Easy Fries: The Future is Now

Being a very lazy vegetarian, I eat a lot of french fries. They probably account for 30% of my diet and 100% of the reason my triglycerides are twice the normal level of people my age. 

Occasionally I have the luxury of waiting 15 minutes for the fries to cook in the oven or the 20 minutes it takes for delivery. However, most of the time I come home ravishingly hungry, palms sweating, fiending for some oily starch. I don't want them, I NEED THEM. That's where Easy Fries come in. They cook in 4 minutes, which is about the time it takes for me to power on my Xbox and start a team deathmatch game. I called Ore Ida and confirmed that this is not a coincidence. They were indeed designed to be nuked in parallel with starting a Call Of Duty sesh. 

Due to advanced tin foil technology, these aren't soft like re-microwaved takeout fries. They come out crispy as fuck and are just waiting to burn the shit out of your mouth. 

Even though they contain over 700mg of sodium, you'll want to be sure to add at least 6 of the salt packets you took from McDonalds the other day. For the more advanced bros, try dousing your fries in your favorite hot sauce. For a refreshing beverage, I recommend pairing Easy Fries with a 22oz Diet Dr. Pepper-- it has great legs and its subtle hints of vanilla and caramel play nicely on the palate with the saltiness of the fries. The beverage's natural acidity also helps to cut through the heaviness of starch.  

So there you go, we can finally break free from the oppressive shackles of our ovens. No longer must we blankly stare at the word preheat for what seems like an eternity. Stuff your face with some goddamn easy fries and frag some newbs.

The last bomb before the fall: when the buff dried up

The following is an excerpt from my new book The Last Bomb Before the Fall: When the Buff Dried Up. Oprah featured it as her book of the month on her show last week. It will be in stores around the country on Black Friday. Enjoy.

Chapter I

August 15, I remember it fondly. It was hot but not too hot, it was cloudy but not too cloudy. There breeze was just strong enough to rustle the pile of crumpled takeout bags and grease-speckled parchment wrappers on the coffee table but not quite strong enough to blow them away. The tantalizing scent of fried wafted from the pile up to my face, fluttering around in my nostrils . I knew what I had to do. Deftly, my fingers moved across the keypad of my phone, Toucan Sam-like my fingers recieving orders from my nose and not my brain.

And, the more I mull it over in my mind, I still can't decide whether it was one of these days (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU) or one of these (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI). August 15, 2009 was the date of my final buffalo bomb from AK's.

I moved to Allston two weeks later, way out of AK's delivery range (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s). I had signed the lease so swiftly, so surely, withouth thinking or even considering the consequences. I didn't realize that my brash decision would leave me in Buff Bomb purgatory.

A month went by and I could still taste the buff, feel the burn and, when I really dug down deep, feel the full pull of its weight in my stomach, the kind rendering it impossible to gather the effort to slither off the couch save for the frantic moments of pure panic not knowing whether I'd make it to the bathroom in time to puke and/or poop. I would awake from delightful buff-town dreams only to realize that my toungue was not on fire, my esophagus did not demand long drawn out cooling breaths, my stomach was still, my small intestine was not a waterslide and my b-hole was placid. I would scream in horror, knowing that I would never develop the sauce-induced ulcer of my buffalo dreams.

Another month went by and I could barely taste the sauce. My Nintendo 64 controllers had dried, the pangs had reduced significantly and I was thinking about moving on. I tried getting takeout from Inbound Pizza because of a promising recommendation from a cabbie. He had informed me that the name is "very very clever" because it is right across from the inbound T stop. He had also informed me that the pizza is "very very well." Needless to say, I tried it and, as it turns out, the sandwich was about as inspired as the name of the establishment (not very inspired). Subsequently, I tried every takeout place in a 2 mile radius but to no avail. It was then that I made the concession that my buff bomb was out of reach and my poops were to remain clean.

This is the story of a tragedy and loss but it is also a story of triumph and rebirth. This is a chronicle of the first rays of spring after a long winter. This is a story of a young man with streak-less underpants.

Ode to a Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich

Awake, oh taste buds, awake,
And bask in the joyous flames of Hell!

