Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (32 page)

1.5 million of the 80–90 million people who watch the Super Bowl call in sick the next day.

HOAX:
The Donahue Fainting

STORY:
In 1985 the popular talk show
Donahue
ceased taping episodes in Chicago, opting instead to broadcast live from New York City. Abel figured this was a good time to protest what he considered trashy television and also make a scene on live TV. So Abel hired seven actresses and got them all tickets to sit in the audience for the first live
Donahue
. One by one, as the show progressed, each of the women fainted, in full view of the cameras. In all, 10-12 people fainted, including some who weren’t even in on the prank. Although no one was seriously injured, Phil Donahue and his producers panicked: Fearing the studio’s lights were too hot, the producers evacuated the remaining audience members and a nervous Donahue finished his show to an empty house. After Abel publicly came clean, he heard from a
Donahue
producer that Donahue was so mad that he tore apart his office and kicked all the furniture around. But when it actually made the show’s ratings go up, Donahue sent Abel a Christmas card that read, “Hope nothing causes you to feel faint in the new year.”

HOAX:
The KKK Symphony Orchestra

STORY:
In 1991 former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana, claiming that he had abandoned his racist ways and had broken all ties with the notorious hate group. Abel didn’t believe him. So to ensnare Duke, he created a fictitious KKK Symphony Orchestra. Posing as “Charles Calhoun,” Abel sent out recordings of the Orchestra along with press press releases promoting a “kinder, gentler KKK” and a claim that although the orchestra members were from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, they’d all play while wearing white hoods. “Calhoun” even told Julia Lobaco, a reporter from the
Arizona Republic,
that Duke was one of the Orchestra’s backers. Lobaco asked Duke, who adamantly denied involvement, to which “Calhoun” responded, “Well, what would you expect him to say?” Nevertheless, when Abel invited Duke to guest-conduct the orchestra, Duke accepted the offer…until he discovered that the “Orchestra” was a put-on. (He lost the election, too.)

East meets West: Mary Kay Cosmetics has over 200,000 representatives in China.

“9-1-DUMB, WHAT’S
YOUR EMERGENCY?”

The other day, Uncle John was thinking about how cool it is that when an emergency occurs, you can dial 911 to get help. So he dialed 911 to say thanks. Apparently, the police don’t really like that. Here are some other things they didn’t like
.

K
EEP POUNDING AWAY
James Little’s voice was familiar to the 911 dispatchers in Regina, Saskatchewan. He had a long history of making frivolous emergency calls and was under a court order not to call 911 unless he had an actual emergency—or else he would go to jail. But on Easter morning of 2010, Little, 75, just couldn’t help himself. He called 911 and asked the dispatcher where the pound key on his phone was located. Little spent Easter Sunday in jail.

MAMA BEER AND BABY BEER

In 2010 a 32-year-old Florida man named Charles Dennison called 911 to report that his mother had stolen his beer. The 911 operator told him that it wasn’t a police matter—he should work it out with his mother. He couldn’t, so he called 911 again. The operator reiterated, “Work it out yourselves.” Then Dennison threatened to keep calling 911 over and over until officers came and arrested his mom. True to his word, Dennison phoned the emergency line dozens of times that night until cops came out and arrested…him.

THIS PLACE IS LIKE A PRISON!

Carly Houston, 29, was hauled into the Naperville, Illinois, police station in 2010 after she threatened a taxicab driver and refused to calm down when police attempted to reason with her. She was arrested for disorderly conduct. At the station, officers informed Houston that she could make one phone call to someone who could come in and post her bail. So who did Houston call? 911. “I’m trapped! You gotta get someone in here to get me out of here!” One more charge was added: making a false emergency call.

More than half of all items listed on eBay receive no bids.

KISS AND MAKE-UP

…and other cleverly named celebrity autobiographies
.

•
The Merchant of Dennis,
by Hank Ketcham, creator of “Dennis the Menace”

•
sTori Telling,
by Tori Spelling

•
Love, Lucy,
by Lucille Ball

•
Just Farr Fun,
by Jamie Farr

•
Bunny Tales,
by Izabella St. James, ex-girlfriend of Hugh Hefner

•
Winking at Life,
by Wink Martindale

•
Breaking the Surface,
by diver Greg Louganis

•
Backstage with the Original Hollywood Square,
by Peter Marshall, host of
The Hollywood Squares

•
KISS and Make-Up,
by Gene Simmons of KISS

•
Sly Moves,
by Sylvester Stallone

•
Out of Sync,
by Lance Bass of *NSYNC

•
To Be or Not to Bop,
by Dizzy Gillespie

•
All You Need Is Ears,
by Beatles producer George Martin

•
Priceless Memories,
by Bob Barker

•
Be My Guest,
by Conrad Hilton

•
Prairie Tale,
by Melissa Gilbert (
Little House on the Prairie
)

•
They Made a Monkee
Out of Me,
by Davy Jones of the Monkees

•
My Word Is My Bond,
by Roger Moore

•
Pryor Convictions,
by Richard Pryor

•
That’s Not All Folks,
by Mel Blanc

•
Between a Heart and a Rock Place,
by Pat Benatar

•
Lips Unsealed,
by Belinda Carlisle of Go-Gos (they had a hit with “Our Lips Are Sealed”)

•
Landing on My Feet,
by Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug

Rule of claw: The colder the waters it lives in, the tastier the lobster.

FAMOUS FOR 15…
EWW!

Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Let’s hope that when your time comes you won’t earn your 15 minutes the way this person did
.

