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5 Country Stars Who Got Fried in the Food Business Posted: 27 Mar 2009 12:27 AM PDT Minnie Pearl's Fried Chicken In 1967, Nashville attorney John Jay Hooker convinced Grand Ole Opry comedienne Minnie Pearl that she could sell more drumsticks than Colonel Sanders. After all, Minnie Pearl seemed like the sort of lady who'd have a good family recipe for fried chicken. Unfortunately, she didn't. But that didn't stop Hooker from selling franchises. Within no time, plans were in place for 300 restaurants and public stock was worth $64 million. Meanwhile, no one seemed worried that only five restaurants were actually operating and that no two franchises used the same fried chicken recipe. Regular customer complaints, combined with an SEC investigation into the company's accounting practices, meant that it wasn't long before the restaurants began hemorrhaging money. By late 1971, the last bird had been fried. Hooker spent decades living down the debacle, while Pearl continued to apologize to her fans right up until her death in 1996. (Photo: ghb624 [Flickr]) Twitty Burger Singer Conway Twitty dreamed of a restaurant chain that would one day hawk Twitty Burgers - a hamburger topped with cheese, two slices of bacon, and a deep-fried, graham cracker-crusted pineapple ring. In 1969, Conway persuaded his friends to invest $100,000 in his cholesterol-rich scheme. But the Twitty Burger never found its audience, and mismanagement led to the chain's swift demise. When Conway decided to repay his investors, he deduced $100,000 as a business expense on his tax returns. (Another bad idea.) The IRS soon caught wind, and Twitty wound up in court. Lucky for him, he was assigned to Judge Leo Irwin, an amateur singer with a soft spot for country. Not only did Irwin allow Twitty to keep the money, but after he read the verdict, he sang a song he wrote entitled "Ode to Conway Twitty." (Image: Conway Twitty's album Gold) PoFolks When singer Whisperin' Bill Anderson visited PoFolks in 1981, he had lawsuits on his mind. After all, the restaurant chain had swiped the title of his biggest hit and the name of his road band. But the owner's hospitality - combined with all the fried food - weakened Anderson's resolve. By the end of the meal, he'd agreed to become PoFolk's national spokesman. As Anderson did PoFolks commercials and even became a partner in several franchises, the chain's prospects grew. He even convinced his pal Conway Twitty to become an investor (apparently the Twitty Burger debacle didn't faze him). At its height, individual PoFolks restaurants were grossing $2 million a year. But careless expansion took its toll, and by 1989, PoFolks was headed for the PoHouse. The chain rebounded in 1991, but without Anderson. Today, there are nine remaining restaurants, mostly in Florida. (Photo: Runder [Flickr]) Kenny Rogers' Roasters In a Seinfeld episode called "The Chicken Roaster," Newman gets Kramer hooked on chicken from Kenny Rogers' Roasters. "The man makes a pretty strong bird," Newman says. True enough. Founded in 1991 by Rogers and former KFC owner John Brown Jr., the Roasters' menu featured wood-fired rotisserie chicken. By 1995, the chain had grown to 350 restaurants worldwide. While Rogers was an affable spokesman, he didn't know his brand. In 1997, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Rogers failed a blind taste test, choosing chicken from the NBC cafeteria instead of Roasters'. That may have been a sign. The company filed for bankruptcy a year later, meaning that Kenny didn't know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Jimmy Dean Sausages Jimmy Dean Sausage was a hit from its first sizzle in 1969. Most manufacturers at the time made sausage from old sows and chilled the pork before shipping it. But the country music star had a different vision. Jimmy Dean decided to only use top hogs and package the product while it was still warm. The tender, juicy result went on to gross nearly $60 million a year. While running the company with his brother, Dean pitched his product on TV, singing of sausage "from the whole hawg, not just the leavin's." Amazingly, those leavin's didn't go to waste, either. The inner skins were donated to burn treatment centers, while the outer skins were fashioned into coats for Dean's spin-off company, Pigskin. Other spare parts were turned into cat food. But trouble soon surfaced in hog heaven. The company expanded too fast, and unsophisticated accounting practices and manufacturing equipments couldn't keep up. When the stress started taking a toll on Jimmy Dean's health, he sold the company in 1984. Despite the change in ownership, Jimmy stood by his product and kept his job as pitchman for another 20 years. The article above, written by Bill DeMain, is reprinted with permission from Scatterbrained section of the Mar/Apr 2009 issue of mental_floss magazine. Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff!

