danny rosenberg
sr. copywriter

Soggy Waffles

Welcome to Soggy Waffles. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the write-up. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online.

 And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

1 = The Frozen Waffle. The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. That bite was so traumatizing that you it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

 2 = The Soggy Waffle. You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

3 = The Microwaved Waffle. This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

 4 = The Crispy Waffle. Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This is the type of movie that cracks into your End-of-Year best list, but doesn’t quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

5 = The Toasty Waffle. This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious. You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Logo and illustrations by Adrienne Luther.

Welcome to Soggy Waffles Reviews. Here’s how these bite-size, digestible movie reviews work. Every movie gets a haiku. That’s one movie, 17 syllables. Every movie gets a short write-up. I’m talking so short that you should be able to completely syrupize a plate of waffles in the time it takes to read the review. If not, then I’m not doing my job. This is my take on the movies I see, not a chewed up and spit out version of anything you’ll find online. And finally, every movie gets a Soggy Waffles rating. The scale is as follows:

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-08.png

1. The Frozen Waffle

The type of waffle that you can still taste the freezer burn when you bite into it. The whole experience is so traumatizing that it might be awhile before you can safely bite into another.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-07.png

2. The Soggy Waffle

You don’t need a pick-axe or other climbing gear to attack this waffle, but the pneumonic device you learned in elementary school to memorize the cardinal directions still applies: Never Eat Soggy Waffles.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-03.png

3. The Microwaved Waffle

This is the type of waffle that won’t stick with you for the rest of your life, but damn you enjoyed it nonetheless. Not every movie can be a Superbad.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-02.png

4. The Crispy Waffle

Oh yeah, it’s not the best waffle you’ve ever had, but it’s pretty close. This rating is reserved for the movise that crack into your End-of-Year best lists but don't quite make it onto your Best of All Time.

Soggy_Waffles_Draft-01.png

5. The Perfectly Toasted Waffle

This is that from-scratch, special recipe, best-you’ve-ever had waffle. The kind in which the waffle is so good that the act of adding chocolate chips, butter or even syrup would be sacrilegious (but obviously you still do). You can never eat it for the first time twice, so savor it when you’ve got it.

For Bubby and Pop

For Bubby

I wouldn’t say I was a spoiled child, but I do think it’s fair to say that Bubby and Pop spoiled me. Our family stayed with them whenever we visited St. Louis, and when we would get to their apartment, Allie and I would race into the room we shared to see what was waiting for us on our respective beds. Whether we found Lincoln logs or chapter books or iTunes gift cards, I can see now that Bubby and Pop loved getting us these “Surprises” just as much as we loved getting them. They loved giving gifts for any occasion, but they especially loved Hannukah, which we discovered they had down to an actual science. Last year when we were cleaning out Bubby’s apartment, we found a meticulous handwritten record of every Hanukkah gift they gave to their children, childrens’ spouses and five grandchildren going back for at least 10 years, noting what each gift was and how much it cost.

And though my memory isn’t as comprehensive as this gift chart, I can safely say that one of my favorite gifts Bubby shared with me was her love for reading. I have fond memories of Bubby and I sitting in their living room, each of us lost in our own respective worlds. Hers, a detective mystery; mine, Captain Underpants. I loved visiting Bubby at the St. Louis Community College library and later at the Thornhill brand, where I would get lost in the stacks of Young Adult fiction and fantasy while Pop and I waited for Bubby to get off work. Bubby introduced me to authors like Harlan Coben – who we actually met once when his book tour stopped at her library –  as well as Mitch Albom. To this day I think it’s safe to say that I’m the only third grader in the history of third graders to bring Tuesdays with Morrie to class to read during quiet time.

It was always Bubby and Pop for most of our adventures, but Bubby and I had our special moments, too. New Year’s Eve was one of Bubby’s favorite holidays – second only to July Fourth – and I remember being five years old and staying up to watch the ball drop, toasting to each other with sparkling grape juice after everyone else had already fallen asleep. Neither of us liked to sleep in late, so on Black Fridays the two of us would creep out at 4am to go to Kohl’s and Target and Best Buy, and by 7am we’d be laughing over pancakes and banana chocolate milkshakes at Steak n Shake to watch the sun rise.

Every spring break from the time I was 8 to 16, I’d spend a week in St. Louis with just Bubby and Pop, and it’s important for me to emphasize here that this was without my parents or sister around. Those were my absolute favorite trips – sorry, Allie – and I looked forward to them every year. This was our time to do the things that we – by which I mean I – wanted to do, like sip Frappucinos at Borders and see arthouse films at the Plaza Frontenac that nobody else wanted to see but Bubby and me.

One of my favorite games to play with Bubby on these trips was the one where we would go to Blockbuster, and I would beg Bubby to let us rent inappropriate movies until she gave in. We played this game a lot, and I got really good at it. This is how I watched Borat and Wedding Crashers for the first time. My mom never even really found out either… but I’m sure I made Bubby nervous once when I got actual nightmares from a movie called Changeling, and we had to agree not to ever tell my mom about it. I don’t think Bubby would mind me saying that now.

Bubby and Pop were the type of grandparents who you can just tell were born to be grandparents. When you think of the ideal of what grandparents should be, they were  quintessentially that. Bubby was also the quintessential Jewish grandma. She loved cooking challah French toast for us and making us Root Beer floats. She loved spoiling us and taking care of us, and like the best Jewish grandmothers, she also loved to be a little stubborn.

