#110 - bro.

i have two bros & one sis. the younger bro (tim) came along my final year of high school, but i grew up with the sis (aimee) & one of the bros (chris). in fact, i shared a bedroom with chris until i moved out for college. through the years, we had our share of sibling squabbles, but it was two times that we were playing together that led to two scar-inducing injuries for him.

the first came when he was about four. our basement had been leaking, so my parents decided to weather treat it & had folks dig up around the foundation, leaving huge piles of dirt & rocks in the yard. since kids love playing in dirt & i was a budding MLB star, the two of us were running around on the mounds as i heaved a random rocks about...until one connected with his forehead. the second time came a few years later, on a rainy afternoon when we really wanted to play wiffle ball. despite our mother's pleas to stay inside, we went out anyhow. during the game, he hit a booming shot to the outfield & i gave chase. by the time i got to the ball, he had already rounded 2nd base & was headed for 3rd, which was a large boulder. as i reached him & went to apply the tag, he slipped on the wet grass, smashing his head on the boulder & reopening the scar from years earlier. playtime fun!

luckily, a forehead scar isn't that serious of an injury, so he grew up to be a relatively well-adjusted individual, despite all the death metal he listened to during high school/college and the fact that he initially went to college & earned a degree in funeral services. it worried some of our relatives, but for the most part, i saw it as him getting into a unique & respected profession. eventually, he went back to school for a degree in industrial design, allowing him to both better utilize his amazing creative talents & get away from dead people.

he's always lived in cool neighborhoods--jamaica plan, somerville, greenpoint--and lived in austin for a few years, which is totally hip. these days, he's just moved into a sweet apartment in greenpoint & has a ton of tattoos & builds bikes & rides them all over the place & designs custom cabinets for hot shot NYC folks. on the side, he works with kaiju big battel, which means he's been on friggin' MTV.

my bro's a good guy. i'd like to say i taught him well, but he's obviously cooler than me. if not for him, who would've introduced me to dirt, gish or dirty? who would've gave me the set of drums i tried to use on my first home recorded album?  who would've brought me back a bag of gourmet popcorn from austin? nobody...that's who.

#110 - bro.
snack: cornucopia dill pickle popcorn
drink: lakefront brewery wheat monkey ale



...so the bro took a trip back to austin a few weeks ago & returned with a gift bag of cornucopia dill pickle popcorn for me. cornucopia's a popcorn store with two locations in austin & this particular bag came from the locale that's housed in an airstream trailer in the trendy soco (south congress) neighborhood.  it was started by two friends who are obviously big fans of the pun.  at cornucopia, there's no such thing as hours of operation.  nope. instead, they have hours of poperation. how punny!

the dill pickle flavor's not as weird as it sounds.  in fact, it's the "house favorite" at cornucopia. it's basically like regular butter popcorn with a buttery/salty taste that's complemented by the dill flavor. when compared with cornucopia's range of flavors, which includes everyday flavors such as smores, texas chili & cinnamon toast and seasonal flavors such as pumpkin pie & pomegranate, dill pickle's rather tame. regardless...really tasty.

to try keeping up the texas theme, i went to my local fancy beer shop (where the coolers are arranged by state) looking for a texas beer. i didn't see any, so i went up to the counter & asked the guy if they had any. with a smirk, he responded, "nope." i had a feeling that was going to be the case. after all, texas is known for beers like lonestar & shiner bock. instead, i went for a bottle of lakefront brewery wheat monkey ale, out of milwaukee. the label has a crazy, clearly drunk cartoon monkey with a piece of wheat for a tail! i love monkeys! they're even spelled cool plurally! :(|)

as for the contents of the bottle, it's your average wheat ale with a hazy look, but it's apparently infused with a lil bit of monkey love, which never hurts.  it's a great beer for the summer--not too heavy but not too bitter, with a slighty fruity taste.  plus, when you're drinking it, you'll have nothing to hide...& your monkey won't either.

#108 - tropical cherries.

for as much as i hate war, i'm sort of a fan of non-spielberg stories that deal with war. renowned director samuel fuller's novel the big red one is one of my favorite books, but i've yet to see the film by the same name. three kings, stalag 17, apocalypse now (obviously)...i love all three films. generation kill is possibly my favorite tv miniseries. it's not like i've ever been in the military or anything. the closest i've ever come was saying to my mother back in high school, "really? so i have to fill out that selective service card or i go to jail? well, ok then. i guess i'll sign it." to be honest, i'd have likely fled for canada if they'd ever reinstated the draft. i'm the first generation in my family who hasn't gone to war or at least been in the military. i'm pretty sure my high-school aged brother doesn't have military ambitions, so maybe the military tradition in my family will skip a generation.

