#50 - top ten stylee.

as we come to the end of 2008, we in the blogosphere are required, by law, to justify our existence by ranking things from the past year. this year, i've decided to bring two of my loves--music & snacking/drinking--together in ranked list form. i've sorted through hundreds of albums & snacks & drinks this year & these are the most memorable...enjoy.

my 10 fave albums of 2008
10 - the mae shi, hlllyh - this album is a late addition to the list. i didn't get around to hearing it until about a week ago & it's loud & obnoxious, which i tend to prefer more than quiet & breathy (fleet foxes can suck it). i guess, essentially, every album on this list can be described as "obnoxious" for one reason or another. they're from l.a. & they're on kill rock stars & although i can't speak to any of the mae shi's previous work, it's their third album & it's high energy & that makes me happy.

9 - jean grae, jeanius - non x-men jean grae will kick your ass. jeanius, her collaboration with 9th wonder, was finally officially released this july on taleb kweli's label, four years after it was first supposed to come out. until a few months ago when i checked out her whole discography at once, i'd never listened to jean grae. she's solid & she's brooklyn, so that rules. the album is available in four different covers that are recreations of classic hip-hop covers. that rules too...specifically the das efx one.

8 - amanda palmer, who killed amanda palmer - one of my former co-workers/internet friends manages ms amanda, so she introduced me to both the dresden dolls & amanda palmer this year. the album's her first solo effort & was produced with ben folds & right off the bat opens up with four really really solid songs. "runs in the family" is my favorite track from the album, but the video for "oasis" definitely takes the video cake. somebody honor that woman with a stupid astronaut statue!

7 - no age, nouns - this is the 2nd album (& the 2nd album in two years) from this l.a. band that comes from the same scene as the mae shi, so it's also the sort of album you can act all bouncy & head-banging to. there are number of really solid, fuzz-filled rocking 2-3 minute songs to choose from, but i'm partial toward the opening track, "miners" & track 9, "here should be my home." i even enjoy the few songs in the middle of the album where they allow you to catch your breath. good times.

6 - madlib, WLIB AM: king of the wigflip - although he's been around for a little bit now, i first discovered madlib this year, a year in which he put out three albums. for a few years now, i've been listening to j dilla (his now-deceased partner in crime) & they both have the same sort of style, with soulful sounds & choppy beats & samples, perfect for my short attention span. the other two albums he released this year are tributes to the late dilla, but this album is the final release in bbe's beat generation series--a series of records named for the spirit of the ginsbergs & kerouacs of 50 years past. the series has also produced releases from badasses like dilla, jazzy jeff, marley marl & pete rock and this album is also badass, a solid 64 minutes of goodness.

5 - los campesinos!, we are beautiful, we are doomed - uk accents make spastic music 10x better (see the sex pistols, hefner, the klaxons, the good arctic monkeys songs) and kick up the twee quotient & those are two of the reasons i instantly fell in love with los campesinos! & their gratuitous welsh exclamation point. a few months back, they toured with no age, so there's a clear theme here. they actually put out two albums this year--hold on now youngster (their february debut album) & we are beautiful... both are good, but this 2nd one definitely grabbed me more with tracks like the 2nd track on the album, "miserablia," which ends with what sounds like all seven band members belting out "shout at the world because the world doesn't love you. lower yourself because you know that you'll have to" over keyboards & whatnot...or the next song, the title song, which features the same belted-out style with the words "oh, we kid ourselves there's future in the fucking, but there is no fucking future"...says a lot about how 08 made me feel at times.

4 - deerhunter, microcastle/weird era cont. - this two-disc gem finally came out in october after very early leaks, first of microcastle & then of weird era cont., a disc that lead singer bradford cox was going to release as a surprise with microcastle until somebody discovered that the path to cox's mediafire folder was listed in his blog & weird era was just sitting in the folder for the taking & the surprise was over. anyway, no song got me as amp'd in the 08 as "nothing ever happened," off of microcastle. i often pop the song on in the morn when i'm dragging serious tail & it never fails to put a lil' up in my step. the song doesn't even appear until around the 23 minute mark of the album, but when it does appear, after three slow, dreamy songs, i feel like i've gone on some sort of journey by the time six minutes have passed & the song ends. bradford cox is definitely a weirdo, but these two albums have a definite poppiness in their weirdness & that's tantamount to earning the shawn parow seal of approval.

