The Daily News
1 Have you ever been so mad at a product that you start yelling at it just because it happens to be in your hand?
2 That happened to me on Saturday night.
3 I was in the midst of one of the most SENSATIONAL weeks of my life, all ready to celebrate with popcorn and a movie and all when I went to the cupboard.
4 No popcorn. Well, a quarter of a bag that probably was there from the 80's. No bag.
5 Now understand this. I LOVE popcorn. I'm a HUGE PC fan. It's a PC world, if you ask me.
6 You get relaxed, you get some popcorn, you pop in a movie.
7 Sometimes it's the little things.
8 But wait!
9 Hearken!
10 I went to the cupboard but there was no popcorn! Well again, there was some, but it was that sticky old bag stuff that's been sitting around for years. This translates to no popcorn. No REAL popcorn.
11 I don't mean that fake microwave stuff.
12 I'm talking the real deal.
13 A classic bag 'o' popcorn.
14 The kind that is all fresh kernals in a plastic bag.
15 Nope.
16 REAL popcorn has to be cooked in a pan with a little oil heated up. You heat a kernal and wait. Once the little guy blows heat, you pour in about a fourth of a cuppa the real stuff.
17 That stuff has to steam, pop, clang, spew oil, and make the whole place smell like a movie. It should look full and fluffy. Why it should be the very essence of a feast!
18 It should be dangerous enough that when you get to the bottom of an old-school bowl, you chip a tooth for your kernal greed.
19 I'm happy to say that out of the teeth I've cracked and lost, popcorn was responsible for about half of 'em.
20 Someday when I look like Mammy Yokums, I'll smoke a corncob pipe and then toss it into the pan right before I go.
21 I'll have one tooth left.
22 I'll start chomping on the corncob, and some hidden kernal will catch my last tooth and send it to its doom.
23 I'll cackle, and then I'll expire.
24 It'll be a peaceful departure.
25 At the moment I expire, the Grateful Dead's Good Lovin' oughtta play.
26 My eppytaph will read, "I told you I was sick."
27 Yeah.
28 Anyway, if you've ever had a steaming bowl of real cooked popcorn, then you know that microwave popcorn is a cheap imitation.
29 So here go: Why I Was Mad: Aight then so I hit the cupboard lookin' for a bag.
30 I had a bag I had carried through the decades because it was Truth.
31 At least I thought I had. I tore the cupboards looking for it. I mean, come on, you KNOW when you have hauled some treasure with you through time. I thought I found this popcorn Ark of the Covenant in the far reaches of a corner of a cupboard in the kitchen.
32 What I found was some old sticky bag which I thought was that vintage, but what turned out to be a bag I think I got at Lucky's, circa 2006. Not a good year for corn.
33 I cooked it anyway. I poured about a half bag in the pot, which shoulda cooked enough to fill three rooms.
34 But once I put the pot over the fire, there was nothin' but empty clangs and thuds.
35 I think it was Mammie Yokums who once said, "Well, intermittent means 'taint no good!" This stuff was pitiful.
36 I looked around for a bag of micro, which in my frenzy I likened to poking around for an old bag of skunk.
37 Useless.
38 I decided to go to good ol' Walgreens.
39 I think somewhere in my family history someone knew Mr. Walgreen.
40 Where I come from, the Walgreen's in Millbrae is to Millbrae what the Tower of London is to London. I remember some old Millbraen saying, "We love our Walgreens". Must have been it's ghostly history.
41 Well this wasn't in Millbrae. Or even London.
42 But it WAS good ol' Sannozay.
43 I hopped in the TOOOOOONDRA and flew over to our local Walgreens.
44 I KNEW Walgreens would come through with the real deal. After all, it was Walgreens, one of the defining edifices of 21st century funk anyone could hope to bear. I came to a screeching halt when I saw the clerk. He was a perfect cross between a panda bear and a fish lure. I knew instantly I was in trouble. He had some tiny key ring hanging off his lower lip. I stoutly shook it all off as prejudice, and I approached.
45 I asked, "Where's your popcorn?"
46 I tossed a glance down the beans and macaroni aisle, ny eyes darting around figuring this guy was going to lead me to the microwave stuff. I knew instinctively he had no clue about REAL popcorn.
47 He pointed at the snack aisle. "Aisle 5."
48 "Fookin' imbecile, " I thought, because the longer I live, the more I realize that most people are fookin' imbeciles. In a way, it was a compliment, 'cuz I was essentially sayin, "Fookin' average guy." An eighty-year old woulda known what I wanted. I wanted a dollar bag of popcorn so I could cook enough to feed a platoon. He was pointing to Microwave popcorn. Limp. I headed to aisle 5 just so the guy wouldn't be offended, then jetted over to aisle 7 when the guy wasn't looking.
49 I ran down aisle 7, the beans and macaroni aisle.
50 No popcorn.
51 I figured I'd have to settle for the skunk.
53 I skidded past this display of mico popcorn and saw like about 7000 bags for $5.99.
54 I grabbed it, slid it across the scanner, paid and bolted.
55 When I got home I looked more closely. I had inadvertently purchased Act I Mini-bags. I threw the first one in the micro and in burned up around 43 seconds in. Musta been designed by NASA.
56 Turns out that Act I made these "mini-bags" that are only 100 calories each.
57 The Diet Age had finally burned me. Act I had made these bags that had about twenty pieces of popcorn in them and could cook in a minute, but to make enough for a group was going to take the rest of the night.
58 So there you go. I cooked 40 bags, ten apiece for a houseload of 4. I might as well have prepared a turkey dinner for all the time I spent in the kitchen.
59 Yeesh. I wanted the guy who designed that stuff's head on a platter.
60 So I want to sponsor an INTERNATIONAL boycott of Act I mini-corn.
62 I can ony have popcorn one time outta the year, because I figure the amount of teeth I have is equivalent to the amount of years I have left on this planet, so I wanna protect my teeth. I wanted the real deal, not some fake diet stuff marketed to imbeciles.
63 But I settled. So there you go. One time a year and I had to eat these little mini-bags that are insulting in their concept and tasteless in so many other ways.
64 Popcorn should have three main things: a) oil, b) butter, and c) salt. Anything else is an amenity.
65 Who'd know, and who'd care anyway? This was Saturday.
66 This is Monday. What's past is past.
67 Fly low.
68 And yeah, you guessed it.
69 Peace.
~H~
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