Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Read online

  Movie: Forrest Gump (1994)

  Scene: After Jenny (Robin Wright) dies, Forrest (Tom Hanks) is visiting her grave. He says, “You died on a Saturday.”

  Blooper: The gravestone reads March 12, 1982 (it’s a Friday).

  Movie: Galaxy Quest (1999)

  Scene: When Commander Taggert (Tim Allen) and Lieutenant Madison (Sigourney Weaver) first encounter the “chompers,” Madison exclaims, “Oh, screw that!”

  Blooper: That’s what we hear, but it doesn’t take a professional lip reader to see that she actually says…a word other than “screw.”

  Movie: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

  Scene: The audience is told that it is a “late November evening.”

  Blooper: In the very next scene, when Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) are in the car, Richard Nixon’s resignation speech is playing on the radio. Nixon resigned in August.

  Movie: Pearl Harbor (2001)

  Scene: When Evelyn (Kate Beckinsale) first arrives at Pearl Harbor, she walks past a tall building.

  Blooper: The building has a sign that says “Est. 1953”—12 years after the actual attack.

  Movie: When Harry Met Sally (1989)

  Scene: During a car ride when Harry (Billy Crystal) first gets to know Sally (Meg Ryan), Harry is spitting seeds out of an open window.

  Blooper: An exterior shot shows that Harry’s window is closed.

  Movie: There’s Something About Mary (1998)

  Scene: Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) gets “stuck” in his zipper.

  Blooper: While trying to get free of the zipper, Ted somehow manages to alternate between wearing his tuxedo jacket and not wearing it, from close-ups to wide shots.

  Good news: Chrematophobia, the fear of money, is curable. Send your dough to the BRI!

  LAND OF THE GIANTS

  Back in the early 1960s, little Uncle John saw a giant statue of Paul Bunyan at Freedomland USA, an amusement park outside New York City. Freedomland closed in 1964, but the Paul Bunyan statue is still around—standing behind a gas station in nearby Elmsford, New York. And it turns out there are a lot more Paul Bunyans around the country…if you know where to find them.

  WHO’S THAT MAN?

  If you’ve taken a lot of car trips you’ve seen them—18-to 25-foot figures of dark-haired, square-jawed men, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and work pants. Their arms are extended at the elbow, with the right hand facing up and the left hand facing down, often holding something, like a muffler or a roll of carpet.

  What you might not know is that there are more than 150 of these gigantic fiberglass figures dotting America’s highways, advertising everything from tires to burger joints to amusement parks. Almost all of them were made by one man.

  BIRTH OF THE BIG BOYS

  It all started in 1962, when the Paul Bunyan Cafe on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, wanted a statue of their namesake to stand by the highway and attract hungry motorists. Prewitt Fiberglass in Venice, California, was happy to supply a figure of the giant lumberjack and created a molded Paul Bunyan character wearing a green cap, a dark beard, a red shirt, and jeans, and holding an axe.

  That was it as far as Prewitt Fiberglass was concerned—one customer, one Paul Bunyan. But then owner Bob Prewitt decided to sell his business to a fiberglass boat builder named Steve Dashew. Dashew renamed the company International Fiberglass and, wanting to make a success of his new venture, started looking for business opportunities.

  The leftover Paul Bunyan mold caught his eye. It was such an odd asset, he thought it might have value. Dashew began calling retail businesses around the country and asking them if they could use a giant advertising figure. A few said they could. When a story about one of Dashew’s customers appeared in a retail trade magazine, stating that sales had doubled after the Paul Bunyan went up, business in the giant fiberglass figures began to boom.

  Q: What is a doniker? A: That’s circus slang for “toilet.”

  PAUL BUNYAN’S FRIENDS

  Dashew started to aggressively market the big statues across the country, and sold them by the score. At first they were all Paul Bunyans, but Dashew soon discovered he could modify the basic mold slightly to create other figures.

  • He turned them into cowboys, Indians, and astronauts. All of the figures had the same arm configuration as the first Paul Bunyan, so they were almost always holding something, like a plate or some tires.

  • International Fiberglass made other figures, too—such as giant chickens, dinosaurs, and tigers—selling each for $1,800 to $2,800.

