Bachelor(ette) Party

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

This past weekend was my Bachelor Party… well, sort of. Originally it was going to be a gaggle of us (male & female) just having a wonderful weekend in Santa Cruz… but unfortunately one guy hurt his back, others had work & other real life stuff happen… so essentially it was just a wonderful weekend with my future wife, her best friend Flea, and her cousin Amy briefly. TEAR IT UP!!! We had dinner at Lazy Dog in Cupertino Friday night, then spent the Saturday checking out breweries in the area & the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

 

First stop was the taproom for Santa Cruz Aleworks where we had some pickled eggs, chips & salsa, and some of their beers on tap including an Oatmeal Stout, Kolsch & their season “Rye Like An Eagle” IPA. Good stuff, check them out…

 

  

Second stop was Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing about two miles away. Their taproom had a REALLY cool copper tree growing behind the bar… and their drink selection was pretty impressive as well. I personally loved their People’s Porter. Here are some pictures…

 

Then we stopped at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk to have some lunch, play some arcade games & take great pictures…

 

The third brewery of the day was Sante Adairius Rustic Ales in Capitola about ten minutes from the Boardwalk. He had visited this location a while back and… frankly weren’t that impressed with the selection. However, our beer buddies informed us that apparently we must have hit them on a bad weekend where they were doing a bunch of festivals or something because they have DOZENS of distinct beers available typically… so we tried them again. This time, there was definitely more selection with about a dozen different brews that were essentially a variety of IPAs, saisons & porters… and yeah, they’re pretty damn good. Check them out if you’re in the area. I wouldn’t make it a destination brewery just yet… but definitely worth a stop along the way…

 

The fourth & final brewery of the day was New Bohemia Brewing and… frankly this was our favorite of the entire day!!! This is the first time that I’ve heard of them, but the taproom is on point… their beer selection was low in variety but great in quality. They had a beer called Queen Bee which was an “Imperial Honey Lager” which is a style-bender kind of beer… but it was very malt forward, very potent with nearly 10% ABV, and extremely delicious. Check THAT out! The others were really good too, including a Dunkelweizen. They even let us bring in some badass burritos from down the street to the bar. Best of all though… they had LIVE bluegrass playing BEHIND THE BAR!!! Check out Wail Aways online!!! Definitely check them out if you’re in Santa Cruz… heck, I saw check their schedule for live performances & coordinate a trip to go see them. Great place… here are the pictures…

 

  

So yeah, not your typical Bachelor Party… and honestly it was just a wonderful weekend hanging with my fiancée & her best bud… but yeah, absolutely fantastic weekend! Can’t wait to do it again!

 

Also, we brewed a Honey Amber...

 

...and we tested our Cheese Fountain for the wedding... spoiler alert, it works lovely.

 

Since then, I’ve been… experiencing some unpleasantness. My work has been accusing me of completely ridiculous things… I assume to get a rise out of me (or keep me in the company as long as possible for as little pay, which is a poor method of retaining exceptional talent). My former roommates are trying to extort money from me too. Basically when I moved out, upon their request, I left them a couch and gave my stereo to a roommate. Well… six weeks since the last time anybody has contacted me concerning… anything, they send an email requesting that I pay half of a trash pickup bill for those items (and stuff from another roommate who wasn’t officially on the lease so good luck proving that SHE even lived there… dizzy cunt). For many reasons, this is ridiculous. If they didn’t want the stuff, gladly would’ve taken it or disposed of it back when I did the rest. Also, there’s a free service with the apartment that takes care of all of that. ALSO, send me a text & I can take precious time and effort out of my day to remove my items for you. Nope. Just send an email saying that I owe them hundreds of dollars because… they decided that they didn’t want the free stuff six weeks later. Yup, I told them that it was completely ridiculous & wished them the best of luck with their new living arrangements. Drop mic.

 

The “Event Horizon” episode is up at eilfm.podbean.com on the Everything I Learned From Movies Podcast, but coming up in a few days… the next episode will feature a fairly similar movie, 1998’s “Sphere” starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone & Laurence Fish… NOPE, SAMUEL L. JACKSON!!! You may want to listen to the podcast to find out why I specifically had to point that out. Beers were involved… as is always the case on EILFM. Until next time, have a great weekend everybody!!!

