The recent press release announcing that Subway has signed a new 10-year agreement with PepsiCo reads

"Under the new agreement, Subway restaurants will offer a consumer-driven assortment of beverages from the diverse PepsiCo beverages portfolio... ."

What the fuck is a "consumer-driven assortment of beverages"?

I don't eat at Subway when I can avoid it (which is most of the time), so I am not in any position to confirm or deny that regular Subway customers often lament their inability to wash down their fish-free tuna sandwiches with such name brands as MTN DEW®, Starry®, and Gatorade®. I mean, sure, maybe. Americans once chose a reality television star to be president, so I guess anything is possible.

As I said, I don't eat there, so it's no skln off my back that Subway has chosen to offer their guests an inferior liquid product to accompany their inferior solid products. If that's what they want, more power to them. I just have doubts that this change was "driven" by "consumers," unless the drivers and consumers in question are Subway and PepsiCo accountants.

Sales data indicates that Pepsi continues to fail its own Pepsi Challenge against Coke (which annually outsells Pepsi 4-to-3 by volume). But PepsiCo is the richer company in large part because it backs up its weaker soda sales with Yum! Brands restaurants and Frito-Lay, which have been the exclusive snack product line of Subway for at least 17 years running... and thanks to a recent agreement promoted in the same press release, will continue to be until at least 2030.

So if there was any such thing as truth in advertising, the press release should probably have read

"If you want our delightful potato chips, you have to take our lousy soda, too."

Whatever. You do you, Subway. Meanwhile, I'll be eating someplace that serves Coca-Cola.

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Nope, I got nothin' today. I'm depressed, and it's rainy. So, like my dogs, you'll just have to find a way to entertain yourself elsewhere.

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On behalf of the Classic City Collective and the Touchdown Club of Athens, we are thrilled to extend a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: Plant the next generation of Sanford Stadium hedges!

That's the first line in an email I received last week from The Georgia Bulldog Club, the fundraising arm of the University's athletics department. The catch there is that the so-called once-in-a-lifetime opportunity1 is limited to 32 slots and costs $5,000. Skinflint that I am, even I don't think $5,000 is too big an ask, but I think I will decline the honor, partially because of who would get that money.

I received the email because I have given money to The Bulldog Club's William C. Hartman Fund every year for over two decades in order to be eligible for football season tickets. (Actually, when I started donating, it was called the Georgia Student Education Fund. It was renamed after former fund chairman Hartman died in 2006.2) Hartman Fund money is intended to support all student athlete scholarships, academic support, medical support, and more. I'm certainly okay with all that, and I expect I'll be donating to the Hartman Fund for years to come.

The Touchdown Club of Athens is Hartman adjacent. (Hartman was a founding member.3) It's pretty much a fraternal organization built around a collective love of Georgia football. I certainly don't have any problem with that, though I don't think they need any of my money. Although I also love Georgia football, I've long shared Groucho Marx's rule about not belonging to any club that would have me as a member.

The organization I have qualms about is the Classic City Collective, which by their own admission aims to be a facilitator for "Name, Image, Likeness" (NIL) contracts for University of Georgia athletes. That means, essentially, that they find ways to buy athletes, luring them to Georgia with more lucrative income opportunities than they might find at other schools. Something about that rubs me the wrong way. While I certainly believe that the athletes should share in the millions of dollars the University makes off their hard work, I think there's something unseemly about buying college players. Maybe I'm just an old prude who was raised in a simpler time of "amateur" athletics, but even if that's the way things are done now, it still feels like cheating. I'd personally rather the football team was made up of students who wanted to study at Georgia, not mercenaries playing for the highest bidder, even if that means we only win as often as Vanderbilt.

All that said, it would be disingenuous of me to say that the participation of the Classic City Collective is the only reason I'm politely declining this opportunity. There's also the fact that this fundraiser is about planting hedges. Sorry, but I don't do yard work. If I'm paying $5,000, it better be someone else who is getting their hands dirty.

1 This should be considered a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity only if you have the lifespan of an English Bulldog. Even the athletic department admits that the hedges live a maximum of 40 years (georgiadogs.com). And while most of the current hedges were last replaced for the 1996 Olympics, some are only as old as 2001, when the hedges were trampled after rowdy students stormed the field three times in a season. (For the record, the hedges were first installed as a crowd control measure when Sanford Stadium was built in 1929 — when the stadium sat 30,000.)

2 In 2004, the GSEF was briefly renamed the Georgia Education Enhancement Fund (GEEF) before becoming the Hartman Fund. I only mention that here because that timeline is surprisingly difficult to find in a diligent Google search. In the Internet age, it seems no one much cares when exactly the GSEF became the GEEF, and I can't entirely blame them; I was working on campus at the time, and I can't remember the switch either. These days it's all just Hartman, Hartman, Hartman, which I'm sure would make the former UGA football star proud.

3 According to the official public relations arm of the University (news.ugau.edu), the Georgia Student Education Fund (GSEF) was founded in 1946 in part by 23-year-old Bill Hartman — then Wally Butts' backfield coach. However, I have to wonder if they haven't conflated the GSEF with the Touchdown Club. Hartman's obituary and Wikipedia page don't mention founding, only that he was a former chairman of the GSEF beginning in 1960. (I suppose it's possible that the Touchdown Club created the GSEF, so all Touchdown Club founders are also GSEF founders.) I'm sure more information about the origins of the GSEF are hidden in the moldering stacks of the Athens library; maybe one day they'll be more accessible to online armchair detectives.

