Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  TOMMY THUMB’S PRETTY SONG BOOK

  By the mid-1700s, attitudes toward children were changing—they were allowed to be what we think of as kids for the first time. Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, written by “M. Cooper” in 1744, was an early fun book, and is said to be the first published collection of nursery rhymes, many of them still familiar, including “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and “Hickory Dickory Dock.” Only one copy of Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book exists today—in the British Museum in London.

  A LITTLE PRETTY POCKET BOOK

  First released in 1744, English author and publisher John Newbery’s A Pretty Little Pocket Book: Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly consisted of illustrations, rhymes, and instructions for various games. An example, titled “Base-Ball”: “The Ball once struck off / Away flies the Boy / To the next destin’d Post / And then Home with Joy.” Newberry was the first publisher to market literature just for kids, emphasizing education through entertainment. To honor Newbery for essentially creating modern children’s literature, the American Library Association’s award for the best children’s book of the year is named the Newbery Medal.

  NAME GAME

  The famous people listed below are better know by their initials.

  Can you identify them all? (Answers on page 536.)

  1) Reclusive novelist Jerome David…

  2) Architect Ieoh Ming…

  3) Fantasy author John Roland Reuel…

  4) Author Clive Staples…

  5) Circus impresario Phineas Taylor…

  6) Poet Thomas Stearns…

  7) Canadian country singer Kathryn Dawn…

  8) Poet Wystan Hugh…

  9) Illustrator Maurits Cornelis…

  10) Horror writer Howard Phillips…

  11) Psychologist Burrhus Frederic…

  12) Race car driver Anthony Joseph…

  13) TV star of The Defenders Everett Grunz…

  14) Fictional A-Team mercenary Bosco Albert…

  15) Science-fiction author Herbert George…

  16) Tycoon John Pierpont…

  17) Baseball pitcher Carsten Charles…

  18) Grey’s Anatomy co-star Theodore Raymond…

  19) Stand-up comedian Darryl Lynn…

  20) Tobacco baron Richard Joshua…

  21) Poet Edward Estlin…

  22) Dallas main character John Ross…

  23) Silent film director David Wark…

  24) Winnie the Pooh creator Alan Alexander…

  25) Real name of the Big Bopper, Jiles Perry…

  26) American pundit Henry Louis…

  27) Political satirist Patrick Jake…

  28) Peter Pan author James Matthew…

  29) 1980s TV cop Thomas Jefferson…

  A SHAGGY DOG STORY

  Wanna hear a joke?

  A “shaggy dog story” is a classic style of joke—one that goes on for a long time and escalates in detail and scope before ultimately ending in a short, ironic punchline or pun. It gets its name from a joke that dates to the early 1940s—and it was actually about a shaggy dog. By increasing the level of detail, the storyteller can easily stretch it out 5 or 10 minutes (or longer), but be prepared: Your audience may think you’re the funniest person on Earth…or they may want to hurt you. Today, comedians still tell long, meandering “shaggy dog stories” about a number of topics. One famous example was the basis for the 2005 movie The Aristocrats. We can’t print that one (it’s X-rated), but here’s a brief version of the original shaggy dog story.

  A wealthy man lost his beloved, valuable pet dog, an incredibly shaggy dog, maybe the shaggiest in the world. The man took out a newspaper advertisement that read, “Lost: World’s Shaggiest Dog. Large Cash Reward.” A young boy saw the ad and wanted the reward, so he decided he’d find the world’s shaggiest dog and return it. The boy combed his town, and the next town over, and the one after that, looking for shaggy dogs. He found some in pet stores and dog pounds, and they were shaggy…but not shaggy enough.

  Finally, at the 30th dog pound he visited, the boy found an incredibly shaggy dog. The dog was so shaggy that he tripped over his own fur, because it covered both his paws and his eyes. When it barked, you couldn’t even hear the sound because it got lost in the dog’s layers of fur. It was the shaggiest dog the boy had ever seen in his life, and there was no way a dog could ever be shaggier.

