It's the little differences

Some more on my voyage to Puerto Rico: As you are no doubt aware, PR is officially part of the United States (I required no passport, I paid for things with George, Abe, Alexander, and Andrew). So it wasn't all that different from what we imperialist American pigs know and love. But Vincent Vega was right: It's the little differences.

Along with coconut soda, this caught my eye at the grocery store:
I don't believe I've ever seen personal-size breakfast cereal sold this way, several boxes of the same kind packaged together. I'm used to the standard variety pack, ten boxes covering a wide gamut (there's always that stray box of All-Bran that no one ever wants). So what's this about? What marketing genius determined that the Puerto Rican market, and only the Puerto Rican market, was prepared for eight blasts of Froot Loops at once? Or can this be found on the mainland if you look hard enough? Eternal questions.

A few shelves down, there was this:
I was very tempted to purchase this, partly because it looked delicious, but also partly because that's the single best product name I've ever seen.

Then, in the airport en route back home, I spotted this:
That's chicken sausage in a little can, in a vending machine. Fascinating…

But the fact is, the food was excellent in Puerto Rico. I had what's probably the best bowl of shrimp and linguine I've ever consumed, a wonderfully authentic chicken quesadilla in a kiosko by the beach and, best of all, mofongo:
That's mashed plantains stuffed with meat (in this case, scrumptious flank steak), a Puerto Rican delicacy. This serving basically looked like a giant beef cupcake, which I gamely consumed with a glass of Sprite. Vacation is good.

Puerto Rico, crawling with non-insects

Yes, this Monday, for the video round, we're "Crawling with Real Live Insects." All you need to know is that it is indeed about insects, and it's awesome.

Sorry for the blogging delay, but I just returned from San Juan, Puerto Rico, my longest vacation in a stupid many years. It was beyond lovely. The people are cool, the place is beautiful; again, I have no clue why it is merely a commonwealth and not a state, and why Menudo don't collectively stride the earth like a colossus.

But, sadly, I gained no insight for this Monday's video round, because I didn't see a whole lot of insects. Oh, sure, there were the odd mosquitoes (much calamine graced my skin), but that was it, entomologically. In fact, I was slightly disappointed at the wildlife on display in PR. As a cat lover, I enjoyed seeing the streets of Old San Juan populated by a whole mess of oddly well-fed gatos…
And the gorgeous El Yunque rain forest didn't offer much animal-wise; we didn't see the famed mascot of PR, the the coqui frog, nor the small Indian mongoose, which I'm duly frightened of after reading this:In the beautiful and temperate ocean, there were apparently numerous small jellyfish. Apparently, because although we didn't see them, my Quizette's jellyfish allergy kicked in with a vengeance, and her arms are plagued with biblical-looking blisters at the moment (lovely, I know). We did, however, spot bioluminescent plankton during a kayaking sojourn; you dip your hand in the water and it looks like you're Ghost Rider.

I also saw a pretty wicked snail in the rain forest, which prompted our "Weird Al"–like composition of a song called "It's Hard Out Here for a Snail." Didn't take a picture, but here's the dreaded Giant African Snail, which the USDA scanned our luggage to make sure we weren't bringing back into the mainland.And I'm extremely disappointed to report that I did not manage to see your pal and mine, the chupacabra. You'll have to settle for this gruesome-looking iguana hanging out in an 18th-century Spanish fort:
Tomorrow, interesting consumer products in Puerto Rico.

The longest tie breaker EVER!

Maybe, perhaps, who knows? It was eight questions total. We had Steve (short for Stephen, a.k.a. Ph), of returning champs Fantastic Fournicators, squaring off with Steven (a.k.a. V), of Gerard Depardouche. I still can't believe neither one of these guys was geeky enough to know what kind of animal fought a zombie in the 1979 horror movie Zombie. People really can surprise you. But 'Douche man V took it by knowing who, in 1948, was the lead researcher behind the groundbreaking work Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. We cover the gamut, my friends.

