Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

I woke up early again today for no real reason. Why does this keep happening? It was also way warm in my room. I mean like sweating to the sheets summer warm. So I'm laying there in bed playing Words With Friends, like I do when I wake up every morning, and decide that it's obviously really nice out, so I'm going to go on a long bike ride before my girlfriend gets up. I eat my cereal and head out to the porch where I realize that it's insanely windy and looks like the sky is going to open up and all of god's wrath is going to come down in the form of unholy rain. I sigh and head back inside and read the morning away. Around noon it cleared up a bit so I decided to take my chances. I ended up riding to North Tonawanda, which is a decent hike. There are brief moments where it's really windy, but nothing I can't handle. Of course as soon as I got to the furthest point in my little adventure it starts to rain. Just a light shower though. I start heading home, but once I reach the bike path that runs along side the river a never-ending wind picks up. Speaking of never ending, it's like the wind that picks up right before the Nothing hits in Never Ending Story. I'm talking Wizard of Oz wind here. It should have picked me up, bike included, and carried me off to some magical land. It turns out it didn't, but I did find myself in the same predicament as some seagulls. They were trying with all their might but they just couldn't make any ground. They were just hovering in one place flapping their wings like crazy. Me? I made slight ground, but for the intensity that I was pedaling I should have been going a lot further, a lot faster. I don't know how I made it home, but I did and collapsed on my bed.

As I lay in bed playing Words With Friends for the second time today, I realized I had some things that needed to get done, but I had little energy to do them. I didn't want to drink one of your every day energy drinks, because that would have just made me feel like a steaming pile of poop. Instead I went with a Mona Vie. It's a "Healthy Energy Supplement." It didn't make me all jittery and crazy feeling like Mike's Celsius drink, but it did give me the little boost I needed to get off my butt and get some work done. It's ever so lightly carbonated, which was a nice touch. There was just a soft fizz as opposed to the big bubbles you would expect. Acai is the base flavor, but it's a pretty smooth version of it. This is an energy drink I 100% approve of. It sure brought me back from the dead.

Tommyknocker soda has no affiliation with the Stephen King novel/movie of the same name. The bottle tells us that Tommyknockers are mischievous elves that came to Colorado in 1859 for the gold rush. They apparently guided miners to the "motherlode." The bearded fellow on the label doesn't look like any elf I've ever seen in the moving pictures or storybooks. He looks more like a dwarf. I expect that just out of view of the picture there is a giant hammer laying around. I mean how else is he going to break all of those giant rocks to find gold. I wonder how much wax from that candle on his helmet he has to pick out of his beard. It's a pretty glorious beard and it would be hella annoying to have to pick wax out of something so majestic.

This is a dessert soda if I've ever had one. You have yourself a nice big meal and then you sit out on your porch as dusk sets in taking sips off of a bottle. That's exactly how I spent my evening. Porch sitting with my cats and a bottle of almond creme. I bet it wouldn't go very well with a meal, but after dinner is done it's just wonderful. It's slightly heavier on the vanilla than the almond, but I think straight up almond might have been too much. These so called elves have gotten the proper proportion down.

It's a lazy Sunday morning/afternoon. Just laying around and not doing much. I decided I needed a little lunch and what better way to celebrate mid day than with a pumpernickel bagel and a bottle of cherry juice? I love cherries as a fruit. They are tasty and fun to eat due to all of the pits you get to spit out. This should be incredible. It's nothing but cherry juice. No preservatives. No sweeteners. Absolutely nothing else is in this bottle. As it turns out when you compress so many cherries and don't cut it with water it is intensely strong. Cherries are ridiculously sweet. Even though there is no sugar added to it, it tastes like the filling in a cherry pie. It seriously is that sweet.

If you're a passive cherry fan, you may want to water this down a bit. On the other hand if you are a cherry enthusiast this is probably just what you're looking for. I will admit it was a little too strong for my liking. The bagel on the other hand was pretty stellar.

