Toilet

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

There are loos. And then there are lulus. The humble toilet isn't necessarily a plain-Jane - or should we say plain-John? - fixture anymore. It's gone upscale, fashioned in stainless steel, clad in leather, and pimped out with heated seats, water-jet cleansing systems, and all manner of gadgetry designed to make your stay more satisfying. It's all in keeping with the increasing emphasis placed on kitchens and bathrooms, says Lenora Campos, public relations manager for the U.S. arm of high-tech Japanese toilet-maker Toto.

Even though the Pentagon is bracing for steep budget cuts, it is still paying nearly $1,900 for toilet covers, more than $640 for urinals and almost $70 for rubber toilet seals, according to congressional staff investigators. The expenses were detailed in a memo this week to Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R., Iowa) and William V. Roth Jr. (R., Del.), who have been looking into a spate of reports on costly Pentagon purchases. The Air Force is paying $1,868.15 each for toilet covers used aboard the C- 5B cargo plane, the memo said.

Day four of their stay at the Southwark Plaza public housing development and federal officials Elton Jolly and Michael Smerconish were waxing philosophic yesterday about what they had seen and experienced. Jolly, the Philadelphia Housing Authority special master, said there was a little maintenance problem Sunday night when the one toilet in the apartment they are staying in appeared to have sprung a leak. The problem turned out to be minor, Jolly said, and they fixed it themselves.

With a twist of the wrist, the modern flush toilet does its thing -unless it gets stopped up, and then you're in a heap of trouble. When we lived in an apartment, the toilet got clogged up fairly often. The maintenance man would come in and in a matter of a few minutes, he'd have it working. Now that we have our own home, I worry that this could happen. How would I take care of the problem? I'd hate to have to call a plumber very often. All modern-day toilets have a similar design, which means that most blockages, while out of sight, are close at hand.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Philadelphia man on parole for murder who is believed to be responsible for the shooting death of a patron outside of an Upper Darby bar described as "a huge toilet. " Upper Darby police believe that John Gordon, 37, of Bellford Street near Buist Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, shot and killed Randy Campbell, 23, outside of the Venue bar on Garrett Road about 2:40 a.m. Monday after the two got into a fight in the bathroom, police said.

Nearly a year after Jean Saxon moved out of a rented Levittown home, her landlord discovered a syringe in the base of the toilet - a find the prosecution in Saxon's murder trial presented in Bucks County Court yesterday as the case's smoking gun. Edmund Armstrong said he found the syringe after taking the toilet apart to see why it repeatedly clogged. He called a Bensalem detective to retrieve it. Saxon, 46, is charged with the murder of her estranged husband, Jerry, 52, who lapsed into a coma on March 17, 2003, and died five weeks later.

Since its move indoors, the toilet has eased its way into ever bigger - and more luxurious - quarters. No longer is it just a place to answer nature's call. The master bathroom is an often-opulent extension of the master bedroom suite, with brass fixtures, whirlpool tubs, faux marble counters and more. It is also, no doubt, an example of the value we place on personal comfort. "It's now become a grooming center," said Gary Schaal, executive vice president of Orleans Corp., a leading home builder.

A 23-year-old man was shot and killed early yesterday outside a nuisance bar in Upper Darby that Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood called "a huge toilet. " "Any of these bars, I don't care what community you are in, if they are a toilet, eventually they overflow," Chitwood said yesterday. "If they overflow, someone dies, like we had last night. " Police said that victim Randy Campbell got into a fight with another man in the bathroom of the Venue bar, on Garrett Road and Fairfield Avenue, sometime during the night.

