nosh nook #149 - thursday, october 8, 2009

secretary fired over meatball snack after 34 years on the job (link)
10.07.09 - the local

this weekend, i'm heading up to massachusetts to celebrate my grandfathers' 90TH FRIGGIN BIRTHDAY. it's my mom's dad & he has a "keep smiling" coffee mug & he pretty much rules. obviously, he's been retired for a while, but when he was still working, he worked for the local power company (yankee electric) & did so forever, to the point where when he retired, the company threw him what, based on my memory of the photos i saw as a kid, was a big affair. in contrast, last year, my dad retired from the post office after almost forty years of service. a dozen or so friends & family had a bbq for him in a family friends' backyard. i guess the guvment isn't exactly in the habit of having big sendoffs for long time employees these days.

neither is the north rhine-westphalian building association, a germany company who, according to the local, fired a secretary after thirty-four years on the job. they did so because she took "two rolls and a frikadelle, a german meatball specialty" that were leftovers from a conference she'd helped set up for her boss. it's total bullshit, because everyone knows that if you're having a day of stupid meetings & there's food left over, it's fair game. you don't just toss it out.

this past tuesday, that secretary "faced her employer...in court to request that he give her a warning instead, saying the incident was not a classic case of theft." damn straight. her boss was all "whatever. she took the meatball snack. can't trust her. she's fired." she's 59 years old, so the chances of her finding another job are pretty damn low. proceedings begin next january & surprisingly, there's actually somewhat of a precedent for this in german courts. earlier this year, the courts ruled "that a former cashier for the kaiser’s supermarket chain was rightfully fired after allegedly taking €1.30 in bottle deposits." this is even more bullshit than that, so hopefully they'll rule in the secretary's favor. after all, it's just frikadelle.

nosh nook #148 - wednesday, october 7, 2009

first look: calories on fast-food menus don't change choices (link)
10.07.09 - washington post - by jennifer larue huget

...so back in july of last year, as one of mayor bloomberg's many "we're going to stick our nose into your business" initiatives, nyc passed legislation requiring restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. the thinking behind it was that once people were able to see how many calories they were consuming when they ate, they'd cut down on fast food & start eating healthier. thinking that this would be the result takes a bit of specious reasoning, as for many low-income citizens, being able to afford to eat usually takes precedence over being able to eat healthy. value meal!

as the washington post reports, the results of the first study measuring the effects of the legislation have come in & they're the complete opposite of what was expected. health affairs, a peer-reviewed medical journal "looked at fast-food purchases made in low-income areas of new york city...and, as a control, in nearby newark, new jersey, where no such requirement exists." they compared receipts & interviewed customers & found little difference between consumers' actions before & after the law went into effect. in nyc, the number of calories consumed actually went up. the post captures it best in the article's opening line, which is no more than the word "oops."

what went wrong? the study offers a few possible reasons. "the timing was wrong." "the sample size (was) too small." "maybe...there should have been a sign telling people that 2,000 calories is the most they should consume in a day." the post suggests that "maybe people just don't care--or would prefer to ignore--the number of calories they're consuming when they eat fast food." the study, the post & the mayor don't seem to be considering that other factor i mentioned. if you're a low-income mother looking to feed a family of five after getting home from a ten-hour shift & KFC offers you a deal on a twenty-piece bucket of chicken, you're going to take it, calorie count be damned. i guess when you're a medical journal, a 200+ year-old paper or a billionaire mayor, that scenario doesn't cross your mind.

pumpktoberfest #4 - in da house.

pumpktoberfest #4 - in da house.
film: hostel
beer: southampton publick house pumpkin ale



at some point over the last decade, filmmakers decided that horror film = doing crazy shit to people or making them do crazy shit to each other. call it the tarantino effect, call it the final destination or saw effect, call it what you will, but if you took a group of people, put them in outlandish situations & killed them off in a series of creative ways, you had beaucoup box office bank. one such film was hostel, which came out in 2005 as one of many "presented by quentin tarantino" films. in it, a group of americans decide to backpack around europe. they end up travelling to slovakia & staying in a hostel. people start disappearing. gruesome "horror" ensues. in fact, it's so gruesome that the film's restricted in some countries. it's directed by eli roth, who if you saw inglorious basterds, you know as "the bear jew." he & tarantino must be tight.

