But wait, there’s more!

The winner will also receive an indoor BBQ. How sweet is that!  Folks in the Midwest may be suffering from inclement weather, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start baseball BBQ season now, especially with the nifty little gadget picture below.

Now, for something this cool, you’re going to have to answer a question, and it’s going to have to involve a little research. But I’ll give you a clue. Here it is:

Dee Bradley Baker is one of the most sought after voice over actors today. On American Dad he plays the role of Klaus Heissler, among others. For what project did he play the role of “Sundae?”

Here’s your clue: The animated project was produced by a company that deals in meat.  See what I did there, I tied the clue into the whole BBQ thi—- Aw, whatever!  Just come up with the right answer and email it to Mr. Malchus (Malchus) by Sunday night’s episode of American Dad (or, 9:30 PM ET).

Good Luck!

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Let me tell you about a place called Victorian’s. It was a little, independent cafe in Victorian Village, a tiny neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio where Ohio State University campus rubbed up against the equally tiny, “hip” part of town called The Short North. After I moved from Columbus Victorian’s got bought up by an ambitious so-and-so who had dreams of turning it into a proper restaurant/music venue, sinking the locale in the space of a year or so. But when I was still in corny, old Ohio, Vic’s was a poorly lit purveyor of weak coffee, bland food and just enough charm to overcome its drabness. It was staffed by tragically apathetic people and frequented by a mix of drunks and pretentious college kids. It was, in a word, depressing.

It was also the best damn cafe the capital city of Ohio could muster.

I began to ponder Victorian’s again after sitting down for an interview with a local Seattle filmmaker for my gig at The Capitol Hill Times. He insisted, in no uncertain terms, to meeting in any neighborhood cafe that wasn’t a chain. But that’s not what he actually meant. In fact, the place he suggested and where we ultimately met was itself part of a chain– it was just a local rather than a national chain. Really, when Seattleites get picky about their coffee (which they/we often do), they aren’t directing their ire for chain stores at the many local and national chains in the city. They don’t get uppity about Caffe Vita, a homegrown chain with a handful of stores around the greater metro area. They certainly aren’t talking about the light distribution of Victrola Coffee or Uptown Espresso shops. They aren’t even talking about Seattle’s Best or Tully’s. No, the contempt of familiarity goes to one target and one alone: Starbucks.

Yes, Seattle’s contribution to the world of multinational food sales is public enemy A #1 for anyone with even the narrowest of hipster streaks. It is, after all, a Seattleite’s privilege to be snooty about coffee. Like any major city, there are literally hundreds of independent, mom-and-pop cafes to choose from. Pick any given neighborhood and you’ll find your preferred bookish cafe, your pricey bakery cafe, your charming ethnic cafe or your wine and coffee cafe. It’s a glorious reason to sniff at the likes of Starbucks, but I’m here to defend that giant, standardized, bean-burning corporation for the good, yes, good it does for the nation.

Let’s go back to Victorian’s. When it was still sucking the life from young English majors, Vic’s was the one option in literally miles for those who wanted a cafe that wasn’t Starbucks. The next best option? Bob Evans, the Ohio answer to Denny’s (which is also available across the highways of Ohio). This isn’t a comment on the cultural black hole of Ohio, at least not directly. The truth is, America outside its major cities and occasional cool college towns has long been ignorant of the proper cafe. For most folks in this wide, weird land, coffee comes from the diner or the Mr. Coffee at work and at home. That is, until Starbucks comes to town.

I’m not here to defend the coffee at Starbucks. Its best application, as far as I can tell, is in sweet, flavored drinks blended with ice that require only the most vague hint of a coffee background. I’m not even going to say that the atmosphere at the average Starbucks even approaches that of any proper, independent cafe. Starbucks isn’t here to compete with the indies. No, it sells an entirely different product. Starbucks sells the idea of the posh, inviting, sit-down cafe with fancy drinks and hip sensibilities, minus anything truly unfamiliar or adventurous about that. For the majority of the people living in America, the ones who live in towns neither large nor arty enough to support an indie cafe, Starbucks is what introduces whole generations to the world beyond the Mr. Coffee. It adds the terms “cappuccino” and “biscotti” to the vernacular through the guise of something that looks and operates much like a McDonald’s. Because, hey, if you want to sell something to suburbanites, make it a family-friendly drive-thru.

I know this may make me sound pretentious and dismissive, that this all sounds like backhanded praise for the biggest cafe chain in the world, but my sentiments are informed by two solid decades in a town with nary a decent, let alone good, cafe. Culture has to come to people in baby steps. Dropping a groovy cafe, an art gallery and a tapas restaurant next door to the Home Depot won’t suddenly turn Middle America into Paris or, hell, even Portland. Starbucks is the bridge between the diner drip and the double-shot latte. You’d be thankful for it, too, if you found yourself craving caffeine beside a cornfield.

