Tasting Notes…

Another edition of Tasting Notes, a series of quick hits on a variety of topics that don’t really warrant a full post. So here’s what I’ve been watching/playing/reading/drinking lately:

Television

  • The only show I watch regularly is True Blood, and even that has been a bit of a bust this season. There are some good things about this season, but it seems like all the side characters are annoying this season. Even Lafayette seems to be getting annoying. You can’t keep increasing the number of big character arcs indefinitely, and this season definitely hit the limit and then stomped over it. All that being said, it’s still an entertaining show, and last week’s cliffhanger was kinda interesting, except that I know better than to trust that it will be conclusive, which is probably a bad thing. Unless it turns out the way I expect, which is kinda ironic. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, I guess.
  • Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: Mythbusters. Yeah, we’ve all seen these epsiodes, but putting them on Netflix Watch Instantly is a problem. I didn’t know they were on there until Shamus mentioned if off-handedly, and now I find myself watching them all the time.

Video Games

  • It turns out that I’ve played approximately 0 hours of GTA IV since the last Tasting Notes, so I’m thinking that I should just move on to something else. Complaints are, more or less, the same as last time. All the good things about the game are the same as GTA III, and all the new bits only seem to weigh it down. And for crying out loud, it’s ok to let people save their games whenever. This is something that I’ve become pretty inflexible on – if you have static save points that force me to replay stuff and rewatch cutscenes, I’m not going to like your game much.
  • In lieu of GTA IV, I’ve been replaying Half-Life 2 on my PC. It’s interesting how great that game is, despite its aged mechanics. It got me thinking about what would make for the ideal FPS game (perhaps a topic for another post).
  • Portal is fantastic, but you probably already knew that. Still, for a 3 hour gaming experience, it’s just about perfect. I only got stuck a couple of times, and even then, it was fun piecing together what I needed to do… Well worth a play, even if you’re not huge into gaming.

Movies

  • Machete is brilliant trash. Interestingly, Rodriguez takes the opportunity to address politics and make a point about immigration. This sort of hand-wringing would normally be annoying, but the mixture of polemic with gloriously over-the-top action, gratuitous nudity and violence, is actually pretty well balanced. On their own, those two elements would be cloying or frustrating. Mix them together, and you’ve got something altogether different, and it works really well. Also working well, Lindsay Lohan in a bit of self-aware stunt casting (I can’t really say that the role “transcends” that with a straight face, but it does go further than simple exploitation). Not working so well: Jessica Alba. She’s fine for most of the movie, but when it comes time for her to give an inspirational speech, it’s kinda embarrassing. Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson (!?) are great. Robert De Niro and Steven Seagal are kinda sleepwalking through their roles, but they’re fine. In the end, it’s trashy fun, and I have a feeling it will stick with me more than other trashy summer fare.
  • The American, on the other hand, is slow, ponderous and ultimately pointless. A promising start, but rather than build on that, the tension evaporates as the film slowly grinds its way to an unsurprising conclusion. Poorly paced and not much to it…
  • Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week: Beer Wars. A documentary about beer, featuring a pretty good cross-section of the craft brewing leaders in the US, as well as some interesting behind-the-scenes info about legal side of things and how the laws impact the rest of the distribution chain. Really, it’s just fun to see interviews with some of my favorite brewers, like the guys from Dogfish Head and Stone brewing, or the Yuengling owner (who seems to get drunk and spill some beans). If you like beer, it’s well worth a watch.
  • Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week That I Haven’t Even Seen Yet: Mother. This Korean thriller made waves in the film-nerd community earlier this year, so it’s on my must watch list. Seems noirish.

Books

The Finer Things (aka Beer!)

  • Brewery Ommegang is probably my favorite brewery in America, and I recently managed to get my hands on some of their more uncommon brews. BPA is a Belgian-style pale ale. Not as hoppy as an IPA, but also not quite as tasty as Ommegang’s other beers. An interesting experiment, but not something I see myself turning to very often. Bière De Mars, on the other hand, is great. I think Ommegang’s standards are pretty tough to beat, but that one holds its own. It’s a seasonal beer and a limited batch; the one I found was from 2008. It was well worth the wait. There are a bunch of other Ommegang seasonals or specialty beers, but the one I really want to find is the Tripel Perfection. The Tripel is probably my favorite style of belgian beer, so I’d love to see Ommegang’s take on it.
  • Some interesting stuff in my fridge: Saison Du BUFF is a collaboration between three local breweries. This batch is from Victory, but the formula was created by Victory, Stone, and Dogfish Head. I saw a case of the Dogfish Head somewhere, but didn’t want to buy it until I tried it out. Also in the fridge: Fantôme Saison (this comes highly rated, but I haven’t seen it around until now), and a few pumpkin or Octoberfest ales.

And that’s all for now.