58 Energy Shots You Need To Ingest, Just For God’s Sake, Not All At Once! Part 1 In A Series!

WE’VE ALL SEEN the commercials. Probably. You’re running low on energy and then you take an energy shot and then you have energy. But are all energy shots created equal? Pretty much, but for purposes of blog content, absolutely not. So, uh, let’s take a look at a bunch of them that I bought, huh?

Also, can’t you just see the above image in enormous poster form tacked up on your dorm room wall? It can be, for only $10. Simply send me $10…and then print it out really big as a poster if you can do that somehow. Voila!

So let’s get started! As with any sort of comparison review sort of thing, we need a control.  Here’s the control:

5-hour Energy
Price: $4.43 for a 2-pack at Walmart
Calories: 4
Vitamin B12: 500 mcg / 8333% RDA
Flavors: Pomegranate, Grape, Berry, Orange, Lemon-Lime
Before: Pooped.
After: Peppy!

5-hour Energy is our control on account of it started this whole energy shot craze thing. And it’s the gold standard, brother. It works.

That is, unless you’re utterly beat when you take it. That’s the trick: All energy shots are much less effective if you take them when you’re already exhausted. If you’re completely run down, then it’s too late. You missed the boat! Call it a night, pal, because you’re finished. Show’s over. Pack it on in! Hit the road, Jack! Throw in the towel! Goodnight, Irene! And, eh…so on. You need to take them before or at the very latest, when you’re just starting to slow down and you know you’ve got a bunch of crap to do before you go to bed.

As for the taste: as you’ll see in the days, weeks, and months ahead as I somehow manage to drag this piece out for what seems like an eternity, many of these shots come in different flavors and in most cases – not all! – the flavors are irrelevant. Most taste pretty similar – an overall tangy, sweet, and slightly medicine-y taste unsuccessfully masked by a mild fruit flavor. I don’t even have a favorite 5-hour Energy flavor. Hell, they’re all fine and the overall taste isn’t unpleasant to begin with.

So then, let’s get started, shall we?  …Tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Ted reviews the first three! What do you care, you won’t be back. Prove me wrong, folks.

Posted by Ted on March 8, 2013, 4:54 PM.

¿What’s Bueno? Lingerie!

FORGET Fredericks of Hollywood! That’s a freeway drive away! And you know what traffic is like here in LA!

Ditto Victoria’s Secret! Who wants to go to a mall?!

Here’s Ted’s secret: Buy your lingerie at the 99¢ Only store and save-save-save! Don’t worry! Now it’s our secret!

Sure, I’d passed the lingerie section of the 99¢ Only store countless times over the years with nary a glance as any perfectly reasonable person – man, woman or, whaddaycall, transwhosis – would do, but a few weeks ago I finally noticed it when I’d picked up a leaking bottle of Tampico punch and I needed to wipe my sticky hands on something.

Bras, thongs, panties – it’s all here, brother, and it’s all under a buck! And name brands, too – like Rampage!

Incidentally, that’s just what your wife is going to go on when she finds out you bought her anniversary gift in a store that also sells pints of spoiled, about-to-explode salsa! For 99¢ Only!

Boy, that’d be an anniversary to remember, huh? “Honey, let’s stay in for our special night. I swung by 99¢ Only and picked up some hot salsa that sat in the ‘bring-me-backs’ basket at the register for two days before it was put back in the refrigerator. And after we polish that off, you can put on this white lace thong.”

But if underthings that look like they were fashioned out of leftover scraps from the floor of the factory that makes the vinyl doily  table runners (housewares, two aisles over), aren’t her (or your) thing, try these on for size!

Va-va-va-voom!

Cute, romantic little words and phrases such as “love,” “sweet,” “believe,” “imagine” and, eh, “keep the peace” are printed all over this pair. If your girlfriend says she loves them, that you’re sweet for thinking of her by buying unmentionables at the dollar store, I imagine she’s just trying to keep the peace…but I believe you’ve found yourself a keeper. Marry her now! Confidential to your girlfriend:  Run!  Run far, far away!

Hey! Let’s talk Lady’s Bras!

Why pay an astronomical $7.95 elsewhere for the same Lady’s Bra they’ve got here for, yes, 99¢ Only!

And what if 34C – the one size available – isn’t quite a snug fit?

