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HOSTESS PRODUCTSTwinkies
The quintessential Hostess food, superficially similar to foods you might create in your own kitchen, yet profoundly different. Yes, the outer layer bears a passing resemblance to sponge cake, and the "creamy filling" might have once read a book about a dairy product, but overall it has that quality of taste and texture that can only be found in the snack food aisle. A+
Cup Cakes
What is it with the so-called frosting? It's this weird flat tortilla of sugar and chocolate clinging pathetically to the much larger cake unit. The best theory I've heard is that the cake and frosting of a Hostess Cup Cake are actually the male and female versions of the same species, locked in chocolatey symbiosis. This would mean that the little swirl of white frosting on top is actually genetic material, which, let's face it, is what it resembles in the first place. B+
Chocodiles
Rebel Twinkies. Chocodiles reject the hypocritical sociability of the other Twinkies in their happy little packs of three, wrapped in plastic and denial, and instead choose to go it alone, sitting in their chocolatey leather jackets and brooding about the futility of existence. But they're hard to find and really not as tasty, so they get a B.
Fruit Pies
Hostess is the reigning monarch of handheld pies. You can keep your Dolly Madison, your Home Run pies, your miniature pecan pie gas station desserts: Give me a cherry Hostess Fruit Pie and a place to eat it and I shall gain some weight. Other manufacturers skimp on the fruit filling, the shortening for the crust, the festive artificial coloring, but not Hostess. Truly theluxury model. A
Suzy Qs
What is the point? Do we really need a Hostess product where you can see the "creamy filling" before you even open the package? The end result is that a thick layer of the dessert in question remains attached to the wrapper, not to mention the fact that the filling is free to squeege out all over your fingers if you're not careful. Not the sort of snack food I want my children exposed to. C-
Ding Dongs and Ho Hos
Unfortunately, I have reached an impasse on perhaps the most controversial issue of our time: Which are better, Ding Dongs or Ho Hos? Blood is shed daily on the streets of some of our more pathetic cities over this very question, and I have a friend who has promised to personally whack me with a titanium microphone stand if I come out on the wrong side, although I've forgotten which she prefers. Well, what the hell, let's say serve Ho Hos with red meat and Ding Dongs with fish and give them both an A.
STUFF IN THE AIRLINE CATALOGEVAC-U8 Emergency Escape Smoke Hood
This would be hard to explain to a child. There should be an accompanying video entitled Sometimes It's Okay to Put a Bag Over Your Head with a patient explanation of the difference between an emergency smoke hood and a Kroger produce bag. Other uses: playing "Darth Vader's Laundry Day," hotboxing. C-
Remote Wireless Meat Themometer
"Monitor meat's temperature without leaving your armchair." To this day, scholars cannot determine how the pyramids were built without the ability to tell what temperature meat is without having to get right up close to it. The best theory right now is aliens with meat beams, but there are those who feel that the ancient Egyptians must have had some sort of primitive wireless meat thermometer made out of birds. C-
Ionic Breeze Personal Air Purifier
Also known as the "I Am an Uptight Asshole Medallion." It blows "cleaner air" up your nose so that you can have the higher-quality atmosphere the lower classes just haven't earned. What I want to see, what I would dearly love to see, is some guy trying to pick up someone in a bar while wearing this. "It blows clean air, baby. That's right, ionized. Oh, yeah." D-
Authentic Pachinko Game
I'm just glad it's authentic, because once I ordered a pachinko game and I forgot to check the "authentic" box and they sent me one of those little Cracker Jack toys where you have to get the little BBs on the puppy's eyes, and it lacked that authentic pachinko experience that I was hoping for. B+
Remote-Controlled Indoor Triple-Turbo Blimp
Okay, so you have a remote-controlled indoor blimp for sale, and some people will dig on that. And if you point out that it's a turbo blimp, that's going to entice a few more fence-sitters. But then there's that reluctant demographic that's been looking at the double-turbo blimps for years now and almost buying them, maybe even pulling out the credit card, but deciding against it at the last minute. And that's where this hot little number comes in. B
The World's Largest Crossword Puzzle
I like that the ad specifies that there are no repeat clues, because I never even would have considered the possibility that all the clues could just be "The noise a smoke alarm makes." Thanks, Hammacher Schlemmer! C+
DEADLY SINSSloth
I'm big on sloth. Sloth is cheap and easy to get. You need a partner or at least an object to get the most out of lust; gluttony and avarice both take something of a financial investment; but sloth is damned convenient. You can get in some quality sloth in your own bedroom, watching TV or even at the office. And if anyone gives you a hard time about it, just point out that by doing nothing, you're helping to slow down the endless march of entropy and delay the eventual heat death of the universe. B+
Gluttony
Most people group sloth and gluttony together as the "slob sins," but the fact is that your dedicated glutton puts a lot of effort into his or her sin. Finding the stores with the pillowcase-sized bags of potato chips, checking out which lunch buffets shut down at two o'clock and which go on until three-thirty, taping Nabisco commercials—gluttony can be hard work. Take time out to give a glutton you know a pat on the back and a bite of your sandwich, just to say, "Hey, thanks for being a glutton." C+
Wrath
Lousy sin. Unsociable, bad on the nerves, and drives property values down. And what do you have to show for it? An ulcer and bruised knuckles, that's what. And it's so vulgar. Take it from me, pass on the wrath. Not only will you be less damned, you'll be happier. D
Lust
