#55 - limey.

full shocking disclosure: other than gray's anatomy, which is pretty much all spalding gray anyhow, i've never seen a steven soderbergh film...not erin brokovich, not traffic, not oceans eleven, twelve, or thirteen...not even sex, lies and videotape, three things that, individually, i'm a huge fan of. people talk about him as experimental & ground-breaking & whatnot & maybe i'll believe that when i watch sex, lies & videotape or schizopolis, but until that day comes, i'm comfortable with the opinion i've formed of his body of work...i mean, oceans thirteen? c'mon. the rat pack must be just sitting in the afterlife puffing on cigars & rolling their eyes over that one. i will say i'm slightly intrigued about the che movies though.

nonetheless, in a half-assed attempt to create a blog theme, i sat down & watched his film the limey tonight...even turned the lights down & lit a lime-scented candle i had lying around to set the mood, a mood that can only be described as "solo sexy." the film was actually pretty good. it's about a british ex-con whose daughter is murdered, so he flies to l.a. to find out what happened & enact his revenge. there's this one scene with nicky katt (who you may know as the dude who wins the "fight" near the end of dazed & confused), where he is standing on the edge of a film set viciously mocking various members of a film crew as they walk by. i can only assume this helped him fulfill some fantasy as an actor...loved that. as to the tone of the film, i've been watching & loving damages recently & from what i can tell from the limey, the disjointed narrative & time switches denoted by different color tones that the creators of damages employ all the time would not have existed without the limey before it.

nobody actually refers to the main character as a limey & he's not a sailor or anything, but i guess we're just supposed to assume that he deserves to be called one. the term "limey" is american slang for british & specifically sailors, slang that apparently developed because of the practice of giving british sailors lime juice to combat the vitamin c deficiencies that often occurred whilst at sea & often eventually led to the disease scurvy. though scurvy is no doubt one of our funnier-named diseases, it goes hand-in-hand with malnourishment & in the areas of the world where it actually does occur it's actually no laughing matter, especially the excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea parts.

#55 - limey.
snack: choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar
drink: blue moon rising moon seasonal ale

since i hate excessive bleeding & non-stop diarrhea, i've taken the necessary precautions to ensure that i don't get scurvy any time soon. tonight, i finished off a choxie dark chocolate key lime truffle bar. choxie is another one of target's hip grocery brands, cleverly named to evoke thoughts of similarly-named japanese candies & treats. in addition to the tastiness of the dark chocolate & the key lime, the truffle bar has graham biscotti pieces, a splendid bonus for a texture lover like myself. the packaging urges me to "keep it hidden from mere amateurs, and keep your choxie for yourself" & that's just what i did. i'm glad target finally wised up & realized they're dealing with a professional here. believe me, nobody even had a chance to lay eyes on that poor chocolate bar.

i had a blue moon rising moon seasonal ale to go along with it. it's a light spring ale brewed with kieffer lime leaves & lime peel, which basically saves me the step of cutting up a lime & putting it in there myself, which is very convenient. who said preventing scurvy takes effort? i bet the british sailors wish they had scurvy-preventing chocolates & beers like i do. they probably have to mix the limes in with their fish heads & gruel. i don't want to sound prejudiced towards british culinary delights, but i'll take my lime chocolates & beers over their lime-tinged fish heads & gruel any day of the week.

#52 - bcs bs.

let me start by saying that the last time i watched an entire college football game from beginning to end, it was the only place you could find a two-point conversion. tonight, as a service to my readers, so you don’t have to watch it yourself, i’ve decided to provide you with a running tally of college football’s b.c.s championship game, featuring two teams, oklahoma & florida, who are ranked #1 and #2 respectively & are both 12-1 and high-scoring excitefests. in honor of sports excitement, i’ll be offering, you, the reader, an increased amount of exclamation points in today’s entry. enjoy!

