Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Read online

  But Wait: In 2003 reruns of the show found an audience on “Adult Swim”—the late-night block of adult-oriented cartoons on cable TV’s Cartoon Network. Suddenly, Family Guy was a big hit. In the 18–49 demographic (which advertisers and networks most want to reach), the show routinely beat The Tonight Show and Late Show with David Letterman, with an average of two million total viewers. On top of that, Family Guy DVD sets were the top TV sellers of 2003, moving three million copies. And so, in an unprecedented move, Fox brought the series back. Family Guy returned to the air in 2005, where it’s been a top-20 hit ever since.

  The production of a single chicken egg requires about 120 gallons of water.

  Program: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  The End: The critically acclaimed but little-watched show about a teenage girl who fights off pure evil aired on the teen-oriented WB network. After languishing in the ratings for five seasons, the WB cancelled Buffy in spring 2001. Writers wrapped up the show’s extensive mythology by having Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) die.

  But Wait: UPN bought the series and resurrected it in fall 2001. What about the dead main character? No problem! (It’s a show about the undead, after all.) Buffy’s friends use magic spells to raise her from the dead and pull her out of Heaven, which gives Buffy severe depression for the better part of the season. Despite a loyal cult following, the show’s ratings never improved. It was cancelled in 2003.

  Program: Scrubs

  The End: This hospital sitcom ran on NBC from 2001 until 2008, when the network cancelled it due to low ratings (it ranked 115th for the year). ABC picked up the show, but ratings for the eighth season were even worse, so the network ordered the show’s producers to prepare a final episode. The big ending aired in May 2009 with the on-again/off-again relationship of Drs. Dorian (Zach Braff) and Reid (Sarah Chalke) happily resolved and with every major guest star and minor character in the show’s run making an appearance. Dorian and Reid move away, everyone says goodbye, show over.

  But Wait: ABC needed midseason replacement shows for the 2009–10 season, so despite having aired its final show, Scrubs was renewed for 13 more episodes. Creator Bill Lawrence completely revamped the show, setting it in a new location (a medical school) and with an almost completely new cast. It didn’t help. Only about half of the Scrubs viewers from the previous season returned (3.8 million vs. 5.6 million), and ABC aired all 13 episodes in just a few weeks.

  All spider species make silk, but only about half spin webs to catch prey.

  LOST (AND FOUND)

  ALBUMS

  Not every album that gets recorded—even ones by the most popular musicians—gets released to the public. For a variety of reasons, a project may get shelved indefinitely…or forever. But luckily, sometimes they do get to see the light of day. Here are a few albums that once were lost, but now are found.

  ALBUM: Finian’s Rainbow soundtrack (1954)

  LOST: Finian’s Rainbow was a hit Broadway musical—it ran for nearly two years, winning two Tony Awards, and originating the standards “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” and “Old Devil Moon.” The plot: An Irish immigrant moves to the South and buries a pot of gold near Fort Knox, believing it will magically multiply, all the while trying to avoid the leprechaun from whom he stole the treasure. In 1954 a former Disney animator named John Hubley began production on an animated film version of Finian’s Rainbow and lined up top talent to provide voices and music, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Nine songs were recorded before the production’s financial backers ran into tax trouble and the film project was canceled.

  FOUND: In 2002 Hubley’s widow, Faith Hubley, discovered a low-quality acetate copy of the Finian’s Rainbow songs, recorded off the original master tapes (which have never surfaced). Narration was recorded in 1954, and that was on the master tapes, not on Hubley’s copy. But the nine songs were, and they were released on the 2002 box set Frank Sinatra in Hollywood (1940–1964).

  ALBUM: Marvin Gaye, The Ballads (1979)

  LOST: Gaye was one of Motown’s top-selling artists, and a dominant soul singer in America by the late 1960s. But what he really wanted to be was a jazz and torch-song singer. Motown let him try three times: The Soulful Moods (1961), When I’m Alone I Cry (1964), and Hello Broadway (1964) were all jazz and show-tune albums, and all sold poorly. Another attempt in 1968 was canceled halfway through recording. Gaye returned to his pop career until 1977, when he decided to take another shot at jazzy torch songs, recording The Ballads in his home studio. Included were “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “She Needs Me,” and “Why Did I Choose You.” Gaye convinced Motown to release it in 1979, but changed his mind and released a disco-tinged gospel album instead. The Ballads was never released; Gaye died in 1984.

  Found: Columbia, Gaye’s label at the time of his death, worked with Motown to obtain Gaye’s never-released jazz recordings from 1968, along with tracks from the late-’70s sessions. The cobbling of those two sets (seven songs, plus alternate takes of three of those songs) was released in 1997 as Vulnerable. The cover featured a simple black-and-white portrait of Gaye, a leftover from the photo shoot for his 1971 classic, What’s Going On.

  Guitar heroes: 20% of Americans have played in a band at some time in their lives.

