• Family and religious groups in Michigan protested a series of beer ads that appeared on billboards in 2004. Sechs Beer put up ads with messages like “As long as you’re 21, it’s OK to pay for Sechs” and “It’s OK to have Sechs by yourself.” The brewer, Walton Sechs Brewery of Wisconsin, explained that sechs is the German word for “six” and refused to remove the billboards.
• Dirt Cheap Cigarettes & Beer, a store in Fenton, Missouri, runs commercials on late-night television. They feature a man dressed as a chicken running around the store yelling, “Cheap cheap fun fun!” while the owner tells male viewers that they should buy beer from him because “the more she drinks, the better you’ll look.”
• In 2004, WCAT, a country music radio station in Pennsylvania, changed its format. They announced the change by playing the children’s song “Pop Goes the Weasel” non-stop, 24 hours a day, for four straight days. After the four days, CAT Country was gone, and Cool Pop 106.7—a pop-music station—was born.
• Family members of the late Johnny Cash refused to allow one of Cash’s signature songs to be used for a TV commercial. Producer Sula Miller wanted to use the song “Ring of Fire” in a commercial for a hemorrhoid medication.
Nancy Green was the first living person whose image was trademarked…as Aunt Jemima.
PUDGE GOES PRO
In our Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader, we told you how football started. Well, halftime is over. (We hope you enjoyed the show.) Here’s the story of the very first pro football player.
COLLEGE GAME
Football was invented at Ivy League colleges in the 1870s, combining rugby with some other ball games popular at the time. For more than 50 years the college game was the dominant form of the sport, both in terms of the number of teams and the number of fans. College football was football. But what about people who didn’t go to college, or grads that wanted to relive their glory days? They wanted to play, too, and they wanted teams they could root for. So in the 1890s local sports clubs and businesses began to organize teams.
These sports clubs, such as the YMCA, had an agenda: their members saw them as stepping-stones to get into even more exclusive clubs and a great way to do that was to belong to a club with a successful sports team. So the pressure was on from the beginning to recruit the best men possible.
One problem: it was against the rules to pay athletes for playing. Amateurism was seen as a noble quality; getting paid to play was seen as crass. So instead of breaking the rules, the clubs bent them. San Francisco’s Olympic Athletic Club, for example, promised to find a job for any athlete that joined the club. Even if this didn’t technically violate the rules, it certainly violated the spirit of amateurism. But the practice was so widespread that, rather than condemn it, in 1890 the Amateur Athletic Union, which governed amateur clubs, created an entirely new category for that kind of athlete—the “semiprofessional.”
LORD OF THE RINGERS
William “Pudge” Heffelfinger was a former All-American for Yale University. One of the best players of his time, Heffelfinger was famous for hurling himself over the heads of interlocked offensive linemen and cannonballing knee-first into the ball carrier’s chest. (Needless to say, the rules of football were quite different back then.)
Botulism bacteria are so toxic that one pound could kill every human on Earth.
A popular practice at the time was to cheat by hiring ringers, skilled college players who posed as average Joes and played under assumed names. Heffelfinger was sorely needed by two rival clubs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. After playing to a 6–6 tie in the citywide championship game in October 1892 (highly contested because Allegheny had stolen some of Pittsburgh’s best players), a rematch was set for three weeks later. Both clubs scrambled to field the best teams possible; both clubs secretly met with Heffelfinger.
GAME DAY
More than 3,000 people turned out for the rematch on November 12, even though it was snowing. The Allegheny crowd cheered when Pudge took the field with their team. The Pittsburgh side cried foul—Allegheny was using ringers, after all. They refused to play unless Allegheny agreed that all bets placed on the game were off. (Gambling was another big part of the early game.) After nearly an hour, Allegheny agreed.
For all the hoopla that led up to it, the game itself was pretty uneventful. Pudge scored the only touchdown, and Allegheny won 4–0 (back then, a touchdown only counted for four points—today it counts for six). Even with the low score and the bitterly cold weather, the crowd was entertained by the brutal play and carnage on the field. Several players were injured—three had to be carried off on stretchers.
Today, Pudge Heffelfinger is just a footnote in professional football. He wouldn’t even be that, were it not for a single scrap of paper that survived among the Allegheny Athletic Association’s financial records for the 1892 season. Today that scrap of paper—an expense sheet for the November 12 game—is on display in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. On it is an entry showing that, in addition to being reimbursed for his expenses, Heffelfinger received a $500 “game performance bonus for playing.” And in those days, $500 was about what a schoolteacher made in a year. Although neither Pudge nor Allegheny ever admitted to the transaction, the expense sheet speaks for itself: Heffelfinger was the first documented professional football player in the history of the game.
Cut left and go long to page 221 for “The Birth of the NFL.”
It takes 630 silkworm cocoons to make a single silk blouse.
BAGPIPER’S FUNGUS
Recent studies have found that professional musicians often suffer from some very real—but very odd—ailments. Here are a few.
FIDDLER’S NECK
The name might sound silly, but according to a study of regular violin and viola players by Dr. Thilo Gambichler of Old-church Hospital in London, the friction of the instrument’s base against the left side of the neck (for right-handed players) can cause lesions, severe inflammation, and cysts. What’s worse, said the study, published in the British medical journal BMC Dermatology, it causes lichenification—the development of a patch of thick, leathery skin on the neck, giving it a “bark-like” appearance.
GUITAR NIPPLE
A similar report issued in the United States cited three female classical guitarists who suffered from traumatic mastitis—swelling of the breast and nipple area—due to prolonged friction from the instrument’s body. The condition can strike male players, too.
BAGPIPER’S FUNGUS
Recent medical reports have detailed the dangers of playing Scotland’s national instrument. Bagpipes are traditionally made of sheepskin coated with a molasses-like substance called treacle. That, the report said, is a perfect breeding ground for various fungi, such as aspergillus and cryptococcus. Bagpipers can inadvertently inhale fungal spores, which, according to Dr. Robert Sataloff of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, can lead to deadly lung—and even brain—diseases.
TUBA LIPS
Many long-term tuba players develop an allergic reaction to nickel, an ingredient in brass. The allergy can result in dermatitis of the lips and can sometimes develop into chronic eczema. Strictly speaking, the condition can also affect the chin and hands, and can be contracted from any number of brass instruments (but “tuba lips” is more fun to say).
Q: What performer had over 100 albums make the Billboard Top 40? A: Elvis Presley.
HAPPINESS IS…
“Happiness is a good quote page.” —Uncle John
“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”
—Albert Schweitzer
“Happiness is perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
—Allan K. Chalmers, artist
“Happiness is a Swedish sun
set—it is there for all, but most of us look the other way and lose it.”
—Mark Twain
“Happiness is your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill.”
—Johnny Carson
“Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.”
—Socrates
“Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.”
—Logan Pearsall Smith
“Happiness is a way station between too little and too much.”
—Channing Pollock
“Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Happiness, at my age, is breathing.”
—Joan Rivers
“Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.”
—Palmer Sondreal
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi
“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”
—J. D. Salinger
“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.”
—Hosea Ballou, minister
Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere were distant relatives.
ORIGIN OF NACHOS
Readers sometimes ask if we’ll ever run out of things to write about. No way. Origins are a good example: as we recently discovered, even lowly snack foods can have fascinating (and delicious) origins.
SNACK
In 1943 Ignacio Anaya, or “Nacho” as he was nicknamed, was working as the maitre d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. According to Anaya’s son, Ignacio Jr., one night the restaurant’s cook disappeared just as a group of officers’ wives from Fort Duncan Air Base arrived for dinner. Thinking fast, Anaya went into the kitchen and improvised a meal by taking some tostadas and topping them with shredded cheddar cheese, then putting them in a broiler, and serving them garnished with jalapeño peppers. The women were impressed. One of them, Mamie Finan, named them “Nachos Especiales” in honor of Anaya’s nickname.
The recipe soon became a specialty of many local restaurants, but remained unknown outside of southern Texas until a man named Frank Liberto saw the potential of nachos as a concession-stand item. In 1977 he figured out how to process the cheese to keep it soft all the time, and started selling nachos at Arlington Stadium, then home of the Texas Rangers baseball team. He later replaced the tostadas with tortilla chips, and modern-day nachos were born.
CRUNCH TIME
But nachos might have remained a Texas specialty if not for Howard Cosell and Monday Night Football. Someone gave Cosell nachos before a game. He loved them…and liked the funny-sounding name. That night (and for weeks after), Cosell and the broadcast team worked references to nachos into the game analysis as often as possible. Cosell loved describing great plays by calling them “nachos,” giving the food national recognition, making the term an acceptable adjective for spectacular events, and forever securing its spot as one of the sport watcher’s favorite finger foods.
Taco is Spanish for “plug.”
CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Here’s the latest edition of the BRI’s cheesy tabloid section—a bunch of gossip about famous people.
MICHAEL JACKSON
During his 2005 trial, a lot of information came to light about the King of Pop—even his favorite food: “Colonel Sanders’s KFC original fried chicken (breasts) with mashed potatoes, corn, and biscuits with spray butter,” according to police records. For his toddler son, Prince Michael II: “crackers, grapes, juice or milk, and KFC cut up into pieces.” On his plane, Jackson bans broccoli “or any other strong-scented food.”
PARIS HILTON
While dining at a fancy restaurant with Pamela Anderson, Hilton threw a temper tantrum when handed the menu. “I hate reading! Someone tell me what’s on the menu!” Anderson told the story to GQ magazine, concluding, “I’m blonde, too. But c’mon.”
