Kokanee, anyone?

Kokanee!! Its Glacier Fresh! I might have never heard if it, but its one of the best selling beers in Western Canada! Which is almost saying something!

                                        

Let's start with the facts: It's a Labatt product, and although brewed in Canada, it is still considered an American Adjunct Lager, proving that "American Adjunct Lager" is just code for "straw-colored backwash". It is advertised as being brewed with mountain stream water. Do they have any idea what fish do in that water?!

  

The word "Konakee" is a term for an inland sock-eye salmon in the Native American Okanagan language.

It has been kindly requested that I refrain from any jokes that poke fun at the rampant alcoholism that is present on Native American reservations. But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking of some really awful cheap jokes. I'm thinking them, alright. I'm thinking them right now...

Moving on... The packaging was as generic as they come. Blue skies, frosty mountains, the word 'beer'. Apparently there's a Sasquatch hidden somewhere on the label, but I couldn't find it. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia is just messing with me for not donating money like they asked me to.

The beer was highly carbonated, which left me very burpy. And much like every American Adjunct, it smelled like rank rotten cabbage. But the taste wasn't the worst. It's got an average alcohol percentage at around 5%, and lacks the standard gross after-taste, which makes it pretty darn drinkable.

Overall, I give it a high C on the cheap beer scale. Definitely a Kimber-do.

Are you there, GiaGia?

So, unemployment has taken a weird toll on me.

I'm bored, and its depressing to watch my phone not ring, and my e-mail box fill up with nothing but info on sales from the Gap, so in an effort to keep myself busy, I've started walking.

Today on my walk I was flagged down by an elderly woman who looked entirely too much like my long-deceased grandmother. If she could have stood up straight, she would have tapped out at around 4' 9'', and she had a  thick eastern European accent that I didn't remember my GiaGia having, but I haven't seen her in a while, so went along with it. She needed me to cut a tree branch for her, and it was clear, now that I had stopped, she was not asking me, she was telling me. So, I cut the branch, without a saw, and then she immediately got me started on racking the lawn. At one point, to let me know I was doing a sub-par job, she walked over and picked up a leaf from an area I had already gone over.

After I had dragged the leaves across the street, she told me to wait while she went into the house. I figured she had something in there she needed fixed, but instead, she came back with this:

Two bags of seasoned croutons and a snack sized fiber one brownie, to thank me for my help. She also offered to have me come in for some toasted bread, but I kindly declined, twice.

Its been a pretty good day, and now I know where I can get toasted bread anytime I want.

The Very First Beer of the Year

Today's beer is Kodiak Ridge Lager, a American Adjunct that I found at the local SaveMart for $3.99/6pack.

It had a logo that appealed to the ho-dunk backwoods hillbilly side of me (what? I have a lot of sides). Reading the can from top to bottom, it starts with a picture of a bear. Bears are Bad-ass. I'm intrigued. Under that, the word "Beer". Yes. I like beer, I'll read on. After that "Kodiak" Again. Bad-ass bear. Read on. Under that "Ridge" Meh... you're losing me, but then in finishes with "Lager" And I'm sold.  

I'd never heard of it, but it must have traveled to the grocery store via coal truck, because the tops of the cans were covered it soot. But it met my new requirement of not being a 30-rack, because I'm tired of getting stuck with 28 undrinkable toxic beers. So, I bought it.  But I had to clean it before I poured:

Upon pouring, I found that it had a less than impressive color. Its lightly carbonated, and the lacing is non-existent. It doesn't smell good. I don't really know how else to explain it. It smells like dirty water or something.

The distributors of Kodiak Ridge is in Novato, California, and its bottled at the Genesee Brewing Company in Rochester, New York, both of which are decided Kodiak-free zones, but whatever, if my city's claim to fame was being the northernmost town in Marin County, I'd want to associate myself with an bad ass Alaskan bear too. I'd also want to move.  

Back to the beer. Its not that thick sweet syrupy beer like the-beer-that-shall-not-be-named. Its very light, a little tangy, with very little after taste. Its certainly drinkable.
I give it a C-

Hipsters in love, or you know, just, like, together or whatever.

I spent my Sunday morning at a bridal expo, and I am embarrassed about it. You know something is shameful when they give out free cake and drinks and you still don't want anyone to know you were there.

It was exactly what I expected it to be, with the exception of a new trend in hipster weddings. There were multiple vendors (dueling vendors!!) renting vintage accessories for your special day. If hipsters even have special days. Maybe they just have, like, you know, days, or whatever.

I now know that for a small fortune, you can rent dirty old bicycles, stacked luggage, empty mason jars, old books, storm windows, or even broken camera equipment. As I was looking at their displays, I realize that my mother's house is like a warehouse of hipster accessories. And she didn't even know it; how hipster of her is that?!   

There was one "piece" at the show that consisted of three old doors leaned up against each other. They looked exactly like the doors my mother stores in our basement because it would be too expensive to bring them to the dump. I asked the vendor how much it would be to rent them and she replied, "Oh, this entire ensemble, including the board*, would be around $350 for an event."

So, let me get this straight, my mother hides her doors and storm windows in the basement, when she could be pimping them around town for serious bank?! That is ridiculous. 

