Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (40 page)

• On his first trip to Europe, Houdini hired seven bald men to sit in a row on the pavement next to a popular café. At regular intervals, the seven men would simultaneously remove their hats and nod their heads forward. Each man had one letter written on his bald head, and together they spelled “Houdini.”

• In 1901 Houdini escaped from the manacles that had been worn by a sadistic murderer named Glowisky when he had been beheaded just three days earlier. It made great newspaper copy.

• A rival magician once interrupted one of Houdini's performances with loud protests that he, The Great Cirnoc, was the true handcuff king. Houdini invited him onstage to prove himself by escaping from some special cuffs. Cirnoc first insisted that Houdini demonstrate that it was possible to do (which he did, in the privacy of his cabinet, using a secret key). The Great Cirnoc then struggled to release himself from the same cuffs but couldn't. He was hooted offstage, and the papers were full of the story the next day.

Popular singer Sarah Bernhardt was honored at a reception at the Met in New York. There, she was presented with a bronze bust of herself. However, no one had paid the bill for the bust. When the $350 bill was sent to her, she returned the bust to the maker. Houdini immediately stepped in and paid the bill. Within a few days, his gesture had been covered in no less than 3,756 newspapers. A reporter estimated that if Houdini had bought that much newspaper space outright, it would have cost him $56,340.

How'd he do all this stuff? Turn to page 289 to find out
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Some things never change. This piece of 19th-century humor by Charles Dudley Warner deals with a problem familiar to every 21st-century homeowner
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There is no class of men whose society is more to be desired than that of plumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know. I suspect the secret of it is that they are agreeable by the hour.

In the driest days, my fountain became disabled. The pipe was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view the situation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion about where the stoppage was. But I found the plumbers perfectly willing to sit down and talk about it—talk by the hour. Some of their guesses and remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their general observations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and could hardly have been better if they had been made by the job.

The work dragged a little—as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers had occasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, upon arrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool and one would go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it, and his companion would await his return with the most exemplary patience, and sit down and talk—always by the hour. I do not know but it is a habit to have something wanted at the shop.

They seemed to me very good workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, or anything else, when I went near them. They had none of that impetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our American civilization. To their credit be it said, that I never observed anything of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two of them will sometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.

They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure to meet such men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for
them
by the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have very nearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people, never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have no anxiety, and little work.

If you do things by the job you are perpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind.

In June 2000, some kids were playing basketball at a recreational field in Moreland Township, Pennsylvania, when they heard screams for help coming from the portable toilet that serves the field. The kids ran home to mom; she called the cops. Cops found a man standing in the toilet, naked from the waist down and up to his hips in…unpleasantness. According to police, the man had dropped his keys in the toilet and became stuck when he climbed in to find them. (He says he removed his shoes, socks, and pants “so they wouldn't get dirty.”)

The man spent 45 minutes trapped in the toilet; it took rescue crews another 45 minutes to free him. That doesn't include the time removing the toilet seat from the man's torso, which was wedged so tight it had to be removed by emergency room doctors. The man never found his keys, but the story did end on a positive note: police withheld his name to save him from embarrassment.

We're back with another installment of anagrams…words or phrases whose letters are rearranged to form new words or phrases. Here's an extra bonus: the new phrase has more or less the same meaning as the old one
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A TELEPHONE GIRL
   becomes…
REPEATING
     “HELLO”

THE COUNTRYSIDE
    becomes…
NO CITY
        DUST HERE

THE PUBLIC ART
    GALLERIES becomes…
        
LARGE PICTURE
            HALLS, I BET

THE GREAT NEW YORK
    RAPID TRANSIT
        TUNNEL becomes…
           GIANT WORK IN
               STREET, PARTLY
                  UNDERNEATH

THE HOSPITAL
    AMBULANCE becomes…
        A CAB, I HUSTLE
          TO HELP MAN

HEAVY RAIN becomes…
    HIRE A NAVY

VACATION TIMES
    becomes…
I'M NOT AS
      ACTIVE

A DOMESTICATED
    ANIMAL becomes…
        DOCILE, AS A MAN
          TAMED IT

CONVERSATION becomes…
    VOICES RANT ON

THE UNITED STATES
    BUREAU OF FISHERIES
        becomes…
I RAISE THE
          BASS TO FEED US
             IN THE FUTURE

