Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd (18 page)

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One night a week, a banquet hall in a Los Angeles hotel becomes a unique restaurant called Opaque. A three-course gourmet meal is served in total darkness by blind waiters. Diners choose meals beforehand from a menu in a lighted lobby before being carefully led to their tables in the pitch-black hall. “You learn how much you rely on your eyesight for cutting food and making sure there’s something on your fork,” said customer Russ Hemmis, “but at least I can pick my nose without anyone noticing.”

Okay, drop the pork chop and come out with your hands up.

…A FISH.
In 2005 a woman in Saginaw, Michigan, was charged with assault after she attacked her boyfriend with a mounted swordfish. She had pulled it off the wall during an argument and stabbed him with the fish’s long, sharp bill. He was treated at the scene; she was arrested.

…A CHIHUAHUA.
In June 2006, a woman in St. Peters, Missouri, bought a Chihuahua puppy from a dog breeder. When the animal died a short time later, the woman went to the breeder’s house, walked in, and, according to news reports, “hit the breeder over the head numerous times with the dead puppy.” Then, as she fled in her car, she waved the dead Chihuahua out of the sunroof while yelling threats and obscenities at the breeder.

…A POOPER-SCOOPER.
In 2006 Leisa Reed, 47, walked into a Waukesha, Wisconsin, home in the middle of the night, wildly swinging a pooper-scooper. The home owners, John and Linda Dormer, tried to tell Reed she was in the wrong house, but Reed wasn’t listening. John Dormer was hit in the face with the pooperscooper and then fought for his life as the crazed woman came at him with two pairs of scissors. Police finally arrived and, although Reed was only 5'2" and weighed a mere 105 pounds, it took five officers, three stun gun shots, leg straps, and a large bag to finally subdue her. The fact that she was high on crack cocaine made her seemingly superhuman, police said. (She got two years in prison.)

…A PORK CHOP.
A 45-year-old Australian man in Roma, Queensland, was helping his son move out of an apartment he had been evicted from when an argument broke out over a refrigerator. The fridge apparently belonged to one family, and the meat inside it to another. During the melee that followed, a woman grabbed a frozen pork chop and hit the father in the head. He was taken to
the hospital to get stitches. The Australian Broadcast Company reported that the woman was charged with “assault with a pork chop,” adding that the “the weapon has been removed from the scene…and probably eaten.”

…A PROSTHETIC LEG.
A teenager with a prosthetic leg in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, was attacked by two other teens in September 2006. The two boys pulled 17-year-old Michael Williams out of his car, pulled off his prosthetic leg, and beat him with it. Alexander Harris, 17, and an unnamed 16-year-old were charged with felony assault. Williams thinks the two probably attacked him simply because he was disabled. “What motivates someone to do that, I have no idea,” he said.

…A FISH (AGAIN).
Alan Bennie was walking through a park in Grangemouth, Scotland, when 22-year-old David Evans approached him, holding a fish. According to prosecutor Neil MacGregor, Evans then asked Bennie, “Do you want to kiss my fish?” MacGregor continued, “Mr. Bennie made no reply, at which point the accused said: ‘You answer me next time I ask you to kiss a fish,’ and slapped him round the face with it.” Evans pleaded guilty to “assault with a fish” and was sentenced to six months in prison.

…A TOILET.
In February 2006, a father and son were in their home in Chamberlain, Texas, watching the Super Bowl when they heard a noise outside. Looking down the street, they saw a man and woman in a heated argument that looked like it might turn violent, so they rushed over to intervene. The man pulled out a knife and was able to wound both the father and son. Luckily, a discarded toilet was lying nearby, so the father grabbed a piece of the bowl and clobbered the man, who was taken to the hospital… for
head
injuries. Then he was
throne
in jail, the
loo
-ser. (He’s in the
can
now.)

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While bending over to make calls at the 2006 Wimbledon tennis tournament, line judges split 60 pairs of pants.

If you thought
Gilligan’s Island
or
Alf
were goofy ideas for TV shows (which they were), you should see the stuff that
doesn’t
make it onto the air. Someone actually filmed pilot episodes of the following shows.

B
affled!
(1973)

A race-car driver (Leonard Nimoy) gets injured in a crash and suddenly begins receiving visions of murders that haven’t occurred yet. He solves the crimes before they happen with the help of a female student of psychic phenomena.