I made my mom go and take a picture of one of them:

 

*the board for rent was a 2x4 covered in chipped paint. And I know what you're thinking. I can't believe she just threw the board in for free either.

To put this all into perspective, if my mother had been renting this decorative fruitcake tin, instead of getting it for free from the dump's swap shop ten years ago, she would have had to pay more then ten thousand dollars just to have it sitting, or, should I say decorating, in her pantry.

I wonder how much they'd change for a peace lily the size of a mature hosta, because she's got one. 

I asked my mom to walk around her house and take pictures of her stuff, here are a few things she captured: 

(not shown: wood stove, cake holders, rocking chair, twenty-year-old cat, 50s step stool, endless amounts of baskets, and more)

I know. Its a goldmine in there. 

Thanks, mom. 

Year End Report:

Google Analytics gives me a lot of stats that are completely not useful to me, but I still find it interesting, because they're about me.

For example, I had 2501 visitors this year on the blog, 400 more visitors than last year, 613 unique visitors, twice as many as last year, and on average, people spent less than a minute on the site, which is actually way less than they spent on the site last year on average, suggesting that a lot more people are finding my webpage for the first time, but then instantly realizing they're in the wrong place. 

What were these people searching for? Well, that's where my second edition of  "I'm pretty sure you didn't find what you were looking for" comes in. Here are my top ten winners of 2011 (for the record, because thanks to google analytics I have a record, I had 99 absolute zingers to choose from), in no particular order:

1. Stalking Cartoonists Makes Me Pee Myself
2. Other People Don't Think I'm Funny
3. Adult Braces Site: Blogspot.com
4. Coors Light Cake
5. Funny Maths Exam Answers Calculator
6. Kimwaw Corn Cakes
7. My Mom Makes Me Wear Diapers Because I Got The Runs On A Car Trip
8. Stuff to Confuzz Your Friends
9. Silver the 85 Year Very Oldman

and finally, last, and most personally hurtful:

10. Ugly Little Blonde Girl With Braces and Glasses

Maybe I did learn something from Google Analytics... I talk about cake way more than I thought, and the internet in comprised of a bunch of idiot perverts.

Second verse, same as the first!

So, I planned on looking back at my early 2011 posts, and using them to illustrate how much I've changed this year, and BOY was I disappointed. I'm still an adult non-student who wears cat-hair shirts to the grocery store to buy cheap beer in the middle of the afternoon, except now I'm unemployed, which is just the icing on the shit cake. I still dress like an old man and expect people to think I'm cute, and I still may or may not be retarded.

Although it was not an excellent year for personal growth, a lot of good has come from 2011. I joined an improv group (www.blacktopcomedy.com go see it, its fantastic), started writing stand-up material (as of two days ago), I bought a car (haggled the SHIT out of the dealer, cried, pitched a fit, and now I can never go back there). I watched a record number of movies in theaters this year: Jane Eyre, Super 8, Bridesmaids, Source Code, Midnight in Paris, The Muppets, and tonight we're going to see TinTin in 3D! I also ate a record number of Papa Murphy's pizzas (an average of one every 2.5 weeks).

Looking back in the year in posts, I am sad that I accidentally abandoned (read: forgot about) my Gross Food Photography project. The Calimonter was such a disgusting gem. I also completely forgot about my Facebook page, and it got archived. Also, I forgot about my childhood bank account, which had 25 cents in it, and was closed for inactivity. I grieved over that for about six straight minutes. I'm going to try not to forget so much in 2012.


On this day last year, I requested "more of the same", and although I didn't really get that, I can't complain. For 2012 however, I request money. Cold, hard cash. And a lot of it.

I take it back.

I need to retract a statement I made earlier in regards to the worst beer I have ever had. I was wrong, Silver Stallion has been stripped of the title of worse-beer-ever. Don't get me wrong, its still a terrible, terrible beer. But it isn't the worst.

This review is of the actual worst beer I have ever had: Game-Day Ice. And I wasn't expecting a lot from the 7-11 produced sister beer of Game Day Light, at $2.99 for a twelve pack, and the notorious 'ice beer' label, it was cringe-inducing before I even cracked open the can.

The beer had color; a dark yellow, but absolutely no head. It was as flat as apple juice. In fact, we continued to compare it to apple juice throughout the taste-test. It smelled like a rotten fruit factory, and who the hell would manufacture rotten fruit? The taste was like corn syrupy garbage. It stuck in your mouth like peanut butter. Clearly the phrase "premium brewed" means nothing. Mike managed to take one sip. I drank 3 cans, because, well, we had 12. As I was drinking, I continued to search for adjectives to describe this  terrible beer, but it was decided one dimensional.

So the taste was terrible, and the smell was rank, but Game-Day Ice didn't clinch the title of Worst Beer Ever until 5am the next morning, when I started what would prove to be a seven hour vomit-fest. I threw-up everything I had ever eaten in my entire life, violently. I couldn't keep down ice, which I found someone ironic. Maybe more unfortunate than ironic... Anyway, Game-Day Ice is now a swear word in our house. It should not be consumed by anyone, its not even fit to be cooked with.

Game-Day Ice, Earning my lowest beer rating ever: F