#144 - port traits: intro.

oh portland, oregon. why must you tempt me so? for years now, i've been hearing about how awesome you are from friends who live there, reading about your bounty of food carts, dreaming of the benefits of your progressive transit system. at one point a few years back, i was even set on moving to you. you're really far from the east coast though, so i never made the plunge & still have yet to, but i'm still young, so you're still on my short list of "places to eventually settle down." sit tight.

as i mentioned a few weeks back, one of my childhood friends (mr chris dorin) came to visit me from portland & when he came, he brought a viking's load of portland-area vegan snacks along for me to sample. in honor of these snacks & my faraway outsider obsession with portland, over the next week or so i'll be bringing you a four-part series devoted to the snacks & "the city of roses." in it, i'll be peppering you with all sorts of knowledge about the city, mostly based on stuff i've heard & things i've discovered via the power of the google & partially based on stuff i made up. it'll be like a mini, slightly-fictional travel guide from someone who has only visited the city for a few hours in the early part of last decade. TOTALLY professional.

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#142 - tracks & snacks.

will you look at that! if you're reading this, that means that you've made it through 2009. congrats. i knew you could do it! well, not you, phil. frankly, your immortality is SHOCKING...but everyone else...i knew you could do it! since we're done with the living hell that was 2009 & already a week or so into 2010, i figured it was high time that i got on with putting together my year-end best of lists. at the end of 2008, i recapped my top ten albums, snacks & drinks of the year. this year, i'm going to keep in the same realm & offer up my top ten TRACKS & SNACKS OF 2009!

just like last year, since my main music obsession these days is mostly in the field of indie rock, all ten tracks on the list are by indie rockers. there are a ton of tracks that i could have included here, but we only have room for ten, folks. the first songs to get cut were those from other years, from miles benjamin anthony robinson's "buriedfed" to o.d.b.'s "got your money" to final fantasy's "this lamb sells condos."

from this year, there are a few honorable mentions. there's peaches' "serpentine" & morrissey's "something is squeezing my skull." in the hip hop world, there's the cool kids' "broadcasting live," vinnie scullo's "eyehearthiphop" & kid cudi's "pursuit of happiness" (with MGMT & ratatat). the last track to get cut from the list was animal collective's "my girls," which i listened to extensively for the first two months of the year before i just got plain sick of it & it fell out of favor. regardless, it still makes me happy when i hear it. so yeah...lots of good music this year. grab a snack & a drink, pull up a chair & let's get to my top ten tracks!

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#140 - ...the end of the year as we know it & i feel meh.

time to do some reflectin', loyal eat!drink!snack! readers! loyal readers, you're SO loyal that i'd feel bad if i lied to you & said that 2009 hasn't been the most exhausting year thus far in my 35 year existence. i think it was that way for a lot of people, so at least i'm not alone, but man, i am so ready for 2010 to begin so i can implement some sort of calendar based-psychological shift & let the happiness start rolling on in again. as that shift approaches, i definitely have a lot to be thankful for, but there's a lot going on in my world & the world at large that calls for the use of a rather large frowny face, one with non-true blood or twilight inspired fangs. 

at the start of the year, when we were inaugurating the new hope & saying goodbye to eight years of bush hell, i tried to be optimistic that obama & democratic congressional majorities would turn the country around, but twelve months later, i can't say that i'm impressed. guantanamo's still open, the health care debate is off-the-rails & the current bill is disgustingly compromised. ten percent of my friends still can't get married. we're upping the troop count in afghanistan, but that was expected, since obama did say that he would do that in the campaign. i didn't vote for him though, so i have a right to be disappointed by him.

...but there are a bunch of bright spots. despite the music industry's shortcomings, i'm as excited about music as i've ever been (year end bests to come!). the same goes for tv. for the first time in a long time, i can't count the shows i follow on my fingers alone. i need toes too! i wish i could say the same about film. as for the world of literature, 2009 marks the first year in my life that i didn't read one book...not one. instead, i spent the time that i would've usually spent reading books on the internet, reading blogs & news sites. i can't say i'm sad about the lack of books in my life this year though, because i've consumed enough media & info that my curious nature has been sufficiently sated.

