Author: Erin

Though it didn’t make much of a dent in the box office when it hit theaters 20 years ago, Christopher Guest’s mockumentary Waiting for Guffman has become a cult hit in the years since. This movie follows a group of small-town residents-turned-amateur actors from Blaine, Missouri, and their eccentric director, Corky St. Clair, as they put on a production called Red, White and Blaine in honor of the sesquicentennial (that’s a 150th anniversary) of the town’s founding by Blaine Fabin. When they get word that New York film critic Mort Guffman is coming to their performance, they begin to dream about taking their show out of Blaine’s high school gym and onto the Broadway stage—until fate intervenes. Here are a few things you might not have known about Waiting for Guffman.

1. THE MOVIE WAS INSPIRED BY A JUNIOR HIGH PRODUCTION OF ANNIE, GET YOUR GUN.

Christopher Guest told Deborah Theaker, who plays Guffman’s Gwen Fabin-Blunt, that he was watching one of his kids perform in Annie, Get Your Gun when inspiration struck. “There were all these little kids with handlebar moustaches and he thought it was just hilarious and sweet at the same time, and wanted to translate that into a movie. That was the impetus,” Theaker said in Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company.

“I was just drawn to the idea how earnest everyone was, how devoted they were to do the best performance they could, albeit at the level that they were working at,” Guest said in DVD commentary. “There’s something charming about the expenditure of energy to watch these amateurs.”

2. THERE WASN’T A SCRIPT …

Guest’s mockumentaries famously have no scripts. Instead, they’re entirely improvised by the actors based on outlines written by Guest and his collaborators—a tradition that began with Guffman.

Guest chose Eugene Levy, who had starred on the Canadian sketch show Second City TV (SCTV), to co-write Guffman with him. (Levy at first thought the call was a joke, but Guest was a fan of his work on SCTV.) Together, they wrote an outline stuffed with details about the story and its characters. “We provide much more information about the characters than you would find in a normal screenplay … anything that will help the actor understand who his character is and then create things on his own,” Levy, who played dentist Alan Pearl in Guffman, explained to Back Stage West. “We know what information has to come out in the movie on a scene-by-scene basis, and the actors know what information has to come out, but how it comes out is entirely up to them.”

That blueprint, Guest told The A.V. Club, is not so flexible. “What is flexible is the dialogue that’s used to convey the actual exposition that we need,” he said. “Every scene has a point; it’s not just people rambling. There’s exposition in every scene that has to be accomplished before we can move on. And so that can’t change, otherwise you have this free-for-all.”

The outline for Guffman ended up being 16 pages long, and as they were writing, some elements changed. For example, Blaine was originally in Kansas, and Corky owned a store called Over the Rainbow. In DVD commentary, Levy said that in the original outline, the cast never made it to the show; instead, a tornado came and destroyed the theater. “The camera was knocked on its side and you saw feet running by the camera,” Guest said. But after Blaine was moved to Missouri, those Kansas-centric details were tweaked, discarded entirely, or relegated to the background.

3. … BUT SOME ELEMENTS OF GUFFMAN DID NEED TO BE SCRIPTED AND REHEARSED.

Namely, the songs and dialogue of Red, White and Blaine. Guest turned to his This is Spinal Tap (1984) collaborators to help him with the music: He and Harry Shearer co-wrote “Stool Boom” and “Nothing Ever Happens on Mars,” while Guest and Michael McKean co-wrote “Covered Wagons, Open Toed Shoes” and “Penny For Your Thoughts.”

The dialogue in Red, White and Blaine is the only dialogue in all of Guffman that isn’t improvised; Guest said in DVD commentary that “writing the book for [Red, White and Blaine] was one of the most fun parts.” The cast rehearsed the choreography for the numbers over the course of four days. “It was just the right amount, because when we eventually did the show, it was at the level it should have been: Under-rehearsed, and if you watch closely, there are many things being screwed up,” Guest said.

4. MARTIN SHORT WANTED TO BE IN THE MOVIE.

Fred Willard, who plays Ron Albertson, recalled in Best in Show that Guest had run the idea for Guffman past some of his friends, including Martin Short, who had worked with Guest on Saturday Night Live and The Big Picture. “[He said] that Marty loved the idea [for the movie]. [Short] said, ‘I love it, when do I start?’ and Chris said, ‘No Martin, I want people who aren’t that recognizable.’” Famous faces, Guest reasoned, would be a distraction.

5. CORKY ST. CLAIR WAS BASED ON PEOPLE GUEST KNEW.

In 2010, Guest told Entertainment Weekly that he based Corky—who moves to Blaine after “living in New York, and working there, as an actor, and director and choreographer for 25 years or so,” as the character says—on “a compilation of people I’ve seen or met over the years, some of whom worked in regional theater. The heart of that character is how guileless he is. He has no concept of his lack of talent.” (Though some people thought Guest had to get a terrible haircut to play Corky, it was actually a toupee: “I thought it would be funny if he had a toupee. There was this box of … I’ll loosely call them wigs. It was just the silliest-looking one and clearly didn’t match the sides.”)

6. CHRISTOPHER GUEST CAST PARKER POSEY AFTER A 10-MINUTE CONVERSATION.

When it comes to casting his movies, Guest often relies on people he knows. “The characters are very much tailored for the actors and actresses … who we want for the parts,” Guest said. “You can’t train them. You can do this or you can’t.”

That said, Guest is open to new talent, and relies on informal interviews rather than auditions. “I just talk to people,” he told Back Stage West. “There’s nothing to read and there’s no audition. I can tell pretty fast if they can do it, just by talking to them. I make a big leap of faith and, again, it’s just based on my instinct—something I get from them during a meeting.”

Parker Posey, for example, had never done improv before Guffman, but as Guest told Back Stage West, “I met [her], and about 10 minutes in I thought, Definitely.” Posey was cast as Dairy Queen employee and ingenue Libby Mae Brown.

7. FRED WILLARD TOOK INSPIRATION FOR HIS AND CATHERINE O’HARA’S CHARACTERS FROM AN ACTING COUPLE HE KNEW.

When he was starting out in New York, Willard took acting lessons from a married couple—and he used them as inspiration for Ron and Sheila Albertson, travel agents who have never left Blaine. “I don’t know that they’d ever worked professionally in their life,” Willard said of the couple, “but they had this acting workshop and you could imagine their home life.”

Willard also drew inspiration from a little closer to home. “My aunts were always drinking, and my uncles were always saying, ‘For god’s sake, put that down,’ and she’d pull away from him,” he said in Best in Show. “Our relationship was based on that. She was drunk, and I’d say ‘We need some coffee over here.’” Willard also came up with the character’s track and field background and how his and O’Hara’s characters had met before cameras rolled.

8. GUEST SUPPLIED THE SONGS, BUT THE ACTORS CAME UP WITH THEIR OWN AUDITIONS.

Though Guest gave the actors their audition songs (most of which had to be in the public domain to avoid fees), he didn’t tell them how they should audition, leaving that up to the actors themselves—so the first time he saw the auditions was when cameras rolled. “The first time we ever did it, was performing in front of the camera,” Levy said in DVD commentary. “So in essence it was more of an audition. We didn’t know if the piece we worked up was going to work, whether it was going to be funny, and not only that, we were doing it in front of a camera.”

O’Hara and Willard’s audition was based on “those coffee commercials that were on TV maybe 15 years ago where they made them almost as if they were little scenes,” Guest said in DVD commentary. “I talked to Catherine about that, and I recommended [the song ‘Midnight at the Oasis’], and they came up with this.”

“We had to actually rehearse these auditions,” O’Hara recalled in Reel Canadians. “So me and Fred are actually trying to get laughs for being bad, but at the same time we had to do our choreography. Fred was so serious, he wanted to wear the towels around his neck and I was so nervous.”

Posey, meanwhile, called Guest from New York and told him she had an idea for her audition. “She sent me this two-page, single-space monologue that she wrote, asked if she could do it in addition to singing ‘Teacher’s Pet,’” Guest recalled in DVD commentary. “It’s one of the most extraordinarily bizarre scenes. For a while I had it in the movie instead of the song. I fell in love with how crazy it was.”

9. BOB BALABAN WAS SUPPOSED TO PLAY THE PIANO.

Bob Balaban said in Best in Show that when he got the call to be in Waiting for Guffman, “I had the good sense not to ask too many questions and just say, ‘Anything you want to do, let’s do that.’” But Guest wanted Balaban to play the music director—and to play the piano during the show’s rehearsals. Though he had taken piano lessons and thought he might be able to memorize the music by the shoot, Balaban ended up not feeling comfortable doing it—so instead, Guest had him train with musical director C.J. Vanston to play the conductor, and an assistant played the piano instead.

10. LOOK CLOSELY AND YOU’LL CATCH A GLIMPSE OF BETTER CALL SAUL’S BOB ODENKIRK.

He’s in the hallway during the audition scenes dressed as a vampire. Odenkirk had been cast as the town minister, but the part was cut when he had a scheduling conflict. You can see his audition in the video above.

11. THE MOVIE FILMED IN LOCKHART, TEXAS—AND A LOCAL WAS CAST FOR ONE PROMINENT AUDITION.

Guffman was shot over the course of 29 days in Lockhart, Texas, and the production cast several locals for bit parts. Most of them were cut for time, but one resident did make it into the final film in one of its most memorable auditions: an older gentleman performing both sides of an expletive-filled scene from 1980’s Raging Bull.

