Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (27 page)

Slogan:
“Frankie Say Relax”

Story:
In late 1984, “Relax,” the debut single by the English pop group Frankie Goes to Hollywood, began climbing the British and American record charts. To market the band and the song, Paul Morley of ZTT, the group’s record label, cashed in on the “Choose Life” T-shirt fad by printing “Frankie Say Relax” in large black letters on white T-shirts. Morley created other “Frankie” shirts, such as “Frankie Say Arm the Unemployed” and “Frankie Say War.” But the “Relax” shirts were the most popular, helping the song reach #1 in England and the top 10 in the United States. Sales figures are unknown, but Morley claims that ZTT actually made more money off of the shirts than it did from the group’s music.

Slogan:
“Just Say No”

Story:
During a visit to an Oakland elementary school in 1982, a student asked First Lady Nancy Reagan what to do if offered drugs. Reagan’s reply: “Just say no.” That event inspired the First Lady to
make youth drug prevention her signature cause. With help from a $1 billion federal grant, more than 1,700 schools around the United States formed “Just Say No” clubs. Reagan gave hundreds of speeches, appeared at the 1983 Super Bowl, helped La Toya Jackson record a “Just Say No” theme song, and even guest-starred on a 1983 episode of
Diff’rent Strokes
, all to help kids learn that to reject drugs all they had to do was say “no.” Critics said it was overly simplistic; 1960s hippie icon Abbie Hoffman called it “the equivalent of telling manic depressives to ‘just cheer up.’” But it may have done some good: according to the National Institutes of Health, teenage drug use in the mid-1980s declined.

Slogan:
“Just Do It”

Story:
In 1988 Dan Wieden of the Wieden+Kennedy advertising agency was trying to come up with a slogan for the Nike shoe company. One day, while expressing his genuine admiration for the can-do attitude of the Nike team, Wieden said, “You Nike guys, you just do it.” He immediately realized that he’d come up with the slogan—if you want to play a sport, just go out and do it. Wieden+Kennedy designed 12 proactively themed commercials for Nike, including the “Bo knows” ads, featuring sports star Bo Jackson (“Bo knows hockey,” “Bo knows bicycle racing”). Nike credits the ads with allowing it to reclaim the #1 position in the athletic shoe market from Reebok.

Slogan:
“Take a Bite out of Crime”

Story:
In 1980 the nonprofit National Crime Prevention Council hired ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to create a kid-friendly mascot and slogan. Copywriter John Keil considered a lion who “roars at crime” and an elephant who “stomps out crime” but finally opted for a dog who “takes a bite out of crime.” Inspired by TV’s Columbo, artists drew the dog as a grizzled gumshoe in a trench coat. The character appeared in public service announcements (Keil provided the voice), urging kids to report
any
crime they witnessed, from bullying to drug dealing. The dog wasn’t named until a 1982 contest—a New Orleans police officer suggested McGruff the Crime Dog (runner-up: Sherlock Bones). The NCPC says that 75 percent of American children today recognize and trust McGruff… and know the slogan.

In 2008
Salon
magazine asked its readers to sum up their lives (or their philosophy of life) in six words or less. Here are some of our favorites
.

Quite often confused; was never satisfied.

Frankly, it is all about me.

Failure was apparently an option here.

I chased him, he caught me.

The greatest underachiever in the world.

Possibility is always better than actuality.

Haven’t lived up to my potential.

Jump right in and play.

Don’t even try to plan it.

I wanted to be a contender.

Restless, fearful, hopeless, hopeful, joyful, thankful.

Just kept doing the next thing.

Found my path. Walked it fearlessly.

Crawl, step, run, step, crawl, lay.

Didn’t do what I should have.

It makes more sense looking back.

Child, adult, wife, mom, widow, me.

Half over but feels like new.

Too much hair, then not enough.

Learned it, used it, forgot it.

Skipped the present pursuing the future.

Not as bad as I expected.

Shout, give; repeat as necessary.

Not what I expected but fun.

Questioned and answered, helped when possible.

Astonished I’ve made it this far.

Too young for life’s great questions.

It’s really none of your business.

Never do silly things like this.

Um…what was the question again?

Cocktails have a certain glamour—they show up all the time in movies and TV shows and have become part of American culture. But if you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what’s in them and where they came from. Here are the (often murky) origins of a few famous ones
.

D
RINK
: Long Island Ice Tea
HOW IT’S MADE
: Stir together a mixture of clear spirits (vodka, gin, light rum, and tequila). Then add triple sec, a splash of sour mix, and a splash of cola, pour it all over ice in a tall glass, and garnish with a lemon slice.

HISTORY
: Food writer John Mariani quotes a bartender from the Oak Beach Inn in Long Island, New York, who said he was “fooling around with some drinks” in 1976, put this combo together, and “the thing tasted just like iced tea.” Another story is that the drink was invented during Prohibition by a moonshiner in an area of Tennessee called Long Island, so that if the Feds raided him it would look as if his customers were drinking iced tea. A third story: Long Island housewives in the 1950s mixed together a little from each bottle in the liquor cabinet (presumably so that no one would notice any was missing), and added cola to make it look like iced tea.

DRINK
: Daiquiri

HOW IT’S MADE
: The purist’s daiquiri is a combination of white rum, lime juice, and sugar, poured over ice, then strained into a chilled glass. The other kind of daiquiri—the slushy frozen variety—is made in a blender with the same ingredients plus fruit (peaches, bananas, or strawberries), retaining the ice.

