Triscuits, Crackers of the Gods

Posted on July 19, 2013 by bayoubabylon

Yesterday I said I would review some Triscuits, so I am doing just that. I have no idea when the last time I posted here two days in a row was, but it has been more than a minute.

I like crackers more than I like cookies. It may not need repeating, but my sweet tooth has never been a problem for me. Most guys I know are this way. Our guts came from beer and hot wings, whereas the ladies seem to struggle with the sugar rush.

But before I get to that, I want to tell you what I did in the gym today:
1. 30 mins on the Whirly-Bird. I normally do 45, but I wanted to hit the weights today. After 45, 30 minutes went by in a second, which was nice. A good workout mix on my ipod helps. Today’s anthem: THIS.

2. I then moved on to the rowing machine. I love this fucking thing. Out of the Trilogy of Terror (the 3 weight machines I do on a regular basis), this is the one I like the most. It’s the friendliest in vibes, and I always imagine myself rowing a giant Viking ship. It helps to know that this machine is probably the one that will hopefully help me the most in my goal of cosplaying as a badass. I won’t tell you how much weight I put on this baby, partly because I am embarrassed at how weak I have become, and also because ummm… I can’t think of another excuse. So totally because it’s embarrassing.

3. It was then time for the Pull-Up Simulator, which I used to refer to as “Getting Something Heavy Down From The Top of the Closet” Simulator. The other day I came to the startling realization that this is way more like doing a pull-up than like getting a bowling ball out of the closet. The difference is that I can’t pull up my own weight yet. This seems like a really good way to work up to pull ups. There’s a pull up bar in the JFZ, but there is no way I’m getting on that thing until I can do, at least, 10 unassisted pull-ups. Which should be right around the time the sun explodes. Because despite the JFZ being notoriously free of J’ing, it happens. People can’t help it. But I really don’t mind it. I’ve been a weird-looking chap my whole life, so I’m kinda used to getting the stink-eye.

4. Then came the push-up simulator. It’s funny that 2 of the 3 machines that I usually do just simulate activities that I could do at home. Like driving to the park to go for a walk, when you have a sidewalk that goes all the way around your neighborhood.

5. Sit in the truck, air cranked to 11, drinking water, with my hand on the door handle in case of vomit. It’s really the weights that do it to me. I can stay on that damn Whirly Bird all day, but when I start in on those weights, my breakfast starts prepping for a reunion tour. This, as I’ve said before, is one of my two greatest fears when I enter the gym: yacking or passing out.

6. Stop at the Shell station on the way home and purchase a 12-pack of Michelob Ultra. There’s not much that will net you a weirder look than the one I got from the cashier when I chucked that 12-pack up on the counter at 6am this morning, drenched in sweat and wearing gym clothes. It’s my day off, gimme a break! I assume she knew what I’d been up to, because it was either that or I was still out from a hot night at da club.

On to the Triscuit Reviews!!!

Right. So Triscuits are good. The crackers of the gods and whatnot.
Have you ever had a triscuit? They make other crackers seem like little more than brittle pieces of paper. Ritz has its place in my heart, but the triscuit is its own beast. And since saying stuff is in “beastmode” is popular, I’ll say that triscuits are normal crackers with their beastmode pegged out.
They’re basically just shredded wheat with a little salt.

I’m assuming they got the name from biscuit. I have no idea where the T or R come from. I’m guessing maybe they are made from three kinds of wheat? Who the fuck knows.
It should be whiscuit. Or like these new rice varieties, maybe Riscuit. Although that is pretty dangerously close to Ricin. James Bond poison is probably not the sort of vibe Nabisco is going for.

1. Triscuit Rice Cracker made with Red Beans

Red Beanz and Riiiice. Imagine Tom Waits singing that. Like a Zatarain's commercial.

Red Beanz and Riiiice. Imagine Tom Waits singing that. Like a Zatarain’s commercial.

I’ve been eating Red Beans N Rice my whole life. I cook it at home all the time (although these days I must scale back on my use of delicious sausages).

According to the box, these crackers are made from rice and beans. No wheat whatsoever. This makes me think that the name Triscuit could be considered a misnomer here.

They don’t taste like red beans and rice. And they come in a box that looks like it was made for a GI Joe to hold. Not one of those big ones either, the ones we played with. This box is tiny! And it’s like 4 bucks!

Despite being a rip-off, these are pretty good. I can taste the bean, and maybe even a little rice, but red beans and rice is a dish unto itself, and can’t be duplicated in cracker form.

I bought these to be scoops for veggie chili I made, and they fill the bill, but I just think I would rather have that latticed-out shredded wheat slab. The regular ones are cheaper too.

7/10

2. Triscuit Rice Cracker with Sweet Potato and Onion

Sweet Potato and Onion!

Sweet Potato and Onion!

Everybody loves the lowly yam these days. Everywhere I go has sweet potato fries or some sweet potato something or other.
I am fine with this, as I am a huge fan of the sweet potato, particularly in pies, which are off the menu completely for awhile.

Apparently the sweet potato is one of the current health fads. Enjoy it while you can, delicious yams, because next week Good Morning America will have some asshole on that says sweet potatoes cause the cancer. Health fame is fleeting, so yam it up while you can, before your friends look at you like you’re eating a Big Mac next time you order a baked sweet tater.

This is a funny combo. Sweet potatoes mixed with onions. Both of which I like, but together? I am accustomed to my sweet potatoes being mixed with melted marshmallow or a pecan-and-sugar crunchy crust, so I was curious where they were going with this new “savory” angle. These were not designed with the average “overweight male from the Deepest South” in mind. Although something made with me in mind, featuring sweet potatoes, would more likely be named “Oreo” instead of “Triscuit”. Can you imagine that? Sweet potato cookies with a marshmallow cream inside? Good Lord n Butter, Mort.

Anyway, they’re ok. Still in the hobbit-sized box, so they’re still a rip-off, plus they don’t taste as good as the red beans and rice ones. The sweet potato seems to reject this marriage with the bulbous onion, so instead of Tango & Cash (the red beans and rice), you get Lion-O and Mumm-Ra, constantly at odds in your mouth.

5/10 Average. Because any version of Triscuit is, at least, average, and better than most.

3. Winn-Dixie Brand Triscuit Knock-offs: “Wheaty Squares”

Winn-Dixie brand doodoo bombs.

Winn-Dixie brand doodoo bombs.

There are some things that it really doesn’t matter if you get the store brand. Dandruff shampoo, peanut butter (sometimes), catsup, etc.
I was curious, given the overpriced nature of the aforementioned Triscuit varieties, if Triscuits were something that could have its funk faked.

I figured, it can’t be that hard, right? I’m sure Winn-Dixie has had their own brand of Shredded Wheat for years now. All they needed to do was break some off, salt it, then intricately weave it upon itself. No problem.

And they did. And it tastes just like Triscuit. The only difference is that where Triscuits are square, these are a rectangle.

I also expected half of them to be pulverized into tiny wheaty bits. I don’t know what store brands are up to at their warehouses, but it seems like most things that are store brand look like someone has played soccer with the box, or at least with the crackers themselves. This is especially true with generic brand Ritz crackers. Somehow the “Butter Round” crackers are always more like “butter chemical flavored powder”, yet the box looks to be in pristine condition, fresh off the truck from the “Generic Ritz Cracker Punting Championships”.

Here’s a photo of a “rice Triscuit” next to a Winn-Dixie brand “Grainy Rectangle”:

Texturized for your pleasure. Sorry.

Texturized for your pleasure. Sorry.

Note that the rice triscuit, on the left, looks different from its wheat cousins. It looks like it is soaked in oil, which it may be, but they don’t taste or feel oily.

It should also be noted that the Winn~Dixie brand only comes in one flavor: delicious plain.

10/10 and a credit to store brand items all over the globe. Save yourself a few cents for the vending machines out front (“A gold watch! Holy shit!”) and get these guilt-free, unless you want your friends to be impressed with your name-brand crackers. Then pay a little extra and keep them out on your counter when company comes over.

tl;dr
Triscuits are good, no matter the variety, but if you’re after the plain kind, you can just get the store brand. But I like the “cracked pepper” ones best.

Posted in About Fitness, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“More like FAT for Dragon*Con, amirite?”

Posted on July 18, 2013 by bayoubabylon

43 Days Until Dragon*Con 2013

I can hear the jokes now.

In a fit of unbridled self-confidence I told Dragon*Con to put “fitfordragoncon” as my display name on my membership badge.

And now I kinda regret it.

I know I haven’t been on here much lately, and even less so with a dyed-in-the-wool fitness post. Of course, as anyone who has read this blog knows, my “fitness” posts are mostly about me not being able to fitness properly. I’m dejectedly fitnessing on the Whirly-Bird, while the gym rats hit the things that don’t require pulleys or pedals to make them go. Like a benched press.

The reason is, unsurprisingly, that I have really let myself go. Again. And again and again and again, etc.

I have a pattern, and it goes a little something like this:

Day 1. Get motivated. This usually happens around about 3am at work while browsing the internet and coming across some story about a guy who lost a thousand pounds by having endless thumb wars with himself. Or I youtube some Manowar.

Day 2. Get motivated. The 3am motivation dies immediately when the sun comes up and I trudge to bed. But if I can still be motivated when I wake up on the afternoon of Day 3, this usually leads to…

Day 3. Actually go to the gym! As always, I hate it for the first few minutes. I get on the Whirly-Bird (who is ecstatic when I put my weight in on the control center) and for the first few minutes I genuinely believe that I have made a mistake. This sucks.
But, after leaving the gym, I feel great and wonder why I quit going for so long.

I’ll go the gym, or exercise at home using the treadmill and/or kettlebell for about a week. Then something will come up.

“Hey man, we’ll be in town tomorrow night! Can we crash at your place?”
“Sure.”

Or we’ll go out of town, or I’ll have a Drinking Club meeting, or something else.

Point is, I get distracted and thrown off course easily. This is a weakness in myself, and I am thoroughly aware of that.

But I have a plan!
The first time someone at Dragon*Con asks me about my badge name, I’ll tell them, “Yeah, I do a stupid fitness blog! You should’ve seen me a year ago! I lost a thousand pounds just by eating sardines and farting a lot!”

I might reserve that one for Plan B.

Plan A is to continue working out.

You see, I’ve been to the gym for the past two weeks! And eating better! By better, I mean not having pizza and wings and beer for every meal.

Today I made some soy chili, which I enjoyed with some Triscuits, the crackers of the gods. In fact, tomorrow I plan on reviewing 2 different kinds of Triscuits, and one off-brand Triscuit. So you have that to look forward to (I kid, I kid).

The other day a guy I knew in college died from a heart attack, and he wasn’t on coke or nothin! Just BAM! dead. I couldn’t help but think, “And the same thing can happen to YOU, Ebeneezer Scrooge!”

I’m at the age now where I can either give up and die of a heart attack, or exercise and live for another 40 years.

My mantra used to be, “I’d rather live a short happy life, doing everything I want to do, than a long miserable one, denying myself the things that I love.”

Now it’s more like, “I don’t wanna die.”

At least not before I receive my pre-ordered PS4.

Posted in About Dragon*Con, About Fitness, About Me | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

UP UP DOWN DOWN BLAH BLAH BLAH…

Posted on June 7, 2013 by bayoubabylon

Only 83 Days Until Dragon*Con 2013…

 

Yeah, we get it, you know the “Konami code” (a term I never even heard until a few years ago or so). Let me guess, you know the lyrics to “Ice, Ice Baby” also.

There’s no need to blurt it out and try to beat me to the end. And it’s not funny that you know it, and you’re not special.

You, my friend, are a child of the 80’s. And that’s it, and that’s all. Sure, I realize that Vanilla Ice is more of an early 90’s thing (a time period that is, more often than not, confused with the 80’s), but you know the lyrics because you were old enough to know them in the early 90’s, but not old enough to realize that that shit sucked. Which places you squarely in my bracket. My target audience today.

get it in ya

get it in ya

As a child of the 80’s, you were raised to win. By any means necessary.

