TV That Doesn't Suck

Television has had a Renaissance in the past 15 years or so. Ever since HBO proved to everyone that you could actually make good TV that was more like a 50 minute movie every week, the stigma of tv being the cheap, lame little brother to film was lifted. Now, the ratio of good to crap tv is way closer than good to crap movies. Standards have been raised so high that when a stupid clunker like The Killing airs on usually bulletproof AMC, it's surprising (and to be honest, it's telling that The Killing would be one of the best, most ground breaking show on TV 25 years ago). There are a couple shows that stand out from the rest, and from time to time I'll start watching one of said shows on Netflix or On Demand, and then my entire life is consumed with watching this show for a couple weeks. I even talk to my friends who haven't seen the show yet about it, and urge them to watch this television show that they've never heard of before, or have heard of but never bothered to watch. This recently happened to me with "Louie".

"Louie" is the brainchild of every comedian's favorite comedian Louis C.K., who writes, directs, edits and stars in the show and basically does everything except operate the camera (I'm not sure, he may even do that). This is C.K.'s second go round on T.V. (his HBO show, Life with Louie, tried to be an adult sitcom and was pretty lame) and he seems to have gotten the kinks out. The show is loosely based on his life as a divorced father and comedian, and at first glance, it kind of seems like a much dirtier Seinfeld, all the way down to the stand up routine wrap arounds and the New York City locations, and maybe even the tenuous connections between the vignettes that make up the show, but beneath the surface is a disgusting, and hilarious show that actually lives up to the cliche of being like nothing you've ever seen on television before.

The first episode I saw was the second episode of the recently premiered second season. (Spoiler Alert) It opens with something familiar as a nightmare to most New Yorkers; a bum yelling at no one and then pointing and running towards you before eventually becoming decapitated by a garbage truck. This may not seem funny, but it's a perfect set up for an awkward encounter a few minutes later in the episode. This same offering ends with some even more awkward casual sex ending in a woman sobbing uncontrollably and a classic last line of dialogue. This all sounds either depressing or a horribly forced attempt at black humor, but it works somehow. Louis C.K. is known as a comedian's comedian, and you can really see how these are just ideas that almost make you laugh at the balls that it takes to put them on screen: think of the most horrifying incident before what is usually an uncomfortable experience like a first date and commit it to film. It's at times a little rough to watch but it's the type of tv show that more than makes up for a little discomfort with great, ballsy writing. The jazzy background music and setting almost makes it feel like a Woody Allen movie, except for the decapitations and graphic sex. Check it out.

RIP Armen "The Hammer" Gilliam

Any New York area basketball fan who had the Sportschannel in the mid 90's remembers The Hammer. Nicknamed the Hammer during his days at UNLV because of his tough inside presence, and his name sounding like Arm & hammer baking soda, Gilliam passed away today of a heart attack at 47 years old. Playing alongside the likes of flashy but difficult to deal with players such as Derrick Coleman, Kenny Anderson and Chris Morris, Gilliam stood out with his boring yet effective low post game. I spent many an evening of my youth cursing out the Hammer and his slow half hook shot that Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason seemed powerless to defend. Although the Nets didn't win much when he was around, they always seemed to have their big brothers across the Hudson's number in those days, dominating the regular season match-ups and getting a game off the Knicks' Finals team in '94. And a big part of their limited success was the Hammer quietly doing his thing in the paint. He went on to play for a few more teams including Charlotte and Milwaukee, but I'll always remember Bill Raferty yelling "The Hammer throws it down!" to a half empty Meadowlands arena, the perfectly unflashy stalwart for a mediocre NBA team in New Jersey. Never getting any accolades, but always a pain in the ass for whoever had to guard him. RIP Hammer.

