The Merchant of Tennis.”) I think it’s time to ask again: what great/terrible punny store names have you seen or been to?

3. A couple months ago, for several long days, I had the Perfect Strangers theme song stuck in my head. Usually when that happens, if I listen to the offending song in its entirety, it goes away. But not that time. You know how I got it out of my head? I had to sing along. If someone had hidden a camera in my office, they’d have a YouTube sensation on their hands. The weird thing was, I haven’t seen an episode of Perfect Strangers in many years. What’s the strangest song you couldn’t get out of your head?
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Last week, after asking you to dream up a new theme restaurant chain, I offered a free mental_floss t-shirt to the most creative budding restaurateur. We have a tie. First, Curt Peinhardt’s “Pros & Cons,” featuring the memorabilia of sports stars who’ve run afoul of the law (with bonus points for his second suggestion—a steakhouse called Belmont Steaks). Second, “S*** My Girlfriend Won’t Eat,” which comes from picky eater Danielle and her boyfriend. Here’s her pitch: “Serving only the most inventive and disgusting dishes made from pure unadulterated necessity – notably the “spaghetti burrito,” or the “peanut butter and jelly on a hot dog.” The decorum would be a scale model of our living room, and guests would be seated awkwardly around the coffee table as my boyfriend shoves colorful combinations of leftovers under their noses.” This was a hard decision; thanks to everyone for playing along! Curt & Danielle, I’ll be in touch about your shirts.
* * * * *
And finally, I need to thank one of our readers for helping me out of a jam last summer. I keep a personal blog where I post pictures of my daughter (and, on occasion, random NBA predictions). In June, it was hacked, which infected the PCs of many relatives. I posted a plea for technical assistance in that week’s Friday Happy Hour, and Jim Hegarty answered the call.

On a Saturday, he took a look, isolated the problem, fixed it, and gave me some tips to make sure it didn’t happen again. He wouldn’t accept payment, so I told him if he ever had something to promote, I’d be happy to mention it here. Jim emailed the other day to say his company had launched something called KlikSpy, which is a pretty cool visual behavior tracking tool for your website. If you’ve got a site of your own and want to see how people are actually using it, give it a look!

Thanks again, Jim!

[See all the previous Friday Happy Hour transcripts.]

December 5: Bathtub Party Day
The online herbalists at wellcat.com copyrighted this holiday in order, I have to assume, to inspire people to buy essential oils and fancy salts to add to their bathwater. I’m not sure what their definition of “party” is, but the way I see it, there’s a 50% chance that Bathtub Party Day is the only holiday on our calendar which advocates having multiple, simultaneous sex partners. (Speaking of bathtubs, December 5 is also repeal day, which celebrates the end of Prohibition and the need to create bathtub gin.)

December 6: St. Nicholas Day
This is weird on two counts: not only does St. Nick have his own day, but it’s also not December 25, the day we normally associate with this most roly-poly of saints. Also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker, he was a Greek bishop whose reputation for selfless gift-giving made him the inspiration for Santa Claus. For his work helping the poor, he’s also the patron saint of pawnbrokers (for those of you who didn’t realize that pawnbrokers needed divine intercession).

December 7: National Cotton Candy Day
Invented in 1897 and originally marketed as “fairy floss,” cotton candy first became popular at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. It was officially renamed in the 1920s.

December 8: Take it in the Ear Day
I have no idea what this day means, who invented it, or what I’m supposed to do to celebrate. (Or what, exactly, I am meant to be taking into my ear.) There is, however, a nifty tee-shirt you can buy commemorating the event, which makes me suspect that perhaps tee-shirt designers are the ones behind TIITE day.

December 12: Poinsettia Day
Poinsettias have long been associated with the holiday season, but that’s not the reason behind this day. It was created by an act of Congress in 1851 in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett, a United States ambassador to Mexico, who first brought the plants back from our neighbor to the south. He died on December 12, 1851.

December 21: Forefathers’ Day
If you know your historical dates, you’ll know that December 21, 1620 was the day the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. First celebrated in 1769 in honor of the pilgrims, this was an ill-fated holiday that eventually fell into obscurity in favor of Thanksgiving. (Do we really need to get excited about the pilgrims more than once a year?)

December 21: National Flashlight Day
This sounds like just another random holiday until you realize that December 21 is also the Winter Solstice — the darkest and shortest day of the year. As long as you’re celebrating, here’s some fun flashlight trivia: it was invented in 1898 by Joshua Lionel Cowan, who also invented the Lionel train.