...but i like war films. friday night, after i returned home from a short evening with two friends down 5th ave at bar reis & reis 100 (the bar's newly opened sandwich shop, where i totally had a white anchovy, pickled carrot & daikon, spicy mayo & cilantro sandwich. BAM!), i decided to watch a movie. i was in the mood for a lil comedy, so i queued up tropic thunder, the comedy about a group of actors shooting a war picture that turns into the real thing. it's taken me so long to see it because for me, the film had ended up in the same category as the crying game & its secret ninja penis, in that one aspect of the movie--academy award-nominated robert downey jr playing a black man--often became the main story surrounding the film. the cast is stellar beyond downey jr, with ben stiller (who i like) & jack black (who i tolerate) & a cast that includes nick nolte, steve coogan, kenny powers danny mcbride & friggin' tom cruise.

as the story goes, downey jr, stiller & black's characters are part of a group of prima donna actors shooting a vietnam war film directed by steve coogan's character, written by nick nolte's character & produced by tom cruise's. to be honest, i didn't even know it was cruise until at least half way through the movie, although i suffered some serious "who the hell is that guy" feelings every time he came on screen. the film shoot's going horribly, so the director & writer decide to shake things up by dropping the actors into the jungle, miles away from the set & their trailers. the director takes charge & coogan's character really explodes on the screen as the war picture becomes MORE REAL THAN THEY'VE BARGAINED FOR.  hilarity ensues.

i liked it so much that i've decided to go back & watch a few war films this summer, most of which i've yet to see. how the lineup plays out thus far:

ON LIST:
- three sam fuller war pictures--the big red one, fixed bayonets! & the steel helmet
- renoir's la grande illusion
- jarhead (the only war movie i own)
- the deer hunter

POSSIBLY ON LIST:
- quentin tarantino's inglorious basterds
- the hurt locker
- in the army now, with pauly shore

NOT ON LIST:
- saving private ryan

#108 - tropical cherries.
snack: cherries
drink: samuel smith organic cherry ale



cherries are probably my favorite fruit. when i was but a wee lad, i'd eat those bright red maraschino ones right out of the jar. ice cream with a cherry on top? i'd have ice cream with four cherries on top & four others hidden within the ice cream itself. i can't say that i ever remember eating a non-maraschino cherry as a kid though. now that i'm an adult (of sorts), i'm trying to overhaul the diet a bit these days & that includes eating nothing but natural snacks for a little bit, hence the bowl of cherries. i'm so glad that i eventually discovered non-jarred & juice immersed cherries, because, pit & all, they're a damn tasty fruit...now if i could just get down that sexy cherry stem-tying thing. actually, screw that. i don't need cherry stems to prove my dexterity.

it turns out that cherries don't have a very long shelf life. tonight, i went back to finish them off & those mofos had already started molding & turning into wine & whatnot. boo cherries. now i'll have to get more of you tomorrow to get my fill. if you're not careful & i'm not stuck to my mattress come 8am, i might even get feisty & chop yo ass up into a morning smoothie along with no less than four other fruits. your own mother won't even recognize you.

since i was going all tropical & fruity, i opened up a bottle of samuel smith organic cherry ale to accompany the cherries. along with the raspberry & strawberry varieties, it's one of sam smith's three fruit beers, which are brewed with actual fruit juice. it's absolutely amazing tasting--think the flavor of a cider, but not as watery & bitter. it's a flavor similar to what you'd get from a syrup-infused berliner weisse, sans wheatiness. paupers take note: it's not a beer for the indigent & downtrodden. i forked over $8.50 for a 18.7oz bottle & i'd do it again, since the ale & cherry combo created an orgasmically pleasurable & fruity explosion in my mouth.

also, in other recent work/cherry-related developments, i'm now heading up the site for john mellencamp's fan club--"club cherry bomb." i grew up with "hurts so good" and "jack & diane" & "pink houses," but they've mostly just been a part of the larger mass of 80's songs in my head. coincidentally, npr's fresh air had an interview with him on friday, timed to coincide with thursday's start of the dylan/mellencamp/willie nelson tour of minor league ballparks. after listening to the interview & mellencamp performing a few songs acoustic, i have a better appreciation for his music & for his take on things. when asked what he learned from the experience of his song "this is our country" being used in chevy silverado ads, he had this to say: "i learned that an artist shouldn't have to do this. this is not what my songs are about...but i also learned that chevrolet was a better record company than columbia." amen, john. amen.

