SWEET ON U

Dear Puddin' Pie,

The Hard Taco song for April is called "Sweet Tooth Trollop." To coincide with the release of this ridiculously splendid song, I am also unveiling a brand new swing dance move, the "Bob Cratchit." It goes like this: the couple is dancing... they're dancing... they're dancing, and then suddenly the man FLINGS the woman straight up in the air. There is another man waiting in the second story window, and he does a quick Charleston kick with the girl as she flies by. Then all three partners yell "Bob Cratchit!" (Some day, my biographer will criticize the fact that every dance move I invented features the dancers yelling out the name of the move as they do it. My preemptive rebuttal: that's why you're the biographer and I'm the dance move-inventor.)

Download Sweet Tooth Trollop, and other songs that make you want to Bob Cratchit the night away.

Love + Candy = Better Love

I'm totally going to get into trouble for this, but I’m prepared to disclose the unofficial list of NECCO's Candy Conversation Hearts phrases for next year. These phrases are chosen 9 months in advance because the recipe for the candies calls for both barrel-aging and a process called "The Trials," a confectionary boot camp in which imprinted candy hearts are subjected to extreme temperatures, white noise, and violent desiccation.

In a recent phone conversation, a NECCO employee detailed this lengthy process to me, saying, "HAND-CARVD. HARD WORK. CARPL TUNNL. MISS FAMLY. WORTH W8ING. THEY RULE." He then added, "LET'S KISS."

Why would anyone care about the Sweetheart phrases for 2011? Let’s just say there is a girl you are sweet on. (If you are a woman, then you are hypothetically bi-curious in this scenario.) You work out a can’t-fail strategy of giving her a Valentine's candy heart inscribed with phrase, "SWEET ON U." You draft a mock-up for this plan on real blueprints. Everything is all sunbeams and buttercups, until you buy a box in January and learn that: Holy Buckets! The phrase "SWEET ON U" has been discontinued!

Did I mention that it's already January?! 

That's why I'm leaking the 2011 candy conversation phrases now. I want to ensure you have ample time to construct your intricate bi-curious wooing strategy around them. Here goes:

 (I believe the idea of this one is that consumers can scratch off either the B or the last O, depending on their needs)

  

The last three are somewhat enigmatic right now, but it is my belief that they are topical and will make sense to us by the end of the calendar year. Sweetheart phrases often have predicted cultural trends for the following year, such as "Tweet Me" (2009), "Dwarf Planet" (2005, in reference to Pluto), or "Ripken Streak" (1982-1998). 

Was BPaul BBunyan a Blumberjack?

Technically, he was a blogger (groan!), and while I'm blogging about food (still groaning from prior joke!), I wanted to rant about the fact that the health food is just food with more adjectives. Like “health.” Let’s compare Triscuits to their Trader Joe’s equivalent.

Triscuits contain: wheat, soybean and/or palm oil, salt. Warning: Contains wheat.

Wendy's Organic Woven Weaves contain: whole-grain bulgar durum semolina flour, pure deionized Cascade Mountain fair trade Spring water, sun-ripened Baltic sea salt, organic expeller-pressed eastern pasque flower oil and/or hemp-filtered rapeseed oil, hand-teased early autumn butcher's yeast, high fructose free-range Indian corn syrup, 100% anti-oxidant enriched privy-aged dung butter. Warning: Hand-woven on wooden wheat looms that are also used to process traces of weathered prune masa.

Which cracker would you rather eat? Neither! Because like the rest of us, you are saving your appetite for January 2011, when you can eat platefuls of XBOXO!

With warmest regards,

Zach