Prince of Punishment

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Tuesday night, Izzy & I went to the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild Monthly Meeting at Chez Poulet… previously most meetings had been held at Anchor Brewing but due to our group growing beyond their capacity, we’ve had to start moving around venues… which has its own pros & cons… but let’s focus on the pros, which is creating a different atmosphere & experience with each meeting as well as keeping the main core values in spreading the good word of homebrewing and the cooperative community that the group provides. At this meeting, we also unveiled our new trophy for Homebrew Club of the Year from the California State Fair Homebrew Competition… because we had far & away the most award-winning beers this year!!!

 

 

 

 

 
 

After discussing events coming up in the next few months (more to come in future entries), one of the Guild’s founder Mr. Kevin Inglin gave a great talk about Mash Temperatures and how they’ll effect your beer on a chemical level, including all the various enzymes, malt sugars, and even various strategies for stabilizing & controlling the temperature during the mashing process. It was a great talk from a man who’s been homebrewing for almost twenty years now & will hopefully have his nanobrewery/homebrew shop open soon. Here are some pictures…

 

Also Monday night, Izzy & I had a little bit of a John Carpenter marathon with movies that we hadn’t seen… starting with 1987’s “Prince of Darkness” starring Donald Pleasance and… well… Alice Cooper is in it briefly as “Street Schizo” but that’s really about it. Egg Shen & Wang Chi from “Big Trouble in Little China” are in it but… yeah, not a lot of star power. The story is about a team of researchers who found this giant cylinder that… looks like it contains a green tornado in it… in this old deserted church… and basically in trying to figure it out & open it, they very well may release the Devil / Satan / Prince of Darkness and bring about the end of the world. That’s the one liner about it… but it’s really more like this. A bunch of stupid science nerds who aren’t particularly good at what they do, an old priest & some crazy Asian liberal arts professor meet up at a church where there’s this cylinder holding… what they can only even fathom is either a nuclear core, the worst plague imaginable, or according to their limited research… a 7 million year old harbinger of Death. Oh… and before they even enter the church, a small army of homeless people led by Alice Cooper basically surround them like zombies to keep them in the church. When the researchers take their naps while doing research, they all share the same dream consisting of an 8 mm film snippet complete with a warning that they’re going to unleash some sort of dark angel… yet they still continue. Well, spoiler alert… but something comes out of it… but it’s basically green ooze (the Devil’s semen?) and basically it’s shot into a girl’s mouth… and then she projectile vomits into another girl’s mouth… and then she vomits into another guy’s mouth… all the while, nobody seems to know where anybody is… but it doesn’t mean they’re going to really do anything about it… or they’ll see that one of their people are acting weird like a zombie… or slashing their own throat… or turning into beetles… and still they’ll do absolutely nothing. Seriously, I was getting frustrated during this movie… because nobody… f**king… did… any… thing… ever. It was sooooo f**king slow… and sooooo f**king stupid… and the dialogue was ridiculously bad… and I basically couldn’t stand it. I wanted them all to die. Well, except Wang Chi… but by the end, I was even willing to part with that if it meant an end to the movie. Oh… and the ending… ugh… who f**king cares? I did not care for it… sorry John, not your best by any means. Waste of two hours… and not even in the kitschy kind of way that I love… just f**king boring and stupid… with all due respect.

  

 

Next up was his most recent full scale production “The Ward” starring Amber Heard (Depp? Really?), Lynsey Fonseca and Jared Harris. This movie is about a crazy hot arsonist (Heard) who is sentenced to a psychiatric ward after burning down a house. Now… right away you’ll notice that the ward is a little different because… it’s basically filled with f**king supermodels. No joke. Every single person in this particular ward is an 18-29 year old superhottie… with various mental issues… but not the serious kind… the more like… it’s as if the cast of “Mean Girls” were on the set of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” but they wore… well, most of the time they wore exactly the same things they would’ve if they were in a high school… incredibly form-fitting blouses & jeans… occasionally a gown but… yeah, odd. Anyway, shortly after getting there (like I think this all takes place over the course of a few days?) she starts to realize that girls are being killed off… and then she learns about a killer ghost of a former patient… except the main doctor (Harris) thinks it’s all in her head… so even as girls are being killed off, they seem to do nothing. Why? What are they hiding? Yeah, the movie has a pretty good “Shutter Island” kind of vibe to it once you get past the fact that it’s a psych ward for starlets… and I actually enjoyed it, definitely a lot more than “Prince of Darkness.” As for the ending, you can kind of see it coming… but it’s pretty well done… except that it’s completely unfeasible in all reality. Maybe I’ll have to do a top ten list of those… Movie Endings that are absolutely ridiculous & unfinished though allegedly based in reality. Anyway, maybe down the road… that’ll take a lot of research to get the good ones for you. Not going to spoil this one though… go check it out… help support a decent, independent filmmaker like John Carpenter.

