Stuck in the ’70s: 31% of U.S. men say they like bell-bottom jeans; so do 22% of women.
DANGER: LEAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND’S BOYFRIEND ALONE!
Are you the kind of girl who would dream up an elaborate and ridiculous plot to steal your girlfriend’s boyfriend?
Perhaps the compulsion comes to you one day during a geometry test after you have borrowed a pencil from him because something is wrong with your ballpoint pen. You flunk the test. His darling smile keeps coming between you and the angles. At the end of the period, you return the pencil. He hands it back.
“Keep it,” he says with a smile. “You’ll probably need it in your next class, and I have another.”
Another smile! The light in his eyes! You tremble with excitement. This is it! He loves you, and you love him. No one, not even your dearest girlfriend must stand between you.
After school you walk half a block behind him until both he and you are away from the crowds. Then you catch up and “just happen” to appear and join him. In a moment you “just happen” to stumble over nothing so that he must catch you in his arms.
He releases you quickly, a strange expression on his face, and then he strides ahead. You turn back toward your own home on the other side of town, overcome by the wonder of it all. You are sure the boy is too overcome by emotion to speak—that is why he went away so fast.
Unhappily, that evening you see him with your girlfriend. They are so engrossed in each other, neither sees you. Evidently the boy has spoken of your afternoon pursuit, however, for your girlfriend is cool toward you. In fact, you find yourself very lonely these days. You are a pitiful case because you are not only dishonest but ignorant.
SHOULD GIRLS TELEPHONE BOYS?
Careful, girls: In a poll of high-school boys more than two-thirds said they do not like to have girls call them on the telephone. They feel that this is a boy’s privilege, and that a girl seems forward when she phones a boy. In fact, most say their families tease them about girls who call them at home.
It takes 100,000 gallons of water to make one automobile, car manufacturers say.
THE DUMBEST
WESTERN EVER MADE
There are plenty of worthless Westerns. But few can match this combination of two—count ’em—hilariously lousy films in one. Director Bill “One-Shot” Beaudine managed to capture the worst elements of both dumb Westerns and cheesy monster movies and roll them into a single feature film.
JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER, Starring Narda Onyx, John Lupton, Cal Bolder, Estelita, Jim Davis and Steven Geray. Directed by William Beaudine.
Background: William Beaudine was a film pioneer who began working for legendary director D.W. Griffith in 1909. During the the golden age of silent films, he became a director himself and churned out some of Hollywood’s biggest hits. But he specialized in Westerns. In Incredibly Strange Films, Jim Morton writes:
Beaudine hit his stride during the early days of Hollywood when studios were less devoted to big-budget productions and more interested in getting as many films as possible out to the American public. In those days, a western had an immediate audience. If it was a Western, it couldn’t fail. These took anywhere from two days to two weeks to make. Beaudine dutifully churned them out, rarely lavishing much attention on any of them....One of the ways Beaudine kept his costs down (and his speed up) was by avoiding retakes whenever possible. He became so notorious for his refusal to reshoot a scene that he earned the nickname “One-Shot Beaudine.” If a boom mike dipped into the frame, if a cowboy started to fall before he was shot—oh well.
Once, when told that he was behind schedule with a film, he responded: “You mean someone’s actually waiting for this c--p?”
During the latter part of his career, Beaudine directed mostly TV shows—including more than 70 episodes of “Lassie.” But in 1965, he directed two last films (both flicks in a drive-in double-feature). The first was called Billy the Kid Meets Dracula. This second, and worst, was Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.
Beaudine, who wound up directing over 150 films, died in 1970.
Q: On average, how long is a giraffe’s tongue? A: 14 inches.
At age 78, he was Hollywood’s oldest working director...and he has the unusual distinction, for a B-film-meister, of having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He certainly didn’t get it for this movie.
The Plot: Dr. Maria Frankenstein and her brother Rudolf have settled in a small town in the Southwest. It’s the perfect location—there’s plenty of lightning to power her experiments, there are plenty of fresh young boys to experiment on, and the Austrian police will never find her there. (Seems she’s been experimenting in Europe, too.)
