What makes Meadow the cow so special? She’s the first to have two prosthetic legs.
• Talk (1999–2002). It got a lot of publicity before its launch because it was a joint project between the behemoth Hearst Publications and the Miramax film studio (Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting), and because its first editor was former New Yorker and Vanity Fair chief Tina Brown. Consisting of in-depth interviews with celebrities and politicians, Talk never turned a profit.
• Cracked (1958–2007). A crude humor magazine for kids—a blatant knockoff of Mad, even poaching several Mad artists and writers in the 1980s, but its circulation numbers never came close to Mad’s, so in 2005 it was revamped as a humor magazine for adult men (similar to Maxim or FHM). That didn’t work either, and the magazine shut down after three issues. Today it’s a trivia website.
• Omni (1978–1995). Created by Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione and his wife Kathy Keton, Omni was a magazine that blended science fiction and science fact. It combined reporting on legitimate, cutting-edge science with science fiction from top writers in the genre such as William Gibson and Stephen King, plus a healthy dose of articles on fringe pseudoscience and paranormal topics. The magazine went to a web-only format in 1996 and then shut down completely two years later. (General Media, the company that publishes Penthouse, filed for bankruptcy in 2003.)
• Weekly World News (1979–2007). When the National Enquirer switched to full color in 1979, the magazine’s founder, Generoso Pope, didn’t want to let his black-and-white press machine go to waste. So he created the WWN, a highly successful supermarket tabloid featuring stories about Bigfoot sightings, two-headed lizard boys, and presidents meeting with aliens. The magazine’s circulation peaked at 1.2 million in the 1980s, but dropped to just 83,000 by 2007, when publication ceased. Why did it go defunct? Because, after 20 years, readers simply grew tired of stories about Bigfoot sightings, two-headed lizard boys, and presidents meeting with aliens. It’s now an online-only magazine.
12% of male American drivers admit to shaving while driving.
DO YOU SPEAK DOG?
More tips and tricks to help you better understand what your dog is thinking and doing. (Part I is on page 350.)
PROBLEM: Your dog “greets” your guests by jumping up on them.
EXPERTS SAY: Dogs do this as a natural part of play with other dogs, but it can be upsetting or even dangerous if they do it to small children, senior citizens, or anyone who’s afraid of dogs.
SOLUTION: You can discourage jumping on guests by teaching the dog a new command for sit. Raise both hands, palms up and facing the dog, whenever you tell your dog to sit. Then, when it’s used to the new command, stop saying “Sit,” so that it learns to sit when only the hand gesture is given. This gesture is the same defensive motion that people make when they fear that an approaching dog is going to jump on them. So when your dog sees a guest making this defensive movement, it will interpret that as a command to “sit.”
PROBLEM: When you take your dog for a walk, it pulls against the leash until it chokes, and just keeps on pulling.
EXPERTS SAY: This can be difficult behavior for dog owners to understand, because the dog could easily relieve the choking by not pulling so hard on the leash. You know this intuitively, but a dog may not. Dogs that pull continuously on the leash do so because they have come to see walking on a leash as an inherently asphyxiating experience, and they’re trying to escape it.
SOLUTION: This problem can be controlled easily—and gently—with head collars, no-pull harnesses, and other training tools that discourage your dog from pulling during walks.
Problem: Your dog has accidents in the house.
EXPERTS SAY: Dogs do this when they haven’t been completely house-trained, or when they have to wait too long for the opportunity to go outside.
SOLUTION: If you catch a dog “eliminating” inside the house, just interrupt it and take it outside without yelling or punishing it. Punishing a dog that is peeing or pooping in the house just teaches it to do its business in out-of-the-way places that are harder for you to find…and clean up.
You risk being electrocuted if you talk on a landline during a thunderstorm.
