It’s Time (Travel) For Tims

Tim Hortons is advertising retro donuts. That is, they're bringing back some of the old donut styles, for a limited time only.

On the one hand, that's nice. I miss dutchies too. On the other hand, this relates to a big part of why public opinion has turned against them in recent years: the selection is nowhere near what it used to be - it seems like every time you go in, there's one less thing on the menu. On the other hand, there will be some bizarre item that wasn’t there last time and won’t be there next time. These retro donuts are just the latest in the dizzying sequence of temporary specials.

I assume their strategy of recent years is to reduce the selection of available products to the bare minimum for efficiency's sake. They then compensate for the lack of variety by having the endless stream of temporary features. Hopefully you won't notice the jelly Timbits are gone if you're distracted by the new Chili Lasagne Bowls. But now the irony is that they're distracting us from the poor selection with the old selection.

I can understand why a company would want to restore some of what customers used to like about them. But being a temporary feature, it feels like a bit of a tease. “Hey remember how great it was when we had a wide variety of products? And you used to like us, not just tolerate us? That was pretty nice. Anyway, time's up! Next month’s feature is Chipotle Omelette Balls. Enjoy!”

I'm trying to imagine which other Canadian companies could restore what people used to like about them. Hudson Bay has already been having occasional pop-up Zellers stores, which is a similarly odd strategy of acknowledging what people used to like about the company, but without actually committing to it. I also remember Muchmusic had a daily retro video show a few years back, but even that’s gone now. Also, there’s quite a few companies like Sears where I’d say, it would be great if they’d go back to existing.

So enjoy the retro donuts while you can, and eat as many as your arteries will allow. If they sell well, maybe they’ll make a return, soon, and bring some of the extinct Timbit varieties with them. Until then, enjoy the Tuscan Sausage Dumplings.

Outback II: Electric Bugaboo

When the Outback Steakhouse started to get big, with its pseudo-Australian stylings, I wondered what a Canadian version of that would look like. And now I’ve stumbled across the fact that there was, indeed, an American chain of Canadian-themed steakhouses.

Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse appears to have been limited to the North East, but there were quite a few of them. The interiors modelled on a Canadian lodge, with log-cabin stylings. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive the Great Recession, so it’s nothing but memories and grainy YouTube videos now.

But wait, it wasn’t just Canadian symbols applied to the Outback formula, it was also a mashup with Chuck-E-Cheese. It had wall-mounted animal heads that spoke with animatronics, and a tree that would give you nuggets of Canadian trivia.

I’m kind of dumbfounded by all this. Partly that it existed at all, and partly that it isn't legendary in Canada. Usually we're obsessed with how Americans see us, and here's this very concrete artifact of their collective mental picture. You’d think this would be a part of our collective lore right up there with that car with skis on the roof and American plates that we all remember seeing that one time.

Bugaboo Creek was founded in the early nineties, and my family did a road trip through New England in the late-eighties, so we just missed it. I can’t imagine the shock we would have had if we had driven through a New Hampshire tourist-town, down that street with all the family restaurants on it, and seen this in between the Denny’s and the Ponderosa. I’m sure we would have run screaming as soon as the moose over our table started talking.

But surely some Canadians saw it — it’s not like it was sequestered in Nebraska, or some other part of the U.S. that Canadians are unlikely to go. You’d think some New Brunswicker looking for cheap beer and cigarettes in Maine would have wandered into the Bugaboo Creek in Bangor. He tells his friends, and the next thing you know, Rick Mercer is interviewing that tree for a “Talking To Americans” segment.

But when I Googled Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, all I could find — in between pages on the real-life Bugaboo Provincial Park in British Columbia — were the reminiscences of Americans who missed going there, or were freaked out by the robots, or a bit of both. Even when I specifically Googled “what Canadians thought of Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse” I couldn’t find anything.

There are still a few menus left on line, but they’re just standard steakhouse stuff. Except for a few moose and snowbird references in the names, there was nothing to distinguish it. There were none of the bad Canadian puns I was hoping for. “Prime (Minister) Rib?” “Fill-Eh Mignon?” “Sir John A. Loin?” Also, no actual Canadian stuff like poutine or Nanaimo bars or milk served in bags. So in the end it’s a half-pound nothingburger, not arousing Canada’s indignation or appreciation. Plus creepy robots.

We All Live In One Of Fifteen Submarines

Subway is really emphasizing new, pre-designed subs, instead of their traditional you-choose-the-toppings approach. You walk in, look at the list of "Subway Series" selections, hold up the line for ten minutes while you read through all the possibilities, then pick a number and order it. And then remember that you still have to choose a size and bread type. The point is, it's different from the way it always has been, where you select every individual thing that goes on your sub. It's the biggest change since they did away with the U-gouge bun slicing.

First up, I'm not really sure why. The ads I've seen are playing up the convenience of just giving a number and letting the sandwich artist do their thing. But I wonder if that was really a big problem for Subway. The choosing of the toppings has never been real time-consuming or mentally-taxing.

