Last night Laurel and I ventured out of our own little rabbit hole and went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D at Fairfax Corner. She had been bugging me for weeks to see this, I had been interested but I had fears of it being like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory^W. Which I did not like…

So which was it? Terrible or Awesome?

Find out more after the break?

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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

I don’t give a shit about 80’s metal and this is still the best documentary I have seen all year. Hell it might be the best movie that I’ve seen all year. I just connected with these guys so much. It’s the reason I love documentaries, these are real people. They aren’t some characters thought up by writers. They have real problems, real emotions, and real heart.

Through the movie you see how much promise and success they had back in the beginning and then they just kind of went nowhere, but they never gave up. Now it’s 30 years later and they’re still trying to make it. The movie focuses on the lead singer and drummer of Anvil. The lead singer ‘Lips’ is the one in the band who won’t let the dream die, he works at a catering company and takes vacation time to play shows. There are people in his life that you can see don’t share his vision and don’t really support him. But his girlfriend and older sister stick with him no matter what. Maybe that’s the part that really resonated personally with me? The other main character is the drummer, Robb Reiner (not the actor/director). He and Lips have this rocky ‘Brothers in Metal’ relationship that creates some intense emotional moments through out the film. When the ending comes you are so emotionally invested in this band that they really feel like family.

I cannot believe that this movie didn’t even get nominated for best documentary in the Academy Awards. The only close competition I would give it was The Cove and that for me is a distant second. Food Inc., the front runner for the award, was NOTHING compared to this movie. ANVIL doesn’t need flashy graphics or voice overs, it thrives on basic human spirit. The story of Anvil provided enough emotion for 10 movies.

If you have a heart and a dream, you will love this movie.

watch the trailer
buy the music

Schu-Review : 5 out of 5 Schus

*UPDATE*
Apparently this movie came out in 2007, but since I just watched it last week. I’m still calling it the best documentary of 2009.

Long name, short number.

Beer Review:

This beer has a very long name, I mean seriously… it’s 7 words long and they aren’t short words either. It’s made in Williamsburg, VA which is about 3.5 hours from my house and always makes me think of being in the 4th grade.  The first thing I thought of when drinking this beer was how thick it was and how much I liked the smell. It has one of those sugary, molassassy, caramely barley wine tastes.  After the first sip you notice the bite of hops. A big bite like a gnarly dog made out of tiny green leaves. the hops sting the nostrils with their pungent aroma. It’s a formidible scent.  After you get that kick of hops the alcohol comes at the end and stomps you in the tounge again. The beer leaves your mouth feeling tight like it was once covered in shag carpeting then ripped out. But this is a good thing! This beer reminds you why your drinking American Craft Beer and not some macro-brew swill.

Bottle review:

Unlike the beer inside the bottle and label are pretty plain. Reminds me of visiting Williamsburg, the people get dressed up as colonial folk, but you’re still aware that they are a dentist from Newport News. The only fun element is the spark in the middle and the ridiculously long name.

Conclusion:

I like this beer. You’re not going to win any hipster friends with the bottle. But the beer inside is what counts anyway. Its a strong thick barley wine in a style that I think Patrick Henry would approve of.

4 out of 5 Schus

Delicious Spicy Pickles

I love pickles. Recently I’ve been indulging more in my addiction to vinegar soaked cucumber slices. I could sit down to watch some tv and eat an entire jar of dill spears. I don’t know if I should be proud of this, but I just love pickles.

I saw this jar in my local pickle isle and I knew that I had to have it. It tastes like pickles soaked in jalapeno juice, which if you don’t like then get the frak off my blog. It’s delicious. when you first bite into it you think to yourself “Man, this is such a waste, it tastes just like a regular pickle” then after a few seconds you start to taste that faint hint of jalapeno and you think… “Now that’s more like it, this is the pickle experience I paid for”. The after taste is ALL jalapeno juice, which is a bit overpowering, but if you eat another one real quick it lessens the pain.. until you run out of pickles and have nothing but your tears to quench the burning.

