#7 - having it my way.

holy storms, batman! this weekend, there were a series of storms here in the city that brought me back to the summer storms of fort lauderdale, where one second it'd be all sunny & happy & a'birds tweetin' and the next, the sky would turn black & sheets of rain would come crashing down on your face.

as an example, on saturday, i left my house & jumped on the subway up to union square. when i left my apartment, the skies were grey, but there was complete skyness dryness in action when i descended into the subway station to catch the train. when i came out of the union square station 45 minutes later, the GAME HAD TOTALLY FLIPPED & there were masses of tourists & nyu students & citizens & trader joes/whole foods bags & baby strollers & a viola taking cover at the top of the stairs exiting the subway...taking cover from the torrential downpour that could have had irreversible effects on us all...if we were mogwai...which i'm pretty sure we aren't. five minutes later, the rain had stopped & the evil scientist with a weather machine hidden deep in the bowels of columbia's pupin hall cackled with glee.

i didn't want to take the chance that i might be even part mogwai, so with the sporadic violent half-hour storms this weekend, i stayed indoors a bunch overall, assembling quite a lazy dog-dangling agenda.

on saturday night in particular, i decided to have some indoor netflix time with two films...3:10 to yuma & the bridge...a western & a documentary about suicide at the golden gate bridge. to prep for a four hour plus span of couch-sitting, i stopped by the rite aid & picked up the awesomest bag of snack i could find & went down to bierkraft to get a few beers that made me feel snooty...

#7 - having it my way.
snack: burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks
drinks: abita purple haze, victory hop wallop, porkslap pale ale

at around 10:10, i started off with 3:10 to yuma, probably the first western i have watched since i watched dead man for the 7,000th time earlier in the year. anyhow...very entertaining film. i didn't want to kill russell crowe half as much as i expected that i'd want to.

a little bit into the film, i broke open the bag of bk potato snacks. the verdict: they don't really have the bk french fry taste to them, but they definitely taste like ketchup. basically, if you've ever paired a can of potato sticks with a bottle of heinz, you're feeling bk with these snacks. by this time, i had finished the abita purple haze & with the fruity beer out of the way, i moved on to the victory hop wallop. it was hoppy.

just after midnight, i started watching the bridge & cracked open the porkslap pale ale (click on the barn doors if you visit the site!). the porkslap comes from butternuts beer, a brewery located in a town midway between syracuse & albany, both places that are cold in different senses of the word. i'm a sucker for beers like theirs--the kind that come in cans but don't taste like piss. under fear of ketchup overdose, i could not eat another bk potato snack at this point & hid the bag safely in the kitchen cupboard.

the bridge...in 2004, filmmaker eric steel, inspired by a new yorker article about suicides on the golden gate bridge, moved to san francisco & got permits to film the bridge. in that year, a pretty typical one, 24 people died by jumping off the bridge, again making it the top location in the world for suicides. he captured 23 of them amongst his footage & then combined this with interviews with friends & family of ome of the victims.

jumping off the bridge is pretty easy to do, in fact. there's no fence stopping you from doing it. the golden gate bridge district has made sure of that by taking forever to put up some sort of barrier. sure, if there were a barrier up, people would probably just rule that method out & find another (one person in the film likens choosing the method of suicide to picking out a college), but a deterrent is a deterrent in my book.

anyhow, if you are ok with watching a movie about suicide & how people get to that point & what effect it has on friends & family, check this movie out. burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks are optional.

#6 - university salute.

i was raised roman catholic, meaning that i am totally down with the guilt & the shame. as a result, for about a week now, i've found myself reflecting upon the early bloggy days of eat! drink! snack! & feeling that the chosen snacks & drinks for my first few entries may not have been of the healthiest variety possible. also, the "snacks ain't healthy enough" issue may have had a tiny bit of something to do with my trip to the beach last weekend.

to combat this wickedness, i decided yesterday that when i was at home tonight, i was going to have some sort of snack that embraced health & more specifically, some type of fruit.

today was when i decided that regardless of whatever fruit i chose, i was going to take that fruit & dip it in nutella...& have it with a tasty beer.

#6 - university salute.
snack: strawberries & nutella
drink: wolavers' organic oatmeal stout

my senior year of college was the first year that i lived off campus, in a just-remodeled apartment in the allston area of boston, where i lived with three sophomore roommates i had met the year before. we had a porch off the kitchen, which gets me on a side track. i've yet to have a porch in new york...just rooftops. new york prefers rooftops to porches for some reason...maybe because porches are best for sitting & we can't sit still for a spell in this city to save our lives.

two of the roommates were a couple. the guy was a younger fraternity brother of mine from romania via lower jersey & the girl was in the same program as he & the daughter of a diplomat. she loved carnivale. they spent a high percentage of their waking moments together, many of them at the apartment. i don't think either of them had to do much cooking until they came to college, so when they ate, they fell back on a lot of the same foods & dishes. one such item consumed in mass quantities was nutella, or as i like to call it...chocolate of the gods. they ate it by the spoonful, dipped breads & fruits & meats & whatnot in it and for all i know, probably poured it all over each other. it is a wonder that they didn't both gain immense amounts of weight or develop a candy shell.

the other roommate was a girl who i also met the year before, a time when i was dating her roommate & she was dating mine. this roommate of mine she was dating was a good fellow, another of my fraternity brothers. he was totally from vermont, dude...the sort of guy who got kicked out of a yanni concert for brawling with a canuck.

in remembrance of this era of my life, tonight's snack pairs the healthiness of hazelnuts & chocolate with strawberries, who won out over the mango when i didn't feel comfortable with my ability to judge the ripeness of a mango on the fly. sure, i could have used it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, since i hear it is a great way to meet babes in a grocery store. does this mango feel ripe to you...babe?

that's not really my style though.

the wolavers beer, brewed by otter creek brewing company in middlebury, vermont, contains the healthiness & starting-your-day-right goodness of oatmeal with the certified goodness of organic beer. mmm.

vermontwise, middlebury is about an hour south of winooski (the town outside burlington where my former roommate grew up). to compare, winooski has its down-the-street proximity to higher ground & phish (who rumor has it may be reuniting!), but middlebury totally has a college that's a member of the little ivy league. they're so tiny those lil ivy leaguers! i'd pinch their lil middlebury panther cheeks if the panther wasn't such a ferocious jungle cat!

good pairing. definitely healthy.

#5 - hot chocolate.

oh to the days of summer, oh so fun. jacques heim & louis reard, i salute you wholeheartedly. today, i traveled to atlantic beach, out on long island, with a few folks, two of whom were basically from the area we were in, although it appears as if they were those working as cabana boys at the beaches & not those owning the houses on the beaches. since they were from the area, we went to a local deli-type place where all the sandwiches were named after the various beach clubs. i got the ocean club, with its chicken & craisins & feta & felt like quite the vip. i also picked up a snickers charged bar for later, not even considering that after three-and-a-half hours in the sun & a day that later led to a tube of aloe, said snickers bar would be a melted mess. i tried putting it in the fridge to turn it back into some sort of solid, but i just couldn't bring myself to eat it.

#5 - hot chocolate.
snack: snickers charged bar
drink: maxwell house french roast iced coffee

...so when i was later at the rite aid counter purchasing aforementioned aloe, i chose to give snickers charged a second life. later in the evening, at the stroke of midnight, i "settled down" for a tina fey/carrie underwood snl rerun (featuring mike huckabee) & what i like to call my "midnight special"--a candy bar infused with caffeine, taurine (not to be confused with chlorine), and b vitamins...paired with a cool, summer glass of iced coffee.

first off, this candy bar features a rhino on the packaging. right off the bat, that gets me pretty amped. rhinos mean two things--DANGEROUS & HUGE. i am expecting that upon consuming this candy bar, i will fly into a dangerously huge rhino-like rage, a rage not unlike one expected from the incredible hulk, who, btw, does not have an endorsement deal with snickers as of yet...snickers does, however, have an adventure bar!...& who likes the adventure bar? who? harrison ford, or possibly a character played by harrison ford, that's who. arti-FACTS! exotic spice! hint of coconut! with all its mars-based tie ins, you'd think i'd feel compelled to go see this movie about crystal skulls, but i haven't, because crystal skulls are totally fake & i apparently now hate anything that isn't steeped in realism. thanks a lot, survivor.

the best part about iced coffee is that it is coffee, but with ice in it.

seriously, check out the maxwell house website if you are so inclined. among its many features are a "smile report," a "which brew are you" function & a "good news" section. the current good news articles are "fourteen tips to avoid nagging," "red panda twins born at zoo" and "dog rescues drowning boy." can you guess the target market? i'll give you a hint...it's not me. i guess i should toss my remaining grounds & go to the starbucks across the street from my d.u.m.b.o. office & get me a bag of $11 sumatra/peru blend for what is probably a pretty good cause and/or tied to paul simon. target markets are funny.