  Album: The Beatles, Get Back (1969)

  Lost: In 1969 Paul McCartney decided that after several albums full of multitracked studio wizardry (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The White Album), the Beatles’ next record should be a return to the simple, blues-based, pared-down rock ’n’ roll of their early years—songs that could even be performed live, unlike their more recent technically intricate work. So the band convened to make an album McCartney appropriately titled Get Back, and invited a camera crew to make a documentary film of the process, also to be titled Get Back. The crew caught the Beatles in what would turn out to be the band’s final days. McCartney and John Lennon frequently clashed over the direction of the music, and George Harrison walked out of a session one day, vowing never to return (although he did). It was so taxing that the Get Back sessions went untouched for a year, until early 1970, when EMI Records forced the band to finish the album. Lennon decided to hire famed producer Phil Spector, whose first order of business was to change the name of the album (and the film) to Let It Be. Spector’s vision contrasted sharply with McCartney’s. He gave the songs an intricate, lush, sweeping orchestral sound, not the simple one McCartney had planned. McCartney hated it, and this dispute directly led to the breakup of the Beatles in April 1970, just one month before Let It Be was released. The original Get Back tapes were abandoned and locked away in a vault.

  At one time, denture makers added uranium to false teeth to give them a “healthy” glow.

  Found: In 2001 McCartney met with Let It Be film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to discuss issuing the film on DVD for the first time, and the conversation turned to the creation of a companion album, but the way McCartney had meant to do Get Back, stripped of Spector’s influence. After getting approval from surviving bandmates Ringo Starr and George Harrison, McCartney hired audio engineers to assemble the album from the original tapes. They were digitally cleaned up and remastered and released in 2003 as the guitar/bass/drums/piano-only Let It Be…Naked. The album was a hit, selling a million copies in the United States.

  Album: Chicago, Chicago XXII (1993)

  Lost: Chicago was one of the biggest rock bands of the 1970s with hits like “Colour My World,” “Saturday in the Park,” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” In the ’80s, the band became even more popular when it shifted to a softer, synthesizer-driven sound—songs like “You’re the Inspiration” and “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.” By 1993 the band’s popularity had waned, so they decided to return to their 1970s jazz-rock sound by recording Chicago XXII, with plans to release it in March 1994. The band loved it and considered it the best thing they’d done in years. But executives at Warner Bros. Records
felt it wasn’t commercial enough and pulled the album from its release schedule. At least that’s what they told the band. Members of the group believe Chicago XXII was shelved in retaliation for the group’s refusing to sign off on a deal to license its songs for use in TV commercials. Chicago left Warner in 1994, retaining the rights to Chicago XXII… but no other label wanted it.

  Found: The album became an underground phenomenon; its mystique was boosted by Chicago doling out the unreleased music in pieces. Three band members each re-recorded songs for solo albums, a handful of finished tracks were included on a Chicago box set, and the band frequently performed the songs live, to positive response from fans. Rhino Records, which specializes in new albums by retro acts, took notice and gave Chicago XXII, re-titled Stone of Sisyphus, a proper release in 2008. The album didn’t trigger the group’s revival—it peaked at #122 on the album charts—but fans still called it Chicago’s best work in years.

  Almost all flu viruses first infect chickens, then pigs, then spread to humans.

  SUFFERING FOOLS

  Just how hard is it to be smarter than most everyone else? We don’t know, but Uncle John says it’s really hard. Here are some more thoughts on the matter.

  “For every person with a spark of genius, there are a hundred with ignition trouble.”

  —Kurt Hanks

  “A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

  —Douglas Adams

  “Stupidity is a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it.”

  —Pope John Paul II

  “Brains are an asset, if you hide them.”

  —Mae West

  “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

  —Bertrand Russell

  “The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.”

  —Oliver Goldsmith

  “Before God we are all equally wise—and equally foolish.”

  —Albert Einstein

  “My New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”

  —James Agate

  “Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”

  —Euripides

  “It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.”

  —Anton LaVey

  “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”

  —Voltaire

  “Always be smarter than the people who hire you.”

  —Lena Horne

  “Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it. Or profit.”

  —Josh Billings

  “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!”

  —George Carlin

  As of 2000, a Canadian law still on the books placed a bounty on all Indian scalps.

  BAD NEWS / GOOD NEWS

  From bad news you can often get an uplifting piece of good news. As these stories will prove.

  HONK IF YOU LIKE FREEDOM

  Bad News: Bernard Levine, 82, found an injured goose in his Toms River, New Jersey, backyard in April 2010. It had an arrow stuck in its chest.

  Good News: Lucky for the goose, Levine is a retired veterinarian. He captured the stricken bird, took it to the Toms River Animal Hospital, which he founded in 1955, and surgically removed six inches of the 26-inch arrow (as well as several air gun pellets) from its chest. He then brought the goose to the Raptor Trust, a bird rehabilitation center. Three weeks later, Levine was present as vet techs freed the bird—now four pounds heavier and in perfect health—on the trust’s protected forest land. “It feels great to see him free and liberated,” Levine said, “enjoying life the way a goose should.”

