The August Megaparty continues -- and despite what you say, I am well within the time limit on posting this entry. Take that.
It was another fun-filled redeye flight back from California last night. I think I'm starting to learn my lesson about redeyes. They're wonderful if you have something to do in the hours leading up to your departure, but if you're like me, and you're stuck in an airport for six hours with nothing to do but wait for your flight, ouch. Fortunately, I had an iPod stuffed with episodes of 24, and an airport that went out of its way to entertain me. Aside from the usual gamut of restaurants and convenience marts littering LAX, I couldn't believe my eyes and good fortune as I stumbled through a door into a smoking section. I've been to LAX a bunch of times in the past few years, and only now do I know that it is not necessary to eat my cigarettes to avoid mental breakdown. So that was cool, and so was this:
Right near my gate was some weird candy store that reminded me all too much of "Over Our Heads" from The Facts of Life. Though smoothies and gourmet chocolate were the shop's specialties, it also played host to both the rudest cashier in the history of airports and the best candy assortment in the history of the entire world. Every kind of candy still in production was on sale here, and I say that fully knowing its level of hyperbole; stores with this much candy deserve fun words like "hyperbole."
It wasn't just the top suspects, either. From gummy "Pet Rats" to giant thumb-shaped lollipops forged in crystal blue raspberry, this was the premiere place to stock up on sweet things only a person with seventy days to kill in an airport would ever buy. I snatched a few ridiculous items, but only have enough energy left in the tank to tell you about the one that really counts: The "Mallow Burger."
I'd be lying if I said it was a life-sized cheeseburger replica, but it's so close to being a life-sized cheeseburger replica that I totally could've gotten away with it. This thing is unreal. We've seen gummy and marshmallow candies evolve their technologies over the past decade, but I've never seen an example that so closely mimics the color, the texture and the size of the real thing as this plastic-wrapped, crunchy-centered all American fun burger. They even put phony seeds on the bun. Phony seeds!
It tastes kind of like a Marshmallow Peep, but less sugary, and less good, and less sand-like. While there's no discernible difference in flavor between the bun, cheese and burger portions, the inside of the burger is filled with a toxically sweet hard candy. The package warns of this feature, but hindsight being what it is, I think it would've been neater to leave the hard candy center as a big surprise for the six people interested in eating a life-sized cheeseburger made of marshmallows.
I kind of love my giant marshmallow cheeseburger, and if I didn't need to shred the package to take pictures for YOU, I would've left it sealed, forever, right next to my keyboard. I'd give it little plastic googly eyes and pet it whenever it needed love. I'd call it Bunji, confident that no one would ever get the reference.
PS: Five hour redeyes should never have Over The Hedge as an in-flight movie experience.
Posted by Matt on 08/02/2006. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
I eat animals and I’m a software engineer. So I owe someone some points.
Does anyone remember those walkman-like devices from the late 80′s, early 90′s that you put these small carts or tapes into. They had one or two songs on them. I know one of the songs was a "Down on the Corner" cover by someone. Mellencamp maybe? It was on the comercial. This just popped into my head while I was in the shower this morning.
Oh this is my first post BTW, I’ve been lurking here for quite a while, I used to post on the forum.