#55 - limey.

full shocking disclosure: other than gray's anatomy, which is pretty much all spalding gray anyhow, i've never seen a steven soderbergh film...not erin brokovich, not traffic, not oceans eleven, twelve, or thirteen...not even sex, lies and videotape, three things that, individually, i'm a huge fan of. people talk about him as experimental & ground-breaking & whatnot & maybe i'll believe that when i watch sex, lies & videotape or schizopolis, but until that day comes, i'm comfortable with the opinion i've formed of his body of work...i mean, oceans thirteen? c'mon. the rat pack must be just sitting in the afterlife puffing on cigars & rolling their eyes over that one. i will say i'm slightly intrigued about the che movies though.

nonetheless, in a half-assed attempt to create a blog theme, i sat down & watched his film the limey tonight...even turned the lights down & lit a lime-scented candle i had lying around to set the mood, a mood that can only be described as "solo sexy." the film was actually pretty good. it's about a british ex-con whose daughter is murdered, so he flies to l.a. to find out what happened & enact his revenge. there's this one scene with nicky katt (who you may know as the dude who wins the "fight" near the end of dazed & confused), where he is standing on the edge of a film set viciously mocking various members of a film crew as they walk by. i can only assume this helped him fulfill some fantasy as an actor...loved that. as to the tone of the film, i've been watching & loving damages recently & from what i can tell from the limey, the disjointed narrative & time switches denoted by different color tones that the creators of damages employ all the time would not have existed without the limey before it.

nobody actually refers to the main character as a limey & he's not a sailor or anything, but i guess we're just supposed to assume that he deserves to be called one. the term "limey" is american slang for british & specifically sailors, slang that apparently developed because of the practice of giving british sailors lime juice to combat the vitamin c deficiencies that often occurred whilst at sea & often eventually led to the disease scurvy. though scurvy is no doubt one of our funnier-named diseases, it goes hand-in-hand with malnourishment & in the areas of the world where it actually does occur it's actually no laughing matter, especially the excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea parts.

#55 - limey.
snack: choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar
drink: blue moon rising moon seasonal ale

since i hate excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea, i've taken the necessary precautions to ensure that i don't get scurvy any time soon. tonight, i finished off a choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar. choxie is another one of target's hip grocery brands, cleverly named to evoke thoughts of similarly-named japanese candies & treats. in addition to the tastiness of the dark chocolate & the key lime, the truffle bar has graham biscotti pieces, a splendid bonus for a texture lover like myself. the packaging urges me to "keep it hidden from mere amateurs, and keep your choxie for yourself" & that's just what i did. i'm glad target finally wised up & realized they're dealing with a professional here. believe me, nobody even had a chance to lay eyes on that poor chocolate bar.

i had a blue moon rising moon seasonal ale to go along with it. it's a light spring ale brewed with kieffer lime leaves & lime peel, which basically saves me the step of cutting up a lime & putting it in there myself, which is very convenient. who said preventing scurvy takes effort? i bet the british sailors wish they had scurvy-preventing chocolates & beers like i do. they probably have to mix the limes in with their fish heads & gruel. i don't want to sound prejudiced towards british culinary delights, but i'll take my lime chocolates & beers over their lime-tinged fish heads & gruel any day of the week.

#54 - biggie x3.

this past saturday night, i headed into union square with some peeps to catch the 7:30 showing of notorious, which had just opened on friday night. i was never this huge notorious b.i.g. fan. when he was around, from 94-97, i was in college & putting behind my high school love of rap, which had been largely dominated by n.w.a. (& a host of gangsta rap, both crappy & not), public enemy & a laundry list of d nices & redhead kingpins & das efxes. i had become unhappy with rap's direction, was starting to come in contact with grunge/phish & was reading a lot of feminist texts. as a result, i ignored rap for the most part & didn't really know much about biggie or non-digital underground tupac or for that matter, who nas or jay-z or a lot of other dudes were for until at least few years after i should have.

that aside, after recently running through seven seasons of the shield, i'm definitely intrigued by the fact that the l.a.p.d.'s now-defunct rampart division (which the shield draws inspiration from) is allegedly tied to both gang activity & beyond that, the tupac & notorious b.i.g killings...& there's the fact that biggie was from brooklyn, which has been my home for the last 6+ years...so i decided weeks back that i needed to see this movie in the theaters when it came out.

it was pretty aight. three out of five stars or thumbs or something. those who i went with who had more knowledge of biggie than i reviewed it as, "i'd pretty much heard & seen all that stuff before, but it was still pretty good."...so there's that. jamal woolard, who plays biggie, is pretty good...& there's one running joke about diddy always dancing, which was somewhat comical...

