28 April, 2006

Ramblings

I nearly cried when I read these words: "Bitter Woman From Hell Going Down The Drain!". Brewmaster Rob Larson of Tyranena had a wee problem with a batch of his Brewers Gone Wild! Bitter Woman From Hell Extra IPA:

Couldn't get enough beer over to the brite tank to reach the cooling jackets... and if you have ever tried to bottle a beer in the 40 degree plus range (we typically bottle with the beer at 34 degrees), you know just how difficult it can be. I did rescue 6 1/2 barrels from the drain... which will start to go on tap Friday.

He reports that he's starting a new batch today, probably as I type. I could use a nice brew right now after having saved the state a few hundred bucks. Here I am making Jimmy Doyle look good and what thanks do I get? Notta. Stupid printer fusers! A bad paper guide caused one helluva jam. I had to scrounge through the boneyard for an old fuser to hork the guide. Then I had to spend a half hour scrapping one of the rollers clean as it had about a pound of toner stuck to the surface. I used isopropyl alcohol which tried up my tender, baby-like hands. And people wonder why I keep some of Burt's Bees Milk & Honey Body Lotion at my desk.

So how has y'all's day been?

The new Isthmus has a little review of some new baseball game for game consoles called Major League Baseball 2K6. Man, sports games have some funky graphics nowadays. The faces of the players onscreen are the actual faces of real MLB players, the umpires actually move, and the like. I have never been able to get into these new-fangled sports games. I'm old school. Gimme Hardball for my old Commodore 64 anytime. When I lived in Chicago, my friend Pete and I would head down to Rolling Stone Records at the HIP (that's Harlem Irving Plaza), buy some progressive rock records and then go back to his place and fire up the C64. Ah, those were the days.



If you have any interest in global warming/the human impact on the climate, you can download a lecture by Tim Flannery on the topic. Dr. Flannery is the Director of the South Australian Museum currently and he gave a speech recently out at CalTech called "The Weather Makers: How Humans are Changing the Climate & What It Means for Life on Earth". It can be downloaded here for a "limited time" - a week, methinks.

The event listing for GenCon was finally published this week and event registration starts on Monday. I really need to go through it more thoroughly but, since it has over 5.200 events, it'll take some time. I hope to get in on some Call of Cthulhu action this year. And while my grandmother can paint miniatures better than me, you can bet your sweet ass I'll be attending a workshop where I can let my inner weaponsmith loose - Build a Foam Weapon. I'm gonna make me a foam claymore so I can go after those pesky skateboarding teens in my neighborhood. Plus there's some cool seminars to be had such as Women Warriors: Ancient Times-Middle Ages and Bridging the Firepower Gap. Next year I wanna run a seminar on bridging the mine shaft gap. There are just too many games for any one civilization to be had. Collectible card games, RPGs, computer gaming, board games, miniatures, and on and on. How about some Monty Python Illuminati?

One thing I'm pleased about this year is the discovery of India Garden, an Indian restaurant. While I think Indy has a pretty nice downtown, I couldn't find any restaurants last year that weren't basically American. The brewpubs were nice, the chili joint was cool, and the BW3 had over 40 beers from which to choose. But it got to the point where I would have killed for Chinese food or Indian or bascially anything not burger/chili/chop orientated. Well, Charles used the Interwebs and found an Indian joint where he and I can drown ourselves in vindaloo gluttony. Less than 4 months to go...

The Midwest Story Festival kicks off tonight. Go and hear some stories the way they were meant to be experienced - told in-person at a pricey hotel ballroom with expensive cocktails.

Earlier this week I had the misfortune of being recruited to watch the pilot episode of a new TV show. I dutifully tuned into channel 18 on Wednesday to experience Untitled Patricia Heaton Project. Heaton plays a physical therapist who was recently widowed and is in the midst of getting her life back together by joining the local PTA. Justine Bateman plays her sister, Cindy. Bateman was looking quite well. Heaton goes to the school and meets up with Hilary, played by Jenny McCarthy. They form an alliance and vow to reform the PTA by wresting it from the hands of Heike Gaert, a woman with a Russian accent who looks like she stepped out of an old Macintosh commerical from 1984, and another woman who is rich and snobby. Honestly, the show sucked donkey dick. Heaton's character had a couple almost-funny comebacks but that was all the humor for this sitcom. McCarthy plays the dumb blonde. At the PTA meeting, Heaton refers to a character named Mary Grey-White and McCarthy replies, "Who's that mocha-colored woman over there?" Realy Emmy quality stuff, as you can tell. The principal of the school, a black woman, is just another sterotype. Every character was just a cardboard cut-out. And it was just not funny. I have nothing against a story featuring women constantly remarking how nice Mr. Delgado's butt is, but the characters didn't interest me. Here's another example of the writing during the scene with Heaton meeting the principal for the first time. The banter was well-paced and could have come out of His Girl Friday had it actually been funny or interesting. Instead we get lines from Heaton like "I'm wearing a thong for the first time and it just found its home" or something akin to that. Heaton's character is very coarse all-around.

About 15 minutes after it ended, I got the super-survey phone call. The guy mispronouced "Heike" as "haiku" but I didn't say anything.

"On a scale of 1 to 10, please rate the music on the show." 0.

"Would you like to see more, about the same amount, or less of Heaton and Hilary together?" Less. Less, less, less. The only thing that I wanted to see more of was Jenny McCarthy's tits as the generous cleavage she gave us was just not enough for me.

At the end of the episode, Heaton, McCarthy, and the principal are sitting around cocktailing and pledging their friendship to one another. I was asked if I thought that "Margarita Club" was a good name for the show so I presume that every episode will feature them drinking.

Towards the end of my interrogation, I was asked a few questions about my TV watching habits. The guy asked me how many times a month I watched various TV shows. Aside from LOST, I watched none of the shows. In fact, I'd never heard of some of them. In fact, I had no idea who Patricia Heaton was and was surprised they built a show around her. I am most decidedly not part of their desired demographic. When I was asked to do the survey, I was told that it was my chance to help determine prime-time TV programming. So please believe me, everyone, I tried my darnedest to make sure this show doesn't go beyond pilot and pollute our airwaves.

All you adult learners like myself can spend some time this summer at the UW in a non-credit course so you can become all enriched and stuff. The summer catalog is now online.

Considering my recent foray into sausage importing, the new Onion piece, "Grease Fire Rages Through Midwest", was quite humorous, especially the picture of crews trying to contain a blaze "in a kielbasa field outside Chicago."

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