pumpktoberfest #2 - whoa, man.

pumpktoberfest #2 - whoa, man.
film: evil bong
beer: wolaver's will stevens pumpkin ale



i'm an ardent supporter of the tv show weeds, but as far as marijuana-themed movies go, they're pretty hit or miss. dazed & confused, pineapple express, friday and harold & kumar go to white castle worked because there's a lot more going on in those films besides weed. i've yet to see half baked or how high. smiley face was only occasionally funny. i don't think i've ever watched a cheech & chong film & if i did, it was when i was ten & it was on local tv, so i didn't get whatever drug references trickled through the censoring. in 2006, before cheech & chong reunited last year, tommy chong "starred" in a "hilarious" marijuana-themed horror film called evil bong.

the film centers around alistair, a nerdy type who moves into an apartment of stoners. shortly after he moves in, one of the stoners sees a crazy bong for sale in some magazine, decides he must have it, orders it & it arrives a few days later. it's huge & oddly shaped, but they go to town with it. one day, one of the dudes smokes off it & gets sucked into a weird strip club universe, where he's killed. this keeps happening to people & as it does, the bong keeps changing shape until it develops the face shown on the dvd cover. in case you're wondering, the answer is "yes." the bong is voiced by michele mais, who plays justice in the broadway production of rock of ages.

tommy chong doesn't show up til near the end & it's revealed that he's the original owner of the bong. that's when the real evil happens. as crazy as it is, the least believable aspect of the film is this one scene where it's the middle of the day & they're all sitting around wanting to smoke, but one of the dudes is all "i'm out. we'll have to wait til tomorrow." really? a room full of stoners in the middle of the day are out of weed & can't remedy that situation? suspension of disbelief GONE. if you like the sort of films they show at 1am on usa, you'll like this film. as for me, evil bong was ok, but i'm probably not going to bother checking out the sequel--evil bong II: king bong--which came out on dvd in july. that's just too much bong, even for me.

since it's from vermont & they totally like bongs up there, i'm pairing the film with a wolaver's will stevens pumpkin ale, which is part of the "farmers series" of beers put out by wolaver's organic beers, an otter creek beers brand. it's apparently the "first & only organic pumpkin beer." who says pumpktoberfest can't be progressive? you're probably thinking "as long as you're not paranoid & don't have an evil bong, i bet this film would probably go well paired with a couple of massive bong hits." you wouldn't believe how well the two go together. like pumpkin pie & whipped cream, i tell ya. regardless, massive bong hits are neither a drink nor a snack, so they have no place as part of a pairing.

...so wolavers has will stevens' recipe for pumpkin ale. he's apparently the farmer who grows the pumpkins & his beer is "brewed with pumpkin & spices." the spices are the most prevalent part of the taste, but there's a faint trace of pumpkin in it. it's better than our first pumpktoberfest brew, the shipyard pumpkinhead. after two beers though, i've yet to try anything mindblowing since pumpktoberfest began & nothing that lives up to the standard set by the pumking on pumpktoberfest eve. hell, even evil bong was more mindblowing than the first two beers i've tried. sorry, will stevens. i'm sure you're a very nice guy who grows outstanding pumpkins, but you need to tell wolavers to put more of your pumpkins in their beer. more money for you. more taste for us. everyone wins next holiday season...just think about it.

pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.

pumpktoberfest #1 - maine is HORRORible.
film: maximum overdrive
beer: shipyard pumpkinhead



the great state of maine has produced a lot of fine talent in its day, from judd nelson to patrick dempsey to dan fogelberg, but horror writer stephen king's arguably the most famous maniac. with a resume that includes way too many books for me to bother counting them up, he's basically become the most famous horror writer of at least this past century. dude hasn't had any of his stories turned into a worthy movie yet this millennium, but through the years, a good number of his books have been adapted into classic horror films.

maximum overdrive isn't exactly a classic, but it was the first film that he directed himself (as he's all too happy to tell you in the trailer) & it's one of his more hilarious films. as the plot goes, a comet goes shooting through the sky & the machines all become homicidal at some truck stop. once the trucks start acting up, people are screwed. it stars a young emilio estevez from back when being emilio estevez actually meant something. in short, if you're looking for the maximum amount of hilarious, machine-based horror this pumpktoberfest season, look no further than maximum overdrive. after all, it's also the last film stephen king ever directed.

the first beer of the pumpktoberfest season is a shipyard pumpkinhead, brewed out of portland, ME. it's a wheat ale brewed with cinnamon & nutmeg & it's only available for two months out of the year, roughly equivalent to the amount of time non-pumpkin farmers care about pumpkins on a yearly basis. based on the front of the label, it probably would've gone perfect with pumpkinhead or sleepy hollow, but neither of them are in my top sixteen horror films, so they can suck it.

the pumpkinhead's nothing special. i enjoy shipyard's beers, but the pumpkinhead was a perfect example of your run-of-the-mill "toss some spices in a beer & call it a pumpkin beer" pumpkin beer. as i suspected, compared to that pumking (pictured behind it) that i killed the other night, it was B-O-R-I-N-G. not HORRORible, but i'm hoping there are some better ones amongst the pumpkin beers i've assembled in my fridge. if not, it's going to be a loooooooooong pumpktoberfest season.

#131 - pumpktoberfest!

if you're proactive or confused & you've already gone & flipped ahead to october in your fictional eat!drink!snack! wall or desk calendar, you'll know that tomorrow is october 1st, which marks the beginning of pumpktoberfest, the happiest, pumpkiniest month of the year here at eat!drink!snack! since it's one of those brand new holidays (the hallmark deal is still pending), you may not be familiar with the inner workings of pumpktoberfest, so imma break it down for you. basically, halloween is the lamest holiday ever. pumpktoberfest is one of the best holidays of all time. thirty-one days, yo! thirty-one days!

as legend has it, pumpktoberfest developed one day in the mind of shawn parow, a mid-thirties blogger from brooklyn. for days, he had been wondering what stupid gimmick he could roll out next on his blog. after a string of post-work evenings standing in front of the coolers at bierkraft poring over microbrews, he realized that, with about a month until halloween, there were a shit ton of pumpkin beers coming out. he'd tried a pumpkin beer or two in his day, but had always taken the same stance with them as he did with christmas beers--they were too much of a spicy novelty item. maybe it was the presence of all that alcohol or maybe it was the five hours sleep the night before, but on that evening, he had a change of heart.

there were enough pumpkin beers in those coolers to field a basketball team & our plucky blogger reasoned that there had to be more out there...& he was right. he started checking the coolers at assorted bodegas & delis. he went on the world wide web. he found that there were enough pumpkin beers out there to field a canadian football team. he got a bit obsessed...& from there, pumpktoberfest was born. initially, he thought BIG & planned to celebrate pumpktoberfest each day with a different pumpkin beer, reporting back to you in blog form. like most of his plans, after going out & collecting a number of pumpkin beers, he realized that he could only field a canadian football team with a few substitutes & scaled those plans back to a pumpkin beer report every odd-numbered day for the entire month of october, each paired with another of his recently rekindled loves...horror films.

he figured that halloween month is the only logical month to go nuts over horror films & then he came across a trailer for the michael bay-directed remake of nightmare on elm street & that sealed the deal. then he watched some footage of the shuttle disaster online & decided to do the columns in countdown form. as he envisioned it, every odd-numbered day for the month of october, he'd give the low down on pumpkin beers whilst providing a list of his favorite horror films, culminating with his top pick...ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT. as the legend goes, if you drink a pumpkin beer with a friend this october, you pass the spirit of pumpktoberfest on to them & when they drink a pumpkin beer with another friend & don't invite you along, they're passing on the spirit of pumpktoberfest...& so on & so forth. it's like herpes, but with less physical contact! happy pumpktoberfest! spread the pumpkin love!

#131 - pumpktoberfest!
snack: david pumpkin seeds
drink: southern tier pumking


in celebration of the impending pumpktoberfest, last night, i half-lazily put together a pumpkin snack-drink combo. for my snack, i picked up a 5 oz bag of david pumpkin seeds that i kept at my side during the evening. whenever i felt the need to run to the kitchen, grab every item in the refrigerator door & mold them into a masterpiece of pumpktoberfestian proportions, i just popped a few of the pumpkin seeds in my mouth & the urge faded for about 60-120 seconds. then i repeated as necessary. i have to be honest though. i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds. i'll take sunflower seeds any day of the week, but pumpkin seeds are just plain weird. with sunflower seeds, at least i know that i shouldn't eat the shell. with pumpkin seeds, sometimes it's a gray area. the bag's not even clear on the subject, but they do encourage you to "break out of your shell™."

these ones have the white, extremely salty outer shell & in typical pumpkin seed fashion, if you manage to crack open the shell, there's a tiny green seed awaiting you on the inside, a pumpkin that never reached its potential if you will. oh well. chomp chomp. since, like i mentioned, i'm not all that into pumpkin seeds, i got sick of them after a while & ultimately tossed them aside, wondering what else i could eat as i picked the pumpkin seed shells from my teeth. maybe i'll use the rest of the bag to stem off smoke cravings or something.

while my snack was lazily thought out, the drink portion of it definitely wasn't. when i first came across it, i knew that i had to ring in pumpktoberfest with the king of all pums, the southern tier pumking. it's a local beer, brewed in upstate ny & according to the bottle, it's "an ode to púca, a creature of celtic folklore." that means that this beer was made in the name of a mischievous shape-shifter who from what i gather, has november 1st (the day after harvest) as his day. since i don't believe a word of that crap, i also ignored the label's suggestion to "pour pumking into a goblet." what kind of person has a friggin goblet lying around? vampires & other blood-drinking types, that's who & i'm not one of those (yet), so i poured mine into a pint-sized mug like a real man & basked in my defiance of labels.

um, this stuff is amazing. when i first opened it, i gave it a good sniffing, since i'd read that it was really pumpkiny. of the pumpkin beers i've tried, i never really felt that any of them were all that pumpkiny. it was more like with them, "pumpkin" meant pumpkin spices--nutmegs & cinnamons & allspices & the like. when i first sniffed the pumking, i could already tell that it was something different. the bottle lists "puréed pumpkin" as an ingredient & since i don't have many opportunities to use this phrase, i'm going to use it here: "you can really taste the puréed pumpkin." you can also taste the caramel malt in it & it's not overly spiced like most pumpkin beers. it sets a pretty high bar for pumpkin beers & i'm skeptical that any of the other pumpktoberfest beers i have in the queue can beat it. i guess we'll just have to wait & see. surprise me imagined pumpkin beer canadian football team! surprise me with one of those grey cups or something!