Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (50 page)

In all the hoopla after the race, the race sponsors “neglected” to hand over the $1,000 prize money to the Thomas Flyer team. It wasn’t until 60 years later, in 1968, that the
New York Times
awarded the prize money to George Schuster. By then, he was the only member of his team still alive.

 

1.
“_____ play fairly when one has the winning cards.”

—
Oscar Wilde

 

2.
“_____ eat spinach just before going on the air.”

—
Dan Rather

 

3.
“_____ take hold of things by the smooth handle.”

—
Thomas Jefferson

 

4.
“_____ do whatever’s next.”

—
George Carlin

 

5.
“_____ mind your happiness; do your duty.”

—
Peter Drucker

 

6.
“_____ read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

—
P. J. O’Rourke

 

7.
“_____ do what you are afraid to do.”

—
Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

8.
“_____ go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

—
Yogi Berra

 

9.
“_____ hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.”

—
Winston Churchill

 

10.
“_____ think of the future; it comes soon enough.”

—
Albert Einstein

 

11.
“_____ put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

—
Mark Twain

 

12.
“_____ contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.”

—
Confucius

 

13.
“_____ be nice to people on the way up; because you’ll meet the same people on the way down.”

—
Wilson Mizner

 

14.
“_____ bet on baseball.”

—
Pete Rose

 

15.
“_____ bend your head. _____ hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.”

—
Helen Keller

Plot:
Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is a baseball star whose career is presumed over when he is shot and nearly killed by a female serial killer. Nearly two decades later, he triumphantly returns to the big leagues.

Familiar Ending:
In the last game of the season, injured and with his special bat broken, Hobbs steps up to the plate and hits a home run that shatters a stadium light. Hobbs is showered with sparks as, in slow motion, he rounds the bases to win the pennant.
Original Ending:
In the original Bernard Malamud novel, Hobbs strikes out…on purpose. Game over, no pennant. A little boy later confronts him and accuses him of throwing the game. Hobbs weeps, indicating that the rumor is true. Producers changed the ending because they wanted to make an
uplifting
baseball movie, not Malamud’s depressing story about a broken man.

Plot:
Wealthy businessman Edward (Richard Gere) hires Vivian, a hooker with a heart of gold (Julia Roberts), to spend a week with him. They fall in love.

Familiar Ending:
They have a fight, and Vivian leaves. But

Edward finds her apartment and serenades her with a recording of an opera they’d attended together. They kiss, make up, and live happily ever after.

Original Ending:
In the first draft of the script, Vivian has a drug problem and agrees to kick it as part of the weeklong deal. They fall in love, but Vivian doesn’t give up the drugs. Edward throws her out of his car. No reunion. Director Garry Marshall liked J. F. Lawton’s script, but thought audiences might not. So he had Lawton change it to a more traditional love story—one with no drug problem and a happy ending.

Plot:
Convenience-store clerk Dante (Brian O’Halloran) endures idiotic customers, a fine for selling cigarettes to a minor, and a dead man in the bathroom during the course of his day on the job, when all he wants to do is play a hockey game on the roof.
Familiar Ending:
Dante closes up shop after a long, crazy day that he wasn’t even scheduled to work and goes off to enjoy the night with his best friend and fellow clerk, Randall.

Original Ending:
This was director Kevin Smith’s first movie, and he says that he didn’t know how to end it. His first attempt: As Dante is locking up the store for the night, a man enters the store, empties the cash register, and shoots Dante, who bleeds to death.

Plot:
The Vietnam War is long over, but it left veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) emotionally disturbed. Homeless and hitchhiking, he gets hassled by a small-town sheriff. He escapes into the forest and starts waging a guerrilla-style war on the town.
Familiar Ending:
Rambo surrenders to his old commanding officer, Colonel Trautman (Richard Crenna).

Original Ending:
As in David Morrell’s original novel, Rambo is cornered by Trautman and, emotionally devastated, begs for his murder to avoid capture. Trautman refuses; Rambo shoots himself. Stallone saw it at a screening and hated it. He threatened to block the movie’s release if the hero died, and had enough clout to force the filmmakers to change the ending. Rambo lived.

Plot:
Ted (Ben Stiller) tracks down his high-school prom date, Mary (Cameron Diaz), with whom he is still in love, enduring humiliating and painful tribulations along the way.

Familiar Ending:
Ted and Mary fall in love, despite challenges from Mary’s stalker as well as her other ex-boyfriend.

Original Ending:
Ted and Mary fall in love. Immediately after, Ted gets hit by a bus. He lives, but a bystander finds his severed foot in a storm drain. Directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly felt they’d already pushed the gross humor as far as it could go and took a more commercial way out: a happy ending.

