Beaming For Bunnies: June 2021

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

June is Done!

Well, another June has come and gone, and frankly, even with the stress I've been under lately, this month's gone better than the last couple of Junes.

No one (I know) died, and nothing was broken nor did any real misfortune plague me. There's still a few hours left of the month, I shouldn't jinx myself.

But first, some big news!

Baja Blast is back! In bottle form! It's pretty much the only flavor of Mountain Dew I like, and since I refuse to go to Taco Bell after they discontinued the Cool Ranch Dorito Taco, I gotta wait until these bad babies hit store shelves. As of right now, I can only find them at gas stations, and only certain ones, and attempts to buy in bulk and ration them had failed. Seriously, I bought two because there was a buy two deal to drink one then, and save the other for another day, and guess what I did? Drink them both that same day. I couldn't help myself! I kept turning down Pepsi Blue because these two sodas aren't available in the same places.

Oh yeah, Pepsi Blue is back, too. I thought I mentioned it before on here, but turns out I hadn't.

I hadn't had the stuff in over fifteen years, but wouldn't you know it, it's still great! It tastes exactly the same: Blue. I said back in the day that it was like drinking a blue raspberry Airhead, and suffice it to say Pepsi had not changed it at all.

I've realized that I have a difference in preference for these two sodas. I have to be in a certain mood to crave Pepsi Blue; whereas if I'm not careful, Baja Blast has the potential to replace water in my diet. I used to date someone who let that happen to her, and I can say from the experience that Mountain Dew addiction is real and not pleasant to deal with.

I also finally tried Burger King's entry in the Fast Food Chicken Sandwich War. This is the Ch'King sandwich, and of course it's the spicy kind.

This lunch got me to start thinking. This whole spicy chicken craze didn't start with everyone trying to copy Chik-Fil-A to try to sap their customers away.

"It's just as good as Chik-Fil-A, only eating this one means you don't support a (openly) homophobic company!" I'd imagine the marketing people were thinking.

No, every single one of these chains are trying to ape the success of Popeye's, They're trying to replicate the massive demand and sales the sandwich got, but no other place has come close to realizing why Popeye's got all the attention. The secret is that they struck gold with the taste of its spices and breading of its regular chicken, but in sandwich form. It's as simple as that. And also because they were the first ones out of the gate, with the rest of the industry playing catch up.

Burger King has come the closest to replicating that sandwich, right down to the style of the bun and the pickles. All in all, I liked it, but I could tell it was a cheap imitator of the Popeye's sandwich, and if you have a Popeye's nearby, I suggest you head there. Not to say that this was a bad sandwich at all! There was something a bit off. I could only briefly taste the spices, and the flavor of the breading and the bun reminded me too much of Popeye's.

And finally, Conan O'Brien bid farewell to late night tv for the third time. He might just be going to HBO Max, but this is truly an end to an era. I can truly say that my awful sleep schedule can be blamed on staying up to watch his show at 12:30 at night during High School. Oh, at first I'd just watch Letterman, but since I wasn't going to sleep anyway, I might as well check out that guy that danced with Bart Simpson.

What I found amongst the celebrity interviews and performances by bands no one's heard of (yet always had the biggest audience reaction) were absurd, odd sketches by equally odd characters. Conan wasn't afraid to be weird, and nearly thirty years on, he still finds ways to show that off.

Case in point, my favorite remote of his during the TBS era was when he visited the American Girl Doll Store.

It only took a few minutes before Conan's headcanon with his doll became that she lived in Nazi Germany and was a raging alcoholic. Only Conan. My early (and let's face it, current) attempts at comedy was trying to pull off even a tenth of what he does.