#4 - drizzle fo shizzle.

i've been going through a bit of withdrawal lately, as, after almost a decade where tv shows were only a skew part of my life, i've recently fallen back in love with tv somewhat & run through the full offerings of the sopranos, the wire, lost, the 4400, dexter & weeds. with no episodes left of any of those shows, i reached out for mission hill over the past weeks, but it just didn't fill the void.

luckily, monday night was the season premiere of weeds. the season premiere of weeds seemed like it was somewhat of a snacking holiday by nature & as such, a few of us gathered at a friend's house, where we settled down around a table of snacks & watched the season premiere of weeds & the series premiere of secret diary of a call girl. boy does that show love sex. anyhow, on the table was a spread of super pretzels, nachos/cheese/salsa, bagel bites, market pantry (target) fruit snacks &...

#4 - drizzle fo shizzle.
snack: archer farms (target) chocolate drizzle indulgent snack mix
drink: harpoon summer beer

growing up, moms used to make large tupperwares full of homemade chex mix, way before chex mix had become just another of the seven million general mills products. the top level of her chex mix recipes was the chocolaty tasty one, with powdered sugar sprinkled on to boot, a pleasant change from the worcestershire sauce-laden version.

the archer farms brand chocolate drizzle indulgent snack mix comes close to mom's chocolate chex mix recipe, but with one slight addition to the recipe, an addition boldly mentioned on the front of the packaging..."& a kick of cayenne pepper." result = mmm.

harpoon, harpoon, harpoon...your summer beer is nothing special. overall, other than the harpoonfest, i'm not really sure why i thought your beers were so awesome at one point. yes, if given the choice between one of your beers & a bud light, i would choose you, but you don't really seem to be going out of your way to impress me. don't make me start talking about sam adams, a beer which i have a long-standing & currently smooth relationship with.

#3 - XTREME PROMOTION!!!

back in nh for the evening, i went for a quick drive with my mother down the street to the windham shaw's supermarket. growing up & until less than ten years ago, the area where the shaw's is was forest next to the commuter parking lot. now it is another version of the most well known new england grocery store with its organic/health food section & great deals & fresh produce tips & whatnot.

after perusing a number of aisles for snacks, we eventually ended up at the organic food section, where i picked up a bag of eden organic spicy pumpkin dry roasted seeds. each serving of these organic bad boys contains 16g of fat, but amongst that fat, there are oodles of omegas & poly & mono fats & junk of that nature..."good fats."

on top of this most spicy & healthy purchase, an end cap display caught my attention near the back of the store, a display that featured a snack that paired a certain swashbuckling doctor with a certain candy mainstay...

#3 - EXTREME PROMOTION!!!
snack: adventures of indiana jones mint crisp m&ms
drink: mountain dew voltage

over the years, i've really become more of a nuts man when it comes to m&ms, with almond emerging as my clear favorite amongst the flavors. even in the basic setup, where the candy display features only plain & peanut, peanut wins 99 out of 100 times.

there have been a number of m&m incarnations through the years & there have been a number of mint editions amongst these. these indiana jones mint ones bring a little crunch bar action into the mix & some of them are branded with cute little indiana jones symbols, like ones where the "m's" printed on the candy shell are wearing an indy hat or the evil ones, where the "m" is inside of a CRYSTAL SKULL! these ones are slightly spooky & probably haunted. as told by the legend on their website (which i highly recommend going to so that m&m/mars can claim higher click-thru rates & charge more $ for their online promotions)...

many centuries ago, mayan rulers discovered a minty snack so deliciously crispy that it was hidden in a secret room deep in an underground maze, never to be tasted again...until now.

SPOO. KEY. anyhow, i was always more of a star wars man, so i'm not going to see the movie anyhow...but i will listen to the theme song on constant loop as i type this post.

to wash down my m&ms, i went to the fridge, which my mother had stocked with two twelve packs of mountain dew for my soon-to-be-driving younger brother. the two flavors--voltage & revolution--are part of a promotion that plays off of the current presidential campaign by creating what is cleverly known as a DEWmocracy. get it? i went with voltage, since it seemed more amp'd & i like that in a soft drink.

the story behind the DEWmocracy is that fans of this pepsi beverage get to vote on their favorite of three brand new flavors (all of which contain ginseng, absolutely beloved by the kids these days). at the completion of the campaign (which comes in only 46 days as of today), the most voted-on flavor joins the mountain dew canon. this is all explained quite clearly on the website, which you should go to so that pepsi co can claim higher click-thru rates & charge more $ for their online promotions, etc...

another fun fact...more people will likely vote in this campaign than in the general election. right now, voltage is the clear front-runner in the race. it makes me feel good to have picked a beverage that, if this trend continues, will stand tall as the clear winner on august 1st...voting is totally EXTREME TO THE MAX!!!