Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (81 page)

Mattel’s game Mindflex uses your brain’s EEG activity to move a ball around an obstacle course
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At first, MTV bosses held their ground: “While we don’t accept responsibility, obviously we feel horrible when a young person does something to hurt themselves,” they wrote in a statement. “We take great care to air our shows responsibly.
Jackass
airs with a TV-Mature rating, with written and verbal warnings throughout the show.” They also pointed out that the episode had featured three minutes of footage showing Knoxville’s safety precautions.

In the end, however, MTV moved
Jackass
to a late-night slot and limited the stunts the cast could do—which upset fans as well as the performers, some of whom quit. The show ended its run less than a year later, and Knoxville and his cohorts went on to make a string of successful
Jackass
movies. “It’s a real primal thing, watching someone get hurt,” said Knoxville. “It’s funny and accessible. I should quit, but man, we have so much fun!”

MORE JACKASS-INSPIRED IDIOCY

Both of the burned boys made full recoveries. But they weren’t the only ones who tried the “home version” of the show.

• A 16-year-old Wisconsin teen copied a stunt in which a
Jackass
crewmember ran up and stole a taco from the hand of a worker at a drive-through. However, unlike on the show, this particular fast-food worker held onto the taco and ended up with a broken arm.

• Four Scottish men in their 20s were arrested in 2004 after performing a fake kidnapping in which one of the men stumbled out of a car in a supermarket parking lot with a black plastic bag over his head, screaming for help. The men told police they were recreating a scene from
Jackass
because it was “funny.”

• In 2006 a 22-year-old British man copied a stunt from the first
Jackass
movie. While his friends watched, he got down on all fours and launched a firework known as a “Black Cat Thunderbolt”…out of his rectum. (Rectum? It damn near killed him!)

“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?” —Ursula K. Le Guin

HOAXERS

Why are people so quick to believe any old story they’re told? Simple: Because this world is a crazy place, and crazy things happen all the time. Here are two classic hoaxes, and one recent one
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T
HE ICEBERG COMETH
April 1, 1978, was a gloomy, overcast day in Sidney, Australia. But that didn’t stop hundreds of people from going to the harbor to await the arrival of local entrepreneur Dick Smith, owner of Dick Smith Foods. He’d promised to show up in a barge hauling an iceberg. Then, he said, he was going to break up the massive iceberg and sell the pieces as “dickcicles”—ice cubes made from pure Antarctica water. A lot of the onlookers figured it was just a big April Fool’s Day joke and Smith wouldn’t show up at all. But then, off in the distance, they could see the barge…and it really was hauling an iceberg. A few minutes later the
Dickenberg I
, as a local DJ dubbed it, floated into Sydney Harbor.

And then it started to rain.

Within minutes, the “iceberg” was revealed for what it really was: a floating platform slathered in a ton of shaving cream. Unfazed, Smith docked and gave everyone cold drinks (the ice cubes came from the barge’s beer cooler). He later said the stunt was worth a million dollars in free advertising.

THE LADY VANISHES

On March 29, 1950, a blonde, buxom actress named Nicole Riche was starring as a kidnapping victim in the noir play
No Orchids for Miss Blandish
at the Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris, France. Between Acts I and II, stagehands witnessed Riche pick up a note, read it, and then run out the backstage door. She never returned for Act II. Theater manager Alexandre Dundas canceled the rest of the performance and called the police. Investigators found the note—which Riche had dropped on the floor—and suspected kidnapping. A massive manhunt commenced.

Headlines across Europe told the “life imitates art” story of the beautiful woman who was abducted while starring in a play about a beautiful woman who gets abducted. Two days later, Riche, still wearing the negligee and fur coat she had worn on stage, stumbled into the Pigalle district police station and told her story: Two men had dragged her into a car and driven her to a hideout outside of Paris, where they berated her for being in an immoral play, and had then left her in the woods. She said she’d found some “kind Gypsies” who gave her a ride back to Paris, but when pressed for a description of her abductors, all she could say was that they were “Puritans.” Police chief Marcel Cambon smelled a rat, so he kept pressing her for the truth, and Riche finally came clean: It was a hoax orchestrated by Dundas to drum up publicity for his financially strapped theatre. Riche had to pay a fine for creating a public nuisance…but the play drew much larger audiences after the fake abduction.

Length of the average criminal sentence in Colombia: 137 years
.

