A Food Expert on Toilets

I was listening to NPR one day this year when a rerun of this episode of "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell me" came on, featuring Michael Pollan answering several questions about Japanese toilets.

Michael Pollan is, well, Michael Pollan. He lives in the Bay Area, and he tells an embarrassing story in this clip about getting caught buying some Fruity Pebbles for his son in the Berkeley Bowl. If you don't know Berkeley Bowl, it's about the crunchiest grocery store you can imagine in the crunchiest town you can imagine. And Michael Pollan, writer of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire" defends local, organic food consumption - you get the idea.

You have to listen to the end of the clip to hear the part about the toilets, but it's well worth the listen. In the process, they discuss Twinkies and Ring Dings, etc. And they actually say, in the course of the interview, that the scriptwriters of "Wait, Wait" discussed what kind of topic they were going to address, trying to figure out a subject Mr. Pollan wouldn't know much about. Since he deals mostly with food, they went with - well, the opposite end of the process.

But Pollan does say, at the end of the interview, that they gave him a good idea for a sequel. So we look forward to sharing with you Pollan's discourse on "what comes out the other end."

A full transcript, with audio, is available here.

Pitt Stop

The TP Blog is a big fan of when toilets make it into high-profile national media. So here we have Brad Pitt featured at the urinal in Wired Magazine's cover story on modern etiquette. The story - and image - were then picked up by NPR's Digital Culture section. I think this just goes to show how important the bathroom scene is to us, especially when it comes to rules of etiquette.

What I find perplexing in this photo is not Brad on his Blackberry, but that dude in the plaid suit next to him. What exactly is he doing? Futzing with the zipper? Shakin' off the tree? Who knows. But how embarrassing, for him. Maybe Brad was just checking his text messages so he wouldn't have to look and see what that guy was doing, since, obviously, someone was performing bad etiquette when they took the urinal next to the other guy. So much a no-no that it's the ICBE's logo.


{The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette}

There's a lot of other stuff in the Wired article, not just celebrities on toilets. For example it IS acceptable to text message someone while having a conversation. It is? I guess so. I've done it. But I always excuse myself when I do, because I know I'm not giving full attention to the other person so I feel it's slightly rude. Hey, maybe rude is the new black of polite society. I guess that makes me old fashioned.

But even though we now have photographic suggestive evidence that Brad does, indeed, relieve himself every once in a while, everyone knows female celebrities do not. For example, there was the famous Ashton Kutcher/Demi debate a while ago, wherein they had an online Twitter exchange about how to hang the toilet paper roll. About that same time, Ashton Tweeted once that his wife was about to go pee. Demi promptly corrected him and forced him to recant, subsequently stating that she neither pooped, farted, nor peed. Ever. And there you have it. Boys can pee. Girls, well, you'll never know. We gotta keep some of the mystery.

Technology in the Toilet

And we're back!

Now, let us approach the subject of the old cell-phone-in-the-toilet issue. My own mother, for one, has dropped no less than two cell phones in various toilets (possibly more, for all I know.). She subsequently went on to use said cell phones after the fact. She has an unusual relationship with technology.

This past weekend, I overheard some girls talking about cell phones at the bus stop. One of them said, "They should make cell phones waterproof for people who drop them in the toilet."

And if you didn't think this was a matter of national concern, NPR itself reported on it just this past December.

If you've ever dropped your cell phone in the drink, here's a little instruction on how to provide emergency CPR (Cell Phone Resuscitation).

image: Corbis