Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 119

4 Oscar-Winning Movies That Roger Ebert Didn’t Like

The Academy Awards are not objective. Sometimes movies that film critics don’t care for take home the big prizes. Here are a few examples of award-winning movies that Roger Ebert didn’t particularly like.

Gladiator (2000)

Oscars: It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe.

Ebert: Since he started reviewing film professionally in the late 1960s, Ebert gave at least three, and almost always four stars, to the films that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Gladiator is the sole exception, with two stars. “The film looks muddy, fuzzy, and indistinct. Its colors are mud tones at the drab end of the palette, and it seems to have been filmed on grim and overcast days,” Ebert wrote. “The characters bring no cheer: They’re bitter, vengeful, depressed. The story line is Rocky on downers.”

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Oscars: It was nominated for just two awards, but they were big ones: Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Kevin Spacey). It won both.

Ebert: The critic gave 1.5 stars to the legendarily twisty movie with a shocking reveal at the end. “To the degree that I do understand, I don’t care. It was, however, somewhat reassuring at the end of the movie to discover that I had, after all, understood everything I was intended to understand. It was just that there was less to understand than the movie at first suggests. I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation.”

The Cider House Rules (1999)

Oscars: John Irving won an Oscar for adapting his own novel to the screen, while Michael Caine won his second award for Best Supporting Actor.

Ebert: Two stars. “I left the theater wondering what the movie thought it was about and was unable to say. It’s almost deliberately unfocused. The story touches many themes, lingers with some of them, moves on, and arrives at nowhere in particular. It’s not a story so much as a reverie about possible stories.”

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Oscars: It won the award for Best Original Screenplay, while director Peter Weir was nominated, as was star Robin Williams in one of his first dramatic roles. It lost Best Picture to Driving Miss Daisy.

Ebert: 2 stars. “A collection of pious platitudes masquerading as a courageous stand in favor of something: doing your own thing, I think. It’s about an inspirational, unconventional English teacher and his students and how he challenges them to question conventional views by such techniques as standing on their desks. It is, of course, inevitable that the brilliant teacher will eventually be fired from the school, and when his students stood on their desks to protest his dismissal, I was so moved, I wanted to throw up.”

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3 Weird Sports Riots

Professional sports can bring communities, and even the entire world, together. They can also lead to some pretty outrageous incidents. Sports riots are scary and dangerous but these three recent examples took a turn for the weird.

The Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot (June 2011)

By the end of game seven of the 2011 NHL championship round, which resulted in the Boston Bruins defeating the Vancouver Canucks, fans were already getting violent on the streets of British Columbia’s largest city. Fans at an outdoors viewing area threw bottles at a screen and things went downhill from there. In the hours that followed, stores were looted, cop cars were set on fire, 140 people were injured, and an audience at a touring production of the Broadway musical Wicked found themselves trapped inside the theater while mobs of drunken hockey fans tangled with authorities outside.

The Seattle Super Bowl Quiet Riot (February 2014)

Sports fans in America often riot whenever their hometown team wins a major championship. However, when the Seahawks won their first Super Bowl in 2014, the streets of Seattle stayed relatively quiet. A video of celebratory Seahawks fans politely waiting for a crosswalk signal to change went viral. However, later that evening, things got at least a little bit ugly. A few fans threw bottles at local police, several businesses had their windows smashed, and bonfires around town had to be extinguished by the Seattle Fire Department. An iron awning in the city’s historic Pioneer Square was heavily damaged but not by a drunken mob hurling bricks. Several fans decided to dance on top of it and accidentally broke 17 of its laminated glass panes.