NBA Free Agency is NUTS!!!

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Wow! NBA Free Agency… is f**king nuts. I’m definitely going back to Utah and teaching my nephew Vinny to put all of his eggs into that basket and become a professional basketball player… or at the very least a left-handed pitcher in baseball. That way, he has a 1% chance of landing some ridiculous contract that’s going to make us all feel bad for wasting our lives on education & hard work. Chandler Parsons got $94 million??? You don’t even know who he is!!! Mike Conley is getting over $30 million a year in Memphis??? THAT’S KOBE MONEY!!! So much for being “the other guy at Ohio State” in Greg Oden’s shadow, I guess. Yes, I purposely did NOT say THE before Ohio State. Anyway, google it… it’s f**king ridiculous… and apparently only going to get worse next year. Kevin Durant has joined the Warriors… Pau Gasol is with the Spurs… Dwight Howard is in Atlanta… and Memphis spent a quarter billion dollars on two guys you’ve never heard of (Chandler Parsons & Mike Conley jr). Stay in school, kids!!! Until you get drafted…

Last week, I finally watched “The Revenant” starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, a man who is mauled by a bear, and left for dead in the Old West… but not before a man who leaves him (Tom Hardy) kills his son… so the Power of Vengeance helps him to rise from what I can assume would be absolute death in the wilderness… and on a path to find his son’s killer. That’s basically the movie… and Downhall Gleeson’s in it. However, the movie was pretty f**king good. This movie is based on a true story (sort of… there was no son murder or anything, just being left for dead) but the movie is beautifully shot by director Alejandro Inarritu (“Birdman” & “Babel”) and there are some great performances and looooooong shots of pretty epic scenes… but also pretty gruesome… and some points where you really have to suspend your disbelief. That being said, I highly recommend checking it out as long as you’re okay with a little gore… and a LOT of low-angle tree shots and majestic shots of the Canadian wilderness. Check it out!

Izzy & I watched the latest Coen Brothers flick “Hail, Caesar!” which has an all star cast of Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, Frances McDormand, Jonah Hill, and out of f**king nowhere… CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT!!! By the way, he looked like Old Connor McLeod from “Highlander 2: The Quickening” in this movie with the makeup… but his part was brief. As for the movie… I feel like the Coen Brothers basically… just wanted to do a couple great homages to the Golden Age of movies like Fred Astaire dance numbers, those dance numbers with synchronized swimmers, somewhat cheesy soundstage army & gladiator movies, one actor/actress playing multiple characters obviously, and basically just wanted to do the scenes… but had to tie them all together somehow… and what you get is this movie. It’s about the head of studio trying to handle a ransom of its biggest star, without stopping production on the movie, and handling a starlet about to have a baby out of wedlock in the scandalous times for that… and he has a family for like three minutes… but yeah, don’t worry about all that. If you’re trying to make a coherent movie out of it… Were that it’were so simple… check it out if you like Coen Brothers stuff but… it’s barely above “Burn After Reading” for me personally. Not their best… and I saw the dance numbers in the previews leading up to the movie’s release and those are the best part.

I (not Izzy) also watched a newer movie called “Green Room” starring the late Anton Yelchin (so sad) & Sir Patrick Stewart. This movie is from the director of “Murder Party” Jeremy Saulnier and is the story of a punk band who takes a gig in the Virginia wilderness where it’s… essentially a skinhead neo-Nazi party, but that’s no big deal. That’s the clientele. Well, after their set, one of them goes back into the green room to grab a cell phone… and they see a body lying on the ground… and so they call 9-1-1 but then they’re essentially barricaded in the green room… and it’s revealed that the cops are not wanted in the area, because of not only the stabbing… but they also produce massive amounts of heroin directly under the green room/crime scene. Well, the owner of the establishment (Stewart) shows up to “clean up the mess” by… well, taking care of the witnesses. What follows after that… is pretty f**king awesome (and gruesome) and just a twisted little tale of backwoods butchery. I highly recommend checking it out… but I warn you that there’s a bit of blood… and guns… and machetes… and hungry dogs… and angry white people with swastika tattoos… and confederate flags… and adult language & situations… and all that stuff. I enjoyed the movie though.

