the musical fruit: movement #22.

the musical fruit: movement #22.
song: "eggplant," train
fruit: eggplant

remember that song "meet virginia" by that crappy band train? it came out in 98 & went to #2 & was all poptastic. in it, lead singer patrick monahan helps us meet virginia with cute lil lines like "daddy wrestles alligators. mama works on carburetors. her brother is a fine mediator for the president." if you check out the video, you'll notice that virginia is actually rebecca gayhart. it was the first major hit off of their self- titled debut album & is important enough that amazon prices it higher than any other song on the album. by their second album, peeps were taking home "best rock song" grammys. tee hee. the recording industry thinks train is "rock."

the debut album also contained a song called "eggplant." it's a little ditty in the middle of the album & believe me, it's equally as awful as any of their stuff. check out these lyrics--"hold up my wings cause you are the sky. paint me by numbers & don't ask me why. i am in bloom and you are perfume and you are perfume and you are." just try listening to the song without throwing up in your mouth a little. i dare you. the lyrics do mention eggplant & caviar & apple pie, which is pretty cool. coincidentally, they just released their fifth album, save me san francisco today. i checked out the first single, "hey, soul sister" & i can assure you that with this song, the lame train is still on the tracks & chuggin' on into a new decade.

so, um, it turns out that the eggplant is a fruit, a berry even. who knew? sometimes you think you're getting a woman & you end up getting a man. life's full of wacky surprises like that. so i have this one pound eggplant. awesome. there it is. right up there in the photo. says so on the side. what the hell am i going to do with it? bake it? stuff it? bread it & fry it like mom used to do? i can't remember the last time i made an eggplant. it's a gem of an eggplant too. i purplized it a bit in photoshop for dramatic effect, but my produce mart lady assured me that "this is a good one. you can tell by the skin." then she smiled at me. she was watching the mayoral debates at the time & asked my opinion. i told her i thought bloomberg should not get a third term. then she frowned at me.

back to the eggplant though...here's what i decided on. i've cut half of it into slices & they've been soaking for about an hour now in a balsamic vinaigrette. as soon as this oven heats its lazy electric ass up, i'm going to bake the hell out of those slices. when they're done, i'm going to toss them in with some gnocchi & a little florentine spinach & cheese sauce & fuggetaboutit! i have a feeling that the other half of the eggplant is destined for something involving couscous, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow when i see how beaten down i feel after work & can properly judge my evening food prep ambitiousness. here's to a future of wednesday night non-sluggishness!

nosh nook #161 - monday, october 26, 2009

wise hopes rock dudes will top cheesy cheetah (link)
10.25.09 - brandweek - by brian morrissey

hey totally radical dudes & dudettes! shawn here rapping at ya with a few tips that'll help make you the coolest guy or gal in school.

tip #1: get a skateboard. i was recently rapping with a few local teens about what drug-free things they like to do in their spare time & "skateboard with my buddies" was by far the top answer (even among the girls! LOL). from this, i deduce that it's a popular teen hobby, so save up the money from your paper route & get a skateboard. just make sure to wear a helmet when you're ollying!

tip #2: get the jonas brothers' latest album (if you don't have it already). they're the most popular band in the world right now. if you're a girl, other girls with think you're cool & want to talk to you. if you're a guy, girls will think you're cool & want to talk to you, although your conversation will likely be about the jonas brothers, so you should probably pick a favorite jo bro. i recommend joe. he's dreamy.

tip #3: get yourself some cheese puffs. cheese puffs are the pinnacle of cool snacking. chester cheetah, that totally cool, totally extreme cheetos mascot with the surfboard & snazzy sunglasses loves cheese puffs. if you want to be as tubular as him, you don't necessarily have to get cheetos. cheese doodles are cool too. according to brandweek, cheese doodles recently unveiled "a digital campaign to support 'cheez dudes,' a trio of rock-band mascots introduced in august as the faces of the cheez doodles snack brand." since they're in a band, you know they're cool. in turn, that makes cheese doodles cool.

tip #4: get money. money equals cool & the cheez dudes can help you solve your teen money troubles. as brandweek notes, on the cheetos website the cheez dudes are featured in a "augmented-reality game called 'rock the cheez' that invites players to create their own rock video by arranging printouts in front of their computer’s web cam." if your rock video is cool enough, you can win $1000! just imagine all the pimple cream & pokemon cards you can buy with that!

if you follow those four tips, i guarantee that you'll be the coolest guy or gal at your school this year hands down. if you follow the last two, the cheez dudes, wise snacks & the folks in marketing will be very grateful.

pumpktoberfest #12 - legendary horr-raw.

pumpktoberfest #12 - legendary horr-raw.
film: the blair witch project
beer: elysian night owl pumpkin ale



after college, even though i'd never been camping, i wrote an unrealized masterpiece screenplay about a group of friends on a weekend camping trip. the title--"into the woods." i had dreams of making the film while on an actual camping trip with the cast & crew. we'd spend a few weekends in the woods, bond & make a film all guerilla style. a year later, i read about a film called the blair witch project. from what i gathered, it was a film made up of found footage by three filmmakers who went into the woods of maryland to film a documentary about a local legend--the blair witch. they never returned. i was intrigued, so i went to the film's website (a great early example of online film marketing) & read up on the backstory behind the film & legend. from what i could tell, shit was real.

with all the website folklore i'd absorbed floating around in my head, i caught the film at a packed kendall sq cinema on the second night it was out. when i left the theatre, i was in complete shock, walking the streets of cambridge like a zombie, feeling like i'd just seen three people's final days but saying to myself, "that wasn't real...right?" even though it wasn't, i immediately put my plans for "into the woods" on hold. i'm very susceptible to believable ghost stories. i had a high school friend who told me that on multiple occasions he'd seen his grandfather wandering the halls of his house in the suit he was buried in. now every time i think of that guy, that's the first thing that comes to mind & i still get the occasional chills from it.

as for blair witch, i went back & watched it today & while i now know that it's not real, watching those people lose their minds in the woods still made me extremely uneasy. the film does a great job of creating a believable reality. a sequel about three boston filmmakers investigating the maryland disappearances came out the following year. i never saw it, but as legend has it, it sucked. now, ten years after the original release, they're working on a new one. since folks will already know that it's not real, i don't see how a new one can be as effective as the original, but i wish them luck...milk that cow.

every pumpktoberfest season, a frightening creature from the underworld roams the streets of seattle's capitol hill looking for prey. as legend has it, back in 2003, a group of five university students were out one evening, walking down pike & celebrating pumpktoberfest when from out of the night sky an enormous bird, the elysian night owl, swooped down, mauling four of them before letting out a deafening hoot & flying off, leaving the fifth to tell the tale. since then, he's returned every year to feast on the blood of the hip capitol hill citizens. in an attempt to appease the satanic strigiform, seattle's elysian brewery developed their seasonal elysian night owl pumpkin ale.

according to the label, each barrel of it is brewed with seven pounds of pumpkin & pumpkin seeds. i'm not sure how big the barrel is, but it sounds like a lot of pumpkin regardless. it's definitely present in the flavor & color. in addition, it's conditioned with a ton of spices (nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger & allspice). they really dominate the flavor, with the cinnamon standing out the most. it was almost too much, but there was just enough pumpkin flavor to balance out the spices. i'd heard a lot of raves about the beer beforehand, so i was sort of expecting something amazing, but to be honest, while i thought it was well done...it wasn't anything legendary.

