Daily Briefs: City Market Eviction; Sugariness
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By CHRIS PACKHAM
Now where will I buy my $3 sunglasses? Tony Conforti, owner of Discounts Unlimited, a store in the City Market, is being forced out of his location after 37 years by The Man, via The Man’s appointed proxy, Copaken, White and Blitt. Presumably, following an eight-month vacancy, they will replace it with something that sucks. The first time I ever shopped there, around 2001, it was called “Clean Tony’s.” There was an etched laminate sign hanging by the register that said “DIRTY DAN’S EAT YOUR HEART OUT.” How could Discounts Unlimited possibly afford to sell new Playstation 2 games so cheaply? Some middle-man somewhere was obviously being eliminated from Clean Tony Conforti’s totally unpredictable distribution chain. (HAHA, today I am C.W. Gusewelle, let’s walk poetically down memory lane and into the Bob Evans buffet!)
The city and KMBC Channel 9, whose story contains several quotes repeatedly attributed to Succotash owner Beth “Varden,” are pretty much out of touch with the neighborhood. If you’re ever interviewed by the station, I’d totally use the military phonetic alphabet to spell your name. Hey, Channel 9: “BRAVO! ALPHA! ROMEO! DELTA! ECHO! NOVEMBER!” Plus, couldn’t the City find occupants for the vacant City Market stalls before ejecting the current tenants? Don’t answer that, because it’s a rhetorical question, like, “Isn’t there something useful I could do with all this menstrual blood?”
Actually, it’s not a rhetorical question: Hints From Heloise: Scientists have extracted stem cells from menstrual blood and used them to cure Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in mice. It’s like repurposing seltzer water to remove stains from carpet! Good news for the mice, and a depressing blow to post-menopausal Duchenne sufferers. HAHA! That would be an excellent joke for Jay Leno’s monologue, if he ever decided to do jokes about menstrual blood.
Die-a-Beetus: I’m no fan of people who would self-apply a baby-talk handle like “Foodie,” but last year, the foodies discovered that Mexican-owned groceries in the U.S. that import stock from Mexico offer Coca Cola made with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, because Mexico doesn’t impose tariffs on sugar or subsidies for corn.
The Coca Cola company’s Web site asserts that there is no flavor difference between the two when it’s obvious to everyone with a mouthful of biomolecular glucose receptors that sugar tastes sweet and high-fructose corn syrup tastes like sweet-tasting WD-40. Which reminds me: Die in a fire, Archer-Daniels Midland, you bitch-ass corporate welfare queen and National Public Radio benefactor.
Now, Pepsi is offering a competing product called “Pepsi Cola Retro.” It’s apparently available in Mexico City, and it’s been spotted in west coast Mexican groceries. I can find very little information about it on the Web, but our sister paper in Los Angeles recently took the Pepsi Retro Challenge. More on this sugary beverage story as it develops.
I think it up, you do the work:
My Dear Internet,
I have a lot of ideas — for instance, there’s my idea for a tense survival-drama screenplay about some inbred Texarkana hillbillies trying to survive a deadly flood. It would be called Warshed Away.
Here’s another idea: If you are taking requests, Internet, I really need you to provide a YouTube video that features twenty kindergarten children at some kind of school pageant singing “Rehab,” by Amy Winehouse, so I can post it here in Daily Briefs. Because HOW FUNNY WOULD THAT BE? That’s not a rhetorical question: It would be hilarious. I should stipulate that this video has been playing in my head all morning, but unfortunately I do not know the URL for that part of my brain. Trust me, it’s great. Please produce this video and make it publicly available. Thank you for your kind attention.
Dans l’attente de vous lire, je vous prie d’agréer, Messieurs, l’expression de mes sentiments distingués —
Chris Packham
