Twinkie defense 2

As follow-up to yesterday’s story on the possibility of iconic snack cakes (if there be such a thing) disappearing from the shelves due to the bankruptcy filing by Hostess, NPR has helpfully suggested ten uses for Twinkies.

I think you could also use them in place of clay pigeons for skeet shooting. I bet they’d make a very satisfying splat when hit.

What are your ideas?

Twinkies defense

This has already been a tough month for childhood icons: first Kodak filed for bankruptcy, & yesterday Hostess has filed. The snack cake giant blamed having to pay out on contractual obligations to current & retired employees as the primary reason for its financial woes.

Of course. Because it can’t possibly be producing a product line of food-like items without recognizable taste or ingredients that practically define the term “empty calories” in an age where they’re being banned from schools & family kitchens alike couldn’t possibly be a contributing factor.

I mean—take a look at the 37 ingredients in a Twinkie. There are only 14 I recognize as food-like products I could purchase & consume (including two kinds of corn syrup & baking soda; & I counted the glucose just to be generous.

(For those not acquainted with the Hostess line, here’s the premise: some sort of cake or sponge lump surrounding a wodge of rubberized cream-like substance, frequently with a hard shell that purports to be icing, but definitely doesn’t melt in your hand.)

As a kid I lusted after Sno Balls®. Coconut is my downfall, & I thought they were the absolute bomb. (Look, I had no point of reference. My mother was not what you might call a baker. A huge thing for us was to get day-old glazed doughnuts from the Helms Olympic Bakery outlet store.) Mom never let me have them, so it was a big deal for me to use baby-sitting money to buy a packet on the sly.

A few years ago I bought a package as a special treat. I couldn’t even finish one of them; the coconut tasted like the spongy frosting tasted like the “chocolate” cake tasted like the crème filling. I didn't try it, but they probably all tasted like the plastic packaging. 

Evidently I’m not the only person to have reached that conclusion; hence yesterday’s filing

Regarding the stated reason for bankruptcy, let me just make one observation. It’s very interesting that corporations don’t seem to have any difficulty finding the money to meet their contractual obligations to senior management, but never have enough to do the same for the people who actually make the products or deliver the service.

Snack on that.

Connecting or not

I was talking with James, the guy who cuts my hair, the other day. He’s a Bay Area native—grew up around Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, now lives in Milpitas and the salon is in Los Altos.

So he’s got a broad perspective on the area. And, while he’s not a technocrat himself, he’s certainly adopted all the tech that has engulfed Gen-XY.

I often ask him about local spots for exploration—where’s a good area to live, where do I find a good park, etc. I do the same with my physical therapist, who grew up in Burlingame and now lives in Redwood Shores.

It was the latter’s recommendation that found me at the Copenhagen Bakery and Café for breakfast just before New Year’s Day. The eggs and bacon were fine, I perused a free local newspaper from a stand right outside and there was good people-watching also for free. (The folks behind the counters were somewhat less than personable, but there you go.)

However—the café did not have Wi-Fi. Which I though passing strange. I mean—a place where you sit down over coffee, in the Silicon Valley (okay—on the northern edge of it), And no Wi-Fi? Really?

As it happened, I hooked into free Wi-Fi from the Sephora store across the street (also a little strange—retail with an open network? Don’t they want you buying eyeliner and D&G perfume instead of checking your emails?). So I wasn’t reduced to reading the sports section of that free newspaper.

When I commented on the experience to James he agreed that it was odd. Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks: “Yeah, because we can’t possibly sit down anywhere without being entertained.”

Oh. Um. Right.

This ties into one of my ongoing TLP resolutions: Pay attention. You can’t be fully mindful of your beautifully poached egg if you’re checking Facebook, or plugged into “Morning Edition”, or emailing some idiot at work. Especially if you’re doing all three at once. Nor can you thoroughly attend to framing that work email if you suddenly notice that you’ve got crumbs in your keyboard.

Thinking about it, having that laptop or tablet out is really kind of a defensive positioning—don’t talk to me, I’m busy; I’m focused on something that’s more important than what’s going on around me. More important than where I am.

But really—what is more important than where you are, where you are at this moment?

What is more important than biting into one of the seven types of toast you can have at Copenhagen Bakery, topped with a splodge of some sort of homemade-looking deeply blue berry preserves, and experiencing the crunch of the toast and the explosion of deeply blue slithery taste in your mouth? What is more important than noticing the people around you—what they’re eating, how they’re conversing with one another, whether they seem to be regulars? What is more important than filling your lungs with the aroma of just-baked bread that permeates the room?

So—what to do?

Font of ignorance

Last month, after I posted the doorway exchange on Comic Sans, I did a little research.

It seems there’s quite the passionate campaign to ban Comic Sans.

The movement (if you will) is going on for 13 years, now, dedicated to the proposition that a typeface should be in accord with & support the message it is communicating.

I certainly agree with the principle, but I doubt it will succeed in turning the tide of people unacquainted with spelling, grammar, punctuation or other fundamentals of language who think that because Microsoft gave them a couple dozen fonts they’re free to slap anything up on the page they feel like.

