#57 - bodega redux.

i moved to my current place in brooklyn (at 4th & 21st) almost two years ago & when i first moved here, i made a point to make the rounds & check out all the closest 4th ave bodegas. there's the one between 19th & 20th that is frequently properly stocked with utz red hot chips that was my clear favorite for a while. there's one across the street on the corner of 22nd, but that one often is often slim pickens & has more unfamiliar spanish brands than it does familiar american brands, so i get all xenophobic (seriously, how did bally midway get away with the xenophobe video game? "exterminate the aliens?" what? can you even say that on a video game poster?) there's a bodega down at 26th, just past the train stop that tends to have a lot of my favorite snacks, but it's all the way down there, five blocks away, a full block-and-a-half past the dunkin donuts/baskin robbins & at that point it's like, "no item at that stupid 26th st bodega will have as satisfying an amount of glaze or sprinkles as anything in this joint right here before my eyes."

there's also one on the corner of 23rd that i originally boycotted because there was a woman working there who always did the thing where even if you'd handed her your money & extended your hand out to receive your change, she'd drop your change on the counter so you had to pick it up. i hate that, so after a few times of getting the friendly change heisman from that lady, i swore the place off. shawn likes friendly.

then a few months back, the place got all torn up inside & renovated & it has new people working there & whatnot & has become my go to bodega. under new management rules! the place is now run by a group of friendly dudes who call me boss & buddy. when i'm in a state of lazy peckishness, they make me sandwiches & often add a banana in with it & then the banana goes bad on my counter because i hate bananas. i left my wallet there one night & it was there behind the counter waiting for me the next morning. there are all kinds of hip, fancy snacks on the shelves. chocolate-covered sunflower seeds!

#57 - bodega redux.
snack: hostess sno balls
drink: dogfish head raison d'être

tonight i stopped by the bodega in the mood for something slightly chocolaty & hostess sno balls contain some chocolate or facsimile of said chocolate, so i brought a pack of the lil tribble-snacks home with me. one summer evening in boston, just after college, i was working at the allston videosmith video store (R.I.P.) & my co-workers and i were bored & i was hungry & my roommate/co-worker & i had probably been drinking on our back porch earlier that afternoon & as a result, we made a deal...they would give me the money to go next door & buy two packages of sno balls, but i had to eat all of them right there. i took their sucker money, went next door & bought two packages of pink sno balls and ate all four. approx 30 minutes later i felt it. if my stomach could talk, he would probably have a better word to describe the feeling, so i will just have to settle for calling it "gator belly snappin' awful." do not try this at home. anyway, i still enjoy sno balls & yes i feel guilty about their contents, but if you can come up with a healthy, natural version of them that combines seasonally-diversely-colored coconut with chocolate cake, cream & marshmallow in the same pleasant manner, i'll give up my precious sno balls & eat your "nature puff" or "koala coconut cream dream" or whatever the crap you decide to call it.

this hip new bodega has perpetuated my love of dogfish beers, as they usually have three or four different kinds in the cooler, which means i usually end up picking up a couple different singles a week there. a few weeks back, they got in some of the dogfish 120-minute i.p.a. it was the first time i'd ever seen the 120-minute, so i grabbed one, plunked down three & some change and enjoyed the hell out of it. next time i went to get one, i discovered that the beers are actually supposed to cost $10 a piece. they had mispriced it & were in the process of sending it back to the distributor. i felt bad. not "let me give you that $7" bad though.

tonight i'm drinking the dogfish head raison d'être with my marshmallowy hostess treats. it's a mahogany ale & has friggin beet sugar & green raisins in it. i know! can you beweeve it? i bet your beer doesn't even have beet sugar & green raisins. i bet you don't even want beet sugar & green raisins in your beer. the raison d'être is probably like my 2nd dogfish BFF right now, behind the 90-minute ale. as you undoubtedly know, raison d'être means "reason for being." tonight, my reason for being is to pretend that i'm actually watching the season premiere of frontline when i'm actually only retaining the word "uighur" (pronounced: wee-gur). uighur. uighur. uighur.

