#87 - man things.

after a long but lovely friday, i woke up on saturday morning with a lighter hangover than expected & the first relatively obligation-free schedule in some time. to start off my day, i sat down with a glass of iced coffee & a bagel and finally got around to watching the first episode of the first season of fx network's rescue me. i'm still on the fence about denis leary in general, but from what i got from the first episode, i've got some good, manly TV watching ahead of me.  it's also set fairly soon after 9/11, so there's that whole aspect.  i know it screwed things up for a lot of people here in the city, especially the ground zero & rescue workers (a group that now includes a number of people who have developed respiratory problems or mental issues because of what they went through on that day), so seeing how they handle that intrigues me.

eventually, i had to leave my house & head into manhattan for a 3pm meeting with a co-worker whose blog i'm helping him set up (go squarespace blogger platform!). we met up at a bar in murray hill appropriately called "the hill," which is not to be confused with that stupid mtv show. we chose the place for its combo of wifi & flat screen tvs, necessary for nfl draft watching. to be clear, re: flatscreens, i was not the one interested in which offensive tackle would go first, but i'm now aware that the OT who fit that description was a guy named jason smith & the rams took him with the #2 pick. while we were about a beer into our power meeting, a group of ny cares people, fresh from the annual "hands on ny day," converged on the bar & i was reminded how last year, that was me. this year, i'm a heartless non-philanthropist.

as we wrapped up our power meeting, it dawned on me that i was around the corner from my newly-reunited via facebook college friend's midtown apartment. since it was a beautiful weekend day, i assumed that he'd be holding court in the outdoor seating at the bar at the base of his apartment...& i was correct, so when the power meeting was done, i went & hung with him & a few of his friends for an hour or so. as a result, i discovered that he & his three friends agree that it's always sunny & philadelphia (another fx show) is basically a gift from god.  mission accomplished.

while there, another friend had sent me a message letting me know that he & his girlfriend were in prospect park with a third dude.  he suggested that i come by. after the previous 24 hours, i was feeling all social for once & we still had a few hours of sunlight left & i enjoy looking at the lovely ladies in the park, so when i was done with my outdoor patio drinking, i headed back to brooklyn & prospect park to join my park-going pals. we hung out & admired the scenery for a little bit before the aforementioned girlfriend headed back home to rest up for a sunday morn bridal shower & the rest of us headed back to my apartment to chill out with a few beers & what have you.

my roommate was hanging out at the apartment for the evening & as that made four of us dudes hanging out & drinking beers, eventually the inevitable happened--a late night, drunken game of risk.  usually, my approach is to control australia early & sweep out across the globe from the southwest hemisphere.  this time, i got cocky & decided to switch it up by coming out of japan & slowly controlling asia.  i got up to kamchatka easily enough & even made my way across the bering strait into alaska before being repelled back into asia by sarah palin & her helicopter wolf hunting skills.  after that, my strategy, much like her 08' ticket, went down the tubes super quickly.  eventually, i was the first one eliminated.

#87 - man things.
snack: good health natural foods chilean lime avocado potato chips
drink: troegs sunshine pils


as i accepted my fate as a risk spectator & saturday became sunday, i ran to the store & grabbed a snack & another beer to ease the pain.  when i returned to the apartment, i broke open the bag of good health natural foods chilean lime avocado potato chips & watched as the remaining three battled it out for control of the globe.  as a rule, potato chips are a pretty manly snack, but when they're cooked in avocado oil & sprinkled with chilean lime, i think that skews toward metrosexual manly.  let me check...according to my manual, those two ingredients put it in the 95th percentile of metrosexuality...so there you have it.

the chips are pretty darn good.  as the back of the bag explains, avocado oil does some sort of junk with cholesterol that's good for you when you cook chips in it.  as it is, avocados are the bomb-diggity tastewise & there's a very subtle bit of that in the chips. as for the lime, it's mixed in with a bunch of other stuff but gives the chips a hint of additional flavor.  by the time the risk game wrapped up, i had made a serious dent in the bag...& finally finished them off tonight.

