Brew Blast: Take The Black Stout

Howdy fellow bloggees!  I'm starting a new series of posts about one of my favorite things, beer!  Hopefully this will help me get back into the habit of posting, since I'm always trying new beers, I should often have something to talk about.  Hopefully I'll be able to describe the beers adequately, only one way to know for sure...let's get to it!

Today my wife, TinyDoom, and I walked into our local market, Pemberton Farms, to find that it had recently transformed into a Beer Wonderland!  They had a decent selection before, but they expanded and the selection is now pretty impressive.

I discovered a bunch of new beers that got me quite excited and inspired this post today.  At least I'm telling myself that the blog was a good enough excuse to buy more beer.

I walked out with 3 bottles and today I have the first to share.

Ommegang's Game of Thrones: Take The Black Stout

I found this in a pint sized bottle, it's 7% alcohol and cost $8.99.  The bottle describes the stout as having "chocolate and caramel sweetness, balanced by hop bitterness, roasty, woodsy notes and an earthy finish".  I think that sums it up pretty well, I definitely got the chocolate up front and the finish is certainly woodsy.  If I had a fire place I'd want to drink this in front of it, with a nice bowl of some kind of hearty stew close by and some crusty bread.  

I had heard Ommegang's other GoT beer was okay, a fairly standard ale, so I was a bit dubious about this one, but being a sucker for dark beers I figured it was worth a try and I'm glad I did.  Now hopefully I can find it again later in the year when it's much cooler out, because as you may have heard, "Winter Is Coming."

Blog-A-Long with the Ladies!

Howdy-ho neighborinos! I've been gone a while, but like a bad penny, I keep turning up!

Today I'm joining my lovely wife, Tiny Doom, and the other ladies of The Ladies of Comicazi in their Bat-Month blog series.  Bat-Month involves each lady choosing her favorite episode of Batman: The Animated Series (including The Adventures of Batman and Robin) and talking about why it was chosen.  I was excited by the idea and decided to join in, unofficially, and do a review of my favorite episode.  As you can imagine, this is no small feat because there are so many incredible episodes of the award wining and genre changing show.

I know this series holds a special place in my heart, I have always been an animation fan and the years just before Batman: TAS began I often complained about the poor animation quality and the poor story telling of the garbage that was on TV.  I honestly thought that American animation was truly was in it's death throws (although looking at what was on in 1993, I can see that Batman was one of the shows that premiered on the precipice of change).  Then along came Batman, with a retro design, fresh concepts that paid homage to story lines from the comics, writing that strove to tell a good story instead of trying to sell toys and voice acting that was actual acting by talented people.  To this day, my wife and I still refer to Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil as "The One True Batman" and "The One True Joker".  The series made folks take notice and once you watched an episode, you were sucked in.
I remember when the show was on originally, my father would watch it with me when he got home from work, once they altered the time to slightly earlier he admitted that he was disappointed to be missing the show!  I didn't even realize he had enjoyed watching it, I had just assumed that he was watching it because it was on when he sat down.

Such is the power of Batman: The Animated Series.


Beware all whom enter, for here there be spoilers:

Cosplay and Crafting and Insects, oh my!

Great gadzooks! It's been just over a year since my last post!  I guess I haven't had too much to say.  Well, luckily I have been hard at work lately and finally DO have something to say.

HALLOWEEN!  My great motivator.  This year my wife, Tiny Doom of The Ladies of Comicazi blog, decided she wanted to be The Wasp, from The Avengers, specifically she wanted to be the Wasp from the cartoon, Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, so I naturally decided I would be Ant-Man. I decided against the cartoon version and chose to go classic silver age comic version.

It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad Correspondence!

I got home last week to find a message from my mother on the phone, which in itself is not unusual, but this time it was a pretty unusual message (even for my mother).


She claimed that she had a letter for me that had arrived to the house which appeared to be to me from me!  After calling and being reassured that I had understood correctly, she asked me if she should open it.  I decided to wait and make the mystery a bit more mysterious.

In which No Prize was awarded.

Great Googley-moogley!  It's been a while, but by now you should all be used to that.  Regardless of my absence from the blog-o-sphere, I am here now and a blogging we shall go.


I recently acquired a neat Marvel Comics collectible for my copious collection.  A genuine No-Prize!  Notice I said "acquired", not "was awarded".  Unfortunately I did not win the coveted No-Prize but purchased it off eBay for the pricely sum of $12.


BEHOLD!

Cosmic Cognizance: Thanos

It's time for a new post my spaced out cadets.  This time around I'm going to be talking about one of my very favorite villains and often a major cosmic threat to the Marvel Universe, Thanos, the Mad Titan!

The Collection Fled Across the Desert and The Goog Followed.

Welcome back friends, to this 51st rambling of mine!  I am sorry to say I missed the milestone of my 50th post with my last blog, but we're here now so let's carry on, shall we?

Today I am happy to share with you a newly completed collection, but isn't comics this time.  This week I completed my collection of Isaac Asimov's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction containing the original printing of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger".  I have been after these books for some time, not entirely continuously, but here and there for well over a decade or more likely closer to 15 years or so.