Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Hop ’N’ Gator. The inventor of Gatorade sold his original drink to a major corporation in 1966. Then, in 1969, he used the money to create another can’t-miss product: a mixture of beer and Gatorade. The Pittsburg Brewing Company tried it out for a couple of years. Unfortunately, people didn’t want Gatorade in their beer.

  Zartan the Enemy action figures. Hasbro promoted the soldier doll as a “paranoid schizophrenic” that becomes violent under pressure. They pulled the product after mental health organizations complained.

  Pepsi A.M. Why not get your morning caffeine from cola instead of coffee? The world’s first breakfast soft drink didn’t get far. Pepsi found out most consumers didn’t want a breakfast soft drink—and people who did “still preferred the taste of plain old Pepsi.”

  Hands Up! Kids’ soap in an aerosol can, introduced in 1962. Instead of a nozzle, there was a plastic gun mounted on top. You got soap out of the can by pointing the gun at a kid and squeezing the trigger. The Hands Up! slogan: “Gets kids clean and makes them like it.”

  Population boom: Cows outnumber people in nine U.S. states.

  EVERYDAY PHRASES

  More origins of common phrases.

  TOO MANY IRONS IN THE FIRE

  Meaning: Working on too many projects at once.

  Origin: “Refers to the blacksmith’s forge, where if the smith had too many irons heating in the fire at the same time he couldn’t do his job properly, as he was unable to use them all before some had cooled off.” (From Everyday Phrases, by Neil Ewart)

  THE NAKED TRUTH

  Meaning: The absolute truth.

  Origin: Comes from this old fable: “Truth and Falsehood went swimming. Falsehood stole the clothes that Truth had left on the river bank, but Truth refused to wear Falsehood’s clothes and went naked.” (From Now I Get It!, by Douglas Ottati)

  TO GIVE SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER

  Meaning: Reject, or act unfriendly toward, someone.

  Origin: Actually refers to food. In England, a welcome or important visitor would be served a delicious hot meal. A guest “who had outstayed his welcome, or an ordinary traveler” would get a cold shoulder of mutton. (From Rejected! by Steve Gorlick)

  READ SOMEONE THE RIOT ACT

  Meaning: Deliver an ultimatum.

  Origin: Comes from an actual Riot Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1714, that made it unlawful for a dozen or more people to gather for “riotous or illegal purposes.” An authority would literally stand up and read out the terms of the Act, so that the rioters knew what law they were breaking: “Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons assembled immediately to disperse themselves and peacefully to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business.” If the crowd didn’t disperse, they were arrested. (From Why Do We Say It?, by Nigel Rees)

  Poll results: 40% of U.S. couples say they first discussed marriage in the back seat of a car.

  PASS THE BUCK

  Meaning: Blame someone else; avoid accepting responsibility.

  Origin: “The original buck was a buckhorn knife passed around the table in certain card games. It was placed in front of the player whose turn it was to deal the cards and see that the stakes for all the players were placed in the pool.” Someone who “passed the buck” literally passed that responsibility to the person next to him. (From Everyday Phrases, by Neil Ewart)

  A BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW

  Meaning: An experience that’s difficult or painful to accept.

  Origin: Refers to taking medicine in the time before doctors had any way to make pills more palatable. “The bark of a New World tree, the cinchona, was effective in fighting malaria. But the quinine it contains is extremely bitter. Widely employed in the era before medications were coated, cinchona pellets caused any disagreeable thing to be termed a bitter pill to swallow.” (From Why You Say It, by Webb Garris)

  HE’S TIED TO HER APRON STRINGS

  Meaning: A man is dominated by his wife.

  Origin: In England several hundred years ago, if a man married a woman with property, he didn’t get title to it, but could use it while she was alive. This was popularly called apron-string tenure. A man tied to his wife’s apron strings was in no position to argue; hence, the phrase came to stand for any abnormal submission to a wife or mother.” (From I’ve Got Goose Pimples, by Marvin Vanoni)

  Credit Where Credit Is Due

  The name “credit card” was coined in 1888 by futurist author Edward Bellamy, who wrote a fictional account of a young man who wakes up in the year 2000 and discovers that cash has been dumped in favor of “a credit corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation...and a credit card is issued to him with which he procures at the public storehouses...whatever he desires, whenever he desires it.” Sixty years later, his vision (in slightly altered form) came true.

  Atlantic coast seals aren’t afraid of most boats—but they’re scared to death of kayaks.

  PRIMETIME PROVERBS

  TV comments about everyday life. From Primetime Proverbs, by Jack Mingo and John Javna.

  ON DOCTORS

  Henry Blake: “I was never very good with my hands.”

  Radar O’Reilly: “Guess that’s why you became a surgeon, huh, Sir?”

  —M*A*S*H

  Sophia: “How come so many doctors are Jewish?”

  Jewish Doctor: “Because their mothers are.”

  —The Golden Girls

  ON GOD

  “It’s funny the way some people’s name just suits the business they’re in. Like God’s name is just perfect for God.”

