#147 - port traits: between the bars.

ever since i turned 21, i've dreamed that one day i'd have a bar that i could call my own, a neighborhood place where i could stop in any day of the week at any time of the day & the bartender, a cute girl who i've established a flirty customer-proprietor relationship with would look at me as i grabbed a stool at the bar & say to me "the usual?" i'd nod & she'd pour me a cold pint of my favoritest snooty beer. it'd be some real cliche shizz & totally not pathetic. every once in a while, she & i & a handful of regulars would order food from the restaurant next door. it'd be like a second home, third if you count my childhood home, which i probably should. to this day, largely due to my propensity towards home drinking, i've yet to find that magical third home...still searching though.

for part three of my portland, oregon investigative series, i've decided to take a look at the portland bar scene & see what it has to offer as far as third homes. i've yet to witness the portland scene firsthand but it's one that i've heard, read & dreamed a lot about & i have a handful of portland friends & acquaintances, so i was able to tap their alcohol-tainted brains & get a ROUGH idea of what's in store for me if i ever go out drinking in bridgetown. that's right...bridgetown. the city has a river running right through the middle of it, so they've got bridges. bridgetown. i'm not sure if anyone actually calls it that, but if they don't, they should. as a nickname, "city of roses" is just stupid. other suggestion: "beavertown."

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#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!

#123 - breaking news!

breaking news! california's on fire again! over 100K acres! it happens every year like clockwork. nature shows its destructive side or some jackass starts a fire & next thing you know, the california hills are ablaze & firefighters & helicopters are all over the place & people end up losing their houses. that has to suck, especially since if you're living in the hills, you probably have a sweet ass house, the kind that hurts extra bad when it burns up. the entourage house from the first couple seasons is totally on fire! that actually started in the kitchen, but there are probably some sweet houses getting torched right now. breaking hearts!

breaking news! disney bought marvel! i know, right? i'm not even a comic book fanatic & i know that's a big deal. the most powerful, happy, family friendly entertainment company on the planet is now in charge of a roster that includes more brooding characters than a paramore show. it only cost disney $4 billion, but it's money well spent. think of the possibilities! just as they did with beauty & the beast, the little mermaid, mary poppins, they could take spiderman & put him in a broadway musical, providing another cheesy outlet for tourists. oh wait. they're already doing that...with u2. maybe a thor musical with music by led zeppelin then? breaking boundaries!

breaking news! millions of people cried "hot yahoo! my mail is down!" on tuesday afternoon when gmail stopped working for them for almost two hours. whatever, right? if your friend doesn't get back to you about plans for friday, it's all good. you wait. here's why it was so awful: apparently some businesses depend on gmail as their primary source of email. seems like sort of a cheap way to run a business. i mean, even i have a dedicated email address for this stupid blog. it's sad but true & so it affected their workflow or something. breaking bad!

i have to level with you. technically, none of that stuff is breaking news any more. cali's been on fire for a week now & the disney/marvel thing happened on monday. the gmail breaking catastrophe isn't even breaking news any more since i decided to pass out last night before finishing writing this.

breaking news! shawn watched mad men & played games on his ipod for way too long & watched the season finale of f/x's rescue me & consumed a goat's worth of goat cheese (it's back in the house today) & fell asleep around 2am listening to the sounds of talk of the nation's neal conan. it was a segment called "a day in the life of a forest firefighter." i'll probably have to listen to it again to make sure i caught the whole thing. surprisingly, there was more talk of fire on npr than the rescue me finale. thanks for those dreams about pretty much everything bursting into flames, mr conan.

#123 - breaking news!
snack: lärabar cinnamon roll bar
drink: joe tea half & half



...earlier yesterday, whilst still at work, i had deemed it "snack time." my office sharing co-worker was working from home after going to the doctor earlier in the day for what started as insect bites but what we're now pretty confident is a colony of spider babies lodged inside his arm. we've convinced him as such. with the office to myself, i had to make things interesting. along with "snack time," i also had "spreadsheet hell hour," "guns n roses rock block" & a "system reboot anger management challenge." the official snack time snack was a lärabar cinnamon roll bar. can i get an umlaut up in this piece? lärabar's got an umlaut & that shizz is over the "a," which is hip. they also have a blog, which is hip & useful. for instance, emma, yesterday's fan of the day...i don't mean to objectify her, but she's pretty durn pretty & hopefully old enough for me saying that to not be creepy. i find that useful.

this lärabar shit's good...or at least the cinnamon roll one is. it's a solid but chewy bar & somehow through only using dates, walnuts, almonds, raisins, cashews & cinnamon, they've created a seriously flavorful snack bar. unfortunately, i ate the whole thing in under a minute, so i'm not exactly able to comment on particular flavor nuances, but i have faith in your imagination skills. pretty much everyone can eat this thing. it's vegan. it's raw. it's kosher. it's gluten, dairy & soy free. it's like the u.n. of snack bars & according to the packaging, they're "the original fruit & nut bar," so i guess that also makes them the elder statesman of fruit & nut bars.

since i'm just a regular ol joe, i chose a joe tea half & half to wash down my tasty bar. joe tea's just a regular ol tea company out of regular ol upper montclair, nj. they're apparently "the original off road tea." it's a title that's not as cool as "original fruit & nut bar," but does ensure a higher probability of a 4x4 ride. i'm a fan of the labeling. the photo above only gives you half of the half & half picture. on the back of the label there's an almost identical image with the lemonade section on the top & lemon tea section on the bottom. it's a nice simple design with a classy use of a red pickup truck.

joe makes a good tea/lemonade hybrid. two for two for snack time!...& all natural! one of my major beefs with the varied lemonade/tea hybrids (snapple & arnold palmer, i'm looking in your direction) is too much emphasis on the lemonade side. it gets all sour & occasionally pulpy & i don't stand for that crap. joe apparently can't either, so his half & half is balanced nicely & with the cane sugar is sweet but not disgustingly so. well done joe bro.

breaking news! blog insider exclusive! i bought those sunglasses you see in the forefront of the above photo for $12 well over a year ago. about a week after getting them, one of the nosepieces broke & fell off. for some reason, i haven't replaced them. that's just the sort of guy i am...slow on the breaking.