Category Archives: American Heroes

America is filled with everyday heroes who help make this country great. By reading America Fun Fact of the Day, you’ve proven that you yourself are also an American hero. And we salute you.

But there’s no way in hell we’re going to salute you by making a fun fact about you, since this page is reserved for REAL heroes. You know, the people who are important enough to get wikipedia pages and such.

Best Batman Performances, Ranked

Posted on March 17, 2023 | 1 comment

“There is no way anyone is going to be completely happy with this list. In fact many will be livid. Let’s run it.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief Johnny Roosevelt

Let's Talk: Batman to Batman

There’s a new entry to the Batman franchise, which is about as evergreen of a statement that has ever existed. Batman franchises replicate faster than Tribbles. We’d make a “Being a Batman franchise is like being one of Nick Cannon’s children” joke but we are not hacks, dammit. We have standards.

Batman is basically the pop culture equivalent of bunnies. Their parents always die.

The latest installment that we don’t really need from a franchise that has about a 50% success rate in their attempts to revive the caped crusader is a CW show called Gotham Knights, which premiered March 14th of this year. Not only is it very bad, it has so many baffling ideas behind it we can’t wrap our head around it.

While there is a popular video game of the same name, that game essentially has you playing characters like Robin, Nightwing, Red Hood and Batgirl in a world reeling from the death of Batman. Gotham Knights the TV series also starts with the death of Batman, but instead follows a random group of teen thieves and the adopted son of Bruce Wayne. We are of course talking about…Turner Hayes????(????)

What? Yes that’s right, they made up a completely new character, who doesn’t even know Bruce Wayne was Batman until his death. There is no Alfred. There is no Jim Gordon. Harvey Dent, played by Supernatural‘s Mischa Collins, basically should be named Gordon, as his role is “boss cop”, but no. (Collins is arguably the only good thing in the show, to be fair. There is a Robin, but she’s a random high school girl that met Batman once before he started training her, again without his son knowing. She is introduced with the line, “Wait, aren’t you in my Trig class?”

Ughhhh.

It’s basically Riverdale, but Batman. The writing is bad, the acting is wooden, and it likely won’t get a second season.

But it got us thinking. A lot of people have played Batman over the years. So why not create a subjective list that’ll get Batman fans upset? Sweet! Let’s rank the best Batmans!

AFFotD Determines, Definitively, Once and For All, Who Is the Best Batman

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Nicolas Cage’s Character Names, Ranked

Posted on July 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

“You say I get to play someone named Castor Troy? I don’t even need to read the script, I’m IN.”

~Nicholas Cage in 1997

face-off-nicolas-cage

There’s no exact science to how we come up with our article topics. Sometimes we see something in the news that piques our interest, sometimes we just think about pizza and think, what if this, but bad.

And sometimes we get a message from friend of AFFotD and occasional contributor, SarahIndie, and the article just writes itself.

Screen Shot 2020-07-11 at 12.50.12 PM

So that’s what we’re going to do! Note, this is NOT going to be a list of which CHARACTERS are the best. It’s just which NAMES are the best. Because if we had to sit down and watch every Nic Cage performance, we would not be able to finish before we reach the heat death of the universe. But names, those we can look at and evaluate.

So here we go. No build up, just NAMES! HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS!

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Yes This Is an Article Entirely About the End Credits of “That Thing You Do!”

Posted on May 6, 2020 | 3 comments

“I haven’t seen this movie in about fifteen years and I must talk about it.”

thingyoudo

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William A. Mitchell Invented All Your Favorite Trashy Food

Posted on November 6, 2019 | 2 comments

“How does this man not have a Nobel Peace Prize?”

~Our Official Statement Regarding William A. Mitchell

william a mitchell

America is a nation of innovation. We gave the world smart phones, microwave ovens, lasers, the internet, and the secret recipe for Coca-Cola. Not only that, we’re a nation that encourages invention. We all grew up listening to stories of Thomas Edison (though, unfortunately, he turned out to be a massive dick who once killed an elephant in order to make his rival look bad), Alexander Graham Bell, and even George Washington Carver who literally became a household name because he invented a lot of ways to use a fucking peanut.

