#67 - you lost yo mind?

i was a latecomer to the world of LOST. i never got into it originally & then for years, because one of my past roommates watched both it & 24 (which i will never watch) i lumped them into the same category, "pointless." then i had enough people tell me they loved LOST, so i started watching it pretty obsessively last spring & finally caught up about a week after last season ended. by the end of watching last season, i found myself checking all sorts of LOST websites & episode guides, scouring through the minisites, building theories...i had the bug pretty bad.

...so when this season started, i was psyched to be able to watch it in real time with the rest of the world, but during the first episode, it was clear that when watching the first four seasons, i definitely benefited from having a pause button at my disposal when watching. without it, i miss/don't absorb everything that's going on. since then, i've gotten better at absorbing.

last night was 8th of 17 episodes in the season & the last episode until march 18th. after this season, there's one season left & the show's done, so they have an ending point to work towards, which probably helps....SPOILERS BELOW?

this year's theme is that a group (the oceanic six) has managed to leave the island, but in doing so, all hell breaks loose on the island, as it keeps skipping through time (because it's obviously a time machine) & the crash survivors who remained on the island have to endure through that crap...so obviously those who left need to get back to the island to save those who are still there. last night, they officially made it back to the island & met up with those who stayed behind...obviously, this happened because they all got on a plane that flew through certain coordinates & they ended up back on the island...but due to all the time skipping it is now 1974 on the island...obviously...so i have probably not been born yet...unless it is december or late november...obviously.

there have been some good moments this season (the locke suicide scene was killer), but there have also been a lot of other "history of the island" moments tossed in & lots of skipping through time, so the storyline's very disjointed, which is unsettling at times. i guess we're supposed to feel as unhinged as the characters or something.

i mean, even though there's so much going on, it's not as if LOST has become ridiculous, like heroes. it's actually an interesting device that each episode seems to have moments where you start out thinking "wait...who the f are these people?" and over time, they make their way into the storyline. it adds to the individual uniqueness of each episode. anyway, i just hope all this junk is leading somewhere good or i will personally send j.j. abrams a box of poop...not really though. after all, it's just a show.

#67 - you lost yo mind?
snack: hebert's berry good! dark chocolate bar
drink: fort collins brewery chocolate stout

while i watched the survivors play around in 1974 island time, i couldn't help but think of/get nostalgic for my childhood & luckily, while watching, i had a snack that fit that nostalgic-for-childhood theme--the hebert's berry good! dark chocolate bar.

when i was growing up in new hampshire, we'd often visit my mom's parents in westboro, mass & on the way, we'd often stop at hebert's candy mansion in shrewsbury. the mansion is this house full of all kinds of candy. we were like kids in a candy store. as a kid, i was very partial to the maple candy & the rock candy...so yeah, this dark chocolate bar made by them makes me all nostalgic & junk. i want rock candy now.

tastewise, it's my jam! it's a bar packed on top with all sorts of awesome junk--strawberries, blueberries, cranberries & white chocolate chips. i give the taste five thumbs up.

on the flip side, there was my choice of drink for the evening, the fort collins brewery chocolate stout. i give it five flaccid penises. it's totally bland & hardly chocolaty & not very stouty at all. i've enjoyed fort collins brewery beers in the past, but this one bored me. maybe it was because after eating the hebert bar, my taste buds we're so doped up on nostalgic candy goodness that nothing else could satisfy their insatiable enjoyment levels, not even a chocolaty beer from colorado.

#66 - what a re-tahd.

when i first heard about the how's your news? team (from a camp on the vineyard) a little ways back & saw the 1999 movie documenting their travels across the country, i wasn't sure what to think of the concept. essentially, you have a group of people, all disabled in some way, engaging in somewhat forced conversations with strangers. often, these conversations aren't even conversations, as the person being interviewed can't understand the interviewer or thinks that the interviewer can't understand them. somewhere in there, truths & awkward feelings are revealed.

since then, i've questioned intent & gone through skepticism & research & intrigue & enjoyment about the idea that they now have a show on mtv, who has been no stranger to exploitation over the years. in passing judgment, one could also argue that trey parker & matt stone make fun of disabled people (see south park's timmy & jimmy), but then one would be misinformed.

i've been around various disabled folks more frequently than usual in various situations over the past year & in applying that to how's your news, i can say that if you're watching & laughing & enjoying it because these peeps are having the time of their lives traveling the country with friends, getting to do the craziest stuff & interview celebrities & have A SHOW ON FRIGGIN MTV, then there is nothing wrong with it. i mean, it's more than i'm doing with myself these days. if you're laughing at them because you're a prick, well...there you have it. there's a name for you too.

exploitation? hell no. there is a show on mtv with a cast made up entirely of disabled people. maybe one day they'll afford the same luxury to an all muslim cast or hindu caste.

i watched the first four episodes the other night & the show is even better than the movie. some key moments:

los angeles (ep.1)
- sue interviews people on venice beach. a guy on a bike stops to be interviewed & the first question she asks him is "if you could change one thing about this country, what would it be?" his reply is, "i'd legalize marijuana." after that, everyone she talks to gets asked about legalizing marijuana.
- red carpet at the grammys! miley cyrus! boys against girls! plain white t's! the shins! the creepy dude from tool!

las vegas (ep. 2)
- jeremy goes to the mall with john stamos as his wingman to pick up chicks.
- ufc fighters! kroq festival! the rambo premiere!

austin (ep. 3)
- sue interviews gil mantera's party dream at sxsw & opens by saying "you guys aren't even ipod material." ha! it's funny cause it's true!
- the how's your news? band rocks sxsw for two shows. three of the dudes have williams syndrome which, from what i've read & seen, means badass musical ability.

new orleans (ep. 4)
- they have an oyster eating session with a guy claimed to hold some oyster eating record.
- they visit a pirate convention (now with more wenches!) & the louisiana state penitentiary for a rodeo (now with more bull!).

#66 - what a re-tahd.
snack: original juan's batch #114 jerk microwave popcorn
drink: sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine style ale / bar harbor blueberry ale

in honor of the how's your news? team's cross-country adventures, i settled in for the four episodes with a popcorn from the heartland & a beer from both coasts.

i finished the entire bag of original juan's batch #114 jerk microwave popcorn (from kansas) as i watched. it's somewhat spicy (the website lists it at "zesty (1,500-14,999 scoville units...their hottest product is 1.5MM scoville units)" & has a screamin' dude on the front. he's all THIS POPCORN IS SOOOOO DAMN SPICY I'M LOVIN IT MUTHAFUCKAH!!!!! then all the ladies get with him.

unlike jerky mcjerkjerk on the bag, i kept my composure but also found it to be moderately spicy & tasty & the jerk flavoring's well done. there are maybe 25 kernels left unpopped, so that is also a bonus...more popcorn for shawn!...also some 500 calories for shawn.

also, original juan's products are developed in micro-batches, ensuring goodness & whatnot. i can't wait to try their jerk nuts. the bag encourages me to have my "favorite cold drink in hand" to go with the jerkiness of the popcorn, so i started with a sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine style ale. as a beer style, the barleywine ale falls pretty low on my list, due to the bitterness, but sierra generally makes a good beer & i enjoyed this one enough.

then i cracked open a bottle of bar harbor blueberry ale. the beer is true to the claim on their website. it's a subtle blueberry flavor, which i'll take over the overpowering apricot of the magic hat #9 any day of the week. i preferred it to the sierra, which once again proves that the best is not in the west. hopefully that same principle will apply to upcoming how's your news? episodes as well, as they make their way back to the east coast...but only to justify the ending of this blog entry.

#65 - it's a mad mad mad mad tv.

if there's one thing that fox can say it's consistently kicked ass in over the years, it's comedy...& i suppose, if you're a bombastic prick, you might also say they've kicked ass in news coverage, but then you deserve a good kick in the nuts too.

just look at the list of awesome comedy-based programming that they've been home to, all with varying run lengths...married with children (11 seasons), the ben stiller show (1 season), arrested development (3 seasons), the simpsons (20 seasons), family guy (7 seasons), in living color (5 seasons), that 70s show (8 seasons), the critic (1 season), get a life (2 seasons), herman's head (3 seasons)...the animated sit down, shut up (with like half the cast of arrested development doing voices) premieres near the end of april. i already assume that it's genius.

in their history, fox has made a mixture of great & awful decisions as far as which programs to keep or cancel. madtv has managed to stick around for 14 seasons now & is finally ending its time on fox after the current season. over time, even though it too can have its fair share of groan-worthy sketches, i've become a bigger fan of madtv than i am of snl.

this saturday's episode opened with a sketch with two people watching a disturbing commercial for a dog declipper. in it, they kept showing a closeup diagram of how the clipper worked, which involved yanking at the claw and slicing off the nail, all to the sound of a dog yelp. the couple squirmed & squirmed & the sketch ended with another commercial for a product that proposed to aid in "papercuts to the cornea." the sketch then returned two sketches later with a commercial for "the circumscissors."

throughout the show, there were a few sexy sketches about abstinence with miley cyrus & the jonas brothers, a celebrity roast of a dying child, a series of "t-mobile fave 5" sketches with bushie the second, angelina jolie & michelle obama, two bobby lee sketches--one with him in a diaper as cupid & one with him as "the blind kung fu master," a sketch where a firm comes up with a new image for a manufacturer of douchebags and a few other "gems." it was humorous enough.

#65 - it's a mad mad mad mad tv.

snack: stacy's cinnamon sugar pita chips
drink: samuel adams imperial white

as i spent the hour watching & writing down notes about madtv, i dug into a bag of stacy's cinnamon sugar pita chips. they're baked & wheat-based & essentially healthy and stacy madison (the co-founder) got her start in boston, so that's cool. the company's currently based out of randolph, a yawntastic town located just south of boston that i never found the need to go to in my 20+ years growing up in the area. their website is pitachips.com, so i guess that pretty much makes them the masters of the pita chip.

i'm a fan of pita chips. they're never greasy & their thickness makes them a substantial & satisfying snack item, especially when combined with the right amount of flavoring. these ones have a cinnamon sugar flavoring that's never overpowering & when you do get a chip that's abound in flavor, it's a sweet treat & no reason to complain...plus, the flavor reminds me of the main reason my moms got me to eat so much toast growing up.

with the chips, i'm enjoying a beer from another boston-based company, the samuel adams imperial white. it's one of three beers (along with the double bock & imperial stout) in their "imperial" series. it's a fruity witbeir and i enjoyed it (even sipped it as suggested by their website) and thought that the orange & coriander flavors went well with the cinnamon sugar...in fact, it was going so well & i was feeling good that when midnight rolled around & madtv ended & talk show with spike feresten came on, i leapt up like a coked-up leopard & shut that tv down before it was too late...catlike pita & beer reflexes, i tell ya...quicklike.

#64 - you could be heroes.

readers! on the honor system! raise your hand if you liked heroes at the end of season one. keep it up if you still liked heroes at the end of season two. the end of the first half of season three? how about where we are now, halfway through the second half of season three? any hands still up?

i go back & forth on whether or not i like it any more. here it is wednesday & i'm just getting around to watching this past monday night's episode. yeah i've been slightly busy, but usually i at least end up fitting in an irrational 1am viewing or something even when i'm busy, but these days, i could care less how quickly i catch the week's episode. their "to be continued..." at the end of every episode should be the thing that makes me go, "OH SNAP! i can't wait til the next episode! must troll internet for advance information!"...but it doesn't. instead, it makes me think, "oh. that's it?" then i yawn & go look at internet porn in an attempt to get my excitement levels back up.

if you give your characters the decision-making skills of an eight-year old & make them do things that are just plain stupid...you could be heroes.

if you make your characters spell out their feelings in every blatant which way possible short of writing them on a chalkboard & shining a floodlight on it...you could be heroes.

if you bank a good portion of your television franchise on two sub-par actors (milo & hayden, i'm looking in your direction)...you could be heroes.

if you keep making every single friggin season lead up to a catastrophic, city-destroying explosion...you could be heroes.

if you're basically in your fourth season, which is when the 4400 started to get lame & got canceled & therefore you're on notice in my book because you're also starting to become a bit lame...you could be heroes.

#64 - you could be heroes.
snack: snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod
drink: sunkist soda

on the other hand, in the snacking world, simple & straight forward is much more successful & appealing to me. while i watched heroes, i chomped on a snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod. snyders is based in hanover, pa, which may be the snack capital of the world, as it's also home to utz potato chips. rumor is that sometimes the two companies get together & rumble in the town square with pipes & chains & buckets of acid. anyway, the chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod is simple & tasty & i wolfed it down. it was sort of like deep throat, but with more chewing.

since i was feeling that i gotta feel those good good good good vibrations, i washed the rod down with a tall, cool glass of sunkist soda. sunkist is so intertwined with oranges that they don't even have to use the word "orange" in their soda name. sunkist = oranges. say no more.

i haven't had sunkist in a while & i think that contributed to how much i enjoyed drinking it...like, it was really tasty. like, it's possibly the most i've enjoyed a glass of soda this decade. like, wow. i'm serious. i'm wishing i had some more right now...not heroes though. that can wait.

