{"id":1370,"date":"2014-02-02T23:34:23","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T04:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2014-02-02T23:34:23","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T04:34:23","slug":"seahawks-sweat-soda-a-partial-repost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2014\/02\/seahawks-sweat-soda-a-partial-repost.html","title":{"rendered":"Seahawks Sweat-Soda (a Partial Repost)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\"bottlesandpac.jpg\"
\nThat’s Seahawks all-pro tackle Walter Jones selling it<\/span><\/p>\n

Perspiration in a Bottle<\/h4>\n

Forgive me, I have never reposted anything, but the Superbowl opportunity smacked me in the face. These alluring beverages will not be available, except in stores that specialize in dusty sports memorabilia.<\/p>\n

I loved the inevitability<\/strong> of puns and wordplay when I was a kid, and so I thought the title of the oh-so-’60s musical The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd <\/em>was an absolute laff riot.<\/p>\n

Still, though I could imagine what a crowd smelled like, I had never actually sniffed one. And greasepaint? I hardly knew what it was, no less could recognize its scent. (My first real musical was A Funny Thing Happened…<\/em> with Zero Mostel, who was greasepaint, and grease, personified. I also played Petruchio in high school, to much predictable laughter, but that’s another story.)<\/p>\n

Many decades later, I found a dried-out tube of greasepaint in a junk shop, made in Philadelphia and dated 1908. Dead silent. So, of course, I lifted it to my nose….<\/p>\n

Flavor of the Moment<\/h4>\n

<\/strong>It still goes without saying that capitalism, in order to bully and thrive, must generate a steady, voracious appetite for change. Yet late in the last century, a corresponding cultural hunger for what some wish to believe is authentic, basic, and pure entered the popular marketplace-imagination as well. Sure, it’s easy to see all the organic, handmade, fair-trade stuffs on the shelves simply as another of a long line of product lines. But there’s a tonic resistance to the “new model” pitch built into the very idea of the unadulterated and authentic, whatever its momentary form or price.<\/p>\n

Keyword: Football<\/h4>\n

I boarded this train of thought after clicking on an online offer I couldn’t refuse: a Seahawks Collector Pack from Seattle-based Jones Soda Co<\/a>., five “limited edition flavors” for $19.95, plus S&H. The Seahawks, by the way, are not an Errol Flynn drag troupe; they’re Seattle’s pro football team.<\/p>\n

And those pigskin flavors? Sweet Victory, Natural Field Turf, Sports Cream (yup, really) and the two that made my heart leap, Perspiration and Dirt.<\/p>\n

You may have seen Jones’s expensive retro glass bottles or affordable 12-pack cans in your market. The company has an “alternative” strategy, “interacting” with customers via make-your-own labels and cool placement in “skate, surf and snowboarding shops, tattoo and piercing parlors” as well as marginal destinations like Target, Starbucks and that ever-edgy 7-Eleven. Jones sodas abjure the cheaper HFCS, high-fructose corn syrup, as sweetener, opting instead for what eons ago used to be the bad-for-you norm: cane sugar. Pure cane sugar.<\/p>\n

Bravo. Seriously. Cane sugar does impart a pleasing mouth-feel and is a “catalyst” flavor: it changes the way ingredients around it taste. Just try a Coke on some hot, faraway island, a Coca-Cola still made with sugar — and fulfill another “authentic” fantasy, the one called “the way food used to taste.”
\n\"pac.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Taste Test<\/h4>\n

So let’s pry open the four most interesting of these sports sodas (leaving one for you to try yourself). I’ll begin with Color and follow with Nose, then Taste:<\/p>\n

Sweet Victory<\/span>
\nC: Cloudy yet fluorescent baby-blue, the hue of a wished-for boyfriend’s eyes
\nN: Strong bubble-gum vanilla
\nT: Thick, saccharine vanilla, with Dubble Bubble notes. This is the only one of the four that’s sweetened. Delightful when chilled, although, unlike in life, one Victory is more than enough.<\/p>\n

Natural Field Turf<\/span>
\nC: Astroturf green
\nN: Faint lawn-dog, watermelon rind, with sharp metal-shop undertone
\nT: Like sun-tea, but with grass. Something of a missed opportunity, if you know how heavenly a just-mowed yard smells. Maybe they should match this one with a Seattle seawater soda: Turf ‘n’ Surf.<\/p>\n

Perspiration<\/span>
\nC: Clear as Perrier
\nN: We have just walked into the cinderblock men’s room of an almost deserted amusement park.
\nT: Voila! Exactly like licking armpits. Equally nasty, and sexy, warm or cold. I am trying to picture the gathering I could serve this to, and what the rest of the menu would be.<\/p>\n

Dirt<\/span>
\nC: Truly repellent diluted puddle. You have seen this brown before.
\nN: Almost no aroma, nothing like freshly plowed anything
\nT: Understated vegetal taint, as if you not only neglected to peel the carrots, but forgot to wash them. Yet there’s a grainy aftertaste, really a texture, that successfully evokes what eating dirt five minutes ago would have tasted like. For a reason I can’t explain, the movie Brokeback Mountain<\/em> comes to mind.<\/p>\n

For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There entry, email jiweinste@aol.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have never reposted anything before, but the Seahawks won, so check out their funky sodas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[408,404,406,405,407],"class_list":{"0":"post-1370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-seahawks","10":"tag-soda","11":"tag-superbowl","12":"tag-sweat","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}