Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Providence, Rhode Island, has a donut shop for every 4,200 people—6 times the national average.

  So…say a guy named Bob acquired such a mutation 1,000 years ago. Bob had 10 kids—and he passed that mutation down to them. They each had 10 kids—and they all got the mutation, too. This kept happening over many generations, and today there are tens of thousands of people with that specific “Bob” mutation. And they’re the only ones on Earth that have it. Well, that’s exactly what happened countless times in human history.

  THE MUTANTS

  DNA and fossil evidence suggests that modern Homo sapiens (that’s us) first appeared in northeastern Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. Their descendants began migrating out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, spreading in different directions at different times. Travel then wasn’t as easy as it is today, so those different groups of travelers didn’t interact biologically (or in any other way) for very long periods of time. The people who would go on to become the Native Americans, for example, wouldn’t interact with the people who went on to become the Europeans for many thousands of years.

  In the same way, that long genetic separation resulted in entire groups of peoples acquiring DNA mutations that were unique to them. The people who became the Native Americans acquired mutations long after they got to the Americas. That means the Europeans, naturally, didn’t have those mutations—they had unique mutations of their own. This is also true of the many different peoples who were separated for long periods of time over the millennia. When means of travel progressed and those long-separated groups of peoples did start interacting, and having children together, those mutations started being shared. And now—we can find them.

  THE ODDS

  As we said, there are relatively inexpensive tests you can take today that look for these particular genetic markers. One kind of test shows “genetic percentages” of your ethnic heritage. The four very broad ethnic groupings determined by the tests:

  African: Peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.

  European: This group is much broader than it appears, and includes peoples from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

  Since it began in 1990, the Human Genome Project is estimated to have cost $3 billion.

  East Asian: Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander populations.

  Native American: Peoples that migrated from Asia to populate North, Central, and South America.

  A result of such a test might say that you have 40% European, 40% African, 18% Asian, and 2% Native American heritage. Or it might say 90% Native American and 10% East Asian. It all depends on your ancestors.

  THE LOST TREES

  Since such tests have become available and affordable to the public, they’ve been particularly popular among African Americans, whose ancestors came to America as slaves, as they usually have little or nothing in the way of written records to help track their family trees. In 2006 Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Studies, produced and hosted a PBS documentary entitled African American Lives with just this in mind. “If we could,” he said, “trace their family tree back, back beyond slavery, analyze their DNA and tell them where their ancestors came from in Africa, what a great contribution that would be to education.”

  Gates asked several prominent African Americans, including Oprah Winfrey and actors Chris Tucker and Whoopi Goldberg, to submit to genealogical DNA testing. They all got very interesting results.

  THE MIXER

  Oprah Winfrey believed she was of Zulu descent (the Zulu people now reside in South Africa). She also believed she had no Native American or European ancestors. She was mostly wrong. The tests showed her to have 89% sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, 3% East Asian, and 0% European heritage. Regarding her sub-Saharan ancestors, Gates told her that she descends from the Kpella tribe in what is now the West African nation of Liberia; the Bamileke people, in modern-day Cameroon; and the Nkoya people in Zambia.

  Hail falls at a velocity of 70–100 mph.

  Chris Tucker guessed he was descended from a tribe in modern-day Ghana. Wrong. His test showed 83% sub-Saharan African, 10% Native American, and 7% European descent. And the African link was to the Mbundu tribe in present-day Angola. Gates said the link was so strong that it was likely that a direct ancestor of Tucker’s had been taken into slavery in Angola sometime in the 1700s. (The show featured Tucker going to Angola and meeting with his distant relatives.)

  Quincy Jones said that family stories told of Native American ancestry, and thought he had probably a little European blood, too. Result: 66% sub-Saharan African, 34% European, and 0% Native American. His father’s line, Jones was shocked to learn, showed only European descent, while his mother’s showed a connection to the Tikar people of modern Cameroon.

  Mae Jemison, the first black female astronaut to go into space, was told she has 84% sub-Saharan African, 13% East Asian, 3% Native American, and 0% European ancestry. She was very surprised to learn about her East Asian heritage, and said it probably stemmed from the fact that in the 1800s many Chinese workers were brought into her family’s native Mississippi.

  Whoopi Goldberg expressed her frustration at never knowing exactly where her family had come from. “You sit with white folks who say, ‘My family goes back to County Cork,’ or, ‘My family goes back to Sicily,’” she told Gates. “And you say, ‘Umm, I don’t know, I think Florida.’” Goldberg was told that she had 92% sub-Saharan African, 8% European, and 0% Native American heritage, and that she was related to the Pepel and Bayote people, who live near the Atlantic Coast in the nation of Guinea-Bissau.

  The Host: Maybe the most surprising results came for the host of the show. Gates, one of the country’s leading African-American scholars, found out that he has 50% sub-Saharan African—and 50% European ancestry. He had no idea. “I’m going to have to give up my job!” he joked. “I’m descended from that African kingdom known as Northern Europe!”

  “It’s surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.”

  —Barbara Kingsolver

  Pears, cherries, apricots, and almonds are all members of the rose family.

