Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (44 page)

Finally, on August 9, he decided to come down and prepared himself to greet his public. A girl
The New York Times
called “one of the prettiest of barberettes” was pulled up the rope to give him a shave, haircut, and manicure.

HERO’S WELCOME

Twenty thousand cheering people were on hand when he made his slow descent that afternoon, and there was a flood of congratulatory telegrams from prominent Americans. Kelly had trouble using his feet when he first touched ground, but was able to shake hands with the official dignitaries who welcomed him back to earth and to pose for newsreel cameramen.

He had been on his flagpole for 1,177 hours, more than forty-nine days, which was a
record nobody broke for nearly another decade. Kelly himself never equaled it again.

A MAN APART

Kelly went on flag-poling through the Thirties and into the Forties, but his fame gradually faded as a new crop of pole-sitters came along. On October 11, 1952, Kelly collapsed on the sidewalk and died of a heart attack, not far from Madison Square Garden where his name once had been up in lights. Under his arm was a scrapbook of old news clippings from...when he had been a headliner. In the nearby furnished room where he had been living...police found a single duffel bag of personal belongings, mostly...flagpole-sitting gear.

Even in the 1970s, there were others still claiming new records, some for perching on high for as long as eight months. But many did their sitting on broad platforms, in tents, huts, and with all the conveniences of home, which “Shipwreck Kelly” would have called not flagpole-sitting at all.

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Strange Scholarships

Want some help with college tuition? You might qualify for one of these. In 1994, it was announced that:

• The Frederick & Mary F. Beckley Fund for Needy Left-handed Freshmen offers up to $1,000 for left-handers who want to go to Juanita College in Pennsylvania.

• The National Make It Yourself with Wool scholarship offers $100-$1,000 to knitters.

• The Dolphin Scholarship Foundation offers $1,750 to the children of WWII submarine veterans.

• The John Gatling Scholarship Program offers $6,000 to anyone with the last name Gatlin or Gatling who wants to go to the University of North Carolina.

• Tall Clubs International offers two scholarships of $1,000 each for females 5'10" or taller, and males 6'2" or taller.

Ever wonder where words come from? Here are some interesting stories.

C
URFEW

Meaning:
A prescribed time to leave certain places.

Origin:
“In medieval times the danger from fire was especially great because most buildings were made of wood. With a wind blowing, a single burning house could start a conflagration. Hence the practice developed of covering fires before retiring for the night. During the reigns of Williams I and II, a bell was sounded at sunset to give notice that the time had come to extinguish all fires and candles. This came to be called ‘curfew,’ a word borrowed almost directly from the French
couvre feu
, which, in translation, is ‘cover the fire.’” (From
The Story Behind the Word
, by Morton S. Freeman)

SHAMPOO

Meaning:
Soap for washing hair.

Origin:
“Early travelers in India were intrigued by a native custom. Sultans and nabobs had special servants who massaged their bodies after hot baths. From a native term for ‘to press,’ such a going-over of the body with knuckles was called a ‘champo’ or ‘shampoo.’” (From
Why You Say It
, by Webb Garrison)

ALIMONY

Meaning:
An allowance made to one spouse by the other for support pending or after legal separation or divorce.

Origin:
“The word
aliment
means food. This traces to the Latin
alo
, ‘nourish.’ So the way the many divorce laws are written now, if a wife sues for release from her bonds, she expects alimony, which, etymologically, is really ‘eating money.’” (From
Word Origins
, by Wilfred Funk)

CANNIBAL

Meaning:
A person who eats humans.

Origin:
“When Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba, he asked the
natives what they called themselves. In their dialect they said that they were Canibales, or people of Caniba. (This was a dialectal form of
Caribe
, and the Cuban natives were
Caribes.)
Later explorers used either name, Canibales or Caribes, in referring to any of the people of the West Indies. All of these people were very fierce; some were known to eat human flesh. Less than a century after Columbus’s voyages, all Europeans associated the name Canibales with human-eaters.” (From
Thereby Hangs a Tail
, by Charles Earle Funk)

ONION

Meaning:
A pungent, edible vegetable.

Origin:
“In Latin there is a word
union
which is translated as ‘oneness’ or ‘union.’ The word onion is derived from this...because it consists of a number of united layers. There is also another interesting analogy between ‘union’ and ‘onion.’ The rustics about Rome not only used the word
unio
to mean onion, but they also thought it a suitable designation for a pearl. And even today a cook will speak of ‘pearl onions’ when she means the small, silvery-white variety.” (From
Word Origins
, by Wilfred Funk)

HORS D’OEUVRE

Meaning:
A small treat served before a meal.

Origin:
“These tasty treats before a fancy meal get their name from a French expression meaning ‘outside of work.’ Preparing the meal was part of the ordinary labor of the kitchen staff, and any extras for special occasions or feasts were not part of the regular chores.” (From
Where in the Word?
, by David Muschell)

POSTMAN

Meaning:
Deliverer of mail.