i've also had an unquantifiable mess of fun in '09. there was my summer chicago trip for the pitchfork festival, where 1% of the calendar year equaled 10% of my 2009 fun. there were bunches of concerts, including multiple bday week dirty projectors shows, this summer's phish shows & ac/dc from the second row. there were the occasional visits from out-of-town friends, from the periodic todd martin visit to drop-ins by now-new orleans resident mike weber to a long weekend visit from my childhood friend & strong proponent of portland, chris dorin. as a bonus, when chris visited, he brought me a booyah amount of snacks from oregon, which will soon be featured in a january series i'm putting together on portland & their mostly-awesome snacks.

the thing i'm most thankful for at the year's end is the fact that i still have a job & as of jan 1, will have been at my job longer than any other in the past. as of november's numbers, 10% of the nation's still unemployed & throughout the course of the year, i've lost a number of co-workers to job cuts. having a job means having a roof over my head & that's something i've reminded myself of all year long. it also means that i can maintain a constant flow of tasty snacks & drinks into my belly. it means that at night, when i'm tired & done with people for the day, i can return to my abode, sit down with a snack & drink & engage with my best friend, this here blog.

2009 was the year when this here blog & writing in general became one of the most important aspects of my life. 2009 was the year where folks started introducing me as "a writer" as opposed to "some guy who does some music industry thing." 2009 was the year where i penned thirty something columns for the amazing fuckedinparkslope, which is run by ms erica, just one of the amazing people i met this year & someone who, just a few weeks back, elegantly captured the reasons why having a blog both totally fucking sucks & totally fucking rules.

for eat!drink!snack!, 2009 was the year where i introduced a new column that's now helped me reconnect with journalism (my initial college major). it was the year where twelve folks (& my bro) blew me away with hilarious/insightful guest columns. it was the year where i OD'd on pumpkin beer for a month. it was the year where i finally decided to sort of think about what i was eating. for eat!drink!snack!, it was a good year. for me, it was meh. i'm already way optimistic about 2010 though. if nothing, we'll get the final season of LOST, a show with a title that's quite fitting for the times. once that's done though, i'm not sure what we'll do. hopefully we'll learn something about how to reset time or something.

#140 - ...the end of the year as we know it & i feel meh.
snack: blue diamond habanero bbq almonds
drink: tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale



as i sit here reflecting on the past year, i'm snacking from a can of blue diamond habanero bbq almonds that i came across this holiday season up at a nh wal-mart. i have a long & colored history with blue diamond, from their lime chili flavor that i tried out way back in january as an accompaniment to college football's '08-'09 championship game to their wasabi & soy sauce flavor, which was my #1 snack of 2008. the habenero bbq ones are one of a few slightly-new blue diamond almond flavors & from what i can tell, they're so new that they haven't had the resources to add them to their website yet. stupid economic downturn. here's to them making it onto the website in 2010.

they're aight & definitely live up to their name, with sufficient bbq flavor & sufficient spicy pepper flavor on blue diamond almonds. a year after declaring them my #1 snack, i'd still pick the wasabi & soy sauce ones over any other nuts. i don't think i could say the same thing for the habenero bbq ones, but they're still pretty damn good. they have a taste akin to a good bbq chip (which, btw IMHO is hard to find) & the habanero flavor adds a nice kick to the mix. plus, with blue diamond almonds, as long as you're a fan of nuts & near-excessive flavoring, you really go wrong. they're tasty & relatively ok to consume, with their fiber & low carbs & whatnot. if you can find them wherever it is that you live, they're definitely worth checking out.

since i started dreaming of a more-promising 2010 months ago, i'm pairing the almonds with a bottle of tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale, made by harrisburg's tröegs brewing co. tröegs has been brewing out of PA's capital for the last decade plus & at the moment, they offer over a dozen beers, all with puntastic names & interestingly-designed labels. i've tried out a couple of their beers, including their sunshine pils, which i tried out back in april. although the sunshine pils was one of three tröegs beers that won a medal at this year's GABF & promised the sunshine of pils, i still felt pretty meh after drinking it. overall, from what i've sampled of their beers, they've been good but nothing special.

as for the dreamweaver, it promises dreams but was also fairly meh. the flavor's fine & all, but it's pretty much your average, everyday wheat bear with less of a cloudy, wheaty consistency than you'd expect from a good, quality wheat beer. i drank it relatively quickly & when i was done, i had trouble thinking of anything unique about what i'd just drank. their website mentions that is has a slight banana taste, which would have been unique, but i didn't notice it at all. it's also only 4.8% ABV, so if i was looking to get shnookered (fuck it, i'm on vacation!), i'd need to down a bunch of them to reach my goal. in this economically-challenged, post-9/11 world, having to do that somehow seems wasteful.

