Read Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers Institute
Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (56 page)
OTHER ITEMS
•
Hygen-A-Seat.
Be sure you always have a clean restroom toilet seat when you need one—carry one with you! The Hygen-A-Seat looks just like a standard toilet seat, except that it folds in half and has luggage handles to make it easy to carry. Nonslip pads enable it to adhere safely to all toilet seats. Comes with sanitizing spray and sanitary storage envelopes. The toilet-seat-as-briefcase look isn’t for you? They also sell a “stylish shoulder bag for inconspicuous storage of your Hygen-A-Seat.”
•
Flush Stopper.
A simple adhesive cover that “blinds” the electric eye of an automatic-flush toilet, so that it won’t flush when little kids—who can be too small for the electric eye to “see”—are sitting on the toilet. “Our research shows that nearly 40% of all children develop some degree of stress associated with public restrooms due to a bad experience with an automatic-flush toilet,” says inventor Jeffrey Kay.
•
Tilt-A-Roll.
Puts an end to the age-old debate: Should the toilet paper roll over the roll, or under the roll? The Tilt-A-Roll lets you have it both ways: it’s a toilet paper holder mounted on a swivel so that if you don’t like the way the roll is rolled, spin it 180° and it’s just the way you like it.
Most really bad movies die a quick death in the theaters and then gather dust on video store shelves. But not this one
.
R
ECIPE FOR DISASTER
• Take two A-list movie stars: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.
• Add a torrid off-screen love affair that doesn’t translate into on-screen chemistry.
• Add a huge dollop of media hype about how great the movie’s going to be.
• Mix in a vulgar, inane script.
Stir it all together and you have
Gigli
(pronounced
zheelie
), a movie that rivals
Ishtar
and
Battlefield Earth
for the title of Holly-wood’s biggest flop. Good news: You don’t have to see the picture—you can be entertained just by reading the scathing reviews. Here are some samples.
“Looking for something to praise in
Gigli
is like digging for rhinestones in a dung heap.”
—
Northwest Herald
“Larry and Ricki eventually climb between the sheets in a scene that is insulting to the sexuality of all living creatures, from plankton on up.”
—
Boston Globe
“There is not one iota of dramatic weight to it, and so we just sit, slack-jawed, as
Gigli
unfolds, a cinematic train wreck of distinguished proportions.”
—
Entertainment Today
“If you’re going to skip one film this year—make it
Gigli
.”
—
Talking Pictures
“
Gigli
looks like a project that was intended for appreciation by precisely two people in the entire universe: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. For their sake, I hope they buy a lot of tickets.”
“
Gigli
is a rigli, rigli bad movie.”
“This is a film that inspires hatred.”
No wonder they’re “big boned”—Elephants spend 18 hours a day eating.
“Fifty minutes into this bomb, one character yells, ‘I’m getting tired of this!’ In our theater, one audience member yelled back ‘Me too!’”
“If miscasting was a crime,
Gigli
would be proof of a felony.”
—
CNN
“The rare movie that never seems to take off, but also never seems to end.”
—
USA Today
“
Gigli
is so unrelentingly bad that people may want to see it just as a bonding experience; viewers (read: victims) will want to talk and comfort each other afterwards.”
—
San Francisco Examiner
“Lopez even gives a long, carefully detailed speech about how to not only gouge out someone’s eye, but to remove the memory of everything they’ve ever seen. Which, by the end of the movie, wasn’t starting to seem so bad.”
—
The Star-Ledger
“Test audiences reportedly balked at the film’s happy ending and wanted Gigli and Ricki to die bloody deaths. And they say critics are harsh.”
—
Rolling Stone
“Not helping things is Lopez’s Betsy-Wetsy lisp that transforms a line like ‘brutal street thug’ into ‘bruel threet fug.’”
—
Film Freak Central
“How on Earth did director Martin Brest envision this film? As
Chasing Amy
meets
Rain Man
meets
Pulp Fiction
? Did anyone think that sounded like a winning combination?”
—
Chicago Tribune
“Mr. Affleck and Ms. Lopez’s combined fees reportedly ran close to $25 million, and they earn their money by hogging as much screen time as possible and uttering some of the lamest dialogue ever committed to film.”
—The New York Times
“
Gigli
is as awkward as the word itself. I suggest you spell
Gigli
backwards so it sounds like ‘ill gig.’”
—
Critic Doctor
“For two hours, not a single hair moved on Ben’s head—not even when every hair in the audience was on end and growing in the direction of the exit’s welcoming glow.”
—
Movie Juice
“It wasn’t good, and we got buried.”
—
Ben Affleck
Ted Danson once appeared in a TV commercial as a package of lemon chiffon pie mix.
“EXTREMISM IN THE DEFENSE OF LIBERTY”
On
page 197
we brought you JFK’s 1961 inaugural speech. Now here’s one from the other side. On July 16, 1964, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona made this speech accepting his party’s presidential nomination. The Cuban missile crisis had just ended and the War in Vietnam was just beginning. In reading the speech today, it’s interesting to see how much of yesterday’s politics turn out to have been of passing importance, how much was of lasting importance…and how much the world is still the same
.
