#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.

#47 - the olden days.

i was doing some research & have discovered that you used to be able to do everything back in the day! nowadays, in the 08, they don't let you do anything, let you have any fun. it's soooo lame.

for starters, you can't even drink after the 7th inning any more. back in the day, you could drink til the end of the game. back then, people actually liked it when baseball games went into extra innings. this one pawtucket red sox game went 32 innings & they eventually had to finish it the next day. nowadays, if the game hits extra innings, that's just time for your buzz to wear off & make you care that your seven-year-old has school in the morning.

back in the day, in this country, it used to be that if you owned a business & your employees tried to bring fair labor to your workplace, you could whack the snot out of them pinkerton style. pfft. if you want to do that nowadays, you have to open up a plant all the way down in south america. i can't say that there aren't any upsides to the current situation though. after all, if you move operations to south america, you get to hire paramilitaries instead of pinkertons & disappear people, which is SO rambo compared to the twirly moustaches & derbies of the pinkertons.

once upon a time, you could walk up to the side of the road with a bindle & a dream & a lucky thumb and hitchhike across this great nation, doing odd jobs, sleeping with random women & philosophizing with random hobos, just like in on the road. you try to pull that crap in the 21st century & you're nuts. i can say from my own experience that i've never been tempted to pick up a drifter & if i was the kind of person who was crazy enough to actually pick up a drifter, i'd likely also be the kind of person who was crazy enough to murder them & store them in my freezer. luckily i can't afford to own a car. it just doesn't seem safe to hitchhike any more is what i'm saying...definitely frowned upon.

i mean, it used to be that you could smoke cigarettes anywhere & drive snowmobiles on whatever land you wanted to under the influence of whatever you wanted to & shoot as many buffalo as your uzi could handle. then you could bring it home & feed your family for months. that's gone now. your son is vegan & the buffalo are protected & if you have weekend plans to grab your favorite automatic weapon, down a sixer of bud on the drive to yellowstone & hang out in the old faithful inn sucking down winstons & whiskeys before hopping on the ol' arctic cat for a couple of hours of bunny hunting, you can forget it. that ship has sailed. this is 2008. POST-9/11.

#47 - the olden days.
snack: archer farms spinach & artichoke tortilla chips
drink: peak organic pale ale

the snacks have gotten better though. when i was growing up, there was no way on god's green earth that you could get your hands on a spinach & artichoke tortilla chip. if you lived outside of cali & did get your hands on a tortilla chip it'd be flavored with salt and/or cheese and you'd like it. in the nowadays, i can get all sorts of flavors in a tortilla chip, like the target brand archer farms spinach & artichoke tortilla chips. i was originally going to grab some sort of dip to go with these chips, but they've got the flavor to satisfy my aching heart. dip would have been overkill...but if you hate flavor chips, i can't help you son.

& i'm washing down these tortilla chips (FROM THE FUTURE!) with a bottle of peak organic pale ale, brewed out of portland, me. the bottle has a picture of an outdoor gathering with the quote "friends gathering on a fine evening" at the top. looks like a bunch of dudes on one side & a bunch of ladies on the other side. i bet you nobody got laid at that party. although...it's a pretty tasty pale ale and goes down easy. maybe this photo was taken early on in the night, before they had drank LIKE FIFTY peak organics. it's ten times better than bud.

nowadays, beer is definitely better. fo sho. there are organic beers & beers from around the country & around the world & brands with more than one type of beer other than "regular" and "light"...but we do miss out on those sweet beer cans with the pull top. those things rule. in conclusion, we couldn't have expanded our beer quality & taste without the help of our global economy. let's have a round of applause for our global economy. hip hip.

#46 - fin.

this tuesday night, as the first snow of the season fell outside my apartment, i sat warm watching the third season finales of two of my favorite picture stories--heroes and dexter. there's that good old saying, "third time's a charm," that is actually not really all that good, and relative to history, not really all that old of a saying...but it is a lot less gay sounding than the british version--"third time lucky."

