Bar El Cruce, Tibás, Costa Rica

From the outside, El Cruce appears to be a classic hole in the wall.

On the inside, El Cruce is not much more fun than visiting terminally ill elders in the hospital.

Bar El Cruce in Tibás is one of those places we've driven past several times, always wondering what's inside, imagining the most deliciously horrid shithole of a bar, filled with the most depraved scum society can offer. So we were greatly disappointed when discovering that, despite its uninviting exterior, it's just a regular bar with no personality and no ambition. A few middle aged people, only half drunk, watching the news on one of the TV screens. No hysterical hookers stabbing customers, no shady business going on in dark corners. A terrible disappointment indeed.

Restaurante El Oporto, San Francisco de Heredia

Food Poisoning Scandal at Restaurant El Oporto, Heredia
Guests were served poisonous fish and then overcharged.
Archive photo, not taken at Oporto. WC at el Oporto is filthier.
Not real #2 at the picture, but an illustrative substance made of beans.

What you see on the picture above is what happens to your WC if you should eat at rest. Oporto. It has the looks and prices of a fancy restaurant, but cheap plastic chairs, bad service and food that is not only tasteless, but also, as it turns out, poisonous. The IWCRP delegation ordered grilled tuna, and half way into the small and extremely overcooked fish, we started experiencing the first symptoms of histamine poisoning.
Quoting the Nutrition Research Newsletter (May, 2001), symptoms of histamine poisoning include rash, facial flushing, vomiting, diarrhea, dyspnea, a tightness of the throat, headache, or a metallic or peppery taste in the mouth. Within the next 24 hours, we had been through the whole list, and it kept going for almost a week.
Histamines are produced when tuna is decomposing or if it's kept in room temperature for long periods of time. Of course, accidents happen, but the official IWCRP theory is that the chef was fully aware that this tuna was bad, for two reasons:
1. Tuna was the chef's special that night, which, according to our sources in the restaurant business, means that they have to sell it quickly before it starts to smell.
2. It was so ridiculously overcooked that no sane, self-respecting chef would serve it unless it was made in an intent to kill bacterias and taste. Sadly, though, histamines survive high temperatures.

Conclusion: Never ever eat at the Rest. Oporto, it's a horrible, horrible place in every way and you may end up dead.

It's the Arts! 22

Our contacts in Hollywood keep sending us promotional material and all kinds of bribes, so we decided to make another "It's the Arts!", thus making millions for ourselves and the movie corporations.

It's the Arts! 22.1:
The Movies

Zack and Miri make a Porno

We expected a lot more WCs in this film, given that the adolescent comedy genre is one of the genres with the highest percentage of WC appearances. We were, however, greatly disappointed. This may not be such a bad thing, though, as the way WCs are portrayed in this kind of films is rather silly and one-dimentional. Cheap laughs galore for the brainless crowds. The only WC appearance in the film is the one we can see above, where Zack has to use toilet water to wash Miri's hair after the water is shut off in their apartment. Instead of silly toilet jokes, the film satisfies its target population by using the word "fuck" a lot.

Ariel

The finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki makes excellent films about people who find themselves in less than ideal conditions in life, depressing in a very funny way. Here's a scene from Ariel (1988) where Taisto Kasurinen is preparing to break out from jail. Behind him, the prison WC with Taisto's Birthday cake on it.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The lady needs to call her little son because the world is about to come to an end, and cellphone coverage will likely be harder to find. Untill then, what better place to say good bye than inside a WC cubicle?

Step Brothers

Sword fight between Ferrell and Reilly

On this picture, the lady takes a whizz after having sex in the men's room

Step Brothers is another one of those films you rent only because it's likely to show a lot of WCs, but in the end it did not have a lot of them. Shame on the filmmakers.

The Cottage

Close-up picture of blond girl with big tits tied up and sitting on the toilet with her pants on her knees. That description should get a lot of our googling, fellow human beings to visit our blog.

Role Models

In "Role Models", they intend to make us laugh by implying that it's possible to urinate a green liquid if you drink too much of a green energy drink. According to the algoritmical IWCRP scientific standards measuring the objective funniness of WC related jokes, this is a cheap joke.

