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joke du journal 5-2-01
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By Funny Guy, Section Culture
Posted on Wed May 2nd, 2001 at 08:04:57 AM PDT
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joke du journal 5-2-01
Add to the list of things that are a-changin' that aren't a-changin': Oreo Cookies.
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| The need to change to stay afloat in our hurly-burly capitalist culture has hit the land of cookies. Oreos, our last bastion of culinary comfort. Staid, conservative Oreos, timeless as the great pyramids of Giza (but much smaller) so constant and unyielding in their march through time that they don't even need a freshness date. Crafted by the master bakers of yore. Stamped with the crenelated curlicues of rococo decor. Or is it baroque? One or two maybe. Sometimes I'll get a package where all of the cookies are baroque. But it doesn't seem to matter with Oreos, it's just another way to eat them. Hell, just crunch em all up for mud pie crust. Ah, Oreos. Hard, slightly bitter, dark chocolate cookies, firm yet oh so dissolvable white sweetened lard center. Rendered, rumor has it, from the liposuctions of countless chunky-thighed maidens. Yes, the creamy filling, always deposited in a perfect white disc. A symphony of symmetry and saccharin stickiness. Do you peel it off with your front teeth, leaving marks like a miniature four-wheeler on newborn grass, or do you roll it from the cookie with your finger into a little tube of tasty tongue teasing delight? Do you take the two cookie halves and slowly pry them apart, or do you twist and yank them quickly to preserve the virgin integrity of the creamy filling? And how about Oreos and Milk? The ultimate after-school snack. An icon of our "Leave it to Beaver" culture. Are you a dunker or are you a chaser? Do you swirl your little cookie around in the luscious chilled teet sqeezins of our bovine friends or do you load your gob with Oreos, chew four times and suck up a tonsil load of 2%?
My friend Greg, whose tender affection for food is second only to my own, was bemoaning the fact that no one has yet devised the Ritz Bits equivalent of an Oreo. Or have they? The idea, as proffered by him, is that the cookies be small enough to just poor into a glass, to then be inundated with milk, and quaffed like a chunky microbrew in one fraternity-like swaller. The Oreo chugalug. Dude.
But now they've changed. Sort of. Oreo and Major League Baseball are working together to exploit Americana to the fullest. One side of each new Oreo cookie sandwich is stamped with a scene from major league baseball. There's a bat, and a ball, and look, there's the Oreo silhouette rendering of Mark McGuire rounding the bases. And there's one of Edgar Rodriguez at the plate, and, look Johnny, there's a picture of Ken Griffey Jr., pouting, and Albert Bell flipping off a reporter, and who's that grinning in the middle of that big pile of money? Why it's... it's... A-Rod!
Talk about a smart cookie. There's a guy who knows how to make change work for him. Lotsa change. Capitalism at its finest.
And the times? The times they really haven't a-changed much after all. |
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