Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (38 page)

The Truth:
There was no band. Kirshner had endured so many problems with the Monkees that the last thing he wanted was another group. He simply hired two studio singers—Ron Dante (who provided the voices for Archie, Jughead, and Moose) and Toni Wine (who sang the Veronica and Betty parts)—and recorded everything with them.

A number of “Archies” bands toured the country claiming to be the genuine article, but the “real” Archies never toured. It wasn’t from lack of trying: “At one point they wanted me to dye my hair and put freckles on and go out as Archie,” Dante remembers. “I said, ‘Oh boy, is this a career move or what?’”

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“On behalf of all white people, I’d like to say we’re sorry about Vanilla Ice.” —
Dennis Miller

At the end of the 19th century, plenty of articles were written speculating on what life would be like 100 years away, in the year 2000. We read a lot of them for our book
Uncle John’s Indispensable Guide to the Year 2000,
but this was the weirdest. Apparently, “Uncle Richard” had a regular children’s column in the
Chicago Tribune.
This piece ran on December 30, 1900, under the title, “Uncle Richard Tells of the Bad Boys of the Year 2000.”

Y
our Uncle Richard has told you of the bad boys of many lands, and from history’s dawn down to the present. He will now peer ahead into the gray mists that veil the future and tell you what is on the cards for the year 2000, and whether or not it will repay you to sit around and wish that you could be a boy at that time.

In the first place, it would not be a good idea to wish to be a bad boy in that year, for there will be no bad boys then. Inventions will have been made so wonderful that the bad boy will have to become a nice sweet child...or step off the earth.

Teachers in the schools will have wonderful instruments on the desks that will record the name of everybody who whispers, and all the teacher will have to do to bring swift punishment will be to press a certain button on the desk, and a current of electricity will shoot through the victim, and make him think he is a human pincushion.

Fond parents who wish their offsprings to rise in the morning will not have to shout up the back stairs fifteen or twenty times and finally threaten to come “right up there now with this apple tree switch, do you hear me?” No, indeed. The parent of the year 2000 will press a small button in the sitting room, and the bed in which the boy is sleeping will have convulsions, and the boy will be hurled clear across the room. An electric spanker will then do a few stunts, and the boy will be glad to make haste in stirring himself suitably for appearance in polite society. If the boy sulks when he is downstairs his mother will punish him by not permitting him to sail with Jimmy Jones in his
new airship in the afternoon.

No bad boy will run away from home to kill Indians, for there will be no Indians at that time except the ones who play football...besides, nobody is going to run away if they know their fond mama is going to pursue them with the velocity and ease of the great bald eagle. For individual flying machines will be in great vogue that year, and mamas, as well as papas, will flit about through the air with great ease, and when they spy their offspring they will pounce down on him from some dizzying height, and bat him over the head with an aluminum wing if he says he won’t promise never to smoke again.

There will be very few horses in the year 2000 and all of them will be in the dime museums, so that the small boy will have nothing to curry except the family flying machine. All the milk will be manufactured downtown and there will be no cows to drive. The milk will be forced through hydrants to the consumers and nobody will have to go after it. The fond mother will say: “James, turn on the milk at the milk-drant and let it flow for a while so that it will be cool.” Will that not be an easy thing?

There will be no chores to do in the year 2000. An electric ax will split the wood and an electric shovel will put the coal into the buckets which an electric carrier will convey to the furnace. Does not all this seem too good to be true?

Of course there will be school in the year 2000, but learning will be much easier. Instead of studying in the books about the capitals, children will simply step into the teacher’s airship and be taken on a trip through most of the world’s capitals—Berlin, Paris, London—returning hurriedly and going again the next day. All the adding and multiplying and silly things like that will be done by machines, and history will be learned from watching moving pictures of the events to be considered in the day’s lesson. Of course, now and then some wicked boy may tie an aluminum can to a dog’s tail, but the dog will probably be an electric dog, so he will not mind it at all.

Does not all of this seem like a dream? Well, dear children, you have guessed correctly, and as Uncle Richard’s pipe has gone out, he will now wake up. So, good-bye.

We were looking for some new ways to entertain you, when someone came up with the idea of a singalong/poetry reading. You know, while you’re sitting in there, you can make some...uh...other kinds of noise. But we wondered—what should we include? That’s when Aunt Jenny came up with a book called
Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts,
compiled by Joseph Sherman and T.K.F. Weisskopf. Its full of those ditties you used to know when you were in 1st grade. Sing it out, now! (Explain it to your family later.)

(Sung to the tune of

“The Old Grey Mare”)

Great green gobs of greasy,

grimy gopher guts,

Mutilated monkey meat,

Little birdies’ dirty feet.

Great green gobs of greasy,

grimy gopher guts,

And I forgot my spoon.

Jingle Bells, Santa smells,

A million miles away.

Stuffed his nose With Cheerios

And ate them all the way—hey!

I’m gonna go eat worms.

