Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (17 page)

“They say marriages are made in Heaven. So are thunder and lightning.”

“I see my films as first aid to the modern male psyche. Most jobs today can be held by women. Many men have become defensive and enjoy being taken to another time, another period, where masculinity was important to survival.”

“Women are superior to men. You see a lot of smart men with dumb women, but you don’t see a lot of smart women with dumb guys. A lot of guys will go out with a bimbo, but women who are smart don’t do that.”

“The self-sufficient human being has become a mythological character in our day and age.”

“I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is ‘to have extreme prejudice.’”

“There’s nothing wrong with glamorizing the gun. I don’t think that hurts anybody. I’m for gun legislation myself.”

“It’s not the bloodletting that people come to see in the movies. It’s vengeance. Getting even is important to the public. They go to work every day for some guy who’s rude and they can’t stand, and they just have to take it. Then they go see me on the screen and I kick the s—t out of him.”

“If I just wanted to go out and make some dough I could gun ’em down as good as I ever did. But I’d rather not do movies where there are 800 guys in the theater and one chick who was coerced into going by her brother.”

People in the U.S. have been collecting baseball cards for over 100 years. Bubblegum hadn’t even been invented yet when Old Judge cigarettes gave birth to this American institution.

B
ACKGROUND

Baseball cards have grown from a kid’s hobby to a $2 billion-a-year industry. Their history goes back to the early days of baseball.

The Duke of Tobacco.
Until the 1880s, when “Buck” Duke took over the Duke Tobacco Company (later The American Tobacco Co.) from his father, most tobacco was sold loose, in tins; people would roll their own cigarettes. In 1885, Buck bought the rights to a machine that put out 200 ready-made cigarettes at a time. Now he was able to concentrate on selling cigarettes instead of tobacco. What he needed was more customers. So he began a huge ad campaign. Soon Duke had 40% of the cigarette market.

To cut costs, Duke replaced tobacco tins with paper cigarette packs. As Pete Williams recounts in
Card Sharks:

When he discovered that many of the packs were crushed in shipping, Duke came up with the idea of placing a cardboard insert to stiffen the pack. Not only would they prevent damage, but the “cards” would serve as advertising pieces and premiums to boost sales...He included cards of actors and actresses...[and] his idea inspired competitors to place baseball cards in their products.

The first cards were sold with Old Judge Cigarettes in 1886. They were 1-1/2″ X 2-1/2″—much smaller than today—and pictured stoic-looking players wearing neckties with their uniforms. Eventually they started using “action” shots, which were actually staged photographs of players reaching for, or swinging at, balls on a string. Instead of the statistics and trivia found on the back of today’s cards, these early cards had advertising.

WHY BASEBALL?

Baseball cards had three advantages for tobacco companies: 1) They capitalized on the growing popularity of the sport, which was just coming into its own; 2) The connection with sports heroes helped combat the notion that store-bought cigarettes were effeminate; and 3) They were collectible. Pete Williams notes:

With the cards came card collecting, which presented a challenge since the cards came one to a pack. Collecting became something of a family affair, as young boys would obtain the cards from their fathers and urge them to buy more tobacco products. Non-tobacco users who wished to collect had to pick up the tobacco habit—as the companies hoped—or find a user willing to part with the cards.

THE PRECIOUS SET

Duke Tobacco got out of the baseball card business in 1890, when it combined with other tobacco companies to form American Tobacco. With a virtual monopoly on cigarettes, there was no need for promotions.

But from 1909 to 1911, anti-trust laws were used to break American Tobacco up, so the company went back to using baseball cards as a promotion. They came out with a 524-card set called the “T206”—which has turned into the most valuable baseball card series in history. According to
Card Sharks
, here’s why:

Shortly after production began, shortstop Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates (now a Hall of Famer) objected to the use of his photo and threatened legal action if his card was not removed from the set. American Tobacco complied, but not before a quantity of Wagners had been printed and shipped with tobacco.

For a long time, baseball historians believed Wagner objected because he disapproved of cigarette-smoking. Then they found out he’d once endorsed a brand of cigars...and realized he just didn’t want them using his likeness without paying for it.

Today, the few Wagner cards that slipped out have become the Holy Grail of baseball card collecting.

In 1997, one was sold at auction for $641,000!

There’s more. For part II of the
baseball card story, turn to
page 368
.

Peggy Thompson and Saeko Usukawa have put together a collection of great lines from Westerns called
Tall in the Saddle.
Some samples:

Young Eddie:
“He don’t look so tough to me.”

Cowboy:
“If he ain’t so tough, there’s been an awful lot of sudden natural deaths in his vicinity.”

—The Gunfighter
(1950)

“I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner. And that’s what I try to do. Sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to the other.”

—Paul Newman,
Hud
(1963)

“Sonny, I can see we ain’t going to have you ‘round long enough to get tired of your company.”

—Richard Widmark,
The Law and Jake Wade
(1958)

Cowboy:
“For a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived.”

Dance hall girl:
“You mean to say you reformed?”

Cowboy:
“No, I got over being ashamed.”

—Goin’ to Town
(1935)

J.W. Grant:
“You bastard!”

Hired gun Henry “Rico” Fardan:
“Yes, sir. In my case an accident of birth. But you, you’re a self-made man.”

