-
Thank God For Focus Groups!
Otherwise, Green Giant might have gone with an unappetizing name for their line of microwaveable frozen vegetables.
By the way, the last time I happened across some 100% natural valley fresh steamers was when I was crossing a cow pasture and wasn’t watching where I was walking. Ho ho ho!
-
What’s Bueno At The 99¢ Only Store: Old El Paso Tortilla Stuffers!
HERE’S a little something you’d turn your nose up in the regular grocery store – and by Godfrey, you’d be right to do so:
But for some reason, when these things show up at the 99¢ Only Store, brother, you and I, we can’t get enough of ’em!
And here’s why: They’re 99¢! Only!
You know what these things go for in a real grocery story? Well, I’ll tell you– No, no, wait! I’ll do better – I’ll show you:
Holy crap! Two for six dollars, and that’s on sale! What kind of idiot pays $3 a piece for these? I guess the kind of idiot who’s slightly smarter than some moron who pays full price for them when they’re not on sale!
No, you and I, pal, we’d never pay that price for these things; why, we don’t even know what the hell they are. But suddenly, for 99¢ (only), they’ve piqued our interest.
So I bought one, and Christ almighty, these Old El Paso Tortilla Stuffers Meal Starters, why, they’re not bad! To paraphrase a wise man, I don’t know why they call this stuff a “meal starter.” It does just fine by itself.
I mean, it includes meat – says so right on the package. Hell, they’ve even underlined it, they’re so confident of its meat content. And easy…? Brother, you know it. Simply squeeze the packet to break up any lumps like you’re massaging the blood clots out of your thigh after a nine-hour flight, tear open a corner, stand it up in the ol’ microwave, set it on high for sixty seconds and a minute later, why, mister, you’ve got yourself a meal!
I guess technically, you could actually put this delicious concoction in a tortilla as the package directs you to, but if you’re like me, you don’t play by the rules. You like to experiment, and I don’t mean the way you did with your dorm roommate the year you went to Reed before dropping out. No, I mean you like to develop your own recipes, which is exactly what I did here.
I started with a bed of Granny Goose tortilla chips (99¢ Only Store!), then emptied the contents of the Tortilla Stuffers packet on top and distributed it evenly, as though I was spreading cow manure on the front lawn. To this I added a liberal dousing of 99¢ Only-store purchased Louisiana Gem Jalapeno Pepper Sauce. (Not a typo! There’s no tilde over the ’n’ on the bottle – oh, I sent them an email.) And then on top of this I added some jalapeño slices – also from the good folks at Old El Paso and bought in jar form at, yes!, the 99¢ Only store.
The result? Nachos Del Parsnips™. A delight for the taste buds.
Also available at the 99¢ Only Store and also an official Ted Parsnips What’s Bueno At The 99¢ Only Store selection, Old El Paso Tortilla Stuffers Garlic Chili Chicken variety.
You can make Nachos Del Parsnips with the chicken version too, only with this stuff, you’ll want to spread it over the chips like you’re spreading chicken manure over your garden, rather than cow manure over your lawn.
Oh, I’m sorry, have I offended your tender sensibilities? Have I ruined Old El Paso Tortilla Stuffers for you permanently with my colorful turns of phrase?
Good. More for me.
-
What’s Bueno At The 99¢ Only Store: Hamburger Helper!
NOW here’s a fun one!
It’s our old friend Hamburger Helper.
And the hysterical thing is – like I even have to point it out to you – the hysterical thing is that it tells us it’s “NEW!” at the top of the box – but then later, like in the middle of the box, it says to us, it says “CLASSIC.”
Well, Betty Crocker, which is it?! Because you can’t have it both ways, there, sweetheart! You can’t have it both ways!
This is exactly the kind of thing I’d have sent in to the back page of “Consumer Reports” where they showcase this sort of packaging absurdity on a monthly basis. But not after I submitted that Little Debbie thing last year and 1) they didn’t use it and 2) they didn’t even have the common decency to lie to me and tell me they liked it but then give me some stupid reason why they wouldn’t use it “but please keep pitching us more stuff,” which is what a good editor does!
Seriously, editors: As the print industry continues to die off, you lazy bastards might want to think about getting back to everyone who submits something, no matter how completely unusable our ideas are! Not only is it good business practice, by Godfrey, it’s common courtesy! Do you think Bennett Cerf got to where he was by just ignoring every pitch that was emailed to him while focusing instead on those joke books that we all enjoyed as children? In a word, no. But thank God he wrote those joke books, right? And where did he find the time? Between crafting such masterpieces as the riddle about the big red rock eater, and his appearances on “What’s My Line?”, I don’t know how he had time for anything else at all. Yet he did. Yet he did.
You folks should know better than to get me started on Bennett Cerf! Ha! Where were we?
Ah yes: I’ve nominated Hamburger Helper as this week’s What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store item, and here’s why:
Because they sell the exact same thing in the grocery store for anywhere from about $1.25 to about two bucks! Only a fool buys Hamburger Helper!
…Eh, for full price in a grocery store, that is!
It’s like Betty Crocker’s just given up and is saying, “Who are we kidding? Since that handsome devil Ted Parsnips single-handedly made it cool to shop in dollar stores, everyone’s forsaken traditional supermarkets, and we’re losing our shirts here. No one’s buying our Helpers anymore! Screw it! Cut a deal with the 99¢ Only Store and we’ll sell this stuff there now too. What choice have we got?”
It’s like she said just that!
Anyway, if all of that didn’t convince you that Hamburger Helper deserves its honor as What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store item this week, well, then I don’t know what to tell you. But take a gander at this, brother:
Yes! A Twin Pack! That’s twice the Hamburger Helper you’d get at your Piggly Wiggly, your Food Lion, your Grand Union – for like less ’an half the price! That’s right: Less ’an half the price!
A regular box of Hamburger Helper at the 99¢ Only Store is “bueno” enough, right? So how did we luck out with these enormous, industrial-size, institutional-quantity, need-a-pallet-jack-to-move-’em, double-size boxes of Helper available for 99¢ only?
Well, I have no idea. But I do have a theory:
Perhaps the phrasing at the package’s lower right corner front panel, “2 Meals, 1 Box,” subliminally reminded shoppers of a particularly infamous viral video and thus entire shipments of these Twin Packs were shunned – left to gather dust in your Publixes, your Kashes & Karries, your CalaFoodses. Now, that’s just a theory. But it’s one worth considering.
Oh, wonderful. Now I won’t be able to eat it, either. And I bought like twelve boxes!
-
Guess Where I Had Lunch!
Go ahead! Guess!
No! Wrong, sir! Wrong!
No, I ate at Bahooka!
Yeah, so, I ate there by myself.
Yes, by myself! Hell, how often do any of us get out to Rosemead these days, anyway? I was out there, alone, on an errand, sure, and as long as I was out there anyway, and in need of lunch, what better place to eat than at Bahooka?
Here’s what I had!
It’s the lunch special; I think it was a cheeseburger. It was too dark to see and frankly I don’t remember. (It comes with three Zombies – the good kind that eat your liver rather than your brain.)
And by “comes with three Zombies” I mean I ordered, separately, three Zombies, because for God’s sake, man, it’s Bahooka, you’ve got to get a Zombie or three. Especially at lunch! Especially when dining alone!
Above: I think this was my booth, but with the lighting, and after three Zombies, who can really say for sure?
Afterward the traditional polynesian businessman’s three-Zombie lunch, I negotiated the veritable rabbit warren of booths in an effort to exit the premises, but much like the Hotel California, you can pay your check at the Bahooka, but you can never leave. Well, it’s not so much that you can never leave, but, really, who would want to?
I don’t even remember where the hell this part is, but you’ll agree it’s magnificent.
I keep trying to convince the missus that we should re-do the bedroom similar to this – like I’ve already done with our island-themed bathroom – but last week the thread holding one of my dried puffer fish broke and the pointy little guy fell on her while she was sitting on the toilet, so she’s put the kibosh on me turning any more of the place into a tiki paradise.
Where was I?
Oh, yes, back at Bahooka. So here’s Rufus.
You’ll recognize him from his appearances on YouTube and also in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
He loves to eat carrot sticks but whether or not he enjoys a slurry of half-digested cheeseburger, fries, and Bahooka’s delicious signature coleslaw mixed with three Zombies is unknown – happily for everyone involved, Bahooka’s attentive and efficient waitstaff pulled me off the tank and got me outside before the unthinkable happened.