WILLIAM SHATNER
Want to know what your favorite star smells like? On the set of the show Boston Legal, which Shatner starred in with James Spader, they filmed a “love scene” in which the two “spooned” in bed together. Spader recalled the experience: “You can tell a lot about a person by that first impression, that first smell. Bill had a very sort of, a strangely very attractive sort of pungent sort of gamey, sort of a venison or a lamb sausage scent.” Ironic twist: Shatner is a vegetarian.
OPRAH WINFREY
After undergoing DNA tests, Winfrey proudly declared that she is a Zulu, descended from the race of warriors who once ruled South Africa. How did the modern day Zulus react? They snubbed her. African-Americans, they claim, are descended from West Africans. South Africans ended up in Asia and South America. Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the seven-million-strong tribe, said, “I hate to tell Oprah this, but she is sorely mistaken.”
There is an underwater statue of Jesus in Key Largo, Florida, called “Christ of the Deep.”
HUGH GRANT
In a book about how people deal with their loved ones getting cancer, Grant recounted his relationship with his mother during her final days. “I got bored and went back to tormenting her,” he said. “My personal favorite being secretly activating her hospital bed so that the head and legs both lifted to put her in an amusing jack-knife position. I blow-dried her hair on the day before she died, which was frankly not the success I had hoped for, and which may—I now concede—have finished her off.”
GEORGE H.W. BUSH
In 1989 President Bush was giving a speech in Poland when it started to rain. He ordered a Secret Service guard—who was holding Bush’s raincoat—to give it to an old woman on the other side of the fence. The press praised the president for his selfless generosity. Sixteen years later, Bush admitted that the raincoat wasn’t his; it belonged to the guard…who was just about to put it on.
HOWIE MANDEL
The wacky comedian was expelled from his Toronto high school. Why? For pretending to be a member of the school board and convincing a construction company to start work on an addition to the school.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA
In 2005 the pop singer was about to record a song written by “Aurora Lynne”…until Aguilera found out that Aurora Lynne was actually a pen name for Britney Spears, who wrote the song. Aguilera refused to record it—keeping a feud going that started early in their careers when the two were Mouseketeers.
TOM JONES
Trying to maintain a hip image, 65-year-old Jones recently returned to wearing his trademark tight leather pants and open shirt on stage. But his son (and manager), Mark Woodward, told him: “Dress your age.” Fearing that fans may have stopped taking the Welsh singer seriously, Woodward banned his father’s new outfit. Also on the “Don’t do that anymore” list: picking up women’s panties that are thrown onto the stage.
With each breath, humans exchange about 17% of the air in their lungs.
SPY HUNT: GRAY DECEIVER, PART I
Everyone loves a spy thriller—especially when it’s real life. Here’s an amazing tale that a BRI operative recently uncovered.
THE MOLE
In February 1994, FBI agents arrested a 30-year veteran of the CIA named Aldrich Ames. The charge: spying for the Soviet Union. In the nine years that Ames was an active spy, he exposed more than 100 sensitive operations and revealed the name of every CIA intelligence source in the Soviet Union. At least 10 of them were executed; many others were sent to prison. Ames was paid more than $2.5 million for his efforts and was promised another $1.9 million, making him the highest-paid double agent in history, not to mention one of the most damaging.
Yet as pleased as the FBI and the CIA were to have cau
ght and convicted Ames (he received a life sentence), disturbing signs soon began to emerge that there might be one, and possibly even more moles hiding elsewhere in various U. S. intelligence agencies. Some secrets known to have been compromised couldn’t be traced back to Ames—he simply didn’t know about them.
So both the CIA and the FBI set up new mole-hunting teams and set to work looking for spies. The FBI gave the investigation the code name GRAYSUIT; each time a new suspect was identified they were given a code name with “GRAY” as a prefix. The new mole hunt dredged up two more relatively minor spies: an FBI agent named Earl Edwin Pitts and a CIA agent named Harold J. Nicholson. Both men were arrested in 1996 and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.
BIG SECRETS
Neither arrest answered the question of who was responsible for giving the two biggest intelligence secrets to the Russians:
• The Tunnel. Someone told the Soviets about the secret eavesdropping tunnel that the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) had dug beneath the new Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. The tunnel program cost more than $100 million but never produced a single piece of useful intelligence, because the Russians were told of its existence in 1994—five years before they moved in.
Food? Clothing? Shelter? About 65% of Americans say TV is a “necessity.”
• The Spy. As we told you in Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader, in 1989 the FBI was hot on the trail of a senior U.S. diplomat named Felix Bloch, who was suspected of spying for the KGB. Someone tipped off his handler, a KGB spy named Reino Gikman. Gikman then tipped off Bloch, blowing the FBI’s investigation before they could collect enough information to indict him. To date Bloch has never been charged with espionage.
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Page 12