#10 - a delayed fortune.

on tuesday at work, someone put out the office-wide call for the lunch special at sea asian...not to be confused with sea, the uber-hip uber-loud locale in williamsburg that features a friggin dj (do people actually enjoy bass-pumping beats with their pik pow squid?) normally, i'm a bring-my-own-lunch kind of guy, but i was feeling a bit saucy that day, so i threw caution to the wind & heeded the call with an order for chicken pad see ew. i'm just that crazy.

as expected, the order came with fortune cookies for all, so when i was done with my pad see ew, i grabbed one & made my way back to my desk. in the usual spirit of my job & my temperament, i got distracted & forgot about my cookie & fortune for the rest of the day. when i was leaving for home, i looked down at the lonely cookie sitting on my desk & tossed it in the side pocket of my backpack. i couldn't leave the lil guy by himself in the office all night & i figured i'd make him into a snack later that night & possibly end up with a blog-worthy fortune.

it is now saturday & through what i can only assume is the result of some sort of cookie mind trick, the cookie still remains.

#10 - a delayed fortune.

snack: four-day old fortune cookie
drink: fort collins brewery the kidd lager

it is mid-afternoon, 95 degrees outside & today's the day of the siren festival down in coney island. although i didn't attend in 2001 (the first year of the festival & the year i moved to the city), i'm a sucker for the indie bands, so i went every year from 2002-2006. the yearly rundown of my experience with the siren festival:

2001 - didn't attend. two months later, the pre-9/11 generation came to an end & we will never forget & whatnot.
2002 - my first festival, with the shins, liars, yeah yeah yeahs & sleater-kinney and sound quality rivaling thomas edison's first phone call.
2003 - the crowd was so friggin huge that i watched modest mouse from outside of the concert area, at an angle off to the side of the stage behind some carnival ride.
2004 - there were a full schedule of bands, including the thermals, tv on the radio, mission of burma & ...trail of the dead. as usual, the crowd continued to grow & the situation was particularly hot & sweaty.
2005 - spoon & mates of state headlined. particularly hot & sweaty again.
2006 - i went down early to see man man & then, afraid of the heat, took the train back home & chilled indoors for a while before hopping back on the train & going back down to catch art brut...once again, a record setting crowd.
2007 - it was too hot, or at least not cool enough where i would go down there to see cursive, who i had already seen a bunch of times during my omaha-loving phase. 100,000 people. record crowds.

now, it is 2008 & it is the hottest day of the year thus far. this year's lineup has a number of standouts--parts & labor, annuals, ra ra riot, islands. of the headliners--stephen malkmus & broken social scene--i am so bored with everything stephen malkmus does, but broken social scene are one of my faves these days.

still, it is now two hours before broken social scene goes on & it is so hot outside that i haven't yet been able to convince myself that traveling to coney island is a better option than sitting in my relatively cool apartment watching the red sox game and drinking the leftover beers from the tasty fort collins brewery 12-pack we got last night before the deerhoof show. this one i'm drinking right now--the kidd lager--is tastetastic & according to the label, "looks dark, drinks blonde."...just how i like my women.

will i leave the comfort of my apartment? based on my fortune cookie, i guess i'll figure it all out sooner or later:

your ingenuity and imagination will get results.

i waited four days for that & to top it off, the fortune cookie mirrored the fortune...stale.

#9 - jamaica mon!

sorry to leave all y'all regular shawn blog reader folks in the lurch like that with no update for the last 8 days. i know you've probably been worried sick. the shawn, for reasons we will not go into in this blog, just hasn't been snackin' that much recently.

today is a different story. i hadn't seen the inside of a non-ghetto grocery store in nigh a fortnight, so i headed down to the local pathmark to regrocerize myself & pick up an evening snack to consume whilst watching the first episode of generation kill. to clarify, by non-ghetto grocery store, i mean one that has at least two non-scary types of fruits/vegetables & one where the teenage cashiers don't get smacked on the ass by the dirty old man who oversees the place. i only say so because there are approximately 63 of that variety of grocery store in my neighborhood.

although i had yet to see a minute of generation kill, i had an inkling that it probably has a distinctly international flair, what with the americans visiting the middle east storyline & all, so when i was at pathmark selecting a fitting snack-drink combo, i went straight to the aisles with the funny foreign foods. at first, i was going to go strictly goya, but to be honest, i'm a bit afraid of the malta goya beverage & the tamarind flavored soda sounded a bit sour to me.

luckily, across the aisle was the jamaican section. the first beverage i set eyes on was a bottle of dg genuine jamaican kola champagne.

i mean, look at the cat on that bottle. he makes that newbury comics dude look like a schmo. he's all "ok, mon. you have your wicked good time, poindextah. i'll just be over here in the shade of this tree with a fat one & me three lady friends sipping on kola champagne."

to pair with it, after much searching, the perfect snack leapt out at me from the freezer section...

