Boz Scaggs – "Lido Shuffle" (1976)

He’s for the money

He’s for the show

Lido’s waitin’ for the go

If you were a fan of Sex and the City. you’re familiar with the Cosmopolitan cocktail that was favored by Carrie Bradshaw and the other female characters on that show.

(The old jokes are the best jokes.)

How do you make a Cosmopolitan – which is often referred to as a “Cosmo”?  Pour two parts vodka, one part Cointreau, one part lime juice, and one part cranberry juice cocktail into a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake until well-chilled, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

There’s a version of this drink that’s made with prune juice instead of cranberry juice.  Can you guess what it’s called?

A Constipoliton, of course! 

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Drinking prune juice isn’t quite as disgusting as eating prunes, but it’s close enough for government work.  

In 2000, the Food and Drug Administration amended its regulation to allow prunes to be labelled as dried plums – which is what they are, and what they always have been.  (The FDA moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.)

While prunes and dried plums are two names for the same thing, prune juice is not the same as plum juice.

To make plum juice, you squeeze plums in much the same way that you squeeze grapes to make grape juice.  But to make prune juice, you first have to cook the prunes in hot water to rehydrate them.  That’s because dried fruits like prunes don’t have much juice.  

Prune juice and plum juice both contain fiber and sorbitol, a carbohydrate that has a laxative effect.  So both juices ease the chore of dropping off of the kids at the pool.

I don’t drink prune juice – which is horrible stuff.  (Gag me with a spoon!)  But I’ve been drinking plum juice for several years.  It may not be quite as potent a laxative as prune juice, but it gets the job done.

Knock back a healthy glass every morning, and – unlike our friend Lido – you won’t be waitin’ too long for the go!

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A lot of people I know are filled with rancor towards Walmart.

Those people are mostly snobs who have plenty of do-re-mi.  Perhaps they’re not aware that a lot of people in this country need to watch their pennies closely.

Walmart is the best thing that ever happened to working-class folks in this country – they sell pretty much everything any normal person needs at low everyday prices.

But Walmart let me down recently.

As noted above, I am a regular consumer of plum juice – to be precise, Sunsweet light plum juice, which contains only about half as many calories as regular plum juice but it just as effective at making room for dessert.

Walmart doesn’t sell Sunsweet plum juice in its stores – you have to order it online.  A 48-ounce bottle of most fruit juices – like cranberry, apple, or grape juice – will run you about $5.  But for some reason, Walmart charged $12.20 for a bottle of plum juice:

For years I wasn’t able to find the stuff anywhere else for less.  I even looked into ordering it directly from Sunsweet, which charges a lot less than Walmart.  But the shipping and handling more than double the per-bottle cost.

Last week I went to Walmart.com to order three bottles of the stuff.  The price had dropped to $9.58 per container – which is still pretty expensive – but the product was out of stock.

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I was down to my last bottle, so I was desperate.

I did a quick Google search, and was surprised to find that Sunsweet light plum juice was available at Giant Food – which is one of the three big chain grocery stores in my area:

I ran to the nearest Giant, and – lo and behold – found a bottle on the shelf priced at only $5.99.  

My prayers had been answered.  Mirabile dictu! 

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I don’t understand why my favored plum juice hadn’t available at local grocery stores for years.  (After all, those stores carry several different varieties of Sunsweet prune juice – which no one in his or her right mind could prefer to my light plum juice.)

And I don’t understand why the product cost twice as much as it should have on Walmart’s website.

But I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to find reasonably-priced bottles of my beloved plum juice in local grocery stores for many years to come.

No thanks to the government, of course – they had nothing to do with it.  I credit the good ol’ free-market economy for finally coming through for American consumers.  To paraphrase the philosopher, the wheels of the free market may sometimes turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.  

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I’ve loved Box Scaggs’s “Lido Shuffle” since I first heard it on the radio back in 1976.  Why I haven’t featured it on 2 or 3 lines before now is a mystery to me.

Better late than never, as the saying goes.

I couldn’t have told you half the lyrics to “Lido Shuffle” before looking them up on Genius.com before writing this post.  So I know what the lyrics are now, but I have no idea what they mean – and I don’t really care.

Click here to listen to “Lido Shuffle,” which I could listen to all day – talk about getting in the groove and staying there.  

Click here to order that recording from Amazon.