#94 - believe it or not!

sixty years ago today, the world lost one of its great cartoonist/anthropologist/oddity enthusiasts when mr robert ripley, the creator of ripley's believe it or not, passed away. during the recording of the thirteenth episode (freaky!) of the first incarnation of his tv show--an episode about death (spooky!)--he passed out & was soon dead of a heart attack. during his life, he started as a cartoonist & through it, became a curious world traveler, had a long-running radio show & iconic tv show and launched a now well-known international brand.

the ripley franchise is still alive & kicking. after ripley's death, the tv show returned in 1982 with jack palance (creepy!) as the host. it lasted for over four years before going off the air & was later revived in 2000, with the awful dean cain as the host. that lasted almost as long as the previous incarnation. the cartoon is still going, syndicated in over 200 papers worldwide. in fact, today's is about a fish called "danionella dracula!" believe it or not!

ripley's also has thirty-five ripley's believe it or not "odditoriums" all over the world, allowing tourists to connect with crazy crap. the first odditorium opened in chicago in 1933 (great depression be damned!) & nowadays, there's even one in kuwait. believe it or not! there's one here in nyc, right in times sq, a few buildings down from my office, but that'd involve mingling with tourists & the tickets are friggin' $26.95! believe it or not!

jim carrey's attached to do a film about ripley's life. tim burton was originally attached to direct, which would have basically guaranteed awesomeness, but he's since moved on & it looks like chris columbus has taken over. i liked his work with the nina, pinta & santa maria. also with goonies & gremilns. jim carrey's been good before, so if it finally gets made, there's a chance it'll be a pretty sweet movie, especially since according to the bio right there on the ripley website, robert ripley was "a notorious ladies man, at times housing up to five or more live-in girlfriends at a time." believe it or not!

#94 - believe it or not!
snack: hershey's dark chocolate with pomegranate
drink: pepsi throwback



tonight's snack of choice is a bar of hershey's dark chocolate with pomegranate. apparently, you can put pomegranate in anything. you can also--if you're hershey's--create a pomegranate flavor by combining the juices of pomegranates, cranberries, apple juice, pineapple & elderberries, forming them into non-descript chewy pieces & cramming them into a dark chocolate bar.

it has a strong fruit smell to it. nothing disgusting...just very noticeable. the flavor's pretty good, but since i'll essentially eat anything with dark chocolate & fruit or fruitesque substances, that's not saying much.

in honor of the old-timey feel that seems to permeate the ripley's franchise, we're jumping in the ol' wayback machine for tonight's beverage--a pepsi throwback. it's made with pepsi's retro formula, where they take out the evil HFCS & replace it with natural sugar, just like they used to do back in the sixties & seventies. it's perfectly positioned for a big summer marketing campaign.

it's only around for a limited time, which is a shame. it tastes way better than the current pepsi formula & it's better for you, so it makes no sense for them to go back to the HFCS, but they will. as a friend recently explained to me, she just discovered something interesting about coca-cola in germany...they don't use HFCS in it. lucky for us here in the U.S., corn farm subsidies are huge, so we can pump out all the HFCS our pop-guzzling hearts desire.

until they discontinue the pepsi throwback formula, you can enjoy the retro taste & as a bonus, also enjoy their...um...retro internet site. it's totally out of sight & has far out features like throwback blog wallpapers & twitter page backgrounds. can you dig it? it has a jive talk dictionary, which i'm obviously already putting to good use. there's also a video page, full of dy-no-mite! commercials like this one featuring a pepsi throwback & a fondue pot:

i saw that i was all "what the fuck was that?" it's so unbelievable. anyway, i'll catch all you jive turkeys on the flip side...gotta go get my groove on.

snack away! #9 - newton's law of figs.

yep, it’s true--there's a recession going on out there, and like pretty much everybody else, i got canned. the good news for me is i was able to land a new gig within a few weeks thanks to an esoteric computer chip programming skill (the details of which are far too boring for a snack blog).

it was when i was between jobs, wandering the streets of boston (and maybe i had consumed a few cold ones) that i talked to shawn about guest snack blogging. i had a lot of time of my hands and had just thoroughly enjoyed reading about todd’s spotted dick (soon to be followed by wilk’s hot nuts) and i wanted in on the action.

fast forward a week and i was working at the new job and all of a sudden i didn’t have much time to think about interesting things to write about. brain was busy digesting new corporate secrets, trying to find where my printouts were being sent to and coping with having to use a shared bathroom instead of the solo units we had the luxury of at the old place.

furthermore, i realized i don’t really even eat snacks. i mean, an apple and a glass of water at 3pm in the afternoon is pretty wild for this guy. what i am basically telling you is this here blog had a pretty good chance of never happening, but as luck would have it, i forgot to grab my apple on the way out this morning and so i wandered down to the cafeteria and bought a little snacky snack.

snack away! #9 - newton's law of figs.
guest blogger: chris leduc, newton, mass

snack: fig newtons
drink: starbucks tazo zen tea (with a little squirt o’ honey)



when’s the last time you had a fig newton? for me it was a least 15 years ago. i remember wondering as a kid what the frig a newton was. why on earth would a cookie be named after the metric system unit for force? what? your kids don’t use the metric system? well fast forward those 15 years and now i live in the city of newton, a rather pleasant if not slightly boring boston suburb which is actually a collection of approximately 13 individual villages rather than one central downtown area. i say approximately because these villages have no official borders and it is hard to even get an official list of what they all are...so i did what any reasonable person would do and went straight for the best places to get indisputable facts: wikipedia...and it was while perusing the wikipedia page about newton that i stumbled upon an answer to that 15 year old question: the fig newton is named so because it was invented right here.

