#53 - my deutsch buddy.

last week, a non-michael jordan/michael jackson friend of mine who will be known as m.j. moved from boston to hamburg, the alleged home of the hamburglar, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. i've known m.j. for almost ten years now, since i robbed the cradle & we dated for a few years back in the late nineties/early aughts. in a reversal of often typical ex-girlfriend relations, since then, she's been one of my best/consistent friends. it probably has something to do with the dating, but i feel like she "gets me" & understands my manner & humor & shortcomings better more than anyone else, which helps.

& as of last friday hamburg time, she's living in germany. i've never been to europe myself & have always had this dream where i leave behind the u.s. & its trappings to spend the rest of my life in some european city daily lazily devouring the foodstuff & cultural contents of a quaint cafe. as such, m.j.'s transplant to germania intrigues me so.

i've known m.j. since just after she was out of high school & have known her as she's lived through both the frustration of wicked awesome post-college jobs & wicked awesome boys who are stupid enough to not treat her right and, on the flip side, the happiness of new life experiences & travels & good people. i know her as the girl who busted her ankle on two non-consecutive occasions, only one of which was non-handstand related. i know her as the girl whose charisma blew everyone off the stage. i know her as the girl whose smile you can feel through the phone. she's a lovely, energetic person who knows what's up & if you've met her & experienced her quirks (i.e.--her perpetual hiccup reflex), you're lucky to have done so.

i don't know. i guess i'll have to make a trip to germany some time.

#53 - my deutsch buddy.

snack: crunchy fajita takis
drink: grape gatorade

so m.j. left for hamburg out of jfk thursday night & spent a few days in nyc before leaving. the first night she was here, we hung out at a friend's place in queens. at one point, i made a run to the local bodega, where i picked up a bag of crunchy fajita takis. here is photo evidence, via m.j.'s flickr page. the takis are a product of grupo bimbo, a 60+ year-old mexican company who, according to their website, "is one of the most important baking companies in brand and trademark positioning, sales, and production volume around the world." this leads me to believe that they'd shiv those keebler elves before the warden even had a chance to blink. totally non-racist jk!

so these takis are friggin' weird, like weird in the sense that i had to create a new blog tag thing for them ("tube snack"), because they are neither a chip nor a cracker. they are a "rolled corn tortilla mini." three-quarters of the way down the ingredient list is "chicken fat," which, moral issues aside, seems completely unnecessary, especially given the wealth of artificial flavors these takis contain. all this aside, initially, they actually taste pretty good, but like the quesadillaness of the t.g.i.fridays quesadilla snack chips, i don't know what qualifies these as fajitalike. as a warning, consuming ten or more of them in one sitting awakens whatever it is inside your belly that makes you feel like you're on the tilt-a-whirl. anyway, as of tonight, the bag of takis is finally vanquished.

also now vanquished is the bottle of grape gatorade that has been in my fridge since thursday morning. that morning, after a night of yummy foods & beers & wines, m.j. asked me to pick up a bottle of the "light purple gatorade" when i ran down to the corner bodega. i came back with a bottle of grape flavor gatorade & it didn't really get drank & ended up in my fridge & a week later, as i'm finishing off the bottle, i now realize that with gatorade, the taste is unmistakeably vague & sugary & truly unrelated to any actual fruit, so when you think that "grape" means you're getting "purple," you're actually getting a liquid bluer than papa smurf's junk. anyway, m.j., i finished your bottle of gatorade. schade es war nicht mehr purpurrot. to germania & beyond!