Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 99

Bombed on Broadway

If your play manages to get to Broadway, you’ve already achieved a huge accomplishment in the world of theater. But, um, then you’ve got to deliver. These folks didn’t. (This story was originally published in the 28th annual edition, Uncle John’s Factastic Bathroom Reader.)

Dude: The Highway Life (1972)

This was a much ballyhooed musical production by Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot, two of the creators of the 1967 hit Hair. The story revolves around Dude, a young man who battles a series of temptations from a Satan-like character named Zero. The plot was so convoluted and confusing that the actors threatened to walk out while the show was in rehearsal. Also during rehearsals, the show’s producers decided that the dude playing Dude, a 23-year-old white actor named Kevin Geer, couldn’t sing well enough to play the role. So they replaced him…with an 11-year-old African American actor (Ralph Carter, who went on to play the little brother in the 1970s sitcom Good Times). That meant all the character’s adult-centered dialogue had to be rewritten. By the time the play started previews, the production was such a shambles that both the director and choreographer quit and had to be replaced. When the show finally opened, critics hated it. So did audiences. Dude was gone after just 16 performances.

Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don’t You Ever Forget It) (1973)

This play was the brainchild of 25-year-old actor, singer, and composer Paul Jabara. At the time he was known only for his performances in the musicals Hair and the London production of Jesus Christ Superstar, but he convinced music business legends Robert Stigwood (the Bee Gees’ manager) and Ahmet Ertegün (the founder of Atlantic Records) to invest $500,000 in this Broadway musical. It was a campy, over-the top disco-themed extravaganza with a story line that traces the life of Rachael Lily Rosenbloom, a Brooklyn fish market worker who becomes a famous Hollywood gossip columnist and later an Oscar-nominated actress. After just eight previews—and a string of mocking reviews, such as the one by New York Times critic Frank Rich, who called it a “musical fantasy of surpassing lavishness that made no sense, at any level, from beginning to end”—the show was closed before it even had an official opening night. Stigwood and Ertegün lost their entire $500,000 investment.

Moose Murders (1983)

This “whodunit” by playwright Arthur Bicknell was about a group of people who get stuck in the “Wild Moose Lodge” in New York’s Adirondack Mountains during a storm. Then they start getting murdered…by someone wearing a moose costume. Notable characters: a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic man entirely wrapped in gauze, and a hippie teenager named Stinky who is obsessed with trying to sleep with his mother. The only reason the play made it to Broadway was that the producers convinced longtime Hollywood star Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks) to play the lead. But the play was so…stinky that Arden quit after the first preview. Moose Murders received some of the most scathing reviews in Broadway history. New York Post critic Clive Barnes wrote that it was “so indescribably bad that I do not intend to waste anyone’s time by describing it.” The New Yorker’s Brendan Gill said the play “would insult the intelligence of an audience consisting entirely of amoebas.” And New York Magazine said it seemed as if the play was staged by “a blind director repeatedly kicked in the groin.” Moose Murders was canceled after one performance.

Bonus fact: In 2013 Bicknell published a book entitled Moose Murdered: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Broadway Bomb, the behind-the-scenes story of the flopped play. And…it got great reviews.

Into the Light (1986)

This was a musical written by unknown playwright Jeff Tambornino. Plot: a nuclear physicist becomes obsessed with verifying—or debunking— the veracity of the shroud of Turin, the purported burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Alienated from his wife and his son, the physicist copes with his obsession by inventing an imaginary friend—a mime. How did Tambornino manage to get a story like that to Broadway? He got actor Dean Jones, the star of two Disney hit movies—That Darn Cat! (1965) and The Love Bug (1969)—to play the lead. (Jones had recently become a born-again Christian and liked the pro-Christianity message of the play.) The show, which was advertised as “futuristic,” featured generous use of a fog machine and lasers, as well as dancing nuns. And remember— it was a musical, so it had Jones, as the nuclear physicist, singing about molecules, quarks, antimatter, and other physics-related things. Into the Light fizzled out after six performances. The show’s producers reportedly lost around $3 million.

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6 Forgotten Daytime TV Talk Shows From the 1990s

In the 1990s, daytime TV was loaded with talk shows hosted by minor celebrities. Most didn’t last more than a year. How many of these do you remember?

Tempestt

Hosted by Tempestt Bledsoe, the actress who played middle-child Vanessa on the hugely popular sitcom The Cosby Show, this show was meant to attract viewers who were, like Bledsoe, in their early 20s. It didn’t work—the show barely lasted one season (1995 to 1996).

