Seal Pup Jumps On Boat For Snuggles
This is unbelievable.
True related story:
Daily Dispatch
Uncle John’s Wins a Gold Award at The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards
This year, Uncle John celebrates 25 years of sitting on the throne as the “King of Bathroom Reading” while also winning a GOLD award for Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader and a SILVER award in for its kid’s book, Uncle John’s KID-TOPIA Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! at the 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.
KID-TOPIA was honored for non-fiction books for young readers, while the super-sized Fully Loaded was honored in the humor category. The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards recognizes excellence in both editorial and design and is regarded as one of the highest national honors in small and independent publishing.
Note From a Fan: Jack Tales
From our FaceBook page two days ago, from a recent contest winner:
I want to thank you guys for stirring an old memory, very precious and nearly forgotten. I was reading one of the free books you sent me not long ago (thanks again!), and found the story of the “Jack Tales”, the traditional southern storytelling folklore. My great-grandfather, who was born and raised in Georgia before the *other* turn of the century, used to tell me these stories around 40 years ago, and I might not have thought of them again if not for your book. As I read the article, I was able to read it in his voice mentally. I only wish I could remember all the different stories he told (I know there was one about an island). It really took me back and helped to keep his memory alive. Thank you so much!
Wes R.
Wes, we are so pleased to be able to light that wonderful memory for you, and thank you for thinking to tell us about it. Very nice of you!
The “Jack Tales” story Wes is talking about comes from our very latest annual – Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (page 388). Continue reading for the whole story.
Bathroom Reading Month: On Top of the Throne
Every week during Bathroom Reading Month, we will host a giveaway for a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader collection. Just to spice it up, we will ask you to answer a question on the blog. At the end of the week, we will pick a random winner from the answers and post it on the blog along with our favorite answers. Remember that this is in addition to our “mother-of-all” contest: enter to win the entire in-print library of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers.
Week #1: On Top of the Throne
QUESTION: What reading materials do you have in your bathroom in addition to Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers?
Answer the question in the comments section of this post to be entered to win a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader library. Answers must be posted by June 5, 2013, midnight PST to be eligible to win. A winner will be announced on Friday, June 7, 2013. Open to US residents only.
A Weird But Great App: No More Kissin’ Cousins in Iceland
The United States is a melting pot. More than 300 million people live here, and most of us are either immigrants from another nation or the descendants of immigrants who came here within the last 200 years or so, from all over the world. The tiny European island of nation of Iceland is not quite so diverse. Distant and remote from mainland Europe, the country hasn’t expanded its genetic pool much over the last millennium. Result: All 300,000-odd residents of Iceland are related to each other.
The government of Iceland has intricately detailed its national genealogy, setting up a database that lists more than 720,000 people born in Iceland, including 95 percent of everyone born there since 1703, but going back 1,200 years. For example, everyone in Iceland—everyone—is related to a man named Jon Arason, who died in 1550.
With everyone related, that makes dating a little awkward—nobody wants to date their first cousin. Your eighth cousin? Well, that might be okay, but first cousin? Gross. That’s why an Icelandic computer programmer named Arnar Freyr Aoalsteinsson developed an app called IslendingaApp. Essentially an interactive version if the Icelandic genealogical registry, two people who have the app tap their phones together, and the app will tell them how closely they’re related. The app’s slogan: “bump the app before you bump in bed.”
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Pop Culture Pizza Pies
There are approximately 50 billion pizza joints in New York City, but Vinnie’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn is arguably the coolest. For the past few years, co-owner Sean Berthiaume has created dozens of special pizzas with punny names, many “ins-pie-red” by popular TV shows. We call these pop culture pizza pies. Here are a few of our current favorites:
Mad Men
• The “Mad Mein” is topped with chicken chow mein, stir-fried noodles, teriyaki chicken, onions, broccoli, and cheddar cheese
• The “Don Caper” (a play on “Don Draper”) includes capers, tomato, garlic, “soy (Jon) Hamm,” soy cheddar, and mozzarella.
Game of Thrones
• The “Pita Linkage” (named for co-star Peter Dinklage) is an open-faced pita pizza with sliced sausage links, red onions, roasted red peppers, and feta cheese.