Jerry Turman—who had previously appeared on the big screen as the chauffeur in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)—was called in to audition for the role. To prepare, Turman said in Best in Show, “I checked out Raging Bull, and I studied the scene over and over again, and there’s no way that a guy from East Texas is going to do De Niro or Pesci—either one, so I did it in my natural voice and told [Guest] and the casting director at the beginning of it, ‘That’s the only voice I have.’”

He nabbed the part and worked on it for a few days before it was time to film. “I knew it very well, and had to learn both parts because the responses were so strange to me. We don’t talk that way here,” he said. “And sure enough when I got in, he had me do both parts. So I was prepared.” Turman had no problem with the profanity, “but I do have grandkids, and suddenly I’m aware that my grandkids are going to know about this.”

12. GUEST’S DANCING AS CORKY MADE LEVY BREAK CHARACTER.

“There’s a rehearsal scene where Corky tries to teach us that move that we just saw in the apartment,” Levy recalled in DVD commentary. “I was laughing so hard I actually worked my way to the back of the group, fell to my knees, and crawled off the set … When these things are being improvised, you don’t want to ruin something that people are working so hard to create because find you it funny and you laugh instead of the audience laughing. The easiest thing to do is to slink off the set and let the scene continue.” (In a speech at the Austin Film Society in 2010, O’Hara recalled that “Eugene Levy would just leave scenes all the time—just go around a wall and wait” when he thought he’d break character.)

But Levy also made Guest lose it. “The idea of the lazy eye was one of the first things in the writing session that got us both on the floor,” Levy recalled in DVD commentary. “That was a very, very heavy laugh.” Said Guest: “And when you came out in the show … I said, ‘I can’t look at you, when you’re doing this thing. I’m going to look way upstage, if that’s OK.’”

(Look closely in the video above, by the way, and you’ll notice a funny detail about the jeans Guest is wearing. “I put on these jeans,” he recalled in DVD commentary, “I said, ‘These are huge, I could wear them backwards!’ And I am wearing them backwards.”)

13. WILLARD CLUED GUEST IN ON ONE IDEA HE HAD FOR THE CHINESE RESTAURANT SCENE.

Normally, the actors wouldn’t tell Guest any ideas that they had for a scene, but Willard made an exception for the Albertsons’ double date with the Pearls, where Ron reveals that he had penis reduction surgery. “I said to Chris, ‘I have an idea for something I want to do,’” Willard said in Best in Show. “Chris said, ‘I usually don’t like to know what another actor is going to do in an improvised scene, but in your case I have trouble keeping a straight face, so please tell me what you’re about to do.’ So I said, ‘I’d like to get up and drop my trousers to show Eugene my operation.’ What could be more humiliating to someone?”

14. “STOOL BOOM” WAS THE TOUGHEST NUMBER TO PERFORM.

Willard recalled in Best in Show that the hardest number to master was “Stool Boom,” which covers Blaine’s distinction as “The Stool Capital of the World” after President McKinley visited the town and took one of its footstools home with him. “Going in, all of us thought we would just play amateurs trying to dance and sing, and there was some discussion whether or not we’d lip-synch or sing live,” Willard said. “Well, much to our surprise, they brought in a woman, a choreographer, and she put us through paces like we were going to do an Off-Broadway show. We were all taken back with all these steps they had us do.” The cast had to rehearse on Saturday afternoons, and at one point, Levy hurt his foot. He “was taking aspirins and wrapping his foot, so he was in pain during that,” Willard said.

The number wasn’t just painful for the performers—the actors who sat in the audience suffered, too. “It was really tedious,” Theaker said in Best in Show. “I thought if I heard ‘Stool Boom’ one more time, I would just snap like a twig in the wind … I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

According to Willard, “The happiest moment of shooting was when we finished filming that number, and they said, ‘Okay, cut, let’s move on.”’

15. WATCHING GUEST DIRECT IN COSTUME WAS A TRIP.

Michael Hitchcock, who played city councilman Steve Sark, recalled in Best in Show that, “The hardest thing about this was Christopher in Corky-guise giving direction, because he would still be wearing the toupee and those outrageous outfits, and he just looked so funny that it was hard not to be looking all over his body and that silly toupee while he was giving you notes.”

16. THE CAST WATCHED DAILIES TOGETHER AT THEIR HOTEL.

The cast stayed in a hotel in Austin, and, as O’Hara said in 2010, “Every night was movie night … when Chris invited us to watch dailies. You want to go to dailies on a Chris Guest movie, because we shoot 80 hours of improvisation … and then he cuts it down to 86 minutes, so if you don’t go to dailies, you miss 90 percent of the movie.”

17. GUEST HAD TO WHITTLE 58 HOURS OF FOOTAGE DOWN TO 90 MINUTES.

That meant that entire characters and musical numbers had to be cut. Frances Fisher, who played Johnny Savage’s mother, appeared in the trailer (above) but didn’t make it into the movie. Red, White, and Blaine itself ran 40 minutes long, so the numbers “Nothing Ever Happens in Blaine” (which came before “Nothing Ever Happens on Mars”) and “This Bulging River” were cut for time, and a dance sequence and solo were trimmed from “Penny For Your Thoughts.”

Editing the movie took 18 months, and Levy recalled in DVD commentary that at one point, Guest had cut Corky out completely. “In the initial edit, when you cut this thing for the first time, you had literally cut yourself out of the movie. I looked at the first cut, there was no Corky in the movie … You thought your little runs were a little too insane and maybe not grounded, and everybody said ‘Let’s put them all back in, how about that.’”

18. THE ENDING COULD HAVE BEEN DARKER.

In alternate endings, Dr. Pearl ditched his wife and baby to go to Miami to become a performer; the Albertsons supplemented their Hollywood income by selling hand cream; and Corky and Steve lived together in New York. “It started on a close-up of Corky talking,” Hitchcock recalled in Best in Show, and then the camera pulled out to reveal Steve. “We were barbecuing on the roof, and we did a little limbo, so it was a little bizarre, but very funny.” But Levy and Guest ultimately ended up feeling that some of the endings were too dark, and so the epilogue of Guffman sees the Pearls living in Florida; the Albertsons making a go of the acting thing in Hollywood; and Corky back in New York City.

19. THE MOVIE HAS SOME SERIOUS FANS.

Guffman has many famous fans, including Alan Cumming (who told NPR’s All Things Considered that he could watch it “a million times”), Casey Wilson, Kristen Bell, Neil Patrick Harris, and Meryl Streep. But the film has plenty of non-famous fans, too, as Guest found out when he went on tour with McKean and Shearer. “I sang ‘Penny for Your Thoughts,’” Guest told Entertainment Weekly. “People would ask strange things like ‘Where is [Corky] working now?’ I’d say, ‘It was actually a film.’ At one of the performances, a group called the Blaine Players or the Corky St. Clair-something Society showed up. It was about 12 people, and they have meetings … Well, I don’t know exactly what they do. The movie is discussed, I guess. They had T-shirts and a lot of, well, information.” Wonder what Guest would make of the 2014 production of Red, White and Blaine that was put on in Chicago?

20. CORKY MAKES A CAMEO IN ANOTHER ONE OF GUEST’S FILMS.

Posey told The A.V. Club that when Guffman wrapped, “I had never worked in this way that felt so real and felt like family. I loved Corky so much. I was so sad to lose him. I cried in the van on the way home, and he held my hand, and I didn’t think I’d see him again.” So she must have been thrilled when Guest donned the terrible toupee to play Corky in Mascots as the coach of Posey’s character, Cindi Babineaux.

This weekend, the president signed an executive order imposing a temporary ban on citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States. The executive order blocks all refugees for the next 120 days, and all citizens of the aforementioned countries for the next 90. The implementation of the order left scores of refugees and travelers with valid visas stranded in U.S. airports and detained by agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. There was also a great deal of confusion around the fate of green card holders—women and men who live, work, and pay taxes in the United States—who can be drafted into the U.S. military in a time of war, though they aren’t yet full citizens.

The order was the continuation of a campaign promise, when Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

Many foreign-born and first-generation immigrants from countries now temporarily banned from entering the United States have had an undeniable impact on science, culture, and business in America. Here are a few of them, and what they achieved.

1. HAMID AKHAVAN

Before taking a partnership at a private equity firm, Hamid Akhavan was CEO of Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications); CEO of T-Mobile International; COO of Deutsche Telekom; and even worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a telemetry engineer. He’s a graduate of Caltech and MIT. He was born in Tehran, Iran.

2. STEVE JOBS

The Apple co-founder’s story has already passed into American legend. The garage. The business acumen. The obsession with design and detail. Steve Wozniak pioneered the first mass-market personal computer, but Steve Jobs delivered it to the world, and in doing so revolutionized the American personal computer industry. Jobs and Apple are responsible, directly and indirectly, for hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth for the United States and the spawning of countless other industries and enterprises. Jobs is a first generation American: His biological father, Abdul Fattah Jandali, was a Syrian immigrant who met Jobs’s biological mother,Joanne Carol Schieble, in Wisconsin while studying Economics and Political Science. Schieble’s Catholic father wouldn’t allow her to marry Jandali, a Muslim, and the baby was given up for adoption to Paul and Clara Jobs.

