This Is My Blood: 400 Pound Monkey

Raise your hand if you're tired of the constant and bizarre belittlement of Northeast Philadelphia. Note that my hand is raised. You get it, you get it, you get it. Let's talk about something positive for once on this sorry fucking blog.

Here's something positive: There is a craft beer store ten minutes away from my house! Yes, craft beer exists even for us NEWTs! The store is called GAT Beer. The acronym stands for Grant Avenue Takeout. It is indeed on Grant Ave., right past Bustleton. It exists in a tiny strip of five or six other stores—I didn't take note of the other ones, but you can probably guess things like a nail salon and a dry cleaners and so on.

It has beer! The kind of beer that I need right now! The store was actually kind of weird. It seemed... empty? Like, it was filled with beer, but they weren't doing a whole lot with the space either. Just fridges and a few tables with higher-end beers, and that's it. The front area was screaming for something more. I know COVID would fuck this up, but, like, why not sell sandwiches and set up some tables for people to hang out and drink beers? Maybe they actually did all this before COVID hit, I dunno.

In any case, I wasn't there to hang out, I was there to build a six-pack. Let's use the five qualities of a good craft beer store that I came up with a few months ago and apply them to GAT Beer.

Is the store convenient? Yes, but only if you are exiled to the Northeast. Is the store's beer well-organized? Sure seemed like it. There was a flow from local to national to international beer, with breweries grouped together. So no issues there. Is there a wide selection? Maybe there's a tiny bit less of a selection than IGA, but honestly, when you consider the fact that IGA's stock consisted of like 80% IPAs, then maybe they are neck and neck. I was able to find a few interesting beers for my purchase that I had never seen before. Is it comfortable selecting your beers? Sure. I got there early in the business day, so maybe it was a because of that, but the store was empty, and the cashier was totally cool with me walking back and forth like twelve times.

And finally, is it fairly priced? Mostly yes, occasionally no, but the yeses cancel out the nos easily. All of the beers were affixed with a price label, which is convenient and helpful, and so I was able to see that most (maybe 75%) of the beers were under $3. This is good. This is really good. I can't remember any of the other craft beer stores with many sub-$3 beers at all. The weird part is that there were also wildly expensive beers, and nothing in between, so even if I was in the mood to spend money on something a little more expensive than $2.75, I literally wouldn't be able to. An example shelf would go $2.75, $2.65, $2.65, $2.85, $20.00, $2.35. I'm not making this up. If I hadn't seen that decimal point I would've paid $20 for a fucking 12 oz. imperial pumpkin ale. But it's almost a moot point, because it's really easy to just not buy something expensive when there are so many selections of fair-priced beers.

So if we're giving a point for each category, then GAT Beer would end up with a 4.5/5, which is... well, it's higher than any other craft beer store I've been to this year. Not gonna lie, folks, this is the biggest late-game curveball I could possibly imagine thrown at me on Day 313, that my fears of not being able to find decent beer in the NEast were for nothing. GAT Beer has completely put me at ease in at least one respect during this topsy-turvy month in my life.

So we will be featuring beers from that six-pack over the next six days, and confirm for once and for all that GAT Beer is the real deal. I only say that because it's a real possibility that this is a mirage and every beer I bought is a dud and expired or something and I never go back. I can say that today's 400 Pound Monkey—an English IPA with high levels of toffee-flavored malt and not much carbonation at all—makes it 1/1. A good beer, even though Pam didn't like it and had me drink her half of the bottle. Maybe I just like all English beers, I dunno... but now I'm getting off track.

Main point: I will more than likely be headed back to GAT Beer soon.

NOTES
 

BEER: 400 Pound Monkey

STYLE: English IPA

ABV: 6.8%

BREWED BY: Left Hand Brewing Company

LOCATION: Longmont, Colorado

PURCHASED AT: GAT Beer

PAIRED WITH: Garlic spaghetti squash

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 471.5

Song of the Week: "Is There a Ghost"

is there a playlist in my house? yes, right HERE

"Is There a Ghost"

Band of Horses

from Cease to Begin

2007

I have come to enjoy the idea of a "First Song" in the context of large life events. Both kids got a first song, and of course there was our first song as husband and wife. Last Friday, I hooked up the iPod and played "Is There a Ghost," which thus became the first song played in our new home.

 

Pretty simple reasoning here. The lyrics are few, and focus on two main ideas: finding out whether there is a ghost in our house (for us, it is an inevitably debatable subject), and expressing the belief that you can sleep if you want to sleep (for us, we are unquestionably sleeping for fewer hours than we did at the new house, and you can blame the ghosts kids for that). Plus, we live next to a horse stable now, and this is a song by Band of Horses.

Anyways, I was alone in the kitchen, setting up the dining room table, when the song first played, so that should show you how much the rest of my family gives a fuck about First Song This and First Song That or whatever. But I'll definitely be thinking of our horse neighbors / lack of ghosts / lack of sleep whenever I hear this song henceforth.

This Is My Blood: Homestead / Pig Iron Porter / Philly Phavorite

Let's talk about Iron Hill Brewery, and let's be charitable—this chain of brewpubs has not insulted me in any personal way, and to talk unnecessary shit on it more exposes me as an asshole than anything else. Anything negative I could say in this space is just another manifestation of my deep-seeded and fucked up need to hold everything "suburban" at arm's length, as if a business that wants to focus on quiet areas outside the city are "less authentic" for some reason. I have a tendency to sneer at anything outside the city limits, but have been able to cloak this needless bitterness for years because my journeys to the suburbs were few and far between. Now we live two minutes away from the Philly/Montco border, and I'm forced to face my very real demons.

So, Iron Hill Brewery. There are 20 locations scattered mostly around the SE Pennsylvania area. I was familiar with the chain before a Huntingdon Valley location opened in 2016 (HV is west of Rockledge, and this Iron Hill might as well be in Rockledge, save for the fact that Rockledge is like 0.0006 square miles). So I've been there more than a handful of times, and I've never had a bad experience there. Notably, we tacked it on to the beginning of the Pike Hike in late 2016, and that same year, Pam threw me a birthday gathering for my 28th. Good times.

So why am I so reluctant to praise this place? I gotta assume it has to do with this picture I've tried to paint of myself, for some reason, over the past however many years. I've tried to portray myself as a "city boy." I truly appreciated Port Richmond in all its gritty glory. I feel connected to my city on early Sunday mornings driving through battered neighborhoods all around Philly. I make these feelings known because that's how I want to see myself. I've fallen into this thought process that equates everything in the city to be cool and everything outside the city to be milquetoast and boring, and everything that is outside the city but tries to be like the city to be inauthentic, the worst of all sins.

Which is stupid. It's stupid even if you ignore the leaps of logic it requires to denigrate the Iron Hill location in Center City Philadelphia ("Oh, that location is just for suburban folk who take Regional Rail into the city on Saturday afternoons"). It's stupid because city boundaries are subjective and man-made and mean nothing when it comes to beer. It's stupid because it makes me seem incredibly vain, worried about how I'm portrayed to the outside world when the outside world could literally not give less of a fuck.

