Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (44 page)

• In 2004, a suspect in handcuffs tried to run away from Officer Denny Fuhrman. But he didn’t get far—his jeans fell around his ankles while he tried to cross the street. “He was flopping around like a fish out of water,” Fuhrman told reporters. The suspect got out of his trousers and continued running, wearing only a shirt and boxer shorts, prompting Fuhrman to make one of the strangest calls of his career: “White male, running, no pants, in handcuffs.” The man was caught and arrested a few minutes later at the entrance of a J.C. Penney store after a 61-year-old grandmother grabbed him by his shirt collar and pulled him to the ground.

*        *        *

IRONY AT SEA

On a voyage in 2006, the luxury cruise ship
Crown Princess
suddenly—and unexpectedly—listed heavily to one side. More than 240 passengers were injured when the ship’s four swimming pools emptied, flooding the decks. The accident, blamed on a faulty steering mechanism, occurred just before the start of the day’s movie:
Titanic
.

First city to have mechanized street cleaners: Philadelphia.

BEHIND THE HITS

Popular songs are more than just background music—we mark the milestones in our lives by the songs we listened to. Here are the stories behind how some of our favorites were created
.

A
RTIST:
Marvin Gaye
SONG:
“What’s Going On” (1971)
STORY:
By the end of the 1960s, Gaye had become unhappy with the way Motown was treating its artists, and with how it valued commercialism over content. Like a lot of other Americans, Gaye was also feeling disillusioned by the war in Vietnam, so in 1970, when Obie Benson of the Four Tops wrote “What’s Going On” and asked Gaye to record it, Gaye jumped at it—he felt the song perfectly summed up his frustrations. But when they played the record for Motown chief Berry Gordy, Gordy refused to release it, claiming it “wasn’t commercial enough.” In protest, Gaye refused to record any more songs until “What’s Going On” was released as a single. After a few tense weeks, Gordy relented. Good move: In January 1971, “What’s Going On” hit the Top 5. Suddenly, of course, Gordy was all for Motown’s music having a message, and Gaye recorded the rest of the songs for soul music’s first concept album, written from the point of view of a Vietnam veteran (based on letters Gaye received from his brother, who was serving in the war). The album sold two million copies in 1971—Gaye’s biggest success to date—and ushered in a decade of socially themed soul music.

ARTISTS:
U2

SONG:
“Where the Streets Have No Name” (1987)

STORY:
This song took so long to record, and caused so much strife between the band and producer Brian Eno, that the track almost never saw the light of day. Eno was so frustrated with the band members’ inability to agree on the melody lines and instrument sounds that one day he threatened to erase all the tapes—three weeks of work—on the theory that they would be better off starting over from scratch. The band had Eno physically restrained and then asked engineer Steve Lillywhite to mix the tapes into the finished track. The song became the third big hit off their album
The Joshua Tree
, reaching #4 on the U.K. charts in 1987.

Some Middle Eastern farmers breed bald chickens. Why? They do better in the heat.

So exactly where are those no-named streets? The prevailing theory: Africa. Bono traveled to Ethiopia in 1985, and the impact the trip made on him found its way into many U2 songs. “The spirit of the people was very strong,” he recalled. “There’s no doubt that, even in poverty, they had something we didn’t have. When I got back, I realized the extent to which the people in the West were like spoiled children.” But when U2 performs the song onstage, Bono usually dedicates it to his love of God, leading many to believe that the place “where the streets have no name” is actually Heaven.

Bono has never stated specifically where the streets are, but he has said where they’re not. “In Belfast (Ireland), you can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name.”

