Truth is stranger than fiction
Do you want to play a game?
(Man, the “Saw” movies make that a fun thing to say…)
Below are three offbeat, strange or weird stories from this week. Can you guess which ones are true and which are made up? I’ll give you the answer at the end of the column.
The Burger King
of the Road
“Honey, get the door, it’s the Burger King!”
You read that correctly: The nation’s number two burger company (and only beef royalty) is experimenting with home delivery in eight restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. The USA Today reported this week that the company will bring you a Whopper and fries for a $2 delivery charge, as long as you live within a 10-minute drive of the participating store.
(No word whether or not the plastic-faced King will do the delivering, like in those creepy commercials from a few years ago.)
While you might think that a delivery guy schlepping your burgers to your house might make them cold and soggy, Burger King says fear not. The company says it has developed “proprietary thermal packaging technology,” which will keep your food hot and fresh from store to door.
If all goes well in the test run, Burger King says it is looking to expand delivery to other areas.
The Super Sensitive School District
A Utah school district is overruling a student-chosen mascot choice because they’re afraid it would be insensitive.
The offensive mascot choice? The Cougars.
The CBS affiliate in Las Vegas reported this week that Canyons School District is afraid that the name Cougars is disrespectful to women because in pop culture, a cougar is “a sexually aggressive middle-aged woman who attracts younger men.”
The district reached this conclusion despite the fact that the animal cougar is quite popular in Utah, with nearby ultra conservative Brigham Young University carrying the monicker.
The school board prefers the district’s teams take on the name “Charger.”
The Case of
the Swiped Shoes
Michael Jordan built a global brand with the shoe brand Air Jordan, and a Charlotte, N.C., man spent about a decade collecting them.
That is until thieves broke into his house overnight and stole his entire collection, which he says is worth more than $10,000.
A North Carolina television station reported this week that the burglars came in through the bedroom window and made off with the shoes, even though they were hidden. (How you hide $10,000 worth of shoes is beyond me.) “I was upset,” he told WCNC-TV. “All that hard work to get them, getting in all those lines.”
Adding insult to injury? The crooks took off with a collection of hats that matched the shoes. The man’s large dog was locked in the home’s garage at the time of the break-in.
Police do not have any suspects (or an explanation as to how 30 pairs of shoes can be worth $10,000).
If you guessed that the Burger King delivery story was fake, you’re wrong. In fact, none of them is fake. Hey, I just said ‘can you guess which ones were made up’ — not that any of them were.
Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.