dionne found the funniest damn SNL clip and threw it up on her blog. it's a rap video called "lazy sunday." i think we watched it like five times in a row last night. i laughed so hard i almost pissed myself.
well, the indianapolis colts finally lost today, meaning football fans will go yet another year without seeing a team finish 16-0 (the colts made it as far as 13-0 before the san diego chargers beat them this afternoon). anyway, you'll undoubtedly hear many references to the 1972 miami dolphins (the only undefeated team in modern NFL history) and the oft-repeated story that the living members all get together and pop champagne to celebrate the last undefeated team's loss. i heard an espn anchor make a reference to this just a few days ago. well, in reality, it's just an urban legend. don shula himself has said he'd be the first to call the coach of that undefeated team and congratulate him. so if you hear someone mention champagne and the '72 dolphins, tell him or her that it's just a tall tale.
you may have heard about this, but the ultra-connected investment company The Carlyle Group is the major investor in the acquisition this week of Dunkin' Donuts. the carlyle group of course appeared unflatteringly in "Farenheit 9/11", but more specifically, it's the company founded by people very, very closely connected to the white house, major fortune 500 boards and the council on foreign relations. i don't mean to sound like a tin foil hat-wearing loon, but i don't like this. when you control the nation's coffee supply, you control the nation! if i'm on the trilateral commission or a member of the illuminati (like tupac!), then i'm thinking of slipping some kind of mind-altering chemical in the coffee... something to make us docile!
the great blog daily kos thankfully has a whole page devoted to the subject. in the meantime, i'm making my own coffee!
slate has a nifty little story about the film "layer cake" today. it's about cockney ganster films and why they seem to do so well on DVD, but not in theaters. apparently, people like to be able to rewind scenes a few times to pick up extra bits of that jumbled mess of english language. i think people just have a hard time finding movie houses near them that show these flicks. but what do i know...
i do know that the straight up smoothest, most sophisticated cockney gangster flick of all time would have to be "gangster no. 1" starring paul bettany and malcolm mcdowell. this one is just buttery smooth. the gangsters just have strut and style that makes this film so alluring. 
for those of you not prone to following such trivial or not-so-trivial things, the indianapolis colts are 12-0 in this NFL season, meaning they need four more wins to attain the perfect 16-0 season. no team has ever gone 16-0, although the 1972 Dolphins were a perfect 13-0. i keep asking people if they'd rather see their team go 16-0 or win the super bowl. so far everyone i know has said something like, "all that matters is winning the super bowl." but they say it in this sort of zombie-like way... like they've been indoctrinated by years of NFL marketing. my point: the 16-0 season is a far bigger feat. you may not remember who won the super bowl in 1998, but the first 16-0 season will not be so easily forgotten. a writer at slater had many of the same ideas on this question.
brewing update...
wow it's been a busy two weeks. last weekend jay and i bottled the IPA and racked the porter to secondary. we have REALLY high hopes for the porter, which used a very good liquid yeast strain and lots of specialty grains like chocolate malt (it doesn't actually have chocolate in it, it's basically a slightly roasted barley malt), black patent malt and roasted barley. should be scrumdiddlyumcious.
so the IPA has been in bottles for a week now. i couldnt' resist trying one today while watching the pittsburgh steelers pathetically lose to the cincinatti bengals. it was only slightly carbonated and the maltiness really hasn't coalesced yet, but it has a VERY interesting hoppy flavor to it (we used centennial hops, which are very bitter) and it was just a beautiful color... bright gold and very clear. this is gonna be a good beer, but it's not there yet.
yesterday we bottled the porter. should be so good. i can't wait to try it. we also decided to brew our fifth batch, a basic english bitter (albeit with american hops). we used just basic malt extract and crystal malt (which gives it a nice amber/brown color and plenty of sweetness and a combination of amarillo hops (a very new and trendy hop variety) and mt. hood (a classic pacific nw aroma hop). the best part was that we reused the london ale yeast from the porter. jay checked on it today and said the thing was churning and foaming like crazy. check out da video.
sorry for the lack of posts lately. i've been a bit distracted lately with work and all sorts of other stuff. to update everyone who i haven't talked to in the past few weeks, here's the scoop:
di and i are having a "70s-themed" christmas party at our house on dec. 17. should be a good time. we're gonna have fondue, lots of disco music and cocaine. mounds and mounds of the fine colombian. ok. everything but the cocaine part is true. we've also got the house all decorated with a christmas tree (fake) and plenty of lights. the cat likes to go after the ornaments. (yes! shiny round things!)
