Super Bowl Sunday is eight days away.
It's the biggest day for snacks, TV watching and sideline stories to the NFL championship game, which will pit the Falcons against the Patriots this time.
It also will feature arguably the smartest snack package in the history of the free world.
Tostitos, which got out of the Super Bowl commercial game last year - and friends, that's an expensive game, considering last year's rates were about $5 million for 30 seconds of air time - has found a way to make a splash without a splashy TV spot.
Tostitos is offering 1,000 high-tech bags to "pre-identified customers" that feature an electronic chip on the front that can detect alcohol on someone's breath.
That's right. We are in a place where a bag of corn chips knows if you had a Bud Light or a gin and tonic, yet we can't cure the common cold.
This bag is not a breathalyzer. But we feel pretty confident that if you are looking for an opinion from a bag of snacks on whether you are good to go behind the wheel, well, the answer is assuredly no. Now if the guacamole says you're good, well, that's a different story.
You have to commend the effort even if you are perplexed by a bag being smarter than your cousin Mitch.
No, these bags of Tostitos are not going to be at your local Food City, but Tostitos has partnered with Uber and Mothers Against Drunk Driving to hopefully keep as many cars with impaired drivers off the road this Super Bowl Sunday as possible.
Standard retail bags of Tostitos Scoops sold before the Super Bowl will contain a code for a $10 coupon toward an Uber ride. That coupon is available to the first 25,000 users who enter the five-digit code online as soon as the game ends.
Wow, this whole deal really is all that - and a bag of chips.
Poof, and its gone
This paper's Steve Johnson reported earlier this week that the Chattanooga History Center - a money pit of epic proportions - is now considering an online home.
So a lot of the photos and maps and different pieces donated to the effort could be scanned and housed on the interwebs.
"We think of ourselves as Gig City, so doesn't that kind of fit that we would have a virtual museum?" Carl Henderson, the center's treasurer, told Johnson earlier this week.
Perfect. A virtual museum of what has been a physical disaster, all things considered.
Of course, that means a lot of the stuff - items saved or donated to the museum in the "virtual" thought that this museum would ever see the light of day - needs a new home. Various ideas are being tossed around about the "virtual" vagabonds, including seeing if people who donated some of the stuff would like those pieces back.
In fact, the history center folks bought an ad in the TFP as well as posted on its website a list of 83 individuals and groups that donated things the center would like to return.
Here's betting that for the group that gave millions of dollars to the cause, the museum is not looking to return your donations.
Man, a 76 must be really bad
OK, this week on the timesfreepress.com website the headline in the middle of the page was eye-popping:
"Big River Grille cited for roach infestation by health department."
Buckets, that can't be good.
(Granted for a chunk of a lot of us back in the day, as long as those bugs were not in beer mugs, we're not sure it would have even affected us. And maybe not even then.)
Now, that banner headline instantly catches your attention - and your breath - as you think, "When was the last time I ate there?"
It begs two questions, really. First, how many two-word phrases would be worse in a headline for a restaurant? Roach infestation is bad. Maybe rotting corpse or malaria outbreak are worse, but that's a short list, no?
Secondly, what kind of grading scale is the health department using when the place that has "roach-infestation" on the report still gets a 77 on the card?
Who's keeping the books on this thing, Bernie Madoff?
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and 423-757-6343.