“It is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.”
“Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.”
“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution: Only nut cases want to be president.”
“Earth, should it find a voice and a sense of irony, might now well say of our abuse of it, ‘Forgive them, Father, They know not what they do.’ The irony would be that we know what we are doing.”
“Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
“I fully expected that by the time I was 21, some scientist would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.”
“The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers.”
“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were big things.”
Sauerkraut was invented by the Chinese.
WEIRD CANADA
Canada: land of beautiful mountains, clear lakes…and some really odd news stories.
YOU WANT THE TOOTH, OFFICER?
Outside Sarnia, Ontario, in June 2010, a driver flagged down a police officer on Highway 402 to warn him of a semi truck meandering all over the road. The officer caught up to the truck and pulled it over. The driver’s explanation for his erratic driving: He was attempting to pull out one of his teeth. No longer able to deal with a toothache, he tied one end of a piece of string to the bad tooth and the other to the roof of his cab. “One good bump” and it would come right out, he told the officer. As it turned out, he was right—the officer could tell by the bloody tooth on a string sitting on the seat.
BEEFY VINO
In Japan, Wagyu cattle are fed beer and massaged with sake each day. The result is the richly flavored and expensive (more than $100 a pound) Kobe beef. Seeking to create his own specialty beef market, Bill Freding of Southern Plus Feedlots in Oliver, B.C., has developed his own booze-based method: wine-fed cows. Like the cattle at other high-volume beef producers, Freding’s cattle eat a diet of primarily grain. But they also drink a liter of wine every day for 90 days prior to slaughter. The red wine is from wineries in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, and Freding claims the beef tastes “sweeter.”
ANIMAL ACT
Wildlife officials in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, had to put down a moose in 2009, after someone reported the animal collapsing from exhaustion in their backyard. Witnesses reported seeing three teenage boys chasing the moose for hours and hitting it with sticks. The teens were quickly caught, brought up on animal cruelty charges…and acquitted. Why? One of the boys’ fathers testified that they couldn’t have been abusing the moose, because at the time they were busy vandalizing a local church.
What’s Mt. Lee’s claim to fame? It’s the hill that the famous “HOLLYWOOD” sign stands on.
PLEASE KNOCK FIRST
For Valentine’s Day 2010, the Toronto restaurant Mildred’s Temple Kitchen pulled out all the stops for romantic diners—serving intimate meals for two…and openly encouraging couples to “couple” in the restrooms. A handful of concerned citizens reported the Mildred’s promotion to the Toronto Public Health office. The agency investigated and found nothing wrong with the idea, as long as frisky patrons stayed out of food-preparation areas.
THE LAW IS THE LAW
In June 2010, Marika De Florio’s five-year-old neighbor was driving her crazy, riding his battery-powered four-wheeler past her Seeley Bay, Ontario, house over and over again all afternoon. She asked the boy’s grandparents several times to keep it down, but to no avail. So De Florio went outside and, in full view of the boy, took off her shirt. That, she reasoned, would convince the boy’s grandparents to bring him inside. Indeed, Mike and Nancy Berry quickly hustled their grandson inside and then called the police on De Florio. No charges were pressed, however—it’s legal in Seeley Bay for women to be topless in public.
DIRTY YOUNG MEN
Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse of the University of Montreal’s social work department began a project in December 2009 investigating how pornography affects the way men view and relate to women. Part of that research required a “control group” for comparison, so Lajeunesse advertised around Montreal to recruit 20 young men who did not view pornography. He received zero responses.
BAN-ADA
In the 1910s, Toronto police had full authority over movies, including the right to ban films they considered offensive. The criteria: Any movie that showed a pro-America attitude, murder, or an extramarital romance could be banned. Any movie. In 1911, an inspector reported, “I witnessed a moving picture show of Hamlet, written I think by Shakespeare. That’s all very well to say it’s a famous drama, but it doesn’t keep it from being a spectacle of violence.” A few weeks later, the same inspector banned a film version of Romeo and Juliet.
Bees fly at about 12 mph.
FAMILY BUSINESS
It’s hard to become famous. One thing that often helps: having a famous parent. Some of these may surprise you.
RASHIDA JONES. She co-stars on the sitcom Parks and Recreation and has a role on The Office. Her mother is The Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton; her father is music producer Quincy Jones.
MITT ROMNEY. The former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential candidate is the son of Michigan governor and 1968 presidential candidate George Romney.
JOSS WHEDON. He has created four TV series with low ratings and rabid cult fan bases—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse—but got his start as a staff writer on Roseanne. He’s also the first third-generation television writer: His father, Tom Whedon, wrote for The Golden Girls, and his grandfather, John Whedon, wrote for The Donna Reed Show.
NORAH JONES. She’s the daughter of classical sitarist Ravi Shankar. (He didn’t raise her, though, and they’ve had long periods of estrangement.)
PAUL GIAMATTI. The Oscar-nominated actor (Sideways, American Splendor) is the son of A. Bartlett Giamatti, a president of Yale University before becoming president of baseball’s National League in 1986, and then commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989. He was in the position for only a few months before he died, but it was long enough to ban gambler Pete Rose from baseball for life.
