#148 - port traits: misc mix.

for the final part of my series on portland, oregon & portland-area snackage, i'm going to mix it up a bit & present you with TWENTY miscellaneous facts about the city. if they ever come out with a "portland edition" of trivial pursuit or you end up on some weird, very-specific portland-themed game show, you'll totally kick ass.

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nosh nook #153 - wednesday, october 14, 2009

cracker jack: the seventh-inning snack (link)
10.13.09 - the ny times - by john branch

it's been a few years since i've taken myself out to the ball game & it's been even longer since i've bought me some peanuts & cracker jack whilst in such a setting. apparently i didn't care if i ever got back...to a ball game that is. in recent times, i haven't picked up a box of cracker jack outside of a ballpark setting either. it may be "the original snack mix" & may have celebrated its 100th birthday last year, but i'm a crunch n munch guy all the way. i do have to give the snack credit though. it's sold at every major league baseball stadium & has remained a popular ball game snack for quite some time now, largely aided by its inclusion in the lyrics to "take me out to the ball game."

in yesterday's ny times, john branch took a look at the long time game time snack & examined where it is today, in an age where pretty much every year, a couple teams open a new, modern ballpark filled with quirky throwback junk & fancy new concession menus. branch notes that "baseball fans can buy rocky mountain oysters (bull testicles) in denver, crab cakes in baltimore, cheese steaks in philadelphia and fish tacos in san diego." you've been able to get an "ichi-roll" (named after the right fielder) at seattle's safeco field for years now. with options like that, why bother with stupid cracker jack?

kevin haggerty (the aramark guy who oversees fenway's concessions) puts it this way. "it does still have relevance. it's part of the ballpark experience. it is still a good snack. it sells well. it holds its place in the sales mix. and it's in the song." haggerty uses the word "it" a lot, but i guess he knows what he's talking about. fenway sells 1000 bags (bags? wha?) of cracker jack at each game. in the real world, cracker jack actually trails crunch n munch in terms of sales ($22.8M to $17.6M for the year ending 9/6), but for now, as long as they don't change the lyrics to "take me out to the ball game," i think they're going to be ok. they're owned by frito-lay after all & those dudes have a stranglehold on the sports snacking environment as it is, based on their promotion of doritos alone. plus, if a ballpark ever did something stupid like try to switch to crunch n munch, fans would rebel...well, at least the stupid yankees ones would.

#127 - i ♥ contras.

hey nicaragua! happy friggin independence day! you've been independent for 188 years now! it's no 233 years, but well done nonetheless. back in the early 1800s, when you finally told the mexicans to take a hike, you were but a tiny central american country roughly the size of new mexico, a country that had endured countless years of rule by outside influences, a nation just hoping for a brighter future. these days things aren't all that much different, but it's cool. take your time developing. managua may have been destroyed in a day, but rome wasn't built in one.

sorry about that thing back in june where we stopped giving you $60 million in aid. you've got a $15 billion GDP as it is, so we figured you wouldn't miss it. i don't know if you heard, but our financial system's a little effed up these days, so whereas we here in america are more than willing to help you out, we could really use that $60 million. after all, alabama needs a bridge. i know that things have been sort of rocky between us in the past, but we promise that once we get back on our feet & decide to give you money again, things will be different. we sort of had to stop giving you money though. a marxist guerilla president? really? the marxist part is intriguing, but the guerilla part? we couldn't have our president palling around with terrorists. you know? don't make us send in the mighty contra commandos in the interest of fomenting. obama is all about change, mr ortega.

now that i think about it, i can't believe they haven't made contra into a movie yet. don't agree with me? go play the game for ten minutes & come back to me with a new answer, please. actually, i have to be honest with you. i like the game a hella lot, but i don't know how i'd feel about a movie adaptation, so if you're pro-contra movie, you probably shouldn't look to me to be your leader. you should look to this guy. he's got a petition signed by 22,000 people & is hoping that they make it with arnie & sly in the starring roles. since schwarzenegger's almost done being the governator & sly's back in shape, i say go for it. get michael bay to direct & blow shit up!

in celebration of the contras, today, indie darlings vampire weekend announced that their second album is coming out...four months from now...like in a whole different year. the name? contra. the concept? ten songs of twee pop with a closing song called "i think ur a contra." the album features a girl in a polo shirt on the front cover, so you can probably expect an album of songs you can wear a collared shirt to, something you can play over & over again at your frat house next semester. i kid though. i'm actually interested in hearing it. i just have a snarky reputation to uphold.

