#138 - the limits of my patience.

a little over a decade back, i was a plucky, naive & young boston university film student without a care in the world. growing up in NH, the pinnacle of film for me was a few good men, but soon after i arrived at school, i discovered that there were a million films out there, independent & otherwise, that were much better than a few good men. i'd thought that i loved film, but it was during that time that really fell in love with film. it was also during this time that i came across the films of the man who became my favorite director, jim jarmusch. he has this style of storytelling where it's about the characters & not the story, where he doesn't beat you into submission with the plot. often, there isn't even a plot to speak of in his films. instead, there are beautifully shot scenes where characters who always seem to be on the move drive the film forward through dialogue. i eat that shizz up & to me, his films are a perfect example of film as art.

about a week back, i finally checked out his latest film, the limits of control, which came out on DVD back in mid-november. it stars isaach de bankolé as "lone man," a criminal on an undefined mission in spain. a lot of critics hated it. it's definitely the most minimalist of all his films & i have no doubt that it's a difficult film for the average movie goer to handle. i even had to go back a few times this week & watch it again to fully understand what he was going for. still, it's definitely SLOW going. you can count the lone man's lines of dialogue on your two hands & throughout the entire film, we're not even clear as to what his objectives are. all we know is that he's in spain & he keeps meeting people (none of who have names) at cafes, where they exchange matchboxes with pieces of paper in them that appear to give him the next steps in his vague mission.

jarmusch has always enjoyed meditating on repeated imagery & scenarios in his films (see 2003's coffee & cigarettes) & in this film, he meditates on this cafe matchbox-swapping scenario, pairing a dead-silent de bankolé with a host of characters played by such folks as john hurt, tilda swinton & gael garcía bernal. each character he meets has their own personality & through comparing these personalities & the lone man's reactions to them, we get some idea of who the lone man is. that's the central device jarmusch uses in the film. since he's paired the lone man up in one-on-ones with a cast of characters, the lone man doesn't even have to speak for us to get a sense of his character. in addition to the cafe scenes, there are appearances by paz de la huerta (who plays "nude" & is totally true to her name in EVERY scene she's in) & bill murray (who appears late in the film).

every shot in the film is artfully constructed, which, along with the fact that you never quite know what's going on, helps to give the film a dreamlike feel. jarmusch was definitely going for a dreamlike feel. in the dvd extras, there's a "making of the film" documentary that opens with jarmusch walking the streets of spain, talking about what is essentially his motivation behind the film. he says that he likes music, so he knows a lot about music. he also knows a lot about the history of movies. although he knows about & enjoys those things, he is more fascinated by all the things that he doesn't yet know about. in the limits of control, there are a lot of things that you don't know, but if you're okay with that, you'll enjoy it for what it is...a film that's not his best but is still a work of art.

#138 - the limits of my patience.
snack: r.w. garcia organic veggie tortilla chips
drink: maine root root beer



to keep myself busy the first time i watched the limits of control, i snacked from a bag of r.w. garcia organic veggie tortilla chips. r.w. garcia's a san jose-based company who's been making "premium tortilla chips since 1982." they're relatively primo, i suppose. the veggie ones are tall-natural & organic & gluten free, so they've got the healthy snack thing going for them. with the veggie ones, you get three flavors--spinach & garlic, red beet & onion and carrot, tomato & sesame. out of the three, i preferred the red beet & onion ones, but the flavor in the chips is baked in & subtle, so i didn't notice a huge amount of difference between the three.

according to the bag, they're "for more than just salsa" & although they are pretty good just on their own, i ended up eating them with a number of different salsas over the past week. it's mostly because i've been growingly increasingly obsessed with fruity salsas recently, ones made with peaches & raspberries & such, so i had to indulge that obsession. the veggie chips made a nice complement, especially since they're a firm, crunchy chip that you can scoop a good amount of salsa on to. like i said though, you don't need salsa. maybe you're a communist & you hate salsa. you can still enjoy these chips & i'll try to avoid questioning your twisted motives.

for my beverage, i went with a bottle of one of my favorite beverages of late, maine root root beer. it's brewed out of scarborough, maine by two brothers who formed the company four years ago. they started it after one of the brothers, who worked at a portland restaurant & was sick of the sub-par root beer selection there, began brewing his own root beer. four years later, they're brewing a ginger brew, a sarsparilla & blueberry, lemon-lime & mandarin orange sodas in addition to the root beer. they even have a pumpkin pie soda that they brewed a batch of for the fall, which i can say from experience is pretty damn good but also pretty damn sweet. they're available all around the country & if you've got a whole foods near you, you'll find their stuff there.