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16/2327. The Racing Scene (1969)
James Garner narrates a documentary about a year in the life of his racing company. It's a lot like Grand Prix with the most dramatic moments edited out.

17/2328. Cornbread, Earl and Me (1975)
It would be easy to handwave away this innocent-black-kid-gets-shot-by-police story as an overly melodramatic mid-70s exploitation film if the same shit wasn't still making headlines.

Drink Coke! (Cornbread, Earl, and Me)
Drinking pop is a key plot element that the Coke product placement team wisely stays away from.

18/2329. True Justice: Family Ties (2024)
It seems that Hallmark is leaning more into the procedural style mystery movie, which I suppose is fine for variety. Unfortunately, the plot construction follows the "last, least likely suspect" approach, so the murderer's motive is... weak. Oh well. As I've said before, I don't watch these things for realism.

19/2330. The Fake (1953)
An American insurance agent stumbles into a British art forgery scheme with just enough fisticuffs, romance, and plot twists thrown in so that all the boxes can be checked off. I enjoyed it in spite of its limitations, but all the cliche elements do tend to encourage eye-rolling.

20/2331. Adaptation (2002)
Brilliantly written meta-movie satire by Charlie Kaufman who uses himself as the fulcrum to demonstrate that Hollywood films are all a waste of time. It's no wonder the material attracted such an accomplished cast. (Kudos also to director Spike Jonze for getting himself out of the way so it seems all Charlie's film.) Even when it is completely predictable — seriously, the second half couldn't be telegraphed harder — it never goes quite where I expect. Loved it.

21/2332. The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)
What else do you give the girl who has everything but William Powell to play her father? Sadly, Powell is criminally underused because the studio is clearly more interested in the dumb, doomed romance built around Elizabeth Taylor. If I were in charge there would have been less Taylor, more Powell. (I suspect Powell thought so, too. This is the last movie he ever made at MGM.)

More to come.

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When the machine decides you're going to lose, you lose
Wordle #1006 (March 21, 2024)

For the record, "shale" would have been my next guess, and it would have been wrong, too. Turns out there are seven common English words matching the pattern of "sha?e". Seven.

My first reaction was to yell "Fuck you, Wordle." But after having... many hours to cool down, I have to admit that "shade" is a perfectly cromulent word. I'm sure it's very popular.

Would I have preferred a word that was actually guessable in the allotted 6 chances? Sure. If you wanted me to lose, Wordle, you could have just told me instead of making me play your dumb guessing game!

But hey, I'm over it now.

Good game, Wordle. You got me. Ha, ha. What a good time we're all having.

Sigh.

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If it's good enough for the Princess of Wales, it's good enough for Audrey

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Today Mom declared that she had finally tired of our single Halloween decoration, so I moved it outside into the seasonally-appropriate shamrock patch.

Mom's sister gave us that pumpkin the first week in October because she liked the stem. I admit, it is handsome.

Rot in peace, uncarved 2023 pumpkin.

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If you're ever feeling stupid, watch an episode of Wheel of Fortune. If the contestants don't make you feel better about your comparative knowledge base... you might really be stupid.

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The headline at Atlanta's Fox 5 was "Over 850 pounds of crystal meth found in Norcross storage unit." My first thought on reading the article was, "wow, that's a lot of drugs." My second thought was, "how do you dispose of that much meth?" The article didn't say, which if you ask me is a real indictment of the modern clickbait era of journalism.

Left to my own devices, I did what I usually do when I have a question: I googled it.

That was a mistake.

I only write this so that when I am arrested and the DA introduces into evidence my Google search history and social media feeds full of helpful instructions about what I should do with my stash when the cops inevitably come kicking in my door, I can say that it was all because I read a poorly reported news story.

(To save you the same trouble, let me report that the answer appears to be "mix it with bleach." I'm guessing a lot of bleach. I have not yet worked up the courage to google how to dispose of that.)

In addition to "how to dispose of crystal meth," these are some other actual Google searches I made in the last 2 weeks: "who likes licorice," "why am I paying 24% taxes," "life is not all sex and sun lamps," and "green lantern condoms." What can I say? I'm a curious guy.

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11/2322. Mystery Island (2023)
So far as Hallmark mystery movies go, this one tries harder than most to echo an Agatha Christie novel. There are several overt references to And Then There Were None which sort of gives the game away. The fun here was watching the characters, mostly crime novel fans supposedly familiar with Christie's oeuvre, fail in different ways to find the obvious answer.

12/2323. The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
I avoided this Michelangelo biopic for years because it's long and I don't like biopics. But I finally gave in after reading that it's apparently pretty accurate, including subtle hints that Michelangelo was a homosexual. I'm no Michelangelo, but I can certainly relate to some of his artistic attitudes.

13/2324. Haunted Harmony Mysteries: Murder in G Major (2023)
More Hallmark! It's a bit more... fantastic than what the channel usually tries -- one of the amateur sleuths in this is a ghost -- but it's still the usual small cast plus love-interest detective. Hey, at least they're willing to try something different.

14/2325. It's a Big Country (1951)
This anthology film, mostly of immigrant stories, is pretty blatant pro-America Cold War propaganda, which sometimes feels a little preachy. But it's got William Powell in it delivering a lecture on the parts of America he loves, so I give it two thumbs up.

15/2326. Somewhere I'll Find You (1942)
Two brothers, both newspaper foreign correspondents covering the unrest leading to World War II, fall for the same woman... and it's just terrible. Every scene of Clark Gable being a dick to Lana Turner is too long and dull, dull, dull. For frustrated housewives only.

More to come.

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To be continued...

 

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