by Uncle John’s
THE FASHION CAFÉ
Among the biggest pop-culture crazes of the early ’90s were theme restaurant chains, like the rock music–themed Hard Rock Café and the movie-themed Planet Hollywood. Both of those eateries are still around, but not at the peak of where they were 20 years ago. The 1990s were also the time of the model as celebrity— “supermodels” such as Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista were the epitome of glamour and success. The Fashion Café is where these two fads came together.
The Fashion Café was the misguided brainchild of Tommaso Buti and his brother Francesco, Italian entrepreneurs who moved to New York City in the early ’90s. After making connections in the fashion industry and developing friendships with Hollywood stars like Kevin Costner, the Butis tried to cash in on both the popularity of theme restaurants and the supermodel craze. The Butis convinced supermodels Elle MacPherson, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington to come on board. The models agreed to make public appearances to promote the Fashion Café in exchange for big paychecks and a percentage of the profits if the enterprise was a success. With their names attached, attracting investors wasn’t a problem.
The first Fashion Café, located in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, opened its doors in 1995, and plans were already under way for a second location in London. The New York grand opening was a star-studded event that captured headlines around the world. But mediocre reviews, a lack of repeat business, and weird events like fashion shows featuring unknown models strutting around in pajamas didn’t bode well for the franchise’s future. While the Butis opened additional locations in the UK, South Africa, Mexico, and Spain, they quickly took on serious debts. There was simply no escaping the fact that the chain was doomed to failure—not to mention the irony of the restaurant’s fare of cheeseburgers and steaks pitched by representatives of the fashion industry, synonymous with an aversion to food.
“UNKNOWN MODELS STRUTTING AROUND IN PAJAMAS DIDN’T BODE WELL FOR THE FRANCHISE’S FUTURE.“
In 1998 tax agents began sniffing around the New York location’s financial records, and utility companies and others began hounding the Butis for late payments. Meanwhile, Turlington and Schiffer pulled out, publicly blaming old vendettas with Campbell. While their empire crumbled, the Buti brothers developed a taste for the high life. Tommaso moved into a $25,000-a-month apartment and threw himself an elaborate birthday party at a Manhattan hot spot. The duo also began digging into the Café’s coffers, spending tons of money on fancy cars and other luxuries. They even managed to ring up $132,000 in cell phone bills, all on the chain’s dime. With investors fuming and bill collectors circling the now-closed flagship in New York, Tommaso resigned as CEO in September 1998. In December 2000, the federal government filed 51 charges against the Butis for fraud and other crimes. Tommaso was later arrested in Italy, and his brother went on the run. All told, the Butis reportedly stole over $12 million from their investors.
TWO CIVIC GOOFS
•In the 1990s, Cleveland had a labor contract with its transit workers that called for any train driver who was fired to be rehired as a bus driver. In 1991 Lynne Herron got a job as a Cleveland bus driver after she caused an accident that injured 14 people during her old job as a train driver. The crash was caused by a disengaged safety system, which had been purposely disengaged…by Herron.
•To save money in 1974, the city council of Bramber, England, voted to shut off their streetlights for three days. The experiment saved Bramber £11.59 in electricity costs. However, the city spent £18.48 on a shutoff fee, then another £12 to turn the lights on. Final tally: It cost Bramber £18.89 to go without streetlights.
WHO NEEDS TELEVISION?
Shelley Long was virtually unknown when she was cast as intellectual barmaid Diane Chambers on Cheers in 1982. The show went on to become a huge hit, and Long won an Emmy. She balanced her Cheers shooting schedule with starring roles in a string of hit films, including Outrageous Fortune and The Money Pit. In 1987 Long left Cheers to focus solely on movies. Cheers replaced her with a new character, bar manager Rebecca Howe, portrayed by Kirstie Alley. With Alley, Cheers became the #1 show on TV. Long’s movie career never quite jelled. (Remember The Boyfriend School? Frozen Assets?) Long later returned to TV with a string of made-for-TV movies and short-lived sitcoms in the 1990s. Her most prominent role in recent years has been a recurring role on Modern Family…a TV show.
