When Science Goes Bad: The killer bee--or how we hoped for more honey, but, yeah, that didn't pan out.

Science performs a multitude of greater good for humanity. But there are those fleeting times science goes off-the-rails in head-shaking, sigh-inducing fashion. This is where we point to those great moments mistakes in science.

Today:  That time bees were bred to make more honey, but instead became "killer" bees.


In the late 1960s and 1970s, American media reports exploded about the impending arrival of bees from South America so frightening and deadly that the United States would have chaos on their hands.

Bee-themed horror movies became all the rage. There was 1966's The Deadly Bees, 1974's more dramatic Killer Bees, and by 1976 the point was really driven home with The Savage Bees. Not to be outdone, 1978 produced a bumper crop of schlock with The Swarm (starring Michael Caine!), Terror Out of The Sky, and the rather bland-titled The Bees, but with the added tag of "They prey on human flesh!" You didn't know bees prey on flesh? You do now.

It's very helpful of the bees to avoid her eyes.

Who hasn't been attacked by bees while wearing a bikini?

This fear sweeping America all began innocently and harmlessly twenty years earlier and 6,000 miles away, rooted in an earnest attempt to improve honey-production in the Brazilian Amazon forests.

It's not that bees don't exist in South America. They do. Bees exist on every continent except Antarctica. Yet, some bees produce honey in greater quantities than others, partly based on their environment. But one such environment that they struggle in? Brazil's Amazon--and here is where the problem evolves.

In 1956, Professor and biologist Warwick E. Kerr looked to create a bee species that could withstand the strenuous Brazilian climate while producing significantly more honey. What he came up with was a blend of the western honey bee (aka: European honey bee) and the East African lowland honey bee. This appeared to be a perfect blend of talents. With the western/European honey bee, one had a fairly docile species with an abundance of honey production. Meanwhile, the East African honey bee produced less honey, but could withstand heat and humidity in South America.

The one caveat is that the East African honey bee--for lack of a better phrase--has a bit of an attitude when provoked, but kept their attitude in check as their own species.

This is not how the bee feels about your breakfast.

At his apiary outside Rio Claro, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Professor Kerr interbred the two species of bees, using queen bees from South Africa and Tanzania, and creating dozens of well-contained swarms for analysis. It was during this analysis that research noted one Tanzanian queen bee led to an interbred hive that seemed rather hostile and defensive, more so than expected or common.

Nonetheless, Kerr and his team utilized a "queen excluder" in the enclosed hives--a device used to allow access for traversing worker bees, but not the larger queen. Everything seemed to be working wonderfully. Multitudes of swarms bustled, a new species appeared feisty, and all of this was kept under strict examination.

That is until October of 1957, when one simple mistake occurred. According to Kerr, a visiting beekeeper believed the "queen excluder" was making life difficult on the worker bees. This visiting beekeeper, being a kindly gentleman, removed the "queen excluder" to alleviate worker bee difficulties--and in the process accidentally unleashed 26 swarms of the new bees into the wild.

And that was that.

Run, Michael Caine! Run for your life!

The newly developed bee species (and 26 "daughter queens" from the original Tanzanian queen) ran freely into Brazil, displaying its now overly-developed sense of hostility, and interbreeding with other western/European bee species long native to the continent. Rapidly they swept country to country throughout South America, moving into Central America in 1982 and Mexico by 1985.

And, as Hollywood feared, they finally arrived in the United States, too. By 1985, they piggybacked on oil field machinery arriving in California. Then, in 1990, the first permanent colony was discovered in Texas.

Oh, who ticked them off?

Were they as fearsome and deadly as believed? Did they kill at random? Were they worthy of low-level, low-budget horror movies with or without Michael Caine? Well, yes and no. When provoked, the "Africanized bee" (not to be confused with the "African bee") are highly defensive of their hive, they swarm in much greater numbers, and have more "guard" bees than other bee species.

This leads to occasional chaos. As the BBC News Magazine reported even in 2014, random chance encounters led to a swarm of 30,000 bees attacking a couple in Texas and killing their miniature horses, 40,000 bees killing another man in the Lone Star state, 100,000 bees attacking park employees in Florida (who survived), and an estimated swarm of 800,000 killing a man in Arizona.

