Remembering the 2000 Official Chubby Checker Website

The Internet is changing so fast, I hope from time to time we all take a moment to remember what it was like at its peak -- and by "peak", I mean the 2000 version of the Official Chubby Checker Website.

Before "Alexander Graham Bell"... no telephone.

Before "Thomas Edison" ... no Electric light.

Before Dr. George Washington Carver ... no Oil from seed or cloning of plants.

Before "Henry Ford" no V8 engine

Before "Walt Disney" ... no animated cartoons

Before "Chubby Checker" ... no "Dancing Apart to the Beat"

What is "Dancing Apart to the Beat"? Dancing Apart to the beat is the dance we do when we dance apart to anybody's music with a beat and before "Chubby Checker" It could not be found!

Tin, elven saints, and Flour Boys

In "Missing Shelves," published today, G of the Junior Ganymede posted this bit of verse written by an unspecified member of his family:

Cultural Christianity

You can’t put books on missing shelves

You can’t make saints of Keebler elves

You can’t have Christ without the cross

You can’t refine and keep the dross

This is synchronistically interesting in connection with my last post, "Laurelin the tin tree?" In a comment there, I wrote:

Tin is a pretty ambiguous symbol. It occurs in the Bible both as a synonym for "dross" and as a valuable commodity listed alongside silver and gold. For Isaiah, tin in the silver is equated to water in the wine, potentially linking it to the Temperance card of the Tarot, which depicts an angel diluting wine with water.

This is the passage from Isaiah I had in mind:

Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:

Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.

Therefore saith the LORD, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:

And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin (Isa. 1:22-25).

The reference to making saints of elves is also topical, as that is quite literally what Bill is doing: identifying elves (Tolkien, not Keebler) with Christian saints, for example equating John the Baptist with the elf-king Thingol.

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The mention of Keebler elves sent me down a minor rabbit hole. I remember that when we were kids, there were four different shapes of E. L. Fudge cookies, and we had given them names and ranks. Cheek Holder was the highest-ranking cookie, followed by Flour Boy. I'm not entirely sure of the names of the two lower-ranking cookies, but I believe it was Fudge Boy followed by (maybe?) Star Boy. "Flour Boys" was also the usual name we used for E. L. Fudge cookies in general. So sometimes our mom would buy a pack of Flour Boys, and we would each be allowed to take a particular number. If you got a good "hand," meaning lots of Cheek Holders and Flour Boys sensu stricto, you "won."

The names came from the appearance of the cookies. Flour Boy and Fudge Boy were holding containers labeled flour and fudge respectively, and Cheek Holder was probably supposed to be waving but looked to us like he was holding his cheek. All the online images, though, have the cookies labeled with names like Ernie, Buckets, and Fast Eddie. Those names definitely didn't exist in my Keebler-eating days.

I did lots of searches adding words like vintage or particular decades, but so far I have scoured the Internet in vain for an image of a genuine Flour Boy, holding a labeled bag of flour. At one point I noticed that my search string -- e l fudge shapes history -- could be read as a sentence, if a rather ridiculous one.

I did finally manage to find a picture of Cheek Holder, which proves I'm not crazy.

Besides his cheek, Cheek Holder is holding a heart. This suggests that the four types of Flour Boys could correspond to the four Jacks/Knaves/Pages.