The Doctor Shall Fight in Hills, He Shall Fight in France - He Will Never Surrender!: Players

Earlier this month I began reading Doctor Who books again in anticipation of Chicago TARDIS. I jumped in more or less where I left off by reading the 6th Doctor adventure Players. It being a Terrance Dicks story I wasn't expecting anything mind-bending or a tale which would tweak the tried and true Doctor Whovery much, if at all. Having finished the book, I can say that I got pretty much what I expected.

Our story begins with Sixie and Peri on Rigel Seven which is a very rainy, muddy place. The pair make a quick escape but Peri decides she wants a change. "I want elegance!" she tells The Doctor. He replies, "Elegance you shall have, Peri." But, as is usually the case, The Doctor is unable to deliver. Instead of a nice respite in Victorian London they end up in South Africa with the Boer War raging. They meet up with a young Winston Churchill as well as a seemingly out of place assassin with a dark complexion. The Doctor, Peri, and Churchill survive a skirmish but end up being captured. A brief interlude in a prisoner camp includes the mysterious Captain Reitz who comes bearing faked orders to have Churchill shot when he tries to escape. Reitz turns out to be the wily assassin whose plan The Doctor had foiled earlier.

At this point in the book things are going well. Dicks didn't reveal the identity of the war correspondent until absolutely necessary, which is fun even though Churchill is mentioned on the back cover. We have a little action and some mystery and I kept envisioning a younger, thinner Ian McNeice in the part. From here, however, the book runs into a big problem. Our heroes escape the prisoner camp with a dash of derring do. Back at the TARDIS, The Doctor explains to Peri that he'd met Churchill previously and thinks that their current adventures are somehow related to events which took place during The Doctor's second incarnation. Peri gets her friend's memories beamed directly into her brain.

The flashback here takes place in France during World War I after the events of The War Games, the Second Doctor's final TV story. The Doctor hitches a lift in an ambulance driven by Jennifer Buckingham and finds that Lieutenant Carstairs is also a passenger. They run into a British staff car which had been ambushed only to find that it belonged to Churchill who was a major by this time. The future prime minister is rescued and they drive through the fog and take shelter at a chateau inhabited by a mysterious (again) Count and Countess...

The problem here is that, as I was reading the flashback sequence, I kept envisioning Sixie instead of Patrick Troughton. After a couple pages I realized that I was reading it all wrong and inserted the short, mop-topped vagabond into my brain. Dicks doesn't capture any of Troughton's nuances here in the flashback and instead what we get is a generic Doctor-lite figure. Too bad.

With this story done, The Doctor takes Peri to 1930s London as he is convinced that running into Winston Churchill was no mere coincidence. The Time Lord and his companion get wrapped up in the prelude to World War II which involves Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to the UK at the time, King Edward VIII along with his mistress Wallis Simpson, and a band of conspirators culled from the English aristocracy who want the English Empire to ally itself with Nazi Germany. Oh, and the count and countess make a return appearance as well.

The London storyline takes up most of the novel and, while not perfect by any stretch, it was rather fun. For instance, there's a scene where The Doctor and Peri go to a bank where The Doctor has an account to withdraw some funds. The thing is, he made his initial deposit 120 years previously and interest has been accumulating. It was disappointing, though not unexpected, that Peri would jump headlong into the lap of luxury and become a conspicuous consumer. Another stereotype rears its head in the form of the private dick, Tom Dekker. A close call with a bomb convinces The Doctor to hire a bodyguard ("'Not a bodyguard,' said the Doctor. 'A security consultant!'"). While The Doctor doesn't let on that they've met before, Dekker has indeed run into the Time Lord previously – he even mentions Ace – though I'm not sure which story this refers to. Like Peri, Dekker is an American ex-pat but from Chicago. And being from Chicago can mean only one thing – Al Capone and his gangsters.

On the other hand, Dekker's partner, referred to only as "The Op" was interesting. Not a major character by any means but I liked how he was described as suddenly coming into view as disappearing just as quickly. I was wondering if something was going to be made of this but Dicks did not. The Op was a funny little diversion in a sea of stereotypes and middle of the road characters.

