Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (5 page)

Guitar heroes: 20% of Americans have played in a band at some time in their lives.

Album:
The Beatles,
Get Back
(1969)

Lost:
In 1969 Paul McCartney decided that after several albums full of multitracked studio wizardry
(Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
and
The White Album),
the Beatles’ next record should be a return to the simple, blues-based, pared-down rock ’n’ roll of their early years—songs that could even be performed live, unlike their more recent technically intricate work. So the band convened to make an album McCartney appropriately titled
Get Back,
and invited a camera crew to make a documentary film of the process, also to be titled
Get Back
. The crew caught the Beatles in what would turn out to be the band’s final days. McCartney and John Lennon frequently clashed over the direction of the music, and George Harrison walked out of a session one day, vowing never to return (although he did). It was so taxing that the
Get Back
sessions went untouched for a year, until early 1970, when EMI Records forced the band to finish the album. Lennon decided to hire famed producer Phil Spector, whose first order of business was to change the name of the album (and the film) to
Let It Be
. Spector’s vision contrasted sharply with McCartney’s. He gave the songs an intricate, lush, sweeping orchestral sound, not the simple one McCartney had planned. McCartney hated it, and this dispute directly led to the breakup of the Beatles in April 1970, just one month before
Let It Be
was released. The original
Get Back
tapes were abandoned and locked away in a vault.

At one time, denture makers added uranium to false teeth to give them a “healthy” glow.

Found:
In 2001 McCartney met with
Let It Be
film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg to discuss issuing the film on DVD for the first time, and the conversation turned to the creation of a companion album, but the way McCartney had meant to do
Get Back,
stripped of Spector’s influence. After getting approval from surviving bandmates Ringo Starr and George Harrison, McCartney hired audio engineers to assemble the album from the original tapes. They were digitally cleaned up and remastered and released in 2003 as the guitar/bass/drums/piano-only
Let It Be…Naked
. The album was a hit, selling a million copies in the United States.

Album:
Chicago,
Chicago XXII
(1993)

Lost:
Chicago was one of the biggest rock bands of the 1970s with hits like “Colour My World,” “Saturday in the Park,” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” In the ’80s, the band became even more popular when it shifted to a softer, synthesizer-driven sound—songs like “You’re the Inspiration” and “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.” By 1993 the band’s popularity had waned, so they decided to return to their 1970s jazz-rock sound by recording
Chicago XXII,
with plans to release it in March 1994. The band loved it and considered it the best thing they’d done in years. But executives at Warner Bros. Records felt it wasn’t commercial enough and pulled the album from its release schedule. At least that’s what they told the band. Members of the group believe
Chicago XXII
was shelved in retaliation for the group’s refusing to sign off on a deal to license its songs for use in TV commercials. Chicago left Warner in 1994, retaining the rights to
Chicago XXII
… but no other label wanted it.

Found:
The album became an underground phenomenon; its mystique was boosted by Chicago doling out the unreleased music in pieces. Three band members each re-recorded songs for solo albums, a handful of finished tracks were included on a Chicago box set, and the band frequently performed the songs live, to positive response from fans. Rhino Records, which specializes in new albums by retro acts, took notice and gave
Chicago XXII,
re-titled
Stone of Sisyphus,
a proper release in 2008. The album didn’t trigger the group’s revival—it peaked at #122 on the album charts—but fans still called it Chicago’s best work in years.

Almost all flu viruses first infect chickens, then pigs, then spread to humans.

SUFFERING FOOLS

Just how hard is it to be smarter than most everyone else? We don’t know, but Uncle John says it’s really hard. Here are some more thoughts on the matter
.

“For every person with a spark of genius, there are a hundred with ignition trouble.”

—Kurt Hanks

“A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

—Douglas Adams

“Stupidity is a gift of God, but one mustn’t misuse it.”

—Pope John Paul II

“Brains are an asset, if you hide them.”

—Mae West

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

—Bertrand Russell

“The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.”

—Oliver Goldsmith

“Before God we are all equally wise—and equally foolish.”

—Albert Einstein

“My New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”

—James Agate

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”

—Euripides

“It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.”

—Anton LaVey

“The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”

—Voltaire

“Always be smarter than the people who hire you.”

—Lena Horne

“Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it. Or profit.”

—Josh Billings

“Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!”

—George Carlin

As of 2000, a Canadian law still on the books placed a bounty on all Indian scalps.

BAD NEWS / GOOD NEWS

From bad news you can often get an uplifting piece of good news. As these stories will prove
.

H
ONK IF YOU LIKE FREEDOM

Bad News:
Bernard Levine, 82, found an injured goose in his Toms River, New Jersey, backyard in April 2010. It had an arrow stuck in its chest.