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Without a doubt the most recognizable brand in the insurance industry is care of GEICO, a vehicle insurer that has courted customers with a wide variety of clever characters and gimmicks. The most popular of them is undoubtedly The Gecko, a computer-animated lizard with an English accent whose congeniality and enthusiasm for GEICO have brought scads of customers to the company. Recently, The Gecko has been at the front of a new social networking push with GEICO, including a press tour during which the elusive character has been granting interviews with various media outlets.  I arrived at the historic Sorrento Hotel in Seattle, Washington to conduct my own interview with The Gecko on behalf of Popdose. Though I can’t say I went in with informed expectations for interviewing a fictional marketing mascot, the experience was nonetheless not what I signed up for.

The room, an elegantly appointed suite, was dimly lit. I had been escorted from the lobby to the suite by what can best be described as a nigh-fantastical sufferer of excessive pituitary function. The human hulk, hairless but for a fuzz on his pate, loomed behind me with the gentle menace of an early scene in an Expressionist silent film. We entered the suite where The Gecko sat in a wood-and-leather chair, a blonde-haired man in a tan suit at his right.

“Ah, Mr. Sarko. Good to see you,” the man in the tan suit said, “I see you’ve met Mr. Gecko’s publicist.”

I nodded in time with a leap of doubt in my heartbeat. The towering publicist took his place at The Gecko’s left and I sat in the chair across from the mascot, proceeding with the interview.

Popdose: Mr. Gecko, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. It’s not every day we at Popdose get to chat with a nationally recognized icon such as yourself. That fame in mind, do you get as much attention in foreign nations as you do in the States?

GECKO: GEICO commercials only run in America, so I guess everywhere else, I’m just your average gecko.

P: I understand you’re currently on a journey across America. What is the most interesting thing you’ve seen so far?

G: When I was in New York, I met a man who called himself the Naked Cowboy. Although he wasn’t really naked. He wore a guitar, underpants and a cowboy hat. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like that. I shot a video with my Gecko Cam to introduce him to my Facebook friends. Sometimes being 6.9 inches tall is a rather unfortunate vantage point.

P: How do you decide where you’ll go next on your journey?

G: There are some places I’ve always wanted to visit, like the Stockyards in Ft. Worth, Texas and well, Vegas. But I also count on my Facebook friends to suggest places for me to go. I never would have known about Magnolia Bakery in New York or Foamhenge in Virginia.

P: A lot of your long-time fans have been perplexed about your accent. You’ve been in America for so long now, have you noticed any shift in the way you speak?

G: When I first started doing commercials, I took a more classical Shakespearean approach to my delivery. But then me mum suggested I just be myself. I think she was right. She usually is.

P: GEICO, your employer, has implemented a variety of marketing concepts over the years. These days, the stage is pretty crowded. In addition to your own TV, Internet and radio spots, the company has its “Adages Taken Literally” commercials and the “That’s Amazing” campaign. Do you enjoy the collaboration with other marketing concepts or do you fear that you are, to coin a phrase, “going the way of the caveman?”

At this point, the man in the tan suit stepped forward.

“The Gecko doesn’t have the authority to speak on behalf of the company’s marketing department. He will not be taking this question,” he said. I was a bit put off by how much he bristled at the question, but I kept myself composed. I can clock a lawyer for what he is by the way he speaks. I decided to let the question go. Moving on, I swallowed a knot of fear and turned the page of my notebook.

P: You’ve spent a lot of time in the United States. You no doubt have absorbed the ubiquitous political content pervading our media. What are your thoughts on the upcoming presidential election? Any opinions on the Republican nomination race or President Obama’s chances of re-election?

The Gecko stammered and his eyes widened. Being unable to sweat or internally regulate his body temperature, he began pouring a small glass of water over his head. The publicist beast lurched forward, twisting my arm behind my back at an angle I never imagined was possible.

“That was not an appropriate question, Mr. Sarko,” he growled, “Perhaps you would consider discussing the country music stars The Gecko can’t stop listening to…”

Being a man of journalistic integrity and apparently little self-preservation instinct, I continued in my original line of questioning, even as the pain in my shoulder entered a new realm of excruciating agony.

P: How about your thoughts on the ongoing global economic crisis? One of GEICO’s main marketing thrusts is the idea of saving people money. As a long-time spokeslizard, does that mean you stand with America’s at-risk middle and working classes? Are we one day going to hear your distinct cockney lilt echoed in an Occupy demonstration?

As my shoulder loosed from its socket with a sickening pop, I began to doubt that the man behind me had sufficient legitimate experience in the field of public relations.

“Talk about the Facebook page!” he snarled, “Tell your readers to Like it! Like the ever-living hell out of it!”

