EAT FASTER— WE NEED THE STOP-ANDGO FORK

EAT FASTER— WE NEED THE STOP-ANDGO FORK

CREEMEDIA

by Rick Johnson

ITEM! Retail Confectioner's Association says candy is a source of consolation" in troubled economic times.

ITEM! Progressive Grocer magazine finds candy consumption per person up one full pound in 1981.

ITEM! Inventor Joe Caruso develops stop-and-go-fork,"an eating utensil with a tiny built-in traffic light in last ditch effort to slim down.

ITEM! Tacoma grocery buyer Fred Holler names chocolate as an inexpensive way to splurge on a tight budget. "

ITEM! Virtually every popular sitcom of the late 60s/early 70s has at least one Don Ho episode.

ITEM! Southern Mississippi farmer William Pace claims hogs that watch television get fatter than those with no entertainment. " He goes on to identify wrestling as their favorite show.

ITEM! Kansas college students make gas out of fermented candy and dub it" Snickerhol. "

ITEM! Memphis candy buyer Tom Quinn says his company had a 60% increase in chocolate sales the first three months of 1981.

Its not just an R&B cliche anymore to ask, whats going down here? Have the pigs taken over the sty? Has food finally passed up human companionship in the gimme dept.? Do we really have freedom of 7-11" like they say on TV?

Dont be a tool, Raoul! The message is as plain as the chocolate mess on your face. Despite the persistence of commie jogging cells and other Doubting Richard Simmonses, America has finally reached the peak of appreciative swallowing—food as drug abuse. Hey—this junkll bring on bedspins and brain death as surely as anything you can sniff, shoot, smoke or become.

Globules And You Probably, youre all worried about getting.. .FAT. There, its out! Cmon we all know why the hog crossed the road. But why do they wear red suspenders?

Anyway, whats wrong with a little blubber? Some research has indicated obese kids have higher IQs than nondisgusting ones, not to mention the ease and convenience of living in a mobile padded cell. So what if your body starts to look like a pear? Pears are organic, man! Admiring blimp jockeys will take one look at you and say, some pear!

Slimy Plea For Sympathy How are you, the reader, going to play successful practical jokes on your metabolism? Send in a stunt eater? Nope—its what Mickey Spillane would call my safe-but-disgusting job to sacrifice the virginity of innumerable taste buds in the name of Science. Ill have to starve myself until 1984 to get back to my lovable stick figure, but who cares? Its my head that wont fit through the door.

If you ever want to feel really stoopid for a couple hours, try spending them in a supermarket drinking warm Sugar Free Dr. Pepper and copying down information from the backs of Bavarian pretzel boxes. Its really too bad that people dont walk up to you on the street like they do on TV, stick candy bars in your face and scream, Its a mix!" Ten percent more chocolate!" Eat it raw or right out of the box!" And the now classic, the more its whipped the bigger it gets!"

First Reference To Canada

There were only two ground rules for this blind date with Pepto Bismol: ^1: tongues allowed and *t2˜. no referees!

Please dont get all Canadian if your regional faves arent included. Food is distributed as haphazardly as Gene Simmonschromosomes. You never know what youll find at your supermarket any given day or if itll even be food.

Fast Foods are another article. Besides, there are only about four or five of the critters in all of McDonough County...Snoot N Hoof, Ebs Bacon-On-A-Stick Hut. Bebes Kwicky Pork and the factory outlet store at the slaughterhouse. Big deal—all chicky sammies are identical anyway. Cmon, lets all sing—

No, it isnt very pretty/what a town without Burger King/can dooooooo....

Cake Things

Little Debbie 12 Star Cakes—little Debbie—cruel mistress of the infamous Zebra cake and 1982s poster child for death—has now unleashed these villainous crumbcakes that look and go down like plaster casts of her little footprints.

Jel-Creme Rolls—Our girl Debbie couldnt fool the Feds with this obscenely flirtatious jpllyroll. They made her put the antidote right on the package.

Sara Lee Original Cheesecake—The grandmother of insulin shock comes through with the ultimate frozen cake thing. But can it make the pivot?

Sara Lee Chocolate Brownies— You can trust S.Lee like moms trust Kool Aid. Ignore the fact these brownies look like something a library would throw out and prepare for one of the seven best chocolate comas of your life.

Willed Boquet-Air Cakes—No problem picking up the delicate scent" of these little weevils.

Possible escapees from a cedar chest road crew. Once again, the real message is on the back: No hooks, no wires, no muss!"

Morton Great Little Desserts—For all you swinging solo eaters. The one serving, uplifting and vaguely sexual sweet. Comes in four different flavors, none of which are thumb.

