#95 - hello brooklyn 4.0.

"new york new york it's a hell of a town. the bronx is up and i'm brooklyn down."

...so said the beastie boys, twenty years ago in their song "hello brooklyn," a short track off of paul's boutique. then in '07, jay-z & lil wayne sampled the song & came out with "hello brooklyn 2.0," part of jay-z's 2007 concept album american gangster, an album inspired by but not actually part of the film american gangster. yesterday, i came across "hello brooklyn 3.0," a remix of the song by someone who's recomposing jay-z songs. i actually prefer it to the first two incarnations. here, i present to you "hello brooklyn 4.0." it ain't a remix of a damn thing.

i've been living in brooklyn for seven plus years now in a couple of different hoods--midwood, kensington & greenwood heights (so fancy sounding!). there's no doubt that brooklyn's hoods each have distinct feels to them, are dominated by specific racial groups & economic levels, have types of businesses & people that make them stand out from the rest. there are the hip hoods--park slope, williamsburg, cobble hill. there are the up-and-coming/gentrifying hoods--bushwick, prospect heights, red hook. there are the hoods i wouldn't walk through at most hours of the day--canarsie, east new york, brownsville.

as i've mentioned before, my neighborhood has a large spanish-speaking population, but twenty and thirty-somethings are moving into the neighborhood in increasing numbers. it's all a part of the gentrification of brooklyn, as us white folk deploy operation snowflake throughout the borough.  still, there are a solid number of spanish-owned & spanish-owned businesses in the hood.

it makes me think of an npr story i heard this past week on talk of the nation, where a maggie anderson, a black woman in oak park (a suburb bordering the west side of chicago) is performing "the empowerment experiment."  as part of it, for the last five months, her & her family have only shopped at black-owned businesses, as a way to point out that there aren't enough black-owned businesses, especially in hoods with large black populations.  it's her hope that in doing so, she'll make folks aware that black-owned businesses empower black communities.  here in new york, it's a little bit better in some neighborhoods, but i can't think of one black-owned business within a ten-block radius of my apartment...mostly spanish and asian-owned businesses. i guess that's because we're west of flatbush ave.

#95 - hello brooklyn 4.0.
snack: chidos chile y limon chicharrones
drink: olde brooklyn greenpoint grape soda



since i was snack shopping in my neighborhood, i picked up a bag of chidos chile y limon chicharrones, a producto mexicano. i'm sorry to report that the best thing about these "chips" is the packaging. those mexican mice on the front of the bag are pretty much the most colorful, excitedly happy cartoon mice i've ever seen. that mouse down in the bottom left corner, with his festive hat & twirly moustache, makes jerry look like droopy for christos' sake.

they're fried flour chips, which is interesting texture & crunchwise, but the flavor is sort of pungent. i tried to muscle through it, but the citrus smell & taste that the lime flavor gives off is reminiscent of a household cleaner. as for the chile flavor, it's no more than a few red colored, slightly noticeable specks scattered about. the worst part about them is that some pieces have, through the frying process, developed a plastic-like strip on the top. if you're like me & prefer to be able to just wolf down one after another of your snacks without having to look down & reject those not fit for consumption, the chicharrones will be rather disappointing.

for my drink, i'm having an olde brooklyn greenpoint grape soda that i picked up at the grocery store the other day. they don't actually come from brooklyn. they're named after brooklyn neighborhoods but made in whitestone, ny, which is the northernmost neighborhood in queens, even further north than shea stadium & laguardia. that's like connecticut, for cryin' out loud.

there's the bay ridge birch beer, the red hook raspberry, the brighton beach black cherry...as for the greenpoint grape, it's named for the neighborhood just north of williamsburg that has a population dominated by both polish folks & hipsters. i guess they drink grape soda there sometimes. my bro lives there, but he's diabetic & has to stick to diet sodas, so he doesn't drink much grape soda. i'm pretty sure there's not much of a market for the diet variety overall.

as to the taste, i drank the entire bottle without noticing, but i have to emphasize the "not noticing" part. the flavor was average.  the carbonation was average.  as a grape soda, it's acceptable, but as it is, i don't really go crazy for grape soda. that's more of an east of flatbush ave sort of thing.  supposedly, they love grape soda over in those parts...that & the olde brooklyn flatbush orange soda.

