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Off to Comic-Con!
You’ll forgive me for not posting more these last few days, but it’s been a busy week as I get ready for an even busier weekend, July 29, 30, 31, down south at – yes! – the San Diego Comic-Con!
I really didn’t think I was going to make it this year because like always, I dragged my feet so by the time I started making arrangements, all the hotels were booked. Or so it would seem!Then the other day, out of the blue, I got an email offer from a Groupon-like outfit (that I don’t even remember signing up for!) and for just $600, I scored $1,400 worth of Comic-Con fun:
• A three-day all-access pass to the Con.
• A freakin’ suite at the world famous Hotel del Coronello.
• An intimate champagne brunch followed by Turkish bath with Jack Kirby, Carl Barks, and Samm Schwartz.
• And a food voucher for two hot dogs, two pretzels, and two Cokes good at any concession in the convention center.Plus they’ve arranged for Norm Prescott to personally review my portfolio at the Filmation booth. Thank you KewlDealz4U!
If you see me there, be sure to say hello – I’ll be the fellow in the Hot Stuff the Tough Little Devil costume. (If you can call a diaper a “costume.”)
Now to finish shaving a few things, apply the red latex body paint, throw an old chenille bedspread over the front seat of the car and hop on the 5!
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Celery!
The problem? Celery is expensive. And it’s a complete pain in the ass. Once you’ve spent $1.89 easily, sure, for a bunch of celery, you’ve got to get it home, and I don’t need to tell you that you’re wiped out after all that shopping so the celery just goes right into the crisper where it’s easily forgotten.
But you can’t forget it, because if you don’t deal with your celery quickly, why, you’ve got yourself a bunch of limp celery and you’ve just pissed away $1.89. Unless you’re a pal of mine who – I swear to God above, this is true! – unless you’re a pal of mine who actually likes to eat limp celery. Isn’t that the most disgusting thing you’ve ever heard? I know! What the hell is wrong with her?
Okay, okay, we’ve all had a good laugh at her expense, but let’s knock it off now.
So you’ve got to pull that celery back out of the crisper before it goes limp. You’ve got less than two days, probably, and that clock is ticking, brother – it’s ticking! So get to work: pry each stick apart from the wad, wash off the germs of whoever harvested it (Hey, we all have germs, I’m not singling anyone out.), chop off the greenery at the top and the whitery at the base; and then measuring twice but cutting once, divide each piece into lengths short enough to fit in your celery receptacle – some sort of plastic tub with a lid. Now you fill that container with some water around the celery sticks, put the top on, and stick it in the fridge. Stop the clock! They won’t go limp now.
Your celery is now ready for whenever you need a quick, healthy snack. And when you want that quick, healthy snack, what you do, see, is you look in the fridge and make a point to ignore that plastic container of celery like you don’t see it, close the refrigerator door, and then opt for some cookies instead, because as long as you don’t have too many, well, they’re not that bad.
Eventually, your celery is pushed way to the back of the fridge, all but forgotten behind eight pounds of government cheese, and then one day, many weeks later, you’ll want a tuna fish sandwich. By the way, why do we put the qualifier “fish” at the end? Is there such a thing as “tuna pork”? Ooh, hold it Ted, you save that gem for a future post. Anyway, you want a little chopped celery in your tuna fish sandwich, in your tuna salad there, sure.
So you pull out that forgotten container of celery and this is what you see.
Warning: Graphic Images!
Well, graphic image, singular. And you can’t even see the slimy scum in the cloudy water. But believe me – it’s slimy, scummy, and cloudy.
What I’d like to know is why it’s perfectly legal for a homeless person to buy a loose cigarette at the local liquor store for, what is it, probably a quarter or fifty cents, but the grocery store refuses to sell me a single stick of celery for my damn tuna fish? I don’t need a whole bunch, a whole wad of celery, I just need one freaking stick. Let’s face it, I was never going to “snack” on celery anyway, not even if I opened that door to find Lenny Weinrib himself had come back to life, flown up from Santiago, Chile and was singing and dancing next to the milk and eggs. What kind of idiot snacks on celery? I just bought it because eventually I was at some point going to make tuna fish for lunch, and now that plan is completely shot to hell, isn’t it?