And it's stupid because I spent my formative years in the suburbs. Really, the more I think about it, I think this wild generalization about the suburbs being some Arcade Fire-inspired monochrome hellscape of vapidity is just a frantic pushback against the experience of a childhood that was incredibly normal. Afraid that I will be stuck in the mire of sameness, I've resorted to pretending to be someone that I'm not. At the end of the day, I'm just another fucking dude from some fucking suburban town. That makes me uncomfortable. It always will. And like it or not, the idea of "suburbs" has become a sort of scapegoat in my futile quest to be someone that I'm not.

It's time to just accept my place in the universe: given a couple hours of free time while the kids are chilling with their grandparents on a Saturday evening, Pam and I went to Iron Hill Brewery in the suburbs.

I mean, I don't even feel comfortable discussing the beers all that much after what I just wrote. My opinion is that Iron Hill's beers are not really all that notable, "generic" at worst and "pretty decent!" at best. I've never had a beer from Iron Hill's taps and been blown away. They aren't doing anything exciting or meaningful in the arena of brewing beer. This is my opinion. But is it my honest opinion, or am I fronting again? Equating the beer with the experience, and disparaging the product only because the peddlers of that product don't seem "authentic" to this exposed phony? I don't know.

I honestly don't! I don't know what else to tell you. It's just something I'm going to have to work through, as the years go by, and I become acquainted with the quiet life out here in no man's land. That assimilation starts with the local brewery, and it continues through the King of the Hill Reward Club, where I admit that if I cannot beat them, then I might as well join them, and get an extra 6 oz. per beer to celebrate the defeat of the Joe I once knew.

 

NOTES (Beer #1)

BEER: Homestead

STYLE: Belgian Saison (Farmhouse Ale)

ABV: 4.6%

BREWED BY: Iron Hill Brewery

LOCATION: Each beer is made in-house, so the location for this beer I had was Huntingdon Valley, PA

PURCHASED AT: the brewery

PAIRED WITH: no kids

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5 (kinda lifeless for a Belgian)

 

 

NOTES (Beer #2)

BEER: Pig Iron Porter

STYLE: Porter

ABV: 5.4%

BREWED BY: Iron Hill Brewery

LOCATION: Huntingdon Valley, PA, but you can get all three of these beers at any location, and they'll taste mostly the same

PURCHASED AT: the brewery, in their beer garden

PAIRED WITH: cheesesteak eggrolls (alright, these are good enough that I don't mind going to the suburbs for them)

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5 (nice and roasty as the night got a little chillier)

 

NOTES (Beer #3)

BEER: Philly Phavorite

STYLE: Hazy IPA

ABV: 6.7%

BREWED BY: Iron Hill Brewery

LOCATION: ya know

PURCHASED AT: on location

PAIRED WITH: Figgy Piggy Grilled Cheese (even the waiter agreed that this is an embarrassing name for a sandwich)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (disappointed that this ended up being hazier than I had hoped, but still, it was pretty good)

 

BEER COUNT: 470.5 (woke up saying "alright if I have a half a beer today I'll be back on par" and then I drank three)

The Writing's on the Wall, Sara

Destiny's Child's 1999 album The Writing's on the Wall is everything I remember it to be. This was a pivotal album in my adolescence and the beginning of a life-long Beyoncé (and Kelly Rowland) fandom. From remembrance, the album was inspiring, girl-power, cool, and fun!! Listening to it again, it is still all those things. I do notice that it's a little cheesy, and only the singles stand out. "Bug a Boo," "Bills Bills Bills," and "Say My Name" are all early 2000s classics, making appearances on nostalgic playlists and power hours. Those can hold up 20 years later, but the intros and outros have GOT TO GO. Let us thank Destiny's Child for running, so Beyoncé could walk today.

The Writing's on the Wall, Sunny

I don't know much about the history and composition of Destiny's Child, so I take it on faith of YouTube comments that this was "the best lineup" of the band and this album was "deeply affecting". Hindsight probably makes it obvious—there are back-to-back mega hits that still get radio play. Legacy aside the album works as a fun hour that can still play on repeat and help get your mind off of whatever you're trying to get it off of.

How about the opening track? A spoken word opening isn't unique (i.e. RTJ4 and Meta Meta Etc.), but a Godfather parody on a 2020 album would be horrendous. In 1999, it's just the right amount of campy to fit the album—uniquely fun.

The Writing's on the Wall, Nate

Four Haikus Regarding the High-Water-Mark of a '90s R&B Concern

Is the legacy
Of this whale in a time of
whales, a launching pad?

Is it lexicon?
Adding language to our mouths?
Hark, “Automobills.”

Is it enough to
bask in the hits and neglect
classification?

Sadly, it is not.
The future eats the past whole.
Leave your man at home.

The Writing's on the Wall, Joe

Thou Shall Not Repeat Opinions from Previous Reviews

Spending time with The Writing's on the Wall this week felt like a puzzle piece falling into place for me, at least in the context of Record Club. About a year ago, we listened to Essentials by Erika de Casier, and I remember at the time struggling to connect the dots between the album and specific touchstones of the late-'90s. Well, here it is—Destiny's Child was the band on the tip of my tongue. Erika de Casier, as well as pretty much every R&B/pop fusion act of the past twenty years, was influenced in some fashion by this group.

Thou Shall Give Credit to the Appropriate Parties

I mentioned for Essentials that the guitar sound—that fluttery, ornate fingerpicking style—as well as the busy drum machine and the off-the-wall sound effects (wind chimes, bubbles) were all recognizable from a not-so-distant past, and sure enough, they are all here. They started here, as far as I know. It interested me enough that I did like 5% more research than I usually do. From that, I think we can attribute that signature style to songwriter Kandi Burruss and producer Kevin "She’skpere" Briggs. Sure enough, the sounds that prominently feature this style all list Burruss and Briggs with songwriting credits. "So Good," "Bills Bills Bills," "Bug a Boo," and "Hey Ladies" are all highlights, and that's in part because they are laying the groundwork for a pop sound that still exists today.

Thou Shall Be More Than the Sum of Your Hits

Whenever we cover massively popular albums in Record Club, there comes the question as to whether the album was popular solely because of its hit singles, or if there are some songs without a Billboard presence that are actually enjoyable. Unlike Jagged Little Pill and diana, The Writing's on the Wall is mostly defined by the songs that everyone knows, which I'd argue is to its detriment. The hits are hits for a reason, don't get me wrong—the sexy lurch of "Say My Name" and the classic high school gymnasium good times anthem "Jumpin, Jumpin" still land magnificently after all these years. But there's also a whole lot of boilerplate pop-by-numbers in between the high points. I'll hold up "Hey Ladies" as the song that I fell in love with this week having never heard it before (i.e. it was not a single, but should've been). It might even improve on the formula that worked for the four juggernauts on the album—as always, a hard horn section brings a song to the next level. But for every "Hey Ladies," there's four or five "Where'd You Go"s.

Thou Shall Not Discount How Well This Has Aged

I wasn't pop culture saavy enough at age ten to know it at the time, but apparently The Writing's on the Wall had a reputation as "an album that hates men" around the time of its release. In the bubble that I live my life in, those themes play really well in 2020. It's not about "hating men," it's about taking agency as a strong female. Beyoncé Knowles could see the changing tides in 1999 (note the title of the album!) and hasn't really lifted her foot off this particular pedal in her entire career since. She's weaponized feminism. As a big fan of feminism, it's interesting to see this happening all the way back in the late 1990s, and I find myself wondering how empowering it was to the girls who grew up with this album.

