homeland humor

So there's this ad by Lindor, the people that make those wonderful little truffle balls that you can buy at the Borders checkouts, or with a $2.50 coupon in the latest Costco coupon book. You've got that Roger Federer guy going through airport security, and the people at the x-ray machine see that his carry-on is full of balls. "Hey, look at this, he's a tennis player" says blue-uniformed TSA person #1 to TSA person #2. Then they open the bag and see that it isn't tennis balls, but rather a big full of those delightful little Lindor truffle balls, while Roger Federer says "Swiss tennis player." Because it's swiss chocolate, get it. And then the TSA people say they're going to have to confiscate the bag, and Roger says "you've got to be kidding me," and the commercial ends with a freeze frame shot of the two TSA people looking very very serious about needing to confiscate that bag.

I find this funny. I don't find much to laugh about at airport security, but I find this funny.

And then tonight I audited the first 15 or 20 minutes of Due Date. Where Robert Downey Jr. has his carry-on switched with one of Zach Galifianakis' that has marijuana paraphernalia and such, and Downey has a dialogue with the TSA guard that's full of the two talking past one another. And then he's on the plane and he starts lecturing Galifianakis on how he shouldn't use words like terrorist and bomb and ends up being shot at by an air marshal with a rubber bullet, tossed off the plane, put on the no fly list. And after not really laughing once, or smiling, or even grinning even the teeny-tiniest bit, even beseeching the gods of comedy to explain why anyone thinks the "driver pulling away when someone tries to open door of car" gag is supposed to be remotely funny, I decided I'd rather get to Whole Foods and buy some dinner before they closed and get home than stay around in the theatre to midnight or so watching a not very funny movie.

So why is this? Why am I willing to enjoy one comic look at the insanity we call airport security while the other leaves me absolutely cold? Is it because I like Lindor truffle balls more than Zach Galifianakis? Because the one is so clearly unreal and exaggerated that I can view it from a distance while the other seems all too real? Because Roger Federer is a better comic actor than Zach Galifianakis?

It's still just a cupcake

Maybe I need to get out of town more.

In around 33 hours actually in the Washington DC area over the weekend, I managed to see 3 plays, visit 1 B. Dalton, 4 B&Ns, 4 Borders, chow down at 2 Whole Foods and a Pizzeria Uno, do the Saturday NY Times puzzle, two from Sunday, a regular and a cryptic, read 70% of the new Violette Malan book and get started on Tanya Huff's next.

I'll talk more about the plays later, but just a few idle observations.

I've sung the praises of Georgetown Cupcake before, no doubt I'll do so again, they're some of the only overpriced cupcakes that at least taste really, really, really good. But what is the world coming to when I pop by their new expanded flagship location in Georgetown and see over 30 people curled around in the store waiting to buy cupcakes. It's just a cupcake. It's not worth waiting, sorry, no possible way unless it's your child's bar mitzvah and the caterer's truck with the viennese table pastries overturned on the beltway, that anyone should wait 30 minutes for a friggin' cupcake. I noticed they had a new location in Bethesda down the street from the B&N on Bethesda Row, much closer to that B&N than the Georgetown location is to the B&N in Georgetown, and the Bethesda store does a much better business in sf/fantasy than the one in Georgetown, so I expect in the future that I'll go to the Bethesda location, and I did wait five minutes or so the next day. And yes, the carrot cupcake was yummy, and the chocolate/vanilla and the key lime pie and the chocolate mint, even though the icing had kind of run off from the top of the cupcake by the time I ate them back home after taking them around with me for several hours and I had to scoop the icing back on top of the cupcakes.

The original home of the Rockville Pike Borders, which became an Anthropologie when Borders moved down the street into White Flint Mall, is an Anthropologie no more. The store is up for rent, so if any of you want to open a store in a historic retail location on 11500 Rockville Pike... And this huge Borders location no longer has even a single visible store-discretion shelf facing in its Front of Store, nor really does the wonderful Borders on 18th and L have any store discretion that's visible in its FOS. I find this a little depressing. I can remember back 20 years when a Borders had character. Of course, there weren't 500 stores back then. And one of the problems the chain had was that it had too much character and not enough management. And I wasn't very happy with George L. Jones because he didn't run a tight ship. But the nostalgic part of me wishes the chain could be a well-run chain while still retaining some of that store-specific character.

