Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 109

The TV Spinoff Machine

The Surreal Life (2003–06) was a VH1 reality show that mixed Big Brother and The Real World. Instead of everyday strangers living in a house together, the housemates were all minor celebrities. And it had one other distinction: it produced more spinoffs than any other show in TV history.

During the 2005 season of The Surreal Life, two housemates, America’s Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry and former Brady Bunch cast member Christopher Knight, fell in love. In one episode, the cast is asked to pitch their own reality show concepts. Curry’s idea: Beauty and the Brady, about her and Knight. Later that year, VH1 began airing a Curry/Knight reality show: My Fair Brady.


The 2004 cast included rapper Flavor Flav (of Public Enemy) and Danish actress Brigitte Nielsen (Red Sonja). The two began a romance, and VH1 built a reality show around the odd couple, 2005’s Strange Love . At the end of the show, the couple split, and Flav was heartbroken.


Don’t cry for Flav—he got another chance to find love (and to be on TV). In 2006 he was the focus of VH1’s Flavor of Love , a Bachelor-style dating show. It went on to become the network’s most-watched show ever, and prompted VH1 to move its programming away from music and pop culture and toward trashy reality shows.


The female contestants on Flavor of Love were prone to drunken blackouts, drunken fistfights, drunken public displays of nudity, public defecation (seriously), and other unruly behavior, prompting VH1 to reunite them for 2007’s Flavor of Love: Charm School , in which experts taught them proper, ladylike behavior. It was hosted by actress Mo’Nique (who would later win an Oscar for her role in Precious).


Winner of Flavor of Love : an ex-stripper named Hoopz. (Flav gave all of his dates nicknames, because he couldn’t remember their real ones—Hoopz wore big hoop earrings.) Runner-up: “New York” (Tiffany Pollard), who moved on to do the mate-picking on I Love New York in 2007. When she didn’t find a partner, VH1 produced a show for Pollard in which she tried to become an actress— New York Goes to Hollywood (2008), and then another on which she worked a different job each week, called New York Goes to Work (2009).


Two guys not picked by New York on I Love New York, “Real” and his brother “Chance,” got to star in a 2008 VH1 dating show called Real Chance at Love .


Also in 2008, VH1 invited the most colorful, obnoxious, and memorable contestants from all of its reality shows back to TV for the unsubtly titled game show I Love Money .


Flavor of Love was a dating show built around an ’80s rap star. But what about an ’80s rock star? Bret Michaels, lead singer of the hair-metal band Poison, was recruited to star on Rock of Love .


Also following the Flavor of Love model, rejected Rock of Love contestant Daisy de la Hoya went on to headline Daisy of Love in 2009.


Other contestants from Rock of Love—heavily tattooed rock ’n’ roll groupies who were just as unruly as the contestants on Flavor of Love—returned to VH1 for Rock of Love: Charm School , hosted by Sharon Osbourne.


Megan Hauserman, a losing competitor on both Rock of Love and I Love Money, got her own show in August 2009 called Megan Wants a Millionaire.


Until Michaels returned in October 2010 for Bret Michaels: Life As I Know It , a series documenting his life after a brain hemorrhage and heart surgery (and winning a reality game show on another network, NBC’s The Celebrity Apprentice).

For more awesome TV trivia, tune in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.

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The Mystic Motel Basement Tour

Want to go on a theme park “dark ride” but live too far away from a theme park? Make one your self!

After a trip to Disneyland in 2012, father and son Scott and Ashton D’Avanzo of Los Angeles, California, were inspired to build “Mystic Motel: Basement Tour.” Scott, who works as a video game designer by day, is a longtime fan of Southern California’s theme parks and always wanted to try his hand at building a ride himself. With his son’s encouragement, they got to work on designing a backyard roller coaster. Shortly thereafter, the duo decided to turn the project into a dark ride because that would allow them to be more creative. After raising $2,500 for the project via Kickstarter, they started piecing their ride together.