#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.

oh, religion. you make people do some funny things sometimes. remember that time back in early A.D. when because of you, the romans nailed a guy who claimed to be the son of god to a cross? that was awesome. how about that time back in the high middle ages when europeans went & removed muslims from jerusalem in your name? that was pretty cool too. 9/11, the holocaust, the events in tibet--all as a result of your hand. oh! i can't forget that you're doing a bang up job in the middle east these days. kudos on that! you've got a stranglehold on that region...an epic, bloody stranglehold.

myself, i was brought up roman catholic in a family who practiced their religion without thinking of it as a tool to further a political agenda. we went to church most sundays, i learned a sense of morals & was confirmed catholic. i never thought of my religion as a way to force moral beliefs on other people & as a result, as i became older & wiser & saw what was done in the name of not only catholicism, but a number of organized religions, i eventually decided to stop going to church. i still have the morals & general kindness to others that came from my religious upbringing, but i now consider myself agnostic. i feel there has to be some higher power, but i have trouble believing that that higher power has a belief system that applies equally to everyone.

here in nyc, there's been a lot of talk lately about the athiest movement. beginning tomorrow, the big apple coalition of reason will have ads appearing throughout the nyc subway system, ads that ask "a million new yorkers are good without god. are you?" according to the the american religious identification survey, athiests are the fastest growing religious group (15% of the population), so they figure they have a solid target audience for the ads. i'm curious to see what response they get once they're actually up. people love writing on ads as it is, but last year, when 877-WHY-ISLAM wanted to run ads in the nyc subways that tried to educate people about islam, people got their panties in a bunch, saying that the dude funding them was tied to terrorism.

sean hannity's tried to get people worked up about the athiest ads, asking what the response would be if a christian group did the same thing, but since christianity's been present in the subways for years, that angle's not going to fly. i mean, in the times sq station alone, there are already crazy end of the world dudes who line the tunnels with their signage, dianetics dudes with their "stress tests" & countless people handing out religious pamphlets with "relatable" religious messages. sorry sean, but here in nyc, everyone's got the best religion ever & can't wait to tell you about it, so i don't think the absence of religion will be that big of a deal. as a new yorker, you should already know that. the sad thing is that some people will actually believe what you said.

i mean, people believe in some crazy shit...supernatural beings & alien saviors & what have you. don't even get me started on the mormons' special religious undergarments or the ridiculousness that is scientology or the fact that folks from the white separatist world church of the creator have dubbed their religion "creativity." there are the breatharians, who believe that all they need to live is oxygen. there's the church of euthanasia, whose main devotion is toward voluntary population reduction & whose main principles are suicide, abortion, cannibalism & sodomy. my favorite religion of them all is pastafarianism, whose flying spaghetti monster is a deity among deities. any god who's that tasty can't be denied.

#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.
snack: zapps voodoo chips
drink: blue point rastafa rye ale



in celebration of a religion that believes in mischievous spirits & a non-intervening god & sticking pins into dolls, i decided to try out a bag of zapps voodoo chips. it's the third flavor of zapps chips featured thus far on eat!drink!snack! & definitely the most interesting of the three. zapps is based out of gramercy, louisiana, a town just west of new orleans, which is famous for its voodoo culture & history. louisiana voodoo's a variation on traditional voodoo, with christian & tourist bents mixed in. new orleans loves that sort of junk. in fact, next weekend, there's voodoofest, a three-day festival with eminem, ween, the flaming lips, KISS & a ton of other acts playing. KISS totally has the voodoo!

the voodoo chips are zapps' current mystery "limited edition" flavor, which according to website legend, is "a result of an accident. an employee was moving a pallet of spices off the top shelf, and dropped it. while cleaning it up, someone stuck their finger into the mixture of about 5 flavors and pronounced it great. we recreated in our lab, and like gumbo, it’s an 'everything in the kitchen' flavor." it's true. the flavor is pretty intense, with a spice combo that's like salt & vinegar but with a lot more going on, hints of paprika & sweetness. since i wolfed them down quicker than i should have, i felt a bit bloated afterwards, but after gently massaging the belly of a doll made in my likeness, i felt much better.

