#57 - bodega redux.

i moved to my current place in brooklyn (at 4th & 21st) almost two years ago & when i first moved here, i made a point to make the rounds & check out all the closest 4th ave bodegas. there's the one between 19th & 20th that is frequently properly stocked with utz red hot chips that was my clear favorite for a while. there's one across the street on the corner of 22nd, but that one often is often slim pickens & has more unfamiliar spanish brands than it does familiar american brands, so i get all xenophobic (seriously, how did bally midway get away with the xenophobe video game? "exterminate the aliens?" what? can you even say that on a video game poster?) there's a bodega down at 26th, just past the train stop that tends to have a lot of my favorite snacks, but it's all the way down there, five blocks away, a full block-and-a-half past the dunkin donuts/baskin robbins & at that point it's like, "no item at that stupid 26th st bodega will have as satisfying an amount of glaze or sprinkles as anything in this joint right here before my eyes."

there's also one on the corner of 23rd that i originally boycotted because there was a woman working there who always did the thing where even if you'd handed her your money & extended your hand out to receive your change, she'd drop your change on the counter so you had to pick it up. i hate that, so after a few times of getting the friendly change heisman from that lady, i swore the place off. shawn likes friendly.

then a few months back, the place got all torn up inside & renovated & it has new people working there & whatnot & has become my go to bodega. under new management rules! the place is now run by a group of friendly dudes who call me boss & buddy. when i'm in a state of lazy peckishness, they make me sandwiches & often add a banana in with it & then the banana goes bad on my counter because i hate bananas. i left my wallet there one night & it was there behind the counter waiting for me the next morning. there are all kinds of hip, fancy snacks on the shelves. chocolate-covered sunflower seeds!

#57 - bodega redux.
snack: hostess sno balls
drink: dogfish head raison d'être

tonight i stopped by the bodega in the mood for something slightly chocolaty & hostess sno balls contain some chocolate or facsimile of said chocolate, so i brought a pack of the lil tribble-snacks home with me. one summer evening in boston, just after college, i was working at the allston videosmith video store (R.I.P.) & my co-workers and i were bored & i was hungry & my roommate/co-worker & i had probably been drinking on our back porch earlier that afternoon & as a result, we made a deal...they would give me the money to go next door & buy two packages of sno balls, but i had to eat all of them right there. i took their sucker money, went next door & bought two packages of pink sno balls and ate all four. approx 30 minutes later i felt it. if my stomach could talk, he would probably have a better word to describe the feeling, so i will just have to settle for calling it "gator belly snappin' awful." do not try this at home. anyway, i still enjoy sno balls & yes i feel guilty about their contents, but if you can come up with a healthy, natural version of them that combines seasonally-diversely-colored coconut with chocolate cake, cream & marshmallow in the same pleasant manner, i'll give up my precious sno balls & eat your "nature puff" or "koala coconut cream dream" or whatever the crap you decide to call it.

this hip new bodega has perpetuated my love of dogfish beers, as they usually have three or four different kinds in the cooler, which means i usually end up picking up a couple different singles a week there. a few weeks back, they got in some of the dogfish 120-minute i.p.a. it was the first time i'd ever seen the 120-minute, so i grabbed one, plunked down three & some change and enjoyed the hell out of it. next time i went to get one, i discovered that the beers are actually supposed to cost $10 a piece. they had mispriced it & were in the process of sending it back to the distributor. i felt bad. not "let me give you that $7" bad though.

tonight i'm drinking the dogfish head raison d'être with my marshmallowy hostess treats. it's a mahogany ale & has friggin beet sugar & green raisins in it. i know! can you beweeve it? i bet your beer doesn't even have beet sugar & green raisins. i bet you don't even want beet sugar & green raisins in your beer. the raison d'être is probably like my 2nd dogfish BFF right now, behind the 90-minute ale. as you undoubtedly know, raison d'être means "reason for being." tonight, my reason for being is to pretend that i'm actually watching the season premiere of frontline when i'm actually only retaining the word "uighur" (pronounced: wee-gur). uighur. uighur. uighur.

