Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (79 page)

Only 3 U.S. presidents were mayors: Calvin Coolidge (Northampton, MA) Grover Cleveland (Buffalo, NY), and Andrew Johnson (Greeneville, TN).

GEORGE

The conventional speculation was that presidential son and tabloid fixture John F. Kennedy Jr. would eventually go into politics. He didn’t—in 1995 he went into publishing instead. That year, Kennedy founded
George,
named after George Washington. Kennedy aimed for a literate mix of political topics with humor and celebrity profiles thrown in. (The first cover depicted model Cindy Crawford dressed up as Washington.) Kennedy’s celebrity certainly helped the magazine’s popularity: In 1996 it was the #1 political magazine in the country, but by the time Kennedy died in 1999, circulation had dropped by half, to 400,000. For six months after Kennedy’s death, interest resurfaced and circulation jumped by a third. But the boost was only temporary. Despite contributions from popular political, humor, and fiction writers such as Ann Coulter, Al Franken, and Norman Mailer, without Kennedy’s leadership the magazine flailed and folded in 2001.
George’s
legacy can be seen today, however. The mix of politics with humor and culture was a precursor to shows like Comedy Central’s
The Daily Show
and
The Colbert Report
.

NATIONAL LAMPOON

Launched in 1970,
National Lampoon
was a for-profit spinoff of the revered collegiate humor magazine
Harvard Lampoon. National Lampoon
became popular by presenting cutting, sometimes surreal, parody and satire of cultural institutions, politicians, and celebrities in the Vietnam and Watergate eras. A few examples: a cover illustration of Lt. William Calley, court-martialed for his role in the My Lai massacre, made to look like
Mad
mascot Alfred E. Neuman; and a cover photo of a dog with a revolver pointed at its head and the caption, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” The magazine was so successful that “National Lampoon” was used as a brand for TV specials, books, a radio show, and films, notably
Animal House
and
Vacation. National Lampoon
signed up its one-millionth subscriber in 1974, and circulation remained steady until the end of the decade, but as the counterculture spirit of the ’70s gave way to the optimistic upward mobility and conservatism of the 1980s, readership dropped drastically. The print version was kept alive at a financial loss, as a flagship/brand name to support the other media projects until 1998, when
National Lampoon
finally folded.

PLAYGIRL

Founded in 1973,
Playgirl
cashed in on the feminist movement, offering beefcake to women as a response to the cheesecake in men’s magazines such as
Playboy
. Featuring nude male centerfolds, Playgirl was marketed to heterosexual women, but before long, research indicated that its audience was predominantly gay males.
Playgirl,
however, refused to alter its content or advertising to reflect that readership. Circulation peaked at about half a million in the late 1990s. As other forms of pornography, both softcore and hardcore, became more available in print and online,
Playgirl
’s sales softened. The last printed issue appeared in January 2009.
But wait!
In 2010 it relaunched to a lot of publicity (but poor sales) when it featured a seminude spread of Levi Johnston, the teenage father of Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s grandchild.

MORE HIGH-PROFILE MAGAZINES THAT FOLDED

•
Vibe
(1993–2009). A major pop-music magazine (surpassed in readership by only
Rolling Stone
and
Spin)
that covered hip-hop and R&B music. Owned by Quincy Jones,
Vibe
spun off a late-night talk show and a televised music awards ceremony. After
peaking at 800,000 subscribers in 2007, readership dropped off sharply and the magazine folded in 2009. The brand name was then sold to a private equity firm; they turned
Vibe
into a pop culture website.

What makes Meadow the cow so special? She’s the first to have two prosthetic legs.

•
Talk
(1999–2002). It got a lot of publicity before its launch because it was a joint project between the behemoth Hearst Publications and the Miramax film studio
(Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting),
and because its first editor was former
New Yorker
and
Vanity Fair
chief Tina Brown. Consisting of in-depth interviews with celebrities and politicians,
Talk
never turned a profit.

•
Cracked
(1958–2007). A crude humor magazine for kids—a blatant knockoff of
Mad,
even poaching several
Mad
artists and writers in the 1980s, but its circulation numbers never came close to
Mad
’s, so in 2005 it was revamped as a humor magazine for adult men (similar to
Maxim
or
FHM)
. That didn’t work either, and the magazine shut down after three issues. Today it’s a trivia website.

•
Omni
(1978–1995). Created by
Penthouse
magazine publisher Bob Guccione and his wife Kathy Keton,
Omni
was a magazine that blended science fiction and science fact. It combined reporting on legitimate, cutting-edge science with science fiction from top writers in the genre such as William Gibson and Stephen King, plus a healthy dose of articles on fringe pseudoscience and paranormal topics. The magazine went to a web-only format in 1996 and then shut down completely two years later. (General Media, the company that publishes
Penthouse,
filed for bankruptcy in 2003.)

•
Weekly World News
(1979–2007). When the
National Enquirer
switched to full color in 1979, the magazine’s founder, Generoso Pope, didn’t want to let his black-and-white press machine go to waste. So he created the
WWN,
a highly successful supermarket tabloid featuring stories about Bigfoot sightings, two-headed lizard boys, and presidents meeting with aliens. The magazine’s circulation peaked at 1.2 million in the 1980s, but dropped to just 83,000 by 2007, when publication ceased. Why did it go defunct? Because, after 20 years, readers simply grew tired of stories about Bigfoot sightings, two-headed lizard boys, and presidents meeting with aliens. It’s now an online-only magazine.

