Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 106

The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Hits Album

“Best of” albums were once a huge source of revenue for record labels, and a great way for music lovers to get an overview of a favorite band. Not so much anymore.

In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a market for singles and a market for albums, and they were almost completely separate and aimed at different audiences. Singles – 45s – were cheap and directed at teenagers. Albums cost more, and so they were marketed to adults. That creates some disparity in the music charts of that era. For example Elvis Presley scored #1 hit after #1 hit, while album sales were dominated by Harry Belafonte and Broadway cast albums. Sure, Presley and other rock acts released albums, but they didn’t necessarily contain songs released as singles, which were often released as standalone items.

One of the few acts of the time that sold both a lot of singles and a lot of albums was Johnny Mathis. In 1958, Columbia Records decided to take all of the crooner’s singles-only releases and put them on one LP, Johnny’s Greatest Hits. Those who already owned the songs individually were enticed to buy with the inclusion of four new Mathis songs. The gambit worked: Johnny’s Greatest Hits sold five million copies. It was the first-ever “greatest hits” album.

These albums aren’t purely the result of crass marketing. “Best of” collections are a way for new fans to sample an artist, a gateway to discovery. In fact, a quarter of the 200 bestselling albums of all time are greatest hits albums, including collections by Elton John, Journey, and the Steve Miller Band. For many artists, the bestselling release of their careers has been their greatest hits album. These older greatest hits albums by the major acts of the ‘70s and ‘80s continue to sell, still moving a few hundred copies a week each. Until Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 led to a few million new sales for Thriller, the bestselling album of all time, with 29 million copies, was Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) by the Eagles.

Greatest hits albums are not the perennial cash-cows they once were. That’s because there are fewer widely popular, blockbuster acts, and overall album sales are down from what they were a decade ago. Kelly Clarkson, one of today’s most popular pop singers has had more than a dozen big hits. Her greatest hits album, released in 2012, has sold less than 500,000 copies. However, the new song on the album “Catch My Breath” was a top 20 hit—thousands of Clarkson’s fans bought the single, a la carte, on iTunes.

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4 Major Sports Trophies, and the People They’re Named After

It’s a big deal for a basketball player to win the Larry O’Brien Trophy…but who’s Larry O’Brien anyway?

The Larry O’Brien NBA Championship Trophy

The winning team of the NBA Finals receives this award, a two-foot-tall, 14.5-pound sterling silver basketball on a stand, covered in gold overlay. O’Brien was the NBA commissioner from 1975 to 1984—not the first head of the league, but certainly one of the most innovative. He brought NBA games to national television with CBS, and carefully merged the failed ABA into the NBA. (Before he led the NBA, O’Brien was a campaign strategist for the Democratic Party, served as Postmaster General under Lyndon Johnson…and appeared on Richard Nixon’s famous “enemies” list.) When he retired in 1984, the NBA championship trophy was renamed after O’Brien—it was formerly the Walter A. Brown Trophy, after the founder of the Boston Celtics.

The Wannamaker Trophy

Rodman Wannamaker took over his father’s Philadelphia store and expanded it into the early American department store chain Wannamaker’s. Wannamaker donated millions to the arts and sports organizations, and in 1916 held a luncheon in New York for 35 top golfers and business executives. That was the first meeting of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America, the PGA, for which Wannamaker put up the initial $2,500 investment. Still the sport’s governing body, the golfer who wins the PGA Championship, one of golf’s four “major” tournaments, takes home the Wannamaker Trophy.

The Heisman Trophy

Before the NFL gained a national following, college football was the most prominent avenue of the sport. Handed out since 1935, the annual award for college football’s top player has been won by legends such as Roger Staubach, Barry Sanders, and Doug Flutie (and, uh, O.J. Simpson). The 25-pound bronze statue, which depicts a player carrying a ball and pushing away defenders, was sculpted by artist Frank Eliscu, who used as his model Ed Smith of the 1934 New York University football team. It’s still presented at the end of the season at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City, where John Heisman was the club’s athletic director.

The Jules Rimet Trophy

It’s now officially called the FIFA World Cup Trophy, but the trophy for winning the quadrennial world soccer tournament was once named after Rimet, the third president of FIFA, soccer’s governing agency. Rimet, who concurrently served as president of the French Football Federation, helped found FIFA in 1908. Plans to hold the World Cup were already floated, but were delayed by World War I, with the first World Cup played in 1930.

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12 Interesting Facts About Apples

Did you know most apple harvests are still picked by hand? Here are 12 other interesting facts about apples you may not know.

1. Some apple varieties are as small as cherries. Others are as large as grapefruits.

2. Maria Ann Sherwood Smith found the first Granny Smith apple growing in her Australian orchard in 1868 from the remains of some French crabapples.

3. Canadian John McIntosh is to be given credit for the McIntosh apple. He found a seedling growing wild, probably from a discarded apple core, and cultivated it in 1811.