VideoSift Clips of the Week Posted: 26 Mar 2009 11:38 PM PDT (Links open in a new browser window/tab) The View From the Intl Space Station Window This short but fantastic video clip is of the view from the Space Shuttle Endeavour's left window looking at the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) of the International Space Shuttle. Link Ying-Yang Twins on Cribs - Translated Does anyone understand what rappers Kaine and D-Roc of the Ying-Yang Twins (shouldn't that be Yin Yang?) are talking about. So thankfully, the guys over at Tasty Booze blog stepped in to translate. While you laugh at their expense, keep this in mind: they probably make more in a week than we all do in a year. Sad, ain't it? Link While watching this, I had an epiphany about MTV Cribs - the jerky camera work is to distract you from how bad the show actually is! Either that or this is how the younger generation actually see the world, and if so God saves us all. If you liked that, then you'll love this: Freestyle Rap Battle Translated into Plain English Men in Black Bloopers I know that it's been a while since MIB hit the silver screen - but this blooper outtakes are just as funny as the film itself. What a neat blast from the past: Link A Ventriloquist and Her Monkey This one is NSFW (strong language), but it's very funny: here's British actress and comedian Nina Conti performing ventriloquism with her sarcastic and profane puppet monkey Monk. Link (Interestingly, YouTube removed a video "due to terms of use violation" from her own website - what's up with that?) Iron Man vs Bruce Lee Who will win? Iron man or the Little Dragon? Regardless of who wins, one thing is for sure: French Canadian filmmaker Patrick Boivin, the man behind this short clip, sure knows how to make an excellent stop motion animation! Link For more the web's most interesting videos, check out: VideoSift.

Pull Up Your Pants Day Posted: 26 Mar 2009 12:50 PM PDT Teachers Diana Carter and Dona McKenzie are fed up with their students wearing clown trousers - y’know, pants that sag to their bums - so they came up with this: "Pull Up Your Pants Day." Following in the footsteps of President Obama, who last year told MTV that "brothers should pull up their pants," the school is encouraging kids to hide the underwear and hike up their trousers. The day was devised by two teachers, Diana Carter and Dona McKenzie, who had become frustrated with the low-hanging look in the school’s hallways. The two even managed to get a Pompano Beach Wal-Mart to donate belts for teachers to hand out to offenders. "The young men need to be educated based upon where it originated from, which it came from our prisons," McKenzie said. "They need to be aware of how they’re looking when they’re out and walking around, how people perceive them." Link (Photo: Eleventh Earl of Mar [Flickr])

Dear AIG: I Quit! Posted: 26 Mar 2009 12:49 PM PDT In the ongoing saga of the economic crisis, AIG has been squarely portrayed as the villains. Everybody piled on the bandwagon of villifying the greed and brazenness of their multi-million dollar bonuses (yes, including this blog). But is that the full and true story? Here’s a letter published in the Opinion section of The New York Times - it’s a resignation letter, actually, sent by Jake DeSantis, an executive VP of the AIG’s much maligned Financial Products unit, explaining why he quit: I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage. After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself. I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down. Link (Photo: jdiggans [Flickr])

