Mike Literman - 1759 Reviews

It's been a hard day is New Jersey. Your wife has been nagging you to quit your job at the pizza place, your kids have been getting in trouble at school and your Honda CRX needs new tires. I know!! Sure they're $30 a piece and you know a guy who can get them cheaper than that because they fell off a truck. Honestly, that guy must just drive behind trucks all day, ready to jump out at a moment's notice in case something falls off. I've never been behind a truck that dropped anything. My friend Ian once drove behind a truck and a rocking chair came out of the back and within a week, a sheet a drywall fell out and he said that it exploded. That must have been awesome. So you've had a hard day. You come home and...oh seriously...the cable is out? You thought you paid it? Yeah, they probably messed up, not you. So what's a boy to do? Open up that fridge baby and grab out some officially licensed product from your and my dad's favorite show, The Sopranos. It hits so close to home. You drove the same streets as those glorious gangsters. They've got family and you've got a family. You love the movie "The Godfather" and they do, too. Same wavelength.

This HBO created show which has won so many awards has created an equally award winning drink, and I wouldn't use that phrase lightly. Myself, not being one who drinks, doesn't know what actual Chianti tastes like, really enjoyed it. It's a light, fruity flavor and actually has less bite than most Italian soda. It was calm and cool, just like you when your spinning those pies. That's when you're at your best. Throwing pizza in the air with the greatest of ease is what makes you happy. You're good at it and you know it. Don't let your nagging wife or dumb kids let you forget it.

I'm a stupid idiot. I don't like painted wood. Why did you install wood with it's nice grains if you were just going to paint it. I can't imagine how awesome my house would look if all the wood was stained instead of lazily painted white. So, since I don't like painted wood, and I own my own house, I took all of the doors off the hinges to strip them. Here's a question for the general public; Did you know that stripping wood is exhausting and tedious work and nothing about it is easy? I tried using stripping chemicals and they just kind of melted the paint. I am currently using a heat gun and it's working, but about two inches at a time. It's tiring and when I got done today, I looked through my stock of drinks and knew that I needed something refreshing. Water? Or juice? I saw that red bottle looking at me and I grabbed it. It was nice. A little sweet and a little flavored. More than a lot of the Hint stuff but still less than a juice that would be too sweet. This was good. It's super low in calories and you can slam it until your heart is content, or until it's time to go back out and scrape more wood. Me? I've got three full doors and one half of another one. I'm closer to starting than to finishing and that blows. Once again, I'm an idiot, but a quenched idiot.

This is a light entry-level ginger beer. Hey, are you new to the world of spicy pop? Try this on for size. It's got a burn but is masked with that earthy, wet dirt ginger flavor that is more prominent in this than any other ginger related drink I've ever had. The flavor is good, though; bold and sweet. I was surprised to see that it wasn't a cane sugar drink as I thought that all Sioux City drinks were as such. That was wrong of me and I will be the first to admit it. The burn doesn't hit you until the drink hits the back of your little throat where it just stings you a bit, like a trick ginger ale.

One thing I will say is that this label design rules pretty hard. Nothing says America like an eagle and this one is coming right at your face. It reminds me of some awful band T-Shirt but on a bottle it's acceptable.

Oh Alo with your giant chunks of aloe. You treat me so well. Let me tell you all, y'all, a story about going to an Asian market. I went to an Asian market with Jay, Thirsty Dudes editor Dan, and some other friends and we came across an olive juice drink. I wanted to buy it so badly because of two reasons:
1. It would have been potentially gross.
2. It would have been potentially delicious.

I did not buy it because it was expired...by four years. As much as I like the idea of drinking milk that's two weeks old, I will not drink anything that's four years old. Why am I bringing this up? This has "olive leaf tea" in it and I hoped that it would taste like olives. Imagine my face when it didn't. It tastes like a sweet tea with chunks in it. Is that bad? Nope. Would I buy it again? No. Why? If I wanted a tea, I would buy a tea. If I wanted an aloe vera drink, I would buy one. I don't need two drinks in one. As novel it is, it's best not to mix something you're great at with something you aren't great at. I'm not belittling Alo, I'm giving them all the credit in the world for trying. Like I said, I'm not picking, I'm just stating an observation. This is a good drink, but it's like a hybrid car. I want all electric or all gas. I don't want to have to worry about plugging it in and filling it up with gas. I know that's not the same with all hybrids, but you know what I'm saying.

This is one of the better aloe vera companies and when it comes to bang for your buck, this company has some great and really different flavors.

I don't like oranges. Oh, I like the taste of an orange, but I don't like oranges. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I love orange juice with as much pulp as you can get. Does that make sense? Does it make sense that it drives me crazy when people love pickles but don't like relish? Nope-ahh. I don't care. I have my preferences. There is no iron fist making decisions for me.

This drink has pulp and it's big, too. No wuss pulp for Calypso. I like a drink with some substance. Look, we know where some drinks come from, but you know what hammers it home? Seeing some chunks of the actual fruits that were used still in there. Tune down your filters and leave some goodness in there.

As usual, this drink is good. It's actually two servings and the flavor is really good. I enjoy that it's two servings because I know that I have another round of flavor town when I get home. There is a good strawberry taste with a cheek puckering lemonade taste. Every sip is like a flavor explosion. I can see where it might be too sweet or too fruity for some, but if you want a drink with some flavor, here you go.

When you've got a good company, hold on to it. I don't know how they could do wrong.

PRE stuff is pretty good, but it's kind of all over the place. The powders are straight Stevia and are pretty good. I've drunk multiple drinks from them and I think that I prefer them to this. This is good. It smells like tea and then it tastes like lightly sweetened tea but then, all of a sudden, at the end you get the cool, Stevia taste. It's fine, but a little strange. They probably did it to keep the calories down, which they successfully did at a whopping 10 per serving (20 per bottle). It's just weird to have a nice watered almost unsweetened tea in the beginning and then WOAH sweetness. Like they were trying to please everyone at the same time.

Like I said, it's not bad, I might even drink it again if I could find it where I live, and the added prebiotics don't hurt matters even though I am (luckily) not a diabetic and don't need insulin in my daily diet.

Avery. I once dated a girl that lived on Avery. She was nice. She was Italian, and for some reason, she felt like she had some link to the mob. I don't know if it was true, but it certainly never sat right with me. I just thought that she thought that since she was Italian, it was common knowledge. I hope someone comes to see me tomorrow to break my legs for saying that. I won't deny I said it, but I certainly will have a story to tell.

So this girl, Sarah, we didn't date that long, a few months. I was 16 or 17 at the time so I had no idea what a jerk I was going to turn into. Along came Christmas and I bought her a bracelet. Nothing big. I think I got it at a department store for like $20. It was nice, though, thoughtful, at least. I gave it to her and she broke up with me. Why? That's a fun one. She said that her dad got her mom the same bracelet and that she thinks that she meant too much to me so she broke up with me, right on her cousin's porch.

No I'm not regretting anything. I've done a lot of stuff since then and have had a handful of girlfriends, but what if I gave her this root beer?

"Hey, Sarah. I got you this root beer and wrapped it like you wouldn't know what it was. It's named after the street you live on so you can keep it like some cool souvenir if you want. If you don't want to keep it, I understand. Who wants a sticky old bottle? Plus, it's pretty good root beer. Just the right amount of sweetness and flavor to get you through even the hardest days."

Do you think if I gave her that over ten years ago that we'd be together? Probably not, I suck. Seriously. I can't believe I've been in long-term relationships at all. You know what I can believe? I can believe that this root beer is pretty good and I would choose it over a "regular" root beer any day. Barq's? Mug? Supermarket brand? Nope. Avery's? Yep. Just poppin' my "P"'s.

All I can think of today is pizza. See, Jay, myself, and Thirsty Dudes editor Dan like (scratch that) love to make exotic pizzas. We roll our own dough. We buy all the ingredients. We bake it. Take a picture of it, eat it, and then lay down for a while because it's typically four inches thick. Pizza we've made include but are not limited to General Tzo, Buffalo Chicken, and Thanksgiving. Tonight I don't know what we should make, but after drinking this Pangleheimers ginger ale, I feel like it has to be accompanied by one wicked pizza.