Here at the BRI, we never get tired of reading about new bathroom
inventions. But it turns out that they’re not all yucky fart-and-
odor-related appliances (although those
are
pretty funny) .
Some are actually kind of cute…like these.

Inventors:
Sisters Tonja King and Elisa Johnson of Wood-inville, Washington, who sell the product through their company, Mommyssentials

Product:
A baby carrier—that’s especially useful in public restrooms

How It Works:
The Babykeeper is a wearable device designed for carrying babies 6 to 18 months old. It’s worn over one shoulder, with the baby sitting in a harness on the wearer’s hip. But the amazing part about it is that if Mom has to use a public restroom toilet, the device comes off and—using the two straps ending in hooks—it can be hung from the top of the restroom partition wall. So the baby just hangs there while mom does her business. Cost: $39.99.

Inventor:
Childcare providers in the Netherlands

Product:
A small clear container on a colorful stand

How It Works:
The TummyTub is simply a small, bucket-sized tub on a short stand that purports to mimic the conditions inside the womb, thereby making the transition from womb to the outside world easier. The baby is placed into a few gallons of warm water up to his or her shoulders, making it feel, according to the TummyTub Web site, “warm, reassured, and secure.” (Of course you have to keep the baby’s head out of the water so he or she doesn’t drown.) And the tubs are see-through—so it’s like seeing inside your tummy! TummyTub is currently used in maternity hospitals all over the U.K. Cost: about $50.

Inventor:
Koregon Enterprises, Beaverton, Oregon

Product:
A moisture-activated alarm system

How It Works:
This is designed for kids with bedwetting issues. It consists of a washable plastic pad that is worn inside the child’s underwear or pajamas at night. It’s connected by wires to a small plastic box that attaches to the child’s pajama top or t-shirt. If the sensors come into contact with just a few drops of urine…it gives the kid a shock! Just kidding—the plastic box actually beeps out an alarm, hopefully waking the child and allowing him or her to high-tail it to the bathroom. The manufacturer promises that your child can never be electrocuted by the Nite Train’R, because it’s powered by harmless 9-volt batteries (not included). Cost: $69.99.

Inventor:
Sozo, a baby products company based in Unionville, Connecticut

Product:
A colored sponge shaped like a men’s athletic “cup,” but it’s for babies—
boy
babies

How It Works:
If you’re a parent of a boy, or if you’ve ever had to babysit for very young boys and had to change their diapers, then you’re probably familiar with what one might call the “Sudden Geyser Effect.” Weeblocks were invented with that in mind. They’re colorful, cuplike, vinyl-covered sponges that you place over your baby boy’s geyser-spouter while you’re changing his diaper. They really work, they’re machine washable—and they come with cute sayings on them like “Whiz Kid,” “Li’l Squirt,” and “Captain Blast Off!” Cost: $10.

In 2009 the state of Iowa changed the name of its Department of Elder Affairs to the Department of Aging. Though the new wording is more politically correct (“elder” or “elderly” is now considered inappropriate), the state is thinking about changing it again due to protests over the acronym formed by the new name: D.O.A.

Since the invention of television, there have been countless claims about promising new technologies. Amazing new improvements!…but always sometime in the future. Many of the predictions have come true—color TV, video players, HDTV—but many more have not. The prime example: three-dimensional TV. Over the years, engineers and marketers have periodically announced impending breakthroughs to give depth to our TV screens. Almost invariably, though, the methods proved unwieldy, unworkable, expensive, or unsatisfactory—good for a novelty broadcast or two, and then, having been found lacking, put back on the back burner again. Here are some of the most promising failures, near misses, and almost-rans…so far.

•
The Possibility:
One of the ways 3-D TV could work would be to send separate images to each eye using two tiny TV screens.

It’s not a new idea. Using two still images to create a 3-D effect has been around since Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the stereoscope in the 1840s, a technique that used side-by-side cameras to take nearly identical photographs, which the viewer would then look at through a binocular apparatus. These viewers were a huge hit over the next few decades, allowing people to see 3-D images of distant places and historic events. Disaster photos from Civil War battles and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were especially popular.

It didn’t take long after the invention of movies for somebody to try a cinematic version of Wheatstone’s invention. British film pioneer William Friese-Greene, who filed the first 3-D movie patent in 1890, designed a modified stereoscope with two reels of film that had to be perfectly synchronized in order for the effect to work properly. In a fate that would be shared by many 3-D
schemes, there is no evidence that Friese-Greene’s idea ever actually made it to the production stage.

ViewMaster 3-D viewers, which appeared as children’s toys in the 1940s, used the same idea as Wheatstone’s invention. So why not adapt it for video?

•
The Problem:
To adapt it for TV, each viewer would require two tiny television screens showing two separate, synchronized video signals. Watching a movie or football game as a group experience would be difficult; the headgear would be uncomfortable and expensive.