It’s Memorial Day weekend and not only does this mark the unofficial start of summer, it also marks my third SEASON PREMIERE! This blogumn officially kicks off my third year on F & N. Since we’re 93 blogumns in (plus 5 filling in for Ryan Dixon’s Fierce Anticipation), it’s time to update some of the great things we’ve talked about over the past two years. MOUNTAIN DEWMOCRACY May 7, 2010 [FIERCE ANTICIPATION: THE JERSEY JOE EDITION III] In my third blogumn filling in for Ryan, PepsiCo, the bottlers of Mountain Dew released three test flavors for the summer of 2010, allowing fans to vote on which they liked best to join the line permanently. They had tried this experiment in 2008 and it was a huge success. Mountain Dew White Out was the winner and went on sale on October 4th and is still on sale now.  For a brief time, Wal-Mart Supercenters also sold 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew: Typhoon, one of the losing flavors.  In addition Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Cherry Citrus and Mountain Dew: Game Fuel Tropical were also on sale last summer to tie into the video game release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  They were discontinued in December. PepsiCo has hinted that it has no plans to test more flavors, but a few new releases have gone on sale.  Mountain Dew Xtreme (grape flavored) in available in Saudi Arabia and Mountain Dew Grape is currently on sale in Japan. For summer 2012, a new flavor will appear in stores: Mountain Dew: Dark Berry as a promotion for the movie The Dark Night Rises.  It will have a mixed berry flavor and the cans will change color when chilled.  It goes on sale June 18th. THE SMURFS MOVIE May...

We’ve all shopped at a JCPenney at one point in our lives just as our parents did. The department store has been around for over 110 years and now the entire chain is undergoing a major change! Penney’s, as most of us call them, have anchored just about every mall built since the suburban population sprawl in the 50’s. The chain is well known for their clothes, makeup, and house wares; as much as they are known for their deep discount weekly sales. James Cash Penney opened his first store on April 14, 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming with help from two partners Guy Johnson and Thomas Callahan. The trio would open three more stores under The Golden Rule Store name, before the partnership was abandoned five years later. Penny would gain control and change the name to J.C. Penney Co. The chain grew very quickly and in 1928 opened their 1,000th store with profits of more than one million dollars per year. The chain held on, while many other companies folded, during the Great Depression and World War II. Most JC Penney Co. stores were open in downtown locations, but began to move with the invention of the Interstate Highway System. After the war, as more American’s purchased cars, the population began to move out of downtowns and into the suburbs. High speed interstate freeways not only linked states with fast, and convenient roads, it also linked city workers with their new suburban homes. With this population sprawl came the shopping mall. The shopping mall revolutionized the way Baby Boomers would shop.  They would no longer have to drive downtown, parallel park, feed a meter, and walk from store to store.  Now, everything they needed was under one roof; multiple stores, food courts, ample parking, entertainment and climate...