Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (7 page)

L
AWYER
C
ALLS
S
OUL
A
S
W
ITNESS

Thanks to President Clinton, Staff Sgt. Fruer Now Has a Son

TORTOISES HELD HOSTAGE AS LOBSTER WAR TURNS NASTY

S
NOW
S
TORMS
M
AY
B
E
P
RECURSOR OF
W
INTER

Blind Bishop Appointed to See

Diaper Market Bottoms Out

Ancient Blonde Corpses Raise Questions

LAWYERS GIVE POOR FREE LEGAL ADVICE

California Governor Makes Stand on Dirty Toilets

R
EASON FOR
M
ORE
B
EAR
S
IGHTINGS
: M
ORE
B
EARS

Ban on Soliciting Dead in Trotwood

C
UTS
C
OULD
H
URT
A
NIMALS

N
UDE
S
CENE
D
ONE
T
ASTEFULLY IN
R
ADIO
P
LAY

Gray whales make the longest annual migration of any mammal...12,000 miles round trip.

Everyone loves bleepers, er, bloppers, er, we mean bloopers. Here are a few great ones from the silver screen
.

M
ovie:
Lethal Weapon 2
(1989)

Scene:
Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is placed in a strait-jacket and thrown into a river.

Blooper:
Struggling to escape from the straitjacket, Riggs purposely dislocates his left shoulder. Back on dry land, he slams his
right
shoulder against a car to put it back in place.

Movie:
Return of the Jedi
(1983)

Scene:
When Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is frozen in carbonite at the end of
The Empire Strikes Back
, his arms are bound together by a leather strap.

Blooper:
When he is unfrozen in the sequel, the straps are gone.

Movie:
Terminator 2
(1991)

Scene:
The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and John Connor (Edward Furlong) escape from a mental hospital in a car, driving in reverse.

Blooper:
The stunt driver is driving from the trunk of the car, and you can see his head pop up just inside the rear window.

Movie:
Panic Room
(2002)

Scene:
When the group of robbers first enters the house, Meg (Jodie Foster) runs into her daughter’s room and dumps a bottle of water on the girl to wake her up.

Blooper:
They quickly make their way to the panic room, but once they’re inside, the girl is completely dry.

Bonus Blooper:
The survival pack inside the panic room is well-stocked with almost everything they need—except food. (It does have another “essential,” though: sugar-free breath mints.)

Movie:
Gladiator
(2000)

Scene:
After the battle with the Germans, Maximus (Russell Crowe) feeds his horse an apple.

First actor to refuse an Oscar: George C. Scott (for
Patton
in 1970).

Blooper:
You can see a crewman standing in the background (wearing blue jeans).

Movie:
One Hour Photo
(2002)

Scene:
Nina (Connie Nielsen) drops off three rolls of film.

Blooper:
Although the film she drops off is clearly labeled “Fuji Superior,” when Sy (Robin Williams) runs the film through the machine all the negatives say “Kodak.”

Movie:
The Last of the Mohicans
(1992)

Scene:
The British troops leave Fort Henry.

Blooper:
As the Huron warriors begin to attack the British, the camera moves behind the procession, and in the middle of the commotion a man in a blue hat can be seen raising a megaphone.

Movie:
Star Wars
(1977)

Scene:
Stormtroopers break into the control room.

Blooper:
One unfortunate trooper rushes in and slams his head against the door frame.

Movie:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
(2002)

Scene:
Just before the final battle at Helm’s Deep, the villagers run into caves for safety.

Blooper:
As the camera pans the rocky interior, one of the villagers leans against a stalactite...which wobbles back and forth.

Movie:
The Scorpion King
(2002)

Scene:
Opening narration.

Blooper:
The film is said to have taken place long before the time of the pyramids, yet all the swords seem to be made of steel, which would not be invented for thousands of years to come.

Movie:
Signs
(2002)

Scene:
Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) is in an Army recruiting office.

Blooper:
The “Army” poster in the background shows a soldier in a Marine Corps uniform.

Hold on! The Milky Way galaxy is moving at 170 miles per second.

Advertisers are always trying to come up with new ways to sell their products. Sometimes they end up achieving the opposite result
.

B
RILLIANT MARKETING IDEA:
In April 2000, IBM launched its “Peace, Love and Linux” ad campaign to promote their Linux operating system. The plan: hire graffiti artists in Chicago, Boston, New York, and San Francisco to stencil hundreds of peace symbols (for “peace”), hearts (for “love”), and smiling penguins (the Linux logo) on sidewalks in biodegradable chalk. Rain and normal foot traffic would cause the ads to disappear after about a week.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:
They were
supposed
to use biodegradable chalk, but somehow the artists in San Francisco either didn’t get the message or decided to improvise, because they didn’t use chalk—they used spray paint, which isn’t biodegradable and doesn’t disappear in a week. Some of the artists were caught in the act, but IBM wouldn’t fess up. “At first they feigned ignorance,” a San Francisco city supervisor told the
Los Angeles Times
. “Then they refused to give the name of the local ad agency. That’s when we parted ways about being amicable.” IBM eventually admitted guilt and paid San Francisco more than $100,000 in compensation. “I guess we got a little carried away,” an IBM spokesperson told reporters.