I tasted blood well up from my cheek as I bit into it by instinct. The pain and the visceral panic were taking over. I wouldn’t be conscious much longer.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be this way…” The Gecko muttered shakily. I managed to croak out one last question, though I don’t know if it was my own or something the lawyer in the tan suit whispered into my ear.

P: Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Popdose readers understand that music is the language of the soul. What are the top albums that express your innermost sense of self?

G: Oh goodness, that’s a tough one. Let’s see…basically, anything that you can shake your tail to. Like…Wrinkle Neck Mules (I have a cameo in their music video on YouTube.  Just sayin’.

The sweet oblivion of unconsciousness took me and when I awoke, hours later in a gutter somewhere on the south side of Seattle, I counted myself lucky to both be alive and still in possession of my digital audio recorder, secreted away in a hidden pocket on my person. Though I wouldn’t advise any aspiring journalist to cross the PR division of a multinational corporation, those intrepid and foolish enough to pursue the truth at all costs should at least know what this life entails.

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If I was a dad to either of them, I know I’d be marching them down to the lab to have them pee in a cup. (I am not judging, nor am I trying to engage in slanderous language…but blinking is good for the eyeballs. You simply must try it some time.)

This year however, Hyundai decided to go a different route (kind of). Jessica Frech also likes to bounce around in sped-up footage (or so the ad agency would have you believe) but comes off instead like Winnie Cooper with a sense of humor (and no discernible need for an intervention).

She also does the occasional original track, sometimes comedic, sometimes not. I’m not exactly how this one ought to be classified.

You can find out more at her website: http://www.jessicamusic.com/

Related articles

• Jessica Frech Not Quite as Lovable Singing for Hyundai (adweek.com)

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1. One of the first computer geeks, Jobs started Apple and dropped the concept of home computing on a stunned world. While the first machines seem primitive now, the effect was seismic. The public just didn’t know it at the time. It took awhile for this contraption to become one of the dominant communication mediums of our age, but when it did, it was inescapable. The Macintosh, or Mac, is today the preferred platform for creative types. Yet in the late 1970′s, this sort of behavior likely meant you were up to your eyeballs in time because, think about it, do chicks really dig computer geeks?

2. Apple was huge, and then it wasn’t. His company was failing and on the verge of petering out entirely. Through dogged and relentless faith in his brand and a bit of savvy remarketing, the logo, the name, the aesthetic are now undeniable icons. Jobs engineered something few companies ever can; a full recovery.

3. Lucasfilm had this little side unit that was doing interesting animations, but there didn’t seem to be much of a future for an offshoot making shorts. Jobs bought it. That company is now known as Pixar, one of the most respected movie-making entities in the industry.

4. People would never, ever trade physical audio product for digital packets. Where were the sleeves? The jewel case? What did this music look like? In the end, it didn’t matter. iTunes is the #1 portal for the purchase of music, much to the chagrin of longtime physical media proponents. This change also affected the look of music (through direct designs versus intricate ones) and its sound (with bigger bass to cut through tiny earbuds).

5. The iPhone was an unqualified success from the start, but the iPad? Would people really buy into a product with a name like that, and all the double entendre it suggests? Well, actually yes they would. The iPad was the item people didn’t know they ever wanted until it was right in their faces, and subsequently it created yet another tether in our ever-connected world. It also started all other electronics companies scrambling to compete.

On October 5, Steve Jobs had his final loss; this time it was his life. He had been sick a long time, and people could guess, from his resigning from the company he put so much blood and faith into, that he was walking a road that had only one destination left. Even in this, he won because, even though he won’t be here to see it, Jobs leaves behind a massive legacy that may never be surpassed, certainly not in our lifetime.

Related articles

• Steve Jobs Has Passed Away (1955-2011) (zerohedge.com)
• Breaking: Apple says Steve Jobs has died (venturebeat.com)

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Mike Duquette: I just got back from a lovely vacation at Universal Orlando™, and when not gorging myself on Harry Potter butterbeers, I thought of another great discussion topic for the gang. One of the many overpriced restaurants on property is Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, the crown jewel in Buffett’s insane island merchandise-empire. I have no idea how Buffett turned himself from silly, inoffensive musician to the Sarlacc of dollars and cents, but he has to be one of the most over-merchandised artists in rock history.

What other egregious examples of such artists can you think of? KISS is certainly one – aren’t they about to open a Koffeehouse or something?

Brian Boone: Kiss’s coffeehouse is a personal favorite punching bag of mine. The Kiss Koffeehouse is in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in a tourist trap. All the drinks have Kiss-ish names, or employ rock-puns, like the Karamel Rockiato. It’s supposed to be a franchise, but so far, nobody has opened a second location.

Buffett’s also got Cheeseburger in Paradise. And, of course, Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup.

