#132 - & now for something completely different.

& now for something completely different: an eat!drink!snack! blog entry about something funny. by something funny, i don't mean that i'm actually going to break tradition & be funny. i mean that i'm going to talk about monty python's flying circus, the uproariously funny sketch comedy show which made its debut on bbc one forty years ago this past monday. i first started watching the show when i was a teenager & although a good amount of it was british stuff i didn't understand, i fell in love with it. as a result of repeated viewings, the show's dry, ridiculous tone is probably responsible for about 50% of my sense of humor. i'm sure there are countless others out there who would say the same thing.

& now for something completely different: a man with three buttocks...a man with a tape recorder up his nose...a man with a tape recorder up his brother's nose. have you got anything without spam? i don't care how fucking runny it is! i'm a lumberjack & i'm ok. i fart in your general direction. what did you expect? a spanish inquisition? strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! know what i mean? wink wink. nudge nudge. say no more.

& now for something completely different: career paths! when the show eventually came to an end in 1974, its members ended up taking a divergent set of paths. between fawlty towers & a fish called wanda, john cleese arguably became the most famous of the troupe, but through a string of awesome directorial efforts, terry gilliam has given him a run for his money. terry jones has done a bunch of writing & michael palin ended up doing a number of documentaries, a ton of which have been travel docs. graham chapman did a bit of acting after python, but died at age 48, twenty years ago this past sunday. eric idle is probably best known for creating the rutles & spamalot, the broadway production which supports the theory that he's over-commercialized the show over the years.

& now for something completely different: a smart idea on the internet. back in november of last year, in response to the wide array of monty python videos up on youtube, they decided to set up their own youtube channel & put up a bunch of the best monty python clips. all they asked from fans was that in exchange for them putting a bunch of high quality clips on youtube for free, the fans go out & buy their DVDs. as a result, sales on amazon rose by 23000%. i didn't even know that percentage existed. anyway, in this brand new interweb world, they pretty much put to bed the fear that giving your content away for free would kill sales. you hear that, record industry?

#132 - & now for something completely different.
snack: peppercorn ranch sun chips
drink: hawaiian punch fruit juicy red



this weekend, i picked up a big ol bag of peppercorn ranch sun chips. they're a new flavor for sun chips, along with roasted sweet chili & spicy chipotle, neither of which i've come across in my snack travels. as part of sun chips' initiative to move to a 100% compostable bag by next year, this bag of peppercorn ranch came in a bag made from 33% recyclable materials. i don't have an active compost bin or anything, so once they go fully compostable, my bags will likely linger in a landfill for years, but it's still a pretty cool idea. 

as for the chips themselves, the flavor's good enough to put them in a tie with french onion for the coveted "tastiest sun chip" award. i love pretty much anything with ranch on it, but the peppercorn combination really works for me. like other sun chips, they're flavorful, but not too flavorful, making it possible to eat a ton of them at once without making yourself sick. as such, by monday night, i'd finished off the entire bag pretty much single-handedly. any chip that's both healthy and supports my gluttonous tendencies is ok in my book.

since i've been in a hawaiian mood lately on the blog, i decided to take a trip down memory lane this weekend with a bottle of hawaiian punch fruit juicy red. back in the day, i used to drink a good amount of the stuff & generally, it came in a large aluminum can you had to use a can opener on. old school! it's not as good as i remember it being though. it's full of sugar & is basically the fruitiest fruit punch available, but i guess to my parents, at the time, if i was drinking hawaiian punch, at least i wasn't drinking soda.

as a kid, i was inspired by hawaiian punch's commercials, which featured punchy, the hawaiian punch mascot. in the ads, he'd walk up to this other character (opie) & ask him "how about a nice hawaiian punch?" since it's impossible to resist a nice hawaiian punch, opie would always answer in the affirmative & punchy would sock him one. aided by that phrase, i've dealt a lot of bruises myself over the years...good times.

hawaiian punch updated the punchy character in 2003 & now they're all 2006 style on their website, which is laid out as punchy's pad. while he lounges on the couch like a lazy hawaiian, you can get all interactive with a game called "punchy's pursuit," where punchy tosses bottles of hawaiian punch & other debris onto the street from the back of a truck & you have to clean up after him. given their environmental leanings, i'm sure the people at sun chips are quite unhappy about punchy's wanton littering. not me though. i love that hawaiian's mischievous capering.

