I’m a big fan of the bar Lansdowne Road here in the big apple. My buddy Ryan and I have been going there since it opened many moons ago.

One thing that is notably missing from the bar though is a jukebox. Well, for the drunken historians out there it might be interesting to know that Lansdowne Road did in fact have a jukebox when it opened. One of those real fancy ones in fact that you can download music to if you pay a little extra per song. It opens up a wonderful work for the music fan to be able to listen to some of their favorite obscure drinking tunes. Unfortunately it also gives scumbags like Ryan and I the opportunity to play the type of music no one in their right mind would ever want to listen to while grabbing drinks with their chums after work. It was amazing what you could find on that thing and by far our favorite choice was anything by the band Hatebreed. not because we love the band or anything, but because it’s some of the most ridiculous hardcore known to man.

Needless to say that within a year of opening Lansdowne Road removed it’s jukebox and put in a stereo system where the owner, who’s a great guy by the way and has become a good friend over the years, could control the music. I remember on more than one occasion heading to the jukebox with Ryan and hearing the bartender call behind us, “you’re just wasting your money fellas. I’m going to turn it off the moment it starts.”. We’d laugh, put on Hatebreed anyway and sure enough within 15 seconds of their hard as nails intro the music would be cut. There’s no hard feelings there, it was pretty damn fun.

Without question the greatest song to ever grace Lansdowne Road, or a few other bars we frequented for the matter, is Hatebreed’s “A Call for Blood” off of their 2002 album “Perseverance”. You might want to take a couple minutes and watch the video below if you don’t know it. Some sick SOB actually took time out of their day to not only post it on Youtube but also to include the lyrics.

Then again maybe avoid the lyrics, it’ll just confuse you more. I’ve listened to the song more times then I can count and to this day I still have no idea what the hell Mr. Jamey Jasta is going on about. From what I gather he’s been doing something for 10 long years, 10 long f*cking years for that matter. And man is he pissed about it. So pissed that he hates the guy who made him do whatever he’s doing. F*cking hates him or her actually. He’s so peeved off that literally every bone in his body aches. That is so much hate Jamey! I beg you to see someone about this.

Maybe it’s a job he took and he really hates his boss? Maybe at a show store or something like that and his boss has made him work the weekend before schools go back in session for 10 years in a row. The insane weekend when every kid is out with their parents looking for new sneakers. Dear god they haven’t had a size 6 in stock for weeks and the kids just keep coming. Why would his boss do this to him every year! Action must be taken and justice will be swift and violent. Get out your pre-paid phone kids, Jamey’s making a emergency “Call for Blood”! That manager at Footlocker won’t even know what hit him. By the 2:30 mark Jamey is agry that he can’t even get out actual words so he resorts to animal like “ohs”. Let the blood spill indeed Mr. Jasta.

Now by no means do I want to sound like I’m mocking the song. Alright let’s be honest I am but that doesn’t mean I don’t love the hell out of it. When you’ve got a few beers in you some people like Billy Joel, David Allen Coe or some Irish band I’ve never heard of. I enjoy all of those too but I challenge any of them to come up with a song that makes you want to run around the bar smashing glasses into people’s faces. Yes I understand this is very much illegal and not advisable but that doesn’t make Hatebreeds talents any less impressive. From time to time I consider myself an avid runner and 75% of what I run to is Hatebreed. Of course that means after a mile I’m really just chasing around other runners screaming at them about perseverance or something ridiculous. I’ve been banned from more then one community park in my day and my entries into the NYC Marathon won’t even be accepted anymore. Pansies.

Let me start of by saying I neither dislike or like the band Kiss. I never understood why they put out so much crap with their faces on it but I guess the fact that people keep paying for it is reason enough. I’d probably buy a Star Wars casket to be buried in if there was one so who am I to judge. I did have periods in my childhood where I did consider myself a Kiss fan though. Mostly during the time in the 80’s that most die hard Kiss fans would rather forget. Their 1984 album “Animalize” featured a song called “Burn Bitch Burn” and that’s all a 6 year old Joe needed to know to become a fan. I didn’t even realize there was a period where my new favorite band wore make-up. I had a couple of their other albums after that and pretty much gave up on them once they got back into actually making music that people liked. I was so underground for a 8 year old. As a side note I realize I started off saying I’m neutral on them, then went on to say I liked them and then went on to say they were my favorite band. Calm down, no one is reading this anyway.