This pop was excellent and just what I needed on such a drab Tuesday. It was just the right amount of sweet and just the right amount of hot to quench my cravings. Also, to those who don't know what "hot" ginger ale, it's spicy ginger ale, not temperature hot. If that were the case, in theory, everything could potentially be hot but would you want it? Seriously? I doubt it. So, anyhow, this funny named ginger ale was good. I would compare it to Blenheim ginger ale.

I wish they sold this by me, as "the team" had to travel to Canada to get it, but it might be worth the trip. The little, what I think is a, Pomeranian is also an adorable spokesperson, too.

I gave my mom first sip, she said that it was just water. I made her try it again, and she said that it's like they forgot to put the flavor in. I gave it to my dad and he said that it was weak. I tried it and they were both right. Yes, it does taste like watermelon, yes it is weak, but it's different than the rest of the Hint stuff I've had. This drink is like Fibonacci sequence of drinks. The more you drink it, the more it tastes like watermelon. Once you stop, it gets back to square one. If you drank the whole thing, gluttonously and irresponsibly, in one chug fest of a drink session, it would probably be like eating a really wet watermelon.

This is good. It's refreshing, but if you're looking for a juice, this isn't it. If you want water with a little tiny bit of taste this is for you. If you like lemon water but are sick of always drinking the same thing, try this on for size, why don't you.

When I was a young man, my family used to go to my grandma and grandpa's house all the time. Sometimes for dinner, but more commonly for no reason other than to just see them. They didn't live that far away, maybe 10 - 15 minutes, so we were there quite frequently. They worked very hard on their back garden and it showed. They had beautiful flowers and an array of vegetables that would make your local supermarket produce-man smile. One thing they grew was rhubarb. I remember being younger eating it all the time. We would get a little dish and put sugar in it and go out to the back garden, grab some stalks of it, and just dip and munch away. The inherit taste of rhubarb is sweet but very bitter. The sugar calmed it down. Think of it as a quasi-healthy Lik-M-Aid.

I really wanted to do this review with my grandma but for the life of me, every time I went to visit I forgot to drink my bottle of it. So last night when I decided that it was finally time to start watching Twin Peaks, I would give it a try. It was very good, too. Very refreshing and very true to just plain ol' rhubarb. I loved this stuff and it was just the right amount of sweet and bitter that it brought me back twenty years with every sip.

I'll see if I can remember to bring the other bottle I think I have downstairs to my grandma and made an edit to this review.

This was our thousandth review. We needed to do something fun/gross/different for you and we decided to incorporate some significant others, pets, and babies. Watch the video and learn what we thought about Rogers Fizzy Amla with Jeera Masala.

Thank you very much for following us along this partially disgusting, partially delicious, mostly mediocre trip. Now, for your viewing pleasure, have a video review.

Often times I just want a simple bottle of pop. Nothing fancy. No herbal juice or exotic brewed tea or drink with chunks of shark in it, although if I could find some, I would drink it. That's where this bottle of Bubble Up comes in. It's been a while since I've had a regular lemon lime pop and as far as lemon lime pops go, this is smack dab in the middle. It was nothing special and I don't really know what you could do to improve it. It's right on par with the likes of Sprite, 7Up, and Sierra Mist. Same ingredients, same flavor, and this isn't a sweetener debate because it was so parallel that it doesn't matter.

Hundreds of kids and adults alike probably love Bubble Up. Until my girlfriend got me a bottle, I had never heard of it, so I would assume that it's a Southern delicacy. Well, the South, enjoy your standard, regular copycat of a drink. I've got something with shark in it to dream about.

In retrospect, which doesn't count ever since it's too late, I wish we had done the dark chocolate review later in the game. I feel that we would have "gotten" the drink a little bit more. They have gotten increasingly better with every drink. Don't get me wrong. It's still a strange drink. It's wonderful for you, but strange as could be. Sludgy. Dirty. Sandy.

