Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (6 page)

MUMBO JUMBO

Meaning:
Confusing language; nonsense

Origin:
“The earliest references used capital initials, as Mumbo Jumbo was said to be an African deity. Unfortunately, no one since the 18th century has reported any such deity in any West African tribe. It is possible that mumbo jumbo is a corrupt form of
nzambi
, Congolese for ‘god.’

“Many explorers dismissed any native god as ignorant superstition. A religious belief in Mumbo Jumbo, a god supposedly invented to scare the womenfolk, was seen as even more nonsensical. Presumably this gave rise to mumbo jumbo in its modern sense of ‘obscure or meaningless talk.’” (From
Take Our Word for It
, by Melanie and Mike Crowley)

*        *        *

Dumb Joke:
A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, “A beer please, and one for the road.”

18th-century English sailors wore skirts.

CAR TUNES

Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them. But they didn’t. Here’s the story
.

S
UNDOWN
One evening in 1929 two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset. It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.

Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios—Lear had served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during World War I—and it wasn’t long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.

SIGNING ON

One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference. When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago. There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. He made a product called a “battery eliminator,” a device that allowed battery-powered radios to run on household AC current. But as more homes were wired for electricity, more radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios. Galvin needed a new product to manufacture. When he met Lear and Wavering at the radio convention, he found it. He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin’s factory, and when they perfected their first radio, they installed it in his Studebaker. Then Galvin went to a local banker to apply for a loan. Thinking it might sweeten the deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker’s Packard. Good idea, but it didn’t work—half an hour after the installation, the banker’s Packard caught on fire. (They didn’t get the loan.)

Wh@t? The @ symbol is 500 years old.

Galvin didn’t give up. He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention. Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside the convention hall and cranked up the radio so that passing conventioneers could hear it.
That
idea worked—he got enough orders to put the radio into production.

WHAT’S IN A NAME

That first production model was called the 5T71. Galvin decided he needed to come up with something a little catchier. In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio businesses used the suffix “ola” for their brand names—Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the biggest. Galvin decided to do the same thing, and since his radio was intended for use in a motor vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola.

But even with the name change, the radio still had problems:

• When the Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110 uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the country was sliding into the Great Depression. (By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)

• In 1930 it took two men several days to put in a car radio—the dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open to install the antenna. These early radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car battery, so holes had to be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them. The installation manual had eight complicated diagrams and 28 pages of instructions.

HIT THE ROAD

Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn’t have been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression—Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorolas pre-installed at the factory. In 1934 they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with the B.F. Goodrich tire company to sell and install them in its chain of tire stores. By then the price of the radio, installation included, had dropped to $55. The Motorola car radio was off and running. (The name of the company would be officially changed from Galvin Manufacturing to “Motorola” in 1947.)

About meat? Carnivores dream more than herbivores.

In the meantime, Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios. In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts. In 1940 he developed with the first handheld two-way radio—the Handie-Talkie—for the U.S. Army.

A lot of the communication technologies that we take for granted today were born in Motorola labs in the years that followed World War II. In 1947 they came out with the first television to sell under $200. In 1956 the company introduced the world’s first pager; in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. In 1973 it invented the world’s first handheld cellular phone. Today Motorola is one of the second-largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. And it all started with the car radio.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…

The two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin’s car, Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different paths in life. Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the 1950s he helped change the automobile experience again when he developed the first automotive alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable generators. The invention led to such luxuries as power windows, power seats, and, eventually, air-conditioning.

Lear also continued inventing. He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented that. But what he’s really famous for are his contributions to the field of aviation. He invented radio direction finders for planes, aided in the invention of the autopilot, designed the first fully automatic aircraft landing system, and in 1963 introduced his most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet, the world’s first mass-produced, affordable business jet. (Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)

Plymouth Rock weighs about 4 tons.

FLUBBED HEADLINES

These are 100% honest-to-goodness headlines. Can you figure out what they were trying to say?

