Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (39 page)

“British magistrate Hector Graham was about to pass sentence in his courtroom in Luton, England, when his musical tie, a gift from his wife, came to life. ‘He had got to the part about how serious an offense it was when all of a sudden “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” started up,' a court spokesman said. ‘He didn't have a clue how to stop it and was extremely embarrassed, especially because after that, it went into two more Christmassy songs and finished with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”'”

—This Is True

“A hospital patient fainted when given the news that she was to be discharged that day. She thought the nurse had said, ‘We're sending you home to die.'”

—Daily Telegraph

“The Republican Party mistakenly invited Robert Kirkpatrick to a $2,500-a-plate fund-raising dinner with President Bush. The mistake? The invitation, complete with a letter from Vice President Dick Cheney, was sent to him at the Belmont Correctional Institution in Ohio. The letter invited him to ‘join the president and Mrs. Bush for a private dinner here in Washington, D.C.' Kirkpatrick, 35, was serving three years for drug possession. ‘Tell him that I'd be happy to attend,' Kirkpatrick said, ‘but he's going to have to pull some strings to get me there.'”

—Associated Press

“Ethem Sahin was playing dominoes at the local coffeehouse in Ankara, Turkey, when a cow fell through the roof, knocking him unconscious. ‘My friends told me later what happened. I couldn't believe it,' Sahin told reporters. What had happened? Apparently,
the cow had wandered from the hillside where it was grazing onto the roof of the coffee house, which was built into the side of the hill. Sahin was treated for a broken leg. ‘May God protect us from a worse accident,' said Sahin's wife.”

—Bizarre News

“MSNBC has apologized for a typographical error that turned the name of an interview subject into a racial slur. The network aired an interview with Republican political consultant Niger Innis. The onscreen graphic identifying Innis, who is black, had an extra ‘g' in his first name.

“Shortly after it appeared, correspondent Gregg Jarrett offered Innis a ‘profuse apology.' ‘It's not the first time it's happened,' replied Innis, ‘but hopefully it's the last.'”

—SFGate

“A German man attempted suicide by turning on the gas to his stove but then reconsidered, called police, and nearly blew himself up when he lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.”

—“The Edge,”
The Oregonian

“Firefighters in Minot, North Dakota, were worried they might need gas masks—but it turned out they should have brought 'Nilla Wafers. Emergency responders scrambled to a report of a leaking railroad car. Initial reports said the leak was strychnine—a deadly chemical. But it turned out to be tapioca pudding mix.”

—KXMC News

“A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist toward the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment, he had been happily listening to his Walkman.”

—Associated Press

Ever wonder what inspired some of your favorite songs? The answers may surprise you
.

T
he Artist:
The Beatles

The Song:
“Come Together” (1969)

The Story:
In 1969 Timothy Leary intended to run for governor of California against a B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan. One of Leary's battle cries was “Come together,” and he asked his friend John Lennon to write a song based on it for the campaign. By the time Lennon got around to it, Leary's campaign was dead (he had to drop out when he was convicted of marijuana possession).

Lennon liked the phrase, though, and decided to build a song around it anyway. He loosely based it on the old Chuck Berry tune, “You Can't Catch Me.” He even left in the line, “Here come old flat-top.” Other than that, it's nothing like the Berry song, but because Lennon admitted to borrowing the line, Berry's publisher sued him. The settlement: Lennon agreed to record two Chuck Berry songs on his 1975 solo album,
Rock N Roll
. Written and recorded in a single session at the studio, “Come Together” was one of Lennon's favorites: “It's funky, it's bluesy. You can dance to it. I'll buy it!”

The Artist:
Sheryl Crow

The Song:
“All I Wanna Do” (1993)

The Story:
After years of trying to break into the Los Angeles music scene—including singing backup on Michael Jackson's “Bad” tour—Crow finally got a record deal in 1991.

During a recording session, Crow wrote what she thought was a pretty good song…musically, anyway; she hated the words. She was stuck, so her producer ran across the street to a bookstore and bought 10 books of poetry, selected at random. He gave them to Crow, locked her in the bathroom, and told her to come out when she had something. Crow picked a poem entitled “Fun” and started singing the words, taking out some of the poet's lines and adding her own. “‘All I Wanna Do' was the throwaway track of the album. It was one that wasn't going to go on the record,” she recalled. Good thing it did—after A&M released it, the song won a Grammy and
propelled Crow to superstardom. Meanwhile, an English teacher in Vermont named Wyn Cooper began receiving royalty checks for a poem he'd written 10 years earlier.

The Artist:
Led Zeppelin

The Song:
“Whole Lotta Love” (1969)

The Story:
While recording their second album, guitarist Jimmy Page came up with a bluesy riff and the rest of the band started jamming around it. Singer Robert Plant “improvised” some words, but they weren't really his. He borrowed them from a song called “You Need Love” written by blues legend Willie Dixon. And although Led Zeppelin had credited Dixon for two songs on their first album, they kept the writing credit on “Whole Lotta Love” for themselves. Why? “We decided that it was so far away in time,” explained Plant. (Actually, it had only been seven years since Dixon wrote it.) “Whole Lotta Love” became the only Zeppelin song ever to reach the top 10 in the United States.

