It Came From Chinatown: Liquids, Part 1

Your eyes do not deceive you... this edition of ICFC is a big, honkin' two-parter; think of it like those Sweeps Week stunts that networks pull to boost rating, except without any guest stars... not even a Baldwin... nor any sort of cliffhanger-style peril for our main characters (me, my girlfriend, our cat). But otherwise, totally the same thing.

So what's the occasion? Why, it's liquids! Or, rather, an assortment of drinks from Chinatown. Because after the dried pepper incident from last week, my mouth needed a break. Or at least it needed something that wasn't so up front about being the most painful thing ever in the history of pain. Thus... a beverage-tacular ICFC that starts today, concludes tomorrow, and is filled end-to-end with questionable liquids quite possibly sold as a dare.

Excited? Of course you are. So let's get started with a singularly-named beverage, the Cher of the Asian drink market... Aloe:



Aloe? As in, the bright green crap that my mom used to make me smear on my sunburns? Um... and I mean no disrespect... but what the fuck's wrong with you guys over there? You're not supposed to drink Aloe. You're just not! It's medicine. It heals and soothes and makes it so I can put on my G.I. Joe peeper-jammers without getting a red-faced case of the pouts. Not to mention the fact that this so-called beverage has got horrifying bits of pulp floating around inside it like so much snot in a clogged-up shower. If you look real close at the above picture, you can see them, hanging there, hating me as much as I'm hating them.

Whatever, let's just do this. Pulp be damned, down the motherfucking hatch:



The pulp is in fact the first thing that you feel; bits of it shooting across your tongue like gummi bears on a Slip n' Slide. The liquid in which they're suspended has the mouth-feel of thick, syrupy water. And the drink itself... folks, I never thought I'd utter these words during the course of ICFC... is delicious. Like, to the point where I'm a little pissed that I've gone nearly 28 years without Aloe in my life. It's sweet like a fruit juice, but with a crispness I'd associate with vegetables ripped right out of the garden. Taste-wise, it favors a tangy, white grape juice made from scratch; oddly enough, it has no processed or chemically-altered sourness to it at all, even though it most definitely is the result of mass production. Maybe they just do things differently in China. Who knows?

But whatever, it kicks ass. Aloe, you've won a fan for life:



So... a stunning upset. Did not see that one coming; in fact, I presumptuously pegged Aloe as being one of the worst of the bunch. Black has revealed itself to be white, monkeys are ejecting themselves from my butt at alarming speeds, and pigs are pulling off aerial maneuvers like they're deleted scenes from Top Gun.

But there's no time to contemplate the Apocalypse this strange turn of events portends. We've got to keep this show steadily on the road!!! Next up... White Gourd Drink:



In a box, no less. Like in grade school, but instead of tasty Ecto Cooler, it's a beverage made from a vegetable; one that's related to a pumpkin. Again, hopes were not high. Although, given that it's packaged the way it is, one could deduce that this is a product geared towards kids. Asian kids, borne into a land of wonky palates and bizarre eating habits, but... nonetheless... kids. Picky eaters and drinkers, them, so maybe... just maybe... we're looking at 2-for-2 here (an event rarer than Halley's Comet).

Now, before we get to the drink itself, I want to warn you... you're about to see the most adorable photo outside of a LOLcat website. I'm sure you all can handle it, but I wanted to give you a heads up because, no joke, the cute-factor presented here is just completely out of hand:



It's like to die, right? Late-20s dude sipping from a juice box with a look so innocent, it made a stuffed armadillo appear over his head and go, "Awwwww!" That tingling sensation in your hands is them wanting to pinch my cheeks.

But focus, please... hugs later, promise... we've got a White Gourd Drink to discuss. So here's the thing: Up front, I'll say that it wasn't awful. It was, however, one of the strangest beverages I've ever had. Why? Because it tasted exactly like caramel corn; or, rather, it tasted like a Jelly Belly Jellybean version of caramel corn. "Huh... but it's made from gourds?" I know. "How is that even possible?" Dude, I have no fucking clue:



The only thing I can figure is that a beverage manufacturing company in China got hit by a "What?" bomb lobbed by members of the WTF Liberation Army and it turned all their boxed juices into shrugs that make no sense. That's all I can come up with. And, if we're going by the principles set forth by Occam's Razor, we must assume that as this is the simplest explanation, it must in fact be correct.

Anyway, I picked up all the shattered fragments of my blown mind and actually tasted the thing again and, yeah, beyond it's weirdness, it's still not a very good drink. Way too sweet, kind of weak-willed and limp... probably what Care Bear pee tastes like. Confusing, unpleasant, and loaded with sugar... the liquid representation of a trannie at the Hershey's Store in Times Square.

Which brings us to the last... or rather, the middle (two-parter!)... item on our list... Milk and Peanut Protein Drink:



Milk and peanuts, together at last. Yeah, I think I'm going to let the picture do the talking on this one:

Have you ever in your life seen a drink so lumpy and beige? I mean... it's got halved peanuts suspended in it's thin, brackish substance like hateful tourists in a hotel pool. It looks like heroin-addict blood. Were it possible to give a beverage radiation poisoning, to have it sprout tumors like one of the guards at Chernobyl, it would look exactly like this. In fact, maybe that's what this is. Who knows what kind of deals were struck in Asia during the Cold War.

Okay, enough Stalin... Stalin... like stalling, but we were talking about Russia, so... oh, fuck you guys, never mind, let's just drink this shit:

Well, it's sweet. Ridiculously so. It's like being smothered to death with a two-week old puppy, or choking on Strawberry Shortcake's big, poofy hat, or getting strangled with some red-rope licorice by Willy Wonka. And the peanuts... oh, god... the peanuts... they're mushy, soft, they break apart like amoebas during mitosis until there's hundreds of them, coating your tongue with a bland, slightly-nutty, slightly-rotten taste that will linger in my memory for years and years, haunting me like I watched a loved one die in a terrible roller coaster accident, leaving me a bitter shell of gloom and sorrow:

That's me, forever. And let me just say this: Despite what it says on the can, you'd have an easier, more pleasant time getting a protein boost by picking up a supporting role on the set of an average bukkake film.

So that's it... for now. But stay tuned, as tomorrow we reach the terrifying conclusion known as...It Came From Chinatown: Liquids, Pt. 2! You'll gasp! You'll swoon! You'll loudly declare, "You're not supposed to make a fruit juice out of THOSE!!!" And I'll agree with you. While gagging.

It's going to get gnarly, kids.

See y'all then!!!