Killing Time, murder consultants: Custom murder mystery cocktail entertainment for groups of 16-30 adults.
We use no actors; your guests play all the roles—even the murderer and the victim!
Follow This Blog(ger)!
Quick Hits
Fassionola. What is this stuff? Long lost Tiki ingredient or just proto-Hawaiian Punch? Is it still made, and do I need it? More in the comments on this post.
Royal Tiki. A series this month of the places I've bought from, or want to buy from. Twitter: @RoyalTiki
I’ve been in a bit of a blogging funk of late, with all sorts of posts piled up in the draft folder and none ready to post. So I thought I’d put up this little palate-cleanser to make folks smile and perhaps be a bit of a slump-buster….
Beer ads have for a long time been sort of the pinnacle in advertising, booze or otherwise, of the Sex Sells meme. Whenever a latter day Don Draper comes up with a ridiculously over the top sexy idea, his agency just puts beers in the participants’ hands and pitches it to Budweiser or Miller. Every once in a while the result is pure, trashy genius. Most of the time, it is pretty much trashy hackery.
Of course, sometimes, Don’s descendants’ imaginations get a little carried away. The following Guinness advertisement is a case in point. Once conceived, it had to be made. But it was never gonna air. I should advise you that this is very likely not safe for work. (But if you are at work, is this or any other cocktail blog all that safe a site to be surfing in the first place?)
Frankly, I’m not sure where to categorize this one. It is definitely trashy, but it is also pretty clever in how it forces speculation on the part of the viewer. The mind is engaged on this. But I’m thinking it wouldn’t move that much Guinness, because while you are perhaps supposed to focus on the bottle and why it doesn’t fall over, that is not what most people are going to be furiously trying to work out in their heads. What do you think?
A tip of the hat to the the good folks at Cracked for this one. Their article has six other ads that similarly were way beyond the pale. I recommend the post, but for the love of God, do not play or even read about Number 5!
OK, it’s beer, not real booze. Sue me.
Via Make:, we find Tuned Pale Ale. I have no idea is Tuned is a great ale. I don’t know if it tastes like pond water.
I. Don’t. Care.
The genius of Tuned is in the label. Look on the right edge and you will see a treble clef with little arrows pointing to a level of the beer within. Drink the ale down to that level, and the bottle will produce that note when you blow across the top. There are a lot of cool songs that you can play with six or fewer notes, ya know?
It’s like a Do-It-Yourself kit for awesomeness like this little performance below, only you don’t have to get as drunk as these guys to get your “instruments” set.
Now, in fact Tuned is more of a super prototype/concept design than a real product. Matt Braun, the creator, is a designer/artist (and DJ!(?)), and apparently a home brewer. He’s actually sold one batch of Tuned, and claims to have another set in production. Visit his site to sign up for your own six-pack. If you are in the beer business (or the liquor business for that matter) and like the idea, he’s also looking for someone with the cash to make this commercially viable. Let’s hope someone does.
I am always frustrated at how much better, more creative, and more funny beer ads are than liquor ads. Is it just budget? Or are spirits makers afraid to go a little gonzo for fear of blue-noses pitching a hissy?
Regardless, here is Heineken’s latest masterpiece of fun social commentary on men, women, and reality TV:
Like most Americans, I hate ads. Unlike most, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship.
Long-time readers (all three of you) may remember my writing incessantly about Tanqueray Gin’s spokescharacter, Tony Sinclair. His silly, exotic adventures on television and YouTube were the stuff of booze ad legend.
For a while now, I’ve been similarly enjoying Dos Equis’ ad campaign that features The Most Interesting Man in the World. This mysteriously unnamed man has much of same vibe as the apparently shelved Sinclair, having incredible adventures, and improbable successes.
The difference between the two is that Sinclair always had an undertone of British Eccentricity, whereas the Most Interesting Man has a Latin Cool about him. I like both, slightly preferring Tony, if only because he promotes a liquor rather than a beer. But it is impossible to not be a fan of a Man so Interesting that he, lives vicariously… through himself. A recent profile of The Man’s actor, Jonathan Goldsmith at Lushangeles (H/T: Jacob Grier) is an interesting and rewarding read. In discussing the ad campaign, the author notes what I think is the most striking and effective aspect of the whole campaign: The Man is not a Dos Equis fanatic.
I don’t always drink beer.
But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.
Here is his iconic ad, which ends with the quote above. Note how effective the soft sell is.
For Americans today, the assumption is that class means cosmopolitan tastes, not slavish devotion. We are unlikely to fully buy into Dos Equis being so magnificent a creature’s only thing, but we can eagerly accept the concept that it is one of his favorite things. When I first saw this ad campaign, I had to remind myself that I frankly don’t like Dos Equis much, and didn’t need to pick some up. It took but a few seconds to realize how effective the soft recommendation is.
