Jimmy Recracked Corn and I Still Don't Care

The birds are chirping. The tulips are blooming. The wife and kids are out of school. That's right folks it is spring break time here in the Texas Panhandle so while I am away from the computer spending time with my beloved and the fruit of our loins please enjoy these posts you may have missed the first time around. 

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Cornarchy!

I consider myself an intelligent fella. I am quite capable of following a string of logic and coming to an understanding, provided there is actual logic behind that said string.

For instance, I get the fact that the more corn we use for the production of ethanol, the less we have for the other, more traditional uses of those little golden kernels. I grass supply and demand economics. I buy the reasoning behind cattle feed going up and there for beef prices rising. I am not baffled that the Green Giant must charge more for his frozen packs of Nibblers.



And, I even understand that the price of popcorn has exploded. But here is where things get greasier than your fingers after eating an entire bag of eight-dollar popped gold at the cinema.

Movie tickets might take hit from exploding popcorn prices

That headline comes from a USA Today story that theater owners are planning to raise ticket prices by as much as 30% because of the escalating price of popcorn. According the the story, ticket prices are subsidized by the sale of concession stand goodies and the higher popcorn is the less people buy it so the less the theater makes. There are more holes in that theory than gray hairs in Indian Jones's stubble.

If I go the counter and see that a tub O' cholesterol now cost me more than Nick Nolte spends on bail money then I'm going to change my snacking selection. I'm just as happy munching on Sugar Babies and Junior Mints as I am on digging kernels of popcorn out of my teeth for the next few hours. As a fat guy I will go on record as saying I don't care what I eat. It's dark and my focus is on the screen. Give me chocolate covered ants, or deep fried grasshoppers and I'll probably never even notice unless the movie is total crap. I say the theater owners should get inventive. Tell the National Popcorn Society to go to hell and feed us something different. Unless your name is Orville Redenbacher you can probably sit through Pirates Of The Caribbean 18 -- The Curse of Jack's Kracken Bones without a barrel of butter drenched, air-infused corn. And if you can't well then you tell the kids there will be no Christmas this year and go ahead and break out the credit card at the concession stand.

This is the equivalent of strip clubs raising their cover prices because the cost of glitter has skyrocketed. I say we all put our foot down and start sneaking in bags of microwaved Pop Secret. Women use your purse, and guys, just cram it under your shirt. Sure you'll look fat and lumpy and you might even get a few grease stains on your clothes, but sacrifices have to be made. Besides, chicks still dug Elvis right up until the end and that same description could have been used to describe him.