Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (39 page)

 

WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Star Trek
cologne and perfume

BACKGROUND:
Three separate scents were marketed in 2009 as tie-ins with the reboot of the
Star Trek
movie series.

•
Tiberius
. Named after the captain of the Starship
Enterprise,
James Tiberius Kirk, and the (over)actor who played him, William Shatner. So does it smell like ham? No, it smells like vanilla and sandalwood. According to the manufacturer, the scent is for men who, like Kirk, are “casual, yet commanding.”

•
Red Shirt.
This one pays homage to an in-joke among Trekkies. In many 1960s
Star Trek
episodes, the main crew explores a mysterious planet and one anonymous crew member—known as a “red shirt”—gets killed by hostile alien natives. Red Shirt, the cologne, is a “daring scent for those brave enough to place no trust in tomorrow.”

•
Pon Farr.
A fragrance for women, this one is named after (and could theoretically trigger) the Vulcan mating ritual.

 

WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Politics

BACKGROUND:
During the hoopla surrounding the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a company called Nature’s Garden created three different scents designed to allow consumers to display their political affiliation via their personal odor.
Republican
smells like “love of country and a strong family unit” (and apples),
Democrat
exudes “a love for mankind” (and clover), and
Independent
evokes “the desire to preserve the quality of our environment” (it smells like daffodils).

 

WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Virtue

BACKGROUND:
According to California perfumers IBI, if you wear Virtue, you can actually smell like Jesus. Using the Bible as a guide to what kind of plants were used as perfumes in the Holy Land when Jesus walked the Earth, IBI scientists claim that Virtue is a close approximation of what Christ and his followers would have smelled like. It’s a sweet blend consisting mostly of apricot, with a dash of frankincense and myrrh, which were given to Jesus at birth by the three wise men.

 

WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Play-Doh

BACKGROUND:
One of the most memorable parts of playing with Play-Doh was the musky, almost candylike odor of the clay when it’s soft and fresh out of the can. Turns out that the scent comes largely from wheat flour, so it’s pretty easy to reproduce. In 2006 Demeter Fragrance did just that, creating a Play-Doh perfume in honor of the toy’s 50th anniversary. It smells exactly like Play-Doh. (Demeter makes many other perfumes that evoke nostalgia for childhood, including crayon, jelly bean, and Tootsie Roll.)

“In January 2007, a foreigner who wanted to visit England’s North Country was denied entry after tourism officials claimed it was ‘not credible’ for anyone to want to spend a week in Gateshead.”

—
Telegraph
(London)

According to tech industry experts, 1995 marked the beginning of the consumer digital photography era. Among other advances, that year saw the introduction of the Kodak DC40—the first digital camera with a
liquid crystal display
, or LCD monitor. This gave photographers an opportunity never before available: to view the image on the back of the camera just seconds after it was taken. A few months later, Microsoft and Kodak formed a partnership to outfit Kinko’s copy stores with kiosks that allowed customers to make photo CDs and send images over the Internet, which was still in its infancy. Around the same time, Hewlett-Packard released the first inkjet printers designed to print out images taken on digital cameras.

All of this technology coming together simultaneously highlights an important aspect of the digital camera: It’s just one part of greater revolution that involves the Internet, home computing, scanning, and printing. Technological innovations in each field spurred the others to keep up, which helped spur innovations in those fields as well. And by this point, major advances in the cameras themselves were occurring at such a fast pace that new models were outdated shortly after they hit the market.

But even through 2000, film cameras were still selling well. Why? Despite the advances, a digital camera
still
couldn’t render as sharp an image as a film camera in the same price range. That changed in 2003 when Canon released the Digital Rebel 300D. Not only could the Rebel’s CCD technology record an image finally on par with film, it was the first digital SLR (a camera with interchangeable lenses that can be focused manually) to sell for under $1,000. Digital cameras have outsold film cameras ever since.

The first profession to truly embrace the advantages of digital was photojournalism. No longer did a photographer on a field assignment have to overnight the negatives to the newsroom: Digital images could be sent instantly. In a highly competitive, deadline-driven field, news photographers had no choice if they wanted to be the first to deliver the scoop.

Photojournalism also played a big part in propelling technological innovations that have since been embraced by the rest of the picture-taking world. Roving photographers complained that the bulky battery packs required to power early digital cameras were too heavy to lug around, so in 1994 the Associated Press partnered with Kodak to create the NC2000—a groundbreaking camera that required a much smaller battery pack, could use standard lenses from film cameras, and had the ability to take hundreds of exposures on a single memory card. By the late ’90s, only half of professional photojournalists were using digital technology. Just a few years later, nearly all of them were.

After most photojournalists made the switch, it took a few years for the pros who shoot products, architecture, fashion, landscapes, wildlife, and weddings to follow suit.

• One of the first big names to go digital was acclaimed
National Geographic
nature photographer Jim Brandenburg, who did so in in 2003. “Remember when vinyl records and tapes were up against CDs?” he asked in his defense (many purists thought he’d sold out). “Now you can hardly find a turntable or a tape player. Some people still prefer the sound of analog, and it will be the same with film. I predict that four years from now, you’re going to see one-hour photo shops closing.”

• One of the last high-profile film holdouts was British celebrity photographer Brian Aris. When he shot the Queen’s 80th birthday party in 2006, he admitted that it would most likely be the last major royal event ever captured with traditional film. When asked what he thought about digital, Aris begrudgingly said, “We’ve all got to embrace it.”

Jim Brandenburg’s prediction was off by one year: Most one-hour photo shops were gone by 2006. As for the rest of the industry, it was either switch to digital or go out of business. The choice was clear…film had become an endangered species.

• In 2006 Nikon announced that it was going to keep only two film cameras on the market and convert the company’s focus to digital.

• In 2008 Polaroid put an end to its line of of analog instant film.

• In 2009 Kodak halted production of Kodachrome slide film, ending an era that began in 1936. “It was certainly a difficult decision to retire it, given its rich history,” said Mary Jane Hellyar, President of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group. “However, the majority of today’s photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology.”

In a little over a decade, the entire field of photography was turned upside down: What had been viewed as an interesting novelty—digital—is now the industry standard. And film—which reigned supreme for more than 150 years—has become a novelty product used only by purists and a few fine-art photographers.

However, the digital camera’s true impact on society wasn’t because the pros switched over—it was because the rest of us did.

During a Major League Baseball game in 2004, Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees was on second base when his teammate hit a pop fly to the infield. Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Howie Clark ran over to catch the ball, but backed off when he heard someone yell, “Mine!” Who yelled it? Rodriguez, who ran to third base after Clark missed the catch.

Air New Zealand came up with a novel way to make passengers actually pay attention to the pre-flight safety announcements: nude flight attendants. Well…sort of. In 2009 the airline produced a video called “The Bare Essentials of Safety,” starring three real Air New Zealand flight attendants and a pilot demonstrating the oxygen mask, seat belts, and flotation devices while dressed only in body paint designed to look like their flight uniforms. To make sure they didn’t offend anyone, the oxygen mask, seatbelt, and flotation device were “strategically placed” in the video.

As part of their wedding celebration in a park in Suvereto, Italy, a couple chartered a small plane to “throw the bouquet” in the traditional gesture to the single women in attendance. A 44-year-old man named Isidoro Pensieri was tasked with tossing the flowers to the ground below. They never made it. The bouquet was sucked into the plane’s engine, it ignited, and the engine exploded, causing the plane to crash nearby. The only casualty was Pensieri, who suffered some broken bones.