I have been searching for this for a long, long time. No lie, like close to 15 years. I always hoped to stumble upon it in some random store while traveling around. I eventually found a handful of places online where you could order "rare" sodas, but they were always out of stock of the blue Brain Wash. I was certain that this drink had gone the way of Crystal Pepsi, Orbits, and Ecto Cooler. On a recent trip to Soda Pop Central up in Canada I was shocked to find a bunch of bottles of it. I grabbed a couple (along with four assorted cases) and hit the road giddy as a small child.

Like many things in life, when you search for it for long enough you build up these absolutely crazy expectations for it. Once I'd get my hands on a bottle that "no woman person in the history of the world is having drinking better sex soda than the sex soda you are having drinking with Ian Brainwash... in my head. That was the worst paraphrase in the history of this site, for the record. As it turns out it's still decent, but it did not live up to the holiness I had built up in my head. It tastes like liquid Smarties mixed with some low-grade chemical acid. I blame the burning acid burning to the jalapeno oil that is listed in the ingredients. I am a glutton for drinks that have a burn to them (I drank a bottle of Prometheus Springs' Lemon Ginger earlier in the day) so I really enjoyed that aspect of the soda.

It also stains everything it comes in contact with blue. I'm not just talking like how Blow Pops stain your tongue blue. After I drank the bottle I looked in the mirror and my tongue appeared to have a thick layer of bright teal paint on it. It was completely solid looking. This drink did a better job painting my tongue than I did painting the walls of my bedroom.

Here is a final thought for you. I now believe that I could not find bottles of this anywhere because Mr. Brainwash of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" fame purchased all that he could find. He then pounded the lot of them and that is how he became insane. I think there's a documentary specifically about that. Seriously, it's streaming on Netflix right now.

Ladies, gentlemen, councilmen, Mr. President, your highness, or whoever it is that makes any sort of decision for the country of Austria. We have a dilemma on our hands. Our country has found itself without a national drink. Yes general I know we consume way more Coca-Cola than we really should, but let's face it Coke is everywhere. There's really nothing about it that shouts Austria. No headmaster. Bundaberg Ginger Beer simply will not work, as it's made in Australia, not Austria. Do you even know what country you live in? Seriously. We need something unique. Something that people can't get in any little market over in Germany. I'm sick of them stealing the spotlight. I want to have something that will make us shine brighter! Hey, what was it that Archduke Ferdinand was always drinking before his untimely demise? Alma matter? Alms to the poor? No, that's not it. Oh yes Almdudler! All in Favor? Anyone opposed? There we have it from here on our Almdudler will now be the national drink of Austria!

When you're dealing with a beverage that makes a claim of being the national drink of anything you get some crazy ideas of what it might taste like. Especially when it's called "Krauterlimonade," which my friend Nina says translates to "cabbage lemonade." I really don't know what I expected it to taste like. So many different ideas entered my mind. Not many of them seemed appealing. After I drank it I did some research and found out that Nina would have been correct in her translation if it weren't for that little "er." Those two little letters change the definition to "small-timer." I still don't know what that has to do with this drink.

As the drink first hit my taste buds I thought it was going to be a ginger ale, but that thought quickly faded. I thought I detected some apple, like in an apple malt soda, but I wasn't exactly sure. As the previously mentioned Nina put it "This tastes like nothing more than water does." It tastes sweet, but the sweetness passes soon. I Wikied it to discover that it's a mix of apple and grape flavors. If that's what it is then Austria has some pretty weak fruit on its hands.

The fact that it doesn't really taste like much of anything is actually extremely appealing. I've just about finished this bottle, and I already find myself bummed that I don't have any more after this. It's something that I really, really enjoy. On top of the strange awesome lack of flavor this also has a nice unique bottle.