• The “Khal-Cheesy” (named for “The Khalesi,” portrayed by Emilia Clarke) has cheddar, provolone, mozzarella, and parmesan cheeses with sliced “pepper-thron-i.”
South Park
• The “South Pork” is topped with salami, ham, bacon, onions, and peppers.
A Weird But Great App: No More Spoilers on Twitter!
Tired of spoilers on online? What you need is a ‘No More Spoilers on Twitter’ app! Gone are the days of watching a TV show on the channel it airs at the time it. Most American homes now have some form of “time shifting” solution when it comes to TV, from the good old VCR to digital video recorders like TiVo to watching the shows online, either a couple days later via Hulu or a couple of months (or years) later in season-long viewing binges on Netflix.
A diehard fan of a show will watch it as soon as possible—when it airs—and many of those fans like to share their thoughts online, while it airs. So if you’re not going to get around to watching Mad Men the night it first airs, you’d better not go anywhere near Twitter. Mad Men fans will discuss plot points, twists, and, to use the parlance of the Internet, “spoil it.”
Boston teenager Jennie Lamere loves to use Twitter to connect with her friends and follow celebrities, but she hated how she would often inadvertently find out the results of her favorite show before she watched—the reality program Dance Moms. So for a student-computer-programming contest, she designed a Twitter application called Twivo. The program works like this: You install it and tell it what shows you don’t want to know anything about. Twivo then blocks all references to the show on your Twitter feed—the text is blacked out—no more spoilers on Twitter. Lamere won the contest; the app may be available to the general public in just a couple of months…hopefully before Breaking Bad starts up again.
Making the Most Out of Kickstarter: How Do I Land?
The “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter can be used for a lot of things. For example, Rob Thomas, creator of the cancelled TV show Veronica Mars, raised enough money this spring (more than $3.5 million) to make a follow-up movie.
Or it could be used to fund expensive, elaborate pranks. Last January, comedian Kurt Braunohler (best known as the host of IFC’s Bunk) put up a plea on Kickstarter to raise $4,000. Goal: to“hire a man in a plane to write stupid things with clouds in the sky.” In other words, to skywrite jokes.
Braunohler successfully raised $6,820—way more than his $4,000 target. And earlier this month he hired a skywriter, who wrote this amusing message in the skies over Los Angeles: HOW DO I LAND?
Parents Just Don’t Understand: Celebrity Emancipated Minors
Recently, actor Will Smith told the British newspaper The Sun that his 14-year-old son Jaden, star of movies like The Karate Kid and the upcoming Will Smith movie After Earth, was looking into joining the ranks of other celebrity emancipated minors. It’s usually used to declare minors legal adults to either help teenagers escape abusive homes, protect financial assets or, as we’re guessing is the case with Smith, be able to work long hours on movie sets without violating child labor laws. The elder Smith seems cool with this. After all, he’s a guy who used to win Grammys for complaining about his parents.
The New Fall TV Shows You Will and Won’t Be Seeing
Last week in New York, the big 5 broadcast networks (and some of the cable networks) held their annual “upfronts.” What is that? NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the CW unveil their new fall TV shows and introduce the new schedule they’ll be airing, all so advertisers can decide whether or not they want to buy commercial space.
There look to be some surefire hits on the way—ABC’s spinoff of The Avengers called Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and NBC’s The Michael J. Fox show both got a positive response. But you’ll be seeing those soon enough—what about the rest? Here are some of the more “out there” shows that were up for a spot on the fall schedule. Most of these didn’t make it…but some did!
Political Carnival: “Crackstarter” Raising Funds to Buy Video of Toronto Mayor Allegedly Smoking Crack
This is crazy!
Backstory: New York-based gossip website Gawker says it was approached by someone trying to sell a video of Toronto mayor Rob Ford apparently smoking crack cocaine in a glass pipe. Gawker editor John Cook says he’s seen the video (two reporters from the Toronto Star say they have, too) – but the person who has it wants money for it. A LOT of money.