  FOUNDING FOOD-ERS

  We tend to take our food products for granted. Turns out there are some pioneers we’ve never heard of whom we ought to thank.

  JULIUS MAGGI

  Maggi (1846–1912) owned a flour business in Switzerland and had a lot of opinions about food. For one, he believed people should eat more legumes (such as peas, beans, lentils, chick peas), and for another, he was concerned that women who worked in factories didn’t have enough time or money to cook traditional meals for their families. He was so well known for his vociferous opinions that in 1882 the Swiss Public Welfare Society asked him to do a study of the national diet. What he learned led him to invent a convenient—and affordable—powdered pea-and-bean instant soup mix. It was such a success that a few years later he came up with a bigger idea: powdered “bouillon” concentrate (the word comes from the French word for “boil,” because that’s what you do with bouillon—mix it with boiling water to make instant broth). The bouillon concentrate came in packets or in capsules…until 1906, when Maggi figured out how to compress the concentrate into cubes. Before the invention of bouillon cubes, it took hours of boiling meat, vegetables, and other ingredients to make the broth that was the basis for soup; after the cubes were invented, making a pot of soup was a piece of cake. In fact, the cubes used to be called “pocket soup” or “portable soup.” We still use identical bouillon cubes today, and the Maggi company still makes them.

  IVAR JEPSON

  Jepson emigrated to America from Sweden in 1925 and brought his engineering and inventing skills to the Sunbeam division of the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company. In addition to redesigning toasters and other existing appliances, he came up with a countertop food mixer, dubbed the Sunbeam Mixmaster. It was marketed
to the public in 1930, and was an immediate sensation. A complete departure from the few earlier single-beater mechanical mixers, Jepson’s design had a motor inside a horizontal housing that extended out over a mixing bowl, with two detachable, interlocking beaters. Sound familiar? His design was so brilliant that it has hardly changed in more than 75 years.

  Beeping alarm clocks have been known to cause heart attacks.

  KIKUNAE IKEDA

  For centuries, Western scientists identified four basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. In Eastern countries there was a fifth, called umami, often described as savory or meaty. In 1908 Professor Kikunae Ikeda, a chemist at Tokyo Imperial University, isolated (from kombu, a kind of seaweed) a white salt called monosodium glutamate, or MSG, which, he discovered, gave that meaty, savory umami flavor to other foods. He called the flavor quality “deliciousness” and named the salt ajinomoto—“the essence of taste.” Ikeda acquired a patent to produce MSG, and a product called Aji-No-Moto (extracted from wheat gluten instead of seaweed) was first marketed in 1909. Referred to as a “flavor enhancer,” it was first produced in the United States in 1934; by 1947 it was on the market as Ac’cent. MSG is still a common flavor enhancer in snack foods, fast foods, condiments, powdered and canned soups, canned vegetables, processed meats, and instant noodles.

  Related Fact: At one time “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”—dizziness, headache, numbness, and other symptoms—was a condition thought to be linked to MSG. Many people were convinced that the syndrome was caused by an overuse of MSG by cooks in Chinese restaurants. However, research has failed to establish any real connection between MSG and the symptoms described by diners.

  JOHN L. MASON

  In 1858 Mason patented a new and reliable kind of canning jar and lid, known today as the Mason Jar. Until that time, farm families could only depend the limited variety of produce and meat they could store in root cellars, pickle barrels, and smokehouses to get them through the barren winter. The reusable glass Mason jar had a screw-on zinc lid that formed a hermetic seal, making it possible to preserve a much greater variety of fruits, vegetables, jams, relishes, and other foods without risk of spoilage. Unfortunately, Mason’s patent expired before he could profit from it. He died a pauper in New York City in 1902.

  Henry Ford and Thomas Edison collaborated on an electric-car design.

  BACK SIDE STORY

  Who among us can honestly say that our career was never in the toilet? Here’s a look at a guy who wants it that way.

  A

  rtiste: Paul Walker, an Irish director and playwright

  Notable Achievement: Writing a play that takes place entirely in a restroom—and actually staging it in one.

  Flushed with Success: After writing his award-winning play Ladies & Gents, which portrays the dark side of Dublin life in the 1950s as seen from the inside of a restroom (based on a true story), Walker staged the drama as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. It met with success there, and then toured the restrooms of Europe before Walker brought it to New York’s Central Park in March 2008. City Parks & Recreation bureaucrats considered his proposal for more than a year before finally giving him permission to use the facilities near Bethesda Fountain, near the center of the park.

  The Play: Ladies & Gents is divided into two acts—one in the ladies’ room, the other in the men’s. (It doesn’t matter which one you see first.) During performances, the audience clusters in front of the toilet stalls to watch the action, most of which takes place near the urinals and sinks. One character in the play, a pimp, does sit on a toilet for a time but doesn’t actually use it (much to the relief of theatergoers). Audiences aren’t allowed to use the facilities, either. But if anyone does have to answer the call of nature, portable toilets are set up outside the restroom during the play’s run. The price of admission for the Central Park run (March 19–29, 2008) was $25. Believe it or not, most of the shows sold out.

