Here’s the brand-new KMSU-made Zeke jingle!
And here’s the story.
In June 2024, I made my second pilgrammage to KMSU in Mankato, MN as a Program Director For The Day. A pledge drive swag item–you can join Shuffle Function and play your own music on air for two whole hours. (Amazing! best use of early o’clock evar!!) I’d played a few songs by OK Glass, and then Shelley, Shyboy Tim, and I chatted for a bit. I told the story of how I met Joe and said how everybody knows Zeke but never me. Elizabeth who??
This prompted Shelley to say one of the nicest things anybody has ever told me: “Could you earmuff Zeke for a moment? We think of you first. Zeke is like the ketchup on the ketchup cake.”
Here’s the clip.
As part of the swag on offer this year in the KMSU Spring Pledge Drive, Shelley offered to sing a customized “sleep deprived jingle”. She gets sing songy when she’s underslept–there’s a history on air of this. (see: What’s the color of Tim’s cardigan) (… what color? is he wearing?) Of course I pledged for one, and when she asked for a prompt I said ketchup!
And today, I finally baked Zeke his cake. This is the recipe from Heinz; apparently they created it in 2009 to celebrate their 100th anniversary in Canada.
I guess there’s a whole history of this kind of thing.
The Heinz recipe made enough frosting to cover an entire aircraft carrier. In the process, I got cream cheese in my hair, and my kitchen is lightly blanketed in powdered sugar, as some kind of tribute to the 45th anniversary of Mt St Helens blowing up. Also, let’s not talk about how I failed to put the cake bottoms together in the middle to avoid a giant gap around the sides. (In my defense, I turned them out upside-down on the rack, and they looked flat.)
As for the cake itself … it’s fine? I mean, it tastes mostly like a spice cake, it would be more red if I’d used a less-dark brown sugar, and I can’t really detect any ketchup flavor. But Zeke loved it, and that’s the important part. Good rat, Zeke.
(permissons granted to post clips and mention friends)