Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (33 page)

Afterlife:
Roswell’s other characters were subsequently voiced by another actor, Marcia Mitzman Gaven. The new voice proved too jarring, so after three years Roswell was asked back to the show with a significant pay raise. (Maude remained dead, however.)

McLeaned:
Valerie Hogan (Valerie Harper)

Show:
Valerie

In the 1950s, the dog that played Lassie made $5,000 a week.

Deadly Plot:
Harper starred as a wisecracking but tender mother of three on this 1980s sitcom. But in 1987, the beginning of the show’s third season, Harper demanded creative control and double her salary. Lorimar, the production company, refused, so Harper didn’t show up for work. (The tactic had been successful when she had asked for a raise on
Rhoda
in 1975.) Lorimar ultimately gave in, but when Harper returned to the set, she lashed out at co-stars and producers, accusing them of trying to upstage her with her popular teen co-star Jason Bateman. Harper permanently left the show one week later. She says she was fired; Lorimar says she quit. To end the squabbling, her character was killed off in a car crash and replaced with Sandy Duncan. The show went on for another four seasons, first as
Valerie’s Family
, and then as
The Hogan Family
.

McLeaned:
Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy)

Show:
Dallas

Deadly Plot:
Duffy left
Dallas
in 1985 to pursue a movie career. Producers felt slighted so they killed off his character, Bobby, possibly the only nice guy on the show, by having him get run over by a car after saving his wife Pam from a hit-and-run driver. Duffy’s movie career didn’t pan out, and when millions of viewers abandoned
Dallas
with nobody to root for, the producers swallowed their pride and asked Duffy to return a year later. But how do you bring back a dead character? At the beginning of the 1986–87 season, Pam Ewing awakes, hears water running, and finds Bobby in the shower. It seems she had only
dreamed
Bobby had died, and as a result, had also dreamed the entire previous season of the show.

McLeaned:
James Evans (John Amos)

Show:
Good Times

Deadly Plot:
In 1975 Amos became mired in a contract dispute with the producers of
Good Times
. The argument was primarily about money, but Amos and co-star Esther Rolle complained about the quality of the show and its writers in
Ebony
magazine. Livid about the comments, producers released Amos from his contract in 1976. And to prevent him from returning, his character was killed in a car accident.

Rerun:
Twenty-eight years later, Amos would be unceremoniously removed from another TV series when his character Admiral Percy Fitzwallace died on
The West Wing
.

At three weeks, a human fetus is about the size of a sesame seed.

Back in colonial days, folks used to mix some mighty peculiar drinks. Here are a few favorites from the 17th and 18th centuries
.

•
SACK POSSET:
Made by mixing clots of curdled milk into ale or wine

•
EGG POP
(or
Egg Hot
)
:
Eggs, brandy, sugar, and ale

•
ALEBERRY:
Ale boiled with sugar, spices, and sops of old bread

•
METHEGLIN:
Spiced or medicated mead (fermented honey and water)

•
MIMBO:
Rum mixed with water and sugar

•
FLIP:
Mix strong beer with molasses and rum, then take a red hot poker from the fire and thrust it into the mixture to give the flip its characteristic bitter, burnt flavor

•
BELLOWSTOP:
A variation of the flip made with eggs

•
LORD MAY’S FLIP:
Like a regular flip, except you add a two-day-old mixture of sugar, eggs and cream to the beer and rum (leave out the molasses) and then heat it with the hot poker

•
CALIBOGUS:
A straight mix of rum and beer

•
BLACK SAP:
Cold rum and molasses, shipped in barrels and sold at general stores throughout the colonies

•
EBULUM:
A cider-based punch flavored with juniper and elderberries

•
SWITCHEL:
Molasses and water seasoned with sugar, vinegar, and ginger

•
COCK ALE:
A mixture of chicken soup and beer

•
MUMM:
A flat ale brewed from oats and wheat malt

•
WHISTLEBELLY VENGEANCE:
A specialty of Salem, Mass., taverns. Old sour beer, boiled with molasses and rye bread and served hot

•
MARTHA WASHINGTON’S RUM PUNCH:
(Taken from her journals) 3 oz. white rum, 3 oz. dark rum, 3 oz. orange curaçao, 4 oz. simple syrup, 4 oz. lemon juice, 4 oz. fresh orange juice, 3 lemons (quartered), 1 orange (quartered), 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg, 3 cinnamon sticks (broken), 6 cloves, and 12 oz. boiling water (Yum!)

Q: Name the only three English words that end in “ceed.” A: Succeed, proceed, and exceed.

The old saying “the best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry” comes from a line by Scottish poet Robert Burns. It means that no matter how well a project is planned, something may still go wrong. In the case of these plans, what went wrong was...they worked
.

T
HE PLAN:
In 1959 a program was started to aggressively introduce wild turkey populations to California. Officials hoped having the game birds would mean big revenue from local and out-of-state hunters.

IT WORKED...
By 1969 there were enough turkeys for a regular hunting season. By the 1980s, there were tens of thousands of them.

...TOO WELL!
In 2003 California officials began introducing programs to get
rid
of wild turkeys. There were more than a quarter million of the birds living in the state, and they were wreaking havoc. Biologists said they were invading habitats of native birds, consuming endangered species of plants and animals, damaging crops, ruining gardens, fouling backyards—and sometimes even attacking children.

THE PLAN:
In May 2003, German advertising firm JC Decaux presented fashion chain H&M with a marketing plan for a new line of bikini swimwear. The idea was simple: plaster the country with posters of German supermodel Heidi Klum wearing the sexy swimsuits.

