October 23, 2005

The Metro Blowup Party

After last night, I think the spinto band has decided that what happens in London stays in London. The blowup at the metro was that scandalous! there are a couple things worth noting:

1. Jeff became the meat in a babe-dance-sandwich.
2. potential- Sam Hughes Reviews: Absinthe
3. people like to dance to The Smiths in the UK

October 22, 2005

Sam Hughes Reviews: Jones Candy Corn Soda

In celebration of my favorite holiday, the Jones Soda company has released four limited edition Halloween sodas sold exclusively through Target. The four flavors here are Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, Strawberry Slime, and Scary Berry Lemonade. Since the last two are just lame remakes of old Jones favorites and the first two are obviously super exciting, I drank the latter sodas first. Unfortunately I had time only to review the candy corn soda.
The packaging hardly differs between all of the cans as each features the classic outline of a Jack O’ Lantern with slightly altered shapes and colors. This strays from Jones’ strategy of packaging as they usually have fan taken photographs on the front of their cans. I can understand this in terms of Halloween packaging though. You don’t want pictures of somebody’s kids sacrificing a goat on a pentagram or a picture of some dude’s wife pleasuring herself with the cross. Despite the fact these are traditional Halloween activities, I’m not sure if the public is quite ready to see them on a soda can. Either way, the packaging gets a solid overall mark.
I opened up the candy corn soda, and boy oh boy is it a doozy! I was filling up my car with antifreeze the other day and I’ll be damned if that liquid isn’t a distant cousin of this soda. This shit looks so bright yellow and radioactive that you’d think you could pour it on four regular turtles and they would turn into wisecracking crime fighters. (PS: Don’t try this. It just pisses the turtles off and makes them smell like candy corn, and it will get you kicked out of the pet store.)
To do a proper taste test, I thought of nothing better than to buy actual candy corn to eat right before and after drinking to really see if we’ve got an accurate soda. So I took a bite of a candy corn, okay, feeling sick. Then I took a swig of the soda, all right, feeling sicker. Then just for kicks and sadomasochistic pleasure I threw in a few pieces of candy corn into the soda. To be honest, I felt a little naughty (and physically ill) after that, but I was sure as hell enjoying myself at the time! It’s as if I fed some bacon to a pig and then made that pig into bacon again and ate some bacon made from that pig. The soda isn’t perfect, but it does a pretty decent job of tasting like candy corn. The bonus points for this soda tasting relatively like candy corn is the vomit factor. If you can eat a bag of candy corn or drink more than eight ounces of this shit (or even, better, do both!) then you truly have an iron stomach and I’d like to see what you could do against Kobayashi at the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. However, if you don’t, there are no losers here because if you vomit it up, it would look awesome. You could puke all over someone’s room and they probably wouldn’t care because they would now have the only glow-in-the-dark room on campus. Truth be told, this soda is disgusting to drink, but I’m extremely glad that it exists. Jones could come out with Birth Fluid soda next year and I’d buy it in a second to at least know what their interpretation of birth fluid flavor was. To sum it up in a few words: taste doesn’t win here with this soda, but fun experimentation does. I can’t drink experimentation though (at least not yet), so this gets poor marks.

3.5/10.

PS: If you have a soda or beverage that you think is worthy of review, tell me about it! I’ll try almost anything!*

*no gay stuff.

London is 4 Lovers

Chaps- let me see if I can keep up to date with all that’s been going on since our arrival in this fair land. We’ve been busy. Yesterday (Friday) was one of the busier days of my short life and it occurred on the back of one of the worst night’s slumbers that I’ve had in my many days.

The plane ride over was on NWA northwest airlines. Eazy-E RIP. Thankfully my dad had given me this little traveler’s pouch that he had gotten on an airline once and it had some of those sleeper masks that old ladies and that one chick on the Real World use to help them go to sleep. That and a little melatonin allowed me to sleep upright the best a man could sleep upright. Everyone else on the plane just played this trivia game that you could play on the t.v. screens. “What is the period in a polo match called?”

When we arrived there seemed to be more people around than there should be in one place. Perhaps it was drowsiness, stress, brits, or some phobia causing me to think this, but everyone wanted to get the heck out of the airport. So much so, I left my book on the plane.

We arrived at the hotel and checked in. The Columbia is bona fide. (for those of you keeping a grifting tally, we had managed to get all the way here without dipping into our wallets.) For some reason or another shaggy-haired, tight-jeaned, unshaven youts seemed to be all around. Someone told me that this is where all the rock bands stay. Even our Nashvilliane comrades-who-we’ve-never-met-but-heard-a-lot-about Be Your Own Pet were in da house.

A bunch of stuff blurred by in between this time and the show. We devised ways of not going to sleep despite being what travelers call jetlagged, whatever that’s supposed to mean. We shook hands, talked about the current state of music a few times and sat in the back of cabs a few more times. Some spintos found that these cab rides were the perfect sleep joints. No one offered us tea.

The show was exciting. One of my fears in planning this trip is that all this effort would go into coming over here only to have the shows be empty. When I arrived at the club I realized this wasn’t going to be the case. The Windmill was a sweet little spot. It’s manager, Nick, was friends with Grimey who is this fella whom you buy records from if you live in Nashville. So we talked to him a bit about Nashville and the ol’ Slow Bar. The stage was small and the club was intimate. People come right up to the stage so you are scared of kicking them and they have these really bright lights that keep you from seeing what’s going on off stage. I met someone who does photographic research about polar bears. She said that in Canada they have a polar bear prison. I think they should not only lock up garbage-rummaging polars in the prison, but also child rapists.

Alright, I just typed this all up, I hope I can find somewhere with some internet to post it online.

October 19, 2005

Off to a foreign land

Well folks. Long time no see. I am glad to be back.

In the past weeks I have been busy mastering Bejewled and havent really had a chance to blog. I did want to get the blog rolling again to chronicle a certain adventure begining tomorrow. In case you were curious, the spinto band is going to London. After seeing Oliver Twist the other day I realized London may replace Baltimore as the best city to grift in. You heard it here first. I will give you first hand accounts of all spinto related grifts that take place in what many people call Londong.

In other news, you may know that Sears Days is going on. The fine people at Sears advertising agency tapped the spinto band's Oh Mandy for use in a Sears Days advertisement. It is quite humorous. My mother almost keeled over when she saw it. It is currently the only commercial break that we have tivoed. Anyway, the commercial is playing everywhere, and to all those people that keep calling me asking, "whats up with that?" or cant decide wether the commercial is a good thing or a bad thing, keep in mind that it helped fund our trip to the UK and Sears Days will be over in a weekend or so. Our dear friend Ryan posted a bit of the commercial here so feel free to peep it up.

Also, I am going to make sure Samuel Bradway LincolnLog Hughes drinks a British soda and writes a review of it for our dear web-journal readers. I hear they have cod-flavored ginger beer at certain pubs. Also, if your name is Shiv, Mr. LincolnLog Hughes apologizes for the delay on your Cincinatti brew review.

so folks, talk soon. Keep up the fine work. God Speed.