& Recently . . .

Dear HBO

HBO 1100 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10036 Dear Home Box Office, I love the HBO. Love it. Your award-winning original programming rocks my socks. Your hit movies also have a rocking effect on my socks. But the…

Alternative Uses for Instant Paper Pulp

by Nick Jezarian

“Listen Mr. Humperdink, computers are making this stuff obsolete! You make a mistake, you type the change and print it out again—simple as pie.” “Silence!” “But Mr. Humperdink…” “I said shut yer pie-hole, you mullet-promoting twit! Not another word from…

If S.T.D.s Were People, I’d Be China

by Pierre Cavanaugh

I know what you are thinking to yourself: “How could you be so disease-ridden?” Well, I’m not even sure when it all started. I have always had a weakness for flesh. At the age of three, I groped my babysitter….

A Salute to Some Things Irish

by Ray Stillman

To Sanjay, the good man at me Dunkin Donuts! Ye serve me green-frosted donuts with li’l green sprinkles today! Let’s drink Guinness till we vomit! To Eugene, the li’l midget who hands out strip-club fliers on the corner of 44th…

Dear N.Y.T.B.R. Pt. II

by Josh Abraham

The Editor The New York Times Book Review 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036 March 16, 2003 Dear N.Y. Times Book Review, What gives? Another week passes and still you ignore my amazing novel, Clams Casino. Look, I…

Polish Fact

Polish-American Athletes
Carol Blazejowski (G.M., N.Y. Liberty)
Tom Gola (Forward, Philadelphia Warriors, N.Y. Knicks)
Sebastian "Sea Bass" Janikowski (Oakland Raiders)
Ron "Jaws" Jaworski (QB, L.A. Rams, Philadelphia Eagles)
Hank Stram (Coach, Kansas City Chiefs)

Learn a Foreign Tongue!

Learn Dutch!
Ik heb twee draaischijven en een microfoon.
I've got two turntables and a microphone.

Y.P.aRt Gallery

Syndicate! RSD | RSS I | RSS II | Atøm
Large Print | Spanish Bea! Add http://yankeepotroast.org to your Kinja digest Creative Commons License
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons License and powered by Movable Typo 3.15.
Crockpot!
© MMV, Y.P.R. & Co.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003   |    Letters (from)

Dear Froot Loops

by Josh Abraham

Kellogg Company
P.O. Box CAMB
Battle Creek, MI 49016-1986

Dear Toucan Sam,

America is facing some tumultuous times, economically, socially, politically. The winds of change blow, and the good or ill effects are not always within our control. In times of great distress, when the changes in our day-to-day lives are almost more than we can bear, we find ourselves eating comfort foods for security and stability. meatloaf and mashed potatoes, mmmm good. A nice hot bowl of Grandma’s chicken soup. P.B. & J., a tall glass of milk and a stack of chocolate-chip cookies. And whether you call ‘em hoagies, subs, or grinders, all of these foods are little edible bits of America.

And then there’s Froot Loops. The quintessential American breakfast cereal.

I see you’ve added Melonberry Pink to your sweetened multigrain cereal. Interesting! Exciting! Tasty! Melonberry Pink is, of course, most welcomed to the Froot Loops spectrum.

BUT YA CAN’T TAKE AWAY RED, SAM! Red is the very backbone of the cereal! Feel free to add new colors and flavors, but Red cannot go. If something’s got to give, take orange or yellow. Red must stay!

Here’s why:

The proper way—the only way—to eat a bowl of Froot Loops and derive maximum satisfaction is to consume all the other colors first and leave Red for last. Once the other colors are depleted, the milk will turn a reddy, pinky, rosey hue due to prolonged Red exposure. When the milk has reached a pleasing shade of crimson, the remaining Red Loops can be finished, and what’s left will be the precise recipe for a unique cherry milk cocktail that tastes equal parts natural flavoring, sugar, and Red #40. Ambrosia.

In these turbulent times, Americans are panicking as if they were driving down a winding mountainside road through the rain and fog and dark of night and the dashboard brake light is flickering. I call on you, Froot Loops, to provide the stability, the security, the strength we need to endure. Red!

Sincerely,
Josh Abraham

Josh Abraham was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent his early years in North Africa, working various jobs—in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company—to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. As a young journalist, his report on the unhappy state of Muslims in the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the Théâtre de l'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevski. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat, then an important underground newspaper. Abraham's fiction, his philosophical essays, and his plays have assured his preëminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Abraham was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. No, wait. That was Albert Camus.