Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (66 page)

Movie:
Amadeus
(1984)

Scene:
Mozart (Tom Hulce) is watching a parody of his operas.

Blooper:
When the last little person pops through the paper backdrop with a toy horse, a member of the film crew—wearing blue jeans—can be seen walking backstage.

Movie:
Ben-Hur
(1959)

Scene:
The famous chariot race.

Blooper:
Do the math: Nine chariots start the race, six of them crash, but somehow four finish.

Movie:
Schindler’s List
(1993)

Scene:
Oskar (Liam Neeson) is in a car with Jewish investors.

Blooper:
Look at the passenger window and you can see the reflection of a movie camera and its operator. (Though it’s not entirely clear, the reflection may belong to director Steven Spielberg, wearing his famous “Class of ’61” hat.)

Movie:
Rocky
(1976)

Scene:
While Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is training, he does several one-arm push-ups.

Blooper:
A careful look reveals that Stallone did only one push-up—the shot was then looped to make it look like he did a lot.

Movie:
Casablanca
(1942)

Scene:
Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is driving through France.

Blooper:
He’s driving on the left; the French drive on the right.

Movie:
Million Dollar Baby
(2004)

Scene:
Maggie (Hilary Swank) is driving to the new home she just bought for her mother.

Blooper:
The house is supposed to be in Missouri, so why are there palm trees on the side of the road?

Good news, kids: Spanking is against the law in Sweden.

EXIT, STAGE RIGHT

There’s nothing funny about dying onstage, but for these unfortunate performers, it
was
somewhat ironic.

•
CARL BARNETT.
This 59-year-old music teacher died in 1974 while conducting a Bach piece at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, high school. The name of the piece: “Come, Sweet Death.”

•
EDITH WEBSTER.
In 1986 the veteran stage actress sang “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” during her big death scene in the play
The Drunkard
. Then she had a heart attack—a real one—and died instantly.

•
MOLIÈRE.
The 17th-century French playwright and actor (real name: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) collapsed during the performance of one of his plays. He had a coughing fit, was carried home, and promptly died. The name of the play:
Le Malade imaginaire
, or
The Hypochondriac.

•
LORD ULLI.
The Lords were a German band who had a string of minor hits in the 1960s, including “Over in the Gloryland,” which included the lyric “When I die, I’d like to drop dead from the stage.” That’s exactly what happened in 1999 at the band’s 40th anniversary concert. Lead singer Lord Ulli fell off the stage, hit his head, and died shortly afterward.

•
RICHARD VERSALLE.
The tenor was performing in the opera
The Makropulos Case
in 1996. He climbed a ladder and belted out the line, “Too bad you can only live so long.” He then had a heart attack and fell to the ground, dying instantly.
The Makropulos Case
is about the discovery of the secret to eternal life.

•
DICK SHAWN.
In April 1987, the veteran comedian was performing a satirical monologue in which he made fun of politicians. After reciting a string of campaign slogans—ending with “I will not lay down on the job!”—Shawn fell to the floor and lay face down. At first the audience thought it was part of the act, but Shawn didn’t get up. A theater employee finally checked him for a pulse: He was dead.

The role of
Dirty Harry
was originally intended for Frank Sinatra. (They wouldn’t do it his way.)

SNEAKY CORPORATIONS

Powerful corporations often set up fake “institutes” and programs that sound like independent foundations promoting the public good—when in fact they’re just the opposite. Here are four examples.

V
ERY INCONVENIENT
The documentary film
An Inconvenient Truth
received a lot of attention and attracted huge audiences when it was released in May 2006. The film argues that global warming caused by industrial pollution is slowly altering the Earth’s climate and melting the polar ice caps, and will eventually flood major cities and leave the planet uninhabitable.

But shortly after the movie came out, “public service” commercials began appearing on TV, calling global warming a myth and claiming that carbon dioxide—a byproduct of industrial pollution and automobile emissions (and the “villain” of the movie)—is actually not a pollutant at all, because “plants breathe it.” They went on to say that industrial waste is not only harmless, it’s essential to life.

So who made the “public service” ads? A think tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose members are almost exclusively oil and automobile companies, including Exxon, Arco, Ford, Texaco, and General Motors.

CHEMICALS ARE COOL!

In 1997 students in hundreds of high schools across America got a few hours off from class to attend “Chem TV.” Supposedly designed to get kids excited about chemistry and science, it was a traveling multimedia extravaganza featuring loud music, videos, lasers, games, skits, dancers, free T-shirts, a huge set with giant TV screens, and a cast of enthusiastic performers.

Educational? Sort of. Chem TV (meant to sound like “MTV”) said it was about
chemistry
, but it was really about the
chemical industry
. It was part of a million-dollar public relations campaign by Dow Chemical—one of the world’s biggest polluters—to help change their image. Dow had a controversial history: It supplied napalm and Agent Orange to the government during the Vietnam War, and lawsuits over faulty breast implants nearly bankrupted the company in 1995.

Cereal trivia: The marshmallows in Lucky Charms cereal are technically known as “marbits.”

Critics charged that the Chem TV presentations were misleading (in one example, an actor took off his clothes to demonstrate that “your entire body is made of chemicals”). Chem TV didn’t differentiate between a
chemical
(a man-made, often toxic combination of ingredients) and an
organic compound
(molecules that fuse together naturally—like water). Despite the criticism, the program toured schools for three years and won numerous awards. (And it was tax exempt because it was “educational.”)

INDEPENDENT THOUGHT

In May 1998, the federal government filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the software giant of monopolistic behavior. In June 1999, the Independent Institute, a California-based legal think tank, ran full-page ads in the
New York Times
and
Washington Post
that staunchly defended Microsoft. In the form of an open letter (signed by 240 “economists”), it stated that prosecuting Microsoft would hurt consumers and weaken the economy. What exactly is the “Independent Institute”? It’s not independent at all. Though its mission statement says it is “dedicated to the highest standards of independent scholarly inquiry,” in 1998 it had exactly one source of funding: Microsoft.

