Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (18 page)

PSYCH-OUT

Finney called in Dr. James A. Brussel, a brilliant psychiatrist who had worked with the military and the FBI. Brussel had an uncanny understanding of the criminal mind, and like everyone else in New York, this eloquent, pipe-smoking psychiatrist was curious about what made the Mad Bomber tick. But because none of the letters had been released to the press, Brussel knew very little about the case. That all changed when police handed him the evidence they had gathered since 1941.

The pressure was on: citizens were growing more panicked with each new bomb, and more impatient with the cops’ inability to catch the Mad Bomber. After poring through letters, phone call transcripts and police reports, and studying the unexploded bombs, Dr. Brussel presented this profile to Inspector Finney:

American pie? The U.S. produced 895 million pounds of pumpkin pie in 2000.

It’s a man. Paranoiac. He’s middle-aged, forty to fifty years old, introvert. Well proportioned in build. He’s single. A loner, perhaps living with an older female relative. He is very neat, tidy, and clean-shaven. Good education, but of foreign extraction. Skilled mechanic, neat with tools. Not interested in women. He’s a Slav. Religious. Might flare up violently at work when criticized. Possible motive: discharge or reprimand. Feels superior to his critics. Resentment keeps growing. His letters are posted from Westchester, and he wouldn’t be stupid enough to post them from where he lives. He probably mails the letter between his home and New York City. One of the biggest concentration of Poles is in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and to get from there to New York you have to pass through Westchester. He has had a bad disease—possibly heart trouble.

GOING PUBLIC

Finney was impressed…but skeptical. His team had drawn some of the same conclusions, but even so, there had to be thousands of middle-aged men who fit that profile. What good would it do?

“I think you ought to publicize the description I’ve given you,” suggested Dr. Brussel. “Publicize the whole Bomber investigation, in fact. Spread it in the newspapers, on radio and television.” Finney disagreed. It was standard procedure to keep details of investigations away from the press. But Brussel maintained that if they handled the case correctly, the Mad Bomber would do most of the work for them. He said that, unconsciously, “he wants to be found out.” Finney finally agreed. And as he left the office, Brussel added one more thing: “When you catch him, he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit, and it will be buttoned.”

So the papers published the profile and the chase went into high gear. As Finney predicted, “a million crackpots” came out of the woodwork, all claiming to be the Mad Bomber, but none of them had the Mad Bomber’s skill or his distinctively neat handwriting. A slew of legitimate leads came from concerned citizens about their odd neighbors, yet nothing solid surfaced. Still, Brussel was confident that the real Bomber’s arrogance would be his undoing.

Did Brussel’s strategy work? Turn to Part II on
page 320
to find out
.

Neanderthals are believed to have buried their dead.

UNCLE JOHN’S SECOND FAVORITE ROLL

A friend of Uncle John’s recently called to report that her son had just made a backpack…completely out of duct tape. That started us wondering about other ways people use duct tape. Here’s a small fraction of what we found
.

D
UCK TAPE
Originally called “duck” tape (because it was made from a kind of cotton canvas known as “duck”…and it was waterproof), this household staple was developed for the military to keep moisture out of ammunition cases. Don’t have any leaky ammo cases? You can use it for a Band-Aid or to repair a tent, even as a fly strip. Russian cosmonauts used it to help keep the aging Mir Space Station lashed together. And now it even comes in a rainbow of designer colors, including camouflage.

Here are some other creative uses people have found for the tape:

•
Researchers say it’s good for removing warts. Duct tape irritates the wart, which causes the immune system to kick in and attack the virus that created it. Recommended course of treatment: Tape the wart for six days, then rip off the tape, soak the area in water, and file the wart with a pumice stone or emery board. Reapply duct tape and keep it on for another six days. Repeat the cycle for two months or until the wart goes away.

•
The Tesoro Iron Dog is a 2,000-mile snowmobile race in Alaska. With temperatures hovering around -20°F, racers apply duct tape to their exposed skin to protect it from frostbite.

•
When one of his cows suffered a deep cut that caused “some of its insides to fall out,” a farmer in Maine used duct tape to close the wound. He found that medical tape couldn’t hold the gash together under all the conditions a cow faced on the farm—but duct tape did. Another farmer stuffed the innards back into an injured hen and taped her up with duct tape. When the duct tape finally fell off (months later), the hen was as good as new.

The U.S. national flowers are the goldenrod and the columbine.

•
When calves are born in severely cold weather, their ears sometimes freeze. Instead of using fleece-lined earmuffs, which the cows scratch off, a Canadian rancher duct tapes the calves’ ears to their heads. The ears stay warm and the cows can’t get the tape off.

•
During the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, snowboarder Chris Klug broke a boot buckle just before his final race. After having survived a liver transplant only 19 months earlier, Klug wasn’t about to let a broken buckle stop him. With less than two minutes to spare, he grabbed a roll of duct tape, jury-rigged a quick repair, and went on to win a bronze medal in the giant slalom event.

•
On the NASCAR pro circuit, a special grade of duct tape is used for split-second auto body repairs. In fact, some cars are literally covered in it, which is why this grade is known as the “200-mph tape.” (Another grade of duct tape, known as “nuclear tape,” is used to repair nuclear reactors.)

•
Starlets, beauty queens, and fashion models have long used duct tape to enhance cleavage in low-cut gowns. First they apply surgical tape across their breasts to protect them, then duct tape, which is strong and flexible enough to lift, shape, and hold everything in place. The technique was once demonstrated on
Oprah
.

