Top 6 Matchups of Kid Things vs. their Adult Analogues

6. Milk chocolate vs. Dark chocolate

Milk chocolate is delicious.  Dark chocolate is tasty, but not delicious.  It's purer and snobbier or whatever, but seriously, if you actually think dark chocolate tastes better than milk chocolate, then go eat unsweetened chocolate because that would be even more hardcore.

WINNER: MILK CHOCOLATE (Kid things 1, Adult things 0)

5. Ping-pong vs. Tennis

Somebody might object to my classification of "ping-pong" as a kid thing, when it's an Olympic sport and there are professionals who devote their life to it.  But hold--those people are playing TABLE TENNIS.  If you call it ping-pong, you are probably still a kid.  And you can learn to play it way before you're physically able enough to play tennis.  And yet...it has so much depth that there ARE professionals, and watching professional ping-pong is almost as entertaining as professional tennis!  It's a close call, but the versatility of the former through age ranges takes it.

WINNER: PING-PONG (Kid things 2, Adult things 0)

4. Pacifiers vs. Cigarettes

Some smokers are going to give me grief about how cigarettes are more than just "things you shove in your mouth to keep it busy."  And I agree.  They're "things you shove in your mouth to keep it busy that also give you cancer."  PARMLOT COMES OUT STRONGLY IN FAVOR OF TRUTH, THE ANTI-DRUG!!!!

WINNER: PACIFIERS (Kid things 3, Adult things 0)

3. Fairy tale utopias vs. Dark fairy tale dystopias

This is a tough one.  The fact is, I like fairy tales, mythology, that whole bit.  Especially Greek/Roman and Norse mythology.  But I also like inventive visions that create entire worlds but one which are wholly and fundamentally flawed, stuff like 1984 and Brave New World, things that make us recontextualize ourselves and our relationship to both fantasy and progress.  On the other hand (back to the first hand, I guess?), I'm wholly sick of the current trend of stuff like Shrek and Enchanted and Pan's Labyrinth and their overly conscious effort to adult-up or realistic-ize my fairy tales (even though two of those three are pretty good movies).  So in the end, straight up fairy tale utopias are gonna take it.

WINNER: FAIRY TALE UTOPIAS (Kid things 4, Adult things 0, this is looking to be a blowout)

2. Grape juice vs. Wine

Well, the adults have to win one sometime.  As much as I like grape juice, which is friggin' DELICIOUS, wine manages to have the combined qualities of being even more delicious than grape juice and also making you all drunk and shit.

WINNER: WINE (Kid things 4, Adult things 1, could they make a comeback?  They could if you're bad at math!)

1. Videogame consoles vs. Computers

My heyday for video-game-playing was in the time of the Super Nintendo.  I could tell you more about Donkey Kong Country (and its two sequels), or Final Fantasy II or III, or ESPECIALLY Chrono Trigger, than I could about any other videogame.  I'm actually just remembering now that at one point in time when I was a kid what I actually wanted to do with my life was to write videogame plots.  That shit's nerdy.  But is it as nerdy as everything you can do with a computer?  More importantly, is it as good as everything you can do with a computer?  Well, guess what I'm typing this up on right now--as much as we both wish it was a Virtual Boy--it's not.  I finished a new draft of a 30 Rock spec earlier today, and similarly, Ataris were not in any way involved.  You can't surf YouTube on a Bally Astrocade.  (Maybe that one's actually a point for videogame consoles).  Well, in any case, the adults have it on this one, too.

WINNER: COMPUTERS (FINAL SCORE: Kid things 4, Adult things 2)

Hooray!  The kids beat the adults, just like in every good episode of What Would You Do?

The 10 Common Fruit and Vegetable Juices, Worst to Best

I will go ahead and admit that "common juices" isn't actually a technical term or anything, but I excluded combinations of juices, which means these are about the only ones that anyone ever really has. Also they're the only ones named on the Wikipedia entry for "Juice."

10. Tomato Juice

This one loses a lot of points and ends up this far back not because it's disgusting--it's not, really--but because it's such a generally unacceptable drink by itself. You keep this stuff around to make bloody marys, not actually to consume on its own. And this is a list about JUICES, not about COMBINATIONS, as I already articulated. Also, it's the official state drink of Ohio, and Ohio sucks.

