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“When I was a little kid, I wished the first word I said was ‘quote,’ so that, when I died, I could say ‘unquote.’”
—Steven Wright
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
When people live close to each other, tensions can flare.
OFFENSE: A 24-year-old man named Zbigniew Filo liked to drive his souped-up Ford Escort at high speeds through his neighborhood in Lubczyna, Poland.
RETALIATION: He went out to his car one morning in May 2012 to discover that it had been hoisted 20 feet up a tree. None of Filo’s neighbors admitted to having done it, although one did say that his crane had been “borrowed.”
OFFENSE: A Polk County, Florida, man wouldn’t water his lawn, despite numerous requests to do so from his neighbor, Joe Florence.
RETALIATION: Florence finally just pulled his own hose over to the yard and started watering. The neighbor called the police. When they arrived a few minutes later, they ordered Florence to put down the hose. He refused. A struggle ensued, and Florence ended up with two black eyes and numerous charges against him, including resisting arrest and trespassing.
OFFENSE: At 8:30 one morning in 2011, a 10-year-old Lakeland, Florida, boy was shooting baskets in his driveway. Next door, 48-year-old Ellenbeth Wachs was trying to sleep. She yelled out her window for the boy to be quiet, but he kept playing.
RETALIATION: Wachs began making loud, moaning sounds of a sexual nature. According to the boy’s father, “She screamed, ‘Oh, John! Oh, John!’ over and over again and kept increasing the volume until it was a loud scream.” Wachs—not the boy—was cited for disturbing the peace.
OFFENSE: Bob Furnad of Covington, Georgia, accused his neighbor of spreading “vicious lies” about him.
RETALIATION: One day in 2012, the neighbor found a bag of dog doo inside his mailbox. Surveillance video showed Furnad placing it in there. He was fined, and the story made headlines because Furnad is the former president of CNN Headline News.
In 1904 the first performance of Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly was booed.
REAL-LIFE SUPERHEROES
Here’s a look at a once-obscure phenomenon that has blossomed into a full-blown fad with the help of social networking sites Myspace and Facebook: grown-ups dressing up as superheroes to battle evildoers.
KID STUFF
Just about every kid who grew up reading comic books and watching superheroes in the movies and on TV has wondered what it would be like to really put on a superhero costume and fight bad guys. Until recently, few people (few adults, anyway) ever got up the nerve to do it. Superhero costumes were like teddy bears and tree forts: When you reached a certain age, you gave them up. If you didn’t (and if your childhood was anything like Uncle John’s), your friends teased you mercilessly until you did. Peer pressure has killed more superheroes than kryptonite ever did.
VIRTUAL BATCAVES
Then in the 1990s, the Internet began to make it possible for aspiring costumed crusaders to live out their fantasies online. Even if they were too intimidated to wear their costumes around town, they could post pictures and videos of themselves on the Web. Social media sites like Myspace and Facebook, and video-sharing sites like YouTube, made it that much easier for real-life superheroes or “reals,” as many prefer to call themselves, to find each other, and to realize that they aren’t alone. As the online community developed, more superheroes were willing to venture out of their homes in full costume. Many cite the 9/11 attacks as intensifying their desire to confront evil in the world.
Their numbers have grown over the years. By 2011, there were some 300 real-life (mostly male) superheroes active in the United States, and another 75 to 100 around the world. In many places where more than one real-life superhero is active, they have organized into groups like the Great Lakes Heroes Guild (Minneapolis), Superheroes Anonymous (New York), and the Black Monday Society (Salt Lake City).
Wizardly word origin: Dumbledore is an Old English word meaning “bumblebee.”
THANKS…BUT
As many costumed crime fighters have discovered, battling the bad guys in real life doesn’t always play out the way it does in the comic books. Crime has been trending downward since the 1980s; neither the police nor the general public feel there’s a need for assistance from unpredictable and (some would say) unbalanced superheroes with no law-enforcement training whatsoever.
When police respond to a call, the last thing they want to see is someone wearing a mask. Most people who wear masks, after all, are bank robbers and other criminals. One night when a group of Seattle superheroes called Rain City Superhero Movement pulled up in front of a Shell station to begin a patrol, a bystander called police. He thought they were there to rob the gas station. The Seattle Police Department had to issue a departmental memo warning its officers not to assume that masked adults are criminals.
Who are those masked men (and women)? Here’s a look at some real-life superheroes.
CAPTAIN STICKY (San Diego)
Secret Identity: Richard Pesta, a consumer advocate. (Why “Captain Sticky”? Peanut butter was his favorite food.)
Costume: Blue tights and a gold lamé cape
Details: Standing over 6' tall, weighing more than 400 pounds, and driving a custom bubble-topped Lincoln Continental “Sticky-mobile,” this self-proclaimed Mighty Man of Carbohydrates was one of the earliest caped crusaders and predates the Internet generation of superheroes by 20 years. In the early 1970s, Pesta began holding press conferences dressed in his superhero costume, shining the light on crooked auto mechanics, health insurance fraudsters, and other villains who preyed on the public. And he got results: His campaign against nursing home abuses was so effective that the California state legislature set up a task force to investigate the issue and invited him to serve on it.
