HE COULDN’T KETCH UP
Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941 is another one of professional sport’s most revered records. But it fell one hit short of landing “Joltin’ Joe” a $10,000 sports endorsement. The Heinz Ketchup company was all set to pay DiMaggio to endorse their Heinz 57 Sauce…if the streak went to 57 games. But on July 17, 1941, thanks to stellar plays by Cleveland Indians third baseman Ken Keltner, DiMaggio went 0 for 3, so the streak ended at 56 games. One Heinz exec was quoted as saying, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to change the name to Heinz 56 Sauce!”
KEEPING HIS EYES ON THE BALL
Ted Williams’s biggest goal in life was to have people say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” Knowing that eyesight was every bit as important to hitting as strength and speed, “Terrible Ted” went to great lengths to protect his peepers. He never read in a moving vehicle, and never chewed gum because it “made his pupils move up and down.”
RECORD COLLECTOR
So who holds the record for the most records in baseball? Nolan Ryan. Arguably the game’s best hurler, Ryan pitched in the big leagues from 1966 to 1993. When he retired, he owned or shared more than 40 American League and National League records.
* * *
“Managing a team is like holding a dove in your hand. Squeeze too hard and you kill it, not hard enough and it flies away.”
—Tommy Lasorda,
manager, Los Angeles Dodgers
Literature quiz: What are Dr. Jekyll’s and Mr. Hyde’s first names? A. George and Charles.
A PIG IN PINK TIGHTS
We invited our legion of BRI members to enter our original limerick contest. Their humor and creativity bowled us over. Here are the winners.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I used to hate having to go,
I was so very bored, you know.
But when I got the Reader,
My visits got sweeter,
Now I’m hoping my “business” is slow.
—Charlie Lopez
There once was a pig in pink tights.
He wanted his name up in lights,
So he held up his nose
and danced on his toes
’Til the farmer made bacon one night.
—Martin Slate
I’m known for my sparkling wit.
So when I need a trivial tidbit
It doesn’t take long
’Cause I’ve got Uncle John
I just couldn’t make doo without it!
—Jonathan Gewirtz
A wicked young woman from Yop
Thought TP should roll from the top.
It tore her marriage asunder
(Hubby rolled his from under).
At least that’s what she said to the cop.
—Warren Blair
Find in these lines what I see
And then you’ll understand me
Can’t find it yet?
Too early to fret
Stop reading across. Read vertically.
—Paul Ferro
I sob, I weep, I shed a tear.
No one can help—my fate is clear.
Although I must grieve
I just cannot leave;
For the paper’s gone. I’m stuck in here.
—Carolyn Wright
There once was a cow who said, “Moo.
I really don’t have much to do.
I stand here all day,
And chew on some hay,
And then chew it again when I’m through.”
—Carolyn Martinez
Said his wife, “It’s addictive, I’ve heard,
But to take quite this long is absurd.
He’s been locked in the john,
Since before August one,
And now it’s November the third.”
—Philip Lynch
AND THE WINNER IS…
i never did two good in scool
i always apeered such a fool
so i bought a p.c.
just for spellcheck, you see
but i can’t turn it on. oh how crule!
—Danielle Garvey
The closest black hole, known as V4641 Sgr, is 1,600 light years from Earth.
A LOT TO LOSE
Overweight, but tired of dieting? More and more celebrities—and regular folks—are opting to forgo dieting and exercise in favor of a shortcut way to lose weight: surgery. (Would Uncle John ever have weight-loss surgery? Fat chance.)
SHARON OSBOURNE
Top Weight: 225 pounds
Last Splurge: All the chocolate she could eat
Big Loser: The wife of heavy-metal star Ozzy Osbourne was used to her husband being in the spotlight, but when she became a star of MTV’s reality show The Osbournes, the spotlight suddenly focused on her. She became more conscious about her looks than ever before, especially her weight. As it crept up over 200 pounds, Osbourne, a confessed chocoholic, decided to turn to a type of weight-loss surgery called vertical banded gastroplasty (VGB).
The surgeon implants a silicone band around the top part of the stomach, reducing the pocket of the stomach and, in turn, restricting the amount of food a person can eat before feeling full. Osbourne says if she hadn’t had the operation she’d weigh “500 pounds and be in a wheelchair.” Today she weighs about 130 pounds.
AL ROKER
Top Weight: 320 pounds
Last Splurge: Multiple steaks, onion rings, Häagen-Dazs ice cream, Krispy Kreme donuts
Big Loser: The weatherman on NBC’s Today Show said, “At a certain point I started eating and I never stopped.” Roker was a guy who ate Quarter-Pounders in pairs and donuts by the dozen. He tried diets and exercise programs, but couldn’t stick with them. Each time he lost weight, he’d eventually gain it back, along with an extra 10 pounds. When he tipped the scales at 320 pounds, “Fat Albert,” as the kids called him in his elementary school years, decided to take drastic action.
Roker turned to surgery to reduce his stomach from the size of a football to the size of a chicken egg. But Roker was embarrassed to admit he was getting the surgery: what if it didn’t work? He told everyone he was having his gallbladder removed, but what he really had was a procedure commonly called stomach stapling.
Ninety percent of the wildlife species on the island of Madagascar are found nowhere else.
Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass is the official name for this procedure, after the Swiss surgeon who invented it, Dr. Cesar Roux. The stomach is separated into two parts with titanium staples. The upper part forms a small pouch. The lower stomach and first portion of the small intestine (duodenum) are bypassed by cutting the small intestine and connecting the lower section (jejunum) to the upper stomach. Food then passes directly into the jejunum. The tiny new stomach can only hold 5 to 10 bites of food at a time.
The operation worked. Roker went from eating 3,000 calories per day to 1,300. He’s lost 100 pounds and so far has experienced no downside to the surgery.
There is a side effect, however, called “Dumping Syndrome” that affects many patients who make the mistake of continuing the habit of eating foods too high in fat or sugar. The stomach contents move too quickly through the small intestine, resulting in such symptoms as nausea, weakness, sweating, and faintness. But as long as Roker sticks with a healthy food plan, this won’t happen to him.
Follow-up: By the way, despite the “embarrassment,” Roker had his operation filmed…just in case there might be a story in it. Surprise: there was. Roker finally fessed up and Dateline NBC devoted an entire show to his adventures in weight loss.
CARNIE WILSON
Top Weight: 300+ pounds
Last Meal: Avocado spring rolls, pasta with cream sauce, and cheesecake
Big Loser: Wilson, daughter of Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame, always struggled with her weight. Even when she was a member of the platinum-selling pop group Wilson Phillips, she fought the battle of the bulge. When taping the group’s music videos, Wilson says she was as
ked to stand behind potted plants or pillars. When the group broke up in 1993, Carnie’s weight ballooned to more than 300 pounds. Her blood pressure shot up, her cholesterol was high, she was short of breath—and she was only 31 years old.
Wilson knew she had to do something about her weight, once and for all. On August 10, 1999, she had her stomach stapled. And in an incredible display of show-biz exhibitionism, she had the surgery in front of 250,000 people who logged on to the Internet to watch. (If you missed it live, videotapes are available for sale.)
Japan has more than 13 million golfers, but only 1,200 golf courses.
Follow-up: For Wilson, surgery meant losing 150 pounds and going from a size 28 to a size 8. Of course, when you lose a lot of weight, you end up with a lot of loose skin. So three years later, Wilson turned to cosmetic surgery, including a tummy tuck that left her seven pounds lighter with a repositioned belly button, a breast lift, liposuction on her torso and hips, and the removal of half a pound of skin from under each armpit. To show how successful the surgeries were, Wilson posed for Playboy magazine in 2002.
OTHER FAMOUS “LOSERS”
• Anne Rice, bestselling author (Interview with the Vampire). She weighed 254 pounds before gastric bypass surgery. She’s lost 44.
