Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (17 page)

Part II of the story begins on
page 349
.

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Interesting Sidelight

August Eiffel also designed and built the iron skeleton that holds up the Statue of Liberty.

Our friend Tim Harrower, an awesome talent in sniffing out
Bathroom Reader
material, came up with these quotes from sports announcers and interviews and graciously sent them our way.

“We have only one person to blame, and that’s each other.”

—Barry Beck,

N.Y. Ranger, explaining

how a brawl started

“He fakes a bluff!”

—Ron Fairly,

S.F. Giants announcer

“Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall—and it rolls off! It’s rolling all the way to second base! This is a terrible thing for the Padres.”

—Jerry Coleman,

S.D. Padres radio announcer,

describing a fly ball hit by a

member of the opposing team

“We are experiencing audio technicalities.”

—Ralph Kiner,

N.Y. Mets announcer

“If I wasn’t talking, I wouldn’t know what to say.”

—Chico Resch,

N.Y. Islanders goalie

“Arnie, usually a great putter, seems to be having trouble with his long putt. However, he has no trouble dropping his shorts.”

—Golf broadcaster,

during a tournament

“Kansas City is at Chicago tonight—or is that Chicago at Kansas City? Well, no matter…Kansas City leads in the eighth, 4 to 4.”

—Jerry Coleman,

Padres announcer, going

through the scoreboard on air

“His reputation preceded him before he got here.”

—Don Mattingly,

N.Y. Yankees’ star, on

new pitcher Dwight Gooden

“Lintz steals second standing up! He slid, but he didn’t have to.”

—Jerry Coleman,

Padres announcer

“I don’t want to tell you any half-truths unless they’re completely accurate.”

—Dennis Rappaport, boxing

manager, explaining his silence

regarding boxer Thomas Hearns

“It’s about 90 percent strength and 40 percent technique.”

—Johnny Walker,

wrist-wrestling champion, on

what it takes to be a winner

“Today is Father’s Day, so everyone out there: Happy Birthday!”

—Ralph Kiner,

Mets announcer

In 1956 it would have been impossible to imagine swivel-hips Elvis Presley singing “O Sole Mio.” But when he did, it sold 20 million copies. This piece is from
Behind the Hits,
by Bob Shannon and John Javna.

I
n March 1960, Elvis returned to the United States after serving a two-year hitch in the Army. He was greeted not only by loyal fans, but by a friendly press. Reporters who’d derided him in the 1950s as a “no-talent” or worse were impressed by his role as a model soldier.

Elvis rewarded these new allies in a number of ways. He appeared on TV with Frank Sinatra, the man who’d scathingly denounced rock ’n’ roll as “a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.” He launched a series of innocuous film musicals that were more Pat Boone than raunchy rocker. And in his records, he moved away from rock ’n’ roll. The new “improved” Elvis was suddenly acceptable to radio stations that wouldn’t go near his material even a year earlier. By the mid-1960s, he was winning Grammys for
religious
music; eventually he became a mainstream demigod.

And it all started with “It’s Now or Never.”

THE KING…OF OPERA?

“It’s Now or Never” is based on an Italian operatic theme called “O Sole Mio,” composed in 1901 by Eduardo di Capua. It was popularized in America by Mario Lanza, who sang it in Italian; then it was popularized again in 1949 by Tony Martin, who sang an English “translation” called “There’s No Tomorrow.”

But what was Elvis the Pelvis doing, singing like Mario Lanza? Actually, the King had always admired crooners like Dean Martin and operatic voices like Lanza’s. As he told a reporter later:

      
“O Sole Mio” has always been one of my favorite songs. I liked the Tony Martin version…and I often played the record by Jan Pierce, the opera singer. I used to sing it myself. I don’t read music, but I know what I like.

CREATING THE SONG

Elvis decided to record the song while he was still stationed in Germany. He told music publisher Freddie Bienstock, who was there to visit him, that he wanted new lyrics to it. Bienstock returned to New York and went straight to his office with the news. As it happens, only two writers were working there that day—Wally Gold and Aaron Schroeder. By being in the right place at the right time, they picked up the most coveted assignment in pop music.

Wally Gold:
“Elvis was a plum….All the writers, we all wrote our behinds off when a project like that was presented to us. This time we were lucky because we were the only ones sitting in the office. We jumped in a cab to go to Aaron’s studio. We got the title in the cab, the melody was already written, and in half an hour we knocked off the lyric. We brought it back to Freddie the same day and he said, “Great! Terrific! Go do a demo.” [A demonstration recording, so the artist can hear what the song sounds like with instruments, etc.] And we did.”

THE ELVIS METHOD

This was a typical Elvis procedure. If a song was accepted by Bienstock, the writers would make a demo—and if Elvis liked it, he’d record it exactly as it was on the demo. For “It’s Now or Never,” Gold and Schroeder made an up-tempo, cha-cha-flavored arrangement. Elvis loved it (it became his favorite of all his records), and recorded it in the same sessions as the
Elvis Is Back
LP, right after he got out of the Army.