Thou Shall Employ a Hokey Gimmick

I could see an argument that the Godfather shtick employed at the beginning of the album is retroactively justified now that Beyoncé really does have as much power and influence as Vito Corleone, but I still don't buy it. It's just a silly thing that doesn't bother me all that much. First tracks are easy to skip. Plus, we condone any and all stupid fucking gimmicks here at Puke on Your Birthday.

Thou Shall Grade the Album

2.5 pukes out of 5

This Is My Blood: Delirium Tremens

I've mentioned the fact that I used to regularly drink in the woods enough times on this blog that it should be familiar at this point, and perhaps even a little annoying. I'm going to briefly talk about it again here, so please feel free to bail if you grew up in a woodless area where the underage drinking occurred exclusively in basements and backyards. I did enough boozing in the woods that it became a little commonplace when I was a teenager, and I never really thought about why we were drinking in the woods. Sure, you could chalk it up to the fact that the woods are secluded, and you can more easily drink there and "get away with it," i.e. stay out of the way of any authority figure (parents, police) who'd rather that you not drink at all, thank you very much. But I'm opening up to the idea that it was more than that, that there was a higher purpose to finding ourselves in the woods at that time in our lives. I think of the woods now as a representation of the idea of an "escape" in the most pure sense of the word. Life outside of the woods is noisy and frantic and sometimes you feel like you're getting pulled in every direction. When you step into the woods, that all fades away. The curtain of trees blocks everything out. If drinking was a way to allow the M-F worries of our teenage years fade away, then doing it in the context of a dark wooded area was a necessary backdrop. It accentuated the ritual of blocking out all external pressures. This isn't a teenager-exclusive thing, and it honestly isn't even a drinking-exclusive thing. You can step into the woods at any time in your life and you can find the peace you are looking for. It's no accident that many people say they can find God in nature. I don't believe in God but I think that the woods let you get as close as possible to the idea of it anyway. It's to the point where I am questioning whether I ever found catharsis in a Lionshead bottle at all, or if I was misattributing what I was feeling from my presence in the Burholme woods. For better or worse, life has handed me another opportunity to find out what is true. I live next to the woods now (see picture above). This is Pennypack Park. When I have the time, I can walk down a very short hill and find myself at a tiny tributary creek. If I wanted to, I could bring a beer to this solitude. I could touch God. There's no time portal in there, and I won't find myself as sixteen around a fire pit with lukewarm lagers. But I can relive a portion of that experience in my own way. The woods are right here, calling me.

NOTES

BEER: Delirium Tremens

STYLE: Belgian Strong Pale Ale

ABV: 8.5%

BREWED BY: Brouwerij Huyghe

LOCATION: Melle, Belgium

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: fresh air on a warm winter day

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 467.5

A Post-Election Meltdown

"Archie Smith, Boy Wonder"

by Joe K***

January 22, 2003

It was a hot night in March, unusually hot for that time of year. Archie, very tired from watching TV all day, went up to bed. Before he went to sleep, he opened the window, just like he did every night, but this night was to be different. Tonight, his world was to be changed forever.

Archie was a normal boy. Nothing special ever happened to him. I guess you could say he was boring. Yes, that was the word. He was just plain boring. Yet he didn't want to be. He wished that something exciting would happen. He yearned for the day that he would be recognized as someone special, as someone unique, different than anyone else. But that day never came. Until that night...

Archie Smith was having a bad dream. He tossed and turned, thinking about the monsters under his bed, in his closet, waiting to strike. Oh, but this was a dream, a dream so real that he did not notice the five tiny specs of light creep into his room through the open window. He did not hear when a tiny voice asked, "Is he the one?" He did not hear a second voice, deeper than the first, respond, "Yes, I believe it is," and he did not hear the other three give a sigh of relief.

Who, or what for that matter, were these things, and what did they want with Archie Smith, the boy with no friends? He would soon find out. 

Archie awoke with a start. What just happened? he thought. He knew something did, or else he wouldn't have awakened. He looked around the room for anything suspicious. then he spotted them—five tiny specs of light. They were talking among themselves. Archie was so frightened he thought he would wet his pants.

The things suddenly stopped. They realized he was awake, so they approached him. The biggest one, who seemed to be the leader of the give, moved forward. He said, "Please sir, forgive us for coming into your bedroom uninvited, but we are on urgent business." "Wait," Archie interrupted, "Who are you?" "We are pixies, sir, from the far-off land of Aihpledalihp, and our land is being terrorized by the evil sorcerer Frodnonag. His evil army is wiping out the entire population of pixies, just for the fun of it! It's horrible! We pixies are utterly defenseless. And that, sir, is why we need you." Archie's eyes widened in fear. "Me? Why in the world do you need me?" A second pixie stepped forward. "A long time ago, the first pixies settled in Aihpledalihp. When they got there, one of them carved a message on the big rock in the middle of town:

THE PEACE WILL NOT LAST

FOREVER. EVIL WILL STRIKE.

WHEN IT DOES, NOTHING

WILL STOP IT, BUT THERE

WILL BE ONE HOPE. A HUMAN

BOY. HE WILL RISE ABOVE

THE EVIL AND DEFEAT IT.

"There was one last thing carved at the bottom of that rock. and do you know what it said?"

ARCHIE SMITH,

BOY WONDER.

"No, no! There must be a mistake," Archie said. "How could I be the one that's destined to slay a monster?" "There is no mistake," the pixie replied. "You are the one. And you must come with us. Now!" "Wait, I—"

Archie started to say something, but he couldn't finish. Suddenly, he wasn't in his bedroom anymore. Archie was in a village that didn't look anything like where he lived. "What is this place?" Archie asked. "This," replied the biggest pixie proudly, "is Smalltown, the last remaining village in Aihpledalihp not destroyed by Frodnonag." Another pixies said, "And do you see that mountain over there in the distance?" Archie looked up and saw a huge mountain with smoke hovering overhead. "That is where Frodnonag's lair is." The smallest of the pixies then moved forward. "You must go to the lair and defeat Frodnonag and restore peace to us pixies! You are our only hope, Archie Smith! We are counting on you!"

So, Archie started his quest toward the lair of the evil one. As he traveled through the village, he saw many, many pixies, all smiling, waving, wishing him luck. Thanking him. Considering him special. Yes! he thought. I am finally special! Unique! One of a kind! But at what cost? He was special at last, yet now he was in danger. Is this what I wanted?

As Archie neared the mountain, he heard someone laugh. It was an evil laugh. "That must be Frodnonag," Archie said aloud. He started to climb. He was tired, but he still climbed. He reached the top and found a cave. Archie went inside...

He walked for what seemed like miles. He then came to the edge of a cliff, and, looking down, he could not see the bottom.

"So, you're here to save your little pixie friends, eh?" a loud voice suddenly rang out and echoed through the cave. Archie's stomach tightened. He couldn't see anybody, but he knew whose voice that was—Frodnonag's. "Yes I am, and you can't stop me!" he whimpered back.

"Oh yes I can!"

Frodnonag suddenly jumped out from behind a rock and tried to push Archie off a cliff. Archie lost his balance, but as the last second he grabbed on to Frodnonag's cloak. They both tumbled off the cliff and neither were ever seen again.

