Though this may be on the verge of changing — Dr. Pepper, having owned the brand for a while, is starting to ramp up its marketing and distribution and use it as a competitor of Mountain Dew — but Sun Drop is a valuable lesson in the risks of underselling. …
With football season over and baseball season about to begin, that means only one thing: it’s time for the 2011 Funny Name All-Stars announcements! MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER FUNNY NAME ALL-STARS Chicago Fire: Corben Bone, Baggio Husidic, Kwame Watson-Siriboe Chivas USA: Kevin Guppy Colorado Rapids: Nane Joseph Nane Columbus Crew: Dilly …
It was in summer of the first year of his second term that the President decided that he didn’t want to go anywhere anymore. It was announced rather precipitately to the public although it was certainly known to his inner circle for quite some time, because when you’re the President …
It’s pretty presumptuous — not to mention trite — for a critic to talk about the movie a filmmaker should have made instead of the one they made. But it’s also a suggestion that’s inescapable after watching a movie like The King’s Speech. Here you have a concatenation of massive …
In the Sandwich Century’s first clash with the authenticity problem, I found myself approaching this one — a south-of-the-equator version of the standard steak sammy — at something of a loss. Australian food culture, with its Thirst-flavored Life Savers and its Vegemite, has always struck me as something like a …
Despite precedent, and with the exception of some future installments of Lots o’ Soda, I normally drink diet pop. The reason for this is that (a) I am addicted to soda and (b) I weigh six thousand pounds, so in order to extend my life beyond the time it takes …
When I was thirty-two and still living alone in the rented house near the river, I found myself in conflict with the radio announcer. Nowadays I need quiet to write; I cannot abide even the softest music, or the flicker of the television with the sound off. But then I …
After a half-century of perceived American cultural hegemony, Europeans feel the need to get back at us in any way that they can. You really can’t blame them; after endless decades of ruling the world, here we come with our fat loudmouthed tourists and our Big Macs, ruining everything, and …
Advertising is pretty evil, and it gets even more evil the more abstract and detached from its subject it gets. But it reaches a certain point of abstraction where it transcends its sinister purposes and can go one of two ways: it can become art, or it can be so …
MANHATTAN. “Okay this one is easy. It’s what you call a basic, a basic cocktail. You take a whiskey, a rye whiskey, and vermouth, and a cherry. And there you ugh! Sorry, there you go! It’s easy! It was named after the Manhattan cocktail. I mean, the Manhattan Hotel. In …
Crime is perennially at the top of polls regarding what voters worry about the most. With the upsurge in terrorism, the advent of cyber-crime, and organized crime taking on a new international flavor, people are not only concerned about crime, but they seem to have new crimes to worry about …
Everybody likes being right, but sometimes being right is a lot more like a severe depressant than an ego boost. Such is the case with today’s look at the world’s widest web: I have always maintained that, even in comparison with such internet sewers as IMDB and YouTube, the comments …
I drink a lot of soda, because I am a doomed consumerist pawn. Occasionally I will review them in this space. And what better place to start than with Coca-Cola, the Platonic ideal of non-alcoholic beverages? The descendant of Georgia druggist John Stith Pemberton’s formulation for French Wine Coca is …
Along with all the other exciting and annoying content to hit this site in 2011, I am getting ready to kick off a special feature called The Sandwich Century. Over the course of the year, I will prepare, consume, and document a hundred different sandwiches, and you will follow it …
1. A popular band makes it a point while on tour to stick with performing material familiar to their fans, reckoning that this is what they most want to hear. Detractors cite this as a reason the band is unadventurous, predictable, and dull. 2. One night, the bandleader, deciding to …