B&N will soon have Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion back on shelves. Should have been there all along, but that's a long story. Maybe I'll tell that story in a blog post some day. That was one of the nice things to see in the stores. The bummer thing is that Borders is underordering on Peter Brett's Desert Spear, around half as many of those as the new Robert Redick hardcover, though I bet Peter will outsell the Redick by about that same margin.

It's soon going to be $8.30 for a one-day pass on the DC MetroRail system. Is it that long ago this was a $5 bargain?

As I get older I get more crotchety about my hotel rooms. I went down twice to ask for a new room because any of the ones facing the air wells on either side, the HVAC equipment at the bottom of the airwell, all that noise just shimmies up the walls. Which leaves a room facing the street so you can get the street noise as the "best" option. I probably won't race to book the Hilton Garden Inn on 14th St. again.

I've never seen so much snow in DC. Knocked over light posts and paper boxes. The sidewalks not so bad but at the corners where snow was plowed from two different streets, you had some interesting detours.

The Pizzeria Uno in Bethesda is closed. And right before I headed to DC, my younger brother told me the one in Manchester, CT is closed now as well. I enjoyed my dinner at the Union Station location. I tried the honey crisp chicken salad for the first time, along with that new moroccan lentil soup, and it was a good thing.

Whole Foods is about to open the new store in Chevy Chase, MD just over the border from DC in Friendship Heights. May 18, I'm told. That's just a little over a mile from the Tenleytown store in DC and not far from the River Rd. location in Bethesda, so I see some same-store cannibalization in the near future. And it's maybe but three years ago that the Tenleytown store was given a pretty major remode. I also see on their web site that the store in Lake Grove, NY will be opening on March 17.

With my little weekend trips the past two weekends when I've been considering myself as on vacation and able to do more than just the Sunday Times crossword, well, I've impressed even myself with how well I've done on the Saturday puzzles. They're not easy, and it takes some backing and forthing and fermenting in the back of the mind while I do other stuff, but I've been very pleased.

I just can't seem to get as much done on a weekend when I'm home.

Holiday Traditions The Second

I think I kind of fell into my Dec. 24 tradition, two or three parts of me merging into something bigger than the sum of its parts.

1983: I start to eat at Pizzeria Uno, and it kind of sticks. Occasional bad service aside, it's still comfort food for me 26+ years later.

1986: I move into NYC, on the fringe of a neighborhood that has a decent quantity of attached and/or single family houses where people can put out Christmas lights. Or, as I refer to them internally in an interfaith-y kind of way, Holiday Lighting Displays. I realize there are worse things to do than walk around on a December evening admiring the Holiday Lighting Displays.

Early 1990s: Barnes & Noble opens a superstore in Bayside, kind of distant from me and in what is then a "two fare zone" because you need to take a subway to a bus to get there and there are no free transfers. It is a mile or so away from a Pizzeria Uno.

1991: I move to a new neighborhood that's almost all apartment buildings, so it's really hard to get a good Holiday Lighting Displays experience.

So I like to visit the B&N every so often, in part because it's a different market and a different feel than the Manhattan stores are.

So some Dec. 24, it's not like there's anything happening in the office, I have lots of time, so why not go to Bayside. Did I walk all ten miles the first year? Did I take the #7 to Flushing and then walk? Did I just go the B&N on that first visit or do both Uno's and B&N? Details, details, all lost in the haze of time. But I decide to walk back from the B&N to catch the #7 at Main St. Flushing, around a four-mile walk, and then it's a "My God it's full of stars" moment as I realize that I'm walking through a neighborhood full of single family homes, which are full of Holiday Lighting Displays, and I just can't resist admiring them, and admiring them, and admiring them. And it's such a much bigger neighborhood than where I'd lived before.

Whatever happened the first time, the tradition eventually developed its firm elements. If possible, you walk all ten miles from your apartment to the Uno's on Bell Blvd. Sometimes, I may have walked even more by first going down Queens Blvd. to the recently closed Entenmann's outlet store. Leave around noon, get to Uno's before 3pm, so you can have the express lunch. Stay an hour or so, no need to rush, maybe walk along the Bell Blvd. commercial strip before heading down to Bay Terrace shopping center and the B&N. Get to the B&N 4:30 or 5, stay a while, enjoy the panicky announcements that we are closing at 6 and you better get your last minute items or else, enjoy the atmosphere. And then sometime between 5:30 and 6, you leave. You meander the 4 miles to Main St. to catch the #7, except tonight it isn't 4 miles. Because you just go down whatever block you feel like, wherever the Holiday Lighting Displays seem to be the most colorful, most interesting, most alluring. You have all the time in the world. Savor it. Soak it in. Enjoy it. Enjoy the lights. Enjoy the people pulling out and pulling up, arms laden with packages. Enjoy the lights on the trees, and the trees inside visible thru the bay windows. Enjoy the quiet and serenity and uniqueness of this one night. And then enjoy that last hubbub on Main St. as everyone else is heading one way home from the subway station and you are heading the other way.

