Harvey Ott Makes an Ass of Himself

           The local tv station had a nightly Animal Hour show, sandwiched between the Game Show Hour and the Nine O’Clock Flick. On this particular night, Harvey Ott guessed all the right answers on the game show hour, and then looked forward to The Animal Hour (his personal favorite), then he had a Rutger Hauer starring-vehicle at nine to check out. The animal show was his favorite, because he never liked to leave the confines of his couch, or one of his several jobs that he has held over his long and not so illustrious career. For one hour a night he was transported to a different world. A dangerous world. A dog-eat-dog world. He never lived dangerously and always practiced a simple and satisfying life.

            That night there was a fascinating little show about the South American Sloth. Harvey could relate.

            A recent college grad, Harvey felt he was ready for the real-world but always felt a strong connection to working normal everyday jobs. The kind he loved to work every summer away from school. He loved all of his past jobs, which included a little of this and a little of that. Jobs like the child’s photography gig at the mall. He never minded all the googly faces and “Say purple potatoes!” in public as long as he could woo the parents to buy big, which they often did.

            Or take his job at the bowling alley as a Snackbar Attendant. League nights were the best. The fatter the bowler, the better the bowler. Thus, he always made sure to stock up on plenty of fried chicken strips, bacon (sautéed then fried in the deep fryer), and plenty of heavy beers borrowed from the bowling alley bar. After all, when you’re in the middle of rolling a turkey you wouldn’t want to wait at the bar in a line with a bunch of kids ordering goofy mixed drinks and always waiting for the bartender to ID some punks. It screwed up with their momentum.

Having a Bad Day?

Having a bad day?

Go home.

Take a shower, one with a big glass of red wine on hand.

Get dinner on,

and put "Ramblin' Rose" on.

One Good Italian Beer

Last night at Monk's, me and Brittany indulged and splurged  on a bottle of Baladin Super Sour 2004, (we thought it was 2005, but oh well). It was the second time I had this beer, the first was at Teresa's, and even then I thought it was excellent.

There aren't many good Italian beers out there, and really that's only because Italy isn't really known for their beer or beer drinkers. The two big ones you see here in America, Peroni and Birra Moretti are OK. Peroni reminds me a little bit of Heineken, maybe a little better. Birra Moretti is the better of the two, but the last one I drank had a strange metallic-malty taste.

Baladin Super Sour is perfectly sour. It doesn't have that phlegm-y effect that some Geuzes and Lambics have on the mouth. It's an 8% sour that doesn't have a strong alcohol taste, sort of like Russian River Consecration that has a similar ABV, but lacks that high alcohol flavor. It's a lighter beer than Consecration for sure, pouring a golden reddish color. My only complaint is that at first the smell can be a bit overpowering, almost like cheese dipped in vinegar and beer. But thankfully, that's all in the smell and the taste is rather pleasant.

The bartender at Monk's explained to us that Baladin originally made this as a Lager, but the batch got infected and they just decided to add the sour-inducing yeast during fermentation. When I looked up a review of the beer on Beer Advocate, I wasn't surprised that the one review it had was a D+...I still enjoyed it, but I think the strong smell and sour taste may be off-putting to some.

If you're looking for something funky to drink, definitely check out Baladin Super Sour 2004 or 2005.

Top 10 Things Learned from "The Expendables"

"The Most Awesome Action
Movie Cast Ever Assembled..."

1.Who’d win in a fight between Stallone and Stone Cold Steve Austin?...Steroids?

2.Jet Li is the shortest Asian to ever kick Dolph Lundgren in the face.

3.One thing we didn’t learn…What language Dolph Lundgren speaks.

4.Not only can Steve Austin wrestle…he can also waterboard with the best of em.

5.Mickey Rourke is the wisest assassin-turned-tattoo artist-turned Rastafarian haircut to be put to film.

6.Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the next President…of Planet Hollywood.

7.The action movie scene where the heroes plant explosive charges everywhere is too good to not have a ten-minute long montage.

8. The Black guy doesn’t always die first, especially when he gets the Uranium-Bullet Shotgun…somewhere Samuel L. Jackson, Apollo Creed, and the Black dude from “Enter The Dragon” yell out a big “Harumph”.

9.When cameramen are exposed to constant explosions and dudes talking work-out regiments, the camera is just bound to be shaky.

10. The best thing to do after blowing up a war-torn country is to head home, down some brews with some brah’s, play some darts, and give each other a thumbs-up.

The L.o.v.e Virus

            Dr. Hugh Milton was sweating.  The anticipation was unbearable and despite the freezing morgue-like temperature setting in his laboratory, Dr. Milton just sweat everywhere.  “Potential after-effects?” thought the Doctor, who wiped his lower back with the back of his hand noting the cold pool of sweat that gathered there.

            Overlooking his long rectangular lab station, one full of various test-tubes, beakers and colorful liquids boiling away on small hot plates, there was a huge ceiling fan that was sucking in a grayish colored smoke that emanated from his station. It goes through several floors in this underground complex, up through a main chimney where it mixes with a few other possibly noxious substances until it’s released like a geyser into the ozone.

            Milton wasn’t concerned with the ozone however. His studies show that only 1% of lab mice had any reaction to the smoke. And that 1% was of no concern, even if it did explode one night. Milton breathed in. “That was early on” he thought and what really mattered was the clear liquid that slowly dripped into a small vial at the end of his lab station. Quite a spectacle he thought, and even though he would have his vial full by the end of the night, it would be a long time before it could ever be mass-produced. The shear amount of ingredients and power and heat and cold and miles of glass and tubing and expensive and loud air vacuums it would take to make another vial was out of the question. It would have to be right.

           Must be right.

"Machete" Review...Keep Making B-Movies!!

Recently, I was invited to a free screening of "Machete", Robert Rodriguez's newest genre flick that can be best described as Mex-Ploitation. The film started as a fake trailer during the "Grindhouse" trailer and intermission set, and was expanded into a full feature length film. 


The film follows an ex-federale (played by the much deserved Danny Trejo) who is a day-laborer on the Texas-Mexico border. He is asked to kill a Senator who refers to the Mexican immigrants as roaches. He is then double-crossed and the Senator gets the sympathy vote. What happens afterwards is an hour and a half of crazy violence and sex as. Machete becomes a cult leader and leads a small Mexican revolution against the Border Patrol. But for those who can get past gaps in logic, buckets of blood, and Lindsay Lohan's breasts you may come across the smartest film to come out of a major studio all summer. It takes a recent hot-topic and flips it upside down, displaying a cartoonish argument for what it really is, a fucking CARTOON.


It delivers the goods on action and humor, and is absolutely the only politically-minded major release to come out in a long time. Which is funny considering the end of the film's trailer shows Machete jumping over a ball of fire on a motorcycle and firing a mini-gun from the bike's handlebar.