Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ Read online

  So on behalf of Porter and the entire BRI staff, Happy Reading.

  And as always…

  Iri kun la Fluo!*

  —Uncle John

  (*That’s Esperanto for “Go with the Flow!”)

  Check us out at www.bathroomreader.com. (We’re now on Facebook and Twitter, too!)

  YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION

  It’s always interesting to find out where the architects of pop culture get their ideas. These may surprise you.

  PATRICK BATEMAN. In the 2000 movie American Psycho, Christian Bale portrayed Patrick Bateman, a stockbroker by day, sociopathic serial killer by night. Bale based his characterization on another actor. According to director Mary Harron, “he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.”

  DONKEY KONG. When a 1981 video game called Radar Scope sold poorly, Nintendo suddenly had 2,000 empty arcade-game cabinets to fill. At the same time, a deal with King Features to make a Popeye Nintendo game fell apart, so staff designer Shigeru Miyamoto just used the Popeye love triangle for inspiration—Popeye, his girlfriend Olive Oyl, and brute Bluto became Mario, Pauline, and a giant ape named Donkey Kong.

  BENDER AND NELSON. Cartoonist Matt Groening’s two TV series are laced with references to John Bender, the teen rebel portrayed by Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, one of Groening’s favorite movies. The hard-drinking, sarcastic robot Bender on Futurama was named for him; school bully Nelson Muntz on The Simpsons was named after Judd Nelson; and Bart Simpson’s catchphrase “eat my shorts” was first uttered by John Bender.

  OLD NAVY. Is there really a sea-based military force of elderly people? No, but there is a bar in Paris called Old Navy. In 1994 the president of the Gap, Millard Drexler, saw it while he was in France. He scrapped the name he was considering for his discount clothing store, Forklift, and decided instead to call it Old Navy.

  THE SS MINNOW. The boat that took the seven castaways to Gilligan’s Island was named after FCC chairman Newton Minow. In a 1961 speech he called television a “vast wasteland.” Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz named the doomed vessel after Minow as an insult.

  Paper made from banana-plant fiber is about 3,000 times as strong as regular paper.

  EMBARRASSED IN THE E.R.

  What’s worse than a trip to the emergency room? A trip to the E.R. for something really humiliating. These are real-life E.R. reports.

  “Forehead pain: Patient shot self in nose with BB gun.”

  “Head injury: Rolled off couch and hit telephone.”

  “40-year-old female using toothbrush to make herself gag, accidentally swallowed toothbrush.”

  “Abdominal pain. Diagnosis: tight pants and belt.”

  “Patient stuffed ear with toilet paper so roach wouldn’t crawl in, now unable to remove.”

  “Patient missed punching bag, hit metal safe.”

  “Concussion, severe headache: Patient being pulled on a sled behind golf cart, struck a bump, launched in air.”

  “Pulled groin while riding mechanical bull.”

  “Bruised shoulder: Husband was throwing cell phone at cat, missed cat.”

  “Patient, 23, used a sword to cut a piece of paper. Laceration left arm.”

  “Accidentally swallowed guitar pick.”

  “Patient, 31, was playing sex games with wife, had belt around neck, jumped over something and got hung up. Also fell down stairs.”

  “Ankle injury from falling off stage doing karaoke.”

  “Swallowed toothpick while eating cabbage.”

  “Fell off monkey bars at police academy.”

  “Patient playing with pillow case, buddy put a rock in it.”

  “Insect bites on lips while riding a go-kart.”

  “Generalized body rash after being in pool and hot tub at hotel.”

  “Pain, swelling, blister on palm: Patient, 15, was playing video games, woke next day with swollen hand. Pain and swelling getting worse.”

  “Patient has wrist pain after sex and bowling.”

  Fewer than 1% of all patented inventions ever make money.

  FOUNDING FATHERS

  Three famous food origins to chew on.

