Jarritos Fruit Punch

Hecho en Mexico. What other three word phrase is capable of conjuring images of such magic and wonder? None! And Jarritos Fruit Punch (a.k.a “Tutti Fruiti”) delivers on that promise. This is a beverage that literally sent me on a journey, even before I’d taken my first sip. It seems the cap is not a twist-off, so I was all over creation looking for an opener. To the far corners of every single one of our kitchen drawers, honestly. I can’t remember the last time I needed one of those. But I found one eventually and the cap came away from the bottle no problem. I sipped, intrigued and emboldened by the promise of riches from a far-off land, delivered.

Fruit punch? More like fruit ambrosia. A rapturous melange of orange, cherry and lemon juices, cascading against fragrant notes of mango and passionfruit, with only the most delicate hint of goji–like a coy lover, peeking out from beneath the sheets.

J/K. Fruit punch is just code for “red sweet flavor,” right? I mean does anyone think any actual fruit was ever harmed in the making of fruit punch? No, but so what? Who cares. Not me. Mexico: you keep tossing it over that wall, I’ll keep catching it.

Bolthouse Farms Prickly Pear Cactus Lemonade

Forget regular lemonade: you’ve been with her too long, and she still hasn’t shut up about not getting the lead in the drama club’s production of Anything Goes. Honestly, let it go. But whoa now who is this new girl in school? She loaned you a pencil in Chemistry, and then winked at you when she bent over to pick up her books. So she’s very sweet, but also just a little bit tart. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. And with her pierced tongue and that offhand remark she made about her overbearing stepfather, there’s a hint of mystery about her. (Seriously, WTF is prickly pear?) You have no idea, but you will dedicate yourself to finding out. After school you’ll go three blocks out of your way just so you can walk past the house/grocery store where she lives. You hear her bedroom’s in the produce section, how kinky is that? You should ask her out before Country Time and Minute Maid hatch a plot to get her kicked out of school. Plain old lemonade can be such a bitch when it wants to be.

Jazz Diet Pepsi

Have I ever regaled you with tales from back when I was a DJ in college? Probably not, it was kind of a weird time. But you’re right, I had no business in college radio. I knew nothing about the hip bands of the day; even a decade later, when I hear the name “Silver Jews” my first instinct is to be offended. Still, I was a freshman in search of a clique who would accept me, and I wanted to be able to regale people later in life with tales from back when I was a DJ in college.

Of course everyone who joins a college radio station does so in hopes of getting their own show. At my school this turned out to be a complicated, almost political process, and you know me, I’m not a small-fish-in-a-big-pond kind of guy. But I learned that the station was in need of someone to head up their jazz department, and if I took those responsibilities on I would fast-track my way to the mic. Sure, I had to play jazz, but now I wouldn’t be just some freshman who wanted a radio show, I would be the Jazz Director of a radio station. Transportin’ in the chocha, as they say.

The primary duties of the Jazz Director were to contact labels, have them send over the latest albums from their artists, and then play them on air. I don’t know what you remember about the state of jazz in the mid-90s, but most of it was derivitive drivel, basically unlistenable. But it was my job, and the hip-hop DJ with the time slot after mine was very cute, so I wanted to keep doing it.

Unfortunately, my need to play new jazz was in direct opposition to my listeners’ need to not hear new jazz. This led to me taking a very hard-line approach. People would call in every week asking 1) what the hell was I playing, and 2) Could I play Miles or Thelonius or anything else instead. And I would tell them No, the point of my show was to showcase new jazz artists, and yes we all love the greats but it’s imperative that we support these contemporary artists, who are struggling to advance the genre and carve out careers, because without them jazz as an art form would stagnate and die. I would actually deliver sermons like this to the callers. Thanks for listening and calling in and being engaged, here’s a fucking lecture.

Eventually I got so exasperated with people calling in making requests like that that I began pre-emptively proselytizing on air, explaining the importance of what I was doing and why people shouldn’t call in to request something else. I mean modern jazz artists are reinventing and pushing the limits of the genre every day, but what’s the point if we’re not bearing witness to what they’re doing? As if I alone, the Jazz Director of a small FM station in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, was keeping the torch lit for future generations. Like anyone within the sound of my voice would have given a shit if jazz died. Like it hadn’t already.

It took a long time before I realized that there was a reason why no one wanted to be the Jazz Director, and it wasn’t just that everyone else preferred indie rock.

Jazz Diet Pepsi comes in two flavors: Strawberries & Cream, and Black Cherry French Vanilla.

GuS Dry Cranberry Lime

Stay up all kinds of late. Pudding for lunch AND dinner. Clean underwear totally optional. Drink as much soda as you want, when you want. Who’s with me: being an adult is awesome. OH WAIT OR IS IT? Your lower back basically hurts all the time, you have no clue what that noise on the radio is, you can’t remember the last time you had anything interesting to write about on your blog, and every bowel movement is written in sweat across your brow.

