Chocolate In My Peanut Butter

 

 

Now that I am in the fourth quarter of life, I don't buy candy like I used to.

For one thing, it is too expensive. 

When I was coming along, candy bars were usually a quarter. Back then, everything was a quarter, including used cars and split-level houses. 

(Note to my Gen-Z readers: No, split-level houses did not cost a quarter, even in Marietta, Georgia, in 1971. I'm joking. ) 

According to our lords in Artificial Intelligence, a standard candy bar is $3.45.  That's pretty hefty in my mind, especially when I'm at the age at which I'm supposed to know my A1C. I'm not sure if a less-than-standard candy bar costs less.

We should recognize that although M&M's and Hershey Bars are great, the GOAT of all candy is the glorious Reese's Cups. 

Reese's Cup is chocolate with peanut butter.  They taste good "chilled" -placed in the refrigerator. I especially like to do this to the small cups they sell at Christmas time. 

However, there has been some trouble in the Reese's Cup world. 

According to the AP, "The grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has lashed out at The Hershey Company, accusing the candy company of hurting the Reese’s brand by shifting to cheaper ingredients in many products. Brad Reese, 70, said in a Feb. 14 letter to Hershey’s corporate brand manager that for multiple Reese's products, the company replaced milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with peanut crème."

First of all, how cool would it be to know your grandfather invented the Reese's Cup?

Secondly, "compound coatings" sounds like the name of an '80s hair band.  "Please welcome to Alex Cooley's Ballroom...Compound Coatings!"

This is a big deal because when I was growing up, the Sterling-Cooper ad agency produced a series of commercials that featured a young man with a chocolate bar running into a young woman eating peanut butter straight out of a jar.

The young man says,  "Hey you got peanut butter on my chocolate bar." While the young woman says, "Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter." From there, they both tasted the heavenly combination, and a million pounds and pimples were conceived. 

James Lileks says this is a perfect example of "encrapification", which is "the process by which everything gets incrementally worse."

Lileks goes on to say, "Every food, every experience, every aspect of daily life and commerce, encrapified by bean counters, hedge funds, cost-cutters, and other MBA types who make something worse so the bottom line looks better, and they get a bonus that sets them up for life."

We geezers say this all the time.  We used to have good music; now we have bad music. We learned this from our parents, who claimed to have music instead of the "racket" we liked. 

The halftime show at the Super Bowl is another example. They used to have Michael Jackson and Prince. This year, they had Bad Bunny, who sells a lot of downloads and performed exclusively in Spanish because of something that has to do with President Orange, and everybody should just shut up because you know you like to go hear operas in German. 

Movies. Really. When was the last time you went to the movies without having to take out a home equity loan?  When was the last time you saw a movie that was really enjoyable?

TV shows? Most of them start good and finish terribly.  

Hershey responded to Mr. Reese: "The company said the classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup hasn’t changed and is still made with milk chocolate and freshly roasted peanut butter. The statement also acknowledged that as the brand has expanded into new shapes, sizes, and seasonal items, the company has made what it called “product recipe adjustments.”

I've noticed white chocolate Reese's Cups, heart-shaped Reese's, and Reese's cups shaped like the Easter Bunny. I guess there had to be some recipe adjustments.

But, for the love of all that is good and sacred, please do not change the taste of a Reese's cup. I don't know if I have a jar of peanut butter to walk around with while waiting for an errant chocolate bar.

Something Big. I Guess.

 

 

It should be apparent that I'm NOT the one you go to for new tech information. 

You've heard of "early adapters" of the latest and greatest tech thing?  I'm sort of a "finally get around to it" adapter.

In the early years of the cell phone, I had a little one. It fit in my pocket. It rang, and I answered it. One time I decided to go a little crazy, and I put the "Hawaii 5-0" theme as my ringtone. 

By the way, the "Hawaii 5-0" theme absolutely slaps, as the kids say today. 

That was pretty cool until I forgot to put the ringer on silent, and during a particularly reflective moment of our church's Christmas concert, my late great friend, Bill Wade, decided to give me a call. 

Nothing says Christmas like the "Hawaii 5-0" theme.

