Eat Me!

It's that time again, everybody. It's time to call bullshit!

And who or what has drawn my ire today? On whom shall said bullshit be called?

Why, food marketing, of course!

Specifically, I call bullshit on the convention of creating sentient, talking mascots THAT ARE MADE OF THE VERY SAME FOOD YOU'RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO EAT.

Because eww.

"We were going to get married and start a family. But nevermind. You're snacky."

Don't get me wrong. I totally understand why this seems like a no-brainer. "Hey, we sell chicken, let's make our mascot a cartoon chicken!" Boom. Done.

At first blush, it makes perfect sense. You want your customers to associate your brand with a particular item ... so you make your mascot a cartoon version of that item. Sure! Everybody does it. Hey, if it works for the Michelin Man, why not us? Easy-peasy!

But it just gets weird when it's food.

Because it's way creepy to have a character effusively encouraging you to devour him and others of his kind.

"Oh yeah! Guzzle my lifeblood after soccer practice!"

The list of these masochistic quisling pitch-men is long. Here are just a few from the top of my head ... Twinkie the Kid, the M&M guys, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Mayor McCheese, Mister Peanut, the Taco Bell Chihuahua ... and on and on and on ...

(Yes, I know technically Taco Bell is made from blanched wood pulp and ground horse faces, but that's close enough to dog meat for my purposes.)

The point is, this creepy convention is pervasive in the food industry and it's been around for years and years.

At least this guy has it figured out. "Sulf-prezurvashun, bichezz."

There are, of course, companies that neatly sidestep the moral quagmire. The Quaker Oats guy, Tony the Tiger, Burger King, Chester Cheetah, Colonel Sanders, Toucan Sam, Ronald McDonald ... none of these characters are pedaling products rendered from their own flesh.

(I have a theory McDonald's cheeseburgers are at least 30% elderly clown meat, but I can't prove it.)

That said, there are other companies who dive face-first into that quagmire and splash about with gleeful abandon.

Don't even get me started on these cannibalistic sociopaths.

But if you like your psychological fucked-up-edness served with a heaping side of crippling emotional trauma then the guy you want to talk to is one Charles T. "Charlie" Tuna.

With Charlie, Starkist really amps up the creepy by giving him a very strong point of view on the subject.

Is he horrified at the prospect of being killed? Guilt-ridden that he is leading his brethren to the slaughter? Nervous? Scared? Skittish in the least?

Nope.

Charlie is eager ... no enthusiastic ... no ... flat-out desperate to be hooked, gutted, steamed, flaked, canned and eventually chewed to a fine paste by humans.

"Pleeease! Murder me with your teeth! Even though I talk! Have deep-seated feelings of inadequacy! Shop for personalized embroidered hats! And apparently go to an ophthalmologist!"

In fact, his life's dream -- his entire sense of self worth -- hinges upon whether he is good enough to die by the fork and teeth of humanity. Anything less is crushing failure.

For Charlie, there is no higher calling than being sluiced through the human alimentary canal. (Such madness, presumably, mercury-induced.)

Just Google some old Starkist commercials and you'll see. For over fifty years, despite all his yearning and all his wishing ... at every turn he is rebuffed and rejected. Every day fills him with new hope and every day the hook descends from the heavens with his answer ... "Sorry Charlie."

Every.

Day.

His wheel of pain keeps coming round and round to crush his soul afresh. He yearns, but he will never be good enough. He is Prometheus, forever chained to his rock, reliving his torment every day for eternity. And every day the eagles come. And every day they decide his liver isn't good enough to peck out. So they just hit the drive-thru and make him watch.

Charlie's true punishment? That he must go on living.

Samuel Becket would have looked at this ad campaign and said: "Whoa. Guys. Little bleak, isn't it?"

Dude, are there even words for all the shit that's wrong with you?

Now, I really want to believe that Charlie's constant suicidal ideation creeped people out over the years. I want to believe that this produced a feeling of unease in the American eater. I want to believe it hurt sales on some level.

Sure, maybe it's on a level that conventional math has never been able to measure, but I desperately want to believe that with the judicious application of some that Nate-Silver-Super-Math -- that maybe we can find some proof that the idea of stuffing a walking, talking being into your mouth and brutally tooth-murdering him kinda turns people off.

