Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 115

5 Weird KFC Items From Around the World

Stateside KFCs mostly serve down-home fare like fried chicken and coleslaw. Around the world, it’s a free-for-all.

KFC New Zealand just introduced the Crispy Burrito—the crispy part comes from a deep-frying. Wouldn’t this just be a chimichanga? Yes, but this isn’t filled with traditional Tex-Mex burrito ingredients. It’s a tortilla filled with fried chicken strips, cheese, bacon, and barbecue sauce, wrapped up and deep-fried.


KFC UK sells Seattle’s Best Coffee and serves them in the brand’s familiar red-and-white cups. Except that the cups are fully edible. The inside of the cup is white chocolate, and the outer part is made of “sugar paper,” and in between is a thin cookie layer. Further, the “Scoffee Cups” are infused with “mood-improving” scents, such as coconut cream, freshly cut grass, and wildflowers.


A few years ago, American KFC’s introduced the Double Down—a “sandwich” in which the bread pieces were boneless fried chicken breasts holding in bacon, cheese, and sauce. Meant to be a temporary item, it was so popular that it was permanently added to the menu. They’re just as popular overseas, but other countries’ KFC franchises have used the Double Down as a jumping off point. Last fall, South Korean KFC stores began serving the Zinger Double Down King. Fried chicken breasts serve as a bun for a barbecue bacon cheeseburger.


KFC Thailand sells doughnuts. But these aren’t glazed chocolate doughnuts. This is the Shrimp Donut—a jumbo, breaded, deep-friend shrimp, formed into the shape of a doughnut (or onion ring).


A KFC menu offering in the Philippines is the Double Down Dog. A boneless chicken patty is folded into the shape of a hot dog bun, upon which is placed a jumbo hot dog and cheese sauce.

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Ask Uncle John’s Anything: It’s Okay, We’ve Got Insurance

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 on the blog, we’ll send you a free book!)

Do celebrities really have certain, signature body parts (or other odd assets) insured with Lloyd’s of London?

Yes. Lloyd’s isn’t a traditional insurance company, but a “specialist insurance marketplace.” Not backed by one institution, it has the financial interest of several backers, which means that it can offer big payouts if necessary by distributing risk around the multiple parties.

The company was founded in London in 1688 and initially sold insurance for boats and cargo, but today it’s undoubtedly most famous for being the insurer of celebrity body parts and talents. It’s logical that something like this would exist—extremely talented rich and famous people rely on their talent (or what have you) and to lose it would mean the end of their livelihood. Some real insurance policies:

In the 1940s, 20th Century Fox took out a policy on the legs of contract player Betty Grable for $1 million (per leg). Mariah Carey also has her legs insured for a cool million (but not her voice), and if anything happens to model Heidi Klum’s legs, she gets $2 million.


In 1957, influential British food critic Egon Ronay insured his taste buds for $400,000.


Riverdance star dancer Michael Flatley at one point had insured his legs for $47 million.


Around the time Born in the USA came out, Bruce Springsteen insured his voice for $6 million.


Gene Simmons’ tongue? Insured for $1 million.


Ilja Gort owns the Chateau de la Garde winery in Bordeaux, and insured his sensitive nose for $8 million.

 

Keith Richards has a $1.5 million insurance policy if he can’t play the guitar anymore. And that’s just for his middle finger.

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7 Restaurants Who Serve Food Creatively

Inspired by the twitter feed @WeWantPlates , here are some real restaurants who serve food on really weird things instead of plates.

The Bazaar, a tapas restaurant in Los Angeles offers potato croquettes in a translucent, plastic sneaker.


Delux Burger Bar in Phoenix serves a barbecue platter of ribs, chicken, and corn on a cutting board. That’s a fairly standard presentation…except that it comes with an order of french fries served in a tiny shopping cart.


John Salt is a high-end restaurant in London that serves an appetizer brick. First the brick is covered in caramel brittle, and on top of that is a dollop of creamed chicken liver, chicken skin, pickled corn, berries, and onion puree. Patrons are invited to lick the brick clean.


