The Sonic Milkshake Shot Club

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Coming soon: the latest summer gustatory adventure by Ida and Erika!

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Coming soon to the Sonic Shot Club...all new reviews of these enticing new flavors that will totally be good and not taste like soap.

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MASTER OF BATES

Two Chicago writer-weirdos beat the Bates’ oeuvre.

Liked the Sonic Shot Club? Join Ida and Erika for their next adventure: watching and blogging about every film featuring Kathy Bates! 

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Strawberry Cream P-WHY DOES IT HAVE TO END?!?!?

In the blog post below, Erika did a remarkable job summing up our Sonic Milkshake Adventure.  She illustrated, in words kinder than those used by a  relative at a bat-mitzvah, the importance and essentialness and glory of our newfound friendship, she debunked the Meyers Brigg Test and she talked about the experience of getting our last milkshakes.

Erika’s final blog post says it all, it’s great, you should read it. I am just gonna whine:

WHYYYYY IS IIIITTTT OVEEEERRRRRR

I DON’T WANTTTTT ITTTTT TOOOO BEEEE DONNEEEE

WHY START A PROJECT IF IT’S JUST GOIIIIINNNGGGG TOOOOOO ENNNDDDD

BOOOOHOOOOOBOOOOOOHOOOOOOBOOOOOBHOOOOO

(hehehe did you see where i wrote boob?)

With every moment of accomplishment comes a moment of defeat. I bet when Edison made the lightbulb he was like:

Yeah great, i made this, it’s done! but also… Damn. It’s….done. it’s just done. i worked so hard. and I reached my goal theres a little coil in a glass thing and it turns on and….now what.

Well, electrocuting cats and shit.

I got to the end of this strawberry cream pie graham crackery mini milkshake and sighed. Part of that sigh was due to the fact that it was very late and i had work at 8 o'clock the next morning but now would be too sugar high to fall asleep but part of that sigh was: I reached my goal and….now what.

Well, electrocuting cats and shit.

NOW WHAT?!

As you can see i’m having a terrible time trying to reconcile the fact that this blog is ending.  I spent the first paragraph reviewing Erika’s review because I can’t handle the fact that soon I have to let go OF REVIEWS ALTOGETHER!  I’m trying to milk this.  I’m trying to milkshake this analysis of everything for as long as I can.

Strawberry Cream Pie: I don’t even really know what you tasted like because I WAS HOLDING BACK TEARS.

Okay, I am being a little over dramatic about this. I wasn’t holding back tears, I was talking to people, and watching a plane crash on TV and also eating snap peas I had in my bag for some reason….but still.

Like good movies or books or TV shows or relationships.

endings suck.  

But the blog will linger on.

The blog lingers on and every time I see someone with a styrofoam cup walking around, waiting for the bus, etc. I’ll think: is that Jalapeno Chocolate?  Coconut Cream Pie? Caramel?

and then.

I shake my head, and say: Nah. It’s probably a Masterblast*

*I tried some of Kate Hardiman’s Butterfinger Milkshake and it was amazing.

--

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Chocolate

It’s fitting that I end my tenure as a Sonic Milkshake-quaffing glutton with the second-most basic bitch flavor, Chocolate. After all, I split open the Shot Club cherry with one of the menu’s more lapidary, frou-frou specialty flavors, Choco-Strawberry, and Ida jumped into the fray with the blandest of them all, Vanilla. 

But looking back, we were innocent, and didn’t realize the relatively high quality of the beverages we initially had. Choco-Strawberry had a faint whiff of fruity flavor, and a rich cocoa essence that made it supremely palatable. I drank a whole Small, instead of diddling my way through a pathetic and disatisfying Mini. And Vanilla, for its utter lack of distinct, warm vanilla beany-ness, at least was up-front about its lack of flavor. The other lackluster shakes were fucking phonies. Vanilla at least was real about it. 

But whollly (sic) shit you guys, can you believe it has been months and seasons since we first embarked on this enterprise? All we had to do was drink a measly 12.5 shakes each, and somehow it took as many weeks, even with the help of an illustrious band of contributors. And damn, weren’t we pie-eyed and winsome, looking forward to the flavors ahead of us and actually taking the time to deliberate about which we would select, and how we would select them (cashier’s choice! 23rd for 23-year-old Ida! etc!), not knowing that this decision was as arbitrary as a multi-choice option on a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. 

(I hate to break it to you, but the MBTI does not mean shit. It’s not very reliable, it’s easy to game, and it does not predict behavior or what your optimum workplace is or even which Mad Men character you are. For example I am a Peggy with a Betty twist but my MBTI of INTJ would probably suggest I’m like a Bert Cooper or a Don or someshit. Okay I lied, I love to break it to you. I’m a smug pedantic know-it-all, like all INTJs. Wait. Did I contradict myself? Very well I fucking contradict myself I’m just as much a douche as Walt Whitman, who wrote that; Oh Walt Whitman, that classic Gemini.)

Where the fuck was I? Oh yeah. Pie-eyed and winsome. That’s how we started this challenge. But now gimlet-eyed and dry-mouthed, chap-lipped and blackened of soul, we joined together on Halloween Eve Eve (thursday) to massacre the final shakes and dance nude beneath a blood moon while all the other shitheads in our coven cackled and moaned. 

We arrived at the Sonic at 10pm. I had just finished an all day bout of teaching and I was beginning to get sick, though I did not know it yet, which I think explains why I look so much like a Neanderthal in the photos. 

 Ida and I played Rock Paper Scissors, winner taking the coveted Chocolate flavor. After three rounds of identical throws, Ida lost, and I claimed my prize. Thank fucking god. I’ve had a ton of fucking strawberry for this blog, including eating regular strawberry TWICE. Get behind me you pale pink slime looking ass satan. Not today. Just once curse somebody else. Sorry Ida. 

Then we stood in line for godfuckingever because the cashier was feeling really chatty with some Guy Fieri, sunglasses-on-the-back-of-the-head type who couldn’t decide what to get. Some of our friends could not decide what to get either. Sarah kept asking me which flavors were good and I kept saying they were all terrible and tasted like nothing GEE I WONDER WHY WE ARE HARD UP FOR SPONSORSHIPS

Mary Tilden altered me to the fact that Jalapeno Chocolate looks like fucking Mystery Meat Loaf Log Shit on the menu, which uh yeah, chzeck it out: 

Ugghghghghghgh damn dude. Anyway, I told Sarah the following, by way of milkshake-selecting suggestion, and I would impart all the same to you!

The Peanut Butter Flavors are dank and awesome. They’re rich, they have a taste, they are not too terrible, go for it, fuck it. 

The Strawberry and Cream Pie varietals are CRAP. Lemon and Coconut pie made me feel sick. Jalapeno is just chocolate with like two slices hanging out on the bottom. 

The Oreo flavors are okay!!! There’s good chunkage!!! Go for it!! 

And even though it ravaged my body and is ultimately a bad idea, I would happily eat the Boneless Wings slathered in translucent cum again. Anytime. Especially while drunk. Which I am right now. HALLOWEEN! 

So how was my ultimate shake? 

It was okay! 

Chocolate is good. It has an actual discernible color and a slightly richer mouthfeel than usual. It does not taste like bland white sick crap. It’s much like a Frosty, but more brown-red than grey-brown the way your standard Frosty is. 

I was gonna try Ida’s shake but she has oral thrush and I do NOT want to dance with the Yeast Infection Fairy again, no thank you, she is a tiresome and clingy mistress. Ida took it all in stride though. 

Which brings me to Ida. Sweet, effusive, brilliant like a beacon of light and hope, Ida. While I’ve learned a lot about the art of eating and reviewing terrible shakes, the most important lesson I’ve learned from this blog is the power of collaboration and friendship. I’m not being cornball here in an ironic way. I’ve used this blog to chronicle many of my issues, which fans of the blog will be intimately familiar with now, but one of the first and most prominent that I mentioned was social anxiety. I want desperately to connect to those rare, radiant people of the world who cross my path, but my own crippling negativity and awkwardness sometimes gets in the way. And while I love to write about petty-ass shit and talk trash, I often do so in a state of utter isolation, in a closet in my underwear while the rest of the world goes on without me. 

