'On any given day, 15.8% of people worldwide have a headache'
Plus Prince and a carby AF frittata from the Lord
Welcome back to The Crunchwrap!
This week, we’re talking Legos, migraines, and #vanlife. It’s April 23, the 113th day of the year. More importantly, it’s the day before Barbra Streisand’s 80th birthday which, in this house, is known as Streismas.
First Crunch
This week, I had to bring my car into the mechanic. I suppose there are more important things going on, but this is a free newsletter inspired by a Taco Bell item so…. Anyway, the car needed an oil change, but it had also developed a noise that (occasionally) started when the car hit 55 or over, a kind of a metallic hum that was truly difficult to put into words.
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A metallic hum that’s truly difficult to put into words is absolutely the last thing a garage attendant wants to hear about when you bring in your car for a check-up. You have to explain where the sound is coming from (“sort of the back right, I think”) and then help them narrow down the possibilities in a car full of shims and components that are capable of producing a metallic hum.
I wanted to say the noise sounded a little like a moment in a movie when there’s some weird feedback caused by something unnatural—the aftermath of an explosion in the Normandy scene of “Saving Private Ryan” or half a dozen scenes in “A Star Is Born” when Bradley Cooper has simply done too many drugs—but honestly, my lack of general knowledge about cars already makes me a bit insecure in these exchanges and I didn’t want to make the situation worse by bringing up way too specific cultural references.
An hour later, Steve (the mechanic) found me watching a rerun of “The View” in the waiting area and told me he hadn’t located the noise. We were going to have to take a ride. I hadn’t expected this, but it wasn’t like I could argue with him. Like Private first class James Francis Ryan, I was going to have to earn this.
Of course, it’s a little weird to roll around the streets with a mechanic you’ve just met waiting for a phantom noise to reveal itself. In an effort to kill the annoyed silence while we looked for a place where we could get the car up to 55, I asked whether driving around with customers sussing out noises was a regular part of the routine. Steve told me it happens all the time.
I asked if there were any stories that stood out and he told me about driving around for 30 minutes with a guy who heard a weird chiming sound every time he made a right turn. After some investigation, they discovered that his daughter had lost one of her steel meditation balls under the seat of the car and that nothing at all had been wrong with the car. Steve had been pretty stoic about it so I didn’t know whether to be outraged on his behalf.
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Earlier that morning, long before I realize how annoying I was about to make a stranger’s life, I came across a story about headaches. A study had found that half of the world suffers from headache disorders, but there’s wasn’t much in the way of what that entails.
The data revealed differences in headache disorders by criteria like gender and geographic area. Females had more headaches than males — 57.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent. While 8.6 percent of males reported migraines, 17 percent of females had the disorder. High-income countries reported more headaches than low-income countries.
There were *a lot* of caveats. Headache disorders are a bit hard to define and vary wildly between pedestrian nuisance and total agony. There have been many differing headache studies and most of these studies take place in high-income countries. Researchers also think that the prevalence of a headaches may be on the rise, but cautioned that it’s too early to tell.
The story itself was a real headache to follow, which I thought was clever, but then it turns out that nearly every commenter said the same thing. (The rest talked about how fragrances give them headaches.) The stat that got me though is this: On any given day, 15.8% of people worldwide have a headache.
It struck me as one of those data points that kind of speaks to how sometimes people out there are just guaranteed to be having a bad day. Like how 14 percent of everyone’s life is going to be a Monday. Or how, on a semi-frequent basis, some guy is going to lumber into a mechanic’s garage and explain he hears a sound that he can’t exactly describe.
Ultimately, Steve and I never heard the phantom noise. And nothing was rolling loose under the car seats. Turns out, I just needed new brake pads.
Quick Plug
Last week on Season 3 of The History Channel’s The Food That Built America, I talked/gesticulated about the birth of Wendy’s, how the stock market changed fast food forever, and the unlikely partnership between Colonel Sanders and Dave Thomas. Here’s a link to the episode!
Video Break
The local CBS affiliate in Minneapolis discovers decades-old footage from a 1970 teachers’ strike. One of the kids interviewed on the street looks suspiciously like Prince. But was it him? A heartwarming(!) investigation ensues:
Snack of the Week: Zucchini Ciabatta Frittata
It’s fun to say, it’s easy to make, and it’s delish to eat. (How’s that for recipe copy?)
Before Passover, I went hard into this Yotam Ottolenghi dish, which involves scraping out the innards of an entire pound of ciabatta bread and soaking it in milk and heavy cream for 30 minutes before putting it into a casserole dish with grated zucchini and a bunch of eggs. I was more pleased with myself than normal, which is saying a lot.
Chef’s Note: Like a lazy idiot, I hand-grated the zucks cause I didn’t want to have to clean my food processor over two medium zucchinis. Reader, this was a mistake. My arms are still sore. Anyhow, I highly recommend this entry into the breakfast/brunch pantheon. The full recipe is here.
Nu, what else?
Friend of The Crunch Doug Mack has a snack-themed Substack called, well, Snack Stack, which delves thoughtfully into the world, history, and culture of snacks. I’ve recommended his newsletter here before, but this week, he did me an unbelievable kindness by including my book in his round-up of nonfiction that influenced his thinking about food and culture so I have to do it again.
An 11-year-old boy from Kyiv had to leave his cherished Lego collection behind when his family fled from Ukraine to Ireland (which, by the way, waived its visa requirements and offered housing and healthcare). His father made a public plea for gently used Lego pieces and, within a few weeks, 45 packages had arrived from all over the world. It’s a nice story.
Finally, this beauty from Caity Weaver about the empty promises of #vanlife: “Based on my pitch, Michael later told me, he’d imagined us cruising California in something resembling ‘a Beyoncé tour bus.’ Instead, our 2013 Ford Econoline E-150, with a psychedelic jungle-scene paint job, resembled a Rainforest Cafe on wheels. Thanks to a huge acid yellow and electric blue bug-eyed chameleon perched just behind the driver’s door, it looked like a vehicle a mobile vape company might use to dispense free samples, or something a person might drive to let onlookers know: Here is someone willing and able to perform unlicensed aquarium repairs — for the right price.”
That’s it for this week! Comments, car repair stories, Saving Private Ryan trivia? I’m here for it all. Just reply. And thanks as always for reading.
Love,
Adam