Tales of the Salty Bag

A month? or so ago the mysterious Ri cky left a present in my mailbox; a lil bag of MACKIE'S of Scotland haggis & cracked black pepper (naturally grown & seasoned) Potato Crisps. I've been intrigued as shit ever since I laid eyes on the bag. A quick skim revealed that these are 'thick cut potato crisps' (lets see if they hold up to standard set by Brannigans for thick cut perfection). As soon as I cracked the bag I took a whiff..animal feed? Visually they look like a nice slab of off-white potato goodness with dark specs of flavour. Snatch, chomp..they're on the puffy side of crunchy (I personally would've liked them cooked slightly longer. That said, they're a 3.5..maybe 4 out of 5 on the Brannigans thick cut scale [so not too shabby]). From chip to chip the flavour varies somewhat. Some have a strong initial black pepper..some the pepper doesn't come on until the 2nd half of crunchtime. Either way there is a lot of black pepper in the seasoni

If you listened to punk in the 90's I assume that you're at least aware of the "Short Music for Short People" comp that Fat Wreck put out in '99. I'm also betting that you assumed the joke died with that cd.  Well, This past spring when I was going through used 7"s at Sloth Records in Calgary I came across a 45 (from 2006) that I vaguely remember hearing of before; Short Attention - (This isn't written anywhere on the jacket, it's only shown on the actual record label...or when you purchase it digitally) Clever, Maddening & Annoying. Yes, short songs are a novelty..but when done right can be quite enjoyable. Short Attention is an east coast pop punk all star team consisting of (now mostly) former members of Dirt Bike Annie/The Slaughterhouse Four/The Ergs/The Unlovables and The Steinways. Short Attention takes short songs to an extreme delivering 29 pop punk blasts in less time than it takes to finish a bag of chips (or 8 minutes and 8 secon