Gabrielle

There was no hotter show for teens in the 1990s than Beverly Hills, 90210. It made teen idols out of Jason Priestley, Luke Perry, Shannen Doherty, and Jennie Garth. Gabrielle Carteris co-starred as brainy school newspaper editor Andrea Zuckerman. Carteris, who was portraying a 16-year-old at age 30, left the show in 1995 for her own talk show, which lasted one season.

Jane

Sassy was an influential, irreverent magazine for teenage girls, and was the brainchild of editor Jane Pratt. In 1993, she got her own TV talk show called Jane. Focusing on issues affecting young women, the show lasted one year. It’s best known for a performance by the alternative rock band Ween, who later admitted they were very high on drugs at the time.

Danny

In the ’70s, Danny Bonaduce was famous as a kid star on The Partridge Family. In the 2000s, he was famous for meltdowns and drug problems captured in his reality show, Breaking Bonaduce. In between (1995 to 1996), he hosted a talk show.

The Mark Walberg Show

No, the rapper formerly known as Marky Mark who later became Academy Award-nominated movie star Mark Wahlberg did not host a talk show in the ’90s. This one was hosted by Mark L. Walberg, a TV personality best known as the host of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow.

Carnie!

Carnie Wilson was best known as the daughter of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and member of the ’90s pop trio Wilson Phillips when she landed this talk show in 1995. It lasted a year, before the production company retooled in, fired Wilson, and turned it into The Rosie O’Donnell Show.

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6 Facts About the Common Cold

Cold season is upon us. Here are some interesting facts about the common cold because knowledge is power (although we realize that it may be “cold comfort” if you actually have a nasty cold).

It’s not the cold virus that make you feel like garbage—it’s your own body that does that. The immune system detects the invasion of the virus, which generally attacks the nose and throat, and lets loose a torrent of white blood cells and other chemical defenders. They attack the virus and force it out of your body, which in turn is what gives you a headache, blocked airways, and other cold symptoms.


An easy way to get a cold is to have close, physical contact with someone who has a cold. Tiny droplets of mucus on their skin is transferred to your skin, and then into your body through a passage, typically the nose or mouth. But those aren’t the only facial orifices you’ve got. A microscopic mucus droplet can and will enter your body through your eye.


Oddly enough, one of the hardest ways to catch a cold: kissing. In one study, one 1 in 13 people contract a cold via a smooch.


A stuffy, blocked up nose is perhaps the definitive cold symptom. But it’s not all stopped up because of mucus. A nose feels full because the nasal blood vessels are inflamed.


By the time you’re 75 years old, you’ve endured an average of 200 colds, which works out to about two years of being sick.


There is no one virus called “the common cold.” They vary from year to year, and as millions develop immunities, they mutate and return as another virus. In fact, scientists estimate that there are more than 100 different viruses commonly referred to as “the cold”—which makes curing it all the more difficult.

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3 Cities That Did Not Host the Olympics

Only a handful of cities around the world truly have the infrastructure and money to host the Olympics, but the International Olympic Committee still takes the bids of every candidate seriously. Here are some cities that tried to get the Olympics…but didn’t quite land them.

Denver

Denver was a logical choice for the 1976 Winter Olympics: It’s surrounded by mountains and ski resorts. But when the city started spending millions of taxpayer money for sports facilities that wouldn’t be used much after 1976, an emergency funding bond measure was put to voters. The voters rejected it, and so the Olympics no longer had funding. Denver pulled out, and the Winter Olympics were quickly offered to Whistler, British Columbia, who turned down the chance. Innsbruck, Austria, was eventually given the games.

Detroit

Detroit has bid on the Olympics a record seven times without winning. In bidding on the 1944 games in the late 1930s, Detroit came in second to London, which won them despite being a major bomb zone in the middle of World War II. (The games were eventually cancelled altogether.) Detroit reportedly almost secured the 1960 Olympics… until the IOC gave them to Rome to make up for the Italian city having to withdraw its bid in 1908 after Mount Vesuvius erupted.

Andorra La Vella

Andorra is a tiny principality on the border of Spain and France, jointly governed by France and a Spanish wing of the Catholic Church. Its capital city, Andorra la Vella, covers 10 square miles and has a population of 22,000 people. It’s the smallest city to ever bid on the Winter Olympics. How small is it? Atlanta, with a population of 400,000, was considered too small when that city bid on the 1996 Summer Olympics. Area-wise, Manhattan is three times the size of Andorra la Vella, and New York City was unsuccessful in its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Ultimately, Andorra La Vella did not win its bid to host the 2010 winter games.

