Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

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  YUM…OR YUCK?

  Ever feel like having dessert for dinner? Try something from the Twinkies Cookbook. Among the 50 “creative” uses for the cream-filled Hostess sponge cake are Twinkie Sushi, a Twinkie Burrito, Pigs in a Twinkie, Chicken-Raspberry Twinkie Salad, Twinkie Lasagna, and a red, white, and blue Patriotic Twinkie Pie.

  Sports commentator Halsey Hall was the first to say “holy cow” during a baseball broadcast.

  MAKE YOUR OWN (ORIGAMI) TOILET

  Okay, technically, this isn’t origami. But when paper engineer Gary Martin came to us with his “garygami” toilet, we just couldn’t resist. In addition to paper, you’ll need glue and scissors. Happy folding!

  First, photocopy the patterns below and on page 364 onto white paper (glossy, if you can get it). Enlarging the patterns 200% will fit them onto two 8½ × 11" sheets. Now cut around the patterns along the solid lines. (Dashed lines are folds, solid lines are cut.) Now follow the steps on pages 365 and 366.

  THE TANK: Steps 1–2: Fold along the dashed lines as shown. Step 3: Fold sides so the tabs meet in the back. Steps 4–6: Twist slightly to interlock the two slots (tabs should join on the inside). Slide them together so they align at the top. Steps 7–8: Fold down the larger flap first and tuck it inside, then do the same with the smaller flap.

  THE BOWL: Step 9: Fold along the dashed lines. Steps 10–11: Overlap and lock toilet lid tab into slot as shown, keeping the toilet “seat” on the inside. Step 12: Now lock toilet seat tab in place with tab facing the outside. Step 13: Push bottom oval into toilet base. Step 14: Glue the tank to the toilet where marked so the bottom of tank aligns with the bottom of the outside tab on the toilet. Voilà! You’re done! Your origami toilet can stand up on its own, or you can put a string through the hole in the “lid” to hang it as an ornament.

  The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island. (Size: 825,000 acres.)

  Dash lines are folded—Solid lines are cut.

  George Harrison owned a musical toilet. It played “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

  Scared of going to jail? In the 1800s, you could be imprisoned for being nervous.

  How about you? Two in every three car buyers pays the sticker price without haggling.

  MORE DUMB JOCKS

  More goofy gaffes by players, coaches, and announcers.

  “Sure. I’m proud to be an American.”

  —Steve Foster, Cincinnati Reds player, asked by Canadian customs if he had anything to declare

  “We kind of looked at each other and said, ‘That was fun.’ It was a couple guys beating on each other. Good times.”

  —Scott Parker, San Jose Sharks hockey player, after fighting Columbus’s Jody Shelley

  “It’s permanent, for now.”

  —Roberto Kelly, San Diego Padres player, announcing he was changing his name to Bobby

  “It is beyond my apprehension.”

  —Danny Ozark, Philadelphia Phillies manager, on his team’s losing streak

  Louise Goodman: “Jonny, it’s started to rain. How will that affect the track?”

  Jonny Herbert: “Well, it makes it wet, usually.”

  —British auto racing announcers

  “I’ll be sad to go, and I won’t be sad to go. It wouldn’t upset me to leave St. Louis, but it would upset me to leave St. Louis. It’s hard to explain. You’ll find out one of these days, but maybe you never will.”

  —Brett Hull, St. Louis Blues player, on a possible trade

  “Well, that kind of puts the damper on even a Yankee win.”

  —Phil Rizzuto, after hearing Pope Paul VI died

  “Not only is he ambidextrous, but he can throw with either hand.”

  —Duffy Daugherty, Michigan State football coach

  “The advantage of the rain is that if you have a quick bike, there’s no advantage.”

  —Barry Sheen, British motorcycle racing analyst

  “If Rose’s streak was still intact, with that single to left, the fans would be throwing babies out of the upper deck.”

  —Jerry Coleman, San Diego Padres announcer

  Hey, sports fans—if one team forfeits a baseball game, what’s the score? (It’s recorded as 9–0.)

