Editor Ruby here with some odds and ends from our research lately!

Salt-N-Pepa covered “Gee, Officer Krupke” from “West Side Story” with help from Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and The Jerky Boys. This is in my opinion a cool take, even if it sounds a little dated now. In a musical where one side is literally a white gang (in my memory they were specifically Italian, but the one guy is just named Tony), “Officer Krupke” has always stood out to me as unusually prescient. Like “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” a song about how racism is systemically indoctrinated into children, in the middle of “South Pacific,” a story that… well… you can read more here if you want. The ‘50s! A real land of contrasts.

Anyway, back to this cover, it’s from the 1996 album “The Songs of West Side Story,” which has some very heavy-hitting celebrities covering different songs from the Bernstein/Sondheim score. Selena on “A Boy Like That”! Tevin Campbell’s “One Hand, One Heart”! Kenny Loggins’ “Tonight”! Aretha Franklin’s “Somewhere”! The song that started the project: Little Richard on “I Feel Pretty”! For some reason it’s all out of order! We’re not saying it’s good. We’re just saying you need to check it out.

Next topic: while looking up whether the Mall of America has its own ZIP code (it doesn’t), I found this website that lets you access a ton of information about any ZIP code. Go look up your neighborhood!

While researching Latinos in space for a Hispanic Heritage Month round, I came across Beatriz Cortez’s website. She’s a sculptural artist whose work engages with space, the future, and her own Salvadorian background. Check out this article on her piece “Memory Insertion Capsule” from the 2017 exhibition “Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas.”

Moving on: We’ve written before about finding out cartoons are based on stuff that’s been totally forgotten (see: Bugs Bunny), and now we have to tell you the origins of Michigan J. Frog. See header image if you don’t know the name. Before he was even named, he appeared in a 1955 animated short called “One Froggy Evening,” where he hops out of a time capsule and sings “Hello! Ma Baby.” Classic Michigan! This would very likely register to viewers at the time as a reference to Jazz Age icon Ol’ Rip the Horned Toad, a Texas horned lizard who supposedly survived 31 years in hibernation inside a time capsule. Maybe that happened, maybe it didn’t, but we know that Ol’ Rip went on a national tour during which he met President Calvin Coolidge (a big fan), before dying of pneumonia. (RIP, not Cal.) (Did you know lizards could get pneumonia?) Anyway, he was so popular the Texas Department of Agriculture had to intervene in mass capture and sale of horned lizards before it drove the genus to extinction.

We found out about Ol’ Rip from Kaleb Horton’s tweet, which prompted Editor Ira to share this article by Horton about the disappearance of a school bus in the 1970s, which he says is “some of the best true crime writing I've read, and I'm not a big true crime person.”

And finally, I’m turning it over to Greg to talk about cereals, and apologize for an error we (OK, I) made this week:

Event Specialist Greg here to issue a rare blanket apology for a misguided breakfast branding question. In a recent game, we asked players to name the brands that produce some staple breakfast cereals, and we included Raisin Bran. Many associate the name most strongly with Kellogg's and its iconic two scoops/smiling sun branding, and that's how we gave the point to players. In fact, Post, General Mills, and many store brands also offer cereals with that exact name. How can that be?

This all stems from a 1944 Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from my own home state of Nebraska. The first raisin and bran flake cereal on the market came from Skinner Manufacturing Company, who monopolized the space for 17 years. When Post and Kellogg's introduced products with the same name, Skinner sued, but the court returned this opinion: "A name which is merely descriptive of the ingredients, qualities or characteristics of an article of trade cannot be appropriated as a trademark and the exclusive use of it afforded legal protection."

So companies can trademark a unique name like Crispix, but when Kroger rolls out an enviable knock-off like Crispy Hexagons, it's fair game for other companies to use such a blandly descriptive name. I guess that's why Kroger calls their product Crispy Hexa-Grains, now? And I suppose someone could bring a Dr. Pepper knock-off to the world under the generic-enough name of Soda with 23 Flavors One of Which is Prune. Though the best one in the game is definitely The Fizzicist.