wingjam in pictures

Outjammed

Every so often, you come across a Jammer so admirable and focused that you question your own allegiance to the Jam.

Case in point, Saturday night. King was stumbling home after two hazy nights of self-destruction, and he decided to take a pit stop at the local taco stand for some much-needed nourishment. The stand was a circus of bar fallout and late-night feeders, each one screaming out his order: Four steak! Dos lengua! Uno Mas!

While waiting patiently in line, King witnessed perhaps the single greatest taco victory ever...

A wide-eyed jammer, liquored beyond belief, stumbled around the stand shouting out his demands: SEVEN POLLO TACOS AND ONE HORCHATA!!! Then, in an act of total disregard, with his eyes set squarely on the Jam ahead, he passed through the self-serve condiment line, opting to swoop up the onions, limes, and cilantro with his bare hands rather than use the provided tongs. Snacking on one of his seven tacos, he jumped back on his skateboard and rolled into the night. If you listened closely enough, you could hear the magic words under his breath as he fled the scene. "Jam, Jam, Jam, Jam, Be There..."

Psych Jam Circle

You missed out. So believe it or not, Sunday night in celebration of a Jam-filled weekend, the food hungry fools at Jam Zone, crashed the National Food Festival with an impromptu Drum Circle Jam. To make this a true jam zone jam, we filled our Djembe drums with an assortment of jamable delights. This picture if proof in the pudding so to speak and gives you apprentices to the jam an inside look at the wonderful founders of The Jam Zone.

Pictured far left is Grape rocking the blue/grey bandana and kicking a funky beat on two drums, one filled with Chicken Tika Marsala and the other brimming with a heap of Crab Rangoon goodness. Sitting in front of Grape, but unfortunately facing away from the camera, is B of the Bsmiths hittin' a beat on drum stuffed with those Spicy Chicken wings from Punjab. A little aside, following our weekend of jams, B of the Bsmiths rocked out hard on a personal order of Fried Spicy wings and Fried rice. Jam On !! In the white cap is King, playing a gangsta half beat on his Southern Pork Shoulder Bongo set. Half-way through our drum jam, King screamed "I can't take it any more," and ripped open his bongos much to the roaring delight of the crowd. Although they thought he was riding the music snake, King was actually just hungry and needed to taste that sweet Carolina flava. Without a drum, King jumped on the Gong featured in the back of the photo. In the back with the Cap and Bling in his ears, is our man Half-Later. Half ripped it up on a pair of bongos as well, which he crammed in an unconfirmed amount of roadside tacos. Truth be told, Half lived up to his name and ate half of each taco before he stuffed it into his bongos. Lastly, is our man Brandy pullin' a Stevie Wonder for the people. I will tell you what, something about that Pollo Asado/Chile Relleno combination in Brandy's drum made him go off that night. Right after this picture was taken Brandy actually stood up with drum in hand and started hootin' and hollerin' like a man fresh from a jam. A call and response soon erupted where in Brandy would yell, "Where's my Asado?" and the crowd would respond, "With my Relleno!"

Bottom line, shit went off. Although the promoters at the National Food Festival had issues with our hostile takeover of their jamstivities, ire was quickly extinguised when we shared with everyone the wonderful bounties found inside each drum.

The Illustrated Jam

On Friday, Brandy took down the fiesty Wolverine of Mutant Burrito Jams. The whole concept of Custom Combo burritos is growing on JamZone as Grape has, on at least one occasion, supplemented an El Metate-birthed Chile Verde Pork burrito Surf-andTurf-stylee with beaucoup strips of fried fish. Here is an illustrated guide to what Brandy did on Friday evening:

JAM x JAM

Every few months any serious Jammer simply needs IN-N-OUT. Actually if The Zone had its way, there would be an IN-N-OUT right on 24th St, and we would probably Jam it every other day.

Dreaming aside, a few of the Zone gentlemen will be hitting the highway tomorrow night for their fix, sometime after eight.

King has his sights set on a 4x4.

Ben Jammin is talking a 6x6.

Anybody else in?

In the Name of the 'Goon and General Tso

Vs.

What's even greater than the jam? The good people who gather to make it happen. On Saturday evening, shortly after posting up at the distinctly unjammable Papa Potrero's for some cheap suds to soothe the the Stoudemire-less Suns' loss at the hands of the formidable Dallas Mavericks, Brandy and King spied Half Later, Grape, and B of the Bs wandering up 24th Street, likely in search of an appropriate taco jam. With beery shouts, Brandy and King dashed outside, hailed their comrades, and bid them join an alternate jam possibility at nearby Punjab, King's favorite Chinese-American eatery. The five jamming jabronies set off together and soon found themselves seated around a large circular table in a deserted dining room nursing cold brews and empty stomachs, at the center of the table, a series of plated jams piping hot from the depths of the Punjab kitchen: crispy salt-and-pepper chicken wings, crab rangooooooon, vegetable potstickers, fried oysters, Szechuan tofu and broc, beef stir-fry, basil chicken and, of course, General Tso's chicken. Twenty minutes later, the dudes were jammed out.

