Max was a strange boy. He was obsessed with all things orange. Not only did he eat the fruit and drink the juice constantly, but he also used orange soap (hand and dish), burned orange scented candles and painted everything in his home the color. As I said there was something off about that Max boy. No one would ever expect this boy to come down with scurvy. A typical meal for him would be oranges to eat, orange juice to drink and for dessert he would put a little sprits of whipped cream on top of an orange slice. One day it dawned on him that he could recreate his dessert in the form of a beverage. He first tried mixing orange juice with whipped cream, but the cream ended up curdling and even though it tasted fine, the idea of it made him want to vom a little. On his second attempt he used orange soda with a little bit of orange juice mixed in and added the whipped cream to that, then mixed it all together into a uniform consistency. The result was subtler than orange cream sodas he had tasted in the past. Since he used whipped cream instead of the traditional vanilla cream, it wasn't as strong and didn't taste like a creamsicle as much. The flavor actually fell in-between that of an orange cream and regular orange soda. He decided to call it orange crème, so he could pretend he was fancy and foreign. As I said, Max was a strange boy. A strange boy whose complexion eventually turned orange, and not from tanning too much.

Can someone please tell me when the energy drink consortium signed an exclusive deal with the Wonka corporation for all energy drinks to taste like someone shot candy with a laser to make it a liquid. One would think it would be a normal flavor, but it is one that is exclusively used in sugar-based candies and in energy drink. It's the strangest thing. Even though this is a sugar free drink it still tastes like candy. How can something with no sugar taste exactly like something that is composed entirely of sugar? That is the “shock” in Shock Wave. It's a shock that this can taste so sweet and candylike, but be sugar free.

Oh and yes, this tastes like a variant of 95% of all energy drinks out there. It tastes slightly diet, but mostly like candy. Sweet, sweet candy.

This week I took my ladyfriend to Philly to go see Wild Flag, eat way too much food and hang out. She had never been to the city of brotherly love before, and it was a good time. No trip to Philly is complete without a stop at Wawa for soft pretzels, peanut chews, and iced tea. At the first Wawa we stopped at I decided to go with the Green Tea Mango. I have never seen it in the past, so I believe it may be a newer flavor. Either that, or I am just completely oblivious to my drink surroundings, and if that is the case I should probably just retire from this game. So I grabbed the tea, my two pack of pretzels and two packs of Goldenberg Peanut Chews. I made a wise choice. The tea was fantastic. One would think that a mini mart's store brand of tea would be garbage that was more sugar water than tea, but one would be wrong in forgetting the magically power that is Wawa. The tea is sweet, but in a good way. It's actually made from green tea, and not some powder. It's also sweetened with real sugar and not HFCS like most store brands. It has the dry/bitter taste of a somewhat quality green tea, with a mango flavoring that tastes authentic. I had barely made it two blocks before all of my purchases had been consumed. I should have opted for the larger bottle.

Ever since I moved back to Portland, it has been cold. Sure we've had a few days where it hit 55-60 degrees, but for the most part it has been chilly. Since it has been feeling like fall, I've had a craving for apple cider. In Buffalo, it's hard to find cider when in the winter or spring. Luckily, I stumbled upon this bottle of Columbia Gorge. Oh Columbia Gorge, how I missed you. This is my favorite juice company in the Pacific North West and they rarely let me down.

On the other hand, I'm really picky when it comes to apple cider. I've never had cider as good as the stuff made in central and western New York. That is, until now. This cider is fantastic, and reminds of a lot of my favorite ciders back home. It has the perfect tart taste, with lots of flavor too. I thought I had to give up pure apple cider when I decided to move back to Portland, but I'm glad to find out that I was wrong.

When you were a child, you were adventurous. You were not smart but you were curious and wide-eyed. You thought that mixing stuff was a good idea. You would experiment down all the time with orange juice and milk or lemonade and iced tea or iced tea and milk or Pepsi and Coke or milk and mouthwash. Some of them would be good but most of them would be bad but you didn't stop. You would never stop. You are a kid. You just keep going. Youth is on your side and you will forever mix. You are an amateur mixologist. You are a professional mixologist in the making.

When you were a youth, you thought that it would be a good idea to make a drink out of cereal milk. You would drink it and on very rare occasions you would put it in the fridge and save it for later thinking that it will be just as good as if you drank it immediately preceding finishing a heaping bowl of cereal. One time you had a giant bowl of Honey Comb mixed with Honey Smacks and thought that it might be good to drink. You ate the cereal after letting it marinate in the milk and then thoughtfully and carefully strained some of the extra "bits" out and kept the leftover milk in a glass and threw it in the fridge. For dinner, you sat down with your family to eat a pork chop and drink your concoction. You took one sip and you knew you had something. It was intense in its honey quantity and still had some of that cereal-ness to it. You would make this every day for a week before you eventually moved on to something else Cocoa Puff based.

