Category Archives: Terrible Things People Eat

November 21, 2011

Veggie Tales: Why Congress wishes to beplumpen your children, and 9% of you are totally OK with that

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse — Last week a Washington Post poll revealed that the United States Congress currently enjoys a nationwide approval rating of 9%. That is nine percent, as in one integer, as in Very Close To Zero, as in if you asked “Do you approve of the job Congress is doing?” to a group of zinfandel-sipping monkeys with typewriters in a warehouse in Des Moines, they would all say “Dear God no not at all are you NUTS?,” because monkeys are actually pretty smart.

Needless to say this 9% statistic is shocking, mostly because I would have guessed somewhere between 9 to 40 percentage points lower. NINE percent approval? Are you sure you didn’t mean nine people? Where do you thumbs-up smiley-faced keep-up-the-good-work types LIVE I wonder? Do you live in Congress? Are you all Boehners? Do you know what the Gallup people meant by “Congress?” Do you think they meant “Con-Air?” Do you think you were approving of Nicolas Cage? Because if so that’s still a dismayingly high number.

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Trailer approval rating: 16%

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5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Awful Political Things, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

November 14, 2011

Well there goes a perfectly lucrative career in the field of cheese sculpture

By Jeff Vrabel

Note: Actual artist not pictured, or a mouse

GateHouse — So I had this AMAZING idea to be a person who sculpts things out of cheese for a living.

Genius, right? Think of it: All the rewarding creativity of a life spent in art, coupled with the incredible opportunity to feast on raw hunks of tastiness without even having to take off the welder’s mask, coupled with years of increasingly confused looks from the FedEx guy. It would have been grand. Also, as a person whose work experience has been primarily in the newspaper/magazine fields, it would have been nice to have some job security for a change.

(Plus it actually made a lot more sense than my other idea, which was cheese painting, which turns out to be a total mess, is murder on the carpeting and basically makes the whole room smell like a long-expired otter, which reminds me: If the kids even ask you for an otter as a pet YOUR ANSWER IS NO.)

Oh, what a glorious future it would have been, my cheese sculptures and me, traveling the globe in privacy (turns out the TSA frowns on flying with massive cheese blocks, whether they fit in their precious “carry-on dimensions” or not), enjoying orange-tie openings at galleries and farms worldwide. I was going to be a STAR, at least in the shadowy realm where cheese meets art, which, let me tell you, isn’t a realm that generally produces a lot of 1%-ers, if you catch my drift.

So imagine the crushing disappointment in learning this weekend that someone has totally beat me to the cheese game. (No, not Mousetrap. The other one. Mousetrap I knew about already.)

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19 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

October 4, 2011

Overweight man’s beef with White Castle finally connects “White Castle” with “beef”

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse — The grassroots protests spilling across the streets of New York against the excesses of Wall Street are raging into their second week and showing no signs of slowing, yet I am going to write about a dude who is too fat to sit at White Castle, because the Internet is very very large and plenty of people are talking about Wall Street, but who is standing up for White Castle in its hour of need? THIS MOTIVATED SLOVAK, THAT’S WHO.

Indeed, my blood brothers at the Castle know that I stand with them whenever some yappy 23-year-old energy drink consumption machine from The Media tries to besmirch, befoul or befmirch them with stories of “ghastly nutritional conditions” or “obese-American prejudice” or “fact-based stories about what animal remains actually constitute their Triscuit-thin patties.”

They know this because White Castle IS IN MY DNA. No, seriously, my Slovak grandparents lived pretty much across the street from a White Castle in Whiting, Ind., and my grandfather was known to spend his days there from about 7 a.m.-6 p.m. — moreso if my dear Slovak grandmother God bless her soul was feeling particularly prickly about the volume of objects he hoarded in the basement (official figures are hard to come by, but let us just say that special arrangements had to be made with the Dumpster Company in Whiting, Ind.). So when I say that White Castle is in my blood, I mean, no really, that stuff is straight IN MY BLOOD, probably slowing down the entire circulatory process and gumming things up something awful around the aorta.

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3 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Being Slovak, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

August 8, 2011

Are your children plump and sweaty enough for Michelle Malkin?

By Jeff Vrabel

Problem. Solved.

GateHouse — Yep. I like McRibs.

You can talk all day long about their ghoulish caloric content, you can walk me line-by-line through the roster of vitamins and minerals they don’t contain, you can provide me with photographic proof of the dog-meat which is smooshed into a grey paste in Cambodia and shipped via donkey, unsupervised ocean liner and nonrefrigerated truck to an outdoor McProcessingfacility/wastewater plant/shooting range in North Carolina, and I will not care because I like McRibs. Someone please rip this out of the newspaper, or three-finger-swipe-left on the iPad or whatever you do to save things, and bring it to my funeral, which will take place in about eight weeks, so everyone can enjoy a good long laugh before the luau. (Note: My funeral is going to be awesome.)

Otherwise, and occasional McGriddle aside (I AM BUT A MAN) I try not eat at McDonald’s. Not for any militant reason I’m gonna tweet about 12 times a day — I just don’t. And for the most part, neither does Little Man — though that’s not always easy to do, because at some point it’s 7:45 p.m. and we haven’t had dinner and the idea of crafting an organic, multi-course Meal out of locally raised and humanely caught fish loses by about a billion to the idea that I can sate my moody and undernourished child immediately, through nuggets.

We can’t boast a 100 percent success rate, but we try hard. In this regard (and few others) I’m like Michelle Obama, who despite Republican objections to her existence/face, has for years promoted healthy eating and living among Our Nation’s Youth.

McDonald’s, you may have seen, recently announced that it would begin offering more “fruit” and fewer chemicals/discarded animal legs in its Happy Meals, by way of atoning for forcing billions upon billions of preservative-filled meathorks on kids for 200 years, but I mean it’s not like there’s been any recent appreciable change in childhood obesity rates or anything.

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12 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Awful Political Things, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

July 13, 2011

I’m just gonna go ahead and let Angry Birds handle the parenting for a minute

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse — “The best things to kill are the monkeys. Not because they’re evil. Because they give you 5,000 points,” my son says, from the backseat, not looking up for one minute from his game of Angry Birds.

First of all, let me clarify that neither my son nor his parents advocate the killing of actual real-world monkeys, no matter how many points it gets you.

But the real world has little bearing on Angry Birds — a game that involves flinging small animals at boulders and glass in an effort to make pigs explode, which I have determined through rigorous scientific research is mostly not possible — except that it’s the one you leave when you press START. That goes double if you are 7, are in the backseat on a two-hour car ride home and you are playing while blurting out increasingly awesome non sequiturs that make no real-world sense whatsoever.

“You monkeys are MEAN!” the boy shouts, with what I can sense is nonsensical but pretty genuine monkey-centric frustration.

For two hours the little mercenary flung virtual birds at virtual hogs on the trip home, and for two hours he rambled nonstop about his game, a span of time in which my increasingly piteous attempts to listen to “music” were demolished by the sound of reckless avian devastation punctuated by the occasional gleeful shouts of “I GOT THREE STARS!” and the even more occasional disgusted grunt — which was in flagrant defiance of our list of Things That We Don’t Pitch Temper Tantrums About (Nos. 1-15,000: video games).

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Dad Stories / Parenting, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

May 27, 2011

Choc-Ola returns, and not a moment too soon

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse — When you see the phrase “Indiana entrepreneurs re-launch” at the beginning of a sentence and you are from Indiana, a few thoughts rocket immediately through the parts of your brain not dedicated to inventing increasingly desperate excuses for why IU hasn’t won a championship since ’87:

  • “Mellencamp’s giant robot will soon rise!”
  • “There must have been tremendous increases in the production of rickety hoops which can be attached to barns.”
  • “Whatever it is, Peyton Manning is shooting a commercial for it in the morning.”
  • “Automated Mitch Daniels-hitting device”

Ha! I kid Indiana because I love Indiana, except its stupid approach to time zones, which is such that when my cousin asked me last week what time it was in my current location I CACKLED WITH GLEE FOR TEN MINUTES because that’s literally the first time the question has swung that way in 35 years. I’m still cackling. I think I’ll take a small cackle break right now. Ha HO! Oh, it feels so good to laugh when you’ve spent 12 years calling people at incorrect times for interviews, such as that one time I woke up “Weird Al” Yankovic’s baby. Still feel bad about that.

But though I love Indiana as a state, frankly many of their exports have left something to be desired, and yes, I’m looking at you, Babyface. You and Choc-Ola, an old chocolate-based beverage that’s being relaunched by two Indianapolis-based entrepreneurs, Dan Iaria and Joe Wolfla, the latter of whom said “It’s the greatest-tasting chocolate milk you’ve ever had.” The GREATEST-TASTING. Brave words, Wolfla; rare is the man who messes with Hershey and survives.

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Carolina Chocolate Drops – Knockin’

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5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Back Home Again In Indiana, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

April 18, 2011

Denny’s Bacon Maple Sundae: Wait, Denny’s is pushing an unhealthy food product of some kind?

By Jeff Vrabel

I'm bringing sexy back

GateHouse — “You’re welcome for your next column,” my friend Bradshaw said with great satisfaction upon sending on a news story about Denny’s new Bacon Maple Sundae, which, as of press time, had killed 239 people in test markets in Iowa. Ha! I’m just kidding, Denny’s Fans And Lawyers: Most of the victims remain safely in Iowa hospitals and/or makeshift baseball fields having their intestines removed, but doctors are optimistic that in the coming years they’ll be able to subsist on a reasonably stable diet of gruel and pudding, which is, incidentally, the name of the worst breakfast buffet in London.