December 23: Festivus (for the rest of us)
Seinfeld fans, of which there are many, will get it right away. Created by staff writer Daniel O’Keefe, it refers to a fake holiday made up by his father Dan in 1966 to celebrate his first date with his future wife.

The holiday includes novel practices such as the “Airing of Grievances”, in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year. Also, after the Festivus meal, the “Feats of Strength” are performed, involving wrestling the head of the household to the floor, with the holiday ending only if the head of the household is actually pinned. These conventions originated with the TV episode. The original holiday featured far more peculiar practices, as detailed in the younger Daniel O’Keefe’s book The Real Festivus, which provides a first-person account of an early version of the Festivus holiday as celebrated by the O’Keefe family, and how O’Keefe amended or replaced details of his father’s invention to create the Seinfeld episode.

December 29: Pepper Pot Day
This real, actual holiday commemorates a thick, spicy soup that was created to feed the Continental Army during the fantastically harsh winter of 1777-78. George Washington’s chef combined scraps of tripe, small bits of meat and some peppercorn with spices to create “the soup that won the war.”

The mental_floss store has terrific holiday gifts for everyone from Grandpa to your Secret Santa pick. Through Monday, we’re offering FREE SHIPPING on all U.S. & Canadian orders! So go on, knock out your shopping in one visit, and kick back.

Just enter the coupon code EARLYBIRD before checkout. Offer valid through Monday, November 23rd.

When Lafayette Ronald Hubbard founded Scientology in 1952, he had no idea there would one day be something called Techno music (best done in Germany, of course) let alone a quiz devoted to comparing and contrasting them. Turns out, the two have a lot in common. See if you can tell which word belongs to which camp.

Take the Scientology Term or German Techno Artist quiz now.

1. He Knew What He Wanted to Be When He Grew Up

Murphy’s high school yearbook photo featured the caption, “Future plans: Comedian,” and the young Murphy got down to business pretty quickly. He started working Long Island clubs like the Comic Strip, and his act proved to be so popular that within two years he was a full cast member on Saturday Night Live. It was a pretty quick start for someone who was such a lethargic student that he had to repeat the 10th grade.

Murphy was a natural for SNL, where his impersonations included Buckwheat, Bill Cosby, Muhammad Ali, and Jerry Lewis. Murphy wasn’t as at home off-screen, though, where he had trouble using his paychecks responsibly. As he later put it, “Give any 19-year-old kid $1,000 a week and he’ll freak out.” In 1982 Murphy told People that he had blown his previous year’s earnings on a Trans-Am and gifts for friends.

2. He May Not Have Written Coming to America

John Landis’ 1988 film Coming to America cracked up audiences and piled up a worldwide gross of over $288 million. Not only did Murphy star in the film, he also received the sole story credit. Writing and starring in such a smash hit would have been a major coup for even a big star like Murphy, but there was something fishy about the writing credit.

After the film became a huge success, humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount for $5 million on the grounds that the movie was based on a treatment Buchwald had sold to Paramount in 1983. It turned out that Paramount had indeed optioned a very similar story in 1983 before terminating the project in 1985. Curiously, though, the Murphy-penned story for Coming to America came out three years later in 1988.

Buchwald and agent Alan Bernheim realized that Paramount was trying to bilk them out of some serious cash, and they sued the studio. After a seven-year legal battle, the pair received $825,000 from Paramount. Although Murphy was never personally implicated in the plotline pilfering, it’s pretty clear that his writing credit may not have been a true solo project.

3. He Had a Hit Record

Yes, Murphy did the obligatory celebrity record. His 1985 musical debut, How Could It Be, reached #26 on the Billboard 200. Although Aquil Fudge produced most of the album, it did have one Rick James-produced track in “Party All the Time.” The song was quite a hit; it even spent three weeks at the second spot on the Billboard Hot 100 behind topper Lionel Richie’s “Say You, Say Me.”

When MTV wanted Murphy to host the Video Music Awards that year, Murphy joked that he’d do it only if the channel would air his video. To Murphy’s surprise—he didn’t even have a video—MTV agreed. Murphy and James quickly threw together a video for the song, and James’ hair alone makes it a masterpiece:

4. His Suit from Delirious Met a Funny Fate

One of Murphy’s first major triumphs as a solo comedian was the 1983 stand-up special Delirious. Today the special is remembered for two things: its raunchy content and the form-fitting red leather suit that Murphy wore on stage for the taping. In fact, so many fans remembered the trademark suit that they would often ask Murphy what happened to the snappy duds.

