#64 - you could be heroes.

readers! on the honor system! raise your hand if you liked heroes at the end of season one. keep it up if you still liked heroes at the end of season two. the end of the first half of season three? how about where we are now, halfway through the second half of season three? any hands still up?

i go back & forth on whether or not i like it any more. here it is wednesday & i'm just getting around to watching this past monday night's episode. yeah i've been slightly busy, but usually i at least end up fitting in an irrational 1am viewing or something even when i'm busy, but these days, i could care less how quickly i catch the week's episode. their "to be continued..." at the end of every episode should be the thing that makes me go, "OH SNAP! i can't wait til the next episode! must troll internet for advance information!"...but it doesn't. instead, it makes me think, "oh. that's it?" then i yawn & go look at internet porn in an attempt to get my excitement levels back up.

if you give your characters the decision-making skills of an eight-year old & make them do things that are just plain stupid...you could be heroes.

if you make your characters spell out their feelings in every blatant which way possible short of writing them on a chalkboard & shining a floodlight on it...you could be heroes.

if you bank a good portion of your television franchise on two sub-par actors (milo & hayden, i'm looking in your direction)...you could be heroes.

if you keep making every single friggin season lead up to a catastrophic, city-destroying explosion...you could be heroes.

if you're basically in your fourth season, which is when the 4400 started to get lame & got canceled & therefore you're on notice in my book because you're also starting to become a bit lame...you could be heroes.

#64 - you could be heroes.
snack: snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod
drink: sunkist soda

on the other hand, in the snacking world, simple & straight forward is much more successful & appealing to me. while i watched heroes, i chomped on a snyders chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod. snyders is based in hanover, pa, which may be the snack capital of the world, as it's also home to utz potato chips. rumor is that sometimes the two companies get together & rumble in the town square with pipes & chains & buckets of acid. anyway, the chocolate fudge covered pretzel rod is simple & tasty & i wolfed it down. it was sort of like deep throat, but with more chewing.

since i was feeling that i gotta feel those good good good good vibrations, i washed the rod down with a tall, cool glass of sunkist soda. sunkist is so intertwined with oranges that they don't even have to use the word "orange" in their soda name. sunkist = oranges. say no more.

i haven't had sunkist in a while & i think that contributed to how much i enjoyed drinking it...like, it was really tasty. like, it's possibly the most i've enjoyed a glass of soda this decade. like, wow. i'm serious. i'm wishing i had some more right now...not heroes though. that can wait.

#60 - office hilarity.

seriously, if you don't enjoy the hilarity that is the office (us edition), you are a soulless, humorless, redcoat spaniard greycoat nazi communist terrorist. that's a scientific fact. watch nova or discovery channel. i don't have time to get into the specifics of it right now.

...so the office returned last week from winter hiatus with an hour-long episode entitled "stress relief" & i finally got to watch it yesterday & there are all kinds of awesome story lines in it & they should just give them the emmy right now for best comedy episode of the year. no competition, really. sorry tina fey, i know you probably have a lot of great episodes lined up (don draper!), but i assume you're a rational human being, so i'm sure you agree with my decision to give them the statue, even this early in the year. i love you & all (in a non-creepy way), but you already have a bunch already from this year's ceremonies anyhow.

if you, the reader, haven't seen the episode yet, i'm going to spoil a few of the awesome plot points for you right now:

opening sequence - dwight is the safety officer of the office & doesn't feel people have properly heeded his fire evacuation instructions, so he decides to make sure they learn. he starts a fire in a trash can in a side room and by locking & heating the handles of various doors, creates absolute chaos that results in such hilarity as oscar climbing into the drop ceiling, angela's cat crashing out of the drop ceiling, people using the copier as a battering ram & michael throwing a chair through a window before dwight informs them it is just a drill & stanley has a heart attack...roll opening credits.

