A (VERY LONG) INTRODUCTION:
The other day, I was playing ball outside of the Uproxx offices. It was one of those summer afternoons when you leave the house straight after breakfast, and don’t return until after dark. When you do, you’re just a little worse for the wear — with dirty hands, scraped knees, and a little too full of ice cream to enjoy your supper. You know those days, when you’re having so much fun that the time just slips away, and before you know it, you’re running like mad as the streetlights hum to life, one by one, full with the knowledge that you’ll be in a whole heap of trouble if you’re late. And just as the final lamp glows yellow, you slide through the door, thinkin’ “phew!” You’re going to avoid trouble this time. But no such luck. Ma’s still gonna smack you with the wooden spoon for ruining another good pair of pants. She sure gets mad! Then she bakes you a cake with vinegar substituted for milk and forces you to eat it all, like the Trunchbull. You beg her to stop, but she’s a real typical mom. Always complaining about you dragging dirt through the kitchen, and then going after your feet with a sledgehammer like that scene in Misery. It was a day like that. An endless, summer afternoon of finding adventures on our bikes, and stopping for a good ball game whenever the moment struck us. And boy, that day? We were having an epic ball game.
It was all tied up. Two outs, and I was up. The boys were yelling, some with encouragements, others sneering. Some shrieking in tongues about the end of days, and having Grand Mal seizures on the field while blood sprayed out of their noses and ears. What can I say? We’re a rowdy, spirited bunch.
Little Stevie Bramucci was telling me I’d never be able to hit the ball. “Girls can’t hit worth a dang,” he said. Can you believe it? I was sure right mad when he pitched. I put all my wishes and anger into that hit. I sure was gonna to prove him wrong. Girls CAN play baseball! So you can imagine how I felt when right away, I hit that ball with a whole heap of fury. It was like a crack of lightning in the sky! Or a shovel against something solid! Like the kind that comes after you hit a man with your car, and you’re worried he’s still conscious enough to read your license plates, and you sure don’t want to leave any witnesses so you go back… to finish the job.
That ball went so high, I swear, it disappeared into the sun! Then it kept going, and going, and we all froze. First in excitement because ain’t nobody seen a hit like that. We were frozen in time, squinting into the bright noon sky trying to see where it would go. But then, we were all frozen in terror. Except for the bunch of us that were department store dummies that we stole from Macy’s to make it look like we got lots of chums. They’re always frozen. But the rest of us, well, we froze, because, of course, that ball went right over the fence into Uproxx’s yard. Sailed right on in, like it was nothing!
Everyone went silent. Especially the department store dummies. They only talk when they’re giving us instructions on how to kill drifters. A ball that goes over the fence at Uproxx, it’s gone.
Cause you know what they say about old man, Brett Michael Dykes up at Uproxx. Say he’s a witch, that the whole place is haunted. You lose a ball over the fence in the Uproxx yard, you don’t never see it again.
“Thanks a lot, Allison,” Marky “Rosebud” Shrayber yelled, throwing his Yankees baseball hat onto the ground. “Now we can’t play no more.”
“Wait a minute!” I said, screwing my courage to the sticking place. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts! I’ll go into the Uproxx office.”
The other writers gasped. There isn’t anybody who’s gone into the Uproxx office and lived to tell the tale. Even the mannequins are afraid of that place. Every time they’re encouraging us to kill a drifter, they take time to warn us that the only thing to fear is fear itself…and Uproxx. I should mention that the mannequins are dressed in Romp-hims and have no discernible facial features except hollow eye sockets that grow red when calling us to the field. They talk inside our heads and they laugh the whole time we’re sleeping.
It’s probably not that important a detail, but I’m just trying to paint a picture.
Anyways, that day, I was being braver than I felt. Acting almost like I wasn’t about to go into the most terrifying yard on the block. Like no big deal! I tried to pretend that I was just about to go to a normal, mannequin blood orgy, and not the Uproxx yard. Inside though, I was shaking like a leaf. This was scary stuff.
