Scattered Curiosities

Ahoy, Matey, and welcome aboard the Curiosity Sloop. Prepare to have your timbers shivered as Commodore Einstone pulls back the thin veil separating kings from pirates, debunks the myth of buried treasure and explains maritime terms from the Golden Age of Piracy. Get familiar with the Gentleman Pirate, the Prince of Pirates, the Robin Hood of the Sea and learn which monarch was so obese they needed to be carried around in a sedan chair, which made popular keeping goldfish as pets, which exhumed their ancestors to shoot at the corpses and whom they all condemned to perform “The Marshall’s Dance”. PLUS, Blackbeard, Black Sam, Black Bart, Jack Sparrow and Captain Kidd’s cat! Batten down the hatches and crack a cask of grog for Pirate/King.

Court jesters have been associated with positions of authority throughout time in memorial from the Pharoah Neferkere to the conquests of Atilla the Hun to the Battle of Hastings and through the Age of Discovery. These wisecracking wearers of the "cap and bells" have gone by various titles: minstrel, juggler, jolly, clown, comedian, joker, harlequin, and fool. Join Albort as he gets acquainted with the innocent and clever funambulists of Bloody Mary, the King of 1,000 slippers, the Virgin Queen, and the Bard of Avon. You will also discover what made Lord Minimus so anomalous, Archibald Armstrong so dastardly and the Groom of the Stool so indispensable.

1986 (a 365-day time frame fraught with discharge of toxic material, skyjackings, and espionage) was dubbed the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. And why not? The U.K. and Netherlands officially ended the 335-Years War, Hands Across America was raising funds for hunger and homelessness, the late Martin Luther King Jr. was honored with a Federal Holiday, and Pee-Wee Herman bridged the gap between adult and child, encouraging all humankind to be themselves. The curiosities of MCMLXXXVI also include the pirating antics of Captain Midnight, the theft of Picasso’s Weeping Woman, the scandalous Iran-Contra affair, and premiere of Perfect Strangers.

Since The Simpsons debuted over three decades ago, Albort’s Jeopardy game has been embiggened exponentially. But for the Simpsons, he would never have known about Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, or William Alton Carter’s Billy Beer; and that’s just scratching the surface. This episode celebrates the random factoids learned from the longest-running animated sitcom and highlights the real-life personalities some of its characters are partially modeled upon, such as Joe Quimby/Ted Kennedy, John Frink/Julius Kelp, Clancy Wiggum/Edward G. Robinson and many more. Woo-hoo!

How many movies have you seen that feature a wardrobe montage, a protagonist tearing out an IV to hastily leave the hospital, post-coital bed-sheets that magically only cover the woman’s chest, or characters uttering stale lines like, “We’ve got company”, “No time to explain”, or “He’s behind me, isn’t he?” All are examples of clichés but they aren’t just confined to films and television. Join Albort as he dissects some of the common clichés used in everyday language from the ‘bee’s knees’ to ‘cat’s pajamas’ to ‘the early bird catching the worm’. You’ll also get familiar with Pipe Dreams, Pink Elephants, Drug Store Cowboys and meet the "most fecund maker of American slang." Gadzooks!

It's been fifty years since Atari’s revolutionary game, Pong, ushered in a Renaissance for video arcades in America and gave rise to the animatronic house bands of Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza. Albort experienced it in real time and invites you to join him for a stroll down memory lane with detours at the 1982 World’s Fair, Blockbuster Video and the hilarious antics that take place within “Shadowrama” all while avoiding the Noid. As a bonus you’ll get familiar with the “pleasure principle”, time shifting, parallel visual processing, the innermost thoughts of Pac-Man’s enemies, negative option billing and the “Netflix Effect”.