ARTIST:
Nirvana

SONG:
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)

STORY:
Before Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain fell for Courtney Love, he dated Tobi Vail, drummer of Bikini Kill, for a while in 1991. But she eventually lost interest in the troubled rocker and broke it off. One night, one of Vail’s bandmates, Kathleen Hanna, was hanging out at Cobain’s apartment, listening to him lament the break-up. At some point she grabbed a can of spray paint and scrawled the words, “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on Cobain’s wall. (Teen Spirit was an underarm deodorant that Vail wore, and her scent was still lingering on Cobain.) The phrase immediately struck him and provided the inspiration for what he later called “the ultimate pop song.” “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became the first big hit from Nirvana’s seminal album,
Nevermind
. It reached #6 on the Billboard charts and has since been called the anthem of a generation. Ironically, Cobain later admitted that he didn’t know that Teen Spirit was a deodorant until after the song was released—he would have never knowingly put the name of a mass-produced product for teenagers into the title of one of his songs.

Adding up all the times you blink in a day, your eyes are closed for a total of 30 minutes.

GEEZERS AND RODNEYS

On a recent trip to the Emerald Isle, Uncle John picked up some Irish words and expressions, old and new. Here are some of his favorites
.

Parish priest:
A pint of stout. It has a black body and white collar (the foamy head of the beer).

Jingler:
A telephone.

Donkey’s grudge:
Day-old cake. If a cake didn’t sell by the end of the day, the baker added layers of pastry on the top and bottom and sold it the following day. Add a layer of cream on top, and it’s called a Donkey’s Wedding Cake.

Mooching shoes:
Today Ireland is one of Europe’s wealthiest countries. But it used to be one of the poorest. Mooching shoes were dirty old shoes specially worn when asking merchants or banks for extra time to pay an overdue bill.

Hogger:
Someone who mooches drinks off others. Originally referred to indigent alcoholics who drank the dregs out of empty Guinness barrels, or “hogsheads,” left outside Dublin pubs for collection and refilling.

In a rat:
In a bad mood.

Rodney:
A twit.

Petty:
Outhouse. From the French
petit
, or “little,” referring to the little house out back behind the main house.

How’s your granny for slack?
A stock pickup line used by Dublin lads who were too shy to say anything else to girls they were interested in.

Shuggly-shoe:
A seesaw.

Swimmers and bricks:
Fish and chips.

Tickle-the-bricks:
A sneaky person (they step very lightly).

Black dog:
An unpaid bill; dates back to the days when pub tabs were written in chalk on slate blackboards.

Chairwheeze:
A fart.

Geezer:
A cat.

Child:
In some parts of Ireland, the word
child
refers only to females. It’s not uncommon to hear someone asking of an infant, “Is it a boy or a child?”

Spadger:
Little boy; from the slang term for “sparrow.”

Mot:
A girlfriend.

Shed a tear for Ireland:
To pee.

It is rumored that Napoleon owned a pair of spider-silk gloves.

LIFE IMITATES ART

Countless movies and TV shows are inspired by real-life events. But when real-life events are inspired by fiction, that’s when Uncle John takes notice
.

O
N THE SCREEN:
In the TV sitcom
Seinfeld
, actor John O’Hurley portrayed J. Peterman, owner of the J. Peterman Catalog, for 21 episodes (1995–98).

IN REAL LIFE:
In 1998 the real J. Peterman Catalog was in financial trouble and headed for bankruptcy. Desperate, the catalog company’s owner (the
real
J. Peterman) called O’Hurley for help. The actor funneled money into it, and within a year, the company was again turning a profit. The J. Peterman Catalog now has two owners: the
real
J. Peterman and John O’Hurley, the
TV
J. Peterman.

ON THE STAGE:
Tim Owens, lead singer for British Steel, a Judas Priest tribute band in Pennsylvania

IN REAL LIFE:
Judas Priest had been without a lead singer for five years in 1996 when Christa Lentine, girlfriend of drummer Scott Travis, happened to see a British Steel show in a small nightclub in Erie, Pennsylvania. She videotaped the performance and showed it to the band, and they immediately flew Owens to London for an audition. After singing just one verse of one song, he got the job. Owens went on to record four albums with Judas Priest.

