Read Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® Online
Authors: Michael Brunsfeld
Let Me Write Sign—I Speak English Good
Gives You Strong Moudi & Refreshing Wind
Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?
The Origin of Soap Operas, Part II
G
reetings once again from the Bathroom Readers’ Institute and welcome to the 14th edition of
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
We’ve just finished putting it together and we think this one could be our best ever. It’s always hard for us to keep perspective, so we’ll let you be the judge.
We like to think that our main goal is to tell stories—about the origins of everyday things; about the histories of people and events forgotten; about topics most of us never even realized had stories. In any edition of the
Bathroom Reader
that’s what you’ll find and this one is no different.
Here’s some of what we’ve included…
• The fascinating history of photography, the explosive story of volcanoes, and how chocolate evolved from bitter to sweet.
• This season we’ve focused on the origin of football. Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’ll love reading the story behind it.
• We have two new categories: A few articles on women inventors turned into a whole section about some of the most amazing women you’ve never heard of. Then there’s a section on Canadiana. To our loyal readers from the Great White North—bet you don’t know the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (It’s on
page 254
.)
• Another first: “Unkle John’s Greatest Bloopers,” a few of the (gasp!) mistakes we’ve made over the past 14 years. Hey, we love bloopers, even our own.
• Join the Party! Relive the birth of the two-party system in the United States. It’s an enlightening story of idealism versus human nature and the struggle to stand up for what you believe in. This was slated for our next edition, but we were feeling patriotic, so at the last minute we decided to include it.
• For the past three years, we’ve been promising you the history of the bra, and with this edition we’re finally fulfilling our promise.
Finally…Jennifer keeps reminding me to mention the website, mention the website, mention the website. “Jennifer,” I keep saying. “None of this shameless promotion(
www.bathroomreader.com
)in the Introduction. If our readers want to find us on the Internet (
www.bathroomreader.com
), they just have to find us on their own.”
Oh…one more thing.
Last October, on a plane from L.A. to Newark, a young man and his mother were sitting next to me. We struck up a conversation and pretty soon I was spouting trivia (I can’t help it). During a lull in the repartee, the young man said to me, “Hey, have you ever read
Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers?
I’ve got them all.” I was speechless (for a moment). All of them? It made me feel great to know that the work we put into these books brings pleasure to so many people. So to all our readers, we just want to say thanks, friends.
Now, as the sun sets here in Ashland, Oregon, remember…
“It’s a weird world out there, so keep on flushin’.”
And, as always,
Go
with the Flow!
Uncle John and the BRI Staff
P.S. Did we mention our website:
www.bathroomreader.com
It’s fascinating to see that some of our favorite songs were inspired by real people. Here are a few examples.
T
HE GIRL FROM IPANEMA.
In 1962 two Brazilian songwriters named Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes were sitting in a bar near Ipanema beach. When a particularly striking woman named Heloisa Pinheiro sashayed past on her way to the beach, both men let out an “Ahhhhhh.” They did that every day when she walked by. And they wrote a song about her—“The Girl From Ipanema.” It became a huge hit that put the bossa nova style of Brazilian music on the map.
WONDERFUL TONIGHT.
Clapton wrote this song about his wife, Patti Boyd Harrison. Don’t let the title fool you—he intended the song “as an ironic and slightly exasperated comment on the amount of time she took getting ready to go out.”
PEGGY SUE.
The song by Buddy Holly and the Crickets was originally called “Cindy Lou”…until Crickets drummer Jerry Allison asked Holly to rename it so that he could impress his girlfriend Peggy Sue Rackham. It worked—Peggy Sue and Jerry eloped a year later, prompting Holly to follow up with “Peggy Sue Got Married.” She recently appeared in a Hot
Rod
magazine layout alongside Buddy Holly’s Chevy Impala.
MY SHARONA.
In 1978 Doug Fieger met a 17-year-old high school senior named Sharona Alperin. He fell in love; she didn’t. He pursued her for more than a year, writing “My Sharona,” an ode to his sexual frustration. Four months after the song was written, Sharona finally came around. She and Fieger got engaged…but never married. Feiger’s group, The Knack, made the song a #1 hit in 1979. Today Sharona sells Beverly Hills real estate—and isn’t above letting her upscale customers know she is the inspiration for the song.
Martin Van Buren was the first U.S. president actually born in the United States.
