Freedom From X-Ray Photos of Our Anonymous Junk

There has been a lot of ranting recently about the new full body scanners in airports. Travelers can submit to the scan or opt instead for a physical pat down. As I understand it, the scan produces an x-ray like image of your body. The people looking at the images can't see your face, and they're located in a different room, or even in a different building. You're exposed to radiation when you go through, just as you are simply by being on a plane. The statistic I read is that the radiation from the scanner is the equivalent of seven extra minutes on a flight.

Here is my take on the issue.

First, I just assume that from the moment I stick a toe through the door of an airport until I roll my Chevy Impala out from the rental car garage, every law of logic, rationality and common sense will be defied. Travelers are hysterical about terrorism, airport workers are paid minimum wage, rules designed to be foolproof don't allow for an ounce of personal discretion or nuance, and the people who have the authority to change anything aren't located anywhere near the actual airport. So, since it's futile, pointless and aggravating to even try to figure out how an airport works and why you have to do the things you have to do when you arrive, my strategy is to submit to everything, question nothing and try to find my happy mental Zen garden. TSA guy wants to lick my laptop screen, remove my kidney and sniff between my toes. Great. Not a problem. Just show me where to sit. And, if I leave myself enough time, I like to have a beer after making it through security and amuse myself by seeing how hoppingly furious everyone else gets because of whatever absurd injustice they've had to endure. You have to show ID to get a beer, of course, even if you're about to turn 100. That's the rule.

Next, if it's a privacy thing that concerns you about the scanner, consider this: does the TSA guy in the next building even want to see you naked? Are you really as sexy as you think? Statistically speaking, probably not. Have you ever paid attention to what the people around you actually look like? I'd say that about one person in 300 would qualify as "hot." There are regional differences. That's the national average. The rest of us fall on the physical hotness scale somewhere between "borderline tolerable" to "frighteningly heinous." For all the collective anxiety that's been expended worrying about whether some homeland security pervert is checking us out, or whether a headless x-ray of our naked selves is going to somehow go viral on the Internet, the reality is that you're more likely to be mentally undressed while out walking your dog in old sweatpants, or jogging in the park. Chances are, the TSA guy would probably get more excited watching a new episode of Two And a Half Men than looking at a scan of your junk.

Finally, I can't help but notice the strange political undercurrents of the body scanner issue. From what I can tell, the people protesting the loudest are the people who are most gung ho about hunting down terrorists and protecting our American way of life. The right to be free, to bear arms, to drive an SUV must be defended at all costs. We'll send our kids to war, invade whatever country it takes (even if it's not the right one) and spend some inordinate amount of our national budget to keep our country safe. But if some minor infringement on our personal space is required - a quick x-ray snapshot of our anonymous junk - that's just too much. Rights are rights and the government shouldn't be able to force such humiliation and oppression upon us.

To summarize: Airports may be ridiculous. Security regulations may be nothing more than window dressing. The TSA guy may be violating the core of your rights as an American. But you have the power to rise above. Just relax, submit, have a cocktail and visualize yourself in front of a pull-down canvas Olin Mills waterfall. Appreciate the miracle of modern technology – that that you can cross the country in a five hour flight instead of an eight month wagon train. You can always opt for a pat down. And you can always take the bus.

Chicken Parms in Boston – Trends, Highlights and Thoughts

I’ve never been much of a foodie. I tag along when people want to go to a nice restaurant and try to swish my wine and savor the flavors. But usually, by the time I wake up in the morning, I couldn’t tell you what I ate the night before. However, due to a unique cosmic convergence of circumstances, I have become a somewhat renowned connoisseur of chicken parmesans in the metro Boston area.

I’ve loved chicken parm since I was an infant. And when I got into running a few years ago, I was delighted to discover the concept of carbo-loading before a long run. The theory is that if you gorge yourself on pasta and carbohydrates the night before a long run, you’ll have extra energy reserves packed away and ready to go when you start pounding the pavement. I have no idea whether there is any actual medical support for this concept, but who am I to judge. If a magazine tells me that my health and well being will be enhanced by eating a chicken parm and a vat of pasta, that’s all I need to hear. And so, every time I have a run of more than 13 or so miles scheduled, I go out the night before in search of some breaded, fried poultry and a side of pasta. I feel that, in the name of health and nutrition, eating anything else would be downright dangerous.

I haven’t yet reached such a level of national culinary fame that I have to disguise myself when I go out to chicken parm establishments. Which is nice. I can just stroll into any Italian restaurant, evaluate the full experience and share it with all of you lucky diners. All of the chicken parms I review here have one thing in common: they are huge. Any moderately legitimate chicken parm should be accompanied by a massive bowl of pasta and should be able to feed a family of four. A chicken parm weighing in at less than three or four pounds isn’t even worth discussing. Anyone who knows me will confirm that I am notably adept at putting down a chicken parm. When a waitress brings out my entrée, gives my 130 pound self the once over, and says something like, “well good luck finishing that,” I chuckle condescendingly and dig right in. I’ve encountered chicken parms of truly epic girth and have never, not once, left even a little morsel on my plate.

I don’t know how many chicken parms I’ve had. Probably thousands, maybe millions. Here are my reviews of the top five most notable chicken parms I’ve experienced in metro Boston.

Galway House – 720 Centre St., Jamaica Plain

The Galway House is my old standby. Most people know it as the place to go if you want to catch up with Jamaica Plain’s old timer alcoholics. The décor consists of posters and plaques that say things like “Loose women tightened here,” and “Beer – helping ugly people get laid since 1862.” But they also have a borderline respectable menu, including two chicken parm options – entrée and sub. The sub bun gets soggy pretty fast, but it’s a nice alternative if you’re only planning to burn, say, 1000 calories the next day, or if you just can’t handle a full throttle chicken parm. The entrée is served on an old white plate by a surly waitress and comes with a side salad and towering pile of mediocre, overcooked pasta. In a word, perfection. Close to my house, cheap and massive, you can understand why a Galway House chicken parm is what is sloshing through my intestines during most of my long runs.

Delfino – 754 South St., Roslindale

Delfino is a little more on the elegant side. It’s a nice place for a date, assuming your date won’t be disgusted watching you put down a massive, breaded expanse of poultry. There’s a small open kitchen and a few counter seats where you can watch all of the food being prepared. The chicken parm is quite tasty, and they’ve got a legitimate wine menu, nice salads and good desserts. The good desserts are irrelevant if you’re going to have the chicken parm, though; anyone who tells you they’ve had a Delfino chicken parm and a dessert is either morbidly obese, lying or bulimic. Delfino also attracts people who are into “taste” and “quality” and so can be crowded at times. Call ahead or go early to get a table.

Bertucci’s – 683 VFW Parkway, West Roxbury / Vinny Testa’s – 867 Boylston St., Brookline (before going out of business)

Bertucci’s and Vinny Testa’s are chains owned by the same publicly traded corporation. Vinny Testa’s went out of business. But since my review of it is identical to Bertucci’s, I’ll include it here. I could try to describe these restaurants myself, but nothing I could say would be as elegant as the descriptions in their parent company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. As so eloquently stated in its 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, “Our Bertucci’s restaurants are full-service, casual dining restaurants offering high quality, moderately priced Italian food. Our Vinny T’s of Boston restaurants are full service, casual dining restaurants based upon re-creations of the high quality neighborhood Italian eateries prominent in the neighborhoods of lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, the north-end of Boston and South Philadelphia in the 1940s.” Pure poetry. If you’ve ever been to a Bertucci’s and liked it so much that you’d like to have the exact same experience, with the exact same decor, with the exact same industrially-prepared food, with the exact same six pieces of flare, and with the exact same scripted lines recited to you by your waitress, you’re in luck. You can just go back to any other Bertucci’s. Or an Olive Garden too (or a Chachki’s). Same restaurant, different shareholders. And don’t forget to upgrade your Bud Light to a super size party mug for just an additional $2! As for the chicken parm, sufficiently huge and edible to serve its purpose. Nothing to jump up and down about, but it’s got enough calories and chicken parm flavor to get you through a 20 miler.

Vinny’s Ristorante – 76 Broadway, Somerville

Vinny’s Ristorante is a lot of fun, and very unique. There are a few animal issues - a cat that lives in the dining room and a minor infestation of fruit flies - but the chicken parm is extra delicious and comes with even more extra-ly delicious homemade pasta. The most unique thing about Vinny’s is that you have to walk though a deli / convenience store to get to it. The dining room is in the back, past the convenience store. The bar is actually in the convenience store. If you’ve ever been out buying Saran Wrap and thought, man, I could really use a drink, Vinny’s would be perfect for you. Do your errands, have a cocktail served up by a friendly bartender, and then adjourn to the dining room for some really much better-than-average pasta and chicken parm.

Papa Razzi – Chestnut Hill Mall, Brookline

Papa Razzi is another corporate owned chain with a dozen locations in Boston. They have photos of celebrities all over the walls. Get it? The location I go to most is the one in the Chestnut Hill mall - ‘cause it’s closest to my house. The Papa Razzi chicken parm is pounded flatter than most, so that its surface area is striking - enough to cover a plate that could be mistaken for a pizza. The wait staff has that certain chain restaurant minimum wage-esque quality - enthusiastic and entirely incompetent. One thing to look out for is the tables that are outside of the restaurant. A few faux-plants and barriers cannot hide it; you are sitting IN the mall. I can see how, if you had been locked up in a Soviet gulag for a few decades, it might be exciting to eat your dinner while watching 14 year-olds with six figure allowances shop with their immaculately quaffed mothers-who-lunch, but for people like me who generally take capitalism for granted and are mildly repulsed by snobishness, it’s nauseating. Better to wait an extra few minutes for a table inside under a framed poster of Marilyn Monroe.

So those are my most notable Boston chicken parms. Someday, I hope to quit my job, set out on the road and investigate chicken parms throughout the world. In the meantime, please, my people on the street, send me your thoughts, photos and, even better, samples of, your favorite breaded, sauced and cheese-covered poultry delicacies.

2010 Musings on the City of Lights and Ozzie Osborne

Leslie and I saved up our allowance and went on a nice trip to Paris this year. Leslie had never been. I had spent time in France as an exchange student in high school, studying abroad in college and on vacation from the Peace Corps after college. Here are some of my thoughts from this most recent visit to France.

Me, Now and Then

Paris is just a beautiful city. I thought it was paradise the last time I visited. Of course, the last time I visited I was on vacation from my village in Mali. And so going from a mud hut with no plumbing or toilet paper to one of the most sophisticated and spectacular cities anywhere (and one where I could get Pizza Hut and drink the water), well, it’s not really a fair comparison. It’s like an old riff Eddie Murphy used to do about how, if you’re starving, and someone throws you a cracker (I think he was talking about getting laid, but the point is the same), you’re gonna think it was the best cracker ever invented in the world – “oh damn, that shit is good. What is that, a Saltine? No, no wait, a Ritz?” I was so impressed by Paris last time I was there that I want back to Africa, quit the Peace Corps and came home.

The Dan visiting Paris had also changed in some ways. In addition to being 21 years older than on my first visit, I had saved up a few more sheckles and so was able to experience some different slices of what Paris had to offer. Like eating at restaurants and staying in hotel rooms that didn’t have other beds in them where strangers were sleeping. Not to knock the entertainment culture of studying abroad – sitting on the Seine with four friends, a loaf of bread, some cheese, three bottles of red wine and a harmonica (total cost - $15, including the harmonica) is good fun. But eating hot food at a restaurant with cloth napkins is nice too.

Le Foot Locker

The most noticeable change in the Paris landscape since I had last been there is the number of American chain stores. There are Gaps and Foot Lockers and Abercrombies all over. And, of course, Starbucks and Starbucks and Starbucks. It’s not a new trend, or a surprising one. The capitalist tradition of hawking junk to anyone with a few disposable Euros marches inevitably forward. But it really is a little sad to see just how widespread it’s all become. Granted, the Champs Elysees has always pretty much been a big outdoor shopping mall (albeit one that’s sandwiched in-between the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre). But it used to at least have some element of flagship store glamour and excitement. You could see the yet-to be released new Bentley models or check out some $100,000 Montblanc watches. But a flagship Niketown store just doesn’t have the same allure.

Ozzy Osbourne’s Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

A wonderful new development throughout France is the sound glyph that gets played at the airport and train stations before every announcement. It’s an eerie, futuristic synthesized human sound that makes you feel like you’re about to be transported into the future, and like there may be something lurking in the future that you’ll be terrified to see. You can hear the sound glyph in the first few photos of the montage above. The best thing about the glyph is that it’s a shameless rip-off of an Ozzy Osborne lick from Crazy Train. Whether by design or by some hilarious consequence of cosmic randomness, I am positive that at any given time, a quarter million people are now wandering around France trying to figure out why they can’t get Ozzy Osbourne out of their heads.

Running in Paris – Dog Shit and Cobblestones

I wasn’t much of a runner the last time I was in Paris. This time, I gave it a shot. Paris is not known as much of a running city. And for good reason. The streets are crowded, the sidewalks are cobblestone, Parisians have no idea what to make of runners, and there is dog shit everywhere. If you’re aware of all this, you can make necessary accommodations and have a good time; if you’re paying attention, the dog shit piles can make a challenging obstacle course, building agility and foot-eye coordination. But if you’re not aware or paying attention, there’s a very good chance you’ll end you end up stepping in dog shit, spraining an ankle and getting run over by a car. It’s apparently even worse for women. Here’s how Betsy Mikel of BootsnAll travel guide described the female running experience:

“Female runners might be a little startled when running in Paris. This is why. Most Parisian women don’t run. Female runners on the streets of Paris don’t make sense. So they get stared at. They get laughed at. They get spoken at. Just put on your mean face and ignore any commentary. If you get the heebie jeebies from some weird French dude giving you the wrong kind of compliment, here are some ways to avoid them:

* Feign deafness if you run into unwanted comments or stares.

* Keep running. You might be challenged to strop and give someone a piece of your mind if you hear something inappropriate. But it’s really not worth it. Finish your workout and channel your anger towards devouring a delicious French pastry afterwards.”

Essential Conversational French

Before we left for our trip, I taught Leslie these essential French phrases:

“Bouff”: Loosely translated as “what you’re saying is so obvious, stupid or ignorant, I’m not going to even dignify it with an actual word.” A sound that’s meant to come across more as a physical reaction to what someone has said – like a choke or a cough – than a response articulated through language.

“Mais bien sur que si”: “Of course it is.” French is the only language I’m aware of that has a special word for “yes” used only when contradicting something. “Oui” means “yes” in most cases. “Si” means, “yes, contrary to what you have just said.”

“Oui, mais”: “Yes, but…” This acknowledges that some tiny portion of something a person has just said could potentially be accurate or valid, but only when qualified with much more information. It’s a recognition that the person you are talking to is not a total idiot, but just mostly an idiot whose statement could potentially be salvaged by some additional input from you.

Teaching someone these three noises / phrases may seem mean spirited and cynical, but not really. It’s not to say that you never have any non-confrontational conversations in French. It’s just that if you don’t speak French, but can respond to people with these nuggets, you’ll have a better chance of them leaving you alone, or at least understanding that you’re wise and sophisticated enough so as not want to bother responding to them.

The English to French translation that had me totally stumped was trying to explain to my French family outside of Paris what our cat’s name – Cletus – meant. “Uh, well, do you know The Dukes of Hazzard? No? Well, um, redneck? Trailer park? Forget it.”

Paris has changed some over the decades. I probably have too. But it’s still one of the most wonderful places in the world. A few new different nuances around the edges, but the essence of the French (not literally, although that’s changed some too) will always be what it is. If you’re afraid of a little poo, the occasional condescension from a waiter or falling asleep with Ozzie in your head, stay away from Paris. But if you can get past those minor impositions, don’t let yourself die before getting there.

We're Not Gonna Take What Anymore?

One of the highly obnoxious, latent human attributes that surfaces with a vengeance in election years is the need to feel oppressed. Somehow, raging against the perceived sources of our oppression scratches such a deep rooted psychological itch that who our oppressor is becomes an almost fundamental component of how we define ourselves. It's a schwaggy little shitstain of human nature but politicians sure are good at exploiting it.

There are a lot forces in the world that keep us from doing whatever we want whenever and wherever we want. And being able to point to some person or group that's the reason for our oppression just feels so damn good.

I'm not talking about the real, serious hardcore - genocide / abuse / rape / slavery / capital O - kind of Oppression, but rather the vague feeling of perceived slights - the ongoing, omnipresent feeling that there's someone out there behind the curtain who's keeping us from being rich, tall, handsome, successful and attractive to babes.

Republicans feel oppressed by government. Democrats feel oppressed by corporations. Rural midwesterners feel oppressed by the eastern elite. The eastern elite feel oppressed by the ignorant masses. Corporations feel oppressed by limitations on free markets. Workers feel oppressed by corporations. Bible thumpers feel oppressed by gays. Atheists fees oppressed by bible thumpers. Gun nuts feel oppressed by big city folks. Hippies feel oppressed by gun nut militias. The rich feel oppressed by taxes. The poor feel oppressed by the rich. Kids feel oppressed by their parents, and parents by their kids. Libertarians feel oppressed by everyone.

Nobody has described this facet of human nature more articulately than renowned anthropologist and sociologist Dee Snider and his Twisted Sister colleagues. As stated so eloquently in the 1984 transvestite-ish power anthem "We're Not Gonna Take It":

We've got the right to choose it.
There ain't no way we'll lose it.
We'll fight the powers that be.
Just don't pick our destiny.
Oh you're so condescending.
Your gall is never ending.
We're not gonna take it anymore.

Click HERE for the video.

What's brilliant about this song is that you have know idea what "it" is. "It" and "the powers that be" can be whatever force it is that's oppressing you. It wasn't just Dee Snider's crazy blond frizzy hair and lipstick that helped Twisted Sister sell a bajillion copies of the Stay Hungry album. It was that they had created a pissed off fight song that could be cranked up in the face of any minorly irritating oppressor that ever existed in the world.

More often than not, the oppressor is not an actual person, but a force, an enigma, a caricature based on a stew of ignorance, exaggeration and imagination. The rougher the stereotype the better. The less information, nuance and perspective, the easier the rant.

Why so much focus on being oppressed? Maybe because it's fun to talk about? There are only so many things you can say about being blissfully happy and satisfied. But if you're oppressed, you can rant about that all night. Or maybe it's the team building aspect of it. How better to bond with other people than by having a common oppressor? The more us vs. them the world is, the tighter knit the "us" group feels. Maybe it's that everyone loves the underdog? The triumphant, the powerful, the successful inevitably start to be too proud and too cocky. Too big for their smug, self-satisfied britches. The winners are the condescending ones Twisted Sister is talking about. In the face of the beaming victors, maybe being oppressed gives you the moral high ground and makes you feel a little better about getting the short end of the stick.

Capital "O" Oppression can spur people to action and lead to positive change. People who are Oppressed can fight for their rights, break free from their shackles and transform the world into better place. The little "o" oppressed, on the other hand, more often just become angry, bloviating Glen Beckian douchebags who blab on forever about whatever forces in the universe are holding them back, without any real thoughts about how, or even any genuine desire to, make things better.

If you're in the former group, good for you. Rock on. Power to the people. If you're in the latter group, I suggest that you consider your predicament in the context of a slightly larger picture backdrop.

Astronomers, philosophers and men of the cloth can't, to date, say for sure whether conscious, thinking beings have ever existed on any of the millions of stars in any of the billions of galaxies in any of the trillions of universes that preceded us. The entire 4.4 billion year old existence of Earth is just an almost imperceptible bat of a cosmic eyelash in the grand scheme of things. And organisms more complex than bacteria and slime didn't arrive on the scene until the last tiny little sliver of time in the Earth's history.

So, just existing at all and having the neurological wherewithal to boot up your Macbook and read a blog puts you in a pretty privileged position. Having an opposable thumb and living at the tippy top of the food chain are gravy. And living in an era in which robots build our sneakers, jet engines carry our big asses around the world and where one of the most pressing health issues is that we're prematurely fattening our kids to death is really pretty spectacular.

So how about this assertion. If you are a human being who is:

1) living in the United States in the year 2010;
2) not clinically depressed or suffering from any other diagnosable mental disorder;
3) making over $30,000 a year;
4) in moderately good health; and
5) not involved in an abusive relationship or physically being held hostage,

then, as far as freedom goes, I would venture to say that the modern world has bestowed upon you about as much say over how your days play out as just about anyone ever. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you shouldn't get your Twisted Sister on. No way. Crank it up. Rage against the machine. Fight the powers that be. But just don't forget what a privileged evolutionary moment in the history of the universe it is that we're living in. You can bitch about your oppressors, but you may not have it so bad after all.

Deb from GE Capital – Lending a Hand and Jammin’ with Bob

I still read The Economist most weeks. And I still think it’s an interesting and worthwhile magazine. But I still come across an ad in The Economist every now and then that makes me want to enlist in some radical Anarchist group, or at least throw myself in front of a subway on my way to work. And when I saw this ad that involved a bank, nice guitars and musicians, I felt even more nauseous than I usually do when reading an Economist ad:

The copy says: “People don’t just come to GE Capital for money. They come to us for help. To build something. The word ‘lend’ has a couple of meanings. Like the part where it’s not simply about expecting something in return, to lend a hand. We’re helping to bring music to people. What’s better than that? GE is invested in Taylor Guitars.”

And there’s ol’ Bob Taylor, President of Taylor Guitars, and sweet Deb Barker of GE Capital sittin’ around in the Taylor warehouse jammin’, like Deb decided to stop in unannounced one Thursday night with a six pack to see if Bob wanted to just shoot the shit and jam a little.

The whole idea of this is so ridiculous and so nauseating, it’s hard to know where to start. So let’s take it from the top.

First of all, I think anyone who has ever learned to play four chords on a guitar would agree with me that Deb Barker does not play guitar. It looks like the photographer for this ad shoot got Deb’s fingers all set up to play an open E major chord. I don’t know what she’s doing with her right hand, but it’s not something I’ve ever seen anyone do while playing a guitar. She might have a prosthetic arm, or no nerve endings in her fingers, but she is most definitely not strumming that nice Taylor guitar that Bob let her play with.

Next, let’s discuss the idea of GE Capital focusing on the “lend a hand” part of lending and not the “expecting something in return” part. I suppose it’s possible that Deb extended a big hefty term loan to Bob and told him to just do his best, have fun, make beautiful music and get her the money back whenever he thought the time was right. If that were the case, I’d say Deb was about as legitimate a banker as she is a guitar player. In reality, when Bob’s business softened, it wouldn’t matter how many super fun hang-out sessions Deb and Bob had and what total BFFs they had become. When clarifying to Bob about the whole “not expecting anything in return” for the cash, it’ll turn out that Deb neglected to mention that, well, she didn’t expect anything other than for him to meet his default trigger covenants and to service his debt payments on time. And at the end of the day, if Bob sold three less Taylor guitars in a year than contemplated by the financial projections he used to get the loan, then Deb would call Bob’s loan and swoop in to foreclose on his business so fast it would make Eddy Van Halen’s head spin. And if Deb’s boss at GE Capital got wind of her having lent money to Bob “to help bring music to people” and without “expecting anything in return,” Deb would be shit-canned faster than BP’s CEO after the oil spill.

Lastly, does this ad actually work? Aren’t the people who read The Economist supposed to be sophisticated, world travelling business titan types who make cold, rational decisions based on the hard numbers and without the childish distraction of emotion and feeling? Does anyone see this ad and think “wow, you know, it really would be nice to borrow money from a bank that just wants to lend in the ‘lend a hand’ kind of way. And that Deb, she looks like she’d really be a fun friend, and she must play guitar really well.” Are The Economist readers really such incredible schmucks, just like all the rest of us hoi polloi? GE Capital and its ad agency obviously think so.

There’s nothing wrong with GE Capital. It’s a bank. It lends money and tries to make money, which is the reason banks exist. And there’s probably nothing wrong with Deb Barker, except that she looks stupid trying to pretend she plays guitar. And there’s nothing wrong with a bank saying that it lends money to “lend a hand… without expecting anything in return” except that it’s ridiculous, bogus and such outrageous bullshit that it’s insulting to even utter the words. If Bob Taylor decided he needed some funds from GE Capital to expand his business, that’s all well and good. But if he was looking for a cute friend to gab and noodle with, he should go play some bar gigs and try to pick up a groupie.

36 Hours in Michigan - the Charlevoix Marathon

Here is the exclusive footage from my brief trip to Michigan last weekend. Be forewarned, it includes scenes involving a drawbridge, a nipple and a mushroom house. Enjoy!

The Creators of the Shake Weight – Let’s Give ‘Em a Hand (for a) Job Well Done

The universe of infomercials and questionable "as seen on TV" scammy-seeming products is, if nothing else, great entertainment. Most of the stuff being hawked is so ridiculous, you have to just laugh at the thought that someone is going to spend actual, real life dollars trying it out. The exercise equipment is best. The promise of most of the products is that, from the comfort of your own home, without moving or doing much of anything at all, you can shed pounds, get washboard abs and look 20 years younger. Usually in under a week. Physiologically speaking, who knows if any of the stuff works. Probably not, but if you focus on the entertainment value, who cares. One of the most awesome exercise inventions ever was the fat-jiggler machine that was popular in the '70s. We had one in my frat house that still worked. Who knows that the effects of using it were, but watching people get drunk, strap in and jiggle their belly fat was top quality entertainment.

The fat jiggler, the Thighmaster, whatever inventions Suzanne Somers endorsed over the course of her illustrious post-Three's Company career - all fine products. But they don't hold a candle to this year's blockbuster exercise breakthrough - the Shake Weight. The Shake Weight is an exercise device that is supposed to tone your arms. I cannot describe in words how the device works (at least not in a blog that my mom is going to read). Watch the ad and see for yourself:

CLICK HERE

The first time I saw this ad, I thought, there's no way this can possibly be real. The underworld of internet comedians and commentators were quick to point out what you would think would be immediately obvious to everyone in the world. A wide variety of voice-overs and parodies followed. Saturday Night Live did a spoof selling DVDs of the ad. Jon Stewart featured it in his Moment of Zen. But, as highlighted on the Shake Weight official webpage, this thing continued to get high praise from the most mainstream of magazines and talk shows. Did no-one dare speak up? Was the whole thing some kind of huge public Emperor's New Clothes fiasco? Were the thousands of producers and writers and researches who put together all these usually milquetoast morning talk shows really unaware that they were featuring A GIANT MECHANICAL HANDJOB SIMULATOR?

I had seen the Shake Weight ad some time ago, laughed, and then forgot about it. But then, last week, I saw it again on a plane. The 6:00 Monday morning DC to Boston shuttle carries about as corporate a group of people as you'll find anywhere. And when I came out of the bathroom in the rear of the DC-9, looked down the aisle at the vast sea of groggy business travelers and saw 175 little TV screens, each showing an athletic-looking woman appearing to give a vigorous handjob to a giant, out of control, robotic cock, well, that was just a terrific way to start the week.

I don't know who is behind the Shake Weight. But whoever you are, I’d like to give you a hand (for a) job well done. If you were totally oblivious to what people would look like using this thing, and just genuinely thought it was a good exercise idea, that's great. If you knew, and figured you'd try moving some units anyway, even better. And if - and this is what I suspect - you thought the whole thing was so outrageous that no-one would ever agree to let the thing appear on TV, and if the whole point was to just to laugh at our collective cluelessness and maybe even make a few bucks on the side, and if you meant to subvert the mainstream media by inducing every wholesome family morning show to peddle your giant handjob machine, then you are my hero. It worked, and you must be the happiest people around. Well, except for all the guys whose significant others have been doing the Shake Weight workout.

Useful Links:

For the real ad CLICK HERE

For the Saturday Night Live riff CLICK HERE

For the Jon Stewart Moment of Zen CLICK HERE

For an awesome overdub (R rated) of the ad CLICK HERE

The DanJaniFoodieFesto – Why I Became a Vegetarian Last Friday Night

I’ve been a vegetarian now for about 36 hours. I had a hot dog yesterday, but it was at a Memorial Day barbecue, and that’s just what you’re supposed to do at holiday barbecue. And I had a few strips of bacon this morning, but it was my wife who had ordered it, so that doesn’t really count. Not sure how long this personal trend will last. I’ve dabbled in vegetarianism before, but I’m pretty lax about it. My record was three days, but that was when I was sick and didn’t really eat anything.

I’m also not much of a foodie. I like good, fresh, locally grown produce and nicely presented, carefully crafted meals. But I also don’t mind eating food of the highly processed, factory produced variety. Just not more than six or eight times a week. I’ll be honest. McDonalds is one of my favorite restaurants. But since every enlightened, cosmopolitan scholar worth his salt seems to have adopted a personal philosophy about food production and consumption, I suppose I should too. So here is my personal foodie manifesto. The DanJaniFoodieFesto.

As I mentioned, I have become a vegetarian. It began Friday night. In preparation for a long run on Saturday, as is my carbo-loading custom, I ate a seriously huge chicken parmesan. I don’t use the term “seriously huge” lightly when I talk about chicken parms. Ask anyone who knows me. A lot of people have been fooled by my scrawny stature. But for a 5’6” guy who weighs a buck forty, I can put down some chicken parm. Anyway, Friday’s portion of chicken parm was shocking, even to a man of such vast experience in these matters. I considered not finishing it, but then regained my focus, committed, doubled down and polished that bitch off. It was impressive.

Then I went home, eased my bloated self down onto the couch, and watched Food Inc., a documentary by Robert Kenner and Eric Schlosser about the meat packing industry. My overall takeaway: damn, that shit is gross. The film was a little preachy and over-reaching. A large, general indictment of capitalism, immigration, corporations, environmental policy and world health. But what resonated most with me was the shots of what really goes on in a meat factory.

I know as well as anyone that the cute red barns depicted on food labels and the corny, friendly down home farmers on TV hawking chicken are pure bullshit PR creations, but over the course of 36 years, they have sunk in a little. I just don’t spend much time contemplating where my food actually comes from. But damn, taking any kind of close-up look at how cows and chickens and pigs are manufactured for food production – and manufacturing really is what happens – is highly disturbing. If chickens ever somehow took over the world and started treating us the way we treat them, we’d be screwed. The live chickens in industrial coops are pretty much stored in huge, pitch black warehouses and have been engineered to grow so quickly and to produce such a disproportionately high percentage of white meat, that their bones and organs can’t keep up. They can’t walk more than a few paces without falling over. Same kind of nastiness with the bovines and hogs. There’s only a tangential relationship between naturally occurring cows and pigs and the things are bred for our consumption.

So how have I made it through this much of my life happily and enthusiastically eating every variety of beast? The same way I deal with most unpleasant things – not thinking about them. Living in a first world city – where food on a plate has lost all association with its origins – you really don’t have to be confronted at all with how your burger became a burger. You can just focus on it’s thick, juicy, cheesy, bacon strip covered deliciousness. And c’mon. Burgers are delicious.

So that’s what been on my mind for the almost the past two days. We’ll see how long this all remains the focus of my attention. We’re having dinner tonight with some vegetarian friends, so my new anti-meat regime will probably last at least until mid-morning tomorrow. Come Tuesday, when my mind will become re-cluttered with work issues and regular life stuff, memories of those poor chicks and cows may recede. But for now, I’m a convert.

On an unrelated note, since I’m on a manifesto-ing food rampage, I need to update my last posting with some more current information. Last month, I mercilessly mocked KFC’s newest creation – the Double Down (the bacon, ham and cheese sandwich whose outer layer – bread – has been replaced with fried chicken strips). Well I learned from a Salon.com article, that in terms of pure, distilled, unabashed gluttony, the Double Down has got nothing on some of the dishes from one of my other favorite restaurants – Cheesecake Factory. CF’s pasta carbonara dish has 2500 calories and 85 grams of fat, which is the equivalent of – are you ready for this – FIVE KFC Double Downs. That is somehow more than just disgusting; it’s incredible. I say hats off to Cheesecake Factory. Gluttony is their business model. And if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Leave room for dessert!

Here are some fun and informative links:

For an outrageously mammoth portion of chicken parm, next time you’re in Boston, head to Delfino in Roslindale:

http://www.delfinorestaurant.com/

For more information about the documentary Food, Inc., check out:

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

Here’s the full Salon.com article about possibly the most egregious, over the top, fatty, life-expectancy-rate-reducing restaurant in history – Cheesecake Factory:

http://www.salon.com/food/food_business/index.html?story=/food/feature/2010/05/28/xtreme_food_awards

Here’s a video of Meatfest 2009 – before my awakening:

http://danjanifesto.blogspot.com/2009/05/meatfest-2009.html

Here’s my rant about the KFC Double Down:

http://danjanifesto.blogspot.com/2010/04/double-down-kfcs-revolutionary-meat-and.html

And finally, if you’re still in the mood for a Double Down sandwich, here’s a link to some KFC printable coupons:

http://www.kfc.com/coupons/

Double Down - KFC’s Revolutionary Meat and Cheese Delivery System

Kudos to KFC (formerly Kentucky Fried Chicken, now rebranded as Kitchen Fresh Chicken or just KFC – much healthier) for coming up with the season’s hottest new fast food product. Everyone’s talking about it: the Double Down sandwich. The Double Down is a bacon and cheese sandwich. But what makes it revolutionary is that the two pieces of bread that heretofore positively defined what it meant to be a sandwich have been replaced with two slabs of breaded, deep fried chicken. Awesome.

Sandwich technology has changed very little since sandwiches were first invented around 230 AD. What’s been stuffed between the bread has morphed incrementally with shifts in taste and style. But the underlying mechanism – two pieces of bread holding together some interior ingredients – has remained more or less the same for millennia.

The KFC scientists who came up with the revolutionary Double Down concept may have gotten their inspiration from a ten year old Jack In The Box (California fast food chain) advertisement. Jack in the Box’s spokesman is a guy with a ping pong ball for a head. In the ad, circa 1997, Jack in the Box was conducting a focus group study where people were talking about its new burger – the Meat-N-Cheese burger. Nothing but meat. And cheese. The people in the focus group were saying how much they liked the meat and the cheese, but that maybe they should get rid of the bun. The ping pong ball head guy stormed angrily into the room and berated everyone, saying “if we got rid of the bun, you’d get MEAT and CHEESE all over your hands.”

The ad was a joke, but maybe the joke was on them. Having a sandwich without bread seemed at the time like a violation of some natural law. But maybe the seed had been planted for someone to shatter the dominant paradigm. Jack in the Box may have just been too rigid and set in its ways. (It may also have been sidetracked by a more pressing public relations situation – the fact that they had distributed a million bumper stickers with their logo that said “Eat Meat,” 997,750 of which were instantly cut down to read “Eat Me.” That was a fun time to be in California).

One of the fundamental challenges confronting fast food science has always been how to maximize the number of calories that can be crammed into a person’s face in one bite. The average human orifice circumference is a constant, at least until mainstream society comes to accept surgical procedures that let people temporarily unhinge their jaws, or African hoop kinds of contraptions that would, over the years, slowly expand the size of a person’s mouth. And so the only way to meet the continually higher American demand for caloric inputs is to increase the calories per cubic centimeter of the food. The formula looks something like this:

CCC x MOC = AIMC

(where: CCC = calories per cubic centimeter; MOC = mean orifice circumference; and AIMC = aggregate intake per mastication cycle).

The brilliance of the KFC invention was in realizing a fundamental inefficiency in the existing delivery platform technology: the bread in the sandwich was just wasted space. By making one simple adjustment – replacing the bun with deep fried chicken – the CCC element of the equation could be increased tenfold and consumers could be delivered the higher caloric input they demanded without any extra volume (and without the attendant negative externality of increased chewing requirements). Delivery of meat and cheese via fried chicken! The heightened efficiencies were astounding!

I haven’t actually tried the Double Down yet (I will, right after I check out Dunkin Donut’s new chicken parmesan flatbread sandwich), but I would think that grabbing fried chicken with your hands would be a little sloppy. KFC’s probably come up with some kind of Monsanto engineered coating that gives the fried chicken a freshly baked sesame bun-type tactile feel, and that lets you eat the Double Down while driving, without getting grease all over your BlackBerry.