The Mets Need to Stop With The Claw

I've written at length about the merits of celebration moves in this space before, and it's a well known fact that this is the true heart of American sports. Leave all that sportsmanship and stoic victory celebration clap trap for Bob Costas and his moralizing middle-aged white men. We want to see those monkeys dance! However, a celebration lacking originality is worse than any boring old wave to the crowd or cliched fist pump that looks best in slow motion with "One Shining Moment" played behind it. That's the problem that the Mets have this season, and it is without question the absolute biggest issue that the Mets have faced in 2011. How to celebrate those Reyes triples and big-time comeback victories? If you're this incarnation of the Metropolitans you just rip off whatever last season's plucky Cinderella team that just don't quit did; in this case the Texas Rangers' "claw" move.

I know the claw wasn't invented by those Rangers either; it's roots are long and historic beginning where most great ripped off victory moves do: professional wrestling. Mick "Mankind" Foley and giant The Big Show did a variation of their claw move as an actual wrestling move, and then also as a celebration and signature hand signal for Big Show and all his fans. Jim Carrey also famously did a claw to amuse his fruity looking annoying son who he ignored for most of the movie in "Liar Liar", a film best known for Jennifer Tilly's cleavage and maybe Carrey's last good comedic performance (maybe). Some theories point to Miguel Tejada as the first beisbol player to flash the claw during game action though, first debuting it during the World Baseball Classic for the Dominican team. This seems plausible as anyone in Brooklyn can tell you, Dominicans love wrestling. However, most mainstream celebration enthusiasts didn't really have it on their radars until Texas started to do it (along with those goofy antlers) during their Yankee killing run through the playoffs last season.

Whoever started it, it wasn't these never-say-die Mets. So I think they should come up with a move of their own, like a M for Mets or an M for Madoff followed by a throat slitting motion (screw you, Bernie). Whatever they choose, they should all put their heads together and come up with something cool soon or they've lost this Yankee fan forever.

America, F$@* Yeah!

You may have noticed PTU looks a bit different these days. If you're wondering why your home for inane lists and hating now looks like Michelle Bachmann's Myspace page, it's because we're attempting to keep the look of the site as topical as possible and we hope the changing look of PTU will keep you, the readers, and us, the bloggers, interested and engaged going into the future. If you hate the way it looks, and would log on to National Review's website if you wanted unabashed patriotism, have a hamburger and some Colombian potato salad and take it easy, PTU will be back to normal after the weekend.

Hope everyone eats too much BBQ and has a safe and twasted 4th of July Weekend. Cheers.

Top 5 Premature Nicknames

It's no secret that the golden age of the nickname is far, far behind us. Back in the day, when Hater J was but a glimmer of hate in his father's eye, most rosters were full of classic nicknames like "High Pockets" and "Scooter". Now, we just call a guy by his first initial and first 3 letters of his surname and that's your new nickname. Boringggg. Nicknames aren't always fun and games though. In the wrong hands, they can curse an otherwise average athlete with high expectations and leave them open for ridicule from wiseacre bloggers with too much time on their hands as well as fans all over the world for years after their modest careers have gone by the wayside. What were the five most egregiously premature athlete nicknames? LIST TIME!

5) Gerald Wilkens AKA "The Jordan Stopper"

Poor Gerald Wilkens. Not only did he have to play ball in the shadow of an older brother who had a very appropriate nickname, but he was also labelled with an oxymoronic nickname himself, if ever there was one. First of all, nobody could stop Jordan in the early '90s and if anyone could come close, it wasn't Nique's little brother who was a decent finisher (he represented the Knicks in the dunk contest one season) and an above average defender but this is "Come Fly with Me" era Michael we're talking about here. Predictably, his Airness made a mockery of whatever Knick was thrown his way, and Gerald was the other guy in the poster for two different teams. He played Frederic Weis to Michael's other buzzer beater in Cleveland (not as popular as the Ehlo shot but still noteworthy) and repeatedly got shitted on by Mike as a Knick. From Gerald's Wiki page: "He was even labeled as "the Jordan stopper," although he had trouble guarding Jordan". Seems like an odd choice for a nickname unless they were being sarcastic.