"third time lucky, smithers?"
"indeed. three card monte."
"splendid."
"third time lucky, indeed. tally ho."

in this case, for these two shawn parow-endorsed picture stories, the third seasons have been slightly flawed at times, subject to doubt, imperfect chapters in the shows' histories. both are already scheduled to return in 2009 for a fourth chapter, with heroes coming back in february with a new chapter,"fugitives," that is technically the second half of the third season for those of you who still care. dexter is already scheduled for at least two more seasons. showtime knows better than to let go of michael c hall...spoilers until the snack break...

heroes season finale
there have been numerous occasions during this 3rd season of heroes where i've wanted to fill my ear canals with fire & splash piranhas toward my eye sockets to avoid the horrendous dialogue & painful exposition that has filled this season. as a complete season, it works fine. i was most pleased by the appearances by actors who used to be on other shows i like, actors like bubbles & marlo stanfield from the wire. both survived the streets of baltimore, but not the third season of heroes...nor did chad faust's character, a marine who, in the second-to-last episode of the third season, becomes the first person injected with the formula for abilities & then is quickly killed in the next & final episode. chad faust was also in the 4400, where he plays a person who injects himself with promicin, the thing on that show that gives people abilities. talk about being typecast.

the third season had its flaws. one of the first things i learned in my intro to screenwriting class was "show, don't tell" and the 3rd season of heroes has so many thousands of storylines going on that there are an abundance of occasions where characters blatantly tell & are all like "gee that must feel really bad to see that happen to your father" so that an ADHD-inflicted fourth grader can follow along with the story...& stupid plot points. elle, the character with the power of electricity is having trouble controlling her power, so what does she do? she gets on a plane. obviously. because there is no chance that that could go wrong...& then there are the abundant lame love stories. overall though, i'm still looking forward to the fourth chapter. i mean, not every pearl jam album is ten. sometimes it's a no code, but you deal with it & pick out the good parts & hope the next one's better.

dexter season finale
early on during the 3rd season of dexter, before things turned around, i was all "you need to start killing bad guys ASAP dexter." things were slow. he was totally not killing any killers. at times i'd secretly hope that rita would turn out to be a child pornographer or have fed elderly folks fatal dosages of meds or something so dexter would have to kill her blatantly one-dimensionally exposition-laden character off, but no such luck. luckily, by the season finale, the killing picked up enough to satisfy me.

& by the season finale, dexter marries rita...& finds out that she is lying to him. she has been married three times, but only says she's been married twice. doesn't talk about the first one, when she was 16. mildly mysterious. he doesn't seem to care though, since he has a secret too, what with the whole being a serial killer thing & she doesn't even know that he used to be gay & work in a funeral home. it's totally like that madonna song. mmm mmm. something's coming over. mmm mmm...so next season, rita will give birth to their kid & there'll likely be whole mess of "new life. taking life." subway ads plugging season 4 of dexter come late summer.

#46 - fin.

snack: pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps
drink: archer farms blood orange italian soda

with my finales, i'm enjoying a bag of pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps. they don't come in a cardboard cylinder like your everyday peasant pringles. these pringles are S-E-L-E-C-T. i really like them. the texture's crunchier than your average pringle, closer to a tato skin-like texture. the flavor's also stronger than what you get from an average pringle. i found myself licking the flavor powder off, just like i used to do when regular pringles used to have a ton more flavor. in my day! turns out that, according to the back of the bag, these jalapeno ranch potato crisps are designed to "kick my taste buds up a notch." i'm not sure how much more they can be kicked up at this point, if you know what i mean, but i ain't letting that stop me.

to wash down these extraordinary chips, i'm going with a cool glass of archer farms blood orange italian soda. i know what you're thinking, but stop right there. i'm no sicko. it doesn't actually have blood in it, just blood oranges & those are completely legal, at least in italy, which is where this particular soda comes from. italian soda. product of italy. it comes in a bottle that just makes me want to open the window wide & store it in a basket on the sill with a pellegrino & a couple tomatoes. it tastes like if fresca was a little more appealing & also didn't have that disgusting aspartame flavor. this blood orange italian soda has black carrot juice in it. wha? i had no idea such a thing existed, but it does. amazing. black carrots...now that's change you can believe in.