as for the root beer, it's one of the best root beers that i've tried to date. it doesn't have an overly carbonated makeup like you find in commercial root beers like a&w and barq's, so when you pour it, it settles nicely in the glass, with a head & everything, just like a draft beer would. when you drink it, it also has the same smoothness as a draft beer. if you're used to drinking commercial root beers, the flavor of the maine root root beer's very similar, but with less carbonation & syrup mucking up the flavor, making for a much more enjoyable beverage. it's made up of all-natural ingredients like extracts of wintergreen, clove and anise & overall, it's just a cleaner, better drinking experience. as far as root beers go, it's a work of art.

#137 - you down with ODB?

i'm not sure how many of you are aware of this, but in order to enter the wu-tang, you must bring the ol' dirty bastard type slang. it's true. ODB said so on "da mystery of chessboxin'," off the wu-tang clan's debut album enter the wu-tang (36 chambers). if you're looking to bring the ol' dirty bastard type slang, all you have to do is put some marbles in your mouth & go on an offbeat, occasionally sung rant. the rest will take care of itself. ODB, who died of a drug overdose back in november of 2004, would have been 41 this past sunday. in honor of his birthday, i spent a good part of the day hanging out at my apartment whilst blasting his two solo albums from my tiny apple speakers & doing a bunch of head boppin'.

his 1995 debut album, return to the 36 chambers: the dirty version, is my favorite of the two, with tracks like "shimmy shimmy ya" & "brooklyn zoo." on it, you get a bounty of half-sung, half-rapped lyrics like "cause I create rhymes good as a tasty cake." there's even a song with him singing the chorus to "somewhere over the rainbow." obviously. over four years later, he released his second album, nigga please, with plain white album art featuring nothing but a photo of him jheri-curled up like rick james. it's a funkier album at times & features two neptunes' produced tracks. the first is a sweet cover of rick james' "cold blooded," which is perfect for ODB, who loves to get to warblin' every once in a while. the second is "got your money," which was the album's only single & also helped introduce the world to kelis, who we've since forgotten about.

by that second album, he was getting into a lot of good ol fashion trouble, which led to the four year wait between albums. we're talking arrests, gunshot wounds, drug possession, life as a fugitive, jail time...all that good stuff. in 97, he took a limo to the welfare office to pick up his check, all while an mtv crew filmed him. remember the 1998 grammy awards, when he took the mic before shawn colvin gave her acceptance speech, rambled for a bit & declared that "wu-tang is for the children?" that was awesome. it was like my generation's "imma let you finish." that was around the same time when he starting calling himself "big baby jesus," just one of many pseudonyms he used over the years. so yeah, his rapping was epic but his behavior was too...sad but entertaining.

his legacy lives on. this past tuesday, a new, posthumous ODB album entitled message to the other side (osirus part 1) came out on money maker entertainment. the record was created from the wu-tang vaults & features a ton of guests, including the RZA on a quarter of the tracks. it even comes with a bonus DVD. i'm extremely skeptical of posthumous albums. they're often culled together from existing material, which is often sparse. plus, i'm of the opinion that wu-tang productions have declined in quality over the years, so there's a good chance that the album could be absolutely awful. hopefully it's not though. ODB doesn't need some lame posthumous album sullying his reputation like that.

#137 - you down with ODB?
snack: dirty chips funky fusion flavor
drink: arrogant bastard ale



since sunday was ODB day, i chose to snack on a bag of funky fusion flavor dirty chips while i listened to his albums. the funky fusion flavor's one of a few new flavors that dirty chips just put out (along with smoky chipolte & pesto parmesan). according to their website, which appears to have been designed some time back in the nineties, the funky fusion flavor "defies description! a little sour, no, a little sweet, no, a little salty, no, a little creamy, no, a little tangy, no........just enjoy!" dear dirty chips. your use of punctuation is too radical even for my tastes. NINE commas in one sentence? what is that? a triple ellipsis? seriously though, unless the owner has a thirteen-year old daughter & she's writing copy for the website, you should probably watch it with the punctuation. thanks.