During my time as a fan though they put out a song called “God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll to You II”. I assume this was meant to be some sort of anthem but it never really got picked up by rock enthusiasts for some reason. Or at least I’ve never heard it played at a Hockey game so I assume it wasn’t. I’m not wikipedia folks. The song was released on 1991’s “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey” soundtrack. That couldn’t of helped things. Not that it’s a bad movie or soundtrack. I saw it opening weekend and the soundtrack was the second CD I ever bought. But at no point could anyone of though “Hey guys, this song is going on the ‘Bogus Journey’ soundtrack, let’s not half ass it”. On second thought maybe it is a bad movie.

More important than the song was the video though. Oh god the video. For the most part it’s just the band in a hanger that for some reason has about an inch of water on the floor. Perhaps Gene Simmons took one of his legendary number twos and overflowed the toilet so the boys just went with it. And when I say “boys” I mean the guys in Kiss that I assume are pushing 70 at the time of the video. I don’t know but it works. In the beginning of the song when the guys are really kicking things off Paul Stanley has some sort of epileptic fit and freaks the fuck out so water goes flying everywhere. The first time I saw the video I was generally concerned for his well being. Whoever the hell the drummer was at the time probably got poopie water in his mouth because of all the splashing but knew he couldn’t say anything or he’d be out the door. They probably made the bass player drink it in between takes.

Along with all that there’s old clips of the bang playing in their painted face days. Sort of saying “hey guys, remember when we were all bad ass? We still are, we just like to dance in doodie water now. It’s cool. Let’s go get some coffee and talk this thing out.” I don’t know but as a young lad I think this was the first time I realized the band use to be transvestites. I was both frightened and confused by a black and white clip of the power duo dry humped each other. Still am.

Favorite shots? I do enjoy the two times they say the word “guitar” in the lyrics and have Paul and Gene show their guitars. It’s kind of educational in a way. When I have a kid and I’m ready to teach him or her in the way of rock I’m going to make him or her watch this video over and over again until they know what a guitar is. That way when people ask what school my kid goes to I can say “The school of hard rocks with a major in hot lix as taught by Mr. Paul Stanly and Gene Simmons and a minor in spastic doodie water stomping.” I can’t imagine anyone is going to know what that means but still, pretty awesome.

Least favorite moments? Really anything with Gene Simmons. Even at a young age I was uncomfortable with the looks that guy gave the camera. For the life of me I can’t remember what song it was but there was a video of him just riding around in a car singing while drinking a soda or something. If you’ve never seen Gene Simmons sip from a straw and look directly into a camera consider yourself lucky.  I saw that and though, “this guy has done some awful things to someone’s daughter. He belongs in jail”. I stand by that statement to this day.

Around the three minute point in the song they break things down. Paul Stanly’s gentle voice lulls you into thinking everything is going to be alright and I remember snuggling up with a blanket and sucking my thumb just before they blast you in the balls and wrap things up. I almost bit my thumb off every time. To this day i still have trouble walking for a good 30 minutes after listening to the song, 45 if I’m watching the video. Watch the video below, you’ll be glad you did. Maybe call out of work first though.

As much as it pains me to see people living out my dreams I can’t help but be excited for my good friend and fellow Burnt Hills Spartan Brian O’Connell and his wife Khara . Brian and I have known each other since we were just young little lads and reconnected a few years back at a friends wedding. I noticed Brian was the only one asking for a glass with his bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the beermance was sparked. We spent the weekend catching up on the good old days and drinking a lot of beer… a lot of beer. If Khara started to question the relationship by the end of the trip she hid it well. Truth be told she had every right to.