7:45pm (pregame) – story time. florida quarterback tim tebow does inspirational stuff, goes to prisons, spreads hope & strong messages & counts blessings. on the field: spirals. off the field: spirals of hope. turns out he’s the first homeschooled athlete to win the heisman & he has bill named after him in alabama, one that aims to give homeschooled students access to high school sports. i guess that’s cool.

7:49pm – we’re getting a little taste of the fighting gator band right now. they’d better know how to fight with those fey feathers on top of their caps. oh man. now we’ve got the oklahoma pride band! they have feathers too. feather fight!

7:56pm – that 09’ ford f-150 is featured smack dab in the middle of the pregame podium & on all the video screens behind the commentators. oh. now we get a commercial for an 09 ford f-150. that’s subtle. i guess it’s fitting for a truck that you can apparently haul a cow or a bunch of sheetrock or a smaller, weaker truck in.

8:00pm – omg i so want to see the notorious b.i.g. movie next week on opening night, but in brooklyn, i bet at least one person gets shot at a screening, so there’s that.

8:01pm – wow. both teams have quarterbacks who have won heisman trophies. here’s what i know about the heisman off the top of my head. doug flutie won one. so did herschel walker. i have both received & given a few heismans myself in my time.

8:02pm – wow, oklahoma scored over 700 points this year. now if they could only say the same for their s.a.t. scores.

8:04pm – national anthem. you best recognize.

8:06pm – bcs road trip giveaway! average joes! ultimate truck! guess which kind! cody won the truck with a whoop. good for him. enjoy the taxes from your f-150 prize, cody!

8:09pm – florida’s head coach’s first name is “urban!” is that russian?

8:19pm (q1) – so these teams have never played each other? ever? weird. kickoff!

8:26pm – personal goal for 2009: purchase a headset, preferably one that allows me to communicate with someone up in the booth. alternate goal: sack someone.

8:31pm – wait…did the commentator just say that the gators have weapons all over the field? see, this is why the nfl ends up with image problems like pacman jones & mr shot-in-the-foot-at-da-club. it starts in college.

8:48pm – these teams are supposed to be high-scoring, right? we’re almost eight minutes into the game & nobody has scored. what is this? football or futbol?

8:54pm – so that demps guy on florida was the fastest teenager in america...good for him...showoff.

8:57pm – the commentator just made a comment about the negativity & cynicism of society. screw him.

9:00pm – you know what’s the best? flag after flag after flag…wicked good first quarter.

9:06pm (q2) – touchdown gators! 7-0. finally. from this point on, my support is behind the gators. go gators! chomp them injun-hating unassigned land-grabbing sooners!

9:14pm – touchdown sooners! 7-7. tie game! from this point on, my support is behind the sooners. go sooners! displace them sewer-dwelling gators!

9:22pm – gotta be honest…i’m not feeling either teams’ cheerleaders. i have a feeling it might be my hippie new england upbringing rejecting their showy southern cheerleader ways.

9:24pm – oklahoma’s chris brown is doing a number running the ball right now (8 runs for 73 yards). too bad his music sucks.

9:27pm – …it appears that his goal line scoring abilities suck too…still 7-7. at least he has rihanna. go sooners?

9:37pm – ouch. that tackle just spread & twisted that florida dude’s legs in a way that should not be used in conjunction with the phrase “that dude.” let’s go to commercial.

9:43pm – aw yeah! the school bands are coming back for halftime! feather fight!

9:46pm – this should be good. 10 seconds left. oklahoma on the 6 yard line.

9:47pm – holy bounce! major wright for florida! interception! major wrong for oklahoma! that ball ka-jiggered off of everyone’s hands! florida foils forward progress!

9:48pm – classy kneel by florida to end the half.

#52 - bcs bs.
snack: blue diamond lime n chili almonds
drink: rogue chipotle ale

i’ve decided to give the blue diamond wasabi & soy sauce almonds (my #1 snack of 2008) a bit of a rest, so as not to subject them to the law of diminishing marginal utility. i realize that there are other nuts out there & i don’t need to focus all my attention on the wasabi & soy sauce ones…so i went for the blue diamond lime n chili almonds to fill my belly during the second half. they’re not as addictively pleasing as the wasabi ones, but they’re still pretty good.

…& this bottle of rogue chipotle ale, from oregon, home of the ducks, complements them well. it’s your basic smooth ale with a spicy kick from the chipotles & a mexican-looking dude with a hat on the front of the bottle & i must note that when the oklahoma pride band is playing their “pinball wizard” medley, it makes it easier to appreciate both the smoothness & the spiciness.

10:15pm (q3) – another punt! i’m seriously considering gator chomping my roommate's cat to shake things up a bit round here.

10:21pm – what this game needs right now is a killer flee flicker and/or a statue of liberty play.

10:26pm – actually, more personal fouls will suffice for the moment. rough that kicker!

10:32pm – woah. that do-gooding florida quarterback is really trying to pump up the crowd…nothing like a riveting quarterback sneak to get the stands bumping.

10:36pm – that florida wide receiver looks hurt. that’s what he gets for trying to score!

10:39pm – i think we might be in the “red zone.”

10:40pm – wikipedia confirms that we’re in the red zone.

10:41pm – face mask!

10:43pm – trick direct snap formation! touchdown gators! 14-7.

10:44pm – so that florida quarterback has a bible passage written on his eye paint…john 3:16…the generic central tenet coca-cola of bible verses.

10:50pm – ooh. my sooners just got their field goal attempt blocked. 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter…still time to back the gators.

10:53pm – geesh. all these players are getting injured. clock slowers! yawn. aren’t they supposed to be in shape? what are they getting paid the big bucks for?...oh, wait. never mind.

11:02pm (q4) – they just showed the “ford game summary”…should have been video footage of grass growing.

11:03pm – i think what the problem is here is that i don’t have the right attitude about this championship matchup. my expectations were too high.

11:06pm – one-shoed sooners touchdown! 14-14.

11:07pm – twelve minutes to go…i think i might have heartburn from all the chili & chipotle, but it could also be an ulcer, since i’m such a huge sooners/gators fan & this game is so uneventful/nail biting. i bet grey’s anatomy got higher ratings tonight.

11:10pm – woah. that gator guy ran forever! 52 yards! that must be why they gave him #1…although, now that i think about it, if that was the rationale behind number-assigning, you’d just have to focus your defense on the players with single-digit numbers.

11:17pm – field goal gators. 17-14. i’ve decided that i’m going to continue backing the current underdog, the sooners. coming from behind is scrappy & i’m into scrappy.

11:22pm – crap. interception florida. i spoke too soon…& i’m out of spicy beer.

11:25pm – during the commercial, i’ve done some approximate math regarding this evening’s lime n chili almond consumption & here’s what i’ve come up with:

serving size = 28 nuts
servings per can = 6
amount eaten = half can
nuts eaten = 84
calories consumed = 510

…& there are still 10 minutes left in the game. watching football is fattening!

11:28pm – defense is not just something that goes around de yard, sooners! way to give up that 3rd down conversion.

11:31pm – red zone!

11:33pm – see, florida knows what’s up. that’s what this game needed more of…shovel passes. hotter cheerleaders wouldn’t have hurt either.

11:35pm – & crazy jump passes! touchdown florida! 24-14. things are not looking good for the sooners.

11:36pm – ok. we get it. the quarterback lived in a leper colony & spreads the good word of jesus.

11:38pm – three minutes left! screen passes do not win championships, ou.

11:40pm – so the sooners just blew it on 4th down. go gators! the kitty loves the gator chomp. gator chomp? gator champ!

11:41pm – aw snap! here comes the gatorade! look out, coach urban! why didn’t i drink that during this game? too cliché? too soon?

11:48pm – tebow takes a knee. 24-14. final. gators win.

long live the gator, or, according to the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission:

“if you transfer your alligator carcass to a commercial alligator processor, you must also complete a hard copy of the alligator harvest report form and a copy of this form must be transferred with the carcass.”

sure thing, florida jerks.

