pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.

pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.
film: maximum overdrive
beer: shipyard pumpkinhead



the great state of maine has produced a lot of fine talent in its day, from judd nelson to patrick dempsey to dan fogelberg, but horror writer stephen king's arguably the most famous maniac. with a resume that includes way too many books for me to bother counting them up, he's basically become the most famous horror writer of at least this past century. dude hasn't had any of his stories turned into a worthy movie yet this millennium, but through the years, a good number of his books have been adapted into classic horror films.

maximum overdrive isn't exactly a classic, but it was the first film that he directed himself (as he's all too happy to tell you in the trailer) & it's one of his more hilarious films. as the plot goes, a comet goes shooting through the sky & the machines all become homicidal at some truck stop. once the trucks start acting up, people are screwed. it stars a young emilio estevez from back when being emilio estevez actually meant something. in short, if you're looking for the maximum amount of hilarious, machine-based horror this pumpktoberfest season, look no further than maximum overdrive. after all, it's also the last film stephen king ever directed.

the first beer of the pumpktoberfest season is a shipyard pumpkinhead, brewed out of portland, ME. it's a wheat ale brewed with cinnamon & nutmeg & it's only available for two months out of the year, roughly equivalent to the amount of time non-pumpkin farmers care about pumpkins on a yearly basis. based on the front of the label, it probably would've gone perfect with pumpkinhead or sleepy hollow, but neither of them are in my top sixteen horror films, so they can suck it.

the pumpkinhead's nothing special. i enjoy shipyard's beers, but the pumpkinhead was a perfect example of your run-of-the-mill "toss some spices in a beer & call it a pumpkin beer" pumpkin beer. as i suspected, compared to that pumking (pictured behind it) that i killed the other night, it was B-O-R-I-N-G. not HORRORible, but i'm hoping there are some better ones amongst the pumpkin beers i've assembled in my fridge. if not, it's going to be a loooooooooong pumpktoberfest season.

nosh nook #142 - tuesday, september 29, 2009

new documentary on local food movement has oregon-heavy cast (link)
09.28.09 - the oregonian - by scott learn

oh oregon, bastion of progressiveness, lover of ducks, home to the most strip clubs per capita in the country. i visited you for a month back in 2002 & from what i saw of your quaintish downtown area, you were fairly green (colorwise) & relatively artsy looking. i've always heard good things about you & for a brief while, i even considered moving across the country & becoming a portland resident. you have free downtown public transit & make an effort to limit sprawl & keep your boundaries intact. as part of the 2008 veggie awards, you were named "veg city taking over the world." i love junk like that. you're so durn progressive, portland!

case in point: the film ingredients, which is a "who's who (of) oregon's locavore movement" & made its debut in portland this weekend. as the oregonian's scott learn writes, the film has strong roots in oregon. the producer & cinematographer, brian kimmel, is from portland. in the film, there are appearances from a range of oregon farmers, chefs & agricultural specialists who paint a picture of the "benefits and challenges of buying food from local producers." there have been a million-and-one films about food recently, so i'm interested in seeing whether they cover any new ground or just reinforce what's already been said.

either way, it's a cause i'm fully behind. as learn mentions, larry lev, a "specialist in agricultural marketing and alternative food systems" who's in the film, lays out the benefits of eating locally. lev notes that "some local products may cost more than food transported from large-scale commercial operations...but the products can have superior taste, and the money shoppers spend stays in the area. shopping locally also helps keep agricultural land from being developed...and leads to closer relationships between farmers and consumers." one of the clips in the trailer points out that there are now so few independent farmers in the u.s. that it's no longer listed as an occupation choice on the u.s. census forms. it's sad that we've become so removed from our food sources, but what's even sadder is that until recently, most people didn't really care. maybe another film will change that.

