#121 - getting car-ried away.

let's get one thing straight right off the bat. on a scale of one to ten, my ability to perform stereotypically male tasks is pretty low. i can hammer & drill things alright. i can play sports but haven't tried much since the clinton administration. i've screwed things here & there, but in instances like the most recent apartment snafu, where the pipes below the sink were occasionally dripping, rather than just sliding on under there & examining/rectifying the problem the first time like a proper adult male, every once in a while, i'd just give the thingy at the top of the pipe a quick lil twist until it stopped dripping. it was only this weekend, after a month or so of me doing that over & over & over again that i really gave it a good look & fixed it the right way.

this ignorance definitely extends to cars. i'm clueless as far as cars are concerned & during the few brief periods of my life when i actually owned a car, changing the oil meant a half-hour opportunity to read a book whilst my friendly neighborhood jiffy lube took care of business. i mean, i'm not entirely hopeless. i can drive a stick & have changed a tire in my time. changed a ton of windshield wipers. still, i haven't owned a car in years & wouldn't know a carburetor from a drive shaft. ok. well maybe i'd know that, but seriously, i don't know squat about the auto. for me, popping the hood & looking around to see what's wrong would be the adult equivalent of my saxophone contribution to my fifth grade band performance upstate...one big game of pretend.

my car owning strategy is as such: i'm holding out for electric cars. i'm holding out for at least a hybrid. i live in nyc, so having a car is pretty ridiculous...unless it's one of those sweet super tiny smart cars like the one that's often parked in front of my apartment building. i just want to pinch its cheeks! i figure by the time i'm able to afford a car, they're going to run on lawrencium or something, which is going to rule. that element's dense. it sucks that my parents didn't horde all of our old cars & turn the backyard into a car graveyard. i'm sure if they had, we could've kicked the squirrels out of one of them & fixed it up enough to get $4500 from the guvment as part of the clunkers program. gimme money fer my clunker, mister prez-dent!

it's really sad what's happened to the american automobile actually. what was once a status symbol, with fins & drop tops & whitewalls & junk, is now the majority of the time nothing more than a bland people transporter. sure there are some totally tricked out cars out there, but i can't tell most cars apart. i need a cool looking car to make me even care. i'm pretty sure that's something i inherited from my dad. through the years, he's owned a bunch of different cars, including a number of interesting shaped ones--a lotus, a VW bug, a boxy volvo, some sort of old ass diesel mercedes benz & now (at age 57) a mini cooper. i haven't owned a car in ages & until they come out with a car that doesn't kill the planet & also has two bubbles, three horns that play "la cucaracha," gigantic cup holders & an engine sound that causes people to think the world's coming to an end, i don't want it.

#121 - getting car-ried away.
snack: jack link's teriyaki beef jerky
drink: nos high performance energy drink



this past weekend, since i was low on fundage, i decided to make use of a gift card i got last christmas but had never used & take a trip over to the friendly neighborhood home depot to pick up some snacks & necessary cleaning supplies. since home depot's all manly & stuff, they have a small selection of food & drink that i'm assuming appeals to your average joe construction worker type. we're talking stuff like sports & energy drinks, tiny cans of pringles, snack mixes, candy & saturday night's snack, a 3 oz bag of jack link's teriyaki beef jerky. i've gotta level with you, mr jack link. the bag is much bigger than it needs to be. when i first opened it, it wasn't even half way full. hasn't somebody in your finance department talked to somebody in development about coming up with a smaller bag that leads to incremental plastics savings?

the teriyaki flavor's acceptable. i mean, as far as teriyakis go, it's better than most of the jerkys you're going to find out there. still, teriyaki is clearly at the bottom of the jack link jerky pecking order & there are a handful of jack link products that i'd choose first if i ever saw them for sale. for starters, there are flavors like maple & brown sugar ham, sweet & spicy thai & jalapeno carne seca. they have a turkey jerky & a buffalo jerky. they even have A1 steak sauce branded nuggets. i don't even like A1 steak sauce all that much, but it sounds damn appealing. to top it off, jack link is committed to "feeding your wild side" with growling sasquatches & adventure on their website. no wonder they're "america's #1 brand of jerky & meat snacks!" it's definitely the growling sasquatch.

every day last week, i'd foolishly stayed up til around two or three in the morn, so come saturday, when i didn't have to get out of bed for anything, i slept in & even treated myself to an afternoon nap. by the time night rolled around & i wanted to be awake, i'd entered that zone where i'd slept so much that i was still tired. to counteract this, around ten or so, i broke out a 22 oz bottle of nos high performance energy drink. since i haven't a clue about cars & haven't seen any of the the fast & the furious series of films or played need for speed, i had no idea that the bottle is meant to look like a n.o.s. (nitrous oxide system), which peeps use to give their cars boosts of power. they're one of nascar driver kyle busch's many sponsors. in fact, he held up a bottle of it after winning sunday's sharpie 500. seriously, that's the name of the race. there are many photos of him with a giant sharpie. oh nascar sponsorships.

