Scary Oktoberfest

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday night, Izzy & I watched the movie “Pet Sematary” which… personally is one the creepiest Stephen King properties that I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t seen it in many years, so I wanted to see if it stood the test of time (since I’ve been disappointed by more than a few like “Maximum Overdrive” & “IT” when watching as an adult). In fact, I may make a Stephen King Movie List one of these days after rewatching a few more… and playing the Stephen King Drinking Game… but yeah, this was made in the late 80’s so peak Stephen King popularity & probably one of his most famous. The story is… wait for it… set in rural Maine, and follows the tale of a young family of four who just moved into their dream house (along a freeway full of speeding semi-trucks) and they had a giant, elderly neighbor Jud (played by Fred Gwynne aka Herman Munster) who befriends them… but seems a little on edge. The family starts having weird dreams & hallucinations… but nothing major. Well, the family cat dies… and rather than just tell the daughter & have her deal with her first loss in life… Jud suggests “another way” and leads the father to an ancient Indian burial ground… and he buries the cat. The next day, the cat comes back… but he’s not nearly as nice… and the daughter is having prophetic dreams of what happened… and I’ll just say that sh*t REALLY hits the fan when (during some of the worst parental supervision since “The Walking Dead”) their two-year old gets plowed by a semi-truck! Long story short, the movie holds up pretty damn well! There’s a side story about the wife & her crippled sister (though played by a dude) and the events of her death… and it’s pretty damn terrifying. Two-year old Miko Hughes makes his debut as the demon child… and there’s obvious creepiness around that in the finale. Some of the acting is questionable… but overall, I’d definitely recommend checking it out… and watch your Achilles tendon. Sequel review probably coming soon…

  

Thursday night, we followed that up with another Stephen King written classic called “The Dead Zone” starring 1983 Christopher Walken as English teacher Johnny Smith whose involved in a horrific car accident… then wakes from a coma… FIVE YEARS LATER… and then finds out that he has psychic abilities upon touching people’s hands. There was a fairly popular TV series made about this story in the 90’s starring Anthony Michael Hall… but I never really watched it so… pass on that for now. You’re probably all familiar with the premise… I think it’s been parodied… I don’t know, everywhere. This movie is pretty great in setting the parameters for some mental injury because… well… Christopher Walken is in it… and he’s a little off kilter to say the least. Well, the real turning point in the movie is when Johnny touches the hand of Senatorial candidate Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) and foresees him becoming President and bringing on a nuclear apocalypse… so then the question becomes “If you could go back & stop Hitler before he came to power… would you do it?” It’s pretty awesome… and directed by David Cronenberg who brought you memorable movies like “The Fly”, “Eastern Promises”, “A History of Violence”, “Dead Ringers” & “Scanners” so you’re in for a treat. I definitely say check it out.

 

Friday night, Izzy & I met up with her aunts and their friends for the last of this year’s Point Richmond Summer Concert Series where we had some nice free soul music in the city square… and then we ate some great Thai food. I was not aware of this area at all… but it’s actually a pretty sweet little town off the freeway and railroad adjacent… yet very 1950’s Americana feel to it. Here are some pictures of the great times with the ladies…

 

Saturday, Izzy & I started up our annual tradition of our Pumpkin Amber Ale… and this year’s edition looks pretty amazing… and it should be ready in time for Halloween festivities. Here are some pictures of the process…

 

Sunday, we met up with Big Ben & Lone Cicerone to enjoy an afternoon at Oktoberfest at Spiesekammer in Alameda. This is the 2^nd Sunday of four consecutive Sundays where this German restaurant goes all out with oompah music, over a dozen authentic German festbiers on tap, and all kinds of amazingly delicious cuisine to pair it with. I played the role of designated driver… but here are some pictures of the WONDERFUL things that I got to put in my mouth…

We were there for a couple of hours, enjoyed a few liters of beer a piece, watched some football (mostly the Niners get destroyed by the Cardinals) and when it was all said & done… they decided to treat us to the whole thing! Truly some of the greatest people on Earth, am I right? A HUGE thank you to Big Ben & Lone Cicerone (plug of her blog yet again, check it out) and we’ve got next round!

 

Also, we had some blood moon thing... here are some horrible pics of that too...

 

Well, that’ll do it for this round… we’ve got a busy few weeks coming up with Alternative Press Expo in San Jose coming up this next weekend, Meal on Wheels event coming up soon, a few competition results that should be coming through, Izzy’s mom moving back to the Bay Area, and that’s all before Halloween… and let’s face it, stuff always just pops up… and we’ll be brewing some new deliciousness in between too. I’ll certainly keep you posted… but in the meantime, have a great week everybody!!!

NCHF 2015

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

So Thursday… I was not feeling well… like at all. However, I still went to work. I figured it was just my body telling me I’m old or some sh*t and it’d be over in less than a day as it usually happens. Well… it didn’t… and by Friday morning, I could barely move out of bed… but was thankfully able to as getting to my bathroom in tame saved a LOT of towels & blankets from being forever stained. Too much information? Sorry… but just giving you the background… as I called in sick on Friday. However, there was one really important decision to be made as well… Northern California Homebrewers Festival!!! I had been waiting for this homebrew beer camp weekend since we went last year… and I’ll be damned if I was going to miss out on that… so I sucked it up & we packed up with enough food & utilities to basically move to the forest for a month… and celebrated a two-day weekend at Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins, California!

 

The weather… was pretty warm… as was expected this time of year. Luckily we didn’t catch much traffic on the way up… but there were a few spots in the Central Valley, and that was unpleasant, especially already being pretty drained of electrolytes & such… but enough about that sh*t, we got there just in time for Hoppy Hour! Okay, a little background, this is the 18^th NCHF but only our 2^nd. The festival is a gathering of homebrew clubs from Northern California, and we all come up, set up booths to share our best & favorite homemade alcoholic beverages, camp out at a beautiful foothill resort complete with a lake (that I’ve never set foot in) and just enjoy ourselves & our fellow homebrewers. It’s pretty f**king fantastic! Hoppy Hour was a bit of a kickoff while people were making their ways up to the resort after getting off work early… and a few club shared their brews. Afterwards, we then had a nice little dinner with the 24 other members of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild who made it out for the event…

Saturday was the big day with booths & drinking all day! The theme this year was Prohibition, so there were a lot of speakeasy themed booths & garb… but for our booth, we did something similar to our NHC booth were it was prison themed (Alco-traz?) and we did pretty good (after cutting off all of our sleeves) but here are some pictures of booths found at big event…

 

 

Saturday night, we had a wonderful meal of pulled pork and played board games and drank beer all night… well, until about 10 PM when we just couldn’t take anymore… but then we slept like babes in a tent… and then we woke up the next morning, helped pack up the booth, and then headed home. Fantastic times!!! Can’t wait to go again next year!!!

 

Anyway, I know that’s kind of a brief summary of the festival, but hopefully the pictures speak thousands of words… and feel free to check out last year’s event as well. Lots of great stuff coming up the next few weeks with the start of Oktoberfestivities!!! Have a great week everybody!!!