The Great Gay-ification of Soda

Tomorrow, our school is having an ethnic potluck for our minority doctoral student association. Last year, I made Choctaw Casserole. This year, I am topping myself by making Choctaw Casserole AND soda pop cake. For those of you sad enough to not know what soda pop cake is, my benevolent self will share it with you now. You bake a white cake, and let it cool (Any white cake will do). Then you poke a lot of holes in it with a fork. Next, you take a can of strawberry soda, stir the bubbles out of it, and pour it over the top. Chill it, and ice it with Cool Whip. It is so easy and trashy. I am sure I have posted about this before. It makes a very yummy cake. The recipe is a souvenir from an ex-boyfriends mom who made the trailer-iest food I have ever had in my life. This one was a keeper.

Anyway, so I go shopping for the three ingredients: Cake, Soda, Cool Whip. I locate ingredients one and three...but where is strawberry soda? I wandered all around Target, and found a bunch of weird-o flavored energy drinks...but no crappy Nehi strawberry soda.

Defeated, I went to Waldbaums (That's New Yorkese for Homeland), in search of the elusive strawberry soda. Any variety. Don't care.

I saw: Tab, Black Cherry Cola, Cranberry Soda, Grape Welch's, and a bunch of other weird Jones Colas. WTF? Where is my trashy soda? There was a fancy bottle that said something like "Diet Pink Lemonade", and "Blue raspberry something or other". Is it so strange to want strawberry soda?

So, I settled on Fanta Pineapple. I have no idea if this is going to suck or not. Frankly, I bought Fanta because it looked like the trashy sodas of my youth. Even the store brand (You know, "Dr. Thunder", "Mountain Lightning", "Red Fear") didn't have any of the crap soda.

Anyway, I blame the gentrification of soda for this unacceptable lack of crappy soda. They probably secretly ban Fresca at their dinner parties, and poo-poo Cheese balls. Does that really sound like any party you want to be at?

See, the thing is, because of my sugar restrictions, I can bake the cake, but I can't eat it. So if the cake sucks, I won't know. But, I won't have to eat it, either. So, everybody wins!

If I had a million dollars

Russ and I went to a concert tonight. The Barenaked Ladies. Yes. I had never seen them before. I remember them getting popular right around my last year of highschool or maybe it was my first year of college. In either case, I was too cool for them then. I was busy plotting ways to pierce things and dye my hair colors not occuring in nature.

However, I have gotten older...but I am still a music snob. This is good news for the 'Ladies, cause I think they're great. They're funny, they put on a good show, their songs are very musical, and the lyrics have lots of little funny things in them like bizarre metaphors and puns. I like that.

So the tickets came to Russ and I compliments of a friend of his. It was at Radio City Music Hall, which is a great venue, because I really like sitting, and they have lots of chairs. Here are some things I noticed about the show:

1) It is really white.
2) People singing along to lyrics look really funny
3) Seriously, I have never seen that many white people all in one room in New York before. They all looked so pleased that they had found the beat.
4) The mix was awesome. No one was too loud or too soft, or too tinny.
5) The opening band sucked my dogs balls. And he's neutered.
6) Smoke free concerts are great. I love coming home smelling like my stanky self, and not everyone else's stanky self.
7) Earplugs, while dampening the overall effect of a noisy show, help filter out unnecessary sound. Like the guy in the front of you who is trying to sing along to all the words of the songs he doesn't know. Earplugs render his mutterings annoyance-free!
8) I love going to a show where I don't have to sell the merchandise. That's right, I ain't nobody's merch bitch no mo. Now I just hawk action figures, and that's much cooler.

I am going to bed now. Bonus! I am off tomorrow because of election day. This week is looking better and better.

Oh! And, we saw Conan O'Brian on the streets of Manhattan. I uttered a reverent "Holy Shit!" and tried not to stare.