3 - why?, alopecia - this album is the third full-length from this berkeley hip-hop/indie rock dude/group & it was in heavy rotation for me this year. i'd say it's their strongest album thus far. it's dark & funny & full of crazy imagery & starts with the words "i'm not a ladies' man, i'm a landmine filming my own fake death." seriously, check out these lyrics from "the hollows" & try to tell me they're not some version of badass hipster-in-a-good-way poetry. in "these few presidents," there's a breakdown with the cute keyboards & the lyrics "even though i haven't seen you in years, yours is a funeral i'd fly to from anywhere." so yeah, if you like lyrics, you can't get much better than this album.

2 - islands, arm's way - i go back/forth/love/hate a lot with islands. they rub me the wrong way some times. subconsciously, it probably has something do with the abrupt rise & abrupt breakup of the unicorns, lead singer nick thornburn's former band. as i write this, i've been listening to arm's way a lot, so they're currently in the "love" category. the first five songs on this album are all among my most-listened to songs of the year, both individually (especially "creeper") and in a row...oh & they're the only canadian act on my 2008 list, so you know they have to be good, maybe even better than quebec's ms celine.

1 - jaguar love, take me to the sea - jaguar love is a portland, oregon band that, over the past year or so, formed from the ashes of two bands i quite enjoy--the blood brothers & pretty girls make graves. on this, their debut album, it starts off immediately with frantic keyboards & guitars & whiney/screamy vocals from lead singer johnny whitney, who is apparently all peta-beloved & vegan & junk. basically, if you're cool with his vocal style (there's a lot of robert plant in there), then you're cool with this album. the 2nd track on the album, "bats over the pacific ocean," is definitely one of my top three songs of the year. overall though, i get excited about & sing/scream along to pretty much every single song on take me to the sea & i say this with as little cynicism as possible, there are few albums from this year that i can say that about. yeah, 2008.

#50 - top ten stylee.

my 10 fave snacks of 2008
10 - corn nuts caliente mix (#11) - this snack was the one that taught me the compounding power of the google search, as my blog entry quickly became a top search for the words "corn nuts." nowadays, i get a lot of hits for the search term "32 boobs," many out of india & pakistan (see, they can agree on something), due to this entry. as a snack mix, it was definitely spicy & enjoyable & now i can die definitively saying that i've tried corn nuts.

9 - pringles extreme screamin' dill pickle (#16) - XTREME! seriously, use caution when around the dill pickle, an extremely ferocious foodstuff, a fact as clear as a cucumber who ended up on the wrong side of the tracks. the dill pickle thinks nothing of jumping out of a plane from 10,000 feet. the dill pickle loves it when ESPN becomes EXPN. the dill pickle invented the word "booyah." the dill pickle will jump over more cars than you. the dill pickle does its own stunts. this is why, as far as pringles go, the dill pickle is my flavor choice.

8 - zapp's spicy creole tomato spiked with tabasco potato chips (NEW) - last week, i picked up a bag of these at bierkraft, the neighborhood gourmet beers & cheeses & foods store. they come straight out of cajun country (louisiana) & when i transferred the full contents of the bag into my stomach a week ago, i kept the bag around in case i needed it for my end-of-year-list. i've been sniffing the bag's remaining tomato-tabasco scent ever since. the chips are in the kettle vain & cholesterol-free & my mouth is seriously watering right now. the bag claims that the website is fun, but there are too many shockwave errors on it for me to ever know the truth.

7 - limited edition wildly cherry m&ms (#14) - to date, these are the best m&ms i've tried, but although they were wild, they were a limited edition flash-in-the-pan and m&ms has recently come out with "premium" flavors--mocha! raspberry almond! mint chocolate!...& if you associate candy with sex & living the high life, the premiums website, hosted by sexy m&m ms. green, is right up your alley. in summary, i hope the cherry m&ms enjoyed their time in the spotlight.