Good News:
Lucky for the goose, Levine is a retired veterinarian. He captured the stricken bird, took it to the Toms River Animal Hospital, which he founded in 1955, and surgically removed six inches of the 26-inch arrow (as well as several air gun pellets) from its chest. He then brought the goose to the Raptor Trust, a bird rehabilitation center. Three weeks later, Levine was present as vet techs freed the bird—now four pounds heavier and in perfect health—on the trust’s protected forest land. “It feels great to see him free and liberated,” Levine said, “enjoying life the way a goose should.”

LIFE SAVER

Bad News:
In April 2010, Robert E. Smith, 48, was working as an attendant at a mental health facility in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, when he was told that a 20-year-old female patient had climbed out a window onto a fire escape and was headed up to the roof of the three-story building. Smith followed her out the window and tried to convince the troubled young woman to come back inside. She refused to listen, and made a lunge to jump. Smith grabbed her arm—and she took him with her. They fell together 30 feet to the ground.

Good News:
The young woman survived…and so did Smith. He actually maneuvered his body as they fell so that he would hit first, which not only saved the woman’s life, but saved her from receiving any serious injuries at all. “That’s just the kind of person he is,” Smith’s uncle, Thomas Katchisin, told the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. Smith shattered bones in both his arms, suffered a wound to his head, broke several ribs, and, after several hours of surgery, was in the hospital for nine days. But he made a full recovery. “I have no regrets,” he said later. “She walked away, and that’s good.”

Among the passengers aboard the
Mayflower
: a Mastiff and a Springer Spaniel.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY

Bad News:
In April 2010, Andriej Ivanov, 26, made his way to a bridge over the Belaya River in Ufa, central Russia. He wasn’t there for the view: His fiancée had recently been killed in a car crash—on the day before their wedding—and he was going to jump off the bridge and kill himself. Worse news: When he got to the bridge, he found that someone had beaten him to the spot. Maria Petrova, 21, had recently been thrown out of her parents’ home after she became pregnant and was there to kill
her
self. Ivanov arrived just as she was climbing over the railing to make the 100-foot plunge into the water.

Good News:
Andriej ran to Maria and yelled for her to stop. “Something in my heart snapped,” he said, “and I couldn’t let her do it no matter how broken my own heart was.” He was able to convince her to climb back down, the two ended up talking long into the night, and then the next day, and the day after that—and in May 2010 announced to their families that they were getting married. “All that pain was worthwhile,” Maria said, “because it led me to my Andriej.”

KARMA

In 2006
Monty Python
and
A Fish Called Wanda
star John Cleese performed his one-man stage show in the city of Palmerston North, New Zealand. He didn’t have a good time. He later reported in an audio diary on his website that the audience was unresponsive, the arena in which he performed was subpar, and that Palmerston North itself was so wretched it must be “the suicide capital of the country.” The unresponsive locals did respond to Cleese: They unofficially renamed their municipal garbage dump after him when someone put up a sign reading “Mt. Cleese” at the landfill. Said Palmerston North Water and Waste Manager Chris Pepper, “It’s popped up overnight, and nobody has said to pull it down.”

Tennis ball felt is usually made of wool.

DINO CHOW

So what did dinosaurs eat 200 million years ago? Don’t look now—it may be in your garden
.

C
LASSIC JURASSIC

You’ll find them in flower arrangements, funeral wreaths, back yards in Arizona and Southern California, and botanical gardens around the United States. They look like a cross between a palm and a fern, with a stout trunk and a crown of feather-like leaves across the top. But these ancient plants—called
cycads,
(pronounced “SY-kads”)—are closer to gingko trees and conifers. They’ve been growing on this planet for more than 300 million years, making them among the oldest species of any kind still living in the world.

During the Jurassic Period (200 million years ago), cycads dominated global forests. The Earth was much wetter back then, prime growing conditions for these plants. Based on fossil evidence, scientists believe cycads comprised 20 percent of all plant life at the time, so the jungles that Tyrannosaurus rex crashed around in and the brontosaurus munched on was most likely a cycad forest (which is why botanists prefer to call the Jurassic era the “Age of Cycads,” not the “Age of Dinosaurs”).

Cycads grow best in tropical and sub-tropical areas, but fossilized remains of the plants have been found on every continent and from Siberia to the South Pole. Scientists consider these finds proof that the Arctic and Antarctic were once much warmer.

LIVING FOSSILS

The key to the cycads’ longevity is their ability to produce their own fertilizer—in essence, they feed themselves. Their roots often grow out of the ground, providing a home for photosynthetic bacteria. In exchange, the bacteria provide nitrogen to the cycad. This nitrogen-fixing ability allows cycads to flourish in extremely poor soil: Some species can grow in sand, and many can tolerate salty soil. Sadly, many cycad species are endangered today, as their favored tropical habitat is rapidly being destroyed by human activity. Once widespread across the globe, cycads today are limited to ranges in Australia, Japan, sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, South Asia, Indonesia, Central and South America, Mexico, and Florida. Also, cycads reproduce slowly, which doesn’t help them survive abrupt changes to their environment. But cycads have already successfully weathered two mass extinction periods in world history, so don’t count them out.