If you order chips at Citron in Dublin, Ireland, you’ll get a piece of Astroturf with a miniature clothing line set up on it. On the grass sits a tiny laundry hamper full of dipping sauce, while the chips, cut into the shape of clothes, hang from the line.


The Botanist NCL serves fish and chips in a wooden gardener’s crate. The peas come in a flowerpot and the tartar sauce in a tiny watering can.


It’s now closed, but the Tampa, Florida, burger place Dogwater Cafe served everything in dog dishes.


Bunky’s Café in Madison, Wisconsin serves its spaghetti “family style”—everyone can just grab a fork and dig in to the giant pile of spaghetti and meatballs…which is dropped directly onto the table.

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3 Notable Cases of Musical Infringement

This week a judge ordered Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams to pay $7 million to the estate of Marvin Gaye, finding that their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines” infringed on Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” Here are some other cases of musical copyright drama .

The ballad “21 Guns” was a big hit for Green Day in 2009, hitting the top 30, selling more than two million copies, and earning a Grammy nomination. On its release, however, many rock critics noted the similarities between the melody of the song’s chorus and “All the Young Dudes,” a song recorded by the glam rock band Mott the Hoople in 1972, but written by David Bowie. Rather than risk a lawsuit, Green Day decided to list Bowie as a songwriter on “21 Guns.”

British rock band the Verve had a big hit in 1997 with “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” The song is built around a looped hook, an orchestral sample of “The Last Time,” a Rolling Stones song played by the Andrew Oldham Orchestra. The Verve licensed the sample from ABKCO Publishing, but after the song started climbing the charts, ABKCO reneged on the deal, arguing that the song relied too heavily on the sample. ABKCO then demanded a full 100 percent of royalties for “Bitter Sweet Symphony” or it would remove the Verve’s album Urban Hymns from stores. The Verve relented.

Michael Bolton had a #1 hit in 1991 with “Love Is a Wonderful Thing,” a song he wrote with songwriter Andrew Goldmark. In 1994, a jury ruled that Bolton, Goldmark, and their label, Sony Music, was liable for copyright infringement for stealing many elements from an obscure 1966 single by the Isley Brothers…called “Love Is a Wonderful Thing.” Bolton appealed the case, arguing that he’d never heard the original song, but a judge disagreed. The Isleys were owed $5 million.

For more music trivia, check out Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music.

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Movie Trivia: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made

No animals were injured during the filming of 1981 horror movie Roar but their human co-stars weren’t so fortunate. Here is some movie trivia about the most dangerous movie ever made.

Have you ever heard of Roar? Probably not, and with good reason. It was trashed by critics and ignored by audiences when it was released in 1981, earning a fraction of its $17 million budget and quickly forgotten. Tim League, a film buff who operates the Alamo Drafthouse revival theaters in Austin, Texas, recently discovered the film and screened it. Roar is earning a lot of new fans because its production is one of the most reckless in cinema history.

Roar was the brainchild of actress Tippi Hedren (best known as the star of The Birds) and her then husband and manager, Noel Marshall. Both were animal rights activists with a passion for big cats, and at the time lived on a wild animal preserve north of Los Angeles that was home to more than 100 cats. They later decided that their lions/tigers/etc. should star in their own big budget Hollywood film about a family, much like theirs, getting attacked by their gigantic kitties. After ignoring the advice of trainers and zookeepers, who told them that their idea was totally crazy, the duo found investors and began filming Roar in 1970.

As you may have guessed, lions and tigers aren’t very good actors and they tend to get awfully “bitey” on film sets. The cast and crew endured more than 70 injuries as Hedren and Marshall bickered with investors and struggled to keep the cameras rolling. The young star of the film was even mauled by one of the lions and had to undergo facial reconstructive surgery. That star: Melanie Griffith—Hedren’s daughter. Additional disasters included the sets being repeatedly destroyed by wildfires and floods and the cats themselves getting hit by a mysterious illness.

Remarkably, no humans died during the production but, at one point, several members of the crew became convinced that the film was cursed due to Marshall’s decision to executive produce The Exorcist. Despite all of the complications, filming continued and Roar eventually roared into cinemas in 1981. As a writer for Variety put it at the time: “[this is] the most disaster-plagued film in the history of Hollywood.”