#94 - believe it or not!

sixty years ago today, the world lost one of its great cartoonist/anthropologist/oddity enthusiasts when mr robert ripley, the creator of ripley's believe it or not, passed away. during the recording of the thirteenth episode (freaky!) of the first incarnation of his tv show--an episode about death (spooky!)--he passed out & was soon dead of a heart attack. during his life, he started as a cartoonist & through it, became a curious world traveler, had a long-running radio show & iconic tv show and launched a now well-known international brand.

the ripley franchise is still alive & kicking. after ripley's death, the tv show returned in 1982 with jack palance (creepy!) as the host. it lasted for over four years before going off the air & was later revived in 2000, with the awful dean cain as the host. that lasted almost as long as the previous incarnation. the cartoon is still going, syndicated in over 200 papers worldwide. in fact, today's is about a fish called "danionella dracula!" believe it or not!

ripley's also has thirty-five ripley's believe it or not "odditoriums" all over the world, allowing tourists to connect with crazy crap. the first odditorium opened in chicago in 1933 (great depression be damned!) & nowadays, there's even one in kuwait. believe it or not! there's one here in nyc, right in times sq, a few buildings down from my office, but that'd involve mingling with tourists & the tickets are friggin' $26.95! believe it or not!

jim carrey's attached to do a film about ripley's life. tim burton was originally attached to direct, which would have basically guaranteed awesomeness, but he's since moved on & it looks like chris columbus has taken over. i liked his work with the nina, pinta & santa maria. also with goonies & gremilns. jim carrey's been good before, so if it finally gets made, there's a chance it'll be a pretty sweet movie, especially since according to the bio right there on the ripley website, robert ripley was "a notorious ladies man, at times housing up to five or more live-in girlfriends at a time." believe it or not!

#94 - believe it or not!
snack: hershey's dark chocolate with pomegranate
drink: pepsi throwback



tonight's snack of choice is a bar of hershey's dark chocolate with pomegranate. apparently, you can put pomegranate in anything. you can also--if you're hershey's--create a pomegranate flavor by combining the juices of pomegranates, cranberries, apple juice, pineapple & elderberries, forming them into non-descript chewy pieces & cramming them into a dark chocolate bar.

it has a strong fruit smell to it. nothing disgusting...just very noticeable. the flavor's pretty good, but since i'll essentially eat anything with dark chocolate & fruit or fruitesque substances, that's not saying much.

in honor of the old-timey feel that seems to permeate the ripley's franchise, we're jumping in the ol' wayback machine for tonight's beverage--a pepsi throwback. it's made with pepsi's retro formula, where they take out the evil HFCS & replace it with natural sugar, just like they used to do back in the sixties & seventies. it's perfectly positioned for a big summer marketing campaign.

it's only around for a limited time, which is a shame. it tastes way better than the current pepsi formula & it's better for you, so it makes no sense for them to go back to the HFCS, but they will. as a friend recently explained to me, she just discovered something interesting about coca-cola in germany...they don't use HFCS in it. lucky for us here in the U.S., corn farm subsidies are huge, so we can pump out all the HFCS our pop-guzzling hearts desire.

until they discontinue the pepsi throwback formula, you can enjoy the retro taste & as a bonus, also enjoy their...um...retro internet site. it's totally out of sight & has far out features like throwback blog wallpapers & twitter page backgrounds. can you dig it? it has a jive talk dictionary, which i'm obviously already putting to good use. there's also a video page, full of dy-no-mite! commercials like this one featuring a pepsi throwback & a fondue pot:

i saw that i was all "what the fuck was that?" it's so unbelievable. anyway, i'll catch all you jive turkeys on the flip side...gotta go get my groove on.