But I couldn’t back down now. Everyone was watching! Especially the mannequins. So I climbed over the fence with a cocky smile. How hard could it be to get one little baseball? As I jumped over, knowing that the other kids and mannequins were peeking through holes in the fence, I shivered without meaning to. It was colder over at Uproxx, and dreary… almost like the sun had right gone away. Weeds covered every inch of the yard, and dead looking vines crawled up the big porch where a single broken rocking chair moved, gently in the wind. From somewhere deep inside the old property, I swear, I could hear the faint sounds of an old episode of Game of Thrones. There were Game of Thrones things everywhere. Must click well, I muttered. But as I looked around, past the discarded NBA players’ sneakers, think pieces, and thousands of printed out Trump tweets, I began to cry. I was so frightened.
Then I spotted it! The ball, it was so close. Just in front of what looked like an old storm cellar door, open. I scrambled towards the ball. It was right in reach, when a gale o’ wind picked up and blew that ball right into the storm cellar. Down into the blackness it tumbled. All my hopes tumbling with it.
“Noooooo!” I screamed. Before rushing down the stairs after it. It wasn’t until I heard the slam behind me that I realized the storm door had closed. I rushed back up, pushing with all my might against it, but it wouldn’t budge. I was stuck, and the only way out now was through the belly of the beast. I was inside the heart of Uproxx.com.
As I crept through the dark, dank basement, papers fluttered around my head, falling from the moldy boxes above, and then one seemed to land right into my hand like magic. A narrow, dusty window near the ceiling provided a soft stream of light that illuminated the page. “Breakfast Pastries, Ranked,” it said.
I gasped. I had never ranked breakfast pastries! Had I? What was this sorcery?? I looked at the date. 2015. I hadn’t even started writing yet! I marveled at the paper. Was it by me? Time traveling from the future? Or was something more sinister and less believable going on. Was it possible that people at Uproxx had been writing rankings all this time? It seemed impossible, but I didn’t know for sure, so I read the list. And dear God, the humanity. My stomach turned. I vomited multiple times. The mannequins started screaming from somewhere deep inside my brain. It was all wrong. Toast was being counted as a pastry. Pop tarts were on a list that included homemade scones and donuts. Something called KOLACHES was on it! What are they? I googled a pic on my phone, and found that kolaches are a typical European breakfast pastry made with buttery dough and filled with the innards of human children who got a little too greedy with candy and were baked alive in a man sized oven until their intestines were soft and pliable. It made of lot of sense. It was clearly some sick Uproxx delicacy.
I stole away the piece, running up the stairs, and weeping. This list was all wrong, I couldn’t let it stand. As I tore through the rest of the house to get back out through the front door, hands grabbed at me. Perhaps they were the shriveled corpses of writers past. I know not. Only that I ran and ran until I burst into the yard, my ball in one hand, and the terrible list in the other. I had made it out, but at what cost?
Breakfast pastries deserved a better list. We all deserved better. As I emerged around the gate. The other kids cheered. But I felt hollow inside, a little older. See, I’d grown up that day in the Uproxx basement. And now, I had a purpose. To rank breakfast pastries with all my heart. And it weighed heavy on me, but it wasn’t the others’ fault. They cheered and laughed, still innocent. So, though, my childhood pursuits were fading away, I smiled outwardly at the other kids. Still lost in their “Chefs tell us,” and “World’s Greatest IPA lists”. They had a few years yet before taking up the heavy cross that is ranking breakfast pastries, and I envied their sweet, sweet youth.
For I was about to enter a world a young woman, and the breakfast pastries would not wait.
A (VERY ODD) RANKING SCALE
Breakfast pastries are truly the most delicious breakfast invention in the world. I don’t say that lightly. Sure, there are lots of breakfast things that are delicious to eat. Bacon. Eggs. Cary Grant’s Rotting Corpse. But a good breakfast pastry is transcendent. Take the blueberry muffin, for instance. I have to let you in on a little secret, it’s just cake with blueberries in it, guys! AND WE CAN EAT IT FOR BREAKFAST. In fact, we’re encouraged to do so. That’s insane.
So today I will rank the very best breakfast pastries in the world, and I will do so with the rating scale of “Number Of Hipsters Who Will Stand In Line For Said Pastry Because It Will Make A Really Good Instagram Photo”.
But before we move on….with great regret, I must tell you that I have to leave all of you lovely humans for a little bit. I’ve got a little human coming who is very needy, and apparently will require feeding and changing at least once a week. So I will be off raising him for a few months. But please, don’t worry about me getting rusty. I promise to spend his childhood practicing for more rankings by exclusively gas lighting my child with fake historical events, and math and science books that I’ve written myself and are completely false. I plan on him believing that George Washington was just the guy who invented potato chips until at least high school. It’s the least I can do.
And then I’ll be back in December just in time to tell you how to eat and drink for the holidays! But, in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few kernels of wisdom to get you through the next three and a half months.
- Mustard is still and always will be a gross condiment. You can pray for me to change my mind about this. Prayer is very powerful — though, not more powerful than my hatred of mustard which is a constant in the same way that Penny was for Desmond on Lost. This is very important to remember. If we end up time traveling together, you must call me up and remind me mustard is gross or I’ll get nosebleeds and DIE.
- Should you find yourself in the same room as Paul Rudd, DO NOT LOOK HIM IN THE EYE.
- If I were allowed to rank cats, it would be 1. Orange. 2. Grey and White. 3. Hairless. Those are the best cats AND THAT’S FINAL.
Thank you guys for reading my absolutely insane ramblings, I may pop up in some articles next week and every once in a while on maternity leave so this isn’t GOODBYE goodbye. And, of course, you’ll frequently see me out of the corner of your eye in the next couple of months….watching you. And you’ll think, nah. Why would Allison Sanchez be behind a plant in my parents’ living room? Or….that can’t be Allison Sanchez in the background of that family photo on my boss’s desk, how would she even get in there? And then you’ll look again and I’ll be gone. But it will nag at you, as you keep seeing me places I shouldn’t be. The backseat of your car, riding a donkey down 5th avenue, in World War II documentaries always trimming the hair of great generals. Just ignore those things, you don’t want to know. Believe me. But that won’t be the worst part, so I apologize. It’s really the late night phone calls that will be the most disturbing. The heavy breathing, the reminders to check the children, the three hours of me singing and acting out the entire script of the Sound of Music — playing every character. It’s all going to be quite frightening, but have no fear, it all just means that I miss you.
So live your life! Unless I call you and whisper “Seven days” and hang up the phone. That means I’m going to crawl out of your TV and totally murder you. But you know, I wouldn’t say that happens all that often at all. So don’t worry too much. Most of you will be fine. Probably. Just go about your day. I’m not going to murder all of you. I’ll be busy with this baby, I swear.
BREAKFAST PASTRIES, POWER RANKED
12. Banana Nut Muffin
I have to feel bad for the banana nut. It is just the saddest of all the muffins. Nobody wants it. We all go for blueberry or chocolate chip, lemon poppy seed, or pumpkin. And so poor banana nut sits there, last. And yet, she doesn’t lose hope.
“But I am a princess,” the little muffin says to me. “All muffins are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags or are picked last out of the basket. Even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or are filled with bananas and nuts the stupidest of all the muffin add-ins. They’re still princesses. All of us.” The little muffin shines up at me, righteous in her belief that all muffins are made the same, and all royalty. “Muffins are all princesses.”
“I guess just like all little girls are princesses,” I say back, and smile. My cold heart melting….just a little.
“Oh no,” says the muffin with a pout. “All muffins are princesses. But little girls, that depends wide-ranging factors. Girls with money are princesses, for example, the rest are really garbage.”
“What?” I ask the little economically-biased muffin.
“Also, a lot of little girls are destined to be criminals,” the banana nut muffin clarified. “It’s not their fault, it’s just genetics.” She hands me a pamphlet and smiles. “We’re having a meeting about it next week. We just want to open your eyes to the truth.” She looks up my articles and notices the “Sanchez” in my name. Then gives a tight grimace.
“I think you should go back to where you came from.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Are all muffins prejudiced?”
“Every single one,” the banana nut princess muffin says.
That’ll teach you. Never feel bad for a banana nut muffin. And DO NOT, let them have a muffin parade, it is not going to be as whimsical as you expect.
Rating: One hipster standing in line for what she thought was the hottest new food spot in Brooklyn, but turned out to be a line for the post office. She instagrammed herself eating a stamp with an apple on it, but somehow that didn’t have the same effect.
11. Chocolate Croissant
Maybe this is a little “banana nut muffin-y” of me to say, but even though I like chocolate AND croissants, I don’t like them mixing together. I don’t like chocolate on or in a lot of things to be honest, like muffins or pancakes or smeared all over the constitution and then slowly licked off by Steve Bannon while congress watches, dressed in Pikachu suits. It just feels unnecessary. I don’t even really like chocolate cake or ice cream. I like pure chocolate, chocolate fountains, and chocolate rivers. But diluted down or mixed into breads? It’s just never as good.
Rating: Two hipsters standing in line waiting….competing to see who’s been around longer.
“Ugh this neighborhood has changed so much. If you like Brooklyn now, you should have seen it two weeks ago. That’s when it was cool,” one says to the other.
“Two weeks ago it was fine…I guess. But you should have seen Brooklyn last year, that’s when the real authentic businesses were still left, you know?”
“Totally, totally. Last year there were some good places, I guess. But really all the best dives and restaurants were only around in the early 2000’s, that’s when I truly loved this city.”
“Right, right. That was an okay time, but if you’re a real New Yorker, then you know it was just so much more authentic in the 1950’s. I loved walking around then, getting a haircut and a shave, singing doo wop on the corner, getting stabbed. It was dangerous then, but in a cool way. More knife fights than guns, you know?”
“Yeah, oh of course. The 50’s were like….fine. But you should have seen Williamsburg before the Dutch West India Company bought the land in 1638. It was just so cool, you know? No buildings, real natives, just so so edgy and raw. When I arrived on a boat just riddled with dysentery…that was I think when the city was as its height…”
“Oh you came over in the 1600’s? That makes a lot of sense. I was actually here when the dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. Like pre-comet. So….I have to say, that’s when you got way more of a neighborhood vibe. Really miss those days. Running from T-rex’s. Eating plants and smaller dinosaurs. That’s when it was cool.”
“Well. I’m God. So….I guess I’ve just known Brooklyn a little longer than that.”
“yeah….well….I’m…..God’s… Dad. Nice to meet you….son. You should’ve seen this place BACK IN THE DAY.”
10. French Toast
French toast is very good. Really in any form. It’s delicious with a fancy, high quality bread, and it’s still quite excellent as French toast sticks from Burger King. And those are made from Styrofoam that was used to smother dolphins. But you coat that styrofoam with egg, fry it up, and slather some syrup on those babies, and I am ON BOARD.
Of course, I’m not going to put these higher on the list because this is America. I think I’ve said it before but we don’t need the French telling us how to eat our fries or our toast. We’re a great nation with plenty of our OWN food that WE invented like crepes or croissants. I’ll stick with a glass of champagne and a baguette any day over damn “French” toast, thank you very much. We’re a great nation and anyone who says any different will get all the fire and fury we have to offer. You’ll see. You’ll ALL see.
Rating: Three hipsters in line with competing handlebar mustaches that are so long they can wrap themselves up like burritos and roll themselves down the street. They rarely do that though, because then they wouldn’t be able to ride their unicycles nearly as often. Mostly they wax their mustaches, and curl them up in fantastic shapes that delight and horrify neighborhood children, who often become accidentally entangled in the creations and starve to death unless promptly found during a grooming session and released. Most children are found in time entrapped in the mustache’s web. Some are not. But isn’t that just life?
