Cool thoughts on international armpits: A '12 Olympic salute

I was going to call this “A Salute to Armpits!” but thought it might confuse people into concluding I’d developed a surprising new fetish.

I have no affinity for armpits -- mine or yours -- although some do. I, of course, found countless sites celebrating those who enjoy romancing the armpit.

I make no judgements. Armpit lickers may find it kinky I enjoy it when my wife nibbles on my ear lobes.

Really, other than during the nano-second morning swab with the Old Spice Matterhorn stick, I rarely devote more than a moment to thinking about the pits.

But for more than a week the world’s armpits have been right in our faces.

I’m talking about the Olympics.

My avid viewership has turned me into the Fareed Zakaria of armpit observation. He’s the CNN expert on international affairs. I’ve become the Latrobe expert on international armpit customs.

Very few summer Olympians wear modest T-shirts. They mostly wear strapped tank tops or less.

I’m sure there are competitive reasons for being as nearly naked as possible, but I suspect it’s mostly vanity.

They want us to see their magnificent upper bodies. I’m sure most Olympians would gladly compete naked if allowed -- and imagine what that would do for viewership!

They have fabulous bodies and want the world to bask in their grandeur.

I understand this, too. I was in Mississippi in March and a pretty girl told me I have beautiful hands (humility prevents me from posting a picture). I got home and the first thing I did was throw away all my gloves.

Probably a good thing she didn’t say I have a nice ass.

But this epidemic of televised near-shirtlessness has unintended consequences: armpits are everywhere. Anytime an athlete raises an arm in celebration or waves to the crowd it’s hello Pitsburgh!

Bushy ones, shaved ones, black ones, yellow ones, white ones, brown ones -- it’s a United Nations of armpits.

I wanted to know why some shave their armpits and some don’t. Men even.

We’re actually coming up on an interesting cultural anniversary here in America. The year 2015 will mark 100 years that Western women began shaving their pits. That’s when popular magazines began showing a scandalous picture of a voluptuous woman in a sleeveless shirt revealing shaved pits.

And let’s all marvel at the innocence.

Profiteers sensed opportunity with another way to make insecure women feel vulnerable about their looks. Soon every woman was shaving her pits.

The anecdote reminds me of a Feech La Manna moment from “The Sopranos.” He was the 60ish Robert Loggia character who’d recently been liberated from nearly 20 years in prison.

In a rare reflective instance, someone asks what surprises him most about societal change since his release. Was it electronic innovations? Social considerations? The fall of the Berlin Wall?

Feech becomes thoughtful and says, “Know what the biggest change for me is? These broads are all shaving their beavers.”

I was surprised to learn it is a religious duty of faithful Muslims, both men and women, to shave their armpits. That’s a hygienic directive straight from the holy Prophet Muhammad.

There’s much to admire about the Muslim faith, but learning their holy men issue religious directives involving the nitty gritty of armpit grooming makes me glad I’m a casual Christian who reads the Bible to learn big picture life lessons like about whom it’s okay for me to screw and when.

Biologists say the hair’s there to wick away sweat and reduce friction between the arm and the thorax, which seems to indicate campfire-starting matches are unnecessary as long as any of us has access to a husky woman with shaved pits.

I’m already suspicious of any profit-minded industry that tells us how we should look, smell or behave to be popular.

That’s why I’m chagrined to announce here an innovation of mine that will certainly revolutionize the body scent industry:

Refrigerated deodorant!

The scorching summer had me two weeks ago looking for ways to micro cool. Putting the Old Spice in the ‘frig seemed like a natural. I’m pleased to report the sensation is heavenly, if fleeting.

Understand, I only do this with my office ‘frig, fearful the girls at home will hastily mistake the deodorant for yogurt pops.

I’ve even coined a handy promotional slogan for my favorite brand:

“Room temperature deodorant just isn’t cool anymore. Try COld Spice!”

I encourage you to give it a shot. Anything else is just the pits.

Trump v. Fiorina & who's our ugliest president?

(701 words)

I knew Donald Trump ran beauty pageants. What I didn’t know was he also judged them and that we were all unwitting contestants.

With each day, I become more and more convinced if a reporter asks him to name the women he most admires in history, he’ll respond, “Miss Norway, Miss Brazil, Miss Maldives . . .”

The guy makes Hugh Hefner appear courtly.

But we have to take him seriously.

Seriously.

So if Carly Fiorina’s mug appears on screen and Trump exclaims, “Look at that face!” I feel compelled to obey.

I looked at her face.

I didn’t recoil. I didn’t shoot the TV. I didn’t shove pointy silverware in my eye sockets.

It’s just a face. It’s not unpleasant. It’s, to me, a perfectly neutral face.

Understand, when she appears on TV I’m not scouting for prom dates.

I absorb political news less with my eyes and more with my ears. Unlike Trump, I generally don’t care how my presidential candidates look.

But let’s say for a moment I did.

Which candidate is the most appealing?

I guess Marco Rubio has the nicest face. He’s youthful, has good hair and seems to have spent a fortune getting his teeth to shine.

The ugliest?

I don’t know. Maybe Bernie Sanders? But his rumpled charm is part of his appeal. His look suggests a man too damn busy trying to save the country to comb his hair, brush his teeth and, I guess, slide some Old Spice beneath his arms.

Ugly old men have run the country for a long time, and they’ve mostly done a pretty good job.

I guess most people would say John F. Kennedy was our most handsome president and we know he got laid a lot.