i cracked open the troegs sunshine pils (from a company out of central pa) to accompany the chips.  at this point, it had already been a joyful, solid weekend & although i'm not much of a pill person myself, i figured that a little bit of the "sunshine pills" could only be helpful.  it's nothing all that mind-blowing, especially after a couple of earlier beers, but it lives up to its name with a sunny, light, pilsner taste...no increased sense of euphoria though...although by the time 2am rolled around & i headed to bed with the windows wide open & the air flowing through, i did have a peaceful sleep & some crazy-ass dreams.  thanks for capping off the night, mr. sunshine.

#86 - shawny shawn's day off.

to keep my sanity intact, every once in a while, especially during the non-holiday months, i take a friday off, relax, get some random errands/adult obligations done, etc. it's like ferris bueller's day off, but with less adventure & not in chicago. this friday was one of those days. i slept in for a few extra hours, waking up around 11am after a night where, with no work ahead of me, i had stayed out past my bedtime seeing the debut performance of the W.U.T.S. (who need to get some music on their page) at vox pop, a recently-saved community-owned bar/cafe/performance space/book store/publishing assistance place here in brooklyn...since i'll be back there, more to come on that awesome place at some point.

...so i woke up at 11 & started my day with an iced coffee & the paying off of some outstanding nj taxes. they were from two months from when i moved back to new york over two years ago, so it was sort of like a closing of that "coming back to ny" period, which i suppose is a good thing...sanity & all.

i also used the power of the internet to purchase a three-day pass to the mid-july pitchfork music festival out in chicago. very excited about that. i've never been to the festival & haven't been to chicago since a 2002ish trip, when i was there for a convention of college cable tv systems. all i remember of the city was a few hour journey into the city to meet a friend at a bar somewhat near where dillinger was shot. that's it though.

...so i finally left the apartment in the early afternoon for my usually bi-monthly supercuts haircut up in downtown brooklyn. usually i get the short, frumpy east-european looking woman or the slightly older, talkative woman who's been there forever, but this time, i got a cute, young girl with glasses & a pseudo-afro who fixed my hair. most satisfying haircut of the 09 thus far. you can smell it...spring is in the air.

after my haircut & a few errands, i came home & picked up my mail. to my surprise, there was a cd-shaped package for me in the mailbox, which contained a cd from allison, who you may remember from such places as snack away! #3 & wrestling entropy. in honor of my now-impending trip to chicago, it's a mix of songs about chicago or by chicago bands (including chicago) & it single-handedly made my weekend & got a solid listen over the last few days, especially with the subway waits due to copious mta construction. so yeah...spring is definitely in the air.

#86 - shawny shawn's day off.
snack: pretzel pete spicy-hot! sour cream & habanero pretzel nuggets
drink: rogue morimoto hazelnut signature ale


my friday evening plans consisted of the long-awaited return of the missing teens (the band i'm doing some managing for) as a full band, complete with guitarist & keyboardist, but it was 4pm & i had a few hours to kill, so i picked up a beer & some pretzels to munch on during my few hour-killing. the pretzels i went with are straight outta landsdale (pa)--the pretzel pete spicy-hot! sour cream & habanero pretzel nuggets. look at that pretzel pete! he's such a pretzel-hording lil scamp!

the pretzels come in a gold bag, which is totally classy. as the diagram on the back of the box points out, a lot of thought has gone into making these nuggets as tasty as can be. a wide split in the nugget & things like flakes of parsley make it all possible. they're good...no less dry than any other pretzel, but they're buttery & peppery/spicy, which is tasty. well done, lil pete.

luckily, i had picked up the rogue morimoto hazelnut signature ale to combat cotton mouth. rogue has recently rebranded their hazelnut brown nectar (featuring a communist-looking figure on the front) to the morimoto brand, featuring some sort of samurai. it's a well-done brown ale that's much more flavorful & not as harsh as a newcastle...not really something i see a communist drinking, to be honest, so i support the switch to the composed, asian stylee.