The Melbourne Darts Riot (January 2015)

Professional darts has become increasingly popular in Europe and Australia in recent years. Part of the appeal? The crowds in the stands, which are often more entertaining than the participants themselves. Darts fans like to dress in all sort of kooky costumes…and drink tons of cheap beer during matches. Things got out of hand during a recent invitational tournament at the Etihad Stadium in Melbourne. A fight broke out in the crowd and a bizarre brawl ensued. Within moments, fans dressed as comic book characters like Batman and Robin began throwing punches at other fans wearing medieval-style armor and/or Bananas in Pajamas costumes. Chairs and tables went airborne. Meanwhile, a group of guys dressed as Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory entered the fray to assist the injured. By the time the police showed up, the crowd had reportedly destroyed the entire seating area.

 

For more sports trivia, check out Uncle John’s Sports Spectacular Bathroom Reader.

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3 Amazing Ice Hotels

Winter is when most of us to curl up indoors next to a toasty fire with a good book. However, others think it’s always nice on the ice. Here are some (literally!) super cool hotels

Icehotel (Jukkasjärvi, Sweden)

If you’re not familiar with them, ice hotels are, well, exactly that. They’re temporary hotels constructed out of ice and snow. Needless to say, you can find them in several of the world’s cooler regions. This one is among the longest-running on the planet. Every year, a crew constructs Icehotel on the outskirts of Jukkasjärvi, a small town in northern Sweden. Now in its 25th season, the current incarnation of the hotel was built out of 1,000 tons of ice and 30,000 tons of snow. It also includes 61 rooms designed by local artists, a bar, a chapel, and a movie theater. Suite 315, nicknamed “Polar Night,” contains an ice statue of a cougar and a glowing bed made out of ice.

The Hotel de Glace (Charlesbourg Borough, Quebec)

This ice hotel is the only one currently in North America and it’s been around for 15 winters now. Its owners are planning to keep it open until March 15th…provided that spring doesn’t come early. Recent editions of the Hotel de Glace have featured a theme and the 2015 one is “Space Time.” The surreal decor includes “time bubbles” that serve as tributes to things like the Big Bang and space travel. Guests will also find 44 themed rooms, a huge ice chandelier, and the Grand Slide, a large outdoor feature. In addition to hosting around 49,000 overnight lodgers over the years, the hotel is one of Quebec’s biggest tourist attractions, drawing a million visitors since 2001, and serving host to 275 weddings.

The SnowCastle (Kemi, Finland)

The SnowCastle is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The 21-room hotel is shaped like a castle and its facilities include a chapel and a restaurant with tables made out of ice. What’s on the menu? Reindeer soup, of course. Why that might sound “icky,” guests rarely turn down a toasty bowl of the stuff. Why? Because the temperature inside typically hovers around 23 degrees Fahrenheit. (It is an ice hotel, after all.)

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More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Astronaut Poop

Much like negligent dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets, America’s astronauts have been known to leave doody in some crazy places.

The legendary Apollo program is one of mankind’s greatest achievements. In addition to successfully transporting 12 astronauts to the moon between 1969 and 1972, it enabled them to bring back over 800 pounds of dust, rocks, and other samples.

But, as you probably already know, space was pretty limited on the command modules. So now did the astronauts free up some room for all of those samples? Well, they left a few things they brought with them behind on the moon’s surface.

In addition to ditching gear and supplies they no longer needed, the astronauts placed symbolic objects like American flags and a gold plated telescope on the moon. That’s not everything. There are an estimated 96 bags filled with the vomit, urine, and feces of Apollo astronauts.

Naturally, this isn’t a topic that’s widely discussed in your average high school history or science class. In case you were wondering, astronauts on these missions used what’s called a “Fecal Collection Receptacle Assembly” when they had to go poop. What’s that, you ask? A plastic bag that they taped to their bottoms so none of their excrement would escape and float around the modules in zero gravity.

A more sophisticated setup called the “Urine Transfer System” was used on at least a few of the missions. It consisted of a condom-esque tube linked to a metal apparatus that could be connected to a bag or a pressure valve. That latter was attached to the module’s walls for those astronauts who preferred to, essentially, pee directly into outer space. Needless to say, using the bag was the safer of the two options.

