By staff writer David Nelson
November 4, 2007
Essential New Word of the Week: peekaboob (definition hint: lateral cleavage)
In recent weeks, PIC prom king Nate DeGraaf has given notice of his intention to get back into shape. Here’s a guy about my age who has more sex in a week than I do in a year, and even he sees the need to diet and hit the gym. Let me tell you something: I just copyedited his semi-autobiographical book, and if I’d had as many sexual encounters as Nate did, I’d be too busy buying crotch insurance to exercise.
I always figured I would get married, spend a wonderful decade growing fat off junk food, followed by a presto-changeo midlife crisis health kick/divorce. That’s just the way it’s done. But, given Nate’s example, it’s becoming clear that I too should log a few hours blasting my obliques, feeling the burn, hitting the crunch or whatever-the-hell fruity terminology they use at gyms these days.
Actually, screw that. Exercise sucks. I’ve tried it, and like a Ben Stiller movie, it’s just painful and boring. Besides, if I date only fat girls, I can still be the attractive one in the relationship. I have to think the sex would not be as bad as they say. The trick is to pretend she’s someone famous. In other words, it might not be all that erotic to hump a giant talking beanbag, but if you scotch tape a picture of Luciano Pavarotti onto her face, it’s at least interesting.
“There’s probably a brand of gravy out there that actually doubles as a sports drink.”
A quick survey of late-night TV doesn’t improve my views on exercise, either. Every infomercial starts with black and white footage of a doughy guy trying desperately to perform a sit-up. I guess I’m supposed to identify with that guy, but I can actually do sit-ups, and without muted trombones of failure blaring in the background. For a few easy payments, I could contort myself into an arrangement of tubes and straps and theoretically become a mountain gorilla in just minutes a day. No thanks.
People like me who hate exercise aren’t necessarily doomed to a life of trying to find their genitals in a sea of blubbery thigh-folds, though. As long as you eat healthy, you should be OK. Of course these days, there are a million diets offering hope to gullible fatsos, a demographic rivaled in number only by the Hispanics. And everyone knows they’re busy feeding America taco after taco until the gringo threat is rendered immobile.
Speaking of which, have you been to a Taco Bell lately? Yo quiero barfbag. I’m no mathematician, but I find it remarkable that they can compile a hundred different menu items, all from the same five ingredients. And every one of them will kill you, particularly the Grade-Z Beefoid Paste.
I have a friend who considers “Think Outside the Bun” a personal philosophy. He’s such a good customer at Taco Bell, they’ll make him random crap that’s not even on the menu. “Hey, give me four taco shells arranged in a trapezoid, with a 60/40 mixture of salsa and guacamole drizzled in a concentric spiral.” “Yes, sir!”
At some point in the pursuit of easy weight loss, science lost its damn mind. There’s no other way to explain the Atkins craze. I think some executive decided people would be dumb enough to think that Big Macs were healthy, as long as you skip the bun. Here’s what they don’t say: Even if you bread them in vitamins and deep-fry them in soymilk, chunks of greasy meat and reconstituted cheese are always going to make you fat.
Years ago, my friends and I used to reward ourselves after road hockey with a trip to Burger King for a Whopper—heavy-all. The “heavy-all” part wasn’t a sanctioned Burger King term, but it aptly referred to a burger positively bulging with cheese and mayo and lettuce fragments. You have to hand it to BK—no other franchise had the nerve to offer food that turned into a shapeless handful of meaty slop after two bites.
Wendy’s recently launched a burger called “The Baconator.” And while my stoner friends love the idea of combining two patties with six strips of cured smoky goodness, it’s not exactly a recipe for health, in spite of what Atkins’ zombie would say. The name alone should strike fear into the hearts of cardiologists, not to mention Sarah Connor. It clocks in at 830 calories and 51 grams of fat, which is more than enough to turn you into a lumbering porkbeast. Still, when you’ve got the munchies….
Burger joints aren’t the only offenders. Kentucky Fried Chicken spent millions of dollars rebranding into “KFC,” so as to de-emphasize the “fried” part. Now, I do enjoy commercials wherein a cartoon plantation owner jumps out of a bucket of chicken to breakdance, but I have a better idea in mind for KFC. If they really wanted the public to stop calling it “fried chicken,” step number one is to quit frying the goddamn chicken.
At the supermarket recently, I actually saw reduced-fat aerosol cheese. At first I thought the executives at Nabisco were simply lying. After all, these are the same shady characters who devised “Reverse Oreos.” But science has actually created a nitrogen-propelled, sodium-laden tub of orange goo that won’t make you fat. Food doctors can get cola down to one calorie and there’s probably a brand of gravy out there that actually doubles as a sports drink. So, why is there an obesity epidemic, again?
Maybe it doesn’t matter, anyway. Maybe liposuction technology will grow so advanced that future eat monsters will be able to strap butter to their insides with impunity. They’ll walk up and place their orders for a dozen Atomic Slam Baco-Meals, and the clerks, instead of simply assuming that lunch is being picked up for a construction site, will ask “For here or to go?” without a trace of sarcasm.
I hope that day never comes. I may not be in perfect shape, but as long as there’s a hierarchy of fat, I can always work just hard enough not to occupy the bottom rung. You won’t see me running any marathons, but you also won’t see me riding my motorized wheelchair to the Twinkie aisle.
Essential New Word of the Week:
peekaboob n [‘pikabub]
With all the war, disease, and feminism in the world, one of man’s last remaining harmless pleasures is gawking at women in revealing outfits. But even this is not as simple as it used to be. If you get caught, you’re liable to be subjected to a workplace sensitivity training seminar. Even more tragically, low-cut tops are not as fashionable as they used to be, or so it would seem. But all is not lost. The magical world of ogling has undergone a paradigm shift, and it’s no longer necessary to hover above an innocent young girl like some kind of creepy gym teacher. Now, there’s peekaboob.
Peekaboob occurs when a lady of decent proportions elects to wear a button-down shirt. Maybe that shirt is a size too small, or maybe it just needs ironing. Whatever the cause, a rift opens between the critical second and third buttons, allowing passersby at eye level to catch a magnificent glimpse of boob, perhaps holstered by a lacy delicate bra. Sneaking a peek from this rare angle is hugely satisfying. I only hope that by giving the phenomenon a name, I’m not helping to somehow diminish it. Any day you catch a peekaboob is a good day.