#40 - mr shawn goes to washington.

yesterday, i took a trip down to the d.c. area to spend an afternoon, evening & morning with mr tadley martin, friend from high school & beyond. previously, i'd been to the city (or the "doggone capitol," as i, quite cleverly i might add, like to call it) twice in my life.

the first time i went was when i was working at ny press. i won the january monthly sales contest & that month's prize was that in the following month, i got to attend the annual association of alternative newsweeklies (a.a.n.) eastern conference with my boss & the publisher. we stayed at the renaissance mayflower hotel, where reagan apparently took breakfast. we had a quick bite there one day & though i can't be entirely sure, i bet there was probably some pol at least as evil as reagan sitting a nearby table as we enjoyed our salads. one afternoon, i did myself a few hours of "lookin' at junk"...memorials & monuments & whatnot. somewhere, there's a mini dv tape of my adventures.

one night, a group of us went to an ethiopian joint in adams-morgan. it was my first experience with ethiopian food & the injera bread, or as it was dubbed that evening due to its rolled-up nature--"penis bread." "floppy penis bread" was also acceptable nomenclature. we ended the night (please note that i may actually, in my head, be squashing two evenings of memories into one evening) at a salvadorian restaurant in lord knows what area of the city. we had been drinking a bunch that night & the restaurant had a side room with salsa music & dancing. we went in there & i, non-dancer that i am, obviously took up the invitation of a short salvadorian woman when she asked me to dance & we danced to the music as she quickly taught me how to salsa & together we salsaed our butts off over the course of the next (what seemed like an) hour. color me gay but my favorite part was when she spun me round, which she did more times than you can count on your normal human hands. it was only later, after we left, that my group informed me that they had been debating whether or not i'd end up on the receiving end of a blade before the night's end, as i danced oblivious to the glare of the woman's boyfriend and/or brother, who was sitting at a table in the corner.

the next night i got home to brooklyn & got mugged by two ass clowns who stole all the spending cash i received as part of my sales contest prize & then the police caught them within the hour, after following the ass clowns' tracks through the snow.

the 2nd time i went was to hang out with mr tadley martin when he lived across the river from d.c. in virginia in what i want to say was an area called ballston. we made an evening trip to black cat for a britpop/indie rock dance night. good times.

#40 - mr shawn goes to washington.
snack: utz smokin' sweet kettle classic chips
drink: sweet leaf cherry limeade

this time, i stayed with tadley in his swinging bachelor pad in rosslyn, va, a pad complete with a bathroom with good face wash & some sort of heated hair device, both of which could either be his or his girlfriend's. it's an interesting area, with lots of modern-looking construction & towers built on the hills just across the river from d.c., a placement (just outside the city limits) that allows them to build taller buildings. d.c. has a height restriction on buildings. originally, it was nothing taller than the capitol (289 feet). now the limit is the width of the adjacent street + 20 feet. virginia has no such restrictions...an interesting washington post article about the effects of the heights restrictions here.

near his place, there was a lil' convenient store that we went to a few times over the course of 24 hours. naturally, i was intrigued by their snack selection, as convenient store snack selections are often largely regional & i love that kind of crap. on my first trip there, i got a bag of blue diamond maui onion & garlic almonds. i was all "dude, what?" i have never seen these in new york, even at target, who could possibly have the finest selection of blue diamond nuts in the city outside of the west village...but i digress.

they also had two utz kettle flavors that i've yet to come across here in nyc--smokin' sweet kettle classics and salt & malt vinegar. on the front of the package of the smokin' sweet ones are the words "spicy heat with a kiss of sweet"...just like my love makin' stee-lo...so i had no choice but to choose those for later snacking purposes.