Some minor variations, maybe. The Cake Box bakery in Bay Terrace went out of business, but then you discover D'Aquila Pastry Shop. Stop and smell the ravioli at Durso's. Try the heavenly hash at Lazar's?

I didn't get out of the apartment on the 24th until 12:26, which makes it a little tight to get to Uno's by 3pm. So in this case, I walked 3.5 or 4 miles to the 103rd St. subway stop, the took the subway 3 stops to Main St. I hoped this might gain me time to buy something at Durso's instead of just smelling the ravioli, but the line was so so so very long that I decided I would make a special trip to Durso's at some point because I really should actually finally buy something there. The walk to 103rd St. was delightful. Not quite the full way to Flushing but certainly the interesting part of it, and I hadn't done it in so very very long so I just looked around as I walked buy, taking in some of the small changes. The very different walk from Flushing to Bayside was a delight. I hadn't done it in so long. Here's an apartment building being fixed up on Roosevelt Ave. There's the IHOP on Northern Blvd and the McGoldrick branch of the library. The old UA Quartet theatre that was a drug store and furniture store for not very long is now an ethnic supermarket. The left turn onto Crocheron Ave., the meander after the Clearview Expressway to the Uno's.

After lunch, it's been so long since I've been in the neighborhood that I decide to take the very scenic route to the B&N, and go down Northern Blvd. to the Joe Michaels Mile along Little Neck Bay. The added distance makes up for the subway ride earlier. The last dribs of sunset reflect from houses on the other side of the Bay. It is getting dark so I can't go to Ft. Totten and double back, so I leave at the Marina for 28th Ave. and up to Bay Terrace. Hey, it's nicer on a crisp fall day or gorgeous glorious spring day, but those opportunities ain't coming so often any more.

No, the lines at the B&N aren't like once upon a time they were. But the announcements are as frantic as always. Hey, there's somebody in the sf section buying Simon Green's Hell to Pay, and they're buying #7 in the series because she's read and liked #1-6. Sweet!

And then I meander. There's always something new in the Holiday Lighting Displays, and this year it's the lettered Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays signs I see in a lot of windows. Of course next year most of those will be gone, like we don't see all of the American flag ornaments I remember on the walk in 2001, but this year everyone has to have one. I set off at least six motion detector lights on houses as I'm walking along. There's a Homer Simpson Clause at this house, a little music going on at that one. More snow-globe type things than I remember Someone calls me on my cell phone and disturbs my serenity to make plans for seeing Avatar. I start thinking we need to finish a filk that starts "Hrathen got run over by a Mistborn, walking home from Vasher's Christmas Eve. You might think there's no such thing as Stormlight, but as for me and Brandon we believe." Durso's was mobbed like always, but there's nobody at D'Aquila's. It's been getting slower and slower there over the years, no twelve people line like I remember. I don't really like Italian pastry that much but for this one night during the year it's nice to do something different. It's a warm enough night that in a concession to age, I rest in Bowne Park for ten or fifteen minutes before doing the final 30-minute walk to Main St. Usually the meander stops at Bowne Park because I'm getting tired and the neighborhood slowly more urban with less to see.

Unlike the 23rd, I enjoyed every single part of this trip as much as ever I had. There's something special about Christmas Eve, just like there was something special 25 years ago to walking along the deserted Diag at U-M on Thanksgiving night. The walk, the lunch, the store, the Holiday Lighting Displays.

I added another element this year, so infused with the spirit, and came home and put in the entire Back to Mono box set, ending with the holiday album.

And the knees that seem to want to get older a little bit quicker than the rest of me are coming up out of the last dip and don't seem to mind the walking from store to store yesterday, or the 18 miles I must have put on the pedometer. No, not something to do every day, but when I rest them up a little bit by doing the bike or the elliptical instead of a walk, I'll feel like I'm rewarding them for a job well done.

