Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards Read online

  • On February 4, 2008, NASA sent a Beatles song, “Across the Universe,” toward the North Star—431 light years away. The date commemorated the 50th anniversary of NASA and the 40th anniversary of the song.

  • In June 2008, scientists in Norway planned to broadcast a 30-second “commercial” (promoting Earth and its inhabitants) to a solar system in the Great Bear constellation—42 light years away. (The first commercial sent into space was a collection of thousands of Craigslist ads in March 2005.)

  Other people are getting in on the act, too. At least one Web site on the Internet sells a “service” that allows anyone to send a text or phone message into space. (Uncle John’s message: “Go with the Flow.”)

  IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?

  SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), a research institute in Mountain View, California, says its mission is “to know our beginnings and our place among the stars.” To that end, it transmits radio messages with the hope that a living being outside of our solar system will receive it.

  Some people, though, think that talking to the heavens is a potentially dangerous activity. In 2006, an editorial in Nature challenged scientists (and amateurs) who send out these radio transmissions to stop because the practice is irresponsible. People could be establishing contact with . . . well, anything. Their other issue was with anyone setting themselves up as a self-appointed spokesperson for the planet. Many scientists also feel that the search for life in the universe is a waste of time. Even if there were extraterrestrials out there and radio waves reached them, it would take the same amount of time for them to send a message back. Hundreds or even thousands of years could go by, and that’s a really long time to wait for a return call.

  TAKE THIS JOB AWARD: 11 UNUSUAL (BUT REAL) OCCUPATIONS

  1. Porta-potty scrubber

  2. Earthworm farmer

  3. Roller coaster inspector

  4. Wine cave digger

  5. Alligator egg collector

  6. Dysentery stool sample analyzer

  7. Armpit sniffer (for deodorant companies)

  8. Jaw massage therapist

  9. Ice cream taster

  10. Orangutan pee collector

  11. Easter Bunny

  THE LOST TREASURE AWARD

  Russia’s Amber Room

  Grab a shovel and put on your thinking cap, because it’s time to go

  hunting . . . for treasure. The location of Russia’s Amber Room,

  which vanished during the chaos of World War II, remains one

  of the Western World’s greatest mysteries. But a crafty bunch

  of art hunters may have finally tracked it down. (For

  more Lost Treasures, turn to page 169.)

  THAT’S QUITE A GIFT

  It’s been called the “most valuable missing artwork in the world” and the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” and it’s worth more than $250 million. But after World War II, Russia’s Amber Room—a room decorated entirely with amber that dated back to the days of Peter the Great—vanished, and people around the world have been looking for it ever since.

  In 1701, the first king of Prussia, Friedrich I, hired craftsmen to panel his study in amber, the fossilized resin of ancient trees. It was completed in 1713, the same year the king died. Three years later, Friedrich Wilhem I dismantled his father’s showpiece room and gave it to Czar Peter the Great to cement a new alliance. The room traveled to St. Petersburg in 18 large boxes and was initially displayed as part of an art collection . . . until 1755 when Peter’s daughter, Czarina Elisabeth, decided to have the room installed in St. Catharine’s Palace in Pushkin (the Russian royals’ summer home).

  BIGGER THAN A BREADBOX

  The part of the palace where Elisabeth wanted to set up the Amber Room, though, was larger than Friedrich’s original study. So Russian artisans added additional jewel-encrusted panels. These included four Florentine mosaics fashioned from gems like jasper, marble, jade, onyx, and quartz. Also among the furnishings were display cases containing precious amber objects like chess sets, candlesticks, and jewel boxes.

  When Catherine the Great came to power in 1762, she ordered even more improvements and had the room moved a second time to her new summer home outside St. Petersburg. The job was finally complete in 1770, and the Amber Room was a marvel. It included more than 100,000 pieces of carved amber paneling that covered about 592 square feet. Catherine showed the room off by installing 565 candles to illuminate its six tons of amber, semiprecious stones, gold leaf, and silver.

