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Archive 15 |
Current
Diaries: world's worst car names product test: pretzel m&ms the dominican republic There have been many silly and asinine car names over
the years. Some that come to mind are the Renault Le Car, the AMC
Gremlin, the Mercury Zephyr, and, well, the Hummer. I figured that
these days, with all the millions of marketing dollars, market research
and branding firms that charge more to make a Nike swoosh rip-off
than 20 of me earn in a year, that they'd be better these days.
Pulling out of my train station, I was sitting waiting to make a
left and noticed the name of the car in front of me. Honda Fit.
Seriously? What the fuck is that? Economy of letters for an economy
car? Nope, I feel like they may have just mailed that one in. That
led me to start looking around to see if I could find the dumbest
car names of vehicles currently in production. Here are the top
ones I found in no particular order of awfulness:
I've admitted on multiple occasions
that I'm a sucker for new products--usually of the edible kind.
I think I even tried some soda shit called Bawls
at some point and some other Special
K twiggy chocolate bar that was like eating a cocoa-flavored
squirrel’s nest. My experience with Pretzel
M&Ms, I'm happy to say, was much more pleasant.  After seeing one of those dumb ads with the giant animated candies--and fulfills the creepy factor of having food you're supposed to enjoy eating talking in commercials--I told myself that if I love Peanut M&Ms (which I do), I'm going to have to loooove Pretzel M&Ms. After all, if they made chocolate covered salt, I'd probably buy it. So I made it my mission to find these things. But it seemed the folks at Mars were going to make me work for it. I looked at every store I walked into. The CVS down the street has Peanut Butter M&Ms, Almond M&Ms, Dark Chocolate M&Ms and fucking Coconut M&Ms (fucking coconut!), but no damn pretzels. I started to think that maybe this was a pre-launch tease or some sort of targeted release that unfortunately wasn't available in the Tri-state area. To this day, I've still never seen a small bag of the things. But I did finally come across a medium-sized and large-sized bag at a place mere blocks from my house. I swear my adrenaline spiked. It was like I was Indiana Jones puling that damn golden head off the pedestal. I got the thing home (totally forgetting Ms. Hipster's prescription) and threw the bag down on the counter like a conquering hero. I believe I said something cool like, "Fuckin'-a, right!" I tore at the bag like a wild animal and popped the first if what would be many candies into my piehole. The outside is much like a typical M&M, with its brightly colored candy coated shell, providing that familiar snap for which they are so famous. Then you get the Mars chocolate layer and finally the peach pit, if you will, of pretzelness. The whole thing is a perfect synthesis of texture, salty & sweet and happy colors. Ms. Hipster soon hovered, and after threatening her to back off with one of those giant bbq forks, I rationed the candies in a "one for you, ten for me" manner and called it even. Unfortunately she's a sneaky one, and infiltrated my sophisticated baby latch system the night of and redistributed the M&Ms in a way she found more Democratic and caloric for herself. Needless to say, the bag disappeared quickly and I have yet to replenish my stash. So if you're ever to invite Mr. Hipster to a party, be forewarned that I will brining with me (because it's the perfect excuse), one of the more addictive pre-package snacks that I've experienced in my adult life. Granted, my former addiction was Peanut M&Ms, so this is like going from coke to crack. Thanks cartoon douches.  So we roll into the airport in
The Dominican Republic, four adults and three children all told. The
tarmac onto which we descend was probably not unlike an angel falling
from the pillowy clouds of heaven to the smoldering cinders of the
bad place. My shirt caught fire and dropped from my pale shoulders
in a melted mass of poly-cotton sludge.