When things are in different languages, I no longer fear the contents of the container. Why? Because I drank that Korean "Essence of Chicken" drink that tasted like pee and I don't think that anything will be as bad as that. This little green gem is quite nice. Why? Well it's tarragon flavored. "Ewww. That's a spice or an herb and I don't want to drink something that's off a spice rack." Well that's a lame response. Open your mind up then travel to around Turkey where this drink was made, shell out like $2 or 1.57120 Azerbaijani New Manat and enjoy a nice, anise-like drink.

I, for one, enjoy anise. I can never have enough. Black licorice, those little red anise candies in the dark red wrapper, or black jellybeans and I'm set, dude. This drink can be added to the list. I liked it. If you've ever had Ouzon then you know what this is all about. This might be stronger, if you're an adult when it comes to your flavors, it's great.

I wonder where I can get it around here. I'm sure there is some dusty old Eastern European bodega somewhere around here that would have this. You know the one. It's the place with all sorts of unpronounceable cuts of meat and cured fish that you have never seen and everything has a light dusting of dust on it. You've never seen anyone in there but they have somehow been open for like fifty years. It's got to be a front, right? I mean, you can't stay in business legitimately. They're probably fighting hens in the stockroom for a cut of the profits.

I'm going to start putting tarragon in everything I make from now on. What a delicious start to my culinary career.

Worldwide fans of Thirsty Dudes,
If you could put me on a television like Matthew Lillard's character Emmanuel Goldstein or "Cereal Killer" in the movie "Hackers" that would be perfect for this. Imagine me on your television or any and every television that you walk by on your way down the street like in an electronics store or Times Square. I am going to give a speech.

Hackers unite and listen to me. I have found it, the holy grail of tea. It is perfect and I wouldn't do anything to improve on it. The quest is over. If I ever have another tea at this caliber, I will not live another day because my heart will explode with glee. This tea smells like carnival cinnamon salt-water taffy and tastes not much different but with the added flavors of a fresh black tea. It's naturally sweetened with honey, which rules, and towards the bottom of the bottle, it just gets better because the honey kicks into over drive. Do not ever pass this tea by. If you ever see it and have 1% of a question in your head, I will crack that riddle for you. Buy it. HACK THE PLANET!

Dear old friend. I've missed you. You've grown up a lot since I've last seen you. Dare I say you've become a man while we've been apart? I might just say that. You have made new friends, I see. I don't blame you. I wouldn't have expected you to wait around for me after all these years. You've also lost a ton of weight. Good for you on that venture. You weren't fat before, but you had some extra chunk and bad skin.

So what have you been doing with yourself? You joined a gym and started eating better? That's awesome. Oh, you've replaced your regular sugar with Stevia? Good for you. Forward thinking. I wasn't introduced to your friend. Hello, my name is Mike. Oh, Acai? Interesting name. Is that Scandinavian? You don't know? Well, nice to meet you all the same. What else besides the gym, dude? It's been so long. Oh, you taste the same? Normally that would not be a big deal except that you have met your new friend Acai here and are using Erythritol and you kept your priorities in check. Everyone always loved you. Now you're even better!

Well here's my number. Don't let this happen again, Fruit Punch.

The bees have started revolting. The world is upset because "bees are going extinct" but in reality, the bees are fine, they're just mad. They're mad because companies have been making "pretty close" honey in powder form rendering the hard working bees of the past obsolete. Bees. They are annoying when you're allergic but they're fine. It's the typical, "don't bother them and they won't bother you" mantra. It's what the kid bee's parents say to them, too.

So man comes along and creates natural things unnaturally and sells them back to people who know and love the natural version of the unnatural thing. Makes sense...These super scientists have created a green tea with lemon and honey that isn't terrible for you, sweetened artificially, and made from powder that isn't absolutely revolting. I know, I know. "Absolutely revolting" isn't a hard level to surpass, but it's been done. It's not too sweet and actually tastes like you want it to all the while being 20 calories. What more could you ask for? Oh, I don't know. A tea made with real honey, lemons, and green tea. Beggars can't be choosers. Remember that mantra while you're categorizing the other one I reminded you of.

