Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (58 page)

•
spread—yodel

•
foster—mutate

•
raise—ooze

6.
Now you have:
“Yodeling poodles have mutated trousers of international funkiness that have oozed the exoskeleton of a benign Keith Richards to the current U.S. banana cream pie.”

7.
Now, the adjectives:

•
international—yellow

•
benign—moldy

•
current—charbroiled

•
U.S.—aboriginal

8.
And we get:
“Yodeling poodles have mutated trousers of yellow funkiness that have oozed the exoskeleton of a moldy Keith Richards to the charbroiled aboriginal banana cream pie.”

Fascinating, and it works with any quote! Try another quote, insert your own words, and have fun with...

George W. Bush...Bill Gates...Madeline Albright... John Ashcroft...Jimmy Carter...Henry Kissinger... Condoleeza Rice...Uncle John

COULD YOU REPOOT THAT?

According to researchers at the University of British Columbia, herring communicate with each other through high-pitched “raspberry” sounds emitted from their rear ends.

Worldwide, cell phone users spent $232.5 million on musical ring tones in 2003.

Can a dead person star in a movie? Well, if a star unexpectedly dies before film production is complete, what’s the studio supposed to do—pass up a great opportunity for free publicity? Not a chance
.

B
IG TIME

In 1970 a filmmaker named Raymond Chow quit his job at Shaw Brothers Studios, Hong Kong’s largest film studio at the time, and formed Golden Harvest Studios. Not long afterward he signed an up-and-coming young martial artist to play the lead in his first movie. The actor was Bruce Lee and the movie,
The Big Boss
, was his first feature-length kung fu film.

The Big Boss
shattered Hong Kong box-office records when it premiered in 1971. Lee’s follow-up film,
Fist of Fury
, was even more successful. His third film,
The Way of the Dragon
, did better still when it was released in 1972.

These three blockbusters put Golden Harvest on the map and helped introduce the Hong Kong film industry to the international market. In 1973 Golden Harvest became the first Hong Kong studio to partner with a major Hollywood studio when it collaborated with Warner Bros. on Lee’s fourth and “final” film,
Enter the Dragon
. Today Golden Harvest is Hong Kong’s largest and most successful movie studio. They owe much of their success to Bruce Lee.

THE CLONE WARS

When Lee died suddenly in July 1973, only four weeks before
Enter the Dragon
debuted on the silver screen, how did the studio honor him? By cashing in on the publicity surrounding his death, of course. And they weren’t the only ones: Hong Kong studios flooded the market with Bruce Lee knock-off films as fast as they could make them—movies with titles like
New Fist of Fury, Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave, Exit the Dragon, Re-Enter the Dragon, Enter Another Dragon
, and
Enter the Fat Dragon
, starring kung fu copycats like Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Liang, and Dragon Lee.

Roman gladiators gave product endorsements.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

But by far the strangest of these films was
Game of Death
, which Lee started but did not live to finish. The only parts that he completed were the fight scenes, including one with pro basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. There was no plot line in any of the finished scenes, but Golden Harvest plowed ahead anyway, taking just 11 minutes of the original fight footage and creating an entirely new movie around it, using a double to play Bruce Lee’s character Billy Lo, a movie star who refuses to submit to gangsters who control the Hong Kong film industry.

PROBLEM SOLVING

How do you make a movie using a dead actor? Golden Harvest tackled the problem in a number of different ways:

•
Lee’s double was filmed in wide angle shots, from behind, or in the dark whenever possible.

•
Reaction shots of the real Bruce Lee, recycled from his earlier films, were spliced into the scenes with Lee’s double.

•
In one scene they literally cut out a still photograph of Bruce Lee’s head and pasted it on the screen over the double’s head.

•
In scenes where the double does show his face, he wears a large pair of dark sunglasses and sometimes even a fake moustache and beard. In other scenes he wears a motorcycle helmet with the darkened visor pulled down.

•
The plot was written to explain the character’s changed appearance: Early in the film a gangster tries to kill Billy Lo by shooting him in the face. Lo survives, but undergoes plastic surgery to repair the damage, and emerges from the hospital literally a new man.

SOME THANKS

Had Golden Harvest simply left it at that,
Game of Death
would hardly be worth anyone’s while. But they didn’t. When Billy Lo gets shot and is rushed to the hospital, he decides to fake his death and even arranges his funeral, so that his assailants won’t know he’s still alive and coming after them. Golden Harvest added this element to the plot to give them an excuse to incorporate footage of Bruce Lee’s
actual funeral
, including close-up shots of the open casket as mourners file past. For a brief moment the camera even peeks inside the coffin, showing Lee’s embalmed face—probably the only time in history that a movie star’s cadaver appears in his own feature film.

Most watched film in history:
The Wizard of Oz
. More than 1 billion people have seen it.

TRAGIC COINCIDENCE

When the gangsters shoot Bruce Lee’s character Billy Lo, they do it by sneaking onto the movie set where he’s filming a gun battle and fill the gun with real bullets instead of blanks. Moments later, Billy is “accidentally” shot while filming the scene.