—The Professionals
(1966)

Fletch McCloud
(Roy Rogers): “Ever hear what William Shakespeare said? ‘All’s well that ends well.’”

Cowboy Bob Seton
(John Wayne): “Shakespeare, huh? He must have come from Texas. We’ve been saying that for years.”

—The Dark Command
(1940)

Trampas:
“When I want to know anything from you, I’ll tell you, you long-legged son of a—“

“The Virginian”:
“If you want to call me that, smile.”

—The Virginian
(1929)

Sheriff Bullock:
“How is he, Doc?”

Doc:
“Well, he suffered lacerations, contusions, and a concussion. His jugular vein was severed in three places. I counted four broken ribs and a compound fracture of the skull. To put it briefly, he’s real dead.”

—Rancho Notorious
(1952)

“I like my coffee strong enough to float a pistol.”

—Ernest Borgnine,
Jubal
(1955)

“I don’t want trouble with anybody—unless I start it.”

—“Wild Bill” Elliott,
The Showdown
(1950)

Here’s the BRI’s quick, all-purpose language lesson. Now, no matter where you’re traveling, you’ll be able to ask the essential question: “Where is the bathroom?” Are you ready? Okay, now repeat after us...

Spanish:
¿Donde está el baño?

Danish:
Hvor er toilettet?

Japanese:
Torie wa doko desu ka?

Russian:
Gde zdes tualet?

Hawai‘I (Hawaiian):
Ai hea lua?

Tâi-Oân Hö-lö-Oë (Taiwanese):
Piän-só. tï tó-üi?

Italian:
Dove e il bagno?

Cymraeg (Welsh):
Ble mae’r toiled?

Magyar (Hungarian):
Hol a mosdó?

Kiswahili (Swahili):
Choo kiko wapi?

Dutch:
Waar is het toilet?

Bahasa (Indonesian):
Kamar kecil di mana?

Afrikaans:
Waar is diebad-kamer? Waar is die toilet?

Româna (Romanian):
Unde este toaleta?

Bosanski (Bosnian):
Gdje je toalet?

French:
Ou sont les toilettes?

C^estina:
Kde je záchod?

Esperanto:
Kie estas la necesejo?

German:
Wo ist die Toilette?

Eesti (Estonia):
Kus on väljakäik?

Íslenska (Icelandic):
Hvar er snyrtingin?

Interlingua:
Ubi es le lavatorio?

Polski (Polish):
Gdzie jest toaleta?

Tagalog:
Nasaan ang kasilyas?

Yiddish:
vu iz der bodtsimer?

Cymraeg (Welsh):
Ble mae’r toiled?

Latviski (Latvian):
Kur atrodas vannas istaba?

Lietuvis (Lithuanian):
Kur yra tualetas?

Srpski (Serbian):
Gde je toalet?

Ivrit (Hebrew):
eifo ha’sherutim?

It’s hard to shock anyone with nudity today. But stupidity is always a shock. These characters demonstrate that whether you’re dressed or naked, you can still be dumber than sin.

N
UDE...
”In 1831, when Edgar Allen Poe was at West Point, parade dress instructions called for ‘white belts and gloves, under arms.’ According to legend, Poe took them literally. He appeared on parade ground, rifle balanced on his bare shoulder, wearing nothing but white belt and gloves. He was expelled.”

PRUDE...
“Madama de la Bresse directed that her life savings of 125,000 francs be used to buy clothing for naked Paris snowmen. In 1876 the courts upheld the validity of her bequest, making French snowmen the best dressed in the world.” (
More Best, Worst, and Most Unusual
)

NUDE...
“When state police in Ogdensburg, New York, caught William J. Hess, 39, burglarizing a greenhouse, he was wearing nothing. He replied that he was naked so that anyone who saw him in the greenhouse couldn’t identify him by describing his clothing.” (
Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest
)

PRUDE...
“The Dallas grocery chain Minyard’s pulled the November 1993 issue of
Discover
magazine from its shelves because of the cover photo of a sculpture of two apes, the 3.2-million-year-old
Australopithecus afarensis
, with their genitals exposed. The apes are believed to be our earliest ancestors. ‘When it shows the genitals or the breasts,’ Minyard’s president Jay L. Williams said, ‘we’re going to pull it.’” (
Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest
)

NUDE...
“In Greenfield, Wisconsin, owners of the Classic Lanes bowling alley decided to jazz up their sport with a little humor. Outside their building, they posted signs reading BOWL NAKED, BOWL FREE. Obviously, no one took them up on their offer...until April 16, 1996. That’s the day 21-year-old Scott Hughes strolled into
the bowling alley, rented a pair of shoes, and proceeded to take off his clothes. As a local church group watched in horror, Hughes went on to bowl a 225 game—wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and bowling shoes.” (
Knuckleheads in the News
)

PRUDE...
Francesca Nortyega, a well-known European reformer, willed her estate to a niece on the condition that she keep the family goldfish outfitted in pants.

NUDE...
In 1995, San Francisco mayor Frank Jordan, running for reelection, tried to show he was a ‘regular guy’ by accepting a challenge from two disc jockeys to take a nude shower with them. Photos of the shower circulated all over the city. He lost in a landslide.

PRUDE...
“East German swimmer Sylvia Ester set a world 100-meters record of 57.89 seconds in 1967—but officials refused to recognize it because she swam in the nude.” (
World’s Biggest Mistakes
)