Which is why it’s frankly shocking to us that not everyone in the United States knows the works of William A. Mitchell, the food chemist for the General Foods Corporation who invented so many products that we adore today. We don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say that this is the guy responsible for both Tang and Pop Rocks. We don’t use the hero too often around here (actually we use it all the fucking time), but those two inventions alone are enough to classify William A. Mitchell.

So we’re going to go ahead and make sure you always remember the name of the most prolific food chemist of the 20th century.

William A. Mitchell Invented All Your Favorite Trashy Food

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We Need to Drop Everything and Talk About the New Lou Bega Song (Seriously)

Posted on August 8, 2019 | 1 comment

Scatman-John-Lou-Bega-–-Scatman-Hatman-Officia

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Larry Adler Was Better At Harmonica Than You Are At Anything

Posted on July 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

“I came here to play harmonica and have copious amounts of affairs, and well, I just finished playing harmonica.”

~Larry Adler

larry adler

When you hear the word “famous” there are a lot of words that could follow without knocking you off balance. Famous movie star? Makes sense. Famous doctor? Somewhat more rare, but not particularly shocking. Famous drunk blogger? Well now you’re just lifting lines from the vision board in our office.

But if you were given a million guesses to name professions or identities that could make you famous, we’re willing to bet that “harmonica player” would not even come close to making the list. But that’s only if you’ve not heard of Larry Adler, the famed mouth organ player. (And yes, he referred to the harmonica almost exclusively as the mouth organ, and yes a part of him no doubt did this to allow for all the easy jokes that come from building a career blowing air into a thing you call a mouth organ.)

Larry Adler somehow managed to go from harmonica street performer who didn’t know how to read music to bonified international star who had affairs with famous actresses and recorded music with the likes of Elton John and Cher (as well as a bunch of people who were famous in like the 1950s but if we started this article with stuff like “oh he knew Jack Benny and worked with Dizzie Gillespie” about two thirds of our readers would lapse into an hour-long coma).

Hell, we’ve written AFFotDs for far less impressive careers. So fuck it, we’re going to talk about a harmonica player now.

Larry Adler Was Better At Harmonica Than You Are At Anything

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Elliott Roosevelt Might Just Be the Most Interesting Roosevelt Not Named Teddy

Posted on May 22, 2019 | 2 comments

“Wait, we found more Roosevelt kids?”

~The Writer of Teddy’s Tots

elliott and eleanor roosevelt

We’re not exactly shy here about our preferences when it comes to the Roosevelt presidents. We’re Team Teddy all the way. But we’re not haters on this front. We’ll readily admit that FDR did have his badass moments, and his wife Eleanor was no slouch on that front either. So while we’re not surprised that their offspring generally went ahead and did impressive things, we were pretty amazed to hear about Eleanor’s supposed “favorite son”, Elliott.

To give you a sense of the Elliott Roosevelt, um, flavor, we’ll just say that we’re about 90% certain that Elliott Roosevelt is only considered her favorite son because he made that claim after she died. Strap in, you guys, this is going to be a wild one.

Now let’s take a moment to talk about the middle son of FDR who, well, let’s just say lived a colorful life.

Elliott Roosevelt Might Just Be the Most Interesting Roosevelt Not Named Teddy

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The Most Absurd College Bowl Game Names of 2018

Posted on December 12, 2018 | 2 comments

“Congrats, after a full season of hard work, your team has been selected to play…The Dollar General Bowl. We’re so sorry.”

~NCAA Selection Committee

bowl games

There’s a lot of money to be made in College Football. No, not by the players, that’s ridiculous. Obviously, we’re talking about the money out there for schools and the NCAA in general.

Yeah, no, fuck those students, they get to go to school for free, and all it costs is spending countless hours practicing, weightlifting, and training, and then putting their bodies in peril every Saturday for three months. But again, everyone else, they’re able to get a lot of money from College Football. And nowhere is that more evident than during Bowl Game season.

This Saturday the Celebration Bowl will kick off a slate of games that, between ticket sales, sponsorships, and naming rights, exist solely as cash grabs for schools across the nation. Every team that mustered up six wins will go ahead and play each other for a bonus game of which only a handful carry any real stakes.