#55 - limey.

full shocking disclosure: other than gray's anatomy, which is pretty much all spalding gray anyhow, i've never seen a steven soderbergh film...not erin brokovich, not traffic, not oceans eleven, twelve, or thirteen...not even sex, lies and videotape, three things that, individually, i'm a huge fan of. people talk about him as experimental & ground-breaking & whatnot & maybe i'll believe that when i watch sex, lies & videotape or schizopolis, but until that day comes, i'm comfortable with the opinion i've formed of his body of work...i mean, oceans thirteen? c'mon. the rat pack must be just sitting in the afterlife puffing on cigars & rolling their eyes over that one. i will say i'm slightly intrigued about the che movies though.

nonetheless, in a half-assed attempt to create a blog theme, i sat down & watched his film the limey tonight...even turned the lights down & lit a lime-scented candle i had lying around to set the mood, a mood that can only be described as "solo sexy." the film was actually pretty good. it's about a british ex-con whose daughter is murdered, so he flies to l.a. to find out what happened & enact his revenge. there's this one scene with nicky katt (who you may know as the dude who wins the "fight" near the end of dazed & confused), where he is standing on the edge of a film set viciously mocking various members of a film crew as they walk by. i can only assume this helped him fulfill some fantasy as an actor...loved that. as to the tone of the film, i've been watching & loving damages recently & from what i can tell from the limey, the disjointed narrative & time switches denoted by different color tones that the creators of damages employ all the time would not have existed without the limey before it.

nobody actually refers to the main character as a limey & he's not a sailor or anything, but i guess we're just supposed to assume that he deserves to be called one. the term "limey" is american slang for british & specifically sailors, slang that apparently developed because of the practice of giving british sailors lime juice to combat the vitamin c deficiencies that often occurred whilst at sea & often eventually led to the disease scurvy. though scurvy is no doubt one of our funnier-named diseases, it goes hand-in-hand with malnourishment & in the areas of the world where it actually does occur it's actually no laughing matter, especially the excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea parts.

#55 - limey.
snack: choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar
drink: blue moon rising moon seasonal ale

since i hate excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea, i've taken the necessary precautions to ensure that i don't get scurvy any time soon. tonight, i finished off a choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar. choxie is another one of target's hip grocery brands, cleverly named to evoke thoughts of similarly-named japanese candies & treats. in addition to the tastiness of the dark chocolate & the key lime, the truffle bar has graham biscotti pieces, a splendid bonus for a texture lover like myself. the packaging urges me to "keep it hidden from mere amateurs, and keep your choxie for yourself" & that's just what i did. i'm glad target finally wised up & realized they're dealing with a professional here. believe me, nobody even had a chance to lay eyes on that poor chocolate bar.

i had a blue moon rising moon seasonal ale to go along with it. it's a light spring ale brewed with kieffer lime leaves & lime peel, which basically saves me the step of cutting up a lime & putting it in there myself, which is very convenient. who said preventing scurvy takes effort? i bet the british sailors wish they had scurvy-preventing chocolates & beers like i do. they probably have to mix the limes in with their fish heads & gruel. i don't want to sound prejudiced towards british culinary delights, but i'll take my lime chocolates & beers over their lime-tinged fish heads & gruel any day of the week.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.

i friggin' hate connecticut & it isn't just because of joe lieberman or their inability to keep the whalers. ever since i moved to nyc back in 01, connecticut has become the two-and-a-half hour nuisance in the middle of my four hour drive to boston. when i first moved here, i used to love driving through connecticut. i had to drive up to new england a lot for work, so i'd often grab a rental car & take an afternoon drive up the west side to the merritt parkway, gliding through its twists & green trees & under its uniquely designed bridges. in recent years, as i've become uber-acquainted with the cheapo nyc-boston chinatown buses, which travel up interstate 95 out of nyc, i've wasted countless hours sitting in traffic near bridgeport & new haven & hartford and i now curse the state. i'm sure the 6pm holiday traffic tomorrow to nh will be swell, especially since i've now acknowledged my curse in writing.