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA. He directed Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. His father, Carmine Coppola, a film-score composer long before his son became one of the most important directors of his generation, composed the music for many of his son’s films. Francis’s daughter, Sofia Coppola, also became a director, winning an Oscar for her second film, Lost in Translation.
WHITNEY HOUSTON. Her, mother Cissy Houston, is primarily a gospel singer but once paid the bills as a backup singer for
Only developed nation where medical bankruptcies occur: the United States.
Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin. (And Dionne Warwick is Whitney’s aunt.)
ELVIS COSTELLO. He’s one of the most influential rock musicians of the last 30 years, but his biggest influence was his father, bandleader and trumpet player Ross MacManus.
ZAK STARKEY. He’s the current drummer for the Who. It’s not easy to fill in for Keith Moon, the band’s legendary drummer, who died in 1978. But Starkey has a decent resume: He was once the drummer for the band Oasis…and his father is Ringo Starr.
DUNCAN JONES. He’s the winner of the 2010 BAFTA Award (the British Oscar) for best first-time British director for his film Moon. He’s also the son of rock legend David Bowie, and was better known as Zowie Bowie during his childhood.
GEORGE W. BUSH. President Bush is the son of another president Bush, George H.W. Bush, who is the son of banker, Wall Street executive, and U.S. Senator Prescott Bush. And Prescott Bush was the son of Samuel Bush, one of the most prominent and powerful
business tycoons of the early 20th century.
GRANT HILL. Hill was one of the biggest stars of the NBA in the 1990s, being named the Rookie of the Year and playing in five all-star games. His father, Calvin Hill, was also a star athlete, but in professional football, not basketball. He played from 1969 to 1981, winning a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys in 1972.
KRISTIN GORE. Like many comedy writers, she went to Harvard, was the editor of the humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon, and parlayed that into writing jobs for TV shows such as Futurama and Saturday Night Live. A guest star on both those shows during Gore’s stints: her father, former vice president Al Gore.
LISA MURKOWSKI. She has served as a U.S. senator from Alaska since 2002. Her predecessor: her father, Frank Murkowski, who left Congress after 21 years to become the governor of the state and appointed his daughter to finish out his Senate term. She was reelected to a full term in 2004.
STELLA MCCARTNEY. She’s one of the world’s most famous and top-earning fashion designers. Her father is Paul McCartney, of the ’70s rock band Wings (and the Beatles).
According to Match.com, 1 in 5 modern relationships start on an online dating site.
KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES
We used to think limericks were the lowest form of humor. (We were wrong.)
A: Desdemona.
Q: Desdemona who?
A: Desdemona Lisa still hang in Paris?
A: Wayne.
Q: Wayne who?
A: Wayne dwops keep falling on my head.
A: Amaryllis.
Q: Amaryllis who?
A: Amaryllis state agent. Wanna buy a house?
A: Shelby.
Q: Shelby who?
A: Shelby comin’ ’round the mountain when she comes…
A: Esther.
Q: Esther who?
A: The Esther Bunny!
A: Venue.
Q: Venue who?
A: Venue vish upon a star…
A: Tarzan.
Q: Tarzan who?
A: Tarzan stripes forever!
A: Yule.
Q: Yule who?
A: Yule never know until you open the door.
A: Zeus.
Q: Zeus who?
A: Zeus company, three’s a crowd.
A: Interrupting cow
Q: Interrupting c
A: MOO.
A: Dwayne.
Q: Dwayne who?
A: Dwayne the tub, I’m dwowning!
A: Macho.
Q: Macho who?
A: Macho do about
nothing.
A: Marcus Welby.
Q: Marcus Welby who?
A: I Marcus Welby dead for all you care.
A: Sam and Janet.
Q: Sam and Janet who?
A: Sam and Janet evening…
A: Somber.
Q: Somber who?
A: Somber over the
rainbow.
A: Cat gut.
Q: Cat gut who?
A: Cat gut your tongue?
A: Hair comb.
Q: Hair comb who?
A: Hair comb trouble.
A: Amish.
Q: Amish who?
A: Amish you when you go away!
A: H.
Q: H who?
A: Gesundheit!
A: Control freak. (Okay, now you say “Control freak who?”)
A: Police.
Q: Police who?
A: Police stop telling me these awful knock-knock jokes!
Average SAT score: 1,520 out of a possible 2,400 points.
JOE STALIN VS.
JOHN WAYNE
After World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a “cold” war: an ideological conflict that was waged through political rhetoric, military posturing, espionage, and an arms race. Would it lead to WWIII? It didn’t, but at the time people weren’t so sure. Here’s an incredible story from that era.
THE PEACE CONFERENCE In the late 1940s, Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, ordered a prominent Russian film director named Sergei Gerasimov to go to New York to attend a left-wing gathering called the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace.
Gerasimov dutifully attended the conference, and that’s pretty much all there was to the story for the next 50 years. Then in 2003, British film critic Michael Munn wrote a book entitled John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, in which he tells a more sinister tale of Gerasimov’s trip to the United States and its aftermath. Munn says he got the story from actor/director Orson Welles, who heard it through contacts in the Soviet film industry.
