Post 174: What’s next? Pineapple Pepsi?

There is a bit of fitness and health trend that has led to less people drinking soda and more people avoiding artificial sweeteners. Which isn’t great for the soda industry. In response, a lot of soda companies are making some pretty weird flavors. Pepsi has come out with Mango, Berry, and Lime. I get lime. Restaurants often had a lime or lemon to your drink, so it is often associated with cola. Mango and berry…seem pretty weird. I have now tried both Mango and Berry. Berry is okay, it isn’t that different from cherry. It tastes kind of like you are drinking Pepsi and eating gummy worms at the same time. Mango was not bad, really. Or good. I have had the Pepsi Mango (591mL) bottle for over a week. I’m starting to get concerned it will go bad before I finish it. It is just too very strong, very sweet flavors competing. It definitely tastes like mango, with kind of a chemically cola aftertaste and a weird fizziness.  It was weird.

Coca Cola also game out with new flavors. Including six different flavors of Diet Coke, each seeming weirder than the last. The newest are strawberry guava and blueberry acai. I haven’t tried either, and have not been eager to try either, despite liking strawberry. The other flavors are ginger lime, twisted mango, zesty blood orange, and feisty cherry. Orange and lime aren’t too weird. They tie into the citrus flavor that is not uncommonly associated with cola. The mango isn’t as sweet as the Pepsi Mango. Feisty cherry is like a cinnamon cherry flavor. It is weird. It’s like a slightly spicy version of diet cherry coke.  There was also raspberry Coca Cola. Which is a really similar flavor profile to Pepsi Berry. There is also a lime Coca Cola and they brought back a vanilla Coca Cola.

Overall, I don’t think I actually really like any of them. I like Feisty Cherry probably the most of all of the ones that I have tried. But maybe I would actually like the Diet Coke Strawberry Guava, Diet Coke Blueberry Acai, or Pepsi Lime.  I don’t know. Overall, the new flavors seem weird more than anything else.

Post 173: Less than a sidekick, but still the main character.

Is having a relative or friend that is cooler or smarter than you are your greatest achievement? If so, A Wrinkle in Time and Epic are movies you will really empathize with. Epic is a movie where a girl is chosen to help save a race of tiny people (think Fern Gully but with less humor, a forced and awkward romance, no moral/message, and no Robin Williams) where she is told that she was chosen for a reason. The ending conclusion? She was chosen…to fetch her dad. But only sort of because it really came down to her leaving a push pin in a map. Despite his tantrum where he said he was done looking for them and the fact that he was convinced she left, he decides to show up anyway and doesn’t seem surprised that she is tiny and arrives at the exact right time to save the day. And then even after he shows up, basically she just uses his phone to play bat sounds and that was really his whole part. So, it is a good thing that the bud thing used its magic to shrink her down to be there to use her dad’s iPod rather than use its magic to stop the Queen from dying.

Wrinkle in Time, the movie at least, seems to carry a similar ending message. The main character is the older sister of a genius. Her role is to be a pessimistic, screw up and to just sort of be there in the end to tell her brother, she loves him. But it also seems to suggest that if she hadn’t been there a lot of what happened could have been avoided in the first place. So…why did she need to be there?

For those who know Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is a scene where Willow witnesses the love her life murdered in front of her. Her best friend is also shot. She is devastated and basically loses it and turns into what could basically be described as a black magic goddess and goes on a bit of a revenge spree. She targets the people responsible for her friend’s near death and girlfriend’s death then decides that isn’t enough. Her best friend who almost died, Buffy, has to fight her because she has turned evil. Her father-figure Giles has to try to fight her. And no matter what she is still stuck in darkness. She is about to bring about the end of the world when her other best friend and the friend she had the longest shows up and stands in her way and as she attacks him and tries to scare him away he continues to tell her he loves her. He tells her over and over until she comes back to her senses.

The end scene in Wrinkle of Time was like a weak version of that scene, but instead of fighting with his own darkness her brother was fighting against a force of darkness that I feel like was never explained as thoroughly as it should have been. And he pushes her around but being as powerful as it is supposed to be, it seems like it could have killed her or just made her disappear or something, but no. She serves as a reminder of his humanity, but as the movie seems to imply she is the main character it certainly seems like she should have more of a purpose than that. He could have looked in the mirror and seen himself and had an epiphany. Wonder Woman was about to kill a psychopath responsible for so many deaths and realized that wasn’t who she was through a memory of Steve. Thumbelina decided not to marry because the ring she received from her past fiancé reminded her of him and even though she thought he was dead that was enough for her to call off the wedding. Now those aren’t the exact same situation, it is comparable and her big moment at the end could have been replaced by an inanimate object, memory, or his own reflection.

You know what it seems like (to me at least)? Like they were trying so hard to make it a female protagonist, that they just slipped the character in even though they didn’t do anything. It would have been more interesting if her dad shrank down instead or if her brother was the main character. If they’re not going to have a role in the story, they certainly shouldn’t be the main character. It would be like if instead of James Bond movies focusing on him having some random girl be the main character and acting like Bond having to save her somehow made her the actual hero.

In both movies the most interesting characters are in it the least, while this wet blanket character acts as the central point. Yeah, it sucks your dad is always working. Boohoo. You literally shrank down to the size of a thumbtack and are involved in what is suggested to be some epic good vs evil battle that looks like it will actually have an effect on the world as a whole (though how and what that implies are never brought up) but sure keep complaining about how your dad doesn’t spend all his time with you and goof around while lives literally hang in the balance.