In the year that followed, Scott says he pumped another $15,000 of his own money into the project and spent an estimated 1,500 hours working on it (with Ashton also contributing an untold number of after-school hours too). His efforts weren’t all for naught, especially since his wife and his other kids were willing to put up with all of the racket while he and Ashton worked on the ride in the family’s two car garage. Mystic Motel now occupies the garage and, as the name implies, it leads riders on a short trip through the basement of a “haunted” motor lodge. It also features animatronic ghouls and a finale that makes it seem like the motel has caught fire. Much like many of the rides in the Magic Kingdom, this one even has a pre-show video that explains the motel’s spooooooky backstory.

The D’Avanzos opened Mystic Motel to the public over Halloween weekend in 2013 and received hundreds of visitors. It was so popular that they expanded the ride in 2014 and added a creepy walkthrough queue in the house’s adjacent courtyard. While visitors wait to go on the ride, they can peek into the motel’s rundown rooms and drink hot chocolate in a dilapidated diner.

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It’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Night!

Minor league baseball is a great place to see future superstars on their way up, past superstars on their way out…and really weird promotional nights.

In June 2014, one lucky fan attending a Round Rock Express (AAA) game won a new car. New to them at least, because it was a used car.


Last year the New Orleans Zephyrs held Lightsaber Giveaway Night. Every fan got a cool plastic laser sword, just like the ones in Star Wars.


Peanuts are a part of the ballpark experience – they’re mentioned in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” even. But not on Peanut Allergy Awareness Night for the Louisville Bats. Fans with severe peanut allergies were invited to attend—no peanuts would be sold or allowed on the premises that night.


Also on the awareness theme, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans recently held Prostate Cancer Awareness Night. They crammed some humor into the affair, as the first 1,000 men at the park received a free foam finger. During the Seventh Inning Stretch, the team’s GM endured a prostate exam in the press box.


The Albuquerque Isotopes (who are named after the minor league baseball team on The Simpsons, who in on episode moved from Springfield to Albuquerque) held a special event last year in its picnic area: a mass “speed dating” meetup.


The first 1,000 fans who made it to the park on Bible Series Bobbleheads night at a Nashville Sounds game got a bobblehead figurine of one of the gift-bearing Three Wise Men. Merry Christmas!


The Tulsa Drillers held Mickey Mantle Night. The legendary Yankee slugger is from Oklahoma afterall…although he died in 1995. No matter. The Drillers gave away rings with Mantle’s image on them, and fans could get autographs from Mantle’s relatives.


For hardcore fans only: The Syracuse Chiefs held Tattoo Night. Fans that got a tattoo of the team logo didn’t only get into the game for free…they can now get into games for free for life. (Reportedly, 36 people thought that was too good a deal to pass up.)

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If You Win the NBA Finals…

…somebody will do something silly, crazy, wonderful, or all of the above!

For the chocolate

Tim Brady spent most of his childhood in Cleveland. That was in the early ’90s, the last time (pre LeBron James) that the Cleveland Cavaliers were contenders, led by all-star guard Mark Price. Since 1997, Brady has kept a Mark Price Candy Bar in his freezer. He has vowed to eat if if the Cavs win the NBA finals this year. (Price even responded to Brady via Twitter: “The taste was built to last. I hope you get to eat it!”)

For the wine

Like a lot of other celebrities, rapper E-40 (real name Earl Stevens) has his own line of wines. Grown from grapes in his Napa vineyard, Earl Steven Selections’ Mangoscato is a sweet Moscato with mango notes and a whopping 18 percent alcohol content. Napa isn’t far from Oakland, where the Golden State Warriors plays. E-40 told the media that if the Warriors win the NBA Finals, “the whole team will get as many bottles of my Mangoscato wine as they want until next season begins.”