• Roseanne, actress and comedian. She weighed 240 pounds before having a gastric bypass. She’s lost 80 pounds so far.
• Ann Wilson, lead singer of the rock group Heart, had gastric band surgery and has gone from 245 pounds to 185.
• John Popper from the band Blues Traveler lost 200 pounds.
• Jennifer Holliday, heavyweight singer from the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, went from 400 to 135 pounds.
THE SKINNY ON WEIGHT-LOSS SURGERY
Interested in weight-loss surgery? Here are a few facts that celebrity tell-alls don’t tell you:
• It’s not for anyone who’s just a few pounds too heavy—you must be morbidly obese (at least 100 pounds overweight)
• Cost of surgery: upwards of $30,000 (including hospital costs)
• Cost of follow-up cosmetic surgery: about $20,000
• Possible risks of surgery include respiratory problems, infections, bleeding, bowel obstruction, leakage of the bowel connections, and obstruction of the stomach outlet.
• More risks: Decreasing the amount of food you eat also means decreasing the amount of protein, vitamins, and minerals you get. Combine that with rapid weight loss, and some people end up with a double whammy of hair and muscle loss.
It is estimated that in 1000 A.D., the world population was about 300 million. By the year 2000 A.D., the world population was more than 6 billion.
BACK IN THE SADDLE
Peggy Thompson and Saeko Usukawa have put together a collection of great lines from Westerns called Tall in the Saddle. Some samples:
“Boys who play with guns have to be ready to die like men.”
—Joan Crawford, Johnny Guitar (1954)
“A horse is a man’s slave, but treat ‘em like a slave and you’re not a man. Remember that.”
—James Cagney, Tribute to a Bad Man (1956)
“Honey, you were smelling bad enough to gag a dog on a gut wagon.”
—The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
“I’d like to make a dress for her. Half tar, half feathers.”
—Destry Rides Again (1939)
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those with pistols, and those who dig. You dig.”
—Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Eleanor Parker: “The women always look beautiful when they get married, and the men always look scared.”
William Holden: “They both get over it.”
—Escape from Fort Bravo (1953)
“I like grumpy old cusses. Hope I live long enough to be one.”
—John Wayne, Tall in the Saddle (1944)
Parson: “I sure hope this town has some pretty girls in it.”
Yellowleg: “You get this far out in the brush, they’re all pretty.”
—The Deadly Companions (1961)
“Faith can move mountains. But it can’t beat a faster draw.”
—El Dorado (1967)
“I almost got married once myself. It was all set until her family came West in a covered wagon. If you’d’ve seen her family, you’d know why the wagon was covered.”
—Gun Fury (1953)
“Don’t spill that liquor, son. It eats right through the bar.”
—Walter Brennan, The Westerner (1940)
Spencer Tracy: “I’ll only be here twenty-four hours.”
Conductor: “In a place like this, that could be a lifetime.”
—Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
NEWS CORRECTIONS
Uncle John was thumbing through his local newspaper when he noticed the “Corrections” box. It turned out to be one of the most entertaining sections of the paper.
“The ‘Greek Special’ is a huge 18-inch pizza, and not a huge 18-inch penis, as described in an ad. Blondie’s Pizza would like to apologize for any confusion Friday’s ad may have caused.”
—The Daily Californian
“In last week’s Democrat, some words were transposed through a typesetting error. The paragraph that began ‘Occasionally circus elephants spent ninety-five percent of their lives chained by two legs…’ should have read ‘A majority of circus elephants…’ while the paragraph that began ‘A majority of circus elephants go mad…’ should have read ‘Occasionally circus elephants…’”
—Coös County Democrat
“In our story on London Hosts, it was stated that the ‘Pub 80’ concept probably appealed more to the younger drinker or those looking for bad food. This should, of course, be ‘bar food’. We apologize for any embarrassment caused.”