#129. - pom pon.

a short while back, i received an email from the folks at pom wonderful regarding samples of their coffee drinks & my interest in trying said drinks. interest = medium/high. soon after, i began imagining the possibilities for a pom-themed blog. more often than not, i found myself returning to thoughts of cheerleaders, with their unflappable love of cheers, cute outfits & ruffly pom pons. between the recent appearance of glee on fox (which features a cheerleading coach as a main character & which i've yet to see) & the start of football season & the general hotness of 18+ cheerleaders, there was a lot to go on with that theme. in the end, i went with a variation on that theme. since there's nothing you can't find out with google, i did a little search for "pon. what did i come across? a 2002 south korean film called phone. in korean...pon. i investigated further & after reading the description, i netflixed it faster than you can say "oh wacky asian horror."

the description: "a vengeful ghost with a cell phone terrorizes anyone who answers its murderous ring in this twisty horror film. after exposing a sex scandal involving children, gritty reporter ji-won (ji-won ha) begins receiving disturbing phone calls. she changes her number, but the ominous calls continue. ji-won's search for the source of the mysterious calls reveals a rash of unsolved murders--and leads her straight to a serial killer." somebody who murders people with phone calls. brilliant! the company that produced it? toilet pictures. even brillianter!

the film opens with this girl in an elevator. she gets a phone call & when she answers it, she hears this piercing noise that kills her. soon after, that ji-won chick, harassed because of her article, changes her phone number & moves into her sis & brother-in-law's other house. the new number she gets turns out to be the same number as the elevator girl...& that's when the freakiness begins. one day, her little niece answers her phone for her & hears the piercing noise & she's basically possessed for the rest of the film. possessed lil girl = horror gold. as the film progresses, the lil girl gets crazier & ji-won learns more about the story behind her phone number & the hilarious horror ensues. i say "hilarious" only because thanks to film school, i'm desensitized towards horror films AND IT'S A FILM ABOUT PEOPLE GETTING KILLED VIA PHONE CALLS! i don't know. it might freak your shit out.

really, i don't mean to make it sound like it's a crappy film. it's not. there were no cheerleaders in the film, but it was still engaging. other than her frequent screaming fits, the possessed lil girl is possessed with awesomeness. near the end, there's a crazy twist that i've amazingly been able to avoid talking about. when i saw it, i was all like "oh that's what's going on." so yeah, if you don't mind a film with a LOT of phones ringing, you should check it out. if you're scared of subtitles & if you believe bloody-disgusting.com (how can't you with a name like that?), hollywood's coming out with a version of the film next summer. i'm sure it'll be awesome. hollywood never screws up remakes. rumor i'm starting: the role of the phone will be played by an iphone.

#129 - pom pon.
snack: clif nectar cherry pomegranate fruit & nut bar
drink: pom iced coffees (chocolate, cafe au lait, vanilla)



whilst watching the film thursday night, i snacked on a clif nectar cherry pomegranate fruit & nut bar. i first experienced the clif bar in large quantities just after college, when i worked for the b.u. sports marketing department & clif bars was one of our sponsors. sports? high-performance snack bar? makes sense. there were clif bars all over the place back in those days, but since my physical activity has never been all that physical, i've never really eaten them as some sort of exercise-related treat. it's always been more of a "hmm. i could use to get that much potassium & fiber & whatnot. should i have the one that looks like flattened poop with chunks in it but tastes like carrot cake or the other one that looks like flattened poop with chunks in it but tastes like pumpkin pie?" the choices!

at the above-average neighborhood grocery store the other day, they had a whole section of clif bars (& their sister bars, the luna bars) amongst the healthy snack bars, so i picked up one of the cherry pomegranate ones. they're part of their nectar series of fruit & nut bars, which includes a cranberry, apricot & almond one, a lemon vanilla cashew one & a dark chocolate walnut one. in looking at the names of the other flavors, i can't help but wonder if i got the lesser of the four. still, like chrissie hynde said, "don't get me wrong." the cherry pomegranate one's good & all. it's got the same sort of poop chunk texture without the poop taste, but it's made solely from organic dates, cashews, sour cherries & pomegranate concentrate, so i enjoyed the flavor immensely, especially given my recent love affair with dates...& my butt loved the fiber.

...so the folks at pom sent me a package of their pom iced coffees, a package that i actually received this time thanks to a tip from my dad, a postal veteran who provided some solid (& successful!) fatherly advice by telling me to have pom write "HOLD AT POST OFFICE. LEAVE NOTICE" on the box. i wanted to add "BUILDING FILLED WITH THIEVES," as well, but figured that might be a bit much. luckily, as the website & the pomster who contacted me noted, the drinks don't taste like pomegranate. i assume such a pomegranate-coffee concoction would be a sin against lord java, but i wouldn't be surprised if starbucks tried to craft a version. maybe they couldn't do so because a louisiana company already has...or maybe just because it's a bad idea.

