This choice in beverages was no accidental happenstance, but a conscious choice to taste-test this product.  I first became aware of it a few days ago while watching NBC’s Thursday-night comedy line-up.  Pepsi had this spot for it during The Office that was all retro-ish (complete with some Isaac Hayes knock-off singing its praises).  By the time the commercial was over, I knew I would have to try it.

I know what you are thinking – that I am some sort of uber-gullible consumer that can be wooed by a catchy jingle and a shallow promise.  Not so!  See, I have in the past years become a strong opponent to artificial food products in favor of more natural/organic/raw foods.  And if I was mildly wealthy, I’d certainly be spending a good amount of that money buying only the most healthy and natural foods and drinks available.  But being as I don’t have the time or the means to do so, I make the conscious purchasing decisions I can afford.  And among the items that I avoid as much as possible are any sweetners other than natural sugars – no aspartame, no sucralose, no acesulfame potassium, no Stevia, and no high-fructose corn syrup (the latter being the most difficult to avoid).  Most of this battle tends to revolve around beverages – specifically sodas – as it is somewhat easier to find food items that are more natural and what you can’t find you can make (to a degree).  But I’m a working stiff and I’ve never been a big fan of straight water, so I try to find drinks that I like that come as close to natural as I can without costing too much.

So, as I said, I was quite eager not only to see how this new/retro Pepsi product tasted, but also to see it succeed in the market.  While the commercial seemed to suggest that it was a limited time item, I for one hope that it is the start of a trend.  See, there is a rift right now in America between health-consciousness and convenience.  Those who want to swear off such artificial items as those found in a regular Pepsi have to look harder to find them and then usually pay a premium for them when they do.  But if more of the big companies (hint-hint) started to make healthy variations on their products, then by simple market penetration they would be more accessible.  And such accessibility will lead to higher conversion and a tide of greater demand for such products.  But no matter how many hints I drop, the best way to point this out to the big food-makers is to show them there is a market.  So I for one plan to buy as much of this stuff as I can and I encourage all of you to consider doing so as well.

How does Pepsi Throwback taste, you ask?  It tastes like Pepsi – not particularly more or less sweet.  Maybe even a little cleaner taste than a standard Pepsi.  It is also satisfying to turn the bottle around and see only 6 ingredients: carbonated water, sugar, caramel color, phosporic acid, caffeine, and natural flavor.  I’ve got a couple of oz. left.  And when I’m done, I plan to recycle the bottle.  It does kind of feel like a sip of history, but not necessarily in the sense they may have intended.

We turned off all the lights, we shut down the computers, and we unplugged the TV (you’d be surprised how much wattage a TV draws even when it is off).  We lit some candles.  And we hung out around a large 3-wick candle in the living room chatting and snacking on Cheez-its.  My daughter told revisionist fairy tales while my wife took pictures of the kids in the candlelight and my son tried his best to resist the urge to blow out the candles (he caved a few times before the evening was over – luckily I kept the lighter close by).  After the hour was up, my wife got our girl settled down with a candle as a temporary night-light and I got the little tike into his fire-engine bed for the night.  Eventually, I turned on the fan and crept out while my wife blew out the candle in our daughter’s room and headed to bed herself.

Being the night-owl I am, I’m still up, but headed to bed shortly.  But I have managed not to turn on a light so far except briefly in the bathroom.  I did turn on my laptop though … and I plugged back in the TV to attempt to watch SNL (a rerun with Alec Baldwin – he was good, but the rest was meh).

I generally think of myself as environmentally conscious – I try to save water and energy when I can.  But in truth it is easy to be lax about it.  I’ve had the TV plugged into a power strip so that I could turn it off when it wasn’t in use, but we never seem to actually turn it off.  I replaced most of the bulbs in the house with compact fluorescents, but I still need to be mindful of how many lights I have on – my daughter has a desk lamp that seems to be on 24-7 as I keep forgetting to buy her a new night-light.  And we have had access to a compost bin for months but only got it set up and in use this week.  I guess now is better than never.  I plan to be a bit more mindful of these matters going forward both for the sake of eco-friendliness and financial sense.  I also plan to make sure that my kids understand the importance of such issues as the grow up.  After all, if the human race stands a chance, we need to start adopting smart habits earlier in life rather than spending decades in the dark and only then trying to change tack.

Currently, I have a job that I like more than any I’ve had before and I make more money than I’ve ever earned before (which helps me enjoy my job as well).  And yet I still find myself living paycheck to paycheck and seeing my health benefits get more expensive and less effective.  I can’t say that I’m struggling with money, but it would be nice to feel like I was getting ahead rather than just keeping pace (and hoping I’m not falling behind).

My wife is currently a full-time stay-at-home mom to our 2 kids.  This was a conscious choice as (a) our kids are a lot happier in these younger pre-school years not being in daycare all day and (b) even if she did work, it would cost all of her salary to keep the kids in daycare.  So her working would only earn us lost time together as a family.  And now she is considering getting a job anyway so that we can be more financially comfortable, but that will likely mean a part-time job during hours that I can be home with the kids (nights and weekends) which means it will likely be a low-paying retail job.