MARKED MAN
According to Munn, while Gerasimov was in New York he learned of the leadership role that John Wayne, one of America’s biggest movie stars, was playing in driving communists out of Hollywood. Wayne was the president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a right-wing group dedicated to compiling a “blacklist” of communists working in the film industry. That blacklist was used to destroy the careers of hundreds of actors, screenwriters, and directors, either because of alleged communist sympathies or simply because they refused to testify before Congressional investigating committees.
When Gerasimov returned home and reported the havoc that Wayne was wreaking on communist efforts to infiltrate the film industry, Munn’s story goes, Stalin became so angry that he dispatched a team of KGB hit men to California. Their orders: Kill John Wayne.
Every hour the world’s human population grows by 9,000…and 3 species go extinct.
BACKLOT JUSTICE
The KGB killers really did come to California, Munn writes, and they even made it onto the Warner Brothers lot, where “Duke” Wayne had an office. Disguised as FBI agents, they checked in at the front gate and were given directions to Wayne’s office. (This part of the story, says Munn, was told to him by Yakima Canutt, a Hollywood stuntman and one of Wayne’s closest friends.)
Luckily for the Duke, FBI informants had already learned of the plot. As the fake FBI agents made their way across the studio lot, real FBI agents hid in the back room of Wayne’s office while he and a screenwriter named James Grant sat in the front room, pretending to be working. When the hit men entered, the FBI agents pounced, disarming and handcuffing the killers before they could harm Wayne.
Those G-men must have been big John Wayne fans, because they let him deal with the killers his own way: At Wayne’s direction, the FBI men loaded the KGB agents into cars and drove them to a secluded beach north of Los Angeles. At the beach the KGB men, still handcuffed, were marched down to the surf and made to kneel in the wet sand. Then, as the FBI agents looked on approvingly, Wayne and Grant drew pistols and aimed them at the heads of the KGB men. “On the count of three,” Wayne told Grant. “One…two…THREE!”
HOLLYWOOD ENDING
Both Wayne and Grant fired their guns, but the KGB men didn’t die. It took a moment for them to realize they were still alive; when they opened their eyes, Wayne held up his gun and exclaimed, “Blanks!” The Duke had never killed a man (except in the movies), and he wasn’t about to start now. “I just wanted to scare the living s*** out of them,” Munn says Wayne told him.
The KGB men’s lives were spared, but probably not for long, and they knew it: If the FBI deported them back to the U.S.S.R., Stalin would surely have them executed. The KGB men decided to defect to United States right then and there, and tell the FBI everything they knew. “Welcome to the land of the free,” Wayne told them. Then he and Grant got into their car and drove off.
In one study, spiders given marijuana started to spin webs but quit halfway through.
Wayne was safe, but would the commies try again? To guard against future attempts on Wayne’s life, Yakima Canutt and his stuntmen friends organized themselves into a private intelligence-gathering force for Wayne and began infiltrating communist cells operating in southern California. On the basis of the information they gathered, Munn writes, the stuntmen were able to break up at least two more attempts on Wayne’s l
ife, the first one in the summer of 1953, while Wayne was in Mexico filming Hondo. They thwarted a second attempt in 1955 by storming the communists’ hideout in the back room of a Burbank printing company and beating them to a bloody pulp.
Those would-be assassins didn’t fare as well as the two that Wayne and Grant “killed” on the beach after the first attempt, Munn writes: The stuntmen bought them tickets on the next plane to Russia…and they were never seen or heard from again.
A DICTATOR MEETS THE DUKE
Wayne didn’t learn that the threat to his life had abated until 1959, when Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, visited the United States. (Stalin died in 1953.) The Duke met him at a reception hosted by Twentieth Century Fox. It was there, according to Munn, that Wayne pulled Khrushchev aside during a quiet moment and asked through an interpreter why the Soviets were trying to kill him. “That was the decision of Stalin during his last five mad years,” Khrushchev supposedly told the Duke. “When Stalin died, I rescinded the order.”
That took care of the threat posed by Soviet communists, but Khrushchev warned him that Mao Zedong, leader of Communist China, had been in on the plot to assassinate him, and was likely still trying to do so.
ONE LAST TRY
Wayne learned how serious Mao’s threat was when he made a three-week goodwill tour of Vietnam in the summer of 1966. Munn claims that during a visit to one village, Wayne was nearly shot by a sniper, who was later caught by U.S. troops. The sniper wasn’t Vietnamese, he was Chinese—and he said that he’d been sent to the village on Mao’s orders, specifically to kill John Wayne.
Part II of the story, turn to page 515, pilgrim.
Ouch! Roman emperor Hadrian toured his entire empire on foot.
HIP-HOP LAWSUITS
We were going to do “lite jazz” lawsuits, but we couldn’t find any.
The Plaintiff: “Freeway” Ricky Ross, a Los Angeles gangster and drug kingpin in the early 1980s
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 31