#14 - get wild!

for those of us who are lovers of scrabble & its various derivatives, these last few days have seen the game really grab a hold of the headlines, pretty much entirely because of the hasbro/electronic arts/scrabble vs scrabulous copyright lawsuit that has resulted in the removal of the scrabulous application from facebook...& the big deal is what now?

the scrabulous application is still available on their website. in fact, i'm on my fifth game of the night right now. sure, you may have lost the results of games you were playing on facebook, but last time i checked, those results aren't redeemable like ski-ball tickets or anything. it just means that you lose some computer memories & that there is one less reason to go onto facebook, people. in fact, by playing scrabulous, i've avoided facebook for the last two hours or so.

as for scrabble protecting their copyright, that makes sense & it's great that cnn & msnbc will discuss copyright law for a few days, but after listening to a story on npr earlier, there's some eyebrow-raising precise timing behind hasbro's recent actions towards scrabulous.

#1 - tuesday was the final day of the 2008 national scrabble championship down in orlando, a tournament, which according to npr, featured players such as 11-year old bradley robbins, from WINDHAM, NH BIZZNITCHES!!!...he won 24 out of 28 games against adults.

#2 - scrabble/electronic arts launched their beta application on facebook...& it is currently unavailable due to maintenance.

#3 - electronic arts announced that it had missed analyst estimates.

it's probably just pure coincidence that scrabble ordered scrabulous to shut down their facebook app at the same time ea missed estimates & launched their beta app & at the same time as the national scrabble championships. clearly, the real loser in all of this is hasbro, whose game has been negatively impacted by the publicity as a result of the existence of scrabulous & the fact that 13-year old girls across the country now know the rules of scrabble & enjoy words more.

#14 - get wild!

snack: limited edition wildly cherry m&ms
drink: coca-cola classic

...so & i'm on my sixth game of scrabulous now & while i've been playing, i've cracked open a bag of limited edition wildly cherry m&ms to snack on. as a rule, whenever i see the words "limited edition" on a candy item, said candy eventually ends up in my mouth. i tried these cherry m&ms for the first time a few days ago & went in with no great expectations. over the years, m&m has done a lot of good beyond the early peanut or plain-only days of the m&m. from the reincarnation of the red m&m to the inventions of the mint and mega m&ms, mars has done a lot to keep me interested over the years, but i've still remained skeptical of new types of m&ms. i don't know why i just don't give them the benefit of the doubt & let it be done with. these cherry ones are friggin' amazing. they're the same size as the peanut butter m&ms & each one is like eating a chocolate covered cherry sans gooey stickiness.

the front of the package urges me to "get wild!" & believe me, i am. it is 1am & i'm sitting in my boxers blogging, covering my teeth with coca-cola classic and watching an eight-year old japanese prodigy play "crossroads" on conan. believe me, i don't dare get any wilder than this. i'd hate to wake the neighborhood & attract the wrath of the nypd. they do not tolerate wildness.

#7 - having it my way.

holy storms, batman! this weekend, there were a series of storms here in the city that brought me back to the summer storms of fort lauderdale, where one second it'd be all sunny & happy & a'birds tweetin' and the next, the sky would turn black & sheets of rain would come crashing down on your face.

as an example, on saturday, i left my house & jumped on the subway up to union square. when i left my apartment, the skies were grey, but there was complete skyness dryness in action when i descended into the subway station to catch the train. when i came out of the union square station 45 minutes later, the GAME HAD TOTALLY FLIPPED & there were masses of tourists & nyu students & citizens & trader joes/whole foods bags & baby strollers & a viola taking cover at the top of the stairs exiting the subway...taking cover from the torrential downpour that could have had irreversible effects on us all...if we were mogwai...which i'm pretty sure we aren't. five minutes later, the rain had stopped & the evil scientist with a weather machine hidden deep in the bowels of columbia's pupin hall cackled with glee.

i didn't want to take the chance that i might be even part mogwai, so with the sporadic violent half-hour storms this weekend, i stayed indoors a bunch overall, assembling quite a lazy dog-dangling agenda.

on saturday night in particular, i decided to have some indoor netflix time with two films...3:10 to yuma & the bridge...a western & a documentary about suicide at the golden gate bridge. to prep for a four hour plus span of couch-sitting, i stopped by the rite aid & picked up the awesomest bag of snack i could find & went down to bierkraft to get a few beers that made me feel snooty...

