Todd Stadler's blog

Gettin' snarky with the journalists, part 2

The second in a series of e-mails I sent to journalists writing hard-hitting news about the Twinkie's forthcoming 75th anniversary.

Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 10:42:33 EST
From: Xxxxxxx@aol.com
To: Todd Stadler
Subject: I'm writing a USA Weekend article about Twinkies

I'm writing a USA Weekend article about Twinkies. Would you tell me a little about the TWINKIES project? When/why/how was it started? What is it? What's the point? Anything else you wish to say. Please give me your full name, title, where you're based, phone number, e-mail address.

Thanks,
Xxxx Xxxxxxx
Phone (xxx) xxx-xxxx
E-mail Xxxxxxx@aol.com

And my response:

Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 18:01:42 -0800
From: Todd Stadler
To: Xxxxxxx@aol.com
Subject: Re: I'm writing a USA Weekend article about Twinkies

I'm writing a USA Weekend article about Twinkies.

Great!

Would you tell me a little about the TWINKIES project?

I'm not sure what to say about the project that isn't on the Web site itself, so ...

When/why/how was it started?

May 1995 (almost a milestone of its own!). As almost all things created by college students, it was a desperate attempt to stave off sleep and/or the need to study, likely both. We were probably inspired by an unsourced internet forward later found to have pulled from a 1989 Spy Magazine article somewhat similar in structure to our tests, but I don't really remember anymore. Either way, we were all goofed up on copious amounts of caffeine, and unwilling to read our books. This would have been unremarkable for college students had we not also decided to post our results on the relatively nascent Web. Because, you know, once you're on the internet, you're credible. And funny — because in 1995, the only other stuff on the Web was scientific research. So you didn't have to try hard to be lauded as hilarious. I remember before the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project became famous, the most popular humor site on the Web was a scan of knock-knock jokes from a 1974 issue of Highlights for Children.

What is it?

Um ... A Web site? No, make that — an old, mostly funny Web site? Or how about: the world's foremost authority in the nascent field of Twinkie science? (I really just want to have a quote from me featuring the word "nascent", so I'm using it as much as possible.)

I was also going to say that the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project is a boon to lazy features journalists, but I didn't want you to get offended. That's why I didn't say it. Still, you'd be surprised how often we get mentioned in papers that never bothered to contact us. Some poor guy, working under deadline, has to write an article in the Living or Today section or whatever, his friend forwards him our URL, and twenty minutes later he's got his article. If he attributes any quotes to us, they're just taken from the site copy. Then we find out about it because somebody reads it and tells us about it. Also, whenever there is a story about Twinkies, we (which means I — Gouge, my erstwhile co-scientist either doesn't get all the e-mail or chooses to ignore it) are the go-to guys for quotes. Not that I mind — I relish the cheap 'n' easy fame, to be sure — but it's odd to me how often respectable publications or programs get ahold of us. But, honestly, don't let my quasi-cynical rambling turn you off. I really do want to be featured in your article.

What's the point?

You know, many a philosophy professor has been granted tenure because he's written copious amounts of verbiage answering this question. So I'm likely not going to cover it all. Ha.

To a surprising number of our readers who bother to e-mail us, the point is that we apparently "have too much free time". As if it were we who just wasted thirty minutes in the computer lab surfing humor sites and writing in to the authors in the futile hopes of getting our e-mail posted on the letters page. Hmph.

To an equally surprising number of science teachers, the point is to teach the scientific method in a fun and humorous way that engages kids at a visceral level something something something. That we still get letters attesting to this use blows me away. Okay, yes, we did use our knowledge of the elementary-school-level scientific method to structure our tests. Maybe because it harkened back to those halcyon days when you could stick some celery in red water and call it science, or maybe because we hadn't done any real research since said days, and we didn't know any better. But I'd like to say for the record that we didn't set out to teach anybody anything in a fun or humorous way. Because I am a firm believer that teaching should never involve cutting the cord off of an underused applience and plugging it directly into the wall. Still, to the degree that we've helped the children (who I believe are the future), that's great. Even if I know deep down that the only reason the teachers use us as examples is because they're bored bored bored.

But, honestly, the point was originally "to entertain ourselves because we are bored". When posted to the internet as such things eventually must be, this became "to entertain nerds with computers because they are bored". Later, when the internet was no longer the exclusive domain of nerds, this became "to entertain losers who are still bored in spite of there being more productive and informative sites out there".

I suppose now, the point is "to keep Todd on the periphery of fame for years to come at no expense to him, much to his own amusement".

Anything else you wish to say.

The Web site didn't always used to be at www.twinkiesproject.com. It used to be at www.owlnet.rice.edu/~gouge/twinkies.html (now that's a URL!), being a part of Chris Gouge's former student Web space. But if you go to that URL now, you get forwarded to twinkiesproject.com, because the former Rice webmaster (Prentiss Riddle) is a cool, cool guy. Anyhow, when Chris graduated a year after me, it looked like the site was going to be shut down. We had tons of offers to "mirror" the site elsewhere, but we didn't like the idea of losing control over what we'd made. Then Hostess, in a curiously wise move otherwise unheard of among large corporations, decided to adopt us without exercising any editorial control. They bought the domain twinkiesproject.com, set it up, and gave us passwords. In theory, I could still edit it today, but I'm pretty lazy these days.

Interestingly, we first got a hold of Hostess because of a raving lunatic. In those days of the nascent (!) Web, lunatics roamed freely, as opposed to now when they're mostly confined to blogs. Anyhow, some guy claimed to have trademarked the word "Winkies" for some animated character he'd made. He'd typed the word "winkies" into a search engine and on the results page saw a link to our site along with a text excerpt that had his precious would-be trademarked term in bold all over the place! Unfortunately, he wasn't clever enough to notice the "T" in front of all the instances of "winkies". So he threatened to sue us. At that time, Rice University had the outstanding legal policy of "if even the looniest of dingbats says you're threatening his copyright, we'll take down your page until our highly paid legal team has thoroughly wasted their time," so the page got taken down. Which got us coverage in the Houston Chronicle, and through them, on the AP wire (and, ultimately, in a Dave Barry book, of course). Because in those days, breaking copyright on the Web was a new thing. Everyone wanted to know if perhaps the internet should be made illegal or burned or something. Anyhow, through this whole legal morass, Rice's legal team got a hold of Hostess' legal team and billed a lot of hours. Out of those meetings came the agreement that our Web site would be "blessed" as legal by Hostess, provided that we put a disclaimer about copyrights they held on the site. We were happy to not be the first internet copyright defendants put to death, so we complied. In hindsight, this was remarkably cool of Hostess. I mean, here we are playing up the "Twinkies are the stuff of mad science" angle, and they co-opted us rather than tried to crush us, which was, and remains, Disney's favorite tactic. Very forward-thinking, very postmodern (I guess — I never studied such things). Anyhow, that's how Hostess came to save the site when we were about to lose it when Chris graduated.

At some point later, Hostess tried to further co-opt our apparent e-fame by cajoling us to "host" twinkies.com. They told us they'd give us a year's supply of Twinkies if we only sent in photos of ourselves (to be Photoshopped onto pixellated white lab coats, no doubt) and agreed to shill for them. Visions of hundreds (possibly thousands — who gets to define a "year's supply"?) of Twinkies arriving at my door made me giddy. Then we found that since they were sticking to their line that Twinkies only last a month or so, they would really only send us coupons every month, good for whatever they deemed to be thirty days' worth of Twinkies. This greatly disappointed us — we wanted hundreds of Twinkies, now! So, being lazy college students, we never bothered to send in our photos.

Some years later, they officially removed their link from twinkies.com to twinkiesproject.com, since they were trying to get rated by some arbiter of child-safety, and our site had all sorts of depictions of people settings things on fire, dropping things off buildings, which to some people is a bad influence to kids, never mind the amazing science education it offers! Ahem. So while we still have an official relationship with Hostess, it's been years since we talked. I miss those days when I got e-mail from their clipping service. Oh well.

And while they went on to declare bankruptcy, we've (er ... I've) continued to milk it for all it's worth. Articles in purt-near every major newspaper in America, plus several foreign ones. Radio interviews. TV interviews (well, only one, but it was on MTV, and they paid for my travel up to Seattle and hotel, which was pretty much the best gig I've gotten out of this, even if the entire interview was filmed in the crew's small hotel room and we kept having to pause whenever the maid's vacuuming got too loud; it was on a show called Big Urban Myth; I only watched one and a half episodes). We were also featured in a manual for a modem (a US Sportster, if I remember), along the lines of "so you're connected to the Internet, now what's out there?" All in all, a ridiculous amount of attention has resulted from a little goofing off. It's the quintessential American success story.

My mom used to act embarrassed that she'd spent all that money sending me to a fine university only for me to get famous for procrastinating. Maybe she thought the folks at church would lampoon her son's lackadaisical ways. But now she's proud to be the mother of "the Twinkies guy". And given that four years ago, I quit my hardware engineering job at Intel and became a webmaster (for a small publisher making gardening and horticulture books), I'd have to say that the T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project contributed more to my current career than my official college major, which was computer engineering. I can only imagine what Rice University has gotten out of it in terms of free publicity. The bums.

So I'm equal parts jaded of the silly stories that get done on us, realizing how they are at least mildly indicative of the sorry state of today's entertainment-cum-"news", and excited to ride the wave of unmerited attention like so many other people who mostly live in California. But you can focus on the excited part in your article. Or you can write me out entirely because I've sort of sullied your profession. Either way, I get to write long, rambling e-mails to journalists of apparent renown, so I've had my fun.

Please give me your full name, title, where you're based, phone number, e-mail address.

Full name: Todd Stadler
Title: Twinkie scientist*
Based: Portland, Oregon
Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx
E-mail: xxxxxxx@aracnet.com

*This was the caption on my interview with MTV's Big Urban Myth, so I'd hate to mess up the "branding" I've got going. If I ever get business cards, this will be my title, so it's practically official or something.