#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.

the musical fruit: movement #3.

the musical fruit: movement #3.
song: "fee," phish (camden, nj - 07.06.09)
fruit: nectarine



as i'd mentioned a little while back, i rekindled the college years back in the beginning of june by going to back-to-back phish shows in mansfield, ma & camden, nj. the camden show was my favorite of the two, as they busted out a bunch of the old faves like "guyute," "lizards," "tweezer," & "wolfman's brother." after opening the show with "chalkdust torture," they moved on to "fee," the opening song on their first album, junta. as slightly shaky live footage from that night shows, phishheads went nuts when they broke into the song & went even more nuts when during the second verse, trey totally forgot the lyrics.

those lyrics tell the story of a weasel named fee ("a buddhist prodigy long past the age of maturity"), milly (the woman he loves, "a gospel singer with pocks on her face") & floyd (a chimpanzee who "was jealous and alone" & "wanted milly for his own"). as the story goes, floyd tracks fee & milly down on a ship, where they're on a "lover's trek." floyd goes after fee with a bottle & milly comes to fee's defense. her weapon, which she slams floyd in the face with...a nectarine. it's such a powerful nectarine that floyd is knocked over the edge of the ship & eventually plummets into the water, allowing fee to be "finally free." it's a touchingly joyous multianimal love story that phish has been telling for over twenty years now & i've been jamming to pretty regularly over the last two months.

tonight, in honor of fee's triumph, i'm having a nectarine for dessert. in the interest of full disclosure, i'm not the person you want to ask to pick a nectarine out of a fictional fruit lineup, especially if those who set up the lineup also toss a peach into the mix. in fact, during the fruit run where i procured tonight's nectarine, i also bought a peach. when it came time for nectarine snacking, the only way i could tell the difference was the tiny labels affixed to their respective skins. in the future, i'll just i have to recall that peaches have the furrier exterior of the two. as long as some other fun fact doesn't push that one out of my phish-rattled brain, it's all good.

once i'd cut up my nectarine & started popping slices into my mouth, my taste buds were all "oh c'mon. this is so a peach. it's got the pit, the yellow-orange fruit with stains around the pit--the whole shebang." this led to an interweb research tangent & the discovery that nectarines are actually a subset of the peach. well there you have it, reader. now that i know that, i feel much better about the whole thing. it means that i can eat one or the other despite the differences between their skins, because they're essentially the same on the inside. that's right...fruit tastiness isn't just skin-deep.

#98 - phish jam.

back in the nineties, i was friggin' addicted to neo-hippie jam bands. among the percy hills, strangefolks, god street wines, blues travelers, dave matthews bands & aquarium rescue units, my favorite band of them all was clearly phish. i was quite fond of waxing on about their musical talent & even went as far as to write a paper on my all time favorite phish song (harry hood) for my music & society course at b.u. it detailed their use of a fugue in the song. during the decade, i went to thirteen shows, all here in the northeast corridor, last seeing them with a group of high school & college friends back in august of '98 at the two-day great went festival, way the f up in limestone, maine. out of my friends, i was one of three who neglected to bring a tent to the festival because "it's august. it'll be fine to sleep out under the stars." turns out that when you're that close to canada, it gets down into the fifties at night. we slept shivering in my friend's truck. a few weeks later, i moved to sunny florida.

i never saw phish play during the period after that, when they headed downhill & eventually broke up, so my image of them might be a bit less tainted than others. when they got their collective shit together & reunited this march, i figured i had to see them when they came around. since circumstances meant they were playing two shows semi-locally (mansfield, ma & camden, nj) over this past weekend & circumstances also allowed me to see them for free, i couldn't pass up the opportunity.

my journey started on friday, when i took the day off to head up to the parow estate in nh. my brooklyn brother was also going up to nh for the weekend for a friend's 30th, so we were going to try to catch a fung wah together, but weren't sure if meeting up was going to work. about a half hour before i needed to catch the bus, i got into the city & gave bro a call...no answer...so i headed to the ATM to re-up. after transacting, i left the bank & turned the corner down toward canal. as i did, i noticed some kid walking toward me wearing a shirt with the letters ΧΦ (my college fraternity) on them. this caught my attention long enough for me to basically walk straight into my brother, who was randomly crossing my path to go to an ATM, unaware that i was standing there. who says that banking doesn't bring people together?

