Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 123

6 Odd and Forgotten College Football Bowl Games

From now until the middle of January, 39 college bowl games will be contested. That’s a lot…but there are plenty of college football bowl games that aren’t played at all anymore.

Havana Bowl

Due to mutual economic sanctions and deep-seated political rivalries, this game hasn’t been played since 1946, but sporadically throughout the 1910s and 1920s, this bowl game was held each year in Cuba.

Boardwalk Bowl

This was an annual matchup between Pennsylvania Military College and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Similar to the Army-Navy Game that pits the two military branches academies in a game, the Boardwalk Bowl was called “The Little Army-Navy Game.” Oddly, it was played indoors at the Atlantic City Convention Center in New Jersey on natural grass that was grown outside and then moved indoors. It hasn’t been held since 1973.

Cosmopolitan Bowl

Obviously, the Cosmopolitan Bowl was played in the sparkling metropolis of…Alexandria, Louisiana. It was played only once, in 1951, with McNeese State defeating Louisiana College.

Epson Ivy Bowl

Played annually from 1988 to 1996, the Epson Ivy Bowl was contested between a team of all-stars from Ivy League colleges (who had popularized football in the early 20th century) and a team of all-stars from Japanese colleges (where football wasn’t terribly popular). The Ivy Leaguers won every single time.

Glasnost Bowl

After glasnost, the policy enacted by Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 to ease tensions with the West, plans were underway to hold an annual college football game in the U.S.S.R., also in the name of peace and understanding. USC and the University of Illinois agreed to play in 1989, but it turned out to be a logistical nightmare and the game never took place.

Pasadena Bowl

The California city is already home to the Rose Bowl, which is a step on the way to the national title for major schools. From 1946 to 1971, the city also played host to the Pasadena Bowl, which was essentially a mini-Rose Bowl, determining the national football championship for junior colleges.

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6 Weird December “Holidays” You Ought to Celebrate

Christmas? New Year’s Eve? Who needs ‘em when you’ve got National Ding-a-Long Day!

Dec. 8: National Brownie Day

As if you need another excuse to eat a sweet treat this month, this holiday is properly celebrated by baking and then devouring a tray of brownies. (You can add nuts if you like.)

Dec. 12: National Ding-a-Ling Day

Get your minds out of the gutter (and your Chuck Berry’s Greatest Hits album). It’s a day to celebrate silly, nutty, goofy behavior by embracing your inner “ding-a-ling.”

Dec. 13: National Ice Cream Day

In 1984, President Reagan officially made July National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday in July National Ice Cream Day. But there’s always room for more ice cream, so there’s a second National Ice Cream Day, too. (Too bad it’s not the same day as National Brownie Day.)

Dec. 19: Look For an Evergreen Day

That shouldn’t be too hard, what with all the Christmas tree farms, Christmas trees for sale in parking lots, and, if you’re not a Christmas procrastinator, the one that’s up and decorated in your living room. (It’s a great day to go pick out a tree, too.)

Dec. 21: Humbug Day

Named for the catchphrase of notorious Christmas hater Ebenezer Scrooge, the creators of this holiday wanted to give everyone stressed out by the holidays a chance “to vent their frustrations.

Dec. 23: Festivus

Seinfeld writer Daniel O’Keefe wrote into a December 1997 his father’s penchant for celebrating “Festivus,” a non-denominational holiday for those who don’t celebrate Christmas or Hannukah. It’s “a Festivus for the rest of us.” The faux-holiday became a semi-real holiday after the episode aired, with hundreds of people in the real world celebrating as Kramer and Frank Costanza did: with feats of strength, an unadorned aluminum pole, and “the airing of grievances.”

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4 Pieces of Random and Weird Christmas Music

Are you dreaming of a weird Christmas?

“A Spaceman Came Travelling”

In 1975, a decade before his hit “Lady in Red” was released, the British singer Chris de Burgh, wrote this song theorizing that the Star of Bethlehem was a spaceship, and it carried a traveler from outer space who was a guardian of humanity. In the song, the alien visits Mary to tell her that she is going to give birth to Jesus. The alien is present for the birth, too, but then leaves, promising to return in 2,000 years.

“What Can You Get a Wookiee For Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb)?”

Only the most devoted Stars Wars fans have ever heard the 1980 album Christmas in the Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album. It’s mostly a story for children about robots in space (like R2-D2 and C-3PO) making toys for Santa Claus to deliver. It also includes some songs, like this silly number about how Wookiees like Chewbacca are very hairy and also difficult to buy presents for. You won’t recognize his voice under a lot of studio tricks, but the singer is Jon Bon Jovi. It’s the first song he ever sang on professionally.

