UNCLE JOHN’S
STALL OF FAME

Uncle John is amazed—and pleased—by the unusual ways people get involved with bathrooms, toilets, and so on. That’s why he created the “Stall of Fame.”

HONOREE: Peter Freuchen (1886–1957), an Arctic explorer from Denmark

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: Saving his own life with a “stool tool.”

TRUE STORY: In 1912 Freuchen was a member of the First Thule Expedition, which sought to test American Arctic explorer Robert Peary’s belief that a sea channel separated Peary Land, the northernmost part of Greenland, from the rest of Greenland.

It was while trekking across more than 600 miles of this forbidding territory that Freuchen got caught out in the open in a blizzard. He took what shelter he could beneath his dogsled, but was soon buried under several feet of snow that had frozen into hard ice.

Freuchen didn’t have any sharp tools on him that he could use to dig his way out, and he had to go to the bathroom. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Freuchen pooped, waited for the poop to freeze, then used it as a “dagger” to dig his way to freedom. By the time he made it back to base camp, his left leg was so badly frostbitten that it had to be amputated, but he completed the expedition and proved that Peary Land is not separate from the rest of Greenland.

Freuchen didn’t have any sharp tools on him that he could use to dig his way out, and he had to go to the bathroom. Why not kill two birds with one stone?

HONOREE: Jumpy, a border collie–blue heeler mix owned by Omar von Muller, who bills himself as a “dog trainer to the stars”

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: Knowing a bathroom trick that many human males have yet to master.

TRUE STORY: Jumpy is very talented. He knows how to paint, do backflips, ride skateboards and wakeboards, and has more than 30 acting credits to his name. But the thing that lands him in the Stall of Fame is a YouTube video titled “Jumpy Leaving His Mark at the Chandler Valley Center Studios.” In it, Jumpy lifts his leg and pees into a men’s room urinal without spilling a drop onto the floor, then stands on his hind legs and flushes the urinal. The video has been viewed more than 166,000 times. Bonus: When von Muller isn’t busy with training dogs for TV and the movies, he makes his services available to the public. So if you live in L.A. “or you are willing to get on a plane with your pup,” he says, he may be able to teach your dog (or the man in your life) the same trick.

Thirsty? When you were born, you were 78% water. Now you’re 50% to 65% water.

HONOREE: Nina Katchadourian, a Brooklyn-based artist

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: She makes artistic self-portraits in airplane bathrooms using paper towels, toilet paper, seat covers, and other items found in airplane bathrooms.

TRUE STORY: Katchadourian says she stumbled across her odd form of portraiture by chance. “While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in 2011, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone.” The resulting image reminded her of 15th-century Flemish portraits, she writes on her website.

Why stop at one? Katchadourian had a long-haul flight from San Francisco to New Zealand coming up in a few weeks, and she decided to spend much of that flight in the restroom, posing for as many portraits as she could. (The other passengers slept for long stretches on the 14-hour flight, so the restrooms were unoccupied.) “By the time we landed,” Katchadourian writes, “I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. There is no special illumination other than the lavatory’s own lights and all the images are shot hand-held with the camera phone.” See for yourself: Katchadourian has posted her self-portraits on her website, ninakatchadourian.com, and in some of them she really does look like a woman from the 15th century.

HONOREE: YoYo Li, a Los Angeles restaurateur

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT: Bringing toilet-themed cuisine to the United States.

TRUE STORY: When Li decided to go into business in L.A., the two options she considered were opening a “bubble tea” shop, or opening a toilet-themed Chinese restaurant. We’ve written in the past about the thriving Modern Toilet restaurant chain in Taiwan: Customers sit on toilets, eat toilet-themed foods out of bowls shaped like Western- and squat-style toilets, and drink beverages from glasses that look like urinals.

L.A. already had plenty of bubble tea joints, so Li settled on her second option. She copied the Modern Toilet concept and opened the Magic Restroom Cafe in the City of Industry suburb of Los Angeles in 2013. Menu items included “Smells Like Poop” (braised pork on rice), “Constipation” (noodles with soybean paste), “Black Poop” (chocolate sundae), and “Stinky Tofu” (stinky tofu). Want to go? If you haven’t gone already, you waited too long—the restaurant closed its doors in May 2014 after just eight months. “Magic Restroom Cafe Goes Down the Toilet,” read the headline in Los Angeles Magazine.

The Pop Tart is based on a Danish homemade dessert called hindbaersnitter.