Enter GuS, or Grown-Up Soda, to provide the perfect accompaniment to the end days of your existence on this planet. GuS is about as un-fun as a soda could possibly get, but let’s face it, at your age maybe it’s all you deserve.

The label says “Not too sweet,” but I’d describe it as “Not at all sweet.” Many sodas, when they want to want to seem more mature, get fruit juice involved. This is why you see apple and grape juices listed as an ingredient in basically everything: it allows them to bump their fruit juice percentage (and appear healthier), while also making the drink sweeter. Not GuS Dry Cranberry Lime. Basically it’s just plain cranberry with some water. This combination of ingredients has been clinically proven to suppress smiling, ask any scientist. There’s a little bit of lime in there, but it’s really only there to remind you what a complete ass you made of yourself the last time you had a margarita. I couldn’t even think of what alcohol I would want to mix this with. That’s a sign of trouble, right there, on a number of levels.

But no, best leave the drinking to the high school kids. For you it’s a quiet night in the house–just you, a salad, and a vague distrust of Youtube. Twist open another GuS. It’s the sound of your hopes, dreams, memory and prostate all throwing in the towel.

Boston Beverage Recap

OK I am back from my trip to Boston. Good job on updating the site once while I was away, you exceeded my expectations by exactly 100%.

I had hoped to discover all kinds of new juices and sodas while I was over there, but to be honest I mostly only drank beer. Taste-wise it was all fine.

I did have some kind of fruity icy tea concoction from Starbucks, on a day when it was about 120 degrees celcius and armpit-to-armpit with no air conditioning on the Green Line. The tea hit the spot, but at that point I would have drinken any mixture of bodily fluids, provided they were served in smoothie format.

Silk Live! Mango Smoothie

No idea how to pronounce the second word this one. In my quiet moments I cradle the bottle like a helpless infant in my hands and say things like “Silk!…Live, damn you!” Like in an exasperated Charlton Heston voice. And pronouncing it with a short “i.” Ah fuck, humor about heteronyms is basically impossible on the internet. In any browser.

Anyhooters. Did we ever talk at all about that homemade smoothie kick I was on a while back? Dogg I was getting straight ill, like on the mad scientist tip, with the frozen strawberries and the fruit juices and the yogurt and the what-not. I mean just allowing myself space to be creative, you know? I had one of them hand-held blenders (The Masturbatron 3000, if you want to look it up. Although maybe that was just the name I invented for it.) and I would just go at it, first thing every morning. It was probably the happiest I’ve ever been, except for those two months when you forgot to post anything here. But all dreams end, I suppose; turns out my blender was not dishwasher safe, and I’ve been too lazy to get a new one. Like the moment had passed and I had to mourn it on a subconscious level.

A friend, who perhaps knew of my sad story, recommended this here bev to me, and I have to say: Not bad. It was very yogurty, which I liked. My problem with a lot of OTC smoothies is they taste too thin and juice-y or have a weird graininess to them. And my problem with a lot of soy products is that they taste, you know, like soy. Which is not an awesome flavor. So I was pleased here. It’s very simple, like vanilla yogurt with some mango, and the viscosity dial set right to “Smoothie-ish.” Plus! Dairy-free! Colons of the world: stand up and testify to the gospel which I am preaching.

Basically I can see adding this to my morning routine. Wake up, spend 45 minutes in bathroom, pin a fresh picture of you to my dartboard, drink Silk Live, wonder how to pronounce it.

Open Thread: Serving Sizes

I had been planning on writing a post about optimal beverage serving size, but thankfully Mr Baldwin wrote about it so I don’t have to:

When Coke [was] sold in 6 oz. bottles it was billed as the “pause” that refreshes. Now it’s a motherlovin’ sabbatical.

Personally I vote 250ml (“energy drink size”) is the absolute perfect amount. You get a good swig, but you don’t feel like the drinking process is taking up the whole afternoon, and there’s room afterwards for if you need to drink something else to wash the taste of the first drink out. What do you kids think.

Snapple White Teas

Recently Snapple has burst–nay, arabesqued–into the marketplace with a new series of white teas. Such a display can mean only one thing: that the white tea craze was over 10 minutes ago. But still, I know what you’re thinking: you hear “Snapple” and “healthy” and “refreshing” and you think: surely, drinking this would be nothing short of magical, like if Tinkerbell–yes the Tinkerbell–came to your house, and she fluttered up above you as you tilted your head back, and she uncupped her hands, letting fall a gentle spray of angel tears, in all the colors of the rainbow, to noiselessly alight upon your tongue. At which point she would offer you the happy ending for $5 extra. Honestly, the mouth on her.

But yeah this is nothing like that. I took a sip, there was clearly something in my mouth, and I was wondering if the flavor had fallen down the front of my shirt. Basically they’re just charging extra for weak tea. It doesn’t involve sexual innuendo from Disney characters, like, at all.