Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards Read online

  ARCHIE

  Award: World’s Ugliest Dog (2006)

  In 2006, Archie (yet another Chinese crested) earned the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. His owner, Heather Peoples, traveled all the way from Arizona to show off Archie’s attributes at the contest. Unlike Sam, Archie does have hair—it sticks up erratically all over his head. His tongue hangs out of one side of his mouth because he has no teeth to hold it in place. His naked, liver-colored belly resembles a sausage. And he’s so ugly that the animal shelter where he was living (and where Peoples worked) gave Peoples $10 to take him away. It was supposed to be just a temporary thing, but Peoples says her husband fell in love with the beauty-impaired beast: “Now when we go out, my husband carries Archie in his arms like a baby.”

  Archie was the winner in a year fraught with scandal. The ugliest dog is crowned after an Internet voting campaign that lasts several weeks, but during the 2006 process, computer hackers infiltrated the contest’s Web site and erased votes from some of the top dogs. Fortunately, contest organizers discovered the crime and remedied the situation: they started the voting over from scratch. In the end, Archie pulled past favorites Munchkin, Rascal, and Pee Wee Martini to take the crown.

  ELWOOD

  Award: World’s Ugliest Dog (2007)

  This Chihuahua and Chinese crested mix took the top title after coming in second in 2006. He traveled all the way to California from New Jersey with his owner, Karen Quigley, who—despite the dog’s new title—thinks Elwood is “the cutest thing that ever lived.” Elwood’s Internet voters, obviously, disagreed. With his dark, almost hairless body (Elwood does have a tuft of white fur atop his misshapen head) and a tongue that always droops from his mouth, Elwood is sometimes called “Yoda” or “ET”—affectionate nicknames, for sure. Besides winning the title and taking home $1,000, Elwood is somewhat of a local celebrity back in New Jersey, where he’s a Good Will Ambassador for the SPCA. He and Quigley try to educate people about special-needs pets (from sick animals to ugly ones) and encourage residents to adopt homeless dogs and cats.

  AWARDS GLUT

  Do you like watching awards shows on TV? Then you have a lot more to choose from than just the Oscars and Grammys. There’s the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the GLAAD Media Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Billboard Music Awards, the Tony Awards, the American Music Awards, the World Music Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, the Teen Choice Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the TV Land Awards, the Food Network Awards, VH1’s Hip-Hop Honors, the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards, the Clio Awards, the BET Awards, the Radio Music Awards, the ESPY Awards, Soap Opera Digest Awards, the Family Television Awards, the Spike TV Scream Awards, the Reality Awards, and the CMT Flameworthy Video Awards.

  THE STINKY CHEESE AWARD

  Vieux Boulogne

  Some like it hot, some like it cold, some like it really smelly. Uncle

  John agrees with the experts—this cheese really stinks!

  WHO CUT THE CHEESE?

  When most people think of a smelly cheese, Limburger is what comes to mind. Comedians joke about its noxious stench, and even though Mighty Mouse had a weakness for it, the stuff’s indescribable scent repels most people. Researchers at the Netherlands’ Wageningen Agricultural University found that the mosquito species Anopheles gambiae “loves both stinky feet and Limburger cheese.” Limburger’s uniquely smelly properties come from B. linens—the same bacteria that attract malaria-carrying mosquitoes to stinking feet. But despite that fact, Limburger is not the world’s stinkiest cheese.

  The B. linens bacterial strain is shared by many other washed-rind cheeses, including Muenster, époisses, Taleggio, Pont l’Evêque Reblochon, and Port-Salut. During the ripening process for washed-rind cheeses, cheesemakers rinse the cheeses with a liquid (usually wine or beer), which encourages bacteria to grow and gives the cheeses a reddish-brown rind. Many people associate smelly with moldy, and moldy with old. But washed-rind cheeses are young cheeses, and the washing process is what brings this type of cheese to maturity. They’re most common in mainland Europe, but are also made in England, like the pungent perry-washed Stinking Bishop. (Perry is hard pear cider common in Wales and Britain’s West Country.)

