Author: Marvo

Bald Guy Greeting Cards

Marvo 18 Comments

I don’t walk into a Hallmark store for greeting cards anymore because when I looked through the aisles filled with folded cards, colorful envelopes, and middle-aged women, I couldn’t find a card that truly expressed what I was thinking or feeling.

I find that most of those Hallmark cards are predictable, like the use of the word “beaner” in a Carlos Mencia joke. “I love you,” “Happy Birthday,” “I miss you,” “Merry Christmas,” or “I have herpes” are just some of the phrases that you might find inside a typical greeting card. I want my greeting cards to say more than that. If I already know what it’s going to say inside, why even bother opening it? Just pull the card out, shake it, and let the cash, personal check, gift card, or condom fall onto my lap.

Thank goodness for Bald Guy Greeting Cards, which have more to say that a typical greeting card and does it with sarcasm. With these cards you won’t find rainbows being used as a metaphor for friendship, love, or the bridge into womanhood.

Instead, you have cards that say what you’re truly thinking, but too afraid to say out loud, unless you’re an asshole. For example, one of their birthday cards I picked up says on the outside, “Happy Birthday (I guess),” then on the inside it says, “For the record, my birthday was on _______ and you didn’t get me a card. Not even an email. But that’s okay. Happy Birthday to you, I guess.”

There have been several occasions when I really needed a card like that.

Another card I picked out for a future wedding says on the outside, “Congratulations on your wedding,” while on the inside it says, “I hope you like your gift. Since you went to the store, picked it out and registered for it. Actually, if you don’t like it, it’s kind of your fault.”

Despite them being honest, I really wish there was more profanity in the cards. You know, to keep it real. One card I found used the word “asshole,” but that was pretty much it. Seriously, which would have more of an impact:

a. For the record, my birthday was on _______ and you didn’t get me a card. Not even an email. But that’s okay. Happy Birthday to you, I guess.

or

b. For the record, my fucking birthday was on ______ and you didn’t get me a fucking card. Not even a fucking email. But that’s okay. Happy Birthday to you, fucker.

Another thing that slightly bothered me about the Bald Guy greeting cards were the drawing on the front of every card. Each emo-ish character looked like something that haunts my dreams, much like New York’s eyelashes do.

Speaking of dreams, I once dreamt of becoming a greeting card writer, so that whenever the dreaded question “What are you going to do with an English Degree?” came up, I could reply “Write greeting cards, bitches!” to my aunts and uncles.

You know what? I think that might just make a good greeting card for English majors.

Item: Bald Guy Greeting Cards
Price: $3.00 (per card)
Purchased at: www.baldguygreetings.com
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Sarcastic cards. Honest. Perfect cards for certain situations. Profanity. Money inside a card.
Cons: Drawings haunt my dreams. Needs more profanity. New York’s eyelashes. Rainbows being used as a metaphor for friendship. love, and the bridge into womanhood. Getting a card that says, “I have herpes.”

McDonald’s McSkillet Burrito

Marvo 29 Comments

The fast food apocalypse shall soon be upon thee! Flee now to high ground and thou lives may be spared from obesity and being pillaged and robble, robble, robbled by the evil Hamburgler.

I am not a witch, nor a soothsayer, but in the back cover of my hardbound printing of “Fast Food Nation,” there is a message written in what I first thought was blood, but later found out was ketchup, that said, “When the four burritos of the rising sun meet, the fast food apocalypse shall drown the Earth.”

With the introduction of the McDonald’s McSkillet Burrito, I fear the worst is one step closer to being a reality. Hardee’s unleashed their 920-calorie Country Breakfast Burrito earlier this year. Jack in the Box recently brought into this world their Sirloin Steak & Egg Burrito. If Burger King, brings forth a breakfast burrito, I can only presume the fast food apocalypse will follow.

What would a fast food apocalypse be like?

I imagine kings and clowns will battle for supremacy; big, dumb, purple Grimaces will fall from the sky; Jack in the Box antenna balls will come to life and mess with your radio reception or tell you how shitty of a driver you are; Jared Fogle will weigh 425 pounds again; and zombie Colonel Sanders will roam the Earth, eating human flesh and proclaiming that it tastes like chicken. It may seem like a big bad dream that could only be caused by licking a toad or Amy Winehouse’s skin, but if one more breakfast burrito hits the market, the world is doomed…DOOMED I TELL YOU!!!

