First Ever Friday Endorsement Extravaganza!

I listen to a lot of podcasts – I'd go so far as to say that my number one entertainment delivery system, with the possible exception of straight up listening to music. I listen to podcasts when I clean the house, when I go for walks with the dog, when I mow the lawn, when I cook supper, and so on and so on, blah blah blah…

Podcasts are great. They're free, you can find them on virtually any topic, and the best of them are super entertaining and informative. Some of my favorites are This American Life, Writers and Company, Desert Island Discs and Radiolab, to name just a few.

I've recently become completely obsessed with the Cultural Gabfest, a weekly podcast put out by Slate.com. I say obsessed because I discovered the podcast in early January, downloaded the 100 back episodes available on iTunes, and have since listened to 80 of them. That's a lot of radio to consume in a month. The basic set-up is pretty straightforward; three hyper-intelligent, witty, culturally informed co-hosts (Steve Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens) sit around for about 45 minutes once a week and yap about three current pop-cultural stories/issues. They talk about movies, TV shows, books, albums, musicians, awards shows, you name it. I can't say enough about the show – it's funny and insightful and if you're the kind of person who loves academic occasionally pretentious yip-yappery about pop-culture, you might want to check it out.

All of this is essentially a pre-amble to my new thang, so to speak. One of my fave parts of the show is at the end, when each of the hosts and sometimes their guest endorses something that they've been culturally "consuming." I've been turned on to lots of great books, TV shows, music, etc… from the endorsement section of the show. So anyway, I'm going to blatantly steal this idea and start endorsing stuff that I love – every Friday.

Without further ado, here are my endorsements for this week :

 

Endorsement #1 : I recently ate my first bag of Hawkins Cheezies. Oh. My. God. I'm telling you, if you love Cheesies or Crunchits or Cheetos any of these corn based cheese snacks, but haven't yet tried these Cheezies, you are missing the boat! They are super delicious and blow the rest of those posers completely out of the water.

I'm not sure where you can buy them – I don't remember ever seeing them in eastern Canada, but they are all over the place in BC, and they are produced and packaged in Belleville, Ontario. I'm telling you, order some now, before I start stockpiling for the apocalypse (only 11 months away!)

 

Endorsement #2 : the awesome song "Kindergarten" from the awesome album "Say Us" by the awesome band "Zeus." Happy headspace listening, straight-up spring-is-comin' music. Give 'em a listen.

That's it for this week – happy Friday!