Diet Grapico

I love Diet Mountain Dew. It may be white-trash NASCAR, but I don’t give a shit. I dig it. It’s my fuel.

But it’s gotta be diet. If it had sugar, I’d weigh 600 pounds. I drink that much.

When I was a kid, my brother and I drank those little 6 oz bottles of Coke. Fully leaded. Hell, it was like cocaine for little dudes. My granny, who lived down the street and watched us after school ’til the parents got home from work, kept the fridge stocked with what seemed like an endless supply.

Oh, we had to have a snack too. Cinnamon toast. White bread slathered with butter, more sugar, and cinnamon.

I can’t believe I got any sleep back then. She’d dope us up, cut us loose, and we’d run outside. We’d play basketball, climb trees, fight, dig holes, build forts, and collapse by 8:00 or 9:00. It took an effort to get fat back then.

Now we’re all fat.  If we’re not literally overloaded, we’re weighed down with sedentary choices.

When I got to the age where I had to watch my caloric intake, I switched over to diet sodas. I’ll drink diet Coke, Pepsi, Canada Dry, or Dr. Pepper (my favorite brown soda), but Diet Mountain Dew reigns supreme.

When sugar wasn’t an issue, I also used to love grape soda. Grapette was a good one. Fanta was pretty tasty. But, there was no diet version.

Over the years, my wife has suffered me yammerin’ in the soda aisle every now and then: “Why the fuck doesn’t somebody make a diet grape soda?”.

Enter Diet Grapico.

Apparently, Grapico has been around since 1914 with distribution only in the Southeast.

And they’re all rock star about it too. Seems you can’t get it in Tennessee. Only Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida, which is where I recently discovered it. So now I stock up on 12-packs twice a year on my way back from the beach.

This stuff is really good. Recently, Faygo released a diet grape, but Grapico’s better. Trust me.

Why am I gettin’ all gay over a beverage?

Maybe it’s the limited availability factor. Once I discovered this calorie-free, fizzy, purple drink, you’d think I’d found moonshine and had to smuggle it back home. Out of the hundreds of soft drinks available, I have to cross state lines to get the one I want.

Think of it this way. You can get decent baby back ribs at any Chili’s or Outback. But you can only get the rack you want to have sex with at Rendezvous in Memphis.

That’s a little extreme. Not to mention a tad gross.

My point is, I have to go the extra mile to get what I want. I began a quest for diet grape soda and fell hard when I found it. It had a mystique and it hooked me.

Remember when certain bands or songs made you carry on in a similar fashion?

There was a time when you had to dig for the goods. Maybe you heard part of a song somewhere, or a friend told you about a new band and how great they were. And the hunt was on. Many times the target was equal to the thrill of the chase. Now that’s all but gone.

Today you can hold your iPhone in the air when you hear a song that catches you and it’ll recognize it, title it, and let you buy it.

In a way, that’s beyond awesome. In another way, it’s fucked up. Like I said, we’re fat.

I still recall when we had to literally stop our life to stay current with a particular television show. Or be anchored to a radio if we wanted to hear a certain hit, let alone record it on a cassette. That was a serious time investment.

Our access to media is so immediate these days that I easily put things off. I’m starting to believe that knowing I can delay a TV show or instantly download songs makes me forget to pay attention in the first place.

Can music ever get its hoodoo-voodoo mojo back? That mystique it used to have? Probably not.

Maybe, in a twisted way, this is good for the acts that specialize in something yet to be downloadable … performing live.

Until holograph concerts with surround sound come to our living room (and they will), the live show is probably the last remaining music offering where you still have to get up and get out to get down.

In this setting, the people who come see you have made an effort. They want an experience beyond iPods, Internet, and Tivo. They need a connection. It’s primal. There’s nothing passive about leaving your crib and getting elbow to asshole at an intimate club gig or massive concert.

So these are a few of my favorite things: diet grape soda, the ultimate rack of ribs, and live performances. None of which are available 24-7.

My next quest: replacing my classic CDs with vinyl records. Why? Because anything I chase down on vinyl will sound better, have more meaning, and most important, be sugar free.