Origin:
“The term ‘post’ to describe mail or message delivery originated in the 13th century with Marco Polo. He described Kublai Khan’s network of more than 10,000 yambs, or relay stations, calling them in Italian
poste
, or ‘posts.’ They were located every 25 to 45 miles on the principal roads throughout the empire. In addition, at three-mile intervals between the
poste
there were relay stations for runners, who...wore wide belts with bells to signal the importance of their business.” (From
Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins
, by John Train)

Doesn’t it bother you when a movie you love gets a thumbs-down from those two bozos on TV? Us, too.
The Critics Were Wrong,
by Ardis Sillick and Michael McCormick, compiles hundreds of misguided movie reviews like these.

F
RANKENSTEIN (1931)

“I regret to report that it is just another movie, so thoroughly mixed with water as to have a horror content of about .0001 percent....The film...soon turns into sort of comic opera with a range of cardboard mountains over which extras in French Revolution costumes dash about with flaming torches.”

—Outlook & Independent

THE GRADUATE (1967)
Nomination for best actor

“The Graduate
is a genuinely funny comedy which succeeds despite an uninteresting and untalented actor (Dustin Hoffman) in the title role.”

—Films In Review

LETHAL WEAPON (1987)

“As a thriller, it lacks logic. As a cop film, it throws standard police procedures, and with them any hope of authenticity, to the wind. As a showcase for the martial arts, it’s a disappointment....And as action-adventure, it’s pointlessly puerile.”

—Johanna Steinmetz,
Chicago Tribune

M*A*S*H* (1970)

“At the end, the film simply runs out of steam, says goodbye to its major characters, and calls final attention to itself as a movie—surely the saddest and most overworked of cop-out devices in the comic film repertory.”

—Roger Greenspun,
New York Times

ROCKY (1976)
Top box-office hit / Oscar winner for best picture and director / Nomination for best actor and screenplay

“An overly grandiose script, performed with relentless grandiloquence....Up
to a point I’m willing to overlook the egg on a guy’s face, but, really, there’s such a thing as too much—especially when they’re promoting this bloated, pseudo-epic as a low-budget Oscar-bound winner.”

—Washington Star

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

“Not a cinematic landmark. It compares with, but does not best, previous efforts at filmed science-fiction....It actually belongs to the technically-slick group previously dominated by...the Japanese.”

—Variety

ANNIE HALL (1977)
Oscar winner for best picture and director

“Woody Allen has truly underreached himself....His new film is painful in three separate ways: an unfunny comedy, poor moviemaking and embarrassing self-revelation....It is a film so shapeless, sprawling, repetitious and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion.”

—John Simon,
New York

PSYCHO (1960)
Oscar nomination for best director

“Hitchcock seems to have been more interested in shocking his audience with the bloodiest bathtub murder in screen history, and in photographing Janet Leigh in various stages of undress, than in observing the ordinary rules for good film construction. This is a dangerous corner for a gifted moviemaker to place himself in.”

—Moira Walsh,
America

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)

“Nothing more than an updated ’70s version of the...rock music cheapies of the ‘50s. That is to say...more shrill, more vulgar, more trifling, more superficial and more pretentious than an exploitation film....A major disappointment.”

—Variety

Here’s another example of someone who’s gone down in history as the worst there ever was.

“B
LACK JACK” TOM KETCHUM (1862?-1901)

Background:
Ketchum was an ordinary cowboy before turning to crime. He returned from a cattle drive one day and learned that his girlfriend had eloped with another man. The rejection pushed him over the edge.

Claim to Fame:
Ketchum has been dubbed the “second stupidest outlaw who ever lived.” He ran with members of Wyoming’s notorious Hole-in-the-Wall gang, but bungled so many stick-ups that getting away with a few dollars was the best he usually managed.

He had a strange reaction to failure, as Jay Robert Nash explains in
American Eccentrics:

Whenever a caper of his went wrong, he would methodically beat himself on the head with the butt of his six-shooter snarling, “You will, will you? (slam!)...Now take that (pop)...and that (bang)!”

Many of Black Jack’s planned crimes turned into disasters, and if each member of his gang got $10 for his share, it could be considered a superior outing. Needless to say, Black Jack’s gun and skull both took regular beatings.

But even stupid outlaws have their day. In 1898, Ketchum and his boys robbed a train in New Mexico of about $500. Not exactly a king’s ransom, but it was enough to keep Ketchum coming back for more. He didn’t bother to vary his routine even a little. Ketchum went after the same train, at exactly the same remote spot, a total of four times. On the fourth, lawmen were waiting for him. There was a shoot-out, and Ketchum was wounded and captured.

So why was Ketchum only the
second
-stupidest outlaw? Because his brother, Sam, was even dumber. While Black Jack was in prison, Sam masterminded yet another identical robbery of the same train. He got himself killed in the attempt.

What do rock stars really think of their “art?” Maybe not what you’d expect.

Q:
“If you had to put into 25 words or less what it is you’re trying to say when you get up on stage, what would it be?”

A:
“LOOK AT ME!”

—Joe Strummer (the Clash)