#106 - ready for my closeup.

back in the mid-nineties, i spent four years of my life & $100K in pursuit of a coveted boston university film degree. as previously noted, other than writing a handful of unproduced feature-length scripts in the late nineties, i've put the film portion of that degree to little use. the only time it led to the creation of an actual film was in 2003, when i documented a cross-country trip a friend & i took to yellowstone for a week of backcountry hiking & camping.

about two-and-a-half years ago, almost ten years after graduating, i found myself on a film set for the first time. i had moved back to nyc a few months earlier & was living the totally glamorous, totally bohemian no-apartment, no-job lifestyle & as such, had a lot of free time on my hands. a friend who i'd met through my girlfriend at the time was acting as producer on a short film & they needed somebody to drive one of the vans that transported the crew from union sq down to one of the sets, a school in new brunswick, nj. other than missing the holland tunnel one night & having to drive through an extra 30-45 minutes of traffic to the lincoln tunnel, i did a fairly good job. in fact, nobody died on my watch.

since my main job was basically two hours of driving to the set & two hours driving from the set with a full day of waiting on the set sandwiched in between, i finished a hell of a lot of crosswords but also provided random assistance here & there. i helped carry in gear, hung a few signs around the building to direct cast members to the appropriate rooms & given my food expertise, was obviously a part of setting up craft services/catering. in addition, since i still get carded for cigarettes & lottery tickets & whatnot and the plot revolved around a high school teacher & a few of her students, i filled in as an extra, playing the part of a high school student. basically, along with a number of extras who were actually high school students, i was tasked with hanging out in the background & reacting to stuff.

my big break came during a scene where the teacher (played by leslie lyles, who also played andy kaufman's mother in man on the moon) was selling fundraiser candy to another teacher (played by eric christie). they conversed for a bit over the candy transaction & then he stepped away & i stepped forward & uttered my one line--"hershey bar, please." this past wednesday, the film--LANDLOCKED--had its first set of screenings & my one line made the cut & was right up there on the screen for all to see. i might be slightly biased, but i really believed that i wanted that hershey bar...& i'm now four degrees away from kevin bacon. leslie lyles was in man on the moon with jim carrey, who was in the truman show with laura linney, who was in mystic river with kevin bacon.

#106 - ready for my closeup.
snack: hershey's mini milk chocolate bars
drink: heineken from a mini keg



along with the screenings, there was a reception that featured an array of tasty wines & beers & cheeses & whatnot. there was even a cake shaped like the state of oklahoma (where the film is set). since the plot largely revolved around the teacher trying to raise money for a class trip by selling candy, there were mini candies sprinkled throughout the reception area. given my on-screen preference, i made sure to make quick work of a few hershey's mini milk chocolate bars during the reception.

recently, i've become somewhat of a chocolate snob, opting for dark chocolate most of the time. regardless, there's always something satisfyingly comforting about hershey's bars. they take me back to my childhood, a time when the parow clan filed into a rented minivan & took a summertime excursion down to hershey park, the most chocolate-themed amusement park on earth. unfortunately, that memory doesn't consist of any actual events from that trip, although i assume that some chocolate was consumed at some point & we probably went on some rides & i probably punched my sister and/or brother at least once.

as part of the reception spread, there was a mini keg of heineken. since i was feeling celebratory & i'm a total lush, i had myself a few classy plastic cups of that along with the chocolate bars. even though it's the world's most popular lager, the best part about the heineken is definitely not its bitter ass taste. it's the adventure that accompanies pouring it from that cute lil keg into a small plastic cup, a task that i discovered is not as easy as it appears to be.

the mini keg is dutch engineering at its finest. for starters, the "tap" extends out from the top of the keg at a 90-degree angle, which, if you're not careful, leads to the beer shooting out of the keg, clear past your waiting plastic cup. luckily, the fancy spread included napkins, which i put to good use. on top of that, the mini keg produces a lot of foam, a development which is fine when it involves tasty beer, but not when it involves heineken. if i have to wait five minutes for my beer, it damn well better be a guinness or a boddingtons or some such draught beer. sure i could be a total heathen & like my friend who i was getting my beer with, swirl a finger covered in nose grease into the foam to speed up the process, but i'd much rather not. it might be fine for her, since she's not a film star like me, but i now have a reputation to uphold & a film star would never do such a thing.  that's not to say that i didn't stick my finger in the foam...i just didn't cover it with nose grease before doing so.

