Fresh Loaf

Among the 15 companies that U.S. News & World Report projects might not survive 2009: Six Flags, Loehmann’s and — gasp! — Krispy Kreme.

According to the story:

Krispy Kreme. (KKD; about 4,000 employees; stock down 50%). The donuts might be good, but Krispy Kreme overestimated Americans’ appetite – and that’s saying something. This chain overexpanded during the donut heyday of the 1990s – taking on a lot of debt – and now requires high volumes to meet expenses and interest payments. The company has cut costs and closed underperforming stores, but still hasn’t earned an operating profit in three years. And now that consumers are cutting back on everything, such improvements may fail to offset top-line declines, leading Krispy Kreme to seek some kind of relief from lenders over the next year.

Just one question. WTF is “the donut heyday of the 1990s”?

(Photo courtesy Twentieth Century Fox)

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Children can be counted on for many things. At 9 am on any given morning, they will be bright-eyed (at least far more so than most adults). They will respond to whatever life throws their way with absolute honesty, be it expressing unadulterated joy at riding a bright orange train in a circle or registering confusion for the stranger pointing her camera out said train’s window. Most importantly, children can be counted on to bring a light to any situation and make tarnished things shiny, make the mundane beautiful.

That was my experience at the opening of the Thomas (the tank engine NOT the train) and Friends area at Six Flags over Georgia last Saturday. Parents stood in waiting, watching their kids experience the garish colors and exaggerated cartoon faces of a sparklingly new train-inspired playground. Maybe they were all thinking the same thing I was: that life comes at you fast and if only I could remember what it was like to be blissed out on a 3-times-around-in-a-circle toy train ride…

(Photo by Tara-Lynne S. Pixley)

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ARMY RECRUITING WITH VIDEO GAMES AT SIX FLAGS: Shoddy armor, amputations, PTSD, and lack of adequate post-war medical care not pictured. (Photo by Alex Gibbs)

Back in the day, game makers boosted sales of military-themed video games by making them seem like the Army. Now, with two endless, aimless wars depressing recruitment, the U.S. Army is taking the converse approach – trying to get young Americans to join the army by convincing them war is like a video game.

The Virtual Army Experience is a touring Army recruitment video arcade which stopped at at Six Flags Over Georgia last weekend. Children in the park were invited to “experience” life in the Army via a short video combat mission. After completing the mission, the kids got a recruitment pitch.

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First it’s news that Piedmont Park will be off-limits to festivals this summer. Then it’s word that Atlanta-area swimming pools may not be allowed to use water this summer. Then it’s news that Six Flags may have to shut down its water-based rides.

Now, reports say that if the drought doesn’t ease soon, nuclear power plants across the Southeast could be forced to shut down for the lack of cooling water they need to operate.

Officials don’t expect blackouts, but it would prompt “shockingly high” power bills for consumers because the electricity would have to be purchased from other energy sources.

The ramifications of this drought have only just begun.

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