Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (69 page)

*        *        *

PAPER OR PLASTIC?

Some items and prices from a 1961 grocery store flyer
.

5-piece Wrench Set: 97¢
Men’s Cotton Pajamas: $1.00
Grass Seed, 5 lb.: 88¢
Deluxe Rubber Bathmat: 58¢
Ladies Socks: 25¢
Asparagus: 29¢/bunch
California Oranges: 10 for 45¢
Good ’N’ Rich Cake Mix: 7¢
Ritz Crackers: 33¢
Waldorf Toilet Tissue: 35¢
Kellogg’s Corn Flakes: 2 for 25¢
Pillsbury Flour, 5 lbs: 39¢
Corn: 5 ears for 29¢
Coffee: 57¢/lb.

Rib Roast: 69¢/lb.

Bumble Bee Tuna: 3 cans for $1

Hydrox Cookies: 39¢

Wisk, ½ gallon: $1.39

Celery: 17¢/bunch
Sirloin Steak: 89¢/lb.
Haddock Fillet: 38¢/lb.
Chuck Roast: 34¢/lb.
Jumbo Insulated Picnic Bag: 88¢
Philadelphia Cream Cheese: 29¢
Kosher Salami: 69¢/lb.
Chicken: 25¢/lb.
Tomatoes: 2 cartons for 25¢
Peaches, 29-oz. Cans: 4 for 98¢

Still, it’s worth it: Ancient Greeks believed drinking beer would cause leprosy.

FROSTED LUNGS AND HALIBUT HEADS

Here are a few Alaskan terms Uncle John picked up the year he wintered in Anchorage with the white eyes and the scissor bills. Enjoy!

•
Squaw candy
. Dried, smoked salmon. Squaw candy was one of the preserved foods that helped Alaskans survive the long, hard winter months.

•
Boomer
. Someone who comes to work in Alaska only during economic booms, such as during the construction of the Alaskan pipeline.

•
Nooshnik
. An outhouse.

•
Frosted lungs
. A pain in the chest similar to frostbite that you get when breathing air that is colder than –30°F.

•
White eye
. A dog with one white eye and one normal eye.

•
Bear insurance
. A gun brought with you during outdoor activities such as fishing or hiking, to protect yourself if you are attacked by a bear.

•
America
. The other 49 states, also known as “outside.” (Alaska didn’t become a state until 1959, and it took the old-timers a while to get used to the idea.)

•
The Banana Belt
. The area around Anchorage and Cook Inlet—comparatively warmer than the rest of the state.

•
Skunk bear
. A wolverine. (Looks kind of like a bear, smells like a skunk.)

•
Greasy thumb
. Greedy, dishonest. During the gold rush of 1897, miners often paid for things by holding open their pouch of gold dust and letting a merchant or bartender reach in and take a pinch. Dishonest merchants greased their index finger and thumb to increase the amount of gold that stuck.

•
Candlefish
. A species of fish so oily that, when dried, it can be lit with a match and used as a candle.

•
Salmon cruncher
. A derogatory Caucasian term for the Inuit.

•
Halibut head
. Derogatory Inuit (Eskimo) term for Caucasians.

•
Scissor bill
. Halibut head.

Penny pinchers: 75% of Americans say they save pennies.

THE PAJAMA REPORT

We’ve written about “Underwear in the News” in previous
Bathroom Readers.
We thought we’d dress up a little for this one
.

P
AJAMA PROTEST
“Johannesburg, South Africa, nurses are wearing pajamas and nighties to work to demonstrate the need for a higher uniform allowance. They vowed to continue until their demands are met, citing a yearly figure of 54 rand ($9) for shoes. Officials said the protest was a potential security problem as it made it difficult to distinguish between patients and nurses, meaning anyone could walk into the hospital pretending to be a nurse. A spokesman for the North West health department complained that the protest was ‘confusing patients and turning our facilities into bedrooms.’”