  HEY, HO, LET’S GO!

  Rock critic Nick Tosches coined the term “punk” in 1970 to describe a wave of raucous bands that had just come on the music scene. Here’s the story of punk rock. Riot!

  ROCK IS DEAD

  In the mid-1970s, the most popular musical acts in America were middle-of-the-road, mellow-rock artists like the Eagles, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, ABBA, and Barry Manilow. But while that was what was happening on Top 40 radio, an emerging scene of musicians in New York City was doing something different. “We were all pretty disgusted with what was going on in rock and roll,” said Joey Ramone. “There was no excitement in music—everything was totally superficial and prefabricated.” Rock music lacked the danger and energy that it had had in the 1950s and ’60s. They also thought rock ’n’ roll was supposed to be simple: Pick up a guitar, learn a few chords, and write some songs.

  In 1973 a failed country musician named Hilly Kristal opened a bar in New York’s Bowery neighborhood called CBGB and OMFUG (short for Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers). Kristal planned to feature country and bluegrass music…until Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell convinced him to let their band, Television, play a weekly gig at the bar in 1974. Over the next few years, CBGB became the home of punk and alternative music, featuring bands like Blondie, the Patti Smith Group, the Clash, Mink DeVille, the Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, the Damned, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Police, the Dictators, Tuff Darts, the Shirts, the Heartbreakers, and the Fleshtones.

  ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR

  Probably the most famous—and most important—band to get their start at CBGB was the Ramones. They pared rock music down to its essentials: catchy melodies, simple lyrics, four chords, songs no more than three minutes long. Their sound was loud, fast, raw, and hard-driving, with lots of smart-aleck humor (they had songs titled “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “I Wanna Be Sedated”). The band members—Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy—all took the last name Ramone (from “Paul Ramone,” an alias of Paul McCartney) and dressed identically in jeans, sneakers, leather jackets, and long hair that covered their eyes. All songs started with Dee Dee counting off “one, two, three, four!”

  Blech! Baskin-Robbins once made a ketchup-flavored ice cream.

  But the Ramones weren’t the first band to combine musical simplicity, noise, and a bad attitude.

  • In the late 1960s in New York, the Velvet Underground (fronted by Lou Reed) played slow, minimalist, creepy songs about depression and drugs.

  • A Detroit band, the Stooges, would do things like play the same riff over and over, faster and faster, working frontman James Osterberg (who later took the stage name “Iggy Pop”) into a frenzy. He’d cut himself with broken glass and dive into the audience.

  • The New York Dolls screeched on guitars and dressed in makeup, high heels, and gold lamé. Their music, like their look, was loud, abrasive, and confrontational.

  But the Ramones, Velvet Underground, Stooges, and New York Dolls all looked back to another band for inspiration: the MC5. This Detroit band released their first album, Kick Out the Jams, in 1968. The music was noisy and the lyrics were political, reflecting band members’ involvement with countercultural groups like the Black Panthers (the first line of the title song contained profanity, shocking for 1968). Controversial in their day, they’re now regarded as one of the greatest bands of all time—and they set the whole “punk” movement into action.

  ANARCHY IN THE U.K.

  In 1974 former New York Dolls manager Malcolm McLaren saw Television perform at CBGB. McLaren was taken with the look of singer Richard Hell, who wore a torn shirt, studded dog collar, and a leather jacket. McLaren thought Hell looked the way punk sounded, and h
e concluded that punk was destined to be a hit among young people. He publicly stated that he wanted to form a punk rock band and “make a million pounds.” So McLaren returned to his hometown of London and opened a punk-themed clothing store he called SEX. He then assembled some amateur musicians who frequented the store—Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock (later replaced by Sid Vicious), and John Lydon (renamed Johnny Rotten)—and called them the Sex Pistols.

  Average length of a coat hanger when straightened: 44 inches.

  The Pistols toured England in 1976, and their sneering attitude and distinct lack of musical ability (none could play more than four chords on a guitar) caused a sensation. Their songs called for revolution, insulted the queen, and were brash, sexual, and violent. Young English kids loved it; the Sex Pistols’ first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” even achieved minor hit status.

