Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (3 page)
Read Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader Online
Authors: Michael Brunsfeld
A NOTE FROM YOUR FAVORITE UNCLE
W
elcome one and all to our 18th edition,
Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader
. We think the title is a pretty accurate description of the reading material you’ll find in any
Bathroom Reader
. Our articles not only provide you with fun information that you can absorb fast, we hope the knowledge you gain will be long-lasting, remaining in your brain for years to come. For instance, did you know that houseflies hum in the key of F? Now you do (and you’ll probably remember it for the rest of your life).
What’s the most astonishing thing we’ve learned after 18 years of making
Bathroom Readers?
It’s that there’s still so much to write about, so many fascinating topics to be explored (and so many bad jokes to tell). Each year we have to dig a little deeper to find them, but once again, the remarkable BRI staff has uncovered a treasure trove of fresh new topics. So expect to find a lot of little-known historical happenings that have had a lasting impact on the future: the first African-American sea captain, the phonograph wars, and the man who gave us leaded gas. On a happier note, you’ll also read about the person who may have saved a billion lives. How? Turn to
page 445
.
What else have we got in store for you? Loads:
•
Origins:
The boomerang, the clock, the spy novel, and nachos.
•
Curses!
From the Ice Man to the Little Rascals.
•
Pop Science:
Hiccups, canoe plants, modern maladies, mad scientists, and rigor mortis.
•
Sports:
The long-awaited conclusion to the history of football tells the story of what happened when the pros took over.
•
Duh!
Dumb crooks, dumb politicians, dumb celebrities, and a woman who called 911 because she was having a cheeseburger emergency at the drive-thru window.
•
Useful Information:
Audio treasures, video stinkers, and survival tips that will come in handy in an array of catastrophes.
•
The Strange:
A beauty pageant held in a Lithuanian women’s prison, a tortoise that adopted an orphaned hippopotamus, and a toothless man who stole toothbrushes.
Now comes the part where I get to thank our dedicated staff for going the extra mile to bring you an extra-great book.
• To our in-house outhouse writers—John D, Thom, Brian, and Jay, all of whom spent hot summer days in the cool confines of our little, red house in Ashland, Oregon—great work! (And thanks for the laughs!)
• A 21-flush salute to our out-house outhouse writers—Malcolm, Jahnna, Jef Ef, Kyle, Ernest “No More Doughnuts” Cheek, Jack, Erin, Gideon, and Angie, whose feet adorn almost every page.
• To our fabulous production staff—John G., Jeff A., Jennifer’s terrific team of conscientious copyeditors, Rain, whom we will miss, Michael B., who’s always got us covered, and Julia, whose managing prowess actually makes this book possible—thanks for 522 pages worth of hard work and dedication.
• To Allen, Sydney, JoAnn, and our friends at Banta, thank you for the support.
• To Porter the Wonder Dog. You’re simply the best dog…ever.
And finally, thank
you
, our faithful readers. Every day we get letters telling us how much our books mean to you. Well, you mean just as much to us. We’re all just one big happy family keeping the bathroom reading movement alive. It brings a tear to my eye. (I have to go now, before I short out my computer.)
Keep on reading. And as always,
Go with the Flow!
Uncle John and the BRI Staff
P.S. Did we mention our Web site? It’s
www.bathroomreader.com
It’s not a typo: It’s
www.bathroomreader.com
It’s always interesting to find out where the architects of pop culture get their ideas. These may surprise you
.
C
HARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
. In the 1920s, England’s two biggest chocolate makers, Cadbury and Rowntree, tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into each others’ factories, posed as employees. Result: both companies became highly protective of their chocolate-making process. When Roald Dahl was 13, he worked as a taste-tester at Cadbury. The secretive policies and the giant, elaborate machines inspired the future author to write his book about chocolatier Willy Wonka.
MARLBORO MAN
. Using a cowboy to pitch the cigarette brand was inspired when ad execs saw a 1949
Life
magazine photo—a close-up of a weather-worn Texas rancher named Clarence Hailey Long, who wore a cowboy hat and had a cigarette in his mouth.
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
. Elvis Costello used it as a pseudonym on his 1986 album
Blood and Chocolate
. Scriptwriter Jeremy Coon met a street person in New York who said his name was Napoleon Dynamite. Coon liked the name, and unaware of the Costello connection, used it for the lead character in his movie.
CHARLIE THE TUNA
. The Leo Burnett Agency created Charlie for StarKist Tuna in 1961. Ad writer Tom Rogers based him on a beatnik friend of his (that’s why he wears a beret) who wanted to be respected for his “good taste.”
THE ODD COUPLE
. In 1962 TV writer Danny Simon got divorced and moved in with another divorced man. Simon was a neat freak, while his friend was a slob. Simon’s brother, playwright Neil Simon, turned the situation into
The Odd Couple
. (Neil says Danny inspired at least nine other characters in his plays.)
“I DON’T GET NO RESPECT.”
After seeing
The Godfather
in 1972, comedian Rodney Dangerfield noticed that all the characters did the bidding of Don Corleone out of respect. Dangerfield just flipped the concept.
Psycho? Alfred Hitchcock had an extreme fear of eggs.
BRI member Richard Staples sent us these real responses from Russian high school kids applying to come to America on a foreign-exchange program
.
Tell us about yourself:
“I’d like to be rich and famous. But it can hardly come true, I’m lazy and talentless.”
“I don’t want to write about my friends because I am afraid to fall over.”
“I love to eat ice cream, apples, chocolate and my mother’s plow.”
“I have a medium body (not too fat and not weedy).”