#9 - jamaica mon!
snack: golden krust jamaican style spicy beef patties
drink: dg genuine jamaican kola champagne

...from behind the freezer doors, the box of golden krust jamaican style spicy beef patties called my name. by examining the box, i confirmed that while these patties are good for lunch or after school, they are also acceptable as an evening snack. says so right on the front. perfect...just what i need...oh & it also says that each patty contains 490 calories of spicy beef goodness, with a lot of that providing essential sodiums & fats...perfect...just what i need. as a rule, i probably eat beef once or twice a month anyhow, so i might as well go big when i do, right?

let me tell you--spicy beef patties are delicious. heart-cloggingly delicious. the jury is still out on the kola champagne soda. i found it to be akin to a cream soda, but without as much yummy cream aftertaste. i guess when you're as high as that jamaican mascot cat probably is, you can find satisfying flavor in anything...even when it bears a striking resemblance to urine.

#8 - got crabs?

for the holiday weekend, high school pals chris leduc (boston) & todd martin (virginia/d.c.) decided to meet in the middle at my apartment & catch the july 4th yankees-sox game at yankee stadium.

their travels were a vicious display of contrasts. chris took the day off, sailed down relatively traffic-free from boston around noon & got here around 5pm. todd got on a bus at around 2pm and arrived in nyc after a seven-hour ride in a non-air-conditioned environment that featured an incident where a trail of urine freed itself from the bathroom & rolled its way across the floor all the way to the front of the bus.

in a gesture of friendship/blog prodding, todd brought some snack gifts up with him. the first snack was a moon pie. unfortunately, the moon pie did not hold up through the seven-hour bus ride & now sits in my fridge next to the melted & rehardened snickers charged bar i bought a few weekends ago at a trip to the beach...a chocolate graveyard of sorts. the second snack was a bag of sour gummi bears. the third snack was a bag of utz crab chips.

#8 - got crabs?
snack: utz crab chips
drink: coca-cola classic

saturday night, after two days of nh-style debauchery that included shared glasses of non-wormwood absinthe at the library, there was no way i was doing anything other than sitting at home on my duff...me & my bag of crab chips and a full schedule of the last few days' npr shows.

i tried to come up with a maryland-themed beverage to pair with my bag of crab chips ("potato chips with chesapeake bay crab seasoning"). todd & chris suggested natty boh, a beer that was originally from baltimore & even became the official beer of the city in the 60s before being sold to strohs & then eventually, pabst. it runs in the same crowd as natty light or genese ice. ick. i considered creating a the wire-themed angle, since there are a couple instances in the show when characters are eating crab chips, but the first & only drink that came to mind when i thought of the wire was whiskey. both involved alcohol, which i wanted no part of & the first likely involved leaving the state.

instead, i decided that to commemorate the july 4th weekend, i should just have a cool glass of america's favorite beverage...the beverage produced by a company who shares a rich history with our great nation...coca-cola...of course, by "rich history" i am referring to the rich history of third-party violence in latin america shared by this great nation & coca-cola. land of the free...home of the brave.

#7 - having it my way.

holy storms, batman! this weekend, there were a series of storms here in the city that brought me back to the summer storms of fort lauderdale, where one second it'd be all sunny & happy & a'birds tweetin' and the next, the sky would turn black & sheets of rain would come crashing down on your face.

as an example, on saturday, i left my house & jumped on the subway up to union square. when i left my apartment, the skies were grey, but there was complete skyness dryness in action when i descended into the subway station to catch the train. when i came out of the union square station 45 minutes later, the GAME HAD TOTALLY FLIPPED & there were masses of tourists & nyu students & citizens & trader joes/whole foods bags & baby strollers & a viola taking cover at the top of the stairs exiting the subway...taking cover from the torrential downpour that could have had irreversible effects on us all...if we were mogwai...which i'm pretty sure we aren't. five minutes later, the rain had stopped & the evil scientist with a weather machine hidden deep in the bowels of columbia's pupin hall cackled with glee.

i didn't want to take the chance that i might be even part mogwai, so with the sporadic violent half-hour storms this weekend, i stayed indoors a bunch overall, assembling quite a lazy dog-dangling agenda.

on saturday night in particular, i decided to have some indoor netflix time with two films...3:10 to yuma & the bridge...a western & a documentary about suicide at the golden gate bridge. to prep for a four hour plus span of couch-sitting, i stopped by the rite aid & picked up the awesomest bag of snack i could find & went down to bierkraft to get a few beers that made me feel snooty...