After that phone, I got a flip phone, which was the worst cell phone ever created.  However, the flip phone could text and take pictures in a very primitive way. 

Then I got a Blackberry, which I thought was pretty cool.  To show how cool it was, Karl Rove had a Blackberry.  You could text on it, and (this is important), you could have the Facebook and Twitter apps, so you could always be engaged with social media.  That might not have been such a great idea. 

Soon, I learned the Blackberry was like the K-mart tennis shoes that your mom would buy you because it sort of, kind of, looked like the Adidas shoes everyone at Wheeler wore, because we were not going to spend $30.00 for a pair of tennis shoes, Alan. 

Then one day, my wife and I walked into the 21st Century and got an iPhone. It drove Blackberry out of the market. I don't even think Karl Rove has one now. 

The big topic in tech is Artificial Intelligence or "AI".

What is AI? According to my deep research (Wikipedia) "AI" is artificial intelligence, which is intelligence that is artificial. It is computer systems that "perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem solving, perception, and decision making".  

 

AI also helps you to spell better and pick out Netflix shows.

 
AI is supposed to do many of things. However, right now, it looks like the main function of AI is to make cat videos for TikTok and Facebook. 

 One video shows cat restaurant servers bringing food to human customers, which is a hoot because, as anybody who has been around a cat knows, they would never bring you anything unless they killed it themselves. 

Another video shows cats dancing around to Taylor Swift songs.

So I was surprised at a post by Matt Shumer, who owns an AI firm titled "Something Big Is Happening".  Read it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/something-big-happening-matt-shumer-so5he/

 Matt Shumer said today reminds him of February of 2020, when we heard rumblings about this "virus" in China that would kill everybody. You might remember it, I think it was called Covid.

The virus was very bad, and it killed John Prine, but there is a line of thinking that if somebody, like, oh, President Trump, had just done something (exactly what nobody has ever explained), maybe so many people would not have died. 

Shumer says in 2022, a mere four years ago, AI could not do simple math. (Finally, me and high tech have something in common.)  Now, AI can pass the bar exam.  AI won't make lawyers disappear, (dang) but Shumer advises that you better be aware of the changes that AI will cause. AI might actually do some work.

Shumer's thesis is simple: brace yourself. Things are going to change fast, so be prepared.  Forbes magazine says this: "His (Shumer) prescription is blunt: get ahead of it. Learn to use AI. Become indispensable. Invest wisely. Prepare for volatility."

The only problem this slightly less tech-savvy person sees is that learning to use AI, becoming indispensable, investing wisely, and preparing for volatility is just good advice anyway. 

I remember a lot of the latest and greatest things. The color TV. Microwave ovens. Calculators. All of these presented a challenge and would change everything. I remember during the dot.com boom, I heard that brick-and-mortar stores would go out of business.  Okay, maybe they were right about that.

AI is just a tool.  It can make things easier and make things more complicated. It depends on how we use it. 

So maybe it is not the end of the world as we know it. Maybe it is just another gadget that can make life better.  Or make more cat videos, we'll see. 

The News About Newspapers

What's the news across the nation?

We have got the information. - Rowan And Martin's Laugh-In

 

 

 

The big news this week was about a newspaper

 

The Washington Post downsized its staff by a third, including the sports and books departments. It was over 300 employees.

 

I know it stung. I was a survivor of a big lay-off back at the insurance company in '96. Looking back on it, it was worse to be a survivor than a victim. The survivors were advised to "work smarter, not harder," whatever that meant. 

 

By the time I was downsized by the insurance company in 2002, it was more of a relief than anything else. I got another job within a month, and nine months later, I was hired for the job I retired from in 2024.

It wasn't really surprising that it happened to the Post because the Post has been bleeding money for years. 

 

 Jeff Bezos bought the paper several years ago, even though he had no experience in making a newspaper profitable.  It turns out that even the most successful businessman on planet Earth can make a newspaper profitable in this Internet age without Wordle.

Because Bezos has so much money, the proglodytes yelped it was his fault that he had to lay off people from a business that depends upon readers and subscriptions when it had no readers or subscribers.  Charles C.W. Cooke notes, "Jeff Bezos was supposed to pay for in perpetuity as penance for having been a useful member of society."

