Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 39

You’ll Scream for These Weird Ice Creams

Summer is almost upon us, which means one thing: the excuse to eat ice cream every day. Can you find somewhere in your strict schedule of chocolate, vanilla, and mint chip to try one of these oddball ice cream flavors?

Lobster ice cream

Maine’s most famous export is lobster, but the people who live there consider it a treat, too—even in ice cream. Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium in Bar Harbor wanted to prove to customers that it really did make its own ice cream in house, so it used the most local ingredient possible. The ice cream itself isn’t lobster-flavored, however—it’s butter-flavored, because what goes better with chunks of lobsters (embedded in the ice cream) than butter?

Cold Duck

Baskin-Robbins co-founder Irv Robbins loved ice cream, of course, although one of his favorite flavors was not regularly one of the chain’s famous “31” varieties. He liked a variety called Cold Duck, made to taste like the sweet, sparkling wine style of the same name that was very popular in the mid-20th century. The chain took it off their worldwide menu when company executives found out that some franchises were promoting its launch by hanging dead ducks from their store ceilings. (At least it sounds better than some other flavors Baskin-Robbins test-marketed, but never widely released, such as Ketchup…and Lox & Bagels.)

Pizza ice cream

Philadelphia has a long, rich food culture—most famously it’s the home of the Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. It’s also the birthplace of pizza ice cream. The City of Brotherly Love’s Little Baby’s Ice Cream shares a restaurant space with a pizzeria, and designed this flavor in tribute, a well-blended and frozen mixture of crushed tomatoes, red pepper, oregano, garlic paste, basil, and salt. (What, no pepperoni and olives?)

Sugar Plum

Even Ben & Jerry’s, which its decadent ice creams loaded with fudge and nuts, sometimes misses the mark. In 1989, it launched Sugar Plum, which according to company executives is “the worst flavor” they’ve ever put into grocery store freezes. It’s a combination of caramel ice cream, and plum ice cream. Number of pints sold during the first three weeks of its availability: one.

Arousal…..

Charlie Harry Francis is an “edible inventor,” paid by wealthy clients to create innovative foods for parties and special events. He’s especially fond of making bizarre frozen treats, including ice cream that glows in the dark, a sorbet made from sprouts…and one made of aphrodisiacs, one traditional, and one, uh, modern. Francis’s “Arousal,” is champagne flavored but is colored blue, just like the pharmaceutical Viagra, which is also a main ingredient.

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Actually, it’s eSwatini, Now

People and companies change names all the time. Not so common—when an entire country decides on a new moniker.

Burkina Faso

A lot of modern-day African culture was shaped by European colonialism. France in particular once ruled over much of the continent, giving countries names that were used by the world political community. Upper Volta—named by the French because the Volta River runs through it—gained its independence in 1960, and in 1984, its president Thomas Sankara officially renamed the nation Burkina Faso. The Burkina means “honest people” in the native Mossi language, and Faso translates to “homeland” in the local Dyula language. Put together, Burkina Faso means “homeland of honest people.”

Czechia

The former Soviet-controlled country of Czechoslovakia split into two nations in 1993: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The government of the Czech Republic was never quite happy with that dry, overly official-sounding name, so in 2016, they officially change the name to Czechia.

eSwatini

In April 2018, the African nation of Swaziland celebrated 50 years of independence with big celebrations in a stadium. It also marked King Mswati III’s 50th birthday. To commemorate, the king announced that the country’s name was changing: to eSwatini, or “land of the Swazis.” Why? He’s been referring to the country as that for years – he addressed the UN by that name in 2017 and when he opened parliament. “Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland.”

Tuvalu

Tuvalu is one of the smallest nations in the world. About 10,000 people live in the Polynesian country of nine islands situated in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and Hawaii. In the local language, Tuvalu translates to “eight standing together.” And yet it comprises nine islands. That’s because when it was first settled 3,000 years ago, people inhabited eight of the nine islands. But from the 1800s until the 1970s—for which most of that time it was a British protectorate, until it gained independence—Tuvalu was called the Ellice Islands. In 1819, a British ship captained by Arent de Peyster spotted the island chain and named it after Edward Ellice, head of the powerful and aggressive Hudson’s Bay Company, which helped explore and settle much of the once vast British Empire.

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The Grimm Origins of Disney Movies

You’re likely aware that a lot of classic Disney movies are based on old, often dark fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm in Germany a couple of centuries back. How much did Disney change those stories? A lot.

