The Wednesday Pop Culture Rant has yet to calibrate our level of enthusiasm for the return of The X-Files. Seeing Mulder and Scully again will warm our hearts, but we assume The Smoking Man has died of COPD, and we don’t want past series contributor Vince Gilligan distracted as Better Call Saul picks up steam.
The brilliance of this current era of television has been its originality and creativity, due in no small part to the fact writers have much greater control over the product than they do in movies. The Rant fears retreads will creep into television and deliver mediocre nostalgia like the tired reboots currently dominating film. Memo to the Fast and Furious franchise: let’s just skip ahead to Furious 58 with nitro-fueled Rascal scooters and call it a day. Vin Diesel can make his Hero Speech, “I’m tired of elder care, I’m ready for elder dare!” and then slam an Ensure.
Now we rant: With baseball approaching(David Ortiz just finished his last at-bat from the prior season. Pick up the pace Big Papi) the stadiums are rolling out their new concessions offerings for the upcoming season. If you haven’t been to the ballpark lately, stadiums have increasingly diversified the food from the usual dogs and peanuts, with sushi in San Fran, craft beer in St. Louis, and hipster kiosks in Seattle that describe local-sourced fare but refuse to serve it to you (The Rant hasn’t actually confirmed that last one).
Not to be outdone in the food arms race, Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers, unveiled nachos on a stick. The Inside the Park Nachos start with a stick of beef, add refried beans, roll the goodness in Doritios, deep-fry the love, and then drizzle with sour cream and cheese. The Rant suffered a myocardial infarction just typing that. Jamie Hodgson, general manager of Miller Park hospitality for concessionaire Delaware North opines: “I think this is going to be a big seller because you can eat this in one hand and have a beer in the other.” To which The Rant replies, but that means we can’t hold a beer in each hand, although we would consider a beer rolled in cheese curds and deep-fried. We’re calling it the Forget-Me-Walker, as it helps erase the memory of the Wisconsin governor from your mind.
The Arizona Diamondbacks will see the Brewers’ nachos and raise them the Churro Dog, a churro inside a doughnut bun topped by a frozen yogurt sundae. Eating one uses all your Weight Watchers points until the year 2092. God Bless America. By the way, the God Bless America is a deep-fried bomb pop rolled in coconut and freedom.
We can only assume that around the All-Star break the Brewers will feature a Defibrillator Day and the Diamonds will give away C. Everett Koop bobbleheads. The Rant suggests we just stop fighting the inevitable and enjoy the calories. Some day in the near future the entire country will explode like Mr. Creosote in The Meaning of Life. The real tragedy will be that Papi was just about ready to step into the batter’s box.