Also, let us know if you’re interested in being a special guest host for upcoming movies. We’re currently laying out our slate for the month of August when we’ll be too busy getting hitched to do it the same week… so we’re looking to get some backlog so that you’re constantly entertained… and we want YOU to be a part of the magic! Come join us at Super Secret Podcast Studios and we’ll introduce you to the Castor & Mr. Pickles too!!!

The next episode of Everything I Learned From Movies will be… the 1997 sci-fi thriller “Event Horizon” which is currently streaming on Netflix, so check it out & then listen to us at eilfm.podbean.com. This movie is… Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!!! Not only am I SUPER interested in what the movie could have been if it were released the way that the director wanted it to be… but THIS MOVIE ACTUALLY SAVED CINEMA FOR YEARS TO COME!!! SPECIFICALLY SUPERHERO MOVIES!!! How did it do this? You’ll have to listen to find out… but the story is pretty f**king awesome. In the meantime, have a great day everybody!!!

Ping Pong Playa!!!

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Sorry, it’s been a while. Wow! That wedding thing is coming up quick… over the weekend we basically got things squared away with the house, got invitations ready to send out, and all kinds of stuff like that… and then I got a little sick. Super exciting stuff, right? Yeah, the rest of the time was working and other super boring stuff… but there was some notes of levity…

Thursday night, my coworkers threw together a wonderful mid-year celebration / wedding shower for me & another coworker with our respective spouses… and it was held at a new trendy Ping Pong place called Spin that… I believe is owned by Susan Sarandon and they’re popping up in big cities all over the U.S. Basically, it’s a cool hip place where people can drink… and play ping pong between beers. Not bad, right? There are people walking around with little nets that pick up the stray balls so that you are safe & free to have fun. The food was great too! We had a grand olde tyme for two hours or so… and then we got a great wedding gift! Izzy got a Keurig and I got a Pizza Stone!!! Pictures coming soon...

The past few weeks on the Everything I Learned From Movies Podcast (eilfm.podbean.com), we went a little patriotic for 4^th of July weekend. Did you know that Al Pacino starred in a movie about the American Revolutionary War? Me neither!!! That sounds hella bad ass, right? Does he play George Washington? No. Oooh, perhaps the fiery Thomas Jefferson? Nope, not tall enough. Benjamin Franklin? Ridiculous. Alexander Hamilton and/or Aaron Burr? That would be epic… but no. He doesn’t play a major historic figure… nor do I think anybody that really existed. It’s a story of the American Revolution… as told by a British (Redcoat) writer & director… and it was made in 1985. The movie is called “Revolution: Revisited” which is actually the 2009 recut of the movie that allegedly made it better. You know… like the Highlander 2: Renegade Cut” was supposed to make it almost watchable. My suggestion to you: Listen to our episode on the podcast (eilfm.podbean.com) instead of watching this two-hour movie. We didn’t care for it… but we do some great Pacino impressions & have fun with it.

Then we watched the currently streaming “Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves” starring Rick Moranis in the penultimate entry of Disney’s “Honey, I F**ked Up” trilogy. This is not to be confused with the Jessica Alba dancing “Honey” movie series (future entry?). This movie involves Rick Moranis as Wayne Szalinski, a nutty professor who invents a Shrinking Machine… and hilarity ensues… several times. Also, in this 3^rd movie, there’s a special appearance from a teenage starlet that might catch you off guard. I know it certainly caught me off-guard. Check it out on Netflix & let us know what you think!

THEN!!! Yes, it’s been THAT LONG that there has been a THIRD podcast since my last update… but it’s well worth the wait… as the latest movie reviewed is one of the all-time classics, “Devil’s Advocate”!!! Prime Keanu & Prime Pacino with a  dash of Charlize Theron nudity… what a movie!!! Definitely check that one out if you haven’t already… and hit us up on the websites. Coming up next week… bachelor party pictures. Until then, have a great weekend everybody!!!