#129. - pom pon.

a short while back, i received an email from the folks at pom wonderful regarding samples of their coffee drinks & my interest in trying said drinks. interest = medium/high. soon after, i began imagining the possibilities for a pom-themed blog. more often than not, i found myself returning to thoughts of cheerleaders, with their unflappable love of cheers, cute outfits & ruffly pom pons. between the recent appearance of glee on fox (which features a cheerleading coach as a main character & which i've yet to see) & the start of football season & the general hotness of 18+ cheerleaders, there was a lot to go on with that theme. in the end, i went with a variation on that theme. since there's nothing you can't find out with google, i did a little search for "pon. what did i come across? a 2002 south korean film called phone. in korean...pon. i investigated further & after reading the description, i netflixed it faster than you can say "oh wacky asian horror."

the description: "a vengeful ghost with a cell phone terrorizes anyone who answers its murderous ring in this twisty horror film. after exposing a sex scandal involving children, gritty reporter ji-won (ji-won ha) begins receiving disturbing phone calls. she changes her number, but the ominous calls continue. ji-won's search for the source of the mysterious calls reveals a rash of unsolved murders--and leads her straight to a serial killer." somebody who murders people with phone calls. brilliant! the company that produced it? toilet pictures. even brillianter!

the film opens with this girl in an elevator. she gets a phone call & when she answers it, she hears this piercing noise that kills her. soon after, that ji-won chick, harassed because of her article, changes her phone number & moves into her sis & brother-in-law's other house. the new number she gets turns out to be the same number as the elevator girl...& that's when the freakiness begins. one day, her little niece answers her phone for her & hears the piercing noise & she's basically possessed for the rest of the film. possessed lil girl = horror gold. as the film progresses, the lil girl gets crazier & ji-won learns more about the story behind her phone number & the hilarious horror ensues. i say "hilarious" only because thanks to film school, i'm desensitized towards horror films AND IT'S A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE GETTING KILLED VIA PHONE CALLS! i don't know. it might freak your shit out.

really, i don't mean to make it sound like it's a crappy film. it's not. there were no cheerleaders in the film, but it was still engaging. other than her frequent screaming fits, the possessed lil girl is possessed with awesomeness. near the end, there's a crazy twist that i've amazingly been able to avoid talking about. when i saw it, i was all like "oh that's what's going on." so yeah, if you don't mind a film with a LOT of phones ringing, you should check it out. if you're scared of subtitles & if you believe bloody-disgusting.com (how can't you with a name like that?), hollywood's coming out with a version of the film next summer. i'm sure it'll be awesome. hollywood never screws up remakes. rumor i'm starting: the role of the phone will be played by an iphone.

#129 - pom pon.
snack: clif nectar cherry pomegranate fruit & nut bar
drink: pom iced coffees (chocolate, cafe au lait, vanilla)



whilst watching the film thursday night, i snacked on a clif nectar cherry pomegranate fruit & nut bar. i first experienced the clif bar in large quantities just after college, when i worked for the b.u. sports marketing department & clif bars was one of our sponsors. sports? high-performance snack bar? makes sense. there were clif bars all over the place back in those days, but since my physical activity has never been all that physical, i've never really eaten them as some sort of exercise-related treat. it's always been more of a "hmm. i could use to get that much potassium & fiber & whatnot. should i have the one that looks like flattened poop with chunks in it but tastes like carrot cake or the other one that looks like flattened poop with chunks in it but tastes like pumpkin pie?" the choices!

at the above-average neighborhood grocery store the other day, they had a whole section of clif bars (& their sister bars, the luna bars) amongst the healthy snack bars, so i picked up one of the cherry pomegranate ones. they're part of their nectar series of fruit & nut bars, which includes a cranberry, apricot & almond one, a lemon vanilla cashew one & a dark chocolate walnut one. in looking at the names of the other flavors, i can't help but wonder if i got the lesser of the four. still, like chrissie hynde said, "don't get me wrong." the cherry pomegranate one's good & all. it's got the same sort of poop chunk texture without the poop taste, but it's made solely from organic dates, cashews, sour cherries & pomegranate concentrate, so i enjoyed the flavor immensely, especially given my recent love affair with dates...& my butt loved the fiber.