THE BIG FAT LIAR

In November 2009, General Felix Murga, head of Peru’s Criminal Investigation division, held a national press conference: “There is a horrible crime being committed in the jungles.” A gang called the
Pishtacos
—named after a mythical Peruvian creature who kills people for their body fat—was kidnapping and killing people for their body fat. A police drawing depicted racks of human carcasses strung up like sides of beef. The Pishtacos, he said, were selling bottles of the fat for up to $60,000 per gallon. The story made headlines; no one in the Peruvian press was talking about anything else. But then that was the whole point. Before that, everyone in Peru
had been
talking about another scandal, in which a police “death squad” illegally executed 46 criminals. It dominated the news…until the fat story. And then people began to question
that
story. Reporters cited a prominent plastic surgeon who noted that “human fat has no value.” And police in Huanaco, where the Pishtacos were supposedly based, had never even heard of the fat-stealing gang until General Murga’s press conference.

A few weeks later, the Peruvian daily
La Republica
reported that the fat story was a complete fabrication—nothing more than a “grease screen.” The press immediately went back to reporting about the death squads, demanding an explanation of the government cover-up. After initial denials, Peru’s chief of police, Miguel Hildago, finally acknowledged the hoax with an announcement that General Murga had been fired for “sullying the reputation” of his department.

Impressive…or just lazy? The Australian pygmy possum can hibernate for more than a year
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LOUD NOISES!!!

On
page 266
, we told you about some of the more common sources of noise pollution—car stereos, loud parties, and Wiccan priestesses. Here are a few more stories full of sound and fury
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C
RAZY COMMERCIALS
You’re curled up on the couch watching your favorite TV show. Something really dramatic happens, the scene fades to black, and before you know it, your television erupts into loud music, glaring colors, and some announcer yelling, “There’s never been a better time to buy a Toyota!” To curb this annoyance, in 2009 Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-California) introduced legislation called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation act, or CALM, which will fine stations for airing “excessively noisy or strident” commercials. But even if the law passes, it may prove hard to enforce. That’s because in the United States, the FCC already controls how loud a station can broadcast. TV shows rarely, if ever, reach the maximum level. Advertisers, however, push the entire 30 seconds to the highest level. “If someone sets off a camera flash every now and then, it’s one thing,” writes Spencer Critchley in
Digital Audio
magazine. “If they aim a steady spotlight into your eyes it’s another, even if the peak brightness is no higher.”

OH, THE iRONY

The Apple iPod was designed to be an “instrument of solitude,” where the listener can retreat to his or her library of music while not forcing it upon others. But a 2007
Associated Press
article reported that people who don’t own the devices have complained to Apple that the iPod itself is a growing source of noise pollution. That’s because the listeners who put the little ear buds on—while on a bus or plane, or in their cubicle or a waiting room—are often unaware that the tinny sound can be heard by anyone within about 10 feet. “Like the cell phone,” said the article, “the iPod can foster a sense of apathy when the user is among strangers. It’s easier to blow off social norms—and channel Justin Timberlake during rush hour—when you don’t know whom you’re irritating.”

A Hunch, Inc., political survey found that Conservatives prefer Colby cheese. Liberals like Brie
.

GOING GREEN THE LOUD WAY

Farmers in Massachusetts have been furious since a taxpayer-subsidized solar panel factory was built on nearby land in January 2009. The plant is so noisy that, according to the
Boston Herald
, “Their horses have ulcers, the ducks have disappeared, and a dog has started gnawing off doorknobs.” Said one farmer, “Imagine tuning your radio to a station that gets only static. Then imagine having to listen to that 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s what we are living with. It’s like our tax dollars are being used to torture us.” The plant has since hired a “noise specialist” to try to figure out how to dampen some of the sounds (after the factory was threatened with fines of $1,000 per day). A spokesman apologized, but said that making solar panels is a “loud business.”

A WAKE-UP CALL

In a recent study conducted by Imperial College London, scientists measured the heart and brain activity of people who lived near four major European airports (including England’s Heathrow, which has had a long history of noise-pollution controversy). Every time a plane flew overhead, the subjects’ blood pressure went up, even when they were asleep. It wasn’t just the jet engines that did it: Whenever any significant “noise event” occurred—described as 35 decibels or more (a passing car with a loud engine, or drunk people shouting in the street)—the subjects’ blood pressure raised to dangerous levels. And there was a direct correlation: the louder the noise, the higher the blood pressure. That makes for restless nights, which leads to stressful days.

THOSE DAMN KIDS!

An 82-year-old German man was fed up by an annoying song coming in through his window. It happened in the morning, the afternoon, and the middle of the night. He kept yelling out his window for the neighborhood kids to shut up, but the song would start playing again. It was so annoying that he finally called the police—who instantly solved the case. How? An officer found a greeting card on the man’s windowsill. It was the kind that has a tiny speaker inside and plays a song every time the card shakes…which happened every time a breeze came in through the window. The man was “happy, relieved, and a little embarrassed.”

Poll results: One in three iPhone owners has ended a relationship via text message
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I HAD MY BABY IN A…