Pimp My White House

I often wonder why I'm so obsessed with Presidential trivia. I suspect it's partly about all the cool stuff you get to do when you're President. And no, I don't even mean all the leader-of-the-free-world business. I mean getting to live in that gigantic, awesome house with that giant awesome office (and hey, the commute couldn't be any better!). Not that I would ever want to be President - the way I see it, the White House is a very necessary perk to keep people interested in what is indubitably one of the hardest jobs anybody could ever have.

Various presidents over the years have lent their own recreational touches to the White House's already glamorous facilities. Here are a few of the more pimpin' ones.

John Quincy Adams's Billiard Table - As a youngster, JQA spent some time in France while Dad negotiated the Treaty of Paris. It was likely there that he developed a passion for billiards. Shortly after becoming president, he had a table built so he could play at home to unwind.

At the time, though, popular sentiment about billiards generally ran to the "trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool" school of thought. In fact, when JQA was up for re-election, Andrew Jackson's people derided Adams for enjoying such an ungentlemanly and altogether ...French pastime.

Calvin Coolidge's Mechanical Horse - Originally a gag gift of sorts, Coolidge kept this bizarre little apparatus in a dressing room next to his bedroom. He only tried it out once someone basically dared him to, and he found that he actually loved it and couldn't get enough. To the amusement of Mrs. Coolidge and various White House visitors, he rode the mechanical horse frequently throughout his presidency, always while wearing his hat, but not always while wearing clothes. (Yeah, not that Silent Cal was an unattractive man, but the visual of him riding the mechanical horse in his underwear is not one my mind needed to conjure. Thanks, Internet.)

The mechanical horse didn't remain at the White House after Coolidge's presidency. He couldn't part with it. So it went home with him when he moved out, and it can now be viewed in his museum in Northampton, Massachusetts. Its descendants can be found in country-western bars throughout the nation.

Harry Truman's Bowling Alley - The first bowling alleys in the White House were built as a birthday gift for President Truman in 1947. Turns out Harry would probably rather have had a new bike or a Red Ryder BB gun - neither he nor Bess were very into bowling. (I know the President, being the quintessential "man who has everything," is probably kind of hard to buy for, but really? Nobody bothered to ask him what he wanted?) He let his staff use it, though. In 1955 the bowling alley was moved into the basement to make room for some copy machines.

Though Truman had little use for it, the White House bowling alley was finally fully appreciated four presidents later, when avid bowlers Richard and Pat Nixon moved into the White House. President Nixon had the bowling alley rebuilt and outfitted with state-of-the-art technology, and used it often.

Dwight Eisenhower's Movie Theater - Well, okay, the movie theater was actually first built during the FDR administration, and screenings had occasionally been held at the White House practically since the dawn of motion pictures. But Ike was the one who really made the theater the pimptastic hanging-out spot it is today. He's the one who installed four enormous cushy armchairs in the first row - all the better to kick back while he watched the westerns he adored.

Subsequent presidents have also made frequent use of the theater - Jimmy Carter hosted frequent regular screenings, as did Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who is reported to be a particular fan of the Austin Powers movies. (That explains so much.) Not so much of a movie buff was Lyndon Johnson, who mostly just liked to watch a 10-minute documentary about himself.

But there was something else LBJ couldn't get enough of...

Lyndon B. Johnson's Fresca Tap - Shortly after he became President, LBJ gave up drinking alcohol, and replaced it with another vice - the refreshing citrus sparkle of Fresca. Which I totally understand, as it's very delicious.

Adjacent to the Oval Office is a small private lounge where the President can go to take a break, catch a quick nap, or even just hide to freak out the Secret Service guys. Originally designed for the Eisenhower administration, it's outfitted with a couple of comfy chairs, some TVs, and direct phones to all the most important aides. LBJ liked it for more informal, one-on-one meetings, and to make it feel more like home, he had a "Fresca" button installed right next to the "Coffee" button, so he could get a glass of his favorite soda whenever he wanted.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. See you tomorrow for the obligatory links roundup. Until then, crack open a Fresca and think of LBJ.