PHOENIX JONES (Seattle)
Secret Identity: Ben Fodor, a social worker and amateur mixed-martial-arts fighter in his mid-20s. He picked the name “Phoenix” because it’s the name of a mythological bird that rises out of the ashes, and “Jones” because it’s one of the most common surnames in the English language—he sees himself as a common man rising from the ashes.
On August 28, 1991, the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis sent the first e-mail from space.
Costume: A full-body black-and-gold superhero suit that includes a bulletproof vest, “stab plates,” a “ballistic cup,” and a utility belt containing handcuffs, pepper spray, a Taser, and a first aid kit.
Details: The most famous real-life superhero in recent years, Fodor made news in October 2011 when he broke up a “fight” outside a Seattle nightclub and pepper-sprayed four people. Only afterward did he learn that the people weren’t fighting, just frolicking noisily on their way out of the club. After being chased off by a woman he pepper-sprayed while “saving” her, Fodor was arrested, and his costume and pepper spray were confiscated by police as evidence. “Recently there have been increased reports of citizens being pepper-sprayed by [Fodor] and his group,” the police report notes. “Although he has been advised to observe and report incidents to 911, he continues to try to resolve things on his own.”
Though no charges were filed against Fodor, the publicity—and the exposure of his true identity, which until his arrest had remained a secret—caused him to be suspended from his job working with autistic children and barred from working with kids and vulnerable adults while the case was under investigation. Not that it stopped Fodor. After his court appearance, he suited back up as Phoenix Jones and returned to patrolling the streets.
PHANTOM ZERO (Central New Jersey)
Secret Identity: A call-center worker in his 30s, real name unknown
Costume: Phantom Zero dresses in black from head to toe and wears a black cloak with a hood. His face is made up to look like a skull. He carries a walking stick. His only splash of color: a red-and-white cravat that he tucks into his shirt.
Details: Phantom Zero started out as a crime fighter like Phoenix Jones, then
switched to costumed activism à la Captain Sticky. Why? When he started patrolling Lindenhurst, New York, in 2007, the only villains he found were drunks urinating in public. When he moved to New Jersey, his new community was even quieter, so he dropped crime fighting in favor of supporting local charities and people in need.
Brazil’s largest private employer: McDonald’s.
MR. INVISIBLE (Los Angeles)
Secret Identity: A 29-year-old insurance salesman who took up superheroing in 2008, real name unknown
Costume: A gray one-piece “invisibility suit” that was difficult to see in the dark, enabling Mr. Invisible to hide in the shadows.
Details: The suit was a little too invisible. One night while Mr. Invisible was hiding in an alley, someone walked up and boldly went where no man had gone before, peeing on the superhero without even realizing he was there. The only other crime Mr. Invisible encountered in his short career was an argument between a small woman and her very large boyfriend. When he inserted himself into the middle of their argument to calm the boyfriend down, the woman punched him in the face. At 0-and-2 after just a week on the job, Mr. Invisible hung up his superhero suit and “refocused” his energies on his insurance career. “It’s dangerous out there,” he said.
ANGLE GRINDER MAN (London, England)
Secret Identity: An unemployed odd-jobber, real name unknown
Costume: Sky-blue leotard worn with gold lamé briefs, boots, gloves, kneepads, cape, and mask
Details: Most superheroes are sworn to uphold the law, but for Angle Grinder Man, unfair parking laws are the villain. In central London, the authorities attach steel clamps to the wheels of illegally parked cars to immobilize them until the owner pays a steep fine. Angle Grinder Man thinks that’s unfair, so he uses his angle grinder to cut the clamps off, freeing drivers to go on their merry way without paying the fines. He got the idea when his own car was clamped and the cost to remove it was £95 (about $150). When he realized that angle grinders rent for just £30 an hour, a superhero was born. “My obsession with wheel-clamping is actually a rebellion against a much deeper malaise, namely, the arrogant contempt that politicians hold for the people who put them into power, and whom they claim to represent,” he says.
In pre-Columbus America, tobacco was used to make tea and jelly.
DC’S GUARDIAN (Washington, D.C.)
Secret Identity: A man in his 40s with a military or national-defense background, real name unknown
Costume: A red, white, and blue leather tunic over blue spandex leggings, red leather boots, and a blue spandex mask with red “Mercury” ears. The mask, which covers his entire head, like Spider-Man’s, is worn over red goggles or sunglasses. DC’s Guardian wears a costume that is deliberately designed to conceal every inch of his body, “to allow black, white, Asian, or Hispanic people to see themselves behind the mask,” he says.
Details: When DC’s Guardian isn’t patrolling a dangerous neighborhood behind the Capitol building, he’s out on the National Mall passing out pocket-size copies of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights to tourists and other passersby. “America has a lot to offer—if people stand up for the foundation it was built upon,” he says.
