pumpktoberfest #17 - oh hell no!

film: drag me to hell
beer: weyerbacher imperial pumpkin ale

happy friday! happy october! HAPPY PUMPKTOBERFEST EVERYONE! after the overwhelming success of last year's pumpktoberfest revelry, where we showcased my top fifteen horror films alongside fifteen pumpkin beers, this year we're back with a whole new round of horror films, none of which i've seen before & a (mostly) brand new round of pumpkin beers! can you feel the PUMPKTOBERFEST EXCITEMENT? i sure as hell can. without further ado, let's get to it!

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#170 - salsa slammed.

in case i haven't made it apparent, i'm cool with the folks over at nachosny. they wrote a guest post for me last summer & i cooked "questionable" nachos in their honor last september. this year, after attending may's guactacular, i started writing a nacho snack guest column entitled "a queso the munchies" for them. back in july, i ate guacamole & listened to indie rock with 200 other people on a boat on the hudson as part of their "guac rock" event. when lee (the mastermind behind nachosny) tipped me off to their next event, a salsa battle dubbed the "salsa slam," it's safe to say that i was pretty friggin excited. then he asked me if i'd like to be one of the event's esteemed judges. i was all "hellz yeah. i love judging both salsa AND people!" the best part? explaining to people that i was going to be judging a food competition, NOT a dance competition.

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only in ny #4: smoke joint.

snack: black angus dog / spicy french fries
drink: abita jockamo i.p.a.

even though i've lived in brooklyn for almost a decade now, my knowledge of the fort greene, brooklyn food & drink scene is relatively lame. i haven't really had all that much reason to hang out there until this summer, when i've found myself at the brooklyn flea on most weekends. as a result, i've been spending much more time in the neighborhood lately. a couple fridays ago, on my quest to find "a place to drink that has food," my brooklyn flea partner-in-crime jessica suggested the smoke joint, a bbq restaurant right off of fulton st. i'm not exactly a huge meat eater, but i do go for quality meats every once in a while, so the promise of bbq sounded good to me.

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#169 - b.a.n.a.n.a.s.

remember that sweet ass tv show the banana splits? some of you may know the awesomeness i speak of, but for most of you eat!drink!snack! readers, who i assume skew heavily tween, you have absolutely no idea what i'm talking about. let me lay it out for you. there was this hanna-barbera variety show back in '68 & '69 called the banana splits that featured four animal characters (people dressed in sid & marty kroft-designed costumes) who were in a band called the banana splits. the show was part live action, part cartoons & part segments where the banana splits got into wacky situations & occasionally rocked out. when i was a kid, it was on in reruns & i ate that shizz up.

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#166 - back in black.

for most of my life, i've never been a huge fan of ac/dc. in my elementary school days, while i listened to a bunch of rock, it was mostly of the big hair variety. during my high school years, i got caught up in rap & by the time college rolled around, ac/dc was being kinda meh, putting out songs like "big gun" & working with uber-producer rick rubin & on 1995's lackluster ballbreaker. since then, they've only put out two albums, but i've been stuck in an indie rock mindset for a while now, meaning i was too cool for them. initially, not even landing a job at a company where they're one of the bands i work with was enough to make me like them. it took meeting the band & then seeing them live from the 4th row to really get what they're all about. they're just five dudes from australia who who play straightforward, eardrum-busting rock & choose a working-man's attitude toward their music over a rock star attitude.

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