the cpr training - michael convinces corporate to not fire dwight & to prepare for future emergencies, he sets up a cpr training at the office, where they practice on a dummy. kevin gives up after 20 seconds, declaring "call it." the cpr instructor tells michael to perform pumps to the chest of the dummy to the tune of "stayin' alive." after michael mistakenly starts pumping to the opening lyrics of gloria gaynor's "i will survive," everyone gets into "stayin' alive" with much dancing & singing, including a moment where kelly gets to show off her dance skills. the training ends with dwight cutting open the dummy to harvest the organs (after the instructor claims they lost the patient during all the dancing) & then cutting off the face & wearing it ala hannibal lecter.

the roast - michael again convinces corporate to not fire dwight & soon after realizes that he is the source of stanley's (& many others') stress. to alleviate tension around the office, michael arranges a roast of himself down in the warehouse & he urges everyone to let loose on him, since "anything goes" in a roast. as a result, the roast gets really nasty, including a line declaring that if his penis "were an ipod it would be a shuffle" & a song by andy called "what i hate about you." at the end, michael stumbles off the stage & walks off behind a shelf, leaving all the cast captured in one full shot, sitting silent in the warehouse.

michael's ending counter-roast - after calling out of work the next day & after much soul-searching (including a hilarious scene feeding the pigeons in the park), michael returns to the office wearing a turtleneck & carrying a stack of note cards. with everyones' attention he starts..."jim, you're 6'11" and you weigh 90 pounds. gumby has a better body than you. boom. roasted."...& he carries on, roasting everyone in the office, ending with "boom. roasted" each time. halfway through, when he gets to stanley & says "you crush your wife when you have sex & your heart sucks. boom. roasted," stanley begins laughing & his laughter continues to grow & spread, completely shifting the tone of the entire scene as he does so. it's hilariously brilliant & is responsible for my new catch phrase. check it..."hey reader. you smell funny & have no taste in shoes. boom. roasted."

the pam & jim stories - there's pam's parents getting divorced (which OBVIOUSLY leads to jim being all dimply boyfriend good). there's andy learning about love through watching (with jim & pam) an illegally downloaded copy of mrs. albert hannaday (a fake movie made just for this episode), starring jack black, jessica alba & cloris leachman (featuring the best scene with a stairlift since gremlins). sometimes jim & pam make me want to throw up in my own mouth.

what continues to astound me most about the office is that its format & direction, with the confessionals & caught facial expressions, give each character multiple opportunities to shine in each episode. in particular, in this episode, there are situations like the fire scene & the roast scene & the counter-roast scene where absolutely everyone is a part of the scene & contributes to the overall mood. i mean, in my recap, i've named almost every character & always for a hilarious reason. anyway, i eat that ensemble crap up.

#60 - office hilarity.
snack: harry & david bing cherry dark chocolates
drink: archer farms orange passion mango italian soda

[segue] ...speaking of eating things, while i watched, i feasted on some harry & david bing cherry dark chocolates. according to the packaging, harry & david/bear creek orchards, a medford, oregon based company, has been around since 1934. that's pretty cool. they seem to have a pretty good story going for them, one that started during the great depression, when two brothers traveled to nyc with boxes of pears & by the time they had left, they'd made pear-giving fashionable among nyc executives...how quaint...& much nicer & wallet-sucking than that cocaine trend.

it turns out that the beavers of harry & david's home state are celebrating the state's "sesquicentennial" this coming valentine's day. i wonder if my oregon friends are celebrating with some bull riding or a cappuccino. or a covered wagon! i wish i could go play actual oregon trail with my pals on v.d.! oregon is so far! [frowny face].

...but holy friggin bing cherries. seriously. if i had no "off" switch (& it's slightly busted as it is), this package wouldn't last more than ten minutes. the package warns that they "may contain pits," so it's probably best that i take it slow anyhow, to avoid choking & dying & whatnot. that'd be the pits.

& since i'm all up on target's jock recently, i'm pounding a bottle of archer farms orange passion mango italian soda along with the bings. mamma mia! it's 12% juice, which is actually more juice than i often get, so i guess that's a good thing. the oranges & mangoes are really yummy no-brainer fruits. as for the passion fruit, i have no passion for it. alanis morrisette should have sang about junk like that...would've made more sense...silly canadian.

#56 - stay positive.

so as i sort of mentioned previously, here's the thing that happens during the winter...it gets cold & i tend to stay indoors more than a good lil nun & i end up feelin' more sad & illin' in the winter than in any other month & the crazy uncertainty of the economy doesn't help stem that stuff...but last week, we swore in a new optimistic president, one who was elected behind the message of hope/change (& a national grassroots machine as well-oiled as the 2007 new england patriots). bring it on, obama. ASAP.

let's take a quick look at today's layoff figures, according to an article from today's ny times:

united states
caterpillar - 20,000 jobs
sprint nextel - 8,000 jobs
home depot - 7,000 jobs
pfizer/wyeth - 8,000 jobs
general motors - 2,000 jobs

worldwide
ing - 7,000 jobs
phillips - 6,000 jobs
corus - 3,500 jobs

TOTAL = 61,500 jobs

that is a lot of jobs. the article goes on to mention that we've lost 2.59 million jobs since december of 2007. that is A LOT of jobs. that's like the entire population of vermont, alaska & the dakotas. but like the hold steady advise, i will try to stay positive. but how can i stay positive when iceland's government is collapsing, hold steady?!!! how?!!! how can i stay positive when everybody is batshit freaking out & running around with scissors in their hands slashing jobs & dumping stocks & shuttering operations?!!! at this rate, six months from now, i won't even be able to afford all these exclamation points!!!

a gmail chat with a friend earlier today:
michael: wheee! the 'conomy!
me: it's like plinko!

can't we just toss bernie madoff & a couple random banking execs & a few virgins into the fiery economy pit to appease the gods & bring this all to a swift end?

i hope that in 2009, people will CHILL THE F OUT ON THE ECONOMY. obama has it all figured out, obviously, people. relax.

i hope that in 2009, i will be able to land a job digging a ditch...& when i am done with that job, i will fill that ditch back up with dirt.

i hope that in 2009, i will not have to blog about "bread."

#56 - stay positive.

snack: tyrrell's beef & horseradish potato chips
drink: a&w root beer float

a few weeks back, i picked up a bag of these tyrrell's beef & horseradish potato chips, made by a british company. they're an "artisan delicacy" made with lady rosetta potatoes thank you very much. there's a cow on the front of the bag. it says his name is "sir walter tyrrell." he looks pretty happy as he sits lazily in the fields. i can only assume that since the company gave him a name & put him on the bag, that he's been spared the fate of dying to provide the natural beef flavouring that flavours these deliciously beefy chips. oh! on the back here, it says he lives with "his 40 lady friends!" what a stud. i guess none of them go into the chips...or do they? ooh! they could offer special "sir walter tyrrell" bags maybe? i'd pay twice the $5 i paid for this bag to know there was a little bit of their mascot in every bite. til then, stay positive, british mascot cow!

seriously, go to the a&w float website, especially if you have a slow internet connection. what you will see is written here, in white, so you can highlight the following text & read it & spoil the awesomeness if you want, or you can go to the website & see a bottle of a&w float violently jerking itself around in circles while the page loads! hilariously awesomely nauseous web graphics!

web graphics won't save this beverage though. when poured into a glass, it looks quite similar to another familiar beverage...

...and that is where the similarities end. every time i raise the glass to my nose it just, it just smells like a putrid caramel. i think that's the best way to describe it. it's tremendously sweet (63g sugar!) & syrupy & i suppose it's similar to if you made a root beer float & then forgot about it on the counter & went out to the picture shows & then came back later that night & then you were all "crap, my root beer float!" & through your tears, you tried to stay positive, panting & crying "it's still ok! it's still ok!" as you hastily carried the melted remains to the fridge, where you left them overnight & then drank them up cold the next morning.

it's sort of like that, but with better packaging, packaging that claims that the beverage is "rich, creamy, and so delicious you won't believe it comes in a bottle." you're right, a&w. i can't believe this comes in a bottle. shame on you.

EDIT: also thousands of layoffs at ibm & texas instruments. wait...texas instruments still exists?

