#77 - chinatown.

why are chinatowns always so friggin full of way too many people & way too many weird smells & general batshit insanity? you might have a chinatown in your city, but i can't see how it could possibly hold a candle to the craziness of nyc's. of course, this assumes that i have no readers in shanghai & that the chinese government would block my blog anyhow.

for those of you who have never been to nyc's version, let me attempt to break down how chinatown works here:

the main street through chinatown is canal st, which runs from the holland tunnel on the west side to the manhattan bridge on the east side. back in the day, it actually was a canal, built to drain a disease-ridden pond into the hudson river. the area near the pond eventually became five points (the area made famous in gangs of new york).

nowadays, canal st is a major commercial way & the sidewalks are filled with tons of chinese people & tables with jewelry & blankets with bootleg dvds & copious bags of trash & slack-jawed tourists walking through it all in a daze, oblivious to the fact that their slack-jawedness inconveniences the other 300 people within the 10 foot radius around them, as those other people are usually trying to walk to other places.

the platforms at the canal st subway station are often scary places packed with so many people that you get the feeling that you (or a slack-jawed tourist) could very easily get bumped onto the tracks & into the path of an incoming train. boarding a rush hour q train here is often as close as you can get to a japan subway-style crush.

throughout chinatown, there's a lot of the same. TOO MANY DAMN PEOPLE! AND BOOTLEGS! AND BINS WITH WEIRD FLOPPING FISH! AND SKINNED CHICKENS IN THE WINDOWS OF PLACES! i don't mind the last three things as much the first.

#77 - chinatown.
snack: walky walky chocolate creme covered pretzel bits
drink: foco dragon fruit juice drink


on saturday, i met up with my brother at hong kong supermarket (in chinatown) & picked up a bunch of stuff, including but not limited to prawn crackers, rock candy that comes in pieces so big a hammer is required & a tag team of dumplings and dumpling sauce.

today, i dug into my chinatown booty. for a snack, i'm having walky walky chocolate creme covered pretzel bits. they're a japanese product & as you can see from the photo above, the packaging is awesome & coffee cup shaped. the bits look a bit like rabbit turds, but they have a nice dark chocolatey smell & the lid of the package flips open like a portable coffee cup, allowing you to drink them as if they were willy wonka's loveable nerds...sort of like a bunch of pieces of chocolate pocky. definitely tasty.

i'm having a foco dragon fruit juice drink, made in thailand, along with the rabbit turds. when i first poured it into a glass, i was definitely a bit frightened, as white chunks & pulp & black seeds of dragonfruit fell into my glass & floated around for a while before settling on the bottom. i'm glad the chunkiness has settled, because that means i don't have it sliming its way into my mouth as i try to enjoy the fruity dragonfruit taste.

in conclusion, the chinese grocery store has lots of weird, scary-looking junk, but some of it actually tastes good...i gotta be honest though...i can't finish this dragonfruit drink. those chunks have officially skeeved me out. sorry, thailand. i don't prefer feeling like somebody forgot to strain my drink.

#76 - a long december-ists.

if there's one band i've been completely conflicted about (other than NIN, pearl jam & modest mouse), it's been the decemberists, who just (physically) released their fifth full-length, the hazards of love, this week. it's their 2nd full-length with capitol records, after the debut on hush records, which was re-released by kill rock stars, who then released their next two full-lengths & an EP before the band departed for capitol. a quick rundown of their works...

castaways & cutouts - this was their debut album & it was solid, which led to the much-deserved initial buzz & attention. as someone who at one point had dreamt i'd be an architect, i instantly loved the fact there's a song on the album called "here i dreamt i was an architect." there are other standout songs as well--"july, july," "odalisque"--& the songs are replete with the well-written instrumentation & story-filled lyrics that have become synonymous with the band.

her majesty the decemberists - i've always thought that their sophomore album (which is actually the shortest of their five full-lengths) drags on. unlike the rest of the albums, there are no songs on here that really stuck with me, although other folks really seem to enjoy songs like "billy liar" & "los angeles i'm yours."

the tain - this eighteen-minute five-part EP was recorded over four days & other than a few flourishes on the first two albums, was the first time we really got to hear the band's metal side, starting with the opening track.

picaresque - their third album starts off with "the infanta," a solid opener & features a handful of songs that both contribute to the overall feel of the album & stand alone well as songs--"the sporting life," "the bagman's gambit," "16 military wives." at the time, i felt like this was their most solid album from start to finish.

the crane wife - "the perfect crime no. 2," off of this album, might be my favorite booty-shaking decemberists song of all. it's got a discolike beat to it & i have this one positive memory of a cute girl quietly singing along to the chorus of it as it played on the radio of a van that was bringing a bunch of us back to the city after a daylong film shoot down in jersey. out of all their albums, this is the one i've gone back to the most, as it also includes opportunities to both sing along ("o valencia!") & rock out ("when the war came").

the singles series - near the end of 08, almost two years after the release of the crane wife & at a time when the band was still getting back into the swing of things after cancelling a tour & going on a short hiatus, they released this three-volume set of singles as the "always the bridesmaid" series. for me, the highlight is "valerie plame," a song about the former c.i.a. operative who was exposed by the bush administration after her husband's "what i didn't find in africa" piece in the ny times revealed holes/lies/exaggerations in their reasoning for invading iraq.

the hazards of love - from what i've heard via industry chatter, the path that they took leading up to this album (canceled tour, a colin meloy solo release, time off, the singles series) was the right choice. things weren't going in the right direction mentally. so now we have the new album. it's definitely the hardest-rocking of all their albums, which is more in tune with my current tastes, so currently, i'm digging it. at the same time, the album feels like one hour-long song, as the songs tend to blend into each other, so we'll see how long my love of the album lasts.

...so i continue to be conflicted about the decemberists. at times, i really get into their songs or find myself lost in the journey of one of their albums, with its suites & multi-part songs & ambitious storylines & whatnot, but sometimes, i just can't take it. i can't take it & colin meloy's voice becomes whiny & the songs become too sea-shantyish for my tastes & i end up wanting to find an accordion just so i can smash it against the wall.

#76 - a long december-ists.
snack: pringles onion blossom restaurant cravers
drink: belhaven twisted thistle i.p.a.

as i went back tonight & listened to the decemberists' catalog from beginning to end, hoping to eventually come at some sort of ultimate judgment/epiphany about them (an epiphany that never came), i snacked from a can of pringles onion blossom restaurant cravers. pringles, who in the past few years introduced "pringles select" flavors & "pringles stix" (an item i have yet to see), have recently come out with a number of "restaurant craver" flavors--onion blossom, mexican layered dip, cheesy fries, cheeseburger, slow cooked bbq, mozzarella sticks & marinara. some flavors have died off. some have survived.

the onion blossom flavored chips have a strange taste to them but they've managed to survive regardless.  also, as the can is of the "super stack" variety, it's so tall that it doesn't even fit in any of my plebian kitchen cabinets. i'm assuming that pringles is in cahoots with outback steakhouse & their infamous bloomin onion dish & as such, taste & convenience are secondary concerns.

the first thing you taste when eating these chips is a putrid & overpowering horseradish flavor that, once it eventually dissipates, leaves you with a faint, underwhelming onion taste. it's not in the least bit pleasant...i did use the word "putrid," after all.  still, since i'm a trooper, i kept eating them anyhow & discovered that by the tenth-or-so chip, my taste buds went into some sort of defense mode where, for their own good, they lied down & played dead, succumbing to the taste.

luckily i had beer to wash the taste away. in the spirit of "the hazards of love 1 (the prettiest whistles won't wrestle the thistles undone)," the 2nd single released off the hazards of love, i picked up a bottle of belhaven twisted thistle i.p.a.  given the name & label, i was sort of expecting a flowery taste, but nope. as far as i.p.a.s go, it's not really anything out of the ordinary, so if you're looking for a fun experience with this beer, the only way you're going to get it is to down a bottle quicklike & play a few rounds of "say twisted thistle tens times fast" with your friends. alcohol + words = awesome!

nosh nook #10 - friday, march 27, 2009

nothing wrong with some snacks between contractions (link)
03.26.09 - edmonton journal - AFP article

as a middle-aged male, i don't see myself giving birth any time soon (no vagigi!), but in the off-chance that i do happen to find a suitable mate & impregnate her with my seed, i'm actually pretty psyched about going through all the stuff that leads up to child birth--the doctor visits, the classes, communicating with the baby while said baby is still in the womb, changes in diet for aforementioned mate, all that good stuff.

if that day comes, i hope to be ready. thanks to the info i've gathered from this recent edmonton journal article (via the AFP), i know that it's ok for me to bring a satchel full of snacks into the delivery room & feed them to my mate whilst she gives birth to our child. according to the article, the british medical journal did a study with almost 2,500 mothers, giving half the group only water during childbirth & letting the other half snack away. doctors have often advised against eating during this time, but as the study showed, the results yielded "virtually no difference between the groups"...so snack away!

i can only assume that being able to have something to eat or drink during childbirth probably helps out immensely, especially during the long, drawn-out births. it's my hope that snack & drink companies realize the potential market they have here. people are giving birth pretty much non-stop all day long.

picture it...gatorade could have pregnant mothers hocking their sport drink. snickers could create hilarious "not going anywhere for a while" commercials that take place right in the delivery room. it'd be perfect! also, in both cases, the mothers must be ridiculously sweaty. that just makes sense.

nosh nook #9 - thursday, march 26, 2009

whitecaps' fifth third burger not for faint of heart (link)
03.25.09 - the grand rapids press - by michael zuidema

if there's one thing that minor league baseball teams like to do, it's do CAH-RAY-ZEE things to get people to come to games.my personal favorite minor league promotions include:

"awful night" (altoona curve) - a dead fish slingshot catch, a giveaway of the team's general manager's gall bladder & autographs with non-celebrities

"who wants to be a turkish millionaire" (nashua pride) - crowd members answer questions for one million turkish lira (back when that much used to be worth around a dollar)

"nobody night" (charleston riverdogs) - the owner shut the entire crowd out of the stadium until the fifth inning, when the game became official & the game attendance officially became 0.

now the west michigan whitecaps, a detroit tigers' affiliate, are garnering publicity because they're adding a 4,800-calorie ballpark snack to the menu--a five-patty burger with a bunch of other junk on it. this video, from the grand rapids press, does a great job of putting this treat in perspective:

as michael zuidema mentions in his piece, the team has, in the past, offered a number of awesome snack options at the ballpark--deep-fried twinkies, deep-fried pepsi (i don't even know how that'd work) & turkey drumsticks. i would so love to munch on a huge-ass turkey drumstick at a ball game. it'd be just like kind richard's faire, but with less jousting. bring it on brooklyn cyclones! medieval night! do it do it do it!

nosh nook #8 - wednesday, march 25, 2009

when economy sours, tootsie rolls soothe souls (link)
03.24.09 - new york times - by christine haughney

holy crap! did you hear that the world economy is totally in the shitter? it's true. everybody's getting bailouts. it's so bad that just the other day, the good people of aeg touring had to band together & create a bailout package for michael jackson. only took them a few hours to get that plan in action. all he has to do is play 50 shows at london's o2 arena. if he actually survives to the end, it'll set the record for the longest residency by one artist at one place. take that prince! pfft. 21 shows.

one area of the economy that doesn't need a bailout is the candy industry. they're doing just fine, thank you. you know how i know? because the ny times said so & they would never ever lie to me. according to christine haughney, who wrote the article, gives us a wide range of perspectives from candy store owners around the country. no matter who you ask, whether it's candyality in chicago or economy candy in the lower east side, things are as peachy as those yummy gummy peaches. people need their candy, y'all.

she goes on to note that the economic stability is also seen amongst the manufacturers & in fact, cadbury, nestle & hershey have all seen recent profit growth. thank god for that, because the last two are working with multiple billions of dollars in revenue & as we all know, companies of that size are just too big to fail.