Garden of Who's?

Hoegaarden (Rating = 4.0)
I had this (again) a few weeks ago and forgot to post about it.  Pronounced Who-gard-en, this, to me, is a perfect hot summer beer.  I have a few memories of this one from some good old days.  The first time I had it was while I was in The Netherlands, hanging out with some colleagues and watching the some World Cup soccer 8 years ago.  The weather was warm, the fans were crazy and this beer went down like water.  Big fan.  And still a fan of the Dutch team (go Orange).  Yes, I am aware that it is Belgium and not Dutch, but the Dutch aren't the ones known for their beer-making.  I've seen it in a bunch more places over the years, including a food/wine festival we went to Chicago a few years ago.  Again, a perfect summer beer - it was hot that weekend in Chicago.  While the food was mostly small plates, the beers were full size (complete with Hoegaarden pint glasses).  So, we now have a nice set of four pint glasses to drink this in.

Good stuff.

Beers down: 15
Beers to go: 986

Ommegang - Abbey Ale, Sierra Kellerweis, and

Three beers to update on tonight (for the record, watching Old School for like the 137th time - Frank the Tank is describing his nice little Saturday at this very moment).

Ommegang Abbey Ale (Rating = 4)
I've actually had this one before.  The brewery is based in Cooperstown and is owned by Duvel.  We went there a few years back with a friend of mine - a nice little weekend with the brewery visit, a visit to the Baseball HOF and a great dinner.  The beers here were really great.  Since then, we've seen Ommegang starting to appear all over.  They had a beer and food pairing a while back at the local liquor store out here (shout out to Julio's in Westborough) and now they actually have six packs in the store, in addition to the large format bottles that are cool.

This is a solid entry from Ommegang - tasty, with some heft to it (8.5% alcohol).  It's dark, but not a porter - pretty good stuff.

Fuller's ESB (Rating = 4.0)
Another brew that stirs up some of my old London days for school and work.  This just screams "traditional london beer".  It's got some hops, a little bitter, but has some fruity flavor as well.  Very easy drinking beer.  Apparently it was originally brewed as a winter beer, but is now a regular beer for all seasons.  Classic British beer - worth checking out.

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis Hefeweizen (Rating = 3.5)
I had this one last week, but forgot to post about it.  I like Sierra Nevada's standard entry.  This one was a bit of a summer version - it had the interesting smell and subtle taste of banana.  Not bad, but again, won't be knocking down doors to get it again.

Beers down: 14
Beers to go: 987

Here is the updated spreadsheet.

Forgot one!

Cascade Kriek Ale (Rating = 2)
This was one other one that came as a gift and we enjoyed it at my recent party.  This had high potential, but the beer soaked cherry flavor just tasted wrong.

Not good.  Blech.

Cross a few entries off the list!

Yes, I have now tried a handful of the 1,001 brews.  I have now settled on a format and what type of info to capture for each beer.  I won't bore everyone (anyone?) with the details, but you can see the full spreadsheet here.  I will do a better job giving a quick overview with each beer that I've tried.

In the meantime, here are the few beers that I've tried over the past couple of weeks (mostly thanks to a gift from my good friend Harvey).  NOTE: my rating scale is completely subjective, from 1-5 (5 being best):

Fuller's London Pride (Rating = 4)
Definitely had this in the old days in London, but it's been a while.  Really a good drinking beer.

Old Peculier (Rating = 4.5)
My favorite of this batch so far.  Great name, great taste.  It is dark-ish, but still fairly light.  Really tasty.  Worth finding more of Old Peculiar (also Harvey's new nickname).

Ayinger Celebrator (Rating = 3.5)
It had a cool little horsey charm around the bottle.  That was probably the highlight.  It was dark, was ok.  I might try it again, but would push down an old lady to get one (unless I was really thirsty).

EKU 28 (Rating 4)
This bad boy was potent.  11% alcohol kind of gave me a strong shove.  It was good, but I can only imagine having a drinking session on this one.

Weihenstephaner Vitus (Rating = 4)
A solid wheat beer entry from Germany.  I know they do some solid varieties (I think I might have actually had this once before on a trip to Germany).  Great summer beer with a little spice.  I'd have it again (notice the trend here?).

This from a recent Germany trip, I had the "small" beer while my colleague opted for a coffee (for the record, this wasn't an espresso, but it was one giant beer) in the airport lounge.  Needless to say, I slept well on that flight.

Murphy's Irish Stout (Rating = 3.5)
I used to be a big fan of Murphy's back in my younger days.  I thought it had a slightly sweeter taste than Guiness.  But after revisiting it, I think I will stick with old reliable.  Love the draught cans though.

Allagash Tripel Reserve (Rating = 4.5)
I love the big bottles.  And this was a nice surprise.  I do normally like Allagash generally, but this was even better than their normal Allagash White.  Nicely balanced fruit and really smooth.  When you can get a solid 2 beers from a bottle, that is living (Old English-style perhaps?).