CLEANING TIP: If your dog does have an accident in your house, deodorize the spot with white vinegar, rubbing alcohol, or a commercial odor eliminator after you’ve cleaned up the mess. The lack of an odor will make the dog less likely to go there again. Whatever you do, do not clean it with any cleaning products that contain ammonia. When urine breaks down in the air, it gives off ammonia, and your dog associates this smell with urine. Adding more ammonia smell to a spot that has already been peed upon may be telling your dog, “this is the place to pee.”
PROBLEM: Your dog suffers from “separation anxiety”—it gets very upset when you leave the house. It chews furniture, barks incessantly, has accidents in the house, or engages in other forms of undesirable behavior.
EXPERTS SAY: Adolescent dogs in the wild eventually reach an age where they can leave the den and hunt with the adult dogs. When your dog reaches that age, it will want to go with you when you leave the den. Not being able to go can be very stressful.
SOLUTION: One trick that can be effective in reducing separation anxiety is de-emphasizing the significance of your comings and goings by being as quiet and undemonstrative as possible. Don’t say goodbye to your dog before you leave—a farewell may give you comfort, but all it does for the dog is emphasize your departure. Then, when you return home, let a few minutes pass before you greet the dog. Put away your stuff, get a drink or a snack from the fridge, sit in your favorite chair, and when the dog has calmed down, say hello. Another trick: Leave a radio on while you’re gone. It can lessen the distinction between an empty house and one with you in it. And drawing curtains over windows through which the dog can see passersby may help your pet feel less threatened when it is defending the den all by itself.
OTHER DOG BEHAVIORS EXPLAINED
• Yawning. Dogs yawn when they’re tired just like people do, but not only when they’re tired: They also yawn when they are feeling timid or under stress—a dog may yawn to calm itself or other dogs, reducing the threat they pose.
The techie term PEBKAC means “Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair” (i.e., you).
• Tail Wagging. When a dog wags its tail it can mean either of two things: 1) the dog is happy, or 2) the dog is in an excited, aggressive state. If you don’t know the dog, don’t let the tail fool you! Many dog-bite victims report they were bitten by a dog that was wagging its tail. Greet a strange dog very carefully before trying to pet it, even if it is wagging its tail.
• Licking Your Face. In the days when dogs lived in the wild, when the mother returned to the den after hunting for food she fed her young pups by vomiting up whatever partially digested prey she’d caught for them to eat. Experts say that puppies learned they could trigger Mom’s barf reflex by licking her face. So when your dog licks your face, it may really be more interested in what you had for dinner than in showing how much it loves you. But not necessarily: A lick may really mean “I love you,” after all, because dogs continue to greet their mothers this way long after they’ve learned to hunt for their own food.
• Poop-Eating. Easily one of the most disgusting spectacles a dog owner has to witness, poop eating actually served an important purpose when dogs lived in the wild: A mother dog ate all the poop produced by her pups to remove the strong smell from the den. This helped the defenseless pups remain hidden from predators while she was away from the den hunting for food. The good news: Poop eating teaches pups that their sleeping area is a place that needs to be kept clean; that, in turn, can sometimes speed up the house training.
SYA HWAT?
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are; the olny iprmoetnt fatcor is taht the frist and lsat ltteres be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbe
lm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Petrty amzanig, huh?
Zebras can be trained to pull carts, but they’ve never been fully domesticated.
DEAD TV
When an actor on a TV show dies, producers are left with a dilemma: What do they do with the actor’s character? Say they moved away? Pretend they never existed? Or make the character die too?
Actor: Will Lee
Show: Sesame Street (1983)
Story: Lee had played Mr. Hooper, the grandfatherly candy store owner, from the show’s inception in 1969 until his death of a heart attack in 1982. Sesame Street writers decided to have Mr. Hooper die as well, in order to teach kids about death—that it’s forever, and that it’s okay to feel sad. On a highly publicized episode that aired on Thanksgiving Day in 1983 (so parents would be home to answer their children’s questions), Big Bird can’t find Mr. Hooper anywhere, and the human characters tell him that “Mr. Hooper died”—the writers didn’t want to use a euphemism like “passed away.” When Big Bird asks when he’ll be coming back, he’s told that he won’t. “But it won’t be the same,” Big Bird pleads. “No, it won’t,” says Bob, who goes on to assure Big Bird that they will always have memories of Mr. Hooper, and that David, the new candy shop owner, will make Big Bird his birdseed milk shakes.