...so pom's come out with three coffee drink flavors--chocolate, cafe au lait & vanilla (the newer one)--and created this insane website based on the tagline "the healthy buzz." it features a sheep with bugged out eyes who says things like "for maximum wakey-wakedness" & "click a flaaaaaaavor" in his thick sheep accent. if you're looking to me to know when it's ok to laugh, it cracked me up significantly.

the drinks! i started my thursday morning with some npr, the chocolate one & (since it goes well with coffee, chocolate & public radio), a cigarette. that night, whilst watching pon, i tried out the cafe au lait one...with a cigarette. it was fairly similar to the chocolate one, but i'll choose something with chocolate over something without any day of the week. the next morning, i woke up with the vanilla one, a bowl of blueberry pomegranate total (which you can actually get a free sample of, btw)...& a cigarette. the vanilla one's my favorite of the three, likely because it's so different from the other two. i'm usually not big on the vanilla coffee, but akin to the starbucks caramel coffee drink, this one could dominate my pre-made iced coffee purchases...if i just stopped being so cheap. the best part about the coffee drinks? since they're healthy, i'm pretty sure that counteracts the effects of all those smokes. they don't claim that in the press materials or anything, but wouldn't it be nice? i could be addicted to two things!

nosh nook #135 - friday, september 18, 2009

a yummy forecast (link)
09.18.09 - the ny times - by daniel m. gold

holy crap. did you hear what the weather's supposed to be like this weekend? the summer's not even officially over yet, but the forecast is calling for cloudy with a chance of meatballs. meatballs! i knew that global warming & el nino were on a rampage, but can you believe that crap? since i'm pretty sure that he predicted that this time was nigh, i feel like it's high time that i check out that al gore movie & see what the deal is. i've heard of it raining cats & dogs, but nothing like this...scary.

speaking of movies that predicted this weather anomaly, the folks at sony pictures released cloudy with a chance of meatballs today. coincidence? i think not. the times' daniel m gold checked out the the animated flick, which is based on the beloved 1978 children's book. the story follows flint lockwood, an inventor who lives in a town called chewandswallow. one day, he invents a machine that "converts water into menu items." it helps him score with a babe, but like with most stories involving inventions, things get crazy when "the technology runs amok, and a perfect storm of the four food groups threatens his town and beyond."  

overall, gold seems to like the film, but notes that in a world dominated by films like up!, it's tough to compete. still, for phil lord & christopher miller (the creators of the film), it's a good first animated film. they may not save the world with their film adaptation, but "if the filmmakers opt to make only light statements about junk food, obesity and solid waste, they at least leave the audience sated on a single serving of inspired lunacy." puntastic, mr gold. puntastic.

#124 - eat!drink!man!woman!

true confession: up until this weekend, i'd never actually sat down & watched eat drink man woman, by director ang lee. regardless, for some reason, when i was trying to come up with a name for this here blog, a variation on the title stuck in my head & eventually won the brainstorm competition. the rest is history. overall, other than his masterpiece, crouching tiger, hidden dragon, i've sort of avoided his films. i blame sense & sensibilty & the ice storm, two movies that i've judged as "pretentious" without even watching. i mean, sure there isn't an outside chance i'd see the incredible hulk, but my unfounded feelings on his films have definitely kept me away from brokeback mountain, lust, caution & eat drink man woman. after seeing eat drink..., i've decided to go back & take a trip through his filmography, maybe even go see taking woodstock.

the story focuses on a taiwanese family that's made up of a widowed father & his three daughters, one who's an old maid school teacher type, one who's an outgoing airline executive & the youngest one, who works at a fast food joint. the father's an aging/semi-retired master chef, who despite the fact that his sense of taste is diminishing, still loves cooking large, gourmet chinese meals. the opening sequence shows him preparing the weekly sunday meal for his family, a ritual that involves hours of cooking with crazy old timey chinese steamers & methods & whatnot. the shit looks AMAZING. about forty-five minutes in, i had to pause the movie when i found myself with my tongue pressed up against the screen.