4)Ruben Patterson AKA "The Kobe Stopper"

Maybe worse than the Jordan stopper label since the Portland forward and accused rapist gave himself this name before repeatedly getting bitch slapped by the then number 8. This may be the greatest match up between two players accused of sexual assault in sports history (unless LT comes out of retirement and sacks Roethlisberger), and we all know who got the best of the matchups on the basketball court as well as criminal court. Portland never played the Lakers during the Jail blazer era of which Ruben was the poster boy, and they pretty much owned LA at the Rose Garden for the past decade, but those 2 shots above are enough to pretty much refute any sort of "stopper" claims. The lesson learned by these first 2 guys is never nickname yourself a stopper of anyone, especially if they're these two guys.

3)Harold Miner aka "Baby Jordan"

Harold Miner was hyped as the next great one, a high flying show stopper who could throw it down with the best of them earning him the nickname (along with his bald head) of Baby Jordan. That's a lot of pressure to live up to, and as we all know, premature Jordan comparisons are nothing new. They have been wrongfully attached to Grant Hill, Jerry Stackhouse, Vince Carter, Kobe Bryant (maybe the closest), LeBron James and a few others, and those guys aren't even close, so you can imagine how a offensively limited tiny guard from USC fared. His one shining moment was a dunk contest win, but he soon disappeared from the league never to be heard from again aside from strange rumors and the occasional "worst nickname" blog post.

2)LeBron James AKA "King James"

Bron has been getting tons of grief from every corner of the Earth. People who I don't think ever watched basketball did so in order to hate on the man. Babe Ruth might not be revolutionary but King James changed the hating game. I know people who never watched basketball, let alone care enough to actively root against a player or team, who this season watched every minute of the Finals just to hate. In that way, I guess LeBron is the king of something: being hated. And the nickname is a big part of it. It's just a play on the Biblical King James name that made some sense as he rose to stardom from high school, but now is just another annoying aspect of his personality that we all love to hate. It's not good to be the King when you haven't earned anything.

1) John Franklin "Home Run" Baker

Imagine being Philadelphia Athletics and Yankees third baseman John Franklin Baker, nicknamed Home Run because of your long ball prowess. You think your hot stuff, you even led the league in dingers 4 straight seasons with out of this world numbers. You hit the ball out of the park (not off the wall or onto the grass like the rest of the weakling contemporary players), you actually hit the ball over the fence not once or twice but 9 times and one season 11 times. Then a guy like Babe Ruth comes along and thanks to the timing of his career and the changing games and ball parks (according to some) your nickname now seems like a cruel joke. It's like saying Slam Dunk Charles Oakley or Jared "The Marksman" Jeffries. Sucks to be you, Home Run Baker.

The Gillette Curse

The sports world is rife with superstitions. From Wade Boggs daily ritual of eating chicken prior to every game to every non sensical fan who thinks they have a lucky ______ (insert item here) that they think has an effect on the game. There are also some well publicized curses. The Curse of the Bambino, the Madden Cover curse (watch those knees Peyton Hillis) and the Sports Illustrated Cover curse. Well, now I'm going to add another curse to the long list.

If you want to remain a successful athlete, do not endorse Gillette razors. Let's take a look at what has happened to each of these three athletes since endorsing Gillette.

Federer: Lost his number 1 ranking to his long time rival, Nadal. He has won only one major in the last 18 months and has fallen to number 3 in world rankings. Most recently lost to a scrub named Jo Wilfred Tsonga after having a 2 sets to none lead in Wimbledon. Also lost to Nadal once again in the French final.

Woods: Got divorced and had to recover from a major knee injury. He hasn't won a major in 3 years and is currently injured again forcing him to miss the US Open and likely the British Open as well. Also, he got outed as a sexual deviant (if you ask the ladies) or if you ask the guys, just a normal dude.