florida obviously sucks intensely. it makes connecticut look like disney world. i've made many many quick judgements about florida, most of them based on my eight months of residency & two weeks of "vacation" there. i went through two hurricanes. some dude driving a van that transports disabled people around was waiting in front of my girlfriend at the time & i, as we sat in her car at a red light leaving the borders parking lot. when it turned green, the dude accidentally put the van into reverse, stepped on the gas & drove right up onto the hood of our car...& then tried to flee. this woman in our apartment complex had a daughter in high school who had no homework because there weren't enough text books. the sushi place in the shopping plaza next to our apartment complex made me sick. there's also the 2000 election, the two florida marlins world series wins, jeb bush, awful tans, sprawling development, disney world, oppressive anti-gay movements, the miami p.d., trafficking trafficking trafficking, more hurricanes, etc.

you know what place is even worse than florida though? zimbabwe. growing up, when i heard the word "zimbabwe," i envisioned it as one of the cool places in africa. in later times, i'd often choose the zulus (impi power!) when i played civilization. i thought of it as some place i'd want to check out some day & at one point, it was that place. people considered it to be one of the jewels in the african crown. then president robert mugabe came along & in 1999, 19 years into his rule, he introduced his whole land reform program & agriculture & tourism went down the pooper & the country has just spiraled downhill since then as he's violently held on to power. technically, they now have a 10 quintillion dollar bill in circulation. back in august, a loaf of bread went for 1.3 trillion dollars. inflation is at 230 million percent...& mugabe just won't quit. he's probably waiting for them to come out with a googol dollar bill before he decides to hang it up.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.
snack: frey pear & caramel chocolate bar
drink: rype orange tingled wheat beer

this frey pear & caramel chocolate bar is really tasty, with lil crunchy bits & pear flavors & whatnot. they don't have this particular flavor listed on their website, but there are a boatload of tasty sounding flavors (they claim to have 350 choices!)...tiramisu! hot chili pepper! cinnamon & blood orange! wha wha! oh. apparently they're only available at target...how exclusive.

anyway, if there's one thing that the swiss should be known for, it's chocolate. oh and their cheese & their babes & their army & their army knives and backpacks, which they don't even use because they're all peaceful & neutral & whatnot. two of their cities, zurich & geneva, are considered some of the best places to live in the world. they have all that stuff down pat. get this though...most of the people don't even speak english. and instead of baseball, they have hornussen, a cross between baseball & golf. seriously, i watched a few of the videos. i can't even begin to tell you what's going on or if it might be fun. the name means "hornet" though. never was a big fan of things that can sting me, especially when they don't make me honey.

in the "washing it down" department, i'm having me a rype orange tingled wheat beer. it has a sharp & clean, modest looking label, but the beer's pretty bland, clean & boring. the moniker-advertised "orange tingle" doesn't even tingle. it turns out that the beer's made by four+ brewing company, out of salt lake city. this could explain its blandness. it has 4.0% alcohol by volume, which by utah law, is the highest amount of alcohol any beer can have if it wants to be served within the beehive state. mormons hate alcohol almost as much as they hate fun. take mitt romney. it's a good thing mccain didn't pick him as his veep. sure, he's from massachusetts, one of the best places on earth, but that dude's a mormon & he hates fun. nothing like his actual pick, that non-mormon sarah palin, who clearly loves fun. hockey moms! lipstick on a pig! nothing but priceless yuk-it-up gems out of that sarah. but seriously, i hear that utah should never be visited ever, unless you have a really good reason. "i was on my way to vegas" is an acceptable reason.

UPDATE: turns out that utah is the fastest-growing state in the country. god knows why...or maybe joseph smith does.