Ah, lust. Putting the "deadly" back into the seven deadly sins. The nasty thing is that while you need to trade liquids to get dead from lust, all you have to do to be damned to eternal hellfire and torment is lust in your heart. Talk about adding insult to injury. I lust in my heart all the time-heart, brain, endocrine glands, the whole shebang. Even if I wanted to not lust, I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Still, of all the deadly sins, this one is its own reward. B
Pride
I'm not sure how this one works. Is plain old everyday pride sinful or do you have to get into the realm of hubris before you're in trouble? Do you go to hell for saying, "This is a pretty tasty three-bean salad I've made, if I do say so myself," or do you have to say, "Why, I bet this is a better three-bean salad than God could make"? And what about self-esteem? My high school counselors were always pushing self-esteem on me. Were they pawns of the Adversary? So many questions. C
Envy
This is another of those thinking sins. Do you get damned for thinking about another slice of pie? Do you burn for considering hitting the snooze alarm? No, of course not, but all you have to do is covet something of someone else and boom, you're a brimstone hors d'oeuvre. You don't have to lay a hand on your neighbor's manservant to get the ecclesiastical zot. There should really be some sort of appeals process. C-
Avarice
Also known as greed. Got a lot of good press in the eighties. Still has a lot of supporters. If gluttony were as popular as greed, the snack food industry would own us all like so much stacked firewood. The problem with avarice is that it gets pretty ludicrous pretty quickly. From billionaires buying a dozen gold Cadillacs to bozos gushing over costume jewelry on the Home Shopping Network, greedy people inevitably end up looking goofy in public. D
DINOSAURSBrontosaurus
Huge beast. Ate only plants, but could crush a '93 Cabriolet with a single step of its titanic brontosaurus feet. Name means "thunder lizard," which is about as cool as you can get. Its only real drawback is that it didn't really exist. B+
Apatosaurus
This is what they're calling brontosauruses these days. Apparently, they had some problem with the wrong skull on the wrong body-duh-and once they figured it out, they had to change the name to "apatosaurus," which means "deceptive lizard." Personally, I think they should have looked up the Latin for "stupid scientist." D
Dimetrodon
Looks like a gecko with a mohawk. Big sail on its back that they think attracted mates or conserved body heat. Actually, that's what scientists say about anything on an animal they don't understand. They could find evidence of an iguanadon with a ZZ Top beard and they'd say "the beard was probably to conserve body heat or attract mates." Which, come to think of it, is probably what ZZ Top uses them for. Anyhow, C.
Tyrannosaurus Rex
Cool animal. Name means "tyrant lizard king." Cool. I wish my name meant "tyrant lizard king." Anyhow, we all know what makes this such a great dinosaur-it could completely eat you. Plus the little tiny forearms make it look like some demented nightmare beast from the fertile mind of Tim Burton. A+
Velociraptor
These guys got a lot of press from Jurassic Park, but let's face it, they're pretty lacking. They couldn't even manage to eat two little kids, one of whom had only minutes before been turned into a toaster pastry. Sure, they got the hunter, but he was coming up with cute last words when he should have been running like a bunny. And then all three of them got totally worked by a baby tyrannosaurus! Lame! D!
Stegosaurus
Two words: spiked tail. "Oh, so you're sneaking up behind me to eat my delicious body? Wham! Spikes! For you! In your head!" Plus it had I-am-an-industrial-monster plates on its back, which, while probably for conserving body heat or attracting mates, were impressive-looking. A
MIRACLES OF CHRISTMoney in a Fish
Needless to say, the ability to find money in fish is not one of Christ's more well-advertised miracles. To begin with, coming up with cash money sounds insufficiently Christlike. "Arise, my child, for you are healed" sounds like something Jesus would say. "Hey, look, a quarter!" does not. Secondly, the whole thing is just a little too "News of the Weird." D
Driving Out Demons
This is a good one. Jesus comes across a guy who is possessed by not one but bunches of demons, which I imagine feels something like scabies, only with the smell of brimstone and a much deeper voice to go along with it. For some reason the demons, realizing their infernal number is up, beg to be sent into a nearby herd of pigs. So Christ complies and the pigs-all two thousand of them-charge down and drown themselves in a lake. I'm sure it's all very symbolic. C+
Water into Wine
According to John, this is the first miracle the Son of God performed, and I have to say it's a good one to start the show with. It's impressive, it's elegant, and it carries more obvious benefit than, say, changing a beet into a rutabaga. And He performed it for the benefit of guests at a wedding, which shows that God loves even those too lamebrained to call a caterer. A+
Healing en Masse
"[T]he multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see. [Matt. 15:31]" This is an important miracle because it shows that Christ has organizational skills. A lesser messiah might have gotten all confused in the turmoil, and then the multitude would have witnessed the crippled seeing, the blind walking, the dumb made whole, and the maimed speaking, and then the wondering would have been more along the lines of "What the hey?" B+
Walking on Water
It's interesting to me that so many of Christ's non-healing-oriented miracles involved water, fish, or both. Water into wine, fishes and loaves, walking on water, the aforementioned money in a fish, and so forth. But it's probably just as well that all this miracle-working took place by the shore in the Middle East, because not only is the ability to walk on tundra much less impressive, but it would look pretty silly to have the faithful attaching little outlines of caribou to their cars. A-
Withering a Fig Tree
You might want to look this one up, because if you haven't read it, you're not going to believe me. It's in Matthew 21:18-22. Christ is hungry, he sees a fig tree, but there are no figs, so in a scene reminiscent of "The Fox and the Grapes II: The Revenge," he curses the tree so that it will never grow fruit again. Weird. Eerie. Disturbing. C-Copyright 2002 by by Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg
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