Greetings From Oz
Childhood Wisdom
MOUTHING OFF
Short
Ol’ Blood ’n’ Guts
Give ’em Hell, Harry
Malcolm X Speaks
Wise Guy
Free Advice
More Free Advice
Wilde About Oscar
Oh, Kate!
According to Shaw
Miss Piggy
Sandburgisms
By George!
By George, Too
Shakespeare Sayeth
Dorothy Parker Sez
Oh No, It’s Mr Bill
Here’s Johnny
Hellman’s Laws
A Wild and Crazy Guy
Zap!
Bombeckisms
Robin’s Raving
Rosanne Sez
Sheer Shandling
Dear Abby
No Respect
Thurberisms
Dave’s World
Here’s Jay
Twain’s Thoughts
Long
Meet the Beatles
ASK THE EXPERTS
Q & A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
Q& A: Ask the Experts
HISTORICAL TIDBITS
Short
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
Food Fight!
Medium
What Really Happened in 1000 AD (Part I)?
What Really Happened in 1000 AD (Part II)?
Pirate Lore
Missed It by That Much
Monumental Mistakes
Long
The Truth About Pearl Harbor
SUSPICIOUS DEATHS
Medium
The Death of Jim Morrison
The Death of Warren G. Harding
Long
Elvis Lives
The Search for Amelia Earhart
The Curse of King Tut
The Death of Vicki Morgan
AMUSEMENTS
Short
April Fools!
Medium
Secrets of Disneyland
It’s in the Cards
The Secrets of a Harlequin Romance
DIRTY TRICKS
Short
Dirty Tricks
Medium
Carnival Tricks
More Carnival Tricks
Long
On the Line
BEHIND THE HITS
Short
Familiar Melodies
Medium
Real-Life Songs
The “Wild Thing” Story
One-Hit Wonders
The Singing Chipmunks
Translated Hits
TV OR NOT TV?
Short
TV Theme Song Trivia
Medium
Inside “Cheers”
Inside “Jeopardy!”
A Family Affair
“The Adventures of Superman”
“The Honeymooners”
Opening Lines
“And Now for Something Completely Different”
Long
“The Avengers”
Welcome to “The Outer Limits”
Dumb TV: The Flying Nun Quiz
FILM
Short
Box-Office Bloopers
The Duke
Box-Office Bloopers II
Coolest Movie Lines Ever
First Films
Sound Effects
Medium
Inside Citizen Kane
The Godzilla Quiz
I Was a Teenage Monster Movie
Disaster Films
Disaster Films II
Accidentally X-Rated
The Dumbest Western Ever Made
Uncle John’s Golden Turkeys
Long
Star Wars
POLITICS
Short
That Was No Lady
Presidential Trivia
Democracy in Action
Medium
The TV Speech That Made a President (Reagan)
Senate Fights
The TV Speech That Made a President (JFK)
Meet Your Commie Masters
J. Edgar Hoover and the Red Menace
Other Presidential Firsts
First Ladies of Politics
Presidential Quiz
Joe McCarthy’s Joke
Politically Correct Nightmares
Long
The TV Speech That Made a President (Nixon)
JFK’s Presidential Affairs
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Short
Bow-wow or Wang-wang?
Let Me Write Sign, I Speak English
Medium
It Loses Something in Translation
It Loses Something in Translation
ANIMAL LORE
Short
Feline Facts
The Truth About Lemmings
A Breed Apart
Medium
The Birds and the Bees
Long
A Natural History of the Unicorn
ON LOCATION
Medium
Hooray for Hollywood
The Story of Wall Street
The Story of Las Vegas
TIPS FOR TEENS
Medium
Tips for Teens
Tips for Teens
Tips for Teens
THEY WENT THAT-A-WAY
Short
The Last Laugh: Epitaphs
Last Wishes
More Epitaphs
Medium
They Went That-a-Way
ANSWERS
What Does It Say?
The Godzilla Quiz
Aunt Lenna’s Puzzles
Acronymania
Test Your “Beverly Hillbillies” IQ
Presidential Quiz
The Numbers Game
Monumental Mistakes
RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE MILLENNIUM...
Patriotic Effort
“America must do more than the minimum on the millennium...I believe it should be celebrated with all the grandiosity, excess and overkill that we can muster. Our national pride is at stake. There is much planning to do. Why, just the logistics of recruiting and training enough Elvis impersonators boggles the mind.”
—Lewis Grossberger,
New York Times, Aug. 14, 1989
In 2000...
“Authors of self-help books will be required to provide proof that they have actually helped themselves.”
—Jane Wagner,
Ms. magazine, 1990
Big Whoop
“A lot of Chinese feel rather patronizing toward the millennium. The idea of a calendar with only 2000 years is rather charming.”
—Charlie Chin,
New York Chinatown History Project
Uncle John’s
FIFTH
BATHROOM
READER
First published October 1992
UNCLE JOHN’S NOTES:
This was the first book we ever published.