—Reuters

ARMED AND PAJAMEROUS

“A bank robber adopted an unusual disguise when he held up a bank in Bexley, Ohio. Police say the man walked into National City Bank on Saturday wearing blue and white checkered pajamas, and bedroom slippers open at the heels. He didn’t have a mask. Of the man’s outfit, Sgt. Bryan Holbrook of the Bexley Police Department said: ‘It was a little unusual, yes, but then robbing banks is an unusual practice anyway.’”

—Whiteboard News

LIFE-SAVING PAJAMAS

“Belgian researchers believe that pajamas based on space technology could provide a breakthrough in unlocking the mysteries of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The prototype pajamas include five sensors, which monitor the baby’s breathing and heartbeat, connected to a small detection unit that triggers an alarm if it detects any abnormalities. The technology was developed by Verhaert, a European systems development group, which helped to design and manufacture special suits to monitor the vital signs of European astronauts.”

—Wired News

Only four days of every year are exactly 24 hours long.

ON SECOND THOUGHT…

“In February 2001, Girl Scout officials of the San Jacinto Council near Houston announced that this year’s father-daughter event would be a ‘pajama party’ dance in which fathers and the girls, aged 11–17, would come dressed in sleepwear. After some complaints (‘It would attract every pervert in the city,’ said one mother), the council changed the dress code to sweatsuits.”

—News of the Weird

JUST PLANE NUTS

“An airline passenger wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms stole a baggage tractor at Atlanta’s main airport and drove it onto an active runway. City police say Robert W. Buzzell, 31, walked out through an exit door that had an alarm at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The man was stopped by mechanics who asked him for an employee identification card. When he couldn’t provide one, they called police. Buzzell, who had a ticket for a Delta flight, was jailed on charges of unlawful interference with security and reckless conduct.”

—CBS News

PAJAMA POLICE

“The days of rolling out of bed and rolling into class are coming to an end. Pajamas, the preferred attire of some sleepy students, are no longer allowed in Hillsborough County, Florida, schools. ‘There’s no reason to wear pajamas to school,’ said James Ammirati, assistant principal at Stewart Middle School. Sleepwear is popular school attire, especially during cold weather and on exam days, students say. Nevena Novakovic, 17, a junior at Robinson High School in Tampa, doesn’t like the new ruling. ‘I think as long as you don’t look like a hootchy mama,’ she said, ‘you should be able to wear whatever.’”

—St. Petersburg Times

*        *        *

In 1992 Ernest Hemingway’s sons established Hemingway, Ltd., to license their father’s name. Two official items you can buy: Hemingway pajamas and a Hemingway shotgun. (Hemingway killed himself with a shotgun in 1961…while wearing his pajamas.)

If it takes a second to vacuum one square foot, it would about 36,400 years to vacuum Ohio.

THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Many people have a favorite book, movie, or TV show that nobody else seems to appreciate. And then one day it’s considered a “classic.” Here’s the story of an underrated television show that became a cult and critical smash
.

F
IRST BLOOD
After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1987 with a degree in filmmaking, Joss Whedon went to Hollywood to write for television. Doors were already open for him—his grandfather wrote for
Leave It to Beaver
and his father wrote for
Golden Girls
and
Benson
—so Whedon was able to land jobs on the sitcoms
Roseanne
and
Parenthood
. But he found the work dull and uncreative. He wanted to develop his own characters, in his own style. He wanted to do something different.

So he decided to write a movie script that would follow a classic horror film formula, but with a couple of major differences.

• First, it was funny and the dialogue was snappy and fast-paced.

• Second, Whedon flipped the character structure. The young blond girl who typically appeared in horror movies as a hysterical, screaming victim, was the hero. Men were helpless victims, not the heroes.

• To make it even more ironic, Whedon named his heroine the cutsiest, anti-action hero name he could imagine: Buffy Summers.

• The plot of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
a high-school cheerleader dates boys, attends class…and fights vampires, demons, and werewolves. And at the end, Buffy ends up not a hero, but an outcast when she burns down her school gym because it’s full of vampires.