  NOTES OF GARLIC AND UNWASHED FEET

  But even Stinking Bishop doesn’t qualify as the world’s stinkiest cheese. In 2004, scientists at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, England, conducted a study to determine the most fetid fromage out of 15 contestants. The panel of pungency used 19 human testers backed up by an electronic “nose” to make its determinations. The electronic nose was made up of an array of sensors, each of which responded to the presence of chemicals in a slightly different way. The sensors were linked to a computer that interpreted their responses and rated them.

  The winner was Vieux Boulogne (“Old” or “Aged Boulogne”), a washed-rind cheese from France that testers likened to a combination of garlic, unwashed feet, and unwashed cat. But like Limburger, the actual taste of Vieux Boulogne (also known as Sable du Boulonnais) isn’t as disgusting as its description. It’s tangier and alcoholic because of the bière blonde (pale ale) used to wash its square rind. In fact, the owner of Le Fromagerie, the only store in London that stocks Vieux Boulogne, describes it as “a young, modern cheese with a surprisingly mellow and gentle taste that’s perfect served with some crusty bread and a beer. It’s a great cheese to try, as it doesn’t have the earthy, farmyardy flavours that some people find overpowering.”

  RUNNY AND ROYAL

  Vieux Boulogne is made in the northernmost reaches of Normandy, a region of France renowned for its dairy products. The rich, flavorful milk from the cows near the city of Boulogne-sur-Mer contributes to its “mellow and gentle taste.” But don’t expect to sample it at your neighborhood grocery store. Vieux Boulogne is an unpasteurized milk cheese, so it’s not legal in the United States. To savor its authentic runny, stinky (and yummy, to some) taste, you’ll need to cross the Atlantic.

  ANOTHER OLFACTORY ASSAULT

  Although it ranked tenth in the Cranfield study, Époisses de Bourgogne is often considered the stinkiest cheese around, simply because it’s more widely available in France and Europe. (A pasteurized version can be found in the United States, too.) French epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called this washed-rind cheese from the Burgundy wine region “the king of all cheeses,” and it was a favorite of Napoleon. Époisses needs to ripen at room temperature for several days before being served—you’ll know it’s at just the right runniness if you stick a spoon in it and it drips and swirls from the tip like thick caramel sauce.

  GREEN BAY STATE’S STINKY SANDWICH

  There is one really stinky cheese that’s made in the United States: We’re back to Limburger, which came to the New World with German and Belgian immigrants. For years, Limburger was a staple of Wisconsin’s Teutonic-descended cheeseheads, whose legacy lives on in a Green Bay State tavern staple: limburger on pumpernickel bread with sliced red onion and hot mustard. However, there’s only one place that still produces stateside Limburger: the master cheesemakers of Chalet Cheese Cooperative in Monroe, Wisconsin.

  LIKE AN (UN)BROKEN RECORD

  Ashrita Furman is the world-record world-record holder. He’s set more than 189 official records over the past three decades—80 still stand. Here are some of his accomplishments:

  • Longest distance traveled on a pogo stick (23.11 miles)

  • Longest distance somersaulted (12 miles, 390 yards)

  • Underwater jump roping (900 jumps in one hour)

  • Longest distance carrying a brick with one hand (85.05 miles)

  • Longest time juggling underwater (48 minutes)

  • Most hopscotch games played in an hour (28)

  • Most grapes caught in his mouth in a minute (77)

  • Longest dis
tance jumped on a pogo stick underwater (1,680 ft.)

  • Most 20-ounce glasses balanced on his chin (81)

  • Eating the most Jell-O with chopsticks in a minute (16.04 oz.)

  • Fastest duct taping a person to a wall (2 minutes, 38 seconds)

  • Fastest duct taping himself to a wall (8 minutes, 7 seconds)

  THE DARK AND STORMY NIGHT AWARD

  Ultra-Short Stories

  Life is short, and sometimes, so is art. When it

  comes to fiction, less really can be more.

