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My pal Rich Handley has co-written a new book about Back to the Future. I figure it’ll be appealing to you Legends fans out there!

Here’s a description of the book:

Great Scott, the space-time continuum can be a tricky place to navigate! But fear not, time-travelers, for your troubles are over. The next time you hop into your DeLorean, bring along Back in Time: The Back to the Future Chronology to guide you through every galaxy-shattering paradox.

Back in Time explores the complex timelines of Back to the Future, as presented in the films, cartoons, novels, comics, video games, card game and even McDonalds Happy Meal boxes. Bring some spare plutonium or a few empty cans for the Mr. Fusion, and prepare to blast to the past, as The Back to the Future Chronology brings you:

*A detailed history of the Back to the Future mythos, from the dinosaur age to a staggering three quadrillion years into Earth’s future
*A stunning painted cover and more than 40 breathtaking interior sketches from artist Pat Carbajal, produced exclusively for this volume
*An insightful foreword by Dan Madsen, founder and publisher of the original Back to the Future Fan Club
*A nostalgic essay examining Hill Valley’s prominent families and significant events, from the town’s Old West frontier beginnings to a future world of barbarians, dragons and sorcerers
*A comprehensive map offering a comparative view of the businesses and shops of Hill Valley’s Courthouse Square, in numerous eras across divergent timelines
*Detailed family trees listing all known members of the McFly, Brown, Tannen, Baines, Parker, Strickland and Clayton bloodlines
*A mini-timeline presenting all known jumps through space-time in a coherent, chronological context, broken down by mode of temporal travel
*An examination of the main characters’ brushes with fame, as Doc and Marty reshaped history and encountered historical figures, their own idols—and even a few characters from other franchises

Designed for both casual fans and those who know the names of Jennifer Parker’s three grandfathers, The Back to the Future Chronology is your guide to Hill Valley history.

Click here for more info.

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Lawrence Welk played “One Toke Over the Line” on his TV show.

The Lawrence Welk Show was an extremely long-running music variety show hosted by bandleader Lawrence Welk.

The show was pretty much defined by how wholesome it was – it was an extremely family-friendly endeavor.

It ran as a local program in Los Angeles for a few years in the early 1950s before coming to ABC in 1955. It stayed on the air until 1970, when it was a casualty of the cuts in prime time mentioned in the previous installment of TV Legends Revealed.

And just like similar “victim” Hee Haw, the Lawrence Welk Show took advantage of the new demand for syndicated programming (because the various TV stations now had all this time that they couldn’t fill with network programming any more) and began airing in syndication, lasting another 12 seasons.

In one of its first seasons in syndication, the Lawrence Welk Show had one of its most surreal music performances ever.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to cuisine (chefs, dishes, etc.) and whether they are true or false.

CUISINE URBAN LEGEND: Tater tots were invented as a way to deal with factory leftovers.

Ahhhhh….tater tots.

Whether it be in a school cafeteria, a diner or even in the film, Napoleon Dynamite…

…tater tots (which are fried shredded potatoes) seem to be most everywhere.

An interesting fact about tater tots is that Tater Tot is actually a registered trademark of Ore Ida, the company that invented tater tots. That’s why you’ll see that other companies will call their versions of this food stuff like Tasti Taters or Tater Treats or Spud Puppies or whatever.

However, even more interesting is how this food was created in the first place!!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Was Nightmare on Elm Street seriously inspired by the 1970s pop hit “Dream Weaver”?

Singer-songwriter Gary Wright was a good friend of former Beatle George Harrison. Harrison invited him on a trip to India. Right before going on the trip, Harrison gave him the book Autobiography of a Yogi (written by Paramahansa Yogananda) and after reading it Wright soon became fascinated by Indian culture and philosophy. Reading more of Yoganada’s works, he came across a poem by Yoganada titled “God! God! God!” which discusses the concept of the mind controlling its own dreams. I believe it specifically mentioned the mind “weaving” dreams. This inspired Wright to write the 1975 song “Dream Weaver,” which was a major hit on the pop charts in 1976. The song was especially noteworthy for the fact that besides drums by Jim Keltner, all of the rest of the music was performed by Wright’s keyboard synthesizer. Therefore, the song was likely the first “synth pop” hit ever.