In 2007, Murphy revealed the truth: Keenen Ivory Wayans had ruined the suit. According to Murphy, he once dared Wayans to wear the suit out for a night on the town and remain in character. Although the suit was tight on the much smaller Murphy, the 6’3” Wayans took his friend up on the dare. As Murphy later remembered, “He met girls, he had a sausage in his pants, there was dancing.” The suit, though, was seriously stretched out after Wayans’ adventures.

5. He’s a Clean Freak

As a child, Murphy was such a neat freak that his stepfather would joke that the lad needed to get a degree and a good job so other people would have to do his dirty work.

Fame didn’t change Murphy’s clean habits; if anything, it magnified them. Murphy has said he takes several showers a day and constantly washes his hands. As he explained it in an interview with Playboy, the process of meeting fans is just an inherently unsanitary one. “Because I always figure somebody might have dug in his nose…then he comes to shake my hand, ‘Hey, Eddie!’ Sometimes you pee and get a little pee on your hands and then it’s, “Hey, Ed!’”

‘5 Things You Didn’t Know About…’ appears every Friday. Read the previous installments here.

Eighty-one-year-old Eric Steward of Yass, New South Wales, Australia went out to get a morning paper on Wednesday. He took a wrong turn onto a highway and drove for nine hours before stopping to ask for directions! Steward ended up in Geelong, Victoria, 400 miles from home. A policeman called Steward’s wife, and sent him in the right direction for home.

“I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive,” he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he’d only been lost once.

The Hamster Hotel

The Hamster Hotel is now open in Nantes, France. No, it’s not just a clever name. Frederic Tabary and Yann Falquerho converted a room in an old building to a human-sized hamster cage complete with a running wheel and hay to sleep on. Guests will live like a hamster, to the point of even having grain offered for meals. The price for the room is currently 99 euros for a night, but the price will go up when Wifi and a TV screen are installed.

Dad Spoke Only Klingon to Child for Three Years

Minnesota linguist d’Armond Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics. He says he isn’t much of a Star Trek fan. But he spent the first three years of his son’s life speaking to him only in the Klingon language!

“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

Speers helped develop a digital dictionary in Klingon for Mac, Windows, and iPhone for the software company Ultralingua. Speer’s son is now 15 years old and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon.

Trimming a Hedge with a Crane

Two men in Cambridge, in the Waikato region of New Zealand have a different idea of how to trim an unruly hedge. They were spotted mowing the hedge with a riding lawnmower hoisted above the foliage by a crane! The two men, who wished to remain unnamed, joked that they might go into business with their unusual trimming method. After a scheduled hedge-trimming service didn’t show up, they came up with the stunt in order to make a video and hoped it would be popular on the internet. The friends managed to get a crane and a lawnmower, but had no video camera. The mower operator broke a hand during the stunt in a fall from the crane. However, passers-found the sight quite entertaining.

North Pole Mail Program Dropped

The 2,100 citizens of North Pole, Alaska take Christmas very seriously. Since 1954, they’ve volunteered for Operation Santa, a program of the US Postal Service which answers letters to Santa Claus. The program has volunteers all over the country, and many letters are routed through Alaska to get the special North Pole postmark. However, the USPS is discontinuing the practice of sending letters to the town of North Pole. New security restrictions on letter-writer’s identities are not feasible in the small Alaskan town. Children can still write letters to Santa Claus and get an answer, but they won’t go to North Pole.

Lion Opens Car Door with Teeth

Lion Safari Park in Johannesburg, South Africa allows cars to drive through the lion enclosure so people can see the animals up close. A family in a white Toyota drove through with the doors closed, but apparently failed to lock at least one back door. A 300-pound lion deftly reached over and opened the back door with his teeth. The family remained still for several seconds, supposedly in shock, before driving off as quickly as possible. The lion chased the car to a gate, where a park attendant held it back by throwing stones. Richard Holden was in a car behind the Toyota took pictures of the incident.

Students Arrested for Not Paying Tip

College students Leslie Pope and John Wagner and four of their friends went to the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The bill came to $73, which Pope and Wagner paid, but they refused to pay the mandatory $16.35 tip, because they said the service was lousy. So they were arrested.

The pub, which was very busy that night, took the $73, but then called the cops, who treated the matter as a theft.