Mike, not me, but one of the other Mike's in our office needed a "pick me up" drink. We went over to the fridge and I ran through the list. Pop? No. Lemonade? No. Tea? No. This? Oh yeah. I made him shake it because it's gratifying to watch the junk on the bottom mix into the dirt water looking drink.

Here's the thing, though...it's good. It is actually berry flavored. I don't know about grape, but it's a pretty honest berry flavor. There's the grit in your teeth that you learn to love with Cell-Nique stuff, too, especially at the bottom of the bottle. It's a good fruity flavor and although some people here who tried it thought it wasn't good, I think that it is and this is my site and I'm giving it a 4.

2.7 ounces. That's it. One serving. Gone. It's like what I think a double shot is if I drank alcohol. Before I get to the drink review, I've got to talk about the packaging. You get 4 of these lil' guys in a carton. Pull one out and it's got a peel off top and the hole at the top is a smiley face. Every sip you get a smile from the cup. Adorable. You can then peel off the aluminum foil bottom and the whole thing is recyclable. Cool. Smart. Good work.

I had my choice and I picked this one. This was a very bold flavor and has an intense Acai flavor. Blueberry is there, but is quickly masked by the superfruit that it lives with in this small, studio apartment with a sweet skylight. You get the blueberry first and then your tongue kind of gets...strange because of the lasting taste/flavor/whatever. It's not bad, though. I'm not on Acai's fan club. No, not because I didn't have any extra stamps to send a self addressed stamp envelope to him, just because the flavor isn't something that my mouth agrees with. Sometimes it's alright, here it's alright at best.

I would say that they did an excellent job, though. Packaging, flavor, ingredients. Everyone is served justice, 2.7 ounces at a time. This could easily earn a higher rating with a different flavor. Acai ruined it for me. I just want to point blame where it belongs.

Smell: Not bad.

Taste: Almost like a natural orange juice but with a strange aftertaste, almost dry. Then sometimes is gets a little strange. It sticks to your palate for a long time. Unwelcomely long. Uninvitedly long.

Burp: Disgusting. Seriously, every burp tastes like you just burped and bile came up. What's strange is that when you burp, it resets your taste buds like when your Nintendo, original, not Super Nintendo, game doesn't work and you hit the reset button 40 times to try and get 720 to work so you can see that dude that is clearly inspired by Rodney Dangerfield. So if you drink it and it starts to get grozz, just burp, make matters worse, and then have everything back to before you took your first sip.

This is along the lines of the FRS drink in its citrocity, but doesn't end up tasting like orange flavored chalk at the bottom of the can.

Orange juice is hard to review. Apple juice is also hard, perhaps harder than OJ. True Brew has been a pretty stellar company from the drinks that we've reviewed. When they were nice enough to let us sample some product, they also sent over these baby-sized bottles. I enjoy putting things into perspective by putting pennies next to things. Regardless of size, even buildings are put to scale properly next to a penny. So this little guy was good. Accompanied with two, count 'em, two McDonald's breakfast burritos. This orange juice was a good sidekick. It had a good, natural orange taste and wasn't artificial tasting. Also, with no additives, this OJ is about as pure as it can get.

Those boys in Texas can do juice, too? Everyone else should watch out.

Wooooo.....mistakes. Look. I am not responsible for myself. Here's the new deal. No, not Teddy Roosevelt's "New Deal", but my house's new deal. Monday and Tuesday I stay home and watch Max, my little dude. I have this thing where I work too hard and don't make time to eat. I did eat a yogurt at about 11 but that's it. Now it's 3:30 and my stomach is aching for nutrition, but who cares because Max is sleeping and I can finally lay down some code. So I'm working hard, got thirsty about a half hour ago and decided, yeah, Celsius.