#127 - i ♥ contras.
snack: viveli happy snack bag o' snacks
drink: nieto senetiner 2006 malbec



in honor of our friends who exist below us, i decided to have myself a little south central fiesta. earlier this summer, amy, the bro's aforementioned girlfriend, went on a little vacay down nicaragua way & when she returned, the bro was all "amy brought you back a treat." when he told me that, it made me so happy that i can only explain it in this way...a few years back, one of my ex-girlfriends traveled to italy & visited vatican city. whilst there, she picked up a set of rosary beads blessed by the pope himself & brought them home for my mom, who's still a devoted roman catholic (but not in some sort of creepy way). it was a totally unexpected gesture & i'm a big fan of those. amy's gift turned out to be a happy snack bag o' snacks from viveli, a company based in nicaragua.

it comes in a neat lil' yellow mesh bag that's stylishly tied with a matching yellow bow. tastefully done. inside, there are a total of thirty-two wafer rolls. half of them are chocolate & come in blue two packs with a smiling yellow fish on the front. fish love chocolate. the other half are four packs with chocolate (again?), fresca, limon & vainilla flavors. i'm not sure what "vainilla" is, but i bet warren beatty would like it. amy picked up a bag for herself as well & warned me ahead of time that some of them might be stale. luckily, i didn't detect that much staleness. amongst the non-chocolate flavors, i prefer the limon. the vainilla's a close second, but true to its name, its showy-ass flavor lingered in my mouth for quite some time after.

for my beverage, i went classy with a bottle of nieto senetiner 2006 malbec that i took home as part of my bountiful snack party doggie bag this past saturday. it's made by an argentinian company, so i'm going to act all retroactive & consider it my two-month, six-day late tribute to argentine independence day. a bottle goes for under $20 & as far as i could tell, it was well worth it. if i was independent myself & bought my own bottles of wine, i'd pay up to $21 for a bottle of this stuff.

since it's a malbec, it has a really dark red color to it. after years where i shunned red wine, i can say that i'm finally more of a fan of red wine than i am of white wine. so yeah...this one's dark. i tend to characterize dark wines as extremely rich & often harsh, but this one was rather smooth. according to their website, it spent "a year in french oak barrels," which sounds like it's probably a good thing to do to wine. i finished it over the course of three nights this past week & can safely say that if you drink dark red wine every night for three nights in a row, you definitely notice it in the mornings. since i'm a gentleman, i'm not going to say how you'll notice, but i will say that you'll be quite surprised.

nosh nook #128 - wednesday, september 9, 2009

gamer grub and mtn dew game fuel (link)
09.08.09 - the onion a.v. club - by josh modell

you have to admit, i'm a pretty funny guy. i have to admit, if you don't, i'll feel funny, like you're not at least trying to humor me about my humor. it's not like i'll go into a corner & cry or something if you don't, but i will spend the next three hours telling jokes to myself in the mirror so that next time you see me, i'll be able to wow you with the funny. if you still don't find me funny at that point, frankly, there's nothing that i or anyone can do for you. your heart is clearly surrounded by layer upon layer of ice.

i mean, not everybody can live up to the onion's high standard of humor. case in point, their extremely funny, sort of eat!drink!snack! style article penned by josh modell that discusses the snack/drink combo of gamer grub & mtn dew game fuel. both products are aimed towards gamers & came from the idea that "ultra hardcore gamers love to be marketed to, and there was nothing that directly said, 'hey, bug-eyes. here’s some sustenance to help you play world of warcraft better, faster, and longer.'" modell notes that MOB gaming (the game grub) & pepsico (the game fuel) realized that in gamers, they had a gold mine on their hands. after all, WOW games "sell more copies than there are humans on earth, and the money they generate could power the sun." i always wondered what made the sun tick. now i know.

he sampled two different varieties of the gamer grub snack mix--pizza and pb&j--for the article. the pizza version "most assuredly does not taste like pizza" & contains crazy fictional items such as "tomato almonds" & "pizza cashews." the pb&j version "is just too damn weird," with "strawberry jelly chips and sweet bread." he even let folks around the office try the gamer grub, eliciting a pretty thumbs down sample of reactions such as "i could see a n00b eating this, but in general, it’s just a big pile of fail. pwned." ha. n00b. pwned.

as for the mtn dew, modell makes a good point about the sweetly abbreviated name--"who the fuck has the time to say 'mountain'?" not me. he tried both the red & blue flavors, but surprisingly "when you mix them together, they turn a ghastly shade of green--which makes no sense in nature." luckily, he works with scientists & one of them hypothesized that "the reason the two colors made green doesn’t actually have anything to do with the color wheel; the combination of the two actually just created nuclear waste." created nuclear waste? mtn dew is nuclear waste.

#98 - phish jam.

back in the nineties, i was friggin' addicted to neo-hippie jam bands. among the percy hills, strangefolks, god street wines, blues travelers, dave matthews bands & aquarium rescue units, my favorite band of them all was clearly phish. i was quite fond of waxing on about their musical talent & even went as far as to write a paper on my all time favorite phish song (harry hood) for my music & society course at b.u. it detailed their use of a fugue in the song. during the decade, i went to thirteen shows, all here in the northeast corridor, last seeing them with a group of high school & college friends back in august of '98 at the two-day great went festival, way the f up in limestone, maine. out of my friends, i was one of three who neglected to bring a tent to the festival because "it's august. it'll be fine to sleep out under the stars." turns out that when you're that close to canada, it gets down into the fifties at night. we slept shivering in my friend's truck. a few weeks later, i moved to sunny florida.