Astrobiologists are curious to learn more about all of that biological waste still sitting on the moon. Given the conditions on the lunar surface (the temperature up there can dramatically range from -387 Fahrenheit at night to 253 Fahrenheit during the day), they theorize that the poop may have undergone weird, genetic mutations over the past 40-plus years.

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Two Sandwiches Fit For The King

It’s 2015 and time to eat like a king, and by “king,” we mean Elvis. Here are a couple sandwiches fit for The King.

Fool’s Gold

Find yourself a loaf of unsliced French white bread. Cover it in butter or margarine and bake it at 350 degrees F until the outside is golden brown. While the loaf is cooking, fry a pound of bacon. Remove the loaf, wait for it to cool, slice it in half, hollow out the middle of both parts, and stuff them with a jar of peanut butter and a jar of jelly. Dump the bacon on top of one slice and close up the loaf. Then get ready to chow down.

Elvis loved Fool’s Gold. One night in 1976, Presley was entertaining a few of his buddies from Colorado at Graceland. They got to talking about the sandwich and decided to use Elvis’ private jet to fly to their home state to have a few. They called The Colorado Mining Company, a restaurant in Denver, before boarding the plane. The owners quickly prepared over 22 fresh Fool’s Gold sandwiches and rushed them to Denver’s Stapleton Airport.

Elvis and his friends arrived at 1:40 a.m. and they spent the rest of the night in a hanger eating the sandwiches and washing them down with Champagne and Perrier. Once it was over, they flew back to Memphis.

Peanut Butter, Banana, and Bacon Sandwich

While Elvis was willing to fly nearly halfway across the country for a few Fool’s Gold sandwiches, his favorite was this one. He was known to wolf them down as midnight snacks. However, accounts differ on his preferred recipe. Some say he liked them with bacon, others say otherwise.

Here’s a recipe for the bacon version that will yield four sandwiches. Take eight slices of bread and butter them each on one side. Spread peanut butter on the other sides of half of the slices. Dice up a banana and place the slices on top of the peanut butter. Drizzle honey over the bananas. Prepare 12 pieces of bacon. Place three bacon pieces on the banana slices. Then plop the remaining bread slices on top, butter side out.

Grill both sides of each sandwich until they’re golden brown. Slice ‘em in half, serve immediately…and hope you don’t die in the bathroom at age 42.

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The MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker

The Grammy for Best New Artist is famously nicknamed “the kiss of death” for how often its failed to pick enduring acts (Starland Vocal Band? Debby Boone?) The Oscars don’t have a similar award, but the MTV Movie Awards did, and they usually nailed it.

Since 1992, MTV has held its own Movie Awards. The categories are fan-voted, and less stodgy than the Oscars, with awards for things like “Best Villain” and “Best Kiss.” From 1992 to 2002, there was an award for Best New Filmmaker. It was almost always an accurate bellwether. Some past winners:

Wes Anderson (1996)

Anderson won his MTV award for his first feature, the heist comedy Bottle Rocket. After that, he developed a singular film style, marked by a love of vintage objects, warm colors, and British Invasion soundtracks. He’s been Oscar nominated for The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, and, this year, for The Grand Budapest Hotel. He’s competing for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

Doug Liman (1997)

Actor Jon Favreau wrote the romantic comedy Swingers to give himself a movie project, but Liman directed it. Liman won his MTV Award for that low-budget, indie film fit, but soon moved on to become one of Hollywood’s top action directors. Liman has helmed The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Edge of Tomorrow.

Guy Ritchie (1999)

He might be better known for being married to Madonna, but Ritchie has written a slew of British comic crime films, such as Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (for which he won the MTV award), Snatch, and the recent Sherlock Holmes movies.

Spike Jonze (2000)

Jonze got his start directing innovative music videos for alternative rock groups like Weezer, the Beastie Boys, and Dinosaur Jr. His first full-length movie was this comic mind bender: Being John Malkovich. Last year, he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Her.

