Kool Thing of the Week # 6: Peanut Butter

Yes, seriously, peanut butter is the koolest thing going this week. This humble yet incredible paste made from legumes grown underneath the earth--which has served as a major source of nourishment for yours truly since I was about four--deserves a bit more recognition than it receives. I eat peanut butter sandwiches every day, but I somehow never get sick of it, so I thought I’d take a second out of my life to state publicly that peanut butter is pretty awesome. According to my precise calculations, I’ve eaten roughly 4400 peanut butter sandwiches over the course of my life—some with jelly (grape only, please), some with honey, some with bananas, but an awful lot of it has been just by itself. This figure does not factor in all the peanut butter-related snacks I have consumed, from Reese’s cups to ‘nabs’(Lance Toast-Chee crackers to some), to slathered on celery in the form of 'ants on a log.' So, it's safe to say I have had my fair share of food products covered  in copious amounts of peanut butter. For most of my existence, I have preferred the smooth variety of the stuff, but in recent years, I have become quite attached to the chunky version. But any which way you try it, peanut butter is perfect for any occasion.

I had long (incorrectly) believed that famed scientist George Washington Carver was the man who invented peanut butter, but apparently that is not the case. While Carver did do a lot of work with peanuts, the first patent for peanut butter was issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal in 1884. Edson, a chemist, reportedly concocted peanut butter for people who had trouble chewing solid food. So there you go. I just don’t know why this guy wasn’t more famous. Someone should have given him a medal. Or perhaps he should be on our currency. Surely the invention of peanut butter is as praiseworthy as anything Alexander Hamilton did.

Even though National Peanut Butter Day won’t come around until January 24^th of next year, now’s as good a time as any to celebrate and enjoy one of humanity’s great achievements by preparing peanut butter on an apple slice or fixing a peanut butter sundae or just chowing down on a plain old peanut butter sandwich. And don’t forget to tip your hat to old Marcellus while you partake in this food of the gods, because I shudder to think where our society would be without it.

Oldies Corner

While the vast majority of my favorite songs fall somewhere between two minutes and six minutes in duration, I can recognize that sometimes you don’t need that much time to get your point across. (See all those great early Angry Samoans songs that were like 30 seconds each.) Lo-fi heroes Guided by Voices have always been quite adept at distilling a melody down to its most essential parts, putting it on tape, and then moving on to the next one. Nowhere does the band do that better than on “Pimple Zoo” from the 1995 album Alien Lanes. Clocking in at just about 40 seconds, it may be, per second, my favorite song of all time. I used to get frustrated that the song didn’t carry on just a bit longer, but now I can say I think it’s fine just the way it is. See for yourself (it won’t take very long):