a smorgasburg of pumpkins.

as i've mentioned a bunch of times in the past, three-quarters of the parow children now live in new york city, so we get together every once in a while. when we do, it's usually over food. last weekend, my doctor sister was celebrating her 35th 25th birthday so on a windy saturday the three of us & a few of the bro's pals met up in williamsburg at the god-awful hour of 11am to eat a bunch of food at brooklyn flea's smorgasburg market. it was the first time i'd returned to the market after visiting there for fucked in park slope back in may for its opening weekend. in preparation for our familial gathering, the bro had purchased three passes from gilt city that were each good for five entrees, a drink & a dessert, so we had some serious eating ahead of us. i, of course, was on the hunt for pumpktoberfest treats.

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pumpktoberfest #33 - the insane housewives of VT.

film: what lies beneath
beer: wolaver's pumpkin ale

being a housewife ain't all it's cracked up to be. sure you have countless opportunities to lounge about the house sipping red wine & baking pies & gossiping with your girlfriends on the phone, but there's eventually going to come a point where your lack of fulfillment gets the best of you & you end up going straight-up crazy. take oscar-winning director robert zemeckis' 2000 film what lies beneath. in it, michelle pfeiffer plays the part of claire spencer, a housewife married to norman spencer, a big-shot scientist played by harrison ford. if you think that owning a nice house in vermont & being married to a dashing scientist is a recipe for bliss, you're sadly mistaken. claire's got ISSUES.

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five questions: sixpoint.

to kick off the third week of pumpktoberfest 2011, today we've got an interview with brooklyn's sixpoint brewery, who've brewed one of this year's new & most unique pumpkin beers. their autumnation, the first pumpktoberfest beer to come in a can, bucks the normal trend of loading up pumpkin beers with pumpkin pie spices & instead relies on a flavor dominated by pumpkin, wet hops, ginger & pepper. i reached out to sixpoint via email & jeff gorlechen, sixpoint's promotion director, sat around with the whole brewery to answer a few pumpktoberfest questions.

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pumpktoberfest #32 - ALF.

film: the thing
beer: harpoon UFO pumpkin ale

let's face it. aliens are friggin scary. if some life form that i've never seen before shows up on my doorstep, i'm freaking the fuck out & reaching for the closest vase to crack over its head. for today's pumpktoberfest film, we've got a 1982 john carpenter flick featuring an utterly horrific alien--the thing. it's sort of a remake of the 1952 howard hawks film the thing from another world, which was based on the 1938 john w. campbell novella who goes there? unfortunately for the producers, it didn't do extremely well at the box office, as it was released at the same time as another film featuring a decidedly more lovable alien--E.T. apparently people prefer cross-dressing, PG-rated aliens over the murderous, R-rated types.

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five questions: southern tier.

during each of the past two pumpktoberfests, southern tier's pumking, an imperial ale brewed with pumpkins, has made its way into the rotation (2009 & 2010), becoming what i'd consider my favorite out of all the pumpkin beers i've tried. if you haven't tried it yet, i seriously don't know what you're waiting for. since i'm all in love with it & shizz, this year i reached out to the folks at the lakewood, NY brewery to ask them a few questions about the pumking & horror films. nathan arnone, southern tier's "communications liaison," was kind enough to respond.

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