Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd (30 page)

In the 1960s, three Italian filmmakers set out to reinvent the documentary. Did they succeed? Well, film critic Pauline Kael once called them “the most devious and irresponsible filmmakers who have ever lived.”

T
HREE MEN AND A CAMERA

Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti, and Franco Prosperi were three budding documentary filmmakers with a problem: documentaries bored them. They didn’t want to paint sedate
National Geographic
-style pictures of foreign cultures. They wanted to show the lurid, shocking, and weird parts of human life that were rarely committed to film. The result:
Mondo Cane
(Italian for “a dog’s life”). Released in 1962, the film was a 108-minute travelogue that visits 30 bizarre, violent, and odd places. It’s sensational, exploitative, trashy…and really entertaining. Among the scenes recorded by
Mondo Cane
cameras:

• Asian cannibals eating a corpse

• The slaughtering of a bull and a pig

• A Taiwanese tribe eating a dog

• Ritualistic fattening of African women (to increase fertility)

• Sexualized tribal dancing

• A trip to a pet cemetery

• A South Pacific “cargo cult” that worships man-made objects

Critics called the movie “vulgar” and “pornographic,” but it was a hit. Surprisingly, the movie’s theme song “More” was nominated for Best Song at the 1963 Academy Awards. And, not surprisingly, it inspired several rip-off “Mondo” films including
Mondo Bizarro
and
Mondo Balardo.
Cavara, Jacopetti, and Prosperi themselves had enough leftover footage for three sequels.

•
Women of the World
(1963) All of the vignettes were about women, many of whom were naked.

•
Mondo Cane 2
(1963) Footage includes flamingo babies dying of sewage poisoning, transvestite cops, a look at torture devices, and a visit to a mortuary school.

•
Farewell Africa
(1966) Shocking scenes of Africa, including animal poaching, mercenary tribal slaughter, and executions.

It’s weir you go to buy weirly weird stuff. Weir going today!

B
UY IT NOW!
Picking up your dog’s or your cat’s poop is gross. That’s why there’s Poop-Freeze. It’s an aerosol spray that, according to the Rockville, Maryland, manufacturer, “forms a frosty film on dog poop (or cat poop) to harden the surface for easy pick-up.” And it’s “perfect for both outside and indoor use.” Cost of a four-ounce can: $9.95.

BUY IT NOW!
Inventors John Packes and Ramon Peralta have come up with a way to spice up the game of golf: flavored tees. They’re made from sanitized, flavored wood, and come in mint, cherry, strawberry, and grape. And you suck on them. “It will knock out the foulest of cigar or beer breath within five seconds,” says Packes. Cost: 25¢ each.

BUY IT NOW!
Want to save a step in getting the game birds you shoot from the field onto your plate? You soon may be able to with Season Shot: Ammo with Flavor—shotgun shells with pellets that flavor the meat of the animal you just killed. Flavors planned: cajun, lemon pepper, garlic, teriyaki, and honey mustard. The product’s inventor, Brett Holm of Chaska, Minnesota, says Season Shot will not only season the birds, but also prevent tooth damage caused by steel shot. “The heat from the stove melts the pellets,” he says. He hopes to have the product ready by 2007.

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Need a good prank gift? How about “Liquid Ass”? It comes in a small squirt bottle and the makers promise it has a “genuine, foul butt–crack smell.” A four-pack costs $17.50. (Available at
liquidass.com
.
)

BUY IT NOW!
If you go to Powys County in Wales, you can buy Welsh Dragon Sausages. Well, you can’t anymore: The Powys County Council made the manufacturers, Black Mountains Smokery, change the name to “Welsh Dragon Pork Sausages”… because they thought some consumers might be confused. “I don’t
think any of our customers believe that we use dragon meat in our sausages,” said company owner Jon Carthew.

BUY IT NOW!
Need a set of gallows? British farmer David Lucas has been building them for countries in Africa for years. A single-hanging gallows goes for $22,000, he recently told reporters, and the Multi-Hanging Execution System, mounted on a trailer, goes for $185,000. “The beauty of it,” says Lucas, “is you can use it over and over again.” When news of of his macabre industry was revealed in May 2006, Lucas defended himself from the storm of criticism that followed. “Business is business,” he said.

Update!
In June, 2006, Lucas’s business partner, Brian Rutterford, came forward and said the entire story was a hoax. “David sells pet food,” he told
The Times
. “If he was building gallows for foreign governments, I think I would know about it.” The BBC, the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and the
Taipei Times
were just a few of the news agencies around the world that had been duped by the story. (Lucas still denies that the story was a hoax.)

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The Isdaan restaurant in Gerona, Philippines, has a unique feature: the “Wall of Fury.” For 15 pesos (about 25¢) you can buy a dinner plate, which you then take to the Wall—printed with words like “ex-wife” and “boss”—and smash the plate against the target of your choice. “The top three targets are ‘boss/manager,’ ‘wine, women and gambling,’ and ‘loan sharks,’” says manager Arnold Viola. For the equivalent of $25 you can also smash a television set. (All this while an Elvis impersonator entertains the guests.)

BUY IT NOW!
Got a fish? Gotta go? No problem. AquaOne Technologies, of Westminster, California, released their “Fish-n-Flush” toilet tank in 2006. It’s a fully-functioning toilet combined with an aquarium. Half of the two-part see-through tank comes with gravel, plastic plants, a filter system, and lighting, and its operation isn’t affected when the toilet is flushed. “We wanted to develop a product that had a dual purpose,” said CEO Richard Quintana. “To serve as a proper, fully functional toilet—and also as a source of entertainment and conversation.” The Fish-n-Flush is yours for $299.

