Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (30 page)

Margaret “Peggy” Shippen was half Arnold’s age and a member of a staunchly Loyalist (pro-England) family. While Arnold fell deeper into debt with extravagances and financial schemes that led Congress to investigate him and recommend a court-martial, Shippen encouraged him to throw parties and keep up with other Loyalists. One of them, British officer John Andre, goaded Arnold into switching sides. (Shippen introduced the men and may have had an affair with Andre; no one knows for sure.) Arnold, who was facing financial ruin and was uncertain of future promotion, made a fateful decision to throw in his lot with the British.

First, he wrote to Henry Clinton, the British commander, promising to deliver West Point and its 3,000 defenders for 20,000 pounds sterling (about $1 million today). Playing on George Washington’s continued affection, Arnold also convinced the general to give him the post of West Point commander.

In September 1780, Arnold tried to execute his plan, sending Andre with maps and plans to the British forces. But Andre was captured, and the patriot soldiers—not knowing their commander was in on the scheme—sent a message to Arnold, who immediately fled West Point. However, George Washington had decided to visit West Point that day. When he found that Arnold was away, he sat down to wait—and when the soldiers brought him the plans that had been captured with Andre, Washington recognized his friend’s handwriting.

As Andre was being hanged as a spy, Arnold was escaping on a British warship down the Hudson River. For his dirty deeds, Arnold received 6,000 pounds and an appointment in the British Army as a brigadier general. He moved to England and, despite his previous battlefield heroics, was condemned as a traitor in the United States. George Washington wrote to a friend,

In Philadelphia, patriots built a life-sized effigy of Arnold—seated in a cart with a figure of the devil next to him holding a lantern up to his face so that everyone could see the traitor. They paraded the cart through the city, with a fife-and-drum corps playing “The Rogue’s March,” before they hanged the effigy and set it on fire. The name Benedict Arnold is now synonymous with “traitor.”

Human Billboards

Advertising is everywhere, and advertisers will try any space at least once in order to promote a product. Some of the efforts are truly inventive, even if irritatingly intrusive—CBS once tried having fresh eggs stamped with ads for its fall programming lineup. Ads are sprouting up on airline tray tables, on city sewer covers, and on bendable straws. And many of us have seen Volkswagen Beetles tricked out to look like rodents to advertise extermination services. How about adult diaper samples delivered with the newspaper?

Human billboards have been around for centuries with people wearing sandwich boards, carrying signs, pointing customers in the right direction, and barking promotional slogans. But the worst ad placement we’ve seen has to be one on the human body. Read on . . . and weep—as long as you don’t have any promotional logos inked on your cheeks.

In 2005, Oklahoma college student Andrew Fischer decided to try something different to raise tuition money. He placed a listing on the popular online auction site, eBay, offering to “wear” a company’s ad on his forehead.

Fischer had two rules about what he would and wouldn’t do:

The winner:
SnoreStop (a company that sells snoring prevention products) ponied up just over $37,000 to place a temporary, 30-day tattoo on Fischer’s forehead.

While Fischer and SnoreStop got a lot of attention, their “head-vertising” attempt was not the first. In 2003, after answering an eBay listing, C I Host, a web-hosting firm, paid 22-year-old Jim Nelson $7,000 to wear the company’s logo permanently tattooed on the back of his shaved head for five years. Nelson’s duties include traveling on behalf of C I Host, handing out flyers and business cards, and delivering sales pitches. Within six months of Nelson’s debut, the company had 500 new customers.

Other companies have tried to head-butt the competition, too. In 2003, Dunlop Tires hired six men to roam the streets of Boston with their heads shaved in a zig-zag tire pattern. Even Homer Simpson tried to get in on the action during a 2006 episode in which he has “Buy Blue Pants” emblazoned on his head in an attempt to increase demand for his favorite product.

And since all that was working so well, why not advertise on a pregnant belly? Amber Rainey said she got the idea from Andrew Fischer and thought: “I have a really big stomach, you know. Hey, and you can’t help but to look at.” In 2005 the 24-year-old auctioned off her acreage, and Las Vegas’s Golden Palace bought it for $4,042. (A paltry price, perhaps, but foreheads are forever—a third-trimester tummy could go any time.)

There are lots of print and video ads that feature different kinds of tattoos, including a Brazilian shoe campaign with supermodel Gisele Buendchen “wearing” nothing but a full-body tattoo. (Temporary tattoos, of course.)

Joe Tamargo of Huntington, New York, tried something a little more permanent in 2005, selling advertising space on his body with permanent tattoos. A pharmaceutical company bought an ad
on his right arm for $500. Another group,
SaveMartha.com
, paid $510 for a multicolored ad supporting Martha Stewart during her incarceration for fraud.

The worst deal has to be Kari Smith’s permanent forehead tattoo advertising Las Vegas’s Golden Palace. (Again!) She settled for $10,000, but even the Golden Palace must have realized that was ridiculous. The casino kicked in $5,000 more.

However, the worst advertising idea ever has nothing to do with tattoos. In 2006, a Canadian couple, Jonathan and Leanne (they declined to give out their last name, with good reason), put a listing on eBay offering ad space on their newborn daughter’s clothing for a year.

