07/20/2008: "Slushies / Business Opportunities"

Hi All,

So, summer's here and I'm in the mood for thirst quenchers. Every summer I go on a slushie bender. I head to the various establishments peddling ice-based drinkable substances and go hog-wild. I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of such imbibibles. Some I like quite a bit. Others rank rather low. Here are my four most trafficked Slushie destinations, my faves, and my least faves.

1. 7-11 Slurpee. The Mac Daddy of all Slushies (although some may argue Slush Puppy, but those are harder and harder to find). I was a huge fan of their Simpsons-themed Slurpee last year. Blue vanilla. Fantastic. Otherwise I'd go with Pink Grapefruit some of the Crush flavors. Lime's good. Thumbs waaaay down to the Slurpiccino. That's one foul concoction. There was that one episode of The Simpsons where Apu messes around with the Squishie lady so the Quickie-Mart replaced them with 'Smushies' instead. Milhouse says: 'Mine tastes like a shopping bag.' Well, the Slurpiccino tastes like a shopping bag. Plasticy. Like huffing the insides of a trashbag. Yes. That's it. While it's somewhat amazing anyone could translate that sensory experience so you can actually TASTE it, well, it's one of those breakthroughs that really serves humanity no real good. Also, the Slurpee machines at the 7-11 nearest my house are always busted. They're usually running at half capacity, and often my favorite flavors are not frozen but rather half-melted like a Popsicle left on the sidewalk. And there's always the salty Slurpee repairman hovering about and he's usually turned one of the units around so's you can see its tube-y guts, which is sort of like seeing the insides of a hotdog factory---I mean, I'd rather not know how the icy biomass that extrudes from the Slurpee machine's nozzle is made. It's like seeing the wizard of Oz behind his curtain. Keep it secret!

2. Mac's Milk Froster. Surprisingly good and consistent. I love the banana flavor and they usually have it at Mac's all summer, so I never have to worry about it disappearing the way they do at 7-11. Bananas, come to think of it, are one of my favorite foods. Probably the first solid thing I ever ate. So, you may call my tastes a little infantile, but if so you can go rot in hell. Kidding! But purgatory, certainly. Anyway, good consistency, good 'mouth feel,' and a Froster tends to hold its flavor---you don't suck all the taste of it to be left with a bunch of useless ice. Useless, I say!

3. Husky's Frostee. This is a western and eastern (maritimes) gas station chain. It's not so prominent in central Canada. Now all Slushie machines are self-serve, but back in the day the clerk used to pull your Frostee, like a soda jerk. But they don't hold their flavor very well---ice; useless, useless ice; I wouldn't even feed it to a starving dog!---plus when the clerk hands them over they look quite mighty, filled to the top of the cup, but as soon as you poked a straw into one they deflated, almost with an audible hiss, as the air pocket burst and you were left with half a cup! And it was 50 cents, back in the days when that meant something! I could've bought two Moon Pies and a handful of horehound candies for fifty cents and still had a farthing left over for a shoe shine!

4, Petro Canada's Cool Stop Oasis. The absolute nadir of slushie technology. I had my first, and last, today. It came out of the nozzle with this burpy pressurized hiss. It looked like all foamy and fuzzy, like those science project volcanoes you made mixing vinegar and baking soda. I got pina colada---tastes like drinking a goddamn air freshener. Or an incense stick. Putrid. I topped it off with strawberry which tastes somehow worse, sickly sweet like a strawberry on steroids might taste. Of course I drank it all because, well, it's fairly clear I have a stubborn bent that verges upon outright masochism.

Now this one place, when I was a kid, used to fill half the cup with slushie and top it off with soft-serve ice cream. Now, as a reformed fattie, let me tell you something: that was the CAT'S ASS. I don't know why someone doesn't do that now. In fact, I thought about opening a store that sold those alone. Two things stopped me:

1. Generally-speaking, I have no money. And by 'generally-speaking,' I mean, of course, '...'
2. I'm a piss-poor entrepreneur.

Case in point: my idea for a Yakiniku Onsen. I cooked this one up in Japan. Yakiniku is a Japanese cooking style where, at a Yakiniku restaurant, you receive uncooked bits of meat and veg and cook them yourself over a burner built into the middle of your table. Korean barbecue, it is sometimes known as. Onsens are like hot springs---actually, they are exactly hot springs. So, little pools found naturally where water is heated by volcanic vents. Often resorts are built around them. (In cities where there are no natural springs, Japanese masochists built what I felt to be Rube-Goldberg-esque water torture devices and went there with the stated purpose of relaxation. These were also called onsens. One device, for example, had water pushed out of a tube that fell some twenty feet into a pool. The intention, so far as I could tell, was to stand under it for as long as you could before the pressure snapped your spine. I stood under it at the urging of my Japanese friends: it felt like being pelted continuously with 5-pin bowling balls, in liquefied form. I came out two inches shorter. Then there was the electricity bath, where a voltage charge was sent through a pool. Of course, I couldn't read the kanji script telling me what it was and so jumped in gleefully only to be jumping and jerking and bucking all around, thinking someone had tossed a toaster in there with me. This, too, delighted my Japanese friends).

Anyway, so ... Onsens and Yakiniku were my two favorite cultural exports and so I thought, "Why wouldn't my fellow Canadians like them---together?" I was really serious about it. I thought I'd make a little onsen and then these floating burners, that would float upon the water, and people could grill their food while they soaked. But then I started to think who really like to eat in the water---like, who would eat a hamburger in a swimming pool, or a banana in the bathtub?---plus in general people don't like eating whilst half-naked, then there was the business of burning-hot coals falling into the water, plus bits of charred beef and vegetables in the onsen, plus there were probably certain public health issues I really hadn't considered. Like celery and rich Belgian chocolate, sometimes two things just don't go together. So the Yakiniku Onsen idea died. Plus, I had no money to make it happen anyway. Plus, I have zero business acumen. Plus, no one in their right minds would give me a small business loan.

All best, Craig.