  So, the boy bought the dog and carried it all the way to the home of the wealthy man who’d placed the ad for the lost shaggy dog. (He had to carry it because the dog was so shaggy it couldn’t see or walk properly.) The boy went to the rich man’s home and rang the doorbell. The man answered the door, glanced at the dog, and then said to the boy, “Not that shaggy.”

  AMERICAN CHEESES

  No, not orange, plastic-wrapped, processed stuff that

  makes cheese snobs groan. These are world-class

  cheeses invented and produced in the U.S.A.

  TILLAMOOK CHEDDAR

  Tillamook County is a fertile valley on the coast of Oregon that’s home to 150 dairy farms and more than 26,000 cows. The county was already an important milk-producing center in 1894 when T. S. Townsend opened the first Tillamook cheese factory, hiring a Canadian cheesemaker named Peter McIntosh to create high-quality cheddar. McIntosh, known as the “Cheese King of the Coast,” was so skillful that his cheddar won a national prize at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Local dairy farmers saw how profitable it might be to produce great cheese, which could be transported to market fairly easily and wasn’t as perishable as milk. And in 1909 ten of them started the cooperative Tillamook County Creamery Association; by 1968 all of the county’s cheese factories had united under the same roof.

  What makes Tillamook cheese taste different? They use a proprietary process called “heat shocking,” which doesn’t heat the milk for as long or to as high a temperature as pasteurization. The process preserves the crucial enzymes in the milk, while cheese-makers who use pasteurization may have to add those enzymes back in.

  Today the TCCA comprises about 110 family-owned dairy farms. The Tillamook cheese factories produce more than 78 million pounds of cheese annually. Their cheddar still routinely wins prizes at the National Milk Producers Federation annual cheese contest, and in 2005 Tillamook was named dairy Processor of the Year by Dairy Foods magazine.

  MONTEREY JACK

  Europeans first saw Monterey Bay, located on the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles, when Spanish explorers sailed into it in 1542. In 1770 Father Junípero Serra built California’s first cathedral, San Carlos Borromeo, in Monterey. The city was the Spanish (and then Mexican) capital of Alta California. Sometime in the 1700s, Franciscan monks started making a mild cow’s-milk cheese that was called queso de país—“country cheese.” Local farmers continued to make it after the missionaries were gone, but it wasn’t until a sharp-eyed Scottish immigrant named David Jack recognized its commercial potential that the cheese’s popularity spread farther. In 1882 he began shipping his version of queso de país to other parts of California. The cheese was labeled “Jack’s Monterey,” which evolved into “Jack Monterey,” and in a final, unaccountable twist people began to call it “Monterey Jack.” The FDA made the name official in 1955, and today you’ll find it in every supermarket in the country. Variations: horseradish jack, pepper jack, salsa jack, Colby jack, cheddar jack, skim milk jack, dry jack, and even a jack from Vermont (it’s called Vermont Jack.)

  MAYTAG BLUE

  When the Maytag Dairy Farms herd of Holstein cows began winning prizes in the 1930s, Maytag, Inc., was already famous for making washing machines. The Newton, Iowa, dairy was just a hobby for E. H. Maytag, son of the company’s founder; he only sold the milk and cream locally. But when his son, 29-year-old Fred Maytag II, took over the appliance operation in 1940, he began scouting around for a more profitable way to use the dairy’s high-quality milk. A year later, Fre
d and his brother Robert heard that two Iowa State University microbiologists had been working on a new process for making blue cheese. The scientists were trying to come up with a Roquefort-style blue-veined cheese that could be made with cow’s milk instead of the traditional sheep’s milk—and a recipe that would cut down on the long time it took to develop the flavor and color. They succeeded by using more rennet, which coagulates milk and turns it into the curds and whey needed for cheese-making. Result: a new kind of blue cheese that was consistent in color and quality, with a tangy flavor and a firm but crumbly texture. By agreement with the university, the Maytags began to produce the new cheese at their dairy. The Maytag corporation has changed hands, but Maytag Dairy Farms is still a family-owned, family-run business.

