Who2 Editorial Blog
Notes and Commentary from the Editors
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Unknown Dump Truck Men Are Trashing Neverland
That didn't take long.The AP says that the trash man has already come to Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.
...Pickup trucks and a large dump truck towing a flatbed were seen entering the 2,500-acre Neverland Ranch, a major piece of the singer's debt-strapped financial empire. It was not clear who had requested the fleet or for what purpose.I just spent some time trying to get a handle on the ranch itself. I've heard the name many times, natch -- mentioned mainly as an exhibit of Jackson's odd and free-spending ways -- but never quite got the whole scene. Now I get it.
One can start with these Neverland photos from our Jackson profile.Turns out the ranch is about 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles, up through Burbank, Oxnard, and Santa Barbara, and near the town of Solvang. (Google Maps shows the ranch here.)
Solvang is its own sort of Neverland, an "authentic" Danish village that has been on tourist maps for years. (Moreso since the area was featured in the film Sideways. The Thomas Haden Church and Paul Giamatti characters stayed in the kitschy windmill Days Inn in nearby Buellton, 10 short miles from Neverland.)
Neverkand is also about 18 miles north of Ronald Reagan's own getaway, Rancho del Cielo. (Jackson had Reagan in size, 2500 acres to 688.)
Here's a nifty Neverland map, posted by a video tech who worked a charity event there.
It's bigger than I thought. The map lists cages for elephants, giraffes, orangutans, tigers, bears, and a crocodile (yikes!) along with bumper cars, a ferris wheel, swings, a "sea dragon" (?), etc. (No Bubbles, though.) As for the layout, it's zoo animals to the north, rides in the middle, private residence to the south.
Jackson apparently lived in the middle of the amusement park when he was in residence; there wasn't a separate mansion elsewhere, as I had assumed.
Mr. Jackson spent more than 15 years living at the ranch. He wrote songs for 1991's "Dangerous" album while sitting in a treehouse overlooking the estate's four-acre pond. His three children were home-schooled on the third floor of the main house.As for the free-spending ways:
[Jackson] created a Neverland Valley Fire Department, with a small fleet of working engines and full-time firefighters who were occasionally dispatched to battle brushfires on neighboring properties.When he wasn't in residence, Jackson let schoolkids and other visitors have the run of the place.
At its peak, Neverland boasted a staff of 150, and cost $10 million a year to maintain, according to people familiar with the matter.
Oh, and Liz Taylor married Larry Fortensky there in 1991.
Now we find out that Neverland wasn't even really Jackson's any more. After much wrangling over debt in years past, he handed it over last November to Sycamore Valley Ranch LLC, a company owned partly by him but mainly by the powerful property company Colony Capital.
Which maybe explains the dump truck.
[ June 30 update: E! Online now says Neverland will host a public viewing of Jackson's body over July 4th weekend. Perhaps, in the Reagan tradition, the workers are just there to clear brush? ]
[ July 1 update: Unknown dump truck men are
[ Still later July 1 update: The Jackson family says there will be no viewing at Neverland after all. ]
Labels: Elizabeth Taylor, Larry Fortensky, Michael Jackson, Neverland, Paul Giamatti, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Haden Church
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 6:37 AM 
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
President Barack Obama By the Numbers
Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. Here's a by-the-numbers look ahead at this historic event.{ 1 } Obama will be the first president born in Hawaii. (Small surprise: Hawaii didn't become a state until 1959. Obama was born in 1961.)
{ 77 } Days until Obama's inauguration on 20 January 2009.
{ 47-5-16 } Obama's age in years, months and days when he takes office in January.
He'll be the fifth-youngest American president ever. Theodore Roosevelt is still the champ at age 42, followed by John Kennedy (43), Bill Clinton (46 years, 5 months), and Ulysses Grant (46 years, 11 months). Obama will bump Grover Cleveland (47 years, 11 months) from the top five.
{ 8 } Presidents, including Obama, schooled at Harvard.
Of those eight, he is the second to attend Harvard Law School. Rutherford B. Hayes was the first; he graduated in 1845, 146 years before Obama.
