Icarus

"Allan had a way of treating fellow homosexuals like mere employees and straight male friends like the brothers he never had. Despite Kleiser and Joel Thurm's exemplary work on Grease, it was the film's cinematographer, Bill Butler, whom Allan sought to adopt as an honorary brother of sorts, and he rewarded Butler in ways that went far beyond the dollars of his contract."—Robert Hofler (link)

"Allan allocated days, not hours, to searching every gym and athletic field in the Los Angeles area to find just the right 1,000 or so male contestants who could be whittled down to no fewer than 250 specimens of absolute masculine perfection. Allan envisioned something similar [to the gym scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes] for the “Y.M.C.A.” production number, only he jettisoned the lead female and radically multiplied the number of men, using split screens to cram as many glutes, pecs, and abs as possible into each frame.—Robert Hofler (link)

"The great thing he wanted in his life was [to host the Oscars], and he got that job and then would spend the rest of his life trying to recover from it."—Gary Pudney
"The Oscars is the one night Hollywood has no sense of humor."—Lorna Luft (pages 244-6)

Addiction

"Everything goes back to this: If addiction is a disease, there's a system that we know to rely on: the medical model. You go to the doctor when you're sick. But if addiction is about morals and choices, then it's a completely different universe. This goes back forever: Addicts look like bad people; they’re the criminals. Most crimes in America are related to drugs and alcohol. There’s a whole treatment system that built up over the years based on this model that people need to be chastised."—David Sheff (link)

"Somebody with cancer, you’re treated for a month. They evaluate, do you need more time? Maybe you need to stay another month. After two months, you’re doing better, you go home, keep seeing your doctor. Then it hits again. You go back into the hospital and insurance is there; it has to be. With addiction, that doesn’t happen."—David Sheff (link)

"He said "I cannot believe what I did. I was at someone's house. I opened up the medicine cabinet, and there was a bottle of Vicodin. I took one. I thought to myself, just one."—which for addicts is the first thing they say to themselves and us—"and soon the bottle was gone. I woke up this morning and realized if I don't do something, I am going to be back on the streets within a week." So he got on the phone and called the treatment center in Minnesota. He was on a plane that day. To me, it's possible to look back on this and say the treatments were a failure: here he was sober for such a long time and he relapsed. But to me, it's the opposite: It shows the treatments had helped him so much that he was able to recognize he was in a free fall and that it was very dangerous."—David Sheff (link)

Urination

Stan: He abused me! He did drugs, he had sex, he paid a woman to pee on my body. He beat up a cop, and then somehow he paid off the cop, and then he peed on me too! Hayley: Wait, who peed on you? Stan: Everyone!—American Dad! "Da Flippity Flop" 5/12/2013

Carter: Peter, what are you doing here? You're not a member! And that means me and the other jocks get to throw you in the pool! Hey Banks, Duffy, get over here! This guy's going for a swim, grab him! Alright, you're kind of heavy so we're gonna pee on you. Not happening. All right, we'll just spit on you. Nothing we have works.—Family Guy "No Country Club for Old Men" 5/19/2013

Donna: I don't have to do anything but rain Hater-Ade on all you fools. Woosh! That's Hater-Ade!—The Cleveland Show "Wheel! Of! Family!" 5/19/2013

Pressure

"When astronauts take a leak while on a mission and expel the result into space, it boils violently. The vapor then passes immediately into the solid state, and you end up with a cloud of very fine crystals of frozen urine."—Straight Dope (link)

"When the breathing ventilation valve opened at a height of 168 kilometers, the gradual but steady loss of pressure was fatal to the cosmonauts within about 30 seconds. By 935 seconds, the cabin pressure had dropped to zero and remained there until 1,640 seconds when the pressure began to increase as the ship entered the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The extent of tissue damage to the bodies of the cosmonauts caused by the boiling of the blood during the 700 seconds they were exposed to the vacuum could have been misinterpreted initially as being the result of a more catastrophic and instantaneous decompression."—NASA (link)

"Four divers in a compression chamber system were suddenly decompressed from 9 atmospheres to 1 atmosphere. One of the divers was about to close the door between the chamber system and the trunk when the accident happened. He was shot out through the door and severely mutilated. The three others died on the spot. The autopsy results are described. The most conspicuous finding was large amounts of fat in the large arteries and veins and in the cardiac chambers, as well as intravascular fat in the organs, especially the liver. This fat can hardly have been embolic, but must have "dropped out" of the blood in situ. It is suggested that the boiling of the blood denatured the lipoprotein complexes, rendering the lipids insoluble."—Giertsen, et al (link)

chthonic

concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld

"There are traces of the old Christianity at Lakewood Church—or perhaps I should say traces of religion in general—lingering like the echoes of archaic chthonic cults that could still be found in classical Greek mythology and ritual." (Ehrenreich 2009)