The possibly world-ending McDonald’s McSkillet Burrito contains cheddar cheese, jack cheese, American cheese, skillet potatoes, chunks of sausage, bell peppers, onions, scrambled eggs, and salsa all wrapped up in a soft tortilla. All of those ingredients equal a decently hefty burrito that could be a part of a complete non-nutritious breakfast. The salsa pretty much dominates the flavor of the burrito, which of course makes it quite spicy and makes me like it a lot. On a scale of one to ten, with one being pussy mild and ten being the burning sensation caused by unprotected sex with Paris Hilton, I would rate its spiciness a six.

I was hoping that the potatoes were crunchy like their hash browns, but unfortunately they weren’t and didn’t really add anything to the burrito. Another problem I had with the McDonald’s McSkillet Burrito was the fact that there weren’t enough “Mc’s” in its name. I think the McDonald’s McSkillet McBurrito has a nice McRing to it. Finally, as hefty as it was, I wish it were huge like a Chipotle burrito (Warning: slightly annoying flash animation, if you click the link), but then again if it was, the fat and sodium content would probably kill me before the fast food apocalypse could.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 burrito – 610 calories, 36 grams of fat, 14 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 410 milligrams of cholesterol, 1390 milligrams of sodium, 44 grams of carbs, 3 grams of dietary fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 27 grams of protein, 20% Vitamin A, 10% Vitamin C, 20% calcium, 25% iron, and -5 minutes of life.)

(Editor’s Note: Thanks to TIB reader Molly for letting me know about the McSkillet Burrito, but if the fast food apocalypse comes, I won’t be glad she did.)

Item: McDonald’s McSkillet Burrito
Price: $3.29 ($2.49 in other places)
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Good and spicy. Heftier than I thought it would be. Nice variety of ingredients. Kings and clowns killing each other.
Cons: Could be a little bit bigger. Not enough “Mc’s” in its name. Trans fat. Potatoes might’ve been better if crunchy. If you’re not into spice, this might not be nice. Fast food apocalypse. Being robble, robble, robbled.

Pomegranate 7UP

Marvo 33 Comments

Since when has pomegranate ever been festive?

When I think of Christmas, I don’t think about pomegranate, but according to the snowflake covered packaging of the limited-time-only Pomegranate 7UP, it might be the second coming of mistletoe. I can think of many things more festive than pomegranate. People waking up at 3:00 a.m. on Black Friday to wait in line at 4:00 a.m. for a slim chance to get a $399 laptop or $10 DVD player, but when they get there, there’s already fifty people in line wanting the same stuff is more Christmassy than pomegranate.

I don’t know of anyone who adds the pomegranate berry to trees, wreaths, or holiday centerpieces. I can’t think of anyone who uses its juice to either permanently stain all their clothes to holiday readiness or to paint a Santa suit on their skin. There also isn’t anyone who thinks pomegranate makes Rudolph’s nose red or adds color to Santa’s cheeks. So how can pomegranate suddenly be holiday-ish?

When I found out about the Pomegranate 7UP, I didn’t think to myself, “Move over, egg nog, I’m going to get fat off of another beverage this season.” But wait, now that I think about it, how would I get fat off of pomegranate? After all, it’s healthy and full of antioxidants.

Thankfully, the wonderful folks at 7UP have solved this dilemma for me, because according to the ingredients list on its packaging, the Pomegranate 7UP has no pomegranate in it and enough sugar to replace the fat content of egg nog, which will help me if I want to become a shopping mall Santa without the need for a fat suit. I know it says “100% Natural Flavors” on the label, but when there’s no juice in its ingredients to give this soda its flavor, you’ve got to wonder whether it’s as natural as Demi Moore’s face.

There definitely is a pomegranate flavor to it, although it’s kind of light. Its overall flavor is good and not sickly sweet, despite the 31 grams of sugar per cup. However, unless you love the taste of pomegranate, I don’t see any real reason to purchase this variation of 7UP. The whole point of putting pomegranate into something is for its health benefits, but when there’s no pomegranate to be found, it’s like a golddigger sleeping with MC Hammer in 1996 and then finding out that he’s bankrupt.

