Product Placement
My friend Anna, who works in the record industry, told me recently that hard economic times are traditionally thought to be good for record labels, because during recessions when people can’t buy large items, they indulge more in small ones, like records and CDs.
Maybe, then, I will start a regular series about tiny acts of consumption. Not that I ever rolled super decadent. But, you know. Kind of an homage to Beer Frame, one of the most brilliant and delightful zines of all time.
There’s a very seasonal dry tickle in the back of my throat, like someone took a loofah to something that wasn’t meant to be loofah’d. For that reason, I’ve been drinking a lot of this:
It’s Traditional Medicinals Organic Throat Coat tea. I impulse-bought it at the overpriced natural foods store on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. It’s slippery elm-based. I had always known about slippery elm and always been reluctant to try it. I imagined that it would produce, instead of tea, a thick slime, like the gluey stuff you put the newspaper strips in when you’re doing papier-maché in elementary school. So I must have been feeling pretty plucky in the store, or maybe it was just that my throat and my joints hurt in such a way that the company’s description of the product as “sweet, aromatic, earthy and viscous” (viscous!!) actually sounded good. Or maybe I was just possessed by the need to buy something new.
The verdict: It is viscous, but not in a gross way.
It makes my throat feel better.
It tastes nice, like licorice.
I think it is very amusing that it’s part of their “Herb Teas for Seasonal Conditions” series.
It makes me feel like a hippie, in a good way.
For $5.49 I satisfied my capitalistic urges, made myself feel virtuous, and soothed my throat.
Four stars.
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