Aloha!
-
Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Tru-Blu Duplex Sandwich Cremes!
OKAY, now where were we?
Oh, that’s right – as I was saying yesterday, before the Government shut down the entire internet – when I happen across a product with delightfully anachronistic package design, why, I just feel as though I’m going to bust, I get so excited!
How come? you ask.
Let me explain: In this fast-paced, ever-changing world, where everyone’s looking for the “next big thing,” for what’ll be “trending” tomorrow, for what’s “hot,” here I’ve discovered some sort of product that defies Big Advertising’s ironclad rules of marketing; a product that seems to tell us through its quaint package design, “Hey, you – slow down. Take it easy, there, chum. There’s no need to rush about all willy-nilly. Look at me, why, I’ve slowed to the point that time stands still. One might say for me, an unassuming package of food, time seems to have stopped years and years ago, when they designed the very package you see I’m sporting.”
Anyway, at the 99¢ Only Store last week, I found these cookies…
…and I think you’ll agree that purple makes absolutely no sense for a duplex sandwich cookie when one side is vanilla, like Betty White, and the other, dark like Martin Landau King Jr., and besandwiched between the two is plain white creme. Now if it were some sort of raspberry creme, then we could understand, but it’s not. It’s plain white cream so it makes precisely zero sense for the package to be purple.
And by Godfrey, that’s why you and I, we love it. That and, well, its overall package design, I guess, because it just looks old, right?
These cheap cookies are like something they’d have in that disgusting afterthought of a daycare “center” in the bowling alley where Mother stuck me when she was on the “Wednesday Ladies” bowling league in 1975 – that terrible place, likely an unused storage room, with no windows, pale green walls and moldy carpet that smelled of urine and bowling ball hole sweat, where I and a cluster of other forgotten children of other bowling moms were left in the care of that hideous old hag who sat there on a chair borrowed from the bar ignoring us while reading “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”
Small, sickly children such as myself were left to fend for ourselves against the other kids (and half of them were from Chickahominy, so you know what that means…!) and invariably whichever bunny puzzle I brought from home that day would end up with pieces missing (or torn in half) and the box intentionally crushed.
You have to remember, this was in the 1970s, back when bullying hadn’t yet been outlawed. Jesus Christ, I still have nightmares about that place. Oh, look, great, I’ve peed myself again just thinking about it. Hold on, let me get the rag.
Okay, I’m back.
Anyway, those cookies I was talking about were pretty good. Hell, for 99¢, you could do a whole lot worse.
Smells like a bowling alley storage room in here. Well, minus the ball hole sweat.
-
Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Sesame Crunch!
AS YOU KNOW, there’s something about anachronistic package design that sets my heart racing.
It’s the idea that here is a product, usually food and often (but not always) sold at the 99¢ Only Store, that seems to be saying proudly, “I had my last packaging update prior to the Carter administration (or maybe much earlier) – and you’ve found me. So treasure me, do, because for all either of us know, right now, at this very moment, the manufacturers who made me could be contemplating updating my package so I look ’contemporary’ (whatever that means!) as though somehow my current typeface and color scheme and design hasn’t served me well for forty, forty-five years. But for now, friend, you’ve found me, and I’m all yours.”
…That’s what America means to me.
–Oh, no, wait. That’s what the product, whatever it happens to be that week, seems to be saying to me.
Anyway, here’s this week’s product with delightfully anachronistic package design:
Why, it’s Sesame Crunch!
And despite its name, and despite that it hails from New York City, no, it is not affiliated with the Children’s Television Workshop. (Don’t feel bad – I thought so, too!)
What’s even cooler than their gloriously early 70s brown and orange color scheme, their little beturbaned mascot (surely soon be a victim of idiotic political correctness at the hands of the evil, anti-American, terrorist-funding organization CAIR – the Committee for Advertising Icon Repeal) or those big, groovy letters spelling out “Sesame,” is the fact that I’ve finally found someone who has a website less interesting than mine! And yet they probably get more hits than I do.
I’m kidding; I’m kidding. It’s the best website in the whole wide world.
Oh, as to the product itself? You’re not going to find a more delicious sesame seed candy bar out there anywhere, I don’t care how hard you look – I guarantee it!
-
The Mother of All Endcaps!
