Food Town

Show of hands: Who eats meals? I'd raise both of my hands with fervor if I could, but I gots to keep my hands on the keyboard for my adoring fans. Meals are so good. They are so freakin good. Imagine a meal right now. So good, right?

A trip to the grocery store is the first step to the whole meal-making process. Ingredients might include: 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a Sesame Street bun.

I'm sure we all have our favorite/most visited market. Mine is favorite'd due to it's proximity to where I make the meal-magic happen. Your choice could be it's amazing deals, choice of organic choices or vegan choices*, or there's a hot number workin that cash-register**.

My grocery store, at times, is rockin 4 out of 4 of the prior pros I listed. I'm not die-hard organic, and CERTAINLY not a vegan***, but it's still fun to see cool options. My Harlem grocery is a Foodtown. Other not as bomb-diggity groceries that are nearby are PathMark, C-Town, and Associated Foods.

This morning, I had a pretty uplifting morning this morning*. On my way home from some "business" I stopped by my local grocer's freezer for some knick-knacks. There was a new employee behind the register, and she was figuring out the buttons with help from her bagger, Vance****. I almost was in a good enough mood to be entirely too corny and say, "Welcome to my favorite Foodtown," "Welcome on board!" or "WHOOP WHOOP! You one of the good guys, now! Fight hunger!!! YAAY!" But, thankfully, I didn't do anything besides smile.

As I left the building, it occurred to me: Foodtown. Foodtown. Say it with me! "Foodtown." First thought is grocery store, but let's go further. FOODTOWN! Food town. Town of food. Oh my gosh, give me more! It's brilliant! OF COURSE I want to go to a town of food! Houses made of chicken breast! It rains Frank's Red Hot! Apples grow on trees!



"Hey Drew?"
Yes?
"Wanna go to Food Town?"
Ummmmm, YES!!!
"Mind if we stop by Happyville and maybe swing by AWESOME FREAKIN CITY, too?"
OMG r0x0rz let's go!

Let's visit our other fine grocery stores for a second.

PathMark. So, I'm wandering around in an open area, I see a little sign that points me back to the main trail. End of story. PATHMARK. Not hungry.

C-Town. What the hell do I say for this. C could mean Cocoa Puffs. Cocoa Puffs Town*****. Delicious, maybe, but I need protein if I'm going to wow the ladies with my muscles. Knaw mean?!

Associated Foods. Ridiculous. Now, I think of a food I want to eat, and immediately am forced to find things by which they are associated. Corn Flakes: Old, smelly farmer Jimbo, with that one tooth that's just got no idea where it's supposed to be. Really not hungry.


OF COURSE I'll go to Foodtown! It's a beautiful thing! Both in reality and in my warped sense of what a town of food would be! It will be my grocery till the end of time, even though I think half of their products are past the expiration date.

* Redundancy is the key to getting a point across. Use it. Use it often.
** Cash-register is not a euphemism for ass.
*** I would be more likely to eat human-meat. Someone call Danny Devito. He's got a guy for everything.
**** Bagger Vance. YES!
***** It rains milk...puddles form...they become chocolate milk puddles after some time.

Dominos Knows

My computer has been falling apart, slowly, for the past 4 months. First, random, unprovoked (seemingly) shut downs. Then stalling every 8 seconds, or so, for small periods of time. Finally, total loss of keyboard and trackpad functionality. I used a pen tablet used for drawing to act as a mouse*. Now, I have a new external USB keyboard.

So, my computer is now fully functioning the way someone in a wheelchair is fully functioning. It can live a fully capable, wonderful life, but not without all the bulky, external hardware to help. It's awesome, comparatively , but my laptop essentially has become a less-powerful desktop computer.


For the 3 people that might happen upon this website in the coming year (my sister, Liz Cherry, and blog-surfer Johannes from Sweden) I owe you a post.


About a month ago, there was another wonderful commercial running that I just loved. Domino's Pizza® ran a commercial boasting that 2 out of 3 people preferred their new Oven Baked Sandwiches to Subways subs.

I challenge you to Mortal Kombat**. I challenge you to take a bite out of the deli ham, veggie, and thinly sliced provolone sandwich. NOW. Take a bite of the sensuous, succulent Domino's Oven Baked Sandwich...yeah, baby. That's some sweet-ass fat content. No wonder you like it. Even from the commercial, which is Domino's perfect-world sangwich, oozes with it's cheese and grease. OF COURSE it tastes better! That's what it's meant to do! You're Domino's: You take gooey cheese, slap it on something, and make fatty-magic. You compare yourself to Subway. I know there are ways to make a truly terrible Subway sub. Just put the sloppy tuna on the bread, and wham, already you got a doozy. However, Subways whole thing is that it's a healthier alternative. Healthy doesn't always taste bad, but you don't see Celery Products of America gallivanting about with "Taste is job 1!!!!!"



2 out of 3 people also preferred the taste of Pepsi to water. 2 out of 3 people preferred the taste of cookies to broccoli. 2 out of 3 people preferred a warm bath to being tar and feathered.