#89 - sweet romance.

last night, i was doing the internet chat with a certain friend in germany & she was looking for a romantic comedy to watch. eventually, she settled on marley & me, starring jennifer aniston, owen wilson & a naughty dog. personally, the closest i get to watching romantic comedies are films with michael cera or seth rogen. today, to avoid the rain falling outside, i checked out nick & norah's infinite playlist, starring cera & the sometimes hot kat dennings & an infinite playlist. ellen page was nowhere to be found.

as a supporter of all things indie rock & skewly arrested development-related, going in, the film could've had michael cera sitting around in his apartment with any cute girl listening to british sea power for ninety minutes & it would have been fine with me. over the past few years, i've been a big believer in indie rock as a great catalyst for bringing people together, so i'm a fan of the film's "dorky love through indie rock" approach. the indie rockness starts right up in the opening shot, which features a merge records (happy 20th anniversary!) sticker & a poster for a show at nyc's bowery ballroom. during the night, they visit all the indie joints--bowery, arlene's grocery, union pool (or "brooklyn pool" in the film). the opening credits play over a devendra banhart song...& then later devendra has one line as a customer in a deli, where he assures norah that she'd know if she'd had an orgasm. creepy.

the film weaves two plots together. the first revolves around a group of high school seniors, including nick (cera) & norah (dennings), trying to find the locale of a secret show by the fictional band where's fluffy?  this plot provides the backdrop for the main plot--nick & norah shedding their exes & falling in love over the course of a single evening. they argue a bit & say nerdy things to each other & get excited about bands & he has a handiwipe handy for her & she calls him "her musical soul mate except for all the cure" and they fall in love. that's the best kind of love! anyway, i enjoyed the film. you should too.

a few items of note...

near the beginning of the film, nick's band, "the jerk offs" are playing a show in the l.e.s. opening for bishop allen. since this gig is at arlene's grocery, we can assume that nobody got paid.

there are a few random cameos--seth meyers (as half of a horny couple who mistakes nick's yugo for a cab), andy samberg (as a scary homeless dude) & kevin corrigan (as a guy at port authority with a turkey sandwich).

favorite line i can identify with #1: "...nicky is definitely worth the underwire. he just needs a little push is all."

favorite line i can identify with #2: "look, other bands, they want to make it about sex or pain, but you know, the beatles, they had it all figured out, okay? "i want to hold your hand." the first single. it's effing brilliant, right?... that's what everybody wants, nicky. they don't want a twenty-four-hour hump sesh, they don't want to be married to you for a hundred years. they just want to hold your hand."

#89 - sweet romance.
snack: ike & sam's kickin' cayenne kettlecorn
drink: grown up soda dry cola


since nothing goes better with a movie than popcorn & a soda, i cracked open a bag of ike & sam's kickin' cayenne kettlecorn to munch on. it is hands down the best popcorn i've had this millennium. the individual pieces are fully popped & fluffy at times and at other times crunchy & sweet & salty all at once. the cayenne flavor's not too crazy, but it's there enough to give the popcorn a slight peppery taste, which goes well with the other prevailing taste, which is like a subtle, sweet caramel...not unlike every single character michael cera has ever played.

the popcorn's made by a company located down by avenue i here in brooklyn, which means i'm a selective locavore, right? it's trans fat & cholesterol free and made with only five ingredients--popcorn, corn oil, sugar, salt & cayenne pepper--which is an amazing feat given the wonderful taste. it's a good thing that it tastes as godlike as it does & that, as a result, i finished off the bag today, because it apparently expires on cinco de mayo.

tonight's beverage of choice is a grown up soda dry cola, made by a company based here in the city. even though i assume they don't have a bottling plant on 57th st, we'll call them local as well, especially since they've donated to both 826NYC & the madison square park conservancy. their cola's made with cola nut extract & like all their beverages is 100% natural, kosher & no-caffeine. no high fructose corn syrup in this bad boy...cane sugar all the way. i prefer the cane sugar sodas over the HFCS ones. it gives them a feel similar to that of fountain soda, even though it's bottled.

