Tarting up the rice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments
Fresh from the Yonsei University candy kitchens. Photograph: Yonsei University/PA

One of the fathers of the Pop-Tart, a staple from my childhood, has gone west.

William Post, who died Saturday at 96 in Grand Rapids, Mich., led the bakery plant that developed the first Pop-Tarts for Kellogg’s in 1964, according to his son, Dan.

Post was a hands-on sort who used his kids to test-drive the early prototypes — some good, some not so good — and once he got them dialed in, well, it was off to the races. Today, for good or ill, sales are in the billions.

One wonders what Post might have done if some Suit brought him the idea for “hybrid rice” — traditional rice grains slathered in fish gelatin, seeded with skeletal beef muscle and fat stem cells, and then grown in a lab.

Professor Jinkee Hong, who actually brought this Frankenrice to life at Yonsei University in South Korea, was hoping to develop a protein source more affordable than traditional beef, with a smaller carbon hoofprint.

After cooking and tasting his creation the professor said it “retains its traditional appearance but carries a unique blend of aromas, including a slight nuttiness and umami which are characteristic of meat.”

“While it does not exactly replicate the taste of beef, it offers a pleasant and novel flavor experience,” he added. “We tried it with various accompaniments and it pairs well with a range of dishes.”

Hm. Maybe so. I suspect it might have been one of those tough sells around the Post family table. But as a perpetually famished skinny-ass kid who inhaled everything from Tang to Space Food Sticks to Hamburger Helper to sammiches of Wonder Bread, pasteurized/processed “cheese food” and Oscar Meyer braunschweiger (in a tube!), I might have given it a go.

Hold the Beef-Rice Pop-Tarts, though. Ain’t enough Taster’s Choice in the world.

What’s old is … well, old

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Heeeeeeeeee’s baaaaaaaaaack. … Matt Wilson/Comedy Central’s The Daily Show

We didn’t watch Jon Stewart’s return to “The Daily Show” last night, because we don’t subscribe to Comedy Central.

We do have Paramount, which apparently will air his Monday musings on Tuesdays, if they didn’t just lay off whoever was responsible for throwing that particular switch.

As former members of the congregation I suppose we should check out the Resurrection. Herself and I were both fans of Stewart’s first go-round at TDS, though she was less enamored of his stint on Apple TV+. She still likes Stephen Colbert, too, though I prefer his alter ego from “The Colbert Report.”

In a chat with “CBS Mornings” yesterday Stewart said he wanted a platform from which he could sound off on the 2024 elections, a wish that apparently had Apple TV+ a wee bit nervous and probably helped croak his struggling “The Problem with Jon Stewart” show.

Said Stewart: “I just thought, who better to comment on this election than someone who truly understands two aging men past their prime?”

That’s good shit there, as was his opening salvo last night: “Welcome to ‘The Daily Show!’ My name is Jon Stewart! Now … where was I?”

With only one day in the hot seat per week he shouldn’t have any trouble coming up with material — shoveling sand against the tide would seem a doddle by comparison — and lord knows we could all use a few laughs.

Dig in, old fella. And remember, lift with your legs.

R.I.P., Bob Edwards

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Bob Edwards (pictured in 1989) started his career at NPR as a newscaster and then hosted All Things Considered before moving to Morning Edition. Photo by Max Hirshfeld for NPR

“The voice we woke up to.” That’s NPR’s Susan Stamberg speaking of Bob Edwards, who for just short of a quarter century was the host of “Morning Edition,” until the bosses gave him the shove in 2004.

Heart failure and complications of bladder cancer gave Edwards his final push on Saturday. He was 76.

I spent a lot of years getting the news from Edwards and his people courtesy of one NPR affiliate or another. KRCC-FM in Bibleburg; KUAZ in Tucson; one or another of the three stations I could get in Corvallis, Ore. (KOAC, KOPB, or KLCC); KCFR in Denver; and others along the long and winding road between newspapers.

“Morning Edition” became particularly important in Corvallis, where I was working for an afternoon paper for the first and last time. Edwards and the NPR news crew gave me a head’s-up as to what might await me when I staggered hungover into the Gazette-Times newsroom at stupid-thirty and started scanning the wires for nightmares to pour into the holes around the ads.

You’d never have known he was from Kentucky (like me, he shed any original-equipment accent). Unlike me, he was drafted and did a hitch in the Army, in South Korea.

Edwards wrote books, hosted a program on SiriusFM, and — according to his wife, Windsor Johnston, a reporter and news anchor for NPR — never got over his dismissal from that outfit, where just four years earlier his work had been honored and described by a Peabody awards committee as “two hours of daily in-depth news and entertainment expertly helmed by a man who embodies the essence of excellence in radio.”

“He was a stickler for even the tiniest of details and lived by the philosophy that ‘less is more,’” Ms. Johnston wrote on Facebook. “He helped pave the way for the younger generation of journalists who continue to make NPR what it is today.”

That’s a helluva mic drop. Peace to him, and to his friends, family, and loyal listeners.

2024: A Spaced Odyssey

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments
“Uhhhh … what was the question again?”

I am not a senile old fool.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply taking a cheap political shot, hoping to stop me from serving another term as Your Humble Narrator here at whatever the hell it is that we, or you, or I am doing at this whatchamacallit, the thing. The … bog? You know.

Now, it’s true that I may occasionally stare blankly at my iPhone, the way that monkey did at the glossy black rectangle in that movie — c’mon, you know the one — because the nice lady on the phone asked me for my phone number and I’m trying to look it up in Settings without hanging up on her because hey, I never call myself. Do you?

Hello? Hello?

Shit.

But I can assure you that while I’m pawing helplessly at that glossy black rectangle I no longer make the plaintive hooting sound. Like the monkey. The one in the movie. You know, where the bone turns into a spaceship and Siri or Alexa or Elon is trying to kill everyone and the young guy in the spaceship turns into an old guy in a Home who can’t remember his phone number? Is it HAL9000? No?

I do? I’m making it right now? I’m sure you’re mistaken. Whoever you are. Ook ook ook.

And sometimes I may forget who the president is, but only because I’m pretty sure it’s not the Red Skull or Pumpkinhead or Dick Tater, whatever the crazy orange fella’s called, the one who looks like a giant circus peanut with beady little eyes like a big fat rat with a mouth like an asshole and is always in the news because he keeps doing stupid shit and getting caught at it but nobody seems to be able to put him in jail and somehow they all think the other fella is the problem because he can’t remember who the King of the Moon is or the name of that movie with the monkey who can’t remember his phone number or how to find it in that big black iPhone that the Space Baby left somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, where the bones turn into Great Red Sharks driven through Bat Country by Hunter S. Thompson to Las Vegas, where an infinite number of monkeys are writing “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’24.”

Anyway, whoever’s president now seems to be a little quieter and more laid back and I don’t have to think about him all the goddamn time and I kind of like that because it’s restful and I seem to need a lot of naps lately. Like right now.