Jeff Giles: Smokey Robinson’s frozen jambalaya always makes me laugh.

Dw. Dunphy: The Beatles are heavily merchandised, but it is different than Gene Simmons’ prodigious ho’ing.

Oh, and I apologize in advance to the Deadheads, but a committed Deadhead will buy ANYTHING Dead-related, even a crappy cover band version of their favorite jammers.

Scott Malchus: We all know Sammy Hagar has a tequila company. I think he makes so much off
of it that he shouldn’t have to work anymore, which really must piss off
Eddie Van Halen.

Jeff: Yeah, but that isn’t “Sammy Hagar Tequila.”

Dave Lifton: I don’t know why Hagar hasn’t started his own line of radar detectors yet.

Boone: Brilliant, Lifton.

Dunphy: For party police: Cabo Wabo Breathalyzers.

Boone: To make sure your little ones don’t drink your Cabo Wabo, put it in your Sammy Hagar Three Lock Box.

Dunphy: Sammy’s three-lock juice box.

Boone: There’s only one way to wok.

Lifton: You win the Internet, Boone.

Jon Cummings: Well, you guys know about Sammy’s Cabo Wabo Cantina on the strip in Vegas, correct? I was in there last summer, late evening on a Friday, and the place had an empty bar/stage area with nobody onstage and next to nobody in the room. There were some folks on the outside balcony, and the service was atrocious and the drinks just as bad.

Lifton: Can we get into a discussion about where Diamond Dave would have a better themed restaurant?

Chris Holmes: There’s a clever comparison to be made there with his music, but it escapes me at the moment.

Annie Logue: I have no Van Halen references.

Years ago, when I lived in SF, one of the shops on Haight Street sold a Chia head that looked like Jerry Garcia. Jerry Gar-Chia, or, the Grateful Head. I sent one to my brother, who was a student at Ohio University at the time. Ohio University, where fun resides until it goes to the University of Chicago to die.

Do you want to include Hot Topic in this discussion? And the millions of suburban high school students in Ramones t-shirts? That’s another band that may have made more off of t-shirts than music.

Finally, I’ll add this: my nieces are/were on a competitive high school dance team. To help pay for the fees, my SIL and BIL have worked the concession stands at the Tweeter Center (or whatever it became) in beautful Tinley Park, IL. When Jimmy Buffett played there, the concession stands sold his Land Shark beer. And my BIL made some nice scratch selling the Land Shark beer banners after the concert to some fans with a lot of money but not much sense or sobriety.

Dan Wiencek: Are we confining the discussion to rock? ‘Cuz there’s this place I’ve heard of called Dollywood … (Truth is I really admire Dolly P. for her business savvy and her forthrightness. But I’d never set foot in Dollywood.)

Jeff: Or the saddest of them all — Chubby Checker Snacks?

Jason Hare: Speaking of, how have we not mentioned Kenny Rogers?

Dunphy: Wow. I genuinely feel sorry for Chubby (and slightly embarrassed) over that one. ”*The Last Twist, Inc* was founded in the late 1990′s but has been Chubby’s vision for much longer”… since the diabetes took out his regular vision.

Holmes: Dude, Chubby Checker does ads for fucking Social Security. You cannot get less rock and roll than that.

Matt Springer: I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to mention the exceptional Hamm & Buble restaurant:.

Jeff: OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, the Kenny Rogers of the 21st century.

Dunphy: Super. Chicken as greasy as his songwriting.

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• Popdose Roundtable: Streaming Chickenfoot’s “Big Foot” (and Striking Up the VH Debate Again) (popdose.com)
• Popdose Roundtable: Artists We Had To Warm Up To (popdose.com)
• Popdose Roundtable: A Musical “Ghost” Haunts Broadway (popdose.com)
• Popdose Roundtable: Michele Bachmann’s Mesmerizing Newsweek Cover (popdose.com)

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From Mashable:
Ticketmaster, the event ticketing property of Live Nation, is enhancing its interactive seat maps so that ticket buyers and event-goers can see where their Facebook friends are sitting, and tag themselves into their seats.

The idea, says Ticketmaster executive vice president of ecommerce Kip Levin, is to return the ticket-buying experience to its pre-web social origins. “Online took away from the old experience of going down to the record store to purchase tickets,” he says. “This is a way to go back to that.”

Annie Logue: Naturally, there will be an extra “social experience” surcharge…

Dave Lifton: I’m always skeptical any time some corporate bigwig says, “We’re trying to recapture the way it was done back then,” especially when said corporation is the one that killed the way it used to be.

Dw. Dunphy: Yes, and honestly, I was no big fan of running down to the record store for tickets anyway. At least in the privacy of my own home, I could be privately indignant that all the good seats got pre-bought by Ticketmaster’s secondary “distributors.”