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4 Starbucks Flops

About 25 years ago, most of us had never heard of Starbucks, but now it’s a big part of the cultural fabric. But not everything they’ve done has been successful.

Mazagran

In 1995, Starbucks was just emerging as a national chain of coffeehouses when it tried to bottle its products and sell them in grocery stores. Through a partnership with Pepsi bottlers, Starbucks sold a drink called Mazagran. Named after the Algerian branch of the French Foreign Legion, it was “sparkling coffee,” also known as carbonated coffee, or coffee with bubbles in it. While it test-marketed well in Southern California, it flopped nationwide, leading Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to change approach and bottle the chain’s Frappucinos instead, which has been very successful.

Chantico

In January 2005, Starbucks introduced one of its richest, most sugar-laden creations ever…which is saying something. Chantico was a new kind of hot chocolate, which the company called “sipping chocolate.” Half cream and half chocolate, a six ounce cup packed 390 calories. (One food blogger likened it to “chocolate flavored lard in a cup.) It was unclear who Chantico was for—it was a coffee-free hot chocolate, but it was too rich for kids. It was off the menu just 11 months later.

Berry Infusions

By 2009, Starbucks had some competition in the fancy drink market: high-end tea and natural juices. Starbucks wanted to get in on the action and launched Berry Infusions. They were both tea and juice—mixed together, and then heated up. Customers didn’t much care for hot juice mixed with tea, such as Apple Chai Infusion.

Layered Espresso

Most Starbucks drinks are some combination of coffee or espresso, some sugar, and some flavoring. There are only so many permutations possible, but they keep trying new ones. One from 2008 that attracted very few customers: layered espresso. It was an extremely sweet, gelatinous raspberry jam in a tiny cup with a shot of espresso poured on top.

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Back to the Future Day: The Tributes

October 21st, 2015 marked the day that Marty McFly blasted into a futuristic version of Hill Valley in Back to the Future Part II. While the world he explores in the film is much different than our own, organizations around the world celebrated the occasion with various tributes and parodies.

USA Today

In the film, Marty’s son is arrested for theft and the incident is, apparently, important enough to warrant a front page story in USA Today. Once his father races to the future and prevents the event from happening, the paper morphs into a story about a group of bullies getting nabbed by authorities instead. The October 21st edition of the real USA Today featured a reprint of the film’s first version wrapped around each copy.

A Mysterious Incident in Scotland

On the morning of October 21st, police in the Scottish community of Ayrshire reported an unusual incident. They claimed that they had received reports of a strange vehicle causing a great deal of commotion in the parking lot of a local supermarket. Supposedly, it nearly collided with two citizens buzzing around on hoverboards. Officers raced to the scene to discover a teenager and a man in a white coat struggling to fix a broken down DeLorean. Needless to say, the Facebook post was a gag and the reps made to sure include the hashtags “‎JustForFun”‬ and “#‎BackToTheFuture‬.”

The Hoverboard Police Unit in Australia

The police department in Mount Isla, Australia, ran a doctored image of three officers riding hoverboards on their website. It was accompanied by a report about the trio buzzing over to deal with a traffic accident involving, you guessed it, a DeLorean. The officers allegedly discovered a teenager behind the wheel with an outdated driver’s license from 1985 who asked for directions to the nearest cinema screening Jaws 19.

The Toyota Promo

The auto manufacturer rounded up Back to the Future stars Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd for a promo video that debuted on October 21st. The two sit in a diner and discuss various things in the middle chapter of the series that have yet to come to pass, like flying cars, hoverboards, and sneakers with mechanical laces before meeting with Mischa Pollack, an aero-mechanical engineer. He teaches them all about various advancements in biofuel technology before taking them for a spin in a new Toyota Mirai.

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3 “SNL” Movies That Were Never Produced

For every Wayne’s World, there was another movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch that never got made at all.

Hans & Franz: The Girly-Man Dilemma

One of the show’s most popular recurring bits in the late 1980s was “Hans and Franz,” the Eastern European bodybuilders portrayed by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon who wanted to “pump you up.” In 1993, production was underway for a movie about Hans and Franz traveling to Hollywood to be movie stars like their idol, bodybuilder turned movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh, and it was a musical. Oh, and Schwarzenegger was supposed to co-star as himself. The movie fell apart when Last Action Hero, a similarly fourth-wall-busting movie starring Schwarzenegger as himself, bombed at the box office.