...so the folks at pom sent me a package of their pom iced coffees, a package that i actually received this time thanks to a tip from my dad, a postal veteran who provided some solid (& successful!) fatherly advice by telling me to have pom write "HOLD AT POST OFFICE. LEAVE NOTICE" on the box. i wanted to add "BUILDING FILLED WITH THIEVES," as well, but figured that might be a bit much. luckily, as the website & the pomster who contacted me noted, the drinks don't taste like pomegranate. i assume such a pomegranate-coffee concoction would be a sin against lord java, but i wouldn't be surprised if starbucks tried to craft a version. maybe they couldn't do so because a louisiana company already has...or maybe just because it's a bad idea.

...so pom's come out with three coffee drink flavors--chocolate, cafe au lait & vanilla (the newer one)--and created this insane website based on the tagline "the healthy buzz." it features a sheep with bugged out eyes who says things like "for maximum wakey-wakedness" & "click a flaaaaaaavor" in his thick sheep accent. if you're looking to me to know when it's ok to laugh, it cracked me up significantly.

the drinks! i started my thursday morning with some npr, the chocolate one & (since it goes well with coffee, chocolate & public radio), a cigarette. that night, whilst watching pon, i tried out the cafe au lait one...with a cigarette. it was fairly similar to the chocolate one, but i'll choose something with chocolate over something without any day of the week. the next morning, i woke up with the vanilla one, a bowl of blueberry pomegranate total (which you can actually get a free sample of, btw)...& a cigarette. the vanilla one's my favorite of the three, likely because it's so different from the other two. i'm usually not big on the vanilla coffee, but akin to the starbucks caramel coffee drink, this one could dominate my pre-made iced coffee purchases...if i just stopped being so cheap. the best part about the coffee drinks? since they're healthy, i'm pretty sure that counteracts the effects of all those smokes. they don't claim that in the press materials or anything, but wouldn't it be nice? i could be addicted to two things!

nosh nook #140 - friday, september 25, 2009

police: vandal goes on snack attack at UC (link)
09.24.09 - wlwt.com

i'm pretty sure i've seen the movie p.c.u. over a hundred times since it came out during my sophomore year of college. that movie rules. everyone had a cause to trumpet, from the animal rights protesters who got a tub of meat dumped on them to the penis-hating womynists. after an entire film where the members of the pit had mocked & harassed all the politically correct groups on campus, they're all brought together to party as one when p-funk shows up on campus & plays the pit's rager. coeds love partying just as much as they love causes. college campuses have always been a place for flourishing activism, as plucky young boys & girls blossom into adulthood & decide they should at least stand for something, not knowing how beaten out of them that something will be by their mid-thirties. when your cause is still meaningful to you, it's a lot of fun. sometimes you protest peacefully, sometimes not. sometimes you get shot or tear gassed by cops, sometimes not.

it looks like there's was a bit of activism on the university of cincinnati campus just the other day. as wlwt reports, u.c. police arrested matthew peterson, a twenty-something dude with a "dude" sort of look when he "cut the electrical cords and data phone lines off of multiple vending machines, rendering them inoperable." vandalism! three counts! one! two! three! vandalism goes on all the time on college campuses, but when you make it so that wasted, hungry college students can't get their late-night cheetos fix, you cross a line & that just can't be tolerated.

where's the activism come in? campus police said that "peterson vandalized the machines because he didn't want people to eat the unhealthy food." dude cut the cords because he wanted to make a statement about unhealthy snacks. really dude? that's how you decided to make a difference? by cutting the cords of three vending machines & doing it in such a lame fashion that you got caught? i seriously hope you were all hopped up on goof balls at the time & hadn't thought it through properly. it's great & all to take action & get college students to eat healthy, but to be in your twenties & do so in such a ridiculously ineffective manner is some serious high-school shit. better luck next time, matthew.

nosh nook #139 - thursday, september 24, 2009

green is new face of butterfinger candy (link)
09.23.09 - sf chronicle

oh seth green. ever since you first graced us with your sarcastic wit over twenty years ago in the film can't buy my love, playing the part of ronald miller's younger brother chuckie, you've graced us with a plethora of wacky roles & projects. you've played a lovable werewolf boy on buffy the vampire slayer, dr evil's son in the austin powers movies & a (hopefully) asshat version of yourself on entourage. you've provided the voice of chris griffin on family guy & created the animation awesomeness that is robot chicken. now, twenty-five years after yor first film role, you finally get to live out your lifelong dream--being the spokesman for butterfinger. congrats.

as the sf chronicle reports, nestle "approached him over the summer to front their new promotional campaign, making him the brand's first celebrity spokesperson" & first famous face since back in the 90s, when bart simpson urged us to bite his butterfinger & warned us that nobody better lay a finger on his butterfinger. since the simpsons are no longer culturally relevant & haven't been for some time, they had to move on from the bartman. that's where green comes in.

so yeah, it's a dream come true for green, but it's one that's been a long time coming. since 60% of the sentences in this article basically say the exact same thing, i'll defer to the sentence with green's actual words: "i've been into candy all my life and butterfinger is my favorite candy bar. i even auditioned for butterfinger commercials when I was doing commercials, and never got one. and then they approached me to do something." i believe that's the wu wei at work right there, folks. best reader comment on the article: "seth neglected to mention that his contract is for 'butterfinger miniatures.'" get it? cause he's wicked short? clever, leilah. clever.

nosh nook #138 - wednesday, september 23, 2009

do mini-bar snack sales reflect economic times? (link)
09.22.09 - usa today - by barbara de lollis

attention world traveler! you need to stop being a friggin frugal fanny! when you're in your hotel room alone at one in the morning, you should be going to town on that mini-bar, busting open that tiny thing of $5 cocktail peanuts & washing it down with a $7 nip of captain morgans. you shouldn't be tentative. it's ok to eat from the mini-bar. you're either on vacation or on the company dime, so take the plunge. indulge yourself for once. if you have more than a one night stay, there'll be more waiting for you the next evening. live a little.

you should probably also take advantage of your complimentary copy of usa today sitting outside your door in the morn. there's some crack journalism in there & it's totally geared toward you, the hotel goer. if you choose not to read your usa today, you'll miss out on great articles like this one about the effect the recession is having on hotel mini-bar sales. it's an article made JUST FOR YOU, world traveler. apparently you world travelers have "changed your late-night mini-bar habits" as of late. since the economy tanked, you've been going for the "not-so-healthy comfort food snacks." you're choosing comfort over health. i'd say "screw it" to my health too, since when you're not there, the maid's using your toothbrush to clean between her toes anyhow.

barbara de lollis sat down with gerard widder, the GM of the westin ny to get the scoop on this mini-bar mini-drama & widder spoke of the irony in what you, the dear hotel guest, are taking out of the mini-bar. he noted that "the westin chain's main marketing message...focuses around helping guests maintain their healthy lifestyle...even the westin mini-bar reflects the healthy theme, with jet-lag herbal tea bags, trail mix and special herbal sleep sprays." since you people have decided to opt for the less healthy fare, the westin is adding more of them to the mini-bar. way to go, hotel dweller. you've managed to make the westin's healthy marketing mission less healthy. talk about power to the people!

#128 - i tallyin'?

hey, remember that show the sopranos? yeah. me too. i was a definite latecomer to it. i heard enough about it when it was on the air, but other than a few months in boston a few years back, i never had hbo, so my opportunities for keeping up with it were essentially nil, especially in that pre-itunes era. i eventually got around to watching the entire series straight through from beginning to end over a two week period about two years ago, shortly after the series had already ended. it's been a while since then, so over the past week, inspired by a stumbled-upon beverage, i went back & watched both parts of the final season, the one with that infamous final scene.

like i mentioned, i initially watched all six seasons of the show (with the split sixth season, sort of like seven seasons, but who's tallyin'?) straight through in a mad dash, so i was devouring a lot of character & story info at once. this time round, going in, i knew there'd be a ton of things i hadn't noticed or comprehended the first time through. i was definitely watching more from an entertainment perspective that first time through, so i was ready to analyze away & let the critic in me spill out this time. after all, with twenty-one episodes in the season, there's a lot of story packed in there.

take the soprano family. while i could care less about meadow going to college or carmela's spec house, the relationship between tony & a.j. during the last season is nothing short of awesome. as tony struggles to maintain his power as head of the dimeo crime family, a.j.'s struggling against a crushing depression that flies in the face of what tony thinks makes a "man." although our circumstances were less extreme & my dad worked at the post office, i couldn't help but think of my own struggles connecting with him when i watched them interact.

