Navel Filled with Icing

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Ooooooo! A navel filled with icing! Sounds racy, doesn't it? Tee hee.

Actually it's more like I'm going to gaze at my navel and write about another favorite food. Most of my legions of readers know that I can't get enough TaB Cola. But there's another junk food staple that rounds out the perfect diet.

Let's talk Tastykake.

Ummmmommmmmommgurgleslurpslurp!

Tastykake is a product of Philadelphia and is distributed in the Mid-Atlantic states as far west as the eastern reaches of Appalachia. So I grew up with Tastykakes, and now I live in Tastykake Central, where they're actually made.

Yesterday I happened to see in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the neighborhood around Eastern State Penitentiary would be staging a campy re-enactment of the storming of the Bastille, using the empty old penitentiary as the Bastille. The highlight of the re-enactment would come after Marie Antoinette intoned, "Let them eat cake," at which point the crowd would be pelted with 2000 Tastykakes. From a three-story rampart on the penitentiary entrance.

This sounded like my cup of tea.

Mr. Johnson and I, daughter The Spare and one of her friends made the trip into Philly for the event. And although it was a hot afternoon, the show was well worth the sweat. When the "queen" (who was swilling real champagne from a bottle) stood upon those high ramparts and said the famous quote the real Marie Antoinette never said, her crew of courtesans began heaving loads and loads of Tastykakes down upon the sizable crowd.

It was rather like the scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where the soldiers pelt invaders with farm animals. You could look up and see packaged pastries falling from the sky in great quantities. They splatted at our feet, on our backs (ouch), and practically into our hands. I do believe Mr. Johnson actually caught one. He has a background in baseball.

This Reign of Tastykake went on for about 15 minutes. And then for ten minutes more, we just lobbed them through the crowd. Then Marie Antoinette was led to the (working) guillotine, and we got to vote on whether or not she should get the mortal whack. Although the crowd stood firmly in favor of quick execution (pelting her with Tastykakes for good measure), she was spared.

Not so the two watermelons used to prove the prowess of the guillotine. Mr. Johnson and I quickly named said watermelons "Rush" and "Cheney," so we felt pretty good about the way that blade made a satisfying whack and carved those melons up good.

We came home with loads of Butterscotch Krimpets, which if you've never had one I think you can buy them online, and they're well worth the $$$$.

You can keep Paris, London, Rome, and all destinations that require overseas travel. What could possibly compare with being pelted by 2000 junk muffins that first were flung high into the air like so many non-combustible fireworks?

Daughter The Heir is out of town right now. When she hears about this adventure she will be very jealous. But by the time she returns, the Tastykakes will all be history, shoved into the maws of those who earned them -- Spare, Mr. Johnson, and self.

I never thought I'd like living near a big city, but if Philadelphia keeps making copies of the Declaration of Independence out of Cheeze-Its and attempting to bean its citizens with packaged pastries, I think I'll have to say that urban life is not all bad.

Leave it to Philly to turn one of France's darkest hours into an opportunity to make bad jokes about George Bush and then pelt people with plastic-wrapped krimpets. My stash is a little banged up, but no matter. The goods survived the plunge, and I'm ready to tuck in. Yummy yum!