“In my free time I like to write poems. They are not very nice but they are mental.”
“My father reckons that I’m just a lazy lump of cheese.”
“And then I will have a good job and I’ll be happy and blah blah blah.”
Tell us about your family:
“People often ask me, my appearance is like mother’s or father’s one. I can say proudly I’m hybrid.”
“I felt safe, as safe as only can be when you are falling off a hill with a bicycle and a father.”
Tell us about your town:
“My town is windy and full of stones.”
“In the suburbs of our town we have stud factory.”
Do you have any pets?
“I visit my dog’s club. His name is Danil. He is an American Staff-teryer. I am proud of him because he is an American.”
“Most of all I prefer to play with my cat and change his hairstyle in winter.”
“My cat is a member of my family. I have special relations with her.”
Tell us about your school:
“We had to learn stupid poems in English about cows and pigs.”
“Exact sciences reach my brain with difficulty.”
Anything else to tell us?
“Free cheese only in mouse-catching machine.”
“Though my mother told me it was only a toy, I could not forgive the silence of the teddy bear.”
The degree sign (°) is an ancient symbol representing the sun.
Q: What does everything in the world have in common? A: There was a first one
.
First brewery in North America:
opened in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in 1612.
First professional sports organization in the United States:
the Maryland Jockey Club, founded in 1743.
First American to fly in a hot air balloon:
Edward Warren (1784).
First American cookbook:
American Cookery
, published by Amelia Simmons in 1796.
First refrigerator:
invented by Thomas Moore in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1803.
First flea circus performance:
took place in New York City in 1835.
First American novel to sell a million copies:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852).
First drive-in movie theater:
opened in Camden, New Jersey, in 1933. (Picture shown:
Wives Beware
, starring Adolphe Menjou.)
First female celebrity to wear pants in public:
Actress Sarah Bernhardt was photographed wearing men’s trousers in 1876.
First blood transfusion:
June 1667, by Jean-Baptiste Denys, a French doctor, to a 15-year-old boy. (He got lamb’s blood.)
First electric hand drill:
invented by Wilhelm Fein of Norwell, Massachusetts, in 1895.
First tank:
built in 1916 and nicknamed “Little Willie,” it could only go 2 mph and never saw duty in battle.
First drink of Kool-Aid:
taken by chemist Edwin Perkins of Hastings, Nebraska, in 1927.
World’s first flight attendant:
Ellen Church, hired in 1930. (She wanted to be a pilot.)
First coast-to-coast direct-dial phone call:
made from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California, in 1951.
First
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader:
went to press in 1988.
Barn owls snore.
The origins of some names you can see from where you’re sitting
.
K
OHLER
. Named after John Michael Kohler, an Austrian immigrant who started a steel products company in Wisconsin in 1873. In 1883 he applied enamel to one of his products, a horse trough, creating the company’s first bathtub.
PRICE PFISTER
. Founded in Los Angeles in 1910 by Emil Price and William Pfister. Their first plumbing product: a garden faucet. Over the decades they added indoor faucets, valves, and shower-heads. (During World War II they made hand grenade shells.)
ELJER
. In 1907 Raymond Elmer Crane and his cousin, Oscar Jerome Backus, bought an old dinnerware plant in West Virginia, where they made some of the earliest vitreous china toilet tanks. The name combines the “El” in Elmer and the “Jer” in Jerome.
DELTA
. Owned by Masco Screw Corporation, which was founded in Detroit in 1929 by Armenian immigrant Alex Manoogian. In 1952 an inventor brought Manoogian his latest product—a one-handled faucet with a ball-valve to mix the hot and cold water. But it leaked. Manoogian bought the rights, perfected the valve, and released the “Delta” faucet, so named because the triangle-shaped cam resembled the Greek letter
delta
[Ø].
HANSGROHE
. Named after Hans Grohe, who founded the plumbing products company in Shiltach, Germany, in 1901. Hansgrohe’s innovations include the first handheld showerhead (1928) and the Selecta adjustable showerhead (1956). Today they’re the world’s largest showerhead supplier. (Not to be confused with Grohe, another German company, which was started by Friedrich Grohe in 1936 and makes futuristic-looking faucet sets.)
AMERICAN-STANDARD
. It comes from two companies: the American Radiator Company, founded in 1872, and the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company, founded in 1875. They merged in 1929 to become the American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation. In 1968 they changed it to “American-Standard.”
Good luck! It’s easier to find gold than to win the lottery.
Everybody enjoys reading about somebody else’s blunders. So go ahead and feel superior for a few minutes
.
S
MART CAR…DUMB TRUCK
“A truck driver hit a Smart car on a motorway then drove for two miles with the tiny vehicle wedged to the front of his HGV—and did not know it was there. Trucker Klaus Buergermeister only stopped when he was flagged down by police, allowing terrified driver Andreas Bolga, 48, to escape. Klaus, 53, said he had only felt a slight bump and added: ‘I could not believe it when I got out and saw there was a car stuck on the front of my truck.’”
—The Express
(UK)
(P)OOPS
“A police sniffer dog caused a political stink in South Africa’s parliament after leaving its excrement under of the seat of a prominent opposition leader. The dog feces found under the bench of Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi provoked outrage among politicians as some believed it was left there as an insult. One member of parliament demanded a formal apology from the Speaker of Parliament. But a police spokesman said it amounted to a simple call of nature. ‘It was one of our police dogs we use to sweep the premises,’ said Inspector Dennis Adriao. ‘The handler did try to clean it up but missed some of it. Obviously, we have apologized for any embarrassment caused.’”
