Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (33 page)

In a 2006 interview with Larry King, Miller said he was planning to display his culinary skills as the host of an American-style cooking show in China (no, he doesn’t speak Chinese), and he was even considering moving there. Let’s see: stay in the U.S. to run a catering company and play yourself in the occasional child star-themed program, or move to China, where your face will guarantee you hordes of screaming fans and great tables in the finest restaurants? Seems like a no-brainer.

Before 1967, pop music album covers were staid images of the artists who recorded them—head shots, body shots, and band portraits were the order of the day—and, if someone were
really
creative, perhaps an abstract image.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
changed that.

The album epitomized the psychedelic rock era, and it remains an essential album for a music lover’s collection—in 2003,
Rolling Stone
ranked it the best album of all time.
Sgt. Pepper’s
is credited with several milestones: the first album to be tracked sequentially, meaning each song blends into the next, and one of the first concept albums. But the cover was a first, too—it was the first to print the lyrics to the songs on the back.

Sixty-two people populated
Sgt. Pepper’s
cover—everyone from psychologist Carl Jung to child star Shirley Temple. There was little or no explanation as to why the different people were depicted or what it all meant. But it proved to be one of the Beatles most (if not
the
most) influential album.

Art gallery owner Robert Fraser, a friend of Paul McCartney’s and a major influence in the British art world in the 1960s, came up with the idea for the cover. Originally, the Beatles planned to use a red and white psychedelic painting, but Fraser talked them out of it. (That painting, by a Dutch artists’ group called The Fool, showed up in the inner sleeve for the first
round of pressings.) English pop artist Peter Blake executed Fraser’s idea.

The cover is supposed to depict a party that has gathered after a concert by the fictional Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As would be expected of such an important gathering, the event is memorialized with a photo of the band surrounded by the celebrity concertgoers. All of the Beatles—except Ringo Starr, who didn’t want to participate—chose the famous and infamous fake guest list, which included cultural icons like writer Edgar Allen Poe, occult practitioner Aleister Crowley, comedians Laurel and Hardy, scientist Albert Einstein, and socialist Karl Marx. At one time the picture was going to include Jesus and Adolf Hitler, but both were ultimately considered too controversial and were omitted.

Each Beatle appears on the cover twice: once as a member of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and once as a Madame Tussaud’s wax figure. The only other person to appear on the cover twice is Shirley Temple—her photo is in the front row, and there’s a cloth replica of Temple wearing a “Welcome the Rolling Stones” shirt. (The Temple doll was designed by Jann Haworth, Peter Blake’s wife, who helped him with the creation of the cover.)

The drum at the center of the album was attributed to an artist named Joe Ephgrave, but since 1967, people have speculated that Ephgrave didn’t actually exist. Many thought the surname was made up and stood for “epitaph grave,” which would play into the “Paul is dead” myth. (An urban legend says that McCartney died in 1966 and a look-alike imposter took his place in the band.) But others insist that he did exist and was a visual artist in England.

Several versions of the famous cover collage exist—from the original album released in 1967 to the current image used for CD pressings, which is missing Indian leader Mohandas Ghandi and actor Leo Gorcey. Gandhi was on the album cover for the original pressings, but the Beatles’ record company EMI (which had an office in India) was afraid that people there would be offended, so he was painted out of the portrait in later versions.

Gorcey, a member of the Bowery Boys (a group of actors who played ruffians in several movies during the 1940s and 1950s),
asked for money for the use of his image, so EMI removed him. (Fellow Bowery Boy Huntz Hall remains on the album cover). Judy Garland also asked for a fee to use her image, and she didn’t make it onto the cover, either.

All the other celebrities, though, gave EMI permission to use their likenesses. Actress Mae West took a little coaxing—initially she responded to the request with a question: “What would I be doing in a lonely hearts club?” But after the Beatles wrote her a letter and asked her to reconsider, she changed her mind.

Peter Blake spent two weeks assembling all the pieces for the famous photograph. Each image was a life-sized cardboard cutout, and he first put the back row of subjects up on a wall in Fraser’s gallery. Then he layered each successive row about six inches in front of the one behind it. He added other elements—from a hairdresser’s dummy to a tuba—to give the image more effect.

Front Row:
Wax dummy of boxer Sonny Liston; “The Petty Girl” by artist George Petty; wax dummy of George Harrison; wax dummy of John Lennon; actress Shirley Temple; wax dummy of Ringo Starr; wax dummy of Paul McCartney; Albert Einstein; John Lennon; Ringo Starr; Paul McCartney; George Harrison; singer Bobby Breen; actress Marlene Dietrich; actress Diana Dorrs; actress Shirley Temple

Second Row:
Former member of the Beatles Stuart Sutcliff; a wax hairdresser’s dummy; comedian Max Miller; “The Petty Girl” by artist George Petty (different from the image in the front row); Marlon Brando; actor Tom Mix; writer Oscar Wilde; actor Tyrone Power; artist Larry Bell; explorer Dr. David Livingstone; swimmer Johnny Weismuller; author Stephen Crane; comedian Issy Bonn; playwright George Bernard Shaw; sculptor H. C. Westermann; soccer player Albert Stubbins; guru Sri Lahiri Mahasaya; author Lewis Carroll; Lawrence of Arabia

