Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Randolph Severn Parker III

Trey Azagthoth's real name is George Michel Emmanuel III

in the US “Trace” and indeed “Tracer” also means III, fact fans

Oooh

Tracer Wainwright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEil2e_bUvg

Tre Mccartney

Name your kid something different, jeez

a popular UK politician called one of his many kids Sixtus, which shows a lack of imagination (similarly my current laptop appears on the network as 'six')

Isn't Una the absolute lack of imagination though, you'd think that at least the first would get a name specific to themselves.

not if you're aiming for the Paloma and Blanca follow ups

sixtus and septimius/septimus are REAL old school names which i associate with Romans, Popes, and also really large Victorian families running out of name ideas for the nth son.

You've just very accurately described the family of the current Leader of the House of Commons.

Although he is more Catholic than most Popes.

kathleen hanna and ad-rock from the beastie boys are married

Marc Maron tells a funny story in one of the WTFs four or five years back where he was invited to some sort of private celebrity function at Horovitz and Hanna's designer craftsman house in Pasadena and awkwardly being the last to know any of this.

Taylor Swift was, apparently, named after James Taylor

James Taylor Swift III

Thought it was Graham Taylor?

Both of their Wikipedia articles mention it. Perhaps it is erroneous but it is a piece of information that I just heard about today, so.

Baseball HOFer Rickey Henderson was named after Ricky Nelson. (His full name being Rickey Nelson Henley Henderson.)

the kathleen hannah thing was in the documentary about her, The Punk Singer (2013) which is worth a watch.

and Don Henley's family changed their surname in honor of anticipating Ricky Henderson's future greatness?

Well, yeah.

I didn't learn, but recently realised of my own proud/mildly ashamed accord, that the wee icon for the clock app on my phone displays the actual current time and isn't just a static generic analogue clock image.

it's even got a fancy sweeping second hand ooooooh

oh shit!!

I remember when I finally noticed that

If it was a snake it would have bit me.

I probably only became aware because the time displayed at the top of my POS iPhone will get hung up and then suddenly jump 2-3 minutes ahead to the correct time so I stopped paying any attention to it.

Both the clock app thing and the Tre/Trey/Trip thing are blowing my mind. And I'm a third, though my preferred name has little to do with my legal name.

I've known one or two Chips...short for Charles, is it not?

Juan is a name traditionally used for the first born.

Joseph Smith never actually made it to Utah.

Hugo Boss is not a contemporary guy. He got his break making uniforms for the Nazis and then died in 1948.

Super Fly (1972) was directed by the son of the man who directed Shaft (1971). If only Gordon 'Trey' Parks III could've directed a seminal blaxploitation film in 1973 to complete the circle of life.

Are those pun names for bands still popular? Because Trey Parker Jr. would be a good one.

The "taka taka taka" dance that Dr. Evil does in the first Austin Powers movie is the macarena.

that shit band KONGOS is made up of four sons of John Kongos

Hiding in plain sight

that Elmlea isn’t cream.

🤯

cool i can start eating it again

I always thought it was kind of strange that we have a metal door that goes from our kitchen into our garage, until last week when some friends car spontaneously caught on fire in their garage and the metal door prevented the entire house from being destroyed.

Everywhere else I've lived were outfitted with wooden doors, probably before this was part of the building code

That happened to someone I knew and it wiped out the animal sanctuary next to the garage, ouch. Luckily the garage was away from the house. Did any US houses ever actually have a set-up like Dan Tanner's in the stupid cop show Vegas, where he'd essentially park the car in the kitchen?

ooooh. i didn't know this either about the metal door thing

Oh man. We don’t have a metal door but we also don’t have a car.

Slapstick comedy gets its name from a thing called a slapstick which is used in theatres to make a slapping sound.

The etymology of the word 'cockpit' is thus (leading on from a conversation with someone about the origin of 'dashboard', which I think is detailed upthread somewhere):

The word cockpit seems to have been used as a nautical term in the 17th century, without reference to cock fighting. It referred to an area in the rear of a ship where the cockswain's station was located, the cockswain being the pilot of a smaller "boat" that could be dispatched from the ship to board another ship or to bring people ashore. The word "cockswain" in turn derives from the old English terms for "boat-servant" (coque is the French word for "shell"; and swain was old English for boy or servant)...From about 1935, cockpit came to be used informally to refer to the driver's cabin, especially in high performance cars

I can't remember where I read this now, but further upthread...

That 'cockpit' originally referred to a space reserved for cockfighting and was adapted to denote the area of a ship where injured crewmen were taken (and which was often a bloody mess, resembling its linguistic forebear).

― Mummenschanz in a Metal Mood (Old Lunch), Wednesday, October 3, 2018 6:13 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe I need to recall the things I was shockingly old when I learned, although re-learning them over and over again is quite fun

Slapstick comedy gets its name from a thing called a slapstick which is used in theatres to make a slapping sound.

And every high school symphonic band's percussion section needs one so that they can play "Sleigh Ride" as written.

See also the vibraslap, which is used exactly once in the score of "Godspell" and then languishes in the closet the rest of the time.

Specialty percussion instruments have a bittersweet air to me because they could someday cease to exist physically. It's easier to just trigger the samples, rather than lugging a cuica and berimbau and surdo and afuche-cabasa around town.