Stupid!
Stupid! was a British television comedy sketch show aimed at children of primary and secondary school age, which was first broadcast on CBBC and subsequently BBC One.
Main characters
King Stupid (played in Series 1 by Marcus Brigstocke, and Series 2 by Phil Cornwell), an immortal who is the instigator of all stupidity. King Stupid has files on every human and can make them behave stupidly using an advanced computer system. The King resides inside his castle in the Etherworld, a pan-dimensional realm with upside-down wall sockets, which is home to many Deed Monarchs, each of which rule over different aspects of human behaviour. Queen Sensible, King Angry, Count Cruel, and King Wonderful all have unique personalities. The Ether World is also home to a myriad of ogres, imps, banshees, witches, boggarts and many other mythical creatures. Stupid is served by his gremlin butleries Goober.
Stupid’s work (or rather, play) is made all the more difficult by his annoying purple gremlin butler Goober (Rusty Goffe), whom he constantly refers to as a "bog house rat". Goober goes out of his way to make the King’s life miserable. Goober is normally given a variety of boring tasks by Stupid such as going to the supermarket and taking out the rubbish. The love-hate relationship between the King and Goober provides a sitcom-style element to the show with a self-resolving story arc throughout each episode.
Stupidity
Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, wit or sense. Stupidity may be innate, assumed or reactive – a defence against grief or trauma.
Etymology
The root word stupid, which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from the Latin verb stupere, for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor. In Roman culture, the stupidus was the professional fall-guy in the theatrical mimes.
According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the words "stupid" and "stupidity" entered the English language in 1541. Since then, stupidity has taken place along with "fool," "idiot," "dumb," "moron," and related concepts as a pejorative appellation for human misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental, due to absence of mental capacity.
Definition
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. In a character study of "The Stupid Man" attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as "mental slowness in speech or action". The modern English word "stupid" has a broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senseless, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either imply a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze or slow-mindedness.
Stupid (art movement)
Stupid was a short-lived grouping of constructivist artists, formed in Cologne in 1919. The founding members were Willy Fick, Heinrich Hoerle and his wife Angelika Hoerle (1899–1923), Anton Räderscheidt and his wife Marta Hegemann, and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert.
The Stupid group aimed to address sociopolitical issues through an art of proletarian character. Seiwert and Räderscheidt had previously been active in the Cologne Dada scene, along with Max Ernst. Ernst later described Stupid as "a secession from Cologne Dada. As far as Hoerle and especially Seiwert were concerned, Dada's activities were aesthetically too radical and socially not concrete enough".
Räderscheidt's studio was their base of operations, but by 1920 he had abandoned the constructivist style. The group exhibited together and issued a publication, "Stupid 1", before disbanding.
Notes
References
Frenchie
Frenchie is a 1950 American film of the western genre, directed by Louis King and starring Shelley Winters, Joel McCrea and Marie Windsor. The plot is loosely based on the western Destry Rides Again.
Plot
Frank Dawson is killed in the town of Bottleneck by his double-crossing partner Jack Lambert, leaving a young girl without a father. For the next 15 years, she lives in orphanages and works for the Fontaines, originally from Paris, earning her the nickname "Frenchie."
Now grown, she makes a fortune running a casino in New Orleans, then returns to Bottleneck to finally try to find her father's killer. She buys the casino the Scarlet Angel but learns that sheriff Tom Banning has cleaned up the town, forcing gamblers to go to nearby Chuckaluck, where the man in charge is Lambert.
Frenchie gets in touch with Lance Cole, a man who helped her in New Orleans, and asks him to come to Bottleneck to run the Scarlet Angel with her. Lambert's gambling interests are threatened, so he plans to ambush Cole's stage. Tom intervenes and prevents bloodshed.
French Bulldog
The French Bulldog is a small breed of domestic dog. "Frenchies" were the result in the 1800s of a cross between bulldog ancestors imported from England and local ratters in Paris (France).
In 2014 they were the fourth most popular registered dog in the United Kingdom and in the U.S. the ninth most popular AKC registered dog breed.
History
The origin of the modern French Bulldog breed descends directly from the dogs of the Molossians, an ancient Greek tribe. The dogs were spread throughout the ancient world by Phoenician traders. British Molossian dogs were developed into the Mastiff. A sub-family of the Mastiff were the Bullenbeisser, a type of dog used for bull-baiting.
Blood sports such as bull-baiting were outlawed in England in 1835, leaving these "Bulldogs" unemployed. However, they had been bred for non-sporting reasons since at least 1800, and so their use changed from a sporting breed to a companion breed. To reduce their size, some Bulldogs were crossed with terriers, while others were crossed with pugs. By 1850 the Toy Bulldog had become common in England, and appeared in conformation shows when they began around 1860. These dogs weighed around 16–25 pounds (7.3–11.3 kg), although classes were also available at dog shows for those that weighed under 12 pounds (5.4 kg).
Frenchie (comics)
Jean-Paul DuChamp, typically referred to as Frenchie, is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics Universe. He is primarily seen as the pilot and sidekick to Moon Knight.
Publication history
The character first appeared in Werewolf by Night #32, in August 1975, which also featured the first appearance of Moon Knight. The character would next appear in The Defenders issue 49, in July 1977, becoming a recurring character in the 1980 Moon Knight series, and the 1989 series Marc Spector: Moon Knight. The character also played a significant role in the 2006 Moon Knight series and was also featured in the 2009 series Vengeance of the Moon Knight.
Fictional character biography
Frenchie was originally romantically involved with a woman named Isabelle Kristel, but she later left him. After this, he became a mercenary, where he encountered Marc Spector and Bushman. Once Spector became Moon Knight, Frenchie helped him fight Bushman, who had betrayed them. He would later design and build Moon Knight’s Mooncopter.