at the end of the month dionne and i are going to visit her parents in their new home in nashville, tenn. they just moved there from lakeland, fla. should be fun. pretty much her whole family will be there. this would have had me nervous a few years back, but at this point, we're all on extremely familiar terms. (basically, they know how crazy i am.)
we're going to probably leave on friday morning the 23rd and make the drive straight down there. should be fun.
graceland here we come....
di's parents just moved to nashville from florida. we're gonna drive down there to visit them. unfortunately, my car is a stick shift... and di refuses to learn how to drive it. that means 17 straight hours of driving for me. and i hate driving! fortunately, di's mom (the world's greatest cook) said that if it drive, she'll cook whatever I want when i'm down there. that means i get to at least pig out on oxtail, lamb curry, rice and peas and her special sweet-and-sour chinese-style meatballs. i can't wait.
jay and i bottled the IPA yesterday and racked the porter to secondary. we also saved the yeast from the porter batch to re-pitch into our next batch. we're probably going to use that yeast for another batch... some type of english ale (maybe a bitter or ESB). right now the yeasties are hibernating in a sanitized jug in jay's fridge. sleep well little yeasties.
i think this story might have some legs... apparently a memo has surfaced that shows bush considered bombing the al jazeera cable network earlier this year. (thanks to keagan for the tip.)
Da Brewery is up and running. check out the website jay is buildingto document our homebrewing adventures. it's still a work in progress, but stay tuned. we'll probably have pictures up soon.
the beer goggle effect has finally een researched. there's actually a mathematical formula to determine the extent of the beer google effect... it involves coefficients and multiplications of factors such as amount of alcohol consumed, smokiness of the bar or club you're in, etc.
there's a brewery in belgium called A Chouffe, click here to hear its theme song. i think it was performed by multilingual brewing elves.
any out there looking to run an authentic english pub out there should come see me. you bring the capital. i bring the management know-how and killer people skills. let's make this happen people!
jay and i brewed again on sunday... which provided a welcome respite from the horrible season the eagles are having (they lost another humiliating game to the giants that day). anyway, we ended up brewing James Bond Porter (an english-style porter, for lack of a better name) and transferring batch #3, Badass IPA into the other carboy for its secondary fermentation/conditioning.
anyway, we're really optimistic about both of these beers. the porter will be great, we hope. for this batch we used a combination of malt extract, chocolate malt, roasted barley and black patent malt to give the wort a nice black color. then we added fuggles hops for bittering and two additions of east kent goldings hops for bittering and aroma.
we also used a liquid yeast... white labs WLP013 London Ale, which should give the beer a nice "english" character and complexity. we also did our first yeast starter, which is the process of adding the yeast ahead of brewing day to a small wort, which allows the viable yeast cells to multiply and results in a better fermentation. it must've worked, because when i talked to jay yesterday, he said the porter was bubbling away like mad.
there's even the possibility that we might go for batch 5 right away. we might actually repitch more wort right on top of the yeast cake from the porter. yeast are living critters, so as long as they're still viable, you can reuse the same batch of yeast for multiple beer batches. professional brewers some times reuse a yeast cake as many as 10 times before pitching fresh yeast.
sorry for the lack of blogging lately. things have just been kind of hectic lately.
i posted a week or so ago about my search for new sneakers. damn i love sneakers -- the more retro the better. i ended up picking out a pair of blue ponys. pony is a brand that, like kangaroo and saucony, really nose-dived after the 80s. but they re-issued a bunch of old shoes recently and they definitely look good.
here's a poem that britney spears (aka mrs. kevin federline) posted on her website recently. It's about their honeymoon. I think she's this generation's robert frost, frankly.
A honeymoon at last, to get away from it all
My assistant Fe gave me the call.
I remember it well, as she was smilin'
She said it was called Turtle Island.
I packed my bags light and quick,
Then grabbed my pink dress & favorite lipstick.
We hopped on a plane and took our flight
I slept really well, all through the night.
As we arrive, I turn and look out the door,
People are greeting us right at the shore.
A meal, a shower and some ice cream
Then I threw my man down, you know what I mean!
Magical nights filled with stars
Silence is golden, no running cars.
Private dinners, romantic fires
Little piece of heaven, whatever your heart desires.
Friendly "hellos" and never goodbyes
When you're having fun, oh, how time flies!
As we sit and prepare to make our part
I thank you, Turtle Island, with all my heart!