Video games were not something to match wits with. They were something to conquer. Something to brag to your friends, “Dude, I beat Jackal last night.” And the next question was never, ” Did you use any cheats?”

 

Of course you did. You got 100 lives and breezed through without a care in the world.

And ya know what? You were still cool. Your friends were still impressed.

 

Because, most of all, they were meant as entertainment and just another way to have fun that wasn’t watching bad cartoons because they were the only cartoons on at the moment.

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The other day I was chatting with a friend of mine at work who is also into video games. I was telling him about the famous “Oghma Infinium” exploit in Skyrim where you can basically go from level 15 to level 81 in a matter of minutes.

He gave me a look like I had just mugged his mother.

Over the years, I have noticed a growing distaste among “gamers” for cheats, exploits, etc. and the renegades that use them.

The point of this post is that, like you friend, I am a child of the 80’s, and…

if there was a code, you used it. So much so, that 25 years later you are busting it out on your friends like you just came up with the wittiest comment since Venkman told the mayor that Walter Peck had no dick.

You’re putting it on tshirts, you’re naming your terrible band after it. It is a part of your brain that will never die. On your death bed you will mutter it as a final prayer for extra life.

We grew up with only one mission in video games: to beat them. And if there was an easier way to do that, we did it.

A typical conversation, while playing Nintendo 25 years ago:

“Stand over there in that corner and he can’t hit you.”

“Ok.”

A typical conversation, while playing XBOX now:

“Stand over there in that corner and he can’t hit you.”

“What?!?!?!?! I’m not a cheater! I’m a self-righteous asshole who takes video games way too seriously!”

Life is hard. I’m an adult, with real problems. I don’t need a video game to remind me that I’m not up to yet another challenge.

I play video games to have fun. Period. And it’s not fun to me if I can’t progress at all.

So yeah, maybe I am a “casual” gamer (a dirty word in gamer circles), but to the “hardcore” gamers out there, I have this to say:

Mind your own fucking business.

If your life is so easy that you need video games to offer you insurmountable challenges, then good for you. Have fun with your games in the way that you have fun, and let me have mine.

Nowadays, my aim isn’t necessarily just to beat the game. As my cousin said once, my main point is to get the story. I want the story to progress, and if there’s a holdup in my progressing through the story, I will use a cheat in a heartbeat.

 

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To sum it all up, people my age use cheats because we grew up using them and if you knew a code, it was instant playground cred on the same level as if you swiped a Playboy from somewhere. In that way, I guess we never grew up.

Younger generations are against using cheats because, well… I honestly don’t really know why because they think differently than me. They also listen to dubstep or something equally terrible, which I will never understand.

Get off my lawn! Kids these days! etc.

 

 

 

Posted in About Media, General dorky shit | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

the Hobbit Review

Posted on December 14, 2012 by bayoubabylon

By now the internet will be weighted down with reviews for the Hobbit movie from a nation of bleary-eyed nerds who stayed up way past their bedtime to watch a film that would transport them back into their favorite mythical world: Middle~Earth.

Regardless of that, I feel compelled to add mine to the fray.

Why? I really don’t know. I know that part of it is that The Hobbit may be my most-anticipated movie of all time. I don’t think there has ever been a movie that I looked forward to with more excitement, but with increasing trepidation as news of more and more changes came to light about the making of the movie.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************

I was about ten years old and had just turned in a Dungeons and Dragons “Choose Your Own Adventure” book to my school library (I tried to find the exact one, but couldn’t. I can’t remember the title. It had something to do with a basilisk and I can picture the cover, but that’s it).

The library was having a Book Fair that day, and if your school didn’t have Book Fairs, I am truly sorry, it was a great opportunity to get new books for cheap and also some high quality scratch-n-sniff erasers and those weird pencils where you take the old lead out and shove it into the butt end of the pencil and it pushes the new lead out. I know how that sounds.

My librarian was a good friend of my mom’s and I had a few dollars to spend at the Book Fair that day. She handed me this book:

pic stolen from the internet

pic stolen from the internet

To say that I devoured this book would be an understatement. I could not stop reading it. Not only that, but I read it over and over and over. I told someone yesterday that I think I’ve read the Hobbit well over a hundred times, and that is no exaggeration.