I have a romantic interest in the state of Wisconsin. Not a person that resides in the state, but with the actual state itself. It's a different world up there, full of amazing people. Every time I've been there on tour it's been nothing but good times. Okay there was that one time when fake Nazis smashed some of our records and my friend pulled a knife on them, but other then that, bright blue skies. It all started when I was in high school and Kevyn and I played Madden football on Playstation. I was always the Packers, or the Pack, for no real reason. It was my go to team, and it instilled a pride in the state of WI for me. On the first tour that took me to this magical state the obscenity of everyone's fascination with Brett Favre was out of control. The news had a nightly segment where they just showed a random picture of him. Hysterical. The night we were there it was him on a riding lawn mower. That started jokes of tattoos of him on the lawnmower wearing a cheese head and holding a beer in one hand and a brat in the other. Now that's comedy. Wisconsin is also home to Woodman's Food Markets. It's the only grocery store I've ever been to that even comes close to the greatness that is Wegmans.

Now that you know my love of Wisconsin you why I picked up this bottle of soda. It's "A Wisconsin Tradition." I don't know what oranges have to do with the northern mid-west, but I'm not going to argue. It's not the world's greatest orange soda, as it doesn't exactly taste like an orange, but it does stand above your everyday Crush, Sunkist or Fanta. It's sweet and smooth. No harshness at all. It's as if someone removed the vanilla from a cream soda, but the smoothness remained. Wisconsin don't ever change. You are a gem.

As far as I'm concerned as of today winter is finally over in Buffalo. It was 50 degrees and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. To celebrate I went on my first decent bike ride of the year. I was planning on just doing a little ride, but every time I reached a destination I decided to keep going. By the time I had listened to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane was coming to an end 14 miles had passed and I was at my front door. From here on out I will solely use David Bowie albums to measure distance. It's the new science. Can you feel it on the horizon?

Before I left on this little adventure I decided it was as good a time as any to try out a Celsius drink aka "Your ultimate fitness partner." It's a mostly natural drink that promises to burn calories, reduce body fat, build lean muscle and give you lasting energy. By the end of my ride I was toned and semi-ripped like Michelangelo's sculpture of David. I'm talking like busting out of my shirt muscular. I'm a scientist, so I cannot tell a lie. That's part of the scientific oath right? I know I had you all convinced that I now look like Mr. Universe era Arnold Schwarzenegger, but truth be told I still look like a semi-dumpy 30 year old from Buffalo. I did have a decent amount of energy on the ride, and I feel way better than I expected to after not really riding in the past 5-6 months (yes our stupid winter can really last that long). So the drink has that going for it.

As for the flavor of it, when I took my first sip I was shocked at how good of a ginger ale taste it had. Within half a second I changed my mind as the diet hell of sucralose set in. Bear in mind that I have no tongue for diet drinks. I know there is a whole world of people out there that don't mind them. If you are one of those people and you're trying to lose weight, or put on some muscle, give this a chance. I think you will be pleasantly pleased with this ginger ale.

Ladies and gentlemen I'd like to be the first to thank you for coming to this ceremony and for purchasing this bottle of Under Way. It brings joy to my heart that all of you purchased this beverage in order to help out with breast cancer awareness. As you know breast cancer is a horrible thing, but by purchasing this drink you are.....wait....what? Under Way has nothing to do with awareness? Why on Earth did they use that pink color for the bottle then? Don't they know that that specific pink is reserved for breast cancer and penicillin? Did they want people to think of antibiotics when they drink this? Oh.....it's a Canadian company. I guess that makes sense.

Even though it's packaging is completely misleading in my world, the drink itself is fairly decent. The diet taste is only slight. The acai and pomegranate flavors overpower it nicely. I don't know how a Canadian drink made it's way down to a U.S. discount store, but it did, and I drank it, and I enjoyed it.