Harry Potter and the Perfect Getaway and other such things

As I mentioned a few posts ago, doing the blog thing is one of the things that takes a back seat when work gets really busy and work has been really busy.  But I'll try and do some quick takes on my recent film-going...

Harry Potter and the Whatever's Whatever.  Seen Wednesday July 29 at Clearview's Ziegfeld.    1.5 slithy toads.  This was nice because it was a guy's night out with Peter V. Brett, who was eager to see the movie again, and I don't often have company for my movies, and we had a nice dinner after, and I saw it at the remaining big single screen movie theatre in NYC.  But I just didn't like it very much.  One of the problems early on in this series of movies was that the films had no screen life independent of the books themselves.  I felt this slowly improved over the first three or four films, but now the series has regressed.  This movie introduces you to characters of absolutely no importance to anyone who hasn't read the books, involved in events and situations that make no sense to anyone who hasn't read the books, and as a result it felt dramatically inert sitting in a theatre watching it.  Peter pointed out the plus sides of the film.  It is a fine reenactment of the book, with excellent special effects on which no expense was spared.  And in that sense, not only great effects but effects that are real world enough to keep you in the world of the movie instead of giving the sense as the most expensive bad effects can that you're watching a computer game.  But for me, just too too flat.

Fahrenheit 451, seen Sunday August 2, 2009 at the AFI Silver Theater (Silver Spring MD), Auditorium #1.  2 slithy toads.  This was also a nice day at the movies with the newest JABberwocky client Myke Cole, in the old restored main auditorium at the AFI Silver, and a nice meal after at Ray's The Classics.  This is the 1964 adaptation by Francois Truffaut (the only English language film by this great French director) of the classic novel by Ray Bradbury.  I've never read the book, and hadn't seen the movie before, and it was interesting, but at the same time not something I'd hugely and heartily recommend.  The performances are a bit icky and flat, and the difficulty Truffaut had coaxing a performance out of his actors in English may be part of why he stuck to doing films in French after.  I'd had this notion that the story was about burning books for censorship reasons, so I was surprised to discover that it's the notion of books itself instead of any particular book that's annoying the authorities in this future world.  The vision of the future includes weird urban design connected by weird monorail to standard suburbs.  The monorail was the most interesting thing to me, with the cars hanging down from the rail instead of being supported by it.  And then access was by stairway which comes down from the floor of the monorail and leads very steeply to ground level.  So this means that the cars lose a lot of usable space because people can't stand on the spot that's the staircase, and then the dwell time in the stations as people climb up or down a steep set of stairs to the ground must be horrible.  Who'd think of such a thing?  It must come from the same mindset that would think that reading a book can only be a dark and depressing experience.  But the solution the film posits (is it the same in the book?) of oral history as the next generation of book is odd as well.  On many accounts an odd and interesting film.

A Perfect Getaway.  Seen Tuesday August 11 at Pacific's Culver City Theatre (LA), Auditorium #9.  3 slithy toads.  For somebody who usually goes to the movies alone, I saw four straight films with company, in this case horror anthology editor and long-time client Jeff Gelb.  Following dinner at the kosher dairy restaurant on Pico run by Steven Spielberg's mom.  This was a very nice B movie.  It's written and directed by David Twohy, who wrote the screenplay for The Fugitive and has done some other nifty genre turns as writer and/or director like Pitch Black and The Arrival.  This looked like above average B movie fun from its coming attraction, and happily the film delivered.  With a good cast including Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich. Some smart scripting.  Some good Puerto Rican locations doubling as exotic  Hawaiian vacation destination.  Suspenseful without overdosing on cheap tricks.  I enjoyed it at least as much as I'd expected from the decent reviews and the trailer, and Jeff maybe even more so.  Not a great movie, but a very good one that I hope will last some on video.  Because it's an exemplary example of the kind of thing it is.

