the musical fruit: movement #23.

the musical fruit: movement #23.
song: "mayonaise," smashing pumpkins
fruit: pumpkin

if i was asked to name the one musician i'd most like to punch squarely in the face, it's billy corgan, the mastermind behind the smashing pumpkins. they're a joke now, but when i first heard the pumpkins back in the early 90s, when my younger brother brought home gish (their debut album), they became my favorite band for most of the decade. their early stuff was filled with fuzzy, layered guitars unlike anything out there & i picked up their second album, siamese dream, on tape on the day that it came out. from there, i bought every single & b-side they put out & even saw them in concert (in rhode island, headlining the fourth lollapalooza). i still loved them even though they were absolutely awful live & the best act that year was the beastie boys, whose set made me think i was going to die in the mosh pit. 

my favorite song off of siamese dream is "mayonaise," the sixth song on an album filled with amazing songs. it starts off with a single guitar & a minute in, a bunch of fuzzy guitars come in, turning the song into a pseudo rocker with occasional quiet parts. there's an acoustic performance of the song on their 1994 video release called vieuphoria & for years, it became one of the songs that i learned & most enjoyed playing on guitar. back in the 90s, i used to listen to the song & bring myself to tears with lyrics like "i fail, but when i can, i will. try to understand that when i can, i will." although i've sort of forgotten about the song over the last decade or so, those lines have sort of become a mantra for my lifestyle. anyway, siamese dream is definitely one of the best rock albums of the 90s & despite how much of a douche nozzle billy corgan's become over the years, i can still put the album on & go nuts over it...not as nuts as present day billy corgan, but still pretty nuts.

...so i have a pumpkin. since today's halloween & nobody cares about pumpkins come november 1st, it's a fruit/squash living on a short timetable. as you can tell from the photo above, although i have plans to see what i can do with it, i've yet to get around to carving it into a jack-o-lantern. from what i've learned, the pumpkin's a pretty useless fruit unless you're willing to remove the insides for pumpkin seeds & scrape the insides to get at the pumpkin meat. actually, one moment...i'm going to try giving this pumpkin a good carving before it's officially november.

...holy crap that was unnecessarily messy. regardless, i have my first jack-o-lantern of this decade. check it! i also have a ton of pumpkin seeds which, when they dry out & are mixed with some olive oil & salt, are going to make a slightly-boring snack that i'll use to subdue my nicotine cravings. other than that, this pumpkin is dead to me. tomorrow i'll probably take it & place it outside my building, where teenage hooligans will likely come across it & smash it to bits in the street...& with that, the halloween cycle will be completed.

pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.

pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.
film: halloween
beer: heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale



for me, the scariest films have always been the ones whose plot make me think "damn, that could actually happen." i'm talking about films sans killer leprechauns or murderous dudes from other dimensions. of these realistic horror films, the pinnacle is john carpenter's 1978 classic, halloween. the film, which centers on a masked, escaped mental patient & non-snl dude named michael myers who terrorizes the midwestern town of haddonfield, IL on halloween night, was the first in what has since become an iconic ten film franchise. over time, the pale white michael myers mask has become synonymous with horror & carpenter's direction, which was occasionally first person & showed little to no gore but was still scary, has been copied by many directors.

the film stars a twenty-year old jamie lee curtis (in her first film role) as a babysitting teenager stalked by michael myers & donald pleasance as myers' doctor. on halloween night, myers escapes from a mental institution & returns to his childhood home to reunite with his baby sister (curtis) & murder people. with the doctor hot on his trail, myers slashes the heck out of haddonfield's horny teenagers & continues to do so until his doctor (who has been with him since myers was a child & has labeled him as "pure evil") shoots him six times in the chest, sending him over the side of a balcony. the kicker? when the doctor looks down over the side of the balcony to check on myers, he's gone. from there, the realistic aspect of halloween goes away, as myers returns for seven more films & two remakes (directed by rob zombie). regardless, the first film left me with significant, psychotically horrific chills.

my final pumpktoberfest beer is the heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale. for years, i've been seeing heartland brewery's ads for the smiling pumpkin ale, with that slightly psychotic dude holding a pumpkin, but i never got around to trying it because it meant that i had to go to one of the city's heartland breweries, which are essentially tourist traps with good beer. case in point...tonight, i ventured into the city to finally try the smiling pumpkin ale. when i got there, i grabbed myself a seat at the bar & ordered up a pint of the smiling pumpkin ale. to the left of me was a guy whose costume was a shirt that read "mike hunt's diving school" & one of those lifeguard floatation devices on his back with the words "muff diver" written on it. he struck up a conversation with me & i learned what should have been obvious. he was from new jersey.

as for the smiling pumpkin ale, it's the only pumpktoberfest beer i've had from a tap & i'm not sure if that made much of a difference, but as far as pumpkin beers go, it's pretty damn good. in addition to the "honey roasted pumpkin," it's made with ginger, cloves, cinnamon & nutmeg, but those spices don't dominate the flavor or smell. the pumpkin flavor is definitely noticeable & it's a smooth beer that went down nicely despite the dude from jersey sitting next to me. while i'm 100% sure that i won't find myself back at heartland brewery any time soon, i'm happy that my final beer of the pumpktoberfest season ended up being a winner.