Jeter: Had the worst season of his career in 2010 and has followed up that performance with an even worse half season thus far. He is currently on the disabled list for the first time since 2003 and is struggling to get back.

Babe Ruth: Revolutionary My Ass

The conventional school of thought is that Babe Ruth was a larger than life character that completely revolutionized the game of baseball. Was he really revolutionary or just a very talented yet over rated opportunist?

Babe was the best home run hitter in a league that had changed the rules when he began his shift from pitcher to every day outfielder. The league was in transition with rules changes that included banning the spit ball, more frequent changing of used/scuffed balls, the change of the "foul ball on two strikes = an out" to the modern "foul ball on two strikes = another pitch", along with new and smaller ballparks sprouting up around the league.

The Fat Man even got his own stadium. "The House That Ruth Built" was really built for Ruth's strengths and to mask his weaknesses (mostly defensive). No one has ever had that advantage, ever, let alone for the entire prime of their career. It's no secret why old Yankees Stadium had such a short right field porch and such little space between the stands and the foul line in right field. The Big Boy loved to pull balls into right field and they didn't want to allow down the line singles to turn into triples. It would be the equivalent of the Yankees building New Yankees Stadium with less foul territory between home and third and shortening left field to speed up the "A-Rod race to the Home Run Crown".

When you have a rules shift that benefits offense and a change in the approach towards the game, the most direct benefactors are the young players who were never conditioned to play in the old fashioned (in this case "small ball") way. He was the best of the first wave and the best prepared to take over playing in a league that had shifted its focus to becoming more fan friendly, home run friendly, and offense friendly.

Bottle will have you think he revolutionized the game and that he hit 60 home runs when the next closest player hit 8 forcing everyone in the league to change what they were doing. The truth is that by time Ruth hit 60, Rogers Hornsby had hit 42 and the players in the game were fully entrenched in the less offensively inept game. A look at league total stats starting at 1918 through 1922 shows the following:

1918 - 7,382 Runs, 235 HR, 254 Batting Average
1919 - 8,668 Runs, 447 HR, 263 Batting Average
1920 - 10,761 Runs, 630 HR, 276 Batting Average
1921 - 11,928 Runs, 937 HR, 291 Batting Average
1922 - 12,057 Runs, 1,055 HR, 288 Batting Average

To me...looks like that's the way the league was trending and the talented and powerful Babe Ruth, was the best of that trend...not the innovator.

Now, in no way am I saying he wasn't great. The fact that his single season home run record was beaten out by a guy who had a fluke home run hitting year (Maris) and his career total was beaten by possibly the most consistent hitter in baseball history (Aaron), are testament to how great of a power hitter he was.

Note - I don't count any of the obvious juice seasons and neither should you.

All I'm saying is he wasn't a player who changed the game. He was a great player who was prepared to and took full advantage of the game's changes.

So to all old white men and Bottle, Babe Ruth was great, but he revolutionized nothing, and stop trying to tell me otherwise.

As told by Hater J

Top 5 Local New York Commercials

In conjunction with their new series about kooky local commercials, the IFC channel is running a local commercial contest celebrating the best and cheesiest in local cable commercials that we all simultaneously love and hate. You know the type of ad that runs incessantly during any Knicks or Mets game or the kind of commercial that you're forced to watch ad nauseum if you want to see what the girls on Beer Money are wearing that day. Usually filmed on a budget of what appears to be the price of a bagel (without cream cheese), and a cast seemingly made up of family members and office receptionists, these commercials work themselves into your brain with their cheesy charm, until you would probably hug Dr Zizmore if you saw him on the street. These are my 5 favorite commercials that can only be seen in the tri-state area or if you have NBA League Pass:

5) The Grand Prospect Hall

So this place isn't really a bad place for a wedding reception (I've been there) but the seriously wooden "We will make your dreams come true" makes this a classic cheesy Brooklyn commercial. A nominee in the IFC contest, as well.

4) Dial 7 Car and Limo

Oh, how this commercial has haunted my dreams on many a cold winter Brooklyn night. Maybe I'll be in the other room grabbing a beer or sandwich while Mike D'Antoni calls another rally killing timeout, and then I hear it: "Taxi, taxi, TAXIIIIIIII!". Despite the fact that no one in any city anywhere has ever hailed a taxi by repeatedly yelling "TAXI" like a lunatic, this commercial somehow made it past Dial 7 car and Limo's usually strict advertising standards. The zoom into the guy's mouth is pretty horrifying too.

3) Keith Hernandez for Coin Galleries of Oyster Bay

On any given day, the mustachioed first base man can be seen on Mets broadcasts, TBS MLB broadcasts and the Seinfeld reruns that run on about 15 other cable channels, but if you can't get enough Keith, he's also prominently featured in these shoe string budget Long Island jewelry ads. I figure he either owed a favor to someone, is a coin enthusiast or doesn't know how to turn any television offers down. It's probably a combination of all three of those.

2)Gary's Gutters

Not much to say about this one except I think Gary is trying to be funny here (at least I hope he is). There's a lot of stuff going on here that even the whitest, least hip hop savvy person can have a laugh at, like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air font or the goofy chain that he's wearing that one of the youtube commenters rightly points out looks like copper paper clips. It sounds like a bootleg version of Rapper's Delight but Gary obviously can't afford to pay the Sugarhill Gang for the actual song so instead it was probably a beat redone by a 13 year old in Kansas with frooty loops. R-0-0-F...Moving on...

1)Hillside Honda
The epic saga of the Hillside Honda couple has captured the hearts and minds of New York cable subscribers for the past few years, or at least has had thousands of dudes googling Hillside Honda girl. Somewhat of a cult figure in New York and at PTU, what I can imagine began as a one time commercial featuring the cheapest actors Honda money can buy has turned into a full on romance serial. To break it down: First, the guido guy meets super hot girl and then instead of asking for her phone number he just wants to log on to Hillside Honda.com (loser), the coy approach must have worked because in subsequent commercials, they're shacked up, laying on a bear skin rug or something and the most recent edition finds the two back in that Honda chatting it up like an old married couple. The Before Sunrise of cheesy local commercials, and the introduction of America's sweetheart, the Hillside Honda girl. Hondas are still shitty cars, though.

Have any other favorite lame-o commercials that you have seen or are in? Let it be known.

A Quick History of Jean Shorts

Even though PTU commenter Shank's new favorite player, Shumpert, got most of the attention last week, the Knicks did pick up another player in the draft. Josh Harrellson, a big lumbering white center from Kentucky who they threw a couple bucks to the Hornets for. From what I understand, he's a good rebounder who can take up some space under the basket but more importantly, the man's nickname is "Jorts". The team gave him the name because he happened to wear some rather short denim shorts to a team meeting early in his college career and I guess it stuck, but that automatically gives him the best nickname on the team (sorry STAT).

Yes, jean shorts have made a comeback this year (mostly on women) but there is a long dynamic history of jean shorts. Let's take a stroll down jorts lane:

200 B.C.:
While drawing on walls in caves, prehistoric man also stumbled upon an alarming fashion trend: jeans that are also shorts. Many of the more snooty cave-men think the jean short wearers are trying to be black.

1960s:
James Dean starts a fashion craze with his iconic leather jacket and jeans look, instantly making the denim look a sign of cool rebellion. His jean shorts look didn't make as much of an impact.

1970s:

Daisy Duke wears jean shorts on the "Dukes of Hazzard" and creates a frenzy of horny jean short enthusiasts.