...so it turned out that my snack & drink choices tied in nicely with the film & just like with the film, they were both subtly sweet & not too "in my face."  when i was done with them, i felt satisfied & hopeful and the best part?  it was all done in a way that felt neither icky nor manufactured...how sickly perfect is that?

#84 - arrr.

so these past few weeks, just in time for baseball season, pirates are all over the news. unfortunately for the pittsburgh pirates, the news isn't about them, meaning that they're once again (see 2003, 2006 & 2007) playing second fiddle to some other pirates. this year, those some other pirates are affecting governmental policy. all the pittsburgh pirates are doing is fielding another mediocre team & trying to avoid being the first professional sports franchise to have a losing record 17 years in a row. roberto clemente is probably spinning in his grave over some of the chumps they field these days.

the pirates that have been receiving the most attention these days are the somali pirates who hijacked the maersk alabama, a denmark-owned ship, back on the 8th. those pirates created an international incident that eventually brought the u.s. into the picture & eventually led to the dramatic rescue of the captain, a new england resident. has he been on leno or the today show yet? as a result, hillary clinton has come up with an initiative to fight the pirates, although she did have this awkward moment regarding them...way to name drop morroco, hillary.

then today, out of sweden, four men from thepiratebay.org, a torrent site, were sentenced to a year in jail & fined a total of $3.6 million for facilitating illegal downloading & therefore, violating copyright law.  despite the ruling, the site is still up, there are tons of torrent sites all around the web & artists like nine inch nails are starting to turn to torrent sites to release music.  so yeah...the swedish courts hate interweb piracy.  btw, pirate bay founder gottfrid svartholm warg...sweet beard, dude.  the hipster grifter would love you!

meanwhile, the pittsburgh pirates are currently a perfectly average 5-5 team, but every single game that they've won has been started by one of two starting pitchers--26-year old paul maholm or soon-to-be 26-year old (on sunday!) zach duke. that means that the other three starting pitchers haven't even been good enough to win a single, solitary game. you can't win a world series with inconsistency like that. i mean really...the steelers just won the super bowl & the penguins are in the playoffs. does anybody in pittsburgh actually care about the pittsburgh pirates right now?

#84 - arrr.
snack: pirate's booty
drink: captain morgan's spiced rum & coca cola cherry


in honor of pirates, tonight's snack is obviously pirate's booty, which we all know is named after one of the pirate's alternate phrases for "salty wenches." what'd you think i was gonna eat to keep up with the pirate theme, fish heads or something? think again, buckaroo. i'm going for the pirate's booty. it's at least one hundred times better tasting & one hundred times better for you than fish heads.  also, the booty pieces are shaped like slightly curly, fat lil off-white worms & i love putting worms in my mouth.

so yeah, when i said that the booty is one hundred times tastier than fish heads, i meant it.  while i assume that fish heads taste like the ass end of a rhino, the booty at least has some flavor.  still, it's made with rice & that leads to a light, airy taste that is a little too subtle.  luckily, while it's ultimately unsatisfying for me, the cheesiness is tasty enough that i don't feel the need to go hijack anything to get my kicks.

if there's one thing that i know about pirates, it's that they truly love grog--a mixture of rum, water, lime juice & a bit of cane sugar. i however, don't so much care for hard alcohol & refuse to suffer for my art, so rather than attempt to suck down a cup of homemade grog, i'm mixing some captain morgan's spiced rum & coca cola cherry. i even added a few squirts of lime juice to ward off scurvy. no cane sugar though. that probably wouldn't go very well with all the high fructose corn syrup in my cherry coke.