As the film opens, all the Mexican peasants are leaving town—mostly to get away from Maria. Only one family remains, waiting for their son—who works at the Frankenstein hacienda—to get over “the sickness.” Actually, Maria has operated on the boy, giving him the artificial brain her grandfather (she’s really Frankenstein’s granddaughter) created.
Rudolf is spooked by all this mad scientist stuff; he gives the boy poison rather than letting Maria succeed. Maria doesn’t know what’s going on—so she decides the boy was too weak; she needs a big, strong man to experiment on.
Well, it just so happens that Jesse James is riding around the countryside with a hulking doofus named Hank...and Hank has been shot during a robbery. He needs a doctor...so he and Jesse conveniently wind up at Frankenstein’s hacienda.
To make a long story mercifully short: Maria gives Hank a new brain and calls him—what else?—Igor. Then she gets Igor to kill her brother. Then Igor kills Maria. Then Juanita, Jesse’s girlfriend, kills Igor. Then the sheriff takes Jesse away. The End.
Don’t Miss:
• The Frankenstein “hacienda” overlooking town. Viewed from Main Street, it’s obviously a 20-foot-high painting. You’ve gotta see this one to appreciate it.
• The generic poison bottle. Rudolph poisons the boy with a beaker full of red water, labelled POISON. What kind of posion? Who knows? Who cares?
• The Indians riding by. Blissfully pointless footage cut in from some other B-film.
If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? In one study, 36% said pizza.
• The helmet. Maria uses it to activate the artificial brain. But it looks like a Rastafarian chemistry experiment, topped with a wire fence. Should win some sort of prize for low-budget props.
• Juanita. Played by actress Estelita Rodriguez, supposed to be a beautiful young girl...“even though she looks every one of her thirty-eight years.”
IMMORTAL DIALOGUE
Maria: “What a fool I’ve been! I’ve allowed the duo-thermal impulsator to be attached only to the body! Let’s see what Grandfather’s notation says.... You see? The duo-thermal impulsator must also be attached to a living brain, to transmit living vibrations to the artificial brain!”
Rudolph: “But such a powerful electric impulse might prove fatal to the brain of a living person!”
Maria: “That chance I am willing to take!”
Maria: “It’s because we’ve been forced to use the brains of children that we’ve failed. What we need is a man—a powerful man—a giant! Then we will succeed!”
Rudolph: “But what—what good will it do to succeed?”
Maria: “Imagine! We’ll have someone to do our bidding who can’t be put to death! Just as we have given it life, only we can take its life away!”
Rudolph: “Maria, we’ve already caused the deaths of three children, and violated the graves of others, just to make the experiments!”
Maria: “My, you’re a humanitarian! You should have stayed in Europe and given pink pills to sweet old ladies!”
Maria: “This is the last artificial brain Grandfather Frankenstein made. The secret of how to make them died with him. If I fail in this last attempt, I too am willing to die!”
Rudolph: “Is it so terribl
e to fail?”
Maria: “You’re a fool, Rudolph! We hold the secret of life in our hands!
Rudolph: “Maria, Maria! This has already cost Grandfather his life!”
Rocky Road ice cream was invented during the Depression as a “comment on the times.”
IT’S A MIRACLE!
The tabloids are full of stories about people who see images of religious icons in everything from a lima bean to a smudge on a men’s room floor. Could they be real? Who knows? But real or not, they can lead to some pretty weird—and occasionally destructive—situations. Here are the details of five widely reported “sightings” of the Virgin Mary, from John Dollison’s book Pope-Pourri.
OUR LADY OF THE 1981 CAMARO
The Sighting: Brownsville, Texas. In September of 1993, a Texas man looked out the window of his house and saw a crowd of people pointing at the dusty hood of his 1981 Camaro. He went outside and asked what they were doing...and was told jubilantly that the Blessed Virgin had appeared in a dirt stain on the hood.
What Happened: To get rid of the throng, the man washed his car. But the image reappeared...and so did the crowds. “We’ve heard the people coming by to see the image won’t let the owner move his car,” a Brownsville police dispatcher told reporters. A church spokesperson told reporters: “If it leads people to prayer, that’s good in itself.”