So it’s been deeply meaningful and a delight to have this blog, to serve as a writing prompt and a way to communicate with other people. I’ve been touched and envigorated by the response, and it’s helped me connect with new people, or somewhat familiar people in new ways. And best of all, it’s left me a new friend in Ida. And she’s such a quirky, whip-smart, bubbly yet grounded dream of a person that a newfound friendship with her would alone be worth drinking twenty-five more of this asshole extrusion tasting motherfucking shakes. 

But like, let’s not, you know? Let’s explore, test, and chronicle some other list of consumables or observables; let’s climb a new mountain; let’s find a new URL with a new Kelis song. It can be another food blog, or a review of all the fucking tires at a Firestone shop or, (as my mom so sweetly suggested), an exhaustive exploration of all the squirrels in our neighborhoods. Or something else entirely! The shake saga of our lives may be over, but there is so much more shit to write about. Or to pretend to write about, while really writing about things that cut much deeper.

Anyway, thank you for reading. If you’ve made it this far, you’re an honorary member of the Shot Club, too. Which means you never have to buy a shake flavor that you don’t want. You’re welcome. I love you.

Erika

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OREO CHEESECAKE: Ida’s friend David Gordezky  on College Roommates, Picky Eating, And (kinda) Los Angeles

I had an Italian-Egyptian roommate in college named Omar. Omar once told me that he thought of meals as a “problem-solution” scenario. The problem? He has all of this food on his plate. The solution? He has to eat it all. There’s something to be said about the amount of food that Omar doesn’t waste because of this. But there is also something to be said for the fact that he feels a sense of competition with a sandwich. Omar also told me that once technology advances enough, he’s going to chop off his arm in exchange for a robot arm. Omar was very strange. I felt a sense of camaraderie with Omar, though. I was kind of an odd duck when it came to food when I was younger. I was a picky eater. Everything I ordered was “plain”. Sandwiches were turkey or tuna with cheddar only. No fruits or veggies. No spices, herbs or anything vaguely exotic. If I had never heard of it, I didn’t want any part of it. I once pestered a chef at a Japanese Hibachi restaurant by interrupting him every time I thought he got even remotely close to getting something on my chicken. Eventually he barked at me to calm down and to try the chicken his way, he said I’d like it. I put it to the side and ate my plain white rice in silence.

It was joked about often in my family that my diet contained only foods that were a shade of brown. They’d laugh over debates about the subtle shades of foods they wanted to elect to be added to my list. My cousin’s ex-husband used to call me “The Chinaman” because all I ever ate when I was over was rice (Racist. Very racist. But he’s an ex now.). I was pretty defensive when I got made fun of. I once saw a documentary that talked about “super-tasters,” people who had a high concentration of taste buds and as a result, couldn’t stand to eat most foods. People just like me, who had to dull down foods and have a pre-written script for restaurant orders, but they were super. Could I too be a “super-taster?” That had to be what I was. I wasn’t some kid who was too stubborn to try new things and expand his palate, no. I was special. I had super powers. Upon hearing this, my mom laughed and encouraged me to tell this to every guest we had over. They’d laugh, but to be fair, laughing would probably be my first reaction if you told me I was talking to a super-human.

As I grew older and met more picky eaters, I would use my new found sense of superiority to secretly scrutinize their choices.

“Even I’m not that picky.” (I was.)

“You are just being stubborn. I have a condition.” (I didn’t.)

“Ugh, it’s probably so difficult to eat at a restaurant with you.” (Hypocrite.)

Meeting other picky eaters and getting to know their quirky tastes puts things into perspective. I met a girl in high school, a legal adult, able to vote and everything, who took the crust off of pancakes. Confused? This girl would tediously scrape and slice off the brown part of a pancake until all that was left was lukewarm semi-cooked batter. It sounded stupid going into my ear, but coming out of her mouth, she sounded so… convinced? This wasn’t an allergy or an obsessive routine, this is just how she preferred to take her pancakes. She was aware it was bizarre, but it’s what she liked. I suddenly thought of the ears that heard my regular order at In N Out Burger.  “3 by 3 [triple patty], plain, just meat and bun,” which I’d usually have to repeat once or twice. I think that’s when I realized that being a picky eater was incredibly dumb and that I should start expanding my palate before I became pancake dissecting freak shows.

Sonic Burgers are a pretty rare occurrence in Southern California, but that doesn’t stop them from buying up an insane amount of Los Angeles ad-space. It’s a sort of inside joke among Los Angelinos. We have all heard of Sonic, but no one has ever actually seen one. We were all familiar with TJ Jagodowski’s face, their wide array of neon colored frozen drinks, and their large selection of milkshakes. But ask any one of us where the nearest Sonic Burger is. Couldn’t tell you. The only one I had ever seen in SoCal was in the middle of the desert on the way to Joshua Tree, but it might have been a mirage.

I was pretty surprised when my friend Ida told me about the Sonic in Chicago. When she asked me to get Sonic Milkshakes with her, there was a tiny voice in the back of brain that whispered “It’s happening…” The first flavor to catch my eye was Oreo Cheesecake.

Back in my Plain Palate days, one of the food I had rules out surprisingly was cheesecake. Something about cheese and cake in one bite didn’t sit right with me. I have since discovered that cheesecake is actually one of my favorite things. I ran the flavor passed Ida. It had not been written about. Success. Let’s do this Oreo Cheesecake. I ordered a side of fries as well, for dipping, obviously.

When you decide to get a milkshake, rarely do you consider that initial frustration that comes with those first couple sips, you know? When you suck so hard on the straw and all that comes out is emptiness and pain? You suck so hard that your eye muscles get involved to help the cause and all your rewarded with is a dribble of cream. Your lips are sore and you think you can taste blood, but you are determined to succeed at this. What started out as an indulgence quickly becomes a challenge, something to overcome. Alright, you milky mother-fucking shake, you’re going down.

I powered forward with Omar’s voice cheering me on in my head. Years ago, I would have gone with just plain chocolate, but today I’m drinking Oreo Cheesecake, goddammit. My fries laid there untouched, undipped. They would have to wait. I had something to prove, I had a problem, and I needed to solve it. I would eat this milkshake, I would enjoy it, I would call my friends in California and tell them “I’ve been there, I’ve done it.”

I came down to the last sip. The milkshake had grown weak in the outside heat. It couldn’t put up much of a fight anymore. I had won. I spooned out the left over bits of Oreo and cheesecake crust at the bottom. Ida offered me the rest of her milkshake. No thanks, Ida. I had accomplished enough for today. I need time to bask in the light of victory. The milkshake was alright. Nothing too special about it. I didn’t not like it, you know?

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Banana Peautbutter: Greetings from the Northwest

Last Saturday, my sister Harriet and I drove down from her College  in Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, California, to celebrate our mother’s 60th birthday. It was a 12 hour drive. By hour 4, Harriet and I were starting to get cranky, and we couldn’t decide if we needed: a break, a coffee, a treat, a meal, a cry..That’s when we saw the glowing boomerang-like symbol of the Sonic Sign. This milkshake is the first one to not be from the Sonic on Wilson and Sheridan in Chicago. The place that this Sonic is in is called “Central Point Oregon.” This Milkshake is also the first milkshake from the shotlist to be consumed  with my dear younger sister, harriet Harriet writes the following about her decision to pick the Peanut Butter Banana milkshake: 

When I lived in Panama this summer, I ate a lot of rice and beans. Every week I would be in rural communities where I was served arroz con pollo every single day. Occassionally I would eat some fried corn tortillas, hot dogs, or just plain dough. The truth was that, when it came to staying in a rural Panamanian house, and eating the food that was so generously offered to me, I had absolutely no control over what, when or how I ate. So when I returned to the house where I stayed on the weekends, I was faced with the cathartic, overwhelming, exciting feeling of eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to eat it. After a long week of only rice and beans, you’d think I’d be craving some variation but nope….I just ate a lot of peanut butter. And a lot of bananas.