I Have Lusted in My Heart for Friday Links

I think maybe I'll just make this the thing I do for Fridays - all the nutty stuff I collect during the week in one tasty little post.

(Listen to me talk like I invented blogging or something...or even like it's not something I've been doing for going on seven years now.)

But forget all that - let's get on with the linkage.

• The Pinky Show Presents: "Thomas Edison Hates Cats" - I can't remember how I stumbled across Pinky, but this kitty's irreverent, well-researched, and creative presentations were part of what inspired me to start a history blog.


• This week in the Onion, Jimmy Carter says "I Got What America Needs Right Here." (Naturally, this is not really Jimmy Carter. Also naturally, it's an Onion op-ed and is thus packed with swears.)


• Speaking of Jimmy Carter, here's the Straight Dope on Jimmy's legendary scrape with a murderous rabbit. And him without a Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.


• Cracked.com presents Five popular brands that originated with the Nazis. Being a humor site first and foremost, Cracked doesn't always do the most meticulous research, but they're almost always hilarious.


• Did a radio broadcaster mistakenly refer to Herbert Hoover as "Hoobert Heever"? Snopes knows the answer.

Did Andrew Jackson really shoot a guy in the junk?

In an earlier post, I showed you a fantastic rap video that featured, among other things, a kid dressed like Andrew Jackson claiming to have shot a guy in the testicles.

Clearly, this is something that, if true, involved both history and funny, and I've meant to explore it for quite some time, and in the process I have become better acquainted with the man who is perhaps the biggest badass ever to have served our country as chief executive.

Most of what you probably know about Jackson is pretty textbook: he's on the twenty. His nickname was "Old Hickory." He fought in more than one war. He had really funky hair. He destroyed the national bank. He was really awful to the Native Americans.

Good or bad, these things only barely hint at Jackson the Badass. It wasn't until I read a couple of accounts of his 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson (this one and this one are both especially good) that I fully appreciated his badassery.

Jackson loved duels. He participated in over a dozen of them throughout his life, but his duel with Dickinson was the only one that ended in someone actually dying. In this instance, Dickinson had insulted Jackson's wife, Rachel, because she was a divorcee (Jackson was her second husband), which understandably pissed off Mr. Jackson. (Apparently he defended his wife's honor a lot. More power to ya, Andy!) So the challenge was issued, and the men rode from Tennessee into Kentucky, where duels were still legal, to engage in their competition.

You may know this from reading up on the Hamilton-Burr duel (at least I did), but the code duello that governed dueling practices of the day basically gave the following rules:

1. The men stand 24 feet apart.
2. A signal is given.
3. Both men very quickly draw, aim, and fire. If one of them dies, the duel's over.
4. Whoever shoots first has to wait for the other guy to shoot before he can shoot again.
5. After both men shoot, if they're both still alive, they can call it a draw and go home or they can keep shooting. (Most of the time, the duelers were satisfied by having both gotten a shot out, and just by showing up, you'd proven that you were a gentleman after some fashion, so mostly I think they just shot and went home.)

Because you have to draw and shoot so quickly under these rules, it's no wonder so many people lived through them - it's pretty hard to do, especially with an early-19th-century pistol.

Rule number 4 came into play in the Hamilton duel because Hammy shot first - straight up into the air - some say intentionally, in hopes that Burr would fire into the air too. (Spoiler - he totally didn't.) In the Jackson-Dickinson duel, Jackson decided to play that rule the other way. Dickinson was a far better shot on the quick, so Jackson figured he could buy some time by letting Dickinson get a shot off first and then pausing to aim.

That's right, he let the other guy shoot directly at him. Badass!

And the other guy hit him. In the chest. Even more badass! (The bullet, inches from Jackson's heart, was too dangerously placed to be removed, so it stayed there for the rest of his life.)

And then Jackson calmly placed one hand over the wound, cocked his gun, aimed carefully at Dickinson's midsection, and fired, killing him. That's so badass it makes 50 Cent look like a basket of fluffy kittens.