1990s:
By this point, jean shorts have officially become the signature outfit for any wigger or actual black person, or simply anyone who wants to appear as if they hang out at Friendly's on a friday night and take vicodin recreationally. Jean shorts are available in every color in the rainbow. Eventually, hipsters in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and crack heads begin cutting their shorts to create makeshift jean shorts. Usually spotted at McCarren Park kicking ass in their Sunday kickball league or smoking crack, respectively. In either situation, jean shorts are the preferred look.

2000's:

John Cena becomes the unofficial jean shorts ambassador. Also releases a rap album and does whatever else he can to keep the wigger nation alive while simultaneously killing it until Detective Holder on The Killing revived it.

Mid 2000's:
Derrick Coleman dons a pair of jean shorts in the NBA Street video game, originally known as NBA Perps.

2011:


The era of the jean shorts has returned. Not only are they now fashionable as everyone from rail-thin runway models to abusive shit-bag Chris Brown have thrown on a pair recently, but the Knicks now finally have their very own jean shorts wearing center. Ewing had the bathrobe, but Harrellson (seen above wearing what I can only assume is jorts) will lead this new generation of Knicks in a slightly different choice of attire. The future of basketball is here, and it's wearing jean shorts.

PTU Book Club: Those Guys Have All The Fun

With the NBA season now in the rear view, and baseball approaching the slow, dog days of summer, I've resorted to other forms of entertainment to keep me from flipping out and hurling a Snapple bottle at someone, such as reading books. I'm not a huge reader, but the types of books that interest me usually involve people getting drunk or sports, especially those that are biographical. Thankfully for the rest of the people in New York that don't like Snapple bottles to the head as well as my own sanity, this summer saw the release of the much ballyhooed ESPN biography "Those Guys Have All The Fun" which is a biography of ESPN that has many stories involving drinking and sports. Win!

I was a big fan of authors James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales' Saturday Night Live oral history "Live From New York" that I received as a Christmas gift at some point this century and promptly finished while there was still tinsel sticking to my socks, and this ESPN tome follows the same formula of a history told entirely through quotes from the people who lived it. The book has received a considerable amount of both criticism and attention for it's more titillating content, and there is definitely some of that sprinkled through out, like the shocking story (revealed kind of matter of factly making it all the more shocking) that the New York ESPN offices in the early 80s were prostituting their secretaries. An executive from that time is quoted as saying that a couple of the girls were blowing Fed Ex delivery men after hours and becoming strung out on coke. The Hell??? Besides that crazy tidbit though, most of the fun is derived from listening to ESPN anchors and executives talking about each other in ways that aren't all that exceptional besides the fact that we don't get to hear people like Linda Cohn rank on Chris Berman or Tony Kornheiser throw jabs at Mike Tirico anywhere else in public, and that's fun for a little while (the married Tirico should probably be most embarrassed by the details revealed in the book, since he comes off as a lecherous, pompous asshole). Written conversations are always more forthcoming and controversial than the spoken word even if the people know that whoever they're talking about will eventually read what is said (same reason it's easier to tell someone off or talk junk in an e-mail or text than face to face).

Other than the gossip factor though, 90% of the more than 700 page epic is dedicated to boardroom stories involving financial mergers and acquisitions. The one knock I have on the book is that the constant business talk tends to get a little redundant after a while. There's only so many ways someone can tell a pithy anecdote about a huge corporation buying another slightly less huge corporation or how heated a meeting of shareholders was. Still, that doesn't take away from it being an enjoyable and informative read for the most part. For people like me who are a few years younger than the network itself, it's kind of cool to see how there was a time that ESPN didn't exist and there were numerous doubters who thought that no one would sit and watch sports or jerks talking about sports for 24 hours, 7 days a week. Salacious details and corporate jockeying aside, it's a little thrilling to see a media powerhouse develop from it's inception, even to a cynic like me.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 Bagels. Check it out, but maybe get a digital copy if you have a Kindle or Ipad or other hi-tech doo hickey. It's freakin' huge.