David Caruso got the role of a lifetime when he was cast as a detective on NYPD Blue, a police drama that debuted in 1993 and was created by Stephen Bochco (L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues). The show was critically acclaimed, although most of that praise was for Caruso’s co-star, Dennis Franz. Nevertheless, after just one season, Caruso left the show for a movie career. In 1995 two Caruso movies materialized: Jade, an erotic crime drama, and Kiss of Death, also an erotic crime drama. Both bombed at the box office. Caruso was stuck—his movies tanked so hard that he couldn’t get any more roles, nor could he get TV work because in order to get off of NYPD Blue, he’d signed an agreement prohibiting him from working in TV until 1997. Caruso stayed unemployed until CBS hired him for the short-lived drama Michael Hayes. (Happy ending: He starred on CSI: Miami from 2002 to 2012.)
“HIS MOVIES TANKED SO HARD THAT HE COULDN’T GET ANY MORE ROLES, NOR COULD HE GET TV WORK.”
Jeff Conaway started out as a movie star—his breakthrough role was as Kenickie in 1978’s Grease. He then moved to TV to portray Bobby, a struggling actor who works as a cabbie on Taxi. After three seasons, Conaway was fired from the show because of a drug problem. Conaway thought he’d restart his film career…but it didn’t work out. He didn’t get cast in a single movie for two years. In 1983 he returned to TV in the fantasy series Wizards and Warriors, which was canceled after two episodes. Conaway acted in films sporadically after that, but returned to TV in 2006… as a participant on VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club, but he dropped out because of his drug addiction; he then sought help on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab. Sadly, Conaway died from an assortment of health problems in 2011 at age 60.
REAL QUESTIONS FROM THE BUTTERBALL TURKEY THANKSGIVING HOTLINE
Should I remove the plastic wrap before I cook my turkey?
The family dog is inside the turkey and can’t get out.
I need to drive two hours with my frozen turkey before I cook it. Will it stay frozen if I tie it to the luggage rack on the roof of my car?
Does the turkey go in the oven feet first, or head first?
Can I baste my turkey with suntan lotion?
I scrubbed my raw turkey with a toothbrush dipped in bleach for three hours. Is that enough to kill all the harmful bacteria?
I didn’t want to cook the whole turkey, so I cut it in half with a chainsaw. How do I get the chainsaw oil out of the turkey?
How long does it take to cook a turkey if I leave the oven door open the entire time? That was how my mom always did it.
How do I prepare a turkey for vegetarians?
BURNING MAN
King Charles VI of France spent much of his reign struggling to maintain his sanity. He suffered from “bouts of madness,” during which he became convinced he was made of glass. He also had a nasty habit of forgetting his own name and running amok through the halls of his Parisian residence. (Historians now believe he had paranoid schizophrenia.) His mental health issues contributed to bitter power struggles within the French government. But before all that there was the Bal des Ardents (“The Ball of the Burning Men”).
In 1393 Charles decided to host a masquerade ball to celebrate the third wedding of a widow named Catherine de Fastaverin, one of his queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The gala was scheduled for the night of January 28 at the Hotel Saint-Pol, the royal residence. Back then, the weddings of widows were cause for wild parties involving loud music, lavish costumes, and silly shenanigans. So for this occasion, Huguet de Guisay, a nobleman with a reputation for being a colossal jerk, came up with a plan to prank Catherine.
He convinced Charles and five of
his knights to dress up as masked “wild men” in disguises made out of wood, resin, and weeds. The participants knew the costumes were highly flammable, so plans were made ahead of time to extinguish all the torches in the hall where the party was held. At the designated moment, the lights went out and the pranksters burst in, shouting obscenities, howling, and dancing frantically. Five of the wild men were chained together.
