THE FOOD CRITIC WEARS A FEDORA

Every so often, I like to read the Reviews of New Food published by McSweeney’s. Especially today, when they put up one of mine:

Ocean Spray Wildberry Diet Juice & Tea

Sweet, good-for-you fruit juice. Refreshing, mildly caffeinated iced tea. Many have tried to combine these beverage concepts, few with happy results: Snapple and Arizona Iced Tea come to mind. What you want is a drink that gets these two different Flavor Ideas to interact with just the right amount of mutual assertiveness. It's a tougher job than it looks.

Now let’s kick the difficulty level up a notch. Where all of these fine products run up against the rocks is in the Low-Calorie Zone, where the requisite artificial sweeteners just ... don’t ... fucking ... work. Most low-calorie/low-carb juice-and-tea combos taste like ass.

But not anymore.

Finally. Finally! A drink with no unpleasant aspartame-saccharine pong, thanks to the beneficent goodness of Splenda, artificial sweetener of the gods. Wildberry Diet Juice & Tea makes my parched throat happy, and I can drink it by the gallon without giving Mr. Blood Sugar an aneurysm. It has given me a reason to rejoice.

Exultate! Juice tea!

The version above is the way I wrote it. On the McSweeney’s site, a typo crept into the last line, killing the pun. Let’s see if they get around to fixing it.