Well, if you are reading this, chances are you haven't received the printed invitation yet. However, rest assured, you are indeed invited! All you have to do is RSVP and instructions on finding the party will follow. Either send an email to the address on the invitation, or submit a comment to this post (and yes, this posted picture does not have the email address. I'm avoiding spam). Either way, you are in the door!
Today, I'm keeping holy the Sabbath by brewing beer. I find it reflective and contemplative. The sweet, malty, cereal aromas make me think of simpler times. I still haven't made final decisions regarding what to brew, but these two have made the cut:
My first beer today is a Lemon Coriander Weiss. Wheat beers are very popular among the anti-beer crowd, so I thought this would be good for the 'Fest. It has very few specialty grains and a lot of liquid malt- 1 1/2 gallons! I discarded the package of pre-ground coriander and ground my own. I didn't know how olde the grind was and worried it would taste like dust, as most preground spices can. I was right. After I finished the grind, I opened the spice grinder and was met with the tart, sweet aroma of lemons and young herbs. This flavor should go nicely with the tartness of the wheat beer. I noticed that the flock from the specialty grains is coagulating in the brew as it boils. I have only brewed 20-minute boil kits of wheat beers before, so this is new to me. I don't know if it's normal or not. Initial gravity: 1.056 (yes I finally caved and bought a hydrometer to measure alcohol content).
Second to be brewed is Hex Nut Brown. I picked it because it's my brother's favorite of my brews. Of course, I was boiling it when I started writing this post, and it boiled over. Darn! It's amusing because I have a 10-gallon pot to brew five gallons…and just last night I was joking it's the only pot in the kitchen that I don't boil over. Anyway, the toasty grains smell delicious. Intial gravity: 1.049
I hope never to brew two in one day again. My day is shot. I sanitized two carboys, lots of tubing, my new wine thief, hydrometer, and various pot fittings. I've stirred, mashed, malted, heated, stirred, boiled, cooled, and pitched…twice. I'm tired. This reminds me why I only do the partial-mash kits. "Real" homebrewers don't use any malt extracts; they create it all from the raw grain. The kits are a little less expensive, but I just don't see myself doing it. It takes several hours longer to mash all that grain. I think I'd have to move up to ten gallon batches to make it worth the time, and then I'd need all-new equipment for sparging, fermenting, et cetera. Plus, I love to try new kits so making huge batches wouldn't suit my desire to try tons of stuff.
OK, time to go watch a movie.
What's with the name Ericson Core? Sounds like a Battlestations pilot name. Look at his son's name. Huh?
Against my better judgement, I went to see a movie in a theater. I was immediately annoyed by the lack of stadium seating and by the cigarette burns on the screen. The theater was also showing the movie in digital, but that showing started at 10:50PM and I was too tired to stay awake that long.
I might want to cringe when I see Disney making a film, but I shouldn't. I think they learned a lesson with Pirates of the Carribbean. A movie can look good and be written well even if it's not edgy Touchstone material. Disney did continue its long history of main characters with only one parent. In this case, it's a true story, but stilllllll. Do audiences feel more compassion automatically because of the lack of nuclear family?
The scenery of the film was great. I love the dirty feel of South Philadelphia. The streets were littered, the despair palpable. Even better was the point-counterpoint of the brilliant look of the scenes shot in the context of professional football: sparkling white-and-bright scenes full of clean hope. Thanks to the NFL for allowing this movie to be officially licensed, too. Seeing fake teams in a movie is as irritating to me as 555 phone numbers.
There is grit here, and it's depressing. The working class of America is on full display and it isn't pretty. There are those who want a hero but there are also those who want to pull every crab back down in the bucket with them.
Mark Wahlberg has the je ne sais crois to make this role perfect. I would say that his greatest feat as an actor is picking the right roles. Papale is not shown as a man of great passion, so Wahlberg's restrained acting range is perfect. He immediately drew me into caring about his character. His love interest, played by Elizabeth Banks, drew a mixed review from me: I wanted to like this shining star of a man's man's woman, but her performance did not always deliver. There were great scenes, like in the Eagles stadium wearing her Giants gear, that she nailed. She managed to be beautiful and the center of attention and admiration while being a complete pariah. But occasionally, such as in the bar reciting her favorite player's stats, when her lines seemed disjointed from the rest of the dialogue. It almost seemed as if the director reshot those lines and the original scene's feel was lost. Banks looked more like she was reciting than being.
Yeah, it's Disney, it's uplifting. But it's a true story and sometimes what a nation needs is a hero.
[rate 3.5]
editor's note: oh, and now I'm totally stoked about football season.
You know, sometimes I have a hard time wasting my energy on reviewing films. While this isn't a zero-star clucker, I was not impressed.
The scenery of this motion picture is beautiful. It opens with chiron over fall foliage of a gorgeous prep school campus. The actors are pretty and the views are beautiful. I particularly like the color palette of the outdoors: the school uniforms coordinate with the fall colors, and the redhead siren's hair is a perfect punch of color. But on to the plot…
This bunch of high school kids plays a game that becomes too much like reality. The leader of the group, Dodger, is an attractive redhead with no acting skills. I say she has no acting skills because I think she's just acting like herself. I saw her screen test and she was dressed like a stripper. An attractive stripper, yes, but she wasn't trying to get the part based on the merit of her read alone.
About ten minutes into the movie, I realized that I didn't care at all about the main character, Owen. I think he was supposed to be some sort of British heartthrob but I just couldn't care. The dialogue was written with the slow crayon simpleness of a George Lucas script, so I can blame not just the actor but the writing.
Several scenes that would normally have really scared me were merely interesting. They had predictable slasher suspense, with minor-key music and eye-of-the-victim camera work. This stuff scares me every time. However, because I was not interested in the plot, these scenes often fell flat.
There is a late plot twist that is interesting. As it dawns on the character who discovers it, the movie uses a lazy device: showing previous scenes that should have given us the clues. I often feel that if the scene didn't resonate the first time, then the film maker didn't do his/her job.
The death scenes are shot in the same flashback, gritty quality of CSI. Except CSI does it a little better.
Maybe I'm too old to care about teenager-style movies. Maybe I'm not, and I should just watch one that isn't awful.
[rate 1]
I don't see many comedies. There are two reasons: the first is just mechanics;I'm not in charge of writing the Netflix queue. Second, most comedies are not that great. How many times have I seen a movie preview for a comedy and thought, "well, I think I just saw every funny line in that movie." With that said, I truly love comedy.
As my TiVo will tell, the summer hiatus has been good for me. The stored dramas are staying stored; I don't think I can care about another dead body on CSI or watch another orange-clad detective on CSI Miami. Why does the costumer put everyone in orange? It's not the new black.
Oh, wait. I'm supposed to be writing a movie review!
Anyway, I love comedies but tend to watch television sitcoms instead of movies. In 22 minutes, they tall a lot of throwaway jokes and it makes me laugh. I had kind of a bad day and this movie's been on my TiVo for months, so I watched it.
It was hilarious. As a former soap opera (what's the PC term now? Daytime serial drama?) watcher, the jokes were hilarious. They even had good sight gags- one character, Bolt (of course named something silly), never wears anything but spaghetti string tak tops and tight workout shorts. He also has the requisite glistening skin. The only costuming that fell flat was the tweetie bird reference.
Kevin Kline simply shines in his role. I fell in love with his comedic style during Dave, and it is alive in this earlier film too. His intelligent deadpan is brilliant. Sally Field's trumped-up overacting is great also. I can't even look at Garry Marshall without laughing because he's so funny. The "play within a play" style of the movie delivers comedy, irony, and a dash of self-deprecation that is so necessary in a campy film like this one.
I laughed out loud more times than I can count. I know the movie is fifteen years old but it is worth watching. And a note to current comedy directors: look! No stupid jokes about genitalia nor scatology! A movie doesn't have to be disgusting to be funny!
[rate 4]
On my way home from work, I was rejoicing about my four-day weekend. I was on a three-lane interstate preparing to exit when the truck in front of me braked. Mildly irritated, I braked to avoid rear-ending him. Then I saw a creature running for his life- an opossum.
(editor's note: opossum or possum? What's in a name? I tried to google and other word nerds are also stymied. I shall use "possum" from this point in my story)
So he somehow made it across the second lane of traffic, despite the fact it was rush hour. I continued to watch him in my rear-view mirror and felt panicky and hopeful that he'd make it across. He was so frightened at this point that in his all-out mad gallop, he stumbled into the third lane. I saw a huge RV headed for him. The RV didn't swerve nor appear to brake. I can't blame the driver; it happened in a split second and he/she may not have had time to react. The huge vehicle bore down on the creature running for his life and I watched as a big black tire swallowed him whole.
I flicked on my turn signal and exited.
Even though the entire event took only a second or two, I was wide-eyed with a sort of disbelief. That animal died for no cause. He spent the last moments of his life in abject terror. The only good thing to say is that his death was probably relatively painless. But his carcass will lie in the road and be run over time and time again until it is unrecognizable.
I drove in silence for a few minutes, then inexplicably started to cry. I think it started when I saw him stumble in his panicked state. He didn't seem like an ugly, smaller version of an ROUS, he seemed like a creature running for his life. Sure, I'm smarter than he. But do I have more purpose? I'm not going to wax philosophical here, because I didn't while I drove home. I could think of nothing but how sad it was that he was so scared and then so dead.
I came home and petted my sweet, bratty doggie and wondered if the possum had babies that will starve now.