3. BOBAK FERDOWSI

Spacecraft don’t magically appear on Mars. It takes teams of hardworking engineers with the audacity to think they can gently land things on tiny dots in the sky, and the brains to actually make it happen. One of those engineers is Bobak Ferdowsi, who spent nine years on the Mars Science Laboratory mission, and who, during the notorious seven minutes of terror (in which the lander needs to decelerate enough to hit the ground safely), was Flight Director for crews and landing operations. Ferdowsi worked also as a science planner for the Cassini–Huygens mission to the Saturn system. The Curiosity team at NASA would have been left one member short, however, had Ferdowsi’s father not immigrated to the United States from Iran.

4. PAULA ABDUL

Harry Abdul was born in Aleppo, Syria—the same Aleppo that has recently received international coverage. He immigrated to Brazil and then to the United States, where he met his wife who gave birth to a daughter, who they named Paula. You’ve probably heard of her: She was a cheerleader for the Lakers, a music sensation in the ’80s with six chart-toppers, and a Grammy and Emmy winner. She would later be a judge on American Idol for eight years. Without her hit songs and choreography (for both herself and stars like Janet Jackson), the music video as we know it would not exist.

5. NAWAL M. NOUR

Harvard Medical School graduate and MacArthur Fellow Nawal M. Nour was born in Sudan, and had she not been allowed to immigrate to the United States, we would have been left without one of the world’s foremost experts in treating women subject to genital mutilation/cutting. As the founder of of the African Women’s Health Center—the only center of its kind that focuses on both physical and emotional needs of women who have undergone FGC—she fights against the practice throughout Africa.

6. F. MURRAY ABRAHAM

No one who has seen Amadeus can forget the mesmerizing performance of F. Murray Abraham, who played Antonio Salieri, avowed enemy of Mozart, who at once adores and despises the more famous composer. The role revitalized classical music in the United States, and Abraham won the 1984 Academy Award for Best Actor. His name has since been associated with everything from Star Trek to Homeland, and Wes Anderson to Arnold Schwarzenegger—and he’s the son of a refugee. His father fled Syria during a famine in the 1920s. “My family had to find a refuge, and America opened its arms to them,” Abraham told The Observer in 2016. “I was hoping that would happen again … I’m hoping that America will regain its sense of compassion.”

The voting process that determines which films and filmmakers become Oscar nominees is a long and complicated undertaking that involves approximately 6000 voting members and hundreds of eligible films, actors, actresses, directors, cinematographers, editors, composers, and more. To even be eligible for a nomination—let alone win that coveted gold statuette—involves a strict procedure governed by specific guidelines, all tied to the illustrious history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself. Here’s a little bit of insight into just how the nominations work, and how they’re chosen.

For all the glitz and glamour the Oscars conjure up, it’s actually an accounting firm that makes it happen. The Oscar voting process is managed by an accounting team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who have handled the duties of mailing out ballots and tabulating the results for more than 80 years. The firm mails the ballots of eligible nominees to members of the Academy in December to reflect the previous eligible year with a due date sometime in January of the next year, then tabulates the votes in a process that takes some 1700 hours.

BECOMING A PART OF THE CLUB

To become one of the approximately 6000 voting members of the Academy, you’d better be in the business. Aside from requiring that each member has “achieved distinction in the motion picture arts and sciences” in their respective fields, candidates must also meet quantitative standards. Writers, producers, and directors must have at least two screen credits to their names, while actors must have credited roles in at least three films. Candidates in the technical branches—like art directors or visual effects supervisors—must be active in their fields for a certain number of years (just how many varies based on the particular area of expertise).

If wannabe Academy members don’t have the necessary credentials, they can also find two or more current members to officially sponsor them; their membership is then either approved or denied by an Academy committee and its Board of Governors. But the easiest route to Academy membership is simply to get nominated: Those who were nominated for or won an Oscar the previous year and are not currently a member are automatically considered.

Once inducted into the Academy, an individual can belong to only one branch. Ben Affleck, for example, can only be an Academy member as an actor and not as a director, and Brad Pitt can only belong to the Academy as an actor and not a producer.

Members vote on potential nominees for standard awards that are given to individuals or collective groups in up to 25 categories, yet members from each field may only vote to determine the nominees in their respective field. Directors only vote for Best Director nominees, editors only vote for Best Editing nominees, cinematographers only vote for Best Cinematography nominees, and actors only vote for nominees in each acting category. Yet all voting members are eligible to vote for potential Best Picture nominees.

THE NOMINATION FORMULA

The Academy has strict rules that determine what people or films can be nominated. In order to submit a film for nomination, a movie’s producer or distributor must sign and submit an Official Screen Credits (OSC) form in early December. That’s not just a full list of credits; you need proof that the film meets certain criteria: In order to be eligible, the film must be over 40 minutes in length; must be publicly screened for paid admission in Los Angeles County (with the name of a particular theater where it screened included); and must screen for a qualifying run of at least seven straight days. In addition, the film cannot have its premiere outside of a theatrical run—screening a film for the first time on television or the Internet, for example, renders the film ineligible.

Then, the ballots are sent out. Voting members are allowed to choose up to five nominees, ranked in order of preference. According to Entertainment Weekly, “The Academy instructs voters to ‘follow their hearts’ because the voting process doesn’t penalize for picking eccentric choices … Also, listing the same person or film twice doesn’t help their cause—in fact, it actually diminishes the chance that the voter’s ballot will be counted at all.”

Once members send back their ballots, PricewaterhouseCoopers begins the process of crunching the numbers. Specifically, they’re looking for the magic number—the amount of votes in each category that automatically turns a potential nominee into an official nominee. To determine the magic number, PwC takes the total number of ballots received for a particular category and divides it by the total possible nominees plus one. An easy example is to take 600 potential ballots for the Best Actor category, divide that by six (five possible nominees plus one), thus making the magic number for the category 100 ballots to become an official nominee.

The counting—which is still done by hand—starts based on a voter’s first choice selection until someone reaches the magic number. Say Ryan Gosling reaches the magic number first for his performance in La La Land: the ballots that named him as a first choice are then all set aside, and there are now four spots left for the Best Actor category. The actor with the fewest first-place votes is automatically knocked out, and those ballots are redistributed based on the voters’ second place choices (though the actors still in the running retain their calculated votes from the first round). The counting continues, and actors or different categories rack up redistributed votes until all five spots are filled. According to Entertainment Weekly, “if a ballot runs out of selections, that ballot is voided and is no longer in play, which is why it’s important for voters to list five different nominees.” (The magic number drops as ballots are voided, by the way.) The process is ballooned for the Best Picture category, which can have up to 10 nominees and no less than five.

Deciding the winners is much simpler: After the nominees are decided, the whole Academy gets to vote on each category. Each member gets one vote per category—though they’re discouraged from voting in categories they don’t fully understand or categories in which they haven’t seen all the nominated films—and the film or actor with the most votes wins. That process takes PwC just three days.

An earlier version of this post appeared in 2014.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Benedict Arnold became one of America’s first military heroes. But within a few short years, patriots were comparing him unfavorably to the man who betrayed Jesus. As a disgusted Benjamin Franklin wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette, “Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions [sic].”

That Arnold defected to the British army in 1780 is common knowledge. But before he switched allegiances, Arnold engineered some crucial victories for the colonist rebels and, by all accounts, led a pretty interesting life. Here are a few things you might not have known about one of America’s most notorious traitors.

1. HE WAS DESCENDED FROM RHODE ISLAND’S FIRST COLONIAL GOVERNOR.

Arnold was born on January 14, 1741 in Norwich, Connecticut—the fifth person in his family to be named Benedict Arnold. Among others, he shared the name with his father and great grandfather, the latter of whom was the first governor of the Rhode Island colony under the 1663 Royal Charter. A wealthy and respected landowner, he would intermittently remain governor until his death. He was laid to rest at a Newport cemetery that now bears his name: Arnold Burying Ground.

2. ARNOLD FOUGHT IN AT LEAST ONE DUEL.

Though he apprenticed at a druggists, and, as an adult, set up a profitable general store in New Haven, Arnold eventually decided to get into the shipping industry, purchasing three merchant vessels by the time he turned 26. He used the boats to trade goods in Canada and the West Indies. (The ventures would later give him a healthy disdain for British tax policies; to get around them, he—like many of his countrymen—ultimately turned to smuggling.) It was while traveling for business that Arnold would get into a disagreement that led to a duel.

On a trip to the Bay of Honduras, Arnold received an invitation to a get-together from a British captain named Croskie. Distracted by an upcoming voyage, Arnold forgot to respond and wound up missing the party. Hoping to smooth things over, Arnold paid Croskie a visit the next morning and apologized. The Brit was having none of it. Irked by Arnold’s apparent rudeness, Croskie called him “a damned Yankee destitute of good manners of those of a gentleman.” Now it was the New Englander’s turn to get offended. His honor impugned, Arnold challenged Croskie to a duel. In the showdown that resulted, the captain fired first—and missed. Then Arnold took aim. With a well-placed shot, he grazed Croskie, whose wound was taken care of by an on-site surgeon. Arnold called Croskie back to the field and proclaimed, “I give you notice, if you miss this time I shall kill you.” Not wishing to risk any further injuries, the British seaman offered an apology. This incident represents the only duel that Arnold is known to have participated in—although some historians believe he may have emerged victorious from one or two others.

