Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (72 page)

The Claim:
In a commercial showing Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca speaking to the company’s board of directors, Iacocca lectures, “Some things you wait for, some you don’t. Minivans with air bags? You don’t wait.”

The Truth:
Iacocca fought for years to keep the federal government from mandating airbags, even claiming that a safety engineer had once told him airbags were so dangerous that they should be used for executions.

Vincent Van Gogh was able to sell only one painting (
The Red Vineyard
) during his lifetime.

So you thought Elvis was just a rock’n’roll singer? Maybe not. Maybe he had special powers over nature...and was an expert on embalming. Here are two bizarre stories told in
Elvis, What Happened?
by Steve Dunleavy.

C
ONTROLLING THE CLOUDS

As Elvis got more famous, he came to believe that he was no ordinary human being. How did he know? Well, for one thing, he believed he could move clouds.

“I remember one day in Palm Springs,” says former aide Dave Hebler. “It was hotter than hell, over a hundred degrees, and Elvis wanted to go shopping. So we all jam into this car....Elvis was talking about the power of metaphysics, although I’m not quite sure he knew the real definition of the word.”

The sky in the desert was cloudless, except for one small, far-off cloud. “Suddenly Elvis yells out, ‘Stop the car. I want to show you what I mean, Dave. Now see that cloud? I will show you what my powers really are. Now I want you all to watch. All of you, look at that cloud.’

“Well, we all look at the damn little cloud up there like a bunch of goats. Elvis is staring a hole through the damn thing. Well, the perspiration is dripping off us. Not a sound in the car, just a whole bunch of dummies dying of heat stroke looking up at the cloud.

“I’m near dying and I am praying that the sonofabitch would blow away. At the same time, I’m really having a problem not to burst out laughing. After about ten minutes, thank God, the damn thing dissipated a little. I saved the day by noticing it first....I said, ‘Gee, Elvis, you’re right. Look, it’s moving away.’ [He] gave me one of those sly little smiles that told me he had done it again. ‘I know, I moved it,’ he says. Then we drive off.”

COMMUNING WITH THE DEAD

“You never knew where a night out with Elvis would end up,” says Sonny West, Elvis’s bodyguard. “Worst of all were the trips to the funeral home.” Elvis had a particular fondness for visiting the Memphis funeral home where his mother’s body had been “laid out.”

Michelangelo
drew
his illiterate cook a shopping list. Today it’s a priceless work of art.

One night, Elvis and some of his troupe went to the funeral home. Elvis began wandering around, trying doors and poking his head into various rooms. He seemed to be looking for something.

Meanwhile, Sonny had his gun out, expecting a security guard to come charging in, thinking “we’re grave robbers or something and start blazing away.” But no one else seemed to be around.

West recalls: “Then I get the shock of my life. We come into this big room with heads sticking from under the sheets. They were bodies, and they were sort of tilted upward, feet first. This was the damn embalming room. I’m horrified. But this was apparently what Elvis was looking for. He is happy he has found this room.”

Elvis started checking out the bodies, explaining to his companions how people get embalmed. “He is walking around and lifting up sheets looking at the bodies, and he is telling us all the cosmetic things the morticians do when people are in accidents. He is showing us the various veins....How a body is bled. Then he shows us where the bodies were cut, and because the cuts don’t heal, there is only the stitches holding the body together.”

“[Some of us] hated those trips, but that’s what Elvis wanted and you just went along with it.”

Strange Lawsuits:
Japanese Version

THE PLAINTIFF:
Reiko Sekiguchi, 56, a Japanese sociology professor.

THE DEFENDANT:
The University of Library and Information Science in Tsukuba, Japan

THE LAWSUIT:
In 1988, the university stopped paying Sekiguchi’s research expenses and travel allowances because she signed official documents using her maiden name instead of her married name. So she sued the university, arguing that “women should have the right to use their maiden names in professional activities and in daily life.”

THE VERDICT:
She lost.

The average U.S. family spends $3,900 a year on travel.

TV wisdom from
Primetime Proverbs: The Book of TV Quotes,
by Jack Mingo and John Javna.

ON AGING

“Those little lines around your mouth, those crow’s feet around your eyes, the millimeter your derriere has slipped in the last decade—they’re just nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got nine holes left to play, so get out there and have a good time.”

—David Addison,
Moonlighting

ON BALDNESS

“I cried for the man who had no hair until I met the man with no head.”

—Bud Lutz,
Eisenhower and Lutz

Buddy Sorrell
[to Mel Cooley]: “I wish you’d kept your hair and lost the rest of you.”

Sally Rogers:
“Watch it Buddy, he’ll turn on you.”

Buddy:
“What’s the difference? He’s the same on both sides.”

—The Dick
Van Dyke Show

ON DEATH

“Abracadabra, the guy’s a cadaver.”

—David Addison,
Moonlighting

“I’d rather live in vain than die
any
way.”

—Bret Maverick,
Maverick

ON COWARDICE

“My Pappy always said, ‘A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one.’ A thousand to one is pretty good odds.”

—Bret Maverick,
Maverick

“He who chickens out and runs away will chicken out another.”

—Robot,
Lost
in Space

ON CULTURE

“Culture is like spinach. Once you forget it’s good for you, you can relax and enjoy it.”