Scott Malchus: Worse, all of the good seats were set aside for industry people.

Annie: I’m not feeling nostalgic for the days of lining up by 5:00 pm to get a wristband, then getting up at 5:00 the next morning to get in line to buy tickets. I do miss the days of mailing in envelopes, though. I think that ended when I was in high school? Bruce Springsteen never picked mine, alas.

David Medsker: Ah, it was nice in the early to mid ’80s, though. I scored tickets in the first seven rows to a bunch of shows by being first in line.

Kelly Stitzel: We used to buy tickets from Ticketron at a local department store. Oh, Ticketron — you had the best radio spots.

Also, I said something to a friend, who is in her early 20s, about camping out for tickets to a show. She couldn’t wrap her brain around that concept.

Malchus: My favorite memory of Ticketron is walking up to the window (located in the back of our Sears automotive department) and buying four lawn tickets to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with the Georgia Satellites and the Del Fuegos, one week before the show. Total money spent? $50.

Matt Springer: Part of me does wish I could have been part of a campout for tickets, where getting in line and waiting would guarantee me a good seat — especially for Springsteen. I would have happily camped out to get a seat for a Springsteen show.

As it is, my one college-era ugly Ticketbastard experience left me so sour on those fuckers that it still angers me to think back on it — it was like a mob scene from a movie. And that was when they did have the wristbands in place. It was for an REM show on the Monster tour and it was so poorly managed. It was at a Blockbuster Music. Man, talk about two shitty companies that should have gone down together.

Jon Cummings: I’ve personally been through almost all the permutations, though I’ve never spent a whole night in a ticket line. My earliest arrival was at 4 a.m., for Prince tickets at the Rosemont Horizon outside Chicago on a frigid morning in December 1984. And by the time we got to the front of the line at 10:45 a.m., we got tickets about as good as you’d get if you got online right at 10 a.m. these days. (That is to say, about 2/3 of the way back.) It was Finals Week at Northwestern, and while gearing up for the ticket-buying adventure I had been careful to prepare for the 3 p.m. final I had that day — only to arrive back on campus at noon and discover that the final had ACTUALLY happened at 9 a.m. The prof let me take the final late, then gave me a rotten grade. It’s poetic, almost, that the course was “Dostoevsky.”

The most convoluted buying & claiming process I’ve been through was easily for Springsteen’s “Devils & Dust” tour, with the ID-showing and the two-hours-in-advance wristbands and whatnot — but that process DID seem to deter brokers and scalping, which few of these efforts seem to do.

Lately I’ve been scammed twice on Craigslist. The first time was two years ago, for the Coachella evening that featured Leonard Cohen, Morrissey and McCartney — I bought hard tickets off a guy and they turned out to be counterfeit. The second time was last summer for Lady Gaga, when a woman sold the same pair of print-at-home tickets to at least eight different people (according to the guy at the door with the scanner, which registers every seat claimed). The good news is that my groups got into both sold-out shows, after spending a bundle of extra money each time. The lesson: As evil as StubHub is, at least there’s a guarantee attached to the tickets.

Dw. Dunphy: Try waiting on line, thinking all the while that you’re in a really good position, only to have the show be sold out when you reach the sales counter. That’s happened to me. I’ve also had computer hiccups during online purchasing where, during a finalization phase, the seat you purchased gets yanked out from beneath you. You try for a different seat, and another, until you wind up behind a pillar or far-left or far-right.

Springer: I went to NU for undergrad too, Jon — that awful Blockbuster Music was right on the main drag there in downtown Evanston.

The ugliest experience I had getting tickets was that REM debacle, but the biggest heartbreak was one morning in my early twenties. I was driving into work when WXRT announced a show going on sale that morning, in about 15 minutes, for Bob Dylan at the Park West, a very intimate room. I worked at a pretty cool place, so I didn’t even call ahead — I just drove straight to the nearest Carson’s and made a beeline for the ticket counter.

I then stood behind some insane middle-aged crone who took 20 minutes to buy goddamned theater tickets for a touring production of Les Miz or some such shit. By the time I got up to the counter, the show was sold out.

Unrelated to TM, but the best ticket kismet I have had, was getting plucked by a roadie out of the back row of the big superdome thing in Indianapolis, and sitting second row at an Elton John/Billy Joel show. That was remarkable.

Malchus: My wife and I got up at the crack of dawn to get tickets for Springsteen’s Tom Joad tour. It was his first ever acoustic tour and he was kicking it off at the Wiltern in L.A. We get to the Tower Records and are handed wristbands, then we wait for another hour and a half until they choose the number that will decide the order of people standing in line.