#124 - eat!drink!man!woman!

true confession: up until this weekend, i'd never actually sat down & watched eat drink man woman, by director ang lee. regardless, for some reason, when i was trying to come up with a name for this here blog, a variation on the title stuck in my head & eventually won the brainstorm competition. the rest is history. overall, other than his masterpiece, crouching tiger, hidden dragon, i've sort of avoided his films. i blame sense & sensibilty & the ice storm, two movies that i've judged as "pretentious" without even watching. i mean, sure there isn't an outside chance i'd see the incredible hulk, but my unfounded feelings on his films have definitely kept me away from brokeback mountain, lust, caution & eat drink man woman. after seeing eat drink..., i've decided to go back & take a trip through his filmography, maybe even go see taking woodstock.

the story focuses on a taiwanese family that's made up of a widowed father & his three daughters, one who's an old maid school teacher type, one who's an outgoing airline executive & the youngest one, who works at a fast food joint. the father's an aging/semi-retired master chef, who despite the fact that his sense of taste is diminishing, still loves cooking large, gourmet chinese meals. the opening sequence shows him preparing the weekly sunday meal for his family, a ritual that involves hours of cooking with crazy old timey chinese steamers & methods & whatnot. the shit looks AMAZING. about forty-five minutes in, i had to pause the movie when i found myself with my tongue pressed up against the screen.

it's an interesting film with some cool twists & a totally unexpected ending. the plot's driven by the three daughters' changing relationships & feelings about love, but as the title implies, a lot of the story revolves around food. as for that title, it comes from a line in the film, where the father is talking to old wen, his fellow chef & business partner. as they stumble drunk down the hall after closing down an enormous kitchen for the night, the father says to old wen, "eat, drink, man, woman. basic human desires. can't avoid them." it's so true. unfortunately, it means that as far as the name of this blog goes, i've changed that philosophy by replacing sex with snacks. no nookie. just food. that's so not representative of my feelings on life, but oh well.

i like what lee & his co-writer james schamus (who's cowritten every single one of lee's films) have done with the story. we get to see enough of the characters' everyday lives outside of the family that when they're together as a family, we're able to put the way they act in the context of their everyday lives. it speaks to an inherent quality of human relationships: how we act when we're with & not with our families are two separate things, but they still influence each other. it's one of the reasons why tv shows with characters like mad men's don draper & breaking bad's walter white are so damn appealing. they represent extreme versions of our desire to have our own personal experiences & feelings & secrets & whatnot, ones that others aren't privy to. maybe it's the whole "knowledge is power" thing, maybe it isn't. regardless, in this film, the consequences of that desire are profound. eat!drink!secrets!

#124 - eat!drink!man!woman!
snack: barbecue popchips
drink: inko's cherry vanilla white tea



a few months back, i tried out popchips for the first time & then gave em the ol razzing a few weeks later in a column about a ny times article describing their $1.3 million ad campaign. part of the campaign was "an outreach to trend-setters that seeks to generate positive buzz." as an obvious trend-setter, i implored them to reach out to me...& they did. unfortunately, the other residents of my building have sticky fingers & my mailperson tends to just leave stuff sitting out if it doesn't fit in the mailbox, so if they sent me a package in the mail, i never received it. thanks for everything, shoddy brooklyn postal service. you too, grabby neighbors. sorry, popchick.

since i was planning on trying out more of their chips anyhow, i picked up a big bag of barbecue popchips the other night & broke them open during the film. popchips has seven flavors & i've only tried the sea salt & vinegar flavor, so i decided to expand my horizons into bbq territory. like the sea salt & vinegar ones (& i assume the rest of them), since they're popped, they're light & fluffy, like a thinner, crisper rice cake. the bag claims that they're "the tangiest barbecue taste this side of the mason dixon," which is odd. last i checked, they're based out of san fran and the mason-dixon line only runs as far west as the far southwest corner of pennsylvania, so i'm pretty sure they're not even on a side of it. whatever though. it's a somewhat tangy barbecue flavor. they were worthy of me totally popping them into my mouth one after another. it was a puntastic eating experience.