—Uncle Martin,
My Favorite Martian

“You can’t let a job stifle your mind, buddy boy. You’ve got to keep yourself free for cultural pursuits, you know....Good reading, good music...bowling.”

—Mike Stone,
The
Streets of
San Francisco

Famous but forgotten superstition: People with dimpled chins never commit murder.

Here it is again—our feature based on Andy Warhol’s prophetic comment that
“In
the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Here’s how a few people have been using up their allotted quarter hour.

T
HE STAR:
Joe “Mule” Sprinz, a professional baseball player from 1922 to 1948

THE HEADLINE:
“Ouch! Blimp Ball Takes Bad Bounce”

WHAT HAPPENED:
In 1939, Sprinz, 37-year-old catcher for the San Francisco Seals, caught five baseballs dropped from the Tower of the Sun (450 feet) at the San Francisco World’s Fair. The Seals’ publicity agent was impressed and asked Sprinz if he’d catch a ball dropped 1,200 feet from a Goodyear Blimp, which would break the world record of 555 feet, 5
inches. “You’ll become famous!” the agent promised.

Two teammates stood alongside Sprinz as the first baseball was dropped, but when they saw it break a bleacher seat...and then saw the second ball “bury itself in the ground,” they backed off and let him make the third attempt by himself. “So the third one came down and I saw that one all the way. But nobody told me how fast it would be coming down,” Sprinz later recalled. Traveling at a speed of 150 miles per hour, the ball bounced off Sprinz’s glove and slammed into his face just below the nose, smashing his upper jaw, tearing his lips, and knocking out four teeth.

THE AFTERMATH:
Sprinz spent three months in the hospital (and suffered headaches for more than five years), but recovered fully and continued his baseball career, retiring in 1948. He never made it into the Hall of Fame...but did earn a place in the
Guinness Book of World Records
for the highest baseball catch “ever attempted.” Sprinz passed away in January 1994 at the age of 91.

THE STARS:
Officer Bob Geary of the San Francisco Police Department and his sidekick, Officer Brendan O’Smarty

THE HEADLINE:
“Ventriloquist Vindicated in Vote”

WHAT HAPPENED:
In 1992, Geary, an amateur ventriloquist, began taking “Officer Brendan O’Smarty”—a dummy dressed as a police officer—on his rounds in the city’s North Beach area.

Birds
do
fly south for the winter, but not to get warm. They do it for food.

When the popular O’Smarty started to get some publicity, Geary’s captain told him to leave the dummy at home; he said it made the department “look stupid.”

Geary not only refused, he used $10,000 of his own money to finance an “initiative” that put the “O’Smarty issue” on the ballot in San Francisco’s 1993 municipal elections. The result: Voters overwhelmingly supported O’Smarty.

THE AFTERMATH:
The pro-dummy election was reported in newspapers all over the country. O’Smarty kept his “job”...and Geary made his money back when he sold the movie rights to his story.

THE STAR:
Dallas Malloy, a 16-year-old girl from Bellingham, Washington

THE HEADLINE:
“Woman TKOs Boxing Association in Court ...and Opponent in Ring”

WHAT HAPPENED:
In 1992, Malloy set out on an amateur boxing career...but learned that the U.S. Amateur Boxing Association had a bylaw banning females from boxing in sanctioned bouts. She contacted the ACLU and together they sued, claiming that the bylaw violated Washington State’s antidiscrimination laws.

Malloy won the suit, and on October 30, 1993, she squared off in the ring against 21-year-old Heather Poyner. A crowd of about 1,200 turned out to watch Malloy batter Poyner for three two-minute rounds. Malloy won in a unanimous decision. “It was great to get in the ring,” she told reporters afterward. “The only thing I would change is that I would knock her out the next time. I really wanted to knock her out.”

THE AFTERMATH:
Malloy abandoned her career two months later. “After [the fight] I kind of lost interest,” she told the Associated Press. Her boxing career had lasted 14 months.

THE STAR:
Andrew Martinez, a University of California, Berkeley, college sophomore

At one point, 74% of Pepsi drinkers said they’d switch to Coke “if it contained oat bran.”

THE HEADLINE:
“No Nudes Is Good Nudes? Naked Guy Nixed”

WHAT HAPPENED:
In September 1992, Martinez began attending classes completely in the buff, calling his nudity a form of free speech. The university did nothing until they received numerous complaints from students and employees.

But what could they do? There weren’t any university regulations banning public nudity, so the school updated its student conduct regulations to forbid indecent exposure, public nakedness, and “sexually offensive conduct.” Martinez was then suspended for two weeks when he gave a nude interview to a (clothed) reporter. When he showed up nude at an administrative hearing to protest the charges, he was permanently expelled from school for failing to wear “proper attire.” “I didn’t think this was so controversial,” Martinez told the
San Francisco Chronicle.
“I was surprised they gave me the boot.”

THE AFTERMATH:
Martinez became a mini-celebrity, featured in magazine and newspaper stories all over the world and appearing on several TV talk shows. His expulsion didn’t stop him from waging his lone crusade. In March 1993, he was arrested near the campus for distributing free beer to the homeless while shouting the slogan, “Drink for the Revolution.” He was, course, nude, and was quickly arrested on suspicion of drinking in public, for being a minor in possession of alcohol, and for resisting an officer.