Author: lobablanca

Flashback Friday: Last of the Independents

~ lobablanca

Loba plans and life laughs. And it’s the cruelest sound in the world. I honestly had every intention of coming here with far more frequency. Febrewary February was nice, right? Seems that it was not meant to be for March. If only I could have come up with a clever beer-related portmanteau for March.

DAMN MY INABILITY TO BE CLEVER ALL THE TIME.

Anywhoodle. March is now almost over, and I’ve only done one Flashback Friday. But it was a good one, right? So I’m back, once more mining my music loves. This time, it’s the 1994 Pretenders album Last of the Independents.

pretenders_loti

As I have confessed many times, music isn’t really my strong point when it comes to obsessions, so if I’m into a group it’s because they’ve finally become popular enough for me to notice them…or the pastor in the “Rock music is all from the Debbil, mmkay” videos that they made us watch in high school mentioned them as specifically evil, which meant in my mind that I needed to listen to them STAT (you think I’m kidding, but that’s how I learned about Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Dio, GWAR, Alice Cooper…see? Great groups!).

The Pretenders were never called out for specific sins by these videos, so my discovery of their music came with the repeated play of the single “I’ll Stand By You” on the radio, MTV, and VH1:

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/J5pECaW-VMI

Yeah, I know. Power ballad. Shut up.

Still, this was the first time that I had ever seen Chrissie Hynde, and I found her mesmerizing. It’s the voice. And the bangs. But mainly the voice. After seeing this video a few times, I knew two things: I wanted to know more about this group and I wanted this album. Not a bad sell from a power ballad.

Of course, I’ve since learned all about the band’s British roots and Hynde as their Yankee front woman and powerhouse song writer. In fact, she either wrote or co-wrote every song on Last of the Independents (as well as the majority of the band’s entire oeuvre). One of the things that I love the most about this particular album is the incredible sociological commentary on womanhood at this point in time. Not feminism or femininity. Womanhood. Hynde basically wrote a musical treatise on her thoughts about being a woman, a mother, an unfairly classified “lesser” gender. Her songs are stories of support, survival, sexuality, stigma. Love and hate, birth and death, success at what cost? Family, fate, and tequila. Hynde’s musical personas through this album all struggle with wanting the fully realized life that men take for granted, sometimes at the expense of these heroines. Frailty. Strength. Admirable. Playful. Pitiable. Seductive. Loathsome. Hynde embraces all aspects, presents them on equal footing, lets us decide.

Also? She turns a phrase like a fiend.

I have to say, I don’t think there’s a dud on this entire album. However, my favorite song actually comes quite late in the playlist, toward the back where weaker songs typically go. This, however, is one of the most beautifully crafted songs

BookBin2014: Vampires in the Lemon Grove

~ lobablanca

vampires

I was already going to write a laudatory review of Karen Russell’s short story collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove. After only three stories, I was completely in love with Russell’s rather idiosyncratic storytelling style. Her characters inhabit worlds that are recognizable in certain ways, completely foreign in others. She chooses periods and places that you might assume at first glance won’t be at all interesting, and then she does beautiful things with words that make it impossible not to fall deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of her curious mind.

Yes, I was already going to praise this book and declare that I needed to add it to my own library. Then I arrived at the story “The New Veterans” and I realized that I loved Russell and needed to read everything she has ever written. Why? Her protagonist in “The New Veterans.” Her protagonist’s name, more precisely.

Beverly McFadden.

I literally laughed out loud. If you’re a dork like me, I hope you’re laughing out loud, too. Or at least smiling in a knowing way.

Yeah, beyond the nerdy joy of that unexpected gift, Russell delivers stories that are equally unexpected. If you like stories that offer neatly packaged resolutions with every ending, then this is probably not going to be your cuppa. Many of the stories have delightfully open-ended conclusions, leaving you to ponder the next scene. I personally like stories like that. It allows me a deeper level of engagement as well as a wonderful freedom to unleash my imagination to play in other worlds.

