#181 - oh carlos!

last saturday, i spent the afternoon with a friend in chelsea, where we wandered from gallery to gallery in the rain. it ruled & here's why this is significant...i've lived in nyc for just under a decade now & in that time, i've never, like ever, just gone to chelsea & walked around looking at mostly-cool art for FREE. seriously, i don't know what my problem is. i've learned my lesson though & plan on doing a lot more gallery wandering this summer. maybe i'll even walk the high line for the first time while i'm in the neighborhood.

the main side effect of such an afternoon activity was that by the evening, i was ready to procure foodstuffs & drinkstuffs & plop down on a couch in my apartment. luckily, the sundance channel was airing all three episodes of carlos, their miniseries that first aired on the channel last october & won this year's golden globe for "best miniseries or television film." it's the story of carlos the jackal, a venezuelan dude who, back in the 70's, acted as a revolutionary & a terrorist in the name of the palestinian cause. all told, the miniseries is five & a half hours long & divided into three parts--carlos' formative years as a terrorist, his 1975 raid on OPEC headquarters & his eventual debaucherous downfall.

the part of carlos is played by edgar ramirez, a venezuelan actor i've never heard of who was in the bourne ultimatum. i've never seen that but he's good in this. he plays carlos over the course of a decade & during that time, he goes through all sorts of transformations. while the belly he grows over the course of the story is rather impressive, the overall character arc & emotional transformation & whatnot is much more so.

carlos' story is this: after being expelled from a moscow university, he headed to beirut & joined the popular front for the liberation of palestine. in the early part of his terrorist career, he gained some noterity but for the most part was pretty damn inept. he screwed up a couple of bomb attempts. one week in january of 1975, an operation he was part of tried to shoot down an el al airliner with a rocket launcher. they missed but decided to give it another shot four days later...& totally failed again.

eventually, in late december of '75, carlos led a team that stormed an OPEC meeting in austria, taking around sixty hostages & killing three people in the process. he & his team eventually loaded a bunch of the hostages onto a plane & had it flown from austria to algeria & from there to baghdad, tripoli & back to algeria, dispatching all the hostages along the way. carlos & the rest of the rebels were granted asylum. after that, he took part in a bunch of bombings in france but eventually became largely ineffective & scorned, as he spent a lot of his time getting wasted & getting laid. he remained at large until 1994, when he was captured, put on trial & imprisoned for life for murdering an informant & two parisian policeman back in the summer of '75.

i really enjoyed it. it had a similar feel to stephen soderbergh's che, which is divided into two parts & clocks in at four & a half hours, but it didn't feel as long & drawn out as che. like with che, in carlos you get to see all sorts of historically-based drama, both internal & otherwise, that leads to the rise & fall of a revolutionary. it's well done. at the same time, i feel like i learned a hell of a lot about palestinian terrorism during the 70's, which was cool. i didn't know jack about that. would i watch it again? definitely. would i watch it all again straight through in one sitting? definitely not.

snack: sundried tomato & basil wheat thins
drink: ithaca beer cascazilla

as i made my way through the five plus hours of carlos' shenanigans, i wolfed down a ton of sundried tomato & basil wheat thins. occasionally, i'd put a cheese slice on top, an activity that's apparently TOTALLY WEIRD. in a ny times article from earlier this year, jim low, the "marketing director for the wheat cracker division at kraft" noted that "wheat thins is one of the least topped crackers in the cracker category." oh, market research. as a result of this fact, kraft is now referring to wheat thins as a "snack" as opposed to a "cracker." while i did sometimes pair them with cheese, more often that not i'd just eat them by themselves, so i guess the whole "snack" vs "cracker" rationale makes some sense. whatever though. in the end, it's all just marketing bullshizz anyhow.

regardless of the preferred nomenclature, they're ridiculously flavorful, as they're covered with a bunch of colorful spices & flavors, stuff like basil, paprika, garlic powder, tomato powder, sun dried tomatoes, onion powder and dried green & red bell peppers. the cracker snack itself is made with a mixture of whole grain wheat flour & unbleached enriched flour. as far as ingredients go, i did notice that in general, wheat thins are no longer made with HFCS, a fact that's clearly pointed out on the side of the box. instead, they're made with malt syrup, which i guess isn't as evil. all together, they're wholesome, tasty crackers snacks & although i ate a bunch of them over the course of five & a half hours, i have a feeling that the MSG in them had a lot to do with that.

i washed down my wheat thins with a number of beverages over the course of the eve, but my first beverage was a bottle of ithaca beer cascazilla, a beer brewed in upstate NY. they've been brewing beer up there for over a decade now. i've had a few of their beers over the years & what i've had's been good but nothing spectacular. until recently, i'd never tried the cascazilla. according to their website, it's a year-round offering that's named for both the cascadilla gorge, an ithaca, NY gorge that's located on the cornell university campus & for the "monster amounts of cascade hops" in it...how clever.

the cascazilla pours with a dark red color & a fairly hoppy scent, but as far as the level of hops being worthy of a "zilla" designation, let's just say that i've had much hoppier beers many times before. that's not to say that there's anything wrong with it. it's a good beer that went well with the wheat thins & it's actually fairly smooth for a hoppy beer. with the caramel malts in it, the flavor even has a bit of sweetness to it. for a wide range of folks, it's definitely drinkable & for a beer snob like myself, it offers just enough hoppiness to make me happy. if you see it, give it a try.