#101 - drrrty.

yr so drrrty! yeah, manhattan, i'm talking to you. don't act like you didn't hear me. i know you're leaps & bounds cleaner that you used to be, but there are still friggin' bags of trash everywhere all the time & inadequate trash cans on your streets & the S-M-O-G & FIFTEEN swine flu deaths. i swear i sucked in a radioactive gas & a tapeworm in times sq the other day. hey brooklyn! for the most part, you're cleaner than manhattan but i'm keeping an eye on you. don't think i haven't noticed all that dog poop on the park slope sidewalks.

when it comes to thinking about where i'd like to finally put down roots, i'm a wavering individual. i've lived in nyc for more than any other locale besides nh (sorry, boston) & love it here, but sometimes, the urbanness of the city really gets to me.  i can easily escape into prospect park if i want nature, but i don't know if i could buy some property & settle down here because i could never sit on my back porch & gaze off into the silence of the vast woods behind me.  as i get older, that might be integral toward keeping my sanity intact.

...but new york has so much cool crap going on all the time.  how could i leave that behind?  there's an abundance of bands & live shows here & speaking of dirty, i gave the new album by brooklyn's dirty projectors (bitte orca, which came out last week) a good listening to this weekend.  a few weeks ago, i finally gave their previous album, 2007's rise above (an album that's an attempt to recreate black flag's damaged without having heard it for fifteen years) a listen.  HATED IT.  this new album's good though.  the songs are a bit more structured but still have some obvious jangliness to them.  they bring the rock, so the kids can probably dig this a bit more than the previous album.

speaking of dirty...real dirty, can we talk about porn star sasha grey (NSFW) for a moment?  she stars as a call girl in steven soderbergh's new film, the girlfriend experience, so i've been coming across articles about her here & there.  rolling stone did an article on her entitled "the dirtiest girl in the world."  i read it over a series of trips to the can & the one thing that i can't shake from my head is the mention of her debut porn scene, where she asked her co-star to punch her in the stomach...basically, she's friggin' dirty.  she wants girls to know that it's OK to be a slut.  she reads neitschze & brecht.  she just turned 21 back in march.  now she's the star of the new soderbergh film.  i'm intrigued, so i probably have to see it, no matter how dirty it makes me feel.

#101 - drrrty.
snack: food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips
drink: function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink



since i believe that food should taste good, the other day, i picked up a bag of, um...food should taste good jalapeno tortilla chips, which were conveniently discounted at one of the better-than-average neighborhood supermarkets. based in needham heights (just outside boston), food should taste good is a brand started by some dude named pete lescoe back in 2006. his secret? he bakes the ingredients right into the chips. genius.

it makes for a really flavorful chip & they even have a little spicy kick to them, since there are jalapenos baked right in. they're the sort of tortilla chips that are just fine sans salsas & guacs & dips & whatnot. if that sounds yumtastic to you, they have a $1 off coupon on the website. all you have to do to get it is join their fan club. since all i do every weekday when i'm on the clock is work on fan clubs, i went for it & joined. to be honest, i'm not sure what it gets me other than a spot on the mailing list & this coupon...now i just need to find me a bag of the chocolate kind so i can redeem this puppy. tasty discounted chips rule!

after being in the city all week for work, i spent my weekend exclusively in brooklyn, but still needed to wash the city away, so with the chips, i cracked open a bottle of function: urban detox citrus prickly pear drink. it includes the "smog-scrubbing" super-antioxidant N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), which is apparently "designed to evict the free radicals hanging out in (my) lungs and sinuses." if there's one thing i loathe, it's free radicals in my respiratory system, especially them hippie greenwich village radicals.  they should lock em all up, i tell ya. scrub this city clean.

anyway, the urban detox is made with science!...& prickly pears! dangerously spiky tasty prickly pears!  get this...the prickly pear isn't a pear at all.  it's actually a cactus!  that's right.  i drank a cactus.  i'm not afraid to get down & dirty for the blog, drink a little cactus for my readers.  i'm crazy like that.  only in new york!

#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.

snack away! #6 - one out of five doctors...

i have a love/hate relationship with snacks. i love to eat them. i hate that before i can decide to bring said snack into my home, i need to calculate the damage that would be done if i were to eat the whole bag. lately the hate had been winning and the evilness of snacks had been avoided.

that is until about a month ago. i was asked to write a guest snack blog. not a big deal, right? i’ll just go buy a snack, write my blog, and that will be it. ahh, but it has to be the perfect snack. damn my perfectionism!

the downward spiral began when i entered the snack row at trader joes. i had already had a failed attempt at a local "healthy" food store, when i purchased chile pineapple tidbits, a ridiculously spicy snack. once i regained my ability to taste again, i found myself in the trader joes snack row. now i do LOVE trader joes, probably more than is natural, BUT my love does not extend to the snack row.

don’t get me wrong, the snacks are yummy and creative and generally healthier than your average chip, but, again, not if you eat the whole bag in one sitting. it’s like the fat free cookie problem, which i believe is responsible for 25% of obesity! as a pediatrician, i feel the need to "practice what i preach" and eat how i tell my patients to. somehow i feel they will know! therefore, i blame you, shawn, for the copious snacks filling my once snackless cabinets and the distinct lack of "real" food in my home.  this, of course, makes me a hypocrite (and approximately four lbs heavier than last month!). however, i thank you, with a twinge of sarcasm, for the discovery of a new snack...