9. Cronut
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXoFXVrBk6D/
Cronuts are great. Are they life-changingly great? I don’t know. You tell me. Once I ate one. The next morning as I awoke from uneasy dreams, and I found myself transformed in my bed into a gigantic insect.
Was this that different from the life I was living before? Perhaps. I do crawl on the ceiling more often than I used to. But really, it’s hard to say. Specifically hard for me to say, because I am now a monstrous man-sized insect. But you know, we all have our things, really.
Rating: Four hipsters waiting in line for the opportunity to Instagram their amazing breakfast pastry. “How many of us does it take to change a lightbulb?” one asks. “None,” another answered. “The lightbulb was better before it was changed.” Hahahaha. The other two hipsters laugh, “Good one.”
“No,” the original hipster says coldly, “that’s not the answer.”
“Oh?” The others say. “What it is?”
“It takes one of us to change the light bulb, grind up the glass, and bake it into a cronut. Then, that person advertises that a cronut shop is opening the next day. And the idiots who don’t know that cronuts are freaking OVER and rainbow bagels are the new cronut well, they come a running. Stand in line. Until they receive their cronut, my cronut. Just like you gentleman and ladies. They eat their cronut. Hope it tasted good. Because see, right now, the glass is slowly cutting away those hipster’s insides. And that’s not even to mention the poison. I put a lot of poison in there. So eat up everyone. EAT UP. Your death has been served.”
8. Cheese Danish
In theory this shouldn’t be as delicious as it is. But it’s all so damn sugary. The pastry, the cheese, the baker who is required to soak himself in a sugar solution for 12-18 dollars a day in order to make the pastry as saturated with sugar as possible (as even his pores are so filled with sugar that his skin will be unable to take any sugar away when touching). All of it combines to create a delicious culinary experience that truly delights us all.
I don’t always pick a Cheese Danish every time I want a pastry, but it’s on my rotation of favorites and about ten percent of the time, I go for one. Just like I also don’t always drink beer, but when I do, it’s for binge drinking purposes to forget about all the terrible things I’ve done. A version of Gob’s Forget-Me-Now, if you will. Living in regret? Have no fear is my motto. Just pair 37 beers with a cheese Danish, and you can’t go wrong. It’s just nice to be able to tell the police you don’t recall your whereabouts and really mean it.
Rating: Five hipsters in downtown LA working at a coffee shop that doesn’t serve sugar. Can I have some sugar for my coffee, I ask only to be looked at like I am genuine monster. “We don’t have….sugar…..here,” I’m told with more disdain than feels necessary. “So I’m just supposed to drink it black?” I ask. “You can have a little milk,” the hipsters say with sighs and eye rolls. But I can tell…they aren’t happy about it. None of us are happy. I came there to get an egg sandwich at the truck that was parked outside. But when I arrived, was told they were out of eggs. Even though they were in a mobile vehicle that could presumably go get some more-they decided to just sit there for two hours, and tell everyone who went up to the counter to go away. There’d be no egg sandwiches today. Only black coffee from the shop inside, if you’re lucky.
And THAT’S WHAT MAKES A GOOD COFFEE SHOP: The disappointing sadness that will eventually consume us all.
7. Scone
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXn7YBsFadj/
Scones are a delightful food. Homemade, from a bakery, from Starbucks, from the strange man who pulled up in a van and told you that his scones were filled with drugs that would “send you to the moon.” All of them are quite good. Especially the drug filled ones, which you now suspect are filled with bath salts as you have a pretty strong urge to eat people’s faces off. Ah, well. You live and you learn. Eating a few faces off never hurt anyone. Except for the people whose faces you ate off. It definitely didn’t hurt Nick Cage. Face/Off was a defining career moment that truly allowed him to flourish as an actor and human, and was one of the greatest movies ever produced so…tell me now that eating faces off is a bad thing.
You can’t can you? Partially because I already ate your lips, but I think it’s also because you agree with me.
