Rare is the Santa Claus who can earnestly grow that full lion’s mane of bright white hair. But I’m sorry, it’s what We The People demand. Fake beards on Santa Claus are an insult. They mock the jolly Christmas cheer, like a wreath made out of lettuce, gingerbread house made of saltines, or a turkey made out of Tofurkey.

So let’s get one thing straight, Kringle — grow the real beard or don’t apply at the mall. It’s that simple. And it’s what the fraternity demands.

AWESOME!

My friend Mike once broke a tooth on a Buffalo wing. Snapped a big chunk off one night when he chomped down on a fatty, bony, Buffalo sauce-drenched chicken wing. But you know what? Mike just kept right on eating. With his new fang he looked like a bear who just woke up from hibernation, stumbled to the river and scooped a salmon out, then started gnawing viciously on its raw belly, pink guts spraying everywhere.

No, there wasn’t anything more important to Mike at that moment than finishing that delicious Buffalo wing, not even if it meant infecting exposed roots, cracking more teeth, or spraying sauce all over the table. He was in the The Any Food Requiring Moist Towelettes And Napkins Zone. His eyes stared straight ahead, his sticky, coated fingers balancing and turning the wing an inch from his face, Mike didn’t stop until he had turned the wing into a needle-thin bone and tossed it on the scrap plate. Then he leaned back on his chair gasping for air, bright red chicken wing guts smeared all over his mouth and fingers.

When I tell people this story they usually nod their head and say something like “Were the wings any good?”, or “I love Buffalo wings.” But this makes sense, because who really cares about Mike’s tooth? He’ll get it fixed. The point here is that wings are delicious. In fact, any food that requires moist towelettes and a stack of napkins is delicious. Ribs, rotisserie chicken, chili cheese fries? Delicious, delicious, even more delicious. All requiring a stack of napkins and some moist towelettes.

We know these foods are great because of what happens whenever you’re out late at a bar, and somebody orders a pitcher, and then somebody else raises their eyebrows, looks around the table, and goes “Wings?” If this happens, no matter what you have to say: “Ohhhhhh….no, I really shouldn’t.” Then you let another really long pause just hang in the air as you slowly purse your lips and allow a very thin smile to reveal itself on your face. Then very quickly give an exasperated ‘I give in’ laugh, a head shake, and an “Alright, I’m in!”, and you’re done! (To show decisiveness and finality, it’s also recommend you toss your menu into the center of the table and tell a really long story about some hot wings you once ordered that turned out to be much hotter than you expected.)

So there you go. Messy, sticky, saucy food is great. You order it, you polish it off, and then there are three ways to use the moist towelette and napkin combo at the end:

Method #1: Use the napkin first. Draw off all the extra sauce and random fried crumbs, and then clean up real nice afterwards with the moist towelette. Perfect!

Method #2: Use the moist towelette first. Rub that towelette until it turns red and cleans off your fingers, then dry off with the stack of napkins. Perfect!

Method #3: Here napkins are used pre- and post-towelette. The idea is that they first remove all the big crumbs, then the towelette comes in to clean everything off real nice, and finally the napkins return for the big dry-off. Perfect!

Whatever your style, one thing’s for sure: When that handful of Wet-Naps and stack of napkins arrives at the table, you better get yourself ready for a great night.

AWESOME!

You know the feeling: you just spent five minutes chasing all the corners of the elastic form-fitting bottom sheet around your bed and then you laid and tucked the top sheet tightly into the mattress. You found some pillow covers in the linen closet, squeezed and shook your pillows in there, put your blanket over all of it, took a deep breath, and then just dove right into the fresh, cold, mothball-smelling sheets.

New sheets are great because they don’t smell like The Sleeping You, with your armpit hair all squishing around in there all night, your drool leaking all over the pillows, and your crusty old feet flaking off into little piles of dead skin shavings at the foot of the bed. And let’s not forget the hot farts you pop out when you’re sleeping, too. Don’t deny it! We’re all disgusting when we’re asleep, and new bed sheets are great for letting us temporarily escape our own filth.

