September 16, 2009 | Mama Smith

scary bon appetit

I made my first mistake when requesting a “free trial” of Bon Appetit magazine a few months ago. Second mistake, forgetting to cancel when those handy little slips to do so came in the mail. And now it’s come to this. The Big Mama of Deliquency Notices.

Dear Ms. Smith,

I didn’t want to send you this letter, but I’m afraid it’s come to this. Holy cow, this sounds like I’m REALLY in for it. Jail? Lashings? Beatings with a nail-studded board?!

Because we have not received your payment for the special services you requested, we have been forced to CANCEL your subscription. NOOOOOOOO!! Is missing issues what you really intended? Umm, I don’t know. Is this where I should start feeling convicted? I know paying bills is a task that gets put off, but now there is no more room to wait.

Unless you reinstate your service now, you will forfeit your delivery of America’s finest food & entertaining publication to which you have grown accustomed. Oh my gosh, wait, WAIT. I didn’t know I’d grown ACCUSTOMED to it!? Are you saying I must be addicted and not even KNOW it!? Whew, good thing you told me or who knows where I’d be in a few weeks. Probably frantically tearing into the public library, all mangy and disheveled, ripping through the magazine racks, letting out blood-curdling screams when there were no Bon Appetit’s too be found, threatening the librarian with a nail file to FIND ME ONE NOW or else!

Don’t make the mistake of others who realized too late how much they counted on their Bon Appetit subscription. No, no I won’t!! Just tell me how to CHANGE!? I can’t join the ranks of overflowing cuckoo-farms packed with all the crazed deliquent B.A. subscribers whose lives have fallen apart without the ability to know how to cook a .25lb piece of $80 free-range organic kangaroo tenderloin flown in from the coasts of Australia! I won’t become one of them!! They too let their account payments slide…and ended up paying more later on. Okay wait, what the heck is THAT supposed to mean?! Are we back to the jail/lashings/beatings innuendos?

Please submit a payment at once.

In your lame, ridiculous-attempt-to-salvage-paper-subscriptions-in-the-year-of-technology dreams, Bon Appetit. In case you’re living in hole, this is 2009. Majority of your recipes (with ingredients usually way too expensive to purchase..cough, cough) are published free of charge, thanks to epicurious. I am sorry I made the dreaded mistake of trying you out. Mark my words, it will NEVER happen again. And for the record, “America’s finest food publication”?! Sorry, Cooks Illustrated has you hands down.

On a random hair note, Levi has sweeeet static slide hair these days. Mama, on the other hand, doesn’t need static to do crazy hair things. She chooses to chop her hair when she gets stressed. This morning, no bangs. After mail arrives with ER bill of $800 for B’s severed tongue, bangs. Voila. It’s that easy.