We’re back with one of our regular features. Check out this real-life exchange
—
it was actually said in court, and recorded word for word.
Clerk:
“Please repeat after me: ‘I swear by Almighty God…’”
Witness:
“I swear by Almighty God.”
Clerk:
“That the evidence that I give…”
Witness:
“That’s right.”
Clerk:
“Repeat it.”
Witness:
“Repeat it.”
Clerk:
“No! Repeat what I said.”
Witness:
“What you said when?”
Clerk:
“That the evidence that I give…”
Witness:
“That the evidence that I give.”
Clerk:
“Shall be the truth and…”
Witness:
“It will, and nothing but the truth!”
Clerk:
“Please, just repeat after me: ‘Shall be the truth and…’”
Witness:
“I’m not a scholar, you know.”
Clerk:
“We can appreciate that. Just repeat after me: ‘Shall be the truth and…’”
Witness:
“Shall be the truth and.”
Clerk:
“Say: ‘Nothing…’”
Witness:
“Okay.” (Witness remains silent.)
Clerk:
“No! Don’t say nothing.
Say: ‘Nothing but the truth…’”
Witness:
“Yes.”
Clerk:
“Can’t you say: ‘Nothing but the truth?’”
Witness:
“Yes.”
Clerk:
“Well? Do so.”
Witness:
“You’re confusing me.”
Clerk:
“Just say: ‘Nothing but the truth.’”
Witness:
“Is that all?”
Clerk:
“Yes.”
Witness:
“Okay. I understand.”
Clerk:
“Then say it.”
Witness:
“What?”
Clerk:
“Nothing but the truth…”
Witness:
“But I do! That’s just it.”
Clerk:
“You must say: ‘Nothing but the truth.’”
Witness:
“I WILL say nothing but the truth!”
Clerk:
“Please, just repeat these four words: ‘Nothing.’ ‘But.’ ‘The.’ ‘Truth.’”
Witness:
“What? You mean, like, now?”
Clerk:
“Yes! Now. Please. Just say those four words.”
Witness:
“Nothing. But. The. Truth.”
Clerk:
“Thank you.”
Witness:
“I’m just not a scholar.”
When the ground temperature is below freezing, it can’t hail.
You already know the names. Here’s who they belong to.
Background:
Hall started out selling picture postcards from a shoe box, but soon realized that greeting cards with envelopes would be more profitable.
Famous Name:
He started a new company, Hallmark Cards, a play on his name and the word for quality, and in 1916 produced his first card. But the innovation that made Hallmark so successful had little to do with the cards themselves—it was their display cases. Previously, cards were purchased by asking a clerk to choose an appropriate one. Hall introduced display cases featuring rows of cards that the customer could browse through. When he died in 1982, the company he founded in a shoebox was worth $1.5 billion.
Background:
In 1881 Gibson got a job working in a shoe store in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but in his spare time, he built musical instruments from wood.
Famous Name:
The instruments were so popular that he quit the shoe store, and in 1902 he incorporated the Gibson Mandolin and Guitar Company. Gibson died in 1918, two years before a Gibson employee invented a microphone that would fit inside the guitar, creating a prototype of the electric guitar.
Background:
Goodrich was a surgeon in the Union Army, but when the bloody Civil War ended, he gave up medicine. In 1870 he bought the failing Hudson River Rubber Company and moved it from New York to Akron, Ohio, where it thrived.
Famous Name:
In Akron, he produced his first actual product, a fire hose. The company went on to invent vinyl, synthetic rubber, and the first tubeless automobile tire, but not before changing its name to the B.F. Goodrich Company.
Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a phone in his study—the ringing drove him nuts.
Background:
David Packard was an engineer with the General Electric Company. In 1938 he moved to California, where he renewed a friendship with William Hewlett. The two went into the electronics business, making oscillators that were smaller, cheaper, and better than anything else on the market.
Famous Name:
Working from a small garage in Palo Alto, the Hewlett-Packard company earned $1,000 that first year. Today the garage is a state landmark: “The Birthplace of Silicon Valley.” Packard died in 1996 leaving an estate worth billions.
Background:
In 1886 Richard Sears managed a railroad office in rural Minnesota. As station agent, he had the opportunity to buy an unclaimed shipment of gold watches. He quickly sold them all…then ordered more. He sold those, too, then took his $5,000 in profits and moved to Chicago.