  But all that changed in December 1976, when the Sex Pistols appeared on the British show Talk of the Town. Guitarist Steve Jones got into a verbal spat with host Bill Grundy and swore profusely on the air. The controversy immediately made the Sex Pistols widely known and the band’s first album, Never Mind the Bollocks, shot to #1 in England, spawning three Top 10 hits.

  CODA

  For most fans, the intensity of punk rock and its lifestyle were too difficult to maintain long term. As musical tastes in the early 1980s shifted to more melodic “New Wave” rock and electronic-based pop music, punk went back underground. But it never died. A revival of ’70s-style punk rock came about in 1994 when the Berkeley, California punk band Green Day sold 10 million copies of their album Dookie. This inspired a new wave of punk bands such as the Offspring, Rancid, and Blink-182, who all sold millions of albums. What was once an underground movement is now mainstream. In 2005, Green Day’s American Idiot even won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

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  Punk rock’s other innovation: rude and funny band names, such as:

  The Buzzcocks, 100 Demons, Agent Orange, I Killed the Prom Queen, Armed and Hammered, the Flesh Eaters, the Battered Wives, Bad Brains, Bastard, Gorilla Biscuits, I Hate You, the Stranglers, Suicidal Tendencies, Choking Victim, Deep Wound, Kinetic Destruction, Butthole Surfers, Dead Kennedys, A Chorus of Disapproval, Jerry’s Kids, the Casualties, the Damaged, the Germs, Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds, the F.U.’s, the Vandals, Murder Disco X, Vitamin X, the Urinals, D.O.A., the Exploited, Shark Attack, the Misfits, the Vomit Pigs

  Who was Edward Despard? He was the last criminal to be drawn & quartered in England (1803).

  THE RANKIN FILE

  This political pioneer was first and foremost a woman of conscience, whatever the consequence. You may not agree with her, but you’ve got to admire her spirit.

  FIRST LADY

  In November 1916, a short, feisty suffragette from Missoula, Montana, named Jeanette Rankin beat seven male rivals to become the first woman ever elected to Congress. And that made her the first woman ever elected to a national legislature in any Western democracy. “I knew the women would stand behind me,” she said, “and I am deeply conscious of the responsibility. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me.”

  Rankin was not afraid of work. Born in 1880, the University of Montana graduate had worked as a teacher, seamstress, and social worker until, at age 30, she joined the fight for women’s right to vote in Montana. “Men and women are like right and left hands,” she declared. “It doesn’t make sense not to use both.” And when Montana women got the vote in 1914, Rankin decided to run for Congress. With her brother Wellington as her campaign manager, she was triumphant and took her seat in the House of Representatives on April 2, 1917.

  STANDING ALONE

  Rankin was not welcomed with open arms. The congressional wives were unfriendly, afraid she’d have designs on their husbands. The U.S. Capitol at that time had no bathrooms for women—there’d never been a need. To make matters worse, four days after she took her seat in Congress, Rankin made the extremely unpopular decision to vote against America’s entry into World War I (the vote was 373–50). It is customary to vote without comment, but Rankin broke with tradition, announcing dramatically, “I want to stand behind my country, but I cannot vote for war.”

  Rankin championed many causes during her two years in Congress: women’s rights, birth control, equal pay, and child welfare. In 1919 she proudly introduced the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, on the floor of the House; it passed and was ratified by the country as the 19th amendment to the Constitution. “If I am remembered for no other act,” she later said. “I want to be remembered as the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote.”

  “After they make Styrofoam, what do they ship it in?” —Steven Wright

  WAR NO MORE

  The ratification of the 19th Amendment was a triumph for Rankin and the suffrage movement. But her earlier anti-war vote had sealed her political fate. When she ran for the Senate in the next election, she was soundly defeated. Yet that loss only fueled her fire. For the next two decades, Rankin worked for peace through the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the National Conference for the Prevention of War. She saw war as a terrible waste and was fond of saying, “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.”