Well, then! It’s off to the 99¢ Only store’s mortal enemy Dollar Tree…

…where you’ll pick up a a couple of these adjustable doohickeys to make up the difference.

Now don’t you wish I had posted all this information last month, before Valentine’s Day?

Posted by Ted on March 5, 2013, 2:51 AM.

Spring Has Arrived!

OH, sure, if you go by the calendar, it’s still nearly three weeks away.

Some wait until they see that the red, red robin has returned from her warm winter home in the south; others until the crocus and daffodils are pushing their way up through the soil. But here in the West San Fernando Valley, we have a different harbinger of the coming season. A most frightening omen indeed.

Last night I saw the first crane fly of spring.

Life size…? Not unless you’re somehow reading my blog on the screen of an IMAX theater.

There are those – renowned entomologists, smug Wikipedia editors, know-it-all neighborhood children, irritable 911 operators, and so on – who will naively insist to you that these obscene brutes are harmless. That the clumsy, nearly comical way they flap at you is merely due to their gangly limbs and weak wings and that they pose no danger to humans.

Don’t you believe it.

There’s a reason why the Mexican people have dubbed this creature chupacabra volando, literally “enormous evil flying goat-sucker from Hell.” Proof of the vicious, insatiable bloodlust of these demonic fiends? A distinct lack of goats in my neighborhood. 

Now if these beasts could just develop a taste for rooster, maybe we’d all be able to sleep past four a.m. and the local cock-fighting syndicato would move their operation to Tarzana.

Posted by Ted on March 1, 2013, 4:00 AM.

Big Lots Presents Exciting Flavor Combinations!

SO I was at Big Lots the other day looking for jars filled with cotton candy that had either dried out or gotten moist – one or the other, who knows? – so that the once big fluffy wads sat like dense, pastel-colored hockey pucks of sugar at the bottom of their plastic containers. Mmmmm-mm!

Excellent!

Having checked that off my list, it was over to the next aisle where I was faced with a difficult decision:

Did I have a hankering for chocolate flavored wine?

…Or was it Banana Moon Pie flavored coffee that I craved?

While trying to  make up my mind, I wandered over to their furniture department and fell asleep in the bottom bunk of one of those metal pipe-frame kids beds. By the time I woke up six hours later, I was completely sober and of course wanted neither. Problem solved!

Posted by Ted on February 26, 2013, 3:10 AM.

Attention News Media!

Let me help you out here! Some free advice!

First:

When you’re filing a story (industry term) about some sort of supposedly newsworthy event, include a little something called details.

For instance!

Here’s a piece titled “The Onion Apologizes for Tweet About Quvenzhané Wallis” over on our sister site newyorktimes.com where they note that “an obscene reference” was made about the young actress. And over at our other sister site usatoday.com, they noted that the Onion issued an apology for a tasteless Twitter remark (which I understand is called a “Tweet”) with the headline news that “‘The Onion issues apology for tasteless Twitter remark.”

Neither story mentioned exactly what was so offensive (though to be fair, USA Today eventually added a link to another story filed a few minutes earlier that spelled it out, or at least gave us the first letter:

If your news organization is touting something as news, have the editorial courage of your convictions to print the actual details of the story rather than make oblique references to it. The entire story here begins and ends with the dreaded c-word, and to paraphrase the Onion itself, everyone seems afraid to use it. (And yes, I realize the irony of me not including it here, but I’m brilliantly and insightfully commenting on the story, not reporting the news. Also, my grandmother reads this blog.)

Furthermore, if readers have to leave your site to do their own research elsewhere and find out what the goddamn story is, your news organization has failed at the one thing it’s supposed to do.

Second:

Nothing that happens on Twitter is ever news.

Posted by Ted on February 25, 2013, 1:00 PM.

Exclusive Look at the 2013 Oscar Nominees’ $45,000 Gift Baskets!

FRIDAY morning, I got a call from my employment agency, the Temp Bag, with an assignment: head over to the Kodak Dolby Theater in Hollywood and sit in the audience for their run-through of Sunday’s show. They needed people to stand in for the stars for lighting, camera blocking, etc. I spent the day with a sign reading “Anne Hathaway” hanging from my neck. (I was hoping to be Joaquin Phoenix, but everyone agreed I’m more of an Anne Hathaway.)