The Players are a race of beings that see everyone and all of history as a game, a chess match for their amusement. Their credo is "Winning is everything – and nothing/Losing is nothing – and everything/All that matters is the Game." What might be a fun conflict between a group of chaotic neutral hedonists and our lawful good hero turns out to be rather uninteresting. The story is peppered with brief interludes that take place at Players HQ on Mount Olympus or wherever they reside but they consist merely of a couple paragraphs of the Players being profoundly irritated with The Doctor. Dicks may have been trying to set up a future story in which the Players feature more prominently and get more backstory but, here as a standalone affair, what could be an intriguing set of villains is rather one dimensional.

Players has its moments, such as a car chase, and is endowed with plenty of intrigue, but it's bogged down by stereotypes and greatly underused villains. Also, I am flummoxed as to how Dicks was unable to write a credible Second Doctor considering that he wrote for the show back in the Troughton era. While there is some fun reading to be had, for the most part, Players is a disposable entry in the Doctor Who canon.

Ms. Carey Goes to Washington and Fresh Kottbusser Available Soon

New Glarus' founder and president, Deb Carey, went to Washington recently and met President Obama.

New Glarus Brewing President Deb Carey was one of several small-business owners who met with President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the federal budget's "fiscal cliff."

"I got beer!" Carey told reporters as she left. "I got beer from the White House!"

Kinky Kabin looks to start bottling soon. Their first is going to be Naughty Wheat, an apricot wheat ale which is already on tap in the La Crosse area.



Sprecher is to release an IIPA called Citra Bomb because there just aren't enough IPAs around.



They also has a Pumpkin Spice brown ale available only at the brewery.



Sprecher along with Lakefront, Central Waters, Bull Falls, and South Shore were recently featured in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an article about their respective wet hopped brews featuring all Wisconsin hops. Sprecher's Hopfuzion sounds just like their Wisconsin Fresh Hop Amber Lager from last fall.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, Ale Asylum has started bottling again.

Lastly, down in Chicago ex-employees of Goose Island and Two Brothers have banded together to open a new brewery called Off Color Brewing. It sounds incredibly interesting.

So what will Off Color beer taste like? Not much like the barrel-aged Goose products — think Juliet, Madame Rose, Bourbon County Stout and its variants — that Laffler has worked on. The difference is clear as soon as Bleitner explains the types of beer that inspired Off Color: "Very bizarre beer no one has heard of or knows about."

The trick is making such beers accessible, and based on the tastes I had of Off Color's two year-round beers, the early returns are encouraging.

The lighter was in the gose style, called (for now) Ampel Weiss ("ampel" is German word for traffic light). The hazy, golden wheat brew is easy drinking, but it is also refreshing, lightly tart, mildly funky and among the most interesting low-alcohol beers (4.2 percent) imaginable. It should appeal to both seasoned beer drinkers and those looking to move on from, say, Blue Moon.

The other is a kottbusser — a style even rarer than gose — that doesn't have a name yet. It's a brown wheat beer made with honey and molasses that finishes dry, with just a light, gentle sweetness. It's another deft easy drinker.

"We're releasing near-extinct German beers at a craft beer six-pack price," Bleitner said.

Can a Broyhan be far behind?

I look forward to drinking their near-extinct German beers and feel jealous of our neighbors to the south. Nicht nur will they have fresh local gose und kottbusser, sondern auch Metropolitan for non-extinct German styles, Pipeworks' Berliner Weisses, and I'll throw in 5 Rabbit because their cerveza kicks ass.

If Idris Elba is to be James Bond...

...can we have Richard Ayoade as Q please?

(Via the world is my oysterrr.)

New & Improved Baldur's Gate - Now With 50% More Adventure

I had no idea that the venerable Baldur's Gate was being overhauled. Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is out today. It features the original adventure plus Tales From the Sword Coast and some new characters, a new adventure, and hundreds of tweaks/enhancements.

Some New Brews

I was recently in the Chicago area and picked up some interesting brews. It's not exactly Berliner Weisse season but a blueberry Berliner Weisse just sounds so tasty. How will Schlägl Roggen Gold compare to Scott Manning's roggenbier? I shall find out.

In Business Madison Profiles Ale Asylum

Robin Shepard Profiles Capital's Brian Destree

That's Brian Destree, the new production manager of Capital Brewery who took over after Kirby left last month. Robin Shepard has a profile of him (and that's where the photo came from as well) up at The Daily Page.

