THE AVENGERS (2012)
We Hear: The Hulk roaring
Actual Sound: Lou Ferrigno. He played the title character and originated the roar in the 1970s TV show, The Incredible Hulk. He’s since voiced the roar in Hulk cartoons and on the big screen.
O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000)
We Hear: A chain gang of prisoners singing “Po Lazarus”
Actual Sound: A 1955 recording of real prisoners on a chain gang
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
We Hear: The low hum of a massive space probe nearing Earth
Actual Sound: After several failed attempts, sound designer Mark Mangini couldn’t create a spaceship hum that pleased star/director Leonard Nimoy. So Mangini asked him, “What should it sound like?” Nimoy replied, “Like this,” and then started humming. Mangini grabbed a microphone and recorded Nimoy’s humming, which ended up in the final mix of the film.
Good for you? In the 1920s, Listerine produced its own brand of “medicated” cigarettes.
GO COWBOYS!
NFL games weren’t always the mega-events they are today. What changed them? The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.
CASHING IN
On November 5, 1967, the Dallas Cowboys were hosting the Atlanta Falcons at the Cotton Bowl. During a break in the action, one of the spectators, “Bubbles” Cash, a well-known Dallas burlesque performer, decided to put on an impromptu performance. Dressed in a fringe halter top, short-shorts, and cowboy boots, and carrying cotton candy in each hand (to resemble pompoms), Cash jumped onto the field and strutted right down the 50-yard line, turning the heads of fans, players, and coaches as she went.
As the story made headlines, Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm was intrigued. Pro football was at a moment of change—the first Super Bowl had been held earlier that year, and Schramm was looking for ways to raise his team’s profile…and increase its revenue. The answer, he realized, was in turning the games from regionally popular athletic contests into national entertainment. Inspired by Cash’s stunt, Schramm decided to inject some sex appeal into the Cowboys.
OUT WITH THE OLD
The Dallas Cowboys already had a cheerleading squad called the CowBelles & Beaux. Adhering to the traditional Ivy League cheerleader format, the squad was co-ed; they led cheers and boosted team morale with rally cries and acrobatic stunts. And the Cow-Belles & Beaux crew was composed entirely of local high-school students. But in 1969 Schramm began putting his burlesque-inspired changes into motion. He dropped the male cheerleaders and simplified the squad’s name to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. By 1970 he’d hired a director and charged her with altering the routines to make them more dance-oriented and less acrobatic.
FRINGE BENEFITS
In 1972 Schramm hired Texie Waterman, a Dallas choreographer who had worked in television (as a dancer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows), to select and train a completely different squad. Requirements: The girls all had to be over 18, they had to be attractive, and they had to have talent. Schramm also asked Waterman to provide her crew with provocative uniforms.
Actors of the Twilight saga were contractually obligated to stay out of the sun.
Waterman hired designer Jody Van Amburgh to come up with something distinctly different from the classic sweater-and-skirt combo. The result: a fringed blue-and-white halter top (Cowboys team colors), white short-shorts, a belt buckle, and tall white boots. (Sound familiar?) Seamstress Leveta Crager made all of the uniforms by hand—and did all of the tailoring work on every single outfit until 1996. With some minor changes (crystals added to fringe, belt buckle removed and then added back), today’s Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders uniforms are basically the same as the ones from 1972—the design is even a registered trademark.
STARS OF THE WEST
The Dallas Cowboys became one of the NFL’s most successful teams. They went to four Super Bowls in the 1970s, earning the nickname “America’s Team.” Their cheerleaders, meanwhile, became a pop-culture phenomenon.
• The squad, with new members every season, went on USO tours and became a fixture on 1970s TV variety shows.
• A TV special, The 36 Most Beautiful Girls in Texas, aired in 1978 before a Cowboys game on ABC’s Monday Night Football.
• The squad guest-starred on a two-part episode of The Love Boat in 1979, and appeared for “Celebrity Week” on Family Feud.