For the needy

The mayors of the cities of teams playing in sports championships traditionally make a wager involving local food specialties. Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson reportedly declined Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf’s wager (he’s supposedly very superstitious about the Cavs and doesn’t want to jinx anything). Instead, the city’s food banks are squaring off in a fundraising drive. The Alameda County Food Bank and the Greater Cleveland Food Bank each hope to raise at least $5,000 by the time the NBA Finals conclude. (The director of the losing food bank will congratulate the other food bank in a Facebook video…wearing the colors of the winning team.)

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5 Industrial Musicals

Plenty of weird concepts make it to the Broadway stage, and maybe win some Tony Awards. Some musicals never make it to the Great White Way, because they were performed at corporate meetings and conferences in the 1960s to rile up salesmen to sell more of the company’s wares.

The Bathrooms Are Coming!

(American Standard, 1969)

The show begins with a group of women asking the Greek goddess Femma, “the epitome of all women’s attitudes and desires” (and not a real member of the Greek pantheon), for a “bathroom revolution.” Who can deliver a revolution for the bathroom, which the show says is a woman’s “private place, a very special kind of place”? American Standard, of course. One scene features a sleazy plumber lamenting how the company’s new products are so good it’s putting him out of business. In another, a woman sings about how dangerous her old tub was. (“It’s dangerous and certainly a hazard. / It’s positively lower than substandard.”) The highlight: “Spectra 70,” a song about the bathtub of the future—it has a shower with two heads and plenty of shelves “for books and kits, martinis, too, / a safety bar to hold, / for cigarettes, a storage shelf with lots of room to spare.” Drinking martinis and smoking cigarettes in the shower? Hey, it was the 1960s.

Penney Proud (J.C. Penney, 1962)

The department store chain was celebrating its 60th anniversary in 1962, so for its annual sales conference it hired nightclub performer Michael Brown to write a musical that told the company’s history in song. Highlights: “Opening Day at the Golden Rule,” depicting the day James Cash Penney began working at the Wyoming dry-goods store that he eventually bought out; and “May I Have Your Penney Charge Card?” (Sample lyrics: “May I have your Penney Charge Card? Though it’s small, it’s such a large card. For a hat, a zipper, or chemise, may I have your Penney Charge Card, please?”)

The Golden Value Line of the ’60s (G.E., 1960)

Twenty-two songs are almost all sung from the point of view of one of GE’s appliances, or an inanimate object praising one of GE’s appliances. Example: a GE Disposall boasts of how quiet it is, and a piece of china (singing in a “Chinese accent”) praises a GE dishwasher. Even Satan gets a number, singing about how “when it gets hot as Hades and lovely ladies look like chicken fricassee.” Everything’s going great for Satan until the arrival of his sworn enemy—a GE air conditioner.

Go Go Bio (DuPont, 1966)

Millions of Americans had space fever in the mid-1960s, and DuPont cashed in on it with a space-themed sales convention. This musical was the centerpiece. NBC news anchor Chet Huntley was paid a hefty sum to record a fake newscast about the “Bio 1” rocket heading into space, which leads into songs sung by astronauts, mission control…and actual DuPont executives. Was this all to demonstrate DuPont’s high-tech role in sending a man into space? No. DuPont made weed killer, and as one song notes, “There’ll be crabgrass on the moon!”

Read more in Uncle John’s Canoramic Bathroom Reader .

 

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Doughnuts 2.0

Happy National Doughnut Day! Here are a few bakeries that are committed to creating weird and wild next-generation doughnuts.

Gourdough’s

If you walk into a chain doughnut shop, you’re probably getting a doughnut that’s been sitting in a display case for hours. At Gourdough’s in Austin, they’re served straight from the fryer and with a knife and fork (so patrons don’t burn their fingers). Among the offerings are Porkey’s, a doughnut stuffed with Canadian bacon, cream cheese, and pepper jelly; and the Baby Rattler, with fudge-covered Oreos and gummy snakes. In addition to their original location in an old Airstream trailer, Gourdough’s operates two cafes that serve doughnut sandwiches, doughnut burgers, and chicken and doughnut dumplings.

