Twinkie bankruptcy: time to nut up or shut up

I was overcome by an alien impulse as I strolled down nutritionally desolate aisle 6 of the local grocery store.

Seize the Twinkies!

News that Hostess Brands, makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, was going bankrupt had apparently triggered a run on the golden sponge cakes with creamy fillings.

Some Twinkie fiends had already laid siege to the shelf. There were only three 10-packs of the indestructible treats still for sale for $4.29 each.

The boxes show the smilin’ Twinkie the Kid cowboy, the creation of some former art student who may once have fancied him or herself the next Picasso, and a supersized Twinkie with the nitpicky legal disclaimer “Product Enlarged to Show Detail.”

That Twinkies were sinking is something that just last year would never have registered with me.

It’s probably been more than 30 years since I’d last eaten one.

If that makes me sound like some sort of snack food snob, it’s misleading.

I eat tons of crap. I love chips, pretzels and about any dark sweetness produced in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a lovely company town that looks like all company towns would look if companies were run by 6 year olds.

And, as I’ve said before, the day chickens start laying Cadbury eggs is the day I become a chicken farmer.

So while the Twinkie’s never tickled my taste buds, something about its forbidden waste always tempted.

The reason I felt compelled to start hoarding Twinkies has less to do with the unsinkable pastry -- for experimental purposes I just submerged one an hour ago (still afloat) -- than it does with Tallahassee.

Not the city.

I’m talking about Tallahassee, the redneck zombie slayer.

Tallahassee is the name of the Woody Harrelson character from the uproarious 2009 movie, “Zombieland.”

It’s a difficult comedy to sell to dainty viewers who are put off by films that include graphic scenes of the living dead feasting on human flesh.

So now when people ask me what “Zombieland” is about, I never say it’s about zombies.

I say it’s about one man’s quest for the world’s last Twinkie.

And it is.

Tallahassee -- to prevent from becoming too familiar, they call each other by their hometowns -- realizes that the zombie apocalypse means production of his beloved Twinkies has forever ceased.

Somewhere exists, he knows, a box of Twinkies.

“Not just any box of Twinkies, the last box of Twinkies that anyone will enjoy in the whole universe. Believe it or not, Twinkies have an expiration date. Some day very soon, life’s little Twinkie gauge is gonna go . . . empty.”

So, being a careful sort, I had to buy a 10-pack.

Like I said, I haven’t eaten a Twinkie since the late 1970s, but something about them has always beckoned. It’s just so iconic.

It’s the subject of a book I have to get around to reading. It’s Steve Ettlinger’s “Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover how the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined) and Manipulated into What America Eats.”

Ettlinger explores how things like Polysorbate 60, Sodium Caseinate and beef fat become part of a simple snack cake.

The concept is pure genius.

I showed Val the box of Twinkies like it was a new puppy.

“Look at this!” I said. “I’ll bet I haven’t had a Twinkie since 1979!”

“That’s probably about when those Twinkies were made,” she observed.

Deciding to savor the anticipation, I put the box aside until the kids were in bed.

Coincidentally, Val had taped a movie made at roughly the same time she suspects the Twinkies were. It was “Broadcast News” from 1976.

What a great, prophetic movie.

It’s funny, because I grew up in the ‘70s and remember it being a time of innocent joy. There was The Partridge Family, Speed Racer, The Steel Curtain and the dawning awareness that life was getting more interesting as one-by-one the girls began filling out their sweaters.

“Broadcast News” reminded me of all the unholy tumult that was off the radar for a boy who’d yet to grasp the importance of the daily news.

There was Patty Hearst, the Munich Olympics, Pol Pot, Watergate, the Nixon pardon and the chaotic conclusion of the Vietnam War.

It wasn’t nearly as idyllic as I remember. Sure, parts of it were decent, but overall it hurt a lot of people and left a bad aftertaste.

You know what?

So did the Twinkie.

Sarah & the zombies

People lean in confidentially when they ask my opinion of the bloodthirsty monster dividing the public and causing millions of Americans to lose sleep at night.

And I’m not talking about Sarah Palin.

Yet.

Oh, I’ll get to her.

I’m talking about zombies. They are everywhere.

They are to this holiday season what Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmos were to gentler days gone by. They are red hot.

What do I think of them? I adore them. Can’t get enough of them.

It surprises even me.

One of my favorite comedies of the past five years is the uproarious “Zombieland.” The Woody Harrelson/Jesse Eisenberg movie is a bloody riot, and I mean that in both the literal and the British sense.

My wife and I have already watched it three times. It has cartoon violence, over-the-top giggles and the best Bill Murray cameo ever.

Then there is the exact reverse of that jolly satire. It’s AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

The story is one of utter dread. There are no laughs, no sly lines. Just a horrific tale of urban survival and gore galore. Its slim six-episode run just concluded last Sunday. The skimpiness of its first run meant AMC had little faith in its potential.

Guaranteed producers have in their rush to capitalize on the sensation become like zombies themselves, albeit ones who feast on sushi and not careless humans.

So, yes, I’m currently infatuated with zombies. I find myself wondering about them and how I can differentiate one from, say, my friends at the bar.

Zombies have blank expressions. Check.

They aren’t picky about their looks. Check.

They have nothing to do all day. Check.

They eat with their fingers and are confused by things like silverware. Check.

If you think I’m being unduly judgmental about the boys in the bar, you are mistaken.

I was checking on myself.

I don’t think I’m a zombie, but apparently that’ll be an option if the kitchen ever runs low on chicken wings.

So with “The Walking Dead” in production, our TV is event free on Sunday evenings.

God help me, I decided to fill an hour of programming about the walking dead with an hour of TV featuring a woman who is just so, golly gee, full of life it’s surprising someone hasn’t jammed moose entrails down her throat to get her to shut the hell up.

Honest, I was just about to write a post congratulating myself for not having mentioned Sarah Palin all year.

The stinging Aaron Sorkin blast about her killing a caribou to show her bona fides to voters who think Ted Nugent an agile-minded man of reason was, I guess, what got to me.

But the real reason I had to watch was the same reason I used to watch a professional wrestling match when two titanic villains were set to grapple.

Yes, last night it was Sarah Palin vs. Kate Gosselin.

And, let me tell you, it was better than a cage match between George “The Animal” Steel and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

The show started with Sarah shopping for guns, talking about how much she loves guns, about the many problems guns can solve and why guns give her the kind of feelings the rest of us get from watching things like E.T.

I’ve never heard her in any interview gush as much about husband Todd, although guns, even unloaded ones, certainly have more to say than he does. 

The show wound up with the Palins camping with the Gosselins. It couldn’t have been more awkward. Sarah spent the entire time rhapsodizing about the joys of Alaska and Kate kept saying, in essence, gee, I hate Alaska.

Kate looked like I must look when a Jehovah’s Witness is eager to proselytize to me during a Steeler game, only with a snazzier haircut.

Sarah’s father rudely said of mega-mom, “She did nothing but bitch as soon as she got off the plane.”

It was fascinating. Here were the two stars of second tier network doing their best to sabotage each other.

News today is that Sarah is in Haiti on what’s being called a humanitarian mission. I heard some rah-rah sound bites and can only imagine they’d edited out the part where she says the solution to all Haiti’s godforsaken problems is to relocate the entire island to suburban Wasilla.

Coincidentally, Haiti is where zombie folklore originated in 1937. You can look it up.

So it makes perfect sense to cynics like me.

She wasn’t on a mercy mission. She was campaigning.

The only people who can see her in a position of leadership any more are truly brain dead.