Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (66 page)

T
—as in
Mr. T,
the mohawked 1980s icon most famous for co-starring in
Rocky III
(1982) and the action-adventure TV series
The A-Team
(1983–1987). In the former he was Rocky’s rival, boxer James “Clubber Lang”; in the latter, he was B.A. Baracus. Although the initials stood for “bad ass,” B.A. was afraid to fly, which is why the A-Team went everywhere in a van. Born Lawrence Tureaud, Mr. T was a bouncer before he was an actor, and after
The A-Team
ended in 1987, his star faded. In 2006 he hosted a reality show called
I Pity the Fool,
in which he helped real people solve their problems, and he most recently appeared in commercials for title-loan company.

Every minute, 5 CDs are sold on eBay and 7,000 songs are downloaded on iTunes.

U
A 1970 double album by the influential Scottish psychedelic/folk group the Incredible String Band, commemorating and named after the band’s 1969 concert tour.

V
A 1983 TV miniseries (remade in 2009) about humanoid aliens who arrive on Earth to befriend humanity…before revealing that they are actually reptiles who just want to eat us.

W
.
The title of Oliver Stone’s 2008 biopic about the life of President George W. Bush (Josh Brolin). It’s Stone’s third film about a president, following
Nixon
and JFK, but the only to take on a comic tone, characterizing Bush’s early adulthood as aimless, reckless, and alcohol-soaked. Stone deliberately released the film just a few weeks before the Obama/McCain presidential election, hoping it would have an anti-Republican sway, but
W
. was a box-office bomb, earning just $29 million. (McCain, the Republican, lost the election anyway.)

X
Also known as
The Man With the X-Ray Eyes,
it’s a 1963 science-fiction film directed by Roger Corman about a scientist (Ray Milland) who conducts experiments with X-ray technology until it goes horribly wrong, mutating him and giving him X-ray vision. Being able to see through humans and ultimately
past
humans into only shades of light and what he believes is an all-knowing eye at the center of the universe, the man with the X-ray eyes obtains relief by plucking out his own eyes.

“Y”
After the Baby Boomers, there was Generation X. The next generation—people born between around 1980 and 2000—is known as Generation Y or, sometimes, the Millennials. Generation Y is characterized by technological savvy (they are voracious users of the Internet and adapt easily to new gadgets). There are currently about 80 million Gen-Y-ers in the United States—outnumbering Baby Boomers by about five million.

Z
The title of a 1966 novel by Vassilis Vassilikos, but better known as a 1969 movie directed by Costa-Gavras, it’s a political thriller about the ruling military dictatorship in power in Greece at the time. The film version was the first movie not in English to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. (It lost;
Midnight Cowboy
won. But it did win the award for Best Foreign Language Film.)

Country with the world’s highest fertility rate: Niger, with 7.1 children per mother.

DUMB CROOKS

More proof that crime doesn’t pay
.

T
HE TWO STOOGES
Regan Reti was facing jail time. Tiranara White was facing sentencing. The two men—handcuffed together after their respective hearings—were awaiting transport back to the Hastings, New Zealand, jail when they decided to make a break for it. The connected convicts darted across the street and encountered a lamppost. One man went to the right, the other to the left…and they slammed into each other on the other side. Each man blamed the other for going the wrong way. Both were returned to the jail.

DUMMIES

Thieves broke into a cell phone store in Moriela, Mexico, in 2009 and made off with some hollow plastic cell phone replicas that were on display. Employees told police that the burglars passed up dozens of real cell phones just a few feet away and stole the fake ones.

BUT THEY SEEMED SO NORMAL

In 2009 Christopher Gray of Quincy, Massachusetts, posted an ad on Craigslist that read “420 help is here!” (420 is stoner-subculture code for smoking marijuana…so we hear.) A man called the phone number, and Gray arranged to meet him in a nearby parking lot. The man showed up with a friend. “Are you guys cops?” asked Gray. “No,” they replied. “Okay, I trust you. You look normal.” Gray then sold them a $45-bag of marijuana. (They were cops.) Said the arresting officer: “It goes without saying that we will continue monitoring Craigslist.”

HE GOT CARDED

A chef from Mexico (name not released) arrived at the Manchester, England, airport in 2010. Customs officials routinely asked what he was doing in the U.K. “I’m visiting a friend who’s opening a restaurant,” he replied. “I’m just staying for a few days.” But while searching his bag, the agents discovered a greeting card that
read “Good luck with your new life in the U.K.!” That prompted a confession from the chef: He was planning to work—illegally—at the restaurant. He was deported the next day.

Who says it’s not a real sport? The average heart rate of a NASCAR driver during a race is 135 beats per minute, about the same as a marathon runner’s.

DON’T FENCE ME IN

One night in March 2010, a Cleveland police officer tried to pull over a car for a minor traffic violation, but the driver sped off. The ensuing chase reached speeds of 90 mph before the car stopped at an intersection and four men jumped out. They all ran toward a tall chain-link fence with thickly wound barbed wire lining the top. Two of the men were captured right away; another was tased while climbing the fence. The driver, Ricky Flowers, actually made it all the way over, despite severely cutting his arms on the barbed wire. He got away? No, he landed in the yard of a women’s prison. Flowers received several stitches at the hospital before being taken to jail (a men’s jail). And why didn’t he pull over when the cops told him to? Because, he told officers, he had a suspended license and “didn’t want his mom to know he was driving.”