 

The library at my college, Hooty U, carried the Post and I read it instead of studying.  When the internet came around, I could read The Post without going to the library.  They used to have a feature called "Live Online" in which you could post a question to Post writer or newsmaker. One day, Buddy Ebsen was featured and I posted a question. Ol' Uncle Jed answered it! I'm going to make sure that is mentioned in my obituary. 

 

The Post had many glorious moments. It was at its zenith in the early 70s when two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein from the City desk followed up on the burglary at The Watergate.  Their reporting eventually led to the resignation of the President.  You may have heard about it.

 Some of the shine has come off those glorious days. In 2005, Mark Felt, a high-level FBI official, admitted he was "Deep Throat", the source of so many leads that Woodward and Bernstein used. He also admitted he didn't do it out of some obligation to save democracy, but rather because he wanted to stick it to Richard Nixon for not selecting him as the director of the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover died. 

 

There were other issues with the paper.  Such as Janet Cooke winning the Pulitzer Prize for a piece called "Jimmy's World" about a heroin addict who was eight years old. Problem: Not one word in the article was true. 

 

No matter. The Post had writers like Thomas Boswell, David Broder, George Will, and among others.  Even though I thought he was a mean-spirited loon, I enjoyed Herbert Block's (HERBLOCK) cartoons.

The Post was liberal, and they were pro-Democrats, but they were not snotty about it for the most part. At least back then.

But over the years, the Post joined up with the "progressive" crowd and became a national nag and scold. The "Democracy Dies In Darkness" kids chose to perform puppet shows for each other, until the center-right and right bounced. When Jeff Bezos declined to endorse a Presidential candidate in 2024, the "resistance"  did its usual: a spastic hissy fit. They canceled subscriptions, and the Post went into a coma. 

 

 I've always loved reading the newspaper. 

My first was my beloved Marietta Daily Journal. Soon, I graduated to The Atlanta Journal. They merged with their morning paper, The Atlanta Constitution, and became The AJC. 

I was a subscriber for almost thirty years. 

True, they were generally more liberal than I was (am). But they had Lewis Grizzard, Furman Bisher, and a great sports staff. Plus, they published Dave Barry's column with Jeff McNally's cartoon.

As time wore on, I began to realize it was odd that newspapers delivered the news to you by putting it in a bag and throwing it in your yard.  

 

I canceled my subscription when the only thing I could remember reading was the "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip. The AJC is now available only on the internet. 

Basically, what happened to The AJC is what happened to The Post. They waited too long to adjust to the changing times, and when they did, it was too late. 

Now, The Post will join its old sister publication, Newsweek, as a shadow of its former self. It is almost a shame Richard Nixon didn't see this day.

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Like It or Lump It: His & Hers

 

 

We end this month with another Like It or Lump It.

This is a feature where I review a show on a streaming service and tell you if it is worth watching. 

Before I get into "His & Hers" (Netflix), a quick word on a couple of other shows. 

One is "Stranger Things 5".

This one was a honking big deal.  Eight episodes spread out between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day.  It was longest Dungeons and Dragons game ever, 

Basically, "Stranger Things" had run its course. All of the kids of Hawkins had grown up. Like "Eleven," who was a little girl when the show started in 2016, but now is a grown woman in more ways than one, if you catch my drift. 

In real life 1987, you would have heard the guys say, "Hey, have you checked out El, lately?"

But no, they kept going down into the upside out or whatever it was to fight the Mind Flyer Spider or Mr. Vecna. Not going into great detail, but it all worked out sort of. I guess. By the time it ended, Dustin flipped off the high school's principal and a girl that had been in a coma for two years graduated with her class.   

Nothing against The Duffer Brothers, but their next show should be about CalvinBall because it seemed like they just made up things as they went along. 

The other show is the second season of "Fallout," which is based on a video game. You can tell.

It is about life in a post-nuclear apocalypse. The first season was really violent. The second season is too violent.  I checked out after the one hundredth exploding head.  