Everyone was having a blast until the Duke of Orléans, Charles’s brother, showed up late, drunk as a skunk, and carrying a lit torch. According to one account, he held his torch over one of the chained pranksters’ heads while trying to figure out the man’s identity. Then a spark fell, setting his costume ablaze. Chaos ensued as the fire spread from one wild man to another. They cried out in pain as the costumes of other partygoers burst into flames. Everyone stormed the exits, running for their lives.
The king was saved by the quick intervention of the Duchess of Berry, who threw her huge skirt over his body to protect him from flying sparks. The only other prankster who survived was the Sieur de Nantouillet, who jumped into a vat of wine and hid there until the fire was extinguished. Several more attendees later succumbed to burns and other injuries. Huguet, the mastermind of the prank, died a few days later, reportedly badmouthing his fellow conspirators until his final breath.
French citizens were outraged that the king’s advisers allowed him to put himself in such danger, while others saw it as a sign that the monarchy had become too self-absorbed and decadent. To quell death threats against the king’s couriers and other aristocrats and offset a possible revolt over the scandal, the royal court somberly marched through the streets of Paris all the way to Notre Dame Cathedral, where they paid penance for the disastrous prank.
Orléans received most of the blame for the tragedy, and his reputation, already tarnished by earlier accusations of sorcery (yup, sorcery), never recovered. The ball is also considered by many French historians to mark the beginning of Charles’s slide into madness and irrelevance. By the end of the century, his role as king had become purely ceremonial.
WRONG TURN
Truck driver Jabin Bogan, 27, made a pickup at a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, in April 2012 and set off for Phoenix, Arizona. Bogan made a wrong turn…and found himself at the Mexican border.
With no room to turn around, he crossed into Mexico, turned around just a minute or so later, and headed back to the States. When he got to the customs checkpoint, his truck was searched: Bogan was carrying 268,000 rounds of ammunition destined for a Phoenix gun shop. Mexican customs agents didn’t believe his story—and Bogan was arrested on arms-smuggling charges.
Bogan’s mother, employer, and several U.S. politicians lobbied the Mexican government on his behalf, and he was released…seven months later.
ANIMAULED
Tigered! Norman Buwalda of Southwold, Ontario, kept a 650-pound Siberian tiger as a pet, despite the objections of his neighbors. In 2004 they complained to authorities after the big cat nearly killed a 10-year-old boy. (Buwalda allowed him to go into the cage to take pictures for a school project; the camera’s flash upset the tiger, who took his annoyance out on the boy.) But Buwalda, who was chairman of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owners’ Association, fought tooth and claw against a proposed bylaw that would have made it illegal for him to keep exotic pets. Good news: He won! Bad news: In 2010 one of Buwalda’s relatives discovered Norman Buwalda’s mutilated body inside the cage with the tiger.
Roached! In October 2012, 32-year-old Edward Archbold entered a contest at a local pet store in Deerfield Beach, Florida: Whoever could eat the most live cockroaches and mealworms would win a python valued at $850! Archbold, who wanted to win the snake for a friend, wolfed down “60 grams of meal worms, 35 three-inch-long ‘super worms,’ and a bucket of discoid roaches.” He had to cover his mouth while chewing to keep the bugs from crawling out. Good news: Archbold won! Bad news: A few minutes later, while standing in the parking lot, he started puking the bugs back up, and a few got stuck in his throat. He was rushed to the hospital, but died before he got there.
Swanned! Employed by a company that uses swans to keep geese away from golf courses and condo complexes, Anthony Hensley was sent to a pond near Des Plaines, Illinois, in April 2012 to check on the swans there. He paddled his kayak across the water to get a closer look, and a large female swan became agitated by his presence. Then, according to witnesses, the big bird rushed Hensley. Not wanting to hurt the swan (who was protecting her nest), he didn’t fight back. His kayak flipped over and he fell into the water. By this time, several other swans had joined the melee—they brutally attacked Hensley as he tried to swim away. He went under and drowned.
Beed! Jaam Singh Girdhan Barela was performing a cremation ritual at his wife’s funeral in India when the smoke upset a nearby beehive. The bees swarmed the funeral party and everyone fled… except Barela. He chose to stay and complete the ritual, but he wasn’t able to because the bees stung him so many times that he died.
Beared! Most big-predator cages have two sections, one of which the animal can be kept in so the keeper can safely enter the other section for feeding and cleaning. Michael Walz of Ross Township, Pennsylvania, kept his black bear in a single-section cage only 15 square feet. One day in 2009, his wife, Kelly Ann, entered the cage and threw a handful of dry dog food at the 350-pound beast to keep it occupied while she cleaned up. But the bear wasn’t interested in dog food. It attacked her. A neighbor ran and got his gun and killed the bear, but not in time to save Kelly Ann. “Why this woman chose to go in the same area that the bear was in is beyond me,” said Tim Conway of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Hippopotamussed! In 2005 Marius Els, an army major from South Africa, took in a baby hippo that had been rescued from a flooded river near his farm. Els named his new pet Humphrey and tried to domesticate it. His neighbors warned him that hippos can’t be tamed, but Els ignored them and raised Humphrey “like a son.” (He even liked to take rides on his “son’s” back.) “There’s a relationship between me and Humphrey,” he told The Guardian in 2011, “and that’s what some people don’t understand.” Apparently, Els didn’t understand the relationship, either. Later that year, when Humphrey was six (and Els was 40), the one-ton beast’s savage side erupted: “Humphrey-Humphrey Hippo” bit Els repeatedly with his giant canines and then dragged his limp body into the same river from which the animal had been rescued…and drowned him.
TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE TYPOS
In 1987 Kamjai Thavorn was sentenced to 20 years in an Indonesian prison for heroin possession. In 2007 Thavorn told the warden that his sentence had ended and he should be set free. But according to prison paperwork, Thavorn began serving in 1997—not 1987—and still had a decade left to go. For the next three years, he pleaded to be set free…to no avail. He might still be behind bars today if not for a chance meeting in 2010 with Indonesia’s justice minister, who was touring the facility. Thavorn told the minister his situation, the matter was looked into, and Thavorn was finally freed.
•In late 2007, two Maryland state assessment workers, both new to the job, were entering data into all of the counties’ proposed budgets for 2008. At one point, one of them accidentally entered the estimated taxable real estate for Montgomery County in 2008 values, instead of the actual 2007 numbers. That single incorrect number created a domino effect that threw off several other county budget estimates. Once officials realized something was wrong, it took eight months and a small army of number-crunchers to find the error. In all, it threw off budget estimates by $16 billion and cost taxpayers more than $31 million to correct.
STRIPPER ACCIDENTS
BOMBS AWAY!
In November 2010‚ Patrick Gallagher’s friends bought him a “bachelor package” at the Penthouse Club, a Philadelphia strip joint, for his bachelor party. As part of the package he was invited onstage with the dancers, who made him lie down next to the stripper pole. That’s when a stripper climbed high up on the pole, slid down, landed o
n Gallagher—and ruptured his bladder. “From a great height, she launched herself down onto his abdomen,” his attorney, Neil T. Murray, told reporters. Gallagher needed surgery, and he sued the Penthouse Club for $50,000 for medical costs as well as “pain, humiliation, and mental anguish.”
DO NOT TOUCH, DO NOT LOOK
Like Mr. Gallagher in the item above, Michael Ireland was celebrating his bachelor party at a strip joint, this one the Cheetah in West Palm Beach, Florida, in September 2008. At one point during the festivities, he was watching dancer Sakeena Shageer perform atop the club’s bar. Shageer wasn’t paying much attention to where she was gyrating, and one of her stiletto heels ended up in one of Ireland’s eye sockets. He suffered a broken orbital bone, a broken nose, and possibly permanently impaired vision. He sued the club, and the Cheetah eventually settled the case for $650,000. However, Shageer’s take on the story is a little different. She claims that while she was dancing with her back turned to Ireland, he spanked her, hard. As the club has a strict “no touching” policy, Shageer says that she instantly and instinctively reacted by kicking out her foot. “I didn’t mean to mess up his face like that,” she said.