Free Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader by Michael Brunsfeld

New York City. A compelling tragic drama? No— Great Day was a comedy. It aired only once.
    MANIMAL (1983)
    An animal behavior studies professor can turn himself into any animal he wishes, whenever he wishes, and uses his power to fight crime. What was an intriguing premise didn’t work. Why? Because the special effects needed to turn man into animal turned out to be very expensive. So producers cut corners, using poorly trained animal actors. Result: the show’s handful of episodes featured birds, tigers, dogs, snakes, and cougars moving the wrong way, attacking the camera, looking directly into the camera, or sitting completely still when they should have been running. NBC’s most-hyped show of 1983 was gone after eight episodes.
    THE CHARMINGS (1987)
    Premise: Snow White, Prince Charming, a magic mirror, and some dwarves are accidentally transported through time to 1980s Burbank, California. The show featured live actors, not animation, and the comedy arises mostly from Snow White’s difficulty in dealing with the 20th century—especially modern appliances. It ran for 20 episodes.
It takes about 0.004 gallons of gas to start your car in the morning.
    WOOPS! (1992)
    Back in Fox’s early days it liked to experiment with edgy concepts. Here’s one they came up with: A nuclear holocaust instantly kills everyone on Earth except for six Americans: a teacher, a feminist, a yuppie stockbroker, a homeless man, a doctor, and a ditzy blonde. They manage to find each other and try to come up with ways to rebuild civilization. Sound familiar? Basically, they just took the premise for Gilligan’s Island and changed the island to a barren post-apocalyptic wasteland after billions of people died. Funny, huh? Viewers didn’t think so. Woops! lasted only 10 episodes.
    FATHER OF THE PRIDE (2004)
    Produced by animation studio Dreamworks (they made the Shrek movies) this prime-time cartoon was for kids, right? Wrong. It was about the private lives of the jungle animals in Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas show and was strictly adults only, with lots of frank sexual dialogue and depiction of drugs. The fact that prior to the show’s debut Roy Horn was critically mauled by one of his tigers couldn’t have been a good omen. But since each episode took nine months and $1.6 million to produce, NBC went ahead and aired the show anyway, despite the tragedy. They should have heeded the omen— Father of the Pride lasted only seven episodes.
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    JEWEL THIEF
    “Two thieves who tried to rob two elderly women in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda, thinking they were easy prey, got more than they bargained for. The two would-be thieves rang the doorbell and attacked the women as soon as they opened the door. But Zoja Popova, 93, brought one of the robbers to his knees—she grabbed the thief by the family jewels and squeezed. ‘I pressed as hard as I could and he squealed like an animal,’ said Popova. Neighbors came running to find out what all the shouting was about. The robbers tried to escape through a window, but were caught by private security guards and handed over to the police.”
    —Mail & Guardian UK)
It may not look like it, but a violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood.

WRONG WAY CORRIGAN
While rummaging through our “Dustbin of History” file recently, we discovered the story of this colorful character. He snookered his way into the hearts of people on both sides of the Atlantic by heading in the wrong direction and ending up in the right place .
    T HAT’S MY STORY…
On the foggy morning of July 17, 1938, a 31-year-old pilot named Douglas Corrigan took off from Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field on a solo, nonstop trip to California. Twenty-eight hours later, he landed in Ireland…with a lot of explaining to do. He had no passport or papers of any kind, nor had he received permission from U.S. officials to make the transatlantic flight.
    Safely on the ground, Corrigan offered this