Archie Smith was a special boy. A boy wonder. But being special meant that he had to riskj his life. His wish of being special came true. The moral of the story is this: Be careful what you wish for, or you just might get it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Willow has a picture book adorned with Sesame Street characters who are all holding signs that stay stuff like, "You are one of a kind!" and "You are special!" It's personalized, so it even says stuff like, "You're the best, Willow! You can't be beat! There's no one like you!" It's cute because fuzzy muppets are cute, but it's also a little creepy and a little sad. Of course I feel like Willow is special and unique and one of a kind, but I don't believe growing up and thinking that kind of stuff about yourself is necessarily all that healthy.

Clearly, I didn't believe it in eighth grade either, even if I couldn't quite articulate it at the time. And of course, you don't want to go too far in the other direction, by saying things like "I suck" and "I'm the worst" and all the stuff down that deep dark path. You need a balance. You are just like everyone else. You are all on an even keel. No one is better or worse than anyone else.

That's probably the biggest takeaway from these last four years for me and for the people whom I am surrounded with in my life—there are people who are worried about "me" and there are people who are worried about "us," and those distinction fall on either side of the political divide.

 

That's it. That's the only reasoning for voting trump that I'm interested in thinking about from now on. I know there are truly evil racists who obviously cast their ballot for this dude, but I'm not interested in trying to determine whether family members and friends are in that group. I don't think they are. It would be easier to reckon with my emotions if they were, to be honest.

Nope, it boils down to most of the people I cared about in the before times who voted for trump two days ago are people who think that they themselves are special, and deserve to be treated better than others. My aunt-not-related said it best (to my parents, not to me): "I don't care about anything else, I only care about what trump can do for me."

That's a bad look. The held belief that one is "special" comes off to me as vanity and selfishness. Especially considering the fact that most people who believe they are special are already well-off enough that they can afford to think that way.

I won't go as far as to say that I won't interact with anyone who voted for trump ever again. As tempting as that is right now, it would just be fucking impossible, and I would absolutely be the bad guy (i.e. what, do I think that I'm special or something?). A bunch of people I care about voted for trump, and it fucking hurts, man. It hurts because that means that they have exposed themselves as shitty selfish assholes. It feels akin to a betrayal, that someone I have spent however much time sending love to has turned around and radiated hate toward the rest of the world.

This is how my world will forever be different after these last four years. My world will forever be divided between the Me people and the Us people, and I will find it hard to ever trust those Me people for the rest of my life. For real. To use purposefully use an example that would probably never happen anyway—if any of my trumpster uncles wanted to babysit my kids on a Saturday night, how could I ever trust them to do it? Why would I want someone who is so clearly selfish to be fit into such a selfless role as babysitter? How can I possibly trust that he would put my kids' needs over his own, when clearly his needs were all that matter when he stepped into the voting booth?

Maybe this is coming from someone who found it a little too easy to accept the normality of life an early age. Instead, I'd like to think of this as coming from someone who is so used to gathering people close and holding them tight—how can I possible do that for the trump voters in my life now? I'm not burning bridges, but I will forever be on edge around those family members and friends who I know for a fact now are willing and likely to put their own needs in front of their community's. I will be uncomfortable for the rest of my life, like there's a big sword hanging over us that could drop at any moment.

For any trump supporters reading this now—which is unlikely, but still—then I hope you take this to heart. I hope you know that I will never feel the same about you. I hope you know that I still care about you, and hope you are well wherever you are in life, but I can never trust you again. I can never pull you close again. I am more confused than anything, honestly—why do you ostensibly think that I am worth caring about, and yet you show such disdain for others less fortunate with your vote? I just don't get it. I will never fucking get it. You're not special. I'm not special. None of us are special.

I dunno. Maybe this is a bad post, and that's why I tried to bury it underneath a four-page double-spaced fictional story I wrote in eighth grade. I mean what I said, all of it, but it does raise the question as to how I could repeatedly claim that I "believe that I am not special" and yet a large chunk of this post seems to be making it seem like I think I'm better than others.

It's just another thing I'm grappling with. I'm grappling with how I can possibly enjoy being in the presence of any trump voter for as long as I live. I'm grappling with the fact that thinking such things might be stooping to their level (what's the opposite of "libtards"?). I'm grappling with the fact that the fucking Apprentice guy, of all goddamn people, was the guy to expose so many of my loved ones as having rotting morals. I'm grappling with the fact that I'm probably the worst of all by even saying any of this.

And I'm grappling with the goddamn election, too, which is something I should've made clear before I typed any of this. As of this typing—11 AM on 11/4—Biden is poised to win when the final votes are counted, but if (if!!!!) he does, it'll be by a slim margin. But at this point, either way feels like a fucking loss to me. 

 

Either 49.9% of the country think they are special, or 50.1% of the country think they are special, and either way, that's a whole lot of people looking in the mirror and thinking they are better than their fellow man and trying to burn down the country to prove it. Either some old white dude is gonna be sitting in the White House getting everything he tries shot down but Bitch McConnell's senate, or some old white dude is gonna be holed up in his White House bunker while poor people are slaughtered. Either way, I will continue to look around and see the enemy everywhere there is a MAGA hat or flag, and I will see those things uncomfortably close to home, and things will never be the fucking same.

I don't like this. I don't know what to do, honestly. I'm sorry for typing this.

This Is My Blood: Pills Mafia

There's a lot of "starting over" when it comes to moving to a new neighborhood. The most annoying start over with our current move is also the most trivial: where the fuck are we going to get our pizza from now?! When I'm getting home from work and it's finally the weekend and I'm cracking open an ice cold beer (more on Pills Mafia at the bottom of this post), I want a hot, fresh, tasty slice of pizza to pair with it. We used to know where the best pizza was around us, but now we're not around those pizzas. We're on the other side of the planet, more or less. Where can I get a good pie around here?

Since the K***s eat like garbage, we've had pizza twice so far. The first was our first night at the new residence, when we had some classic Rising Sun Pizza delivered. Long-time PoYB readers will recognize this one as one of the best pizzas of all time. Pam has always derided it, but had nothing but good things to say about it last Friday night. My theory on the opinion change: she could never believe that some schmuck corner store pizza joint in the Northeast could have great pizza until she became a Northeaster.

It'll be interesting to see how the other pizzas around Fox Chase hold up in her mind to Rising Sun Pizza, and if she will continue to eat all her unkind words toward Rising Sun Pizza all these years. I hope so! RSP is fucking bangin'!

Tonight, we tried Verree Express, by far the closest pizza parlor geographically to our house (three blocks maybe). I've never had their pizza before, though I have had their wings—Kev brought 100 of them to a small gathering I had in 2014 for a Sunday Night Eagles game against the Giants (man, I really need to delete some of these memories from my brain so I can remember by daughters' social security numbers).

The pizza was fine! About as good as you can expect for a run-of-the-mill establishment on a moderately busy Northeast Philly street corner. The plain slices went perfectly with the German pilsner that we split. Can't ask for much more than that on a Thursday night (I have off Fridays, it's the motherfucking weekend y'all).

Still, when pressed, Pam's Pizza Power Rankings stand at 1) Rising Sun and 2) Verree Express. Over time, we'll get around to trying everything in the area.

Of course, I've already had all the pizza in the area at one point in my life, though none recently. For some, it's been 20 years. But here are the other pizzas coming up soon, and what I remember about each.

