Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Backstory: At the Barney Greengrass restaurant in Beverly Hills, Ingels got his fair share of famous customers. One day, he waited on Jane Adams, best known for her roles on the TV shows Frasier and Hung. When he brought the check, she got really embarrassed and said she’d forgotten her wallet in the car. After promising to be right back, she never returned. Surprised, Ingels wrote it off as a loss when the restaurant closed that night. But that wasn’t the end. Eventually, Adams’s agent called the restaurant and although he paid the bill on her behalf, he did not leave a tip.

  Twantrum: “Jane Adams, star of HBO series ‘Hung,’ skipped out on a $13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” Six weeks later, Ingels posted an update. Adams had come in person and angrily gave him a tip. “A month later,” he wrote, “she brought in $3 tip. Made big deal about $3. Bitterly said she read about it on Twitter.”

  Aftermath: Though Ingels had only 22 followers on Twitter when he made the first post, the story was eventually picked up by news sites. Adams and others complained about the unprofessional tweet, and Ingels was fired.

  More photos are taken every two minutes than were taken in the whole of the 1800s.

  Tweeter: Charlie Sheen

  Date: June 21, 2015

  Backstory: Charlie “Tiger Blood” Sheen is famous for his public meltdowns. But his worst was probably on Father’s Day, nine years after his divorce from actress Denise Richards. Sheen was livid that Richards and their two daughters had declined his invitation to join him at a resort in Mexico. So he spent the holiday going ballistic on Twitter.

  Tweet: A lot of it is too profane to include, but here are some highlights (or lowlights): “Open letter to the media: Denise Richards is a shake down piece of sh*t doosh phace & worse mom alive! A despicable charlatan.” Sheen discussed co-parenting: “I have paid that Klay-Vinnik leaky diaper over 30 Mil and she calls me a DbD [dead beat dad]! see u in court you evil terrorist sack of landfill rash.” (Sidenote: If you figure out what Klay-Vinnik means, please let us know.) He went on to criticize her dad, her boyfriend, and her acting (“couldn’t act hot in a fire or wet in a pool.”)

  Aftermath: That night, Richards posted a response that was roundly praised as “classy.” She tweeted: “Happy Dad’s Day! @charliesheen have a great trip in Mexico! Kids were disappointed u weren’t here for it- Hey we’ll celebrate when u r back!” Sheen eventually deleted the tweets.

  Bonus! During the tweetstorm, Sheen managed to say a few nice things about his third ex-wife, Brooke Mueller. “Brooke M is a sexy rok star whom I adore D Richards a heretic washed up piglet shame pile Happy Father’s Day!!!”

  THANKS, BUT WE’LL PASS

  Anybody who was anybody in the music business during the golden days of American Bandstand had to make a guest appearance with Dick Clark. But there were three recording stars who hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and were never on the show.

  •Elvis Presley, whose manager, Colonel Tom Parker, wouldn’t let him appear.

  •Ricky Nelson, who didn’t need exposure on Clark’s show—he was already featured on his family’s weekly TV series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

  •The third big act that didn’t appear on American Bandstand probably would have liked to…but they couldn’t. Reason: the “group” was actually one person—Ross Bagdasarian singing as Alvin and the Chipmunks on one of 1958’s biggest hits, “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late).”

  Orange and green insects are those colors for a reason—they “warn” predators that they may be poisonous (or at least taste awful).

  A GIRL WITH HEART

  Here’s the story of a girl who found a way to improve the lives of people suffering with “invisible” disabilities using sign language—restroom sign language.

  ON THE INSIDE

  Grace Warnock is a 12-year-old girl living in Prestonpans, Scotland. She is one of more than 115,000 people in the UK living with Crohn’s disease, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the digestive tract. Because of it, there are times when Grace urgently needs to use the bathroom. If the only one available is a disabled access restroom, she uses it. But when she does, she sometimes gets dirty looks from other people, because even though she has a disability, she doesn’t look like someone who has a disability.

