Subject: Coca-Cola Classic

• Interpol: Suitcore at the Uptown

  October 11, 2007

• The Science of Shots

  October 16, 2007

• Daily Briefs: Great Balls of Corn; Old People Unite

  April 21, 2008

• Breakfast Buffet: Friday, 8/15

  August 15, 2008

• Stealing Time: Midtown Miscreant vs. Alonzo Washington, Arrowhead Addict vs. JoPo and Big Sexy, Life in SoJoCo vs. Toplikar

  November 13, 2008

• Stevia coming: Nutrasweet and Splenda, you've been warned

  I don't want to boast, but a couple of times I've noted the upcoming domination of non-caloric stevia. Stevia is a naturally occurring (at least in Paraguay) herb that's incredibly sweet and may or may not be slightly mutagenic at high doses. The FDA has been stalling on releasing a report on whether stevia is safe. Yesterday, though, Coca-Cola announced it was releasing a stevia-based drink this week, before the FDA ruling.Coke is using stevia in its Odwalla line of drinks and fruit smoothies.

  December 17, 2008

• Drinking and smoking

  The word "taxes" makes people act irrationally. Take, for instance, this wide-ranging tax plan from New York State, which would tax everything from clothes to boats to license plates to caloric (non-diet) soft drinks. It's already got a catchy nickname -- the obesity tax -- and, not surprisingly, has already the ire of soft drink manufacturers. I received this dandy of a press release yesterday from the Center for Consumer Freedom. Titled "Taxing Soda May Shrink New York's Bloated Deficit, but I

  December 16, 2008

• Well that didn't take long. FDA clears stevia.

  If it seems like only yesterday that I wrote about the forthcoming FDA ruling on stevia, and today the FDA made its decision.Ladies and gentleman, stevia is safe.Not that it mattered much for Coke -- which released its stevia-based drinks think week -- but the ruling did have an impact on Pepsi, which was holding off on shipping stevia-flavored Sobe.Pepsi says it will release the Sobe next week. Pepsi's stevia-based sweetener is called PureVia, while Coke uses Truvia.Now the only thing holding s

  December 18, 2008

• The return of an old flame

  March 16, 2000

• Blues and Jazz Festival

  July 27, 2000

• Around Hear

  January 25, 2001

• McDonald's and fast food in the future

  Wired Magazine is going beyond predictions for 2009 and 2010. They're looking at five years out and making mock-ups of what they think things will look like in 2013.One of the products they believe will significantly change in 2013 is McDonald's Happy Meal. Here's the current version: Here is the Happy Meal from six years ago:

  January 8, 2009

• Best Place to Have a Drink

  October 17, 2002

• Eight best Super Bowl food and drink commercials

  I know everyone is making a list of favorite Super Bowl commercials this week, but being trained in the black arts of advertising I couldn't resist making my own. Culled from the dredges of YouTube and my memory, here are my eight best food and drink Super Bowl commercials of all time.Number 8: After losing the '96 election to Bill Clinton, Bob Dole showed he can shill product with the best of them. Here he is promoting his "little blue friend."

  January 30, 2009

• Hair of the Dogg

  April 3, 2003

• Singin' in the Pain

  February 19, 2004

• Sky is the limit for soda machine

  Coca-Cola Inc.At the same time as New York is trying to pass a soft drink tax, ABC News is doing an expose on Mountain Dew Mouth and doctors are urging all Americans to cut down on soda, Coca-Cola is debuting a new soda fountain that can hold more than 100 sodas. That's ten times more than current soda fountains.Currently, fountains work through syrup bags. The restaurant buys a bag (actually, a bag in a rectangular box) from Coke or Pepsi, hooks it up to a soda line and then the fountain combin

  February 19, 2009

• Counter Intelligence

  June 24, 2004

• Blues for Blayney's

  March 5, 2009

• Zona Rosa Arts Festival

  September 11, 2008

• The Year in Film: Doc Block

  December 27, 2007

• Teen Trauma

  June 28, 2007

• Bee Gees

  The Studio Albums, 1967-1968 (Rhino)

  February 15, 2007

• A Big Load

  Even the Belger Cartage Company might have trouble hauling around all this Americana.

  July 20, 2006

• Painted Ladies

  November 17, 2005

• G. Love and Special Sauce

  October 27, 2005

• Tom's Diner

  When David Cronenberg picks up a pistol, Violence begets comedy.

  September 29, 2005

• Weird, Weird World

  Need a bumper car from an old arcade? We know where to find one.

  September 1, 2005

• Wave This!

  Dare we say it? Jay Norton's flag burning fizzles.

  July 14, 2005

• Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark

  The Night Ranger commiserates with fellow former band geeks at D.B. Cooper's.

  September 2, 2004

• Hart-Felt

  A showbiz veteran brings all that jazz to Kansas City.

  August 19, 2004

• Night & Day Events

  Week of August 12, 2004

  August 12, 2004

• Wakarusa Walkabout

  One man's journey into a weekend of short sets and really long solos.

  July 1, 2004

• Going Down

  The Night Ranger gets down with the lowest common denominator at the Brooksider.

  April 8, 2004

• Roll Out

  The Prairie Dogg finds the dirt on Playboy, Popeyes chicken and Harry Potter with Ludacris.

  February 19, 2004

• Block Party

  With two studios splitting space, it's a beautiful day in the Neighborhood.

  November 21, 2002

• Lovey, American Style

  The Main Street Inn is like an old classic.

  September 20, 2001

• Roadside Attraction

  A visit to The Bamboo Hut is a roadside reverie.

  May 31, 2001

• 'N Sync/Pink/Boyz 'N Girlz United

  Kemper Arena-- Thursday, June 22, 2000

  June 22, 2000

• The Virgin Suicides

  May 4, 2000

• International house of pasta

  Semolina International Pasta Restaurant does for the noodle what IHOP did for the pancake.

  March 23, 2000

• The Give-a-Shit List

  This week: Celebrate Earth Day in the cinema, the public forum or out in the field; get schooled by local and national experts on how to stem the foreclosure hemorrhaging; be part of the dedication of Precious Doe Memorial Park; and hear the thoughts of a now-famous mom who's still rallying activists against the Iraq war years after her son's death.

  April 20, 2009

• Blues News: J.D. Summers, Johnny Ricker and the mighty mighty MerleJam

  Looking to ease into some KC blues this weekend -- and maybe a purple silk shirt, too? On Friday night, the Hideout (6948 North Oak Trafficway, 816-468-0050) hosts the J.D. Summers Band. Led by Jordan D'Ray Summers, a 29-year-old guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist, this band boasts a solid party song lineup. How could you not respect a band that makes these promises on its Web site? We only play with the highest quality instruments available and always have back up equipment on hand in

  April 30, 2009

• MerleJam

  April 30, 2009

• Coca-Cola and Pepsi are no longer content to feud quietly

  \While it may not be Hatfield vs. McCoy, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola have enough bad blood between them to fill a Wikipedia page and even cause skirmishes among drivers. The rivalry may have flattened a little since its Pepsi challenge/New Coke days, but things got heated again last Friday in court.At contention was whether Coke's brand Powerade had lied in advertisements for its ION4 sports drink. Billboard ads showed a Powerade bottle looming over a Gatorade bottle lopped in half, while the tag "

  June 9, 2009

• Sweeteners in disguise

  Avoiding sugar and its cousins doesn't sound like it should very complicated. All you need to do is look at the ingredient list and see if sugar is one of the items. Easy, right? Wrong. Sweeteners can be labeled under a score of different names, making certain products seem healthier than they are and causing problems for diabetics.IVillage Total Health has put together a list of 24 ingredients that are really sweeteners in disguise. Some are sugar-based, some crop-based and some artificial. The

  June 23, 2009

• Unlikely romances: Coke and Pepsi on Twitter

  After enduring a spate of bad publicity from feuding in court, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have decided to make up. On Twitter.The idea was proposed by advertising agency Razorfish, whose co-founder Iain McDonald (the @eunmac in the tweets) suggested that it would be like "a public hug" for the two to follow each other. Coke took the initiative and 18 hours later, Pepsi followed.Razorfish called it "a historic moment in branding." Actually, it was more like a nice gesture, if totally meaningless. Follow

  July 8, 2009

• Behold the Coke soda dispenser of the future

  Future robots don't have to be evil -- some of them might help us have a world with more soda choices at our finger tips. Coca-Cola is currently test-marketing the Freestyle -- a soda dispenser with more than 100 choices inside a single machine -- in southern California. The first machines are in Jack-In-the-Box, where food science is likely a way of life. Fat City covered the initial rollout of the new dispensers back in February. The fountain machine uses flavored concentrates that it then mix

  August 24, 2009

• We'll all soon be drinking coconut water

  ​If you were sitting there during Cast Away wishing you could have a sip of coconut water instead of your 128-oz. Diet Coke -- boy are you excited about the latest potential growth market for Coke and Pepsi! As demand for bottled water has shrunk, beverage makers are trying to boost their market share by turning to new offerings, the latest of which appears to be coconut water. In the past two weeks, Pepsi has purchased Amacoco -- Brazil's largest producer of coconut water -- while Coca-Cola h

  September 3, 2009

• Breakfast Buffet: Friday, October 30

  A collection of the worst restaurant Web sites in the city, with explanations of why they made the list. [KC Lunch Spots] We've got a few more holidays left until Christmas, but you can already get peppermint ice cream in the grocery store. [Around the Block]You think the last time your knife slipped in the kitchen was scary? This collection of kitchen injuries from chefs in New York City is ghoulish. [MetroMix]Get ready for Jelly Belly flavored sodas. Because the last time you had a Coke,

  October 30, 2009