#130 - the rolden golden age of comedy.

the fall tv season's officially here & this past sunday night was a big one for premieres. for the folks over at fox, they had a lot riding on sunday's animation domination! block of programming. unfortunately, they weren't talking about some racy manga action. they were talking about rolling out their tired lineup of animated comedy shows (the simpsons, family guy, american dad!), with one new show (the cleveland show) added to the two-hour block of ahem...cartoon hilarity. for fox, it's their big comedy block. nobody was laughing over at fox on sunday though, especially seth macfarlane, who's responsible for three of those four shows. in the end, fox finished last in every time slot except for that of family guy, which barely beat out cbs's the amazing race 15.

since you can't spoil something that's already rotten, i'm going to just tell you what happens in all the premieres. animation domination! began with the simpsons, now in its 21st season. up until some time this decade, i used to LOVE the simpsons. to this day, i still quote from episodes & find myself often asking people "you remember that episode of the simpsons when..." now the show's just lame. the season premiere revolved around the comic book guy, who's created a superhero called "everyman" that hollywood's decided to make a film out of, since they've run out of ideas. a story made because they've run out of ideas? how meta of fox. who plays everyman? homer, of course. yawn. next up was the series premiere of the cleveland show, the family guy spinoff that they've been hyping up since spring of last year. the jokes, the settings, the family setup, everything...it's the same exact stuff as on family guy, but in a different city & with less interesting characters. yawn. good thing they've already ordered a second season of it.

the second hour kicked off with family guy, the only one of their shows that i actually try to catch if i'm in front of a tv at the time. based on the episode, titled "road to the multiverse," i may have to rethink that stance. the premise behind the episode was that stewie's created a remote control that lets him leap between universes. he reveals this to brian & they hop from wacky universe to wacky universe. the end. yawn. the last show in the block, american dad!, was actually my favorite of the four, which is surprising, since i generally can't stand it. in the episode, steve (the son) is asked to sing the national anthem before a group of veterans, but stan (the dad) doesn't think he's ready, so he subjects him to a vietnam war reenactment. fortunately, this time, hilarity actually ensued. i guess one out of four ain't bad. that's better than david ortiz is doing this year.

if fox isn't putting out good comedy any more, who is? there's some notable comedy programming this fall. jay leno's new show is notable, but only because it sucks worse than his last show. saturday's season premiere of snl was actually 75% funny, a level they haven't reached in quite some time. hbo's got two funny shows at the moment. so far, bored to death is the b-o-m-b. i love zach galifianakis. i love ted danson. i love jason schwartzman & can relate to so much of his character that it's scary. hbo also has curb your enthusiasm, which is back for a seventh season. i haven't really followed it, but i've seen the first two episodes of this season & larry david actually manages to make the main storyline (him trying to dump his girlfriend right when she finds out she has cancer) funny. on the same un-p.c. level, f/x's it's always sunny in philadelphia, which is by far the best comedy on television, is back as well. i guess that's where fox is hiding their funny shows these days.

#130 - the rolden golden age of comedy.
snack: rold gold parmesan garlic pretzel waves
drink: arizona tea water yumberry organic green tea



while i tried to stomach animation domination!, i filled my stomach with a bag of rold gold parmesan garlic pretzel waves. rold gold, who's been around since 1917 & a part of frito lay since 1999, apparently decided that they needed to roll out some new rold gold products to keep the public interested in pretzels. the boys down in development were feeling lazy & were all, "um...how about we take our sun chip technology, apply it to the pretzels & add some flavoring like the sun chips have? we could even put them in the same biodegradable bags that we're going to start putting sun chips in." the head guy was probably all "hmm. it's really similar to a sun chip. you know what? lose the biodegradable bag thing & run with it." BAM! the pretzel wave was born.

they're available in three flavors--cheddar, buffalo wing & parmesan garlic. believe me, i would've tried the buffalo wing flavor if they had it, but i had to make due with what they had. the parmesan garlic's not bad though. it's a flavor that's slightly reminiscent of the bold flavor of bold flavor chex mix, if you've ever tried that. once the pretzel waves were no more, i definitely poured the remaining flavor powder into my mouth from the corner of the bag. texturewise, when the sun chip technology's applied to the pretzel, the result is a chip that's essentially a pretzel-based sun chip with a tad bit of air in the middle. i was cool with them...now to find those buffalo wing flavored ones.

to wash down the bad taste left in my mouth by fox's animation domination!, i drank an arizona tea water yumberry organic green tea. wowzers. isn't that name a mess of a redundant mouthful? first off...tea water? isn't tea basically water that's had a tea bag in it for a spell? tea water, green tea...which one is it? your branding is stepping all over itself. c'mon, pepsi. get it together. i see you managed to get it together enough to partner with poland spring/nestle for the water supply, but not enough to come up with an unwieldy moniker. also, i'm sorry but i refuse to believe that the yumberry is an actual fruit. i simply refuse. please do not attempt to direct me to any web pages that dispel this theory. thanks.

as for the beverage itself, the label notes that it's "the perfect 20 calorie beverage." i'm curious as to what other 20 calorie beverages were in the running for that title, but i get it. according to this chart, as long as i can work four-and-a-half minutes of sex into my day, i'll burn those calories right off. i wonder if it has to be with another person to qualify. the flavor's fine, with the "yumberry" & the green tea flavor & whatnot. still, as a "tea water," it lives up to its name, tasting like a watered down iced tea. sure, the label lived up to its claim, since i was technically more "naturally hydrated" after finishing it than i was before i cracked it open, but next time, i'll get a bottle of poland spring water & keep the change.

nosh nook #142 - tuesday, september 29, 2009

new documentary on local food movement has oregon-heavy cast (link)
09.28.09 - the oregonian - by scott learn

oh oregon, bastion of progressiveness, lover of ducks, home to the most strip clubs per capita in the country. i visited you for a month back in 2002 & from what i saw of your quaintish downtown area, you were fairly green (colorwise) & relatively artsy looking. i've always heard good things about you & for a brief while, i even considered moving across the country & becoming a portland resident. you have free downtown public transit & make an effort to limit sprawl & keep your boundaries intact. as part of the 2008 veggie awards, you were named "veg city taking over the world." i love junk like that. you're so durn progressive, portland!

case in point: the film ingredients, which is a "who's who (of) oregon's locavore movement" & made its debut in portland this weekend. as the oregonian's scott learn writes, the film has strong roots in oregon. the producer & cinematographer, brian kimmel, is from portland. in the film, there are appearances from a range of oregon farmers, chefs & agricultural specialists who paint a picture of the "benefits and challenges of buying food from local producers." there have been a million-and-one films about food recently, so i'm interested in seeing whether they cover any new ground or just reinforce what's already been said.

either way, it's a cause i'm fully behind. as learn mentions, larry lev, a "specialist in agricultural marketing and alternative food systems" who's in the film, lays out the benefits of eating locally. lev notes that "some local products may cost more than food transported from large-scale commercial operations...but the products can have superior taste, and the money shoppers spend stays in the area. shopping locally also helps keep agricultural land from being developed...and leads to closer relationships between farmers and consumers." one of the clips in the trailer points out that there are now so few independent farmers in the u.s. that it's no longer listed as an occupation choice on the u.s. census forms. it's sad that we've become so removed from our food sources, but what's even sadder is that until recently, most people didn't really care. maybe another film will change that.

the musical fruit: movement #17.

the musical fruit: movement #17.
song: "alison's starting to happen," lemonheads
fruit: lemon

back in the early nineties, the best candy-themed band to come out of boston was the lemonheads, fronted by evan dando. since i enjoyed the original song, i liked their biggest hit, their cover of simon & garfunkel's "mrs. robinson," the first thousand times i heard it. i heard a few songs off the album but never picked up it's a shame about ray (which it was added to after its popularity as a single). for some STRANGE reason, i pegged evan dando as whiney & mopey, that time's john mayer & i didn't really want anything to do with him. plus, i was just coming out of my gangsta rap phase around the time the album came out, so it wasn't really in my wheelhouse. even without my support, it ended up being their biggest album, going gold.

i finally gave it its first full listen last night with rhino's 2008 collector's edition of the album & it's a lot more rocking than i always assumed it was. the eighth son on the album (out of thirteen), "alison's starting to happen," falls into the category of "songs i've heard before" & now that i've heard the whole thing, i can definitively say that it's my favorite song off it. the song's a bouncy, two-minute rocker named for bassist nic dalton's girlfriend at the time. the lyrics near the end of the song are all "alison's getting her tit pierced. alison's getting a mohawk." i initially heard it when it came out (& i was in high school) and remember thinking "whoa, that chick's one of those punk rock girls that the dead milkmen sing about." good times. speaking of good times, the youtube has some footage of the lemonheads playing the song before enormous crowds at the 1994 glastonbury festival. the lyric quality's shite, but the song still rocks.

ok. i don't know why my camera decided to make me so damn red in that picture above. no amount of photoshop trickery seemed to fix it. i'm not that red. you have no reason to worry about my blood pressure or anything. i wasn't wasted either. my camera just decided to hate me at the time. not even the tremendous acidity from that first bite into the lemon could make my skin turn that red. to be honest, i'm actually more of a shade of green. my white skin color aside, that first bite was definitely the pulpiest/most acidic thing i've done this year. i was going to go all the way & eat the whole lemon (y'know, for love of the blog & all), but that first bite quickly slashed & burned my resolve into a million little pieces.