  • They made 300 “Big Friends” for Texaco, figures of smiling Texaco service attendants in green uniforms with green caps.

  • They built Yogi Bear figures for Yogi Bear’s Honey Fried Chicken restaurants in North and South Carolina.

  • To advertise Uniroyal Tires, they made a series of hulking women who looked a lot like Jackie Kennedy, holding a tire in one of her upraised hands. These women were issued with a dress, which could be removed to reveal a bikini.

  But the figures made from the original Paul Bunyan mold proved to be the most popular, not to mention the most cost-effective for Dashew, who used the same mold over and over again. By the mid-1960s, the figures had made their way into hundreds of towns across the United States and were great attention-getters for retail stores and restaurants of all kinds.

  BYE-BYE, BUNYAN

  But by the 1970s, the big figures that had seemed so impressive years earlier were getting dingy, weather-beaten, and silly looking to the next generation of consumers. As sales of the statues slowed, Dashew concentrated his energies on other business ventures. In 1976 he sold the business and the Paul Bunyan mold was destroyed.

  Today, most of the fiberglass colossi are also gone, having been destroyed, removed, or beaten down by the elements. But they haven’t all disappeared. In fact, almost every state in the Union has at least one. With businesses changing hands, the figures have been modified over the years:

  Go to bed! Experts say if you go without sleep for 10 days straight, you’ll die.

  • One Bunyan in Malibu, California, used to hold an immense hamburger. When a Mexican food joint bought out the burger place, he was given a sombrero and a serape, and his hamburger was replaced with a taco.

  • A Bunyan at Lynch’s Super Station in Havre de Grace, Maryland, was dressed in desert fatigues in 1991 to show support for the Gulf War.

  • One former Uniroyal Gal stands in front of Martha’s Cafe in Blackfoot, Idaho, holding a sandwich platter.

  • Another Uniroyal Gal, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, has been dressed in a pair of Daisy Duke shorts, given a beach ball to hold, fitted with a queen-size stainless-steel belly button ring, and placed in front of the Men’s Night Out “private club.”

  BIG MEN IN THE MEDIA

  If you can’t get to see one of the giant statues in person, you can look for them in movies and on TV:

  • A Paul Bunyan was featured in the 1969 movie Easy Rider.

  • A modified Bunyan is pictured in the opening credits of the TV show The Sopranos. The figure, which holds a giant roll of carpet to advertise Wilson’s Carpet in Jersey City, New Jersey, is now a stop on the New Jersey Sopranos bus tour.

  • Bunyans have also made appearances in the TV show The A-Team, in the 2000 John Travolta flick Battlefield Earth, and in commercials for Saturn cars and Kleenex Tissues.

  * * *

  PATRIOTIC PAUL

  In the small town of Cheshire, Connecticut, a Paul Bunyan statue ignited controversy because zoning laws declared him too tall for any purpose other than holding a flag. The statue now functions as a flagpole.

  In Greek mythology, Nike is the goddess of victory.

  A PASSING FANCY

  Creativity—why should it be wasted on the living? Now, thanks to some imaginative “grief counselors” (see page 209), our dearly departed have quite a few options as to where to spend eternity.

  OUT OF THIS WORLD


  The remains of more than 100 people have been shot into space by Celestis of Houston, Texas. They pack a small portion of cremated remains (or “cremains”) into a lipstick-sized aluminum container, load it into a NASA spacecraft, and blast it into an Earth or moon orbit. Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry both chose this after-death option. Cost: $995 to $12,500.

  DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

  LifeGem of Chicago came up with a brilliant idea: They compress portions of cremated remains into manufactured diamonds. It sounds like a hoax but it’s for real: after all, diamonds are carbon—the same stuff humans are made of—and it’s been possible to manufacture diamonds from carbon since the 1970s. So far they’ve made the blue-tinted diamonds (which get their hue from the boron present in human remains) for 50 clients, whose loved ones usually have the diamonds set into jewelry. Cost: $4,000 and up.

