#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.

oh, religion. you make people do some funny things sometimes. remember that time back in early A.D. when because of you, the romans nailed a guy who claimed to be the son of god to a cross? that was awesome. how about that time back in the high middle ages when europeans went & removed muslims from jerusalem in your name? that was pretty cool too. 9/11, the holocaust, the events in tibet--all as a result of your hand. oh! i can't forget that you're doing a bang up job in the middle east these days. kudos on that! you've got a stranglehold on that region...an epic, bloody stranglehold.

myself, i was brought up roman catholic in a family who practiced their religion without thinking of it as a tool to further a political agenda. we went to church most sundays, i learned a sense of morals & was confirmed catholic. i never thought of my religion as a way to force moral beliefs on other people & as a result, as i became older & wiser & saw what was done in the name of not only catholicism, but a number of organized religions, i eventually decided to stop going to church. i still have the morals & general kindness to others that came from my religious upbringing, but i now consider myself agnostic. i feel there has to be some higher power, but i have trouble believing that that higher power has a belief system that applies equally to everyone.

here in nyc, there's been a lot of talk lately about the athiest movement. beginning tomorrow, the big apple coalition of reason will have ads appearing throughout the nyc subway system, ads that ask "a million new yorkers are good without god. are you?" according to the the american religious identification survey, athiests are the fastest growing religious group (15% of the population), so they figure they have a solid target audience for the ads. i'm curious to see what response they get once they're actually up. people love writing on ads as it is, but last year, when 877-WHY-ISLAM wanted to run ads in the nyc subways that tried to educate people about islam, people got their panties in a bunch, saying that the dude funding them was tied to terrorism.

sean hannity's tried to get people worked up about the athiest ads, asking what the response would be if a christian group did the same thing, but since christianity's been present in the subways for years, that angle's not going to fly. i mean, in the times sq station alone, there are already crazy end of the world dudes who line the tunnels with their signage, dianetics dudes with their "stress tests" & countless people handing out religious pamphlets with "relatable" religious messages. sorry sean, but here in nyc, everyone's got the best religion ever & can't wait to tell you about it, so i don't think the absence of religion will be that big of a deal. as a new yorker, you should already know that. the sad thing is that some people will actually believe what you said.

i mean, people believe in some crazy shit...supernatural beings & alien saviors & what have you. don't even get me started on the mormons' special religious undergarments or the ridiculousness that is scientology or the fact that folks from the white separatist world church of the creator have dubbed their religion "creativity." there are the breatharians, who believe that all they need to live is oxygen. there's the church of euthanasia, whose main devotion is toward voluntary population reduction & whose main principles are suicide, abortion, cannibalism & sodomy. my favorite religion of them all is pastafarianism, whose flying spaghetti monster is a deity among deities. any god who's that tasty can't be denied.

#134 - the gods MUST be crazy.
snack: zapps voodoo chips
drink: blue point rastafa rye ale



in celebration of a religion that believes in mischievous spirits & a non-intervening god & sticking pins into dolls, i decided to try out a bag of zapps voodoo chips. it's the third flavor of zapps chips featured thus far on eat!drink!snack! & definitely the most interesting of the three. zapps is based out of gramercy, louisiana, a town just west of new orleans, which is famous for its voodoo culture & history. louisiana voodoo's a variation on traditional voodoo, with christian & tourist bents mixed in. new orleans loves that sort of junk. in fact, next weekend, there's voodoofest, a three-day festival with eminem, ween, the flaming lips, KISS & a ton of other acts playing. KISS totally has the voodoo!

the voodoo chips are zapps' current mystery "limited edition" flavor, which according to website legend, is "a result of an accident. an employee was moving a pallet of spices off the top shelf, and dropped it. while cleaning it up, someone stuck their finger into the mixture of about 5 flavors and pronounced it great. we recreated in our lab, and like gumbo, it’s an 'everything in the kitchen' flavor." it's true. the flavor is pretty intense, with a spice combo that's like salt & vinegar but with a lot more going on, hints of paprika & sweetness. since i wolfed them down quicker than i should have, i felt a bit bloated afterwards, but after gently massaging the belly of a doll made in my likeness, i felt much better.

for those who think that smoking weed & belief in a former ethiopian emperor as god incarnate should be the main tenets of a belief system, i'm washing down the voodoo magic with a 22 oz blue point rastafa rye ale. since from what i've read, alcohol is frowned upon by rastafaris, i'm a bit confused by blue point's rastafari theme, but i guess they knew a good pun when they saw it & decided to run with it. the dude on the front of the label has your typical rastafarian dreadlocks, but he looks like a character out of a crappy video game storyline, like a grand theft auto knockoff or something. he'd be the shady guy you'd smoke a spliff with while you learn about your next mission.