  —Edith Bunker,

  All in the Family

  ON FRIENDS

  “I’ve never felt closer to a group of people. Not even in the portable johns of Woodstock.”

  —Rev. Jim Ignatowski,

  Taxi

  “A friend, I am told, is worth more than pure gold.”

  —Popeye

  The Popeye Cartoon Show

  ON GREED

  “Oh, yes indeedy, it doesn’t pay to be greedy.”

  —Popeye,

  The Popeye Cartoon Show

  Robin [anguished]: “The Bat-diamond!”

  Batman: “What about it, Robin?”

  Robin: “To think it’s the cause of all this trouble!”

  Batman: “People call it many things, old chum: passion, lust, desire, avarice....But the simplest and most understandable word is greed.”

  —Batman

  ON SEX

  Sam Malone: “I thought you weren’t going to call me stupid now that we’re being intimate.”

  Diane Chambers: “No, I said I wasn’t going to call you stupid

  while we were being intimate.”

  —Cheers

  ON DEATH

  “Death is just nature’s way of telling you, ‘Hey, you’re not alive anymore.’”

  —Bull,

  Night Court

  The Canadian Mounties haven’t mounted horses since 1938.

  A WILD & CRAZY GUY

  Observations from Steve Martin, one of America’s biggest hams.

  “Sex is one of the most beautiful-natural things that money can buy.”

  “I gave my cat a bath the other day....He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that....”

  “What? You been keeping records on me? I wasn’t so bad! How many times did I take the Lord’s name in vain? One million and six? Jesus CH—!”

  “A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”

  “In talking to girls I could never remember the right sequence of things to say. I’d meet a girl and say, ‘Hi was it good for you too?’ If a girl spent the night, I’d wake up in the morning and then try to get her drunk...”

  “I learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. The most important thing I learned was: Never let go of the girl’s leg no matter how hard she tries to shake you off.”


  “Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything.”

  “I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal, high enough so you can look up her dress.”

  “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.”

  “What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.”

  “There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I’m talking about, of course, is cat juggling.”

  “I believe that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was—an arctic region covered with ice.”

  “I started a grease fire at McDonald’s—threw a match in the cook’s hair.”

  “I have a new book coming out. It’s one of those self-help deals. It’s called How to Get Along with Everyone. I wrote it with this other asshole.”

  Q. What’s the most common language spoken by New York City cabdrivers? A. Urdu.

  GONE, BUT

  NOT FORGOTTEN

  You can see them in museums or in books—but you won’t see them on the road, because no one makes them anymore. Here’s some info about five automobile legends.

  THE PIERCE-ARROW (1901-1938). One of the most prestigious cars of its day, the Pierce-Arrow set the standard for luxury and performance. According to one auto critic, “Even a massive limousine could whisper along at 100 mph—uniformed chauffeur up front; tycoon, cigar, and Wall St. Journal in the rear. (Some cars had speedometers back there so the owner could keep an eye on the chauffer’s lead-foot tendencies.)” Pierce-Arrow was the car of choice for rumrunners—who liked its quiet engine and reliability—and presidents: Woodrow Wilson rode in a customized Pierce-Arrow limousine; so did FDR and J. Edgar Hoover (theirs were bulletproof).

  Fate: When the Depression hit, the company kept building expensive cars, thinking the business downturn was temporary. Sales dropped from a high of 10,000 cars in 1929 to only 167 in 1937. The company was sold at auction a year later.

  THE REO (1905-1936). In 1904, Ransom Eli Olds left the Olds Motor Vehicle Co. and began a new one. The Olds Motor Vehicle Company wouldn’t let him use his last name—but couldn’t stop him from using his initials, so he called it the REO Motor Car Co. By 1907 it had become the third largest auto manufacturer, after Ford and Buick. Five years later Olds announced his retirement and introduced his last car, REO the Fifth (the company’s fifth model).

  Fate: Olds retired from day-to-day operations, but retained enough veto power to make himself a nuisance. As a result, REO began to lag behind its competitors. Olds finally gave up control in 1934, but it was too late: Two years later the company became yet another victim of the Great Depression.

  THE STUTZ BEARCAT (1911-1935). Grandfather of the American muscle car, it was built for speed. According to legend, founder Harry Stutz designed his clutches with “springs so stiff that a woman couldn’t operate them.” It was a teenager’s dream car in the ’teens and ’twenties, because it won so many races. In 1912 it won 25 of the 30 national races it entered, and in 1915 Cannonball Baker drove a 4-cylinder Bearcat from San Diego to New York in less than 12 days, shattering the transcontinental record.

  Fate: Another casualty of the Depression. Stutz couldn’t slash costs and prices fast enough to stay competitive. In January 1935 it got out of the passenger-car business, and went bankrupt two years later.

  Hi, Mom: 60% of Americans call their mother at least once a week.

  THE DUESENBERG (1920-1937). To the driver of the 1920s, the name Duesenberg meant the top of the line: “The Duesenberg was more than a status symbol; it was status pure and simple, whether the owner was a maharajah, movie star, politician, robber baron, gangster, or evangelist....‘He drives a Duesenberg’ was the only copy in many company advertisements.” The first passenger cars rolled off the assembly line in 1920; for the next 17 years the phrase “It’s a Duesy” meant the very best.

