Imponderables: Fun and Games

by David Feldman

  In fact, we’re not aware of a single animated special that even contains the name Peanuts—the majority of titles feature Charlie Brown, and a significant minority Charlie’s untrusty companion, Snoopy.

  So we are left with the irony that the iron man of comic strips, the giant who created the most popular strip in the history of comics, who made more money from cartooning than anyone, detested the title of his own creation. Schulz probably appreciated not only the royalties from foreign countries, but the knowledge that especially in places where peanuts are not an important part of the diet or had no association with children, his strip was called something else: Rabanitos (“little radishes”) in South America, Klein Grut (“small fry”) in the Netherlands, and the unforgettable Snobben (“snooty”), Sweden’s rechristening of Snoopy.

  Submitted by Mark Meluch of Maple Heights, Ohio.

  WHERE IS THE DONKEY IN DONKEY KONG?

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  For those of you who didn’t have anything better to do than obsess about Nintendo in the early 1980s, Donkey Kong is a game created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the most famous video game creator on the planet. Donkey Kong featured a diminutive hero, Jumpman (whose name was later changed to Mario), who had a much larger pet, a gorilla. The gorilla did not exactly bond with his “master,” and conveyed his wrath by kidnapping Jumpman’s girlfriend, Pauline, climbing a building, and hurling barrels and other missiles as our hero attempted to rescue his sweetheart. If the little man managed to reclaim her temporarily, the gorilla snatched Pauline away again. As the game progressed, each level made it harder for Jumpman to succeed. But regardless of what level the player progressed to, nary a donkey was seen.

  So why the donkey in the title? Although some fans insist that the “donkey” was a misheard or mistranslated attempt at “Monkey Kong,” Miyamoto has always insisted otherwise. On his tribute site to Miyamoto (http://www.miyamotoshrine.com), Carl Johnson includes an interview with Miyamoto at the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, where the game’s creator addresses this Imponderable:

  Back when we made Donkey Kong, Mario was just called Jumpman and he was a carpenter. That’s because the game was set on a construction site, so that made sense. When we went on to make the game Mario Brothers, we wanted to use pipes, maybe a sewer in the game, so he became a plumber.

  For Donkey Kong, I wanted something to do with “Kong,” which kind of gives the idea of apes in Japanese, and I came up with Donkey Kong because I heard that “donkey” meant “stupid,” so I went with Donkey Kong. Unfortunately, when I said that name to Nintendo of America, nobody liked it and said that it didn’t mean “Stupid Ape,” and they all laughed at me. But we went ahead with that name anyway.

  In some other interviews, Miyamoto indicates that “donkey” was chosen for its usual connotation in English—stubbornness. In his book on Nintendo, Game Over: Press Start to Continue, David Sheff writes:

  When the game was complete, Miyamoto had to name it. He consulted the company’s export manager, and together they mulled over some possibilities. They decided that Kong would be understood to suggest a gorilla. And since this fierce but cute Kong was donkey-stubborn and wily (donkey, according to their Japanese-English dictionary, was the translation of the Japanese word for “stupid” or “goofy”), they combined the words and named the game Donkey Kong.

  At least one party wasn’t happy with Nintendo’s name—Universal Studios, which owned the copyright for King Kong. Universal sued for copyright infringement, claiming that the video game mimicked the basic plot of the movie (man climbs building to save his girlfriend from the clutches of a giant ape). Universal lost on the most obvious of grounds—the judge ruled that the movie studio did not own the rights to King Kong. Nintendo won the suit without, unfortunately, having to justify the nonexistence of a donkey in Donkey Kong.

  Submitted by Darrell Hewitt of Salt Lake City, Utah.

  WHO ARE ALL THOSE PEOPLE ON THE SIDELINES DURING AMERICAN FOOTBALL GAMES?

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  The action may be on the football field, but the traffic congestion is usually on the sidelines. In NFL games, but especially in big-college football schools, the area around the benches is teeming with as many people as Grand Central Station at rush hour. Who are all these guys? As Bob Carroll, executive director of the Pro Football Researchers Association puts it, the sidelines are full of

  …players, coaches, assistant coaches, equipment managers, towel boys, mascots, cheerleaders, officials holding the sticks, TV folks, photographers, police, alumni, anyone donating big bucks to the school, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  Restrictions on issuing credentials for access to the sidelines are surprisingly loose, especially in the pros. Faleem Choudhry, a researcher at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, told Imponderables that there isn’t a hard and fast rule limiting the number of sidelines personnel, or even visitors: “Anybody the team deems necessary can be there.” One team might want the electrician who supervises the lighting of the stadium to stay near the bench; another team might banish him to the stands.

