#57 - bodega redux.

i moved to my current place in brooklyn (at 4th & 21st) almost two years ago & when i first moved here, i made a point to make the rounds & check out all the closest 4th ave bodegas. there's the one between 19th & 20th that is frequently properly stocked with utz red hot chips that was my clear favorite for a while. there's one across the street on the corner of 22nd, but that one often is often slim pickens & has more unfamiliar spanish brands than it does familiar american brands, so i get all xenophobic (seriously, how did bally midway get away with the xenophobe video game? "exterminate the aliens?" what? can you even say that on a video game poster?) there's a bodega down at 26th, just past the train stop that tends to have a lot of my favorite snacks, but it's all the way down there, five blocks away, a full block-and-a-half past the dunkin donuts/baskin robbins & at that point it's like, "no item at that stupid 26th st bodega will have as satisfying an amount of glaze or sprinkles as anything in this joint right here before my eyes."

there's also one on the corner of 23rd that i originally boycotted because there was a woman working there who always did the thing where even if you'd handed her your money & extended your hand out to receive your change, she'd drop your change on the counter so you had to pick it up. i hate that, so after a few times of getting the friendly change heisman from that lady, i swore the place off. shawn likes friendly.

then a few months back, the place got all torn up inside & renovated & it has new people working there & whatnot & has become my go to bodega. under new management rules! the place is now run by a group of friendly dudes who call me boss & buddy. when i'm in a state of lazy peckishness, they make me sandwiches & often add a banana in with it & then the banana goes bad on my counter because i hate bananas. i left my wallet there one night & it was there behind the counter waiting for me the next morning. there are all kinds of hip, fancy snacks on the shelves. chocolate-covered sunflower seeds!

#57 - bodega redux.
snack: hostess sno balls
drink: dogfish head raison d'être

tonight i stopped by the bodega in the mood for something slightly chocolaty & hostess sno balls contain some chocolate or facsimile of said chocolate, so i brought a pack of the lil tribble-snacks home with me. one summer evening in boston, just after college, i was working at the allston videosmith video store (R.I.P.) & my co-workers and i were bored & i was hungry & my roommate/co-worker & i had probably been drinking on our back porch earlier that afternoon & as a result, we made a deal...they would give me the money to go next door & buy two packages of sno balls, but i had to eat all of them right there. i took their sucker money, went next door & bought two packages of pink sno balls and ate all four. approx 30 minutes later i felt it. if my stomach could talk, he would probably have a better word to describe the feeling, so i will just have to settle for calling it "gator belly snappin' awful." do not try this at home. anyway, i still enjoy sno balls & yes i feel guilty about their contents, but if you can come up with a healthy, natural version of them that combines seasonally-diversely-colored coconut with chocolate cake, cream & marshmallow in the same pleasant manner, i'll give up my precious sno balls & eat your "nature puff" or "koala coconut cream dream" or whatever the crap you decide to call it.

this hip new bodega has perpetuated my love of dogfish beers, as they usually have three or four different kinds in the cooler, which means i usually end up picking up a couple different singles a week there. a few weeks back, they got in some of the dogfish 120-minute i.p.a. it was the first time i'd ever seen the 120-minute, so i grabbed one, plunked down three & some change and enjoyed the hell out of it. next time i went to get one, i discovered that the beers are actually supposed to cost $10 a piece. they had mispriced it & were in the process of sending it back to the distributor. i felt bad. not "let me give you that $7" bad though.

tonight i'm drinking the dogfish head raison d'être with my marshmallowy hostess treats. it's a mahogany ale & has friggin beet sugar & green raisins in it. i know! can you beweeve it? i bet your beer doesn't even have beet sugar & green raisins. i bet you don't even want beet sugar & green raisins in your beer. the raison d'être is probably like my 2nd dogfish BFF right now, behind the 90-minute ale. as you undoubtedly know, raison d'être means "reason for being." tonight, my reason for being is to pretend that i'm actually watching the season premiere of frontline when i'm actually only retaining the word "uighur" (pronounced: wee-gur). uighur. uighur. uighur.

#56 - stay positive.

so as i sort of mentioned previously, here's the thing that happens during the winter...it gets cold & i tend to stay indoors more than a good lil nun & i end up feelin' more sad & illin' in the winter than in any other month & the crazy uncertainty of the economy doesn't help stem that stuff...but last week, we swore in a new optimistic president, one who was elected behind the message of hope/change (& a national grassroots machine as well-oiled as the 2007 new england patriots). bring it on, obama. ASAP.

let's take a quick look at today's layoff figures, according to an article from today's ny times:

united states
caterpillar - 20,000 jobs
sprint nextel - 8,000 jobs
home depot - 7,000 jobs
pfizer/wyeth - 8,000 jobs
general motors - 2,000 jobs

worldwide
ing - 7,000 jobs
phillips - 6,000 jobs
corus - 3,500 jobs

TOTAL = 61,500 jobs

that is a lot of jobs. the article goes on to mention that we've lost 2.59 million jobs since december of 2007. that is A LOT of jobs. that's like the entire population of vermont, alaska & the dakotas. but like the hold steady advise, i will try to stay positive. but how can i stay positive when iceland's government is collapsing, hold steady?!!! how?!!! how can i stay positive when everybody is batshit freaking out & running around with scissors in their hands slashing jobs & dumping stocks & shuttering operations?!!! at this rate, six months from now, i won't even be able to afford all these exclamation points!!!

a gmail chat with a friend earlier today:
michael: wheee! the 'conomy!
me: it's like plinko!

can't we just toss bernie madoff & a couple random banking execs & a few virgins into the fiery economy pit to appease the gods & bring this all to a swift end?

i hope that in 2009, people will CHILL THE F OUT ON THE ECONOMY. obama has it all figured out, obviously, people. relax.

i hope that in 2009, i will be able to land a job digging a ditch...& when i am done with that job, i will fill that ditch back up with dirt.

i hope that in 2009, i will not have to blog about "bread."

#56 - stay positive.

snack: tyrrell's beef & horseradish potato chips
drink: a&w root beer float

a few weeks back, i picked up a bag of these tyrrell's beef & horseradish potato chips, made by a british company. they're an "artisan delicacy" made with lady rosetta potatoes thank you very much. there's a cow on the front of the bag. it says his name is "sir walter tyrrell." he looks pretty happy as he sits lazily in the fields. i can only assume that since the company gave him a name & put him on the bag, that he's been spared the fate of dying to provide the natural beef flavouring that flavours these deliciously beefy chips. oh! on the back here, it says he lives with "his 40 lady friends!" what a stud. i guess none of them go into the chips...or do they? ooh! they could offer special "sir walter tyrrell" bags maybe? i'd pay twice the $5 i paid for this bag to know there was a little bit of their mascot in every bite. til then, stay positive, british mascot cow!

seriously, go to the a&w float website, especially if you have a slow internet connection. what you will see is written here, in white, so you can highlight the following text & read it & spoil the awesomeness if you want, or you can go to the website & see a bottle of a&w float violently jerking itself around in circles while the page loads! hilariously awesomely nauseous web graphics!

web graphics won't save this beverage though. when poured into a glass, it looks quite similar to another familiar beverage...

...and that is where the similarities end. every time i raise the glass to my nose it just, it just smells like a putrid caramel. i think that's the best way to describe it. it's tremendously sweet (63g sugar!) & syrupy & i suppose it's similar to if you made a root beer float & then forgot about it on the counter & went out to the picture shows & then came back later that night & then you were all "crap, my root beer float!" & through your tears, you tried to stay positive, panting & crying "it's still ok! it's still ok!" as you hastily carried the melted remains to the fridge, where you left them overnight & then drank them up cold the next morning.

it's sort of like that, but with better packaging, packaging that claims that the beverage is "rich, creamy, and so delicious you won't believe it comes in a bottle." you're right, a&w. i can't believe this comes in a bottle. shame on you.

EDIT: also thousands of layoffs at ibm & texas instruments. wait...texas instruments still exists?

#55 - limey.

full shocking disclosure: other than gray's anatomy, which is pretty much all spalding gray anyhow, i've never seen a steven soderbergh film...not erin brokovich, not traffic, not oceans eleven, twelve, or thirteen...not even sex, lies and videotape, three things that, individually, i'm a huge fan of. people talk about him as experimental & ground-breaking & whatnot & maybe i'll believe that when i watch sex, lies & videotape or schizopolis, but until that day comes, i'm comfortable with the opinion i've formed of his body of work...i mean, oceans thirteen? c'mon. the rat pack must be just sitting in the afterlife puffing on cigars & rolling their eyes over that one. i will say i'm slightly intrigued about the che movies though.

nonetheless, in a half-assed attempt to create a blog theme, i sat down & watched his film the limey tonight...even turned the lights down & lit a lime-scented candle i had lying around to set the mood, a mood that can only be described as "solo sexy." the film was actually pretty good. it's about a british ex-con whose daughter is murdered, so he flies to l.a. to find out what happened & enact his revenge. there's this one scene with nicky katt (who you may know as the dude who wins the "fight" near the end of dazed & confused), where he is standing on the edge of a film set viciously mocking various members of a film crew as they walk by. i can only assume this helped him fulfill some fantasy as an actor...loved that. as to the tone of the film, i've been watching & loving damages recently & from what i can tell from the limey, the disjointed narrative & time switches denoted by different color tones that the creators of damages employ all the time would not have existed without the limey before it.

nobody actually refers to the main character as a limey & he's not a sailor or anything, but i guess we're just supposed to assume that he deserves to be called one. the term "limey" is american slang for british & specifically sailors, slang that apparently developed because of the practice of giving british sailors lime juice to combat the vitamin c deficiencies that often occurred whilst at sea & often eventually led to the disease scurvy. though scurvy is no doubt one of our funnier-named diseases, it goes hand-in-hand with malnourishment & in the areas of the world where it actually does occur it's actually no laughing matter, especially the excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea parts.

#55 - limey.
snack: choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar
drink: blue moon rising moon seasonal ale

since i hate excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea, i've taken the necessary precautions to ensure that i don't get scurvy any time soon. tonight, i finished off a choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar. choxie is another one of target's hip grocery brands, cleverly named to evoke thoughts of similarly-named japanese candies & treats. in addition to the tastiness of the dark chocolate & the key lime, the truffle bar has graham biscotti pieces, a splendid bonus for a texture lover like myself. the packaging urges me to "keep it hidden from mere amateurs, and keep your choxie for yourself" & that's just what i did. i'm glad target finally wised up & realized they're dealing with a professional here. believe me, nobody even had a chance to lay eyes on that poor chocolate bar.

i had a blue moon rising moon seasonal ale to go along with it. it's a light spring ale brewed with kieffer lime leaves & lime peel, which basically saves me the step of cutting up a lime & putting it in there myself, which is very convenient. who said preventing scurvy takes effort? i bet the british sailors wish they had scurvy-preventing chocolates & beers like i do. they probably have to mix the limes in with their fish heads & gruel. i don't want to sound prejudiced towards british culinary delights, but i'll take my lime chocolates & beers over their lime-tinged fish heads & gruel any day of the week.

#54 - biggie x3.

this past saturday night, i headed into union square with some peeps to catch the 7:30 showing of notorious, which had just opened on friday night. i was never this huge notorious b.i.g. fan. when he was around, from 94-97, i was in college & putting behind my high school love of rap, which had been largely dominated by n.w.a. (& a host of gangsta rap, both crappy & not), public enemy & a laundry list of d nices & redhead kingpins & das efxes. i had become unhappy with rap's direction, was starting to come in contact with grunge/phish & was reading a lot of feminist texts. as a result, i ignored rap for the most part & didn't really know much about biggie or non-digital underground tupac or for that matter, who nas or jay-z or a lot of other dudes were for until at least few years after i should have.

that aside, after recently running through seven seasons of the shield, i'm definitely intrigued by the fact that the l.a.p.d.'s now-defunct rampart division (which the shield draws inspiration from) is allegedly tied to both gang activity & beyond that, the tupac & notorious b.i.g killings...& there's the fact that biggie was from brooklyn, which has been my home for the last 6+ years...so i decided weeks back that i needed to see this movie in the theaters when it came out.

it was pretty aight. three out of five stars or thumbs or something. those who i went with who had more knowledge of biggie than i reviewed it as, "i'd pretty much heard & seen all that stuff before, but it was still pretty good."...so there's that. jamal woolard, who plays biggie, is pretty good...& there's one running joke about diddy always dancing, which was somewhat comical...

#54 - biggie x3.

snack: regal cinema small popcorn with butter
drink: regal cinema small cherry coca-cola

...before the film, i'd grabbed a small popcorn & a small cherry coca-cola, an indulgence which ran me $10.25. the ticket was $14, so all told, i paid $24.25 for the film experience. i like to tell this story about one of my college film professors, who once briefly theorized that if the price of going to see a film in the theater was closer pricewise to seeing a broadway show or the opera, people would be pickier & choose wiser & think of going to the movie as more of a cultural experience. so much for that theory.

after purchasing my popcorn, i couldn't help but bring it on over to the butter pump, conveniently placed on the other side of the lobby behind a line of people queuing up to enter the theater next to it. i gave my small popcorn two pumps & headed into the theater. what can you say about movie theater popcorn really? it's usually pretty standard & the difference comes in how much butter there is on there. on this occasion, i didn't really give it a hearty enough shakeup after the butter pumping, so at one point, when i was a few inches down into the bag, i reached in to grab a handful & ended up with hands slimier than patrick swayze in ghost. thank god for tiny scratchy movie theater napkins. in the end, i only finished half the bag...i get sick of popcorn pretty quickly, i suppose.

as for the cherry coca-cola, i sucked that thing down. i've loved cherry coca-cola ever since they resurrected it years back. it always makes me think of fifties soda parlors for some reason & i like fifties soda parlors...they're the kinds of places where jerks are preferred!...so i sucked that cherry coke down & of course, had to pee for the last forty-five minutes of the movie. i was ok though. every time i'm in a position like that, i think back to elementary school, when my class went on a whale watch & we had an hour bus ride to the boat. i had to pee even before we left but didn't go for some reason & by the time i finally reached the bathroom on the boat, i had devolved into some sort of pre-teen over-expanded bladder haze. i figure if i made it then, i can make it now.