I would start out my weekends by pulling out all of the guineo’s (bananas) that various old women had gifted me during the week, and setting them on the counter. Then I would open the communal refrigerator, and pull out the glorious jar of peanut butter that always awaited me (one time the rest of staff came home to find no peanut butter in the house and feelings of hanger quickly turned to a passive aggressive rage that my directors quickly learned was too unpleasant to not have peanut butter in the house). Sometimes I would put the peanut butter on a slice of white bimbo bread, and lay the banana’s gently on top. When the bread supply became low, I would scoop out peanut butter and lay it directly on the banana. Other times, I would mix the peanut butter banana with jelly, or cornflakes, or oatmeal. Sometimes it tasted amazing, and other times, I wanted to throw up. But in the end, peanut butter banana was the one food that I was completely in control of this summer. It was my food freedom.

So, when driving down the i5, feeling hangry, and grumpy, stuck in a monotony of driving, the idea of a peanut butter banana milkshake made so much sense to me.

We ordered the milkshake from a stand, and it was brought out to us by a fresh faced employee on roller-skates. Rollerskates is something that the Chicago Sonic should really adopt. They are retro and excellent. That, mixed with pure unadulterated dairy and sugary drink, put an end to our  cranky mood. At least until he told us how many more miles of the trip we had to go:  323. Yikes. We thought we were a lot closer...

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updated shot club list

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Banana Cream /Body Image Crap (ugh ugh I know I know)

This is a post about regretting something that you’ve eaten.

No, dear shot clubbies, I did not screw up again. On the way to Sonic this time, I compulsively checked our to-drink list, doubting myself continually. Had I forgotten to slash through a completed flavor with a red line in MS Paint? Was I confused? Was Peanut Butter Banana even a real flavor, or was I thinking wishfully? Had we really not drunk Strawberry Cream Pie? How is that different from Strawberry Cheesecake? Crust dust, I'm sure is the answer. Crust dust. Will I ever get a drink that isn't a pale, sad beige nearly denuded of all color? No. Of course not. Of course not.

In the line, I decided I wanted Banana Cream Pie. No. Not really. I didn't even want it. I just wanted to make sure I ordered something novel, to get through this god-forsaken list. I really wanted Banana Peanut Butter. But I was afraid it wasn't real, somehow, or that it had been drunk and I just forgot. I thought, also, that I devoted enough of my day to shoving gobs of peanut butter into my maw, as is. 

Also I didn’t even really want a shake. I felt kind of gross and cloyed.  More on this later.

So Banana Cream Pie it was. I ordered and the cashier, Jasmine, initially submitted the order as, simply, Banana. My heart stopped, which should surprise no one at this point. Was Banana Cream even a thing? Would this be another Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Incident?

In a flash, and without my saying anything, Jasmine reached out and corrected the error. Across the blue screen in front of me, there appeared the words Banana Cream Pie.

It was a real flavor! What a relief.

I also ordered some tots.

I needed salt. I needed something savory. My body was furious at me for ordering sugar, and I hadn't even taken a bite yet. And in a single sitting I can eat a bag of marshmallows or gnaw the frosted tops off of every single Frosted Mini Wheat in a box, so when I am over-sugared, you know its bad.

I felt like I was developing a protective allergy to Sonic Shakes. Did you know that in early human history, allergies were actually an evolutionary advantage? People who had sensitive tummies or immune systems were less like to over-indulge in moldy grain or eat too many mildly toxic nuts or mushrooms. It is only now, in a world where most food is safe, that a sensitive system is disadvantageous. My friend Erik used to believe that people with allergies are genetically inferior and less evolved and used to give me shit for how often I rubbed my eyes or nostrils. So, read that fucking article and get your shit right, Erik. Also sorry for yelling at you. For all I know you might not even believe that shit anymore. 

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This newfound Sonic aversion not withstanding, I do not have food sensitivities. I can binge-eat the daylights out of something and suffer nothing more than a puffy, overfull feeling. I have a nasty habit of not eating all day and then consuming a massive amount of bland carbs in the mid-evening, too ravenous to make a reasonable decision about getting Five a Day or cooking or managing portions.

This problem first manifested in high school, when I had a quasi-eating disorder. Quasi because though I lost weight and became cold and pale and my period became irregular and people questioned me about whether I had an eating disorder or not, I never got a diagnosis, and I got better on my own.

During that time, I would try not to eat all day. Or ever, I guess was the idea. I kept meticulous track of what I did falter and eat -- usually it was a slice of the sample bread at Panera, gobbled down when my friends and I snuck out of school to go there for lunch. I'd obsess over the pointless one or two tiny slices I'd eaten and try not to eat anything else all day. We’d go out to Denny’s or Perkins or Applebees or whatever and I’d just get coffee. 

Yeah it was conspicuous. A friend once told me she thought I was a robot because I didn't seem to eat or sleep. I thought that seemed pretty badass.

But late every night, my non-robotic nature would get the better of me. In the middle of the evening while everyone slept I'd mow through Zebra Cakes and left-over pizza and Captain Crunch eaten straight out of the box with a peanut-butter-dipped spoon. I'd eat until I felt uncomfortable and regretted it all, my belly tight and acid coming up my throat. I never meant to eat that much, it just happened, quickly, almost out of my control, and then I’d resent myself for it. 

And then, no joke, I'd turn on Dance Dance Revolution, put it on exercise mode and play through the 10-step difficulty songs that burned the most calories, doing them over and over again until my calories-burned count matched what I estimated my intake of calories to be. Like 1200 or 1300 or so. I'd crack open the windows and strip down to my underwear and drink liters of ice water and jump around and sweat. I went for hours, sometimes.

I had the lamest version of exercise bulimia ever.

One day I just got sick of being famished and trying to attain a level of hip-narrowness that my Banging Hourglass Physique would never allow. And then, just like that, I started eating big loaves of bread and broccoli slathered with hummus and dates and figs and pecans again. I biked through the Cleveland Metro Parks and swam all day in the pool where I worked as a life guard and ate burgers dolloped with blue cheese while sitting on the patio with my mom and I filled out and my legs got really strong and I felt, for the first time in a long time, good about my size. That summer was the heaviest I ever got, and I was athletic and well-fed and squishy and thick and it was cool.

AND NOW I AM A PILLAR OF MENTAL HEALTH 

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Oh yeah the Banana Cream Pie shake. Okay, so now it will become semi-clear why I went on that big navel-gazing eating disorder confession tangent. One, I felt disgusting before I even ate this slop, which was reminiscent of those weird high-school-era binge days where I would deliberately go hours and hours without eating, to the point that my hunger signals got screwed up. Two, though the Banana Cream Pie shake was Just Awful, just bland and flavorless and teeth-rotting nonsense, I just kept on eating it, not even wanting to, not even meaning to, kind of like when I used to go on a starvation-inspired eating spree.

I mean, in a very micro way.

This shake was so lame! Like, there was nothing offensive about it except its blandness. On the menu it is a lovely daffodil color, yellow and bright. In life it looks like ET when he's dying. And it tastes probably like ET's shit would have tasted, after he ate all those Reese's Pieces. Sugary and processed and devoid of nutritional value. No, not even -- there's no peanut butter in this thing. So it's worse.

I felt like crap after eating this shake. I have been eating like crap and feeling like I'm Too Big, lately, and that is some bullshit and I need to work on that. I've been forgetting to eat until mid-day or evening and then eating sugary carb garbage and then not even enjoying Sonic shakes as a pleasurable indulgence as a result.

I mean, it's obviously not the same as it once was, when I was a teenager. I'm not trying to shrink, and when I eat a lot, it's because I've decided I need to eat and I allow it. I don't beat myself up much for over-indulgence and I recognize I need fuel to live and that I will always be hippy and titty and thighy and whatever. (Have you ever seen "titty" used as an adjective before? Holy shit!)

But still, I felt inordinately bad for sucking down all of that shake. And I didn't like the shake, so I couldn't understand why I did it. And it's probably valuable for me to acknowledge the psychological precursors to shit like that. Every now and then I let myself slip into irresponsible habits and though it's never, ever so extreme as back then, I still sometimes end up sick or weak or severely anemic (did you know dairy impedes iron absorption? Yeah neither did I, until I got a heart murmur from losing so many red blood cells. I'll write about that too, one of these days).

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I should go cook something hearty with a vegetable or 12 in it. And pack snacks for work tomorrow. I feel like the emotional and psychological benefits this blog gives me more than makes up for the deleterious effects of the shakes. And to the extent that the shakes do have a deleterious nutritional impact...I should cut my ass a fucking break for it.