Corpus delicti 2

Following up on the story about the discovery of a body on Sandringham estate on New Year’s Day, the deceased has been identified as a 17-year-old Latvian immigrant to Cambridgeshire, Alisa Dmitrijeva. She was last seen on 31 August; reported missing by her family a week later.

Still no report of cause of death.

I feel for the young woman’s family (although I wonder why it took a week to report her missing) and think about the life cut short—what might Dmitrijeva have accomplished, whose lives might she have touched, had she lived?

But I’m also curious about who would leave a body on a royal estate. Okay—it’s gone undiscovered for three to four months. But the wooded area is used with some regularity to shoot pheasants, with beaters walking through it to scare the birds into the air so they can be blasted in their thousands by people with too much time and money on their hands who call it sport.

(Oh. Wait. <ahem> Right—better.)

One could reasonably predict that the corpse left at Sandringham would be found at some point. And that when it was it would make news and focus a lot of law enforcement resources on finding the killer.

There are so many places s/he might have chosen where there might be a much better chance that the body might have gone unnoticed.

So I keep going back to the question: why there?

Happy families

As we move into this Month of Primaries, it's nice to add a touch of classy ghoulishness to the ordinary variety we're seeing: Google has noted the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Addams with a daily doodle.

It’s a welcome change from the inescapable street-fighting-dressed-up-in-$3000-suits going on in New Hampshire, South Carolina and all the other states.

Product oxymoron

I don’t know how I came across this, because God knows I don’t indulge in energy drinks. I’ve never even so much as sniffed a Red Bull.

But am I the only person who wonders how you can have a decaf energy drink?

No, seriously—how does that even work?

Down with Skool--up with Searle

I was rooting around The Telegraph looking for news on the body found at Sandringham, when I came upon the very sad news of the death of Ronald Searle last Friday. The utterly brilliant cartoonist and illustrator was 91.

Searle had a wicked sharp artistic style, evident in all of his works; his wit was as sharp as his pen. In the inimitable British phrase, the guy could take the piss out of anyone and anything. As a teenager I became acquainted with his cartoons in Punch, and also his illustrations in the books on Nigel Molesworth. Down with Skool! is a classic, and I own How to Be Topp.

In case you are unfamiliar with him, Molesworth is not a recommendation for any education system. Searle seriously took the piss out of British schools in this series and the one on St. Trinian’s, a perfect horror of a girls’ school.

His title designs for the 1970 film Scrooge are gorgeous—as I was reminded when TCM ran the movie last month. The title sequence outstrips the live action in both evocative power and artistry. (I won’t speak of the musical score.) If you come across it, run through the titles and forget the rest of it.

And then, about 15 years ago, I went to the Imperial War Museum and saw his drawings of life in Japanese POW camps, where he spent three years in his early 20s. He had to sneak his sketches, because the Japanese didn’t allow any sort of documentation of the camps, and because the British officers took offense at them.

The drawings are searing, as well they should be.

That he lived so many years after that experience is a testament to the lessons he learned there—that when all your friends die around you, also in their 20s, every day is a gift.

 

Or maybe it’s that he spent the last 40 years of his life in France. The Guardian has a reminiscence by fellow cartoonist Gerald Scarfe of the friendship he formed with Searle. The established artist was generous with his attention and encouragement of younger illustrators.

And it seems that Searle just loved champagne and cats.

Really--we're all poorer for his loss; but I celebrate the wit and whimsy he brought to us.

Corpus delicti

Here’s my conundrum du jour: whether to comment on the Republican caucuses in Iowa or the female corpse found on the premises of one of Her Majesty’s royal properties. What to do, what to do?

<pause>

Nah—no contest. I’m going for the story with the lower stink factor.

It seems that a dog walker out in the woods at Sandringham (the Queen’s country house in Norfolk) on New Year’s Day found the body of a young woman. Presumably in an advanced state of decomposition, as it’s reported that she’s been dead for somewhere between one to four months. (Although there’s no word as to whether she’s been at Sandringham for all that time, or whether it was a dump job.)

Moreover, while there’s no cause of death yet, official word is that she didn’t die by natural causes or by accident.

So we’re talking homicide.

Ordinarily one would wonder at a corpse going unnoticed in the grounds of a royal estate—could this happen at Camp David? Aren’t there security patrols? But not all of Sandringham is entirely private, and the body is in an area open to the public, although apparently not very often traveled.

But you also have to wonder at someone having the chutzpah to either kill the woman or leave her corpse on HM’s doorstep. Or at least, within a mile or so of her doorstep. Was it a crime of opportunity, or some sort of political statement? And, seriously, what’s with her security force not taking a swing around the perimeter every once in a while?

Well, in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”, Sherlock Holmes averred that “The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” Holed it in one, old chap.

Sign of the times 2

Oh, ya gotta love California. Where else but the Golden State would you find this:

Sadly, it turns out that two businesses must have chipped in for a single sign. You can’t count on this drycleaner using the metaphiz biz to ensure that they never lose your interview suit or your little black dress.

(If you're interested, it's on El Camino Real, in Mountain View.)