Reading it over now, I like the ideas and information but think the writing is still a little rough. This book clearly needed more editing—but frankly, we didn’t know how to do it back then.
Still, you can see the BRI style developing. Compare the section called “Order in the Court,” for example, with the “Court Transquips” in our current work. It’s clearly on it’s way to becoming a viable format.
We were also just starting to figure out that the length of the articles in a BR should vary. There are a few longer-than-average pieces (e.g., “The TV Speech that Made a President”) here—but not enough. A number of articles would have been much better longer. For example: compare the section on Citizen Kane in this book (2 pages) with the one in Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader (6 pages). It’s night and day.
But, then, we had to start somewhere.
Some of our favorites in this volume:
• Carnival Tricks
• The Myth-Adventures of Christopher Columbus
• Meet Dr. Seuss
FELINE FACTS
Cats are America’s most popular pet. Here are six things you may not know about them.
THE INSIDE POOP
Nearly all domestic cats bury their feces—but in the wild, only timid cats do. Aggressive cats in the wild actually leave their droppings on tiny “advertising hills” that they create. This leads researchers to believe that domestic cats see themselves as submissive members of their human families and environments.
FAMILY FLAVOR
Does your cat lick its fur clean after it rubs against you? That’s its way of “tasting” you—becoming familiar with the taste and scent of the people in its life.
CAT & MOUSE
Why do cats play “cat and mouse” with their victims? Experts believe it’s because they’re not hungry. Wild cats, who eat nothing but the food they catch, rarely, if ever, play cat and mouse.
PURR-FECT
Do cats purr because they are happy? Probably not, researchers say; even dying cats and cats in pain purr. The researchers think a cat’s purr is a sign it is receptive to “social interaction.”
THE BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH
Unlike human eyes, a cat’s eyes have pupils that are shaped like vertical slits. These vertical slits work together with the horizontal slits of the cat’s eyelid to give it greater control over how much light it allows into its eyes.
WHISKED AWAY
Because a cat’s whiskers are sensitive to the slight air currents that form around solid objects (such as furniture and trees), they help it to “see” in the dark. This is especially helpful when the cat hunts at night.
Elvis Presley’s favorite amusement park ride was the bumper cars.
WHERE-ING CLOTHES
Ever wonder how fabric designs and clothing styles get their names? Some are named after the places they were created or worn. Far example...
CALICO. In the early 1700s, a fabric from India became so popular with the British public that they stopped buying English cloth and English weavers began losing their jobs. The weavers rioted. (In fact, they started attacking people wearing the cloth.) The result: Parliament banned imports of the fabric, and English weavers began making it themselves. They named it after the place it was originally made, the Indian town of Calicut. Eventually, Calicut cloth evolved into calico cloth.
PAISLEY. These amoebalike patterns were originally found on shawls imported into England from India in the 1800s. Scottish weavers in the town of Paisley began producing their own versions of the design.
BIKINI. Daring two-piece swimsuits were introduced at end-of-the-world parties inspired by America’s 1946 A-bomb tests on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
BERMUDA SHORTS. Bermuda, an island in the Atlantic, was a popular warm-weather tourist resort in the 1940s. But female vacationers had to use caution when they relaxed—a law on the island prohibited them from walking around with bare legs. The fashion solution: knee-length shorts, worn with kneesocks.
CAPRI PANTS. Fashion designer Emilio Pucci met a beautiful woman while vacationing on the Isle of Capri in the 1950s. The encounter inspired a line of beach fashions that featured these skintight pants.
JODHPURS. These riding pants were created by English horsemen living in Jodhpur, India.
Batter up: An estimated 41 million Americans play softball in their free time.
FAMOUS
FOR 15 MINUTES
We’ve included this feature—based on Andy Warhol’s comment that “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”—in almost every Bathroom Reader. Here it is again, with new stars.
THE STAR: Oliver Sipple, an ex-marine living in San Francisco
THE HEADLINE: “Man Saves President Ford’s Life by Deflecting Assassin’s Gun”
WHAT HAPPENED: President Gerald R. Ford was visiting San Francisco on September 22, 1975. As he crossed the street, a woman in the crowd, Sara Jane Moore, pulled out a gun and tried to shoot him. Fortunately, a bystander spotted Moore and managed to tackle her just as the gun went off. The bullet missed the president by only a few feet.
Oliver Sipple, the bystander, was an instant hero—which was about the last thing he wanted. Reporters investigating his private life discovered that he was gay—a fact he’d hidden from his family in Detroit. Sipple pleaded with journalists not to write about his sexual orientation, but they ignored him. The next day, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story headlined “Hero in Ford Shooting Active Among S.E Gays.”
THE AFTERMATH: The incident ruined Sipple’s life. When his mother learned that he was gay, she stopped speaking to him. And when she died in 1979, Sipple’s father would not let him attend the funeral. Sipple became an alcoholic. In 1989, he was found dead of “natural causes” in his apartment. He was 47.