4 out of 5 Schus

Old Man Winter

First off. I love Southern Tier beers. I’ve been sting that since my first sip of Unearthly Ipa. But I’ve come to think I should be saying,  I love Southern Tier beers that come in big bottles. I like almost every one that comes in the 22ounce bottles, but every time I get a six pack of ST, it’s just so… regular.

Its not like this is a bad beers, it’s just so ordinary. I mean it’s 100 times better than a keystone light, so lets not get crazy. It just has that bitter dry mouth hoppy flavor that is the signature of so many microbrews out there. I’m gonna rate it right in the middle, just average.

2.5 schus

Chapter 1: Backstory.

This movie came out in 2007 and for some reason I had never watched it. I like the director’s first movie, Donnie Darko^W, but something had been stopping me from actually sitting down and watching Southland Tales^W. I heard that it was bad, but I’ve liked bad movies before (The Island, Terminator Salvation). Laurel was working on Friday night so I decided that I was bored enough to watch it.

I was unprepared.

To say this movie is bad is a disservice to other bad movies. You know when a movie is so bad it’s good? (Road House) Well this movie was heading there then it would snap back to good for a second, then dive headlong into a shit storm of terrible, then it would try to redeem itself, then it would snap off into a vat of crazy.This movie is so insane that it will make you question your own sanity.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

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This wasn’t one of those albums that grabbed me right away, but I knew that there was something I liked about it. I think he’s finally, in my mind, moved out of novelty act territory. He’s no longer “that Hasidic jewish guy” who raps and sings reggae, this is actual good music. Like much of the reggae genre the themes of hope and fun permeate the album. There’s just something about this music that makes me happy. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to get out there and do something positive in the world.

The first track, “Smash Lies”, starts the album with a crowd pleasing energy and tempo and is one of my favorite tracks. The rest of the album is less reggae and moves into more reggae-influenced rock and pop, but it’s the peaceful attitude that ties it all together. The third track and possibly the radio single, “One Day”, is so hopeful for the future it almost crosses into cheesy. There are some songs that I might skip through if they came on by themselves, but they’re so much in the flow on the album that I don’t notice till they’re over. I know it’s just music and it wont “really” change anything, but it makes you think it’s possible, in a Michael Franti^W sort of way. The whole sound of the album is a bit like a jumble of Franti, MGMT^W, and SOJA^W

Schu-Review : 4/5 Schus

The Pumking

I could smell this beer for an hour.

It reminds me of the pumpkin milkshake from McDonalds… and that is a good thing. There is a strong vanilla flavor that is topped with a solid taste of pumkin pie and finished with nutmeg and spice. The beer is thick, almost like milk which adds to the milkshake vibe. At 9% alchohol and in a 22 oz bottle it’s not something you (should) drink a lot of at one sitting. But I have to stop myself from drinking more than one at a sitting.

Laurel wasn’t so excited about this one. But I can’t get enough of it.

Yet again, Southern Tier, FOR THE WIN

4/5 Schus

I’ve been drinking tea more at the office. This is partly because I’ve gotten tired of paying 2 bucks for a cup of Starbucks and also because the coffee they make in the office tastes like they made it with pinto beans instead of coffee. Usually I have the regular Lipton tea (there’s a big box of it in the cabinet) but sometimes I find some other kind to try. Today I found a straggler, a single bag of Echinacea Tea that someone must have cleaned out of their desk. I’m no stranger to eating or drinking things that other people have discarded so I thought it would be OK.

At first smell I could tell that something was going to be different about this cup. It had a weird smell of pine or maybe mint. It could have been the mint I was eating… but I wasn’t sure. I let the bag soak for a few minutes to make sure I was getting the full experience. When I finally did drink the tea… it was weird. But not in weird enough for me to stop drinking it, plus I was really tired and needed something. It was like I dipped a mint/pine air freshner into the cup along with the teabag.

I was going to quit drinking it when it hit me. It wasn’t like when you finally wake up after a cup of coffee, it was this weird ‘out there’ feeling. I think it was my chakra opening up, or maybe my third eye, this is yogi tea after all. It was a really pleasant experience. It made drinking this awful liquid worth it. This might be because of the tea, but I did find it in a cabinet at work, so it might have been there for years absorbing all the spiritual energy from hundreds of disgruntled HUD workers.

3/5 Schus