12% of male American drivers admit to shaving while driving.

DO YOU SPEAK DOG?

More tips and tricks to help you better understand what your dog is thinking and doing. (Part I is on
page 350
.)

P
ROBLEM:
Your dog “greets” your guests by jumping up on them.

EXPERTS SAY:
Dogs do this as a natural part of play with other dogs, but it can be upsetting or even dangerous if they do it to small children, senior citizens, or anyone who’s afraid of dogs.

SOLUTION:
You can discourage jumping on guests by teaching the dog a new command for sit. Raise both hands, palms up and facing the dog, whenever you tell your dog to sit. Then, when it’s used to the new command, stop saying “Sit,” so that it learns to sit when only the hand gesture is given. This gesture is the same defensive motion that people make when they fear that an approaching dog is going to jump on them. So when your dog sees a guest making this defensive movement, it will interpret that as a command to “sit.”

PROBLEM:
When you take your dog for a walk, it pulls against the leash until it chokes, and just keeps on pulling.

EXPERTS SAY:
This can be difficult behavior for dog owners to understand, because the dog could easily relieve the choking by not pulling so hard on the leash.
You
know this intuitively, but a dog may not. Dogs that pull continuously on the leash do so because they have come to see walking on a leash as an inherently asphyxiating experience, and they’re trying to escape it.

SOLUTION:
This problem can be controlled easily—and gently—with head collars, no-pull harnesses, and other training tools that discourage your dog from pulling during walks.

Problem:
Your dog has accidents in the house.

EXPERTS SAY:
Dogs do this when they haven’t been completely house-trained, or when they have to wait too long for the opportunity to go outside.

SOLUTION:
If you catch a dog “eliminating” inside the house, just interrupt it and take it outside without yelling or punishing it.
Punishing a dog that is peeing or pooping in the house just teaches it to do its business in out-of-the-way places that are harder for you to find…and clean up.

You risk being electrocuted if you talk on a landline during a thunderstorm.

CLEANING TIP:
If your dog does have an accident in your house, deodorize the spot with white vinegar, rubbing alcohol, or a commercial odor eliminator after you’ve cleaned up the mess. The lack of an odor will make the dog less likely to go there again. Whatever you do,
do not
clean it with any cleaning products that contain ammonia. When urine breaks down in the air, it gives off ammonia, and your dog associates this smell with urine. Adding more ammonia smell to a spot that has already been peed upon may be telling your dog, “this is the place to pee.”

PROBLEM:
Your dog suffers from “separation anxiety”—it gets very upset when you leave the house. It chews furniture, barks incessantly, has accidents in the house, or engages in other forms of undesirable behavior.

EXPERTS SAY:
Adolescent dogs in the wild eventually reach an age where they can leave the den and hunt with the adult dogs. When your dog reaches that age, it will want to go with you when you leave the den. Not being able to go can be very stressful.

SOLUTION:
One trick that can be effective in reducing separation anxiety is de-emphasizing the significance of your comings and goings by being as quiet and undemonstrative as possible. Don’t say goodbye to your dog before you leave—a farewell may give
you
comfort, but all it does for the dog is emphasize your departure. Then, when you return home, let a few minutes pass before you greet the dog. Put away your stuff, get a drink or a snack from the fridge, sit in your favorite chair, and when the dog has calmed down, say hello. Another trick: Leave a radio on while you’re gone. It can lessen the distinction between an empty house and one with you in it. And drawing curtains over windows through which the dog can see passersby may help your pet feel less threatened when it is defending the den all by itself.

OTHER DOG BEHAVIORS EXPLAINED

• Yawning.
Dogs yawn when they’re tired just like people do, but not only when they’re tired: They also yawn when they are feeling
timid or under stress—a dog may yawn to calm itself or other dogs, reducing the threat they pose.

The techie term PEBKAC means “Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair” (i.e., you).

•
Tail Wagging.
When a dog wags its tail it can mean either of two things: 1) the dog is happy, or 2) the dog is in an excited, aggressive state. If you don’t know the dog, don’t let the tail fool you! Many dog-bite victims report they were bitten by a dog that was wagging its tail. Greet a strange dog
very
carefully before trying to pet it, even if it is wagging its tail.

•
Licking Your Face.
In the days when dogs lived in the wild, when the mother returned to the den after hunting for food she fed her young pups by vomiting up whatever partially digested prey she’d caught for them to eat. Experts say that puppies learned they could trigger Mom’s barf reflex by licking her face. So when your dog licks your face, it may really be more interested in what you had for dinner than in showing how much it loves you. But not necessarily: A lick may really mean “I love you,” after all, because dogs continue to greet their mothers this way long after they’ve learned to hunt for their own food.

•
Poop-Eating.
Easily one of the most disgusting spectacles a dog owner has to witness, poop eating actually served an important purpose when dogs lived in the wild: A mother dog ate all the poop produced by her pups to remove the strong smell from the den. This helped the defenseless pups remain hidden from predators while she was away from the den hunting for food. The good news: Poop eating teaches pups that their sleeping area is a place that needs to be kept clean; that, in turn, can sometimes speed up the house training.