Hot Cup of Dickens Cider

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Sunday, Izzy & I met up with aunts & mom at the Cow Palace to go to the Great Dickens Fair… where they turn that space into turn of the 19^th century London but with slightly less child labor and definitely better conditions… because they have cinnamon almonds. Dozens of potteries, craft stores, haberdashers, cobblers, psychics, jewelers, clothers, and other various trades of the time… and a few choice food establishments offering meals ranging from meat pies, bangers & mash, fish & chips… to gyros, hot dogs & pasta. You can even enjoy some hot mulled wine (if you are looking to punish yourself) but there was also some Lagunitas handy. Hundreds of actors & patrons dressed in Victorian garb, yelling to show off their Renaissance Fair barking skills in Cockney accents, “Happy Christmas!” everywhere you turn, what’s not to love? We had a fun time trying the fares, Izzy bought a nice clay mug, good times. Here are some pictures…

 

 

Monday night was our CHAMPION Softball Team’s celebration party at Jillian’s and it was a lot of fun… a few drinks, some billiards, some great appetizers, catching a little football, pro basketball & college basketball… good times… here’s the team photo…

 

That’s really about it with the early week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday… but there will be plenty of pictures & stories from that. Also, this weekend is our first trip to & being a part of the Treasure Island Flea Market, so plenty of stuff coming from that experience as well. Until then though, have a great Thanksgiving everybody!!! And THANK YOU for reading!!!

Furious $teven

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday night, Izzy & I finally watched “Furious 7” which is the 7^th installment of the Fast & Furious “film” franchise… and at this point in time, the 4^th highest grossing movie OF ALL TIME!!! The soundtrack was #1 in 59 countries… and yes, they mentioned it on the DVD… and yes, I wanted to slit my wrist listening to choice clips from it throughout the movie. I’m assuming that because it IS the 4^th highest grossing movie of all time, that you’ve probably all seen this movie at least once in theatres… or maybe even in the last month since it’s been out on DVD… so there’ll be some spoilers. I’ll tell you what’s not a spoiler though… Paul Walker does die… in the movie anyway. Too soon? No, it’s not. It’s an ironic tragedy. Moving on. Fun game to play though… pretend that you don’t know that Paul Walker’s going to make it in the end because you’ve been awake the past six months or on any form of social media… and watch the movie with every scene as a “Is this where his character gets killed?” mentality… it’s actually pretty intriguing. Is it the scene where he’s getting dropped out of a f**king airplane in a car? Is it when his buddy Dom (Vin Diesel) is holding up a sports car by himself like a man-jack stand for a few minutes while he tries to delicately remove a microchip that has been inexplicably placed under it? Is it during one of the many shoot-out scenes with apparent armies of international criminals and/or cyborgs? All I’m saying is… that if ANYBODY died in these movies, there was ample opportunity for that to happen… unless it’s all the odd homoerotic dreams of various fanboys… which it absolutely is. This movie is people (directors, producers, actors, etc) playing with action figures. Pure & simple. That being said… it can totally be fun. Is it the 4^th highest grossing movie of all time fun? Of course not… but yeah, adjust for inflation or something and it’s still worthy of making some cash on the side. I ain’t gonna hate… it’s not like “Pitch Perfect 2” grossing more than “Mad Max: Fury Road” or something like that. No, I still haven’t forgiven you for that yet, America!

 

Anyway, this 7^th installment picks up where the last one left off… at the end of “Fast 6” the “good guys” brought down Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) and beat his ass good into a coma… well, apparently all that did was piss off his older brother Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) who’s even MORE dangerous (because he’s basically a Terminator apparently) and wants nothing more than to just kill the “good guys” and already killed the Japanese one from the 3^rd installment that nobody watched. Well, to protect his family, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) basically joins forces with a secret ops guy named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) who may or may not be government sanctioned… and they have to find a McGuffin known as “The God’s Eye” which basically uses all technology in the world to locate somebody anywhere in the world. It’s just that easy. Even easier than… say… standing around and waiting for Deckard Shaw to find them? Not quite… but otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. Basically from there, it’s just one global jetsetting trip to another to do things like drop vehicles out of airplanes over Azerbaijan, drive from tower to tower in Abu Dhabi, introduce cameos from Ronda Rousey, Tony Jaa, Djimon Hounsou, Iggy Azalea, T-Pain… and let’s face it, Jordana Brewster’s character is basically a cameo in those movie too… and I think Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was on set for MAYBE a week & over half of that was the fight with Deckard Shaw. Anyway… it basically takes all the craziest scenes from every other ridiculous action movie ever made… and puts them all into one… with a lot of gun butter, Vin Diesel mumbles, waify girl asses, ridiculous situations, one liners that don't really say anything… all the stuff that you want in one of these movies. Do I think that anybody associated with this movie will be nominated for an Academy Award? FOH, of course not. Was it fun to watch? Absolutely… and absolutely infuriating when you try to use the laws of physics or rationality… but hey, you get what you want from it. I’d say check it out… and there’ll be plenty more of these movies… don’t you worry about that either.

