Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (13 page)

7.
Wrapped Roman Wall
:
In 1974, Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped a 2,000-year-old wall built by Emperor Marcus Aurelius to surround Rome. Set at the end of the crowded and cosmopolitan Via Veneto, this work highlighted the coexistence of ancient and modern worlds.

8.
Running Fence
:
A dramatic, 24½-mile white fence running through California’s Marin and Sonoma counties, this 1976 installation brought the artists to the forefront of the American art scene. Charles Schulz gave the authors a nod in a
Peanuts
cartoon strip with Snoopy coming home and finding that his doghouse had been “wrapped” à la Christo. Twenty-five years later, in 2003, Christo and Jeanne-Claude presented the Charles Schulz Museum with a life-size wrapped Snoopy doghouse that is now on permanent exhibit.

9.
Surrounded Islands
:
Of course, an installation in Miami’s Biscayne Bay would be done in flamingo pink. The 1980–83 work involved surrounding 11 islands with 6.5 million square feet of polypropylene fabric. It also highlighted an unintentional but significant aspect of the artists’ work: cleaning up debris and leaving natural places the same or better than when they started. Forty tons of garbage were removed from the islands before the project began.

10.
Pont Neuf Wrapped
:
It took years to get permission to wrap this historic bridge in Paris that connects the Île de la Cité with the Right and Left Banks. When it was complete, the installation highlighted the heart of Paris.

11.
The Umbrellas
:
This was a joint project—3,100 fabric umbrellas were set up in Japan and California (blue for Japan, yellow for California) and unfurled in 1991. The Japanese umbrellas were positioned close together and the Californian umbrellas spread out in many directions.

12.
Wrapped Reichstag
:
The Reichstag building, home of Germany’s first parliament, has been a symbol of democracy in Berlin for more than 100 years. But it’s also endured many decades of conflict. So perhaps it’s fitting, then, that it took 24 years for Christo and Jeanne-Claude (with the help of 90 professional climbers) to wrap this building.

13.
The Gates
:
The original design for New York’s Central Park included a number of gates that were never installed. In 2005, Christo and Jeanne-Claude created their own version of the gates, a series of 7,500 gates made of billowing, saffron-colored fabric panels. It stood for two weeks, spread over 23 miles, and was the largest created artwork since the Great Sphinx of Egypt.

The artists are as famous for their fortitude in fighting the approval process as they are for the scale and audacity of their breathtaking works. In February 2005,
The Gates
was unveiled in Central Park. The $20 million installation was conceived in 1992 and had been rejected by several mayoral administrations until Mayor Michael Bloomberg finally approved it. Bloomberg told the
New York Times
, “I can’t promise . . . particularly since this is New
York that every single person will love
The Gates
, but I guarantee that they will all talk about it.”

In fact, many people had been talking about it for years. The work’s official title was
The Gates: Central Park, New York, 1979–2005
. That 26-year span in the date is no typo. It represents the length of time it took the artists to persuade New York City officials to install this work. (That includes 41 formal presentations in 1980 alone.)

Let’s cover some fun facts about the creative couple:

“I’d like to thank the rest of the cast. To give a really bad performance like mine, you need to have really bad actors.”

Popcorn

A cup of air-popped corn has just 20 calories, and according to a 2004 survey by Jolly Time Popcorn, 86 percent of respondents considered popcorn to be a healthy snack—even though 58 percent also want an intense buttery taste.

Americans eat about one billion pounds (59 quarts per person) of popcorn every year. Sure, we also nosh on potato chips, pretzels, peanuts, crackers, and rice cakes, but popcorn is special. Crunchy and buttery, fluffy and salty, it’s good hot or cold. (Some people even float it in soups as a garnish!) Popcorn, a starchy carbohydrate, is an indigenous all-American food product that is cheap, wholesome, and low-calorie (in its unadorned form). Did we mention versatile? Throw on some butter or cheese, some sugar or spice—popcorn tastes great any way you serve it.

Actually, the word “corn” doesn’t refer to the green-sheathed cobs we’re used to finding at roadside stands. “Corn” is an Old English word that means simply “local grain.” The “corn” mentioned in the Bible probably meant barley. In England, it meant wheat, and in Scotland and Ireland, oats. So when European settlers came to the New World, they began calling the most common grain found here “corn,” though its proper name is maize.