I could make this some powerfully poignant reflection on life and death, but I won't. The possum died and I cried. How weird is that?
IMDb link
As always, the reviews of others pre-colored my thoughts of this movie. I had heard that it was difficult to understand the plot switches. This little piece of forewarning was very helpful, because I was sure to concentrate. Even so, some of the plot was too tangled in badly constructed dialogue.
This movie was full of quotes. Someone would say a line, and I would want to jot notes so I could use it later, gems such as “it’s not racist if it’s positive” and “corruption is why we win.” I think the writer may have been so busy filling the movie with profundity that he forgot plot movement and clarity is vital in the American market.
Some of the lack of clarity may have been intentional. Three plotlines interweave and the theme that binds them is often the confusion of the characters or oil ruining their lives because the culture of oil is a tangled web. There is no absolute good or evil in the film and each person makes decisions based upon their reality at the moment.
My problem with the movie is that there are two audiences of viewers: those that believe the film is more of a documentary than fiction and those that think none of the film’s concepts are plausible. Both insulate themselves from the fact that we do not know that truth and cannot suppose to understand the climate of oil culture.
Whether truth or fiction, I started thinking more about how much I dislike our oil gluttony. I think E85 is only a crutch used by automakers who don’t want to really leap into alternative fuels; however, it is quickly renewable and its source can be grown almost anywhere in the world. Then again, it takes energy to make it, and it only delivers 66% of gasoline’s energy per gallon, and the facts are so politically charged that who knows where the truth lies.
Hey…wait…I’m talking about energy in the middle of a movie review. Maybe the director accomplished his purpose.
If you want to feel like you’re seeing something that is “high art,” good for you, you should rent this. If you just want to watch a superhero save us from ourselves, there are better choices.
[rate 3]
I racked the Scottish ale Saturday morning and tasted the first bit from the siphon in a small wine glass. While I like the two beers (a hefeweiss and a bourbon barrel ale) I have on tap right now, this beer is more delicious than either of them. It is quite cloudy so I need to be sure to clear the yeast before kegging.
I have picked my Oktoberfest beers! In addition to the Scottish Ale I ordered and made a week ago, I will be brewing Hex Nut Brown with American Ale yeast, Belgian Tripel with Belgian yeast, and last year’s taste test winner, Oatmeal Stout. That means the only “new” brew will be the Scottish, as I’ve brewed all three of these at previous Oktoberfests. But will the guests care it’s not new? Doubtful that they remember, much less care! I hope not. I do have a lemon coriander Weiss that might also make the cut.
I chose these three because that will mean that all four beers this year will have distinctively different yeast. I think in the future I’d like to mimic the “vertical tasting” concept done with wine: the same grape and vineyard is tasted through several vintages. I’d like to make several of the same type of beer with different yeast, or have four with all the same yeast, or something else so that the beers can be better compared.
This year will be a mesclun just like always. Now, what food to serve: traditional or no? Usually, I go with sauerbraten, wursts, and a variety of breads and whole-grain mustards straight from Germany. No matter how much I make or buy, I almost never have leftovers. I’m thinking that with the distinctively non-German beers I might instead have four stations of complimentary food pairings.
Scottish Ale: A delicious meal in itself. So malty and sweet…can’t think of good pairings
Lemon Coriander Weiss: salsa, guacamole
Hex Nut Brown: white bean dip, fried mashed potatoes
Belgian Tripel: grilled fruit, baklava
Oatmeal Stout: Chocolate cake, cheesecake, macadamia-crusted something
The nice thing about all of these (except the fried potatoes) is that they can easily be made ahead. Even the mashed potatoes can be made and rolled ahead, then quickly fried. The other difficulty is it looks like most of the dishes are sweet, not savory, and I’m not a big sweets fan.
Well, now I’m just yammering with no point. I need to order the beers and start brewing!
As I left home this morning, I was mourning the loss of a trip to Burning Man. I saw the culture class epicenter moving ever westward as I drove southward to Kentucky.
I don’t like Kentucky. If you’re from New York or LA, you are probably laughing at my Indiana snobbery. Indiana and Kentucky are more similar than dissimilar. I didn’t know until I was an adult that the “stupid Kentuckian” jokes were told as “stupid Hoosier” jokes south of the Ohio. But my prejudice still surfaces and I prefer Indiana. Amusingly, I prefer Indiana because Indianapolis doesn’t seem as prejudiced as Louisville.
But lately I’ve been luxuriating in All Things Cornfield. As I was driving a few weeks ago, I noticed that the corn was so high I couldn’t see the roof of my house from the road. I passed fields of soybeans and large family gardens full of ripening produce. I saw wizened farmers with handmade “tomato’s” signs and smiled for loving their simpleness. I decided to relish Indiana and its changing seasons: no longer mourning the shortening days but instead living in each moment.
