Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Read online

  Workplace Hazard: Beavers sometimes get crushed by the trees they gnaw down.

  INSPECTOR MORSE (1975)

  Morse’s creator, Colin Dexter, was once a Morse Code operator in the English army—but that’s not where he got the name for his character. Sir Jeremy Morse, the chairman of Lloyd’s Bank, was a champion crossword-solver in England. Dexter, once a national crossword champion himself, named his melancholy inspector after Sir Jeremy.

  HERCULE POIROT (1920)

  Some say the meticulous Belgian detective was named after a vegetable—poireau means “leek” in French. But it’s more likely that Poirot’s creator, Agatha Christie, took the name from the stories of another female author of the time, Marie Belloc Lowndes. Her character: a French detective named Hercules Popeau.

  TRAVIS MCGEE (1964)

  John D. MacDonald began working on his Florida boat-bum character in 1962, calling him Dallas McGee. The next year, President John Kennedy was shot—in Dallas—and MacDonald changed the name to Travis.

  KINSEY MILLHONE (1982)

  Sue Grafton spent 15 years as a Hollywood scriptwriter before the birth of her first Kinsey Millhone novel, A Is for Alibi. Where’d she get the name? From the birth announcements page of her local newspaper.

  JOHN SHAFT (1970)

  Ernest Tidyman was trying to sell the idea of a bad-ass black detective to his publisher, but was stymied when the publisher asked the character’s name—he didn’t have one ready. Tidyman absent-mindedly looked out the window and saw a sign that said “Fire shaft.” He looked back at the publisher and said, “Shaft. John Shaft.”

  * * *

  “Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest citizens. It’s the other 2% that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.”

  —Lily Tomlin

  Q: How many time zones are there in North America? A: 8.

  CELEBRITY LAWSUITS

  It seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are a few real-life examples of unusual legal battles involving celebrities.

  PLAINTIFF: President Theodore Roosevelt

  DEFENDANT: Newspaper publisher George Newett

  LAWSUIT: In 1912 Newett wrote an editorial in his Ishpeming, Michigan, paper, The Iron Ore. “Roosevelt lies, and curses in a most disgusting way,” he wrote. “He gets drunk too, and that not infrequently, and all of his intimates know about it.” Roosevelt happened to be campaigning for another presidential term at the time and jumped at the opportunity to be the center of a big news story. He sued Newett for libel, insisting that he hardly drank alcohol at all. Roosevelt arrived in the small town with a phalanx of security, some famous friends to act as character witnesses, and a horde of reporters and photographers. Huge crowds showed up for the trial. The National Enquirer even gave the start of arguments a banner headline: DRUNKEN ROOSEVELT TRIAL BEGINS! On the stand, Roosevelt mesmerized the judge, the jury, and the crowd with long stories about his many adventures around the world.

  VERDICT: Newett must have realized he was outgunned. After five days, he gave up, reading a statement to the court admitting that he had wronged the former president. Roosevelt, having proved his point, asked the judge that he be awarded the lowest legal sum—6¢. The judge agreed. Asked by a reporter what he would do with his winnings, he replied, “That’s about the price of a good paper.” Cost of The Iron Ore: 3¢.

  PLAINTIFF: Judy Z. Knight, aka JZ Knight

  DEFENDANT: Julie Ravel

  LAWSUIT: Knight claimed she could go into a trance and “channel” the spirit of a 35,000-year-old warrior from the lost continent of Atlantis named Ramtha. She charged fees of up to $1,500 per séance. By the 1980s she had attracted thousands of followers (including actresses Shirley MacLaine and Linda Evans), had published books and videotapes, and had become very wealthy. When Ravel, also a clairvoyant, started channeling the same ancient Atlantian in 1992, Knight sued her in an Austrian courtroom. “I’ve had spiritual contact with Ramtha since 1978,” Knight said. “I need him and he needs me.”

  Skip this fact: The first leap year was in 46 B.C.

  “Ramtha feeds his thoughts and energies through me and me alone,” Ravel replied. “I am his keeper.”

  VERDICT: Knight won. The judge ordered Ravel to stop using the Ramtha “brand” and to pay Knight $800 for interfering with her transmissions and for creating her subsequent period of “spiritual limbo.”

