Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (86 page)

17) DANIEL SCHORR.
The memo labels the CBS News reporter “a real media enemy.” Schorr started at the network in 1953, recruited by Edward R. Murrow, the newsman who challenged Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s drive to root out Communists in government in the early 1950s (a drive in which California congressman Richard Nixon had assisted). Schorr made several reports over the years that Nixon loathed, including a sympathetic interview with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1957 and an examination of life in East Germany in 1962. The FBI opened a file on Schorr in 1971.

18) S. HARRISON DOGOLE.
One of the leading contributors to Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 presidential campaign was Globe Security Systems—one of the largest private detective and security agencies in the United States. Globe president S. Harrison Dogole authorized the contributions to Humphrey, who lost to Nixon in the ’68 election. Nixon’s team was convinced that Dogole would be out for revenge in 1972, stating in the memo that Dogole had to be deflected because he could contribute millions to the 1972 Democratic candidate, or possibly even use Globe agents to spy on Nixon.

19) PAUL NEWMAN.
Yes,
the
Paul Newman. One of the biggest stars in Hollywood, he was also aligned with “radical and liberal causes,” including the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Newman had personally endorsed the candidate in campaign commercials, and Nixon’s folks feared he might be used again in such a way in 1972.

Studies have shown that listening to slow music while you eat can make you eat more slowly.

20) MARY McGRORY.
A columnist for the
Washington Post
, McGrory was a liberal editorial writer who penned “daily hate Nixon articles,” as the memo put it, and anti-Vietnam War pieces. (McGrory went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for her reporting on the Watergate scandal.)

AFTERMATH

In conjunction with the ongoing Watergate investigation, the Congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation looked into whether or not the people on Nixon’s Enemies List had, in fact, been subjected to any unfair treatment, specifically unfair taxation or unnecessary tax audits. The committee announced in December 1973 that it had found no evidence that any of the people listed had been treated unfairly. But who knows what would have happened if those five men who broke into the Watergate hadn’t been captured.

SMART ALECKS

“When you say, ‘Bedtime!’ that’s not what the child hears. What the child hears is, ‘Lie down in the dark...for hours...and don’t move...I’m locking the door now.’”

—
Dylan Moran

“A dog goes into a hardware store and says: ‘I’d like a job please.’ The hardware store owner says. ‘We don’t hire dogs, why don’t you go join the circus?’ The dog replies, ‘What would the circus want with a plumber?’”

—
Steven Alan Green

“Sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I like to take a home pregnancy test. Then I can say, ‘Hey, at least I’m not pregnant.’”

—
Daniel Tosh

“The only time it’s OK to say ‘I have diarrhea’ is when you’re playing Scrabble... because it’s worth a s***load of points.”

—
Zach Galifianakis

“Toughest job I ever had: selling doors, door to door.”

—
Bill Bailey

World’s tallest statue: China’s Spring Temple Buddha, 3 times as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

TOILET TECH

Better living through bathroom technology
.

H
EAVY DUTY
Product:
The Great John

What It Is:
The first toilet, says the manufacturer, made

specifically for “modern Americans.” Translation: It’s extra-large.
How It Works:
Invented by the Great John Toilet Company (no relation to Uncle John), the Great John can reportedly accommodate any person up to the weight of 2,000 pounds. The base is wider than a conventional toilet’s to provide extra support, and it connects to the bathroom floor with four anchors instead of the standard two. The seat provides 150 percent more “contact area” than a normal toilet (as well as offering side wings to prevent pinching if flesh still hangs over the larger seat).

SNAKE EYES

Product:
FlexiSnake

What It Is:
A plumbing snake to remove hair clogs from drains

How It Works:
A traditional snake is tough to use—you have to unspool the metal coil, secure it with a screw, stick it down the drain, and hope that it doesn’t snap into your face and blind you. The FlexiSnake is much simpler: A two-inch Velcro pad mounted on the end a short, bendy wire—it looks like the power cord on a lamp—grabs the hair that’s blocking your drain, and you pull it out. Yucky, but easy.

STICK TO IT

Product:
Bottom Buddy

What It Is:
A long-armed TP holder

How It Works:
One of the biggest challenges of being a large person is, um, cleaning up after using the toilet. That’s why there’s this $10 device. It’s pretty simple, actually: It’s a curved plastic wand with a gripper where a wad of toilet paper is inserted. After reaching around and using it, just press a button, and the wand neatly releases theTP into the bowl for hands-free disposal.

American pioneers had recipes for locust stew.

PAPER MOON

Product:
Hemo Roll

What It Is:
“Medicated” toilet paper

How It Works:
Bad news: You’ve got hemorrhoids. Good news: You can get rid of them with Hemo Roll, a hemorrhoid-fighting toilet paper infused with herbs and tinctures that help reduce inflammation. At least that’s what the Slovakian paper company that manufactures it claims. Among the ingredients in Hemo Roll, which is said to be gentler on the backside than non-infused, regular toilet paper: extracts of oak bark, marigold, and yarrow.