  ROBERT H. COBB. In the 1930s, the hot restaurant for anyone in the movie industry was the Hollywood Brown Derby, located at North Vine Street. Owner Robert Cobb claimed to have invented the restaurant’s signature dish in 1935, and named it after himself: the Cobb Salad. (A more likely scenario: the chefs at the Brown Derby invented it.) The original Cobb consisted of a mixture of greens (iceberg lettuce, watercress, chicory, and romaine), topped with diced chicken breast, tomatoes, avocado, chopped bacon, hard-boiled eggs, chives, and Roquefort cheese, served with a red wine vinaigrette. The Brown Derby closed in 1985 (Cobb died in 1970), by which time they’d sold more than four million Cobb Salads.

  GRANNY SMITH. Maria Sherwood Smith was 50 years old when she and her husband Thomas settled on a farm in New South Wales, Australia, and began planting fruit orchards. She liked to experiment with fruit hybrids, and in 1868, at the age of 69, she crossed a European wild apple with a common Australian apple to create a new breed—light green in color, tart in flavor, and slow to brown when cut and exposed to air. Smith died just two years later, not living to see her apple blossom. The Australian government began cultivating it in 1895. It was first exported to the U.K. in the 1930s, but didn’t make it to the U.S. until 1972. Today it’s one of the most popular apple varieties in the world.

  GENNARO SBARRO. In 1956 Sbarro emigrated from Naples, Italy, to Brooklyn, where he found work in an Italian deli. By 1959 he’d opened his own deli in the Bensonhurst neighborhood, and five years later he owned four delis around New York. In 1977 Sbarro expanded into restaurants. The first one was located where you’d still find a Sbarro today: a shopping mall. The store in Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Brooklyn (it’s still there) established the Sbarro format of pizza and pasta, served cafeteria-style. Today there are more than 1,600 Sbarro restaurants in 47 states and 43 countries. (And they’re still mostly in malls.)

  Makes cents: Men tend to tip female waiters more; women tend to tip male waiters more.

  DREAMY FACTS

  What happens to you when you sleep? Read on.

  • According to experts, dreaming is a natural brain function, and all human beings do it. But some people never remember their dreams.

  • People who have quit a longtime smoking habit report having very vivid dreams for several weeks after stopping.

  • The Old English word dream, which etymologists believe is the origin of our word dream, meant “'joy,” “mirth,” or “music.”

  • Psychologists say that both men and women become sexually aroused while dreaming—even if the dream has no sexual content.

  • Average amount of time spent dreaming per night: 1½ to 2 hours.

  • The Raramuri people of northern Mexico believe that dreams are the result of one’s soul “waking” or “sobering,” and seeing the world more clearly than usual. (Raramuri families often wake up and discuss their dreams during the night.)

  • The longest dreams—up to 45 minutes long—usually occur in the morning.

  • Negative emotions, such as anxiety, are more commonly felt during dreams than positive ones are.

  • Studies show that women who experience nightmares during pregnancy have easier births than women who don’t.

  • Birds, like humans, experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, during which they experience brain wave activity similar to that of humans. This suggests that birds dream.

  • Reptiles also experience brain activity during sleep that suggests they too may dream. (Fish do not.)

  • Scientists believe schizophrenics suffer from irregular REM sleep, and that the hallucinations and delusions they experience may actually be “waking dreams.”

  • For most of his life, President Lyndon Johnson had nightmares that he was paralyzed.

 
Shock jock: Green Bay QB Matt Hasselbeck has been struck by lightning twice.

  LITTLE THINGS

  MEAN A LOT

  “The devil’s in the details,” says an old proverb. It’s true—sometimes the littlest things can cause BIG problems.

