FlaSoxxJim

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Mar 30, 2010 -> 03:42 PM) You Didn Get Mad When!... ^ ^ Pretty much.

Despite the lack of activity in this thread, my evenings of late have not been entirely bereft of the finer things. This evening I'm getting the chance to get to know a brand new (to me) rum called Scarlet Ibis. A Trinidad navy proof rum blended from several oak aged pot still rums and imported to the states specifically at the request of NY's Death and Co. cocktail bar, a couple dozen cases were released to the public in 2008 and apparently some more has been made available as well. Been reading about this one for a while and last week it showed up on the shelf of a local shop. Sipping this one neat revealed lots of great funky pot stil flavors backed up by a formidable bit of alcohol. Some of the reviews I've read suggest this one is too harsh to make for a good neat sipper, but I think I have to disagree. Tried it in a classic (rum, curacao, lime, orgeat, simple syrup) mai tai next, pairing an ounce of Scarlet Ibis with an ounce of El Dorado 15-year Demerera rum which remains one my all-time favorite rums. Outstanding drink, good complexity and balance, and one that I could drink on a regular basis if the rums weren't both $30+ per bottle. Currently enjoying a daiquiri with the new rum, lime and sugar, and a bit of pimento (allspice) dram. Really a very good drink, although I'm a little surprised how nicely this boisterous rum plays with the other ingredients. Totally tasty drink, but I was looking forward to a little more of the rough rum character coming through in this one. Might need to step back some of he other ingredients to let the rum come through a bit more. The experimentation continues. . .

Wow, talk about a whirlwind romance! I think it's very shrewd. . . she hasn't really had time to see most of the rough edges yet. Well done.

Happy belated birthday wishes, Kap!

Belated Birthday Tidings!

Happy belated B-Day. Oh, wait, I forgot about your advanced age. . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

QUOTE (iamshack @ Mar 20, 2010 -> 12:08 AM) What? No one has any more relationship problems now? Nope, we figured everything out a little while ago. Where the hell were you?

Excellent Work!

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Mar 18, 2010 -> 08:55 PM) The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Public Citizen sued over it. Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter actually joined in. The lawsuit determined that a deem and pass rule is constitutional and acceptable. Doh!

QUOTE (The Baconator @ Mar 18, 2010 -> 10:24 PM) B, primarily because the Nike swoosh on a Sox hat irks me. ^^ That. Who wants to be Tiger Woods and have the SWOOSH on every damn piece of clothing?

Yeah, Predators looks like it may be totally over the top badass, the same way Aliens was as a followup to the original. I'll just pretend that none of the Predator films other than the first one exist and treat this one as the followup. Full Disclosure: I did like the first AVP, although Requiem had to be one of the biggest turds I've ever watched.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 10:07 PM) He is awful live now. I saw him and Billy Joel with a free ticket about 5 years ago, and he was a shell of himself. Billy Joel stole the show. I saw them together the first time out back in the early 90s. Contrary to your exerience, that first time around Elton John was definitely the better performer.

QUOTE (maggliopipe @ Mar 18, 2010 -> 12:24 PM) Alex Chilton died last night of a heart attack at age 59. Very talented and unknown guy that inspired a lot of acts. I liked The Box Tops and Big Star's music, but learned to appreciate him a lot more after visiting the Stax Museum in Memphis last year. http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/tur...less-bands.html Oh, wow, I hadn't seen that. Big Star is one of the most underappreciated rock bands of all time and influenced so many different acts. Going to put #1 Record on right now in remembrance of Alex and Chris Bell.

I was going to post this in the Finer Things thread, but decided instead that there might be a broader interest so I'm posting here. With the Jewish Passover holiday season set to commence March 29th, Kosher Coke has started to show up is grocery story Kosher shelves in the ethnic food aisles. This is real Coca-Cola made with real sugar and not high fructose corn syrup. This is how it's supposed to taste. Having recently treated my kids to a couple cans of the recently released real sugar Throwback Pepsi, they absolutely flipped when they tried real Coke for the first time the other day. The glass bottles of Mexican real sugar Coke that used to turn up at a few Hispanic grocery stores have pretty much been replace by a Coke product still from Mexico but now using corn syrup. The Kosher Coke is the only real sugar Coke I've seen here in about two years. Unfortunately, I'm only finding it in 2 liter bottles, because I'd much rather have single serving bottles that I can ration over the next year, reserving them for the occasional 10 Cane Cuba Libre that is infinitely better with real sugar Coke.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 07:05 PM) I just done see how sequel for a movie ruins this track record. What if Brad Bird meant the Incredibles to be a 3 story Arc, and the Moleman was leading into it? With the game tie-in, it is possible play the game then. :-) I kid because I care