#139 - documenting genius.

since i'm a genius myself, i feel like i'm qualified to say that the best part about being one is that if you end up going off the rails at some point, there's a good chance that folks will just chalk it up to you being an eccentric, madcap intellectual & just let you be your babbling, holes-in-your-shoes self. my favorite type of insane genius is the mad, musical type, so over the past week i checked out two films that document the lives of two such geniuses--wesley willis & lil wayne.

the first film--wesley willis's joy rides--came out on dvd last week & to mark its release, pitchfork had it available for viewing all last week, so i checked it out. the film gives us a glimpse into the life of wesley willis, the late artist from chicago. willis, who was known as much for being a for being a 300-pound schizophrenic as he was for being a prolific artist, released hundreds of songs in his lifetime. they're all simple pop songs with simple, humorous & sometimes obscene lyrics that almost always end with a company's tagline. there's "northwest airlines," which ends with "american airlines. we mean business in chicago." there's "oprah winfrey," which ends with "johnny rockets. it's the original hamburger." there's his biggest hit--"rock n roll mcdonald's"--which ends with "wheaties. breakfast of champions." obviously.

in addition to his musical output, willis also did countless ink pen drawings of chicago as he saw it, usually in extremely intricate detail. the filmmakers speak with him a lot & it's obvious that he was troubled, consumed by demonic voices that "shouted profanity at him" & as he described it, took him on "hellrides." still, until he died of complications from leukemia, he was known as a jovial guy & a prolific artist & the film does a great job of capturing both that & his mental troubles.

the second film--the carter--came out on dvd a few weeks back. it follows lil wayne around during the time that his last album (the carter III) was released & is directed by adam bhala lough, whose 2002 film bomb the system focused on nyc graffiti & won some festival acclaim. he does a good enough job telling the story of lil wayne. i'm only familiar with wayne based on his prolific output over the last few years & although i like what i've heard, i've never been able to understand what all the hype was about. it was that sense of "seriously...why is this guy so huge?" that made the carter an interesting film for me.

from what i've heard of his music, his beats are kind of boring, but the dude has a ridiculously intelligent lyrical vocabulary & carries a recording setup with him wherever he goes. from what i've heard of his lifestyle, dude's smoking blunts & rapping 24-7 & artists who are never sober but still manage to be both good & prolific intrigue me. the film opens with a disclaimer that lil wayne refused to do a proper interview, but regardless, after 90 minutes of seeing him in hotel rooms & on the bus, i was left with the feeling that he really thinks that he's the best rapper alive & until somebody else puts as much passion into rapping as he does, i'm not going to argue with him or fault him for smoking blunts 24-7.

so why did i enjoy these two films so much? it's largely because i'm obsessed with music & a lot of what i enjoy is made by mad musical geniuses. although the documentary i recently watched about him was totally boring, pink floyd's syd barrett & his descent into LSD insanity both make me sad & curious. when i watched the devil & daniel johnston, i was more interested in why daniel johnston has become a disturbed cult musician than in his music. artists are generally off by nature & when i get to see what makes them tick, i can't help but think that if they were "normal," it just wouldn't be the same.

#139 - documenting genius.
snack: mcdonald's grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap
drink: dixie blackened voodoo lager



in honor of the late wesley willis & his undying love for rock n roll mcdonalds, tonight i'm snacking on a mcdonald's grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap. since wesley died in 2003 & the snack wrap wasn't introduced until 2006, he never got to sample the wonder of the mcdonald's snack wrap, but i'm sure he would've wrote a sweet song about it if he'd had the chance. it'd be all like "mcdonalds snack wrap. you are healthy to the max. i like to eat you. you go good with the rock" with his signature keyboards behind it. it'd be way better than any song mcdonald's has ever used in any of their ads.