I really do want to believe that.




But I don't.




Because we humans will eat anything. Regardless of any feelings that thing might evoke in us. Guilt, sadness, pity, terror, disgust ...

Doesn't matter. Down it goes.

We'll eat anything.

Any. Goddamn. Thing.

Need proof?

Okay.


We know what lobster tastes like.

Hell, we even have a chain of mid-level family restaurants dedicated specifically to that very activity.

"But lobster is delicious," you say. "How is that proof? People love eating delicious things."

Sure, but at first we didn't know lobster was delicious. But at some point in history, there was that first guy who looked at a lobster and said to his buddy:

"See that giant, terrifying ocean roach with the nightmarish snapping claws?"

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna put that in my mouth."

"Seems reasonable."

"I hope it's delicious."

"Sure."

"But you know what would make it better?"

"If it begged and pleaded to be eaten?"

"Exactly."

"We could pretend it did."

"With cartoons?"

"Of course."

"Done."

"I'll get the butter."

So resigned.
So very resigned.

Till next we meet ...

I Call Bullshit ... On Halloween.

That's right.

You heard me.

I said it.

Halloween! I call a long belated (or is it prudently early?) "bullshit" on you!

Apologies, dear readers. If you could indulge me a moment, I need to take a second to hike my pants up to my ribs and holler at the damn punks on the lawn. Ready?

Wait ... why am I doing a post about a holiday that's six months in the past and/or future? Because shut up is why.

Okay. Are we ready now, Mr. ThisBlogIsntTopical?

Okay, then.

Annnd ....

"BULLSHIT!"

Now, to be fair, my problem isn't with Halloween proper. I actually dig the ever-loving shit out of the holiday. As an enjoyer of quality horror films, a frequent scribbler of creepy yarns and an enthusiastic, near-bottomless consumer of vast amounts of high-fructose corn syrup ... it really is my favorite time of year.

Or at least, it should be.

So why isn't it? What's changed?

Trick-or-treating. Nobody knows how to do it anymore.

And who's fault is that?

Surprise! It's not the kids.

"Did I mention BULLSHIT? Because I really meant to. Vis-a-vis Halloween.
Also, I should point out that I may be an unholy hybrid of an
old man and Scrooge McDuck. Damn you, Science!
Damn you for meddling in God's domain!"

Anyway, here's the deal.

For most of the 18+ years I've been in New Jersey, I've lived mainly in a series of rather grim apartment complexes. Sadly, trick-or-treaters could never even find most of those buildings, let alone my actual door. So having any turn up at all was a pretty rare phenomenon.

But once we finally moved to an actual house on an actual street in an actual neighborhood we were excited by the prospect of taking part in an actual Halloween.

But, the first couple of Halloweens at the house ended up falling on weekdays. And with our work schedules and commutes, we didn't manage to get home until most of the fun was over. We'd catch a few stragglers, but never really got to hand out many snacks.

It wasn't until Halloween 2010 that the holiday finally landed on a weekend. And I would at long last get my chance to live the pageantry and splendor that is The Suburban New Jersey Halloween Experience.

It was going to be glorious!

Nothing but eight-year-olds in Snooki costumes as far as the eye could see! And I would fill their bags with all things fun-sized! And their little orange faces would light up with glee! Or early-onset diabetes. Tomayto/tomahto.

"Fuggedaboutit! Badda-BING! Amirite!? Jersey Strong! I'm Snooki! Sure I am! Popular and/or current catch phrase!"

It was a Sunday. A spectacular fall morning. Sun beaming. Warm breeze fluttering. Birds singing. If you could bottle a morning like that you'd be a millionaire.

(Also, you'd be terrifying. Because only an evil, weather-controlling, cosmic wizard could dare trap time and space in a bottle, only to then sell it to the highest bidder for his own amusement.)

I digress.

As a suburbanite, for me, nice weather on a Sunday almost always means some manner of yard work. It is Suburb Law. And on this fine October morning, with hours and hours to go before all the Halloween fun got started, I decided that it was a splendid opportunity to wash my car.

