Best Bathroom Book Bets 2011

Anyone who's read me for a while knows I'm a huge fan of what I like to call toilet books. These are the books that (maybe not) you bring in with you for a pleasant little time away from the world, crapping or peeing to your heart's content while you read a little something something.

Toilet books can't be linear. They need to be something you can simply flip through and select a random page to read. Doesn't matter what page you turn to, you're going to find something interesting. After all, you're only going to be in their for ten or twenty minutes. Now, this is important: It also can't be a book you're reading in a linear fashion, because that interrupts your digestive flow. No, no, no. The perfect bathroom book needs to be something light and tasty, but with a little kick...kind of like an aperitif.

And of course, you need to mix bathroom books up every so often. One does get bored reading the same books time and again, after all. As a result, some get put away for a year or so, and then come back again. Others get retired for good.

So, in no particular order, here are my current picks for classic bathroom books...what I'm reading now. Pick a few up and you can crap like Ted! Let's face it, that's infinitely more entertaining than moving like Jagger. I know, right?

• Get Happy: the Life of Judy Garland by Gerald Clarke. Okay, I lied, this is my number one fave, right now. I have to admit, I am mildly obsessed with this book. But how can you not be fascinated with a book that has a story about Judy Garland giving some random movie star a hummer and then being forced to sing "Over the Rainbow" after she's done finishing him off? Talk about singing for your supper! Or the MGM executive who flashes a teen Shirley Temple, expecting her to service him, but she just ends up in a fit of giggles, so he fires her? I mean, this book is the Good Ship Lollipop, and the some! (My personal favorite pages: the late MGM years, right before she gets fired and tries to commit suicide. I don't like the suicide part, so I always skip over that.)
• Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story by Wilson and Florenski. A quick read about the misadventures of a deeply troubled gay icon: practically every page ends in disaster. Without a doubt, the most offensive Hollywood Squares Paul Lynde joke: "What should you think when you walk into an apartment and all the walls and carpets are brown?" Paul Lynde: "The maid exploded."
• Sing for Your Supper by Ethan Mordden. A look a Broadway musicals in the 1930s. Fascinating rhythm!
• Popeye: The First Fifty Years by Bud Sagendorf. If I had a book on Dick Tracey, that would be on this list. But how can you go wrong with the Sea Hag, Alice the Goon, or Poopdeck Pappy?
• My 1981 High School yearbook. Okay, okay, I know you PROBABLY don't have access to this one, particularly the version I own, which my best friend from high school sent an ENTIRE YEAR defiling and defacing. But if only you could...oh, the hours of pleasure I've derived from this book! It's better than sex. Well, almost. I'm including two of the few items that couldn't possibly offend anyone...the rest just will have to remain secret for some time to come.

On the death of bookstores and the future of things.

There you go. The end of an era: the demise of the super-bookstore.

Sunday afternoon, Ashes and I stopped by our local Borders to see what was there to be had. She snagged a ton of YA, I stuck with feeding my passion for Twain and picked up copies of Life on the Mississippi and Huck Finn. God, I love that man.

In my heart of hearts, I have this strange hope that the demise of the huge bookstores will bring things full circle, and usher in a return to small local bookstores. Certainly, my quasi-city could use one: with Borders closed, I can't think of a bookstore in the vicinity. A small local bookstore would be nice, I think. Maybe keep a little online business going on the side. Hey, maybe it can't make BIG HUGE PROFITS...but guess what? Evidently, neither could Borders.

However, I know, in my mind of minds, that such a thing is not going to happen. As much as I would like the demise of big business to signal the resurgance of small business, I know that what it really signals is the inevitable ascendancy of virtual business. The local bookstore housed within your computer, on your Kindle. No need to go out, interact with people, drive your car. You can take care of everything from your bedroom, with your slippers on (never mind that because everything is virtual, and there's less need for, oh, American employees, those slippers are pretty ratty, because you can't afford to buy new ones).

Such is the way our world is headed. Someday soon, most necessities will be purchased without leaving our home, which is okay, because our job will be in our home, too. Already, I suspect that a good percentage of us who have jobs could possibly conduct most of our work out of our homes, if we needed to. The only real jobs for most of the population outside of the home will be in fast food, medical, warehouse storage, and delivery. To save money, the government will establish virtual classrooms to teach our children. Our entertainment will be fed to us through our large screen televisions. The only reason any of us will need any sort of outside business is to buy fast food and to pump gas to visit non-virtual friends. And, for those who can afford it, expensive vacation resorts, like Disney. Oh, and attorneys will survive, too.

And also, what will happen to all of these empty monster stores? I thought they were stupid and useless when they were first being erected everywhere, but now I wonder, what's going to happen to all of them, eventually?

Maybe they can be torn down, to make way for large family homes or rental units. In a virtual world, jobs will be increasingly hard to find, as only the truly technically savvy will have jobs that pay anything worth a damn. To make due, the size of the nuclear family structure will have to increase, as only two or three will have jobs that pay much, and the community that used to be our work community will revert back to the family structures we used to see hundreds of years ago (only perhaps larger and older, since we are living longer, now). Also, it won't be two parents, ten kids, but a broader, more diverse assemblage--two or three kids, one parent, an aunt or brother, grandparents.

Okay, well that's just plain depressing. Can you see why a return to the small local bookstore is what my heart is hoping for? The other possibility doesn't seem like a very pleasant existance at all. I'll take a return to normalcy, thank you.