I
N THIS WORLD
no party can guarantee anything, but what we can do and what we shall do is to deserve victory, and victory will be ours. The good Lord raised this mighty republic to be a home for the brave and to flourish as the land of the free—not to stagnate in the swampland of collectivism, not to cringe before the bully of communism.
During [the past] four futile years the current administration has distorted and lost that faith. It has talked and talked and talked the words of freedom, but it has failed and failed and failed in the works of freedom.
Now failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs; failures marked the slow death of freedom in Laos; failures infest the jungles of Vietnam; and failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations, the NATO community. Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening wills, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses.
I NEEDN’T REMIND YOU—
but I will—that it’s been during Democratic years that our strength to deter war has been stilled and even gone into a planned decline. It has been during Democratic years that we have weakly stumbled into conflicts, timidly refusing to draw our own lines against aggression, deceitfully refusing to tell even our people of our full participation and tragically letting our finest men die on battlefields unmarked by purpose, unmarked by pride or the prospect of victory.
The temple of Siva in Madura, India, is adorned with 30 million separate carved idols.
Yesterday it was Korea; tonight it is Vietnam. Make no bones of this. Don’t try to sweep this under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam. And yet the president, who is the commander in chief of our forces, refuses to say—refuses to say, mind you—whether or not the objective is victory, and his secretary of defense continues to mislead and misinform the American people, and enough of it has gone by.
Now, the Republican cause demands that we brand communism as the principal disturber of peace in the world today. Indeed, we should brand it as the only significant disturber of the peace. And we must make clear that until its goals of conquest are absolutely renounced and its relations with all nations tempered, communism and the governments it now controls are enemies of every man on earth who is or wants to be free.
WE CAN KEEP THE PEACE
only if we remain vigilant and strong. Only if we keep our eyes open and keep our guard up can we prevent war. This is a party for free men, not for blind followers and not for conformists. In 1858 Lincoln said of the Republican Party that it was composed of “strange, discordant, and even hostile elements.” Yet all of the elements agreed on one paramount objective: to arrest the progress of slavery and place it in the course of ultimate extinction.
Today, as then, the task of preserving and enlarging freedom at home, and of safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad, is enough to challenge all our resources and to require all our strength.
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
OUR CAUSE IS TO FREE OUR PEOPLE
and light the way for liberty throughout the world. Ours is a very human cause for very humane goals. This party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.
You’re both right: Bimonthly can mean 1) every other month, or 2) twice a month.
Ever watched rounders and fish splash the pot until they’re down to the felt? If so, you’ve seen some serious poker players. They have their own language, too. Ante up!
•
All in:
Bet all your chips
•
Down to the felt:
So broke all you see in front of you is the green felt of the poker table
•
Tapioca, or Tap City:
Tapped out; out of money
•
Buy the pot:
Make a bet so large that other players are unlikely to match it
•
Tap:
Bet as much as your opponents have on hand, forcing them to bet everything
•
Catching cards:
On a winning streak
•
Railroad bible:
Deck of cards
•
Toke:
The tip you give to the dealer
•
Splash the pot:
Toss your chips into the pot, instead of just placing them there. It’s considered bad form because other players can’t see how much you’re actually betting
•
Rake:
The house’s cut
•
Cowboys:
Kings
•
Ladies:
Queens
•
Rock:
A very conservative player, someone who doesn’t take big chances
•
Paint:
A face card
•
Trips:
Three of a kind
•
Berry patch:
A very easy game
•
Underdog:
A weak hand that’s likely to lose
•
Rag:
An upfacing card so low in value that it can’t affect the outcome of the hand
•
Alligator blood:
A player who keeps his cool under pressure has alligator (cold) blood
•
Wheel:
The best hand in lowball poker—6, 4, 3, 2, A
•
Fish:
A very bad poker player. They’re only in the game so that you can beat them out of their money
•
George:
A fish
•
Rounder:
A professional poker player. A rounder makes his living parting fishes and georges from their money
•
Base deal:
Dealing from the bottom of the deck
•
In the hole:
In stud poker, the cards dealt face down, so only you can see them
•
Bullets:
Aces in the hole
•
Big slick:
A king and an ace in the hole
•
Boat:
A full house
Emily Dickinson wrote 1,700 poems. Seven were published in her lifetime.
So you think you know movies and celebrities like Uncle John does? Take this quiz and find out. (Answers on
page 501
.
)
1.
Actor Jack Lemmon once told this story: “In the early 1970s I received an award, and I had a chauffeur who told me he wanted to be a comedian. He said, ‘Mr Lemmon, if I’m successful, I want to be your neighbor in Beverly Hills.’” Who was the chauffeur?
a)
Rodney Dangerfield
b)
Lemmon’s driver Bill Papp. “Kid,” Lemmon said. “You’re not funny. But if you work for me, at least you’ll pay the rent.”
c)
Jay Leno
d)
Dr. Phil (He decided nagging people was easier than comedy.)
2.
When Bob Hope died in 2003 at age 100, what did he and his
New York Times
obituary writer Vincent Canby have in common?