dime.oftheweek

postponed until I can find some (local 7/11s are failing me)…

After struggling with all aspects of dime.oftheweek, I am changing Monday’s topic from Current Events Monday to Media Monday.  Media Mondays will deal with the evolution of the dime store in the Aughts.  Mondays will now incorporate television, movies and music that keep the dime store ethic alive in a new century.  First topic, Law & Order.

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Round Up:

Law & Order Title Card

Law & Order is one of the longest running shows on television.  It is currently in its 19th season airing Wednesday nights at 10pm on NBC.  However, its place in the dime store cannon has been secured through its syndication on TNT, as well as its ability to sprout spin-offs like Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.  Law & Order, the original, contains all the features of a great dime store novel, translated to the small screen.  It has a formula, so finely honed that a fan of the show can know the future in the first ten minutes.  It has loveable characters, like D.A. Jack McCoy and Det. Lenny Briscoe.  All in all, not a bad way to spend a spare hour (as long as your mate (life- or room-) is willing to watch).

Recommendation Level:

Five Stars (out of Five).  If you like drama, mystery and murder, this show should appeal to you.  If you are a fan of dime store novels and their ability to draw you in, this show is your chance to get your hit from TV instead of a book.

Clips:

Season One Titles

Jack McCoy, at his best

(Still learning how to embed files in a player… MTC or BP, I am looking at you for some help!)

Sources:

Law & Order’s Wikipedia Page

Law & Order’s Imdb.com Page

Law & Order’s official website

Law & Order’s TNT Page

Round Up: A quick side note, the demise of dime.oftheweek has been greatly exaggerated.  Today, I will tackle the Airhead, a cheap, individually wrapped strip of taffy that should remind many of you of middle school (I used to love to pack my Airheads into a little ball by holding tight to one end of the wrapper and banging it back and forth to make a nice ball of sugar!).  I was able to find Airheads for as little as $.19 on my recent trip through the heartland (NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA and TX).

The original Airheads logo

History: Airheads were created in 1986 by Van Melle Inc, a Dutch candy company that produces other luminaries like Mentos and Fruitella.  After a merger in 2001, Van Melle became Perfitti Van Melle, the sixth largest candy manufacturer in the world.  Airheads and their accompanying product lines are produced in Erlanger, Kentucky.

Facts:

• Nearly 14 billion Airheads have been sold since 1986.
• There are six flavors of Airheads: Green Apple, Strawberry, Cherry, Watermelon, Blue Raspberry and White Mystery.
• Perfitti Van Melle refuses to identify White Mystery, but I contend it is its own flavor all by itself.  Other theories of mine are that they simply leave out the dye from the other flavors, making it a veritable candy Russian Roulette while still others think it is a blend of all the flavors.
• Airheads is the official ‘non-chocolate candy’ of US Youth Soccer.

Competition: As a taffy-like substance, Airheads comeptition naturally other taffies.  An obvious contender would be Laffy Taffy, another individually packaged, cheaply priced taffy.  Perhaps a less obvious competitor is Now and Later, a candy sold in chews (like Starburts) but with a very similar intense flavor to AIrheads.

Nutritional Information

• Net Weight: .55 oz
• Calories: 60
• Total Fat: 1g
• Sugar: 9g

Sources:

• Airheads official website
• Airheads wikipedia page
• Perfitti Van Melle history

Second on my list of favorite dime store authors is Agatha Christie.  She is a genius of the mystery, usually murder most foul.  While I got an early start on reading Louis L’Amour, I started reading Agatha Christie novels in high school.  This delay was probably due to a few factors, not the least of which was that they were my older sister’s favorite books so I thought they were girly.  In high school, after I had burned through all of my ‘Louis’ (twice, at least), I was so desperate that I picked up some ‘Agathas’ from my dad’s library.  They were instant favorites.

Most Agathas include a mysterious murder and a cluster of suspects for the reader to choose from.  Like all good formulas, every Agatha is different enough to tantalize the brain buds.  Another important factor of is that Christie was British as they come (appealing to the Anglophile* in all of us).  Christie also created two of the more memorable detectives in mystey fiction, Miss Jane Marple and Monsuir Hercule Poirot.  Both are eccentrics who are easy to love.  Still, the best part of every Agatha is the solution.

Of course, the attentive reader has an opportunity to solve the crimes.  All the characters are gathered.  All of the evidence has been presented.  Usually, I am so excited that I do not even stop to figure out the cases, but when I do, I have noticed some simple trends.  The guilty always seem to be easily dismissed and sufficiently minor to be the obvious choice, and yet, I have never solved a mystery.  Some of my favorites include The ABC Murders, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, and At Bertram’s Hotel.  Expect features on these and others in the near future.

* Correction:  This post originally said ‘appeals to the anglophobe in all of us’