SPARKLY NUGGETS

Product:
Jemal Wright Bath Designs

What It Is:
Designer toilets

How It Works:
Wright is a high-end home designer who specializes in fancy toilets and matching bathroom fixtures. Among his works are diamond-encrusted toilets, a gold-plated toilet with a matching pedestal sink, and a relatively understated metallic orange chrome toilet...with a diamond-encrusted flush handle. Cost: $65,000...and up.

BATHROOMS ARE FOR LOVERS

Product:
TwoDaLoo

What It Is:
A love-seat toilet

How It Works:
In 1991
Saturday Night Live
aired a fake commercial for an imaginary product called “The Love Toilet”—a two-person toilet for people so in love that they never want to be apart, even when they have to use the facilities. Like a Victorian love seat, the side-by-side toilets faced opposite directions, so the lovers could stare into each others eyes. In a case of life imitating art, the TwoDaLoo is now a real item, available for purchase for only $1,400. The only difference between the real TwoDaLoo and the fictional Love Toilet: The TwoDaLoo has a “privacy” bar separating the two commodes (as if that’s an issue).

Water floats a ship. Water sinks a ship. —
Chinese proverb

First country to use police dogs: Belgium (1859). They protected officers on the night shift.

WHAT’S COOKING?

If a recipe called for you to blanch some almonds, would you know how to do it? Cookbooks are full of techniques that are a mystery to most of us, even if their names sound familiar
.

H
EAT AND SERVE
There are many different ways to cook food, and each method affects food differently. Most techniques can be broken down into two categories: wet and dry—but it’s not quite as straightforward as you’d think.

•
Wet cooking
involves the use of water or water-based liquid. This includes wine, broth, stock, milk, vinegar—whatever you like, as long as it’s water-based. Wet techniques (also called
moist
techniques) include boiling, blanching, poaching, steaming, and stewing. The temperatures involved in all of these techniques are actually pretty low—because boiling water doesn’t get any hotter than 212°F.

•
Dry-cooking
techniques include baking, broiling, frying, sautéing, and, you might be surprised to learn, deep-frying. Reason: Though oil is a liquid, it’s not water-based and its use is therefore considered a
dry
cooking technique. Dry cooking involves cooking at temperatures of 270° F and above. It is these hotter temperatures that allow dry cooking to
brown
food—which cannot be done with wet techniques.

WET-COOKING TECHNIQUES

Boiling
is simply the cooking of food in water-based liquid at a full boil. It’s best for starchy or hard foods, such as pasta, potatoes, rice, beans, and hardier vegetables, but it can damage softer foods, such as fish. Boiling is also used to
reduce
—making foods like sauces or gravy thicker by steaming off water—and to decontaminate foods that may have come in contact with bacteria.

Blanching
involves plunging food into boiling water for just a moment, and then removing and plunging it into ice water to stop the cooking process. It’s commonly used to loosen vegetable or fruit skins for removal, to brighten the color of vegetables,
and to remove bitterness. Tip: Use plenty of water—the more water you have, the less the temperature will drop when you add the food.

Japan produces almost 50% more cars than its two closest competitors, Germany and the US.

Parboiling
is
partially
cooking something in boiling water, often to make a later cooking technique quicker. You might parboil hard vegetables such as carrots, for example, so they don’t come out too hard when being stir-fried with softer vegetables. Or you might want to parboil chicken to speed up grilling. Parboiling is also used before freezing vegetables, although some require only blanching.

Poaching
is cooking in water (or wine, milk, stock, etc.) below boiling temperature, at 160°F to 180°F. You should be able to see the water circulating but not bubbling. This is a gentle method that works well with delicate foods such as eggs, fish, or fruit. In
submersion
poaching, the food is completely covered with liquid; in
shallow
poaching, the water comes about halfway up the food, with the pan covered, thereby both poaching and steaming the food. Tip: When poaching eggs, add a touch of vinegar to the water to get the whites to form a nice, neat shape.

Simmering
is the step between poaching and boiling, done at temperatures of between 180°F and 205°F. It’s a slow method for preparing stocks and soups, and to soften up tougher cuts of meat—the ones around “the hoof and the horn,” such as chuck, shank, and brisket. To get a proper simmering temperature, bring the water to a full boil, and then turn down the heat until you see tiny bubbles occasionally rising to the surface.

Steaming
is cooking with the steam from boiling liquid. It’s considered a healthy cooking technique because it adds no oils to food, and nutrients don’t leach out into the water as they do with submersion techniques. The steam doesn’t have to come from a liquid in the bottom of a steamer—it can come from the food itself. A good example is fish cooked
en papillote
(“in paper”): Wrap fish in parchment paper and heat it (in an oven or over a fire, for example), and let the fish’s own juices steam it from inside.

Stewing
is the simmering of meats and vegetables (cut up into bite-sized pieces) in liquid that covers the food completely. It’s
good for tough meats, but any meat or fish can be stewed.
Braising
is similar to stewing, but the food is
browned
first (see below), then only half-covered with liquid, and the pot is always tightly lidded to keep the steam in. A classic example of a braised dish: pot roast.