i grabbed a bottle of inko's cherry vanilla white tea to go along with the popchips. inko's is based right across the river in jersey. the company got its start because there weren't any white teas on the market & the founders loved drinking white tea so much that they just had to start their own company. they also discovered that white tea leaves may have cancer-fighting properties, so proceeds from every bottle go to white tea cancer research. here's the science behind it...apparently there are these things in white tea leaves called polyphenols, chemicals that some believe have cancer-fighting properties. since white tea leaves are processed less than other types, they have more polyphenols in them. i can get behind that.

gotta be honest...i couldn't even taste the polyphenols. it's made with all natural ingredients, so what i did taste was a tea flavored with an acceptable amount of cherry & vanilla extracts. the prevalence of the cherry extracts made me think of cherry coke, where the cherry flavor's there, but it's not overwhelming the beverage itself. as far as sweetness goes, on a scale of one to ten, it's "not too sweet." it's sweetened with fructose crystals, an ingredient that the label makes sure to note is "not corn syrup." it's true. fructose crystals are basically the same thing as cane sugar (sucrose) crystals, but without as much of an insulin surge. sounds ok to me. anything that aids my ongoing quest to lower my HFCS consumption is good in my book...doubly so if the whole white tea cancer prevention thing pans out. eat!drink!snack!health!

#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.

a great man once said that you could do anything back in the olden days. that great man was wrong. back in the olden days, beginning almost ninety years ago this year, you totally couldn't drink...legally, at least. prohibited! prohibited via the 18th amendment! thanks, fanatical old-timey religion. only two states voted against the amendment (CT, this is the only thing you've been good for thus far). actually, it wasn't all that bad, i suppose. the american government & ladies in long skirts, a decade removed from WWI, were in no position to actually enforce the 18th amendment, so you could get booze. underground! still, the amendment remained an actual part of our constitution for over thirteen years. sorry only amendment to be no more. repealed! they had to create a whole new amendment to get rid of you. lame, #18.

...but they tried for a while to keep the country dry & yay! we got gangsters! we got dudes with classy hats & tommy guns & whatnot. have any of y'all seen brian depalma's the untouchables? if so, you remember that one scene where al capone bashes that dude's head in with a baseball bat? that scene ruled & definitely freaked my thirteen-year old ass out (in both a good & a bad way). i guess that's one positive thing that came out of the 18th amendment. without it, brian depalma never would have made the untouchables. it's basically the last good movie he's made & i wouldn't want to take that away from him. there was word that he was working on a prequel to the film starring nicolas cage as capone, but that project's been stalled. too bad. that could really lift depalma's spirits.

i can't even fathom those times. people rolling around town bop bop bopping people with tommy guns, having crazy car chases, posing as cops to assassinate members of a rival gang...you could do that stuff back then & often get away with it. old-timey murder! less than a hundred years later, the mob just ain't what it used to be. i mean, maybe it's so far underground than i don't even notice, but these days, you only really get to hear about one, maybe two sweet mob killings a year. it's got to the point where there are more reports of arrests than there are of gangland murder. the most famous mob family--the sopranos--even they met their end. fuggetaboutit.

these days, here in nyc, there are faux speakeasy style establishments popping up all over. when i first moved the city near the beginning of the decade, there were a couple speakeasy type bars (i.e.--milk & honey), but now it's become such a trend that the ny times did a piece on speakeasies back in june. there's PDT (please don't tell), a speakeasy hidden through a phone booth in the back of crif dogs. brooklyn has the hideout (in ft greene) & rye, a restaurant in williamsburg that looks like a speakeasy. just the other day, the museum of the city of new york finished up their speakeasy series of events, ones that celebrated the fact that manhattan used to be home to around 30,000 speakeasies. there's senor swanky's mexican cafe & speakeasy in the upper west side, but that's only a speakeasy in name. i turn my apartment into a speakeasy a couple nights a week, but it's so far underground that i'm the only one who's found it so far. bootleg!

#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.
snack: tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips
drink: speakeasy white lightning



holy crap! will you look at the old-timey hats on those dudes on the front of the bag of tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips? i can't tell...are they prussian or bobbies or something? probably bobbies, since tyrrell's is a u.k. company. the u.k. thing also explains the crazy spelling of "chili." crazy brits with their double l's. the car the bobbies are in is totally old-timey. it's the sort of car you'd expect to tip over taking a corner or whose radiator would explode for no good reason. i wish i had one of those cars & was on the front of a bag of chips. lucky probably dead now dudes. i tried out tyrell's beef & horseradish potato chips around the beginning of the year. they have a cow on the front of the bag. sir walter tyrrell's his name. i'm hoping that he's still alive, but he's a tasty cow, so it's tough to be certain.