  (NOT) PRESERVED IN AMBER

  The room stayed at Catherine’s palace until 1941, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union and the Amber Room went missing. How does an entire room simply vanish?

  As the Nazis advanced, the Soviets tried to hide the amber panels by wallpapering over them. (First, they tried to disassemble the room but couldn’t figure out how to take it apart without the amber crumbling.) The Nazis easily uncovered the ruse, tore down the room (they didn’t care so much about the crumbling stones), and shipped it to Germany. Then they set it up at their own museum in Königsberg, where it was on display for two years.

  In 1943, the Americans bombed the town of Königsberg, and no one is sure if the Germans got the room hidden away before the bombs razed the museum or not. Supposedly, the museum’s director had been warned of the raid and was told to save the amber, but there’s no evidence that he actually did. And since then, the Amber Room has been missing.

  ROOM ON THE RUN

  The missing room, though, and all of the gems, jewels, and other treasures that went along with it have inspired many theories as to its fate:

  1. The amber was loaded onto a ship that sank in the Baltic Sea.

  2. The Soviet Army destroyed the room themselves before the Americans bombed the museum in an effort to keep the world’s attention on Western atrocities as one way of justifying the Cold War.

  3. Then there’s the Amber Room Curse—the idea that the room doesn’t want to be found. Lots of people associated with the missing room have died. The museum director in Königsberg (and his wife) died of typhus during the KGB’s investigation of the missing room. A Russian intelligence officer was killed in a car crash after he talked to a reporter about the room. And in 1987, an Amber Room hunter was murdered in Bavaria.

  FOUND ART?

  In February 2008, however, treasure hunters started digging up an abandoned mine in the German town of Deutschneudorf. They looked there on a tip from the son of a former German pilot who said that the Nazis had stashed art, gold, and silver there when they realized they were going to lose the war.

  Further investigation led authorities to believe that the underground location might contain parts of the famous Amber Room, but because of possible booby traps and adjoining mines, they haven’t yet been able to enter the site to find out what’s in it. If the material below ground does turn out to be surviving relics of the Amber Room, Deutschneudorf’s mayor Hans-Peter Ulstein says they’ll be returned to Russia.

  AMBER ROOM REDUX

  Whether or not those finds prove to be the original Amber Room, the Russians unveiled a reconstructed Amber Room in 2003. They government had been working on the new room since 1979, and it was finally dedicated to mark the 300-year anniversary of the original room. It took six tons of Baltic amber and $11 million to re-create the Amber Room, and it’s on display in the town of Pushkin outside of St. Petersburg.

  “Looking out on these tuxedos tonight, it’s like seeing the movie again. Thank you for this homage.”

  —Yves Darondeau, when his March of the Penguins won the Academy Award for Best Documentary

  THE JOLLY GREEN GIANT AWARD

  Envirolet Composting Toilets

  They were all a flush when they heard they’d won.

  A BIG GREEN FLUSHING MACHINE

  They say if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. Here at the BRI, we feel obligated to beat a path to the door of someone who builds a better
toilet. It takes a special kind of talent to improve on something so popular and widely used. When we noticed someone had made an improvement in composting toilets, we knew we had to give him a thumbs-up for doing the green thing.

  YOU ARE WHAT YOU POST

  Composting takes organic waste (manure, plant trimmings, leftover food, things like that) and lets it break down over time. When added to soil, it can add nutrients back into the environment and work as a sustainable fertilizer for new plant growth and vegetation. Composting saves a lot of material from going to landfills, too. It’s a win-win all around for the environment.

  It’s easy enough, and human beings have been doing it for thousands of years. But when it comes to adding human waste to the compost pile, most people turn up their noses. Not so with Envirolet Composting Toilets. It’s sometimes easier to use a composting system in a cabin or a remote place that doesn’t have access to plumbing, which these toilets work well for, but Envirolet has broken into the home bathroom market. In a good home system, a holding tank for the waste is kept somewhere remote from the toilet itself. And in that special holding tank, the composting magic begins.

