Self Portrait

Parents Christmas tree

Busy Christmas

Taken at my Aunt's house in West Kingston, RI. Prepping in the kitchen for Christmas.

Another Audible!!!

I might still do some food posts, but I just bought a new camera recently (Canon Rebel T3) and have been taking some cool shots. I've been wanting a DSLR for a while, so I'm going a bit crazy with photos, figure I may as well start posting some of them without making massive facebook albums (for now). So I'll try to post some every few days if I have a backlog, otherwise it might be surges of them as I do things that result in good shots.

Calling an Audible

So I haven't updated this in a long time, I've been made well aware of that (thanks AK). I've been pretty good about tweeting (@crunkbear), probably because I can only write 140 characters at a time. I think the reason I moved away from blogging was because I felt it was too time consuming and it was mostly just posting random stuff. Well I think I'm going to try to start it up again, but with a specific focus: food. I like to cook, and I like to eat, and I often tell people about both, so I figure why not try putting it down in one central place. There won't be tons of posts, but I do hope they're quality posts. There may be some occasional Dipset news mixed in, but everyone loves Dipset so that shouldn't be a problem.

I should have a post later this week and I can provide a bit of a preview right now. The first item featured on this blog will be the Dinosaur BBQ's Texas Red Chili....kinda. When I began the process of making this, I thought it would be the Dino chili. Alas, I was wrong, and when I realized it, it was like a horrible person's diddy bop barged through every block in my city. And that's why you won't see that post tonight, because I'm not happy with the result. However, like my soul, it can be saved (according the christian missionaries who came to my door last week). How you ask? The answer is simple: pork. I'm about to hit this bad boy with a double shot of pork like it's never had before (ay yoooo). Because has sausage and bacon ever made something taste worse?

There will be a full rundown and pictures this coming week, hope it goes well....

Until then, peace.

Top of my do not want in a girl list

If she wears these:



Could you imagine meeting a girl out who's wearing this shit? "They make me stylish and comfortable" she says, "No, they make you broke as shit" you counter. If that grandma chillin on the couch wants to wear them, fine; but if any girl under 40 is wearing these around, you need to go find a kufi, place it on her head, and slap that shit off. Is wearing jeans that difficult? If you're struggling to get your jeans on, maybe you should either hit the gym or get a bigger size. Those marks they leave, I don't know about you, but I've never had a problem with it. That girl looks like she was wearing jeans two sizes too small for a week straight to get that etched into her skin. This commercial is so wrong on so many levels, now if they made cargo shorts sweatpants, sign me up.

Jing's visit to Orlando

The entire Styles 101 Music Group made an appearance in Orlando this weekend as part bid to take over the dirty south. I picked him up on Friday from the resort where he was staying at Disney (-1 point for making me drive through Disney). We went back to my spot for a bit before heading out for dinner at a super trill establishment, 4 Rivers Smokehouse.

Pulled pork, brisket, and burnt ends sliders with BBQ beans and smoked jalapenos? Yes please.

They give you a lot of food with your meal, but Jing wanted some dessert, so he decided to get a slice of cake.

Jing going very hard in the cake, I think that one slice had 2000 calories in it...

After finishing our dinner we made our way to the Amway Center in downtown Orlando to see the Magic take on the Nuggets. The Amway center is brand new (inaugural season) and is really nice, though a bit generic. We decided to go all out and get (relatively) lower level seats (counted as 100 level...). The game was very sloppy but ended with the Magic winning on a buzzer beater 3 pointer so that was super trill.

Another highlight of the game was probably an older guy who sat in the front row of the lower level who would become very irate whenever the refs made what he felt was a bad call. It quickly became clear that he was a regular fan since they would always put him up on the jumbotron and they even had a clip of him playing when they were trying to get people make noise. His name is Jack Nelson, but he also goes by Sweater Vest Guy:

After the game we saw the set up for the post game show outside the arena, Jing was trying to get on TV:



Jing and I were both spent after the game, so we came back to my place and watched a movie and crashed.

On Saturday we grabbed lunch a place called The Ravenous Pig, unfortunately I didn't get any pics, but it was quite good. He got an oyster and shrimp po boy, and I got a steak sandwich with avocado salsa and tomato marmalade, both came with very good fries. They bill themselves as a gastropub, and even though their beer selection is not huge, it offers some very good options. I went for a Bell's Oberon (which I'm sure K has had) and I was quite happy with it.

Later in the afternoon we tried to be as southern as possible, so we went to the shooting range. Neither of us had ever shot a gun before, so we didn't really know how the range worked but the guy set up us well. He gave us a 38 caliber revolver since he said it was the easiest to use and still very fun.

Waka Approved.

