Uncle John’s Briefs
Page 23
Movie: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Scene: After defeating the big spider, Sam (Sean Astin) rushes over to Frodo (Elijah Wood), who has been paralyzed.
Blooper: When Frodo is lying on the ground unconscious, his eyes are open. When Sam picks him up, Frodo’s eyes are closed. When he’s on Sam’s lap, his eyes are open again.
Some asteroids have other asteroids orbiting them.
Movie: Amadeus (1984)
Scene: Mozart (Tom Hulce) is watching a parody of his operas.
Blooper: When the last little person pops through the paper backdrop with a toy horse, a member of the film crew—wearing blue jeans—can be seen walking backstage.
Movie: Ben-Hur (1959)
Scene: The famous chariot race.
Blooper: Do the math: Nine chariots start the race, six of them crash, but somehow four finish.
Movie: Schindler’s List (1993)
Scene: Oskar (Liam Neeson) is in a car with Jewish investors.
Blooper: Look at the passenger window and you can see the reflection of a movie camera and its operator. (Though it’s not entirely clear, the reflection may belong to director Steven Spielberg, wearing his famous “Class of ’61” hat.)
Movie: Rocky (1976)
Scene: While Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is training, he does several one-arm push-ups.
Blooper: A careful look reveals that Stallone did only one push-up—the shot was then looped to make it look like he did a lot.
Movie: Casablanca (1943)
Scene: Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is driving through France.
Blooper: He’s driving on the left; the French drive on the right.
Movie: Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Scene: Maggie (Hilary Swank) is driving to the new home she just bought for her mother.
Blooper: The house is supposed to be in Missouri, so why are there palm trees on the side of the road?
There are more pets per person in France than in any other country in the world.
NATURE’S REVENGE
What happens when we start messing around with nature, trying to make
living conditions better? Sometimes it works…and sometimes nature gets
even. Here are a few instances when people intentionally introduced
animals or plants into a new environment…and regretted it.
Import: Kudzu, a fast-growing Japanese vine
Background: Originally brought into the southern U.S. in 1876 for use as shade. People noticed livestock ate the vine and that kudzu helped restore nitrogen to the soil. It seemed like a perfect plant to cultivate. So in the 1930s, the U.S. government helped farmers plant kudzu all over the South.
Nature’s Revenge: By the 1950s, it was out of control, blanketing farmers’ fields, buildings, utility poles and—often fatally—trees. Today, utility companies spend millions of dollars annually spraying herbicides on poles and towers to keep them kudzu-free. And instead of helping plant kudzu, the government now gives advice on how to get rid of it.
Import: The mongoose
Background: The small Asian mammals famous for killing cobras were brought to Hawaii by sugar planters in 1893. Reason: They thought the mongooses would help control the rat population.
Nature’s Revenge: The planters overlooked one little detail: The mongoose is active in the daytime while the rat is nocturnal. “In Hawaii today,” says one source, “mongooses are considered pests nearly as bad as rats.”
Import: The starling, an English bird
Background: In 1890 a philanthropist named Eugene Schieffelin decided to bring every type of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays to New York City’s Central Park. He brought in hundreds of pairs of birds from England. Unfortunately, most (like skylarks and thrushes) didn’t make it. Determined to succeed with at least one species, Schieffelin shipped 40 pairs of starlings to Central Park and let them loose just before the mating season on March 6, 1890.
The Mason-Dixon line had nothing to do with slavery. It was surveyed in 1767 to settle a border dispute between British colonies.
Nature’s Revenge: There are now more than 50 million starlings in the U.S. alone—all descendants from Schieffelin’s flock—and they have become a major health hazard. They fly in swarms, littering roads and highways with their droppings, which carry disease-bearing bacteria that are often transmitted to animals and people. They’ve also become pests to farmers, screeching unbearably and destroying wheat and cornfields.
