Big boy pants

Imagine if children, and thus human beings in general, never learned how to control their bladders.

You’re standing in a conference room, making a presentation to your peers and coworkers. Behind you, projected on the wall, is a PowerPoint screen outlining your company’s financial performance during the second fiscal quarter, a morass of graphs and pie charts and labyrinthine corporate lingo. You’re clicking along from slide to slide, in command of the room and the material, feeling puffed up and important in your tailored suit. You’re rockin’ this. Your boss is smiling approvingly, and you finally catch a whiff of that long-awaited promotion.

Then you catch a whiff of something else. You feel an involuntary release, and falter slightly, stopping short in the middle of your spiel about the monthlong spike in web traffic. With the dawning realization of what just happened, you begin to cry.

“What’s wrong, Johnson?” asks the senior vice president.

“I peed!” you wail. The presentation grinds to a halt because you’ve stopped to suck your thumb.

Then a staccato, jackhammer brrrrrap! emits from your backside, and all hell breaks loose.

Welcome to an alternate universe ruled by babies.

We’re born into this world partially formed, the womb having taken us only so far. The real work is still ahead of us: learning to crawl, to walk, to pontificate on the collected works of J.D. Salinger. One by one we pick up these various skills of personhood, and as time passes we slowly start to resemble what most of us consider a normal, functioning homo sapien, with our button-up dress shirts and well-mannered bodily functions. Just grabbing hold of the basics is a years-long process, and so by the time we stand up in that conference room and blast off into our PowerPoints, it’s frankly amazing that we have the wherewithal to keep it all together. Think of all the careers that could easily be ruined with an ill-timed, cacophonous fart.

Humans aren’t the only animals that need extensive life skills training, but other species seem to have expedited the process. Look at cats. A newborn kitten is all squinty and half-blind, wholly unable to engage in full-grown cat stuff, like pouncing on insects and disdaining everything. But it doesn’t take long to get up to speed. A few short months pass and they’re using their litter boxes as though it’s hardwired into their DNA, batting at strings like they’ve been trained in yarn-swatting by a battle-tested samurai. Heck, even a day-old runt will claw your hand if you try to get all up in their business. Ninjas from the word go, these cats. Someone ought to steal the feline training manual, ’cause they’ve streamlined the whole endeavor -- no diapers or training wheels for these suckers, no siree. Give ’em a can of tuna and warm bed and they’re masters of the freakin’ universe.

I was watching a National Geographic special about northern Canadian wildlife a few months ago (the Playstation was on the fritz), and the documentary crews went around placing hidden cameras in the wilderness to capture the natural living patterns of deer. If cats speed toward maturation in a souped-up Camaro, deer are on a bullet train. It took a single afternoon for a newborn calf to start walking. At first its movements were awkward and gangly -- it was like watching a scarecrow huffing through an obstacle course after sucking down a half-bottle of Jagermeister -- but soon it was bounding across the plains with grace and confidence.

It would be a whole different world if human babies matured at the same rate. Let’s examine this hypothetical reality for a second. Assume you’ve got a new baby named Horatio. Fresh from the oven, he looks like any other baby: Round head, chubby cheeks, facial features scrunched like the puckered navel of a belly dancer. That’s at 9 a.m. By 11 o’clock he’s on his feet, waddling along your living room carpet with a stabilizing hand on your coffee table. He utters his first word at noon (“compartmentalize”), graduates to sounding out R.L Stine novels by 1, can play basic scales on a violin by 2, and has enrolled in the fourth grade by mid-afternoon, which has inspired him to work on his long division. He practices equations until dinnertime, where he spends most of the meal picking bread crumbs out of his beard.

Canadian deer, meet your human counterpart, Horatio Growsfast III.

That’s one extreme; the conference room scenario described above is the other. We sit comfortably in between, of course, with our development-conscious school grading system and age-appropriate sex education pamphlets. As a society we’ve grown accustomed to a certain pace and rhythm when it comes to maturation, but what we rarely think about is that everything, every aspect of our lives, is based on something over which we have no biological control. We can’t make PowerPoint presentations when we’re still in diapers, and we can’t learn to shave on the same day we start walking. It’s impossible. We’re slaves, in a sense, to our own biologies, and to time -- always to time, that equalizer of all things.

As human beings live longer, the checkpoints may shift a bit; we’re seeing this already, with adolescence sometimes stretching into people’s 20s (guilty), and grown professionals showing up to work in cargo shorts and band T-shirts (also guilty). But that just further proves the point: People take their sweet time. Assuming we haven’t destroyed ourselves in the next 400 years, we’ll probably still be breathing at 150 and living with our parents until we’re old enough to qualify for Medicare.

No wonder cats regard us with bemused detachment. If I saw a species that took so long to get its act together, I’d be a little bemused, too.

Pop rocks. Except when it doesn't.

Don’t you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is a word.

Those are lyrics from a terrible song called “Surfin’ Bird.” Released by The Trashmen in 1963, it’s been infiltrating people’s brains for decades, slowly driving them nuts with its repetitive and nonsensical chorus. I mean, technically they’re correct -- “bird” is, indeed, a word -- but so what? So are “cat,” “jiggle” and “lugubrious.” I blame that song on psychedelic drugs.

Not every bad song can be blamed on mind-altering substances. Some are simply designed to burrow into our subconscious and stealthily lay their eggs. These eggs then hatch when we’re driving with our windows down on a perfect day in late spring; you’re toolin’ along with your arm out the window when suddenly you hear it coming out of your mouth: “Backstreet’s back, ALRIGHT!”

Only no. No, it is not alright.

The songwriters and producers who stitch together these crummy tunes are downright insidious. Like, curly mustache and monocle insidious. There’s a rigorous set of assembly line instructions for crafting pop songs -- so many beats per minute, so many iterations of the word “baby” -- and these auditory confectioners follow them religiously. The results are songs that muckle onto our brains like barnacles but provide shockingly little sustenance. They’re empty calories, all sugar and no nutrition. Cheez-Its instead of cheese. If you want me to crack under intense interrogation, just play Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York” on a loop for about an hour and a half. I’ll give you anything you want: nuclear codes, locker combinations, grandma’s secret recipe for French onion soup. Just please, make the torture stop.

Because I’m a major nerd, there’s a band I listen to called Rush. Rush isn’t everybody’s cup of tea; the singer has a very high-pitched voice, like Mickey Mouse after a groin injury, and some people find it shrill and grating. That’s fine. But it’s indisputable that these guys are master instrumentalists, each a virtuoso on his respective instrument. Their arranging and songwriting skills are through the freakin’ roof. They’re just about the dorkiest band on the planet, but when I last saw them live in 2012, my head was filled for days with epic bass lines, dizzying drum fills and guitar licks that could skin a cat. It’s the kind of music I want stuck in my head, because there’s enough variation in the songs to keep them from becoming overly repetitive. Never once during that time did I want to take an electric drill to my head. That’s my musical litmus test: Not wanting to endanger my health with a rusty power tool.

Years later, I pine for the days when I could chew on a Rush song with luxury. After a back condition devolved into a full-blown medical headache, I became a regular at a local gym, with the goal of strengthening said back and allowing myself to do things like tie my shoes without calling in the National Guard. Every time I go in, they’re playing Top 40 pop. By the time I sit down at my desk at work, one of those gooey tunes has inevitably burrowed into my cranium, so instead of happily humming the lead lines in “La Villa Strangiato” or the bass gymnastics in “Digital Man,” I’ve got some dope in my head crooning on about a woman he saw dancing at a club. Well you know what? I don’t go to clubs. I eat clubs. I douse clubs in mustard and then I eat them. I don’t care about you and your dance-floor Venus, you saccharine-sweet nincompoop. Oy gevalt.

And I’ve only mentioned lyrics obliquely. That’s another aspect of pop music that could use an overhaul, if for no other reason than to benefit the teens and pre-teens who comprise its core audience. Data analysis company Seatsmart conducted a study a couple of years ago, finding that lyrics to the typical pop song land at about a third-grade reading level. Third grade. No joke. Unfortunately that’s not entirely surprising, considering some of the IQ-draining banality that’s flooding the radio waves. Check out some of the lyrics to a song called “Give Me Everything” by the rapper Pitbull:

“"Me not working hard? / Yea, right! / Picture that with a Kodak / And, better yet, go to Times Square / Take a picture of me with a Kodak."

Uh, what?

First of all, this is a relatively modern song, so there’s a good chance the 13-year-olds listening to it won’t even know what the hell a Kodak is. Nice up-to-date reference, Pitbull. What’s worse, though, is that he rhymes Kodak with Kodak.Granted, there aren’t a lot of rhymes for Kodak -- Go back? Yo, Jack? -- but that just solidifies the case for not using the word in the first place. It doesn’t even make contextual sense. The lyrics probably would have been more coherent if they’d been written by an actual pitbull.

Here’s an even worse lyric, this time from “So Yesterday” by Hilary Duff:

"If the light is off, then it isn't on."

Glad you were able to work that one out, Hilary.

I suppose this is me in full-blown crotchety-old-man mode, and I’m fine with that. Disdaining popular music is one of adulthood’s great rites of passage; with that out of the way, I’m ready for other watershed life moments, like discovering my nose hair now grows like weeds. I’m one man shouting into the cacophony, so I don’t expect Taylor Swift and Jay-Z to take notice and re-tool their musical output, but it would be nice to hear literate lyrics, interesting compositions and some all-around thought put into these songs for once.

Have you heard? “Rush” is a word. It’s true. I looked it up.

Bed head

Buying furniture is stressful. Too stressful. I’ve driven across French-speaking Canada alone with no map, I’ve worked and taken graduate courses full-time, and I even watched a Vin Diesel movie once, which was perhaps the most arduous undertaking of all. And I would do it all again if it meant never having to buy another mattress.

When I walked into the furniture store last week it inspired flashbacks I thought were the sole domain of war veterans and the wrongfully imprisoned. The showrooms at these places sort of look like living rooms at first, which I suppose is to make them seem inviting. Take a closer look, though, and you notice that that there are way too many loveseats and the ottomans have spawned like tuna; everything is arranged artfully, but pointed toward nothing at all. It’s what a room would look like if 12 unfocused people with expensive taste all lived together in one of M.C. Escher’s optical illusion paintings. And there’s no TV. It’s disorienting.

In the midst of this confusion you’re expected to make an important commitment. Choosing a new mattress or recliner isn’t like buying a new T-shirt -- if you’re unhappy with it you can’t just re-wrap it and give it to your least favorite cousin at Christmas. You’re selecting at item that not only contributes to the aesthetic of your home, but is meant to support the weight of your body in a state of rest, meaning form and function have to converge with military precision. That’s a lot of pressure. Fail to do your homework and you risk getting stuck with a pricey lump of space-sucking uselessness, and warranty or no warranty, it’s going to be a hassle to make an exchange. It’s like choosing a spouse, only a La-Z-Boy doesn’t eat all your Fig Newtons without asking.

Mattress shopping is especially difficult, moreso when you’re a light sleeper with a mutinous back. You oftentimes don’t get a sense of how a mattress will treat you until you’ve spent a night or two lying on one, and yet when you’re at the furniture store you have perhaps 10 minutes to make a decision, 20 if you know how to flirt with the salesperson. (This trick has come in quite handy.) Condensing the selection process so dramatically is confounding to the senses; rather than lying on a bed in a state of sleepiness or relaxation, you’re forced to bring attentiveness and focus to the proceedings, which frankly is sort of a buzzkill. The only time you’re supposed to bring intense focus into the bedroom is if there’s an expensive dinner and formalwear involved.

So there I was, in the store’s sleep center, trying to decide how to spend my nights. What struck me were the options. There were way, way too many of them. Not so long ago in human history, beds were a simple thing: a bunch of feathers or horsehair stuffed into a person-sized bag and thrown on the floor like a rug. At least that’s what I imagine when I ponder such things, which is never.

How far we’ve come. Now there are traditional coil mattresses, memory foam mattresses, hybrid mattresses, mattresses that bend and recline, mattresses with cooling gel, mattresses that vibrate, and mattresses that have memorized the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. We’re a few years away from having beds that shuffle cards and play the ukulele.

The only good strategy for making an informed choice is to spend some time on each one, which is a guaranteed way to look like an idiot. “It takes about 10 minutes to get an idea of how you’ll respond to a mattress,” the salesperson told me, and feeling the need to exercise diligence, I took her at her word. I hopped on the coil mattress first. Ten minutes later, the memory foam. Ten minutes after that, the hybrid. And on and on, until I’d lain on so many beds I felt like a world traveler, or a Frenchman. The sleep center ceiling has 75 eggshell-colored tiles, by the way. In case you were wondering.

Selecting the mattress was the most important step, but it wasn’t the last one. Sullen-looking, muscular men still had to deliver it, which is generally an awkward experience. Whenever heavy objects are being lifted and moved around, a certain masculine instinct kicks in -- you want to help out, to heave and grunt and sweat along with the other guys. But movers are professionals. They don’t need the help, and probably don’t want it. Which means I have to stand there with my hands in my pockets, nervously shifting my weight from foot to foot as I “supervise” their progress, saying things like “Yep, right there,” and “A little to the left.” Sometimes I’ll grunt approvingly as if I have some sort of hidden moving expertise, which I don’t, and they know I don’t. The whole thing is a charade, an act that’s meant to convey one message: I am not a dweeb. Except I am.

At least I’m a dweeb with a nice bed. The identities of our homes are forged as much by furniture as by the physical spaces themselves, so in a way, snagging the right piece can bring us a step closer to the mental image we have of ourselves. A loveseat cocked at just the right angle, an end table festooned with comforting bric-a-brac -- these things matter to us, superficial as they are, and so when the movers are gone and we’re left with our new purchase, a strange sense of peace prevails. It’s the kind of calm one rarely experiences outside of a remote monastery, one in which all the monks have taken a sacred vow of silence.

The best thing about bed-buying is that when it’s done, you have a place to crash. I plan on taking advantage. I’ve got a recliner that may need replacing soon, and I’m gonna need all the rest I can get.