It was an interesting experience, it was loud as hell in the range, even with ear protection, and you could definitely feel the kick with every shot. We went through 2 bags of ammunition and had a 3 round shooting contest that I won, causing Jing to purchase my dinner for that night. We agreed it was an odd feeling knowing that everyone around you could kill you if they wanted, but I guess it works on mutual trust....? I probably wouldn't go on my own, but if someone else wanted to try it I would go again.

LAWSS

BAWSS!

After the range we grabbed my winner's dinner (Chipotle, Jing's choice) and went back to the spot. We were going to hit up a bar, but ended up talking to this hipster on video chat.

Nice glasses and earbuds....sucka

The shooting range also inspired us to play Call of Duty until 3 in the morning, yeah, we're cool.

On Sunday we walked around my neighborhood and grabbed some cuban sandwiches for lunch (very good). We also did some celebrity watching...

CARROT TOP!!!!!!!

Apparently he's a regular in the Winter Park area, when I looked up his name and WP it showed Carrot Top Inc. being located right around me (maybe I should apply for a job there).

That about sums up the weekend, good time overall and I was glad to check off two things from my Florida list: Magic game/seeing Dwight Howard play, and shooting range. Dipset.

Dinner

K put in a request for some cooking posts (kinda), so I'm obliging. The name of the dish:

Whole Wheat Pasta with Chicken Sausage, Chickpeas, and Garlicky Greens

People who will probably like it: K (with modifications), Dave, Fitty
People who might like it: Jing
People who won't like it: AK

Ease of cooking (1-easy, 10, hard as shit): 2
-Very little advanced prep, gotta cook the sausage and everything else is frozen/canned

Flavor (1-cardboard, 10-best shit ever): 6
-My flavor scale might be too wide, it was pretty good. I actually didn't have the parmigiana cheese and it was still quite tasty, but I did add an extra tablespoon of soy sauce. Oh, and
I didn't have a full pound of frozen spinach so I added some frozen broccoli


Will this be a repeat meal: Yes, it was easy, tasty, and fairly healthy

You wanna make it, click this ish

Uga Flugga Flame

Got my new credit card in the mail today....How Bout Them Dawgs!

I was originally going to skip getting a credit card when I opened my new bank account, but when I saw I could get this on it....I was sold.

Super Bowl Pick

My Outstanding Super Bowl Pick of the Year

We Keep It Mature

This was taken during a discussion of the new Shy Ronnie video from SNL:



In case you need the reference:

Lonely Island: stays killin it.

DREXEL 52-Louisville 46

HOT DAMN. Drexel just beat #21 Louisville! I'm excited as shit right now. Drexel's strength was also their weakness tonight, they played very physical which threw Louisville out of it's rhythm, but also put the Dragons in foul trouble. Surprisingly only one of our players fouled out, but with a pretty shallow team that can be costly. Either way, big win and as long as we take care of St. Francis (PA) it gives some great momentum going into the Syracuse game.

Dear Lousiville: FLOCKA!

GET THAT BALL OUT MY FACE!!!

Chris Fouch, our top scorer (14th in the nation in PPG), was off tonight (10 pts), but luckily Gerald Colds picked up the slack offensively (20pts) and added a little defense as well (#11 above). We have some true freshmen on this team that gained some great experience tonight, and hopefully the solid play continues.

Who Am I, Dave?

I took the whole month of November off, but I am way more active on Twitter now (@crunkbear). Since Dave hasn't posted shit in mad long (albumoftheweek.net) I'm taking over for him. In honor of some his mix posts I decided to post one of my own this week. He normally does ones for holidays or seasons or some hipster shit like that, but mine is simple, it's the I Love Me mixtape. All rap, and all songs about how great the rappers are (or how great the shit they have is).

Let's get to it!

1) The Champ-Ghostface Killah




2) Blow Up-J. Cole



3) Kinda Like A Big Deal-Clipse ft. Kanye West



4) 99 Problems-Jay Z



5) Thank Me Now-Drake



6) Money Cash Hoes-Jay Z



7) Shottas-Juelz Santana ft. Cam'ron and Sizzla



8) Wow-Kanye West



9) What Them Girls Like-Ludacris



10) Popular Demand-Clipse ft. Cam'ron



11) Hero-Nas ft. Keri Hilson



12) No. 1-Rick Ross ft. Trey Songz and P. Diddy



13) On Top of the World-T.I. ft. Ludacris and B.o.B.



14) Trapstar-Young Jeezy



In full Dave fashion, here is the zip file so you can listen to these trill tracks anytime you want!

http://www.zshare.net/download/8342544877aa0066/

Put this shit on blast in your whip and let the world know who's bawss (Rick Ross is the bawss, not you)

Week 8 Picks

I know it's been mad long since not only a picks post, but any sort of post, so hopefully this makes up for it slightly. I just realized that I should have used Halloween music, but listen to the end of the track and it will explain why I'm not going to correct for that.

Here be them picks!