MMM…PIZZA

In May 2009, police responded to a robbery call at an Italian restaurant in Osijek, Croatia. The cops entered and asked the employees which way the suspect went. One of the workers pointed to a man named Ante Baranovic, who was sitting in a booth gobbling up a slice of pizza. “I know I should have run,” he said as the officers arrested him, “but this pizza is good!”

A SIT-DOWN COMEDIAN

“Dogs are gross. They drink out of the toilet. But when you’re going to the bathroom, maybe your dog is thinking, ‘Hey, I drink out of that thing! Why don’t you just go in my dish, save yourself a walk down the hallway.’”

—Garry Shandling

I BURP, THEREFORE I AM

As once said by that famous philosopher, René Descaaaaartes
.

C
AN’T STOP BURPING YOU.
Jean Driscoll, 72, of Chelmsford, England, started burping constantly (and loudly) in 2006…and has been unable to stop ever since. She’s been to several doctors, taken numerous medications, had acupuncture and hypnotherapy, and has even had her digestive tract examined with a tiny camera—but the loud, spontaneous burping won’t stop. “I don’t go out anymore because I’m too embarrassed,” Ms. Driscoll said, “People laugh and stare at me.” At last report, she’s still trying to find a cure.

JAILHOUSE BURP.
In February 2010, Thomas Scott Vandegrift of Roanoke, Virginia, filed suit against several police officers for $6 million each—because they beat him up for burping. Vandegrift claims he was physically assaulted by the officers when they misread his acid-reflux-caused burping as deliberate and disrespectful.

SLAP MY BURP UP.
Chinese newspapers reported in April 2007 that a man in the northeastern province of Liaoning had tried to cure his constant belching by slapping himself in the face—hard—several times. Good news: He cured his belching. Bad news: He also broke one of his eardrums. His doctors told reporters that people should not try to cure medical problems by slapping themselves in the face.

DRY YOUR BURPS.
In June 2007, Frederick Cronin was arrested for drunk driving in Stratham, New Hampshire. He lost his driver’s license but appealed. According to police rules, officers must observe people arrested for drunk driving for 20 minutes before giving them a breathalyzer test. If the person burps during that period, the officer has to start over. Cronin and the arresting officer agreed that Cronin burped during his waiting period, but the officer insisted it wasn’t a real burp—it was a “dry burp.” At a state Department of Motor Vehicles hearing, Cronin argued that
it was indeed a “wet” burp and that the police officer had broken the rules. The hearing officer’s ruling: The “gaseous mix that flowed out of Cronin’s mouth had not emanated from his stomach and contained nothing but air.” Cronin the Burparian did not get his license back.

17% of all American restaurants are pizzerias.

EVERY BURP YOU TAKE.
In July 2006, Bryan S. Jeanfreau of Natchez, Massachusetts, was issued U.S. Patent Number 7070638 for a Burp Gas Filtering Device. It’s about six inches long and cylindrical, with a large opening at one end and several small openings on the side, near the other end. When you feel a burp coming on and you’re afraid it’s going to be a foul-smelling one, you put the end with the large opening in your mouth, and the gases released with the burp go through a filter of activated charcoal before being released. Bonus: It’s also a pen. (We don’t know why.)

THE WAY WE BURPED.
Have you ever wanted to burp, but couldn’t? For some people it’s a lifelong reality. Normally when gases build up in the stomach or the esophagus, the
belch reflex
allows them to be released through the upper esophageal sphincter (UES), a one-way valve below your voice box that is chiefly used to let food into the esophagus while you eat. (The vibration of the UES is what makes burps sound the way they do.) But for people with a disorder called “dysfunction of the belch reflex,” that valve doesn’t work properly—and they can’t burp. Ever. The condition can cause severe bloating of the stomach and esophagus, and excruciating pain. What causes the disorder is unknown, and so far there is no cure.

TINY BURPLES.
Do fish burp? Many fish species have
swim bladders,
baglike organs that they can fill with air in order to maintain buoyancy at different depths in the water. They can also expel air from the bag, and they do this by belching it out of their gills. You can see little fish burp bubbles when they do.

“I come from a very big family. Nine parents.” —
Jim Gaffigan

Besides chicken pox, you can also catch cow pox, swine pox, and monkey pox.

BEHIND THE LOVE SONGS

What’s every songwriter’s favorite topic? Love. Only problem: They can’t seem to agree on love’s true nature. Either it’s strange, it’s all around, it hurts, it’s crazy, or it’s a battlefield. Here are the stories behind some well-known “love” songs
.

T
he Song:
“Love Is All Around” (1967)
The Artist:
The Troggs
The Story:
The Troggs were a British garage-rock band best known for the raw 1966 hit “Wild Thing.” But when Troggs singer Reg Presley saw a Salvation Army band play an old, sentimental folk song on a TV variety show—he can’t remember the song or the show—it inspired him to write a gentle song about love. (Presley claims he wrote it in just a few minutes.) By the end of 1967, “Love Is All Around” had reached the Top 10 in America and the U.K. More than 25 years later, the song became a hit again when the band Wet Wet Wet covered it for the 1994 film
Four Weddings and a Funeral,
taking it to #1 for 15 weeks. (Presley donated his songwriting royalties from the Wet Wet Wet version to crop-circle research.)