OUR LADY OF THE AUTO PARTS STORE
The Sighting: Progreso, Texas. On December 3, 1990, the owner of the Progreso Auto Supply announced that the Virgin Mary had appeared in the concrete floor of the men’s room shower.
What Happened: Within two weeks more than a thousand people a day were visiting the restroom to weep and pray. Few, if any, bought auto parts. Believers not only took the appearance seriously—some took Mary’s unfortunate location, on the floor of an auto parts store shower, personally. “I feel guilty,” one distraught woman declared. “I’m part to blame for where she is.”
OUR LADY OF THE BACKYARD
The Sighting: In 1992 Marlboro, New Jersey citizen Joseph Januszkiewicz told the world that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him in his backyard on the first Sunday of each month and would keep doing so.
Presidential first: To pay for the Civil War, Abe Lincoln signed an income tax into law.
What Happened: The monthly visits attracted as many as ten thousand of the faithful to Marlboro (population 28,000)—costing the town as much as $21,000 in police patrols and “sanitation overtime” per visit. On September 25, 1992, the health department ordered Januszkiewicz to install ten portable toilets on his property to meet his pilgrims’ nonspiritual needs. Health officials took the action after receiving “vivid accounts of people defecating in the woods and bushes.”
OUR LADY OF COLD SPRING, KENTUCKY
The Sighting: In August 1992, Reverend LeRoy Smith of Saint Joseph Church in Cold Spring told his congregation that a visionary had predicted that the Virgin Mary would make an appearance at the church at midnight on September 1. He never identified the visionary. Six thousand people showed up to see if Mary would appear.
What Happened: Whether or not she did depends on who you ask. Some people saw her on the side of the church; others saw her in a nearby tree. One woman saw lights outside the church that she was sure represented the Blessed Virgin. But most people didn’t see anything, including William Hughes, the local bishop. “I am convinced that nothing of a miraculous nature occurred,” he reported the next day. Still, many of the spectators disagreed. A Ms. Dang voiced the opinion of many on hand when she commented to a reporter: “The bishop is a mortal man...and he could make a mistake.”
OUR LADY OF MEDJUGORJE
The Sighting: In June 1981, two teenagers were sneaking cigarettes on the side of a hill overlooking Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the Virgin Mary appeared to them in the clouds. Four other teenagers made similar sightings not long afterwards (no word on what they were smoking), and the story spread around the world. Since then more than 15 million of the faithful have made pilgrimages to the site.
What Happened: Despite Medjugorje’s immense popularity with pilgrims (before the Bosnian civil war it drew almost as many people as Fatima and Lourdes), the Vatican called the sightings bunk. They officially discouraged pilgrims from going there, and the local bishop denounced the sightings as “collective hallucinations.” In a 1991 statement, nineteen of twenty Yugoslav bishops declared that “on the basis of research conducted so far, one cannot affirm that supernatural apparitions are involved.” The pilgrims kept on coming, even as civil war raged...and a cottage industry of pizza parlors, hot dog stands, and foreign exchange booths sprang up to serve them. “The atmosphere is like Mary World,” one Florida-based pilgrim told reporters. Even the outbreak of bloody civil war didn’t stop visitors entirely. “I’ve had open-heart surgery, a ruptured appendix, a gall bladder removed, a back operation, a plugged carotid artery, an angioplasty, and I’m on my second pacemaker,” another pilgrim told The Wall Street Journal while a fierce battle raged just outside of town. “You think I’m afraid of a little shooting?”
Reindeer are the only species of deer in which the female grows antlers.
Unfortunately, people’s excitement about the prospect of seeing the divine can have unexpectedly tragic consequences. Two more examples from Dollison’s book:
OUR LADY OF BAZA, SPAIN
Background: In 1993 Sanchez Casas, an eighteen-year-old Spanish faith healer, announced that on June 11 the Virgin Mary would appear to any of his followers who “looked directly at the sun.”
