Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (7 page)

Green Kryptonite:
Deadly.

Red Kryptonite:
Causes weird, erratic behavior.

Blue Kryptonite:
Safe for Superman, but deadly to Bizarros, who live in an alternate universe where everything is the opposite.

X-Kryptonite:
Gives Earthlings superpowers for a limited time.

Gold Kryptonite:
Removes superpowers permanently.

White Kryptonite:
Kills any plant life from any world.

Jewel Kryptonite:
Pieces of Krypton’s Jewel Mountains that allow residents of the Phantom Zone—a two-dimensional “prison dimension”—to focus their energy and make objects in the outside world explode.

Black Kryptonite:
Effects unknown.

Titleholder:
Juliet Lee, who polished off 13.24
pounds
of the sauce in eight minutes in November 2007.
Additional Accomplishments:
Lee, who once taught chemistry at the University of Nanjing in China, also won first prize at the 2008 Ultimate Eating Tournament after she downed seven chicken wings, one pound of nachos, three hot dogs, two personal pizzas, and three Italian ices in 7 minutes, 13 seconds.

Description:
For the uninitiated, haggis is a traditional Scottish dish that consists of sheep’s lungs, liver, and heart that are combined with oatmeal, onion, spices, and other ingredients, then stuffed into a sheep’s stomach and boiled for three hours.
Titleholder:
Eric Livingston, who ate three pounds of haggis in 8 minutes in 2008.

Titleholder:
Timothy Janus, who slurped down 10.5 pounds of noodles in 8 minutes in October 2007.

Additional Accomplishments:
Janus, a day trader who uses the name “Eater X” and wears makeup to disguise his true identity, currently holds six eating records, including nigiri sushi (141 pieces in 6 minutes), tamales (71 in 12 minutes), and burritos (11.81 pounds in 10 minutes).

Titleholder: “
Humble” Bob Shoudt put away 13.5 pounds of
“Cincinnati Chili” (a thin, meaty chili flavored with oregano, cinnamon, and cloves, served over spaghetti) in 10 minutes in September 2008.

Additional Accomplishments:
Shoudt also holds the record for beef brisket BBQ sandwiches (34.75 sandwiches in 10 minutes), and the miniature-hamburger two-minute speed-eating record—39 burgers. When he isn’t competing, he’s a vegetarian.

Titleholder:
Dominic “The Doginator” Cardo, who consumed an entire 3-pound tongue, plus “a few bites” of a second tongue, in 12 minutes on Fox TV’s prime-time
Glutton Bowl
in 2002.

Titleholder:
Don Lerman, who goes by the name “Moses” and is another Glutton Bowl winner, downed seven ¼-pound sticks of salted butter in 5 minutes.

Additional Accomplishments:
Lerman, an IFOCE Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, also holds records in baked beans (6 pounds in 1 minute, 46 seconds), bologna (2.76 pounds in 6 minutes), quarter-pound hamburgers (11 ¼ in 10 minutes), and other categories. He placed third in the
Glutton Bowl
’s cow brain eating finals, losing to Takeru Kobayashi—the Tiger Woods of “gurgitation,” as it’s known in the trade. Kobayashi, who is most famous for winning the Nathan’s Famous 4th of July hot dog eating contest six years in a row (2001–06), consumed 57 entire cow brains, or 17.7 pounds’ worth, in 15 minutes to win first prize.

Titleholder:
In 2003 Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas downed 65 eggs—more than five dozen
—
in 6 minutes, 40 seconds, smashing the old record of 38 eggs in 8 minutes. Thomas swallowed the eggs whole. So why’d she stop at 65? The organizers ran out of eggs.
Additional Accomplishments:
Thomas, one of the biggest stars of the competitive eating world, holds 29 different world titles in foods as diverse as cheesecake (11 pounds in 9 minutes), chicken nuggets (80 nuggets in 5 minutes), crawfish jambalaya (9 pounds in 10 minutes), and oysters (46 dozen in 10 minutes). To keep her stomach in top form, Thomas eats one very large meal per day.

When she worked as an assistant manager at Burger King, a typical daily meal consisted of one chicken Whopper, 20 chicken nuggets, three large orders of fries, and 64 ounces of diet soda, consumed over the course of a couple of hours. You might assume that Thomas is overweight, maybe even obese, but she’s not. She exercises two hours a day, five days a week, to maintain her competitive edge. Her weight typically fluctuates between 98 and 105 pounds.

Titleholder:
Richard “The Locust” LeFevre, a retired accountant, popped 247 pickled peppers at the Texas State Fair in 2006. (No word on who picked the peck of pickled peppers.)

Additional Accomplishments:
Another living legend in the world of competitive eating, LeFevre, 63, has held records in 24-inch-diameter pizza slices (7 ½ extra-large slices in 15 minutes), birthday cake (5 pounds in 11 minutes, 26 seconds), chili (1 ½ gallons in 10 minutes), SPAM (6 pounds in 12 minutes), huevos rancheros (7 ¾ pounds in 10 minutes), and other categories. He weighs 132 pounds.

• Eat healthy in your daily diet. Avoid junk food.

• Eat fewer meals, but make each one larger to get your stomach used to accommodating large quantities of food. As a contest date approaches, eat larger and larger quantities of food.