snack away! #6 - one out of five doctors...
guest blogger: aimee parow, phoenix, az

snack: buccaneer joe’s unburied treasure sour cream & onion corn puffs
drink: fresh & easy cucumber flavored water

upon entering trader joe’s for my snack quest, i found a somewhat familiar snack bag, however with a green stripe. you may be familiar with the unburied treasure white cheddar flavor (a really yummy knock off of pirate's booty), however this new bag was sour cream & onion flavor!

now where do i start? true to the original white cheddar flavor, the base of puffy corn is light and airy, dissolving in your mouth. the sour cream & onion flavor is not overwhelming and is evenly distributed over all pieces. it leaves a slight aftertaste of sour cream and probably some really rank breath. it will definitely keep the creepy, stand-too-close friend at a more appropriate distance. this may just be the perfect sour cream and onion snack.

they are also relatively healthy (which every doctor likes!) with 140 calories, 5g of fat, 2g fiber (who doesn’t love fiber?!) and 3g protein in a rather large 2.5 cup serving. also there is no MSG, my arch enemy...definitely a better choice than the hot cheetos staining the lips and fingers of the children of phoenix.

in order to compensate for the fact that i’ve eaten 2 ½ 3 4 servings of the snack while writing this, i chose to go with a no calorie drink--fresh & easy cucumber flavored water. i’m not sure who's the genius who came up with this one or why no one told him/her that cucumbers don’t HAVE any flavor. not surprisingly, it tastes like water with a very, very, very, very slight aftertaste of cucumber. i’m not really seeing the advantage over water.

all in all, the combination of very flavorful snack and flavorless drink worked very well. it also came with minimal guilt, provided the rest of the bag remains in my cabinet until at least tomorrow. diet starts tomorrow.

aimee parow is a pediatrician who lives in phoenix with her two dogs (lona & gypsy) & a stray cat named max, who lives on the porch. she enjoys exotic foods & gadgets and is an M.D. who is one part E.R., two parts S.C.P.A., one part M.L.B. & no parts MSG.

#2 - 2am bacon, egg & cheese.

so i'm taking today off & heading up to boston/nh for the weekend. originally, my father was scheduled to retire from the usps at the end of may, so i was originally planning to head up to the parents' house in nh for the weekend, where we would celebrate his retirement (& father's day to boot)...two birds with one stone, as they say.

since formulating this original plan, my mother didn't like the idea of inviting a bunch of people to the house, where there is limited parking (meaning room for no more than 8-10 cars, which would have been fine, but whatever), my father pushed his retirement date back to the end of june & my brother's dog got ill & he's having to stay at home with her this weekend anyhow.

the result...i'm heading to boston right now to hang with chris leduc & megan jones et al this eve before heading to nh tomorrow to hang with the family, followed by a sunday afternoon dinner at my grandfather's house for father's day...a fine enough agenda all around. to boot, i'm testing out the bolt bus as we speak & BLOGGING ON THE GO, as bolt bus has wifi on board. suck on that, fung wah.

so that i could get to boston in the afternoon, i needed to catch the 11am bus & last night, with laundry to do, i found myself debating whether to stay up until about 3am (when said laundry would be done) or wake up early & do it before catching the bus. i chose to stay up until 3am...& of course i needed to run to the neighborhood 7-11 in between the wash & dry cycles.

the 7-11 is a fairly recent addition to the neighborhood, one of few chains in the lower park slope area & is only good for one thing: buying extremely unhealthy but extremely yummy snack foods at unreasonable hours..."7-11 foods to go" like asian spring rolls & tubular taco things. during one of my first trips there, i stumbled upon two new flavors of combos, available in 7oz bags...cheeseburger and bacon, egg & cheese. i tried cheeseburger on that visit & they taste like cheeseburger, but they are combos & as such, do not provide the same satisfaction as eating a cheeseburger. this time, as it was 2am, i was in more of a breakfast mood, so i went with...

#2 - 2am bacon, egg & cheese.

snack: combos bacon, egg & cheese cracker
drink: peach mango vitamin water

i like a lot of snack flavors. i've eaten utz crab chips. i've eaten herrs' heinz ketchup flavored chips. bacon, egg & cheese combos makes these chip flavors taste like what (i can only assume) the first glorious sip of breast milk must taste like to a newborn fresh from the womb. technically, it is not as bad as all that, but i believe the flavor of bacon, egg & cheese combos could kill a less experienced snacker.

as for the peach mango vitamin water, well...i drink a lot of vitamin water. we have it in the fridge at work. it is a great hangover cure when necessary. last night, i figured that since i was going to get five hours sleep, pre-sleep i would likely benefit from the rejuvenating effects of vitamin water. since 7-11 was out of yellow flavor, iced tea, red flavor #1, red flavor #2, lemonade & all the other ones i usually pick up, i went with the peach mango. i don't hate these fruits, but there's always something a little disconcerting about having to settle for your 7th or 8th choice. sure it was tasty enough, but the "vitamin" aspect of the water really let me down. i was still dragging tail come morning. endurance my ass.