#54 - biggie x3.

this past saturday night, i headed into union square with some peeps to catch the 7:30 showing of notorious, which had just opened on friday night. i was never this huge notorious b.i.g. fan. when he was around, from 94-97, i was in college & putting behind my high school love of rap, which had been largely dominated by n.w.a. (& a host of gangsta rap, both crappy & not), public enemy & a laundry list of d nices & redhead kingpins & das efxes. i had become unhappy with rap's direction, was starting to come in contact with grunge/phish & was reading a lot of feminist texts. as a result, i ignored rap for the most part & didn't really know much about biggie or non-digital underground tupac or for that matter, who nas or jay-z or a lot of other dudes were for until at least few years after i should have.

that aside, after recently running through seven seasons of the shield, i'm definitely intrigued by the fact that the l.a.p.d.'s now-defunct rampart division (which the shield draws inspiration from) is allegedly tied to both gang activity & beyond that, the tupac & notorious b.i.g killings...& there's the fact that biggie was from brooklyn, which has been my home for the last 6+ years...so i decided weeks back that i needed to see this movie in the theaters when it came out.

it was pretty aight. three out of five stars or thumbs or something. those who i went with who had more knowledge of biggie than i reviewed it as, "i'd pretty much heard & seen all that stuff before, but it was still pretty good."...so there's that. jamal woolard, who plays biggie, is pretty good...& there's one running joke about diddy always dancing, which was somewhat comical...

#54 - biggie x3.

snack: regal cinema small popcorn with butter
drink: regal cinema small cherry coca-cola

...before the film, i'd grabbed a small popcorn & a small cherry coca-cola, an indulgence which ran me $10.25. the ticket was $14, so all told, i paid $24.25 for the film experience. i like to tell this story about one of my college film professors, who once briefly theorized that if the price of going to see a film in the theater was closer pricewise to seeing a broadway show or the opera, people would be pickier & choose wiser & think of going to the movie as more of a cultural experience. so much for that theory.

after purchasing my popcorn, i couldn't help but bring it on over to the butter pump, conveniently placed on the other side of the lobby behind a line of people queuing up to enter the theater next to it. i gave my small popcorn two pumps & headed into the theater. what can you say about movie theater popcorn really? it's usually pretty standard & the difference comes in how much butter there is on there. on this occasion, i didn't really give it a hearty enough shakeup after the butter pumping, so at one point, when i was a few inches down into the bag, i reached in to grab a handful & ended up with hands slimier than patrick swayze in ghost. thank god for tiny scratchy movie theater napkins. in the end, i only finished half the bag...i get sick of popcorn pretty quickly, i suppose.

as for the cherry coca-cola, i sucked that thing down. i've loved cherry coca-cola ever since they resurrected it years back. it always makes me think of fifties soda parlors for some reason & i like fifties soda parlors...they're the kinds of places where jerks are preferred!...so i sucked that cherry coke down & of course, had to pee for the last forty-five minutes of the movie. i was ok though. every time i'm in a position like that, i think back to elementary school, when my class went on a whale watch & we had an hour bus ride to the boat. i had to pee even before we left but didn't go for some reason & by the time i finally reached the bathroom on the boat, i had devolved into some sort of pre-teen over-expanded bladder haze. i figure if i made it then, i can make it now.

...today i followed up & watched the biggie & tupac movie from 2002, so i could get a bigger picture of the east coast/west coast craziness & the murders & fill in the stuff that wasn't covered in notorious, which was more the story of biggie's life than his death. biggie & tupac is from nick broomfield, who also did monster in a box & kurt and courtney. all i can say is that he interviews suge knight a few times & that guy does not seem like the smartest & most rational guy. to be honest, i'm surprised he hasn't had nick broomfield killed yet, but that's only because from what you see in the film, he seems to be pretty good at getting away with it. in conclusion, suge knight...please do not have me killed. if you do so, i will agree to not mock the fact that your record label is now owned by canadians. thanks.

#46 - fin.

this tuesday night, as the first snow of the season fell outside my apartment, i sat warm watching the third season finales of two of my favorite picture stories--heroes and dexter. there's that good old saying, "third time's a charm," that is actually not really all that good, and relative to history, not really all that old of a saying...but it is a lot less gay sounding than the british version--"third time lucky."