  The problem of overpopulated sidelines is greater in the college ranks, and the Big 10, known for its impassioned football competition, is among the most restrictive conferences in regulating credentials. The Big 10 allows a maximum of forty credentials for the bench area of each team, including all of the absolutely essential non-playing personnel, such as coaches, trainers, and physicians. According to Cassie Arner, associate sports information director of the University of Illinois, the bench area has a dotted line 50 yards long around it, usually starting at one 25-yard line and running to the other 25-yard line. The bench area zone does not extend all the way back to the stands, so cheerleaders and other credentialed personnel (in some cases, marching bands, press, and security) can stay behind the bench zone.

  Here’s how Arner estimates the University of Illinois allocates its credentials:

  Ten to fifteen coaches

  Approximately ten team managers (whose jobs range from handling balls to charting statistics for the team)

  Five full-time equipment managers, who are responsible for mending damaged paraphernalia

  Ten to fifteen trainers, of whom perhaps five are full-time doctors

  The rest are student assistants there to get water, help with taping of bandages, and other relatively unskilled tasks

  But other folks somehow manage to creep down to the bench area as well. In this category, Arner includes the team chaplain, security, and occasionally someone from the event management or operations department of the school. But the University of Illinois does not issue credentials for alumni. Occasionally, a big donor or a dignitary from another team might be brought down to the “forty zone” during timeouts or at the quarter breaks. An occasional “honorary coach” is given credentials—usually a professor from the university who has helped with recruiting.

  Tom Schott, sports information director at Purdue University, concurs with his Illinois counterpart, although it sounds like Purdue is a little looser in issuing credentials. As he says, “It’s really up to the school’s discretion, except for the forty in the bench area.” On occasion, Purdue will issue a sideline pass to a former player or corporate bigwig, expecting them not to crowd the bench area. Schott observes:

  If the school has corporate deals with companies, they may ask for sideline passes. We’re pretty frugal with those but they do exist. Officials have the final say and if they think the visitors are getting too close to the sidelines, they’ll push them back.

  As long as participants in the game are not being harassed or distracted, the NCAA and NFL don’t want to get involved in regulating the population flow on the sidelines. And even if the colleges don’t like having to turn down entreaties for sideline passes, sometimes the alternative is worse. Case in point: Purdue. Schott remarks:

  For years we weren’t very good in football so there wasn’t much demand for sideline credentials. Now that we’ve gotten good, there are more requests.

&nb
sp; Submitted by Rachel Rehmann of Palo Alto, California.

  WHY ARE THE MUPPETS LEFT-HANDED?

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  Our sharp-eyed correspondent, Jena Mori, first noticed that all the Muppet musicians seem to be left-handed, and then realized that just about all of the Muppets’ complicated movements were done with their left hands. We went to the folks at Jim Henson Productions for the answer to Jena’s conundrum and were lucky enough to get an expert answer right from the frog’s mouth, so to speak.

  Steve Whitmire has been a Muppet performer for fifteen years, and currently “is” Kermit The Frog. Steve performs Wembley Fraggle and Sprocket the Dog from “Fraggle Rock,” as well as Rizzo the Rat, Bean Bunny, and numerous lesser-known Muppets. He also performs Robbie and B. P. Richfield on “Dinosaurs” and has worked on all of the Muppet movies.

  Since we don’t often have the opportunity to speak with Muppet performers, we imposed on Steve to answer in interview form.

  Imponderables: Steve, why are Muppets left-handed?

  Steve: Because most puppeteers are right-handed.

  Imponderables: Huh?

  Steve: Imagine standing with your right hand in the air. You are wearing a hand puppet that fits down to approximately your elbow. Now imagine that a television camera is raised to six feet off the floor and is pointing at everything above your head. You are watching what the camera sees on a television monitor on the floor in front of you. Your right hand is in the head of the character. If you want to move the puppet’s arms, you reach up in front of your face and grasp one or both of the two wire rods that hang from the puppet’s wrists. You have to make sure that your head is low enough to clear the camera frame, so you’ll probably have to shift your weight to your left as you duck your head to the left.

  Imponderables: Why do you duck to your left instead of your right?

  Steve: The right hand is stretching as high to the right as possible because that is most comfortable. When the right hand stretches up, the left side automatically hunches down a bit. It’s easier for me to duck my head to the left; otherwise, I’d be ducking my head under my right arm.

  Imponderables: If your right hand is controlling the head of the puppet, how are you controlling its arms?

  Steve: You reach up in front of your face and grasp one or both of the two wire rods that hang from the puppet’s wrists. You’d be able to have general control of both arms with your left hand. If you needed to do some bit of action that is more specific, you’d likely use the puppet’s left arm.

  Imponderables: Aha, we’re now at the crux of our Imponderable. But since you are controlling both of the puppet’s arms with your left hand, why does it matter which of the puppet’s hands you control?

  Steve: Right-handed people tend to have more dexterity and stamina in their right hand and arm, so it goes into the head of the puppet. It is an ergonomic choice more than anything. If the puppeteer is right-handed, it is the more coordinated arm and hand, and it is usually best for it to be in the head. The left arm of the puppeteer is just below the puppet’s left arm, so making the left hand of the puppet its dominant hand seems like the natural choice.