“Here’s Your Sign Christmas”

Bill Engvall is a comedian best known for the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” and his “here’s your sign” bit. In short, Engvall theorizes that stupid people who do stupid things should receive a yellow hazard sign they have to carry around to alert others to their stupidity. (Example: “I was flying a kite and a guy walks up and says, ‘y’all flyin’ a kite?’ Here’s your sign.”) In Christmas 1998, Engvall recorded “Here’s Your Sign Christmas.” Over a backing track of familiar Christmas melodies, Engvall recites Christmas-themed takes on his froutine. Example: “I took my son to the mall to see Santa Claus. The woman in line behind me says, ‘Hey is that Santa Claus up there?’ I said, ‘No, ma’am, it’s a Kenny Rogers stunt double.’ Here’s your sign.”

Yuletide Disco

Mirror Image wasn’t a real band, but a collection of studio musicians hired to bang out some songs for a quickie disco album. That album: 1978’s Yuletide Disco. What says Christmas more than disco? Set to a disco beat and generic disco instrumentation were familiar songs like “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Good King Wenceslas.” An instrumental version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” seems baffling, because that song’s fun arguably lies in the repetition of the previous verse after every new verse is introduced. Without the words, what’s the point?

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10 Christmas Desserts From Around the World

One of the best parts of the holiday season is gorging yourself on gingerbread, sugar cookies, eggnog, candy canes… but that’s just here in North America. Here’s some interesting trivia on some holiday sweet treats from elsewhere on the planet.

Stollen (Germany)

It’s a very dense, very sweet bread made with brandy-soaked cherries, currents, and raisins. It’s also sometimes filled with almond paste and topped with a frosting so sweet it makes your teeth hurt.

Risalmande (Denmark)

It’s a pudding made from rice, whipped cream, and chopped almonds. Whoever finds the one whole almond dropped into the mix, they win a small gift.

Kutya (Ukraine, Belarus)

Christmas is a somber, religious holiday in the Eastern Orthodox church, which has a major presence in Eastern Europe. The holiday concludes on January 6—Epiphany—with a 12-course Christmas dinner. It starts with dessert: kutya, a sweet grain pudding made from wheat berries, poppy seeds, walnuts, and honey.

Buche de Noel (France, Quebec)

It’s a thin layer of sponge cake that’s topped with buttercream, then rolled up to look like a fireplace log or a Yule log. It’s then baked and topped with chocolate buttercream frosting or chocolate ganache, and then decorated with marzipan and sliced.

Beigli (Hungary)

Another sliced pastry roll, the fillings in this are traditionally a poppy seed paste, or one made from minced walnuts.

Cougnou (Belgium)

It’s traditional to serve one of these sweet, red-colored raisin rolls with a mug of hot chocolate. The Christmas angle is that they’re shaped to resemble the baby Jesus in his swaddling clothes.

Pan de Pascua (Chile)

German immigrants to the South American nation introduced stollen, but locals devised this takeoff. It’s a sponge cake batter made with walnuts, raisins, ginger, and candied fruits.

Buñuelo, (Dominican Republic)

Christmas doughnuts! Flavored with anise, shaped into a bowl, and fried, they’re then glazed with coconut water and drizzled with a cinnamon-sugar syrup.

Truchas de Navidad (Canary Islands)

Turnovers that have been fried and filled with a hot, sweet potato pie puree.

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Ask Uncle John Anything: More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys

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!) Today’s question is from Jeremy C., who asks…

Where in the world did we get the expression, “more fun than a barrel of monkeys”?

Answering this question only brings up more questions. Why did someone have a barrel, and decide to fill it up with monkeys in the first place? And why is that a fun thing? It seems like it would be a nightmarish disaster of monkeys clawing at each other, and throwing their waste at each other, all the while screeching and howling. This doesn’t sound all that fun, let alone the barometer against which all other fun things are judged.

(And for what it’s worth, we’ve never found the children’s game it inspired, “Barrel of Monkeys,” to be all that much fun.)

But fortunately there is an explanation. “More fun than a barrel of monkeys” is supposed to be an ironic statement, or at least a sarcastic one. It’s properly used to wryly describe something that isn’t fun (say, the board game “Barrel of Monkeys.”) The previous incarnations of the phrase lend credence to that. It was first recorded in 1840 as “cage of monkeys.” By the 1890s, the term had evolved into “a wagon-load of monkeys,” which would aptly describe something both chaotic and terrible.