Joseph's—Believe it or not, my bachelor party started at Joseph's. It's an old-school family restaurant that sells pitchers of beer with their pies. This is also the place where someone knocked over their big flowerpot all drunk one time and the owner chased us with his car, driving up on the sidewalk and almost murdering Harry in front of the 7 Eleven. The pizza is okay.

Bill's Old London Pizza—They use that brand of cheese that stinks like it's gone bad. I haven't had it in over a decade but I can't imagine it's much better since I have.

Quig's—I think I had this at Jim's house like three years ago, and it wasn't awful, but I remember when I was kid, they used to keep pizza slices in the window for days at a time until they looked like shiny plastic, and it's always made me a little queasy thinking about their food in general.

Big Ben Pizza—They were and possibly still are known as the pizza place in the area that sells those super-large pies, like four feet diameter or whatever. I dunno, we had it a few times growing up because my dad was their mailman and thought he could get a deal. We stopped getting it when my dad realized they were not going to give him a deal.

Chevy's—Just opened a couple years ago, and my parents are big enough fans that they brought it to Port Richmond a few times. It's thin crust like Tacconelli's, which is great in theory, but it's thin enough that it goes cold if you're driving 25 minutes to your son's house after you pick it up. Maybe it'll be better when it only travels five minutes. 

Galaxy Pizza—Set up in the old John's Water Ice (I think it was called John's), and I'll never forgive them for replacing it.

Vincent's—You already know about this travesty.

Vince's—I used to go to Vince's for my birthday every year, when birthdays consisted of eating pizza with family. So fucking good. A little expensive, but we're used to paying good money for great pizza... just please do not refer to Vince's as "center city-style" or whatever the fuck.

AND NOW, A WORD ABOUT THE ACTUAL FUCKING BEER: Alright, this is one of those beers that I picked out at random, and then only found out what the fuck the name was referring to while researched post-consumption. Pam and I assumed it was a pun on something, and sure enough, "Pills Mafia" refers to the hardcore Buffalo Bills fanbase, the Bills Mafia. There's a great article about them on The Ringer from the 2019 season by La Salle University's very own Gonzo. Yes, pizza is involved in this too—a Bills Mafia member is known for cooking pizzas in a filing cabinet. But just read the article. And if you're looking for a good German pils, you can't really go wrong with this one, regardless of how you feel about the Bills.

NOTES

BEER: Pills Mafia

STYLE: German Pilsner

ABV: 4.8%

BREWED BY: Thin Man Brewery

LOCATION: Buffalo, NY

PURCHASED AT: IGA (down to two more IGA beers after this one)

PAIRED WITH: Verree Express pizza (I always forget the second R in "Verree" and I've had this problem my entire life)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 466.5

Whatever It Takes: Joe Returns to Reviewing Degrassi as the World Burns

Degrassi: The Next Generation

"Secrets and Lies"

Season 1, Episode 8

Original aired: May 6, 2002

First, a programming note: Good morning. Thanks for waking up and turning on your computer and clicking on your PoYB bookmark. Welcome. How's your coffee? Good? Great. It's the morning of November 4th here in the United States of America. Well, it's November 4th where you are. I'm still here on November 3rd, typing this. The polls are just opening where I am. I've read the polls over and over for the past few weeks, but I unfortunately cannot tell the future. I gotta believe that, where you are, a lot of votes are counted, and Biden is in the lead, and some votes are being counted still, and they too are trending Biden. I gotta believe that, despite whatever our orange fascist is spewing on Twitter, there is some semblance of democracy left in our broken country, and a transfer of power is forthcoming. Or maybe not! Maybe you're waking up to a scorched earth. I don't know. Like I said, I am not a prognosticator.

But I do know this: last night was probably stressful for you, and it was probably stressful for me. I've always believed that it's best to return to sources of comfort during times of high stress. Consume what you know as you become surrounded by a world of unknowns. For me, Degrassi is that comfort. I know Degrassi. I believe in Degrassi. Degrassi is a constant, and it brings me peace during those moments in my life when the variables appear posed to beat me into submission. Let us consider Degrassi: The Next Generation here on the morning of November 4th. 

A second programming note: I have not watched this episode in almost two months. After I reviewed the Drake/Adderall episode, I watched "Secrets and Lies" at least twice, with the intention of writing about it, but it just never materialized. Life gets in the way (I guess I'm preaching to the choir here on November 4th). But I took notes during those viewings, and I have enough to say based on those notes that I can cobble together a blog post, especially on a morning in which no one in their right fucking mind is giving up even five minutes to read a fucking blog post about a fucking Canadian teen soap opera from fucking 2002 on a fucking pointless blog.

It figures that, on this day of all days, when I am looking everywhere and anywhere for any sense of comfort and sanity, Degrassi gives me an episode in which they ask me to sympathize with Ashley and Liberty, the two worst characters in season one of Degrassi by a Canadian kilometer. Let's start with Ashley, because she really ramped up the asshole-ishness in "Secrets and Lies."

We've mentioned a few times about how Ashley's parents are divorced—I am continually intrigued by how often her mom and stepdad are involved in these season one plots, something I had completely forgotten about before this rewatch—but this time, we get to meet Ashley's dad. Apparently he's been on a "long vacation in Europe." Really, he's been away with his boyfriend. Ashley's dad is gay. 

Everyone seems to be okay with this except Ashley. Her mom is cool with it at this point—the two of them are on civil terms. Ashley's friends at school are okay with it—Terri makes a good point that at least both her parents are alive, while Paige tries to bond with the fact that they both have family members who are gay (see you in season three, Dylan), and gets a cup of water thrown in her face for her troubles. 

The only person who is a dick about it is Ashley. And you know what? It's really easy for me to call her a dick, but if I was in eighth grade, I might have thought that the world revolved around me as well. It's less difficult for an adult to step back and consider other people's feelings—e.g. appreciate that your parents were able to work through their issues, appreciate that Dad is living his truth, appreciate that there are still two parents in your life who care deeply for you—but a fourteen-year-old doesn't have the emotional capacity to understand any of that. Well... not Ashley anyway.

You know who else is kind of a dick in this episode? J.T. Which means that Liberty was made a fool of so badly that she couldn't be the villain in this episode, so you know J.T. must've been a HUGE dick to cause such a seismic shift in my opinion of LVZ. The gist of their B-plot is that Liberty's crush on J.T. finally becomes explicit enough that J.T. is going to have to address it. And he addresses it in the worst way possible.

But it's an interesting way of addressing it, at least from a plot standpoint. J.T. has heard the rumors about the goings on in the A-plot, and decides to bring some of that magic to the B-plot. J.T., instead of being honest with Liberty, simply pretends he is gay. My zoomed-out general takeaway from this is being impressed that the show was able to weave both of these plotlines together. My specific takeaway is that J.T.'s stereotype-laden gay impression was so cringeworthy but unfortunately accurate as far as seventh grader gay stereotypes go.

My personal takeaway from this, however, is something that the show touches on briefly but then shifts focus before it even gets its due. I'm talking about the position that J.T. finds himself in at the beginning of the episode when a girl likes him and he does not like her back. Man, I kinda wish that Degrassi would've focused more on this very real—painfully real—teenage scenario.

Okay, because there's conflicting feelings here, right? One, there's a total lack of romantic and/or sexual connection to this person, i.e. no desire to have any relationship past friendship with this person. So this creates conflict. But two, there's also a need to not make another human being feel sad, and unfortunately, in this context, telling the truth would make the other party sad. So you avoid the truth for as long as possible, out of the this second need. But you're walking a tightrope, because you don't want to lead the other person on, but you don't want to shoot them down.