The Hobbit changed my life, for the better I would say. With the exception of most of my music tastes, everything that I am into can be traced directly back to this first introduction to Middle~Earth.

In fact, I didn’t even know it was a prologue to anything. I didn’t discover the LOTR trilogy (I know some folks take issue with calling it a trilogy, but anyway, you know what I mean) until I was a teenager. I really don’t know how I didn’t know that The Hobbit was a prologue for those few years, but so be it. When I found LOTR at around 14 or so, I had the same reaction, but it will always be The Hobbit that first grabbed me and would not let go, and still has not. The wife and I listened to the audiobook (the Rob Inglis one, of course) on vacation. I send it to every little kid I know for a gift.

And I know I’m not alone. The hype behind this movie is enough to prove that.

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Spoiler Free Section

Like Quickbeam over at TORn, I want to do a quick “spoiler free” section for the people who have not seen it yet (are you out there?).

Here goes…

Most of the reviews are saying it is too long and too slow. Having read that before seeing the movie, I thought, “These people are stupid and are spoiled by movies like Rush Hour 2 (my go-to bad movie). The first film is the set up and will probably focus a lot on character development and identifying each dwarf as their own separate personality.”

I was wrong. While you do get a decent introduction to each dwarf (over the course of roughly 3 hours), it is unfortunately true that some scenes could easily have been trimmed. Not cut completely, just trimmed a smidge. A minute there, 2 minutes here, and voila! the studio has 3 blockbusters made and waiting in the wings to drain my fellow hapless nerds of their income. I really did feel like some scenes were stretched out in an effort to pad the time. And that sucks because I never felt that way about the LOTR movies, even though the EE’s of each are like 4 hours.

I don’t think the movie is boring, though. Far from it. In fact, it’s a little too action-y.

Is this a Jerry Bruckheimer film? Not to give anything away, but suffice it to say, I never pictured any of the action sequences in The Hobbit happening the way they did in the film. The only word I can think of is “overwrought”.

I realize that a certain amount of the “suspension of disbelief” is required for happy movie watching, especially considering this is a tale of elves, dwarves, magic, and dragons, but the amount of stuff we were supposed to buy into was a bit much.

We saw it in 3D, which I did not care for. It was fun at times, but it didn’t really add anything to the story and, at times, really made it look like we were watching a cartoon (I kinda wish I had just stayed home and watched the Rankin/Bass one).

I am really not good at “no spoiler” reviews. I honestly don’t really know what is appropriate to discuss or not.

So screw it.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (including possible spoilers for the next couple films. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, proceed with caution)

Like I mentioned above, if the book purists hated the LOTR films, their heads are going to explode when they see The Hobbit.

But let’s be positive for a moment:

– The cast is actually pretty darn good. Martin Freeman is a wonderful Bilbo, and of course the returning cast is good (though I thought the opening scene with Old Bilbo and Frodo seemed incredibly stilted and poorly acted). Despite my qualms with “hot dwarves”, they all seemed to be cast pretty well. You can blame the Design Dept. for making the dwarves that could pass for short elves.

– The best two scenes are the heavy Bilbo scenes. I wanted more of Bilbo just living his life in the Shire than we got, but if the critics thought it was slow already, more of Bilbo puttering around his house and smoking his pipe and having tea would have put them in a coma. I also thought the scene with him and Gollum was probably the best scene in the entire movie. At least no one was falling thousands of feet, only to end up in slight discomfort.

– I also liked the end. The thrush (foreshadowing) waking up Smaug with just the eye showing through the treasure was great.

That’s about it for the positive stuff. Here are my gripes:

1. Orcs and goblins can’t travel effectively in daylight. I’m no loremaster, but I thought that the point of Saruman creating the Uruk-Hai was that they could run in the daytime. This makes the whole “goblins hunting the merry band of dwarves” a bunch of bullmess, which is unfortunate because it’s a huge part of the movie.