Two weeks ago, my mother brought me fresh sweet corn. She’d traded it from the receptionist at her doctor’s office. I joked that soon she’d be paying the doctor with a new goat or something, but the corn was sweeter than any I’ve tasted in years.
Last week, my parents came to my house with a batch of tomatoes from their garden, freshly picked and in a recycled cereal bag. I cut into the first one. Under the skin was a deep, deep, garnet red of such beauty I almost photographed it. The sun was setting and beams of gold light cut into my kitchen, highlighting the tomato flesh. I quartered five tomatoes, sprinkled them with kosher salt, and ate them warm as I stood in the waning sunlight filtered through the corn in my backyard.
Every day for two weeks, one of my coworkers has brought in produce from her garden. Tomatoes, cucumbers for pickling, yellow squash, eggplant. She places them on a filing cabinet free for anyone to take. Some people don’t "get" it, but I see her as caring and loving of all of us as she offers us the fruits of her labor.
So back to today. I’m not wanting to leave my comfy home, leave my doggy with my parents, and hike to Kentucky to listen to folks talk badly about their friends or gab unapprovingly about other people who aren’t like them. I pouted that my desire to be artistic was going to be suppressed by a weekend of shuffling closer to losing all creative touch.
Then I came here and unwound a little. When the heat of the day was subsiding, we adjourned to the vegetable garden and started picking tomatoes for dinner. The earthy smell of tomato vines took me back to being eight in my dad’s garden. I would pick vegetables with my siblings and it would inevitably end in a game of chase with rotten tomatoes flying!
We picked tomatoes, hot peppers, watermelon. We discussed pickling beets and the best kinds of refrigerator pickles- English cukes with vinegar, salt, garlic, onions. And yes, despite being triple the age I remembered, a rotten tomato was thrown. We ate a cold supper in the kitchen, just like Mrs. Belden used to make for Brian, Mart, Bobby, and Trixie. (If I’ve lost you there, we’ll catch up later.) We quietly read the day’s paper or magazines. Someone mentioned watermelon and the men walked to the garden, peering at the melon patch in the twilight. Under the vine-covered arbor, we spread newspapers on a metal wicker table and quartered the two-foot-long melon with a machete. We ate with abandon in a way only acceptable in the outdoors: stickily slurping melon juice and spitting seeds onto the newspaper. I don’t know if the partial darkness helped us all feel masked, but with the lax manners, we also talked more. We laughed and carried on and I ate a pound or two of sweet pink melon without caring that the juice dripped down my chin.
I guess my point, if this is pointy at all, is that I found beauty in the simple things. I allowed myself to live slowly, to retreat from the concept of Big Art by Big Artists, and saw the gorgeous color that the real world can bring. I saw my narcissistic angsty pouting as an excuse to feel sorry for myself, which is possibly one of the most useless feelings to have. I realized that I could take what I saw and translate it into art of my own, even if it only becomes the e-words on the e-page you’re reading. I saw that I could drink in these experiences and enjoy the flavors and textures presented to me by the bountiful harvest of the Midwest.
Even in Kentucky.
Sometimes I think I live in this tiny little world and have no idea about anything. A cowboy with no horse; a deipnosophist with no drivel. I feel kinda like the day I first discovered Firefly. How have I never heard of this? And this, this is even more so.
During my Gen Con carpool, I first heard of a little, tiny art show called Burning Man. After researching it, I realized that to call it "little" or a "show" or even merely "art" was a misnomer. It's like calling Gen Con a little gaming party. I started reading about Burning Man a couple of days ago and realized how left in the dust I am.
I have an artist inside that craves to come out, but I never find the time. I pour my talent into other things: cooking, RPGs, even mini painting. Minis…well, sure, they're art, but let's not kid anyone: I get EXP from my GM too. Ever the multitasker am I. All of the art of mine that is on display in my house is at least ten years old.
Then I hear of and read about this place where people not only view art, but live and breathe it to a level I can scarcely comprehend. I want to be challenged like that. I want to sit in front of a statue for three hours and not say a word. I want to stand in front of a light installation for 30 seconds and be unable to stop yammering because of the excitement. I want to talk art with artists and arties who know far more than I, and who can teach me so much. I want to feel awkward in the face of great art.
Burning Man takes my emotions one step further and burns them. It's not a painting where I can look at one brushstroke, so lovingly placed, and my eyes well with tears. It is art that feeds on itself, and thus mirrors the fact that the art's experience is fed by those who experience it.
Here I am on the raggedy edge of the emotions I feel and the sad hole where my artist's soul used to be. I am envious of those who allow themselves to go to this weeklong indulgence. I wish I could be as free. I wish I would let myself.
IMDb link
IMDb link
IMDb link