Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (101 page)

•
Juanita
.
Played by actress Estelita Rodriguez, supposed to be a beautiful young girl...“even though she looks every one of her thirty-eight years.”

IMMORTAL DIALOGUE

Maria:
“What a fool I’ve been! I’ve allowed the duo-thermal impulsator to be attached only to the body! Let’s see what Grandfather’s notation says.... You see? The duo-thermal impulsator must also be attached to a living brain, to transmit living vibrations to the artificial brain!”

Rudolph:
“But such a powerful electric impulse might prove fatal to the brain of a living person!”

Maria:
“That chance I am willing to take!”

Maria:
“It’s because we’ve been forced to use the brains of children that we’ve failed. What we need is a man—a powerful man—a giant! Then we will succeed!”

Rudolph:
“But what—what good will it do to succeed?”

Maria:
“Imagine! We’ll have someone to do our bidding who can’t be put to death! Just as we have given it life, only we can take its life away!”

Rudolph:
“Maria, we’ve already caused the deaths of three children, and violated the graves of others, just to make the experiments!”

Maria:
“My, you’re a humanitarian! You should have stayed in Europe and given pink pills to sweet old ladies!”

Maria:
“This is the last artificial brain Grandfather Frankenstein made. The secret of how to make them died with him. If I fail in this last attempt, I too am willing to die!”

Rudolph:
“Is it so terrible to fail?”

Maria:
“You’re a fool, Rudolph! We hold the secret of life in our hands!

Rudolph:
“Maria, Maria! This has already cost Grandfather his life!”

Rocky Road ice cream was invented during the Depression as a “comment on the times.”

The tabloids are full of stories about people who see images of religious icons in everything from a lima bean to a smudge on a men’s room floor. Could they be real? Who knows? But real or not, they can lead to some pretty weird—and occasionally destructive—situations. Here are the details of five widely reported “sightings” of the Virgin Mary, from John Dollison’s book
Pope-Pourri.

O
UR LADY OF THE 1981 CAMARO

The Sighting:
Brownsville, Texas. In September of 1993, a Texas man looked out the window of his house and saw a crowd of people pointing at the dusty hood of his 1981 Camaro. He went outside and asked what they were doing...and was told jubilantly that the Blessed Virgin had appeared in a dirt stain on the hood.

What Happened:
To get rid of the throng, the man washed his car. But the image reappeared...and so did the crowds. “We’ve heard the people coming by to see the image won’t let the owner move his car,” a Brownsville police dispatcher told reporters. A church spokesperson told reporters: “If it leads people to prayer, that’s good in itself.”

OUR LADY OF THE AUTO PARTS STORE

The Sighting:
Progreso, Texas. On December 3, 1990, the owner of the Progreso Auto Supply announced that the Virgin Mary had appeared in the concrete floor of the men’s room shower.

What Happened:
Within two weeks more than a thousand people a day were visiting the restroom to weep and pray. Few, if any, bought auto parts. Believers not only took the appearance seriously—some took Mary’s unfortunate location, on the floor of an auto parts store shower, personally. “I feel guilty,” one distraught woman declared. “I’m part to blame for where she is.”

OUR LADY OF THE BACKYARD

The Sighting:
In 1992 Marlboro, New Jersey citizen Joseph Januszkiewicz told the world that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him in his backyard on the first Sunday of each month and would keep doing so.

Presidential first: To pay for the Civil War, Abe Lincoln signed an income tax into law.

What Happened:
The monthly visits attracted as many as ten thousand of the faithful to Marlboro (population 28,000)—costing the town as much as $21,000 in police patrols and “sanitation overtime” per visit. On September 25, 1992, the health department ordered Januszkiewicz to install ten portable toilets on his property to meet his pilgrims’ nonspiritual needs. Health officials took the action after receiving “vivid accounts of people defecating in the woods and bushes.”