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 05:08 PM) You didnt quite answer my question though, you LOVE your godzilla movies. Lets say you were a kid/teenager when the original Godzilla came out. Would you think "I hope they dont make another. This is great, dont mess with perfection."? Its all in the eye of the beholder. Personally I like reading books/comics/watching movies that continue on with a character or storyline. I want to know what happens next. And I am sorry, but your Monsters Inc/Toy Story 2 criticism is kind of weak. There have been plenty of movies that have made fun of the mysterious behind-that-door baggage service at airports. The story in itself didnt rip anything off, maybe they did use a similar idea in one scene, but overall the movies arent very similar. I stand by my criticism of pixar raping itself in two successive films. Had they been lampooning some other cultural touchstone I wouldn't take issue with it, but it was at best two production teams that didn't communicate, and at worst a rare example of pixar being lazy. That is what I'd like to see them avoid - lazy, uninspired filmmaking. And so far they have done a remarkable job of it. Re, the Godzilla comparison. I love the franchise because it got so campy and low rent and that was part of my childhood. There is no question in my mind that the reputation and legacy of the original film has been dameged by decades of shoddy remakes. So, if the goal in serializing pixar's best work is to provide camp fodder for a new generation of kids, then let the subpar sequels fly. I may be selfish here, but my hope is that the amazingly rare phenomenon of a flawless big screen track record that is pixar remains intact.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 04:29 PM) Yea Toy Story was my favorite when I was a kid with the Incredibles right up there. Ice Age ain't bad either. Ice Age isn't Pixar. Not a bad film though, I agree.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 04:14 PM) FlaSoxx, would you be happy if they stopped making Godzilla movies after the first one ever made? I loves me some bad Showa era Godzilla installments, that is true. But not one of them can hold a candle to the 1954 original (the version without Raymond Burr spliced in, thank you very much). The beauty of Incredibles and the way it ended, with the Underminer (the Mole Man parody) showing up and the family going into battle mode, was that it let the viewer know that this family of superheroes is out there fighting the never-ending comic book battle against the baddies. That those adventures are not chronicled for us in sequel upon sequel (akin to month after month in the comic world) doesn't diminish the satisfaction of imagining they are out there doing battle somewhere on our behalf. The Monsters Inc. talk brings up a key criticism of mine regarding Toy Story 2. The airport baggage conveyor belt seen was totally derivative of the Monsters climax scene with all the bedroom doors on the conveyors. Pixar ripping itself off. That's the lack of original ideas that I'm afraid the sequels could devolve into if they go that route.

Brad Bird is a genius and The Incredibles is not just one of my favorite Pixar offerings, it's one of my favorite films period. And it would be a snap to serialize the franchise and do sequels ala' the comics that inspired the film. But I really hope they don't. Don't mess with perfection.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 01:05 PM) They are also making a Cars 2 (coming out next year) which is the first Pixar movie I'm not really looking forward to. But they are also releasing an original movie in December of next year as well. Yeah, that's what I don't want them to start doing — going the less creative sequel route. I think revisiting favorite characters in the the shorts, ala' jack Jack's Revenge and the one with Mater and the aliens is enjoyable, but I'm not nearly as interested in seeing the studio revisit their best work via sequels as I am in seeing more original offerings.

I'm also in agreement that cars was the weakest of the Pixar offerings, but that comes down to the company it has to keep in the other Pixar films. That said, I'm in the apparent minority of rabid Pixar fans who would rather not see them focus on Toy Story sequels. The stable of characters is great, certainly, but I fear that success with the sequels could send the company down that road with their other franchises and that would be a shame. Part of the perfection of the films is that they are complete little stand-alone entities that are as close to perfect storytelling as films usually get. It becomes too easy to riff off the established characters and the sequels suffer for it. I definitely think that was the case with Toy Story 2 and will be with the third installment as well.