  PLAINTIFF: Shenandoah South Theater

  DEFENDANT: Singer Wayne Newton

  LAWSUIT: In 1994 Newton filed suit against the Branson, Missouri, theater for failing to pay him his full fee. Shenandoah owner Gary Snadon immediately filed a countersuit. Newton had appeared at the Shenandoah in 1993 and had been paid $5 million, Snadon said, while the theater had lost $500,000. Snadon’s suit charged that Newton had ruined the theater’s reputation. How? Because the singer told too many “fat” jokes and jokes about people from Pennsylvania.

  VERDICT: Newton paid an undisclosed amount in a settlement before the trial ended. The Shenandoah South closed down later that year.

  * * *

  RANDOM FACTS TO BUG YOU

  • The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head like a human.

  • The word bug started out as the Anglo-Saxon word bugge or bough, meaning “a terror, a devil, or a ghost.”

  • The hairs on the butt of a cockroach are so sensitive that they can detect air currents made by the onrushing tongue of a toad.

  • The praying mantis is the official state insect of Connecticut.

  • Mating soapberry bugs remain locked in embrace for up to 11 days, which exceeds the life span of many other insects.

  President Gerald R. Ford’s birth name was Leslie Lynch King, Jr. (He was adopted.)

  TODAY’S MENU

  Funky foods from around the world.

  CRACKLING ICE. Researchers from a Japanese steel company discovered that samples of Antarctic ice mixed in alcoholic drinks make distinctive, loud crackling sounds. When the ice is placed in alcohol, air bubbles trapped in the ice thousands of years ago are released with a loud popping sound. The stronger the alcohol, the louder the sound. Straight whiskey (80 proof) over the ice produces crackling sounds of around 70 decibels (equal to the noise of a loud radio) every second or so.

  CRETE-DE-COQ. Cock’s combs are often used by French and Italian chefs to garnish various poultry dishes. (The comb is the red, fleshy thing on top of a rooster’s head.) According to experts, it’s chewy but quite tasty.

  CONCHA FINA. This shellfish looks like an oyster. But while oysters are often served raw (and dead), this Spanish delicacy is always served raw…and alive. Squeeze a little fresh lemon over the concha fina. When it starts fidgeting, pour it down your throat.

  FRUIT BAT SOUP. A delicacy from Micronesia made with fruit bats (also called flying foxes). For the soup, the meat of the fruit bat is simmered in water, ginger, and onion and topped off with scallions, soy sauce, and coconut cream. When not in the soup, these furry bats are said to make affectionate pets.

  CHIA PET SALAD. This dish features the edible sprouts of Salvia columbariae—related to the spice, sage. The “fur” that grows out of the ceramic cow, frog, hippo, puppy, or whatever is stripped from the pottery and tossed lightly with peppery nasturtiums and beanlike tulip flowers.

  STUFFED ROAST CAMEL. It is served at traditional Bedouin wedding feasts in Middle Eastern and North African deserts. Ingredients include 1 medium-sized camel, 1 medium-sized North African goat, 1 spring lamb, 1 large chicken (some recipes substitute fish or monitor lizard), 1 boiled egg, 450 cloves of garlic, and 1 large bunch of fresh coriander.

  Holy cow! McDonald’s uses 560 million pounds of beef each year.

  The chicken is stuffed with the boiled egg and coriander, then stuffed into the lamb, which is stuffed into the goat, which is stuffed into the camel. The camel is then spiked with garlic, brushed with butter, and roasted over an open fire. The finis
hed dish is placed at the center of the table. Pieces of camel, goat, lamb, and chicken are pulled off and eaten with the hands. No utensils are required. Serves 100 to 150 guests.

  SCHLAGSCHOCKEN. The recipe for this dessert from Zurich, Switzerland, calls for 12 pounds of cream, sugar, eggs, honey, and chocolate, all reduced down into a single four-inch square of Schlagschocken. Warning: The Swiss are used to this rich treat, but visitors have been known to pass out from eating a single serving.