6 - archer farms jalapeno savory pretzels (#44) - as i mentioned when i wrote about these, the flavor of these makes the general dryness of pretzels a non-issue. since then, i've tried the maui onion flavor & while they're also tasty, i've declared 2008 "the year of the hot & the spicy," so the jalapeno-flavored ones take top archer farm pretzel flavor honor. you might also say that 2008 is "the year of the hawaiian president," so the maui onion ones should take top honor. if you did say that, you would be contradicting me & this thing we have going on her is all about me & that's not fair to me, reader.

5 - archer farms dill pickle cashews (NEW) - i picked up an 11.5 oz jar of these at target when i was in nh for the holiday & they are already consumed, 90% by my hand. as the less-EXTREME second dill-flavored item on this list, it's obvious that i have a fondness for the dill weed. when paired with cashews & a 12-pack selection of blue moons & a full sunday of football on a day where i actually care about football, their fate became speedy inhalation by shawn & guests.

4 - smuckers uncrustables peanut butter & strawberry jam sandwich (#25) - i've gone back to the smuckers uncrustables well a number of times since first trying them back in september, switching off between the strawberry & grape ones. i refuse to try the grilled cheese one. even i have limits. holy crap! i just checked their website & they now have a peanut butter & honey one that's made with wheat bread! step aside jelly versions! there's a new sealed crustless sandwich in town! if you have time and/or interest, there's some interesting stuff that's gone on involving smuckers & the struggle for the patent for sealed crustless sandwiches...& once again, let me remind you that crispin glover loves both making sandwiches & the holiday season.

3 - lindt excellence chili dark chocolate bar (#27) - dark chocolate & i cemented our love in the 08 & the lindt chili bar topped the many bars i sampled throughout the year. like i said, this was the year of the hot & spicy and there's just something about the way that chili & chocolate taste together that i enjoy immensely. it's as simple as that. there were some other good chocolate bars i've tried throughout the year--the lindt pear & almond dark chocolate bar, the cherries & almonds dark chocolate bar from chocolove chocolate bars (came with this poem!), the frey pear & caramel chocolate bar--but the one i've gone back to the most is flavored with a lil bit of chili. spicy.

2 - utz red hot flavored potato chips (#1) - when it comes to me & the red hot chips, it's pretty simple--i've consumed more of them than any other snack this year. i've endured the occasional weak-flavor bag, the morns when i regretted eating a whole bag the eve before, the days when i had bought out all the local stores & couldn't find a bag anywhere and the economic downturn & its resulting shrinking bag size & rising price. through it all, they've helped me rekindle my friendship with the hot & the spicy. thank you, utz.

1 - blue diamond wasabi & soy sauce almonds (NEW) - i never really gave almonds their due until a few years back when i was living in watertown with jeff & he always used to have almonds around, so i tried them out. turns out i like eating them, sometimes a can at a time & with this rough economic climate, who has money for sushi? not me, brother, so i make up for it with lots of wasabi & soy sauce almonds and an active imagination. how good are deez nutz? well, there's this one guy in my office. for some reason, if you have a snack at your desk, he is comfortable with just walking up & helping himself to some. i mean, in the grand scheme of things, who cares, right? share & share alike. one day, when i had an open can of these at my desk, he came back to my desk for the sixth time because he loved them so much that he had already finished the first five handful of deez nutz, i had to start caring. i know they're addictive. it's nothing personal. so yeah, they're that good.

my 10 fave drinks of 2008
10 - cream-o-land dairy 1% milk (#22) - this makes the list just to prove how hardcore i am. if you can find me another 2008 top ten list that includes milk on it, i'll shake your hand. virtually. via coffee & cereal, i drank a lot of milk this year. just last week, i heard an interesting segment on npr's fresh air with food historian anne mendelson about milk & it wasn't in reference to the gus van sant film, which i still need to see. to be honest, hearing some woman talk about milk & its flavor & creaminess & whatnot was actually a bit creepy.

9 - gatorade fruit punch thirst quencher (NEW) - earlier this december, on a day when i had endured hours of vomiting & laying in bed dying of sickness, i made it to the closest bodega & put my faith in a 20 oz bottle of fruit punch gatorade, counting on it to replenish my electrolytes & save the day. when i started drinking it, it tasted like some godly beverage & i could truly envision that weird-colored effect on your body that happens when you drink gatorade as depicted in their commercials. fifteen minutes later, i puked it up, but for the fourteen minutes leading up to that point, it was the best beverage i had ever drank.