Here is a drawing of a banana I made in MS Paint.

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The Parent Trap and Oreo/Peanutbutter

The plot of the 1998 film, “The Parent Trap” from wikipedia.com with commentary by me, who recently watched the film, as a sort-of-appetizer to my Oreo Peanut Butter Milkshake.

In 1986, Nick Parker (Dennis Quaid) and Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson) meet and get married during an ocean cruise on the RMS Queen Elizabeth II. After the birth of their twin daughters, Annie and Hallie (Lindsay Lohan), Nick and Elizabeth divorce and lose contact, each parent raising one of the twins without telling her about her sister. Nick raises Hallie in Napa Valley and becomes a wealthy wine grower, while Elizabeth raises Annie in London and becomes a famous and wealthy wedding gown designer.

UM. It’s hard to suspend my disbelief and believe that there is a custody arrangement which allows for the separation of twins the way Hallie and Annie are separated. Also

RIP Natasha Richardson.

Over 11 years later, Nick and Elizabeth coincidentally enroll their daughters at the same all-girls summer camp in Maine called Camp Walden. Hallie and Annie first meet at the end of a fencing match, when they remove their masks and see that they look exactly alike. A comical hostility between the two girls leads to a prank war that ends when the camp counselors fall into one of Hallie's traps and isolate the twins from the other girls.

How does Annie  and her scrawny eleven year old arms manage to put all of Hallie’s furniture on the bunk’s roof without anyone in the entire camp noticing she was doing this? and where did she get the english flag with flag pole? Did she bring it from home?

Hallie retaliates by setting a terrifying boobytrap. One can only assume that writer of this film wrote this scene while watching Home Alone.

The “Isolation Cabin”, where the two are sent, is a punishment which is borderline child abuse.  I’m pretty sure if anyone at Camp Walden told their parents about Isolation Cabin, the camp would get shut down, real quick.

(RIP NATASHA RICHARDSON)

Living together in an isolation cabin, Hallie and Annie discover they were born on the same day, and each has half of a torn wedding photograph of their parents. Realizing with delight they are twins, the girls act a plan to meet their previously unknown parents. Each girl trains the other to impersonate her, with the intent to switch places at the end of summer camp.

“YOU LIKE OREOS AND PEANUT BUTTER TOO?” for some reason it’s the COOKIES that are the catalyst in the two girls realizing that they are twins. “FUCK LOOKING THE SAME, SOMETHING WE REALIZED 3 SCENES AGO WHEN WE TOOK OFF OUR FENCING HELMETS!”

SNACK CHOICE = IDENTICAL DNA

(RIP NATASHA RICHARDSON)

When camp is over, the plan happens. Hallie, pretending to be Annie, goes to London to meet her mother, her maternal grandfather, Charles, and the James family's butler, Martin (Simon Kunz). Annie, pretending to be Hallie, goes to California to meet her father, the Parker family's housekeeper, Chessy (Lisa Ann Walter), their dog Sammy, and Nick's young, opportunistic fiancée, Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix), who is only interested in Nick's money. Distressed by Meredith's deviousness, Annie telephones Hallie and persuades her to bring Elizabeth to California to break up the engagement. Soon, everyone except for Nick and Meredith, who remain unaware of the switch until their newfound family members surprise them, discovers the girls' identities.

1. Couldn’t they have just talked to their parents and been all like: “I met my twin, so crazy right? Hey listen. I’d like to have a relationship with her. Can we hang out now?” did the elaborate rouse involving a  stabbing of ears with needles, and 203924234 dollar plane tickets to Europe and learning a complicated butler/employers kid handshake on a dock need to happen? Did this movie need to exist?

2. The name “Chessy” is really very silly. Not Jessie. Chessy. This scene is my favorite in all of cinema, look at Walter’s lip quiver:

Also, this scene is the first of many where Dennis Quaid enters a private conversation, with a dumb look on his face and a line that is something like: “What’s going on guys!!!”

3.  (RIP NATASHA RICHARDSON)

To bring Nick and Elizabeth together, Hallie, Annie, Chessy, Martin, and Charles conspire to have them meet at a hotel in San Francisco by arranging for Nick to meet Meredith's parents and by not telling Elizabeth about Meredith. Nervous about meeting Nick, Elizabeth asks Martin to accompany Hallie and her. After a few comical mix-ups in the hotel, Nick and Elizabeth eventually see each other. Nick finally learns about the switch and the girls host a candlelit dinner for their parents, served by Chessy and Martin, on a yacht decorated to recreate their first meeting. At dinner, Elizabeth mentions that Nick did not follow her after she left him, and Nick responds that he was not sure if Elizabeth wanted him to. They make plans for the girls to spend holidays together, but decide against resuming their relationship.

No disrespect to Natasha Richardson (RIP) who is the film’s one good actor, but this is where the movie really could end….where it really should end….but it doesn’t.

This movie is too long.

I watched this movie with my friends Catharine and Hal, (Hal who jumped a little and said “that’s my name” every time the twin Hallie was referred to as Hal) and we talked through this whole part, so I don’t really know: do Chessy and Martin have implied sexual relations? Or is Martin gay?

Hallie and Annie dislike this idea, so they force their parents to take them on a camping trip—the annual outing Nick and Hallie take before school starts—while keeping quiet about which twin is which. Elizabeth coaxes Meredith into camping with Nick and the girls in her place, while she stays behind at the Parker residence. During the trip, the girls play various tricks on Meredith. It all boils over after the two execute their final prank, of sending Meredith out on the lake by their camp while she is sleeping. Meredith becomes enraged and gives Nick an ultimatum: her or his daughters. Nick chooses the girls over Meredith and breaks off the engagement. Although Annie and Hallie are both punished for their shenanigans, they accept it, as they are rid of Meredith for good.

Okay, so just in case you have forgotten these are the same mean pranking girls from the beginning of the movie: you are reminded in this part when they almost drown this evil step-mom to be by putting her sleeping mattress with her sleeping on it into the lake. But damn, that Meredith is a sound sleeper. (NATASHA…You an angel. Rest in Peace. For Real.)

When Nick returns home, he shows Elizabeth his wine collection, which includes the wine they drank at their wedding. Elizabeth is touched at first, but has a change of heart and returns to London with Annie. However, when Annie and Elizabeth get home, they find Hallie and Nick waiting for them, having flown there on the Concorde. Elizabeth is fearful of remarrying, but she yields to Nick's unwavering confidence, and Hallie and Annie look on happily as their parents embrace. The ending shows Nick and Elizabeth getting remarried aboard the QE2, with the girls as bridesmaids and Martin presenting Chessy with an engagement ring.

Lindsay Lohan tells Oprah she just did crack 5 times. Just 5.  Thinks that Lindsay Lohan doesn’t have “head intelligence”, but she does have “heart intelligence”

watch it her tell her that right here at 0:53 seconds:

This movie makes no sense, head intelligence wise.

but it has some heart intelligence for sure.

Sister’s reunited. A cute dog. Just look at Natasha Richardson (RIP)’s face when she sees her family of insane twins, aloof white dude husband, gay-but-not-gay butler and lip quiver queen lady butler  reunited. Cue Cole Porter. AAAAAAand credits.

I got the oreo peanut butter milkshake with my friend David, who, in this specific picture, taken circa feb. 2015. Looks like he could be my twin!  Maybe we should come up with a cool handshake. 

The milkshakes took a little while because James, the cashier, made my drink extra fancy on top With the drizzled PB and the Oreo crumbles. The milkshake itself was about on par with the movie: sweet but too much. I couldn’t finish either one without feeling  a little sick.

Natasha Richardson. RIP. Natasha Richardson. RIP.

[sonicshotclub]

The Oreo Chocolate Redundancy

There’s no excuse for this. 

There’s an explanation for it -- namely, that it was 5pm on a Saturday and I was obliterated, and in my compromised state I believed that all the Oreo flavors (save Oreo+Caramel) were still on the to-do list, just a big creamy black expanse of choco-chunk milkshake flavors, waiting for us to quaff them -- but that is not an excuse. 