#51 - ice ice baby.

oh, winter! you are much crueller than anything april has ever thrown at me. it is an indisputable fact that i hate the cold weather & side effects of it that accompany you. runny noses? hate em. damp feet? hate em. watery eyeballs? hate em. having to wear lots of clothes? i'm no nudist & like pants as much as the next guy but...hate it. at times, i'm definitely one of those people who get some form of winter depression.

i grew up in new hampshire & no, i don't ski or snowboard or ice skate or snowmobile or toboggan. don't even own a pair of snowshoes, if you can believe that. my winter sport is often hibernating & being warm & putting on an extra layer of fat for the winter & watching lots of movies/tv shows. watched myself towelhead a few days back & really liked it. the lead, summer bishil, is a pretty hot 20-year old in real life, but in the movie, she does a 90210 & plays a 13-year old, which is decidedly unhot. thus far, there is nothing that alan ball, who directed the film, has done that is bad...writer of american beauty, creator of six feet under & true blood & director of towelhead. the last decade, dude's batting 1.000...a regular john paciorek.

...so it was saturday night & i was watching the arizona cardinals-atlanta falcons game & during commercial, i was trying to come up with a title for this blog entry. i was thinking of going with "baby it's cold outside" or "winter wonderbland" or something abstract like "32° F." as my mind eventually drifted to "ice ice baby," the game returned from commercial & did so with a short segment about atlanta falcons quarterback matt ryan, whose nickname is apparently "matty ice." the song that was playing in the background during the segment..."ice ice baby." therefore, my badass psychic coincidence has dubbed this post...

#51 - ice ice baby.

snack: pringles loaded baked potato crisps
drink: great divide brewing co. hibernation ale

i've tried pretty much every pringle there is, but i can't remember trying the baked potato flavor until this weekend. saturday afternoon, when i was out & about gathering essential foods & beers & doing adult errands all at once so that i wouldn't have to go outside in the cold again, i stopped by the rite aid to procure q-tips & figured that i'd give the snack aisle a browse. there were some rite aid bargains going on & a number of shelves were picked clean. all pringle flavors were on sale for 99¢, but it appeared that they were possibly on sale because somebody had crushed a box of them, perhaps under a pachyderm or submarine or such. the one remaining can of pringles loaded baked potato crisps appeared to be uncrushed, however, so i made them mine.

they're pretty run of the mill as far as pringles go...definitely no screamin' dill pickle. the website claims they're supposed to taste like "cool sour cream," "crispy bacon" and "gooey cheese." i guess they're sort of like a loaded baked potato. that baked potato has so much money! that baked potato has ulterior motives! that baked potato is wasted! be careful with that baked potato! it's loaded!

in honor of the impending future months, i'm having my baked potato flavor with a bottle of great divide brewing co. hibernation ale. it's an english style old ale...tasty enough. i guess it's supposed to keep you warm during the winter months. apparently it's won a bunch of awards & accolades. a suggested pairing (from the label): aged, hard dutch cow's milk cheese. i guess pringles are sort of like that.

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

it's official. these days, film degree be damned, i prefer tv to movies & here's why. tv gives the show's creator(s) greater freedom to meditate on an overarching storyline, stretch it out, pass it off to various directors, highlight different characters, kill people off, introduce new people, etc etc. with the exception of sequel films, which often suck, stories told by film are generally limited to a static 1.5-3 hours of story. that just doesn't do it for me these days.

i just finished watching the seventh & final season of the shield, which means i watched about 70 hours of storyline with that show alone. as david bianculli noted in fresh air's 12/24 segment on the top ten tv programs of the year, well-executed tv can be like a novel, with a starting point, an ending point & a journey in between. when he said this, it was in reference to the shield. screw the sopranos. the final episode of the shield might just be the greatest series finale ever made. it was directed by clark johnson, who also directed the pilot for the show & also directed the pilot & final episodes of the wire (in addition to playing gus haynes, the baltimore sun desk editor in the wire's final season). seriously, it's worth watching the series straight through just to get to that final episode of the shield. for me, it also helped that unlike with the sopranos, i had no prior knowledge of how the show ended, which allowed me to experience something with uninfluenced expectations, a rare opportunity.

