My friends Kim and Chris have been doing this cable access show called Free NY since 1994. I haven’t seen an episode since I left NY but it seems like the focus of the show has got more political over time. In the early days though Kim and Chris would bring their camera to game night at my old place in Brooklyn. They’d record as pre-game conversations and those would become episodes. Topics ranged all over the place. I remember coming home from work one night to find the roundtable in full swing. They turned the camera on me and said, “What do you think about Kurt Cobain’s suicide today?” I replied, “Well, that’s what he gets for selling out.” A wee bit harsh, eh?

One day in 1995 they decided to do a kiwi strawberry episode. They got 25 odd beverages and we did a blind taste test. I had never had so much kiwi strawberry stuff in my life. Until they did a follow-up episode that is, where we put the previous winner (Snapple’s KS iced tea as I recall) against a field of new contenders. Since those shows I have had kiwi strawberry beverages only a handful of times. When I see them in stores, I never buy them, nor crave them. It seems drinking that much of the stuff in such a short period of time overloaded my system and it never recovered. It was thus quite a surprise when I pulled a random vitamin water out of the fridge this morning and discovered it was kiwi strawberry. I think I’m good for another few years.