Fade to Black

Beer Review:

Chocolate coffee sweet molassasy thick feel bite of hops. This is a good black ale. You have to be in a dark beer  mood to drink it, but you’ll be rewarded if you do. There’s so much flavor inside this bottle, the smell of dark chocolate, the taste of strong coffee. It has a thick sweet texture with a formidable bite of hops at the end. At 8% ABV it’s pretty strong, so a 6 pack will probably do you in for the night. But the beer is so strong tasting that I’d recommend stopping at 3.  Overall it’s just a good beer that I will seek out again.

Bottle Review:

This may be one of the best designed bottles that I’ve seen in a while. I could be that I’m really into this old english ribbon-y font right now, but I think it’s timeless.  The cut of the label and how it’s just filled with so many details that it almost becomes texture. You kind of just feel like a badass when you’re drinking it. When a beer is called ‘Fade to Black Ale’ you need an awesome bottle to match it.

Schu-Review : 4 out of 5 Schus

Maybe someday I’ll get too old to wear skate shoes. I’ve cut back on the styles I wear. I probably won’t be getting those hot pink and black ones again. I just get plain styles and colors. Bit I couldn’t pass these up on Whiskey Militia for $25.  GMU colored skate shoes! Even if I only wear them with Mason clothes it’ll be worth it.

van no. 32 (green and yellow), originally uploaded by Orrin.

Yesterday Laurel called me because her car (1994 Saab 9000) wouldn’t go into drive at a red light. She shifted into reverse and back to drive and it started again. Turns out that her transmission fluid was low. But it got me thinking about having to buy a new car if Laurel’s starts to die.

My first car was a 1987 Chevy Van 20 that had been the family van for about 10 years before it was passed down to me. This meant that I was ‘The Van Guy’ for all my friends. I drove them around and I carried lots of crap around with me. So I have a special place in my heart for vans. Aesthetically I just like their shape, they’re like the rounded-rectangle tool of vehicle design. But they do have sort of a stigma among the ‘Normal non-van owning people’ that the people inside them may either be pedophiles or just crazy people living inside them. Part of me wants a sweet airbrushed mural on the side, but that may be taking it too far.

Is my desire to own a sweet custom van greater than my desire to fit in with normal society? We’ll have to see!

Stitch the Lids

I’ve been really interested in custom lettering for a long time now. I’ve just started producing work that I’m happy with. There’s something abotu custom lettering and fonts that appeals to both sides of my personality. It has the creative influence of finding out where each letter is going and how they’re interact with eachother. Then comes in the technical side of getting it into illustrator. But then my obsessive side takes over and I get lost trying to make everything exactly right. I think my work suffers here, I try to line everything up too much and it all  ends up being too exact and looking a little stiff. But I’m working on it.

Snowmageddon 2010, originally uploaded by pillpusher.

Still pictures make us look like we actually know what we’re doing. Like this one where I look like a complete badass.