Look at the guy. He has the face of someone who lugs around sacks of grain and manhandles barrels all day. It was nice to read:

Destree describes his personal approach to brewing as old school with an appreciation for lagers. He doesn't plan to make any dramatic changes in the brewery's well-known lineup of beers, especially brews like its popular Supper Club. "I appreciate what it takes to make them, but we are also going to step outside those boundaries," he says.

I was relieved to hear that the emphasis on lagers isn't going to go away, although if Supper Club disappeared, you won't hear a complaint from me. It's also good news that he is looking to step outside Kirby's legacy as well as he has proven with Pumpkinataur Wrex*** as I thought it was an excellent beer.

The article notes that Eternal Flame 2.0 comes out next month and will be in bombers as the initial sortie in the Capital Square Bomber Series which will feature a new brew every 2-3 months. After Eternal Flame comes a beer called Jacked Maibock. What is that to be? Maibock aged in Jack Daniels barrels? Destree also says, "I'd like to make a beer that puts the hops forward, and that may shock the Capital faithful." It will be very interesting to see what he comes up with. An IPL like Coney Island's Sword Swallower?

Capital seems to be in good hands.

***Shepard reviews Pumpkinataur Wrex in the new Isthmus although the review is not online yet. He gives it 3 out of 4 bottle openers and says, "Pumpkinataur is best on its own as a dessert beer." I respectfully disagree. Personally I thought Pumpkinataur was much better than Lakefront's Pumpkin Lager which Shepard gave 4 bottle openers to. It doesn't attempt to be pumpkin pie in a bottle by de-emphasizing the spices and so would go well with a pork-apple combination or a cuisine that doesn't treat allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon as the exclusive province of autumnal pies. Think curry.

Former U.S. Marshall and DEA Agent Notes Racism Inherent in Drug War

Listen to Matthew Fogg, a former U.S. Marshall discuss the racism behind the Drug War. If you go and bust poor colored people, that's OK. But if you mess with the white folks out in the suburbs, well, that's just going to cause trouble.

Oliver Stone Takes On American History

Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States debuted last week. From what I'd read about it, it wasn't going to be a conspiracy-laden look at The Great Satan or any such thing but rather a look at the history of the United States post-WWII that isn't widely known and that doesn't feed into the myths we tell ourselves about American exceptionalism. I have watched the first episode and can say that it was not a menagerie of conspiracies. It was apparently Stone's intention that the series start in the late 19th century and cover World War I but there just wasn't enough money to do more than ten episodes. That and he didn't want to overwhelm viewers with context, thusly the series starts with World War II.

Stone*** opens the show by stating his intentions and his disappointment that the history lessons his kids received in school consisted of the same schlock that he was taught. Hence this program which he hopes can contribute to a better understanding of history and provide direction and hope for change.

In a bit shy of an hour, Stone gives us an overview of World War II. The narration is his and there are no talking heads. Although quotes and the text of some speeches that were never recorded are heard here, there are also no recognizable celebrities doing the deed. Stone is avoiding the Ken Burns pathos trap here. (And I have to wonder if some of the maps that look like they were lifted from an old newsreel were, in fact, newly created.) After Stone's prologue we get a very brief look at the Manhattan Project, mainly Trinity. An interesting choice as it merely foreshadows later episodes in the series.



When the show finally does get moving with WWII, it starts in a way that is foreign to a lot of people. Stone says that it started in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria as opposed to Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. It's really a semantic issue with Stone declaring an act that is generally considered to be prologue to be part of the war proper. But it does set up America's entrance into the war. It's also worth noting for conservative-minded Stone haters out there that the program didn't do much to cover the imperial ambitions of the United States. Thusly we are told about Japan's encroachment in the Pacific but the Spanish-American War is not covered so no explanation is ever given for why places thousands of miles away from North America such as the Philippines, Guam, Midway Atoll, Wake Island, and Hawaii were "ours".

Still, there's more of a sense of the war as being the product of geopolitical maneuvering than you often times get.

The second aspect of the program that caught my eye was the emphasis put on Roosevelt's anti-imperialism. He and Churchill are generally looked at as being good buddies but, at their meeting in August 1941 in Newfoundland which produced The Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt was rather antagonistic. He told his son before the meeting, "We've got to make clear to the British from the very outset that we don't intend to be simply a good-time Charlie who can be used to help the British Empire out of a tight spot, and then be forgotten forever." Churchill, presiding over the British Empire, couldn't have been too enthusiastic about the egalitarian tone of the Charter. But he needed the U.S. to enter the war.



