Drinkers Beware

I remember a Mercury party some years ago that was sponsored by Sparks, just when the sweet methamphetic bee nectar was hitting the market. There were big iced barrels full of cans, along with little battery strips. The strips worked like this: press one and hold it to your forehead and a thermometer-like meter would tell you how “charged up” on Sparks you were. (Naturally I forget who it was with, but we tried damn hard to hit the top and no one made it… I guess you’re only fully charged up when the strip detects a vein in your forehead has become varicose, protruding to the point of immenent rupture.)

Now, I know, as head of the Engery/Anti-Energy Drink Desk Marjorie has written about the death of Sparks. Perhaps it was just my own absent-minded reading, but I missed something of importance in those posts and judging on the response I received last weekend, you, dear Sparks lover, may have as well.

When the word of demise came down I figured it meant Sparks would cease to appear on the shelves—after all, they had been accused of marketing towards children. So each time I walked into a 7-11 or Plaid Pantry and found that battery-styled can still in the cooler I said to myself, “awesome… there’s still a few left–just liquidating that remaining inventory.”

WELL NO—THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED.

Somewhere along the line Miller simply yanked out all the good parts—caffeine, taurine, guarna, and all the other toxic bullshit that power a diesel engine. These were the elements that made Sparks worth the risk of adult onset diabetes. After changing the recipe, Miller left Sparks the shelves, ever so slightly re-designing the cans—replacing the ass-kicking ingredients section with similar text running along the side in the same font and spacing.

So when I was sucking one down at a show last weekend in hopes of making it through the long day/night, a friend approached to give me the news (a special warning which he’d recently received from a fellow Sparks aficionado). The fact that no one else at the party knew afforded me no solace. There I was, sucking on a river of piss-candy sugar-sludge without drugs in it.

They got me. Don’t let them get you too. No one’s going to keep drinking Sparks for the taste. It’s time to get that teasing bitch off the shelves—there’s no need for a reminder of the good times we wont be having. Just be gone.