In 2019, a New Mexico town closed a park after two employees survived an attack. As US News & World Report mentioned, "Officials say the town will let the bees calm down and seek a bee expert to remove them." Yes, sometimes even bees need a breather to relax.

And reports within the last year keep coming:

An attack in Pasadena, CA, where fire fighters were swarmed.

Two men died in Crossroads, TX--one while mowing his lawn--after separate attacks.

A Code Red was issued in Breckenridge, TX, after a swarm bombarded a person, while citizens were told to shelter in their homes.

Four dogs were swarmed in San Tan Valley, AZ, with one dying from an attack.

And it goes on and on and on and on...

Are the bees angrier and deadlier than other bees? Yes. Will you likely ever encounter a swarm? No. Were all the movies warranted? No. Did Michael Caine look for a quick buck and easy paycheck? Probably.

The intentions were good. Science looked to make a heartier bee that would still produce honey. Instead, it made an angry bee that sometimes needs to let off a little steam. And it all occurred because a visiting beekeeper one day wanted to help the worker bees stretch their legs a little bit.



As a side note: Michael Caine wasn't the only celebrity to appear in The Swarm, just the lead actor. Oscar winners Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda made cameos as well. It was a veritable who's who of money-grabbing celebrities.

A box office failure, The Swarm was actually nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, so, if anything, everyone in the cast looks dashing.

Famous Writers with Cats: Philip K. Dick

Writers need inspiration somewhere in life, and for many that inspiration comes from their pet cats.

This is a running series where we post pictures of famous writers with their feline companions--the cute, the cuddly, the creepy. And that's just the writers.

Today:  Philip K. Dick

Considering Philip K. Dick's stories have been made into movies like Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall, there's a strong chance this cat is just some sort of android that had vengeance and murder on its mind. Look at it. You can't tell me that cat wasn't wondering about murder.

Okay, and maybe catnip.

Famous Writers Arrested: Ring Lardner, Jr.

Here we'll occasionally dive into mugshots of the criminally-inclined writers who found themselves in the big house. Crime doesn't pay, although literature sometimes does.


Today:  Ring Lardner, Jr.

Ring Lardner, Jr's. mugshot

Ring Lardner, Jr., was renowned in Hollywood circles in the 1940s, making more money for his screenwriting than most actors earned as the face of the movie. His success led to winning an Academy Award in 1942 for his script for the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey-led Woman of the Year.

But amidst all the fame, amidst all the glamour, amidst all the awards, Lardner's career spiraled onto a blacklist for a time as he went to jail for not participating in a congressional witch hunt.

So, why?

In the heady days leading up to World War II, the United States fell under a veil of panic, a precursor of sorts of the 1950's "red scare" of Communists from the Soviet Union.

By 1938, as Adolf Hitler gained power in Europe, the United States established the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which acted as an investigative arm of Congress that looked into any citizen--private or public--deemed subversive in their behavior. This was especially true of groups having affiliations with Fascist or Communist organizations.

Congressman Martin Dies, Jr., the first chairman of the HUAC from 1938-1945.

Congressional members picked their targets randomly. The HUAC went after the Federal Theater Project and Federal Writers Project, questioning if Communists had infiltrated the rash of actors and writers. They went after Japanese-Americans during World War II, creating an argument for their internment. And yet the HUAC chose not to go after the Ku Klux Klan because, as Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi said, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."

As 1947 rolled along, and America began the early stages of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the HUAC targeted members of Hollywood for their left-leaning views. Over forty individuals testified, many naming names of others they claimed held Communist sympathies. It was a modern-day Salem Witch Trial, where no proof was needed, only allegations. But ten other witnesses chose not to cooperate with the congressional investigation--one of those ten being Ring Lardner, Jr.

The Hollywood Ten, with two others.

The group--later called "The Hollywood Ten"--included another Oscar-winning screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo. Both men, along with their eight fellow witnesses, claimed they had protections and privileges granted by the First Amendment that allowed them to not cooperate with the HUAC. Congress and the court system disagreed. Despite a number of appeals lasting until 1950, all ten men were sent to prison for contempt of Congress, with Lardner sentenced to one year at the Danbury (CT) Federal Prison.

Not the headline you want associated with yourself.

