#161 - WTF?

hey BP! WTF? you've really caused one hell of a mess down in the gulf of mexico, huh? it's been fifty-six days and counting since your oil rig blew up down in the gulf, killing eleven people & releasing oil into the gulf and from what i can tell, there's still no end in site. at first, you tried placing the blame elsewhere & since then, you've deployed a handful of ridiculous methods in an attempt to try & stop the leak and contain the spill, methods with comical names like "top kill" & "junk shot." surprise surprise...none of them have worked & with thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the gulf each day, the spill is now almost as large as pennsylvania.

thanks to your incompetence, the disaster has now become the largest oil spill in u.s. history. congrats on the milestone, BP! along the way, you've devastated local industry, threatened a coastline & killed countless animals. you've also developed a killer PR campaign, even going as far as to try to control the flow of information by buying up google keywords. wow. that sounds like a good idea to me. i mean, why wouldn't it work? so far, you've showed that you're ABSOLUTE GENIUSES at controlling the flow of things. i'm not saying that i have the solution to your problems, but then again, i'm not a multi-billion dollar energy company & it's not my exploded rig & busted pipeline, so i'm not supposed to have solutions. anyway, in terms of "WTF's," you've really taken the cake.

in the nyc food world, we've got a WTF of our own going on right now. it's not as catastrophic as dumping thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean & fucking up an ecosystem, but it's definitely devastating in its own way. last week, city councilwoman jessica lappin (5th district/UES) introduced a bill that would suspend a food truck's license if it gets two parking tickets in a year & revoke it if it gets a third. given the state of the economy & everything else that's going on in the city, it sounds TOTALLY NECESSARY to me. seriously lappin, WTF? oh. you have a truck in your district that, in your words, has "got a takeout a menu that says he's located on 86th and lexington every day from 11:30 until 10pm at night. and that's just not right." for that you're willing to punish everyone? give me a break.

the majority of food trucks don't camp out to that degree, but parking tickets are a regular part of NYC life & three in a month is routine, so in a nutshell, if it passes, it would quickly put most food trucks out of business. destroying someone's livelihood for three parking tickets? WTF? food trucks have become a vibrant part of the city's economy & if lappin has her way, that part will soon go away. if you believe it's ridiculous & are free on wednesday at 10am, there's a hearing about the bill at the committee on consumer affairs (250 broadway, 16th floor). if you can't make it, you can always sign the online petition or one of the many petitions at many of the city's food trucks. do your part to show councilwoman lappin just how much of a moron she's being.

snack: kit kat sparkling strawberry
drink: lagunitas wilco tango foxtrot

last night i had myself a snack that, when i first saw it, made me say "WTF?"--a sparkling strawberry kit kat. it's one of japan's hundreds of kit kat flavors, flavors like soy sauce, framboise & sweet potato. according to a story that npr did about a month back, kit kat makes all these ridiculous flavors in an attempt to stand out within the cutthroat japanese convenience store culture. my sister picked these ones up on a recent trip to hawaii & unlike kit kats made in the u.s., which come in a four pack, these ones came in a box containing two individually wrapped packs with two bars in each. oh...& they also have a ton of CAH-RAY-ZEE japanese characters all over them.

compared to the kit kats you can get here in the states, they're TOTALLY foreign. that doesn't mean they're not good though. as the name implies, they're kit kats with strawberry frosting between the layers of wafer & on the outside. it's a pretty intense strawberry flavor, but it's not overpowering. i like it, but i'm not sure where the "sparkling" part comes in. while it would've been cool if they were, it's not like they're filled with pop rocks or something. they just taste like artificial strawberries, not sparkling. i'm not going to say that the japanese are lucky to have such a wide kit kat selection or anything, but if i could find them here in the states, i'd certainly eat the sparkling strawberry ones again.

i paired my japanese kit kats with a big ol 22 oz bottle of lagunitas wilco tango foxtrot that i purchased at sprouts farmers market on the last night of my recent trip to AZ. it's made by california's lagunitas brewing co. & is their limited release for spring 2010, a tribute to the messed-up year that's been 2010, with the label describing it as "a malty, robust, jobless recovery ale." i initially thought it was named for wilco & their 2002 album yankee hotel foxtrot, but according to the folks at lagunitas, it's named for the words that represent "WTF" in the NATO phonetic alphabet. they would've went with "whiskey tango foxtrot" (the actual letters), but the ATF apparently frowns on using the word "whiskey" to describe a beer, so they substituted "wilco" (short for "will comply") for "whiskey."

it's a nice scented dark brown ale that pours with a slight head. the flavor's somewhat sweet with a mix of flavors. their website mentions chocolate, which i tasted, but i also noticed hints of caramel & brown sugar. like the label says, it's robust, but i'm not sure that i'd call it "malty." it's worth checking out but unfortunately, it's a seasonal release & the summer finally arrives a week from today, meaning that even if you can still find it, it's not around for that much longer. luckily, this summer lagunitas is bringing back their lucky 13 beer which, when i had it last year, was just as good. sure the name's not as clever, but in a world where misguided corporations & politicians can destroy people in an instant, i'll take it.