#105 - on the fringe.

there once was a time when i was all "j.j. abrams? pfft. whatever. that guy can take his fancy one-word tv shows & cram em." that time's long gone though, so after ignoring it during its entire first season (whilst continuing to blindly follow the sub-par third season of heroes), i finally got around to watching the first season of fringe over the past few weeks. i'd initially stayed away because the two guys i shared an office with for the past six months or so both watched the first season, but they were also both excited about the new star trek & excited about/disappointed with the new terminator, so i figured it might be a little too sci-fi for my tastes. plus, until recently, when i finally got caught up with rescue me, i had a backlog of unwatched tv shows pushing fringe to the rear.

...but now my dance card's pretty free & i'm always up for some obsessive tv watching, so my recent free moments have been plugged with fringe & this sunday evening, i settled in for the last two episodes of the first season. the show revolves around olivia dunham (played by australian anna torv) & her federal team, which investigates occurrences tied to "fringe science." her team includes peter bishop (played by pacey) & his father, walter bishop (john noble, another australian). walter's just been freed from a mental hospital, so he needs his son nearby. it's a major plot point, but just one of many within the show. there are a few actors from the david simon stable--olivia's boss (lance reddick, from the wire) & another agent, played by chance kelly ("godfather" from generation kill). gbenga akinnagbe (the wire's chris partlow) even shows up for an episode. there's also this freaky bald character (played by the tony award winning michael cerveris) who's only referred to as "the observer."

my favorite things about the show? the openings often feature some sort of strange occurrence, a method often employed by the 4400, which i loved. it's set in boston, so 75% of the locales are in the greater boston area...love those sweeping flyovers of the hancock & the zakim bridge. walter is famous for saying he needs two things, one of which is usually a tasty treat. also, the most-uttered phrase on the show, usually in the opening, is "we've/i've/they've never seen anything like it." how fringy of them! to top it all off, the finale ends with two pretty badass revelations that have me eagerly awaiting next season.

so what's next? big love? battlestar galactica? deadwood? chuck? friday night lights? maybe i'll watch them all! other than mad men's return in mid-august, i figure i have at least until september until they start bringing back the series i enjoy. fringe will be back by then, as will dexter & dollhouse. tv-wise, it's going to be a long summer til then.

#105 - on the fringe.
snack: primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky
drink: atwater block brewery vanilla java porter



as i settled in for the first season finale, i tore open a primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky that i'd procured earlier in the day, after it'd caught my eye at the supermarket register. impulse buy! it's made by a company (primal spirit foods) founded by two vegetarian "walking buddies" from west virginia. i wonder if they ever ran into mark sanford out on the appalachian trail.

it's by far my top new snack of the year. i'm interested in purchasing a thai peanut sauce IV if one ever comes onto the market, so there's that. sorry gluten-avoiders, this mofo's made with seitan & that seitan is damn tasty. after eating this one on sunday night, i jonesed for another one all monday & finally, last night, returned to the supermarket, grabbed some veggies & made a beeline for the registers, where i picked up the last remaining two. by the end of the night, they were no more. screw jerky made with meat. this stuff is just plain awesome. in fact, it's so awesome that PETA honored primal strips with their 2004 "best new vegetarian snack award"...which is saying something because those PETAs hate pretty much everything!

i figured a sweet-tasting beer would work well with the peanut sauce flavor, so i grabbed a bottle of atwater block brewery vanilla java porter. it's brewed out of detroit, in a 1916 factory on the river, in the rivertown-warehouse district, where properties currently go for an average of $175K, a 45% decrease from five years ago. that's still much better than the average for detroit ($9K) and the square footage there goes for 1000% higher than the detroit average. it's sad that in detroit, you can now get a house for less than a car. as the ny times reported back in march, the real estate market is so crazy that artists are now moving there & buying houses for $100.

as for atwater block brewery, their vanilla java porter is pretty damn good & pretty damn sweet. it's not overpoweringly sweet, but the vanilla, coffee & chocolate flavors are definitely prevalent. my prediction that it'd be a stellar complement to the thai peanut jerky totally came true. while my prediction was no fringe science, believe me, it was some serious nostradamus shit...& that's close enough. btw, i also predict that you'll find this last line hilariously meta.