  So what was the hardest part about staging a play in a public restroom in Central Park? Probably the rehearsals, which were conducted before the portable toilets were set up. The actors were constantly interrupted by tourists and pushy New Yorkers who cared more about relieving themselves than they did about Art. At least one man refused to look for another restroom or wait for a break in the rehearsals; he just marched right in and took care of business as the actors performed their parts. “He was a bit belligerent, really,” said actor John O’Callaghan, who played the pimp. “I guess when you have to go, you have to go.”

  During the 1950s, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. had plans to bomb the Moon.

  MAKING A MOVIE, PT. III:

  PREPRODUCTION

  Wow, we’ve already reached the third part of this article and are only now getting to preproduction? You see, Uncle John? Making a movie does take a lot of work. (Part II is on page 232.)

  GATHERING THE TALENT

  Now that the script and budget have been approved and the director is onboard, every aspect of the project must be thoroughly planned out in advance. Every film is a “business” in its own right, so first a production company is formed. Then the director (alone or with an illustrator) turns the script into storyboards, rough sketches of every planned shot. Those are then sent to each department head so that they can begin the conceptualizing work, such as how the sets and costumes will appear. A rough filming schedule will also be set. Here are the people and departments who start putting it all together.

  CASTING

  Often a director will have specific actors in mind for the lead parts. It is the casting director’s job to find and then begin negotiations with those actors. Alternatively, the director may give a detailed description of the roles’ requirements. The CD will then advertise the parts in industry trade publications, look at hundreds or even thousands of 8x10 photos, and then schedule auditions, presenting the director with only the best candidates. The CD is usually in sole charge of casting the smaller parts and remains with the production during filming, acting as a liaison between the production company, the actors, and their agents. Sometimes, a CD must get creative to find the perfect person for a role.

  Reel-Life Example: When looking for an 11-year-old boy to play the son of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in There Will Be Blood (2007), casting director Cassandra Kulukundis auditioned hundreds of kids from New York and Los Angeles, but they were all a little too “polished” to play a simple West Texas boy who could shoot a gun. So Director Paul Thomas Anderson sent Kulukundis to Texas to look for the real thing. There, she found a 6th grader named Dillon Freasier who’d never acted before but otherwise had all of the desired attributes. Kulukundis recorded a screen test in Freasier’s living room and sent it to Anderson, who flew out to meet the boy…and knew he was perfect “the minute he laid eyes on him.” That’s what directors and CDs strive for: the “Eureka!” moment when they know they’ve found the perfect marriage between actor and role.

  Some monkeys have fingerprints at the tips of their tails.

  Did it work? There Will Be Blood made nearly three times its $25 million budget during its theatrical run and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. And critics agreed that Freasier’s performance was one of the reasons the film was so powerful.

  PRODUCTION DESIGN

  The production designer is the “architect” of the film, in charge of every object on the screen that isn’t an actor. If the screenplay calls for grit and realism, the PD has to make sure that everything in the frame—from the city skyline to the tattered shoes to the trash on the ground—reflects that vision. Reporting to the PD is the art director, who oversees the conceptual artists to finalize the film’s look. Once the main design elements are approved, a revised set of storyboards is created by the art department that will serve as a guide to setting up lighting, props, and camera angles once filming has started.

  Meanwhile, the property master—working from an exhaustive list put together by the PD—has already begun the arduous process of finding or c
reating every object that appears in the movie. A prop is any inanimate object that an actor directly interacts with, such as a chair or a gun. A set dressing is any object that appears in a scene but that the actors do not touch. The property master searches through catalogs, prop houses, and thrift stores looking for these things. If they can’t be found or don’t exist, it is up to the art department to build them or modify them from real objects (such as turning an electric razor into a futuristic communicator).

  Reel-Life Example: Jeannine Oppewall is a veteran PD with more than 30 films and four Oscar nominations to her credit, one of which was for 1998’s Pleasantville. The film was especially difficult because it combines a period piece that strives for historical accuracy with a fantasy—Oppewall calls this a “hyper-reality.” The plot: two modern teenagers are magically transported back to a 1950s TV sitcom town where everything appears in black-and-white and everyone behaves innocently. As the two new teenagers introduce modern values and mores, Pleasantville gradually begins to show color.

  Medical term for the ring finger: annulary.

  On a typical project, Oppewall will spend up to nine months working 14-hour days, researching and drawing up plans. With a period piece, she says, the most important job is taking things out: “air-conditioners, reflectors that run down the middle of the street, cars of the wrong vintage, and satellite dishes.” Oppewall supervised the refurbishing of real neighborhood streets plus the creation of a replica of the town on a studio back lot.

  Did it work? Yes. Pleasantville turned a tidy profit during its theatrical run, taking in nearly $50 million. It also garnered great reviews, most of which acknowledged how convincing the make-believe world was. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The film’s unsung heroine is Oppewall, who wittily turns the fantasy of Pleasantville into an actual place. Watch the sidewalks crack and the skirts grow less poufy as reality sets in.”