I really do want to be more eco-friendly in my lifestyle, but to do so is not cheap (and as illustrated above, I’m not really in a position to opt for friendly over frugal).  I WANT to eat more organic foods.  I WANT to produce less waste (as in garbage).  I WANT to purchase goods that use less packaging and more recyclable materials.  I TRY to use less water, less electricity, less plastic and chemicals.  But the next steps seem to be the ones that will cost me more.  It is hard to justify buying organic juice when the grocery store has a buy-one-get-one-free sale on Juicy Juice.  It is hard to justify driving 2 to 3 times as far to go to a Whole Foods market and pay 50% more for the same amount of food when gas is around $3.50 a gallon (I HAVE been trying to coast more to save on gas – it actually works when driving manual).  It is hard to say it is worth being green if it means possibly going into the red.

I am not overly worried – I will soldier on and I am optimistic that I will find the balance.  But I hope that the declarations that I hear on my TV are not hollow.  I know there are people in this country who are worse off than I and they need these promises to bare fruit.  They need the economic stimulus that a $300 tax rebate ain’t delivering.  They need the growth of industry and the moderation of big business that is currently lacking more than I do.  But if those things come, I plan to use whatever windfall I may reap of it to achieve the greenness that currently seems so elusive.

I have to say that personally I really enjoyed this second installment in the rebooted Batman franchise.  It was dark and broody and full of flawed characters as such a film should be.  It picked up nicely on the heels of Batman Begins (not immediately, but close enough that there was continuity).  It returned with all of the characters you’d expect to from the first (though with at least one face that was less familiar) and introduced an array of interesting new people – obviously including the Joker.

This movie was long without being slow and had both believable action and realistic drama.  At no point did the film ever tread too close to the cartoony unreality that the older franchise seemed to drown in.  There were no rubber nipples or freeze rays or arrays of villian-themed weapons and vehicles.  Just one flawed hero trying to hold himself and Gotham together in the face of chaos.  What really made this movie ring true is the fact that people reacted throughout the movie like real people – Batman was not a hero uniformly lauded by the masses; he had supporters and skeptics and when the chips were down, some questioned their loyalties.  Additionally, the Joker’s plans and schemes were actually reasonably thought out and cleverly executed.  While Batman prevailed in the end, it was not due to the Joker’s failure in his own perverse pursuits.

I cannot speak for my wife’s opinion on the movie as she was rather tight-lipped about it.  She may not be sleeping well tonight as a result of some of the imagery in this movie.  In short, it was a bit darker than the last one and in a lot more graphic ways.  While the filmmakers were careful not to show anything gory, they came really close a number of times and very often you expected things to get gruesome.  It was almost worse than actually being gory because you couldn’t not imagine what they didn’t show you.  And knowing my wife’s great imagination for such things, I can see why she was a bit shaken afterward.  I give it a solid thumbs up.  But if she is interested in doing so, she will have to give her own review.

Now I’m going to write about something that is often excluded from movie reviews – the previews.  I love movie previews.  While some people might plan to get to a movie late so they can skip them, I look forward to seeing them.  I will even watch them on DVDs.  So here are the previews they showed before Dark Knight (that I remember seeing) and my quick impressions on each:

Watchmen - I’m looking forward to this one.  I’m currently in the process of reading the comics and it is really an interesting story arc.  It is interesting to see that DC is actually getting more properties to screen finally.

The Spirit - Another DC production.  It looks interesting, but it is done in the Sin City style and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I liked Sin City, but if they do too many movies in this style, it will lose its uniqueness.  If I do see this, I may wait for the DVD.  I have to see something more compelling to convince me otherwise.

Bolt – This is a new animated feature from Disney.  I don’t recall seeing Pixar’s name attached to it and I worry that that might be an indication that they didn’t want to be involved in it.  I’m on the fence, but will likely take the kids to see it anyway.

The Mummy 3 - While I like Jet Li and I appreciate that they are taking a fresh tack with this franchise, I think they should have let it die.  I will not be seeing this in the theater and possibly not at all.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a question (for those that have seen the movie already):  Do you think that they could continue the franchise with a third installment?  Do you think they should?  If they do, where do you think they should go with it?

The setting of the movie is Earth some 800 years in the future.  And what we find is a landscape riddled with garbage.  And it would seem that the failure of society to avoid such a fate is directly tied to the success of american consumerism.  And what is truly scary about this nihilistic outlook is that it may not be much of an exaggeration.

While our behavior as Americans is not necessarily a precise mirror of the rest of the world, areas with small ecological footprints are in the minority among most cultures.  As a result of recent rhetoric (and unfortunately moreso due to movies like this one), the idea of living cleaner and greener is becoming more mainstream, but it will take more than a couple years of bashing the world over the head with the club of awareness to turn around millennia of unbridled growth and consumption.  We are like a caterpillar chowing down on leaves and only now realizing we may run out of leaves.  While we can try to manage our appetite to an extent, we are bound to grow or die and we can’t exactly switch trees.  In Wall-E, we found a way to build a cocoon – in many ways, I don’t think we are there yet.

One idea that I’ve long held that this movie affirmed was that whatever happens to us as a species – whether we recover and find balance or continue to consume and ravage the Earth until we collapse – the Earth will live on in spite of us.  This world we live in came to be through billions of years of coalescence and millions of years of evolution under more volatile circumstances than we observe today.  We could manage to wipe the slate clean through a nuclear holocaust or some other machination of destruction not yet imagined and it will simply mean a new chapter in a much longer story.  I’d like to think that we can find a way to continue beyond the chapter we are in.  I guess only time will tell.  If some of us can imagine a version of our future where in a world ravaged by our carelessness can result in an unlikely romance between a pair of robots that manage to wake up humanity by overzealously trying to do their jobs, then made there is hope.