Anyway, when we broke for lunch (industry term), I managed to sneak backstage (Not allowed! Shh!) where I snapped this picture of those legendary Oscar gift baskets they give to the nominees.

Man, I tell you, those celebrities have it all!

Posted by Ted on February 23, 2013, 4:06 AM.

We Both Know It’s Wrong!

IT’S FUNNY how things work out sometimes. I was leaving the gym the other day and I came across this in the parking lot.

Can you see the seat covers in the car?  They’re these:

I’d been looking for someone to take care of Nana Parsnips when I take off for Vegas for a long, lost weekend-slash-bender. What better In-Home Care-Giving Service than “California’s #One In-Home Care-Giving Service” that features the Grim Reaper as their unofficial automotive upholstery logo, right?

But it gets better, and unfortunately, if I were to prove it, I’d open myself to all sorts of litigation and even more people picking on me at the gym when they realize I’m the jackass taking pictures of vehicles in the parking lot.

Anyway: The website of their in-home care-giving service, which I ingeniously blacked out to minimize the inevitable settlement I’ll be paying for the sake of entertaining you, what, six regulars…? Well, when you visit it, and then click on the “About Us” section offering little bios of their employees…?

It plays the 1972 soul hit “Me and Mrs. Jones.”

Honest to God!

Sure, they’ll probably end up killing Nana, but at least she’ll die with a smile on her face.

Posted by Ted on February 22, 2013, 6:07 AM.

¿What’s Bueno? Planter’s NUT•rition Peanut Butter!

Sweet pickled radicchio!  Do my eyes deceive me?! Look what’s at the 99¢ Only store – peanut butter!

And not just any peanut butter, but high-end, name-brand, fancy peanut butter! Faaaaaaancy peanut butter!

From Planters! The peanut people!

New! says the label! Planters NUT•rition Energy Mix Berry Nut and Cinnamon Raisin Granola Nut peanut butter. Twelve ounces for 99¢ only. Who could say no to that?  You could?

Well, what if I pointed out that the lid is green?  And this isn’t your father’s green!  Back in the old days, a green lid on a jar of peanut butter meant it was either lime-flavored peanut butter or menthol light peanut butter or an open case of peanut butter was back in the stockroom when the maintenance crew put a fresh coat of spray paint on the cardboard baler!

No, today, green implies healthy and/or recycled! I’m going out on a limb here and presume that, even though I bought this at the 99¢ Only store, this isn’t recycled peanut butter so that leaves only one other possibility: healthy! You’d pay 99¢ only for a jar of healthy peanut butter, wouldn’t you?

Of course you would! We all would!

How exactly is it healthy? I’m glad you asked! It’s got Mr. Peanut using his cane to mime a golf swing on the label, and it’s from Planters NUT•rition line of products – which is a play on the word “nutrition.” Could it be any more healthy?

And that’s not all! It’s also got 10% copper!  See?

Do you know how much copper sells for these days?!

…Neither do I, but I know it’d be a hell of a lot easier to buy a bunch of this stuff from the 99¢ Only store and smelt it down to the copper and peanut alloys (peanutium rises to the top) than to break into construction sites and vacant houses and steal all the copper wiring like we all did during the summers we were in college.

Here’s the Cinnamon Raisin Granola Nut version:

I tried some on a crisp Ritz cracker!

And then there’s this one, the Berry Nut type:

Which I also tried on a crisp Ritz cracker. Mmm-mm! Good cracker! Good cracker!

As you know, everything tastes great when it sits on a Ritz, but the first one – the granola one – it was just a little bit better.  Crunchy, it was. And not crunchy like chunky peanut butter. Really crunchy, like there was granola made of rice in there, which there was. Who the hell makes granola out of rice? you ask. Apparently Planters does. Don’t argue, it gives it a nice crunch.

Tired? Need a quick pick-me-up without the crash? Toss those cans of Monster M-80 in the garbage, you’re going to chug a peanut butter sandwich! Yes, that’s right – these are “Energy Mix” peanut butters.

Like a peanut butter adrenaline shot directly to the heart, they are! Christ almighty I hope you’re not allergic to peanut butter!

Oh, by the way, if you are allergic to peanut butter, and, by extension, peanuts…?

Or even peanut, singular, I guess.

