Jay About the end of another year

How stupid does Nostradamus look now? End of the world in 2000, yeah we are about to roll into 2011 and we are still limping along. In your face dead weirdo! So, it appears everyone does year end lists and I am just a follower so how about I do a list or two?

Top 5 area chow spots

5. American Flatbread. Hate to say it but they have a great beer selection and consistent "bread"

4. The Alchemist. One of the better brewpubs I have ever been to. Great beer, cool vibe, and solid everyday burger-type fare.

3. Bluebird Tavern. They just changed chefs which makes me nervous but to this point the food is inventive, flavorful and always prepared w/ great care. Heavy but delicious.

2. L'Amante. Good food, good service, good drinks. Best Bolognese in the area hands down.

1. Hen of the Wood. I don't care what anyone says it is still the best restaurant I have eaten at in VT. Try the short ribs. Or anything else for that matter

Top 5 Youtube videos

5. Annoying Orange- the one w/ the leprechaun. Pisses everyone off, I love it

4. Panda Cheese Commercial. That panda is not to be trifled with!

3. Drinking Out of Cups. Lighthouses rule

2. Porkchop sandwiches. Oh shit! Get the F*** out!

1. Crazy Whale Guy. 34K views and I am 30K of those. You want me the have a mutha f*in' heart attack?!

Top 5 things that really annoy me.

5. Prius drivers. Kind of speaks for itself no?

4. Pakistani cell phone customer service.

3. colin cowheard on ESPN radio. If I ever meet that dude in person I will punch him in the face

2. ONSTAR radio commercials. "Oh no I have just shit my pants on Rt. 100. OK, relax sir, we will send the police. WWWAAAHHHHH. Shut the f*** up sir!"

1. Air travel. I really hate JFK and everything about getting on (or actually not getting on) a plane these days.

Top 5 things that happened to me in 2010.

5. I made it to 1/30/10 in decent health!

4. That bowel evacuation in the weird Puerto Rican bar was pretty fun, but having a coconut drink and watching the sun set over the ocean was a little better

3. Swimming in a warm lake on a 90 degree day in Maine was fantastic

2. Sitting on a back deck overlooking the Tetons, or in the hot tub w/ snow falling (in summer) in Montana, or watching grizzlies in Yellowstone were all really fun.

1. Everyday w/ my special lady just doing our thing. Each one of those days is alright w/ me.

So good luck and good health to all 5 of you reading this in 2011. I will toast a champer or two to you tomorrow night (and maybe tonight too!).

Jay About the Holidays

Whew... we are right in the middle of the holidays and I am about to explode! I am taking down somewhere around 10000000 calories a day, enough to feed a small town (or Kathy Bates). Between beer, cookies, quiche, wine, ham, candy, etc... I might explode Aliens style at any moment. So I am not really at liberty to go into all of the holiday doings but here are a few quick hits. My favorite gift was the travel bag my wife gave me (narrowly edging out the sponge my in-laws left in my stocking). My least favorite was the 200th wine stopper. Can't ever have enough of those right? Wrong! You can have enough... that number is 1. I cursed out a dumb driver in the Madeiras parking lot the day before Christmas. That was fun. I really got in the spirit! Want a professional gift wrapper for next year? Sign up early, I really had some gems this year. Blind 2 year olds have an easier time w/ tape and colored paper than I did this year. 3 great office additions, a grabber I use to annoy people who are "working", a flying cow slingshot, and a panda that poops jelly beans. Pretty solid stuff.

I have taken in a few off the run movies the last 2 weeks.

The Book of Eli. Denzel doing Denzel thing is never a terrible thing. These days it is not a great thing either. This one is good on HBO which you have already paid for. If I rented it on Pay Per View I might have kicked my cat out of misplaced anger. 1 thumb sideways

John Q. All Denzel all the time for this guy. Actually a pretty ok movie. Definitely another bonus on HBO and I bet an in the park homer if watched on a plane. A little preachy but I liked it. 1 thumb up.

Wall Street 2. Not bad, not great. Shia Laboof plays a great hedge fun douchebag. It was actually the part he was born to play. He needs a much bigger motorcycle helmet. This one merely made him look like a bobblehead. Michael Douglas looked a bit... well, weathered. 1 thumb sideways.

