WHERE THE STARS GO
Those Hollywood celebrities—they’re just like us! (By which we mean they get themselves into embarrassing situations with toilets, restrooms, urinals, and the like.)
MAGNUM, PEE? AYE!
Even Tom Hanks, the world’s most likable movie star, can embarrass himself once in a while. In a 2013 interview, he recounted a moment he wished he could take back. At the 1998 Academy Awards, when nature called, he responded with a trip to the men’s room. “I found myself in the bathroom in a stall, next to Tom Selleck,” Hanks said, referring to the former star of Magnum, P.I., who was there in support of Oscar nominee Joan Cusack, his co-star In & Out. “So I leaned over and I said, ‘Looks like we’re a couple of peeing Toms.’ ” Hanks thought Selleck would find his wordplay (and his violation of the unspoken “code of silence” of men’s bathrooms) hilarious. He didn’t. “His angry silence is something I’ll never forget.”
MATERIALLY EXTREME
In 2008 Madonna’s concert tour took her to the Palais Nikaia, a concert hall in Nice, France. Apparently the Material Girl expects backstage areas to be as clean as possible, but she went the extra mile to make sure that it was very spotless. A person who worked at the hall revealed to the gossip magazine In Touch Weekly that, prior to her arrival for the performance, Madonna had a crew remove all of the toilets, sinks, and showers, scrub them thoroughly, and then reinstall them at the Palais Nikaia.
NO ONE POOPS LIKE GASTON
Before he became an action movie star and the guy who played Wolverine in the X-Men movies, Hugh Jackman was primarily a star of stage musical productions. In 1996 he starred as the villainous Gaston in an Australian production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The rigors of performing left him unhealthy, and he suffered from headaches and dehydration. Then one show day, he got diarrhea, too. He thought he’d passed a little gas while talking to reporters before the show, only to realize that he’d passed, well, more than that. Jackman threw out his underwear and had to rush on stage. He went “commando” for his performance that night, but his body kept sabotaging itself, well into his first musical number. “Literally I’m picking up Belle, and as I pick her up, I stopped singing and right in that moment I realized the muscles you need to release in order to sing are the ones you don’t want to release if you need to go,” he said on The Rachael Ray Show.
…but First Lady Grace Coolidge decided to keep her as a pet instead.
While touring Europe in March 2014, singer Drake treated himself and his entourage to a night on the town in a Glasgow, Scotland, nightclub called Cirque. Big stars often request a private room for their party, but Drake’s management also wanted exclusive use of the closest bathrooms, “and that happened to be the female one,” Cirque manager Mark Loney told reporters. The club agreed, so as soon as the star arrived, club staff cleared women out of the bathroom…even while they were still using it. “I don’t care who Drake is, or his toilet requirements, but it’s a basic right to be able to use the women’s toilets,” one woman said. “We were told that we could use the men’s. That’s disgusting.”
AN EVEN WORSE BRAND OF MCCARTHYISM
Before she was an actor and co-host of The View, Jenny McCarthy got her big break as a Playboy centerfold. The job requires lots of public appearances and “meet-and-greets.” One of those sessions is one she’ll never forget. “I once had really bad diarrhea at a Playboy autograph signing,” McCarthy said. “I was squeezed into a tight red dress, dripping in sweat, and knew something was not right.” She held it in as she posed with fan after fan, but after what seemed like an eternity, she’d had enough…and she didn’t make it to the restroom. “I was like, ‘Oh no, the demon is about to be unleashed,’ ” McCarthy recalls. “And it was unleashed for about 20 guys to witness.”
NOT THINKING OUT LOUD
British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is known for his sensitive, heartfelt songs about love and romance, such as “Shape of You,” “Perfect,” and “Thinking Out Loud.” He recently admitted that while playing in front of a receptive audience (he wouldn’t say where), he felt some gas build up in his undercarriage. He was playing with a band behind him, so he wasn’t worried about the noise factor and he let it rip. Big mistake: It wasn’t a fart, but rather its, um, gift-bearing cousin, the “shart” (figure it out). “It was midway through a performance, and I was really lively, and then halfway through I was like, all right,” Sheeran said. “I’m just gonna stand still for the rest of this performance and hope it’s over soon and then go home and throw these trousers out.”
A WORD ORIGIN
People in the Middle Ages were so afraid of one particularly large forest mammal that they wouldn’t even say its name. In fact, if it had a name, it’s been lost to history. Instead, the animal was referred to as bera, which in Old English meant “the brown one.” It’s from this that we get the modern word bear.
Automaker Ferruccio Lamborghini hated the clutch on his Ferrari. That’s what prompted him to start his own car company.