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3 of the Craziest Weather-Cursed NFL Games of the Past Decade

While the Buffalo Bills recently had to play a home game in Detroit due to unprecedented snowfall, other teams have hit the field under even crazier conditions.

Cleveland Browns vs. Buffalo Bills

(Dec. 16th, 2007)

Nearly a month later, these two teams faced off in blizzard-like conditions. They hit the field at FirstEnergy Stadium in Cleveland as it was getting battered by 40 mph winds. Visibility was limited, needless to say, which made passing pretty much impossible. The teams relied on their running games…not that this tactic was much better. Neither team could gain much traction on the icy field. The Browns, however, managed to score three times with a safety and two field goals. They went home the victors with an incredibly rare 8–0 win.

Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Carolina Panthers

(Sept. 25th, 2011)

What began as a pretty nice autumn day turned ugly in the middle of this game. The sky grew dark, it started to rain, and in less than hour later, four inches of precipitation had fallen, turning the game into a slippery free-for-all. Conditions in the stands weren’t much better. “Waterfalls” of rainwater rolled down the stairs and onto the field, which quickly became a bog. Both teams had a difficult time scoring and Carolina squeaked by with a hard-earned 16–10 win.

Miami Dolphins vs. Pittsburgh Steelers

(Nov. 26th, 2007)

The good news: Both teams went into this game on a re-sodded field in Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field. The bad news, the sky didn’t care and it unleashed a torrential rainstorm on the stadium. The kickoff was delayed by lightning as conditions on the field grew worse with each passing minute. In a soggy battle that would later be dubbed “Monday Mud Night,” both sides tried and failed to make a touchdown. By the time it was all over, there weren’t many fans remaining in the stands. The Steelers ultimately won 3–0 in one of the lowest-scoring games in NFL history.

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5 Classic Movie Stars Who Never Won An Oscar

They’re screen legends who made classic, hit films, but the one thing that eluded them was Hollywood’s highest honor: an Academy Award for acting.

Cary Grant

Though popular with audiences from the 1930s through the ‘50s in hits like His Girl Friday, North by Northwest, and Bringing Up Baby, Grant never won an Oscar. He was only nominated twice, for Penny Serenade and None But the Lonely Heart.

Fred Astaire

While Astaire was known primarily for his dancing, he was one of the biggest screen draws in the mid-20th century. While his frequent on-screen dance partner Ginger Rogers won an Oscar for her dramatic turn in Kitty Foyle (1940), Astaire was only nominated once, and sentimentally toward the end of his career for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno.

Judy Garland

Garland successfully transitioned from child star to adult fame and enjoyed a stage and recording career, too. She never won a Best Actress Oscar, though, although she was nominated once for A Star is Born and in the supporting category for Judgment at Nuremberg. In 1962, however, Garland was honored with a lifetime achievement Oscar—at 39 years old, the youngest person to ever receive the award.

Gene Kelly

Kelly starred in three of the most popular and critically acclaimed movie musicals of all time: Anchors Aweigh, An American in Paris, and Singin’ in the Rain. His direction and choreography of movie musicals defined the genre, and yet Kelly never won an Oscar for his performance. He was nominated for acting only once, for Anchors Aweigh.

Marilyn Monroe

Perhaps the most enduringly popular screen icon of all time, Monroe never won an Academy Award. Nor was she ever nominated for one.

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Cool History Facts: Why Hotels Put a Chocolate On Your Pillow

Have you ever wondered why hotels put a chocolate on your pillow? The answer is revealed in our latest edition of Cool History Facts.

Have you ever been lucky enough to stay in a really nice hotel? If so, you were likely nicely surprised by a wrapped mint, chocolate, or chocolate mint, cleanly set on the pillow upon your arrival. It’s a nice, small gesture, and it had to start somewhere. In fact, it didn’t start all that long ago.

Sometime in the early 1950s, actor Cary Grant was staying at the luxurious Mayfair Hotel in downtown St. Louis. He was a frequent guest and booked the penthouse suite, and he had a woman who was meeting him there. (At the time, Grant was married to this third wife, actress Betsy Drake.) As the story goes, the woman arrived at the suite before Grant did, and found that he had laid a trail of chocolates. It started in the sitting room, ran into the bedroom, across the bed, and onto the pillow, sort of a seductive “Hansel and Gretel” breadcrumb trail.” (A letter was also left on the bed, although its contents, along with the identity of the woman, and if the chocolates, uh, worked, remain undisclosed.)