by the time i was done with its 22 oz & had a bit of pretzel pete coursing through my veins, i was good & ready for a full on rock & roll show. james call & erotic photo hunt (the missing teens mastermind's solo project) opened up, followed by full-on rock from psycho rainbow, who i had seen before but absolutely loved for the first time on friday night (check out "penny penny" & this rockin' live action & this stripped-down live action if you're so inclined). then the missing teens returned with a seriously awesome show & (i think) i got my video camera to work & (hopefully) taped the whole thing. i'm so happy they ditched the singer + ipod + couple of instruments approach in favor of a full band sound. it sounds so damn alive it's not even funny.  tons of people came out & rocked their faces off & peeps made some money! friday night melted into saturday morning with beers & conversation & this awesomeness.

part deux of weekend amazingness coming tomorrow! my life is so inspiring exciting! interesting neat full of events!

#85 - a night in at the movies.

since i've been obsessed with obsessing over tv series recently & was staying in this saturday night, i decided to take a different path & watch a few flicks & since my last entry was entitled "arrr," i decided to keep going that route by watching two flicks with "r" names--rachel getting married & religulous...after catching up on the last five episodes of the office, of course.

i've been meaning to see rachel getting married for quite some time now, pretty much since it came out. for starters, when i first saw previews for the film & realized that it had that "indie" feel that i go for & that tv on the radio's tunde adebimpe was playing rachel's groom, i wanted to see it. i loved him in jump tomorrow & as it is, he's only acted in a handful of films thus far. plus, anne hathaway's in it & she's totally hot & from brooklyn. going in, i could've cared less about the fact that it's directed by jonathan demme. other than silence of the lambs & swimming to cambodia, nothing he's done interests me. anyway, til now, i slacked on seeing it.

i'm a sucker for character-driven stories & rachel getting married is full of characters. anne hathaway is amazing as rachel's recovering addict sister, kym, and all the many many other actors in the film each have numerous chances to shine. for me, one of the other special parts was the use of music. everyone's staying at rachel's family's house for the wedding & since 90% of them seem to have some sort of musical talent & most of the action takes place at the house, there's almost always somebody playing music in the background. one of my pet peeves is when a film tries to make you feel a certain way by laying the sounds of omnipresent, sappy music over the action. in this case, since there's only natural music, it adds to the "realism" of the film. anyway, i didn't cry or anything, but i definitely felt the emotion of the film & i definitely recommend it.

religulous takes an interesting (if not self-indulgent) approach to storytelling, as the film revolves around bill maher doing his shtick & examining the craziness of religion through the filter of his own experience/struggles with the existence of god. one of the guys i share an office with & who, by default, listens to npr with me, leading to multiple, daily, political discussions, passed it on to me last week after watching it. now we can have all sorts of discussions tomorrow!

it was an interesting enough film, but i have the same problem with bill maher that i have with michael moore. although maher's not as annoying as moore, both of them go at people with a smug attitude that subtly mocks their subjects & adds an unspoken "i'm right, but i'll ask you regardless to prove that i'm right" to every one of their questions. i get that it was larry charles' follow up film to borat, so there's some of that "talk to people & they'll expose their own ignorance" thing, but for some reason, i've never viewed that as the best approach to revealing truths.

throughout the film, he shows the craziness of most organized religions, speaking with a rabbi who denies the holocaust, a man who claims to be the second coming of jesus, mormons & scientologists and a number of folks hopeful for the end of the world. he does a solid job of exposing how much of what is written in religious texts is written by men & often overlaps with texts from other religions. all of them are so sure that they're right & their god & text are the one true ones & as such, do crazy things to those who don't believe in what they do & start wars & whatnot...oh humans. you'll believe anything.