The other odd part of this is that the individual Subway restaurants don't seem too keen on the change. The first time I tried ordering numerically, the employee had to turn and look at the menu to know which sub I meant. The second time (at a different location) she rolled her eyes a little when I gave the number — and she was wearing a t-shirt that said, just order by the number. And every time I've gone with one of the designed subs, they nevertheless keep asking what I want on it, no matter how many times I assure them I just want the standard construction. Oh, and apparently, they call them the "recommended" toppings. They didn't like it so much when I called them "standard" like I was ordering a Buick Riviera.

Of course, this isn't totally new, this format of preset subs which I guess you can change if you really insist. That's what the pretenders to the sub throne Firehouse and Jersey Mike's have done. But hey, the number one in the market copying their competitors, throwing away the formula that made them successful in the first place? It has a New Coke stench to me. 

And now that I think about it, people have speculated that New Coke was a cover to switch from cane sugar to the cheaper corn syrup. And I have noticed that one commonality of the numbered subs is that the prices have crept up. So I wonder if this is a bit of corporate sleight-of-hand to hide higher prices. Unfortunately, a lot of companies think that raising the prices and moving up-market and overusing words like “premium” is an easy way to greater profits. But the fact is that it's quite difficult to convince the public that you have become a higher-price-higher-quality option, and not just the same cheap company with higher prices. I don't think the public's perception of Subway meshes with the idea of pricey designer food.

Mmmall Mmmemoirs

Today I was looking through news headlines and I was surprised to see a Toronto Star headline, "The Rise and Fall of the 90's Muffin." That intrigued me, because it combines two favourites of mine (the 90's and muffins, that is; not so keen on rise-and-falls.)

It turns out to be the story of the MMMuffins chain. If your personal journey through time and space hasn't taken you near that name, I'll tell you that they were a chain of muffin shops, predominantly in malls, in Canada, through the 80's and 90's. If you haven't heard of them, I'm sure you can think of a similar example of a chain that used to be ubiquitous but is now gone.

The chain is, surprisingly, not completely out of business: according to their website, they have precisely two locations left, one in Toronto, one in Montreal. Also strange about that: they have a website. It looks kind of weird to see an older name with "www." & ".com" around it. Just watch:

www.k-tel.com

www.fotomat.com

www.pan-am.com

www.americanmotors.com/gremlin

www.ptl.org

www.coleco.com/cabbagepatch

And that leads to my realization: stores can come and go without you even noticing. They're sort of like TV commercials. Sometimes I'll be watching something recorded a few months ago and I'll catch one of the commercials and be like, wow, where did you go? You were everywhere and then, boom, nothing. And I didn't even notice.

It's hard to believe, but entire store chains can disappear from consciousness, like MMMuffins. I'm pretty sure that at least once in the last twenty years, I asked myself, "hey, what ever happened to that MMMuffins place?" But on the other hand, I didn't even notice The It Store was gone until a few years back when I saw it on a Facebook meme of stores that have disappeared. They used to be a regular mall feature, now they're so forgotten they don't even have a Wikipedia entry.

So let's spare a thought for some of the chains that have disappeared unceremoniously from our malls:

Randy River

Northern Elements/Getaway

Big Steel Man

Bata

Thrifty's

Cotton Ginny

Coconut Joe

Lewiscraft

Leasure World

Direct Film

Smart Set

Chuck Berry

You’ve probably heard that tomatoes are technically fruits. Perhaps you’ve also heard the saying that knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. And that brings up an important point: there’s a limitation to these technical classifications.

It gets much worse the more you look at these terms. Technically, a berry is “a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary.” Yes, plants have ovaries, try not to think about that right now, there are bigger things to worry about. So the following are not berries:
Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

...but the following are:
Oranges, tomatoes, bananas, eggplants, grapes, kiwis, avocados, pumpkins, watermelons

Vegetables are plants, and so are herbs. The only difference is that herbs are just to taste, rather than a main ingredient. But basil is usually a herb, but pesto isn’t pesto without basil, so does that make it a vegetable. Or a part-time vegetable?

This is turning into one of those pedantic, meaningless, non-trivia pieces of trivial information like the names of groups of animals. I (and others) argued that if no one uses the term, then the term doesn’t really have meaning.

I’m not one of those people who insists that scientific classifications have to conform to popular ideas. (Sorry Pluto, I’m with Neil Degrase Tyson on this one.) And it’s fine when we try to put some scientific rigour behind common definitions, only to find that there are exceptions we didn’t previously think of. I will still correct you if you try to call whales or dolphins, “fish.”

But if the scientific definition turns out to have nothing at all to do with the popular definition, then it’s time to admit that we need new words. How about we define "berry" as, "sort of fruit-like, but smaller." And then the scientific concept that they're calling "berry" — even though it isn't — can be something else; I don't know, name it after a great berry scientist or something.

Can't Get Enough Of That Overthinking Commercials

Today at the grocery store, I happened to see a box of Sugar Crisp cereal, with its cartoon bear mascot, Sugar Bear. That bear has been around forever; I remember him trying to sell my generation cereal, now he's back for our kids.

I found him a little confusing as a child. I remember he started off as a normal anthropomorphic bear. Then they introduced the idea that eating Sugar Crisp made him into some sort of super bear. Okay, fine, we have the transforming hero trope. Even we youngsters had been introduced to that through Popeye. In Popeye's case, it was based on eating nutritious food, while Sugar Bear just had some sort of epic sugar high.

