Uncle John’s Briefs Read online

  William Shatner and I AM CANADIAN!”

  —William Shatner

  Most of Bill Gates’s 50,000-square-foot home is underground.

  DIED ON THE JOHN

  From the darker wing of Uncle John’s Stall of Fame, here are some people who took their last breaths in the bathroom. (Someday we’ll probably put Uncle John on the list.)

  In 1016, 27-year-old King Edmund II of England was murdered in the bathroom. An assassin hid behind the primitive toilet and, as Edmund sat, the murderer stepped out and quickly shoved his sword twice “into the king’s bowels.”

  • Another English monarch, King George II, died on the toilet in 1760 at the age of 77. He woke up at six that morning, drank some chocolate, and an hour later went to the bathroom, where he died of a ruptured aorta.

  • Evelyn Waugh, one of the greatest English novelists of the 20th century (Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One) had just returned home from Easter Mass. In recent years, the 62-year-old had put on a lot of weight. He also drank a lot, smoked cigars, and rarely exercised. He died “straining at stool” in the bathroom, April 10, 1966.

  • Perhaps the most famous death-by-toilet is Elvis Presley’s. A combination of weight gain and too many prescription drugs gave the 42-year-old singer a heart attack while he was “takin’ care of business.” (At the time of his death he was reading a book entitled The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus.)

  • Movie producer Don Simpson (Top Gun, Flashdance) died in 1996. While rumors persisted that he died of a cocaine overdose, the truth was more humble and embarrassing: He died of a heart attack while going to the bathroom.

  • It’s commonly believed that Catherine the Great of Russia died after being “crushed” by a horse. True? Na-a-a-a-a-y. On that fateful day in 1796, she suffered a stroke while sitting on the toilet, but died in her bed several hours later.

  To be called a “heavy rainfall,” it must be raining at least 1/6 of an inch per hour.

  FLINTSTONE V. JETSON

  Who’s the bigger environmental (Hanna) barbarian?

  AN ANIMATED DEBATE One is from the Stone Age, and one is from the distant future, but Fred Flintstone (of The Flintstones, 1960–66) and George Jetson (of The Jetsons, 1962–63) are a lot alike: Both are middle-class family men just trying to get by. Here’s where these two fictional characters from 40-year-old cartoon shows truly and most importantly differ: Who had the larger carbon footprint?

  FRED FLINTSTONE: GOOD

  • He lives in the Stone Age. All building materials, tools, cars, and consumer products are made out of natural, mostly unadulterated—and extremely eco-friendly—stone. Flintstone lives off of the earth, literally.

  • Flintstone doesn’t use fossil fuels. He lives alongside plants and animals that will one day putrefy and become petroleum. Without a drop of oil, Flintstone powers his car by rapidly pedaling his feet, perhaps the greenest alternative energy source in history. Further, since electricity hasn’t been harnessed yet, all of the appliances in his home are powered via the mechanical labor of various birds and animals. Carbon emissions from the Flintstone home: zero.

  • One could argue that this is animal cruelty, as the birds and mammoths are forced to work as indentured servants. However, instead of running away, the animals seem perfectly content to insult Fred with their clever wisecracks.

  • Finally, Flintstone doesn’t wear shoes or pants, so he doesn’t contribute much to the pesticide-dependent cotton industry. Conclusion: Fred Flintstone is quite “green.”

  GEORGE JETSON: BAD

  The Jetsons was a product of the early 1960s idea that “the future” would be all about technology and labor-saving devices. What didn’t seem to occur to anyone was all the energy it would take to power a world full of robots, flying cars, and self-cleaning kitchens.

  • Jetson eats food prepared by a Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle, a microwave-size machine that prepares any meal at the push of a button. Because it’s a tiny device that can’t store bulky items, it can’t produce just any food. According to an article by David Freedman in Discover, it would only produce “blobs of tasteless but nutritious paste” with flavoring chemicals added. So the Jetsons subsist on highly processed chemicals, decidedly not locally grown or organic.

  Who’s George Holiday? The man who videotaped the Rodney King beating in 1991.