All in all, Russell is a wondrous surprise of a discovery, her stories showcasing an obvious adoration for linguistics and a penchant for peculiarity seasoned perfectly with a pinch of humor and a pinch of horror. I can’t wait to read more from her.

Final Verdict: Finally, a library discovery that I have happily added to my own wishlist.

Febrewary: Shiner Holiday Cheer

~ lobablanca

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Brewer: Spoetzl Brewery
Location: Shiner, Texas
Type: Dunkelweizen
ABV: 5.4%

Has it really been 28 days since I started Febrewary? I suppose so. Doesn’t feel like it. Also doesn’t really feel like I accomplished what I set out to do, which was reduce the number of singles that I’ve recently purchased. Instead, I took this as an opportunity to drink some of the beers that I have been aging…make room for new beers to age. And so it goes with my final Febrewary entry.

I’ve had this bottle of Shiner Cheer in my aging collection for slightly more than three years. It was another one of the oldest in my collection. The rare thing about it is that it’s only a 5.4-percent ABV beer. Some believe that you shouldn’t really waste your time aging anything under 8 or 9 percent. However, I sometimes will make exceptions for beers that have a flavor that I think aging will enhance and showcase.

First, if you’ve never tried a freshly bottled Shiner Cheer, and you’re not averse to fruit-flavored beers, then I would highly recommend this Dunkelweizen (another new beer type for the lair!). Here’s a little bit more about this beer, from the label:

Happy Holidays from the “Little Brewery” in Shiner, TX. We hope you enjoy your Shiner Cheer, an Old World Dunkelweizen brewed with Texas peaches and roasted pecans. The malty flavors of this dark wheat ale are enhanced through the use of malted barley and wheat. And Kr

Febrewary: Cinnamon Porter

~ lobablanca

Brewer: Flying Dog Brewery
Location: Frederick, Maryland
Type: American Porter
ABV: 6%

I honestly wasn’t planning on doing another beer review quite this soon. After the last beer beat down, I thought it would be wise to give myself a little bit of recuperation time. However, the best laid plans of mice and beer lovers…you know how that goes.

Back in early December of last year, Flying Dog had a really groovy release party at their brewery for the last Brewhouse Rarities beer they created for 2013: Cinnamon Porter.

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For those unfamiliar with the Brewhouse Rarities series, it is pretty much the brewers (and, really, any Flying Dog employee) getting together at the end of the year or the beginning of the next and deciding on some spectacularly bat-shit crazy flavor ideas for beers. They typically either make them only for on-tap sales or they bottle a very limited supply (like the Green Tea Imperial Stout that I have aging downstairs right now). The slogan and inspiration for all of Flying Dog’s Brewhouse Rarities is a Hunter S. Thompson quote: “Too weird to live. Too rare to die.”

As much as I wanted to go to the release party for the Cinnamon Porter (not only did I think it sounded like an awesome way to spend an evening, but it was also the only place I could get this porter in a bottle), they had the party on a Tuesday evening. Even in the best traffic conditions, that would have been a really bad idea.

So next best thing? Stalk my regular beer haunts until one of them finally announced that they had a keg of Cinnamon Porter to tap! That’s precisely what I have been doing for the better part of a month. My pay-off came with a special DM this morning from one of my regular go-tos, letting me know that now was my time. After work, I headed on over, and I enjoyed one of the very first pints pulled from this freshly tapped keg.

My first comment is less about the beer itself and more about how places serve dark beers. This particular place served me a very, very cold porter. I will say this until I have no more ability to speak…and then I will write it: Porters and stouts should not be served cold. At most, if you are worried about your clientele complaining that the beer is too warm, then at least knock it up a few degrees from how you would serve a pale ale or a lager.

This beer was so cold that it was unwilling to give up even the slightest bit of flavor beyond the basics present in most porters. I even had a very difficult time discerning much from the nose. So, I patiently picked up my glass and cradled it in both of my hands, strolling around the perimeter of the store while looking at their beer and wine selections. Those who know me know that I don’t have the warmest hands, so this attempt on my part to warm the porter took a significant amount of time and energy on my part.