But at some point they seemed to forgo the transformation concept, and just had Sugar Bear be super powerful all the time. That seemed like a cheat. Even back then, I could see that the trade-off of this trope is that the hero has powers to defeat his foes, but also had normal human (or ursine) weakness. You can't just discard that and have him be some sort of all-powerful ultrabear who, for some reason, only battles enemies that threaten our cereal supply.

I wasn't sure if I remembered all this correctly - it's not like I actually ate Sugar Crisp. I prefered Cheerios, which only had that bee in the ads. He didn't introduce challenges to story-construction theories; his only problem was being short a couple of limbs. But it hit me: this over-formalized analysis of pop culture that used to just exist in my head, but now I often see it in another place too: Wikipedia. So I looked it up there, and sure enough, it very earnestly explained that in the mid-to-late 1980's, the super bear concept was dropped for a bear that simply had a "vitamin-packed punch."

Also, it turns out that it's only here in Canada that it's still called Sugar Crisp. It's become "Golden Crisp" in the U.S. to avoid association with sugar. But apparantly we don't worry about that. I'm not sure what that says about our respective countries.

I'll Gladly Text You Tuesday For A Cheeseburger Today

There's been a furor about the emojis representing cheeseburgers. Here are the Apple and Google versions, courtesy of Emojipedia

The Apple version shows the more traditional arrangement of cheese on the patty, while Google has the cheese under the patty. All other companies that provide emojis with their phones or apps also have the cheese on top.

So here's how it played out:

SOCIAL MEDIA: Can you believe the Google cheeseburger emoji has the cheese on the bottom? That's so weird!

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Get a load of this controversy over the cheeseburger emojis online! That would make a great filler story if we're having trouble filling...What's that? Mueller's started filling charges? Drop the cheeseburgers, we finally have real news!

FOX NEWS: Get a load of this controversy over the cheeseburger emojis online! That would make a great filler story if we're having trouble filling...What's that? Mueller's started filling charges? Get those cheeseburgers on the air! We need distraction, stat!

THE DAILY SHOW, COLBERT, SETH MEYERS, JIM JEFFERIES, ETC.: Can you believe that while the rest of the media was reporting on the Trump Administration going down in flames, Fox news was reporting on controversy over cheeseburger emojis? Why would they think that's important. But seriously, Google's all wrong, everyone knows the cheese goes on top.

ME: That Google burger with the cheese on the bottom looks familiar. <Looks up pictures of the most popular burger at the most popular burger chain>

Just as I thought.

Pineapple Express

This weekend we got news that the inventor of Hawaiian pizza has died. You may know - or may have just guessed - that Hawaiian pizza is not actually Hawaiian. In fact, it's not even popular in Hawaii.

I think I heard somewhere that Hawaiian pizza is originally Canadian. But I definitely didn't know that it was from Chatham of all places. So score one for small-town Ontario. It's good to know that between this and Crokinole we've made a lasting mark, of some sort.

It's also interesting that the inventor was of neither Italian or Hawaiian origin, but rather Greek. So a Greek immigrant running an Italian restaurant naming something after a place in the U.S. is either the most Canadian thing ever, or an epic incident of cultural appropriation.

Mostly though, I have to ask, can we please use this moment to end the tiresome argument about pineapples on pizza? Yes, I know, it's supposed to be one of those silly time-wasters where we have passionate discussions of something that doesn't really matter, like over-the-top vs. down-the-wall toilet paper. But this one is just annoying because:

• Hawaiian pizza has been around since the sixties, it's too late now. Watching people in their forties suddenly feigning disgust at a food that's been around their entire lives just sounds forced. It's not like we don't have new foods to get angry about. I mean, who decided salt and caramel have to go together? In what world is caramel not good enough on its own? Or not bad enough for you?
• It goes against the democratic appeal of pizza. As the ultimate personalizable food, I don't really care what disgusting things other people are putting on their pizza. I know someone in the world loves to defile their pizza with brussels sprouts, but I'm okay with that. I disapprove of their pizza, but I will defend to the death their right to eat it.
• Pineapple is constantly dropping down the list of unconventional pizza toppings. Look at Canada's other unconventional pizza institution named after an unrelated part of the U.S.: Boston Pizza. Have you looked at their menu? You can get perogy pizza with potatoes and sour cream on it; how is that not a bigger abomination?

Hal, Tell Them About Doritos

Burger King got into the news recently because of a clever but dickish ad. The ad has someone saying, "OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?" As you may know, "OK Google" is the phrase used to get the attention of Google-based products, like Android phones (For you Apple types, it's the equivalent of addressing a question to Siri.)

Of course, that means that any Google products in hearing range will be activated, and go to a page on the Whopper. Google responded by changing the programming to recognize that particular sound clip and not respond to it. And, just to underline that Burger King is subversive/tone-deaf, they re-recorded the clip to get around Google's response.

