A Taste Of The Carolinas

Sorry, 48 other states and District of Columbia, but you can't have one.  Cheerwine Kreme Filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts are hitting the shelves today in approximately 1,000 grocery stores across North and South Carolina.  The only way that this doughnut could be any more North Carolinian would be if two of them were sandwiched around a hunk of barbecue, and a Camel cigarette was placed in the center, birthday-candle style.  These are only going to be available in July.  My wife has balked at the concept, but I will administer a taste test before these disappear from the shelves.  Stay tuned.....

Hillbilly vs. Bigfoot

This will be the grudge match of the century.  I wonder who will win - the hairy beast that lives in the woods or Bigfoot?

I Pity The Fool

The A-Team was once the highlight of my Tuesday evenings.  In elementary school, three of my friends and I formed an authentic schoolyard re-creation of the A-Team.  Our group never fought as soldiers of fortune, though.  We existed really for no other reason than to call one another by our character names: Hannibal, Face, Murdock, and B.A.  The square-jawed blonde kid was Hannibal, because blonde was as close as you could get to gray at age 8. Face was in constant rotation, depending on who was in our good graces at the time, because even as boys, men won't dare admit that one of their own is handsome. By default, the lone black kid in the class was B.A., and yours truly was Murdock, primarily because there wasn't a true-to-life A-Team character that ate too much macaroni & cheese and wore husky jeans.
 
I was a marketer's dream, falling hook, line, and sinker for anything and everything emblazoned with an A-Team logo.  I even had an official A-Team Action Activity Book that consisted mostly of word puzzles.  It seemed a wise purchase for $ 1.95 at the Pinebrook Elementary School book fair, but turned out to be a dud, with puzzles like the one that  instructed me to unscramble the following letters to find the name of an A-Team member - DURMOCK. The book had a picture of the cast on the back of the cheap cardboard cover, and one Saturday, I cut the picture out and took it to the little league baseball field, hoping to convince the younger, more gullible kids that I was indeed a close, personal friend of the A-Team.  Faced with any doubt, I'd simply whip out the picture as proof of this solid relationship.  Certainly the A-Team wouldn't hand out flimsy cardboard headshots to just anyone.  Turns out my gig was up pretty much before it started. A quick-thinking kindergartner called my bluff, noting that my photographic evidence had been snipped a little too crudely around the edges.  Apparently, my wife is right--even then, I lacked attention to detail. I could have gnawed the picture out with my teeth and gotten a cleaner cut.

This weekend, the television series I recall with such nostalgia is being released (2000s style) on the big screen.  I won't be seeing it. Hollywood's penchant for remaking television shows is long standing but never affected me personally until they began tinkering with shows from my generation (i.e., rewriting history and pissing on my childhood memories). 2005's The Dukes Of Hazzard is outright sacrilege.  The real Uncle Jesse has been dead for a while, and I'm sure he was rolling over in his grave when that piece of garbage hit the theaters.  Similarly, I cannot and will not accept that Rampage Jackson, an ultimate fighting goon, is now playing B.A. Baracus. There has always been and will forever be only one B.A. Baracus (rumor has it that the real Mr. T has seen and is not too fond of the remake), just as there is one Luke Duke, and even one Karate Kid.

With precious few exceptions, they got it right the first time.