There is nothing excusable about this. After all, I’m the only one on our growing list of contributors that has double-dipped on the shot club list before. Last time, the redundant flavor was Strawberry, and I got it the second time because a cashier recommended it to me. That time, at least I was following the rules. I asked for his favorite flavor, he gave me his favorite flavor, it was a flavor I’d already had, and I gritted my rapidly decaying teeth and immersed them in the shake’s pink, saccharine, lipidy surface. 

This time, I just screwed up. Oreo + Chocolate is already a redundant flavor in its own right -- Oreo is, after all, primarily chocolate (followed by trans fats) -- and now, this excessive decadence has to besmirch our shot club list twice. And that’s not the only disappointing fact about this trip. Oh, no. 

See, I was so giddy with day-drunk Bloody Marys that now I can barely articulate the phenomenology of eating this freaking shake. Or of eating the food that I ordered, which was undoubtedly mediocre, though rendered irresistible through the sheer power of drunkness. Everything I got was eaten hastily, in a delirious, desperate state, without much attention paid to basic decency of mouthfeel or flavor -- which is to say, this Sonic visit was as close to an ideal or typical Sonic visit as someone like me will ever get. 

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Behold the spread in all of its glory. The offensive redundant shake, gulped down thoughtlessly, with only a passing observation of, hey, they don’t just have Oreo pieces in here, but actual Oreo cream chunkles too! The sad, unseasoned, un-gussied-up $1.49 chicken sandwich, a paltry replacement for Sonic’s former “Little Chickies” menu item, which is still advertised in the store and on Sonic’s in-house radio, but which has been discontinued. And the coup de grace, a new Sonic item proudly declared on all of its signage -- the wings. 

There are a lot of wing flavors to be got. Garlic Parm. Sweet Asian. Buffalo. A couple others I don’t remember. And I have a longstanding history of drunkenly eating wings in the fall while football blares on from a peripheral TV (as was happening in the Sonic that day). I did go to a Big 10 school after all. Wings are my favorite part of sports. Wings are my favorite part of being drunk. So I ordered a six-piece of Garlic Parm and settled in, kind of excited at the possibility. This was a mistake. But what can I say, I was drunk. 

These are not wings. These are white meat nugs breaded some time eons ago, frozen and transported across thousands of miles, and baked in an oven in some dark corner of Sonic that somehow takes 22 minutes to access. After baking and breading the nugs, they are spooged on with some kind of greasy viscous flavor liquid, which is probably compositionally very similar to what flavors the shakes. 

Wings do not have thick, almost calcified breading. Wings are dark meat (okay, some boneless wings are not) and have been fried, not baked. Wings are absolutely suffused with flavor, not drizzled with barely seasoned lube. These are not wings. These are just Sonic’s chicken poppers with anal leakage on them. 

I loved them. 

I ate these guys fast. I couldn’t put them down. They attained that perfect balance of salty, fatty, carby, and protein-y that makes the taste buds of any drunk person sing. I looked at the Ohio State game on the TV and shoveled that crap into my mouth and made it disappear in like a minute, probably. Then, still hankering, I turned my soul-sucking maw towards the shake, and also made it vanish in a matter of moments. 

What was over in a span of five minutes went on to give me throbbing stomach pain for the whole rest of the day. 

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The Sonic Shot Club list is dwindling. The same day that I inhaled a redundant and pointless and not-good Oreo Choc shake, Ida knocked the coveted Oreo Peanut butter off the list. I suspect she hates these fucking shakes more than me (she seems like she eats healthy most of the time and gives a shit about life), and yet she’s whipping through the club at a rate I can’t match. She’s racing towards oblivion and I’m grinding my gears. 

And I’m the one who makes the update shot list posts, crossing off the completed items. 

Ugh omg dammit fuck good lord fuck no ugh 

It’s Monday and I’m sober, except for the 16 oz of coffee buzzing through my body, making me type too quickly and think too deeply about the myriad small mistakes I’ve made in my life. I’ve doomed the shot club list, giving us an unbalanced number. I’ve doomed myself to eat more shakes than originally planed. I regret many things. 

I do not regret the Sonic Shot Club enterprise, though. It’s given me valuable writing fodder, myriad moments of introspection, pages and pages of food-infotainment, and new friends. Plus, hey, maybe some of the proceeds from this garbagepile food order maybe kind of helped out some kids: 

Actually, now that I’m reading the bag more closely, it looks like it’s only Limeade purchases that go to Learning

dammit 

[sonicshotclub]

The OREOcaramel cold thing

I

I am only now realizing, this is probably the only OREO milkshake where I haven’t had the OREO cookie in it’s natural form (read: not in a milkshake), in combo-nation with the prefix-ingredient in its natural form.  Sonic’s Oreo Caramel milkshake is the first time I’ve experienced the two flavors at once.

I can’t 100 percent confirm, but I feel fairly confident that I’ve eaten a slice of Oreo-flavored cheesecake before.

I’ve definitely eaten one Oreo dipped in peanut butter

and I’ve also definitely eaten a chocolate dipped Oreo.

but I ain’t never, ever, EVER had the cookie dipped in caramel.

have you?

It is also the first time that I have gone to enjoy a milkshake at Sonic with just my co-blogger Erika Price, and no one else.

Just her and I, two about-to-be-world-famous-bloggers, at the Sonic, buffer free.

Just caramel and Oreo, two sweet pieces of consumable matter, in the milkshake, safely styrofoam encased.

I am happy to report both of these new experiences contained as many positive vibes as an elementary school’s field day: everybody wins, everybody gets a trophy. There is a bee sting, but despite all of it, Erika's and my friendship grows thick, like the two mini milkshakes themselves, and I am inspired to try a real Oreo dripped in caramel outside of a beverage context.

My decision to get OREO Caramel was due to these new caramel colored glasses frames that I got  fitted to my face at the eye doctor, directly before meeting Erika at 5:30 sharp. Speaking of sharp, my vision during this experience  was not. They dilated my pupils at the optometrist and  the brightness of the world, and of the sonic employees' blue polos was somewhat overwhelming.

Sometimes when I squint, I think I look mean. Or judgmental or something. And as you can see from Erika’s post below where she describes my positive attitude,  that is NEVER my intention.

I hope that the cashier dude didn’t think I was mean when I approached him to order. But because of my squinting, I may have seemed rude and accusatory rather than curious, when I questioned him for speaking the word “FROZEN” into the microphone after I ordered.

“That’s to let them know  in the kitchen, to go make a cold thing.”

And I laughed. Maybe that was mean. But for some reason I imagined that it was a truly hilarious Food Network scurrying situation  back there. It is funny to imagine a bunch of sonic employees hurting from one side of the kitchen where they are making “hot things” to the side reserved for “cold.”

Erika and I got our “cold things” and we sat outside.

I was glad to be on this playdate with Erika Price. I had just gotten back from New York, and I hadn't seen her or any friends in awhile.  Erika is  the opposite of boring. And she has no problem sitting on the asphalt writing in a notebook. I admire that quality in a fellow human lady. She has a deviousness about her which I notice when, while drinking her cheesecake shake,  she describes the time that she and Nick went to the cheesecake factory drunk during their stay-cation. Being drunk amidst the  geriatrics at the cheesecake factory is just as funny to me as a bunch of sonic-sters running around a kitchen.  Erika is also one of the most even-tempered, calm, and collected persons I think I know. She has never gotten mad at me for writing her name with a "c." Whenever I come over to her home, the apartment she shares with her boyfriend Nick Hart, I can be found frantically shouting ideas about lube and heads exploding, and never once has she asked me to tone it down. She even was totally down to deliver my spontaneous request (demand) for her to interview me about the milkshake I was drinking.

And even though she compared me to the famed bespectacled This American Life host in her own post, it is Erika who asked the truly hard-hitting, recently-treated-eye-opening  milkshake questions. Pretty much what I’m sayin’ is:  If I am Ira Glass, then Erika is Terry Gross.

Here is the transcript from that interview:

Erika:  What geological structure would you compare your milkshake to?

Ida: Please define, and give me an example of what a geological structure is.

Erika: Is it like mud, is it silty, is it a canyon?