Lamest Sneakers Of All Time: Reebok Shaq Kamikazes

Shaquille O'Neal was as dominant and influential an athlete that the NBA has ever seen and was more than worthy of all the accolades and praise he received since his recent retirement announcement. But while Shaq Diesel (seen above dunking on PTU hero and jean short enthusiast Derrick Coleman) dipped his size 22 toes into non-basketball related endeavors such as music and movies with mixed results, one world that the Big Marketer couldn't conquer was the sneaker world. Despite being perhaps the second most famous basketball player of all time (and arguably the most physically recognizable), Shaq never had a truly popular sneaker.

Most of the designs of Shaq kicks ranged from boring and clunky looking to just plain disgusting. These Reeboks (one of the last pairs that he wore before jumping ship to form his own brand of unwearable footwear) most definitely fall into the latter category. I mean, look at these abominations, but not for too long since they literally will make you sick. Who was in the Reebok offices in the mid-90s that thought the best way to compete with the dominance of the sleek and cool looking late 90s Nikes worn by Barkley and Jordan would be to produce a pair of sneakers that will literally make you dizzy if you stare at them for more than 5 seconds? I guess the idea was they needed to have a pattern that could match the maverick, outside the box thinker that Shaq was (and I guess he kind of was compared to most boring pro athletes), and I'm all for different and unique designs on sneakers but this is ridiculous. They look like the signs that doofus fans seated behind the backboard would hold up when players were shooting free throws so maybe it was an inside joke poking fun at Shaq's notorious foul shooting troubles. Whatever the thinking behind these truly horrible, vertigo inducing sneakers, the Kamikazes belong in the PTU Lamest Sneakers Of All Time closet next to the Catapults, never to be worn or thought about again.

Get your pair

Weapon of the Week: Made from The Best Stuff On Earth

Disclaimer: PTU, Johnny Bagels or any of PTU's contributors or advertisers do not condone violence but do love the great taste of Snapple products.

We've all been in this situation before: The inconsiderate perp driving the Acura to the right of you decides to cut you off without once thinking about your rightful place as the alpha dog of the street. You can:

A) Swallow your pride and anger like a spineless pussy, not say anything and take it out later on your child, spouse or dog.

B) Honk your horn at this jerk, drive up alongside and flip the bird at him then drive off muttering to yourself how lucky he is that he's in that car and you're not within ass whipping distance of each other.

C) Grab the nearest weapon and make him wish he would've used that Metrocard that morning.

All the real G's know the correct answer is C. You won't be able to look at yourself in the mirror if this guy isn't taught some manners, but driving with a real weapon like a gun, boxcutter or nunchukas is frowned upon by the boys in blue. What to do? Grab that empty kiwi strawberry bottle in the cup holder next to your change and make like Randy Johnson is what you do, tough guy. That fat lady might have seemed jovial and friendly enough on TV but, believe me, she was no joke. What might seem like a tasty, refreshing alternative to Arizona or Lipton is actually a sweet and sometimes sour tool of destruction with a whimsical, ambiguously truthful trivia fact on each cap about penguins or Zamboni machines.

The violent uses of Wendy's favorite beverage are as plentiful as the real fruit flavors in every sip. If your enemy is silly enough to get out of the safety of his vehicle, simply run up to him and smack him across the face like the tangy flavors of Mango Madness smack your taste buds. Or, break the bottle in half and get all stabby. Your mark isn't budging from his vehicle or your simply a fan of the old reliable drive-by? Not a problem, the Diet Plum-a-granate will save you some calories along with providing you a quick make-shift projectile that will break the windshield or window of any poor sap's car speeding frantically away. You think Billy Bad-ass in the next lane might think twice about passing you the next time? You can bet your Snapple-loving ass. The old fashioned type? Grab a classic Lemon Iced Tea (Peach is for women), and quench your thirst for revenge. You'll be glad you did.