And now, "His & Hers".  The premise per Reddit: "The investigation by TV anchor Anna Andrews (Tessa Thompson) into a murder case in her hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia, deeply troubles Detective Jack Harper (Jon Bernthal) in the thriller series based on Alice Feeney's novel of the same name."

 Jack Harper is troubled because Anna Andrews is (wait for it) his estranged wife!

Anna was the six o'clock news anchor at WSK-TV  Channel 5 Action News Scene Alive. However, she disappeared a year before the story takes place and is replaced by a bubble-headed-bleach blonde whose husband is a cameraman.

The story starts when the town's Miss Lincoln (everybody took a shot at her in the balcony) is found all carved up in a wooded section near downtown Dahlonega. 

Anna just happens to stop by WSK to ask her old boss for her old job back, but Blondie has taken her place as anchor, but gives Anna the story because, what the heck, it is great to have the old mouth breather back. (The actress conveys the act of listening by looking at a person with her mouth open.)

I would add more, but it would ruin it for you. Just be aware there are a lot of "dunnits" in this "who dunnit".

Acting:  Okay. There's a lot of criticism on Reddit about the guy who plays Jack Harper, who slides in and out of a Southern accent. The lady who plays Anna Andrews is a little better, but you can't really imagine her being from Dahlonega. Everybody else is just okay, too. There's a newbie detective from Boston who is being trained by Jack.  You really wonder how in the world she made it to Dahlonega from Boston. Did she answer an ad?  The best acting in the show came from "The lady holding a pink box of donuts in the sheriff's office".  This actress really captured the essence of holding a box of donuts. The fact that my wife and I know the actress from church did not influence my evaluation. 

Violence:  Some stabbing, punching, and shooting. No exploding heads.

Language: NSFGRD (Not Safe For Gold Rush Days).  Lots of F-words. Someone tells someone else to "shut your pie hole".  I have lived in Georgia for sixty-six years, and I have never heard anyone use the phrase "shut your pie hole".  That's a Yankee phrase.  A southerner would say either "Hush," or if they are really mad, "Shud-up."

 Sex and Nudity: Lots of getting it on in the North Georgia mountains. However, there is no nudity except Grandma nudity. It is essential to the plot. 

The Good:  In most tv shows and movies, Dahlonega would have been presented as a Hillbilly Redneck heaven where everybody is drinking shine and getting their white sheets dry-cleaned so they can meet up at the local Klan rally and sing praises to President Trump. "His & Hers" does not do this. The people of Dahlonega are presented as good people who say, "shut your pie hole."

Additonally, Jack and Anna are an interracial couple, and nobody makes a big deal about it.

As a whodunnit, it keeps you on your toes. There is a surprising red herring, and the ending makes some sense. Kind of. Close enough for jazz.

The Bad:  The acting could have been better, except for the lady holding the pink donut box.

The Weird:  Dahlonega is portrayed as a suburb of Atlanta, which I can assure you it is not. Characters zip from Atlanta to Dahlonega with no problem. It would take you 30 minutes to get from Buckhead, where WSK-TV is, to Ga-400 and at least an hour from there to Dahlonega. 

Verdict: Like it, but don't expect too much from it.  

 

 

  

 

 

Modern Andy

 

 

One of my principles in life:  Never watch an "Andy Griffith Show" that is in color.

The reason for this is simple. Don Knotts wasn't in it and he made the show. Plus, and this is important, it wasn't funny and sometimes it was dishwater dull.

But as I was flipping the channels the other morning, I ran across an "Andy Griffith Show" of color, and watched as Helen Crump (Andy's Squeeze) was being accosted by some old biddy (this was back when you could tell an old biddy just by looking at them) about her "past" (Helen's-not the old biddy).

It turns out that Helen was arrested in Kansas City when she was younger because she was part of the Mob or something. 

This presented us with a question:  Helen Crump was from Kansas City? It leads to another question:  How did she make it from the swinging town of Kansas City to Mayberry?

Spoiler Alert (is this necessary for a 58-year-old program?): When Helen was getting her master's degree in journalism, her thesis was on organized crime, and she somehow infiltrated the Kansas City mob with the help of her great gams. 

More questions: Helen's got a master's degree?

In journalism?

Why is she a school teacher in a small North Carolina town?