—Morning Advertiser
“A book review…quoted a passage from the book incorrectly. It says, ‘Your goal should be to help your daughter become a sexually healthy adult’—not ‘a sexually active, healthy adult.’”
—The New York Times
“The following corrects errors in the July 17 geographical agent and broker listing: International: Aberdeen is in Scotland, not Saudi Arabia; Antwerp is in Belgium, not Barbados; Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not Nigeria; Cardiff is in Wales, not Vietnam; Helsinki is in Finland, not Fiji; Moscow is in Russia, not Qatar.”
—Business Insurance
“Due to a typographical error in last week’s issue, the words ‘Con-Men’ appeared on the border of an Ashley & Nephews advertisement. ‘Con-Men’ was the headline of a story that was not used because of lack of space and is absolutely nothing to do and is in no way connected with Ashley & Nephews.”
—The Enfield Independent
The average child will eat 1,500 peanut butter sandwiches by high school graduation.
“Just to keep the record straight, it was the famous Whistler’s Mother, not Hitler’s, that was exhibited at the recent meeting of the Pleasantville Methodists. There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how the error occurred.”
—Titusville (Pa.) Herald
“Tuesday’s edition called a charge residents pay for 911 service a ‘surge’ charge. It is, of course, a sir charge.”
—Carlsbad Current-Argus
“An article about Ivana Trump and her spending habits misstated the number of bras she buys. It is two dozen black, two dozen beige, and two dozen white, not two thousand of each.”
—The New York Times
“In our issue of November 30 we reported that the Lubavitch Foundation in Glasgow held a ‘dinner and ball’ to celebrate its tenth anniversary. This was incorrect. A spokesman explained: ‘The Lubavitch movement does not have balls.’”
—Jewish Chronicle
“Sunday’s Lifestyle story about Buddhism should have stated that Siddartha Gautama grew up in Northern India, not Indiana.”
—Bloomington Herald-Times
“The following typo appeared in our la
st bulletin: ‘Lunch will be gin at 12:15 p.m.’ Please correct to read ‘12 noon.’”
— California Bar Association newsletter
“I would like to point out that what I did in fact write was that the council forced piped TV ‘on us’ not ‘up us’ as printed in the County Times on October 25. T. A. Wilkinson”
—County Times & Express
“November is a heavy publishing month for all newspapers and with large issues misprints inevitably increase. Note, however, that there are 5 000 characters in every full column of type. Even if there are five misprints a column that is only an error of 0,1 percent. We are working constantly on the problem, aiming to keep problem, aiming to keep—Editor”
—The Johannesburg Star
* * *
“Newspapers are unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.” —George Bernard Shaw
Light conversation: In Saudi Arabia, there are solar-powered pay phones in the desert.
THE BUGS AND THE BEES
We sometimes wonder about insects creeping and crawling in the garage or out in the garden. What do they do all day? It turns out that even with six or eight legs, they still have a one-track mind.
CHEAPSKATE FLIES
The mating ritual of a type of fly called Hilara, commonly known as the “dance fly,” involves gift-giving. The male catches a small insect, wraps it in silk, and then presents it—along with a wing-waving mating dance—to his potential mate. When she accepts it, he mounts her while she’s busy eating the gift. But some dance flies are too lazy to even catch the bug. In one species, the male offers the female what looks like a gift-wrapped insect. While she unwraps it, he mates with her, trying to complete the act before she discovers there’s no bug in the bag.
TRICKY ORCHIDS
The female tiphiid wasp can’t fly. So she climbs to the top of a tall plant and releases her pheromones into the air. The male flies by, grabs her, and flies away. Mating takes place in midair.
One type of orchid has made an interesting adaptation: its flower looks just like a female tiphiid. Not only that, its scent is almost identical to her pheromones. The unsuspecting male wasp grabs the flower and tries to take off with it; in the struggle, he brushes against the pollen before becoming frustrated and flying away. He goes on to the next orchid and goes through the same routine, thus pollinating the orchids.
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Page 43