I guess it's some kind of achievement to be judged the most entirely average, but still, I don't think "Miss Typical" pageants are often held nowadays. They seem to belong to an age when conformity was thought to be more of a virtue. Rachel Reber here won "Miss Typical Freshman Coed" title back in 1941.
Marilyn Charleston was judged Miss Typical Teen of Nevada:
Some media gimmicks never go out of style. But you'd think we could have reached a conclusion during the past sixty years, since the article appeared in 1948.
Back in 1948, Norman Robert Kolreg of Lewiston, Maine, became famous when he was able to walk upright (with some help from his mother) at the tender age of 5 days. Soon Mrs. Kolreg began exhibiting him to any curiosity seeker who showed up at her door. She even took out an ad in the paper, listing his scheduled performances. She didn't charge an admission fee, but she did accept donations. Which led to criminal charges being brought against her, alleging that being exhibited was injurious to the child's "life, limb and health." The charges were dropped, but only after she agreed to stop making him perform. [The Day - Apr 2, 1948]
Reportedly, little Norman kept on walking — soon without any help from Mom. I have no idea what become of him later in life.
Here's a twist. Usually, I present the trailer first, then the full film it represents. But I can't find the full film for Roger Corman's Amazons trailer (1986) above. And I can't find the trailer for the feature length Queen of the Amazons (1947) below. So you get the trailer for one, and then the full other feature. But they are both so bad, you probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't mention it, despite a 40-year gap and one being in color and one in B&W!!
This film makes the Sterling Silver industry looks like the Freemasons, the Bilderberg Group and the Illuminati all rolled up into one. A plan for world domination unfolds!
In the mid-1960s, when I was in elementary school, I had a subscription to HUMPTY DUMPTY MAGAZINE. A very weird comic strip therein was titled "Twinkle, The Star That Came Down From Heaven." (Seen above, drawn by Jerry Smath, and courtesy of the Flickr stream of Glen Mullaly.) Even as a kid, I knew it was strange. A living, sentient star who manifested on Earth in a bipolar costume and kept his face-equipped iconic star head? And did he come from the celestial heaven or the Christian Heaven? Far out!
Little did I know until recently that "Twink" had earlier adventures in the 1940s, in the pages of CALLING ALL KIDS, that were even more bizarre in their fashion. Unfortunately, no information remains about the writer and/or artist who was crazed enough to invent Twinkle.
Back in the 1940s, talking wasn't allowed in the dining room of the Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison. So the convicts developed a primitive sign language to communicate what food they wanted:
Upheld hand: more bread, please
Upraised fist: more potatoes
Upheld knife, fork and spoon: more stew
Washing motion with the hand: water
Thumb up and index finger straight out: coffee or tea
Open and close the hand as if milking a cow: milk, please!
Hand flat and passed back and forth across the plate: gravy
Fork held up: meat
Thumb thrust through the fingers: vinegar
Two fingers thrust out: salt and pepper
If the person at the end of the table beats the table with his spoon: dessert is on the way
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.