ON THE SCREEN:
In a 1999 episode of
The Simpsons
, Homer invents “tomacco,” a horrible-tasting, highly addictive hybrid of tobacco and tomatoes.

IN REAL LIFE:
Inspired by the episode, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, did some research on tobacco and tomatoes, both members of the nightshade plant family. He then successfully grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots. Result: real-life tomacco. The plant even bore fruit that looked like regular tomatoes. But although tests on the fruit revealed no nicotine, Baur wouldn’t eat them. One tomacco fruit was destroyed for testing, one was given to the
Simpsons
writers, and one was sold on eBay.

Nothing to sniff about: You will have lost 20% of your sense of smell by the age of 20.

DUSTBIN OF HISTORY: AL GROSS

We recently came across the story of this unknown pioneer of modern communication. Who was he? Let’s put it this way: if you can talk into it and it isn’t plugged into a wall, thank Al Gross
.

F
DR’S REQUEST
Not long after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt summoned William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), to make a complaint. Winston Churchill always seemed to have more accurate, up-to-date information on the war than he did, Roosevelt explained. Churchill got his intelligence directly from spies behind enemy lines, but FDR had to wait for information to filter up through the chain of command. The president wanted Donovan to do something about it.

Donovan had recently read an article about a 23-year-old man named Al Gross who had invented a portable two-way radio with a range of several miles. Donovan thought Gross’s “walkie-talkies” or something like them might help solve the president’s problem. He arranged to meet Gross and get a demonstration.

Gross had been fascinated by radio since childhood and had built amateur, or “ham,” radios out of parts he scrounged from junkyards. In those days ham radios were bulky—as big as today’s microwave ovens—and too heavy to carry, and Gross didn’t like being stuck inside the house every time he wanted to talk to other hams. It took two years of tinkering, but in 1938 he finally managed to build one small enough to hold in his hand.

Four years later, when Gross demonstrated the device to Donovan, the OSS chief came away so impressed that he hired Gross on the spot, gave him the rank of captain, and set him to work building radios that American spies could use behind enemy lines.

JOAN AND ELEANOR

The first thing Gross did was take a trip in a high-altitude bomber over Nazi-occupied Europe. The bomber was loaded with radio scanning equipment, and as Gross studied the radio traffic he realized the Germans didn’t have any equipment that worked on frequencies above 180 megahertz. So he came up with a system—codenamed “Joan-Eleanor”—that operated at 250 MHz and was composed of two kinds of radios: “Joan,” a small walkie-talkie that spies could easily conceal, and “Eleanor,” an enormous radio built into the belly of the high-altitude bombers that regularly flew over enemy territory.

Only 2% of the immigrants who were processed through Ellis Island were turned away.

The Joan and Eleanor radios had a range of more than 30 miles, which meant that spies operating behind enemy lines could talk to a bomber flying overhead for as long as 15 minutes. And because the Germans didn’t have the technology to detect the radio traffic or listen in, the spies could use plain English instead of speaking in code. That meant that as soon as the bomber was back on the ground, the information could be sent on its way to President Roosevelt without having to be deciphered first. The radios even saved on training time, since people could be sent into the field without having to master secret codes.

LIFESAVERS

Joan-Eleanor was a huge success: The Germans never intercepted any of the radio signals and didn’t even know that such high-frequency radios existed. FDR got the intelligence he wanted, and the radios helped shorten the war, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the process. The spy radios were a highly classified secret—so secret, in fact, that Vice President Harry Truman did not learn of their existence until he became president following FDR’s death in 1945. Joan and Eleanor radios weren’t declassified until 1976.

Gross also aided the war effort by inventing another kind of radio—a one-way device that received signals but could not transmit them. It was used to detonate bombs. Operatives would hide explosives under bridges, and then an aircraft flying overhead would transmit a radio signal to the receiver, causing it to detonate the bomb. As many as 600 bridges were destroyed using Gross’s invention—another huge contribution to the war effort.