...so don't call me a trooper, because i'm not. i managed to finish off about half the lemon, but didn't even bother with the second half. as it was, downing half a lemon gave me a little case of the heartburn...& that, boys & girls, is why we usually squeeze lemons onto things or mix them with other things, tasty things like sugar. instead of finishing it, i just let it dry out on my kitchen counter overnight, which is sort of a shame, because i could have at least used the juice from the other half to write messages in secret code to my friends, secret messages like this one: MEET ME AT TREE HOUSE. 2PM. see you there!

nosh nook #141 - monday, september 28, 2009

can't knock the fruit snack hustle (link)
09.27.09 - detroit free press - by oneita jackson

when you're a kid growing up on the mean streets of detroit, you've got to do what you can to get by. whether it's honing your rap battle skillz or lifting a bunch of copper piping from abandoned homes, you do what you can to bring a little money in. sure you could join up with a gang & peddle crack, but whereas you get to make friends & meet interesting people, that route tends to be a tad bit dangerous & illegal. if you want to avoid going the gang route, but don't have lyrical skillz or agile, copper-thieving hands, there is another option for you: walk around with a box of snacks, offering them to the hungry residents of detroit.

the detroit free press' oneita jackson recently ran into a group of snack-hocking kids on the neighborhood streets & decided to give them a piece of her mind. when a group of kids approached her with a box of welch's fruit snacks & a six-year old asked her," would you like to buy some candy for my football team?" she responded with "no, i don't want any of your high-fructose corn syrup snacks." after questioning them a bit, she determined that they didn't even play football. lying, sniveling kids! i bet they don't even know what an end run is.

eventually, they decided to be honest with her & told her that they were "out here trying to make money so we can buy some clothes and stuff...so we don't have to do other stuff." with "head cocked, eyebrows arched & nostrils flared," she responded with "other stuff like what? you mean like hustle?" um, yes oneita. what did you think they were talking about? starting a hedge fund? once they were being honest with each other, they "had a good conversation about education, life, money and personal responsibility." i'm sure the kids loved that, especially since they clear about $50 apiece from selling the fruit snacks & when they were sitting there getting lessons on life from a detroit free press columnist, it cut into their money making time. i would've been all "time is money, lady. smell you later. we've got to get our fruit snack hustle on."

the musical fruit: movement #16.

the musical fruit: movement #16.
song: "mango woman," ween
fruit: mango

ween! before i knew a damn thing about the craziness that is ween, my only point of reference for them was that in the record stores, they were the band stocked next to weezer. eventually, a friend who introduced me to a lot of music introduced me to them. a year earlier, he & a friend had tried to interview them for a zine they were working on & as he explained it, "we were going to interview them, but they were all coked up & punching holes in the wall backstage, so we left." good times. the first two albums he gave me were from the early nineties--chocolate & cheese and pure guava. i hated them at the time, but with the latter of those albums, realized that ween was the band responsible for the song "push th' little daisies," which came out as a single, with an mtv video & everything. i liked that.

i didn't come across it until a few weeks ago, when a friend suggested it for this here column, but the "push th' little daisies" single included a song called "mango woman." ween's a master of jumping between musical genres. this one's all reggaelike & features lyrics like "hey mon, where you come from? uh, i come from uh, new hope. you smoke spliff? y-yeah i smoke spliff. ya oy! uh." it's a real head bopper & along the way, they make sure to name check babylon, mount zion & the rastaman whilst singing about this "mangoey woman." i can only assume that, given her mangolike qualities, said woman is sweet on the inside but ultimately intimidating.

i say this because mangoes are totally sweet but definitely intimidating. for starters, on a lunch break about a few weeks back, i picked one up at a food emporium in the city. i paid three & change for it, only to walk past fruit cart after fruit cart on my way back to the office & realize that i could of got one for way cheaper. on top of that, since i can't recall ever purchasing a mango, i wasn't sure how to know when one's ripe. when i got back to work, i turned to a few co-workers for guidance. one told me that when the skin had a good amount of redness to it, it was ready to eat. another told me that it was all about the firmness. if you squeezed it & it gave a bit, it was good to go. based on their theories, it appeared that my mango had a day or two to go before reaching peak form, so i brought it home & left it to ripen. after a day, it still didn't seem ready. the following morn, i woke up & checked on it only to find that overnight, one specific area had become so soft that i almost stuck my finger through the skin. the rest still felt firm. awesome. in the end, i tossed that pricey mango.

on friday, i went for take #2. this time, i went to my local produce market & made sure to ask the woman there to confirm the ripeness before i purchased it. since she loves me, she hooked me up with "a good one...a very, very good one." that afternoon, i decided that fruit time was nigh, so i took my mango to the kitchen for some slicing & dicing, an activity that turned out to be quite daunting. i didn't realize that, given the hard center of a mango, there's a certain way you need to cut it to get the maximum fruit. as a result, from that entire mango, i probably got about eight or nine slices of fruit. i guess in the end it was worth it, since there aren't many fruits better than a fresh, awesomely sweet mango. i just wish that my path to that deliciousness wasn't filled with so much imagined drama. darn womany mango.