Really, only one thing can add to that new bed sheet feeling and that’s when it’s your first seasonal sleep in thin, cotton summer sheets or thick, linen winter sheets. As you close your eyes softly, crickets chirping outside your window, moonlight and tree branches shadow-dancing on the walls, you know right then and there: It’s going to be a good night.

AWESOME!

High fives are good. High tens are great.

Picture it — jaw dropping in slow-motion silence, eyebrows furrowing in mock-angry rage, head slowly wagging side to side, both hands lifting high up top, waiting a brief moment for your friend to answer your call and deliver a booming double palm-on-palm SMACK.

Now that’s a beautiful picture. That’s the happy dial turned to 10. That’s a good day giving birth to a great one. That’s a photo from Appendix A of The Study of The Best Things Ever. Lady, I don’t know who you are, where you live, or what you’re all about. But I know that you gotta love that beautifully loud high ten and its satisfying twenty-finger crack. It’s just explosive.

Like I said, the high five is good, too. But really, almost anyone can deliver a high five. It’s just one hand! Once you start tenning, the five starts to look wrong, incomplete, and unfinished. It becomes a half, a partial, a sort of, like a flop with no flip, yang with no yin, pong with no ping, or a unicycle.

But the high ten! Sugar, let’s talk about that high ten. Now that’s the celebratory hand-on-hand gesture for you and me. See, the high ten takes guts for two big reasons:

1. First off, higher chance of looking stupid: You throw a high five up there and no one answers it, no problem. You just put your hand nonchalantly back in your pocket, scratch your head, or swipe it through the side of your hair, Fonzie-style. No one notices you covered it up and all is well. But you throw a high ten up there and you get left hanging? Well now you just look foolish — like you’re trying to get the wave started at your kid’s T-ball game or just airing out your pits.
2. Also, there’s more coordination required: Think about it, during a high five all eyes are on that one hand. With four eyes focused on one slap, there’s not too much that can go wrong. Yes, there’s the awkward pinky-on-pinky slap, but those really don’t happen too much. Now, the high ten’s a different animal. This time each person has to focus on two slaps. Time them right. Aim them precisely. Smack them hard. You can’t just high ten perfectly the first time. It is very difficult and requires a lot of practice.

However, the good news is that once you work up the nerve to pull off the high ten, it can be a very rewarding slap. So give it a shot. Test it out. See what it’s all about. And hey, maybe even try laying a thundering double palm-on-palm SMACK on one of your closest friends…today! Then maybe go out for beers or something. Wings too, if no one’s eaten.

AWESOME!

I was on a long flight not too long ago, one where they turn the lights out for most of the trip and everybody is just laying like jelly all over their seats fast asleep. Legs propped up over armrests, seats reclined into laps, and headphones, blankets, and eye masks creating cocoon-like defenses against all light, sound, and touch.

Frankly, I don’t like flights like this because I feel really uncomfortable. I think I’m going to wake people up and bother them. I feel like I’m hanging out in a nursery and I’ve finally got all the babies asleep, now I just have to sit in a rocking chair in the corner taking quiet, calculated breaths until the sun rises.

It’s very stressful.

I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and tiptoed up the stairs to the bathroom. Often I wouldn’t even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of excrement zooming through the walls on it’s way out of the house.

On the airplane I don’t tilt my seat back too far because I think I might crowd the person behind me. I walk down the aisle slowly and analytically, quickly grabbing chairs and overhead compartments for support so that a sudden jolt of turbulence doesn’t knock me into a sleeping grandma’s lap. I have brief visions of shattering her hip and sending her dentures flying into someone’s glass of wine.

It is because of my attempts to keep really quiet on these Voyages of the Subconscious that I am fascinated by the toilets in the airplane.

First of all, they exist! The fact that you can go to the bathroom on an airplane is pretty novelty. I bet nobody expected that a hundred years ago. Can you imagine two sailors looking over the front rails of their massive ocean liner in 1908, one of them pointing way up in the clouds and whispering to the other “One day a man will take a dump up there.” No, me neither.

Anyway, after we get over the fact that these bathrooms exist, let’s talk about that amazing flush. You do your thing, close that lid, hit that little plastic button, and a second later there’s a full five seconds of giant, full-force, vacuum-sucking noises. It’s so loud it’s unbelievable — like a transport truck full of silverware flipping over on the dirt patch between two World War I trenches.