For years Arizona has run the tallboy can of tea game. They were fairly unchallenged. Peace Tea was a contender, but their drinks always left something to be desired. Xing Tea has now officially issued a challenge to Arizona. Just like in Mike Tyson's Punch Out you can't just come right out and fight the champ. You have to fight your way up the ranks. In the first two fights Xing held it's own. In all honesty when you're fighting the Glass Joe and Von Kaiser of iced teas you really don't need to put up much of a fight to get them down. In the third fight Xing's sweet tea went up against iced tea's version of Piston Honda. It was a long, drawn out fight but it ended with a TKO in favor of Xing when it noticed his eyebrow movements. After that Xing really started to shine. It plowed its way through its opponents, even beating that annoying fat slob King Hippo. He definitely would be some sort of ghetto tea that's over-saturated with high fructose corn syrup.

Finally we are at the here and now. Xing is going to be battling against Great Tiger. I always hated that guy. He was always a thorn in my side via video game boxing. Xing has trained well and has put forth its best mango effort for this match. This is a smart tea. It's really sweet, but you can tell by taste and consistency that it's cane sugar sweet. It tastes like a summer sweet tea made with green tea instead of black. The mango flavor is attentive. It's knows when to hit Great Tiger's jewel with it's bite and when to hold back and block his teleportation attack. It's these great moves that helped Xing win this battle as well.

Xing still has a long way to the title fight, but if it keeps making the moves it's been making, it will be going toe to toe with Arizona Black & White in no time.

This could not look more like a wine bottle. I had to read the entire bottle several times before I was fully convinced that it was not. Just because I don't drink alcohol doesn't mean that I can't be fancy. I busted out one of my roommates fancy wine glasses and poured myself a glass. Not too big mind you, as the bottle recommends you drink only 2 ounces twice daily.

It may not be wine, but it is some of the most potent juice I've ever come across. The prime flavor in the juice is definitely the acai. There is a whole lot of it in each sip. It is combined with 18 other fruits and mashed into this wonderful bottle. There are a lot of fruits present that I have never heard of before such as aronia, maqui, sea buckthorn, boabab, cupuacu, bilberry, jabuticaba. A lot of those words just seem made up. They are apparently magical fruits that are "scientifically proven to strengthen the body's immune defenses." As I said before it's a strong juice. It's the kind of juice that you can tell it has to be doing wonders for your health just from the taste. I don't mean it tastes bad at all, but you can just imagine the fruits putting on their armor and taking up their swords and going to war against all the nastiness in your body. I wonder if buckthorn rides a horse in battle.

What is up with all of these political sodas? Leninade, Not See Kola, and now Red Cola. I had no idea that soda was such a strong propaganda tool. Imagine political leaders standing at the podium, giving their speeches. Instead of emphasizing with a fist, or a thumb gesture, the one in power shakes a bottle of soda. As the speech reaches its crescendo the bottle is opened and the built up carbonation sprays everywhere as cheers explode from the crowd.

It's has a pretty normal cola flavor with a bit of a burn to it. I didn't realize it at first, but the further I got into the bottle the more I felt it in my gut. I expected it to be a cherry cola from the name. You know a little wacky word play, but nope just straight up cola that has a red coloring to it.

I still don't really know what cola has to do with communism, but hey if it helps our proletariat brothers who am I to argue.

The great argument of what the greatest sketch comedy of all time is. Many would say Saturday Night Live. While I think it has its high points, it's never really held my attention much as a whole. There have been too many mediocre to bad seasons and cast members. For me it's a toss up between The State and Kids in the Hall. No matter how many times I watch the handful of seasons that each troupe had I always end up hysterically laughing. Those who say Mad TV, well they should just be institutionalized. That is one of the least funny shows to ever be produced.