Superfans

The “Superfans” are perhaps better known as “Da Bears guys,” a bunch of beer-swilling Chicago sports fans with Chicago accents. SNL writer Robert Smigel played one of the group (along with Chris Farley, Mike Myers, and guest host George Wendt) and wrote a bizarre screenplay based on the sketch. In it, a businessman (to be played by Martin Short) buys the Chicago Bears’ Soldier Field and turns it into a luxury stadium for the rich, shutting out the team’s working-class fans, like the Superfans. It was set to be made in 1995, until SNL was nearly cancelled after the show’s ratings sank and other SNL movies tanked in theaters. NBC forced SNL to focus on the show, and cut out the movies.

Dieter

The surprise success of SNL alum Mike Myers’ Austin Powers in 1997 allowed him to make a movie based on a very weird character he’d developed on TV: Dieter, the artsy, all-black-wearing German who hosted a talk show called Sprockets (along with his pet monkey, Klaus). The script was written by Meyers and “Deep Thoughts” scribe Jack Handey, and followed Dieter as he traveled across the U.S. in search of the kidnapped Klaus. But just as production began, Myers cancelled the film because he didn’t like the script (the one he co-wrote). The film’s producers, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment, sued Myers for breach of contract, a matter that was resolved with Myers agreeing to star in 2003’s The Cat in the Hat. Dieter, however, was never made.

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Sports Trivia: How to Make Ice

Uncle John’s always wondered: How on Earth can they play hockey in Miami? Here is some sports trivia to help kick off hockey season. 

Freezing in Florida

It’s a common question from hockey fans: How do they maintain the ice in hockey rinks, especially in warm-weather places like Florida? To answer these and other questions, we caught up with Ken Friedenberger, Director of Facility Operations for the St. Petersburg Times Forum, home of the 2004 Stanley Cup champions Tampa Bay Lightning.

He gave us the simple rundown:

Two layers of sand and gravel mixture form the foundation of the ice. The two layers and the precise mixture, Friedenberger said, prevent it from freezing into permafrost (perpetually frozen soil), which would “eventually crack the piping and turn it into a big mess, which would took like spaghetti.”


“The piping” he refers to is perhaps the most important part of the rink. Five to ten miles of it run under and through a massive concrete slab that sits on the base. A liquid similar to antifreeze is cooled by massive air conditioning units to below freezing and pumped through the piping, making the temperature of the concrete slab below freezing, too.


Water is hosed onto the concrete and allowed to freeze in a very thin layer. When it’s frozen, more water is added and allowed to freeze, another layer is added…and the process is repeated until there are 24 layers of ice, each one from 3⁄4 of an inch to a full inch thick.


When all of this is finished, the ice surface temperature hovers between 22°F and 26°F. And because of the constantly cooled concrete below, the temperature inside the stadium stays in the 60s or 70s even when the air temperature outside is in the 90s.


The lines, circles, and spots are painted on before each game, and four to five new layers of ice are frozen over them to protect them.


A Zamboni machine smoothes out the ice before a game—and it’s time for the opening faceoff.

This story was first published in Uncle John’s Sports Spectacular.

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Impossible Questions: The Never-ending Season (The Answer)

Think you’ve got the right answer? Keep reading to see if you got it.

What’s the most games played in an NBA season?

Okay, this was a trick question. (But you probably already figured out at least that much.) Each NBA teams plays 82 games in a season, and each season dozens of players put in at least a few minutes into all of them. But is there a hundreds-way-tie for the record of “most games played in an NBA season”? Not exactly. Hall of Famer Walt Bellamy holds the record all by himself: 88 games played in the 1968-69 season.

In October 1968, Bellamy began his eighth season in the league with the New York Knicks. He plays in 35 games, until just before Christmas he was traded to the Detroit Pistons. (The Pistons first game was against the Knicks. Bellamy scored 18 points.) At the time of the trade, the Knicks had played six more games than the Pistons, and enjoyed a brief break. The Pistons, meanwhile, had to make up some games. By the end of the season, Bellamy played in 53 games as a Piston. Added to his Knicks totals, that’s 88 games, or six more than everybody else.

He couldn’t played in even more, if playoffs count…but the Pistons didn’t make them that year. They finished 32-50 and missed the postseason. (The Knicks, however, did fine without Bellamy and finished 54-28.)

Need more impossible questions? Check out  Uncle John’s Impossible Questions.

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Impossible Questions: The Never-ending Season

Think you know the answer to this question? Think you can get it? Good luck…and come back tomorrow to see if you’re right.

 

What’s the most games played in an NBA season?

 

Need more impossible questions? Check out  Uncle John’s Impossible Questions.

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