slightly misguided themes aside, the rastafa rye's an acceptable beer. it's a copper beer with a relatively smooth taste made up of a good balance of hops & malty rye. i mean, it didn't make me want to pop on some bob marley or grow the natty dread, but i still enjoyed it. as a bonus, blue point donates a portion of the proceeds from the rastafa rye to a charity that works with "orphaned, at-risk and underprivileged children throughout the caribbean." that's good to know. usually, when i'm drinking, i'm doing it for the children. its not for the children of israel or anything, but i like to think that jah would still approve.

pumpktoberfest #11 - you little punk!

pumpktoberfest #11 - you little punk!
film: child's play
beer: dogfish head punkin ale



over the years, i've dated a number of girls who were seriously creeped out by dolls & more specifically, dolls with lifelike characteristics. i never saw what the big deal was. it's not as if those lifelike dolls were going to one day come to life & murder us in our sleep like something out of child's play, the 1988 horror film about a killer "good guy" doll. the film came out at a time when cabbage patch, teddy ruxpin & my buddy dolls were all the rage. i was fourteen when it came out, so for me, it's always been more hilarious than scary, but it still has a handful of moments that make you jump.

the film opens with a cop chasing a crook into a toy store. after the cop shoots the crook a couple times in the chase & the crook realizes he's going to die, he does some voodoo shit on a good guy doll, transferring his soul into it. days later, he winds up as some little kid's birthday present, a good guy doll named chucky. the good guy dolls, based on a fictional tv show, are supposed to be loveable companions for little boys, with catch phrases like "hi, i'm chucky. wanna play?" & "i'm your friend to the end. hidey ho. ha ha ha." since this one's possessed by a criminal, he adds phrases like "you stupid bitch! you filthy slut! i'll teach you to fuck with me!" to the mix & kills people with his good guy hammer.

throughout the film, we get lots of doll on human violence as chucky learns that if he doesn't transfer his soul into the little kid's body, he's going to become the doll. they made four more child's play movies, including the hilariously awesome bride of chucky & seed of chucky, featuring jennifer tilly as the voice of chucky's bride. in an attempt to reboot the franchise, there's a remake of the original scheduled to come out next year. whenever it comes out, i'm totally there on opening weekend.

so far, i've loved every single dogfish head beer that i've tried. the delaware brewery puts out a vast line of uniquely crafted beers, beers made with saffron or green raisins, ones made in barrels built out of palo santo wood, brews with rich, often complex flavors. their dogfish head punkin ale, brewed exclusively for the pumpktoberfest season, made its debut fifteen years ago at delaware's punkin chunkin, an annual delaware event (now in its 24th year) where people use machines to see who can chuck pumpkins the farthest. at the time, dogfish head wasn't even a brewery yet.

it's a brownish/orange beer brewed with "pumpkin meat," brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon & nutmeg and like the rest of their beers, it has a nice flavor to it. i'm pretty sure that the main thing i'm tasting is pumpkin, but it's blended in well enough with the spices that it's hard to tell. regardless, it's tasty & not too bitter & one of the better pumpkin beers i've tried this pumpktoberfest season. since i love dogfish head as much as i do, i might be a bit biased, but after suffering through my last pumpkin beer, the dogfish version is like drinking sweet nectar from the teat of a goddess.

pumpktoberfest #10 - and we all shine on.

pumpktoberfest #10 - and we all shine on.
film: the shining
beer: jack's pumpkin spice ale



man, jack nicholson used to be such a friggin awesome actor. easy rider? loved it. five easy pieces? outstanding. one flew over the cuckoos nest? batman? the shining? all brilliant performances. with nicholson, the last film of his that i can stand him in is a few good men. everything after that can suck it. i don't care if he won an oscar for as good as it gets or was uproariously funny in anger management. he's been a caricature of himself for some time now, giving us more of a "jack crazy" shtick than actual acting. i find it kind of sad, really. he used to be so good back when he didn't feel the need to tear down the curtains to make a scene work.

the shining, released in 1980, is our second steven king film this pumpktoberfest season & arguably the best film out of all that have come from king's books. it's a good story, but it helped that the film was directed by stanley kubrick, who for the most part rules & that jack nicholson didn't suck yet. in the film, he plays jack torrance, a writer & the husband of a family acting as caretakers at a hotel for the winter. we learn that their son has something called "the shining" that lets him see into the future & past & because of it, he sees a bunch of murdered people at the hotel. eventually, jack goes crazy because they're holed up in the hotel & he tries to murder his family. it's got creepy kids, an elevator with a bunch of blood in it & lots of "jack crazy," but in a good way...a classic horror film.