 

Tuesday night, Izzy & I went to Local Brewing near AT&T Park for the SF Homebrewers Guild’s monthly meeting. Local Brewing opened up about four months ago & is already getting a great reputation around the Bay Area as a fantastic brewery. They have a 10bbl system and are very savvy with social media & technology to essentially “give the people what they want”. They started with four beers on tap… and are now up to 16 beers and essentially the beers that make the cut at a particular time are those that patrons want, like & let them know. I mean… it’s a pretty simple idea of giving the people what sells & what they want… but they use the technology to their benefit since things like size & storage of their location are limited. Brewmaster Regan & head brewer Patrick talked about their process & answered questions from the guild… and it was a great experience. Here are some pictures…

 

A HUGE thank you to Regan for letting us host our meeting at her location & for the samples of their wonderful beer. Check them out if you’re in the SOMA area!

 

While this was going on, the softball team was wrapping up our undefeated championship season! I had a migraine starting up, so I didn’t make the games but they pulled out two victories in this doubleheader playoff situation… and we just crushed them! I’m incredibly proud of our team!

 

This past week, Izzy & I also had the opportunity to help out with a brew at Elevation 66 Brewing… and as usual, it was a lot of fun & very interesting… and not a bad way to spend about 8 hours starting at 5 AM. I have to keep thanking Super Dave, Big Ben & Li’l Jon for allowing us to help out and learn the intricacies of big league brewing… and apparently, Li’l Jon may have his own brewery that he’s in charge of soon enough in his hometown… but I’ll obviously share those details as we get a little closer to opening. Hopefully next year.

 

As for our own brewery (Terrible Lizard Brewing located entirely within my home at this time), we also are making an Apple Cider that we may let sit for a while and become an Apfelwein… but that was basically just putting apple juice & some brewing yeast in a carboy…

 

Also, we’re getting a 2^nd five gallon whiskey barrel from Seven Stills Distillery… so we’ve started another Scotch Ale to barrel age for a competition that they’re doing with the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild. Details will be coming soon regarding the release party during SF Beer Week… but in the meantime, we’ve started the base beer Scotch Ale… so that it’s ready for a moment’s notice when we get the barrel. It should be fantastic…

That should do it for this entry… as this weekend will be pretty full with the Bay Area Mashers’ Sacramento Brewery Tour & then the SF Homebrewers Guild taking over the bottle sort for the California State Homebrewing Competition… but more on that later. Until then, have a great weekend everybody!!!

Everything I Learned From Movies #eilfm

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Tuesday night, we finished off the Softball regular season with a great barbecue and… a 24-12 victory over our biggest rival (another branch of the company). I didn’t play a whole lot as we had something like 15-16 players, but I did get one at-bat, single, and run it in. So… if memory serves me correctly, my regular season stats are 9-for-11 batting (all singles) with two walks, and 8 RBI, with 6 runs. That’s about 85% on base percentage… which ain’t bad at all, even in softball. Anyway, championships are on Tuesday but… I have a scheduling conflict with the SF Homebrewers Guild monthly meeting so… I’ll probably have to be there in spirit only. We shall see…

Saturday, Izzy & I helped out at the Meals on Wheels Fallfest Gala which is where dozens of vintners & high-profile restaurants in the Bay Area come down to Justin Herrmann Plaza near the Ferry Building to help raise money to feed the elderly. Annually, this event raises MILLIONS for this great cause & we’re always glad to help out in any way that we can.