Or more accurately, my minivan.

(No, it's NOT creepy for a childless person to own a minivan! Darned if it isn't convenient for all sorts of-- DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!!)

So I gathered my bucket and hose and headed for the driveway. There was a filthy, rust-crusted van that needed my attention, and by GOD I was going to give it.

It was 11 A.M. on the dot and all was right with the world.



That is, until our first trick-or-treaters toddled up.



Did I mention that it was 11 A.M.

Yes, that's right. I said "A.M.".

Which I believe, in scientific parlance, stands for ... IN THE COCK-FUCKING MORNING.

Now to be absolutely clear ... I don't blame these kids. They couldn't have been much older than five or six and surely couldn't tie their own shoes yet, let alone strategize and plot when to wriggle into their Barney costumes and waddle out the door to do some systematic pan-handling.

Hell, they weren't even all that clear on what they were supposed to be doing, half-heartedly mumbling a few slurred syllables that sounded something like: "... (mumble mumble) ... chicken feet ... (mumble) ...".

Or words to that effect.

Nope. My beef was with their mothers, who were watching from the sidewalk a few yards away, beaming like fools.

Helicopter mode set to: HOVER.

Did I mention where I was and what I was doing when these toddlers were sent shambling up to me by their mothers at 11 A.M. with their candy sacks open?

To reiterate ... I was in the driveway.

With a hose.

And a bucket.

WASHING A VAN.

Purely from a candy acquisition standpoint, it's a terrible plan. When you approach a man on all fours, elbow-deep in soap suds, vigorously scrubbing what appears to be decades of filth from a rusty minivan ...

... and you then ask for candy ...

I'm just saying that ... realistically ... you should probably not expect to actually receive any candy.

The closest thing to candy you're likely to get is a clot of pennies from the bottom of the cup-holder, spot-welded together with five years of congealed soda syrup.

But candy?

Probably not so much.

"YOU! FAT MAN! FILL THESE BUCKETS WITH WINDEX AND
TURTLE WAX! CHOP CHOP!"

Needless to say, I was caught a bit ... let's call it ... under-prepared.

It should also be pointed out that I was in NO way nasty to them. Those little guys were adorable. But the truth was, I hadn't actually bought any candy yet. BECAUSE IT WAS 11 O'CLOCK IN THE FUCK-SHITTING MORNING.

All I could do was smile and shrug and explain: "Sorry guys. I don't have any candy right now. It's too early."

Had these little guys been older, more seasoned veterans of the holiday, they would have just taken this in stride and shambled on to the next house in search of a sugar teat that was producing. All while filing away my address for use later that night when they might return with some eggs and toilet paper.

"Gonna burn your shit DOWN, old man. Burn your shit down to the GROUND."

But they looked to be on their very first Halloween sortie. They must have been. Because my answer was not one they were expecting or prepared for.

They stood there, blinking and confused for a long moment. And then they just started over. Like I was a glitchy PC. They just rebooted. They took half a step closer, held their bags out again and repeated: "... (mumble mumble) ... flicker meat ... (mumble) ...".

Or words to that effect.

"Make with the Skittles, motherfucker. 'No' is not an option."

So, I tried to explain my position again, this time loudly enough for their moms to hear.

And at that exact moment, it would seem there occurred some kind of temporal rift or atmospheric anomaly or cosmic flux or somesuch. Because the words that left my mouth clearly weren't the same ones that made it to their ears.

What I said was: "I'm sorry guys, it's too early. I haven't bought any candy yet."

But what the moms apparently heard was: "YOUR PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS ANGELS ARE SCABBY, PUSTULENT, MOUTH-BREATHING ASS-MONSTERS PACKED FULL OF THE ACCUMULATED EVIL OF A THOUSAND HITLERS!! YOUR MOMMY BLOGS ARE INSUFFERABLE!!! YOGA PANTS MAKE YOUR EVERYTHING LOOK FAT!!! ALSO SEX IN THE CITY WAS NEVER FUNNY!!"

Or words to that effect.

