On the original Star Trek, many sets include pipes and tubes marked “GNDN”.
That’s an in-joke among the set designers — it stands for “Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.”
Entertainment
Unquote
“There’s just some people you don’t hit with a pie and that’s all there is to it.” — Buster Keaton
Whole Lotta Love
Led Zeppelin never won a Grammy.
Unquote
“He has to retreat into his fanciful world in order to survive. Otherwise, he leads kind of a dull, miserable life. I don’t envy dogs the lives they have to live.” — Charles M. Schulz, on Snoopy
Watch Dogs
In 1997, retired advertising executive Dan FitzSimons proposed a new cable TV channel called The Puppy Channel: “24 hours a day, seven days a week, footage of puppies fooling around like puppies do, acting the natural comedians and cuties that they are, with no people, no talk, accompanied only by relaxing instrumental music.”
In focus group surveys, 41 percent of respondents said they would prefer watching the channel to CNBC, and 37 percent preferred it to TBS.
The Final Cut
In high school, Robin Williams was voted “most likely not to succeed.”
Moving Words
Kermit the Frog spoke at ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s funeral.
“It’s a Great Advantage to Be Able to Hurdle With Both Legs”
Memorable sportscasting quotes:
- “And here’s Moses Kiptanui, the 19-year-old Kenyan, who turned 20 a few weeks ago.” (David Coleman)
- “Juantorena opens his legs and shows his class.” (Ron Pickering)
- “With half of the race gone, there is half of the race still to go.” (Murray Walker)
- “What I said to them at halftime would be unprintable on the radio.” (Gerry Francis)
- “I was in Saint-Etienne two years ago. It’s much the same as it is now, although now it’s completely different.” (Kevin Keegan)
- “I imagine that the conditions in those cars are totally unimaginable.” (Murray Walker)
- “The Baggio brothers, of course, are not related.” (George Hamilton)
- “For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are in the all-yellow strip.” (John Motson)
“Real Madrid are like a rabbit in the glare of the headlights in the face of Manchester United’s attacks,” Hamilton once said. “But this rabbit comes with a suit of armor in the shape of two precious away goals …”
Snow Miser
The world’s tallest snowman was Angus, King of the Mountain, built in Maine in 1999. He stood 113 feet 7 inches tall.
In Lithuania, a snowman is called “a man without brains.” Last winter, protesters made 141 snowmen in their capital — one for each member of parliament.
Television Privileges
Emmy Award trophies are made at the maximum-security El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.