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

it's official. these days, film degree be damned, i prefer tv to movies & here's why. tv gives the show's creator(s) greater freedom to meditate on an overarching storyline, stretch it out, pass it off to various directors, highlight different characters, kill people off, introduce new people, etc etc. with the exception of sequel films, which often suck, stories told by film are generally limited to a static 1.5-3 hours of story. that just doesn't do it for me these days.

i just finished watching the seventh & final season of the shield, which means i watched about 70 hours of storyline with that show alone. as david bianculli noted in fresh air's 12/24 segment on the top ten tv programs of the year, well-executed tv can be like a novel, with a starting point, an ending point & a journey in between. when he said this, it was in reference to the shield. screw the sopranos. the final episode of the shield might just be the greatest series finale ever made. it was directed by clark johnson, who also directed the pilot for the show & also directed the pilot & final episodes of the wire (in addition to playing gus haynes, the baltimore sun desk editor in the wire's final season). seriously, it's worth watching the series straight through just to get to that final episode of the shield. for me, it also helped that unlike with the sopranos, i had no prior knowledge of how the show ended, which allowed me to experience something with uninfluenced expectations, a rare opportunity.

in addition to the clark johnson example, with my growing love of tv, i've discovered that there's some serious tv incest going on. fx's new highest rated show, sons of anarchy, is created by kurt sutter, who wrote for the shield & also played armenian hitman margos dezerian in the 1st & 3rd seasons. he's married to ms peg bundy katey sagal, who plays one of the leads on sons of anarchy and also had an occasional role on the shield. sons also features a major creepyass storyline with jay karnes, who played dutch on the shield.

sons is impressive. i watched the first season while i was in new hampshire at the parents' house for the holidays. there are shakespearean undertones, religious undertones, reflections on aging & paths taken & not taken, copious amounts of punching and hot biker babes like the characters played by maggie siff (who you may also know from her hot work as rachel menken on mad men) & taryn manning (who you may know from her hot work as a prostitute). heck, i'll go as far as to say that katey sagal's hot & the main character, played by charlie hunnam, could definitely knock johnny depp from the title of "dude i'd most prefer to sleep with." turns out he was on the uk version of queer as folk. well there you go then.

i found myself about eight episodes into the season on wednesday night when i decided it was time for a snack run...

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

snack: t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips
drink: shock top belgian white

...but being that it was 9pm on christmas eve in new hampshire, the places open for snack purchasing were at a minimum. i hopped in the car with my teenage brother & we tried the shaws supermarket in windham (closed), the 24-hour wal-mart in salem (closed. wha! commerce closes?) & eventually settled for the hess gas station in salem. people always need gasoline & cute mini tankers round the holidays. here's what i could get my hands on:

for snacking, i picked up a bag of t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips. i've seen them before & always avoided them but had to go with them given the low uniqueness/appealing nature of the hess snack selection. i have no idea what gives t.g.i.fridays the right to qualify these snacks as quesadillaesque other than the shape & them calling them "quesadillas." basically, the "quesadillas" are puffy crackerlike things shaped like quesadilla wedges, with a bunch of powdered cheese on them. eh.

for drinking, i scoured the beer cooler for something unique or barring that, tasty. if i'd gone for a single beer i would have been drinking bud or some equivalent & i wasn't having that, so i had to decide on a six-pack. the one that looked most unique was the shock top belgian white, with its mohawk-wearing orange mascot on the label. i took a six-pack of it out of the cooler & started to examine it when a female employee of the gas station came out of the back room & as she walked by, said to me, "shocking, isn't it?" well played, gas station lady. well played. when i got the six-pack home & popped one open, i glanced at the label & discovered that shock top is a michelob beer, one of anheuser-busch's attempts to create microbrewlike beers with some semblance of flavor. eh. the sons of anarchy drink michelob round the club, so that makes me cool by default. sure they aren't drinking the belgian white, but i suppose it'll have to do.

by the time i left nh on saturday morning to head back to brooklyn, i had finished the first season of sons of anarchy & the quesadilla chips. one amazed me & made me wish i was in a motorcycle club, or at least living the free lifestyle & babes that come with it. one did not. the six-pack of shock top remained unfinished. for me, there's a limit to how many beers i feel comfortable drinking when home at the parents for a three-day holiday stretch, especially when it's basically just slightly better than michelob michelob. that limit? five.