I weigh 150 pounds. I don't eat terribly well, but I don't eat a lot so it all balances out. Celsius would aid me in losing more weight, even though all I'm doing is running Max up and down the stairs only to find out that he was going to wait until I have his diaper off to pee. Jerk. That tiny jerk. So I drink it and it's something. It's diet-y, and even though there is some element of a fruit flavor, there is this diet, burning undertone, and it kicks in fast. You see, they replaced the calories with caffeine is bugging me out, much like John Leguizamo in "House of Buggin'". My hands are shaking and my torso feel hot, like it is summertime and I'm wearing a vest like a stupid idiot.

All that being said, I guess it's doing what it's supposed to. I'm not working out, per-se, but I am typing a mile a minute and I've been doing stairs like it was that strange time in your high school gym class and you did step aerobics like a bunch of girls. Yeah, I said it. Girls do step aerobics. Men know that they have stairs at home that women, ironically, hate going up and down.

If it wasn't for stores like TJ Maxx or Marshalls, Jay and I might have not found ourselves loving drinks as much as we do. Some places just don't get some drink companies, and some do. It's unfortunate that every company can't be as widely distributed as Pepsi and Coke. I don't think that the TJX chain of stores cares, as long as they're getting large quantities of stuff cheap, and for that reason, neither do I. I got a four pack of this for $3. Yeah, less than one dollar (USD) per can. In addition, it's pretty good. Not too sweet, rightfully fruity and it actually does justice to blueberries everywhere. I like this because there are antioxidant properties, it's all natural, and they have other flavors.

What I thought was strange about this drink is that it didn't have a scent. I didn't care because it could have gone the other way and smelled grozz.

So, as I sit here writing this review while listening to Sneaker Pimps, I wish that I hadn't just brushed my teeth and that I could have another one. Maybe if I'm good today I'll have another one.

Every day when I go to work I have to walk past a coffee shop. I do not like coffee, but I do enjoy the smell. It's not one of those "Oh, it brings back so many memories." things, it just smells good to me. I don't want to turn into one of those kids that are way too young to be hooked on the stuff, though. I despise people who say "Oh, I need my coffee," or "I had like 6 cups of coffee today," or the classic "Don't get me wrong, it's not like I haven't had coffee in years and am, for some reason, holding a grudge. I try a sip here and there and it just never gets me.

Here's where I feel I can blend in with society. This Bai stuff has been nothing but incredible. The fruit of the coffee bean can be used to add antioxidants to juice, tons of them according to a (probably biased) scale on the side of the bottle. This dragonfruit flavor is no exception. The Stevia does a good job of not masking the flavor and the flavor itself is a nice, fruity flavor.

I don't see myself drinking coffee in the near or far future, but I do see myself drinking Bai for many years to come. Does that mean that I am going to go into coffee shops with a couple bottles of it, pull out my laptop and work for 8 hours while people are standing next to me awaiting seats in the worst laid out establishment ever? Absolutely not! You can have your seat, addicts.

I don't like strip clubs. I've been to two in my lifetime and I'm fine with that. I like to look at girls as much as the next dude, but something about looking at one with other people seems creepy. You can't touch them so all you can do is look. Seems pointless. You can see the same thing in a Sears ad every weekend. Seriously, you can. It's really not a big deal. Dudes go and drop thousands of dollars and for what? To think that some girl likes you because you had money before you rudely threw it at her? There in an infinite amount of things I would rather do than go to a lunch buffet at a strip club. Burger King, for one. Honestly, do you know what would make a Whopper more awesome? Not much, I know, but this tea can't hurt. It's not like it has complimentary flavors or ingredients, it's just really good. You taste the plums right off the bat. Second comes pomegranate, all while being mixed in a nicely brewed green tea.

I really like Tazo because they not only use natural ingredients, but they clearly have fun. Seriously?
Brambleberry? Made up, but it's interesting. Thank you, Tazo, for the taste voyage you put me on and we've got a long ways to go before we're to the end of your street.

Dudes, if you're at a strip club and you're reading this; go home to your wife and kids. If you would spend more time with your possibly attractive wife and kids, you might all get along more than you know. Plus, your wife will let you touch her hogans so that's already a plus one for the "family man".