3. HE INSPIRED A MINOR HOLIDAY BY COMMANDEERING BRITISH GUNPOWDER.

On April 19, 1775, the battles of Lexington and Concord broke out in eastern Massachusetts, marking the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Three days later, Benedict Arnold led New Haven’s local militia—the Second Company Governor’s Foot Guard—to the city’s powder house, where its supply of emergency gunpowder was stored. He was met at the front door by the local selectmen and demanded the keys. At first they resisted, but it soon became clear that Arnold would be willing to force his way into the building if necessary. “None but the Almighty God shall prevent my marching!” he warned. Faced with the prospect of violence, the selectmen handed over the keys. The Second Company then rounded up all of the available gunpowder and began a march to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they rendezvoused with other rebel troops.

Since 1904, New Haven has been commemorating this chapter in its history with an annual Powder House Day celebration. Every spring, a reenactment of the standoff between Arnold and those selectmen takes place on the steps of City Hall. There, members of the Second Company Governor’s Foot Guard (which still exists) arrive in historically accurate regalia led by a member who plays Arnold himself.

4. HE TOOK PART IN A FAILED ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE CANADA.

Arnold made a name for himself by joining forces with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys to capture Fort Ticonderoga on the New York side of Lake Champlain in May 1775. That fall, George Washington tapped him to lead a military expedition into Quebec. At the time, many Americans believed—falsely—that their Canadian neighbors would be willing to help them overthrow the British. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery and his men were sent to Montreal by way of the Champlain valley. Meanwhile, Arnold (by that time a Colonel) was given command of a second force that was to proceed upwards through Maine before attacking Quebec City.

This campaign wasn’t exactly Arnold’s finest hour. For starters, he’d been given a wildly inaccurate map of the area which led him to underestimate the distance between Maine and his destination. Since the trek took more time than Arnold had bargained for, his force inevitably depleted its food supply along the way. As a result, many of the men resorted to eating dogs, squirrel heads, and even leather. Severe storms and equipment-destroying flash floods did not help matters.

By the time Arnold finally reached Quebec City on November 8, 1775, the force of around 1100 he’d started out with had been whittled down to less than 600. That December, Montgomery and his men—who’d already captured Montreal—met up with Arnold’s demoralized group outside of Quebec City. On the final day of 1775, the Americans attacked. Montgomery was killed in the fray, more than 400 American soldiers were captured, and a splintering musket ball nearly cost Arnold his left leg. Despite this and other setbacks, the invaders from down south remained in Quebec until 10,000 British troops—accompanied by German mercenaries—arrived to force them out in May 1776.

5. AN ARNOLD-LED NAVAL FLEET THWARTED A MAJOR BRITISH ADVANCE.

Having driven Arnold and company from Canada, the Brits decided to go in for the kill. After advancing down to the northern shores of Lake Champlain, General Sir Guy Carleton ordered his men to construct a fleet of new ships from existing parts and available timber. Meanwhile, Arnold and General Horatio Gates set up shop in Skenesborough, located at the lake’s southern end. The Americans got to work building new ships of their own, which would sail alongside four vessels that Arnold and the Green Mountain Boys had captured in 1775. The stage was set for a naval clash that would have profound implications for the rest of the war.

On October 11, 1776, Arnold led the 15-ship American fleet into battle against Carleton’s newly-finished squadron of well-armed war vessels, which was making a beeline for Fort Ticonderoga. Concealing his forces in the strait between Valcour Island and the lake’s western banks, Arnold was able to catch the British off-guard—momentarily, anyway. Despite this sneak attack, Carleton’s superior weaponry took out 11 of Arnold’s ships, killing or capturing 200 rebels. But from a strategic standpoint, the confrontation worked out well for the colonies because it thwarted the General’s primary goal: recapturing Ticonderoga and then funneling Royal troops across the Champlain. The Battle of Valcour Island—along with all the ship-building that had preceded it—kept him busy until winter arrived. By November, the lake had started freezing over, which prompted Carleton to head back to Canada, where he and his men would remain until spring. His temporary retreat gave the Americans some desperately-needed time to prepare for Britain’s next invasion from the north.

In 1777, General John Burgoyne led 8000 troops down the Champlain Valley. At the Battles of Saratoga, the American forces were able to overwhelm them, forcing the General to surrender his army. More than anything else, it was this surprise victory that inspired France to enter the fray on the rebels’ behalf.

According to Alfred T. Mahan, a naval historian, “That the Americans were strong enough to impose the capitulation of Saratoga was due to the invaluable year of delay secured to them in 1776 by their little navy on Lake Champlain, created by the indomitable energy, and handled with the indomitable courage of the traitor, Benedict Arnold.” Arnold was injured at Saratoga when a bullet went through his leg and killed his horse, which then fell on and crushed the injured limb—the same one that had been wounded in Quebec. The Major General spent three months in the hospital; his leg never fully recovered and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

6. HE SIGNED A LOYALTY OATH AT VALLEY FORGE.

In 1778, the Continental Congress made an attempt to weed out any closet loyalists that might be in its midst by forcing the army’s enlisted men and officers to sign standardized loyalty oaths—which they were also expected to read aloud before a witness. Arnold was presented with a copy when he visited Washington in Valley Forge that May. With no reported hesitation, Arnold recited and signed the document; the event was witnessed by Henry Knox, Washington’s future Secretary of War. Today, the signed agreement can be found at the National Archives.

7. ARNOLD SWITCHED SIDES IN PART BECAUSE HE FELT DISRESPECTED.

On June 18, 1778, after a nine-month occupation, British General Sir Henry Clinton and 15,000 troops withdrew from Philadelphia. (By relocating, Clinton hoped he might avoid any French ships that might visit the area.) Philadelphia, back under colonial control, needed a military commander; Washington picked Arnold, who would presumably be grateful for a post that wouldn’t tax his bad leg too much.

Philadelphia was a city known for its radicals, and Arnold was never able to make peace with them. Instead, Arnold found himself gravitating towards the more pro-British upper classes, where he met a charming young woman named Margaret “Peggy” Shippen. Although she was half his age and the daughter of a wealthy judge with strong connections to the British, he married her in 1779. (It was his second marriage; Arnold’s first wife, Margaret Mansfield, died in 1775.) The marriage didn’t make Philadelphia’s new military commander the most popular guy around town. Arnold’s extravagant lifestyle also aroused the suspicions of many, and some suggested that he’d been using his position to fatten his wallet with black market goods. In 1779, he was court-martialed twice, largely on accusations of misusing government resources and illegal buying and selling.

Arnold was cleared of all significant charges, but the experience left him embittered and humiliated. The court-martials were just the latest entries in a long list of perceived slights. Throughout his military career, Arnold felt underappreciated by the Continental Congress, which seemed to constantly ignore him when doling out promotions or praise. On a deeper level, he’d grown increasingly pessimistic about the rebellion’s chances. So before 1779 ended, he used his new wife’s social circle to contact Clinton and the British spy John André. At some point in their correspondence, Arnold let it be known that he’d had enough of the colonies; he was now willing to switch sides—if the price was right.

Arnold started lobbying Washington to grant him command of West Point. On June 29, 1780, the founding father caved and handed over the post. The very next month, Arnold offered to surrender the fort to Clinton for the low price of £20,000 (about $4.7 million in 2017 dollars).

8. WHEN ARNOLD MADE HIS ESCAPE, WASHINGTON WAS EN ROUTE TO HIS HOUSE FOR SOME BREAKFAST.

Arnold arranged to meet with André face-to-face on the night of September 21, 1780. André arrived on the British sloop the HMS Vulture and was rowed to shore. At a location later known as Treason House, Arnold handed André papers that exposed West Point’s weaknesses and the two planned to part ways. But during the meeting, the Vulture had been bombarded by Americans and was forced to move, stranding André in rebel territory. He decided to make his own way to the British-occupied city of White Plains, New York, but along the way he was seized by American militia men who discovered the West Point plans tucked away in his shoe.

André was brought before Lieutenant Colonel John Jameson. Following the dictates of protocol, Jameson sent a letter about this strange man who’d been found with incriminating documents to … Benedict Arnold. Meanwhile, the documents themselves were mailed to George Washington.

In an amazing coincidence, Washington had arranged to have breakfast at Arnold’s residence in southern New York on September 25, 1780. That very same morning, mere hours before Washington arrived, the turncoat received Jameson’s letter. In a frenzied panic, he dashed out of the house, found the Vulture, and hopped aboard. When Washington learned what had transpired, the normally reserved general shouted, “Arnold has betrayed us! Whom can we trust now?”

9. HE SAW PLENTY OF ACTION AS A BRITISH GENERAL.

Arnold’s involvement with the Revolutionary War didn’t end when he embarked on the Vulture. The British made him a brigadier general, and he captured Richmond, Virginia with 1600 loyalist troops on January 5, 1781. Amidst the carnage, Virginia’s then-governor—Thomas Jefferson—staged a massive evacuation. Arnold wrote to the exiled Sage of Monticello, offering to spare the city if the governor agreed to surrender its entire supply of tobacco. When Jefferson refused, the general’s men burned a number of buildings and looted 42 vessels’ worth of stolen goods.

Later that year, Arnold laid siege to his own home colony. Recognizing New London, Connecticut as a refuge for privateers—who routinely plundered British merchant ships—Arnold ordered his assembled force of British and Hessian soldiers to put over 140 of its buildings to the torch, along with numerous ships. For the rest of the country, this devastating assault became a rallying cry. At the battle of Yorktown, the Marquis de Lafayette fired up his men by telling them “Remember New London.”

