Hot Pockets Heiress Guilty in College Admissions Cheating Scandal

Michelle Janavs, heiress to the Hot Pockets microwave snack fortune, has been sentenced to 2 minutes on High in a 1880 watt oven five months in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping her daughters cheat the college application process. Ms. Janavs admitted to paying $100,000 to have to have someone cheat on her daughters’ ACT exams. She also agreed to pay a USC athletic official $200,000 to have one daughter recruited to the college as a beach volleyball athlete when her only qualification was owning a swimsuit. On the bright side, some low-security federal prisons have volleyball courts, so maybe Ms. Janavs will be able to coach her daughter after she’s done her time.

Michelle Janavs must also pay a $250,000 fine, was ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, and faces two years of supervised release after she’s freed from prison.

More:

“Hot Pocket Heir Michelle Janavs Was Sentenced To 5 Months In Prison In The College Admissions Scandal,” Ellie Hall, BuzzFeed News

“A Trojan horse: USC was the most frequent target in alleged admissions scheme,”
Moriah Balingit, Susan Svrluga, and Nick Anderson, Washington Post

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The Twinkies Bakery is Now Worth Big Dough

Hostess, baker of America’s beloved Ding Dongs, Ho Hos and Twinkies, founded in 1930, went bankrupt in 2012. The firm was bought the next year by a partnership led by C. Dean Metropoulos, savior of Vlasic, Hungry-Man, Old Milwaukee and Chef Boyardee food brands. The turnaround king has done it again, for our nation’s iconic dessert cakes:

“Now, the iconic dessert titan is resurgent, selling its golden, cream-filled Twinkies across the world under the name Hostess Brands and turning down $2 billion offers from a pack of hopeful buyers. On Tuesday morning, the company reached its latest peak when Reuters, citing anonymous sources, suggested Hostess would head to Wall Street with an initial public offering that would value the company at around $2.5 billion.”

— “Twinkies are not just back from the dead. Their baker may now be worth billions.” Drew Harwell, Washington Post

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America, Rejoice! We Have Twinkies!

A puff of white smoke emerged from the bakery, announcing to the Nation’s faithful: “Habemus Twinkies!” America’s iconic snack has returned. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and snacking in the parlor.

Actually, it’s a very mixed blessing:

The Republic Is Saved. We Have Twinkies.

“Twinkies, the cult favorite snack brand orphaned by its liquidating parent company, Hostess Brands Inc., may have a new home.

The popular product, along with Hostess brands such as CupCakes, Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, is being sold to private equity firms Apollo Global Management and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. for $410 million.”

— “Two private equity firms to buy Twinkies, other Hostess brands,”  Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times

The Last Twinkies

The last shipment of Twinkies and other Hostess packaged pastries, 600 boxes, went on sale at a Chicago Jewel supermarket at 6:00 AM last Tuesday. Consumers made them disappear by 8:00 AM. In related news, the vulture capitalists who bought Hostess Brands made employee pension funds disappear while savoring the sweet creamy treat of big bonuses.

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Oreo Cookie Centennial

An American icon reaches the century mark today: the Oreo sandwich cookie. A classic. Two crisp, round, embossed chocolate-colored wafers separated by a thin stratum of sweet white paste. Nothing but the finest sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B1}, riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid, high oleic canola oil and/or palm oil and/or canola oil and/or soybean oil, cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), salt, soy lecithin (emulsifier), vanillin — an artifical flavor, chocolate. Yum.

Impending American Apocalypse: Save Our Twinkies!

The Hostess Snack Cake company has declared bankrupcy. No Twinkies? America is doomed. The Mayans were right about 2012.

The true impact of this catastrophe will be blunted by the legendary long shelf life of Hostess cakes and the Pentagon”s massive Strategic Twinkie Reserves, but the USA will run out of Ho-Hos sometime after mid-century. Freight sidings across the country are crammed with abandoned tank cars full of vanilla creme that will never see the inside of a cupcake. Someone call the EPA.

More:

“Costly ingredients, healthier eating habits put Hostess in bankruptcy,” Mae Anderson And Michelle Chapman, AP via Detroit Free Press

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Two Hummus Solution

Princeton University students recently rejected a proposal to stock an additional brand of hummus dip besides Sabra hummus. Pro-Palestinian students favor adding a new hummus choice, saying their only chickpea dip option is Israeli-owned Sabra, a company they accuse of having ties to the Golani Brigade, a troubled and violent Israeli military unit.

Some facts: