Diet Pepsi Jazz – Strawberries & Cream

My, but this peppy new twist on an old favorite brings back some of my fondest memories: dancing to hot jazz on a Saturday night down by the river; stealing kisses from neighborhood gals beneath the crisp autumn moon; playing stickball in the alleyway with my pals from the old neighborhood, being careful not to wake mean old Mrs. Higgins from her afternoon nap; dropping by the fountain shoppe with a shiny nickel in hand to enjoy a strawberries & cream soda, or as we called it, "a very merry berry phosphate and cream." And how, in the days just before the war, the world seemed full of opportunity to a clever boy of no fixed disposition. With a bright idea and a little elbow grease, he could conquer the world! And the "he" was me!

Ah, but the world is a different place nowadays. Some say the wind blows colder. You can't trust your neighbors anymore, not like you used to; you have to lock the porch door on a summer's night; not like it used to be, when you could walk into anyone's house and stick your ass in their freezer to cool it down after a barenaked dip in the "hot pit." Have we hardened into coal-black cynics, the weight of the world and the burden of the evening's news bearing down on us, forcing our retreat to a collective cave of emotional shutdown?

Well, at least we have this little reminder of that bygone time when a man could become whatever it was that was in his heart … why, he could even become a horse-man, if that was his dream! A real, live Centaur-man, poking his trident at the townsfolk and spinning his riddles to weed out the unworthy. Those were the days, when Centaur-men ruled the towns, before modernization and industry ran them out to the outerbounds, where they lived in exile, mere wisps of what they once were, their tridents bent and bowed, their spirits broken by toil and shame. We were a proud race before that dark time when the Centaur nations fell to the age of Man.

To summarize, Diet Pepsi Jazz – Strawberries and Cream was perhaps one caffeinated drink too many this morning.

Review by "Bad" Brad Floppies