#64 - you could be heroes.

readers! on the honor system! raise your hand if you liked heroes at the end of season one. keep it up if you still liked heroes at the end of season two. the end of the first half of season three? how about where we are now, halfway through the second half of season three? any hands still up?

i go back & forth on whether or not i like it any more. here it is wednesday & i'm just getting around to watching this past monday night's episode. yeah i've been slightly busy, but usually i at least end up fitting in an irrational 1am viewing or something even when i'm busy, but these days, i could care less how quickly i catch the week's episode. their "to be continued..." at the end of every episode should be the thing that makes me go, "OH SNAP! i can't wait til the next episode! must troll internet for advance information!"...but it doesn't. instead, it makes me think, "oh. that's it?" then i yawn & go look at internet porn in an attempt to get my excitement levels back up.

if you give your characters the decision-making skills of an eight-year old & make them do things that are just plain stupid...you could be heroes.

if you make your characters spell out their feelings in every blatant which way possible short of writing them on a chalkboard & shining a floodlight on it...you could be heroes.

if you bank a good portion of your television franchise on two sub-par actors (milo & hayden, i'm looking in your direction)...you could be heroes.

if you keep making every single friggin season lead up to a catastrophic, city-destroying explosion...you could be heroes.

if you're basically in your fourth season, which is when the 4400 started to get lame & got canceled & therefore you're on notice in my book because you're also starting to become a bit lame...you could be heroes.

#64 - you could be heroes.
snack: snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod
drink: sunkist soda

on the other hand, in the snacking world, simple & straight forward is much more successful & appealing to me. while i watched heroes, i chomped on a snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod. snyders is based in hanover, pa, which may be the snack capital of the world, as it's also home to utz potato chips. rumor is that sometimes the two companies get together & rumble in the town square with pipes & chains & buckets of acid. anyway, the chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod is simple & tasty & i wolfed it down. it was sort of like deep throat, but with more chewing.

since i was feeling that i gotta feel those good good good good vibrations, i washed the rod down with a tall, cool glass of sunkist soda. sunkist is so intertwined with oranges that they don't even have to use the word "orange" in their soda name. sunkist = oranges. say no more.

i haven't had sunkist in a while & i think that contributed to how much i enjoyed drinking it...like, it was really tasty. like, it's possibly the most i've enjoyed a glass of soda this decade. like, wow. i'm serious. i'm wishing i had some more right now...not heroes though. that can wait.

#63 - dushk as you're told.

...so i watched me some josh whedon's dollhouse the other night. i haven't really seen much of his other shows, so i figured i'd give this one a shot. first thing's first...the show's star...mmm eliza dushku (pronounced "douche-coup") mmm. hotties rule! how have i never noticed her existence? it looks like i need to brush up on my maxim magazine. and she's from watertown, mass! graduated from watertown high! i lived there for five months! hottie!

here's the thing though. as a university-educated white male with a snooty film degree and a non-snooty rural middle-class upbringing and a snooty bookshelf that includes such feminist literature as cunt, the second sex and they call me mad dog! and limited knowledge of josh whedon's feminist mores & lesbian subtexts, i'm supposed to be wicked offended about the premise behind this show, right?

the premise: there's this company. people ("dolls") voluntarily come to them & agree to have their personalities wiped clean for a period of five years. during these five years, the dolls are imprinted with new personalities, go on "engagements" with clients and then have their memories wiped at the end of each engagement. in between engagements, they live at this facility ("the dollhouse"). kinda sorta like prostitution, right? a female lead with no free will?

turns out that josh whedon actually ran the show by the gals at equality now (who work heavily against human trafficking), so it's all good in the hood. plus, he sounded pretty sincere about his intentions in a recent interview on fresh air when discussing the show's premise. plus, the totally gnarly lead scientist dude (fran kranz) says early in the episode, "we gave two people the perfect weekend together. we're great humanitarians." plus eliza dushku is a hottie boombalottie. yes, that is the correct spelling.

the first episode was pretty good. within the first six minutes, echo (eliza) is seen racing motorcycles with some dude through the streets & eventually they drive straight into a hall, to his birthday party & then seconds later, she's dancing with him, wearing a dress that hangs at what is basically the curves at the bottom of her butt. the concept of the show's interesting enough too. anyway, it's good enough that i'll watch it again next week.