Early morning. You've got a taste for something but it's 8:30 and you're not a child anymore. Sure, you love video games and cartoons so mentally, you might be a bit youthful, but on the outside you look legitimate. Also, you don't want to be awakened by the stampede of a hundred elephants by drinking something like a five hour energy drink or even a regular energy drink. You don't want something too light like plain old water. You want some flavor. You want some pep. You want some pizazz. This drink satisfies those needs and desires. It's really bold, spicy, and perfect for a morning wake-up call.

Yerba Mate is going to energize you naturally and it's not too bitter for beginners. There is cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and anise in there for the spice lovers. All together, they play together to create a nice, spicy tea that I could and will drink again and again. I was a bit skeptical of chai because I think I had it before but it might have been some milk and tea mixture that I was not crazy about. Now I feel like a dumb dummy because I've been missing out on a new morning staple.

When I was a youth, I used to drink a lot of the non-Lean Sobe honey green tea. It was awesome. Later on in life I realized that it was one of the worst drinks for you on the shelves. I don't eat particularly well, but anything I can do to ensure that I don't become a chunk helps, so I dropped it.

Cut to today, I've got a bottle of the Lean and I'm excited to see what zero calories versus 240 tastes like. Different? A little sweeter and just as oddly minty as it's fully fattened predecessor. Do you know what that means? Awesome. It means awesome. It means that for one of the limited times, you can get a good tasting diet version of the non-diet version of a drink you love. It has Erythritol and tastes like it but I don't hate it as an alternative sweetener so I won't count it against them.

Science and diet drinks have come a long way since Sweet & Low. Diet drinks don't all suck. Re-give them a chance.

The lottery is pretty intense today. Odds are that you have a 1 in 175,711,536 chance of winning. That is, for the first time ever, not a made up arbitrary number. Imagine winning. It is undoubtedly true that you would at least contemplate buying your own plane, but that's not a smart investment. You don't leave the city limits so what business do you have owning a plane you will never use? Me? I'd move to a nicer house in the same city that I live in, but seriously, not extravagant. I would also probably not buy many new clothes. I would probably buy that stainless Rolex Datejust that I want but can't afford the bi/tri-annual maintenance fees. I would probably do everything the same with a nicer car and maybe pants that don't have holes in them.

I would continue to do this site because I enjoy doing it. I would drink gross stuff with chunks and I would also drink great drinks like this Mate Fusion. I do get a bit of pomegranate but the yerba mate is strong, brother. Strong. Bitter and strong. It was nicely sweetened but still a genuine tea at heart. It's a nice guy. It's the guy that would win the lottery that you know and are friends with that might just give you like thirty grand for "fun money." What a generous dude. What a generous tea. Thanks for giving back, tea. You're a good dude.

Sometimes you have a long day at work and when you get home you just want to sit back relax with your ladyfriend and your cats and watch a movie. Sometimes you still feel stressed, so you drink a relaxation drink to help mellow you out. Sometimes that relaxation drink is a can of the sugar free version of Koma Unwind. Always that drink will taste like the strangeness that would be diet Pixie Stix. Instead of tasting like flavored ground down sugar it now tastes like flavored ground down sucralose. It's somehow not completely terrible. I don't like it as much as the normal, but for those of you out there who are accustomed to diet drinks this would probably taste pretty darn awesome.

Sometimes about a half hour after drinking this drink your still conscious, but your body feels like it is asleep. Sometimes it's a strange sensation and it makes you feel restless, because you're not in bed and asleep. Sometimes you give in and go to bed. Sometimes you have dreams that you're a criminal breaking into a broken down Dave Foley's house to break into a safe. Sometimes he comes home and you sneak out the back into a neighborhood park. Sometimes he comes out and you chat each other up. Sometimes you ask if you can use his bathroom so you can go back in and recover the jacket you left behind. Sometimes Dave Foley has a completely disgusting toilet. Sometimes the next thing you know a truck with a gallows on it is pulling up for your execution. Sometimes you make it so the truck rolls down the hill into the lake in order to not die. Then sometimes for some inexplicable reason you dream about drawing highly lifelike pictures of Hugh Laurie.

Sometimes life is very strange with Koma.

I'm sorry, but I have nothing positive to say about this drink. It doesn't really taste like tea at all, even though it has natural tea solids. It also tastes overly diet. Splenda is the devil, and it has no place in beverages. Drink companies of the world take note. It's gross. I don't want to drink it. Keep it out of your drinks, so I don't have to taste it when I write reviews. I understand the need for diet drinks. We live in a country where the majority of the inhabitants are overweight in an unhealthy way. Diet drinks are fine; just use natural sweeteners such as Stevia. Finally, the peach flavor tastes insanely fake due to all of the artificial sweetener that's in here. Hansen's I expected more from you.

