The Complete History of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

How two comic-book artists created the characters beloved by kids during the 1980s and ’90s. The original turtles weren’t so cuddly:

“The original Mirage comic book really wasn’t made for youngsters. The Turtles diced up enemies while spouting the occasional curse word, and one of the Turtles’ allies was hockey mask-wearing vigilante Casey Jones, who beat down even low-level crooks with baseball bats and hockey sticks. But when Playmates Toys expressed interest in producing TMNT action figures in 1986 (we’ll get to those), the comic’s PG-13 attitude wouldn’t fit Playmates’ 4-8 year old target audience. In addition, part of Playmates’ marketing was an animated cartoon, which had to pass television censors. So to make the Turtles viable for the younger set, the Turtles had to soften up.

“Among other changes, the Turtles became wise-cracking jokers obsessed with pizza, the Shredder became a typical bumbling cartoon villain, members of the Foot Clan were now robots so parents wouldn’t complain that the Turtles were too violent, and instead of ‘Damn,’ the Turtles shouted easily-marketable catchphrases like, ‘Turtle Power!’ and ‘Cowabunga!'”

Author: Rob Lammle
Source: Mental Floss
Published: Jun 7, 2012
Length: 12 minutes (3,018 words)

Asleep at the Roger Clemens Trial

Experiencing firsthand the boredom that overtakes the courtroom during the perjury retrial of the seven-time Cy Young winner:

“As far as jury duty goes, you might think the perjury trial of the most decorated pitcher in baseball history would be the kind of blockbuster assignment you tell your grandchildren about. But if you’re enough of a baseball fan to recognize Roger Clemens, you would have been booted out of the pool in short order. The ladies and gentleman of this jury have been carefully selected on the basis of their ambivalence toward the nation’s pastime. That’s why witnesses must pause to define elementary baseball nomenclature like ‘foul pole.’ To clarify what it means for an athlete to be ‘in the zone.’ To explain that the game is played both indoors and outdoors, and that Fenway Park is home to the Boston Red Sox.

“So you can begin to see why two jurors have already been dismissed for napping during testimony. Only 13 remain, and Judge Reggie Walton is determined not to lose another. The survivors have been encouraged to take advantage of the complimentary coffee in the jury lounge, for the defense is expected to argue deep into June.”

Source: Salon
Published: Jun 10, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,910 words)

I Sing the Body Electric

Japanese-pop star Hatsune Miku has millions of YouTube hits, sells tickets to her concerts at $76 a pop and has adoring fans from all around the world. She’s also not human:

“Created by Crypton Future Media, Miku is the most popular avatar created to sell Vocaloid 2, the singing synthesizer application originally developed by Yamaha. In Japan, it is common to create a character associated with software, and at first glance, Miku may seem like little more than an animated mascot, not unlike the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Snuggle fabric softener bear. But Miku inspires an unparalleled creativity.

“Instead of passively worshipping her, fans have mobilized into an interactive artistic community. Using Vocaloid 2, they write melodies and lyrics, sharing their songs on YouTube or the Japanese equivalent, niconico (“smilesmile”). Since Miku’s ‘birth’ in August 2007, amateurs have used her likeness in hundreds of thousands of songs, illustrations, videos, games, animations—and one rather creepy, dead-looking Miku robot. She’s a cosplay (costume role play) favorite at anime conventions and elsewhere.”

Published: Jun 1, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,158 words)

Daddy: My Father’s Last Words

[Not single-page] A difficult life with a father remembered through his favorite words and phrases:

“He never once found comfortable shoes, and when he’d come home from the plant after a double overtime, the searing pain in his feet would have him whimpering like a child. Swornin’ to goodness! was his pain expression. Was it his horrible feet?

“His maniacal mother, my grandmother, Letha (we called her ‘Lethal’), taught him that ‘if it isn’t perfect, its not worth doing,’ thus paralyzing my father for life. It was she who dragged my father, aged eight, to a hotel in downtown Baton Rouge, busted into a room, and showed him his father in bed with another woman. ‘Look at your father,’ she said. Was it Lethal?

“Or are unhappy people born unhappy?

“Would he have been the way he was if he had never had children? Did I turn my father into a monster?”

Source: Esquire
Published: Jun 8, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,073 words)

Scandals of Classic Hollywood: That Divine Gary Cooper

Cooper played heroic cowboys and espoused all-American values while the studio system helped hide his offscreen affairs:

“Cooper became a hero to many, even as he developed a reputation as one of the most notorious philanderers in Hollywood. He had stiff competition — Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, the list goes on — but Cooper may or may not have slept with EVERY. SINGLE. CO-STAR. No matter his age, no matter their age, he was insatiable, before and during his marriage. How to reconcile his moral righteousness onscreen with his philandering offscreen? That was the work of Fixers, gossip magazines, and the studio system at large, which ensured that Cooper was never caught, never denounced, and held up as a paragon of American values. Of course, the way he looked in pants didn’t hurt.”

