Are You Miracle Whip? Well...? ARE You?

In response to yesterday's post, ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© accused us of spreading pro-Hellmann's propaganda, insisting that only Miracle Whip had the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Skippy. Which reminded me of a photo I snapped one day while loitering at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga -- known to fans of meaningless honorifics as "Raymond Chandler Square."

A billboard was being stripped down to the wood, and the bottom-most stratum revealed an artifact from the Age of EXTREME DIET MAYONNAISE SUBSTITUTES!

Remember when Miracle Whip was the new Mountain Dew, and all the kidz were chillin' with their MW?

[Full disclosure: I myself was never MW, because I instinctively grasped that a man of my advanced years would appear inauthentic with his butt hanging out of low-riding pants, texting his brahs on his Sidekick while smearing slices of toast with a low cholesterol sandwich spread.]

Happy Birthday, Heydave!

Yes, it's the natal anniversary of our very own Hawkeye, heydave. Although he was born and raised in Chicago, City of Big Shoulders and the apparent inspiration for those weird, linebacker-looking gowns they wore on Dynasty, Dave was eventually wished into the cornfield by Billy Mumy, where he has remained, shucking and detasseling, for the past twenty years or so. So really, when you think about it, his journey from dazzling urbanite to soil-encrusted rustic makes heydave our own version of the Eddie Albert character from Green Acres, or the Fred MacMurray character from The Egg and I, or possibly the Scarecrow from Jeepers Creepers.

Anyway, it's Party Time! Sadly, we're out of prunes, but I did find this advertisement extolling a concoction my grandmother used to make for me whenever I visited, perhaps because the Depression hit her particularly hard, and left Grandma with remarkably elastic definitions of words such as "edible," and extremely narrow definitions of words like "abomination."

Yes, Skippy and Hellmann's together! "Tremendous" is certainly one word you could use to describe it, assuming what you're describing is the size of the liability issue involved, but others certainly come to mind and nearly to the lips, before I remember there are ladies present. Now this isn't exactly Grandma's lunchtime recipe (which she always called "the Special," raising my hopes that she'd been hybridizing a particularly potent breed of chronic rather than slapping together a shit sandwich).  "The Special" was served on toasted Roman Meal bread, peanut butter spread on one slice, mayonnaise (Best Foods in this case, since we lived west of the Rockies, but it's all the same) on the other, with some freshly-washed iceberg lettuce added for a bit of crunch and water damage.  But the marketeers responsible for this Superman v. Batman-style battle in your mouth operated on the theory that if the flavor profile of their product was hideous, it would seem less hideous if it was buried under a bunch of other, more hideous combinations.  So let's check out the menu, shall we?

Peanut butter and mayonnaise...a brand new flavor promise!

It doesn't strike me as a promise so much as a flavor threat, but let's see what they've got...

1.  double crunch: For a sandwich that really swings,

Nowadays, of course, a sandwich that really swings is less concerned with tasting good, and more worried about hackers releasing its user profile from Ashley Madison.

...add crisp bacon and Fanning's Bread & Butter Pickles to your Hellmann's and Skippy.

And if that's not enough to bring about the End Times, just hold your Horses of the Apocalypse, because we haven't even gotten to the pineapple yet...

2. pineapple topper:  Scrumptious for supper!  Peanut butter and mayonnaise -- a welcome flavor contrast for fruits, like canned or fresh pineapple.

Okay, that doesn't "contrast" flavor, it just flat out contradicts it.

3. apple fandango: Deliciously daring!

I figured someone must have dared them to serve it.

Creamy-smooth Skippy and Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise with sliced apples and marmalade!

The exclamation point suggests the copywriter would like me to believe this will prove a treat for my tastebuds, a thrilling departure from the usual drab noonday fare, but it just sounds like the kind of sad little simulacrum of a Christmas dinner British POWs would cobble together from the dregs of their Red Cross packages.

4. crazy combo: Man-sized pleaser!