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.
film: a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors
beer: post road pumpkin ale



as far as horror films go, wes craven has definitely solidified his spot as one of the top directors of all time, with an almost forty year resume that includes the hills have eyes, the serpent & the rainbow, shocker & the scream franchise. the most enduring of his films has been a nightmare on elm street, about freddy kreuger, a janitor who was killed by the citizens of springwood, OH & is now obsessed with getting revenge on them by killing their kids in their dreams. it's since become a cult classic, spawning seven more movies (only one of which craven both wrote & directed--1994's new nightmare), with a michael bay-directed remake of the original film set to come out in the spring of 2010. my favorite of the series & the only other one (other than new nightmare) that craven wrote the screenplay for is 1987's a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors.

it was the first nightmare on elm street film i saw & it features both the debut of a young patricia arquette & one of the best theme songs ever, "dream warriors," written by the 80s hair metal band dokken. arquette plays kristen parker, a girl who meets freddy early on in the film when he tries to slash her in her dreams with his iconic bladed glove. he doesn't kill her but when she awakens, she has cuts on her arms & her mother thinks she tried to commit suicide, so she sends her to a psych ward. when she arrives, she realizes that the other patients are the last remaining children of the mob that killed freddy & decides that she needs to protect them. freddy still manages to kill a bunch of them, usually with some wisecrack like "welcome to prime time, bitch" (when he kills a girl with a TV). as is par for the course with the films, he's defeated in the end but in the final scene, we learn that he's not actually dead. sequel!

the word on the street in brooklyn these days is that you should probably try brooklyn brewery's post road pumpkin ale before the pumpktoberfest season is over & you can no longer get one. living in brooklyn, i see this pumpkin beer pretty much everywhere i go. to be honest, since brooklyn brewery's beers are in coolers & bars all over the place, i'm starting to think of them as new york's version of sam adams. by that, i mean that while i enjoy their beers & i'd choose them over a budweiser any day of the week, i no longer think of them as anything special. in that tradition, i've sort of already grown tired of the pumpkin ale, but it's still pretty good.

one of the first things that i noticed when i opened it was that, unlike most pumpkin beers, it doesn't have an overwhelming spice smell to it. in fact, when i took my first sip, i was surprised at how little spice there actually is in it. i tasted a little bit of nutmeg, but the spices really just sit back & let the beer speak for itself. in addition, there are apparently hundreds of pounds of pumpkins in every batch, but i guess it must be a seriously big batch because while you can taste the pumpkin, there's really only a hint of it. since the spices & the pumpkin are so tame, it has a relatively smooth taste. so yeah, it's tasty but it's nothing to dream about. that's ok though, because as we've learned from the nightmare on elm street films, dreaming will get you killed.

tomorrow! my #1 horror film in the entire universe & our final pumpkin beer of the pumpktoberfest season! don't miss it!

nosh nook #165 - friday, october 30, 2009

victory for afghanistan troops as full ration snack noodles arrive (link)
10.29.09 - wandsworth guardian - by harry miller

i've never been to war myself, but i can only imagine that when you're a soldier stuck in a war zone, there are a lot of things that you long for. as a soldier in that situation, war's not only your job but it's your life, as you're usually living in the theater, away from your family, friends & home. you're not only away from everyday life but you're also far away from everyday comforts like video games, a comfortable bed & sexy sexy loving. with so much missing from your life, sometimes it's the little things that count.

the wandsworth guardian reports that victory has finally come for u.k. troops serving in afghanistan. thank god, because that war's been taking forever. i just hope it's not one of those "mission accomplished" sort of things. hopefully not, because that victory comes in the form of pot noodles, the beloved british snack. according to the guardian, u.k. soldiers were being short-changed with their rations of pot noodles, which had arrived only half-full. as corporal dale 'windy' miller notes "pot noodles are a staple diet in afghanistan, everyone gets sent them by loved ones and well wishers but when you've been out all day and you get back, open one up and it's half full, it can be a bit disappointing." as such, soldiers started complaining.

those complaints reached the ears of the folks at pot noodle, who were "outraged that servicemen and women were going without their daily intake of noodles" & responded by sending an enormous care package of noodles to afghanistan, including "bombay badboys, chicken and mushroom and doner kabob flavoured noodle treats." fusiler scott clarke welcomes the noodles. "we all really like pot noodles so when we found out they were sending us a load of them we were all really chuffed." you hear that? the soldiers are chuffed about the pot noodles. nuff said.

pumpktoberfest #14 - finally.

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!