Open, great jaws, open wide and do tell

A tale of a tender chick so spectacularly spicy.

Listen, old ears, and play for me a thunderous crunch;

Play me the sweet story of the sandy on which I munch.

Keep watch, murky eyes, don’t fail me now,

Signal my brain, doesn’t matter how.

Now, slender finger, without trepidation,

Scoop that mayo ‘fore it falls from this Godly creation.

Receive, grumbling stomach; my favorite receptacle,

For what’s coming your way is nothing short of a spectacle.

Lord! Behold! Such a righteous stack;

Its golden bun, gaily and delicately sauced,

Atop a fluffy garden, though the ‘berg’s not lost.

A simple duo of veggies well suits this snack.

Under that, is the golden idol.

Its suggestive breading is what makes the title.

For the juicy river of flavor that runs inside;

My lonely tongue, the only appropriate guide.

It rests on what was once a lowly bun, now mighty altar,

Transcended from white bread, now it cannot falter.

Its mayo gaze, through crispy eyes, sees all else as blighty.

Hark! For this is a gastronomical Aphrodite.

“Oh, Wendy,” they ask “please do tell”—
The bloodthirst grows stronger every nigh’
Oh, how I need that chicken when I’m high—
“Wendy, I beg you, please remedy this spell.”
Minutes seem like hours and hours like days,
Without my spice, I’m in a perpetual haze.
My dependence once led to a spicy sabbatical,
But Don’s and the King are hardly ecclesiastical.
Never again will I leave her;
I'm not so sure if I can handle the stir.
The tantalizing crunch of her crust makes me itch.
Her name is the Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT FOOD

Times change. Specifically though, home decor changes. Even more specifically, window decorations change.

Windows first became popular sometime in the middle ages, when the only people able to afford such luxuries were royalty (e.g. palaces, castles) and the church (e.g. churches). The window style of these two institutions differed drastically; castles had those slits for shooting arrows, while churches had stained glass pictures of righteous d00ds. Since then, many different styles of window attire have evolved from these primitive examples. Curtains (first appeared in the late 18th century) were, and still are, a very popular window accessory. The Venetians are famous for their annoying and noisy blinds. But the most recent development in the way of window obscurement technology are Bamboo Blinds.

Bamboo Blinds (BamBlinds) began appearing in trendy homes some time in the late 80's and their popularity rose exponentially year to year, falling off somewhere around 2004. Several reasons for this strange surge have come to light to window researchers. Our best scientists have proposed that their cheap price and ease-of-installation played a very large part. Since their extreme popularity, many people have realized that they look like tacky shit.

Much to my horror and dismay, my mother "donated" about 8-9 fixtures of BamBlinds on her last visit. She must have noticed the unardorned windows in my living room and kitchen for some reason the last time she was here. Since they were free and extremely easy to install, I put them up (nail+hammer+BamBlind=all done+'good job' beer) . As soon as I got like 3 of them up, I sat down and admired my handiwork (I didn't have any beer so I chugged some errant jim beam leftover from the night before). I looked at them long. I looked at the hard. I pondered and contemplated them. At some point, I passed out, and at another point I woke up. Then I had a stream of BamBlind related thoughts:

Why the fuck do people buy these things? For one thing, they're a total pain in the ass to get up/down evenly. Did I mention they look like shit? I don't really know why exactly my mother bought these in the first place, but she clearly realized she made a terrible mistake and bought something way better. They look brand spanking new. My hypothesis: mom saw a nice display in a store, bought em, made dad install them all over the house, went back to the store, saw a nicer display of something else, repeat. This must be how I came to have them. It has to be. Maybe I should have called home less. Maybe then they'd be in my brother's apartment right now, instead. Maybe.

As I stared at my collection of BamBlinds, I thought about how bad I'm going to be making fun of these ridiculous things 20 years in the future while I raise and lower whatever futuristic window shade apparatus is popular. The future-blinds will no doubt be mentally-commanded, with the ability to change images so you can look out over whatever landscape you choose; rolling plains, snow-capped mountains, sunsets, I-93 at rush hour, under-the-sea adventure, porn, random youtube videos, etc. I have to imagine another built in feature of these blinds will be to project an image to the outside audience as well. You can make your home look like you live in a palace, a cave, a glass house, an aquariun, a porno, etc.