Monster Cookies Country Oven Iced Fruit—Jump back, Little Debbie! Gunner, Wes and Adolf—that rascally crew over at the Country Oven—are true friends of the pocketbook. Thats right, all their products compare unfavorably with the lining on an old purse. These kooky Krauts are responsible for a whole line of bore crimes with the sullen variety of wanted posters on a Post Office bulletin board. You soon realize .that what they mean by iced fruit is that its dead.

Nabisco I-Screams—The same good guys that brought us such munchterpieces as Fig Newtons, Nilla Wafers, Mystic Mints, Party Grahams, etc. are not resting on their crumbs. The ice cream cone cookie" is a sort of anti-matter Oreo available in two different combinations (lets-get-whitey and vice versa). Personally guaranteed by this tummy ache mechanic to be even better than a drug traffic upsurge.

Bugs Bunny Graham Cookies—The only trucklick on the Nabisco roster are these unidentifiable blobs that are thought to have come from a family planning centers chip, bumps and dents sale.

Dr. Scholl Toe Caps—Is heavy leather dead? Not a chance, as evidenced by these tiny tastebusters. Dont overdo it though, or youll feel like a ballet is being performed on your abdomen. Pillsbury Chocolate Chips—In a comparison test with similar impact to Auburn Universitys research on dog fainting, the Dough Boys chips defeated Duncan Hines, Betty Crocker, Nestles, Bama, Mrs. Goodcookie, Frito-Lay Grand Mas and Keeblers elf concoctions. If you ask me, Mrs. Goodcookie would be a lot better name for a drug dealer.

Try one of these, little girl Reeses Pieces—Did they have to give the greatest pig breakthrough since M&Ms such a rude name? Honestly—you ask for em at the show and the girl slaps your face. What I like to do is mix up a barrel of these with equal amounts of M&Ms and lost my head in it.

Mars Twix—ITS A MIX!," as they say on TV 1,063,614 times a day. Their mix of chocolate and caramel with a crispy center brings to mind such immortal pairings as liver/drool ice cream, Cher n Gregg, Borgnine/Merman and John Kordoshs face/my ass. Country Over Pe-Co-Pi—Yes, its the Oven Men again, this time determined to put the rubber vomit industry out of business. Chew carefully and tumble dry.

Junket Rennet Tablets—Perfect for those unpredictable rennet moods that come along every once in a while. Plus, theyll enable you to make cottage cheese in your own stomach!

Candy Castle Wacky Wafers— Everything to emerge from the Hassle Castle is wack city.

Ingenious combination of dehydrated footwear and All My Pegboards will have you wondering why you didnt think of it yourself. Baseball Bats—C. Castles most self-descriptive candy. Picture little red and green baseball players. Picture the pitcher pitting himself against the peep pugilist. Picture a brouhaha of flavor. Picture yourself on a train in a station. With plasticine porters with looking glass ties...

Ichbro Skittles—These arent in the Physicians Desk Reference yet because no one can tell whether its the Skittles themselves or their obnoxious jingle that cause illusions of Plasticene porters, rocking horse people and girls uiith kaleidescope eyes. One advantage—if youre not hungry now, theyre worth a fortune on the street!

Curtis Reggie Bars—Could be the last roundup for this honestly tasty bar, which is kind of a Baby Ruth with carmel where the babies usually are. Best part—it cannot talk!

Did we eat yet?

Carnation Slender/Pillsbury Figurines—They say theres no accounting for taste, particularly in the diet biz. With these overpriced erasers, theres no accounting period. Latest insult is overpriced Caramel Nut Figurines, where a once proud flavor is reduced to a bad fill-it-to-the

rim-with-Early-Pregnancy-Test joke. At least with E.P.T. you can use a straw!

Hypostyx Plant Food Sticks—These are a big fad on the west coast right now. Its called mulching out." I see a lot of local musicians and dogniks sucking these babies down and it seems to me that people who eat alot of them have unusually big teeth.

Butter Buds 100% Natural Butter Flavored Granules—You cant get any lower than this dry yellow smoot. Just handling the box brought on tormenting recollections of dim fondle and strategic tatoos. Love Snacks [manufacturer too embarrassed]—Ridiculous name for a divertingly colorful mix of X-ray bib-scented nuts and bolts. The Riegel in you will immediately conjure up a suitable clothes-dryer-as-fishtank metaphor to describe Luv Snax visual excellence.

Monukka Trail Mix—Monukka Trail sounds like a 17th-ranked high school basketball team in Alaska. Monukka Trail Mix sounds like something mined from corralls. Hartz Hamster and Gerbil Mix—Says here on the box this stuff has a high percentage of fat, fiber and crude protein. Crude protein? What does it do, make sexual innuendos about dairy products? Another plus: also good for other small animals."

First, you chomp.

Quincy Maid Potato Chips—A likely product of the same genetic slum as Little Debbie, the Q-Maid stares at you from the front of the bag as if you were personally responsible for the invention of childbirth. Folks all over western Illinois swear by these chips, which is not a good symptom.

