Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  10. “Mama Mia, that’s a spicy meat-a-ball!”

  11. “They’re magically delicious.”

  12. “When you care enough to send the very best.”

  13. “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.”

  14. “Finger lickin’ good.”

  15. “You’ve come a long way, baby!”

  16. “We bring good things to life.”

  17. “Double your pleasure, double your fun.”

  18. “We drive excitement.”

  19. “Less filling. Tastes great.”

  20. “How do you spell relief?”

  21. “Betcha can’t eat just one.”

  22. “Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t.”

  23. “Ancient Chinese secret, huh?”

  24. “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

  25. “Stronger than dirt.”

  26. “It’s the real thing.”

  27. “No more tears.”

  28. “Nothin’ says lovin’ like something from the oven.”

  29. “Because life is not a spectator sport.”

  Remember this tomorrow: An average person will forget 80% of what they learned today.

  WORD ORIGINS

  A few more interesting stories about where words come from.

  HOPSCOTCH

  Meaning: A children’s game of hopping into and over squares drawn on the ground

  Origin: “The word scotch here has nothing to do with the inhabitants of Scotland. It’s a 15th-century word for a ‘cut, incision, scratch, or score on the ground,’ which is how the boxes were drawn before kids got their hands on chalk. Schoolchildren have been playing scotch-hoppers since at least 1677.” (From Devious Derivations, by Hugh Rawson)

  AGONY

  Meaning: Extreme suffering

  Origin: “This word originally was the Greek agonia, meaning ‘contest,’ especially any athletic contest. Since at least one party—the loser—in an athletic contest usually suffers some pain or anguish, the word gradually came to mean what it does today.” (From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume III, by William and Mary Morris)

  CENT

  Meaning: A monetary unit equal to one hundredth of a dollar

  Origin: “Why are pennies called cents in America? As part of the trend to de-English our language at the time of the Revolution, Governor Morris proposed the word cent—one hundredth of a dollar—to replace the British word penny. The attempt was not entirely successful, since penny is still widely used on this side of the Atlantic.” (From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume II, by William and Mary Morris)

  INVEST

  Meaning: Put money into a financial plan with the expectation of a profit; devote one’s time to an undertaking

  Origin: “The etymological notion underlying invest is of ‘putting on clothes.’ It comes from Latin investire, a compound verb formed from the prefix in-, and vestis, ‘clothes.’ It retained that original literal sense ‘clothe’ in English for several centuries, but now survives only in its metaphorical descendant. Its financial sense, first recorded in the early 17th century, is thought to have originated from the idea of dressing one’s capital up in different clothes by putting it into a particular business, stock, etc.” (From Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Ayto)

  Now you know: The liquid inside a Magic-8 ball is a mix of water, antifreeze, and blue dye.

  BANG

  Meaning: A sharp, loud noise or a hairstyle

  Origin: “‘Bangs,’ the hair style, comes from the same root as ‘bang,’ the sound of a gun or slamming door. It comes from an Old Norse word, banga, meaning ‘to hammer.’ In English, ‘bang’ first meant ‘to strike violently,’ but gradually came to be used for any violent movement, especially one which caused a loud noise. It continued to evolve, which brings us at last to modern haircuts. ‘Bangs’ are so-called because they are created by cutting the hair ‘bang-off’—abruptly and straight across the forehead.” (From The Word Detective, by Evan Morris)

  HOAX

  Meaning: An act meant to trick or dupe someone

  Origin: “Believed to be a contraction of the word hocus from the term hocus pocus, which first appeared in the early 17th century. It may be derived from the name of a conjuror in the time of King James known as ‘The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus.’ Before every trick he would call out the nonsense phrase, Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo. This phrase was itself probably an imitation (or mockery) of the Latin hoc est corpus (‘this is my body’), used by Catholic priests performing the act of transubstantiation. (From The Museum of Hoaxes, by Alex Boese.)

  * * *

  A Groaner. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you,” says Dolly. “It’s true. No bull,” says Daisy.