But if Arnold thought these raids would earn him Great Britain’s respect or acclaim, he was sorely mistaken. When the war ended, this Connecticut Yankee-turned-redcoat general moved to London with his second wife and their children. To his dismay, Arnold learned that his adopted country distrusted him almost as much as his homeland now did. Although Britain continued to recognize him as a general, the U.K. repeatedly declined to give him any sort of major role in the military. Desperate for work, Arnold then attempted to join the British East India Company only to strike out yet again—a high-ranking employee turned him away by saying, “Although I am satisfied with the purity of your conduct, [most people] do not think so.”

10. HE’S BURIED NEXT TO A FISH TANK IN ENGLAND.

Arnold died on June 14, 1801. His body was laid to rest inside a crypt in the basement of St. Mary’s Church, Battersea in London, where Arnold and his family had been parishioners; Margaret and their daughter, Sophia, would also eventually be interred there. Strange as it may sound, their tomb is embedded in the wall of a Sunday School classroom. Right next to a whimsical goldfish tank, you can read the protruding headstone, which has an inscription that reads: “The Two Nations Whom he Served In Turn in the Years of their Enmity Have United in Enduring Friendship.”

The headstone was financed by the late Bill Stanley, a former state senator and proud native of Norwich, Connecticut who defended Arnold throughout his life. “He saved America before he betrayed it,” Stanley said. Heartbroken by the underwhelming elegy that for many years marked the general’s final resting place, Stanley personally spent $15,000 on the handsome new grave marker that sits there. When this was completed in 2004, the ex-state senator flew out to London with his immediate family and more than two dozen members of the Norwich Historical Society to watch the installation.

Many of us couldn’t imagine enduring these chilly winter months without down jackets—they keep us warm without weighing a ton. The outerwear was first patented in the U.S. in 1940 by Eddie Bauer; it would become his most iconic and successful product and change the nature of his business, taking it from a local storefront to a nationally known brand. But he might not have come up with the idea if not for a scary near-death experience that occurred 80 years ago this month.

The Little Shop That Could

Bauer was just 21 when he started his business in 1920, renting 15 square feet of space inside another man’s gun shop in downtown Seattle and stringing tennis rackets. According to company historian Colin Berg, Eddie Bauer’s Tennis Shop operated for about a year—just enough time for Bauer to save enough money to open his own storefront.

Bauer’s Sports Shop was a hunting, fishing, and sporting goods store, but Bauer was more than just a merchandiser, he was an outdoorsman, too, and developed gear based on his own needs and the needs of his clients. “If I didn’t trust the equipment, it wasn’t stocked,” he once said. “If I needed equipment that wasn’t available elsewhere, I developed it myself.” If you’ve ever played badminton, for example, you’ve used the shuttlecock Bauer developed and patented.

Bauer backed everything in his shop with a lifetime guarantee—a rare thing in the ‘20s, and something Bauer called “my greatest contribution to the consumer … that guarantee was part of what I sold”—and he only hired people who, like him, were adept at outdoor pursuits. “People knew that if something was in Eddie Bauer’s store, we had personally put it to a rugged test,” he said. His small shop was successful, with a reputation not just for quality goods but also a knowledgeable staff.

For someone who had a passion for hunting and fishing, owning an outfitting shop was the best thing ever: “My business was also my hobby,” Bauer said. “It was like one long vacation. I loved every bit of it.”

A Fateful Trip

The shop might have stayed a small but successful business if not for a fishing trip Bauer took with his friend Red Carlson, a trapper from Alaska, in January 1935. The pair headed to a canyon in the Olympic Peninsula, where they fished for steelhead. That cold, snowy January day, their haul was 100 pounds, and they stripped off their heavy wool mackinaw jackets, climbing out of the canyon in just their wool shirts and long underwear.

The car was a mile away, and the 200- to 300-foot climb out of the river canyon was steep. As they hiked, Bauer—wet from his bag of fish and sweating profusely—began to fall behind his friend. When he reached the top of the canyon, he stopped and leaned against a tree to rest. “He was literally falling asleep on his feet, nodding off,” Berg says. “All that moisture froze in the cold and the snow, and he was getting hypothermic. He was in a bad way.”

Thankfully, Bauer was carrying a revolver. He pulled it out and fired two shots to alert his friend, who came back to get him and helped him to the car. If Bauer had been by himself, he might not have survived. But despite the scary experience, “he wasn’t about to give up winter fishing or hunting,” Berg says. “He realized what he needed was a really breathable, warm jacket that he wouldn’t have to take off when he was working strenuously in the cold.”

Designing with Down

Inspiration struck when Bauer remembered the stories his Uncle Lesser had told him as a kid about his time in the Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria, before he had emigrated to the United States. Russian officers, Lesser had told Bauer, wore feather-stuffed coats to keep warm in the bitter, bitter cold.  And now, Bauer would create a jacket that would allow American outdoorsmen to do the same.

Bauer had worked with feather merchants making flies for his store, so he knew where to get high quality goose down. “He made a pattern for a jacket that he thought would fit him,” Berg says, “and had a local seamstress assemble the prototype.” The resulting jacket was made of high-thread count cotton (which kept the down from escaping) with diamond quilting in the torso (which kept the down in place) and alpaca-lined sleeves.

Bauer took his new outerwear—which he called the Blizzard-Proof Jacket—to his friend Ome Daiber, “a well-known climber at the time, who had also developed some climbing gear,” Berg says. “As a mountaineer himself, he immediately knew the importance and value of it.” Daiber, who had a small manufacturing operation, created the first generation of the jackets for Bauer, who continued to tinker with the design. Then, in 1936, he released a new version of the jacket—he called it the Skyliner—and began to advertise in Field & Stream, American Rifleman, and other hunting and fishing magazines. “He didn’t have a catalog at that point,” Berg says, “so sales happened through mail order and in his shop.”

The jacket proved to be a hit right away, and in 1939, Bauer filed for a patent on his jacket, which he received in 1940. Interestingly, though, the patent didn’t mention down feathers at all. “It could have been insulated with anything as far as the patent was concerned,” Berg says. In fact, none of Bauer’s 11 patents relating to down jackets actually mention down: “They all happened to be insulated with goose down, but it was really the visual quilting pattern that was the patented element.”

Then, in 1942, Bauer made another down jacket that would change his business: the first down-insulated flight jacket of the U.S. Air Force, called the B-9. The jacket—along with the accompanying pants—could keep aviators warm for up to 3 hours at -70 degrees F, and allow them to float with 25 pounds of gear for up to 24 hours. The jacket’s label read “Eddie Bauer, Seattle, U.S.A.,” and when aviators returned home in 1945, they wrote letters asking where they could get more down gear. The servicemen became the company’s core customer base when it launched the catalog that same year.

The Skyliner was a key part of his collection from 1936 to 1986 (and was offered again in 1995, 2003, and 2010), and was included in the business’s inaugural 1945 catalog. Testimonials printed in the catalog heaped praise on the product: “I was so pleased with the down Blizzard Proof Jacket, I am ordering three more as presents for my duck hunting friends,” one NYC man wrote. “My husband thinks his down jacket is the best thing that was ever made,” wrote a New Hampshire wife. And, said Mrs. L.E. from Kodiak, Alaska, “I wear it everywhere out of doors. I didn’t buy any woolen underwear, but with this jacket on I certainly don’t need any.” Other satisfied customers say the jacket is “tops” and “worth its weight in gold.”

Lighter Than a Feather

Jackets weren’t the only thing Bauer created with down: In the 1940s, he made comforters, pillows, a “sleeping robe,” and a sleeping bag that was was guaranteed to keep people warm down to temps of -60 degrees F. And though one of Bauer’s early slogans was “Lighter than a feather, warmer than 10 sweaters,” because he wanted to make things as warm as possible, he packed in a lot of down. “The sleeping bag weighed 18 pounds,” Berg says. “The marketing tagline was ‘Built for service you’ll never require.’ But you’d need a dogsled to carry it around.” This was a pattern; the jacket Bauer designed for the 1963 American ascent of Mount Everest had so much down in it that it was rated to -85 degrees F. “I talked to Tim Hornbein from the expedition, and he said, ‘It was in our packs most of the time,’” Berg says. “They couldn’t climb in it, it was so warm.” 

Over the years, the designs of Bauer’s down jackets have changed, of course, as new materials became available: The company began blending cotton with nylon in the 1950s, and started using Ripstop nylon in 1958. “It was a little bit like pulling teeth to get Eddie to go that route, because he was afraid that lighter fabric wouldn’t stand up to the durability that was so important to him,” Berg says. (After all, this is a guy who believed that “there can be no compromise of quality when lives depend on … performance.”) His original down jacket, meanwhile, probably wouldn’t look out of place in modern retail stores. “Some of the jackets from the ‘70s and ‘80s seem much more dated, either because of the cut or the color,” Berg says. “But lots of people say you could just take the original off of the form and wear it today.”

How the master of horror got his first big break—and how his wife inspired him.

It was 1973, and Stephen King’s pockets were empty. He lived in a doublewide trailer and drove a rust-bucket Buick held together with baling wire and duct tape. King’s wife, Tabby, worked second-shift at Dunkin’ Donuts while he taught English at Hampden Academy, a private high school in eastern Maine. To scrape by, King worked summers at an industrial laundry and moonlighted as a janitor and gas pump attendant. With a toddler and a newborn to feed, money—and time to write fiction—were hard to come by.

