#17 - head.

on wednesday, i made my way up to the boston area on the megabus with ryall to meet up with m.j. & my bro for the radiohead concert at the venue formerly formerly known as great woods. my trip began in the prospect ave stop on the r train, where after a few minutes, the train entered the station. as i waited for the train to stop & the doors to open, i looked at the torn advertisement behind me, which had the following message scrawled across the bottom of it:

i snapped a quick pic & got on the train. it's safe to say that as the lead singer of belle & sebastian (the band that acted as the jumping-off point for pretty much everything i've listened to since 2001), i'm not sure if i could ever let go of stuart murdoch, no matter how twee he is. regardless of this person's personal struggle with stuart murdoch, musically speaking, i took my random path-crossing with this particular message to be a positive start to radiohead day. usually the subway ads feature no more than crudely drawn penises on them.

the megabus busride was fine overall, other than the non-functioning wifi. the southwest airlines-influenced bus driver even quipped, "there's wifi on board. sometimes it works." they played two dvds during the five-hour drive--benji: off the leash! & shark bait (the reef), which is a budget attempt to cash in on the success of finding nemo. it appears that somebody else has the upper hand in the wifi-inclusive bus service market at this point, megabus...or should i say, megabutt?

radiohead was friggin' amazing, as was expected. as i have probably expressed to everyone & their mother at this point, i can not believe how lovely & clean they sound in a big open amphitheatre. i was in the absolute back of the lawn & it still sounded wondrous. my personal fave...jigsaw falling into place. my personal victory...we were the very last people they sold beer to in our section. they literally gave us our beers & shut the gates to the stand, making lots of people behind us quite sad.

#17 - head.

snack: flaming hot flavored munchies
drink: pomegranate blueberry mash

after the concert, an hour or so in the parking lot & an hour or so drive back to my brother's place in j.p., we went to pretty much the only thing open in the neighborhood after 1pm...7-11, where i, of course, spent in the area of $10 on snacks alone. clearly a smart allocation of my funds.

for this particular night, i decided i needed to eat from a bag of flaming hot flavored munchies. it was after 1pm. i had just been at 7-11. munchies were clearly the right snack for that moment. each munchies flavor features rold gold pretzels, sun chips, cheetos & doritos, with the last three ingredients changing depending on the overall snack mix flavor. you would be correct in assuming that this particular flavor features the flaming hot versions of the sun chips, cheetos & doritos. as my brother informed me, they used to have a kids' version with doritos, cheetos, popcorn, m&ms and captain crunch. if you ask me, that is one hell of a snack & should probably only be available for adults due to its high awesomeness content.

...& seriously, people. pomegranate is not going to save civilization. it is just a fruit. i defer to bevnet for or a link for the pomegranate blueberry mash, as boylan bottling apparently doesn't care enough about this product to have a web page for it. in fact, they care so little about this product that they appear to have even spelled "pomegranate" incorrectly on the label..."pommegranate" ain't correct, mr & mrs boylan. look it up.

#16 - billions served.

here's what i love about the olympics...& by saying "love" & "olympics" in the same sentence, i am not implying that i love the olympics. i hardly ever watch them really. actually, now that i think it through, i'm using "love" in a sarcastic manner. like, "wow, i love your haircut a wicked lot. seriously."

so what i love about the olympics is the over-the-top melodrama & the stories that the announcers use to enhance it. friday night's opening ceremonies were cool visually & all but incomplete without the announcers' calm description of tai chi (not an olympic sport, btw) or quick mention during the parade of nations of the recent assassination attempt on the president of maldives, which was thwarted by a boy scout...son probably got a mess o' badges for that. on an announcer-related note, can we please force tim mccarver to retire? in conclusion, without the announcers' brilliant words, the games would be incomplete. once again...sarcastic.

i suppose i could have shut off my tv & not watched the olympics at all but the important fact here is i that didn't. china & its billion citizens were trying REALLY HARD to impress me & make me forget about all the bad things the chinese government has done in the past, so i stuck around. i mean, you wouldn't walk out on your brat niece's big flute recital no matter how many times she's peed on your carpet & no matter how much the rug ties the room together, would you?...so while i watched "china through the ages" & the announcement of for the most part, every country in the world, i passed the time with a "tasty" snack & drink pairing...