Rating: 6 hipsters wearing oversized, colorful sweaters, and writing poetry using typewriters while they nibble on scones, and reflect upon their youth (they are 24 but have very old souls. Also, their parents cut them off financially last week and it’s making them really question what it means to be an adult. It’s coming out beautifully through their poetry. They’re really learning what it’s like to STRUGGLE NOW. I mean the parents still pay their rent and health insurance and give them a monthly stipend for food, but…they aren’t allowed to use the AMEX anymore for MISC stuff, and that’s really going to change things).
6. Pancakes
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWVbgi4hExW/
Pancakes are a perfect food, soft and fluffy, best if just a little underdone. The very best pancakes are from Walker Bros Original Pancake House in Wilmette. They were immortalized in the film, Mean Girls as a gift certificate given to the prom queen and king, BUT I LIKED THEM WAY BEFORE THAT. But really, even though it is undisputed that Walker Bros. has the BEST pancakes, I love all pancakes. They are delicious in all sorts of fun shapes, and sizes, and political affiliations.
Now, I realize it is going to be controversial to call pancakes a pastry. That some of you will say it goes against the definition of “Pastry” which is, of course, a “dough of flour, water, and shortening that’s licked vigorously by one or all of the Baldwin brothers, but especially by Stephen.” Pancakes are rarely licked by Stephen Baldwin, you’ll probably say. And only about half the time by Alec or Daniel. That’s totally a fair point. But I would argue that I had to put waffles on this list. And once I put waffles on, how could I leave out pancakes? You know what they say, Uproxx Life is a slippery slope of emotion and tricky choices and giant pandas. And sometimes you have to pick the panda that’s the fattest even if it’s not the cutest. Does that make sense?
Rating: 7 hipsters….I don’t know, getting their hips replaced. No jokes. It’s a serious surgery guys.
5. Donut
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXoGBVLBdob/
Mmmmm….. Donuts….
I’ve had many a fancy donut in my day. But I’ll always go back to Dunkin Donut’s Vanilla Long John as being the “best” donut. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I truly have not had a donut that I’ve found more delicious. Except for the kind you put on your car when you get a flat. I could lick that smoldering rubber all day.
Rating: 8 hipsters…you know…. when I first starting doing these lists. I didn’t have to come up with an increasingly complicated rating system. But as things evolved, Steve insisted on them. And YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD THEY ARE. WHAT ARE THE HIPSTERS DOING WHILE STANDING IN LINE FOR THEIR VOODOO DONUT OR WHATEVER? THEY’RE WRITING DOWN ALL THE WAYS THEIR BOSSES MAKE THEIR LIVES SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT THAN THEY HAVE TO BE. AND THEN TRACING THEM OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN HARDER AND HARDER UNTIL THE LIST BREAKS THROUGH THE PAPER AND GOES INTO THEIR SKIN LIKE HARRY POTTER IN DOLORES UMBRIDGE’S OFFICE. AND AS THE BLOOD RUNS DOWN THEIR ARMS, THEY REALIZE THEY NO LONGER FEEL PAIN. THEY’VE GONE CRAZY FROM THE STRESS. THE STRESS THEIR BOSS PUT ON THEM BY MAKING THEM COME UP WITH A CRAZY RATING SYSTEM EVERY WEEK.
Haha. I’m just kidding. Hipsters don’t have jobs.
4. Croissant
Ah, the simple joys of the croissant. It’s just such a perfect pastry. Butter soaking through its every fold, every flake. There is no one in the whole world that DISLIKES croissants. Am I wrong about that? Is there a person who reads Uproxx and is sitting there going, You know what, I do not care for those things. I do not like them one bit???? IS THERE? Show yourself. Don’t worry. I won’t do anything to you. You can trust me. I’m nice. Real nice. I just want to know. Which. Of. You. Doesn’t. Like. Croissants. Then I want to talk. REAL nice like. Real calm. Just have a few words in the sound proof shed I have out back. The floor is covered in plastic sheeting and it’s a really nice place to talk. Real quiet there, real peaceful. The talk will go quick, I promise. Just let me know who you are, and then turn around and just stand there for a minute. While I go get, my special…. Talking…..shovel. I’ll just be a minute. Just look at the flowers, Lizzie. That’s right. Just look at the flowers.
