Tuesday, December 11, 2018

HopCat (Finally) Does the Right Thing

Back in July of 2015, I wrote a piece about why the name of HopCat's "Crack Fries" bothered me. (The blog first appeared on The Fix's website, then was published here as well.) At that time, HopCat told me, "We have no plans to change the name." Well, it took a while, but HopCat is finally doing the right thing. Today they announced that they are indeed changing the name of their "Crack Fries."

In a statement on their website, HopCat says: "We chose the name more than 11 years ago as a reference to the addictive quality of the fries and their cracked pepper seasoning, without consideration for those the drug negatively affected. We were wrong."

Big kudos to HopCat for making the change. And while I admit that my blog more than likely didn't have anything to do with this development, I like to imagine some HopCat bigwigs referencing it during some important meeting. In any case, this change is a good thing. I might even go check out the HopCat in downtown Detroit now.

If you'd like to read more, here's the link to a good mLIVE story about the name change:

HopCat's Crack Fries Are Getting a Name Change

And here's a video from Mark Gray, CEO of Barfly Ventures, which is HopCat's parent company:

Monday, December 10, 2018

High: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction

I just posted a review of the monumental new book by David and Nic Sheff. It's called High: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction, and it's a book that every young person and their parents should read.

As you probably already know, David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, which was recently made into a movie (Beautiful Boy) starring Steve Carrell and Timothée Chalamet. And Nic Sheff told his side of his story of addiction in the book Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines. Now they've joined forces to write High, a fabulous, informative book that has been needed for many years.

If you'd like to read my review of High--and, hopefully, give it a "Helpful" vote over at Amazon (those are always appreciated)--click on this link:

Take me to Dean's review of High on Amazon.com

I think this book is going to be huge when it comes out on 1/8/19. Kudos to David and Nic Sheff for creating it. It's going to save a lot of lives.

Nic and David Sheff