Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  WOMEN SEEKING MEN

  Pussycat, serious, 28, seeks ugly man with middle-class lifestyle.

  Lady Guinevere/Elizabeth Taylor/Barbara Walters seeks Huckleberry Finn/Richard Dreyfus/Picasso, or any combination of the above.

  Recent widow who has just buried fourth husband is looking for someone to round out a six-unit plot. Dizziness, fainting, shortness of breath not a problem.

  Winning smile: Active grandmother with original teeth seeks dedicated flosser to share corn on the cob and caramel candy.

  IF U CN RD THS AD u cn hav a dat w/me. Bored, attractive secretary late 30s seeks macho executive-type, late 40s, unattached male for long coffee breaks and other diversions. Send resume.

  Write in 25 words or less why you want to date me.

  Stop Fission! Naturally radiant lady with hot core will bring you to a controlled meltdown. Absolutely no nukes.

  MEN SEEKING WOMEN

  Ordinary man, 30, would like to meet ordinary woman.

  Menelaus, Conqueror of Troy wishes to meet the beautiful maiden he ravished many lifetimes ago.

  Love-starved SWM seeking a trophy wife with upper-class looks and attitude to take to my next high school reunion.

  Fat, flatulent, over 40, cigar-smoking redneck seeks sexy woman with big hair to cook, clean, and pick up unemployment checks.

  White male, 50, but looks 49, seeks a person who is female and breathing.

  DWM, 45, and uglier than a bucket of rattlesnakes. I chew tobacco, but I take my hat off at the dinner table. If you can bake an apple pie and kiss this ugly face, I want to hear from you.

  DWM, 55, tall, fit, successful Blah, Blah, Blah; seeking appealing, romantic, Blah, Blah, Blah.

  Smart guy: Albert Einstein never memorized his home phone number.

  MY OTHER VEHICLE IS IN ORBIT

  We keep thinking that we’ve seen every clever bumper sticker that exists, but every year readers send us new ones. Have you seen the one that says…

  I’m Still Hot. It Just Comes in Flashes.

  MY OTHER VEHICLE IS IN ORBIT.

  Remember: It’s pillage first, then burn.

  It’s my cat’s world. I’m just here to open cans.

  Just keep staring—I may do a trick.

  Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

  Coffee makes it possible to get out of bed; chocolate makes it worth it.

  My dog is smarter than your honor student.

  PHYSICALLY PFFFFFT!

  If all else fails, stop using all else.

  Don’t Drink and Derive. Alcohol and Calculus Don’t Mix.

  What would Scooby do?

  BOTTOMLESS PIT OF WANTS AND NEEDS

  I’m so old that “getting lucky” means finding my car in the parking lot.

  Buckle up—it makes it harder for the aliens to snatch you from your car.

  a PBS mind trapped in an MTV world

  Welcome to Middle Earth. Now go home.

  Officer, will this bumper sticker saying

  SUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT

  save me from getting a ticket?

  The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

  Dangerously under-medicated.

  If I Had a Life, I Wouldn’t Need a Bumper Sticker.

  Household hint: To open a stuck zipper, try rubbing it with soap.

  THE KING’S JEWELS

  Elvis Presley—he was such a huge star that even if you’re not a big fan, you’re probably familiar with his songs. Here’s a look at the stories behind some of his biggest hits.

  “A RE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?”

  If you like this song, thank Colonel Tom Parker’s wife. Without her influence Elvis would never have heard of it, let alone recorded it. Written in the 1920s by two songwriters named Roy Turk and Lou Handman, it had been sung by Al Jolson (and other artists) and then languished for more than 20 years before the Blue Barron Orchestra recorded it in 1950. Their big band version only went to #19 on the charts, but Mrs. Parker loved it, and she persuaded the colonel to have Elvis record an updated version. In 1960, the King’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” opened at #35 on the pop charts, making it the first American single to break into the top 40 its first week. The next week it went to #2, and the following week it hit #1 and stayed there for five weeks.

  “HOUND DOG”

  Believe it or not, when Elvis was first booked to play Las Vegas in 1956, his act bombed. The King was popular with teenagers, not with their parents—and that’s who went to casinos. So his monthlong engagement at the New Frontier Hotel was cut to two weeks, freeing up time for Elvis to take in some of the other acts in town. One of the groups he saw was Freddie Bell and the Bellboys; one of the songs they sang was “Hound Dog,” a slow song by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton that hit #1 on the R&B charts in 1953.

  Freddie Bell sang it comically as if it were a novelty song, even adding his own lyrics, including “You ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.” Elvis saw the band perform several times and laughed out loud every time they sang “Hound Dog.” When he started performing the song live, RCA Records encouraged him to record it. Elvis resisted at first—“Hound Dog” was a novelty song, after all—but he put his own stamp on it by speeding it up and singing it like a rock-and-roll song, which is exactly what it became. “Hound Dog” spent 28 weeks on the pop charts, including eleven weeks at #1.