  THE WRONG E-MAIL LIST

  In April 2009, more than 30,000 applicants to the University of California San Diego received an e-mail that began: “We’re thrilled that you’ve been admitted to UC San Diego, and we’re showcasing our beautiful campus on Admit Day!” Thousands of excited students shared the good news and started booking flights and hotel rooms. But two hours later, those same applicants received a second e-mail from UCSD informing them that the first one was a mistake. “In all humility, I ask that you please accept my apologies,” wrote admissions director Mae Brown, who later explained that the first e-mail was supposed to go only to the 18,000 applicants who had been accepted, but it was accidentally sent to all 47,000 who applied. “We accessed the wrong database,” she admitted. Said one of the rejected applicants: “It was one of the greatest moments in my life and then, boom, it was one of the lowest.”

  AN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT…IN AUSTRALIA

  A man, a woman, and a dog walked into the Thai Spice restaurant in Adelaide, Australia, in 2009, only to be told by a waiter: “We don’t allow dogs in here!” The woman responded (in her native Australian accent), “But he’s a gay dog!” Offended, the waiter—who was from Thailand—told them to leave immediately. A few days later the restaurant’s owner, Hong Hoa Thi To, received a call from South Australia’s Equal Opportunity Tribunal asking him why service was refused to a blind man who came in with a friend and his guide dog. “Guide dog?” asked Hong? He thought the woman had said “gay dog.” The restaurant was ordered to apologize to the man and pay him $1,500. “My staff genuinely believed that it was an ordinary pet dog which had been desexed to become a gay dog,” said Hong.

  Only Oscar to win an Oscar: Oscar Hammerstein II, for Best Song (1941 and ’45).

  A TYPO

  In 1987 Kamjai Thavorn, 30, was sentenced to 20 years in an Indonesian prison for heroin possession. In 2007 Thavorn, then 50, told the warden that his sentence had ended, and he should be set free. The warden’s answer: No. According to the prison’s paperwork, Thavorn began serving in 1997—not 1987—and still had a decade left to go. For the next three years, he pleaded to be set free…to no avail. He might still be behind bars today if not for a chance meeting in 2010 with Indonesia’s justice minister, who was touring the facility. Thavorn told the minister his situation, the matter was looked into, and Thavorn was finally freed. Prison officials apologized, explaining that whoever admitted him must have accidentally typed a “9” instead of an “8.”

  THE WRONG ADDRESS

  When real estate agent Peter Collard arrived at the six-bedroom house he was trying to sell in Brisbane, Australia, in 2010, he was horrified to discover that half of the yard was dug up and ten palm trees had been ripped out of the ground. Next to the devastation were two confused-looking workmen and a backhoe. When Collard asked them what the (blank) they were doing, the men quickly loaded the backhoe onto the trailer and, without a word, drove away. According to police, they were digging a swimming pool, but due to an address mix-up, they were at the wrong house. The workers were never located, and Collard’s insurance company denied his claim for compensation. Cost of the repair: $20,000.

  A PIN

  An American Airlines 767 landed at the company’s maintenance facility in Fort Worth, Texas, after a test flight in 2009. Standard procedure dictates that a pin be inserted into the front landing gear to prevent it from retracting while it’s on the ground. Someone forgot to follow standard procedure. When workers boarded to complete their post-maintenance checklist, one of them pulled the front landing gear lever. The wheel retracted and the 767 plunked down nose-first onto the tarmac. Luckily, no one was underneath it, but according to sources from the airline, the structural damage was so extensive that the plane—which was only six years old and cost $150 million—was “beyond repair.”

  75% of Hawaii’s population lives on one island: Oahu.

  GIVE ME A SIGN!

  Church reader boards are a great source of humor and wisdom. Here are some real signs that we’ve collected.

  “There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google”

  “Staying in bed shouting, ‘Oh God!’ does not constitute going to church”

  “Read the Bible—it will scare the hell out of you”

  “Walmart is not the only saving place”

  “Forgive your enemies—it messes with their heads”

  “Salvation guaranteed, or your sins cheerfully refunded!”

  “Do not criticize your wife’s judgment—see who she married”

  “There’s no A/C in Hell either”

  “God shows no favoritism but our sign guy does. Go Cubs!”