The final element of the episode that I want to note is that Stone eschews delving into the Battle of Midway, D-Day, the Battle of Britain, et al and focuses on the eastern front. Russia's role in the war is front and center. There was certainly much enmity towards the USSR on the part of Western leaders and Stone asserts that they were happy to let the Soviets bear the brunt of the German war machine for a time. For his part, Stalin was quite paranoid. Russia and the UK had been enemies for some time and Stalin didn't forget that the U.S. support the whites during its civil war. After describing the horrors endured by the Soviets – the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of Stalingrad, for example – Stone declares that it was really the Soviets that deserve credit for defeating the Nazis.

All in all, I thought this first episode was interesting. My father was a very big WWII buff so most of this was old hat for me but I get the impression that much of this history doesn't make it into schools. That the Allies were allied against the Axis powers but that there was infighting and distrust amongst them is not a common refrain. We seem more interested in simple opposites like Hitler bad and Allies good and overlook just how complicated things really were. Plus, no doubt in large part to Stephen Ambrose, we almost fetishize D-Day and ignore most of the rest of the conflict.

I was surprised at how little attention was paid to American imperial ambitions here. FDR is portrayed in the sequence at Newfoundland as being anti-imperialist with him noting that the Philippines were due to become independent in 1946 in addition to bargaining with Churchill. And, as I noted above, nothing is said about how all those islands in the Pacific came to be under American control.

I have read some criticism of the show by people who have watched the first few episodes and I don't doubt that some of it is warranted. But it amazes me that critics think they're scoring points against Stone by noting that nothing here is truly "untold". I agree that the title is hyperbole and, sure, historians and people well-read in the subject aren't going to be wowed by any revelations here, but the show really isn't aimed at them; it's for high school students and adults who know only the basics of the story. Having only seen the first episode I can only say that it serves to complement, not supplant, more "traditional" or more common histories.

Lastly, it should be noted that this program has stuffed 14 years of conflict into just less than an hour. A fair amount of ground is covered but it goes by quickly. Having it on your DVR will serve all viewers well but those for whom this is unknown territory will especially benefit from being able to rewind. We're back to familiar early-90s territory here with lots of quick cuts. Whomever was tasked with seeking out all those old newsreels and stock footage deserves a medal. Ditto for editor Alex Marquez.

***While the program bears his name, Stone wrote the program with historian Peter Kuznick and one Matt Graham who is, as near as I can tell, a TV/film writer.

This One's For Samara Kalk Derby

Required reading for Samara "choice white meat" Kalk Derby - "The Unbearable Whiteness of White Meat":

White meat turkey has no taste. Its slabs of dry, fibrous material are more like cardboard conveyances, useful only for transporting flavorsome food like stuffing and gravy from plate to mouth. It's less a foodstuff than a turkey app, simulated meat, a hyperlink to real food.

Where Are the Curses? - Toil & Trouble Gruit by Vintage and Sweet Mullets

Last week The Dulcinea and I went to the Vintage for dinner. We were seated by the host but, before our waiter made his way to our table, I looked up from the menu to discover that brewmaster Scott Manning was placing two sample glasses of this year's Tippy Toboggan roggenbier down. He knows I think the stuff is the nectar of the gods. A nice way to start my night.

I didn't know that TT had just been tapped and so I had a different goal in mind. Spin down the ages...

It's the year 700 C.E. and you live in a Bavarian village. Let's say you're the blacksmith. What do you with your buddies the baker, cobbler, and tanner when it's quittin' time? You reach for a cold one, of course. The thing is, hops are about 100 years off. Hopheads haven't been invented yet. Instead you're drinking gruit which is basically beer before the introduction of hops. Your brew might have had a combination of bog myrtle, rosemary, yarrow, woodruff, and other herbs and spices. Coriander found its way into beer occasionally. The ancestors of all those crazy Norwegians in Stoughton are using juniper in their gruit while sweet gale was popular in Denmark and areas of Scandinavia.

