#186 - OMG!

OMG! do you guyz know what today is?!!! OMG OMG OMG! of course you know what today is! how could you not? SHRIIIEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!! today is the seventeenth anniversary of the day when one pattie mallette squeezed the blessed beiber baby out of her vajayjay & into our universe!!! OMG JUSTIN BIEBER BDAY XVII!!! on the day he was born, slick willie clinton was in the white house & mariah carey's "without you" was the number one single. seventeen years later, the bieb's grown up to be a bonerfied canadian pop star/teen hearthrob/lesbian doppleganger. sure he's never had a number one single of his own, but he's been trying REALLY HARD to get one. i think it's because he doesn't have enough co-writers & producers. now that he's seventeen, he should demand no less than ten co-writers & ten producers on each & every one of his songs. if they don't meet his demands, he cuts his hair again.

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#184 - please listen to my demo.

the only time i ever crashed a car was back at the end of my junior year of high school, when i took my mom's chevy corsica & drove it right off a new hampshire backroad & down into a ditch, smack dab between two thick new hampshire trees. for some reason, even though i didn't have a seatbelt on, i totally lived to see the day when i'd get to start this here awesomely irreverent snack blog. while i survived, my tape of EPMD's unfinished business was totally lost in the crash. from that point on, the frequency with which i heard their song "please listen to my demo" seriously dropped off. it told the tale of EPMD trying to break into the record business, as they shopped their demo around & around & eventually "signed on the dotted line" & got to "cruise in golden limos." success success success!

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the musical fruit: movement #22.

the musical fruit: movement #22.
song: "eggplant," train
fruit: eggplant

remember that song "meet virginia" by that crappy band train? it came out in 98 & went to #2 & was all poptastic. in it, lead singer patrick monahan helps us meet virginia with cute lil lines like "daddy wrestles alligators. mama works on carburetors. her brother is a fine mediator for the president." if you check out the video, you'll notice that virginia is actually rebecca gayhart. it was the first major hit off of their self- titled debut album & is important enough that amazon prices it higher than any other song on the album. by their second album, peeps were taking home "best rock song" grammys. tee hee. the recording industry thinks train is "rock."

the debut album also contained a song called "eggplant." it's a little ditty in the middle of the album & believe me, it's equally as awful as any of their stuff. check out these lyrics--"hold up my wings cause you are the sky. paint me by numbers & don't ask me why. i am in bloom and you are perfume and you are perfume and you are." just try listening to the song without throwing up in your mouth a little. i dare you. the lyrics do mention eggplant & caviar & apple pie, which is pretty cool. coincidentally, they just released their fifth album, save me san francisco today. i checked out the first single, "hey, soul sister" & i can assure you that with this song, the lame train is still on the tracks & chuggin' on into a new decade.

so, um, it turns out that the eggplant is a fruit, a berry even. who knew? sometimes you think you're getting a woman & you end up getting a man. life's full of wacky surprises like that. so i have this one pound eggplant. awesome. there it is. right up there in the photo. says so on the side. what the hell am i going to do with it? bake it? stuff it? bread it & fry it like mom used to do? i can't remember the last time i made an eggplant. it's a gem of an eggplant too. i purplized it a bit in photoshop for dramatic effect, but my produce mart lady assured me that "this is a good one. you can tell by the skin." then she smiled at me. she was watching the mayoral debates at the time & asked my opinion. i told her i thought bloomberg should not get a third term. then she frowned at me.

back to the eggplant though...here's what i decided on. i've cut half of it into slices & they've been soaking for about an hour now in a balsamic vinaigrette. as soon as this oven heats its lazy electric ass up, i'm going to bake the hell out of those slices. when they're done, i'm going to toss them in with some gnocchi & a little florentine spinach & cheese sauce & fuggetaboutit! i have a feeling that the other half of the eggplant is destined for something involving couscous, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow when i see how beaten down i feel after work & can properly judge my evening food prep ambitiousness. here's to a future of wednesday night non-sluggishness!

#79 - pop.

i don't even know what's considered pop music any more. back in the eighties, it was clear. everything was pop music (for the most part). these days, every year they're all "& the grammy award for best pop album goes to...duffy! (2009) or steely dan! (2001) or joni mitchell! (1996) and i'm all "wait, didn't taylor swift/N*SYNC/hootie sell the most albums last year? they're all pop, right? why didn't they win? clearly they had the best pop album of the year."  joni mitchell's considered pop?

(please note that lil wayne actually had the best-selling album of last year, but he's cool in my book & taylor swift scares me, so she gets held up as last year's pop example.  she seems too "perfect" to really be perfect & she's not even disney, so that frightens me...some anti-christ shizz or something going on there).

so what exactly is considered pop music?  there's u.k. indie pop like belle & sebastian or blur or the divine comedy & u.s. indie pop like death cab for cutie or vampire weekend or the magnetic fields.  there's the more mainstream u.s. rock stuff like fall out boy or the foo fighters or green day.  then there's the more blatantly pop stuff like the jonas brothers or justin timberlake or kelly clarkson.  all of them could be considered pop, even though they're all quite different. 

basically, someone needs to clear this up for me ASAP, before my genre-programmed brain explodes all over my keyboard.

#79 - pop.
snack: sea salt & vinegar popchips
drink: jones fufu berry pure cane soda

tonight, i'm rocking out to some "pop music"--a little weezer & a little kanye west--and having a bag of sea salt & vinegar popchips.  they're one of five flavors made by a company out of san francisco that has recently expanded distribution to the eastern part of the u.s.  these popchips are supposed to be awesome because they've taken chip healthiness to the next level.  they don't fry their potatoes.  they don't even bake them.  they pop those puppies, making them through heat & pressure.

the resulting chip has a not-unpleasant light fluffy texture somewhere between a rice cake & a ritz cracker.  without the grease you'd get from a regular ol fried chip, the flavor definitely stands out better.  in this case, it's salt & vinegar, which you could sprinkle on pretty much anything non-living & i'd probably still eat it.   on the popchips, you get a good dose of salt & vinegar, but without the choking kick-back that you get when a salt & vinegar chip is too damn powerful...i'm looking in your direction, lays.

since i'm going all healthy & natural with my snacks today, i'm having a jones fufu berry pure cane soda along with the popchips. for you midwesterners...POP!  i call it "soda," my boston-based grandmother calls it "tonic," others call it "coke," you call it "pop."  to each his own, but "pop" is just silly sounding.

all the jones sodas are made without the usual soda corn syrup tastiness (they use cane sugar), which gives their beverages a slightly unsettling taste.  i've tried their blue bubble gum and strawberry & lime flavors and essentially, they all taste like derivations of the same berry flavor that's in the fufu berry flavor.  berries?  yawn.  they're nothing spectacular.

i think i need to get away from their berryesque flavors & try out the new orange cola flavor or sample one of their holiday packs before completely pooh-poohing their pricey, natural sodas away.  last year's halloween pack had a candy corn flavor!  that rules!  what doesn't rule is their past thanksgiving packs, which have included turkey & gravy, green bean casserole and mashed potato & butter flavors.  that's just gross & disturbing & makes me want to pop the one who thought that making those flavors was a good idea square in the kisser.  POP!