Q1 2025 Update
01.02.25: After the end of year update for 2024, I got to thinking a little bit and decided, since I usually update the file with the end of year post multiple times throughout the year and usually the quarterly posts here and there a few times prior to posting those, I would just start keeping track of when I dip in to add content. Poking in to update the Hot Ones remaining sauce list, for instance, probably shouldn’t really count as an actual update, per se, since I’m mostly just re-aligning the numbers as a running tally, not should edits to phrasing of stuff that’s already there. So, we’re going to do this for a few quarterly updates and see how it goes. Will I remember to do it every time or at all? I suppose that is the larger question...
The month of January seems to have it in for me, if such a thing is possible. Some of this I have written about, but, to wit: January 2020, I was booted (part of an overall layoff) from an existing gig. January 2022, I was booted from the replacement gig (same as the preceding sentence). January 2023 I did not have anything to replace it, which is always its own treat. January 2024 I got COVID and was put on the shelf for a few weeks, with aftereffects I have yet to recover from. January 2025...well, somewhere in there, either NYE or New Year’s Day, my refrigerator decided to give up the ghost. It seemed fine New Year’s Eve, when I threw some stuff in there. I am probably indulgent the majority of the time, truth be told, but NYE I tend to get really indulgent, even though I was flying solo for this one. It wasn’t booze, since I had done a series of challenges and/or very hot adventures and figured I’d give my poor beleaguered internal works a bit of a break, but indulgent in terms of eating a bunch of foods that I don’t normally buy or consume regularly. Anyway, come January 1, when I’m ready to start maybe shooting some more less intensive stuff or at least do some testing for other content, such as perhaps a hot sauce review for these very pages, I reach in and notice a box is soggy.
Now, if you stick your mitts into a freezer and notice that cardboard is soggy, this is a bad sign and yes, this was definitely a bad thing. The refrigerator still seemed to be working, so I thought maybe the coils were dirty (they were, but not caked), so I cleaned them off, plugged it back in and hoped...to no avail. So, yes, so far into this young year, I’ve had to pitch a couple hundred bucks worth of food. That, in itself, is bad, no question, but here the chilehead thinking kicks in. I also had maybe a couple dozen or more open bottles of hot sauce, some of which I’ve neither reviewed nor filmed, so it very rapidly became a question to go get ice and a large enough cooler or go buy a temporary refrigerator so I could save the sauce. Most of it is (hopefully) stable at room temperature and it never warmed up to quite that degree, so I think the grace period was probably fine (and yes, I am aware of Ed Currie’s sentiment on refrigeration of open bottles, to which I rather wholeheartedly dissent), but I guess we’ll see in the coming day(s?) when the fridge actually gets replaced. Right now, all of it is hanging out in my garage, which is currently pretty chilly, in a bed of ice in coolers, so if it had to happen, I guess it was good it was in winter. Anyway, while it could have been worse, this is definitely not, by any stretch, what could be considered a good start to the year...
01.03.25: It will be about another week before I get a new fridge delivered, but my impromptu tactics (ice, coolers, unheated garage) seem to be working and it’s not going to warm up anytime within that period to where I’d have to worry about it. The impulse to buy a temporary refrigerator for hot sauce was brief.. Let no one question my dedication to this stuff...or my lack of sanity...or possible stupidity. Anyway, I did not buy one, both because my much less expensive method is working well enough and because all of those attributes I mentioned myself as having do have limits...also, I could not find a unit I especially liked and this is (hopefully) a very temporary situation and I have no real need for another, smaller unit. I am trying to whip through as much sauce as I can to try to reduce the amounts left in open bottles, so this may ultimately wind up in a surge of new reviews, which is typically the case for January anyway in years past, albeit for entirely different reasons.