2. Radagast??? I have always been curious about Radagast, and found this mysterious character intriguing, but he shouldn’t interact with the dwarves. Gandalf only. This is where my knowledge of what happens in the appendices gets a bit fuzzy. I know that Gandalf met with Radagast concerning the Necromancer setting up camp near Mirkwood, but I’m not sure what exactly went down. The stuff about the Morgul blade seems a bit of a stretch, especially when Galadriel shows up (who should not be involved in The Hobbit at all).

3. Thorin should not be nice to Bilbo this early in the game. Part of the reason it’s a huge deal in the book is because Thorin is kind of an ass to Bilbo throughout the book, up until the end when he realizes that Bilbo is flippin awesome. His whole bro-down with Bilbo at the end of this one is meaningless and made me groan aloud.

4. A hot dwarf being a badass archer. Lame.

5. That scene with the Storm Giants. What the eff was that all about? Once again, overwrought action sequence stretched out to squeeze a couple extra minutes (i.e. dollars) out of the “series”.

OVERALL:

I give it a 6/10. Better than average, because it takes place in Middle~Earth, but some points get taken away because it felt like every other action, comic book, movie garbage that is out there, and The Hobbit is way more than that. It’s better than that. At least it should be.

To be honest, I’ll probably go see it again in the theater and I’ll definitely buy the EE when it comes out on blu ray, but that’s only because I can’t help myself (which is why, as I’ve stated before, the studios are making all these “geeky” movies. They know we can’t help ourselves).

I would really like to discuss with other fans, though. Feel free to sound off below, whether you agree or disagree. My feelings on the film are so conflicted that I’m open to every point of view.

Posted in About Me, About Media | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

2 Holiday Dranks

Posted on November 19, 2012 by bayoubabylon

I’ve said it before, but here it is again anyway: reviews have got to be the lowest form of bloggery. Everybody thinks their opinion of something is so damn important.
Well, for a change, mine is not. My opinion sucks and I suck, so there ya go. If you want to read two reviews for two holiday themed beverages, be my guest. Continue on, just know that I think my opinions are bad and come from a person with no discernible taste whatsoever. I have stated before that my palate is as distinguished as a Georgia bulldog’s, so take these reviews with a shot.

It is no secret that I am a sucker for themed stuff. Half the posts on this blog center around themey shit. In fact, “geeky” could easily be defined as its own theme.

The way I see it, I’m not a sucker though, I just like to embrace the different times of year and everything they have to offer. Give me those cheesy Christmas carols. Give me the candy corns at Halloween and the re-runs of Treehouse of Horror. I want to blow shit up and eat loads of meat on the 4th of July.

In other words, I just want to do it.

I know you are like me. You want to do it, too.

Here are two drinks that will help you do it.

#1. Sam Adams “Merry Mischief” Gingerbread Stout

 

This is one uh dem “big beers”. The ones that they charge you out the ass for. I have no clue how much these are normally everywhere else, but this one was $7. That is $7 for what amounts to be, basically, two beers. While this may be a steal at your local watering hole, the ambience of my living room does not command exorbitant prices for holiday beer, no matter how themey it may be.

Still, they are 9% alcohol, so it’s almost like drinking 4 beers. And if you are a glutton like me, it’s like drinking 4 beers really fast.

The flavor is about what you would expect: heavy on the gingerbread and the stout. You would definitely get a similar effect from drinking a Guinness and eating a gingerbread man at the same time.

How lame of a review is that? I basically just said what it says right on the bottle, but at least you can’t get Sam Adams for false advertising.

It makes a massive head, I can tell you that. I overflowed the first two mugs I poured this stuff in.

Really, you’re in it for the label. Three gingerbread men on a sled. I have never been on a sled like this, being as it has never snowed enough here to use one, and in the rare circumstances when I have been somewhere where there is a ton of snow, no one has one of these toboggans lying about for my use and enjoyment.

It looks like fun, though, except for the one in the back who has broken his arm, or leg. He looks dismayed at this result of winter frolic.

