Yakkin' About Electrolytes: Carmelo Anthony's Sports Drink Evolution

There is, to be fair, no right way for an athlete('s social media consultant's assistant) to write a tweet spamming that athlete's branded sports drink. If there is, it's something along the lines of "Hey, everyone, we just launched two new flavors of Jannero Pargo's ParGoJuice. They are High Fructose Fruit Punch and Yellow Flavor. Hope you like them." That would be fine.

But that is more than 140 characters, and somehow Jannero Pargo doesn't even have a sports drink, and keeping it low key is not the move when it comes to sports drinks. Gatorade could advertise its product by showing people playing sports, getting sweaty, and then enjoying a Gatorade afterwards, but they instead advertise it by having football players turn into monsters or whatever, and by having the one voiceover dude who does all the Youth Oriented Consumer Products spots explain that you take the lemon/lime sports goo AFTER you play, so you can recover. It's complicated. But the general grandiosity that goes with the territory still can be done wrong. For instance, one('s social media consultant's assistant) could tweet something like this:

Which is hilarious and strange and raises some questions, Carmelo Anthony! The question of evolving electrolyte beverages seemed like something worth talking about.

David Roth: It seems like a natural thing to want one's sports drink to evolve.

Eric Freeman: He doesn’t just want it to evolve, David. He wants it to evolve with him. As a person.

DR: Together. Like a married couple. “I’ve improved somewhat as a player, and so it follows naturally that I want to be in a relationship with my sports drink and get old together. I want to take vacations with it, and just laugh. I am not averse to having some kids with my sports drink, if that’s where life takes us.” This is all very down-the-middle.

DR: But I think it would be really frightening if a sports drink actually "evolved." Like developed gills or something.

EF: What would be a logical development for a sports drink, though? Other than more electrolytes, of course.

DR: The ability to speak any language, or control the weather. Or become invisible. I guess that's more "mutation" than "evolution."

EF: Yeah, you’re thinking of the sports drink as an X-Man. Presumably its name would be Hydrato, and it would sap the liquids from enemies and give them really bad headaches. But I’m talking about something different. Like if sports drinks eventually developed natural nozzle tops, or Lemon-Lime and Riptide Rush mated randomly and created some much stronger progeny. Now that’s the real survival of the fittest!

DR: It's already happening. You'll notice no one has been credited with inventing the G Series By Gatorade. The G Series just happened.

EF: I had assumed from the ads that Peyton Manning created it using a child’s chemistry set. I guess those energy chews might have just congealed on their own.

DR: Some prototype electrolyte gel was smuggled out of a lab. Which is amazing considering how many fail-safes there are at Gatorade headquarters, starting with the fact that the Gatorade labs are, and I seem to recall reading this in Wired, located deep beneath a hollowed-out mountain in Florida. I might be remembering some of this wrong. But my point being that if the electrolyte gel it falls into the wrong hands—by which I mean, I guess, DeShawn Stevenson's—God help us all.

EF: CAUTION: Highly volatile sports drink! It could make you TOO HYDRATED. You will pee uncontrollably on the court! Bill Walker accidentally drank it once and tarnished his reputation forever.

DR: You will melt like Bruce Davison in X-Men. I HAVE SOME VERY INCORRECT IDEAS ABOUT EVOLUTION.