Obviously, this rather markedly disrupts my weekend heat plans, which is the second year in a row that circumstances have stopped me when I was on a roll. This one isn’t the end of the world, though, as I will just push everything out a week or so and try to just use this weekend to continue building tolerance. After the prior weekend (see previous day’s post), it seems pretty clear that I am in need of that. On the subject of challenges, in one of those videos, I referenced the Paqui One Chip Challenge...today, I learned that Paqui, as a company, was shuttered in late spring of 2024, a casualty of what was frankly their own stupidity (in not age-gating the coffin chips), which wound up with them in a lawsuit. I wrote about this a bit on the Community section of the YouTube page, but today I thought I’d check and see where things wound up.
So, I did a deep dive on the lawsuit, which seems to be a civil suit filed in Boston, but the last update on Justia was September 2024 and I don’t have a Pacer account to look through the court filings for the rest of the case, so no idea where it’s at now. I fully expect that Hershey’s will probably eat the pineapple on this one and be the one to pay the settlement costs, which I doubt will remotely approach the $350mil that the plaintiffs are requesting. Also, suing the minimum age store worker and store manager, when there is no law on the books regarding those products, is pretty dogshit. Look, I beat the shit out of corporations all the time and think we’d generally be better off if most of them were broken up (and the entire stock market didn’t exist at all), but in the name of fairness, I’d also include Walgreen’s as unfairly being defendants, as there was no actual wrongdoing on their part.
As someone who strongly feels that stunt products like this should be age-gated, we need to look at mechanisms for how to do this. We can’t just say, well, fucking Walgreen’s should have just refused to sell it, because they can’t. It’s like refusing to sell candy bars to fat people and that opens up a whole other avenue that they decidedly do not want to walk. We also can’t say, well, Paqui should have insisted that the products be behind a counter, like tobacco, except then retailers are definitely not going to be adding those product SKUs to their stores. You’re asking them to do work at that point, for a very niche product. Also, selling tobacco to an underage person is not legal, which is a highly salient point here. It is entirely legal to sell food items, seasonings say, such as pepper powder or fresh Reaper pods or any of that in stores, to patrons of any age, and a few grocers near me actually have that kind of produce for sale. If a 14 year old buys some Ghost chili powder, say, and it’s too much for them and they have a panic attack exacerbated by an accompanying adrenaline dump and wind up collapsing and/or dying because of it, who are we suing then?
I’m getting off-track here. In order to age-gate these properly, Paqui needs (or needed, I guess) to sell the challenge chips exclusively online, with a disclaimer form, the way every single other online retailer that sells this kind of stuff does OR they can do like Dave’s Hot Chicken does and Houston TX Hot Chicken says they do (though the latter didn’t for me) and make you sign a 18+ waiver to get the product. Now, the question might become, if some kid lies about his or her age and orders a bunch of the hottest fingers and puts themself in the identical situation to the one described after the One Chip Challenge, will that disclaimer actually hold weight? If nothing else, they are putting the warning out there and trying to ensure that people know what they’re getting into and while it won’t serve as absolute protection, probably it will at least absolve them of the responsibility for someone else ignoring the warning and hazard signs.
Also, I’m now having second thoughts about this format, since the last goddamn thing I want to do is to have this turn into something approaching “Dear Diary” entries. I mean, I do these fucking things quarterly and I’m only 3 days into the first month of the first quarter and we’re already at nearly 1600 words. Also, the overarching idea of the blog is as close as I can get to a sort of universal neutral stance, rather than anything directly personal. Enjoy it while it lasts, I suppose...?
01.04.25: In a way, this new format is a lot of fun, in another way, it runs a very serious danger of this post being hugely excessive in length. Anyway, I thought it bore mentioning that I’m already off-track in the End Of Year post from 2024. Therein, I said that all of the old videos would be posted by the end of March, but then shortly after posting, I bumped one into April, because hey, just one couldn’t hurt. And now I just bumped another into May. I’m also decidedly suspicious of the idea that I will wind up producing less content this year, as I also said was the general plan, but the year is young and jury still out on that one. I didn’t expect the less content thing to happen until after Q2, so we’re still at least on track for that.