A teenage boy can only exist in that position for so long before something gives. J.T. made the poor decision of making a cartoonish performance his buffer between discomfort and hurt, but at the end of the day, I don't blame him for making a dumb decision. There was at least one instance in college when I was in a similar position and I pretended that I was asleep. There was at least one instance in college when I was in another similar position, and I literally ran away—like, I was told that she felt things for me, and instead of responding in any sort of way, I turned and ran out of the building and up the street. Can I really say that J.T. is a dick without being a hypocrite?

At the end of the day, it's made painfully clear that, as much as it hurts, J.T. was right to tell the truth. Same with Ashley's dad—the truth hurt Ashley, but it's out there. Now the healing can start. Liberty can start to deal with unrequited love in a healthy way, Ashley can start to deal with the fact that her dad is still the same guy she knew before, and the audience can start dealing with the fact that all these teenage characters will, time and again, react very, very poorly to the challenges that they face. That's how it goes at Degrassi.

Well, what do you think, gang? Is that enough for today? Have you had your fill of Degrassi? Did it make you forget about the toppling pillars of democracy, at least for a few minutes? I hope so. Maybe by the time we get to the next episode, things will have calmed down around here. Until then... I know we can make it through.

 

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

This Is My Blood: Merry Monkey

There's about four different things I could be writing about when it comes to this beer, but let's go with this, since it might be the most pressing—it's time for another new beer style to be discussed. We already drank a bunch from the list that I made last spring, found HERE, and so now here is one more.

Belgian Strong Dark Ale

(#60)

Exemplified by Merry Monkey

This beer's two main characteristics are right there in the name. Yes, it is strong—ABV can go from 7.0% to 12%, which is a lot, and it's enough that you can definitely get a hint of that alcohol burn as it travels down your throat. Yes, it is dark—the malts are darker, and create a complex flavor. That flavor usually involves some fruitiness and spiciness.

Those last two flavors lend themselves quite well to the classic Belgian Strong Dark Ale variation—the Christmas beer!  (And yes, the discount Christmas beer I had last January was a BSDA as well.) We talked about this a little bit when discussing winter warmers, about how there are multiple Christmas-y type beers, but Belgian Strong Dark Ales are the best for adding shit to it to make it more festive.

Take Merry Monkey as an example. Not only are the festive fruitiness and spiciness of the Belgian yeast coming through, but Victory also adds a whole bunch of other stuff—cranberry, orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon. If you had to name four classic Christmas flavors, those might be the ones. It's very good.

Not all Belgian Strong Darks are Christmas in flavor and theme, though the ones that aren't tend to be expensive as shit. It makes sense—the stronger the beer (flavor- and alcohol-wise both), the more it's gonna cost. But I'm just saying that they exist, and the only reason we haven't covered one before now is because I cannot afford that shit.

But if you can afford it, then go grab a bunch of strong dark ales. This shit is fucking great. I can see a cold Mad Elf in my future...

NOTES

BEER: Merry Monkey

STYLE: Belgian Strong Dark Ale

ABV: 10.0%

BREWED BY: Victory Brewing Company

LOCATION: Downingtown, PA

PURCHASED AT: Oxford Beer (I said yesterday that the Victory variety pack was done, and that's true; this beer came in its own six-pack, when Pam requested something "more seasonal.")

PAIRED WITH: cleaning the basement and putting down a new rug

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 466

Top Five Tuesday: What Not to Watch (Kids Version)

me after casting my vote for Joe Biden

Mixed feelings about Trolls aside, there are many TV shows and movies that Willow is into that are wonderful for children and adults alike, and many of those have been covered here (Frozen, Toy Story, TSLoP2). But she is a normal child, and normal children can also get really excited about terrible, cheaply animated, vapid annoying bullshit on the television. For every Ratatouille, there's some generic 10-minute short called something like "Boo Boo Song" that Amazon Prime obviously bought for pennies on the dollar.

Look, I'm there in the room with these kids. About half the time I can get them to listen to a new indie rock record while we play with toys, but the other half of the time, they're gonna wanna watch what they wanna watch, and I still have to be there, watching it with them. I absorb this shit. It's soul-crushing, but what other choice do I have? I can't leave them alone, they're too young.

So I watch what they want to watch, and sometimes it's awful. But you know what? It could be worse. I'd rather watch 1000 hours of the most insipid children's program today than have to watch a bunch of talking heads discuss ad nauseum an election that won't even be decided by the AM hours. So let's have our potshots at kiddie TV bullshit now and blow off some steam, because the real tasteless television fuckery is going to be happening tonight, and I'd rather make this Top Five list instead.

Top Five Worst TV/Movies That Willow Has Gotten Really Into

5. "Wear Your Seatbelt"

Okay, so there's a whole series of shorts under the umbrella term "Little Angel" on Amazon Prime that is colloquially known as "Baby John" in our house, as the protagonist is an empty shell of an infant named John. It's standard fare; they take public domain nursery rhymes and awkwardly create new lyrics to reflect whatever lesson they are trying to impart. It tends to be more innocuously dull than stab-your-eyes-out awful, but some shorts are worse than others. There are none worse than "Wear Your Seatbelt," which chronicles Baby John and his family's experiences on an airplane with the most cloying song of all time.

Then again, I'd rather watch this than watch Jake Tapper speculate where Texas's electoral votes are going.

4. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Pam insisted that I include this Amazon TV series on this list. She said that she hates it because she "hates all cartoons," a statement that bizarrely seems to encompass adult programming as well, but that's a blog post for another day. This isn't a bad show, but it's not a good show either. I try to look at the slight suffering I feel while watching it as karmic retribution for drunkenly yelling the title of this classic children's book during improv shows in college.

Then again, I'd rather watch this than watch MSNBC poke at a large digital mockup of the electoral map.

3. "Baby Shark" Sequels

Anyone with a young child knows "Baby Shark," for better or worse (worse). Shit, it's not even a new song—I remember learning this song in preschool back in the early '90s. I've long since accepted the reality that it has achieved unlikely ubiquity in my adulthood. But did you know that there are dozens and dozens of permutations of "Baby Shark" out there? Trust me, I've watched them. Ping Fong, the evil production company who created the version that originally went viral, has also produced a ton of sequels. It's the same song over and over, but with slight changes. One "Baby Shark" version follows an aunt, uncle, and cousin. One version is Christmas-themed. One is made with 8-bit video game sounds. A few simply replace shark with another animal, so there's "Baby Monkey" and "Baby T-Rex" and so on and so forth. It goes on forever. The bottom line: if you are annoyed with "Baby Shark," then you ain't seen nothing yet.

Then again, I'd rather watch this than endless clips of "normal Americans" dropping their ballots into a wooden box.

2. Halloween Non-Stop

If you thought Little Angel and Pink Fong were scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of low production value, then get ready to be hit by a fucking train when you watch 62 minutes of this absolutely bonkers trash. Misshapen animated children in Frankenstein masks yell gibberish as they do the floss dance. A witch threatens to "drop your bed into a zoo." An anthropomorphic train speaks in a game show host voice to tell you that ghosts will be haunting you now okay? None of it makes sense. None of it!