It shouldn't be a surprise that something loaded with the delicious tastes of the gods would win over something Satan provided to help people control their caloric intake***.

Hey Domino's, 2 out of 3 people**** prefer a professional journalistic website***** to this contrived crap I'm slappin on the page. And?


And to really bring it home for the big D (urbanized), they ran a more recent campaign with "Ask not what your crust can do for you...ask if it has cheese on it." Way to take something that exists as a wonderful piece of history, and just muddle it up for all of today's youth. And what's even worse than messing up relevant, powerful history, IT'S JUST NOT FUNNY! Not funny, not funny, not funny. The potential for a funny/fun, different ending to that phrase is so vast, it just kills me to hear such drivel.

Oh well, at the end of the day, I just wanna tasty treat. Bring it, Domino's.

* There is an Ink application on my Mac, and it allows me to write out letters with my mouse, translating it to text. Painstakingly annoying.
** Get over here.
*** Eat that 100 calorie pack. You goin to hell.
**** Ones me, the other is a middle schooler who says, "The pix make me lol."
***** The Onion

The Bus is Scary

I'm a subway guy. 81...81 dollar....81 dollar month paaaaaaass*! One thing that I have avoided is using the bus. This is because they are scary and are bad. The whole kitten-caboodle**.


I get flustered when it comes to some normal everyday functions. Once I understand them, they're not so bad, but until then....spooooooky. This isn't unlike most people, I think (I hope). I had/have a debilitating fear of banks, the post office, and a sundry of other similar thingies. "DAWG! YOU SCARED OF DA POST OFFICE?!" Yes. Think about it, if you don't understand how the facility/process works, you hold up the queue. Bank and post office trips are chores to the everyday worker. You all have been in a line, and have some bumbling idiot ahead just muckin things up with the normal protocol, and you wanna kill him. Amiright?

Well, give him a break, cause it's probably me, and I'm easily angered, and I'll punch-a-bitch, I swears it.

It's amazing what my brain will imagine and make "real." I walk into a bank, and immediately everybody looks at me and scoffs thinking things like, "Look at this jerk, he doesn't know a great many things, I bet." Or, "Look at this jerk, I bet he's dumb and will mess up at the teller's post. Ha ha ha! What a dumb jerk!"

The same thing happens with the entire bus process. The first thing is trying to figure out whether you're at the right stop or not. I look at the signs proclaiming what buses come and whatever, but I never understand which direction they'll be heading. The subway is clearly marked with MULTIPLE direction-like words. For example: "Uptown and the Bronx," "Downtown and Brooklyn," or "Uptown and Manhattan." These people are genius! Not only do I know that I am going the right way, but I also know where the other people on the train will end up even after I get off!! SWEET! The bus? Couldn't tell ya anything about anything.


Let's say you got lucky (or asked someone really angry and New Yorky for help) and are at the right stop, and get on the right bus in the right direction. You have a few people behind you in line, and a few in front. You see the people in front using their MetroCard to get on the bus, but you can't see the way the slide it into the machine. You get up there, and you look at the picture to figure it out. BAM, already people behind you hate you. So, you panic and just throw your card in any way you can manage, muffing it up 3 or 4 times before the angry, New Yorky bus driver grabs the card and does it for you. Now, you are this evil, stupid person to anyone within 7 feet of the incident.

You're on, you're moving, you think things are great. Boy, are you wrong. Again, the subway wins for "Stop Recognition." No, subway train operators don't always say which stop you are at out loud over the speaker clearly, or at all sometimes, but the bus people? You're screwed. The subway walls and pillars have the stop listed every 5 feet! Awesome! The bus only has the city's street signs to use. They are much smaller and hard to see at night. Between the "Furpow sra" which is busdriver for "Thirty-first street" and the non-existent signs, you almost missed your stop. THANKFULLY, you used a GPS thing on your phone***, cause you knew it was gonna be trouble.

So, you stand up, in a panic, but never letting the panic show to the enemy (everyone else). You're actin all cool, waiting at the back door of the bus for the bus to stop. It does. The door remains closed. Damnit, you see "User Operated Door" in type in front of you. Easy enough: it's a door. You push it. WRONG. There's a thin yellow strip that has magic inside it, and somehow when you touch it, it releases into the door, making it openable. Why, oh why, are BUSES trying to look/be on the cutting edge of futuristic technology with a yellow strip? Give me a break. You're a bus: I don't need, or even want, you to look cool.
NOW, You are being yelled at (not made up in your head. this time it's a true thing) by the people behind you and the bus driver himself, because you don't understand how to release the magic! Finally a giant, angry, New Yorky man reaches over your shoulder and releases beautiful bus magic into the door, not before he releases miserable curses upon you and your family.

So, in all the panic and unnecessary turmoil, you lose track of which direction you need to walk when you're finally out of the torture chamber and you walk the wrong way, looking even more like a tourist.

