Classic Rant #848 (November 19, 2012): Twinkies Fallout

I am sure that you have read that Hostess Brands, the maker of the eponymous Twinkies franchise, has gone under.

Yes, they have gone out of business.

Their unions were told of their plans last week, told if they didn't accept what the parent company was offering, they would have to terminate business.

In one of the stupidest union moves ever, the union called the parent company's bluff, and now, they have no jobs to fight for.

Stockholders of the parent company will make millions off this deal, as brands like Wonder Bread and Ding Dongs will be sold to the highest bidder.

And that include Twinkies.

What happened after the company went under is one that you have to scratch your heads about.

People ran out and bought every Twinkie they could fine--the regular vanilla filled ones, even the chocolate ones.

The bought boxes and boxes of the stuff, and figured now would be the time to make a killing.

They put their purchases up on eBay, asking for upwards of $100 for a box of Twinkies.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Twinkies. I just had a few last week. I didn't even realize we had them, and my son and I ate them before all this nonsense started.

It isn't the same Twinkie that I grew up with. Yes, they are good, but they are a bit more dense than I remember them to be, not too fluffy anymore. That's probably because they use corn syrup, not real sugar anymore.

Anyway, would you spend $100 a box for a Twinkie fix, especially when it is almost a certainty that these things will come out once again in the near future through another manufacturer?

People knock Twinkies because they aren't healthy, but heck, if you are eating these things, you are not looking for their health benefits.

I saw that someone on Facebook said the reason that the company went out was because they didn't make their products healthier.

Come on. There is no such thing as a healthy Twinkie, and there will never be a healthy Twinkie.

You want healthy things, eat granola, or real yogurt.

You are not going to reap any health benefits from a Twinkie, and its makers knew that.

People knock Twinkies, but people love them too. If you don't want to eat it, just don't.

But $100 for a box of Twinkies? No, I draw the line.

Where's Little Debbie when you need her ... err, it?

Rant #2,194: Back In Love Again

One of life's guilty pleasures is back in stores, and I personally could not be more happy about this re-emergence of a comfort food from my past.

We all grew up with Drake's Cakes, or at least on the East Coast of the United States we did.

Whether you are talking about Ring Dings, Yodels, Yankee Doodles, or Devil Dogs, there was probably no better snack cake around than what was being put out by Drake's during our childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s.

There were other snack cake makers--Little Debbie and Hostess come to mind--but for my money, and my taste, there was nothing better than coming home from school and having a Yodel or two with a glass of milk,

And the company--which began its operations way back in 1986 in Harlem, New York--knew exactly who its audience was, and marketed itself to young kids well into the 1980s and 1990s.

Drake's fell on hard times as people became more in tune with good health--no, their chocolate concoctions were and never will be healthy food--and it changed hands several times over the past two or three decades.

Now owned by McKee Foods, you can still get those Yodels and Devil Dogs at your favorite supermarket.

But the company also puts out other snack cakes, and that is where we are going to go with this.

Drake's is also well known for its fruit pies and its coffee cakes. These sugary concoctions are not as popular as its chocolate products, but they do have an audience.

Drake's, under all the different owners that it has been under, has continued to produce its chocolate snack cakes nearly continuously since the 1920s. Other than stoppage of product due to ownership changes, consumers have been able to purchase those snack cakes, in various versions, for the past 100 years or so.

But incredibly, in the fall of 2017, Drake's pulled the plug on its coffee cakes.

I remember that my family would buy these coffee cakes on occasion, and we simply could not find them anywhere.

I remember that I did some Internet searches and I found out that Drake's had discontinued producing these yummy little cakes, which also go so well with a glass of milk (and presumably, with a cup of coffee too).

I never was able to find out the exact reason why, but surfing from one explanation to another being postulated on the Internet, it appeared that Drake's had discontinued its coffee cakes because they simply were not selling very well, probably not as well as its chocolate counterparts.

Finally, the company came out with an announcement just a few days ago, on July 27, that production would resume on the cakes, and that they would be ready in the fall.

Well, the fall came early this year to Drake's, and to consumers, because these little, scrumptious cakes returned to many store shelves last week--or pretty much right after the announcement was made that they were returning.

My wife saw them in a local Best Market store, and she grabbed them, and we have since seen them in Target. I don't remember seeing them in Walmart, but I am sure they are coming.

