This past week has been scorching with hot-button news items.
The Yankees dropped their "no beards" policy.
Gasp.
“Lizzie McGuire” legend Hilary Duff and her husband are selling anti-Kanye West shirts and donating the proceeds to Holocaust survivors.
Class.
President Trump declared himself the King, though people say he may not have been doing so purely for the laughs?
Yikes emoji.
And rocker Dave Grohl’s baby mama has been revealed, at long last.
The pipes are calling; though, for the platinum record, we ought to start listening to what is, and stop listening to what is not our business—God save the Queen, and mic drop the world.
The week was also rife with me, an intellectual, checking some big-time food and drink items off my bucket, or simply yet-conquered list—something not too alarming to talk about now.
MY HERO
I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand Yoo-hoo’s game.
As I’ve long attested, pink drink reigns supreme. Strawberry Nesquik proverbially. A strawberry milkshake from Mister Softee seasonably. These are the type of beverages one religiously waxes poetic on from early boyhood onward, and will occasionally still indulge in while out and about at iconic after-hours delicatessens wherein young adulthood-denying wild things still flock to scream, frolick and shout.
That’s why, when your girlfriend first offers you a Saturday morning Strawberry Yoo-hoo—not a euphemism, come on, guys, get your head out of the context-perplexed gutters—you’re taken emphatically aback.
After all, you exclusively drank cafeteria-issued Strawberry Tru-Moo and Cream-o-Land milk cartons at lunchtime through middle school, when FLOTUS Mobama™ waged war on child obesity and therefore, took strawberry milk off the menu—and your childhood along with it.
Over a decade-and-a-half later: your first, and absolutely not your last Strawberry Yoo-hoo—a company indisputably most known for its chocolate baseline—hits your 29-year-old gustatory buds like a bat out of hell. Like a candle rescued from the mightiest of winds. Like primadonna Peter Griffin’s first Red Bull, brought to you by Madonna incarnate’s “Ray of Light” video. Like “My Hero” during the climactic scenes of “Varsity Blues.”
Send the firefighters home, because we just brought the kid in us back from the brink our wholesome damn selves.
And Strawberry isn’t just back, either. It too never left. It was just gone, but not forgotten. A dormant volcano waiting to erupt with the Sadaharuan fury of nearly a thousand home-runs.
If only we could drink this s— every day with no ramifications.
EVERLONG
The same goes for the French Toast Bagel of Town Bagel in Wantagh we forgot to order last week, but subsequently launched a redemption shot by purchasing this go-around.
My typical go-to—cream cheese and lox—on a specialty contraption comprised of syrup-laden baglé goodness (sue me) was not something I knew I was lacking, but realized in the moment I was in sore need of it with each successive bite.
Equal parts filling and thrilling, a finger-licking and sticky enterprise, vis-a-vis the syrup, I’d be hard-pressed not to attempt tastefully rehashing Long Island’s own, the late, great poet Walt Whitman when remembering back the experience; indubitably both a sweet and savory one, for this bagel too contains multitudes.
Engulfing the merry mouthful whilst sitting across from my equally sweet, savory and newfound main squeeze turned out to be as much of a welcomed slow dance as the Foo Fighters’ acoustic rendition of “Everlong.” Remember the good old days, readers?
Speaking of: when we arose to wash our hands as one does after a dolphin dive into unknown waters, we were greeted by the sight of a “Welcome Back Kotter” lunch box—something that means more to my family group chat, nay, my family, than I will divulge at this juncture.
Seeing such made me grow homesick for a time I never experienced, but is ingrained into every part of my being all the same. At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s like to one-off, flex out of opting for your obligatory "egg everything," and to blazing results?
BEST OF YOU
Alexa, play hype-up tunes that some oddball others may misinterpret as “off yourself” music, for the peer pressure has gotten the best of me this week. Yet, I couldn’t be more grateful.
Here’s why: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — I just had my first-ever peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Full stop.
I’ve long enjoyed peanut butter, either by the spoon or celery stick-full—shout-out a timeless father and son pastime bestowed upon me by either “Boy Meets World,” my own dad or both.
However, the trauma of being age-3 surprised by Dunkin’ Munchkin jelly made me swear off the purp for a quarter century. It wasn’t until my brother started smoking cream cheese—again, not a euphemism, holy moly—at family barbecues last year that I became acutely illuminated unto the gelatinous condiment’s greater possibilities (say those last four words five times fast; or don’t).
This dish comes equipped with jelly slathered atop a strip of its badass self; ergo, there was no avoiding fate: one UFO-shaped dipping cracker crashing down upon a sea of what’s most desirable, offset by a splash of a personal eye-roll—to overrule a golden rule of my old world.
Incredibly, the kick was good! I enjoyed this collision enough to next plow full steam ahead with a most egregious long-overdue: a new dawn, thy name is PB & J.
And you know what? It was pretty terrible. Oh well. 2 out of 3 is still a passing grade.
Ultimately, I’d rather try and fail to appreciate things most others do that I just can't wrap my head around, than regret never boarding the Embrace Change Train™ in the first place.
Stay tuned for our next “First Time Try’s,” should this column pilot fare well with test audiences.