Raging Beer

SO HERE WE HAVE, as I am so fond of saying, a beer fulla fridge. The local mega-mart had the last of Harpoon Brewery's summer stock-- HA!-- on sale for fifteen bucks, so this morning I broke down and shelled out. This despite the fact that, historically, I haven't liked wheat beers, and fully half the bottles in here are a hefewiezen of one sort or another. (Literally: three are one kind, three are another.) Given that today's lunch . . .

is the double cheese-burger I am so fond of, I figured it would be a good day to try out a wheat beer. The cheeseburger, which I am not calling the Double Whammy, and the tots, which are not Totlettes, would be capable of walking up to any substandard beer and staring it down into cowed submission. This turned out to be unnecessary. The UFO, often seen but never heard, was bold and hoppy, where most of the wheat beers I've experienced before tended to the sweet and thick. The summer brew was what about everybody does for a summer brew these days, which is a lighter bodied lager with brighter hops, which was just fine as well. The next question mark is the Harpoon crystal wheat brew, but fortuantely, between here and there, there will be the ubiquitous IPA, and there's a coupla Red Hook ESB's to be had there, too.

The movie of the day is not this ultra-violent love letter to a more embittered, embattled time when we all had the souls of wolves and the wits of sharks.

I did see this a number of years ago, largely on the grounds that it was something I ought to see one day. I think I had just recently seen one of Scorcese's other celebrated greatest hits and nipped out to Blockbuster to get this. I remember describing it, in an e-mail to Ol' Doc Nagel, as the most relentlessly violent movie I had ever seen. This was before I had seen Straw Dogs. I have now seen Straw Dogs, and this is still the most relentlessly violent movie I have ever seen. It's not just the fight scenes. It's everything. The dialogue, the mob scenes, the relentless jealousy and serial adultery and spousal conflicts and on and on and on. Where Scoresese's mob movies are cruel in the way that characters are tortured and killed, this one is cruel in that way in which characters are tortured and spared.

So I tried. I really did. But thanks, Marty, once was enough. My most fervent hope was that you meant this one to have a positive message-- See, kid? At least you're not them!!!"-- but it's just hard to watch that much brutality in one sitting.

At least the movie of the day is not this. I caught it on one of the vaunted on demand-- sorry-- On Demand chanels day before yesterday when there Was Nothing On. It was perfectly fine, the kind of indie tragicomedy where all the characters are defined by quirks, evil is comprised of conformaity, and heroism lies in not making very obviously bad choices when they are blatently presented to you, veritably shoved in your face. All the performances are commited, nuanced, and utterly false. Which is all to say that it killed ninety minutes that I could have otherwise spent reading David Crosby's 1988 autobiography, which I picked up at the Goodwill last weekend for a buck thirty nine.

So that's good at least.

But when it cropped up today, at three in the afternoon, right as I was done with one thing and not quite started on another, ehhhhhhhh-- no, thanks. Once was fine.

So do I recommend it? Sure. Don't read anything about it first, if you do, just kind of dive in and let the movie fill you in. It's got a little more suspense going for it that way. DeNiro gained and lost a total of four Marlon Brandos perparing for this role, which may just be his most commited and finest performance to date, and Marty Scorcese bankrolled at least a half dozen Columbian soccer teams in the making as well, so I think we all owe it to them, and the universe, to experience this film just once. Amen. So far the Harpoon products have yet to let me down, so yeah, unless they start producing lye-- and this would have to include the presence of skulls and crossbones and DO NOT INGEST warnings on the labels-- yeah, I'd go ahead and do it.

And sure, have the cheesburger. Like Warren said, before he went: enjoy every sandwich.

Amen.