Just as there is good and bad in everything except having a van door closed on your eye, everyone knows there are good and bad methods of making comparisons between things that are, as the old saying goes, apples and oranges. (Though these are both flavors of Life Savers, which are all exactly the same shape, so I don’t see the problem.) I, Meldon Sandrow, have invented a new way to compare and rate the different kinds of shopping environments that sustain our modern lives, in a new kind of no-holds-barred consumer cage match. My methodology is so simple as to be revolutionary. It is alphabetical. I begin this series with book stores versus food stores. Shoppers, you are welcome.
A – D: Here in the Book Store one finds Adult Literature, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, comics, and a biography of Bob Denver with pictures of Ginger totally shirt-crowning.
The food store has asparagus, broccoli, carrots and diced carrots. There is also Confectionary, but in this section one must take care that the homeless haven’t sneakily half-emptied the mini-bite bags, replacing Heath and Mars bars with wadded-up squares of pant cardboard, “as is their wont.”
Diapers are here, for those friends of mine who have become boring.
In this part of the food store, beware of the Chilean Sea Cherry, formerly known as the Patagonian Toothfruit.
A negative for A – D in both stores is that it’s closest to the door, where you have to pass people asking you to sign petitions to get angry at strangers doing things you never heard of.
Winner: book store.
E – H: This is a good place to browse in either place, having Freud and frankfurters, Robert Heinlein and ham, each being interchangeable with the other, sort of All the Foreign authors are here too, except John Le Carré.
The food store boasts hamburger and fries here; major plus, even though it’s a stroll to the ketchup.
The book store has film studies, Fangoria boxed sets, and, under Economics, pictures of women from French Guyana disguised as books about micro-lending.
I’m calling this one for food.
Financial advice: for the same reason you shouldn’t grocery shop when hungry, never go to a book store with a full wallet right after you’ve been in a head-on crash in which you may have suffered a concussion.
I – L: Ice cream wins this one for the food store, which on the book store side is represented by Scandinavian authors with names that have little dots all over them, and biographies of black musicians named Jackson, James, Jones, Johnson, Joplin, Jarrett and Jelly Roll, all of whom were The King or The Queen of something.
As a plus for books, the Stephen King volumes are here, so this is definitely the place for you if you don’t like ice cream and are intrigued by what would happen if a clown grew amazing powers of hiding and was pissed at you.
For women in the food store there is Jergen’s Lotion. I’m not sure what it’s used for (and is it food?) but they all seem to have some.
M – Q: In this section of the book store we find Photography, an incredible tribute to nature, human patience and digital editing. There are books on animals and geysers, plus one about Robert Mapplethorpe with pictures of dudes checking each other for termites. If that’s your thing, go for it.
The book store has its Music section here, but it’s usually books about under-appreciated musicians, meaning 500 pages about a guy who played drums for Traffic in 1969 before stabbing his mother. (Is there a book about a musician that is not a downer? They can give you serious schwangst, which is angst so bad your penis hurts. If you don’t have a penis count yourself lucky!)
Religion is here in the food store, with Michelmas cake, matzohs, Manischewitz and Quaker Oats.
For hipsters, this part of the food store has Organic, balanced for them in the book store by Prius Repair.
Pizza is found here, as well as olives and pepperoni, which is pretty well a headlock for food store, sorry books.
R – V: This is the busiest section of both places, with Shakespeare and Charles Schulz (in Mexico: Carlos Schulz) duking it out with spaghetti and sodas, Tolkien against tacos, and Vonnegut versus V-8 Juice and venison. (My nearest Vons seldom has venison. Is there a boycott I don’t know about?)
Shoelaces are here in the food store, for reasons going back to frontier days when the barbers in cowboy towns were also the surgeons, the dentists were the gold miners, the broccoli harvesters made the shoes, and so forth.
Many book stores, trying not to go out of business, used to have Videos here, until streaming, when the video section helped them go out of business too. Who in my age group can even remember a DVD? They were like a small beautiful rain forest frog that only lives for a day and then is crushed by a tractor harvesting wood for, ironically, a “realistic frog habitat.”
My vote: spaghetti and tacos lock it down for food.
W – Z: This is the dregs of both stores, featuring vegetables and the poetry of Anson Williams. If you find yourself shopping under W – Z, it might be best to just Uber on out of there, or Lyft during surge pricing.
This part of the book store ends at floor level, with writers whose last names start with Z missing out on potential readers who don’t want to get fur from the book store cat on their knees. Some authors change their names to move away from here to shelves with higher elevations , an option not available to watercress or zucchini. A workout bud tells me popular woman’s author Cheryl Strayed, now near the front of the store, was born Marion Zitsucker. Her Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention this so there is no way to confirm or deny it.
Winner: neither store, sorry.
Next in alphabetic reviews: The Great University Courses versus Men’s Clubs