Impatience. We've learned to treat this as anything but a virtue. Like that time that Mitch Hedberg told the wino who he saw eating grapes “Dude, you have to wait!” Apparently the folks at Starbucks never got that memo and they harvested their coffee beans too early. You see the little buggers were still green. They were in no shape to be roasted and eventually brewed into a $4 cup of coffee at one of their stores. The thing is that unlike everydayman the Starbucks head honchos are an industrious type. They knew that the green coffee still has high caffeine content. They didn't want their crop to go to waste, so armed with this knowledge they decided to make a chilled energy drink. They took some sparkling water, mixed in some orange, apple, grape and watermelon juice, and then put in the extract from the green coffee and some other ingredients to help create energy (physicists be damned). For an afterthought due to impatience it is crazy how good these drinks ended up tasting. It almost tastes like a mellow Orangina, with a little bit of a watermelon kick. Unlike almost every other energy drink in the world, this one tastes like you're really just drinking some sparkling juice. It also has a low calorie sweetener in it, but the taste of it is nicely hidden. It's only really noticeable slightly in the aftertaste. Well played Starbucks. It's shocking that a drink in one of your shops costs about as much as three of these did in the supermarket, and these taste way better.

There is a cabin that a friend's family owns that Jay and myself go to a few times a year. Before there was the powerhouse that is Thirsty Dudes there was just Jay and I drinking drinks for fun. On our way up to the cabin, we like to stop at a supermarket and get things like hot dogs and drinks. This was the first time that I had seen or heard of Steaz. I think that I got a pomegranate acai and I also think that it was three-ish years ago. I hated every sip of it and I don't think that I have drunk another Steaz until today because of it. I'm not one to really hold a grudge, but I didn't feel like I was missing out on drinking any more of that junk.

We have been playing catch-up with some older, more common drinks as of late and I have seen this on the shelves forever and just assumed it was junk and skipped right on by. I decided to give it a go last week and I'm happy that I did. This is just what I was looking for. It's really light and has a nice, non-gum and non-mouthwash mint taste. It's actually refreshing and if I was a common man and not a destroyer of drinks, I would easily make this a standard in my collection of go-to drinks. It's not too bitter but tastes real. I liked it. The colder it was the better, too. It really brings out the coolness of the mint. This is good. Sorry I hated you for so long.

The fine folks of Azerbaijan have dreams, big dreams. In case you didn't know it Azerbaijan is a country in Eurasia that borders Armenia. If you didn't know that you certainly did not know of the countries collective love of all things bubblegum. The people of Azerbaijan dream of a world where all things have a bubblegum flavored equivalent: ice cream, steak, asparagus and even sugar. They have come close to their goal. In fact just recently that have perfected a bubblegum flavored pickle that I'm told will knock your socks off.

Now that their goal is nearly achieved they have decided to up the ante a bit. They now want different flavors mixed with the classic bubblegum flavor to give people options. You know that classic Azerbaijan saying, “Life is all about options. Without them people are no better than a tortoise.” Well they take that very serious, so their scientists have been hard at work at splicing flavors. So far they have perfected the coupling of bubblegum with mint, cantaloupe, cardamom and the often sought after artichoke. Rumors have it that recently the scientists have set their sights on the flavor of pear, you know apple's bastard cousin. I believe what I hold in my hand here is a concentrate of the pear bubblegum flavoring. I say that because the flavor is so strong and sweet that to think it was an actual beverage blows my mind grapes. I hadn't even twisted the cap off all the way before the entire room I was sitting in suddenly smelled incredibly strongly of pears. It is strange because once you get the cap off and smell the liquid directly it smells more of bubblegum than pear, but it's still detectable. The flavor is that of the strongest cola champagne I have ever tasted with slight undertones of pear. I guess it's true what people say that the people of Azerbaijan love their bubblegum flavor, but sometimes like a pinch of something else. Had I not known the history of this fine country I would have not expected this beverage to taste like this at all. I would have expected simply nothing but sparkling pear juice. That is why you must learn the history of the world, so that bubblegum flavored drinks don't sneak up on you.

I never took any still life drawing classes in high school or college. I nude modeled for a life drawing class and bought a pizza with the proceeds but that's a different story all together. Even though my life lacks the ability to mix paint, I don't need to look at a bowl of fruit for hours on end to know that a "banapple" is not a real fruit. I enjoy fruit, too. I had cantaloupe today, yesterday, and the day before. If that isn't dedication to fruit, I don't know what is. I enjoy looking at the exotic fruits with my lil' buddy Max when we go to the store. He holds on to dragonfruit, apricots, kumquats, and more. A banapple has never been on the shelves.