Gawker has published a photo they say is a screengrab from the video:
That’s all crazy enough on it’s own – but here’s where it goes into overdrive: Cook has started an IndieGoGo fundraiser he’s titled “Rob Ford Crackstarter” (a takeoff of fundraising site KickStarter), saying:
The World’s Smallest Movie
This tiny film doesn’t feature any big stars like Brad Pitt, or even any littler stars—because there literally wasn’t enough room for them. Instead, A Boy and His Atom stars, amazingly, just a few microscopic particles. Guinness World Records has declared the stop-motion-animated short film “the world’s smallest movie.” The 90-second film consists of a “boy” bouncing an atom-sized ball while dancing and jumping around. There’s not much of a plot but given the methods involved, it’s pretty incredible.
IBM scientists created the film with a “scanning tunneling microscope” that manipulated a few dozen carbon atoms placed atop a copper surface. First they had to chill the microscope to just above absolute zero (-450° F) because at a higher temp, the “excitable” atoms would have ignored their stage directions.
Garth Brooks: Country Star, Failed Filmmaker, Defendant
Name the bestselling solo male musician of all time. Elvis Presley? Bing Crosby? Elton John? Nope. It’s country superstar Garth Brooks, who has sold more than 128 million albums in the U.S., which is especially remarkable because unlike those other guys, he didn’t have a recording career that lasted decades. His first record came out in 1989 and his last one in 2001. Why’d he retire? He wanted to try new things, particularly starring in and making movies.
Brooks is one of the most popular musicians of all time, and if a new lawsuit filed by a former business partner is to be believed, one of the prickliest. Former business partner Lisa Sanderson is taking Brooks to court because his bad behavior and pattern of bridge-burning resulted in a number of movie projects that never saw the light of day, and thus prevented Sanderson from earning a great deal of money.
Here are some of the movies Sanderson alleges she and Brooks worked on that never made it to the big screen:
Giant Duck in Hong Kong Harbor!
Though it does closely resemble our ducky mascot, we swear that we are not behind this.
For the past few weeks, a gigantic, inflatable rubber duck has sat in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and drawn thousands of onlookers. How big is it? Pretty big—16.5 meters tall, or 54 feet of inflatable ducky goodness.
The Misappropriation of Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill was one of the most promising singers of the late ’90s. As part of the Fugees, she sang on a smash hit cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and then in 1998 released her solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Hill wrote and produced most of the album, which sold 19 million copies and won five Grammys, including Best New Artist and Album of the Year.
It looked like Hill would be one of the biggest pop stars of the new millennium…but then almost nothing happened. The only album she’s released since was a live performance in 2002, which was marked by emotional breakdowns and bizarre stage banter. After that she retired from music to raise her five children.
The Real Marge Simpson
In late April in Portland, Oregon, the real Marge Simpson passed away at age 94.
Allow us to explain. Margaret Groening was the mother of Matt Groening, the cartoonist who created the comic strip Life in Hell, and later, when he didn’t want to sell the TV rights to Life in Hell, an animated family sitcom called The Simpsons, which you may know as one of the longest-running and universally beloved entertainments of all time.
Kid’s Book Giveaway—May 2013
UPDATE: We have our 3 winners! Amy S., Rbecca S., and Eric S. have been contacted via email.
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Pop Quiz time!
Do you have horrid memories of pop quizzes from your school days? We’re looking to change that, by awarding prizes just for answering. No ditching class necessary.
So here’s the question (comment below):
Name one thing you’ve learned from an Uncle John’s book.
Tell us something fun. Like that yak milk is pink. Or that the world’s most stolen food is cheese.
You’ll all get an automatic “A” but three random winners will get an “A+” and win our two new kids books: Uncle John’s Infomania Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! and Uncle John’s Smell-O-Scopic Bathroom Reader For Kids Only!.
Must enter by May 10, 2013, midnight PST. Winners will be announced on May 13, 2013. Open to US residents only. Entrants must be 18 years or older.
READY, GO!
Titanic II: Oceanic Boogaloo
All aboard? Back in February, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer held a press conference to announce his plans to build a duplicate of the Titanic—arguably the most famous ocean-liner in history. The original Titanic, billed as “unsinkable,” hit an iceberg in 1912 and sank. Palmer is calling his ship, of course, Titanic II.
Think that might be a bad idea? Of course you do. And you’re not alone. While Palmer promises that Titanic II will have a stronger, more iceberg-proof hull (and way more lifeboats), critics say that the new ship makes a mockery of the hundreds of passengers who died on the original Titanic. Descendants of survivors of the disaster are even passing around a petition to block the construction of Titanic II.
