Public Enemies Trailer

OK - perhaps a teaser of a trailer but still a pretty good production. I like the first more then the second even though the second as some newer material.



I like the first one better but here is an updated version!





Caffeine

I tried a new candy bar called Snickers Charged. Yea - the shiny packaging got me all excited so I purchased one. It has 60mg of caffeine, 50mg of taurine, and 10% of your daily value of Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, biotin and Pantothenic Acid. The caffeine is a little less then a typical 8oz cup of coffee. Not that exciting but if companies can find a way to put caffeine in anything they will certainly try.

Personally I have only felt a caffeine buzz once in my life. I think it is more of a placebo but Starbucks certainly does like the wonders of caffeine. In the latest tests Starbucks have the most caffeine in their coffee. It's what makes people come back for more and more and more.

Even Dunkin Donuts are looking into new caffeine donuts. One donuts will have the equivalent of a cup of coffee.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if caffeine was never discovered. No caffeinated soft drinks or Hershey bars or coffee.

OH - Snickers Charged had no effect on me and tasted pretty much the same.
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Grinders Island Brewery Double Chocolate Stout Doggie Beer Bars!

There are two major bi-products from making beer. The first is an astonishing amount of packing peanuts which come in the boxes I receive Austin Home Brew. I have "talked" to the owner about this and he said they tried organic packing peanuts but rodents seemed to love them.

His suggestion was to find a local company that use's them and donate. So if you know any local companies in Columbus that use packing peanuts! Let me know.

The other is barley. two to three pounds of it.

My first few batches I tossed the sweet grain into the garden as compost. It all seemed like a good idea until I saw Blake in the garden eating the dirt and or rolling in it. I looked it up to make sure dogs and barley were compatible (I guess rodents have problems) and they are.

So last night I was brewing up a batch of Double Chocolate Stout (a 3.5 hour process) and without thinking too much about it figured I'd make Grinders Island Brewery Double Chocolate Stout Doggie Beer Bars!

Of course I've never done anything like this in my life and thought perhaps 4 minutes about it and dove it. What could go wrong!!

hmmmmm - perhaps I should have thought of this JUST A LITTLE LONGER.

First of all before I get people emailing me - there is NO actual chocolate in the bars. It's chocolate malt which is malted barley. Barley that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and then quickly halted from germinating any further by drying with hot air. THAT is malt.

Well - after I was finished sparging my mash in preparation to creating my wort (I love that kind of talk) I had 2.5 pounds of sweet/sticky hot barley. A very yummy mixture actually with five different malts.

I mixed in a bunch of peanut butter, flour and a few eggs!! Put the goop on a cookie sheet and back for 15 minutes, then another 15 and then another half hour until I got frustrated and said hell with it - they will never get crispy.

Blake LOVED the "bars". Of course he also loves poop., I'm not really sure if it's better then poop or not. Maybe that will be a tag line.

Grinders Island Brewery Double Chocolate Stout Doggie Beer Bars!

Healthier AND Better Then Poop!

Dog owners will know what I'm talking about! He got sort of crazy after he had some and DJ thought he might be drunk but I believe there has to be fermentation involved to create alcohol.

Anyway - I'm looking into REAL recipes now and perhaps I have to dry the grain before making treats. I've seen some dog treats recipes and . . come on. Do you really need 10 ingredients - I need something real simple with flour, eggs and peanut butter. Dogs eat anything. Maybe I have to make them into cookies instead of bars. That way they would dry out faster.

hmmmmmm - Hey - I actually found a recipe for spent grains - Blake will be happy!
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Young Chuck, moved to Montana and bought a horse from a farmer for $100.00. The farmer agreed to deliver the horse the next day. The next day he drove up and said, 'Sorry son, but I have some bad news, the horse died.'

Chuck replied, 'Well, then just give me my money back.'The farmer said, 'Can't do that. I went and spent it already.'

Chuck said, 'Ok, then, just bring me the dead horse.'

The farmer asked, 'What ya gonna do with him?

Chuck said, 'I'm going to raffle him off.'

The farmer said, 'You can't raffle off a dead horse!'

Chuck said, 'Sure I can Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead.'

A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, 'What happened with that dead horse?'

Chuck said, 'I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898.00.'

The farmer said, 'Didn't anyone complain?' Chuck said, 'Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back.'

Chuck grew up and now works for the government.
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SUMMIT CREDIT UNION - DAMN YOU

Yea - remember when I lost a debit card a while back? I called the Credit Union to get a new card Friday and they said they could not do that. Now that they knew it was lost one they HAD to cancel the card. I said can you wait until after the weekend? No. They said deal with it (basically - not their words).

So they canceled the card and I cut up the remaining card.

The PROBLEM was that they canceled MY debit card!!! Not the joint account. DJ say - well - at least we still have one card . . . . . . . no honey - I sniped it up! grrrrrrr

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Packers - if anyone wants a tape of Saturdays game let me know before I actually burn the tape as I never want it to be used that tape again.

Hey - it's preseason on the road with 11 starters not even making the trip.

Opening night is Monday September 2nd AT 6:00.

That's right - the Packer game September 2nd, Monday night has a 6:00 starting time - I just saw the tickets with Brett Favre on them (sort of funny).
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Have a great Monday!

What? No Synchronized Weightlifting?

Now wait just a dog gone New York minute. First I can not find Mens Synchronized Swimming and then I can not find Synchronized Weightlifting (either sex, you really can't tell) . Where are all the good sports.

Then I saw Team Handball which looks NOTHING like real handball. Is this REALLY a sport???

Sheesh!! Water Polo? WHERE ARE THE HORSES!!!!!

Sure - we can have water walking but no Synchronized Swimming!!!


And talk about cheating. Who REALLY wants to wrestle this guy.

Did anybody watch the Chinese Synchronized Diving? WOW! Seriously awesome - I wonder what the Synchronized Diving Commentators do between Olympics! I'm still thinking that the Chinese won the Gold using a Hologram.

At the same time as the 2008 Olympics is the World Headless Competition! This is a little know event that is not shown on TV because well . . . . it's a little creepy!


Back to reality - sis you know Michale Phelps has size 14 feet?

Remember this guy??

Here he is today
And I bet you thought I'd find some bad photo!!!
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Back here in the States The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood (I'm trying to keep the Chinese theme) on this day in 1939.

Also on this day but 30 later in in an entirely different reality The Woodstock Music Festival started in Bethel, New York. 186,000 tickets were sold but more then 400,000 attended.

There were only two deaths, one from a heroin overdose and one from being run over by a tractor in a neighboring corn field. There were two births!

After the concert Max Yasgur, who owned the site of the event, saw it as a victory of peace and love. He spoke of how nearly half a million people filled with possibilities of disaster, riot, looting, and catastrophe spent the three days with music and peace on their minds. He states that “if we join them, we can turn those adversities that are the problems of America today into a hope for a brighter and more peaceful future...

If any of you ever get a chance to see Tom Brokaws Special called 1969 (oops 1968 - DANG!! wrong year) on the History Channel check it out, you will not be sorry. ANYWAY - pretend we're talking about 1968.

It's a very very good summery of 1968 and you really wonder how the world survived. So many things were going wrong. You think these are hard times but this ain't nothing! I'm glad I was not old enough to really know what was happening in the world as I would have been scared shitless.
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This being Friday we all know that Saturday and Sunday are coming. Many of you retired people are not aware of this "weekend" thing so I will not blog on the weekends for retired people.

This way they can wake up. Look for the blog and when there is no new blog they will know it is either Saturday OR Sunday (depending how long they slept). It's a public service.

Plus we're having a guy come out tomorrow morning to talk about finishing our basement. Were not going to take his offer as it's from the Owens Corning Basement Finishing people and we have read ALL about them. But might as well hear their pressure sales pitch as they try to sell their $70 per square foot basement system.

Speaking of oppressive work places.

My sup was just talking about a place where he worked where a lead worker told his workers to leave a post-it note on their computer when they were going to the bathroom.

My sup found out about this (he was their sup at the time) and told the employee to leave a yellow post-it note if he was just going pee and a green one for going poop.

He stopped this process after a few days and some laughter!

I'll have more on that Monday!

Rod

Favre - Dorff - Dillinger

At The Kurth last night I had the pleasure of talking to a woman who works in Columbus but lives in Black River Falls(??). We talked about Dillinger and she said there was a bar in Lyndon Station (the only town where I was almost hit by a house . . . more on that later) that had a photo of her brother(??) sitting on Dillinger's lap.

It seemed that Dillinger would stop at the speak easy on his way to Little Bohemia and since the internet connection was rather slow in the 1930's no one knew he was the NOTORIOUS KILLER BANK ROBBER JOHN DILLINGER!

He was just a real nice guy that EVERYBODY loved.
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In the middle of July there was an interview with Stephen Dorff

Brent Simon: You mentioned Public Enemies — what was that experience like, and what's the tone and look of the film?