Third Row:
Illustrator Aubrey Beardsley; former Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel; writer Aldous Huxley; poet Dylan Thomas; writer Terry Southern; singer Dion (singer); actor Tony Curtis; actor Wallace Berman; comedian Tommy Handley; Marilyn Monroe;
author William Burroughs; guru Sri Mahavatara Babaji; actor Stan Laurel; artist Richard Lindner; actor Oliver Hardy; Karl Marx; author H. G. Wells; guru Sri Paramahansa Yagananda; a wax hairdresser’s dummy

Back Row:
Guru Sri Yukteswar Giri; Aleister Crowley; actress Mae West; comedian Lenny Bruce; composer Karlheinz Stockhausen; comedian W. C. Fields; psychologist Carl Jung; Edgar Allan Poe; dancer Fred Astaire; artist Richard Merkin; “The Varga Girl” by artist Alberto Vargas; actor Huntz Hall; architect Simon Rodia; musician Bob Dylan

Nonhuman items pictured:
Two cloth figures (one is Shirley Temple), a candlestick, a television set, four figurines (one of Snow White), a bust from John Lennon’s home, a trophy, a doll from India, a hookah pipe, a velvet snake, a garden gnome, and a drum with the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band logo

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the creators of
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
should feel pretty flattered. Since the album’s release, the cover has been parodied many times (mostly lovingly, but sometimes with sarcasm, as in Frank Zappa’s case). Here are five famous examples.

Sweden’s Icehotel

Cocooned in a heavyweight sleeping bag, you lie on top of reindeer pelts that cover a queen-sized bed fashioned completely from blocks of ice. In fact, the walls, artwork, and furniture in your room are all made of pure ice. Moonlight streams in through a glacial skylight. You’re a guest at Sweden’s famed Icehotel, found in the village of Jukkäsjarvi, about 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Before an attendant brings you a morning mug of hot lingonberry juice and invites you to warm up with a sauna, let’s look around a bit.

The heart of the Icehotel is its design. The hotel melts with each spring thaw, so every year, a carefully selected group of international artists, sculptors, and architects have been trekking to Jukkäsjarvi to participate in the annual creation of a new Icehotel.

Winter 2007–2008 was the 18th season of the Icehotel. For that season, 19 design teams from 16 different countries created rooms that reflected their unique visions. Some are whimsically named, such as “Mind the Gap” for a hotel corridor, or “Meander” for a bedroom suite with a motif of watery twists and turns. The “Kristall” Church pays homage to the hotel’s basic building block—the snowflake. And it’s no surprise that the drinking hole is—what else?—the Absolut Bar, where vodka is served in specially formed ice tumblers. The hotel’s Web site and books showcase the glorious but temporary creations.

Planning starts to rebuild a hotel in the spring, and each November, construction begins anew, using approximately 3,300 tons of ice cut from the pure waters of Sweden’s Torne River. Water is sprayed on steel skeletons, and when it hardens, the skeletons are removed. A room’s walls don’t contain anything except frozen water.

Local delicacies are served on ice plates in the Icehotel’s restaurant, but that structure, like a nearby inn for the less hardy, is heated. A visit to the Icehotel isn’t just remarkable; it’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, since you can never stay in the same room or—for that matter—hotel twice. Interestingly, that temporary quality seems to have inspired a trend that’s about long-lasting things: Icehotel weddings. Along with the hotel and the Icebar, each year the design team creates an Ice Chapel, complete with fur-covered pews and frosty flying buttresses.

The Icehotel is open from early December to mid-April, depending on the weather. If you just happen to be in Jukkäsjarvi, you can tour the hotel each day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. After 6 p.m., the hotel is reserved for guests. Prices start at around $250 a night for doubles, with single rooms costing significantly more.

The number of rooms varies but typically includes about 80 rooms, including 22 bedroom suites. The night-time temperature is around 23°F, so guests need to be sure to follow instructions about what to wear and how to get ready for bed. (With all the long underwear, sleep hats, socks, mittens, and separate sleeping bags, a night in the Icehotel is not necessarily one for love.) The hotel provides guests with free outerwear—snowmobile overalls, hats, mittens, and boots. You can’t keep your luggage with you—if you left it in your room, it would freeze—so the hotel’s porters lock it up in a special luggage area. But not everywhere at the hotel is cold: there are saunas to help you wake up in the morning, and the hotel’s toilets are heated. (Uncle John’s readers, rejoice!)

The Pentagon Validates Wicca

There are about 1.4 million men and women currently serving in the U.S. military, and within that group, all types of religions are represented. Christians make up the largest portion, but Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, Russian Orthodox, and even Unitarians are included. And each of those religions also has a chaplain and an approved symbol to appear on a fallen soldier’s grave. (Deceased Christian soldiers have crosses on their tombstones, Jews have Stars of David, Unitarians have a Flaming Chalice, and so on.) But when the military’s Wiccan contingent asked that its religion be recognized equally by the military, they hit some roadblocks.