Wonderland Burlesque's 'The Big Interview' Quiz - Part Four

Wonderland Burlesque's

 'The Big Interview' Quiz

Part Four

We are done with the arts. Today, we're moving on to the other areas of life. And you know what I've learned? That, for this particular sort of quiz, twelve questions are simply too much, so I am going to break this section into three parts - with only five per quiz. Why? Because sometimes less is more. Twelve such questions felt overwhelming. My bad. I learned.

But that is the only thing that has changed...

Imagine if you were a television, radio or newspaper reporter and it was your job to conduct interviews with people you either admire intensely or from whom you would like to demand answers.

That's the fantasy that fuels today's quiz. I want to know whom you would like to interview, and just as importantly, what is it you want to know. What's the burning issue? What's that one question you're dying to get the answer to?

Explain your reasons for picking the individual. What is it about them that intrigues you? Approach this as if they have to answer the questions you ask them! They have no choice. They have to answer and answer honestly. And they can't walk out on you.

Let's begin! Here are the next five:

An Inventor

Hedy Lamarr

What a fascinating women. She was Garbo, but approachable. She was also one smart cookie. Bored with merely being a movie star, the lady had a 'hobby.'

She invented an improved stoplight and a tablet that dissolved in water to create a carbonated drink (it never went to market, she said it tasted like Alka-Seltzer.) She suggested to Howard Hughes that he go for a more streamlined look for his aero planes; something found in nature - a bird or a fish. While the pair dated, "(h)e put his team of scientists and engineers at her disposal, saying they would do or make anything she asked for."

But her crowning achievement? 

During WWII, she felt guilty making movies and money while the boys overseas were fighting for her opportunity to do so. She learned that radio-controlled torpedoes could be easily jammed and came up with the idea for a frequency-hopping signal that would prevent that such interference. Working with pianist/composer George Antheil, they developed a tiny player-piano type mechanism which utilized radio signals instead of plucked notes.  

While the Navy was interested, they were slow to adopt the technology because it came from outside the military. However, by 1957, they did incorporate it and it's impact was so widespread that it actually influenced blue-tooth technology.  

Copy of U.S. patent for 

"Secret Communication System"

So much for being just another pretty face! I want to know where all her confidence sprang from. What was it's source? To be involved in the world of film; one so many wanted to be a part of, and to find it to be of so little consequence that in order to feel like she was truly contributing she had to go to these extraordinary measures. Obviously she was using a larger percentage of her brain than most of Hollywood.  

Lamarr was inducted into The Florida Inventor's Hall Of Fame in 2019, something I think she probably would find far more satisfying than winning an Oscar. 

A Scientist

Ada King

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. 

The only child of poet Lord Byron and Lady Byron, and the only one of Lord Byron's children to not be considered a bastard. Regarded as the first computer programmer, she was "an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine." She came up with the very first algorithm. Not bad for someone born in 1815.

Her approach to science was somewhat unorthodox, for she valued metaphysics as much as mathematics, thus finding the poetry in science. When asked to describe her work she threw about such terms as "poetical science" and considered herself a "metaphysician."

As a teen, she struck up a friendship with Charles Babbage, who is considered "the father of computers." While translating an Italian paper on the calculating engine on behalf of Babbage, King became fascinated, including a series of her own observations while translating. This elaborate set of notes was later published as "Notes" and are considered important in the history of computers and serve as the first computer program.  It was she who saw that computers had the capability to be more than mere number crunchers. 

Sadly, she would die at the age of 36 due to uterine cancer. 

Another case of a woman who could have floated through life on her title alone, but demanded more of herself, for she knew herself capable of more than playing party hostess or attending the opera. Her father died when she was eight, so, while she did worship him (she demanded to be buried next to his grave,) he couldn't have served as much of a direct influence on her life. Was it his poetry that inspired her? If so, what, in particular, led her to her chosen path? What did she sacrifice? What were others saying about her? 

She had a daughter, Ada, who, at the time of her mother's illness, forbade her friends and colleagues from seeing her. And, in a rather dramatic turn, her husband would abandon his wife's bedside after she made a bedside confession heard only by him. To this day? No one knows what she told him. 

Well, of course, I love good dirt. I wanna know what she told him! You know it's juicy!

A Religious Figure

Since I believe that religions are all the same and little more than manipulative trickery used to maintain power in order to gain both influence and wealth, I won't bother interviewing Jesus or Mohamad or any of the rest of those imaginary deities. What a bore. It would be about as stimulating as talking to the Easter Bunny - who is sort of a religious figure, when you think about it.

No, I want to interview Tammy Faye Baker.

I remember initially despising her. Then, when her whole world went south, I felt she got her comeuppance. Then I moved to pity her. And finally, I rather admired her... especially when she embraced her gay fans. The lady soldiered on... and with style. That kind of moxy? Well, there's a story to be told there.

I realize that she came under the influence of a rat king (Jim Baker is odious and remains so.) at a young and impressionable age. I also realize that she was self-medicating, which had something to do with her delusional state at the height of the couple's popularity. I think her brand of self-care was her means of coping with a situation that, in her heart of hearts, she knew was wrong. And I am making a great deal of assumptions on her behalf. What I really want to know is - how aware was she?

I also adore her for teaming up with wide-eyed, country boy Jim J. Bullock. Those two were a hoot.

Near the end of her life, on The Larry King Show, she said, “You know, when we lost everything, it was the gay people that came to my rescue, and I will always love them for that.”

I find her fascinating.

A Business Leader

Jeff Bezos

Explain Amazon to me in the simplest of terms. What did you initially envision? 

Are you destroying the economy as we know it?  Are you destroying our planet?

What do you see as the 'new' economy?

Justify your space flight when people are homeless, ill and starving? Why not reinvent healthcare? Why not buy Detroit? Why not do something with a tenth of your vast wealth that would benefit others? 

Philanthropy. 

Are you the face of the new evil? Why are you such a pig?

Yeah, I fucking despise Jeff Bezos. 

A Criminal

While Charles Starkweather fascinates me a tad, I think I will go a more intellectual route. 

Leopold and Loeb

The absence of all empathy... how did that come about? Talk about white privilege run amok. And that is what I want them to talk about. These were no run of your mill hoodlums. No ordinary psychopaths. Intellectualizing child murder to this degree? A special kind of  soullessness. 

And for two individuals to come to the same conclusions, seeking the same results, engaging in the same kind of hideous social experiment? Those had to be some pretty heady conversations. 

It's one thing to be so privileged that you make sport of murder, luring a child into your vehicle and ending their life in a coldblooded manner. Given the times and their positions in the world, they so easily could have gotten away with it. But it's another kind of hutzpah, that spurs one on to toy with grieving family and law enforcement by carrying out a fake kidnapping/ransom ploy. This was a game to them. How is it that life allowed them to have nothing better to do? 

This brand of evil is the same one infecting our society today. The wealthy? They have better things to do... things they could be doing. But instead? They are only interested in doing evil for the sake of evil. Oh, they and we may be convinced that their motivations are of a selfish nature... but I suspect it's because their driven by their privilege to prove their superiority -  that they are above the law, above morality. 

Leopold and Loeb were devotees of Nietzsche and his concept of 'the superman.' - the same nightmare fuel that infused the writings of Ayn Rand, which the Repulsivecans are so quick to point to as some kind of superior intellectual stomping ground. It's an ugly theology; at the heart of white privilege (which is my current preoccupation) and the stuff of monsters.

And monster fascinate me. 

--- ---

That's all for today. 

Your turn; leave your answers in the comments section or post them on your blog and leave a link here. 

Next week we'll conclude this series of quizzes. Don't worry, the last one is of a more personal nature. I realize that answering these questions? It's a bit like doing a book report!

Until then... 

Thanks for reading and participating!

Love Them Anyway - Heddy Lamarr

1969 Interview - Hedy Lamarr 

 The Merv Griffin Show

(The sound quality is very low 

and I apologize about Woody Allen.)