  “Swallowing pride will never give you indigestion”

  “Cars aren’t the only things recalled by their maker”

  “Come in and let us prepare you for your finals”

  “Life stinks. We have a pew for you”

  “Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families”

  “Whoever stole our mower: God will get you.”

  “How do we make holy water? We boil the hell out of it”

  “Now open between Easter and Christmas!”

  “Forbidden fruit creates many jams”

  “Santa Claus never died for anyone”

  “Down in the mouth? It’s time for a faith lift”

  “Pessimists need a kick in the can’ts”

  “Church parking only. Violators will be baptized”

  “Too cold to change sign! Message inside.”

  In the 1800s, artists used paint made from ground-up mummies.

  FATAL FLIGHT FIRSTS

  At least they got to be the first in the world at something.

  LT. THOMAS E. SELFRIDGE

  Claim to Fame: First person killed in a plane crash

  Story: On September 17, 1908, Orville Wright was demonstrating his Wright Flyer at Fort Myer army base in Virginia. Along for the ride was 26-year-old First Lieutenant Tom Selfridge, a U.S. Army dirigible pilot. About 150 feet above the ground, a propeller broke. Wright was able to glide the craft to about 75 feet, but then it went into a nosedive. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull and died that evening. Wright suffered a broken thigh, pelvis, and ribs, and spent seven weeks in the hospital, but lived to fly again.

  VERNON CASTLE

  Claim to Fame: First celebrity plane death

  Story: In the early 1900s, Vernon and Irene Castle were trendsetting superstars who appeared in Broadway productions and movies. When World War I began, Vernon returned to his native England and became a war pilot, then returned to the United States to train American pilots. On February 15, 1918, he took off from an airfield near Fort Worth, Texas—and was forced to make an emergency maneuver to avoid another plane. That caused his plane to stall, and it crashed. Castle died soon after.

  ORMER LOCKLEAR

  Claim to Fame: First airplane fatalities while filming a movie

  Story: Locklear was a World War I pilot, then a barnstormer who flew in daredevil shows across the country. In 1920 he got the starring role as a pilot (and stunt man) in the film The Skywayman. For the movie’s finale, Locklear was supposed to simulate a plane crashing into oil derricks—at night. He’d warned the lighting crew to douse their lights as he got near so he could see to pull out of the dive at the last minute. They didn’t, and he crashed, killing himself and his co-pilot. However, thanks to the lights staying on, the director got vivid footage of the crash and its gruesome aftermath…and used it in the movie.

  45% of Americans age 60 have at least one parent still living.

  CANCELLED! WAIT…

  Life doesn’t follow schedules, but TV does. So it’s surprising when the networks revive a show that’s been taken o
ff the air—especially when they do it after broadcasting the “final episode.”

  Program: Sledge Hammer!

  The End: This dark satire-sitcom centered around a loose cannon police officer named Sledge Hammer (David Rasche). Sledge loved to use his gun—he slept with it, cooked with it, and shot criminals far more often than necessary. The show was a critical success for ABC, but not a ratings hit, so it was cancelled at the end of the 1986–87 season. Sledge Hammer! producers decided to have the show go out with a bang (of course): Sledge attempts to disable a nuclear bomb set to destroy Los Angeles. He is unsuccessful, and all the characters—and the entire city—are destroyed.

  But Wait: The ratings for the last episode were so high that ABC changed its mind and renewed the show for another year. The scriptwriters explained the post-apocalypse revival by saying the new episodes took place “five years earlier” than the first season, even though the story lines picked up exactly where the plot had left off before the bomb threat. Unfortunately, ABC gave it a time slot opposite The Cosby Show and reduced its budget, suggesting that the network never really expected the show to do well. It didn’t. It was cancelled in 1988.

  Program: Family Guy

  The End: It debuted on Fox after the 1999 Super Bowl, so its initial ratings were high. But critics dismissed the animated show about an overweight man and his wacky, dysfunctional family as a ripoff of The Simpsons, and the ratings gradually declined. Fox stuck with the show until 2002, when it was quietly cancelled before the fall season.