  PUSHING UP DAISIES

  San Francisco’s Creative Cremains mixes cremated ashes and flower seeds into the paper they use to make their handmade death-announcement cards. The cards are intended for grieving friends or relatives, who can cut them into pieces and plant them to create a flowering garden memorial. Cost: $300 and up.

  SPEND ETERNITY WITH YOUR GOLF CLUB

  A dizzying variety of companies will pack a portion of human ashes into keepsake items, from fishing rods to pendants to musical instruments. The objects can also be engraved with details of the deceased’s life. Cost: $150 and up.

  The Statue of Liberty’s waist size is 35…feet.

  GOING OUT WITH A BANG

  Celebrate Life of Lakeside, California, will pack the cremated remains of your loved one into fireworks and then explode them on a beach or off a boat at sunset. Fireworks shows can be coordinated to music (“When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “Wind Beneath My Wings,” etc.) and can even be rendered in red, white, and blue. Cost: $500 to $3,750.

  GOOD G-REEF

  Since late 1999, Georgia’s Eternal Reefs Inc. has mixed the ashes of more than 200 ocean lovers with eco-friendly concrete to create artificial “reef balls.” Once lowered into the ocean, the balls provide refuge for fish and other sea life. Eternal Reefs attempts to place the balls near areas of damaged coral to give plants a new home to cling to. Cost: $1,495 to $4,950.

  DIG THIS!

  The nutrients a decaying body gives off are typically wasted when enclosed in a traditional wood or metal coffin. The “green burial” movement encourages the deceased to go out in environmental style instead, buried in a biodegradable cardboard box or a simple shroud. This method is widely embraced in the United Kingdom, where some 150 burial grounds offer green burial. The United States has been slower to follow, but Memorial Ecosystems in South Carolina has buried 18 nonembalmed bodies in biodegradable caskets on its 33-acre site since 1998. Cost: $3,000 or less.

  HANGING AROUND

  Mississippi’s Eternally Yours incorporates cremated remains into paintings, sprinkling a few tablespoons over original works of art that can be customized to match home decor or the deceased’s interests. Cost: $350 to $950.

  FREE AT LAST

  Donated bodies, called “anatomical gifts” in the funeral biz, are used for research at medical schools across the country. Many medical facilities will pick up the “gift” at no charge to the deceased’s estate. Once the research is complete, the body is cremated. Cost: Free.

  Government waste: There are 284 bathrooms in the Pentagon.

  DIE-HARD CHICKEN

  Readers have been asking us to tell this story for years. It was so weird even we had a hard time swallowing it…but it’s true.

  OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

  On September 10, 1945, Mike the rooster was making his usual rounds in the Olsen farmyard in Fruita, Colorado. He paused for a moment to join the other Wyandotte chickens as they hunted and pecked for grain outside the chicken coop. Mike didn’t notice the dark shadow that fell across his path. It was Lloyd Olsen.

  Clara Olsen had sent her husband out to the chicken coop on a mission: catch the rooster and prepare him for dinner. Lloyd Olsen grabbed Mike and put the rooster on the chopping block. Remembering that his mother-in-law (who was coming to dinner) loved chicken necks, Lloyd took special care to position the ax on Mike’s neck so a generous portion of neck would remain. He gave that rooster one strong whack and cut off his head.

  Mike the now-headless rooster ran around in circles, flapping his wings. At this point, most chickens would have dropped dead. Instead, Mike raced back to the coop, where he joined the rest of the chickens as they hunted and pecked for food.

  Lloyd Olsen was flabbergasted. He kept expecting the rooster to keel over. It never happened. The next morning he checked again and found the feathered fellow—minus his head—asleep in the henhouse with the hens.

  ONE FUNKY CHICKEN

  Lloyd decided that if Mike was so determined to live, even without a head, he would figure out a way to give him food and water, so Lloyd used an eyedropper to drip food and water into Mike’s gullet.

  When Mike had managed to live an entire week, Lloyd and Clara took their headless wonder to scientists at the University of Utah to determine how it was possible for the bird to stay alive without a head. The scientists determined that the ax had missed the jugular vein, and a clot had kept Mike from bleeding to death. Although his head was gone, his brainstem and one ear were left on his body. Since a chicken’s reflex actions are controlled by the brain stem, Mike’s body was able to keep on ticking.