Clearly they must have heard something like that, because they were instantly enraged. In an eye-blink they went from grinning like a flock of cooing, squinch-eyed Renee Zellweger impersonators ... to huffing and sneering at me like a trio of rodeo bulls eyeing a cornered clown.

They just couldn't FATHOM that the strange, pony-tailed man washing a van on a Sunday morning didn't readily have fistfuls of Snickers to give their beautiful, beautiful babies! The nerve! The goddamn NERVE!

In a whoosh of huffy, track-suited dudgeon, they snatched confused little Trench and Chaynce and Jaydien (or whatever the hell suburban white women are naming their kids these days) and dragged them away like they'd just been booed off stage of the Apollo. All the while their baleful, withering, reproachful glares searing deep into my soul.

Somehow I was at fault. Somehow I'd betrayed them.

It was as though I had broken some solemn pact we'd made. Like we'd all gotten together the night before and pinky swore to hold Halloween about ten hours too early.

Now, granted I'm not a parent, so I don't know how this whole "having kids thing" works. But it seems to me, if you encourage your toddlers to approach strange men in vans and ask for candy ... well, frankly, you should probably count yourself lucky to get those kids back.

Also: Free duct tape!

Now I understand how parents might want their kids to do their trick-or-treating during the "safety" of daylight hours. I get it.

I just don't agree.

Thing is, I don't actually remember there being any safety issues with Halloween when I was a kid.

Sure, that was approximately two hundred thousand years ago, but I certainly don't recall ever having all this paranoia about it being "dangerous" to go out trick-or-treating.

And I grew up in the '70s when shit actually was dangerous. Slides at the playground were twenty feet high, pocked with skin-shredding rust, and angled 70 degrees straight down into concrete. And when you were being treated for your inevitable tetanus and stress fractures, the doctor would light up a Lucky Strike in the goddamn exam room.

And yet we survived.

"And I don't wanna hear any of this bike helmet bullshit either.
In my day, massive head trauma was considered roguishly charming.
When you stop twitching, walk that shit off. You know, if your legs still work."

Nothing spooky or Halloweeny has ever happened at 11 A.M.

Didn't Halloween used to be an evening activity? Not so anymore, I guess. Last year, the last of our trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell before the dinner hour. The whole thing was over before it ever started.

When I was a kid, we didn't even put our costumes on until the sun went down. And once we left the house, we were completely unsupervised; marauding in packs through the neighborhood in the middle of the night.

We didn't get driven from door to door by our parents.

I mean, sure, we'd all heard the urban legend of the crazy old lady who put razor blades or needles into apples, but A) that never happened. Anywhere. Ever. To anyone. And B) if some asshole actually did give you an apple, that shit got chucked at the back of your brother's head before you got back to the curb.

In fact, if you're talking about "safety," it would seem like that "worry vector" should probably have been pointing the other way. Hordes of sugar-gacked, feral kids roaming the streets in the dark ... well, we tended to get up to a fair amount of mischief. (Or, as fancy-pants legal scholars like to call it: "minor vandalism.")

Think "Lord of the Flies" with fun-sized Butterfingers.

And yet ... somehow ... we all survived.

I say it's time we were all honest with ourselves, each other and the kids when it comes to Halloween.

Is it measurably safer to trick-or-treat at 11 A.M. than it is at 6 P.M.? Or 9 P.M. for that matter? Nope.

Admit it, parents of America ... chauffeuring your toddlers about for a round of pre-lunch trick-or-treating has absolutely NOTHING to do with their safety, and absolutely EVERYTHING to do with your convenience.

Do your kids a favor this year. Just wait a couple more hours.

Because the quickest way to totally ruin what used to be an awesome night, is to hold it at 11 in the morning.



I guess what I'm really trying to say is ... I should've just blasted them all with the goddamn hose.



Till next we meet ...

You Stay Classy, Charmin.

(sigh)

You know what I miss?


Tact.

Yeah.

I kinda miss tact.

It's a concept that seems to be turning up in shorter and shorter supply these days. And one that would appear to be entirely lost on the good folks at Proctor & Gamble, makers of popular bath tissue, Charmin.

I mean, we ALL know how toilet paper works, right? We don't really need it spelled out in graphic, scatological detail ...

Or DO we?

Well, if you've seen any of Charmin's cartoon bear-based commercials, or any of the numerous billboards currently posted around NYC ... well, they seem to think we do.

To be fair, I don't wish to suggest that the good people at Charmin are somehow unaware of subtlety, class or nuance.

Nope.

But I do wish to suggest that they are deliberately ignoring such things because they wish to have more money.

Which is especially disappointing since these are the people who introduced the world to paragon of propriety, one Mr. George Whipple, Grocer. Who was more dignified, proper or fusty than Mr. Whipple?

Nobody. That's who.

Unlike the new cartoon bears, Mr. Whipple never had to be overly literal about the specific uses of the product. It wasn't necessary. We were all perfectly well aware of what he meant. It was his job merely to suggest to us how "squeezably soft" Charmin was. It was toilet paper, after all. If you were in the market to buy some, presumably you had already figured out the logistics.

I mean, sure ... we all knew that by "squeezably soft" he actually meant: "pleasing to rub against your tender, tender anus."

But he didn't need to spell it out. Unlike advertisers today, Whipple respected our intelligence enough to employ a bit of subtlety.

"Charmin: Your tender, tender anus will thank you." --G. Whipple, 1967 (while drunk)

(Although ... when you stop and think about it ... Whipple's curiously vehement crusade against Charmin squeezing ... coupled with his own inability to keep his feverishly palpating mitts off the stuff ... well, in retrospect, it smacks of the kind of hypocrisy usually deployed by virulently anti-gay preachers who love nothing more than secret gay sex with boy prostitutes in seedy motels out by the airport. Huh. Weird, right?)

But I digress.

The point is, this is a thing that now exists right here in New York ... a Charmin-run public toilet:

Oh, come on, Charmin. Red and blue bears? Just take that last, little step and make them brown and yellow. You know you want to.

Now, to be clear, I certainly don't have a problem with public toilets. In fact I've been known to use them myself on many an occasion. They have been the mark of civilized society since the Romans. And, truth be told, I actually find this to be a pretty brilliant publicity idea for a toilet paper company. Especially given how incredibly crowded and chaotic NYC can be this time of year.

But where Charmin and I part company is in the overt literalism of their ads. I mean, Mr. Whipple only wanted to squeeze the package. His interest was oblique. You never saw him dancing around with his hands thrust betwixt his legs, dangerously on the verge of explosively filling his slacks.

That would have been undignified.

And that was not how Whipple rolled. No sir.

The cartoon bears? Well, they don't seem to have much of a problem with it.

And you know what? While we're on the subject, why the hell would you use bears as your toilet paper mascots in the first place?

The implicitly "clever" notion embedded in that choice is, of course, the unsaid association with the famous phrase: "Do bears shit in the woods?"

Clever, right? You've ingeniously linked your toilet paper brand to the act of defecation! Well played, sir! Perfect! Call the animators! Buy some ad time during Wheel of Fortune!

But ... if they'd taken another moment to parse it out ... they might have changed their minds. Because it would seem, if you're going to put people in mind of that famous rhetorical question ... you might also want to make sure the answer to that question somehow intrinsically involves the use of your product.

The answer: "Yes. Bears DO, in fact, shit in the woods. And when they're finished, they rarely, if ever, use Charmin brand toilet paper. Or any toilet paper at all, really. Or toilets. Because they're BEARS."

"Young man, no one likes pieces left behind! So you FINISH eating those hikers this instant!" (Because ... see ... BEARS.)

But again ... I digress.

Back to the gripe at hand -- the erosion of tact in the selling of bath tissue. Right.

Gone, it seems, are the salad days when gentle euphemisms like "quilted softness" or "super-absorbency" would be used to highlight a brand's quality.

Today's consumer doesn't have time to be sifting through all that rocket science like a WWII codebreaker! Get to the point, dammit! Somewhere C-list celebrities are dancing! And we're missing it!

So instead, we dress people up as toilets.

"WANTED: Performers to wear costumes for in-store promotions. No benefits. Sense of dignity not a prerequisite."