 

Wednesday night, we watched a movie that had somehow slipped through the cracks for me when it first came out, “Punisher: War Zone” starring Ray Stevenson & Dominic West. This is a re-reboot of the famous Marvel comic book “Punisher” which had originally been brought to the screen in the late 80’s with Dolph Lundgren as the star, then in 2004 with Thomas Jane (and John Travolta as the bad guy), and this movie was released in late 2008. For those who don’t know the basic story, Frank Castle is a former cop/war hero who was trying to lead the good life… until his family is brutally murdered (in this version, apparently during a picnic at an Old Navy commercial backdrop) and he then becomes a vigilante who exacts justice for criminals who slip through the cracks in the justice system. No, he’s not Daredevil. He doesn’t have superpowers & he’s not blind… nor is he Batman because although he apparently has a full arsenal at his disposal, he’s not a billionaire who dresses up in a rubber suit… basically he’s Batman if Bruce Wayne just loaded up on bulletproof vests, machine guns, rocket launchers & frag grenades and just decided that instead of putting criminals in Arkham Asylum to be released/escape a month later, he just did a quick double tap followed by evisceration of the corpse. He doesn’t even wear a helmet while he does it. Basically he’s a bit of an 80’s badass in the Rambo, Commando mold… but in this day & age (especially with the last decade’s shoot-em-up news stories) it’s not nearly the same appeal as it once was.

 

In this edition of the Punisher, after the Jane-Travolta movie didn’t do so well with audiences because it was either too dark for the PG-13 crowd that it tried to get or too weak & predictable for comic book fans, this version was meant as a full R-Rated version that wanted to be dark, violent, sickening, basically what the newer versions of the comic books were… and it pulled it off pretty tremendously. This is kind of a sequel to the Jane-Travolta version in which it takes place 4-5 years after the events of that movie… and the Punisher has been “takin’ care of business” and cleaning the streets of wrong doers… until he almost singlehandedly takes out the local crime syndicate… but accidentally takes out an undercover federal agent. Now the Feds have to take him down… and also, one of the few generals left in the crime syndicate is still alive (even after being ran through… some kind of glass pulversizer machine?) and emerges as the villain… JIGSAW!!! Jigsaw (West) then breaks his brother Looney Bin Jim out of… I assume another wing of the asylum from “The Ward” (same kind of super lax security) and they want revenge… and to get $12 million for facilitating the transfer of some dirty bombs to local terrorists. Who can save us? The Punisher!!! Okay, that’s the story… or at least the first act or so… but it’s all about the execution of the story… and I’ll admit… everybody in this f**king movie sounds like they have a weird Irish twist to their respective accents. The Punisher doesn’t speak much… so it’s hidden well… but Jigsaw sounds like an Englishman doing his worst Italian-wopdago stereotype (and I love Dominic West, don’t get it twisted)… and there’s even a Jamaican parkour guy who sounds like Bobby O’Marley… but aside from that, the movie is spot on. It’s extremely unabashedly violent… the mood is always dark… there’s always hues of red & green to almost every frame… even the sound effects sounds like the engineers were having a field day with KY jelly, grapes, mac & cheese, breaking glass and all kind of other muted breaking noises… HE PUNCHES THROUGH A GUY’S FACE!!! I read a little bit about this movie on IMDb… and there are WELL over a hundred DIFFERENT KINDS of guns used in this movie… and the death toll is probably in the Top 10 Movie Death Tolls of all time... but I enjoyed it. If you’re down for a total Man Movie, then I’d say check it out! You could do a LOT worse! There are some scenes where you’ll just go “F**K!!! Hahahaha… that was pretty awesome!”

