The Eclectic Eccentric 2: The Kwyjibo Chronicles: Big Skin Game

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Last Monday night, Izzy & I bottled our latest Strawberry Hefeweizen which will be a belated wedding gift for some friends of ours… and yeah, it turned out pretty well… here are pictures…

Softball season started again! Did it sneak up on you too? Yeah, we got the usual 3 days’ notice last week so I missed the game… but I made it to the game Tuesday night… and both games so far ended with us winning with scores like 20-2 & 18-1… which you may be used to hearing. The most impressive thing really… is that our defense usually shuts down SOFTBALL teams to two runs or less. The few games that we’ve lost over the past few years were with final scores of like 6-5 or something like that where we couldn’t get our offense going for whatever reason. Anyway, enough about the team, let’s talk about me! I batted 4-for-4 (all singles) with 5 RBIs and even played 3 innings in Right Center Field (softball position) with zero f**k-ups… and really zero plays that made it to my section. I was ready though! Anyway, great job team! It’ll be a few weeks before I have another game with SF Homebrewers Guild meeting next Tuesday & I think a bye week is in there… but yeah, probably a good thing so I can get a little more physically fit.

Friday night, Izzy & I watched a new movie called “Skin Trade” starring action movie legends Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa & Michael Jai White in a tale of… okay, it’s basically a hybrid of a bunch of their past movies combined and centered around the sex trafficking trade. Okay, so… there’s this Newark cop (Lundgren) who makes a big bust in the trafficking business and incidentally kills the son of a Russian mob boss (Ron Perlman BTW)… and so in retaliation, the mob boss has his family killed in a fiery explosion… but he doesn’t die… so now the cop is on a vigilante justice rampage (sound like Punisher?). Meanwhile in Thailand, a Thai cop (Jaa) is in love with an informant at a nightclub ran by the mob boss… and she gets found out… and sent into the sex trade… so now he’s on a vengeance rampage to save the one he loves (sound like The Protector? But a woman instead of an elephant). Insert the token black FBI superagent (White) and you’ve got yourself an action flick. The story… pretty standard. The action… pretty good but not what you may come to expect from other Jaa movies. Overall, if you like these kinds of movies… check it out. There’s some good action scenes… vigilante justice… all that stuff. If it’s not your bag though, it’s not exactly Academy Award nominated stuff… but I’d recommend it.

By the way, one little tidbit about this movie… I thought it was funny that this movie stars Dolph Lundgren, known throughout the world as the Russian superboxer Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV”. In this movie… the Russian mob family’s last name is Dragovich. However, I feel like every single time that the last name is said (and it’s said a LOT) that the DRAGO is emphasized… and the “vich” part is almost whispered. Sometimes it almost seems like the “vich” was added in post… probably when they realized that one of the smaller son’s character names is IVAN DRAGOvich. Just something that I noticed…

Next up was another newer action movie called “Big Game” starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Stevenson (speaking of Punisher) and young Finnish actor Onni Tommila who… and I’m aware that I’m probably going to hell for this… basically looks like one of those Gelflings from “Dark Crystal”? I mean… He seems like a sweet kid… and I’m sure he learned a little English for this role… but let’s be real, he’s in the movie because he’s the nephew of director Jalmari Helander (“Rare Exports”). The story is about the President of the United States (Jackson) whose on Air Force One on a diplomatic mission to Finland… when all of a sudden there’s a bit of treachery from his most trusted Secret Service agent (Stevenson) and a psychotic oil prince or something & they shoot down Air Force One… and the President escapes in an escape pod… but is only found by a 13-year old Finnish child (Tommila) who is currently on a hunting mission to prove his manhood to his father. Now the child must help the President to make it back to civilization before the bad guys catch up to them. The premise is… okay. I knew watching the preview that it wasn’t going to be the greatest flick ever… but yeah, this was not the greatest by any means. Metascore is like 55… and I think that’s a little high. There was a LOT of obvious CGI throughout… some of the character motivations are questionable at best. For example, the young boy doesn’t immediately take the President to town because… wait for it… he hasn’t bagged a deer yet for the hunt. Then… several hours later… has the realization that “Oh yeah, I’ll be taking the President of the strongest nation in the world back to town… that’s pretty cool too. Maybe they’ll at least give me a redo on this hunting trip.” The Secret Service guy who turns on the President… does so for the sum of $10 million… but then what was his f**king plan once the President was taken by the Jihadists? Was he just going to hang out with them? Take camp in Finland? Try to travel to some remote island using his Swiss bank account funds? I feel like he didn’t plan that far ahead… especially for what seemed like a REALLY immediate turn after taking a bullet for the President a few weeks earlier. I’m pretty sure that entitles you to a LOT of benefits from your local government for the rest of your marginally shortened life. There’s also a lot of other little things involving Air Force One in the lake which leads to the final battle scene (FYI spoiled by the opening menu on the DVD) and whether or not the plane is underwater or not… but yeah, aside from that, Finland is beautiful (even though it was really shot in Bavaria, Germany), it’s a bit of a predictable action movie with a lot of slickness (really too much at some points) and the kid is decent for the lead… even if a little unsettling to look at. Sadly I spent half the time that I should’ve been reading subtitles in thinking “Okay, if that man is his father… is his mother Asian? Maybe Thai? Oooh… Inuit? OH SH*T! He kinda looks like the early stages of Species… could he be half Alien that landed at Roswell? Is that going to be the big twist at the end!?! That’s not prosthetic though… sh*t, I gotta IMDb to find out what this kid is…” to no avail by the way. Yes, I’m aware I’m going to hell… but seriously… it was kind of distracting… and this was after I had just watched a movie starring Ivan Drago as Jersey cop, Tony Jaa as Ong Bak, Black Dynamite as an FBI agent, & Hellboy as a Russian mob boss.

Saturday, there was a planning meeting with the members of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild who will be attending the Northern California Homebrewers Festival in just three short weeks. The agenda was to get everybody on the same page, construction/layout plays for our booth, find out how many kegs we’ll be bringing to share, what kinds of beer they will contain, logistics for moving everything to the campground three hours away, all that kind of stuff… and it was held at my apartment on three days’ notice so a slim turnout... but we rocked it… some great things are in the works now… finally.

Sunday morning, Izzy & I started another BIG BEER… a new batch of Barleywine, which is a high gravity beer that will take about six months to brew fully but will be about 10-12% ABV… and typically pretty delicious & smooth. Here are some pictures of the process…

We also kegged our Kentucky Common (which tastes delicious, like a malty amber but with a bit of rye bitterness/sourness), bottled Clark’s gallon of Kentucky Common, and bottled a gallon of our Hefeweizen without the strawberries from last week. Here are the pictures…