Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (42 page)

THE REAL THING

Traditionally, scientists have dismissed aphrodisiacs as frauds. But new research into medicinal herbs and pheromones (chemical messengers) has produced some interesting results. Experts now believe that some aphrodisiacs may really work. Here are seven “maybe’s.”

1. Yohimbe:
The bark of a West African tree thought for centuries to produce passion in African men. Research has found that the chemical
yohimbine can in fact excite men by increasing blood flow. The drug was approved by the FDA 10 years ago as a prescription treatment for impotence.

2. Oysters:
Traditionally considered an aphrodisiac because of their association with the sea and their resemblance to female sex organs. However, now we also know that they’re very rich in zinc—a mineral necessary to male sexual health. A man deficient in zinc is at high risk for infertility and loss of libido.

3. Chocolate:
Contains PEA, a neurotransmitter that is a natural form of the stimulant amphetamine. It has been shown that either love or lust increases the level of PEA in the bloodstream and that with heartbreak, the levels drop dramatically.

4. Caffeine:
Research has shown that coffee drinkers are more sexually active than non-drinkers, but no one’s sure if that’s because of something in the caffeine, or just because it keeps people awake, and therefore interested, after bedtime.

5. DHEA:
This hormone has been called the “natural aphrodisiac” by doctors. It’s been shown in studies that blood levels of DHEA predict sexual thoughts and desire. DHEA became a food-supplement fad when it was hyped in the media as a way to increase energy and maybe even prevent cancer or heart disease (as well as boosting the libido).

6. Cinnamon:
According to Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Research Foundation, the aroma of cinnamon has the ability to arouse lust. As reported in
Psychobgy Today
, “Hirsch fitted male medical students with gauges that detected their excitement level, and then exposed them to dozens of fragrances. The only one that got a rise was the smell of hot cinnamon buns.”

7. Androstenone:
This is a pheromone. Scientists conducting research with animals found that androstenone produced by boars had a very positive effect on the sexual receptivity of sows. Androstenone is also found in human sweat.

FINAL THOUGHT

“Power is the great aphrodisiac.”—
Henry Kissinger

More of the annual Top 10 TV shows of the past 50 years.

1973-1974

(1) All in the Family

(2) The Waltons

(3) Sanford and Son

(4) M*A*S*H

(5) Hawaii Five-O

(6) Maude

(7) Kojak

(8) The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour

(9) The Mary Tyler Moore Show

(10) Cannon

1974-1975

(1) All in the Family

(2) Sanford and Son

(3) Chico and the Man

(4) The Jeffersons

(5) M*A*S*H

(6) Rhoda

(7) The Waltons

(8) Good Times

(9) Maude

(10) Hawaii Five-O

1975-1976

(1) All in the Family

(2) Laverne and Shirley

(3) Rich Man, Poor Man

(4) Maude

(5) The Bionic Woman

(6) Phyllis

(7) The Six Million Dollar Man

(8) Sanford and Son

(9) Rhoda

(10) Happy Days

1976-1977

(1) Happy Days

(2) Laverne and Shirley

(3) The ABC Monday Night Movie

(4) M*A*S*H

(5) Charlie’s Angels

(6) The Big Event

(7) The Six Million Dollar Man

(8) The ABC Sunday Night Movie

(9) Baretta

(10) One Day at a Time

1977-1978

(1) Laverne and Shirley

(2) Happy Days

(3) Three’s Company

(4) Charlie’s Angels

(5) All in the Family

(6) (tie) Little House on the Prairie

(6) (tie) 60 Minutes

(8) (tie) M*A*S*H

(8) (tie) One Day at a Time

(10) Alice

1978-1979

(1) Three’s Company

(2) Laverne and Shirley

(3) Mork & Mindy

(4) Happy Days

(5) Angie

(6) (tie) 60 Minutes

(6) (tie) M*A*S*H

(8) The Ropers

(9) Charlie’s Angels

(10) (tie) All in the Family

A few words from Harry Truman, our 33rd president.

“It isn’t polls or public opinion at the moment that counts. It is right and wrong and leadership—men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.”

“We’re going to lick ’em just as sure as you stand there!”

“Whenever the press quits abusing me, I know I’m in the wrong pew.”

To his daughter: “Your dad will never be reckoned among the great. But you can be sure he did his level best and gave all he had to his country. There is an epitaph in Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona, which reads, ‘Here lies Jack Williams; he done his damnedest.’ What more can a person do?”

“If they want to ask me some impudent questions, I’ll try to give them some impudent answers.”

“You won’t get any doubletalk from me. I’m either for something or against it.”

“This is your fight. I am only waking you up to the fact that this is your fight. You better get out and help me win this fight, or you’re going to be the loser, not I.”

“I hope you will join me in my crusade to keep the country from going to the dogs.”