And speaking of Steven Spielberg...  Close Encounters of the Third Kind, seen Monday August 17 at the HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival.  4 slithy toads.  My friend Mark from my Scott Meredith days joined me in the park for this, and it's always nice to sit, talk, eat al fresco, people watch, and make a full evening of it.  The final showing of this year's Bryant Park Film Festival was packed but happily not quite as much as last year's showing of Superman.  Mark was just back from Atlantic City and got me a box of James Salt Water Taffy as a two-month early 15th anniversary gift for the founding of JABberwocky, and lovingly changed every number on the Nutrition Facts box to a "15."  I love James Taffy and it still tastes yummy anad really best in classs/best in show for taffy, though sadly it agrees less with my fortysomething teeth than it did my twentysomething teeth.  Oh, and the movie...  it's a masterpiece still 32 years and multiple viewings on.  It's tautly constructed, well-edited, well-acted, I still get goose bumps when we get to the dark side and the music-and-light show begins and the aliens swoop down for their visit.

A lot of the summer it's been a struggle to find good movies to see but recent weeks when I've had a distinct lack of movie time have seen a lot of interesting open.  I did see 3 more movies yesterday and am going to try and make time for a few more during midweek, but I'll save those.  Four movies in this post is a real post, and that's all the blog time I can give tonight.

Geometrical Shapes

So I was noticing today at the local Pathmark that all of the Entenmann's cakes are now in a square box instead of a rectangular one.  But I just can't for the life of me say for certain if this is because they've just decided to make the cakes square for some reason while providing the same amount of cake, or because it seemed like a nice way to hide one of those stealth price increases.  The current Marshmallow Iced Devils Food Cake has 510 grams of cake, 8 260 gram servings, 260 calories each, and that looked to be the same for the Black and White Cake, the Fudge Iced, etc.  So if anyone out there has a 2 or 3 month old Entenmann's cake in their freezer in the "classic" rectangular box, can we get to the bottom of this?

And then moving from the squares and rectangles to the circles, orbs, spheres, ellipses and similar such things, there is more news on the Tim Hortons front.

As described here and elsewhere, the Riese Organization, a longtime purveyor of indescribable fast food to the NYC masses, is spending the weekend turning its Dunkin Donuts outlets into Tim Hortons outlets, giving Tims an instant beachhead in Manhattan several weeks ahead of the previously announced co-branding with Cold Stone Creamery.

Is this an example of "watch what you wish for, you might get it?"  The Riese Organization, its official corporate history aside, is just not known for its fine food and fine restaurants.  As is mentioned in the NYT article linked above, there is an infamous incident in which the NY Post took pictures of beloved animals enjoying the cuisine at a Riese Dunkin Donuts outlet.  OK, in fairness, I should do my first-ever blog link to the NY Post and its coverage of the donut war news.  I'm sure that kind of thing doesn't happen often.  Still, as much as I like my timbits, I'm not eager to get them at the Riese food courts that I've managed to avoid for many decades, just as I've managed to avoid their Fridays franchises.  And their Houlihans outlets.  And everything else.

Cold Stone Timbits

I am a big Tim Hortons fan.  I love just thinking about precious little Timbits, only 60 calories in a banana cream.  You can read what I said here about the genius idea of having Wendy's spin off Tim's.  

I am not a Cold Stone Creamery fan.  I prefer Ben and Jerry's, where Ben and Jerry do the hard work of picking yummy flavor combinations for me.  I think it's too much work to have to select the mix-ins at Cold Stone, and I don't think the ice cream is particularly wonderful that I've wanted to wait on line for 45 minutes as I once did with my niece.

But it looks like I'll be going to Cold Stone a little more often now that they've announced plans to roll out a co-branding initiative to three Manhattan stores, including the one on 42nd St. across from the AMC Empire theatre.

I don't know how much space each brand will get, but let me say right now loud and clear that they better have room for some Timbits.

I worry a little about having temptation so close at hand, or that the bloom will go off the rose when I can get Timbits more easily.  But hey, life is full of risks.

a pint by any other size

A pint of Haagen Dazs is now 14oz, in the latest instance of stealth price increases.  I don't know if a Ben & Jerry's pint is still a pint or not, but they have started to sell more aggresively a 4oz container of ice cream that can go on sale for $1, instead of the 2/$6 pricing that's been more common on the pints, and which doesn't inspire ice cream purchases.  Wednesday was 31¢ scoop night at Baskin-Robbins, and I had my full 3 scoop allotment, 2 World Class Chocolate and one Oreo Cookies 'n' Cream.  But I did not walk from the Baskin-Robbins at 42nd St. to the Baskin-Robbins at 46th St. so I could have six scoops.

District Affairs

I go down to Washington DC fairly often, often doing the same things over and over again though trying at some level to always experience something new on each trip, even if it's walking down a different block.

