Trashy Food Part One: Hot Pockets

Welcome to the Trashy or Not: Trashy Food Cycle 2007. In this series, I plan on fully exploring the world of microwaveable entrées and bastard foods. Today, we’ll start with Hot Pockets.

Hot Pockets brand stuffed sandwiches were introduced to stores in 1983 and purchased by Nestle 19 years later. There are currently five different Hot Pocket brand stuffed sandwiches and countless “flavors” in production. Being an Italian American, I’m most offended by the “Subs” and “Calzone” categories. (I assume these taste like a sub and/or calzone being thrown up into your mouth…like a pre-chewed sandwich.) Anyhow, the five sub brands are listed below:

>> Hot Pockets
>> Lean Pockets
>> Croissant Pockets
>> Subs
>> Calzones

Have you ever smelled a Hot Pocket while it is cooking in the microwave? It smells like plastic. I know this because my older brother is an avid Hot Pocket consumer. Not only are these people eating sketchy frozen meat nuggets…but they are also green-lighting their decision AFTER they smell the thing cooking. My mind is blown.

I’m going to assume that most people start eating Hot Pockets because they are “quick” and “easy.” Well, so is a grilled cheese made on the stove…with real bread and real cheese. Pasta is also easy. BOIL SOME WATER (it comes out of the tap hot, you’re half way there before you even turn on the burner). Pull yourselves together, people! Being a lazy slob is unattractive and trashy. I know that you don’t have many cooking supplies in your parents basement. But come on, be an adult and start eating big people food.

For further investigation, I urge you to read about a real life Hot Pocket dissection.

Bubbly

I don't know why it is, but most things associated with bubbles are kind of trashy. This is something I just realized as I was reading a draft of a post I had crafted about hot tubs. There's so much in this world that's "bubbly" and that I consider trashy as well. See the following.



1. Champagne. I really don't think there is a classy incident, save weddings and some celebrations where champagne can be considered classy. I associate champagne with headaches, constant burping and a freewheeling, loopy drunk that makes me want to make out with everyone and chain-smoke while swigging out of the bottle and burping with gusto.



2. Bubble baths. Just gross, guys. I don't know. Some find bubble baths to be relaxing moments, taking time out of the stressful everyday to relax in a peaceful oasis of softly sented bubbles and candles and whatever. Fuck that. Bubble baths remind me of vaseline-smeared photos of women with frosted lipstick and bad eyeshadow batting lashes at the camera. Has anyone ever really enjoyed a bubble bath? They are good for about 2 minutes and then the water gets lukewarm and you realize you're sitting in a tepid pool of dead skin. Then you get pruney and the bubbles fade. You're left with nothing but shame.



3. Hot tubs. This is where the line is fuzzy, because hot tubs are awesome in a sleazy 70's-Marin-key-party-swinger kind of way. I love a good hot tub, maybe under the stars with someone fun to make out with and a nice joint. That's good right there. That's living. Hot tubs reveal their trashy underbelly when they are located at motels. I once spent an awkward 15 minutes in a hot tub at a Holiday Inn Express in Ukiah, located right off the freeway. There was a girl who made small talk with us while chain-smoking Kools. After she left, we stared at the space over each other's heads for about 5 more minutes, then walked silently back to our room, silently acknowledging the trashiness that had just occurred.

The beauty in the trashiness inherent in bubbly things is their irrefutable power when employed simultaneously. Separately, these things are mildly trashy, but together they form a Triumvirate of Trash. If you're sitting in a hot tub drinking champagne out of the bottle whilst Calgon takes you away, we might as well bag your ass up and put you on the curb for the garbage man because you are officially TRASH.

My lip gloss is cool.

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Kitty kat.

Please direct your attention to the following site. This was brought to my attention by a delightful friend who suggested this go on le blog. Never did I think I would be discussing perfume that smells like a ripe vag, but stranger things have happened.

It goes without saying that this is unspeakably, horrifically trashy. This is perhaps the zenith of trash, along with frosted lipstick and styling mousse. There are people in this world who decided it would be okay to BOTTLE THE SCENT OF A WOMAN'S VAGINA. People. Seriously. I don't care if you're a neckbearded virgin with a RealDoll at home in your parent's basement or some gigolo pimp-master brohan who bags Marina bitches every weekend with a calculated recipe of crantinis and an excessive amount of Acqua di Gio. This product is marketed at each and every one of you. As a MASTURBATORY AID. If you are so fucking creepy that you need manufactured scent of vagina to bring yourself to pitiful, gasping orgasm, I sincerely hope that you never get laid again.

Hair of the dog.

You rallied last night, got your ass off the couch and went out to the bar with the kids. Maybe you didn't eat dinner. Maybe you had two huge drinks, smoked some pot and then ate a burrito. Maybe also you threw up last night and briefly considered making a bed for yourself on the floor of the bathroom with the throw rug draped ceremoniously over you like a stole. Now you're awake, you've got a headache and every time you stand up you bob and weave like a homeless. This is not ideal. It's Sunday. There's shit that needs to get done. Laundry. Return things to the library. Take a shower. Fix your bangs, which are insane right now. Maybe eat those chips your roommate bought last night while you contemplate doing a face mask and watching Season 4 of Sex and the City. You kind of wish you could get stoned and watch nature shows on the Discovery Channel but lack cable, pot and the drive to find either. Looks like someone's hung over!

Hangovers look like this. Hangovers are the feeling when you wake up dressed only in your underwear and a sweatshirt, wondering why you failed to put on pants or remove the sweatshirt. Sometimes you wake up and there's a bag of Milanos, a Nalgene filled with water and a pair of scissors in your bed next to you. There's no reasonable explanation for this.
Let's all try to handle hangovers with decorum, grace and dignity. Wash your face. Put on some pants. Brush your teeth, even if the sensation of the toothbrush in your mouth is enough to make you vomit again. Throw on your eating pants and get your ass to brunch. You're going to eat a trough full of hash-browns, hollandaise and bacon. It's going to be delicious.

Get a job.

A change has come over me recently. A sudden, nauseating but also oddly liberating change. A change that was a long time coming, maybe, but was also one for the better, even though I didn't believe that at first and had to be told this over drinks and photobooth pictures one balmy Wednesday in early September. I've shuffled off the mortal coil of Bravo! Marketing. I've become unemployed. Redundant, as the British call it. Done.

This recent development leads to an entirely new realm of trashiness previously undiscovered and never written about on this blog. Daytime trashiness. Middle of the week, still at home in your pajamas because you woke up at 7:30 thinking you still had a job for a brief moment trashiness. Watching the Today Show past 9 am. Forcing yourself to leave the house and going to Walgreens to buy tampons and a blowdryer. Walking around throngs of the possibly-homeless pushing carts in the A/V section of the library and coming home with awkward documentaries and a copy of "Say Anything" because you haven't seen it yet, but you heard it was good. Yesterday, I watched a documentary about children at a musical theatre camp in the Catskills and somehow felt ok about myself after it was over. This is monumental.

There's something vaguely unclean about being home during the day on a weekday. For a while, you feel like you're just at home, on a sick day, and it's fun. No one's around! I can eat ice cream! Look, I'm watching the View! Then, around 12:30, it hits. You've been up for a really long time. You thought you had a job when you woke up this morning and in fact, you do not. People have already started their day and are at lunch, eating compact plates of falafel and chatting with their co-workers. You've maybe had a handful of cookies and stared at the fridge with the door open for a while. You peck for a little while at craigslist and send out some cover letters. It all feels rusty, like you've done this before and it sucked and now you have to do it again. There's an air of desperation, even though it's sunny and perfect outside. You know you're going to get through this, regardless of what happens. It will all be ok.

Panty dropper

No one really likes doing laundry. It's time-consuming, labor intensive and often involves you walking up and down the stairs of your apartment complex dropping socks and t-shirts along the way. Sometimes motherfuckers steal shit out of the laundry room when you've walked away for TEN MINUTES BECAUSE YOU LEFT THE QUARTERS UPSTAIRS. Once I found a carefully written epistle in my laundry room on top of an empty box of laundry detergent, ranting in a passive aggressive fashion about the injustices of the world and how it was totally unfair that someone used all of their detergent and how they could just go fuck their mothers because honestly who does that?! Laundry incites riot and unnecessary rage. I waited up until fucking 11 pm last night waiting for my goddamn pants to dry. I kind of hate laundry. With a passion.

