Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (36 page)

 

• THAT’S SO SWEET.
In March 2009, Skittles candy launched a new Web site built around Twitter, the blogging service in which all entries are 140 characters or less. Anytime anybody anywhere wrote about Skittles on their personal Twitter page, it went into a feed, which then displayed it on the front page of
Skittles.com
. Within hours, thousands of Skittles-related “tweets” were posted, the majority of them negative and humorous, such as “Skittles causes cancer” and “Skittles killed my brother.” Mars, Skittles’ parent company, quickly removed the feature from
Skittles.com
.

 

•
BUS FARE.
To precede an image overhaul, the Jack in the Box fast-food chain launched an ad campaign in which Jack, the company’s mascot, gets hit by a bus. His “recovery” was updated on
www.hangintherejack.com
, and visitors were urged to post comments, such as “We love you, Jack” or “Get well soon.” But negative comments (some serious, some in jest) overwhelmed the posts. Examples: “Jack in the Box killed people with poor sanitary habits and spread disease across the nation” and “Defeat death, Jack! We would have sex with a mullhawk gorilla under the sewer for you.” The company let most comments stay, deleting only the most profane or offensive ones.

 

•
JAVA JIVE.
On May 19, 2009, Starbucks created a Twitter page to interact with its customers. On the same day, filmmaker Robert Greenwald premiered his latest project on YouTube:
What Do Starbucks and Wal-Mart Have in Common?
In the film, Greenwald alleges that Starbucks aggressively prevents its workforce from unionizing. From his own Web site, Greenwald encouraged viewers to photograph themselves outside of their local Starbucks, holding signs protesting Starbucks or in support of union labor, and then post the pictures to Starbucks’ Twitter page. Within a couple of days, the Starbucks Twitter site was riddled with photos of the protests. (Starbucks removed them all.)

 

MONSTER:
Sciopod

WHERE IT LIVED:
Ethiopia

LEGEND:
Latin for “shade foot,” these relatively peaceful creatures were first recorded in around A.D. 77 by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. They were said to live in the wilds of what is now Ethiopia and were described as small, pale, humanlike creatures—but with only one leg and a giant foot. They hopped around on that giant foot, but they also used it as a sun shade: Sciopods reportedly spent several hours a day lying on their backs with their giant feet in the air to block the harsh North African sun. Sciopods were extremely powerful, too. They could kill a large animal (or a human) with a single jumping kick. But never fear—the strange creatures didn’t eat meat. Or plants. Or anything. They existed solely on the aroma of living fruit, which they always carried with them. Sciopods are mentioned in numerous writings over several centuries, ending sometime in the Middle Ages.

 

MONSTER:
Gowrow

WHERE IT LIVED:
Arkansas

LEGEND:
This monster was first heard of in the 1880s, when Arkansas farmers reported being terrorized by a huge lizard. In 1897 Fred Allsopp, a reporter for the
Arkansas Gazette
, wrote about an encounter with the beast. The monster, which Allsopp named a “gowrow” after the sound it made, had been eating livestock in the Ozark Mountains in the northwest of the state. A local businessman named William Miller formed a posse to hunt and kill it. They found its lair, which was littered with animal (and human) bones, and waited for it. It surprised them by emerging from a nearby lake and attacking them—but they were able to kill it with several gunshots. Miller described the
gowrow as being 20 feet long, with huge tusks, webbed and clawed feet, a row of horns along its spine, and a knifelike end to its long tail. He said he sent the body to the Smithsonian Institute—but it mysteriously never made it. Allsopp finished the article by saying he believed it was a “great fake,” but sightings of a similar lizardlike creature were reported in the Ozarks for many years.

 

MONSTER:
Encantado

WHERE IT LIVES:
The Amazon River

LEGEND:
Encantado
means “enchanted one” in Portuguese and refers to a special kind of
boto
, or long-beaked river dolphin native to the Amazon—that can take human form. Encantados are curious about humans and are especially attracted to big, noisy festivals, which they often attend as musicians, staying in human form for years. How can you recognize one? Look under its hat: They always have bald spots that are actually disguised blowholes. Encantados are usually friendly, but they occasionally hypnotize and kidnap young women and take them back to the
Encante
, their underground city. Sometimes the women escape and return…pregnant with an Encantado baby.

 

MONSTER:
Kappa

WHERE IT LIVES:
Japan

LEGEND:
Kappas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers throughout the Japanese islands. They look like frogs, but with tortoise-like shells on their backs. They can leave the water—carrying their shells with them—because they have shallow depressions in their heads in which they keep a bit of water that not only allows them to walk around on land but also makes them incredibly strong. If you encounter one, bow to it. They’re very polite, so they’ll have to bow back to you…and the water will spill out of their head-bowls, weakening them. Their favorite food: the blood of small children. Their second-favorite: cucumbers. That’s why you can still see people in Japan throwing fresh cucumbers into lakes and rivers—with the names of their children carved into them. This, the legend says, will protect their little ones from the kappa’s clutches.