For more real-life superheroes, turn to page 401
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COMEDIAN RANTS
“Eggs! They’re not a food, they belong in no group! They’re just farts clothed in substance!”
—Dylan Moran
“Swimming is not a sport! Swimming is a way to keep from drowning. That’s just common sense!”
—George Carlin
“When people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. Why? What exactly do you expect to find?”
—Billy Connolly
“I am sick of reading on message boards that I am one of these ‘foul-mouthed modern comedians.’ I am absolutely not! Honestly, who are these [censored]?”
—Stewart Lee
Can you name Madonna’s first band? The Breakfast Club. (We didn’t know, either.)
POLICE BLOTTER:
CHEESEBURGER EDITION
On February 21, 2012, a man attempted to trick the employees of a Denny’s restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, into believing that he was their new general manager. This is the actual police report describing the incident, written by the Madison Police Department’s information officer, Joel DeSpain, who, we’re pretty sure, secretly dreams of writing crime novels.
INCIDENT: Disturbance
DATE: 02/21/2012 - 4:32 p.m.
ADDRESS: 1798 Thierer Road (Denny’s) ARRESTED: James B. Summers, age 52, Madison. Mr. Summers was arrested for Fraud, Disorderly Conduct, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and Possession of an Electric Weapon.
VICTIM: Female, age 38, Madison
DETAILS: He never announced he was one of the pros from Dover, but the briefcase-toting gentleman wearing a maroon tie and long black trench coat was quite clear: He had been sent by Corporate. He claimed he was the new general manager, that he had worked for the restaurant chain for 30 years and that he was starting his new job—right now.
The gray-haired stranger with the goatee had just arrived yesterday afternoon, unannounced, at the private office door of the restaurant manager. She was in the process of counting the day’s receipts at the Denny’s on Thierer Road. Surprised, and a bit shocked, the 38-year-old thought, “Surely this must be a mistake.” She had heard nothing from Corporate about a new general manager, and politely told the man so. “Perhaps,” she said to him, “you have arrived at the wrong restaurant.”
This conversation developed into a tête-à-tête or a “nose-to-nose,” to quote the manager, as the man asserted his new role and she told him she thought not. This went on until he said it was final, he was going to commence his duties. It was at this point that the manager began making calls up the chain. She was able to reach the man in charge of all hiring at her location. By this time the new “GM” had left the office, but not the restaurant, and she had shut the office door in order to carry out this important, private conversation.
Originally, each piece of U.S. paper money was individually hand signed.
While on the phone, she waved off kitchen staff as they rapped on her door, trying to get her attention. She was not to be interrupted while talking with Corporate. What the staff wanted her to know was that the new “GM” was cooking a cheeseburger and fries for himself and had gotten himself a soda. He was in the midst of dining when she let him know that the gig was up: She had talked with Corporate, and he was no new hire. Unfazed, he continued to brush off her remarks, saying she just had not yet gotten the memo. It was about this time the manager called 911. When the responding officer arrived, he saw the suspect walking away from the restaurant. Upon contact, he told the officer there was a misunderstanding, that he was the new GM, but there must have been a paperwork goof-up. He agreed to return to the restaurant so both sides could present their case.
The manager prevailed and the man was arrested. The officer found, beneath the man’s trench coat and suit jacket, that he was packing a stun gun on his belt. The officer asked if the suspect had a concealed carry permit. The man replied, “It’s in the pipeline.” He was cooperative with the officer, but as he was being led from the restaurant, he yelled out to those eating: “This is why you don’t dine and dash, kiddies.”
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KNOW YOUR -OLOGIES
• Momilogy is the study of mummies.
• Astacology is the study of crayfish.
• Deltiology is the study of postcards.
• Fromology is the study of cheese.
• Tsiganology is the study of gypsies.
• Parthenology is the study of virgins.
• Splanchnology is the study of entrails
• Gelotology is the study of the laughter.
Neon, the 4th most abundant element in the universe, makes up .0018% of our atmosphere.
THE MAGIC NUMBER
In honor of the Bathroom Reader’s 25th anniversary…
25 is the 26th number in the Arabic numeral system. (The first number is 0.)
25 is a square number—the product of a number multiplied by itself, in this case 5 x 5.
25 is the smallest square number that is also a sum of two squares (32 + 42).
25 is the smallest Friedman Number—a number is one that can be expressed as an equation (using addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division) in which the number’s own digits are used. In this case 52, which uses the digits 2 and 5, equals 25.
25 is the number of chipmunk species in North America.
25 is the atomic number of the element manganese, commonly found in nature in manganese dioxide. This soft, dark-colored solid was used to make cave paintings, such as those in Lascaux, France, 25,000 years ago.
25 is the number of players on a Major League Baseball roster (until August 31, after which teams may expand rosters to 40 players).
25 is the minimum legal age of candidates for election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
25 is a jersey number often reserved for a Major League Baseball team’s slugger. Examples: Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Jim Thome, and Carlos Delgado.
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 18