film: zombieland
beer: buffalo bill's brewery pumpkin ale
dude. why are people so friggin obsessed with zombies? i mean, these days peeps organize "zombie crawls" in cities all across the country, events where people dress up like zombies & roam the city "looking for brains." there was a bunch of buzz last year when pride and prejudice and zombies, a novel which puts the classic jane austen tale in a world filled with zombies, was released. over the past decade, there have been a ton of zombie films made, stuff like 28 days later and shaun of the dead. i don't get it really. i guess zombies are kinda cool, but if i'm picking something to obsess over i'm going with ninjas or pirates.
one of the more recent zombie films to come out is 2009's zombieland, the directorial debut from ruben fleischer. basically, zombies have taken over america & the remaining humans have to deal with the constant threat of being eaten by zombies. the story focuses on four of those humans--"columbus" (jesse eisenberg, the dude from the social network), "tallahassee" (woody harrelson), "wichita" (emma stone) & "little rock" (abigail breslin). the film opens with the story of columbus, who's a nerdy college student traveling to ohio to try to find his parents. whilst walking down the highway one day, he meets up with tallahassee, a zombie killer who's on a quest to find a twinkie. after combining forces, they run into wichita & little rock, who quickly con them, steal tallahassee's truck & take off.
soon after, columbus & tallahassee catch up with wichita & little rock and after columbus proposes a truce, they all begin traveling together to pacific playland, an amusement park in cali that wichita & little rock have heard is a zombie-free zone. when they finally arrive in cali, they get a map of the stars & go to bill murray's house to rest up. after a slightly hilarious run in with the movie star & a moment where wichita realizes she's falling for columbus (a no-no during the zombie apocalypse), the girls again ditch columbus & tallahassee and take off for pacific playland. when they arrive, they're ready to finally enjoy themselves for once, but they soon discover that the playland is not as zombie-free as they expected. columbus & tallahassee give chase & of course, that leads to an exciting, zombie-killing finale.
i certainly enjoyed it. there's a lot to like about the film. woody harrelson's rather hilarious as a badass on a quest for twinkies. emma stone's officially one of the hottest hotties in hollywood. jesse eisenberg & abigail breslin aren't bad either. it's got horror & comedy & with plot devices such as the "rules" that columbus has created to deal with the zombie apocalypse (rules like "beware of bathrooms" & "always check the back seat"), the story itself is pretty darned entertaining. i guess a lot of folks agree, as it's currently the highest-grossing zombie movie of all time, edging out the 1978 zombie classic dawn of the dead.
whilst viewing zombieland, i cracked open a bottle of buffalo bill's brewery pumpkin ale to have along with the film. buffalo bill's is a hayward, california (east bay) brewpub founded back in 1983, giving it the distinction of being one of the first & oldest brewpubs in the country. according to the label, their pumpkin beer is "america's original pumpkin ale." it was first brewed back in 1985, so i'm not sure how accurate that statement is. maybe they're the first to brew it commercially, but i'm even skeptical of that. after hearing about it last year during pumpktoberfest & learning that it was "america's original pumpkin ale," i was really looking forward to trying it, but couldn't find it anywhere. i finally found it a few weeks back at a few bodegas & grabbed a few bottles. since then, i haven't been able to find it anywhere.
it's ok though, because i've got one word for buffalo bill's pumpkin ale: meh. it's nothing special at all, a light amber brew with a spiced scent that's extremely faint. when i first gave it a whiff, i detected a tiny bit of nutmeg & cinnamon in there, but didn't detect any pumpkin whatsoever. flavorwise, it's got some flavor but between the lack of pumpkin & the lack of spices, it's a watery & pretty bland flavor overall...definitely not worthy of the "buffalo bill" name. i guess if there was a zombie apocalypse or something & my choices were limited, i'd have one but given the choice between it & most of the other pumpkin beers out there, i'd have to leave buffalo bill for dead.