#101 - drrrty.

yr so drrrty! yeah, manhattan, i'm talking to you. don't act like you didn't hear me. i know you're leaps & bounds cleaner that you used to be, but there are still friggin' bags of trash everywhere all the time & inadequate trash cans on your streets & the S-M-O-G & FIFTEEN swine flu deaths. i swear i sucked in a radioactive gas & a tapeworm in times sq the other day. hey brooklyn! for the most part, you're cleaner than manhattan but i'm keeping an eye on you. don't think i haven't noticed all that dog poop on the park slope sidewalks.

when it comes to thinking about where i'd like to finally put down roots, i'm a wavering individual. i've lived in nyc for more than any other locale besides nh (sorry, boston) & love it here, but sometimes, the urbanness of the city really gets to me.  i can easily escape into prospect park if i want nature, but i don't know if i could buy some property & settle down here because i could never sit on my back porch & gaze off into the silence of the vast woods behind me.  as i get older, that might be integral toward keeping my sanity intact.

...but new york has so much cool crap going on all the time.  how could i leave that behind?  there's an abundance of bands & live shows here & speaking of dirty, i gave the new album by brooklyn's dirty projectors (bitte orca, which came out last week) a good listening to this weekend.  a few weeks ago, i finally gave their previous album, 2007's rise above (an album that's an attempt to recreate black flag's damaged without having heard it for fifteen years) a listen.  HATED IT.  this new album's good though.  the songs are a bit more structured but still have some obvious jangliness to them.  they bring the rock, so the kids can probably dig this a bit more than the previous album.

speaking of dirty...real dirty, can we talk about porn star sasha grey (NSFW) for a moment?  she stars as a call girl in steven soderbergh's new film, the girlfriend experience, so i've been coming across articles about her here & there.  rolling stone did an article on her entitled "the dirtiest girl in the world."  i read it over a series of trips to the can & the one thing that i can't shake from my head is the mention of her debut porn scene, where she asked her co-star to punch her in the stomach...basically, she's friggin' dirty.  she wants girls to know that it's OK to be a slut.  she reads neitschze & brecht.  she just turned 21 back in march.  now she's the star of the new soderbergh film.  i'm intrigued, so i probably have to see it, no matter how dirty it makes me feel.

#101 - drrrty.
snack: food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips
drink: function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink



since i believe that food should taste good, the other day, i picked up a bag of, um...food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips, which were conveniently discounted at one of the better-than-average neighborhood supermarkets. based in needham heights (just outside boston), food should taste good is a brand started by some dude named pete lescoe back in 2006. his secret? he bakes the ingredients right into the chips. genius.

it makes for a really flavorful chip & they even have a little spicy kick to them, since there are jalapenos baked right in. they're the sort of tortilla chips that are just fine sans salsas & guacs & dips & whatnot. if that sounds yumtastic to you, they have a $1 off coupon on the website. all you have to do to get it is join their fan club. since all i do every weekday when i'm on the clock is work on fan clubs, i went for it & joined. to be honest, i'm not sure what it gets me other than a spot on the mailing list & this coupon...now i just need to find me a bag of the chocolate kind so i can redeem this puppy. tasty discounted chips rule!

after being in the city all week for work, i spent my weekend exclusively in brooklyn, but still needed to wash the city away, so with the chips, i cracked open a bottle of function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink. it includes the "smog-scrubbing" super-antioxidant N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), which is apparently "designed to evict the free radicals hanging out in (my) lungs and sinuses." if there's one thing i loathe, it's free radicals in my respiratory system, especially them hippie greenwich village radicals.  they should lock em all up, i tell ya. scrub this city clean.

anyway, the urban detox is made with science!...& prickly pears! dangerously spiky tasty prickly pears!  get this...the prickly pear isn't a pear at all.  it's actually a cactus!  that's right.  i drank a cactus.  i'm not afraid to get down & dirty for the blog, drink a little cactus for my readers.  i'm crazy like that.  only in new york!