Dishoneree: Calvin Robinson, a 19-year-old homeless man from Spokane, Washington
Dubious Achievement: Using a public restroom to make…money
True Story: In 2008 Robinson paid $100 for a color copier so he could make $90 in counterfeit money and buy a bag of marijuana. But being homeless, Robinson had no place to plug in his copier, so he used a public restroom in the River Park Square shopping mall. His plot unraveled when mall workers alerted the police that someone had been in the locked restroom for more than an hour. The cops broke in and found Robinson sitting on the floor with his copier and his poorly copied $10 bills. “I don’t believe he’s going to be recruited by NASA,” said the arresting officer.
DO YOU SPEAK DOG?
Many dog owners believe their special relationship with their pet includes an ability to understand what the dog “says” and does. We’ve been reading up on the subject and talking to canine behavior experts. Not all of these tricks work with all breeds, but you won’t know unless you try.
PROBLEM: You have to repeat commands over and over before your dog obeys. Almost anyone who has owned a dog has gone through it: You want your dog to sit, so you say, “Sit.” The dog doesn’t sit, so you say “Sit” again…and again. Now you’re SHOUTING!…and the dog finally sits.
EXPERTS SAY: You’re falling into a bad habit. Your dog may actually be learning that the command for “Sit” is the multisyllabic word “Sit…sit…sit…SIT!” (maybe with a few dirty words thrown in). When you get frustrated and start yelling commands at your dog, you also may be teaching it to ignore any command that isn’t shouted.
SOLUTION: Call the dog by name to get its attention, then give your command just once, in a firm but not loud voice. Wait. If the dog doesn’t respond, call it by name again and repeat the command. Repeat again if you need to, but if you get frustrated, take a break—it’s better than teaching the dog bad habits.
PROBLEM: Your dog barks whenever someone comes to the door or walks past your house.
EXPERTS SAY: The dog sees these people as threats to the security of its “den.” That much you know already. But yelling at a dog for barking at strangers not only doesn’t work, it may even reinforce the undesirable behavior. That’s because you’re responding to the threat the dog has called to your attention by making loud noises of your own, which the dog hears as “barks.” It interprets your barking to mean that it has done the right thing in alerting you to the danger, and will probably continue barking as long as you do, to help you drive the threat away.
SOLUTION: Respond calmly and quietly to whatever your dog is calling to your attention, then calmly say “okay,” or “thank you,” give it a pat, and call it back to your side. The dog interprets this to mean that you evaluated what it has called to your attention, and decided it’s not a threat. No further barking is required.
A Maryland community college offers a 12:00 a.m. psych class called “Midnight Madness.”
PROBLEM: Your puppy pees whenever it greets someone.
EXPERTS SAY: One of Uncle John’s friends has a border collie named Bijou that used to pee every time she greeted a person, regardless of whether it was a threatening stranger, a familiar visitor, or even her owners returning home. This is a behavior trait that begins in the litter, when a mother dog stimulates her pups into “eliminating” on command by nudging their genital area. When the pups become old enough to see, all the mother has to do is give her pups a certain look and they pee or poop. Young dogs, therefore, come to associate authority figures with elimination, which is why they pee during greetings. (Uncle John has a similar relationship with the IRS.)
SOLUTION: Puppies grow out of this behavior naturally, but until then, you can lessen its occurrence by making your greetings as calm and non-authoritative as possible. Don’t approach the puppy; let it come up to you. Avoid eye contact, speak softly or remain silent, and rub the puppy under the chin instead of stroking it on the head and back.
PROBLEM: Your dog engages in behavior it clearly understands is bad, just to get your attention.
EXPERTS SAY: A dog doesn’t distinguish between good attention and bad attention the way humans do, so any action that gets attention, even if it makes the owner mad, is a good thing to the dog and will likely be repeated.
SOLUTION: To a dog, eye contact is a form of attention, so when your dog does something that annoys you, look away, leave the room, or cover your eyes with your hands until the dog stops the bad behavior; then resume eye contact and praise the dog’s good behavior. Keep it up even if the dog increases the bad behavior for a time. All this means is your efforts are paying off.
NOTE: Unfamiliar dogs will also study your eyes. Don’t stare—a dog will interpret this as a challenge and may become aggressive. It may even bite.
For more tips, turn to page 472.
50% of Americans polled admit that they regularly sneak food into movie theaters.
LAST CONCERTS, PART II
On page 155, we told you the stories of the final concerts of some of the greatest musical acts in history. Here are a few more.