Hollywood blacklisted Ring Lardner Jr., Dalton Trumbo, and the eight other witnesses for a few years after their prison sentences, turning incredibly successful screenwriters and directors into jobless individuals looking for a break. But because Hollywood operates off of money, and money talks, circumstances slowly ebbed in Lardner's favor. By the mid-1950s, Lardner began writing under a pseudonym with fellow blacklistee Ian McLellan Hunter, scriptwriting for television shows like The Adventures of Robin Hood in Great Britain. The blacklist ended in 1965, when director Norman Jewison and producer Martin Ransohoff gave Lardner full screenwriting credit for the Steve McQueen movie The Cincinnati Kid, with Lardner's full name, his full respect, his full due.

By 1970, Lardner won a second Academy Award for his screenplay of the movie adaption of M*A*S*H.

Although near the end of his life, Lardner had one last laugh left. He confessed to fellow writer Miklós Vámos that he won yet another Academy Award under a pseudonym while blacklisted.

Lardner refused to say which pseudonym specifically, as another fellow writer allowed Lardner to use his name and did a favor during a very dark time. To this day, no one knows which famous movie it is exactly that Lardner wrote.

A short addition to this story that brings it all together:
The chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 was a Republican Congressman from New Jersey named J. Parnell Thomas.

In 1948, Thomas' secretary sent newspaper columnist Drew Pearson information regarding how Thomas was placing people on his staff payroll as clerks (although they were clerks in name only), and then these individuals would turn their income back over the Thomas. This increased his salary and allowed Thomas to avoid a higher tax bracket.

Rep. J. Parnell Thomas

A grand jury was convened and Thomas was called to testify. He claimed he had First Amendment rights that absolved him from cooperating, just as "The Hollywood Ten" had claimed in 1947 when Thomas was chairman--a right he denied them.

The courts disagreed he had that right as well, and Thomas was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 18-months in a federal prison.

The prison? The same Danbury (CT) Federal Prison Ring Lardner, Jr. received his sentence. Their sentences overlapped. Lardner and Thomas, the accused and the accuser, became prison mates.

Elementary school shows "The Lion King" during a fundraiser. Now it owes Disney $250.

"One of the dads bought the movie at Best Buy," PTA president David Rose told CNN. "He owned it. We literally had no idea we were breaking any rules."

So it goes for the folks at Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley, CA, which was hosting a fundraiser for "parents' night out." They showed the 2019 remake of The Lion King during the festivities--and, in the process, raised about $750 for the school.

That is until Movie Licensing USA caught wind of the event. The company represents Disney and other major Hollywood studios for licensing issues. They emailed Emerson explaining that since the school didn't have a license to publicly show the movie, they owe Disney $250. The PTA says they won't fight it and will give Disney the money.

Disney's net income for 2019 was $10.44 billion on record revenue of $69.57 billion.

They want $250 from a school.

That's all you really need to know.

Aww, f*#@! The script to "Uncut Gems" has the 7th-most f-words in Hollywood history.

Three guesses what word he's about to say.

Sometimes, with screenwriting, one word becomes a crutch, a go-to, a repetition. For Adam Sandler's new movie, the f-word is the go-to crutch again and again...and again. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Sandler's recently released Uncut Gems has the 7th-most f-words in Hollywood cinematic history. And how many f-bombs does it actually take to get to 7th place? It takes 408 utterances. Somewhere, Quentin Tarantino must be smiling.

Of course, that means there are six other movies that exceed Uncut Gems for such linguistic love. So, how does the top-10 shake out?


1.)  Swearnet: The Movie  (935 f-words)
2.)  Fuck: A Fuckumentary  (857)
3.)  The Wolf of Wall Street  (569)
4.)  Summer of Sam  (435)
5.)  Nil by Mouth  (428)
6.)  Casino  (422)
7.)  Uncut Gems  (408)
8.)  Straight Outta Compton  (392)
9.)  Alpha Dog  (367)
10.)  End of Watch  (326)


In a shock to all of the western hemisphere's moving-going public, not one film in the top-10 is a Quentin Tarantino creation, despite his scripts' collective reputations. In fact, he barely cracks the top-30, with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction popping up in 27th and 28th place, respectively.

The face of vindication.

And here I was thinking something like Scarface would be in the mix, but it appears Tony Montana was a choir boy all along.

Closed Brooklyn theater now posts haiku on the marquee.

Instead of having a shuttered eyesore squat in the middle of Brooklyn, two locals decided to place a haiku on an old cinema's marquee to gussy up the joint.