#16 - billions served.

snack: pringles extreme screamin' dill pickle
drink: samuel smith organic cider

when i was purchasing the evening's snack & drink pairing, i grabbed the items at different stores & it's safe to say that i was so drawn to their individual characteristics that i gave no thought to their to their combined tastes. zero.

dill pickle & apple.

on an individual level, the dill pickle pringle concept is quite comical. they've made them a part of their "extreme" series, which also includes kickin' cheddar & blazin' buffalo wing. from these flavor names, i instantly deduced that in order to be extreme, you must drop your g's. beyond that, i'm confused as to how the dill pickle became an extreme item & for that matter, why the particular dill pickles used in the making of these chips are screamin'. am i to believe that the dill pickles used in the making of these chips are akin to barreling down the face of a mountain bellowing into the wind with excitement? even though these chips are tasty & at times overpowering, i'm skeptical that there is or ever will be anything extreme about a pickle. prove me wrong, vlasic. prove me wrong.

as for the samuel smith organic cider, i love everything i've ever tried by good ol' sammy & his sons. i love the oatmeal stout, the nut brown lager, the taddy porter...all of them. i would even love their organic cherry fruit beer if they let me...& told me where i could locate said beer. if wikipedia can be believed (& we all know it can), in addition to being the oldest brewery in yorkshire, in the past, samuel smith brewery has removed its logo from pubs & in pubs that it owns, no "large-corporation spirits" are served. those crazy crazy u.k. people with their nutty socialist economic beliefs. it's definitely no capitalism, i tell ya! luckily for us, it's no communism either.

#15 - i've been a bad, bad man.

last night, i was walking back home from picking up a fast food dinner & needed to make a stop & pick up a pint of newcastle for my roommate & to my surprise, after stopping in no less than six bodegas, i still hadn't procured the pint. the six bodegas didn't even have a six-pack of newcastle. if only my roommate liked smirnoff ice, everything would have been fine. judging by the coolers at aforementioned bodegas, people love that smirnoff swill. sure, the roommate had mentioned that i could go with bud as a backup, but based on the love that newcastle & i have for each other, i assumed that at least one bodega would come through & help us all avoid the bud.

nobody came through for me...not even stop #7, the midway between a bodega & a supermarket locale with the somewhat-diverse beer selection...my last option...so i formulated a quicklike alternative...

#15 - i've been a bad, bad man.

snack: kettle brand island jerk krinkle cut chips
drink: guinness draught in a bottle

seconds earlier, i had been scoping the chip area for snack yumminess on my way past to the beer coolers & the words "island jerk" had popped out at me. when i arrived at the beer coolers & realized that there was no newcastle to be found on that stretch of 4th avenue leading to my apartment, i called the roommate, requested that he split a six-pack of guinness with me & developed this concept for a blog entry...follow my convolution...

island jerk...brooklyn is the west coast of an island...i live in brooklyn...i like guinness...guinness is an irish beer...i'm a good % irish...when irish people find themselves in a stereotypical situation with too much guinness, they can be jerks...me...island jerk.

concept: a blog spawned by the duo of kettle brand island jerk krinkle cut chips & guinness draught in a bottle, detailing three of my jerkier yet still blog-safe moments...friggin' brilliant, right?

#1: the fights of pre-high school - growing up, in terms of popularity pecking order, i was in some sort of in-between world, where i wasn't a cool kid but i wasn't a nerdoid. as a result of this ambiguous social status, i took it upon myself thrice during the 1st-8th grade period to start fights with the kids who a few of us thought were the least cool kids in our group of friends that week. this was some sort of attempt to oust the least cool person from our group, thereby upping the overall group coolness. the stupidity of my thinking is obvious now & anyhow, it never worked & i got body slammed once. sorry eric bonde, rich rittenhouse & bill gadoury.