THE STAR: Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese army lieutenant during World War II
THE HEADLINE: “Japanese Soldier Finally Surrenders...29 Years After the War”
WHAT HAPPENED: In February 1945, Allied forces overran Lubang Island in the Philippines. Most of the occupying Japanese soldiers were captured, but a few escaped into the hills. There they waited to be “liberated,” unaware that Japan had surrendered. They survived by living off the forest and raiding native villages for food. Villagers called them “the mountain devils.”
Q: What cable TV channel is available to the most American viewers? A: C-SPAN.
The U.S. and Japanese governments knew there were holdouts on the island, and for more than 25 years they tried to reach them by dropping leaflets, organizing search parties, and bringing relatives to coax them out of hiding. But nothing worked.
By 1974, there was only one soldier left: 53-year-old Hiroo Onoda. One day, he spotted a young Japanese man drinking from a stream in the hills. The stranger turned out to be Norio Suzuki, a university dropout who’d come to the island specifically to find Onoda. Suzuki explained that the war had been over for 27 years and asked Onoda to return with him to Japan. But Onoda refused—unless his commanding officer came to the island and delivered the order personally. Suzuki returned to Japan, found the commanding officer, and brought him back to Lubang Island, where Onoda finally agreed.
THE AFTERMATH: Onoda was regarded as a curiosity in the world press, but in Japan he was a national hero. More than 4,000 people greeted him at the airport when he returned to Japan. He sold his memoirs for enough money to buy a 2,870-acre farm in Brazil, stocked with 1,700 head of cattle.
THE STAR: Roy Riegels, captain of the football team at the University at California, Berkeley during the 1929 season
THE HEADLINE: “Blooper of the Century: Cal Captain Runs Wrong Way, Gives Away Rose Bowl Game”
WHAT HAPPENED: It was the 1929 Rose Bowl game: U.C. Berkeley was playing Georgia Tech, and the score was 0-0 in the second quarter. Cal had the ball deep in Georgia Tech territory, but in four attempts, they failed to score. Now Tech took over the ball...but on first down, the Georgia quarterback fumbled. In the confusion, Roy Riegels recovered the ball and started running for a touchdown. The only problem was, he was running the wrong way.
Benny Lom, Cal’s center, realized what was happening and chased Riegels, shouting and screaming. But Riegels outran him, carrying the ball 69½ yards down the field. Lom finally tackled him—six inches from the California goal line.
Heavy fact: Pound for pound, earthworms make up half of all animal life.
THE AFTERMATH: On the next play, Tech nailed Cal for a safety, making the score Georgia 2, California 0. They added a touchdown in the third quarter, but failed to make the extra point. Now the score was Georgia 8, California 0. In the fourth quarter, California scored a touchdown and made the extra point—but that was it. Final score: Georgia Tech 8, California 7. Riegels’s blunder had cost Cal the game. The next day, Riegels was the mo
st celebrated sports figure in the country. In fact, he’s still known as “Wrong Way” Riegels.
THE STAR: William Figueroa, a 12-year-old student
THE HEADLINE: “New Jersey Student Makes Vice President Look Like a Foole”
WHAT HAPPENED: In June 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle visited a Trenton, New Jersey, elementary school where a spelling bee was being held. Quayle took over. Reading from a cue card, Quayle asked Figueroa, a sixth-grader, to spell the word “potato.” The boy spelled the word correctly, but Quayle insisted that he change it, because “potato” was spelled with an ‘e’ at the end. “I knew he was wrong,” Figueroa later told reporters, “but since he’s the vice president, I went and put the ‘e’ on and he said, ‘That’s right, now go and sit down.’ Afterward, I went to a dictionary and there was potato like I spelled it. I showed the reporters the book and they were all laughing about what a fool he was.”
THE AFTERMATH: Figueroa became an instant celebrity. “Late Night with David Letterman” had him on as a guest, and he was asked to lead the pledge of allegiance at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Afterwards, an AM radio station paid him $50 a day to provide political commentary on the Republican National Convention. He was also hired as spokesperson for a company that makes a computer spelling program.
TV QUIZ: THE ADDAMS FAMILY
1. What language drove Gomez crazy?
2. What did Gomez called Morticia?
3. How did Uncle Fester produce electric light?
4. What kind of creature was Wednesday’s pet, Homer?
5. How was Itt, the four-foot ball of hair, related to Gomez?
Answers: 1. French; 2. Tish; 3. He put a bulb in his mouth; 4. Black widow spider; 5. Cousin.
FAMOUS PHRASES
Here’s another of our regular Bathroom Reader features—the origins of familiar phrases.
NOT UP TO SCRATCH
Meaning: Inadequate, subpar
Background: In the early days of boxing, there was no bell to signal the beginning of a round. Instead, the referee would scratch a line on the ground between the fighters, and the round began when both men stepped over it. When a boxer couldn’t (or wouldn’t) cross the line to keep a match going, people said he was “not up to the scratch.”
CAUGHT RED-HANDED
Meaning: Caught in the act