Well, I guess we’ll just have to go to KFC again today. Hey, on the way back, we’ll stop at Wendy’s for Frosties!
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A Yoghurt Treat!
Many of you have asked me just how I’m able to maintain my girlish figure especially considering that now the 99¢ Only store usually has tubs of off-brand cake frosting that’s good enough to eat right out of the jar with my finger. Others have been requesting a personal family recipe from me for that fund-raising cookbook you’re putting together for your local charity, women’s club, or other foundation that supports causes that I really shouldn’t have my name associated with, but I’ll just blame the whole thing on a made-up assistant if it ever becomes a problem.
…Well, I’ll tell you how. Oh, and also give you that recipe.
In a word: Yoghurt. You’ve probably heard of it. Perhaps you’ve even seen it for sale in one of those new “health-food” shops that are popping up everywhere. Or maybe you’ve visited Greece, where this unusual food hails from, and had it as a dressing (or “side”) on one of their national dishes, such as ceviche or sauerbraten.
Yoghurt, pronounced “yo-gurt,” is high in beneficial ingredients, while lacking many of the things that make other foods less nutritious. Without further adieu, here’s that recipe:
Ted Parsnips’ Samoa-Girl-Scout-Cookie-In-A-Cup
Ingredients:
1 cup (6 oz.) of Ralph’s Blended Grade A Low Fat Yoghurt, Pina Colada with Other Natural Flavors flavor
1 tbsp Kretschmer Honey Crunch Wheat Germ For U.S. Export OnlyDirections:
1. Preheat oven to 425º.
2. Sprinkle a spoonful of wheat germ on top of the yoghurt.
3. Eat the yoghurt. Holy crap, it tastes exactly like a Girl Scout™ brand Samoa® Cookie!
4. That wasn’t very filling, was it? Pop a frozen pizza in the oven.—contributed by Ted Parsnips
© 2011 Ted Parsnips. All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
See how easy I’ve made that for you? It’s absolutely free of charge, too. You can print that out and send that right to the cookbook publisher – what could be easier? Please contact me for permission first with your request on your organization’s letterhead including a brief history of your organization, proof of non-profit status and expected print run. Also, I would appreciate a case of 24 copies of the cookbook when it’s published.
Now a few things about this recipe, which as God as my witness, I created all by myself:
• First of all, that Kretschmer Wheat Germ? I bought that at the 99¢ Only store – here in these United States! – yet clearly printed on the label is “For US Export Only.” Someone at 99¢ Only or the Kretschmer Corporation or both will probably lose his or her job over this post, but what can you do?
• Secondly, it really tastes exactly like a Samoa! Seriously! The wheat germ becomes like the shredded coconut. I don’t know how it can taste exactly like a Samoa, since there’s no chocolate or caramel in my concoction, but I think the reason that it tastes exactly like a Samoa is because I haven’t had a Samoa for a long time and probably don’t remember exactly what they taste like.
• Third, and most importantly, how much do you want to bet that the notoriously litigious Girls Scouts of America will get their panties in a knot over me mentioning the name of one of their precious cookies? My promise to you: I’ll reproduce the cease-and-desist email or letter here whenever I get it.How’s our pizza coming along?
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RIP Amy Winehouse! Also Norway.
I’m an enormous presence on Twitter, what with me constantly tweeting hilarious one-liners, non sequitirs, various other bon mots and insightful observations about anything and everything; re-tweeting this, hash-tagging that, trading witty barbs with other wags, one-upping them, occasionally (but rarely!) being one-upped myself; following tens of thousands of people, and being followed by – no surprise here! – many thousands more. My God, you can’t keep me away. There’s not the tiniest bit of minutia, the most seemingly insignificant detail of my day-to-day life that I would consider too run-of-the-mill, too dull, too mundane to share with the world in 140 characters or less. Hell, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, you surely being one of my aforementioned many followers.