The other night, we watched “The Relic” starring Tom Sizemore, Penelope Ann Miller, Linda Hunt and directed by Peter Hyams (“Timecop”, “End of Days”, “Sudden Death”, etc). This movie is essentially set in the Natural History Museum in Chicago… and is about a superstitious homicide detective (Sizemore) and an entirely too hot anthropologist (Miller) trying to find a vicious killer… and then discover that it’s actually a South American beetle-lizard god running a rampage in the museum (and nowhere else). The weird thing about watching this movie… is that I kept thinking that I had watched it last week when it was called “Mimic” and as I looked into it… yeah, it’s pretty much the same movie… released the same year (this one just a few months before in 1997) but yeah… some mysterious supernatural being is killing a lot of people in surprisingly dimly lit areas (not sure why no lights in the museum EVER, but subways at least made some sense) and there’s a superhot scientist in the middle of it all… but yeah, honestly if you’re going to watch one of these things, watch “Mimic”. This movie wasn’t good at all… well… you know, it wasn’t horrible… but yeah, you’ve seen the movie before or some cookie cutter version of it probably. Not a lot here… and the superstitious stuff was just irritating. Oh, you have a problem with black cats? Then you probably don’t want to be a f**king homicide detective in Chicago.

Sunday night, we watched a 1990 independent movie called “Hardware” starring Dylan McDermott & Stacey Travis, directed by Richard Stanley (the guy who was originally going to direct the 1990’s Island of Dr. Moreau disaster). The story is set in a bleak apocalyptic future that’s kind of Blade Runner meets Mad Max… it’s a barren red radioactive desert wasteland… but with gritty metal & wire kind of cities as well with toxic green rivers… and if there’s one thing about this movie that was REALLY impressive, it’s the atmosphere & setting this really f**ked-up future that global warming will apparently lead to. The red tones & darkness kind of make your eyes hurt, there’s a lot of quick subliminal shots that are just odd & upsetting, you can almost feel the dirt and broken glass and grime that this world has all around them. Anyway, in this future, there’s a scavenger who comes to town and sells a cyborg skull to another scavenger named Moses (McDermott) and he takes it to his ladyfriend (Travis)’s super-secured… I guess, art studio apartment… and she wants to use the skull as the center of one of her pieces that she does. Well, they soon find out that this skull can actually rebuild itself into a six-limbed killing machine. Now, this movie was… awkward to say the least. It’s a very unique & memorable world… and the ladyfriend is kind of a badass… and there are strange turns in the story where you’ll find yourself yelling at the screen… and there are some extremely violent, bloody scenes (was apparently cut a bit to become R rated in 1990) but overall, it’s actually a pretty twisted little sci-fi horror tale without being too predictable or cliché. I highly recommend watching it with some friends this Halloween season… and best of all, I’m pretty sure that none of your friends have seen this little flick. Fun game: See if you can spot Lemmy from Motorhead.

Monday night, Izzy & I hung out with my neighbor J-Mo and we watched “The Dead Lands” starring a mostly New Zealand / Maori cast. Essentially the movie starts at a peaceful Maori village… and they have visitors from another tribe / former rivals… so you know some sh*t is about to go down. Anyway, there’s a burial ground that’s sacred to the rival & they come back saying that the grounds have been desecrated, so basically… this means War. Well, instead under the guise of going back home, they attack like thieves in the night & slaughter the peaceful tribe, leaving behind only one teenage son of the chief who was able to escape. Now… the son wants revenge… but he’s just a boy, what can he do? Well… there’s a mythical monster in the area known as The Dead Lands who may be able to help him… if he/it doesn’t decide to just kill him. This movie… is awesome. It’s a total Man Movie with plenty of fighting involving blunt force trauma, cannibalism, tales of vengeance and honor, talking with dead people thanks to deprivation & mushrooms, but overall… it’s just a great hard hitting movie along the lines of “Apocalypto” a few years back where even with the “primitive” time setting & traditions involved… you find that it’s really still a human story just in their context & beliefs and beautifully shot (except some of the camera work with the fight scenes may cause seizures). I highly recommend checking it out if you can handle the little bit of gore & reading subtitles. Enjoy!