Voodoo Doughnut

Among the items available when the first location of Voodoo Doughnut opened in Portland in 2003: a Pepto Bismol doughnut and another coated in NyQuil-based frosting. The FDA forced Voodoo to take those off the menu (you can’t mix food and medicine), but no matter, because Voodoo also serves Frisbee-sized glazed doughnuts, jam-stuffed voodoo doll doughnuts, and doughnut-flavored beers. Its maple bar topped with crispy bacon has spread to hundreds of doughnut shops around the world.

Psycho Donuts

The website for these two unusual doughnut shops in the Bay Area claims that Psycho Donuts is the “world’s first and only asylum for wayward doughnuts.” Proprietor Jordan Zweigoron’s commitment to smashing down the boundaries of what we thought we knew about the breakfast treats is definitely to be admired. To date, proprietor Jordan Zweigoron has served pizza doughnuts, taco doughnuts, and even sushi doughnuts. More traditional sweet doughnuts include a Nutella-sstuffed doughnut and Boston Scream Pie—a Boston cream pie doughnut with a frosting skull on top.

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4 Fun Facts About Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Ferris Bueller and friends taking the day off. So, let’s take a look back in our archives for some fun Ferris Bueller facts you may not know.

Model Character

One of writer/director John Hughes’s models for the title character of his 1986 film was his childhood friend Edward McNally. Like Ferris, McNally was tormented by a school official over his frequent absences, impersonated his father to sneak his friends out of school, and tried to reverse the odometer on a “borrowed” sports car. Ferris’s shy, nerdy friend Cameron was based on Hughes himself.

I Spy…

There are references to several of director John Hughes’s movies in the film. Where to Find Them: On the license plates of various cars. VCTN (National Lampoon’s Vacation), TBC (The Breakfast Club), MMOM (Mr. Mom), and 4FBDO (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

The Ferrari

Details: The 1961 Ferrari 250GT California used by Ferris and his friends was not a real Ferrari. The Italian automaker made fewer than 100 250GTs, which cost $350,000 each. So the studio saved money by putting a lookalike fiberglass shell on an MG.

Where is it now? The fake Ferrari used in the movie was sold at auction in April 2010. Bonham’s of London expected it to fetch around $50,000, but it ended up selling for $122,000 to an anonymous American bidder. Going price today for a real ’61 Ferrari 250GT California? $10,976,000.

Save Ferris

What do The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Sixteen Candles have in common? All take place in Shermer, Illinois. It’s a fictional place, based on Hughes’s hometown of Northbrook, Illinois. Landmarks from the movie, however, are real. Fans can see the “Save Ferris” water tower and the high school used in The Breakfast Club.

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Ask Uncle John Anything: Hats Off!

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 are hat sizes so odd?

People come in all shapes and sizes. That’s reflected in the way that clothing is sized. For example, shirts may come in small, medium, large, and extra-large. Men’s pants are generally sold labeled with two numbers: one listing waist size, and the other length. Women’s dresses are a bit more amorphous with numbered sizes like 2, 6, 10…or even 0.

People are a lot of different sizes, but in spite of that, their heads really are not all that different. Nearly all adult heads have a circumference that sits somewhere within a five-inch range. That’s not a lot of variance, and why had sizes are so much more precise and specific, at least compared to a “size 4″ dress or a “medium” shirt.

Hat sizes in the U.S. are listed by quarter inch. The smallest fitted size generally available for adults is a 6-3/4, and the largest is an 8. A “one size fits most” hat is usually around a 7-1/8 or 7-3/4. Every little bit matters in hat sizing, so that’s why hat sizes are so much more precise and specific, unlike a “size 4″ dress or a “medium” shirt. But those actual sizes are not an actual, direct number, like the waist size listing on a pair of pants. It’s a number derived by measuring the circumference of a head to the nearest eighth of an inch, and then dividing by pi (the figure by which all circular measuring begins).

It makes a little more sense in Europe—hats there are sized by circumference in centimeters. (Except in France, which has a similar quirky hat sizing system that measures hats from 0 up to 9-1/2.)

