1. Early this afternoon, after getting myself cleaned up, I popped open a pint-sized can of Bombastic Brewing's Fifth Anniversary, an Imperial Stout aged in rum and bourbon barrels for a year and weighing in at 12% ABV. On Thursday, Ginger poured Byrdman and me a sampler of this mighty ale so I knew what was coming this afternoon. The Fifth Anniversary is not a balanced beer and Bombastic is proud of that fact. It pours very dark in the glass with a brief root beer looking head and feels thick and luxurious in the mouth. The rum barrels aging gives Fifth Anniversary a welcome sweetness, the bourbon aging adds booziness to the beer's profile, and I enjoyed the licorice taste that came on the back end of each sip. After pouring Debbie a sample of Fifth Anniversary, I filled one of our ByGeorge Brewing (of Munising, MI) glasses with the idea that this intense, over the top, even foreboding glass of rich darkness would last me for much, if not all, of today's ZOOM session.
2. Diane, Bill, Bridgit and I jumped on the ZOOM machine around 2:00 and talked about cats and dealing with stuff and who had seen Ted Lasso other things for a while, but before long Diane gave our yakking a fun and fascinating focus.
Diane discovered an article online about Brett Goldstein's podcast "Films to be Buried With", here.
Every episode features Brett Goldstein asking his guests a list of questions about their experiences with movies. Diane posed each of the questions to us and we had a lively and invigorating discussion of movies as we answered them. If you'd like to know more about films you might select to be buried with, here is the list of questions:
What was the first ever film you saw?
What was the film that scared you the most?
What was the film that made you cry the most?
What film is TERRIBLE but you love it?
What is the film you once loved but watching it now you realise it’s terrible?
What is the film that means the most to you? Not because of the film itself, but because of the memories you have of it.
What is the sexiest film?
Which film do you most relate to?
Which film is objectively the greatest ever?
Which film is the one you’ve watched the most?
What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
What is the film that’s literally made you laugh out loud the most?
Answering these questions with Bill, Diane, and Bridgit exposed something about me that I already knew was true: the movies that stay in my memory, that have had the most impact, and that I care the most about were, for the most part, made between about 1967 to about 1980-4. I loved what happened in movies as the restrictions of the Hays Code (or decency code) were challenged, relaxed, and, in 1968, eliminated.
Free of these restrictions, some of cinema's best (in my view) movies emerged: Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, The Godfather, part II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Harold and Maude, The French Connection, Apocalypse Now, All the President's Men and many others.
When our session ended, I thought about how I think I need to reassess the answers I gave today and look closely at movies made, say, from 1985-present, movies that I know I've enjoyed but that don't immediately come to mind when I enter into great discussions like Bill, Diane, Bridgit, and I had today.
3. This afternoon, Diane contacted Debbie and she had a slight post-Crab Feed change of plans in mind. Originally, she was going to make a hot crab dip with the fresh crab we had leftover from our high holy Saturday.
Her new plan was to have us bring some of the crab stock I've made in the past to her house and she and Debbie would team up to make crab chowder.
I pulled stock out of the upstairs freezer.
Only later did I realize that I had pulled out a quart of clam stock, not crab stock. I vaguely remember steaming clams some time ago and the turning those shells into stock, but it wasn't on my mind when I pulled out the frozen quart.
But, the clam stock worked deliciously, the crab chowder was awesome, and Diane, Debbie, and I thoroughly enjoyed extending the crab feed another day -- and it won't end tonight.
We have leftover crab chowder and I have a gallon of shells to turn into more stock.
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