Is there any question why Hostess is filing for bankruptcy when this is your competition?
I’ve lived in apartments smaller than this. In fact, my first place was a Charmin display at the end of Aisle 6 in my local A&P. It was so small it didn’t even have a bathroom, but as it turns out, that wasn’t a problem.
-
What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store: Shasta Diet Grapefruit Soda!
LIKE YOU I’m a big fan of Fresca. Have been since I was a little boy, sure.
Here’s some Fresca Fun Facts you might not know:
• According to Wikipedia, “according to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Fresca was the favorite drink of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk on his Oval Office desk which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.”
• It used to irritate Ladybird Johnson to no end when Lyndon would toss his empty Fresca cans out the window of the presidential motorcade especially because she was knocking herself out doing that whole “Beautify America” campaign.
…Actually, I made up that second Fresca Fun Fact, because as it turns out – and I had no way of knowing this when I started this blog post – I could only come up with one real Fresca Fun Fact.
Anyway, I was very happy a few years ago when they brought back Fresca – even more so than when I found out they brought back Steak-Umms.
Technically, neither product ever went away, I just didn’t see them for years. But for our purposes here, let’s just say they brought back Fresca. (I think they’ve always made Boo Berry cereal, too, but did anyone actually see it in a store from about 1978 to maybe 1997? No. I rest my case.)
So recently I started re-drinking Fresca, and it brought me back to my boyhood years, when I used to drink the stuff, oh my, by the canful and then throw my empties out the back window of the family station wagon as we’d head down the Interstate on family vacations.
“Give Ladybird something to do,” I used to laugh to myself, imagining our First Lady at the side of the highway wielding a stick with a nail at the end of it, spearing cans and putting them in a burlap sack slung over her shoulder like someone sentenced to 120 hours of community service, all of this despite the fact that I was probably born after Johnson had left office, I think. (How the hell would I know – who do I look like, Doris Kearns Goodwin?)
Okay, at this point, I don’t know where I was going with any of—
Oh!
So Fresca’s good, sure, but I’m telling you, this stuff…?
Diet Shasta Grapefruit…? It’s like ten times better!
I like Fresca, sure, but it’s a little too goddamn sweet. The weird thing about Fresca is that it’s a “diet” soda, but it doesn’t make a point of telling you that on the front of the can. I guess you’re just supposed to know.
Shasta, however, makes regular grapefruit soda and diet grapefruit soda, and this diet stuff, I’m telling you, it kicks Fresca’s ass. And I don’t mention this lightly: I’m a big fan of Fresca – you know this!
Oh! I’ve come up with another Fresca Fun Fact:
• The only place I’ve ever seen Fresca on tap is at California Chicken Café in Woodland Hills. Every time I’m there, I get it, because how often do you see Fresca on tap, right?
Anyway, they sell this Shasta crap at the 99¢ Only store, so I guess that makes this this week’s What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store? entry. You should pick up a four-pack! (It’s the 99¢ Only Store. They sell them in four-packs. For 79¢. Don’t try to make sense of it – it’s the 99¢ Only Store, for God’s sake.)
Tell ’em Ladybird sent you! Or Lyndon; I guess that would make slightly more sense.
No! Wait, wait, wait! Tell ’em Doris Kearns Goodwin sent you! That’ll liven things up!
-
Six Dollars My Ass!
SOMETHING struck me the other day when I was looking up at the menu board at my local Carl’s Jr., and no, it was not an enormous cockroach erratically fluttering down from a damp and stained acoustic ceiling tile, causing me to run out the door and into the parking lot, shrieking like a little girl and knocking over an old woman with a walker in the process. (I said Carl’s Jr., not Arby’s.)
No, what struck me was not something physical, but a thought. A realization, to be more precise.
Remember back in 2001 when Carl’s Jr. – and for those of you lucky enough to live in the good, God-fearing regions of this country, Hardees – introduced their signature sandwich, the Six Dollar Burger, that would soon become their signature sandwich? Of course you do – why, we all do.
The whole concept behind that particular menu item was that, why, it was just the sort of burger you’d expect to pay the lofty sum of $6 for at a sit-down restaurant – you know, at your Applebee’s, your T.G.I. Friday’s, your Jazzburger’s, and so on.
