2011 January | Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

Archive for January, 2011

January 31, 2011

“I’m looking over, a 2,000-mile-wide snowstorm…”

“This visible image was captured by the GOES-13 satellite and shows the low pressure area bringing snowfall to the Midwest Jan. 31, 2011. Heavy snow is expected today in portions of northern Iowa, southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Snowfall from the system extends from Michigan west to Montana, Idaho, Utah and Arizona. A mix of rain and snow also stretches into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, and it is all moving east. This system appears to be as large as 1/3rd of the Continental U.S.”

Hmmm, according to page 10 of the effervescent and mind-widening Uncle John Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader, the upper-Midwest is in for a baby boom:

In March 2003, a huge snowstorm shut down the Front Range along the eastern
slope of the Rockies. Forced to stay at home, people huddled very close
together for warmth. The Colorado blizzard yielded a lot more than snow and
snowboard rentals. The result? A baby surge 9 months later.

Youbetcha!

Posted by Thom

Tags: Science

January 30, 2011

Fender Factory Tour Video: 1959

Awesome. Just music and video of the artisans at the original Fender guitar factory doing their thing. At the very end you get a glimpse of Freddie Tavares, who helped design the Stratocaster, among many other Fender products.

If you need some more Fender and electric guitar history in general, look on page 77 in one of our very favorite releases, UJBR Plunges Into Music.

Posted by Thom

Tags: History, Music

January 27, 2011

RIP Charlie Louvin

Yesterday we lost one of the greats in the history of country and pop music, Alabama-born Charlie Louvin (LOO vin), best known for being one of the Louvin Brothers with his brother Ira starting in the 1940s. Here’s a nice little video bio. An especially nice bit is when Charlie talks about the roots of the duo’s harmony, about 1 minute and 40 seconds in:

A good obituary, strangely enough in the UK’s Telegraph:

The brothers enjoyed most of their success in the 1950s, but their close harmony style defined duet singing for a generation, inspiring many later stars and, notably, the Everly Brothers – who initially styled themselves almost entirely on the Louvin Brothers’ “high lonesome” sound. Other acts who took inspiration from the Louvins include The Byrds, Emmylou Harris and Dwight Yoakam.

Charlie set out on a solo career in 1963 after years of problems with Ira’s drinking. (Ira died in a car crash in 1965.)

Charlie enjoyed mainstream success as a solo act, reaching No 4 in the US charts in 1964 with I Don’t Love You Any More and going on to have 30 hit singles in America over the next decade, including See The Big Man Cry and Less and Less. His star also rose as other acts exploited the Louvin Brothers’ legacy. The Byrds covered The Christian Life and Emmylou Harris had her first hit with If I Could Only Win Your Love.

Our condolences to the family and the friends of Charlie Louvin.

We’ll leave you with the aforementioned If I Could Only Win Your Love, a really sweet song with some really tricky changes:

Posted by Thom

Tags: Music, People, Pop culture

January 26, 2011

Revenge: Best Served to Telecom Companies

This, dear readers, will make every one of you feel a tiny bit better for every minute you’ve ever been on a senseless and agonizing telephone run-around mill courtesy of your telephone company—and a tiny bit times a thousand or so adds up to a lot of feeling better:

Belgium’s much-reviled phone company Mobistar was elaborately pranked by a program on VRT Belgium; the pranksters hid themselves in a steel container, which they had dropped directly in front of the gates of a large Mobistar office at 5AM. The container had a prominent customer service number printed on the side of it — a number which rang the pranksters inside the container — that was promptly called by a series of Mobistar employees who wanted to get the container moved off before 2,000 Mobistar employees reported for work and found the parking lot blocked off.

The pranksters proceed to put the Mobistar employees through a high-art comedic phone hell, disconnecting them, subjecting them to terrible hold music (performed live from within the container on a little synthesizer), gradually ratcheting the misery up in a Dante-worthy re-enactment of every terrible, awful mobile phone company experience.

Our favorite part has the be the live hold music. Or maybe, “Will someone be there between 12 and 7?” Hilarious!

And watch until the end if you can: you won’t regret it.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Funny

January 26, 2011

Polar Bear Swims 9 Days Straight

Um, mom? We got you a boat...

This is almost impossible to comprehend:

A polar bear swam continuously for over nine days, covering 687km (426 miles), a new study has revealed.

Scientists studying bears around the Beaufort sea, north of Alaska, claim this endurance feat could be a result of climate change.

Polar bears are known to swim between land and sea ice floes to hunt seals.

[...]

“This bear swam continuously for 232 hours and 687 km and through waters that were 2-6 degrees C,” says research zoologist George M. Durner.

The first question that came to us: When did it sleep? Did it not sleep? If not, how did it survive not sleeping that long?

Unbelievable. Animals are just amazing.

P.S. We wrote about polar bears in UJBR Plunges Into the Universe, if you want some more polar bear with this story. (Page 226 for those of you who already have it.)

[photo]

Posted by Thom

Tags: Animals, Science

January 25, 2011

I Dreamt of a Fighting Swan Giving a Speech in 127 Hours

Finally the Oscar nominations are out. All you film buffs out there, we want to know which movie you think should win for Best Picture. Post your comments on the blog/Twitter/Facebook by Sunday midnight PST and we will pick a random winner on Monday to receive a copy of Uncle John’s Plunges into Hollywood.

And, just for fun, here is some advice from Kate Winslet about keeping the Oscar statue in the bathroom.

Posted by BRI

Tags: BRI News, Celebrities, Contest, Movies, Pop culture

January 24, 2011

The Sega Urinal Game

As the kids say: Oh. My. God.

Four types of “Toylets” games are available to be played during a test period ending this month at four male bathrooms in pubs and game arcades, in a project aimed at drawing attention to digital adverts.

Each urinal is fitted with a pressure sensor, and a small digital display is placed at eye level. Digital adverts are shown after the games.

Games include “Graffiti Eraser” in which a user tries to aim at the pressure sensor in the urinal to erase virtual graffiti on the display.

There is even a video. Really. (And no, it does not feature an actual man peeing.)

Smart money says there will be one of these games in the BRI office bathroom by the end of the week.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Bathroom News, Funny

January 23, 2011

RIP Mr. Jack LaLanne

The undauntable Jack LaLanne has left for the big exercise room in the sky:

“I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for,” Elaine LaLanne, Lalanne’s wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.

We wrote abut Mr. LaLanne not too long ago in UJ’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (p. 498). I don’t have one handy, but I’ll ask one of the Oregon gang if they can give us an excerpt tomorrow.

RIP Mr. LaLanne, and condolences to family and friends.

[photo]

Posted by Thom

Tags: People, Pop culture

January 21, 2011

“Oh Let the SUNS Beat Down Upon My Face…”

Or is is “Tatooine You“:

“Yes, any day now we see a second sun light up the sky, if only for a matter of weeks.

The infamous red super-giant star in Orion’s nebula – Betelgeuse – is predicted to go gangbusters and the impending super-nova may reach Earth before 2012, and when it does, all of our wildest Star Wars dreams will come true.”

Of course those scientists always spoil the party: