#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.

a great man once said that you could do anything back in the olden days. that great man was wrong. back in the olden days, beginning almost ninety years ago this year, you totally couldn't drink...legally, at least. prohibited! prohibited via the 18th amendment! thanks, fanatical old-timey religion. only two states voted against the amendment (CT, this is the only thing you've been good for thus far). actually, it wasn't all that bad, i suppose. the american government & ladies in long skirts, a decade removed from WWI, were in no position to actually enforce the 18th amendment, so you could get booze. underground! still, the amendment remained an actual part of our constitution for over thirteen years. sorry only amendment to be no more. repealed! they had to create a whole new amendment to get rid of you. lame, #18.

...but they tried for a while to keep the country dry & yay! we got gangsters! we got dudes with classy hats & tommy guns & whatnot. have any of y'all seen brian depalma's the untouchables? if so, you remember that one scene where al capone bashes that dude's head in with a baseball bat? that scene ruled & definitely freaked my thirteen-year old ass out (in both a good & a bad way). i guess that's one positive thing that came out of the 18th amendment. without it, brian depalma never would have made the untouchables. it's basically the last good movie he's made & i wouldn't want to take that away from him. there was word that he was working on a prequel to the film starring nicolas cage as capone, but that project's been stalled. too bad. that could really lift depalma's spirits.

i can't even fathom those times. people rolling around town bop bop bopping people with tommy guns, having crazy car chases, posing as cops to assassinate members of a rival gang...you could do that stuff back then & often get away with it. old-timey murder! less than a hundred years later, the mob just ain't what it used to be. i mean, maybe it's so far underground than i don't even notice, but these days, you only really get to hear about one, maybe two sweet mob killings a year. it's got to the point where there are more reports of arrests than there are of gangland murder. the most famous mob family--the sopranos--even they met their end. fuggetaboutit.

these days, here in nyc, there are faux speakeasy style establishments popping up all over. when i first moved the city near the beginning of the decade, there were a couple speakeasy type bars (i.e.--milk & honey), but now it's become such a trend that the ny times did a piece on speakeasies back in june. there's PDT (please don't tell), a speakeasy hidden through a phone booth in the back of crif dogs. brooklyn has the hideout (in ft greene) & rye, a restaurant in williamsburg that looks like a speakeasy. just the other day, the museum of the city of new york finished up their speakeasy series of events, ones that celebrated the fact that manhattan used to be home to around 30,000 speakeasies. there's senor swanky's mexican cafe & speakeasy in the upper west side, but that's only a speakeasy in name. i turn my apartment into a speakeasy a couple nights a week, but it's so far underground that i'm the only one who's found it so far. bootleg!

#122 - speakin' easy of the old-timey.
snack: tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips
drink: speakeasy white lightning



holy crap! will you look at the old-timey hats on those dudes on the front of the bag of tyrrell's sweet chilli & red pepper chips? i can't tell...are they prussian or bobbies or something? probably bobbies, since tyrrell's is a u.k. company. the u.k. thing also explains the crazy spelling of "chili." crazy brits with their double l's. the car the bobbies are in is totally old-timey. it's the sort of car you'd expect to tip over taking a corner or whose radiator would explode for no good reason. i wish i had one of those cars & was on the front of a bag of chips. lucky probably dead now dudes. i tried out tyrell's beef & horseradish potato chips around the beginning of the year. they have a cow on the front of the bag. sir walter tyrrell's his name. i'm hoping that he's still alive, but he's a tasty cow, so it's tough to be certain.

i've tried a couple of the tyrrell's flavors & they've all had a nice, full flavor. the sweet chilli chips are no exception. they've got a no-too-greasy kettle feel & a burnt orange look with a bunch of lil sweet flavor specks scattered throughout. the sweet specks dominate over the chilli & pepper, so if you're one of those fancypants who can't handle spicy chips, it's ok. they won't hurt you...you candy ass. jk, candy ass! jk! seriously, they're good chips...a tad pricey, but good nonetheless. according to the bag, they're even "suitable for" you candy ass vegans. jk, candy ass vegans! jk! quick question, vegans. is candy ass one word or two? jk!

the speakeasy white lightning is totally bootleg! well, not really. the name implies that, but it's actually made by an totally legit brewery out of san fran. no canadian border runs from the g-men here! their website is goodbeer.com, which is a tad cocky. the white lightning's not on the website though, so i'm not sure if the beer's named after the george jones big bopper-penned song about g-men & t-men & pappy's brew or the 1973 burt reynolds movie in which reynolds plays a guy named "gator mcklusky," a former moonshiner who goes undercover in the moonshine circles to expose the sheriff who killed his brother. i haven't seen it, but it was shown as part of quentin tarantino's first ever semi-annual film festival, back in 1997...so i guess it's that kind of movie. hopefully it's named after that.

to be honest, it's a pretty boring beer. it's a wheat beer flavored with coriander seed & curacao orange peel, but it's really light for a wheat beer. there's not really that much flavor there, especially when competing for my flavor love with the deliciousness of the sweet chilli & red pepper. i expected more from it. i guess that's why it's such a self-conscious beer, with its pair of eyes staring at me from the neck of the bottle the entire time i drank it. it was all looking askance & mumbling "you're not impressed are you? you've had better, huh? i'm sorry to hear that. did i mention that speakeasies are old-timey? you like old-timey, right? ok, i'll be quiet now. enjoy your beer."

#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.