Product Review: Banjees

Need a place to put all your things when you go out, but just don’t know where? Ladies are you in luck, because now you can use Banjees, the fashion wrist wallet. This stretchable, spandex item resembles a wrist warmer and has a pocket with a zipper so you can store small items. The “fashionable” part is that they come in lots of cute designs that girls will love like floral patterns and sequins, and the really nice touch is that they’re reversible. So just slip it on your wrist and off you go! The problem is that this product boasts that it can “store your cash, keys, id, and a lip stick in the zippered pouch”, but there is no way it can unless your items are the size of Barbie’s accessories. The pocket size is just big enough to hold a card, and because the material is made thin, the pocket can only go so deep. We carry bags for a reason; they look nice, have big pockets, and no one can tell what’s inside. Sure Banjees look nice, but unless the items you put in are paper-thin, the stretchy fabric shows everyone exactly what you have inside, that’s not very fashionable.

TV Commentary: Secret Life of the American Teen

Last night I had the displeasure of watching "The Secret Life of the American Teen". What looked to me as a very long PSA mixed with one of those lame after school specials, turned out to be the stupidest show on TV for young teens. This show started out as a story about a young teen, Amy, goes away to band camp and has sex with this guy, Ricky, then finds out she's pregnant conveniently right at the beginning of the school year. So right away you think this is a show to educate teens about the dangers of sex and to force religion down their young impressionable throats. That's fine, our teens do need sex education. The problem? The script, the acting, the story lines, are all utterly lame. In fact, I think they're sending the wrong message to our youth.

In last night's episode the focus was on a girl named Grace who was beside herself with guilt because she was convince she killed her dad because she had sex and enjoyed it. I'm not going to even stop and break down how stupid that is. She then goes on to blame the guy she had sex with, who then blames the girl he lost his virginity to. Can you believe that? A guy trying to call the girl a whore because she slept with him, and his reason was because if he didn't have sex in the first place, he wouldn't have wanted more. So the message so far is, don't have sex because you can kill your parents.

Now let's look at the title of the show, The Secret Life of the American Teen. What exactly is the secret life? It can't be having sex because it looks like everyone knows who's doing who...including the parents. We have the lead character, Amy, who since having sex that one time and becoming pregnant looks like she was sucked dry of personality. Plus we have to be clear that she did not enjoy sex! Then we have the character, Adrian, who is suppose to be the slut of the school since she kept saying in one episode, "It's not my fault I like sex!". Let's forget talking about Grace since she's still crying about her dead dad, and forget all the guys too because there is nothing really interesting about them. Well maybe how bad Ben's acting is...He sounds like he's 40 and has the intensity of a rapist. So yeah, there is nothing secret about these teens.

I mean if the point of this show is to teach teens about the dangers of sex, why is it that every scene has them talking about sex. It's nonstop sex talk on this show like that's all teens do. In fact, you could make a drinking game about how many times the word "sex" is said and get very wasted. So their solution to the teen sex epidemic is to show that all teens do is talk about it? It's all very confusing. So first they teach that if you have sex you're going to become pregnant, yet the school slut doesn't have a baby or any STDs. Then they make the deeply religious girl have sex and have her dad die as a punishment. Maybe they'll have her get pregnant to so they can drive home the message that good girls can't have sex because then they'll get pregnant. I guess if you're already a slut, being known as one is your only punishment. Of course for the guys there is no lesson because we still have these double standards when it comes to sex. What's worse is that they don't place a lot of focus on contraceptives. They just like preaching religion and repercussions, and scare tactics are horrible ways to teach teens about important stuff.

Finally let's move on to the "American Teen" part, how is anything they're doing different from the teens across the globe? Shows like Skins and Degrassi have teens doing much wilder things and they're from Britain and Canada. The whole title of this show is just senseless and long. Here's a better title, "The Crusade to Promote Abstinence-Only Education", now that's catchy!

Ayurveda Cafe Review

I was looking for a nice Indian place to eat at during my lunch break from work. After coming across many expensive, trendy places, I found a very different type of place. The Ayurveda Cafe on 706 Amsterdam Ave in NYC is a vegetarian Indian restaurant that serves meals based on a belief that every meal should have six different tastes. Their menu has only one pre-set meal that they serve and it changes every day. So I walk into the place and the first thing I see is a shrine of Indian gods and pamphlets about what they believe. I quickly grab one and pick a table at the front of the place to sit. All I had to do was pick a drink and choose between white or brown rice, and that was it. It was very refreshing not to have to stare at a menu and think about what's the right thing to order while an overbearing waitress looks over you.

The meal itself was placed on a large metal dish with rice and five little saucers containing five different foods. Each dish was suppose to represent something sweet, salty, sour, bitter, pungent, and astringent. I was wondering where the sixth dish was, but I would later find out that it would be for dessert. I tried to figure out which dish was suppose to be what taste, but it all blended together after a while.

The first dish was green and tasted like a spinach concoction, the second was chick peas in an orange sauce, the third was yogurt that had something orange in it, the fourth was like a tiny salad with fresh carrots, lettuce, and cabbage, and the fifth was lentils in a spicy sauce. Even though I wasn't really sure what I was eating, I didn't mind and I found it all very filling. When I ate all I could, they took my plate away and put a small dish in front of me. It had strands of what tasted like coconut in a sweet powder, it was very good. When the bill came, it was only about $15 for a six-course meal and a lemonade. For New York, that lunch is pretty cheap!