Sofia Coppola (2001)

Coppola, daughter of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, was critically drubbed for her wooden performance in The Godfather Part III. She turned to filmmaking, and won the MTV award for her first movie, The Virgin Suicides. Two years later, her second film Lost in Translation was nominated for nine Oscars. She was the second woman ever nominated for Best Director (she lost to Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings) but won the award for Best Original Screenplay.

Christopher Nolan (2002)

One of the most successful filmmakers working today, Nolan makes dense, brainy movies (like his award-winner, Memento) that are also big-budget blockbusters. For example: The Dark Knight, Inception, and this year’s Interstellar.

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Breaking Bad (With Glitter)

Here’s what happened when one entrepreneur recently decided to turn those annoying little decorations into a mean-spirited business.

Glitter is a lot like sand: pretty and sparkly, but it gets all over the place. Who among us hasn’t found themselves picking a tiny bit of glitter off a cheek at one point or another, especially during the holidays when it’s added to everything from decorations to greeting cards?

A single piece of glitter can be irritating, which means that a whole bunch of it can be really, really irritating. In recent years, “glitterbombing,” which involves throwing a handful of glitter at someone, has become a way for protesters to humiliate celebrities and others at public events. This is one of the reasons why 22-yea- old Australian entrepreneur Matthew Carpenter started Ship Your Enemies Glitter. For a small fee, Carpenter ships to the enemy of your choice an unassuming envelope filled with glitter, packed to ensure that it’ll make a huge mess the second it’s opened.

Within four days of the website’s debut, Carpenter was slammed with orders from every corner of the globe. He’d completely underestimated his customer base. After receiving 2.5 million hits on the site and a mention on The Tonight Show, Carpenter pulled the plug. “Please stop buying this horrible glitter product,” Carpenter told his customers. “I’m sick of dealing with it.”

Carpenter has clearly created a bedazzled monster. While he may not have the resources to deal with a potentially lucrative (and totally cruel) enterprise, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t willing to cash in on it. The young entrepreneur decided to put his business up for sale on the auction website Flippa. As of this writing, it’s received 338 bids, the latest of which is for $70,800.

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The Strange Tale of the Poe Toaster

For over six decades, a mysterious figure visited the grave of Edgar Allen Poe every year on his birthday. Why? We wish we knew.

Edgar Allen Poe remains one of history’s most influential writers. He’s the mind behind The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart, and is widely credited for helping create science fiction and the detective novel. He packed a lot in before he died at just 40 in 1849.

Over a century later, the legendary Poe still has lots of fans, one of who is a legend himself. Beginning sometime in the 1930s, a mysterious individual, presumably male, began visiting Poe’s original gravesite in Baltimore’s Westminster Hall and Burying Ground every year on January 19th (the author’s birthday). Later dubbed “The Poe Toaster,” the man began a tradition that involved sneaking into the cemetery in the dead of night while dressed in black clothes, a wide-brimmed black hat, and a white scarf. Upon arriving at Poe’s grave, the toaster would always place three roses beside it in a particular order before opening a bottle of cognac. After toasting Poe with a glass, the man would then place the bottle next to the grave before disappearing back into the night. In the years that followed, the toaster kept his tradition alive. Some years he covered his face with a scarf or hood. Other times he brought a silver-tipped cane with him. He also left behind the occasional note, many of which contained riddles or cryptic messages.

Why was he doing this? What did it all mean? Some theorized that the roses had a hidden message and might have been intended to honor the author’s wife and mother-in-law. Countless others even made the trek to Baltimore to see if they could catch a glimpse of the toaster in action.

On January 19th, 1990, a reporter from Life managed to capture a photo of the toaster. Three years later, the toaster left a note behind stating that he was retiring but that “the torch will be passed.” His replacement was a bit strange and his stint as the Poe Toaster was marked by peculiar notes about the Iraq War and the 2001 Super Bowl (which featured, appropriately enough, the Baltimore Ravens).