Import: The gypsy moth
Background: In 1869 Leopold Trouvelot, a French entomologist, imported some gypsy moth caterpillars to Massachusetts. It was part of a getrich-quick scheme: He figured that since the caterpillars thrive on oak tree leaves, which are plentiful there, he could crossbreed them with silkworm moths, and create a self-sustaining, silk-producing caterpillar. He’d make a fortune!
Unfortunately, the crossbreeding didn’t work. Then one day, a strong wind knocked over a cage filled with the gypsy moth caterpillars. They escaped through an open window and survived.
Nature’s Revenge: At first, the moths spread slowly. But by 1950, gypsy moths could be found in every New England state and in eastern New York. They’ve since spread to Virginia and Maryland—and beyond. Populations have become established as far away as Minnesota and California, probably due to eggs unknowingly transported by cars driven from the Northeast to those regions. They’re not a major threat, but can cause severe problems: In 1981, for example, they were reported to have stripped leaves from 13 million trees.
Import: Dog fennel
Background: At the turn of the 19th century, Johnny Appleseed wandered around the Ohio territory, planting apples wherever he went. It’s not widely known that he also he sowed a plant called dog fennel, which was believed to be a fever-reducing medicine.
Nature’s Revenge: It’s not only not medicine, it’s bad medicine; farmers are sick of it. “The foul-smelling weed,” says the People’s Almanac, “spread from barnyard to pasture, sometimes growing as high as fifteen feet. Today, exasperated midwestern farmers still cannot rid their fields of the plant they half-humorously call ‘Johnnyweed.’”
YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION
More stories about the inspirations behind cultural milestones.
POPEYE
Was there a real Popeye? Apparently so. E. C. Segar’s character was based on a beady-eyed, pipe-smoking, wiry old barroom brawler named Frank “Rocky” Feigle—a legend in Segar’s hometown of Chester, Illinois, around 1915. Feigle was reputed never to have lost a fight. But he was no sailor; he earned his drinking money by sweeping out the local saloon.
Note: There was a real Olive Oyl, too: Dora Paskel, a shopkeeper in Chester. She was tall and skinny, wore her hair in a bun, and even wore tall, button-up shoes.
ROCKY
In March 1975, Chuck Wepner fought Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight boxing title. Wepner, a second-rate fighter from Bayonne, New Jersey, was considered a joke; Ali didn’t even bother training full-time for the match. But to everyone’s surprise, Wepner lasted 15 rounds with the champ, and even knocked him down. Sly Stallone saw the fight on TV, and was inspired to write his Oscar-winning screenplay about Rocky Balboa.
STAGE NAMES
• Nicolas Coppola always admired a comic book character named “Luke Cage, Power Man.” So he changed his name to Nicolas Cage.
• Roy Scherer got his stage name by combining two geographical spots: the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River: Rock Hudson.
THE SHINING
Inspired by John Lennon…or at least the term was. Stephen King came up with the idea of the “shining” as a description of psychic power after hearing Lennon’s tune “Instant Karma.” King recalls: “The refrain went, ‘We all shine on.’ I really liked that, and used it. The book’s name was originally The Shine, but somebody said, ‘You can’t use that because it’s a pejorative word for Black’…so it became The Shining.”
In 1920 Billboard became th
e 1st national magazine to give regular coverage to black musicians.
FART FACTS
You won’t find trivia like this in any ordinary book.
THE NAME
The word fart comes from the Old English term foertan, to explode. Foertan is also the origin of the word petard, an early type of bomb. Petard, in turn, is the origin of a more obscure term for fart––ped, or pet, which was once used by military men. (In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, there’s a character whose name means fart ––Peto.)
WHY DO YOU FART?
Flatulence has many causes—for example, swallowing air as you eat and lactose intolerance. (Lactose is a sugar molecule in milk, and many people lack the enzyme needed to digest it.) But the most common cause is food that ferments in the gastro intestinal tract.
• A simple explanation: The fats, proteins, and carbohydrates you eat become a “gastric soup” in your stomach. This soup then passes into the small intestine, where much of it is absorbed through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream to feed the body.