#63 - dushk as you're told.
snack: archer farms salt & pepper cashews
drink: archer farms blueberry black tea

since i have no free will myself these days, when i'm looking for a snack, 83% of the time, i find myself at target, plunking one after another of their target-brand archer farms products into my lil red basket like a good little target target customer. i ate about a quarter of an 11.5 oz jar of archer farms salt & pepper cashews while watching dollhouse. i mean, cashews are good, but cashews covered in both salt & pepper are at least ten-fifteen times whatever good is. good for shoveling. mouth shoveling. it's a simple flavor genius that i've enjoyed ever since the days when i first moved to nyc & first laid eyes on a bag of utz salt & pepper chips, during the pre-9/11 era. i can never forget that moment.

the label provides me with a wealth of juicy info:

#1 - these cashews are multicultural, as they're a product of india, brazil, vietnam & indonesia. that means that these cashews have been to twice as many countries as me. nuts. i should get out more...& eat locally more. i don't even want to know what the carbon footprint is on deez nutz.

#2 - they are made up of four ingredients--cashews, salt, black pepper, modified food starch (corn). wtf target! i know you're all "shelf life shelf life shelf life," but i've been in your brooklyn location & unless your employees are lame at restocking which i couldn't IMAGINE FOR ONE SECOND that they'd be, stuff flies off the shelf. so shelf life's not a problem. please. can i eat one thing that doesn't have friggin corn in it?

#3 - the label offers up a "100% satisfaction guaranteed" guarantee...followed by the phrase "and they said you can't guarantee happiness." i bet the woman sitting alone in her apartment right now bawling as she shovels cashew after cashew into her mouth whilst watching tivoed episodes of extreme home makeover & picking cat hair off the sofa agrees with you 100% about that happiness thing.

speaking of what isn't good, there's archer farms blueberry black tea. ever since every beverage company & their mother started bottling teas, everyone thinks they can just whip up a good tea & call it a day. for starters, the name's got "black & blue" in it. for finishers, the tea tastes as bland as an ang lee film. boom. roasted. sorry target. i refuse to be an empty vessel for your crappy tea. i'll take your corn-laced cashews though.

#62 - obviously funny.

since i'm in love with tv shows again, in return, i've decided to give them a valentine's day gift today, with a display of devotion beginning with the first of a month's long theme of snack blog entries, all with a tv-centric focus. what can i say? when's one of the best times to snack? when you're engrossed in your favorite tv show...or your favorite 20 tv shows, so for the next month, that's what i'm going to be up to...my v.d. gift that keeps on giving...a whole month of the gift of v.d., you might say.

i guess i had heard the name "demetri martin" in the past and i recognized his face. then i came across some ads for his new comedy central show, important things with demetri martin & then he showed up in my mailbox & bathroom on the cover of new york magazine & then i noticed a few friends had watched the show...thanks to facebook status updates! the greatest thing that has happened to this country since whatever it is we used to go to myspace for! spam? it was spam, right? that's why we went there?

i decided to watch last week's premiere episode of important things today. i'm a sucker for self-referential comedy & deadpan comedy or "smart" comedy & i love charts & diagrams and mr. demetri (communist name?) also loves that stuff. some of my favorite shows are sketch-based and made up of short comedy bits (the state, kids in the hall, pre-norm mcdonald snl) so i feel like i'm solidly in the target market for this show. this week's theme was "timing." it's funny most of the time & i'll definitely watch it next week. next week's theme is "power." luckily, comedy central tends to stick with shows like important things (see the sarah silverman program), so it'll hopefully have time to grow on people, since it's not typical comedy.

#62 - obviously funny.

snack: wonka tinglerz
drink: bawls guarana cherry

on 42nd street on friday afternoon on my walk back from picking up thai food & looking to get a drink to enjoy with it, i stopped in the 7-11 across from port authority & grabbed a mountain dew from the cooler & started toward the register when i was stopped in my tracks by a shiny purple bag of wonka tinglerz. they're simple to explain...pop rocks + chocolate = tinglerz. since willy has never steered me wrong, i grabbed a bag. these things are friggin wacky & fun & all but i can't help but feel like the pop rock tingliness is actually my teeth being eaten away at. that sort of freaks me out, but in a yummy, chocolaty way.

when i grabbed the tinglerz, i figured i should pair it with some beverage i'd never had before & make a blog out of it & when i checked the first cooler, i found my choice, a choice based on pure, blatantly obvious comedy...bawls guarana cherry. would you like some bawls with your tinglerz? yes, yes i would. i would also like it if you made my comedy simple & spoon-fed so that i can shut my brain off. it's just easier that way & i have a feeling that it might keep production costs down. anyway, i'll follow jay leno & whatever he does off a cliff like a lemming, as long as it keeps production costs down, especially if i've got bawls coursing through my veins.

plus, i like to live life on the edge. remember the urban legend about eating pop rocks with soda? as it went, by consuming both at the same time, you would totally explode. a big-ass energy drink is ten times more dangerous than that, right? it's a clear beverage & gives me the eeriely unsettling feeling illustrated through the comparison of bawls is to energy drink as grain alcohol is to alcohol, without having to drive to nh to get it. it's mostly odorless & tasteless & i have a feeling that when i'm finished with this can, i'm going to be TOTALLY AMP'D. bawls to the wall!

anyway, being amped on bawls & tinglerz is wicked funny...WAY funnier than this stupid snl episode. didn't i swear these snl bizznitchez off? i'm watching it for the jonas bros. that's it. & i won't watch the whole thing...so it's ok. obviously.