The Pavillion Theater in the Park Slope neighborhood closed last year and has remained dormant while new owners refurbish the property inside. Locals Molly Gross and Drew Pisarra asked the proprietors if, in the meantime, they could add a little artistic flair to the property and place cinematic-themed haiku that relate to Brooklyn on the marquee.

Gross wrote the first haiku, a nod to Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It:

Nola Darling dreams
A story in black and white
Loving herself first

They've also posted a nod to Saturday Night Fever, with a work by poet Diane Mehta:

Right down to my blood
Fast-footed strut this disco
Love these teenage feet

"We like the idea of creativity in public spaces," Gross told the New York Post. “This is definitely our biggest project to date. We hope that this inspires people."

Well, it's at least inspired me to start humming the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive," so it's got that going for itself.

The Scottsdale, AZ, library was a little short on DVDs for awhile.

A Scottsdale, AZ, mother of two is facing criminal charges after she tried to pawn 90 DVDs that belonged to the local library. And how did she collect all those DVDs? Like any good parent, she had her children borrow them. You can never start 'em too young!

According to AZCental, Joanna Marie Alvarez had DVDs worth $2,872--suggesting she wasn't pawning PBS documentary specials that retail for $2.99 at the local Family Dollar store.

Alvarez went to SuperPawn in Mesa ("Super" lends an air of sophistication to all of this) with her haul. An employee asked where she got the DVDs, to which Alvarez said at a Scottsdale library yard sale. Considering the DVDs all had the library's name on them, the SuperPawn associate called the library to confirm the priced-to-move yard sale action.

In a police filing, Alvarez said she didn't know pawning the items was illegal, and that she intended to get them back.

Authorities were only able to recoup 77 of the 90 DVDs in the end. After all, those Weekend at Bernie's director's cut DVDs are a hot commodity and don't stick around too long.

Various celebs "audition" to play teen Dumbledore on 'Conan'

Comic Con was held this past weekend, an event where everything sci-fi, fantasy, comic book, and nerdgasm related converged for four days. It brings together movie studios, celebrities, and thousands of sexually and socially awkward fans to celebrate trailers of upcoming movies and television shows.

Conan O'Brien knows his demographics are largely centered around 20-something year old men high on Cheetos dust who can recite the entire history of Chewbacca, Spock, or Harry Potter's life--which explains why he brought his show on remote to Comic Con.

With J.K. Rowling currently writing the script to the sequel to the Harry Potter-ish Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them--which will feature a young Dumbledore--Conan had some celebrities try out for the role:

Evanna Lynch, who portrayed Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies, recently visited the Hobbits' Shire.

Once Chewbacca visits Hogwarts, the circle will be complete.

Two hundred movie theaters showed '1984' last week as a protest to the government.

According to the website United State of Cinema, two hundred art house cinemas showed the dystopian movie 1984 last week, which is based on George Orwell's novel of the same name.

Over 184 cities and 44 states had a showing, while locations outside the country--five in Canada, and one each in England, Sweden, Holland, New Zealand, and Croatia--also joined in.

The collected group of theaters decided the week of April 4th was timely, as the protagonist in the book and movie begins his diary on that day.

The theaters' goal?


"The endeavor encourages theaters to take a stand for our most basic values: freedom of speech, respect for our fellow human beings, and the simple truth that there are no such things as 'alternative facts.'"


Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming--all states with their fingers on the pulse of the excitement--were the six states that didn't have a single cinema in their entire state show the film. By comparison, California had 28 locations. Even Alaska and Alabama had a single location feature the film.

Delaware has a history of never involving itself in anything. It's like the agoraphobic of American states, the geographic and political equivalent of a pasty man with no calf muscle definition who enjoys white rice, low sodium saltines, and the smooth, smooth taste of filtered water.

What I'm trying to say is that it's a bad sign when even Alabama outdoes you.

Baseball Opening Day, Walt Whitman, and Susan Sarandon

Most of Major League Baseball officially has its Opening Day today, the sports equivalent of a town crier heralding spring in the form of bat and ball and glove.

April is also National Poetry Month, a quick 30-days where Americans casually pretend they read poetry and recount that time in second grade they were really digging Shel Silverstein.