After that we kept in touch over the intertubes. Emailing each other about our homebrew from time to time and what we’d been drinking. Then one day I got an email from Brian that he was opening a brewery. After moping around the apartment for a few days and asking my wife “Why not me?!” over and over I finally got really excited for Brian.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Brian it’s how much time it takes to get a brewery up and running. I assumed you decided you wanted to brew, you bought some space and then 3 or 4 weeks later you had a brewery. Not so my friends! There’s been name changes, location scouting and most of all a crap load of paperwork. But now Renegade Brewing Company has a home, a liquor license and if there’s a god on this earth they’ll starting churning out beer in the near future.The plan is to open up sometime this summer with a fifteen-barrel brewing system and start off with a mix of organic and non-organic brews.

Until then hop on over to the Renegade Brewing Company Facebook page and “like” the hell out of them to keep up to date on their happenings and even check out some job openings. More importantly though in ten years when you’re standing at some beer fest drinking Renegade’s latest kick ass release you think of me. You’ll be bragging to your friends about how you heard about these guys back before they even brewed a drop of beer and you tell them I told you about them. If you don’t I swear on my life I will find you and make you listen to me sob about how it should have been me. Trust me, my tears ruin even the greatest beer. You’ve been warned.

Feel free to take this idea and run with it because I never will and it’s so genius that it deserves action. My buddy and I, for the sake of this post let’s call him King America, have always talked about registering a bunch of URL’s of peoples names that we went to High School with. For instance registering johnsmith.com. Then taking that site and just putting up a picture of that person from our Sr. year book. Maybe going one step further and just putting the word “prick” below their picture or something. I don’t know this could go anywhere really. The point is we think it would be hysterical and really creepy if that person randomly stumbled upon the site one day. Everyone Googles their name from time to time and imagine how frightening it would be to one day find a site with your name as the URL and a picture of your Sr. photo centered on it with nothing else. Or someone calling you a prick for no reason whatsoever. Of course now that I think of it I’m sure there’s some sort of law this has to be breaking that could get me in trouble so if you do this don’t tell anyone I told you. I’m not god! It may not be funny at all also. King America and I get a lot of stupid ideas that probably aren’t half as funny as we think they are.

Just to be clear we didn’t go to High School with a John Smith either. While it wouldn’t be as creepy as the above idea it would still be kind of weird to find some random post where a guy you went to High School with is talking about doing this kind of thing and using you as an example. Maybe the point to this whole thing is I should really apologize to everyone I went to High School with for still thinking of ways to weird them out. I should probably move on.

I’m sorry because I haven’t made an updated in months and I’ve let you all down. If you’d like to see my comedic stylings though you can head over to BloodyGoodHorror.com. I’m forced at gunpoint to do the news there every day and I also sit in on the weekly podcast. Every episode we discuss a movie and I make a beer pairing. It’s really something my friends!

I’m so sorry. If I come up with something interesting to write about I promise I will post something. I’m boring.

A little late to the Pumpkin Beer party this year but my wife and I were also a little late celebrating Halloween. We were out of town the weekend of all hallows eve so this past weekend we decided to carve our pumpkins, watch some horror movies and crack open this brew.

I had picked it this bottle of Smashed Pumpkin a few months back when we had visited the  Shipyard Brewery up in Portland Maine. It had just been released and we actually had a chance to sample last year’s batch in the tasting room. Good people those folks up at Shipyard. They made me feel pretty. But not in a dirty way.

Anyway the beer, we’re here to talk about the beer and not how dynamite I look today. Which by the way I do, the t-shirt is clean after all. In short I love this beer. Next to Southern Tier’s Pumking this might be my favorite pumpkin beer out there. It’s nice and smooth where a lot of beers go overboard on the spices. How they hide the 9% ABV I have no idea but they do, very well. A good amount of malt in the taste also which I think works well with the spice. Nothing crazy or out there going on here, unless of course you count the fact that you’re going to be a little tipsy by the end, just an awesome straight forward pumpkin beer. Drink it, now!

We’ve got a lot to talk about here before we even get to the taste my friends so you might want to grab a box of Fig Newtons and put on your comfy knock-a-bouts. It’s going to get thick.

