Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (73 page)

PRODUCT
: Flat-D (for “flatulence-deodorizing”) underwear

INVENTOR
: Brian Conant, a Postal employee, retired member of the National Guard, and president of Flat-D Innovations

HOW IT WORKS
: When Conant was in the National Guard, he participated in a military exercise that required him to wear a suit designed to protect him from chemical weapons. At one point in the exercise Conant ripped a really big one…and was surprised to find that neither he nor anyone else could smell any odor. When he told his wife about it, she replied that she, too, would like to be spared the effects of his toxic gas. So Conant got ahold of an extra chemical suit and experimented with it in his spare time. Result: designs for male and female undergarments, which feature strategically placed, keyhole-shaped activated charcoal pads that absorbs odor. (Conant also sells activated charcoal face masks, for use around people who aren’t wearing his underpants.)

PRODUCT
: ShotGuard Inner Shorts, which block infrared rays

INVENTOR
: Cramer Japan, one of that country’s largest sportswear manufacturers

HOW IT WORKS
: These undies don’t protect against skin cancer, they protect against
hentai
(perverts), who have figured out a way to use camcorders with infrared night vision to “see” through many kinds of fabric, in order to take revealing photographs of unsuspecting women. ShotGuard undies are made with a blend of nylon and polyurethane fabric that are impervious to this kind of photography. Cramer president Takashi Hokazono hopes that “by introducing conditions that make photography more difficult, the number of malicious photographers will decrease.”

“People want economy and they will pay any price to get it.”

—
Lee Iacocca

Believe it or not, these laws are real
.

• In Providence, Rhode Island, it’s illegal to sell toothbrushes on Sundays. (Toothpaste is okay.)

• It’s against the law in Washington state to pretend that your parents are rich.

• Women in Corvallis, Oregon, are not legally permitted to drink coffee after 6:00 pm.

• By law, Washington drivers must carry an anchor to be used as an emergency brake.

• In Christiansburg, Virginia, it’s a crime to imitate the sound of a police whistle.

• It’s against the law in Iowa to charge people to watch a one-armed pianist perform.

• In Missouri, men are legally required to have a permit to shave.

• It’s a crime in Long Beach, California, to curse while playing miniature golf.

• It’s against the law in Oklahoma to display a hypnotized person in a window.

• In Israel, it’s illegal to pick your nose on the Sabbath.

• In Florida, widows may not skydive on Sunday afternoons.

• It’s illegal for a woman in Joliet, Illinois, to try on more than six dresses in one store.

• It’s okay to wear a fake nose in Aberdeen, Scotland, but only if it doesn’t conceal your identity.

• Richmond, Virginia, prohibits anyone from flipping a coin to determine who will pay a restaurant tab.

• A man may not legally wear a strapless evening gown in Miami.

• In Devon, Colorado, it’s illegal to walk backwards after sunset.

• In Connecticut, it’s against the law to play SCRABBLE while waiting for a politician to speak.

• It’s illegal to run a three-legged race for money in British Columbia.

• Eating soup with a fork is against the law in New York.

• It’s illegal to sell used confetti in Detroit.

While the brutal sport of boxing has existed for thousands of years, historians consider the first modern “boxing match” to be one that took place in England in 1681. Since that era of bare-knuckle fights to today’s gloved bouts there have been more than 1,400 documented boxing-related deaths. These are just a few
.

G
EORGE “THE COACHMAN” STEVENSON.
His is one of boxing’s earliest recorded deaths, going all the way back to 1741. Stevenson fought Jack Broughton in a bare-knuckle contest that lasted about 40 minutes—with no breaks. Stevenson sustained massive injuries, including several broken ribs and probably bruising to his heart. He died about a month later. The tragedy led Broughton, already a champion for many years and quite wealthy from it (the fight was held in “Broughton’s Amphitheater”), to codify rules to make the sport safer, including introducing padded gloves. Broughton is still known as the “Father of Boxing” today.

BILL DAY.
Day fought William Tower on November 22, 1784, in London. English sportswriter Pierce Egan described how “Tower caught him in one corner of the stage, and held him fast by one hand, while with the other he nearly annihilated Day.” The two fought for about 30 minutes; Day died shortly afterward.

SIMON “THE EMERALD GEM” BYRNE.
Irishman Byrne, 27, fought Englishman James “Deaf ’Un” Burke, 24, on May 30, 1833, in Salcey Forest in central England. The two heavyweights fought for more than three hours until the fight was called because Byrne’s hands were too damaged for him to continue. He was already near death, but lingered for two more days. The sport was illegal at the time (though wildly popular), so Burke was arrested and charged with murder after the bout, but was later acquitted of the crime.

Karma?
Byrne has the dubious distinction of being one of only a few boxers who were on both ends of “death” fights. In 1830 he fought Scotsman Alexander “The Highland Hercules” McKay for
53 minutes, after which McKay died. News of the death caused riots across Scotland, and Byrne was charged with manslaughter. And just as Burke would later be for Byrne’s murder, Byrne was acquitted.

CLYDE KAUFMAN.
One of only a handful to die after a fight he actually won, Kaufman beat Jerry White on October 3, 1931, in Hollister, California, by a technical knockout in the third round. A short time later he was found unconscious on the ground next to his car. That night he was diagnosed with a concussion; he died the next morning.

