(thanks to Dea & Sarah for the photos)
Love to all
-Wrence
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Shmeptember
Latest in the series "Wrence Taking Weekend Trips to Various Places He'd Rather be Living" - some shots from Portland, OR & Pink's wedding.
(thanks to Dea & Sarah for the photos)
Love to all
-Wrence
(thanks to Dea & Sarah for the photos)
Love to all
-Wrence
Saturday, August 22, 2009
The Damofest Effigy
After Damien told us we could definitely NOT have a bonfire on the lawn, Garvey inquired about burning an effigy. Diesel said "sure, you go ahead and do that." -partially because he didn't think we'd actually follow up on it, and partially because he didn't know what an effigy was. Hell, I don't even think what we did qualifies as such, however it was large and we burned the shit out of it just the same.
Here is a photo essay for your enjoyment. For whatever reason I ended up being the point guy on building this thing. I think it worked pretty well.
(Thanks to Garvey and Rosario for the pics)
-Wrence
Here is a photo essay for your enjoyment. For whatever reason I ended up being the point guy on building this thing. I think it worked pretty well.
(Thanks to Garvey and Rosario for the pics)
-Wrence
Monday, August 17, 2009
DAMOFEST `09
Ok, I am back from Vermont, but am in such a deep state of culture shock that I don't think I can really get into the details of the last 5 days yet. Perhaps another post may come up later to handle some of that stuff....perhaps not. I am not quite sure how to get on with my life again this morning, but I'll leave you with a photo I took in my car just before I arrived.
I sincerely love you all,
-Wrence
I sincerely love you all,-Wrence
Monday, August 3, 2009
Pee Town
So the busy part of my summer came graciously to a close last Tuesday. For the next four weeks or so I will be working very little, although i will be in the office, and will be doing a decent bit of traveling on the weekend. This past weekend saw me head on out to Cape Cod. It's been something of a yearly ritual to make at least one trip out there every summer, and I was loathe to let this year be any different.
After waiting far too long to book a place, Angie and I settled on a decent, although pretty 'spensive" hotel right on the North Truro/Provincetown line. We were walking distance into town, which made it nice and easy. Friday night we hit up this place called Lorraine's, a pretty tight non-cheesy Mexican place that takes food and tequila very seriously. Angie had some kind of margarita, in keeping with the theme, while I opted for a Dos Equis...a favorite of mine since my days of chasing underage Jersey girls in Cancun. The menu was pretty legit and we ordered two specials...a roasted yellow beefsteaktomato stuffed with cous cous with some kind of awesome sauce that i can't even describe. Then I had grilled swordfish with lime-cilantro ajo and some kind of otherwordly potato dish that continues to make my mouth water. Angie had some kind of flautas or something. Solid place, and definitely recommended. Then we went off to get shitfaced...which was no hard task. I found a bar called Waydowntown, which may have been some kind of gay reference that was lost on me. But they were showing the Sox game, so it seemed like a decent place to hang out. They had a bunch of decent brews on tap, but I stuck with the Cisco Whale's Tail Pale Ale...and got sufficiently sloshed. After the game the drag show started, but this dude was the worst drag queen I have ever seen. If i had been a bit more sober I think I could recount better why he was so awful. Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to a funny little drag show, but this guy killed it....and I think the other four people in the bar would agree with me.
Saturday we had a fucking glorious beach day during which we drank beer on the beach and eavesdropped on the conversations of those around us. The blanket next to us awas a bunch of late 20s/early 30s gay dudes who were hilarious. They were seriously all over the spectrum from fat messes to WWF style bodybuilders, but they all seemed to get along fabulously and were pretty funny to listen to. The blanket in front of us was a group of five dudes who were at least in their forties...also funny but for different reasons. Apparently one of these guys never gets laid when he goes to P'town, and they were giving him shit for it throughout. Bros will be bros....not much really changes when you come to think about it.
Saturday night we hit up Cafe Edwige, which was one of the better meals I have had in a good long while. Roasted quarter chicken, with roasted potatoes garlic, and asparagus. I really can't do it justice other than to say that it was one of the better cooked pieces of chicken I have ever had...which doesn't sound like it is saying very much, but it is. Angie had a corna nd lobster bisque followed by the special which was pan-seared striped bass. All reports were overwhelmingly positive.
Post dinner we grabbed a beer at The Squealing Pig, which also has a dope beer menu (including BBC Coffeehouse Porter) and then met Angie's friends who are an older couple of gay dudes who also had some friends with them. All in all, it was areally solid time and I managed to stumble back to the hotel without getting hit by a car, a dramatic success in and of itself.
Next weekend I am off to visit my Moms in NJ. Looking forward to seeing their new house and such.
Keep it reals ya'll.
&Ry
After waiting far too long to book a place, Angie and I settled on a decent, although pretty 'spensive" hotel right on the North Truro/Provincetown line. We were walking distance into town, which made it nice and easy. Friday night we hit up this place called Lorraine's, a pretty tight non-cheesy Mexican place that takes food and tequila very seriously. Angie had some kind of margarita, in keeping with the theme, while I opted for a Dos Equis...a favorite of mine since my days of chasing underage Jersey girls in Cancun. The menu was pretty legit and we ordered two specials...a roasted yellow beefsteaktomato stuffed with cous cous with some kind of awesome sauce that i can't even describe. Then I had grilled swordfish with lime-cilantro ajo and some kind of otherwordly potato dish that continues to make my mouth water. Angie had some kind of flautas or something. Solid place, and definitely recommended. Then we went off to get shitfaced...which was no hard task. I found a bar called Waydowntown, which may have been some kind of gay reference that was lost on me. But they were showing the Sox game, so it seemed like a decent place to hang out. They had a bunch of decent brews on tap, but I stuck with the Cisco Whale's Tail Pale Ale...and got sufficiently sloshed. After the game the drag show started, but this dude was the worst drag queen I have ever seen. If i had been a bit more sober I think I could recount better why he was so awful. Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to a funny little drag show, but this guy killed it....and I think the other four people in the bar would agree with me.
Saturday we had a fucking glorious beach day during which we drank beer on the beach and eavesdropped on the conversations of those around us. The blanket next to us awas a bunch of late 20s/early 30s gay dudes who were hilarious. They were seriously all over the spectrum from fat messes to WWF style bodybuilders, but they all seemed to get along fabulously and were pretty funny to listen to. The blanket in front of us was a group of five dudes who were at least in their forties...also funny but for different reasons. Apparently one of these guys never gets laid when he goes to P'town, and they were giving him shit for it throughout. Bros will be bros....not much really changes when you come to think about it.
Saturday night we hit up Cafe Edwige, which was one of the better meals I have had in a good long while. Roasted quarter chicken, with roasted potatoes garlic, and asparagus. I really can't do it justice other than to say that it was one of the better cooked pieces of chicken I have ever had...which doesn't sound like it is saying very much, but it is. Angie had a corna nd lobster bisque followed by the special which was pan-seared striped bass. All reports were overwhelmingly positive.
Post dinner we grabbed a beer at The Squealing Pig, which also has a dope beer menu (including BBC Coffeehouse Porter) and then met Angie's friends who are an older couple of gay dudes who also had some friends with them. All in all, it was areally solid time and I managed to stumble back to the hotel without getting hit by a car, a dramatic success in and of itself.
Next weekend I am off to visit my Moms in NJ. Looking forward to seeing their new house and such.
Keep it reals ya'll.
&Ry
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Your Mother Was a Hamster
This post is probably going to be boring, as I begin typing without knowing what exactly I'm going to type about; the feeling is akin to buying a scratch-off lottery ticket, you might actually win some money, but most likely the ticket will be a crumpled up piece of garbage on the floor of your car for the next 3 weeks until you get the free cleaning with your next oil change at the Spring Garden Car Wash. And so:
The last week was another cluster-fuck at the brewery. In case you don't know what a cluster-fuck is, it's basically a junk-show on crystal meth. We are still playing catch-up, brewing like crazy: this week we got in another 14 brews (as opposed to our normal 10 brews). Again, it's just me and one other guy doing all this. Oh yea, we also filtered 7 batches during this same time period. Not to complain or anything, but I have woken up each morning so sore that I can barely facebook my email internets.
Normally Friday is our slow day, instead of brewing we just clean up, and usually it's a 6 or 7 hour day (to make up for all the 9 hour days earlier in the week). Oh, but not this friday - we brewed and filtered again. Hotter than satan's crotch in a wool jock strap. Luckily I got to stay late last night breaking down the filters and reloading them for Monday's filtrations. Nothing like working a brutal 10-hour shift to wind the week down.
When I finally got home, around 8pm, carrying a couple cases of beer, my sopping wet work clothes in a bag, and my pre-prepared dinner from Whole Foods, I noticed the apartment was really warm. Baking, in fact. Our building is about 100 years old and made completely of brick. It once was a furniture factory and as such has few windows, so they central aired the hell out of the place. My air conditioning was busted. I did what anyone would do in my situation: freaked out momentarily, and then resigned myself to fate, took a cold bath, and got cross-eyed drunk in my underwear. A few hours later the a.c. sort of fixed itself. Weird.
So this weekend is my first actual 2 days away from the brewery since....early July. See past updates for my last couple weekend re-caps - they all involved work of some kind. I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing for the next 48 hours. There are just two things on my agenda: pick up a CO2 cylinder to complete my keg-readiness for Vermont*, and get my dimensions professionally measurisized for Pink's wedding uniform**. The likelyhood that I get even those tasks accomplished is meek, to say the least.
I take heart that today is the first day of August and soon enough the heat will begin to subside, work may eventually become tolerable again, and the possibility of me cooking and/or brewing something in my own home becomes more and more palpable.
Enjoy your August, folks!
-Wrence
*August 12-15 will see me in my beloved state of Vermont for this year's DAMO-FEST
**August 31 will see me in Portland Oregon for Pink's wedding
The last week was another cluster-fuck at the brewery. In case you don't know what a cluster-fuck is, it's basically a junk-show on crystal meth. We are still playing catch-up, brewing like crazy: this week we got in another 14 brews (as opposed to our normal 10 brews). Again, it's just me and one other guy doing all this. Oh yea, we also filtered 7 batches during this same time period. Not to complain or anything, but I have woken up each morning so sore that I can barely facebook my email internets.
Normally Friday is our slow day, instead of brewing we just clean up, and usually it's a 6 or 7 hour day (to make up for all the 9 hour days earlier in the week). Oh, but not this friday - we brewed and filtered again. Hotter than satan's crotch in a wool jock strap. Luckily I got to stay late last night breaking down the filters and reloading them for Monday's filtrations. Nothing like working a brutal 10-hour shift to wind the week down.
When I finally got home, around 8pm, carrying a couple cases of beer, my sopping wet work clothes in a bag, and my pre-prepared dinner from Whole Foods, I noticed the apartment was really warm. Baking, in fact. Our building is about 100 years old and made completely of brick. It once was a furniture factory and as such has few windows, so they central aired the hell out of the place. My air conditioning was busted. I did what anyone would do in my situation: freaked out momentarily, and then resigned myself to fate, took a cold bath, and got cross-eyed drunk in my underwear. A few hours later the a.c. sort of fixed itself. Weird.
So this weekend is my first actual 2 days away from the brewery since....early July. See past updates for my last couple weekend re-caps - they all involved work of some kind. I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing for the next 48 hours. There are just two things on my agenda: pick up a CO2 cylinder to complete my keg-readiness for Vermont*, and get my dimensions professionally measurisized for Pink's wedding uniform**. The likelyhood that I get even those tasks accomplished is meek, to say the least.
I take heart that today is the first day of August and soon enough the heat will begin to subside, work may eventually become tolerable again, and the possibility of me cooking and/or brewing something in my own home becomes more and more palpable.
Enjoy your August, folks!
-Wrence
*August 12-15 will see me in my beloved state of Vermont for this year's DAMO-FEST
**August 31 will see me in Portland Oregon for Pink's wedding
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Power of Beer
A quick bit I noticed on the whole Henry Louis Gates/Cambridge PD/Obama's mouth menage-a-trois. I will refrain from any sort of commentary on the very real institutionalized racism which still exists in our country or the possibility of a belligerent Harvard Scholar, but I did want to point out this quick little blurb I saw on NPR:
The Power of Beer.
-Wrence
"After a phone call from President Barack Obama urging calm in the aftermath of his arrest last week, the black professor said he would accept Obama's invitation to the White House for a beer with the president and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley."
They are totally going to crush a few beers and easily work this whole thing out! I love it...I'm sure things might be heavy and a little awkward at first, but by the time they are all on their 2nd glass of barley juice, they will probably be talking about baseball and tits, making prank calls to Iran, and having such a good time they won't even be able to remember why they were there in the first place. Michelle will totally have to throw them all out of the house 8 hours later after they trash the blue room.
The Power of Beer.
-Wrence
Tours at the Fish/Kite & Key
Holy Junk-show did we have TON of people in the brewery yesterday! I was there from 1-4 giving tours and I seriously think we got 100 people through in that time. Poured MANY a free sample and put a few into my own face as well. My last group was huge and I was actually starting to lose my voice by the end of the tour, which was a first.
Snotty showed up at the brewery, along with a couple of his bros. It was good to see some familiar faces there. We shot the shit & drank little cups of beer for a few hours. I think they enjoyed seeing the brewery, especially since I brought over a bunch of our beer last weekend to Snotty's BBQ and they were naturally curious to see where it was brewed.
____________
After shutting things down out at the brewery, I drove right back into town to meet Snotty and his crew at Monkey Boy's restaurant (last mentioned here). Well, it's not actually his restaurant, but he has been executive-cheffing things up there for the past 9 months, and totally rules at it. Seriouslyforeals. Last time we met there, he just started sending out courses and we basically died from awesomeness. This time was no different, except for the fact that I had my phone with me and decided to take pictures of each plate before I ate the Jesus-punching shit of it.
I now offer you gratuitous food-porn for the remainder of this post:
The last time we were here, Monkey sent us out something very similar to this, and I loved it - even though the idea of eating snails is still something I can't quite wrap my head around. Though it is not nearly even close to the most disgusting food item I regularly eat, it is just weird, right? Maybe it's the name...let's just start calling them "land-clams" - I think more people could get down with that. I thought this dish was awesome the LAST time I had it, and this time he added BACON. Enough said.
This dish was really a life changing moment for me & Snotty. I realized quickly that I had never been served a prawn with the head still attached. I obviously knew that this was the way to do it, intact body usually translating to freshness, but I had NO IDEA. Biting into this guy was like biting into fresh corn on the cob in summer: crisp, juicy, sweeeet as all hell. Like super sugar sweet fleshy prawny goodness! Did I mention how sweet it was? I couldn't believe it. This bore ZERO resemblance to those pre-be-headed pink rubbery shrimps I had been served all my adult life. When Snotty and I stopped to think about that fact, we became incensed! He put it best when he said "I've been paying people to shit in my mouth all this time."
There's not much to add about this dish other than it was awesome.
Same here.
_________
All in all, a strong showing for the day. Also I should note that this place has great beer. Among my quaffed were: Elysian's Jasmine IPA, Ommegang's Hennepin, and a few others. I got crunked and walked home around 9pm. I awoke in the middle of the night in my bed, but on top of my sheets and sporting a large ice cream-colored stain on my tee-shirt. Sweet.
-Wrence
Snotty showed up at the brewery, along with a couple of his bros. It was good to see some familiar faces there. We shot the shit & drank little cups of beer for a few hours. I think they enjoyed seeing the brewery, especially since I brought over a bunch of our beer last weekend to Snotty's BBQ and they were naturally curious to see where it was brewed.
____________
After shutting things down out at the brewery, I drove right back into town to meet Snotty and his crew at Monkey Boy's restaurant (last mentioned here). Well, it's not actually his restaurant, but he has been executive-cheffing things up there for the past 9 months, and totally rules at it. Seriouslyforeals. Last time we met there, he just started sending out courses and we basically died from awesomeness. This time was no different, except for the fact that I had my phone with me and decided to take pictures of each plate before I ate the Jesus-punching shit of it.
I now offer you gratuitous food-porn for the remainder of this post:
Course 1
Spicy home made kimchi with
chillis and basil oil
Justin fermented the Kimchi himself, and it was impressive.Spicy home made kimchi with
chillis and basil oil
Course 2
Escargot with bacon over English muffin
bread with poached egg
Escargot with bacon over English muffin
bread with poached egg
The last time we were here, Monkey sent us out something very similar to this, and I loved it - even though the idea of eating snails is still something I can't quite wrap my head around. Though it is not nearly even close to the most disgusting food item I regularly eat, it is just weird, right? Maybe it's the name...let's just start calling them "land-clams" - I think more people could get down with that. I thought this dish was awesome the LAST time I had it, and this time he added BACON. Enough said.Course 3
Prawn with corn/shrimp nugget
& kick-ass sauce
Prawn with corn/shrimp nugget
& kick-ass sauce
This dish was really a life changing moment for me & Snotty. I realized quickly that I had never been served a prawn with the head still attached. I obviously knew that this was the way to do it, intact body usually translating to freshness, but I had NO IDEA. Biting into this guy was like biting into fresh corn on the cob in summer: crisp, juicy, sweeeet as all hell. Like super sugar sweet fleshy prawny goodness! Did I mention how sweet it was? I couldn't believe it. This bore ZERO resemblance to those pre-be-headed pink rubbery shrimps I had been served all my adult life. When Snotty and I stopped to think about that fact, we became incensed! He put it best when he said "I've been paying people to shit in my mouth all this time."Course 4
Marinated tomatoes on toasty
bread with goat cheesy goodness
Marinated tomatoes on toasty
bread with goat cheesy goodness
There's not much to add about this dish other than it was awesome.Course 5
Sliced steaky bits over beans & bread
crumbs, with some sort of reduction sauce
Sliced steaky bits over beans & bread
crumbs, with some sort of reduction sauce
Same here._________
All in all, a strong showing for the day. Also I should note that this place has great beer. Among my quaffed were: Elysian's Jasmine IPA, Ommegang's Hennepin, and a few others. I got crunked and walked home around 9pm. I awoke in the middle of the night in my bed, but on top of my sheets and sporting a large ice cream-colored stain on my tee-shirt. Sweet.
-Wrence
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