Hot Dog, We Have a Wiener!

Apparently, I'm on a roll or something, as this is the second food-related award I've won in recent weeks. For those not in the know, what you see above is a can of "Drank," a "relaxed lifestyle beverage" marketed by Houston-based Innovative Beverage Group. Ironically, their beverage is anything but innovative, as it's based on "purple drank," aka as "sizzurp," "lean," or "purple jelly," a concoction which came to be in the dirty south hip-hop community. Purple drank is basically a mixture of prescription strength codeine cough syrup and Sprite. Jolly Ranchers are often thrown in as a garnish. Now I should stress, this is not something to be glorified. Purple drank, being based on opiates, is illegal and dangerous. People have actually overdosed and died drinking this stuff. But, American pop culture being what it is, it's become a phenomenon, and somebody was bound to commercialize it. To their credit, IBG's version doesn't contain any codeine, but rather is built around melatonin, rose hips and valerium. And, naturally, high fructose corn syrup...

So how did I come to win a can of this magical elixir, you ask? A few months back, Marjorie Skinner over at the Portland Mercury blogged about Drank (which is not yet distributed in the Pacific Northwest). Somebody at IBG caught wind of it and sent her a couple cans. So Marjorie decided to keep one for herself, and offer up the other can to whoever could write the best rap verse about tha Drank. Which, incredibly, turned out to be me. You can check out my winning entry, along with a link to the runner-ups, here. Mom will no doubt be glad that I took the Bill Cosby approach and avoided using gratuitious F-bombs, and also for my reference to Timmy O'Neill, Boulder's favorite boulderer. Mom has a bit of a crush on Timmy O'Neill...

So I can't yet report on how it actually tastes (or what its effects are), as I haven't opened it yet. I'm waiting for just the right special occasion for that.

Efterklang: The Arcade Fire of Denmark?

It's been said, by critics who've earned my respect, no less... I'm not sure I'd go that far, but they put on a good show, for sure, at the Doug Fir tonight. They're definitely worth a look...