Astropus

Way way out there

Marvel will never top The Winter Soldier

eojkriyCaptain America: The Winter Soldier isn’t just my favorite movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s one of my favorite films in recent memory. The sequel to the kitchy and genre-steeped The First Avenger transcends the superhero movie, succeeding as a taut thriller in the vein of 70s spy films and with the kinetic panache of the Bourne films. I don’t think that Marvel and the creative team behind The Winter Soldier will ever again capture that lightning in a bottle, but I’m very excited to see them try – first tonight at a screening of Captain America: Civil War, and then again in a few years for the third and fourth films in the Avengers series. Read the rest of this entry »

Inspiration in failure

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Last week I traveled to Chicago to sit for the Master Cicerone exam – a grueling two day assessment of beer knowledge and sensory acumen that has only been successfully passed by 11 people in the world. I will not be the 12th person to achieve the rank of Master Cicerone. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally It Happened to Me…

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I don’t usually like to talk about my ongoing struggles with anxiety and attendant unpleasantness, but that was simply too strange to not share. Read the rest of this entry »

One hobby that I need to get back into

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During some smalltalk at a recent beer dinner event, a tablemates said one of her hobbies was “close friends”, and I was really struck by that sentiment. As someone with the reputation of picking up and dropping hobbies with frightening regularity, the idea made me realize how much I’ve neglected that particular hobby recently. Read the rest of this entry »

One Darling Escapes

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Writers have to learn to, as either Ginsberg or Faulkner put it, “kill your darlings” — to viciously excise those self indulgent bits of plot or character or (much more often in my case) sentence or diction. It’s a lesson that is not much fun to learn, but any working writer is undoubtedly a mass-murder of darlings. A certified spree killer.

But sometimes I just can’t pull the trigger. Read the rest of this entry »

October 2014 Writing Round-up

I’m shamelessly stealing this from the the great Joshua Bernstein (beer writer for Bon Appetit and author of The Complete Beer Course) who posts a monthly recap of his writings for various publications on his personal website. An index of sorts. I had a pretty slow month writing-wise in October, so I figured this would be as good a s time as any to start keeping track of what I’ve had published around the web. Read the rest of this entry »

A Beer Writer’s Notebook

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I should probably mention the tumblr blog that I started a couple of months ago to collect all the snippets from my beer reporting that don’t find their way into a story or blog post.

It’s mostly a collection of tweets, images, and the occasional link or thought too-long for Twitter but too-inconsequential to actually blog about. If you’re into the whole tumblr thing come on over and follow the blog!

A long awaited reckoning

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Well, here goes nothing.

I’m about to break the seal on a iPhone 6, but I’m not really sure if I want to. Read the rest of this entry »

For Sale: Nikon Camera Gear (Including D5100 Body and Great Glass)

I’ve been a loyal Nikon shooter since getting my first dSLR for my birthday in 2007, and I’ve since built up a powerful collection of great lenses for the Nikon DX format. But, technology marches on, and now that Julie has invested in the Olympus/Panasonic Micro Four-Thirds system it just doesn’t make sense to keep two collections of glass. I’ve decided to try and sell off all my Nikon gear that’s served me so well for so long to fund a migration to Micro Four-Thirds as well. I could list all this stuff on Craig’s List or Reddit (and I may still), but I figured I’d give my social network a shot at some killer gear at great prices before I hassel with selling to strangers. Read on for the details on what I’m selling, and for how much.  Read the rest of this entry »

Three Years Gone and Still Teaching Me Lessons

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It has been three years since everything changed. Since my moms died.

“Everything” might sound hyperbolic, but from my perspective it is pretty accurate. The first months after that phone call I can only remember as fragmented blur. Like a watercolor painting broken into puzzle pieces. There was paperwork and bureaucracy and an endless flow of tears. The shock threw me into a spiral of anxiety, hypochondria, and illness that took months to recognize as grief’s sinister work. Read the rest of this entry »