man. when i was growing up & reached that late junior high age when i became conscious of how i looked & what clothes i was wearing & started developing a sense of "cool," i was a friggin' nut job about my appearance. it was a weird time, a time when i would often obsess about my level of popularity, which now, looking back on it, i assess as "not cool. not loser." considering that my parents were middle class folks who both worked but had to support three kids, they did a pretty good job of catering to random my brand whims & style choices.

since an appealing face & environs are a clear asset for coolness, having the kind of skin that clearasil marketing execs probably masturbate about at night was a constant teenage frustration of mine. i fought through it with a series of distracting, often-feathered hairstyles, sometimes with pieces on the side shaved out of them. part way through high school, i picked myself up an earring too. that was pretty cool. if the hole hasn't closed up, maybe i can start rocking that look again.

i rolled through a blur of ocean pacific shirts, guess jeans, z cavarrici & skidz pants & a countless number of other name-brand-of-the-moment garments.  when i first started working, during the year when the chicago white sox changed their colors to black & white, i spent half a week's paycheck on one of their jerseys...& then wore it to my job, in a print shop, with full-on printing presses & whatnot, ruining it within a week.

i had both a sweet black adidas jacket & a long-ass trench coat that i wore with a big gold chain...right around the time i got caught trying to steal kid n play's 2 hype from lechmere (r.i.p.).  structure (now express mens) was my go-to store for a while.  i've since met a handful of gay men who shop there, so i know i was stylish.  hell, my first (insane) girlfriend even bought me this classy watch with a face that looked like stone.  when i wanted to check what time it was, i did so in style.

for kicks, after a phase where i rocked boat shoes with pegged pants, i moved onto soccer shoes (diadoras, adidas gazelles) with pegged pants.  i wore my fair share of basketball sneakers too.  shit.  now the only time i buy new shoes (or new clothes, for that matter) is when they get holes in them.  note to self: go shoe shopping ASAP.

#97 - hey, good lookin'.
snack: stretch island mango sunrise fruit leather
drink: fanta orange soda



in honor of that awesome brown leather jacket from structure that i wore for a few years back in the day when i was a teenager (before i had status & before i had a pager), tonight's snack is a stretch island mango sunrise fruit leather. i feel like sort of a slacker. i've consumed an elephant's worth of fruit roll-ups in my day, but oddly enough, have never actually eaten any fruit leather until now. it's not like fruit leather is some crazy new snack. stretch island fruit co. is almost as old as i am, having been started back in '76 on stretch island, just west of tacoma, wa.

i have to say, after all those years of fruit roll-ups, i now know what i was missing by forgoing the fruit leather. whereas a fruit roll-up is super stretchy & can be easily balled up into a projectile, the stretch island fruit leather has a firmness to it. when you bite into it, you actually bite off a definitive piece. they're only made with four ingredients--concentrates of apple puree, mango puree & lemon juice and natural mango flavor. with no added sugars or anything, it has a clean, mangoey taste & like i've stated before, i love mangoes...especially when combined with a sunrise.

to balance out the stretch island fruit co. fruit naturalness, i decided to have some manufactured fruitiness in my beverage, so i went with a fanta orange soda. there are natural flavors in it, but there's also HFCS & sodium benzoate, modified food starch, sodium polyphosphates, glycerol ester of rosin & some artificial colors. i can feel the plastics forming in my stomach! on an anniversarial note, june is the month that fanta was introduced to the u.s., way back in 1960.  looks like somebody turns fifty next year!

the orange flavor's ok, but i feel like i'm getting a bit short changed.  they used to have all sorts of crazy fanta flavors, flavors like red cream & iced tea. they even had a collins mixer. now, the most exotic they get is an apple flavor (which i must get my hands on).  the game is afoot!  anyway, you must excuse me now.  i need to go scrub the fanta from what's left of my teeth.  gotta look good, you know?