  CURRIED RAT. On your next trip to Vietnam, try this local delicacy. Severe flooding in 2000 nearly wiped out the rat population in rice fields along the Mekong River, but they’re back on the menu thanks to their amazingly fast reproductive rate. Rat catchers make about $4 a day selling them to restaurants. Choice rat meat goes for $1.70 per kilo ($.77 per pound). Don’t like curry? Try fried rat, rat on the grill, or rat sour soup.

  IGUANA EGGS. A Central American favorite. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then sun-dry them. The result is a slightly rubbery egg with a cheeselike flavor. How do you get iguana eggs? Catch a pregnant female iguana, slit the abdomen open with a sharp knife, and gently remove the eggs. Then rub some ashes into the wound, sew it up with needle and thread, and let the iguana go. There’s a good chance you’ll see her again next year for another meal.

  BIRD’S NEST SOUP. Have you seen this on a menu in some fancy Chinese restaurant? Forget it. Real bird’s nest soup is made from bird spit—the gooey, stringy saliva that Chinese swiftlets use to attach their nests to the walls of caves. The hardened saliva is prized for its medicinal—and aphrodisiac—properties, which makes it very expensive. The license fee to harvest one cave: $100,000. The soup is a simple chicken broth, with one good dollop of bird spit in it.

  Fred Astaire’s feet were insured for $650,000.

  FLYING FLOPS

  Okay, so the last thing you want to read about is airplane trouble. But it’s better to read about it in the bathroom than in an airplane. What? You took this book with you on a flight to Hawaii? Oh, well, our advice: skip this article for now and read it when you’re back on solid porcelain.

  CAPRONI CA-60 TRANSAEREO (1921)

  If a plane with two wings is called a biplane, and a plane with three wings is called a triplane, what do you call a plane with nine wings? A very bad idea.

  Count Gianni Caproni was an Italian nobleman who owned an airplane factory and built bombers for the Italian Air Force in 1914 and 1915. Yet for some reason, when he set out to build a seaplane that could fly from Italy all the way to New York, he ignored all of his practical experience. Instead of building a plane that could land on water, he took a houseboat and added wings—nine wings (three in the front, three in the middle and three in the back)—and eight engines (four on the front wings to pull the plane, and four on the back wings to push it).

  On March 4, 1921, his test pilot fired up the engines, taxied across Lake Maggiore, and took off…sort of.

  The craft got about 60 feet into the air, then suddenly nose-dived, broke into pieces, and slammed into the lake. The pilot survived, but Count Caproni’s image did not. “His reputation for commercial aircraft thoroughly blackened,” Bill Yenne writes in The World’s Worst Aircraft, “Caproni skulked away into oblivion.”

  THE BREWSTER BUFFALO

  In the 1930s, the U.S. Navy checked out prospective new fighter planes by putting them through a rigorous test flight. A test pilot would fly the prototype to its maximum altitude and then take it into a long, steep dive at full speed. If the pilot could pull out of the dive without ripping the plane’s wings off, the Navy would consider buying it.

  Reasonable or not, the test encouraged airplane manufacturers to build planes stronger than necessary, which made them heavy.

  Egg whites will turn pink when left overnight in a copper bowl.

  That, in turn, made them slow and difficult to maneuver—bad qualities for aircraft whose speed and agility could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

  The worst example of this was the 2.5-ton Brewster Buffalo. It was so overbuilt in its structure that the manufacturer underbuilt other parts of it—landing gear and machine guns, for example—just to save on weight.

  England’s Royal Air Force bought 150 Buffaloes, but then found them so worthless against the fast German fighters that it sent them to Britain’s Far East colonies, to go up against Japanese fighters (considered “antiquated junk”). Big mistake—Japan’s Mitsubishi Zeros proved to be faster, more maneuverable and better armed. They flew circles—literally—around the Buffaloes, whose four tiny machine guns were no match for the Zero’s two larger machine guns and 20-millimeter cannons.

  According to one expert, within a few months of the start of the war, “every Buffalo in the Far East had been lost, giving Brewster the distinction of having handed the Japanese complete air superiority over Southeast Asia on a silver platter.”

  Only a few American Buffaloes saw action and they didn’t see it for long—13 of the 19 sent into combat during the Battle of Midway in June 1942 were shot out of the sky in less than half an hour. “It is my belief,” wrote one Buffalo pilot who survived, “that any commander who orders pilots out for combat in a Brewster should consider the pilot as lost before leaving the ground.”