on the front of the nos, it specifically says "caution: powerful" & there's some weird sort of warning symbol (beware of crabs?), but i didn't pay much attention to that. i figured it was just a gimmick. since i rarely have energy drinks, i probably should have at least given the label a good once over. if i had, i definitely would've heeded the warning. instead, i just poured the entire bottle into a big glass & fiddle dee dee went about my fun filled night hanging round the apartment whilst taking in its generic citrus energy drink flavor. i did some writing. i did some cleaning. i took in the prisoner: or how i planned to kill tony blair. i did some more writing. i watched a couple tv shows. i played on the internet. next thing i knew, it was three in the morn, so i decided it was time to go to sleep. my body had other ideas though & i tossed & turned for a full three hours in a state of half sleep until i finally crashed some time around sunrise.

when i woke up around noon, it felt like somebody had taken one of those tiny black school portrait combs to my innards. it was awful. later in the day, i was chatting with my roommate, an avid consumer of energy drinks & i was all "check out this energy drink. it's friggin nuts. i was up til six in the morn because of it." his first question was "how many servings is that?" the answer: 2.75. oops #1. i grabbed a can of red bull from the recycling to do a comparison. turns out that a small can of red bull has 80 mg of caffeine in it. a 22 oz bottle of nos has FOUR & A HALF TIMES THAT (357 mg). oops #2. on top of that, it has 2750 mg of taurine, 550 mg of L-carnitine, 274 mg of inositol & 136mg of panax ginseng. it's a good thing that my heart didn't explode. oops #3 averted. thank god. death by energy drink is not how i want to go.

side note: started writing this on sunday, came across an article about an energy-drink infused jerky the very next evening. check it. i can predict the future.

nosh nook #117 - tuesday, august 25, 2009

it's an energy drink? no, it's beef jerky (link)
08.24.09 - denver business journal - by mark harden

ever wonder how history's great inventions came about? penicillin? somebody left a sandwich out on the counter too long. the ronco rotisserie? somebody left ron popiel out in the garage too long...& there you have it. just like that, we were blessed with two of history's great inventions & they came into being completely by chance. the snack world's no stranger to great inventions & we've now been graced with the greatest invention since sliced bread--"perky jerky"--the result of crossbreeding a bag of jerky with an energy drink. what took science so long?!

perky jerky was created through the same "oops/wait a second..." method that brought us penicillin. as the denver business journal & the perky jerky website describe, it all started "after a long, hard night of energy-drink-cocktail-fueled libation" at a ski lodge, when somebody spilled an energy drink into a bag of jerky. the next morn, when they woke up, somebody was all "i don't care if ronnie spilled his red bull into the bag of jerky last night. i'm friggin starving."...& they went for it...& they liked it...& it was through that process that perky jerky & the performance enhancing meat snack co (PEMS for short) were born.

it turned out that after soaking in energy drink overnight, the jerky actually became more tender & to top it off, the skiers "realized they'd been given an extra boost" from the energy drink. after three years of development, the jerky was finally ready for market. it wasn't easy though. they couldn't just keep getting drunk around the ski lodge & hope for the best. brian levin, the force behind PEMS, explains it this way--"creating an energizing meat snack was only half the battle. i refused to compromise on both the taste and the effect, so it took several years of trial and error to find the perfect combination of flavor and kick." sounds great, brian!...& when it's finally available in stores, i might just try some. i'm always looking for a little extra kick from my meat snacks.

#115 - all points afar.

friday was like the little day that could. through a hookup through a friend with ties to the jay-z camp, a group of us were planning on going to the first night of the all points west festival, headlined by jigga & held out in liberty state park, in jersey city, just across the river from manhattan. so i could leave work mid-afternoon, i upped my game & got to work a full hour early at 9:30am. i swear i saw the sunrise en route to the subway. at work, everything went relatively smoothly. in fact, i propose five hour days from here on out, because the amount of work i got done by having to cram it into five hours was truly monumental. employers, if you are monitoring my blog, please take note. less hours = increased productivity. salary intact, please.