Well, as I just had a hamburger melt w/ fries, chicken tenders, and artichoke dip for lunch... I need to migrate south w/ the rest of my whale brothers!

Jay About Puerto Rico

Just got back from a week w/ my special lady in our 51st state... Puerto Rico! We like the Caribbean and this seemed like a pretty easy trip to take a bit of the edge off the holidays and to burn a few vacation days before I lose 'em! We started w/ a couple days in old San Juan, spent a night in the jungle in the middle of the island, and then relaxed on the beach at Rincon for a few days. It was a fun trip and we had a nice time. PR has a few hits and misses as you may expect. It is not particularly close to the U.S. mainland but unlike other islands it really is alot like Florida. The roads are mostly paved and in pretty good shape. There are McDonalds, and KFC shops everywhere. Cell service is really good. There is a ton of litter and it is all derived from shitty US companies!! A few quick take-aways... We went into a Walgreens one day and I have never seen so many people in a pharmacy before. Seriously. We noticed the same thing at various times throughout the week. The parking lots would be packed and people were jammed in there like it was a mall or something. So if you are a Puerto Rican kid, apparently you stocking will be filled w/ shaving cream, soap, vitamins, and a VHS tape of Beauty and the Beast. Item numero duo... the food sucks. It is mostly fried and really not good. We had one pretty solid meal all week, Tapas in Rincon was pretty good and they had a nice setting and excellent service. We also had a pretty good meal at a small place off the side of the road in Rincon w/ a big pig on the sign. They had slow roasted pork w/ rice and beans and sweet plantains that was really good. Oh yeah, La Bombonero in Old San Juan was really good. Try the rice and beans w/ the ham croquettes and a fresh squeezed OJ... you will not be sorry, or hungry. Otherwise we had a shit ton of fried plantains, fried jalapeno poppers, fried meat rolls, french fries, fried grease. The best part is that everyone has a "homemade" fried plate but suspiciously they all look exactly the same? You can also get nice fruit that is really cheap from road side stands.

Our hotel situation was much better. Our first stop was the Gallery Inn in old San Juan. It was a cool place. Very eclectic as it is put together by a wacky older artist lady. Plants, parrots, and odd art are everywhere. But it is comfortable and has lots of cool spaces, a nice honor bar, and we had a great room w/ a view of the ocean. We then stayed one night at the Casa Grande Mountain Resort. It was very quiet and clean. The food was nothing special but not terrible... except this weird desert thing that looked like jabba the hut. That was kind of weird? They also had directions to a hiking trail that did not actually exist? It was supposed to be a kilometer 5. Well there was a KM4 and a KM6, between them? An old guy sitting at his house/bar and a drive way w/ a horse some chickens and a horror movie house. Ok, next up was over on the western part of the island Rincon. We stayed at Tres Sirenas which is a cool place w/ like 4 rooms right on the water opened by some new yorkers. It is clean comfortable and the service was very good. The beach is great for swimming and they make a nice breakfast brought right to your room every morning. There is no other food or booze there but we had a kitchenette and there are other places that are great for a quick bit or a rum punch right down the beach. That was my favorite place for the week.

Couple other quick notes. I got shat on by a bird in old San Juan. Good luck? F*** that and f*** that damn bird. Old San Juan was pretty cool and surprisingly very clean and tidy. The fort was pretty neat and they had some fun bars. We did not stay up late enough for the real action which starts around midnight? Rincon was itself kind of shitty. I thought it would be a cool surfing town but it was really just a dumpy one horse town. On the north and south ends there were some pretty mellow and cool bars and restaurants on the beaches. So get a car and explore a bit. Surfers are really in shape and pretty good looking. I can't surf. The ocean is pretty cool and there are some great places to swim as well as some pretty gnarly breaks.

I like warm weather. JFK sucks. It really sucks. My wife is a good travel partner. What is the Puerto Rican equivalent of Montezuma's Revenge? I have that!

Vacation next week

so I don't imagine I will be making any posts. I will be getting my drink on, my eat on, my groove on... probably not my tan so much?! Good luck finding something super awesome to read next week!!!!!!