in addition to the clark johnson example, with my growing love of tv, i've discovered that there's some serious tv incest going on. fx's new highest rated show, sons of anarchy, is created by kurt sutter, who wrote for the shield & also played armenian hitman margos dezerian in the 1st & 3rd seasons. he's married to ms peg bundy katey sagal, who plays one of the leads on sons of anarchy and also had an occasional role on the shield. sons also features a major creepyass storyline with jay karnes, who played dutch on the shield.

sons is impressive. i watched the first season while i was in new hampshire at the parents' house for the holidays. there are shakespearean undertones, religious undertones, reflections on aging & paths taken & not taken, copious amounts of punching and hot biker babes like the characters played by maggie siff (who you may also know from her hot work as rachel menken on mad men) & taryn manning (who you may know from her hot work as a prostitute). heck, i'll go as far as to say that katey sagal's hot & the main character, played by charlie hunnam, could definitely knock johnny depp from the title of "dude i'd most prefer to sleep with." turns out he was on the uk version of queer as folk. well there you go then.

i found myself about eight episodes into the season on wednesday night when i decided it was time for a snack run...

#49 - i want to be anarchy.

snack: t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips
drink: shock top belgian white

...but being that it was 9pm on christmas eve in new hampshire, the places open for snack purchasing were at a minimum. i hopped in the car with my teenage brother & we tried the shaws supermarket in windham (closed), the 24-hour wal-mart in salem (closed. wha! commerce closes?) & eventually settled for the hess gas station in salem. people always need gasoline & cute mini tankers round the holidays. here's what i could get my hands on:

for snacking, i picked up a bag of t.g.i.friday's quesadilla snack chips. i've seen them before & always avoided them but had to go with them given the low uniqueness/appealing nature of the hess snack selection. i have no idea what gives t.g.i.fridays the right to qualify these snacks as quesadillaesque other than the shape & them calling them "quesadillas." basically, the "quesadillas" are puffy crackerlike things shaped like quesadilla wedges, with a bunch of powdered cheese on them. eh.

for drinking, i scoured the beer cooler for something unique or barring that, tasty. if i'd gone for a single beer i would have been drinking bud or some equivalent & i wasn't having that, so i had to decide on a six-pack. the one that looked most unique was the shock top belgian white, with its mohawk-wearing orange mascot on the label. i took a six-pack of it out of the cooler & started to examine it when a female employee of the gas station came out of the back room & as she walked by, said to me, "shocking, isn't it?" well played, gas station lady. well played. when i got the six-pack home & popped one open, i glanced at the label & discovered that shock top is a michelob beer, one of anheuser-busch's attempts to create microbrewlike beers with some semblance of flavor. eh. the sons of anarchy drink michelob round the club, so that makes me cool by default. sure they aren't drinking the belgian white, but i suppose it'll have to do.

by the time i left nh on saturday morning to head back to brooklyn, i had finished the first season of sons of anarchy & the quesadilla chips. one amazed me & made me wish i was in a motorcycle club, or at least living the free lifestyle & babes that come with it. one did not. the six-pack of shock top remained unfinished. for me, there's a limit to how many beers i feel comfortable drinking when home at the parents for a three-day holiday stretch, especially when it's basically just slightly better than michelob michelob. that limit? five.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.

i friggin' hate connecticut & it isn't just because of joe lieberman or their inability to keep the whalers. ever since i moved to nyc back in 01, connecticut has become the two-and-a-half hour nuisance in the middle of my four hour drive to boston. when i first moved here, i used to love driving through connecticut. i had to drive up to new england a lot for work, so i'd often grab a rental car & take an afternoon drive up the west side to the merritt parkway, gliding through its twists & green trees & under its uniquely designed bridges. in recent years, as i've become uber-acquainted with the cheapo nyc-boston chinatown buses, which travel up interstate 95 out of nyc, i've wasted countless hours sitting in traffic near bridgeport & new haven & hartford and i now curse the state. i'm sure the 6pm holiday traffic tomorrow to nh will be swell, especially since i've now acknowledged my curse in writing.