Fifteen years later, Dixon heard the song for the first time and noticed the resemblance. Dixon sued the band and settled out of court in 1987. He used the proceeds to set up the Blues Heaven Foundation to promote awareness of the blues.

The Artist:
Little Richard

The Song: “
Tutti Frutti” (1955)

The Story:
After a long, unproductive recording session in 1955, Little Richard couldn't get the sound his producer, “Bumps” Blackwell, wanted. Exasperated, they took a lunch break and went to the local dive, the Dew Drop Inn. The place had a piano, so Richard started banging on it and wailing out some nonsense words: “Awop-Bop-a-Loo-Mop a-Good Goddam…Tutti Frutti, Good Booty!” It was the sound Blackwell was looking for.

Richard had actually written the song while he was washing dishes at a bus station in Macon, Georgia. “I couldn't talk back to the boss,” he said. “So instead of saying bad words, I'd say, ‘Wop-Bop-a-Loo-Bop-a-Lop-Bam-Boom,' so he wouldn't know what I was thinking.” Blackwell cleaned up the lyrics (“good booty” became “aw rootie”), and they recorded it that day. The single reached #17 on the pop charts. (Believe it or not, Pat Boone covered the song and it outdid Richard's version on the hit parade.)

Uncle John is no Houdini. When he was a little kid, he accidentally locked himself in the bathroom and couldn't get out. But it didn't matter—by the time someone answered his calls for help, he'd decided to stay
.

H
arry Houdini was a genius at performing death-defying feats of magic. But he was more than that—he was also a genius at getting free publicity. Everywhere he went, he staged stunts specifically designed to get newspaper headlines.

• When Houdini first went to London, he had no bookings. He boasted about his talents to a stage manager, but the man was skeptical, and told Houdini, “I'll hire you—but only if you can get out of handcuffs at Scotland Yard.” Houdini rounded up some reporters, then challenged police at Scotland Yard to cuff him.

• Wrapping Houdini's arms around a pillar, the police superintendent snapped on the cuffs, and turned to leave, saying, “We'll be back in an hour to release you.”

• As they headed for the door, Houdini called out, “You better take your cuffs with you!” He had undone the handcuffs in less time than it took the cops to walk across the room.

• The reporters were impressed, and made sure Houdini got a lot of free publicity from the stunt. The result: a six-month run in London.

• From then on, challenging local police departments became one of his regular gimmicks. It always worked—even when he failed.

• In 1899 Sergeant Waldron of the Chicago police challenged Houdini to escape from his special handcuffs.

• Houdini agreed, then struggled to release himself for over an hour as the audience laughed and jeered.

• The cuffs had to be cut off—and only after the theater had emptied did Waldron admit that he had tampered with the cuffs, dropping molten lead in the lock so it would be jammed.

• When the trick was revealed, the local newspaper ran the story and Houdini garnered even more free publicity.

• The
San Francisco Examiner
ran an story claiming that Houdini's secret was extra hidden keys.

• In response, Houdini announced he would pit himself against any restraint the San Francisco police could throw at him. A reporter was assigned to cover the event.

• Houdini was stripped, searched, and shackled. His hands were cuffed behind his back; his ankles were locked in irons; and 10 pairs of manacles were placed on him. He was then locked in a closet.

• Ten minutes later, he was free. The newspaper retracted their exposé and ran another story…applauding his talents.

• In Germany, Houdini wanted to stage a stunt where he would jump—roped and chained—off a boat into a river. The police refused to give permission—but he did it anyway. As he pulled himself out of the river and walked up the riverbank, he was arrested. • The only thing the cops could charge him with, though, was walking on the grass. The story made the papers all over the country.

• To get even, in 1902 the head of the Cologne police, Schutzmann Werner Graff, denounced Houdini as a fraud and a swindler.

• Houdini demanded an apology. When none was forthcoming he sued for slander. Graff told the judge and jury he could prove what he said was true just by chaining Houdini up.

• Houdini consented to be chained, then demonstrated to the judge and jury (but he refused to show Graff) exactly how he was able to release himself. He won the case, the police were fined, and Graff was ordered to apologize.

• But Graff had other plans: he appealed to a higher court. There, he produced a specially made lock that was supposed to be impossible to open. Houdini escaped in four minutes.

• This time, Graff was ordered to pay court costs and run an apology in all German newspapers. He refused again and instead took the case to Germany's highest court. Graff argued that Houdini's
claim that he could escape from safes was false—yet Houdini successfully escaped from a safe right in front of the judge.

• For the third time, Graff lost his case. Thanks to the stubborn policeman, the publicity for Houdini was enormous.

• Houdini became famous for escaping from straitjackets while hanging upside down from his feet over public streets. He sought out the newspapers in each town he traveled to and offered to perform the stunt while hanging from their roof. It made the front page in every town he played.