#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.

#104 - meet my day.

wah wah wah! it's rainy! wah wah wah! my feet are wet! wah wah wah! my umbrella broke! wah wah wah! not again, mother nature! wah! let me update my facebook and/or twitter status to reflect my displeasure! wah!...etc. the city has been rainy rainy rainy lately lately lately. forecasts are for rain from now until the end of the first bobby jindal administration, so people need to be start being more accepting of the fact that we had big hair in the eighties & as a result, weather is going to be a disaster, natural or otherwise, for the unforeseeable future...that is, unless scientists figure out a way to alter it. until than happens, quit whining & go bend some wood for the ark...as the bible states in genesis 6:14, please make sure that it is gopher wood.  get thee to minnesota!

...so thursday night's post work entertainment was a nyc/brooklyn blogger's meetup at the bell house, a bar/venue located a few blocks from my apartment here in brooklyn. since i'm all about the networking, i reached out to one of my partners in crime, mike weber, and requested his presence at 8ish at said house of bells. it had basically stopped raining (reverse wah!) by the time i left my apt to head over, but five minutes into my walk, it started on up again. luckily, i'd just taken a shower (yes, for bloggers, an often unshowered bunch, i showered), so my hair was already slightly wet & nobody (but me) was the wiser.

since eat!drink!snack! has been a real thing for over a year now, it's high time i got into blatant marketing mode. i was going to buy a bag of assorted chocolates at the store & affix stickers with my logo, name & email to the back of each for handing out purposes (icebreaker!), but got as far as printing the stickers. it worked out ok though, as the rain kept a lot of people away, so i wouldn't have had much opportunity to give candy to strangers anyhow. regardless, i did get to finally meet the peeps from nachos ny, both lee & rachel (the girl who finally brought nachos to this blog by writing the most-read post in the history of eat!drink!snack!). they like nachos. it was another opportunity to see erica, from fuckedinparkslope, home to my weekly column for the last four plus months. i even got to have a short conversation with the guy who runs this bar sucks. he didn't seem to think that bell house sucks, so that was good. it turns out that kristin hersh (throwing muses) was playing in the back room. she pretty much rules, but i wasn't in the mood for a random show, so i passed.

after leaving the meetup, i headed home & put on music for men, the new (& fourth) album from the gossip. you can too! beth ditto (their singer) pretty much rules...way more than kristen hersh. i loved the last album. booty-shaking rock fo sho. this performance on letterman says it all. this is their first album with columbia records & it's produced by the famous/infamous rick rubin, so i'm assuming they're going to be responsible for one of your/our summer jams...especially since they now have a branding agency behind them (two or so page scrolls down). anyway, the new album definitely made my day.

#104 - meet my day.
snack: crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel
drink: foster's



since i'd skipped dinner before heading over to bell house, when i got home, i was quantifiably ravenous. for those tallying the ravenousness at home, that quantity is 4.  please update your score cards accordingly. with dinner still some cooking away, i broke open a box of crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel that was hanging out in my cabinet.  recently, it's been a snacktime fixture here in the abode, as a box of this delicacy goes for only $1.69 down at my fave bodega.  the only drawback...i'm freaked out about the health of my teeth & copious amounts of heftily-sugared corn syrup caramel & chocolate don't help my conscience.

...but the crunch 'n munch chocolate 'n caramel rocks my face.  it's a ton of extremely large, stuck together popcorn chunks, with peanuts stuck to the caramel ones.  when i eat it, the parts of my brain that crave salt & sugar join hands in a super-sexy slow dance...& then they head home to my stomach where they become one...& are burned with acid...in true love.

on my way home from the meetup, with a couple of $3 blogger special brooklyn lagers in me, i decided to stop by a bodega on the corner of 4th ave & 17th to pick up a beer. when i walked in, something was obviously different about the place. after heading to the coolers, picking out a foster's & bringing it to the counter, i figured out what the difference was...bulletproof glass enclosing the counter...awesome.  also, i got carded for buying a foster's...awesome.  it's australian for beer!...yeah...& beck's is german.

i got about half way through the mighty australian beer before i got tired & decided to cash in my chips so i could be a functioning human at work the next day.  foster's is a good beer if you're looking to get in a bunch of light beer drinking all from a single can.  as long as you're opting for economy & mock-exoticism over quality & flavor, you'll be fine with a foster's. if you're a beer snob who made a snap judgment whilst on a lightly-raining walk, you'll regret your decision in the morning...but it'll be friday & it'll end up being a good friday at that, so you won't care in the least.