#2: remember when there was no interweb? - near the end of my sophomore year at b.u., when i was pledging chi phi, i met a girl who was pledging a fellow sorority. we hung out a bunch for the last few months of that school year & i thought she was a cool girl & when the summer came, i went back to nh & she headed down to alabama. before leaving, she wrote her phone number on a piece of paper for me & we said goodbye for the summer. a few days later, i was back home & looking to call her & could not find the piece of paper anywhere, a fatal flaw, as i didn't exactly do the email yet (yeah, 1995) & found myself with no way to get in touch with her, effectively killing what relationship we had. thanks a lot, non-prevalent interweb. sorry ada.

#3: mind your own damn business - after college, when i had returned to boston after a brief ft lauderdale stint, i was dating ms mj & we were with melissa shaw & an unknown third person. i've always looked quite young & as a group, i suppose we looked quite young. we were standing in coolidge corner waiting for the c line to take us back to my brighton apartment & i was smoking a cigarette. a woman of about 60 walked near us, looked at me & said "put that cigarette out." i looked at her & said "excuse me?" she came back with "you're too young to be smoking, put out that cigarette." i was 24 years old & told her so. her response..."you are not. you're sweet sixteen never been kissed." i've always been a bit insecure about being called a liar & about being talked down to because of my apparent youth...so i told her straight up to mind her own damn business. sorry nosy old lady...sorry that you were such a nosy old lady. i may have been a jerk, but you were probably miserable.

in conclusion, try the island jerk chips...even if you live on a peninsula.

#14 - get wild!

for those of us who are lovers of scrabble & its various derivatives, these last few days have seen the game really grab a hold of the headlines, pretty much entirely because of the hasbro/electronic arts/scrabble vs scrabulous copyright lawsuit that has resulted in the removal of the scrabulous application from facebook...& the big deal is what now?

the scrabulous application is still available on their website. in fact, i'm on my fifth game of the night right now. sure, you may have lost the results of games you were playing on facebook, but last time i checked, those results aren't redeemable like ski-ball tickets or anything. it just means that you lose some computer memories & that there is one less reason to go onto facebook, people. in fact, by playing scrabulous, i've avoided facebook for the last two hours or so.

as for scrabble protecting their copyright, that makes sense & it's great that cnn & msnbc will discuss copyright law for a few days, but after listening to a story on npr earlier, there's some eyebrow-raising precise timing behind hasbro's recent actions towards scrabulous.

#1 - tuesday was the final day of the 2008 national scrabble championship down in orlando, a tournament, which according to npr, featured players such as 11-year old bradley robbins, from WINDHAM, NH BIZZNITCHES!!!...he won 24 out of 28 games against adults.

#2 - scrabble/electronic arts launched their beta application on facebook...& it is currently unavailable due to maintenance.

#3 - electronic arts announced that it had missed analyst estimates.

it's probably just pure coincidence that scrabble ordered scrabulous to shut down their facebook app at the same time ea missed estimates & launched their beta app & at the same time as the national scrabble championships. clearly, the real loser in all of this is hasbro, whose game has been negatively impacted by the publicity as a result of the existence of scrabulous & the fact that 13-year old girls across the country now know the rules of scrabble & enjoy words more.

#14 - get wild!

snack: limited edition wildly cherry m&ms
drink: coca-cola classic

...so & i'm on my sixth game of scrabulous now & while i've been playing, i've cracked open a bag of limited edition wildly cherry m&ms to snack on. as a rule, whenever i see the words "limited edition" on a candy item, said candy eventually ends up in my mouth. i tried these cherry m&ms for the first time a few days ago & went in with no great expectations. over the years, m&m has done a lot of good beyond the early peanut or plain-only days of the m&m. from the reincarnation of the red m&m to the inventions of the mint and mega m&ms, mars has done a lot to keep me interested over the years, but i've still remained skeptical of new types of m&ms. i don't know why i just don't give them the benefit of the doubt & let it be done with. these cherry ones are friggin' amazing. they're the same size as the peanut butter m&ms & each one is like eating a chocolate covered cherry sans gooey stickiness.