All that remains now is for KFC to get people out buying the Double Down. The challenge is one of getting people to let their ids take over their egos. The dominant social mindset in the year 2010 is all about healthy living and moderation and exercise. But while everyone has some vague feeling that they should cut back and eat smart and all that, they still, at their core, want to binge out on fat, greasy, cheesy, deep fried piles of ambiguous animal flesh. KFC’s Double Down ad actors are perfect – good-natured, good-looking friendly faces letting the world know that it’s OK if a super sized Whopper meal isn’t enough to leave you satisfied. Unleash the id! Eat the sandwich of the future! Wrap your fixins in fried chicken! Nothing could be more natural!

Only time will tell how important an innovation the Double Down will prove to be. The best thing since (and substitution for) sliced bread? Or the last straw in inflating Americans to the point of collapse? In the meantime, I can’t wait to go get my hands on a tasty fried chicken fast food bacon receptacle.

My Bus Trip to Ségou

Despite what most Westerners think, living in the third world isn't all horrible all the time. My exposure to the third world was as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa. There are certainly a lot of huge, fundamental forces that make life difficult in Mali. The net result is a life expectancy rate 30 years lower than in the U.S. But day to day life in a village in Mali can be nice. It's peaceful. You wake up with the sunrise. You have a clear view of the bright stars at night. You get to know goats by name. Telemarketers never call.

But travel in the third world really is horrible. Fortunately, there is sometimes a very fine line between horrible and hilarious.

A Peace Corps stint in Mali starts out with ten weeks of in-country training at a Peace Corps camp outside of Bamako, the capital. One week into training, after the fresh-faced volunteers have learned the bare essentials of living in Africa - things you would have thought we would know how to do already, like showering (but with a bucket), eating (but with your hands) and ass wiping (see previous parenthetical) - volunteers are sent off for a weekend visit with other volunteers who have been in the country for a while. This is what the Peace Corps calls the "demystification visit."

It's a good term. Demystification. The mystificated version of Peace Corps life - what you read about in Lonely Planet and daydream about recounting at sophisticated cocktail parties later in life when you're hip and successful - is supposed to be instantly transformed into the demystificated version - "holy SHIT; what have I done?" It also sends the fainter-of-heart volunteers packing for Cleveland earlier rather than later (if you ever wonder why Peace Corps houses all over the world have posters of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 "phone home" alien hanging on the walls, it's because "E.T.", in Peace Corps speak, means "early termination").

Anyway, my demystification visit was to Ségou. A Peace Corps staff member took me and five other volunteers - Matt, Misha, Andy, John and Tom - to a big dirt parking lot in Bamako and somehow figured out which bus we were supposed to get on. The bus was the sketchiest, most death trap-looking thing I had ever seen in my life. Little did I know that this would be the highest-end traveling I ever did in the country. Later trips would involve snuggling up with animals, having a wheel rip off a car, riding in the bed of an industrial dump truck, and sucking carbon monoxide two inches from where an exhaust pipe had maybe once been. Looking back, this demystification bus, with its individual seats and glass windows, would seem downright pretentious. The six of us got on the bus. Like cool fourth graders, we went straight to the back row.

The trip started off as an exciting adventure. We weren't in Kansas (or Indiana or Ithaca, NY) anymore. We clicked away on our new going-away present cameras, snapping photos of the endless, dry landscape, the mud huts, the donkey carts. We drank Peace Corps-issued bottled water. We talked about Jerry Garcia, who had just died the week before. Then, out of the blue, there was a loud KA-POW, and the front windshield of the bus shattered into a million pieces, showering glass all over the driver. The driver slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. The other passengers glanced over towards the driver for a few seconds, then went on talking as they had been. The driver brushed himself off, smoked a cigarette, put his sunglasses back on, tied a bandana over his nose and mouth and pulled the bus back onto the road.

We couldn't believe it. If something like this had happened back in our homeland, a Fox news helicopter, a fleet of emergency vehicles, a lieutenant governor and two dozen personal injury lawyers would have been on the scene within minutes. A 60 Minutes expose and some congressional sub-committee inquiries would have followed within the week. Then there would be lawsuits, CEO press releases, workers comp claims, tell-all interviews and maybe even a book deal. But in Mali, this wouldn't even merit a longer-than-usual answer to the question "how was your trip?"

We got settled back into our seats by the rear window. It was hard to talk because of all the wind hurricaning through the bus, there being no windshield and all. But we laughed our asses off, slapped each other on the back, and were generally exhilarated to have been part of such a crazy experience. Not ten minutes later, probably because of the aforementioned skin-peeling wind raging through the bus, the back window ripped out of its bracket. It just popped right out - boink - landed in the road and smashed into another million pieces. Once again, everyone turned to take a quick look and went right back to their conversations. This time the bus didn't even stop. We were beside ourselves. "This is soooo insane!!!!" "No-one's even gonna BELIEVE this!!!"

But the volunteers who met us in Ségou did believe it. And they weren't that impressed. "Huh," they said, "Is it true that Jerry's dead?" "Any cute chicks in the new training group?" And that was that. We all wrote letters home about our crazy bus ride. But after a few months in the country, after we had become really, truly demystified, we stopped telling stories like that altogether. They didn't even rank. Yup, life in the third world doesn’t always suck, but travel in the third world always, always does.