Many poets have written about baseball, though--one of the rare times literature and sports merge, as the construction, the imagery, the metaphors inherent in baseball are hardly found in other American team sports. Be it Donald Hall, May Swenson, Marianne Moore--when writers tend to comment or craft a piece about a sport, rare as it is, usually it's about baseball.

Case in point: Walt Whitman, of all people, is quoted in the movie Bull Durham by Susan Sarandon's character as she woos her latest lover, who is a baseball player. Sarandon's character, after all, believes in "The Church of Baseball." She claims Whitman said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us."

Not quite what he said. Good try, though.

So what did Whitman actually say about baseball? The sport of bats and balls was newly created at the time Whitman was an old man. A writer named Horace L. Traubel began having conversations with Whitman late in the famed poet's life and took notes, compiling them in a book called With Walt Whitman in Camden. Being Whitman, of course, his thoughts weren't pithy.

His actual thoughts on baseball?


"I like your interest in sports ball, chiefest of all base-ball particularly: base-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen generate some of the brutal customs (so-called brutal customs) which, after all, tend to habituate people to a necessary physical stoicism. We are some ways a dyspeptic, nervous set: anything which will repair such losses may be regarded as a blessing to the race. We want to go out and howl, swear, run, jump, wrestle, even fight, if only by so doing we may improve the guts of the people: the guts, vile as guts are, divine as guts are!"

Later, in another conversation with Traubel, Whitman continued on baseball:


"Baseball is the hurrah game of the republic! That's beautiful: the hurrah game! well—it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game: has the snap, go, fling, of the American atmosphere—belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life."


If, as Sarandon's character in Bull Durham believes, that there is a Church of Baseball, then Whitman saw the divine in it a hundred years earlier in the twilight of his life, the American game, our game, a beautiful thing, with divinity found in guts.

Richard Adams, author of "Watership Down," dead at 96.

2016 has been a great year if you have money riding in a celebrity death pool.

Have you already won this year? You're a horribly morbid human being.

Haven't won yet? Don't worry. Betty White and Bob Barker can't live forever.

This is a roundabout way of saying that Watership Down author, Richard Adams, died on December 24th, according to a press release from his family. He was 96-years old.

The book sold over a million copies in his native United Kingdom, became hugely popular worldwide, and was eventually made into a movie.

In other words, Adams had a good go of it.

But if I'm any other celebrity at this point, I'm sitting in a padded room, alone in the dark, and trying to ride out the next four days in hiding.

Forget the graduation video. Israeli sixth graders accidentally receive porn DVD instead.

In honor of National Hug Day, sixth graders at an elementary school in Haifa were to receive a commemorative DVD of their graduation ceremony. It was supposed to be the type of video that makes soccer moms and grandparents alike fan themselves from excitement.

Except an excitement of a different sort popped up on the video--excitement in the form of hardcore porn. Apparently there was a whole different form of hugging going on.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the school claims the DVD maker created the graduation ceremony video on used pornographic discs which left in scenes from various--uhh--lusty movies.

Parents have been aghast. "This is a scandal," said one.

Damn right. Who gets their dirty movies on DVD anymore?

Hermione Granger’s movie home is up for sale.

The real life home used as the stand-in for Hermione Granger's residence when she left Hogwart's for the summer is up for sale for the low-low price of £2,400,000, or $3,100,000, whichever currency you choose to dabble in. It seems Hermione was swimming in fanciful living despite the bedraggled hairstyle.

Hermione Granger's house for sale in Hampstead Garden Suburb for £2.4m https://t.co/AY4H8H954d pic.twitter.com/NxREGzUwLU

— Hampstead Mums (@Hampstead_Mums) September 26, 2016

Lest you think you're not getting much bang for your buck, the listing notes the house has six bedrooms, two bathrooms, and two reception rooms. Why would you need two reception rooms? I wouldn't know, since my experience with haute bourgeoisie society comprises driving through such neighborhoods on a ten-speed, not a Tesla.

Hermione's movie home comes on the tail of Harry Potter's movie home also going up for sale recently. The boy wizard's humble home--which looks like a cut rate residence on a cul-de-sac in suburban Kansas--can be yours for £475,000, or $616,000.

The Kansas-y part of England.

What does this all mean for Ron Weasley? I assume his family lived in a modified 1974 Winnebago with 215,000 miles on it and it's probably for sale soon in suburban England somewhere.