Ida: mmm. Great questions Erika Price. I would say that it is like the side of a dusty dirty hill. Where you are walking up it but you shouldn’t be walking up it, because it is crumbly.

Erika: You are gonna fall.

Ida: In part due to the Oreos. Reminds me specifically of Corona heights hill in San Francisco.

Erika: How much of that shake, what ounce-age or size-age do you think you could take without throwing up?

Ida: I might throw up after this mini one. But if i HAD to, if somebody  challenged me to, if somebody said: “you have to drink a whole big….the biggest one….” I could do it. I wouldn’t throw up probably. I’d feel really bad though.

Erika: What did you do to prepare for this today?

Ida:  It was pretty spontaneous actually. I had a break between my last appointment of the day….I had a lot of appointments today, actually.  A lot of different kinds of doctor’s. First one was regular doctor, second one was the eye doctor, third one:  therapist. Checked out that i’m doing well. Physically…

Erika: Emotionally as well.

Ida: Emotionally and Physically prepared. Not for this event specifically…If you take all those together. I don’t have a UTI, but you don’t want to risk it so: keep drinking liquid. Milkshake. Second thing: milkshake. Glasses. I can see my milkshake, up close it’s a little blurry, I don’t wanna see my milkshake i just wanna drink it. Therapist, you know, like relax,Wednesday afternoon: it’s ok. you’re doing ok. You can come and see Erika… Really long answer. Whole work up.  Any more questions?

Erika: What was the best thing you ate in New York?

Ida: Oh! Not the best thing I ate….but another milkshake….I went to Harlem Shake. A milkshake place in Harlem. The Chocolate Peanutbutter Milkshake. It was better than this milkshake. But also….just a different thing. But like it was across from this church that had a sign that says, like: "Jesus hates the homos. We are allowed to have this sign up."

Erika: Oh god.

Ida: No signs like that around here. But wait! Harlem Shake was across from a church. And we’re [Sonic] is across from a church. Weird. Crazy.

Erika and I had a good time this past Wednesday afternoon. And we have 9 more shakes to go. We came up with some schemes for their consumption and reviews (hint: it involves alcohol). I’m not sure what the future shakes will be like, but I know, even without my dilated pupils, Erika and my friendship’s future: well, it’s mighty bright.

[sonicshotclub]

Cheeseshake

I was in the middle of drinking a latte and eating a fistful of Pumpkin Spice Latte flavored M&M’s(tm) when Ida invited me to come get our next shake. 

Sugar and dairy were clinging  to my tongue, teeth, and presumably arteries, but I had faith in my ability to make more nutrition-free foodstuffs disappear into myself. In fact, earlier that day, I’d eaten one Pink Lady Apple and half a wheel of Aldi(tm) brand brie for breakfast, and nothing else. So when the possibility of taking in even more lipidy glucose arose, I should have been put off. But my capacity for sweetness and dairy knows nearly no bounds, and it had been well over a month since our last coordinated shake-dranking sesh, so I  agreed. 

I brought the PSL M&M’s with me, thinking that perhaps I could get a bland flavor and mix them in. For some reason I’m doggedly attached to the idea of taking my Sonic shakes with a helping of candy-coated mix-ins, when really a Masterblast or Nerds Slush or whatever could meet that need. So far, I haven’t actually done it. And by the time I got to Sonic to meet Ida, I knew it wasn’t going to happen today either. 

Let me tell you briefly about the Pumpkin Spice Latte M&M’s. They are milk chocolate with a slightly spicy, coffeeish flavoring, coated in autumnal shades of off-white, orange, and brown. On the package, a hipster-chic M&M lady is holding a coffee cup with a scarf rakishly tossed across her shoulder: 

They are a dastardly on-trend and cynical corporate ploy, appealing to basic bitch PSL drinkers and spiteful, ironic hate-eaters at the same time. The PSL M&Ms entice you with their strangeness and complexity, and mock you for that same enticement. Shamefully purchasing them and binge-eating them is a complicated and wrought process. Eating them is grating and ambivalent and confusing. 

Suffice to say, by the time I was holding my Cheesecake Shake, I had already been through a cloying late-capitalist struggle of desire and disgust. I was primed for more. 

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Ida is such a delight. I’m so glad that she came up to me one night over a month ago and said, “I hear you’re trying to drink all the milkshakes on Sonic’s menu. Want to write a blog about it?” I admire her energy, positivity, and genuine interest in other human beings. She can really charm anyone, from a tired Sonic cashier to my very own ass, out of their shell with her buoyant personality and curiosity. Also she is adorable and has some snazzZZZZzzzy new glasses, which makes her look like a hot babygirl Ira Glass, check it out: 

Ida, by the way, ordered an Oreo Caramel Shake, which must have been absolutely decadent and immoral and wrong. When I tried it, I was impressed with the flavor density; the shake itself tasted like thick, corn-syrup-solid-based Oreo cream. No detectable caramel though. She said, knowingly, that the second flavor of a Sonic shake is always a bit hidden or obscured. The caramel sauce was at the bottom. Stay tuned for her examination of these weighty issues. 

We took our shakes and went out onto the patio. It was 5:00pm and Uptown was bleary with fading daylight and waning summer heat. We took pictures of one another and discussed Halloween costumes. Ida’s going to be an airport security scanner. I’m going to be the asscrack guy from the Magic: The Gathering Conference. 

Just as I was describing my grand Halloween plans to Ida, a wasp or some other kind of yellow/black insectoid demon stabbed me in the webbing between my index and ring finger and clung to my ring and stayed there. I flung my arm around saying I’d been stung and held the digits out, wasp still attached to me, begging for help, even though I had a free hand I could have used to fight it off. Ida saved the day by detaching the monster from my hand and making sure I wasn’t allergic. She’s had training for these situations. She knows where to jam an epi-pen. Again, what a gem. What a blessing. 

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Ida suggested that we take this opportunity to interview one another about our shakes, which we did on mic. Here is the transcript of her interview with me: 

IDA: So Erika Price, there is a composition note book that you’re writing with, on the table. It has a fox on it--

ERIKA: It’s a hedgehog! 

IDA: It’s a hedgehog! It’s a hedgehog. 

ERIKA: They do make a fox, though. But see here’s his little spike-ies...

IDA: Hedgehog. Do you think that...paint us a scene of what would happen if you tried to give a real hedgehog a cheesecake milkshake. 

ERIKA: Yeah, well, so I think that like, uh, strategizing how you’re gonna administer it is important...so I have seen some videos -- I’ve done some video research on hedgehogs -- and I know that you can put them in, like, a sink or a bathtub and they kinda just float on their back, so then their, like soft underbelly is exposed.

IDA: Hm. 

ERIKA: So then I think you just put it on a little bit of, like, a spoon or maybe one of those spoon straws, you know?

IDA: Yeah.

ERIKA: And kinda just force-feed it to them. Not -- force feeding is a little aggressive of a term. But just, nudge it in there. And then, you know, you can clean it all up in the sink right there, right where it is. So, you know...they like to eat cat food I’ve heard, and meal worms, which I feel like that’s not that different. 

IDA: Yeah. I think so too. Um, that just reminds me of your chinchilla. How’s your chinchilla doing?

ERIKA: Oh, Dump Truck is doing great, he’s gonna be a year old in October --

IDA: Dump Truck? I’ve heard a different name. 

ERIKA: Oh, his name is, his full name is Wilford “Dump Truck” Brimley. 

IDA: Ohh.

ERIKA: Wilford Brimley, after the diabetes commercial guy, which, they just have similar posture, and chinchillas get diabetes really easily, so that’s why.

IDA: How easily are we going to get diabetes after this milkshake?

ERIKA: (laughing) Oh god.

IDA: (laughing) Yeah.

ERIKA: I worry about that...often. My -- my dad -- so he would drink, like, at least a two liter thing of Pepsi every day of his life. 

IDA: Uh huh.

ERIKA: And he did eventually get diabetes. So I feel like, sometimes I feel like I’m a ticking time bomb, but that does not stop me. So, you know--

IDA: We’re not stopping!

ERIKA: Nah, I’m running head-first into oblivion.

IDA: Perfect. 

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Erika & Ida, running into creamy decadent oblivion. Stay tuned for Ida’s entry, and my interview of her. 