However, did the pop song also somehow inspire Wes Craven to create the horror film Nightmare on Elm Street? Read on to find out!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to cuisine (chefs, dishes, etc.) and whether they are true or false.

CUISINE URBAN LEGEND: The impetus for the suicide of a famous French City chef was rumors that his restaurant was going to lose a star in its Michelin Guide rating.

Bernard Loiseau was one of the most famous chefs in a country, France, that has a great many famous chefs.

Even as a young chef in the early 1970s, Loiseau was a proponent of “nouvelle cuisine,” a style of cooking that stressed light, delicate dishes with a heavy emphasis on presentation.

After working for a number of restaurants, Loiseau worked for (and eventually purchased for himself in 1982) the restaurant, La Côte d’Or

Loiseau’s dedication and hard work paid off in 1991 when La Côte d’Or was awarded a prestigious three star rating from the famous Michelin Guide for restaurants. To show how prestigious such a rating is, in the over 5,000 restaurants rated by the Guide in Ireland and Britain, only THREE were given three star ratings.

The percentage is a great deal higher in France, but even there, of the multitude of great French restaurants, there are only about two dozen three star restaurants in France, and Loiseau had one of them.

Loiseau had another interesting approach to the world of fine cuisine – he felt that it should not be something only for the rich, but rather something to be shared with all the world. To this effect, he marketed a line of frozen dinners under his brand. He also took his brand to the public itself, becoming the first chef to incorporate – Bernard Loiseau SA was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He also made a point of stressing that being a great chef was a skill that could lie within ANYone, rich or poor.

In many ways, it appears as though Loiseau was an inspiration for the character of Auguste Gusteau, the celebrity chef who inspires Remy, the rat who becomes a famous chef in the film Ratatouille.

Sadly, though, the Gusteau and Loiseau share more than a similar sounding name and an approach that fine dining could be for everyone.

You see, in Ratatouille, Chef Gusteau dies shortly after his famous restaurant loses two stars.

In real life, Loiseau was suffering under similar pressures from the changing world of French cuisine.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to cuisine (chefs, dishes, etc.) and whether they are true or false.

CUISINE URBAN LEGEND: Lasagna was invented in England.

Lasagna (spelled lasagne in many countries) is a popular food that consists of flat pasta layered on top of each other, with cheese and some sort of sauce (typically either tomato/meat sauce or just plain tomato sauce) mixed in each layer. Really, though, you could put anything you want in those layers (eggplant, etc.).

Lasagna has always been associated with Italian cuisine, but a few years back, an interesting discovery was made that led a historian to claim that lasagna was actually a British creation!

The historian Maurice Bacon and his team of researchers discovered the first “published” recipe for lasagna, and it was in a British cookbook!

Forme of Cury, the oldest surviving cookbook, was created in 1390, about four decades before the printing press was invented!

In any event, in Forme of Curry (which was written in Middle English), there is a recipe for a dish called loseyns, pronounced “lasan” and it describes lasagna pretty perfectly, although without tomatoes involved (tomatoes were not used in England at the time).

That’s pretty darn cool, in and of itself, but Bacon claims that this is proof that lasagna was created in England, and I…well, I am more than a little dubious.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: James Cameron used a trickier method than trick camera work to have two Sarah Connors in a scene in Terminator 2.

We’re all well accustomed to the common practice of using split screens to depict the same actor/actress playing multiple characters in the same scene.

This practice was the basis of The Patty Duke Show (where Duke plays “identical cousins”)…

You can see it, too, on the TV series Friends, where Lisa Kudrow plays twin sisters Phoebe and Ursula…

The trick, of course, is that Kudrow is filmed twice – once as each character – and then the two shots are edited together to make it appear as though it is one shot.