You may be asking yourself "Self, what does sketch comedy have to do with guava juice?" The answer is that parrots remind me of the Kids in the Hall skit where Mark McKinney is a beaten down husband. His wife, played by Dave Foley, is about to leave for the day and is giving him instructions. He only answers with "Yes dear," which is then echoed by their pet parrot. In the end it seems that the parrot has more say than him and he suffers a break down. With each sip I took I heard the parrot say, "Yes dear" in my inner monologue. I say, "Yes dear" indeed. This is a nice juice. Things that come in large cans tend to be fairly cheap and chock full of cheap sweeteners and artificial flavors. This is actually made with real juice and cane sugar. It may only be 30% juice, but that is more than I would have expected it to contain. I love the way guava tastes. It's a fruit that I think the world needs to reexamine and use more.

Mr. President I appreciate you taking me out to dinner. I even appreciate that you took me to this world-class steak house, even though I'm a vegetarian. Oh don't worry, how could you have known. You're too busy you know with running the free world. What's that? You are also pitching for the New York Yankees now as well? Well sir you have quite the full plate. Color me impressed. How did you ever get that gig? Oh of course you threw the opening pitch of the season and impressed the entire team. Makes sense. I still don't understand why you took me out to diner to begin with, but don't worry about me, I'm sure I'll find something on the menu I can eat. Oh look there's a salad. Oh it's got fruit on it. That's sounds good. You just order a steak and enjoy that. I'll fill up on leafy goodness.
*25 minutes pass and the waiter brings out two glasses*
Well that sure was a long time to get our drink orders. Wait, what? You mean to tell me that this is some fancy upscale modern restaurant where they serve all of their food in a liquid form? Hmm. Oh well, down the hatch. Well as far as liquid salads go this isn't too bad. I mean at least the chef had the good sense now to include the salad dressing. The strange thing is that it's not the vegetables that are throwing me off. They are pretty faint tasting. It's the pears. It's such a strong flavor it takes away from the veggies. Also why did he add sugar to this? I think a nice pureed veggie juice would be much better than this. Okay I was wrong before. This isn't very good. It's pretty gross, but I can assure you that it has be better than that glass of liquefied meat you will soon be drinking. I wish you the best of luck with that and your game against the Red Sox tomorrow Mr. President.

Last week was my girlfriend's birthday, so a bunch of us went out to a Greek restaurant. At the restaurant they had two different sodas made by the Ivi company. We picked up the carbonated lemonade variety. It has fairly obnoxious packaging. The label was obviously designed with Illustrator, which I am not a big fan of. Any art that looks like that is going to be so dated in ten years. Unfortunately it is everywhere nowadays. This specifically looks like it was designed to attract the interest of teenagers.

When I spent sometime in Europe I discovered that the people there have a love for carbonated lemonade. It's not something that you see very often in the U.S. Mostly it was pretty much just lemonade with sparkling water, a nice light beverage. This on the other hand is more of a soda. It tastes like a 7Up with way more lemon in it than there normally is. I enjoy it, but it's way thicker than I would have expected.


When I spent sometime in Europe I discovered that the people there have a love for carbonated lemonade. It's not something that you see very often in the U.S. Mostly it was pretty much just lemonade with sparkling water. A nice light beverage. This on the other hand is more of a soda. It tastes like a 7Up with way more lemon in it than there normally is. I enjoy it, but it's way thicker than I would have expected.

We went camping this weekend for our friend Kevyn's bachelor party. I brought several boxes full of my extra drinks for everyone to enjoy. A lot of aloe drinks were downed. The fun this about aloe is watching people's faces when they drink it for the first time. Even when they know there are chunks in it the look of shock and disgust is always there. It's ridiculous how many people describe the chunks as "feathery." Everyone I've known who's kept trucking and finished a bottle, has loved it by the end and wanted more. Once you get used to the chunks, they become a fun little game. Catching them in your teeth and chewing them after you swallow the liquid is always fun. Our friend Nick had his first aloe experience this weekend, and he powered through that first bottle. By the end of the weekend I think he had drank about six of them himself.

