pumpktoberfest #10 - and we all shine on.
film: the shining
beer: jack's pumpkin spice ale



man, jack nicholson used to be such a friggin awesome actor. easy rider? loved it. five easy pieces? outstanding. one flew over the cuckoos nest? batman? the shining? all brilliant performances. with nicholson, the last film of his that i can stand him in is a few good men. everything after that can suck it. i don't care if he won an oscar for as good as it gets or was uproariously funny in anger management. he's been a caricature of himself for some time now, giving us more of a "jack crazy" shtick than actual acting. i find it kind of sad, really. he used to be so good back when he didn't feel the need to tear down the curtains to make a scene work.

the shining, released in 1980, is our second steven king film this pumpktoberfest season & arguably the best film out of all that have come from king's books. it's a good story, but it helped that the film was directed by stanley kubrick, who for the most part rules & that jack nicholson didn't suck yet. in the film, he plays jack torrance, a writer & the husband of a family acting as caretakers at a hotel for the winter. we learn that their son has something called "the shining" that lets him see into the future & past & because of it, he sees a bunch of murdered people at the hotel. eventually, jack goes crazy because they're holed up in the hotel & he tries to murder his family. it's got creepy kids, an elevator with a bunch of blood in it & lots of "jack crazy," but in a good way...a classic horror film.

have you ever thought about what it might be like to have somebody take a leak right into your mouth? i hadn't either, but then i tried jack's pumpkin spice ale, put out by michelob & i got a pretty good idea what the experience would be like. this stuff is just absolutely awful. as a pumpkin beer, i just...i mean did they even try to make it taste like pumpkin? there are definitely spices in the beer, but they're very weak. as it is, michelob is an awful beer. it's just plain terrible. they could've put a TON of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger & clove in & tried to mask the pure evilness that is tasting a michelob, but they didn't.

i guess i can't fault michelob for trying to come out with different beers, but i'm baffled as to how they could have thought that somebody would drink their pumpkin beer & go "wow. this tastes really good." it's just unfathomable. since they realized that people sometimes like it when their beer tastes good, michelob now brews almost twenty different kinds of beers, including a seasonal series (which the pumpkin atrocity is part of), a marzen & a dunkel weisse. i've tried their shock top wheat beer & that at least tasted like a wheat beer, so i guess there's a chance that one of their other beers is worthy of drinking, but after trying the pumpkin spice ale, i'm not holding my breath until i find it.