[sonicshotclub]

Jalapeño and Chocolate! (And A Sonic Memory From Kelsey)

It had been awhile since i’d dropped some pretty pennies on garb for my sweet sweet twelve year old boy body and so I decided that it was time to treat myself to some new shoes and maybe a new romper. I went with my new friend and fashion-savvy Kelsey Ettman. It was a playdate we’d planned the days before. I needed to plan it semi far in advance because I needed to adjust to the idea of spending an entire afternoon doing an activity that stresses me out the way air travel stresses out some.  I get overwhelmed in large department stores, upon entering them, my typically energetic and bright facial expressions transforms into a glazed pre coma disposition.  It is what I call my “shopping face” and it is probably a reaction to the irritating numerical juxtaposition of one billion clothing decisions on wire hangers to  the singular OMI song playing on loop. The one about that cheerleader. Get me out of this Forever 21 I am going to pass out and pee myself. The antidote for shopping face is to have someone who enjoys shopping accompany me. Or at the very least someone who doesn’t want to shave their skin off  when Ariana Grande blasts at  at the highest of all decibel levels in the DSW. The one that goes “love me, love me, love me, harder harder harder”

I chose Kelsey to come with me  this year because not only is she a costume designer by profession, and I knew that she is semi unemployed like me and would have an afternoon free, but also because  ever since I met her I thought she was a person who I wanted to get to know better. I met Kelsey through Jeewon Kim, she is his roommate, and I knew she was a winning human being on the afternoon I came over to take a nap and then eat corn, and saw she was watching a sword competition show on the History Channel. I knew Kelsey would be  worthy to escort me on this expedition after she told me, at aforementioned corn eating day,  that she very recently went shopping with someone else (who shall remain nameless)  who similar to myself, WANTS to like shopping but breaks out in hives at the idea of counting out six items for the dressing room attendant while the remix of Sia’s Elastic Heart plays in the background. You know the one about that….uh… what is Sia saying ever?

In addition to providing a listening ear to my concern over dresses that do not have built in shorts, and assure me that I was nowhere NEAR as neurotic about trying on clothes as the person who shall still remain nameless,  Kelsey’s biggest help was to steer me away from summer-colored Keds and eased me into the maroon pallet, which, as she puts it are more “fall.” More fall. But from the summer, still on sale.

She also explained the concept of stank boot, when girls on hot days wear combat boots.

here they are:

After shopping, we went to this place called sonic. Have you heard of it? Tj and Dave are in a commercial for it. Note to self and Erika: We must try to get TJ or Dave to come on a Sonic Trip with us. Note to TJ or Dave if you are reading this: When u free? The following is Kelsey’s account of our Sonic visit, complete with references to the clothing choices of the Sonic employees:

“This was only my second visit to a Sonic. The last time/the first time was about 4 years ago during an ice storm in Arkansas.  Sonic commercials aired routinely on my rural NY television growing up but the first Sonic didn’t open in NY until earlier this year. It always seemed like a terrible waste of advertising money but I guess it worked because five Ettman, smushed in a tiny rental sedan pulled into the Sonic drive-in to finally experience the mythical fast food joint.

Even in the below freezing temperatures, surrounded by sheets of dangerous ice, a part of me still expected to see a young woman in a cheerleading skirt and rollerskates glide up to the window with the tray of food. Instead, I got so much more. A tall blonde in a camouflage onesie appeared. Call it “cold wear coveralls” or a “hunting snowsuit” if you’d like but it was an adult onesie and it was majestic.

i think if Ida had grown up in Arkansas instead of San Francisco, she’d be wearing the exact same thing.

As for the chocolate jalapeno shake- They put actual jalapeno slices in a chocolate shake! That’s it! Sonic cooks the same way I do- throw together things you having lying around and hope for the best.  Was strawberry pickle the runner up?”

I finally got the milkshake that i had planned to get on my very first day of starting this blog: The Chocolate Jalapeño.   Planned shopping expedish. Planned milkshake choice. Planned re-enactment of  finding a spicy pepper chunk  swimming in the brown ocean that is this milkshake.

Much like the alarm that got set off  in the store when I accidentally removed the security tag while trying on stanky boots, the spicy Jalapeño pieces in the milkshake set off some alarms in my own mouth.

shit was spicy!

I have decided two things related to shopping and related to milkshakes:I’m gonna buy some coldwear coveralls for this upcoming winter. And also deff gonna  get the chocopeño shake again. I liked it.

[sonicshotclub]

Lemon Pie, Laryngitis Problems

I wake up on Labor Day with a voice that is still, after five godforsaken days, nearly nonexistent. 

I don’t have class.  I don’t have meetings. All I have to do that day is call my mom. We talk every Sunday, but I missed Sunday, because I couldn’t talk, so we agree to talk Monday, but I still can’t talk. So I put off calling until it gets close to my mother’s hallowed, sacred pajama time, which is 8 PM in the summer. In the winter pajama time for her is like 5 PM. 

“It’s dark out!” she rationalizes. She believes  you can wear pajamas as long as it’s dark out. 

My mom, like me, has overwhelming and pendulous DD cup breasts. Pajamas are to her what nudity is to me -- a blessed, lumpy release from anti-gravitational torment. I may not wear pajamas, but I do wear stretchy pants or leggings 12 hours per day, 365 days per year, which is essentially the same as wearing pajamas, and the rest of the time I am naked. 

Like my mother, I know how to fucking party. 

I put off calling her. I decide to go to Sonic for breakfast because I will never make anything of my life.

Nick and I walk the nearly precisely 1.00 miles from our apartment to Sonic. 

I curse the heat and the sun with the same ferocity that I’m gonna use to curse the rain the very next day. It doesn’t matter. I’m sick of languid simmering summer heat and humid rainstorms. I’m ready for fall, with its attendant scarves and little jackets and little candy corns and, maybe, I hope, pumpkin spice shakes. 

We arrive at the Sonic and I remember that my voice is nearly nonexistent.The pretty cashier is there. Her nails are maroon and gold; she too is ready for fall. I find her beauty intimidating, and I don’t want her to realize I’m running a milkshake blog. When I open my mouth my voice sounds like my throat is crammed full of tumbleweeds and bog water. 

I order a Lemon Pie shake. I’ve tasted the Lemon Pie before, when Nick ordered it, and I liked it. Spoiler alert. I also order a small spicy popcorn chicken and honey mustard. This combination I regret immediately -- ranch would suit spicy one thousand percent better. I don’t say anything; maroon nails looks impatient. The restaurant is busy. She doesn’t deserve to be stuck here on a national banking holiday. I’m not going to change my order. 

My order takes a long time to show up. My order number is like 120 but I see 123, 124, 127, 130 and so on receive their food before me. In retrospect, I deserve it. This is my punishment for patronizing an establishment open on Labor Day, furthering the commercial forces that keep places open on Labor Day, thereby keeping service industry workers like maroon nails stuck indoors and dealing with people like me when she ought to be on a beach, getting fanned with palm fronds. 

Nick somehow gets his order right away. 

He is not being punished because he is not wicked. 

He works with children and makes real art instead of dribbling crap on several different blogs. 

He once showed his dick to over 3000 people. 

So he has suffered enough in his life. 

Plus he used to have a shower with no heat and a bedroom with no heat and a roommate who dropped a whole brined turkey on the floor at like 11 PM. 

Nick has suffered enough. 

I will never suffer enough. 

Finally my shake and spice pop chix arrive. 

I relish the whipped cream dusted with pie crust crumbles. That graham crackery crack is the main reason I wanted a Pie shake. When it’s depleted, I spoon through the off-white surface and into the heart of the shake. 

It is too thick to drink. 

It is tart

So tart

Not even lemon exactly so much as tart. 

I contemplate the blending of acid and cream and what a risky proposition that always is. Right now, writing this, that makes me recall puking Irish car bomb froth on the pavement outside of a church next door to my freshman dorm at The Ohio State University. Nothing like the refreshing curdle of a dark acidic beer combined with Bailey’s cream. 

Even though the shake isn’t all that good and I already feel like crap, I keep eating it. Something about the elusiveness of Sonic’s shake flavors makes you keep going, spooning that shit down your gullet mindlessly, your brain barely registering that something is being eaten. 