Anyway, there ya go: Planters NUT•rition Energy Mix Peanut Butter (contains: peanut) is what’s bueno at the 99¢ Only store today. But it won’t be for long, because every jar they had (and they had a lot of them) had a best-by date of somewhere around the third week of February. And folks, we’re there now.

Now that’s not to say that they won’t continue to carry them long past the best-by date. Good heavens, no – this is the 99¢ Only store we’re talking about, after all! I’m just saying that maybe they won’t be as bueno, say, fourteen months down the road as they are today.

Posted by Ted on February 21, 2013, 2:19 AM.

#118 – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa!

HEY, I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: This is not a political blog!

But one thing that all Los Angelenos everywhere can agree on is that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a complete and utter scu—

—Actually, my attorney’s on vacation this week, sure, and his paralegal is frantically waving her arms and telling me that the laws regarding elected officials and libel are, eh, difficult to interpret, so we’ll just say, for now, that, in my First Amendment-protected opinion, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is #118 on a completely non-sequentially numbered list of an arbitrary total number of 857 reasons to get the hell out of the filthy toilet that is Los Angeles or not move here in the first place. If it weren’t completely non-sequential, he’d be closer to number one. In my opinion.

Voted Most Likely To Be LA’s Worst Mayor

There’s no particular heinous or disgusting or stupid thing he’s done or said lately*, it’s just that I was at the ol’ post office the other day to pick up my mail and I was distressed to see that it’s happening again…

…My mailbox is filling up almost quicker than I can empty it. That’s four days worth of political flyers, and we’re only getting started.

But the good news is that among the offices we’ll be voting for is that of mayor of Los Angeles. Villaraigosa is thankfully termed out and so his reign of embarrassing douchebaggery is near an end. But before he’s hopefully irrelevant**, I wanted to note what an awful mayor this former gang member has been, and thus has been a perfect fit for L.A. Considering he’s served two terms – that the city saw how much of an opportunistic, preening jackass he was during the first four years, and yet he was voted in again – this city deserved him.

So I won’t go into great detail about his extra-marital affair, his silly promise to plant “one million trees,” his other silly promise to fill one million potholes (which he achieved by labeling virtually any road repair work as X number of potholes), his legendary narcissism and vanity, or the number of hours the man actually spends doing his job. (Or, hell, the much longer LA Weekly piece that is a delight to read.)

Have I written anything considered libelous? I hope not; I don’t want Tony suing me. Not him directly, of course – an attorney working for him, I mean. For him to sue me by himself, he would have had to have passed the California State Bar on one of his four attempts.

But what better man to represent the filthy toilet that is Los Angeles, than Antonio “We Clean Your Toilets” Villaraigosa holding court wielding a toilet brush as a scepter?

…which would have been an awesome way to end this post if I knew how to Photoshop a toilet brush in his hand.

But, aaah, I don’t.

*Well, aside from partying with Charlie Sheen or giving LA a final F-You by supporting another increase to our ridiculously high sales tax.
**That is, if Obama doesn’t see the irony in naming the mayor of a city with notoriously bad traffic the Secretary of Transportation.

Posted by Ted on February 20, 2013, 12:00 PM.

Overpriced Goodwill Item of the Week: Jelly Jars!

Here we go. Little glass canning jars from the 1970s:

They hold about ten ounces. Does $1.99 seem reasonable to you?

Each. $1.99 each.

Okay, now, what if I were to tell you that most of them are missing the little rubber rings inside the lids, the rings that are there are in various states of disintegration, and the rest we can’t be sure of because the rusty lids seem to be permanently fused to the glass?

Still a good deal, huh? Hey, you’re the jam expert.

Let’s leave that Goodwill, and head to another.

Oh, but let’s stop at the store first – this reminds me: I need to pick up marmalade. Sweet orange marmalade.

Here we go.

$2.78. Hey, that’s the price of sweet orange marmalade these days.

All right then, on our way!

And now here we are in a different Goodwill. Oh, what a coincidence – another jelly jar.

An empty one.

For a dollar ninety-nine! The jar full of preserves only cost 79¢ more!

It’s like I’ve always said: You’re not paying for the sweet orange marmalade, you’re paying for the jar.

Posted by Ted on February 18, 2013, 4:53 AM.