Dining out can get kind of boring. After all, how many times can you have the same old burger at the same old coffee shop? Fortunately, in the last 20 years, the “theme restaurant” has emerged, offering diners not just a meal…but an experience.

M
IM

Location:
Barcelona, Spain

Details:
Don’t speak Spanish? Don’t worry, the waiters don’t speak it, either. In fact, they don’t speak any language at all. That’s because MIM is a mime-themed restaurant, housed in an old theater. Staff communicates through body language, and every few minutes, they put on short mime performances, culminating in a flying trapeze act. (Warning: If you suffer from
coulrophobia
—the fear of mimes—avoid this restaurant.)

Location:
Indiana

Details:
No shirt? No shoes? No problem. Adam & Eve’s is the world’s only naked restaurant. The waiters are nude, the cooks are nude, and the customers are nude. (Better not order anything hot.)

Location:
Tokyo

Details:
If you’ve ever wondered what life on the brutal, desolate San Francisco island prison was like, go to this Japanese bistro. Uniformed “wardens” (not waiters) cuff patrons at the big steel front door and lead them to “private cells” (not tables). Menu items include chipped beef on toast, pudding cups, and other foods served in a prison cafeteria.

Location:
Minneapolis

Details:
Think reading old newspapers is an exciting way to spend an evening? The News Room celebrates old newspapers and the often-depressing headlines of the 1920s and 1930s. The
restaurant is divided into several newspaper “sections,” including “The Sports Page” (old sports footage plays on monitors) and “The Financial Page” (a Depression-era stock ticker hangs from the rafters and continually shoots out ticker tape and imaginary stock quotes). In every room, rolled-up giant newspapers hang from the ceiling.

Location:
Las Vegas

Details:
When most Americans think of the Soviet Union they think of a cruel, totalitarian government, breadlines, and impending nuclear war. But Red Square—a family-friendly restaurant located in one of Vegas’s grandest hotels, Mandalay Bay—plays up Soviet life as nostalgic and kitschy. The red decor features a headless statue of Lenin, a hammer-and-sickle logo, and propaganda posters that glorify the worker. Naturally, it also has one of Las Vegas’s largest assortments of vodka.

Location:
Mumbai, India

Details:
One of the worst restaurant ideas ever. The menu is pizza; the decor is Nazi, featuring lots of swastikas—“Hitler’s crosses”—and giant photos of Adolph Hitler. Fewer than 3,000 of India’s one billion people are Jewish, but protests led the restaurant’s owner, Punit Sabhlok, to consider changing the restaurant’s name and theme. “We wanted to be different,” he said. “This is one name that will stay in people’s minds.”

Location:
Taipei, Taiwan

Details:
Yes, it’s a toilet-themed restaurant. Diners sit on toilets and eat out of toilet-shaped bowls and plates. The interior of the restaurant is laid out with brightly colored bathroom tile, and the lights are shaped like urinals. The favorite menu item, says owner Eric Wang, is chocolate ice cream—probably because “it looks like the real thing.”

If you’re a fan of YouTube but you’re tired of sorting through millions of uploaded videos for something fresh, interesting, and (of course) odd, here’s a suggestion: Type “bait car” in the search window, press return, and enjoy the ride.

C
AR TROUBLE

In the winter of 2001, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, were battling a ring of thieves who were stealing as many as five Japanese sports cars a week from the parking lots of local golf courses, then stripping the cars to sell the parts. Auto theft is a difficult crime to fight: Stolen cars change hands so quickly that even if you catch someone driving one, it’s difficult to prove that they know it’s stolen, let alone prove they’re the one who stole it. You have to catch car thieves in the act, and that’s not easy because they tend to break into cars when there are no witnesses around. And because car theft is a property crime, not a violent crime like kidnapping, assault, or murder, there’s a limit to how much time and money police agencies can spend fighting it, especially when the odds of winning a conviction are so low. How low? Fewer than 15% of all car thefts end with the thief being jailed.

The Vancouver police department couldn’t spare enough officers to stake out every golf course in the city. If they were going to catch the crooks they’d have to find another way. Phil Ens, a Vancouver police officer assigned to auto-theft detail, had heard about a program in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where police were using “bait cars”—cars wired with hidden audio and video equipment and GPS tracking devices, then left where thieves were likely to steal them. Police could track a car using its GPS signal, then shut off the car’s engine by remote control as they moved in to make the arrest. The video evidence was then used to convict the thieves and send them to prison. The approach was effective: Auto thefts were down in Minneapolis, and prosecutors were winning convictions against longtime car thieves, thanks to the video evidence recorded by the bait cars. Even passengers in stolen cars were
going to jail as participants in the crimes. Ens approached the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), which sells auto insurance in the province, and Boomerang Tracking Solutions, which makes auto tracking devices, and talked them into helping fund a test of the bait-car concept in British Columbia.

Boomerang sent Ens an Acura Integra loaded with GPS tracking equipment and the remote-control device that allows police to shut off the engine. Ens added a hidden camera, a microphone, and a VCR. Then the police department placed the car in the parking lot of a local golf course…and made their first bait-car arrest just 45 minutes later.

ICBC was sold on the program—they decided to back it in a big way, donating recovered stolen cars to be wired up as bait cars and spending more than $500,000 a year to make them bait-car-ready. The provincial government of British Columbia agreed to pick up the rest of the tab, with the program to be administered by an interagency task force called the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT).