Horrorscope

It had begun innocently enough: Henry’s Mom and Dad welcomed the guests and the parents dropping them off only stayed long enough to find out when to return to pick them up. The kids rushed in bearing their gifts, which were placed on a side table in the hall. Henry, who’d been waiting all day for the festivities to begin, grinned from ear-to-ear as he proudly showed off his new bike. It was purple, and had a banana seat and ape hanger handlebars with streamers.

But once everyone had arrived, Henry’s Mom (she said to call her Doreen) gathered everyone into the living room den and had them take off their shoes and sit in a circle on the shag carpet. Henry’s Dad (he said to call him Frank) turned down the lights and drew the curtains, so there was a lot of chatter, because this could only promise a really exciting game. Doreen put some music on the hi-fi, but it wasn’t party music; it was all sort of swirly. Frank plugged in a lava lamp and took his tie off. “Is everyone ready to learn what their futures hold?” Doreen asked, and all the boys shouted their assent.

Doreen sat down in the circle criss-cross-apple-sauce style and put her hands on her knees with her fingers pinched together, and asked everyone to do the same. There was some giggling, but they did it. Doreen started swaying a little, and then opened her eyes wide and said “Eric!” Eric grinned as his friends on either side poked him.

            “Eric!” Doreen continued, “You enjoy sports! You’re going to play baseball and make it to the major leagues!”

            Eric approved of this future wholeheartedly.

            Next, Doreen shifted and closed her eyes and opened them again and pointed to Peter, who hoped she’d predict he’d become an astronaut, like he hoped.

            “Peter!” she called, “You are into math and have a feel for calculations! You’re going to work at a big tax corporation as one of their accountants!”

            Peter looked dejected.

            “And you’re going to have a really nice car!” Doreen added. This softened the blow.

            “Me next, me next!” the boys shouted excitedly. Doreen moved again, closed her eyes, and opened them on Buddy.

            “Buddy!” she cried. Buddy hopped up and down on his behind awaiting his fate.

            “Buddy — I have bad news for you,” Doreen said. “You will be tempted by the dark side, and lead a life of crime.”

            “What?” Buddy exclaimed, but Doreen had moved on. The boys jostled, uneasy at this sudden turn in events, but expecting it to work out in the end.

            “Alex!” Doreen went on. “Alex, you will be a very successful businessman!” The boys cheered. “You will live in a huge mansion and marry a beautiful woman!” The boys roared. “But it won’t last!”

            Alex deflated. “It’s OK, nudged Ian, sitting next to him, “it isn’t real.”

            Doreen focused her attention on Boris, who stared back silently. “Boris!” She hesitated. “Boris! Your birth mother says she’s sorry, and regrets what she did. She wants me to tell you to avoid the evils of alcohol!”

            “Birth mother?” Boris said. The boys sat transfixed.

            Just as Doreen was about to reveal the fortune of another boy, Frank, who’d been smoking quietly in the corner, interrupted his wife by asking if anybody would like to loosen up a little, to which the party-goers responded gratefully. As they clambered up from the circle, Frank put some new music on the hi-fi and announced it was getting awfully hot in there. Doreen agreed, and started unbuttoning her blouse.

            “It’s the Age of Aquarius!” Frank shouted gleefully.

            At first, the boys were leaping about to the music, but as Henry’s parents began disrobing, the merriment came to an abrupt halt. Henry himself was missing. He must have slipped out.

            “That’s better,” Doreen announced as the last of her clothes came off, as if completely oblivious to the mortified stillness around her.

            “Come on, everybody,” Frank urged, pulling his pants down.

The boys rushed for the door, getting jammed in their rush to escape.

            “Where’s Henry?” Eric cried in a panic.

            They found him in the kitchen staring at his birthday cake. It was bright yellow, with the signs of the zodiac piped around the edge in yellow icing. The center held a sun made out of candy corn.

            “What’s wrong with your Mom and Dad?” Buddy cried.

            “What did she mean, my ‘birth mother’?” Boris kept repeating.

But Henry just sat there looking at his cake.

            “I hate candy corn,” he said. “How come she knows about everyone else but me?”

           

Children’s Parties Card #5 Age of Aquarius, Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

See Also: An International Incident, Raggedy Ann Revisited, A SNAFU In The Jungle

Raggedy Ann Revisited

“Do you remember Denise’s Mom?”

            “Who can forget?”

            “What about that time she invited us all over for a tea party and served us margaritas?”

            “How old were we — six?”

            “That lady was broken. I mean, she tried, but come on — you can’t give kids hard liquor!”

            “So check what I found the other day at a yard sale. A set of Betty Crocker recipe cards from 1971.”

            “My Mom used to have one of those too!”

            “So I’m going through the cards for fun, because these recipes are whack — and look what I found.”

            “Rag Doll Tea Party. Sweet Jesus — that’s what she served us!”

            “I know, right? Because what little kid expects to be served a salad instead of cookies and lemonade?”

            “Ooh — lettuce! Celery! Raisins!”

            “What’s the hair made out of?”

            “Cheese. Is that a boiled egg for the head?”

            “No — it’s a marshmallow. I remember it being egg, though. Oh my God.”

            “Wow.”

            “No — I mean Oh my God, I just figured it out.”

            “What?”

             “The margaritas. She read it wrong. They were supposed to be meringues. They’re called ‘Marguerites.’”

            “How can you get that wrong?”

            “Girlfriend, everything about this is wrong. You need a cocktail to get through it. She was doing us a favor.”

Children’s Parties Card #15 Rag Doll Tea Party, Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

See Also: An International Incident, Horrorscope, A SNAFU In The Jungle

A SNAFU in the Jungle

Nac uoy ared shit? Fo erousc ton.

That’s because in English, we have spelling. Spelling, a thing that schools seem to think is the key to your future success as a human being, is all about putting the letters in the right order. Only sadists and serial killers mix the letters up to hide the message they’re sending — probably just to give themselves more time to commit whatever heinous act they get off on.

On a related note, some mothers take birthday parties a little too seriously. They forget that the only reason little Susie wants a party is so that she can play the Queen Bee and decide which of her classmates she’s going to invite or leave out in the cold as a crystal-clear message they’ve been shunned. The only reason the other kids go is to get high on sugar and run around for two hours and see what presents the other kids brought, hoping that theirs is the best.

The actual details don’t matter, so long as there is cake.

The one thing you want to avoid in planning a child’s birthday party is having it resemble school. This party game devised by the sinister and tortured souls at Betty Crocker hits all the marks:

            involves spelling difficult words 3

            requires writing 3

            is timed 3

            is judged 3

            only exists to kill time 3

            provides ample opportunity for humiliation 3

And to put the icing on the cake, as it were, let’s look closely at what they consider a “jungle” animal:

lion, elephant, monkey, peacock, flamingo, rhinoceros, tiger, bear, hippopotamus, seal, llama, giraffe, kangaroo, penguin.

Penguin, FFS.

This situation is NOT normal — it is all f*cked up.

Children’s Parties Card #3 African Safari, Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

See Also: Raggedy Ann Revisited, An International Incident, Horrorscope

Why We Can’t Cook

Cooking: what is it, and how can I get involved?

Cooking is a long-lost ancient skill our ancestors used to prepare food to eat. Long ago, in order to eat, people had to “grow” “raise” “hunt” and “cultivate” edible things that they would then “cook” to turn into food. It took all day.

Today, cooking has become popular among a select group of hip individuals who wish to recreate this long-abandoned art in their own homes. People who do cooking are known as “cooks.”

What sorts of things do “cooks” make?

Take pizza for example. A cook will make a pizza using a “recipe” and techniques learned from “books.” They will actually make the “dough” (the stuff the base is made from) themselves using their hands, and the tomato part and the cheese part (although many cooks still buy the cheese). * Then they will heat it in an oven. This is also called “cooking” it, which may be confusing.

But why would someone go to all this trouble?

No-one really knows. You can buy a pizza at any supermarket.

What does homemade pizza taste like?

Again, this is unclear. Cooks rarely allow non-cooks to share their “food.” By the time you show up, it’s usually all been eaten. It is thought they do this to hide the evidence of their habit. The only way to know is to become a cook yourself.

Cooking sounds like a religious cult. Is it dangerous?

As with all new things, caution should be taken before attempting. Before trying to cook, you should document your whereabouts and alert your family, should things go wrong. It is a known fact that people who have taken up cooking have disappeared into kitchens, and are never heard from again. It can take years to track a cook down, and it has proven to be very difficult to re-integrate them back into society. Cooks have also been known to recruit their own family and friends into the habit: it’s a discussion you should have before you become hooked.

*Not the cheese you may be used to: this cheese is made from milk and enzymes which are mixed together and left to “age.”

Fast Meals Cookbook, Rockville House Publishers, 1972

Also from this book: Revenge Salad

Peppered Chicken

Stick man hungry. Stick man want chicken. Stick man not sure how to procure chicken. Stick man think. Stick man put on thinking pants. Stick man getting thinner by the minute. Stick man put on belt to prevent pants from falling down. Stick man spies shotgun, has brain-wave. Stick man hunts chicken. Stick man sees chicken dressed in best crown minding chicken’s own business. Stick man don’t care. Stick man hungry. Stick man takes aim, shoots own-business-minding chicken in face. Stick man happy with himself. Stick man plucks, guts, and cuts up chicken. Stick man invites five stick friends over for dinner. Meanwhile, chicken community hold meeting, plot revenge. Chickens wait until sun goes down, pour gasoline around stick man’s house. Next day, nothing left but stick man’s belt.

Recipes from the East, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1955

Also from this book: Boobies

Boobies

Bare boobies have usually only appeared in select publications: medical texts, National Geographic, porn, and cookbooks. These are from 1955, that glorious period in American history in which there were absolutely no barriers placed on the availability of nude pictures for the whole family to enjoy.

Recipes from the East, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1955

Also from this book: Peppered Chicken

Kitchen Nightmares

A local restaurant was advertising their summer special on the radio the other day. The special was a shrimp, avocado and strawberry salad. Good luck with that.

Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant makeover show, Kitchen Nightmares used to be a good show when it was filmed in Britain. Well-meaning people did badly because they just didn’t have a clue. Then he did a version in America, but it featured a smarmy narrator with pop-in quickie comments by Ramsey, and mostly him throwing fits, which is what Americans like to see. They don’t care about sincerity; they just want reality show drama. So they picked insane eateries run by insane people. Thus it is that Ramsey’s reputation in America is one of being a bully and a coarse-mouthed thug in a white jacket. It has nothing to do with cooking.

What had happened was that the American show was a TV version of the very thing he was trying to “fix”: it was a rubbish show, with a terrible “menu” of content and no amount of shouting could rescue it from oblivion.

Whenever I see food pairings of obvious folly, I am reminded of Ramsey’s original show. In it, he often had to explain to hapless chefs why strawberries don’t go with fish or some such incompatibility of nature.

There is no need to put pineapple on top of your barbecued ribs. Don’t do it, people.

Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

 Also from this book: Common Cored

Mother’s Day

For years, I worked at the bakery. Most of the time I was behind the counter, slicing loaves and putting éclairs in boxes, and keeping an eye out for the mice — there’s always mice in bakeries, as you can imagine. Once day Doris was out sick and an order came in for a decorated cake — Happy Anniversary Mum and Dad, with flowers piped around the edges. Well, Doris did all of that; she was quite territorial about it. And the cake was a rush order, so the boss said “Marjorie, give it a go,” and I did. I found where Doris kept the icing and piping bag and got to work.

I think I did a decent job, and really enjoyed it too. In fact, the people who put in the order liked it so much they told the boss, and from then on in, Doris and I had to share the decorating duties. She’d get one, and I’d get the next one.

Doris didn’t like this arrangement, and kept trying to sabotage me by hiding the equipment or botching the order by spelling out the wrong names. One time she was closing up and left my cake out on the counter, with a trail of breadcrumbs leading to it. Well, you can imagine what the mice did with that.

The last straw came when Doris’s own son, Carl, passed his driver’s test and his Dad called in an order for a celebratory cake. Only it was my turn, not hers. This is the cake. I was very proud of it, I must say. And I’m glad we got this picture, because not long afterwards, Doris “accidentally” sat on it right before it was due to be picked up. You’d think she’d be upset at having ruined her son’s cake, but she wasn’t.

After that, she went on to work at the chicken plant, bagging giblets. I stayed on at the bakery until I retired. Every now and then I’ll get the piping kit out for old time’s sake, but my arthritis keeps me from doing too much. Carl’s got kids of his own now. My kids all upped and moved away. Charlie, the youngest, always remembers me on Mother’s Day.

Creative Cake Decorating, Better Homes and Gardens, 1983

Also from this book: Pablo The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Will no one rid me of this turbulent cake?

Common Cored

The Common Core Standards Initiative, adopted in many states in the last decade, has been criticized for turning formerly simple and well-known approaches to math that have been employed for centuries into Kafkaesque problems whose very existence causes mental anguish among not just the poor students subject to mastering them, but to their hapless parents as well.

Instead of performing a simple arithmetic task — subtraction, say — by subtracting the smaller number from the larger one, students now have to break the numbers up into chunks and draw squares and put them all back together again to produce the answer. It takes far longer, defies logic, and is more likely to result in a wrong answer.

14? Right?

I can speak from personal experience; my fifth-grader, who has a natural affinity for math, can often be found in tears when confronted by the need to do his homework the way the teacher insists, rather than just getting the right answers. I cannot explain to him why he needs to do this. I shrug and we do the problems the old-school way.

In the spirit of the Common Core, I would like to illustrate this with a Glazed Ham Ring from 1969.

Imagine the math problem as a pig. A delicious pig. Think of all the lovely ways you could eat this pig: pork chops; ham; bacon; barbecued ribs; slow roasted shoulder; pulled pork sandwich; sausages; crackling. All are relatively simple in that the pig is broken down into various parts and cooked, and then served. The parts still look like they came from an animal on the serving platter, and indeed, on your plate.

Now imagine taking some of this wonderful pig and grinding some of it into a pink mush. Mix the mush with bread, eggs, and onion. Take this mush and form it into a ring mold. Invert the oiled mold onto a baking tray and bake. Afterwards, cover it in a bright red glaze, and fill the hole in the middle with a mixture of half-peeled potatoes, peas, and cream. Serve with red apples and a generous helping of parsley.

Write a word problem for this pig that takes into account having turned all the ingredients for this dish into spheres. Then, solve the problem, showing your work. Use a #2 pencil.

Congratulations: according to the Common Core, you are now ready to apply your knowledge in the workplace.

Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Kitchen Nightmares

SOS!

 

The asparagus spears stared at us intently from their jelly cocoon as we made small talk and sipped aperitifs. I tried to pay attention to the man sitting next to me, who was relating an anecdote about his misbegotten youth — likely the same anecdote he’d been using on unsuspecting dinner table partners for years — perhaps since his youth, which was, it was obvious, at some time in the distant past of the last century.

The asparagus seemed to want to make telepathic contact, to transmit an SOS directly to my brain. Help, they cried piteously. Been boiled. I think my friend is ill. Stuck in aspic. Can’t move.

Something something…Ration books and the War. Something something…Well, you’ll never guess what happened next…Three shillings ha’ppenny.

Save us, they silently screamed. I felt the same way.

I attempted to return their desperate communiqué. Dilemma noted, I thought. Will attempt rescue soon.

The more I stole glances their way, the less they looked like asparagus, and more like the disembodied tentacles of some awful sea creature, or else the severed penises of some exotic South American mammal.

Our hostess clinked her glass, bringing me out of my reverie, and temporarily releasing me from the verbal assault of my gentleman admirer. It was time to begin. I sat, fork poised over the perfectly smooth, glistening surface of my appetizer, aware that every second delayed the heroic rescue I was about to perform.

What if, once freed, the asparagus leaped up from their gelatinous prison, gasping for air and hell-bent on exacting revenge? They stared at me, and I stared back. It was the moment of truth.

“Go on,” I said to my ancient paramour. “I believe we were rudely interrupted.”

Salad Book, Lane Books, 1966