pumpktoberfest #14 - finally.
film: final destination
beer: shipyard smashed pumpkin



i friggin love final destination. i'm indifferent towards final destination 2, final destination 3 & the final destination, but the first film in the series was just plain awesome. the film opens with this superstitious high school kid named alex getting ready for a class trip to paris. the next day, he gets to the airport & boards the plane, but while waiting for the plane to take off, he has a premonition of the plane exploding & freaks out. in the process, he, a teacher & a handful of students are removed from the plane & it takes off without them. when the plane actually does explode in midair, the horror begins, as those left behind discover that they've cheated death & death will stop at nothing to fulfill his plans. oh death. you're such a little scamp. their final destination...death. ridiculously convoluted death.

first, one of the students "accidentally" strangles himself in the bathroom & people think it's a suicide but alex is all "nuh uh. it's death trying to carry out his master plan." everyone else is all "nuh uh. you're crazy" but then another one of them gets hit by a bus & people start believing his annoying ramblings. he eventually figures out that death is killing people in the order they would've died on the plane, but despite his findings & everyone's efforts to thwart death, those left behind keep dying in more & more intricate "freak accidents."

my favorite's the one with the teacher. she's killed when she puts on a john denver record, boils some water on the gas stove & pours herself a mug of it but then throws the boiling water on the floor when she notices that it's a mug from the high school. she instead decides to get some vodka from the freezer & pours it into the same mug. the quick change in temperature cracks the side of it, but she doesn't notice & carries it all the way across the room, leaving it on top of the computer. the vodka drips inside & shorts out the computer, which starts smoking. when she goes to check it out, it explodes, shooting a shard of glass into her neck. as she flails about the house with blood gushing from her neck, the computer continues to spark, starting a fire that follows the trail of vodka back to the kitchen & blows up the stove, igniting her entire house. SO convoluted.

finally finally finally. thirteen pumpkin beers into the pumpktoberfest season, the shipyard smashed pumpkin has finally come along & proved that somebody other than southern tier can make an outstanding pumpkin beer. i've had myself 2.1 of these over the last month. i say "2.1" because last week, i totally spilled almost all of the third one all over creation, aka my apartment. it was just an awful, awful turn to the evening & i'm still coming across occasional sticky reminders of the event. the smashed pumpkin is the second shipyard beer of the pumpktoberfest season, but it's leaps & bounds above the first beer i sampled this month, the shipyard pumpkinhead. i mean, that one was aight, but this one is a high-class beer...& at $8-$10, it's well worth paying as much as you'd pay for a stupid bottle of wine.

watch me gush now...for starters, the presentation is tres swanky, from the gold foil over the cap to the quality of the paper on the label. when i first cracked it open, i gave it a good whiff & man, does it smell absolutely delish. it's spiced with nutmeg & i think there's some cinnamon & probably some other junk in there too. the pumpkin flavor's quite prominent & not in some lame ass pumpkin pie way either. overall, the taste is surprisingly smooth considering the alcohol content. that's the other bonus. it's 9.0% alcohol & comes in a big 22 oz bottle. that's largely why i was so disappointed at spilling almost a whole bottle's worth last week. i was so about to get drunk on a thursday & fate was all "nuh uh. you lose." regardless, i give the smashed pumpkin seven thumbs up!

tomorrow! my #2 horror film & another pumpkin beer! til then!