8 - porkslap pale ale (#7) - it's official. good beers in a can are the greatest invention since good beers in a bottle. in 2008, i definitely drank more canned beers than i have in recent years & luckily, a smaller percentage of them were bud lights than in past years. the porkslap pale ale, with its ginger & chocolate hints, is my favorite of butternuts beer & ale's four types of canned beers, making it my fave canned beer of the year.

7 - blueberry cobbler flavor new england coffee (#24) - this coffee pretty much single-handedly changed my mind about flavored coffees. i mean, it's not like i've started downing cup after cup of hazelnuts & french vanillas & whatnot since my couple-week obsession with all things flavored blueberry but whereas in the past i'd be all "get your flavor coffee out of my face before its aroma forces me to barf in it," now i can appreciate some flavor coffees.

6 - garnacha de fuego 2007 (#30) - i feel like this year represented a turning point for me & wine, largely due to the neighborhood wine shop. full disclosure: until some time last year, 90% of the wine i drank was white wine & 90% of the time that white wine was a chardonnay. it was SO fruity of me. i drink more reds now. the garnacha, from spain, was the best wine i tried this year whose name i can remember...& its flavor...spicy.

5 - schweppes dry grape ginger ale (#20) - so yeah, when i'm feeling guilty about my excessive caffeine intake but not my soda intake, this is my go-to beverage. as a youngster, i used to love mixing cranberry juice with ginger ale. it took into sometime in my adulthood for schweppes to catch up productwise & invent a version that eliminated the need for some assembly by the customer, but i don't hold it against them. i just drink my grape soda & enjoy the time saved.

4 - 4c white iced tea antioxidant blueberry flavor (#33) - this year, the 4c white tea supplanted the regular ol' lemon flavor as my 4c iced tea flavor of choice. it has antioxidants & those are good for me. they are also good for you. i've shared some moments with the white tea over the last few years, brought a suspicious-looking ziploc bag of it to my office so i could enjoy a cold glass of white iced tea while i check on mariah's website, mixed it with chardonnay at a picnic with friends on governor's island a few summers back...good times like that. good, refreshing times.

3 - archer farms blood orange italian soda (#46) - this is the 3rd entry by a target brand on this year's list. i mean, i like target & all and it's really nice of them to have that $1 section of crap right when you come in the front door, but 90% of my love for target is based on their food selection. the blood orange soda is a great example of what makes their food selection so appealing. they take a product, make sure it has an ingredient that sounds slightly exotic, put it in nice packaging, give it a price point that's not too high & watch the profits roll in. sounds tasty to me.

2 - mountain dew (NEW) - i drink a disgusting amount of mountain dew. often it's the regular neon green flavor but occasionally it's the code red version, once in a while, it's a voltage flavor & never ever ever is it the diet kind, which my mom always has in the house, a beverage remnant of the time when my brother & his TOTALLY LAME diabetes lived there. there's just something about the skew fruitiness of the flavor & its associated chemicals that makes my taste buds smile. it's probably the taste of diabetes.

1 - dogfish head 90 minute i.p.a. (#36) - recently, i've become non-hinckley-like obsessed with delaware's dogfish brewing co. & have tried the raison d'etre, the midas touch and the 60, 90 & 120 minute i.p.a.s. i've made the 90 minute i.p.a. my beer of choice as of late. it used to be that i was skeptical of i.p.a.s as a result of drinking too many of that overrated harpoon i.p.a. in college & beyond. this dogfish i.p.a. changed that. if i have my way, i'll take a vacation to the brewery & restaurant this summer, where i anticipate trying everything on tap. everything. i said it before & i'll say it again...who's with me? yeah, 2009.

EOY. til next year, over & out.