Cinderella

The title character’s wicked stepsisters are even more unhinged in the Grimm version. To try to fit their feet into the shoe left behind by Cinderella, and thus claim the prince as their own, they mutilate themselves—one stepsister cuts off her toes, and the other her heel. It doesn’t work, and they wind up attending the wedding of Cinderella and the prince to get in their good graces. Unhappy ending: While there, birds peck out their eyes.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

In both the Grimm version and the Disney version, the evil queen puts Snow White into a permanent coma with the use of a poisoned apple. Her loyal dwarfs watch over her indefinitely. (The Grimms didn’t bother to name the dwarfs, however.) Eventually, a prince shows up and revives Snow White with true love’s kiss…which is a little bit different than in the old fairy tale. In that, the prince carries the still comatose Snow White away, but trips. The accident dislodges the apple in Snow White’s throat and she wakes up. And while in the movie, the evil queen dies from falling off a cliff, in the Grimm take, the evil queen is forced to attend Snow White’s wedding and wear a pair of burning iron shoes and dance herself to death.

Tangled

This was based on the familiar tale of Rapunzel, a beautiful young woman imprisoned in a tower until she’s rescued by a prince, who climbs her incredibly long hair to get to her. In the Grimms’ version, published in 1812, the story goes on a little bit longer—Rapunzel and the prince spend a few days in each other’s company, and then she gets pregnant.

Sleeping Beauty

The 1959 Disney movie and its direct source material, a story by French writer Charles Perrault, both stem from the Grimm fairy tale “Briar Rose.” In that tale, it isn’t the kiss from her true love, a prince, that wakes the sleeping beauty (whose name is Briar Rose), it’s that the sleeping curse expires right when their lips touch. What a coincidence!

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How Much Extra Do You Get for Winning a Championship?

Every professional athlete wants to win a championship for their team. It’s the culmination of a season, or career, and the ultimate in glory on the field, court, or diamond. Beyond beating all comers, there are other advantages to winning a title—as in a substantial cash bonus.

KENTUCKY DERBY

On the first Saturday in May, a horse named Justify won the Kentucky Derby did, the first arm in the Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse racing. While Justify won the traditional garland of roses and a future of being one of the most sought after stud horses in the world, he’s a horse, and has no need for the huge sum of money he won. It goes to his handlers—owner, trainers, and jockey. They’ll split, however they see fit, a total of $1.43 million.

WORLD SERIES

In Major League Baseball, a money “pool” is created from the gate receipts—or ticket sales—at postseason games. Half the revenue from wild card games, 60 percent of the revenue from the first three games of the division series, 60 percent from the first four games of the league championship, and 60 percent from the first four World Series games all go into that pool. Its then split up amongst players on the World Series winning team that the team’s players determine played with the team for long enough or who otherwise made a major impact. In 2016, the Chicago Cubs ended a ridiculous 108-year championship drought with a long overdue World Series title, and took home a pool of $27.6 million. All postseason teams get a cut, but the champion gets the most. Those Cubs with full shares each took home about $369,000. That’s not much for the team’s multi-millionaires, but it’s a nice chunk of change for players making the MLB league minimum of $507,500.

NBA FINALS

The NBA employs a similar “pool” system to reward players whose teams advance far into the annual playoff tournament. In 2018, that totaled around a reported $20 million. Each round a team advances, their potential bonus goes up by 25 percent. This year’s NBA champions will then get about $3.3 million to split amongst themselves. Shared among the team’s roster, that works out to about $222,000 each. Some NBA Finals winners may also have clauses in their player and endorsement contracts that stipulate future pay raises if they win a title. That may bump their future earnings by as much as 50 percent.

SUPER BOWL

The NFL’s system is a little more complex, because its playoff system is a little more complicated than that of other sports. The NFL sends six teams from each conference to the playoffs, with the two teams that earn the best regular-season record earning a first-round playoff “bye,” and then face the winners of the wild-card rounds. If a player on a bye-earner makes it through their first playoff game, the conference finals, and wins the Super Bowl, they stand to take home a total bonus of around $191,000. If their opponent was also a bye team, they bring home about $140,000 in all. A player on a team that loses in that first wild-card round: Their bonus is “just” $26,000.

 

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An Alan Smithee Film

Sometimes a film director or other entertainment creative is so unhappy with the way a movie turned out that they don’t even want their names publicly associated with it. For decades, the solution was to attribute the movie to a fictional, pseudonymous director named “Alan Smithee.” Here are some entries from “his” filmography.

City in Fear

Inspired by the terrifying “Son of Sam” murders that rocked New York City in 1977, this movie is about a serial killer (Mickey Rourke), whose crimes are sensationalized by a newspaper. Jud Taylor directed the 1980 movie, but after he thought production had wrapped, the studio secretly shot four gratuitous murder scenes. Taylor was “offended,” and had his name taken off the film.