My God, the wonders of tomorrow.

Ranking Toothpaste: the world's most teethwhiteningest condiment

The other day, I experimented with a new kind of toothpaste, a gel. The Crest/Listerine Whitening Gel claims to be utopia in a bottle, the perfect balance between toothpaste and mouth wash. And that it may be but as far as I'm concerned, toothpaste and mouth wash are two separate and distinct entities never to be souped up into one. I was left with a rather dystopian feeling in my mouth and an unreasonable amount of residual plaque that I can only imagine plagued Harrison Ford's character in Blade Runner as he had to deal with while fighting probable androids and possible nonandroids. That's some hard shit to do with an organic glue stick in your mouth. Its tarter and gingivitis controlling abilities notwithstanding, those boys over at that Crest/Listerine outfit make a pretty tasty paste.
Believe it or not, toothpaste has only recently surfaced as an acceptable condiment/late night snack. For years, toothpaste was considered very plebeian. The bourgeois looked down its collective nose at peasants as they squeezed all possible dollops of sweet fluoride nourishment out of their collective tube, not unlike the way middle class Americans now sneer at lower-middle class fatties as they wait in line at Taco Bell, languorously waiting for their supreme burritos to squeezed out of tubes and for their sour cream to be ejaculated from caulk guns. No, it was not until the 80's that the stigma started to fade away. Enter Seth Rogan.
Seth is a pioneer, albeit an unknowing pioneer-- and not in the movie industry, of course. He turned the non-toothpaste-eating world on end at sleep away camp on Lake George back in 1985. One fateful night, the 9-year-old Rogan, was lying awake in his bunk unable to drift into sweet sweet repose. Before curfew and prior to the campfire where he consumed only 4 s'mores (doublestuffed), Seth had only eaten a meagre 12 chicken nuggets (4 of which he procured from a small Jewish boy for his fruit cup) flanked by a side of mashed potatoes covered in what can only generously be described as a dollop of gravy. Needless to say, as he laid in bed, young Seth's belly was not satiated. Subsequently, he did something rather extraordinary that would shake the very foundation of the culinary world. He gingerly climbed out of his bunk and carefully opened up his trunk and removed his tube of Bubblegum Crest with sparkles, which his mother was kind enough to purchase for him after just a slight tantrum in the Walmart toiletries isle. He then worked way back into his bunk, under the cover of his lime-green Coleman sleeping bag and started to consume. Consume he did. All of it. It was so fucking good that the next day he shared his innovation with a friend of his with a similar build whose own mother often and kindly would call Rubenesque. He told a couple of other fat camp buddies who told some of their fat camp buddies, and you know how it goes. None of them ever got a cavity again and toothpaste took off.
Now, thanks to Seth and his little fat camp friends, we have hundreds of flavors of toothpastes lining the shelves of our Wallgreens. Lemon lime, chocolate, vanilla, orange, purple, strawberry, anything you want at the squeeze of a tube. And what are we to make of this Ethan Allanesque toothpaste liberty? How do you choose the proper one? Which ones are fucking atrocious?
Last year Cornell University researchers came up with a scale to measure the tastiness of these fluoride treats, the Arm & Hammer/Colgate All Purpose Whitening scale. Arm & Hammer is a 1 and Colgate All Purpose Whitening is a perfect 10. Classic and delicate. Delicious. The following are some highlights and lowlights from the study:
Lows:
Mentadent (2)-- Not enough mint and too much fluoride. Also, it comes in a container with a pump.
That shit you get at the dentist (3)-- Terrible texture and overwhelming flavor. Flavor crystals stick around in your mouth way too long.
Highs
Crest Cheesecake Whitening (8)-- Very smooth and creamy. It just slides down the back of your throat. There are hints of lemon and little crust crumbs throughout. Wonderfully done.
Aquafresh Chili Cheese Dog Tarter Control (9)-- Meaty and a little spicy. It's everything you could ask for in a toothpaste. Tip: Add a little strip of Heinz Spicy Brown Cavity Protection, for a truly cum-in-your-pants-good brushing experience.
Enjoy and brush responsibly.