Rendition

In Rendition, Jake Gyllenhaal is a CIA agent whose task is to spy on middle eastern women in the bathroom. Of course, it all goes wrong and he ends up fleeing the country with a mentally unstable man.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

The young lady depicted above has an accident during her visit to a bus station WC, and has to do the Trainspotting Trick in order to retrieve her cellphone and her chewing gum.

Milk

It's well known that public bathrooms is a favourite concept amongst homosexual men. In Milk, Sean Penn's character visits a WC with no less than three urinals placed within arms length of each other.

Martyrs

Yet another film with sadistic torture as its main ingredient. We're used to watching torture now and want to see interesting WCs instead. Martyrs goes wild with the torture, but the basic idea of the film (why all these people are being mistreated) is just so damn silly that when you find out, it feels more terrible and disturbing than having to watch 99 minutes of meaningless violence.

Das Leben der Anderen

A great film, this one, despite its bizarre lack of WCs. The IWCRP board of filmexperts finds it exceedingly hard to believe a story involving only one not very visible WC for 137 minutes.

La Zona

A good Mexican film with Mexican themes like social segregation, corruption and WCs.

Gone Baby Gone

The title refers to this scene, where the man is playing hide and seek in the dark with his WC. As we can observe, both the man and the WC are practically invisible; they appear to be "gone". Clever.

Fatso

This scene from the Norwegian film Fatso shows a lovely decorated Norwegian bathroom and a man who, judging by the outfit, appears to be this great nation's king.

Evan Almighty

Despite some slightly funny scenes and a WC, this film is just way too eager to please stupid children and their easily offended religious parents. God is portrayed as a friendly old man who does not mind dancing a silly dance with Steve Carrell, who for some reason dances the silly dance a million times throughout the film, the problem is that it's not funny silly, it's stupid and annoying silly. The film is just another boring, moralistic family values flick, and leaves the comic potential of a man talking to god completely untouched. If you want a seriously good film based on biblical references, The Life of Brian is still number one. Amen.

Dear Zachary

Incredibly sad and enfuriating documentary of a death foretold. A filmmaker decides to memorialize a murdered friend when his friend's ex-girlfriend announces she is expecting his son. From there on, everything goes to hell, big time.

Dogs and Toilets 1:
Gran Torino

Gran Torino is about this dog's search for a drink of water. As we can see in the background, his first choice of water source has a lid on it, so he looks into the bathtub and finds a naked, old and grumpy Clint Eastwood soaking in what is clearly unfit as drinking water.

Dogs and Toilets 2:
Bolt

Well made film with a more intelligent approach to WC related jokes than usual.

Appaloosa

Appaloosa was the wild west's prequel to Lollapaloosa and other modern day music festivals, where there are no rules except that you have to piss where you stand in order not to lose your spot by the bar.

It's the Arts! 22.2:
The Series

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is one of our favourite series of all times, all the way up there with the Sopranos. A very good script, excellent direction and actors and, most importantly, plenty of WCs. The toilets' function is similar to the one they had in Pulp Fiction; that of being an ominous sign. Nothing good ever happens near a WC in Breaking Bad, not as much as a healthy fart.

30 Rock

Tina Fey accurately portraying the WCs place in today's popular culture. Like the fake nose, the rubber chicken and the ugly suspenders, the WC is often used as something you can simply show people for a cheap laugh, no need for intelligent humour.

The Simpsons

A classic which needs no further comments.

Two and a Half Men

Although it's getting predictable and Jake's not cute any more, Two and a Half Men is still a decent way to waste half an hour on the couch.

It's the Arts! 22.3:
Unknown Soldiers

For our 22nd edition of It's the Arts! we hired 273 japanese workaholics to see through as many films as possible for eight months in order to identify the unknown soldiers. Nevertheless, two pictures were returned unidentified. This, of course, is a great shame in japanese culture. We have sent 273 pencils and pencil sharpeners to Japan in order to show that there are no hard feelings despite their shameful failure.

As always, we'll give $10.000 to whoever manages to identify the films from which these pictures are taken.