The menu clearly states, “18 percent gratuity added to check of parties of 6 of more,” and a similar message is printed on receipts, a pub employee said this morning.

The students will be in court over the matter next month.

Here’s the second entry in our Brain Game number block puzzle series. Enjoy!

Each of the nine squares inside the main red grid should contain either a 1, 2, or 3. Three of these numbers are already provided for you. Place a 1, 2, or 3 in each of the blank squares so that the sum of the rows, columns, and diagonals equal the totals shown at the ends of those lines (after the equals signs). Good luck:

NOTE: Super-sharp reader Mike was the first to find a second solution to this puzzle, so we’ve added it to the list. Nice job, Mike!

]]> http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/41228/feed 13 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/41090 http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/41090#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:31 +0000 Ransom Riggs http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/?p=41090 Strange Geographies: Village Life in Vanuatu

Ransom Riggs visited Vanuatu earlier this year and stopped by a few villages that were definitely not on the tourist trail. Lucky for us, he brought his camera.]]> I’ve written a lot about strange places in the U.S. this year — an airplane graveyard in the desert; a mock Iraqi village in the suburbs of San Diego; a town killed by a modern-day dustbowl two hours north of Los Angeles. But the strangest place I’ve ever been — the strangest and most beautiful, I should say — is a developing nation 1000km northeast of Australia, populated by the friendliest former cannibals you’ll ever meet, called Vanuatu. I wrote about it a little bit back in April, right after I returned from two weeks in country, but I’d had such a whirlwind trip, and taken thousands of pictures I’d hardly even begun to cull, that I needed six months or so to process just how profoundly different life in Vanuatu is.

It’s an archipelago comprised of 84 volcanic islands, each separated by many miles of shark-filled seas and unpredictable weather. Travel between islands is difficult and expensive, and as a result, to many of Vanuatu’s 200,000 citizens “international travel” means going to a nearby island every few years to visit cousins. They’ve had some exposure to foreigners — missionaries starting in the 19th century (some of whom were eaten); American soldiers during World War II, who established a base on the largest island to fend off the Japanese, stationed in the nearby Solomons; some British and French, who co-governed Vanuatu in a bizarre arrangement for many years; and tourists that come to a few of the islands nowadays (mostly from Australia, which is where they all assumed I was from). But even on the largest islands, which are mountainous and covered with tough-to-penetrate jungle, there are remote villages where locals have rarely, if ever, encountered outsiders. I didn’t make it quite that far afield, but I did find myself in a few off-the-beaten villages that were definitely not on the tourist trail, and luckily, I brought my camera.

There’s one main city in Vanutu, Port Vila, which is heavily westernized and caters to tourists who come in on cruise ships, and another large-ish town, Luganville, which is a few dusty streets of Chinese-owned shops, French restaurants and hotels catering mainly to scuba divers. Villages throughout the rest of the country rarely have electricity or running water, and though the people are very poor, they own their own land, and the rich soil and unspoiled seas make farming and fishing easy. Food that tourists consider delicacies, like coconut crab, mangoes, pineapple, and all manner of fish, are everyday dishes for the locals. A fisherman on Oyster Island at dusk:

Families make money by selling what they grow in village gardens at roadside markets like this one:

Cows are everywhere and beef is plentiful. The grass-fed, organic beef raised on Espiritu Santo is considered some of the finest in the world, and is exported to top-tier restaurants in Japan and Australia. What else would you expect from cows that get to hang out on the beach all day? I ran across these ladies while kayaking:

Of course, when a cow is slaughtered, nothing goes to waste. Fresh oxtail, anyone?

Pigs are a big deal on Vanuatu, as well. Pigs are a traditional form of monetary exchange, and the most valuable pigs are the ones with the longest tusks. PIgs whose tusks grow so long that they make a loop that pierces the bottom of the animal’s jaw — gruesome, I know — are especially valuable. Some pig jaws on proud display in an Espiritu Santo meeting hut:

Homes are made from branches and folded palm leaves, which are sturdy enough to keep out the most torrential rain, but tend to blow away during cyclones (which are frequent). Here’s a detail of the underside of a hut roof:

Here are a few views of typical Vanuatu villages, homes and a Catholic church, all woven from grass and leaves:

Christianity came with missionaries in the 19th century, and while churches abound, many villages still practice customary religions and black magic. There are also a number of fascinating cults on Vanuatu — especially on the volcanically active island of Tanna, where tourists come to ogle a lava-spitting mountain they call Old Man Yasur.