 

It also got me thinking… about how the Punisher hasn’t been in the Marvel Universe. This movie came out a few months after the first Iron Man movie… and was under the “Marvel Knights” company… which apparently is separate from the more financially successful Marvel team (as it’s composed of this movie & the 2^nd Ghost Rider abortion a few years later) and is apparently for the more… let’s say EXTREME Marvel Universe where you can have gun-toting vigilantes & minions of Satan where there’s actual death tolls (as opposed to one character being killed off in “Avengers” movie and then brought back for a TV series later that year). If it’s the only way to get some of these characters & storylines brought to the screen, then so be it. Other characters in this universe are Black Panther (at least until next year), Black Widow and the Inhumans… and some of the darker storylines from other staples like I feel the Netflix Daredevil series is trying to do… but it got me thinking… “What if Punisher were in that extended Marvel Universe?” And here are some of my favorite Punisher Crossover Movie possibilities… starting with the most ridiculous to one that MUST happen…

 

Avengers: Infinity War Part Two – Let’s face it… there’s already enough characters in this movie… but I wouldn’t mind a quick cameo of The Punisher locking& loading as like a special general with S.H.I.E.L.D., giving a quick speech about finding the gumption to face impossible odds, charging into battle, and then maybe being quickly pimpslap-vaporized by Thanos. Maybe even follow it up with a snarky Tony Stark one-liner… You’re welcome, Hollywood.

 

X-Men: Apocolypse/Punishment Day – Basically the same as Avengers, but replace S.H.I.E.L.D. with Stryker’s armed forces… and Thanos with Apocalypse… and Tony Stark with Wolverine rattling off a Bad Pun… … …isher.

 

Punisher vs. Ghost Rider – Honestly the only reason that I want this movie to exist is to see Nicolas Cage do his crazy thing… you’d think that I’d be over it by now but… it’s just absolutely mesmerizing. As for the plot, they’re going after the same baddies… “This is my turf, punk!” Battle ensues… the only drawback is… honestly it’s not really a fair fight. Guns don’t even phase the Ghost Rider… in fact… from what I can tell in the movies… the only things that can slow down the Ghost Rider is either a dwindling return on investment… or Nicolas Cage’s schedule. That’s why this next one is much better…

 

Punisher vs. Daredevil – I’ve actually read this is already going to happen in the 2^nd season of the Netflix Daredevil series… and I basically got a woodie. Full chub. They even cast Jon Bernthal (“Walking Dead” & “Fury”) as the Punisher… and I’m perfectly okay with that. Also, you may be wondering why I don’t care about him going against fellow New Yorker Spiderman… and it’s because Spiderman is a f**king p**sy who couldn’t lick Frank Castle’s boot. Face!

 

Blade vs. Punisher – What? Blade gets top billing over the Punisher in this one? You bet he does! Wesley Snipes reprises the role that he was born to play… it’s the 4^th movie in both quadrilogies… and you can even have them meet up & battle the first time they meet because… you know, Punisher got wind that vampires are terrorizing the city… and Blade is half-vampire… but then after a battle, they begrudgingly join forces to try & take down Satan himself… played by Nicolas Cage with a full Fu Manchu… you’re welcome, World!!!

 

Punisher vs. Predator: Dusk of Justice – Okay, so I was trying to keep this all in the Marvel Universe… and I know that I might as well be saying Punisher vs. Jesus / Rambo / Batman / Superman / Lobo / Jason / Freddy /  The Devil / The Devil’s Rejects / Time / Barb Wire / Beavis & Butthead / Jurassic World or something like that. However… this would be f**king amazing on every level!!! You could even have Dolph Lundgren back as an aging Punisher (though I’d prefer Jason Statham or Ray Stevenson) following the trail of this mysterious killer whose… basically doing his work, taking out the trash of New York City. However, as he gets close… he realizes that it’s all for sport… and there’s only one man who can actually give Predator a challenge. “PUNISHER VS. PREDATOR: DUSK OF JUSTICE… coming this December…”

 

Anyway, that’ll do it for this entry… I hope you all enjoyed it… now if you’ll excuse me, I’m probably going to watch some of that Netflix Daredevil so that I can get ready for the 2^nd season… have a great weekend everybody!!!

Trip to Tahoe & Virginia City

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Friday night, Izzy & I drove up to Truckee to spend the weekend with her aunts who own a place up there… and let’s face it, I just LOVE the Lake Tahoe area in the summertime… and this weekend was absolutely perfect for it. The daytime highs are in the 70’s with clear blue skies (despite some wildfires west of there) and the nights get pretty crisp in the 30’s/40’s. My kind of weather… shorts weather… but yeah, the first night we just had a few beers and kicked back.

 

Saturday, the four of us went out to Virginia City, which you may remember from an entry about five years ago when I lived in Tahoe. Basically Virginia City is a small town with one main street where the buildings are basically pretty similar to the way they were back in the silver mining days in the 19^th century… just now with coffee shops & souvenir shops alongside their many, many bars & old timey photo businesses. Oh… and there are trains and mine tours and haunted hotel tours and all kinds of great fun stuff to do… so yeah, go check it out if you’re in the neighborhood. Here are some pictures…

 

 

One stop was Virginia City Brewing which… I kid you not, apparently started their FIRST batch that morning… so none of their beer on tap, but we got to talk to one of the brewers for a bit & enjoy some other craft brews on tap…

 

On the way back to the cabin, we stopped for dinner at Great Basin Brewing Company in Reno/Sparks… and yes, they have great Award-winning beer of all types… but there’s also great food there… and here are some pictures of that…

 

 

That night back at the cabin, we also tried our barrel-aged Scotch Ale… or I like to call it, Scotchy Scotch Scotch… and it’s pretty fantastic. Somewhere in the 7-8% ABV area… great smokey, oaky flavors on a malty backbone of a Scotch ale… and crystal clear in a rich mahogany color (keeping with the Anchorman theme) but… I’ll have to get a better picture of it another time for the blog since… well, this was the cup that was handy…

 

Sunday, we started off the morning by doing some tie dying T-shirts with ice & powder dyes, which I had never tried before… and here are some of the beautiful pictures of us doing it… but yeah, may have to wait a day or two for final results on the shirts. Can you guess which one is mine? The best one of course…

 

We also took a few walks throughout the day to local swim/fishin’ holes… which is always a treat…

 

That evening, we headed back to the Bay Area (after a quick stop at Fifty Fifty Brewing to fill up our growler with Totality Imperial Stout) and got some beautiful shots of the smoke cloud made by the wildfires nearby… our heart goes out to the people in danger & the firefighters keeping it in check… but yeah, made for a pretty amazing sunset…

 

So yeah, it was a fantastic weekend with my lady & her aunties… and I’m blessed to be a part of their lives… and vice versa (HA!!!). It’s always great to see those beautiful mountains, wonderful weather, great beer, but most of all great people to share it all with. I hope you get many, many similar opportunities… have a great week everybody!!!

I Made Your Game My Bitch

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Monday night, Izzy & I were invited to a special preview screening of “Pixels” starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage & Josh Gad among others. Yes, this is the latest “Sandler movie” as it seems half of the country can’t stand are being made, and the other half are super stoked about. For me, it’s been a while since I really enjoyed a Sandler movie… like left it saying “I’d watch it again.” That being said, the man is one of the highest-grossing movie stars of all f**king time. Think about that for a second… Opera Man has been legitimately A-List… for nearly two decades. This movie revolves around a premise that… let’s face it… is pretty far-fetched & ridiculous (even when conveniently expositioned by Sandler & Dan Aykroyd in a cameo)… where in 1982, the video game championships are recorded (on beta max?) and sent into space… for some reason… and then an advanced race of creatures (Digital? Made out of light?) receives the video… and somehow sees it as an act of war against them… so this allegedly peaceful alien civilization attacks Earth… by challenging it to some of the old video games… like exactly represented version of the video games? So yeah, because apparently Navy seals don’t know how to play video games (in this generation?) nor fire guns and/or drive vehicles apparently… the President (James) has to call in his best buddy (Sandler) and the other two best gamers of 1982 (Dinklage & Gad) to help save mankind. Is the premise stupid? ABSOLUTELY!!! Even with disbelief, I’m hitting my forehead with almost every explanation of everything… but whatever, it’s a means to an end. What is that end? Sandler & the crew involved in their version of an action-comedy with the nostalgia of old video games, paired with some action scenes taken almost straight out of the Fast & Furious franchise and its ilk, throw in a ridiculous… repeat RIDICULOUS love story between Sandler & superhottie Michelle Monaghan (and another odd one involving Q-Bert) and BOOM!!! You’ve got this movie. Yes, it has funny moments. Yes, the 3-D effects will give you a f**king headache and really aren’t needed except for a few montage scenes. Yes, it’s full of cameos & probably going to make a few bucks for the movie company that made it. NO!!! It does NOT have San Francisco being destroyed by Pac-Man as it does in the movie poster… and thus is taking a bold new approach in the alien invasion / worldwide disaster movie genre. All that being said, go ahead and check it out. I had SUPER low expectations… and it was better than that. A perfectly average movie for me… but hey, you might REALLY enjoy it if you like these kind of movies. Enjoy!