  Fate: Duesenberg was the best carmaker of its day—but it was probably also the worst run. The Duesenberg brothers were notoriously bad administrators. Chronic mismanagement, combined with the stock market crash of 1929, pushed the ailing company permanently into the red. It collapsed in 1937.

  KAISER (1946-55). When World War II ended in 1945, shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser decided to start his own car company. The U.S. government wasn’t buying ships anymore, and the auto industry hadn’t released new models since the beginning of the war. Kaiser thought he could beat existing carmakers to market with flashy new models and change the Big Three to the Big Four.

  Kaiser’s 1946 models did make the Big Three’s cars look dowdy and old-fashioned in comparison. The company’s sales hit 70,000 in 1947—but it soon ran into trouble.

  Fate: Ford, GM, and Chrysler shed their prewar image in 1947-48, and began beating Kaiser on price. The situation became desperate: some years Kaiser’s sales were so bad that rather than introduce a new model, the company just changed the serial numbers on unsold cars and introduced them as the new models. In 1954 the company merged with the Willys-Overland (forerunner of the Jeep company); one year later the Kaiser model line was discontinued.

  Explosive fact: 12,000 Americans are injured by fireworks every year.

  CHILDHOOD WISDOM

  Quotes from classic children’s books.

  “We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, and you of the City. The same substance composes us—the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star—we are all one, all moving to the same end....Bird and beast and stone and star—we are all one, all one—Child and serpent, star and stone—all one.”

  —The Hamadryad, Mary Poppins

  “If I can fool a bug, I can fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.”

  —Charlotte, Charlotte’s Web

  “Money is a nuisance. We’d all be much better off if it had never been invented. What does money matter, as long as we all are happy?”

  —Dr. Doolittle, Dr. Doolittle

  “Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days.”

  —Charlotte, Charlotte’s Web

  “Don’t be angry after you’ve been afraid. That’s the worst kind of cowardice.”

  —Billy the Troophorse, The Jungle Book

  “Time flies, and one begins to grow old. This autumn I’ll be ten, and then I guess I’ll have seen my best days.”

  —Pippi Longstocking, Pippi Goes on Board

  Are you lonesome tonight? In a recent survey, 1% of Americans said they have no friends.

  LOOK IT UP!

  Every bathroom reader knows the value of a good record book, or a volume of quotes, in a pinch. Here are the stories of the originals.

  BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS.

  John Bartlett was 16 years old when he left school in 1836 and got a job as a clerk at the University Bookstore across the street from Harvard.

  Over the next 13 years he saved enough money to buy the store—and in that time managed to read nearly every book it contained. He became so well-known as a “quotation freak” that whenever someone asked where a familiar saying came from, or needed a quote to dress up a term paper, the answer would be, “Ask John Bartlett.” By the mid-1850s, his reputation had grown beyond even his own remarkable abilities; no longer able to recite everything from memory, he began writing things down.

  In 1855 he printed up 1,000 copies of his 258-page list of quotes, and began selling them at the store. “Should this be favorably received,” he wrote in the preface, “endeavors will be made to make it more worthy of the public in a future edition.” Sixteen editions and nearly 140 years later, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is the most frequently consulted reference work of its kind.

  THE GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS.

  In 19
54 Sir Hugh Beaver, an avid sportsman and managing director of Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (brewers of Guinness Stout beer), shot at some game birds in the Irish countryside...but they all got away. Looking for an excuse, he exclaimed that he’d missed because the breed of birds—plovers—were “the fastest game bird we’ve got” in the British Isles. But were they? He had no idea, and no reference he consulted could tell him.

  He never found out for sure about the plovers. But the experience did give him the idea for a book of world records. He commissioned two researchers, Norris and Ross McWhirter, to write it for Guinness. Four months later, they were finished, and four months after that the first Guinness Book of World Records was #1 on the British best seller list.

  More collect calls are made on Father’s Day than on any other day.

  A HANDY GUIDE TO

  THE END OF THE

  WORLD (Part II)

  Here are more “end-time” predictions from Uncle John’s Indispensable Guide to the Year 2000—this time from three Native American sources.

  HOPI

  Background: A Pueblo tribe that today occupies several mesa villages in northeast Arizona. Their stories are passed on orally. Frankly, if they are really from ancient times, and not “backdated” by someone to make them sound more accurate, they’re pretty amazing.

  Signs the End Is Near: According to many Hopi tribal elders (such as Dan Evehama, Thomas Banyacya, and Martin Gashwaseoma), the coming of “white-skinned men” and “a strange beast, like a buffalo but with great long horns” that would “overrun the land” (cattle) were predicted as precursors to the end of time. They also say their prophecies include:

  • “The land will be crossed by snakes of iron and rivers of stone. The land shall be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web. Seas will turn black.”

  • “A great dwelling-place in the heavens shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star. The world will rock to and fro.”