#60 - office hilarity.

seriously, if you don't enjoy the hilarity that is the office (us edition), you are a soulless, humorless, redcoat spaniard greycoat nazi communist terrorist. that's a scientific fact. watch nova or discovery channel. i don't have time to get into the specifics of it right now.

...so the office returned last week from winter hiatus with an hour-long episode entitled "stress relief" & i finally got to watch it yesterday & there are all kinds of awesome story lines in it & they should just give them the emmy right now for best comedy episode of the year. no competition, really. sorry tina fey, i know you probably have a lot of great episodes lined up (don draper!), but i assume you're a rational human being, so i'm sure you agree with my decision to give them the statue, even this early in the year. i love you & all (in a non-creepy way), but you already have a bunch already from this year's ceremonies anyhow.

if you, the reader, haven't seen the episode yet, i'm going to spoil a few of the awesome plot points for you right now:

opening sequence - dwight is the safety officer of the office & doesn't feel people have properly heeded his fire evacuation instructions, so he decides to make sure they learn. he starts a fire in a trash can in a side room and by locking & heating the handles of various doors, creates absolute chaos that results in such hilarity as oscar climbing into the drop ceiling, angela's cat crashing out of the drop ceiling, people using the copier as a battering ram & michael throwing a chair through a window before dwight informs them it is just a drill & stanley has a heart attack...roll opening credits.

the cpr training - michael convinces corporate to not fire dwight & to prepare for future emergencies, he sets up a cpr training at the office, where they practice on a dummy. kevin gives up after 20 seconds, declaring "call it." the cpr instructor tells michael to perform pumps to the chest of the dummy to the tune of "stayin' alive." after michael mistakenly starts pumping to the opening lyrics of gloria gaynor's "i will survive," everyone gets into "stayin' alive" with much dancing & singing, including a moment where kelly gets to show off her dance skills. the training ends with dwight cutting open the dummy to harvest the organs (after the instructor claims they lost the patient during all the dancing) & then cutting off the face & wearing it ala hannibal lecter.

the roast - michael again convinces corporate to not fire dwight & soon after realizes that he is the source of stanley's (& many others') stress. to alleviate tension around the office, michael arranges a roast of himself down in the warehouse & he urges everyone to let loose on him, since "anything goes" in a roast. as a result, the roast gets really nasty, including a line declaring that if his penis "were an ipod it would be a shuffle" & a song by andy called "what i hate about you." at the end, michael stumbles off the stage & walks off behind a shelf, leaving all the cast captured in one full shot, sitting silent in the warehouse.

michael's ending counter-roast - after calling out of work the next day & after much soul-searching (including a hilarious scene feeding the pigeons in the park), michael returns to the office wearing a turtleneck & carrying a stack of note cards. with everyones' attention he starts..."jim, you're 6'11" and you weigh 90 pounds. gumby has a better body than you. boom. roasted."...& he carries on, roasting everyone in the office, ending with "boom. roasted" each time. halfway through, when he gets to stanley & says "you crush your wife when you have sex & your heart sucks. boom. roasted," stanley begins laughing & his laughter continues to grow & spread, completely shifting the tone of the entire scene as he does so. it's hilariously brilliant & is responsible for my new catch phrase. check it..."hey reader. you smell funny & have no taste in shoes. boom. roasted."

the pam & jim stories - there's pam's parents getting divorced (which OBVIOUSLY leads to jim being all dimply boyfriend good). there's andy learning about love through watching (with jim & pam) an illegally downloaded copy of mrs. albert hannaday (a fake movie made just for this episode), starring jack black, jessica alba & cloris leachman (featuring the best scene with a stairlift since gremlins). sometimes jim & pam make me want to throw up in my own mouth.

what continues to astound me most about the office is that its format & direction, with the confessionals & caught facial expressions, give each character multiple opportunities to shine in each episode. in particular, in this episode, there are situations like the fire scene & the roast scene & the counter-roast scene where absolutely everyone is a part of the scene & contributes to the overall mood. i mean, in my recap, i've named almost every character & always for a hilarious reason. anyway, i eat that ensemble crap up.

