Whiz Kids

Urinal ban lifted: Even editors occasionally go on vacation, and leaving the section in someone else's hands is a bit like asking someone else to baby-sit your children. It's heavenly, but you still can't help but worry.
The one and only time I've truly been mad at the people in my department happened a few years ago. I came back from a trip to find that a designer had run a giant picture of a urinal -- with a yellow background, no less -- on the cover of our entertainment magazine, UV. In his defense, the cover story was about the sublimely absurd musical comedy "Urinetown," (www.urinetown.com) which was making its way through Utah.
In hindsight, I can see how that particular -- and very talented -- designer thought that a urinal was an appropriate way to illustrate a very silly theater production. But I thought it was in incredibly poor taste to run a picture of a giant man-toilet on the cover of a newspaper section. And I told him so. And anyone else who would listen, for some time.
In fact, it prompted me to issue what has been a standing mandate in the features section for some time: No urinals.
You can imagine my dismay, then, when a wire service distributed an interesting and tastefully done South Florida Sun-Sentinel story about this very subject -- running on this same page. According to the article, a new trend in some higher-end homes is to include a urinal in the master bathroom. Also according to the story, the trend has been reported by such illustrious papers as the New York Times and the Financial Times in London. The New York Times even said urinals are becoming "a definite must for luxury homes."
Now, if the New York Times and the Financial Times in London jumped off a cliff, would I? (Probably.) If they can report on urinals, I guess I can get off my high horse, and wade through the sewage (so to speak) of urinals and other topics I prefer to never think about: camping, snowmobiles, bees.
Let the ridiculously rich do as they please in their own homes. As long as I don't have to ever clean or look upon said man-toilet, I'll admit that the designer who put the urinal on the cover of UV was ahead of his time. A true whiz kid, you might say.
-- Elyssa Andrus
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1 on April 4, 2007.