Category: Certainties

Steamworks Kolsch Lagered Ale

Steamworks KolschThe question is, what are you willing to do for 300 words? It could come to this. Come to writing beer commercials. For free.  It’s all right.  It’s any work that lies to hand.  It’s “Kölsch”.  Sure it is.  Love those little dots over the “ö”.  I wouldn’t waste a lot of time over the site.  It’s “Under Construction” but I’ve no idea for how long.  Steamworks

“Lagered” ale.  Look that up.  I don’t know.  I just like the can and what’s inside it.  That’s when they make a bunch of ale then cool it way down like a lager.  What’s a lager?  Pretty sure.

Great artwork.  It’s what’s striking about the Steamworks line-up.  The Kölsch, among other things, has a fanciful, fun rendering of something out of the Montgolfier brothers.  Another writer has used the word “whimsical”.  And that it is.

Brandever A local graphic design concern doing a lot of great work.  Art direction by Laurie Millotte and Bernie Hadley-Beauregard.  Concept by James Ng.  The illustration itself is by a guy you should check out, St. Louis-based  Michael Halbert

This is a well-captalized beer.  I’m glad I found that out so that instead of merely gumming another can of Steamworks Kölsch or any other Steamworks brew and wondering who’s behind these brilliant illustrations I can have a clue as to what’s going on here.  “Kölsch” in the can.

And then you remember Cologne.  Not the fragrance but the town.  Köln.  And, like a true student of life, you pick up on how this “Kölsch”, and many others like it bearing the same name, are based on a style of beer that originated in Cologne/Köln.  Cologne’s a really old town in Germany.  Of course it is.  And if there’s one thing they know about not just in Cologne but all over Germany it’s beer.  Let’s get started.

DSCN0197

 

Summer Rain

Isn’t this great? Precipitation. The strip of grass on the side of my building is a not unpleasing-looking, if you must know, straw colour.  I mean in a painterly way.

Now it’s got a chance. It’s going to get a chance to come back and be green, like the rest of us. You said what?

IMAG1313Is that a bug on the screen?  But it’s here. It’s all around us. The beneficent, beautiful, beneficial cool summer rain. The roses up here on the upper deck have been giving out exhaustion-repreive bleatings most of the day.  Make it hot but there’s nothing wrong with a little rain.  It’s a good day for summer rain and they think we ought to celebrate it.  So here goes.

Well Hi There Stranger
Well Hi There Stranger

We’ve had the summer wind and so it’s excruciatingly apt that the summer rain is here.  7:10 pm.  There.  Another little pelt of summer rain.  Just to dampen things down a bit.  Cool.

And now, from the west, a thundering crescendo of cloud-filtered sunlight.  This is the day of all hyphenated words.  Which, no matter how long the hyphenated word is, counts for just one word in writing contests.  Good to know.

It’s a “Royal William”.  “Hybrid tea”, as I recall.  Named for the prince who would be king of England.  He’s 33 so that means we’ve been in possession, owned and cared for this rose for more than a decade after purchasing it from “Murray’s”.

That’s absurd.  They shot Murry and burned down his gardening centre.  For the crime of getting on in years.  We liked and admired Mr. Murray and looked forward to seeing him.  What happened down there must have seemed almost biblical.

It’s time to forget what I’ve said.  It’s the sweet summer rain….

 

 

 

Faux West

imagesKodi Smit-Mcphee. Your fancy name ain’t gonna save ya from this disaster, son. Goes for you too, Mr Michael Fassbender, if that in fact is your name. I’d shoot Ben Mendelsohn myself if I could locate his sorry butt.

I take that back. It was the character he was playin.  Caren Pistorius, if your role hadn’t a been so hacked off and chewed up and left for dead in that fake clapboard house thingy this here movie might a had potential.

Worst thing is we don’t know who these people are.  There is but a modicum of character development and that hurts when you’re all sittin in the theatre waitin for somethin to happen.

Now I know western movies, horse operas some people used to call em, mean different things to different folks.

But when I see a bunch of strangers shootin off huge amounts of expensive lead I do start to wonder when the verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief is gonna come in.IMAG1287It’s a good effort.  It’s beautifully shot although old New Zealand ain’t ever gonna stand in for the old west.  Not enough character development.  I mean, these incredibly well-armed characters, well, where’d they get the money and stuff to have all these beautiful pistols and rifles? They ain’t rich.

It don’t make sense, but that’s all right.