QUOTE (Flash Tizzle @ Mar 17, 2010 -> 06:57 AM) Usually for something to be ironic you need to compare several items that are somewhat related, and I can't see how cruelty and 'self-mutilation' (which you associate with piercings and tattoos) are similar. Everyone entering the door will be willing participants for whatever they want done to themselves. Did you hear the one about the masochist and his sadist wife who used to torture him by refusing to torture him?

And in other not-drunk-but-drinkin' news. . . the Trinidad Sour continues to be the greatest counterintuitive-cocktail-that-totally-works in history. I think I poured dashes off of my first bottle of Ango for two years before I used it up, and now here comes this crazy, shouldn't-work-but-does cocktail that uses a full ounce of the stuff in one go! Someone else here on SoxTalk, please give this cocktail a spin at home. It has, for good reason, been the buzz in the bozeblogger community for a while and it's worth trying if only to challenge your notion of how bitters should be used in cocktails and what exactly constitutes a cocktail by conventional standards. Disclosure: I can't get a 100-proof rye here, so by necessity I substitute the venerable 80 proof Old Overhart in this one. I've asked Santa for Bonded Rittenhouse for a couple of years running, and instead I always seem to get underwear. Go figure.

Adding the exactly 6 drops of Pernod first this time around, I managed to mix up a 1934 Donn the Beachcomber Zombie to book specs tonight — or at least to reasonable specs given that the Puerto Rican rum Donn used back then doesn't exist anymore and I can't get Demerera 151 here to save my life. Subbing the newly encountered and very nice Ron Del Barrilito 3 Star PR and an imperfect Goslings Black Seal 151 in place of the above missing ingredients, and piling Appletons 12 year on top of that, gives a nice rummy base for this historic tiki drink. Toss in homemade falernum (lime zest and ginger liqueur that one of the great "lost" cocktail ingredients), homemade cold-press grenadine (pomegranate juice and sugar), homemade Donn's Mix 2 (grapefruit juice and cinnamon syrup), lime juice, and a dash of bitters, quick mix in a blender with a cup of ice, and voila! Vintage Tiki genius. Stepping back from my own cocktail nerdia long enough to see the number of specialty and homebrewed ingredients in this one, I guess I can understand why the original zombie is not often mixed up outside of the homes of obsessed alco-historians. Which is a shame, because this is one incredibly tasty, no-holds-barred, rumaliscious drink!! That said — and as much as I'm digging the Del Barrilito as a new favorite sipper — I think this drink is slightly better with old standby Bacardi 8. Granted, when a drink weighs in at 4 oz of rum (including a good whallop of overproof), you're not doing a lot of side-by-side comparisons unless you already have a replacement liver lined up. But I think there is an over all depthe and richness that the Bacardi 8 gives to drinks like this that the Del Barrilito just barely misses out on. Maybe that means Del Barrilito stays on as a fine sipper, while the Bacardi 8 resumes its place as my go-to anejo PR rum for mixed drinks aqnd cocktails. Meanwhile, the Missus continues to give me the Evil Eye as the rum collection spills out from it's confinement pen and onto the kitchen counters and beyond. In tonight's zombie, the cinnamon and ginger noted from the Donn's mix and falernum do rise up to add essential flavor notes, while the Pernod that almost single-handedly destroyed my last zombie attempt (due to an accidental overpour) sits quietly in the background where I much prefer it. The big downfall of the Internet is that I can't give you all a taste of this drink, because I think if I could I'd make a lot of converts to the cause.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Mar 15, 2010 -> 12:36 PM) I dont think the film totally missed the point of Sendaks book, I think it expanded on it and made the story slightly different so that a 10 page childrens book can be told in a 1 1/2 hour film. My take is, I think the filmmakers got the message wrong as far as emphasizing Max as being a liar (among other things), and having all of the Wild Things embody many of the more base traits of humanity. In contrast, Sendak's emphasis was on the power of childhood imagination and the innocence of youth. Again though, I did like the film in and of itself.