  WATER, WATER NOWHERE

  Most of the waste people generate is water—up to 90 percent, in fact. Composting toilets let that water evaporate back into the air as the . . . ahem . . . deposits that people make in the toilet are collected in a special aeration basket. The obvious concern here is smell—and in this case, fans, microbes, and a little bit of peat moss do the dirty work of eliminating odor.

  For home use, the baskets need to be placed in a waste treatment container, and most people don’t want that in the bathroom. Outside or in the basement is better (the principle is the same as home plumbing; it’s just that the journey is shorter—instead of going to the main collection spot, the waste goes into the holding tank). The system takes care of the rest of the compost creation process. You only have to empty it out once a year too.

  The Envirolet toilet systems are designed to use either no water or very little of it, depending on the model. A typical regular toilet uses about three gallons of water every time it’s flushed; low-flow toilets use about half that. That’s a lot of water being wasted on waste. Composting is a huge benefit to the environment, too, especially when yard waste and disposed food products are added in. The Environmental Protection Agency praises composting for helping regenerate soil, suppressing plant diseases, helping create larger crop yields, and reducing the need for water, fertilizers, and pesticides. Waste not, want not, we say.

  COMEBACK KID?

  Pia Zadora was a child actress, appearing in 1964’s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians . . . but then nothing. She didn’t get another role until 1982, when she starred in Butterfly, a drama in which Zadora’s character has a romantic relationship with her father. The movie was financed by Zadora’s husband, Israeli businessman Meshulam Riklis, and was a critical and commercial flop. Zadora especially earned poor reviews. Nevertheless, she won a Golden Globe Award for Best New Star of the Year. But that might have had something to do with the lavish trips Riklis gave members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the Golden Globes’ voting body.

  THE FASHION ON A ROLL AWARD

  Toilet Paper Wedding Gowns

  and Duct Tape Prom Dresses

  These creations are the very definition of “throwaway chic.”

  A SILK PURSE OUT OF A SOW’S EAR

  The idea of making something from nothing springs from that all-American pioneer spirit: if you can make a doll from a corncob or build a house out of sod and a few boards, you can do anything! So instead of purchasing expensive off-the-rack garments, these people are using their ingenuity and skills to create elaborate and intricate garments out of the most mundane and humble materials.

  THE BRIDE WORE TWO-PLY

  The women behind the Web site Cheap Chic Weddings wanted to help budget-conscious brides (and publicize their site). So in 2005, they launched the first “Toilet Paper Wedding Gown Competition.”

  Rules: the gowns must be complete, wearable, and made of nothing except TP, tape, and glue—no buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, or zippers!

  Prize: $500 (squeeze the most out of every penny, ladies!) The real prize, though, is that the contest’s sponsor foots the bill to turn the winning design into a fully finished fabric gown.

  TYING THE KNOT

  From day one, Cheap Chic contestants took the contest seriously. Bustles were incorporated into long, full-skirted designs; bustiers accented the bosom. But some of the most creative work involved the toilet paper appliqués and delicate toilet paper “lace.” One woman managed to construct a floor-length lace veil. Another gown’s floor-length veil had delicate scalloped edging. And working buttons were one of the more challenging elements of 2007 first runner-up Katrina Chalifoux’s strapless two-piece design.

  Hanah Kim, the 2007 winner and 2006 first runner-up, makes miracles with toilet paper. Her 2007 gown featured looped fringe trim and pieced cap sleeves, while her strapless 2006 entry consisted of angled accordion pleats. (Kim and her 2007 creation even made it on The Martha Stewart Show.) Kim isn’t a serial bride, though; she’s an aspiring designer. After her second entry won the top prize, she was invited to design a toilet paper dress for a real wedding that took place in the temporary “Charmin Restrooms” erected in New York’s Times Square. The winners of the all-expenses-paid wedding contest (Jennifer Cannon and Doy Nichols of Lexington, Kentucky) tied the knot after Kim tied the bow on the back of Cannon’s custom creation. “You may kiss the bride,” said the Reverend Debra who performed the ceremony, “but please don’t squeeze the Charmin dress.”