Big ones and little ones,

Ishy guishy squishy ones,

I’m gonna go eat worms.

I’m gonna die,

Everybody cry,

I’m gonna eat some worms.

Eeny meeny miney moe,

Catch your teacher by the toe.

If he squirms, squeeze it tight

Then you take a great big bite.

‘Twas the night before

Christmas

And all through the garage,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even the Dodge.

The tires were hung by the

chimney with care.

In hopes that St. Nicholas

would fill them with air.

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider

And sat down beside her

And she ate that, too.

Mary had a little lamb.

She fed it castor oil.

And everywhere that Mary went,

It fertilized the soil.

(To be sung to the tune of

“The Star-Spangled Banner”)

Oo-oh say can you see

Any bedbugs on me?

If you do, pick a few—

’Cause I got them from you.

Planning on traveling abroad? Many cultures frown on behavior we consider “normal”—fingerpointing, yawning without covering your mouth, even eating while walking on the street. Here is a list of rude or vulgar behavior from around the world...which just might help you avoid touching off an international incident.

C
hina:
Never suck on your chopsticks.

Russia:
Never squeeze through a theater aisle with your backside turned to the people sitting there.

Turkey:
Don’t talk to elderly people in a louder-than-normal voice.

Thailand:
Avoid stepping on doorsills. (It’s believed that a domestic deity lives in them.)

Taiwan:
Never move an object with your foot.

Chile and Bolivia:
Don’t pour wine with your left hand.

Bali:
Never take pictures of topless or nude bathers.

Arab countries:
Don’t sit so that the sole of your shoe (“the lowest and dirtiest place on your body”) is pointing at someone.

Germany:
Never shake hands while your other hand is in your pocket.

Poland:
Don’t drink everything in your glass if you hadn’t intended getting a refill.

Indonesia:
Never touch anyone’s head.

Japan:
Don’t scribble on someone’s business card.

Brazil:
Don’t give the “O.K.” sign—it’s considered obscene.

Chile:
Don’t slap your fist into the palm of your hand.

Portugal:
Never use your bread to soak up the juices from your meal.

Kenya:
Never accept a gift with your left hand.

India:
Don’t whistle in public.

Iran:
Never blow your nose in public.

England:
Don’t start a conversation with “What do you do?”

Ireland:
Avoid discussion of religion or politics.

Iceland:
Never use a person’s last name when greeting them.

It’s always fascinating to find out who, or what, inspired familiar characters. Here are some we’ve come across.

D
ON CORLEONE
, the Mafia leader in
The Godfather
, Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel.

Inspired by:
Puzo’s mother. “Like the don,” he explains, “she could be extremely warm and extremely ruthless....[For example], my father was committed to an insane asylum. When he could have returned home, my mother made the decision not to let him out—he would have been a burden on the family. That’s a Mafia decision.”

MOBY DICK
, the Great White Whale, title character of Herman Melville’s classic novel.

Inspired by:
Mocha Dick, a real white sperm whale that was the terror of the seas in the first half of the 19th century. (He was named for Mocha Island, near Chile.) Mocha Dick was said to have wrecked or destroyed nearly thirty whaling boats and killed thirty men, beginning in 1819. Historians say Melville first read of him in an 1839 issue of
Knickerbocker
magazine.

WINNIE THE POOH
, Christopher Robin’s stuffed bear.

Inspired by:
A Canadian black bear. In 1914, Harry Colebourne, a Canadian soldier, was traveling east on a troop train headed for England and World War I. When the train stopped in White River, Ontario, Harry bought a black bear cub from a hunter. He called it Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg, and took it to England as a mascot.

Colebourne was eventually stationed in France, and while he was gone, he loaned Winnie to the London Zoo. By the time he returned, the bear had become so popular that he decided to leave it there.

A few years later, a four-year-old named Christopher Milne
brought his favorite stuffed bear, Edward, to the zoo. Christopher saw Winnie and became so excited that he decided to rename Edward. “Pooh” was his nickname for a swan he loved—he appropriated it for the bear, and Edward became Winnie the Pooh.

MARY
, the classic nursery rhyme character (“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow...”).

Inspired by:
An eleven-year-old girl in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1817, a young man named John Roulstone saw young Mary Sawyer on her way to school...followed by a pet lamb. He thought it was so amusing, he jotted down a little poem about it.

Thirteen years later, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale added 12 more lines to the poem and published the whole thing under her own byline. Today there’s some controversy about the authorship of the poem...but not the inspiration.

OLIVER BARRETT IV
, the romantic hero in
Love Story
, a #1 bestselling book by Erich Segal and a hit movie in the 1970s.

Inspired by:
Two students Segal knew at Harvard in the 1960s. The side of Barrett that was “the tough, macho guy who’s a poet at heart” was fashioned after Tommy Lee Jones (now an actor). The side that “had a controlling father and was pressured to follow in the father’s footsteps” was inspired by Jones’s roommate—Al Gore.