OUR LADY OF COLD SPRING, KENTUCKY

The Sighting:
In August 1992, Reverend LeRoy Smith of Saint Joseph Church in Cold Spring told his congregation that a visionary had predicted that the Virgin Mary would make an appearance at the church at midnight on September 1. He never identified the visionary. Six thousand people showed up to see if Mary would appear.

What Happened:
Whether or not she did depends on who you ask. Some people saw her on the side of the church; others saw her in a nearby tree. One woman saw lights outside the church that she was sure represented the Blessed Virgin. But most people didn’t see anything, including William Hughes, the local bishop. “I am convinced that nothing of a miraculous nature occurred,” he reported the next day. Still, many of the spectators disagreed. A Ms. Dang voiced the opinion of many on hand when she commented to a reporter: “The bishop is a mortal man...and he could make a mistake.”

OUR LADY OF MEDJUGORJE

The Sighting:
In June 1981, two teenagers were sneaking cigarettes on the side of a hill overlooking Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the Virgin Mary appeared to them in the clouds. Four other teenagers made similar sightings not long afterwards (no word on what they were smoking), and the story spread around the world. Since then more than 15 million of the faithful have made pilgrimages to the site.

What Happened:
Despite Medjugorje’s immense popularity with pilgrims (before the Bosnian civil war it drew almost as many people as Fatima and Lourdes), the Vatican called the sightings bunk. They officially discouraged pilgrims from going there, and the local bishop denounced the sightings as “collective hallucinations.” In a 1991 statement, nineteen of twenty Yugoslav bishops declared that “on the basis of research conducted so far, one cannot affirm that supernatural apparitions are involved.” The pilgrims kept on coming, even as civil war raged...and a cottage industry of pizza parlors, hot dog stands, and foreign exchange booths sprang up to serve them. “The atmosphere is like Mary World,” one Florida-based pilgrim told reporters. Even the outbreak of bloody civil war didn’t stop visitors entirely. “I’ve had open-heart surgery, a ruptured appendix, a gall bladder removed, a back operation, a plugged carotid artery, an angioplasty, and I’m on my second pacemaker,” another pilgrim told
The Wall Street Journal
while a fierce battle raged just outside of town. “You think I’m afraid of a little shooting?”

Reindeer are the only species of deer in which the female grows antlers.

Unfortunately, people’s excitement about the prospect of seeing the divine can have unexpectedly tragic consequences. Two more examples from Dollison’s book:

OUR LADY OF BAZA, SPAIN

Background:
In 1993 Sanchez Casas, an eighteen-year-old Spanish faith healer, announced that on June 11 the Virgin Mary would appear to any of his followers who “looked directly at the sun.”

What Happened:
On June 11, an estimated one thousand of his followers travelled to Baza, looked directly at the sun...and suffered severe eye damage. More than thirty people were hospitalized, and at least eight suffered permanent vision loss. (Casas pooh-poohed the stricken as “nonbelievers” who had “stared at the sun on the wrong day.”)

OUR LADY OF DENVER, COLORADO

Background:
In November 1991 a Denver woman announced to the world that the Blessed Virgin would appear at a shrine on Assumption Day—and that “great favors” would be rained upon those who witnessed the holy event. (How did the woman know? She said that Mary had told her so in a vision.)

The
Tyrannosaurus rex’s
razor-sharp teeth were about six inches long.

What Happened:
More than six thousand people—many of them elderly and infirm—traveled to the shrine in below-freezing temperatures to witness the “miracle” and spent the entire day staring into the sky waiting for something to happen. Nothing did...but as in Baza, some of the pilgrims looked directly at the sun. At least two dozen people suffered permanent loss of vision; others suffered permanent loss of faith. “Did you ever hear of people going to Jesus for a miracle,” one partially blinded woman asked, “and coming away crippled?”

...And Now For Some Health Info from the BRI

Skin cancer has become the most common form of cancer in the U.S. today...and nine times out of ten it’s caused by too much exposure to the sun.