I used to think that the airplane toilet was a little hole that opened up right to the outside of the plane. I looked down when I flushed expecting to see clouds or little cities below maybe, and figured someone had just done the math and proven that dropping dirt bombs from thirty-thousand feet didn’t actually hurt anybody. It was just a matter of gravity, distance, and atmospheric pressure or something.

Turns out I was dead wrong about that.

See, according to the Internet’s geek patrol, regular ol’ house toilets just don’t do the job in the airplane world. The combination of toilet bowl water and rough landings tend to leave splotchy autumn-colored rainbows all over the plastiform vanity and walls. For this reason airplanes use a whole new type of toilet called vacuum toilets. I guess these vacuum toilets are perfect for the job because they don’t use much water and are fairly low maintenance. Just one little side-effect, though: When you flush them it sounds like somebody’s making a smoothie out of rocks.

Now personally, I love that beautifully loud airplane toilet flush. I can’t very well leave a gift bowl for the next passenger, so I’m forced to press the button. The power and noise of that flush undoubtedly wakes up the last few rows on the airplane every time so I have no choice but to confront my fears.

So I say thanks, airplane toilet flush. Your whooshing, vacuum-packed boomflush wakes the whole world up.

AWESOME!

From electric shavers that work in the shower to whitening paste you can coat your teeth with overnight to lasers that zap away unwanted body hair, we sure are surrounded by a lot of fancy and expensive personal hygiene technologies these days. That’s why flossing is so great. It’s just a piece of string.

AWESOME!

Tell me something: Have you ever rolled down your window at a gas station to catch some hot whiffs? While pumping gas have you ever spilled a few drops on your shirt for some free take-out smell? Baby, I know you’re with me. Because you know that the smell of gasoline is one of life’s simplest pleasures.

Now, I know a lot of people out there seem to think the smell of gasoline ain’t great for your brain. They insist you’re fritzing out all your head circuitry with these evil airborne hydrocarbons, the equivalent of releasing a sack of rats into the restaurant kitchen or pouring a can of Coke into your laptop air vent. And you know what? Maybe they’re right. I do fully agree that huffing gas fumes is really bad for you. That’s really not debatable. But the regular ol’ smell of gasoline just lingering around the fillup station? I say the jury’s still out on that one.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I have no idea why, when my dad pulled our old wood-paneled station wagon up to the Shell pumps, I’d love to get out and take a giant sniff of that hot, gassy air. But I know I did. Maybe I felt a bit like a woodsman stepping out of his cabin holding a cup of coffee, a baker pulling a tray of fresh, hot croissants out of the oven, or a wine tester swirling a big fat glass of Merlot before the big sniff. Maybe for a kid growing up in the suburbs the smell of gasoline at the local pumps was the same sort of deal. Just one of those great smells of life. A smell that says something about who you are. Something about where you come from. Something… about what you believe in.

AWESOME!

Toronto is home to some of the best hot dog street vendors in the world. Street meat, we call it proudly, waiting in lines to get char-grilled, crisp-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside, big, brown beautiful hot dogs. The dogs usually come set perfectly in a puffy, yellow bun, like a smiling child tucked tightly into bed. Yes, it’s a glowing little beef-tube of heaven, a spicy little meat-wand of joy, the perfect company for a movie or a long walk home after the bars.

Now, despite the powerful taste-punch to the mouth the street vendor hot dog delivers, I’m sorry to say there is just one little problem: my friend, there is spillage, and plenty of it. Hot dog vendors pride themselves on their never ending array of toppings, from spicy mustard to onions, pickles to olives, sauerkraut to banana peppers. It’s a delicious den of germs just sitting out on the street in little glass jars, protected from gas fumes, building exhausts, and pigeon crap by nothing more than a large umbrella.

Now, like most people, I love hot dog toppings. But you and me, together we face a common problem: trying to balance piles of wet toppings on top of a round, slippery wiener. It ain’t easy, homes. Usually the relish slips off first, and you get those artistic looking ketchup and mayo swirls dripping onto your pants. Worst-case scenario you get a rogue pickle coated in mustard leaving a big yellow skid mark right on the belly of your T-shirt. The ladies sure love those.