But we’re not here to talk about the perils of the Bowl system, or about the NCAA, or anything like that. We don’t really like delving into serious matters like that. We’d much rather talk about goofy names.

So let’s talk about all of the Bowl games that have hilarious, silly names, shall we?

The Most Absurd College Bowl Game Names of 2018

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, Athletes, Miscellaneous America, Strange America

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Eric Roberts Has More Hustle Than Any Actor in Hollywood

Posted on November 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

“*sigh* Yeah he’ll take it.”

~Eric Roberts’ Agent

eric roberts

So here’s a story. The other day we were thinking about Eric Roberts. You know, the actor. Don’t ask us why. You’re gonna ask us why? We were drunk, okay? What that’s not enough explanation for you? Have you ever read our site? We once got drunk and decided it was a good idea to rate every fictional president in film history, and then this shit happened. We are not responsible adults here, okay?

Anyway, we went to Eric Robert’s IMDB page, because we may or may not be watching Sons of Anarchy and may or may not have wanted to write a joke about how shit Eric Robert’s haircut is before realizing that he’s not in that show at all, he just looks kiiiind of like Jeff Kober. Tell us we’re wrong.

Do you know what we found? Well, as you can tell by the title of this article, this dude hustles. Like, holy shit. Look at how many pending project he has on his IMDB page. We can’t even fit all of them in a screenshot, and that’s after we’ve zoomed our browser down enough that it’s blurred beyond recognition.

imdb

How do so many of these not have release dates?

So yeah. Apparently Eric Roberts, according to the internet (WHICH IS INFALLIBLE! ALL PENGUINS ARE GIRLS, THAT’S A FACT NOW) has FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN CREDITS to his name. That’s insane. You know how insane that is? When we started writing this article, that number was on 504. Then when we finished writing this article it was 514. And between writing this and posting it, it jumped up three more. We wish that was a joke.

Now if you want to feel kind of disillusioned, here’s a fun fact. Again, if we go by what the internet says (APPARENTLY ALSO SPIDERS ARE AFRAID OF BULLSEYES, THAT’S A FACT NOW, SO SAYETH THE NET) that Eric Roberts is worth about $8 million, after a highly successful acting career and literally half a thousand roles.

That means each appearance he’s had behind the camera has been worth about $14,000. Which honestly? Is not bad money, but it’s not “award-nominated actor” money either. Not even close.

His sister, Julia Roberts (MAYBE YOU HAVE HEARD OF HER HMM) is worth about $140 million. Over 61 credits.

His daughter, Emma (who we confuse with Emily Rossum for some reason?) is worth $15 million. Which, lol. Do you think he’s a bit jealous of his daughter being worth twice as much as him, or is he mostly proud? Probably mostly proud, with a twinge of jealousy, right? That seems right?

Anyway, we’re going to talk about Eric Robert’s Hustle.

Eric Roberts Has More Hustle Than Any Actor in Hollywood

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The Original Little Rascals Cast Was Probably Cursed?

Posted on February 28, 2018 | 8 comments

“Okay guys, I don’t know who decided to write this article, but I’ve doubled our whiskey rations for it. Things are about to get bleak.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

 little rascals

Our Gang helped define an entire era of early Hollywood entertainment. From 1922 through 1944, the franchise, which you may know better as The Little Rascals, put out 220 short films and one film, featuring 41 child actors during that span.

They remain such an important cultural touchstone that we even decided to revisit the characters in a 1994 motion picture (which, like, did only okay). But when we started looking into the actors who played iconic characters such as Spanky and Buckwheat and Alfalfa, we discovered something a little…perturbing.

That cast is haunted, guys.

Sure, snopes has weighed in on this to preemptively tell us we’re wrong. But we’re not. To prove so, we’re going to talk about the early, non-natural demises of original cast members in what promises to be our most depressing article yet. We excluded things like overdoses and people who got heart attacks in their 50s because, well, we just don’t want to write a bunch of jokes about that kind of stuff today.

But we’ll leave it to you once you’ve seen the evidence. Was the original Little Rascals cast cursed?

(Yes they fucking were.)

The Original Little Rascals Cast Was Probably Cursed?

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