  • The food machine is just one of many sophisticated gizmos that preclude any work for Jetson and his family (his boy Elroy, daughter Judy, and Jane, his wife). The Jetsons enjoy talking watches, machines that control their dreams, holographic 3-D television, video phones, a machine that gets them out of bed and dresses them, and Rosie, the robot maid. Every single one of these gadgets requires a tremendous amount of electricity.

  • Jetson drives a flying car. It looks like a cross between a Volkswagen Beetle and a flying saucer, but the closest thing we have to compare it to is a Sikorsky S-76C, a common commercial helicopter that gets terrible gas mileage—less than two miles per gallon. Today’s gas-guzzling Hummer H2 gets about 10 mpg, meaning that Jetson’s “futuristic” car is only 20% as efficient as a Hummer.

  • Even if Jetson wanted to drive an energy-efficient car on the ground, he couldn’t. All of the buildings in his hometown of Orbit City are elevated hundreds of feet off the ground—he can’t even walk anywhere. Flying is the only option. And when Jetson steps out of the car at his destination, the sidewalks move. (It’s truly amazing, then, that Fred Flintstone is fatter than George Jetson.)

  • And why exactly are all those buildings sky-high? It’s not touched upon in the show (creators say they based the buildings on the futuristic Space Needle in Seattle), but maybe Al Gore was right: By the time The Jetsons takes place, in the year 2062, all the electricity used to power our labor-saving devices has produced so many carbon emissions that the polar ice caps have melted, covering the surface of the Earth in water, leaving humanity no choice but to build upward. (Sorry, George. Our bad.)

  Fred: How can you be so stupid?

  Barney: Hey, that’s not very nice! Say you’re sorry.

  Fred: I’m sorry you’re stupid.

  —The Flintstones

  No permit required: Beavers in Connecticut have the legal right to build dams.

  SOUND SMARTER

  Experts say the path to success is built on a good vocabulary. Here are a few words, with examples of their use, that might make you sound smart enough to go into politics. (Hmm…maybe that was a bad example.)

  New Word: Endemic (en-DEM-ik)

  Meaning: Belonging to a particular region or people

  Instead of… “Them Tasmanian Devils are only found in Tazakistan, I’m pretty sure. And zoos.”

  Sound Smarter: “The Tasmanian Devil is endemic only to the Australian island of Tasmania.”

  New Word: Cavil (KAV-uhl)

  Meaning: To quibble or nitpick

  Instead of… “Well, I guess that’s for the jury to decide.”

  Sound Smarter: “I hate to cavil, darling, but I’m fairly sure that man you just hit was riding a Segway, not a scooter.”

  New Word: Parlous (PAHR-lous)

  Meaning: Dangerous

  Instead of… “This won’t hurt a bit!”

  Sound Smarter: “I assure you there is nothing parlous about the intracranial demulsification procedure.”

  New Word: Imbibe (im-BAHYB)

  Meaning: Drink; absorb

  Instead of… “Let’s go sit on the porch, down a few cold ones and take in the scenery.”

  Sound Smarter: “Please join me on the veranda to imbibe some refreshing beverages and enjoy the spectacular ocean view.”

  New Word: Soporific (soh-puh-RIF-ik)

  Meaning: Sleep-inducing

  Instead of… “I could eat a whole ’nuther helping of pie—but I’m just too pooped.”

  Sound Smarter: “Unfortunately, the soporific effects of the turkey, not to mention all the wine I’ve imbibed, prevent me from staying awake long enough to partake
of dessert.”

  In 1990 Sacramento, CA, officially renamed its manholes “maintenance holes.” Why? For “gender equality.”

  New Word: Alacrity (uh-LAK-ri-tee)

  Meaning: Quick, cheerful enthusiasm

  Instead of… “Brian’s a go-getter, isn’t he? I like him. But he kind of bugs me, too.”

  Sound Smarter: “Brian’s tendency to approach every task with alacrity made him not only one of the office’s favorite employees, but also one of the most annoying.”

  New Word: Circumspect (SUR-kuhm-spekt)

  Meaning: Cautious

  Instead of… “Uh, Fred, you might not want to look down that tube.”

