Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (58 page)

In 1974 former New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren saw Television perform at CBGB. McLaren was taken with the look of singer Richard Hell, who wore a torn shirt, studded dog collar, and a leather jacket. McLaren thought Hell looked the way punk sounded, and he concluded that punk was destined to be a hit among young people. He publicly stated that he wanted to form a punk rock band and “make a million pounds.” So McLaren returned to his hometown of London and opened a punk-themed clothing store he called SEX. He then assembled some amateur musicians who frequented the store—Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock (later replaced by Sid Vicious), and John Lydon (renamed Johnny Rotten)—and called them the Sex Pistols.

Average length of a coat hanger when straightened: 44 inches.

The Pistols toured England in 1976, and their sneering attitude and distinct lack of musical ability (none could play more than four chords on a guitar) caused a sensation. Their songs called for revolution, insulted the queen, and were brash, sexual, and violent. Young English kids loved it; the Sex Pistols’ first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” even achieved minor hit status.

But all that changed in December 1976, when the Sex Pistols appeared on the British show
Talk of the Town
. Guitarist Steve Jones got into a verbal spat with host Bill Grundy and swore profusely on the air. The controversy immediately made the Sex Pistols widely known and the band’s first album,
Never Mind the Bollocks
, shot to #1 in England, spawning three Top 10 hits.

CODA

For most fans, the intensity of punk rock and its lifestyle were too difficult to maintain long term. As musical tastes in the early 1980s shifted to more melodic “New Wave” rock and electronic-based pop music, punk went back underground. But it never died. A revival of ’70s-style punk rock came about in 1994 when the Berkeley, California punk band Green Day sold 10 million copies of their album
Dookie
. This inspired a new wave of punk bands such as the Offspring, Rancid, and Blink-182, who all sold millions of albums. What was once an underground movement is now mainstream. In 2005, Green Day’s
American Idiot
even won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

*        *        *

Punk rock’s other innovation: rude and funny band names, such as:

The Buzzcocks, 100 Demons, Agent Orange, I Killed the Prom Queen, Armed and Hammered, the Flesh Eaters, the Battered Wives, Bad Brains, Bastard, Gorilla Biscuits, I Hate You, the Stranglers, Suicidal Tendencies, Choking Victim, Deep Wound, Kinetic Destruction, Butthole Surfers, Dead Kennedys, A Chorus of Disapproval, Jerry’s Kids, the Casualties, the Damaged, the Germs, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, the F.U.’s, the Vandals, Murder Disco X, Vitamin X, the Urinals, D.O.A., the Exploited, Shark Attack, the Misfits, the Vomit Pigs

Who was Edward Despard? He was the last criminal to be drawn & quartered in England (1803).

THE RANKIN FILE

This political pioneer was first and foremost a woman of conscience, whatever the consequence. You may not agree with her, but you’ve got to admire her spirit.

F
IRST LADY
In November 1916, a short, feisty suffragette from Missoula, Montana, named Jeanette Rankin beat seven male rivals to become the first woman ever elected to Congress. And that made her the first woman ever elected to a national legislature in any Western democracy. “I knew the women would stand behind me,” she said, “and I am deeply conscious of the responsibility. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me.”

Rankin was not afraid of work. Born in 1880, the University of Montana graduate had worked as a teacher, seamstress, and social worker until, at age 30, she joined the fight for women’s right to vote in Montana. “Men and women are like right and left hands,” she declared. “It doesn’t make sense not to use both.” And when Montana women got the vote in 1914, Rankin decided to run for Congress. With her brother Wellington as her campaign manager, she was triumphant and took her seat in the House of Representatives on April 2, 1917.

STANDING ALONE

Rankin was not welcomed with open arms. The congressional wives were unfriendly, afraid she’d have designs on their husbands. The U.S. Capitol at that time had no bathrooms for women—there’d never been a need. To make matters worse, four days after she took her seat in Congress, Rankin made the extremely unpopular decision to vote
against
America’s entry into World War I (the vote was 373–50). It is customary to vote without comment, but Rankin broke with tradition, announcing dramatically, “I want to stand behind my country, but I cannot vote for war.”

Rankin championed many causes during her two years in Congress: women’s rights, birth control, equal pay, and child welfare. In 1919 she proudly introduced the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, on the floor of the House; it passed and was ratified by the country as the 19th amendment to the Constitution. “If I am remembered for no other act,” she later said. “I want to be remembered as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote.”

“After they make Styrofoam, what do they ship it in?” —Steven Wright

WAR NO MORE

The ratification of the 19th Amendment was a triumph for Rankin and the suffrage movement. But her earlier anti-war vote had sealed her political fate. When she ran for the Senate in the next election, she was soundly defeated. Yet that loss only fueled her fire. For the next two decades, Rankin worked for peace through the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the National Conference for the Prevention of War. She saw war as a terrible waste and was fond of saying, “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.”

In 1940, when she was nearly 60, Rankin made another successful run for Congress on the slogan, “Prepare to the limit for defense; keep our men out of Europe.” Then, in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Despite pressure from the president, Congress, and her family, Rankin cast the lone dissenting vote, saying, “As a woman I can’t go to war and I refuse to send someone else.” Her vote caused a near-riot in the House chamber. She was showered with boos from the angry crowd in the gallery and had to hide in a phone booth until the Capitol police escorted her out. Jeanette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against both world wars.

STICKING TO HER BELIEFS

Though she never ran for public office again, she continued to work for peace. In 1968 at the age of 88, when the United States was sending soldiers to fight in Vietnam, she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade—5,000 women in black—in a silent protest march on Washington.

