Why I Love LA...Reason #236

first off, i wanted to let anyone who was wondering or waiting for my evaluation know that coke zero vanilla is everything that i hoped it would be. seriously, absolutely fantastic.

i highly recommend you begin drinking this beverage in large quantities (this is really more for selfish reasons then anything else — as in order for coke to continue to manufacture the product they’re gonna have to see it selling well — that said if you do purchase some you won’t be disappointed, it’s delicious).

okay, now on to the aforementioned reason.

so i was doing a little grocery shopping earlier this afternoon and after acquiring all of the other items that i had set out to purchase i was perusing the cards section to pick out a father’s day card.

because the card section of the grocery store i was in (the mayfair market) is a narrow one, i had moved my cart off to the side in case others needed to pass while i was browsing.

standing next to me during this time was a woman (i’ll guess mid 50s hoping to pass for mid 30s) who was also browsing the cards. after a few moments she found a card that was to her liking, dropped it into her cart, and began walking away while i continued to peruse the selection.

but then a few seconds later she came walking back to near where i was in order to get a customer service person to open up the locked section of the liquor aisle. the customer service person told her that they’d be over in a minute and so the woman turned and headed back towards the liquor.

i finished picking out a card and turned around to put it in my cart only to find that my cart was nowhere to be found. i looked around unsure if i had perhaps forgotten where i had placed it, but there were no carts in sight…except for the one that was being pushed by, you guessed it, the woman.

i walked towards her and could clearly see that she had my cart.

“Excuse me, mam, I think you have my cart,” I said.

she looked down at the cart for what seemed like a solid 15 seconds (perhaps examining the contents, i really have no idea), before looking up at me with an expressionless face that only multiple injections of botox can provide, and replied, “No, I don’t.”

at which point i looked down again to see if perhaps i was the stupid jackass who didn’t know what grocery items i had just spent the last 30 minutes or so filling my cart with.

but sure enough, the items in the cart were definitely mine. I tried again, “Uh, I’m pretty sure this is my cart…the items in this cart are an exact match to the items on my grocery list.” at which point i proceeded to hand over said list for her to inspect…

which she did.

for about a minute.

after looking over my list and (presumably) seeing the items on the list all in the cart she looked up and said, “Gee, that’s strange. Well you must have my cart then.”

“No, I don’t have any other cart,” I replied.

“Well you must have moved it then, because I don’t think I would lose my cart.”

seeing how her circular logic would clearly trump any rationale explanation about how I had nothing to do with her a) having my cart and b) not knowing where hers was, I opted instead to look around to see if I might find a quicker way to resolve the situation.

it was at this point that i spotted another cart about fifteen feet from where we were standing, and upon directing her attention to it asked, “Is that your cart?”

she again took a long look over at this other cart, before breaking into a hyena like laugh. this was followed by, “I’m such an idiot…there’s my cart!”

this was a point that i decided not to argue partly because i was a little freaked out by the woman and was hoping to avoid prolonging the encounter any longer than necessary, but also because there was a grand total of 5 items in her cart as compared to mine which was semi full. i really had no idea how someone could even come close to mistaking the two, and as such her self-assessment seemed pretty spot on.

now everything up to this point in the story would be something that could (probably) take place in any number of different cities throughout the country. but, here’s why i love LA.

the woman finally let go of my cart and walked over to hers. i started to push past and head towards the checkout line, which is when she looked at me and said, “That’s so funny, don’t you think? I’m totally going to put that into my screenplay.”

i smiled politely and replied, “Good luck with that.”

indeed.

Return Of The King

oh sweet, glorious day…

while i was out running some errands earlier today i received a bit of good news that has put an end to a dark period of time (approx. 16 months) in my life…a period that hopefully i will look back on some years from now and remember as an unfortunate piece of history that hopefully will be able to be fixed without any long lasting scars (kinda like the bush presidency).

today, while driving down franklin i came face to face with a giant billboard (thank you corporate america!) announcing the return of vanilla coke.

some of you who have been reading my blog for some time now may remember a post a while back (over on friendster - before i became part of the myspace community) lamenting the end of diet vanilla coke’s production (feel free to refresh your memory here the end of an era).

for those of you who are too lazy to reread that old post, the short version is that i was a huge fan of diet vanilla coke and its removal from the marketplace left a substantial void in my life that had been (temporarily) filled by diet black cherry vanilla dr. pepper.

but no more settling for an inferior dinner beverage (sorry diet black cherry vanilla dr. pepper, we both knew that our arrangement was a marriage of circumstance not of choice).

my baby is (kinda) back!

coke apparently relaunched their vanilla coke brand a couple of weeks ago and stores across the country have begun restocking their shelves with the tasty beverage.

the one drawback is that diet vanilla coke is not part of the new relaunching…instead there is only vanilla coke and coke vanilla zero.

but, i am hopeful (and fully expect) that coke vanilla zero will be able to step in and provide a much more worthy replacement for diet vanilla coke than anything else i have tried in the past year and a half while searching for a worthy successor to the crown for beverage of my choice.

the only negative that came from today’s discovery was that i saw the billboard on the way home from the grocery store. I ran over to pick up a few items and didn’t pass down the soda aisle and so i was unaware of this new development until after the opportunity had passed to purchase the deliciousness that has been missing from my life.

this is okay, as the joy experienced upon learning of this good news far outweighed the disappointment from having to wait an extra day or two to be reunited (or technically speaking introduced).

as you can i’m sure tell, i am clearly ecstatic over this development. i do have a few cans of dbcvdrp left in my fridge from my most recently purchased case, but i suspect that i will go out tomorrow and pick up some of the coke vanilla zero anyways…i mean it was hard enough to stop myself from turning around the instant i saw the billboard and return to the grocery store (rush hour, the start of the mets game, and a need to use the commode all eventually tipped the scales in favor of continuing home).

so…i guess what i’m trying to say is…

welcome back…i missed you.