Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Other Daria

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the premier of the Beavis and Butt-head episode "Tainted Meat," in which extremely gross things were witnessed by Daria Morgendorffer. All of these gross things had to go with Beavis, of course.

Today is the 62nd birthday of actress Daria Halprin, for whom many fans thought Daria the cartoon character was named. (She wasn't. Wish we had more information about the namesake.) Daria Halprin is best known for her starring role in Zabriskie Point, a 1970 counterculture movie (with its own fandom) that has something to do with this Daria fanfic. (Details here.) Daria Halprin in real life eventually became an expressive arts therapist.

If you want to explore the Daria Morgendorffer/Daria Halprin connection further, you should check out Inaria's long-ago remark that Daria M. might have been named for the actress because her parents liked the movie Zabriskie Point. (Maybe Helen and Jake made out at the real Zabriskie Point in college.) This thought was followed by Scissors MacGillicutty's ficlet in which two Highland movie critics discuss Zabriskie Point, and finally UU's announcement of the passing of Michelangelo Antonioni, who directed the movie and thus had something in common with Glenn Eichler.

Exploring the origins of Daria M.'s name led to the discovery of the real reason why Daria hung out with B&B, and the origins of the "Diarrhea, Cha Cha Cha" song of which B&B were so fond. (Indeed, the "origins song" has its own blog! It's even in the Urban Dictionary! Is the Internet wonderful or what?) And we've come back around to the duo who gave us "Tainted Meat": the perfect circular blog post. Enjoy your day!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Zabriskie Point is a very good movie, nice to see it mentioned here.