  “People were horrible. It wasn’t just me. Just after my diagnosis, I spoke to other people and we had all experienced the same thing,” she told Glasgow’s Evening Times in February 2018. “I thought a better restroom sign might help, so I sketched an idea for one on a napkin.”

  PAIR OF HEARTS

  The international symbol for a restroom that’s accessible to disabled people is a figure in a wheelchair. Grace added two more figures: a man and a woman, both with hearts on their chests to represent invisible disabilities. “I want people to have a heart and think before they say something rude, because not all disabilities are easy to see,” she says.

  When Grace wrote a letter to the Scottish Parliament telling them about her sign and asking for their help in spreading the word, they adopted it for their disabled restrooms. Since then the signs have popped up on restroom doors at schools, airports, sports stadiums, and other places all around Scotland. They’ve begun appearing around the rest of the United Kingdom, too. (Prince William and his brother Harry were so impressed, they invited Grace to visit them in London.) Given the amount of interest her idea has received from people in the United States, Australia, and elsewhere in the world, it’s probably just a matter of time before the signs begin appearing on disabled restrooms near you.

  She gets dirty looks from other people, because she doesn’t look like someone who has a disability.

  “So many people have got in touch to congratulate Grace on her idea, telling her it is so important,” Grace’s mother, Judith Warnock, told the Evening Times. “I don’t think it has quite sunk in for Grace, just how big an impact her idea has had.”

  Only 8% percent of Dunkin Donuts sales come from doughnuts.

  NAME THAT SOUP, TOO

  On page 75 we gave you a huge bowlful of soup name origins. (BURRRRRRP.) Who’s up for seconds?

  RAMEN

  You’re probably familiar with ramen—the Japanese noodle soup consisting of thin, yellow wheat noodles in a broth made from fish, pork, beef, vegetables, or chicken (or some combination of those ingredients), typically flavored with soy sauce or miso, and topped with a variety of ingredients, including scallions, sprouts, and meat. Many sources say this distinctly Japanese soup is actually Chinese: it was brought to Japan by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th or early 20th century. By the 1910s, the soup, originally known as shina soba, meaning “Chinese noodles,” was hugely popular in Japan, and after World War II it became a global phenomenon. The Japanese name for the soup, spelled “ramen” in English, is derived from the Chinese lamian (or la mian), meaning “pulled noodles,” referring to the ancient Chinese stretching and pulling method of making noodles. The first instant ramen noodle packages hit stores in Japan in 1958, the year instant noodles were invented by Japanese inventor Momofuku Ando. (They were printed in Japanese, but included the English-esque words “Chikin Ramen.”) Today annual sales exceed 100 billion packages worldwide.

  CHOWDER

  There are lots of different kinds of chowders—clam chowder, oyster chowder, fish chowder, potato chowder, corn chowder, and more—almost all of them characterized by their cream- or milk-based textures. The dish is believed to have originated as fish chowder along the coast of France, and to have been brought to northeastern North America by French explorers and trappers in the 1700s. (Which explains how it became a traditional favorite in New England and Canada’s Maritime provinces.) The most likely sources of our English word “chowder”: the French word chaudron, for “cauldron,” or chaudière, for “stew or cooking pot,” the names of the pots the chowder was cooked in. (Non-creamy chowders include Manhattan clam chowder, Rhode Island clam chowder, and Bermuda fish chowde
r, which are called “red chowders” because they’re tomato-based rather than milk-based.)

  GAZPACHO

  A cold, creamy soup of very old Andalusian (referring to a region in the south of Spain) origin that is still immensely popular in Spain and Portugal today, especially during hot Iberian summers. It consists of stale bread, raw chopped or blended vegetables (typically tomato, cucumber, green pepper, onion, and garlic), and usually olive oil and sherry vinegar. According to food historians, gazpacho’s culinary influences were introduced over many centuries, first during the Roman and Muslim eras in the region, and later by the many new foods imported into Europe during the Age of Exploration, especially tomatoes, which became one of gazpacho’s chief ingredients. And the origin of the name “gazpacho”? Most sources say it came from the Mozarabic language, a long-defunct, Arabic-influenced, Latin-based language spoken by Christians in Andalusia during the era of Muslim rule (fifth to eighth centuries), and their word caspa, meaning “fragments,” referring to the pieces of stale bread used to make this dish.

  There’s an estimated 3 million wrecked ships at the bottom of the world’s oceans.

  EXTRAS

  •Rumford’s soup (Rumfordsche Suppe in German) was developed in the German state of Bavaria around the year 1800, as an effort to develop an inexpensive and nutritious meal for the poor. Made from barley, dried peas, potatoes, and beer, it was named after its inventor, Count Rumford, a.k.a. Benjamin Thompson, an American scientist and inventor from Massachusetts. Thompson fought for the British during the American Revolutionary War, and moved to England after the British lost the war. In 1785 he moved to Bavaria, where he was made a count—and invented the soup that still carries his name.

  •Mulligitawny is a spicy Anglo-Indian curry soup that first became popular in England during the 1700s. The name comes from the Indian Tamil language, and means “pepper-water” or “chili-water.”

  •According to legend, the soup known as bouillabaisse was created by fishermen in the French Mediterranean port of Marseille. Not wanting to use the best, more valuable fish for their own meals, they used the cheaper varieties, including conger eels, along with local vegetables and herbs, to create this singular and now world-renowned fish stew. The name “bouillabaisse” was derived from the French Provençal name for the soup, bolhabaissa, taken from the words bolhir, “to boil,” and abaissar, “to simmer.”

  •Wedding soup is a meat and green vegetable soup found in many Italian restaurants in the United States. Why “wedding soup”? Legend has it that it was traditionally served at weddings in Italy…but that’s wrong. The term really comes from a misunderstanding about the name of an Italian soup called minestra maritata, meaning “married soup,” which was a reference to the “marriage” of the soup’s ingredients.

  Technical name for a glob of toothpaste sitting on a toothbrush: a nurdle.

  A STORE IS BORN, PART 2

  On page 129 we told you the story of how competition with 7-Eleven helped turn a chain of Los Angeles mini-marts into the Trader Joe’s franchise. But how did that franchise spread nationwide? That part of the story involves two reclusive brothers who built their own grocery chain in Germany…then split it in half following a fight over cigarettes.

  OUT OF THE ASHES

  When Joe Coulombe, the founder of the Trader Joe’s grocery chain, decided to sell his company in the late 1970s, the person who snapped it up was a German businessman named Theo Albrecht. He and his brother Karl had built up the Aldi (short for Albrecht Discount) grocery store chain in Germany from very modest beginnings. Their father, Karl Sr., had been a coal miner, but in the early 1930s he developed emphysema and could no longer work. So their mother, Anna, opened a small food store near Essen and supported the family that way. Theo, two years younger than Karl, helped in the store and Karl got a job in a delicatessen.

  After Hitler seized power in the 1930s, Karl and Theo were drafted into the military as soon as they came of age. Both men fought for Germany in World War II, and both ended up in prisoner-of-war camps when the war turned against the Nazis. After the war, they returned home to Essen. Because Essen was in Germany’s industrial Ruhr area and within close range of England, it had been bombed more than 200 times during the war. Very little of the city was left standing when the boys returned home, but somehow their mother’s shop had survived.

  That’s when Albrecht developed an interest in a small but thriving Los Angeles grocery chain called Trader Joe’s.

  WHAT’S IN STORE

  Theo and Karl went back to work at the store, and soon they were running it themselves. Soon they added a second store, then a third, and then a fourth.

  It didn’t take a genius to see what the defeated, war-ravaged, impoverished German consumers wanted from a grocery store: just the basics—bread, butter, milk, canned goods—and as cheaply as possible. That’s what the Albrecht brothers gave them. Their stores were absolutely bare-boned. The few items that the store carried sat on the floor in the shipping crates they had arrived in—why waste money on shelves? Customers bagged their own groceries, using bags they brought from home; if they didn’t have one they had to buy one. Shopping in an Aldi store wasn’t particularly pleasant, but the prices were rock-bottom and that’s what mattered.

  What kind of wood do termites like best? Vibrating wood.

  By 1955 the Aldi chain had grown to more than 100 stores in West Germany, and by 1960 there were more than 300. Though times were improving—the strong economic growth of the 1950s has been called West Germany’s “economic miracle”—the Albrechts never changed their formula, and West German shoppers never got tired of going to Aldi. The chain kept growing.

  WHERE THERE’S SMOKE…

  In the early 1960s, Karl and Theo had a falling-out over whether or not Aldi stores should carry cigarettes. Not because of health concerns, but because Karl thought they’d be an attractive target for shoplifters. So the brothers split their business in two: Theo took the stores in the north (Aldi Nord), and Karl took the stores in the south (Aldi Sud). They also split the western world into territories: in the future, Theo would expand Aldi Nord into Europe; Karl would open Aldi Sud stores in the United Kingdom, Australia, and North America.

  That formula worked well for the next decade or so, but by the mid-1970s Theo was eager to break into the American market. Because of his agreement with his brother, he couldn’t…at least not with Aldi stores. But their deal didn’t say anything about investing in other store chains…and that’s when Theo developed an interest in a small but thriving Los Angeles grocery chain called Trader Joe’s.

  Theo was impressed with the way Trader Joe’s did business: like Aldi, it placed great emphasis on selling goods at rock-bottom prices. (Unlike Aldi, the stores had character, and shopping in them was a pleasant experience. But Theo Albrecht was willing to overlook that.) In 1977 he made an offer to the company’s founder, Joe Coulombe…who turned him down. But two years later, Coulombe decided to sell. For how much? The price he and Albrecht agreed upon has never been made public. When asked, Coulombe says simply he “can’t remember.”

  TOP SECRET

  If you’re a fan of Trader Joe’s and you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of Theo Albrecht, it’s because like his brother Karl, he was about as secretive and reclusive a businessman as has ever lived. This was partly due to his personality, but it was also out of necessity. In the 1970s, terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction were targeting German businessmen for kidnapping and assassinations, so people like the Albrechts had little choice but to keep a low profile.

  In 1971 Theo himself was kidnapped while driving to work—not by terrorists, but by a lawyer with gambling debts who was aided by a burglar accomplice. When he was taken, the kidnappers demanded to see his driver’s license to be sure it was really Theo Albrecht. They didn’t know what he looked like, since photographs of him were virtually nonexistent, and they could not believe that someone wearing such a cheap suit could really be one of G
ermany’s wealthiest businessmen.

  Coca-Cola sold about nine Cokes a day in 1886; today’s daily sales are around 1.9 billion.

  The kidnappers held Theo for 17 days, then released him after a ransom was paid. (True to his cost-cutting ways, Theo bargained the ransom down to about $2 million, then deducted the amount from his taxes as a business expense.) After he was released, he told a reporter that he was “exhausted” from his ordeal, and a photographer managed to snap a photograph. Though he lived another 39 years and built a fortune estimated at more than $25 billion, he never made another public statement, and no one ever took another picture of him, at least not one that was made public. When Theo passed away in 2010, he left this world just as privately as he had lived in it: Aldi did not announce his death until after the funeral was over and he was safely buried in his grave.

  Though he lived another 39 years and built a fortune estimated at more than $25 billion, he never made another public statement, and no one ever took another picture of him.

  NO COMMENT

  Today Trader Joe’s is owned by Theo Albrecht’s heirs through a family trust. The company has continued his tradition of secrecy: At the corporate headquarters in Monrovia, east of Los Angeles, there are no signs on the building identifying it as such. Trader Joe’s does not release financial information to the public, nor does it comment on news articles about the business. Ever. They do not acknowledge that Albrecht bought the company in 1979 (that information comes from Joe Coulombe), or that his heirs have inherited the business. They don’t even identify Coulombe, the founder of the company, by name on the Trader Joe’s website. They refer to him simply as “Trader Joe.”