MASSACHUSETTS WOMAN HAS EYE ON KERRY’S SEAT

Four Top Dogs Inducted Into Meat Industry Hall of Fame

Material in Diapers Could Help Make the Deserts Bloom

Study Shows Some Denial From Parents on Ecstasy

MAN KILLED OVER PHONE

Passengers Feeling Airline Crew Cuts

Toronto Suspects Hate Crime

Waterskiing Accident Ruled Accidental

JUDGE NOT CONVINCED MURDER VICTIM IS ALIVE

Men Who Make Inappropriate Advances Should Be Exposed

11 HIGH STUDENTS SCORE PERFECT GRADE

Bonus Permits Enable 809 Hunters to Kill Two Deer

Brief Cooking at Low Heat Recommended For Diabetics

Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

POLICEMAN SHOOTS MAN WITH KNIFE

Astronomers See Colorful Gas Clouds Bubble Out of Uranus

School Bans All Kinds of Nuts on Campus

DEALERS WILL HEAR CAR TALK AT NOON

MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH

HOSPITALS SUED BY SEVEN FOOT DOCTORS

Youth Steals Funds For Charity

MUSIC INDUSTRY MEETS ON DRUGS

OIL BARGE BREAKS OFF TEXAS

Dodge Says Probe Puts Him in Awkward Position

Porsche owners are more likely to cheat on their partners than any other car owner.

“I SPY”…AT THE MOVIES

You probably remember the kids’ game “I Spy, with My Little Eye…” Filmmakers have been playing it for years. Here are some in-jokes and gags you can look for the next time you see these movies
.

T
HE INCREDIBLES
(2004)
I Spy
…The computers from
2001: A Space Odyssey
Where to Find Them:
Animators paid homage to
2001
by making the computer screen displays on Syndrome’s secret island replicas of the ones used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic film.

THE RETURN OF THE KING
(2003)

I Spy
…Director Peter Jackson’s arm

Where to Find It:
In the tunnel of Shelob, when Sam’s (Sean Astin) arm enters the frame and points the sword at the big spider, it’s not Astin’s arm, it’s Peter Jackson’s.

MONKEY BUSINESS
(1931)

I Spy
…Sam Marx, father of the Marx Brothers

Where to Find Him:
When the brothers are being carried off the ship, dad can be seen behind them sitting on a crate.

SCHINDLER’S LIST
(1993)

I Spy
…A photograph of Anne Frank

Where to Find It:
In the scene where the Nazis are gathering the Jews’ belongings, the camera pans over a pile of photographs; the top one is a picture of Anne Frank, the girl who wrote the famous diary about hiding from Nazis with her family in Amsterdam.

JAWS
(1975)

I Spy
…Peter Benchley, author of the novel that inspired the film
Where to Find Him:
He’s the TV reporter on the beach talking about Amityville and the shark.

The flashing light on the Capitol Records Tower spells out HOLLYWOOD in Morse code.

BIG FISH (2003)

I Spy
…Props from earlier Tim Burton movies

Where to Find Them:
During the bank robbery, the door to the vault is the same one that protected the Batsuit in
Batman
(1989). At the science fair, young Ed Bloom shows off a breakfast machine that first appeared in
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
(1985).

FIGHT CLUB
(1999)

I Spy
…Starbucks coffee cups

Where to Find Them:
In every shot, according to director David Fincher, who put the cups there to illustrate the pervasiveness of corporations in our society. “I don’t have anything against Starbucks, per se,” he says, “but do we need three on every corner?”

THE SOUND OF MUSIC
(1965)

I Spy
…Maria von Trapp

Where to Find Her:
The nanny who inspired the story worked as an extra in the scene where Julie Andrews (starring as Maria) sings “I Have Confidence.” There are two Austrian peasant women standing in a doorway—von Trapp is the elder of the two.

CATWOMAN (2004)

I Spy
…Former Catwoman Michelle Pfeiffer

Where to Find Her:
In a stack of photos labeled “catwomen of history” is a picture of Pfeiffer as Catwoman from the 1992 movie
Batman Returns
.

SHREK
2 (2004)

I Spy
…Justin Timberlake (boyfriend of star Cameron Diaz)

Where to Find Him:
When Fiona (Diaz) visits her childhood bedroom, there’s a poster of “Sir Justin” on the wall.

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
(1975)

I Spy
…Michael Palin’s infant son William

Where to Find Him:
In “The Book of the Film” scene, baby William is the photograph of Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film.

Houseflies hum in the key of F.

CAPITAL-ISM

Small towns are flush with pride about their contributions to the world. Here are some places that proudly proclaim themselves “World Capitals.”

S
OCK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

Town:
Fort Payne, Alabama