#7 - having it my way.
snack: burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks
drinks: abita purple haze, victory hop wallop, porkslap pale ale

at around 10:10, i started off with 3:10 to yuma, probably the first western i have watched since i watched dead man for the 7,000th time earlier in the year. anyhow...very entertaining film. i didn't want to kill russell crowe half as much as i expected that i'd want to.

a little bit into the film, i broke open the bag of bk potato snacks. the verdict: they don't really have the bk french fry taste to them, but they definitely taste like ketchup. basically, if you've ever paired a can of potato sticks with a bottle of heinz, you're feeling bk with these snacks. by this time, i had finished the abita purple haze & with the fruity beer out of the way, i moved on to the victory hop wallop. it was hoppy.

just after midnight, i started watching the bridge & cracked open the porkslap pale ale (click on the barn doors if you visit the site!). the porkslap comes from butternuts beer, a brewery located in a town midway between syracuse & albany, both places that are cold in different senses of the word. i'm a sucker for beers like theirs--the kind that come in cans but don't taste like piss. under fear of ketchup overdose, i could not eat another bk potato snack at this point & hid the bag safely in the kitchen cupboard.

the bridge...in 2004, filmmaker eric steel, inspired by a new yorker article about suicides on the golden gate bridge, moved to san francisco & got permits to film the bridge. in that year, a pretty typical one, 24 people died by jumping off the bridge, again making it the top location in the world for suicides. he captured 23 of them amongst his footage & then combined this with interviews with friends & family of ome of the victims.

jumping off the bridge is pretty easy to do, in fact. there's no fence stopping you from doing it. the golden gate bridge district has made sure of that by taking forever to put up some sort of barrier. sure, if there were a barrier up, people would probably just rule that method out & find another (one person in the film likens choosing the method of suicide to picking out a college), but a deterrent is a deterrent in my book.

anyhow, if you are ok with watching a movie about suicide & how people get to that point & what effect it has on friends & family, check this movie out. burger king ketchup & fries flavored potato snacks are optional.

#5 - hot chocolate.

oh to the days of summer, oh so fun. jacques heim & louis reard, i salute you wholeheartedly. today, i traveled to atlantic beach, out on long island, with a few folks, two of whom were basically from the area we were in, although it appears as if they were those working as cabana boys at the beaches & not those owning the houses on the beaches. since they were from the area, we went to a local deli-type place where all the sandwiches were named after the various beach clubs. i got the ocean club, with its chicken & craisins & feta & felt like quite the vip. i also picked up a snickers charged bar for later, not even considering that after three-and-a-half hours in the sun & a day that later led to a tube of aloe, said snickers bar would be a melted mess. i tried putting it in the fridge to turn it back into some sort of solid, but i just couldn't bring myself to eat it.

#5 - hot chocolate.
snack: snickers charged bar
drink: maxwell house french roast iced coffee

...so when i was later at the rite aid counter purchasing aforementioned aloe, i chose to give snickers charged a second life. later in the evening, at the stroke of midnight, i "settled down" for a tina fey/carrie underwood snl rerun (featuring mike huckabee) & what i like to call my "midnight special"--a candy bar infused with caffeine, taurine (not to be confused with chlorine), and b vitamins...paired with a cool, summer glass of iced coffee.