#46 - fin.

this tuesday night, as the first snow of the season fell outside my apartment, i sat warm watching the third season finales of two of my favorite picture stories--heroes and dexter. there's that good old saying, "third time's a charm," that is actually not really all that good, and relative to history, not really all that old of a saying...but it is a lot less gay sounding than the british version--"third time lucky."

"third time lucky, smithers?"
"indeed. three card monte."
"splendid."
"third time lucky, indeed. tally ho."

in this case, for these two shawn parow-endorsed picture stories, the third seasons have been slightly flawed at times, subject to doubt, imperfect chapters in the shows' histories. both are already scheduled to return in 2009 for a fourth chapter, with heroes coming back in february with a new chapter,"fugitives," that is technically the second half of the third season for those of you who still care. dexter is already scheduled for at least two more seasons. showtime knows better than to let go of michael c hall...spoilers until the snack break...

heroes season finale
there have been numerous occasions during this 3rd season of heroes where i've wanted to fill my ear canals with fire & splash piranhas toward my eye sockets to avoid the horrendous dialogue & painful exposition that has filled this season. as a complete season, it works fine. i was most pleased by the appearances by actors who used to be on other shows i like, actors like bubbles & marlo stanfield from the wire. both survived the streets of baltimore, but not the third season of heroes...nor did chad faust's character, a marine who, in the second-to-last episode of the third season, becomes the first person injected with the formula for abilities & then is quickly killed in the next & final episode. chad faust was also in the 4400, where he plays a person who injects himself with promicin, the thing on that show that gives people abilities. talk about being typecast.

the third season had its flaws. one of the first things i learned in my intro to screenwriting class was "show, don't tell" and the 3rd season of heroes has so many thousands of storylines going on that there are an abundance of occasions where characters blatantly tell & are all like "gee that must feel really bad to see that happen to your father" so that an ADHD-inflicted fourth grader can follow along with the story...& stupid plot points. elle, the character with the power of electricity is having trouble controlling her power, so what does she do? she gets on a plane. obviously. because there is no chance that that could go wrong...& then there are the abundant lame love stories. overall though, i'm still looking forward to the fourth chapter. i mean, not every pearl jam album is ten. sometimes it's a no code, but you deal with it & pick out the good parts & hope the next one's better.

dexter season finale
early on during the 3rd season of dexter, before things turned around, i was all "you need to start killing bad guys ASAP dexter." things were slow. he was totally not killing any killers. at times i'd secretly hope that rita would turn out to be a child pornographer or have fed elderly folks fatal dosages of meds or something so dexter would have to kill her blatantly one-dimensionally exposition-laden character off, but no such luck. luckily, by the season finale, the killing picked up enough to satisfy me.

& by the season finale, dexter marries rita...& finds out that she is lying to him. she has been married three times, but only says she's been married twice. doesn't talk about the first one, when she was 16. mildly mysterious. he doesn't seem to care though, since he has a secret too, what with the whole being a serial killer thing & she doesn't even know that he used to be gay & work in a funeral home. it's totally like that madonna song. mmm mmm. something's coming over. mmm mmm...so next season, rita will give birth to their kid & there'll likely be whole mess of "new life. taking life." subway ads plugging season 4 of dexter come late summer.