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No Finale

The finales of popular TV shows like M*A*S*H or Mad Men are big media events, wrapping up the series neatly and bringing in huge numbers of viewers. But some shows tape their final episodes without knowing it’s the final episode, or that the show’s about to get canceled.

Married…With Children (Fox)

On the Air: 1987–1997

The End: An offbeat, cynical, and often crude take on the traditional family sitcom, Married was one of the first-ever shows on the Fox Network. It remained on the air through its 11th season, getting renewed well in advance of the season’s end each year. In early 1997, Fox was noncommittal about another year of the show, but the producers filmed the 11th-season finale as planned—a regular episode in which Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) prevents daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) from marrying a jerk. A few weeks later, Fox canceled the show. O’Neill got the news that he was out of a job when a couple of fans bumped into him in a parking lot and expressed their condolences.

All in the Family/Archie Bunker’s Place (CBS)

On the Air: 1971–1983

The End: All in the Family, the satirical show about a loudmouthed, blue-collar bigot named Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and his “dingbat” wife Edith (Jean Stapleton), was one of the biggest hits in TV history—it was the #1 show for five years. Then, in 1979, the actors who played Archie’s daughter and son-in-law (Sally Struthers and Rob Reiner) quit the show, necessitating a format change away from the “family” setting. So producers changed the name to Archie Bunker’s Place and moved most of the action to the bar that Archie bought in season eight. The new show continued to draw viewers and was a top-20 hit, although it wasn’t as popular as All in the Family. Then Stapleton left. With none of the original characters in the cast except Archie, the ratings plummeted, and CBS canceled Archie Bunker’s Place without a proper ending to the 13-year Archie Bunker story. Instead, the last episode is about the bar’s co-owner trying to win back an old girlfriend. Writer Fred Rubin said that if he’d been given advance notice, he would have written an ending that reunited Archie with his WWII army buddies in Italy.

Gunsmoke (CBS)

Years: 1955–1975

The End: Gunsmoke debuted in TV’s early black-and-white days, outlasted more than 100 other Western shows, and was still popular in 1975, when sitcoms like Happy Days, Sanford and Son, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show dominated and it was the only Western on the air. For 15 of its 20 years, Gunsmoke was a top-10 show, and no prime-time TV show has ever produced as many episodes—635 in all. Despite all that, Gunsmoke was simply pulled off the air in April 1975, a few weeks after a forgettable episode—the sharecropping Pugh family struggles to get their crops planted before they’re evicted; lead character Marshal Dillon barely appears. The show had slipped to #23 in the ratings, but no one from CBS had ever mentioned to anyone in the cast or on the production staff that the end was even a possibility. James Arness, the star of Gunsmoke for 20 years, had planned to retire after another three years. Instead, he read about the show’s cancellation in Variety.

Read more in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV .

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The Last Time Cleveland Won a Sports Championship

In 1948 the Cleveland Indians won the World Series…and that’s the last time the city of Cleveland enjoyed a major sports championship, the longest drought in American sports. (It ends if the Cleveland Cavaliers win the 2015 NBA Finals.) Here’s a look at what life was like 67 years ago, when Cleveland ruled the sports world.

The oldest current coach in the NBA is Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs. He was born in 1949…about three months after the last time Cleveland hosted a championship sports team.


In 1948, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act, also known as the Marshall Plan. It provided $13 billion in aid to help Europe rebuild after World War II. NBA payroll in 2014-15: about $2 billion.


Cost of an NBA ticket in 1948 (when it was still called the Basketball Association of America): 25 cents.


In 1948, a pound of hamburger cost 45 cents and a loaf of bread cost 14 cents. To get a hamburger at Quick Loans Arena, where the Cleveland Cavaliers play, it’ll run you about $10.


In 1948, a million American homes had television. This year, about 20 million people will watch the NBA Finals on TV.


The average new home in the U.S. in 1948 cost $7,700. When LeBron James lived in Miami, he paid $50 million for a mega-mansion.

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