florida obviously sucks intensely. it makes connecticut look like disney world. i've made many many quick judgements about florida, most of them based on my eight months of residency & two weeks of "vacation" there. i went through two hurricanes. some dude driving a van that transports disabled people around was waiting in front of my girlfriend at the time & i, as we sat in her car at a red light leaving the borders parking lot. when it turned green, the dude accidentally put the van into reverse, stepped on the gas & drove right up onto the hood of our car...& then tried to flee. this woman in our apartment complex had a daughter in high school who had no homework because there weren't enough text books. the sushi place in the shopping plaza next to our apartment complex made me sick. there's also the 2000 election, the two florida marlins world series wins, jeb bush, awful tans, sprawling development, disney world, oppressive anti-gay movements, the miami p.d., trafficking trafficking trafficking, more hurricanes, etc.

you know what place is even worse than florida though? zimbabwe. growing up, when i heard the word "zimbabwe," i envisioned it as one of the cool places in africa. in later times, i'd often choose the zulus (impi power!) when i played civilization. i thought of it as some place i'd want to check out some day & at one point, it was that place. people considered it to be one of the jewels in the african crown. then president robert mugabe came along & in 1999, 19 years into his rule, he introduced his whole land reform program & agriculture & tourism went down the pooper & the country has just spiraled downhill since then as he's violently held on to power. technically, they now have a 10 quintillion dollar bill in circulation. back in august, a loaf of bread went for 1.3 trillion dollars. inflation is at 230 million percent...& mugabe just won't quit. he's probably waiting for them to come out with a googol dollar bill before he decides to hang it up.

#48 - totally rippin' on places.
snack: frey pear & caramel chocolate bar
drink: rype orange tingled wheat beer

this frey pear & caramel chocolate bar is really tasty, with lil crunchy bits & pear flavors & whatnot. they don't have this particular flavor listed on their website, but there are a boatload of tasty sounding flavors (they claim to have 350 choices!)...tiramisu! hot chili pepper! cinnamon & blood orange! wha wha! oh. apparently they're only available at target...how exclusive.

anyway, if there's one thing that the swiss should be known for, it's chocolate. oh and their cheese & their babes & their army & their army knives and backpacks, which they don't even use because they're all peaceful & neutral & whatnot. two of their cities, zurich & geneva, are considered some of the best places to live in the world. they have all that stuff down pat. get this though...most of the people don't even speak english. and instead of baseball, they have hornussen, a cross between baseball & golf. seriously, i watched a few of the videos. i can't even begin to tell you what's going on or if it might be fun. the name means "hornet" though. never was a big fan of things that can sting me, especially when they don't make me honey.

in the "washing it down" department, i'm having me a rype orange tingled wheat beer. it has a sharp & clean, modest looking label, but the beer's pretty bland, clean & boring. the moniker-advertised "orange tingle" doesn't even tingle. it turns out that the beer's made by four+ brewing company, out of salt lake city. this could explain its blandness. it has 4.0% alcohol by volume, which by utah law, is the highest amount of alcohol any beer can have if it wants to be served within the beehive state. mormons hate alcohol almost as much as they hate fun. take mitt romney. it's a good thing mccain didn't pick him as his veep. sure, he's from massachusetts, one of the best places on earth, but that dude's a mormon & he hates fun. nothing like his actual pick, that non-mormon sarah palin, who clearly loves fun. hockey moms! lipstick on a pig! nothing but priceless yuk-it-up gems out of that sarah. but seriously, i hear that utah should never be visited ever, unless you have a really good reason. "i was on my way to vegas" is an acceptable reason.

UPDATE: turns out that utah is the fastest-growing state in the country. god knows why...or maybe joseph smith does.