Aside from the personal joy Twitter has afforded me and the ways it’s enriched my life, the site has indeed been a godsend for many other lazy writers as well, especially when they need to file a story, any story, but don’t really want to exert any effort in crafting something themselves. Witness the flurry of articles you’ll see in any given week where the writer – or, really, the compiler – has simply culled a bunch of Tweets on a common theme.
…Did you witness them? Well, you should.
Yesterday I saw no less than three such pieces – yes, right here on the internet! – on a single theme: Celebrities reacting to the death of Amy Winehouse. Now, that’s to be expected – she was famous, she was popular, she made a song sound much more 60s-like than Zooey Deschanel. And Twitter was practically invented for celebrities, so many of which need to be center of attention every waking moment, so given a chance to issue some over-the-top, dramatic, tearful message, the stars came out in droves.
So thank you, Kelly Osbourne, Kim Kardashian, Demi Moore, Ricky Martin, Soleil Moon Frye, Melissa Joan Hart, Ryan Seacrest, Usher, Adam Levine, LA band “Foster the People,” and those of you who I haven’t mentioned – for bravely sharing your feelings about what must have been difficult news to hear.
And yet…I’m still left wondering if perhaps – just perhaps! – Winehouse’s death wasn’t as much of a shock as news of the murder of 77 people in Norway, which none of the above had anything to say about. (To be fair, many of the other celebs in the articles did mention the much more significant tragedy.)
One who apparently is still unaware about Norway’s darkest day – but not about Satanists and the Monsanto Company’s genetically modified seeds – is former Roseanne sitcom star Roseanne. Judging by the number of tweets coming through her account an’ stuff, she’s got little to do all day but dick around with her smartphone an’ junk. She tweeted about Winehouse at least 18 times over a period of about 24 hours, each tweet a little batshit crazier than the last, and then finally ended her ongoing 140-character eulogy with this:
The inclusion of a hashtag advertising her new reality show? Brilliant and tasteful self-promotion! Good to know Roseanne’s as classy as she ever was.
And yet my favorite celebritweets were from a gal named Natasha Bedingfield who I only know of because she has a song they play at my gym all the time that doesn’t annoy me like Zooey’s. Anyway, she originally tweeted…
But let’s give credit where credit is due. She didn’t ignore the horrific events in Oslo: Sometime later, she followed that up with this heartfelt message…
Shouldn’t that have ended with the tag “#insincereafterthought”…?
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Salt!
Well, it hadn’t been a week since I last showered you with images and descriptions of products in delightfully anachronistic packaging before the emails started coming in. “Ted, won’t you please find more products in delightfully anachronistic packaging to share with us, the readers,” so many of you wrote. Okay, okay, I give in! But you’re just getting one more…for now.
And here we are. Despite the little missus’ recent heart attack scare, I can’t keep the salt away from her. I’ve given up trying to let her dole it out via the traditional shaker and just let her pour it onto her Fritos pie right out of the canister. She’s going through a package a week, and at this rate, Morton’s is getting a little pricey. Solution? Royal Crystal Iodized Salt.
Picked up this baby at the Dollar Tree for – yes! – a dollar and believe me, brother, you’re not going to find a more delightfully anachronistic package of salt.This Royal Crystal Iodized Salt looks like it’s from…the 1970s.
Proof of Its Modernity: Mention of trans fat on nutrition label.
Where You’d Expect to See It: In the background of a photo in a print ad for Fit & Trim dog food in “Family Circle” from 1979, shot in a grocery store with all the products on the shelves out of focus just enough so you can’t read the brand names. But you’d, eh, recognize it from the color scheme, sure.
Buy It Because: For God’s sake, salt is salt. You might as well get the cheap stuff. Hell, I’d feed our six foster kids road salt if we lived in a climate where I could scrape it off the streets in the winter.
