By Brian Boone
Today’s guest blogger is our boss, founder, and inspiration in all things trivia- and bathroom-based, Uncle John. What’s the occasion? He’s got a free minute after putting the finishing touches on our latest and possibly greatest, now available opus, Uncle John’s Action-Packed Bathroom Reader.
It’s September, so that means a few of things around the Bathroom Readers’ Institute (nestled somewhere in between Flushing, New York, and Porcelain Falls, Oregon):
1) I can’t get that Earth, Wind & Fire song out of my head, 2) It’s time to send the littlest Bathroom Readers back to school, armed with a summer-full of fun facts in hopes of getting them on the Honor Roll, and
2) Another edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is hot off the presses and on its way to a place of honor on the top of countless toilet tanks across the land.
It takes a long time to make one of these. We started working on this thing in early 2023, and it’s now late 2024. It takes just that long to come up with great ideas, research those ideas, delve into our research library and mountains of clippings, and then put everything together, write it, edit it, vet it, copy edit, throw on an extra gloss of entertainment gloss, and then send it to the printer.
Get Uncle John's Action-Packed Bathroom Reader Today!
While each Bathroom Reader is an entry in an ongoing series with a stalwart format – you gotta give the people what they want; 10 million readers can’t be wrong — each one has its own unique flavor. We’re subject to our own whims, or our curiosities, or certain themes in the culture that can’t be avoided. This year, we’re all about the action. We wanted to turn things up and be more active, more pulse-pounding, just altogether more exciting. (More pops and pows, basically.) It was during an early editorial meeting when someone said this book should be action-packed. And right there and then we got our theme (and title) for BR #37 – Uncle John’s Action-Packed Bathroom Reader.
And then we were off to work, compiling the usual assortment of amazing material, but it had to be more exciting than usual, just ever so edgy. Different. Unlike anything you’d see anywhere else. So that’s how we defined “action-packed.” We think we pulled it off, too. Inside Uncle John’s Action-Packed Bathroom Reader you’ll discover…
• Why people started doing things once considered kooky, like wearing skimpy underwear or lifting a sports championship trophy over their heads
• The thickness of common objects and landmarks in terms of toilet paper sheets (and we got out the ruler and the rolls and did the math!)
• The weirdest, most tough to believe conspiracy theories of all time
• The individuals single-handedly responsible for monumental cultural shifts
• A look at the wild histories of both monster trucks and the American Gladiators
• The bizarre story of the imposter bands who went on tour as famous bands
• An exhaustive history of how cats captured our hearts
And much, much more, of course.
The product of these labors, Uncle John’s Action-Packed Bathroom Reader, is in stores now. Get it now, and get to devouring those lovingly, exuberantly crafted 400 pages!
Go with the flow,
Uncle John