  Gardeners’ claim: Roses cut in the afternoon will last longer than ones cut in the morning.

  THE CURSE OF THE LITTLE RASCALS

  When Robert Blake was arrested in 2002 and charged with the murder of his wife, a lot of people began to look back and wonder if the kids who starred in the Our Gang films were under some kind of cloud.

  BACKGROUND

  According to Our Gang producer Hal Roach, 176 kids played in the 221 Our Gang films made between 1922 and 1944. Only a few of these became major stars in the series.

  It’s not unusual for child stars to have a difficult time as they move into adulthood, and if anything life in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s was even tougher. Children who worked on the series typically started out earning less than $100 a week, and they never earned residuals—when the Our Gang films made their way to television in the early 1950s, the kids didn’t get a penny. Result: when their fame ended, they didn’t have money to fall back on like child stars do today.

  When you consider how many kids cycled through the Our Gang series, it stands to reason that quite a few of them would have problems later in life. Even so, the number of kids who suffered misfortune over the years is startling. You can’t help but wonder: Are the Little Rascals cursed?

  LOSS OF INNOCENCE

  • Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer: Like many of the Little Rascals, Switzer had trouble finding movie roles as he grew older. He landed bit parts in films like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Defiant Ones, supporting himself at such odd jobs as bartender, dog trainer, and hunting guide between acting gigs. He was shot to death in 1959 following an argument over $50. He was 31. (Carl’s older brother, Harold, also appeared in the Our Gang series; in April 1967 he murdered his girlfriend and then killed himself. He was 42.)

  • William “Buckwheat” Thomas: When his career in front of the camera ended, Thomas became a film technician with the Technicolor Corporation. In October 1980, a neighbor who hadn’t seen Thomas in several days entered his home and found him dead in his bed. Cause of death: heart attack. Thomas was 49.

  Rhode Island prison inmates have the legal right to change their underwear once a week.

  • Robert “Wheezer” Hutchins: A cadet in the Army Air Corps, Hutchins was killed in 1945 while trying to land his plane during a training exercise. He died a few days shy of his 20th birthday.

  • Matthew “Stymie” Beard: A high school dropout, Beard fought a heroin addiction for more than 20 years and was frequently in and out of prison. He beat the habit in the 1970s, but passed away in 1981, at age 56. Cause of death: pneumonia, following a stroke.

  • “Darla” Hood Granson: Contracted hepatitis while in the hospital for minor surgery and died in 1979 at the age of 47.

  • Norman “Chubby” Chaney: Chaney’s weight was due to a glandular problem; by the time he was 17 he weighed more than 300 pounds. In 1935 he had surgery to treat his condition; that dropped his weight down to 130 pounds, but he never regained his health. He passed away in 1936 at the age of 18.

  • “Scotty” Beckett: Scotty was the kid who wore a cap turned to the side of
his head. A classic case of a troubled former child star, Beckett slid into alcohol and drug abuse when his acting career petered out. He had two failed marriages, a history of violence, and numerous run-ins with the law. In 1968 he checked into a Hollywood nursing home after someone beat him up; two days later he was dead. Investigators found a bottle of pills and a suicide note by his bed, but the coroner never ruled on whether it was the beating or the barbiturates that killed him. He was 38.

  • William “Froggy” Laughlin: Rear-ended and killed by a truck while delivering newspapers on his motor scooter in 1948. He was 16.

  • Richard “Mickey” Daniels: Long estranged from his wife and children, Daniels died alone in a San Diego hotel room in 1970. Cause of death: cirrhosis of the liver. Years passed before his remains were identified and claimed by his family. Daniels was 55 when he died; he is buried in an unmarked grave.

  • Bobby Blake: (He used his real name, Mickey Gubitosi, in the Our Gang films until 1942.) If you’re charged with murdering your wife and you beat the rap, does that count as being cursed or beating the curse? In the 1990s, Blake took up with a woman named Bonnie Lee Bakley. He didn’t know it at the time, but she was a celebrity-obsessed con artist who wanted to have a baby with a Hollywood star. Blake took the bait, and in 2000 Bakley gave birth to Blake’s daughter. Five months later they were married.