• A simple design with bold letters on a field of that deep red-orange – that’s what makes this one look old. That and the double-shield thing – I’m sure it has some sort of graphic design name – in which “Royal Crystal” is printed in white on deep blue. That thing alone looks like something you’d see as part of some sort of modern American colonial bicentennial style decorating motif, right? Oh, you know what I’m talking about. Look, the important thing is it looks like the Royal Crystal salt people designed this thing 35 years ago, and here it is, still today. I love it, and now that you’ve seen it, so do you. -
Sears!
As you know, this past weekend a lot of folks were hoping to get an iPad from Sears for $69.
And while you may be heartened to know that public opinion is largely on Sears’ side rather than on that of those who ordered the item in question (and who most have labeled as “greedy” or “stupid,” or “incredibly greedy and enormously stupid”) I’d like to offer some evidence that may in fact change your mind:
Sears pulled this little stunt once before! Oh yes!
Back at the turn of the century – the real turn of the century, not that lame one we just had less than a dozen years ago, my Great Great Grand Uncle – oh, let’s say, Zebediah—sure, it’s a little cliché but why not? – Great Great Grand Uncle Zebediah Parsnips was fascinated by the latest in state-of-the-art moving-picture technology. Sure, he had a Magic Lantern, but those were so 1890s. So when he’d seen a crazy good deal in the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Fall 1900 catalog – $34.00 for an Optigraph – he of course jumped at it:
Now, bear in mind, this price wasn’t for the already outdated 1899 model, oh no. For thirty-four bucks, Sears was promising you the next generation Optigraph. Too good to be true? Uncle, eh, what was it?, Zeke? Zeb!, he didn’t wait around to find out:
As you can well imagine, there was no way Sears was going to actually let the 1900 Optigraph go for that price. Turns out $34.00 was a so-called “typo.” The real price? A significantly steeper thirty-four and a quarter.
Well, Uncle What’s-His-Name was pissed, especially since Sears refused to honor their advertised price. Instead they sent him a couple upright parlor grand pianos, a pump organ, a houseful of furniture, a four-seater enclosed surrey, six bushels of oysters and a credit for the balance, $18.35, which they put on his Discover Card.
Just so you know, I spent a goddamn hour and a half in the garage looking for that stupid retro catalog.
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Slap Tags: The Gateway Graffiti!
In an ongoing effort to “completely ruin my knees” before I’m even 35 (as my more zaftig pals insist I’m doing), I go running thrice weekly. (And I say “thrice” because I’m really trying to ramp up the pretension on the blog this month.) I need to exercise now because once I hit fifty, I plan on not caring any more, really start packing on the pounds, and rest on my laurels that at one point, years ago, for a month or so, I ran thrice weekly.
That way, at the buffet at Circus Circus (or whichever buffet), Mrs. P and I can chat with an attractive, trim, younger couple at the next table, and as I dig into my third plate of all-I-can-eat fried shrimp, I’ll remark, “Oh, yeah, I used to run, too – just like you. Worst thing I ever did. Blew out both my knees.”
But that’s all in the future.
These days I run in one of my community’s more affluent neighborhoods, because it’s fun to pretend I live there, and because occasionally someone leaves their garage open and this is an excellent way to score power tools. (You’d be surprised how few people look twice at a half-naked man lurching down the sidewalk carrying a bright red plastic Sawzall case that’s loudly slapping against his left thigh. In fact, most tend to look away.) Also I figure it’s only a matter of time before I have some sort of impromptu rendezvous with one of the comely housewives on my route though so far the only luck I’ve had has been an awkward tryst in the pricker bushes with a gardener here or there and these fellas always – and I mean always – fall in love with me. And afterwards, it’s difficult – they don’t speak English and I don’t speak…you know, whatever. Gardenese.