i've tried a couple of the tyrrell's flavors & they've all had a nice, full flavor. the sweet chilli chips are no exception. they've got a no-too-greasy kettle feel & a burnt orange look with a bunch of lil sweet flavor specks scattered throughout. the sweet specks dominate over the chilli & pepper, so if you're one of those fancypants who can't handle spicy chips, it's ok. they won't hurt you...you candy ass. jk, candy ass! jk! seriously, they're good chips...a tad pricey, but good nonetheless. according to the bag, they're even "suitable for" you candy ass vegans. jk, candy ass vegans! jk! quick question, vegans. is candy ass one word or two? jk!

the speakeasy white lightning is totally bootleg! well, not really. the name implies that, but it's actually made by an totally legit brewery out of san fran. no canadian border runs from the g-men here! their website is goodbeer.com, which is a tad cocky. the white lightning's not on the website though, so i'm not sure if the beer's named after the george jones big bopper-penned song about g-men & t-men & pappy's brew or the 1973 burt reynolds movie in which reynolds plays a guy named "gator mcklusky," a former moonshiner who goes undercover in the moonshine circles to expose the sheriff who killed his brother. i haven't seen it, but it was shown as part of quentin tarantino's first ever semi-annual film festival, back in 1997...so i guess it's that kind of movie. hopefully it's named after that.

to be honest, it's a pretty boring beer. it's a wheat beer flavored with coriander seed & curacao orange peel, but it's really light for a wheat beer. there's not really that much flavor there, especially when competing for my flavor love with the deliciousness of the sweet chilli & red pepper. i expected more from it. i guess that's why it's such a self-conscious beer, with its pair of eyes staring at me from the neck of the bottle the entire time i drank it. it was all looking askance & mumbling "you're not impressed are you? you've had better, huh? i'm sorry to hear that. did i mention that speakeasies are old-timey? you like old-timey, right? ok, i'll be quiet now. enjoy your beer."

#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!

yeah, i know. everybody & their mother has already written about last sunday's third season premiere of amc's mad men, but i want to write about it too, damnit. after all, it's one of my favorite tv shows & it's been almost ten months since season two came to a close, so i've been jonesing. overall, almost three million people tuned in to the premiere, a 33% increase over the season two premiere, so i wasn't alone. the buzz has totally built. luckily, i've waited almost a week since it aired to get around to writing it, so i'm assuming that i'll be the "final word" on it.

when we last visited the mad men at the end of last season, things had fallen into a serious state of unrest. on a global scale, the cuban missle crisis & the possibility of a nuclear holocaust loomed over american society. the fate of sterling cooper was in question, as they were on the brink of a merger with a british firm (putnam, powell & lowe), leaving things all topsy-turvy for many of the main characters. don draper had been kicked out of his own house and his marriage was in shambles because of his constant cheating & overall attitude towards betty, but in the final scene of the season, she'd revealed to him that she's pregnant.

...& it's under those circumstances that we begin season three. the episode opens with don dreaming about the circumstances surrounding his birth (to a prostitute who dies after giving birth to him) as he warms milk on the stove. he brings the milk upstairs to betty & other than seeing that she's still pregnant, we're not entirely sure where we are on the timeline. we know that he's back living at home & that the sterling/putnam merger's gone through, but not much more. this vagueness is one of the keys to how mad men creator matthew weiner weaves his storytelling magic. much of the time, the characters feel & act like they're in control, but the truth is that they never seem to know the whole story & as such, there's always something waiting to derail them. as the season starts, we get this same feeling.

the premiere seemed to set up a lot of the storylines for season three. don & betty will soon have their third child, but don is still cheating on betty, doing so with a stewardess while on a business trip in baltimore. on that same trip, sal (who we've always assumed was gay but it's never been confirmed) starts getting hot & heavy with a hotel bellboy until they're interrupted by a fire alarm that clears out the hotel. while climbing down the fire escape in the evacuation, unbeknownst to sal, don spies the bellboy in his undershirt in sal's room. at the agency, they fire burt peterson (the head of accounts) & pete thinks that he's been named the new head but soon learns that they've actually replaced burt with a two-man team made up of him & ken cosgrove. there's also tension between joan & john hooker, the new male british secretary who's the "right-hand man" to lane pryce (the new CFO).

overall, it was a slow start to the season, but i'm not worried, as weiner's laid the foundations & in previous seasons, things didn't really take off until a few episodes in anyhow. we're someplace around the beginning of 1963 & since actual historical events have always had some effect on the storyline, there's a lot looming on the horizon. the feminine mystique & the beatles' first album (please please me) are coming out soon. the civil rights movement continues to boil over in the south & martin luther king will soon deliver his "i have a dream" speech. most importantly, JFK will soon be assassinated, an event that changed things for a lot of people. i can't wait to see what effect those things have on the folks at sterling-cooper.

#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!
snack: mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps
drink: lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale



you know who's a mad man? mr krisper. by looking at him, you might think that he's quite the charmer, given his bowler & bow tie & coy smile, but make no mistake about it--that dude's CAH-RAY-ZEE. i was watching TMZ the other day & saw him coming out of the club with his posse & a girl on both arms & within the span of sixty seconds, he had mooned the paparazzi, kicked a stray puppy, jumped up on the hood of a car & puked onto the pavement below before speeding away in his escalade. it was some serious andy dick type shizz, but not as naked & effeminate & pathetic.

despite his craziness, there's one thing that mr krisper can do & that's make a tasty crisp. since he's as mad as a march hare, he spells "crisps" with a "k." he's just that wacky. like the front of the bag says, his mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps have a "great whole multigrain taste." great? sure, why not? i definitely consumed them at a fairly rapid pace. they're the size of poker chips & made of brown rice, giving them a nice firmness somewhere between a chip & a cracker. in general, my feelings toward barbecue chips are mixed. if they're overwhelmingly flavorful (i'm thinking mesquite here), they need to stay as far away from my mouth as possible, but if they've got a simple barbecue taste that's not too overpowering, i'll invite them in like an old friend. fortunately, mr krisper's krisps fall into the latter category.

if you don't believe that, then you'd better believe that i'm going to give you the hairy eyeball. it won't be my lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale though, because i've already drank it. plus, if i was giving away an eyeball, i'd probably have to give it to mr krisper, because even though he's nuts & possibly dangerous, it looks like he's having some trouble with his left eye & could use the help. this particular hairy eyeball is lagunitas' 2009 new years release, a brown ale with a copper color & a caramel/brown sugar taste. from what i could tell, there wasn't a lick (lock?) of hair or a wink of eyeball in it, but that's just fine with me. that stuff probably would've interfered with the flavor.

the slogan on the front of the bottle--"here's lookin' atcha'!"--sounds like something don draper would come up with. i can see the tv spot now. there's a man. he's out having drinks with a few of his buddies. from across the room, he catches a glimpse of a sultry, red-haired woman alone smoking a cigarette at the end of the bar. she notices him. they exchange a few knowing glances. he calls the bartender over & whispers something to him. the bartender nods back at him, grabs something from the cooler behind the bar, makes his way down to the woman & places a beer in front of her. it's a lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale. she looks across at the man. he winks at her. she smiles & looks at the label, which reads "here's lookin' atcha'!" then they make whoopie. end scene...& we go back to watching an engrossing episode of the beverly hillbillies or the jetsons or something.

#117 - sexy black-haired mamas.

who doesn't love a sexy black-haired mama? if you don't you're a communist. actually, there are a lot of sexy black-haired mamas in china, so i'm not sure if i still mean that or not. i mean, i sort of often have a thing for redheads & that may or may not have to do with some sort of weird freudian "my mom has red hair" thing that i don't want to get into but black hair: i enjoy it quite a bit. who doesn't? since back in the time when men were still men & wars were still wars & pinup girls were still pinned up by pins, there was bettie page, one of playboy's first centerfolds & for me, basically the babe ruth of black-haired mamas. seriously, how many black-haired women since her have to some degree carved themselves in her image? if you said "seven," aim higher.

nowadays, it seems like black-haired babes aren't doing enough to prop up the breed. sure portland, oregon's suicide girls have been around for a while now & their first book is adorned with a girl with jet-black hair, a girl who also became the logo of the site for a while. mmm. mary. rose mcgowan gave it a shot for a while but she doesn't even have black hair any more & other than that, for black-haired babes, we're now left with katy perry's faux or not faux lesbianism & vanessa hudgens' high school musical camera phone nudity (NSFW). zooey deschanel & robin tunney have tried their best, but they can only do so much. maybe i'm missing somebody besides them (does bjork still have black hair?) but they aren't coming to mind at the moment.

speaking of black hair, there's been a slight to-do in recent months over the fact that kristen stewart (one of the stars of the tweentabulous twilight movies) has died her hair jet-black to play joan jett in an upcoming movie about 70's band the runaways. scout taylor compton as lita ford! not black hair. anyway, i guess kristen stewart's hair didn't used to be that black, so TMZ has to report on that. i refuse to make a judgment on the positive aspects of such a hair color, as she just turned 18 back in april & that'd be creepy. as for her playing joan jett, the more young girls that discover joan jett the better. go jett-black hair.

...so all i'm saying is that it's going to be winter soon & i'm pretty sure cosmo recommends winter as a perfect time to dye your hair black, ladies. a lot of us think the black hair is sexy. i'm not saying that you have to venture into goth or cure/smiths territory, but i'll definitely notice you. maybe you're a bit apprehensive about making such a drastic change to your hair color. that's understandable. would it change your mind if i told you that madonna once had black hair? no? what if i told you she just dyed her hair black back tonight at the hotel suite after the copenhagen show?...that's what i thought. black is the new black.

#117 - sexy black-haired mamas.
snack: route 11 mama zuma's habanero chips
drink: lagunitas lucky 13 ale



in the spirit of spiciness, the other night, i had a bag of route 11 mama zuma's habanero chips. i picked them up last weekend on a late night park slope stop off at reis 100, the sandwich shop that just opened up next door to 5th ave's bar reis. the place features a hundred crazy tiny sandwiches, including one with honey, brie & apple, one with white anchovy, pickled carrot & daikon, spicy mayo & cilantro and another with bahn mi tofu, pickled carrot & jalapeno & cilantro. they're tiny but perfect for munching on while you get drunk with other park slopers on the back patio at bar reis. so...the chips. they have a bunch of gourmet-type chips hanging on the wall next to the counter at reis 100, so i grabbed a bag of these for later.

while i was waiting for my sandwiches, a man who at first appeared to be completely normal entered & walked up to the wall of chips. after a few minutes of staring at the chips & occasionally touching them, the dude left empty-handed. two minutes later he was back at the front door, staring in at the wall of chips. after a minute or so of that, he came back in, walked up to the counter & asked the girl working, "how much are the chips?" after she told him that they're $1.50, he surveyed the wall for another minute or so, grabbed a bag, plunked down his cash & left. i suppose you had to be there, but it was seriously the most dramatic chip-buying scenario i've ever witnessed. i'd hate to be with that dude when he's buying a home appliance.

so...the chips. holy crap they're hot. they're so hot & covered with habanero & other spices that after only two chips, with the saliva buildup in my mouth, i was able to faithfully recreate the sounds of a well-bubbling bong. speaking of sounds, route 11 potato chips are so damn hip that they have their own jingle. it's a rocking lil rockabillyesque number about "riding down the road to potato chip heaven" with a bag of route elevens. it gave me the power to make it through this bag of route elevens, but true to her name, mama zuma definitely got her revenge the next morn.

since the chips were so damn hot, accompanying fluids were an absolute necessity. i paired the chips with a 22 oz bottle of lagunitas lucky 13 ale with its black-haired mama on the front & although it helped, i eventually had to bring in a glass of water as well. it provided some additional relief, but nothing short of a fire extinguisher would've subdued mama zuma's habanero flames. i'd picked up the lagunitas from bierkraft a few days back & while there, i discovered that last tuesday, the folks from lagunitas were in town from cali doing a beer tasting there. i've been to the store on past tuesdays & from what i've discerned, females go to these tastings, so i totally missed out on an attempt to meet my future wife. i could've been all, "yeah, i blogged about lagunitas just the other day. i'm a blogger. [pause] i know. it's sexy."

so...the beer. it's a "mondo large red ale," with a copper look, a pleasant, almost sweet smell & a very full flavor, which in this case means it's pretty damn hoppy...definitely not a beer for those who can't handle the hops. lucky (13) for me, with this snack-drink pairing, the hops definitely helped aid in the battle against the habanero fury. i figure it's good practice since from what i gather, black-haired mamas are just as feisty as red-haired mamas. either way, i'm now prepared for fury, even if it means habanero & hops breath.