The couple divorced in 1982 and Hedren wrote a book about the debacle titled Cats of Shambala. If you’re curious to see Roar for yourself, it will be re-released in select cinemas this April.

For more movie trivia, check out Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Hollywood.

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Ask Uncle John Anything: Tennis, Anyone?

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 is a diamond covered bracelet called a tennis bracelet?

It makes very little sense why a very expensive, very shiny piece of jewelry, a bracelet studded and glimmering with diamonds would be named after tennis. A tennis court seems like the absolute worst place to wear something so valuable and fragile. And oddly enough that’s exactly how the tennis bracelet got its name.

Before 1987, diamond bracelets were generally called, well, diamond bracelets. Tennis superstar Chris Evert was competing in a match in the U.S. Open in New York that year. In addition to her tennis whites, she took the court wearing a very expensive bracelet that was inset with multiple individual diamonds. During the course of the match, all the activity caused the clasp on the bracelet to come open and break off. Evert didn’t notice right away it had fallen off, until she looked down at her wrist during a break in play and noticed her jewelry was gone. She asked the referee to stop the match so she could find her bracelet. The match was paused, Evert searched the court, and found the diamond bracelet.

That’s how “tennis bracelets” got their name…although it’s doubtful anybody has been so foolish as to wear one during a top-level tennis match after that.

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3 Members of Famous Rock Bands Who Don’t Play Music

Did you know that you could be in a band but not actually have to do much?

The Prodigy

This is an electronic group, and those kind of groups can be fairly anonymous, relative to rock bands with charismatic lead singers. Recognizing the need for an image if they were to play live or make videos, the Prodigy hired a Mohawk-sporting, eyeliner wearing man named Keith Flint. Not a songwriter, DJ, instrumentalist, or singer, Flint at first was the band’s official “dancer,” and jumped around the stage during Prodigy shows. (They later promoted him to “vocalist,” but he doesn’t exactly sing or rap—in songs like “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” Flint repeats or chants a phrase or two.)

Procol Harum

Many bands have a go-to songwriter or musical mastermind who shapes the group’s sound from behind the scenes. Jim Steinman once wrote all of Meat Loaf’s songs, and Brian Wilson wrote for but didn’t perform with the Beach Boys for years. Procol Harum, the British art rock band best known for the 1967 hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale” counted among its full members Keith Reid—he wrote lyrics, and only lyrics, for the group. He has never played with the group live, but because he’s a full official member, he still earns royalties for writing and performing whenever the band does a concert.

The Happy Mondays

This alternative rock band from Manchester, England, combined rock riffs with dance beats. The band was big on the English dance-club circuit, and so was the drug ecstasy. Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder thought his drug-dealer Mark “Bez” Berry brought so much to the band’s sound—by providing them with drugs—that he made him a member of the group. Billed as the group’s “mascot” since 1990, Bez would dance around the stage, and once in a while play the maracas. In 1993 the Happy Mondays split up and Ryder formed a new band called Black Grape…of which Bez continued to work in a similar capacity.

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4 Interesting Facts About “We Are the World”

The charity single to benefit Ethiopian famine relief was released 30 years ago this week. Here are some interesting facts you may not know about it.

Released under the name USA for Africa, “We Are the World” was recorded in an all-sight session in a Los Angeles studio following the 1985 American Music Awards. Producer Quincy Jones figured that would be the only time he could get more than three dozen rock stars together in the same place on the same night.

The song’s writers, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson, sing on the song, as do superstars like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, the Pointer Sisters, Cyndi Lauper, and Dan Aykroyd. Why was a comedian there? An L.A. talent manager named Ken Kragen was in charge of assembling as many stars as possible for “We Are the World.” He booked a few of his own clients (Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes), as well as Aykroyd, who accidentally made an appointment with Kragen in 1985 when he was looking for a business manager.