The Mayfair’s manager heard about the chocolate gambit, likely because a hotel staffer had to procure the chocolates and lay them out. The manager liked the idea so much that he made a chocolate on the pillow upon arrival one of the hotel’s many standard amenities.

Hundreds of hotels adopted the gesture, although the Mayfair discontinued the act a few years back. But when the hotel was sold and became the Magnolia Hotel St. Louis last August, management restored the tradition, with chocolates from St. Louis chocolatier Bissinger’s.

Every room gets a chocolate on the pillow, particularly the 18th floor’s “Cary Grant Suite.”

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Random Trivia: Why Some Foods Are “Deviled”

Some random trivia you ought to know, because the devil is in the details.

“Deviled” as a culinary term goes back to the 1700s, and it originally meant to cook something—anything—with lots and lots of hot and spicy condiments and seasonings. The most commonly used spices in this catchall preparation were mustard and cayenne pepper. (It’s first ever use in print refers to a “devil’d kidney,” which we’re sure was quite tasty.)

The meaning behind the term is pretty easy to ascertain: deviled, to devil, to hot and spicy, in going with the traditional representation of the devil as a horned demon that lives in fire. It’s a phenomenon that continues to this day, with cartoon devils appearing on the packaging of numerous hot sauces and other spicy foods.

Deviled foods of all stripe were eaten in the U.S. well into the 19th century, with some culinary historians going so far as to place the idea something like a westernized version of a curry. Deviled shrimp and seafood were especially popular.

Today, the term is most closely associated with just two foods: deviled eggs and deviled ham. While deviled eggs—egg yolks mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, and spices and placed back into a halved, hard boiled egg—aren’t particularly spicy, they do maintain the qualities that makes a food traditionally deviled: mustard and pepper. The paprika is technically a variety of chili pepper, and for extra devilish credentials, it’s red.

As for deviled ham, it was invented in 1868 by the Underwood Company, when a worker mixed ground ham with some slightly spicy seasonings, and then canned it.

As for devil’s food cake, well, that’s just a clever spin on angel food cake, which came first. Angel food cake was light and white, and it’s opposite, dense and darkly colored chocolate cake, came from the “devil,” of course. However, in the cake’s original, 1880s preparation, cocoa powder reacted with baking soda, giving the cake a red tint…which was positively devilish.

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4 Special Thanksgiving TV Specials

Turkey Day has spawned plenty of Thanksgiving TV specials, but they’ve never received the kind of attention as those based on Christmas and Halloween.

Garfield’s Thanksgiving (1989)

With its Snoopy prepared feast of popcorn and jelly beans, 1973’s A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is probably the most famous animated Thanksgiving special of all time. It still airs on ABC annually, unlike this one starring another comic strip transplant. It follows the overweight cat as he grapples with a diet while his owner, Jon, tries and fails to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. The special originally aired on CBS and had a spin-off book but it wasn’t popular enough to become an annual TV tradition. Perhaps viewers didn’t like “Thanksgiving Day,” a schmaltzy song that pops up in a scene towards the end. Watch it here, and learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

A very special episode of The Brady Bunch (1970)

In the second-season episode “The Un-Underground Movie,” Greg Brady directs a short movie about the pilgrims for a school project. He convinces his family, and Alice, to play all the roles. The production proves chaotic when everybody won’t stop bickering. In typical Brady fashion, they all learn a valuable lesson about teamwork by the end of the episode and learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

A very special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1999)

The Scooby Gang celebrated Thanksgiving in “Pangs,” but not before Buffy grappled with a vengeful spirit accidentally unleashed by her friend Xander. The spirit, eager to avenge a centuries-old tragedy, turns into a bloodthirsty bear but it proves no match for Buffy. After the slayer defeats it, she and her colleagues all sit down for dinner and learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

A very special episode of Bob’s Burgers (2012)

The Belcher family agrees to an “indecent proposal” from their landlord, eccentric millionaire Mr. Fischoeder. Linda and the kids pose as Calvin’s family while he attempts to woo a former flame (Bob is stuck in the kitchen cooking Thanksgiving dinner). The episode includes a tune called “The Thanksgiving Song,” which was later covered by indie rock band The National.

We hope it taught you something about the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

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