So, look, we all know it’s not easy being a teenager.
Your face breaks out in acne, your body is changing thanks to all these damn hormones coursing through it, you’re trying to get the opposite sex interested but not sure how, you’ve got pressures of family, school, maybe a part-time job, and your self-image is usually not very good.
It’s rough. There isn’t enough money in the world for you to pay me to go back to the years when I was 13-18. It’s brutal for almost all of us.
So, you know, scientists of Germany, this really isn’t helping. Check this out:
“A new study led by a team of researchers in Germany has for the first time compared the chemical composition of body odor between teenagers and infants, homing in on the exact compounds that make babies smell like flowers and teens smell like sweaty goats.
The research gathered together two cohorts – 18 infants aged between zero and three, and 18 teenagers aged between 14 and 18. Each subject slept for one night in a pre-treated cotton t-shirt with pads sown in under the arms. For 48 hours before the study night, each subject followed strict dietary and hygiene protocols, abstaining from perfumed cleaning products and refraining from eating strongly spiced foods.
The cotton pads were then analyzed using a variety of processes including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography-olfactometry. From this data the researchers broke down the body odor into 42 distinct odor-active compounds.”
And, after analysis, it was discovered teenagers smell “goat-like” and wax-like. Other compounds were variously described as having odors resembling sweat, urine, musk and sandalwood.
Oh man. Poor teenagers. It’s just a miserable time of life, and we all have to smell you, so we’re not thrilled, either.
I’ll say this: The goat smell thing does call to mind all the times I’d leave the front door open and my mother would yell “What, were you raised in a barn???”
**Next up, it seems to be music week here on the ole’ blog, because I can’t NOT share this. This is 20-year-old Japanese kid Kent Nishimura, playing just a banging version of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”
Just sensational. Here’s a link to Kent’s YouTube page, if you, like me, want to spend 20 minutes of your day being blown away by his talent.
**And finally today, I must say a few words about the end of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a show I have mostly enjoyed very very much over the past 25 years, even though a few of its 12 seasons were stinkers, including this last one.
But the finale this past Sunday was, in the words of Larry David, pretty, pretty, pretty good. The season-long storyline of Larry getting arrested in Georgia for giving water to a voter online was finally paid off, with a trial invoking the “Seinfeld” finale, as so many people Larry has screwed over the past 12 seasons of the show, coming back to testify at his trial.
I enjoyed all of the guest stars from the past, including Mocha Joe, the girl whose doll Larry ruined, Col. Vindman, all of them were delightful.
And we got major star guest stars for the finale as well, including Allison Janney, Greg Kinnear and Jerry Seinfeld. I thought how David poked fun at the criticism he got for the “Seinfeld” finale, and he had a clever “change” at the end, with Seinfeld figuring out a way for Larry to avoid prison time after being found guilty and ordered to serve one year (just like the “Seinfeld” quartet was).
I loved the callback as well to the “pants tent” which was in the first Curb episode, and knowing Richard Lewis was filming his last scenes ever was also poignant.
I didn’t love this final season (it was even more juvenile and filled with way more unfunny vulgarity than in the past), but Larry David sent the Curb universe out strong. I am so glad he decided to do another show after “Seinfeld.”
Wide World of Stuff 