Pie another day

My father insists that pizza is a health food. “Pizza is a health food!” he says. Then I laugh at him.

Pizza is many things. It’s a marvel of geometry, a delicious feast and a great dinner choice when all you have left in the fridge are two cans of Diet Coke and a wedge of cheese. But that doesn’t make it a health food.

Which isn’t to say it’s totally without nutrition. The cheese has calcium, tomatoes contain lycopene, which helps to ward off diseases, and if the crust is made from whole wheat flour then there are grains and fibers galore, which makes your basic pizza nutritionally decent, if incomplete. Certainly there are worse things you could be eating, like just about anything found in the snack or cookie aisle of your local supermarket. As far as your health is concerned, the only thing worse than a sleeve of Oreos is a chocolate-coated cyanide tablet. Even then, at least the chocolate has antioxidants.

For each of its redeeming qualities, though, there’s something else that bumps pizza down a tick. Depending on toppings, a pizza can be loaded with saturated fat, calories and sodium, which is what those in the nutrition business call the “evil hat trick.” Actually, I’m making that up. But it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? That would a be a great name for a metal band -- Evil Hat Trick. I”m going to take a break from my thesis for a second to congratulate myself on that one.

Ahhh. That felt good.

Anyway, pizza. It’s unfortunate that its effects on health are complicated at best, because the world would be a thousand times better if we could all just eat it at every meal, and occasionally for a snack. There’s a reason why establishments exist that specialize in pizza and pizza alone, and why most of those establishments deliver it straight to your door. Not a lot of foods have their own business model supporting them. There are no peanut butter and jelly shops, no boiled-chicken-and-broccoli restaurants, no mom-and-pop outfits exclusively serving up breakfast cereal. Even burger joints have to sell something besides burgers to maintain people’s interest -- chicken nuggets, plastic clowns, something. Not pizza. I could open a pizza place tomorrow that served plain cheese pies and nothing else, and there’d be an audience for it. Assuming the pies were good. Which they wouldn’t be, because everything I cook tends to taste like shoes. But still.

Overindulgence is the enemy of waistlines, and it’s hard not to overdo it with a food so delicious. The trick for me is to not let pizza become a weekly routine. It was, once. During my preteen years every Friday was the same: The family would order a couple of large pies and hunker down in front of the TV, munching silently as we watched Looney Tunes marathons on TNT. I was quite a bit larger back then. Pizza wasn’t the only culprit, but it didn’t help, and yet I still didn’t put two and two together, happy to nosh mindlessly while Daffy Duck got bonked on the noggin with an anvil as big as a grand piano. To this day I still associate cheese pizza with Bugs Bunny. I’m not sure what that means from a psychological standpoint, and frankly, I’d rather not find out.

In a way, being a child of the ’80s and ’90s helped to fuel my pizza fascination. Kids of that generation -- especially boys -- were obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a gang of four anthropomorphic reptiles who fought crime and could kick really high. We liked them ’cause they looked weird and killed a lot of robots. They were also party dudes who were obsessed with pizza, and since the boys in my class all wanted to be like them, we had to be pizza-obsessed party dudes, too. As a food it already lends itself to being a kids’ favorite, but the Turtles’ popularity kicked things into overdrive; everything was pizza, pizza, pizza. The NInja Turtles did more for pizza than the sitcom Cheers did for beer. Although frankly beer doesn’t need the help.

The Turtles were fond of loading up their pies with offbeat toppings, like flies and stinkbugs. Those haven’t crept into the American diet (yet), but that hasn’t stopped people from experimenting with all manner of oddities. “Gourmet” pizza restaurants cater to our strangest whims and cravings. I ordered a macaroni-and-cheese pizza once, mostly out of curiosity, and found it to be surprisingly edible, although it would have been nice if it had come with a complimentary angioplasty.

Macaroni and cheese is undoubtedly an offbeat topping, but that’s nothing compared to what’s found around the globe. Australians put kangaroo and crocodile meat on their pies. The French lather them with fried eggs. Brits top theirs off with haggis, Palestinians load them with pine nuts, and Swedes often opt for banana curry. A lot of those toppings sound gross -- you might as well put Skittles and strawberry jam on a pizza -- but they also, in their culturally unique and gag-reflex-triggering way, represent what’s so appealing about pizza. It’s customizable. No two are the same. You can put whatever you want on a pie. Marshmallows. Honey Nut Cheerios. Circus peanuts. Every steaming tray pulled from every oven is as unique as the individual ordering it, the ultimate representation of culinary diversity. No wonder it’s one of the world’s most popular foods. It can be everything to everyone.

Despite all that, it’s not a health food. It belongs in the same category as French fries and cheeseburgers, a treat that works best as an infrequent indulgence. Sorry, Dad. If you want to make healthy food choices, the NInja Turtle diet may not be the best way to go.