4. Apple cider can be frozen for up to a year. Just don’t use a full or glass jug—it expands as it freezes.

5. The Gravenstein apple came to California sometime around 1820 with Russian immigrants, but it’s been around for a while: In the 1600s, it first grew around Germany’s Castle Graefenstein.

6. If you had eaten an apple a day from age 5 until you were 35, you would have eaten 10,957 apples.

8. The only apple native to North America is the crabapple.

9. It takes the energy from 50 leaves on an apple tree to produce one ripe fruit.

10. McDonald’s buys 34 million pounds of fresh apples in a year, mostly from Michigan.

11. McDonald’s keeps its Happy Meal apple slices from browning by dipping them in calcium ascorbate (a mix of calcium and vitamin C). They have a shelf life of two weeks.

12. The Red Delicious apple was cultivated by chance on a farm in Peru, Iowa. In 1872 it was first dubbed “Hiatt’s Hawkeye” after the man who owned the farm.

This story was originally published in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. For a full list of our titles, visit this handy checklist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From the High Desert, It’s Art Bell

Art Bell has been (mostly) off the air for over a decade but, in honor of his return to radio, here’s a quick look at his bizarre career.

Bell began his radio career while stationed as a medic at Amarillo Air Force Base during the Vietnam War. There he started a pirate radio station where he played anti-war songs like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” After leaving the military, he set a world record while working as a disc jockey in Japan—he stayed on air 116 hours and 15 minutes. It was a charity effort to earn money to rescue 130 orphans out of Vietnam.

Years later, Bell accepted a job as a late night host at KDWN, a radio station broadcast out of the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. Instead of sticking with a conventional format, the host focused instead on conspiracy theories and other offbeat topics. Slowly, more and more people began tuning in. By the late ‘80s, many radio stations all across America were broadcasting the show. Bell redubbed it Coast to Coast AM and, in 1988, he moved it to a studio in his home in Pahrump, Nevada.

At the peak of its popularity, the show was broadcast on over 460 stations to an audience of 15 million listeners—in the middle of the night. Favorite topics: paranormal activity, Area 51, ghosts, time travel, and mysterious figures called “shadow people.”

Bell announced his retirement in 1998 due to undisclosed problems involving his family (prompting many conspiracy theories about his forced exit). He returned to host the show a few times before calling it quits for good in 2007 following the death of his wife.

Despite his “retirement,” Bell has returned to radio several times since. He briefly hosted a Sirius XM show in 2013 and had a falling out with management that kept him off the air for the following two years. Bell is set to return to terrestrial radio with a new show called Midnight in the Desert that’s slated to air on over 20 stations across the US. The first episode will debut on July 20th, three days after his 70th birthday.

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6 More Weird July Holidays You Ought to Celebrate

If you’re not still too tired from the Fourth of July and Canada Day, there’s always…

July 20: Moon Day

This one isn’t such a weird holiday: It honors what is perhaps humanity’s greatest achievement: traveling to the moon and back. It was on this day in 1969 that the “Eagle” Lunar Module touched down on the moon, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took a few giant leaps for mankind.

July 24: Amelia Earhart Day

Earhart was an American hero and pioneer of early flight. She’s also the subject of one of the most famous missing person cases in history. In July 1937, on an attempt to fly around the world, her plane disappeared, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. She was never found. (Today marks the 118th anniversary of her birth.)

July 25: Thread the Needle Day

It’s a very proactive and dramatic name, but this is simply a little holiday to spread awareness and encouragement of knitting, sewing, and other fabric-based hobbies.

July 26: Aunt and Uncles Day

Everybody has that “crazy aunt” or “weird uncle” or “cool aunt” or “fun uncle.” Did you know that your parents’ siblings have a day to themselves, just like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparents Day? Give your aunt and uncle a call.

July 27: Take Your Pants for a Walk Day

It’s just an unofficial holiday encouraging people to go for a walk. Why the pants? It’s unclear…but it’s always a good idea to wear pants when you’re going out in public.

July 31: Mutt’s Day

Who needs a purebred anyway? Dogs whose parents don’t have papers are just as awesome (maybe even more so) than the ones who do.

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5 Disney Rides That Were Never Built

What rides at Disneyland and Disney World have the shortest lines? These do…because although they were planned, they were never actually built.

Atlantis Expedition

“Submarine Voyage” was one of three Tomorrowland attractions that opened in 1959. (The other two: the Matterhorn and the Monorail.) Guests boarded a submarine in a pool, and it gave the impression of a deep-sea voyage. When the ride closed in 1998, plans were made to refurbish it into “Atlantis Expedition,” a new deep-sea voyage based on Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a Disney animated movie set to open in 2001. Coming in the wake of a string of smash hits—The Lion King, Pocahontas, Tarzan, and others—Atlantis was expected to be a massive hit.