BRILLIANT MARKETING IDEA:
In the early 1980s, Pan Am Airways decided to run a promotion for its New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, route by serving a special meal on the flight: salami, cheese, and an apple in a basket, along with a small bottle of Mateus wine and a tiny tablecloth. The airline made plans to publicize the promotion by running newspaper ads.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:
The idea seemed simple enough... until the 2,000 pounds of sliced salami arrived. Pan Am’s agreement with its in-house food preparers stipulated that only
they
could slice meats served on the airline. So Pan Am rescheduled the newspaper ads and ordered 2,000 pounds of fresh, unsliced salami...only to learn that the little bottles of wine were delivered to New York, and the baskets were sent to San Juan. It rescheduled the newspaper ads again...only to learn that while New York was shipping the wine to San Juan, San Juan was shipping the baskets to New York. The ads were rescheduled again. Finally, when everything was in order, the ads ran, the special meals were served on the flight...and the flight attendants realized that the bottles had cork tops instead of screw-off caps. (The planes didn’t carry corkscrews.) Pan Am replaced the corked bottles with screw top bottles and a short time later switched the small jumbo jets on the New York to San Juan route over to much larger 747s. When the flight attendants complained that preparing baskets for all 300 passengers was too time consuming, the airline scrapped the promotion altogether.

Cosmic question: Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?

BRILLIANT MARKETING IDEA:
In 1998 Toyota launched an ad campaign aimed at young African Americans.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:
An ad for a Toyota Corolla that ran in
Jet
magazine had the slogan, “Unlike your last boyfriend, it goes to work in the morning.” And then in 2001 they ran an ad that showed a young smiling black man with a gold outline of the RAV4 on his front tooth. Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders were incensed. When they threatened a boycott of Toyota and Lexus, Toyota diffused the crisis by negotiating a 10-year, $7.8 billion campaign to improve corporate diversity.

BRILLIANT MARKETING IDEA:
In 1989 Kraft General Foods launched its “Ready to Roll” game promotion: customers who bought Kraft Singles cheese slices could match a “left half” game piece inside the cheese package with a “right half” coupon inserted into Sunday newspapers in Chicago and Houston. Prizes included bicycles, skateboards, cheese, and a 1990 Dodge Caravan. Odds of winning the $17,000 van: 15 million to 1.

ON SECOND THOUGHT:
Kraft only planned to issue one grand prize-winning game piece...but the printer made a mistake and printed 10,000 of them, plus another 10,000 winning pieces for the bikes, skateboards and free cheese. “Essentially all of the game pieces appear to be winning ones,” a Kraft spokesperson told reporters. When the company tried to cancel the promotion, the “winning” contestants sued; Kraft ended up paying $700 to everyone who won a van—and giving smaller prizes to other winners. Total payout: $10 million.

The word
pencil
is Latin for “little tail.”

Wartime leaders with an ear for a memorable phrase
.

“War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.”

—William Tecumseh Sherman

“I prefer fifty thousand rifles to fifty thousand votes.”

—Benito Mussolini

“Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.”

—The Duke of Wellington

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”

—Julius Caesar

“I want you to remember that no son of a bitch ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

—Gen. George S. Patton

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong

“In war, you win or lose, live or die—and the difference is an eyelash.”

—Gen. Douglas MacArthur

“Do not forget your big guns, the most respected arguments of the rights of kings.”

—Frederick the Great

“If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.”

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

—Herman Goering

“They are in front of us, behind us, and we are flanked on both sides by an enemy that outnumbers us 29 to 1. They can’t get away from us now!”

—Gen. Chesty Puller

Snobs? Rabbits and hares never mate with each other.

Is he lucky...or unlucky? You decide
.

T
HE SELAK ZONE

On a cold January day in 1962, a Croatian music teacher named Frane Selak was traveling from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik by train. Well, that’s where he
thought
he was going. Little did he know that he was actually about to embark upon a strange 40-year odyssey marked by freak accidents and near-death experiences.

•
The train carrying Selak in 1962 inexplicably jumped the tracks and plunged into an icy river, killing 17 passengers. Selak managed to swim back to shore, suffering hypothermia, shock, bruises, and a broken arm, but very happy to be alive.

•
One year later, Selak was on a plane traveling from Zagreb to Rijeka when a door blew off the plane and he was sucked out of the aircraft. A few minutes later the plane crashed; 19 people were killed. But Selak woke up in a hospital—he’d been found in a haystack and had only minor injuries.

•
In 1966 he was riding on a bus that went off the road and into a river. Four people were killed—but not Selak. He suffered only cuts and bruises.