For a little more than a month, as I passed this one stretch of houses that border a park, I saw these things in the leaves and dirt on the curb:
And, well, you know me, I’m like a five year old – always picking crap up out of the gutter (and then putting my fingers in my mouth). So a couple of weeks ago I gathered all of these that I could find, tucked them into the waistband of my sheer running shorts – with the liner intentionally cut out and the legs slit way up the sides to give me plenty of freedom of movement – with the intention of writing an insightful post on taggers.
Well, I never did. But some of the points you would have enjoyed reading might have included:
• How delightfully amusing it is to find evidence of tagging in wealthy neighborhoods by the kids who live there and should know better. Because they’re not poor. (In addition to pretension, I’m also trying to increase the overt elitism here on the ol’ blog.)
• Some over-the-top rant about how dumbasses like this are solely responsible for USPS rate increases since his monicker was scrawled on free Priority Mail labels – which now are used more by taggers than by law-abiding postal customers like you and me who stimulate the economy by selling, on eBay, ashtrays stolen from long-defunct hotels and then shipping them across the country.
• And some little zinger like, “Isn’t this fellow’s little monicker missing a letter? Specifically S? Shouldn’t it read LOSER?” Yeah, I went there. Or, rather, I was going to.But I never wrote any of that, instead deciding to focus on more pressing matters over the previous weeks, like cartoon birds and French fries.
And then two days ago I was driving down the street, a few miles from where I found these slap tags, and I see this billboard:
Hm! Recognize the name?
Anyway, CBS Media, owner of the billboard: I can’t guarantee it, but I bet – I just bet! – I can pinpoint to within maybe three or four houses where the young man who’s vandalizing your signs lives. Ooh, and his family’s rich so it’ll be fun to make an example out of him. Especially if you offer any kind of reward to me, and by God, I’m putting my life on the line here, so you’d better make it worth my while. Hell, let’s get Warner Bros. and J. K. Rowling in on this thing, too. They’d be happy to throw some cash my way to nail the little bastard, right?
As to the mother and father of this miscreant: Dad, you pony up a new cordless drill, a small table saw, and one of those big red metal tool chests on wheels – namebrand, none of that crap from Harbor Freight! – and we’ll forget the whole thing. (Unless CBS, et al., offers a better deal. Jesus, I could have a bidding war on my hands!). Or Mom…? I need you to go outside and pick up the paper in your bathrobe after hubby’s left for work when I run by tomorrow morning and, eh, we’ll take it from there. And, ooh, wear fuzzy pink slippers, too – I have this thing for them.
Look, Mr. & Mrs. Where-Did-We-Go-Wrong, it’s up to you, but Junior can kiss his chances of getting into Pepperdine goodbye and LOER his college expectations if I blow the whistle.
And that’s not a threat. That’s a…well, that’s a vague hope that I can something more out of this whole thing than the dog doo under my fingernails I got from picking up trash from the side of the road.
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Zooey Deschanel Versus the LA Times
I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately from all of you to weigh in on the whole Zooey Deschanel / LA Times brouhaha, or, if you prefer, kerfuffle. God, how I hate both of those asinine terms – “brouhaha” and “kerfuffle” – and you have my word that I will never again use them on this website.
Anyway, you’ve been emailing, calling, sending postcards, a few of you have even shown up at our offices unannounced (and then begged to use the bathroom) – all demanding that I pick a side in the whole kerfuffle – this brouhaha, if you will.
Okay. I give in. Here’s my official position:
…Actually, first, let’s review what we know about the case:
Actress Zooey Deschanel reportedly said, with regards to Prince Will and Princess Katie’s recent visit to some event in downtown Los Angeles, “I just don’t want them to see the worst of L.A…This is such a big deal and there are, like, parking lots filled with trash all the way here. I hope they helicopter them in past that.”
And on July 10, in an LA Times opinion piece, opinionated opinion piece writer Patt Morrison opined, “I can’t believe Zooey Deschanel is really the snobby cow she came off sounding like Saturday evening.”
The verdict? I have to side with Zooey on this one. I mean, first of all, it’s the LA Times for God’s sake, so it’s a no-brainer. C’mon, we all hate the LA Times, and it’s a given that you just automatically take whatever the other side is.