• A 1979 made-for-TV movie called The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (co-starring Bert Convy and Jane Seymour) was a big hit, and a sequel followed a year later.
• Through the 1980s and ’90s, calendars, posters, and other merchandise bearing the images of the scantily clad cheerleaders flew off store shelves, and the Cheerleaders continued to make TV appearances, from Saturday Night Live to Hee Haw.
IF IT AIN’T BROKE
Before long other NFL teams followed suit and started cheerleading squads using the Cowboys formula—young women in small costumes dancing around on the sidelines, posing for calendars, and making public appearances. Some of the squads that started in the ’70s include the Chicago Honey Bears, the Cincinnati Ben-Gals, the Dolphin Starbrites, the New Orleans Saintsations, the Liberty Bells (for the Philadelphia Eagles), the SwashBucklers (for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and the Derrick Dolls (for the Houston Oilers).
Hard of hearing? The Queen of England gets a 41-gun salute every year on her birthday.
But the Cowboys are still the most famous. Through merchandise sales and public events, the squad currently earns more than $1 million per year for the franchise, but their value in shining a spotlight on pro football, and on the Dallas Cowboys, is immeasurable. Or maybe not. As of 2010, the Cowboys are one of just five football teams worth an estimated $1 billion or more.
* * *
LAST LAUGH: EPITAPHS
In Massachusetts:
Francis Magranis
My shoes are made
My work is done;
Yes, dear friends, I’m going home.
And where I’ve gone
And how I fare
There’s nobody to know
And nobody to care.
In Vermont:
Unknown man shot in the Jennison & Gallup Co.’s store while in the act of burglarizing the safe Oct. 13, 1905.
(Stone bought with money found on his person.)
Here lies Johnny Cole,
Who died, on my soul,
after eating a plentiful dinner.
While chewing his crust.
He was turned into dust,
with his crimes undigested—poor sinner.
In Rhode Island:
Sidney Snyder
The wedding day decided was,
The wedding wine provided;
But ere the day did come along
He’d drunk it up and died, did.
G. Winch, the brewer is buried here.
In life he was both hale and stout.
Death brought him to his bitter bier.
Now in heaven he hops about.
In Vermont:
She lived—what more can then be said:
She died—and all we know she’s dead.
Jedediah Goodwin
Auctioneer
Born 1828
Going!
Going!!
Gone!!!
1876
Of the seven continents, Africa is the second largest, but has the least coastline.
LEGAL BRIEFS
Lots of moms have told their kids to be sure to wear clean underwear just in case they end up in the emergency room. But how many moms have warned their kids that underwear might land them in court?
CASE: The Navajo Nation v. Urban Outfitters
DETAILS: When Urban Outfitters, a national chain of retail clothing stores, began selling “Navajo Hipster” panties in the fall of 2011, the Navajo Nation sent the company a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that the “derogatory and scandalous” panties, plus more than 60 other Navajo-themed products, be pulled from the store’s she
lves. Urban Outfitters removed the panties and some other products from its stores and its website, but it continued to sell others. The Navajo Nation sued, claiming that the company misappropriated the tribe’s name and trademarks and illegally suggested that the panties and other products were made by American Indians. In their suit, the Navajos demanded all the profits generated by the sale of the goods, plus $1,000 per product per day for every day that the offending panties and other items were offered for sale.
OUTCOME: As of June 2012, the case was still working its way through the courts. (But no Navajo-themed items are currently for sale on the Urban Outfitters website.)
