Extremely Difficult Trivia About "Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

      Continuing my year of trivia quizzes about the "Mad Max" series, we're up to the 4th one, "Mad Max:  Fury Road."  Since it had been 30 years since the 3rd one, I had some misgivings going into this one.  Happily, it turned out to be great.  Arguably even the best one, maybe.  I think it really helped that creator George Miller was still in charge of this one, too--he didn't want to screw up his baby.  Anyway, let's get to it.  Same format as always, and these details are just as nit picky and unimportant as always.  For obsessive fans only, I guess.  And many SPOILERS ahead, obviously.

Questions:

1)    In the opening scene we see Max eating something.  What?

2)    What is the full text of the tattoo forcibly inked on Max's back after he's captured?

3)    What does the Citadel (Immortan Joe's outpost) call water?

4)    Aside from the Citadel, what are the two affiliated places under Joe's control?

5)    What cardinal direction does Imperator Furiosa head off in, instead of her reported destination?

6)    What is the name of the old woman who's the caretaker/matron of Joe's wives?

7)    Nux is a War Boy driver.  What is the name of his lancer?

8)    What do Nux, and the rest of the War Boys, call Max throughout the movie?

9)    What is the name of the warrior tribe that first assaults the War Rig and its affiliated vehicles?

10)   What number of horsepower is the War Rig, according to Furiosa?

11)   What is the code sequence to avoid the kill switch in the War Rig?

12)   Furiosa made a deal with the motorcycle gang for gas in exchange for safe passage through their territory.  For how many gallons of gas?

13)   Which of Immortan Joe's Wives dies during the movie?

14)   Which Wife tries to run back to Immortan Joe during the chase, but is stopped?

15)   Nux mentions his pals Larry and Barry.  Who are they?

16)   Which one of the Wives befriends/romances(?) Nux during the journey?

17)   After the initial battle, one of the Wives counts up the remaining bullets.  How many Big Boy rifle bullets are left, and how many pink handgun ones remain?

18)   After the War Rig gets away for a while, The People Eater tallies up what the group has spent trying to retrieve Joe's Wives and the War Rig.  How many gallons of gas, how many cannisters of nitro, how many assault bikes, and how many pursuit vehicles have been lost at this point?

19)   What is the name of Immortan Joe's doctor?

20)   What body part is Furiosa missing, for which she has a mechanical version?

21)   What is the name of Furiosa's original tribe?

22)   What was Furiosa's Initiate Mother?

23)   What was the name of Furiosa's actual birth mother?

24)   After their capture, how many days later did Furiosa's mother die?

25)   What was the name of Furiosa's clan?  (A subgroup of the overall group from Question #21.)

26)   How many days has it been since Furiosa was captured by Immortan Joe's group?

27)   What happened to the Green Place?

28)   How many days does the group estimate it will take to cross the salt plain?

29)   After Joe and his War Boys leave the Citadel to chase after Furiosa and the Wives, who is left guarding it?

30)   At one point, one of the Wives starts praying.  When asked, what deity, or deities is she praying to?

31)   By what slang title is someone with mechanic's skills known as?

32)   What is the name of the youngest woman in the all-female group that Furiosa and company meet near the end?  (The remnants of her childhood group.)

33)   According to Max, aside from blood loss, what is Furiosa's most serious injury?

34)   What are the full names of the 5 Wives?  (See answers to #13, #14, and #16 for three of these.)

35)   Near the end of the movie, we see a quotation that reads, "Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland in search of our better selves?"  Who, or what is this quote from?

36)   Aside from Furiosa, how many other Imperators are seen or mentioned in the credits?

37)   What is the collective name for the regular people who live outside of the Citadel, and survive off its scraps?

38)  Aside from his son with Splendid Angharad, seen dying in the movie, how many living children does Immortan Joe have?

Answers:

1)    A lizard, which he stomps on and catches onscreen.

2)    I could only read some of this, but alternate online resources gave a fuller listing.  With my added punctuation it appears to say, "Day 12045.  Ht 10 hands. 180 lbs.  No name. No lumps.  No bumps.  Full life clear.  Two good eyes.  No busted limbs.  Piss ok.  Genitals intact.  Multiple scars heals fast.  O-Negative Hi Octane.  Universal Donor.  Lone road warrior.  Rundown in the Powder Lakes.  V8.  No guzzaline.  No supplies.  Isolate.  Psychotic keep muzzled."  All of which suggests some disturbing things.  Not only would prisoners be forced to give blood to War Boys, but possible other organs.  And the mentioning of intact genitals might mean males were forced into sex slavery as well, or something.  Finally, the height (ht) is probably not hands as in horse measurements, but actual War Boys' hands, since rulers are probably not available.