Otherwise, I'm going to keep it brief, since in 13 hours I leave for the most trivial land of Puerto Rico. The Movie Quote Thesaurus was a great mess of giggles, and the Wizard of Oz audio round fulfilled a childhood dream of mine; will Alice in Wonderland be next? Finally, in an effort to thwart the testosterony Fantastic Fournicators, I inserted (heh) a four-part question about feminine hygiene products (attention anyone reading this who did not attend the show: this is true). As I say, the gamut is covered at the BQT.

And the standings:

1. Gerard Depardouche: Nails were bitten!
2. The Fantastic Fournicators: Questions about tampons barely slowed them down.
3. Strippers for Stephen Hawking/Incontinental Congress (tie)
5. Birds of Ill Omen

October 26 we're back: We're going to be "Crawling with Real Live Insects!," which I'm pretty excited about (some entomology knowledge is helpful but hardly required). See you on the other side.

Off to the Rich Port…

This Tuesday, mere hours after the next Big Quiz Thing concludes, I'm going on vacation. A real vacation—not this "take a three-day weekend and get on a 7:30am bus to Boston" bullshit. Heavens no: I'm going to the airport, putting my shoes through the X-ray, getting on an airplane, and sitting on a beach for five solid days. Perhaps drinking something out of a glass equipped with a small novelty umbrella, who knows.

I'm going to Puerto Rico, with my little quizette. Puerto Rico: It's sunny, it's warm, it's not that far away, and we got a good deal. Also, we can zip-line through the rain forest, which will fulfill some kind of preteen fantasy of mine. But that's about it as far as reasoning goes. And that's all we need.

I don't know all that much about Puerto Rico. As with most subjects, I know only the trivial and mundane. For example…

-- It's the ancestral home of the Latino characters in West Side Story (which, by the way, is worth seeing in its current Broadway run; the Spanish content gets in the way only during "I Feel Pretty," and not even that much). The preamble to "America" tells you a lot about the island: Rosalia offers the point—"lovely island, island of tropical breezes," etc. Anita, of course, has the counterpoint—"ugly island, island of tropic diseases." She likes the isle of Manhattan, you see; smoke on your pipe and put that in. I like the isle of Manhattan too, and Karen Olivo absolutely kicks ass in the current production. But I'm trusting Rosalia for next week. Watch this; the magic of the stage…



-- In 1950, a couple of Puerto Rican independent radicals attempted to assassinate President Truman, managing to kill a White House security agent. Kind of intense stuff; read more here, and gaze at this, the menacing-looking flag of the Puerto Rican Nationalist party of the time:-- In a sequel to the 50 State Quarter Program, the mint issued a quarter for Puerto Rican quarter this past March. It was released alongside coins for D.C., Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and your favorite, the Northern Mariana Islands. Should've gone there, perhaps.

-- Menudo was from Puerto Rico (the boy band; the soup is from Mexico). They were monstrously huge for a time in the early '80s, and were famous for booting out any member who either (a) turned 16 or (b) got a girlfriend, which sounds creepier to my adult mind than it did to my childhood one. Ricky Martin was a member for a while, they made a guest appearance on Silver Spoons, and they bought a private plane that had been owned by Richard Nixon. Also, in the fall of 1983, they starred in a series of mind-bogglingly cheesy music videos shown between Saturday morning cartoons on ABC. Check their ode to a shopping mall; I've had that "Menudo on ABC" theme song stuck in my head for more than a quarter century:



-- Despite what some think, Puerto Rico is in the United States, it just isn't itself a state; it's a commonwealth. Their voting power and representation in Congress is very limited, and I have no idea how this constitutes anything resembling fairness (it probably doesn't). I'm not sure what's holding them back from becoming the 51st star; as a fan of American geographical trivia, I'd love another state to play around with, and I can't imagine that Puerto Rico would be any greater drag on the USA than some of those pointless existing states, like Alaska or South Carolina. But apparently, the Puerto Ricans themselves are split on the issue: Some do want to become a state, some want full independence, some like things as is. (When she was scrounging for primary votes last year, Hillary Clinton apparently made an ill-advised promise to the Puerto Ricans that if elected President, she'd work toward PR statehood. She trounced Obama in the primary, for all the good it did her.) As with everywhere I go, there's so much to learn while on my vacation…