Dune

Legendary cult filmmaker David Lynch tried to go mainstream with his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi novel Dune. He’s listed as the director on the version that played in theaters, but not the cut that aired on TV. Producers assembled a three-hour cut without Lynch’s knowledge or involvement. He wanted his name stricken on that version. So, the TV Dune was directed by “Alan Smithee.”

Twilight Zone: The Movie

This big-screen version of Rod Serling’s classic TV anthology features three separate stories. It’s notorious for one sad section in which Vic Morrow plays a racist who suddenly finds himself the victim of racism and oppression, such as lost in a jungle and hunted down during the Vietnam War. A helicopter accident on set decapitated Morrow and killed two child actors. Segment director John Landis was tried (and acquitted) of manslaughter, while assistant director Andy House was not credited at all, in favor of the Alan Smithee pseudonym.

An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood

Arthur Hiller directed this 1998 showbiz satire about a director actually named Alan Smithee (Eric Idle) who tries to disown his own bad movie, but can’t because his name is Alan Smithee. Ironically, Hiller thought one of the movie’s producers interfered so much that it ruined the film, and he had his name removed from the final cut. That means An Alan Smithee Film was credited to…Alan Smithee.

Supernova

After the release of An Alan Smithee Film exposed Hollywood’s secret fake-naming convention, the movie industry had to find a new pseudonym for disheartened directors. Walter Hill didn’t want his name on the 2000 sci-fi movie Supernova, so it’s attributed to “Thomas Lee.”

 

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Han Solo

Solo, a Star Wars prequel about the early days of Han Solo—played in the original films by Harrison Ford—is currently filling up multiplexes. Here are some things you might not have known about the galaxy’s most charismatic space smuggler.

The space pirate ship

In early drafts of the movie that became Star Wars: A New Hope, Han didn’t pilot the Millennium Falcon. He ran a space pirate ship.

The fish man

Also in early drafts of the script, Han Solo was a green, gill-covered fish man, not unlike the sensitive sea monster in The Shape of Water.

Who inspired the character?

Han Solo is so charming, so effortlessly self-assured that he must be a complete work of fiction, right? Not so—Star Wars creator George Lucas has said he based the character off fellow director Francis Ford Coppola after watching him command a movie set.

Who else auditioned?

It’s the role of Harrison Ford’s lifetime, but he almost didn’t get the part. Christopher Walker, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, Kurt Russell, and Robert Englund (the future Freddy Kruger) all came close. Billy Dee Williams also auditioned, but he was cast as Solo’s compatriot Lando Calrissian instead.

A comic book link

A decade ago, Dark Horse Comics published a series called Into the Unknown. The plot: Han Solo and Chewbacca crash their spaceship in the Pacific Northwest region of Earth, where he’s captured and killed by an indigenous group of villains. (Chewie escapes.) A century later, an archaeologist in search of Bigfoot (which turns out to be Chewbacca) discovers Solo’s remains. The archaeologist: Indiana Jones, who, like Han Solo, was portrayed on-screen by Harrison Ford.

Not killed by Ewoks

Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Han Solo dies in the 2015 blockbuster, killed by his own son, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). It was wish fulfillment—actor Harrison Ford unsuccessfully persuaded George Lucas to have those adorable, militaristic Ewoks kill him in 1983’s Return of the Jedi. 

Released and thawed

Clearly, Harrison Ford was a little bit grumpy about playing Han Solo. So much so that filmmakers wouldn’t sure he’d return for the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi. That’s why he was “frozen in carbonite.” If Ford came back, Han would get released and thawed. If not, he’d remain in suspended animation.

 

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The 2018 Father’s Day Gift Guide

On behalf of dads and fathers everywhere—don’t get your pop another tie or some kind of golf-related item or barbecue accessory this Father’s Day. He hates wearing ties, and he has all the golf balls and novelty aprons he’s ever going to need. Let Uncle John help you pick out the perfect gift for Dad—a trivia or humor book tailored to his unique tastes.

DADS WHO LOVE TRIVIA

According to an unscientific survey (a lot of our readers have told us), the largest segment of Bathroom Reader readers are dads. Perhaps it’s because they spend a lot of time in “the reading room,” or maybe it’s because our annual book of trivia provides two things dads love: unbelievably interesting fun facts…and value. (We pack a lot of material into just 500 pages—all killer, no filler!) Old Faithful is the latest entry in the long-running Bathroom Reader canon. Our 30th edition, it’s got stories dad will enjoy, like the inside scoop on the creator of his favorite movie series (James Bond), friendships that developed our of political rivalries, the weirdest animals ever discovered, and the very latest in toilet technology.

Purchase



DADS WHO ARE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVES

Does your dad like mystery novels, or crime shows, and always fingers the culprit before the detectives do? He’ll love Strange Crime, a look into law, order, crime, justice…and just how weird it can be. Here’s a book about celebrities turned criminals, the dumbest criminals to ever

almost get away with a crime, bizarrely unsolved mysteries, looney laws from the around the world, and other stuff he’ll lock up in his brain. (If your dad just likes the strange-but-true, we also recommend Strange History and Strange Science.)

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DADS WHO LOVE ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS

Remember when you were little and you followed your dad around all day and asked him questions about how the world worked and why, and he’d dutifully answer every single one? Dads must get those answers from somewhere—and that somewhere could just be a book like Who Knew? Help Dad spread the secrets of the universe by being able to answer the questions everybody has asked, like “why do elephants have huge ears?” and “what’s the difference between fog and mist?”

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DADS WHO LOVE OLD-TIMEY THINGS

Who knows what Dad wants for Father’s Day? The Shadow knows. Before podcasts and before TV shows, dads relaxed at the end of the day or on Saturday afternoons with radio dramas. If your dad is the kind of guy who loves classic entertainment like these, he’ll love exploring the Golden Age of Radio with The Top 100 Classic Radio Shows, a book full of profiles and facts about the most memorable shows of the 1930s and 1940s, such as The War of the Worlds and The Shadow.

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DADS WHO LOVE DAD JOKES

There’s something about fatherhood that triggers a biological shift in a man’s brain…one that makes him love totally cheesy jokes. Dad Jokes is the best collection of cringe-inducing, groan-worthy jokes ever assembled. Covering everything from home life to food to husband jokes, your dad will appreciate the mostly pun-based hilarity. (Here’s a sample on a topic close to Dad’s heart: yard maintenance. “Did you hear about the houses next door to each other that fell in love? It’s a lawn-distance relationship.” Ha!)

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DADS WHO LOVE OUTDOORSY STUFF

What’s a dad’s natural habitat, besides out in the backyard mowing the lawn? Out in the woods, roughing it…or pitching a tent at a campground, sort of roughing it. The wild blue yonder calls out loud and clear to dads, and they want to know that they’ve got what it takes to survive out there, should anything bad happen. To give Dad the skills he needs (with tongue firmly in cheek), gift him How to Fight a Bear…and Win. He’ll learn how to live off the land, be he stranded in the forest, jungle, or desert. He’ll finally know what bugs he can eat, and how to avoid sunstroke by hiding out in a shelter he made himself out of animal dung.

Purchase

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Crazy Days, Golden Knights

The 2018 Stanley Cup Finals will pit the Washington Capitals against the Vegas Golden Knights. If you don’t follow hockey closely, did you even know that there was a team in Las Vegas? There is, and they’re making history.

First*

The 2017-18 season is the Vegas Golden Knights’ inaugural season. Expansion teams are traditionally terrible—it takes a club on the playing surface and off to gel. Well, usually it does. The Golden Knights are the first time in years that an NHL expansion team made the finals in its first season. It’s never happened in the NBA, NFL, or in Major League Baseball.

Explaining That Asterisk

The only other time that a first-season team in any of the big 4 North American sports leagues was in 1968, when the St. Louis Blues advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals and were swept by the Montreal Canadiens. However, it wasn’t much of a feat. Prior to the season, the NHL expanded from six teams to 12, and all six new teams were placed in a new division, from which four teams gained playoff spots. That means one of the new teams would necessarily head to the finals.

Welcome to Las Vegas

Some major cities with sports teams have never had a team advance to the finals. Winnipeg, for example, has never experienced the Jets playing for a Stanley Cup. So not only are the Golden Knights the first team in 50 years to advance to the playoffs in its first year of existence, it’s the first year of the first sports team to exist in the city of Las Vegas.

All bets are on

Las Vegas is of course a major center for gambling, particularly sports gambling. Before the season began, Vegas oddsmakers gave the Golden Knights extremely long odds to win the Stanley Cup, because, as stated, expansion teams are usually terrible. Some sportsbooks gave odds in the realm of 500 to 1. However, lots of Vegas residents and visitors got sentimental and placed a bet before the season began…which means bad news for the betting house if the Knights win it all. Each and every person that placed, say, $10 on the team, will be owed $5,000.

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The Great Bill Veeck

Another exciting baseball season has begun, so here’s a look at some of the zaniest and wonderful contributions to Major League Baseball by one the game’s most innovative and entertaining owner, Bill Veeck (1914–1986), who once held stakes in the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox.