Julie is fifth in line! I know! I’m about to piss myself I’m so excited. So we get up to the ticket window and have a choice between opening night and the second night of concerts. Well, we’re fifth in line, who isn’t going to pick opening night? I’m already imagining sitting in one of the first 15 rows of this classic, two story theater and watching Bruce blow into his harp and possibly some of his spit landing on the guy in front of me. Of course, we had to wait, like, three months before the concert, but who cares, we’re going to opening night!

Well, we get to the Wiltern and start following the directions to our seats. Upper baclony? Huh? We keep following the directions and lo and behold, we’re three rows from the back of the frickin’ theater. Later, when I’m reading the reviews, I learn that a majority of the floor seats to the concert were either a) held for Hollywood bigwigs and industry insiders or b) purchased by scalpers. Mind you, it was a great show, but there has always been a tinge of disappointment that we went through everything to get the tickets and still wound up in the nosebleeds.

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Problem is, I’m an impatient guy, and also (unfortunately), new novelty cereals don’t come out every week, and also also, there are things I’m simply unwilling to eat. (One of many reasons why this series will always be a pale shadow of the one that inspired it: The Sneeze’s wonderful, wonderful Steve, Don’t Eat It!) The end result is that it’s been over a year since I braved the sugary depths of the breakfast aisle. Which is awful. But I’m here to make it up to you with not one, not two, but three new LIMITED EDITION “food”stuffs for your consumption.

Remember: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I’m just saying.

Anyway, let’s take a look at our contenders in order of consumption. In this corner, weighing in at a slim 110 calories per serving, we have the latest addition to Post’s never-ending family of Pebbles products: PEBBLES BOULDERS!

They look like dog food, don't they?

As you might recall, our most recent Gross-Off entry was inspired by the last Pebbles product: Cupcake Pebbles, a cereal so powerfully sweet that Post didn’t even bother pretending it made sense to eat it for breakfast. They’ve altered course for Pebbles Boulders, billing it as a “Wholesome, Sweetened Cereal” and bragging on the box that a serving contains “less sugar and more whole grain than Honey Nut Cheerios.”

That’s a pretty powerful claim, even when you stop to consider that the breakfast aisle is loaded with cereals that everyone thinks are healthy but really aren’t all that great for you. (Crunch [ahem] some of the surprising numbers dug up by the Harvard School of Public Health, and then fast for a few days.) Honey Nut Cheerios have nine grams of sugar per serving; Pebbles Boulders have eight with a little cross next to the number, which either denotes some sort of disclaimer I can’t find or signifies that Christ died for them. Either way, these are a little less sweet than a cereal everyone feeds their toddlers, which is kind of surprising for a product line that made its name on Fruity Pebbles, a.k.a. Soggy Rainbow Sugar Pulp.

There are two problems with this. One, the number of parents who care about their children’s diet and are willing to inspect a box of Pebbles for this kind of information has got to be infinitesimal. Most adults see “Pebbles,” think “diabetic coma,” and move on to something more responsible, so I kind of think Post is fighting a losing (and silly) battle here.

Two, Pebbles Boulders are gross. The flavor is described on the box as “Stone Age Caramel Apple,” and that’s in the ballpark, I guess, since it smells sort of like a case of candy apples that’s been sitting in the back of a carny’s truck since Clinton’s second term. (If there’s one thing Post knows how to do when it comes to Pebbles, it’s coat them in suggestive odors.)

But when you get around to putting the damn things in your mouth, you realize the smell is a ruse to disguise the fact that Pebbles Boulders don’t taste like caramel (which is just as well, because caramel for breakfast would be disgusting), nor do they taste like apple — and it isn’t like they achieve apple flavor failure in a good way, a la Apple Jacks. They end up just tasting off, like…I don’t know, like maybe an Alzheimer’s patient’s dim recollection of apples. Crossed with Splenda.

I ate a handful while I typed that sentence, just to refresh the ol’ sense memory, and now I’m angry.

So, final verdict: Post isn’t fooling anyone with this “Wholesome, Sweetened” crap, Pebbles Boulders are a stain on the noble legacy of the proudly sugary Pebbles line, and cereal companies should stick with what they do best. Also, I just dumped a nearly full box of this shit off my deck. Maybe black bears are stupid enough to eat it. Grade: D

This brings us to our second contender, also weighing in at 110 calories, and boasting a surprisingly low nine grams of sugar per serving (as well as 10 percent of your RDA of Vitamin D, which is good for something, I guess). Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to COCOA PUFFS BROWNIE CRUNCH!

Oh my God, it's a bowl of chocolate chip brownies!

See what I mean about cereal companies sticking with what they know best? General Mills knew they weren’t going to get anywhere by pretending Cocoa Puffs are some kind of health food, so when it was time to debut a new flavor, they did the only sensible thing: they added chocolate chips and pretended the whole box came out of a fucking brownie pan.

HELL YES, GENERAL MILLS.