Photo: Associated Press

Good thing Red found it when he did: The 'Shawshank' tree is no more.

Hurry up, Red. That tree isn't going to last forever, man.

Stephen King wrote The Shawshank Redemption as a slice of the Maine prison system, and the movie adaptation played along and pretended it was rural Maine as well.

Except the movie's producers probably realized you never want to visit rural Maine under any circumstances, so they used a great deal of Ohio as a stand-in.

This included the area where Red (played in the movie by Morgan Freeman), once released from prison, seeks out a tree that his former prison mate, Andy (played by Tim Robbins), told him about. The tree was where Andy proposed to his wife--and buried at the base of the tree would be a tin with information and money for Red to come join in a new life with him.

In the book and in the movie, the tree is symbolic of hope and love and redemption.

Alas, Mother Nature doesn't care about your feels and doesn't care about Stephen King stories. Lightning struck the tree in 2011, badly damaging large portions of it. Then, yesterday, not one to wait around for the inevitable, Mother Nature drew up a fury of high winds which caused the tree to keel over.

Which sort of makes you wonder what Red would have done if the tree actually tipped over years before he ever found it in the book or the movie. Andy didn't think this through, did he? He can figure out how to chisel through prison walls and overthrow a corrupt warden--but the man never had a backup plan if Mother Nature went on a tear.

That was the really lackluster alternative ending Stephen King never wanted you to read.

When Writers Go Weird: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. 'When Writers Go Weird' is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.

Today: That time Ken Kesey faked his suicide.

Contrary to what Hollywood would make you believe, faking your own death to get out of something isn't a common occurrence. This is because faking your death is hard work with you still being alive and all.

Kesey thinking up ways to not kill himself.

This brings us to Ken Kesey. Kesey--who looked like a middle-aged patron in a South Boston back alley bar--is in that group of one-hit wonder authors, but with only a fraction of the fame of your J.D. Salingers and Harper Lees. He wrote more, it's just that none of it was memorable. His most notable work was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a massive hit made even more popular with its 1975 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson.

Kesey sprung to critical and commercial success in his mid-twenties for Cuckoo, which was partly inspired by his time spent in an illegal medical trial run by the CIA for psychoactive drugs run. The trial tested drugs like LSD, cocaine, and mescaline, creating all of the allure of a club scene but without the great dance beats, which Kesey detailed in his writings. Not surprisingly, Kesey continued the medical trial long after the medical trial ended. Drugs are funny that way.

After Cuckoo garnered success, Kesey moved to a ranch in La Honda, CA, south of San Francisco. There, Kesey and a large gathering of acquaintances and friends dabbled in then-legal psychedelic drugs like LSD (notice a pattern yet?), and held parties dubbed "Acid Tests." The group came to call itself The Merry Pranksters and criss-crossed the country in a bus painted for a bad trip--a trip on acid, not Interstate 95--for no other apparent reason than they could.

There's probably at least three dozen
illegal things going on with this bus.

By 1965, Kesey was arrested for marijuana possession, one of the few illegal drugs at the time. Then he found himself busted a second time for the same crime. For reasons unknown--paranoia? fright? looking for a thrill? a history of bad decision making?--Kesey decided to create a faked suicide to escape pending jail time.

Driving up to northern California, outside Eureka, Kesey parked a truck near a seaside cliff and left an elaborate suicide note with the line "Ocean, Ocean, I'll beat you in the end." Suicide never sounded more poetic or romantic. Then, through the help of his friends and luxurious trunk space to hide, Kesey snuck over the border into Mexico to hide from the FBI for his marijuana arrests.

Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, then Manzanillo all received a visit from Kesey, his friends, his family, and even the bus. The FBI didn't buy the supposed suicide, although the media reported Kesey's death as fact. U.S. authorities tracked the author to Mexico, enrolling the help of the Mexican Federales, but Kesey remained largely hidden, even escaping undercover stings a couple of times. For eight months he hid in plain sight in the town with friends. As the New York Times later recounted, a former hotel owner in Manzanillo, Bart Varelmann, wrote in a memoir that "[t]he interior of Ken's bus was a cornucopia of strange pills, exotic herbs, magic mushrooms, peyote buttons, LSD, uppers, downers, poppers, and of course marijuana." Varelmann also noted that "[o]n a windless day one could get stoned just strolling past the bus." If you think this sounds ideal, clearly you were alive for the 1960s.