Then again, I'd rather watch a train tell me my life is a horror show then watch the real horror happening in our democracy.

1. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

A personal choice for a personal list: the Madagascar sequel is my least favorite thing Willow watches, and it's not even close. Hearing David Schwimmer sing part of Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move It" is like nails on a chalkboard to me. The penguins are classic children's movie trope in that they think they are way funnier than they actually are. And why does this movie think that anyone—adults, children, anyone—wants to see this many animated animal assholes? Like, literally, there are close-ups of all the character's literal assholes. I hate it. I hate everything.

Then again, I'd rather look at an animated rhinoceros' puckered asshole for 90 minutes then look at trump for nine seconds, but you know every TV station is going to be constantly cutting to short video clips of him, even though his face looks like what would happen if someone accidentally spilled cayenne pepper on my grandmother's vagina.

So, I guess in other words, I'm giving you a list of things that you might rather watch than whatever malarkey is gonna happen tonight. Wake me up when November ends. 

This Is My Blood: Easy Ringer

It's Election Day in America. I feel like I've been pretty negative in this column recently (I think posting on reddit is stupid; I think watching the Eagles is pointless; I think I'm just going to avoid the scene where the rest of my family argues about where we should mount the basement TV), and the looming election is probably why. The worst part is that I don't think it's going to get better tomorrow, regardless of which candidate prevails.

 

What I know right now is that this is not the time to get drunk. For real, seeing our country collapse through inebriated eyes would absolutely break me. I need some barriers to protect me. I need a session beer (and only one of them) to keep me sober. Even better—I need a koozie that distracts me from the label's possibly false promises of "victory," and Pam found the perfect one while unpacking:

It was just eight short years ago that I was posted up in a very crowded McGillin's, killing pitchers while Obama was racking up the electoral votes. Everyone was happy, so it didn't matter that everyone was drunk too. It was eight years ago, but it might as well be eighty. Tonight I will be sad. At least I'll be sober.

NOTES

BEER: Easy Ringer (there's something to be said about me being an easy ringer when it comes to believing in polls that are going to be waaaay off, but that wound is going to need a while to heal)

STYLE: Lo-Cal American IPA

ABV: 4.3%

BREWED BY: Victory Brewing Company

LOCATION: Downingtown, PA

PURCHASED AT: Oxford Beer (the final of the five beers from that Victory variety pack)

PAIRED WITH: hardboiled egg and bacon sandwich

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 465.5

Yes, This Is the Long-Awaited PoYB Movie Review of Trolls: World Tour

First of all, I don't feel the need to put the same bullshit stamp of equivocation here at the start of the review that every other movie review of every other children's movie includes: "I should note that, yes, this movie is meant for kids." Fuck that. The creators of the Trolls entertainment complex know damn well that parents are going to be roped into watching this shit too. If you can't throw us a bone, then you deserved to be thrown under a truck like every normal filmmaker.

 

How many bones was I thrown throughout the course of Trolls: World Tour? Not many, but I could probably use two hands to count them, and that's more than many boneless children's films I've seen in the past couple years (e.g. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which is undoubtedly the worst movie of all time). There's a bit where Ozzy Osbourne voices an elderly troll, for example, that works on both a kid level and an adult level ("that old troll is silly" vs. "holy shit this is the perfect casting of Ozzy Osbourne"). I mean, most of the jokes are stolen wholesale from TV Tropes, but that doesn't mean they can't land every once in a while. I'll withstand having to watch a troll shit out a lit birthday cake if it means I get to watch the Justin Timberlake troll made to look like the dumbest troll alive.

But no one is coming to Trolls: World Tour for the fucking jokes. We're watching Trolls: World Tour for the RAWK 'N' ROLL!! Personally, I am in that small sliver in the middle of the Venn Diagram of people who take music seriously and also people who watch Trolls: World Tour, so let's talk about the movie in that context.

I could nitpick, and say that there was a lot of misleading bullshit about music in Trolls: World Tour. For example, the "techno trolls" listen to Daft Punk. Daft Punk is not techno music, for one. For two, didn't the so-called "pop trolls" listen to the same music at a rave in the first movie? What a fucking retcon! Also, who's to say that Daft Punk isn't pop? Pam looked it up on her Apple Music—they consider Daft Punk's 2013 album Random Access Memory "pop." Hip hop is basically pop now too, but they are rolled in with the "funk trolls." "Rock trolls" basically just play all popular '80s rock and hair metal, and completely ignore every other substrain of the rock and roll continuum (where are my "blog rock trolls" voiced by Alec Ounsworth?!).

Like I said—nitpicky for sure. Especially considering that the overall message of the movie is that we shouldn't worry about certain music being considered one thing and other music being considered another thing, and that we should all just enjoy what we like and appreciate that there's other music out there. I can get behind that message, even if it comes at the expense of certain genres anyway (smooth jazz never gets redemption; note that the song that brings all trolls together is a shitty pop song; etc.).

I can get behind the message because it's a necessary anti-snobbery message that I learned way too late in life. There really is a ton of music out there, and a lot of it is very fucking good. There's also a lot of bad music out there, really awful noxious fucking music that millions of people still love dearly, and ya know what? It doesn't fucking matter. It makes no difference how many weeks in a row Post Malone camps out in the Billboard Hot 100, because music you can like and appreciate is out there anyway, waiting to be discovered.

If there's one thing I hope kids get from this film, it's that Rachel Bloom is the hardest rocker of our generation. Just kidding! She seems like she's having fun singing all those rock classics, but I actually think that this touches on possibly the biggest disservice doled out by Trolls: World Tour. I googled "who sings rock you like a hurricane" the other day, and the #2 hit was "'Rock You like a Hurricane' by Rachel Bloom." I also came home the other day to find Willow, et al, listening to the Trolls: World Tour soundtrack, which features all songs you know featuring the voices of the trolls. Willow is going to grow up thinking that the famous Cyndi Lauper song is called "Trolls Just Want to Have Fun." That makes me a little uncomfortable!

To be clear, I don't have a problem with the existence of a song called "Trolls Just Want to Have Fun." It's still a great song, and the animation during the big dance sequence is quite fun. But at a certain point, I question why kids wouldn't want to just listen to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." I almost am tempted to make a playlist of all the original songs that are covered in Trolls: World Tour. Wouldn't it be cool if my kids heard Black Sabbath do "Crazy Train" and they actually sort of recognized it?

There are a couple of original songs in the movie, including a hip-hop track from an Anderson .Paak troll, who raps about how pop trolls stole music from the rest of the trolls and made money off it (there's an argument to be made that the movie could've done more with this allusion to the dark history of rich white men making money off of talented black artists, but I also wonder how that would even be possible in a generally light and goofy kids movie). These songs are mediocre at best, but I would prefer them to "Atomic Dog" being repurposed for an action sequence score.

Should I have talked about the plot more? Does anyone reading this give a fuck? The trolls discover that there are "strings" that represent all the different genres of music, and the evil Queen Barb is trying to steal them all so that she can remake the world in her own rock 'n' roll image, and... yeah, we don't need to talk about this. It's a mostly shitty movie with some redeeming comedic moments and a questionable grip on musical heritage. I could take it or leave it. Most days, I'm praying that Willow leaves it. Most days, she's watching it three times.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

This Is My Blood: First Drop

Almost four months ago, I wrote about the various craft beer communities on reddit. It was more of a drive-by analysis of those subreddits, more to do with lurking than participating. For today, I thought it might be interesting if I actually participated in one of them, to see if anything interesting would happen.