Actor: Phil Hartman
Show: NewsRadio (1998)
Story: Hartman’s death was a sudden and violent one—in May 1998, his mentally ill wife shot him, and then herself. The sitcom had finished taping for the season, so the first episode that aired after Hartman’s death was the September 1998 season premiere. Plot: the staff of the news radio station deals with the sudden death of Hartman’s character, the arrogant news reader Bill McNeal. The actors choke back real tears as they read a letter found in Bill’s desk to be opened upon his death, “If Dave is reading this to you, I have either been fired or I have passed away. Since my formidable talent would preclude the former, I’ll have to assume that the latter is true.” Hartman’s former Saturday Night Live castmate Jon Lovitz joined NewsRadio as a replacement, but the show was cancelled at the end of the 1998–99 season. Hartman was also a voice actor on The Simpsons, playing two recurring characters: washed-up B-movie actor Troy McClure and the terrible lawyer Lionel Hutz. Simpsons producers opted to simply retire those two characters.
The average adult has three colds per year. The average kid: six.
Actor: John Ritter
Show: 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (2003)
Story: Ritter suddenly fell ill on the set in September 2003 and was rushed to a hospital, where he died later that day of an undiagnosed heart ailment. It was early in the show’s second season, and ABC wasn’t sure what to do about 8 Simple Rules, a family sitcom that was also a starring vehicle for Ritter. Ultimately deciding that the show could continue with the other characters (James Garner and David Spade were later added to the cast), producers transformed the show into one about a family trying to put their lives back together after the death of the patriarch. It ran for two more seasons.
Actor: Nicholas Colasanto
Show: Cheers (1985)
Story: Colasanto was primarily a director of TV drama series episodes, but in 1982 he was cast as bartender Ernie “Coach” Pantusso on Cheers as Sam Malone’s (Ted Danson) absent-minded former baseball coach. While at home after completing his work on the third season of Cheers in early 1985, Colasanto died of heart failure. His death was acknowledged as part of the plot in the fourth season premiere that September—Coach had died, and the bar needed to hire a new bartender to replace him. Colasanto, however, was remembered in more subtle ways by the cast and crew. Colasanto had kept a picture of Geronimo in his dressing room as a good-luck charm, and after his death it was placed on the Cheers set. In the last scene of the very last episode of Cheers in 1993, Sam straightens the Geronimo picture, turns off the lights, and the show ends.
“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.”
—Don Marquis
First American billionaire: Henry Ford.
THE PEARL HARBOR
SPY, PART II
From Uncle John’s Dustbin of History, here’s the final installment of our story about the person most responsible for making Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as devastating as it was. (Part I is on page 343.)
BEFORE THE STORM
On the evening of Saturday, December 6, 1941, Yoshikawa sent what would turn out to be the last of his coded messages to Tokyo:
VESSELS MOORED IN HARBOR: NINE BATTLESHIPS; THREE CLASS-B CRUISERS; THREE SEAPLANE TENDERS; SEVENTEEN DESTROYERS. ENTERING HARBOR ARE FOUR CLASS-B CRUISERS; THREE DESTROYERS. ALL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND HEAVY CRUISERS HAVE DEPARTED HARBOR….NO INDICATION OF ANY CHANGES IN U.S. FLEET. “ENTERPRISE” AND “LEXINGTON” HAVE SAILED FROM PEARL HARBOR….IT APPEARS THAT NO AIR RECONNAISSANCE IS BEING CONDUCTED BY THE FLEET AIR ARM.
