nosh nook #157 - tuesday, october 20, 2009

a new coke? well, it's smaller (link)
10.19.09 - the washington post - by jane black

aren't tiny things TOTALLY THE BEST? babies? usually cuter than regular humans. pygmy pot bellied pigs? best pet ever. the mini me guy? one of the great actors of our time. frosted mini wheats? shit. do they even make non-mini wheats any more? it's just a fact of life. tinier = awesomer. trust me, nobody would have paid any attention to gary coleman if he was 6'2". it's indisputable. coca-cola's no dummy, so later this year, they're bringing their version of tiny to the world of soda.

the washington post reports that in december, coca-cola will be releasing 7.5 ounce cans of coke in nyc & d.c. before releasing them nationwide in march & rolling out 7.5 ounce versions of their other products. since we americans are a bunchy of fatties, it's coca-cola's way of helping us "manage (our) calorie intake while still enjoying the beverages (we) love," with only 90 calories per can. that's less than half the calories of a regular can of coke. btw, coca-cola, you can use that line in your ad campaigns if you like, free of charge from eat!drink!snack!

in addition to the tiny lil cans, coca-cola's doing a number of things to encourage healthy lifestyles among their consumers. just a few days ago, they "joined other food manufacturers to launch the healthy weight commitment foundation, which aims to educate parents, teachers and children about 'energy balance.'" i can see the literature now..."it's ok if your child drinks fifty cans of coke a day because they'll be so full of energy that they'll run those calories right off. sponsored by coca-cola." the day after setting up the foundation, coca-cola "announced a partnership with the american academy of family physicians 'to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners.'" i remain skeptical about how genuine they are about people's health. maybe if they took HFCS out of their american beverages, i'd could start taking them seriously.

#128 - i tallyin'?

hey, remember that show the sopranos? yeah. me too. i was a definite latecomer to it. i heard enough about it when it was on the air, but other than a few months in boston a few years back, i never had hbo, so my opportunities for keeping up with it were essentially nil, especially in that pre-itunes era. i eventually got around to watching the entire series straight through from beginning to end over a two week period about two years ago, shortly after the series had already ended. it's been a while since then, so over the past week, inspired by a stumbled-upon beverage, i went back & watched both parts of the final season, the one with that infamous final scene.

like i mentioned, i initially watched all six seasons of the show (with the split sixth season, sort of like seven seasons, but who's tallyin'?) straight through in a mad dash, so i was devouring a lot of character & story info at once. this time round, going in, i knew there'd be a ton of things i hadn't noticed or comprehended the first time through. i was definitely watching more from an entertainment perspective that first time through, so i was ready to analyze away & let the critic in me spill out this time. after all, with twenty-one episodes in the season, there's a lot of story packed in there.

take the soprano family. while i could care less about meadow going to college or carmela's spec house, the relationship between tony & a.j. during the last season is nothing short of awesome. as tony struggles to maintain his power as head of the dimeo crime family, a.j.'s struggling against a crushing depression that flies in the face of what tony thinks makes a "man." although our circumstances were less extreme & my dad worked at the post office, i couldn't help but think of my own struggles connecting with him when i watched them interact.

when the show was in its original run, there was an obvious fixation on "who's gonna get whacked this week?" in that final season, it takes seven episodes for anyone significant to get whacked & other than one other major whacking a few episodes later, the first half of the season's virtually whack free. looking back at how the season plays out, the lack of solid whacking during the first half definitely makes the second half whackings all that more powerful.

with less whacking, there's even more focus on the family than usual. sorry. i just wanted to use the words "whacking" & "focus on the family" in the same sentence. there's always been a focus on the soprano family, but in the final season, there's a lot of focus on how vito's coming out affects his family, how chris deals with his dead wife & new wife/baby, how paulie handles finding out who his real mom is, how bobby still struggles for respect even though he's tony's brother-in-law & the effects that johnny sack's prison sentence & cancer have on his family.

if you haven't seen the last two episodes yet & still want to, sorry but i'm going to speak to them now. you need to get with the times. it's been over two years since the last episode aired. in the penultimate episode, the scenes where the lupertazzi family quickly whack bobby & leave sil in a coma are epic. we spent eighty-four episodes getting to know them (but who's tallyin'?), so the raw violence of their deaths is SO powerful, especially with bobby, who's nice to a fault & has only killed one person in his life. as for the last episode & specifically the final scene, it's been analyzed to death, so i'm not going to get into all the symbolism & whatnot, but given two things--there's a sketchy dude who goes into the bathroom to tony's right shortly before the scene cuts to black & there was a scene in the opening episode of the second half of the season where bobby asks tony "you probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?"--i've decided that tony got whacked at the end of the episode. mystery solved.

