A Taste of Jersey

It's no secret among my friends that I enjoy the finer things in life: good cheese, fine wine, and repeated viewings of "The Real Housewives" of every city except for Miami, Vancouver, and that God-awful boring mess that was the one season of DC. (I have nothing against the Vancouver version; it just doesn't air here and I haven't bothered trying to find it online.)

My favorites are New York and Beverly Hills, but I'm still down with the O.G. Orange County Girls, and I have a love/hate relationship with New Jersey, as passive aggressive toward that section of the franchise as New Jersey Housewife and former Vegas stripper Jacqueline is toward her ambitionless hair-pulling daughter, Ashlee. Sometimes I like the show, and sometimes I want the show to go live with its biological father and never appear on camera again.

Still, I was excited to discover a Real Housewives of New Jersey-related product tonight at Earthfare when I stopped to get that fancy exfoliating relaxation soap that I like:



Blk. Water, the beverage that adorable disappointment Albie, hyperactive youngest child Chritoffer, third musketeer and sassy homosexual Greg, and Jacqueline's long suffering husband Uncle Chris have been hawking and promoting on the show for the last two seasons. As a somewhat suggestible shopper (I did, after all, buy Hostess cakes because Green Lantern told me to, and then there's the whole story of the James Blunt CD and VH1 that I'm vaguely ashamed to share), I spent approximately two seconds thinking, "Oh my God! Black water!" and then shoving it into my basket.

I've been curious about the Blk. water since they started promoting it. It's black because it has "fulvic trace minerals" in it. After several minutes of searching on the internet I still have no idea what those are or if I actually need them, but according to the bottle there are "over 77 trace minerals and electrolytes essential to health and wellness" in every bottle.

Oddly enough, though, the bottle also says that it contains 0% of the recommended daily allowance of anything.

I guess they really are just traces of minerals.

On the other hand, it looks exactly like I expect water from New Jersey to look. It doesn't smell like it, though. In fact, it doesn't smell like anything. It's also not black, although it is very dark:



It's more of a dark, dark brown, the color of flat Coca Cola. Pouring it into a much fancier glass than it deserved, I swirled it beneath my nose, hoping to catch a hint of the bouquet. Like I said, though, it didn't smell like anything. It also doesn't taste like anything. It's water. It tastes like water. The only interesting thing about it was the hidden writing on the bottle:



Overall, I'm not impressed.

Which is often how I feel while watching "The Real Housewives of New Jersey".