King couldn’t even afford his own typewriter; he had to use Tabby’s Olivetti from college. She set up a makeshift desk in the laundry room, fitting it snugly between the washing machine and the dryer. Each evening, while Tabby changed diapers and cooked dinner, King ignored the ungraded papers in his briefcase and locked himself in the laundry room to write.

The early returns weren’t promising. King mailed his short stories to men’s magazines like Playboy, Cavalier, and Penthouse. When he was lucky, every once in a while, a small check would turn up in the mailbox. It was just enough money to keep the King family off of welfare.

One day, the head of Hampden’s English department gave King an offer he couldn’t refuse. The debate club needed a new faculty advisor, and the job was his for the taking. It would pay an extra $300 per year—not much, but enough to cover the family’s grocery bill for 10 weeks.

The lure of extra income enticed King, and when he came home, he thought Tabby would share his enthusiasm about the news. But she wasn’t so convinced. “Will you have time to write?” she asked.

“Not much,” King said. 

Tabby told him, “Well, then you can’t take it.”

So King turned down the job. It was a good call. Within a year, he would write his way out of that trailer with a bestseller called Carrie. 

A Pair of Writers

There’s a running joke at the King dinner table that Stephen married Tabby only because she had a typewriter.

“That’s only partly true,” King laughed in 2003. “I married her because I loved her and because we got on as well out of bed as in it. The typewriter was a factor, though.”

Growing up, neither of them had much. When King was two, his father went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never came back, leaving his mother to raise two boys on her own. Meanwhile, Tabby was one of eight children from a modest Catholic family. The two met at the University of Maine in the ’60s, fell in love while attending each other’s poetry readings, and married soon after graduation. King had to borrow a suit, tie, and shoes for the wedding.

Both of them dreamed of making it someday as writers, but during their first year together, they amassed a collection of rejections instead. Tabby wrote the first book of their marriage, a set of poetry titled Grimier, that publishers liked but not quite enough to publish. Stephen’s luck was no better. He penned three novels that barely made it out of his desk drawer. (Those manuscripts—Rage, The Long Walk, and Blaze—were published years later.)

King flourished in the nudie mag market, though. Most of his stories were buried behind centerfolds in Cavalier, a magazine that had also featured Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Roald Dahl. Science fiction and horror, for some reason, complemented two-page spreads of buxom blondes, which gained King a meager reputation as a men’s writer and sharp criticism from readers.  “You write all those macho things,” one reader told him. “But you can’t write about women. You’re scared of women.”

King took that as a challenge. The fire for Carrie was lit. 

Creating Carrie

Carrie is the story of Carrie White, a homely highschooler who can control objects with her mind. One day during gym class, she starts having her first period. Long sheltered by an oppressively religious mother, Carrie doesn’t know what’s happening to her—she thinks she’s bleeding to death. Bullies taunt and tease Carrie, but the newfound surge of hormones gives her telekinetic powers, and she uses them to exact revenge on the kids who make her life hell. 

The idea for the novel came to King in a daydream. He had remembered an article about telekinesis in LIFE magazine, which said that if the power existed, it was strongest in adolescent girls. King’s background as a high school janitor also flashed to mind, specifically the day when he had to clean rust stains in the girls’ showers. He had never been in a girls’ bathroom before, and seeing tampon dispensers on the wall was like visiting a distant planet.

The two memories collided. King knew it could make a decent short story for Cavalier. Playboy was a possibility, too. Hef’s magazine paid better, and the Buick needed a new transmission.

King modeled Carrie White after two of the loneliest girls he remembered from high school. One was a timid epileptic with a voice that always gurgled with phlegm. Her fundamentalist mother kept a life-size crucifix in the living room, and it was clear to King that the thought of it followed her down the halls. The second girl was a loner. She wore the same outfit every day, which drew cruel taunts.

By the time King wrote Carrie, both of those girls were dead. The first died alone after a seizure. The second suffered from postpartum depression and, one day, aimed a rifle at her stomach and pulled the trigger. “Very rarely in my career have I explored more distasteful territory,” King wrote, reflecting on how both of them were treated. 

These tragedies made Carrie all the more difficult to write. When King started, he typed three single-spaced pages, crumpled them up in anger, and dumped them in the trashcan. He was disappointed in himself. His critics were right—he couldn’t write from a woman’s perspective. The whole story disgusted him, too. Carrie White was an annoying, ready-made victim. Worse yet, the plot was already moving too slowly, which meant the finished product would be too long for any magazine.

“I couldn’t see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn’t like and wouldn’t be able to sell,” King wrote in his memoir On Writing. “So I threw it away … After all, who wanted to read a book about a poor girl with menstrual problems?”

The next day, Tabby went to empty the trash in the laundry room and found three crinkled balls of paper. She reached in, brushed off a coat of cigarette ashes, and unwrinkled the pages. When King came home from work, she still had them.

“You’ve got something here,” she said. “I really think you do.” Over the next few weeks, Tabby guided her husband through the world of women, giving tips on how to mold the characters and the famous shower scene. Nine months later, King had polished off the final draft.

Thirty publishers rejected it.

Published at Last 

It was fifth period at Hampden Academy, and just as he did during every other fifth period, King was groggily grading papers in the teacher’s lounge, thinking about how nice it would be to take a nap. A voice boomed over the lounge PA system. It was the office secretary. 

“Stephen King, are you there? Stephen King?” King reached for the intercom and said he was there. “Please come to the office,” she said. “You have a phone call. It’s your wife.”

King raced to the office. Tabby never called him at work. Tabby never called him anywhere—they didn’t have a telephone. They had removed it to save money. To make a call, Tabby would have had to dress up the kids, drag them to the neighbors’ house, and call from there. That kind of hassle meant something either terrible or amazing had happened. When King picked up the phone, both he and Tabby were out of breath. She told him that the editor at Doubleday Publishing, Bill Thompson, had sent a telegram:  

“CONGRATULATIONS. CARRIE OFFICIALLY A DOUBLEDAY BOOK. IS $2500 ADVANCE OKAY? THE FUTURE LIES AHEAD. LOVE, BILL.”

King had broken through. The $2500 advance wasn’t huge—not enough to quit teaching and pursue writing full time—but it was the most money he had ever made from writing. King used the advance to buy a shiny Ford Pinto and moved his family out of the trailer and into a dumpy four-room apartment in Bangor, Maine. They suddenly had money for groceries. They even could afford a telephone.

King hoped that fat royalty checks would keep replenishing his bank account, but Carrie only sold 13,000 copies as a hardback, tepid sales that convinced him to grudgingly sign a new teaching contract for the 1974 school year. He started a new novel called The House on Value Street, and, by Mother’s Day, he figured Carrie had run its course. It was the last thing on his mind. 

One phone call changed all that. It was Bill Thompson again. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

King was home alone, standing in the doorway between his kitchen and living room. “Do I need to?” he said.

“You might,” Thompson said. “The paperback rights to Carrie went to Signet Books for $400,000 … 200K of it’s yours. Congratulations, Stephen.”

King’s legs wobbled and gave out. He sat on the floor, shaking with excitement from winning the literary lottery—and there was no one home to share the news with. Tabby had taken both kids to their grandmother’s house. To celebrate, he felt compelled to buy Tabby a Mother’s Day present. He wanted to buy her something luxurious, something unforgettable. King raced to downtown Bangor. It was Sunday and every shop was closed except for a drug store. So he bought Tabby the best thing he could find—a hairdryer. 

King quit teaching and Tabby stopped peddling pastries. And three years later, King bought Tabby another present. He visited swanky Manhattan jewelry store Cartier and bought her an engagement ring. They had been married for six years.

A Bonafide Hit

Carrie sold over 1 million copies in its first year as a paperback despite a mixed critical response. The New York Times was impressed, considering it was a first novel, while Library Journal called it “terribly overdone.” Falling somewhere in the middle, the critic at the Wilson Library Journal said, “It’s pure trash, but I loved it.” Forty years later, even King is critical of his debut. “It reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader,” he later said. “Tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom.”

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The book-buying public was more enthusiastic—Carrie was a hit. The novel struck a sympathetic chord with teens and adults who knew what it was like to be an outsider. In 1975, it was adapted into a profitable feature film, which sparked a sequel a decade later and a remake in 2013. The story has also been adapted for TV and the stage (although the 1988 Broadway production was a forgettable flop). 

King made Carrie, and Carrie made King. Now the 19th best-selling author of all time, King won the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and was invited to speak at the National Book Awards. When he spoke, he didn’t talk about writing or success or money. He talked about the woman who rescued Carrie from the trash and insisted he keep going—Tabby. 

“There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world,” King said at the ceremony. “In short, there’s a time when things can go either way. That vulnerable time for me came during 1971 to 1973. If my wife had suggested to me even with love and kindness and gentleness … that the time had come to put my dreams away and support my family, I would have done that with no complaint.”

But the thought never crossed her mind. And if you open any edition of Carrie, you’ll read the same dedication: “This is for Tabby, who got me into it—and then bailed me out of it.” 

When Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at age 21, doctors thought he’d only survive a few more years. But the theoretical physicist defied the odds: Today is Hawking’s 75th birthday. Here are 11 quotes from the director of research and founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time. 

1. ON HIS SCHOOLING

“At school, I was never more than about halfway up the class. It was a very bright class. My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better. When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don’t know if this bet was ever settled, and if so, which way it was decided.”