Maize has been growing for thousands of years in the Americas. Ranging from smaller than a penny to about 2 inches high, the
oldest ears of popcorn were discovered in the Bat Cave of west central New Mexico in 1948 and again in 1950. Those Bat Cave ears may be nearly 2,500 years old. The Aztecs used popcorn in many ways, including as a decoration for statues of the god Tlaloc, who governed rain and fertility. In many countries, including the early U.S. colonies, popcorn was the original breakfast cereal, served variously with milk, cream, sugar, and fruit. And the Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts, which introduced popcorn to the first Thanksgiving feast in Plymouth, even made popcorn beer.

The colonists were also the first to invent an alternate popcorn flavor: kettle corn. It’s mentioned in the diaries of Pennsylvania Dutch settlers (whose ethnic origin is German), and its sweet-and-salty flavor comes from a combination of salt and sugar, honey, or molasses, though some people use two or more.

It wasn’t until the 1890s that popcorn became a popular snack food, but when it did enter the scene, one of its attractions was in the “pop.” When heated, moisture inside the kernel turns to steam and the pressure of the steam causes the corn to pop. (The kernels left behind are called “old maids.”)

A popped kernel of corn is called a “flake,” and there are two main types of flakes: “mushroom” and “butterfly.” The former have fewer “wings,” and are sturdy enough to take heavy coatings (like caramel), while the latter have that typical “winged” shape and feel lighter. Most commercially produced popcorn is from white and yellow corn strains.

The more popular popcorn became, the more venues vendors found for its sale. When street vendors hawking the fluffy stuff started cutting into snack stand sales at movie theaters in the 1920s, the theater owners decided to bring the vendors inside. Thus, a classic pairing began, as moviegoers realized that popcorn was the perfect food to eat while their eyes were glued to the screen. Those savvy theater owners also realized that they could sell more popcorn if they offered butter to pour over the top. Soon a tub of popcorn and a stack of paper napkins were as essential for going to the movies as ticket stubs.

Most popcorn is bought and consumed at home (70 percent, both unpopped and prepopped), and the main popcorn producers are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio. People buy the most during the fall and winter, when they spend more time indoors. Perhaps one of the most nostalgic popcorn-making methods today is the 1960s–era Jiffy Pop, an aluminum pie pan with a foil top and a handle that the maker shook over an electric burner until the kernels burst and turned the top into an aluminum mushroom cloud.

The most popular flavors for popcorn include plain, butter, cheese, and caramel, but there are plenty of variations available, including a Halftime Chili and Sour Cream, green apple and blue raspberry, Irish Cream Coffee with white chocolate, loaded baked potato, and even root beer float.

A new trend in modern popcorn snacking came in the 1980s with the boom in home microwave ovens. Microwave popcorn accounted for $240 million in annual popcorn sales in the United States in the 1990s. Recently, however, microwave popcorn has come under fire as posing possible health hazards. In particular, people who work in the plants where the popcorn’s butter flavoring is made have complained of lung problems (from breathing in the chemicals), though plenty of manufacturers claim there’s no risk for consumers.

Best Movie Taglines

Movie posters excite movie buffs and collectors, who value the art as a snapshot in time of culture and society. In 2005, a collector bought an original movie poster for
Metropolis
, Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction classic for $690,000—the highest price ever paid for a movie poster. But the words on the posters also help to excite interest in an upcoming movie. According to one film industry marketing executive, a good tagline reinforces a film’s iconic image. The words suggest the experience that awaits the viewer, and are themselves an art worthy of recognition. In some cases, the tagline is more memorable than the poster it’s printed on—and sometimes it’s even better than the movie.

Los Angeles design firms employ copywriters to come up with the words to sum up a movie. They brainstorm the concepts and words months in advance of the poster’s release. As the first step in the process, ad copy can cement the direction for a motion picture’s multimillion-dollar-marketing campaign. The tagline’s goal is always the same: entice, lure viewers in, and don’t give away too much.

Since 1971,
Hollywood Reporter
has been honoring creative movie marketing at its annual Key Art Awards, but it was only in 2004 that a category was added for the best copy line. So far, the paper has honored the following:

Perhaps the best-known tagline, though, comes from a movie that was first a major best-selling book that scared people out of the ocean. In 1975, thousands of people heeded the warning of
Jaws
’s tagline: “Don’t go in the water.” Three years later, the poster for
Jaws 2
, released in 1978, used another effective tagline: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water . . .”

Jaws 2
’s tagline stands out in movie history for many reasons: