The Reluctant Whore

The New York Times reports today with a full page spread, that the Whoopie Pie is having a resurgence across the nation. Ok.

There was even a segment on it on The View this morning where Barbara Walters aggressively snatched the segment away from Whoopi Goldberg (whose name justifies the entire segment anyway) because apparently Whoopi didn’t see the story in the Times first and Whoopi was moderating.

Here is the actual text of how Barbara Walters snatched the story:

They come back from a break and there’s the star spangled “V” and the camera cuts to Whoopi Goldberg.

Goldberg: Did you happen to see the front page
Walters: YOU DIDN’T ….and I did
Goldberg: Oh…yes…go ahead Barbara
Walters: So, I’m going to do it…So, I pick up the New York Times and on the front page I see what Whoopi did NOT see. It says Whoopie! There you go. So, I got all excited and I brought it in.
Goldberg: You got excited and I split an atom and I got Whoopie Pies for us.

So, ultimately, Whoopi Goldberg wins because she brought the pies and later points out that her name has no "e" in it but it’s worth noticing the needless aggression from Barbara Walters for anyone who thinks she’s gone soft.

So, despite the fact that everyone is living for them at the moment, can I just say that I think that Whoopie Pies are, with the exception of anything that contains peanut butter, the MOST disappointing dessert experience I’ve ever had? I mean, that doesn’t include the disappointment of being at a Christian babysitter’s house and having them drag out fruit salad that has been pre-served into small plastic cups – there’s hardly anything worse than that entire scenario; the fact that you’re act a Christian babysitter’s house in the first place gives pause for thought. But apart from that I think these freaking Whoopie Pies are a really disappointing, deceitful experience.

I mean, look at them; they're amazing looking. It’s all cake and chocolate and then there’s this whipped up cream inside and it just looks like the kind of thing that could potentially replace Prozac or Lexapro or Paxil or whatever free samples your therapist has given you that week because you don’t have prescription insurance. Nothing about Whoopie Pies LOOKS disappointing. I have been to the Union Square farmer’s market on several occasions and I have seen them sitting there in bakery stalls, apparently assembled with organic cream and sugar and eggs and sunlight and Buddhist zen perfect flour from the head of Siddartha Gotama and I bought them wanting to take part in this apparent universally loved and now New York Times acknowledged cake pie whatever and from the moment you actually take a bite it’s all downhill.

The fact is Whoopie Pies are a dessert that is there without really being there. For starters, I think anyone with a brain can see that it's not a pie so, like the Catholic Church's World Youth Day, the name is saturated in deception. Then, the Whoopie Pie generally seems to refer to itself but it never really gets there and actually delivers. The cake isn’t quite chocolate cake. It can’t commit to being a cookie or a slab of cake so it just sits there in uninspiring oblivion and the cream is so light on flavor that you actually feel resentful when it spills out all over you and gets all over your face and you eventually swallow some. I mean, it’s like if you’re going to be that annoying at least be cream cheese based or have something extraordinary going on like gold leaf or little pellets of Vicodin.

Crème brulee, tirami-fucking-su, good old American pie…now THERE are some desserts you can set your watch and aim a missile launcher to.

So, even though the New York Times is all thrilled about noticing that Whoopie Pies are the new Palestinian scarf or heavy black-framed reading glasses when it comes to stall bought desserts, I really don’t agree.

When I got out of the shower my hands were so white they were transparent and I could see blue arteries pulsing beneath the skin in much the same way Tom Cruise’s face was covered in subtle blue veins in Interview with a Vampire that were probably put in later on with digital software. My hands didn’t need digital software. Does this mean I’m probably now a Vampire? I think we can all safely assume that it does.

Actually, I have no idea what it means but my gut instinct is to eat more chili. [source]