have you ever thought about what it might be like to have somebody take a leak right into your mouth? i hadn't either, but then i tried jack's pumpkin spice ale, put out by michelob & i got a pretty good idea what the experience would be like. this stuff is just absolutely awful. as a pumpkin beer, i just...i mean did they even try to make it taste like pumpkin? there are definitely spices in the beer, but they're very weak. as it is, michelob is an awful beer. it's just plain terrible. they could've put a TON of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger & clove in & tried to mask the pure evilness that is tasting a michelob, but they didn't.

i guess i can't fault michelob for trying to come out with different beers, but i'm baffled as to how they could have thought that somebody would drink their pumpkin beer & go "wow. this tastes really good." it's just unfathomable. since they realized that people sometimes like it when their beer tastes good, michelob now brews almost twenty different kinds of beers, including a seasonal series (which the pumpkin atrocity is part of), a marzen & a dunkel weisse. i've tried their shock top wheat beer & that at least tasted like a wheat beer, so i guess there's a chance that one of their other beers is worthy of drinking, but after trying the pumpkin spice ale, i'm not holding my breath until i find it.

pumpktoberfest #9 - ghost in the machine.

pumpktoberfest #9 - ghost in the machine.
film: poltergeist
beer: smuttynose pumpkin ale



growing up, my parents wouldn't let me see films with anything higher than a PG rating, meaning that i missed out on a lot of cool films. at the same time, until 1984, there was no PG-13 rating, so there were a number of PG films put out that probably should have been rated R. one such film was steven spielberg's poltergeist, which was originally rated R, but was then re-rated to PG even though it's clearly way too scary for a PG rating. um, a swimming pool full of skeletons is PG? a boy-eating killer tree is PG? as it was, i only got to see the broadcast television version & at 9-10 years old, even that version gave me the willies. i sort of still believe in ghosts, but at the time, i REALLY believed in ghosts. casper, one-eyed willie, jesus, all of em.

the film centers on the freelings, a family whose little girl carol anne starts talking to ghosts through the tv. she was only a few years younger than me, so when i first saw it, i was all "maybe i shouldn't sit so close to the TV when i'm watching cartoons." long story short--the ghosts are trapped between dimensions & think carol anne can help them get out but there's a beast who's using carol anne to distract the ghosts & keep them there. eventually she gets sucked into the other dimension & they have to call in a freaky spiritual medium lady to get her back. after a bunch of crazy ghost shit happens & they bring her back, the beast makes a last ditch attempt to kick ass, but totally gets ghosted. why'd all this happen? get this shit. they built the house on an ancient indian burial ground. i can see bulldozing wetlands for more condos, but you have to draw the line somewhere. whooping cranes can fly someplace else. dead people can't. if i was those ghosts, i would've sucked that lil girl into the tv too.

i don't mean to sound bitter, but the freelings sort of had it coming to them. oh! speaking of bitter, i had a smuttynose pumpkin ale tonight. smuttynose brews out of portsmouth, NH & since i'm from NH, i've tried most of their beers. overall, they put out solid beers, but with the exception of their spring hanami ale, none of them really stick out as memorable in my mind. this one's one of their seasonal beers & according to their website, it's their "homage to the craft and heritage of america’s brewers" because colonial folks apparently used to put squash & whatnot in their beers. we new englanders love paying homage to colonial folks.

like the rest of their beers, the pumpkin ale doesn't really knock my specially-crocheted pumpktoberfest socks off. it has an orange color to it, so you'd think there's some pumpkin in there, but i can't taste any at all. it's apparently made with pumpkin puree & spices, but to be honest, i can't taste the spices either. i only notice them in the smell. i guess that means that as a pumpkin beer, it's a FAIL. as an IPA though, it's a well-done beer. too bad i'm not really a fan of bitter ass IPAs. sorry smuttynose, but your pumpkin ale sort of gave me heartburn. is that any way to treat a fellow new hampshirite? i think not. thanks for the beer, but that's totally not pumpktoberfestian of you, yo.

#133 - ninety.

i'm pretty lucky in that of my four grandparents, three are still alive & kicking. my mom's mom passed away a few years back, but her dad turned ninety last weekend. he's always been the liveliest of my grandparents. he grew up in brooklyn, worked the same job for years, raised three kids & was active in both his church & community. he's the kind of guy who gives you a extra firm handshake when he sees you because he sees the humor in giving an extra firm handshake. he has a place in a retirement community now & whenever we visit him & go to the dining room for a meal, pretty much everyone there is his best friend. he has jokes for all. during one visit a couple years ago, we were standing in the dining room entrance waiting to be seated, so i checked out a bulletin board featuring pics from the community halloween party. my grandfather was in a few. he had gone as a vampire in drag that year.