"third time lucky, smithers?"
"indeed. three card monte."
"splendid."
"third time lucky, indeed. tally ho."

in this case, for these two shawn parow-endorsed picture stories, the third seasons have been slightly flawed at times, subject to doubt, imperfect chapters in the shows' histories. both are already scheduled to return in 2009 for a fourth chapter, with heroes coming back in february with a new chapter,"fugitives," that is technically the second half of the third season for those of you who still care. dexter is already scheduled for at least two more seasons. showtime knows better than to let go of michael c hall...spoilers until the snack break...

heroes season finale
there have been numerous occasions during this 3rd season of heroes where i've wanted to fill my ear canals with fire & splash piranhas toward my eye sockets to avoid the horrendous dialogue & painful exposition that has filled this season. as a complete season, it works fine. i was most pleased by the appearances by actors who used to be on other shows i like, actors like bubbles & marlo stanfield from the wire. both survived the streets of baltimore, but not the third season of heroes...nor did chad faust's character, a marine who, in the second-to-last episode of the third season, becomes the first person injected with the formula for abilities & then is quickly killed in the next & final episode. chad faust was also in the 4400, where he plays a person who injects himself with promicin, the thing on that show that gives people abilities. talk about being typecast.

the third season had its flaws. one of the first things i learned in my intro to screenwriting class was "show, don't tell" and the 3rd season of heroes has so many thousands of storylines going on that there are an abundance of occasions where characters blatantly tell & are all like "gee that must feel really bad to see that happen to your father" so that an ADHD-inflicted fourth grader can follow along with the story...& stupid plot points. elle, the character with the power of electricity is having trouble controlling her power, so what does she do? she gets on a plane. obviously. because there is no chance that that could go wrong...& then there are the abundant lame love stories. overall though, i'm still looking forward to the fourth chapter. i mean, not every pearl jam album is ten. sometimes it's a no code, but you deal with it & pick out the good parts & hope the next one's better.

dexter season finale
early on during the 3rd season of dexter, before things turned around, i was all "you need to start killing bad guys ASAP dexter." things were slow. he was totally not killing any killers. at times i'd secretly hope that rita would turn out to be a child pornographer or have fed elderly folks fatal dosages of meds or something so dexter would have to kill her blatantly one-dimensionally exposition-laden character off, but no such luck. luckily, by the season finale, the killing picked up enough to satisfy me.

& by the season finale, dexter marries rita...& finds out that she is lying to him. she has been married three times, but only says she's been married twice. doesn't talk about the first one, when she was 16. mildly mysterious. he doesn't seem to care though, since he has a secret too, what with the whole being a serial killer thing & she doesn't even know that he used to be gay & work in a funeral home. it's totally like that madonna song. mmm mmm. something's coming over. mmm mmm...so next season, rita will give birth to their kid & there'll likely be whole mess of "new life. taking life." subway ads plugging season 4 of dexter come late summer.

#46 - fin.

snack: pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps
drink: archer farms blood orange italian soda

with my finales, i'm enjoying a bag of pringles select jalapeno ranch potato crisps. they don't come in a cardboard cylinder like your everyday peasant pringles. these pringles are S-E-L-E-C-T. i really like them. the texture's crunchier than your average pringle, closer to a tato skin-like texture. the flavor's also stronger than what you get from an average pringle. i found myself licking the flavor powder off, just like i used to do when regular pringles used to have a ton more flavor. in my day! turns out that, according to the back of the bag, these jalapeno ranch potato crisps are designed to "kick my taste buds up a notch." i'm not sure how much more they can be kicked up at this point, if you know what i mean, but i ain't letting that stop me.

to wash down these extraordinary chips, i'm going with a cool glass of archer farms blood orange italian soda. i know what you're thinking, but stop right there. i'm no sicko. it doesn't actually have blood in it, just blood oranges & those are completely legal, at least in italy, which is where this particular soda comes from. italian soda. product of italy. it comes in a bottle that just makes me want to open the window wide & store it in a basket on the sill with a pellegrino & a couple tomatoes. it tastes like if fresca was a little more appealing & also didn't have that disgusting aspartame flavor. this blood orange italian soda has black carrot juice in it. wha? i had no idea such a thing existed, but it does. amazing. black carrots...now that's change you can believe in.