In 2006, a group of fans attempted to intercept the toaster but failed. Four years later, he didn’t show up. Four “faux toasters” attempted to keep the tradition going in 2011 but were determined to be fakes by Jeff Jerome, the former curator of a local museum devoted to Poe. Sadly, the real toaster hasn’t put in an appearance since 2009. Jerome declared the tradition “dead” (or nevermore) in 2012.

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Ted Turner’s CNN Doomsday Video, Revealed

It’s become something of a legend over the years, but Ted Turner really did record a special clip to play on his CNN news channel…at the end of the world. Here is the story of the CNN doomsday video.

CNN, the first 24-hour cable news network debuted on June 1, 1980. It was viewed by some TV industry pundits at the time as something of a folly by its founder, eccentric media mogul Ted Turner. Turner was unfazed, boasting that the all-news, all-the-time network would stay on the air until human civilization was wiped out. “We won’t be signing off until the world ends,” he told reporters. “We’ll be on, we’ll be covering it live, and that will be our last, last event. When the end of the world comes, we’ll play ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ before we sign off.”

Since that bold proclamation, CNN has not only stayed on the air to consistent ratings, but has spawned several sister networks like CNN International (and the bizarre airports-only CNN Airport), but competitors like Fox News and MSNBC, in turn creating the 24-hour news cycle and the way the news is reported and consumed. It’s also covered countless world events, in addition to airing more than a few rambling Larry King interviews and making a star out of Anderson Cooper.

But one burning question remains: Did Turner really commission a video that would air when the apocalypse happened?

Yes. He really did. He’s occasionally screened the video for curious journalists sent to interview him. Dubbed the “Turner Doomsday Video,” it became a well known enough urban legend to be parodied in the 1990 movie Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

Turner sold CNN to Time Warner in 1996 but his creepy video remained ready to go at a moment’s notice. During a slow news day in 2009, CNN intern Michael Ballaban discovered the video in one of the network’s databases. It was listed below a bizarre note that read: “HFR until the end of the world is confirmed” (HFR is media lingo for “hold for release”).

Ballaban, now a writer for Jalopnik, won’t reveal how he managed to sneak a copy out of CNN, but you can watch it here. Or, if you don’t like spoilers, wait until the world actually ends and tune in to CNN.

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5 Fast Facts About the Seattle Seahawks

Last year’s Super Bowl champions are playing this weekend in the NFC Championship game. Here’s some Seattle Seahawks trivia to help you prepare.

In the early 1970s, the NFL had just merged with the AFL and were looking to expand. However, they had to claim territories in cities before the new, upstart World Football League could, and both leagues were interested in Seattle, Memphis, Phoenix, Honolulu, and Tampa. The WFL picked Honolulu and Memphis; the NFL went with Tampa and Seattle. Luckily for Seahawks fans, the WFL folded in 1975, halfway through its second season.


In November 1983, the Seahawks played in what would be the fifth-highest-scoring game in NFL history. While playing the Kansas City Chiefs on the road, the Seahawks won 51 to 48 in overtime.


Dan McGwire, the Seahawks’ backup quarterback from 1991 to 1994 was 6’8” tall—the tallest quarterback in NFL history. (The height didn’t provide much advantage—he threw for two touchdowns in his entire career.)


Second-year fullback Derrick Coleman is the first deaf offensive player in the NFL. He wears hearing aids and can read lips, which allows him to understand audibles from the quarterback.


Who’s the most valuable team member in Seahawks history? The team says it’s “The 12th Man.” A “12th Man” flag is raised before games, which refers to the raucous crowd in the stands at home games (there are 11 players on a side during a game, and the 12th man is the spectators collectively). Fans are so enthusiastic that the league instituted a noise rule in the 1980s…but it didn’t do much to silence The 12th Man.

Looking for more sports trivia? Check out Uncle John’s Sport Spectacular.

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