Huey Lewis’s one solo line, “But if you just believe, there’s no way we can fail,” was originally set aside for Prince…arguably the biggest star of the 1980s who didn’t appear on “We Are the World.” He turned down the offer to sing on the song—because he thought it was a terrible song, regardless of its charitable intent—but offered to play guitar. Producer Quincy Jones response to Prince’s manager, Bob Cavallo: “I don’t need him to f****** play guitar.” Prince instead contributed a song to the USA for Africa album.

Willie Nelson was a part of USA For Africa, and the occasion inspired him to further his charitable work to help people closer to home. Nelson would later start Farm Aid. (Also, later in 1985, USA for Africa participants Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder would record “That’s What Friends Are For” to benefit AIDS research.)

For more music trivia, check out Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music.

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6 Deliciously Heart-Stopping Ballpark Foods

You can get these real foods at Major League ballparks…but you probably shouldn’t eat anything else for the rest of the week if you do.

Last year, the Arizona Diamondbacks made headlines with The D-Bat Dog—an 18-inch long corndog stuffed with bacon and cheese (at a price of a mere $25). This year, the concession stands at Chase Field have come up with something even more delicious and unhealthy: the Churro Dog. They take a chocolate long-john donut, split it down the middle like a dog bun, and place inside a cinnamon churro topped with caramel, chocolate sauce, and a few scoops of vanilla frozen yogurt. And it’s only $8.50!


At U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago (where the White Sox play), you can get a three-pound banana split. It consists of 12 scoops of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate ice cream (four each), and is drizzled with caramel, strawberry sauce, chocolate sauce, cherries, and covers a couple of healthy bananas. It contains 5,000 calories and costs $17.


You can’t go to Baltimore without eating some of the local specialty, crab. You can even get it at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles. The Walk Off is a foot-long sausage, wrapped in pretzel dough, baked, and then smothered in crab dip. (Cost: $15.)


The Closer is available at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. It’s a grilled cheese sandwich, but each piece of bread is an entire grilled cheese sandwich. Between the sandwiches are bacon, and nine different kinds of cheese.


Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, has a challenge for you: the Fan vs. Food Burger. It’s four pounds of beef, cheese, bacon, and all the trimmings. It’s the size of a dinner plate and as tall as three Bathroom Readers (which you’ll probably need if you eat the whole thing). If you can finish the $30 burger (along with a pound of French fries), you get a free T-shirt, and two free tickets to a future Rays game.

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Fake-or-Fact Friday: Amazin’ Animals Edition

Whenever an animal does something incredible, it makes the news. Here are three recent news stories about remarkable creatures. But only two are real, and the third we made up. Can you guess which one is the fake? (Answer at the end of the post.)

A.

When she was four years old, a Seattle girl had a tendency to drop food—she’d get out of the car and drop a French fry, for example. Crows in her neighborhood caught on, and would approach whenever she went outside. Over the years, she started feeding them bits of food from her packed lunch while waiting for the school bus, as well as bird food from a backyard feeder. Amazingly, the crows have seemingly been thanking the girl. For more than a year now, after the birds eat each morning, they leave the now eight-year-old girl “presents.” The girl now has a bead storage container filled with the prized trinkets that the crows left for her on a yard table, including buttons, Lego, paper clips, beads, shiny balls, sea glass, and even a pearl.

B.

There have been many news stories about octopuses escaping their tanks at aquariums, but most are usually found a few hours later, somewhere on the premises. Not “Andi,” an octopus at the San Antonio Aquatic Research Center. Andi has escaped before, so staff wasn’t too worried. After three hours went by, they closed down the center to the public and started looking for Andi in other animals tanks, the bathrooms, anywhere it might be found. Where did they find Andi: sitting outside, a block away…at a bus stop.

C.

A dog trainer in Kentucky has taught her dog to read. Or at least something to that effect. She had been privately training her dog, an Australian shepherd, and went public with her results this month at an elementary school. There, students held up laminated cards, each with a word written on it. The dog would see the card, and then react—if the card said “jump,” the dog jumped. One card said “high 5,” and the dog held out a paw. The trainer says she can teach any dog to read in just four weeks, with a combination of vocal commands, hand gestures, and bold letters written on cards.

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Want to read more things that sound like they’re real, but aren’t? Buy Uncle John’s Fake Facts. (Really!)

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