the front of the package urges me to "get wild!" & believe me, i am. it is 1am & i'm sitting in my boxers blogging, covering my teeth with coca-cola classic and watching an eight-year old japanese prodigy play "crossroads" on conan. believe me, i don't dare get any wilder than this. i'd hate to wake the neighborhood & attract the wrath of the nypd. they do not tolerate wildness.

#13 - backyard yumfun.

i spent this past weekend up in n.h. at the parents' house, celebrating my father's retirement from the the u.s.p.s. after 38+ years of service. government jobs are strange animals that breed interesting people. these jobs & people have things like pensions & grievances & overtime rules & seniority & pay scales & a union. whereas my father had all these things, i, at the one job at which i even had the chance to join a union (when i worked for b.u. after college), chose not to join, half because i felt unions pressured people into joining & half because i couldn't afford it. oh to be a naive 23-year-old again.

the retirement gathering was on saturday at the house of one of my 6'0" tall almost-16-year-old brother's friends, whose father my father has become friends with. they live in a house with a yard that slopes down from the road past the house & some landscaping into the backyard, where the grass continues downward around the pool & pool house and rolls for a while before hitting the sand area, featuring a horseshoe pit & bocce court. off to the side, there is a shed & behind it all, there are two tall trees, from which they have hung a 30' x 50' screen that they pull out at will to project movies onto in front of the forest. one phrase i overheard from one of the more-grownup-than-me grown ups was "he must have at least an acre here." i am not the one to verify acreage, but i was duly impressed with the environs.

it was a perfect day weather wise & a 4pm start time gave the heat a chance to partially subside. after three hours of yummy catered food & homemade salads of both the fruit & vegetable variety, the sun began to go down & our hosts capped off the meal with a table full of cookies & treats, of which i chose...

#13 - backyard yumfun.
snack: many dainty canollis
drink: iced cappuccino

...& we waited quite a while for the sun to go down so we could watch the slideshow my brother & his friend had thrown together in the hours before the party. the husband host offered up coffee beverages. i was away at the restroom & missed when he initially took orders, but when i returned & saw people with cups that featured a straw sticking out of them & a whipped cream topping, that changed faster than you can say "gimme." turned out they were iced cappuccinos & turns out it was the best iced cappuccino i have ever had...ever...in the history of me.

coming into the gathering, i had expected that, given the flagpole that jutted out of the sand area & held both a large italian flag & a large american flag, that the evening's dessert would feature either tiramisu or cannoli...either way, i knew victory would be mine, yumwise & when they brought out the boxes of dainty cannolis, my tastebuds flashed the ol' V sign.

as we waited for it to be dark enough for the slide show, i passed the time with my tasty treats & a conversation with my dad's friend/our childhood dentist, a man who, when i was a kid i thought of as "preachy." now that i'm an "adult," he is "opinionated." during our chat, his wife brought up this youtube clip, which captures him at his dental office on this january's nh primary day working on a patient whilst talking politics. he commented that it had over 1000 hits already.

finally, the sun went down & my brother put on the slide show. we got to see my father graduating, in various poses with the four children and in a series of photoshopped photos that placed him in canada, paris & italy (where he also had a photoshopped afro & sunglasses). among the photos were photos of me, my oldest brother & my sister as "adults." as my teenage brother had put the whole thing together that afternoon, he pulled this photo of me off myspace & it became the adult photo representation of my dad's eldest son:

i would have gone with one where i wasn't half blinking & at a party, but that's just me...& in a time that lasted in the area of two minutes, the slideshow looped back around & was over. soon after, the guests started to head for home. i hung around for a while & left with my mom for home, with approx. fifty pounds of food in my belly, all topped with dainty cannolis & iced cappuccino.