...so i got out by 2:30 & made my way back to brooklyn to run a few errands & relax at home whilst everyone else finished their days. i had thoughts of going to see ra ra riot, but eventually set a goal of getting there in time to see flying lotus (not safe for work/not safe for strobe haters) in the dj tent at 7:15. during that time, the group plan split into two pre-festival meetup groups, with one including the friend responsible for the hookup & the other including me & one other dude. also during that time, the skies opened up with some pretty impressively awful downpours, to the point where i, hater of umbrella-carrying, carried an umbrella on my journey to meet the aforementioned other dude where he was hanging out, at the apartment of a friend of his in battery park city.

when i arrived, the three of us hung out for a while, conversatin' & bumping a whole lot of jay-z. since the apartment was in battery park city there was a ridiculous view of the harbor from the bedroom windows. to make it even better, there was a sweet terrace type thing a few floors up, complete with bullt in grills & patio areas. once the doppler radio informed us we were in the clear rainwise, we ventured up there & from there, we had a clear view across the harbor to liberty state park, where we posited that vampire weekend was finishing up their set. since i love my phone's camera, i took a few photos of the environs, none of which included a view of liberty state park.



upon returning downstairs, we soon discovered, through a few phone calls & much resignation, that our entry to the festival was in jeopardy. awesome. apparently things were messed up for those relying on our particular method of entry & it was close to 8:30 & in the end, we had already missed every band but jay-z & MSTRKRFT anyhow. the other two dudes had other possible angles to entry, but i'd already had a few fun hours in battery park city, so i headed back to brooklyn to end my evening. jigga what? jigga no.

#115 - all points afar.
snack: homemade beef jerky
drink: yuengling lager



but! while i was there & doing the getting to know of the friend's friend, a mention came of this here blog & its content & the friend's friend, quite hospitable as he was, offered me a piece of homemade beef jerky from a jar on the kitchen counter. there were a dozen or so pieces of jerky remaining out of a jar that probably held 100 or so pieces. apparently my friend had emptied most of the rest of it on a previous visit. it was that jerkilicious.

since it was homemade, i inquired about the story behind the jerky. according to our host, the best beef to get for jerky is from key food, as it's cheap & of acceptable quality. i'm pretty sure this jerky was made of beef from there. either that or he really wanted to drive the key food thing home for some reason. it was spiced with peppercorns, vanilla & something asian that i believe, in a tribute to wayne's world, was called "cream of sun yung guy." not really though. something asian, but definitely not that...so yeah, damn good jerky. from the jerky-induced conversations surrounding its consumption, i've learned that it's not that big of a challenge to make jerky, so i may give it a shot one of these days.

whilst prepping for what i thought was going to be all points west, i repeatedly revisited yuengling, a beer that i'd previously imbibed back in march during tv month. since i was eventually headed for liberty state park, it made sense that i'd be drinking a beer from the country's oldest brewery. go freedom! go freedom to drink many lagers in good company! anyway, our host had a fridge full of them, so once i exhausted the only guinness (erin go bragh!) in the fridge, i went american.

as far as cheap beers go, yuengling's wonderful. i still hold fast to my opinion that i'll pay a buck more for a yuengling if it means avoiding a bud. yuengling's headquartered in pottsville, pa, home of the crimson tide & the county seat of & largest city in schuylkill county. the beer has a friggin eagle on the label! OMG patriotism orgasm! anyway, it made me not care so much that i never made it to the festival. on the upside, i'll have more energy for ac/dc in albany tonight. second row! my heart and/or ears and/or brain may explode. stay tuned for results.

#105 - on the fringe.

there once was a time when i was all "j.j. abrams? pfft. whatever. that guy can take his fancy one-word tv shows & cram em." that time's long gone though, so after ignoring it during its entire first season (whilst continuing to blindly follow the sub-par third season of heroes), i finally got around to watching the first season of fringe over the past few weeks. i'd initially stayed away because the two guys i shared an office with for the past six months or so both watched the first season, but they were also both excited about the new star trek & excited about/disappointed with the new terminator, so i figured it might be a little too sci-fi for my tastes. plus, until recently, when i finally got caught up with rescue me, i had a backlog of unwatched tv shows pushing fringe to the rear.

...but now my dance card's pretty free & i'm always up for some obsessive tv watching, so my recent free moments have been plugged with fringe & this sunday evening, i settled in for the last two episodes of the first season. the show revolves around olivia dunham (played by australian anna torv) & her federal team, which investigates occurrences tied to "fringe science." her team includes peter bishop (played by pacey) & his father, walter bishop (john noble, another australian). walter's just been freed from a mental hospital, so he needs his son nearby. it's a major plot point, but just one of many within the show. there are a few actors from the david simon stable--olivia's boss (lance reddick, from the wire) & another agent, played by chance kelly ("godfather" from generation kill). gbenga akinnagbe (the wire's chris partlow) even shows up for an episode. there's also this freaky bald character (played by the tony award winning michael cerveris) who's only referred to as "the observer."

my favorite things about the show? the openings often feature some sort of strange occurrence, a method often employed by the 4400, which i loved. it's set in boston, so 75% of the locales are in the greater boston area...love those sweeping flyovers of the hancock & the zakim bridge. walter is famous for saying he needs two things, one of which is usually a tasty treat. also, the most-uttered phrase on the show, usually in the opening, is "we've/i've/they've never seen anything like it." how fringy of them! to top it all off, the finale ends with two pretty badass revelations that have me eagerly awaiting next season.

so what's next? big love? battlestar galactica? deadwood? chuck? friday night lights? maybe i'll watch them all! other than mad men's return in mid-august, i figure i have at least until september until they start bringing back the series i enjoy. fringe will be back by then, as will dexter & dollhouse. tv-wise, it's going to be a long summer til then.

#105 - on the fringe.
snack: primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky
drink: atwater block brewery vanilla java porter



as i settled in for the first season finale, i tore open a primal strips seitan thai peanut vegan jerky that i'd procured earlier in the day, after it'd caught my eye at the supermarket register. impulse buy! it's made by a company (primal spirit foods) founded by two vegetarian "walking buddies" from west virginia. i wonder if they ever ran into mark sanford out on the appalachian trail.

it's by far my top new snack of the year. i'm interested in purchasing a thai peanut sauce IV if one ever comes onto the market, so there's that. sorry gluten-avoiders, this mofo's made with seitan & that seitan is damn tasty. after eating this one on sunday night, i jonesed for another one all monday & finally, last night, returned to the supermarket, grabbed some veggies & made a beeline for the registers, where i picked up the last remaining two. by the end of the night, they were no more. screw jerky made with meat. this stuff is just plain awesome. in fact, it's so awesome that PETA honored primal strips with their 2004 "best new vegetarian snack award"...which is saying something because those PETAs hate pretty much everything!

i figured a sweet-tasting beer would work well with the peanut sauce flavor, so i grabbed a bottle of atwater block brewery vanilla java porter. it's brewed out of detroit, in a 1916 factory on the river, in the rivertown-warehouse district, where properties currently go for an average of $175K, a 45% decrease from five years ago. that's still much better than the average for detroit ($9K) and the square footage there goes for 1000% higher than the detroit average. it's sad that in detroit, you can now get a house for less than a car. as the ny times reported back in march, the real estate market is so crazy that artists are now moving there & buying houses for $100.

as for atwater block brewery, their vanilla java porter is pretty damn good & pretty damn sweet. it's not overpoweringly sweet, but the vanilla, coffee & chocolate flavors are definitely prevalent. my prediction that it'd be a stellar complement to the thai peanut jerky totally came true. while my prediction was no fringe science, believe me, it was some serious nostradamus shit...& that's close enough. btw, i also predict that you'll find this last line hilariously meta.

nosh nook #57 - tuesday, june 2, 2009

bacon jerky, a new kind of bacony goodness snack for bacon lovers (link)
06.01.09 - news blaze

friggin' bacon. one day, it's just another part of a hearty breakfast & the next, it's become all hip & shit. one company has even gone as far as to come out with baconnaise & bacon salt, because, as their slogan says, "everything should taste like bacon." hasn't this damn bacon craze gone far enough? how many bacon-themed tattoos & articles of clothing must we endure before the madness ends? i'm actually a fan of bacon, with a leaning towards the turkey variety, but all this "i ♥ bacon" nonsense that's going around is seriously making me reconsider our relationship.

one such organization fighting on the side of bacon evil is bacon freak's “bacon is neat candy” gourmet bacon club, who has now created a bacon jerky. according to what appears to be a press release (& a biased one at that) on newswire, a few months back, the folks at bacon freak created bacon jerky. as a result, "no longer are you limited to eating bacon at home." as one who can't even count the amount of times i've longed to be able to tear into some bacon while i'm out & about but haven't felt comfortable doing so, i can now "satisfy (my) daily bacon urges on the go."

bacon jerky is one of those snacks you shouldn't have to share with your friends, but with flavors like "coastal caliente jalapeno bacon" & "boss hog hickory bacon," it sounds like it'd be tough not to. luckily, as the press release notes, "the best part about bacon jerky in comparison to regular bacon is that when you cook bacon, the aroma floats through the air calling out to those around you to come and get it which means that you have to share." with bacon jerky, not only is there no cooking involved, but all that baconacity is now contained in a pouch that you can squirrel away from your friends. the press release also notes that "you can simply enjoy a few pieces and those around you want know that you're snacking on the most delectably delicious bacon ever."  that's not proper english, but who cares when you've got bacon jerky?