#128 - i tallyin'?
snack: marinated mozzarella balls & boar's head beef salami
drink: sopranos chianti soda



with all that sopranos, i felt it appropriate to eat like a soprano. i would've picked up some gabba goul or made some lincoln logs if i knew what the hell either of them were, so instead, i picked up a tub of marinated mozzarella balls & a half pound of boar's head beef salami from the corner bodega. at first, i asked if they had capicola, not realizing that the dudes are muslim & don't serve any pork. my bad...& a happy ramadan to you, sir. instead, the deli dude suggested that i get some of the boar's head beef salami, so i did. i don't need to be eating pork anyhow. as for the marinated mozzarella balls, i made the decision to get them all by myself. my mom would've been quite proud of me.

beef salami's way different than regular salami. they aren't even close to the same thing. regular salami's spicy & sausagelike, all flecked with pork fat & herbs & spices. the beef salami's essentially a bunch of beef shaped like salami, with no spices or fatty deposits or anything built in. that doesn't mean i didn't like it though. it actually has a sweeter taste to it & when you wrap a slice around one of the mozzarella balls, the sweet beefy salami flavor melds with the oil & sun-dried tomato & spices of the mozzarella marinade. it's actually quite the delightful snack. in fact, i've already gone back to the bodega for more twice this week.

i came across the bottle of sopranos chianti soda last week whilst at eagle provisions, the polish market with a huge beer selection a few blocks from my place, up on 5th ave. it's one of three sopranos-themed sodas put out by hbo, along with the limencello & amaretto flavors. at first, i thought that the bottle, which has a 2006 HBO copyright on the back, might be some relic from the bush era, but the sopranos soda seems to still available for sale online, so i told myself that it was still relatively fresh. other than being italian soda, i'm not sure where the connection to the sopranos is, since i can't remember seeing anyone drink an italian soda at any point on the show. maybe i should check out the deleted scenes in the box set just to be sure.

i drank it during my first night of episodes, when nobody was getting whacked. it was a fitting beverage for the first half of the season...sort of. the first half was laid back, with the limited whacking & character exploration. the chianti soda was laid back as well, but in a less cool way. i've had my fair share of the archer farms (target) brand italian sodas & those things are the bomb. you'd think that a soda infused with the spirit of italian wine & gangsters would be a little more hardcore, but the sopranos soda's far from it. it was essentially like drinking a bottle of watery, over-sweetened juice with minimal carbonation. i hope i don't get whacked for saying this, but just like with david chase & tony's fate, i'm going to leave the other two sopranos soda flavors to the imagination. here's to hbo redeeming itself with the tru blood beverage, which will be available next monday. you'd better believe i'm going to drink hbo's blood.

nosh nook #128 - wednesday, september 9, 2009

gamer grub and mtn dew game fuel (link)
09.08.09 - the onion a.v. club - by josh modell

you have to admit, i'm a pretty funny guy. i have to admit, if you don't, i'll feel funny, like you're not at least trying to humor me about my humor. it's not like i'll go into a corner & cry or something if you don't, but i will spend the next three hours telling jokes to myself in the mirror so that next time you see me, i'll be able to wow you with the funny. if you still don't find me funny at that point, frankly, there's nothing that i or anyone can do for you. your heart is clearly surrounded by layer upon layer of ice.

i mean, not everybody can live up to the onion's high standard of humor. case in point, their extremely funny, sort of eat!drink!snack! style article penned by josh modell that discusses the snack/drink combo of gamer grub & mtn dew game fuel. both products are aimed towards gamers & came from the idea that "ultra hardcore gamers love to be marketed to, and there was nothing that directly said, 'hey, bug-eyes. here’s some sustenance to help you play world of warcraft better, faster, and longer.'" modell notes that MOB gaming (the game grub) & pepsico (the game fuel) realized that in gamers, they had a gold mine on their hands. after all, WOW games "sell more copies than there are humans on earth, and the money they generate could power the sun." i always wondered what made the sun tick. now i know.

he sampled two different varieties of the gamer grub snack mix--pizza and pb&j--for the article. the pizza version "most assuredly does not taste like pizza" & contains crazy fictional items such as "tomato almonds" & "pizza cashews." the pb&j version "is just too damn weird," with "strawberry jelly chips and sweet bread." he even let folks around the office try the gamer grub, eliciting a pretty thumbs down sample of reactions such as "i could see a n00b eating this, but in general, it’s just a big pile of fail. pwned." ha. n00b. pwned.

as for the mtn dew, modell makes a good point about the sweetly abbreviated name--"who the fuck has the time to say 'mountain'?" not me. he tried both the red & blue flavors, but surprisingly "when you mix them together, they turn a ghastly shade of green--which makes no sense in nature." luckily, he works with scientists & one of them hypothesized that "the reason the two colors made green doesn’t actually have anything to do with the color wheel; the combination of the two actually just created nuclear waste." created nuclear waste? mtn dew is nuclear waste.

nosh nook #125 - friday, september 4, 2009

an off-putting brew with extra hops (link)
09.03.09 - the new zealand herald - from ap

every once in while, you unexpectedly come across nature in your food. you're happily chomping away at your salad & upon lifting up a piece of lettuce, discover there's some sort of african worm hiding under there. or...you get your greasy ass chinese food home, sit down in front of the tv & dig on in. half way through you notice what is most likely a millipede cooked into your wonton. you're pretty sure it's a millipede, but you can't find the other half. "excuse me waiter. there's a fly in my soup. what's he doing there?" waiter leans in to examine. "i believe he's doing the backstroke." etc etc. there was that dude a few months back who swore he found a snake head in his jersey t.g.i. friday's broccoli. luckily, i've never had anything more than a fly in a dish.