It’s brilliant, and I have to say, Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch taste pretty much exactly like dried-up chocolate chip brownie bits — only not nearly as gross as that description makes them sound. They’re actually pretty awesome, in a “This is my breakfast and don’t you dare judge me” kind of way — and I say that as a man whose three-year-old son took a look at the box and uttered simply, “My dad is gross.”

Whatever, kid. You still don’t know how to wipe your butt right, and the other night, when I went into your room to find out why you were calling out in your sleep, I found you lying on top of your covers at the foot of your bed. I’m a man who knows a thing or two about unhealthy cereals, and I’m here to tell you that there isn’t a single thing wrong with Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch. You learn to wipe and sleep, and then we can have a serious talk about what makes a good bad breakfast.

What it comes down to is this: For a junk food cereal to be truly successful, it needs to be both sweet and simple, and Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch has both of those qualities in spades. Does it taste like chocolate? Yes, it does. Can you describe it in a single sentence? Yes, you can: They’re chocolate chip brownies in a bowl. BOOM. Shit for breakfast at its elegant finest. Grade: B+

Which brings us to our third and final contestant, also weighing in at a trim 110 calories, but boasting a muscular 11 grams of sugar per serving. It’s a name you know and trust, folks — the king of mouth-shredding, sinfully delicious cereal. Yes, it’s Cap’n Crunch and his new CHOCOLATEY CRUNCH!

Unlike a lot of breakfast cereal franchises, the Cap’n Crunch line has remained fairly consistent over the years. This is, I think, for two reasons: One, the core Cap’n lineup (original, peanut butter, and Crunch Berries) is pretty unbeatable, and two, most of the twists Quaker has tried putting on the formula have been awful. Christmas Crunch is just Crunch Berries with different food coloring, Oops! All Berries should be renamed Oops! Rainbow Diarrhea, and Cap’n Crunch’s Choco-Donuts are as foul as they are inexplicable. (What kind of sailor brings donuts on a long sea voyage?)

So I approached Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Crunch with trepidation, to say the least. But I have to hand it to the mad breakfast scientists at Quaker, because they got it right this time — instead of trying to add some weird wrinkle to the Cap’n's fleet, they simply took the old school Crunch, made it chocolate, and put it in a box. Did I say Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch is elegant? Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Crunch is sugary poetry in a bowl.

To their credit, Quaker doesn’t try and pretend this stuff is good for you — instead of bragging about Vitamin D or sugar content, they simply let you know that you’ll be ingesting a small amount of sodium and saturated fat in each serving. This is probably required by law, because really, who cares what’s in the box or whether it’s healthy? It’s Cap’n Crunch, dammit!

Here’s how cheerfully Quaker embraces Chocolatey Crunch’s non-goodness: on the back of the box, they recommend you use it as a “GREAT topping” for vanilla pudding, ice cream, a mocha latte, or — if you’re a figure-conscious wuss — yogurt. All of which sound pretty great, honestly, but the true test of a cereal is how it tastes in milk, and this stuff is damn tasty. Remember my sass-mouthed son, who cast aspersions on Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch? He can’t eat a goddamn cup of applesauce without making me break out the mop, but I let him try a bowl of Chocolatey Crunch (after his regular breakfast, judgmental toddler food hippies), and he didn’t waste a single crumb of its real cocoa-ey goodness.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Grade: A

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Troy McClure made the industrial film a legend

McClure’s work resonates with us because, well, it’s so typical of the genre.

Ford Motor’s River Rouge Assembly Plant is open to the public, which is pretty cool. It also has not one, but two, industrial films

The Rouge was the centerpiece of Ford’s emphasis on seamless integration. Here, the ore, coal, and other raw materials would arrive via ship, and then be turned into steel, parts, and finally cars. The facility has changed a lot over the years. It now houses the assembly line for the Ford F150 truck, the company’s best-selling model, and employs about 6,000 people – down from peak employment of 100,000.

The first movie on the tour tells the history of Ford Motor Company and from the plant. It’s mostly spliced from old black-and-white promotional films, and it’s mostly balanced. The perspective is Ford’s, but the movie includes information about the company’s checkered past with the United Auto Workers (the Rouge being the site of one of the United Auto Worker’s largest strikes). Of course, we’re in a new era of labor-management relations – maybe. It’s a standard industrial film, updated just enough to avoid the Troy McClure clichés.

The second movie on the tour puts a nail in Troy’s coffin. Called “The Art of Manufacturing”, it’s in 3D! With special effects, like hot air and warm mist! And a score by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra! It’s more Walt Disney than Henry Ford. You’ll wonder why Bob Seeger, Michael Stanley, and Bruce Springsteen wrote so many songs about the frustration of factory work, because it sure looks like fun in this movie.

Of course, the Rouge tour includes a walk through the assembly line, so you can see it for yourself what it’s like to work there now.