Nabisco Cheese Nips—I don t care what you call them, if you suck this snack, youll end up with washcloth lips.

Country Oven BBQ-Flavored Pork Rinds—Convincing evidence of past life regression in the food chain.

Keebler Pizza Bites—Hey, Ive got second degree pizza bites on my chin, both my hands and all up and down one leg. What we really need is pizza repellant!

Old El Paso Nachips—Nacho is getting to be as popular a flavor as dead public figures. But listen—you dont buy these unless there are no actual Doritos within a 20-mile radius of your mouth.

Washing it all down.

Pepsi Light—Gruesome is too kind a way to describe this mosquito chow. Its supposed to taste lemony, but with Pepsicos famous quality control, you get a taste adventure in every can. Its commonplace to buy a six pack arid get Ovaltine, Mad Dog 20-20, mouth deodorant, filmy aquarium, three nights of terror and one extremely bad dream.

Gerber Baby Juice—No, its not drained from babies. But its cheap, yummy, sugar-free and comes in improbable combinations like Apple/Beefy Jerky, Andy G./Victoria P., AC/DC and Young/ Gifted/&Black.

Mello-Yello—This apparently was Cokes answer to Pepsi Light. Why they would want to is not known, as liters of this jaundiced soda hit the Reduced Goods basket faster than Brownsville Station albums to the cutout bins.

Ross Ready Mucilage—Where," asked Kolchak the Night Stalker on the tube last night, would you look for a swamp creature around Chicago?" Ricks house!, they shouted in reply. And what do you drink at Ricks house?

Country Time

Lemonade—General Foods non-carbonated, not sickly sweet and pretty damn good lemonade in a can. Absence of bubbles makes the fifth can go down real slow.

RC100—The selling point here is cola without caffeine, which seens as unlikely as cartoons without dynamite.

Hawkeye Gold—Iowas own soft drink!" says the can and who would argue? Flavor rating unavailable due to lack of flavor. I think this is what Jonathan Hart had been drinking before he said, Without a body, how do you tell a nurse her patient is dead?"

And dont forget...

Assorted Flavors Turns—The best thing out of Tuckahoe since Maudes little girl. Also the only product Ive ever encountered that works just as good as the advertising says. Now available in four flavors, theyre almost good enough to eat just for the taste. Of course, you get sick on these and then what can you take?

Hot Rods From Hollywood

ROD STEWART by Paul Nelson & Lester Bangs (delilah)

Rod Stewart was co-written by two of the worlds greatest rock writers, so its not surprising that the book is one of the most entertaining critical pop star biographies to come our way. Lester Bangs revolutionized the rock biography a few years ago with his scathing diatribe on Blondie, and his pen has lost none of its iconoclastic charm ,in dealing with 01 Roostertop. Paul Nelson was a Stewart associate when he worked for Mercury Records (Stewarts original solo label), and he has a concise understanding of the singers descent from genuine rock hero to what both writers term his Jayne Mansfield" persona.

Stewarts story is an authentic artistic tragedy, and his decline is viewed as a major disappointment by both Nelson and Bangs. Believe it or not, there was actually a time, according to Nelson, when Stewart was considered the Bruce Springsteen of his time, our least-affected, most-down-to-earth rock star," not to mention front man of what Bangs once considered the Ultimate RocknRoll Band"—the Faces. (Of course, that was also a time when Ron Wood actually played guitar instead of jumping around a stadium stage like some sort of buffoon.) Its all here—the John Baldry, Brian Auger and Jeff Beck years; an excellent, in-depth account of the Faces rise and fall; the stunning early solo LPs; the interviews and reviews from Rolling Stone, NME and CREEM (including some neat early insights from Dave Marsh), and finally the horrid, bleached-blond Hollywood tart who threw it all away, yet cant understand why his old fans have turned against him, the critics attack him and the punks despise him.

As in everything Bangs and Nelson write, the book ultimately transcends its subject, and Stewarts tale becomes a metaphor for the decline of rock itself in the 1970s. Thus even if you cant stand and/or could care less about Rod Stewart (I havent been able to stomach him since the Faces demise), the book still makes for fascinating reading. Bangs is at his best here, attacking everything from the hypocrisy of punk rock to the rock star myth in general, offering us his profound little rock insights (i.e., What he (Ron Wood) mainly knew from the beginning on was what Keith R. first taught us all: that rhythm guitar is lead guitar"), and once again making us laugh at rock and ourselves with his inimitable, tough-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold' style. (His comments on the Stewart-Britt Ekland affair are especially hilarious.) Its also Bangs who presents the books partially tongue-in-cheek theme: We know this tale has not been a pleasant one, but present it in the hopes that readers considering careers in the music industry, at least those who nurse dreams of becoming rock stars, will mark its tragedy and in honest pragmatism reconsider their options, perhaps going into accounting instead."