And for close-ups, you do the ol’ “back of the other character’s head” shot…

Well, when Terminator 2 came out in 1992….

the bad guy had the ability to take on the appearance of other people.

So when audiences saw the following scene, where the bad guy (the killer robot T-1000) takes on the appearance of Sarah Connor…

clearly, everyone thought “Sure, split screen.”

But it’s not.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Carole Lombard’s death led to an edit in her last film.

Carole Lombard was a beautiful and popular actress of the 1920s and 1930s (plus the beginning of the 1940s)…

Her most famous role is probably in the film My Man Godfrey, which she did with her ex-husband, William Powell…

In the late 1930s, she became involved with movie star Clark Gable.

The two would eventually marry and as far as anyone can figure, the pair were very happy together…

Well, in 1941, Lombard filmed a movie called To Be or Not to Be, along with Jack Benny. The movie is about a troupe of actors in Occupied Europe who use their acting skills to mess with the Nazis (think Hogan’s Heroes).

In late 1941, after the filming had finished, Lombard flew to her home state of Indiana with her mother and her press agent and raised money for War Bonds. She raised over $2,000,000 dollars!

She returned home to Gable in January of 1942. When the cross country journey stopped in Las Vegas to re-fuel, passengers were asked to get off the plane to allow 15 U.S. Army Air Corps personnel headed to California ride on the plane in their stead. Most every passenger got off, but Lombard convinced them that she was, in effect, working with the war effort, as well, so she should be allowed to stay. They eventually agreed and Lombard and her mother and her agent boarded the small plane along with the 15 Air Corps men.

Sadly, the plane never got to Burbank, California, as it crashed soon after leaving Las Vegas.

The release of her last film was delayed a month, and when it WAS released, one line had been removed.
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: There was an unaired episode of the Simpsons where Bart dies.

Beyond simple behind the scenes bloopers that happen on the set of pretty much every television show that there is, there is a long history of television shows and other creative works making alternate episodes or alternate versions of their works just for their own personal amusement. For instance, there was an R-Rated version of Genndy Tartakovsky’s kids show Dexter Laboratory that was never intended to actually air (I featured the story of “Dexter’s Rude Removal” in a TV Legend here). And Mort Walker would often do explicit versions of his Beetle Bailey comic strips for his own amusement (which I featured in a Comic Book Legend here). So if Matt Groening and the staff of The Simpsons did a special one-off episode of the series where Bart Simpson died, it would not be that shocking. But does such an episode really exist? Read on to find out the truth behind “Dead Bart”!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin had a memorable first meeting outside of a movie theater.

Two of the largest stars in all of film during the days of silent films were Charlie Chaplin…

and Douglas Fairbanks (seen here as Zorro)…

The two men were great friends. They toured the United States together (along with famous film star Mary Pickford, who Fairbanks was dating) raising money for War Bonds during World War I (Chaplin is standing on Fairbanks’ shoulders) …

The two even decided to form their own motion picture studio together, along with Pickford and director D.W. Griffith (Fairbanks is the first one in the photo, from the left).

That studio, United Artists, in one form or another has continued to exist to this very day (although the current United Artists is pretty much just connected by the name only)!

In any event, there’s an old story about how the two men met.

Here it is (courtesy of an old Fairbanks biography):

While passing a cinema in Hollywood one day, Charlie Chaplin stopped to examine the posters advertising the new Douglas Fairbanks comedy appearing there. “Have you seen this show?” Chaplin asked a young man standing nearby. “Sure,” he replied. “Any good?” Chaplin asked. “Why, he’s the best in the business,” the man exclaimed. “He’s a scream! Never laughed so much at anyone in all my life.” “Is he as good as Chaplin?” “As good as Chaplin!” the man exclaimed. “Why, this Fairbanks person has got that Chaplin person looking like a loom. They’re not in the same class. Fairbanks is funny. I’m sorry you asked me, I feel so strongly about it.” Hearing this Chaplin coolly revealed his identity: “I’m Chaplin.” “I know you are,” the other man laughed. “I’m Fairbanks!”

True?
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