IT WORKED...
The Klum ads became one of the most successful advertising campaigns in the country’s history. H&M reported huge sales.

...TOO WELL!
More than half of the posters were immediately stolen. Not only that, people smashed display cases to get them. JC Decaux president Hans-Peter Bischoff said, “We put up 750 small posters, and they were all gone within a few hours. It’s madness.” The company had to hire guards to protect the display boxes while they figured out a solution. The solution: H&M started giving the posters away for free.

Is your second toe longer than the rest? If so, 15% of the population has toes just like you.

THE PLAN:
After a hole was discovered in the ozone layer above Australia in the mid-1980s, the government began aggressive ad campaigns to warn people about the risks of getting too much sun. The ozone layer acts as a filter against the dangerous ultraviolet rays in sunlight, and the country already had the highest skin cancer rates in the world. One of the most popular campaigns was “Slip, Slop, Slap”: “Slip on a shirt, Slop on sunscreen, and Slap on a hat!”

IT WORKED...
National health associations credited the campaign with making sunscreen usage a normal part of life for many Australians, saving countless lives.

...TOO WELL!
In 2000 officials announced that nearly 25% of Australian adults were vitamin D deficient. How do you get vitamin D? Primarily by exposure to sunlight—the skin produces it in reaction to the sun’s rays. Lack of the vitamin can cause a host of health risks, including osteoporosis, and is believed to be linked to breast, colon, and prostate cancer.

THE PLAN:
To get its citizens to spend money, and thus boost the country’s faltering economy, in 1999 South Korea instituted a program making it easy for anyone to obtain a credit card.

IT WORKED...
The nation’s economic growth climbed by 10% in the first year alone.

...TOO WELL!
By 2003 the average South Korean worker had four credit cards and consumers had rung up more than $100 billion in debt. There were so many unpaid credit card accounts that the nation’s largest credit company had to stop issuing money from their ATMs and had to get an emergency loan just to stay afloat. Credit card debt was also blamed for a rash of suicides, thefts, kidnappings, and prostitution cases. “Koreans ate a poison pill,” economist Kim Kyeong Won told
Time
magazine, “It tasted sweet at the time, but was still poison.”

TWO REAL NOTES GIVEN TO TEACHERS

“Dear School: Please excuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33.”

“Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.”

Before the Civil War, the average work week was 11 hours a day, 6 days a week.

You’ve probably heard of the pilgrimage to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia that is a requirement of the Islamic faith. But have you heard about the
Kumbh Mela
? How about the...

H
OLY SITE:
Sites around Mecca, Saudi Arabia

THE JOURNEY:
The
Hajj
pilgrimage is the duty of all Muslims, if they are physically and financially able to make the journey. It always takes place in the 12th (and holy) month of the Islamic year,
Ramadan
. Some requirements of the Hajj: Pilgrims are not allowed to hunt, wear perfume, have marital relations, or argue; they must walk around the
Ka’aba
—the ancient mosque said to be built by Islam’s patriarch, Abraham, and his son Ishmael—seven times. (The
Ka’aba
is the direction that all Muslims face during prayer.) They must also stone the three pillars of
Jamraat
, which represent Satan, symbolizing Abraham’s rejection of temptation. More than 2 million people make the Hajj to Mecca every year.

HOLY SITES:
Four cities in India

THE JOURNEY:
The
Kumbh Mela
is the world’s largest religious pilgrimage. It centers around a Hindu myth: Long ago the gods and demons fought a battle over the
Kumbh
, a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality. During the battle, four drops of nectar spilled onto the Earth. Those drops fell in the Indian cities of Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain, and Haridwar. Every three years a
mela
(fair) is held in one of the cities, rotating so that each is visited every 12 years.
The Guinness Book of World Records
called Allahabad’s 1989 gathering “the largest number of human beings to ever assemble with a common purpose in the entire history of mankind.” An estimated 25 million people—nearly the population of Canada—attended.

HOLY SITE:
Ise Jingu (The Grand Shrine of Ise), Mie, Japan

THE JOURNEY:
The Ise Jingu is the Shinto shrine dedicated to Amaterasu Omikami, the Great Sun Goddess and mythological ancestor of the Japanese royal family. In the 600s A.D., Emperor Temmu declared it the most important shrine in Shintoism. At first, only Japanese royalty were allowed in, but it in the 1600s it was opened to the public. Ise Jingu also has the distinction of being one of the oldest—and newest—pilgrimage sites in the world. Every 20 years it undergoes
shikinen sengu—
all the shrine’s buildings are destroyed and rebuilt, using the same construction techniques that were used 13 centuries ago. (The next
shikinen sengu
is in 2013.) Today more than 6 million make the trip every year, with more than a million showing up around New Years Day alone.

Can you wiggle your pollex? Probably...it’s your thumb.

HOLY SITE:
Chek Chek shrine near Yazd, Iran

THE JOURNEY:
Zoroastrianism was founded in the 6th century B.C. and was the official religion of the ancient Persian Empire. Legend says that in 640 A.D. Muslim armies chased the daughter of Persian Emperor Yazdgird III to the mountains near Yazd. There she prayed to the Zoroastrian creator, Ahura Mazda, for her freedom, and the mountain opened up and saved her. A holy spring still runs at the site (Chek Chek means “drip drop”). Every June, thousands of pilgrims make their way up the mountain to a sacred cave, where they pray and drink the water from the spring.