01.10.25: Hey, remember that one time a long time ago (end of 2024 blog post) where I said that all of the videos done in the old style would be posted by the end of March...so, I just now pulled my third video out of that time frame because stuff keeps coming up that I want to get posted first, including one thing that I’ve had on the backburner as long as it has existed. There has been a bit of shuffling, including one particular video I’ve now moved three different times since I originally uploaded and scheduled it...
I do also have a spanking new fridge, which is working a charm, although the door configuration for my sauces necessarily had to change and some of the stuff I tried to keep on ice in the unheated garage (as a refrigerator fix only, all the freezer stuff was ruined), I wound up having to toss anyway, but none of the sauces. The delay has also pushed back filming of at least one fairly major (in terms of infrastructure to film it, as well as a greatly extended filming time) video I wanted to do for the weekend closest to this post, but I have enough of a cushion that we should still be in really good shape for that to happen then.
01.11.25: I discovered today that Buzzfeed did indeed find a buyer for First We Feast, who produces The Hot Ones show, which is more and more becoming a licensing juggernaut, and it just so happened to be First We Feast itself and Sean Evans and a few other investors, some named, some not. At least now, as they enter into their 10th year, clearly they will be able to continue the show at their own choosing and you know, more power to them. I think we’d all dearly love to be in that position.
01.16.25: Season 26 of the Hot Ones had the sauces announced today, so I updated that page. I commented a bit on the Community tab on YouTube, but this looks to be a relatively tame season, as far as heat goes and another that is unfortunately onion-heavy. It is adding 4 new sauces to the hit list, though one of those is the Last Dab Xperience, which will cover a few seasons once I get to it...I’m curious to see what the lineup for subsequent seasons looks like and what will get re-used then.
01.20.25: I’m finding this new format kind of fun (and also kind of dangerous, considering that, as someone who strong pursued “writing” professionally and was successful at it long enough to consider myself a “writer,” I definitely seem to have the gift(?) of being rather wordy). Today, I was doing some look ahead and I think, barring anything unforeseen, I’m already well tanked as far as this being a year where I’d be making less non-sauce FOH content. As of right now, May is already nearly entirely scheduled and half of June is as well. The new filming change was kind of a good kick in the ass (I think, at least some days, I’m finally closing in on the elusive setup), but also I’m in relatively good health and good spirits, which is a pretty big sea change from the last three years. I’ve resumed exercising again, albeit more fitting it in where I can, as I’m certainly not less busy, and with any luck, perhaps I will be able to resume the gym again, though I doubt I have it in me any longer to be a “rat” again.
01.25.25: For winter 2023/2024, I had some unexpected enjoyment doing some heat-related challenges for the then-newer FOH playlist of Challenges (link to that at right). That was rather substantially derailed by COVID in January of 2024, which, though I happily did not lose any sense of taste or smell, instead almost seemed to reset a lot of things, like capsaicin tolerance, as well as a bizarre litany of weird stuff that took a while to shake out. It has also seemingly permanently changed my relationship to alcohol.
Anyway, because I was enjoying some of the challenges way more than I had thought I would, I figured I should pad out the playlist a bit more and picked up a few others that looked at least somewhat interesting. I can say pretty conclusively that I am not experiencing that same moderate enjoyment in the winter 2024/2025 period and once I finish out the ones I already have and have planned (which is 4 total), the idea of resuming my former stance of largely ignoring challenges entirely, aside for very specific and random one-offs, is holding increasingly greater appeal. If anything, this strongly reinforces my “foodie first” mindset. In an interesting (to me, at least) twist, what I’m experiencing with the ones I’ve shot this winter is what I kind of thought last winter’s would be like. This is just not really the kind of content I like doing.
