Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (14 page)

The premiere episode of
Al Shamshoon
aired in October 2005, on the first night of the holy month of Ramadan—the biggest TV-viewing night of the year. Muslims fast from sunup to sundown during Ramadan, and after the fast is broken with an evening meal, millions of the faithful settle in for a night of watching TV. Though 52 episodes were scheduled to air that month—with MBC looking forward to “Arabizing” all 17 seasons of
The Simpsons
in the years to come—the series was pulled after only 34 shows. Why? Because not many people tuned in to watch it.
Al Shamshoon
turned out to be just too strange a show for many viewers, especially in a part of the world where cartoons were still seen as entertainment for children.

But what really killed
Al Shamshoon
may have been the very thing that brought it into being in the first place: Satellite TV channels. Arabs with satellite TV dishes can pull in
non
-Arab stations, and some of these broadcast
The Simpsons
in all its original, unadulterated glory. (The show is also available on DVD.) Many of the people who tuned in to watch
Al Shamshoon
were fans of
The Simpsons
who just wanted to see how badly MBC would botch the job, and after having a few laughs at the network’s expense, they went back to watching the real thing.

Out of the 205 bones that make up a horse’s entire body, 80 are in its legs.

HOME GROWN

For Arab critics of
Al Shamshoon,
one of the most frustrating things about the show was knowing that if MBC had just taken a fraction of the money it spent on
Al Shamshoon
and hired Arab animators to create an entirely new, entirely Arab show from scratch, they might have come up with something funny and engaging that Arabs could understand and call their own.

Even as
Al Shamshoon
was falling flat on its face in 2005, work had already begun on just such a show.
Freej
(“Neighborhood”), a comedy about four grandmothers living in a quiet neighborhood of Dubai, a booming metropolis in the United Arab Emirates, was already in production.
Freej
was the brainchild of a twenty-something UAE national named Mohammed Saeed Harib, whose first exposure to animated shows came in the late 1990s when he was a student at Boston’s Northeastern University and his dormmates downloaded bootleg episodes of
South Park
and other shows to watch on their computers. Hareb came up with Um Saeed, the first of his four grandmother characters, while he was still living in the dorm. By 2003 he’d developed a concept for an entire show, which he sold to the satellite channel Sama Dubai.

FULL CIRCLE

One year after
Al Shamshoon
bit the dust, the first episode of
Freej
aired in the same coveted time slot—the first night of Ramadan. Unlike
Al Shamshoon, Freej,
the Arab world’s first 3-D animated series, was a hit from the very start. By the time the second season of
Freej
aired the following year, half of all television viewers in the UAE were tuning in to watch the show. Stay tuned: You may be watching one of these days, too: In 2009 Hareb entered into talks with American media companies to bring his show to the United States. (Until then, you can look for clips on YouTube.)

Mississippi’s largest “crop”: catfish—the state produces 150,000 tons a year.

PRODUCT FLOPS

Don’t try to make your product too new or too improved…or nobody will know what to do with it
.

N
OT-SO-INSTANT COFFEE

Since the 1960s, there have been two ways that most Americans make coffee at home: 1) a standard Mr. Coffee-style coffee maker, and 2) adding hot water to “instant coffee” in a cup. The first way takes about five minutes, and the second takes about three. In 1990 Maxwell House came up with a third option: Maxwell House Brewed Coffee—ready-to-drink coffee in a refrigerated carton. But it had to be heated up, and the foil-lined carton wasn’t microwave-safe, so the coffee had to be poured into another cup and
then
microwaved, making it no more convenient than coffee-pot coffee or instant coffee. Maxwell House Brewed Coffee lasted less than a year in stores.