first off, this candy bar features a rhino on the packaging. right off the bat, that gets me pretty amped. rhinos mean two things--DANGEROUS & HUGE. i am expecting that upon consuming this candy bar, i will fly into a dangerously huge rhino-like rage, a rage not unlike one expected from the incredible hulk, who, btw, does not have an endorsement deal with snickers as of yet...snickers does, however, have an adventure bar!...& who likes the adventure bar? who? harrison ford, or possibly a character played by harrison ford, that's who. arti-FACTS! exotic spice! hint of coconut! with all its mars-based tie ins, you'd think i'd feel compelled to go see this movie about crystal skulls, but i haven't, because crystal skulls are totally fake & i apparently now hate anything that isn't steeped in realism. thanks a lot, survivor.

the best part about iced coffee is that it is coffee, but with ice in it.

seriously, check out the maxwell house website if you are so inclined. among its many features are a "smile report," a "which brew are you" function & a "good news" section. the current good news articles are "fourteen tips to avoid nagging," "red panda twins born at zoo" and "dog rescues drowning boy." can you guess the target market? i'll give you a hint...it's not me. i guess i should toss my remaining grounds & go to the starbucks across the street from my d.u.m.b.o. office & get me a bag of $11 sumatra/peru blend for what is probably a pretty good cause and/or tied to paul simon. target markets are funny.

#2 - 2am bacon, egg & cheese.

so i'm taking today off & heading up to boston/nh for the weekend. originally, my father was scheduled to retire from the usps at the end of may, so i was originally planning to head up to the parents' house in nh for the weekend, where we would celebrate his retirement (& father's day to boot)...two birds with one stone, as they say.

since formulating this original plan, my mother didn't like the idea of inviting a bunch of people to the house, where there is limited parking (meaning room for no more than 8-10 cars, which would have been fine, but whatever), my father pushed his retirement date back to the end of june & my brother's dog got ill & he's having to stay at home with her this weekend anyhow.

the result...i'm heading to boston right now to hang with chris leduc & megan jones et al this eve before heading to nh tomorrow to hang with the family, followed by a sunday afternoon dinner at my grandfather's house for father's day...a fine enough agenda all around. to boot, i'm testing out the bolt bus as we speak & BLOGGING ON THE GO, as bolt bus has wifi on board. suck on that, fung wah.

so that i could get to boston in the afternoon, i needed to catch the 11am bus & last night, with laundry to do, i found myself debating whether to stay up until about 3am (when said laundry would be done) or wake up early & do it before catching the bus. i chose to stay up until 3am...& of course i needed to run to the neighborhood 7-11 in between the wash & dry cycles.

the 7-11 is a fairly recent addition to the neighborhood, one of few chains in the lower park slope area & is only good for one thing: buying extremely unhealthy but extremely yummy snack foods at unreasonable hours..."7-11 foods to go" like asian spring rolls & tubular taco things. during one of my first trips there, i stumbled upon two new flavors of combos, available in 7oz bags...cheeseburger and bacon, egg & cheese. i tried cheeseburger on that visit & they taste like cheeseburger, but they are combos & as such, do not provide the same satisfaction as eating a cheeseburger. this time, as it was 2am, i was in more of a breakfast mood, so i went with...

#2 - 2am bacon, egg & cheese.

snack: combos bacon, egg & cheese cracker
drink: peach mango vitamin water

i like a lot of snack flavors. i've eaten utz crab chips. i've eaten herrs' heinz ketchup flavored chips. bacon, egg & cheese combos makes these chip flavors taste like what (i can only assume) the first glorious sip of breast milk must taste like to a newborn fresh from the womb. technically, it is not as bad as all that, but i believe the flavor of bacon, egg & cheese combos could kill a less experienced snacker.

as for the peach mango vitamin water, well...i drink a lot of vitamin water. we have it in the fridge at work. it is a great hangover cure when necessary. last night, i figured that since i was going to get five hours sleep, pre-sleep i would likely benefit from the rejuvenating effects of vitamin water. since 7-11 was out of yellow flavor, iced tea, red flavor #1, red flavor #2, lemonade & all the other ones i usually pick up, i went with the peach mango. i don't hate these fruits, but there's always something a little disconcerting about having to settle for your 7th or 8th choice. sure it was tasty enough, but the "vitamin" aspect of the water really let me down. i was still dragging tail come morning. endurance my ass.