  Imponderables: You are implying that a Muppet performer concentrates much more on the head of a character than its arms.

  Steve: The attention of the audience is generally focused on the puppet’s face and, more specifically, its eyes. That’s part of the appeal of the Muppets—they seem to be looking at whatever they are focused on, whether it is a prop, another character, or the home audience via the camera. The arms are somewhat secondary, although if they are performed badly, say, with arms dangling, they can attract unwanted attention.

  Eye contact, and life within the face, is always the first priority in bringing our characters to life: simple head moves and gestures, accurate lip sync, etc., mimic human or animal movement. We keep all of the movement of the characters to the minimum needed to give them the life we want. There shouldn’t be any movement without a purpose.

  Imponderables: But some of the Muppets’ movements seem awfully complicated. How can you control intricate movements with your “wrong” (i.e., left) hand manipulating two rods?

  Steve: If there is specific action that requires precision that would draw our attention away from the head for too long, we will often have another puppeteer handle the right, and occasionally both, hands.

  Imponderables: Couldn’t it get tricky having two people manipulate the same puppet?

  Steve: It can. Having one performer manipulating the head and left hand and another the right hand of the puppet can help. This method allows the puppeteer on the head to do any action with the left hand if it needs to come in contact with the face, or the puppet’s right hand.

  However, when Jim Henson did the Swedish Chef, he worked only the head, and it was usually Frank Oz in both hands. One reason for this was that the Chef’s hands were actually human hands and needed to match. Another reason was that Jim and Frank loved to do difficult and silly things like that. Frank’s goal was to break the china on the back wall each time they did a bit and the Chef threw something over his shoulder during his opening song. We would all take bets. I think he only did it [successfully] once or twice.

  Imponderables: So this answers the question reader Robin R. Bolan asked about why some Muppets don’t seem to have wires: The answer is that sometimes they don’t.

  Steve: Right. These types of puppets are good for handling props because the puppeteer can simply pick things up. In this case, a second puppeteer always does the right hand of the character, because the lead performer is completely tied up with the head and left hand.

  Imponderables: Sounds like it’s easier to be green than a Muppet performer.

  Steve: I always liken what we do to being an air traffic controller, because there is so much to concentrate on while we are performing. Not only are we manipulating the puppet’s mouth, body movements, and arms, we are doing the voice, remembering dialogue, watching a television screen (we never look at the puppet—only the screen), and tripping over cables, set pieces, and five other puppeteers who are doing the same thing we are.

  It’s a wonder we ever get anything done considering how truly complex it really is. Fortunately, and for good reason, the audience only sees what goes on up there above us.

  Submitted by Jena Mori of Los Angeles, California.

  Thanks also to Robin R. Bolan of McLean, Virginia.

  HOW DID THE FOOTBALL GET ITS STRANGE SHAPE?

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  If it weren’t for the forces of civility, we might call the game “headball” instead of football. For the earliest antecedent of football used human skulls as the ball.

  The Danes occupied England in the early eleventh century. Shortly after the Danes were vanquished in 1042, an Englishman unearthed the skull of a buried Danish soldier and kicked it around his field. Others dug up Danish “headballs” and enjoyed the pastime of kicking them around but found the solidity of the object rather hard on the foot. So they looked for alternative sporting equipment. And they quickly found the obvious choice.

  Inflated cow bladders, of course.

  The game caught on and assumed the proportions of a mass psychosis. A bladder was dropped between two neighboring towns. If one team managed to kick the bladder into the center of the other’s town, it won. Although contestants never touched the ball with their hands (indeed, they called the game futballe), they had no such compunctions about using their fists to hit each other.

  King Henry II (1154–1189) banned the sport, not only to eliminate rampant vandalism and violence but because it posed a security threat. His soldiers were playing futballe instead of practicing their archery. For the next four hundred years, futballe was outlawed but continued to be played anyway.

  The ban against futballe was lifted by James I (1603–1625), who bowed to the wishes of sportsmen. The game was legitimized by placing it in standardized playing fields and awarding points for passing the other team’s goal. Cow bladde
rs yielded to round balls. This game became known as Association Football. The shortening of the Association to Assoc. provided the slang expression “soccer,” which is the sport’s modern name.

  The next historical development crucial to the history of American football occurred when a frustrated William Ellis, a college student in England, decided to pick up the soccer ball during a game and run with it. He scored the first illegal touchdown in 1823. Although at the time his behavior was not rewarded, his college is best known for his unsportsmanlike behavior. The name of his college: Rugby. (And now you know why this is the only sport whose name is often capitalized, at least when referring to English Rugby.)

  Many early settlers in America played soccer, but the game caught on in the mid-nineteenth century among Ivy League colleges. Bob Carroll, of the Professional Football Researchers Association, sent us an entertaining account of how the shape of the American football evolved: