The time? High summer. The place? Binghamton, New York. My husband and I were there for a two-week stint, and though we weren’t native to the place, we were growing restless. Our Airbnb seemed haunted, with its framed photos of people that looked like ghosts and a decorating motif that could best be described as violently Christian. And we—a Jew, a Buddhist, and a corgi who answered to neither man nor God—longed to escape. But where?
Time and again, our answer to this question was Wegman’s.
The First Grocery Run for an out-of-towner is always overwhelming; there are basics to acquire, meals to plan, and (in our case) mustard packets to swipe from the sit-down café area to hoard for midweek sandwich-making emergencies. Amidst this chaos, I espied a logic-defying new popcorn strain from a familiar brand. But the First Grocery Run is no time to get fancy. Watermelon hibiscus-flavored anything cannot be indulged in when one is in survival mode.
By the second trip to Wegman’s later that week, I had leveled up to a more advanced need in the hierarchy: the need for entertainment. It was time to track down that weird popcorn for some cheap thrills. But it seemed to have vanished. As I inspected the snack aisle, I felt like a character in one of those middle-grade books, where a child buys an enchanted object from a twinkly old man whose magic shop is nowhere to be found on that same street a few scenes later.
The popcorn’s mysterious disappearance morphed my mild interest into full-blown yearning. Fortunately, on our third trip to Wegman’s (yes, that same week), my prayers were answered. There were about 20 bags placed strategically on the line to the self-checkout. I pretended that it was an impulse purchase instead of something I’d been planning for four days and grabbed one.
The package displayed oversized orange flowers and pieces of watermelon above the brand’s mascot, who sported a pink, bald spherical pate, closed eyes, and a serene smile like an offensive caricature of the Buddha. The copy on the back informed me that he was, in fact, known as “The Guru,” and for reasons unexplained, his name was Homer. Homer counseled, “It’s by illuminating the star within, we someday explore the stars above,” which sounded like something Elon would say while snorting Ketamine and blowing up a SpaceX rocket.
I opened the bag as soon as we got in the car. At first huff, its contents smelled like Fruity Pebbles. The kernels were speckled with brown dots, which I knew from the ingredient list were motes of “watermelon hibiscus seasoning.” It looked like popcorn that had come down with the measles.
I popped some into my mouth.
I was hit with a burst of artificial generic fruit flavor that brought to mind a strawberry fluoride treatment at the pediatric dentist. Next came the barest hint of salt, and a curdled aftertaste that left my tongue feeling like a sugar-coated cardboard box. Gun to my head, I would have been able to identify neither watermelon nor hibiscus in this stuff.
My husband, behind the wheel, permitted me to pour some into his open palm, and after the first bite, cried out, “WHY????” Then he put out his hand for more. Then he grabbed the entire bag and attempted to eat it with one hand while driving with the other. It was the LaCroix of popcorn; more essenced than flavored, the kind of food that you end up eating too much of because you’re convinced that with just one more bite, you might feel something.
My mind wandered to the origins of LesserEvil. It was an odd name for a company. Was consuming popcorn somehow inherently wicked? Did the founders say to each other, “Look, if these junkies are going to eat it anyway, we might as well keep them safe by giving them a product that’s certified USDA organic and free of seed oils?”
And just who were those founders? According to Wikipedia, they were: some random dude, Jim Kramer, and… GENE HACKMAN. That’s right—the steadfast detective from The French Connection teamed up with the screaming host of Mad Money to create a national noshing franchise. It’s a combination as unlikely as popcorn and watermelon-hibiscus, as snacking and original sin, as a Buddhist leader who either wrote the Odyssey or really, really likes doughnuts and Duff beer.
Or as unlikely as the ceramic crucified Jesus looking down from the breakfast nook on a pair of heathens as we finished off the bag. We may not have been converted, but at least we were entertained.
Dining and Cooking