This weekend should prove epic… as Saturday is the Bay Area Mashers’ Sacramento Brewery Tour where we’re going to take a bus ride up to Sacramento to tour FOUR breweries… all four new to us… New Glory Craft Brewery, Device Brewing, Track 7 Brewing & Oak Park Brewing Company. Also, we’ll be introduced to other fellow homebrewers from the East Bay area… and it’s always good to spread the culture. The SF Homebrewers Guild’s Brewery Tour is coming up in December too… but more on that as we get closer.

Then on Sunday is the bottle sort portion for the California State Homebrew Competition which the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild is taking control over now… so yeah, a lot of awesome beer related things to come… as well as…

WE’RE FINALLY RELEASING OUR PODCAST TO THE WORLD!!!

We found a little time on Sunday to finally focus & get some structure to our podcast “format” and this podcast is called… EVERYTHING I LEARNED FROM MOVIES!!! #eilfm Yes, there’s some resemblance to the Audrey Hepburn quote (and book I think) “Everything that I learned I learned from movies” but essentially… to start, our podcast will include movies reviews, some beer talk, and we’re working out some of the musical aspects… but until then, you get to witness the beautiful harmony of our voices in accapella versions of theme music… and just trust me, you’re going to love it. Check it out! Our first episode… we review the new Netflix release “Tremors 5: Bloodlines”!

Have a great weekend everybody!!!

Twilight Tusk

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

The other night, Izzy & I watched the horror anthology of 1983’s “Twilight Zone: The Movie” which is… basically a movie where four of Hollywood’s best directors at the time rebooted four old episodes of the legendary 1950’s Rod Serling TV series. I hadn’t seen this movie in a long, long time… and the only thing that I really remember from it are that the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes have parodied them… and my dad used to give me the crazy Dan Aykroyd look every once in a while and say “Do you want to see something REALLY scary?” and I’d immediately respond, “No, I do not. Not interested at all. Thank you.” That’ll be explained in the Proglogue starring Dan Aykroyd& Albert Brooks in the first few minutes. However, because this is an anthology… I’m going to review this movie by its four sections… since they have different directors. You’re welcome.

 

Segment 1: “Time Out” – Directed by John Landis (“Blues Brothers”, “Animal House”, etc) – A bigoted man meets up with a few friends of his at the bar… and he just missed out on his promotion at work… and basically the reason he believes that it happened was that the guy who got the promotion was Jewish. From there, he basically goes into a rambling racist rant and even pisses off a few people at the bar… and then he leaves in a huff. Well, when he steps outside… he’s magically transported to Nazi-occupied Germany in the 1940’s. Now he will know what REAL prejudice is! Overall a good segment… good message of racial tolerance, keeping everything in perspective, judging people by their actions and not their race, creed, all that stuff… give it a watch. Not incredible, but fairly memorable.

 

Segment 2: “Kick the Can” – Directed by Steven Spielberg (“Jaws”, “A.I.”, “Munich”, etc) – If there’s a segment to completely skip because it’s pretty damn boring AND it doesn’t really fit into the whole Twilight Zone thriller theme, it’s this schmaltzy bit from Spielberg about a retirement community who has a mystical, magical stranger (played by Scatman Crothers) who is trying to cheer up the locals… but they’re a bit on the crotchety side. Well, what if they could be young again? Although the segment is well-shot (even if a little slow), acted well, and all that… it’s basically just a shortened version of “Cocoon” and there’s really no intrigue in my humble opinion. It seemed REALLY out of place.

 

Segment 3: “It’s a Good Life” – Directed by Joe Dante (“Gremlins”, etc) – A young woman (prime Kathleen Quinlan) is on the road going… somewhere… when she stumbles into a diner ran by character actor Dick Miller. While leaving, she accidentally back into a kid named Anthony on his bike… and offers to take him to his house. When she walks into the house, the family invites her to stay for dinner… but things seem a little off. The family is on edge… cartoons are playing on every TV… in fact, the whole house kind of seems like she’s in a cartoon… but why? Short of giving anything away, I’ll stop there. What I really like about this segment was the growing sense of suspense during the buildup portion… and then the (somewhat dated but still) great use of physical effects with the various creatures that pop up during this segment. Also, fun fact, this segment was redone in a Simpson Treehouse of Horror episode… and the voice of Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright) is Anthony’s sister in this show. You’ll be able to tell which one as soon as she opens her mouth.

