Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (49 page)

How about you? An average Facebook user has 130 “friends.”

THE SANDWICH ARTIST STRIKES BACK

Have you ever given any grief to the person who’s making
your
sandwich? You may want to think twice next time. A Subway employee who identified himself only as “Chris” sent in this letter to
The Consumerist:

I’ve been working at Subway for about a year and a half, and it always amuses me when people complain about me not “tessellating” their cheese [ie., place the triangles in such a way that there’s cheese in every bite]. Now, merely to amuse myself, not only do I
not
tessellate the cheese, but I also leave gaps in the cheese placement so that an indeterminate amount of your bites will be cheeseless. Also, I put a really small amount of dressing on your sandwich whenever you ask for it. Then when you ask for more, I squirt out a large quantity before you can say stop so that your sandwich has far too much dressing. Then, when I cut the sandwich in half, I only cut it 3/4 of the way through so that you have to messily tear the rest of the sandwich yourself.

Cheers! —Chris

Sunscreens rated higher than SPF 30 don’t provide extra protection against UV rays.

IT’S A CONSPIRACY!

If you know anybody who believes in these wacky theories, please send them our way. (We have a bridge we’d like to sell them.)

C
ONSPIRACY THEORY:
The NFL fixed the 2001–02 season so that the New England Patriots could win the Super Bowl. Reason: The league wanted to use the “Patriots” to cash in on a post-9/11 wave of American nationalism.

THE STORY:
The Patriots finished the 2000–01 season with a dismal 5–11 record. The following year, they somehow improved to 11–5 and won their division. With two minutes left in their first playoff game, they trailed the Oakland Raiders 10–13. The Pats had the ball…and quarterback Tom Brady fumbled it. But the referees had instructions to make sure the Patriots won, so they ruled that because Brady tucked the ball into his body and his arm was moving forward, it was an incomplete pass, not a fumble. The Patriots retained possession. A few plays later, Patriots placekicker Adam Vinatieri made a game-tying field goal from 50 yards out…aided by a helium-filled ball that the NFL provided to enhance the ball’s flight. The Pats won the game and went all the way to the Super Bowl, which they won with another helium-assisted field goal.

THE TRUTH:
Although it is rarely invoked, the “tuck rule” is real. As for the lighter-than-air football, tests show that helium-filled balls don’t travel any farther than air-filled balls. The real reason for the Pats’ rapid turnaround? Tom Brady improved after his rookie year in 2000. He led the Patriots to two more Super Bowl titles.

CONSPIRACY THEORY:
Singer Bob Marley was a voice for

political change in Jamaica. But when he opposed a puppet government, he was murdered…by George H. W. Bush’s son Neil Bush.

THE STORY:
In 1980 the U.S.-backed International Monetary Fund was offering loans to Third World governments. Jamaican president Michael Manley turned it down because he thought it would make him a puppet of American business interests and the CIA. The CIA was furious, so it worked with American-born Jamaican politician Edward Seaga to force Manley out of office. But an outspoken critic of the IMF plan was Jamaica’s
other
most influential voice: Bob Marley. One night as Marley slept, two of Seaga’s goons went to the singer’s home in Kingston and shot him. But he didn’t die—he went to a mountain retreat to recuperate, where he was interviewed by a reporter from
Rolling Stone
. When Marley’s manager called the magazine a few days later, editors told him they hadn’t sent a reporter. So who
had
been there? Neil Bush, CIA operative and son of former CIA director George Bush. While Marley was asleep, Bush injected him with a syringe of “something,” and a few months later, in May 1981, Marley died at age 36 of cancer.

“Dord” appeared in the dictionary for 5 years before anyone realized there is no such word.

THE TRUTH:
Manley rejected the IMF loan, but he wasn’t overthrown—his party simply lost power in 1980. As for Marley, he was diagnosed with cancer far earlier, in 1977, and died four years later. He was never shot and never went to a mountain retreat, so he never had a chance to “get” cancer from Neil Bush.

CONSPIRACY:
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck didn’t write the Oscar-winning script for their career-launching film
Good Will Hunting
. Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman did.

THE STORY:
In 1996 two out-of-work actors, Damon and Affleck, wrote a violent, action-packed screenplay about a poor Boston kid who’s really a math genius and gets caught up in a spy ring. It was terrible, but Miramax producers realized that a movie written by two handsome and charismatic lead actors, even if they were unknown, was marketing gold. So Miramax hired William Goldman to anonymously write a new script—a quiet, sensitive piece about a poor, troubled math genius who worked as a janitor at Harvard.
Good Will Hunting
made more than $100 million for Miramax and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Damon and Affleck. (And Goldman was paid millions in hush money.)

THE TRUTH:
Damon and Affleck wrote the script with parts for themselves because they couldn’t get acting work. The first draft
was
action-oriented, but it also contained most of the math subplot and emotional torment that ended up in the film. The source of the Goldman rumor: Producer Rob Reiner, who had the rights to the script before Miramax, asked Goldman to read the script and offer his opinion. He suggested dropping the spy stuff and concentrating on the human drama. So they did. Goldman himself denies he’s the author, saying, “People just don’t want to think those two cute guys wrote it.”

In 2010 Edmonton, Alberta, introduced recycle bins that sing a blues song about recycling.

NEOLOGISMS

The term
neologism
comes from the Greek
neo
(“new”) and
logos
(“word”). Here are some recent additions to English, and where they came from
.

D
OWNSIZE:
The term was adopted by companies in the early 1980s, but it was actually coined during the energy crisis of 1975, when U.S. automakers were forced to curtail the manufacture of giant gas guzzlers and “downsize” their cars.