Factory work will never be fun, but it is not as tedious as it once was. Many of those 94,000 people who used to work at the Rouge have been replaced by robots; machines don’t get bored, and they can work to high precision. The humans have the jobs requiring judgment, fit, and quality control. Just what sound system goes in which vehicles? How does it have to be installed? It makes the work more challenging, but it also means roles for fewer people. Those who are still making cars are proud of what they do, and they want you to appreciate it. (They’d also like it if you bought a new Ford F150.)

If you’ve never seen an assembly line in operation and find yourself near Detroit, go see the Rouge plant. That form of work is a key piece of American life and culture that many of us overlook. And, in this case, the movies are as much pure entertainment as they are an introduction to the tour.

Tours of the Rouge plant leave from the Henry Ford Museum, 20900 Oakwood Boulevard, Dearborn. Adult tickets are $15, children’s are $11. Check the website to ensure that the plant is open, because it periodically shuts down for model changeovers, inventory management, etc.

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The house itself is a center-hall colonial, large for the time but tiny by modern McMansion standards. It’s on a nice chunk of land in what was once a gracious suburb, Whitehaven. Graceland has been diminished by the passage of time, and not only because big houses are so common now. The jungle room looks a lot like a goofy basement rec room. The three televisions in the basement look comical in an era of home theatre. And Elvis lacked the same sense of quality as the squires of other historic houses. The Washingtons, du Ponts, and Kaufmanns put care into Mount Vernon, Winterthur, and Fallingwater. Elvis, meanwhile, was a country bumpkin throwing too much money around in the 1960s, a recipe for decorating disaster.

What’s most frightening is that Graceland is not as it was when Elvis died. When Priscilla Presley took over management of the estate, she removed the red leather upholstery and fake fur rugs to take the house back to the more tasteful style it had when she moved out in 1972.

The visitor center is across the street from the mansion. You buy your tickets, get your audio headset, and then take a bus to the shrine. The mansion tour itself is short because the house is relatively small and the upstairs is off view. The grounds are open, so you can see the office and the garage, the horses, the stable now used as a costume museum, and the racquetball court that is houses more memorabilia.

The finale is the Meditation Garden, the Presley family gravesite adjacent to the swimming pool. You can see the graves of Elvis, his twin Jesse Garon, his parents, and his grandmother. People leave flowers, teddy bears, and notes; some even cry. I found it disconcerting. Elvis was an amazing musician, but he wasn’t a god. He killed himself over thirty years ago with a cocktail of hard living and too many drugs. At this point, there is more to marvel at than to mourn.

Graceland offers a choice of tour packages. The Graceland Mansion Tour, $31 for adults, includes the house and grounds only. The better value is the Graceland Platinum Tour for $35, which gives you access to the car museum, Elvis’s two airplanes, and a few smaller exhibits. All of these additional exhibits do, indeed, exit through gift shops. In fact, the ’68 Special Exhibit barely pretends to be separate from the racks of t-shirts. The assortment at each gift shop is just a bit different, too, to better inspire you to look around and maybe buy that special someone a TCB necklace.

The hard-core fan may opt for the Graceland Elvis Entourage VIP Tour at $70. And only the hard-core fan will find value in the extra $35. It moves you to the front of the line at the mansion and includes two areas not on the regular tour: a former garage that houses more stage costumes and miscellaneous memorabilia and the little trailer park on the back of the property that used to house various Presley cousins but now has offices. Unless your Christmas tree has an Elvis ornament section and you’re carrying tissues in preparation for your time at the Meditation Garden, save your money.

No matter how you decorate for the holidays, the best way to understand Graceland is to point the rental car south and drive about two hours to the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. For $4 ($12 if you also want to see the museum and Assembly of God church), you can visit the two-room shack where Elvis was born and where his twin died at birth. Hospitals were for rich people, and the Presleys were not rich.

The birthplace is nothing more than a bedroom and a kitchen. The bathroom would have been an outhouse in the yard. It wasn’t terribly crowded, though, as Elvis was an only child and his father spent some time in jail for passing bad checks. Mississippi is warm much of the year, so the family could spend time on the porch and in the yard. But let’s face it: if you had lived any part of your life in a two-room shack with an outhouse, excluding any residencies involving backpacks and Lonely Planet guides, you’d hang lots of mirrors in your front hall to give it an elegant and spacious appearance as soon as you had the money to do so.

Mount Vernon, Winterthur, and Fallingwater show us how people raised with good taste spent their money. Graceland is about how someone raised with absolutely nothing spent more money than he ever could imagine.

Graceland’s visitor center is at 3765 Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. It is open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas most of the year and closed on Tuesdays in January and February.

The Elvis Presley Birthplace is at 306 Elvis Presley Drive in Tupelo. It is open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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