#46 - fin.

snack: pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps
drink: archer farms blood orange italian soda

with my finales, i'm enjoying a bag of pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps. they don't come in a cardboard cylinder like your everyday peasant pringles. these pringles are S-E-L-E-C-T. i really like them. the texture's crunchier than your average pringle, closer to a tato skin-like texture. the flavor's also stronger than what you get from an average pringle. i found myself licking the flavor powder off, just like i used to do when regular pringles used to have a ton more flavor. in my day! turns out that, according to the back of the bag, these jalapeno ranch potato crisps are designed to "kick my taste buds up a notch." i'm not sure how much more they can be kicked up at this point, if you know what i mean, but i ain't letting that stop me.

to wash down these extraordinary chips, i'm going with a cool glass of archer farms blood orange italian soda. i know what you're thinking, but stop right there. i'm no sicko. it doesn't actually have blood in it, just blood oranges & those are completely legal, at least in italy, which is where this particular soda comes from. italian soda. product of italy. it comes in a bottle that just makes me want to open the window wide & store it in a basket on the sill with a pellegrino & a couple tomatoes. it tastes like if fresca was a little more appealing & also didn't have that disgusting aspartame flavor. this blood orange italian soda has black carrot juice in it. wha? i had no idea such a thing existed, but it does. amazing. black carrots...now that's change you can believe in.

#43 - hispanic attack.

mon dieu. as a teenager in high school, why in le monde did i choose to learn french over spanish? here's what i've learned as an adult: pretty much nobody speaks french. it's a useless language unless you want to go to france or quebec & pretty much nobody ever goes to either of those places. these days, all the cool kids are speaking spanish. i mean, according to the ethnologue, it's the 2nd most spoken language in the world, just ahead of english. french? 17th. last i checked, they don't give out medals for 17th.

i really should learn spanish. i've given it a few half-assed attempts over the years, but in reality, i've put more hours toward learning bengali. i guess it's because its alphabet is ten times more beautiful/fun to write with. still, i have a lot more call for spanish on a daily basis than i do for bengali. currently, two of my favorite tv shows contain high-ranking hispanic officials & sometimes they speak in spanish and fx & showtime apparently can't afford subtitles or is forgoing subtitles in an attempt to be realistic or something. oh...there are probably tons of spoilers in the next two paragraphs:

david acevada (benito martinez), the shield
i'm just starting to watch the 4th season (out of 7) of the shield, which is the season in which hispanic police captain david acevada makes the transfer to city councilman. he's had one of the show's more interesting character arcs thus far, as in the previous season, he was in a limbo period between the primaries & the election. it's a time where he's still the police captain but he's a few months away from running unopposed for city councilman in the election...& in the 3rd episode of the season, two thugs hold him at gunpoint & force him to give one of the thugs head. it's rare to see a major male character on tv who is raped during his adult life. benito martinez's acting is damn good, especially when he is still the only one who knows about what's happened to him & he is cycling through hundreds of emotions throughout the season...anyway, that dude speaks spanish sometimes...los angeleso spanish.

miguel prado (jimmy smits), dexter
jimmy smits also speaks spanish & this season, he's joined the cast of dexter playing hispanic assistant d.a. miguel prado. in the opening episode, dexter accidentally kills miguel's brother, who happens to be at the house of a drug dealer/murderer dexter is hunting named freebo. freebo flees the scene, leaving miguel with the impression that freebo is the one who killed his brother, as miguel has no clue that dexter was even involved. as the season has progressed, miguel has become dexter's first real friend & they've bonded & even worked together to kill someone who has escaped justice (as is dexter's m.o.). i've never watched l.a. law or nypd blue or the west wing so i can't comment on jimmy smits' acting style, but in dexter, he's a commanding presence. he's smooth & persuasive & apologetic, but he can kick your ass & he just might...anyway, the show is set in miami, so he totally speaks spanish sometimes...cubano spanish.