  Sound Smarter: “Frederick, a more circumspect approach to that fireworks cannon you just lit might be advisable.”

  New Word: Phlegmatic (fleg-MAT-ik)

  Meaning: Apathetic; sluggish

  Instead of… “Get your lazy butt up off the sofa and answer the phone yourself.”

  Sound Smarter: “Guinness World Records just called to let you know you’ve been named Most Phlegmatic Couch Potato.”

  New Word: Enmity (EN-mi-tee)

  Meaning: Ill will, hostility, or outright hatred

  Instead of… “I hate you! I hate, hate, hate you!”

  Sound Smarter: “Be assured, my charming friend, that my enmity for you is outmatched only by my resistance to having my tonsils extracted through my nasal passages.”

  New Word: Temerity (teh-MEHR-eh-tee)

  Meaning: Foolhardiness; reckless courage

  Instead of… “I don’t know if that was brave or just stupid, what you just did. Did it really eat your cell phone?”

  Sound Smarter: “It takes extreme temerity to jump into the grizzly bear enclosure, Jethro. Shall I call an ambulance?”

  NOT EXACTLY

  PRINCE CHARMING

  Ever heard of Prince Philip? He’s the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England. About the only time he makes headlines is when he, as one newspaper puts it, “uses his royal status to insult and belittle people.” His public gaffes are so frequent that they’ve earned him the title “The Duke of Hazard.”

  To a driving instructor in Scotland: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”

  To a Nigerian diplomat in traditional Nigerian garb: “You look as if you’re ready for bed.”

  On seeing a fuse box filled with wires, during a visit to an electronics company: “This looks like it was put in by an Indian.”

  To a chubby 13-year-old boy at a space exploration exhibit, pointing to a space capsule: “You’ll have to lose weight if you want to go in that.”

  To a smoke-detector activist who lost two of her children in a house fire: “My smoke alarm is a damn nuisance. Every time I run my bath, the steam sets it off and I’ve got firefighters at my door.”

  To members of the British Deaf Association, while pointing to a loudspeaker playing Caribbean music: “No wonder you are deaf.”

  To a tourist, during a state visit to Hungary: “You can’t have been here long, you’ve no potbelly.”

  Speaking to British students studying in China: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”

  On the “key problem” facing Brazil: “Brazilians live there.”

  On his daughter Princess Anne: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”

  Remark to the Queen on seeing a picture once owned by King Charles I of England in the Louvre in Paris: “Shall we take it back?”

  Instant classic: Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in six days.

  RANDOM ORIGINS

  You know what these are…but do you know where they came from?

  WOOD-BURNING STOVES

  If you wanted to heat your home in the mid-18th century, there was only one way: your fireplace. But because they were usually built into an exterior wall, fireplaces were inefficient—much of the heat was lost to the outside air. In 1742 Benjamin Franklin invented a freestanding metal stove that could be placed in the middle of the room, so all the heat radiated into the room. The “Franklin stove,” as it came to be known, remains one of Benjamin Franklin’s most famous inventions. One problem: it didn’t work. Smoke rises, which means you have to put the chimney outlet at the top of the stove. Franklin connected his at the base, and because of that the fire would not stay lit. His stove didn’t become practical until another inventor, David Rittenhouse, connected the chimney above the fire.

  MAIL-ORDER CATALOGS

  In September 1871, a British major named F.B. McCrea founded the Army & Navy Cooperative in London to supply goods to military personnel at the lowest possible price. Its first catalog was issued in February 1872…six months before an American named Aaron Montgomery Ward put his first catalog in the mail.

  ALUMINUM

  The Earth’s crust contains more aluminum than any other metallic element, yet it was not discovered or extracted until the mid-1820s—when it was so expensive to extract that it was actually considered a precious metal. Then, in 1886, two different inventors—Charles Hall, an American, and Paul Héroult, a Frenchman—discovered a process by which aluminum could be extracted much more cheaply using electricity. The Hall-Héroult process reduced the price of aluminum to less than 1% of its previous cost. But it wasn’t until World War I, when German designer Hugo Junkers started building airplanes out of metal instead of the traditional wood and fabric, that aluminum came into its own. Today the world uses more aluminum than any other metal except iron and steel.