“Some of the presidents were great, and some weren’t. I can say that because I wasn’t one of the great presidents, but I had a good time trying.”

“I don’t believe in anti-anything. A man has to have a program; you have to be
for
something, otherwise you will never get anywhere.”

“My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating—and when to stop working.”

We’ll bet you didn’t know your favorite rock singers could talk
, too.
Here’s some of the profound things they have to say, from
The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Quote Book,
by Merrit Malloy.

“I’d rather have ten years of super-hypermost than live to be seventy by sitting in some goddamn chair watching TV.”

—Janis Joplin

“When you’re as rich as I am, you don’t have to be political.”

—Sting

“People used to throw rocks at me for my clothes. Now they wanna know where I buy them.”

—Cyndi Lauper

“I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.”

—Mick Jagger

“People have this obsession: They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you, you know?”

—
Mick Jagger

“Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin’, too.”

—
B. B. King

“Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.”

—Frank Zappa

“There are no more political statements. The only thing rock fans have in common is their music.”

—Bob Pittman,

Vice President, MTV

“Some American kid recognized who I was and he says, ‘Your dad eats cow’s heads/ My daughter says, ‘You don’t, Daddy. I’ve never seen you eat a cow’s head.’ I thought that was kind of sweet.”

—Ozzy Osbourne

“I would think nothing of tipping over a table with a whole long spread on it just because there was turkey roll on the table and I had explicitly said, ‘No turkey roll.’”

—Steven Tyler,

Aerosmith

“Mainly, I helped wipe out the sixties.”

—Iggy Pop

You might be surprised at the role that trickery played in helping an up-and-coming singer get the “lucky break” he needed.

B
ACKGROUND

In 1942 a young singer named Frank Sinatra gave a performance at New York’s Paramount Theater. Until then, his career had gotten little attention. But that night was different—Sinatra played to a packed house and gave such a powerful performance that about 30 bobby-soxers passed out and had to be taken away in an ambulance. The publicity that the incident generated helped catapult Sinatra to superstardom in less than a year

BEHIND THE SCENES

The decisive moment in Sinatra’s career actually came a few weeks
before
the Paramount show, when his press agent, George Evans, saw a teenage girl throw a rose on stage while Sinatra was singing. “I figured if I could pack the theater with a bunch of girls screaming, ‘Oh, Frankie,’ I’d really have something,” he recounted later.

So Evans paid a dozen teenage girls $5 each to sit in the front rows during the performance and swoon. Rehearsing with them in the basement of the Paramount, he taught some of them to faint in the aisles during the slow songs, and taught others to scream ‘Oh, Daddy,’ when Sinatra sang “Embraceable You.” He made sure the theater was full by giving away free passes to schoolkids on vacation. He even rented the ambulance that waited in front of the theater to take the girls away.

MASS HYSTERIA

Evans paid only 12 girls, but in a classic moment of mass psychosis, hundreds of others got caught up in the “excitement.” About 20 girls who
hadn’t
been paid to pass out fainted…and the whole crowd went crazy. The next time he played the Paramount, recalls a promoter, “they threw more than roses. They threw their panties and their brassieres. They went nuts, absolutely nuts.” Sinatramania was born. Ol’ Blue Eyes went on to become the most popular singer of his generation. But Evans wasn’t around to enjoy it. Sinatra fired him a few years later in a dispute over money.

The “incident at Roswell” is probably the biggest UFO story in history. Was it a military balloon…or an alien spacecraft? You be the judge…

T
HE FIRST FLYING SAUCERS

In 1947, a U.S. Forest Service pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State in search of a missing plane when he spotted what he claimed were nine “disc-shaped craft.” He calculated them to be moving at speeds of 1,200 miles per hour, far faster than any human-built aircraft of the 1940s could manage.

When he talked to reporters after the flight, Arnold said the crafts moved “like a
saucer
skipping over water,” and a newspaper editor, hearing the description, called the objects “flying saucers.” Thus, the expression “flying saucer” entered the English language, and a UFO craze much like the one that followed Orson Welles’s 1938 broadcast of
War of the Worlds
swept the country. “Almost instantly,” Dava Sobel writes in his article
The Truth About Roswell,
“believable witnesses from other states and several countries reported similar sightings, enlivening wire-service dispatches for days.”

THE ROSWELL DISCOVERY

It was in this atmosphere that William “Mac” Brazel made an unusual discovery. On July 8, 1947, while riding across his ranch 26 miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico, he came across some mysterious wreckage—sticks, foil paper, tape, and other debris. Brazel had never seen anything like it, but UFOs were on his mind. He’d read about Arnold’s sighting in the newspaper and had heard about a national contest offering $3,000 to anyone who recovered a flying saucer. He wondered if he’d stumbled across just the kind of evidence the contest organizers were looking for.