I ate licorice during Licorice Pizza

It wasn't intentional.

In fact, I would not intentionally have black licorice in my possession on any occasion. 

I do like a hint of black licorice. I used to enjoy the black licorice flavored Altoids -- not sure if they are still on the market -- and I think licorice also makes an excellent flavoring for tea.

But when you combine it with the texture of eating licorice itself, something about that curdles the experience for me. I think it's just too much licorice.

Still, someone in my extended family has gotten it into their head that I like licorice. This is not the first time I have received licorice in my stocking at Christmas, and because who gave what is anonymous with stockings, I still don't know who this misinformed little elf is. (It's not my wife, who considers licorice vile in all its forms, but it could be my father-in-law, his partner or my sister-in-law, likely one of the latter two.)

Here's what this misinformed little elf gave me:

That's right, that's two full meters of licorice. Or, 2 full metres of liquorice, if you want to use the local spellings. 

I don't like it but I will eat it. Especially when I can use it as theoretical sustenance during a long movie I'm watching at night, which is what Licorice Pizza was.

I swear, though, that when I threw it into my bag on Wednesday night, I didn't recognize the coincidence. And yes, if there's a coincidence to be had, I will certainly tell you about it on my blog.

In fact, it wasn't until digging into my backpack about 15 minutes into the movie that I thought "Ha, I'm eating licorice during Licorice Pizza."

Although I choked it down with only sort of a mild annoyance at each bite I was taking, you can be sure I limited myself to a single of the two available metres. 

The funny thing is, I never did figure out what the title referred to.

I know at one point the movie was called Soggy Bottom, a term that gets referenced a lot in the plot and relates to the marketing of the new invention of the water bed. But for I'm sure the same reasons that Alana considers "soggy bottom" to be a bad form of marketing, making you think of shitting your pants, the title was changed to Licorice Pizza.

I just googled it and apparently the movie is named after an iconic Southern California record shop from the era in which the film was set -- reluctantly, it would appear, after Paul Thomas Anderson was forced to change the title. "If there's two words that make me have kind of a Pavlovian response of being a child and running around," Anderson explained, "It's 'licorice' and 'pizza.'"

I'm only three years younger than Anderson, and it's true, licorice was around a bit back then. Perhaps not any more so than it is now, though I must admit I don't track the licorice market very closely.

I will tell you that I was very happy to eat red licorice, which is probably only described as such because Twizzlers made it in the same texture and shape as its black licorice. Licorice is really a flavor, though, not the shape of a confection. Still, if you are going to eat something that calls itself licorice, you are better off with the red. (You are also infinitely better off with the Twizzlers than the Red Vines. As a SoCal native, I'm sure Anderson would disagree.) 

If we're talking Twizzlers, though, I should tell you that my favorite Twizzler is one I only discovered in the year or two before I moved from California, which is this:

I can see from the packaging they no longer try to pass them off as licorice, only referring to them as "filled twists."

These things just burst with flavor, those flavors being "cherry kick" and "citrus punch." And yes they do have a kick. In fact, if I'd had some with me, these would have been an actively selected form of sustenance in any movie, for whenever I needed a kick to wake myself up a bit. 

I became so obsessed with these that I have actually had people send them to me from the U.S. to Australia. I can remember one instance of my likely befuddled aunt and uncle having done it, at least. Good sports they were. 

Not everyone shares my enthusiasm. In fact, when I convinced two friends to try them on a trip to Las Vegas in the year or two before I left, they reserved language related to cleaning products in their descriptions of the experience of grimacing through a bite or two.

What can I say, not everyone has a taste for licorice.

And that's all I have to say about licorice for today -- and all I'm going to say about Licorice Pizza, so close to revealing all in my 2021 rankings.