  LIEDERKRANZ

  Emil Frey was a Swiss immigrant who started working as a cheesemaker for the Monroe Cheese Company in Monroe, New York, in 1888. Adolphe Tode, one of the owners, asked Frey to create a new cheese that tasted like Bismarck Schlosskäse (a Limburger-like cheese he imported), which often spoiled on the long trip from Germany. In 1891 Frey came up with something so good—a soft cheese with an edible crust and a very pungent flavor—that Tode told him to forget Bismarck and concentrate on making the new cheese. They named it “Liederkranz” after one of Tode’s most prestigious customers—a German-American men’s choral society called the Liederkranz of New York City (liederkranz means “wreath of songs”), and their endorsement helped the cheese become hugely popular.

  Frey (who also invented Velveeta) kept close watch on the production of Liederkranz after the company was sold to Borden in 1929, and remained as general manager (and Liederkranz supervisor) of the plant in Van Wert, Ohio, until 1938. He died in 1951. Borden sold the factory to the Fisher Cheese Company in 1982, and Fisher expected to go on making Liederkranz forever. Unfortunately, in 1985 several of Fisher’s cheeses, including the Liederkranz, somehow suffered bacterial contamination…and that was the end of Liederkranz. The name and bacterial culture were sold off (it’s unknown whether the culture still exists), and the original Liederkranz cheese was never made again.

  BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS

  • In 1979, when Simon Cowell was 20 years old, he worked at Elstree Film Studios in England. One of his jobs was to polish the ax that Jack Nicholson used to break down a door in The Shining.

  • The still-standing record for most field goals kicked in a season by a member of University High School’s varsity football team in Irvine, California, was set in 1986 by Will Ferrell.

  • On July 1, 1967, as part of Canada’s 100th birthday celebration, the nation honored the first child born in Canada’s second century. That “Centennial Baby” grew up to be Pamela Anderson.

  SOCIAL NOTWORK

  “Social networking” Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter invite two-way

  communication, and many companies now use them to generate buzz

  about their products. Turns out this can go wrong very fast.

  • THAT’S SO SWEET. In March 2009, Skittles candy launched a new Web site built around Twitter, the blogging service in which all entries are 140 characters or less. Anytime anybody anywhere wrote about Skittles on their personal Twitter page, it went into a feed, which then displayed it on the front page of Skittles.com. Within hours, thousands of Skittles-related “tweets” were posted, the majority of them negative and humorous, such as “Skittles causes cancer” and “Skittles killed my brother.” Mars, Skittles’ parent company, quickly removed the feature from Skittles.com.

  • BUS FARE. To precede an image overhaul, the Jack in the Box fast-food chain launched an ad campaign in which Jack, the company’s mascot, gets hit by a bus. His “recovery” was updated on www.hangintherejack.com, and visitors were urged to post comments, such as “We love you, Jack” or “Get well soon.” But negative comments (some serious, some in jest) overwhelmed the posts. Examples: “Jack in the Box killed people with poor sanitary habits and spread disease across the nation” and “Defeat death, Jack! We would have sex with a mullhawk gorilla under the sewer for you.” The company let most comments stay, deleting only the most profane or offensive ones.

  • JAVA JIVE. On May 19, 2009, Starbucks created a Twitter page to interact with its customers. On the same day, filmmaker Robert Greenwald premiered his latest project on YouTube: What Do Starbucks and Wal-Mart Have in Common? In the film, Greenwald alleges that Starbucks aggressively prevents its workforce from unionizing. From his own Web site, Greenwald encouraged viewers to photograph themselves outside of their local Starbucks, holding signs protesting Starbucks or in support of union labor, and then post the pictures to Starbucks’ Twitter page. Within a couple of days, the Starbucks Twitter site was riddled with photos of the protests. (Starbucks removed them all.)

  OBSCURE MONSTERS

  You’ve heard of Bigfoot, Nessie, and the Abominable

  Snowman. Here are a few of their more obscure

  (but just as fascinating) cousins.