FLAKING OUT

In 1998 Kellogg’s noticed increased sales for fast-food breakfast items and wanted to get in on it the action. So they introduced Cereal Mates: a package that contained a single-serving box of cereal, a small carton of milk, and a spoon—perfect for a break-fast-on-the-go. Only problem: Grocers didn’t know know where to place it in the store. The milk didn’t need refrigeration, but if they put it in the cereal aisle, consumers might be repulsed by the idea of nonrefrigerated milk. And the dairy case seemed wrong because shoppers wouldn’t look for cereal there. Ultimately, Kellogg’s put Cereal Mates in dairy cases and then spent $30 million on advertising to tell people to “look in the milk section” for the product. It didn’t work; Cereal Mates didn’t last a year. But what ultimately did in this “convenience food” wasn’t its placement. It wasn’t really convenient: You can’t eat a bowl of cereal while you’re driving to work, like you can a Pop Tart or an energy bar.

SUNDAE WORST

In 1986 the Johnston Company, a Milwaukee ice-cream topping maker, introduced the Hot Scoop—a hot fudge sundae that was designed to be microwaved for 30 seconds. The ice cream was supposed to stay cold while the fudge heated up, thanks to a strategically placed heat-reflecting lining in the package. It didn’t quite work—microwaves of the ’80s were still full of kinks and their power and quality varied greatly by brand. The end result was that the fudge and ice cream both ended up tepid, instead of hot and cold. The product disappeared from stores by the end of the year. Amazingly, another company, Steve’s Ice Cream, licensed the technology in 1987. Its microwaveable ice-cream sundaes were no more successful than Johnston’s.

It’s a rat race (guess which rats are winning): If the minimum wage had risen as fast as the salaries of CEOs, the lowest-paid worker would make $23 per hour.

INTERNUTS

When General Magic launched WebTV in 1995, it was predicted to be the technology that would launch the “Information Superhighway,” combining TV and the burgeoning World Wide Web into an entertainment juggernaut. Consumers wouldn’t have to buy a $1,500 computer to surf the Internet—they’d just plug the WebTV console into a television. Microsoft execs thought it was such a sure thing that they bought WebTV for $425 million in 1997, when the service had only 58,000 customers. (That’s more than $7,300 per customer.) Subscribers did use WebTV (rebranded as MSN TV) to surf the Internet and send e-mail, but did not, as Microsoft had hoped, create any revenue beyond their monthly $20 service fee. Microsoft incorrectly assumed that WebTV users would click on online ads or shop online (from which Microsoft would get a cut). Not only that, they actually
cost
Microsoft money in tech support. WebTV had so effectively courted technology-phobes that those customers became its bane, with more than 10,000 calls daily to tech support. WebTV peaked in 1998 with around 500,000 customers, but then began a slow and steady decline. The service and boxes still exist, but there are only a few thousand WebTV/MSN TV subscribers left. And Microsoft has stopped selling boxes to new subscribers.

“Kickboxing is my favorite sport. It combines the grace and elegance of boxing…with kicking.”

—Norm MacDonald

WELCOME TO DRUK YUL

Isn’t it odd that we call Germany “Germany,” while people who live there call it “Deutschland”? Here’s what we should be calling some other countries
.

H
UNGARY:
Magyarorszag (
my-uh-YORR-sag
)

SWEDEN:
Sverige (
SVERR-ee-uh
)

POLAND:
Polska (
POLE-skuh
)

JAPAN:
Nippon (
nee-PON
)

IRELAND:
Éire (
AIR-uh
)

GREENLAND:
Kalaallit Nunaat (
kuh-LAH-leet noo-NAHT
)

WALES:
Cymru (
CUMM-ree
)

ESTONIA:
Eesti (
ESS-tee
)

CROATIA:
Hrvatska (
kurr-VOT-skuh
)

FINLAND:
Suomi (
soo-OH-mee)

GREECE:
Ellas (
ELL-us
)

NEW ZEALAND, in Maori:
Aotearoa (
AH-tee-air-oh-ah
)

CAMBODIA:
Kampuchea (
kam-poo-CHEE-uh
)

SOUTH KOREA:
Hanguk (
hahn-GUHK
)

NORTH KOREA:
Choson (
cho-SAHN
)

BHUTAN:
Druk Yul (
druk yool
)

THAILAND:
Ratcha Anachak Thai (
RAW-tcha ah-NAH-chak tai
)

ALBANIA:
Shqiperia (
shkee-PAH-ree-uh
)

GEORGIA:
Sakartvelo (
sak-ART-vuh-low
)

ARMENIA:
Hayastan (
HI-uh-stahn
)

MALDIVES:
Dhivehi Raajje (
duh-VEH-ehh rah-JEE
)

MOROCCO:
Al-Maghrib (
all-muh-GRIB
)

BELGIUM, in Dutch:
Belgie (
bell-GEH
)

…in French:
Belgique (
bell-JEEK
)

…in German:
Belgien (
bell-GEE-in
)

(Belgium has three official languages.)

Fat chance: If you’re 5'6" and weigh over 165 lbs., you can become a Sumo wrestler.

THE LOST EXPLORERS:
MUNGO PARK

Veni, vidi…evanui!
(I came, I saw…I vanished!) Here’s the first article in a series on bold, intrepid explorers…who never returned
.

T
HE WILD ROVER

Mungo Park was barely 22 years old when he left England for Sumatra in 1792 and discovered seven new species of fish. Three years later, Park ventured from the west coast of Africa into the unknown Saharan interior to become the first European to reach the Niger River and trace its course for more than 300 miles. Imprisoned by a Senegalese chieftain for four months, he escaped with only a horse and compass and somehow found his way back to the safety of the coast. Upon returning to England, he chronicled his adventures in
Travels in the Interior of Africa,
which secured his reputation as the boldest explorer of his time. Any other man might have rested on his laurels, spent his royalties (his book was a bestseller), and enjoyed life as a country squire with his wife and children. Not Mungo Park. He had the “itch”—a compulsion to wander. So when the British crown asked him to lead another expedition into the Sahara, he jumped at the chance.

RIVER OF NO RETURN

On January 31, 1805, Mungo Park and a company of 40 men sailed from Portsmouth, England, disembarked in Gambia in western Africa, and set off overland. By the time they reached the Niger River months later, only 11 men remained; fever and dysentery had killed the rest. Undaunted, they began building a 40-foot boat in which to sail down the unexplored stretch of the river to its mouth. Park dubbed the ship the HMS
Joliba,
after the native name for the river. On November 19, more than 10 months after leaving England, Park’s party, now reduced to two officers, three enlisted men, three slaves, and a local guide named Isaaco, pushed off and headed downstream. Before leaving, Park sent Isaaco back to Gambia with a pack of letters to be taken home by ship. To his superiors at the Colonial Office, he wrote: “I shall discover the termination of the Niger or perish in the attempt.” It was the last anyone ever heard from him.

England has banned bagpipes twice: in 1560 and 1746. (They were considered tools of war.)

WHERE’D HE GO?

When enough time passed to convince British officials that something had gone amiss with the expedition, they made sporadic attempts to find Mungo Park, even hiring Park’s guide, Isaaco, to go back to the Niger to look for him. But aside from various rumors—Park had been killed by bandits, he’d been kidnapped by slave traders, he’d gone mad and run off to live in the desert like a monk—nothing conclusive was uncovered. Then in 1810, Isaaco returned with a dramatic report of the explorer’s death. Park and his companions, he said, had run the course of the Niger for more than 1,000 miles, fighting off hostile tribal attacks the entire way. Their luck ran out at the Bussa Rapids near the Guinea coast. The tribute Park intended for the local king was stolen by a go-between, and when the
Joliba
ran aground on a rock, the angry monarch sent his warriors to collect his toll. Unable to free the boat, and under a constant hail of arrows and spears, the desperate Englishmen (only Park and three others were left) jumped into the raging rapids and drowned. When pressed for proof, Isaaco admitted he had nothing to back up his story except hearsay.