Harry Potter's Bathroom Graffiti!

A teenager named Sara took this picture of bathroom graffiti. It's about the most ambitious bathroom scrawling I've ever seen. Not only that, but it turns out to be the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone!

High I.Q. Graffiti!

Every day, I sit in a toilet stall and look at lousy graffiti. It's just the usual bad words and stupid jokes (e.g., "Here I sit, broken hearted, tried to poop, but only...")

And the worse part is, since I'm at home, the graffiti is all mine!

That's why I like going to places where smart people leave graffiti on the bathroom walls.

Like when I was invited to a local elementary school for an author presentation (right)!

Top photo by David Pescovitz.

Hicklebee's Has the Most Awesome Bathroom in the World!

I went to San Jose this weekend, which gave me a chance to visit a bookstore I've heard many great things about: Hicklebee's!

It has everything you could want in a bookstore: a super-friendly staff and LOTS of books. It also has a legendary bathroom complete with sink, toilet, and artwork created by visiting writers and illustrators.

For example, I enjoyed the picture to the right by David Shannon.

And Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame) left behind this an important bum-flap reminder, below.

Ooh, here's a surprising Santa Claus portrait by Marla Frazee. But as I sat in the most awesome bathroom in the world, I realized two things:

1.) Somebody in the hallway was yelling, "What's taking so long?"

2.) I was never going to be able to photograph it all. I mean, this is just PART of the back of the door:

So it was with great regret that I reached for a poo-ticket ... and saw this handy instruction about the only foreign body that's supposed to end up in the toilet. 

Man, what a great bathroom experience! You know, I think that from now on, I'm going to go to Hicklebee's EVERY time I'm in San Jose and I need to "get a book."