#45 - eat! drink! smoke!

today's "stupidest thing ever said," courtesy of my one-a-day calendar:

WOMAN NOT INJURED BY COOKIE
- actual newspaper headline

thank you for your guidance, one-a-day calendar. thank you for providing me with an example of a brave woman who, when she found herself face-to-face with a cookie, emerged victorious...a real story of human triumph over a snack item. i take this as a logical sign that i have the o.k. to throw caution to the wind on this saturday evening, as i too, am human.

#45 - eat! drink! smoke!

snack: rold gold dipped twists fudge coated pretzels
drink: dogfish head 120 minute i.p.a.
smoke: imported dreams belgian blend

i picked up a bag of rold gold dipped twists fudge coated pretzels to snack on tonight. i love chocolate covered pretzels. back at the tail end of the 90s, i was in my mid-twenties & living in boston & working extra hours part time at a boston university "campus convenience" store. i used to eat chocolate pretzel flipz for breakfast, usually with a nantucket nectars orange mango juice. developed me a sweet extra chin for a little bit during that period of my life. anyway, i like these rold gold ones. they're nothing special, but good nonetheless.

holy crap this beer is hoppy. it's a dogfish head 120 minute i.p.a. and it's amberish & opaque & when you bring it to your mouth, your nose finds itself buried inside the glass & it's all holy friggin' hops!...it does smell nice, like when you get a whiff of a really good wine or champagne or scotch or what have you vice wise & smell-related. maybe you like dirty diapers. to each his own, i say. at least you've found something to appreciate. so this beer experience is like that.

on the side of the bottle it reads "what you have here is the holy grail for hopheads. this beer is continually hopped over a 120-minute boil and then dry-hopped every day for a month. enjoy now or age for a decade or so." a decade!...says "ages well" right on the front label. i'm telling you, aging beers is the cool thing to do. take your aged wines & cheeses & cram them. i have one beer that i'm aging. it's this beer from belgium that's "brewed with dandelions." my bottle is from 2004, so the label is all crudely hand-sketched & totally different. i have no idea what the deal is with the crazy ghost on the current label. ms whitney rodgers gave it to me along with five other beers, a gift from a short ways back from an auction she went to & thought of me at. i drank the others a while ago, but now know when i hope to enjoy this final sixth bottle & why.

& tonight with the chocolate covered pretzels & the hoppy hoppy beer, i'm having me a flavored cig. why not? i don't REALLY smoke. the best part about these, other than the slight chocolate taste left in your mouth (which is fine if you don't mind the accompanying smoke taste), is the name. apparently, they used to be named "sweet dreams chocolate." now they've changed the name to "imported dreams belgian blend." why? because flavored cigarettes, whose yumminess appeals to teens (teens love yumminess!), have been a recent target of lawmakers, even though they only represent a mere fraction of overall cigs smoked. at the same time, the menthol cig (like a cigarette AND a minty breath mint!) remains free to frolic unfettered through african american communities. obviously. so the flavored cig companies had to change their product's names to make them less appealing to teens, and if there's one thing that teens could care less about, it's belgium. so they're now a "belgian blend." obfuscation mission accomplished.

#41 - F.L.O.R.I.D.A...flo-ree-dah.

back in 97, shortly after college graduation, i moved to pembroke pines, fl, a city in broward county just minutes north of miami. it was the year of the expansion florida marlins' first world series win, a dark year for baseball indeed.

my girlfriend at the time had moved down there to get a masters in o.t. & i really liked her & for the most part, had never left the northeast, so i went with. she was moving down earlier than i & so we flew down there a few months before her school year started to find an apartment, see the school & area, etc. i was 22 & it was the first time that i had flown in a plane & was old enough to actually remember doing so.

