Americans of a certain age may remember the Martin Scorcese street-violence film Gangs of New York. Without reviewing the movie (I’m a fan), it centers on Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, a legendary gang leader of the Bowery Boys, the Washington Street Gang, and a semi-prominent politician. If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s twenty minutes too long (a hallmark of a Scorcese film) but it’s very good. DDL also gives a performance worth the time commitment on his own, even if you don’t care much for the plot. Was Bill the Butcher a Real Person? Importantly to us, Bill…
Author: Kevin Nye
Kevin Nye
Kevin Nye grew up near Cleveland, was educated at Ohio University and was re-educated by living in Chicago and doing improv and sketch comedy. He is a triple threat of mediocrity.
Skinwalker Ranch, Sherman Ranch, UFO Ranch – all of these are the same place, the most-studied paranormal hotspot on the planet (investigated by paranormal researchers and celebrities alike). The ranch itself is a 500+ acre property in Utah located in the northeastern quadrant of the state, not close to anything in particular. The three names come from three perfectly good reasons: Skinwalker ranch comes from the Skin-walker witch legend from the Navajo people, who once inhabited the area. Sherman Ranch comes from the 50+ year owner of the ranch, Terry Sherman. And UFO Ranch comes from the decades of alleged…
It’s no secret that we here at America Is Weird get a kick out of anomalies. We also like a good tale of geography. With that in mind, here is a small sampling of American geographic anomalies. This list (you, the reader, will know soon if this actually becomes a list or not) starts and ends with Alaska. Alaska is anomalous for countless reasons, not least of which is its near-incomprehensible size. How Big Is Alaska? Alaska is about the size of Spain, Germany, and France combined. It’s more than twice the size of Texas (which is big enough that your most direct east-to-west…
When revisiting bygone eras in American pop culture, we often use TV shows as a touchstone: The I Love Lucy days, the M*A*S*H days, the Simpsons (when they were still good) days, and so on. Somehow, the one that has lasted the longest is the reality TV era, which has disproven the existence of God by lasting 25 years… and counting. On the bright side, it has not been bereft of insanity. While the most famous examples involve families licensing and distributing sex tapes to boost interest in their reality TV show, there have been enough slaps, memes, and DUIs to keep TMZ in business…
American sports are a pretty insane landscape: Billions of dollars in contracts, advertising, licensing, and more, coupled with the inherent incentives to ignore systemic problems (like concussions, abuse, or prescription drug usage), creates a truly ripe-for-the-corrupt environment. What’s more, modern-day technologies increase access to athletes of all ages, leading to teenagers with million-dollar earning potential long before they ever graduate high school. While football feels like the most prominent of these examples, most professional (or even high-level college) sports are just a good world to be a grifter, particularly if you’re looking to take advantage of young people. Ron Weaver…
Americans born between about 1975 and 1995 will unquestionably remember the Beanie Babies crazy of the late 1990s. It was everywhere – those cute little plush toys were even prominent in divorce proceedings, as people assumed they were fighting over their early retirements. The full story of the Beanie Babies craze is probably worth its own article, but they were a perfectly handled example of a manufactured craze. Who Is Ty Warner Really? The owner of the parent company – Ty Warner (now you now why the company was called Ty) – had worked in the toy industry for a…
Public art is a societal good. Studies show that there is a correlation between public art and safer streets, reduced mental stress on residents, and increased tourism. And while art is purely subjective, there are some pieces that almost universally make the viewer scratch their head. In Cleveland, Ohio, that piece is the Free Stamp, which functions as the world’s largest rubber stamp. Imagine, if you will, driving along Lake Erie, alternating your gaze between the midsized skyline in front of you and the water to your side. You pull off at East 9th Street and head into the heart…
The United States of America is a misleading name because there are more than just states. You undoubtedly know that Washington D.C. is not a state, and most of you likely know that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory but not a state (side note: taxation without representation is tyranny). Fewer probably know about the U.S. Virgin Islands, fewer still about Guam, then maybe American Samoa, and by the time we get to the Northern Mariana Islands, we’re talking to a pretty small percentage of people. All of those places are known as U.S. Overseas Territories. But if you think…
As someone who grew up in the Midwest, Hawaii used to hold a certain amount of mystique. As an adult who has visited the state, it’s hard to wrap your head around how strange it is that Hawaii is part of the same country as the one I grew up in. It’s not even an overseas territory like Guam, which Hawaii is far more similar to than say, I don’t know, Massachusetts. I knew Hawaii became a state recently, and I knew that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was the flashpoint of the Pacific theater of World War II, and…
We have previously written about the haphazard and wildly unsuccessful expansion efforts the Canadian Football League put in place to reach US audiences in the 1990s. The short version is that they tried to put teams in non-NFL markets and play most of their games before the NFL season began to avoid competition. What ended up happening is that a handful of teams lost between $1 and $10 million each over the course of about three years. Teams kept folding and moving and trying again elsewhere. But no team had a more absurd journey than the Las Vegas Posse. After…