A first attempt at a manifesto
My brother John and I have a disagreement. In painting the disagreement between the two of us I intend to be completely unfair.
Some facts:
John thinks he likes blueberry bagels.
Blueberry bagels are disgusting.
My long-suffering mother also thinks John likes blueberry bagels.
This is where the friction begins.
A brief history of bagels
Before 1980 or so, people rarely ate a toasted bagels on purpose. Once Dunkin’ Donuts got into the “bagel” business they foisted toasted bagels upon an unsuspecting public in the name of destroying good bakeries all over the world.
The Stale Bagel Proposition
The only bagels that should be toasted are those that are otherwise inedible. This includes fast food bagels, like Dunkin’ Donuts, Lenders, whatever round garbage your grocery store sells (insofar as any of them they count as bagels), and bagels that have gone stale.
When a bagel goes stale it can be saved by toasting. Dunkin Donuts must know this. Their entry into the “bagel” business was simple. Make a dense bread, punch a hole in it and try and sell it to people.
A Bagel Manifesto
Stories about coming to terms with belief, culture and that no one really cares about bagels anymore.bit.ly
I don’t know if you’ve ever had an un-toasted Dunkin Donuts bagel, but I double-dog dare you to try one. It’s like sand but with less flavor and texture.
I started eating bagels before Dunkin Donuts changed what counted as a bagel. Therefore a toasted bagel always will taste stale to me. And it isn’t just bagels. Bread is made to be eaten fresh. Day old bread was practically free during the Depression because, before American’s taste buds were fully homogenized, we cared about fresh, edible bread.
This is all relevant background information that also establishes, at some level, my biases.
Let’s talk about bagels
Recently, my brother and Godson whom I love and I have gotten into it a little bit over blueberry bagels. The reason is simple enough. I live in Maryland where they will literally sell you stale bagels. Bagel shop owners here expect that people will toast their bagels because diners here have no living taste buds except when it comes to crab cakes (which, let’s face it, are mayonnaise and crab meat, and how could anyone ever screw that up?).
After two decades here, I have become more than a little protective of my “bagel time” in New Jersey.
I also gorge myself like a dying man on bagels when I go up to Jersey. Seriously, there are days there I will have three bagels (which I admit is kind of gross), but I eat them in a hibernation kind of way.
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If I eat three good bagels a quarter (essentially one per month) each year, but do it all in four sittings, who are you to judge?
The following is completely made up, but I don’t care.
I feel as if my brother chose to “like” blueberry bagels so that my mother would buy them and he would always be assured one bagel after the frenzy. He is the fifth of six boys who have never known want but always known desire, especially in the case of food.
It isn’t his fault that he was late to the party and, at some level, it makes sense that he would “prefer” something so gross that his four older brothers would rather not gorge themselves than endure the horror of a blueberry bagel.
I was up in Jersey recently. We all were. Between my siblings and their children and mine there are about 20 people for breakfast. There was one bagel left over. It was blueberry. Here is the evidence:
For me, every uneaten blueberry bagel is an otherwise edible bagel that could have been mine. Moreover, Jon Stewart who is at least as Jersey as Springsteen, if not more, recently decried blueberry bagels as an “abomination before God” and this from a man who somehow manages to choke down cinnamon raisin bagels.
I’m not here to judge. According to the interview, Stewart’s fall from grace had something to do with toppingless bagels and the need for additional flavor.
But not only does Mr. Stewart have John-spelling issues, he is not my brother or Godson. Moreover, he does not espouse the position that blueberry bagels are in any way normal or good.
When I am in full gorge mode, and come upon the final bagel and that bagel is blueberry, I don’t merely lose my will to live, I lose my hope that humans are a species worth saving.
Hell, you may as well just get a bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.