HISTORY
: After the Spanish-American War (1898), many American engineers lived in the Cuban town of Daiquirí, where they ran the local mines. It was their habit to go to the Venus Hotel to relax on weekends, and Chief Engineer Jennings Cox is credited with “inventing” the daiquiri there. Of course, Cubans had been mixing rum, lime, and sugar for a very long time, but it wasn’t until Cox named the cocktail and Admiral Lucius Johnson, a navy medical officer, took it back to the Army and Navy Club
in Washington, D.C., in 1909, that it gained a following in the United States. F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions the drink in his 1920 novel
This Side of Paradise
, and it’s said that the daiquiri was one of Ernest Hemingway’s preferred drinks. (The frozen daiquiri is rumored to have been developed much later, at La Florida Bar in Havana, a favorite hangout of Americans.) During World War II, when wartime rationing made it hard to get other spirits, rum from Central and South America was still plentiful, and the daiquiri became very popular. Later, the daiquiri was President John F. Kennedy’s favorite drink, an odd fact considering that it originated in Cuba—and Cuba was the site of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, a low point in the Kennedy administration. (Kennedy also loved Cuban cigars.)

DRINK
: Harvey Wallbanger

HOW IT’S MADE
: Mix together vodka, orange juice, and Galliano—an Italian liqueur with flavors of vanilla and anise. A Hillary Wallbanger substitutes white wine for the vodka.

HISTORY
: The story goes that after losing a big surfing contest in the late 1950s, a surfer named Tom Harvey went to Duke’s Blackwatch Bar (or possibly Pancho’s Bar—stories vary) in Manhattan Beach, California, and slugged down a few Galliano-spiked screwdrivers. He tried to walk a straight line to the door, but the walls kept getting in his way, earning him the nickname “Harvey the Wallbanger”—and the cocktail he drank that night got the same name. A less-romantic theory is that the Galliano company launched an ad campaign featuring a clumsy cartoon character called Harvey, and the drink got its name from him. The Wallbanger was popular in the 1970s, but it’s gone out of favor since then.

DRINK
: Manhattan

HOW IT’S MADE
: This classic drink begins with a base of rye, blended whiskey, or bourbon. Then add sweet vermouth and a dash of bitters, stir briefly with ice, immediately strain it all into a lowball glass, and garnish with a cherry. A Manhattan made with scotch is called a Rob Roy.

HISTORY
: Again, there’s more than one possible origin story. Some believe it was first served in New York City’s Manhattan
Club at an 1874 banquet given by Lady Randolph Churchill (Winston Churchill’s mother) to celebrate the election of Samuel Tilden as New York’s governor. But other historians claim that the Manhattan Club bartender invented it for Supreme Court Justice Charles Henry Truax in 1890, when the judge’s doctor ordered him to stop drinking martinis.

DRINK
: Tom Collins

HOW IT’S MADE
: Combine dry gin, sugar, lemon juice, club soda, a lemon or orange slice, and a cherry in an extra-tall glass that’s now known generically as a Collins glass. A Ron Collins substitutes rum for gin (
ron
is the Spanish word for rum); a José Collins is made with tequila.

HISTORY
: The drink, a variation on the gin fizz, is said to date back to the mid-19th century. It was invented either by a bartender named Tom Collins who worked at the Whitehouse Bar in New York City, or by a headwaiter named
John
Collins who worked at a London hotel. In fact, some experts say it was originally known as a “John Collins,” and the name changed when bars started making it with a sweetened gin called Old Tom. Later, during the shortages of World War II, some soldiers were forced to make the drink with aftershave because they couldn’t get gin… and called it an Aqua Velva Collins.

DRINK
: Cosmopolitan

HOW IT’S MADE
: Stir together vodka, triple sec, lime juice, and cranberry juice, and serve in a martini glass with a garnish of lime wedge.

HISTORY
: The “Cosmo” had already been fairly popular for two decades when it made its first appearance on
Sex and the City
on July 18, 1999. (Samantha orders one at a wedding reception.) That skyrocketed the Cosmopolitan to fame. Who invented it? No one’s quite sure—it may have come from Provincetown, Massachusetts, or San Francisco in the 1970s. But wherever it came from, New Yorkers soon started drinking them, and the rest of the country followed suit. Cosmos are sweet, but they can pack a punch, which is why they’re sometimes called “pink kamikazes” or “stealth martinis.”

Uh-oh. Looks like Jay has written the BRI team into a another batch of puzzles. Let’s see how we do. Answers are on page 539
.

Kait is the newest member of the BRI team. To test out whether we were really as smart as she’s heard (we’re not), she asked us a math question that even her 11-year-old son, C. J., answered correctly: “Three
Bathroom Readers
are stacked vertically next to each other on a bookshelf, with their spines facing out. The covers of the books each measure 1/8". The pages of each book measure 2". If the bookworm starts eating at page one of the book on the left, then eats through the books in a straight line until he gets to the last page of the book on the right, how many inches of book will he have eaten?”

Uncle John strolled into the office and announced, “Civics quiz, everybody!” After we whined a bit, he asked a question that sounded tough, but he assured us it was not. “According to the U.S. Constitution,” he said, “five conditions must be met in order for a candidate to become president. He or she must: 1) be born in the United States, 2) be 35 years old or more, 3) be an American citizen, and 4) have resided in the U.S. for the last 14 years. What’s the fifth condition? You may think you don’t know it, but you do.”

Julia is riding a horse. Directly to her left is a hippo traveling at the same speed. In front of her is an elephant, also traveling at the same speed. Following behind her—at the same speed—is a lion. And to her right is a ledge. How will Julia make it to safety?