Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2008 August 11

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August 11

Summer and Winter Olympic medals

This question may have been answered before but I couldnt find it. Has anyone ever won a medal in both the Summer and Winter Olympics? I suspect the best chance would be someone competing in Shooting in the summer and Biathalon in the winter, but I'd be interested to know if it's actually happened. -RunningOnBrains 03:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Four athletes have won medals in both: Eddie Eagan, Jacob Tullin Thams, Christa Luding-Rothenburger and Clara Hughes; Eagan is the only person to win gold in both. None won shooting or biathalon events. Giants2008 (17-14) 04:05, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(EC) Eddie Eagan, USA: Gold in boxing 1920 Summer Olympics and bobsleigh 1932 Winter Olympics. Gwinva (talk) 04:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

IIRC there are a couple of current athletes who have competed at both speed skating and cycling, though offhand I can't bring any names to mind. Grutness...wha? 06:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Clara Hughes, mentioned above, is one. - Eron^Talk 11:59, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

...and, see w:Category:Dual Olympics competitors for a number of athletes who have competed (without necessarily winning medals) in both Summer and Winter events. (One interesting entry is Hayley Wickenheiser who has participated in both women's ice hockey and softball.) - Eron^Talk 17:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Gillis Grafström won gold medals in the summer and winter Olympics in the same sport: figure skating. That's because winter events were part of the summer games before the winter games were established. --Anonymous, 04:31 UTC, August 12, 2008.

Soccer socks

I've bought a few and they all rip after a few months. Is that what I have to live with? Brand, no brand...doesn't seem to make a difference. Thanks. 67.243.6.204 (talk) 14:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Cut your toe nails more often. Problem solved. --Endless Dan 15:06, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you know how to sew, darning your socks is simple and can make them last much longer. —D. Monack ^talk 16:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

One bit of advice: always buy tube socks. Unlike other socks, they can be put on in any rotation. This allows the normal wear points to be spread out into a ring, making the socks last much longer. I also find them easier to put on in the dark, and it would be apparent to anyone who has seen my choice of clothes that I always dress in the dark. StuRat (talk) 05:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Flushed Away page mystery

For a while There was an area on the flushed away (Film) page about the sequel to the movie titled flushed away again. Recently the subject has been deleted and I don't have a clue why. Can you tell me who deleted it and why? Can you also give me any information links given by the person when they created the subject?

Thank you Ritaslilsis (talk) 18:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is an older version of the article with the sequel mentioned. It had no source, so I guess that's why somebody removed it. You can check the page history if you want to hunt down the person who removed it. Fribbler (talk) 18:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

A-side and B-side of albums

Did the concepts of A-side and B-side traditionally have significance to full albums as they did to singles and EPs? NeonMerlin 21:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't recall having heard the terms used that way. Albums had a first side and a second, or sides 1 and 2, or even A and B, but never with connotations of inferiority or obscurity as with singles. The second side was just the side that played second, and it might well contain the album's biggest hits. Algebraist 21:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Typically on vinyl LP albums the hit songs were first on each side. The sound quality of a record deteriorates slightly as you get closer to the center. —D. Monack ^talk 22:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

That was also related to a concern in the old days, now obsolete, about the sequencing of each side. Traditionally, you'd want a strong or catchy song beginning each side, so that no matter what side was put on the turntable, the listener would get immediately drawn in. This was not a universal rule, of course. Another concern from the days of cassette tapes, now obsolete, is that side A should be of equal or longer duration than side B, because you didn't want a long space of blank tape before the tape machine switched over to the second side. 24.172.156.74 (talk) 07:13, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

In the case of a concept album, like the Beatles' Sargeant Pepper, or Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, I daresay, it was fully intended by the artist that side A be played before side B. It was probably their vision to create that progression of their works. One quirky exception to the whole subject of Lp sides was Spanky and Our Gang's Anything You Choose/Without Rhyme or Reason Lp, which had a side A, and a side 1. Now that's REALLY leaving it up us!T lX$W7x05h^ (talk) 21:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

What I meant to write was that having a side A and a side 1 is really leaving it up to us which side to consider the "first" side.T lX$W7x05h^ (talk) 04:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Related question

I’ve never been greatly into popular culture, so I don’t know if what I’m about to describe still happens.

An album is sometimes named after one of the songs on the album. However, I’ve often noticed that the “name song” is almost never the first track. Neither is it the last track. It’s more often than not about 3rd last. In the good old LPs days, the song would be on side B, towards the end of the side, but not right at the end. With CDs it’s in an equivalent place in the order of the songs. I’ve often wondered why this was done so often. My impression was that they were in some way downplaying the importance of the name song.. Was this to inject some balance? By that I mean, they’d already given the song a boost by naming the album after it, so they needed to give greater prominence to some of the other songs. I’m sure there are lots of exceptions to this practice, but I noticed it a lot when I was in my noticing days. Any ideas about this? -- JackofOz (talk) 09:22, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I have always seen it as actually the opposite of downplaying the song. Since many albums have a sense of a theme or mystery or at least spark anticipation, I think the idea is to place the title track deep inside to cause the listener to hear most of the body of work before getting to the title track. If the title track is placed first, then the theme or main idea may be revealed too soon in some way. By the way, I had a couple albums from the 1980's where the title track was the first song on the tape or cd. Usually the rest of the songs were not that great.cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 14:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The first band I decided to check was the Beatles: the title track is the first song on the albums A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, and Yellow Submarine , and a bunch of their EPs, too. Please Please Me and Let It Be are albums that have a title track, but not as the first track. This is just one example, but... with about 15 songs on an album, it is not statistically likely that one particular song will end up either as the first or last position. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 20:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

That would be true if the order of the songs was determined by picking titles out of a hat. But does that ever happen? Surely the order is normally determined quite deliberately, as part of the overall marketing strategy. Thanks for those examples, which demonstrate some of the many exceptions I referred to. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the order is chosen quite deliberately. However, the people making the decision have all available choices to choose from (for an album with n tracks, there are n! permutations). Some people might feel that a title track should be placed first, but many others will want it somewhere in the middle. It depends on how well the song fits into the mix. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)