{ 24 } Years Michelle Obama will be older than the youngest first lady.
Michelle Obama will turn 45 on January 17th, three days before her husband takes office. Frances Folsom married Grover Cleveland at the White House in 1886, when she was only 21. There have been many youngish First Ladies; most recently, Jackie Kennedy was 31 when JFK took office in 1961.
{ 2 } Michelle Obama will be the second First Lady with a law degree. Hillary Clinton was the first.
{ 7 } and { 10 } Ages of Obama's daughters Sasha and Malia when he takes office.
Jenna and Barbara Bush were 19 when George W. Bush was inaugurated. Chelsea Clinton was 12 at the start of her father's term in 1993. Amy Carter was nine when Jimmy Carter took office in 1977.
{ 1 } Obama will be the first Columbia University undergraduate to become president. (Dwight Eisenhower was president of Columbia when he was elected U.S. president in 1952.)
{ 4 } Presidents, including Obama, with strong ties to Illinois.
Abraham Lincoln remains the state's favorite son (though he was actually born in Kentucky). Ulysses Grant was a clerk in Galena, Illinois when the Civil War broke out; he was living there again in 1868 when he received word he had been elected president. And Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico in 1911.
{ 44 } Obama will be the 44th U.S. president. (Grover Cleveland -- him again! -- is counted as both the 22nd and 24th presidents, having served non-consecutive terms.)
{ 55 } Obama's age on leaving office in 2017, if he serves two terms. That's one year older than George W. Bush was when he took office in 2001. In the year 2017, Michelle Obama will be 53. Sasha and Malia will be 15 and 18.
{ 1 } Barack Obama will be the first African-American president. It has been 138 years since the 15th Amendment guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote.
Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower, George W. Bush, Malia Obama, Michelle Obama, Ronald Reagan, Sasha Obama, Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses Grant
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:25 PM Share on Facebook 10 comments
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Phony Presidential Trivia
Here's a swell new Onion interview with writer John Hodgman.He's the dowdy "PC" on Apple TV ads, and a regular on Jon Stewart's show. He's also the author of the fake-trivia books The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require.
Who2 has a love/hate relationship with Hodgman. Five years ago we wrote a fake trivia book of our own -- Utterly False Trivia -- and couldn't get it published. We're glad Hodgman got his out there, but full of envy and irritation that we couldn't get it done ourselves.
That's not Hodgman's fault, of course. The shame is ours.
However: In honor of the presidential elections of 2008, here are a few choice items from the "Hail to the Chief" section of our unpublished UFT.
* * *
Baseball star Babe Ruth portrayed President William Howard Taft in Big Bill, the only film in the Bambino's brief post-baseball acting career. Ruth played both the president and himself in a scene where Taft throws out the first ball to Ruth at the 1912 World Series. It was the first use of split screen in Hollywood history.
* * *
President Ronald Reagan's Four Famous Commands to Mikhail Gorbachev:
1. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
2. "Mr. Gorbachev, put down that maid!"
3. "Mr. Gorbachev, turn down that thermostat!"
4. "Mr. Gorbachev, make me a ham sandwich!"
* * *
The Barkley Presidential Length Index (BPLI) uses a formula of height multiplied by length of term to measure the inch-hours served by each chief executive.
William Henry Harrison, at 5'10" but only 33 days in office, has the lowest BPLI. Abraham Lincoln, had he lived, would have had the hightest BPLI of any two-term president. The all-time highest BPLI belongs to four-term president Franklin Roosevelt, if measured while standing instead of in his wheelchair. However, had Lyndon Johnson (6'4") run again for reelection in 1968 and completed 9+ years in office, he could have become the new BPLI leader.
* * *
In his 2004 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush repeatedly referred to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- who had been dubbed "the Butcher of Baghdad" -- as "the Barber of Seville."
* * *
In an attempt to raise spirits during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover had "Hail to the Chief" replaced with "The Charleston" whenever he appeared in public. The original song was quietly reinstated by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933.
Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Babe Ruth, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, John Hodgman, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, William Henry Harrison, William Howard Taft
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:58 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments
