I initially wrote this under the pseudonym Doc Tarrasque for the now defunct humor website, FupDuck.com. I’ve always been happy with how the piece turned out. It seemed appropriate to update it and publish it here. Happy New Year!
At the start of each year, I like to take a few days off of work to sit back, focus, and think about the direction my life is going in. One subject that routinely gets pondered on during this little siesta is my health, or, rather, my lack of health. This year was no different. And while I have many friends who would probably club me to death if they ever heard me gripe about my weight, the fact is that I no longer posses the spry form I once maintained in my youth. So, in an effort to stem the physical effects of my gamer lifestyle, I am slowly weeding out those foods from my diet that are unhealthy. That is to say, I’m eating fewer foods that make me happy, such as juicy, red-centered, medium-rare steaks topped with runny Gorgonzola, and eating more foods that make me very, very unhappy. Foods like sardines, broccoli, and the most soul crushing of all, yogurt.
I do not like yogurt. It’s not just the taste and the texture of yogurt that doesn’t agree with me, either. I don’t like the idea of yogurt. Take any container of yogurt and turn it on its side. Emblazoned, like a Surgeon General’s Warning, are the words “contains live cultures”. I pride myself on having tried foods from different countries. In Indian restaurants, I’ve eaten amorphous globules that had names akin to Lovecraft’s Elder Gods. I regularly dine on sushi of all different shapes and sizes. I’ve even enjoyed the occasional dish served in the tartare style. However I simply cannot reconcile the concept of “live cultures” with “good eats”.
I recognize that this is an irrational thought. I’m an avid beer drinker. More to the point, I’m an avid beer brewer, and yeast, a single-cell fungus, is perhaps the most crucial ingredient used in brewing. Yet, somehow, my brain accepts beer where it won’t accept yogurt. Maybe it’s the fact that the yeast in bottled beer is dormant. Most likely it’s because my brain has learned that beer gets it drunk, which is nice. Also, and I’m not joking, I think it’s because beer doesn’t resemble “the Stuff”. Are you familiar with the movie, The Stuff? In it, a wildly addictive creamy custard-like dessert turns out to be a sentient creature that feeds by dissolving humans from the inside out. As evidenced by the existence of this essay, the imagery from the film has stuck with me over the years.
Despite my fears that in the end it would be me who gets eaten, I resolved to swap out Star Crunches in exchange for yogurt in my weekly diet. But which one to try? I’ve avoided the stuff (implications intended) for years. With no ideas as to what to buy, I turned to my wife. It turns out her live-culture-laden custard of choice is Activia. “Well, why not?” I thought. After all, she’s been eating it for months and she’s hasn’t died or dissolved into a foamy white mass bent on world domination.
Yet there was one more thing holding me back from accepting the “Activia Challenge”- the commercials. There’s not a dude in a one of them. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became by it. Is it not meant for male consumption? Is the secret ingredient estrogen? Are women the only ones to suffer digestive problems? What gives?
Well, I have it on solid first hand authority that men are indeed affected by digestive irregularities. Every Thursday night, a group of my best buddies gathers at my house for dinner and a few hours of Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, that Dungeons and Dragons. Anyways, by the time the evening wraps up, there is such a piquant funk enveloping the gaming table that even my dogs have stopped visiting us. It was during one of these male bonding sessions that the answer came to me. You will not see men in an Activia commercial because marketing a product like Activia to guys would be a PR nightmare. Women shy away from their digestive problems. Men revel in them.
Think about it. Every Activia commercial starts out with a group of ladies either lounging around a swimming pool or gathered in a well furnished living room. One of the women then leans over and demurely confides to another that she’s afraid that swimming a few laps or joining in on the scrap-booking will goad her colon into unexpected and premature action (I know that’s not exactly what is said; I’m cutting through the subtext). At that point, Jamie Lee Curtis busts in, like a feminine version of the Kool Aid man, and announces that the ladies need not give up a dip in the pool or imprisoning baby pictures in three-ring binders, for Activia will right all the wrongs in their stomachs. How would such a scene pan out if guys were involved?
(A crowd of men are gathered around a big screen television watching football, or soccer, or hockey, or Top Gear, or the Venture Bros. Empty pizza boxes lay open around them, like spent clams. A guy walks in from offstage, looking slightly flushed yet satisfied.)
1st Man: I just tore it up in your bathroom!
2nd Man: (takes a tentative sniff, then recoils) Oh, damn! Someone grab the matches!
While I imagine that such an advert might become popular with the You Tube crowd, I don’t see it selling much yogurt before getting yanked off the air.