FOLLOW UP

Another thing I love about the South:

They are obsessed with football. High school football is super legit down here and college football is outta control. If I hadn't come down here twice already, there's no way I would be as interested in college football as I am now. Here's to having both Saturday and Sunday locked down from September through January now.....

Another thing I hate about the South:

They have no clue how to establish an internet connection. They didn't do it well in Georgia and they haven't done it well in South Carolina. I can't even use youtube here. This ish is outta control and unacceptable.

5 Best Things About the South

Boom, followup post. Let's get right into it.



5) The weather
--Though Alex might disagree, the weather is super trill. Now, I've never been in the South in August, so that could change my mind, but right now I'm loving it. It's been mad warm and not raining at all. I have been told that in the summer you don't want to go outside, so that could kinda suck, but I'd take this weather in October anytime.


4) Cost of living
--Stuff is so cheap here. Gas is mad cheap, rent is mad cheap, strip clubs are mad cheap (though it seems like you get what you pay for....), tickets to football games are mad cheap (Jim Jones: Scalpers!). It just seems like your money goes a lot further down here, which is always nice, especially since my last trip was to Europe where American money is basically toilet paper.



3) Everyone is nice
--I'm sure there are A-holes, but everyone I have encountered has been real nice. When I was looking at colleges niceness was something I avoided (sounds weird) but it is a refreshing change of pace now. Fast food employees are nice to you and don't seem like they despise their job like they do in the Northeast. It seems like the only people who aren't nice are greedy ass ticket scalpers who be trying to snatch your ish.



2) The food
--Southern food is super trill. BBQ, soul food, fast food (southern only chains), it's all great. I've eaten more BBQ this week than I have in a long time, and it's all been amazing. The best was probably found in Johnson City, Tennessee at Dixie BBQ. The food was outstanding, but the decor coincided with the Worst List #1. The concept of the BBQ buffet is also a great idea. Since BBQ is meant to be slow cooked and sit around, it really doesn't lose much when served buffet style like other cuisines do. Plus BBQ buffets fit in nicely with #4.

Honestly, these girls would probably get a B grade at most, while in the Northeast it would probably be a solid A

1) The girls
--Southern girls are absolutely gorgeous. They know how to dress up and the accent is killer. Whoever came up with the idea that girls need to dress up for football games like they're going to a cocktail party is a genius and should be given an award. Taking these trips down South has definitely increased my interest in blondes (Jing moment) and really made me think about what I would do for a girl (go to church?? ennnnhhhhh, debatable). Walking around Athens on game day was a complete sensory overload in the best of ways.

5 Worst Things About the South

After spending a full week in the South, there are a lot of things I really enjoy, but some things that they can approve on. Here are the top 5 worst things about the South.



5) It smells
--I'm not sure why, but the South smells. In both Georgia and South Carolina I've run into this weird sulfur smell in the air and I don't know exactly what's causing it. Alex apparently was told that in Athens it's caused by a nearby syrup plant, plausible, but it doesn't explain why it's persisted in South Carolina. A quick google of the issue did not reveal any answers.



4) Guys with a southern accent/stupid people
--A southern accent on girls is amazing, but it just makes guys sound like idiots. I was going to make this one saying that the people are kind of dumb, but I'm not sure it's true (probably is, updated to just come out and say it). At the very least they sound a lot dumber than they do in the North and the accent is largely the reason. However, the accent alone isn't the reason I say that they're dumber, the guy holding a sign advertising Dominoes upside down didn't help their case. Southern taxi dispatchers are also idiots.



3) They drive slow as hell
--Man, they are way too relaxed down here. Apparently no one is in a hurry to get anywhere because it seems like almost everyone drives at or below the speed limit. This is particularly frustrating on backcountry single lane roads. Come on people, pick up the pace!



2) No one works here
--I wanted to stop at a BBQ place in South Carolina but almost all of the ones I looked up were open 3-4 days per week. Right now I'm in Charleston, SC (very touristy city) and all the stores close at 5, I guess it's good for work-life balance, but how does anyone make money here?! If this is Southern living, sign me up.



1) Their history
--I'm sorry, but as someone born and raised in the Northeast, I can't get over the confederate flags. I can understand the argument that it's just about Southern history, but if people don't realize what it stands for now they're idiots (see number 4) or they're just blatantly racist. Luckily #4 basically prevents the bumper stickers saying the South will rise again from coming true.


Now, as I said at the start, there's a lot to like about the South. That post will be either coming tonight, or tomorrow.

Week 4 NFL Picks

Here y'all go! As always, these picks are guaranteed winners.

Week 4 Picks

Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Falllon: Hip Hip History

Not that they're creating history, just reviewing it. Fallon did a surprisingly good job on it and The Roots (Philly what) killed it.

Week 3 NFL Picks

After a 1 week hiatus, my picks are back!!!!! As always, put as much money on these picks as you can, they are a lock.

Week 3 NFL Picks