It wasn’t. Disneyland executives then canceled the ride, and “Submarine Voyage” remained closed. Fortunately, in 2003 Disney’s Pixar Animation released Finding Nemo. That one was a huge hit, and in 2007 “Submarine Voyage” became “Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.”

Nostromo

In the early 1980s, Disney acquired the rights to make a scary ride based on the 1979 horror-science-fiction movie Alien. Mirroring the plot of the movie, riders would sit inside armored vehicles on a rescue mission to find the missing (and presumed-dead) members of the Nostromo spaceship crew, as they were being chased by a gigantic, horrific alien. George Lucas was brought in to help develop the attraction, but Disney bosses forced developers to scrap the ride.

Reason: they were afraid that because the R-rated Alien was so scary, the ride would be too scary for family-friendly Disneyland.

Mary Poppins’s Jolly Holiday

Of the major animated movies released by Disney during its 1930 to 1960s heyday, only one has never been turned into a ride at Disneyland or Disney World: Mary Poppins. Even getting the movie made was difficult—Walt Disney only persuaded Mary Poppins author P. L. Travers to sign off on the rights after 20 years of asking.

Travers hated the film and refused to sell Disney the right to make any sequels. That’s also what prevented “Mary Poppins’s Jolly Holiday” from being constructed in the late 1960s. Proposed for Fantasyland, guests would have ridden on a turn-of-the-century carousel, in upside-down umbrellas. It never got past the planning stage.

Mount Fuji Roller Coaster

Epcot, part of Disney World in Florida, is home to several pavilions representing the cultures of various nations around the world. The Japan pavilion features a traditional pagoda, Japanese gardens, and Japanese restaurants. For its opening in 1982, designers planned an indoor roller coaster housed inside a gigantic replica of Japan’s Mount Fuji. And like the Matterhorn at Disneyland, with its mechanical Abominable Snowman lunging at riders, the Mount Fuji Roller Coaster was set to feature a Godzilla-like lizard scaring patrons. So what stopped the ride from getting built? Its name.

Kodak, one of Epcot’s largest sponsors, objected to Disney building a ride with a name so similar to that of Kodak’s biggest competitor, Fujifilm.

Lilliputian Land

Part of the pitch used to interest potential investors in the original Disneyland was an attraction called “Lilliputian Land.” Named after the race of tiny people in Gulliver’s Travels, this area of the park was intended to be a tiny village, populated with nine-inch-tall singing and dancing robots. The area was going to feature a miniature train that guests could ride to see the sights of the little town and an Erie Canal barge to take passengers on a scenic tour of “the famous canals of the world” (in miniature). Ultimately, though, Lilliputian Land was called off. Reason: Disney technicians couldn’t figure out the animatronics to make the miniature robots work.

This article was originally published in Uncle John’s Canoramic Bathroom Reader.

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Planet Pizza

According to Mrs. Uncle John, pizza—bread, tomatoes, and cheese—is the perfect food. But in many countries, that’s not how it’s made. Here is some food trivia, featuring pizza from around the world.

South Korea

Among the most popular varieties of pizza in Korea are those featuring potatoes. The dough, made with a potato-based crust, is topped with sweet-potato mousse and sour cream (instead of tomato sauce), bacon, and potato wedges.

Iceland

Italian-style pizza is popular there, but not topped with mozzarella cheese. Icelanders prefer cream cheese and blue cheese.

Brazil

A thick layer of pizza sauce is unusual. Instead, a very thin layer is used and, more often, none at all. Popular toppings include sliced tomatoes, peas, and bananas.

Finland

There are more than 200 outlets of the Kotipizza chain in Finland. Its most popular topping is smoked reindeer, which is called the Pizza Berlusconi after Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who, in 2005, visited Finland and remarked that he had to “endure” Finnish food such as marinated reindeer.

Turkey

The closest thing to pizza in Turkey is a flatbread dish called lahmacun—a round, thin piece of baked dough topped with minced lamb, parsley, and lemon juice.

South Africa

It looks like the usual pizza, except for the tomato sauce—it’s blisteringly spicy. The most popular pizza toppings in South Africa: bananas and minced pork.

India

The country’s residents are predominantly Hindu, and don’t eat meat. The Western-style pizza is popular, but pepperoni and sausage as toppings are not. Indian pizza eaters prefer baby corn, pickled ginger, and tofu.

Norway

What country’s citizens eat the most pizza, per capita? Norway. Except that it’s frozen pizza. More than 24 million frozen pizzas are sold to Norway’s five million residents each year. The most popular brand is Grandiosa, introduced in 1980. Grandiosa is so beloved that a commercial jingle for the frozen pizza has topped the Norwegian pop chart…twice.

This article was originally published in Uncle John’s Canoramic Bathroom Reader.