— From the lecture “My Brief History,” 2010

2. ON ALIEN LIFE

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

— From Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, 2010

3. ON THE EUREKA MOMENT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

“I wouldn’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.”

— From a lecture at Arizona State University, April 2011

Continue reading “11 Incredible Stephen Hawking Quotes”

Bartenders began putting cocktail names and recipes to paper centuries ago. As they soon discovered, many were using different names for the same recipes or the same name for drinks with much different ingredients. The 1913 Bartenders’ Manual, by the Bartenders Association of America, attempted to clear up some of the overlap. “In compiling this book our subject is to come as near as possible to a uniformity of names and methods of mixing and serving drinks with the view of establishing a standard to work from,” the book begins. “There is no actual code universal, either in name or formulas for mixing drinks … Our endeavor is to assemble the various names and methods of concoctions so as to prevent confusion.”

In general, the names that stuck around were the ones that were the easiest to remember. So when bartenders came up with new drinks, they’d try to make theirs memorable by giving them either frank, informative names or totally bizarre ones that no one else would possibly come up with.

Today, bartenders still use this principle when naming their original craft cocktails. Molly Wellmann, who is owner of Japp’s bar in Cincinnati, considers how her new cocktail names will be received in the future. “I believe every craft cocktail will be a classic one day,” she says. “When you make your own cocktail, you should always have a good story behind the name because 100 years from now, there’s going to be a bartender wanting to know about this one drink.”

Flipping through cocktail books from 100 to 200 years ago, it’s obvious that many bartenders did not have the same foresight. In our search through 50 cocktail books that were published between the 1820s and 1940s, we found quite a few cocktails with names that we’re glad were lost to history. (Many of these titles are available to peruse at the EUVS Digital Collection, an online library of bartending books.)

Whether it’s because tastes have changed or because the words carry completely different connotations today, the following 10 cocktails all have one thing in common: Judging by their names alone, you wouldn’t want to put them anywhere near your mouth.

1. URANIUM FIZZ

This recipe—which called for making a regular gin fizz with the addition of ginger ale—comes from Bill Kelly’s 1946 book The Roving Bartender.

2. AMMONIA AND SELTZER

A medicinal hangover cure conceived in George J. Kappeler’s 1895 book Modern American Drinks: How to Mix and Serve All Kinds of Cups and Drinks, this formula calls for mixing seltzer or plain water with the aromatic ammonia spirit (not the kitchen cleaner!), which was and still is used to prevent fainting and gastric acid.

3. GRIT COCKTAIL

A tiny drink composed of vermouth and whiskey and found in Drinks (1920) by Jacques Straub, this concoction goes down much smoother than you’d imagine. 

4. BOSOM CARESSER

Edward Spencer’s very specific recipe for fondling-in-a-glass, detailed in The Flowing Bowl (1903), consists of sherry, brandy, an egg yolk, sugar, and two grains of cayenne pepper.

5. STOMACH ESSENCE

The Flowing Bowl also contains the recipe for this tummy-clearing cocktail, which is infused with two exotic ingredients: cortex China (a bitter Chinese herb used for releasing toxins) and flores Cassia or cinnamon, which increases blood flow.

6. BEEF TEA

This straightforward drink from Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual (1900) is made from beef extract, or highly concentrated beef stock, and hot water. Other versions of this recipe call for chilled water or even raw beef. You can add sherry or brandy to the glass for an upcharge. 

7. MONKEY GLAND

This tropical recipe contains gin, orange juice, absinthe and grenadine and can be found in Café Royal Cocktail Book Coronation Edition (1937) by William J. Tarling.

8. HOT INVALID PUNCH

Made for invalids like the hungover, not of them, this hearty punch in Louis’ Mixed Drinks (1906) by Jacques Louis Muckensturm contains chicken consomme, sherry, and poached eggs. 

9. ASSES’ MILK

Probably named after the donkey instead of the body part, this cocktail in Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (1872) by William Terrington combines aerated lemonade with half a gill (or about 2 ounces) of rum. The gill was a unit of measurement and physical vessel that was used in 14^th Century England like a modern-day jigger.

10. DIARRHEA MIXTURE

There is no way to know if this ginger-peppermint-brandy cocktail, found in Drinks (1920), was meant to resemble its namesake in the glass or cause it after you consumed it. Either way, bottom’s up!

Pretend you’re the director of a movie. You want to indicate to the audience that something important is happening. Maybe your hero is facing off against his or her mortal enemy for the first time, or is reuniting with a long lost love after many years. Naturally, there are a number of cinematography techniques at your disposal, but should you choose slow motion, you’d be in good company; it’s a favorite technique of filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, and Wes Anderson.

Of course, time isn’t literally slowing down for your characters—it just feels that way for the audience. There are a few different techniques that a director or cinematographer can use to accomplish slow motion, each of which probably strays very far from what August Musger, the original inventor of the effect, could have imagined.

A PRIEST, PHYSICIST, AND MOVIE LOVER

August Musger was born in 1868 in Eisenerz, an old mining town in Styria, Austria. A gifted student throughout his childhood, he graduated from the Faculty of Theology and was ordained in 1890, after which he spent two years serving as a Kaplan, or a priest’s assistant. He began studying mathematics, physics, and drawing in Graz during this time, eventually becoming a teacher of these subjects in 1899. When he wasn’t teaching, he was likely taking in a film.

In the early 1900s, motion pictures were a relatively new art form. Not much time had passed since one of the world’s first movies, the Lumière brothers’s L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896), allegedly sent audiences screaming out of the theater, but motion pictures were becoming a popular pastime. The first “nickelodeon” opened on June 19, 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, allowing scores of people access to the cinema for only five cents a pop. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a movie theater.

Still, the technology was primitive. Projectors used intermittent motion, in which a mechanism held a frame of the film in place for a split second before the film advanced. The hand-cranked machines had shutters that blocked light and caused flashes of darkness between frames, which was necessary to trick the eye and brain into seeing motion. If all was operating smoothly, and the cranking was moving at a consistent rate of around 16 to 24 frames per second, the flashes would be imperceptible to the human eye—but they became apparent when the film was moving slowly. Because the projectors were cranked by hand, the frame rate was highly variable, causing movies to flicker and jerk. (That’s one theory for why we call movies “flicks.”)

CONTINUOUS MOTION

Musger thought he could fix the flickering by creating continuous motion—or having the film move with the shutter open—within a projector. It was easier said than done. Just playing film without the shutter made the projected image blur, so he developed a method of “optical compensation” for the movement of the film. To do this, Musger divided a dark chamber into two areas: In one was a conical lens, a wheel of mirrors, and a rotatable prism; in the other were the rollers that, along with the wall, guided the film strip.

During projection, a light source placed outside the apparatus shone into an opening (n) designed to allow light to enter. The light illuminated a frame of film (e) that was exposed by a gap (d) in the wall along which it ran, projecting that image onto a mirror on the rotating mirror wheel (c). The image bounced off the mirrored wheel onto an angled mirror (located at u) that projected it through a lens (b) and onto the surface where the film was being viewed. Rather than using a shutter to block the light in between frames of film, as in intermittent motion, Musger’s apparatus fed the film continuously, using wheels that rotated at the same speed as the mirror wheel. The mirrors from the wheel caught the images from the film and threw them onto the angled mirrors, which projected them onto the viewing surface. Each mirror on the wheel reflected one image, which was replaced by the next image as the mirror rotated and the film progressed. The angled mirrors worked to flip the top and bottom portions of an image when one frame was replacing another, so that the picture always remained right-side up to the viewers.

Musger patented his device—which could also shoot film—in 1904 and demonstrated its projection capabilities for the first time in 1907 in Graz (where Musger lived) on a projector made by K. Löffler. After the demonstration, Leopold Pfaundler, a professor and a member of the Board of the Physical Institute, wrote that Musger’s device was “theoretically correct and has also proven to be useful in the samples taken at the physical Institute. Any extant imperfections, which exist with the first model, will be easily remedied by small modifications.”

Musger’s complicated projector did create a small improvement in the flickering, but it had an unintended side effect: By shooting at 32 frames per second—twice the normal speed—during recording and playing it back at a regular frame rate, he could create slow motion.

The inventor didn’t see this as a selling point for his apparatus, though, and didn’t seem aware that he had created something unusual; he mentioned his device’s slow motion capabilities only in passing in the patent, noting that “all movements are continuous and without impacts, that no moment of time is lost for the recording, and that the number of recordings possible in a second becomes a significant one, which may be particularly advantageous for scientific purposes.”

SLOW MOTION MAKES ITS WAY TO THE MASSES

With a public demonstration and a favorable review under his belt, Musger went about improving his invention. In 1907, he submitted a patent on the improvements. At the same time, he founded Prof. Musger Kinetoscope GmbH in Berlin to build and sell his projector, expanding the business to Ulm in 1908.

Sadly, Musger wouldn’t get far in his endeavor. His projector was plagued by technical difficulties, and though he had conversations with Zeiss, Messter’s Projection, and Steinheil & Sohne, he couldn’t convince any of them to invest in his technology. Financially ruined, Musger couldn’t pay the fees to keep his patents and lost them in 1912.

Waiting in the wings was Hans Lehmann, a technician at Ernemann and a man to whom Musger had been writing about his apparatus for a year. Lehmann took Musger’s idea and improved upon it, creating a slow motion system that he presented to the public in 1914. 