I laugh, but folks: this is a serious problem.

Thankfully though, there is a solution: Yes, I’m talking about The Toppings-First Method. That’s right, believe it. Now here’s how it all goes down:

1. First, ask for your bun while the hot dog is still cooking. “Mind if I get the bun first?” There, just like that. Most vendors will just hand it over, so now you’re holding a big empty hot dog bun in your hand. Everyone with me so far?
2. Next is the very important bedding step. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this step. You can’t just lay your wet condiments down in the crack of the bun and expect the integrity of the bun to hold up. That would be ridiculous. No, you need to lay down a layer of condiment bedding first that gently cradles the wet toppings while preventing them from soaking through. Your ideal choices here are diced onions, pickles, or even lettuce if you have to.
3. Okay, now… load that bun up like there’s no tomorrow! Just keep piling the wet toppings in there! Deep red river of ketchup, bright yellow pools of mustard, generous spoonfuls of relish. Load it up. Believe me, the dog will still fit.
4. Finally, dog up! Rest that beautiful Fat Jim right down on your sugary bed of condiments. It may lay a bit high on the bun, but don’t you worry. Everything will still fit. Now the hot dog serves as shield and a guide, protecting your pants while escorting the delicious condiments into your hungry stomach below.

This is a magical technique I first learned from my friend Chad. He has perfected it to a science, where he has a very specific condiment architecture involving categorizing condiments into “wet”, “gritty”, and “cheese.” He can talk for five minutes about how relish is the most underrated topping or how proper cheese placement is key to fine melting. The point is that there are more advanced versions of this technique, but you really need to master the basics first. Sure, I’ve given you a guide. But only you can do the rest.

AWESOME!

In the suburb of Toronto where we live they’ve implemented a new recycling initiative which I’ve dubbed Project Stinky. Everyone received a green bin and we’ve been instructed to load it up with our moldy compost each week — from eggshells and stale bread to raw chicken and wads of paper towel. Everything compostable is greenbinnable, and us residents are just being asked to do our part to keep planet Earth, quote unquote, truckin’.

In the beginning I had no real problem with Project Stinky. It was a stinky project, sure, but really a small price to pay for diverting a pail full of garbage from the dump each week. If somebody was willing to drive around town and pick up our compost then hey, who are we to stop them? We even used those biodegradable green bags too, until the city left us stickers telling us that those really didn’t degrade into bio very quickly so we should just dump our compost in the bin au naturel. We said sure, kept doing what we were doing, and in general felt a bit better about ourselves for doing our part.

Then the maggots came.

I guess the blazing heat of the past few weeks did a number on the pile of rotten food sitting in the green bin outside. That explains why a few weeks ago I opened the lid of the bin to awaken a wall full of white, squirmy maggots that were wriggling up the side and all over the lid of the green bin. Stunned, I took a step back, let out a high-pitched scream, and ran away. Then I jumped in my car and drove straight to work, hoping it was all a dream.

When I got there I told my coworker Laurie about my harrowing experience. “Oh, yeah, that happens,” she said nonchalently, not even looking away from her computer screen, clacking away on emails. “We call it the Maggot Wagon at our house. But don’t worry! They’ll just fly away eventually.”

There was a pause as I thought about that for a minute. First I was like “Say what, girlfriend?”, but then I did a bit of research and found out that Laurie’s right. I guess I was just the last to learn about this whole metamorphosis thing. Maggots are just baby flies — cute little larval worms looking to grow some wings and fly around until they fall in love and make some more baby maggots with one of their own. It’s kind of cute, really. Caterpillars are in the same boat. After wiggling around on tree trunks and nibbling on leaves for a while, they finally clue in and grow wings, turning themselves into beautiful butterflies, haphazardly flying off into the setting sun.

Frankly, I imagine growing wings is a pretty tough task. You might have to spin yourself a cocoon or hide in a tree knot or something, you know, just for a bit of privacy. Hey, if you’re about to metamorphasize you need your space, I get that. And then of course there’s probably a lot of gritting your teeth, squeezing your muscles really tight, and screaming ‘Nnnnn! NNNNNNNN!’ a lot. Plus, you’re on your own. No one’s around to cheer you on. You just push and push and push and push until you finally give birth… to yourself.