Know Your Risk

• If you sunburn easily and have a hard time getting tan, you’re especially vulnerable to skin cancer. If you have fair skin, red or blonde hair, and light-colored eyes, you are at higher risk.

• If you got a severe, blistering sunburn during childhood, you’re more likely to get the most deadly form of skin cancer later in life.

• If a member of your immediate family had skin cancer, you’re at risk. About 10% of skin cancer cases run in families.

Protect Yourself

• Cut back on how much sun you get. Be most careful between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., when the sun’s UV rays are most intense.

• Wear a hat to protect your face and head (especially if you’re bald). If possible, cover arms and legs. Be careful on overcast days; as much as 85% of the sun’s ultraviolet rays can penetrate clouds.

• Use sunscreen, even if you’re not on the beach. Apply it 30-45 minutes before exposure. Experts recommend a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of at least 15. A higher rating isn’t necessary, as long as you apply sunscreen liberally. An average adult should use about an ounce per application. Apply evenly to all exposed skin.

• Note: Sunscreens rated SPF 15 or higher contain ingredients that provide some protection against UVA.

In Bangkok, Thailand, ice skates are known as “hard water shoes.”

Back in the 1980s, the Medved brothers introduced the term “golden turkeys” for unbelievably, hilariously bad films. Today there’s a big subculture of people who love to watch them...and Uncle John is one. Here are two of his favorite grade Z films
.

T
HE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961)
Written, Directed and Edited by Coleman Francis. Producted by Anthony Cardoza. Starring Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks. Narration: Coleman Francis
.

The Plot:
Joseph Javorski, a Russian rocket scientist (played by hulking ex-wrestler Tor Johnson) escapes to America with secret documents. Javorski’s destination: “Yucca Flats. And a meeting with top brass at the A-bomb testing grounds.” When he gets there, he’s chased into the desert by 2 KGB agents. Uh-oh there’s an atomic test going on. An A-bomb goes off near the Russian trio; the spies are vaporized, but Tor is merely turned into a maniac. He spends the rest of the film wandering around the desert with a stick, looking for people to beat up and/or kill.

Commentary:

• From
“The Beast of Yucca Flats” website:
“As a fan of bad movies I have seen many of the greats in bad films, including the works of Ed Wood Jr., Larry (
Mars Needs Women
) Buchanan and Jerry (
Teenage Zombies
) Warren....But I have never seen a worse film than this....As soon as I saw it I knew my search (for the world’s worst movie) was over. Since then I have seen it over and over...and each time it still amazes me.

Don’t Miss:

•
The Narrator
.
There’s almost no dialogue, and no synchronized soundtrack. Instead, there’s an “omniscient narrator,” dubbed in after the film was completed. Ken Begg writes in
Jabootu’s Bad Movie Universe
:

Adding to the laughs is some of the most mind-boggling narration this side of the master, Ed Wood himself. Getting to watch Tor run around in ragged clothing, like TV’s
Incredible Hulk
, is a treat for any Bad Movie connoisseur. The ponderous, repetitive narration about Mankind, Science, Justice and other Big Topics so solemnly intoned here is the cherry on the sundae.

“Honcho” is a Japanese word that means “squad leader.” It was Americanized after WWII.

Some examples:

—“Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast.”

—“Jim Archer. Joe’s partner. Another man caught in the frantic race for the betterment of mankind. Progress.”

—“Jim Archer. Wounded parachuting on Korea. Jim and Joe try to keep the desert roads safe for travelers. Seven days a week.”

—“Shockwaves of an A-bomb. A once powerful, humble man. Reduced to...nothing.”

—“Joseph Javorski. Respected scientist. Now a fiend. Prowling the wastelands. A prehistoric beast in a nuclear age. Kill. Kill, just to be killing.”

—“Vacation time. People travel east. West. North or south. The Radcliffs travel east, with two small boys, adventurous boys. Nothing bothers some people. Not even Flying Saucers.”