So, r/CraftBeer. I've been a member of the community for like six months now. Like I said last time, it's unobtrusive, with a couple pictures of craft beers showing up on my front page each day. Nothing too exciting. I'm not basing my beer purchase decisions on what is posted here, it's just nice to look at a tall glass of a rich imperial porter sometimes rather than see yet another orange-man-bad political post.

The vast majority of the submissions are pictures of a beer can with the beer next to it in a nice-looking glass. Let's call it 90%. Occasionally there are posts of multiple craft beers stacked up in someone's fridge. Even more rarely, there's a craft beer meme. But yeah, most of this shit is just the beer looking tasty and pretty, so that's why I did today.

Also, depending on the beer, sometimes it's enough to just say "here's a good beer" and it'll earn a bunch of internet points. With lesser beers (read: cheaper, less popular), it helps to add a little personal touch to the title of the photo. Why are you drinking this beer, in other words? Are you enjoying this beer with your dog? Did you just beat cancer and are celebrating? Maybe it's just your favorite beer and you want the world to know about it?

So, in an attempt to earn as many worthless internet points as possible, I saved a thematically appropriate beer for the new house, and involved a rather large fib about First Drop being my "first beer in the new home." It's the fourteenth and a half beer of the new house, but no one ever said you had to tell the truth on reddit.

Anyways, it went okay. I think it's a nice-looking picture (better than most of the garbage photos I take for this column). A few people seemed to appreciate it with upvotes (though the number has actually gone down since I posted it, so I guess some people just don't like APAs?). No comments, but it's really hard to write about beer, even in a short comment. I get it. I received no satisfaction from the experience, but I experience no dissatisfaction either. It was appropriately nonessential and unmemorable. Woohoo.

[Postscript: I always get a little hesitant to post my reddit username on the blog, as if it might give a little too much away. So just know that I am constantly going back through my entire reddit history and deleting everything I can possibly think of before posting about it on the blog. Also, most of my reddit history is me asking questions that help me write about shit on the blog, so it's not like there could be many surprises anyway.]

NOTES

BEER: First Drop

STYLE: American Pale Ale

ABV: 5.9%

BREWED BY: Upper Pass Beer Company

LOCATION: South Royalton, Vermont

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: Grilled chicken (figuring out the new kitchen has been difficult, but the grille is simple and efficient as always)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 464.5

Album of the Week: The Writing's on the Wall

There are plenty of people on the Record Club email chain. Not everyone participates. This is my attempt to get everyone involved, even those whose Record Club emails go directly into the spam box.

 

For week #5, we are featuring Kelly R******. I don't believe she's made an appearance on Puke on Your Birthday in the past (though there's no better time than the present). Back in December, she was nice enough to visit a newborn Martha, and I repaid her kindness by forcing her to join the Record Club email chain against her will. Let's see if we can get it to pay off.

 

Archives HERE, playlist HERE, this week's pick below.

 

WEEK 92 — November 1-7, 2020

 

What we're listening to this week (Kelly's pick):

 

ALBUM: The Writing's on the Wall

ARTIST: Destiny's Child

 

RELEASED: July 27, 1999

 

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Pop R&B

 

WHY KELLY MIGHT A REVIEW FOR THIS ALBUM: I know for a fact that Kelly occasionally checks out the Record Club album of the week, because she asked Pam earlier in the year how to listen to one of the albums that she was interested in. Kelly is the reason I now feature the section on "WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE." She also called the # mark "pound" until like 2019, but we will hope that she is now able to figure out how to listen to albums on the internet, and will thus be able to write about this one. Especially an album that Pam informs me she and Pam and all their friends listened to religiously back in the day! (Let's not forget that this is the first album pick featuring an artist with the same name as the album picker!!!)

WHY KELLY PROBABLY WON'T WRITE A REVIEW FOR THIS ALBUM: I'd say that maybe Pam will text Kelly to inform her that it would be fun to write a review for The Writing's on the Wall, but something tells me that there is something else going on this week that might be a bit distracting for everyone... hmm...

TRACKLIST:

1. Intro (The Writing's on the Wall)
2. So Good
3. Bills, Bills, Bills
4. Confessions (ft. Missy Elliott)
5. Bug a Boo
6. Temptation
7. Now That She's Gone
8. Where'd You Go
9. Hey Ladies
10. If You Leave (ft. Next)
11. Jumpin, Jumpin
12. Say My Name
13. She Can't Love You
14. Stay
15. Sweet sixteen
16. Outro (Amazing Grace... Dedicated to Andretta Tillman)

LENGTH: 64:52

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube

READING SOME SHIT: It's a year or two later than the release of this album, but Rolling Stone had a pretty decent feature on the group in 2001.

Happy listening, Kelly! Have a great week!

This Is My Blood: Rye Eagles Rye

I hate to say it, but I really don't give a fuck about the Eagles this year. Between the election taking up a lot of my headspace (cheering "Phillies! Obama!" on Broad Street feels like a million centuries ago), the move taking up whatever space is left, the pandemic making it unsafe for players to be playing at all, and, yeah, an Eagles team that is fucking terrible but still expects us to care because they are in an even more terrible division... yeah man, I don't have time for this shit. Throw me in Vet Jail if you want, but why should I waste my time with a team who is going to drunkenly stumble into a one-and-done playoff spot and who is captained by a dude who both leads the league in interceptions and leads the team in being most likely to vote for trump on Tuesday?

It's kinda funny, because during a normal year, it would've been the perfect night for watching the Birds. Our internet is working great and we found an app that allows us to watch local TV stations. The kids had a rare night of sleep. I didn't have work the day after a late Sunday night game. We were drinking a beer called "Rye Eagles Rye." And still, I said fuck it and didn't watch a single minute of the game.

More about the beer, because this is supposed to be why we're here, even if I've lost my way somewhat over the past 306 days. Rye beer! Yeah, man! It's a thing. And I am a little surprised it took me until now to have a proper one, because this was great (note: I did have a what was technically a rye beer in Wacker's Imperial Rye Altbier, but that brew had so many other things going on that the rye got lost in the mix).

It was probably hoppier than it had to be, but still, the grains shone in every sip. You really could taste the rye! It's not like it literally tasted rye bread, but just picture in your mind's mouth how different white bread, wheat bread, and rye bread would taste, and now just apply that difference to beer.

On the binary scale of Would I Drink More Yes or No? then yes, absolutely, I would drink more Rye Eagles Rye, and I liked it enough that I will be actively seeking out additional rye beers throughout the rest of my drinking life (anywhere between ten and fifty years, probably, depending on what shape my internal organs are in). Maybe one day I'll buy a four-pack, one for each quarter of a game I actually give a fuck about. For now, I'll have half a beer, and watch zero quarters, and the earth still spins.

NOTES

BEER: Rye Eagles Rye

STYLE: Rye Beer

ABV: 5.9%

BREWED BY: Round Guys Brewing Company

LOCATION: Lansdale, PA

PURCHASED AT: IGA (I brought what was left of my final IGA six-pack to the new house)

PAIRED WITH: episodes of The Politician (campy and a lot more fun than watching the Eagles)

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 463.5