on saturday, i had to meet friends in boston for a carpool to mansfield for the show, so i left the parents & headed over to salem to pick up a rental. when i got there, there was this short, cute girl working at the counter who totally matched the voice that'd confirmed my reservation the day before. she asked me who my "employer" was & i said "live nation" & this led to me mentioning that i was renting the car to go to the phish show & she was "so jealous" because she wanted to see them (but at least she got to see DMB) & i cringed inside but didn't hold it against her, because well...she was short & cute. long story short...she talked me into the insurance coverage.

we got to the lot around 2pm for the 7pm show & basically hung out all day in the sun/shade, drinking beers, grillin' & shooting the proverbial shit. somewhere, there is now a blinding picture of me & leduc with our shirts off, taking in rays. good times. the show itself started out with a slow first set, but the second set ruled, with songs such as fluffhead, the aforementioned harry hood, possum & contact. on sunday, i got up early to catch a fung wah & make my way back to the city to meet a friend in jersey & drive down to scenic camden for the next show. once my dad dropped me off in boston & drove away, i realized i'd left my cell phone & ipod in his car. awesome. after a frantic fifteen minutes, i miraculously reached him, he returned to save the day & i made my scheduled departure. unfortunately, when i arrived in brooklyn, i realized that some time the day before, i had lost the keys to my apartment & was locked out until at least after the show. double awesome.

as for the camden show, i hung out with a younger friend from the college fraternity, someone i don't think i'd ever really hung out with. we went with his cool canadian girlfriend & a girl from one of ΧΦ's favorite sororities--ΔΓ. she was cool too & although she was fond of occasionally asking me to hold her drink, she made my non-feet moving phish dancing even more fun than usual. at one point before the show, my older cousin stopped by in the lot & we hung out for the first time in years. as for the show, it was the better of the two this weekend, as they played an inordinate amount of tasty songs--lizards, fee, tweezer, chalkdust torture, run like an antelope. i've been listening to mp3s of the show constantly today. they were just as good as i remember them & when combined with all the hang time i got with peeps & all the random interactions i had with strangers, it made for a solid weekend. call me an old neo-hippie, but i had a smile on my face pretty much the entire time. it was totally like "wow," man.

#98 - phish jam.
snack: cvs fruit & nut medley
drink: sync berry-cherry vitamin water



on sunday, i grabbed a bag of cvs fruit & nut medley to snack on throughout the day, figuring that snack mix was a relatively healthy way to keep from starving in the lot. as it ended up, i ate other stuff & forgot about them in my bag until the ride home after the show. when i discovered them in my bag around midnight, it was like the best ninja surprise ever...next to the ninja surprise i got when my new found dancing partner friend fell asleep on the ride home & eventually leaned on/drove her head into my arm. oh you crazy tired, drunken girls. what will we do with you?

so the snack mix...i decided to go with the fruit & nut medley because i wasn't in the mood for the other, m&m containing kind they had at cvs. the medley's made up of pineapple, mango flavored pineapple, raisins, almonds, banana chips, yogurt covered raisins, cranberries & cashews. i like all those things, especially when they're together in a resealable pouch.

this weekend, i made sure to complement the copious amounts of beer with a ton of water, adding a couple vitamin waters into the mix on each day. on saturday, i tried one of vitamin water's newer flavors, the sync berry-cherry vitamin water. it's all hip & shit, with a myspace partnership that gives me a free music download at amazon for buying it! the myspace partnership also highlights a bunch of myspacey acts & a few big acts like 50 cent (obviously), alicia keys, carrie underwood & chris paul. it's sad that 50 cent's my favorite out of that group of artists.

anyway, i do declare that i really enjoy the berry-cherry flavor, despite all the lame copy on the label, copy that offers promises of "sync(ing) up with your daily download of key vitamins & antioxidants." whatever. it tastes like cherries & berries and has a bunch of vitamins & sugars & junk, so it definitely helped with the weekend hydration, but i'm not going to try to tie that to downloading music.  synergistic branding should be taken only so far & not a step further. i don't care how community 2.0 they think they are. thanks for the free download though!  i'm going to get back to my regular musical environment & download me some indie rock now.