Victory Golden Monkey (Rating = 4)
Victory Prima Pils (Rating = 3.5)
Victory Hop Devil (Rating = 3)
I found a nice treat at Julio's Liquors in Westborough a few weeks ago. They had a nice variety pack from Victory - which I had noticed rated 3 beers on this list.  No real surprises here - wasn't a huge fan of the hoppy one, the pilsner was fine (nothing special) and the summer-y one was light and tasty (I think I did have it on a warmer night).

That will do it for this update for now, more to come.  

1001 Beers to Try Before I Die.

Thanks to the gift of this book by my lovely wife, I am now on a quest to try all of these beers.  Yes, 1001 beers is the challenge.

I've enlisted a few friends to assist in the process.

The key is this - you must try the beer now - no grandfathering in of previous tastes.

Photographic proof is a bit too much.  But at least a brief update when you've hit one off the list is required.

Here is the list (1001 beers to try before you die)

Let the beer drinking commence.

All Time Top 20 Rap Hits Sweet 16 Bracket (ATT20RHS16B)

Gentlemen (and Lady),

I officially welcome you all to a very interesting project - aka ATT20RHS16B for short. We have quite a list of participants - welcome to everyone (as there are some friends of friends connections). The idea's originator was Jamie Myers, a good friend of mine from college. We've spent many an occasion discussing top 10 lists, best albums, etc. - many of them focused specifically on rap (as we have been fortunate enough to see quite a few interesting live rap shows collectively over the past few years - Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground, Public Enemy, Slick Rick, Wu-Tang Clan to name a few). But I digress. Through emails with a few of you, we've improved the idea and come up with ATT20RHS16B.

This is built on a few very simple ideas:

* Everyone on this list is a big fan of the rap music
* We all grew up in the heyday of mix tapes
* We're all fans of sports - and the NCAA bracket is an enjoyable work diversion
* We all think our favorite songs are categorically THE BEST songs

So, I challenge each of you to create 1 single CD with 20 (if it can't fit on 1 CD, make it 2 CDs) of your favorite rap songs of all time. There are no other restrictions - interpret words like "best", "favorite", "rap" and "song" as you like. Simply create a CD with 20 songs and send it to us. We will then, via popular vote, attempt to identify the "best" compilation from our submissions.

Each of you should create 1 copy of your CD and send it to either Jamie or myself (your designated recipient is listed below) BY JANUARY 31. We will then copy the CDs and send out a package to each of you with 8 CDs (including your own). So, you will receive a total of 16 CDs. You will have about 2 weeks to listen, review and critique the CDs.

Then the bracket fun begins - we will put together brackets of each person's CD and everyone will get a vote to choose their favorite. The winners go forward to the next round, until we end up with the winner. Brackets will be constructed based on a random drawing of names.

At the same time, we will have a bracket to choose the all-time best rap song. Each person can submit up to 3 of their personal nominees for best rap song when they submit their CD. We will compile a list and put together a random bracket so we can vote on this as well.

Got it?

So, again, send us your 1 CD of your Top 20 Favorite Rap Songs. Please include the following information:

* Title and artist for each song on your CD on some sort of printed listing
* Title of your CD & Your name and address
* Your 3 nominees for Top Rap Song


I am quite excited for this project and have already been poring through old cds, tapes and journal entries to find my top 20 songs.

Good luck gentlemen (and lady)! Any questions, please let me know.

Thanks,

Goodbye Corey

As soon as I got the news this morning (via text message from my very "connected" wife), I was going to write something about Corey Haim's passing. Like many other people, I find it hard to be surprised with the news (especially if you had seen him on The Two Corey's recently, he looked like a mess). If the saying is true, these things come in 3's. We've already bid adieu to Andrew Koenig (Boner from Growing Pains, man I could have written about his dancing with Carol Seaver at the school dance as a seminal experience in my TV-viewing childhood). But, who would be next? The cast of Sixteen Candles, given how they looked at the Oscars, could certainly be next (If you see Judd Nelson on the corner, please give him a dollar or something). Maybe Skippy Handleman from Family Ties is feeling ill today. Or perhaps Cockroach from The Cosby Show.

Regardless, Corey's death hits closer to home to me. Only a couple of years older than me, he seemed like he was the ultimate kid actor sensation. He was out in a flash and pretty much gone that quickly. Yes, I had to do some quick IMDB'ing, but he had a nice little streak in the mid to late 80s. First was a supporting role in Murphy's Romance with the original Gidget (Sally Field) and Ben Affleck's Father in Law (James Garner). Yes, I saw this movie about a mother and her young son moving to somewhere in the midwest (Texas, perhaps?). This was back when HBO was one of the only options - if it was on, you probably watched it (hoping for some skin, for the record, I don't recall any).

Then came his 4-hit string. There are lots of other things listed that he appeared in, but these were the only other films that mattered (to a small few). Lucas, License to Drive, The Lost Boys and Dream a Little Dream. I think all of them could be described as good/bad movies. They were basically bad, but at the time they seemed pretty good (I guess I can chalk most of it up to youthful bad taste perhaps? Although that doesn't really explain why I still like them). All but Lucas co-starred his partner in crime Corey Feldman (who has a much more impressive list of credits - Goonies, Bad News Bears, Stand By Me, The burbs, Gremlins, and the voice of Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), with who Haim was often confused. And judging by things that I saw online today, people are still quite confused about the two Corey's. I kind of feel a little sorry for Corey Feldman right now - does he have to email and call everyone he kind of knows to just say "hey, I'm still alive - don't worry about me".

But, on to the movies. I think Lucas was the first one really. It was a great teen movie about an awkward teen trying to fit in. He befriends the new girl in town (when he starts mowing her lawn I think, also used in the Patrick Dempsey teenage chick flick Can't Buy Me Love), played by Kerri Green. She's another one of those fast flashes in the pan - she hit it big (relatively) with Lucas, Summer Rental (with John Candy) and Goonies and then - poof. She disappeared. Lucas and Kerri are friends as school starts, but then she starts to fall in with the cool crowd - the jocks and the cheerleaders.

Of course, there was a pretty stellar cast of cool kids. Courtney Thorne Smith (Allison from 90210 and the surfer chick from Summer School) was the head cheerleader. She dated hunky Charlie Sheen, the star football player. Also on that team was none other than Ari Gold (real name = Jeremy Piven). Kerri Green falls for Charlie, the only cool guy that is nice to Lucas. Lucas has a very young Winona Rider chasing after him (as the geeky nerdy girl), but he only wants Kerri. So, he goes out for the football team to show everyone that he can do it. He does it - but eventually gets beat up in the big game (after bothering the coach enough, they put him in and he drops a sure touchdown, then gets brutalized). At the end, the slow clap scene happens when the team gives him a varsity jacket and everyone is happy. But Charlie still gets the girl. Corey as Lucas (lucaplaciea, meaning cancer of the mouth) is the every nerd fighting for respect and the girl he likes. It is a heart warming tale.

My personal favorite was next - License to Drive. Corey is going to get his license, but fails his test. He neglects to tell his parents he failed and one insane night of comedy, love and hijinks ensue. Along the way, we get treated to some powder blue Cadillacs, some Sinatra music and our first dose of Heather Graham (as the cute Mercedes Lane, his love interest). Again, not exactly a movie for the ages, but entertaining nonetheless. Completing the mood was a killer soundtrack that included Billy Ocean (Get out of my dreams, get into my car), Sinatra, Nia Peeples (yes, the hottie host of The Dance Machine with Nia Peeples and the lovely lady from that top notch surfer movie North Shore), New Edition, INXS and more. Can't you just remember the tracks that Corey put together for his mix tapes to play when he drive Mercedes around? Oh, maybe that's just me. Also, I just read that Nia Peeples now has something to do with some guy called the Teenage Whisperer. I'm sure that there will be new Catch a Predator series looking for that guy.

Probably the one that Corey is best known for is The Lost Boys. Vampires in California - how can't you love this one. This also features an all star cast - mainly Corey, Corey, Jamie Gertz, Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland. Corey and Corey try to fight off the vampires. Actually, their best actual movie, with a large cult following.

Lastly was Dream a Little Dream - another one of those movies that was on constant loop on HBO back in my teenage years. You know, to this day, I really don't know what this movie was about - there was some body switching going on. There was a weird scene where Corey Feldman publicly admits and flaunts his love for Michael Jackson - wait, that was the best scene where Corey dances against himself (Feldman, not Haim). There is a girl in that they are chasing that has a large set of umm, personalities. I think that's all I really remember. Maybe calling this one a hit is a stretch. The old guy from Quick Change, a very underrated movie with Bill Murray, Randy Quaid and Geena Davis, was also in it. And the dad from Pretty in Pink too.

So, I guess Corey was still trying to relive the glory of this 4 movie run (maybe a 2 picture run in reality). But, still, he was just 38 and he was a mess. He was on all sorts of drugs and was convinced that he was still a good actor (was he ever?). It's pretty sad that he's dead, but he's probably better off. I guess if these guys would have come out now, they'd have all sorts of online stories about them on TMZ, sex tapes and even more appearances in reality television. Regardless, Corey Haim makes me think about my childhood - awkward goofy teenager, young vampire killer and failed driving school dropout. Rest in peace Corey. May the legend live on. Let's also hope that Feldman doesn't try to use this as a way to re-launch his career.