#43 - hispanic attack.

snack: planters roasted salted pepitas
drink: negra modelo

so i got a bag of these planters roasted salted pepitas at a gas station back in new hampshire over the holiday because i read the front real quick & thought they sounded exotic enough, but it turns out that pepitas are basically squash or pumpkin seeds. in this case, it's a mix of pumpkin seeds & sunflower seeds. roasted pumpkin & sunflower seeds. with salt. if there was a single word that allowed me to combine a sarcastic "mmm" with a long, drawn out yawn, i would use it here.

the seeds aren't all bad, i suppose. i didn't have to actually do any carving or roasting. a machine who took the job of a hispanic worker who took the job of a black worker who took the job of a white worker at some ubiquitous planters/kraft/philip morris/altria plant took care of that for me. plus, a few sources on the internet tell me that pumpkin seeds are good for urinary flow & as mentioned in my previous post, i love things that are good for the ol' tract.

...like beer. beer really gets the tract flowing. take negra modelo, for instance. if you were to believe all the off-based generalizations about the effects of mexican beers, you would think that if you wanted to drink a negra modelo, you'd need a lime wedge & the patience to be running to the bathroom for the remainder of the evening. not so. i drank a negra modelo & passed the hell out still wearing my jeans. take that evil stereotypes.

UPDATE: bill richardson has been named secretary of commerce. go hispanics.

#32 - boobs.

tonight was a night of chillin' at home & catching up on a few of my fave tv shows--true blood, mad men, dexter and the life & times of tim. these shows occupy various pleasure zones in my brain for varied reasons--crazy twists, social commentaries, crude humor--and all of them share one dominant trait, a favorite of heterosexual males worldwide...boobs.

i've been pleasantly surprised by true blood. other than the unarguably awesometacular film that was lost boys, i've never been the biggest fan of stories about the undead. i never watched buffy, read anne rice or cared for bram stoker, but i enjoy true blood so far. one of the reasons is anna paquin's boobs & her sun dresses/louisiana wardrobe (apparently designed by a friend of a friend!). she's just amazingly cute is all...and as both last sunday & this sunday's episodes clearly show, she is comfortable with nudity. boobs...oh & lizzy caplan (of cloverfield fame) joined the cast during this week's episode & is apparently also comfortable with, well...boobs.

i've also started watching hbo's new show the life & times of tim, brought to you by the same guy who brought you the budweiser lizards. remember how much we all loved those lizards & their hilariously dry wit? after a while, we didn't even remember the budweiser frogs. well, the life & times of tim is soaking in the same hilariously dry wit as those commercials. how witty is it? let's just say that last sunday's episode featured a scenario where tim ends up squeezing his girlfriend's grandmother's boobs...boobs.

mad men features many conical 1960s boobs & perhaps the largest boobs in television today, owned by actress christina hendricks, who is quite the sassy badass as the character of joan holloway, the ad agency's office manager...boobs.

i hate all the female characters on dexter. boobs unimportant. the end.

#32 - boobs.

snack: ghirardelli dark chocolate with raspberry
drink: canada dry sparkling green tea ginger ale

as i watched these shows & thoughts of boobs floated through my head, i snacked on a few pieces of ghirardelli dark chocolate with raspberry. after living through a childhood that included the wonders of tidal wave gum & gushers & and adulthood that has brought both jalapeno poppers & salmon roe to my pallette, i've always been a sucker for foods that squirt junk when you bite into them. the ghirardelli don't exactly squirt junk, but they have an inner mushiness that is accented by what i hope are raspberry seeds.

at the atlantic center target earlier today, i was determined to find a good sized bottle of some unique beverage to enjoy over the next few days. for those who know this place, it often resembles a soviet-era grocery store, with its long lines & empty shelves. today, the soda aisle was stripped fairly bare on one side, but when i looked up, the top shelf featured a bottle of pepsi & some relatively clear foreign soda whose label was facing away from me. i reached for it & to my surprise, discovered a new soda invention...canada dry sparkling green tea ginger ale. this soda has antioxidants & is yummy. the green tea flavor goes well with the ginger ale & they both work nicely with the chocolate & raspberry. well done, canada...for once.

in conclusion...boobs.