Oh, how I miss Pepsi Holiday Spice.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cup – 120 calories, 0 grams of fat, 35 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams of carbs, 31 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 0 grams of caffeine, and 0 grams actual pomegranateness)

Item: Pomegranate 7UP
Price: $1.49 (2-liters)
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes good. Not sickly sweet. Pepsi Holiday Spice. Getting a $399 laptop on Black Friday.
Cons: Seems like there’s no actual pomegranate. HFCS. No sweet, sweet caffeine. 31 grams of sugar per cup. Golddiggers. Not getting a $399 laptop on Black Friday.

REVIEW: Snapple Juice Drinks

Marvo 24 Comments

Fuck! Shit! Goji!

I ♥ profanity — probably a little too fuc…I mean, kiwin’ much. It’s so bad that I think I make dirty sailors blush. I can’t help it because using certain four-letter words seem like the only way I can express what I’m truly feeling. When the cops are about to knock down my door, the words, “Oh, snarf” just doesn’t seem right. Or if I’m ever in the heat of passion, the words, “Oooh, baby. You like the way I fudge you?” are probably the least erotic words I could say in bed.

But as I get older, I realize that I need to cut back on my swearing for the sake of my future children and because I’m slowly replacing every noun I know with the word “shit.”

“Did you see that shit?” or “Can you get a shit of shit from the shit?”

So I’ve tried to quit swearing in numerous ways. The first shit…I mean, goji I tried was using a swear jar, putting a certain amount of money in a jar every time I used profanity and donating that money to a worth cause. That didn’t work very well, but some UNICEF kid got really lucky this past Halloween with his orange box. If the commercials on television are correct, I think I gave him enough shi…I mean, goji to feed a third-world village for a year.

Then I figured if I’m doing it for the children, I should surrounded myself with young children and hang out at Chuck E. Cheese. You would think being around easily impressionable young minds might make me want to hold my tongue, but being around hyperactive, annoying children, who do nothing but cry and complain, had the opposite effect on me. Now those children are not only hyperactive and annoying, they also have a few more words in their vocabulary that I’m sure their parents don’t appreciate and I’ve been banned from Chuck E. Cheese.

So now I’m trying to substitute all my swear words with names of exotic fruits and so far it’s kind of working. Why names of exotic fruits? Because they sound like profanity in foreign languages. Guess which of the following words are names of exotic fruits and which are foreign swear words: salak, gunggong, skila, goji, merde, pajuo, matisia, vlaka, rambai, kuso, rambutan, goumari, noni, salaud, luntao, santol, hako, tassepe, kiwi, culone, jaboticaba, putanginamo.

I fuck up…I mean, I kiwi up once in awhile, but slowly and surely I’m becoming less dependent on profanity. How did I come up with this idea? I have to thank the new Snapple Juice Drinks I’ve been drinking, which come in four flavors, but I only tried the Noni Berry, Kiwi Pear, and Goji Punch. The juice drink label is a little misleading since according to the bottles they each contain between 5-10 percent juice.

Each flavor in the new Snapple Juice Drink line has a health benefit. The low-calorie noni and kiwi flavors help with metabolism, while the not-so-low-calorie goji one aids with immunity. So boys and girls, if you want to kill someone, drink some Snapple Goji Punch before you do it.

Oh wait, the other kiwin’ fighting germs-type of immunity.

The 40 grams of sugar in the Goji Punch might not help with either definition of immunity, since sugar is known to weaken the white blood cells in your body. As for helping with metabolism, it might seem a little more realistic since according to the bottle, studies show that consumption of 300 milligrams of EGCG antioxidants per day with caffeine helps boost metabolism and each bottle contains 30 milligrams of sweet, sweet caffeine and 55 milligrams of EGCG.

As for taste, the Noni Berry flavor tasted like the strawberry-kiwi Vitamin Water; the Kiwi Pear flavor had a strong pear scent, but had an equal balance of pear and kiwi flavor; and the Goji Punch tasted like berry, berry watered down berry vodka. The first two were good despite a very slight artificial sweetener aftertaste, while the goji one was really fuckin’ shitty…I mean, kiwin’ shitty…I mean, fuckin’ gojity…I mean, kiwin’ gojity.

Oh, fuck it.