  Electric eels must surface to breathe every five minutes or they will drown.

  THE CHEW-CHEW MAN

  Where did the low-calorie diet come from? It started with a guy known as the “Chew-Chew Man” to critics and the “Great Masticator” to fans.

  THE BIRTH OF “FLETCHERISM” In 1895, 44-year-old Horace Fletcher was turned down for life insurance because he weighed 217 pounds (at 5'6" tall), and he drank excessively. “I was an old man at forty, and on the way to a rapid decline,” he recalled years later.

  In 1898 Fletcher performed an experiment on himself. He began chewing each bite of food 30 to 70 times—even milk and soup, which he swished in his mouth—and never ate when he was upset or wasn’t hungry. After five months of “Fletcherizing” each morsel of food, he lost 60 pounds and regained his health. He also found that he could live happily on 1,600 calories a day, far less than the 3,500 to 4,500 calories recommended at the turn of the century.

  THE GREAT MASTICATOR

  The experience helped Fletcher find a new calling—pitching his chewing habits to the masses. His slogan: “Nature will castigate those who don’t masticate.” Fletcher’s lecture tours and bestselling books attracted tens of thousands of followers, including John D. Rockefeller and Thomas Edison. Adherents formed “Fletcher clubs,” where they met to eat slowly and chant ditties like:

  I choose to chew, Because I wish to do, The sort of thing that Nature had in view, Before bad cooks invented sav’ry stew; When the only way to eat was to chew! chew! chew!

  Fletcher died from bronchitis in 1919 at the age of 69, and his chewing theories soon followed him to the grave. But one thing that did survive him was his low-calorie diet: In 1903, a Yale University professor named Russell Chittenden examined Fletcher, found him to be in excellent health, and decided to try the diet himself. Soon after, his rheumatic knee stopped bothering him and his chronic headaches went away, prompting Chittenden to launch a series of studies into diet and health. These and other pivotal studies led to a ratcheting down of the recommended calorie intake from 3,500 a day to the 2,000 recommended today.

  The Boston police department purchased America’s first cop car in 1903.

  FAMOUS FOR

  15 MINUTES

  Here’s proof that Andy Warhol was right when he said that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

  THE STAR: Mark Stutzman, a 34-year-ol
d illustrator living in Mountain Lane Park, Maryland

  THE HEADLINE: Struggling Artist Takes Care of Business

  WHAT HAPPENED: Stutzman was just another artist having trouble making ends meet in 1992 when one of his clients encouraged him to enter a contest to design a stamp commemorating Elvis Presley. He’d never designed a stamp before, but he entered anyway, creating a portrait of the King in his younger days. “It’s the first thing I think of when I think of Elvis,” he says, “when he was really young and parents didn’t want their kids to listen to his music.”

  Thirty artists submitted designs to the U.S. Postal Service; only Stutzman’s (a young Elvis) and another artist’s (an old, fat Elvis) were chosen as finalists. The American public would choose between the two designs by voting at their post office or mailing in a special ballot.

  What happened? Millions of people cast their votes…and Stutzman’s stamp won overwhelmingly.

  THE AFTERMATH: The U.S. Postal Service ordered 300 million of the stamps and then, when those sold out in barely a month, ordered 200 million more, making it the most popular commemorative stamp in U.S. history. Estimated profits: $20 million. How much of that went to Stutzman? Zero—he got the standard design fee of $3,000… nothing more.

  THE STAR: James Carter, 76, an ex-convict and retired shipping clerk from Mississippi

  THE HEADLINE: Ex-Con Makes It Big with a Song He Can’t Remember, in a Movie He’s Never Seen

  WHAT HAPPENED: In September 1959, Carter was chopping wood with a Mississippi prison road gang. He frequently led the men in singing while they worked, and one afternoon he happened to be recorded while singing a song called “Po’ Lazarus.” Carter served out his sentence and became a shipping clerk when he got out of prison. By 2002 he was retired.

  Tommy Bolt is the only professional golfer to have been fined for passing gas (1959).