• But the small intestine can’t absorb everything, especially complex carbohydrates. Some complex carbohydrates—the ones made up of several sugar molecules (beans, some milk products, fiber) can’t be broken down. So they’re simply passed along to the colon, where bacteria living in your intestine feed off the fermenting brew. If that sounds gross, try this: The bacteria then excrete gases into your colon. Farting is how your colon rids itself of the pressure the gas creates.
FRUIT OF THE VINE
So why not just quit eating complex carbohydrates?
• First, complex carbohydrates––which include fruit, vegetables, and whole grains—are crucial for a healthy diet. “Put it this way,” explains Jeff Rank, an associate professor of gastroenterology at the University of Minnesota. “Cabbage and beans are bad for gas, but they are good for you.”
Most popular condiment in ancient Rome: liquamen—a strong fish sauce made from anchovies.
• Second, they’re not the culprits when it comes to the least desirable aspect of farting: smell.
• Farts are about 99% odorless gases—hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane (it’s the methane that makes farts flammable). So why the odor? Blame it on those millions of bacteria living in your colon. Their waste gases usually contain sulfur molecules—which smell like rotten eggs. This is the remaining 1% that clears rooms in a hurry.
AM I NORMAL?
• Johnson & Johnson, which produces drugs for gas and indigestion, once conducted a survey and found that almost one-third of Ameri cans believe they have a flatulence problem.
• However, according to Terry Bolin and Rosemary Stanton, authors of Wind Breaks: Coming to Terms with Flatulence, doctors say most flatu lence is healthy. What’s unhealthy is worrying about it so much.
NOTABLE FARTERS
• Le Petomane, a 19th-century music hall performer, had the singular ability to control his farts. He could play tunes, as well as imitate animal and machinery sounds rectally. Le Petomane’s popularity briefly rivaled that of Sarah Bernhardt.
• A computer factory in England, built on the site of a 19th-century chapel, is reportedly inhabited by a farting ghost. Workers think it might be the embarrassed spirit of a girl who farted while singing in church. “On several occasions,” said an employee, “there has been a faint girlish voice singing faint hymns, followed by a loud raspberry sound and then a deathly hush.”
• Josef Stalin was afraid of farting in public. He kept glasses and a water pitcher on his desk so that if he felt a wind coming on, he could mask the sound by clinking the glasses while pouring water.
• Martin Luther believed, “On the basis of personal experience, farts could scare off Satan himself.”
“Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?” —George Carlin
The average car has about 3,000 feet of electrical wiring.
UNIQUELY PRESIDENTIAL
You may know that Richard Nixon was the only U.S. president to resign or
that Grover Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive
terms. But there are many more presidential anomalies than that.
The president: Jimmy Carter
Notable achievement: Only president to write a children’s book. Carter wrote The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, which was illustrated by his daughter Amy, and published in 1995. The plot: A crippled boy named Jeremy meets a repulsive sea monster who turns out to be quite friendly.
The president: Abraham Lincoln
Notable achievement: Only president to earn a patent. In 1849 Lincoln invented a type of buoy. Lincoln is also the only U.S. president to have worked as a bartender.
The president: Theodore Roosevelt
Notable achievement: Only president to be blind in one eye. Roosevelt took a hard punch to his left eye in a boxing match. It detached the retina, leaving Roosevelt blind in his left eye for the rest of his life. The boxing match occurred in 1908, while Roosevelt was president.
The president: Richard Nixon
Notable achievement: Only president to have been a carny. When he was a teenager, Richard Nixon was a midway barker at the Slippery Gulch Rodeo in Arizona.
The president: Gerald Ford
Notable achievement: Only president to survive two assassination attempts in the same month. In September 1975, former Charles Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to shoot Ford when he reached out to shake her hand in a public meet-and-greet. She pulled the trigger, but the gun’s chamber was empty. Just three weeks later another woman, Sara Jane Moore, fired on Ford in a similar crowd situation, but a bystander knocked her arm away.
In Seattle, Washington, a dog must pay full bus fare if it weighs more than 25 pounds.
JAWS, JR.
