Column: Refreshing: Clean toilets and a Philly man eating 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days

On a recent day when the world was being torn apart by war, energy prices were through the roof and the country was heading toward a cataclysmic and perhaps democracy-destroying election, the No. 1 viewed story in The Washington Post was "Your toilet is grosser than you think. Here's how to clean it better." There is hope for America after all. Nothing like a little toilet ick to remind us that there are things in this world that are more important than geopolitics. And Americans know this at heart. If you're the sort who fears that the new class of congressional members is going to systematically dismantle the Constitution, OK. But American politicians haven't gotten anything done since the New Deal; what makes you think they're going to start now? So this leaves us free to focus on what might really be the most important story of the year: the Philadelphia man who ate 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days and didn't say why. This is something we need to get to the bottom of. According to the Post, a 31-year-old waiter named Alexander Tominsky "culminated his quest to eat 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days on Sunday, just as his hometown was collectively mourning a World Series loss to the Houston Astros and a similarly crushing Major League Soccer Cup defeat — all within the space of 24 hours." If you have just lost the World Series, eating lots of chicken can make up for it because … I'm not sure anyone alive can logically finish that sentence. Except this is Philadelphia, so … "Yea, we lost 2 championships in one day," one resident tweeted. "But the next day? We celebrated a man eating his 40th rotisserie chicken in 40 days at an abandoned pier behind Walmart. You can't keep Philly down." But sports isn't the answer. This chicken-eating began long before anyone had an inkling the Phillies would make the series. So let's go to the man himself for an explanation: "It seemed like the right thing to do," Tominsky told a local news reporter. No no, we need something better than that. Come on guy, cough it up — no wait, don't. "I'm not sure how it started," Tominsky said. "It's hard to understand how it manifested." On a wing and a prayer, I suppose. No matter, the story had legs. By the time he downed No. 40, he'd been written up in the Post and The New York Times, and attracted several hundred people to come watch his "coop" de grace. Not to deflect from this feat, but I'm not sure how difficult it is to eat a rotisserie chicken. It's not like that hot dog guy who eats 80 frankfurters in five minutes. And it's not like the guys on TikTok who make names for themselves by eating insects or live snakes. It's chicken. Tominsky said he hates chicken, but who believes him? No one hates chicken. That's why you feed it to toddlers, it's patently inoffensive. There's a reason you don't see Cargill bagging up frozen liver nuggets. But his purported hatred of chicken was, he said, part of the point. Much of the world is in pain, Mr. Tominsky told the Times, so he must do something that brings him pain to make others smile. "Sounds weird," he said. "But I just felt like I was doing this for a very important reason." Right. Someone must have thought the same thing about Spandex. In the end, though, this probably says more about the people who became obsessed with Tominsky than it does Tominsky himself. "I feel like the rest of American society has turned into a kind of dystopian, capitalist, meaningless, soulless hellscape," one attendee said. "And something like this — that's not done with a profit motive, or really any meaning at all — is refreshing." As refreshing as a clean toilet. — Tim Rowland is a columnist for Herald-Mail, a columnist and staff writer for Sun Community News, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include "High Peaks; A History of Hiking the Adirondacks from Noah to Neoprene" and "Strange and Unusual Stories of New York City".

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Column: Refreshing: Clean toilets and a Philly man eating 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days

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