—Lord Rochester
“You don’t know how much you don’t know until your children grow up and tell you.”
—S. J. Perelman
“You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.”
—John J. Plomp
“Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.”
—Doug Larson
Helium cannot be frozen.
TERRIBLE TYPOS
These stories illustrate the old adage that the devil’s in the detales…er, details.
TYPER: A group called Citizens Opposed to the Library Project was fighting a tax referendum to build a new library in Franklin, Indiana. In submitting their financial disclosure documents in 2012, they made one little mistake.
TYPO: They listed their name as “Citizens Apposed to the Library Project.” Said a pro-library spokesman, “That proves our point right there.”
TYPER: Reader’s Digest ran an article about women’s rights.
TYPO: In the headline, the “R” in “Rights” was replaced by a “T,” so readers saw “Movers & Shakers in Women’s Tights.”
TYPER: A clerk working at the Chicago Board of Elections in 2010 entered the name of Illinois Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney into electronic voting machines.
TYPO: The clerk left the “n” out of Whitney, so it appeared as “Whitey.” Although the mistake was caught before the election, nearly 5,000 machines had to be reprogrammed. But by that point, the press had caught wind of it—and headlines across the country read “Rich Whitey Running for Illinois Governor!”
TYPER: In 2010 a communications firm called Blue Waters Group made an all-too-common typo. What set theirs apart is that it appeared on a billboard in very large letters. It urged residents of South Bend, Indiana, to visit the city’s website and learn the “15 Best Things About Our Public Schools.”
TYPO: Despite four proofreaders looking at it, “Public” was misspelled as “Pubic.” The sign remained on display for several days before a citizen alerted city officials, who quietly took it down.
TYPER: In 2011 Derby, Connecticut, Democratic Town Chair Sheila Parizo meant to add the name of the incumbent candidate to sit on the local tax board. She typed in “James J. Butler.”
TYPO: The candidate’s name was James R. Butler. James J. Butler is his son, and he isn’t a politician…but he did receive the most votes. “My son wants nothing to do with this,” said the elder Butler. Nevertheless, he had to stand by as his son was sworn into office. (After a few days of legal wrangling, James J. resigned and Dad took his rightful seat.)
Kissin’ cousins? Elvis was related to Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter.
TYPER: A graphic designer at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review attempted to create a reflection effect on the words “Suit Yourself” to accompany an article about summer swimsuits.
TYPO: Because of the reflection, the “u” in suit ended up looking more like an “h.” Before the mistake was caught, more than 40,000 copies were printed that featured a bikini-clad supermodel standing next to a headline that appeared to say “[Bleep] Yourself.”
TYPER: In 2012 Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign released an iPhone app called “With Mitt.”
TYPO: At the top of every page it said “A Better Amercia.”
TYPER: On November 11, 2011, the Utah Valley Daily Herald ran a front-page article called “11•11•11: Date of the Decade.” (The article was about how neat it is for the babies born on 11-11-11.)
TYPO: There were no goofs in the headline or in the article. But for some reason, when setting up the page masthead, the typesetter accidentally typed in the day’s date as “November 11, 2010.”
TYPER: Realtor Shirley Hunsperger ran an ad for a new home in Mount Shasta, California, with a “huge deck for entertaining.”
TYPO: The “e” in deck was mistakenly replaced with an “i.”
TYPER: In 2003 Sunrise Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, changed its name to Sunrise-McMillian Elementary. Reason: To honor its first-ever teacher, Mary McMillan.
TYPO: In 2012 one of McMillan’s relatives alerted the school that an extra “i” had been added to her name. (It’s McMillan, not McMillian.) Embarrassed school officials fixed the sign out front, but admitted that it would take a few years to replace the rest of the signage—along with all the stationery, business cards, library cards, visitor’s passes, spelling bee award certificates…
Food for thought: Carbs make you sleepy. Protein makes you more alert.
THE NEW YEAR’S EVE OPOSSUM DROP
Think New York’s Times Square Ball is the only thing that falls at midnight on December 31st? Here’s a list of a few other things that get dropped to bring in the new year.
MAPLE LEAF AND SARDINE DROP
Residents of the town of Eastport, Maine, drop a four-foot plywood maple leaf from the third story of the Tides Institute & Museum of Art building in the downtown Bank Square at 11:00 p.m. on December 31. That’s because midnight comes an hour earlier for their friends across the border in New Brunswick, Canada. (That’s also why it’s a maple leaf.) Then, at midnight, they drop an eight-foot plywood sardine—a tribute to Eastport’s history in the Atlantic fishing industry.
RUBY SLIPPER DROP
Every New Year’s Eve since the late 1990s, female impersonator Gary “Sushi” Marion climbs from the second-floor balcony of the Bourbon Street Pub in Key West, Florida, into an eight-foot, bright-red high-heeled shoe. Then, as thousands of onlookers shout the countdown, Sushi (in full drag) and the shoe are lowered to the street. “When I was a little kid, I never really dreamed about being in drag,” he told reporters in 2011, “let alone being in a giant glittery red shoe at the stroke of midnight. It’s fabulous!”
OPOSSUM DROP
In 1996 Clay Logan, owner of Clay’s Corner Store in Brasstown, North Carolina, came up with an idea to get Brasstown some well-deserved recognition as the “Opossum Capital of the World” (which Brasstown and about 100 other towns claim to be). So he caught an opossum, put it in a pyramid-shaped Plexiglas box, and, as midnight on New Year’s Eve approached, slowly dropped it from the roof of his store. It worked! The Brasstown Opossum Drop regularly makes headlines in newspapers all over the world and attracts thousands of people every year. (And every January 1, one confused opossum is released into the wild near Brasstown.)
The Times Square Ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs 11,875 pounds.
DEUCE OF CLUBS DROP
According to local legend, Show Low, Arizona, got its name from a poker game. A few years after settling there in the early 1870s, town founding fathers Corydon Cooley and Marion Clark decided that there was only room for one of them in the area. They agreed to play a game of poker to decide who would move out. When it came time for the very last draw, Clark said to Cooley, “If you show low, you win,” meaning that if he drew the two of clubs—the lowest value card in the deck—he’d win. Cooley drew the two of clubs—and the town’s been called “Show Low” ever since. In honor of that story, an illuminated “deuce of clubs” playing card (roughly four feet wide by seven feet high) is dropped from the top of a crane in the town square every New Year’s Eve.
BOLOGNA DROP
Lebanon, Pennsylvania, is known for “Lebanon bologna,” a type of cured and smoked sausage similar to salami. To honor the town’s reputation, every New Year’s Eve a 12-foot, 200-pound loaf of Lebanon bologna is lowered to the ground by a crane. (And the next day, it’s donated to a local food bank.)
MOON PIE DROP
Mobile, Alabama, is the home of America’s first Mardi Gras celebration (in 1703). Since the 1950s, moon pies have been a favorite “throw”—things people toss at passing Mardi Gras floats—in Mobile. That’s why the city celebrates New Year’s Eve with a Moon Pie Drop, in which a 12-foot-diameter, 600-pound electronic moon pie is lowered from the top of the 34-story RSA BankTrust Building. More than 80,000 people watched the
Moon Pie Drop in 2012.
OLIVE DROP
At midnight, the good people of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, lower a giant styrofoam olive 221 feet from a skyscraper into a 15-foot-high illuminated sheet-metal martini glass. Happy New Year!
Nearly 40% of childhood dreams are nightmares.