However, I do have to say that I was rewarded with a worthwhile payoff. As the porter began to warm, I could start to smell the gentle waft of cinnamon stick rising from my glass…not ground cinnamon, mind you, but the actual sticks. That muted, mellifluous scent…that promise of woodsy spice, just a scratch or two away.

Drinking the slightly warmed beer revealed even more of that soft, mulled flavor. I admittedly had no idea what to expect with this beer, but I know that when Flying Dog wants to knock you across the room with flavors, they do that in spades. This however, was a surprisingly delicate soup

Febrewary: Alice Porter

~ lobablanca

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Brewer: Brew Dog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
Type: Renaissance Baltic Porter
ABV: 6.2%

The profoundly puzzling Alice Porter.

Cryptic. Enigmatic. Alchemistic.

Few beers are shrouded in secrecy like the porter; a beer whose roots are said to be punctuated by hurried footsteps along cobbled London streets and swirls of mist from atop the River Thames.

Decloaked and radically reinvisaged, BrewDog’s Alice Porter is a 6.2% sacred union of one 300-year-old recipe and two cross-continental hop varieties.

A delicate mirage of chocolate, red fruit and burnt sugar, let Alice Porter whisk you away to a forgotten time juxtaposed against the backdrop of modernity.

And then, before you know it, she’s gone…tumbling down a rabbit hole into the same obscurity that first caught your attention.

Leaving but the question…who or what is Alice Porter?

I thought you all might enjoy a little story as your first official introduction to the brewer of tonight’s beer. See, once upon a time, in the far-away land of Scotland, a little brewery named BrewDog began. And they liked to make really crazy beers, oftentimes with mind-smashingly high ABVs and flavor profiles like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots crushing tastes directly into your mouth. Sometimes, they were great. Sometimes, they were destructive. Sometimes, they were just left enough of center to drop-kick you right into Nirvana. Nearly always, they brought along a story to tell us a little more about their existence. Or to just confuse us even more regarding what we’re tasting. Either way, it’s always been a fun ride.

Sadly, for the longest time, I couldn’t really find many BrewDog beers on this side of the pond. Now, however, I’m pleased to report that San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company is now responsible for importing BrewDog. I hope, I hope, I hope that this means that we’ll be seeing more of their options over here.

Tonight, however, I come to review a beer that was gifted to me several moons ago by one of my lovely, lovely ImagiFriendsTM. He gave me two bottles of Alice Porter, actually. One, I drank only a few days after I received it. I even snapped a photo:

aliceporter1

(And this would be why tonight’s beer is in that same Wonder Woman glass, by the by. Call back!)

When I drank this porter relatively fresh from the source, I commented that it was “Definitely a full frontal start followed by a startling dropoff. Strange. But delightful. Like tumbling down a rabbit hole…”

I wrote that on July 20, 2012. Tonight’s tasting comes more than a year later, and I have to report that this beer would have made a hops fan ecstatic. As I learned from some reading this evening, this porter uses two different type of hops, an English varietal known as Bramling X and a Japanese varietal called Sorachi Ace. I’m not familiar with the flavor profiles of either of these hops (not like I am with, say, a Willamette hops), but I’m assuming that it’s this combination that gave the fresher beer its precipitous flavor profile, and what consequently turned this aged bottle into a tangy sucker-punch that nearly shorted out the entirety of my palate.

I seriously was not expecting the vicious sharpness of this porter’s taste after aging. However, I knew that something was definitely changed in ways I wasn’t anticipating when I drew a deep breath from the glass and felt the metallic sting of the beer’s bouquet. I pushed the beer aside for a little while, allowing it some settling time. I’ve learned that BrewDog’s beers are never completely “clean,” often requiring a bit of settling time before drinking. That’s not that big a deal, though; my attempts at home brewing have taught me that sometimes, you’re just going to end up with some sediment, but that’s not going to ruin anything.

