The Last Candle

During a trip home over the weekend, my Dad, Jocelyn, and I found an opportunity to visit the local brewery in Dexter, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. The favorite liquor store here in Mount Pleasant has bottles one of Jolly Pumpkin’s ales, Oro de Calabaza, in stock (and is quite good), but the rest of the Jolly Pumpkin catalogue isn’t available. Hey, I don’t mind going to the source — especially when the source sells the wares at $1.50 cheaper and allows you to visit a beautiful, yeasty abode of beer-making action. Truly a delight.

Through a sequence of truly thrilling events, our ‘fridge around late Saturday afternoon (after the Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales visit) had a ratio of beer and alcohol products to all other foodstuffs pretty darn close to 1:1. This is sensational! Jocelyn had purchased some Woodchuck Cider the night before; I had brought home Wexford Irish Cream Ale and good ole good-for-you Guinness the night before to have my Dad sample the combination of the Irish Cream Ale chased by the Guinness (causing the chocolate tastes in the latter to be highly and most beautifully emphasized — best Guinness I’ve ever had was right after an Irish Cream Ale…); a growler of Short’s Nicie Spicie, grabbed by my parents on a vacation up north; several bottles across all available varieties from the visit to Jolly Pumpkin; and then there was the usual moderate stock of resident homebrews and drinks.

Folks, that ain’t bad. Not bad at all.

Returning to the subject of those fine Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, we tried the Maracaibo Especial with a brownie-cherry-ice cream dessert, and the combination was quite good. While it wasn’t as fine a match as a stout would have been (which would go perfectly with the chocolately-ness of the brownie and the smoothness of the ice cream), the Maracaibo’s desserty flavors (thanks be to the dark malt, cinnamon and cacao!) meshed all the tastes beautifully, making each one a good degree more satisfying. (This was one of the few instances where I’ve been able to test and really feel a good food and beer complement — the kind Garrett Oliver preaches about in his excellent book with great detail.)

The Short’s Nicie Spicie was good, but sure didn’t hold back on the Spicie part: it was already hopped up to be as bitter as an India Pale Ale, but even after the puckering from the full hops, a pepper aftertaste rages in like a spice-powered steam engine. Very flavorful, but like Mackeson’s XXX stout (which is probably as far from the Nicie Spicie as you can get in terms of flavor, color, and nose), it was a beer that needs food to help simultaneously match and calm the extra-strong taste.

Pursuing a vague (and not likely uncommon) goal to visit as many microbrewies as possible, I’d like to visit Short’s someday. Unlike Jolly Pumpkin, being two hours north in Bellaire makes it not such an easy visit. But the guys in the apartment and I have driven to Mackinaw City and back within a night, so perhaps they’d be up to doing the same two-hour drive north thing again — with a slight change of destination from last night, natch.

But, of course, we could have a possible fight on our hands over who has to be the designated driver and not partake in the full opportunity of the brewery. (But I’ll say it right now: it ain’t gonna me, boys! Necessary and esteemed as being the DD may be, I intend to take part in the flowing draughts to the fullest.)

Rhapsody’s newish album, Symphony of Enchanted Lands II: The Dark Secret, featured Christopher Lee of recent fantasy film evil white-haired guy fame for the album’s narration. While I’ve only listened to a couple tracks from the new release — what I have heard sounds like same ole’ Rhapsody: classically powerful, melodically memorable. and bombastically overblown — Lee’s baroque, sonorous voice is a very welcome and audibly-pleasing addition. As an implicit bonus, when Lee came in, the previous narrator, a man who had the voice of a 40-year old simp and sounded like his mother forget his midday pudding, got the boot. Thank Dargor for that.

(To hear a cut from the new album, along with Christopher Lee engaged in some fine narration and funny LARP costuming and lots of stock footage of mountains, Rhapsody’s The Dark Secret page has a music video for one of their singles at the bottom. But also go there to see Christopher Lee looking rather sad on some rather poor album art.)

But while Lee’s admission as narrator was nice, it was only about 50% worth of the Forest of Trolls: Lee is classically trained to sing, including in the opera style. Why Rhapsody of all bands didn’t jump on this opportunity to add yet another facet of classical bombast to their production is beyond me, but there it is.

However, all will be well soon: they’re re-releasing a track from The Dark Secret, and this time a duet between Christopher Lee and Fabio (lead singer of Rhapsody, not that…other guy) will be present. Fabulous. (Check out the previous link; the other band members are playing the surrounding Lee at their respective instruments, looking as equally strange and pretentious as they do when swinging swords around in fields for music videos).

Maybe the addition of Lee will motivate me to buy the albums and the Lee-augmented single, but I dunno. My favorite Rhapsody albums were (most favorably) Dawn of Victory and Power of the Dragonflame where they most successfully combined heavy, rough-ridged melodies with the common 60-piece orchestra and 30 member choir harmonics. The albums before and parts of The Dark Secret are tilted more towards the orchestrated/Manheim Steamroller side of their timbre — still enjoyable, but not tempting enough to rush out and grab.

But speaking of tempting enough to rush out and grab (or, in my case, wait anxiously by the door for the delivery fellow to arrive): Kamelot’s The Black Halo is in my grasp, drive, head and 8/10s of the way to being one of my favorite cuts ever (2/10s for the ultimate test: the test of time). It’s definitely a fine, fine followup to Epica, but The Black Halo has a more mature, detailed sound than the general (but absolutely perfect) melodic brightness of Epica. If Epica was an amazing power metal release with bits of progressive metal creeping in at the sides, The Black Halo has embraced the progressive side fully, meshing the two styles with a hint of black metal (in both feeling and timbre) at the corners.

Heck, the first song on the album, March of Mephisto, is a rough-riffed, minor-keyed, march-sampled anthem featuring Shagrath from black metal group Dimmu Borgir on backup vocals. Compare that to Center of the Universe, Epica’s first song that was bright, upbeat, and wholly optimistic. Geographically, The Black Halo puts its happy-future tune, Serenade, at the end of the album as “the outskirts of the concept” and “an inversion of the opening cut on Epica.” Epica goes light to dark; The Black Halo goes dark to light. Both are fantastic.

Kamelot has released two music videos of songs from the new album on their website. The video for The Haunting (Somewhere In Time) is better than the one for March of Mephisto (although neither is a knock-out), but if you roughly combine the feeling of the two songs — March of Mephisto is just two songs away from The Haunting on the album — the general dark mood of The Black Halo is evident.

The Corner has some pictures of the incredible demonstrations occurring in Lebanon.

According to most sources, more than a million and a half joined the demonstration. This would represent more than one third of Lebanon’s population.

Amazing. Imagine if 100 million-plus Americans tried to gather in one area to demonstrate…

This is the second post from an ongoing series made from the Anderson household’s new-ish wireless network. Enjoy.

From UK paper The Independent: Was Bush right after all?

It is barely six weeks since the US President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of “ending tyranny in our world”. Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of “regime changes” imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President’s opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

That debate is now happening, in America and beyond, as the first waves of reform lap at the Arab world.

Like Jeff Harrell points out, an important part here is that the people who were once strictly against the far-reaching Bush foreign policy are the ones asking the question. But even more importantly (and without partisanship): we just might be seeing the beginning of the Middle East shaping up.

That’s something that everyone can hope for.

(Additional thoughts and links available through Instapundit, as always.)