Wally Gold:
“It was enormous. Number one in every market of the world, which made it, I believe, the #1 single of his entire recording career. Worldwide it sold more than twenty million. For a few issues we were in the
Guinness Book
as the largest-selling single in the history of music….Aaron wrote other hits, I wrote other hits, but a song we finished in a half hour was the biggest of our career!”

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“I don’t know anything about music. In my line, you don’t have to.”

—Elvis Presley

A
few thoughts about man’s best friend.

“You can say any fool thing to a dog, and the dog will give you this look that says, ‘My God, you’re right! I
never
would have thought of that!’”

—Dave Barry

“They say the dog is man’s best friend. I don’t believe that. How many friends have you had neutered?”

—Larry Reeb

“My dog is half pit bull, half poodle. Not much of a guard dog, but a vicious gossip.”

—Craig Shoemaker

“Outside a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read.”

—Groucho Marx

“If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.”

—Woodrow Wilson

“Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.”

—Max Eastman

“Acquiring a dog may be the only opportunity a human ever has to choose a relative.”

—Morecai Siegal

“Every dog should have a man of his own. There is nothing like a well-behaved person around the house to spread the dog’s blanket for him, or bring him his supper when he comes home man-tired at night.”

—Corey Ford

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”

—Aldous Huxley

“To err is human, to forgive canine.”

—Anonymous

“Dogs have more love than integrity. They’ve been true to us, yes, but they haven’t been true to themselves.”

—Clarence Day

“Every dog is entitled to one bite.”

—English proverb

Your grave is supposed to be your final resting place. But that isn’t always the case, especially if you’re famous. Take a look at what happened to these unfortunate folks.

A
BE LINCOLN

Claim to Fame:
16th president of the United States

How He Died:
Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14,1865

After the Funeral:
On April 21, his body was laid to rest in a temporary vault in Springfield, Illinois, while a permanent mausoleum was under construction. The body was moved three more times, then entombed in the National Lincoln Monument on October 15, 1874. But in 1876 a ring of counterfeiters made two attempts to kidnap the body and hold it hostage until an accomplice was freed from prison; the second attempt was nearly successful—it was foiled just as the conspirators were prying open the sarcophagus.

Between 1876 and 1901, Lincoln’s body was moved 14
more times
—sometimes for security reasons, other times to repair the dilapidated crypt. In 1901 Old Abe was laid to rest a final (so far) time. As his son Robert supervised, the coffin was encased in steel bars and buried under tons of cement. As far as anyone can tell, Abe hasn’t been moved since.

FRANCISCO PIZARRO

Claim to Fame:
16th-century Spanish explorer and conquistador of the Incas

How He Died:
Stabbed to death by his countrymen in 1541 in a feud over Incan riches

After the Funeral:
Pizarro’s body was buried behind the cathedral in Lima on the night he died, where it remained for 2 1/2 years. In 1544, his bones were exhumed, placed in a velvet-lined box, and deposited under the main altar of the cathedral.

Pizarro’s remains were moved repeatedly over the next 350 years because of earthquakes, repair work on the cathedral, and other reasons. On the 350th anniversary of his death, in 1891, a mummified body authenticated as his was placed in a glass and marble sarcophagus, which was set out for public display.

Then in 1977, some workers repairing a crypt beneath the main altar found two boxes—one lined with velvet and filled with human bones. The other box bore the Spanish inscription, “Here is the skull of the Marquis Don Francisco Pizarro who discovered and won Peru and placed it under the crown of Castile.”

Which body was Pizarro’s? In 1984, forensics experts from the United States flew to Peru to compare the two sets of remains and determined that the bones in the boxes were those of Pizarro. (The box itself fit the historical description, and of the two sets of bones, the ones in the boxes were the only ones with stab wounds.)

Aftermath:
When Pizarro’s bones were positively identified, they were placed in a box in the glass sarcophagus, and the “impostor” mummy (who was never identified) was returned to the crypt underneath the altar.

JOHN PAUL JONES

Claim to Fame:
Revolutionary War hero, founding father of the U.S. Navy, and the man who said, “I have not yet begun to fight”

How He Died:
Kidney disease and bronchial pneumonia. Jones was one of the greatest heroes of the American Revolution, but that counted for little when he died in Paris on July 18, 1792. Rather than pay to ship the body back to the United States for burial, the American ambassador to France instructed Jones’s landlord to bury him “in the most private manner, and at the least possible expense.”

After the Funeral:
In 1899, 107 years later, another U.S. ambassador to France, Horace Porter, became obsessed with locating Jones’s grave and returning it to the United States for a proper hero’s burial. Nobody knew where in Paris Jones was buried, but after six years of searching, Porter was pretty sure he was buried in a cemetery for Protestants. The cemetery, abandoned decades earlier, had since had an entire neighborhood built on top of it.