A Diatribe Called Quest: November 2009

"Unlike many of the counties in the southern part of Arkansas, the city of Baltimore does not prohibit one from tossing handfuls of Hot Cheetos out of the sunroof of a motor vehicle moving in excess of 30 m.p.h. Now you can see why my weekend was so exhausting," my friend Darrell said all in one breath.

Then he gave me a cursory pound-pound-bump (I try to always refrain from exploding the fingers), turned on his heel and bounced away. The back of his shirt said "Thick & Syrupy," and I wished I had more time to consider what it meant. Those two adjectives could be a desired result, a side effect, a type of BBQ sauce, an entry on a CSI's crime scene report or a hooker's catchphrase in some of the sadder parts of the country. But I didn't have time to stew about this question, I had to see my Finnish friend Sebastien and his latest litter of mongoose pups. There was an albino! That's a portent of five bountiful harvests in parts of Africa. And I don't fuck around, so I stole that shit. I don't even think Sebastien cared, he was too pooped from his latest 14-hour ice fishing shift. And to think that's an administrative position in the largely unstudied government of such an inconsequential and frosty nation.

Out of all the indignant and whiny European nations, Finland wins its place at the bottom of that group, a generally inoffensive and piffling state (sometimes referred to by geography/processed food enthusiasts as the easternmost hot dog of Scandinavia). Its capital, Helsinki, has gained world renown for its inordinate number of Slinky factories, architecture, pigeons and snowfall that often exceeds 3 cm in height! UN Peace Keeping Officers were called into Finland in the early '90s, but they remain unable to keep down the attacks of cloven-hooved insurgents. Even today, wild animals, chiefly moose and reindeer, cause several thousand traffic accidents every year.

[Additionally, it's interesting to examine the term, "Finlandization." This concept dates back to the Cold War and describes Finland's acquiescence to the Soviet Union and general lack of any testicles whatsoever. As political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen so artfully paraphrased the words spineless president Juho Kusti "Cash MONEY" Paasikivi, Finlandization is, "The art of bowing to the East so carefully that it could not be considered mooning the West."]

OK, so Finland sucks. But that's not important now. And "Thick & Syrupy" isn't even important, although it's gonna haunt me until I see Darrell again and can ask him about that shirt. What IS important, however, is what he said to me, and the implications of it.

Firstly, the hot cheetos. We all know regular cheetos. They're dangerously cheesy and stain the fingers worse than Jonah Hill's period pants in Superbad. Unbeknownst to much of white/suburban America, however, are the equally delicious but infinitely more toxic "Flamin' Hot Cheetos," which have been ripping shotgun-blast holes in the stomachs of their consumers for the last 12 years. This variation on the original Cheetos is truly a potent substance. While the crisp itself appears to be similar in color to the standard Cheeto, it is almost impossible to see under a thick layer of a curious firetruck-red mixture. Out of the 135 ingredients in this thick, bright coating, only cayenne pepper, powdered sulfur, FD&C food colorings Red #4, #2, and #40, Drano, salt and goat blood are accessible by way of public record.

Nextly, since when has the city of Baltimore become so progressive on Cheetos-tossing rights? It's possible that Obama stimulus plans contained such liberalizations of the laws (right in line with the demands of the Tasty Cheesy Crisp Tossing Coalition) in order to boost the snack food market by encouraging extra-vehicular crisp tossing. It worth noting that this same tactic worked well for Old Reagan back in the day under the name Cheeto-Down Economics.

Post-penultimately, I must question Darrel's story itself. You may have only know him for a few months, but D and I go way the fuck back. All the way back to middle school. I knew him when he was a stupid little tweener, chasing girls around the playground and eventually form-tackling them to the ground (he caused upwards of nine broken bones), because it took him years to grasp the concept of playful flirting. And as long as I've known Darrell, he has never, not once, turned down a sticky handful of Cheeto goodness. He's not morbidly obese, but a few years back he started cropping up in fringe dictionaries (no M-Dubbs, son) next to the entry for rotund. So it just struck me as inconceivable that he would have frivolously chucked handfuls of delicious Flamin' Hot Cheetos to the sky like Pacman Jones chucks Benjamins.

Something had to give here. I called every person in my phonebook who wasn't a ginger (never trust them with anything worth more than a pocketful of rye), asking if they knew about big D's whereabouts this past weekend. No one knew. Sandy Trapstein said he'd seen Darrell but he couldn't remember where. Earl Roth told me Darrell had taken a long weekend in Kosovo. Elias Johnson and Rosalita Forbiñoso both provided equally suspect stories. As I scrolled in reverse-alphabetical order through my phone, I was beginning to think the universe had little interest in my knowledge satiety. Finally though, Serendipity, that slut of beautiful timing, came through. She appeared, like Tinker Bell hovering over my left ear, and told me to press "send." The name on the screen was DonnieDonowitz. Donnie's a good egg, very trustworthy (more so than processed milk I assure you) and has his ear to the ground, hot for gossip like the best Sioux scouts. Tangent: Hey Sioux, maybe don't be such gossiping little sluts and Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson won't have to reach out and fuck you up and down the Trail of Tears with the long dick of American law.

Back at the ranch, I get Donnie on the phone. He says he's hesitant to tell me about Darrell, but I wear him down with promises of increasing numbers of FlavorIce. Ice-T actually has nothing to do with them; they're simply tasty freeze pops. The offer of 4 cartons gets Donnie to admit that Darrell had gone to a Lady GaGa concert--but he won't tell which Parmesan cheese refinery hosted the concert. Two more cartons gain me that morsel, plus the rest of the story. Apparently Ms. GaGa was spraying the audience with LSD-infused Jarritos mandarin soda, and Darrell managed to catch a real load of it right in the kisser, which rocked his world more than hookers rock Berlusconi's mondo*. Philandering italians aside, Darrell's night really shot through the roof when he decided to hit up his friend Rhonda, who was working the concert along with her gang of fellow pa-pa...pa-pa razzi. Darrell supplemented his psychedelic drugs with a healthy measure of cheap tequila at the urging of his new batch of shutter-happy home slices. Several unclear hours of Galifianakis-esque proportions followed, culminating in the most intense scene of all. As the story goes, Darrell, Rhonda and several unidentified comrades were the aggressors in a high-speed car chase with Lady GaGa's car up and down North Avenue in Baltimore (shades of Princess Di). The GaGaMobile ended up escaping unscathed andunphotographed, but the car with Darrell and the paparazzi crashed through the front window of a bustling King's Fried Chicken. Luckily there were no serious injuries to the passengers or patrons, although the owner of the King's franchise is suing the driver for damages based on 150 spilled gallons of cooking grease. A Cochran-led defense is relying on the defendant's claims that Lady GaGa was tossing Hot Cheetos at his car in order to throw him off of the chase, though there is little forensic evidence to support this theory of the case. Darrell was never formally charged with anything, as the LSD wasn't his and he was asleep in the trunk at the time of the crash. Just a wild weekend. Wish I had been there. But I'm much less adventurous and probably wouldn't have rolled with the 'razzi crowd; I most likely would have just danced.

*Thanks to Ms. Brome for this.