Undercover Substitute Teacher Reprimanded for Covertly Filming School’s Deficiencies Posted: 26 Mar 2009 12:48 PM PDT Substitute science teacher Alex Dolan took covert footage of students in London and Leeds to document and uncover deficiencies in the local school system. And what did she get for her trouble? Why, she was found guilty of professional misconduct, of course! Didn’t she ever heard of the adage "no good deeds go unpunished?" Alex Dolan recorded the footage covertly at four schools in London and Leeds in 2005, exposing apparent attempts by the school to dupe Ofsted inspectors. A General Teaching Council panel found her guilty of taking advantage of pupils, breaching their trust – and that of colleagues – and abusing her position. Dolan was praised at a hearing of the panel last week for showing integrity, and acting as a whistleblower to expose conditions in the schools in which she had taught. But in its judgment, the panel said it did not accept that the public interest issues raised by the film Undercover Teacher justified the use of covert filming. Link - via Arbroath

Why “Expert” Advice Suddenly Makes Us Stupid Posted: 26 Mar 2009 12:46 PM PDT It’s long been known that if you want someone to do something (especially if that "something" is contrary to what they’re likely to do in the first place), give them an "expert" advice. But why is that? Emory University Neuroscientist Greg Berns and colleagues have found the answer: a brain-scanning study of people making financial choices found that when given the so-called expert advice, the decision-making parts of their brains often shut down. In the study, Berns’ team hooked 24 college students to brain scanners as they contemplated swapping a guaranteed payment for a chance at a higher lottery payout. Sometimes the students made the decision on their own. At other times they received written advice from Charles Noussair, an Emory University economist who advises the U.S. Federal Reserve. Though the recommendations were delivered under his imprimatur, Noussair himself wouldn’t necessarily follow it. The advice was extremely conservative, often urging students to accept tiny guaranteed payouts rather than playing a lottery with great odds and a high payout. But students tended to follow his advice regardless of the situation, especially when it was bad. When thinking for themselves, students showed activity in their anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — brain regions associated with making decisions and calculating probabilities. When given advice from Noussair, activity in those regions flat lined. Link

30 Simple Tricks that Make You Look Smart Posted: 26 Mar 2009 10:47 AM PDT Who can’t use a few tricks up their sleeve when in a pinch? I’ve already used the dollar as a rule hint this week. Pretty awesome. Look like a genius using these secrets for navigating everyday life Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.

15 Vintage Household Ads Posted: 26 Mar 2009 10:44 AM PDT Kitch and nostalgia abound. Definitely got a kick looking at these! Favorite? "Weighting only 8 lbs" to describe the portable TV of the future.  Household chores may never feel effortless, but appliances that make our day-to-day lives easier have definitely come a long way over the decades. Take a fun look back at vintage ads that tout then-innovative inventions, such as the gas range, electric broom, portable television and more! Link From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ahammel.

Earthrise 1966 Posted: 26 Mar 2009 08:03 AM PDT The first photograph of Earthrise was taken in 1966 by NASA’s robotic probe Lunar Orbiter 1. After the Apollo manned lunar missions brought back better pictures, the original image and other priceless photographs stored on 2-inch tape were dumped into storage and forgotten. In the 70s, NASA hired Nancy Evans to look after their archives. Evans was appalled that a lot of the space agency’s original data was regularly dumped to save on storage costs. When the clerk came in to ask about the Lunar Orbiter tapes, she didn’t hesitate. “Do not destroy those tapes,” Evans commanded. She talked her bosses at JPL into storing them in a lab warehouse. “I could not morally get rid of this stuff,” said Evans, 71, in an interview at her Sun Valley home. She had no idea what she was letting herself in for. The full collection of Lunar Orbiter data amounted to 2,500 tapes. Assembled on pallets, they constituted an imposing monolith 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and 6 feet high. The mountain of tapes was just part of Evans’ new burden. There was no point, she realized, in preserving the tapes unless she also had an FR-900 Ampex tape drive to read them. But only a few dozen of the machines had been made for the military. The $330,000 tape drives were electronic behemoths, each 7 feet tall and weighing nearly a ton. The L.A. Times has the story of how Evans fought bureaucracy and outmoded technology for 30 years to preserve the 1966 pictures. Link -via Metafilter Also see a post with photographs that follow the story of the recovery. Link (image credit: NASA)

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