• Exercise regularly, and lose weight! Belly fat surrounding your stomach can impair its ability to stretch out as needed when stuffed with hot dogs, beef tongue, hard-boiled eggs, etc. (This theory is especially popular with titleholders weighing under 125 pounds. It’s much less popular with those weighing over 300 pounds.)

• Don’t eat the night before an eating contest.

• If you start to feel sick during the contest, slow down! Gurgita-tors who regurgitate are disqualified on the spot.

• Kids, don’t try this at home.

On October 16, 1866, brothers John and Simeon (“Sim”) Reno and a third man, Frank Sparkes, boarded a train in Seymour, Indiana, and broke into the express car (where the money was kept) once the train was underway. After overpowering a guard, the men smashed open a safe and stole its contents—$10,000. They pushed a larger safe off the train at a spot where other members of the “Reno gang,” including John and Sim’s brothers Frank and Bill Reno, were waiting. An approaching posse forced the gang to flee before it could get the big safe open. Not the biggest haul in the world, but it was the very first train robbery in U.S. history.

John Reno soon went to prison for robbing a courthouse; the rest of the gang kept robbing trains. Their second robbery netted $8,000; a third was thwarted by Pinkerton detectives. A fourth netted $96,000. Then the gang’s luck ran out: While attempting a fifth train robbery, they were ambushed by Pinkertons, and though all but one of the robbers escaped, they were quickly rounded up. Three were arrested, then seized by vigilantes and hanged from a tree on July 20, 1868. A few days later three more gang members were captured and hanged from the same tree. Bill and Sim Reno were arrested at the end of July; then Frank Reno and another gang member named Charlie Anderson were caught in Canada and extradited to the U.S., where they were put in the same jail with Bill and Sim. All four men were hanged by a
third
lynch mob that stormed the jail on December 11, 1868.

The lynching of ten members of the Reno gang, which never numbered more than about 15 people, put it out of business for good. But newspaper coverage of the their exploits inspired other criminal gangs (the James-Younger gang, the Wild Bunch, the Dalton gang, etc.), who would soon follow in their footsteps. The era of Wild West train robberies had begun.

Ball loved Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Driving Miss Daisy.
In 1988, when she heard it was going to be turned into a movie, the 76-year-old actress went after the title role of the crotchety old Southern woman who develops a tender friendship with her African-American driver. Ball almost landed what would’ve been a career-capping comeback part, but right before producers Lili and Richard Zanuck made a decision, they got a phone call from her—she felt she was too ill to play the part. Indeed, by the time cameras rolled in early 1989, Ball had died.

By 1996 Culkin was a fading former child star (
Home Alone, Richie Rich)
who had pretty much quit show business, having not made a movie in three years. But in casting what would ultimately be the highest-grossing movie to date,
Titanic
producer/director James Cameron nearly hired Culkin for the male lead. When 20th Century Fox wanted him to cast Matthew McConaughey instead, Cameron compromised with a third option: critically acclaimed actor—and former child star—Leonardo DiCaprio.

As producers started work on this big-screen remake of the classic 1970s TV series, two of the three Angels were quickly cast: co-producer Drew Barrymore, who cast herself, and Cameron Diaz. The third slot proved more difficult to fill. It was first offered to Angelina Jolie, who turned it down because she didn’t like the original TV show. Jada Pinkett Smith was also given a shot, but she decided to make Spike Lee’s
Bamboozled
instead
.
Then producers considered (and rejected) Catherine Zeta-Jones, Liv Tyler,
two different Spice Girls, and singers Lauryn Hill and Aaliyah, who gave a good test performance but was ultimately considered too young. Nia Long landed the role, but backed out to film
Big Momma’s House,
a less physically demanding movie than
Charlie’s Angels
, because she was pregnant. British actress Thandie Newton replaced her, but had to drop out when filming for her previous movie,
Mission: Impossible 2
, ran over schedule. The role was finally offered to—and accepted by—
Ally McBeal
co-star Lucy Liu.

The family-friendly musical set in the squeaky-clean 1950s nearly co-starred a controversial, non-family-friendly figure of the 1970s. Adult-film actor Reems, best known for his part in the 1972 pornographic film
Deep Throat
, was cast to play Coach Calhoun, the Rydell High track coach. Reems had done legitimate theater before making porn films, which is how his agent was able to get him the role. But before the movie began filming, executives at Paramount Studios got nervous and fired Reems. Cast instead: real-life 1950s icon Sid Caesar.

In
The Crow,
Eric Draven and his girlfriend are brutally murdered by a gang of street thugs, and a year later, he rises from the dead to avenge their deaths. Newcomer Brandon Lee, son of martial-arts legend Bruce Lee, was cast as Draven, but he wasn’t the studio’s first choice—they wanted Christian Slater. When Slater declined, Lee got the role. Sadly, Lee was killed on the set when a prop gun misfired. In a weird twist of fate, Slater’s next role would come because of another premature death. He played the Interviewer in
Interview with the Vampire
after the original actor hired—Slater’s friend River Phoenix—died of a drug overdose in 1993.

Chappelle auditioned for and won the role of Bubba Blue, the slow, backwoods-born, shrimp-loving soldier befriended by Forrest Gump during the Vietnam War. Even though he was a 21-year-old comedian struggling to land his first major acting job, Chappelle turned the part down because he thought it stereotyped blacks. The part went instead to Mykelti Williamson, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.