i first saw the film back in 06, during the few months when i was living in watertown. i'd been laid off a few weeks earlier, so it was just me & hostel in the middle of the day chillin round the apartment. i'm not usually that freaked out by horror films, but this one freaked me out. as it is, i'm not a fan of hostels. i've only stayed in a hostel once in my life & if i wasn't sharing a private room with a friend, i never would have done so. communing with strangers is not for me. to make matters worse, my roommate & a few of my friends were preparing to take a trip to europe for oktoberfest, so there were a bunch of travel books strewn about the coffee table & for some reason, that made the whole "travelling around europe" aspect of the film way too real. if i actually remembered my dreams, i probably would have remembered nightmares for weeks.

as far as buildings go, i'll take a pub (or "publick house" for long) over a hostel any day of the week. our fourth pumpktoberfest beer, the southampton publick house pumpkin ale, is named for a pub/restaurant way out in southampton, long island. it's been around in various forms since the 1800s & over time, has served both average joes & famous peeps, peeps like babe ruth & clark gable. the latest incarnation of the publick house came into being in 1996, when they fixed up the restaurant, added a brewery & started pumping out beer. over the years, they've won a ton of medals at the annual great american beer festival, so they must be doing something right.

the pumpkin ale is one of their seasonal brews, an amber colored beer made with pumpkin, spices & vanilla extract. out of the four pumpkin beers i've tried this pumpktoberfest season, this one is the best of the bunch. when i opened it & gave it a good whiff, the vanilla stood out & when i drank it, it made a nice complement to the pumpkin taste. that's right. unlike with the other three i've tried thus far, for once you could actually taste a little bit of pumpkin in the beer. up until this one, the pumpkin beers had done nothing to dispel my notion that pumpkin beers are nothing but a bunch of spices, so this one was a pleasant surprise. like i said, they're doing something right. southampton's in da house!

#132 - & now for something completely different.

& now for something completely different: an eat!drink!snack! blog entry about something funny. by something funny, i don't mean that i'm actually going to break tradition & be funny. i mean that i'm going to talk about monty python's flying circus, the uproariously funny sketch comedy show which made its debut on bbc one forty years ago this past monday. i first started watching the show when i was a teenager & although a good amount of it was british stuff i didn't understand, i fell in love with it. as a result of repeated viewings, the show's dry, ridiculous tone is probably responsible for about 50% of my sense of humor. i'm sure there are countless others out there who would say the same thing.

& now for something completely different: a man with three buttocks...a man with a tape recorder up his nose...a man with a tape recorder up his brother's nose. have you got anything without spam? i don't care how fucking runny it is! i'm a lumberjack & i'm ok. i fart in your general direction. what did you expect? a spanish inquisition? strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! know what i mean? wink wink. nudge nudge. say no more.

& now for something completely different: career paths! when the show eventually came to an end in 1974, its members ended up taking a divergent set of paths. between fawlty towers & a fish called wanda, john cleese arguably became the most famous of the troupe, but through a string of awesome directorial efforts, terry gilliam has given him a run for his money. terry jones has done a bunch of writing & michael palin ended up doing a number of documentaries, a ton of which have been travel docs. graham chapman did a bit of acting after python, but died at age 48, twenty years ago this past sunday. eric idle is probably best known for creating the rutles & spamalot, the broadway production which supports the theory that he's over-commercialized the show over the years.

& now for something completely different: a smart idea on the internet. back in november of last year, in response to the wide array of monty python videos up on youtube, they decided to set up their own youtube channel & put up a bunch of the best monty python clips. all they asked from fans was that in exchange for them putting a bunch of high quality clips on youtube for free, the fans go out & buy their DVDs. as a result, sales on amazon rose by 23000%. i didn't even know that percentage existed. anyway, in this brand new interweb world, they pretty much put to bed the fear that giving your content away for free would kill sales. you hear that, record industry?

#132 - & now for something completely different.
snack: peppercorn ranch sun chips
drink: hawaiian punch fruit juicy red



this weekend, i picked up a big ol bag of peppercorn ranch sun chips. they're a new flavor for sun chips, along with roasted sweet chili & spicy chipotle, neither of which i've come across in my snack travels. as part of sun chips' initiative to move to a 100% compostable bag by next year, this bag of peppercorn ranch came in a bag made from 33% recyclable materials. i don't have an active compost bin or anything, so once they go fully compostable, my bags will likely linger in a landfill for years, but it's still a pretty cool idea. 

as for the chips themselves, the flavor's good enough to put them in a tie with french onion for the coveted "tastiest sun chip" award. i love pretty much anything with ranch on it, but the peppercorn combination really works for me. like other sun chips, they're flavorful, but not too flavorful, making it possible to eat a ton of them at once without making yourself sick. as such, by monday night, i'd finished off the entire bag pretty much single-handedly. any chip that's both healthy and supports my gluttonous tendencies is ok in my book.

since i've been in a hawaiian mood lately on the blog, i decided to take a trip down memory lane this weekend with a bottle of hawaiian punch fruit juicy red. back in the day, i used to drink a good amount of the stuff & generally, it came in a large aluminum can you had to use a can opener on. old school! it's not as good as i remember it being though. it's full of sugar & is basically the fruitiest fruit punch available, but i guess to my parents, at the time, if i was drinking hawaiian punch, at least i wasn't drinking soda.

as a kid, i was inspired by hawaiian punch's commercials, which featured punchy, the hawaiian punch mascot. in the ads, he'd walk up to this other character (opie) & ask him "how about a nice hawaiian punch?" since it's impossible to resist a nice hawaiian punch, opie would always answer in the affirmative & punchy would sock him one. aided by that phrase, i've dealt a lot of bruises myself over the years...good times.

hawaiian punch updated the punchy character in 2003 & now they're all 2006 style on their website, which is laid out as punchy's pad. while he lounges on the couch like a lazy hawaiian, you can get all interactive with a game called "punchy's pursuit," where punchy tosses bottles of hawaiian punch & other debris onto the street from the back of a truck & you have to clean up after him. given their environmental leanings, i'm sure the people at sun chips are quite unhappy about punchy's wanton littering. not me though. i love that hawaiian's mischievous capering.

the musical fruit: movement #19.

the musical fruit: movement #19.
song: "spongebob squarepants theme song," painty the pirate & kids
fruit: pineapple

kids these days! give em a crazy, colorful cartoon & an overly happytastic theme song & you're golden. back in my day, we rocked out in front of the TV whilst the sesame street theme song filled us with carefree 70's joy...sunny days, sweepin the clouds away, etc. that was all we needed, really. these days, the kids are all TOTALLY AMP'D on sugar & soda & the interweb, so theme songs like that of sesame street just don't cut it anymore. they need MAXIMUM HAPPINESS in their theme songs.

in the ten years since the show's first episode aired, the "spongebob squarepants theme song" has become one of the most annoying & well-known tv theme songs in existence. kids love it almost as much as they love moon pies & electronic video games! sung by painty the pirate & a bunch of kids, it encourages kids to "drop on the deck & flop like a fish" because they're SO FRIGGIN EXCITED about spongebob. it makes sense. i mean, the dude's not only filled with joy, but he's absorbent, yellow, porous and lives in a pineapple under the sea! if you ask me, he has it pretty sweet. in case hearing the theme song every single time spongebob airs isn't enough for your kid, the track's available on spongebob's greatest hits. MAXIMUM HAPPINESS!

pineapples are tasty & tropical & perfect on the end of a toothpick. personally, i prefer eating them to living in them. if given the option, i wouldn't turn down the opportunity to live in one, but if it was under the sea, i'd probably have to pass. unless they threw in a free set of gills or one of those underwater helmets worn by spongebob's friend sandy cheeks, i just plain wouldn't be able to breathe properly, which would make it hard to fully enjoy my pineapple abode.

since actually purchasing a pineapple & cutting it up my damn self is way more of an undertaking than i'm willing to go through, i decided to take home this can of dole pineapple slices from my office. it'd been sitting around the office since some time last year, when we moved our offices from brooklyn to times sq & it came along. i'm not sure where it originally came from, but for the past year, it's been passed around, living on one desk after another for a few days before moving on to a new & exciting locale. when i cracked it open, i was fully expecting to find something nuclear inside. to my surprise, it was actually still fresh, so i took a few & baked them with chicken, took a few & ate them as a snack & took the rest & set it aside so that one day, i can build myself a pineapple home of my own...on land, of course.