#85 - a night in at the movies.
snack: broiled spicy octopus salad
drink: radeberger pilsner


tonight, i'm snacking on a broiled spicy octopus salad, made up of octopus that was totally broiled in the oven, tomatoes, onions, feta & lettuce, all topped with balsamic vinaigrette. it was more of a meal, but i sort of picked at it for a few hours instead of inhaling it all at once, so i'm calling it "snacking." as a rule, i rather enjoy picking at my food, so it worked out just splendidly toward confirming that quirk.

i guess i have to consider myself an octopus lover. that doesn't mean i'm a red wings fan or have ever had sex with an octopus (SFW?), but i very often get it as sushi & occasionally consume calamari, which is squid & like the octopus also a cephalopod. there's just something about the pseudo-chewiness of it that appeals to me. it also goes well with the 2000 horror classic, octopus.

i'm glad i chose to broil it rather than just tossing it cold in with some veggies. it gave it more of a spicy, off-the-grill, bbq flavor. recently, i've been making a lot of salads for dinner, partially due to the aforementioned co-worker above, who has been eating salads every day for lunch, partially due to the positive influence of his girlfriend. as a result, it gave him reason to question my lack of greens in my weekday lunches & i realized he had a point & remembered that i actually like veggies, so i recently began stocking the fridge with the essentials--lettuce, onions, tomatoes--& started picking up avocados & peppers & portobello mushrooms & whatnot on my way home from work so i could have me a salad every once in a while...luckily, that led to leftover veggies for tonight's salad making.

i had a radeberger pilsner along with the salad. i can't say that there's anything special about the radeberger. it's your basic european pilsner, all light & easy to drink, with a subtle bitterness. it's made by a german company out of dresden, the city that we completely leveled with firebombing at the end of world war II, destroying 13 square miles & killing tens of thousands of civilians with repeated incendiary bombings that raised the ground temperature to 2700° F. at least that war had nothing to do with relig...oh, wait. never mind.

#83 - candy pants mcgee.

seriously, what would easter be without the bunny?  that rabbit kicks ass, right?  i mean, rabbits in general are pretty important (see bugs, roger, greg, the trix rabbit & the jackalope), but the easter bunny takes those other rabbits' importance, adds it all together & then does something mathematical to it, resulting in a level of importance quite unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  here's why.

he's been more successful in wrestling easter away from jesus than anyone on the planet.  growing up, we usually celebrated easter with a combination of easter mass, candy & treats for the kids and visiting & dinner with the family.  what part was most important?  the part where i got to down an entire tray of single serving reese's easter eggs or consume the entire head of a rich, chocolatey, hollow rabbit the moment the parents weren't paying attention.

SPOILER AHEAD...before i was old enough to figure out space & time and know that there wasn't an actual easter bunny filling the baskets of children all around the world every easter morning in honor of the resurrection of god's son, that bunny ruled.  when it came to easter, he was where it was at holiday wise. he had the candy & he'd give you some.

if only he had a van he could've lured me into in exchange for said candy, we could've left the world behind & gone on all sorts of wacky, candy-filled adventures.  it'd be just like the baby looney tunes' eggs-traordinary adventure, but with less emphasis on the search for the true meaning of easter, since we already know that the true meaning of easter is four.

#83 - candy pants mcgee.

snack: three musketeers raspberry dark chocolate minis
drink: flying dog garde dog ale


tonight, i'm going to down like fitty of these three musketeers raspberry dark chocolate minis.  they're a limited edition version they've brought out for the spring, with a bag that urges consumers to "bring the spring feeling home" and promises "whipped up, fluffy chocolate-on-raspberry taste."  if there isn't a bit of a pornographic feel to that promise, i'm a monkey's uncle...coincidentally, the monkey's uncle is the second awesomest animal in the kingdom, trailing only the easter bunny.

