A Thousand Times No

Huzzah, it’s November 30th! I made it through National Blog Posting Month for another year. This morning I went to peek at the completion badges, and had to laugh when I saw them:

It’s our buddy Poppin’ Fresh, better known as the Pillsbury Doughboy — quite possibly to most beloved white guy to come out of Minnesota, ever.

The earliest memory I have from childhood involves none other than this puffy icon. I was about two or three years old, and I recall asking my mother not to use a knife to pierce the wrapping on a tube of Pillsbury dough because she might hurt the Doughboy. (The Pillsbury commercials of that era always opened with an anonymous hand thwacking a dough canister against a countertop, liberating an understandably exuberant Poppin’ Fresh from his economy seating.) My mother promised me she would be careful, and gently pushed a knife into the diagonal seam of the canister.

Pop!

[Silence.]

I eagerly waited for Poppin’ Fresh to emerge. And waited. And then I burst into tears. “Where’s the Doughboy? Why didn’t he come out? What happened?” I was completely beside myself.

My mother tried to console me. My father stepped into the kitchen to see what was the matter. They both spent a lot of time talking to me about the difference between commercials and reality.

And that, dear readers, is the first conscious recollection I have: marked for life by the primal No of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

As I grew up, I stopped expecting him to pop out of the wrapper. Now, older still, I realize that he’ll never jump out of a canister — but everyone once in a while, he still manages to turn up and make your day.

Congratulations to everyone, bloggers and readers alike, on making it through NaBloPoMo 2007!

I’ve had a mixed year on the fitness front. On the up side, I spent plenty of time cycling this spring and summer. On the down side, I spent months struggling with a case of frozen shoulder, something that interfered with everything from my grip on the bike to the way I slept at night. My time on the bike also cut into any number of other pursuits, including blogging and working on my podcast, but it was a way to stay fit despite the trouble I was having with my joint.

These days, my shoulder is finally close to being normal again. It began to spontaneously resolve, as frozen shoulders are wont to do, some time in late June. Inch by inch, I’ve been regaining my range of motion. Swimming helped a little; yoga helped a lot. There were days when I would feel a tiny twinge while reaching for something with my left arm. It wasn’t pain so much as an uncanny echo; my shoulder bones were revisiting spaces that had been left untouched for months on end.

Today I finally made it back to the gym, trying to get an early start on the inevitable New Year’s resolution. It was my first trip back to the weight machines and free weights since my shoulder trouble first began. Curls! Extensions! Pulldowns! Skullcrushers! Once I got moving, I felt positively governatorial.

Then I began the cool-down from my workout, which involved sitting on the floor of the women’s locker room and slowly twisting the dial on my combination lock. For 80-90 reps.

In my haste to reach the gym for my first-ever session with a personal trainer, I had mistakenly grabbed a combo lock that I hadn’t used in over a year. A lock whose combination was nowhere to be found upstairs in my mental junk drawer. A lock that required a ginormous bolt cutter, plus considerable body English, for the staff to remove. All in front of my new trainer.

Because my workout would not have been complete without The Head Lifts of the Sheepish.

I’ve been making a conscious effort to keep my hands out of the community candy jar at work this week. An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but this little leaning tower shows what it takes to keep the chocolate cravings at bay on a day when you don’t get home until 8:30 in the evening:

One locally grown Fuji apple, a few ounces of Gouda cheese, some stone wheat crackers, a dozen organic baby carrots, beans and rice with shrimp, and turkey fruit salad.

Somehow, I feel like a sherpa when I haul so many provisions to the office. Perhaps I should also be toting a flag to plant when I reach the summit, or picking up empty oxygen tanks during my return trip? Do keep reminding me that this is better than a trip to Candy Mountain.

If you repeat it enough times, I just might believe you.

When you misplace your cell phone, how do you find it? Well, if you still have access to a land line, you call your cell phone and let it ring until you locate it. Easy peasy, right?

How about when you forget for two days straight to pack it with your things when you head to work? So that when you get on the wrong express train out of the city to meet a group of people for dinner, you can’t even call them to tell them you’ll be late? And when you try to call your own cell phone, the battery has expired?

Obviously, when they took attendance this week, my mind was absent.

Today is “Cyber Monday,” prime time for shopping online. Or it would be, were we back in the Paleozoic Era of Internet commerce, oh, three or four years ago. I don’t think the suits running some of the Fortune 500 retailers get it: Plenty of people have high-speed Internet access at home these days, and that’s where we’re shopping now.

I was deeply unpatriotic on Black Friday, staying home to clean house rather than fighting hand-over-fist to buoy the sinking American economy at my local mall. Taking a tip from the Org Pr0n folks, I began tossing out hard copies of product manuals after downloading their PDF equivalents. When I searched for an electronic replacement for a Kenmore air conditioner manual, I landed at the Sears website.

Or to be more accurate, the Sears website slammed the door in my face:

Beg pardon? It’s America’s biggest shopping day of the year, and you haven’t bothered to set up any sort of load management for your website? So this is what I get for well over an hour? Sigh.

“Sears. Where it [ends before it even] begins.”

I used to purchase Apple products on a regular, if sporadic, cycle. Once every four or five years a new set of boxes would land at my house, and then unpacking and merriment would ensue. Like any good junkie, over time I’ve been getting my fix on an increasingly frequent basis. My latest hit has been the new Apple aluminum keyboard.

Is it possible to be passionate about a peripheral? I’m enchanted by its looks: simple, sleek, sexy, clean. More importantly, I love how it performs. The keys have very little vertical travel, making them swift and surprisingly quiet. They’re also placed in a tighter configuration, akin to the key spacing on a portable manual typewriter, with added buffer space between the keys to prevent accidental keystrokes. Touch typists, take note: this baby was built for the links lane of das Infobahn.

Looking for an ecumenical holiday gift? This little marvel will plug into either your Apple or your PC. Spread the love and share the joy!

As Pr0n Week draws to a close, I will reveal something so shocking and socially compromising that it can only be called “The Pr0n That Dare Not Speak Its Name.”

We are surrounded, all of us, by people who consume this material during their private hours. It’s a $40 billion industrial juggernaut in the United States alone, a number that leaves everything from professional sports and Hollywood, not to mention the GDP of dozens of nations, in the dust. Do I have a secret cache of magazines, movies, and even books loaded from cover to cover with tantalizing photos and heart-pounding narratives, all devoted to this specific overpowering force field?

I do.

This is the one realm in which I’ve been more a producer than a consumer. I’ve sung from rafters, booked photographers and organists, designed invitations, planned seating arrangements, packaged favors, and worn frightful dresses with dyed-to-match shoes. I remain irreverent and skeptical, yet utterly fascinated by the entire process and its inherent theatricality.

Okay, I’ve just outed myself. Please be gentle and refrain from throwing stones or rice. Thank you.

Pr0n Week 2007: All Tied Up

Certain residents of my household, no longer content with simply making cameo appearances in this web space, have stepped up their demands for public visibility. It’s Friday, to boot. Need I say more?

• Death by a Thousand Cutes
  Hardened veterans of the Kitten Wars, furious at being exploited and then abandoned by their erstwhile allies (read: us), decide to launch a guerrilla attack upon their former confederates. How else could you possibly explain the subversive and oddly opiate properties of LOLCats?

• Hello Kitty
  I still remember the first time I ever saw Hello Kitty merchandise. My sister and I were wandering in the aisles of Dayton’s, the much-beloved Minnesota department store, when we spied it: a small kiosk display rife with miniature stationery kits, tiny tsunamis of kawaii in bright primary colors. I was enraptured. Now, decades later, Hello Kitty has branched out into bling. For a mere $50,000, you too can say, “Hello Kitty, goodbye cash!” Can a Hello Ferrari really be far behind?

• The Ultimate Scratching Post
  This scratching post rises totemically from the ground, ascending nearly a full meter in height. Its creators at SmartCat boast that the product, decked in ribbed sisal, is “designed to maximize your cat’s scratching pleasure.” When the original scratching post in my house finally began to unravel, I succumbed to the lure of this product. Alpha Cat took to it instantly. Naturally, Cat the Second refused to set foot anywhere near it, seeking consolation in the seductive embrace of the nearest armchair instead.

• Drinkwell Pet Fountain
  The inventors of this device emphasize the benefits of providing your cat with a continually aerated stream of healthfully oxygenated water. (Animals that use their own tongues as toilet paper could make do with nothing less!) Yet you will find one of these gizmos in my house, sporting a reservoir with a honkin’ big O-ring. In my own defense, the temptation of refilling the water dish only once a week was to great to resist.

• Turducken Cat Food
  A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma…tucked in a chicken, encased in a duck, engulfed in a turkey. Proof that the apocalypse is nigh.

• Dyson DC 17 Animal
  How else was I to deal with the pockets of feline felt that were sprouting all over my house? The ones that ruthlessly stripped belt after belt off less stalwart models? Even after snagging a phenomenal deal on Craigslist, this was a huge splurge, but the turbine attachment allowed me to finally rescue a carpeted stairwell from complete Yeti-fication. Without fail, whenever I turn this sucker on, I always feel very, very dirty. (”Heh-heh, she said purple hoover.”)

• The Furminator
  Ounce for ounce, dollar for dollar, this wonder brush puts even the Dyson to shame. It’s easy to look at the low-budget videos and say to yourself, “They must be faking it,” but no, this little marvel performs exactly as advertised. The most addictive grooming tool ever.

Thank you for your continued interest. We sincerely hope these confessions aid in keeping you and yours in the pink.