I suppose we should get out of the way that the Bacon Maple Sundae looks like the thing that my dog did after she devoured that entire box of chocolate Santas that one year, but who are we kidding: Denny’s has already gotten what it was looking for when it began the lengthy, probably international process of launching a dessert product that resembles dog chork: Pinheads on the Internet writing about a dessert product that resembles dog chork.

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Morrissey – Every Day Is Like Sunday

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3 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

March 28, 2011

Yes, we are bombing Madagascar, but Cap’n Crunch isn’t retiring so it’s a pretty even week overall

By Jeff Vrabel

I'm ALIVE! Neckless, but alive.

GateHouse — Happy Spring Break, everyone! Hope you all had/are having warm, froofy-drink filled vacations and/or forced furloughs. Sit back, put your feet up and inhale a few more precious moments of clear-eyed fiction before you return to the unfettered horror that has become everyday life, the drive back to which will cost you $2,400 in gas.

Indeed you are probably going to want to return to whatever blissful malt-liquor induced haze you just reluctantly emerged from, because everything out here on planet America is, as is so often the case, worse than ever: Gas prices are ohthisisweird forehead-slappingly high again, the country’s largest corporation, G.E., pays exactly zero in American taxes in an inexplicable tongue-unrolling hilarity which will be humiliatingly justified by most of your boring GOP presidential losers (“Obamacare!” Tim Pawlenty will shout to an empty Elks Lodge), you have to pay to read NEWSPAPERS online now and though your public school hasn’t the remotest hope of “fixing those bus exhaust problems” or “replacing those teachers,” we’ve magicked up several billion dollars of bomb money for that 45th war going on in, I think it was Madagascar? Kazakhstan? Whatever. It’s brown on my globe.

And yet, in an age where daily soul-crushing reports of untethered greed and corporate power drive the nation’s economy, one hideous headline stands apart: They’re getting rid of Cap’n Crunch.

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Blues Explosion – Crunchy

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12 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

November 8, 2010

San Francisco’s Happy Meal ban: Keep your government hands off my Hamburglar

By Jeff Vrabel

Oh good, this picture should make people feel less stoned

GateHouse — Attention, Citizens Of San Francisco, At Least Whatever Percentage Is Not Baked Enough To Realize I Am Not A Cartoon Dog’s Voice In Your Brain Right Now:

Hi, it’s Jeff. Listen, we — and when I say “we,” I speak for all of us out here in Real America, the one with all the trucks — know you’ve had an emotional few weeks. You apparently won a World Series, which means you were apparently competing in a World Series, which means a World Series was apparently taking place — whatever, hey, good for the World Series. And we know that glorious victory was immediately followed by a Republican Midterm Tsunaminado that will swiftly unravel all the basic rights you’ve held out hope for, such as the ability to fuel your cars with angel sneezes, or marry whoever you want.

But you simply cannot expect us to sit idle while you take out your violent mood swings on our innocent kids’ toys and our beloved trans fats.

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Culture And / Or News, GateHouse, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

October 26, 2010

Count Chocula = impossible to buy in South Carolina. HALLOWEEN IS CANCELED.

By Jeff Vrabel

Count Chocula is, needless to say, embroiled in a centuries-old feud with that shirtless werewolf cereal.

GateHouse — I have discovered two equally displeasing things about Halloween this year: 1. The neighbor down the road, the one on the corner at Sundew Court, which is like the least-evil name ever (she might as well live at Dew Drop Hug Soup Emotionally Supportive Boulevard) has produced a front-yard Halloween display of such breadth and creativity that frankly my fake tombstones (“Here Lies Doug M. Upp” — ka POW), cheesy blinking “Great Pumpkin” Linus and assortment of artfully sliced-up pumpkins looks like a cruel failure by comparison. The neighbor’s display occupies probably 2,500 square feet, likely required several meetings with the power company, includes what I’m sure were Army-sized rations of that cobwebby cotton stuff and is making the rest of us aspiring warlocks feel SUPER INADEQUATE. Thanks, Sundew Court. See if I include you in the next block party volleyball game.

The second, and obviously more important problem: I cannot buy Count Chocula anywhere remotely near my house, and/or Sundew Court.

I don’t want to minimize anyone’s problems. I know times are hard for everyone. Your boss is slicing back  your hours and your bank is being a jerk, but frankly my problem is worse than any of yours multiplied by a fafillion, because none of you have, in the past week, driven around for a full afternoon stopping at five grocery stores in the futile hunt for a fictitious cocoa-based vampire who apparently IS NOT FOR SALE IN SOUTH CAROLINA, due to, I am sure, something Rush Limbaugh said once.

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28 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Dad Stories / Parenting, GateHouse, Holidays, Humor Columns, Terrible Things People Eat

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