The only reason I did laundry last night was because the underwear drawer was starting to look bare. Due to my irrational yet strong hatred for doing this menial task, I try to do laundry very rarely. I have enough clothes to last and I like to think that I don't smell. Possibly I am a disgusting creature, but this is no matter. Whatever, man. If you don't like it, then leave. Underwear is not something you can make stretch. We change our underwear every day, children.

These underwear even have explicit instructions written on them as to when to change. There is a reason for that. Shit is naaasty. However, in my travels yesterday I briefly contemplated relying on an old college trick that got me through many financially strapped weeks when I desperately needed to do laundry but was too busy squandering my lucre on things like cigarettes, magazines, salsa con queso from the C-store and weed. Instead of going to Safeway like a responsible grown-up and getting quarters, I was going to take a little trip to Ross and buy underwear instead of doing laundry. This stroke of genius saved my ass numerous times in college. Once I was invited to an impromptu trip to a friend's house in New Hampshire. I had about three hours to get ready and packed. I had not done laundry in many moons. I was all packed and wearing the last clean pair of underwear I had. My only choice was to walk to the TJ Maxx in Brookline next to the liquor store and purchase 5 of the most shameful pairs of underwear ever. One pair is teal. It says WANNA BE A ROCKSTAR on the ass in rhinestones. One pair has the Easter bunny on the crotch. This was bargain basement underwear, shit that most should not and would not wear. That's why they were $3 each.

Panties in hand, I remember strolling peacefully back to my apartment. Take that stank pile of laundry! I've beat you once again! The rhinestones fell off individually over the years. I still have those underwear. They are my underwear of shame.

Don't be this trashy, kids. Try to keep it together. Do your laundry. It won't be that bad, I promise.

Trashy or Not?

Nappers

napping in your bosses office while she is away? trashyornot, it's so much fun :)

Wet Hair

So last night you threw back too many lychee martinis and forgot to set your alarm before passing out. You wake up 30 minutes before work starts, take one look at your hair to assess the damage and almost vomit in your mouth. You throw yourself into the shower hoping to wash away your shame, piecing together the events of the night before. You throw on the clothes nearest to you on the floor (without a stain on the boob and with the least amount of wrinkles) and attempt to fix yourself up so you can prove to yourself, against the harsh judgement of the world that you are really a classy brawd....well kinda....sometimes....

Cut to twenty minutes later. You are speed walking down the street, jacket half on, putting on earrings and adjusting your bra strap when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the store window. The familiar taste of vomit collects on your mouth. You try to look away but like a bad car accident, your eye keeps turning. You see it every where, on the side of the bus, in the sunglasses of the people who walk by, in the post office window: Your wet hair gleaming, scattered about your head like a bad flower arrangement. You eerily resemble the wild dog who sketechily wanders up the alley behind your apt looking for food. Except you look worse, like you been dragged up and down the street a few times before having your hair run over by a truck . You pray/hope your hair will miraculously dry by the time you get to work.

No luck...you breathlessly brush through the doors 10 minutes late, to be greeted by your coworker who loves to comment on how tired you look. "Didn't get much sleep last night huh?" She smiles "sympathetically", cocking her head to one side.

For the rest of the day your hair is desperately trying to figure out what to do with itself, and eventually you give up and put it back into the inevitable pony tail.

Sigh.. the curse of the wet hair... plaguing us girls (and some fashion conscious boys) since elementary school. It's the look that screams to the world how badly you suck at life. How you just can't get your shit together in time..ever. I always wondered how the girls in the Cosby show pulled it off...

Plus, living in the ice box that we call the northeast, during the winter time (ie 8 months out of the year) we get the extra bonus of having your hair freeze into cute little dreaded icicles, delaying the drying time even more. At least if you live in Southern California, you could be mistaken for being a hot surfer chick who got up early to catch some waves. (right...)

But before you go and start blow drying your hair in the hand drier in the bathroom, you can take comfort that there is a time and place for wet hair. When it is actualy appropriate and even sexy. Contra trashy...

Enter the beach hair. The glorious time when it doesn't matter what you are wearing, if you are wearing anything, or when the last time you took a shower was..well because you're tan and beautiful.

The best part about the wet hair at the beach look is that it will soon turn into the sexy beach blown hair look, that you so desperately try to recreate with John Frienda's beach blonde (which sadly they do not make anymore). So go... jump in the water, get your hair as salty and sandy and sun exposed as possible. Let your damp locks fall freely on your cleavage. Just make sure you're at the beach.