Most people have probably thought about flying once or twice. I know I have. It’s gotta rank up there with being invisible and seeing through clothes on the Things I Want To Be Able To Do list. For that reason, I say the idea of wriggly little insects squeezing out a pair of wings and then just flying away is completely admirable. It’s simply honorable. It’s downright respectable. And we all know it’s just totally

AWESOME!

Slides used to be dangerous.

After climbing up those sandy, metal crosstrax steps you got to the top and stared down at that steep ride below. The slide was burning hot to the touch, a stovetop set to high all day under the summer sun, just waiting to greet the underside of your legs with first-degree burns as you enjoyed the ride. It also smelled like hot pee, years of nervous children with leaky diapers permanently marking it as their territory. Lastly, to top it all off, there were no cute plastic siderails or encapsulated tube-slides, which meant that if you went too fast or aimed your legs poorly, your shoes would grip-skid on the metal, and you’d spill over the side, landing face down with a sickening thud in a bed of pebbles, cigarette butts, and milk thistles.

It wasn’t just slides, either. Everything in the playground was more dangerous. And they were different and unique, seemingly put together by the neighborhood handymen who in a burst of creative energy one Saturday morning emptied their garages of old tires, 2x4s, and chains and just nailed it all together.

There were wooden tightrope beams suspended high in the air, daring the confident, athletic kids to attempt a slow, heart-pounding highwire walk while other kids encouragingly showered them with handfuls of sand and pine cones.

There were fire poles two stories high — just a cheap, simple pole planted deep in the ground. It was popular, and educational too, quietly introducing children to concepts like gravity, friction, and badly sprained ankles. There was a certain Fire Pole Form too, a kind of arms-on, cross-legged-spider-wrap maneuver that was both awkward and majestic at the same time.

And of course, there was my favorite — the Big Spinner, also known as a Merry-Go-Round, but not the kind with lights and plastic horses going up and down. This was just a giant metal circle that laid about a foot off the ground and could be spun, usually by someone standing beside it. If you were lucky you’d get a pile of kids on there and somebody’s mom or dad would kindly whip you into a World of Unimaginable Dizziness. A couple kids would fly off from the G-forces but most would hang on, teeth gritted, eyes squinted, cheeks flapping wildly against the wind, until the Big Spinner reluctantly came to a slow stop and finally let you off. Then you’d all walk away in different directions, some kids hitting tree trunks head on, others falling down nearby hills.

These days those classic playgrounds sure are hard to come by.

Everything is plastic now — unaffected by temperature, easy to disinfect, and bendable into all kinds of Safe-T-Shapes, the sharp, rusty nail heads of yesterday replaced with non-toxic washable adhesives poured from a cauldron of polymers and Purell. Now not only are our kids getting lame baby-approved fun, but just think what we’re doing to the tetanus shot industry.

Seriously though, new playgrounds sure are terrible. This guy agrees. They say that playgrounds have gotten too safe and become so sterile and boring that kids just walk away from them, preferring instead to hang out in the weeds by the railroad tracks or throw bottles in the alley behind the pizza place. Kids could actually be placed in more danger by these lame plastic netherworlds that encourage more video game time instead of fresh air and bruising. Another blow to childhood struck by overprotective parents and pesky lawsuits.

Well, we can’t change the world, so let’s just enjoy the good news: old, fun, dangerous playgrounds are not completely extinct. Yes, the Safety Conglomerate hasn’t killed all the buzz with their rocking horses two inches off the ground, pillowy-soft imitation sand, and stationary, bolted-on steering wheels. Old, dangerous playground equipment can still be found. They’re out there.

So please — when you find monkey bars taunting you from ten feet off the ground, extended see-saws that allow for maximum elevation, and rickety, sagging rope bridges with planks missing, please, run around like crazy, bump your head a few times, and twist your ankle. Because tell me something– is there anything quite like it?

AWESOME!

This post is in The Book of Awesome

Illustration from: here