Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (71 page)

RUMOR:
The Snapple Beverage Corp. supports Operation Rescue and the Ku Klux Klan.

HOW IT SPREAD:
Unknown. One theory: The maritime graphic on the label—taken from a historic drawing of the Boston Tea Party—may have been misinterpreted as a slave ship. There is also a small letter K inside a circle on the label that signifies that the drinks are
Kosher
—not Klannish. But the main source may have been the company’s sponsorship of Rush Limbaugh’s program.

WHAT HAPPENED:
The company launched a $100,000 print and radio advertising campaign targeted specifically at dispelling the rumor. “It is hurting us as human beings,” one of the company’s founders said in September 1993. “The Ku Klux Klan is a horrible organization. I mean, three Jewish boys from Brooklyn supporting the Ku Klux Klan?”

A handful of countries have been kicked out of the U.N., but only Switzerland
refuses to join.

Here are the origins of some familiar phrases.

C
ASH ON THE BARRELHEAD

Meaning:
“Paying up front or before a delivery.”

Background:
Frontier saloons often consisted of little more than a lean-to shed, a couple of barrels of whiskey, and a wooden plank across them that served as the bar. And when you didn’t have a plank, you just stood one of the barrels up on its end and used it as a bar. Drinks were paid for in advance—by putting your
cash on the barrelhead.

GET THE SACK/GET SACKED

Meaning:
“Get fired / lose your job.”

Background:
When you worked on assembly lines in the old days., you had to bring your own tools—which most people carried in
sacks
—to work with you. If your boss fired you, he literally
gave you the sack
—handed you your tool bag and told you to get lost.

OUT OF TOUCH

Meaning:
“A person is out of physical or mental contact with others.”

Background:
In the 18th century it became fashionable among European military leaders to have their soldiers march as close together as possible. “As a practical way of regulationg his space,” one observer notes, “the soldier in the ranks had to be sure that his swinging elbows would touch those of comrades on each side.” When gaps in the line formed, it was a sure sign that somewhere a soldier was—literally—
out of touch.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Meaning:
“In the background; out of view.”

Background:
It was common in Elizabethan theater to leave important actions and events out of plays entirely, and instead just report to the audience that the event had taken place between acts. Audience members joked that the actions had taken place
behind the scenes
—behind the props and backdrops on the stage—where no one could see them.

For the first federal income tax (1914), the “normal” tax rate was 1%; five years later, it was 77%.

She’s mostly forgotten now, but the “Singing Nun” was one of the most famous nuns in American history. Here’s a look at her unusual career.

P
OP NUN

Remember the
Ed Sullivan Show
? If you had tuned in to watch it one particular evening in 1963, you would have seen a peculiar sight: a Belgian nun in full habit, playing a guitar and singing a song called “Dominique.” The nun’s name was Sister Luc-Gabrielle, but she was better known as Soeur Sourire (“Sister Smile”)—and her song was fast becoming a pop-music hit all over the world.

Hardly anyone who tuned in that night had any idea what Soeur Sourire was singing—“Dominique’s” lyrics were entirely in French. But the tune’s light melody was so catchy that the song went all the way to #1 on U.S. pop-music charts and ultimately sold more than 1.5 million copies.

The song was a critical success as well, winning the 1963 Grammy for the best religious song and numerous other awards. Soeur Sourire became a star in her own right. In 1966, Debbie Reynolds portrayed her in the film
The Singing Nun.

IN THE BEGINNING

Soeur Sourire got her start singing songs during religious retreats. As one nun told
Time
magazine in 1963, “We have these retreats for young girls at our Fichermont monastery, and in the evenings we sing songs composed by Sister Luc-Gabrielle. The songs are such a hit with our girls that they asked us to transcribe them.” One of the catchiest tunes was “Dominique,” a song that honors St. Dominic Guzman, founder of Soeur Sourire’s Dominican order (and the man credited with introducing rosary beads to the Roman Catholic faith).

In 1961, the nuns decided to record some of Soeur Sourire’s songs and give them away during the retreats...but they couldn’t afford to rent a recording studio or manufacture their own records, so they asked the Philips record company to lend them one of its studios. After a few months of prodding, the company agreed. Philips initially planned to issue a few dozen pressings of the album and donate them to the nuns for their own use, but company executives liked the album so much they contracted with the convent to sell it all over Europe.

St. Paul in Alberta, Canada, is the home of the world’s only (known) flying saucer launch pad.

Philips issued Sister Luc-Gabrielle’s album in Europe under the name
Soeur Sourire
, and it took the continent by storm. But when it was released in the United States a few months later under the name
The Singing Nun
, no one bought it. So Philips issued “Dominique” as a 45-rpm single and sold more than 400,000 copies in three weeks.

FROM BAD TO VERSE

Soeur Sourire seemed to adjust quite well to her celebrity status at first...but it didn’t last long: She left her convent in 1966 before taking her final vows, telling the press that she wanted to continue her missionary work while pursuing a recording career. (She did, however, turn all of her song royalties over to her religious order before she left.)

For her next single, she chose a song called “Glory be to God for the Golden Pill,” a tribute to artificial birth control. It didn’t have quite the same ring to it that “Dominique” had. Nobody bought it, nor did they buy the updated synthesizer version of “Dominique” that she issued in 1983.