holy crap! check out the captain morgan's website. there's a "morganette" greeting you on the home page. she has a sexy cop outfit on, which means you have to enter an over-21 birth date to enter the site. twelve-year olds take note. type in 12-25-25 & you're in like flynn. it's all good. you're 83 and interested in rum! the marketing team at captain morgan's will get a kick out of your contribution to that demographic...& when you're done, pirates won't be the only ones who love sexy cops. way to keep the kids out, captain! lockdown!

side note: is it a coincidence that two of the three morganettes have the same name as ex-girlfriends of mine?... & if it's not a coincidence, does that mean that i'm destined to be with someone named caitlyn?

#79 - pop.

i don't even know what's considered pop music any more. back in the eighties, it was clear. everything was pop music (for the most part). these days, every year they're all "& the grammy award for best pop album goes to...duffy! (2009) or steely dan! (2001) or joni mitchell! (1996) and i'm all "wait, didn't taylor swift/N*SYNC/hootie sell the most albums last year? they're all pop, right? why didn't they win? clearly they had the best pop album of the year."  joni mitchell's considered pop?

(please note that lil wayne actually had the best-selling album of last year, but he's cool in my book & taylor swift scares me, so she gets held up as last year's pop example.  she seems too "perfect" to really be perfect & she's not even disney, so that frightens me...some anti-christ shizz or something going on there).

so what exactly is considered pop music?  there's u.k. indie pop like belle & sebastian or blur or the divine comedy & u.s. indie pop like death cab for cutie or vampire weekend or the magnetic fields.  there's the more mainstream u.s. rock stuff like fall out boy or the foo fighters or green day.  then there's the more blatantly pop stuff like the jonas brothers or justin timberlake or kelly clarkson.  all of them could be considered pop, even though they're all quite different. 

basically, someone needs to clear this up for me ASAP, before my genre-programmed brain explodes all over my keyboard.

#79 - pop.
snack: sea salt & vinegar popchips
drink: jones fufu berry pure cane soda

tonight, i'm rocking out to some "pop music"--a little weezer & a little kanye west--and having a bag of sea salt & vinegar popchips.  they're one of five flavors made by a company out of san francisco that has recently expanded distribution to the eastern part of the u.s.  these popchips are supposed to be awesome because they've taken chip healthiness to the next level.  they don't fry their potatoes.  they don't even bake them.  they pop those puppies, making them through heat & pressure.

the resulting chip has a not-unpleasant light fluffy texture somewhere between a rice cake & a ritz cracker.  without the grease you'd get from a regular ol fried chip, the flavor definitely stands out better.  in this case, it's salt & vinegar, which you could sprinkle on pretty much anything non-living & i'd probably still eat it.   on the popchips, you get a good dose of salt & vinegar, but without the choking kick-back that you get when a salt & vinegar chip is too damn powerful...i'm looking in your direction, lays.

since i'm going all healthy & natural with my snacks today, i'm having a jones fufu berry pure cane soda along with the popchips. for you midwesterners...POP!  i call it "soda," my boston-based grandmother calls it "tonic," others call it "coke," you call it "pop."  to each his own, but "pop" is just silly sounding.

all the jones sodas are made without the usual soda corn syrup tastiness (they use cane sugar), which gives their beverages a slightly unsettling taste.  i've tried their blue bubble gum and strawberry & lime flavors and essentially, they all taste like derivations of the same berry flavor that's in the fufu berry flavor.  berries?  yawn.  they're nothing spectacular.

i think i need to get away from their berryesque flavors & try out the new orange cola flavor or sample one of their holiday packs before completely pooh-poohing their pricey, natural sodas away.  last year's halloween pack had a candy corn flavor!  that rules!  what doesn't rule is their past thanksgiving packs, which have included turkey & gravy, green bean casserole and mashed potato & butter flavors.  that's just gross & disturbing & makes me want to pop the one who thought that making those flavors was a good idea square in the kisser.  POP!