3)    Aqua Cola.

4)    Gas Town (the fuel refinery), and the Bullet Farm (a bullet factory, clearly).

5)    East.

6)    Miss Giddy.

7)    Slit.

8)    Blood Bag, since he's forced to give transfusions against his will.  (Also, to be fair, he only tells his name to Furiosa near the end.)

9)    The Buzzards.

10)   2000.  It's also nitro boosted.

11)   The sequence is:  1st switch, then the 2nd and 3rd switches simultaneously, followed by the 1st switch again, then the red switch, then the black switch, and finally the ignition switch.

12)   3000 gallons.  Don't know why Australians aren't using the Metric System, but that's it.

13)   Splendid Angharad.  Who was reportedly Joe's favorite, and the heavily pregnant blonde one.

14)   Cheedo the Fragile.  (She has long, dark hair.)

15)   They're the two tumors on his neck and shoulder area, which he's drawn faces on.

16)   Capable.  (She's the red-headed Wife.)

17)   4 for Big Boy, and 29 for the handgun.

18)   30,000 gallons of gas (guzzaline), 19 cannisters of nitro, 12 assault bikes, and 7 pursuit vehicles.

19)   The Organic Mechanic.  Which is kind of poetic, in a way.

20)   Her left forearm.

21)   The Vuvalini.

22)   K.T. Concannon.

23)   Mary Jabassa.

24)   The 3rd day.

25)   The Swaddle Dog.

26)   7,000 days, plus ones she doesn't remember.  7000 days would be a bit over 19 years.

27)   It suffered some kind of extreme environmental disaster.  The water was poisoned, and the soil was affected, so they had to leave.

28)   160 days.

29)   It's not being guarded well at all.  All the able-bodied War Boys are with Joe, leaving the Citadel guarded by too-young War Boys (knows as War Pups), and sick and injured War Boys.

30)   "Anyone who's listening."

31)   A Black Thumb.  Which I think was also a term in an earlier Mad Max film, if I recall correctly.

32)   Valkyrie.  She's the woman used as bait initially, hanging naked in the cage.

33)   A collapsed lung.

34)   I already mentioned The Splendid Angharad, Cheedo the Fragile, and Capable.  The other two are Toast the Knowing (the short-haired brunette), and The Dag (the other blonde one).

35)   It's from a fictional book in the Mad Max universe, called, "The First History of Man."

36)   The credits list 3--the Prime Imperator, and 2 others.  A Mad Max website adds a Ripsaw Imperator.  So either 3 or 4, depending on which is canon.

37)   The Wretched.  Which they truly are.

38)  Surprisingly, given his power, and large harem, only 2.  His sons Rictus Erectus (the tall, fit guy who travels with Joe), and Corpus Collossus (the little person back at the Citadel who sits in the sling).  It appears fertility is a large problem in this world generally, and for Joe specifically.

  

Exotic/Disgusting Foods and Beverages Forum--A Greek/American/Italian Apricot Spread, Plus a Weird Superstition

      It's been a while since I covered a fruit spread, so let's rectify that today.  My local Shop-Rite has really improved on its supplies of foreign and odd cheeses, meats, crackers, and such.  This was one of them.  The apricot spread was from the DeLallo brand, out of Jeannette, Pennsylvania.