WIKI:
In 1994 programmer Ward Cunningham was developing new Web software that would allow anyone to edit a site’s content. While on a Hawaiian vacation, he took a
wiki wiki
shuttle bus.
Wiki wiki
means “quick,” so he called the software “WikiWikiWeb.” Wiki software now powers scores of wiki websites. “Wiki” entered the dictionary in 2007.

GAYDAR:
It’s unknown who coined this term for the supposed ability to discern whether a person is homosexual, but it first showed up in print in a 1982 article in the
Village Voice
.

BLING:
Rapper Lil Wayne claims he invented this term for “gaudy jewelry,” but it predates him. In the early 1990s, comedian Martin Lawrence often made fun of 1970s Ultra Brite toothpaste commercials which promised to “give your smile (ping!) sex appeal!” Lawrence substituted “bling” for “ping.” The term went mainstream thanks to a popular 1999 song called “Bling Bling” by New Orleans rapper BG. “Bling” was added to the dictionary in 2003.

BLOGOSPHERE:
Coined as a joke in 1999 by blogging pioneer Brad Graham: “Oy! That name! ‘Blog’!” he wrote in his blog. “Goodbye, cyberspace. Hello blogiverse! Blogmos? Blogosphere?”

CRINGEWORTHY:
This adjective for a person or action that causes extreme embarrassment was invented in 1972 by Leo Baxendale in his popular British comic strip
The Bash Street Kids
. A new student in class, Cuthbert Cringeworthy, was such a know-it-all that none of the other kids wanted to be near him.

DUH:
First uttered in a 1943 Bugs Bunny cartoon, “Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk,” when the dimwitted giant announces, “Duh! Well, he can’t outsmart me, ’cause I’m a moron!”

Bullock County, Alabama, was named for Sandra Bullock’s ancestors.

ODD MUSICALS

For every great idea that gets turned into a musical (fiddlers on roofs, poor girls transformed into fair ladies, wagons getting painted), there are a bunch of nutty ideas that also get turned into musicals
.

M
USICAL:
High Fidelity
(2006)
DETAILS:
The 1997 Nick Hornby novel and the 2000 movie version are both about an immature, obscure-record-collecting music store owner who learns what it takes to be a man and have a serious relationship with a woman. Naturally,
High Fidelity
is a cult classic among young men and the obscure-music-obsessed. But these are generally not the kind of people who like show tunes or who are willing to pay $100 to see them performed on Broadway. And ironically, all the characters in
High Fidelity
are obsessive fans of obscure music who abhor mainstream pop music, including show tunes from musicals. The main character even throws a customer out of his store because he wants to buy “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” People who do like musicals hated this one, and so did the critics. Result:
High Fidelity
opened on Broadway in December 2006…and closed just ten days later.

MUSICAL:
Taboo
(2003)

DETAILS:
In 2002 talk show host and musicals aficionado Rosie O’Donnell saw a show in London called
Taboo
. It was a minor hit there, but O’Donnell loved it, and immediately went to work on staging a production in the U.S. She financed it herself, putting up $10 million to bring it to Broadway, where it opened in late 2003.
Taboo
is set in the gay London club scene of the early ’80s and the “New Romantic” pop music fad. One problem: The New Romantic style never really hit it big in the United States, except for Culture Club, the band fronted by Boy George, who co-wrote
Taboo
. Culture Club hadn’t had a hit in 20 years, but to attract their aging fans, Boy George was billed as the star of
Taboo
. Another problem: He played only a minor role; the character of “Boy George” was played by someone else. One more problem: Nearly all characters wore bondage-inspired costumes, and engaged in explicit sex, lurid violence, and overt drug use.
Taboo
barely stayed open for three months. O’Donnell lost every penny of her $10 million investment.

When you’re at rest, 15% of your blood is in your brain.

MUSICAL:
The Fields of Ambrosia
(1996)

DETAILS:
It’s a love story set against the backdrop of post-World War I anti-German hostility. And two characters are executed on stage. And it’s a
comedy!
The plot: Gretchen, a German immigrant, is sentenced to death for a murder she probably didn’t commit. Jonas, the state executioner, falls in love with her and destroys the electric chair, hoping to delay the execution. No matter—they hang her instead. A few months later, the electric chair gets repaired and Jonas gets fried for trying to save Gretchen. End of play. The London
Daily Mail
called it “the biggest turkey, the floppiest flopperoo, the greatest slice of ham to hit the West End stage in years.” (If that wasn’t bad enough, a show about capital punishment is a very odd choice for England, a country where they don’t have the death penalty. It lasted for just three weeks.)

MUSICAL:
Moby Dick
(1992)

DETAILS:
A dense novel that takes place largely in the thoughts of one character, who is far out at sea, chasing after a giant whale? Seems like a hard thing to put on a stage. But if anyone could do it, it was Cameron Mackintosh, the British producer best known for ultra-lavish productions based on classic literature. His two biggest hits:
Les Miserables
and
The Phantom of the Opera. Moby Dick,
however, wasn’t really based on the Herman Melville novel. It was about a group of wild Catholic school girls who try to save their school from bankruptcy by staging a performance of
Moby Dick
in a swimming pool. The show was not an epic, grand spectacle like Mackintosh’s other work. It was really a raunchy, awkwardly funny burlesque show. The mostly-female cast wore swimsuits most of the time, the dialogue was loaded with dirty puns built around the words “Moby Dick,” and the Captain Ahab character, written for a woman, was played by a male actor in drag.
Moby Dick
closed after four months on the London stage.