it happened to a dude in florida & since it's one of those "tales from the wacky," the new zealand herald picked it up. an off-putting brew with extra hops! ha! as the story goes, back in late july florida resident fred dinegri was out grilling & grabbed himself a pepsi. when he cracked the can open & took a swig, he got a secret prize inside all cracker jack style, but in a freaky way. at first he thought it was a rodent but after further examination, determined that it was a frog/toad...& not the cool kind you kiss to become a princess. oh man. i'd be HOPPING mad if that ever happened to me. 

pepsi spokesman jeff dahncke calls bullshit. he was quoted as saying that "the speed of production lines and rigorous quality control made it impossible for a frog or toad to get into a can." "denegri said he was certain the animal was in the can before he opened it." the FDA says it's the real thing. who do you believe? a corporation or a citizen & the government? maybe that frog was really fast! i looked at the picture (NSFW) & whatever it is, it's nasty. if it is a frog, it is a former frog.

#97 - hey, good lookin'.

man. when i was growing up & reached that late junior high age when i became conscious of how i looked & what clothes i was wearing & started developing a sense of "cool," i was a friggin' nut job about my appearance. it was a weird time, a time when i would often obsess about my level of popularity, which now, looking back on it, i assess as "not cool. not loser." considering that my parents were middle class folks who both worked but had to support three kids, they did a pretty good job of catering to random my brand whims & style choices.

since an appealing face & environs are a clear asset for coolness, having the kind of skin that clearasil marketing execs probably masturbate about at night was a constant teenage frustration of mine. i fought through it with a series of distracting, often-feathered hairstyles, sometimes with pieces on the side shaved out of them. part way through high school, i picked myself up an earring too. that was pretty cool. if the hole hasn't closed up, maybe i can start rocking that look again.

i rolled through a blur of ocean pacific shirts, guess jeans, z cavarrici & skidz pants & a countless number of other name-brand-of-the-moment garments.  when i first started working, during the year when the chicago white sox changed their colors to black & white, i spent half a week's paycheck on one of their jerseys...& then wore it to my job, in a print shop, with full-on printing presses & whatnot, ruining it within a week.

i had both a sweet black adidas jacket & a long-ass trench coat that i wore with a big gold chain...right around the time i got caught trying to steal kid n play's 2 hype from lechmere (r.i.p.).  structure (now express mens) was my go-to store for a while.  i've since met a handful of gay men who shop there, so i know i was stylish.  hell, my first (insane) girlfriend even bought me this classy watch with a face that looked like stone.  when i wanted to check what time it was, i did so in style.

for kicks, after a phase where i rocked boat shoes with pegged pants, i moved onto soccer shoes (diadoras, adidas gazelles) with pegged pants.  i wore my fair share of basketball sneakers too.  shit.  now the only time i buy new shoes (or new clothes, for that matter) is when they get holes in them.  note to self: go shoe shopping ASAP.

#97 - hey, good lookin'.
snack: stretch island mango sunrise fruit leather
drink: fanta orange soda



in honor of that awesome brown leather jacket from structure that i wore for a few years back in the day when i was a teenager (before i had status & before i had a pager), tonight's snack is a stretch island mango sunrise fruit leather. i feel like sort of a slacker. i've consumed an elephant's worth of fruit roll-ups in my day, but oddly enough, have never actually eaten any fruit leather until now. it's not like fruit leather is some crazy new snack. stretch island fruit co. is almost as old as i am, having been started back in '76 on stretch island, just west of tacoma, wa.

i have to say, after all those years of fruit roll-ups, i now know what i was missing by forgoing the fruit leather. whereas a fruit roll-up is super stretchy & can be easily balled up into a projectile, the stretch island fruit leather has a firmness to it. when you bite into it, you actually bite off a definitive piece. they're only made with four ingredients--concentrates of apple puree, mango puree & lemon juice and natural mango flavor. with no added sugars or anything, it has a clean, mangoey taste & like i've stated before, i love mangoes...especially when combined with a sunrise.

to balance out the stretch island fruit co. fruit naturalness, i decided to have some manufactured fruitiness in my beverage, so i went with a fanta orange soda. there are natural flavors in it, but there's also HFCS & sodium benzoate, modified food starch, sodium polyphosphates, glycerol ester of rosin & some artificial colors. i can feel the plastics forming in my stomach! on an anniversarial note, june is the month that fanta was introduced to the u.s., way back in 1960.  looks like somebody turns fifty next year!

the orange flavor's ok, but i feel like i'm getting a bit short changed.  they used to have all sorts of crazy fanta flavors, flavors like red cream & iced tea. they even had a collins mixer. now, the most exotic they get is an apple flavor (which i must get my hands on).  the game is afoot!  anyway, you must excuse me now.  i need to go scrub the fanta from what's left of my teeth.  gotta look good, you know?