#195 - links & drinks 2011.

well...so today, for the first time in almost a year, i actually went back & checked out last year's top ten links & drinks list. in it, i described 2010 as an "often-shite year." hmm...i thought that 2011 was the often-shite year. who knew? 2011 was a year that, with that whole "lack of steady employment" thang going for me, i spent a LOT of time on the internet. on TWO separate occasions this year, i got my google reader down to ZERO. somebody please design me the appropriate nerd merit badge.

as is par for the course, much of my interwebz time was spent perusing food & drink sites, as i dreamed of all the things i could be cramming into my piehole. along the way, i came across a bunch of new blogs & tumblrs & whatnot, many of whom worked their way into the regular rotation.

all told, this year's list is comprised of eight new sites & two repeat members from last year's list. if you're looking to waste all your precious time on the internet, you can't go wrong with adding any of these sites to your daily regimen...enjoy!

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the devil made me do it.

i am absolutely the WORST at going to bed at a reasonable, adult-like hour. oh! it's 2am? well that's the perfect time for popping on a movie & flaring up the oven! take this past weekend. on friday night, although it was well after midnight, i decided it was in my best interest to scroll through my on-demand options & see what film was best suited to keep me up past 3am. i ended up watching the 2010 film devil. it's produced by & based on a story by m. night shyamalanadingdong & features chris from the most recent season of damages & a dude who i totally thought was lafayette from true blood but totally isn't & that sorta-young mexican dude who seems to be in everything.

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only in ny #12: chip shop.

  

snack: fried twinkie
drink: r. white's lemonade

my wicked smart doctor sister is totally obsessed with groupon. she gets it from my mother, who was always careful with money & on the hunt for deals. on sis's phone, at all times, she has access to handfuls of groupon deals. if you're in our immediate family, she already has a good idea of what she's getting you for christmas, as she's already found an applicable groupon for your interests. this past sunday, we met up on atlantic ave to take advantage of a chip shop groupon she had that was set to expire in a few weeks.

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only in ny #11: oaxaca.

  

snack: potato y poblano taco
drink: jarritos toronja

when it comes to food, i often go through phases. over the past year or so, i've gone through a dumpling phase, a sushi phase, a stir-fry phase & a burger phase. basically, during these phases, whenever i eat out i try to get that type of food & whenever i'm at home cooking, i'm trying to replicate my favorite dishes from when i eat out. these days i'm knee-deep in a taco phase, or what a trained pyschologist may describe as a taco "fixation." i always have a bag of corn tortillas in the fridge & a few limes at the ready. when i stayed in astoria this past weekend watching the pooches, i made a point to go to el rey del taco truck. for the last three weeks, i haven't gone more than two days without eating a taco.

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#193 - mid-year hype.

is it really that time of year again? you bet your sweet ass it is...it's time for my mid-year top five list of albums, accompanied by some sort of snack-drink list! for the past two years (2009, 2010), i've paired my top five albums with five snack-drink pairings that i'd planned on writing about but never got around to. this year, since i'm feeling slightly nostalgic, i'm changing it up a bit & pairing the top albums with the top five posts of all time on eat!drink!snack! isn't change exciting?

has it been a good year for music so far? it's been aight i suppose. while the list of bands who've put out albums is impressive, the quality of those albums is much less so. over the last six months, we've had lackluster new efforts from a bunch of bands i expected more from--the decemberists, arctic monkeys, tv on the radio, the strokes, art brut, deerhoof, destroyer, okkervil river & the beastie boys.

even with all these letdowns, there have been a bunch of good albums released thus far. the dodos, pains of being pure at heart, yuck, man man, bon iver, the kills & radiohead have all put out albums that are worthy of being in my top five. in the end though, there were just too many albums to cram into a top five, so i sort of leaned toward my current faves.

as a predictor, last year only one of the songs from my mid-year albums list ended up on my end of year "top ten songs" list. in the previous year, four of my favorite mid-year albums had songs on the 2009 end-of-year list. how will this year's mid-year albums fare? more importantly, how drastically will my mood change by the end of december? you'll just have to stay tuned for another six months to find out!...or you can skip the next six months of amazing blog posts & check back here in january if you want to be a jerk about it. but for now, here are the top five...

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