Before Rankin passed away at 92, she said, “If I had my life to live over, I’d do it all the same—but this time I’d be nastier.”

It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink to the deepest part of the ocean.

IT’S A WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

More proof that truth is stranger than fiction.

C
LOSED DUE TO AWESOME WEATHER
“Instead of enduring a day of inattention and spring fever, Bellingham (Washington) Christian School declared a ‘sun day’ in April 2006 and gave everyone the day off. School administrators had told the students there would be no school on the first sunny day that hit at least 63 degrees. After the forecast called for a high of 65, school was closed. Students were told to return the next day, when the forecast called for rain.”

—
Arizona Republic

GOOD OMEN

“A horror film fan who prayed that her baby would be born on 6/6/06 (he was) named her new boy Damien. The boy—weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces—was born six days after his mother’s labor was first induced. Suzanne Cooper chose the name because
The Omen
is her favorite film. ‘He’s a perfect baby—nothing at all like Damien (the son of the devil) in
The Omen
.’”

—
The Sun
(U.K.)

PHONIES

“In an inversion of the Third World call center set-up, a British man was fined for advertising that his ‘sex chat’ phone line offered ‘Filipino girls,’ when the women in question were in fact working from central England. He was unmasked when clients found the alleged ‘Filipinas’ had strangely familiar accents.”

—
The Standard

HOPPING MAD

“Bryan Johnson, who portrayed the Easter Bunny at the Bay City (Michigan) Mall in 2005, was pummeled in an unprovoked attack on the job. Police say the attacker was a 12-year-old boy who sat on Johnson’s lap the day before the incident. Johnson, 18, suffered a bloody nose. He kept his cool during the attack, deeming it inappropriate for the Easter Bunny to fight back.”

—
Detroit News

What do you call a part-time bandleader? A semi-conductor.

FINGER FOOD

“Brandon Seinna ordered a meal in a T.G.I. Friday’s in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2005. When the food arrived, he spied what looked like human flesh on the plate. It was, and T.G.I Friday’s had to scurry to do damage control. ‘A manager cut his finger while working in the kitchen,’ the company said in a statement. ‘In the rush of attending to his medical needs, the team members were unaware that a small piece of skin from the individual’s finger top had fallen onto a plate, and that plate was subsequently served to a guest.’ The statement went on to say that safety procedures were reviewed and another such incident would not occur.”

—
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

TRUE ROMANCE

“A 104-year-old Malaysian woman has gotten married for the 21st time—to a man of 33. It’s his first trip to the altar. The bride, Wook Kundor, caught Muhammad Noor Che Musa’s eye because she was childless, old, and alone. And no, she hasn’t got money. Before this, Muhammad reportedly said, he never stayed anywhere long enough for a relationship.”

—
Parade

JUST VISITING

“In Denmark, a 43-year-old man was arrested in jail after passing himself off as a bona fide prisoner and spending a night voluntarily behind bars. Per Thorbjoern Lonka said he carried out the prank to prove that rich people could easily pay someone else to serve their prison terms. He was right—the prison guards who locked him up failed to ask for his identity papers. But it didn’t matter—the judge sentenced Lonka to two months in prison.”

—
Daily Times
(Pakistan)

Cats also have “whiskers” on the backs of their forelegs.

UNCLE JOHN’S STALL OF FAME

One woman’s quest to do what the cops would not.

H
onoree:
Katja Base, mother of six, from Norco, California
Notable Achievement:
Solving “the Great Paper Caper”
True Story:
One February morning in 2006, Base awoke to find her house had been “TP’d”—wrapped with dozens of rolls of toilet paper. But the vandals didn’t stop there: They damaged landscaping, broke light fixtures, ruined the finishes on the family’s cars, and left the front yard covered with dry dog food, cheese, flour, and hundreds of plastic forks. Base called the police, who said they’d file a report but were too busy to chase down “teenage pranksters.” Unwilling to give up so easily, Base went into action.

• First, she went to the local supermarket and asked the manager if there had recently been any large sales of toilet paper. Sure enough, two days earlier, someone wiped out their entire supply—144 rolls, to be exact. Also included in the sale: “cheese, dog food, flour, and plastic forks.” But because it was a cash transaction, there was no way to trace the buyer.

• Base convinced the manager into letting her review the security tapes from that afternoon, which showed four teenage boys in line purchasing said items. One of them wore a letter jacket from the local high school with his name printed on the back.

• A parking-lot camera captured the teens climbing into a pickup truck, and Base was able to get the make and model.

• That night, Base looked through the school yearbook and found the culprits. Then she entered the teens’ names into an online database and found their addresses. Base neatly packaged up all of the evidence and brought it to the police.

Result: The cops brought the culprits in, showed them the evidence, and got a confession. The boys were arraigned on felony vandalism charges. Base told reporters, “Mainly, I pursued this as a lesson for my daughters. I don’t want them to ever come to me and ask why I didn’t do anything about this.”

Yum! Eww! Yum! Eww! An earthworm eats and excretes its own weight every day.

WEIRD PITCHES

Lots of celebrities have endorsed products. Sometimes it helps sales. The George Foreman Grill, for example, has sold millions. Sometimes, on the other hand, it’s just a weird idea.

• In the 1880s,
Pope Leo XIII
endorsed a “medicine” called Vin Mariani in newspaper ads. (It was really wine laced with cocaine.)

• Former Chicago Bears linebacker
Dick Butkus
made TV ads for the Kwik-Cook, a portable grill that burned newspapers for fuel. More football news: Bassett Furniture carries a line of furniture designed by former Denver Broncos quarterback
John Elway
.

• Teen star
Hilary Duff
endorsed a line of ottomans.