Klau Kalash!

You asked for it…sticks. A couple stories about things on sticks. First, go rent “So I Married an Axe Murderer.” There’s a great discussion of foods on sticks. And a bagpipe solo. And some great anti-afro redhead sentiment. Why it never got an Oscar nod, I’ll never know.

I once worked with a chef who had an extreme fear of popsicle sticks and mayonnaise. This led to my first experience with mayo popsicles; also to my first experience of a grown man screaming like a little girl at a Backstreet Boys concert.

To me, there’s something great about chewing on a stick after whatever it’s been holding is long gone. You get that latent grape flavor of a long-gone popsicle, the fried aroma of what once was a corn dog. I can’t however, express the same dedication to the fortitude of stick-held food than my friend Jon, who very nearly came to blows over a corn dog’s “wardrobe malfunction” after a night of drinking in Brighton. Jon has never failed a good stick; that night, the stick failed him.

One of the many, many fried foods that has made itself enough of a mainstay of common cuisine here to be featured in the meat cabinet at the local supermarket in the Scotch Egg. A hardboiled egg that’s been covered in sausage meat and deep fried, this is something that would benefit from a stick. Like those blessed Arancinis that were like a small smoldering fire for your mouth on cold Italian days. It would help keep the grease off your hands, and therefore off your ridiculously expensive Italian clothing.

But you’re not in Italy, are you? You’re back in the U.S. of A., where consumerism makes popsicle sticks like manna from heaven, and we can stick them in whatever kind of food we want. Now that’s freedom.

One day you wake up from that sickeningly sweet desire to save money that lures you into the darkest depths of Benny’s, Ocean State Job, or, worst of all, The Christmas Tree Shop. The Christmas Tree Shop is to intelligent Catholics what Foxwoods is to intelligent Mashantuckets: a disgraceful sellout of your culture to the masses. When you get to the cash register, the clerk’s got that look like they’re either counting change in their head, or contemplating how they’re going to kill themselves. And it’s such a misnomer: they don’t sell anything that would pass for a Christmas Tree, besides one that hangs on your car mirror. And you certainly don’t shop there: you suffer. That’s if you even admit to going. They should call it Useless Item Suffering. UIS. Gives me IBS.

Not today. Today, you’re in the back, talking to the 1.99 chalkboard that has the cutest little elves dancing all over it, and you’re about to buy 3, because…well, the elves are talking to you. Also, you’re high. And everyone needs that one thing in their house that makes them a little sick whenever they look at it. For me, chronologically, it was Heathcliff cartoons, my sister, Brussels sprouts, and tequila.

And just as some female linebacker in a sundress larger than the actual sun tries to get her not-so-wee sausage fingers on your elfish hoard, you spy an overlooked box of 10,000 popsicle sticks. And then all you think is about how now, for the next 10,000 times you need to apply ointment to anything, or get drunk enough to make some stupid home-made freezer pops from a Martha Stewart cookbook…well, you’ll be set. You drop the chalkboards, spend a moment watching the “sun” set over the lower shelves as your foe struggles to pick up her new gain, grab the sticks, and run for the door.

Are you nuts? When have you used ten thousand of anything? Those sticks were once a tree that housed those damned chalkboard elves, before they had to sell their images to the Christmas Tree Shop in exchange for a few square feet of space at one of the many, many, many trailer parks in Wareham. Have you ever really looked at how many there are? You’re driving down the strip, and when you look to one side, you catch a glimpse of them through the trees, but you really don’t believe your eyes enough to realize what kind of danger you’re in. Remember when Daniel Day is walking with the English through the field in Last of the Mohicans? Just like that, except replace the Hurons with white trash. You could give one popsicle stick to each trailer in Wareham, and you’d still find yourself running back to that wind milled monstrosity for seconds.

But I’ll give credit where credit’s due. There is in fact one stick that has withstood the test of time, a food focused, stand-alone marvel: the Hoodsie cup. That wood stick tastes good, all by itself! And it’s not all Excalibur’d in the food already…you get to disgrace it as you see fit, on your terms. I have no idea where Hood gets its wood (“Every man wants Hood wood”….a sexually charged marketing scheme for the summertime), but it pairs perfectly with the chemical laden ice cream duo in the cup.