Secondly, well, the fact is, Los Angeles is a toilet. And, yes, Zooey’s right: Downtown Los Angeles is a big ol’ greasy, corn-studded Number 2 wedged in the bottom of the bowl, and if you ever manage to flush that overgrown mudpuppy down, break out the Bon Ami and the waterproof Freezy Freakies because otherwise you’re going to have brown streaks all along the white porcelain of your low-flow Kohler. Hey, I’m not saying anything that we all don’t already know and agree on. However I will concede that I should have ended the toilet metaphor right after “Number 2.” It doesn’t really make any sense after that, though it sure was fun to read, right?
But I’m not letting Zooey off that easy. Because I have to listen to her sing this song every day at my gym:
They pipe music throughout the gym, but only in a coupla rooms do they have monitors, so I’ve been hearing her caterwaul for three months before I was finally in an area where I saw the actual video, and I was stunned – because like you, without seeing the video, I presumed this was some singing nobody wearing Birkenstocks and sporting unshaved armpits if you know what I mean. But then I saw the video. “Oh, okay, it’s Zooey Deschanel. Well…good for her…I guess.” But it’s still annoying. You know the most annoying part?
“And you can worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk…” Her extending the single-syllable word “work” just goes through me, and believe me, it’s about ten times worse on the cheap, tinny speakers at the gym than it is here. No other singer in the history of singing would take the word “work” and sing it “worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk.” In fact it’s more like “worrrrrrrr-urrrrrk.” I hate it. I hate it even more than you do, and I know you hate it a lot.
And the other thing is the comments below the video. Everyone is going on about how amazing it is that Zooey has recreated the sound of the 60s with this song.
Newsflash, folks: She hasn’t. But you think she has because of the kitschy extended intro to the video, the various dance scenes, the 3-Zooey girl-group back-up singers, and all the vintage set pieces in the admittedly extremely smart-looking video.
But the sound isn’t all that 60s. If you want the quintessential 60s-sounding modern song, look no further than Amy Winehouse and “Rehab.”
Now that’s not to say that Zooey isn’t absolutely adorable in this and everything she does, because you know, I know, Craig Ferguson knows, we all know, she is. She’s absolutely adorable. Christ almighty, you look up “adorable” in the dictionary and there’s Zooey looking adorable, wearing something adorable, doing something even more adorable. No wonder Josh Deschanel married her. She’s adorable.
Great, now that damn song is stuck in my head.
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Gluten-Free Rice Krispies!
I VISITED the cereal aisle of my local grocer yesterday hoping to see what the long-overdue new prize is in Kashi’s Good Friends cereal (still the Ira Glass Mini Goofy Glasses) but what ended up catching my eye was Rice Krispies! These weren’t just any Rice Krispies but Gluten-Free Rice Krispies. Like you, I had to laugh. As you know, this entire “gluten-free” nonsense is the next ridiculous trend in household products that Big Grocery is shoving down our throats.
Remember just a few years ago they were adding oxygen to every manner of cleaning product because somehow the filthy air we breathe was supposed to get our underpants whiter? (Yeah, like that did your bloomers any good!) Next, all these different food products were suddenly infused with acai berry and green tea and flaxseed oil and whole grains! (What had we been eating before, partial grains? Sheesh.) And let’s not forget pomegranate – and to a lesser extent, blueberry – mania from a few years ago. Jesus!
Good citizens all, we dutifully began to eat food with these new, exotic ingredients no one ever had heard of before. And no sooner had we all gotten used to buying mayonnaise with “olive oil” in it then we’re supposed to recalibrate our grocery buying again as they pull the same crap with this gluten-free campaign. But now we’re to avoid certain foods – the kind with “gluten” in them – at least until the manufacturers can come up with a gluten-free variety of whatever it was we were eating before. They’re working fast and hundreds of new variations of old products – gluten-free, of course – have already popped up. What’s also sprung up out of nowhere like so many gluten-free mushrooms in a pile of gluten-free horse manure are your gluten-free blogs written by these well-meaning but, okay, let’s face it, naive and half-witted gluten-free Moms who somehow have convinced themselves that their children can’t handle gluten. Whatever gluten is. (And, no, I don’t know, either.)