In the interest of promoting non-partisanship, I’d have to say Ronald Reagan was probably the most handsome Republican president. He was very dashing and charismatic. 

It’s my understanding George Washington had tremendous sex appeal, which is a pity because I have trouble believing anyone had sex back prior to 1964.

Who would be on Mt. Rushmore if the men on Mt. Rushmore were chosen based purely on their beastliness?

Certainly, there’d have to be a place for that sweaty sourpuss, Richard M. Nixon. The only time he smiled it looked like the smile of a man who’d just enjoyed evicting an old widow.

Rutherford B. Hayes, in office from 1877-1881, was very ugly. Pictures of him make it look like he has Bernie Sanders hair. The problem is all of it looks like it’s bursting out his mouth.

His beard is repulsive. He might do well today because repulsive beards are all the rage.

William Henry Harrison (above) had a long, bony nose, deep-set eyes and ears as big as barn shutters. It may have been providence that Harrison died in office after just 32 days — 32 days!

He caught pneumonia delivering his two-hour inaugural address on March 4, 1841, on a rainy day and without proper weather gear. He died the next month and yielded office to VP John Tyler (he was a real ugmo, too).

Had Harrison lived long enough to achieve immortality, his face might be on some currency and it might crater the economy because no one would want to keep a picture of him in their pocket.

The fourth ugliest?

Sorry, but it has to be Lincoln.

Because of his greatness — maybe the greatest American ever — fair-minded Americans overlook his homeliness.

Trump won’t.

I’ll bet if Trump wins the presidency, he’ll sculpt a new face on the Lincoln Memorial so honest Abe more resembles Rob Lowe.

I hope I one day live to see a competent man (or woman) channel Uncle Sam and run for president.

It’d make for a dandy campaign poster — and just imagine if Uncle Sam were on the stage for Wednesday’s GOP debate.

So maybe Trump’s right. Maybe it’s time we voted for only the most beautiful, the sexiest, the most gorgeous and the most beguiling man or woman in America. We’re talking eliminating the people the very sight of whom makes our stomachs turn.

I’m all for it.

It rules out Trump.

Related . . .

Trump’s no jackass; he’s under-qualified

Who’ll take on Trump and what Cher has to do with it

Gina Cerilli: Our model candidate

Don’t hate me ‘cuz I’m beautiful

Tasteful/tasteless re-enactments on Titanic/Lincoln anniversaries

“Ich bin ein horny”

BP = evil/ Old Spice = good

I don’t for a minute believe BP when it says it’s capped the well. I think they have a stage set with a Top Hat rig in a pool about 20-feet deep they’re using to simulate competence.

Look carefully enough at the tape and in the dim background you can glimpse BP men walking around on their way to meetings where they plan wars, famine and the futures of men like LeBron James.

Who knows what kind of menace you’ll see if you look deeply enough into BP?

This is a company of such grandiose evil you have to believe Darth Cheney’s somehow involved.

Now comes the news that BP was behind the release of murderous terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi -- and I hate him even more now that I had to type and spell check such a long and awful name.

It’s outrageous.

I understand a certain ruthlessness is required to run a global conglomerate that earns obscene profits that number in the billions.

You need to deceive governments, your customers, your stockholders and daily do unethical things that would cause terminally poor men like me to lose sleep at night.

But this deal with Libya goes beyond the pale. What business in the name of profit leans on a government, in this case Scotland, to free a man responsible for the terrorist deaths of 270 innocents?

And what government says, yep, sure, you can go free and live out your years in the comfort of your loved ones where you’re considered a hero for your deadly villainies.

In America, this would be an impeachable offense.

I don’t cast my votes in Scotland and am in one of those all-too-common situations where I want to lash out at a target too nimble to hit.

I don’t drink Scotch, preferring all-American bourbon, so I can’t hit them there.

The boycott BP movement isn’t satisfying either. That’s taking it out on the little guy who runs a mini-mart that just happens to be linked to what is right now is the world’s most damaged brand.

I doubt any mom ‘n’ pop started their franchise by saying, “Pa, what the good people in this neighborhood really need is a place to buy good ol’ BP gas. It’s the best gas. It’s good for their cars and the BP rep gave me his word the company will never do anything to disgrace our affiliation.”

The guy’s probably like me. He couldn’t care less if he sells BP gas, Exxon or some other petroleum product.

Gas isn’t like underarm deodorant, a product that requires some brand loyalty. Like my dad, I’ve always been an Old Spice man, a patronage that’s currently being rewarded by its association with the funniest ads ever seen on TV.

(“Swan dive! Into the best night of your life!”)

I buy gas based on need. When the gauge starts to edge toward “E,” I pull over to the nearest filling station. I don’t feel like I’m being disloyal to Sheetz if I stop at the Get Go. I don’t think the car’s going to run angry if I fill up with Exxon instead of Chevron.

I couldn’t care less.

So there’s nothing a guy like me can do to punish BP for its treachery.

All I can do is hope that one day, and I pray it happens soon, we find a cheap and clean alternative to oil that is at the root of so many environmental and foreign policy problems bedeviling this godforsaken world.

And I don’t want something incremental. I want it to be an overnight sort of sensation.

I’d love to see President Obama break into programming with a stunning announcement that tomorrow at noon every car in America will be fitted for free with glove box converters that will allow vehicles to run in perpetuity on just one slim dispenser of Old Spice High Endurance Deodorant Stick.

Know what I’ll do?

I’ll buy everyone at the bar a shot of good ol’ Kentucky bourbon and together as one we will swan dive into the best night of our lives.