my parents hosted a gathering last sunday in celebration of his ninetieth, so i spent the weekend at their place up in good ol windham, NH. it's always interesting to be home & see how my parents respond to the stressful task of satisfying a houseful of guests. in addition to the six of us in the immediate family, they were hosting fifteen other relatives, so it was one of the biggest gatherings they've hosted in at least a decade. luckily, nowadays they have three semi-responsible, somewhat helpful adult kids (hell yeah i'll prep the deli platter!) & a level-headed teenager, which means they don't have to do everything, so i think that eases a little bit of the stress for them.

for me, the gathering was an opportunity to catch up with a few relatives i hadn't talked to in ages. there were my two cousins, one of whom i haven't seen since the clinton administration & who is now all adult & married & living in pamplona & shit. as two of the four people eating bean burgers, we totally bonded. four of my mom's cousins were there as well. i remembered them from when i was a kid & they were teenagers, so it was interesting to see how they all turned out. one of them lives in alaska & worked on the pipeline until she was laid off. another has two adopted girls, one of who noted that "the jonas brothers' music sounds stupid." yeah, little girl. a third was wicked excited when i said i helped with nickelback's website. i can't remember much about the fourth, but she was nice.

i also learned that back in the day, my aunt (a baker chef who is my mom's younger sister & the pamplona cousin's mom) had baked a cake for president ford. somebody made a comment about it as she cut my grandfather's birthday cake, a white cake with white frosting & fresh raspberries on top that she had prepared. auntie definitely has baking skillz. as everyone got a piece & stood around consuming it & chatting, i couldn't help but feel a wee bit wistful. my mom had organized a successful gathering for twenty some people, my dad got to give tours of the yard & his gardening & my grandpa got to be with three generations of his family on his ninetieth birthday. the best part? on the way out, my grandpa & i promised to do it again in ten years.

#133 - ninety.
snack: pumpkin whoopie pie
drink: manchester brewing the devil's rooster märzen



on saturday, my dad picked my brother, his girlfriend & i up in boston & after dropping the bro & girlfriend off at various locations, my father & i drove around the greater windham area for a bit. i'd informed him about my quest to try tons of pumpkin beers, so first, he took me to the drink shoppe in hudson to see what they had in stock. after i had dawdled around in there for a little while, we tried to hit up a sandwich place he likes. unfortunately, when we arrived, they were closed. turns out they'd closed just three minutes earlier. sorry bout the dawdling, dad. he was still hungry for a sandwich, so we headed back to windham & stopped at the kitchen at windham junction, a cutesy lil small town place just down the street from the parents' home. i smoked a cig whilst sitting at the picnic table in the picture on their website!

my dad & i stood at the counter whilst he waited for his food & chatted up the woman behind the counter. at one point, he looked into the glass case next to the counter & noticed a tray of treats. once he determined that they were pumpkin whoopie pies, he looked at me, the professional snacker & decided to get two. then he tried talking to the woman behind the counter about my blog, leading to me having to explain this here blog to her. she seemed quite confused about the whole thing.

when we got home, i tried one of the whoopie pies & WHOOPIE was it tasty. it was crazy sugary sweet, so i had to take my time with it, but it had cream cheese frosting on the inside & cakelike outsides dusted with powdered sugar & DOGGAM! i'd also picked up a piece of chocolate cake, but my my dad, figuring i wanted both of the whoopie pies for blogging purposes, ended up eating that chocolate cake instead of his whoopie pie...so i got to eat two of them last weekend. since those whoopie pies were damn good but are now hundreds of miles away up in NH, i'm seriously considering making some of my own. so many baking ideas, so little time!

i did find some pumpkin beers at the drink shoppe, but they were for another time, so i also picked up a bottle of manchester brewing the devil's rooster märzen. they had a rack of manchester brewing beers, all with nifty labels like the pentagram/rooster one on the devil's rooster märzen. satanic! they had one beer there called the "conspiracy theory oatmeal stout," featuring a guy whispering "did you hear about building 7?" into another dude's ear on the front of the label & another with soviet-style font & imagery (the koncord kombat ale). the second beer's named in honor of the city that's home to manchester brewing & all the communists in the state, NH's capital city of concord.

whenever i'm having a beer at my parents' house, i benefit from the chilled mugs they keep in the freezer. nobody in the house drinks beer, so i'm not sure why they have them, but i digress. i'm not a fan of the frosty mugs, but if i take one out for a bit before using it, it warms up enough to not ruin the taste. since the devil's rooster comes in a 22 oz bottle, i grabbed the biggest mug available & poured me a tall, semi-frosty one. it's an orange/amber beer with a brown sugar/toffee sort of taste. definitely something to crow about. devilishly good. i'm hoping that i'll get to try a few more of their beers next time i'm in NH. maybe the one with the dominatrix "naughty nancy" cartoon character on the label, although that one apparently "makes you say 'whip me, beat me, make me write bad checks,'" so i may have to opt for another one. i'm 95% sure my parents wouldn't appreciate that sort of behavior under their roof.