They’re just little fishes, but piranhas can turn you into a
skeleton in a few seconds flat. Nice thought, huh?
THE NAME. The word “piranha” comes from the Tupi language of South America and means “toothed fish.” In some local dialects of the Amazon region, the name for common household scissors is also “piranha.”
NOT A SHARK. A piranha only has one row of upper and lower teeth, not several, as many sharks do. But its teeth are sharper than almost any shark teeth. When the piranha snaps them together, says one expert, “the points in the upper row fit into the notches of the lower row, and the power of the jaw muscles is such that there is scarcely any living substance save the hardest ironwood that will not be clipped off.” Natives often use the teeth as cutting blades.
FISHING TIP. Piranhas are capable of biting through a fishing net. If caught on a hook, they usually die from the injury. So a good way to “bring them in alive” is to throw a chunk of meat in the water. The fish will bite into it so hard that you can lift bunches of them out of the water before they let go.
BEHAVIOR. Some things that attract piranhas are blood and splashing. Experts disagree over whether the fish will attack a calm, uninjured person, but piranhas are definitely territorial. That’s why Amazon fishermen know that if they catch a piranha, they’d better try another spot if they expect to catch anything else.
DEADLY DIET. Surprisingly, only a few species of piranha are meat-eaters; many eat fruits and other plants that fall into the river. But those meat-eaters can do exactly what you think they can. In the 19th century, for example, Teddy Roosevelt wrote about his adventures along the Amazon. He claimed to have seen piranhas quickly make a skeleton of a man who had fallen off his horse and into the river.
Makes sense: Arkansas was once spelled Arkansaw.
THE FIRST…
A bunch of musical firsts.
…pop album with printed lyrics: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967.
…singer to refuse a Grammy: Sinéad O’Connor won Best Alternative Album prize in 1990 for I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. She declined the award to protest the Grammys’ “extreme commercialism.”
…foreig
n-language #1 pop song: “Volare,” by Italian singer Domenico Modugno. It went to the top of the Billboard charts in 1958.
…double album: Benny Goodman’s Live at Carnegie Hall, 1938. First rock double album: Bob Dylan’s 1966 Blonde on Blonde.
…American pop band to tour the Soviet Union: the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, in 1977.
…musical guest on Saturday Night Live: Billy Preston. He beat the debut show’s other guest, Janis Ian, by about 20 minutes.
…recorded yelling of “Free Bird!” at a concert: 1976, at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. The show was being taped for Lynyrd Skynyrd’s live album, One More From the Road.
…music book published in the United States: Seven Songs for Harpsichord or Forte-Piano, by Francis Hopkinson, in 1788.
…African-American recording artists: Pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith of Newark, New Jersey, who played on the 1920 song “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds.
…British musician with a #1 single in the United States: It’s not the Beatles—it’s Mr. Acker Bilk, whose clarinet instrumental “Stranger on the Shore” topped the American charts in 1962.
…band to rock Antarctica: Nunatuk, a band made up of resident British researchers, who performed in Antarctica as part of a series of environmental awareness concerts in 2007.
…album on CD: ABBA’s 1981 album The Visitors.
Dolly Parton’s first single: “Puppy Love” (1960). She was 13.
CASTLE IN THE DESERT
How a cowboy named “Death Valley Scotty” conned his way into fame, fortune…and a big house that didn’t belong to him.
HOT PROPERTY
In a desolate canyon in Death Valley National Park sits a 33,000-square-foot Spanish-Mediterranean castle with 14 bathrooms, 14 fireplaces, 4 kitchens, a solar water heating plant, a hydroelectric generating system, a gas station, stables for dozens of horses, and a 56-foot clock tower complete with 25 chimes. The main house has a rock wall fountain, is decorated with European antiques, hand-painted tiles, and handcrafted ironwork, and features a theater organ with 1,121 pipes and a 250-foot unfinished swimming pool. The castle sits on 1,500 acres and is surrounded by a 45-mile-long fence. It cost $2 million to build in the 1920s.