Though Yoshikawa provided much of the intelligence used to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor, he did not know when—or even if—it would occur. (“To entrust knowledge of such a vital decision to an expendable espionage agent would have been foolish,” he later explained.) He learned the attack was under way the same way that Hawaiians did: by hearing the first bombs go off as he was eating breakfast, at 7:55 a.m. on the morning of the 7th.
INFAMY
Yoshikawa had been feeding the war planners in Japan a steady stream of information for eight months, and his efforts had paid off. The Japanese military accomplished its objective with brutal effectiveness: The naval strike force, which included nine destroyers, 23 submarines, two battleships and six aircraft carriers bristling with more than 400 fighters, bombers, dive-bombers and torpedo planes, had managed to sail more than 4,000 miles across the Pacific undetected and then strike at the home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet while its ships were still at anchor and the Army Air Corps planes were still on the ground.
There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil.
Twenty American warships were sunk or badly damaged in the two-hour attack, including the eight battleships along Battleship Row, the main target of the raid. More than 180 U.S. aircraft were destroyed and another 159 damaged. The destruction of the airfield on Ford Island, in the very heart of Pearl Harbor, was so complete that only a single aircraft managed to make it into the air. More than 2,400 American servicemen lost their lives, including 1,177 on the battleship Arizona, and another 1,178 were wounded. It was the greatest military disaster in United States history.
The Japanese losses were miniscule in comparison: 29 planes and 5 midget submarines lost, 64 men killed, and one submariner taken prisoner—the first Japanese P.O.W. of the war—when his submarine ran aground on Oahu.
INVISIBLE MAN
The FBI raided the Japanese consulate within hours, but by then Yoshikawa had burned his code books and any other materials that would have identified him as a spy. He was taken into custody with the rest of the consular staff, and in August 1942 they were all returned to Japan as part of a swap with American diplomats being held in Japan.
Yoshikawa worked in Naval Intelligence for the rest of the war. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, he hid in the countryside, posing as a Buddhist monk, fearful of what might happen to him if the American occupation forces learned of his role in the Pearl Harbor attack. After the occupation ended in 1952, he returned to his family. In 1955 he opened a candy business.
By that time Yoshikawa’s role in the war had become widely known, thanks to an Imperial Navy officer who identified him by name in a 1953 interview with the newspaper Ehime Shimbun. If Yoshikawa thought the exposure would bring him fame, fortune, or the gratitude of his countrymen, he was wrong on all counts. Japan had paid a terrible price for starting the war with the United States: On top of the estimated 1.6 million Japanese soldiers who died in the war, an additional 400,000 civilians were killed, including m
ore than 100,000 who died when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Few people wanted anything to do with the man who helped bring such death and destruction to Japan. “They even blamed me for the atomic bomb,” Yoshikawa told Australia’s Daily Mail in 1991, in one of his rare interviews with the Western press.
Some species of shark can live to be 100 years old.
The candy business failed, and Yoshikawa, now a pariah in his own land, had trouble even finding a job. He ended up living off of the income his wife earned selling insurance. He never received any official recognition for his contribution to the war effort, not a medal or even a thank-you note, and when he petitioned the postwar government for a pension, they turned him down. By the end of his life he had returned to the same vice that supposedly landed him in the spying business in the first place: alcohol. “I drink to forget,” he told a reporter. “I have so many thoughts now, so many years after the war. Why has history cheated me?” He died penniless in a nursing home in 1993.
FINAL IRONY
Yoshikawa was the only Japanese spy in Honolulu before the outbreak of war; only the consul general knew his true identity and purpose, and with the exception of the geishas, his driver, and others who assisted him without fully realizing what he was up to, he worked alone.
And yet it was the Roosevelt administration’s fear that other Japanese spies might be out there, both in the Hawaiian Islands and on the West Coast of the United States, that prompted the federal government to round up 114,000 Japanese Americans and incarcerate them in internment camps for the duration of the war. Many were given only 48 hours to put their affairs in order and as a consequence lost everything they owned.
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 54