Stephen Dorff: It was awesome. We just finished last week, and it's a full-on gangster flick — 1934, the last year of Dillinger's life, and shooting real Tommy guns and hanging out of cars, having a ball. It was a journey, with a bunch of great actors. Johnny (Depp) was incredible to work with, and very sweet to me. I've known him for years, but had never gotten to work with him. And Marion Cotillard is an incredible actress; Christian Bale, the list goes on. There's so many great actors in that film. I had a really good time with Michael on it. It was long, but I think it'll be a really good movie. I think they're talking about a trailer or teaser going up soon, and it'll probably be out next summer.

hmmmmmmmm!
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OK OK - Ricky Weeks can NOT turn a Double play for the life of him! It's a head case thing now I believe.
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Farve - from Football Outsiders - the Gods of numbers and REAL in site to football.

Brett Favre: We’ve run the new projections. Not good. Favre is moving to a team with a weaker offensive line, and away from perhaps the deepest receiver corps in the NFL. He relied more on short passes in 2007 than his gunslinger reputation might have you believe; 54 percent of his throws were listed by Football Outsiders as Short (five yards or less), which was five percent higher than in 2006. Green Bay’s receivers led the NFL in yards after catch in 2007, and they’re certainly a good bet to do so again with Aaron Rodgers throwing a bunch of three-yard outs.

Of course, you’re thinking that New York’s receivers, used to compensating for Chad Pennington’s “noodle arm,” would have a bead on YAC(Yards after Catch), right? Nope. The Jets ranked 26th in YAC overall, and 15th in YAC by receivers. Oh yeah, there’s also Ryan Grant and his 161 DYAR (11th among running backs) versus Thomas Jones and his -36 DYAR (just above Cedric Benson). So, there’s your complementary running game down the tubes. Will defenses back off with Favre under center? To a point, but the message is clear. Brett Favre was the engine in an efficiency machine, and he’s now in a situation where he’ll have to make more things happen. Historically, the more he’s “just havin’ fun out there” because he has to, the more sacks and interceptions will pile up.
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One of my many super hero traits (perfect pitch and the ability to visualize music and flavor with colors) is the ability to see things straight . . . . . or actually to get annoyed when I see something NOT straight.

Recently when driving to work we have seen a car that has an American Flag on the back trunk - AND IT'S CROOKED???? It just bugs the hell out of me! HOW can someone put on a bumper sticker CROOKED!!! Can they not tell it's 10 degrees leaning? Were they drunk? Do they just not care?? I honestly do not understand how you can do this.

There is a State van that has an entire decal crooked. AAAARGH!!!

I can understand the advertising thing where it's meant to be crooked to get your attention. The Columbus Library has a metal plaque next to it's door that is crooked.

Michelle's photos are crooked but that is a different animal and now she has ME taking crooked shots - they are meant to be crooked. But bumper stickers are making me have road rage :-)
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OH - anybody else in the Kestrel Ridge subdivision get a letter saying there will be a neighborhood meeting September 2nd?

I was putting in some top soil and a certain neighbor is drives up and informs me that SHE got a letter and there will BE A MEETING. Well - LA-DE-FREAKIN-DAA! oh - don't get me started!!

We didn't get a letter. calm down rod - go to your happy place.
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Check out this slow mo lightning - it's awesome



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Being hit by a house.

I was on a 500 mile week long bike tour and we were passing through Lyndon Station. Also passing through was a large house on a trailer. I was in the corner that comes into main street and a guy comes up and tells me I better move before a house hits me!

It was the closest I have ever come to having a house hit me.
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Lastly - I have mentioned this before about beer being good for you (in moderation) but here are some more facts.

Drinking beer in moderation will . . . . .

Lower rates of heart disease. Consuming alcohol in moderation (defined by the U.S. government as no more than two drinks per day for men or one drink per day for women (sucks to be you guys)) may lower coronary heart disease risk for some people by 30 to 60 percent, even those at high risk because of diabetes, hypertension or a previous heart attack.

Aid in bone formation. Beer contains silicon, a mineral that helps build bone mass. Dietary silicon has been shown in one study to improve bone density in the hips of men and premenopausal women.

Prevent cell damage that can lead to cancer and heart disease. Hops and malt used to make beer are rich sources of disease-fighting antioxidants. Beer also contains polyphenols, the same antioxidants found in wine, fruits, vegetables, and green and black tea. Ales and lagers generally contain more antioxidants than light and nonalcoholic beers.

Lower rates of diabetes. In one 12-year study, regular light to moderate alcohol intake was associated with a 36-percent lower risk of diabetes. Moderate consumption has been associated with reduced insulin resistance and reduced diabetes (conversely, heavy drinking and alcohol dependence is associated with increased insulin resistance and increased diabetes).

Protect against ischemic stroke (responsible for 80 percent of all strokes), Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Moderate consumption has been linked to improved cognition and memory.

So - drink up!!!

Rod