~ Britney
i really do dig this place for my shoe buying. it's great because customers can actually rate the shoes they bought and are wearing - amazon style. here's a pretty typical comment about pony brand shoes (which i dig)...
awesome fresh dopeness!! These shoes are so ill!! Nobody got these, everyone else is rockin Asics, Puma, Adidas, blah blah blah. Pony is uniqueness!!! They're sharp lookin, wear these and you get lots of compliments!!
i'm really jonesin' for some new sneakers. i really dig the old school, retro 70s looking sneakers... puma, adidas, pony, saucony, new balance, etc. i'm also on the lookout for a pair of these...
the impossible-to-find kangol warwick... made by the company better known for their caps. unfortunately, it appears this show has long been discontinued. if anyone knows where to get them, email me.
finally, hookers are becoming a lot easier to find in rhode island!
no, not hookers in the solicitous sense of the word. actually, the thomas hooker beers are available here. they're brewed by troutbrook, a small brewery in hartford. they make some seriously amazing beers. just a notch above a lot of other microbrewers. i'm just having their oktoberfest right now and it's sooooooo drinkable.
it's on....
the eagles play the cowboys in philly next monday night. yes, i know, it's been a profoundly embarrassing week for the club, what with T.O. making us look like fools with his traitorous antics... but all that is behind us now and I for one am relieved that the team is moving on without him.
jay and I got around to brewing on saturday. we had a great time. we had hoped to finally use liquid yeast for this batch, but liquid yeasts require a starter (basically a mini-fermentation that allows the yeast cells to propagate and increase the cell count before pitching onto the wort). a starter has to be done a day ahead of time, though, and jay and i were so hungry to brew saturday that we couldn't wait a day.
so anyway, we trucked up to woonsocket to check out blackstone valley brewing supplies, a local shop. we met the owner there and he was very helpful. we ended up making only a few small changes to the recipe i had come up with earlier.
"Joel's IPA" should come out to around 7% abv. we ended up using 7 lbs. malt and one pound honey for the fermentables. we also used a dry yeast called safale us-56, which is the dried version of the "chico" strain... essentially the same exact yeast used to make sierra nevada pale ale.
lately i've sorta realized how much of an anglophile i've become. i'm not sure why, but i've always had this deep interest in english culture. shit just fascinates me. one thing i never understood, though, was why they call their elite boarding schools "public schools." this just never made any sense to me. anway, here's an excerpt from wikipedia that i think explains it a bit...
"Until 1902 there were no publicly-supported secondary schools in England. Public schools were schools supported by an endowment, with a governing body, available to all members of the public, provided that they could pay for tuition costs. Private schools were run for private profit.[1] In recent years all schools formally called public schools now refer to themselves as independent schools, but the national press and many other still use the term public school when referring to independent schools, in particular the older, more prestigious fee-paying schools such as those mentioned in the Public Schools Act 1868: Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, Winchester, Merchant Taylors' and St. Paul's."
i don't mean to alarm you, but i laid out all or part of 18 pages tonight at work. basically, probably 40 people's jobs depend on me gettign my work done on any given night and not completely messing up. it's kinds of a lot of pressure... which i think is tough for others not in my seat to understand. the entire operation is so dependent on bill (the other editor) and i that it's starting to wear us down. night-in, night-out, we're being asked to carry A LOT of weight. so far, we've done it well, but i just hope things don't come crashing down one night when one of us is alone on the news desk and overwhelmed. the paper we work for was started 123 years ago. i don't want to be the guy responsible for killing it off.
nananananayeah!
that's the signature call for my boy richie spice. richie's music has me hooked lately. he's a reggae singer who really mixes well the whole dancehall style with the roots reggae singing of bob. we jamaicans just refer to mr. marley as bob, by the way. for real, though, richie spice has this soulful element in his music that is SOOOOOO different from a lot of dancehall nowadays that seems to borrow more from american radio-friendly hip-hop. richie kinda remembers of some of the 80s singers who really kill me... barrington, super cat, yellowman. check out his song "youth are so cold." hard-edged political lyrics, smooth reggae keyboard riffs and an absolutely ass-rattling bass line. the kind that makes your car sound like it's about to crack in half like an egg. oh yes.
my boy jay and i haven't been able to brew at all lately, mainly since i've been so busy with the wedding/honeymoon/move. batch 1 was an english-style pale ale that came out pretty well. batch 2 was a wheat beer that came out really well. batch 3 will most likely be an india pale ale, a nice hoppy ale with, according to my calculations, 7.1% alcohol and 68 IBUs (international bitterness units, which basically measure hoppiness). here's the recipe i came up with. it might get tweaked, but hopefully we'll brew SOMETHING this weekend.