This episode was aired back when television was fairly tame. Three years later, "All In The Family" came out, and it was Katy-Bar-The -Door. Things started to get nasty. 

Couldn't you see "The Andy Griffith Show" in the '70s?  There would be episodes like "Opie's Trip" and "The Fun Girls Are Really Fun Now!"

You could just see this description in The TV Guide:  

Andy Griffith:  Barney sees Thelma Lou topless and can't stop talking about it!*

 Barney:  Ah, Ange, you should have seen 'em

Andy:   Now, Barney, I've seen 'em when I was dating her.

Barney:  Andy!  I didn't know you dated Thelma Lou!

Andy:  Barney, there are two single women in this town, and I'm the only single guy with a great job.

 <Barney runs out the door and drives to Mt. Pilot.>

Yes, I know it was a simpler time back then. Television was made for a general audience then, and that meant Grandma, Mom, Dad, and the kids would be watching. 

Now, TV doesn't care. If made today, Helen would have been in the witness protection plan because she was a mobster's girlfriend. I'm not even going to mention what they would have done with Gomer Pyle. 

 

* I've discovered some more modern TV Guide listings:

 I Love Lucy:  Women make only 79% of what men earn, and Fred thinks they're overpaid.

The Honeymooners:  The police serve a bench warrant on Ralph.

60 Minutes:  People from the South talk funny. The automobile industry wants you dead.  The myth behind Joey Bishop.  Andy Rooney tells you what has been grinding his gears lately.  Morely Safer, Mike Wallace.

Dick Van Dyke:  Laura tells a national television audience that Alan Brady is bald, but doesn't tell the reason: Alopecia.

 

The Past Year In College Football

 

 

 Well, we are finishing another season of our favorite professional sport, college football.

I've been using "our favorite professional sport, college football," for a while now because college football was the last rung until a football player made it to the NFL. It is part of my funny-ha-ha man persona to use it as a template because while college football always claimed to be "amatuer" (students), it was actually, "professional" in every sense of the word. 

 I know a guy who went to a local land-grant university ("Glory, Glory") and saw the star quarterback ("Glory, Glory") driving a new convertible Cadillac down the main drag.  This star quarterback was a young man from a modest household, so it was pretty obvious that a "booster" presented this student athlete with this vehicle. 

Those days are gone.

The old argument for paying college athletes so that these young, hard-working men could have "pizza money." 

Those days are gone, too.  

 Now, the big-time players make big-time money playing at big-time schools. I'm not sure if they have to go to class.

What this has done is level the playing field. No longer is the Championship Game the domain of the SEC.  Nope. The Big Ten is now the Big Conference in college football. 

Indiana University will play for the national championship next week.  That's like saying I will be selected as People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year. 

Let's review the College Football Season.

The season started by saying goodbye to one of the legends, Lee Corso.

Corso was part of the ESPN Game Day crew that would analyse the upcoming games. At the end of the broadcast, Corso would put on the "headgear" of the team he picked to win.  It was a grand time. 

Over the years, Game Day would expand. It would feature special interest stories, sometimes tied to a student-athlete who showed the human condition and how the player overcame the obstacles in his life.

A lot of these stories were about someone in the family was sick with an awful condition. Or a player whose dad was in jail for armed robbery and never saw his son play a down, but this week, he got out early for good behavior, and a booster got him tickets on the 50-yard line. 

 Corso retired after the first game of the season this year. Game Day continued. They have Pat McAfee now doing the lighter stuff. He has a 30-yard field goal contest, which is fun.  He can be a little much.

Nick Saban is on the program, too. Nick knows a lot about football. Not sure how much he knows about being a human being.

Ohio State was number one until they actually played somebody. Peyton Manning's nephew was supposed to be a lock for the Heisman Trophy. But then they played a game. 

More proof there is a God: Alabama lost to Florida State in the first game of the season. 

At the end of the season, Lane Kiffin was the coach of Ole Miss and LSU, or something like that. ESPN was on Lane Kiffin watch for 1000 hours. "Lane Kiffin still hasn't decided if he is going to coach at LSU. Wait...breaking news...we still don't know if Lane Kiffin is going to coach at LSU. If you hear anything, let us know."

