Thoughts on Craft Beer and Community

As an observer of the craft beer industry and a consumer of their wonderful products I have very much felt the collaborative nature of these businesses. It often seems like local brewers aren’t out to get each other and steal the market; they just want to make quality products and share them. This collaborative economy makes customers feel a part of the community and it grows interest so that no market stealing is necessary.

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Encounters at the End of the World is technically not a science fiction, but really it fits right in. It is both a pre and post-apocalyptic look into our world. Herzog asks questions about why humanity feels the need to control other animals and nature and to put our fingerprints on everything in the world. He assures us that, according to popular theory, nature will not allow humanity to live on this planet forever.

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The Double Abyss

2009 Abyss in one hand, remote control in the other. The other night I paired Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss beer with The Abyss science fiction film. It’s The Double Abyss! So, do the two go together? The movie does indeed bring you to a dark place, well below the surface of the earth where there is no light, just dark. You get a sense of being claustrophobic as you watch it. The Abyss beer does provide some of the darkest, thickest beer, you can find but the flavors open up up as you sip it, revealing layer after layer of rich complexity – quite the opposite of claustrophobia. The movie makes you cold, knowing the people are so far down underwater that there would be very little heat. The beer is 11% alcohol, an imperial stout, if my memory serves me, so it warms you right up. That’s a good combo. The movie is a very long one so if you wanted to drink a full beer you would need to sip it. And the beer is definitely made for sipping, but I can’t imagine drinking the whole thing in one 3 hour sitting. I would say make sure a couple friends are with you and sip very slowly. But a beer with such high alcohol volume just serves to increase your tiredness during a slow movie, so by the end of the movie you will likely be asleep. If you’re wanting to watch the full movie, I recommend a different beer.

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Portland’s Bermuda Triangle is Horse Brass, Movie Madness, and Belmont Station. The perfect, walkable, place to lose track of time, enjoy beer and science fiction, and bring something home for later.

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I’m a little behind in watching the $10 movies – why spend $10 at a franchise theater when I can wait 2 months, pay $3 to watch it at Laurelhurst Theater and drink beer? Or wait for the DVD and browse the incredible selection of horror and science fiction at the famous Movie Madness?

Anyway, [...]

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Cleaning Up Our Act

Our pollution is getting worse, we are creating a monster. It’s impossible to stop the progress of buying new things and throwing out the old, which is polluting the planet.

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Double Feature Sci-Fi Movie Recommendation #05 is based off my observations of tourists at Yellowstone National Park. I want to recommend movies where tourism goes horribly wrong. Read on for details…

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Black Sheep and Night of the Comet are two horror movies that are perfect for curing the Swine Flu Epidemic. The movies will teach you to isolate yourself so you are out of harms way and help you identify who’s infected and who’s not.

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In The Land Of Beer

Information about the movie Beer Wars and microbreweries and some photos from Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River, Oregon.

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I have paired together two sci fi movies that I believe work well as a double feature…Panic in the Year Zero (1962) and The Man From Earth (2007).

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Post-Apocalyptic movies portray the destruction of the world. Can we have a post-apocalyptic movie that shows the rebuilding phase, the hard labor, and connecting of communities instead of just ending the movie right when the world is saved or meaning is found?

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A discussion between Dolittle and Bomb 20 in Dark Star about how we perceive our reality and how what we think is our reality may not be true or the same for others. Doing what we think we need to do has effects and consequences on other people’s lives. Does this have any correlations to the utopia movie Commune?

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Earlier this evening I went to the Bagdad Theater, drank a Terminator Stout and watched Alien on one of the original film reels. I’ve never seen Alien in such quality. Nor have I seen it with a crowd that is as nerdy about it as I am. You could hear cheers and laughter after scenes [...]

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Rotten Tomatoes released a list of “10 Sci Fi Flicks For the Thinking Man (or Woman)” and I have created an alternative which I believe to be much better. Both lists are less about fighting aliens and outer space battles than they are a list that contains “more thoughtful movies as to what it means [...]

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A handful of links about outerspace, art, beer, utopia, dystopia, and the mix of it all together.

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