Batch 3 IPA
5 gallons
7.1% ABV
68 IBUs
original gravity 1.074
final gravity 1.019
8 lbs. light dry malt extract
1 lb. crystal malt (30L) steeped
1 tsp. irish moss (for clarity)
1 oz. centennial hops at 45 min.
1 oz. cascade hops at 30 min.
1 oz. liberty hops at 3 min.
Wyeast 1056/WLP001/US56 American ale yeast
primary fermentation 7-10 days
secondary fermentation 2-3 weeks for improved clarity
It is so nice to be finally settling down after th past two months of craziness. i swear, from the week or two before the bachelor party in september up until this week, things have been out of control around here. just a lot of planning and things to worry about and houseguests and appointments. Now we plan to relax a bit in our new house. yeah, we're renters, so it's not like we own the place, but it's still nice to have a change of scenery. we're living in east providence, right in the middle town. it's right across the river from providence. very convenient location.
here are some photos....
the sun porch
our living room with our new couch... the first non-futon we've ever bought
di and i were constantly amused by the horribly mistranslated english that we read at the resort in mexico. it reminded me of old vcr manuals written in scary japanese-to-english techo-pidgin. here's our favorite excerpt from the portion of the room service menu called "For the Kids."
We know how important it is for you that your kids have a balanced food, mainly in this first stage, where a good physical condition will let them grow up and become strong and wealthy teenagers. utside (sic) it is difficult to have control of their food habits, specially during vacations, but in the privacy of you (sic) room, like in home, it is easy to handle it. That is why our kids menu is conformed with a balanced and at the same time "attractive" to the little ones, reducing grease to the minimum.
that just cracked me and di up every time.
does anybody know how to ask "do you know what day of the week the garbage truck comes by?" in portuguese? i tried asking the old man sitting on the stoop across the street and just got a blank stare. i then realized that i should've asked it in portuguese. duh!
(it is funny how people who are asked a question in a foreign language respond like catatonic deer staring down an 18-wheeler. it reminded me of when i was in france and was routinely asked things that i had no idea how to answer.)
sorry about the lack of new posts lately. di and i moved into our new home in east providence this weekend. the computer is still in a box somewhere and the cable modem is awaiting a creepy cable guy to invade our home and hook the shit up. pictures of the place will be posted at some point. for the impatient, it's a beige, 2-story cape cod with a master bed, living room, BIG kitchen, bathroom and 2 upstairs offices/studies.
it's been a RILLY RILLY busy week for di and I. we got back last week from mexico, then immediately begin moving out of the apartment in federal hill. for those who don't know, we're moving into a small house we're renting in east providence. it's a little more space and definitely lot more privacy. should be a nice fresh start.
of course, in the meantime, we're spening every spare minute packing boxes and moving junk into the house. i hate moving.
well, it's a moot point now. harriet miers has withdrawn herself from the running for the supreme court. check out here blog....Harriet Miers's Blog!!!.
harriet miers sucks. sorry to talk about a potential supreme court justice that way, but i have to. here's a good story about why her tenure in charge of the dallas bar association really isn't that impressive. the woman has ZIPPY in terms of accomplishments and is utterly undeserving of being on the supreme court whether she's conservative, liberal or anywhere in between. think about it... are truly great legal minds spending their time running the bar association... or are they out arguing important cases?
i have to vent a bit about my beloved eagles....
i got a chance to watch them against the san diego chargers today and i have to say... they sucked. yes, they managed to win 20-17, but their offense has continued to play horribly this season. basically, they only won because their defense is playing better than I've EVER seen an iggles defense play and because of a last-minute special teams play (the blocked kick returned for a touchdown.)
the real problem for this team, though, is the offensive scheme. i have this deep, paranoid belief now that the rest of the league is catching up with andy reid's offense. last season, they were putting up A LOT of points on teams by throwing the ball every down and letting T.O. and westbrook break tackles to make big plays. but this season, those plays just aren't gettng broken and teams are letting an obviously-injured mcnabb throw the easy underneath passes, but forcing him into tough plays on third and fourth down. it's not working. the real problem is the lack of a running game. I think andy reid is very smart, but sometimes he's maybe a little too smart for his own good. he's always thought he could beat the system and outsmart EVERYBODY. well, after the last few weeks, i'm not so sure. i enjoy watching a good runnign game, like the one they had three years ago with duce, westbrook and buckhalter together. i miss that part of the game (the eagles only ran 10 run plays the whole game against SD.)