This is the second apportionment of our four-part Better Half mini-series containing four lectures regarding the First Ladies of the United States within the Reconstruction Era, the Gilded Age, through total global interwar, the Mad Decade, and up to the brink of the Dirty Thirties. The sixty-eight-year span features a shy First Lady entreating the Queen of Hawaii, a cross-eyed, anti-suffragist equestrian (with a strict dress code) battling polygamy, and a tee-totaling, guitar-playing FLOTUS hosting weekly gospel sings with a band of cabinet members. The White House Lawn Easter Egg Roll becomes tradition, the billiard room converted to a greenhouse, Christmas Trees, apparitions, and Einstein make their debut appearance there, and the term "First Lady" finally appears in the press. A long list of First Ladies volunteer for the newly formed American Red Cross, the premier Presidential Library is established, a serving First Daughter has a hit song with Columbia Records, a string of First Sisters denounce women's suffrage, the Statue of Liberty is dedicated, a future FLOTUS pulls a reverse Footloose on her fiancée, the United States has its first and only non-consecutive serving First Lady, another that secretly runs the government for seventeen months, and a public confrontation with the Commander in Chief's mistress. As a bonus, we will visit the Women's World Fair with a FLOTUS who taught the deaf, decipher private conversations of the only First Couple to speak Mandarin fluently, and indulge in Waffle Mania.

This is the inaugural episode of an introductory four-part mini-series regarding the First Ladies of the United States of America. The New Nation's inception thought nothing of what to call the President's wife as "First Lady" did not appear in print until thirty-six years after Martha Washington's death. Because women have been so thoroughly shafted in history, much of our familiarity of them come from personal correspondence, leaving us to know some better than others; compare the five existing notes of Mrs. Washington to the over 1,200 of "Mrs. President," Abigail Adams. Unfortunately, a number of those presidential partners chose to destroy letters to protect the legacy of the men under which they were operose. Get to know the First wives, daughters, and nieces from the birth of the Republic until the end of the Civil War. The White House will be built, burned, and renovated several times over by a diverse pool of American Queens, including a First Lady who dies there, one that never steps foot inside the home, and one that deputed "Hail to the Chief" as its theme song. Additionally, we will meet the mysterious "Rose of Long Island," explore a Presidential love affair worthy of Van Halen and dive into the ignominious Petticoat Affair where the "Mean Girls" of the Washington elite cause an uproar in the President's cabinet.

It has been eleven years since ABC’s smash drama LOST has been off the air, yet fans continue to debate and mythologize its doctrines via blogs and hundreds of podcasts devoted solely to dissecting the mysterious island series from multiple perspectives, delving deeper into the characters' connections to one another; this is not one of them. Instead, Albort wishes to introduce some historical figures the roles on LOST were named for: Locke, Bentham, Faraday, Rousseau, Hume, Minkowski, Shephard, Austin, Alpert, Cooper, Burke, Bakunin and much more. Get familiar with Tabula Rasa, the People’s Stick, the Noble Savage and what any of it has to do with Weezer. SCATTERED CURIOSITIES IS NOW AVAILABLE ON VURBL AT https://vurbl.com/station/AAUbrHYt955/

What happens when a paranormal consultant remembers an incarcerated Nelson Mandela dying in the 1980s instead of famously being released from his twenty-seven-year sentence in 1990, becoming the first Black President of South Africa and living an additional three decades? The rara avis known as False Memory Syndrome gets rebranded as The Mandela Effect. Though it just as easily could have been named for Lemuel Gulliver, Thomas Jefferson, or Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, who have all had their biographies altered by nothing more than folktales and the power of suggestion. Join Albort as he reveals societal errors that have been pinned on the bible, cannibalism, Voltaire, Sherlock Holmes, le livre “Monkey Planet” and other victims of The Mandela Effect.

When did fashion dolls morph into America’s movable men? Why do unicorns and Pegasus get confused for one another? Who, among rock stars, would make the ugliest, but most talented, baby? What Golden Raspberry Award-winning actor and former BOP Boy are we infatuated with? How is it that Weebles wobble but do not fall down? And where does Albort dream of going with the King of Horror? The long-awaited responses are revealed in this tell-all rainy-day cocktail-conversation between Mr. & Mrs. Einstone from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt have Amelia Earhart shot down over the Pacific during a “reconnaissance” mission in retaliation for her lesbian affairs with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt? Probably not, but if you nit-picked your facts, you might be able to construct a plausible explanation to support that theory; we are not the first to suggest it, by the way. Today’s narrative was built around the 1933 evening when Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt ducked out of a party at the White House to take a spontaneous flight to Baltimore. The two would forever be associated with aviation, Amelia (for obvious reasons) and Eleanor for travelling over 40,000 miles as First Lady of the United States. Despite their thirteen-year difference, the two had much more in common than air travel. Both taught, wrote books, endorsed products for sponsors, fought for civil rights and refused to take their husbands’ last names; a technicality for Eleanor who’d always been a Roosevelt but Amelia suggested her husband, George Putnam, should, perhaps, be called Mr. Earhart. Put your seat tray up and buckle-in for Amelia and Eleanor’s Excellent Adventure.