A LOT AT STAKE

Twentieth Century Fox bought Whedon’s script, but it perplexed them. It wasn’t a straight horror or action movie and it wasn’t a straight comedy, either. It was about seemingly ditzy teenagers, but they talked like sophisticates from a 1940s Spencer Tracy / Katharine Hepburn movie. It also had an unhappy ending and an unlikely hero. Result: they made Whedon rewrite
Buffy
as a light comedy with cartoonish violence, no edge, and a weak, ditzy heroine. In other words, it became exactly the kind of movie Whedon was trying to parody. Fox’s changes didn’t work. Released in the summer of 1992,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
bombed.

A standard Oreo is 29% cream, 71% cookie.

BIG SCREEN, LITTLE SCREEN

Whedon was bitter that Hollywood had ruined his creation. He stopped trying to pitch ideas to the studios and became a screen-writer-for-hire, doing script-doctor work throughout the 1990s.

Meanwhile,
Buffy
was selling well on home video and Fox wanted to capitalize on its success. Fox executive Gail Berman remembered reading Whedon’s original script in 1992 and asked Whedon if he’d be interested in resurrecting
Buffy
for a TV show. He was, but on one condition: he would be head writer and executive producer, ensuring the series wouldn’t again stray from his original darkly comic, feminist angle. Berman agreed and a new series—a sequel to the film—was begun. Buffy (now played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) attends high school in Sunnydale, California, which sits on a “hellmouth,” a gateway to the world of demons and vampires.

Eleven episodes were filmed in 1996. The only problem: the show didn’t fit any category, so no network wanted to air it. After months of lobbying both broadcast and cable networks, the young WB Network agreed to air
Buffy
as a mid-season replacement. It premiered in March 1997 to 3.3 million viewers—the WB’s biggest audience ever at that time.
Buffy
became the WB’s first big hit and actually kept the struggling network afloat.

THE FORMULA: NO FORMULA

While the original movie was so fluffy that teenagers rejected it, the series followed Whedon’s vision and became one of the most influential and talked-about shows on TV. Young viewers liked it because it was hip and never condescending. Viewers of all ages appreciated its originality: no other show at the time combined comedy, horror, melodrama, romance, and action as well as philosophy, feminism, and mythology. Even critics liked it. Joe Queenan of
TV Guide
wrote:
“Buffy
is far from being the stuff of fantasy or mere satire, it is the most realistic portrayal of contemporary teenage life on television today.”

Out of garlic? According to legend, constant bell ringing will drive away vampires too.

After
Buffy’s
success, dozens of teen-oriented shows hit the airwaves in the late 1990s and early 2000s, all heavy on dialogue and wit, and many with a similar supernatural element.
Buffy
also showed that a woman could be the center of an action-oriented series. Among the shows that owe a debt:
Alias, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity, The O.C., Tru Calling, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Roswell, Joan of Arcadia, Point Pleasant, Popular, Veronica Mars, Smallville, Gilmore Girls
, and
Charmed
.

THE DEAD SHALL WALK AGAIN

Because
Buffy
was on a very small network, it couldn’t draw huge audiences like
American Idol
or CSI. (It never finished higher than 62nd in the ratings.) And because of that, the WB canceled
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
in 2001. Though it had saved the network in its infancy, the show was unceremoniously dropped—not even allowed a final episode to wrap up four years of stories. Fortunately, another small network, UPN, immediately picked it up and ran it for two more years. The modest but loyal audience followed. They’ve made
Buffy
a pop cultural phenomenon: there are countless
Buffy
books, comics, and Web sites. There’s even talk of another big-screen version, featuring the TV series’ cast.

Joss Whedon got the last laugh. While Fox tinkered with his movie script and failed, he got to do
Buffy
the way he wanted and it was a huge success. And because
Buffy
worked so well, Whedon now gets creative control on everything he does, which was what he wanted all along.