Kind regards,

– The Boys (and Food Lady)

Pr0n Week 2007: Let’s Get Animal.

Compared to several people I know, my food proclivities are relatively tame. I’m not one to chase after the latest chic restaurant or fancy kitchen gadget. I always, always order the Pad Thai the first time I go to a new Thai restaurant. (My theory: if they can’t serve a decent Pad Thai, why bother sampling anything else on the menu?) I don’t know up from down on a wine list, and have an abiding weakness for macaroni and cheese. There have been times when my kitchen and I have not seen each other for weeks on end.

Even so, I manage to indulge in Food Pr0n.

• Iron Chef
  I adore this show in its original Japanese incarnation. From the moment the “Chairman” chomps into the raw bell pepper, I’m transfixed. The campy costumes, feeble dubbing, nonstop playing with fire, and bizarre ingredient challenges (create a dessert with squid!) are like a trip to the circus — minus the smells.

• SmittenKitchen.com
  Deb Perelman somehow manages to hold down a full time job and still post a series of luscious recipes and food photos most nights of the week. The pictures always look good enough to eat, even when the food burns. And she met her husband through her blog. Uh, waiter, I’ll have what she’s having.

• Kitchen Confidential
  Tony Bourdain makes you want to shag, and eat. In that order.

• Compendium cookbooks
  These are the tomes that can double as doorstops, or perhaps boat anchors. Like a kitchen Kama Sutra, they detail techniques for skimming, dipping, kneading, tying, stuffing, icing…and so on. In my kitchen, you’ll find How to Cook Everything, The New Best Recipe, and their fabled predecessor, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Will I ever use all these recipes? Of course not. But they do provide something to fall back on in the event of a sweetmeat emergency.

Of course, none of this is half as rare or delectable a never-married, heterosexual male decked out with his own Kitchen Aid mixer. Ho-ho-ho!

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all.

Pr0n Week 2007: Use Your Tongue.

Sometimes the most enticing, inviting, elusive, decadent thing you could possibly imagine doing in bed is sleeping. If you are too busy, too unsettled, too ill, too stressed, or (worst of all) too tired to close your eyes, you’ll discover that you’ve become an easy target for those who peddle in sweet dreams.

Just last week, one of my friends expressed skepticism about very existence of Sleep Pr0n. “Is there really enough stuff to make that its own category?” Easy for him to say: he beds down in a sleepatron factory each night. The rest of us are subject to the predations of the Sleep Industrial Complex, which Business 2.0 pegged as a whopping $20 billion trade. (Excuse me, what’s with the racket? Some of us are trying to sleep over here.)

Just who is underwriting sleeponomics? People like me. People who have secret stashes of Sleep Pr0n tucked in nooks and crannies throughout their homes.

• Tempurpedic pillows
  The much-touted Swedish memory foam doesn’t lull me to sleep, but it has saved me countless hours of pillow-fluffing. It’s the only pillow that allows me to lie on my side and continue reading (see Book Pr0n) for any length of time. I’m sure sleep experts would cite this as a textbook example of terrible sleep hygiene, but as Mr. “Sleeper” himself said, it’s only dirty if it’s done right.

• Eye masks
  Forget about silks and satins, it’s the fluffy terrycloth that gets me every time. I keep a pair of these around right next to my bed, but can’t seem to bring myself to use them except once in a blue moon. Wearing one on a plane or a train, where it might actually prove useful at blocking out unwanted light, feels unaccountably perverse. Look, I may be an insomniac, but I that doesn’t mean I enjoy exposing myself.

• Sleep audio
  There’s a voice that tells you to relax from your fingertips. Or beautiful nature sounds and soothing tunes with subliminal, delta-wave inducing pulsations embedded into the soundtrack. When it works, it works. When it doesn’t, you find yourself lying in bed in the embarrassing company of someone who plays tasteless, uninspiring mood music — namely, yourself.

• Melatonin
  This stuff has saved my bacon in Europe more than once. Sadly, it can’t seem to revive the flagging US dollar, or work consistently within the confines of my own bed. The same goes for all the other natural sleep aids, like camomile tea, valerian, warm milk, and a quiet conscience.

• Sleeping pills
  Great, if I want to go out like a light…and spend the entire following day feeling like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck.

• Turbo beds
  The salespeople at the Dux bed store in Philadelphia told me that their customers report being restless in the world’s best hotels, longing for the unparalleled comfort of their own obscenely expensive Dux beds at home. I didn’t drop $7K for a Dux bed, and I won’t drop $15K for a Gravity Zero bed, because those price tags would keep me up at night.

When all else fails, I resort to Sudoku, which is Japanese for “getting in bed with Will Shortz.” (Okay, not quite — but I can dream, can’t I?)

Pr0n Week 2007: Fun In Bed.