*WARNING: CONTENTS OF THIS EPISODE CONTAIN CHRISTMAS SPOILERS. NOT FOR CHILDREN* Join Albort as he explores the many incarnations of the most fantastical, generous, Coca-Cola loving character of the holiday season, Santa Claus; from Saint Nikolas of Myra to Sinterklaas of the Netherlands to Pere Noel of France to L. Frank Baum’s “Neclaus” and why the wife of the man in the “Ho-Ho-Tuxedo” doesn’t even have a first name! Learn how the Little Ice Age influenced the violins of Antonio Stradivari and the writing of Charles Dickens, which holiday song became the first to be broadcast from space, what Norwegian scientists suspect to be the cause of Rudolph’s shiny nose and how the “Father of the American Cartoon” changed American’s reception of Santa Claus, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland.

It’s October and time for our most spooktacular episode yet. Get a lesson in the provenance of Halloween and the many names it goes by, from the Celtic festivities of Calan Gaef and Samhain to All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowmas, All Saint’s Day, Reformation Day, Founder’s Day and the Day of Seven Billion. Albort’s cauldron is brimming with vampires, witches, candy, aliens, splatstick, Jack O Lanterns, souling, full moons, black cats, Michael Landon and R.E.M.

Orville Redenbacher, Mario Puzo and James Brown walk into a podcast…don’t you wish that was the set up to a fantastic joke? It’s not (sorry) but a connection between the three can be found in the year 1969; as well as Ho Chi Minh/Dwight D. Eisenhower, Judy Garland/Sharon Tate, Jack Kerouac/Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and Boris Karloff/Frank Loesser. Join Albort as he gets semi-centennially nostalgic for the Moon Landing, Munchos Potato Crisps, 12¢ stamps, Doom-Buggies, Scooby-Doo, the Dick Sargent/Dick York Bewitched switcheroo and George Lazenby’s singular portrayal of James Bond. It’s a Golden Jubilee.

Capital cities are the center of government to nations states and provinces but are not always the most prominent, popular, populous or permanent (New York City and Philadelphia are NOT capital cities…anymore). Pensacola and Saint Augustine are also former heads of state that ceded to Tallahassee when East Florida and West Florida unified. Join Albort for a brush-up lesson of US capitals and a potpourri of factoids to boot. How did Alabama become the “Yellowhammer State”? Which is the state of “Hogs and Hominy”? What capitol building showcases nineteen chandeliers from Tiffany’s of New York? And why were early Americans so passionate about naming places for Christopher Columbus?

It is time for this season’s language analyzing episode, featuring near miss accidents, poison versus venom, Judas Priest, Alzheimer’s Disease, The Pirates of Penzance, bald faced lies, Diphtheria, Contronyms, Malapropisms, Voiceless Labiodental Fricatives and Albort explaining the difference between amused/bemused, viable/feasible, ultimate/penultimate and how to pronounce Açaí. This is Unglish.

It’s the season three premiere and boy is it a scattered one, including little known factoids about some infamously ferocious historical redheads and a queen whose hair turned white overnight. Delve into the many loves of Cleopatra and Gaius Julius Caesar (along with each other), cross-dressing Romans, decisive beheadings, felinophobes, the tale of the Gordian Knot and the unlikely American success story of Adolph Hitler’s nephew. With special appearances by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, celebrate the first episode of our third season by taking a closer look at some of yesteryear’s Distinguished Despots and Enigmatic Eminences.

It’s the Season Two Finale and Albort thinks the Renaissance names for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were not assigned properly and intends to make a case for it. Get the back story on the cold-blooded half-shelled vindicators of justice and their belletristic namesakes of antiquity Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

Albort reflects on his fortieth year on this our fortieth episode. Travel back to the mystical year one thousand, nine-hundred ninety-eight to decide if Albort predicted the Bird Flu virus as he reads excerpts of his recently dusted off writing assignment book borne of his ten year old, pop-culture infected mind to discover how he and the world have changed in the past thirty years.