If this company invented a fruit just for this drink, that is incredible but I feel like that is science that should be better put to use making tacos out of thin air or something. Food science is food science, right? Don't waste your time bastardizing apples by adding a banana to them. If you made a pearana (the concatenation of a pear and a banana) that would be great because I hate those dudes.

Luckily for me, there isn't a strong presence of banana in this drink but there is a strong presence of a pretty great, smooth, berry drink. You don't even know the chia seeds are there, those of you who are concerned about a Mama Chia like drink. These chia seeds have been finely ground that they blend in with everything else and provides you with a nice, thick berry smoothie. I like it. Banapple, you know that apple is doing all the work, right? You are the kid in high school that relies on everyone else in the group to do the project while you sit back and play Ninja Gaiden.

These drinks are the beverage worlds equivalent of Tribbles. Don't act like you don't know what a Tribble is. I know you're secretly a nerd and have at least a beginner's knowledge of Star Trek, so you can just stop pretending that you are clueless as to what I'm talking about. Again, this drink=Tribbles. No matter how many I drink of them whenever I open my fridge/cupboard there are more waiting for me. I think they may actually be asexual organisms that are just reproducing. If they were spectacular drinks I would celebrate this and encourage them to reproduce at high volumes. Truth be told, I'm not a fan of diet drinks, or things that taste like seltzer water. I don't flat out hate them, but with so many other drinks floating around my world I'm drinking these out of a sense of duty. In reality these aren't bad at all, but they are completely middle of the road. This one in particular tastes like a slightly dry diet orange soda with just a hint of mango. You really can't even make out that it's mango, but there is definitely another fruit flavor there other than orange. To be completely honest I would have probably enjoyed this a bunch more if they had completely forgone a sweetener instead of using sucralose. Oh well, I'm sure that when I go to move more drinks to my fridge tomorrow I'll find 8 more bottles of this stuff. KKKKKHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!!

It's hot, I mean unnaturally hot for this time of year, and you've been cruising around like a jackass on your longboard all afternoon. Earlier you got a double iced ristretto venti nonfat organic chocolate brownie Frappuccino from the Starbucks on campus but for some reason something with such a stupid name just didn't refresh you like you wanted it to. You really need something to cool you down, but you blew the last of your money on the sweetest visor you have ever seen at the local “skate shop.” Well at one point in the past it was a skate shop, but now it's really just a stupid clothing boutique, but they still have a couple killer longboards in the window. You were just about resigned to give up on your day and head home and drink whatever beer you could find stashed in other kids dorm rooms, when you decided to take a shortcut behind the mini mart that sells beer to underage kids. As you were holding your breath to ride passed the dumpster that smells like it contains the corpses of at least eleven different types of mammals, you noticed a case of drinks sitting by the back door. The turd who worked the counter made fun of you last week for buying Zima and Skittles so screw him you're just going to steal a couple of bottles. You grabbed a handful of the drinks and shoved them in every pocket that your cargo shorts had to offer. Then you reached down to grab one for the road. You really showed the proprietors of that store, stealing drinks they had out by the dumpster. That will show them to laugh at your alcoholic beverage choices. As you turned out of the alley onto the regular road you cracked open the bottle of Jones 24c Strawberry Lemonade. It looked like it was your lucky day, nothing beats the heat that a nice bottle of lemonade. You gulped a huge mouthful and promptly fell flat on your face. It could have been the pebble that stopped the wheel of your longboard, or it could have been the distinct feeling that something was not quite right with the lemonade. Actually you instantly decided that whoever decided to call it lemonade should be fired. Not only did it not contain a single drop of lemon juice, but it also didn't taste like they even tried to fake it. Now that you think about it, it didn't even really taste like strawberries either. It just tasted like a generic fruit flavored fake Vitamin Water. Something was also very off with the taste. Originally you thought that it might have been the sweetener, but after realizing that it was made with cane sugar, you decided it was either the vitamins that had been added, or the drink had simply gone bad. All of these thoughts swam through your head as you stared down at your new visor that was now swimming in a mud puddle. Suddenly a moment of pure enlightenment washed over you. Whether it was spoiled or this was just the way it tasted this drink had been where it belonged out by the dumpster. Also, you are a complete douche bag and “longboard is the wrong board” bro.