ATHENS (2004).
The Greek government paid $9 billion to make its capital city Olympics-ready, with new roads, airport and public-transit improvements, and the construction of 22 new sports venues. Despite the fact that some of them had been under construction since the early 1990s (Athens incorrectly assumed that it was a lock to host the centennial 1996 games), several facilities were finished just hours before the 2004 opening ceremonies. But five years after the Olympics, 21 of those 22 buildings are unused and abandoned or have been vandalized, largely because they were placed in poorer neighborhoods in an effort to revitalize those areas of the city. Two large outdoor stadiums are completely closed, the tae kwon do and volleyball complex is now a homeless camp, and a sports field that was supposed to be converted into an ecological education park became a garbage dump, because that’s where thousands of residents started throwing their household trash. On the bright side, the city did get a new airport and pedestrian walkways that link ancient Greek historical sites, a project that had been planned for more than 150 years and finally was built to coincide with the Olympics. But Athens will be paying off the Games for a long time—the debt amounts to $500,000 per household.

 

MONTREAL (1976).
The main facility, Olympic Stadium, was a futuristic-looking building with a curved 556-foot tower that was meant to be a lasting symbol of the Games. And it is—it’s come to symbolize the financial disaster of the Montreal Olympics. The games were mostly paid for by the provincial government of Quebec, and at the time Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau assured residents that the revenues generated by the sports events would offset the expense of holding them. “The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby,” Drapeau boasted. When Montreal won the bid in 1970, organizers said the
games would cost $310 million. But cost overruns and frequent labor strikes pushed up the final cost to just under $2 billion. Most of that money was connected to building Olympic Stadium, designed by French architect Roger Taillibert. Initially projected to cost $150 million, it had a final price of $800 million…and the tower and retractable roof weren’t even finished on time. (The roof wasn’t finished until 1987, more than a decade later.) Taillibert also designed the bicycling velodrome, which cost $59 million—five times the original estimate. After the Games, the velodrome was converted into a biosphere, and the Montreal Expos baseball team moved into Olympic Stadium. But in 1986, a mysterious explosion in the tower caused it to burst into flames (it was later repaired), and in the late 1980s, roof tiles began dropping onto the playing field. The province of Quebec did eventually pay off its Olympic debt through a tobacco tax. The last payment was made in October 2006—30 years after the closing ceremonies.

 

LOS ANGELES (1984).
The long-lasting effect of the Olympics on the infrastructure of the southern California megalopolis? Other than a welcome infusion of cash into the local economy, not much. Shortly after the financial disaster of the 1976 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee took bids from cities wishing to host the 1984 event, and Los Angeles was the only one seriously interested. The organizing committee had a plan to prevent another Montreal: Do it on the cheap, with very few new costs to the city or taxpayers. They’d accomplish that in two ways: 1) use pre-existing facilities, and 2) get corporate sponsors to foot the rest of the bill. Only two new venues were constructed: a velodrome, paid by (and named for) 7-Eleven, and an aquatic sports building, paid by (and named for) McDonald’s. Result: After the games, there were only two buildings to convert or worry about instead of two dozen. The Los Angeles games actually made $200 million, the most profitable Olympics ever.

 

SEOUL (1988).
Although the Olympics brought crushing debt to some countries, the attention given to South Korea in the years leading up to the 1988 Games brought the country democracy. In 1979, two weeks after South Korea bid for the 1988 games, dictator Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the pro-democracy leader of the country’s major intelligence agency. Pro-democracy demonstrations
were on the rise around the country, but a new dictatorial regime took power anyway, a military government led by Major General Chun Doo-hawn. Chun declared martial law and used the military to violently snuff out the democratic rallies. In one such instance in the city of Kwangju, 191 people were killed and 850 were wounded. But despite objections from human rights groups, in 1982 Seoul was awarded the 1988 Summer Olympics… because no other city had put in a serious bid. The Chun regime prepared for the Olympics the way it dealt with political rallies: with brutal violence. Government security forces terrorized more than 750,000 Seoul residents—they raped women, beat up men, and burned down homes to get people to leave the areas to be razed for Olympic venues. And in June 1987, a Seoul University pro-democracy protester was arrested, tortured, and killed by Chun’s death squads. Then another student was killed by a police tear gas bomb at a protest. The two deaths led to a resurrection of widespread pro-democracy demonstrations, as well as the formation of a political group called the Resistance of June, whose goal was to remove Chun from power. And it was successful. On June 29, 1987, Chun changed the constitution to allow for direct presidential elections—in other words, democracy. He then stepped down. Today, Seoul is a high-tech, skyscraper-filled city and the centerpiece of South Korea, which is now one of the wealthiest and most politically stable countries on the planet.

Quesadilla Explosion Salad (Chili’s)
Chicken Parmesan Tanglers (Applebee’s)
Chocolate Thunder From Down Under (Outback Steakhouse)
Weight Management Chicken Salad
(The Cheesecake Factory)
Super Sizzlin’ Sausage Sunrise (Friendly’s)
Feesh Neeblers (White Castle)
Moons Over My Hammy (Denny’s)
Rooty Tooty Fresh N’ Fruity (IHOP)