...so the raspberry three musketeers minis taste reminiscient of a chocolate you'd randomly select out of one of those holiday hearts or boxes filled with assorted chocolates.  as far as new three musketeer flavors go, i prefer the mint flavor to the raspberry, but if a tiny japanese guy challenged me to a eating contest involving the raspberry flavor, i wouldn't turn him down...& i'd wipe the floor with him in the process.  u.s.a.!  u.s.a.!

my beer of choice on this sacred easter night is a flying dog garde dog ale, a french "beer de garde."  that's french for "beer for keeping."  i'm not sure why that is exactly, because i'm definitely not keeping it around for very long.  it's flying dog's spring beer & has a light, fruity sort of taste, which is odd when juxtaposed with the snarling, ralph steadman dog on the label, but it's all good.  it has a feel somewhere between a pilsner & a cider, so i'm pretty sure that means i'm getting servings from both my bread & fruit groups all in one beer.  yay nutrition.

so yeah...happy easter, all you pagans.

#82 - a wing & a player.

 ...so friday night i met up in the city & spent a few hours in midtown (eek!) having beers & conversation with a college friend who i hadn't seen since we graduated twelve years ago (eek!) & found ourselves out in the non-mtv real world (eek!). with my nh upbringing, back in college, when i first met him, he represented a good portion of my initial experiences with nyc types & dramatic types & literary types.

i originally met him during my sophomore year through his cousin, the only girl who lived in our fraternity house. we're both irish & thus enjoy drinking & were in college & not yet beaten down & around the fraternity & whatnot.  as a result, we shared countless late nights of intellectual/philosophical discussions during our time at b.u.  we're both wicked smaht.

so i haven't seen this guy in over a decade & we met up at a bar located at the bottom of his apartment building.  i showed up after work, around 7pm, but since he's not working, he'd been there since noon & drinking since four.  as such, he already had a bit of the enhanced "everyone here is awesome & you should all know each other" swagger that i remembered of him from our college days.

since we were spending the evening on his block & at his regular bar, during the evening, i got to meet everyone who came within ten feet of us.  during the night, i heard the half-joking phrase "oh, you knew him back in college, huh?  you must have stories!" a ton of times.  i was introduced to all the cute female bartenders.  we spoke to a hot mommy outside of the bar, as she returned with her baby from some sort of hot mommy happy hour event.  in addition, he seems to attract famous people, so he regaled me with sweet stories of all the people he's brushed elbows with over the years, including informing me that a relative of his is soon to be married to one of america's most hip, radical authors.

anyway, he's a blast to hang out with & tends to make every moment interesting & friday night was no exception...a high-roller & a true player.

# 82 - a wing & a player.
snack: buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers
drink: newcastle brown ale


it's been a rainy saturday, so tonight, i'm staying in & chillin' & snacking from a bag of buffalo nickel honey mustard horespower wingers that i picked up at the local bodega.  buffalo nickel makes five versions of their "wingers," each with a number rating denoting their hotness.  from tamest to hottest, the flavors are "no bull barbecue," the honey mustard ones, "nacho chilichanga," "caribbean zing" and "fiery buffalo bleu."  they have a makeup that's similar to bugles, with a light crunch, round shape & hollow inside...and of course, there's the awesome, slightly-winglike, slightly-squashlike shape.

these honey mustard horsepower ones have a flavor that's pleasant enough but sort of off.  i utilize honey mustard quite often in my sandwich-making & pretzel-eating & was initially pretty excited about them, but after eating a few, i felt a bit underwhelmed.  the honey mustard taste occasionally shines through, but the horseradish is almost non-existent & overall, the taste left in my mouth was only tolerable with something to eventually wash it away.

...& my choice of weirdly-tangy wing flavor eradicator is a newcastle brown ale.  back in college, newcastle was my beer of choice, the beer i'd carry around in my backpack at frat parties to avoid having to drink lame keg beer.  it remained my beer of choice for quite some time but over the years, as microbrews have exploded in popularity, i've found myself with many more choices, choices which when compared to newcastle, are way better-tasting.  regardless, for me, i still enjoy the slight-bitterness of a brown ale & it's still a nice, easy-drinking beer, so i continue to return to newcastle every once in a while, if only for the place it holds in my history.

on a college related, player-related note, b.u.'s hockey team totally took the national championship tonight. go sports!   sigh, if only i had cable...then i'd be a player too...until then!