I remember back in Darktober, I reviewed a bottle of Tr

Febrewary: Palo Santo Marron

~ lobablanca

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Brewer: Dogfish Head
Location: Milton, Delaware
Type: American Brown Ale
ABV: 12%

How best to regroup after a thoroughly disappointing beer experience? Get up, dust your taste buds off, and ease back into the game by way of a tried-and-true favorite. I wrote very approvingly of Delaware’s Dogfish Head back in Darktober. Even after more than a year of drinking other beers on tap and from bottles, I still consider Bitches Brew to be one of my all-time favorite flavor discoveries. (This also reminds me that I still need to buy a bottle for aging.) And DFH’s Indian Brown Ale remains one of my favorite go-to beers for when I want a nice, solid, reliably delicious brew.

However, when I want to treat myself with a delicious DFH beer without breaking the bank on something like a bottle of Bitches Brew or their deliciously overpriced World Wide Stout, but a little higher on the scale than the Indian Brown? I go with their Palo Santo Marron.

First, here is what DFH writes about this beer on its label:

An unfiltered, unfettered, unprecedented Brown Ale aged in handmade wooden brewing vessels. The caramel and vanilla complexity unique to this ale comes from the exotic Paraguayan Palo Santo wood from which these tanks were crafted. At 10,000 gallons each, these are the largest wooden brewing vessels built in America since before Prohibition. It’s all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do, too.

Silly guys.

Whatever they say about this beer, I say it’s one of my all-time favorites. In fact, whenever I go to one of DFH’s pubs, I struggle even to consider trying anything else on tap (unless they happen to have World Wide Stout, then that’s a no-brainer), because I know…I know that this beer is going to blow my mind, every time. For my particular beer preferences, this is a sensory feast, with rich, bold flavors; sumptuous aromas; and a massive mouth feel that invades every last inch of your palate.

Deep, impenetrable pour with a flutter of foam, but don’t mistake the absence of carbonation as a hint of flatness (like other recent appearances). This beer keeps some surprises internal. However, inhale and the blitz of smells is intense: malty sweetness, cinnamon-spiced complexity, fresh vanilla, toasted caramel, baking breads and dried dark fruits…plums, figs, cherries…a subtle scintillation, even, of pipe tobacco…all topped off with a woody freshness, for good measure. I think that might be my favorite part of this beer’s bouquet. Ever taken a deep breath in a wood shop? Or opened a drawer to a freshly built piece of furniture? Or even stood at a Christmas tree farm, surrounded by freshly cut conifers? That sensation…not necessarily the particular scents of these various woods…but that experience of inhaling something sylvan…organic…fresh…these are all intertwined throughout the nose I catch from Palo Santo Marron.

One sip and you discover where the carbonation was hiding. Not overwhelmingly bubbly, but enough to give the mouth feel a joyful effervescence as a counterpoint to the silky smooth rush of flavors. One of the wonderfully surprising thing about this beer (and several of DFH’s more “spirited” brews) is that the relatively high ABV doesn’t make itself overbearing at any point while drinking this beer. Another delightfully dangerous beer.

As for the flavor profile, I love bold malty brews that have nary a hint of hops, and this falls right in line with that particular personal preference. I fall in love with this beer a little bit more each time that I drink it. Riotously flavorful, smooth, complex, and satisfying, it has never been anything less that pleasing to me. The only way I haven’t yet had this one is aged in my collection, simply because I can never hold on to one long enough.

I’m going to try this time to save one bottle for at least a year. I’ll let you know how that goes…

Daft Luge

~ lobablanca

Today was unofficially a snow day here at the lair. My company was closed because of the snowy pummeling we received overnight and through most of the morning. I was still on-call, but because most of our work comes from the government (which was closed), there wasn’t much call for me. So, in between random projects, social media blurbling, and putting all my workout muscles to use during marathon shoveling sessions, I finally took the time to make a PhotoShop trickery idea a reality.

It started after watching this great PSA, put together by the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion in response to Olympic host country Russia’s abysmal treatment of gays:

//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/n4CEaoNADiY

Yet another way Canada has already won the Olympics.