Then, as randomly as he faked a suicide, as abruptly as the hijinks began, and as if the vacation was over, Kesey headed back to the United States and accepted five months in jail for his prior arrests. The ruse of a suicide was over.

Can you fake a rebirth? If so, Kesey tried his best version of it. The general absurdity of the previous two years faded as Kesey, out of prison, moved to rural Oregon and wrote largely forgettable material for books and magazines, including a memoir and tour in a new version of the psychedelic bus. He remained largely uninteresting--dare say, normal--until his death in 2001.

The weirdest thing Kesey did at the end of his life was that he became boring. And that was maybe the most criminal thing of all.

Shakespeare's plays, as told by LEGO.

The LEGO Movie a couple years ago springboarded the toy into another level of ubiquitousness little seen outside Ryan Seacrest. Plastic brick mania has gripped the world, which explains why--yes--of all weeks, there's a LEGO tie-in to the Shakespeare 400th anniversary.

That's right. Here's 1:38 of LEGO reenacting scenes from Shakespeare:





This LEGO Shakespeare love is being outviewed on Youtube by a LEGO video called "LEGO Ninjago: Tall Tale of Monkey Wretch."

Which means the end of Shakespeare it seems.

He had a good run.

Chewbacca proves it once and for all: Han shot first.

The great debate amongst Star Wars geeks that makes them asthmatic with excitement is whether Han Solo shot the alien smuggler Greedo first in the Mos Eisley cantina, or if Greedo was actually the bad guy.

The original 1977 movie seemingly showed Han gunning down Greedo first. Fast forward to the 1997 re-release of the franchise, when George Lucas played around with the film, added scenes and special effects, and suddenly Greedo was the bad guy initially firing.

Today, it's been settled. Peter Mayhew, the actor who has played Chewbacca and Han's loyal sidekick in seven movies for the franchise, released photos of the original Star Wars script on Twitter today (or as the script was once called, The Adventures of Luke Skywalker as taken From the 'Journal of the Whills').

The result? Han is a murderer.

#chewscript 014 Han Shot First. Period. @starwars pic.twitter.com/4tGOOsRp2l

— Peter Mayhew (@TheWookieeRoars) March 2, 2016

Forget Han being the killer here. The real news is that Greedo's original name was Allen.

Allen.

That's an insurance adjuster from Schenectady, NY, with a penchant for sensible shoes and midsized Toyotas. Not an alien smuggler from a galaxy far, far away.

Teen boys wear women's clothes to protest school ban.

Teen boys donned dresses and teen girls wore men's clothes in Clovis, CA, in protest of rules upheld by the local school board dictating a dress code.

The Clovis Unified school board voted to maintain a decade-long outline that specifically states dresses are solely worn by women and girls, and forbids boys from having long hair and earrings. The students argue this stance is discriminatory against many, including those who are transgender, and intend to fight the decision by dressing however they please, as this photo shows:

The cast of 'Reality Bites' reunites!

Clovis Unified Trustee Richard Lake is quoted as saying, "a woman's a woman and a man's a man, and there's a difference."

He's right! Men have testes and women have ovaries! I just looked it up! Some people even have both sex organs! Look up endocrinology if you're bored sometime. It's an extensive world regarding the vast complexities of hormones.

But that doesn't explain why clothes--which are simply just sewn pieces of fabric assigned social codes--somehow dictate who's a man and who's a woman. Clothes are only defined by the standards and mores individuals and society levy upon the inanimate objects that woven fabric actually is. It's not a difficult concept.

The silliest thing about all of this?

In order to "swap" genders, all the Clovis students somehow dressed like the cast of an early 1990's romantic comedy. If you squint closely, I swear Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garfalo are in the photo above.

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli...and the archives.

The late Mario Puzo's estate is auctioning off a wealth of material associated with The Godfather author.

The collection includes--but isn't limited to--a 744 page draft of the novel, handwritten outlines, the 1965 Olympia typewriter Puzo used to create the epic, and letters he wrote to Francis Ford Coppola, the director of the movies that forever made us an offer we can't refuse. (The auction actually includes the working movie script that quotes that line as well.)

The 45 boxes of archives will be sold as together, with a pre-auction estimate of $400,000.

And you thought getting killed over your cannoli was expensive.