as i write tonight, i'm enjoying those chips & with them, i'm having me a bottle of sweet leaf cherry limeade that i picked up upon my arrival back in brooklyn this evening. the non-threatening cartoon granny on the label was also on a decal affixed to the door of a local convenient store, plugging her sweet leaf teas & beckoning for me to come check her out when i was done picking out a quart of milk. when i was done, i went over to visit her & couldn't resist her allure. her cherries. her lime. her ade. her promises of "homemade goodness in a bottle"...so i went with the cherry limeade.

dear label granny,

unfortunately, i don't enjoy your creation. like, if the flavor of the best flavored lemonade ever is equivalent to making out with a really hot chick, the the flavor of your cherry limeade is equivalent to making out with, well...a granny. catch my drift?...but seriously, granny...you seem like a very nice person.

yours in beverage,
shawn.

#35 - weenie howla.

i was at the local better-than-average for my area grocery store earlier this evening purchasing a lil' snack & couple of frosty beverages for a night of chillin' at my apartment. when i got to the beer section there were two girls from the neighborhood there, picking out a six-pack for the night. i grabbed my beers & snack & got behind them in line at the register. the guy behind the counter, who was probably in his mid-to-late twenties, was flirting with the girls, offering them halloween candy from the festive pale white bucket at the end of the register.

they left with a goodbye & as soon as they were on the other side of the sliding doors, he turned to me, smiled & said, "man, there are tons of hotties out tonight," to which i replied, "i bet the candy helps, huh?" the sad thing is that both of our statements are true.

for me, this scenario illustrates that which, as an adult with no kids, makes me both hate & love halloween. on halloween, adults do & get away with the stupidest of things.

females: a majority of the women (at least in nyc) dress up in the sluttiest outfits possible. as long as you are wearing a normally inappropriate amount of makeup & all black & you slap on a pair of cat ears/devil horns, you have a costume...but why stop there? there are a wide range of sexy costumes that you can wear, from a sexy cave woman to a sexy nurse to a sexy cop to a sexy sarah palin, which is basically a u.s. flag bikini with glasses & a ms alaska sash (hunting rifle not included). unfortunately, the costume's only available in up to size a 10, so sorry ladies who are over that size. apparently it's not possible for you to be sexy and/or the vice president.

males: this is your night to act like a jackass, especially to women, who will be flocking to you for the first time since sometime around last halloween because, well, girls love hugging and/or having their picture taken with chewbacca. if you're lucky, you might get to grab a boob or something. too bad your hoglike sweating inside the chewbacca suit has made you as moist as a gym towel...my halloween hero...the office's jim halpert, who in this week's episode, went as "dave."

i can't wait for the day to come when i might have a child of my own to take out trick or treating & subdue my hatred for halloween...& that'll be fine, because halloween is for kids.

#35 - weenie howla.

snack: cheddar beer flavor kettle chips
drink: southern tier brewing co harvest ale / brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest

you'd expect that since it's halloween, i'd be snacking on some sort of candy or treat, but nope...i decided to go with a bag of chips & a bag of chips that have the word "beer" in the flavor to boot--cheddar beer flavor kettle chips. they're pretty tasty overall. since they're kettle chips, they're nice & crunchy. the flavor's akin to cheddar flavored tato skins. you know the ones. the ones with baked potato appeal, cause they're made with potatoes & skins that are real. they're no longer made by keebler (who is now owned by the kellogg co) & are now made by the inventure group & also marketed as a t.g.i.friday's snack. i don't really taste the beer in these kettle chips, but that's okay, because i have two actual beers right here.

the first beer is from southern tier brewing co, out of lakewood, ny, which is about an hour & 45 min down route 90 from buffalo. it's an extra special bitter hoppy beer, but not too much so. enjoyable enough. the second is a brooklyn brewing co oktoberfest. there was a time when i was actually excited by brooklyn brewing co, but as happened with my former favorite local beers before brooklyn--harpoon & sam adams--i've drank so many of them over the years that they've lost their luster...seems like a theme, doesn't it?

in attempting to close, i'd like to draw a desperate parallel between my feelings toward brooklyn beers & what happened with me & halloween...they've both lost their luster. end transmission.