prior to that, the only other time i had been to florida was in between junior & senior year of high school, when i rode all the way down from hudson, nh to jupiter, fl in the back of a mostly-empty van that belonged to the father of my (first real) girlfriend at the time. we drove down there with her divorced parents & little sister. one day, the girlfriend & i took her dad's van to the mall & when i was finished purchasing a pair of midnight blue jean shorts at the guess store, we left the mall through an entirely different entrance & got lost. while trying to figure out where i was going i almost ran a red light & slammed on the brakes. the sand on the road caused the van to slide sideways & as we skidded to a halt, i remember a tool box & a jar of change unloosing themselves all over the van. we emerged unscathed other than the tool & change collection duties necessary to do to avoid detection from her parents. a couple days later, hurricane andrew hit. that should have been a clear sign as to the future of that relationship.

...so in august of 97 i moved to florida & lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. from the outset, it was obvious that she was stressed. school was pretty hard, neither of us had long-standing friends in the area & for the most part, things did not go well between us. i know i wasn't happy...hell, i only went to the beach once my entire time there.

my best friend at the time was a girl named michelle, who i worked with at my data entry job. as far as i know, we were the only two college-educated folks in our office, so we naturally gravitated toward each other. as far as i can remember, she was my first ever gay friend (nh & b.u. kept me a bit sheltered up until then). often, when my monthly new issue of playboy arrived (via a gift subscription from my girlfriend), michelle & i would flip on through together. we'd go out to lesbian bars & shoot pool & ramble about our respective relationship issues. she brought a lot of happiness to me at a time when many aspects of life sucked...& it helped that she was totally cute...& then i moved away after only eight months in florida & came down to visit a few months later for new years' eve & then through circumstances, we completely lost touch, even with the recent advent of social networking...friendwise, this is the loss i most regret. she was a really good friend to me & i really hope she's doing well now that we're ten years into the future.

#41 - F-L-O-R-I-D-A...flo-ree-dah.
snack: hershey's all natural extra dark assortment
drink: sobe orange carrot elixir

as i've mentioned previously, i currently have a thing for dark chocolate. recently, it's gotten worse & regular dark chocolate just won't cut it any more. when i go to a store & they only have one or two types of lindt bars & both of them are nothing more than your average dark chocolate, sans any fruits or nuts or geographical cacao branding, i scoff heartily...but i am occasionally a rational man & when my best choice at a local rite aid the other night was a bag of hershey's all natural extra dark assortment, which contains single serving pieces of both the average "pure dark chocolate" & "pure dark chocolate with cranberries, blueberries & almonds," i "went for it." i absolutely love the cranberry, blueberry & almond ones. the fruits & nuts are tiny & worked into the chocolate really well. basically, biting into one is like biting into any other candy bar, until you notice that there's a chunk of cranberry stuck in your teeth & you get to lick at cranberry for 2-5 minutes trying to get it out of there...& when you do, the reward is all yours. this bag is definitely no match for me tonight.

with them, i'm downing a sobe orange carrot elixir. it is SO ORANGE!...but i wouldn't ever turn one down based on its shocking color, because it's a pretty tasty beverage & carrots are totally good for your health. some might say "this beverage is too friggin' sweet." to them i say, "your teeth only live once, jacko." i was addicted to sobe beverages (& more specifically the black tea) in the years round the end of college, when they started appearing on the shelves of boston convenient stores. when i moved to florida in 97, i was forced to starve my addiction. as far as i could tell, there was nary a sobe drink to be found in the greater ft lauderdale/miami area, which absolutely baffled me, considering that the drink gets its name from south beach, an area of miami beach, located just 30-45 minutes south of my pembroke pines apartment. it turns out that sobe is based out of norwalk, ct, known primarily for its oysters & from what i can tell, "sobe" is pretty much just a pre-geico lizard marketing gimmick...& i hate their website. it tries to be cool while sacrificing functionality for bird chirps.

in closing, originally this post was going to be more lesbiancentric, but in the end, i decided to go in a different direction...instead i'm just going to throw out this one random thought from that thought train: are there any females in my neighborhood who aren't lesbians? even one? i remain skeptical.