Them's Good Eats

I've always loved Little Debbie products, and perhaps my favorite of the company's offerings is its "cupcake"....
I put that last word in quotations because the Little Debbie cupcake is no longer actually CALLED the Little Debbie cupcake. For some reason, Little Debbie seems to have run into some trouble settling on exactly what to call these things. They're really just two chocolate pastries with a layer of thick white cream between them, held together by a thin layer of flaky fudge. I first discovered them back when they were still marketed as cupcakes, and they could be purchased individually for 25 cents at my local Shell station. I remember working there one summer, and catching a middle aged man in a suit stealing some. He slipped two of them into his pocket while hanging out behind the coffee counter. It struck me as funny that someone as well-dressed as this guy would shoplift a 25 cent item, so I didn't say anything, and let him get away with the crime.



Anyway, in a technical sense, the snacks in question weren't REALLY "cupcakes", as they were more pentagonal than round, and they obviously were not baked in a standard cupcake pan. I liked them anyway, though, because they were cheaper than their Hostess counterparts, and had more flavor. Plus, they could be easily pulled apart into two delicious little frosted chocolate morsels from which one could lick the frosting. Very convenient, and I like to have multiple options with whatever I consume.


But the saga doesn't end there. About a year ago, I noticed that the "cupcakes" had undergone a name change, and were simply called "chocolate creme cakes" or something vague like that. I was slightly annoyed that their identity had apparently been questioned by the folks at LDHQ, but I let it slide and continued eating them. Things stayed this way for some time, but THEN, last week, I saw the cakes at Walmart sold in THIS form:

Whoa! They're now being called "Chocolate Zebra Cakes". The frosting stripes on top are a bit different; but otherwise, they're the same product. Thankfully, Little Debbie has not abandoned its classic, pre-existing line of Zebra Cakes, either. They're now called "Yellow Zebra Cakes", one of three flavors in the Zebra line currently offered (the third is Orange). I like this change. Finally, my favorite mass-produced-creme-filled-pastries have an acceptable identity. Plus, the box now features a cool zebra wearing sunglasses. That's more value for the same price!

I declare Little Debbie Chocolate Zebra Cakes the Snack of the Month. And speaking of fine dining, here's a zombie movie:

Boy Eats Girl (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0415679/



"Resurrected by his mother after a tragic accident, 17-year-old Nathan (David Leon) awakens with a taste for human flesh. Next thing you know, a run-in with a school bully (Mark Huberman) sets off events that spread Nathan's "condition" all over town. Meanwhile, the undead Nathan tries to curb his appetite for his dream girl (Samantha Mumba) in this tongue-in-cheek zombie romp also starring Laurence Kinlan and Sara James."


Boy Eats Girl is yet another teen romantic comedy with an undead twist. I can't count how many of these films I've seen, and they're almost always crap. THIS ONE, however, is slightly tolerable.

A teenager named Nathan turns into a zombie. And if that isn't a big enough problem for him, he soon after turns the school bully into a zombie, setting off a chain reaction of zombiehood across their sleepy little town. Being basically light-hearted, this is one of those zombie movies in which the undead actually retain their personalities and sense of morality, so Nathan feels terrible about everything that's happened. On the other hand, the bully, being a jerk, has no qualms at all about attacking and infecting everyone he encounters. He's the one responsible for unleashing chaos across the whole town.

Anyway, Nathan is in love with a neighborhood girl whom he tries to protect from the other zombies, and that leads me to one of my biggest gripes about this picture. It's CALLED "Boy Eats Girl". Therefore, I was expecting that, you know, THE BOY WOULD EAT THE GIRL. Sadly, however, this does not happen. Instead, Nathan hangs around like some wuss, apologizing to the lass (who isn't really all that great looking, by the way), as if it's HIS fault that he's been turned into a zombie.

In fact, this is really all his mother's fault, as she'd apparently been dabbling in the black arts. See, it's a rule of thumb that in EUROPEAN zombie movies, the outbreak is usually caused by Voodoo, whereas in AMERICAN zombie movies, it's almost always a virus. Since Boy Eats Girl is an Irish movie, we've got Voodoo. Nathan's mother didn't understand the forces she was messing with; he turns into a zombie; they get drunk and eat some potatoes, yada yada yada....


So, this film took a little while to get rolling, and by roughly the halfway mark, I was seriously starting to wonder if there really would be any zombie mayhem at all. Smart writing kept my interest for the first 30 minutes or so, but the basic characters and situations here have been done so much before that this tired story was REALLY starting to drag by the time any undead attacked.

Boy Eats Girl's zombie scenes had a lot to make up for when they finally got underway, and I must say that they more-or-less succeeded. Sure, the level of gore is somewhat tame at first, but in later scenes, when our heroes (Nathan, his woman, and his trio of dorky friends) actually fight back the hordes, things get interesting. Plenty of amusing and creative ways to kill zombies here, folks (I especially liked it when one of the girls ran over several undead with a piece of farm equipment -- arms and heads fly everywhere!).

Boy Eats Girl isn't scary, but it does offer a few chuckles and some respectable scenes of zombie pandemonium. Although this film is nothing special, it's certainly a lot better than Night of the Living Dorks. Check it out if you're into this sort of thing.

3 out of 5.

b.