In case you're wondering, yes, it is possible to change the phrase to something else on your Google products, so this won't happen. I'm reminded that in the sci-fi book, Old Man's War, there are personal assistants built into people's heads, and most people find it so intrusive that they choose profane names to address it with. That would solve your problem: just use one of the words you can't say in TV.

It seems to me that there's a learning-curve for everyone when it comes to new technology and media, where we all learn about what is going to be considered acceptable. In the early World Wide Web, there was a company - I think it was Pepsi - who programmed their web page to record the e-mail address of everyone who came to the site. Today, it's hard to believe that a company wouldn't know that would blow up in their face, or that we were so naive about privacy that a Web browser would give out your info to whoever asked. When people found out, there were complaints, they stopped the e-mail trawl.

But the other similarity in these two incidents is that it came from exactly who you would expect it from. For all their imperfections, it's hard to imagine McDonald's pushing the limits of acceptable use of technology like this. But Burger King and Pepsi are both playing the role of the brash upstart in their business duels. Of course they'd be the one to push the limits too far. Coke isn't going to offend everyone by trying to appeal to woke youngsters, but Pepsi would. In the book, Infinite Jest, where years are named after their sponsors, it's mentioned that the first such year was the Year of the Whopper. And that made total sense; of course they were the first ones to buy a year. They always will be.

Mainly Because Of The Meat

My local supermarket has a small section of the meat case reserved for halal meat. Halal, as you may know, is the Islamic seal of approval that's sort of their equivalent of kosher, though I'm Muslims and Jews alike would have a problem with my saying that.

I just read about a far-right politician in Sweden who also has a problem with halal food. He claimed that eating halal meat makes you Muslim. That comes as news to most people, including most Muslims, who were under the impression that there was a little more to their religion than that. The incident happened a couple of years ago, but somehow with the backlog of neo-Nazi Islamaphobia I'm only finding out about it now.

It may seem like the garden-variety xenophobia, but it got me thinking about how many of us have become Muslims without knowing it. I don't know that I've ever knowingly eaten halal meat, but I assume I have unknowingly. I mean, at least half the food outlets here in downtown Kitchener are shawarma places now. I've never checked, but I'm assuming shawarma from a restaurant run by people from the Middle East would be halal. So there you go, the whole city has been converted.

And I remember going to an Egyptian restaurant when I was in university. That means I've been Muslim for most of my life now. Wow, I am really behind on my prayers. And I have to plan a trip to Mecca. They don't normally allow non-Muslims into the city, but apparently I just have to show them a receipt from the pita place down the street.

But it gets weirder when you realize that logically, this has to work with kosher products too. Lots of foods are kosher: Coca-Cola, for instance. So a huge portion of the world's population are unknowingly Jewish. And many people - myself included - are both Jewish and Muslim. So now we all have no choice but to get along with each other. Thanks, crazy Swedish politician.

Tso Long And Thanks For All The Chicken

There's a Tums ad running where a guy finishes a meal at a Chinese restaurant, then receives a declaration of war from General Tso, who - in the form of some sort of meatball avatar - proceeds to pelt him with chicken pieces. It's a reasonably funny ad, even though it's likely a historical abomination.

Okay, I looked it up, and yes, General Tso was a real person. Though at least General Tso's Chicken did originate in Taiwan, which makes it more authentic than much Westernized Chinese food.

But speaking of General Tso Chicken, it also brings up a point I've wanted to make for a while now: For the last time, people: It's General Tso, not General Tao.

You could understand if it was a simple misspelling or something, but this is a rather awkward misremembering in which people confuse two of the few Chinese things they've heard of. Worse, Tao is a religious concept, so it's a particularly touchy thing to confuse. Imagine that Apple Crisp became popular in China, but they couldn't remember the word "crisp," so they started calling it, "Apple Christ."

What's especially embarrassing, this seems to be a largely Canadian problem. Americans get the name right. But here in Canada, companies like President's Choice put "Tao" on their packaging. Even Chinese restaurants give in and use the wrong name. So let's take this ad as proof we need to change; there's no way we can get out-ethnic-diversitied by Tums.

Burger Time With A Computer

When I was young I - like many children - didn't like mixing foods. One way that manifested itself was that I preferred my hamburgers plain, no mustard, ketchup, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Well actually, I was okay with cheese.

Even though that's usual for kids, it caused some problems. For instance, my parents liked to put onions in the hamburger patties. I'm not sure why, I guess they saw it in a magazine it something. But I hated it. A hamburger is the simplest food there is, so adding in something I didn't really like just made it unappetizing. Of course - as with so many things parents do - I later realized it was actually not too bad an idea.

The other casualty of my dislike for mixed foods was McDonalds. Most kids love McDonalds as much as pop-culture programs them to. But their assembly-line burgers with their blur of condiments were just gross to me. Sure, over time I got used to food with a variety of flavours. Now I have relatively few foods that I hate, and no alergies or religious restrictions, so I don't really think about the ingredients of anything I order. If I order a fast food burger, it doesn't even occur to me to hold any toppings.

Anyway, it's taken a while, but here's how far I've come: Today I used McDonalds' custom burger kiosk. And there were several levels of irony.

• McDonalds, that paragon of standardization, is betting their future on personalization
• I get to choose my topings at McDonalds, 40 years after I could have used the opportunity
• Given the choice, I put lots of weird stuff on it
• I voluntarily added onions.

It was kind of fun, bashing pictures of food on the touchscreen, trying hard to look like I know what I'm doing. But more than anything, it was one of rare points when I honestly felt like I'm living in the future. Yeah, I'm using a computer to order at McDonalds; I'm George Jetson. That's why it seems futuristic. So many of the really mind-blowing changes in our society are totally new concepts, rather than a modern spin on old things. Like you never saw Facebook in science fiction. It never occured to anyone because it's not like anything that was around then. But ordering fast food is something that's been done for decades; doing it in a gratuitously-modern way is just how I envisioned the future.

The process was fairly easy. Though in retrospect, I would have expected an easier interface from McDonalds. It also wasn't as superfast efficient as you would expect from a collaboration between technology and the Western service economy. For instance, the machine had to tell me to get a locator beacon from the counter. (Okay, I'm not sure if that's what their called; I mean the thing that identifies who you are and where your table is.) I have to ask at the counter? That cancels the system's two biggest benefits: efficiency and not talking to people.

When the burger was delivered, it came on a rustic cutting board, with the fries in a precious little deep-fryer basket. It was like what you'd expect in a chain restaurant where you have to chose between sitting at the bar or grill. But on closer inspection, the cutting board was plastic. Oh, McDonalds, even in the future, you can't help but be McDonaldsy.

This is an interesting concept, and it could change how fast food works. I've always been interested in how McDonalds organizes itself for efficiency. At the tiny McDonalds counter we used to have in downtown Kitchener, you had a great opportunity to see how everything works, because most of the food preparation happened within ten feet of the counter. So you see them making the burger patties dozens at a time, watch the worker with the condiment gun firing at each open faced bun. And you see how they try to make the maximum number of offerings from the fewest possible basic ingredients.

But now, all they have to do is have the basic ingredients available, and leave it to the customers to figure out what things they want to create out of them. So maybe one day they won't bother trying to make up standard sandwiches. Instead of researching what people want and marketing it, they'll just concentrate on getting those basic building blocks to the restaurants as cheaply as possible.

(Only after typing "building blocks" did I realize they have created Lego-as-food.)

But I'm not sure that it's going to work out they way they intended. See, I never saw anyone else getting their custom burger. Sure, I was there well after the lunch rush (I wanted as few people as possible to watch me blunder through the process.) But there were still a lot of people going through, and many were using the self-serve kiosk, but it was mostly to order from the standard menu. So maybe this personalized, lots-of-choice isn't what people want from McDonalds.

They've been trying to cater to a sophisticated clientelle for a while. They're pushing coffee, they made nicer interiors, and suddenly all their restaurants look like they were designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright fanboy. (Speaking of which, if I have any readers in Pennsylvania, could you check on Fallingwater and ensure that it hasn't been turned into a Mcdonalds.) But I don't know if any of this has really changed the way people think about Mcdonalds. It's true that as I left after my meal, I noticed there was a Ferrari in the parking lot, which has to be a first. But mostly it was just people coming in and casually ordering standardized food, same as it ever was.

So perhaps they should embrace the way we see them. For instance, instead of the cheesy cutting board, here's my idea: develop a machine that prints out the burger containers and assembles them on the premises; you can upload your own designs, so your burger comes in a traditional container, but a custom one. That way, you're getting the fast food experience, but it's a modern take on it.

A Big Ball Of Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey, Chickeny-Wickeny Stuff

If, like me, you enjoy trivia, you've probably seen a quiz or Internet listicle about which brand personnas were real people (Chef Boyardee, Duncan Hines) and which ones are made up (Betty Crocker, Mrs. Butterworth.) One that might surprise people is Colonel Sanders, of KFC fame, who was a real person. People older than me will remember seeing him in commercials, but people my age and under will only have seen him as a cartoon caricature, and probably assume he was made up just like Ronald McDonald.

I'm not old enough to remember him in ads, but his death in 1980 is one of the earliest news stories I can remember. That may not have been the biggest story back then, but for many kids, it was like being told that Santa was dead, so teachers had to patiently explain it to us. So that's why I cringe a little when I see the latest way that KFC has employed his image. Not that I have any connection to him - I can't even remember the last time I ate at KFC - but I do realize that it's an actual person that they're dealing with.

We've seen a few other people start the transition from human company founders and pitchmen to cartoon symbol: Orville Redenbacher and Wendy's Dave Thomas come to mind. I assume they wouldn't mind too much, since they were symbols of their brands in life, and creating a character to be a corporate figurehead. But even business leaders that seem more serious might be in a commercial down the road. A few years ago, Gottlieb Daimler showed up in a Mercedes ad, as a stilted way of introducing the new corporate slogan.

That ad had me imagining a future depiction of Bill Gates shown slaving over the original Edlin code, and saying the new slogan that will carry Microsoft into the 22nd century. Of course, that's ridiculous. Microsoft won't be in business that long. Though arguably Steve Jobs' public perception is about as exaggerated as any of these corpse corporate mascots, so maybe he's on his way to that fate.

