Food Fight Blog — out-of-order history

That’s me in the Sonic Youth tee, with my two younger siblings. Shortly after this picture was taken, I stopped going to theme parks with my family. I declared that theme parks were an artificial entertainment designed to distract the masses in a sort of replacement rush for the thrill of the violent olden days… or something like that. My mom told me I was being pretentious; I was. In all likelihood, I just didn’t want to hang out with my family anymore.  Before that acned stage, I loved theme parks: roller coasters, water slides, haunted houses, the rigged games,...

"Ohhhhh, yyyeah!" Who doesn't remember that party-loving pitcher? He breaks through the walls, with a mission to quench thirst and pitch a sugary powder that can be added to water to make it more exciting. A powder that, as we grew, could be used as a temporary hair dye when one is too broke for Manic Panic. A powder that was not actually used in the horrific Jonestown massacre (it was grape Flavor-Aid Jim Jones laced with cyanide to poison his followers). But, people will probably always remember it as "the Kool-Aid". Kool-Aid has been around since the 1920s. Originally called Fruit Smack(!), it was first sold as a liquid. The Kool-Aid Guy, created in 1975, has...

Like many kids, I was raised on the Brothers Grimm. My grandfather would read a story to me from an old two-volume set every time I saw him, and mark the date in neat pencil on the top margin.  I never really liked the fairy tales that Disney had already Disney-fied. I was definitely a little princess, but the old German versions of Cinderella, Snow White, and the like seemed weird and somehow off when compared to the glittering, animated, showtunsey versions I got from those plastic-cased VHS tapes. (Yep, it was the 80’s...) The tales I wanted to hear again and again...