Prost! Sommerfest Block Party

Prost! Beer Hall is throwing a party - Sommerfest - tomorrow. German beer, food, and polka music, including some tunes spun by DJ Shotski and live music from The DB Polka Express.

You're in a taproom and you're sitting there and all of a sudden you look up and you see a Champagne Tortoise

Karben4's English mild returns to the taproom today.

I am looking forward to sampling as I helped brew it! Here I am adding the grain. Barley! Oats! Rye! Oh my!

I sparged and did a lot of cleaning too. Look at the wort - it boils!

I heard that it got kegged a couple days ago and turned out well. This evening I shall judge for myself. The plan is to also sample their Kölsch which, I am told, received a nice, long lagering as is proper.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Soon we'll have fresh corn and then snow and then it'll be 2025. Tempus fugit!

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl teaser

There's now a teaser out for the latest Wallace & Gromit adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl.

The stones of 53 years

Emerson Lake and Palmer released their second album, Tarkus, on this day in 1971. The opening section of the epic title track, "Eruption", has been inspiration for many a prog tune and I am thinking I've heard one such song recently. Something by Wobbler, perhaps?

Here's an abbreviated version of "Tarkus" recorded here in Madison in February 1993.

IMAX docs return for the summer

I heard some good news: our AMC cinema out in Fitchburg with an IMAX screen is bringing back a series of documentaries this summer. While it was my hope that they'd start screening them again on Sunday mornings as they used to, the flicks are instead going to be screened on Tuesday mornings while I am at work. Bummer.

Adults like 3D IMAX docs too, AMC.

6/18 - Under the Sea 3D

6/25 - Island of Lemurs: Madagascar 3D

7/2 - Deep Sky

7/9 - Under the Sea 3D

7/16 - Deep Sea 3D

7/23 - Born to be Wild 3D

7/30 - Deep Sky

Squirrels are just like people

They don't like to get out of bed.

“Oh my i’m late for work” “Wait i’m a squirrel” 😂 pic.twitter.com/jHFtY3yHgz

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 31, 2024

Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself with headphones on

 

I have listened to the first part of BBC Radio 4's adaptation of Dante's The Divine Comedy. Inferno is also the only part of the poem that I have read. It was excellent. You've got 2 legends - David Warner and John Hurt - along with some fellow named Blake Ritson. The soundscape was fantastic. I cannot tell you how eerie it was, owing a lot to the absence of non-diagetic music.

I suspect I am very sensitive to this subject now after having watched the bulk of the current season of Doctor Who. The music this series has mostly made for a very...very...typical soundtrack. "Let me tell you exactly how you should feel here!" kind of stuff. It's fine stuff but doesn't strike me as unique or particularly Doctor Who-y. In 1963 the show featured experimental electronic music and now it's generic orchestral music. Nothing against the composer - no doubt it was what he was paid to do - but it just sounds like it came from basically any other TV show or movie. There's no character to it as it's all "feel sad!" or "danger!" or whatever emotion is required that the visuals and the rest of the soundtrack are apparently unable to deliver.

Anyway, this adaptation of Dante is just great so far.

Lola rennt 25 Jahre später

I went to see Run Lola Run, a.k.a. - Lola rennt, on the big screen. I don't think I'd seen it since c.1999 when it originally came to theaters. Great fun. I had forgotten quite a bit, such as the brief bits of animation.

Watching it this week, I recalled a bit of how it felt doing so 25 years ago. It felt new wavey back then with an electronic music soundtrack at a time when that genre was The Next Big Thing every year for a few years. Its frenetic pace with a plethora of camera angles woven together provided continuity but also served to heighten the tension. The characters were about my age and there was some of that aforementioned animation along with split screens. A very nice visual mix.

Now that I am older, I can really appreciate the ideas here, the notions of destiny and that one's life could have been different.

Ghost signs and Trachte buildings - Columbus

Seen on a swing through Columbus today. I saw a couple more Trachte buildings that I wasn't able to get photographs of. Another day.

Practice

I guess someone is practicing dibs for the winter.

How I wish I was there

Holy biscuits! Obscured by Clouds is 52 today. Superstardom arrived ere long and things were never quite the same. The last gasp of the old Pink Floyd, in a way. Or one of the old Floyds, at least.

This is "Childhood's End" by Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets live in Milwaukee back in 2019