But even if today's business superstars live on as corporate mascots, they'll still be playing catch-up to Colonel Sanders, who is now in his own comic book. Upon hearing about this, I assumed that it would be some cheesy corporate promotion that they would perhaps give out with whatever KFC calls it's Happy Meals. But no, it's an actual comic from DC, built around parallel Colonels from parallel universes. It's hard to tell what's going on from a quick glance, but they apparently have Russian Colonel, Stone Colonel, Sexy Colonel and Actual-Chicken Colonel.

I think it's safe to say this is a completely new level in the shift from person to symbol. On the one hand, it's nice to see a major brand having some fun with their mascot instead of taking themselves too seriously. But it's also weird to think that this cultural force was launched because some guy had a really good chicken recipe.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye

I love pizza. I don't just love pizza itself, I love the idea of pizza. It's unpretentious, something we all have in common, and yet it's infinitely customizable. It's universal and individualistic at the same time. Also, it's become enough a part of Western culture that elites can't dismiss it as worthless pablum of the great unwashed, the way they might for hamburgers. But in the other hand, pizza's individuality defuses the one-upmanship that usually poisons food discussion: You may encounter some self-righteous foodie who insists that the best pizza is from Guido's at 9th and Broadway, and anything less is inedible cardboard. But you can always say you prefer deep-dish pizza; the foodie will be infuriated, but you'll have diffused his power of culinary elitism over you.

What's interesting is, I'm just starting to see how many types of pizza there are, even if we restrict it to this continent. Lots of people have heard of Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, but I was intrigued to find that is not the only kind of pizza that's unique to an American region. Detroit (deep-dish, rectangular, crispy cheese), St. Louis (thin crust, local cheese) New Haven (thin crust, bitter cheese, no sauce), Colorado (lots of toppings, extra thick rim) and even Iowa/Illinois's Quad Cities (nutty-crust, spicy sauce) have their own styles.

I recently read that the Detroit style of pizza is actually related to the auto industry. It's rectangular because it's made on a kind of tray that was originally intended for holding spare parts in car factories. And because it's in a tray, rather than on a sheet, the toppings can go right to the edge, allowing the cheese to get crispy.

And that leads to the really mind-blowing part: in the last few years, the Little Caesar's chain has started selling a square deep-dish pizza with crispy-edge cheese. Well you might assume that was just something they made up, but no, it's based on Detroit-style pizza, since Little Caesar's is from Detroit. Those weird ads with the creepy seventies-style disembodied heads? They're actually introducing customers to authentic Americana.

This all leads back to my never-ending quest to get unique and slightly weird things for Canada in general, and Kitchener-Waterloo in particular. First off, could Canada get its own pizza? Yes, many restaurants and grocery stores have "Canadian" pizza, but that usually just means regular pizza with bacon. Further research reveals that Nova Scotia is way ahead of us on this: Halifax has Donair Pizza (donair meat and sauce on pizza crust) and Pictou County, on the north side of the province has its own unique style (with a "brown" sauce made with a variety of vegetables, and thick pepperoni.) These are now spreading slowly through the country with emigrating Nova Scotians, though mostly in places where there's a critical mass of expats to support a business (like in Toronto or Fort McMurray.) So one day these pizzas could be as common as poutine. It's facinating to see Canada create a culture, even if it is at a glacial pace. Come back in a few centuries and we might have our own identity.

And KW? I can't find any pizza that's particular to here, but we could do our usual thing of adopting German stuff. They have a pizza-like bread called Flammkuchen. I also searched for Mennonite pizza, but that doesn't seem to be a thing. Surely in a city with two universities, an influx of different cultures, and precocious downtown eateries looking to make a name for themselves, we can come up with something unique.

Sub(stantial Con)fusion

Many people have observed that whenever someone starts a sentence with, "This isn't racist, but..." then you know that the rest of the sentence is going to be totally racist. But I'm hoping to be the first person to start a sentence that way and not be racist. Here it goes:

This isn't racist, but I've noticed that a lot of Subway® franchises are run by people of Indian heritage, or elsewhere in Southern Asia. What's up with that? Again, to emphasize: not racist, since I have no problem with anyone running a Subway. I'm just curious, since it seems surprising.

Of course, it's common for immigrants to set up a restaurant; it makes sense, since you come to a new land, and you don't know much about the customs and traditions. So you take advantage of what you do know, which is your own culture. That's a win-win, because they get established in their new home, and everyone around them gets to experience a new culture. But subs? Don't get me wrong; I enjoy both Subway and Indian food. But you've got to admit that on the spectrum of human food, they're at opposite ends. So I'm wondering how people say, "Let's introduce people to our marvelous culinary culture, with its elaborate language of spices... Nah, on second thought, let's make sandwiches with cold cuts."

