15 Minutes of Fame, 15 Years Later

So…back in the day (1995 to be exact), my best friend and I compiled a bunch of "useless facts" that we'd been posting on a white board in our college dorm hallway and posted them on a newfangled thingy called the World Wide Web.

We submitted the site to Yahoo! and they added it to their directory with "cool" sunglasses and "Deb & Jen's Land O' Useless Facts" was eventually named a Cool Site of the Year in 1996. We got submissions of more useless facts from around the world and built the site out and it was all very exciting.

Eventually time passed, we moved the site to its own domain after they kicked us out of college, we moved on with our lives, and we mostly abandoned the site, leaving it to become one of those bits of quaint Internet detritus from ye olden times (like animated "under construction" gifs).

Fastforward to last weekend, when I stumble out of bed on my way in my usual groggy way and the husband goes, "Um, there's something you need to see…" I assumed from his serious tone that the roof had caved in or that crickets that live under our floor finally ate something important. But no, it wasn't a crisis, it was a Ricky Gervais HBO standup special from 2008, and as it turns out, his closing comedy bit is partially inspired by our old website, which he names onscreen as "Deb & Jen's World of Knowledge." I think I double-taked three or four times before I believed it. Anyway, this is mostly awesome because Ricky Gervais is awesome, but he cites two facts direct from the site (re: polar bears and elephants) and that's pretty cool, so we pirated the clip and posted it on Vimeo for your edification and amusement.

http://www.vimeo.com/9303762
1:38 - Mentions "Deb & Jen's World of Knowledge"

Deb & Jen's World of Knowledge - Deb & Jen's Land O' Useless Facts - Ricky Gervais: Out of England from Jennifer Godwin on Vimeo.