  PAPA’S POINTED PROSE

  Ernest Hemingway is famous for his economy with the written word. In novels like The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls, his sentences are spare and his adjectives sparer. But his sparest work? Just six words: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

  Legend says that “Papa” Hemingway wrote this poignant line after being bet $10 that he couldn’t write a story of six words or less. Even if it doesn’t seem to meet the criteria of a real short story, there are two things to keep in mind: one, that the bet was all about writing a story of six words or less. Two, over the years numerous literary experts have included this “story” in their accounts of micro-fiction.

  The “story” doesn’t have a plot, resolution, or a back story of its own, but it does show how effectively a few words can deliver emotional impact—and make you want to know the rest of the story.

  WHO WRITES SHORT SHORTS?

  Hemingway wasn’t the first to find extremely short-form fiction pleasing. From Aesop’s Fables to Chekhov to O. Henry and beyond, writers have long packed punches in what is referred to variously as flash, micro, sudden, postcard, short-short, quick, minutes, furious, and skinny fiction.

  Even if Hemingway didn’t consider the “baby shoes” story his masterpiece, it’s pretty close to genius for economy of scale. While writing less rather than more might sound like working less rather than more, nothing could be further from the truth. Flash fiction is rarely, if ever, composed in a flash of inspiration.

  SHORTEST, SHORTER, SHORT

  In the past several decades, the shortest fiction has enjoyed a renaissance among serious literary writers, but its most ardent practitioners are usually fantasy and science-fiction writers, which is where the term “nanofiction” probably gained popularity. Nanofiction, or “55 Fiction,” is strictly limited to 55 words.

  55 Fiction developed from a writing contest run by New Times magazine in 1987 and must contain at least one character, a setting, and a plot that includes conflict and resolution. Drama, suspense, and shock are important elements, too. Many devotees of “55 Fiction” try to include a “last sentence shock.”

  Next in line of increasingly longer short fiction is “The 69er,” consisting of—you guessed it—69 words. However, its slightly longer (100-word) counterpart, “The Drabble,” has a more interesting back story.

  The Drabble has the distinction of being the only literary genre to grow out of a Monty Python’s Flying Circus publication. In the British comedy troupe’s 1971 Big Red Book, Drabble was a word game where the first person to write a novel wins. While this was of course a tongue-in-cheek jab at the popular board game Scrabble, where players compete to build words for points, Drabble captured the imagination of British science-fiction circles, and during the 1980s at Birmingham University, the first 100-word Drabbles were born.

  SCREEN GEMS

  Very short stories aren’t written just in English. In France, they’re known as nouvelles, and in China, there are lots of names for them: “little short story,” “pocket-size story,” “minute-long story,” “palm-sized story,” and the “smoke-long story” (one cigarette’s worth of reading). But the latest innovation in short fiction comes from Japan: cell-phone novels. These backlit books aren’t just read on tiny screens; they’re composed on them, too. A new generation of cell-phone novelists has sprung up, and now that group is doing what all aspiring novelists do: trying to get their work published in print editions.

  FLASH FORWARD

  Most “flash fiction” is a bit longer, from 300 to 1,000 words. Its proponents think that anything over 1,000 words is a short story (or at least a “short short”). If this sounds a bit picky, remember—these are people ready to pick a story down to its bones.

  Like a good poem, a good flashfic story can have a “lightbulb” quality, illuminating an image, an emotion, or an experience so that its intensity stays with the reader. But a good flashfic story isn’t necessarily a poem. A poem doesn’t have to have a beginning, a middle, and end—flash fiction does.

  Although some types of very short fiction originated in the genre communities (science fiction, suspense, and so on), today these shortest of shorts aren’t given short shrift by the best writers. Venerable authors like John Updike, Francine Prose, Amy Hempel, Joyce Carol Oates, and Raymond Carver tried their hands at flash fiction, proving that Hemingway’s idea was no flash in the pan.

  AWARD ORIGIN: THE IRVING G. THALBERG MEMORIAL AWARD

  Thalberg was president of MGM Studios in the 1920s and ’30s. He sought to make films more respectable, and not just profitable. After he died of pneumonia in 1936 at age 37, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began presenting the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. It’s a lifetime achievement award presented at the Oscars to a well-established director or producer. Past winners include Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and Billy Wilder.