Nobody says that any Drake's Cakes are healthy food, that you will lose weight by eating them. All the chocolatey ones kind of taste the same, in its various shapes, sizes and concoctions.

But the company's Coffee Cakes have a different flavor, simply because they aren't chocolate.

And those little morsels on the top of these little cakes pack a punch that can't be beat.

So if you have missed these little cakes like my family and I have, they are back!

When we often talk about things from our childhood which have left us and can never return, here is something that did leave us, but has returned.

For how long is another question, but obviously, they were brought back because people wanted them to come back, so now is the time to show Drake's and McKee that they should never go away again.

Have a good weekend. Speak to you again on Monday.

Classic Rant #847 (November 16, 2012): Working For the Weekend

It's Friday.

Thank goodness.

The only problem is that Friday is not Saturday nor Sunday. Friday is not the weekend.

I may have Friday on my mind, but I really have the Friday after work on my mind, and the two days that follow it.

It has really been a rough few weeks for everyone in my neck of the woods, what with the hurricane, the nor'easter, and adjusting to life after that.

And as I have said, my family was really, really lucky. I can only imagine what others have had to go through, and will continue to go through.

As for me, these weeks have been long and rough, and I am just looking forward to some relaxing time.

It has just been announced that gas rationing will end this weekend, so the odd/even thing is out the door.

It seemed to work, and the only question I have to our governor is why it wasn't imposed earlier?

I waited 10 hours for gas one weekend on four different lines. Ridiculous, but it was me and thousands of others who killed a weekend doing that.

There is nothing special about this coming weekend, no Knicks games, no celebrations of birthdays, nothing like that.

It's just a time to relax, and although you can't fully relax as a parent, at least you can wind down a little.

And that is what I hope to do.

So I will see you Monday.

And you know what? Next week is a really short week with Thanksgiving coming up, so relaxation looms.

And no, I won't be running out on Black Friday to do my shopping.

That wouldn't be very relaxing, would it?

Rant 2,193: Another Day

Today is August 2, the 214th day of the year, and for me, it is just another day at the salt mine, another day where I wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, go to work, work a very long day, eat lunch sometime in between, come home, eat dinner, watch a little TV, and go to sleep.

Yes, August 2 is just another day for me, and it does not stand out among the 365 days of the year.

At least it isn't a leap year this year, because then, I would have to say the same for a 366 day year.

What have I written about in previous August 2 posts at this blog?

Let's see ...

In Rant #783, in 2012, I wrote about the 59th birthday of actor Butch Patrick, best known for playing Eddie on the classic TV series "The Munsters."

The last I heard, Patrick had a wisdom tooth pulled ... or was it a wisdom fang?

In Rant #1,724, from 2016, I wrote about "Shooting Blanks," where I spoke about sometimes having a brain cramp while writing this column five days a week.

Sometimes you just can't come up with a specific topic to write about, or something you want to get off your chest, and August 2--the beginning of what is referred to as the dog days of summer--appears to be the perfect time for this malaise to set in.

Last year, in Rant #1,951, I wrote about the strange case of baseball's two Lee May's, one a slugger mainly for the Reds who had just passed away, and Lee Maye, with the extra 'e," who also had a solid career but also scored as a singer on a number of singles in the early to mid 1960s.

Interesting. I bet you could buy Lee Maye's records at the old Mays stores, which had a spectacular record department, as I recall.

Yes, writing about May in August demonstrates that yes, we are really in the dog days of summer.

I am so warm now, typing this all up in a room without air conditioning, that I am literally melting on the keyboard.

But again, it is all in a day's work here.

The difference between this work and real work is that this is fun.

Does anyone actually have fun at their jobs, enjoy what they do thoroughly, and cannot imagine themselves doing anything else during their working career?

I wish I had that feeling, but I don't.

I am completely burned out, and since it is probably going into the high 80s or low 90s today with plenty of humidity and a high dew point, I am absolutely boiling right now.

So here is my entry for today, as we slowly creep up to my 2,200th Rant, which will come during the week after next.

I hear that we are going to go through another heat wave starting today and extending into next week, so I will continue to be warm.

Thus, I have to think warm thoughts during this period, even though my real thoughts aren't too warm, to be honest with you.

I have to think that things could be worse, and they certainly could be.

So as I write this column, my thoughts stray off to the near future, my upcoming vacation, and the weekends, which are my salvation.

As for these Rants, no, I certainly will tell you that it is hard to come up with gems each and every day, and while today's column certainly isn't one of my best, it was kind of fun to look back a bit.

And again, happy birthday, Butch.

I am sure that dad Herman, mom Lily, Grandpa and Marilyn echo my good wishes, wherever they are right now.

Eddie Munster is 65? Heck, he is a virtual teenager in the Munsters' world.

Remember, wasn't Grandpa like two or three hundred years old during the show's run?

With a lifeline like that, why worry?

Classic Rant #846 (November 15, 2012): Baseball, Anyone?

In the midst of all of this hurricane stuff, sports remains as one of our personal outlets for our frustrations.

Sure, sports fans do live through their teams and individual players, but in the middle of the rubble, it is almost comforting to know that sports are right there for us ...

That is, unless you are a hockey fan. The National Hockey League lockout continues, with no end in sight.

On other fronts, football and basketball are in full swing, and on my end, the Knicks look real good. Is it a mirage or is their 5-0 start--including one victory that my son and I saw in person--the real thing?

And then we go onto baseball, our national pastime.

Yes, lots of baseball news in November.

If you like trades, the Jose Reyes trade from the Marlins to the Blue Jays is a blockbuster, once again totally depleting the Miami team and fortifying the Toronto team, making them contenders with just about every other team in that division (except the Red Sox).

And to make matters even more interesting, the leagues announced their respective Cy Young Award winners yesterday, signifying that these two pitchers were the best at what they did last season.

David Price of the Rays won in the American League, and R.A. Dickey of the Mets won in the National League.

No real surprises here. Price and Dickey dominated their leagues, even though neither team they pitched for made the playoffs.

In fact, the Mets were so bad last year--only prevented from ending up in last place in their division by the totally awful and now dismantled Marlins--that Dickey was probably the one and only bright spot they had last year.

And the two pitchers couldn't be different.

Price is a sleek, classic pitcher with an assortment of nasty pitches. He throws hard.

Dickey, once a pitcher to kick around, throws just about one pitch now, and he throws soft.

He throws a knuckleball.

Not too many knuckleballers are successful, and not too many win the Cy Young Award.

None did before Dickey, but Dickey was so dominant most of the time, that voters simply could not ignore him.

So right in the middle of November, with frost on the cars that survived Hurricane Sandy, the focus is on baseball.

Incredible!

The national pastime lives on and on and on.

No matter how many ignorant people knock it, it stands as the only 12-month-a-year sport.

And I love it, I really do.

Rant 2,192: Build Me Up. Bubblecup

Yes, that is a play on words, but if you decide to accept your mission and read on, you will find out exactly what I am talking about.

I am not the biggest water drinker, but I have upticked my water intake as I have gotten older, and usually, at least during the week, I try to drink at least a half bottle a day of water, sometimes even a whole bottle.

And that is because my place of work is a constant 78 degrees year 'round--too hot in both the summer and the winter for me to stand it, but that appears to be the temperature that they like, so there isn't much I can do about it.

So using both a bottle of water and a mini-fan, I try to stay cool at work, and using both in tandem kind of works, in particular when the water is ice or ice cold as it melts through the day.

But now, I am on another beverage kick, having found the perfect solution to this non-problem I have had for decades.

I finally found a bottled seltzer that I actually like.

I have always like seltzer, but I prefer the real kind, the one that comes out of the bottle with the spout that you used to be able to get when I was a kid.

That was the real thing, the real deal, and my family got that delivered to the house as long as it was available, so that stopped in the late 1960s, when the "seltzer man" stopped making deliveries to our house.

That seltzer was always bubbly, as it was pressurized inside that thick glass bottle, and always ready for you to enjoy either straight or as the major ingredient of an egg cream (to those who don't know what an egg cream is, it is kind of chocolate milk mixed with seltzer, but that isn't even a fair description of this New York concoction).

Anyway, since the late 1960s, I have not really been searching, but I have been trying to find a seltzer that I actually like.

When the seltzer companies pretty much went out of home delivery--and many went out of business--there was still a market for his water with fizz, and several local beverage companies--and even some of the big national ones--put seltzer in a can.

I guess it was OK drinking the first "zup" after the can was opened, but even if you drank it in one sitting, it lost its fizz pretty quickly, not being under pressure anymore. That was the beauty of those old soda bottles, because the contents of those bottles was under pressure all the time, so every time you drank it, it had that fizz in it.

So people pretty much had to settle for what some called soda water, others called seltzer, but was actually a product that really wasn't satisfying at all.

I would have seltzer here and there over the past 50 years, but it was never part of the my regular beverage intake.

I had tried so many of the so-called canned seltzers, and they were as flat as a board with their fizz, so I was pretty much drinking water with minimal fizz, but not seltzer.

And then, about 10 years ago, the backlash against sugary soda started, and people looked for other beverages to quench their thirsts--bottled water for sure, but later, energy drinks, and ready to drink coffee and teas, and some natural juices.

And seltzer was part of this emerging niche, in particular when beverage companies added flavors to the seltzer to boost the taste.

I tried a couple, but the flavoring tasted artificial, and again, the fizz wasn't there for me to enjoy for very long.

So, up until recently, I stuck to drinking soda, water and, of course, milk, and that was that.

Then a few months ago, I finally found the motherlode, exactly what I was looking for as far as seltzer was concerned.

I bought it out of curiosity, pretty much, and I came away maybe not wholly satisfied--no, it just doesn't come even close to the old seltzers that were pressurized in those thick bottles--but at least it was something I found appealing to drink.

It was Poland Spring Seltzer, but in the bottle only. I found one of those big bottles of the stuff in my local Walmart, tried it, and again, it wasn't as good as the stuff I drank as a kid, but it was good enough.

And again, I am talking about the pure seltzer, not the seltzer that they put out with the flavoring.

You open the bottle, take a "zup" of this stuff, and you can feel the bubbles hitting your tongue.

And being in a bottle rather than a can, the carbonation lingers a little longer, so you feel that sensation for a bit longer than you would with canned seltzer.

It has a nice taste, and while it isn't the "real" stuff, I guess it is good enough.

I am sure in today's world, and especially living in New York, I could probably locate the last seltzer company in the world and have the real stuff delivered to me, if they still did that (heck, I can even remember the seltzer being delivered by horse-drawn trucks, believe it or not!).

But admittedly, I just want something that I can easily get while I do my weekly shopping, and this stuff seems to be it.

So while I am not being paid by Poland Spring to say this, but if you crave the old seltzer you drank decades ago, this stuff doesn't replace it, but it at least is the best seltzer from a bottle that I have probably ever had.

Try it, you might like it.

Classic Rant #845 (November 14, 2012): Getting Better All the Time

Yes, things are getting better all the time.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the nor'easter that followed, things are really getting better, at least for most of us that were greatly impacted by those weathre disturbances.

Just about all of us have power, which is a major step in the right direction.

Gas lines have either shortened to next to nothing or they don't exist at all.

Yes, things are getting back to normal.

But for many, that just isn't the case.

Those who have lost their homes or are still flooded out of their homes don't know what normal is yet, and they won't know what it is for some time.

Many seaside communities are still without power, and many are so lacking that you can say that they are without hope.

Each home has to be inspected to see if it is safe to start up the power again.

The problem is that the water is still so deep in many cases that it isn't safe at all to turn on the juice.

And the inspection process is slow and arduous, and, of course, that really rankles people.

And that's for the people that still have some semblance of their homes.

Others are homeless, and will remain homeless for some time.

Housing has to be erected, to keep those people in their communities while they rebuild.

I am sure some people will just throw up their hands and leave, but others will stick it out.

Where they will stick it out is another problem, and that is why temporary housing is severely needed in some seaside areas.

This might be a somewhat nasty thing to say in light of these peoples' problems, but I am going to say it anyway.

If I had the money for a home, I would never, ever build near the water.

And I do mean never.

As a teenager, I had friends who lived right on the water. Their backyard was the Great South Bay.

I remember the mother saying that anytime there was a heavy rain, their basement leaked, and there really wasn't anything they could do about it.

That was a long time ago, and that family isn't there anymore.

I presume the house still is, and if it is, you can just imagine the damage that the hurricane inflicted on that house this time around.

Years ago, when my family was moving from Queens to Long Island, our family was supposed to live near the water, not on the water, but very much near it.

Happily, those deals fell through, and we moved to an area that is close enough to the water but far enough away.

Water is a great thing, it keeps us going, but as we saw this time, it can take away things from us too.

I hope those that have been ravaged by these weather disturbances can get their lives together, but as we have seen, it is going to be tough.

But for the rest of us, things are slowly, very slowly, getting better.

And that's good.