#35 - weenie howla.

i was at the local better-than-average for my area grocery store earlier this evening purchasing a lil' snack & couple of frosty beverages for a night of chillin' at my apartment. when i got to the beer section there were two girls from the neighborhood there, picking out a six-pack for the night. i grabbed my beers & snack & got behind them in line at the register. the guy behind the counter, who was probably in his mid-to-late twenties, was flirting with the girls, offering them halloween candy from the festive pale white bucket at the end of the register.

they left with a goodbye & as soon as they were on the other side of the sliding doors, he turned to me, smiled & said, "man, there are tons of hotties out tonight," to which i replied, "i bet the candy helps, huh?" the sad thing is that both of our statements are true.

for me, this scenario illustrates that which, as an adult with no kids, makes me both hate & love halloween. on halloween, adults do & get away with the stupidest of things.

females: a majority of the women (at least in nyc) dress up in the sluttiest outfits possible. as long as you are wearing a normally inappropriate amount of makeup & all black & you slap on a pair of cat ears/devil horns, you have a costume...but why stop there? there are a wide range of sexy costumes that you can wear, from a sexy cave woman to a sexy nurse to a sexy cop to a sexy sarah palin, which is basically a u.s. flag bikini with glasses & a ms alaska sash (hunting rifle not included). unfortunately, the costume's only available in up to size a 10, so sorry ladies who are over that size. apparently it's not possible for you to be sexy and/or the vice president.

males: this is your night to act like a jackass, especially to women, who will be flocking to you for the first time since sometime around last halloween because, well, girls love hugging and/or having their picture taken with chewbacca. if you're lucky, you might get to grab a boob or something. too bad your hoglike sweating inside the chewbacca suit has made you as moist as a gym towel...my halloween hero...the office's jim halpert, who in this week's episode, went as "dave."

i can't wait for the day to come when i might have a child of my own to take out trick or treating & subdue my hatred for halloween...& that'll be fine, because halloween is for kids.

#35 - weenie howla.

snack: cheddar beer flavor kettle chips
drink: southern tier brewing co harvest ale / brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest

you'd expect that since it's halloween, i'd be snacking on some sort of candy or treat, but nope...i decided to go with a bag of chips & a bag of chips that have the word "beer" in the flavor to boot--cheddar beer flavor kettle chips. they're pretty tasty overall. since they're kettle chips, they're nice & crunchy. the flavor's akin to cheddar flavored tato skins. you know the ones. the ones with baked potato appeal, cause they're made with potatoes & skins that are real. they're no longer made by keebler (who is now owned by the kellogg co) & are now made by the inventure group & also marketed as a t.g.i.friday's snack. i don't really taste the beer in these kettle chips, but that's okay, because i have two actual beers right here.

the first beer is from southern tier brewing co, out of lakewood, ny, which is about an hour & 45 min down route 90 from buffalo. it's an extra special bitter hoppy beer, but not too much so. enjoyable enough. the second is a brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest. there was a time when i was actually excited by brooklyn brewing co, but as happened with my former favorite local beers before brooklyn--harpoon & sam adams--i've drank so many of them over the years that they've lost their luster...seems like a theme, doesn't it?

in attempting to close, i'd like to draw a desperate parallel between my feelings toward brooklyn beers & what happened with me & halloween...they've both lost their luster. end transmission.

#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.