  Why was Elvis’s popular 1956 song “Paralyzed” never released as a single? RCA Victor…

  “LOVE ME TENDER”

  In 1956 Elvis went to Hollywood to film The Reno Brothers, his first movie. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to sing in it—he wanted people to see him as a serious actor, not a singer who made movies—but Twentieth Century Fox (and Colonel Tom Parker) soon put a stop to that, hiring an accomplished songwriter named Ken Darby to write four songs for the movie. For one of them, Darby took a shortcut: he took an old folk song called “Aura Lee” and wrote new lyrics. He must not have liked “Love Me Tender” very much—rather than take credit for it, he listed his wife, Vera Matson, as the author even though she had nothing to do with it.

  Fox was impressed: they even renamed the movie Love Me Tender to cash in on what they thought was a surefire hit. Their judgment, not Darby’s, proved correct: Love Me Tender was the second-highest-grossing film of 1956, and the single knocked “Hound Dog” to #2 on the Billboard pop chart, making Elvis the first-ever artist to push his own song out of the #1 spot.

  “JAILHOUSE ROCK”

  For Elvis’s third movie, MGM hired the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to write the title song, which, thanks to the popularity of “Love Me Tender,” would also serve as the title of the film. (Leiber and Stoller were also the guys who wrote “Hound Dog” for Big Mama Thornton.) They spent a couple of months trying to come up with songs, but when they flew to New York to report on their progress, they still had nothing. One of the record company execs, a bear of a man named Jean Aberbach, came to their hotel room and asked to hear the title song. Informed that they still hadn’t written it, he shoved a couch in front of the door, sat down on it, and told them they weren’t leaving until the song was done.

  Leiber and Stoller started scanning the film script for ideas. Maybe it was the scene that called for a big production number in a prison block; maybe it was the big guy sitting on the couch. In any event, four hours later they had finished not just “Jailhouse Rock” but three other songs as well. (Aberbach let them out of the hotel room.) “Jailhouse Rock” spent 27 weeks on the Billboard charts, including seven weeks at #1.

  … was afraid paralyzed people would be offended by it.

  THE 12 DAYS OF MYTHMAS

  Secret codes and urban legends—Uncle John’s idea of a perfect combination!

  SECRET TEACHINGS

  There’s been a story going around for years that the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which seems like a nonsense song, actually contains coded teachings of Catholicism. It was written, t
he story says, during England’s anti-Catholic era, after King Henry VIII split with the Catholic Church and founded the Anglican Church in the 1500s. The open practice of Catholicism actually did become illegal in England, and remained illegal until the Emancipation Act of 1829. During that era one could be imprisoned or even executed for being a Catholic. To avoid such punishment and to preserve the faith, the story continues, some clever Jesuit priests wrote the song, with each day’s “gifts” representing the Catechism—the essential teachings of the Church.

  THE HIDDEN SYMBOLS

  • The “true love” that is giving the gifts, the story says, is God.

  • The “partridge in a pear tree” represents Jesus Christ.

  • Two turtle doves: the Old and New Testaments.

  • Three French hens: the Holy Trinity; or the three Virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity.

  • Four calling birds: the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

  • Five golden rings: the first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Pentateuch.

  • Six geese a-laying: the six days of creation.

  • Seven swans a-swimming: the seven sacraments.

  • Eight maids a-milking: the eight Beatitudes.

  • Nine ladies dancing: the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.

  The Yellow Sea (Korea) is the world’s shallowest, with a maximum depth of 500 feet.

  • Ten lords a-leaping: the Ten Commandments.

  • Eleven pipers piping: the eleven “good” apostles (Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, isn’t included).

  • Twelve drummers drumming: the 12 points of doctrine of the Apostle’s Creed.

  URBAN LEGEND?

  The story has been widely spread, especially on the Internet, and is taken by many to be fact. The only problem: there’s no historical evidence to support it. And there’s a lot of logic to refute it:

  • All the “hidden” teachings except one wouldn’t have to be hidden at all—they are common to both religions. There would be no reason a Catholic would hide the Old and New Testaments behind “two turtle doves”—since Anglicans follow the two testaments, as well. The same is true of all the other gifts except for the sacraments: Catholics have seven; Anglicans just two.

  • If the song was written to secretly teach religious tenets, why would it be a Christmas song, which would be sung only at Christmas? How would they teach the Catechism for the rest of the year?

  • What some people believe happened is that through the years, the song was mixed up with another more openly religious song about the twelve days of Christmas. “The New Dial,” also known as “In Those Twelve Days,” dates to at least 1625, and is remarkably similar to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” It has one verse for each day, and in some cases the exact same subject matter: two for the two testaments, three for the Holy Trinity, and so on.

  • Many people still believe that the song is a secret Catholic code. One of their arguments: there’s no solid proof that the song isn’t the secret teaching device they believe it to be—so we really can’t know for sure. That’s what legends are made of. Either way—it’s still a nice song and kids all over the world love it.

  * * *

  So when are the twelve days of Christmas? They’re after Christmas, not before. They start on Christmas Day and end with the Feast of Epiphany, which is traditionally celebrated on January 6.

  One in 20 Icelanders claim to have seen an elf.

  FORGOTTEN HISTORY: SHAYS’ REBELLION

  “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1787. But the American Revolution was long over—so what was he referring to? Shays’ Rebellion.