You can climb up to the rim of Yasur, which puts on a humbling show after dark.

I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to visit either of Tanna’s cult villages, the best known of which is the Jon Frum cargo cult. A white man known as Jon Frum (possibly “Jon from America”) supposedly visited Tanna sometime before the second world war, predicting that white men would drop from the sky with food and all sorts of goods — which is exactly what happened when the war began. When the Americans and their cargo left, the Jon Frum followers began praying to him, using faux American flags, red cross symbols, and military uniforms, hoping that more cargo from the sky would arrive. It hasn’t come yet, but the Jon Frum cultists continue to worship. (Jesus died 2,000 years ago, they like to remind us, and Christians are still waiting around for him to come back.)

The American military left its mark on Vanuatu in other ways, too. Rusting quonset huts are everywhere on Espiritu Santo, and all the country’s few paved roads were built by the American government. This wide, pothole-filled road, for instance, is the remnant of a WWII airstrip. Calling it “paved,” however, is charitable — It’s in such bad shape that you have to drive in a zigzag pattern just to avoid the axle-breaking holes.

The Americans also introduced a species of fast-growing vine to Espiritu Santo, in order to cover their installations and hide them from Japanese air surveillance. Those vines covered much of the island in short order:

The locals I talked to weren’t bitter about the American military presence in Vanutu, though. If anything, they seemed grateful: “You are our big strong brother!” one man said to me, flexing a muscle. “You saved us from the Japanese, then gave us our country back!” Which is true, I suppose — whereas the French and British hung around and tried to run Vanuatu for more than a hundred years, the Americans came, established some bases, and left. Still, it was a novel experience, being thanked by someone abroad for something my country’s military did.

Villagers are nothing if not resourceful. Just as they’ll use American airstrips as roads, other goods have multiple uses, too. A baby named Florence enjoys an unusual tire swing:

Once you get away from the beach, getting around the island can be a bit difficult — rivers and tall, volcanic ridges are everywhere. But villagers, lacking concrete or asphalt, make do anyhow. This is a somewhat treacherous bamboo bridge across a river, on the other side of which is a steep ladder up a hill formed by branches.

Later, a villager took me to an amazing, bat-filled cave (too dark to photograph) followed by a great deal of scrambling over boulders in a rushing river — again aided by a number of seemingly death-defying hand-made bridges. (If you look closely, you’ll notice that my guide is wearing a Dora the Explorer floatie around his neck.

Finally, we floated down the river for a half-hour, nipped at by curious fish, walls of rock rising above us. Waterfalls and a riot of vegetation fell down from the cliffs above. It was, in a word, ridiculous, and the cheap waterproof camera I took this picture with does the scene no justice.

Families and kids are everywhere on Vanuatu; the population is very young.

Everywhere you go, kids follow, laughing and having fun.

It was unsettling at first to realize that even the smallest kids carried machetes with them almost everywhere they went. I soon realized that they were invaluable — the fast-growing jungle constantly needs cutting, and machetes can cut down coconuts and open them, and their blunt handles serve as hammers.

These kids were showing me their pet eel, which they’d grown to an enormous size in a small, waterfall-fed freshwater pond in their village. They used to have two but the other one had been stolen; the remaining eel was guarded 24/7 by boys with slingshots (and machetes, naturally).

Kids in Vanuatu, you won’t be surprised to learn, spend a lot of time in the water. Not only is the South Pacific warm year-round, but Vanuatu’s islands are dotted with magical “blue holes” — rain- and river-fed reservoirs of deep, cool, crystal blue water which provide drinking water to nearby villages and swimming holes for its young people.

After a snorkel:

After a scuba dive, I came up to find these boys playing on a rock jetty; they’d been following the divers’ air bubbles. My lens was wet, and the result is sort of impressionistic, but totally captures the feeling of the place.

We found this boy smiling at us from a hole in the jungle. A nearby adult explained that he’d just gone through his circumcision ritual, which meant he had to wear a namba (a huge penis-sheath), mud makeup, and hang out in holes for a week or so (this guy’s English was about as good as our Bislama, so I’m not totally sure on the details).

In short, Vanuatu is one strange and beautiful place, and it’s people couldn’t be friendlier. The South Pacific is a mind-bogglingly huge constellation of little island worlds, and though there are so many more to explore, I’m certain I’ll be back to Vanuatu one day.

You can find more photo essays on my website.