#174 - double fantasy.

i'm no beatles expert. that's for sure. i am pretty familiar with their music though. i first really heard the beatles when i was a pre-teen & found abbey road amongst a box of records my dad had in the basement. i fell in love & to this day, it's still my fave beatles album & possibly my fave album of all time. since then, i've heard everything they've ever done multiple times, but my beatles cd collection only consists of sgt peppers, the beatles 1967-1970 & the beatles anthology I. i know. i'm a slacker. maybe all that will change now that the beatles' music is on itunes. [insert chuckle here]. with that in mind, other than "imagine" & the other smash hits, i know next to nothing about john lennon's solo career. with today marking the 30th anniversary of the day when he was murdered here in NYC, i decided to mark the date by familiarizing myself with his first two solo albums--john lennon/plastic ono band & imagine--and his final album, double fantasy.

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only in ny #5: brooklyn MAC.

  

snack: the carroll gardens MAC with bacon
drink: santa cruz organic orange mango sparkling beverage

i like to think that i'm on the cutting edge snackwise, someone who's got his eyes on the blogs & his belly full of unique & exciting foodstuffs. like, i knew that bacon was awesome WAY before it TOTALLY BLEW UP LADY GAGA STYLEE. a few weeks back, the village voice tipped me off to the upcoming opening of brooklyn MAC, a brand new restaurant in greenpoint that's focused on the good ol' american favorite, MAC & cheese. i totally missed out on the first nyc MAC & cheese wave when S'MAC opened up back in the summer of '06, so when brooklyn MAC finally opened up about a week back, i figured this was my chance to redeem myself.

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#173 - mr shawn goes to washington (pt deux).

hey there, neglected food blog. how're things going? oh yeah. i suppose that since i decided to shun you for the past month, things have probably been fairly crickets & tumbleweed for you lately. sorry bout that. things have been pretty fun for me though. thanks for asking! mid-month, to kick off my annual bday week celebration, i decided to revisit my 2008 d.c. birthday celebration with a trip down to the capitol to hang with my good friend tadley, best known round these parts for his uber-classy guest column on spotted dick. as has become the standard these days for my vacations, my time there ended up being one that was jam packed with food & drink.

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#172 - real talk.

maybe instead of constantly bashing jay leno & his insufferable chin, i should thank him for what he's done for late night TV--driven conan o'brien to TBS. after nine months away from late night, last night conan returned with andy richter once again at his side & the max weinberg seven swapped out for jimmy vivino & the basic cable band. the premiere took the top rating amongst late night shows, slightly beating out the tonight show with jay leno & i was one of the many who tuned in. as a service to you who may have missed the premiere, imma gonna break down what went down for you. of course, due to the wonders of technology, you can already watch the episode online, but wouldn't you much rather read my ramblings about it? after all, a thousand words is worth a bunch of pictures or something. i've got way more than a thousand words here.

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pumpktoberfest #29 - every time i turn around.

film: invitation to hell
beer: sixpoint pumpkin brewster

wow. how time flies when you're spending your days drinking copious amounts of pumpkin beer & watching horror films. with this here entry, we've come to the end of another pumpktoberfest season. frowny face. to close out the season, we're bringing you a film from a genre that i like to describe as "suburban horror," wes craven's invitation to hell. it's a 1984 made-for-tv movie that came out a few months before he hit the jackpot with a nightmare on elm street & stars robert urich as matt winslow & susan lucci as jessica jones, the head of a mysterious country club in a matt's housing development. when matt moves there for a job with his wife (joanna cassidy), son (barret oliver, bastian from the neverending story) & daughter (soleil moon-frye/punky brewster), he discovers that something's not quite right about the place.

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