#16 - billions served.

here's what i love about the olympics...& by saying "love" & "olympics" in the same sentence, i am not implying that i love the olympics. i hardly ever watch them really. actually, now that i think it through, i'm using "love" in a sarcastic manner. like, "wow, i love your haircut a wicked lot. seriously."

so what i love about the olympics is the over-the-top melodrama & the stories that the announcers use to enhance it. friday night's opening ceremonies were cool visually & all but incomplete without the announcers' calm description of tai chi (not an olympic sport, btw) or quick mention during the parade of nations of the recent assassination attempt on the president of maldives, which was thwarted by a boy scout...son probably got a mess o' badges for that. on an announcer-related note, can we please force tim mccarver to retire? in conclusion, without the announcers' brilliant words, the games would be incomplete. once again...sarcastic.

i suppose i could have shut off my tv & not watched the olympics at all but the important fact here is i that didn't. china & its billion citizens were trying REALLY HARD to impress me & make me forget about all the bad things the chinese government has done in the past, so i stuck around. i mean, you wouldn't walk out on your brat niece's big flute recital no matter how many times she's peed on your carpet & no matter how much the rug ties the room together, would you?...so while i watched "china through the ages" & the announcement of for the most part, every country in the world, i passed the time with a "tasty" snack & drink pairing...

#16 - billions served.

snack: pringles extreme screamin' dill pickle
drink: samuel smith organic cider

when i was purchasing the evening's snack & drink pairing, i grabbed the items at different stores & it's safe to say that i was so drawn to their individual characteristics that i gave no thought to their to their combined tastes. zero.

dill pickle & apple.

on an individual level, the dill pickle pringle concept is quite comical. they've made them a part of their "extreme" series, which also includes kickin' cheddar & blazin' buffalo wing. from these flavor names, i instantly deduced that in order to be extreme, you must drop your g's. beyond that, i'm confused as to how the dill pickle became an extreme item & for that matter, why the particular dill pickles used in the making of these chips are screamin'. am i to believe that the dill pickles used in the making of these chips are akin to barreling down the face of a mountain bellowing into the wind with excitement? even though these chips are tasty & at times overpowering, i'm skeptical that there is or ever will be anything extreme about a pickle. prove me wrong, vlasic. prove me wrong.

as for the samuel smith organic cider, i love everything i've ever tried by good ol' sammy & his sons. i love the oatmeal stout, the nut brown lager, the taddy porter...all of them. i would even love their organic cherry fruit beer if they let me...& told me where i could locate said beer. if wikipedia can be believed (& we all know it can), in addition to being the oldest brewery in yorkshire, in the past, samuel smith brewery has removed its logo from pubs & in pubs that it owns, no "large-corporation spirits" are served. those crazy crazy u.k. people with their nutty socialist economic beliefs. it's definitely no capitalism, i tell ya! luckily for us, it's no communism either.