ALIEN, STARRING MERYL STREEP
Some films are so closely associated with a specific actor or director that it’s hard to believe they weren’t the first choices. But it happens all the time. Can you imagine, for example…
RICHARD PRYOR AS SHERIFF BART
(Blazing Saddles, 1974)
Pryor was the hottest comedian of the 1970s…and one of the most controversial. His sharp standup routines brutally skewered American racial politics and sentiments. And that’s exactly who director Mel Brooks wanted for his comic western Blazing Saddles, about a small Old West town that hires a black sheriff. Brooks insisted on Pryor to play Sheriff Bart, even as he was pitching the script to studios. Hollywood studios wanted Blazing Saddles, but wouldn’t agree to hiring Pryor (because he was a controversial figure and was rumored to be unreliable due to drug problems). Cleavon Little was eventually cast, and the movie became the top-grossing movie of 1974. Seven years later, Brooks tried again to cast Pryor in a movie, this time in the role of Josephus, the slave who tries to smooth talk and bargain his way out of being thrown to the lions in The History of the World Part 1. Pryor was set to take the role…until, just before filming began, he was free-basing cocaine and lit himself on fire, burning most of his body and nearly dying. (Gregory Hines was cast as Josephus.)
MERYL STREEP AS RIPLEY (Alien, 1979)
The makers of Alien weren’t out to make a “blockbuster” sci-fi movie like Star Wars—they wanted something dark, disturbing, and well-acted. To cast the role of Ellen Ripley, the tough officer on a spaceship confronted with a terrible alien monster, the film’s producers and director Ridley Scott went to Broadway in early 1978 to look for a new actress who hadn’t done a lot of screen work. Their casting director, Mary Goldberg, narrowed down the search to two women. The first was Meryl Streep, coming off a Tony-nominated performance in A Memory of Two Mondays / 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. At the last minute, producer Gordon Carroll cancelled his meeting with Streep, because her fiancé, actor John Cazale (Fredo in The Godfather films), had died of lung cancer a day before, and he didn’t want to subject her to a tough audition. Carroll did meet with the other actress that Goldberg found for him—Sigourney Weaver, who got the role.
The typical wool kilt weighs 5 pounds.
BILL COSBY AS THE DOCTOR (Doctor Who, 1996)
Doctor Who had been running consistently on British television since 1963, but by the late 1980s, the show was running out of steam, and viewership had slipped to half of what it was at its peak in the late 1970s. In 1989 the BBC cancelled the series, but sold the film rights to Warner Bros., who wanted to reboot Doctor Who as a movie and market it to American audiences. Warner Bros. asked one of the biggest names in entertainment at the time—Bill Cosby, a doctor of education in real life and an obstetrician on the sitcom The Cosby Show—to play the main character, the mysterious alien time-traveler known only as “the Doctor.” Cosby turned them down. Warner Bros. finally made a Who movie in 1996, starring British actor Paul McGann, which aired on Fox.
OWEN WILSON AS TED STROEHMANN (There’s Something About Mary, 1998)
Bobby and Peter Farrelly were coming off two huge hit comedies, Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin, when they started their third movie, There’s Something About Mary. They wanted Ben Stiller for the lead role of Ted Stroehmann, an uptight, put-upon former nerd who reconnects with his dream girl, played by Cameron Diaz. The studio was fine with Diaz, but were reluctant to hire Stiller, who was best known for The Ben Stiller Show, a critically-acclaimed but unsuccessful sketch comedy show. So the Farrellys suggested Owen Wilson for the part. It was a trick—the Farrellys knew that if they presented an actor more obscure than Stiller, as Wilson was at the time, the studio would relent and let them cast Stiller. And that’s exactly what happened.
* * *
Don’t reason with a hungry belly; it has no ears. —Greek proverb
First reference to a “red carpet”: the Greek tragedy Agamemnon (458 B.C.), by Aeschylus.
THE GRUNGE CODE
The slang or vernacular of any subculture develops slowly and naturally over time. Not so with the words and phrases associated with the 1990s “grunge” music scene.
BACKGROUND
In the early 1990s, the biggest thing in rock music was grunge, a mixture of punk rock and dreary guitar riffs that shot bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam into superstardom. It influenced other parts of culture, too—the leather boots and flannel shirts worn by the bands (because they were from cold and rainy Seattle) became a fashion movement. In November 1992, journalist Rick Marin was writing an article about the grunge scene for the New York Times. Wanting to cover every aspect of the movement, Marin figured there must be a lexicon, so he called Caroline Records, a Seattle-based music label. Receptionist Megan Jasper answered and humored Martin with a list of “grunge terms” and their definitions…all of which she made up on the spot. “I thought we would have a hearty laugh, and he would have to write it off as 15 minutes wasted, but it never happened,” she says. Ironically, some of Jasper’s terms did become widely used slang terms, even appearing on T-shirts and bumper stickers. Here’s her list:
• Wack slacks: Torn-up jeans
• Fuzz: Thick wool sweaters
• Plats: Platform shoes
• Kickers: Heavy boots. “Kicks” became a common term for all shoes in the 1990s and 2000s.