I brought this bottle of Sabila as part of my personal stock. It's pretty great. The chunks are an average size for these types of drinks. What stands out with this brand is that they use actual juice instead of artificial flavoring, and that the sugar added is low on the ingredients list. They let the aloe and the juice speak for themselves. They have a lot to say, believe me.

CalNaturale is better known for their wine that comes in these little cartons. They have fairly recently branched out with their Svelte line. It's a vegan friendly line of nutritional/protein drinks. Their website claims to provide you with "the lasting nutrition and sustained energy you need for your active and busy day." We've had a handful of protein style drinks lately. Most of them have been surprisingly good.

I have proclaimed many times (to the rolling eyes of my girlfriend) that a bowl of cereal in the morning does not count as food for the day. It is simply part of a routine, a crucial part at that. Being that I need my morning cereal (fake Cinnamon Toast Crunch, because I am a child after all) I use a decent amount of soy/almond milk. For a while I always used the vanilla versions to give the cereal a little extra kick. None of the stuff that I had tried had an eighth of the vanilla punch that this little carton does. You get punched right in the uvula by that little vanilla bean. While you're recovering the soy aftertaste sets in. When I first started drinking this carton I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. The further in I got the more I enjoyed it. I guess I just needed to get accustomed to it.

I'm just going to come out and say it in a public forum. I have a completely non-sexual man-crush on Paul Rudd. He's hysterical and just seems like he's a really rad dude. Also, he apparently loves Lungfish and other DC bands. That gets my approval. One of my favorite roles of his is Jeff from the in-between segments in the movie "The Ten." I bring this up because in that role he's fighting with his ex and they get into an argument over whether he's been taking his fish oil. Exasperated he yells that he's "getting his omega 3 fatty acids through other means." His delivery is absolutely perfect and I erupt into laughter every time I see that part. I can only imagine he's getting those fatty acids through flax seed. If I'm correct I really hope he's drinking said flax seed in this liquid form.

With all of the soda we drink I'm always pleased to get some natural teas to review, but when drinks go into new territories of healthy I will admit I get nervous. The container of flax seed that my roommate keeps in the fridge definitely made me skeptical of this. Let's face it, specialty health drinks for the most part usually aren't the greatest. I anticipated bitter. I anticipated gritty. What I didn't anticipate was a very smooth and sweet tea with a strong mandarin orange flavoring. Pleasant surprises abound! As an added bonus the label design is top notch. I'm very excited to try their other flavors.

Now I just want to watch a Paul Rudd movie. It will probably be Role Models. That never, ever gets old.

Here is the latest installment of our recent influx of protein/workout drinks. The point of this drink is to help out in muscle recovery after a workout. This specific formula was designed with three parts carbohydrates to each part protein to help with the muscles.

This is chocolaty. Dark chocolatey with only a little bit chalky texture. Not enough to be problematic. A friend said it tasted like a high end Yoo-Hoo. I can see that, except it's thicker. I should really work out more. Winter has made me lazy. When I finally shake this laziness off I will have to drink these afterward. How hysterical would it be if I got ripped? That would be laughable.

Danny at Real Soda knows how to make a quality frothy beverage. This is a top-notch birch beer with a nice amount of bite to it. For those not familiar with birch beer it is similar to root beer, but with a slightly different twist. It has a woodsier taste to it. The label design leaves something to be desired, but really that doesn't matter when you have a quality soda like this. I wish I had more to say, but I'm off to go see Off! play. Keith Morris here I come.

I drank half of this bottle at work last week. I hadn't finished it by the time I left so I threw it in the fridge when I got home, and planned on finishing it later that night. During the next few hours it got lost in the sea of beverages that my refrigerator has become. It somehow resurfaced this afternoon. I guess the tide must have been low during the hours of 3 to 5.

Like most, if not all, Honest products this is made with organic tea, cane sugar and natural fruit flavor. It's a solid drink. It's a nice bitter green tea with a slight mango flavor. It delivers what it promises. It's true, Honest Tea are no liars.