(Nutrition Facts – Noni Berry & Kiwi Pear – Serving Size: 1 bottle – 20 calories, 0 grams of fat, 70 milligrams of sodium, 2 to 4 grams of carbs, 2 gram of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 30 milligrams of caffeine, 55 milligrams of EGCG, and 50 grams of non-sexy exoticness.)

(Nutrition Facts – Goji Punch – Serving Size: 1 bottle – 180 calories, 0 grams of fat, 60 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of carbs, 40 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 20% Vitamin A, 20% Vitamin E, and 25 grams of non-sexy exoticness.)

Item: Snapple Juice Drinks
Price: $1.19 each (17.5 ounces)
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Despite being low calorie and containing artificial sweeteners, the Noni Berry and Kiwi Pear tasted pretty good. Sweet, sweet caffeine and antioxidants in the noni and kiwi flavors. Using exotic fruit names to help cut back on swearing. Helped a third-world village this Halloween.
Cons: Not much juice in these juice drinks. Goji Punch has a lot of sugar. My inability to hold back my swearing. Being banned from Chuck E. Cheese. You like the way I fudge you?

Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars

Marvo 20 Comments

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen something shimmer like the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars. Its glistening reminds me of a sweaty, chiseled beefcake working on his fine, defined, Zeus-like body at Muscle Beach in a spandex bodysuit that hugs every hump and lump on him sexy, tantalizing, glowing sunbathing beauty with curves like a roller coaster in a very revealing Wicked Weasel bikini that leaves very little to the imagination covered in a seductive-smelling cocoa butter suntan lotion.

The Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars consist of mostly nuts and its shine is probably from the same things that keep all those nuts together in bar form — corn syrup and sugar.

Speaking of ingredients, the number of ingredients for these nut bars are small, like the bow ties around the necks of attractive, well-oiled Chippendale dancers gyrating and thrusting their hips to the beat of dance music causing me to stare at their black spandex pants covered crotches a foxy Hooters Girl uniform that conforms around the voluptuous bodies in them causing their beautiful breasts in the tight white tank top to stretch out the word Hooters, making the owl’s eyes open wider and my eyes stare in a totally inappropriate way at the white spandex covered breasts as I order a platter of their famous Hooters Buffalo Wings.

Each of the two Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bar flavors have only six ingredients. The Peanut Crunch contains only peanuts, sunflower seeds, sugar, corn syrup, salt, and almond flour. The Almond Crunch consists of only almonds, peanuts, sunflower seeds, sugar, corn syrup, and salt.

If you read carefully over the ingredients, you probably noticed that the ingredients for both flavors are almost identical and because of this, both flavors also taste very similar. Each one tasted kind of like honey roasted peanuts, so if you blindfolded me and had a hunky, strong fireman gorgeous, curvy female flight attendant straddle me and feed me each flavor, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

Because they’re made out of nuts, these bars have a good crunch to them, but because everything is being held together with just the tasty adhesives of corn syrup and sugar, they’re kind of fragile. So if I stick it in my fanny pack laptop messenger bag, it will probably break into several pieces as I walk from my car to the office. If it does break, be very careful when opening the foil packaging because nuts will drop.

Overall, I liked the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars. They’re tasty, contain healthy fats (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats), and each bar has seven grams of protein, which helps if I want to build muscles without going on “the juice” so that I can perhaps one day be a sweaty, chiseled beefcake working on my fine, defined, Zeus-like body at Muscle Beach in a spandex bodysuit that hugs every hump and lump on me.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bar (varies per flavor) – 190 to 200 calories, 12 to 14 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams trans fat, 0.5 to 2.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 10 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 to 180 milligrams of sodium, 11 to 14 grams of carbs, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 6 to 7 grams of sugar, 7 grams of protein, and more nuts than a NFL locker room.)

(Editor’s Note: Cheap Eats and The Message Whore also reviewed the Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch. which means I know of three pairs of nuts who reviewed these nuts.)

Item: Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch Bars
Price: FREE (Retails for $3.39)
Purchased at: Received from nice PR folks
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Tastes like honey roasted peanuts. Lots of nuts. Crunchy. Shiny. Seven grams of protein. Good fats. No ingredients with names I can’t pronounce. Wicked Weasel bikinis.
Cons: Fragile, like my ego. 200 calories per bar. Both flavors taste similar. Me in a spandex body suit. Fanny packs. Sexual harassment. The use of corn syrup as an adhesive.