Jay About Patriots

So Monday night I was lucky enough to get down to Foxborough for the Pats-Jets showdown. My last experience w/ a live football game was at the old stadium and to be fair... it was so shitty I thought I might never go back to a live football game. This time though we had a ride and the stadium is so much nicer. Real seats as opposed to concrete. Few assclowns around me that were looking for a fight. The view was great. The one downside was impossible to control, is was butt-ass cold. I mean it was like 15 degrees and windy. I was bundled up and we had a warm beverage so no problem. A couple other things about Gillette stadium... the surrounding area still sucks. The parking situation and the in and out is beyond terrible (it took us about an hour to get out of the parking lot and we left before the game was over). The food is not terrible but it is not great. I had a chicken wrap that was bland but ok. We also had a couple mini-pizzas that had ok toppings but the crust was gross. The bathrooms were pretty good size and clean for a stadium. The jumbotrons are amazing, they are huge and ridiculously clear. The field was in good shape and the game itself was fun... for a Pats fan. The J-E-T-S like to talk alot of shit but they do not rush the QB well and Sanchez sucks. He just does. A couple brain farts from some of the worst teams in the NFL does not mean you are a "winner" and the Patriots exposed this. They do have some decent players and the Patriots defense is shaky enough that at any time they could implode and give up 56points so I am not crowning them Super Bowl champs yet. They did look awfully good Monday and have beaten every good team in the AFC.

Here is another thing. Peyton Manning has been terrible and everyone is giving him a pass. "Oh, Peyton doesn't have a good team, oh he doesn't have good receivers like Brady does." Blah blah blah. Manning has a great receiver in Reggie Wayne and Pierre Garcon was a pretty high draft pick. They have had other decent guys at various times during the season. Brady? Ok I will give you Wes Welker but the other guys? Deion Branch? He hasn't been good for 4 years. Julian Edelman, Brandon Tate, Alge Crumpler's corpse, Aaron Hernandez? Yeah, that is a real murderer's row. The running game? BenJarvus Green-Ellis? Who the f*** is that guy? Seriously, the Patriots are just a good team and Brady makes them all better. Peyton Manning makes opposing corner backs look better. But he is still better than Sanchez!!!

Jay About a few things here and there

The holiday season is ramping up and it feels like an odd one. Things are getting better I think but people still seem pretty freaked out about the uncertainty out there... and there is alot of that. Nervous energy. Anyway, we had our regular cosmic wine tasting put on by the good people at Daedalus here in Burlington. It is a really fun event at the Firehouse gallery and if you are able to check it out you should. Actually, scrap that, it is already pretty crowded. Don't go! It sucks really bad and you won't have any fun!!! I think the Firehouse smells like feet!!! Anyway, we stopped over at the Farmhouse for a quick burger before tasting 70 wines. A guy was walking out as we walked in and commented on exit, "I don't know why people go here, it is overpriced and the food is germane." Well, it is funny because he misused the word germane... it means "being both pertinent and fitting". The intent was quite fitting however. The place is always packed but everyone I know says the food is not that great and overpriced. It is not particularly pertinent though. How superfluous! We waited a half hour and then another hour before we got our entrees which were nothing special. Fries were good but the burger was only germane, and $13! Beer is good but sheesh. And it was totally packed there.

Next up, we went to the tasting. It was good not great as well. The wines overall were alot thinner and less interesting than previous tastings. They cannot all be winners of course. The one real bright spot was the champagne table. They had a real champagne and a brut sparkling wine that were very dry and quite refined. Then we rocked a pink sparkling wine (pinot) and a kava and they were also very good. Of our case of wine (great prices) we ordered 6 champers!!

To close the night we went for a night cap (mind you it was only 9:30) at the 1/2 bar. It was quiet and very relaxed. This was where I had the real highlight of the night, a shot of the "local" rye whiskey Whistlepig. It is only bottled in Vermont, so it is not really local. The stuff is really expensive, like $65 a bottle which is pretty egregious for whiskey. The shot was $14! I got it for the table so we could all try it though. It was great. The color was nice and it had a slightly sweet smoky bourbon flavor that then tasted like melted butter before disappearing in an unbelievably smooth finish. Worth $14 for a small glass? No. $65 for a bottle? Yeah, maybe.

Thank goodness, it is the weekend. I am tired and need a long rest tonight!