Clone Master
(1978)

A government scientist (Art Hindle) makes a bunch of clones of himself (all played by Hindle) then sends them out into the world to fight crime and catch evildoers. Each episode would have focused on a different clone’s adventures.

The Tribe
(1974)

Set 40,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age, this series chronicled a Cro-Magnon family’s struggles to survive harsh living conditions and skirmishes with a rival tribe of primitive Neanderthals.

The Mysterious Two
(1979)

A man must stop two popular televangelists…because they’re actually evil aliens who are brainwashing humanity in order to take over the planet.

Judge Dee
(1974)

Lots of shows in the 1970s were about sensitive people traveling around, generously helping others with their personal problems for free (K
ung Fu
and
The Incredible Hulk
are two examples). In
Judge Dee,
a judge wanders his rural district helping people and resolving disputes. The twist:
Judge Dee
is set in 7th-century China. It’s not to be confused with
High Risk
, in which six former circus performers hit the road and help people solve their problems…for money.

Microcops
(1989)

Two microscopic cops from outer space come to Earth in pursuit of an equally tiny intergalactic criminal mastermind. To move around the planet, the tiny cops attach their tiny spaceship to people, dogs, and birds.

Danger Team
(1991)

A ball of space goop crash-lands in a sculptor’s studio. Naturally, he molds the goop into three figurines. The figurines come to life, but only the artist can see them. The artist and the goop men team up to go fight crime.

Steel Justice
(1992)

A little boy idolizes his policeman father and likes to secretly tail him when he goes out on drug busts and stakeouts at night. One night, the kid gets killed. Dad is distraught…until he meets his new crime-fighting partner—a fire-breathing, 100-foot-tall robot dinosaur that’s possessed by the spirit of his dead son.

Shangri-La Plaza
(1990)

A widow and her teenage daughter inherit a donut shop in a Los Angeles strip mall and flirt with the mechanic brothers who work next door. Sounds like normal TV fare…except that all of the dialogue was sung.

Tag Team
(1991)

Trying to cash in on the popularity of professional wrestling, this pilot starred 1980s WWF stars “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Jesse “The Body” Ventura as the Lizard Brothers, professional wrestlers who quit the ring to become undercover cops.

Wurlitzer
(1985)

A man inherits a decaying diner and its antique Wurlitzer jukebox. The plot: In each episode, the man selects a song on the jukebox and is then transported back in time to the year that song came out. Why? To help people with their problems. In the pilot episode, he listens to a Jefferson Airplane song, goes to 1968 San Francisco, and helps a hippie quit drugs.

America 2100
(1979)

Two stand-up comedians are accidentally put into suspended animation. They awake at the dawn of the 22nd century to find the world run by a supercomputer with the voice and old jokes of fellow comedian Sid Caesar.

K-9000
(1991)

A Los Angeles cop volunteers for a futuristic experiment: His new partner is half robot, half dog. The two are able to communicate via the microchip implanted in the cop’s brain.

Danny and the Mermaid
(1978)

Danny is an oceanography student failing all of his classes. Then he meets a mermaid who, along with her talking dolphin friend, helps Danny get better grades by escorting him all over the ocean and tutoring him on sea life.

Ethel Is an Elephant
(1980)

A New York photographer fights with his landlord to keep his unusual pet in his apartment—an elephant (named Ethel) that was abandoned by the circus. Most of the comedy revolves around unsuccessful attempts to hide Ethel behind furniture.

Mixed Nuts
(1977)

This pilot was one of the first shows to depict mentally ill people living in an insane asylum. A sensitive portrayal of forgotten people living on society’s fringe? No,
Mixed Nuts
was actually a comedy.

Dad’s a Dog
(1989)

To the embarrassment of his children, the only work a former TV star can get is on a sitcom (also called
Dad's a Dog
), where he performs the voice of a man who is magically transformed into a dog.

Heil Honey I’m Home!
(1990)

A parody of 1950s sitcoms like
Leave it to Beaver
, this British show was about Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun living peacefully in a suburban neighborhood until their lives are turned upside down by their new Jewish neighbors.

In his spare time, Scott Williams of Newport, Rhode Island, digs up things from his backyard and submits them to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. as authentic “paleological finds.” Here is the actual (we think) response from the Smithsonian, proving that some scientists do indeed have a sense of humor.