Deniz Tek – "Can of Soup" (2014)

Can of soup

Can of soup

That’s all I got to look forward to

I’ve got a bone to pick with the Campbell Soup Company.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “The Campbell Soup Company is an iconic American institution.  2 or 3 lines has a hell of a lot of nerve to be picking a bone with them!”  

And I don’t blame you for thinking that.  But just hear me out.

You see, I’ve been enjoying Campbell’s Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup for years.  I’m not the biggest soup consumer in the world – I eat one or two cans a week at most – and Split Pea with Ham & Bacon is not the variety I eat most frequently.  That honor goes to Campbell’s Homestyle Chicken Noodle, which has much better noodles than the old-fashioned Campbell’s chicken noodle soup we all ate as kids.  (If you were lucky, your mom served it along with a grilled-cheese sandwich.)

But it’s hard to beat a bowl of Campbell’s Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup – accompanied by Ritz crackers and some extra sharp cheddar cheese from the Pennsylvania Dutch farmer who comes to my local farmers market – on a chilly winter’s day.

Unfortunately, that’s a pleasure I haven’t been able to enjoy in weeks because I can’t find Split Pea with Ham soup on the shelves of any of the grocery stores in my area.

Believe me, I’ve tried – I’ve gone to Safeway, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, and a few others only to find the cupboard bare when it comes to Campbell’s Split Pea with Ham & Bacon. 

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After weeks of scouring the grocery-store shelves for my beloved soup proved fruitless – not to mention pealess – I finally called the Campbell Soup customer service number.

I politely asked the representative who answered the phone WHAT THE F*CK???  I was gobsmacked by her answer.

She told me that as a result of the covid pandemic, Campbell Soup had stopped making Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup until at least February 2022.  It seems that the company is short of factory workers to make soup, short of cans to put the soup in, and short of truck drivers to deliver the soup to stores, etc., etc., etc.  

So they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul – or, to put it less metaphorically, they’re robbing Split Pea with Ham to pay Tomato Bisque, Broccoli Cheese, Cream of Asparagus, Cream of Chicken, Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Chicken & Mushroom, and many, many more varieties of soup that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot spoon.

I’m not a guy who happily takes “no” for an answer, so I went to the Campbell Soup Facebook page and messaged them.  It turns out that the vegetarian Campbell's Green Pea soup is no longer being produced, but that the Split Pea with Ham & Bacon variety is still available:

When I responded my zip code, they replied with the names and addresses of three semi-nearby stores that they said would most definitely have Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup.

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On the way back from my latest trivia triumph a few nights later, I stopped in one of those stores.

There was a sh*tload of Campbell’s soup on the shelves at that store, but not a single can of Split Pea with Ham & Bacon:

I was reminded of the famous line from Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

Water, water everywhere, nor any a drop to drink! 

Except it wasn’t drinking water that there was nary a drop of in sight – it was pea soup.

I had hung around Smoketown Brewing after my team’s hard-fought trivia victory earlier that night, celebrating with a glass of their “1748” bourbon-barrel-aged American strong ale.

That brew clocks in at a healthy 10.6% ABV, and my eyes and my brain may not have been functioning at peak efficiency as a result of my quaffing a big glass of it.  

So I looked over the Campbell’s soup selection extra carefully – I scanned the shelves from left to right, then from right to left – and I can guarantee-damn-tee you there wasn’t a single can of Split Pea with Ham & Bacon to be found.

I went to Campbell Soup’s Facebook page and left a message gently chiding them for sending me on a wild-goose chase to yet another store with no Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup:

To date, no reply. 

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Campbell’s Split Pea with Ham & Bacon soup isn’t the only thing I want to buy that isn’t available.

I’ve wanted to replace my old SUV for months, but the model I want is not currently being manufactured with a factory-installed trailer hitch.  When you ride a bicycle as frequently as I do, you need a trailer hitch to hold your bike carrier.  

I keep hearing that the automobile industry is having problems keeping up with demand for new cars  because there’s a shortage of certain computer chips.  I’m not an expert when it comes to car manufacturing, but I’m pretty sure that trailer hitches don’t have computer chips.

No matter – it looks like I’m just going to have to suck it up and drive my old SUV a few months more.

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Pondering these and other supply-chain interruptions – not to mention the vicissitudes of life during a pandemic in general – I’m reminded of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which was a big-budget, major-studio movie comedy released in 1963.

That movie starred a number of legendary old-school comedians – including Jim Backus, Milton Berle, Joe E. Brown, Sid Caesar, William Demarest, Andy Devine, Selma Diamond, Jimmy Durante, Norman Fell, Paul Ford, Leo Grocery, Buddy Hackett, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, and (last but certainly not least) the Three Stooges.  It was over three hours long, and seemed much longer when I saw it as a bewildered 11-year-old.

You think Steve Carell, Will Farrell, and Seth Rogen aren’t funny?  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet when it comes to unfunny movies until you’ve seen It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Click here to watch the trailer for the It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Like the movie, the trailer isn’t funny.  But unlike the movie, it’s only three and a half minutes long.

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Today’s featured song was released in 2014 by Deniz Tek, a Detroit-area native who moved to Australia to go to medical school and later formed Radio Birdman, a very underappreciated band with a style that was somewhat similar to MC5, the Stooges, and Destroy All Monsters.

Deniz Tek with Niagara

Deniz is a close friend and admirer of the legendary punk femme fatale Niagara, the frontwoman of Destroy All Monsters, and was kind enough to contribute to a 2 or 3 lines post featuring my favorite Destroy All Monsters song, “Nobody Knows.”  Click here to read that post, which was the 1000th post to appear on my wildly successful little blog – and one of my very best (if I do say so myself).

Click here to listen to “Can of Soup.”

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: