#179 - tracks & snacks 2010.

alright loyal eat!drink!snack! readers, it's time to slam the barn door shut on 2010! normally, i'd reminisce about the past twelve months & be all "blah blah blah blog good blah blah blah blog bad," but i'm just not in the mood this year. instead, i'm just going to get right down to business. it's no secret that i'm both a music monger & a snack monger and as such, around these here parts we have a one year old year-end tradition of looking back at the ten tracks & snacks that totally rocked my world over the past year, so let's just concentrate on that for now.

2010 was definitely a great year for new music. for the past twelve months, it seemed like every single week i came across another new album or song or band that got me excited about music again, so that was coolio. per usual, the stuff that got me most excited fell under the category of "indie rock" with a smidgen of hip hop mixed in. what can i say? i like what i like & like to stick with what i like.

so yeah, this year was jam packed with fun time music, so much that the task of narrowing my favorites down into a top ten list was much more difficult than usual. in the end, i had to leave off a bunch of stuff i liked, including freddie gibbs' "the coldest," yeasayer's "ambling alp," the national's "bloodbuzz ohio," sleigh bells' "tell 'em" & frightened rabbit's "nothing like you," all of which got a TON of play on my stereo & ipod. sorry to them. this ain't tee ball. here at eat!drink!snack!, not everybody gets a trophy. let's check out who actually does get a trophy this year!

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#166 - back in black.

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

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#156 - the woods, the snacks & the sea.

oh man. so my high school pal jeff is getting married this summer & his bachelor party was this past weekend up at foxwoods. originally, i wasn't planning on attending, but circumstances eventually changed & by saturday afternoon, i was drinking a beer in a foxwoods hotel room. this is what happened: on friday, tadley (of spotted dick fame) & nugs drove up from d.c. for a friday evening stopover before heading up to foxwoods on saturday. i got out of work a whole hour early & met them out at mission dolores (alternate name: missing clitoris), a new beer garden in a converted church on 4th ave in park slope. it was a lovely day out & we sat in the outdoor courtyard drinking snooty beer after snooty beer & taking artsy photos & by the third beer, i'd said "screw it" & decided to join them when they left the next morn. after all, how many bachelor parties is jeff going to have? two, maybe three?

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#153 - panda vs rabbit.

back in the spring of 04, animal planet launched a brilliant show called animal face-off where they took data from two different animals & then used science & 'puters to pit those two animals against each other in an epic, CGI battle to the death. we're talking thrilling matchups like "hippo vs bull shark" & "anaconda vs jaguar." although it was a hilariously awesome concept, it only lasted for twelve episodes before going off the air, leaving us with all sorts of unimagined possibilities for animal warfare.

today, i'm going to rekindle the spirit of animal face-off by recreating one such unimagined battle--giant panda vs rabbit! since the giant panda's way bigger, we're going to even things out a bit & pit him against fifty-or-so rabbits. i'm pretty sure they hunt in packs like that anyhow, so it makes perfect sense. let's get to the ring & take a look at our mighty mammalian competitors!

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#152 - twenty-two minutes.

this weekend, before i sat down for the evening's snack & drink, i was on the phone with a friend explaining that in my next blog post, i planned on discussing things that are twenty-two minutes long. his response was "like taking a dump?" i was all like, "twenty-two minutes? it takes you that long?" personally, when it comes to doing my business, i'm in & out in five minutes tops, but i suppose that for some people, if you're sitting on the can for twenty-two minutes, that's acceptable. if you're standing at a urinal for that same amount of time, that might be a problem though. if it takes you twenty-two minutes to deftly execute your corporate strategy, that's acceptable. if it takes you twenty-two minutes to execute a prisoner by electrocution...not so deft.

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