I had come to the Vintage for this:



That's Toil & Trouble, the gruit brewed by Scott and Mark Duchow of Sweet Mullets in Oconomowoc. It was a nice reddish brown and slightly cloudy. The aroma was slightly sweet with a fairly strong herbal component. The brew was made with heather tips and mugwort and, to my nose, it smelled like heather. I say this because I've had Fraoch Heather Ale and T&T smelled like it tasted.

T&T also tasted a lot like Fraoch in so far as the heather was very prominent. Think floral. I can't tell you what mugwort tastes like but I believe the floral aspect of the brew comes from the heather while the slight bitterness was from the mugwort. In an effort to make something akin to a period brew, Messrs. Duchow and Manning used some peat-smoked malt. All malt was smoky back then as you dried the stuff over a fire because the use of indirect heat and pale malts were still centuries away. They didn't use a lot of the smoked malt here as its flavor was subdued and instead blended well with the herbs and malt. Also in the mix are wild yeasts which yield a prominent sour flavor. In the end you get a drink that has a nice blend of malt sweetness and heather with some smokiness that yields to a pleasant tartness and a bit of bitter. There is a helluva lot going on here and everything is balanced really well. Considering the base is that of a Scotch ale, T&T does not have a heavy mouthfeel. Indeed, it is very quaffable and, weighing in at 7%+ ABV, it can be dangerous.

Other than Fraoch Heather Ale, the only other commercial gruit I know of is Professor Fritz Briem 13th Century Grut Bier and I just happen to have a bottle of the stuff in my cellar. Perhaps I can bust it out soon and do a gruit comparison.

Junk food pairing: Pair Toil & Trouble with Frytor of Erbes. A judicious selection of herbs and a drizzle of honey on the frytor will complement the gruit's own herbal flavor and sweetness.

P.S. – we got a mispour so, in addition to the very tasty sour barrel aged Pumpkin Disorderly, we also got a free Alpentraum, a rauch weizenbock. All four beers we tried last week were very tasty but think the roggenbier needs to mellow a bit.

Lakefront's 25th & WI Foodie Visits New Glarus

Lakefront will be turning 25 on 2 December and to celebrate their silver anniversary they are going to be releasing a series of four beers starting with an Imperial stout.



Next year we can expect a bourbon dopplebock, saison, and a brandy barrel-aged pumpkin ale.

The Wisconsin Foodie TV program recently profiled New Glarus Brewing. The hop garden is just waiting to be planted in the spring. They visit the House the Spotted Cow built - the Carey's home, where you can witness the very kitchen where Moon Man was developed. Oh, and don't believe Dan when he says people only drank beer during the Middle Ages. They drank water from wells and collected rain in barrels just like my hippie neighbors.

The Day The Earth Stopped Masturbating

Guy #1: "How many times would we have to jerk off to kill all the guys on Earth?"

Guy #2: "But that would make us monsters!"

Guy #1: "No. It would make us gods!"

What's the Sticke?

It's nice to see that Port Huron is brewing an altbier and that Robin Shepard reviewed it last week for Isthmus. I look forward to trying it. Three beer nerd observations:

1) Shepard writes: "Altbiers are ales conditioned at cooler temperatures for longer periods, in a way similar to how a lager is made."

German brewing tradition pegs it as a lagerbier, albeit one that is top-fermenting, and not an ale. Different brewing traditions. How did we Americans get in the habit of classifying beer as either an ale or a lager? I wonder if it's something we inherited from the British. Then again, they didn't think of stouts and porters as ales as late as the early 20th century. Perhaps it is a more recent distinction resulting from Charlie Papazian and the homebrewing revolution. And when we use the ale vs. lager distinction, are we really talking location of the yeast or the temperature at which the yeast works its magic?

Where does the California common fit in? I've read (probably at Ron Pattinson's blog) about the German practice of mixing top and bottom-fermenting beers in years where there's a shortage of ice. How do you classify these beers? If your weizen has more than 50% wheat or if you ferment only wheat as in a grätzer/grodziskie, is it even beer? Or a roggenbier with more than 50% rye? Is kvass beer? What about gluten-free brews like Lakefront's New Grist?

2) "The stronger, darker and richer version is called Sticke, which means secret, a reference to brewers' habit of providing few details as to the beer's recipe."