here are some more photos to enjoy....
my new parents-in-law maxine and george, at the reception
the cake that corinne made. she's looking to do more wedding cakes, too. hire her! now!
di and I at the reception
me being goofy in the hotel room during the honeymoon. i'm now the official spokesman for negra modelo beer... "la crema de la cerveza" as we say in mexico. 
loftus, hoppo and adrienne during the rehearsal dinner at paragon
alexandra, gabe, keagan and loftus at the rehearsal dinner
my aunti barb, me, my mom, keagan and di at the rehearsal dinner
di and adrienne before the wedding 
di and i on our way out of the church looking relieved
the bridesmaids, kristen, alexandra, adrienne and keisha
i finally got around to finishing "white teeth" by zadie smith, mainly thanks to a lot of reading time on the beach. (what's better?) the book is just a masterpiece, plain and simple. she's a crazy talented writer and just puts the most beautiful sentences down on the paper. she kills me. the story is about two families living in a 1980s London suburb... and it spirals out from there. it really ventures deep into topics dealing with immigrants and their loss of identity... it's profound enough to transpire just thatcher-era london.
now that i'm done with that, i'm moving onto "the crying of lot 49" by thomas pynchon. i've already red "mason and dixon" by him. this is NOTHING like that. "crying" reminds me more of the surrealness of samuel beckett (i'm no scholar! believe me. but i did read one of his plays en francais as a student). i also really dug heller and vonnegut, so i'm hoping pynchon will be a tasty treat for me. 
di and i are moving tomorrow morning (actually, just later THIS morning). we're moving into our little single-family house in east providence, just over the river from where we live now. we're SOOOO excited. basically, we wanted to stay in the city, but also have a little more space to ourselves. it's going to be nice not having to worry about making too much noise for the neighbors downstairs for once. i'm even thinking of cranking my bass back up again like in the old days. maybe i'll make myself a little mini music studio in the basement. can't wait.
anyway... we're painting the kitchen in the morning and plan to spend all next week moving our mountains of shit into the house.
also tomorrow night is our friends jay and sharon's engagement party. congratulations you two... welcome to wedding-planning-hell.
well, i just got off work a little while ago. my boss was out, ahem, "sick" today and the news editor, bill, had a day off... leaving me to put the entire paper out by myself. oh, and this was the sat.-sun. edition, the largest paper of the week. i did 16 pages by myself before it was all over. and actually, i was only about an hour past deadline, which isn't that bad, especially considering the circumstances. needless to say, it's not good for your newspaper to have one editor manning the ship. one set of extremely fatigued eyes can let some failry obvious mistakes and typos get by. i actually thought my A1 cover looked pretty good, though, despite the less-than-perfect circumstances.
after the wedding reception, di and i stayed the night at la dolce villa, a boutique hotel near where we live. it wa a really nice room... very modern. at 5 a.m. the next morning, keagan and my dad drove us up to logan aiport to fly to puerto vallarta. by 2 p.m. we were in mexico. when we arrived in our room at the resort (dreams puerto vallarta), we were greeted with this...
a few minutes later they brought up a chilled bottle of champagne for us! wow. the room was nice. nothing fancy... but the best part was the view of the beach.
the resort was pretty nice. we went kayaking along the coast and jet-skiing, which was great. the waves were pretty big, too, so i got to do some boogie-boarding. mostly though, we just sat around on the beach or by one of the pools and drank pina coladas and margeritas all day long. the resort was all-inclusive, so they just bring you drinks all day long. plus you can order room service and they'll bring you up whatever you want to eat or drink in your room. had them deliver me bottles of negra modelo... it was great!
mexico was wonderful. di was a little more ambivalent about it, but i love the people and really loved the food. one of the best parts of the trip, i think, was when we went into town to sightsee. di ended up buying an oil painting from a local artist...
here's a bunch of shots from the reception....
that's dionne's sisters simone, adrienne and keisha just before the reception started
di and i during the reception. we did get to actually eat some of the food. my veal marsala was just great.
my bro keagan and i during the reception
here's the whole family, with di and i in the middle
so then we went to the reception...
we had it at via roma, a smallish reception hall on atwells avenue, here in providence. it was absolutely wonderful. the location worked out so well. the food was great. the drinks were great. the service was great. ffor di and i, it was really our first chance to relax a little.
here's us cutting the wedding cake, which was done by our friend corrine tesson, a pastry chef. (anyone else in the providence/fall river area looking for a wedding cake should hire her!).....anyway.........