On my latest visit I decided I wanted to try very very hard to do some things recommended to me by the Washington Post.

So I went to get cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcake.  Now, this whole cupcake craze has me a little befuddled.  Illogically, because I think it's crazy to pay in the neighborhood of $3 for a little cupcake.  Why do I say that's illogical?  Because we all have things we're willing to indulge in.  I pay $6.50 every so often for a slice of Juniors Cheesecake, so why not pay $3 for a cupcake.  But logically, because Juniors is really good stuff (I think so, most people I've introduced it to think so, or have sent as a gift).   But most of these cupcakes are pretty dreary, and paying so much money for a bad cupcake?  Like this little place in Sunnyside that opened up near me recently, and I tried one of their expensive cupcakes and it was so godawful dry and bad and ugh ugh ugh.  

But I was willing to give this Georgetown Cupcake a try because when the Washington Post did a whole series of cupcake reviews in the fall they actually admitted time and again over the course of the reviews that the emperor had no clothes, that most of the cupcakes they were trying weren't very good.  Neither place very good in week #1.  Week #2, one of the places "no better than grade school cafeteria."   Hence, when they concluded the series by rating Georgetown Cupcake as the best, I was willing to give them some credence, and so I happily waited on line to try some of them.  I ended up getting six cupcakes, which with tax cost $16.50.  Each a different flavor.  As things turned out I ended up carrying them with me to dinner, then to the train station, then home, and some of them toppled over a bit even though they give a very good box which does hold the cupcakes well in more normal transport, but they were more than good enough even so for me to concur that if you want to indulge in a cupcake this is a very good place to do it.  I liked the chocolate mint quite a bit, banana pudding not bad at all, red velvet much better than average.  Chocolate #3 was a little bit disappointing but wasn't one of the fresher by the time I got around to it.  Bottom line, the cakes were moist and yummy, and the icings were flavorful without being icky sweet.  

For the record, here in NYC the cupcakes at Magnolia, Billys and Buttercup are among those that leave me feeling cold.  Sage has a decent ersatz Hostess cupcake, the Little Pie Co. has a nice cream filled chocolate if eaten at room temperature (I also like Juniors best at room temp), and some Crumbs like the grasshopper are OK, but I think from now on I'll save myself for when I can do Georgetown Cupcake.

Dinner that night, cupcakes in tow, was at Ray's Hellburger, which the Washington Post liked quite a bit and put in their fall magazine listing as one of the best restaurants in DC.  Well, thank you Tom Sietsema!  This is one yummy hamburger.  I got a pepper encrusted burger cooked medium with some swiss cheese atop.  It was big and juicy, moderately but not overly messy.  Like the review says the bun was a little overmatched, but it was a good bun with some real texture and substance to it.  The surroundings are not luxurious.  You order at the counter then sit down and wait a few minutes for the burger to be delivered.  You might be sitting in close surroundings to somebody else.  I had my bags and cupcakes because my next stop was Union Station, and I had to kind of fight my way through the ordering crowd to get to the bathroom.  But if you want a good, no frills, eating experience when you're in DC. Rays Hellburger is well worthwhile.

If you want a bit of a walking tour, Rays is at the downhill side of the very walkable very pleasant Clarendon corridor.  Now that the B. Dalton won't be there any more I'm not sure if it makes sense to start a walk at the far end by Ballston Commons.  But certainly you can get off at Clarendon, enjoy the little park and admire historic theatres in the CVS window and think on the very good Delhi Club for some other meal someday, walk downhill to the upscale shopping mall, browse at the Barnes & Noble, check e-mail at the Apple Store, pick up some vino at Whole Foods, down a little further past the Arlington County courthouse and the AMC, then eventually go down Wilson a little bit further to Rays.  Have good burger, having built up nice appetite.  Then continue down Wilson to Rosslyn, walk over the scenic and glorious Key Bridge into Georgetown, with wonderful views in abundance, and then just a few short blocks to Georgetown Cupcake.  It's only 1.3 miles according to Mapquest from Hellburger to Georgetown Cupcake, downhill, (burn more calories by having cupcake first then going to burger), and my that would be good.  The problem with the Clarendon corridor is that it gives too many good choices.  If you eat at Ray's you can't eat at Whole Foods, if you go to Georgetown Cupcake who'll have an appetite for a slice of Linda's Fudge Cake at Cheesecake Factory, if you go to Delhi Club there's no chili at Hard Times.  