Fifteen years after
Game of Death
premiered, in March 1993, Bruce Lee’s only son, 28-year-old Brandon Lee, died on the set of the movie
The Crow
. While filming a scene in which his character is shot and killed, the prop gun, supposed to be loaded only with blanks, was loaded with a real .44-caliber slug.

Police concluded it was an accident resulting from the film crew’s negligence: Sometimes “dummy” bullets—real bullets with the gunpowder and primer removed—are used to make it look like a gun contains real bullets. On this occasion one of the dummy bullets apparently came apart inside the gun, and a slug remained lodged in the barrel. Nobody bothered to make sure the barrel was clear before blanks were loaded into the gun. When the gun was fired at Lee, the slug shot out and struck him in the lower abdomen. He died in surgery 12 hours later.

LESSON LEARNED

Game of Death
was unfinished when Bruce Lee died and was later finished without him. Similarly,
The Crow
was unfinished when Brandon Lee died and was later finished without him, using computer-generated special effects. This time the Lee family approved, believing that Brandon would have wanted the film to be completed.

The footage of him being shot was left out. In fact, mindful of the way Bruce Lee’s death had been exploited in
Game of Death
, the family had the footage destroyed. As a family spokesperson put it, “they didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

“If you love life, don’t waste time—for time is what life is made of.”

—Bruce Lee

Meep-meep
: An adult roadrunner can run as fast as a human sprinter.

Political pundits say that anything can happen in an election. Here’s proof
.

C
ANDIDATE:
Mike Rucker

OFFICE:
County Commissioner in Tallahassee, Florida (2002)

CAMPAIGN:
Rucker was putting up “Vote for Rucker!” lawn signs one morning when he noticed that someone had removed a sign put up just minutes earlier. He installed a new one (he had permission from the homeowners) and continued on his way. A few minutes later he drove by the house again—the new sign had disappeared. Miffed, he rang the doorbell but got no answer. So he went into the backyard...and found the missing signs. About that time, coincidentally, he felt the call of nature, so he relieved himself—right in the backyard. Unluckily for him, the owners saw him and told the papers about it, and his “pee of revenge” ended up in the national news.

OUTCOME:
His campaign petered out...and he lost the election.

CANDIDATE:
Arnold Schwarzenegger

OFFICE:
Governor of California (2003)

CAMPAIGN:
During the 2003 campaign to recall California governor Gray Davis, several women accused Schwarzenegger of touching them inappropriately during his acting career. One of them—Rhonda Miller, a stunt double in
Terminator 2—
made the claim just one day before the election. Within hours, Schwarzenegger’s press secretary, Sean Walsh, sent an e-mail press release to reporters and editors pointing to the L.A. Superior Court Web site. There, he said, anyone who typed in the name “Rhonda Miller,” would find that Miller had a long rap sheet, including four convictions for prostitution, three for drug possession, and one for forgery. Conservative talk shows and Internet sites jumped all over the story, bringing Miller’s credibility into serious question.

OUTCOME:
Schwarzenegger won the election, but the next day an interesting fact emerged: the Rhonda Miller on the court Web site was not the Miller who had made the accusations. A simple background check would have shown that the two women had different birthdays. But the damage had been done—Miller the stunt double had to endure being labeled a drug addict and prostitute. “When I turned on the TV set,” she said, “oh my God. I was in shock. What they were saying about me was horrible. I just stood there and cried.”

De-throned: King George II fell to his death...from a toilet seat.

Radio stations and Web sites issued retractions, but the press secretary claimed he had nothing to apologize for. “We did not make any allegations,” Walsh said. “I wrote that memo myself. I wrote it very, very carefully.”

CANDIDATE:
Howard Metzenbaum

OFFICE:
Senator of Ohio (reelection, 1974)

CAMPAIGN:
During the Ohio Democratic primary race, Senator Metzenbaum was running against famed astronaut John Glenn. Metzenbaum accused Glenn of being a lifetime “government employee” and “never holding a real job.” What was Glenn’s government job? He served for 23 years in the Marine Corps, fought in two wars (WWII and Korea), and went on to become the first American to orbit Earth. Glenn responded to the insult by giving the “Gold Star Mother” speech. He asked Metzenbaum to look any “Gold Star Mother”—a mother who had lost a son in combat—in the eye and tell her that her son had not held a “real job.”

OUTCOME:
The speech made national news and Metzenbaum looked like a buffoon. Glenn won the primary by more than 100,000 votes and then went on to win the November election and become senator.

CANDIDATE:
Ernie Eves

OFFICE:
Premier of Ontario (reelection, 2003)

CAMPAIGN:
During the campaign, a staffer for Conservative premier Eves sent an e-mail to media representatives about their opponent, Liberal candidate Dalton McGuinty. The e-mail ended with the statement, “Dalton McGuinty. He’s an evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.” When asked by reporters if he really ate baby cats and was a space alien, McGuinty smiled and said, “I love kittens, and I like puppies too.” Eves, the incumbent, refused to apologize and blamed the release on a staffer who “had too much coffee.”