Source: The Hairpin
Published: Jun 8, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,845 words)

America’s Last Prisoner of War

In 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan after deciding to walk off his base. A look at why he left, and the complications surrounding his rescue:

“Within an hour, two F-18s were circling overhead. Afghan forces passed along intelligence that a U.S. soldier had been captured by the Taliban. By that evening, two F-15s – call sign DUDE-21 – had joined the search. A few minutes later, according­ to files obtained by WikiLeaks, a radio transmission intercepted by U.S. forces stated that the Taliban had captured­ three civilians and one U.S. soldier. The battalion leading the manhunt entered and searched three compounds in the area, but found nothing significant to report.

“The next morning, more than 24 hours after Bowe had vanished, U.S. intelligence intercepted a conversation between two Taliban fighters:

“‘I SWEAR THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD ANYTHING YET. WHAT HAPPENED. IS THAT TRUE THAT THEY CAPTURED AN AMERICAN GUY?’

“‘YES THEY DID. HE IS ALIVE. THERE IS NO WHERE HE CAN GO (LOL)’ ‘IS HE STILL ALIVE?’

“‘YES HE IS ALIVE. BUT I DONT HAVE THE WHOLE STORY. DONT KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW IF THEY WERE FIGHTING. ALL I KNOW THAT THEY CAPTURE HIM ALIVE AND THEY ARE WITH HIM RIGHT NOW.'”

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Jun 7, 2012
Length: 33 minutes (8,300 words)

10 Timeframes

The past, present and future of how we perceive time, and which units actually matter:

“The time you spend is not your own. You are, as a class of human beings, responsible for more pure raw time, broken into more units, than almost anyone else. You spent two years learning, focusing, exploring, but that was your time; now you are about to spend whole decades, whole centuries, of cumulative moments, of other people’s time. People using your systems, playing with your toys, fiddling with your abstractions. And I want you to ask yourself when you make things, when you prototype interactions, am I thinking about my own clock, or the user’s? Am I going to help someone make order in his or her life, or am I going to send that person to a commune in Vermont?”

Author: Paul Ford
Source: Contents
Published: Jun 7, 2012
Length: 11 minutes (2,765 words)

North of

[Fiction] Bob Dylan comes to Thanksgiving Dinner:

“We park in front of my mom’s house, my mom who has been waiting for us at the door, probably since dawn. Her hello carries over the lawn. Bob Dylan opens the car door, stretches one leg and then the other. He wears a black leather coat, and has spent the entire ride from New York trying to remember the name of a guitarist he played with in Memphis. I pull our bags from the trunk.

“‘You always pack too much,’ I say.

He shrugs. His arms are small in his coat. His legs are small in his jeans.

“‘Hello hello,’ my mother says as we amble toward her.

“‘This is Bob,’ I say.

Published: Jun 4, 2012
Length: 21 minutes (5,460 words)

Team of Mascots

Obama famously said he wanted a “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Why that never happened:

“The way Cabinet officers relate personally to the president is—no surprise—often the crucial factor in their success or failure. Colin Powell had a worldwide profile and a higher approval rating than George W. Bush, and partly for those very reasons had trouble building a close rapport with a president who had lots to be modest about. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, may have a Nobel Prize in physics, but that counted for little when he once tried to make a too elaborate visual presentation to the president. Obama said to him after the third slide, as one witness recalls, ‘O.K., I got it. I’m done, Steve. Turn it off.'”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Jun 6, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,990 words)

The Long, Fake Life of J.S. Dirr: A Decade-Long Internet Cancer Hoax Unravels

Tracing a years-long Internet hoax back to its creator, a 22-year-old woman in Ohio:

“On the evening of May 13, Mother’s Day, a Canadian woman named Dana Dirr was hit head-on while driving to the Saskatchewan hospital where she worked as a trauma surgeon. She was 35 weeks pregnant, but determined to work until the moment she gave birth. The morning after the crash, her husband John (‘J.S.’) Dirr posted a note on Warrior Eli, a Facebook page the Dirrs had created to document their 5-year-old son Eli’s battle with cancer: ‘Last night at 12:02am I lost the love of my life,” J.S. wrote. “I lost my wife, the mother of my children, and my best friend.’ Miraculously, Dana had held on in the hospital just long enough to have her baby—a daughter, and the Dirr’s eleventh child.

“If any of it had been true, it would have made for a very sad story—the kind of story that would have taken over the news cycle on Mother’s Day, even. But there was none of that, because the Dirrs are not real. They are, in some ways, just the latest example of the countless hoaxes perpetrated by bored, lonely people the world wide web over.”

Source: Gawker
Published: Jun 6, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,606 words)