#175 - unnatural causes.

as a society, we had to see it coming. we've been living pretty high on the hog for a while now, allowing our hedonistic, caffeinated alcoholic beverage-swilling ways to control our actions, but our collective national wild ride has finally come to an end. as of today, after five years on the market, the manufactured nectar of life known as four loko is officially GONE from the shelves of bodegas & convenient stores across the country. back on nov 16th, in anticipation of a government ruling, phusion products, the makers of four loko, announced that they were going to reformulate their beverages & remove the caffeine. the very next day, the FDA ordered four loko & three other manufacturers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages to pull their products from shelves by today's date, as the caffeine in them was ruled an "unsafe food additive."

Click to read more ...

#168 - you've been iced, bro!

i consider myself lucky. to this day i've remained friends with a number of people who i first met in high school & even prior to that. this past friday, bri, my first ever friend from kindergarten, got married down in savannah, georgia & while i wasn't able to make it down south for the wedding, about a month back, i was able to make it up to boston for a weekend of bachelor party activities with him & a dozen or so of our friends. it's the second bachelor party i've had the opportunity to attend this summer & though the first one was a blast, bri's definitely took first prize.

Click to read more ...

#25 - kids these days.

the other night, i was on the phone with a good friend who lives on the other side of the country & we got to talking about how we always see kids these days round our respective cities guzzling red bulls & monster energy drinks & whatnot, leading us to believe that they either have no energy & need the drinks to function properly or that they are seriously amp'd all the time, which actually explains a lot of behavior i encounter on the subways. those kids are all full of sugar & guarana & roots & junk.

there's this triad of kids i've seen multiple times on the train. they have a boom box & they dance & clap & spin & flip the tiny one in the air & he kicks the ceiling when he hits the top of his arc, which usually brings at least one gasp & the attention of pretty much everyone in the car. those kids are probably sooooooooooo high on energy drinks & funding their habits by performing on the train. it explains a lot, actually.

when we were kids, we didn't have energy drinks & we were off doing sports & running around our suburban yards & going on scouting excursions just fine thank you. sure, now that i'm all grown up & perpetually tired from late nights & long days, i take in a lot of caffeine myself, occasionally in energy drink form, but i'm an adult, who can obviously handle my caffeine intake.

these are kids we're talking about though. where is the regulatory system/religious group who should obviously step in & speak out against such consumption? we're in an election season, people!

#25 - kids these days.
snack: smuckers uncrustables peanut butter & strawberry jam sandwich
drink: sparks

so it's saturday late afternoon/early evening & i'm feeling a bit run down from an early wakeup & the rare doing of things before noon & realizing i could go down one of two roads at this point. i could settle down for a couple hour nap & still have the evening ahead of me when i awake or i could guzzle the sparks that i bought on a whim the other night & ride the alcoholic energy drink snake. i chose the road paved with sparks, figuring that if i crash & burn once the caffeine & malt liquor has worked its way out of my system hours from now, so be it.

for me, sparks is a beverage that i often feel should not be. i liken the taste of a sparks to that of an orange willy wonka bottle cap, meaning that its flavor is fruity with a chalky, tooth-decay-enveloping aftertaste.

shortly after i moved to nyc, sparks was introduced to the city, specifically to hipsters & often in brooklyn. it was one of the first markets sparks was available in, i assume. i was going to a boatload of concerts at the time & quite often, there was free sparks available, to give hipsters a little shake to their step. now i think they just do coke instead.

anywho, if you drink more than one, you will probably get sick. one evening after work, i saw ted leo during cmj at the now defunct rothko. i didn't have time to grab dinner & was likely broke & so took advantage of the free sparks on hand. by the end of ted leo's set & my second sparks, i was 95% sure that some part of my stomach had eaten a less fortunate other part of my stomach. for a brief moment, i felt like i could identify with kurt cobain. luckily, tonight, i am older & wiser & only have one on hand.

along with the sparks, i'm snacking on a smuckers uncrustables peanut butter & strawberry jam sandwich. it tastes fine. it's basically what you'd get if yo moms made up a bunch of sandwiches one night all crispin glover style & then stored them in the freezer for you, rationing them out to you one at a time, asking you if you'd like a pb&j and when you say "yes," telling you to wait 30-60 minutes so she can thaw one out. maybe yo moms has a court order preventing her from using knives. if so, these smuckers joints are right up your alley.