A guy passing out flyers once shouted those exact same words to me outside Show World on Eighth Avenue.

Hellmann's and Skippy with a trio of salami, onions, and sliced eggs!

It fails as a sandwich, but brilliantly succeeds as an ipecac.

Don't argue...just try it!

You know a product is bad when its slogan slips into verbal abuse.

5. funny face: Irresistible! Skippy-Hellmann's sandwich face, flavored with raisins and carrot features!

Not being an enraged chimpanzee, I'm seldom tempted to eat a face, but if it's flavored with desiccated grapes and root vegetables?  Well, that's another story!

6. lunchbox special: Happy new lunchbox surprise for all the family! The basic combination is a real "natural" as is, or use as a base for your favorite fancy fixings!

Translation: We're out of ideas and can't even pretend this is food anymore, but the boss wants the presentation on his desk by five and we're this close to snapping a picture of peanut butter and mayonnaise garnished with pencil shavings and that smoldering lump of latakia cinders Jenkins just knocked out of his pipe.  So figure it out for yourself, will ya?

I know foodie culture has gotten out of hand in recent years, but honestly, how was it even possible to be a food critic back then? I imagine every review just consisted of one word, like "Yuck" or "Don't."

Anyway, now that we've paid our ten cents and gawked at the freaks on the buffet table, let's head on over to the dessert station for the traditional birthday cheesecake. I've decided to keep the Myrna Loy theme going this week, so here she is, reasonably nude in The Barbarian (1933):

And of course...

Sexy Birthday Lizard!

Happy birthday, heydave!

Happy Birthday, Preznit!

I'm sure the plethora of white sales tipped you off already, but for those who may not have been perusing the dry goods circulars in their local newspaper, today is the birthday of preznit giv me turkee, and therefore a national holiday.  Now, to be fair, the nation doesn't seem to agree with me on this, but I decided to take the day off anyway, because I think it's important to honor our preznits and their service and it's not like I had anywhere I needed to be anyway.  So whaddya say? Let's get this party started!

I don't know just how venerable Preznit is, but I don't believe he's quite old enough for a Lemon Party, so this seemed like the next best thing. After all, Prunes are "oh-so-easy", famous as the sluts of the desiccated fruit family, so there's a good chance the birthday boy will get lucky tonight! Or at least have a smooth and trouble-free trip to the toilet tomorrow morning.

Before we go any further, let's do some quick photo analysis, examining the image above for tips on conjugating the shit out of the verb "to party." Now admittedly, the girls on either end don't seem to be all that into the prunes; in fact, they appear to be ignoring the dried fruit entirely, and instead concentrating on their home-made incendiary devices, which I presume are intended as a protest against the lack of birthday candles on the cake. And the lack of a cake.

The girl on the right is treating her I.E.D. rather gingerly, perhaps fearful of a premature detonation, but the girl on the left is cool and ruthless, and probably went to Belfast after college and wound up in the IRA. Or perhaps she hiked into the Pyrenees and joined the Basque Separatist group, ETA. Or maybe even the SLA. At any rate, I'm sure that eventually she joined one of the many three-initial terrorist groups that end in "A", and all because of prunes.

The boy on the left is clearly attempting to eat around the prune, and seems pretty relieved by his success, but the boy on the right is overcome with despair and futility, and is actually cooperating in his own oppression by digging into the prune itself, because really, what choice does he have? He has been invited to a party, a party where cake is both expected and obligatory, and yet a party where there is no cake. He has been made to don a dignity-destroying paper hat, to sit awkwardly at a fragile card table, and to submit to the false cheer of his fellow partygoers, including a girl whose party dress and party hat are belied by the grimacing way she holds her party favor, which is most likely a bomb she has fashioned from straw and nihilism. In such grim circumstances, he no doubt wonders, why not eat the prune? In such circumstances, is the prune not, in fact, the perfect metaphor for human existence in a random and absurd universe: a dead thing, made even deader through dehydration.

