Category Archives: The Best of the Rest

You might not fit into any particular niche, but you’re American as hell anyway.

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.

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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 | 2 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 | 1 comment

“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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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.

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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 | 7 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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Posted in 20th Century Insanity, America Fun Fact of the Day, American Heroes, The Best of the Rest

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Victoria Woodhull, the First-Ever Woman Presidential Nominee, Was Kind of Badass

Posted on November 14, 2017 | 1 comment

“Sure, this thing says I can’t vote, but where does it say I can’t just be president, then, huh?”

~Victoria Woodhull

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There are two kinds of historical figures in America; the ones we learn about at an early age in school, and the equally badass ones who just sort of linger in obscurity for a while until someone decides to write a movie about them. The latest figure in that latter category, based on the fact that Brie Larson is signed on to play her in a currently under-development movie from Amazon Studios, is Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States of America.

Oh, no, she didn’t come close to winning, obviously, but she still stands as an impressive, and pretty quirky, American hero that might as well be saluted in these hallowed, beer-splattered halls. So here we go.

Victoria Woodhull, the First-Ever Woman Presidential Nominee, Was Kind of Badass

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Posted in 19th Century Factoids, America Fun Fact of the Day, American Heroes, The Best of the Rest

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Unsung Heroes: The Budweiser Beer Strike of 1976

Posted on April 5, 2017 | 1 comment

“Wait, without Budweiser, that means I’ll have to drink a better beer, which is literally any other beer.”

~America in 1976

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Even when we’re screeching harpies hating on everything you love (which, apparently, solely consists of fucking ALDI, you goddamn lunatics of the internet) we are at least aware of the hatred we’re spewing.

For example—many Americans like Budweiser. Like, they buy it, and drink it, and describe the flavor as something better than “remember that kid who would always sit alone and chew grass during recess?

We’re pretty sure he’s now the brewmaster for Anheuser-Busch” and that’s fine. Let your freak flag fly, enjoy getting full before getting drunk and, we don’t know, unironically wearing trucker hats, it’s your life and do what makes you happy.

We’re putting that out there because, invariably, every time we talk about Budweiser (which fucking sucks) an army of mouth breathers flock to the comments section to respond to our (correct) point (that Budweiser is trash). They say things like “Hey!  Asshole! I like Budweiser!” (literally the only valid argument you have) or “Listen Mr. Fancy Beers, go back to your IPAs and your porters or whatever” (which inevitably is brought up in the articles where we never once mention IPAs or porters).

So, we know two things here.

First of all, this article has a fun fact that most of you are unaware of.  And secondly, we know that many of you will be absolutely fucking livid at the tone we take to tell you about it (that tone being “Budweiser is like if someone drank gutter water and thought ‘if only this could get me a slight buzz’”) (which is the correct tone).

And we say bring it on.  Budweiser is trash, no one should drink it, and for a brief moment in 1976, a group of Teamsters actually managed to make that happen.  This is their story.

Unsung Heroes:  The Budweiser Beer Strike of 1976

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Posted in 20th Century Insanity, America Fun Fact of the Day, Beer!, The Best of the Rest

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Jackie Coogan: Uncle Fester Was Kind of a Badass

Posted on November 30, 2016 | 4 comments

“Holy shit, I can’t believe I got killed by Uncle Fester.”

~An Actual Murderer

coogan

“Actors aren’t as tough as they used to be” sounds like a sentence you’d hear an angry old man shouting from his porch, possibly to children gliding down the sidewalk on Heelys. But there is some truth to it.

Sure, a lot might have to do with the times we live in, but it’s easy to forget that Hollywood wasn’t always full of glamour and George Clooneys. The Golden Age of Hollywood was pretty much fueled by animal deaths on set and carefully regimented drug cocktails forced upon strung out teenage actresses off it, and if you managed to pull through that minefield relatively successful and sane, then you had to be made of some pretty solid stuff.

We mention that because while we (correctly) look back at groundbreaking actors such as Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, and Humphrey Bogart as visionaries and badasses, there’s one actor who probably was the toughest son of a bitch to step in front of a camera (yes, we know that list includes Danny Trejo) if for no other reason than the fact that his childhood, we’re pretty sure, was haunted. Which probably helped him prepare for the role of Uncle Fester.

Yes, we’re going to talk about Jackie Coogan, who could totally beat you up.

Jackie Coogan:  Uncle Fester Was Kind of a Badass

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