Park-wide singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

There probably isn’t a more iconic place to take in a ball game than Wrigley Field in Chicago. It’s steeped in history and tradition, such as the ivy that covers the outfield fence, and the mid-game, park-wide singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Both of those additions to the game were Veeck’s idea when he worked for the Chicago Cubs.

Fun promotional events

No matter which team he was running, Veeck loved staging fun promotional events to get people out to the ballpark. His ideas went far beyond giveaways or nickel-beer night. In 1949, the year after the Cleveland Indians won the American League pennant and the World Series, Veeck publicly had that ’48 pennant buried when it became clear the Indians wouldn’t repeat their success.

Average Joe Night

When a fan named Joe Earley complained that Veeck’s many nights praised everybody but “the average Joe,” Veeck obliged with “Average Joe Night.” The guest of honor: Joe Earley.

Grandstand Manager’s Day

In August 1951, Veeck staged the elaborate “Grandstand Manager’s Day. The crowd got to coach the game. Fans were given placards with “yes” and “no” printed on each side, which they used to vote when a team employee held up cards that said things like “bunt,” “steal,” and “change pitchers.”

Minnie Minoso

When he owned the Chicago White Sox in 1976, he activated 54-year-old player Minnie Minoso for a handful of at-bats, just to publicize the fact that Minoso was the first man to play in four decades. In 1980, Veeck brought Minoso back for two at-bats…making him the only player to come up to bat in five decades.

Baseball’s color barrier

Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he signed Jackie Robinson. But Veeck reportedly almost did it three years earlier. In 1944, he had plans to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and then load the team’s roster with Negro League all-stars. When baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis heard about it, he blocked Veeck’s advances. This wasn’t a mere publicity stunt on Veeck’s part—he was an outspoken Civil Rights advocate. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Veeck stood in line for 15 hours to pay his respects, all the more notable considering he had a wooden leg after suffering an injury while serving in the Marines during World War II.

Larry Doby

Veeck didn’t get to integrate all of baseball, but as the owner of the Cleveland Indians in 1947, he did sign the first African-American player in the American League, an outfielder named Larry Doby.

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The Weirdest Moments in NBA History

With the NBA Playoffs underway, basketball is all about drama and excitement at the moment. Sometimes, however, pro basketball is just downright strange .

How foul

Bubba Wells played just one year in the NBA, as a reserve for the Dallas Mavericks. In a tight, December 1997 game against the Chicago Bulls, Mavericks coach Don Nelson tried a unique strategy to limit the Bulls’ points—foul their star forward Dennis Rodman as often as possible, because he was a terrible free-throw shooter. A big part of that strategy was making Bubba Wells do as much of that fouling as possible—and boy, did he deliver. Wells fouled Rodman six times in just three minutes, and per NBA rules, that disqualified him from playing in the rest of the game. That’s still an NBA record for fouling out.

LVP?

How valuable is the most valuable player if their team doesn’t win the championship? Only one year, and the first year in which it was handed out, the Finals MVP award went to a player on…the losing team. Jerry West led the Los Lakers to three wins in the 1969 NBA Finals…but the Boston Celtics won four, and the title, despite West’s MVP-level 38 points per game average. Still, his team lost.

Taking half 

In a January 2014 regular season game, the Houston Rockets squared off against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Houston thoroughly dominated the other team in the first half, outscoring them 73 to 59. That’s a pretty comfortable lead…which the Rockets somehow blew with one of the first second-half scoring outputs of all time. After the break, Houston put up just 19 points, and the Thunder wound up easily winning the game 104 to 92.

No man’s land 

NBA teams carry a roster of 12 players—with five guys on the floor, and seven on the bench. In April 2010, injuries so depleted the Golden State Warriors that they were down to just six players for a game against the Portland Trail Blazers. And in the first quarter, starting center Chris Hunter went down with a knee injury, meaning the Warriors had five players to play, meaning nobody could take a break for the entirety of the game. Later on, the Warriors’ Devean George fouled out…but thanks to an obscure rule, he got to stay in the game because the Warriors wouldn’t have had enough players without him. Somehow, the Warriors won the game, in overtime.

Let’s put on a shoe! 

This has to be the strangest defensive play in NBA history. In a December 2014 game between Golden State and Dallas, the Warriors’ Marreese Speights lost his shoe (basketball is a very physical game), and when the Mavericks got possession, he had to head down to the other end of the court with one foot in a shoe, and one foot in a sock. His shoe sat on the court, until the Warriors got the ball again. Speights’ teammate Stephen Curry swiped the shoe and tried to toss it back to its rightful owner…only for Mavericks center Tyson Chandler to swat it away.

 

 

 

 

 

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