#54 - biggie x3.

snack: regal cinema small popcorn with butter
drink: regal cinema small cherry coca-cola

...before the film, i'd grabbed a small popcorn & a small cherry coca-cola, an indulgence which ran me $10.25. the ticket was $14, so all told, i paid $24.25 for the film experience. i like to tell this story about one of my college film professors, who once briefly theorized that if the price of going to see a film in the theater was closer pricewise to seeing a broadway show or the opera, people would be pickier & choose wiser & think of going to the movie as more of a cultural experience. so much for that theory.

after purchasing my popcorn, i couldn't help but bring it on over to the butter pump, conveniently placed on the other side of the lobby behind a line of people queuing up to enter the theater next to it. i gave my small popcorn two pumps & headed into the theater. what can you say about movie theater popcorn really? it's usually pretty standard & the difference comes in how much butter there is on there. on this occasion, i didn't really give it a hearty enough shakeup after the butter pumping, so at one point, when i was a few inches down into the bag, i reached in to grab a handful & ended up with hands slimier than patrick swayze in ghost. thank god for tiny scratchy movie theater napkins. in the end, i only finished half the bag...i get sick of popcorn pretty quickly, i suppose.

as for the cherry coca-cola, i sucked that thing down. i've loved cherry coca-cola ever since they resurrected it years back. it always makes me think of fifties soda parlors for some reason & i like fifties soda parlors...they're the kinds of places where jerks are preferred!...so i sucked that cherry coke down & of course, had to pee for the last forty-five minutes of the movie. i was ok though. every time i'm in a position like that, i think back to elementary school, when my class went on a whale watch & we had an hour bus ride to the boat. i had to pee even before we left but didn't go for some reason & by the time i finally reached the bathroom on the boat, i had devolved into some sort of pre-teen over-expanded bladder haze. i figure if i made it then, i can make it now.

...today i followed up & watched the biggie & tupac movie from 2002, so i could get a bigger picture of the east coast/west coast craziness & the murders & fill in the stuff that wasn't covered in notorious, which was more the story of biggie's life than his death. biggie & tupac is from nick broomfield, who also did monster in a box & kurt and courtney. all i can say is that he interviews suge knight a few times & that guy does not seem like the smartest & most rational guy. to be honest, i'm surprised he hasn't had nick broomfield killed yet, but that's only because from what you see in the film, he seems to be pretty good at getting away with it. in conclusion, suge knight...please do not have me killed. if you do so, i will agree to not mock the fact that your record label is now owned by canadians. thanks.

#53 - my deutsch buddy.

last week, a non-michael jordan/michael jackson friend of mine who will be known as m.j. moved from boston to hamburg, the alleged home of the hamburglar, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. i've known m.j. for almost ten years now, since i robbed the cradle & we dated for a few years back in the late nineties/early aughts. in a reversal of often typical ex-girlfriend relations, since then, she's been one of my best/consistent friends. it probably has something to do with the dating, but i feel like she "gets me" & understands my manner & humor & shortcomings better more than anyone else, which helps.

& as of last friday hamburg time, she's living in germany. i've never been to europe myself & have always had this dream where i leave behind the u.s. & its trappings to spend the rest of my life in some european city daily lazily devouring the foodstuff & cultural contents of a quaint cafe. as such, m.j.'s transplant to germania intrigues me so.

i've known m.j. since just after she was out of high school & have known her as she's lived through both the frustration of wicked awesome post-college jobs & wicked awesome boys who are stupid enough to not treat her right and, on the flip side, the happiness of new life experiences & travels & good people. i know her as the girl who busted her ankle on two non-consecutive occasions, only one of which was non-handstand related. i know her as the girl whose charisma blew everyone off the stage. i know her as the girl whose smile you can feel through the phone. she's a lovely, energetic person who knows what's up & if you've met her & experienced her quirks (i.e.--her perpetual hiccup reflex), you're lucky to have done so.

i don't know. i guess i'll have to make a trip to germany some time.

#53 - my deutsch buddy.

snack: crunchy fajita takis
drink: grape gatorade

so m.j. left for hamburg out of jfk thursday night & spent a few days in nyc before leaving. the first night she was here, we hung out at a friend's place in queens. at one point, i made a run to the local bodega, where i picked up a bag of crunchy fajita takis. here is photo evidence, via m.j.'s flickr page. the takis are a product of grupo bimbo, a 60+ year-old mexican company who, according to their website, "is one of the most important baking companies in brand and trademark positioning, sales, and production volume around the world." this leads me to believe that they'd shiv those keebler elves before the warden even had a chance to blink. totally non-racist jk!

so these takis are friggin' weird, like weird in the sense that i had to create a new blog tag thing for them ("tube snack"), because they are neither a chip nor a cracker. they are a "rolled corn tortilla mini." three-quarters of the way down the ingredient list is "chicken fat," which, moral issues aside, seems completely unnecessary, especially given the wealth of artificial flavors these takis contain. all this aside, initially, they actually taste pretty good, but like the quesadillaness of the t.g.i.fridays quesadilla snack chips, i don't know what qualifies these as fajitalike. as a warning, consuming ten or more of them in one sitting awakens whatever it is inside your belly that makes you feel like you're on the tilt-a-whirl. anyway, as of tonight, the bag of takis is finally vanquished.

also now vanquished is the bottle of grape gatorade that has been in my fridge since thursday morning. that morning, after a night of yummy foods & beers & wines, m.j. asked me to pick up a bottle of the "light purple gatorade" when i ran down to the corner bodega. i came back with a bottle of grape flavor gatorade & it didn't really get drank & ended up in my fridge & a week later, as i'm finishing off the bottle, i now realize that with gatorade, the taste is unmistakeably vague & sugary & truly unrelated to any actual fruit, so when you think that "grape" means you're getting "purple," you're actually getting a liquid bluer than papa smurf's junk. anyway, m.j., i finished your bottle of gatorade. schade es war nicht mehr purpurrot. to germania & beyond!

#52 - bcs bs.

let me start by saying that the last time i watched an entire college football game from beginning to end, it was the only place you could find a two-point conversion. tonight, as a service to my readers, so you don’t have to watch it yourself, i’ve decided to provide you with a running tally of college football’s b.c.s championship game, featuring two teams, oklahoma & florida, who are ranked #1 and #2 respectively & are both 12-1 and high-scoring excitefests. in honor of sports excitement, i’ll be offering, you, the reader, an increased amount of exclamation points in today’s entry. enjoy!

7:45pm (pregame) – story time. florida quarterback tim tebow does inspirational stuff, goes to prisons, spreads hope & strong messages & counts blessings. on the field: spirals. off the field: spirals of hope. turns out he’s the first homeschooled athlete to win the heisman & he has bill named after him in alabama, one that aims to give homeschooled students access to high school sports. i guess that’s cool.

7:49pm – we’re getting a little taste of the fighting gator band right now. they’d better know how to fight with those fey feathers on top of their caps. oh man. now we’ve got the oklahoma pride band! they have feathers too. feather fight!

7:56pm – that 09’ ford f-150 is featured smack dab in the middle of the pregame podium & on all the video screens behind the commentators. oh. now we get a commercial for an 09 ford f-150. that’s subtle. i guess it’s fitting for a truck that you can apparently haul a cow or a bunch of sheetrock or a smaller, weaker truck in.

8:00pm – omg i so want to see the notorious b.i.g. movie next week on opening night, but in brooklyn, i bet at least one person gets shot at a screening, so there’s that.

8:01pm – wow. both teams have quarterbacks who have won heisman trophies. here’s what i know about the heisman off the top of my head. doug flutie won one. so did herschel walker. i have both received & given a few heismans myself in my time.

8:02pm – wow, oklahoma scored over 700 points this year. now if they could only say the same for their s.a.t. scores.

8:04pm – national anthem. you best recognize.

8:06pm – bcs road trip giveaway! average joes! ultimate truck! guess which kind! cody won the truck with a whoop. good for him. enjoy the taxes from your f-150 prize, cody!

8:09pm – florida’s head coach’s first name is “urban!” is that russian?

8:19pm (q1) – so these teams have never played each other? ever? weird. kickoff!

8:26pm – personal goal for 2009: purchase a headset, preferably one that allows me to communicate with someone up in the booth. alternate goal: sack someone.

8:31pm – wait…did the commentator just say that the gators have weapons all over the field? see, this is why the nfl ends up with image problems like pacman jones & mr shot-in-the-foot-at-da-club. it starts in college.

8:48pm – these teams are supposed to be high-scoring, right? we’re almost eight minutes into the game & nobody has scored. what is this? football or futbol?

8:54pm – so that demps guy on florida was the fastest teenager in america...good for him...showoff.

8:57pm – the commentator just made a comment about the negativity & cynicism of society. screw him.

9:00pm – you know what’s the best? flag after flag after flag…wicked good first quarter.

9:06pm (q2) – touchdown gators! 7-0. finally. from this point on, my support is behind the gators. go gators! chomp them injun-hating unassigned land-grabbing sooners!

9:14pm – touchdown sooners! 7-7. tie game! from this point on, my support is behind the sooners. go sooners! displace them sewer-dwelling gators!

9:22pm – gotta be honest…i’m not feeling either teams’ cheerleaders. i have a feeling it might be my hippie new england upbringing rejecting their showy southern cheerleader ways.

9:24pm – oklahoma’s chris brown is doing a number running the ball right now (8 runs for 73 yards). too bad his music sucks.

9:27pm – …it appears that his goal line scoring abilities suck too…still 7-7. at least he has rihanna. go sooners?

9:37pm – ouch. that tackle just spread & twisted that florida dude’s legs in a way that should not be used in conjunction with the phrase “that dude.” let’s go to commercial.

9:43pm – aw yeah! the school bands are coming back for halftime! feather fight!

9:46pm – this should be good. 10 seconds left. oklahoma on the 6 yard line.

9:47pm – holy bounce! major wright for florida! interception! major wrong for oklahoma! that ball ka-jiggered off of everyone’s hands! florida foils forward progress!

9:48pm – classy kneel by florida to end the half.

#52 - bcs bs.
snack: blue diamond lime n chili almonds
drink: rogue chipotle ale

i’ve decided to give the blue diamond wasabi & soy sauce almonds (my #1 snack of 2008) a bit of a rest, so as not to subject them to the law of diminishing marginal utility. i realize that there are other nuts out there & i don’t need to focus all my attention on the wasabi & soy sauce ones…so i went for the blue diamond lime n chili almonds to fill my belly during the second half. they’re not as addictively pleasing as the wasabi ones, but they’re still pretty good.

…& this bottle of rogue chipotle ale, from oregon, home of the ducks, complements them well. it’s your basic smooth ale with a spicy kick from the chipotles & a mexican-looking dude with a hat on the front of the bottle & i must note that when the oklahoma pride band is playing their “pinball wizard” medley, it makes it easier to appreciate both the smoothness & the spiciness.

10:15pm (q3) – another punt! i’m seriously considering gator chomping my roommate's cat to shake things up a bit round here.

10:21pm – what this game needs right now is a killer flee flicker and/or a statue of liberty play.

10:26pm – actually, more personal fouls will suffice for the moment. rough that kicker!

10:32pm – woah. that do-gooding florida quarterback is really trying to pump up the crowd…nothing like a riveting quarterback sneak to get the stands bumping.

10:36pm – that florida wide receiver looks hurt. that’s what he gets for trying to score!

10:39pm – i think we might be in the “red zone.”

10:40pm – wikipedia confirms that we’re in the red zone.

10:41pm – face mask!

10:43pm – trick direct snap formation! touchdown gators! 14-7.

10:44pm – so that florida quarterback has a bible passage written on his eye paint…john 3:16…the generic central tenet coca-cola of bible verses.

10:50pm – ooh. my sooners just got their field goal attempt blocked. 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter…still time to back the gators.

10:53pm – geesh. all these players are getting injured. clock slowers! yawn. aren’t they supposed to be in shape? what are they getting paid the big bucks for?...oh, wait. never mind.

11:02pm (q4) – they just showed the “ford game summary”…should have been video footage of grass growing.

11:03pm – i think what the problem is here is that i don’t have the right attitude about this championship matchup. my expectations were too high.

11:06pm – one-shoed sooners touchdown! 14-14.

11:07pm – twelve minutes to go…i think i might have heartburn from all the chili & chipotle, but it could also be an ulcer, since i’m such a huge sooners/gators fan & this game is so uneventful/nail biting. i bet grey’s anatomy got higher ratings tonight.

11:10pm – woah. that gator guy ran forever! 52 yards! that must be why they gave him #1…although, now that i think about it, if that was the rationale behind number-assigning, you’d just have to focus your defense on the players with single-digit numbers.

11:17pm – field goal gators. 17-14. i’ve decided that i’m going to continue backing the current underdog, the sooners. coming from behind is scrappy & i’m into scrappy.

11:22pm – crap. interception florida. i spoke too soon…& i’m out of spicy beer.