CASE: Carol Ketover v. Bloomingdale’s
DETAILS: In 2004, Ketover, a 60-year-old real estate agent, picked out a pair of $200 designer slacks and was directed by store staff to a dressing room to try them on. Inside the dressing room were two large Bloomingdale’s shopping bags in front of a chair, but Ketover thought nothing of it as she disrobed down to her thong underwear. “As I bent down to put my foot in the slacks, I saw a flash of light behind me. I pushed the shopping bags away from the chair, and I saw a [video] screen. As I bent closer, I saw my butt with my thong underwear across the screen,” she told the New York Daily News. She discovered a video camera that was taking the image next to the mirror. After hearing laughter outside the dressing room, Ketover quickly dressed and fled the store. Had a pervert rigged the dressing room for a peep show? Not quite: NBC’s Today show was filming the department store for Fashion Week, and someone had stashed the camera and a video monitor in the changing room when they weren’t being used. Though the equipment was apparently on, NBC says it wasn’t recording, and the only monitor connected to the camera was the one that Ketover saw, so no one else saw her in her thong underwear (the laughter she heard outside the dressing room was apparently unrelated). No matter—Ketover sued Bloomingdale’s and its parent company, Macy’s, Inc., for invasion of privacy and asked for unspecified actual and punitive damages. “We should have put a sign on the dressing room that it was closed. But the producer told me the camera would only be working if someone was operating it,” Bloomingdale’s spokeswoman Anne Keating told the New York Daily News.
Apple harvests are still picked by hand.
OUTCOME: According to the company, “Macy’s, Inc. does not comment on litigation. Regards, Corporate Communications.”
CASE: Sang Eun Lee v. the Ontario, Canada, Police Department
DETAILS: In January 2010, Lee was arrested on suspicion of impaired driving and taken to jail. There she was patted down by a female police officer to see if she was concealing any weapons, drugs, or other contraband on her person. She wasn’t—but the officer noticed she was wearing an underwire bra and ordered her to remove it, on the grounds that the wire in the bra could be used as a weapon. Lee was humiliated at having to remove her bra, and at her trial, she argued that the impaired driving charge should be tossed out because being forced to remove her bra was a violation of her constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
OUTCOME: Lee lost the argument, and when the case went to trial, she lost that, too. She was fined $1,000, and her driver’s license was suspended for a year.
CASE: Unidentified male employee v. Sterile Reprocessing Services, Inc., a Texas medical-supply company
DETAILS: One afternoon in 1992, the 31-year-old employee, who was not named in press accounts, and three female co-workers were talking about underwear. The man said that some days he didn’t wear underpants, whereupon he was accosted by the women, who were eager to see if this was such a day. (It was.) “At one point, all three women pulled the plaintiff’s pants to his knees and caused him to fall. While the man was struggling to get away, they dragged him across the floor by his pants,” the man’s lawyer said in documents filed with the court. (In their defense, the co-workers said they took the man’s comments about his lack of underwear “as an invitation for an ‘inspection.’”) The man probably wishes he’d worn his underpants that day, because afterward the women took to calling him “Shorty,” “Pee Wee,” and other names. The man waited two years to report the incident to his employers, and then did so only after he was disciplined for an unauthorized absence. Company executives promised his complaint would be kept quiet, but word leaked out, and that, apparently, is what prompted the man to sue the company in 1996.
In 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted with 500 times the power of an atomic bomb. Geologists considered that a “moderate” eruption.
OUTCOME: The case was settled out of court in 1997 without Sterile Reprocessing admitting wrongdoing; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The Houston Chronicle’s headline: “Firm Settles Suit with Man Whose Pants Were Pulled Down.”
* * *
MISS AMERICA STATISTICS
• Women from 31 states have won.
• The winningest states are California, Ohio, and Oklahoma, which have each produced six Miss Americas. The city to produce the most winners: Los Angeles, with three.
• Three states have done it consecutively: Pennsylvania (1935–36), Mississippi (1959–60), and Oklahoma (2006–07).
• Ohio produced winners in 1922 and 1923, but both wins went to Mary Campbell, the only woman to win the contest twice. She placed second in 1924. (It’s now against the rules to even compete twice.)