now for the ceremony...
overall, it went really well. everyone liked father bocchino, who is sorta not your typical parish priest. anyway, i was so nervous i could barely sit still beforehand. then when di and her father made their way down the aisle, i'll admit, it was a little tough to hold it together. 
now we get to the wedding day. we all woke like a bunch of hung-over deadbeats that morning. calabro, one of my groomsmen, still wasn't in providence! his flight the night before had been cancelled and he didn't end up arriving at my house until 3 hours before the ceremony. we all hung out at my place. we all put on our tuxes, but the weather was getting kinda hot. the funniest shit was when calabro puts his tux on and just starts sweating his BALLS off in the tux. i mean, he looked like he just dove in a pool with his suit on. it was hilarious. he eventually towelled down and i gave him a wife beater to put on, which must've helped. and no, john, i don't need that wife beater back. it's cool.
a little while later, loftus mixed us all some pre-wedding ceremony libations... you know, to take the edge off. well, his special recipe, the alaskan thunderfuck (yes, that's the name) was just scary. i don't want to know what he put in that shaker.
i'll continue this little story shortly...
the headband mafia is up in this piece! as you can see, we had a great time friday night at the rehearsal dinner. we all met up at paragon on thayer street for a nice meal, and best of all, an open bar. i got each of my groomsmen a gift: soccer shirts and matching headbands. di thought they would hate the gifts, but i thought they went over well. anyway, the dinner was great. paragon's atmosphere was just excellent and the drinks were top-notch. oh and afterward we somehow managed to stumble over to a couple of bars in my neighborhood. yes, i felt like the death when i woke up the next morning on my wedding day.
di's friend kristen (one of the bridesmaids, in fact) took some good wedding/reception shots and posted them at her blog, Miss Kristen. nice, k.
hi everyone,
sorry it took me so long to post anything on here. i haven't forgotten about you, believe me. there will be MUCH, MUCH more to come about the wedding and honeymoon, including lots of photos...
first things first... i want to thank our parents, mark and marilyn and maxine and george... for not only raising us, but shelling out a small fortune to make sure our wedding and honeymoon were special. we don't take your contributions lightly.
second... thank you to my groomsmen aka "the headband mafia" -- the best man keagan aka "osama bin keagan", john h. aka "hoppo," aka "dj john hopkinz", anton aka "dr. giggles" (we don't really have a nickname for him yet, but we're workin' on it), loftus aka "the lobster" and john c. aka "calabs," aka "lattimer."
yes, we have a positvely bushian love of nicknames around here... all we need is someone named pootie-poot.
anyway, di and i are still gathering all of the billions of digital photos from the rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception and honeymoon. in the meantime, here's a nice shot that di's sister keisha took of us during the reception...
di posted a list of reasons why she loves the mook she's marrying on sat. it's nice list. although i've NEVER gotten anywhere near 90% of jeopardy questions right.
i can't wait until this whole wedding thing is friggin over! this sucks so bad. there are just too many twists and turns and last minute problems to deal with. now we found out that the reception can't start until almost 2 friggin hours after the ceremony. great. can i skip the ceremony and reception and just hop on the plane to mexico with di?
here's a cool site cataloguing japanese vending machines. it's amazing what you can buy from vending machines over there. and yes, there is even a photo of one of the legendary schoolgirl panty vending machines. no, i'm not kidding.
you need gas. so stop whining. you'll head right back to the pump when the needle hits "E" again. so stop complaining about the price of gas. anyone else getting annoyed by all the moaning about this? yes, i do live in rhode island and have a daily commute of only 3 miles. too bad, suckers. but seriously, can't we americans just admit that our recent gas price shitstorm is just the latest bill arriving from a 50 year party that has gone on too long? for decades now our government has done EVERYTHING it could to encourage us to be slaves to automobiles. they've depleted cities out of economic viability. they've zoned walkable suburbs out of existence. they've artificially kept the price of petroleum down through massive government subsidies and low gas taxes, i could go on and on.
but the joy ride is about to end, folks. most mainstream oil experts are now predicting oil production to peak sometime in the next five years. once that happens, the oil we DO get will be more and more expensive to extract. so don't buy the hype when dubya the dumbass gets on tv and asks americans to conserve gasoline. the capitalist elites in this country have made sure long ago that you have no real alternative.
it's time for a new vision. it's time to stop foolishly cutting amtrak subsidies. it's time to require automakers sell only electric cars within the next 10 years. it's time to build nuclear power plants and invest FAR more money toward developing fusion power (which produces no nuclear waste). most importantly, it's time for us to admit that TIME IS UP.