for those who think that smoking weed & belief in a former ethiopian emperor as god incarnate should be the main tenets of a belief system, i'm washing down the voodoo magic with a 22 oz blue point rastafa rye ale. since from what i've read, alcohol is frowned upon by rastafaris, i'm a bit confused by blue point's rastafari theme, but i guess they knew a good pun when they saw it & decided to run with it. the dude on the front of the label has your typical rastafarian dreadlocks, but he looks like a character out of a crappy video game storyline, like a grand theft auto knockoff or something. he'd be the shady guy you'd smoke a spliff with while you learn about your next mission.

slightly misguided themes aside, the rastafa rye's an acceptable beer. it's a copper beer with a relatively smooth taste made up of a good balance of hops & malty rye. i mean, it didn't make me want to pop on some bob marley or grow the natty dread, but i still enjoyed it. as a bonus, blue point donates a portion of the proceeds from the rastafa rye to a charity that works with "orphaned, at-risk and underprivileged children throughout the caribbean." that's good to know. usually, when i'm drinking, i'm doing it for the children. its not for the children of israel or anything, but i like to think that jah would still approve.

pumpktoberfest #11 - you little punk!

pumpktoberfest #11 - you little punk!
film: child's play
beer: dogfish head punkin ale



over the years, i've dated a number of girls who were seriously creeped out by dolls & more specifically, dolls with lifelike characteristics. i never saw what the big deal was. it's not as if those lifelike dolls were going to one day come to life & murder us in our sleep like something out of child's play, the 1988 horror film about a killer "good guy" doll. the film came out at a time when cabbage patch, teddy ruxpin & my buddy dolls were all the rage. i was fourteen when it came out, so for me, it's always been more hilarious than scary, but it still has a handful of moments that make you jump.

the film opens with a cop chasing a crook into a toy store. after the cop shoots the crook a couple times in the chase & the crook realizes he's going to die, he does some voodoo shit on a good guy doll, transferring his soul into it. days later, he winds up as some little kid's birthday present, a good guy doll named chucky. the good guy dolls, based on a fictional tv show, are supposed to be loveable companions for little boys, with catch phrases like "hi, i'm chucky. wanna play?" & "i'm your friend to the end. hidey ho. ha ha ha." since this one's possessed by a criminal, he adds phrases like "you stupid bitch! you filthy slut! i'll teach you to fuck with me!" to the mix & kills people with his good guy hammer.

throughout the film, we get lots of doll on human violence as chucky learns that if he doesn't transfer his soul into the little kid's body, he's going to become the doll. they made four more child's play movies, including the hilariously awesome bride of chucky & seed of chucky, featuring jennifer tilly as the voice of chucky's bride. in an attempt to reboot the franchise, there's a remake of the original scheduled to come out next year. whenever it comes out, i'm totally there on opening weekend.

so far, i've loved every single dogfish head beer that i've tried. the delaware brewery puts out a vast line of uniquely crafted beers, beers made with saffron or green raisins, ones made in barrels built out of palo santo wood, brews with rich, often complex flavors. their dogfish head punkin ale, brewed exclusively for the pumpktoberfest season, made its debut fifteen years ago at delaware's punkin chunkin, an annual delaware event (now in its 24th year) where people use machines to see who can chuck pumpkins the farthest. at the time, dogfish head wasn't even a brewery yet.

it's a brownish/orange beer brewed with "pumpkin meat," brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon & nutmeg and like the rest of their beers, it has a nice flavor to it. i'm pretty sure that the main thing i'm tasting is pumpkin, but it's blended in well enough with the spices that it's hard to tell. regardless, it's tasty & not too bitter & one of the better pumpkin beers i've tried this pumpktoberfest season. since i love dogfish head as much as i do, i might be a bit biased, but after suffering through my last pumpkin beer, the dogfish version is like drinking sweet nectar from the teat of a goddess.