Nelson focuses more on the human side of Stewart, and being a disillusioned fan, he almost makes us feel sorry for the pathetic" Stewart were left with today. That is we feel sorry until we recall some of the singers more sensitive and modest quotes—On relationships: Ive always been the one to push and shove and say, Sorry, thats it, darlin, its all over, goodbye. Take 20 Valiums and have a stomach pump and thats the end of it;" On his art: I love the music, but I wouldnt be doing it if I wasnt getting paid;" On his talent: I can sing the pants off Mick Jagger." Call it honesty if you want, but its quotes like these that make you realize that Stewart probably deserves every attack that comes his way.

Finally, Bangs and Nelson may have invented a new form of rock criticism with the chapter entitled Two Jewish Mothers Pose As Rock Critics," in which the two men interview each other, revealing all their prejudices from the onset, and offering the reader a brilliant, two-sided evaluation of Rod Stewart, as well as the sorry state of modern popular culture in general. It alone is worth the price of the book.

Now if these guys would only devote their time to someone who really deserves the attention...

Bill Holdship

Conventional

Wisdom

RIDING ON A BLUE NOTE by Gary Giddins (Oxford University Press)

A few of the details have begun to filter down about the proposed film bio of legendary alto saxist and jazz innovator Charlie Parker, the main one being that Richard Pryor is going to play the lead. Now that suggests interesting possibilities-— almost anything involving Richard Pryor does—but still, I dont think you have to be too cynical to expect the movie to turn out to be a mess. Partly because of the Hollywood tradition of cranking out highly fictionalized, formalized, romanticized life stories, a tradition which extends from the benighted past, when movies were more, nonchalant about historical truths and Paul Muni roamed the Earth, to the present, when even a modern piece of revisionist chutzpah like Mommie Dearest cant manage to get all the facts right. And partly because of the subject matter. Jazz has existed, flourished outside of the mainstream of popular culture for so long now that when that culture deigns to acknowledge it, it usually blows it. The fact is that most people dont know, or at least have strange ideas about, what jazz is.

(An aside: the word jazz" is sometimes frowned upon by musicians who feel stigmatized by the word, but itll serve for the modest purposes of this review— besides, the alternative terms are usually unwieldy or appalling or both.) In his introduction to this collection of his essays on jazz and its creators (and some related folk— the book is subtitled Jazz and American Pop") Gary Giddins, jazz critic for the Village Voice, says the question most frequently asked of a jazz critic is ËœHow did you get interested in it?-" Which is the kind of question frequently asked of someone who is perceived as being involved with something vaguely exotic, possibly frivolous—like stamp collecting...

Giddins is one of the most knowledgable and articulate jazz critics currently practicing, and this collection of his pieces culled mostly from the Voice is recommended to everyone. Its an invaluable aid to both those who bre deeply involved in the music and those who would take the plunge. As it were. Giddins doesnt just hand out considered judgements (tho he does that too), he passes on information, gives shape to neglected careers, describes abstractions without resorting to poetic mistiness.. .in short, he doesnt obscure a music thats often difficult (often difficult just to get to hear), he makes it clearer. A friend, a rock critic with a flowing iconoclastic writing style, thinks Giddins stuff is stupefyingly boring" and I know why he says this (aside from the fact that its the sort of thing that flowing iconoclasts are supposed to say) —the scholarly approach can get a little tedious—but the somewhat conventional style is infinitely preferable to the fannish scrawl and mystic rave that have at times passed for jazz criticism (I think my ongoing rejection of my 60s roots is showing here...) The book is concise, anecdotal, opinionated, objecteve.. .there are chapters on singers like Ethel Waters, Bobby Blue Bland, Bing Crosby (surprise!), Frank Sinatra (Giddins digs pop music but has a jazz fans impatience with MOR mush, e.g., Gershwin and Kern wrote melodies; Hamlisch and Manilow write hooks—cheap tow-bar geegaws that give momentary focus to unfocused songs"), landmark instrumentalists like Bird, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy, examinations of the selling out dilemma via looks at Wes Montgomery and George Benson (no easy answers here—an artist selling out is both opportunist and victim), essays on the avant-garde (Giddins excells at describing this elusive music with the matter-of-fact exactness of someone describing a chair... a helpful approach, to my mind) and, as they say, more.

Boring, eh? Fuck that, I think its tough—scrupulous and relevant, its just the type of book Id have liked to have had when I was first testing the waters.. .at one point, writing of Ornette Colemans Skies Of America, quoting Colemans liner notes on the pieces method and harmolodics, Giddons adds, the work is readily approachable and can be enjoyed without the footnotes"—true, Id like to think, of all jazz—but the truth is that when the footnotes are as precise and eloquent as Giddins, they can only enhance the enjoyment.

Richard C. Walls