Off-Kilter
Statistic of the Day: Approximate number of times the Pillsbury Doughboy has been poked in the stomach: 57,000. Sounds like grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit to us.
Chez NASA: If you think airline food is bad, wait till you taste the swill they plan to serve the first tourists in outer space: soybean curd, edible flowers and enzymatically predigested moldy rice.
According to the Washington Post, chefs at Cornell University are working with NASA to develop recipes for astronauts who will spend months at a time on the moon or Mars. It’s no easy task. Raising animals in space is impractical, so meat, milk and flavorful animal fats must be replaced with plants that are grown in microgravity hydroponic gardens under 400-watt sodium lamps (similar to the ones used in street lights on Earth). But even that is limiting, because some plants can’t reproduce without insects to pollinate them--and nobody wants to take bees to Mars.
Another obstacle: Many of the “edible biomass” dishes developed so far tend to be on the gassy side. “That could be a problem if you’re living in a closed environment,” one researcher told the Post.
Dessert is also a hurdle. Chefs have been unable to devise truly mouthwatering recipes that don’t rely on unacceptably large volumes of Earth-based sweeteners. Even if astronauts cut their sugar intake in half, they would still need a separate spaceship to ferry all the cookies and cakes.
Lunatic Fringe Department: A San Diego feng shui expert named Shelley Deegan claims that changing the color of your dog’s food bowl can improve the animal’s mood and behavior. Never mind that dogs are colorblind.
Whiny Celebrities Department: Everywhere we turn lately, Ellen DeGeneres is slamming her corporate masters at ABC, reportedly sending them bouquets of dead flowers, blaming them for sabotaging her show and accusing them of being on the Grassy Knoll when JFK was assassinated. OK, we lied about the Oliver Stone part, but she is getting paranoid (a condition that can be cured with a green food dish, according to our feng shui expert).
In reality, ABC probably canceled “Ellen” for a simple reason: It stank. Viewers abandoned the show in droves because it stopped being funny and started being preachy. The same thing would have happened if Ellen had come out of the closet as a born-again Christian and replaced the show’s jokes with heavy-handed religious messages. As Elton John put it, “We know you’re a lesbian. Shut up and just be funny.”
Weird Polls Department: A pre-Mother’s Day survey by https://www.babycenter.com found that “Leave It to Beaver” parental unit June Cleaver is considered a better mom than Hillary Clinton. The survey also said 16% of Americans think Madonna is the ideal mother, and 31% claim that being a mom has wrecked their sex life.
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Thrill-Seeking Couple Eaten Alive--While Having Sex in Lion Pen!” (Weekly World News)
Bonus feature: The story ran right next to a full-page advertisement for an herbal product called “Cat’s Claw.”
* Roy Rivenburg’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.
Contributors: Pillsbury, Entertainment Weekly, Ann Harrison, Wireless Flash News Service, National Enquirer