A teenager who delivered a baby in a bathroom at the Atlantic City bus terminal in July 1997 and left him in a toilet was sentenced yesterday in Family Court to two years' probation, according to Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey S. Blitz. Vanessa Rosa-Gomez was 16 when she gave birth to the full-term baby, and her aggravated-assault case remained in the jurisdiction of Family Court, despite the prosecutor's efforts to have her tried as an adult. She was in custody from July 14, 1997, a day after the birth of the 6-pound, 10-ounce baby, until Dec. 14, 1998, when she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

Myron Wentz, a microbiologist, recently wrote a book called The Healthy Home — www.myhealthyhome.com — and offers some ways to create one at your house: Take your shoes off before entering your home. We walk around unwittingly in car oil, pesticides, animal waste, and toxins. Nonstick pots and pans release potentially hazardous fumes and particles into the air such as toxic gases, carcinogens, and global pollutants. Try using a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet instead.

Plumbers working on a clogged residential toilet discovered the remains of a fetus Monday afternoon in the city's Harrowgate section, police said. Two plumbers opened a pipe in the basement of a home in the 800 block of East Russell Street about 4 p.m. and found the remains while removing debris from a pipe leading to a second-floor toilet, Chief Inspector Scott Small said. They dialed 911, and responding officers and investigators determined the remains were human, Small said.

IF YOU WERE casting the empathetic best friend in a semiautobiographical buddy film about cancer, you would go through a long list of actors before you got to Seth Rogen. Rogen, however, had two big advantages in landing his role in "50/50. " He's a producer of the film. And he really is screenwriter Will Reiser's good friend. "The funny thing is, the real story about how I was told Will has cancer is a thousand times more absurd than anything we felt comfortable putting in the movie," Rogen said earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. - A young mother charged with murder has told police that she hid her pregnancy, gave birth to twin sons and killed the infants by smothering their cries so that her parents wouldn't hear them. Police in this Nashville suburb arrested Lindsey Lowe, 25, on Wednesday after her father discovered one baby's body in a laundry basket. According to a police affidavit, the young mother believes that she got pregnant in January. Police said Lowe told them that said she went into labor on Monday evening while on the toilet at her parent's home.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Philadelphia man on parole for murder who is believed to be responsible for the shooting death of a patron outside of an Upper Darby bar described as "a huge toilet. " Upper Darby police believe that John Gordon, 37, of Bellford Street near Buist Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, shot and killed Randy Campbell, 23, outside of the Venue bar on Garrett Road about 2:40 a.m. Monday after the two got into a fight in the bathroom, police said.

A 23-year-old man was shot and killed early yesterday outside a nuisance bar in Upper Darby that Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood called "a huge toilet. " "Any of these bars, I don't care what community you are in, if they are a toilet, eventually they overflow," Chitwood said yesterday. "If they overflow, someone dies, like we had last night. " Police said that victim Randy Campbell got into a fight with another man in the bathroom of the Venue bar, on Garrett Road and Fairfield Avenue, sometime during the night.

DEAR ABBY: The letter from "Turned Off in Texas" caught my attention. While I agree that putting a toilet brush in the dishwasher with the dishes was unexpected and off-putting - we don't ever want to link the toilet with our food - I think your answer showed a little overreaction. Running the dishes in another cycle should take care of any concerns as long as the water is hot. Studies have shown that the inside of the average public toilet bowl is not as bacteria-laden as a public drinking fountain.

WITH APOLOGIES to Sons of Ben, most Americans don't give a hoot about soccer. We don't look at it as a major sport and wonder aloud how anyone can watch a game where 1-0 leads are insurmountable. But in Goiania, Brazil . . . you heard me, in Goiania, Brazil . . . the fans booed the national team after what they felt was a listless 0-0 final in a friendly (that's a game against another country that doesn't count for anything; we call them exhibition games here in America) against the Netherlands.

HARRISBURG - The burning question Wednesday in the state's halls of power had nothing to do with the $4 billion deficit or the deep divide over whether to tax natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale. It was far more elemental: where to go . . . to go. After Gov. Corbett reopened the Capitol after two days of its being shuttered because of a ruptured water main, the 16,000 state employees arrived to toilets that still didn't flush, and faucets that spouted little or no water.