Oakland University alumnus creates book of photos, quotes from Mich. bathroom stalls

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Some of the most clever quotes can come to you in the most unexpected places.

For Doug Rice, a 2005 Oakland University graduate, the unexpected place was a bathroom of the Oakland University library.

After reading a message scrawled across a bathroom stall, Rice was inspired to compile a coffee table book of bathroom graffiti that he titled “From the Stall.”

The State News: Where did you collect the quotes from?

Doug Rice: For the most part, it’s Michigan campuses — Western, Eastern, Oakland University, MSU.

There are some random ones from Boston and Montana and also there’s some from Greece as well, but for the most part, I’m from Michigan so most of the material I was able to conveniently take was from Michigan campuses.

SN: What inspired you to write this book?

DR: I was at Oakland University and I was studying.

It was finals week and I was in the library forever one day studying. And I had to use the restroom.

You know, “swing by the office.”

So I go down into the basement of Oakland’s library, which is like the most private bathroom, and in front of me, someone wrote “Rick Moranis has enormous horseballs.”

My mental state at the time, I was in a really slaphappy mood because I had been studying for a long time and I just could not get over the fact that someone would actually think of something like that to write — let alone actually write it on the bathroom stall wall.

I just started to chuckle to myself and I’m like, “Wow! That’s unbelievable that someone would do that.”

I thought it would make a great home bathroom reading book — to be able to read all the bizarre things people write and the perverted things people write in the comfort of your own home.

So in your own bathroom at home you can still have the luxury of reading the public bathroom stall graffiti.

SN: How long did it take to complete the book?

DR: The idea was completed probably three years ago.

I was taking pictures for maybe a year or a year and a half.

I was trying to find a publisher, which I was unsuccessful … and I decided to publish it myself.

So then I had to do all of the work of creating the book — how it was going to look, where I was going to get it printed — so that whole process took about a year and a half.

SN: Why should someone read “From the Stall?”

DR: Oh my god! Because it’s hilarious! If anyone has ever been curious, especially about what the other sex may be writing in the bathroom because I have both men’s and women’s bathroom’s in there, as well as whoever has either written or read bathroom graffiti and have kind of been affected by it — how I was with the Rick Moranis quote.

It’s some unbelievable stuff that comes out of the human brain when they’re taking a shit.

Also, there’s a part of the book at the end. I call it “shooting blanks.” I took pictures of blank stall walls and they’re dirty and grungy but there’s no specific graffiti.

There’s just a blank picture of a stall for people at the end, who have hopefully been inspired by reading other peoples’ graffiti, to write their own graffiti into the book.

It’s directed more toward a college atmosphere because if they’re living with someone — in a dorm room, a suite mate, if it’s a house or an apartment — and they’re sharing a bathroom, they can write little notes back and forth, making fun of each other in the book. Or if you’re a buddy using your buddy’s restroom, you can write something to them in the back of the book.

SN: Are you planning to write a sequel?

DR: I am. On the Web site (www.fromthestall.com) there’s a gallery for photos but there’s also a photo submission part where I encourage people to take pictures themselves and e-mail them to me at doug@fromthestall.com.

So hopefully, in the future, I can get some more photos sent to me and the hope would be to have it more spread out nationwide.

Because the majority of this book is Michigan — which is somewhat insignificant where the pictures come from — but it’s nice if you have been to (MSU) or an alumni of (MSU), it’s more closer to home.

You can say, “Oh yeah. I remember that hall.” Of course it’s not necessarily imperative that that’s a school that they came from but in the future I’d like to have pictures from all over the country.

SN: What is your favorite bathroom stall quote?

DR: There’s a lot, but if I had to pick one, it would be the Rick Moranis quote because that’s the inspirational one, but there’s one from U-M that says, “Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have his shoes.”

SN: What is the most bizarre quote you’ve seen?

DR: There’s one from Oakland University that said, “My nipples sweat when I eat ham.”

So that was pretty unpredictable.

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