I eat some spicy chickens. It tastes legitimately worse than the kind you can get in a bag at Mariano’s for $7.99. Everything here tastes the same: burnt, dry, and lard-laden. 

I take another nauseating gulp of not-yellow, not-lemon tart shake and try to talk. Probably to say something snide about High School Musical, which is playing on the corner TV. On screen, Zac Efron is frolicking along the hills of a golf course singing that you can Bet on Him, Bet on Him, Bet on Him, Bet on Him. I try to tell Nick that I was at the high school where they filmed High School Musical, for a debate conference a month or two before the movie came out. 

But I can barely speak.

It will get worse as the day wears on. Then I will try to talk to my mom and my sister and their jointly-owned dog Mr. Sausage over Skype and it’ll get even worse. 

We go home and I flop on the bed and look over my lecture slides for the next day.  In my Research Methods class, we will be talking about research ethics, so I’m going to lecture about the ethical travesties of science's past and present. The Tuskegee syphilis study, the Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, the stuttering “monster” study, the Diederik Stapel case. 

I love ethics day.

I love teaching my students everything that is wrong with the discipline I perhaps mistakenly dedicated myself to. They sit back and gape while I recount the decades of prejudice, exploitation, trauma, and fraud.

I talk and talk and get really energized and bleak. I project to the back of the room, telling them about all the horrific things psychologists have done and continue to do, and I relish it just a little too much, and I put too much of myself in it, and I blow my voice out again. 

I'm a bad person. I deserve to suffer. 

I want to puke the shake up, and void myself of its badness, but I can’t. My body processes it and absorbs it instead. 

[sonicshotclub]

TEN SHAKES REMAIN!

[sonicshotclub]

“Does He Talk?”:  A Patron Saint, A Parrot, and  A Pineapple Milkshake .

Just because it is almost fall, and the crumb snatching youth are going back to school and the leaves are starting to fall on the gum stained Uptown sidewalks doesn’t mean that Erika and I can’t still feel, behave, conduct ourselves in a  tropical manner. Our milkshake choices of this week reflect this: Erika got Coconut, and I Pineapple. We are doing our best to  stretch out the final moments of summer like the 14 shakes we have  consumed between the two of us, are doing their best to stretch out our pant’s waist lines. It may be September, but I still need my tropical fix. And unlike Rafael Nadal who this week lost the US open, I am getting what I want:   The weather is still in the 80′s and 90′s, I got a  haircut that really cools my head off, and on the same day I got this shake, I hung out with a Maccaw parrot.

Just because I am Jewish,  doesn’t mean that I don’t wear a necklace with a Catholic Patron Saint Pendant. The necklace that I am referring to was given me by my friend Vicky.  Vicky, who was raised Catholic,explained to me that the saint on this necklace was Saint Rafael: The Patron Saint Of Happy Encounters. My connection to my Judaism has always been causal. My Bat Mitzvah was 90% tambourine and 10% prayer, I went to a synagogue where believing in God was optional but tie dye was not and besides the few years I was a dumb-ass vegetarian who didn’t know better, I eat Pepperoni Pizza. My firm faith in this concept of Happy Encounters, on the other hand, is pretty orthodox. I am intensely religious about going out of my way to  have positive social exchanges  with most human nuggets on this planet we call earth. It’s why I talk to strangers in the dollar store, why I wake up early to have chats with the baristas in the coffee shop downstairs from my apartment, it’s why Vicky gave me the necklace, in the first place, I think: she knows that while, I am technically of the penis snipping, hannukah celbratin, hollywood runnin’ tribe,  I could get on board with a saint like Rapha whose purpose is to be someone you pray to when you are craving a good meet up.

On Wednesday what I was craving was a milkshake, but I  ALSO  met Kelly and her parrot on my way to said milkshake.   Kelly was  standing by that small beach cabana shop, the one right next to the bridge by the overpass near Oak Street Beach.  It’s the one that has a big red sign that says “Cold Drinks” and even though the shop probably has a real shop name,  everyone most likely calls it “Cold Drinks” cause that sign is so big. She was feeding her parrot a hot dog, a Chicago style hot dog. That should have been my first clue that she was not from here. Later, in our conversation, Kelly would tell me she was from Upstate New York, by way of Montreal. 

 She was an older woman, but not so old, maybe about my mom’s age. Tan, grayish blonde shoulder length hair, she was wearing that stylish athletic REI gear, a propylene zippery skort thing and that synthetic-ish material shirt with a flower pattern on it. She was wearing a little bit of mascara and a lot of pretty golden bracelets and i think two necklaces. For some reason,  I found this combination of utilitarian garb mixed with tacky bohemian jewelry as something that would be completely in line with the character of  someone who owns a macaw parrot. There was a scarf around Kelly’s wicker hat and the scarf’s colors matched the parrots feather’s perfectly.  I wondered if she did that on purpose. The parrot was not constantly squawking like some parrots I have seen in the past at the zoo.  It might have been because It was eating. Regardless it  seemed like a generally chill parrot.

I wanted to start a conversation with her, but I wasn’t entirely sure how.

“Cool Parrot” was the first thing that came out. Followed by: “It really likes that hot dog” and then: “What’s it’s name?”

At first, it seemed like Kelly didn’t want to talk to me. I am pretty sure she is used to the attention that her parrot.  I am pretty sure she is used to the attention that her parrot  brings her in public places like the “Cold drinks” beach cabana shop. She probably thought I would say a few more things about the bird and then ride away. But  I am the Jewish patron saint of Happy Encounters on her way to get a tropical milkshake who wants to know more about this bird eating just the inside of a Chicago style hot dog with it’s weird black bird tongue!

Kelly is just visiting Chicago for a few days. She is staying somewhere downtown, and was going to take an architecture tour at 7 pm, so she was just killing time riding up and down the bike path until then. I rode with her. I learned that Kelly drove here from upstate New York in a big van, with  her parrot.  Kelly is a visual artist. She said she likes to travel and wants to find out where she wants to forever settle down.  She wants to go to a lot of places, to check them out, but she can’t stay in hotels cause hotels are “too expensive” and more than that “not all of them take parrots.” Kelly seemed kind of annoyed by her own Parrot. I pointed out that it must be hard to have a transient lifestyle but then also have to be weighed down by the bird, and the bureaucracy and rules regarding aviary species in all the places that she goes to.

The bird’s name was Up, Up and Away and despite this name which implies a level of  restlessness,  the whole time we rode up lakeshore path, the parrot stayed calmly on his owner’s bike. (See: Chill parrot) Up Up and Away can talk. And he says things like: “Pretty bird.” and  “Wanna cracker” and: “Does it talk?” Which I think is hilarious because it’s a mockery of the 9,000 people who ask that to parrots.  “Yeah you fucking imbecil,of course I talk, I'm a parrot. What a stupid question. Let me eat the inside of this hot dog in peace.” 

Kelly wants to go to Europe. But she can’t cause of the Parrot. In trying to maintain the happiness of this encounter, I  waited a long time to ask this fairly  rude question:

“How long do parrots live?”

she said 80 years. Then she added: Up, Up is 15.

I asked Kelly about the parrot’s diet. A question that is rude when it comes to humans, less rude when it comes to animals. 

“Pretty much whatever I eat. Sometimes fine cheese. He can’t have  too much dairy though,” She said.

Just like me, I thought, while ordering the mini sized pineapple milkshake, jsut  minutes after leaving Kelly and the bird.  Unlike a parrot, the Sonic employee on the other side of the drive thru stand repeated my order back to me incorrectly: “One peanut butter milkshake!” 

I clarified. 

The  Ananas comosus milkshake tasted like the styrofoam cup it came in, no trace of the most economically significant plant in the Bromeliaceae family at all.  Even if it had been the most pineapple-ey milkshake in the world, I don’t know if I would notice, I was too excited. Too excited  about my previous happy encounter, the continuation of summer into September, and how Erika and I are almost completely through this milkshake list. All of which, like the drinks from the cabana at Oak Street Beach where I saw a blue and yellow bird annihilate a hot dog is pretty cool.

P.S. You can follow the adventures of Up, Up and Away on Instagram!

https://instagram.com/upupmacaw/