For Brandy, despite having stuck to primarily meatless options throughout, the jam proved a diabolic dose of sodium and grease. Sluggish and dehydrated, his body had no will to suffer a night and morning of hard-drinking. Half Later, Grape, and King, however, rose to the occasion and took the party down to Jack's where they continued the jolly bro-jam -- with instruments and amps -- much to the amusement of fellow patrons. Late night, the self-abusive trio had the audacity to hit up Walgreen's for a variety of delicious frozen foods -- a pepperoni pizza, T.G.I. Fridays hot wings, and a Banquet chicken meal -- to satisfy the strange persistent hungers that swells rapidly after a tremendous beer-jam and a few potent bolts of Orange Crush.

By dinner-time the following night, all Grape could contemplate eating was a large bowl of raw broc and some steamed tofu slop. He calmly expressed his wish to opt out of any plans for a Classic Sunday Jam. King was undeterred. He begged Grape to partake in another jam and showed him menu after menu in an attempt to change his mind. Grape firmly stated he would not be bullied into sacrificing his health in the name of gastronomic excess. King would not back down. He knew he'd have only to whisper a gentle 'goony longing in Grape's ear to make the poor lad wilt. Sure enough, he did and the two dialed up another Punjab jam of more crab rangoon, wings, and General Tso's chicken.

Speaking of General Tso's, it will amuse JamZone readers to learn that there truly was a general named Tso. Before he became a glistening mound of batter-dipped hard-fried chicken nuggets drenched in a thick sauce of ginger, garlic, sesame, scallion, and soy, General Tso was a prominent military leader during the waning of China's Qing dynasty in the mid-1850's. During the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, he served with distinction, brutally crushing the rebels in four provinces.

According to Arthur W. Hummel's 1944 Library of Congress volume entitled "Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644-1912)", the Hunan Province-born Tso initially failed official court military exams on three occasions and proved, if only temporarily, a significant disgrace to his family. For a brief period, it looked like young Tso would amount to very little. After his academic failures, he returned home quietly, married a local lass, and took up some distinctly unwarlike activities, namely the farming of silkworms and tea. When the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, history came calling for Tso, now 38 years-old. After a short spell as a general's secretary, Tso raised a force of 5,000 volunteers and took the field, driving the Taiping rebels out of Hunan and Guangxi provinces, into coastal Zhejiang. From then on, he was a profoundly respected commander. Before his death in 1885, he was responsible for smashing a lesser revolt called the Nian Rebellion and, while on a western campaign, snatching Chinese Turkestan back from the clutches of Muslim rebels.

DMG Sign Up!!! This Weekend!!!

The Zone welcomes all Jammers to the first of the Dollar Menu Gauntlets, to be held this weekend. Of course we'll start out with the easiest of the DMGs, Burger King. To recap, it's a seven-course feast, and the order in which you Jam your $1 goodies is entirely up to you. But to safely navigate the Gauntlet means you gotta stick all these delights down your gullet: Whopper Jr, four chicken tenders, fries, onion rings, salad, apple pie and soda.

We'll have ribbons (edible ones, similar to Fruit Roll-Ups) for all the brave souls who can do the deed. Plus, the fastest jammer will be invited to curate the next DMG, either Wendy's triple-burger bomb or the Dessert Shitfest that is McDonalds.

Some Jammers are apparently taking DMG #1 more seriously than others. While rifling through King's personals the other night, JamZone found the following document:

"Tactical Guide to the DMG in the BK Theater"

1) Consolidation - Stuff two chicken fingers each into Whopper Jr. and

Apple Pie.

2) Sauce, the Unlikely Ally - Condiments will bloat and clog the internals in the long run. But in the short term, especially when applied to fistfuls of food, they will lube the throat and mouth, as well as some of the deeper internals. This makes the entire operation all that easier. Think at least 20 fries or eight onion rings per bite.

3) Soda Coda - Save it all until the end. Drink it at first and your JAM

chamber will expand with the bubbles. In between items and it's just

an inefficient use of valuable time. At the end it's flatter and you'll

desperately need some liquid to get you out of Sodium Shock, so you'll

drink it much more quickly.

So RSVP in the comments section, and please indicate your preferred time. We're thinking Sunday dinner, around 8:00 or so.

The Buffet: Jam On It

Be it Chinese, Indian, Wedding, Western Sizzlin', Sizzler, Wendy's, a Cruise Line, Pizza Hut, or the Family Reunion, the buffet is both reason to celebrate and reason to jam hard. Grape just returned from a weekend wedding jam fest which may have well been entitled, The Wedding: A Succession of Jams. The wedding buffet was insane: cheese plates, check, vegi platters, check, dessert table, check, and the rarely overlooked open bar jam, check please. Needless to say Grape represented hard and often on the East Coast. Capped things off with a quick stop at the East Coast Summer BBQ jam, one of the most delightful jams around, before jamming in another round of Flight Jam.