Table of contents for Autumn 2016 in Smith Journal

There were football trophies (the kind they handed out for participation), tin lunch boxes, and a pair of tap dancing shoes that I wore during a primary school performance of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. The most prominent place, however, was reserved for an old pair of model F1 racers – one yellow, one red. These cars played a special role in my formative years. They were mounted and intended purely for display. But, back in the day, I liked to get more hands-on with them. When mum went out to do the washing, I’d unscrew the bolts that attached the cars to their plinths and set up a race. My preferred venue was the corridor that led down to the kitchen. It had solid floorboards, and was…

THE SPIKES ALONG A STEGOSAURUS’S HIPS AND SPINE WERE EFFECTIVE AT REPELLING ATTACKS, BUT PRESUMABLY DIDN’T LEND THEMSELVES TO REAR-MOUNTING. AT A BRITISH SCIENCE CONFERENCE IN 1987, A PALAEONTOLOGIST NAMED DR BEV HALSTEAD INVITED A WOMAN ON STAGE AND POLITELY ASKED HER TO DROP HER SKIRT. A tense, collective breath echoed around the auditorium as the garment hit the ground. Halstead had a reputation as an eccentric, but the stunt seemed uncouth, even for him. What on earth was he up to? Halstead explained that the woman was his partner, Dr Helen Haste. She had graciously agreed to help him demonstrate an aspect of brontosaur behaviour that he was studying: sex. Wearing a pair of skin-hugging tights, Haste walked over to a box near the podium. She rested her hands…

TIMOTHY WINSLOW KNEW HE WAS IN TROUBLE WHEN HE HEARD THE TONE OF HIS MOTHER’S VOICE. It was about 9am when she barged in to his bedroom and woke him up. “There are two men at the door,” she said. “I think they said they’re from the FBI.” Winslow had a sinking feeling. The 20-year-old ripped off his covers and paced down the hall of his Milwaukee home. Sure enough, there they were: a pair of men dressed in dark suits. They introduced themselves and explained the reason for their visit. They had it on good authority that he’d played a role in one of the most significant computer crimes in U.S. history. Winslow’s mother collapsed into a chair and began to weep. The men were invited into the kitchen.…

WHEN I WAS IN KINDERGARTEN, A BUNCH OF KIDS AND I WERE PLAYING SUPERHEROES. EVERYONE WAS PICKING CHARACTERS FROM TV – THE HULK, SPIDER-MAN, BATMAN – BUT I PICKED A CHARACTER CALLED RAGMAN. He was a vigilante from the DC universe who dressed in a skin-tight suit of rags. I was really anxious that someone would pick him before I did. Looking back, I shouldn’t have worried – no one was going to pick Ragman. But I was just obsessed with characters who didn’t get a lot of attention. Later in life, I started thinking about why some comic book characters succeed, and others get consigned to the superhero scrapheap of history. And it turns out the rules for making a good superhero also make a lot of terrible ones.…

ONE JOURNALIST CLAIMS THAT IT STARTED WITH A MAN NAMED SOUJIRO NISHIO, WHO PREVIOUSLY MADE WAX MODELS OF ORGANS AND DISEASED LIMBS FOR DOCTORS IN KYOTO. ETSUJI ISOZAKI RUNS ONE OF TOKYO’S BUSIEST KITCHENS. Every day, while most people in the city are just heading to work, he and his staff of 60 are turning out dishes with precision and speed. Fresh pizzas are set out to cool, sushi is prepared, and rice is heaped into bowls. The work requires great skill and concentration, and doesn’t let up until dusk. Right up until the sun goes down, there are things to take care of: pancakes to stack, donuts to ice and golden omelettes to plate. In total, the group prepares around three dozen dishes at a time – although you…

THE BEST THING YOU COULD SAY ABOUT ME WHEN I FIRST MET SIMON PEGG WAS THAT I WAS A PRETTY GOOD WAITER. It was 1992 and I’d just come back from staying at a kibbutz in Israel. I was working at a Mexican restaurant called Chiquito in the north of London and feeling very much like a big fish in a tiny pond. The place was filled with huge personalities and heaps of drinking, partying and recreational dope smoking. Chiquito or not, it was a pretty good life. Then this girl started working there. She was a wee Scottish thing. We became close friends really quickly and I wanted to take it further, but of course she had a boyfriend. I hated him without even meeting the guy. And then…

SPIKE JONZE MADE FILMS THAT WERE WARM. I KIND OF ATTEMPTED TO FOLLOW THAT. IT DIDN’T REALLY WORK, THOUGH, BECAUSE EVERYONE THINKS I’M A SARCASTIC ARSEHOLE. WRITE LIKE THE MASTERS by William Cane If you’re a young writer, sometimes you get this feeling that everything you do has to be completely new. It’s almost like no one is allowed to know what your influences are. But this book by William Cane explains that you don’t really have to feel like that. It explains that many famous writers, from Hemingway to Shakespeare, have published works that were clearly inspired by other people, and there is no shame in that. When I read that, it really affected me – it made me think, “Hey, if I just cop to the fact that…

BILL KOCH PURCHASED A VAST QUANTITY OF FRENCH WINES FROM KURNIAWAN, MANY OF WHICH HE ENDED UP DESCRIBING AS “MOOSE PISS”. THOMAS JEFFERSON HAD A THING FOR EXPENSIVE VINO. IN FACT, THE FOUNDING FATHER ONCE WENT AS FAR AS DESCRIBING “HIGH FLAVOURED WINES” AS A “NECESSITY OF LIFE”. With that in mind, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why Jefferson thoroughly enjoyed his time as a diplomat in France. During his tenure, he supposedly made a point of building an incredible wine cellar. He bought bottle after bottle from the country’s most famous vineyards – Lafite, d’Yquem, Mouton, Margaux – and had each of them engraved with his initials. For centuries, it was unclear what happened to this collection. Had it been completely consumed? Had it been gifted…

FRED ARBOGAST 1894–1947 When Fred Arbogast was 12 years old, he went on a long fishing trip with his dad and caught absolutely nothing. The experience shat him so much that he vowed to learn everything he could to avoid repeating it. He kept his vow. Arbogast went on to become a committed student of fishing, and in his 20s even set a world record for distance casting. He also established himself as a world-class lure maker. His specialty was working with different kinds of rubber – a skill he first picked up from working at a Goodyear tyre factory in Ohio. In fact, one of his most famous lures took the form of a fish wearing a synthetic ‘hula skirt’. Called the ‘Hawaiian Wiggler’, the colourful piece of tackle…

DURING WORLD WAR II, THE AVERAGE LIFESPAN OF A U.S. BOMBER PILOT WAS 13 MISSIONS. In other words, the job was one of the deadliest in the whole military. It’s no wonder, then, that commanders used to cut airmen a little slack when it came to discipline. They even turned a blind eye to what would normally be a serious offence: the vandalism of uniforms. Throughout the conflict, guys in the U.S. Air Force had a habit of painting on things that they weren’t supposed to, including the leather jackets they received on completion of basic flight training. They used a whole range of images. Some were vaguely menacing – shark’s teeth, tigers, the grim reaper – but most were benign, sometimes verging on the cheerful – cartoon characters, planes,…

THERE ARE ALL KINDS OF HURDLES THAT PEOPLE IN STARTUPS CAN FACE ON THE ROAD TO SUCCESS – FLAKY INVESTORS, BAD PRESS COVERAGE, OR A CHANGE IN THE ECONOMY. BUT FOR MAXIM GREW, A BUDDING CAMERA MAKER IN HOVE, ENGLAND, THE LEARNING PROCESS WAS PARTICULARLY TOUGH. HE EXPERIENCED A HICCUP THAT NEARLY CLAIMED HIS LIFE. The incident occurred at the small workshop that Grew and his partners use as the base for their business, Intrepid Cameras. One day, they were manufacturing parts when someone noticed a plume of smoke. A dust extractor had broken and within minutes the whole place was enveloped in a cloud of sawdust. It was becoming hard to breathe, and if the smoke turned to flame, the whole thing could blow. “We need to leave!” Grew…

TATTOOS OCCUPY AN AWKWARD SPACE IN THE ART WORLD. THEY’RE ALMOST LIKE PAINTINGS WITH AN EXPIRY DATE. When a tattooed person dies, so too do the artworks on their body. The colours and lines are lost forever. The intricacies in the ink become a memory. They’re burned or buried – never to be seen or appreciated again. This idea has never sat too well with Chris Hamm. He owns a tattoo parlour near Cleveland, and has a body covered in expertly rendered oddities. A proud gorilla takes up half his chest; the name ‘Clarence’ is scrawled below his collarbone; and his left arm is awash with rockets and planets. For a long time, whenever Hamm looked in the mirror, it saddened him to think his family and friends wouldn’t be…

JASON BARNES DOESN’T REMEMBER MUCH ABOUT THE ACCIDENT. All he can recall is that it happened while he was servicing a restaurant’s exhaust fan in Atlanta, Georgia. He had rubber waders on and was standing in a small puddle of water. Everything was going fine. Then there was a pink flash of light. Around 22,000 volts of electricity entered through his left arm and exited the right side of his body. It took him a day to wake up. The damage to Barnes’s right hand was so severe that it was rendered unusable, and the decision was made to amputate. The worst bit: when Barnes wasn’t working as a repairman, his greatest passion in life was drumming. He spent a month in hospital, and when he was released, despondency set…

STEVE ERENBERG OWNS A SMALL MUSEUM IN UPSTATE NEW YORK THAT LOOKS A LITTLE LIKE AN S&M DUNGEON. It’s called the Radio Guy Collection, and it’s pretty much an accumulation of different curiosities that he’s picked up over the last 30 years. At first glance, the place doesn’t seem to have much rhyme or reason; it contains everything from prosthetic limbs and gas masks to vintage radios and anatomical models. But if you look closer, it is possible to pick out one field that Erenberg has a particular interest in: he’s among the world’s leading collectors of vintage quack devices – machines that claim to deliver health benefits, but, in truth, do nothing. Most quack devices fall into two categories. The first are gadgets that were created with a genuine…

THE FIRST THING THAT STRIKES YOU WHEN YOU PUT ON THE NINTENDO POWER GLOVE IS THE WAY IT FEELS. YOUR ARM IS INSTANTLY TRANSFORMED INTO A MASHUP OF DARTH VADER AND A VHS PLAYER. It’s an addictive sensation – and a big part of why the Power Glove ultimately became one of the most famous game controllers in history. The other reason? At the time of its release in 1989, the device offered something the world had never seen before: a way for people to interact with their screens through hand gestures. It opened the door for a major technological breakthrough: virtual reality. The earliest prototype of the Power Glove was made by a young inventor named Thomas Zimmerman in 1982. Back then, he had just graduated from M.I.T. and…

GEOFFRO STEVENSON Roadied for Queens of the Stone Age and the Dandy Warhols. Based in Newcastle, New South Wales. My mates call me the Leather Prawn. I’ve never seen another roadie who wears leather on the job, but I find it protective – especially when people spill drinks on you. Things can get rough when you’re a roadie. But it rarely feels like a job. Every day’s different, and it allows me to travel. It’s long hours, though. When I go on the road, I barely even get to see my hotel room. In the old days, when you’d finally packed up the show, the band would want to go out, so you’d take them out and make sure there was no trouble. We don’t party like we used to,…

THE FUNNIEST ARTWORK I EVER SAW WAS A STUDENT VIDEO OF A HORSE WEARING A HORSE COSTUME. I JUST PISSED MYSELF WHEN I SAW IT. AVOID CLICHÉS When I was young, my mum decided that she fancied our milkman and had sex with him. I sometimes jest that this is why I’m allergic to clichés. You see, my job as an artist is to sort of negotiate around clichés. Because the minute something is declared cool, you know it’s on its way to death. MY FIRST ROLE MODEL WAS FICTIONAL I was quite shy and introverted as a child. I had a very well-organised and powerful fantasy life. All my games revolved around the same basic scenario. My teddy bear, who I called Alan Measles, was the leader of a…

“IT BECAME PERSONAL. YOU’RE SITTING IN FRONT OF THIS GUY FOR, LIKE, FIVE DAYS. AND YOU WANT TO HELP.” LOOMING OVER THE SCHOOLS AND APARTMENT BLOCKS OF KIPS BAY, MANHATTAN, IS A DULL, BLOCKY BUILDING WITH A MORBID PURPOSE. It’s the headquarters of New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner. Every week, the remains of people who have died from criminal violence or suicides arrive here, and effort is made to identify them. Some of the bodies are easy to process; they’re freshly deceased with clear indicators of who they were – dental records, fingerprints, DNA. But not all the cadavers are like that. About a dozen times a year the examiners on duty get what they call “skeletal corpses” – bodies that are have gone through such a long period…