Well, here we are ten blessed years later and as you can see by this coupon Carl’s Jr.’s Six Dollar Burger is still a staple on their menu. One might even say that over the last decade it’s become their signature sandwich.
And just how much is the Six Dollar Burger today?
$5.69.
In Los Angeles, where sales tax is king (yet is completely impotent in bailing out the sinking bankrupt ship that is circling the drain of this disgusting toilet of a city, to mix a few metaphors) you’ll pay a total of $6.19.
Six dollars and nineteen cents!
So, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll be paying more than $6 for their signature Six Dollar Burger, so-named originally because, why, it’s the kind of burger you’d happily pay $6 for at a sit-down restaurant. Happily!
My advice to you?
Oh-my-God go out right now and get their Six Dollar Steakhouse Burger. Right now!
Brother, if you like crispy fried onions, A-1 Steak Sauce and crumbled blue cheese not to mention Swiss cheese (!) plus everything else that goes on a decent hamburger – a real man’s hamburger! – like I do, and I know you do, get your fat ass into Carl’s Jr. now and get one. Hurry! It’s only there for a limited time.
And don’t worry, we’ll get started on our class action lawsuit about this “[Actually More Than] Six Dollar Burger” nonsense they’re trying to pull just as soon as this Steakhouse Burger promotion of theirs is over.
-
Alleged Arson Suspect Guy Allegedly Caught!
AS YOU KNOW, we’ve had a harrowing few days here in the disgusting cesspool that is Los Angeles thanks to some guy running around lighting fires!
Thankfully, he’s allegedly been caught but given the LAPD’s recent track record with alleged suspects (cough cough Dodger Stadium beating cough cough), who can really say for sure?
Now, the first thing they tell you in the continuing education class “Blogging: The Wave of the Future But Is It Right For Me And How Much Money Do I Stand To Lose Doing It?” at Oxnard Community College (best $145 I ever spent and definitely worth the two-hour drive to Ventura during rush hour on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!) is unless you’re specifically going to blog about local politics and news, stay the hell away from local politics and news, so’s not to limit your blog’s appeal.
See, the last thing you want is a blog whose content is so esoteric that it’s only relevant to a tiny percentage of everyone on earth who has internet access, insists our professor, Sylvia Haynes-Darden, of Random Musings and Ramblings of A Militant Christadelphian Organic Pistachio Farmer Who Collects Vintage 70s Dannon Yogurt Lid Inserts. And evidently, she should know!
Where the hell was I?
Oh! Anyway, I must have clicked on something accidentally last night and ended up on the website of Los Angeles’ worst newspaper ever, the cesspoolular, to coin a word, Los Angeles Times.
They had an article about “social media” and its role in this whole story:
Credit: The venerable Los Angeles Times
You’ll get the gist of the story from the quote I’ve included below, despite my attorney’s admonitions:
Above: A quote from the LA Times story by Matt Stevens and Richard Winton, and that oughta satisfy my goddamn attorney.And despite what you just read, I’m here to insist that the way Twitter is designed may have, in fact, prevented the cops from catching that guy sooner!
You see, two nights ago, yes, New Year’s Eve!, aware of the situation, I was extra vigilant, keeping a wary eye out for anything unusual. And as luck would have it, I did see something suspicious. So I got on my Twitter account (which you’d know if you actually followed me, which you don’t unless you’re User QuakerChewy or User Nevada, my two goddamn followers, and I love them both) and posted it immediately:
Or at least I tried to! That’s as far as I got before that ridiculous 140-character limit kicked in.However!
As it turns out – and I found this out later – the smoke wasn’t from a car fire as I suspected, but rather someone grilling fresh feral cat on a hibachi. (This was, after all, in the “Little Czechoslovakia” section of L.A. – enough said there!)
So, at least in this one instance, it was probably fortunate I didn’t waste the police or fire department’s time, and just as well that I was limited in my Twitter message (or “Tweet”) and never got the full address out.
But I want you all to know – Sylvia Haynes-Darden, the others in my class, my attorney, the attorneys for the LA Times, and the rest of you who have access to the internet all over our home we call Earth:
Even if I had managed to finish typing out the address, rest assured, I’d have made up for the mishap by treating all emergency personnel who’d have responded to this false alarm to the best feline kapustnika they’ve ever had from an unlicensed street vendor this side of Prague!
Ted Parsnips
?>