(And it's more than a little bit unsporting, many people would argue.)

So is he badass? Hell to the yeah.
Is he a dirty cheater? Possibly.
Did he really shoot a guy in the jewels? Inconclusive. Some sources say "groin," others say "middle," still others only point out that he died. I'm going to guess not, though, because most accounts explicate that Dickinson was shot once and died on the spot, and getting hit in an extremity like the testicles probably wouldn't kill you instantly. The femoral artery, maybe, and the gut, possibly, but right square in the nads wouldn't necessarily have done the trick, I don't think.

I guess it's a little bit more amusing if that's what happened, but the idea of Jackson taking a bullet to the chest without flinching is funny enough on its own.

Next time, I'll tell you about his cursing parrot.

Stephen Douglas was a great debater, but Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator

Back from vacation and ready to bring more history funny to you. Today's topic: presidential hair.

Now, of course there are some very obvious presidential 'dos that spring to mind, even above and beyond the conventions of the day (powdered wigs aren't funny if everyone's wearing them - if it were the 1790s, you'd be wearing one too, smart-ass). James K. Polk and his egregious mullet are clearly way up there, and of course there's also the glorious mane of Andrew Jackson. But those, to me, pale next to this photo I found on a stereoview in the Library of Congress, depicting Abraham Lincoln circa 1860 with some truly wacky hair.

I think I saw this guy drinking PBR at Barcade the other night.

Were he young and alive today, no doubt this Abe would be an avid fan of Sufjan Stevens, from whom I get the quote in this post's title.

Status Quo is Latin for "the mess we're in"

Via the American Presidents blog, which is possibly my favorite blog on the entire Intertubes: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library can't locate or account for roughly 80% of the artifacts in its 100,000-item inventory.

There are a billion and one Reagan jokes I could make here, and they are ALL completely disrespectful and tasteless. While I am probably way more irreverent than the folks over at American Presidents, I do have to draw a line somewhere, and I think Alzheimer's jokes are well on the wrong side of that line. I'm sure the joke was much funnier as you imagined it in your head, anyway.

The Era of Good Feelings From Other People's Dads

James Monroe is an interesting dude. A little too young to be completely effectual as a founding father, he often gets overshadowed by his predecessors, particularly his mentor, Thomas Jefferson. And sure, that Missouri Compromise business was a pretty huge misstep. But look at what he did do - he acquired Florida, he penned the Monroe Doctrine, and he deemphasized partisan politics. Which was kind of a no-brainer given that Federalism was pretty much dead by this point, but still. People liked him quite a lot. He was the only president other than George Washington to run unopposed for re-election, and he won the 1820 election practically unanimously.

I say practically because there was that one guy in the Electoral College who just had to be a hater. William Plumer of New Hampshire, a staunch Federalist, couldn't bring himself to vote for Monroe. Instead, he cast his vote for Monroe's Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. Interestingly enough, JQA's own father didn't vote for him, most likely because JQA wasn't actually intending to run and Plumer's vote kind of came out of nowhere...still, it's interesting that the one voice crying out in the wilderness on his behalf was not his dad.

JQA stepped right up to the plate voluntarily as soon as Monroe was done with this President stuff, and in the 1824 election Dad was more than happy to back him up. Most folks preferred Andrew Jackson, on the popular as well as electoral side, though, and it was only after a lot of heated contention that JQA pulled that victory out. (Surely I can't be the first person to feel a little deja vu when it comes to this tale of the son of a former president running away with an election after he lost the popular vote.)

Okay, maybe that's not funny ha-ha so much as funny strange. Still.

Martin Van Buren, Samurai Badass

As an avid Wikipedia editrix, I would never want to encourage any sort of vandalism that detracts from the site's status as a valuable reference tool.

However, my scruples didn't stop me from being driven to hysterics by this subtle change to Wikipedia's "Martin Van Buren" article, which claims that the eighth president studied samurai under Mr. Miyagi.

These edits were up for less than ten minutes, I think - testament to the effectiveness of Wikipedia's self-policing team of editors and moderators. Good job, guys!