Day 4, 9,021 Words

I have been having so much fun this year! My favourite part has been the amazing suggestions that I have received and incorporated. Please, keep the suggestions coming! They're great!

Regarding Indigo's question about cronuts, I have to say that I was sort of underwhelmed. The cronuts were good, of course, but black market-worthy? Definitely not.

That isn't what Chloe would say, however:

The first cronut that she tried she ate slowly, almost delicately, so that her taste buds could remember everything about it. Her fingertips felt warm, and her whole body started tingling. She would tell her grandchildren about how light and flaky the pastry was, how perfectly sweet the icing sank into the dough, and how it almost melted in your mouth if you were lucky enough to get it just as it came out of the oven. But the next one, and about two dozen after that, were all a blur. All she remembers is waking up sprawled on the ground in the corner of the parking lot with an empty purple Juliet’s Bookstore and Bakery box that had probably been filled with cronuts previously. The only thing that was left to commemorate those dearly departed cronuts was her tummy ache. Her face was covered in sugar, icing and what she would later discover to be a drawn-on moustache, and for some reason a Swiss army knife with her initials engraved in it (that she did not know that she owned) was clutched tightly in her hand. She would neglect to tell her grandchildren about that.

I have to post this next longer part because it amused me endlessly. This is for you, Manta!

The customers who happened to pass through the bakery would often ask about the cronut, but most stuck to their favourite desserts instead. That is, until the cronut got what should forever be referred to as the Bill Paxton Bump.

Bill Paxton had launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to film the sequel to the hit disaster adventure movie Twister. Bill had been inspired by the popularity of movies about theme park rides—namely the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise starring inimitable Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow (although many would unsuccessfully try to imitate him) and Orlando Bloom as Will Turner, the considerably less successful Haunted Mansion (which Bill thought was criminally underrated), and the forthcoming Tomorrowland movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Bill had the (what he perceived to be) ingenious idea to make a Twister movie about the Twister ride that had been at the Universal Studios theme park since 1998. In this ride, The guests line up on a tiered observation platform under a corrugated metal roof, overlooking a simulated outdoor scene featuring a view of a rural drive-in theater and a diner at dusk as dark clouds roll overhead. Suddenly, a tree gets struck by lightning, scenes from The People Under the Stairs appear on the movie screen, sirens sound briefly, and winds in the room get stronger. A small light can be seen inside a house in the distance, as well as voices of a family getting into their storm cellar. A simulated tornado drops from the sky, and rain begins to fall. Guests are squirted with water from above. The tornado wrecks the drive-in screen, the diner, and a car, which causes a fireball to erupt. The roof of the observation platform also threatens to tear off. A cow, lifted by the wind, flies past the spectators. As the "storm" dies, the floor of the standing area lurches with a sudden drop, giving guests a final scare. Participants are then directed to exit through the "Aftermath" gift shop. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast was less than enthused about the film—particularly the extensive scene about the gift shop—and they didn’t agree that its “meta-ness” would be alluring to filmgoers. The only person who had donated to his Kickstarter campaign was someone who referred to themselves as “Fangs 4 Lyfe,” and this person had only donated five dollars (which earned them a high five from Bill Paxton himself, although no one had contacted him to collect). Crushed with disappointment, Bill Paxton relocated to Hollywood North in order to test his idea on what he perceived to be a more welcoming Canadian market.

Bill, being an adventure seeker, was thrilled when he saw that there was a never before seen pastry that he could try at his favourite bakery and bookstore. After having tried his first cronut he couldn’t help but go on a mini cronut bender himself, although his fell far short of Chloe’s (luckily). He decided to take to the Internet to tell the world about the newest baking sensation that he knew would soon take the world by storm. While his Kickstarter campaign had not been particularly popular, his social media accounts were all the rage. He used his Instagram account (the Earlybird filter was his favourite, although he agreed with Juliet that the “lo-fi” filter was most appropriate given the lighting), his Twitter account (he still hadn’t changed it from his spooky Halloween Twitter handle, which was appropriately @bill_pAXEton), his Tumblr, his MySpace, hell, he even Snapchatted everyone he knew to tell them to come to Juliet’s Bookstore and Bakery on the corner of Cumberland and Bellair in Yorkville, Toronto. “Cronuts are in,” he declared boldly. “Get the fuck out, cupcakes.”

First came the hipsters, who had been ironically following Bill Paxton on Twitter. Next came the mommy bloggers, who were initially opposed to the bakery because of all of the sugar, but they eventually decided that they could justify it because there was a bookstore there too. Then came the foodies, the foodie wannabes, the bloggers, the magazine writers, the newspaper columnists, the Bill Paxton fans (including a particularly fervent curly-haired woman who was weirdly dressed as a manta ray) then the people who had finished dinner and had vaguely heard something about the bakery. Within days, the poor employees of Juliet’s Bookstore and Bakery couldn’t keep up with the demand. Juliet had to hire more employees, which was of course a slow process since it takes a while for someone foolish enough to come along who will call a number in a bathroom stall looking for a job. Soon enough the bakery started to resemble a scene from Twister, complete with Bill Paxton.

I would like to thank the Wikipedia entry for the ride at Universal Studios for giving me so much material.