 Walking into the thatched hut (past the beautiful ladies with their Polaroid cameras, giant smiles and visions of cashola dancing in their chestnut eyes) that subbed for a terminal in these parts granted us little reprise. It turns out mammoth fans mounted akimbo on hut ceilings do little more than blow sweltering humidity to and fro in a quite wasteful and useless manner. We posed for the family portrait--to be collected upon our departure from said hut on our way back to the lush Garden State--and tried our hardest not to look like the bedraggled heaving tourists that we were. Several lines and passport revealings later we boarded our waiting minivan and embarked on our journey to the resort we would call home for the next five nights and six days. I was seated up front with the driver because it was decided my six years of high school and one year of college Spanish made me the most qualified and experienced Spanish speaker in our crew. It turns out my five-year-old son would have been better suited to the task, but I managed to pigeon-speak my way through a 40-minute ride with a driver who spoke literally not a word of English. Not a word. It turns out if one nods, furrows one's brow and combines it with some guttural noises that resemble "uh-huh" and "si" and "aye" that it can easily be substituted for comprehension and make others in one's company believe he or she is actually contributing to a dialogue about (at least what I believe was) the beauty and history of the Dominican Republic. Having been booked solely by Ms. Hipster and the wife in the other couple, I had little to no understanding of the topography, annual mean income, racial makeup or general lifestyle of our host country. It turns out that it looks much like the small villages and towns in Mexico, but on what seemed like a smaller scale, and mixed with some Caribbean cultural references that give it a colonial flavor that's missing (thankfully) on the Yucatán Peninsula. And why wouldn't it be, you clueless ethnocentric douche (I say in my internal voice), the two cultures are totally different, have different ancestral lines and are not even geographically close? And then, after wending our way through dusty towns, bumpy roads, signage straight out of the 1950s and folks who honestly looked like they could use some of our tourist dollars, we came upon the guard booth, surrounded by high walls and backed by the visage of lush greenery, whizzing golf carts, pale European legs and the smell of chlorined loveliness. And this is the last of the outside world we’d see until our same driver chauffeured us from the gates on our way back to the thatched airport. Once sequestered behind the inviting walls of Paradisus Punta Cana, the rain rolled in. Yet there we stood ankle deep in the kiddie pools, wrapped in soaking towels and finally getting to the bottom of that Vietnam-era myth of it raining up. Hell, we were on vacation, paying through the nose for our accommodations and at the mercy of children impervious to pruning and a bone-chilling soak. We would spend a lot of time at that pool in the coming week, though not in such a downpour. And, being the parents of the year, we abandoned our children to a random babysitter (supplied by the hotel) the first night in The D.R. to go eat at one of the less than promising all-you-can-eat restaurants on campus. The young sitter, as it turned out, beguiled and delighted the boys with her easy smile, shy demeanor and good looks that the resort clearly recruited from the throngs of beauties that seem to be in endless supply in the surrounding villages, towns and cities. Where else and how else would a local make a comfortable living other than watching the children of Europeans and Americans wealthy enough to afford that Jacuzzi tub and double marble sink? We bid the kids adieu and crossed our fingers that we wouldn't come back to absolute chaos (or a ransom note) and headed downstairs to check out our options for dinner. And this, as it stood, was what became a running joke—in a trying-not-to-cry sense—our entire visit. It turns out that the food at all-inclusives is not the draw. Granted, when left alone in my adult years, I make myself what was termed a ‘banana-eggy’ back when I was five and consists of a cup of milk, a banana, a table spoon of peanut butter, a raw egg (now skipped in my smarter, non-70s recipe) and occasionally some frozen yogurt or ice cubes if I’m feeling bloated that day. So food is all relative to me. We chose from the twelve restaurants available to us, salivating at the thought of all those options. The common wisdom, as noted, started to make all too much sense as we ran across dishes like “discus of cilantroed bull spleen” and “rhombus hare jacketed in cabbage spears,” along with “cylinders of green chicken” and “beefy pasta spirals in a suze of jackal.” Our hopes started to fade. We threw a dart at the book and landed on the steak joint. I won’t harp on the food too badly, but suffice it to say that while my steak was fine, the salad bar was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. There were gelatinous piles of stuff, sweaty cheese, and unfortunate misspellings and/or namings of some of the items on the bar. Apparently, even in a country where our babysitter spoke perfect English, the restaurant staff couldn’t think that they might want someone to double check that “roast of beast" wasn’t gonna sound so good to their paying guests. And so went the week in food. TO BE CONTINUED...
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The shittiest party ever.
| More on Mr. Hipster |
 Hipster Movie ReviewsEnjoy the rantings as Mr. Hipster proves he slept through his film criticism courses in college. |
 Hipster Book ReviewsThis much ignorance about literature can only lead to hurt feelings and a whole lot of nonsense. |
 MusicCheck out the albums that have left Mr. H with permanent hearing loss in his left ear, but a song in his heart |
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