#16 - billions served.

here's what i love about the olympics...& by saying "love" & "olympics" in the same sentence, i am not implying that i love the olympics. i hardly ever watch them really. actually, now that i think it through, i'm using "love" in a sarcastic manner. like, "wow, i love your haircut a wicked lot. seriously."

so what i love about the olympics is the over-the-top melodrama & the stories that the announcers use to enhance it. friday night's opening ceremonies were cool visually & all but incomplete without the announcers' calm description of tai chi (not an olympic sport, btw) or quick mention during the parade of nations of the recent assassination attempt on the president of maldives, which was thwarted by a boy scout...son probably got a mess o' badges for that. on an announcer-related note, can we please force tim mccarver to retire? in conclusion, without the announcers' brilliant words, the games would be incomplete. once again...sarcastic.

i suppose i could have shut off my tv & not watched the olympics at all but the important fact here is i that didn't. china & its billion citizens were trying REALLY HARD to impress me & make me forget about all the bad things the chinese government has done in the past, so i stuck around. i mean, you wouldn't walk out on your brat niece's big flute recital no matter how many times she's peed on your carpet & no matter how much the rug ties the room together, would you?...so while i watched "china through the ages" & the announcement of for the most part, every country in the world, i passed the time with a "tasty" snack & drink pairing...

#16 - billions served.

snack: pringles extreme screamin' dill pickle
drink: samuel smith organic cider

when i was purchasing the evening's snack & drink pairing, i grabbed the items at different stores & it's safe to say that i was so drawn to their individual characteristics that i gave no thought to their to their combined tastes. zero.

dill pickle & apple.

on an individual level, the dill pickle pringle concept is quite comical. they've made them a part of their "extreme" series, which also includes kickin' cheddar & blazin' buffalo wing. from these flavor names, i instantly deduced that in order to be extreme, you must drop your g's. beyond that, i'm confused as to how the dill pickle became an extreme item & for that matter, why the particular dill pickles used in the making of these chips are screamin'. am i to believe that the dill pickles used in the making of these chips are akin to barreling down the face of a mountain bellowing into the wind with excitement? even though these chips are tasty & at times overpowering, i'm skeptical that there is or ever will be anything extreme about a pickle. prove me wrong, vlasic. prove me wrong.

as for the samuel smith organic cider, i love everything i've ever tried by good ol' sammy & his sons. i love the oatmeal stout, the nut brown lager, the taddy porter...all of them. i would even love their organic cherry fruit beer if they let me...& told me where i could locate said beer. if wikipedia can be believed (& we all know it can), in addition to being the oldest brewery in yorkshire, in the past, samuel smith brewery has removed its logo from pubs & in pubs that it owns, no "large-corporation spirits" are served. those crazy crazy u.k. people with their nutty socialist economic beliefs. it's definitely no capitalism, i tell ya! luckily for us, it's no communism either.

#15 - i've been a bad, bad man.

last night, i was walking back home from picking up a fast food dinner & needed to make a stop & pick up a pint of newcastle for my roommate & to my surprise, after stopping in no less than six bodegas, i still hadn't procured the pint. the six bodegas didn't even have a six-pack of newcastle. if only my roommate liked smirnoff ice, everything would have been fine. judging by the coolers at aforementioned bodegas, people love that smirnoff swill. sure, the roommate had mentioned that i could go with bud as a backup, but based on the love that newcastle & i have for each other, i assumed that at least one bodega would come through & help us all avoid the bud.

nobody came through for me...not even stop #7, the midway between a bodega & a supermarket locale with the somewhat-diverse beer selection...my last option...so i formulated a quicklike alternative...

#15 - i've been a bad, bad man.

snack: kettle brand island jerk krinkle cut chips
drink: guinness draught in a bottle

seconds earlier, i had been scoping the chip area for snack yumminess on my way past to the beer coolers & the words "island jerk" had popped out at me. when i arrived at the beer coolers & realized that there was no newcastle to be found on that stretch of 4th avenue leading to my apartment, i called the roommate, requested that he split a six-pack of guinness with me & developed this concept for a blog entry...follow my convolution...

island jerk...brooklyn is the west coast of an island...i live in brooklyn...i like guinness...guinness is an irish beer...i'm a good % irish...when irish people find themselves in a stereotypical situation with too much guinness, they can be jerks...me...island jerk.

concept: a blog spawned by the duo of kettle brand island jerk krinkle cut chips & guinness draught in a bottle, detailing three of my jerkier yet still blog-safe moments...friggin' brilliant, right?

#1: the fights of pre-high school - growing up, in terms of popularity pecking order, i was in some sort of in-between world, where i wasn't a cool kid but i wasn't a nerdoid. as a result of this ambiguous social status, i took it upon myself thrice during the 1st-8th grade period to start fights with the kids who a few of us thought were the least cool kids in our group of friends that week. this was some sort of attempt to oust the least cool person from our group, thereby upping the overall group coolness. the stupidity of my thinking is obvious now & anyhow, it never worked & i got body slammed once. sorry eric bonde, rich rittenhouse & bill gadoury.

#2: remember when there was no interweb? - near the end of my sophomore year at b.u., when i was pledging chi phi, i met a girl who was pledging a fellow sorority. we hung out a bunch for the last few months of that school year & i thought she was a cool girl & when the summer came, i went back to nh & she headed down to alabama. before leaving, she wrote her phone number on a piece of paper for me & we said goodbye for the summer. a few days later, i was back home & looking to call her & could not find the piece of paper anywhere, a fatal flaw, as i didn't exactly do the email yet (yeah, 1995) & found myself with no way to get in touch with her, effectively killing what relationship we had. thanks a lot, non-prevalent interweb. sorry ada.

#3: mind your own damn business - after college, when i had returned to boston after a brief ft lauderdale stint, i was dating ms mj & we were with melissa shaw & an unknown third person. i've always looked quite young & as a group, i suppose we looked quite young. we were standing in coolidge corner waiting for the c line to take us back to my brighton apartment & i was smoking a cigarette. a woman of about 60 walked near us, looked at me & said "put that cigarette out." i looked at her & said "excuse me?" she came back with "you're too young to be smoking, put out that cigarette." i was 24 years old & told her so. her response..."you are not. you're sweet sixteen never been kissed." i've always been a bit insecure about being called a liar & about being talked down to because of my apparent youth...so i told her straight up to mind her own damn business. sorry nosy old lady...sorry that you were such a nosy old lady. i may have been a jerk, but you were probably miserable.

in conclusion, try the island jerk chips...even if you live on a peninsula.

#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.

#1 - icy hot.

for some time now, i've had this desire nagging at me to start up another blog, this time devoted to the incessant snacking that is my daily routine & after months & months, i guess i've finally succumb to the nagging.

when i say "desire," i mean that in the dysfunctional family that is my brain, there are two children--"desire" & "laziness." every night, when i get home, desire comes up to me all bright-eyed, tapping me on the right leg to get my attention & share with me the amazing songs she's heard that day, all the films she's seen, tales & experiences from her day--pretty inspiring stuff, actually. at the same time, on the left side of me, there's laziness, laid out on the floor watching another episode of two and a half men, asking me if i'm up for 10-15 games of scrabulous tonight.

...so i guess that recently & up until now, i've been watching a lot of two and a half men, so to speak. that jake is quite the scamp...& don't even get me started on uncle charlie!

here's the high-concept blog concept...stick with me:
each blog post will be devoted to one snack food item i consume that day & an accompanying drink item. the end.

#1 - icy hot.
snack: utz red hot flavored potato chips
drink: 4c lemon iced tea

these days, there's utz red hot powder flowing through my blood. for 99 cents i get a 4.25 oz bag of red hot goodness. on a number of occasions, i've eaten an entire bag in one evening, a consumption that nets me 600 calories & 72% of my rda of vitamin e. what do they taste like? they taste like red hot, that's what...except for when you get a crappy bag that doesn't have enough red hot flavor. those bags stink.

for me, 1st-4th grade was spent at golden brook elementary in windham, nh. the school was comprised of one long building, with each grade separated off into a "pod." each pod was comprised of that grades' classrooms laid out in a circular fashion, built with their front doors facing a central area. it was in this central area that they sold little bags of bachman potato chips to we hungry school children. it was in this central area that i experienced a series of snacking ups & downs, all centered around the ability to procure bachman red hot potato chips. this was always a daunting task because while there were plentiful bags of bbq or the barf-worthy plain "flavor," there was a limited supply of the red hot. on the days when i was lucky enough to get my hands on a bag, i was lucky enough to bask in the wonder that was firey mouth intensity.

years later, in college, i drank big plastic cups of 4c iced tea like they were water...went through jugs of that powdered stuff like a colombian drug lord. in fact, it became so integral to my existence, that...let's just say...i'm pretty sure it saved my life one day. well, that...& phish.

in the present day, i still consume pretty good amounts of iced tea--usually 4c but occasionally pathmark brand. to be sensible in my spending, i take ziploc bags of 4c iced tea powder to work with me & when i am thirsty, i get up from my desk & carry what looks like a baggie of brown cocaine across the office to the kitchen & with the aid of the water cooler...instant drink.