Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (84 page)

Don’t miss:
The “Run Like a Headless Chicken 5K Race.”

JUNE: Toe Wrestling Championships, England

Description:
Each June, competitors assemble in Staffordshire to lock big toes and try to force their opponent’s foot off of a custom-made podium known as a “toesrack.” If you think you can go toe-to-toe with one of the sport’s superstars, such as Alan “Nasty” Nash or Paul “Tominator” Beech, it’s free to join the competition. All you need are clean feet and strong ankles.

History:
Toe wrestling was invented in the 1970s by a group of
bored pubbers at Ye Olde Royal Oak Inn in Wetton, Derbyshire. Today it’s an internationally recognized sport, attracting big-name sponsors such as Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
Don’t miss:
Also in June and just a few hours’ drive away is the annual Summer Solstice Festival at Stonehenge, a celebration that’s much larger and, in many ways, weirder—but features little, if any, toe wrestling.

JULY: Boryeong Mud Festival, South Korea
Description:
At this festival, you can frolic in the mud with more than 1.5 million revelers in the coastal city of Boryeong. The six-day celebration attracts as many foreigners as locals, making it not only the largest festival in Korea, but also one of the biggest in the world. Enter the Mud King contest, enjoy a mud massage, ride on a mud slide into a giant tub of mud, and when you’re done, take a mud shower.

History:
This festival was founded in 1998 to take advantage of the town’s unusually silty soil. Because it isn’t suitable for agriculture, marketing-savvy civic leaders concocted a plan to push the mud’s beauty benefits. With high concentrations of germanium and other minerals, Boryeong mud is said to be great for the skin and hair.

Don’t miss:
The opportunity to take some of Boryeong home with you in the form of mud soap, mudpacks, and mud cosmetics for sale at the festival.

AUGUST: Burning Man, Nevada

Description:
Each year during the week before Labor Day, nearly 50,000 people gather in the Black Rock Desert, a flat tract of fine sand 80 miles north of Reno. But don’t expect to be able to buy supplies there; the only things for sale at Burning Man are coffee and bags of ice, both available at what’s known as “Center Camp.” Everything else—food, water, fuel, tents—you have to bring yourself. You’ll also need some very sturdy tent poles to keep your homestead secure during one of the inevitable dust storms and wind gusts that often blow over 50 mph. And during the day, the temperature regularly tops 100°F; at night, it can drop down to the 30s. Why put yourself through all of that? To see mechanical fire-breathing dragons lurch by on hydraulic legs, or take a ride on a life-size clipper ship sailing over the sand, or just get to know the thousands of artists, performers, and ordinary people who make Burning Man an annual pilgrimage. Plus there are 24-hour dance parties, live music from all over the world, a Thunderdome (just like the one from
Mad Max
), and the ceremonial burning of the 40-foot-tall Man on Saturday night.

Montana hosts six different “Testicle Festivals” each year. Participants dine on bull testicles
.

History:
In 1986 two friends from San Francisco, Larry Harvey and Jerry James, went to a nearby beach and built an 8-foot-tall wooden man—and a wooden dog—and burned them. Inspired by the crowd that had gathered to watch their “spontaneous act of radical self-expression,” they did it again the following year. More people came. The next year, even
more
people came. Finally, it got too big for the beach. After a long search, in 1991 the organizers moved the event to the Black Rock Desert.
Don’t miss:
The chance to take part in Burning Man’s “gifting society.” Bring extra trinkets and supplies to give away to other attendees.

SEPTEMBER: Sputnikfest, Wisconsin

Description:
Enjoy the fried cheese, cold beer, and friendly people dressed as big-eyed aliens, and see local celebrities get soaked in the “Splashdown” dunk tank.

History:
Around 5:30 in the morning on September 5, 1962, hundreds of early risers in northern Wisonsin reported a spectacular sight: dozens of bright, burning objects streaking throught the clear dawn sky. Around the same time, two patrolmen in the town of Manitowoc noticed a strange object in the middle of a street: a 20-pound chunk of metal that had embedded itself in the pavement. They went to remove it—but it was too hot to touch. It turned out to be a piece of
Sputnik IV
, a Russian satellite that had gone off course shortly after it was launched two years earlier, and had finally disintegrated in the skies over Wisconsin. In 2008 the town decided to turn the odd incident into a reason for a celebration—and Sputnikfest was born.

Don’t miss:
The tinfoil-suit fashion show, the “Miss Space Debris” beauty contest, and for the kids, the Alien Autopsy Room.

OCTOBER: Phuket Vegetarian Festival, Thailand
Description:
Squeamish? Then stay far, far away from this festival. Every autumn, Chinese and Thai religious devotees called
Mah Song
parade through Phuket’s streets in trance-like states, their bodies pierced with, among other things, bicycle wheels, saw blades, and metal skewers of varying sizes—all protruding into and out of their arms, legs, noses, lips, ears, and eyebrows. There’s also hot-coal firewalking and a ladder made of sharpened blades. Why? The Mah Song believe that those who are truly devoted feel little, if any, pain, and aren’t left with scars. You don’t have to participate in the self-mutilation, but like the Mah Song, you’re asked to adhere to a vegetarian diet all week. Luckily, that’s not hard because the festival’s food is excellent.

World’s youngest lion tamer: 8-year-old Jorge Elich, of the Circus Paris. He works unassisted
.

History:
In the 1820s, when Phuket tin miners and their families were suffering from a malaria epidemic, a traveling opera company from China came to the area. The singers also caught malaria, but for 10 days, they ate nothing but vegetables and performed religious ceremonies. To the surprise of the miners, the performers recovered from the illness much more quickly than the locals did. The opera singers taught the rituals to the townspeople, and within a year the malaria epidemic had ceased. The festival keeps the tradition alive today, though it’s unclear how the self-mutilation became part of the festivities.