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

it's official. these days, film degree be damned, i prefer tv to movies & here's why. tv gives the show's creator(s) greater freedom to meditate on an overarching storyline, stretch it out, pass it off to various directors, highlight different characters, kill people off, introduce new people, etc etc. with the exception of sequel films, which often suck, stories told by film are generally limited to a static 1.5-3 hours of story. that just doesn't do it for me these days.

i just finished watching the seventh & final season of the shield, which means i watched about 70 hours of storyline with that show alone. as david bianculli noted in fresh air's 12/24 segment on the top ten tv programs of the year, well-executed tv can be like a novel, with a starting point, an ending point & a journey in between. when he said this, it was in reference to the shield. screw the sopranos. the final episode of the shield might just be the greatest series finale ever made. it was directed by clark johnson, who also directed the pilot for the show & also directed the pilot & final episodes of the wire (in addition to playing gus haynes, the baltimore sun desk editor in the wire's final season). seriously, it's worth watching the series straight through just to get to that final episode of the shield. for me, it also helped that unlike with the sopranos, i had no prior knowledge of how the show ended, which allowed me to experience something with uninfluenced expectations, a rare opportunity.

in addition to the clark johnson example, with my growing love of tv, i've discovered that there's some serious tv incest going on. fx's new highest rated show, sons of anarchy, is created by kurt sutter, who wrote for the shield & also played armenian hitman margos dezerian in the 1st & 3rd seasons. he's married to ms peg bundy katey sagal, who plays one of the leads on sons of anarchy and also had an occasional role on the shield. sons also features a major creepyass storyline with jay karnes, who played dutch on the shield.

sons is impressive. i watched the first season while i was in new hampshire at the parents' house for the holidays. there are shakespearean undertones, religious undertones, reflections on aging & paths taken & not taken, copious amounts of punching and hot biker babes like the characters played by maggie siff (who you may also know from her hot work as rachel menken on mad men) & taryn manning (who you may know from her hot work as a prostitute). heck, i'll go as far as to say that katey sagal's hot & the main character, played by charlie hunnam, could definitely knock johnny depp from the title of "dude i'd most prefer to sleep with." turns out he was on the uk version of queer as folk. well there you go then.

i found myself about eight episodes into the season on wednesday night when i decided it was time for a snack run...

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

snack: t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips
drink: shock top belgian white

...but being that it was 9pm on christmas eve in new hampshire, the places open for snack purchasing were at a minimum. i hopped in the car with my teenage brother & we tried the shaws supermarket in windham (closed), the 24-hour wal-mart in salem (closed. wha! commerce closes?) & eventually settled for the hess gas station in salem. people always need gasoline & cute mini tankers round the holidays. here's what i could get my hands on:

for snacking, i picked up a bag of t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips. i've seen them before & always avoided them but had to go with them given the low uniqueness/appealing nature of the hess snack selection. i have no idea what gives t.g.i.fridays the right to qualify these snacks as quesadillaesque other than the shape & them calling them "quesadillas." basically, the "quesadillas" are puffy crackerlike things shaped like quesadilla wedges, with a bunch of powdered cheese on them. eh.

for drinking, i scoured the beer cooler for something unique or barring that, tasty. if i'd gone for a single beer i would have been drinking bud or some equivalent & i wasn't having that, so i had to decide on a six-pack. the one that looked most unique was the shock top belgian white, with its mohawk-wearing orange mascot on the label. i took a six-pack of it out of the cooler & started to examine it when a female employee of the gas station came out of the back room & as she walked by, said to me, "shocking, isn't it?" well played, gas station lady. well played. when i got the six-pack home & popped one open, i glanced at the label & discovered that shock top is a michelob beer, one of anheuser-busch's attempts to create microbrewlike beers with some semblance of flavor. eh. the sons of anarchy drink michelob round the club, so that makes me cool by default. sure they aren't drinking the belgian white, but i suppose it'll have to do.

by the time i left nh on saturday morning to head back to brooklyn, i had finished the first season of sons of anarchy & the quesadilla chips. one amazed me & made me wish i was in a motorcycle club, or at least living the free lifestyle & babes that come with it. one did not. the six-pack of shock top remained unfinished. for me, there's a limit to how many beers i feel comfortable drinking when home at the parents for a three-day holiday stretch, especially when it's basically just slightly better than michelob michelob. that limit? five.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.

i friggin' hate connecticut & it isn't just because of joe lieberman or their inability to keep the whalers. ever since i moved to nyc back in 01, connecticut has become the two-and-a-half hour nuisance in the middle of my four hour drive to boston. when i first moved here, i used to love driving through connecticut. i had to drive up to new england a lot for work, so i'd often grab a rental car & take an afternoon drive up the west side to the merritt parkway, gliding through its twists & green trees & under its uniquely designed bridges. in recent years, as i've become uber-acquainted with the cheapo nyc-boston chinatown buses, which travel up interstate 95 out of nyc, i've wasted countless hours sitting in traffic near bridgeport & new haven & hartford and i now curse the state. i'm sure the 6pm holiday traffic tomorrow to nh will be swell, especially since i've now acknowledged my curse in writing.

florida obviously sucks intensely. it makes connecticut look like disney world. i've made many many quick judgements about florida, most of them based on my eight months of residency & two weeks of "vacation" there. i went through two hurricanes. some dude driving a van that transports disabled people around was waiting in front of my girlfriend at the time & i, as we sat in her car at a red light leaving the borders parking lot. when it turned green, the dude accidentally put the van into reverse, stepped on the gas & drove right up onto the hood of our car...& then tried to flee. this woman in our apartment complex had a daughter in high school who had no homework because there weren't enough text books. the sushi place in the shopping plaza next to our apartment complex made me sick. there's also the 2000 election, the two florida marlins world series wins, jeb bush, awful tans, sprawling development, disney world, oppressive anti-gay movements, the miami p.d., trafficking trafficking trafficking, more hurricanes, etc.

you know what place is even worse than florida though? zimbabwe. growing up, when i heard the word "zimbabwe," i envisioned it as one of the cool places in africa. in later times, i'd often choose the zulus (impi power!) when i played civilization. i thought of it as some place i'd want to check out some day & at one point, it was that place. people considered it to be one of the jewels in the african crown. then president robert mugabe came along & in 1999, 19 years into his rule, he introduced his whole land reform program & agriculture & tourism went down the pooper & the country has just spiraled downhill since then as he's violently held on to power. technically, they now have a 10 quintillion dollar bill in circulation. back in august, a loaf of bread went for 1.3 trillion dollars. inflation is at 230 million percent...& mugabe just won't quit. he's probably waiting for them to come out with a googol dollar bill before he decides to hang it up.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.
snack: frey pear & caramel chocolate bar
drink: rype orange tingled wheat beer

this frey pear & caramel chocolate bar is really tasty, with lil crunchy bits & pear flavors & whatnot. they don't have this particular flavor listed on their website, but there are a boatload of tasty sounding flavors (they claim to have 350 choices!)...tiramisu! hot chili pepper! cinnamon & blood orange! wha wha! oh. apparently they're only available at target...how exclusive.

anyway, if there's one thing that the swiss should be known for, it's chocolate. oh and their cheese & their babes & their army & their army knives and backpacks, which they don't even use because they're all peaceful & neutral & whatnot. two of their cities, zurich & geneva, are considered some of the best places to live in the world. they have all that stuff down pat. get this though...most of the people don't even speak english. and instead of baseball, they have hornussen, a cross between baseball & golf. seriously, i watched a few of the videos. i can't even begin to tell you what's going on or if it might be fun. the name means "hornet" though. never was a big fan of things that can sting me, especially when they don't make me honey.

in the "washing it down" department, i'm having me a rype orange tingled wheat beer. it has a sharp & clean, modest looking label, but the beer's pretty bland, clean & boring. the moniker-advertised "orange tingle" doesn't even tingle. it turns out that the beer's made by four+ brewing company, out of salt lake city. this could explain its blandness. it has 4.0% alcohol by volume, which by utah law, is the highest amount of alcohol any beer can have if it wants to be served within the beehive state. mormons hate alcohol almost as much as they hate fun. take mitt romney. it's a good thing mccain didn't pick him as his veep. sure, he's from massachusetts, one of the best places on earth, but that dude's a mormon & he hates fun. nothing like his actual pick, that non-mormon sarah palin, who clearly loves fun. hockey moms! lipstick on a pig! nothing but priceless yuk-it-up gems out of that sarah. but seriously, i hear that utah should never be visited ever, unless you have a really good reason. "i was on my way to vegas" is an acceptable reason.