 

Segment 4: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” – Directed by George Miller (“Mad Max” movies & “Babe”) – This was my favorite segment! The TV version stars the great William Shatner in the main role, but for the movie version it’s the great John Lithgow… and he stars as an airline passenger who is having a bit of a panic attack while mid-flight during a bit of turbulence in the heart of a lightning storm. The stewardesses offer him some sedatives to help him calm down… but he takes a few deeps breaths & says that he’ll be fine. Throw in a few creepy passengers (especially that little girl, WTF?) and suspension is being built beautifully… and then he glances out the window… and sees some one out on the wing of the plane! He calls for the stewardess… but she doesn’t see it… no one else does… neither does he… is he losing his mind? Long story short: It gets crazy from there! Also, Simpsons did that one too… but yeah, check out the big screen version. I love everything about this segment… even the creepy little girl with the doll. It totally makes sense that this part was from the director of the Mad Max movies. Overall, basically see this whole damn movie… but if you only have an hour to spare, skip the old folks home. Great stuff!

  

Monday night, I watched another horror flick that had been recommended to me called “Tusk” starring Justin Long, Michael Parks & Haley Joel Osment and directed by Kevin Smith (“Clerks”, “Mallrats”, “Jersey Girl”, “Dogma”, etc). This is apparently the first in a horror trilogy that Kevin Smith is doing (not unlike “Devil” was for M. Night Shyamalan a few years back) which peaked my interest… mostly as a “can he really pull it off?” interest. Now, I’m a big fan of most Kevin Smith movies… but what seems to work best in his movies (dialogue, humor, occasional touching moments, cameos by big stars like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon or Will Smith) doesn’t typically translate well to the horror genre… unless it’s a kind of tongue-in-cheek horror parody or something… and even then, it’s tricky. So yeah, interested! The movie is about a podcaster named Wallace (Long) who travels the world in search of stories to share with his co-host (Osment) on their show, the Not-See Party (always make sure to spell it out over the phone). Well, his travels take him to the Great White North (Canada) where he wanders into a bar after a failed interview… and finds an interesting invite on the bulletin board from an elderly gentleman (Parks) who wants to share his stories. PERFECT! He calls the man up… and they arrange an interview. The evening starts off at his palatial estate about an hour from anywhere… and then things take a sickening turn when it seems that his beverage has been drugged.

 

Now, I don’t want to give too much away… but let’s just say that what follows is very “Human Centipede” inspired. For the rest of this paragraph, there are going to be spoilers… so if you’re interested in seeing this movie, then by all means, please skip to the next paragraph about Softball. Seriously, I’m going to reveal some things that might ruin the experience if you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Okay, now that they’re gone… this movie was a little odd-fitting to me. The performances were pretty great. Michael Parks was amazing as the protagonist! Genesis Rodrigues as his girlfriend had some VERY impressive moments… and she’s obviously easy on the eyes. Even the addition of Johnny Depp as Canadian detective Guy LaPointe was convincing… even if it’s Depp in a LOT of makeup with a crazy accent as what seems to be his MO the past few years. However, I couldn’t really tell if this movie was supposed to be horror… or a parody of horror. If it was supposed to be a parody, then it wasn’t really funny… barely a few chuckles… even though there were a LOT of jabs at Canadian stereotypes & Justin Long rattling off the typical Kevin Smith dialogue in the first act or so. The whole premise is a crazy old man who’s trying to surgically turn abducted people into a walrus, and then live with them as his loving companion for the rest of their lives. If that premise doesn’t SCREAM parody of horror… then I don’t know what does. It’s pretty f**king ridiculous. That being said… the movie is pretty well shot for the eerie atmosphere of a horror flick… well-acted… and as long as you can get past the whole ridiculousness about the walrus (which the final transformation costume looks like Frankenstein Fat Bastard with two parking cones shoved in his mouth) then it can be a pretty harrowing tale. I don’t know… it’s just a weird mid-genre movie… and in doing so, it doesn’t really pull off either. Definitely an interesting movie… and I kind of enjoyed it… but yeah, just a little off to me. Apparently he’s following up this movie with “Yoga Hosers” later this year (involves two teenagers from this movie teaming up with Guy LaPointe to battle an ancient evil) and “Moose Jaws” next year (actual tagline is “Like Jaws, but with a moose”) so it might be interesting to see how they all interconnect… but only mildly curious based on this movie. Again, I enjoy Kevin Smith movies… but I understand that sometimes they’re a little weird with his dialogue, inside gags & stuff like that when he’s trying to do a serious genre flick. There are definitely great elements of this movie (again, Parks, f**king boss!!!) but may have missed some points in the delivery overall. Okay, back to non-movie stuff…

