Todd Stadler's blog

Gettin' snarky with the journalists, part 1

Apparently, the Twinkie's 75th anniversary is coming up soon, and as a result, several journalists have contacted me, in the hopes that a hard-hitting story will write itself, or perhaps that at least I'll write it. It's been odd again being the focus of attention, ten years after Chris Gouge and I made The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project.

For no apparent reason, I thought I'd share my correspondance with the journalists from respected institutions (they're the only ones I spend time writing convoluted responses to, because I am a fame whore). It's self-deprecating. It's conceited. And it probably reflects a belief that any story mentioning me probably won't pan out — they rarely do. So I have my fun writing back. The degree to which you have fun reading it is entirely your fault.

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:11:57 -0000
From: Xxxxx Xxxx
To: Todd Stadler
Subject: Enquiry

Are you guys still around and involved in the investigation of Twinkie duration?

Many thanks
Xxxxx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/

My reply was as follows:

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:42:50 -0800
From: Todd Stadler
To: Xxxxx Xxxx
Subject: Re: Enquiry

Well, one of us is still around, in spite of (or because of? preservatives?) our erstwhile snack cake dealings. The other one hasn't shuffled off the mortal coil so much as he doesn't seem very interested in eking out every last drop of "fame" from passing journalists. Unlike me, of course.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm still "involved" in investigating our snack cake friends, perhaps because there isn't much more to say about them, but more probably because ten years later people are still responding to what I've already done, so why do more?

Still, it's not every day I get an e-mail from someone at the BBC, so of course I'll reply and if you have any questions, I'll answer them, although the odds of my being more humorous than the Web site are slim.

It's not so much that the Web site is "all that" as that it was written when I was a college student, deeply intent on not studying, and this e-mail and any subsequent communications will occur while I'm working, perhaps deeply intent on not getting much done, but ... hmm, I don't know where I was going with that.

But whenever people interview me, I get the impression that they think my every word will be as brilliant as they perceive the site to be. They usually lose this impression quite quickly. This sometimes leads to their rather sadly asking me questions that they think are funny, regardless of how I answer, and rarely but most pathetically to simply asking me to say a quote that they've prepared because it will really tie the piece together. Gads, I'm not famous enough to pry this kind of pathos. Still, I once did a video interview with MTV in a hotel in Seattle in which the entire scene was shot in the rather small hotel room of one (all?) of the crew members — the camera was on one side of the bed, and I on the other, with a box of Twinkies duct-taped to some lighting rigging in between us. We had to keep pausing the interview because the sound of vacuuming outside was getting too loud. That's the sort of life experience that one treasures forever.

So maybe you don't want to ask me any questions now. Or maybe you see through my thin self-deprecating veneer and you know that I actually crave an interview with you, as it would give an otherwise normal life the imprimatur of exciting media coverage.

Either way, I have some questions for you. First, aren't most Britons unfamiliar with Twinkies? It seems like I get several e-mails a year from folks in the UK asking what a Twinkie is and could I send them a box or (for the sadly uninformed) could I, on the assumption that I work for Hostess, arrange for Hostess products to be distributed in Britain (a move which would be sure to firm up British respect for the United States and her corpulent citizens)? I think, to most Great Britizens (I just coined that term — can you circulate it over there?), a Twinkie is some vaguely defined monstrosity that looks less like the golden sponge cake it more or less is, and more like some kind of embodiment of everything that's wrong with America. Sort of, and I mean no deep offense here, like I think of a haggis (great chieftain o' the puddin' race!). Not that I've ever had a haggis, but then I doubt most Britons have ever had a Twinkie.

Secondly, a friend and I were having a discussion about units the other day (you can see how much less exciting my life has become since my heady days as America's premier Twinkie scientist), and we were talking about what units are used in the UK. I was under the impression that it was all metric at this point, but it seems not to be the case. Maybe it depends on how old you are. I don't expect you to tell me what unit you use for light brightness or whatever, but what about car speeds, distances between towns, paper dimensions, temperature, and so on? I know about using "stone" for people's weights, and I don't get it, so you don't have to talk about that.

Thirdly, can you say hello to Ricky Gervais for me? I know how small and intimate the BBC is, so you must see him somewhere around. Just let him know how much we enjoyed The Office several years after it aired over there. And if you could quote something from the show when you see him, so much the better.

Thanks.