  THE “SECOND BANANA” AWARD

  Emma Peel

  For an outstanding and unforgettable performance as sidekick.

  THE INTRODUCTION

  Choosing one Golden Plunger-worthy sidekick was tough—there have been so many great ones through the ages: Don Quixote’s Sancho Panza, Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson, Ralph Cramden’s Ed Norton, Frodo’s Samwise, Lucy’s Ethel, Andy Taylor’s Barney Fife, Mary’s Rhoda, Batman’s Robin, Seinfeld’s Costanza . . . the list is so long! In their own unique ways they all did what every great sidekick must do: made their star brighter without making their own too bright. Some simply provide comic relief; some give an otherwise aloof star opportunities to show emotion; some provide sexual tension; some even help highlight a star’s negative aspects, thereby making the character more human. (Think of Dr. Watson and Holmes’s cocaine habit.) It’s a difficult job—but there have been many masters. But we chose one of the most unique sidekicks in history.

  DUELING DUET

  On October 2, 1965, British TV viewers sat down in front of their sets and watched the following scene unfold: An impeccably dressed, 40-ish British gentleman in a black bowler hat and carrying an umbrella/walking stick arrives at the apartment of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 20s. She is dressed in a tight, black leather body suit and is holding a fencing epee. He pours tea. She makes him duel her for cream for the tea, and during the sometimes seemingly real battle the two engage in witty verbal repartee rife with sexual tension. She is clearly the better fencer, but he is more devious—and he wins when he tricks her and “ties her up” in a curtain . . . and then smacks her on the bottom with his epee. “That was very, very dirty,” she says . . . and so began the partnership of star secret agent John Steed and sidekick Emma Peel in the off-kilter, darkly humorous, surreal British spy series, The Avengers.

  TOWERING VIOLET

  Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel gets our award for not only being a great sidekick, but doing it in a way that reached beyond the television screen. Emma Peel was a breakthrough character for women in television. Before “women’s liberation” was a household phrase, she was a hero to young female viewers around the world. Before then, playing a female sidekick to a secret agent would have meant being easily frightened and prone to fainting, and being saved from bad guys by the star every week. And while sex appeal was certainly a part of her character, Peel was no fainter: during the three years she was on the show, she saved Steed as often as he saved her.

  In that same episode, titled “The Town of No Return,” Mrs
. Peel (she’s a widow) mentions that she has just finished writing an article for a respected science journal, disposes of two dangerous criminals with martial arts moves, knocks back a few brandies, and finishes the show driving off on a moped . . . with Steed sitting side-saddle behind her. Steed was the star of the show, so he of course performed a bit more of the bad-guy-beating, but Peel was clearly his match in many ways, and he obviously liked and respected her—and it made Steel (played by Patrick Macnee) seem more human and likeable.

  BEHIND THE SCENES

  Rigg wasn’t the first sidekick to John Steed: The Avengers debuted in 1961 with a male partner for the spy. In 1962 Honor Blackman, best known as the Bond girl “Pussy Galore” in 1964’s Goldfinger, became Steed’s first female sidekick as Dr. (of anthropology) Catherine Gale. Like Peel, she was attractive, independently wealthy, intelligent, and knowledgeable in martial arts and weaponry—but, while the show was very popular, it hadn’t matured yet. Steed was portrayed as a trench coat-wearing macho man during this period, and the humor had not yet developed the level of sophistication it later would. In any case, in 1964 Blackman quit the show when she was offered the role in the Bond film.

  That year more than 60 actresses showed up at Associated British Corporation studios in London to audition for the part. Among them was a 26-year-old actress from London’s Royal Shakespeare Company, Diana Rigg. She had never seen the show before. But did she get the part? Not at first. Another actress, Elizabeth Shepherd (she has played small parts in numerous films, including 1978’s Damien: Omen II) got it, but one-and-a-half episodes into taping for the 1965 season the producers decided she wasn’t right for the part—and Rigg got the job.