  The sun’s surface is transparent.

  MIRACLE MIKE

  Sensing that Mike had the possibility of becoming a real cash cow (or chicken), the Olsens hired a manager and took him on a national tour. Audiences in New York, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, and San Diego paid a quarter each to see “Miracle Mike.” Time and Life magazines ran feature articles on the amazing fowl. Mike even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. This “Wonder Chicken” was so valuable, he was insured for $10,000.

  For 18 happy months Mike was a celebrity. Then one night in a motel in Arizona, Mike the headless chicken started choking on some food. Lloyd tried to save him, but he couldn’t find the syringe he had often used to clear Mike’s throat. Moments later Mike was dead—this time for real.

  Those who knew Mike, which included many of the residents of Fruita, remembered him as a “robust chicken, and a fine specimen, except for not having a head.” One recalled that Mike seemed “as happy as any other chicken.”

  GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

  Mike’s been dead for almost 60 years, but his spirit lives on in Fruita. In 1999 the Chamber of Commerce was looking for something more interesting than “pioneers” as the theme for Colorado Heritage Week, when someone suggested Mike. Now, every third weekend in May, folks in this town of 6,500 gather to celebrate the remarkable rooster at the “Mike the Headless Chicken Festival.”

  The two-day-long celebration features the 5K Run Like a Chicken race, egg tosses, Pin the Head on the Chicken, a Cluck Off, Rubber Chicken Juggling, and the Chicken Dance. Chicken Bingo is played with chicken droppings on a grid and there is a Famous Fowl Pet Parade, for which owners dress their dogs, cats, and horses like chickens. Of course, great quantities of chicken—fried or barbecued—are enjoyed by all.

  In 2000 Mike was memorialized in a statue made out of rakes, axes, and farm implements by artist Lyle Nichols, who said, “I made him proud-looking and cocky.” And he gave the chamber a discount on the sculpture…because it didn’t have a head.

  If you have alektorophobia, you’re chicken…of chickens.

  NAME THAT COUNTRY

  See if you can guess the name of the country before reading all the clues. (Answers on page 499.)

  SAVED

  1. It was originally inhabited by the Pipil tribe.

  2. The Pipil are believed to be direct descendants of the Aztecs.

  3. The Pipil were defeated by Spanish explorers looking for gold.

  4. The Christian Spaniards named it in honor of Je
sus.

  Name the country

  NOTHING TO IT

  1. The local Nama people call it “an area where there is nothing.”

  2. The name describes the coastal desert area of the country.

  3. It has been governed at different times by the British, the Germans, and the South Africans.

  4. It gained independence in 1990 from South Africa.

  Name the country

  THE NAMELESS NAME

  1. It got its European name long before Europeans knew it existed.

  2. Early geographers insisted it must be there—if not, the Earth would “wobble.”

  3. The early name was Latin for “The Unknown Southern Land.”

  4. Captain James Cook “discovered” it in 1770.

  Name the country

  OVER THERE WHERE THE SUN COMES UP

  1. Our word for this country originally comes from China.

  2. It combines the words “sun” and “east,” meaning “sunrise,” or “sun’s origin.”

  3. Portuguese traders learned the name from Malaysians in the 1500s.

  4. Inhabitants of this country call it Nippon.

  Name the country

  It takes 16,550 kernels of durum wheat to make a pound of pasta.

  GRECIAN FORMULA

  1. Early inhabitants called themselves the Pritani.

  2. The Greek sailor Pytheas named it after the inhabitants in 300 B.C.

  3. When enemy tribes attacked in the 400s, many inhabitants fled this island, taking the name with them to the mainland.

  4. To differentiate between the new “lesser” settlement on the mainland, the word “Greater” was added to the name of the island.

  Name the island

  ACUTE COUNTRY, BUT A BIT OBTUSE

  1. This country, when grouped with two other countries, is known by another name.

  2. When grouped with three other countries, it’s known by yet another name.

  3. The name comes from a Germanic tribe that invaded the country about 1,500 years ago.