  In 1940, when she was nearly 60, Rankin made another successful run for Congress on the slogan, “Prepare to the limit for defense; keep our men out of Europe.” Then, in 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Despite pressure from the president, Congress, and her family, Rankin cast the lone dissenting vote, saying, “As a woman I can’t go to war and I refuse to send someone else.” Her vote caused a near-riot in the House chamber. She was showered with boos from the angry crowd in the gallery and had to hide in a phone booth until the Capitol police escorted her out. Jeanette Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against both world wars.

  STICKING TO HER BELIEFS

  Though she never ran for public office again, she continued to work for peace. In 1968 at the age of 88, when the United States was sending soldiers to fight in Vietnam, she led the Jeannette Rankin Brigade—5,000 women in black—in a silent protest march on Washington.

  Before Rankin passed away at 92, she said, “If I had my life to live over, I’d do it all the same—but this time I’d be nastier.”

  It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink to the deepest part of the ocean.

  IT’S A WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

  More proof that truth is stranger than fiction.

  CLOSED DUE TO AWESOME WEATHER

  “Instead of enduring a day of inattention and spring fever, Bellingham (Washington) Christian School declared a ‘sun day’ in April 2006 and gave everyone the day off. School administrators had told the students there would be no school on the first sunny day that hit at least 63 degrees. After the forecast called for a high of 65, school was closed. Students were told to return the next day, when the forecast called for rain.”

  —Arizona Republic

  GOOD OMEN

  “A horror film fan who prayed that her baby would be born on 6/6/06 (he was) named her new boy Damien. The boy—weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces—was born six days after his mother’s labor was first induced. Suzanne Cooper chose the name because The Omen is her favorite film. ‘He’s a perfect baby—nothing at all like Damien (the son of the devil) in The Omen.’”

  —The Sun (U.K.)

  PHONIES

  “In an inversion of the Third World call center set-up, a British man was fined for advertising that his ‘sex chat’ phone line offered ‘Filipino girls,’ when the women in question were in fact working from central England. He was unmasked when clients found the alleged ‘Filipinas’ had strangely familiar accents.”

  —The Standard

  HOPPING MAD

  “Bryan Johnson, who portrayed the E
aster Bunny at the Bay City (Michigan) Mall in 2005, was pummeled in an unprovoked attack on the job. Police say the attacker was a 12-year-old boy who sat on Johnson’s lap the day before the incident. Johnson, 18, suffered a bloody nose. He kept his cool during the attack, deeming it inappropriate for the Easter Bunny to fight back.”

  —Detroit News

  What do you call a part-time bandleader? A semi-conductor.

  FINGER FOOD

  “Brandon Seinna ordered a meal in a T.G.I. Friday’s in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2005. When the food arrived, he spied what looked like human flesh on the plate. It was, and T.G.I Friday’s had to scurry to do damage control. ‘A manager cut his finger while working in the kitchen,’ the company said in a statement. ‘In the rush of attending to his medical needs, the team members were unaware that a small piece of skin from the individual’s finger top had fallen onto a plate, and that plate was subsequently served to a guest.’ The statement went on to say that safety procedures were reviewed and another such incident would not occur.”

  —Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

  TRUE ROMANCE

  “A 104-year-old Malaysian woman has gotten married for the 21st time—to a man of 33. It’s his first trip to the altar. The bride, Wook Kundor, caught Muhammad Noor Che Musa’s eye because she was childless, old, and alone. And no, she hasn’t got money. Before this, Muhammad reportedly said, he never stayed anywhere long enough for a relationship.”

  —Parade

  JUST VISITING

  “In Denmark, a 43-year-old man was arrested in jail after passing himself off as a bona fide prisoner and spending a night voluntarily behind bars. Per Thorbjoern Lonka said he carried out the prank to prove that rich people could easily pay someone else to serve their prison terms. He was right—the prison guards who locked him up failed to ask for his identity papers. But it didn’t matter—the judge sentenced Lonka to two months in prison.”