I had always hoped this would lead to Indian influence in the subs, and at last, we have a butter chicken sub. So I rushed out and bought one. But I hadn't considered that of course this means I'm likely ordering it from someone intimately familiar with Indian culture, so I'm going to look like the Ignorant White Cultural Appropriator. Or at the very least, I'm going to break her heart when she realizes my sandwich will be such a mangled version of her culture. I mean, what appropriate toppings can you choose for a butter chicken sub out of what's available at Subway? You can't just put mayo on it. Raita isn't available as a sauce, so I chose Ranch dressing as the closest thing, and then felt very guilty over it (though it did go surprisingly well; I recommend it.) So it was weird, but we survived, both I and the Indian Subcontinent. I'll now feel confident ordering the butter chicken sub in the future, whoever makes it.
 
However it's become obvious that this is the direction that popular food is taking, where each culture is represented by one dish which becomes internationally famous. Then we think of that food as being the representative of its entire culinary culture. Don't sample all of Thai food, just try Pad Thai. And then we pick and choose combinations of those things and create new cosmopolitan abominations. For India, the dish is butter chicken. Sorry vindaloo, you're out of luck. For Canada, poutine is emerging as our representative. Want to put them together? Bam! There you go.

Requiem For A McDonald's

Our local McDonald's is closing. Of course, this being downtown Kitchener, it's not a conventional McDonald's; it's in Market Square. That's an urban mall that has its own depressing story, but suffice to say it's yet another Canadian downtown mall that hasn't done well in recent decades. It's largely empty, even though most of it has been repurposed for other uses.

But thanks to office workers' lunch needs, the second floor food court has hung on to life, much longer than it has any right to. There are local food vendors that have come and gone, a Tim Hortons that was replaced by a Subway, and a Chinese place that I don't think anyone has noticed isn't Manchu Wok. But the McDonald's has been consistently popular.

As I say, it's not an ordinary McDonald's. For one thing, the mall's attempt to reinvent itself has meant that this is one of the few fast food places directly outside a health club.  (I've always wondered which of them benefits from that arrangement.) And being a mere counter, it doesn't even carry the full menu. Really, I think the whole place would fit in the ball pit at a suburban McDonald's Play Place.

But it's also unusual in its clientele. In an urban setting, the average wealth of the customers is probably a lot lower than your average. I've noticed that orders tend to be pretty small, many go for the free refills, and people pick and choose from the menu looking to stretch their cash. That gets pushed in your face when you're waiting for your order, and realizing customers have become experts in maximizing value.

Manager: I have three double cheeseburgers and an apple pie! Here you go sir. Who else is still waiting for their order? You sir, what are you waiting for?
Me: A Big Mac combo
Manager, to kitchen: Do we have a Big Mac meal for Mr. Big Spender here?

I guess that's a big part of why it's closing. Supposedly fast food places make their money in certain very specific items, like drinks, so I can image this place doesn't make much money. But I do worry about the many people who have been regulars. I know, as a lefty I'm supposed to blame McDonald's for exploiting the poor, but I don't see many locally-owned fair-trade artisan restaurants selling anything you could call a meal for just pocket change.

Badly-Cooked Food For Thought

There's a story going around the Internet about American university students who have been complaining that their cafeteria is guilty of cultural appropriation. It's easy to see how that would get people's attention: many sins are committed in university cafeterias, but cultural appropriation had got to be a new one. Now they'll just need mail-fraud to complete the set.

If you're not familiar with it, cultural appropriation is the idea of taking another culture's symbols and using them for your own purposes. That fashion house that used Inuit designs for their own clothing is a classic example.

The concept is controversial, since it's hard to pin down, and potentially widespread. It's easy to come up with obviously bad examples, but it's also easy to come up with innocent, or even obviously positive things, that an extremist would consider appropriation. If I try to make my own pad thai, it would be hard to claim that as unfair to the people of southeast Asia.

And in this case, it's also hard to accept the students' criticism. Look, I spent longer in university residence than anyone really should, so I definitely wouldn't deny them the right to complain about school food. But, well, that's just the problem: this food is just bad, not disrespectful. And I should point out that I discovered that dorm/residence food is bad not because of the skills of the cooks, but primarily because of the poor supplies they have to make do with. And that just further explains the substandard dishes the students found: the cooks appear to be attempting to diversify, but without access to proper ingredients.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the students know all this, and just came up with the cultural angle because it was the only way they could get the administration to do something about the food. I have to admit that while my first thought about this story was that the students were misguided, my second thought was that I wish I'd thought of that. One particularly memorable bad meal from the residence cafeteria was a curry that somehow came out as bland. That was one of those mind-bendingly bad meals that wasn't just really bad, it was bad in an entirely unexpected way, if not a completely impossible way. If I'd thought of complaining that it was insensitive to students of South-Asian extraction, I might have gained some traction with the bureaucracy.

So no, I don't think there's grounds to believe the university is guilty of cultural appropriation. Just ask the white kids what they think of the school's rubber steaks and you'll see that there are some circumstances where all cultures are equally abused.

Eat Locally, Rant Globally

I have a long history of trying to recycle things. I sorted through the blue boxes in our early recycling program in high school, I tried to get my roommates to recycle in university. Living on my own, I've done everything I can to divert as much waste as possible from the landfill.

So I know just how hard it is to get people to understand what is and isn't recyclable. Many don’t consider that there has to be someone somewhere who sorts everything you put in the blue box. Or they just assume that putting other stuff in there will somehow make it magically become recyclable. Or they have bizarre reasoning, like assuming that if paper is recyclable, then wood is also recyclable.