9. Carrot Juice

Who drinks this shit?

8. Pineapple Juice

This one, like tomato juice, is used frequently as a mixer, but not so much as to completely overshadow its importance as a beverage, a task at which it sucks. Come on, guys, this stuff is sour in the bad way, made from probably the most overrated fruit ever, and comes in those weird gross cans where you have to puncture the inch-thick lid keeping the world safe from pineapple juice.

7. Orange Juice

Okay, here. Orange juice is an okay juice. It's not a bad juice, it goes well with breakfast things in general, etc. etc. There's just no reason it should be the most-consumed juice. It's entirely mediocre. Every time I have it without pulp I think I probably like it with pulp better, and every time I have it with pulp, I think I probably like it without pulp better. The truth is that I just don't like orange juice that much.

6. Grapefruit Juice

Now we are starting to get into the "better than average" juices, but not that far into it, and actually this should still be in the "worse than average" category if I'm taking "5.5" as "average" "position" and if I could "do" "math." However, grapefruit juice trumps (HAHA THATS MY NAME) orange juice in the citrus juice category, and it's one of the few juices that I think is actually substantially better than simply eating the fruit that produces it. (This may be mostly because grapefruits are annoying to eat.)

5. Pomegranate Juice

Here is where these juices start to get seriously delicious. Pomegranate juice is kind of the snobby, uppity newcomer to this list, but we shouldn't dismiss it for that reason, because it is very tasty. I don't really give a shit about this antioxidants are the key to health movement, but I am awfully glad that the focus on them has brought to our attention this delicious juice. It is really expensive though, and it can leave an oddly unsatisfied aftertaste in your mouth, though, so pomegranate juice comes in at number five.

4. Mango Juice

Yesssss this stuff tastes really good. Mango is an excellent fruit, and its juice is excellent as well. I know mango isn't actual citrus, but I think of its juice in the same category as orange and grapefruit juice, and it definitely destroys those two. I am craving some mango juice right now as I am typing this.

Also, important to mango is the ability to shout out the Eddie Izzard line "Freeshly squeeeeezed mango juuuuiiiiice" (at about 4:36 in that clip, all of which is good).

(NOTE: If you do this and the mango juice isn't actually freshly squeezed, Eddie will find you and kill you.)

3. Grape Juice

Grape juice, like another member of this list that I'm not naming BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT THERE YET, is something that a lot of people associate with childhood. Apparently, kids like grape juice enough so that vitamin companies made vitamins that tasted like grape juice, Fun-Dip made Fun-Dip that tasted like grape juice, and the Greek kids made wine. (That didn't really make sense or work as a joke, but I'm moving on.) Notice that all of those grape-flavored things (yes, all two of them I named, but also there are more) taste way more like grape juice than they taste like grapes. That's because stuff that actually tasted like grapes would be watery and not all that great. I love grapes, but grape juice is just actual good flavor of grapes more concentrated, ergo better.

Kids like grape juice because they're awesome and grape juice is awesome.

If you drank grape juice instead of wine at church, you are going to hell.

If white grape juice were on this list, it would be probably between 4 and 5.

2. Cranberry Juice

Cranberry juice is extremely sour and extremely scrumptious. It's another one that has a lot of rep as a good mixer (which it is), but it is also delectable on its own, and that is what earns it a place here. Also important to cranberry juice is the ability to quote The Departed while drinking it, which is actually much more integral to cranberry juice than Izzard is to mango juice.

Yes, I have decided that what you can mix juice with doesn't count for anything, but what lines you can quote while drinking it are important. Fuck you. This is my list.

Cranberry is also a superfruit, which means it fights crime.

1. Apple Juice

If you do not agree with this choice, you have not drunk enough apple juice. Specifically, you have not drunk enough Martinelli's apple juice, which is one of the finest beverages in the world, if not THE finest. Apple juice is better than apple cider because it just is.

You liked apple juice when you were a kid because you were cool. Now you think you like orange juice better because it is more socially acceptable. The Man is getting you down. The Man likes orange juice more than apple juice because he is a stupid dick.

Drink more apple juice and live a happier life.