pumpktoberfest #8 - coming home to roost.
film: the birds
beer: blue moon harvest moon ale
when animals attack! killer animals have played a major role in the history of the horror film, from cujo & jaws to the mosquito & the piranha. king kong was the original. if you believe that giant lizards are an animal species, godzilla is technically one. have you heard about the birds? oh. i thought everyone had heard. it's a hitchcock film & it totally has killer animals. in it, a san fran socialite (tippi hedren) runs into a man at a bird shop & even though she's never met him before, she decides to drive all the way up the coast to a small town (bodega bay) so she can play a prank on him by bringing him two lovebirds. because she does this, the local birds start tweaking (tweetking?) out & attacking the residents of the town.
when you take a good look at it, the film's pretty ridiculous. whereas most hitchcock films feature characters driven to do things as a result of their dramatic circumstances, the characters in the birds (including the birds) have little to no stated motive for anything they do. this is one of the major issues critics have with the film. if you can get beyond this fact, it's a good film. i like it. my favorite scene is when tippi's at the town diner hiding out from the birds & the gathered town residents are discussing their bird problem. there's a bible-quoting drunk, an snooty-sounding ornithologist who gets cut off every time she tries to dispel bird knowledge & a frantic woman whose kids are worried that the birds will eat them. eventually, the birds attack a guy filling up his gas tank outside the diner & gasoline spills all over the place. from inside, the townsfolk watch as another guy drives up, gets out of his car & lights a cigar, causing a super-awesome explosion. it's the perfect mix of hitchcock's comments on society & hilarious bird-induced violence.
the time for seeing a harvest moon may have passed a few days back, but the time for drinking a blue moon harvest moon ale is totally right now! get to it! please note that if you are reading this in december & you're all "i really want to try that!" you're out of luck. the time is no longer now. you missed the boat. seasons change, so you'll have to settle for their full moon winter ale instead. that's how it works with blue moon. they put out a different beer for every season. there's the full moon for the winter, the rising moon in the spring, the honey moon for the summer & the harvest for autumn. that means that harvest gets to be their beer for two major holidays--thanksgiving & pumpktoberfest. lucky beer.
the harvest ale's made with a few of your standard pumpkin ale spices--allspice, nutmeg & clove. they provide most of the flavor. according to the label, there's also "vine-ripened pumpkin" in there, but i'll be damned if i noticed it. it's not crappy or anything, but the flavor's even less dramatic than that of a regular blue moon. basically, the best thing about the beer is the fact that it's a twist off. the website suggests pairing it with sweet potatoes, beef or turkey. i suggest pairing it with another pumpkin beer. it also goes well with killer birds, but that's pretty much all because of the killer birds.