Ok, I might have gone overboard in my depiction of a man’s yogurt commercial. I’m certain that advertising executives would find a way to dance around the realities of such a situation and get their point across. But who would they get for a pitchman? Jamie Lee Curtis got her start in the ‘70’s as a hot, young scream queen, and worked her way up to become a respected actress. These days she’s a mother of two, writing children’s books on the side, and in her fifties she still sounds and looks fabulous. She’s the perfect mixture of every-woman and glamour. Who is the male equivalent? The first name that sprung to mind was John Travolta. After all, his success story starts around the same time as Jamie Lee’s, he’s still a popular star, he has a gorgeous family, and flies jets in his spare time- all very manly and glamorous, indeed. Yet, have you seen him in From Paris with Love? I’m sorry, but chubby and bald is not the look I’m aspiring to. Plus, you cannot ignore his Scientology connections, which some people may find dubious. What’s the Church of Scientology’s stance on pro-biotic foods? Best not to take chances.
So, to me, that ruled out Travolta. For the briefest of moments the name Chuck Norris popped in my head. Imagining Chuck Norris pimping yogurt sent my eyelids into a twitching frenzy that didn’t subside for over 20 minutes. Besides, to partake in the old Internet pastime, Chuck Norris doesn’t get irregular. Chuck Norris inflicts irregularity on his enemies. Then he kills them.
Stymied, I turned to my DVD collection for inspiration. Within moments I had my answer: Kurt Russell. The man is pushing sixty, yet he’s still in great shape and working steadily. Plus, in every interview or DVD commentary I’ve ever heard him in, he’s come across as an affable and down to Earth guy. Besides, I have long held the belief that Kurt Russell never receives the proper recognition he deserves for his contributions to cinema. During the action movie heydays of the ‘80’s and the ‘90’s, whenever the press spoke about action heroes, the same names were always mentioned together: Eastwood, Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Van Damme. Where was the love for the man who helped bring characters such as “Snake” Pliskin, R.J. MacReady, and Jack Burton to life? It is high time society gives this man some props. Not that the opportunity to hawk Activia on national television is a just reward, but it would at least make me feel somewhat better about eating it.
However, as I think about it now, I really wonder if even an association with Kurt Russell would be enough for me to be “ok” with consuming yogurt. There is still the matter of the taste I have to contend with. The other day while at the supermarket, I took a look at all the flavors that were available. No matter which brand I focused on, they all seemed to share the same repeating varieties: strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, wild berry, berry berry berry, and vanilla. None of these appeal to my palate. It’s bad enough that I’m allowing yogurt into my diet. It seems unfair that I’m being forced to shoehorn more fruit in as well.
I feel fairly confident in saying that I’m not the only guy who feels this way, although I only have anecdotal evidence to support my claim. In my Thursday night gaming group, the word “fruit” is regarded with the same scorn as the words “al-Qaeda”, and “Jar Jar Binks”. Why can’t there be yogurt flavors to appeal to those of us with the Y chromosome? I’m not going to be so crass as to suggest that there should be bacon flavored yogurt. I’m sure the amount of sodium required to pull of such a feat would completely nullify all beneficial effects. I see the truth of it.
I have it! Like a ray of light streaming down from the heavens and filtering through a stained glass window to beam insight onto my face, I have the answer! Several months back my friend, Kehn, gave me a pint of ice cream that had been crafted at a local creamery. It was Irish Stout flavored, and it was pure ambrosia. Yogurt is ice-cream’s less attractive cousin, is it not? Why not Guinness Stout yogurt? Surely one of the dairy companies out there must have the foresight and the technology to make it happen, so why haven’t they? What a missed opportunity! If yogurt tasted like Guinness, I would have absolutely no qualms about eating it for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. It would be like a gateway drug. Think of the most desperate of alcoholics who begin each day with an oatmeal stout, and fool themselves into thinking it’s ok because it’s oatmeal stout. They’d be compelled to try a Guinness yogurt, at least once.
Sadly, though, no such thing exists. And, when I sit in front of my television, with my tin of sardines and a side of broccoli, I have no male role models to rely on, to tell me that I’m going to be okay if I finish it all off with a carton of creamy bacterium. Yet already the New Year is upon us, and I must get on with my resolution. So, I will be eating vanilla flavored Activia. But I sure as hell won’t be happy about it.
Update: I’m still maintaining my somewhat healthier diet- including yogurt. Over time, I have come to, and I can’t believe I’m writing this, like yogurt. Even the berry stuff. Although I still think that Guiness flavored yogurt would be amazing. C’mon, Dannon, show some chutzpah!
The question that still haunts me, however, is what exactly is all this yogurt doing to me? Do I enjoy it because it genuinely tastes good- or am I slowly losing my identity to the cultures swirling within?