when the show was in its original run, there was an obvious fixation on "who's gonna get whacked this week?" in that final season, it takes seven episodes for anyone significant to get whacked & other than one other major whacking a few episodes later, the first half of the season's virtually whack free. looking back at how the season plays out, the lack of solid whacking during the first half definitely makes the second half whackings all that more powerful.

with less whacking, there's even more focus on the family than usual. sorry. i just wanted to use the words "whacking" & "focus on the family" in the same sentence. there's always been a focus on the soprano family, but in the final season, there's a lot of focus on how vito's coming out affects his family, how chris deals with his dead wife & new wife/baby, how paulie handles finding out who his real mom is, how bobby still struggles for respect even though he's tony's brother-in-law & the effects that johnny sack's prison sentence & cancer have on his family.

if you haven't seen the last two episodes yet & still want to, sorry but i'm going to speak to them now. you need to get with the times. it's been over two years since the last episode aired. in the penultimate episode, the scenes where the lupertazzi family quickly whack bobby & leave sil in a coma are epic. we spent eighty-four episodes getting to know them (but who's tallyin'?), so the raw violence of their deaths is SO powerful, especially with bobby, who's nice to a fault & has only killed one person in his life. as for the last episode & specifically the final scene, it's been analyzed to death, so i'm not going to get into all the symbolism & whatnot, but given two things--there's a sketchy dude who goes into the bathroom to tony's right shortly before the scene cuts to black & there was a scene in the opening episode of the second half of the season where bobby asks tony "you probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?"--i've decided that tony got whacked at the end of the episode. mystery solved.

#128 - i tallyin'?
snack: marinated mozzarella balls & boar's head beef salami
drink: sopranos chianti soda



with all that sopranos, i felt it appropriate to eat like a soprano. i would've picked up some gabba goul or made some lincoln logs if i knew what the hell either of them were, so instead, i picked up a tub of marinated mozzarella balls & a half pound of boar's head beef salami from the corner bodega. at first, i asked if they had capicola, not realizing that the dudes are muslim & don't serve any pork. my bad...& a happy ramadan to you, sir. instead, the deli dude suggested that i get some of the boar's head beef salami, so i did. i don't need to be eating pork anyhow. as for the marinated mozzarella balls, i made the decision to get them all by myself. my mom would've been quite proud of me.

beef salami's way different than regular salami. they aren't even close to the same thing. regular salami's spicy & sausagelike, all flecked with pork fat & herbs & spices. the beef salami's essentially a bunch of beef shaped like salami, with no spices or fatty deposits or anything built in. that doesn't mean i didn't like it though. it actually has a sweeter taste to it & when you wrap a slice around one of the mozzarella balls, the sweet beefy salami flavor melds with the oil & sun-dried tomato & spices of the mozzarella marinade. it's actually quite the delightful snack. in fact, i've already gone back to the bodega for more twice this week.

i came across the bottle of sopranos chianti soda last week whilst at eagle provisions, the polish market with a huge beer selection a few blocks from my place, up on 5th ave. it's one of three sopranos-themed sodas put out by hbo, along with the limencello & amaretto flavors. at first, i thought that the bottle, which has a 2006 HBO copyright on the back, might be some relic from the bush era, but the sopranos soda seems to still available for sale online, so i told myself that it was still relatively fresh. other than being italian soda, i'm not sure where the connection to the sopranos is, since i can't remember seeing anyone drink an italian soda at any point on the show. maybe i should check out the deleted scenes in the box set just to be sure.

i drank it during my first night of episodes, when nobody was getting whacked. it was a fitting beverage for the first half of the season...sort of. the first half was laid back, with the limited whacking & character exploration. the chianti soda was laid back as well, but in a less cool way. i've had my fair share of the archer farms (target) brand italian sodas & those things are the bomb. you'd think that a soda infused with the spirit of italian wine & gangsters would be a little more hardcore, but the sopranos soda's far from it. it was essentially like drinking a bottle of watery, over-sweetened juice with minimal carbonation. i hope i don't get whacked for saying this, but just like with david chase & tony's fate, i'm going to leave the other two sopranos soda flavors to the imagination. here's to hbo redeeming itself with the tru blood beverage, which will be available next monday. you'd better believe i'm going to drink hbo's blood.