Yes. Yes, he will eat the prune, for the prune is both the symbol and the essence of his own mortality.

But while the picture may tell a tale of existential and other kinds of nausea, the text is cheerful, optimistic, even manic about the menu:

Win their hearts with prune tarts

And win their minds with watermelon rinds. Why didn't we try this approach in Viet Nam?

Just yummy, Mummy!

Well, the prune is dry, wrinkled, chewy, and discolored, so I guess it does taste a bit like mummy meat.

Wonderful California prunes are fairly bursting with energy, iron, vitamins and minerals.

I was a lot like those kids when I was their age -- fretting over iron-poor blood, and always buttonholing the hostess at birthday parties to quiz her about the mineral content of the cake. Anyway, dig into enough of those prunes and you'll be fairly bursting too, so you might want to grab a magazine.

To make delicious, decorative prune tarts just use your favorite prune whip recipe.

Don't eat that you idiot, it's just decorative! Jeez, you'll be gnawing on the decoupage next.

By the way, before you pull out the prune whip I should probably tell you that my safe word is "roughage."

Pour into tart shells and top with whole prunes, stuffed with almonds.

If you're going to force whole prunes on us, you might as well have the decency to stuff them with bitter almonds, because then we might swallow a fatal dose of hydrogen cyanide and die quietly in a corner during Pin the Tail on the Donkey, our dignity intact.

Hm. This is ending on kind of a downer note for a birthday party. How about we replace the prune tarts with some wholesome pre-Code cheesecake?

In honor of the occasion we've flown in Myrna Loy all the way from 1931 to give you kids with your "hook-ups" and your "sexting" a master class in "bedroom eyes."

And just to seal the deal...

Sexy Birthday Lizard!

Happy birthday, Preznit!

Random Scenes of Hollywood

Well, we haven't done this in awhile, and since lately I've been escaping our stiflingly hot apartment by meandering over hill and dale, snapping photos hither and yon, a happy wanderer, a vagabond prince, I might as well share them with you guys, because I'm just going to delete them, along with the pictures I accidentally took of my bunions, my thumb, and my cat's ass.

First, let's take a tour of our local flora:

If you're a 1950s astronaut and you see this on an alien planet, you've got ten minutes -- tops -- before it eats your comic relief.

I'm not certain what this is, I just thought it was pretty, but I'm fairly sure that if it were to suddenly discharge a load of spores into Spock's face it would totes make him horny for Jill Ireland.

In honor of the release -- under mysterious circumstances -- of Harper Lee's first novel, Go Set a Watchman, we present the next big trend in American arts and letters: Southern California Gothic.

Is this a tree? A bush? Oh why must you always label everything? Why can't you simply accept it for who and what it is, and let it be free to be you and me?

Enough of nature. How about some creepy, dead-eyed golems?

The Force...AWAKENS!

...then hits the Snooze button and mutters, "Just five more months..."

The new edition of the All-Star Summer Jamboree podcast is out, and this episode is all about the geekgasmic movie news that leaked and oozed and pre-came from Comic-Con:

ASSJam Episode 63 “Grumpy McGrumpnuts Gets His Geek Back” 

Starring Jeff Holland and Scott Clevenger 

Music by Josiah Yareff and Ralph Ramond Hayes 

This week Jeff and Scott discuss Batman, Suicide Squad, and a LOT of Star Wars as Jeff reconnects with his inner child until it issues a restraining order.

There are the usual obsessive digressions, plus the never before told story of how I discovered the existence of Star Wars long before most kids my age, but thought -- due to a tragic miscommunication -- that it was about Star Belly Sneetches.  Click on the link above to give it a listen.

[By the way, my sincerest apologies for all the dead air around here lately. Things have been a little rough chez stately Crap Manor, but I plan to rise above it like an inexplicably buoyant Ugandan and resume actual blogging shortly.]

Happy Birthday Jim Donahue!

Quick! Hide the hooch and straighten this joint up! I just found out it's Jim Donahue's birthday today!