First off this is what the kids on the tubes call a collaboration beer. Meaning a couple, or in this case three, breweries get together and make a beer. So this one was spawned from Stone, Dogfish and Victory getting together and starting something they call “BUFF” or “Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor”. They apparently didn’t do to much with the idea until 2010 when they created this brew. The rest of the time I think they played video games and grab ass. That’s probably not true.

This is an ale made with parsley, Rosemary and thyme. I think they made a song about that or something. Aroma is a little bit lemony, of the herbs used in this I would say the parsly sticks out most. But that could also be in my head, honestly it smells like all four of them and I had trouble picking out which was the front runner. In any case it smells good, like fresh herbs. So there’s that.

Taste I think has to go to the sage and Rosemary. But again it’s hard to tell. Not that it matters really, at the end of the day it’s a nice refreshing brew. I have no idea if the three plan on making more beers together but I hope so. Do it for me kids, for the Joey.

I’m sitting here watching “30 Days of Night: Dark Days”, a direct to DVD sequel to a movie that no one liked, except me maybe. It’s not very good. Luckily though I am distracted by this mighty good beer. Let’s talk about that shell we! I can’t imagine you want to hear about the movie.

Like their other beers Stone Brewing goes to great length to explain their brew, seriously the back of the 22 oz bottle has a small book on it. It’s  impressive but I have to admit I didn’t read it. But I got a rough idea from scrolling over it, the brew is combo west coast IPA and straight up Belgian delight. Get where the name Cali-Belgigue comes from now? See we all learned something.

It seems like a simple enough idea. Take your standard IPA and throw in some Belgian yeast but I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of beers like this. Of course it should also be noted that Stone’s “standard” IPA is pretty awesome on its own so they’ve got a head start. The aroma was a little surprising to me but it probably shouldn’t of been. A big ass amount of hops popped up off the bottle before I even started to pour. When I shove my nose right up in the glass though you do get a nice hint of yeast, so it’s there. But hops are the front runner.

The flavor is such a great balance of citrus from the hops and clove/banana from the yeast that I almost think they found way to marry them in a court of law. It’s good, very good even. There I said it. Little bit of a warm feeling going down which was kind of surprising for only being about 7% ABV but then again what the hell do I know.

So in short this beer is a lot better this crappy horror movie I’m watching right now. But I have to say after finishing off a bottle of this I’m liking the rubber teeth vampires a lot more then I did when I first cracked it open. So there’s that. Beer makes everything better.

I’ve decided to switch over to Tumblr based on the recommendation of Mr. Pixelheap. I have no idea what the difference is but I pretty much went to college in Philly because he said it would be cool so really putting my stupid blog somewhere else because he says to isn’t that big of a deal.

You’re welcome

A lot of people avoid moving to places like California and Florida because they’ll “miss the seasons”. I’ve always thought that it ridiculous. I’ve lived with seasons for 32 years of my life, they suck. A nice fall day when it’s about 68 degrees out is good. Same goes for Spring. But -10 degrees and waiting for the bus sucks big time and so does waiting in a hot disgusting subway station when it’s 90 out. Seasons are stupid but you know what isn’t? Seasonal beers! And Fall just happens to be the best time for these brews. Case in point is one beer that I look forward to more then any other to be released, Southern Tier Brewing Companies Pumking.

This beer is like pumpkin pie in a bottle. Where most pumpkin beers have a large amount of spice flavor to them Pumpking does a great job of balancing that out with a rich creamy mouthfeel that makes you want to nestle up next to a warm fire.

The aroma is big on nutmeg with some hints of butter and clove. I don’t know how they get butter in a beer but trust me on this, it’s awesome. Like the pie just came out of the oven or you fell in a big vat or pie mix. The flavor I’ve already explained but I think I should do it again. Like you just shoved an entire pumpkin pie in your mouth and french kissed Charlie Brown in a pumpkin patch. Sounds really hot right? Only complaint I think I can make about this one is there’s no way you could tell it’s 9% ABV without looking at the bottle. The flavors do a great job of covering that up. Even if you’re not a fan of pumpkin beers I’d suggest giving this one a go. It’s completely different from any other beer I’ve had and by far my favorite of the style.