saturday was dionne's birthday and we had a nice day together (which is rare nowadays, thanks to our totally incompatible work schedules). we went roller skating, then went and saw the movie "Roll Bounce" at the theater.
the movie is a coming-of-age story set in late 70s chicago and is stepped in the world of roller disco skating competitions. the film isn't winning a palm d'or anytime soon, but it was just an enjoyable movie. the storyline and acting were actually watchable, but the roller skating sequences were just BAD (in a funkalicious kind of way! the music is just great, too. i thought the movie came out as sort of a cross between "saturday night fever" and "crooklyn" by spike lee.
di and i love film, so i'm going to try to blog more about them...
i finally got around to watching the dvd of antonioni's "blow-up" last week. the movie came out in 1966 and is both in color and in english. set in swinging london, it was shocking at the time it came out for its partial nudity and pot smoking scenes. by today's standards, though, it's pretty tame. it's still a great movie, though. antonioni's camerawork is just so groundbreaking. the camera never flinches and it practically doesn't even movie. you find yourself staring at things WAAAAY in the background or cocked way off to the side of the frame. the dvd also came with a commentary by a film studies professor and author (from the univ. of virginia, i think), which i really liked.
well, i finally got around to tasting batch #2. jay and i brewed it about three weeks ago. this time we brewed a weizenbier... a wheat ale. it didn't exactly come out as german versions like this....
but it did come out really well, probably even better than batch #1, which everyone who tried it seemed to like. The beer had a nice reddish, orange color and HUGE head. the flavor had slight tanginess from the wheat malt that we used. the hops this time around are hallertauer and tettnang, two german varieties that are nice and subdued. i think we probably should have used a liquid yeast strain specifically designed for the style, but that will come later. this time around we used safale s-33, a basic french-produced ale strain. it did it's job... actualy a little too well. we had krausen shoot up through the airlock on the first day of fermentation.
batch #3 is where we really step it up. jay and i are leaning toward doing a nice american-style IPA or maybe even barleywine. we're talking big malt backbone, assertive hops and high alcohol! more isn't ALWAYS better, but in this beer, it will be. we also went out and bought a second carboy, the glass jugs we ferment in. this will allow us to rack to secondary fermentation and improve the clarity of the beer.
it's been an upside down world lately. everything in life just seems to be hot and cold, black and white. we're both anxious and apprehensive about the wedding. work has been downright horrible lately. i've been left by myself at nights to basically put the paper out alone. it's a lot of weight on my shoulders. at the same time, we got a new place to live today. as of november, we'll be moving into a house we're renting in east providence. it'll be much better than the place we're living in now.
not that the last three years have been bad. in fact, they've been mostly good. but we're ready for a change of scenery. di and i are getting married and we thought it would be nice to just get a completely new start. new roof over our heads. new cat. new dishes and a new neighborhood. and...we're no longer in little italy. now we're in little portugal.
it's on, bitch! our little cat gatsby is fighting the good fight over at kittenwar.com. i wanna win, dammit!
my co-worker, don the copy editor, is leaving us today. damn. don and i could paginate THE SHIT out of some pages on deadline. we kinda had our own little system that pretty much always worked. i can't do my job NEARLY as efficiently without him around, so i hope they find someone good... and quickly. here's don't own blog.
slate has a story on where to hide from mother nature. it's a semi-scientific look at where in the u.s. you're least likely to be a victim of a natural disaster. rhode island is possibly the safest place in the entire country. yeah, we have much coastline, but the colder water is rarely hurricane prone. we dont' have earthquakes, tornadoes or volacanoes. the winters aren't bad enough for blizzards and we don't have any mountains... so no avalanches.
whew. what a relief. i can now go back to worrying about terrorism, gang violence, west nile virus, avian flu, shark attacks, ebola, gay marriage, road rage, workplace shooters, school shooters, "africanized" bees, dutch elm disease and being kidnapped by a pedophile.
i found another great soccer site for u.s. national team fans... check out Yanks Abroad. it's a mixture of coverage of the national team and individual american players who are playing in foreign leagues. the u.s. team qualified for the world cup 2006 last week by beating mexico (!!) at home. i have really high expectations for the WC and here's why....
damarcus beasley was just a skinny kid at the 2002 cup. dont' sleep on this guy. he's been tearing it up in the very good dutch league lately and has been playing very high quality competition. wooo!
wedding update...