Wait, that doesn't make any sense...Sorry, I guess I panicked. Let me try that again:

Quick! Unhide the hooch, I just found out it's Dim Jonahue's dirthbay!

Dammit!

Okay, deep breaths, deep breaths...There.  Good.  Sorry about the haste and hysteria, but Jim took his birthday off his Facebook profile, presumably so potential employers will think he's still a fetus (it's all about Flaming Youth in the tech sector), but still demands tribute from his thralls in the form of birthday greetings, so I rushed over here all of a dither. Not Mr. Dithers from Blondie, because that's a specific Dither, and I'm really in more of a general, all-purpose dither.  Anyway, had I my druthers rather than this dither, I would've written an appropriate movie review as a gift, but as you can see from all the vamping and flop sweat, I didn't have anything prepared, which bums me out because Jim really is a swell guy and a highly skilled movie critic (check out his autopsy on perhaps the worst movie ever made, After Last Season and his fascinating history of the Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger rarity They're a Weird Mob, which seems to be some kind of odd, Stuart Smalley-like daily affirmation for racist Australians).

He's also willing to share the wealth, i.e., dare me to watch movies so bad even he couldn't make it through them, which is how I wound up experiencing a Danish art film filled with American actors faking Polish accents, and which climaxes with lighter-than-air Ugandans floating at the end of tethers like so many dirigibles at Lakehurst.

But enough of my deep and unending bitterness. Let's see what the stars have to say about Jim's destiny!

July 9 Zodiac
Being a Cancer born on July 9th, you are masterfully in-touch with your feelings, as well as those of others

In fact, Jim has touched my feelings so often, despite the court order, that a social worker asked me to point out where on the doll. Unfortunately, it was a Tickle Me Elmo doll, and all the touching sent it into convulsions, and eventually, respiratory arrest.

You are ruled by the inclination to mostly keep your feelings private and secretive. It is this mysterious nature that often frustrates even your closest friends as they struggle to understand you.

Frankly, I think Jim is up to something, and this whole "millionaire playboy" routine is just an act. I bet at night he actually dresses up as a giant bat and writes scathing movie reviews.

July 9 Element
Water is the element paired with your sign and in fact, you have the more fundamental relationship with water than any other sign. 

Probably because you're over 60% water yourself. I'd say you two kids were made for each other!

It is the forceful nature of water that causes you to experience emotions with strong waves that you ride with understanding.

That's why I always watch Jim's face, and if it looks like he's struggling with some deep emotion, I immediately grab my surf board.

 Likewise, you can sense even the most subtle ripples of emotions in others. As you embrace the positive qualities of water, you will grow as a sympathetic and compassionate individual. Be weary of the negative influence of becoming overly influenced by water, as you run the risk of becoming emotionally unstable.

And having to pee a lot.

July 9 Planetary Influence
The moon is your sign's planetary ruler

And since this guy is the ruler of the moon, he's totally the boss of you.

And there's nothing you can do about it, because your birthday is your destiny, and also because the Moonmen have lunarium, which is much more efficient at generating atomic reactions than your puny uranium, and as you can see, their caftan technology is light years beyond earth's!

So there you have it. Please join me in wishing Jim a very happy birthday, and a successful career as a catamite to Retik, Lord of the Moon.

And just to make it official...

Here's some extra-slinky, Roaring Twenties era Carole Lombard.  And of course...

Sexy Birthday Lizard!

Happy 4th of July!

We leave you now with this image, which is both an evocation of the just and blazing pride we Americans take in our liberties and heritage, and a graphic warning about the dangers of taking penis envy a little too far.

Have a great holiday everyone.

Update: Hey, look who just flew in for the Independence Day festivities! It's the 50 Foot Woman!

Alllllll right, we got ourselves a party now!  Listen boys, we're gonna need a couple cases of Hawaiian Punch, a fifty-five gallon drum of grain alcohol, and about two yards of 18-inch ADS drainage tubing to use as a straw...