I was at the City Market cheese counter the day after the Super Bowl and noticed a basket of Broncos-themed baked Parmesan cheese crisps for sale. So I’m wondering, did anyone purchase Broncos-theme snack foods after the embarrassing debacle? Sign me, Val Veeta.
Those crispy treats were a big hit prior to the Big Game. According to the cheese clerk who asked to remain anonymous, 48 bags of baked Parmesan cheese crisps featuring the Broncos logo were sold prior to kickoff.
On the day after, not a one was purchased. Zero. Zip. Nothing. Bupkis.
Which is exactly the number of points Our Favorite Team scored in the first half of That Event. A coincidence? Hmmm.
Anyway, the crisps are tasty and popular as a cracker replacement for the gluten-free crowd.
City Market prepares them right there at the store. The crisps are made with real Parmesan cheese from wheels and not that sawdust-like junk in the green shaker.
Fortunately, a camera-bearing Action Line visited to the cheese counter just before the snacks, like the Broncos, headed for the off-season.
With the Super Bowl in the rear-view mirror, the City Market cheese counter has set its sights on the next big promotional occasion: Valentine’s Day.
Instead of packages with stylized horse heads, Parmesan cheese crisps will be featured in bags emblazoned by red hearts.
Rather than getting a box of chocolates for your sweety, why not a bag of Parmesan crisps? It’s a cheesy gift, but it’s a lot healthier.
And as for the Broncos, Action Line can think of nothing more fitting than baked cheese snacks: They are flat and, they crumble – jut like the boys in orange on that painful episode eight evenings ago.
H H H
The Mea Culpa Mailbag takes note of an interesting, if not embarrassing, quirk.
Our friend Scott emailed about a rogue spelling problem. Last week’s question featured the word “guerilla” – with only one “r.”
“I’m wondering if you can get your spell-checker to stop permitting the misspelling of guerrilla. There are two r’s,” Scott writes.
“I ignored it last February, but did a quick search for the ‘guerilla’ and found that it’s a regular occurrence in The Durango Herald (31 times in past few years),” he wrote.
“Don’t the writers and/or editors use spell-checkers? Could you pass this on to the editors to have ‘guerilla’ removed as an acceptable spelling?”
The one-“r” insurgent needs some urgent detergent. Thus, the news desk has added “guerilla” to the list of naughty words.
But here’s the weird thing: Spell-check in both the Microsoft and Apple operating systems don’t flag “guerilla” as being incorrect.
To complicate matters, several dictionaries list the one “r” word as an acceptable alternative.
If you Google “guerrilla,” there are 9,150,000 results.
But Google “guerilla” and you get 4,620,000 results, including the name of an arts magazine, a marketing firm, a tech company that makes reading magnifiers and a metal-guitar manufacturer.
In addition, most of the 31 Herald misspellings appeared in Associated Press dispatches. The AP normally has an eagle-eyed copy desk whose staff members knows “guerrilla” is the appropriate spelling.
It seems that the insidious “guerilla” has infiltrated our lexicon.
That’s why relying on spell check isn’t always a good idea.
As they say – when it reigns, it pores.
Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you refer to a rebel simian barbecuer is a guerrilla gorilla griller.