One of our favorite family stories is when Allie was born in November of 1999. It was an uncharacteristic 80-degrees that day when she and Pop drove me to the hospital to meet my little sister for the first time, and Bubby insisted I wear my winter coat because it was, of course, November. And even though I begged and pleaded in the car for her to let me take it off, she never let me, and I never let her forget it.

But on the flipside of that, Bubby’s stubbornness is also what made her resilient. When she had her first and then second stroke when I was in middle school, I surely thought we were coming to the end. But that was almost 20 years ago! And even though she never drove a car or walked without a cane or walker again, it wouldn’t have been like Bubby to give up at then.

In a different sense, Bubby was also resilient in that she was far tech savvier than she ever got credit for being at her age. She never quite figured out how to use a flip phone, but we did set her up on Facebook, and she loved email. Bubby and I emailed each other almost every day from 2008 until 2022, and sometimes she’d reply within minutes of my message. And then I’d be like, damn, I just crossed emailing Bubby off my to-do list, now I have to write it on my to-do list again so I can get the satisfaction of crossing it off again.

But back to Bubby. Bubby even had an iPad before I did, and we loved to use it to play Words With Friends against each other, even though she would almost always claim she lost because “she got bad letters that game.”

As Bubby and Pop got older, all they wanted was for our family to get closer. And in the six years since Pop passed, we’ve definitely done that. We’ve also grown significantly in size by adding five new little members to the family. Matlida, Cooper, Mac, Spencer and Sawyer made Bubby a great grandma, and just between us, I think she might’ve cherished being a great grandma even more than being a grandma.

Bubby passed away on Easter Sunday, so of course I had to ask Chat GPT about the significance of that. It said that when your grandmother passes away on Easter, her teachings, values, and love continue to live on in the lives of her descendants, much like the enduring impact of Jesus's teachings. If you ask me, I think Bubby would’ve laughed at that, and then I think she would’ve laughed disapprovingly at me for making a joke about Jesus at her funeral.

After Bubby had her strokes, I had a growing fear that my time with Bubby and Pop would be cut short. But I’m fortunate that it never was. I got 22 amazing years with Pop and 28 amazing years with Bubby. They were, and are, and always will be, my favorite people in the entire world. So now that I think more about it, I actually might be pretty spoiled after all.

 For Pop

I’ve always thought that the biggest crime the universe ever committed was separating Pop and me by a gap of 67 years. Had we been contemporaries, I’m confident we would have been best friends. Anyone who’s known me growing up, knows that he and I always shared a special connection. Even today, I’m jealous of my mom and Uncle Stuart and all of Pop’s friends when they tell stories about him from when he was younger, because they got to know him in a way I never could. But I might be luckier than them after all, because I got to know him as a grandfather, and I got to be his only grandson.

And as Pop’s only grandson, there’s a lot he passed down to me: his luck for winning random things in raffles, and hopefully his hair, but unfortunately not his bowling skills. Ask my friends. When I have a good game I say it’s because bowling is in my blood, but more often than not I’m saying that I must not have gotten Pop’s bowling gene.

 But Pop also passed something else onto me: his creativity. He always loved to draw and color, and for a while I thought I was going to be good at drawing too. But then I came into my own as a writer, and he always encouraged me to follow that talent. Whether I wanted to be an author or a movie critic or an advertising writer, he always wanted to know what I was doing, how my classes were going and what my teachers were like.

 And when we were younger, Pop wasn’t just interested in what his grandkids were doing, he was an active participant. For Jessica and Abby and Emily, that meant sitting front and center for cheerleading and softball games, and with me, that meant countless trips to Chuck E. Cheese and listening to a 4-year-old explain the nuances of Tony Hawk and Pokémon Nintendo 64 games to him.

 But as I got older, Chuck E. Cheese trips were replaced with trips to Blockbuster and AMC movie theaters. Every spring break in elementary school and middle school, I would spend a week in St. Louis with Bubby and Pop. We probably averaged seeing two movies per day, and Bubby and I would gauge how much Pop liked a movie by how long he stayed awake. If he stayed up the whole time, it was an Oscar contender. If he was dozing by the previews, then we probably could have skipped it.

 The number of movies Pop took me to is probably in the hundreds. We saw everything from Toy Story 2 to Spiderman 2, and even a few my mom didn’t know about. Some of my favorite movie memories include seeing Inception twice the day it came out, the time Pop snuck me into The Hangover without ever telling my mom, and another time when my mom even dropped us off at the theater thinking we were seeing one movie, and we ended up seeing another. According to her, she’s only finding out about these things now.

 But the irony isn’t lost on me that the last movie I ever saw with Pop is Coco, the latest Disney Pixar movie. It’s a movie about the importance of family, and family was always the most important thing to Pop. He made this clear in the hospital, when he called for a family meeting on Sunday and named everyone he wanted in attendance, including Stuart and Debbie, Barry and Karen, Jessica and Mitch, Emily and Colton, Abby and Allie, and myself. Well, today is Monday and not Sunday, but we’re here, Pop. We know you’re impatient, so sorry to keep you waiting.

This past week has been really hard for us, but I was talking to a friend the other day who said something really special. She told me that when someone dies between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it’s because they are so righteous that they have nothing to atone for. As painful as it is for everyone who loves them, it’s because they were just that wonderful a person.

 I don’t think I’ve ever believed in anything more, as Pop was the most righteous man I’ve ever known. Goodbye, Pop. Thanks for everything.

 

Danny Rosenberg