i never saw phish play during the period after that, when they headed downhill & eventually broke up, so my image of them might be a bit less tainted than others. when they got their collective shit together & reunited this march, i figured i had to see them when they came around. since circumstances meant they were playing two shows semi-locally (mansfield, ma & camden, nj) over this past weekend & circumstances also allowed me to see them for free, i couldn't pass up the opportunity.

my journey started on friday, when i took the day off to head up to the parow estate in nh. my brooklyn brother was also going up to nh for the weekend for a friend's 30th, so we were going to try to catch a fung wah together, but weren't sure if meeting up was going to work. about a half hour before i needed to catch the bus, i got into the city & gave bro a call...no answer...so i headed to the ATM to re-up. after transacting, i left the bank & turned the corner down toward canal. as i did, i noticed some kid walking toward me wearing a shirt with the letters ΧΦ (my college fraternity) on them. this caught my attention long enough for me to basically walk straight into my brother, who was randomly crossing my path to go to an ATM, unaware that i was standing there. who says that banking doesn't bring people together?

on saturday, i had to meet friends in boston for a carpool to mansfield for the show, so i left the parents & headed over to salem to pick up a rental. when i got there, there was this short, cute girl working at the counter who totally matched the voice that'd confirmed my reservation the day before. she asked me who my "employer" was & i said "live nation" & this led to me mentioning that i was renting the car to go to the phish show & she was "so jealous" because she wanted to see them (but at least she got to see DMB) & i cringed inside but didn't hold it against her, because well...she was short & cute. long story short...she talked me into the insurance coverage.

we got to the lot around 2pm for the 7pm show & basically hung out all day in the sun/shade, drinking beers, grillin' & shooting the proverbial shit. somewhere, there is now a blinding picture of me & leduc with our shirts off, taking in rays. good times. the show itself started out with a slow first set, but the second set ruled, with songs such as fluffhead, the aforementioned harry hood, possum & contact. on sunday, i got up early to catch a fung wah & make my way back to the city to meet a friend in jersey & drive down to scenic camden for the next show. once my dad dropped me off in boston & drove away, i realized i'd left my cell phone & ipod in his car. awesome. after a frantic fifteen minutes, i miraculously reached him, he returned to save the day & i made my scheduled departure. unfortunately, when i arrived in brooklyn, i realized that some time the day before, i had lost the keys to my apartment & was locked out until at least after the show. double awesome.

as for the camden show, i hung out with a younger friend from the college fraternity, someone i don't think i'd ever really hung out with. we went with his cool canadian girlfriend & a girl from one of ΧΦ's favorite sororities--ΔΓ. she was cool too & although she was fond of occasionally asking me to hold her drink, she made my non-feet moving phish dancing even more fun than usual. at one point before the show, my older cousin stopped by in the lot & we hung out for the first time in years. as for the show, it was the better of the two this weekend, as they played an inordinate amount of tasty songs--lizards, fee, tweezer, chalkdust torture, run like an antelope. i've been listening to mp3s of the show constantly today. they were just as good as i remember them & when combined with all the hang time i got with peeps & all the random interactions i had with strangers, it made for a solid weekend. call me an old neo-hippie, but i had a smile on my face pretty much the entire time. it was totally like "wow," man.

#98 - phish jam.
snack: cvs fruit & nut medley
drink: sync berry-cherry vitamin water



on sunday, i grabbed a bag of cvs fruit & nut medley to snack on throughout the day, figuring that snack mix was a relatively healthy way to keep from starving in the lot. as it ended up, i ate other stuff & forgot about them in my bag until the ride home after the show. when i discovered them in my bag around midnight, it was like the best ninja surprise ever...next to the ninja surprise i got when my new found dancing partner friend fell asleep on the ride home & eventually leaned on/drove her head into my arm. oh you crazy tired, drunken girls. what will we do with you?

so the snack mix...i decided to go with the fruit & nut medley because i wasn't in the mood for the other, m&m containing kind they had at cvs. the medley's made up of pineapple, mango flavored pineapple, raisins, almonds, banana chips, yogurt covered raisins, cranberries & cashews. i like all those things, especially when they're together in a resealable pouch.

this weekend, i made sure to complement the copious amounts of beer with a ton of water, adding a couple vitamin waters into the mix on each day. on saturday, i tried one of vitamin water's newer flavors, the sync berry-cherry vitamin water. it's all hip & shit, with a myspace partnership that gives me a free music download at amazon for buying it! the myspace partnership also highlights a bunch of myspacey acts & a few big acts like 50 cent (obviously), alicia keys, carrie underwood & chris paul. it's sad that 50 cent's my favorite out of that group of artists.

anyway, i do declare that i really enjoy the berry-cherry flavor, despite all the lame copy on the label, copy that offers promises of "sync(ing) up with your daily download of key vitamins & antioxidants." whatever. it tastes like cherries & berries and has a bunch of vitamins & sugars & junk, so it definitely helped with the weekend hydration, but i'm not going to try to tie that to downloading music.  synergistic branding should be taken only so far & not a step further. i don't care how community 2.0 they think they are. thanks for the free download though!  i'm going to get back to my regular musical environment & download me some indie rock now.