| |
Sep
8
|
 |
If you’ve ever been to a party with people too hip to drink Mike’s Hard Lemonade but not nerdy enough to be a beer geek, you’ve no doubt drank Sparks. The energy drink not only supports Coors (”The Republican beer!”), it looks and tastes like somebody combined Red Bull and battery acid. That means teenagers drink it. It also contains alcohol, which does the same.
As such, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has sued Coors in an attempt to force Sparks off the market. CSPI cites cites a study (.pdf) that suggests caffeine impairs one’s ability to tell drunkenness; whether that’s true or not, good luck getting science to guide drug policy. (This is a hilarious drug policy joke, trust me.) The release goes on:
Sparks’ juvenile web site and guerilla [sic] marketing appeal to young consumers, according to CSPI. The web site offers a recipe for a drink called a “Lunchbox,” consisting of half Miller beer and half Sparks, and elsewhere, the site proposes consuming Sparks for breakfast alongside omelets. The company also hosts give-aways of Sparks at house parties, sponsors events unrelated to beer such as art shows, and engages in other unconventional marketing practices, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Oh, look, it’s all there: Unconventional marketing! A”Lunchbox”! Breakfast! Gorilla marketing! The Journal Sentinel, man! A full-fledged conspiracy to get kids to drink. Scoob, we gotta do something!
The group has already forced Budweiser to can its similar (but unsurprisingly worse) drinks. Unlike Tilt and Bud Extra, people actually drink Sparks, so it’s safe to say this suit will go nowhere. But let’s imagine a whistleblower comes around, with documents that say employees of the company that sells alcohol wanted people (even underage people!) to drink alcohol. We will be shocked, we will demand hearings, we will somehow be utterly surprised by all of this. And we will have hipsters who do more cocaine and teenagers who mix Red Bull with vodka and drink a lot more alcohol with a lot more caffeine in it. Well, maybe.
via Join Together
Photo of Ken (my apologies, man), Creative Commons license
|
|
dmac | 3:15 PM | 2 Comments
|
Jan
12
|
|
 Okay, people, it’s time to come clean: I had a blast doing the hipster issue. Well, I mean, I didn’t spend too much time on it. But I wrote a timeline making fun of myself, and contributed some quiz questions.
Yeah, we had the Vice dos and don’ts ripoff, we made fun of people, blah blah blah. Look, I think some people took it too seriously, as in, “Oh, come on. It’s not meant to be taken seriously.” You’re free to disagree, or boycott PW, or whatever. But people who didn’t like it would agree with me that citing it as a source for hipster-bashing is, uhm, kind of strange:
The week of Nov. 9, 2005, Philadelphia Weekly ran a cover story entitled “The Trouble With Hipsters: Why We Hate Them,” in which they criticized the “crazy, malnourished, bespectacled, follicly challenged, hipper-than-thou little fucks” for their “cultural fascism and the belief that populism is somehow inherently evil.”
Whoo! I don’t even have to look it up to know that she’s quoting PW Music Ed. Neil Ferguson. I don’t usually like to rag on the Daily Pennsylvanian, and god knows some of my columns there were boring, but, come on, citing the hipster issue? To bash hipsters who go down to First Friday?
Eh, but I suppose I shouldn’t discourage any mention of PW.
Bonus fun fact: A Daniel McQuade column supporting John Street for mayor in 2003 cited a story in The Philadelphia Independent.
Die, Hipster, Die [PW]
Keeping the local art scene accessible [DP]
|
|
dmac | 7:00 AM | 1 Comment
|
Dec
20
|
|
 I saw this post about hipsters on Craigslist in the morning and decided it started off okay, but then got silly by the end. In a way, it was like one of my own jokes. And I can’t show anyone that they’re not that hard to write. So I decided against linking it.
But then I got a bunch of people emailing it to me. No, really. More email than I’ve gotten on any other random topic people emailed me about. And that means it has to be linked, if only because of
An excerpt:
Between the women’s jeans they were wearing, and the foul stentch of body oder and insense wafting from the window, I knew these were not your everyday poser hipsters. They were super hipsters! They must be Hipster Leaders (H.L.) I thought! How exciting! I’d heard of the hipster leaders but knew they only surfaced for very special reasons - like blow-out cigarette sales or that one day a year you’re allowed to put out couches and big items on the curb for the trash. While pondering what could possibly have brought out the infamous H.L.s, I heard a shrill and piercing scream come from further down second street.
Jesus, I thought! What was that? A feral cat? Did a litle girl get hit by a bus? Concerned, I rushed that way and then I saw them! What the hell?! A group of skinny young girls was walking down the middle of Second St. and the leader was screaming at the top of her lungs. Wait, wait a minute. Those aren’t girls, they’re fully-grown hipsters wearing womens’ clothing. At that minute, a group of at least 25 hipsters poured out of the Standard Tap.
The two hipster gangs met at 2nd and Poplar and faced off. I heard whispers. It seems that the Fishtown Hipsters were sick of taking second billing to the N. Libs Hipsters and were making a stand. In a loud yet odly high-pitched voice, the leader of the Fishtown Hipsters said, “Today brothers we fight for Fishtown and for Johnny Brenda’s. I’m wearing size zero petite jeans and I’ve never in my life showered more than once a month! This proves we are the most EMO hipsters alive!!!!!”
And it goes on like that. The rest of it’s over at CL. Have fun!
Disclaimer: I had a hand in the hipster issue of PW. I don’t know how that reflects on this post.
Well it happened again - more hipster violence [CL Philly]
|
|
dmac | 3:25 PM | 3 Comments
|
Dec
19
|
|
• An ex-Phillies bench guy played this year for a team in Korea called the “Lucky Goldstar Twins.” Geeze, that’s almost as ridiculous as Phillies. [Beerleaguer]
• A question from the city’s Quizzo master: “Jessica Pressler ruffled some feathers when in a New York Times article she called Philly what?” One of the answers he got: “The Fifth Borough.” [Johnny Goodtimes]
• I’ll be buying 15 of these t-shirts later today. [Jossip]
• More sports, but come on: Rick Fucking Tocchet is the new coach of the Phoenix Coyotes, at least until Gretzky comes back! Whoo! I’ll be growing my hair long and elbowing somebody into a wall in celebration! What’s Peter Zezel doing? [Metroblogging Philadelphia]
• And tomorrow, the Dover intelligent design case decision will be announced. A commenter is “on pins and needles already.” Uh, okay. [Speaking Freely]
|
|
dmac | 3:45 PM | 0 Comments
|
Dec
12
|
|
 And, in the best Craigslist missed connection since “Me: Playoffs; You: Phillies,” it’s a touching story of love between a boy and a hawk:
The Time: 12:25 in Rittenhouse.
You: The brown feather-coated beauty who decided to venture into metro life, swoop down, and kill and eat a pigeon today in the park… perched just low enough that everyone could see the beautifully gory details.
Me: Um, the boy wishing that you were my pet hawk, to launch at unsuspecting hipsters and cabbies who swerve into the bike lane.
Here’s hoping we meet again.
This sure beats the usual “Boy I sure hate blacks and jews!” posts that usually passes for banter on Craigslist.
Look at my hawk [CL Philly]
|
|
dmac | 1:21 PM | 47 Comments
|
|
|