Now I ask you: do you remember, growing up, a single kid in school who had a gluten allergy? Of course not – they didn’t exist! So what happened to this loser generation of children that this previously non-existent problem has become such a wide-spread epidemic? I’ll tell you what happened – nothing! Nothing happened! Also, helicopter parenting.
Gluten allergies are of course a myth, like Bigfoot landing on the moon and gluten-free spider eggs in Bubble Yum. And to prove it, I encourage you, if you know some kid with a supposed gluten allergy, to carry around a loaf of Wonder Bread. And when you see that that poor little putz about to take a bite of his almond butter and goji berry sandwich on sunflower-seed-and-brown-rice gluten-free bread (all of which was purchased at Trader Joe’s, and don’t get me started on that place!), you knock it out of his hand and cram a slice of Wonder Bread there in its place. It helps build strong bodies 12 ways, and if he was eating it in the first place, he wouldn’t have had his sandwich knocked to the ground so easily.
To see how completely joyless the whole idiotic gluten-free craze is – to show you that this gluten-free crusade doesn’t just remove the delicious gluten from our favorite foods, it removes the fun – you need only point your browser at the Kellogg’s website, and visit their Gluten-Free Rice Krispies recipes section.
I don’t need to tell you that the quintessential regular, good ol’-fashioned Rice Krispies recipe is of course, what else?, the beloved and revered Rice Krispies Treat. But not Gluten-Free Rice Krispies! Oh no, brother! What do you make with that cereal?
Parmesan Zucchini Sticks. (Try showing up with those at the next bake sale. You’ll be drummed out of the PTA!)
See what I said about forcibly removing the heart and soul from our favorite foods? The gluten-freeniks would have our kids after-school-snacking not on an 8″x8″x2″ Rice Krispies Treat or two, presumably washed down with a quart of delicious Strawberry Quik as you and I did each day Monday through Friday, but rather on something made with vegetables.
…Oh, look, if you scroll down on that same page, it turns out you can make Rice Krispies Treats with Gluten-Free Rice Krispies, too. Huh.
I bet those gluten-free Rice Krispies make the marshmallows taste terrible.
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The Long-Awaited Final 10 Products with Anachronistic-Looking Packaging That I Found at the 99¢ Only Store That You Need To Know About, I Guess
Here’s that last ten I promised you weeks ago! And this is what’s going on, if you’ve just joined us: Apparently I have some weird fascination with products in packages that look like they were designed decades ago. Lord knows I’ve tried to get you interested in this, too. I thought maybe it could grow into a hobby we can share (since you evidently have no interest in competitive horseshoeing) and we could work on it during the weekends that I have you. You know, we could even take a trip to the 99¢ Only store sometime, just you and me. And…and maybe Lucinda, too, Daddy’s new…eh…roommate. Oh, you’ll like her fine.
So what I did was I went to the 99¢ Only store and I found these things. Each and every single one is currently available there! (Well, except for the two that aren’t, but we’ll get to that later.) And the thing is, they all look old, which is pretty cool. They all look old, but they’re current products. Isn’t that neat?
Now let’s dip into this final ten…with some dip!
This Laura Scudder’s Green Onion Dip Mix looks like it’s from…the early 1980s.
Proof of Its Modernity: Website listed on back.
Where You’d Expect to See It: In the cupboard where your elderly widowed neighbor keeps all her spices and seasoning packets, the last of which she most recently purchased in 1983.
Buy It Because: According to their website “Once you try it, you’ll never want to use any other brand.”
• What a great old-looking design – made all the more wonderful when you realize those onions are rendered entirely with just two shades of green and one shade of brown.
Ted Parsnips
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