My other DC item to review quickly was the production of Grey Gardens at the Studio Theatre.  This was the classic Studio production for me to see, something I'd kind of wanted to see when it was on Broadway but never quite got around to, so the DC production becomes a last chance at a theatre that I know will generally do a good job of things.  The production was solid enough with the lead played by someone with lots of Broadway experience and another role filled by one of the cast members from the Studio's superb stunningly good wish-it-were-still-running production of Jerry Springer the Opera, but it's not a very good musical alas.  It's based on a documentary about some Onassis relatives living in squalor at the eponymous estate on Long Island.  The first act is set earlier in the 20th century when Grey Gardens is still a place to be seen.  Joe Kennedy is courting the ladies.  All very frilly but not very thrilling.  I don't care about these people at all.  The second act gets a little more interesting with some nicely staged numbers with the entire company and one particularly interesting song called Jerry Likes My Corn that is an ode to the handyman who's willing to help out the crazy ladies in Grey Gardens, but one bad act followed by one mildly interesting one doesn't make for a good night at the theatre to me.  So One Slithy Toad for this production, seen at the evening performance on Sunday January 1, 2009.  Interestingly enough, Peter Marks, the critic for the Washington Post seems to feel the same way that the production is much better in the second act than the first, and I guess overall liked much more than I since his capsule review gave it the "recommended" star.  But shouldn't he have genuinely liked both acts before he recommends it, instead of giving that little star to something that even he seems to say has some first act issues?

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

So I'm buying Yodels at Pathmark tonight because they're on sale for $1.99 for the "family pack." And I notice it has this extra logo on it, that the package now says "Drakes ... by Hostess," with a note on the back to tell me "Since 1998, Drakes and Hostess have had more in common than bakery-fresh taste. They've both made by the same company. You can taste this dedication to quality in everything we make, from our famous Twinkie and Devil Dog snack cakes..."

For the many of you who do not know, a Drake is (in this context) not a duck but a regional brand of snack cakes (though one with a duck as its mascot), mostly in the Northeast, and as explained at length in the Wikipedia article on the subject without much long-term success when trying to branch out. Interestingly, Drake's was once owned by Borden, which also owned the NE-localized Wise chips brand. A Yodel is their version of a swiss roll, chocolate cake and cream rolled up and wrapped in chocolate frosting. I have always had a soft spot for Yodels, kind of like the timbit thing I was talking about earlier. My older brother has a soft spot for Funny Bones, the article for which has been deleted from the Wiki. Shows him. Devil Dogs were another family favorite. Yankee Doodles and Sunny Doodles were always very blah. Ring Dings were good. My younger brother was just telling me he still thinks highly of the Drake's coffee cake.

To those who do know what a Drake or Yodel is without being told, this double-branding is not good news. It almost has to be seen as the first step toward doing away with the Drake's name entirely, and perhaps selling some of their products under the Hostess name. I guess this wouldn't be a surprise. The ten years since Interstate Baking purchased the Drake's name have not been good for business. The company has been in financial trouble. Brands like this have felt pressure from improved grocery store bakery departments. Now prices of flour and other ingredients are going up. I used to hold out for $1.49 Yodels, and now I have to give in at the rare $1.99 sale, and I cannot conceive that anyone would pay $3.99 for a pack of Yodels.

Even if the rest of the world might not care, Drake's cakes have a warm spot in the heart of those of us who live in the Northeast. As is explained in the Wikipedia article, Drakes cakes were and are kosher, and while some Hostess cakes are now kosher in some bakeries, the pack of Hostess cupcakes I looked at today had pork something or other in the ingredients and would not be safe to take as a hebrew school snack. We did not keep Kosher when I was growing up, and I still don't, but it's always nice to know there's some treat I can bring to the synagogue... I believe Entenmann's has benefited over the years from this same virtue.

If the brands to merge, a HoHo is a lot like a Yodel. Will a Yodel still have a place, or will it have a place only for a while as the Drake's cakes languish and eventually disappear.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I just can't conceive that they're changing the Yodels box to put the Hostess logo on because the people at Interstate Baking are having warm loving thoughts for the Drake's name. I had no idea until I started this post that the Drake's heritage dates back to 1888. Will the Drake's logo be around for the 125th or the 130th?