TALKING HEADS
Last Concert: The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, March 18, 2002
What Happened: The Talking Heads stopped playing together in 1988 on less-than-friendly terms, and officially disbanded in 1991. Rumors of a reunion swirled in 1996, but eventually fizzled when frontman David Byrne said “no.” The rumors returned in 2002…and this time they came true, when Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, and guitarist Jerry Harrison took the stage at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York for the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They played just three songs: “Life During Wartime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “Burning Down the House,” but it remains the last Talking Heads performance in history.
Coda: Rumors of another reunion surface every few years, but Byrne has always refused. “The only reason to get back together,” he told Australia’s The Age in 2005, “would be to do one of those ‘sound like you used to sound’ tours. And who wants to do that? I’ve already sounded like that once. And I don’t need the money.”
ROSEMARY CLOONEY
Last Concert: Honolulu, Hawaii, November 16, 2001
What Happened: In 2001 Clooney, a music and screen star since the 1950s, was diagnosed with lung cancer. That November she took a vacation in one of her favorite places, Hawaii, and while there agreed to perform with the Honolulu Symphony Pops. She did the show—sang, cracked jokes with the audience, told stories, and by all reports had a great time. And that was that. She returned to her home in Beverly Hills, where she died seven months later.
Coda: Nobody connected with Clooney knew it at the time, but the concerts had been recorded. The Honolulu Symphony Pops had been trying to get a record deal with orchestral specialists Concord Records for some time. Concord said they’d need to hear samples—so the Pops had been recording all their 2001 shows. That news eventually got to Clooney’s longtime manager, Allen Sviridoff, he took the recording to Concord—and Rosemary Clooney’s very last performance became her first live record in 45 years—Rosemary Clooney: The Last Concert (2002). “As it turns out, this show was one of the best performances Rosemary had done,” Concord vice president John Burk said. “It was just one of those magical moments that came together. No one knew it would be her last show.”
Parking lot: Automobiles take up about 24% of the total land area of Los Angeles.
THE RAMONES
Last Concert: The Palace, Hollywood, California, August 6, 1996
What Happened: The groundbreaking punk rockers announced beforehand that the August 6 show at the Palace would be their last. They played 31 songs—nonstop—for 70 minutes. The show featured several special guests, including bassist Dee Dee Ramone, who’d left the band years earlier, and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, who came onstage during the last song, wearing a rubber mask. He ripped it off in time to join in the final chorus on the final song, the Dave Clark 5’s “Anyway Y
ou Want It.”
Coda: Once inside the arena, every member of the audience was given a special numbered ticket reading, “Adios Amigos. Ramones. The 2263rd Show. Billboard Live. August 6, 1996.” Only problem: The show was held at the Palace, not the Billboard Live club. It was supposed to be at the brand-new Billboard Live, but had to rescheduled at the last minute when the club was prevented from opening due to building code problems.
JOHNNY CASH
Last Concert: The Carter Ranch, Hiltons, Virginia, July 5, 2003
What Happened: A black Mercedes ambled up to a rustic old amphitheater on a hillside in rural Virginia. About 700 people were there, and they got the shock of their lives when Johnny Cash was helped out of the car and into a wheelchair. He’d been in increasingly deteriorating health since being diagnosed with a degenerative nerve disorder in 1997. Cash was rolled into the theater, and physically carried onto a chair on the stage. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Johnny Cash.” Backed by a small band, he played seven songs: “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “Ring of Fire,” “Angel Band,” “Big River,” and finished with one he said he hadn’t sung in 25 years, “Understand Your Man.” He was then carried back to his chair, rolled out to the car, and was gone.
Coda: Cash made the difficult trip to the old Carter family home in tribute to June Carter Cash, his wife of 40 years, who had died less than two months earlier. Cash himself wasn’t far behind: He died three months later, on September 12.
Whale oil was used as a lubricant in car transmissions as recently as 1973.
THE POLICE
Last Concert: Madison Square Garden, New York City, August 7, 2008
What Happened: The Police broke up in 1984, but got back together briefly in 1986, played at Sting’s wedding in 1992, and at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2003. Then in May 2007, after 21 years apart, the original three—Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland—kicked off a worldwide 30th anniversary reunion tour. A whopping 151 shows later (and after grossing roughly $358 million), they finished off at Madison Square Garden on August 7, 2008. They started the final show with Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” then brought up the New York City Police Department’s band to help them on “Message in a Bottle” (the usual show opener), played 11 more of their biggest hits, and then left the stage. The crowd watched on the big screens as backstage Sting had his beard shaved off while getting a manicure and massage. The band then returned for a five-song encore, left again, and came back for the big finish, an amped-up version of “Next to You”—the very first song on their very first album, Outlandos d'Amour (1978).