di and i met with the church organist after mass on sunday. he's definitely a musician's musician. i predict our guests are going to be blown away by barry's organ playing. we were standing up near the organ's keyboard while he played 4 or 5 pieces for us. wow. this organ just sends shivers up your spine. we're going to have our processional be "rigadoun" by andre campras. none of that tacky "here comes the bride" crap (even though that WAS composed by wagner).
work has just been horrible lately. they brought in a new news editor... so he's using my desk. while i use my boss's. it sucks not having a desk. i feel homeless. not only that, but technical problems kept me at work til 1 a.m. yesterday -- after 9 straight hours of paginating. sigh.
anybody out there have work for an editor/page designer/jack of all newspaper trades?
some guy in gulfport, miss. told "major league asshole" dick cheneyto "go fuck yourself, mr. cheney while he was touring damaged areas sunday.
the more i read about it, the more i begin to think that maybe New Orleans SHOULDN'T be rebuilt as if nothing ever happened. every great city is a work of engineering marvel and every city involves man overcoming some aspect of nature and geography, but the big easy has been an ecological and geographic disaster for the past 100 years. it's a city built on swamp and landfill. it's completely unsustainable.
kaleefa sanneh has another good story in the ny times about damian "junior gong" marley and his album "jamrock." the song "jamrock" is just dope as hell. i can't get enough of it. his first album was great, too, so i expect even better things this time around. 
bill hemmer on fox news (he used to be at cnn, making THAT channel instantly more watchable teh day he left) just talked about the plight of the poor, poor insurance industry. i thought he was about to cry. it's so sad how corporations that profit by the billions each year when nothing happens have to pay out when a disaster strikes. THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DO! ugh.
by the way, everybody needs to check out dionne's blog, Blank People. it rocks. plus the chick who writes it is hot. or so i heard.
i'm having my bachelor party on sept. 17. my brother, keagan, who is my best man for the wedding, is in charge of party planning. ironic, huh? we have a devout muslim who eschews alcohol, pork and sex (the three best things about being a human!) in charge of debauch-fest 2005. great.
i called him a couple days ago and asked him the planning was going. he thought the party was on the 24th!!!!!!!!! what kinda damn party planner is he? eventually he got it straightened out, though, and is getting a lot done.
maybe i'm getting paranoid, but sometimes at work i actually feel like i'm the subject of some sick experiment. like my boss and my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss are all watching me on a big screen. there's joel losing his mind again. let's see what else we can do to get his hopes up, then knock them back over again like bowling pins. maybe i'm paranoid, but i almost feel like someone at work is trying to run me off. one of my co-workers told me "don't attribute malevolence when sheer incompetence can explain it," but damn. i can't help it. the ONE co-worker who could really relate to the sheer hell i've been through is now leaving for greener pastures. i don't blame him at all. now i just have to find a way to save my sanity.
batch #2 update...
jay and I brewed our second batch on saturday. goddamn it was fun. there's just somethign about making our own beer that's just such a thrill. i'm hooked on brewing like tyrone biggums at the 3 o'clock free crack giveaway.
anyway... this batch is a wheat beer. we're going to make one half of the batch a plain wheat and the other half a raspberry wheat. the ingredient kit we bought came with raspberry extract, but we figured out that we can just add it to half of the batch at bottling time.
here are the specs:
4 gallon wort: half light dried malt extract, half liquid wheat extract. we steeped about a pound or so of crystal malt. we did about a 1hour 15 min. boil this time, a little longer than the first batch. i've read that a longer boil helps carmelize the sugars in the wort and utilize the hops. we pitched 1 oz. of hallertau hops and 1 oz. of u.s. grown saaz hops. those are two nice varieties. both are more spicy and earthy than some of the more well-known u.s. hops like cascade (which is the main hop in sierra nevada pale ale). we're not shooting for a bitter beer, though, but a nice wheaty mouthfeel and easydrinking beer. the color came out nice and golden, too.
we then pitched our yeast, a packet of Safbrew s-33, which apparently an english ale strain called "edme." apparently the yeasties REALLY liked our wort, because the next day, jay visited his basement and found this...
the yeast fermented so aggressivley that they produced a mountain of foam that just shot up out of our airlock and made a big-ass mess. THAT is why dionne won't let me brew in our little ol apartment.
as for the first batch (the pale ale) that we made a few weeks back. well, we were amazed with it, frankly. it came out really well and seems to keep getting better the longer it conditions in the bottle. the head retention is really getting much better. we're gonna be damn good brewers some day.
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