Anyway, I liked the way the visors blacked out the luge team’s faces. Kind of like Daft Punk’s helmets totally black out their faces. And that was all I needed to come up with this:

daft-luge2

You’re welcome.

Febrewary: K-9 Winter Ale

~ lobablanca

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Brewer: Flying Dog Brewery
Location: Frederick, Maryland
Type: English Strong Ale
ABV: 7.4%

Hey, denizens. It’s snowing. Again. It’s only supposed to be “conversational” snow, which I suppose it is…if the conversation consists of the phrase, “Damn, why is it sticking to the roads?”

Guess it’s time to seek comfort once more with a four-legged purveyor of liquid winter warmth. This time, it’s the K-9 Winter Ale from my much-adored friends at Flying Dog. As is the case with many of Flying Dog’s brews, this one comes with a happy little story:

Your legs are strained and your ass is clenched as you descend down the face. You don’t even notice the blood dripping from your nose as the powder is crushed beneath you. It’s freezing cold, but you don’t feel a goddamn thing.

Oh, Flying Dog. You spin such heart-warming tales. Fo shizzle.

Apparently, this particular brew shifts its flavor profile each year, based on the whims of its brewers. I’ve never tried it before, so I can’t make the expected comparisons with previous beers. I can, however, say that this is probably the first time that I have been decidedly “meh” toward a Flying Dog beer.

It’s a beautiful beer, to be sure

BookBin2014: Swallow Me Whole

~ lobablanca

smw

Publishers Weekly wrote this about Nate Powell’s graphic novel Swallow Me Whole:

Indy comic artist Powell, an Eisner-nominee, works full-time with adults with developmental disabilities, which may have been an inspiration for Swallow Me Whole, a stand-alone graphic novel about two teenage step-siblings with psychological problems. Ruth suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and thinks she can hear insects speak, making it difficult for her to walk across grassy lawns but landing her a sweet internship in the natural history museum. Perry sometimes sees a tiny wizard who speaks to him about his destiny, which would be cute if this were a fantasy comic; instead, it’s sadly tragic since Perry recognizes the wizard as nothing more than a troublesome hallucination. It should be obvious from the start that things will not end well. Dark inks and elongated whispering word balloons carry us into Ruth’s world of voices and missing time, while experimental paneling masterfully conveys the characters’ inner worlds and altered states. Powell’s ultimate message remains unclear: Is this a cautionary tale reminding ill teens to take their medication(s)? Or should we take a hopeful message away from Ruth’s tragic story, knowing that one need not give in completely to one’s delusions?

I place this here because I believe this is an excellent summary of a novel that in many ways defies summarizing. Even this tidy little blurb misses so much. Powell delivers a haunting and complicated attempt at viewing the world through the inescapable maze of mental illness. Ruth in particular was poignant in her alienation, tragic in her magnificence. He uses the visual aid of his chosen medium to leave us just as confused, just as lost, just as frustrated and bewildered as Ruth and Perry. His artistry, at times bleak, primitive, decorates the landscapes of Ruth’s and Perry’s world in deep shadows, ghostly gray mists, and sharp lines of light. At times, he erases all boundaries, leaving a page emblazoned with a single image, the surrounding blackness threatening to completely devour it. Sometimes, the nothingness wins…entire pages devoured, formless, empty.

Worth second mention is Powell’s ingenious use of word balloons. Conversations snake through the air in contorted streams, shrink in size and trail away…made pointless by some mental disturbance that steals meaning from spoken words and focuses our attention on the slow disentanglement of our protagonists from reality.

Even though the plots are quite different, Powell’s novel reminded me in many ways of David Beauchard’s graphic novel Epileptic. Both deliver stories involving extremely difficult mental/medical conditions as experienced through younger perspectives. Again, I believe this dismisses the author from having to provide a convoluted (and possibly overwhelming) level of medical explanation, instead allowing us to experience the transpiring events on the same level as the main characters.

Final Verdict: While I don’t know if I would like to add this book to my own library, I’d be interested to see if Powell is able to provide the same level of power and control. Perhaps reading some of his other works would inspire me to want to bring several of his works into my graphic novel collection.