I’d rather not have a main female character than a fake main female character. I don’t want some stock character who is there just to be there for diversity. If they’re not going to serve a purpose, then lose them.  

Post 171: No to Starbucks Sippy Cups

Not a fan of the Starbucks sippy cup. In order to prevent further straw pollution and be more eco-friendly, Starbucks has redesigned the lids of their cold drinks to look and work like adult sippy cups. But this does not work well. When the cold drinks sit, the liquid sinks and the ice floats. And when the ice sits on top and the liquid goes to the bottom (as well as the flavor) the first half of the drink tastes like watered down slush and the last half is way too sweet.

Paper straws or biodegradable straws would have been so much better. You wouldn’t want to drink a Slurpee without a straw. That is what it is like drinking a Frappuccino without a straw. I would much rather have a paper straw or even pay an extra $1 for a metal straw. You can buy re-usable metal straws in bulk online for like $0.23 each, so they’d be making money off selling metal straws and they’d still be green. In fact, they could sell branded metal straws and it would get their brand out as well as being green. It’d be like their reusable coffee mugs but at a cheaper price point, so if offered whenever someone bought a cold drink (especially if their other option was straight sippy cup) they are likely to buy it.

And really, that seems cheaper than redesigning the lids anyway. Which probably had to go through testing both on the practicality/utility level as well as customer acceptance level. And as they make new lids and test the different kinds, that would have cost money and time. And since I saw at least six people getting straws from somewhere else (like the nearby Tim Hortons) it isn’t really reducing the waste of straws.

Sippy cups are not the solution.

I don’t generally get Starbucks anyway, though. I generally find it over to be overpriced. For the same price of just a medium Frappuccino at Starbucks, I can get a large iced cappuccino and a bagel at Tim Hortons (plus, I like Tim’s Iced Capps better).

Avalon High (2010)

There is a moment when I find out a book I love is going to be made into a movie where I feel a powerful and strange mixture of utter joy and complete misery. There are really two ways a book based on a movie can go, absolutely fabulous or painfully despicable.

The Help was very well done.

Avalon High, not so much.

Three main things that bugged me:

1. They changed the main character.
2. They changed the main character.
3. They changed the main character.

My listing it three times is more than just me being dramatic. It actually reflects to the three main issues that came up when they changed the main character. This isn't a movie I really recommend, 90% on bias and 10% because I found it cheesy.

So, I am going to give away spoilers. That was your spoiler alert.

The main premise of the book is that every generation has an Arthur (as in King, Excalibur, Knights of the Round Table, etc.). And with every generation the forces of evil grow stronger. In this generation, a young girl (high school) moves to a town where the events are already being set in motion. There is a boy named Will who is the high school, football star, who is Arthur. His girlfriend Gwen and his best friend Lance, who are having an affair (get the reference - even the names Gwen/Guinevere, Lance/Lancelot).

The main character comes to town and she doesn't know all this. She befriends "Merlin". As things go on she finds out about the prophecy and she wants to help. But everyone tells her not to get involved. They assume she is a minor character because of her name. But, she insists anyway. In the end, she saves Arthur, because she is actually the Lady of the Lake. A character who never appeared before, so no one expected her.

In the movie, it isn't an 'every' generation thing.  In the movie, Gwen and Lance are having an affair, but the main character is now Arthur. It is still a she, they just made the football star obsolete and made her Arthur instead of Lady of the Lake.

They also changed the bad guys a little bit, but it didn't effect the plot nearly as much as what they did to her.

First of all, the whole Lance and Gwen thing no longer has a point. The whole point was that history was repeating itself in them. But, now that Arthur is a girl and not even a friend to either Gwen or Lance, having them be together really only served as misdirection and a point of frustration. Also she has no connection to them, so how do they even remain part of the story? The only time it even affects the plot at all is when Will finds out and throws a fit. Of course, he has been flirting and going googly-eyed for the main character pretty much the entire movie, so it seems a little hypocritical. Then, he forgives Lance not ten minutes later. Further making it pointless.

Second, it kills some of her characters moxie because no one is telling her to sit back and not get involved. It was one of the reasons she was so likable to me, because she didn't care if the prophecy said she wasn't involved, she wasn't going to sit back and watch her friends suffer. They totally took that out of the plot.  The character everyone thought she was in the book isn't mentioned in the movie. And she is encouraged to help Arthur, so she isn't taking initiative she is just following along since it isn't even really her idea.

Third, and what annoys me the most, some of the people who were commenting on the movie said that this was better because it gave her more power making her king. I'm sorry, but how does downgrading her from a powerful, mystic being who was the Ruler of Avalon, the woman who raised Lancelot and who gave Arthur the sword that lead to his gaining power in the first place down to just a King an act of empowerment? Or is it all because they made what everyone thought would be a male character a female character?

The presence of the Lady of the Lake was the whole reason in the book that evil was finally defeated once and for all and would not rise again.

But they cut that all out. Which also meant that the main character's love interest was suddenly a nobody who was somehow connected, but not actually involved in the prophecy. He was just there like a tag-along.

The book was better and she was better in it.  Disney, please leave my favorite books alone (or do them right). I don't even want to go into what you did to the Princess Diaries series.

Still, I say - if I hadn't read the book it would have been okay. But I am far too attached to the book to look the other way, personally. So, for me I say not recommended. But will tag it 'with conditions' as well.