You Are What You Order

Domino’s Pizza compiles amazing statistics about its pizza deliveries. The company reports that men wearing muscle shirts when answering the door order pepperoni three times more often than any other topping. People who have pierced noses, lips or eyebrows ask for a vegetarian topping 23% more often than a meat topping. Those who have wind chimes on the porch are four times more likely than the average to want olives on their pizza.

A recurring element in Domino’s figures is the suspicious correlation between pizza-eating and TV-watching. Whatever day and time “Roseanne” airs is always the biggest half hour of the week for meat-topped pizza orders. The biggest hour for pizza delivery ever was O.J. Simpson’s slow-mo freeway chase.

Since you asked, the number one pizza-ordering show (figured by comparing orders during its time slot with weeks when the show doesn’t air) is “Melrose Place,” which is also by far the leading show for vegetable-topped pizzas. And by the way, pizza orders in the “Melrose Place” time slot have gone up 14% since Heather Locklear joined the cast.

Oh, yeah: While “The Simpsons” is on the air, crank calls to Domino’s go up 16%.

The Best Insect for the Job Is a Mammal

Ieie, the climbing pandanus of Hawaii, is pollinated not by insects but by rats, who get their fur and whiskers covered with pollen while eating the fleshy leaves at the base of the flowers. Some relatives of the ieie are pollinated by a kind of bat.

Except in Anorexic Zebras

OK, so this probably won’t come up much, but if you ever need to know whether somebody’s serving you zebra meat, check out the fat. It’s a deep chrome yellow color.

The Burgermeister

Gadgets for making burger patties go back 50 years or more. The new wrinkle with the Tastee Rings Burger Press is its circular grooves, which squeeze air from the patty and close cracks in the meat as you press it. The resulting grooves in the surface of the patty (which needn’t be meat, of course--it’ll work with any moldable food) also increase its heat-absorbing area. You’re supposed to use it with plastic wrap, which makes it unnecessary to touch the food from mixing bowl to grill. In markets, or send $4.95 plus $2 shipping to Burger Press, P.O. 3622, Hemet, Calif. 92546.

We Apologize for This Item

A scientific paper entitled “Does Beano Prevent Gas? A Double-Blind Crossover Study of Oral Alpha-Galactosidase to Treat Dietary Oligosaccharide Intolerance” points out the market for gas-preventing pills and drops such as Beano is not unlimited. For some people, “the production of high volumes of resonant, pungent intestinal gas is a source of personal pride and fulfillment and can be used as a greeting or other form of communication.”