Coda: As the Police left the stage for the last time, the “That’s All Folks” Looney Tunes theme was played on the house speakers. As far as the chances of a reunion go—don’t count on it. According to Sting: “There was no new energy on the tour. Who really wants to go and live with the wife you divorced? I won’t do it again.”
Gallup poll results: 49% of Americans don’t know white bread is made from wheat.
THE STRANGE FATE
OF BIG NOSE GEORGE
“Big Nose” George Parrot got his nickname from the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.
THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.
Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train outside of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came “Dutch” Charlie Burress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn’t: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was Deputy Widdowfield’s hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.
Next up for justice: “Big Nose” George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his involvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose George managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.
Country with the most automobile deaths in the world: India (more than 130,000 yearly).
DOPE ON A ROPE
Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3½ months’ time. But he didn’t live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying break out of jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.
Twice.
The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself —by the noose around his neck—over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.
Big Nose George had no sympathizers in the crowd. The mob was happy to wait for gravity and muscle fatigue to finish the job. Over the next several minutes, he slowly lost his grip and died what must surely have been a slow and painful death.
(According to legend, George’s namesake beak was so big that when he was finally cut down hours later and laid out in a coffin, the undertaker had trouble nailing down the lid because the dead man’s nose was pressing up against it.)
AND NOW THE GRUESOME PART
When no next of kin arrived to claim the body, two local doctors, Dr. Thomas Maghee and Dr. John Osborne, claimed it in the name of medical science. Dr. Maghee had a personal interest in the case: His wife was criminally insane, the victim, it was thought, of head injuries sustained from falling from a horse. Maghee wanted to examine Big Nose George’s brain for any signs of abnormality that might explain his criminal behavior, then use what he learned to try and help his wife. With the assistance of Lillian Heath, his 15-year-old apprentice, he sawed off the top of the skull, removed the brain, and studied it, but found nothing unusual. Perhaps in a macabre gesture of thanks, he let Lillian keep the top of the skull as a souvenir.
Blueprints for the Eiffel Tower required a third of an acre of drafting paper.
NEXT OF (S)KIN
Dr. Maghee would probably have been better off examining Dr. Osborne’s brain for signs of abnormality. Osborne’s interest in Big Nose George was anything but scientific (he may have been motivated by revenge; according to one account, he was on one of the trains robbed by the Sim Jan gang and the delay caused him to miss a party). After making a plaster death mask of the deceased, a common practic
e at the time, Maghee removed the skin from Big Nose George’s chest and thighs (but not his nose), and mailed the human flesh to a tannery in Denver, Colorado, where it was made into human “leather”—definitely not a common practice at the time. Osborne then had the leather made into a coin purse, a doctor’s bag, and a pair of shoes.
Well, not the entire shoes. They were made from a combination of 1) leather taken from the shoes Big Nose George was wearing the day he died and 2) Big Nose George’s own skin. If you’re ever in the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, where the shoes are on display to this day, you’ll see that it’s easy to tell where the ordinary cowhide ends and Big Nose George begins: Most of the shoes’ leather is an ordinary dark brown, but the leather on the front of the shoes over the toes is much paler—the color of Big Nose George’s own Caucasian hide.
Dr. Osborne loved to wear his Big Nose George shoes. He wore them while practicing as a country doctor, and when he diversified into ranching, banking, and politics in later years, he kept wearing them. When he was elected the first Democratic governor of Wyoming in 1892, in what some claimed was a stolen election, he wore the shoes to his inauguration—which must surely make him the only elected official in U.S. history to be sworn into office while wearing another man’s skin.
Let’s hope so, anyway.
Physician Amynthas of Alexandria performed the first known nose job in the 3rd century B.C.
WHERE’S THE REST OF ME?
The remainder of Big Nose George’s remains did not fare much better: Drs. Maghee and Osborne kept them in a whiskey barrel filled with saltwater for about a year; then, when Dr. Maghee decided he’d learned everything he could (or Osborne decided one pair of shoes was enough), Maghee buried the barrel, with Big Nose George still in it, in the yard outside his medical office.
Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Page 40
