Daily Archives: April 24, 2020

“I, Betty Crocker.”

​I was born at the age of 42.

Betty’s Favorite “Look”

​Some of you might regard that as a handicap, but at the time I assumed everyone was born fully grown in a corporate test kitchen. In fact, I still think of it as an advantage; like being born with a silver spoon in my hand.

​My parents were industrious and successful advertising icons themselves. Mom was the housewife on the Crispy Cornpads cereal boxes, Dad the cartoon character in the Gillette Safety Razor commercials who always stroked his chin and declared, “Feels smoother, too!” 

​My parents were proud of me from the start and encouraged me to think of myself as more than a mere advertising symbol. Knowing from their own experience how difficult life could be for someone who never had a childhood, adolescence or early adulthood, they arranged for me to play with other celebrities like myself. Thus, I led a very active social life, and still fondly recall those days when the Gerber Baby, the Morton Salt Girl (what a klutz!), the Ivory Snow Mother and myself would stay up till all hours of the night exchanging recipes and baby care advice.

​It’s easy to judge one’s parents by today’s standards, but in truth it was a far different world back then. So, it’s not surprising that my parents wouldn’t allow me to play with Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, or that my father threatened to lock me up in the kitchen if I so much as glanced in the Marlboro Man’s direction.

​Ah, the Marlboro Man! There was a fellow who could turn the head of any woman who spent most of her days on cake mix boxes. But like most things in life, the dream was far more interesting than the reality. Later on, when I had the chance to date Mr. Marlboro, I found him to be dull, insipid and totally lost without his horse. Not only that, there was an aura of stale smoke always hovering around him and fouling his breath. It was all you could do to let your nostrils open for even the smallest intake of smelly, cigarette-reeking air.

​I laugh now to think of my father’s Victorian attitudes, but having worked in men’s magazines his entire career, he had seen too many unsuspecting females whose advertising careers were ruined by associating with the wrong type of commercial characters. So, except for a brief relationship with that boy who kept getting sand kicked in his face in Charles Atlas ads, I was never allowed to go out on dates until the start of the Second World War.

​The war years, with their food shortages and rationing, were lonely years for me, and I recall staring down long empty supermarket aisles waiting for a chance to wave at the Gorton’s Fisherman or Tony the Tiger as they went by. By then, I had developed a line of hot breakfast cereals that put me on the shelf next to the one real love of my life.

​Modesty forbids me to reveal the intimate details of my relationship with the Quaker Oats Quaker — or ‘Quaky’ as we used to call him — but you’ll most likely remember from the fan magazines that we were seen at all the “in” places, dancing till dawn, burying ourselves in confetti, drinking champagne from Buster Brown slippers.

​Sad to say, it was an affair fated for an unhappy ending. Inevitably, gossip about our relationship reached into the corporate headquarters of both our companies, and rulings came down from both mountaintops forbidding fraternization between competing brands. Quaky went into brief seclusion while I was given the first of my “new looks” by my personal illustrator, a total revamp that not only changed my look but my entire personality as well.

​To be honest, with my new personality I suddenly discovered new appetites rising up within me, so that stuffy old icons like Quaky began to have about as much appeal as cold oatmeal. Shocking to say, I began seriously looking around for the kind of relationships my father had always worried about.

​And so, girls, I began to experiment with more exotic spices.

NEXT: “No Kitchen Could Hold Me,” Betty’s honest look back at her “lost years” and her torrid, love-hate relationship with the Pillsbury Doughboy.

MY FUNNY QUARANTINE

“Oy vey!”

My funny quarantine,
Sad, frightened quarantine,
You make me smile

With each swipe  

Of your alcohol wipe,
Your actions

Win my heart 

As both do our part,

You my neurotic

Shut-in,

Me, your lockdown

Champion,

How quickly to the store

I can dart,

Face masked in

Snoopy pajama art,

Gloves covering

Both my hands,

The kind doctors wear

To probe your glands,

Stay in, funny quarantine, stay

Each day is the same

In almost every way.

Each day is quarantine Day.

Your eyes never leave

Our TV,

Scared by the

Dark shit on MSNBC, 

But don’t change

The channel for me,
Fox News frankly

Scares me

Stay, Dr. Fauci, please stay!

And send the buffoon

Far away!