 

Tuesday night, we had a surprise doubleheader in softball (apparently a makeup game that nobody knew about until the umpire asked us as everybody was leaving) but as per usual… we f**king crushed it. Final scores were something like 13-1 & 14-3. Our defense is solid as always and our bats were finally catching fire too… well, by our bats I mean the team’s… my perfect batting average came to a crushing halt with a 1-of-4 performance over the two games… but yeah, the team is 7-0 still and we’re just catching stride.

 

This weekend, in spite of pretty obvious mishandling / incompetence by the powers that be over the event, we will still have a booth at the Alternative Press Expo in San Jose on Saturday & Sunday. Though because of the mishandling / incompetence / prejudicial behavior, we will be that awesome booth in the far-back corner away from everything… even though we booked the booth several months ago. Yeah, obviously I’m a little pissed at the piss-poor performance of the event coordinators... and I’m not even going to get into how they’ve “promoted” the event to absolutely no one… but f**k ‘em, we’ll be there, we’ll sell a bunch of art in spite of them… and then they may or may not get a flaming bag of human excrement on the way out. Come take part in the fun! On the real though, there’ll be a LOT of great independent artists & comic book people (billed as the Indie Comic-Con but you’ve never heard of it due to lack of promotion) and it’s definitely worth a stop… or at least it was. Worst-case scenario, I’ll be there… so you know that’s f**king awesome 24-7. See y’all there!

 

Aside from that, more to come after this busy busy weekend… have a great weekend yourselves!!!

Drinkin' with Dr Bamforth

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday, about a dozen members of the SF Homebrewers Guild joined up at our VP’s house to build our booth for the Northern California Homebrewers Festival… and spoiler alert, it’s a prison theme similar to our NHC booth… but it’s called Alco-traz… and here are some teasers…

 

Sunday was the return of professional football… and I have the NFL Sunday Ticket… so I spent seven hours of my day watching the Red Zone Channel & drinking homebrew… like a f**king boss. Jealous? Well, swing on by the crib next time & we’ll do it potluck style.

 

Monday night, Izzy & I met up with Big Ben, Lone Cicerone & Li’l Jon and we attended a special event at Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo Room in Berkeley where the great Dr. Charles Bamforth (UC-Davis professor) was giving a special talk about beer, the history of beer, the chemistry & science of beer, and of course… each chapter in the talk was complimented with an appropriate beer. He discussed many thing like yeast, the chemistry of taste, nitrogen, foam, malt preparation, hops, attenuation of hops and a slough of other things… and a great night was had by all. Here are a few pictures…

 

Tuesday night was softball… and we fell into a bit of a hole early… I believe we were down 8-1 after the 2^nd inning, just a few fielding mistakes but in softball those things add up quick. However, a few innings later, we started clicking at the plate again… and we ended up winning 9-8 in a nailbiter. We’re 4-0 now… and I’m not one to brag… but I’m literally batting 1.000 this year still. 6-for-6 with two walks… I make it to the plate, son. I’ve even ran in about half of them (I’m near the end of the batting order). Anyway, great game everybody!!! Let’s keep this stuff going… and let’s get back to the blowout victories. They’re easier on my heart.

 

Well, that’s really about it for this entry… the next few days we’ll be getting ready for the Northern California Homebrewers Festival this weekend… and hopefully the wildfires here in California won’t ruin the festival… but seriously, my hearts go out to all of the people REALLY affected by the fire & those heroes that are out there putting them out in hellish conditions. God’s speed everybody! Have a great weekend!!!