I always thought the secret wasn't the ingredients - it's an altbier, for starters, and, after 1870 or so*** (see Ron Pattinson's comment below), they would have been Reinheitsgebot-compliant - so I can't see why people would have shrouded the beer's recipe in mystery. Instead the secret was when the barrel would have been tapped. A brewer would mismeasure malt and have to add more hops to compensate so you got a bigger alt. From the German Beer Institute*** (see Ron's comment again):

The news of a brewmaster's mistake, of course, normally would get around quickly among the initiated, who would pass the secret by word of mouth, behind cupped hands, in a "stickum" or "sticke" sort of way... and to be in on the secret was quite a privilege. It is said that this "stickum" hot tip, shared among the aficionados, then became the origin of the beer's name. Nowadays, however, Sticke brewers have abandoned the secrecy sourrounding the unveiling of the Sticke.

This is what I've always heard. The secret is when the bier would be unveiled, not the recipe.

3) "Alt Bier is traditionally served in a narrow 200 ml (about 7 ounces) glass called a Stange..."

I thought you drank your Kölsch out of a stange but your altbier from a becher which is cylindrical like a stange but shorter and wider. See Wikipedia, for example. Or, better yet, look at photos taken by beer nerds in Düsseldorf. Those aren't stangen.

Not that it really matters to we Americans as tend to put everything shy of 10% ABV in a pint glass, although it may be a point of contention if you hail from Köln or Düsseldorf.

A Real Horror Show: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

The Wasp Factory is Iain Banks' first published novel. Not having read anything by him previously, I can't really say how it compares to his later work. However, I am game for reading more by him now that I've completed this book.

The story concerns Frank Cauldhame, a 16 year-old who lives with his rather dour father, Angus, on an island that lies somewhere just off the coast of Scotland. Frank narrates and begins his tale rather enigmatically by saying, "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me." The book had been recommended to me on the basis of it having an unreliable narrator but it's not completely true. It's not that Frank lies to the reader; it's more that he delays providing explanations for his cryptic story.

These first sentences get the reader asking what these Sacrifice Poles are, wanting to know about Frank's brother and from where he escaped, and just what the nature of the titular factory is. We immediately learn that the poles are sticks on a dune that hold the corpses of various animals and insects while the other questions are answered later. Frank spends his time amongst the dunes and roaming about the island that is his home being a menace to the fauna. When Frank is not out hunting rabbits with a wrist rocket, he can often be found in an old World War II bunker where there are more animal heads on spikes and he can perform sacrificial rites. Back at home, the attic serves a similar function and houses the Wasp Factory, a massive clock that once adorned the local branch of the Bank of Scotland but has been refitted for a more sinister purpose.

Frank is a lot like his father. Angus is either going into town or locked away in his study which Frank has never even peered into much less stepped inside of. While the son is sadistic, the father is very strange. He commits household measurements to memory and expects the same from Frank.

We eventually find out that Franks brother, Eric, has escaped from a mental institution. He was sent away after his behavior moved from stuffing the mouths of local kids with worms and maggots to setting dogs on fire. Eric's presence is felt mostly over the phone. He calls Frank frequently to say that he is making his way home and will be there soon. Frank describes his older brother as crazy but loves him anyway. The return of the reprobate revenant hangs over the proceedings. When will he pop up? Is he looking to exact revenge on his family?

Banks does a great job here of slowly revealing the story of Frank's life. Little details emerge that are only explained later. For example, Eric notes that he does not officially exist. No birth certificate and the usual panoply of government records are absent. How could that be? Banks also drops in bits of foreshadowing such as when Franks says, "I represent a crime, and if Eric was to come back stirring things up The Truth About Frank might come out." And the truth about Frank does come out eventually.

Banks seems to be saying something about how our environment shapes us, especially our parents. Frank is not a particularly sympathetic character. He strangles a rabbit with the elastic sling of his wrist rocket, is deeply misogynistic (“My greatest enemies are women and the sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadows of men and are nothing compared to them."), and confesses to having murdered three children when he was a boy. But we learn that he was abandoned by his mother and Angus is not exactly the paragon of parenthood. When The Truth About Frank does get revealed, it's obvious that many adults in the boy's life failed him. And they failed Eric as well.

The problem is that both Frank and Eric are such repulsive characters that it's difficult to see them as victims of forces outside their control. You can add Angus to that list as well. Three monsters. The story gives a point at which these people snapped, essentially – the point at which they started to become monsters – and shows how external forces, i.e. – other people, helped make these individuals what they are. Unfortunately Banks doesn't dramatize the environmental factors enough. The act of killing the rabbit is elaborated upon as are the plans Frank hatched for killing the three kids but the incidents that drove Frank, Eric, and Angus to be what they are get short shrift. They're mentioned almost off-handedly so the causal connections aren't given enough emphasis and so the focus mostly remains on the atrocious protagonists.

The Wasp Factory has a lot of good ideas in it – the effects we have on one another, de-romanticizing childhood, and perhaps even mocking religion – but, in the end, I think A Clockwork Orange, while not covering the exact same ground, did this kind of thing better.

Polish Film Fest Starts Tonight With 80 Million

Madison's Polish Film Festival kicks off tonight with 80 Million.

A new film by Waldemar Krzystek. Poland, Lower Silesia, the beginning of a very cold winter 1981. After the series of entrapments by the Security Service a confrontation between the opposition and the communists seems to be inevitable. Just before the proclamation of martial law a group of young Solidarity activists decide to play va banque and organize a rash action to take out 80 million of the Union money from one of the Wroclaw's banks before the account would be blocked. Security Service officers follow their steps. It's the beginning of a gripping tournament in which also priests and curb dealers will play their parts. Each side has aces up their sleeve.

It looks like I'll be seeing it with a friend who grew up in Poland at this time so I should get some interesting bonus commentary.

Capital Looking to Brew an IPA?

The final nail in the coffin of the Kirby Nelson era at Capital Brewery looks as if it is being pounded in:



Kudos to Capital for moving forward (step one was brewing a pumpkin beer). But do we really need another IPA? (This assumes, of course, that this tweet is indicative of Capital intending to brew one.) I fear Dark and Pilsner will be gone soon.

The Old Fashioned to Become Demi-Brewpub

Apparently The Old Fashioned is no longer content with merely serving beer brewed by every brewery in the state and has decided to start brewing its own. The grapevine says that Ashley Kinart is to be the bierbrauer. She looks to be Madison's first female brewmaster, at least of the modern craft beer era.

Some new labels:


I haven't seen this around though you'd think it would have been available for Halloween. Perhaps a limited edition brew only available in the Milwaukee area.


Due in 10 days.


A new Kölsch. The style is catching on. Somebody get me a Kölsch-Kranz for Christmas.


Louie's Demise aged in bourbon barrels. They've even produced a video.



And from south of the border:



Pipeworks is out of Chicago but it's a raspberry Berliner Weisse and should be mentioned. It's the follow-up to Blue Lady, a blueberry Berliner Weisse. I am am going to be in the Chicago area over Thanksgiving weekend and am hoping the nearest Binny's has it in stock.

The latest entry into Wisconsin's craft beer scene is the Pigeon River Brewing Company. It's a brewpub located in Marion. The lone brew of their on tap right now is an oatmeal stout but more are to come and their selection otherwise is good. If you ever find yourself in Waupaca County, stop in.

Lastly I'll note that Vintage has their seasonal roggenbier, Tippy Toboggan, available. Brewmaster Scott Manning knows I think it's one of the best beers in the entire universe and so he brought us samples last night. The stuff is still a junge at only 2 weeks old so let it mellow a bit.

Oh, and there's a beer tasting at the Vintage this Sunday. Don't worry - the start time was moved to after the Packer game. And the adjuncts here aren't rice or corn but rather things of a botanical nature. Expect a pumpkin beer, Goose Island's Sofie, and more.

We're Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse

I never knew my employer had a disaster recovery plan until this morning when I saw this sitting next to our UPS:



Apparently we're supposed to cover our equipment if a pipe springs a leak or some such thing. If any electronic equipment is threatened with a large amount of water, I am out the door. Trying to grab some plastic sitting next to a UPS during an indoor flood is well above my pay grade. Where were the disaster recovery people when the tape backup system was down for weeks?

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Trailer

I'd never heard of Gregory Crewdson before seeing this trailer but have discovered that his work is really neat. The one with the baby lying on the bed reminds me of Nighthawks. Good stuff.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters will be screening here in Madison on 18 January courtesy of UW Cinematheque.