  Mark Twain called the accordion a “stomach Steinway.”

  On May 4, 2001, Bakley was shot in the head and killed while sitting in her car outside a restaurant where she and Blake had just eaten dinner. In April 2002, Blake was arrested and charged with Bakley’s murder; in March 2005, a jury found him not guilty. He beat the rap, but the media continues to doubt his innocence. Blake says that as a result of the ordeal, he’s now destitute.

  OTHER RASCALS’ FATES

  • Robert “Bonedust” Young. Fell asleep while smoking in bed in 1951; he died in the ensuing fire at the age of 33.

  • Jay “Pinky” Smith (aka the freckle-faced kid). Stabbed to death in 2002 by a homeless man he’d befriended, who then dumped Smith’s body in the desert outside of Las Vegas. He was 87.

  • “Dorothy” Dandridge. Committed suicide in 1965 after losing all of her money in a phony investment scheme. She was 41.

  • Kendall “Breezy Brisbane” McComas. Committed suicide in 1981, two weeks before being forced into retirement as an electrical engineer. He was 64.

  • Darwood “Waldo” Kaye. Waldo was the rich kid with glasses who competed with Spanky and Alfalfa for Darla’s affections. In 2002 he was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while walking on the sidewalk. He was 72.

  • Pete the Pup: The first dog to play Pete was poisoned by an unknown assailant in 1930.

  VOICE OF REASON?

  Hal Roach, who outlived many of his child stars and died in 1992 at the age of 100, never believed that the kids were cursed. “Naturally, some got into trouble or had bad luck,” he told an interviewer in 1973. “They’re the ones that made the headlines. But if you took 176 other kids and followed them through their lives, I believe you would find the same percentage of them having trouble in later life.”

  Six standard eight-post Legos can be combined in 102,981,500 different ways.

  FICTIONAL VACATION

  On page 96, we told you how you can visit the Field of Dreams baseball diamond. Here are some other tourist attractions based on fictional places.

  • Tourists can take a Sopranos tour in suburban New Jersey. Stops include Satriale’s Pork Store, the place where Livia Soprano is “buried,” and the Bada Bing nightclub. The tour includes cannolis and a meeting with actor Joe Gannascoli, who plays Vito on the show.

  • Sam Spade, the detective in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, kept his office in the Hunter-Dulin Building at 111 Sutter Street, San Francisco. The building is real; the office is fictional.

  • Gunsmoke was filmed in California, but set in Dodge City, Kansas. Since the 1960s, about 100,000 people a year visit the real Dodge City to see replicas of buildings from the show.

  • The house used for exterior shots of The Brady Bunch is at 11222 Dilling Street, North Hollywood, California. The current residents installed an iron fence to keep out fans hoping to catch a glimpse of the Bradys.

  • The Wizard of Oz takes place in Kansas, but neither the book nor the movie say where in Kansas. So the town of Liberal decided that it was there, and in 1981 opened a museum they call Dorothy’s House—an old farmhouse that kind of looks like the one in the 1939 movie.

  • The 1990s TV series Northern Exposure took place in the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, but was filmed in the real town of Roslyn, Washington. The Roslyn Museum houses artifacts and memorabilia from the show.

  • People still visit Fort Hays, Kansas, setting of the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves. Only problem: the movie was filmed in South Dakota.

  • Twin Peaks was filmed in Snoqualmie, Washington, and North Bend, Washington. You can visit the show’s Mar-T Cafe in North Bend, where they sell cherry pie, “a damn fine cup of coffee,” and official Log Lady logs.

  Cone heads? Australia is the world’s top consumer of ice cream.

  • What do The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Sixteen Candles have in common? All were written by John Hughes and all take place in Shermer, Illinois. It’s a fictional place, based on Hughes’s hometown of North-brook, Illinois. Landmarks from the movie, however, are real. Fans can see the “Save Ferris” water tower and the high school used in The Breakfast Club.

