#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!

yeah, i know. everybody & their mother has already written about last sunday's third season premiere of amc's mad men, but i want to write about it too, damnit. after all, it's one of my favorite tv shows & it's been almost ten months since season two came to a close, so i've been jonesing. overall, almost three million people tuned in to the premiere, a 33% increase over the season two premiere, so i wasn't alone. the buzz has totally built. luckily, i've waited almost a week since it aired to get around to writing it, so i'm assuming that i'll be the "final word" on it.

when we last visited the mad men at the end of last season, things had fallen into a serious state of unrest. on a global scale, the cuban missle crisis & the possibility of a nuclear holocaust loomed over american society. the fate of sterling cooper was in question, as they were on the brink of a merger with a british firm (putnam, powell & lowe), leaving things all topsy-turvy for many of the main characters. don draper had been kicked out of his own house and his marriage was in shambles because of his constant cheating & overall attitude towards betty, but in the final scene of the season, she'd revealed to him that she's pregnant.

...& it's under those circumstances that we begin season three. the episode opens with don dreaming about the circumstances surrounding his birth (to a prostitute who dies after giving birth to him) as he warms milk on the stove. he brings the milk upstairs to betty & other than seeing that she's still pregnant, we're not entirely sure where we are on the timeline. we know that he's back living at home & that the sterling/putnam merger's gone through, but not much more. this vagueness is one of the keys to how mad men creator matthew weiner weaves his storytelling magic. much of the time, the characters feel & act like they're in control, but the truth is that they never seem to know the whole story & as such, there's always something waiting to derail them. as the season starts, we get this same feeling.

the premiere seemed to set up a lot of the storylines for season three. don & betty will soon have their third child, but don is still cheating on betty, doing so with a stewardess while on a business trip in baltimore. on that same trip, sal (who we've always assumed was gay but it's never been confirmed) starts getting hot & heavy with a hotel bellboy until they're interrupted by a fire alarm that clears out the hotel. while climbing down the fire escape in the evacuation, unbeknownst to sal, don spies the bellboy in his undershirt in sal's room. at the agency, they fire burt peterson (the head of accounts) & pete thinks that he's been named the new head but soon learns that they've actually replaced burt with a two-man team made up of him & ken cosgrove. there's also tension between joan & john hooker, the new male british secretary who's the "right-hand man" to lane pryce (the new CFO).

overall, it was a slow start to the season, but i'm not worried, as weiner's laid the foundations & in previous seasons, things didn't really take off until a few episodes in anyhow. we're someplace around the beginning of 1963 & since actual historical events have always had some effect on the storyline, there's a lot looming on the horizon. the feminine mystique & the beatles' first album (please please me) are coming out soon. the civil rights movement continues to boil over in the south & martin luther king will soon deliver his "i have a dream" speech. most importantly, JFK will soon be assassinated, an event that changed things for a lot of people. i can't wait to see what effect those things have on the folks at sterling-cooper.

#120 - mad? these men are CAH-RAY-ZEE!
snack: mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps
drink: lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale



you know who's a mad man? mr krisper. by looking at him, you might think that he's quite the charmer, given his bowler & bow tie & coy smile, but make no mistake about it--that dude's CAH-RAY-ZEE. i was watching TMZ the other day & saw him coming out of the club with his posse & a girl on both arms & within the span of sixty seconds, he had mooned the paparazzi, kicked a stray puppy, jumped up on the hood of a car & puked onto the pavement below before speeding away in his escalade. it was some serious andy dick type shizz, but not as naked & effeminate & pathetic.

despite his craziness, there's one thing that mr krisper can do & that's make a tasty crisp. since he's as mad as a march hare, he spells "crisps" with a "k." he's just that wacky. like the front of the bag says, his mr krispers barbecue baked rice krisps have a "great whole multigrain taste." great? sure, why not? i definitely consumed them at a fairly rapid pace. they're the size of poker chips & made of brown rice, giving them a nice firmness somewhere between a chip & a cracker. in general, my feelings toward barbecue chips are mixed. if they're overwhelmingly flavorful (i'm thinking mesquite here), they need to stay as far away from my mouth as possible, but if they've got a simple barbecue taste that's not too overpowering, i'll invite them in like an old friend. fortunately, mr krisper's krisps fall into the latter category.

if you don't believe that, then you'd better believe that i'm going to give you the hairy eyeball. it won't be my lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale though, because i've already drank it. plus, if i was giving away an eyeball, i'd probably have to give it to mr krisper, because even though he's nuts & possibly dangerous, it looks like he's having some trouble with his left eye & could use the help. this particular hairy eyeball is lagunitas' 2009 new years release, a brown ale with a copper color & a caramel/brown sugar taste. from what i could tell, there wasn't a lick (lock?) of hair or a wink of eyeball in it, but that's just fine with me. that stuff probably would've interfered with the flavor.

the slogan on the front of the bottle--"here's lookin' atcha'!"--sounds like something don draper would come up with. i can see the tv spot now. there's a man. he's out having drinks with a few of his buddies. from across the room, he catches a glimpse of a sultry, red-haired woman alone smoking a cigarette at the end of the bar. she notices him. they exchange a few knowing glances. he calls the bartender over & whispers something to him. the bartender nods back at him, grabs something from the cooler behind the bar, makes his way down to the woman & places a beer in front of her. it's a lagunitas the hairy eyeball ale. she looks across at the man. he winks at her. she smiles & looks at the label, which reads "here's lookin' atcha'!" then they make whoopie. end scene...& we go back to watching an engrossing episode of the beverly hillbillies or the jetsons or something.