#7 - having it my way.
snack: burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks
drinks: abita purple haze, victory hop wallop, porkslap pale ale

at around 10:10, i started off with 3:10 to yuma, probably the first western i have watched since i watched dead man for the 7,000th time earlier in the year. anyhow...very entertaining film. i didn't want to kill russell crowe half as much as i expected that i'd want to.

a little bit into the film, i broke open the bag of bk potato snacks. the verdict: they don't really have the bk french fry taste to them, but they definitely taste like ketchup. basically, if you've ever paired a can of potato sticks with a bottle of heinz, you're feeling bk with these snacks. by this time, i had finished the abita purple haze & with the fruity beer out of the way, i moved on to the victory hop wallop. it was hoppy.

just after midnight, i started watching the bridge & cracked open the porkslap pale ale (click on the barn doors if you visit the site!). the porkslap comes from butternuts beer, a brewery located in a town midway between syracuse & albany, both places that are cold in different senses of the word. i'm a sucker for beers like theirs--the kind that come in cans but don't taste like piss. under fear of ketchup overdose, i could not eat another bk potato snack at this point & hid the bag safely in the kitchen cupboard.

the bridge...in 2004, filmmaker eric steel, inspired by a new yorker article about suicides on the golden gate bridge, moved to san francisco & got permits to film the bridge. in that year, a pretty typical one, 24 people died by jumping off the bridge, again making it the top location in the world for suicides. he captured 23 of them amongst his footage & then combined this with interviews with friends & family of ome of the victims.

jumping off the bridge is pretty easy to do, in fact. there's no fence stopping you from doing it. the golden gate bridge district has made sure of that by taking forever to put up some sort of barrier. sure, if there were a barrier up, people would probably just rule that method out & find another (one person in the film likens choosing the method of suicide to picking out a college), but a deterrent is a deterrent in my book.

anyhow, if you are ok with watching a movie about suicide & how people get to that point & what effect it has on friends & family, check this movie out. burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks are optional.

#6 - university salute.

i was raised roman catholic, meaning that i am totally down with the guilt & the shame. as a result, for about a week now, i've found myself reflecting upon the early bloggy days of eat! drink! snack! & feeling that the chosen snacks & drinks for my first few entries may not have been of the healthiest variety possible. also, the "snacks ain't healthy enough" issue may have had a tiny bit of something to do with my trip to the beach last weekend.

to combat this wickedness, i decided yesterday that when i was at home tonight, i was going to have some sort of snack that embraced health & more specifically, some type of fruit.

today was when i decided that regardless of whatever fruit i chose, i was going to take that fruit & dip it in nutella...& have it with a tasty beer.

#6 - university salute.
snack: strawberries & nutella
drink: wolavers' organic oatmeal stout

my senior year of college was the first year that i lived off campus, in a just-remodeled apartment in the allston area of boston, where i lived with three sophomore roommates i had met the year before. we had a porch off the kitchen, which gets me on a side track. i've yet to have a porch in new york...just rooftops. new york prefers rooftops to porches for some reason...maybe because porches are best for sitting & we can't sit still for a spell in this city to save our lives.

two of the roommates were a couple. the guy was a younger fraternity brother of mine from romania via lower jersey & the girl was in the same program as he & the daughter of a diplomat. she loved carnivale. they spent a high percentage of their waking moments together, many of them at the apartment. i don't think either of them had to do much cooking until they came to college, so when they ate, they fell back on a lot of the same foods & dishes. one such item consumed in mass quantities was nutella, or as i like to call it...chocolate of the gods. they ate it by the spoonful, dipped breads & fruits & meats & whatnot in it and for all i know, probably poured it all over each other. it is a wonder that they didn't both gain immense amounts of weight or develop a candy shell.

the other roommate was a girl who i also met the year before, a time when i was dating her roommate & she was dating mine. this roommate of mine she was dating was a good fellow, another of my fraternity brothers. he was totally from vermont, dude...the sort of guy who got kicked out of a yanni concert for brawling with a canuck.

in remembrance of this era of my life, tonight's snack pairs the healthiness of hazelnuts & chocolate with strawberries, who won out over the mango when i didn't feel comfortable with my ability to judge the ripeness of a mango on the fly. sure, i could have used it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, since i hear it is a great way to meet babes in a grocery store. does this mango feel ripe to you...babe?

that's not really my style though.

the wolavers beer, brewed by otter creek brewing company in middlebury, vermont, contains the healthiness & starting-your-day-right goodness of oatmeal with the certified goodness of organic beer. mmm.

vermontwise, middlebury is about an hour south of winooski (the town outside burlington where my former roommate grew up). to compare, winooski has its down-the-street proximity to higher ground & phish (who rumor has it may be reuniting!), but middlebury totally has a college that's a member of the little ivy league. they're so tiny those lil ivy leaguers! i'd pinch their lil middlebury panther cheeks if the panther wasn't such a ferocious jungle cat!

good pairing. definitely healthy.