R
ENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
In August 2009, a 19-year-old British woman named Charlotte Taylor hopped a train from East Boldon, in northern England, to the city of Leeds, 75 miles away. She and some friends had tickets to the three-day Leeds Music Festival, which featured acts such as Radiohead, Vampire Weekend, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kings of Leon, and the Arctic Monkeys.

Taylor made it to the festival and was enjoying the music along with thousands of other fans. Then nature called, and when she visited the portable toilets, she found her 15 minutes of fame when she accidentally dropped her purse down the hole of the toilet…and then tried to retrieve it herself.

OH, NOOOOO!

Before you pass judgement on Taylor for going after her purse, stop and think for a minute: If you were unlucky enough to drop your purse where she dropped hers, you might not go after it if all it contained was your ID, a little cash, and some credit cards that you could easily cancel. But what if the purse contained
lots
of cash—say £400 (about $650)? And your new iPhone? And your house keys and your train ticket back to East Boldon? Taylor’s purse contained all this and more. “If I left it, I would have been stranded,” she told a reporter.

We all have our price. Drop a purse with enough valuable stuff in it down a porta-potti and even
you
will try to get it back.

Taylor’s price
was
met that day in Leeds. As she watched her purse fall down the hole, she felt she had only one option. So she reached down into the hole with one arm, then with both arms, and when she couldn’t quite reach the purse, she stuck her head and shoulders down the bowl, too.

And that’s when she got stuck.

World’s largest phone bill: $218 trillion. The Malaysian man who received the bill said there must have been “some mistake.”

IN A JAM

Taylor struggled to free herself, but all she managed to do was wedge herself even deeper into the bowl. Her friends waiting outside couldn’t free her either, and finally the fire department had to be called. It took seven firefighters to dismantle the portable toilet and set her free; in all, she spent nearly 30 minutes wedged upside down in the john. (She did get her purse back.)

But if she hoped to escape from her situation without attracting a lot of attention, it was already too late. Even as the fire department worked to free her, word of her predicament spread through the festival, and soon a crowd formed around the porta-potti, chanting, “POO GIRL! POO GIRL!”

Fortunately for Taylor, the porta-potti was so deep that she never actually came in contact with the kinds of things you’d think a person would come in contact with deep inside a porta-potti: This was a Poo Girl who’d touched no poo. But the fire department gave her a good hosing-off anyway, and after a quick change into dry clothes, she was back enjoying the music festival with her friends.

BY ANY OTHER NAME

If Poo Girl thought her notoriety would end once the festival was over, she was wrong there, too. Her story made headlines all over the United Kingdom, and the news wire services spread it all over the world. How about the Internet? More than one concertgoer captured the incident on their cell phone cameras and posted the videos on YouTube, and when someone launched a “Poo Girl Leeds Fest 2009 Appreciation Society” page on Facebook, 22,000 people signed up. (If you wanted to order an “I Am Poo Girl” T-shirt, tote bag, or hooded sweatshirt online, those were available, too.)

It took a few weeks for Taylor’s bruises to heal and her embarrassment to fade. Waiting for the notoriety to dissipate is going to take more time. Her family has tried to be supportive, but keeping a straight face around the Poo Girl has not been easy. “When Charlotte told me what happened I just laughed,” her mother Chris told
The Sun
. “I felt bad for her, but you have to laugh at these things.”

PHOBIAS OF THE FAMOUS

Celebrities are just like us, if we also couldn’t stand ostriches and paper
.

Tyra Banks:
Dolphins. Ever since she had childhood nightmares about them. On a 2006 episode of her talk show, she went to Sea World to confront the fear by petting some. (She sobbed the whole time.)

Walt Disney:
The creator of Mickey Mouse was actually afraid of mice.

Meryl Streep:
Helicopters.

Andy Warhol:
Hospitals, after he spent two months in one after he was shot and nearly killed in 1968.

Eminem:
Owls.

Pamela Anderson:
Her own image startles her. She has a hard time looking in mirrors and can’t bear to watch herself on television.

Matthew McConaughey:
His fear of revolving doors and tunnels (a very specific form of claustrophobia) is so strong that he gets the shakes when he has to go through them.

Megan Fox:
Paper. Movie scripts are sent to her either laminated or in e-book form.

Jake Gyllenhaal:
Ostriches. A few were present on the set of his 2010 movie
The Prince of Persia
. Trainers warned that sudden noises could startle the birds into violent attacks, which reportedly left Gyllenhaal paralyzed with fear whenever they were around.

Woody Allen:
Bright sunlight.

Madonna:
She reportedly has an extreme fear of thunder.

Kylie Minogue:
Clothes hangers, more specifically the terrible screeching sound they make when the loop at the top touches the closet pole.

Miley Cyrus:
Fireworks.

Tom Cruise:
Going bald. Insiders say he uses hundreds of dollars worth of hair tonics each month and obsessively counts the hairs he finds on his pillow.

Janet Leigh:
Showers, a fear she developed after the famous murder scene in
Psycho
(which seems only fair, considering how many movie buffs developed the same fear after seeing the film).

Bestselling U.S. supermarket product: Campbell’s soup. 50 cans are sold every second.

BEHIND THE RIFF

Many classic rock songs are built around memorable guitar hooks that drive them. Here are the true stories (if the musicians can be believed) behind some of the most familiar riffs in rock-music history
.

S
ong:
“You Really Got Me” (1984)
Musician:
The Kinks
Story:
Lead singer Ray Davies had written a jazz song based on a two-note line played on the saxophone. His brother, guitarist Dave Davies, thought it would sound better on guitar…heavily distorted. So he poked the speaker of his amplifier with needles and shredded it with a razor blade, and turned those two notes into one of the first rock songs built around a fuzzy guitar riff.