since i'm a professional, despite dirty chips' claim that they defy description, i'm going to attempt to describe them. i figure it's the least i can do, so here goes: they taste sort of like a spring roll from a thai restaurant. see? that wasn't so hard. they definitely have an asian flavor to them & in classic dirty chips style, that flavor is in abundance. there's a lot going on with them. it's like an EXPLOSION of funky fusion. as for the texture, you can't beat the crunch of a dirty chip. still, even though they're kettle cooked & all natural, they're slightly greasy & full of a bunch of fat & sodium. health concerns aside, i definitely enjoyed them though.

to complete sunday's ODB tribute, i had a 22 oz bottle of arrogant bastard ale along with the funky dirty chips. the arrogant bastard's made by stone brewing co., who brews out of sunny san diego. a little known fact about san diego (home of the padres & ron burgundy): discovered by the germans in 1904, they named it san diego, which of course in german means a whale's vagina. i guess that the devilish dude on the front of the bottle is the arrogant bastard. he's kind of a lil bitch. in order to access his website, in addition to certifying that you're 21, you have to certify that you're "not a fizzy yellow beer drinking ninny here under false pretenses." according to the front of the bottle, i'm not worthy of drinking it. screw you arrogant bastard devil mascot. you don't know me.

the arrogant bastard's beer is decidedly less arrogant than his website & bottle. the ale pours with a dark reddish-orange color & a rich, hoppy smell. with the abundance of hops & all the bastard's talk about arrogance, i was expecting a harsh taste, but it's actually pretty smooth & drinkable & it's definitely something that i'm going to return to in the future. i'm pretty sure it's not something ODB would have drank, but i wasn't really in the mood for a 40 oz of old english this weekend. forty ounces are more of a summertime thing for me. anyway, at least it's brewed by someone who believes in carrying on the good bastard name. i think that'd make ODB proud.

#135 - abstruse adjectives.

monday marked the octennial anniversary of a grand day in our great nation's history, that historic day back in 2001 when the crucial USA PATRIOT act was signed into federal law by the best 43rd president we ever had, GWB. since that stupendous day, this terrorist-preventing bill has remained strong. i mean, has there been a horrific terrorist attack in the good ol u.s.a. since 9/11? not that i can recall, so today, we're going to celebrate the two day-old anniversary of that momentous bill signing with a grandiloquent display of out of sight adjectives. it's going to be scrumtrulescent!

...so the amazingly heroic USA PATRIOT act. thank almighty god that our gracious government came up with it. it's always working hard to keep us hard-working u.s. citizens safe with a solid, balanced diet of law enforcement enhancements, terrorist-thwarting legislation & unprecedented data collection, with some occasional messy fingerprinting mixed in. a little-known fact about the glorious PATRIOT act: there's a special section in there where if you make tasteless light of the infallible bill on your radical left-wing blog, you'll be whisked off to the southeastern edge of a tropical communist island within twenty-four hours. true story.

hold on a cotton-pickin' second. i just remembered something. in michael moore's award-winning documentary farenheit 9/11, there's an eye-opening scene where the crafty filmmaker is in washington d.c. & he catches a couple of u.s. senators basically saying "we don't actually read the bills. that would take too long." i sort of wish they would have at least read the freedom-altering bill instead of rushing it through in a knee-jerk bluster, especially since it gives our curious government & inquisitive law enforcement officials some pretty awesome powers.

you know what? now that michael moore has made a totally bold statement & in the process, made me think about it, the controversial USA PATRIOT ACT is pretty much the most injudicious piece of governmental legislation that the unrepentant bush administration gave us. a whole bunch of orwellian provisions in this satanic bill are set to expire on december 31st of this quickly-fading year, but i have scant faith in anything changing. i mean, we can't get rid of the PATRIOT ACT, right? if we did, crafty terrorists, determined to undermine our precious freedoms, would instantly begin flooding our preeminent cities with muslim bombs. if we were to let the shining sun set on those wide-sweeping provisions, well that'd just be plain unpatriotic. it'd be a downright flag-hating act.

