Best in Show

Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked Chocolate Chunk, Dark Chocolate Brownie cookies.

“Frome your first bite, you’ll see why Pepperidge Farm Soft Baked Chocolate Chunk Cookies are The BEST Chocolate Chunk Cookies in the World!
Baked with an abundance of big chunks of rich chocolate and crunchy macadamia nuts or chewy caramel. Also enjoy our Soft Baked Oatmeal Raisin cookies. So satisfying, so delightful, so scrumptious.”

Intrigued, I snagged the bag after a rigorous workout at the Fieldhouse. “Best Chocolate Chunk Cookies in the World” huh? Well that’s pretty presumptuous. They must be right to make that kind of claim.
The cookies are the darkish brown or light black and smell of Hershey’s distinct dark chocolate aroma. Well, at least they’re accurate. I took a bite.

Meh. I am sorry I just implemented one of the most overused words of my generation to describe something that was neither correct or wrong, good or bad. It was just…meh.
Which got me thinking: How does one make the greatest cookies in the world? Or better yet, how do you rate them? By what standard that exists are we rating these cookies?

I suppose the standard of opinion, but that’s not much of a standard. These cookies obviously aren’t the best cookies in the world to me, so how does one advertise and attempt to skew my opinion which will be whatever it is upon tasting the morsel. I keep expecting a Pepperidge Farm Jedi to show up at my door, wave his hand and say, “These are the cookies you’re looking for.” Oh well, they didn’t quite hit the spot, in fact they were off by about 60 yards, but who’s counting?


Anyway, what I hope may become the JFS band (the Brass Sextet, really) had their/our first performance Thursday and more or less rocked the house. True, our intonation and dynamic balance was off, and I’d like to kill our first trumpet for tuning backstage while slouching and then sitting up straight for the performance and playing sharp. BUT, for a premiere performance, it was well executed. Most of us have long-term plans for the ensemble, and we learned a lot from that concert.

Speaking of concerts, the Wind Ensemble is really funny drunk.

Wait, let’s backtrack. We performed Mirror, Mirror by Stacy Garrop (wicked-cool lady) for the second time on Monday. The Sackler competition founders, Mr. and Mrs. Sackler, were there to witness the performance too, along with the Dean and Music Head. Though I spied Mrs. Sackler clutching her ears, her face all screwed up, during some of the more dissonant sections in the second and third movements, she later said it was just her “old ears.” From my seat, it was a joy to play something with a contemporary style, but a programmatic approach. Too much of the “harder stuff” we play has mucho dissonance just for the sake of sounding strange; the dissonance builds a lot of tension, but never resolves into a distinct melody. Mirror, Mirror felt like a film score, and comparable to James Horner’s ability. I’ve been humming this tune (Mirror, Mirror) for the past week, it’s that good.

But after the performance, they gave us White and Red Wine, amazing triangular brownies, and cheese. I stuck with water, which was actually club soda…which I drank a third of before “accidentally” leaving it on a resting tray and forgetting about it. No one was tipsy after the wine, but after we got back on the bus for the 2 and a half-hour ride back, the trombone section broke out the Captain Morgan. Nuff said, I fell asleep and woke up just in time to see the tank scene from the Last Crusade. Golly I love that movie.

Well, time to go practice before Sisterhood stuff (which is going quite well), and then I’ll travel to Bridgeport for the Basketball Tournament (I hope we win).

Thanks for reading and have a great day.
Over and Out,
Adam

PS: There wasn't a lick of Caramel or Nuts in those cookies, lying possums.