A Sad Note:
Soeur Sourire lived to regret her decision to give up all of her royalties. The Belgian government hounded her for $63,000 in back taxes for the next 20 years, and in 1983 the center for autistic children that she and a friend (also an ex-nun) founded closed its doors due to lack of funds. Her life ended tragically in 1985 when she and the friend were found dead in their apartment, the victims of an apparent double suicide brought on by their financial problems. She was 51.

THE SPIRIT OF 2000

In November 1997, Hair of the Dog Brewing Co. in Portland, Oregon, created
Fred
—a beer designed to get better as it ages. “Meet
Fred
the beer you’re not even supposed to crack open until the millennium,” wrote the
Wall Street Journal
in 1998. The first batch sold out in an hour.

According to one expert, the less you blink the happier you are.

The
AHD (American Heritage Dictionary,
in case you were wondering
)
says an acronym is “a word formed from the initial letters of a name.” Here are some acronyms you may have heard—without realizing they were acronyms. See if you know (or can guess) what they stand for. (Answers are on
page 665
.)

1. ZIP code

2. DNA

3. DOA

4. EST (there are two)

5. HUD (a govt. agency)

6. INTERPOL

7. KISS (a business axiom)

8. LASER

9. UNIVAC (the 1950s computer)

10. NABISCO

11. NASA

12. NECCO (the candy company)

13. NIMBY

14. NOW (women’s group)

15. OPEC

16. OSHA

17. QUASAR

18. RAND Corp.

19. RBI (sometimes pronounced “ribbie”)

20. REM

21. SCUBA tank or diver

22. SWAK

23. TNT

24. UNESCO

25. UNICEF

26. CAT scan

27. AWACS

28. AWOL

29. CD-ROM

30. M*A*S*H

31. WILCO (as in “Roger-wilco, over and out”)

32. SONAR

33. SNAFU

34. NATO

35. SALT (as in “SALT agreement”)

36. RADAR

37. SCUD

38. SAC

39. WYSIWYG (computer term)

40. WAC

41. SEALS

42. MS-DOS (computer term)

43. NORAD

44. TASER

45. RAM (computer term)

46. WOMBAT

47. AKA

48. CANOLA (the oil)

What’s so special about Elvis’s 1957 film
Loving You?
Both of his parents were extras in it.

Here’s a look at some advertising claims that prove the old adage
caveat emptor—
“let the buyer beware”—is still good advice.

T
RIUMPH CIGARETTES

The Claim:
“Triumph Beats Merit! In a recent taste test, an amazing 60 percent said Triumph cigarettes taste as good or better than Merit!”

The Truth:
Actually, Merit beat Triumph. The results: 36% of the people surveyed said Triumph was better than Merit, but 40% said that Merit was better than Triumph. Triumph pulled ahead of Merit only when the 24% who said the two brands were equal were added to the total. That’s why the ad used the words “
as good
or better than Merit.”

USAIR

The Claim:
“USAir had the best on-time record of any of the seven largest airlines!”

The Truth:
USAir conveniently forgot that Pan Am, the
eighth
-largest airline, was actually rated first.

ITT CONTINENTAL BAKERIES

The Claim:
“Fresh Horizons bread contains five times as much fiber as whole wheat bread!”

The Truth:
The bread did indeed contain five times as much fiber, but the extra fiber came from
wood...
which the Federal Trade Commission dryly called “an ingredient not commonly used, nor anticipated by consumers to be commonly used, in bread.”

ANACIN-3

The Claim:
“Hospitals recommend acetaminophen, the aspirin-free pain reliever in Anacin-3, more than any other pain relievers!”

The Truth:
They neglected to mention that Tylenol also contains acetaminophen...and hospitals recommend that product more than they recommend Anacin-3.

Meow! Number of muscles in a cat’s ear: 32.

LEVI’S 501 JEANS

The Claim:
“Ninety percent of college students say Levi’s 501 jeans are ‘in’ on campus!”

The Truth:
Levi’s cited a fall fashion survey conducted annually on 100 U.S. college campuses. What they
didn’t
say was that Levi’s 501 jeans were the
only
blue jeans listed in the survey. Other entries included T-shirts, 1960s-style clothing, overalls, beach pants, and neon-colored clothing. So anyone who wanted to choose any type of jeans had no choice but to pick 501s.

LITTON MICROWAVE OVENS

The Claim:
“76% of independent microwave oven technicians surveyed recommended Litton!”

The Truth:
The survey included only Litton-authorized technicians “who worked on Littons and at least one other brand of microwaves. Technicians who serviced other brands, but not Littons, were excluded from the study.”

CAR COMMERCIALS

The Claim:
In 1990, Volvo aired a commercial showing a monster truck driving over several cars, including one Volvo. The roofs of the other cars were crushed; the Volvo’s roof withstood the abuse.

The Truth:
An onlooker videotaping the making of the commercial observed workers reinforcing the Volvo’s roof with wooden planks and welded steel rods...and
cutting
the roof supports on the other cars. The man turned over his evidence to the Texas state attorney general’s office; they alerted the media and threatened to sue Volvo. The company, embarrassed by the negative publicity, removed the ad from the airwaves.