#135 - abstruse adjectives.
snack: zesty tomato terra chips
drink: arizona mucho mango



when searching for an ambrosial snack worthy of PATRIOT act day, i was looking for something with a tantalizing name, something that made me want to go on an intrusive "sneek & peek" or tap into an innocent person's mobile phone. i found that pined-for snack in zesty tomato terra chips. these tasty treats aren't your everyday chips. they're exotic vegetable chips made from taro, ruby taro, sweet potato, yuca, batata & parsnip. it's a very healthy, chromatic mix of chipified veggies seasoned with tomato, worcestershire & celery. basically, you could toss some vinegary horseradish & a few hefty shots of top-shelf vodka in with the zestily-spiced chips, swirl everything around & you'd have yourself a fernand petoit-approved bloody mary.

my absolute favorite of the vivid vegetables is the ruby taro. it's mellifluous & flavorful & the chip version of the festive ruby taro drove my middle-aged mouth wild with repressed excitement. for a while, i singled a privileged bunch of them out from the sorry rest of the plebian chips because they were clearly too good to be in the lowly company of those other inferior vegetables. that's not to say that i didn't enjoy the other ones. since i got 15% MORE CHIPS FREE in the bag & they have NO TRANS FAT, i eventually went to the proverbial town on all the chips equally...just because i could. i'm loco like that.

i felt that it was muy importante that i found a refreshing beverage that reminded me of the refreshing USA PATRIOT act. the arizona mucho mango definitely fits that bill. it's named for the state where both aging senators love the PATRIOT act & it's MUCHO & made with 5% juice. wait. that doesn't sound like MUCHO mango. hmm. if you visit the arizona beverage website, you'll come across a totally hip music player featuring rocking, cutting-edge musical acts like this blue holiday, laser blade & a rag-tag bunch of other no-name bands. while you're there, you should head over to the smoove AZ lounge. it's like a graffiti wonderland! you should check it out if you want to be boss.

the mucho mango is mucho sweet, basically because the second ingredient after filtered water is high fructose corn syrup. i guess there wasn't enough mango puree or pear juice to make it taste sweet, so the inventive folks at arizona decided to go all the way. on a serious note, i had to take a brief break part way through drinking it. i felt like my train-wreck teeth were buzzing from the herculean amount of HFCS. it could just be a microscopic listening device implanted in my unsuspecting incisor by the nefarious government while i slept, but i want to be an unwaveringly-true patriot, so i'm just going to grin & bear it, like i did with the sacchariferous arizona mucho mango.

#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.

oh, religion. you make people do some funny things sometimes. remember that time back in early A.D. when because of you, the romans nailed a guy who claimed to be the son of god to a cross? that was awesome. how about that time back in the high middle ages when europeans went & removed muslims from jerusalem in your name? that was pretty cool too. 9/11, the holocaust, the events in tibet--all as a result of your hand. oh! i can't forget that you're doing a bang up job in the middle east these days. kudos on that! you've got a stranglehold on that region...an epic, bloody stranglehold.

myself, i was brought up roman catholic in a family who practiced their religion without thinking of it as a tool to further a political agenda. we went to church most sundays, i learned a sense of morals & was confirmed catholic. i never thought of my religion as a way to force moral beliefs on other people & as a result, as i became older & wiser & saw what was done in the name of not only catholicism, but a number of organized religions, i eventually decided to stop going to church. i still have the morals & general kindness to others that came from my religious upbringing, but i now consider myself agnostic. i feel there has to be some higher power, but i have trouble believing that that higher power has a belief system that applies equally to everyone.

here in nyc, there's been a lot of talk lately about the athiest movement. beginning tomorrow, the big apple coalition of reason will have ads appearing throughout the nyc subway system, ads that ask "a million new yorkers are good without god. are you?" according to the the american religious identification survey, athiests are the fastest growing religious group (15% of the population), so they figure they have a solid target audience for the ads. i'm curious to see what response they get once they're actually up. people love writing on ads as it is, but last year, when 877-WHY-ISLAM wanted to run ads in the nyc subways that tried to educate people about islam, people got their panties in a bunch, saying that the dude funding them was tied to terrorism.

sean hannity's tried to get people worked up about the athiest ads, asking what the response would be if a christian group did the same thing, but since christianity's been present in the subways for years, that angle's not going to fly. i mean, in the times sq station alone, there are already crazy end of the world dudes who line the tunnels with their signage, dianetics dudes with their "stress tests" & countless people handing out religious pamphlets with "relatable" religious messages. sorry sean, but here in nyc, everyone's got the best religion ever & can't wait to tell you about it, so i don't think the absence of religion will be that big of a deal. as a new yorker, you should already know that. the sad thing is that some people will actually believe what you said.

i mean, people believe in some crazy shit...supernatural beings & alien saviors & what have you. don't even get me started on the mormons' special religious undergarments or the ridiculousness that is scientology or the fact that folks from the white separatist world church of the creator have dubbed their religion "creativity." there are the breatharians, who believe that all they need to live is oxygen. there's the church of euthanasia, whose main devotion is toward voluntary population reduction & whose main principles are suicide, abortion, cannibalism & sodomy. my favorite religion of them all is pastafarianism, whose flying spaghetti monster is a deity among deities. any god who's that tasty can't be denied.