Rating: Nine hipsters. So why are there only 8 in this picture? Because one of them is taking it. DUH.
3. Cinnamon Roll
Cinnamon rolls. Oh man, whether it’s a Cinnabon the size of your head from the mall, or the kind that come out of a can that you always eat on Christmas morning with the family, cinnamon rolls are truly an amazing invention that is a gift to us all. Serious question: Who is the maverick that came up with the Pillsbury haunted house can extravaganza for cinnamon rolls? What sadist decided to create not only a roll of delicious cinnamon rolls but a horrible game where one must jam a spoon into the side of the can until it completely out of nowhere pops, and causes you to drop the tube in complete fear. Hats off to you sir, you didn’t just make us a food. YOU GAVE US AN EXPERIENCE. Hats off.
Rating: 10 hipsters dancing to a vinyl record player and drinking PBR in the streets. Where did the record player come from? They carry them, like walkmen or ipods. Just strap the record player into a giant fanny pack and wear it while they run to 1930’s jazz music. Sometimes they fall over or into rivers because the record player really throws their balance off. That’s okay though. Hipsters regenerate easily. Their body composition is more or less the same as T-1000s. They’ll shake it off.
Speaking of which. The T-1000 hipsters do listen to Taylor Swift. BUT ONLY IRONICALLY.
2. Belgian Waffle
As Leslie Knope once said, “We need to remember what’s important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn’t matter, but work is third.”
Waffles are truly a food of the Gods. Right after I graduated from college, I traveled around Montana and then Idaho for nearly a year with Shakespeare companies performing at schools. We stayed in a lot of Motel 8’s, many a Best Western. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the highlight of my and every other company member’s day was a waffle maker day. Not every hotel had a waffle maker for the morning. But when you pulled up, late at night, exhausted, and were greeted by a waffle maker — shining like a beacon of goddamn hope in the middle of the continental breakfast counter? You knew it was going to be a fucking, good day. The next morning was going to be a waffle day, and all was right in the world. No. Not just right. FANTASTIC.
Rating: 11 hipsters waiting in line for the chance to Instagram their very instagrammable food. If a food is plated in front of them and no one can “like” it, did it ever exist? Did they eat all? It’s the age old question and it’s truly impossible to answer.
1. Blueberry Muffin
Look, you don’t get better than a blueberry muffin. It’s practically cake, and yet, the blueberries make it healthy. THEY DO. Don’t look at me like that. Blueberry muffins are the healthiest (AND MOST DELICIOUS) breakfast anyone could ever have. I know it, you know it, and your mom knows it. She told me last night so….BOOYAH.
Rating: Many, many hipsters standing in line for a “throwback Thursday” blueberry muffin. The kind of classic that’s become “IN” again. And all of those hipsters stand in a line that stretches as far as the eye can see! Some say it goes for blocks, others for miles. One woman said she passed the start of the line sometime in the prairie states. We may never know. Because the line never moves, and the store never opens. It just keeps building and building as more join it, waiting. And yet, when another hipster sees the beginning of the line, they can’t help but fall in. The muffins must be so good if so many want them. So worth the wait. And on and on it goes. Until the end of time. The line grows, the people wait, and death comes for them.
For life is just one big line for a blueberry muffin that never comes. One delicious item we struggle to achieve, and sometimes the line looks not very long at all, other times it seems endless. But it doesn’t matter, until things start moving, we’ll wait. And just hope that we have a good book to pass the time, and maybe that the other people waiting around us will be cool. We’re too scared to get out of the line, we might miss something. So we wait, and we wait. And we wait. For the thing everybody wants, the thing that just might, we think, make us complete. The line will move any day now, you think some times, and at others, you realize the line is never going to go, the muffin will never come. You should go. Leave the line.
Well, shall we go? You say.
Yes, let’s go.
But we
do
not
move.