UPDATE: turns out that utah is the fastest-growing state in the country. god knows why...or maybe joseph smith does.

#47 - the olden days.

i was doing some research & have discovered that you used to be able to do everything back in the day! nowadays, in the 08, they don't let you do anything, let you have any fun. it's soooo lame.

for starters, you can't even drink after the 7th inning any more. back in the day, you could drink til the end of the game. back then, people actually liked it when baseball games went into extra innings. this one pawtucket red sox game went 32 innings & they eventually had to finish it the next day. nowadays, if the game hits extra innings, that's just time for your buzz to wear off & make you care that your seven-year-old has school in the morning.

back in the day, in this country, it used to be that if you owned a business & your employees tried to bring fair labor to your workplace, you could whack the snot out of them pinkerton style. pfft. if you want to do that nowadays, you have to open up a plant all the way down in south america. i can't say that there aren't any upsides to the current situation though. after all, if you move operations to south america, you get to hire paramilitaries instead of pinkertons & disappear people, which is SO rambo compared to the twirly moustaches & derbies of the pinkertons.

once upon a time, you could walk up to the side of the road with a bindle & a dream & a lucky thumb and hitchhike across this great nation, doing odd jobs, sleeping with random women & philosophizing with random hobos, just like in on the road. you try to pull that crap in the 21st century & you're nuts. i can say from my own experience that i've never been tempted to pick up a drifter & if i was the kind of person who was crazy enough to actually pick up a drifter, i'd likely also be the kind of person who was crazy enough to murder them & store them in my freezer. luckily i can't afford to own a car. it just doesn't seem safe to hitchhike any more is what i'm saying...definitely frowned upon.

i mean, it used to be that you could smoke cigarettes anywhere & drive snowmobiles on whatever land you wanted to under the influence of whatever you wanted to & shoot as many buffalo as your uzi could handle. then you could bring it home & feed your family for months. that's gone now. your son is vegan & the buffalo are protected & if you have weekend plans to grab your favorite automatic weapon, down a sixer of bud on the drive to yellowstone & hang out in the old faithful inn sucking down winstons & whiskeys before hopping on the ol' arctic cat for a couple of hours of bunny hunting, you can forget it. that ship has sailed. this is 2008. POST-9/11.

#47 - the olden days.
snack: archer farms spinach & artichoke tortilla chips
drink: peak organic pale ale

the snacks have gotten better though. when i was growing up, there was no way on god's green earth that you could get your hands on a spinach & artichoke tortilla chip. if you lived outside of cali & did get your hands on a tortilla chip it'd be flavored with salt and/or cheese and you'd like it. in the nowadays, i can get all sorts of flavors in a tortilla chip, like the target brand archer farms spinach & artichoke tortilla chips. i was originally going to grab some sort of dip to go with these chips, but they've got the flavor to satisfy my aching heart. dip would have been overkill...but if you hate flavor chips, i can't help you son.

& i'm washing down these tortilla chips (FROM THE FUTURE!) with a bottle of peak organic pale ale, brewed out of portland, me. the bottle has a picture of an outdoor gathering with the quote "friends gathering on a fine evening" at the top. looks like a bunch of dudes on one side & a bunch of ladies on the other side. i bet you nobody got laid at that party. although...it's a pretty tasty pale ale and goes down easy. maybe this photo was taken early on in the night, before they had drank LIKE FIFTY peak organics. it's ten times better than bud.

nowadays, beer is definitely better. fo sho. there are organic beers & beers from around the country & around the world & brands with more than one type of beer other than "regular" and "light"...but we do miss out on those sweet beer cans with the pull top. those things rule. in conclusion, we couldn't have expanded our beer quality & taste without the help of our global economy. let's have a round of applause for our global economy. hip hip.

#46 - fin.

this tuesday night, as the first snow of the season fell outside my apartment, i sat warm watching the third season finales of two of my favorite picture stories--heroes and dexter. there's that good old saying, "third time's a charm," that is actually not really all that good, and relative to history, not really all that old of a saying...but it is a lot less gay sounding than the british version--"third time lucky."