On the back of this bottle, it said “Batch #1”. I kept a full bottle of it for posterity. Maybe some dope will buy it in 10 years, thinking it is worth some money, like I bought that beat up first issue of Punisher, only to find out later that it was worth a grand total of about 50 cents. Enough to purchase 3/4 of a granola bar from the vending machine at work, if it worked that way.

I am guessing that this “Batch #1” is a trick of some sort. Perhaps it is the “mischief” mentioned on the front label. Getting people to buy it, thinking it is rare, when every bottle of Merry Mischief has had this printed on it since 1992, the heyday of Color Me Badd, before they were lame and way before they were ironically cool to name drop in some geek loser’s blog.

#2. Evan Williams “Peppermint Chocolate” Egg Nog

I know it is tacky to leave the prices on Christmas gifts, but I did it anyway. Partly because I thought that was a decent deal, but mostly because I am lazy and just wanted to open the fridge and snap a pic of it sitting there, chilled out and thickening up to the consistency of cake frosting.

Despite my girth, I do not care too much for sweets. I didn’t get fat on cakes on pies, I got fat on meat and potatoes. Or rather, chicken wings and beer. And pizza.

I have mixed feelings about the “egg nog with the booze already in it” that you see in liquor stores this time of year.

For one, I don’t trust it. How can they leave bottles of cream and raw eggs, mixed with bourbon, out on the shelves??? It seems like it would get too hot, or the bourbon would curdle it or something. It all sounds like a food poisoning lawsuit waiting to happen, and I’d hate to see Evan Williams standing next to the Twinkie Kid in the unemployment line.

For two, it is never as good as you think it will be, or as good as you hope it will be. I’ve bought numerous bottles of this stuff over the years, and they never get finished. They usually end up sitting in the fridge, half empty, until March when I finally can own up to the fact that Christmas is over and isn’t coming back, no matter how long I keep a bottle of rancid, eggy, booze milkshake in my refrigerator.

It just doesn’t taste that good, honestly. I would not have bought this bottle if it wasn’t a variety I have never seen before: Peppermint Chocolate, the Grand Poobah of Christmas flavors.

Peppermint Chocolate Egg Nog has got to be the most Christmas-y grocery item I have ever seen. There is nothing about it that isn’t Christmas.

Let’s review these ingredients:

1. Peppermint. Mint is Christmas. Why? Who the fuck knows. My guess is that mint and cold go together, like in the York Peppermint Patty commercials. I also don’t think I have ever seen a stocking on Christmas morning that did not have some sort of mint product in there somewhere. Preferably the soft Leo brand sticks, if Santa is reading this shit.

2. Chocolate. Sweet stuff is also Christmas. I do not like chocolate, but it seems like I am in the vast minority. Chocolate only realizes its full Xmas potential when paired with mint. Alone, chocolate and mint are all-year flavors, but when their powers are combined, they form an unstoppable force of Christmas consumerism! Like the Devastator of the seasonal aisle at the drug store.

3. Egg Nog. Only available at Christmas time. My mom would only let us have a tiny bit at a time (we never got junk food), so one time I saw my sister buy a carton of it and chug it in about 3 minutes flat, vomiting immediately after. Lesson learned.

I actually prefer a beverage called “Boiled Custard” to Egg Nog, but no one around here has Boiled Custard, which is probably for the best, anyway.

Speaking of egg nog, there is only one brand of egg nog that will forever be the only one in my mind:

stole this one from the internet.

Since the Evan Williams egg nog is clearly not the Barber’s egg nog, it will never hold a special place in my Christmastime memories, and must be cast aside into the lake of fire. Or my trash can.

The flavor of the Evan Williams Peppermint Chocolate Egg Nog? Just what you would expect. Perhaps a little more “chemically” tasting that I expected, but otherwise it tastes mostly like mint, egg nog, and cheap bourbon. The chocolate flavor is not as pronounced.

And it gets ultra-crazy thick in the refrigerator. In fact, its main use until I can, hopefully, drink it all is now “fancy Christmas coffee creamer”. It makes a nice toddy to have on the way to work, if you work in the morning. Which I do not.

Those are my reviews and they were terrible. Thanks for reading them anyway, even though you could have gotten the same information from the labels on the drinks themselves.

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