When I do a challenge, that is literally my entire day. In the morning, after my usual routine, I begin prepping for the challenge. This is via a variety of strategies, all of which are aimed directly at cramping, for which I have no patience, and all of which help, based on a sliding scale depending on my relative tolerance, but are not “cures” in an of themselves. After the challenge, because I don’t purge (and have never tossed cookies from capsaicin and only very rarely from anything over the course of my life), it’s generally a few hours of mitigation, depending on severity of cramping, again in varying degrees based on my relative tolerance and how much of the prep I actually did. I try to time the challenges themselves for right around noon, which works out with my body having enough time to process whatever the challenge was and concluding so that I can get in dinner (and I can tell the process is over when hunger trips, because in the interim, the very last thing I want to do is eat or drink anything). I don’t generally do more than a single challenge in a day, unless whatever I have is not remotely actually challenging.
So, if I’m not getting particular enjoyment out of it, while it’s nice to have content and sometimes fun to film with a timer, I’ve essentially just wasted an entire day, not to mention what was probably an overpriced product to obtain in the first place. I also don’t pre-run them or sample them off-camera, so when I film them is my very first exposure to whatever that product is. I am, in essence, going in blind, so to speak. I might have a guess, but have no real idea if that is even slightly accurate for most of it going in.
01.28.25: Just did some quick math after some stuff I’d ordered but forgotten came in and if I kept a normal posting schedule to previous years, I wouldn’t have to film any more non-sauce FOH content...for the entire year. So, definitely that less content thing I was talking about in the end of the year post in 2024 is almost definitely out the window entirely for this year and along with it, the idea of not doing more goofy “holidays,” which I’m doing a bunch of this year also. Further, chances are pretty good I will go past 1000 FOH videos (somewhat related, this blog is on a trajectory to also finally exceed 100K views). Interestingly, while the number of FOH videos continues to run past this blog, at a pretty dramatic rate, the blog is outpacing the YT channel rather considerably, something I find both curious and a bit mystifying. We’ll see how long it holds. It’s kind of funny...when I was a kid, I was heavily into baseball, like really really into it and the wryly amusing thought strikes me that we’re awfully early to be saying “there’s always next year,” but...that is exactly what I’m saying.
02.19.25: Seeing very limited fast food and restaurant offerings in the space so far this year, with several fast food places sort of shrinking down what they formerly offered. There is still not a shortage of stuff on my side, though, and I’ll likely breeze through this year, unless something stupid happens with the current political turmoil. I did have to cut short my grand winter experiment (and didn’t get to the backups at all) due to eggs being prohibitively expensive to continue doing that. If you saw the video for the Smokin’ Ed’s Chocolate Strawberry sauce, you probably know what the experiment is, but if not, it will go live on Memorial Day this year. Almost certainly, though, I will be producing a lot less FOH content next year overall because I’ve covered so much stuff and am now scrounging a bit. I will say that I was a bit under the weather earlier in the month and it was nice not to have any pressure to have to create content and could give myself whatever break I wanted. Same with this blog, actually, where scheduling it out is working very nicely to give myself the same break. I don’t know that I will always have this backlog of stuff where I can do that, but I’m definitely enjoying it while it’s here.
It also dawns on me that this post will either be outright or be right around the 600th post overall for the blog and at some point this year, probably in April, I will hit 600 sauces covered overall. Typing this got me thinking a bit. As I type this, I have 586 full and mini reviews. I have another 6 sauces waiting on deck to be posted here, which makes 592. I have another 6 open bottles in the fridge, waiting to be reviewed and filmed, for 598. On the shelf is maybe another 20 or so unopened bottle, so, in fact, possibly, even likely, by the end of Q2, this blog will hit that 600 overall hot sauce review number.
02.22.25: Today, I filmed back to back challenge videos, leaving me with a single challenge product remaining and a second product of that caliber that was not intended per se as a challenge product, but I’m going to try to treat in that way for filming. The actual challenge product will need an on-screen timer, but not the other. Both of those will be waiting until March to attempt, however. Unless one or both of those is a lot more fun than the vast majority of challenges I’ve attempted this winter season, I’ve probably quenched my generally moderate interest in partaking of any more of those products. My interest was piqued a bit from the prior winter and I thought it might be nice to pad out the Challenges playlist a bit, but the latter goal is accomplished and interest back to previous minimal levels, so I’m not sure of any further point. Not helping things was me battling allergies for some of the challenges and one of those I lost thanks to a sneezing fit in the middle of it. Since it was timed, there was no real way to continue with the cadence and since I found the challenge design kind of lazy as it was, I called a halt to it rather than trying to finish the product, but failing a challenge has no bearing on this. Mostly it’s a sense that I’ve had my fun with the dalliance and am now facing diminishing returns.