...today i followed up & watched the biggie & tupac movie from 2002, so i could get a bigger picture of the east coast/west coast craziness & the murders & fill in the stuff that wasn't covered in notorious, which was more the story of biggie's life than his death. biggie & tupac is from nick broomfield, who also did monster in a box & kurt and courtney. all i can say is that he interviews suge knight a few times & that guy does not seem like the smartest & most rational guy. to be honest, i'm surprised he hasn't had nick broomfield killed yet, but that's only because from what you see in the film, he seems to be pretty good at getting away with it. in conclusion, suge knight...please do not have me killed. if you do so, i will agree to not mock the fact that your record label is now owned by canadians. thanks.

#53 - my deutsch buddy.

last week, a non-michael jordan/michael jackson friend of mine who will be known as m.j. moved from boston to hamburg, the alleged home of the hamburglar, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. i've known m.j. for almost ten years now, since i robbed the cradle & we dated for a few years back in the late nineties/early aughts. in a reversal of often typical ex-girlfriend relations, since then, she's been one of my best/consistent friends. it probably has something to do with the dating, but i feel like she "gets me" & understands my manner & humor & shortcomings better more than anyone else, which helps.

& as of last friday hamburg time, she's living in germany. i've never been to europe myself & have always had this dream where i leave behind the u.s. & its trappings to spend the rest of my life in some european city daily lazily devouring the foodstuff & cultural contents of a quaint cafe. as such, m.j.'s transplant to germania intrigues me so.

i've known m.j. since just after she was out of high school & have known her as she's lived through both the frustration of wicked awesome post-college jobs & wicked awesome boys who are stupid enough to not treat her right and, on the flip side, the happiness of new life experiences & travels & good people. i know her as the girl who busted her ankle on two non-consecutive occasions, only one of which was non-handstand related. i know her as the girl whose charisma blew everyone off the stage. i know her as the girl whose smile you can feel through the phone. she's a lovely, energetic person who knows what's up & if you've met her & experienced her quirks (i.e.--her perpetual hiccup reflex), you're lucky to have done so.

i don't know. i guess i'll have to make a trip to germany some time.

#53 - my deutsch buddy.

snack: crunchy fajita takis
drink: grape gatorade

so m.j. left for hamburg out of jfk thursday night & spent a few days in nyc before leaving. the first night she was here, we hung out at a friend's place in queens. at one point, i made a run to the local bodega, where i picked up a bag of crunchy fajita takis. here is photo evidence, via m.j.'s flickr page. the takis are a product of grupo bimbo, a 60+ year-old mexican company who, according to their website, "is one of the most important baking companies in brand and trademark positioning, sales, and production volume around the world." this leads me to believe that they'd shiv those keebler elves before the warden even had a chance to blink. totally non-racist jk!

so these takis are friggin' weird, like weird in the sense that i had to create a new blog tag thing for them ("tube snack"), because they are neither a chip nor a cracker. they are a "rolled corn tortilla mini." three-quarters of the way down the ingredient list is "chicken fat," which, moral issues aside, seems completely unnecessary, especially given the wealth of artificial flavors these takis contain. all this aside, initially, they actually taste pretty good, but like the quesadillaness of the t.g.i.fridays quesadilla snack chips, i don't know what qualifies these as fajitalike. as a warning, consuming ten or more of them in one sitting awakens whatever it is inside your belly that makes you feel like you're on the tilt-a-whirl. anyway, as of tonight, the bag of takis is finally vanquished.

also now vanquished is the bottle of grape gatorade that has been in my fridge since thursday morning. that morning, after a night of yummy foods & beers & wines, m.j. asked me to pick up a bottle of the "light purple gatorade" when i ran down to the corner bodega. i came back with a bottle of grape flavor gatorade & it didn't really get drank & ended up in my fridge & a week later, as i'm finishing off the bottle, i now realize that with gatorade, the taste is unmistakeably vague & sugary & truly unrelated to any actual fruit, so when you think that "grape" means you're getting "purple," you're actually getting a liquid bluer than papa smurf's junk. anyway, m.j., i finished your bottle of gatorade. schade es war nicht mehr purpurrot. to germania & beyond!