the grilled chipotle bbq snack wrap...as a snack, it's aight. i've eaten a ton of them in my day & if i had to choose a favorite snack wrap, the grilled chipotle bbq one would definitely win. since it's built back on the mcdonald's assembly line, it never comes out looking as awesome as it looks in their ads & signage, but they slather it in bbq sauce & i can easily be distracted by the right amount of bbq sauce. on top of that, they put it in a wrap. if you've been following the trends of the past decade, you know that that means that it's exponentially healthier. as far as chicken goes, the meat's pretty white & essentially acceptable, although i just saw food inc this past weekend & i'm pretty sure that the chickens that gave their lives to make my snack wrap didn't enjoy a life of struttin' in the meadow.

to pay tribute to lil wayne, i'm washing down the snack wrap with a bottle of new orleans' own dixie blackened voodoo lager. i was planning on trying out drank, the "relaxation beverage" that helps you "slow your roll" & is named after the cough syrup & soda concoction popularized by rappers like lil wayne. i stopped into hundreds of bodegas & corner stores over the past week trying to locate a can of the stuff to no avail, so i picked up a bottle of the blackened voodoo instead. it's made by the dixie brewing co, a brewery that has been around for just over a hundred years but is in bad shape these days because of what katrina & the successive looting did to the brewery. apparently their website got looted too.

i first tried the blackened voodoo just after college, when i was living with this guy named dave who was a mad genius in his own right & one of the first people i knew who picked up six packs of good beer. at the time, i was more of a "twelve-pack of red dog" sort of guy, but dave would occasionally come home with six packs of stuff like the blackened voodoo & offer a few up while we sat around & talked about the mysteries of bog butter. i remembered the blackened voodoo being a lot darker & blacker, but it's actually a dark brown sort of color & is smoother than i remembered. i'm probably just remembering it that way because i like to think that my past was darker than it actually was though. after all...a dark past is a sign of a true genius.

the musical fruit: movement #21.

the musical fruit: movement #21.
song: "zombie," the cranberries
fruit: cranberries

a lot of irish music makes me want to smash a fiddle, but ireland's produced its fair share of musicians over the years. u2 is definitely the biggest of them all, but there are a handful of other notable ones out there, from indie acts like my bloody valentine, ash or the divine comedy to older acts like thin lizzy & the pogues. people seem to enjoy snow patrol quite a bit. back in the 90s, there was the pope pic tearing shenanigans of sinead o'connor & there was the cranberries, who rose to prominence on the back of their 1993 single "linger," off their debut album, everybody else is doing it, so why can't we? it came out when i was a senior in high school & believe me, i got a lot of comedy mileage out of reworking the lyrics so it became a song about farts.

their follow up album, no need to argue, features the only song by the cranberries that i can actually stand--"zombie." it's a protest song & whereas most of their songs are totally wussy & the only thing cool about them is lead singer dolores o'riordan's accent, "zombie" is a total rocker. it starts off all slow like but builds into a rocking chorus where she's saying "zom-bay" over & over again & heavy guitars chug along. the video has a bunch of dirty kids in it, which is sort of cool. it all added up to the song reaching #1 on the billboard modern rock charts, which, for comparison, is a title currently held by muse. after a few more albums, o'riordan went solo, but come november 12th, the cranberries are back together & heading out on the road for their first full tour since 2002. they're in nyc the day after my bday, but it's totally sold out. looks like a lot of people still like the taste of the cranberries.

as a fruit, cranberries are pretty cool, but you usually have to do something to them before you eat them like mash them into a sauce or put them in a juice or dry them out or something. i found this box of dried cranberries on the wall next to me whilst waiting in line at the times sq walgreens, so i decided to go the dried route & wait until thanksgiving for the sauced kind. $1? hellz yeah. i can swing that. i'm not sure what's up with the box looking all trapezoid warped in the photo though. in real life, that box has a lot more right angles to it. when i opened the box, it sort of looked like i had a box full of red beetles, but they're moist & sweetened & actually pretty tasty, especially considering that they're the walgreens store brand.

i don't want to get bogged down in the details, but there are a lot of reasons to like cranberries. for starters, cranberry sauce rules. then there's the cool way that they're harvested. rather than just picking them off the vines, cranberry growers flood the cranberry beds & scoop up the fruit. in juice form, cranberries go well with pretty much any other fruit. they have antioxidants & whatnot, so if you're looking to beat a drug test, cranberry juice is your best friend. they're a huge thing in massachusetts, especially on cape cod, where the cape cod cranberry growers' association oversees over 300 cranberry growers. good stuff. in closing, this thanksgiving, i urge you to get totally sauced in honor of the cranberry.