BENNY “KID” PARET.
Paret, from Cuba, was world welter-weight champion when he fought Emile Griffith, an American, on March 24, 1962, in New York City. In the 12th round of the nationally televised fight, Griffith hit Paret a reported 18 times in just six seconds. Paret fell onto the ropes unconscious, and died 10 days later from brain injuries. The death prompted journalist Norman Cousins to pen his now-famous (to boxing aficionados, anyway) essay critical of the sport, “Who Killed Benny Paret,” in the May 5, 1962, edition of
Saturday Review
.

DAVEY MOORE.
On March 21, 1963, the featherweight champion (and former American Olympic champion) faced Cuban Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos in Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The 29-year-old Moore lost the fight, but he did finish it, and even gave an interview before heading for his dressing room. About 45 minutes later he lapsed into a coma; two days later, he died. Because the fight was nationally televised, his death created a public uproar about the safety of the sport. It got considerably more attention when young folksinger Bob Dylan released a song about the incident, “Who Killed Davey Moore?” just three weeks after the fight.

WILLIE CLASSEN.
In October 1979, this 29-year-old New Yorker was knocked out in a fight against legendary British fighter Tony Sibson in London. Just a month later, he fought up-and-coming 21-year-old Wilford Scypion in New York City. Scypion beat him badly, knocking him down a few times, but the fight wasn’t stopped. In the 10th round Classen was knocked unconscious. Five days later, on November 28, he was dead.

DUK-KOO KIM.
In one of the modern era’s most infamous matches, Korean lightweight Kim, 23, met world champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini on November 13, 1982, at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Kim had to lose several pounds shortly before the fight and was reportedly dehydrated. He lasted until the 14th of the scheduled 15 rounds, and collapsed and went into a coma minutes later. Emergency brain surgery was performed that night, but Kim died three days later. The tragedy prompted the World Boxing Council to reduce championship fights from 15 to 12 rounds, and it was the main reason for instituting the standing-8 count—in which the referee stops the fight for eight seconds to determine if a fighter is able to go on. Kim’s mother committed suicide in South Korea three months later; the fight’s referee, Richard Green, did the same in 1983.

LEAVANDER JOHNSON.
Johnson had fought professionally for 16 years when, in 2004, he became the International Boxing Federation lightweight champion at the age of 34. In his first defense, and the biggest fight of his career, he fought Mexico’s Jesus Chavez at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on September 17, 2005. The fight was stopped in the 11th round after Johnson took a number of hard punches to the head. He fell into unconsciousness in the dressing room, was hospitalized with swelling and bleeding on the brain, and died on September 22.

The grave of the Scottish boxer Alexander “The Highland Hercules” McKay, who died after a match with Simon Byrne in 1830, lies in an English churchyard not far from where the fight was staged. On it is this inscription:

Strong and athletic was my frame,
Far from my native home I came
And bravely fought with Simon Byrne,
Alas, but never to return.
Stranger, take warning from my fate
Lest you should rue your case too late:
If you have ever fought before,
Determine now to fight no more.

Here’s another in-stall-ment of a
Bathroom Reader
favorite
.

H
onoree:
The town fathers (and mothers) of Chauncy, Ohio
Notable Achievement:
Inventing a way to collect taxes in the bathroom

True Story:
Don’t worry, the program is voluntary…sort of. When the town had trouble coming up with the money to pay its $500-a-month streetlight bill in 2006, rather than pass a mandatory tax increase, the town government decided to try something a little more creative and fun: They got a wooden outhouse, dubbed it the “Redneck Wishing Well,” and started putting it on the front lawns of various town residents. When the outhouse landed on someone’s lawn, the only way to get the city to haul it away was by tossing a contribution toward the light bill into the “well.”

Bonus:
After a resident had done their duty,
they
got to pick whose lawn got the outhouse next. In the first two days alone, the wishing well collected $200.

Honoree:
The administrators of Frederick Community College in Maryland

Notable Achievement:
Standing firm against bathroom blackmail

True Story:
In the fall of 2007, someone vandalized one of the men’s rooms on campus (even worse, they stole all the toilet paper!) and left a note, threatening to continue trashing toilets until the school rescinded its campuswide ban on smoking. Rather than give in to privvy piracy, the school offered a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the lavatorial louts.

Update:
At last report, the toilet terrorists had struck another dozen times, but the smoking ban is still in effect and the reward is still up for grabs. (Students can still smoke in the parking lot.)

Honoree:
Residents of the Po Tin Housing Complex in Tuen Mun, China

Notable Achievement:
Refusing to take cramped, substandard bathroom conditions sitting down

True Story:
The residents were living in apartments with bathrooms that were barely 2' × 2'. A toilet, sink, and shower were crammed into the tiny space, smaller than a phone booth. “As there is no room in the toilet,” one resident explains, “the users need to dry themselves and put on clothes in the dining room after showers. Their family members have to stay on the street until receiving a phone call from home, saying the user is fully dressed.” After seven years of waiting for the local housing authority to take action, in October 2007, the fed-up residents staged a protest outside the Legislative Council building, complete with a life-size model bathroom to demonstrate how cramped the facilities are. Did the protest do any good? Hard to say—the Housing Authority admitted that the bathrooms “may not be satisfactory” and promised to consider the residents’ request, but at last report the residents were still waiting for action.