  MONSTER: Sciopod

  WHERE IT LIVED: Ethiopia

  LEGEND: Latin for “shade foot,” these relatively peaceful creatures were first recorded in around A.D. 77 by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder. They were said to live in the wilds of what is now Ethiopia and were described as small, pale, humanlike creatures—but with only one leg and a giant foot. They hopped around on that giant foot, but they also used it as a sun shade: Sciopods reportedly spent several hours a day lying on their backs with their giant feet in the air to block the harsh North African sun. Sciopods were extremely powerful, too. They could kill a large animal (or a human) with a single jumping kick. But never fear—the strange creatures didn’t eat meat. Or plants. Or anything. They existed solely on the aroma of living fruit, which they always carried with them. Sciopods are mentioned in numerous writings over several centuries, ending sometime in the Middle Ages.

  MONSTER: Gowrow

  WHERE IT LIVED: Arkansas

  LEGEND: This monster was first heard of in the 1880s, when Arkansas farmers reported being terrorized by a huge lizard. In 1897 Fred Allsopp, a reporter for the Arkansas Gazette, wrote about an encounter with the beast. The monster, which Allsopp named a “gowrow” after the sound it made, had been eating livestock in the Ozark Mountains in the northwest of the state. A local businessman named William Miller formed a posse to hunt and kill it. They found its lair, which was littered with animal (and human) bones, and waited for it. It surprised them by emerging from a nearby lake and attacking them—but they were able to kill it with several gunshots. Miller described the gowrow as being 20 feet long, with huge tusks, webbed and clawed feet, a row of horns along its spine, and a knifelike end to its long tail. He said he sent the body to the Smithsonian Institute—but it mysteriously never made it. Allsopp finished the article by saying he believed it was a “great fake,” but sightings of a similar lizardlike creature were reported in the Ozarks for many years.

  MONSTER: Encantado

  WHERE IT LIVES: The Amazon River

  LEGEND: Encantado means “enchanted one” in Portuguese and refers to a special kind of boto, or long-beaked river dolphin native to the Amazon—that can take human form. Encantados are curious about humans and are especially attracted to big, noisy festivals, which they often attend as musicians, staying in human form for years. How can you recognize one? Look under its hat: They always have bald spots that are actually disguised blowholes. Encantados are usually friendly, but they occasionally hypnotize and kidnap young women and take them back to the Encante, their underground city. Sometimes the women escape and return…pregnant with an Encantado baby.

  MONSTER: Kappa

  WHERE IT LIVES: Japan

  LEGEND: Kappas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers throughout the Japanese islands. They look like frogs, but with tortoise-like shells on their backs. They can leave the water—carrying their shells with them—because they have shallow depressions in their heads in which they keep a bit of water that not only allows them t
o walk around on land but also makes them incredibly strong. If you encounter one, bow to it. They’re very polite, so they’ll have to bow back to you…and the water will spill out of their head-bowls, weakening them. Their favorite food: the blood of small children. Their second-favorite: cucumbers. That’s why you can still see people in Japan throwing fresh cucumbers into lakes and rivers—with the names of their children carved into them. This, the legend says, will protect their little ones from the kappa’s clutches.

  AFTER THE OLYMPICS

  Cities spend billions in civic improvements and new sports facilities to host the

  Olympics, hoping that afterward they can be converted to other uses and

  lure tourists. Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t. Here are

  some stories of what happened to Olympic host cities.

  ATHENS (2004). The Greek government paid $9 billion to make its capital city Olympics-ready, with new roads, airport and public-transit improvements, and the construction of 22 new sports venues. Despite the fact that some of them had been under construction since the early 1990s (Athens incorrectly assumed that it was a lock to host the centennial 1996 games), several facilities were finished just hours before the 2004 opening ceremonies. But five years after the Olympics, 21 of those 22 buildings are unused and abandoned or have been vandalized, largely because they were placed in poorer neighborhoods in an effort to revitalize those areas of the city. Two large outdoor stadiums are completely closed, the tae kwon do and volleyball complex is now a homeless camp, and a sports field that was supposed to be converted into an ecological education park became a garbage dump, because that’s where thousands of residents started throwing their household trash. On the bright side, the city did get a new airport and pedestrian walkways that link ancient Greek historical sites, a project that had been planned for more than 150 years and finally was built to coincide with the Olympics. But Athens will be paying off the Games for a long time—the debt amounts to $500,000 per household.