And don't even get me started on the obviously unintentional -- yet still way-icky-when-you-think-about-it -- misogynist overtones of dressing ladies up as toilets. It's just creepy.

Suffragette Shitty

Now, far be it from me to dictate what demographic Charmin should be trying to sell their toilet paper to.

If people find that sort of thing amusing and sales increase, well, I can't really argue with that. Hell, I've seen it first hand. I pass this establishment on the way to work every morning, and there are plenty of people who seem to find toilet costumes to be the very zenith of the Comedic Arts in the Western World.

And I certainly can't begrudge them. After all, the people who go to Spencer Gifts to see the latest in rubber vomit technology ... or to hear which country tune the hilarious wall-mounted fish will be singing this season ... well those people need toilet paper, too.

Just because they aren't my demographic, doesn't mean they shouldn't enjoy having squeaky-clean underselves, too.

Alas, I'm just an artifact of an earlier time. A time when things were just a little more innocent. A time when the lowest common denominator was just a smidge higher. A time when cartoon bears didn't regularly wipe their asses on TV.

A time when we didn't have red carpet openings for public restrooms.

Oh, didn't I mention that? They had a red carpet opening for a public restroom. Press, celebrities, velvet ropes ... the whole deal.

In fact, former boy-bander Joey Fatone was among the glitterati allowed behind the brown velvet ropes at this star-studded gala event. The press ... oh hell, why not ... let's call them the "pooperazzi" ... got plenty of photos.

Joey Fatone: Mostly just happy to be out of the house.

Also present ... the uber-ubiquitous Kim Kardashian! Who is famous for some reason!

"Did you need me to pose nude? I can pose nude-- OH GOD, KEEP LOOKING!! IF YOU STOP LOOKING AT ME, I'LL DISAPPEAR!!"

Presumably Ms. Kardashian was invited because of her notably fulsome derriere. (Though I'm beginning to wonder if the folks at Charmin might be laboring under the misconception that it looks that way because it's swollen with feces. It probably isn't.)

Though it's also possible -- likely even -- that Ms. Kardashian was not on the guest list at all. She may well have tottered in of her own accord, hypnotically drawn to the sound of clicking of cameras ... very much the way a mindless zombie is irresistibly pulled by the sticky-sweet scent of warm, throbbing brains.

But I'm digressing again.

Anyhow, in closing, I suppose there is a tiny bit of a silver lining in all this. We can still be thankful Charmin hasn't teamed up with Jamie Lee Curtis and her poop-inducing yogurt.

Yet.



Till next we meet ...

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream ... Cuz It's Bullshit!

Double scoop of righteous indignation? Don't mind if I do.

So, after a recent ... oh, let's call it a "Brush With The Law" ... I was on the NJ Motor Vehicle website doing a bit of research.

(See, I got a couple of tickets recently. Oooh, I hope they're to a show! Or maybe a theme park!)

Anyhow, during said research I happened upon a list of moving violations and something struck me. Hard.

"Improper passing of a frozen dessert truck."

Well, that didn't make any sense at all. So I read it again. And sure enough:

Frozen.

Dessert.

Truck.

Written right there. Right into New Jersey law.

Huh.

And so, by the power vested in me by nobody in particular ...

I call "Bullshit."

We concur. 'Tis bullshit, verily.

I mean, it's one thing for traffic to be held up by a school bus that's collecting or depositing its passengers. School is a necessary and important part of society. And I, for one, don't mind being inconvenienced by it.

But an ice cream truck? Really, New Jersey? Really? This is something you thought was so important that it needed to be explicitly spelled out in your State Vehicle and Traffic Code?

So the entire world has to stop and wait whenever a fat kid waddles across the street to get their gooey, melty, sticky fix from a carny/ex-con in a rusted-out, converted ambulance?

Yes, the world waits for you, you tub of shit.

So I repeat for emphasis: Bullshit.

I blame the powerful Frozen Dessert Truck lobby for exerting their delicious, delicious influence to get a law passed that's favorable to them.

Their lobbyists watch you while you sleep. Fatty.

Just another example of how the common man is crushed under the sticky thumb of Big Sweetness.

Bull. Shit.

Not a suggestion. That would be illegal.

Till next we meet ...