     When I looked at the label for this spread, I assumed it was from a company that was either Greece-based, or at least one that specialized in Greek cuisine.  Since it read "Product of Greece."  However, a little online checking indicated that something else was going on here.  The motto listed on the official DeLallo company website is "Authentic Italian Food Since 1950."  And their product list confirms this, consisting of Italian delicacies such as pasta, pizza, sauces, olives and antipasti, tomatoes, peppers, Italian desserts, pastries, olive oil, and charcuterie ingredients (cheeses, meats, etc.).  It wasn't until scrolling through quite a bit that I finally saw a mentioning of them marketing non-Italian Mediterranean foods as well.  So, it appears that I happened to buy one of the very few non-Italian products that DeLallo sells.  And since the headquarters of DeLallo are in Pennsylvania, this presumably means that the apricots were grown in Greece, but probably fully processed into the spread back in the U.S.  I know I just did a post about another Italian food (the dessert cheese from last week), but we're going to have a heavily Italian-related post topic for consecutive weeks.  Anyway, at least this time I was actually able to find out a little about the founders of the business.  In 1950 George DeLallo and his wife Madeline DeLallo started the George DeLallo Company, Inc., in the Pittsburgh suburb of Jeannette.  They were striving to replicate the authentic Italian experience here in the States.  (The website didn't say if George and/or Madeline had been born in Italy, but it appears likely that they both had Italian in heritage, at least.)  The business thrived, as it is apparently a nationally recognized Italian and Mediterranean food company.  In 2014 DeLallo acquired the Three Saints Bakery, which specializes in tea cookies.  Currently the firm makes over 200 products.

DeLallo apricot spread:  Its color was a yellowish-orange, and its odor was slightly sweet.  There were some visible chunks of apricot in it as well.  I had some plain, and some on some crackers and flatbreads.  Both ways were good--the taste was sweet, and tangy.  Solid overall.  Not my favorite spread, jam, or jelly, but certainly decent.  Fans of apricots will probably really enjoy this.

     I also looked up apricots in general, and learned a few nuggets.  There is some dispute over this, but the scientific consensus appears to be that this fruit originated in China.  Currently apricots are grown on every continent in world, save for Antarctica.  The top 5 producers of this fruit are, in order, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Iran, Algeria, and Italy.  As with their cousin the peach, the seed (commonly called the stone) of the apricot is highly dangerous if consumed raw.  It contains amygdalin, which releases cyanide.  But the strangest thing about apricots is a superstition about them held by the U.S. Army and Marines.  This dates back to at least the Vietnam War, or possibly World War II.  Allegedly, people started noticing that some armored vehicles, such as Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVTs), Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), and especially tanks, tended to break down, or get attacked more if apricot rations were inside.  The superstition grew, and now many tank operators won't allow this fruit inside, or even admit people who have eaten apricots in the previous 24 hours.  Some refuse to even speak their name aloud, calling them "cots," or the "A-fruit," or the "forbidden fruit."  This whole notion seems laughably absurd to me, since clearly the original basis for the belief was just a series of coincidences.  Consuming a particular type of food or drink doesn't cause machinery to break down, or attract rockets and artillery.  But, bizarre as it sounds, this is evidently a real superstition, and a surprising amount of people take this seriously.  So bear this in mind the next time you're going on a journey in a M1 Abrams.  

 

 

Exotic/Disgusting Foods and Beverages Forum--An Italian Dessert Cheese

      It's been a while since I covered a member of my favorite food group--which is, of course, cheese.  Fortunately, I was able to locate a good candidate or two recently.  The one I'll discuss today is radically different, as it's a "dessert cheese."  Aside from my post which included a "chocolate cheese" (see my May 12, 2013 post for more info) and maybe my encounter with mascarpone (May 9th, 2020), I haven't had many examples from this cheese subgenre.  To be more exact, I tried the baked lemon ricotta from Il Villaggio.

     As has become very common recently, I can't tell you much about the Il Villaggio company.  Their official website, and alternate ones, have almost nothing.  I couldn't learn who founded the business, and when, and even where, aside from "somewhere in Italy."  About the only nugget I discovered is that their cheese expert is a guy named Dan Melotti.  Even the cheese list on the official website was rather lacking in detail.  They do make a parmigiano reggiano, ricotta salata, fontina, gorgonzola, pecorino Romano, provolone piccante, taleggio, asiago fresco, and cheese accompaniments like balsamic vinegar and little pieces of hard bread or crackers.  Oh, and if you're wondering, "Il Villaggio" means "The Village" in Italian.

