desperation.
118 entries turned out to be a lofty goal.
Spoiler alert. Some entries in the Table make veiled reference to entries elsewhere in the Table. Some of you tell us you’ve enjoying discovering these associations on your own, so maybe hold off reading these rubric items until you’ve spent time with the Table as a whole. Which, if you can’t spring for the print version right now, you’ll find it here.
desperation.
91 | Wilshire Phant-o-matic
Designed in collaboration with Frank Iero of the band My Chemical Romance, the Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic Electric Guitar features classic humbuckers, and it is the perfect guitar for trunking rhythm. Perhaps ironically, it has an antique ivory finish.
desperation.
92 | Elephant Gambit
Aka the Queen’s Pawn Countergambit, the Elephant Gambit is a rarely played chess opening beginning with the moves e4 e52 | Nf3 d5!? Generally thought risky, it enables White to capture either of Black’s center pawns, leaving Black in a passive position, muttering ¡@#¢ƒ∞§.
desperation.
101 | Order of the Elephant
The Elefantordenen or Order of the Elephant is a Danish royal order of chivalry and Denmark’s highest-ranked honor. Nelson Mandela received the award in 1996. In 2004, the original mold for the elephant was stolen from the court jeweler, Georg Jensen; Elefantordenen badges offered on eBay should be considered suspect.
desperation.
102 | Order of Carlsberg Elephants
Brewed with Pilsner malt and rice, Carlsberg Elephant beer is pale gold in colour with a malty character and a hint of caramel finished with a dry bitterness. The beer honors the trained female loxodonts who, with sharpened tusks, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, stand guard at the gates of the Carlsberg Brewery.
“With four parameters, I can fit an elephant. With five, I can make him wiggle his trunk.” Such was mathematician/ physicist/ engineer/ computer scientist John Von Neumann’s way of expressing the degree of ease and blithe insouciance with which a complex model may fit a data set given enough parameters.
Edward Teller once said he could never keep up with Von Neumann. “(He) would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals. I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.”
desperation.
108 | Von Neumann’s Elephant
desperation.
109 | White Elephant
Monarchs and potentates used to have white elephant parties all the time, giving each other actual white elephants. The white elephant served as a symbol of royal power and prestige in Asia. (The flag of the kingdom of Laos before it became a republic in 1975 featured three white elephants holding an umbrella.)
desperation.
116 | Jellophant
If you look through cookbooks from the 1930s, you’ll find a third of the salad recipes are gelatin-based, with varied fillings of figs, dates, bananas, maraschino cherries, marshmallows, and almonds. In the 1950s, these salads became so popular that Jell-O came up with savory and vegetable flavors like celery, Italian, mixed vegetable, and seasoned tomato, until the people stormed the Jell-O factory and burned it to the ground.
desperation.
117 | Umbrellaphant
Bry says he vaguely remembers drawing this at 3:30 in the morning as he tried to get the Table done for scheduled press time.