After the public decried the couple for including their baby as part of the scheme, the parents pulled the listing. But Jonathan said he thought it was completely all right because the advertising would just be on clothing and would not harm the baby.

Where did he get the idea? “From that guy in the United States who has advertising space on his forehead.”

During the 1978 Academy Awards, singer Debby Boone performed her Oscar-nominated song, “You Light Up My Life.” Surrounding Boone on stage were hearing impaired children translating the song into sign language. The Academy was embarrassed the next day when reports surfaced that the kids weren’t hearing impaired at all—they were actually local fifth graders who were directed to
pretend
they were deaf. How did the ruse get found out? Actual hearing impaired people couldn’t understand their incomprehensible sign language.

Movie Easter Eggs

In the late 20th century, “Easter eggs” took on new meaning for video gamers and movie watchers. No longer just treats left by the Easter Bunny, they now were encrypted treats hidden by wily computer programmers. These digital Easter eggs contained additional content, fun asides, new material, and more.

The history of the digital Easter egg is fuzzy. The most often-told version goes like this: In the 1978 Atari 2600 video game “Adventure,” computer programmer Warren Robinett hid his signature in a hidden room. Why? Apparently, Atari didn’t give its programmers credit in the early days, and Robinett wanted to secretly “sign” his work. His employers didn’t know about it, but when players found it, they thought it was part of the game.

But some people say that they found an earlier Easter egg in a 1977 video game called “Demo Cart.” It was played on the Fairchild Channel F, a console that preceded Atari, and supposedly featured a hidden message containing the programmer’s name.

Whatever their origin, Easter eggs in video games became commonplace throughout the 1980s, as software programmers and designers hid their names in credit files for people to stumble upon. From there, the eggs evolved and started showing up on DVDs, where they’re usually hidden on menu screens. To open them, people have to know where to look or how to find them.
You may have to move the cursor to a specific spot on the screen. If something that doesn’t look like a menu option (in other words, if it isn’t labeled with anything) is highlighted, chances are you’ve found an Easter egg. For people who don’t enjoy the hunt, many Web sites have sprung up that list where Easter eggs are hidden in popular movies and games.

We went hunting for Easter eggs in our favorite movies. Here is some of what we found (most are in the standard DVD editions):

The Godfather
Collection.
On the bonus disc, go to “Galleries,” click on “DVD Credits,” and hit “Next” on your remote four times. You’ll find the cast of the TV show
The Sopranos
watching . . .
The Godfather
.

T2: Judgment Day.
The DVD for the sequel to
The Terminator
features an extended version of the film with an alternate ending. In the “Special Edition” menu, highlight “Play Special Edition” but don’t hit enter. Instead, type in 82997 (a significant date in the film) on your remote. You’ll then see “Play Extended Special Edition” highlighted. Press Enter.

The Fellowship of the Ring
(Four-Disc Extended Edition).
An MTV Movie Awards spoof is included. On the final page of the Scene Selection menu, highlight the “Council of Elrond” scene and press the down arrow on your remote. You’ll highlight the ring. Press Enter.

Seinfeld
Season 5.
On the fourth disc, click on Setup. Go to Subtitles, and then press the right arrow to highlight the heart. Press Enter, and a behind-the-scenes look at a popular episode will play.

Fight Club
(2-disc edition).
On the second disc, click on “Advertising.” Press the down arrow three times and a smiley face will appear. Press enter to go to a gallery of merchandise related to the movie.

Donnie Darko.
Go to “Special Features” and choose “The Philosophy of Time Travel.” Go to “Appendix A” and hit the up arrow. A circle will appear. Click on it to see a deleted scene.

The Matrix.
Nine eggs in one can be found here. Under “Special
Features,” choose “Making the Matrix.” Then select “The Dreamworld.” Then select “Continue,” followed by a click on “Follow the White Rabbit.” Go back and watch the movie, and, periodically, a white rabbit will appear onscreen. When it does, hit enter to see a short feature about the scene. When it finishes, the movie will resume playing, and you can keep looking for more white rabbits. (They’re in chapters 1, 10, 15, 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, and 33.)

Citizen Kane
(Two-Disc Special Edition).
Choose “Production Notes” and then “On the Set.” Advance through 10 pages and then hit the up button, which will highlight a sled. Hit enter to see an interview with the film’s editor.

Finding Nemo.
Under “Bonus Features,” click on “Mr. Ray’s Encyclopedia.” Highlight the curved arrow and press the down button to bring up a fish. Highlight it and press enter to see a short bonus scene between Dory and Marlin.

The Star Wars Trilogy.
On the bonus disc, select “Video Games and Still Galleries” from the main menu. On the new menu, press 11, then 3, then 8 on your remote. This plays a five-minute gag reel.

Titanic: Special Edition.
Choose “Deleted Scenes” and then select “Scene Selection.” Go to scene 29 (“Extended Carpathia Sequence”) and hit the down arrow. The people in the bottom left of the screen will be highlighted. Hit enter, and you’ll see a
Saturday Night Live
skit related to the movie.