#63 - dushk as you're told.

...so i watched me some josh whedon's dollhouse the other night. i haven't really seen much of his other shows, so i figured i'd give this one a shot. first thing's first...the show's star...mmm eliza dushku (pronounced "douche-coup") mmm. hotties rule! how have i never noticed her existence? it looks like i need to brush up on my maxim magazine. and she's from watertown, mass! graduated from watertown high! i lived there for five months! hottie!

here's the thing though. as a university-educated white male with a snooty film degree and a non-snooty rural middle-class upbringing and a snooty bookshelf that includes such feminist literature as cunt, the second sex and they call me mad dog! and limited knowledge of josh whedon's feminist mores & lesbian subtexts, i'm supposed to be wicked offended about the premise behind this show, right?

the premise: there's this company. people ("dolls") voluntarily come to them & agree to have their personalities wiped clean for a period of five years. during these five years, the dolls are imprinted with new personalities, go on "engagements" with clients and then have their memories wiped at the end of each engagement. in between engagements, they live at this facility ("the dollhouse"). kinda sorta like prostitution, right? a female lead with no free will?

turns out that josh whedon actually ran the show by the gals at equality now (who work heavily against human trafficking), so it's all good in the hood. plus, he sounded pretty sincere about his intentions in a recent interview on fresh air when discussing the show's premise. plus, the totally gnarly lead scientist dude (fran kranz) says early in the episode, "we gave two people the perfect weekend together. we're great humanitarians." plus eliza dushku is a hottie boombalottie. yes, that is the correct spelling.

the first episode was pretty good. within the first six minutes, echo (eliza) is seen racing motorcycles with some dude through the streets & eventually they drive straight into a hall, to his birthday party & then seconds later, she's dancing with him, wearing a dress that hangs at what is basically the curves at the bottom of her butt. the concept of the show's interesting enough too. anyway, it's good enough that i'll watch it again next week.

#63 - dushk as you're told.
snack: archer farms salt & pepper cashews
drink: archer farms blueberry black tea

since i have no free will myself these days, when i'm looking for a snack, 83% of the time, i find myself at target, plunking one after another of their target-brand archer farms products into my lil red basket like a good little target target customer. i ate about a quarter of an 11.5 oz jar of archer farms salt & pepper cashews while watching dollhouse. i mean, cashews are good, but cashews covered in both salt & pepper are at least ten-fifteen times whatever good is. good for shoveling. mouth shoveling. it's a simple flavor genius that i've enjoyed ever since the days when i first moved to nyc & first laid eyes on a bag of utz salt & pepper chips, during the pre-9/11 era. i can never forget that moment.

the label provides me with a wealth of juicy info:

#1 - these cashews are multicultural, as they're a product of india, brazil, vietnam & indonesia. that means that these cashews have been to twice as many countries as me. nuts. i should get out more...& eat locally more. i don't even want to know what the carbon footprint is on deez nutz.

#2 - they are made up of four ingredients--cashews, salt, black pepper, modified food starch (corn). wtf target! i know you're all "shelf life shelf life shelf life," but i've been in your brooklyn location & unless your employees are lame at restocking which i couldn't IMAGINE FOR ONE SECOND that they'd be, stuff flies off the shelf. so shelf life's not a problem. please. can i eat one thing that doesn't have friggin corn in it?

#3 - the label offers up a "100% satisfaction guaranteed" guarantee...followed by the phrase "and they said you can't guarantee happiness." i bet the woman sitting alone in her apartment right now bawling as she shovels cashew after cashew into her mouth whilst watching tivoed episodes of extreme home makeover & picking cat hair off the sofa agrees with you 100% about that happiness thing.

speaking of what isn't good, there's archer farms blueberry black tea. ever since every beverage company & their mother started bottling teas, everyone thinks they can just whip up a good tea & call it a day. for starters, the name's got "black & blue" in it. for finishers, the tea tastes as bland as an ang lee film. boom. roasted. sorry target. i refuse to be an empty vessel for your crappy tea. i'll take your corn-laced cashews though.