THE LONDON TAXI DRIVER EXAM If you want to become a London cabbie, the first thing you have to do is pass ‘The Knowledge’ – widely regarded as one of the most difficult exams in the world. Successful candidates have to prove they know the city’s layout better than Prince Charles knows tweed. That means being able to instantly recall the location of around 25,000 streets, as well as countless businesses and landmarks. Trainees spend years driving around with a map to prepare. Of course, the rise of GPS (and Uber) is threatening this tradition, but it still lives on. After all, nothing beats the feeling of having a taxi driver who actually knows their way around. THE ALL SOULS FELLOWSHIP EXAM Getting in to Oxford is hard enough. But…

IN 2012, A STRANGE POSTER STARTED POPPING UP ON TELEPHONE POLES AROUND INNER-CITY MELBOURNE. IT FEATURED A PICTURE OF A GUY SMILING, AND A BEGUILING HEADLINE: BACKYARD SPACE? The person in the picture was Andrew Mellody. He’d created and distributed the poster for a very specific purpose: to help him make a drastic lifestyle change. Mellody figured that if he could learn to survive on hardly any money, he’d have more control over the way he spent his time. In particular, he’d be able to devote more hours to volunteering for good causes and less on working to pay for bills and rent. So, he decided to give it a crack. He packed up his stuff, moved out of his share house and bought a clapped-out caravan from the ’70s.…

BORN: July 12, 1895, Milton, Massachusetts DIED: July 1, 1983, Los Angeles AS A KID, RICHARD BUCKMINSTER FULLER JR WAS CONVINCED HE LIVED IN AN EXCEPTIONALLY FUZZY WORLD. A PAIR OF COKE-BOTTLE GLASSES EVENTUALLY SOLVED THE PROBLEM. BUT EVEN AFTER THAT, HE ALWAYS HAD A SPECIAL WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS. Depending on who you ask, Bucky – as he was known to virtually everyone – was either a genius or a crackpot. On one hand, he was the engineer/mathematician/architect/ cartographer who invented the geodesic dome and was a consultant for NASA. On the other, he was the guy who thought evolution was a load of rubbish and that dolphins were descended from early humans. Whatever side you come down on, however, there’s one thing that’s irrefutable: the man was…

IN A LOT OF WAYS, THE NAVAL CONTACT MINE IS A PERFECT WEAPON. It’s simple to make, difficult to detect and – most importantly – built to last. In World War II alone, more than 550,000 of the things were thrown into the world’s oceans. They were deployed in such a haphazard way that even today, nobody knows exactly how many are still floating around. One thing’s for sure, though: there are a lot of them. Since October 1945, mines have sunk or damaged 15 U.S. Navy ships. The things even wash up on European beaches from time to time. They’re dangerous, bad for the environment and hard to dispose of – a nuisance by nearly every metric. But Estonian artist Mati Karmin has found a silver lining. He’s come…

I DON’T REMEMBER EVER BEING TOLD I WAS ADOPTED. I JUST REMEMBER KNOWING. It must have been explained to me at some stage, so that I would understand, but I was clearly very young. I must have been a toddler. I always knew the story: My [adoptive] parents were told they couldn’t have any more kids after my sister was born by caesarian, so they tried to adopt. But they were musicians, so the agency would never give them approval. One night, they performed on Jack Paar’s talk show, and after they were finished, the next guest was the comedian Bob Newhart, with whom they’d toured. Jack said something like, “Mitzie and Ken Welch – aren’t they wonderful?” and – on national TV – Bob said, “Yeah, they’re wonderful. You…

I PROBABLY FIRST HEARD CYNDI LAUPER ON THE RADIO WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN SYDNEY. I wasn’t really listening to a lot of pop music at the time, because my parents were mostly into jazz and classical. So, when I started hearing other stuff it was exciting. And ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ was one of the first things like that. More than anything, the song just made me really happy. I remember dancing around to it with my friends. It felt like the whole thing was about us. It was like, “We are girls, and we want to have fun. This song couldn’t be more tailored to us.” Life was pretty straightforward back then. I was just going to school, hanging out with my older neighbour, and…