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!