JUNK FOOD = FITNESS

The American Council for Fitness and Nutrition was formed in 2003 to combat the United States’ growing obesity problem. At least that’s what they said. Shortly after its formation, the Council held a press conference to announce its latest findings: Contrary to numerous government and medical studies, they reported, too much fast food and vending machines filled with junk food did
not
make children fat.

Turns out the ACFN’s interest in childhood obesity is purely business related. The ACFN is actually a lobbying group…for snack-food makers and fast-food restaurants. Its members include Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Sara Lee, Pepsi, Nestle, McDonald’s, Hershey, Coca-Cola, and the Sugar Association.

World’s first speed limit: England, 1903. (20 mph.)

THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE

For many cities—Chicago and San Francisco, especially—it took a disaster to finally improve building codes and safety regulations. Boston was no exception.

C
ALM BEFORE THE STORM
November 9, 1872, was a quiet Saturday night in Boston’s downtown business district. Everything was closed, and only a handful of people were on the street. Then, at about 7 p.m., a fire broke out in the Klous Building, at the corner of Summer and Kingston streets. The three businesses housed in the three-story building sold dry goods, neckties, and hoopskirts, with boxes full of back stock stuffed into every empty room. In effect, the Klous Building was a giant pile of kindling, just waiting for a spark to set it on fire.

And that’s what happened. The fire started in the basement, when a spark from the coal-burning steam boiler that powered the elevator ignited a box of hoopskirts. The elevator shaft sucked the flames up, fueled by the shaft’s wood lining, and they spread quickly to other floors. Five minutes later, the entire building was a raging inferno.

LAZY PEOPLE AND SICK HORSES

The fire could be seen from blocks away, and a crowd gathered to watch the blaze. After standing around for about 15 minutes, many wondered aloud why they couldn’t hear a fire alarm. Surely
someone
had alerted the fire department. No, nobody had—they all assumed somebody else had done it. The fire department was finally summoned at 7:25 p.m. by a policeman half a block away who saw smoke in the air.

By that time, smoke was already visible five miles away across Boston Harbor in East Boston. Without waiting for an alarm, a pumper engine from the East Boston Fire Department boarded a ferry and was at the fire within minutes. But once the firefighters got there, tragically they couldn’t do anything: Their fire hoses weren’t compatible with Boston’s fire hydrants. All they could do was watch the building burn and the fire spread. The Klous Building was gone by 7:30. Metal shutters had slid down the building in molten streams; shingles and roof tiles had fallen to the ground and struck onlookers.

The Great Fire of London (1666) destroyed 13,200 homes but…

Though firefighters all over Boston had heard the alarm, they couldn’t get to the spreading fire because the horses that pulled their water-pumper engines had been stricken by an epidemic of horse flu. Some engines tried to get to the fire anyway, only to have their sick horses die along the way. The city had had the foresight to keep 500 men on call to carry the engines by hand, but by 7:45 p.m., only 75 of them had shown up.

Shortly after 8:00, Fire Chief John Damrell knew he’d need more help. He sent telegrams requesting fire engines and firemen to every town within 50 miles. The word spread, and 1,700 firefighters from 27 towns headed for Boston…but most didn’t get there until well after 10 p.m.

GRANITE, HYDRANTS, AND COAL

The fire had started to spread to adjacent buildings as early as 7:20, before any firefighters even arrived. Most of the buildings in the district were made of granite, which normally isn’t flammable. But anything—including stone—will burn if it comes into contact with the proper oxidizing agent. The burning materials inside the Klous caused a chemical reaction that created the necessary agents, making the granite burn.

Granite burns hotter and creates a wider perimeter of heat than burning wood. A building across the street from the Klous caught fire without even being touched by flames; the heat from the fire was enough to ignite it. Now buildings on both sides of the narrow street were ablaze. This created a “wind of heat”—a 16-mph backdraft that blew embers and cinders in every direction, igniting even more buildings.

By 8:30 p.m., entire blocks were burning. There were 50 engine crews on the ground, but not enough fire hydrants in the business district to beat back the spread of flames. In some cases the nearest hydrant was 700 feet away. By the time the water came out of the hose, there wasn’t enough water pressure to fight the fire. Other crews hooked up multiple hoses to a single hydrant. That also killed water pressure. The hot winds were so strong that what little water did come out was reduced to a mist.

…caused only 6 recorded fatalities.

The pumpers ran on coal, and fire engines usually carried 500 pounds of it—enough for an hour of firefighting. Ordinarily that would be sufficient, but on this night the engines ran through their coal and then, because the coal carts couldn’t replenish the supply fast enough, resorted to using stray boxes, garbage, broken-off fenceboards—even shutters and blinds from nearby buildings—for fuel. Ironically, there was a large coal yard nearby, but it, too, caught on fire, making its thousands of tons of coal unusable.

FIGHTING FIRE…WITH GUNPOWDER

At 10 p.m., the firemen were still concentrating on dousing the burning buildings, instead of trying to contain the fire. Fire Chief Damrell finally agreed to Mayor William Gaston’s demand to use explosives to blow up houses and buildings in the fire’s path. That was how the Great Chicago Fire had finally been extinguished—if there is nothing in a fire’s way to burn, it will eventually stop. Would it work in Boston? They decided to find out: The police department donated kegs of gunpowder, and volunteers and business owners ignited them. The explosions eliminated the buildings…but it also ignited gas lines connected to street lamps. For a time, the fire raged hotter than ever, but because there were no buildings left, it could finally be controlled. It was largely extinguished by noon the next day.