The Yums And The Sneers

I hadn't intended to write anything today. Really. Here at the Fortress of Crankitude, New Year's Day is traditionally reserved for junk-food recovery and miscellaneous grousing about undelivered mail-orders. But Ace backlinked to a post I didn't see when it was "fresh:"

Everyone likes sweets, of course. But he [Adam Carolla] was getting at the idea of reversion to the juvenile. That adults, rather than simply attaining the taste for actual coffee, and you know, drinking coffee, were instead reverting to their Childhood Palates of insisting that all things be "nummy."

That they be very sweet, and even very cute. "Moccachino." That's cute, isn't it?

And what adults had historically done, he said, was embrace adult tastes. Cigars taste good to an adult cigar smoker because he has cultivated that taste. Oysters don't taste good to a kid; oysters taste good to an adult who has cultivated a taste for oysters. Cognac isn't good because it's sweet. Cognac is good because we have embraced adulthood and trained ourselves to embrace more sophisticated tastes.

...and it got me thinking...and you, Gentle Reader, are about to suffer the consequences.

---

The heart of the Carolla / Ace tirade is the concept of acquiring the taste.

In one of Steven Brust's non-Dragaera novels, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille, there's a brief exchange between the narrator-protagonist and his love interest:

    She sat down next to me and sipped some of my drink. She made a face.
    "It's single-malt whiskey," I said. "It's an acquired taste."
    "Why did you want to acquire it?"

There is a wealth -- a genuine wealth, not just another bit of Fran Porretto hyperbole -- of insight in those three lines:

• Hard liquors are unkind to the digestive system, particularly the liver and the stomach;
• Whiskey is very expensive;
• Whiskey of any sort tastes biting and medicinal.

So why did he want to acquire a taste for it?

In another novel, Michael Halberstam's neglected classic The Wanting Of Levine, the protagonist invests considerable effort in "acquiring the taste" for tequila, which he originally characterizes thus:

    "This is good tequila," the friend said.
    Levine tried it. The stuff tasted like the sweat of hell.
    "If this is good tequila," he said, "then what is bad?"
    "Don't ask," the friend said.

In that case, there was an explicit reason: Levine, a Northeastern Jewish traveling salesman who had been assigned the Deep South as his demesne, believed that to win the confidence of his target customers, he had to be able to drink with them. He had, therefore, an economic motive for subjecting himself to considerable displeasure until he'd become accustomed to it.

Clearly, pleasure did not enter into Levine's consumption of this "luxury good."

---

When I was a lad, I discovered, upon first encountering them, that I liked certain foods that other children routinely disdained:

• Liver
• Mushrooms
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts

This evoked a lot of "ewww!" commentary from other children near to my age. I wasn't supposed to enjoy those things. I was violating "guild rules" by liking them and admitting to it. I shrugged it off -- I've always been something of a maverick -- but it's remained a point of curiosity with me ever since.

Mind you, I also enjoyed various delights that nearly all children enjoy -- chocolate; ice cream; pastries of just about any variety -- but that wasn't newsworthy. That was "well, he's a kid after all" stuff. My defections from juvenile solidarity on the thou-shalt-not-enjoy food list were what evoked comment.

But note: all the other kids, in their desperation to "be grown-up," wanted to smoke. To me it seemed the most pointless and disgusting practice any human being had ever adopted. More, I could see that the attempt to smoke inflicted suffering and damage on my coevals. Why were they doing it?

I still enjoy all the things I did as a child, without changes. I still reject all the things I rejected as a child, with one exception: I came to enjoy semi-sweet white wine. And in this Year of Our Lord 2014, I shall celebrate my sixty-second birthday.

---

The whole "juvenile tastes" versus "mature tastes" business is an artificial attempt to separate adults from children in a qualitative way. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's a crock of shit. There is no qualitative difference by which an "adult" can be told from a "child." All the differences are differences of degree, including the most important one: the acquisition and acceptance of responsibilities.

There's an admirable authenticity, in my eyes, about an adult who'll admit to still loving ice cream, chocolate, and sweets. It's not that I share those tastes, but that so many adults who do share them are abashed about them and conceal them as best they can. Recent commercials by a certain tequila company to deride such tastes strike me as offensively manipulative: "Drink this so you'll look like a man."

BALDERDASH!

Here's how to "look like a man:"

• Stand behind everything you say.
• Take full responsibility for your actions.
• Fight for innocents who are unable to fight for themselves.

If you've been casting about for New Year's Resolutions to adopt, feel free to use those three; no charge. Forget the condemnation of "nummy tastes." If you genuinely enjoy sweets, the sole reason to eschew something of that variety is diabetes.

And seriously, folks: Happy New Year.