...so it was a no brainer that i grabbed the fig newtons when i saw them in the vending machine today. i paired them with a hot cup of tazo zen tea (with a little squirt o’ honey) from the pseudo-starbucks in the lobby. one thing i noticed right away is that these things are messy. the cake outer part crumbled all over the place and i had quite the mess. biting into the newton, you get a very sugary blast of fig. anyway, i assume it's fig because that’s what it says on the package and i’ve never had a fig in its natural state.

overall, i’d say it was pretty gross and i think i am all set with the fig newton for another 15 years. the aforementioned grossness didn’t stop me from wolfing down both newtons and 200 calories later, i was wishing i had selected a cold beverage to cleanse the cake residue in my mouth. the tazo tea had cooled enough by this point and i found it very refreshing and generally zen-like as advertised.

i don’t regret getting the newtons, as it was a nice trip down memory lane, but the next time i get a little hungry at work, i think i’ll go with a bag of chips.

chris leduc is a jumbo who does something with computers & has been responsible for approximately 17,000 funny moments over his 33+ years. he will sing "cracklin' rosie" for you at the drop of a hat. one time, he saved money, bought car.

nosh nook #53 - wednesday, may 27, 2009

confessions of a snack addict (link)
05.26.09 - winnipeg sun - by ian gillespie

...so it turns out that i'm not the only one with an excessive, irrational need for snacking, a desire to be as funny as possible as often as possible & a love of making up outlandish stories in the name of humor. last night, while perusing the intrawebz for a captivating news story for today's nosh nook, i came across this commentary from ian gillespie--"confessions of a snack addict." he appears to be on my side and writes columns that appear in newspapers all across canada.

gillespie's (by all accounts fictional) story is one of a personal struggle with late-night snacking, a story that he's finally able to tell due to the (by all accounts fictional) "publication of his new book, fridge raid: the story of a lifelong snack-addict." he was being controlled by his late-night snacking. he was attempting to hide his habit. he was stealing his daughter's easter chocolate & leaving behind meaty remnants of late-night binges...he had it bad.

that's when he found the (by all accounts fictional) support group, late-night snackers anonymous & realized that there are millions of others like him, folks possessed by their midnight nibblings. it's helped him come to a few (by all accounts fictional) realizations.  "a late-night snack can't buy you love." "a peanut butter sandwich is not my friend."  i'm not sure if i'd go that far, but if it works for him, more power to him.  at least he's trying to come to terms with his addiction.  like with any addict, he realizes that a cure won't come easy (if it all), so he just "take(s) it one day at a time."  good luck, ian...conquer those tasty demons.

nosh nook #52 - tuesday, may 26, 2009

just another beer? not to those in laos on a mission to create a global buzz (link)
05.25.09 - the ny times - by emily rauhala

here in the u.s., it's hard to go through a day without coming across the budweiser brand name. in laos, the pseudo-equivalent is beer lao, a rice-based lager that enjoys immense popularity in its own country, but is essentially unknown outside of the pacific rim. while i can get budweiser at pretty much every place that sells beer, i have to go to specialty stores to find beer lao.

they have high hopes that the beer lao name will soon be known beyond asia & are definitely getting help from the american press. back in january, npr ran a story about the lao brewery's aspirations for global domination. now there's this story, by the times' emily rauhala, that focuses on laos brewery's quest for expansion. although they're backed by carlsberg, a huge danish brewer who owns a half stake in the company, they're utilizing grassroots efforts to help build the beer lao brand. as rauhala explains, one of their growth techniques is "building a network of fans-turned-distributors who import and sell the beer in select markets." it seems to be working out for them so far (they expect 10% growth this year).

i tried beer lao a few weeks back & to be honest & it wasn't really anything all that special. since it's from laos, it seems exotic at first, but basically has the same boring, watery consistency that you'd find in a budweiser. as beer marketing consultant randy mosher notes in the article, “this is very much one of the international-style pilsners that happens to be brewed in exotic locations. fizzy yellow beers tend to be all the same.” a fizzy yellow beer? hell, in america, that's enough to make you the king of beers.

nosh nook #51 - monday, may 25, 2009

ew, y'all: bizarre foods show comes to texas (link)
05.24.09 - houston chronicle - by jeanne jakle

to me, texas has always been this strange, unfamiliar world, an enormous state with big skies, a penchant for secession & a reputation for barbecuing both tasty meats & their worst criminal offenders.  personally, other than a stopover at the dallas airport, i've only been to the state once & that consisted of no more than driving through the skinny part up at the top of the state near amarillo.  sure my brother lived in austin for a spell & i dated a girl whose family was from dallas, but i've never actually visited.  now i really have a reason to go there--bizarre foods.

as jeanne jakle reports, andrew zimmern, host of the travel channel's bizarre foods (a show where he samples old delicacies from around the world), traveled to texas & shot an entire episode there, highlighting texas' wacky cuisine.  the episode, which premieres this tuesday, took zimmern all over the state, where he came across such crazy dishes as rabbit sausage, alligator kabobs & something called "skunk pig."  mmm...skunk pig.

for zimmern, two of the big highlights were a trip to houston's johnson space center (where he tested out a range of freeze-dried astronaut food) & san antonio's liberty bar, where he found a new favorite snack--"goat cheese with chile morita & piloncillo sauce."  it makes sense that he'd fall in love with a goat cheese dish.  if i was him & had just had a texas experience that included eating both cow's head & wild dove wrapped in bacon, i'd probably go with the goat cheese too.