Notre Dame wasn't selected to play in the college playoff, so they pouted and didn't go to a bowl game. Some of the bowl games seem like fun, like The Pop-Tarts Bowl, which wasn't fun for Georgia Tech because they lost it.

Speaking of bowl games, my beloved Kennesaw State Owls won the Conference USA championship after winning only two games the previous season. 

The Owls played in the Myrtle Beach Bowl against Western Michigan and lost Twenty Billion to Ten or something like that.  No matter. We wanted to play in a bowl game, and now we have!

I was able to go to the Kennesaw State homecoming, and I met Miss Georgia, Audrey Kittila. As you can tell by the picture below, she is a tall drink of water. 

I know that's not really football related, but anytime I can get my picture taken with Miss Georgia I am obligated by the Laws of Social Media to tell you about it. 

 

2025: Deja Vu All Over Again

 

 

Here we are at the end of another year, and I think we can say:  

 "Haven't we had a year like this before?"

Donald Trump began his second term by focusing his laser beam attention on an issue that concerns all Americans. That is: statehood for Greenland and/or Canada.

He also changed the name of "The Gulf of Mexico" to "The Gulf of America" because, well, just because.

The second term started with a lecture from a female Priest at the National Cathedral because it had been a whole twelve minutes since someone criticized Donald Trump.

The Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, defeating the Taylor Swift Chiefs. By the way, in case you haven't heard, Taylor came out with a new album this year called "Death Of A Showgirl", which came out around the time she got engaged. Imagine that.

One of the songs on the album is called "Wood." The following is an example of the lyrics: 

Redwood tree, it ain't hard to see
His love was the key that opened my thighs

I'm sure this will be played at weddings everywhere.

Speaking of open thighs, the absolute highlight of the year on the social media site formerly known as Twitter (X) was when Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot were caught in a "kiss cam" at a Coldplay concert, and they immediately went into some sort of spaz attack because who wants to be seen at a Coldplay concert. 

Democracy has suffered a huge blow when CBS canceled "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert." 

But, don't worry, Democracy! Jimmy Kimmel still has a job, and he is still doing his daily lecture to America! He finished the year giving a lecture in England, of all places, about the state of fascism in the United States.  Just imagine Merv Griffin doing this. 

One of the most horrible incidents was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was gross.

Also gross was some people's reaction on the various social media platforms. People were posting their daily editorials exclaiming great joy that a "phobe", who caused such division because he held such controversial opinions as people should get married and have kids, got what he deserved. 

A memorial service was held a short time later. It was a very long memorial with everyone in the Trump administration saying a few words. His widow was the next to the last speaker. She gave a very poignant eulogy saying that she had forgiven his killer. The last speaker was President Trump, who decided that people needed to know that he would never forgive anybody. 

President Trump decided to build a ball room at the White House and to do so they had to demolish the East Wing of The White House.  You would be surprised the affection Democrats have for the East Wing of The White House. I went on a tour of the White House before the demolish began. They basically tore down a hallway.

New York elected a new mayor, a man whose platform included doing things he couldn't do and making things worse for New York.

"Saturday Night Live" celebrated its fiftieth year of existence and its forty-ninth year of people saying "it is not as good as it used to be."  

In travel news, while attempting to land at the Toronto airport, a Delta flight flipped over and came to a rest upside down. I spoke with a Delta employee who said, "Gee, one plane flips upside down and everybody forgets about all the planes that land right side up."

Better late than never: In "Original Sin" by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, it is revealed that President Biden was an "elderly man" that wasn't "all there sometimes."  They also revealed that the sun "rises in the East and sets in the West."

Oh Really?  Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote a book called "It Wasn't My Fault".

That didn't look good:  President Trump and Vice President Vance yelled at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for having a "hard name to spell".  

In personal health news, I spent a good part of the spring and summer going to the dermatologists, having various skin cancers removed.  The most interesting one was the one I had on the cartilage of my ear, and I had to have "Moh's Surgery" on it. The nicest thing I can say about "Moh's Surgery" is that it is not a day at the beach.  But my doctor did a good job and gave me some nice painkillers.