• In order to represent a state at Miss America, entrants must win their state pageant. Those who finish in second place or are “first runner up” are invited to the Miss National Sweetheart pageant. Grand prize: a $1,000 scholarship and a necklace with a pendant that looks like an ear of corn. It’s produced by the Jaycees of Hoopeston, Illinois, as part of the city’s Sweetcorn Festival.
TAKING IT TO THE GRAVE
Undertakers will honor most funeral requests (as long as they’re legal). Check out what these people took with them to eternity.
RECLINER. Reuben John Smith (d. 1899) liked to relax in life, so he asked that his eternal resting place be a leather recliner and that a checkerboard be placed in his lap. (Smith also asked to be buried with a key to his tomb in case the undertakers made a mistake.)
WHISTLE. In To Have and Have Not (1944), Lauren Bacall delivers a famous line to real-life future husband Humphrey Bogart: “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together…and blow.” After Bogart was cremated, Bacall put a golden whistle in the urn with his ashes.
PIPE AND TOBACCO. Sixteenth-century explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is credited with popularizing tobacco smoking in England, a habit he picked up on his travels to the New World. His last request before being executed for treason in 1618: one final smoke. Raleigh’s will provided for “ten pounds of tobacco, and two pipes” for any smoker who attended his funeral, and requested that he be buried with his favorite pipe and some tobacco, in a coffin lined with wood from his cigar boxes.
PETS. Ancient Egyptians are famous for it, and people today still like the idea of being buried with their animal companions. Cemeteries have started selling combined burial plots so that owners can lie beside their beloved pets for eternity. One 68-year-old woman from Surrey, England, asked that her cat be put down and buried with her. (The funeral home refused.)
STETSON. Actor Tony Curtis died of heart failure in 2010. He asked for his casket to be filled with items he may “want in the next life,” including a Stetson hat, an Armani scarf, and Anthony Adverse, the novel that inspired his screen name. His family also put his iPhone in the casket…just in case.
Karl Marx was once a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE AMERICAN ACCENT, PART II
There are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of distinct accents in the U.S. This article only scratches the surface of a fascinating linguistic puzzle. (Part I is on page 209.)
WORLD TOUR
Just as it was with the English, immigrants from other countries tended to stick together when they got to America. Here’s a look at where they came from, w
here they ended up, and how the way they spoke then still affects the way people in the United States speak today.
• Germany. After England, Germany produced the largest wave of U.S. immigrants between the 1680s and 1760s. Arriving first in Pennsylvania, the newcomers adopted the nasal tones of their Quaker neighbors who had come from England, then added their own clipped German speech patterns. The biggest German influence is the hard “r” sound at the end of words—“river” vs. “rivah”—and is the feature that most distinguishes American speech from British. This trend spread as settlers moved into the Midwest and beyond.
• The Netherlands. When settlers from New England moved south to New York, there was already a sizable Dutch population. The mixture of the two groups formed the famous Brooklyn accent (think of Bugs Bunny), in which bird is pronounced as “boid,” these and those, “deez” and “doze,” and coffee, “caw-fee.” Unlike most other immigrant languages, which were abandoned for English within a generation or two, the Dutch language lingered in New York City for three centuries. (Theodore Roosevelt grew up hearing his grandparents speak it at the dinner table as late as the 1860s.) While other immigrant groups have influenced the classic New York accent, it comes primarily from original Dutch settlers.
First woman to climb Colorado’s Pikes Peak: Amelia Earhart’s mother, Amy, in 1890.
• Russia and Poland. Arriving in New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Yiddish-speaking Jews from eastern Europe added many new words and humorous turns of phrase to English, including, “I should live so long,” “I need it like I need a hole in the head!” and “What’s up?” Interestingly, although “New Yawk tawk” has become strongly associated with Jewish immigrants, Yiddish seems to have had little effect on the accent itself, which was adopted by the Irish, Italians, Chinese, and dozens of other ethnicities who live in New York. Actual spoken Yiddish—which is very clipped and Germanic—sounds very little like the New York accent.
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 49