SOFTWARE becomes…
    SWEAR OFT

LISTEN becomes…
SILENT

“THAT'S ONE SMALL
    STEP FOR A MAN, ONE
        GIANT LEAP FOR
          MANKIND.”—NEIL
            A. ARMSTRONG

    becomes…

A THIN MAN RAN,
    MAKES A LARGE
        STRIDE, LEFT
          PLANET, PINS
            FLAG ON MOON!
              ON TO MARS!

Uncle John's loves to bring you the best in bathroom news, so here's something he recently discovered: restroom ratings posted on the Internet. Are they legit? We don't know. Are they accurate? We don't know that, either. Are they fun? Definitely
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Finagle-A-Bagel,
Boston, MA

Comments:
“Large, unusually clean. Convenient location. Decent bagels, too.”

Unos Pizzeria,
Phoenix, AZ

Comments:
“The small urinals were a ridiculous four inches from the floor. At that height, even a dwarf would have to crouch to stay on target!”

Shinjuku Subway Station Men's Room,
Tokyo, Japan

Comments:
“This pay toilet cost 100 yen ($1.00). Too expensive. But it smells good.”

House of Blues,
New Orleans, LA

Comments:
“The candies were a bit stale. The after-shave was not my brand.”

Castle Island,
Boston, MA

Comments:
“What a horrible bathroom. Dirty, smelly, perpetually ‘wet' floor. I almost felt dirtier coming out than I did going in.”

The Shell Station,
US-219 near Lewisburg, WV

Comments:
“Upon opening the door to the men's restroom, which was unlocked, a man already seated upon the toilet smiled at me as I opened the door. I quickly closed the door, never to enter again.”

Tabata Subway Station Men's Room,
Tokyo, Japan

Comments:
“Worst toilet in Tokyo. Help! I'm nauseated.”

Syracuse Carrier Dome,

Syracuse, NY

Comments:
“A unique bathroom. Instead of urinating into a urinal, you urinate on the wall. It then trickles down the wall into a small trough which carries the urine to God knows where.”

Pazzaluna,
St. Paul, MN

Comments:
“The small framed photos of pasta dishes hanging above the urinals were nice.”

The next time you're doing some home improvement, chances are you'll use one at least one of these three products
.

In 1894 Theodore Witte was applying putty around a window frame with a butter knife—and it was a messy job. Sometime later, while waiting in line at a bakery shop, he noticed a baker squeezing icing onto a cake from a tube attached to a nozzle…with complete precision. Witte went straight home and designed a “puttying tool.” He patented his idea of “using a ratcheted piston to force window putty through a nozzle to effect a smooth, weatherproof seal.” Witte never made much money for his invention, but to his credit, he got it right the first time; very little about the caulking gun has changed since then.

After someone spilled raw fish oil on his metal deck, a Scottish fishing boat captain named Robert Fergusson noticed that—over time—the deck stopped rusting. So after he landed in New Orleans, Fergusson spent many years trying to formulate a fish-oil based paint that would inhibit rust and corrosion. His biggest problem wasn't getting it to work, but getting it to work without smelling fishy. Finally in 1921, after working with more fish oil than any person should ever have to, Fergusson unveiled a new paint that stopped rust, dried overnight, and left no lingering aroma: Rust-Oleum.

Norm Larsen, a chemist at the Rocket Chemical Company, had unsuccessfully tested 39 compounds that would prevent corrosion and eliminate water from electrical circuitry. He finally got it right in 1953 and labeled the compound Water Displacement Formula 40. Other workers snuck the stuff home and discovered that in addition to preventing corrosion, it also stopped squeaks and unstuck locks. So the Rocket Chemical Company marketed it for home use. The product, now called WD-40, hit store shelves in 1958. Today more than a million cans are sold every week.