But now I find myself on the other end of things whenever I eat at a food court in a shopping mall. In a commendable effort to be responsible, they’re introducing recycling. And they’re doing the best they can in an industry - fast food - that doesn’t try to hard to minimize waste.

Having said that, whenever I try to throw things out, I feel like I’m taking a test. There’ll be several categories, like paper and plastic, but then there’s also a “garbage” category. There are pictures to give examples of each category, but the pictures of the garbage also include plastic and paper things, so I’m still confused. What about a straw? I have no idea what kind of plastic that is. And you have cardboard in the paper section, but does that include waxy paper cups? So there I am looking back and forth at the different pictures, nervously grasping my Subway cup, while people line up behind me. I’m sure they’re quietly cursing me, with the final judgement coming when I make a decision and become a terrible person for either adding to the landfill unnecessarily, or for making life harder for some sorter.

The frustrating part of all this is that there’s only so many types of waste at a food court. Waxy drink cups, sandwiches and burgers in paper or foil, paper napkins, plastic cutlery, cardboard boxes, and the segmented plates from the chinese place. So you could just have a photo of everything people are going to throw out, and it will be nice and simple. And I’m sure whoever empties the recycling will be glad to take the photos for you.

Donut Judge

I'm not feeling well, so I won't put pressure on myself to come up with anything particularly insightful.  I'll just observe that Tim Hortons is running its Duelling Donuts contest, where the public submits donut ideas, and celebrities and the public vote on the winners.  What caught my attention is that one of the celebrity judges is electronic musician Deadmau5. 

photo by Octavio Ruiz Cervera from Mexico, Mexico, used by Creative Commons

That seems like an odd combination, even if they are - in their own way - Canadian icons.  And then I had to wonder, did he wear the mouse head to the donut tasting?  How does he eat with that thing on?

Apparently he has a history with Tim's, doing a web series of going there for coffee with music celebrities.  And they thanked him for the publicity by sculpting his logo out of Timbits.  But it occurred to me that there's an association that I hadn't previously seen:

There seems to be a resemblance to that little guy they used to put on the Timbit boxes.  And if memory serves, they were using the Timbit guy in the early eighties, around when Deadmau5 was born, so this could be a baby picture.

Hunting For Answers

I'm still not sure what what to feel about the killing of Cecil the lion. Like many people, I'm not happy about it. But I can't pretend to be a great friend of animals, as a non-vegetarian. That's a debate a lot of people have been having online: vegetarians questioning the integrity of those concerning the death of an animal. I don't have a real good answer for that. I guess it comes down to hunting itself.

I generally don't like the idea of killing animals, but have justified meat-eating to myself on the grounds that it's killing animals for something important and unavoidable: food. I acknowledge that this reasoning is flimsy, since a human can survive without eating meat, even if that's not the natural lifestyle for homo sapiens.

On the other hand, consider activities that are common targets of the animal rights movement: hunting, fur, and cosmetic experimentation. Those are trading animal lives for less-integral, more easily-replaced things. In the issue at hand - hunting - you're trading an animal's life for your own entertainment. That's a proposition I've always had difficulty buying.

In this case, at least some of the anger is that this was a particular lion. People had an attachment to it, so there's extra emotion. But that also begs the question of why we both allow hunting, but also pick out a specific animal as untouchable. After all, it’s hard to say, go ahead and kill any of these animals, just not that one over there.

It's weird how public opinion has turned here. If you watch politics, you see how sometimes a determined minority can hold sway in society. The most obvious example of this is the American gun "debate" (I put it in quotes because really there in no debate) where the enthusiastic and well-organized gun lobby always gets its way, even when it is on the less-popular side of an issue. But it seems like now we could be seeing two of those determined minorities face off: There's a wave of opinion against hunting at the same time, and in the same place, that politicians regularly make a show of going hunting as a way of proving their qualifications.

But a big part of the anger is clearly about the hunter himself. A lot of the coverage of the incident emphasizes that he's a dentist. Some of the anger is, I'm sure, due to widespread hatred of dentists. But I think more of it is the incongruity of a big-game-hunting dentist, and the transparent desperation for masculinity. That just accents the difficulty accepting hunting I mentioned above. This lion appears to have been sacrificed not just for entertainment, but to prove a man's virility. Or, to put it another way, everything we say about the Chinese when they drive an animal to the edge of extinction because they've decided one of its body parts is an aphrodisiac, all applies here too.

Another thing that’s happened recently perhaps explains the anger over Cecil, and that is the demise of Hitchbot, the hitchhiking robot. In a story that reaffirmed everyone’s national stereotypes, the helpless and immobile robot successfully hitchhiked across Canada and Europe, then got destroyed after only a tenth of its journey across the United States. No, I’m not claiming that the loss of a not-even-close-to-sentient robot is the equivalent of a living thing. But it’s the same sort of equation: one person decides that the enjoyment they get out of destroying something outweighs the enjoyment many may get from its continued existence. And that’s where the frustration comes from: it’s a pattern we’ve all seen throughout our lives, and feel unable to prevent.