Each day is quarantine day.
Each day is quarantine day

Another blog post that was mysteriously removed from my archives. My apologies if I’ve stumbled a bit in trying to recreate the original text.

FOR ALL THE LOVELY PEOPLE

Swamp Creature, Melania, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell


Yesterday I looked around and realized there was only beauty and happiness in the world. Everybody had a home, two Mercedes and a signed Christmas card from Donald and Melania Trump.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I didn’t have to wait to go to heaven.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for those with the Midas Touch,
This is for all the ones
Who never leave
Till they have too much,
I love all the lovely people.


Yesterday I looked around and realized there was no hunger in the world, and that poverty only existed in old newsreels and fiction. Everybody had quiche for breakfast and American Express for emergencies.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I was no longer just a man. I was a member of a club, and membership had its privileges.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for summers at the shore,
This is for Donald Trump
Who never stops
Working at the pump,
God bless all the lovely people.


Yesterday I looked around and realized there was nobody in the world that needed my help. Everybody had more than enough love and every child knew just what they wanted for Christmas.

Yesterday I looked around and realized there was no reason to wait for the second coming. It couldn’t get any better than this.

This is for all the lovely people,
This is for People Magazine,
This is for all the ones
Whose private jets
Are kept shiny and clean,
God loves all the lovely people.


Yesterday I looked around and realized there was nothing I had to do for anybody. Everybody had gotten exactly what they deserved from life and only deserved to get more.

Yesterday I looked around and realized I was the center of the universe. Oh, why did I wait so long to join the Republican Party?

THE LEGEND OF SWAMP CREATURE

Swamp Creature

Folks in these parts recall how this damn nasty swamp you see in front of you was once a modern Capital City, name of Washington, D.C. Then, of course, as the legend goes, Swamp Creature moved into the environs and quick as a jumping frog on a hot stove started draining the swamp, as he repeatedly promised, to get himself elected President of These United States.

‘Course Swamp Creature never exactly mentioned which swamp he’d be draining and to where he’d be releasing the stinking, toxic swamp effluence. As it later turned out, he was talking about draining the swamp filled from his business dealings back in New York City, which contained all the swampy murkiness of Swamp Creature’s previous questionable dealings; like his improper bank loans, his bogus charity; his questionable real estate transactions; his unprovoked acts of sexual aggression. And, of course, his falsified tax filings and other mob-like shenanigans. 

Truth is, when you drain one swamp, reason dictates, somewhere there’s a swamp getting swampier from the draining. In this case, the locale of that swampier swamp was that aforesaid Capital City mentioned above. 

But anyone who believes bringing in Swamp Creature to drain a swamp will result in anything ‘cept more swampiness deserves to spend two hours at lunch with Mitch McConnell. You remember Mitch, if only from remembering the one kid in grade school you wanted to punch in the face; the kid you could always count on to snitch on everyone else in class. Mitch was only one of the many swamp denizens enlisted by Swamp Creature to do his bidding and to help transform the capital city into a nightmarish City of Swamp. 

Nobody, least of all the citizens of Capital City, expected Swamp Creature to so quickly transmogrify normal, rule-of-law Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham into soulless, lying and cheating, ass-kissing Swamp Creature sycophants. But he did, and without raising a sweat.

Swamp Creature’s other top henchmen included Billy “The Kid” Barr, enlisted to shoot up and tear down the once proud Department of Justice; Mike Pence, particularly effective as “The Smiling Stooge” who immediately gave Swamp Creature the patina of Republican respectability he needed after his Russian-assisted election victory. And then there was Mike “The Ass Kisser” Pompeo who would sacrifice his own children, as well as the entire Department of State, on the altar of Swamp Creature’s thirst for a second elected term.

A second elected term, legend has it, in which Swamp Creature could finish draining the United States Treasury to pay for all his Florida golf expeditions. And to complete the job of desecrating all the familiar landmarks and traditions that once made the Capital City a beacon on a hill for the planet’s meek, humble and poor.

And, as legend declares, a second term to finish the task Vladimir Putin had set for him before his first term…the destruction of American democracy and America’s network of Western allies who once, in the time before Swamp Creature moved to Capital City, stood together like a solid wall as a bulwark against Russian aggression. 

Swamp Creature loves walls.

But not that one.

This is a reissue of a past blog post that was mysteriously taken down.