Hey bus.....you suck. Well, except for the fact that beyond all the havoc you wreaked on my soul, you got me where I needed to go in HALF the time as the subway system would've taken me. Hey bus.....you still suck.

*
** Yes, thanks, I know it's wrong. That's the point.
***Of course, you had to be really sly about it. Nothing more uncool than looking at GPS in NY.

P-Diddy has "strunth."

Sean Combs. This is a man who believes his own identity can be a statement. Also, his name is a statement: Sean combs. Yes, he does, and he combs well.

Remember when you liked "Puff Daddy"'s music? Were you 12? Me too! Remember when you decided "Puff Daddy" was a ridiculous name? Were you 13? OMG ME TOO! Sadly, Sean Combs was easily into his later 20s before he figured it out. "Puff Daddy?" C'mon. Thank the heavens he went to a more approachable name: P-Diddy.

"Ah yes," says the general consumer, "P-Diddy sounds like something I would enjoy."
"Sir, would you have any idea what a P-Diddy was?" I reply.
"No, but it wouldn't matter."

Damn you, Sean. You've won, again.

This mentality of do-whatever-it'll-be-gold has continued to this day. His recent ad campaign for newly released scent, I Am King, is running on some channel that my sister watches. I end up watching shows such as "Dress Me Cause I Look Like Hell" and "Cook a Meal, and So Help Me If It Sucks..."* Between segments of these fine programs, I ended up seeing his singular I Am King commercial roughly 8 times in a short time-span. Already there's cause for concern. "Mr. Combs? Do you have to beat me over the head with your new fragrance?" I don't even wear cologne, I just wear Axe: Vice and hope for the best**.

Next on my list: "Strunth."

What the hell. Strunth, or strinth***, is Diddy's newfound attribute I would assume closely resembles strength. But, then again, it might not be that at all. I do understand that there are dialects and accents and variations of language, but I'm trying to understand D-Poopy's use of his. Refer back to the age you thought Diddy was the bee's knees. 12 years old, right? Are you ridiculously non"street"? I am. Do you say "strength?" I do. P-Doolittle's music, to my knowledge, is music for middle-class, non-urban middle-schoolers.

Living in NYC, I get the privilege of hearing other peoples music played over a speaker in the subway. Most of the time, the music is some sort of hardcore hip-hop/rap by someone who carries a 'thug'like aura. I have yet to hear, nor can I imagine, this scary-looking individual blasting out "Been Around The World." "Strunth" gets you, and us (especially) no where. It was a voice-over, so I know he could focus on EXACTLY how he wanted to sound. Lord knows, he already looked about as REALISTICALLY AWESOME as he could be.

Tux on a jetski....I want to smell like HIM!

* I actually don't mind them, and even like them sometimes. Do girls like me yet?
** Best - My pits don't smell like a racoon dropped a slimy duce.
*** Phonetically, I believe the English language doesn't have the proper letters to portray the correct spelling.

The first step to recovery is making a small documentary.

XBox Addiction is a serious problem.

Meanderers in NYC

As a first post, instead of a "Hey this happened today, and it was totes weird," I will do a, "Holy shit, this happens all the time, and it will never be justified."

I refer to the offense as the Sidewalk Meander.

I live in NYC. We walk really a lot. That's because the city is so huge packed into a small circumference! It really creates wondrous amounts of options for most things you could want out of life. For me: McDonald's, GameStops, and Bars. Of course, anywhere on the globe has the chance to be, at whatever moment, a dangerous place, but, NY has so many people in a small area, there is just a higher percentage for an act of violence or crime to occur to you, by you, bayou, Erika Badu. That being said, I'm sure I'm not the only New Yorker (I'm not native, but still) that walks with purpose to their destination. This means, I'm briskly moving forward and determining my path of least resistance far before any obstacle is near. I try hard to remain on a straight-ish path following traffic flow, only cutting across lanes when necessary.

BOOM! Some random piece of hell who was just standing, leaning on a stoop-post, decides he wants to slowly walk into the sidewalk perpendicular to the flow of traffic, with no awareness of anybody walking normally, like a person should. If you are in a field, sir, meander away. Let go of your awareness, and let the planet swallow you into it's vast, earthy goodness. But fuck, dude, this is a NY sidewalk. What made you think there wasn't anyone coming? I know my sister refers to my movement within my own apartment as "like an assassin," but my jeans are going "schwee! schwee!" with every step. I'm also movin a crisp 8 mph or somethin crazy! You will be hurt if it weren't for some catlike-reflexive fancy-footwork from ol' Drabes. I sidestep, juke, spin-move, etc. out of the way, and MOST LIKELY get some sort of "stupid walker" face from the bumbling, meander-man.

I mean, really, what ARE you doing? You just wanted to see if it was warmer over by the parked cars? Or what?! You tell me, asshole. I just sprained my ankle to avoid plowing my crotch into your flighty-ass.

The Sidewalk Meander can be greatly improved if people would just look both ways before crossing the "street." I learned how to do that before Kindergarten. Give it a shot.