"third time lucky, smithers?"
"indeed. three card monte."
"splendid."
"third time lucky, indeed. tally ho."

in this case, for these two shawn parow-endorsed picture stories, the third seasons have been slightly flawed at times, subject to doubt, imperfect chapters in the shows' histories. both are already scheduled to return in 2009 for a fourth chapter, with heroes coming back in february with a new chapter,"fugitives," that is technically the second half of the third season for those of you who still care. dexter is already scheduled for at least two more seasons. showtime knows better than to let go of michael c hall...spoilers until the snack break...

heroes season finale
there have been numerous occasions during this 3rd season of heroes where i've wanted to fill my ear canals with fire & splash piranhas toward my eye sockets to avoid the horrendous dialogue & painful exposition that has filled this season. as a complete season, it works fine. i was most pleased by the appearances by actors who used to be on other shows i like, actors like bubbles & marlo stanfield from the wire. both survived the streets of baltimore, but not the third season of heroes...nor did chad faust's character, a marine who, in the second-to-last episode of the third season, becomes the first person injected with the formula for abilities & then is quickly killed in the next & final episode. chad faust was also in the 4400, where he plays a person who injects himself with promicin, the thing on that show that gives people abilities. talk about being typecast.

the third season had its flaws. one of the first things i learned in my intro to screenwriting class was "show, don't tell" and the 3rd season of heroes has so many thousands of storylines going on that there are an abundance of occasions where characters blatantly tell & are all like "gee that must feel really bad to see that happen to your father" so that an ADHD-inflicted fourth grader can follow along with the story...& stupid plot points. elle, the character with the power of electricity is having trouble controlling her power, so what does she do? she gets on a plane. obviously. because there is no chance that that could go wrong...& then there are the abundant lame love stories. overall though, i'm still looking forward to the fourth chapter. i mean, not every pearl jam album is ten. sometimes it's a no code, but you deal with it & pick out the good parts & hope the next one's better.

dexter season finale
early on during the 3rd season of dexter, before things turned around, i was all "you need to start killing bad guys ASAP dexter." things were slow. he was totally not killing any killers. at times i'd secretly hope that rita would turn out to be a child pornographer or have fed elderly folks fatal dosages of meds or something so dexter would have to kill her blatantly one-dimensionally exposition-laden character off, but no such luck. luckily, by the season finale, the killing picked up enough to satisfy me.

& by the season finale, dexter marries rita...& finds out that she is lying to him. she has been married three times, but only says she's been married twice. doesn't talk about the first one, when she was 16. mildly mysterious. he doesn't seem to care though, since he has a secret too, what with the whole being a serial killer thing & she doesn't even know that he used to be gay & work in a funeral home. it's totally like that madonna song. mmm mmm. something's coming over. mmm mmm...so next season, rita will give birth to their kid & there'll likely be whole mess of "new life. taking life." subway ads plugging season 4 of dexter come late summer.

#46 - fin.

snack: pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps
drink: archer farms blood orange italian soda

with my finales, i'm enjoying a bag of pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps. they don't come in a cardboard cylinder like your everyday peasant pringles. these pringles are S-E-L-E-C-T. i really like them. the texture's crunchier than your average pringle, closer to a tato skin-like texture. the flavor's also stronger than what you get from an average pringle. i found myself licking the flavor powder off, just like i used to do when regular pringles used to have a ton more flavor. in my day! turns out that, according to the back of the bag, these jalapeno ranch potato crisps are designed to "kick my taste buds up a notch." i'm not sure how much more they can be kicked up at this point, if you know what i mean, but i ain't letting that stop me.

to wash down these extraordinary chips, i'm going with a cool glass of archer farms blood orange italian soda. i know what you're thinking, but stop right there. i'm no sicko. it doesn't actually have blood in it, just blood oranges & those are completely legal, at least in italy, which is where this particular soda comes from. italian soda. product of italy. it comes in a bottle that just makes me want to open the window wide & store it in a basket on the sill with a pellegrino & a couple tomatoes. it tastes like if fresca was a little more appealing & also didn't have that disgusting aspartame flavor. this blood orange italian soda has black carrot juice in it. wha? i had no idea such a thing existed, but it does. amazing. black carrots...now that's change you can believe in.