#60 - office hilarity.
snack: harry & david bing cherry dark chocolates
drink: archer farms orange passion mango italian soda

[segue] ...speaking of eating things, while i watched, i feasted on some harry & david bing cherry dark chocolates. according to the packaging, harry & david/bear creek orchards, a medford, oregon based company, has been around since 1934. that's pretty cool. they seem to have a pretty good story going for them, one that started during the great depression, when two brothers traveled to nyc with boxes of pears & by the time they had left, they'd made pear-giving fashionable among nyc executives...how quaint...& much nicer & wallet-sucking than that cocaine trend.

it turns out that the beavers of harry & david's home state are celebrating the state's "sesquicentennial" this coming valentine's day. i wonder if my oregon friends are celebrating with some bull riding or a cappuccino. or a covered wagon! i wish i could go play actual oregon trail with my pals on v.d.! oregon is so far! [frowny face].

...but holy friggin bing cherries. seriously. if i had no "off" switch (& it's slightly busted as it is), this package wouldn't last more than ten minutes. the package warns that they "may contain pits," so it's probably best that i take it slow anyhow, to avoid choking & dying & whatnot. that'd be the pits.

& since i'm all up on target's jock recently, i'm pounding a bottle of archer farms orange passion mango italian soda along with the bings. mamma mia! it's 12% juice, which is actually more juice than i often get, so i guess that's a good thing. the oranges & mangoes are really yummy no-brainer fruits. as for the passion fruit, i have no passion for it. alanis morrisette should have sang about junk like that...would've made more sense...silly canadian.

#59 - the beautiful people.

a glimpse into the life of some people who are totally beautiful (on the outside, of course/at least):

rod blagojevich - so the former governor of illinois was on letterman tuesday night. that man's swooping helmet bangs are sooooooo astounding & slightly unreal & toupeeish. at one point in the interview, letterman asked him, "do you use shampoo & conditioner?" i think the answer is obvious. daily, his hair is bathed in milk & vegetable extracts & crushed olives or something before being hand-picked by a female gorilla. he's been all "i'm innocent. i'm innocent. i'm innocent" lately. i'd swear that he & roger clemens have the same pr firm, but i can't seem to find his name on the hendricks sports' management's web site...i did, however, come across this report they did that analyzes the greatness of roger clemens' career...at rogerclemensreport.com. beautiful. i was going to write something funny about the report, but that'd mean i'd have to read it first. so anyway, blago, with his beauty hair, it sucks that he's lost the governorship & i get that he wants to clear his name & not have his kids hate him (i've seen the first season of damages), but that man needs to give it a rest prontolike.

rose byrne - speaking of damages, i mean wow. rose byrne is BEAUTIFUL. AUSTRALIAN BEAUTIFUL. i've already hollywood-crush fallen for robin tunney & thora birch & zooey deschanel (& now that i think about it, alexis bledel on some level) & i put them all in the same genus amazicus black-haired ladius as ms byrne, so it only makes sense that she's my current hollywood crush. it helps that her character on damages is all smart & take-charge & sexy & damaged but trying to hide it at the same time...i'm pretty sure these traits make up my perfect female.

the people on beautifulpeople.net - obviously, if you're a beautiful person looking to meet other beautiful people so that you can breed & create your wholly-attractive master race, you should visit the official social networking site of beautiful people. judging by the photos on the site, beautiful people are pretty much white (or asian females), so keep that in mind when you decide to submit your photo to the beautiful people community & have them vote on whether or not you are beautiful enough to become a member...it also helps if you own a tanning salon and/or are unclear on the whereabouts of your shirt. fyi, the site's only supported in internet explorer (obviously), so we now know what browser the beautiful people prefer.

#59 - the beautiful people.
snack: dark chocolate chex mix
drink: archer farms beauty fortified pear lychee water beverage

so as i noted previously, moms always used to treat us to awesome chocolate homemade chex mix, so i love the fact that chex has started making their own mixes (both sweet & salty) and bagging them up (although i suppose they effectively muscled out my mom, which sucks). i'm pretty sure the dark chocolate chex mix is my favorite thus far. it's got m&m-like thingies and chocolate cookies & chocolate-covered pretzels & both white and dark chocolate chex. with a lineup like that, the chex themselves definitely aren't the first thing i reach for in the bag, but even they're good. this particular chex mix has "50% less fat than regular potato chips," which is definitely helpful if i want to be beautiful...& i obviously do.

in case the chex mix doesn't make me beautiful, i'm also drinking archer farms beauty fortified pear lychee water beverage. on the label, there's a mention of "beauty coming from within." i'm not sure why they're even going there since as we all know, the only important beauty in life is the outer beauty. inner beauty is fine for helping out the non outer-beautiful people, but ultimately outer beauty trumps that. i feel beautiful already. after drinking this beverage (& afterwards sufficiently brushing my teeth), i can tell you that this beauty-fortified drink is super sweet...& i don't mean that in a cool, napoleon dynamite slang sort of way, either. fist-bump beautiful people! you saw that movie! you have the vote for pedro shirt!...that is, you did before you puked on it down the shore.

good day. stay beautiful.