02.27.25: One of my very favorite things about the new upgrade to the software is that not only can I film in higher definition, but also I’m no longer time-locked for making content. In the past, as I relied nearly entirely on natural light for the videos, I would have a window in which to film whatever I wanted and I’d have to hope that it wasn’t stormy or overcast or my light would sometimes even then be entirely sunk. Now, happily, even though setup for the new process takes considerably longer than the older one ever did, I can film nearly any time of the day, so my window went from 6 - 9 hours, depending on the time of year, to something closer to 20 hours, on any given day. It is an aspect I’m still adjusting to, even now, after 5 months of having the tech upgrade.
03.19.25: Finished out filming all of the challenge stuff I had, as well as a product I will call challenge-adjacent involving Pepper X, yesterday and barring anything coming along of high interest, I’m probably done screwing around with challenge stuff entirely. As I mentioned in that video (which will be posted sometime summer 2025 - I’m current scheduling stuff into August, at this point for the FOH YT series and nearly through April for blog reviews), Pepper X is relatively new enough that I’m still coming to terms with it. As far as current pods go, the mighty, mighty Reaper remains the one that seems to react the worst with me, in terms of cramping down the line, unless I’ve built a tolerance specifically to it. Tolerance at the moment is probably towards the middle of things, if I had to guess - the current level is of decreasing interest to me, so I can’t really assess properly - and the Pepper X thing gave me a rather sharp 10 - 15 minute cramping session about an hour after I’d finished the product and then largely subsided. This is in contrast to the Reaper, which generally is less sharp but perhaps more intense and tends to be of longer duration, as well as more repetitious. The Reaper also, to this point, has made waste excretions generally more burning, but, again, Pepper X is relatively new to me and testing still continues.
To challenges specifically, the idea that one gets high from this kind of activity is lost on me. While I’ve been high many times *ahem*, I have never had a “runner’s high,” despite being a gym rat for quite a few years and actively somewhat aggressively biking for longer. In the case of these challenges, I don’t get any kind of high but a post adrenaline bump crash, which tends to leave me exhausted and crashing for the rest of the day. This effect can be minimized with enough tolerance, but the problem then becomes maintaining tolerance, which is somewhat difficult for what I actually do and the content output I provide. I don’t find challenges particularly interesting or engaging and usually not very tasty most of the time, so returning to my earlier stance of those being occasional, if at all, definitely strikes me as the good move here.
03.23.25: A beautiful spring day here and it naturally is making me think of grilling season...still a bit too cold to launch that just yet, but I don’t imagine it’s more than a couple weeks away. Now that I have someone to whom I can pass along open sauces I don’t like well enough to finish or to hand off ones where I discover previously unknown onions, in combination with pulling out entirely and relocating the sauces earmarked for the Wing Thing videos, I’ve managed to clear some door shelf space, but it is more limited in this refrigerator than in the prior one, so I have to keep an eye on it. Just out of curiosity, as this quarter ends, I’m at (not counting the ones I’m holding strictly for the Quarterly Wing Thing FOH videos), 22 unopened bottles on the shelf and 13 open bottles in the fridge door, 4 of which still need to be reviewed and filmed. I’m trying to make a concerted effort this year to keep the open bottle count lower, particularly since I no longer have the space for it. This week and going forward, since I will be leaving my current job at the end of this week, I’m going to make more of a concerted focus to use up a lot of the bottles just hanging out in there, even though the fridge dying earlier in the year did a decent job “helping” with many of those. Also, after being under the weather for seemingly all of February and most of March, I’m finally looking at resuming the workouts that I was doing at least a decent job of getting to in January.