The Zeitlupe (from the German words for time and magnifying glass), as he dubbed it, was then sold by his employer, the Ernemann company, specifically as a slow motion recorder and player. Like Musger, Lehmann thought slow motion was a means to observe the previously unobservable—more for scientists than for cinematography. In a 1916 article for the German periodical Die Umschau, Lehmann recommended the technology to sculptors, military trainers, and gymnasts, so that they could further their craft by studying, in slow motion, movements typically too fast for the naked eye.

THE SLOW MOTION REVOLUTION BEGINS—WITHOUT MUSGER

Lehmann never publicly acknowledged that his device was based on Musger’s work, though he did admit it privately to the priest in a 1916 letter. “I would be delighted to be able to show you the progress [of technology] based on your invention,” Lehmann wrote, noting that his device “might be called ‘Zeitmikroscop’ (because it increases the temporal length of rapid movements that the eye can not follow at the natural speed).” Musger never profited financially from the device Ernemann sold.

Despite his failures, Musger wasn’t yet ready to give up on cinematographic inventions. In 1916, he filed another patent application in Austria and Germany for “Kinematograph mit optischem Ausgleich der Bildwanderung,” or “Cinematograph with optical compensation of the image migration.” The layout of the device differed significantly from his first cinematograph, and had two rotating mirror wheels. But Europe was in the midst of World War I, and the poor economic situation prevented Musger from building the new device. Eventually, the idea of continuous film would fall by the wayside as well, when camera operators realized that by “overcranking” or cranking the camera at a faster-than-normal speed, they could capture footage that was good enough for their purposes.

Musger passed away on October 30, 1929 in the Prince-Bishop’s minor seminary in Graz, without seeing the effect his invention would have on the film world. But if he were alive today, he’d probably be happy that slow motion is one of the most widely used cinematography techniques.

Additional reporting by Jocelyn Sears.

Human ingenuity knows no bounds—as these patents show.

1. REWARD CANDY DISPENSER

Patent: US 5823386 A
Published: 10/20/1998

As any multitasker knows, it can feel impossible to sit at a computer and focus on work that needs to get done. What if something happens on Facebook? How can you focus until you know who’s on the Wikipedia page of left-handed historical figures? To force concentration, many resort to draconian measures like limiting Internet use or (gasp!) going offline altogether. But the inventors of this tool tap into what behavioral scientists and kindergarten motivational speakers have long known: Treats get results.

The Reward Candy Dispenser for Personal Computers is positive reinforcement for desk jockeys. An optical sensor attaches to your screen to keep an eye on what you’re doing. When you achieve your target (say, sending that email or reading all the way through a long news story), a signal is sent to a container on your desk, and, as with a gumball machine, a single piece of candy is released into a chute. Want another? Get more work done! Lab-rat life never tasted so good.

2. LEAF GATHERING TROUSERS

Patent: US 6604245 B1
Published: 8/12/2003

With fall comes the ultimate scourge of lawn work: raking leaves. All of those gorgeous, oxygen-giving trees in your yard become instruments of torture, fiendishly littering their leafy bounty all over the lawn and sidewalk.

According to the inventor of the leaf pants, the leaves aren’t the problem. It’s the rake—that pronged horticultural nightmare that strains backs, blisters hands, and poses a real threat if left lying in tall grass. But a leaf blower isn’t the answer either. Instead, the inventor insists, what humanity needs is a method that is “compatible with the natural body movement of a person.”

Enter leaf chaps, a pair of zip-on flexible tubes that slip over pant legs with a net fastened between the two so you can gather leaves as you stroll. The net corrals the leaves and collects them in front of you, so with just a few extra steps, you’re forming piles that are easily picked up later. Not merely convenient, the chaps also promise to make you more productive. Rather than struggle with bulky tools, do something you’d be doing anyway (walking around your lawn), while getting work done! Sure, that walk is more like a waddle, but that’s the price you pay for innovation.

3. THE DAD SADDLE (AKA, THE DADDLE)

Patent: US 6241136 B1
Published: 6/5/2001

Attention, parents: Are your kids bored with the same old piggyback routine? Are you sick of getting sticky fingers in your hair every time you let them hitch a ride? Try the Dad Saddle. Paul R. Harriss, the inventor of this parental paraphernalia, noticed that while contraptions—from ergonomic backpacks to simple scarves—exist to help parents carry their babies, once the kids grow up, you’re forced to go bareback. Suffer no more! The Dad Saddle’s sturdy harness fastens around the waist and sports two pint-size stirrups for a child’s feet, “virtually eliminating the possibility of back strain.” Adjust the height of the stirrups so your little cowboy or cowgirl can hold steady. Then remind them to tip their hats before they tackle the open range.

4. THE CRISPY CEREAL SERVER

Patent: US 4986433 A
Published: 1/22/1991

From the moment John Harvey Kellogg created the first cornflake, people have been trying to solve the problem of soggy cereal. Turn your back on it for a moment too long, and even the crispiest flakes become a bowl of mush. Cereal makers can treat their products to keep them from absorbing milk, but that only delays the inevitable. But what if the solution were in the bowl itself? The ingenious Crispy Cereal Serving Piece and Method keeps your Froot Loops fresh until the very last minute, guaranteeing “the crispness of the cereal throughout even the most leisurely meal.” A bowl on the table holds just the right amount of milk, while a second bowl, holding the dry cereal, is suspended in the air by a sturdy chute. Send a spoonful down the chute into the milk when you’re ready to take a bite, and relax knowing that the rest of your breakfast is high and dry (literally).

5. THE GREENHOUSE HELMET

Patent: US 4605000 A
Published: 8/12/1986

Everyone knows there’s nothing like a walk outdoors for a breath of fresh air. But in a hectic, urban life, you may be too busy to plan a nature walk—let alone one around the corner. Not to worry: The greenhouse helmet will bring nature to you at a moment’s notice. All you need to do is strap it to your face! A self-enclosed, anti-fog-treated dome sits over the wearer’s head, containing multiple shelves to hold tiny plants inside. As you exhale, the plants soak up the carbon dioxide, supposedly stocking you in return with the purest oxygen money can buy. The helmet even has a two-way intercom system, so you can communicate with friends in the not-so-great outdoors. Now, no matter where you are, the air will always be as fresh as a daisy. Have fun watering your head, though.

6. REALLY COOL SHOES

Patent: US 5375430 A
Published: 12/27/1994

Late summer’s swelter is the perfect excuse for wannabe exhibitionists to strip down to fashion’s bare minimum, from top to toe. But for those whose tootsies are less than sandal-ready, one ingenious inventor came up with a solution: air conditioned shoes. As you step, a series of chambers in the heel contract like mini-bellows, exerting force on a set of coolant-filled coils that turn the ambient heat into chilled air. That air is then expelled through a pad running under the foot, literally cooling your heels. And with a quick switcheroo, the cooling chambers reverse their function, becoming a foot warmer for winter months. Finally, a shoe for all seasons.

7. THE AUTOMATIC PET PETTER

Patent: US 20060207518 A1
Published: 9/21/2006

As any kid with a puppy knows, pets are a lot of work. They need food, exercise, grooming, poop scooping, and hardest of all: nonstop physical affection. Thankfully, inventor Anthony Steffen created a machine to make life easier. The automatic dog petter not only strokes your pup (or feline) with a mechanical hand; it also plays audio so you can provide your furry friend with a comforting pep talk or their preferred cover of “Hound Dog.” Fido need only stand on a motion-sensor platform, and it’s just like you’re there with him. As Patent 20,060,207,518 reminds us, “It is a fact of modern life that most people work away from their homes. If they have pets, these pets will often be alone for many hours.” This may be a fact of modern life, but so are robots, and both you and Fido will be better for it.

8. SLED-FREE SLEDDING/SLED PANTS

Patent: US 5573256 A
Published: 11/12/1996

Little is more exhilarating than zipping down a snow-covered hill. And little is more humbling that trudging back to the top, toboggan in tow. That breathless, awkward, sweaty climb is the conundrum that Patent 5,573,256 seeks to solve. “Until now, a sled capable of being attached to the body of the user and worn before, during, and after a downhill sled run has not been invented,” writes inventor Brent Farley. Fortunately for us, he fixed that. His liberating contraption allows you to simply strap sled chaps to your snow pants and enjoy ride after unencumbered ride.

9. THE BANANA SUITCASE

Patent: US 6612440 B1
Published: 2003

It’s snack o’clock and your banana got horribly bruised in your bag on the way to work. What now? Stale party mix from the break-room vending machine again? Thick skins notwithstanding, bananas are subject to all manner of abuse, but the Banana Suitcase keeps your favorite fruit safe and fresh as it travels in this perforated, foam-lined case that hinges shut. That is, as long as it fits into this one-size-only carrying case! No wonder the invention didn’t exactly peel off.

10. THE GERBIL VEST

Patent: US 5901666 A
Published: 5/11/1999

Thanks to this clever invention, you can make your guinea pig live up to its name. Or you can take your hamster grocery shopping, bring your chinchilla on a morning jog, or sign that bank loan with your gerbil’s moral support. The technology is simple: “A vest or belt is integrally formed with tubular, pet-receiving passageways that extend around the wearer’s body and terminate in pocket-like chambers,” the patent says. “Outer wall portions of the passageway are transparent so that a pet moving along the passageways can be seen by a spectator.” The pet display vest is not available in all, or frankly any, stores.