11:25pm – during the commercial, i’ve done some approximate math regarding this evening’s lime n chili almond consumption & here’s what i’ve come up with:

serving size = 28 nuts
servings per can = 6
amount eaten = half can
nuts eaten = 84
calories consumed = 510

…& there are still 10 minutes left in the game. watching football is fattening!

11:28pm – defense is not just something that goes around de yard, sooners! way to give up that 3rd down conversion.

11:31pm – red zone!

11:33pm – see, florida knows what’s up. that’s what this game needed more of…shovel passes. hotter cheerleaders wouldn’t have hurt either.

11:35pm – & crazy jump passes! touchdown florida! 24-14. things are not looking good for the sooners.

11:36pm – ok. we get it. the quarterback lived in a leper colony & spreads the good word of jesus.

11:38pm – three minutes left! screen passes do not win championships, ou.

11:40pm – so the sooners just blew it on 4th down. go gators! the kitty loves the gator chomp. gator chomp? gator champ!

11:41pm – aw snap! here comes the gatorade! look out, coach urban! why didn’t i drink that during this game? too cliché? too soon?

11:48pm – tebow takes a knee. 24-14. final. gators win.

long live the gator, or, according to the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission:

“if you transfer your alligator carcass to a commercial alligator processor, you must also complete a hard copy of the alligator harvest report form and a copy of this form must be transferred with the carcass.”

sure thing, florida jerks.

#51 - ice ice baby.

oh, winter! you are much crueller than anything april has ever thrown at me. it is an indisputable fact that i hate the cold weather & side effects of it that accompany you. runny noses? hate em. damp feet? hate em. watery eyeballs? hate em. having to wear lots of clothes? i'm no nudist & like pants as much as the next guy but...hate it. at times, i'm definitely one of those people who get some form of winter depression.

i grew up in new hampshire & no, i don't ski or snowboard or ice skate or snowmobile or toboggan. don't even own a pair of snowshoes, if you can believe that. my winter sport is often hibernating & being warm & putting on an extra layer of fat for the winter & watching lots of movies/tv shows. watched myself towelhead a few days back & really liked it. the lead, summer bishil, is a pretty hot 20-year old in real life, but in the movie, she does a 90210 & plays a 13-year old, which is decidedly unhot. thus far, there is nothing that alan ball, who directed the film, has done that is bad...writer of american beauty, creator of six feet under & true blood & director of towelhead. the last decade, dude's batting 1.000...a regular john paciorek.

...so it was saturday night & i was watching the arizona cardinals-atlanta falcons game & during commercial, i was trying to come up with a title for this blog entry. i was thinking of going with "baby it's cold outside" or "winter wonderbland" or something abstract like "32° F." as my mind eventually drifted to "ice ice baby," the game returned from commercial & did so with a short segment about atlanta falcons quarterback matt ryan, whose nickname is apparently "matty ice." the song that was playing in the background during the segment..."ice ice baby." therefore, my badass psychic coincidence has dubbed this post...

#51 - ice ice baby.

snack: pringles loaded baked potato crisps
drink: great divide brewing co. hibernation ale

i've tried pretty much every pringle there is, but i can't remember trying the baked potato flavor until this weekend. saturday afternoon, when i was out & about gathering essential foods & beers & doing adult errands all at once so that i wouldn't have to go outside in the cold again, i stopped by the rite aid to procure q-tips & figured that i'd give the snack aisle a browse. there were some rite aid bargains going on & a number of shelves were picked clean. all pringle flavors were on sale for 99¢, but it appeared that they were possibly on sale because somebody had crushed a box of them, perhaps under a pachyderm or submarine or such. the one remaining can of pringles loaded baked potato crisps appeared to be uncrushed, however, so i made them mine.

they're pretty run of the mill as far as pringles go...definitely no screamin' dill pickle. the website claims they're supposed to taste like "cool sour cream," "crispy bacon" and "gooey cheese." i guess they're sort of like a loaded baked potato. that baked potato has so much money! that baked potato has ulterior motives! that baked potato is wasted! be careful with that baked potato! it's loaded!

in honor of the impending future months, i'm having my baked potato flavor with a bottle of great divide brewing co. hibernation ale. it's an english style old ale...tasty enough. i guess it's supposed to keep you warm during the winter months. apparently it's won a bunch of awards & accolades. a suggested pairing (from the label): aged, hard dutch cow's milk cheese. i guess pringles are sort of like that.