  LIFE SAVER

  Bad News: In April 2010, Robert E. Smith, 48, was working as an attendant at a mental health facility in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, when he was told that a 20-year-old female patient had climbed out a window onto a fire escape and was headed up to the roof of the three-story building. Smith followed her out the window and tried to convince the troubled young woman to come back inside. She refused to listen, and made a lunge to jump. Smith grabbed her arm—and she took him with her. They fell together 30 feet to the ground.

  Good News: The young woman survived…and so did Smith. He actually maneuvered his body as they fell so that he would hit first, which not only saved the woman’s life, but saved her from receiving any serious injuries at all. “That’s just the kind of person he is,” Smith’s uncle, Thomas Katchisin, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Smith shattered bones in both his arms, suffered a wound to his head, broke several ribs, and, after several hours of surgery, was in the hospital for nine days. But he made a full recovery. “I have no regrets,” he said later. “She walked away, and that’s good.”

  Among the passengers aboard the Mayflower: a Mastiff and a Springer Spaniel.

  DOUBLE JEOPARDY

  Bad News: In April 2010, Andriej Ivanov, 26, made his way to a bridge over the Belaya River in Ufa, central Russia. He wasn’t there for the view: His fiancée had recently been killed in a car crash—on the day before their wedding—and he was going to jump off the bridge and kill himself. Worse news: When he got to the bridge, he found that someone had beaten him to the spot. Maria Petrova, 21, had recently been thrown out of her parents’ home after she became pregnant and was there to kill herself. Ivanov arrived just as she was climbing over the railing to make the 100-foot plunge into the water.

  Good News: Andriej ran to Maria and yelled for her to stop. “Something in my heart snapped,” he said, “and I couldn’t let her do it no matter how broken my own heart was.” He was able to convince her to climb back down, the two ended up talking long into the night, and then the next day, and the day after that—and in May 2010 announced to their families that they were getting married. “All that pain was worthwhile,” Maria said, “because it led me to my Andriej.”

  KARMA

  In 2006 Monty Python and A Fish Called Wanda star John Cleese performed his one-man stage show in the city of Palmerston North, New Zealand. He didn’t have a good time. He later reported in an audio diary on his website that the audience was unresponsive, the arena in which he performed was subpar, and that Palmerston North itself was so wretched it must be “the suicide capital of the country.” The unresponsive locals did respond to Cleese: They unofficially renamed their municipal garbage dump after him when someone put up a sign reading “Mt. Cleese” at the landfill. Said Palmerston North Water and Waste Manager Chris Pepper, “It’s popped up overnight, and nobody has said to pull it down.”

  Tennis ball felt is usually made of wool.

  DINO CHOW

  So what did dinosaurs eat 200 million years ago? Don’t look now—it may be in your garden.

  CLASSIC JURASSIC

  You’ll find them in flower arrangements, funeral wreaths, back yards in Arizona and Southern California, and botanical gardens around the United States. They look like a cross between a palm and a fern, with a stout trunk and a crown of feather-like leaves across the top. But these ancient plants—called cycads, (pronounced “SY-kads”)—are closer to gingko trees and conifers. They’ve been growing on this planet for more than 300 million years, making them among the oldest species of any kind still living in the world.

  During the Jurassic Period (200 million years ago), cycads dominated global forests. The Earth was much wetter back then, prime growing conditions for these plants. Based on fossil evidence, scientists believe cycads comprised 20 percent of all plant life at the time, so the jungles that Tyrannosaurus rex crashed around in and the brontosaurus munched on was most likely a cycad forest (which is why botanists prefer to call the Jurassic era the “Age of Cycads,” not the “Age of Dinosaurs”).

&nbs
p; Cycads grow best in tropical and sub-tropical areas, but fossilized remains of the plants have been found on every continent and from Siberia to the South Pole. Scientists consider these finds proof that the Arctic and Antarctic were once much warmer.

  LIVING FOSSILS

  The key to the cycads’ longevity is their ability to produce their own fertilizer—in essence, they feed themselves. Their roots often grow out of the ground, providing a home for photosynthetic bacteria. In exchange, the bacteria provide nitrogen to the cycad. This nitrogen-fixing ability allows cycads to flourish in extremely poor soil: Some species can grow in sand, and many can tolerate salty soil. Sadly, many cycad species are endangered today, as their favored tropical habitat is rapidly being destroyed by human activity. Once widespread across the globe, cycads today are limited to ranges in Australia, Japan, sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, South Asia, Indonesia, Central and South America, Mexico, and Florida. Also, cycads reproduce slowly, which doesn’t help them survive abrupt changes to their environment. But cycads have already successfully weathered two mass extinction periods in world history, so don’t count them out.

  Most charitable city, based on actual donations: Miami. Least: Detroit.

  PSYCHED FOR CYCADS

  • Cycads contain BMAA, a paralyzing neurotoxin. But native peoples in Australia, Africa, and North America found ways to leach out the poison and turn the starchy stems into edible flour.

  • The Seminole Indians of Florida called cycads the “white bread plant.” Their entire diet was based around sofkee, a pudding made from its starch. When Confederate soldiers garrisoned in Florida during the Civil War ran out of provisions, they tried to create their own version of sofkee. Unfortunately they skipped the soaking process that removed the plant’s poison and hundreds died.