#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.
snack: zapps voodoo chips
drink: blue point rastafa rye ale



in celebration of a religion that believes in mischievous spirits & a non-intervening god & sticking pins into dolls, i decided to try out a bag of zapps voodoo chips. it's the third flavor of zapps chips featured thus far on eat!drink!snack! & definitely the most interesting of the three. zapps is based out of gramercy, louisiana, a town just west of new orleans, which is famous for its voodoo culture & history. louisiana voodoo's a variation on traditional voodoo, with christian & tourist bents mixed in. new orleans loves that sort of junk. in fact, next weekend, there's voodoofest, a three-day festival with eminem, ween, the flaming lips, KISS & a ton of other acts playing. KISS totally has the voodoo!

the voodoo chips are zapps' current mystery "limited edition" flavor, which according to website legend, is "a result of an accident. an employee was moving a pallet of spices off the top shelf, and dropped it. while cleaning it up, someone stuck their finger into the mixture of about 5 flavors and pronounced it great. we recreated in our lab, and like gumbo, it’s an 'everything in the kitchen' flavor." it's true. the flavor is pretty intense, with a spice combo that's like salt & vinegar but with a lot more going on, hints of paprika & sweetness. since i wolfed them down quicker than i should have, i felt a bit bloated afterwards, but after gently massaging the belly of a doll made in my likeness, i felt much better.

for those who think that smoking weed & belief in a former ethiopian emperor as god incarnate should be the main tenets of a belief system, i'm washing down the voodoo magic with a 22 oz blue point rastafa rye ale. since from what i've read, alcohol is frowned upon by rastafaris, i'm a bit confused by blue point's rastafari theme, but i guess they knew a good pun when they saw it & decided to run with it. the dude on the front of the label has your typical rastafarian dreadlocks, but he looks like a character out of a crappy video game storyline, like a grand theft auto knockoff or something. he'd be the shady guy you'd smoke a spliff with while you learn about your next mission.

slightly misguided themes aside, the rastafa rye's an acceptable beer. it's a copper beer with a relatively smooth taste made up of a good balance of hops & malty rye. i mean, it didn't make me want to pop on some bob marley or grow the natty dread, but i still enjoyed it. as a bonus, blue point donates a portion of the proceeds from the rastafa rye to a charity that works with "orphaned, at-risk and underprivileged children throughout the caribbean." that's good to know. usually, when i'm drinking, i'm doing it for the children. its not for the children of israel or anything, but i like to think that jah would still approve.

nosh nook #159 - thursday, october 22, 2009

pending approval, snyder's to acquire utz (link)
10.22.09 - york daily record - by sean adkins

one summer, when i was but a prepubescent boy, my family rented a caravan & drove down to hershey, PA to visit hershey park. we never did disney world or land, but we did do busch gardens (virginia) as part of a joint colonial williamsburg trip one summer & hershey another summer...deliciously fun. besides hershey, pennsylvania's home to some of the prominent snack food manufacturers. there's utz, which has been around since the harding administration. there's wise potato chips, which is surprisingly not owned by some food conglomerate. there are the two snyders--snyder of berlin & snyder's of hanover. twizzlers (now owned by hershey) & planters (now owned by kraft) both got their start there. snackwise, it's pretty much the best state.

as the york daily record reports, the big news in the PA snack world this week is that, pending FTC approval, two of the hanover businesses--utz & snyder's--are becoming one, as snyder has gobbled up utz. luckily for the town of hanover, carl e lee, jr (president/CEO of snyder's) "doesn't anticipate any job losses as a result of the sale." in fact, combining the two companies will "lead to additional sales and manufacturing jobs...as (they) grow both brands and expand the new company." one worker noted that it would help them better compete with frito-lay. i'm all for that.

at the moment, utz is primarily based on the east coast, but snyder's is a nationwide brand with four times more sales than utz & has been around for over a decade longer. i know all this because in the article, the york daily record does a darn good job of breaking down what the deal means for both companies & their workers. they even include a little "at a glance" segment at the end to reinforce the key points of the deal. from what they tell me, it looks like it's a good deal for all involved. anyway, some solid reporting there, mr adkins. snack on, hanover.