 

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The Lost Pixar Movie

Pixar announces its upcoming films years ahead of time—because that’s how long it takes to make a full-length CGI-animated film. Or sometimes not at all.

Producers of live-action movies can rewrite scripts and reshoot scenes with actors. It’s much harder to change things after the fact in animation, which is why Pixar goes through many iterations of a film before they get to work on the final product. As Inside Out director Pete Docter told Fresh Air, they will animate basic stick drawings of scenes and add in music and dialogue to see if an individual scene or character is working.

Directors and animators receive feedback, and then change things during production if something isn’t working. Toy Story, for example wasn’t always about a toy cowboy and toy spaceman teaming up. It was initially about a one-man-band tin toy and a ventriloquist’s dummy Monsters, Inc. was set to be about a 30-year-old cartoonist haunted by monsters he drew as a child. It eventually became a movie about a monster city, and the relationship between one of those monsters and a little girl.

Only once has a movie in production not met Pixar’s self-imposed high standards: newt. Announced in 2010, it was to be about the last blue-footed newts on the planet that have to find each other, fall in love, and, uh, propagate. Unbeknownst to Pixar, and its corporate parent, Disney, 20th Century Fox had a similar movie set for release in 2011: Rio, about two endangered exotic birds that have to find each other, fall in love…

Pixar first delayed the release of newt to 2012, and focused on making Cars 2 instead, buying itself some time to rework the concept. But Pixar staff couldn’t find a way to make newt any less similar to Rio, and it was taken away from director Gary Rydstrom and given to Docter. Instead, Docter told Pixar bosses that he could possibly rewrite the movie…or they could make an idea he had about the emotions that live inside of a young girl’s brain.

After a lot of workshopping, that idea became Inside Out…and newt never made it to the screen.

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Root Beer-Topia: Fun Facts About Root Beer

Did you just polish off the last drops of Uncle John’s Beer-Topia? Then pour yourself a glass of facts about that other frosty beverage.

Craft Root Beer

Craft brewing has revolutionized beermaking, with thick, hefty, hop-loaded ales slowly gaining market share away from lighter lagers like Budweiser. Those same “major microbreweries” are also giving large-scale commercial root beer a run for its money. Goose Island (Chicago), Sprecher (Milwaukee), and Rogue (Oregon) all brew and market their own nonalcoholic root beers, slowly brewed with spices and yeast the old-fashioned way. Canned root beers like A&W or Barq’s are mostly combinations of water, sweetener, and the carbonation is injected in with carbon dioxide…not the result of active yeast.

Root Beer and Colonial America

In the Middle Ages and into the days of the early American colonies, people drank beer more than water—the water was polluted, and the brewing process meant the beer was safer. The problem with that is that beer had alcohol in it, and that wasn’t necessarily suitable for children. Experts say root beer was invented in colonial America as a nonalcoholic alternate to beer, but which was still clean.

Banning Sassafras

Up until the mid-20th century, most commercial root beer got its flavoring from the sassafras root and sarsaparilla root. (That’s why the drink itself was sometimes called sarsaparilla.) In 1960, the FDA banned sassafras in all packaged foods when tests on laboratory rats indicated that it was a carcinogen. However, “old time” root beer can and is still made with sassafras root—extracts can be purchased with the cancer-causing compound called safrole removed.

Root Beer Flavoring

The main source of flavor in today’s root beers: a combination of wintergreen and vanilla. Other trace ingredients: ginger, licorice, anise, juniper berries, and dandelion.

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Ask Uncle John Anything: Mmmm…Doughnuts

Uncle John knows pretty much everything—and if he doesn’t, he heads his massive research library, or puts one of his many associates on the case. So go ahead: In the comments below, ask Uncle John anything. (And if we answer your question sometime, we’ll send you a free book!)

Why do cops like doughnuts so much? Do cops really like doughnuts that much?

We can’t really speak to the latter, except to say that we’re sure that many cops don’t eat a lot of doughnuts because they’re sugar and fat bombs that can slow a person down in the line of duty. (But we’re sure a lot of cops do love doughnuts. Reason: Doughnuts are absolutely delicious.) However, we know what you mean—there’s a stereotype, if not a cliché that cops eat a lot of doughnuts. Look at Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons, for example, or how the cops in Wreck-it Ralph are walking doughnuts.

The concept dates back to the 1930s and 1940s. Before the proliferation of fast food restaurants and convenience stores, there weren’t a lot of places for swing shift or overnight workers to get a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. By and large, American restaurants opened shortly before normal breakfast hours and closed shortly after normal dinner hours. Sure, there were all-night diners, but cops can be called to the scene at any time and may not be able to wait around for food to be served. The only other establishments that were open around the clock (or at least with earlier or later hours) were doughnut shops. Beat cops could easily pop in for a snack and a cup of coffee and be on their way.

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