Tuesday, June 25, 2013

THE HAND FAN THAT STIRS THE PUMA.



Cast:
Man w/ Fan
Woman w/ Puma

Director:
Dan Gutstein

Running Time:
1 minute 1 second

Advance Praise
"An erotic journey." --Film Fancy

"The exotic camera." --Movie Mirage

"Hypnotic!" --Cinema Chimera

Awards
Official Selection: Commuter Rail Film Festival

Best Hand Fan in a Dramatic Short

Best Puma Legs in a Dramatic Short

Thanks To
Everybody I know!

Trains.

Phones.

Fans.

Sneakiz.

Monday, June 17, 2013

FIVE TOP AMERICAN CRAFT STOUTS IN THREE CATEGORIES—SESSIONABLE, MID-RANGE, AND IMPERIAL—(BY ABV) (+7 PORTERS) THAT YOU MUST DRINK BEFORE YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH ME ABOUT DARK BEER.

Port Brewing A.B.L.E. Stout, Ocean Beach.
Sadly, it does not travel beyond San Diego.


In addition to producing an array of beers brewed with staggering quality, the American craft beer revolution has endorsed a sense of “the local” as well, with competent beers appearing in the tasting rooms or articulated pubs of great micro-breweries across the country—in cities large and towns small. Some of these beers are world-beaters, to be sure, but not all of them travel in bottle or keg outside the locality. When compiling a list of top examples, therefore, one must consider the brews that others can reasonably locate at their tap-houses or beer stores. Below follows just such a list. You can probably tell that I am partial to dark beer, having tasted, conservatively, upwards of 1,000 stouts and porters in the past few years. I have swilled all over the country, from Boston to Chattanooga, from Chicago to San Diego, from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, Washington, sampling, along the way, many stouts and porters unavailable nationally. Some of these local dark beers have been special, including, let’s say, Port Brewing Company’s A.B.L.E. Stout in Ocean Beach, an American double at 8.20% that may not be brewed again, and will never travel. The A.B.L.E. stout reminded me of Founders Breakfast Stout, a major beer that is available in most areas. The Founders beer and all other stouts do offer nutritive benefits (antioxidants, to name one) when consumed in moderation. The key thing, when sampling such a fine beverage, is to effect moderation. But I digress. Let me get to the list, which I have broken into three divisions, according to alcohol by volume, or ABV. The first category I will deem “Sessionable Stout”, with ABV not to exceed 6.50%. I will name the second category “Mid-Range Stout”, with ABV between 6.51% and 8.99%, and the third category “Imperial Stout”—for ABV values that soar above 9.00%. You can thank Catherine the Great (love that gal!) for imperials, as she commissioned the production of the very first one, a stout that would endure the snowy journey from England to Mother Russia without freezing en route. This list (“Warning!”) may be controversial to some. For one, I have organized it primarily by alcohol content, not necessarily by style. I have also determined my own ABV divisions. The list, moreover, does not include stouts and porters from abroad, not even from Mother Canada. The list does not attempt to establish these beers as the ultimate tops in their categories, but as “five of the tops”, even though these beers may be the very five tops after all. Click here if you need any instruction on how to imbibe a dark brew. Otherwise: to the pub! Comments welcome!  

Five Top Sessionable Stouts (up to 6.5% ABV.)
Sierra Nevada Stout 5.8%
Deschutes Obsidian Stout 6.4%
Wolavers Oatmeal Stout 5.9%
Anderson Valley Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout 5.7%
Sixpoint Diesel 6.3%

Five Top Middle-Range Stouts (6.51% to 8.99% ABV.)
Founders Breakfast Stout 8.3%
Evolution Rise Up Stout 6.8%
Bar Harbor Cadillac Mountain Dry Irish Stout 6.7%
Green Flash Double Stout 8.8%
Big Bear Black Stout 8.1%

Five Top Imperial Stouts (9.00% ABV and above.)
Founders Imperial Stout 10.5%
Alesmith Speedway Stout 12.0%
Deschutes The Abyss 11.0%
Stone Russian Imperial Stout 10.5%
North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout 9.0%

Porters (any ABV.)
Deschutes Black Butte Porter 5.2
Mayflower Porter 5.5%
Russian River Porter 6.1%
Founders Porter 6.5%
Anchor Porter 5.6%
Smuttynose Robust Porter 6.2%
Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter 5.8%

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

PARTS PER MILLION: AN OPEN LETTER TO CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS WHO DO NOT, IN TURN, REJECT THE SCIENCE OF WARFARE.

Intertwined, like it or not.


For the sake of Brevity, let us define Science as both Military and Climate. A belief in the routines of synthesizing Modern Weaponry, for example, would obligate you to believe in Global Warming. You couldn’t believe in one part of Science, that is, without believing in all parts of Science, and in any event, for the sake of Brevity, we are offering a definition that equates, say, the Fundamental Routines required to conceive of Ordnance and Trajectory with the Fundamental Routines required to measure the levels of Greenhouse Gasses. Interestingly enough, the increased administration of Modern Weaponry will probably lead to the progression of Global Warming, and the progression of Global Warming will probably lead to the increased administration of Modern Weaponry. The scene shifts to a mountaintop in Hawai’i, where the measurement of Carbon in Parts Per Million surpasses reasonable levels. The polluted air—steeply—warms the earth yet you deny the Science. “This is natural,” you may assert or “Mono-Deity intends for this to happen” or “Scientists Are Engaging in a Conspiracy to Falsify Their Findings” even as drastic consequences loom and the fossilized, ice-core history of the Earth hasn’t indicated such disastrous levels of Parts Per Million in Millions of Years. Science, of course, builds cartridges, magazines, firearms, torque, detonations, submarines, jump jets, nerve agents, mushroom clouds, satellite guidance, and all sorts of sundry materiel. This is “Natural?” this is Mono-Deity? In one half of our basic two-part system, Science warns of Great Harm, and in the other half, Science produces Great Harm. You reject the former but not the latter. It must be nice to entitle yourselves to these types of inconsistencies. The scene shifts to man-made structures—rails, overpasses, domiciles, high-rises, signals, gutters, power plants, wiring, cathedrals, off ramps—that are, desperately, perpetually, attempting to crumble or combust. The scene shifts to soil, there is a Drought in the soil, the Drought rises toward the surface, through soil that is perpetually striving to evaporate, and without some Immediate Attention, Skeptics, witness the Dumb Animal in Collapse.