     I was able to locate a bit more about the company that recently acquired and now owns Il Villaggio, the Atalanta Corporation.  This New York City-based firm began in 1945, founded by Herbert Moeller and Leon Rubin, who were businessmen.  The company specialized in importing foods from other countries, which appear to be mostly European nations.  As of now their many respective brands include 3000 different kinds of cheese, from 45 countries.  Along with 500 grocery items from 30 nations (presumably not 30 entirely new and separate countries from the 45 cheese-making ones).  Aside from Il Villaggio some of their brands include Big Picture Foods (organic olives, peppers, and capers), Cracking Good! Cheese (cheeses from the British Isles), Casa Flores (Spanish meats and cheeses), Mt. Vikos (Greek food), Royal Mahout (Indian cuisine), and Celebrity Goat (which market cheese and butter made from goat milk, but not, disappointingly, from goats that are actually famous, or even infamous).  Evidently a Thomas Gellert is the CEO or owner of Atalanta, and the parent company of Atalanta is called the Gellert Global Group.  Atalanta bought up Il Villaggio in 2017.  So that was my only data for Il Villaggio's starting date--they've been around since at least 2017.  Reportedly Il Villaggio used to have a worth of 25,000,000 (Euros?  American dollars?  It didn't specify), but was in decline when they were sold off.

     Moving on, readers may be asking, "What kind of cheese is ricotta, specifically?"  Well, it's ancient--it dates back to the 2nd Millenium B.C., and is believed to have been born in what's now Italy.  Ricotta is an example of the "using-every-part-of-the-buffalo" strategy.  After other cheeses are made, the remaining scraps and byproducts are then used to make ricotta.  The remaining whey is harvested after it becomes acidic from fermentation, which takes about 12-24 hours.  This is then heated to near-boiling temperatures, which produce some curds.  These are then cooled, and strained through fine cloth.  The resulting cheese is usually white, soft, sweet, and very fragile and ephemeral.  It's often used to augment pastries and other desserts, similar to mascarpone.  Some folks bake the ricotta again, to cause it to harden and toughen, and have a longer shelf life.  American ricotta is saltier and moister than the Italian kind, mostly because American usually uses only the milk of cows, while the Italian sort uses milk from sheep, goats, and water buffalo as well as cows.  Baked lemon ricotta is believed to have been developed in the Southern Italian region of Puglia.  It's a dessert cheese, and its taste and texture are often compared to cheesecake.

Il Villaggio baked lemon ricotta cheese:  It looked like a little cake--round, with an outer color of light brown, with a syrup-y shiny sheen to it.  The inner portions were light yellow.  First, I tried some plain.  It was very sweet, with a recognizable lemon tang.  It didn't taste like normal, savory cheese, but more like cheesecake, or custard, even.  Or flan.  Very soft texture, almost spreadable.  It was quite tasty, if more than a little weird.  It was also good on crispbread, as the sweetness combined nicely with the savory/salty flavors of the base.  Overall it wasn't my favorite cheese, but it was a cool take on the style.  Certainly a different, and interesting, choice for a dessert.

Exotic/Disgusting Foods and Beverages Forum--An Adult Snow Cone

      A while ago at the liquor store, I saw something near the cashier checkout that caught my eye.  It was something called a "spiked snow cone."  As regular readers no doubt recall, I'm a sucker for new and unusual kinds and formats of booze.  In just the past few years I've tried alcoholic gummies (see my post on March 4th, 2023), and two kinds of alcoholic popsicles (see my posts on November 14th, 2020, and on April 30th, 2022).  So I picked up this one, too.  The cone was the "tiger's blood" flavor from the Daily's line.

     Man, do the Daily's company top executives want to stay anonymous!  I checked their official website, and various other business-related websites, and still never got the founder's (or founders') name.  But I did find out a little about their history.  In 1960, the Daily Orange Juice Company started manufacturing orange juice, and they sold it door to door, in the Pittsburgh, PA suburb of Verona.  In 1965 the company began also selling a sweet & sour mix for making cocktails.  Over the next few decades more kinds of pre-mixed alcoholic drinks were developed and sold by them.  In 2005 the business came up with frozen alcoholic drink pouches.  Somewhere along the line Daily's became a brand name, and the overall company name was changed to the (very generic) American Beverage Corporation.  In 2015 ABC was acquired by Brynwood Partners, as a subsidiary of the Harvest Hill company.  Harvest Hill specializes in selling juices, or at least juice-like beverages, as they also own Juicy Juice, Sunny D, Veryfine, Fruit2O, and several other brands.  It's a little confusing, but I believe that ABC also makes Little Hugs Fruit Barrels, Big Hug's Fruit Barrels, and the Guzzler brands.  The only top ABC executive I could discover is that the current President appears to be Kevin McGahren-Clemens.  Whether he's a descendent of the founder, or even the founder himself is unknown.  Alternate flavors of the spiked snow cone line include peach smash, blackberry smash, raspberry mojito, margarita, strawberry daquiri, and Bahama mama.  Dail's also markets some cocktail mixers.  And, as far as I can tell, the company fazed out selling orange juice some time ago.

