The Handbasket File

All official Trouservillians have that file, as in "the world is going to hell in a handbasket." If you don't have one yet, don't worry, it's issued with your Medicare card. Or, if you are natural born crankypants like me, you've had one for years.  Although I abandoned the physical file years ago, the items keep on coming.

Today's entry: Cronuts.  

Just seeing the headline in my sister's email, I assumed it was a new term for crazy-cranky old ladies:  Crone + Nuts. Turns out it is a cross between a donut and a croissant, and in the Big Applecore folks are standing in line for hours to purchase what amounts to a blob of flour, sugar, and grease.  

There are cronuts scalpers who turn around and sell them at a profit.  There are knockoffs: doissants.  And I am sure Mayor/Chief of the Nutrition Police Bloomberg is frothing at the mouth about this latest threat to the health of his city.

After all that standing on line, they can only purchase two because the management has decided to ration them, presumably to avert the Great Cronuts Massacre of 2013 in which thwarted patrons slug each other and the management with whatever the trend-obsessed New Yorker has to hand or foot--designer handbags, iPads, dog leashes, spike heeled Manolos. Or maybe it's just a clever marketing ploy to create scarcity and, thus, cachet.

Okay, maybe I'm old, but I don't get it.  No matter how rare, or how tasty, no baked good is worth waiting in line for.  In my Cape Cod town there is a bakery (closed two days a week) where demented vacationers wait for an hour or so in a line that features voracious green flies, but not so far as I know scalpers, to get a baguette or a croissant.  What for?  The bragging rights? The bread is decent, but it's not the only decent bread in the county.  

If you live in NYC, where a lot of folks live in apartments the size of storage lockers, maybe it does make more sense to stalk a piece of pastry to flaunt your up-to-the-minuteness.

I also think that Americans just like to make a competition out of anything.  If you can't get on to a reality TV show,  you can make your own little drama by scoring the most scarce and trendiest sugar bomb and boasting about it.  

"Those crumbs all over my pants? Oh, that must be the Cronut."  

"Excuse me while I lick my fingers.  Those Cronuts are a bit sticky you know." 

"Oh, yes, we scored a dozen Cronuts . Would you like to buy a raffle ticket? Only a hundred dollars. We're starting a vacation fund. We hear there's a great little town on Cape Cod where you can wait in line for baguettes. "

I'll wave to them as I drive by on my way out of town.