Don’t miss:
The ear-plug vendors. In addition to being one of the world’s most unusual festivals, it’s also one of the loudest. Drums and firecrackers are sounded all week long to scare away evil spirits.

NOVEMBER: The Quiet Festival, New Jersey
Description:
One of the activities at this low-key festival in Ocean City: hearing a pin drop. You can also try your hand at a group whispering session, enter a yawn-off, and take as many naps as you like. It’s one of the smallest and most obscure festivals in the world (only a few dozen people participated in 2009), and also offers silent movies, a sign-language choir, and mimes.
History:
“I’ve been tired for about 40 years now,” says Mark Soifer, 72, who organized the first Quiet Festival for stressed-out people in 1989. “I feel uniquely qualified to represent the millions of tired folks in this nation and the world.” By day, Soifer works as Ocean City’s publicist, but he’s also the president of the National Association of Tired People (NAP), which sponsors the event.
Don’t miss:
The “windchime symphony.”

Oxford scientists have discovered a way to implant artificial memories in the brains of fruitflies
.

DECEMBER: Night of the Radishes, Mexico
Description:
Each December 23rd, this pre-Christmas celebration features the most elaborate radish sculptures in the world. Skilled artisans gather in Oaxaca City for
La Noche de Rábanos
to show off their pink-and-white sculptures of saints, Nativity scenes, conquistadors, and animals. And these are no ordinary radishes, but giant ones, some measuring 1½ feet long and weighing seven pounds. The festival lasts only one night because after that, the artwork starts to rot.

History:
Spanish monks brought radishes to Mexico in the 16th century and encouraged the locals to grow them—and also to carve them. The elaborate veggie sculptures have been a tradition ever since. The Night of the Radishes officially began in 1897, thanks to Oaxaca’s mayor, Francisco Vasconcelos Flores, who wanted to preserve this unique cultural heritage (and sell more radishes to tourists).

Don’t miss:
After the judging has ended and a champion radishartist has been named, fireworks light up the sky.

WELCOME HOME!

Congratulations! Now that you’ve dodged camel spit in Turkey, splattered your friends with oranges in Italy, devoured fried lamb testicles in New Zealand, danced around the Maypole in Scotland, run around like a chicken with your head cut off in Colorado, wrestled toe to toe in England, frolicked in the mud in South Korea, sailed on a ship through the Nevada desert, performed an alien autopsy in Wisconsin, traversed hot coals in Thailand, made windchime music in New Jersey, and sculpted a radish saint in Mexico, you can take a month or two off.

Or…you could catch a quick flight to Russia and participate in a truly surreal New Year’s party: At Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, a hole is cut into the ice and divers haul the New Year Tree more than 100 feet below the surface. After you get your picture taken with Russian folk heroes Father Frost and the Ice Maiden, you plunge into the depths where you’ll celebrate the night SCUBA-dancing among the sparkling lights of the New Year Tree.

Then
you can dry off, warm up, fly home…and take that well-deserved sabbatical.

Michael Jackson & Raquel Welch had something in common: Both reportedly bathed in bottled water
.

ODDS AND ENDS

With the emphasis on “odd.”

•
In September
2008, Santiago Cabrera woke up in his Fresno, California, home when he “felt something hit him in the face,” according to the subsequent police report. He looked up to see “an unknown male bent over him. The male continued to strike him in the face and head area with a sausage.” The assailant—who really
was
hitting Cabrera with a sausage—then took off his pants and ran out of the house. Police found the man’s identification in the pants he’d left behind, and Antonio Vasquez Jr., 21, was arrested a short time later. “I tell you,” said Fresno police officer Ian Burrimond, “this was one weird case.” (The sausage couldn’t be used as evidence; amid the confusion, Cabrera’s dog ate it.)

•
Prena Thomas
of Lakeland, Florida, has something unusual in her freezer: a 33-year-old snowball. She made it in 1977 during a rare Florida snowstorm and kept it as a memento. “It’s just like a little pet,” she says, and she occasionally takes it out of the freezer to look at it.

•
British television
personality Myleene Klass, 31, was appearing on the reality show
I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!
in Costa Rica in 2009 when she had to call for help one night from her hotel room. The problem? She’d sprayed herself with insect repellent, which had reacted with the varnish on the bed’s wooden frame—and one of her hands had gotten stuck to the wood. Staff had to slowly peel Klass off the frame to free her (which was, many agreed, more entertaining than the reality show).

•
Jonathon Guabello
, 29, of Fort Myers, Florida, and his girlfriend came home from a bar one night in October 2008. Guabello wanted to have sex, but his girlfriend wasn’t in the mood…so Guabello shot himself in the arm twice, then tripped over the oven door, hit his head, and passed out. His girlfriend called the police; Guabello was arrested for threatening violence and firing a weapon in an occupied dwelling, and faces several years in prison.

In 2007 Gibson Guitar launched a Les Paul Robot Guitar that can tune itself
.

Two men
burst into a home in Plant City, Florida, late one night in December 2008. One of the men held a knife to the throat of the homeowner…and demanded an eggbeater. The homeowner found an eggbeater and gave it to him. Robert Eugene Thompson and Taurus Deshane Morris were arrested a short time later on burglary and aggravated assault charges. The eggbeater was found in Thompson’s back pocket and returned to the victim.

In January 2010
, police arrested Carlos Laurel, 31, and Andre Hardy, 39, on drug charges in Kingston, Pennsylvania. Police reports noted dryly that Laurel and Hardy had 50 bags of crack cocaine in their possession.