  STUCK ON YOU

  Going to a prom usually requires a lot of money and advance planning, but you know it’s true love when your date agrees to wear or even help to design clothes fashioned from duct tape. That’s right: duct tape, the one item that can solve nearly any household emergency. No material of any other kind can be used, but since the company that sponsors one duct-tape prom contest makes the sticky stuff in nine different colors, at least there is a choice of palette. (College scholarships are the prizes.)

  Efforts range from the supremely simple (a short, strapless, A-line dress in a single color) to the sublimely complex (a floor-length gown with a train of realistically fringed peacock feathers). Some couples match precisely; others sport completely different outfits but follow a theme like the pair who constructed medieval Japanese jousting costumes. The attention to detail is amazing, too; some pieces are completely woven out of duct tape, some have strands of “pearls” fashioned from duct tape, and one gown even featured embroidered flowers made of duct tape.

  Accessories are one of the wackiest aspects of the prom contest: handbags, cummerbunds, ties, hats, bouquets, capes, tiaras, and shoes carefully crafted out of duct tape to match the suits and dresses. Anyone who bemoans the state of today’s youth should admire the stick-to-it-ness of these crafty teens.

  BAG LADIES

  If you’re not prepping for a wedding or a prom, you still can participate in the do-it-yourself couture trend. A recent fad in charity events is the Trashy Ladies Ball. Rather than drop thousands on the latest Valentino, attendees garb themselves in garbage-bag creations and donate the money they would otherwise spend on couture dresses to worthy causes. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, “Garbage Bag Gala” is now entering its seventh year. Creations range from cocktail dresses to ball gowns, and the “fabric’s” provenance doesn’t matter, as long as it’s a plastic trash bag! (Some additional trashy material is allowed, such as newspapers and aluminum can tabs.) Many women fashion their frocks from classic black, but others whip up frothy fake marabou from white, blue, and pink bags. Ruffles and boas are common, but even an “I-couldn’t-be-bothered plastic toga” will do. It’s all throwaway chic.

  BRIDEZILLA BONANZA

  They come bearing signs that read “Simple A-line Size 10-16,” sporting neon headbands and deelybobbers, and wearing T-shirts with
slogans like “Team Alison June 28th.” Who are they? They’re brides-to-be (some aren’t even engaged yet), accompanied by their moms, sisters, best friends, and the occasional fiancé, and their object is Filene’s “Running of the Brides.” This twice-a-year sale offers designer wedding gowns originally priced from $900 to $9,000, now marked down to just three prices: $249, $499, and $699.

  Filene’s began the sale in 1947 at its downtown Boston store and now has “Running” events at a handful of others around the country. It’s not an event for the faint of heart; within about 60 seconds of the store’s opening, all 2,500 gowns will be stripped from the metal racks and guarded by a designated “dress-watcher.” Women huddle in groups while the bride, stripped down to her undies, tries on as many dresses as possible until she finds “the one.” No returns are allowed, so the gown has to be just right!

  THE THINK OUTSIDE THE BOTTLE AWARD

  Champagne in a Can

  What do Sofia Coppola and Paris Hilton have

  in common? Hint: it comes with a pull-tab.

  CHAMPAGNE BY ANY OTHER NAME

  Champagne is a popular drink for celebrations, and since not all celebrations involve several people, wine producers started packaging champagnes and other sparkling wines in small bottles known as “splits.”

  Splits of wine (remember, the name “champagne” applies only to sparkling wines produced in that region of France by the time-honored “méthode champenoise”) hold about 12 ounces, or two glasses. However, splits have their disadvantages: They’re heavy for their size, since the same thickness of glass is used even though the bottles are smaller. It takes a minute or two (and some practice) to unwrap and unwire the cork before removing it without spraying champagne all over the place. And there are places where you might like to enjoy a bit of bubbly, but glass is prohibited (boats, pools, beaches, and so on). What’s a bubbly lover to do?