• Bound-and-hagged: Staying home on Saturday night with your significant other instead of going out to a concert or club
• Dish: An attractive man
• Big bag of blotation: Drunk
• Swingin’ on the flippety-flop: Hanging out with friends
• Score: Great
• Harsh realm: Bad
• Tom-Tom Club: Inspired by the name of a dance-pop side project by the mainstream Talking Heads, Jasper claimed this meant “uncool outsiders.”
• Cob nobbler: A loser
• Lamestain: A cob nobbler
• Rock on!: See you later!
The Muppet Movie (1979) was banned in New Zealand. Reason: “gratuitous violence.”
POLI-TALKS
American politicians say the darnedest things.
“We’d like to avoid problems, because when we have problems, we have troubles.”
—Wesley Bolin, former governor of Arizona
“What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?”
—Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, D.C.
“American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”
—Christine O’Donnell, U.S. Senate candidate
“Stand up, Chuck, and let ’em see ya.”
—Joe Biden, to Sen. Chuck Graham, who is confined to a wheelchair
“We want the press to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.”
—Sharron Angle, U.S. Senate candidate
“I find it interesting that in the 1970s the swine flu broke out under a Democrat, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on Obama—I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
—Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 2009 swine flu outbreak
“Gingrich—primary mission: Advocate of civilization, Definer of civilization, Teacher of the rules of civilization, Leader of the civilizing forces.”
—Newt Gingrich
“They don’t call me ‘Tyrannosaurus Sex’ for nothing.”
—Sen. Ted Kennedy
“Today’s a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs, which is really good!”
—Sen. Harry Reid
“T
his deal is a sugar-coated Satan sandwich.”
—Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, on raising the debt ceiling
“Lemon. Wet. Good.”
—Mitt Romney, when asked how a glass of lemonade tasted
City with the lowest marriage rate in the United States: Washington, D.C.
FERAL CHILDREN OF THE MODERN WORLD
Stories of children who end up on their own in the wild and survive by their wits—or with the help of wild animals—have been around for as long as recorded history. Most of the stories are hard to believe, and a lot harder to confirm, but there are a few that have occurred in relatively modern times that are actually true.
JOHN SSEBUNYA OF UGANDA
In 1991 Millie Sseba was gathering firewood in the jungle near her village, when she came across a group of monkeys. One, in a tree, looked particularly odd. She looked closer…and saw that it was a boy. She ran back to her village and returned with a group of men who, after battling the monkeys, were able to capture the boy. They took him to their village and cared for him. He was badly malnourished, covered with sores, and had tapeworms. A few weeks later, he was taken to Paul and Molly Wasswa, a Ugandan couple who run an orphange for destitute children. The boy was soon identified as John Ssebunya, the son of a man and woman who used to live in a nearby village.
The story of what had happened to him began to be pieced together. John himself was able to add to it when he eventually learned to speak. About a year before he was found with the monkeys, at the age of three or four (nobody knows his exact age), John saw his father shoot and kill his mother. He fled, fearing he would be killed, too, and ended up in the jungle. A few days into the ordeal, a group of vervet monkeys approached the boy and, according to John, gave him food. Monkey experts say this part of the story is doubtful, and that it’s more likely the boy was simply allowed to take the monkeys’ extras. In any case, what is accepted as fact is that after some time the monkeys took the boy in. He learned to eat roots, fruits, and other monkey food, and spent most of his time in trees—and his monkey friends are credited with his survival in the jungle. John’s story became an international sensation and was the subject of a 1999 BBC documentary called Living Proof.
Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader) Page 10