  BACKGROUND

  After winning the revolution against the British in 1783, the victorious American soldier-citizens went home with optimism for a bright future. Almost immediately, though, things began to get grim. The lack of centralized federal power bred local governments that ruled with dictatorial corruption. A postwar economic depression hit hard. Boston merchants, in debt to foreign suppliers, demanded immediate payment from debtors. Farmers in western Massachusetts discovered that much of their state-and bank-issued currency was now worth much less than its face value. Many were sent to debtors’ prison and saw their land, livestock, and belongings sold for pennies on the dollar.

  PROTEST

  A 39-year-old farmer and former captain in the Revolutionary War, Daniel Shays, became the leader for a group of increasingly desperate farmers. At first, they peacefully petitioned the government against the political forces that seemed to unfairly target farmers and working people. Disproportionate property taxes, poll taxes that made voting unaffordable, harsh debt laws, unsympathetic judges, the high cost of pressing (and defending) lawsuits, and the lack of a stable currency left people at the mercy of banks and merchants to define how much their property was “really” worth.

  When it became clear that their protests were being ignored, the desperate farmers’ tactics escalated. They began by raiding jailhouses to free imprisoned debtors. Wearing their old Continental Army uniforms (with a sprig of hemlock tucked into their hats), the self-named “Regulators” occupied the Northampton courthouse on August 29, 1786, making it impossible for the court to imprison debtors or seize their property. Inspired by this act of insurrection, other farmers occupied courthouses in Concord, Taunton, Great Barrington, and Worcester. In late September, Captain Shays led a band of 1,500 followers to occupy the Springfield Courthouse to prevent the Supreme Judicial Court from doing business.

  Deadliest epidemic ever: The Black Death, claiming 75,000,000 victims from 1347 to 1351.

  REVOLT

  Shays and his men swore they weren’t leading an insurgency, but rather were continuing the 1776 revolt against tyranny. “I earnestly stepped forth in defense of this country,” wrote one member of the group in an open letter to the public, “and liberty is still the object I have in view.”

  In response, Governor James Bowdoin of Massachusetts, funded by contributions from large Boston merchants, hired 4,400 militiamen under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln to put down the revolt. When Shays heard of Lincoln’s attempt to capture the Worcester debtors’ court in January of 1787, he led 2,000 volunteers in an assault on the Federal Arsenal in Springfield, hoping to capture the armory and beef up their firepower. They believed that their neighbors and fellow veterans would join them, as had happened in previous raids. Instead, to shouts of “Murder!” a much smaller force of mercenaries fired cannons into the crowd, killing four men and injuring 20, and repelling Shays’s “Regulators.”

  In the meantime, General Lincoln marched his men through a nighttime snowstorm from Worcester to Springfield, and took the Regulators completely by surprise, forcing them to surrender.

  PARDON ME

  Offered a general amnesty, most of Shays’s men took it. Shays escaped to Vermont, but he was tried for treason in absentia, along with six other leaders.

  But what to do with them? Samuel Adams, former Revolutionary agitator and now back in his role as an affluent businessman, argued for execution. “Rebellion against a king may be pardoned or lightly punished,” he wrote, “but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.”

  Thomas Jefferson was one of the few who disagreed. “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” he wrote from Europe. “It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.” General Lincoln, who had successfully subdued the rebellion, also advocated clemency.

  An object on Jupiter would weigh 31.75 times more than it would on Pluto.

  Nevertheless, seven of the leaders were sentenced to death. Two were hanged. Others were publicly marched to the gallows before being informed that they had been reprieved by Massachusetts’s new governor, John Hancock.

  DEFENDER OF LIBERTY

  Shays himself avoided that drama. He applied for amnesty from the
safety of Vermont and permanently relocated to New York. The government eventually pardoned him for his part in the rebellion that bears his name. He retired on a veteran’s pension for his service in the Revolutionary War. Daniel Shays died in 1825, maintaining to the end that his fight in Massachusetts was for the same principles he defended in 1776.

  * * *

  PRIZE FIGHT

  In February 2005, Los Angeles Times film critic Patrick Goldstein wrote about how the major movie studios had initially rejected many of the films that were nominated for that year’s Academy Awards. Instead, said Goldstein, they chose “to bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.”

  Rob Schneider, the star of the Deuce Bigalow movies, responded by taking out full-page ads in Variety calling Goldstein unqualified to attack his movie—he’d never won any awards, particularly a Pulitzer Prize, “because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter.”

  In August 2005, in his review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert noted the Schneider-Goldstein feud and said, “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.”

  Q: What is a bellwether? A: A castrated sheep.

  SPELLING TEST

  Think you know how to spell pretty well? Take this quize and find oat. Guess witch of these commonly misspelled words is spelled correctly. (Answers on page 519.)

  1. a) Milenium b) Millenium c) Millennium

  2. a) Dumbell b) Dumbbell c) Dumbel

  3. a) Seperete b) Seperate c) Separate

  4. a) Necesary b) Neccesary c) Necessary

  5. a) Minniscule b) Miniscule c) Minuscule

  6. a) Accommodate b) Acommodate c) Accomodate