SPACE CASES

•
When
Apollo 17
astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan drove their lunar vehicle across the moon, the fine grit kicked up by the vehicle’s wheels wreaked havoc on their equipment. They fixed the problem by building extended fenders out of spare maps, clamps, and duct tape. (Or did they? See
page 278
.)

•
After a month of living on the International Space Station without a kitchen table, astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko began piecing together scraps of aluminum. Once they got a frame together, they covered the top with duct tape. The table became the social center of the space station—the best place to eat, work, or just hang out.

*        *        *

“Duct tape is like the Force: It has a dark side and a light side—and it holds the universe together.”

—Pop philosopher Carl Zwanzig

Catnip can affect lions and cougars as well as house cats.

UNCLE JOHN’S PAGE OF LISTS

Some random facts from our files
.

5 Roman Delicacies, circa 200 A.D.

1. Parrot tongue
2. Ostrich brain
3. Thrush tongue
4. Peacock comb
5. Nightingale tongue

8 Things Rupert Murdoch Owns

1.
The N.Y. Post
2.
The Times
(London)
3.
The Australian
(Sydney)
4.
TV Guide
5. Twentieth- Century Fox
6. Madison Square Garden
7. Fox News Channel
8. L.A. Dodgers

4 Jell-O Flavor Flops

1. Cola
2. Coffee
3. Apple
4. Celery

5 Greatest American Generals (Gallup Poll, 2000)

1. George Patton
2. Dwight Eisenhower
3. Douglas MacArthur
4. Colin Powell
5. George Washington

5 States with the Most Nuclear Waste Sites

1. Illinois—10
2. California—9
3. New York—9
4. Michigan—6
5. Pennsylvania—6

4 Most Expensive Ad Spots on a Race Car

1. Hood
2. Lower rear quarter panel
3. Behind rear window
4. Behind driver’s window

10 Animals That Have Been in Space

1. Dog
2. Chimp
3. Bullfrog
4. Cat
5. Tortoise
6. Bee
7. Cricket
8. Spider
9. Fish
10. Worm

4 Most Copied Hollywood Noses (Beverly Hills plastic surgeons)

1. Heather Locklear
2. Nicole Kidman
3. Marisa Tomei
4. Catherine Zeta-Jones

7 Actors in
The Magnificent Seven

1. Robert Vaughn
2. Steve McQueen
3. Brad Dexter
4. James Coburn
5. Horst Bucholz
6. Yul Brynner
7. Charles Bronson

A variety of mimosa is called the “sensitive plant” because it wilts when touched.

RETURN OF THE SEQUEL

Hollywood can’t seem to leave well enough alone—not when it looks like there’s money to be made. Here’s a look at some of the worst movie sequels ever made
.

H
OME ALONE 3
(1997)
Background:
The first
Home Alone
(1990) earned more than $280 million at the box office, turning child actor Macaulay Culkin into a household name and the biggest child star since Shirley Temple.

The Plot Thickens:
Macaulay appeared in
Home Alone 2
(1992), but by the time
Home Alone 3
went into production, he was too old—17—and too expensive for the part. So the filmmakers cut their losses and started over with an entirely new family and an entirely new son: Alex, played by newcomer Alex D. Linz. Plot: He’s home with the chicken pox when international thieves break into the house to retrieve a missile-system computer chip that has found its way into one of his toys.

The Critics Speak: “
Better to stay home alone.” (Steve Persall,
St. Petersburg Times
)

THE NEXT KARATE KID
(1994)

Background:
The original
Karate Kid
, starring Ralph Macchio as teenager Daniel LaRusso, was the sleeper hit of the summer of 1984. It made more than $90 million at the box office; two years later
Karate Kid II
pulled in more than $115 million. Why not try for more?

The Plot Thickens:
By the time
Karate Kid III
hit screens in 1989, the kids in the audience had moved on but Macchio, 27, had not. He looked ridiculous trying to pass himself off as 17, so for sequel #3 the filmmakers dumped him and brought in a girl—Mr. Miyagi befriends Julie, a “churlish orphan” played by newcomer Hilary Swank. That Swank eventually became a star was no thanks to this dud: It died at the box office and took the entire franchise down with it.

The Critics Speak: “
The sound of one mouth yawning.” (Mike Clark,
USA Today
)

Saturn’s not alone: Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus also have rings.

BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2
(2000)

Background:
The Blair Witch Project
(1999) cost $35,000 to make and went on to earn more than
$250 million
worldwide, making it not only the most successful independent film ever made, but also the most profitable motion picture in Hollywood history. Newcomers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who directed the first film, made the covers of
Time
and
Newsweek
and were hailed as the brightest young talents in Hollywood.

The Plot Thickens:
Then Artisan Entertainment (the major studio that bought
The Blair Witch Project
after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival) decided to rush out a sequel. Myrick and Sanchez were starting work on a comedy called
Heart of Love
, but rather than wait for them to finish, Artisan hired a documentary filmmaker named Joe Berlinger to direct the sequel instead.

Big mistake—
Book of Shadows
, the story of five fans of the original documentary who return to the same patch of woods to see if the Blair Witch legend is true, is probably the most hated of the most anticipated sequels ever made. Myrick and Sanchez had very little to do with it, but their careers stalled anyway; as of the summer of 2003, they hadn’t gotten
Heart of Love
off the ground and hadn’t made any other films.

The Critics Speak: “
The characters are boring, the violence generic, the suspense nonexistent.” (Jack Matthews,
NY Daily News
)

PSYCHO
(1998)

Background:
In its day Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho
(1960) was disparaged by critics as a “sensationalist slasher movie.” But in the years since, the film has grown in stature and today is considered to be the second most influential film in the history of American cinema after Orson Welles’s
Citizen Kane
.