What Happened: On June 11, an estimated one thousand of his followers travelled to Baza, looked directly at the sun...and suffered severe eye damage. More than thirty people were hospitalized, and at least eight suffered permanent vision loss. (Casas pooh-poohed the stricken as “nonbelievers” who had “stared at the sun on the wrong day.”)
OUR LADY OF DENVER, COLORADO
Background: In November 1991 a Denver woman announced to the world that the Blessed Virgin would appear at a shrine on Assumption Day—and that “great favors” would be rained upon those who witnessed the holy event. (How did the woman know? She said that Mary had told her so in a vision.)
The Tyrannosaurus rex’s razor-sharp teeth were about six inches long.
What Happened: More than six thousand people—many of them elderly and infirm—traveled to the shrine in below-freezing temperatures to witness the “miracle” and spent the entire day staring into the sky waiting for something to happen. Nothing did...but as in Baza, some of the pilgrims looked directly at the sun. At least two dozen people suffered permanent loss of vision; others suffered permanent loss of faith. “Did you ever hear of people going to Jesus for a miracle,” one partially blinded woman asked, “and coming away crippled?”
...And Now For Some Health Info from the BRI
Skin cancer has become the most common form of cancer in the U.S. today...and nine times out of ten it’s caused by too much exposure to the sun.
Know Your Risk
• If you sunburn easily and have a hard time getting tan, you’re especially vulnerable to skin cancer. If you have fair skin, red or blonde hair, and light-colored eyes, you are at higher risk.
• If you got a severe, blistering sunburn during childhood, you’re more likely to get the most deadly form of skin cancer later in life.
• If a member of your immediate family had skin cancer, you’re at risk. About 10% of skin cancer cases run in families.
Protect Yourself
• Cut back on how much sun you get. Be most careful between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., when the sun’s UV rays are most intense.
• Wear a hat to protect your face and head (especially if you’re bald). If possible, cover arms and legs. Be careful on overcast days; as much as 85% of the sun’s ultraviolet rays can penetrate clouds.
• Use sunscreen, even if you’re not on the beach. Apply it 30-45 minutes before exposure. Experts recommend a Sun Protection Factor (SPF) of at leas
t 15. A higher rating isn’t necessary, as long as you apply sunscreen liberally. An average adult should use about an ounce per application. Apply evenly to all exposed skin.
• Note: Sunscreens rated SPF 15 or higher contain ingredients that provide some protection against UVA.
In Bangkok, Thailand, ice skates are known as “hard water shoes.”
UNCLE JOHN’S
GOLDEN TURKEYS
Back in the 1980s, the Medved brothers introduced the term “golden turkeys” for unbelievably, hilariously bad films. Today there’s a big subculture of people who love to watch them...and Uncle John is one. Here are two of his favorite grade Z films.
THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961)
Written, Directed and Edited by Coleman Francis. Producted by Anthony Cardoza. Starring Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks. Narration: Coleman Francis.
The Plot: Joseph Javorski, a Russian rocket scientist (played by hulking ex-wrestler Tor Johnson) escapes to America with secret documents. Javorski’s destination: “Yucca Flats. And a meeting with top brass at the A-bomb testing grounds.” When he gets there, he’s chased into the desert by 2 KGB agents. Uh-oh there’s an atomic test going on. An A-bomb goes off near the Russian trio; the spies are vaporized, but Tor is merely turned into a maniac. He spends the rest of the film wandering around the desert with a stick, looking for people to beat up and/or kill.
Commentary:
• From “The Beast of Yucca Flats” website: “As a fan of bad movies I have seen many of the greats in bad films, including the works of Ed Wood Jr., Larry (Mars Needs Women) Buchanan and Jerry (Teenage Zombies) Warren....But I have never seen a worse film than this....As soon as I saw it I knew my search (for the world’s worst movie) was over. Since then I have seen it over and over...and each time it still amazes me.
Don’t Miss:
• The Narrator. There’s almost no dialogue, and no synchronized soundtrack. Instead, there’s an “omniscient narrator,” dubbed in after the film was completed. Ken Begg writes in Jabootu’s Bad Movie Universe:
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 72