     Also, I was curious if snow cones are just an American thing, or are enjoyed worldwide.  Just in case foreign readers aren't familiar with the term.  Well, first off, snow cones are ground up (sometimes very finely) ice with a syrup poured over, and within them.  The flavors are typical fruity, and the snow cone is often served in a cone-shaped paper receptacle.  Anyway, snow cones are an American development.  With a caveat.  Back in the days before modern refrigerators and freezers, people of course had to put actual blocks of ice in their "ice boxes."  Trucks from colder climates would make the trek down to Southern U.S. states, even down to Florida.  Along the way the truckers would have kids begging them for chunks of ice to beat the heat in the summer.  Particularly in Baltimore, Maryland, for some reason.  It became the usual habit in the 1850's for trucks to give the kids pieces of broken ice, which they would then grind up further and flavor with egg custard from their mothers.  It became a Baltimore tradition, and other flavors, such as fruit syrups, began to be added as well.  By the 1930's and 40's these "snow cones," as they were called, became popular across the country.  Modern fridges and freezers make the storage of these treats much easier.  There are a bunch of alternate spellings for snow cones--snow kones, sno kones, sno-kones, sno cones, sno-cones, and possibly others.  So, do only Americans get to enjoy this dessert?  Nope.  We Americans weren't the first, or only people to develop the ground-up-ice-with-flavors-atop-and-within-it idea.  It's just that folks in other countries have different names for them.  Therefore, "snow cones" are technically an American invention, but desserts that are the same kind of thing as snow cones exist in many other countries--they're just called something different.

Daily's spiked snow cone, tiger's blood flavor:  Had a deep red color.  The taste was strawberry-ish, with some alcohol-like flavor.  Overall it was okay, but not great.  It was kind of a fun twist on the booze format, so I can see folks enjoying it because of that, similar to the adult popsicles, Jello shots, and the like.  It did resemble blood, and since I actually consumed it in October, that was appropriate.  So maybe a fun concoction for Halloween parties.  I will say the red dye in this snow cone really lingered--I was still spitting red after thoroughly brushing my teeth, even.  Oh, and the alcohol content for this 10 ounce (295 mL) pouch was 5%, or about the same as a typical bottle or can of beer, glass of wine, shot of liquor, etc.

     When I saw the flavor name for my snow cone, I thought about actor Charlie Sheen's bizarre ramblings and rants from a while ago, as he talked about "winning" and tiger blood.  This was around the time of his acrimonious departure from the successful television program "Two and a Half Men" in 2011.  I figured that this flavor was a rather late reference to this cultural verbal phenomenon.  It turns out, though, that it probably wasn't.  The tiger's blood as a flavor name predates Mr. Sheen's ravings by several decades.  In the 1980's folks began mixing together strawberry, watermelon, and coconut into a combination, and using this for flavoring things like snow cones.  Where it began is disputed--it was very associated with the state of Hawaii, but some think that it was actually invented in Texas.  Wherever it truly started, the flavor spread quickly, into places like Utah and South Carolina initially, and the rest of the country eventually.  Getting back to Carlos Estevez (Charlie's birth name), in addition to using the expression "tiger blood," he was also photographed drinking something called that in a bottle, using a hand-made label done with a Sharpie.  Apparently, this was a mangosteen juice drink called Xango, which Sheen really enjoyed.  (And it was reportedly $45 per 750 mL bottle, so probably mainly consumed by rich folks.)   Then, in 2017, in an interview Sheen apparently blamed his weird outbursts on overuse of a testosterone cream, which allegedly caused him to undergo "roid rage," and ramble incoherently.  Finally, I could find no information on this, but evidently literal tiger's blood is not considered to be an especially tasty topping for snow cones, or other frozen desserts.  And since the animal is woefully endangered, this would be incredibly wasteful and irresponsible anyway.