 

This weekend, we'll be checking out Tahoe with the Aunties... so many pictures coming... until then, have a great weekend everybody!!!

Brewhaus Blewz

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday morning, Izzy & I met up with Big Ben for some Big League Brewing at Elevation 66… and it was just the three of us doing the brew. Well, Super Dave was there observing but… yeah, it was pretty fantastic. Before when I’ve been able to spend the whole day there, six or seven people were helping out… but here’s the thing… two of those guys are now starting jobs at other breweries (where they actually get paid) and the others have kind of feathered out… so yeah, a lot more hands on learning & I love it when I get a chance to help out.

 

How did I get away from the job to help out? Well… it was because I had to take the day off (and Thursday) for a Quick Trip to Utah… for family estate stuff involving my recently deceased father. Yes, “recently” means just over six months ago… but yeah, not going to lie… it’s been a little rough. Most of the time I’m pretty good… and then I’ll wonder if I’m being absolutely heartless by not having it be a huge deal in my daily life. Then other times, I’ll start tearing up over stupid sh*t that I see in a movie that I’ve even seen before… and then it’s like, “Where the hell is this coming from?” So yeah… fun stuff… but I’m doing fine…

 

As for the trip, I’m not going to go into details or anything… but basically there were only a few hours that weren’t completely occupied by stuff I rather wouldn’t have been doing & could’ve been resolved via email… I didn’t sleep well because the AC kept kicking on VERY LOUDLY at the hotel… and the last few hours I was in town, I got to spend some time with my brother for his birthday, C-Rock & Isaiah. They’ve been doing… not so good… but it was good to hang out with them & catch up. I also go to have gelato with my mom, niece & nephew. So yeah, for a 26 hour stay in the Beehive State, a lot was done.

 

Saturday, Izzy & I spent the day pretty much relaxing and playing video games… which may sound lame… but it really wasn’t… it was pretty awesome.

 

Saturday night, I met up with coworkers for a dinner & drinks at Roam Burger and then going to The Fillmore to see Anjelah Johnson a.k.a. Bon Qui Qui from “Mad TV” for a comedic musical performance that was actually pretty amazing. The comedy was tight… and the music with her husband’s band was pretty damn catchy and hilarious as well… I highly recommend to check them out on the Bon Qui Qui Tour… possibly coming to a town near you. Now… there’s only one picture… and it’s of us… boom…

 

Sunday morning, Izzy & I started our newest brew… the belated batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen for Clarissa & Andrew as a wedding present (married last month). This is the 3^rd time that we’ve made this fairly easy recipe so it’s been explained a little more in past entries… but basically it’s only a few pounds of wheat dry malt extract, one ounce of hops, and then strawberry puree in the secondary fermentation.

 

 

The main difference with this time… was the yeast. With every single batch that we’ve made before, we’ve used a vial of yeast from a brewshop… but this time, thanks to our FastFerment conical fermenter, we had a good batch of already active yeast from last week’s Dunkelweizen that we just pulled from its… I don’t know, “reservoir tip” at the base. Why do I mention this? Because it’s pretty awesome… previously with the vials, the reaction in the wort would take about 12 hours or something… and so it would start really doing its thing in the middle of the night & then we’d wake up to a mess of activity upon the carboy… but this time around… it was already blowing off in about two hours… pretty impressive. I think I’m really going to like this FastFerment thing…

 

So currently in our Brewhaus, we have this new batch of Strawberry Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen in the FastFerment, our Cyser that’s probably ready to bottle soon, and we have our Chocolate Porter in the Whiskey Barrel. Not bad if I say so myself…

 

Another fun tidbit… about a month ago, a brewshop was handing out hop rhizomes that they had… and they were basically either expired or possibly diseased in all honesty… but we took some Columbus hop rhizomes to try planting in my backyard, just to see if they would work (and I had an open bucket) and… well, it’s sprouting pretty good…

Anyway, so it was a pretty busy weekend for being “quiet” but tune in next time… as there are a few movie preview screenings this week… and a trip to Tahoe this weekend coming up… so yeah, until then, have a great day everybody!!!