  • Visiting New York? Take the Seinfeld tour. It’s led by Kenny Kramer, who inspired Michael Richards’s Kramer character on the show. Stops include: the Soup Nazi’s restaurant, Monk’s Diner (Tom’s Restaurant in real life), and the building used to film exterior shots of the office where Elaine worked. It’s a great way to spend Festivus.

  • Bedrock City in Custer, South Dakota, is a re-creation of the town of Bedrock from The Flintstones. It includes the Flintstone and Rubble homes, the main street (with a bank being held up by a caveman), and Mt. Rockmore, a mini Mt. Rushmore (with Fred, Barney, and Dino instead of presidents).

  • Little House on the Prairie (the books and the TV show) is based on author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, growing up in the 1860s near Wayside, Kansas. People who visit Wayside can see modern replicas of the show’s schoolhouse, post office, and the Ingalls’s cabin.

  • Fans of Gone With the Wind can’t visit Tara—it’s fictional. But they can visit the Road to Tara Museum in Clayton County, Georgia. Highlights include replicas of some costumes used in the 1939 movie, such as Scarlett’s drapery dress, two seats from the Atlanta movie theater where stars of the movie saw the film’s premiere, and a copy of the novel autographed by the author, Margaret Mitchell.

  • Andy Griffith was born in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, which became the model for Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show. Every September, Mt. Airy holds “Mayberry Days” (cast members attend). There’s a statue of Andy and Opie and replicas of Floyd’s Barber Shop, the jail, and Andy’s house. But don’t look for the fishing hole seen in the opening credits—that’s in Beverly Hills.

  Count ’em yourself: There are about 1,750 Os in every can of SpaghettiOs.

  SPY HUNT: GRAY DECEIVER, PART II

  Here’s the second part of our intriguing tale of espionage, money, and politics. (Part I is on page 110.)

  TO TELL THE TRUTH

  The map of dead drops (places where spies and their handlers exchange money and secret documents) that the FBI found in CIA agent Brian Kelley’s home was pretty incriminating, but it wasn’t enough to secure a conviction, so the Bureau decided to trick Kelley into taking a lie detector test. They arranged for him to be transferred to a “new assignment,” debriefing a non-existent Soviet defector. To be approved for the new assignment, Kelley’s CIA superiors explained to him, he had to take a polygraph test.

  The results of the test stunned even the seasoned FBI mole hunters—Kelley pass
ed with flying colors. There wasn’t a flicker of a guilty response anywhere on the test. Fooling a lie detector test so thoroughly takes a lot of skill. This guy was good.

  KNOCK KNOCK

  Next, they set up a “false flag” operation: an FBI agent masquerading as an SVR agent knocked on Kelley’s door and warned him that he was about to be arrested for spying and needed to leave the country. The agent then handed Kelley a written escape plan and told him to be at a nearby subway station the following evening. Then the man disappeared into the night…and the FBI waited to see what Kelley would do. If he made a run for the subway station, that would in effect be an acknowledgement that he was indeed a spy—people who aren’t spying for the SVR don’t need help fleeing the country.

  The next morning Kelley went to work as usual and reported the incident to the CIA. He even gave an accurate description of the “SVR agent” to a sketch artist. Once again the FBI was astonished by Kelley’s skill under pressure. Somehow he must have detected that the SVR guy was a fake and was not taken in by the trick. He was so cool and collected that the investigators gave him a new nickname—the “Iceman.”

  “Bubble gum” flavor originally was a combination of wintergreen, vanilla, and cinnamon.

  IN YOUR FACE

  The FBI still lacked enough evidence to get a conviction and was running out of options. They made a last-ditch attempt at tricking Kelley into incriminating himself. On August 18, 1999, he was called into a meeting at CIA headquarters and confronted by two FBI agents who told him that they knew everything about his spying, even his SVR code name, KARAT. Kelley professed astonishment and denied everything, so the FBI agents pulled out Kelley’s handwritten map. “Explain this!” one of them said.

  “Where did you get my jogging map?” Kelley asked.