it's an interesting film with some cool twists & a totally unexpected ending. the plot's driven by the three daughters' changing relationships & feelings about love, but as the title implies, a lot of the story revolves around food. as for that title, it comes from a line in the film, where the father is talking to old wen, his fellow chef & business partner. as they stumble drunk down the hall after closing down an enormous kitchen for the night, the father says to old wen, "eat, drink, man, woman. basic human desires. can't avoid them." it's so true. unfortunately, it means that as far as the name of this blog goes, i've changed that philosophy by replacing sex with snacks. no nookie. just food. that's so not representative of my feelings on life, but oh well.

i like what lee & his co-writer james schamus (who's cowritten every single one of lee's films) have done with the story. we get to see enough of the characters' everyday lives outside of the family that when they're together as a family, we're able to put the way they act in the context of their everyday lives. it speaks to an inherent quality of human relationships: how we act when we're with & not with our families are two separate things, but they still influence each other. it's one of the reasons why tv shows with characters like mad men's don draper & breaking bad's walter white are so damn appealing. they represent extreme versions of our desire to have our own personal experiences & feelings & secrets & whatnot, ones that others aren't privy to. maybe it's the whole "knowledge is power" thing, maybe it isn't. regardless, in this film, the consequences of that desire are profound. eat!drink!secrets!

#124 - eat!drink!man!woman!
snack: barbecue popchips
drink: inko's cherry vanilla white tea



a few months back, i tried out popchips for the first time & then gave em the ol razzing a few weeks later in a column about a ny times article describing their $1.3 million ad campaign. part of the campaign was "an outreach to trend-setters that seeks to generate positive buzz." as an obvious trend-setter, i implored them to reach out to me...& they did. unfortunately, the other residents of my building have sticky fingers & my mailperson tends to just leave stuff sitting out if it doesn't fit in the mailbox, so if they sent me a package in the mail, i never received it. thanks for everything, shoddy brooklyn postal service. you too, grabby neighbors. sorry, popchick.

since i was planning on trying out more of their chips anyhow, i picked up a big bag of barbecue popchips the other night & broke them open during the film. popchips has seven flavors & i've only tried the sea salt & vinegar flavor, so i decided to expand my horizons into bbq territory. like the sea salt & vinegar ones (& i assume the rest of them), since they're popped, they're light & fluffy, like a thinner, crisper rice cake. the bag claims that they're "the tangiest barbecue taste this side of the mason dixon," which is odd. last i checked, they're based out of san fran and the mason-dixon line only runs as far west as the far southwest corner of pennsylvania, so i'm pretty sure they're not even on a side of it. whatever though. it's a somewhat tangy barbecue flavor. they were worthy of me totally popping them into my mouth one after another. it was a puntastic eating experience.

i grabbed a bottle of inko's cherry vanilla white tea to go along with the popchips. inko's is based right across the river in jersey. the company got its start because there weren't any white teas on the market & the founders loved drinking white tea so much that they just had to start their own company. they also discovered that white tea leaves may have cancer-fighting properties, so proceeds from every bottle go to white tea cancer research. here's the science behind it...apparently there are these things in white tea leaves called polyphenols, chemicals that some believe have cancer-fighting properties. since white tea leaves are processed less than other types, they have more polyphenols in them. i can get behind that.

gotta be honest...i couldn't even taste the polyphenols. it's made with all natural ingredients, so what i did taste was a tea flavored with an acceptable amount of cherry & vanilla extracts. the prevalence of the cherry extracts made me think of cherry coke, where the cherry flavor's there, but it's not overwhelming the beverage itself. as far as sweetness goes, on a scale of one to ten, it's "not too sweet." it's sweetened with fructose crystals, an ingredient that the label makes sure to note is "not corn syrup." it's true. fructose crystals are basically the same thing as cane sugar (sucrose) crystals, but without as much of an insulin surge. sounds ok to me. anything that aids my ongoing quest to lower my HFCS consumption is good in my book...doubly so if the whole white tea cancer prevention thing pans out. eat!drink!snack!health!