Apple Review #20: Crimson Topaz

Speaking more about reviews — I think it’s less fun for me and less enticing for you when I review an apple that isn’t either I PUT THIS INTO MY MOUTH AND ALL MY TASTEBUDS CAME ALIVE AND SANG A CHORUS OF HALLELUJAH or IT’S LIKE SATAN ATE BAD SUSHI AND THEN TOOK A SHIT ON MY TONGUE. This is, in part, a problem with the Internet in general, though I don’t think it started there — the reviews you tend to remember are the ones that are a total pan or a fawning fuckfest. We respond more strongly to love and to hate, and doubly so when we feel the opposite feeling to the strong feeling offered — “Oh, you hate this thing I love? May you fall into a mud hole for a thousand years.” “Oh, you love this thing that I hate? You are the most foolish mortal who has ever walked the earth, it’s astonishing you’re even managing to walk and talk and feed yourself, you huge piece of shit.” Again, this didn’t start with the Internet — but certainly shoving us all into close digital quarters with one another and dropping a comment section below every Hot Take like a sewer system has only encouraged it. And the more extreme a review, the likelier it is people are going to share it or scream at it and both of those things are going to goose the Almighty Algorithm.

(More points to why I like Bluesky — it has its problems, but the nuclear block and the lack of a presiding algorithm are key for me.)

All of this means people are far likelier to dial their opinions up or down online — and that means not just in reviews, but in general — to get the attention. The algorithm detects that sort of aggro-love-hate-arrgh-hnngh behavior, and it promulgates that opinion throughout the digital world. This is the attention economy — the algorithm detects attention or potential attention and then amplifies it, which becomes something of a self-feeding beast, a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I’m not saying this entirely explains our current political situation, but… it’s in there somewhere.

So of course I’m prefacing all of this because I found one of those… mid-apples. The Crimson Topaz (also my superhero name) is a good apple, but will probably never be great and while better than most grocery store apples just isn’t going to explode your dick with how amazing it is. It’s fine! It’s even good. But that makes it less exciting to review, and I don’t know if you can jazz up mediocrity, right? Effusive cromulence just isn’t a thing. It’s hard to make boring be un-boring. How do you make a three-star review exciting? “The plumber did his job, it’s fine,” just doesn’t hit like “The plumber was drunk and ate my houseplants and then shoved his underwear down my shower drain before falling asleep, ass-up, do not hire this guy, he’s the worst.” At the same time, the everything is amazing and everything is terrible mindset just can’t work with a perfectly normal apple like this one.

So! Please bear with me when we go through these sort of middle-ground apples. Pretend I’m yelling it at you, or that the review is lit up in fireworks or something. Maybe sing it! Everything is better in song! Probably!

That said, I think the photo I took of it, above, is one of my favorites, because it’s just a little noir — and in the background you can see the far superior Esopus Spitzenburg ready to shank it with a blade made from its dark stem.

(That apple lands at the blog tomorrow.)

And now, the review.

My review of a Crimson Topaz, from Manoff Orchard, PA, mid-Oct:

This is an apple! You can eat it if you’d like.

The end!

6.1!

Okay, that’s probably not fair to this apple.

Fine, fine, here’s a better review.

This is a perfectly nice apple. This is an apple that will get a good job regardless of how well the economy is doing, provide for its family, retire in half-comfort, and then perish knowing secretly it could’ve done so much more with its life.

We — or at least I — sometimes want a measure of complexity in our apples, which at the base level is why I think sweetness balanced with tartness is interesting. It just does more for your mouth. Thai food is great because of how it brings all these flavors to the party: sweet, sour, savory, spicy. A good apple is that way, too, with multiple flavors bouncing around in there. It’s like rhythm in a song, or pacing in a story — it can’t all just be one thing, all the time. That gets dull quick.

But the Crimson Topaz is… pretty one-note. It’s mostly just sweet. There’s acid in there, there’s a little bit of an edge, but it’s way more Jerry Seinfeld than George Carlin, if you follow me. The flavor isn’t bad — it’s quite candy-forward. You get vanilla and honey up front, but then as you eat it, you get a strong taste of bubblegum — Juicy Fruit in particular — and like, Skittles.

The crunch is flat, but releases a fair bit of juice. Still, the chew lingers too long, like that guest who can’t take the hint that the party is over? You’ve started to wash the punchbowl and yet there they stand, talking about some insipid shit you don’t care about, and you wonder? Do you need to turn out the lights? Put chairs up on the table? Throw a cat at them?

There’s a flavor that lingers once the chewing-chawing-chomping is complete — it’s a kind of savory umami thing, but it’s odd, and I didn’t like it.

This is an apple that is ultimately superior to most grocery store apples and honestly, if you like a sweeter-side apple, you might love this.

I did not love it.

I like it fine.

Just not enough to hang out with it after work, or make out with it in the shrubbery after having a few too many drinks. This lax, lumpen apple is not one I’d seek again, really, but one I’d eat if you handed it to me.

I think 6.1 is a perfectly cromulent score. I would say 6.7 but then some middle-schooler is going to kick down the door to my comment section and do the meme, and that’ll just ruin my day.

Crimson Topaz: More an acquaintance than a friend, tbh