  CONVAIR XFY-1 POGO

  One of the problems with flying an airplane, especially in a war, is that there isn’t always a runway where you need one. The Convair Pogo, developed in the mid-1950s, was designed to be an airplane that didn’t need a runway. It looked just like an ordinary plane, except that it was tilted up vertically on its tail like a rocket. It had an engine and propeller so powerful that it could take off straight up in the air and land the same way, just like a helicopter…or a pogo stick.

  Taking off wasn’t too difficult, but landing vertically was another story: the pilot had to literally set the plane back down on the ground while looking over his shoulder, which was almost impossible.

  It was the same with a similar plane, the XFV-1, being developed at Lockheed. “We practiced landing looking over our shoulders,” remembers Lockheed designer Kelly Johnson, “but we couldn’t tell how fast we were coming down, or when we would hit. We wrote the Navy: ‘We think it is inadvisable to land the airplane.’ They came back with one paragraph that said, ‘We agree.’”

  Britain’s Imperial Crown has 1,783 diamonds, 277 pearls, 17 sapphires 11 emeralds, and 5 rubies, and weighs about 7 pounds.

  CONVAIR XF2Y-1 SEA DART

  The Sea Dart was built in the 1950s when it was easy to get money from the Pentagon and defense contractors were willing to try anything. So how about a supersonic jet fighter…on water skis?

  Only five prototypes were ever made, only three were ever flown, and only two made it back safely. Vibration caused by the retractable skis made the Sea Dart unstable, but what really killed it was common sense. With the Pentagon’s approval, Convair had pumped millions into the Sea Dart program without having any idea why such planes should be built in the first place. They never did come up with a reason, either.

  “The program was terminated,” Yenne writes, “without ever having demonstrated any operational rationale.”

  * * *

  THOUGHTS FOR THE THRONE

  If you could shrink the world down to 100 people—keeping the same ratios—there would be:

  • 51 female, 49 male

  • 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas, and 8 Africans

  • 70 nonwhite, 30 white

  • 70 non-Christian, 30 Christian

  • 50% of the wealth in the hands of 6 people—all in the U.S.

  • 80 living in substandard housing

  • 70 who were illiterate

  • 50 suffering from malnutrition

  • 1 person near death, 1 near birth

  • 1 with a college education

  • Not one who owned a computer…or a Bathroom Reader

  BOX OFFICE BLOOPERS

  Some of our favorites from new and classic films.
r />   Movie: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

  Scene: When Elliott (Henry Thomas) first meets E.T. in his backyard, a crescent moon can be seen overhead.

  Blooper: In the famous bike-flying scene, the silhouettes of Elliott and E.T. pass in front of a full moon, yet it’s only three days later.

  Movie: Braveheart (1995)

  Scene: In the beginning of the film, young William Wallace (James Robinson) is throwing rocks with his left hand.

  Blooper: In the next scene, a grown-up William Wallace (Mel Gibson) is throwing rocks with his right hand.

  Movie: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

  Scene: At the veterinary hospital, Kate (Claire Danes) is hiding only a few feet away from the T-X (Kristanna Loken).

  Blooper: The T-X is the state-of-the-art Terminator, with heightened sensory awareness all around: sight, hearing, smell, even the ability to sense body heat. Yet somehow Kate—heavy breathing, sweating, and all—stays under the T-X’s radar and escapes.

  Movie: Titanic (1997)

  Scene: The passengers are all boarding the lifeboats.

  Blooper: One of them is wearing a digital watch.

  Movie: Maid in Manhattan (2002)

  Scene: Near the beginning of the movie, it’s six days before Christmas. There’s a fresh blanket of snow in the foreground.

  Blooper: Someone forgot to tell the trees—in the next scene they all have green leaves.

  Movie: L.A. Confidential (1997)

  Scene: Toward the end of the movie, Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) is talking to Detective Exley (Guy Pearce).

  Makes sense: Frito means “fried” in Spanish.

  Blooper: An establishing shot shows them facing each other, but in each of their close-ups, the sun is behind their heads. Are there two suns in Los Angeles?