There is much fun to be had at the Man’s website, and I embed a few more of his favorite hits below the fold! (more…)
I stumbled across a blog post recently that made me go back and look at my own draft folder. E.E. Southerby of Points in Case is a wrong-headed individual who reminds me of my own younger self, only with a better writing ethic. He has a regular feature he calls “Rejected Column Ideas“, in which he does a collection of short blurbs about posts he never finished. Gizmodo does something similar. I took a look at the 34 posts in varying degrees of decomposition in my draft folder, and decided I ought to give the idea a shot.
You are welcome.
First up, I have two booze stories from far-off, fading Avalon.
Number one is about beer. I don’t blog about beer, so I set this one aside. But I just gotta say that if you are going to brew 64 proof beer, “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” is a pretty good name. (H/T: Ace)
Number two is about Scotch. The English have introduced a whisky of their own. Apparently the only reason Scotland has not declared war (yet) is that they spell whisky correctly. Me, I just am hoping for a sample bottle of $75, three-year-old scotch to come from the Liquor Fairy….
A while back, I had a moderately well-read post on a recent IP dustup about Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and the Dark ‘n Stormy (which can only legally be called thus if you use Gosling’s). Among the several others who also wrote on it was Jacob Grier, who plots to storm the Trademark Bastille with a yet to be invented, “Dark ‘n Sue Me“. I love Jacob, but I suspected he had his head lingering dangerously near the wrong parts of the anatomy on this one. While I usually do not shy away from a good Rule 4 dust-up, I did here because… well, Jacob and his crew sound much better educated on the subject than I do. And it is less than fun to get into a public debate with people who appear more educated than I.
Even when I am, of course, right.
Descending from the rarefied air of intellectual property rights to the Basement Bar, I bring you these things for the PeTA member who hungers for an old-school, drawing room-type mancave:
A company named Cardboard Safari has a whole raft of these things, up to and including a full sized, whole body rhino. (H/T: Streetlevel, via Asylum)
I was thinking about one of these for my Basement Bar a while back, when I was noticing a slight shrinkage in the waistbands of many of my trousers (a condition that has yet to abate). Behold the Stationary Bike Blender Kit!
But then I got one of these, and I decided to look elsewhere for exercise. Especially since I’d only use it enough during Tiki Month. (H/T: OhGizmo)
The next item really ought to be it’s own post, but I’m sticking it here because, well, I’m on a roll and it has been in the queue for almost a year.
Understanding Cocktails pointed out that one of the exploding trends in 2008 was cocktails, so much so that Google’s Zeitgeist report for 2008 gave us a list of top ten drinks searched for as one of its featured lists.
I used Google Trends to check a few other search histories and found that our area of interest is as fresh and new in the public consciousness as we think. But I am dismayed to see that it is not growing as much as I’d like. I searched for Cocktail Bars, Mojito, Manhattan, and Martini. Only Mojito goes back before 2005 as even a blip on the radar. The others all appear out of the blue around 2005-2006, but don’t grow much from there. We cocktail bloggers are not doing our jobs, folks!
And last, what would a post like this be without a video? Here is the finest (IMHO) in the Cooking with Andy series from YouTube. Beware FoodBuzz types! This is the way a lot of people out there view food bloggers!
UPDATE: Ack! Apparently my dashboard ate my previous version of this post for no reason. I hate technology…. If this version of the post sucks more than the first, I apologize.
There is a blog I’ve been watching for a while called IKEAhacker. It is all about projects you can do and things you can make by repurposing stuff from IKEA. I’ve been reading it in part because I’m a sucker for IKEA stuff, and in part because I knew that ideas I could use for this blog’s Basement Bar Design series would show up there in due course.
Apparently, I’m psychic….
IKEAhacker’s latest post, Cheers, it’s a Kegerator! shows how to use a few miscellaneous items from the scratch and dent bin at IKEA to dress up an old commercial refrigerator into a very nice cardiovascular system for a beer-centric home bar. You should visit IKEAHacker to see the products they use, and to just look around.
The post is useful, but I thought I’d do a little digging around to help you out with the one thing that Jules doesn’t go into, the tap mechanism itself.
There are lots of conversion kits available on the web that will accomplish this end. At a minimum, a kit will need a keg tap, hoses, a faucet, a regulator, and a CO2 tank. Make sure you get the last, as it is not included in all kits.
There are two different types of pouring faucets: Door mount, and tower. The kind pictured above is a tower, and mounts to the top of the fridge. The larger fixture will make a kit of this type cost about eighty dollars more than a door mount, but a door mount on a short appliance like this would require a suppler back and sturdier knees than I for one posses. If you are converting an old full or apartment sized fridge, go for the door mount.
The cheapest kit I found was a door mount that, with gas tank, would cost about $140 from Beverage Factory.
The tower kits come with either one or two spouts. Since a fridge of the size shown would not likely have room for two kegs, I assume the person who made it went the two faucet route because of appearance, or because it was what was at the store. A base, one spout, tower kit can cost as little as $214 from KegWorks.
There are also deluxe kits that come with better components, and more importantly, with maintenance materials. A tower kit of this nature goes for $490 from KegWorks.
You ought to consider going with a deluxe kit, unless you are a fan of sticky counters and bacteria.
I would be remiss in any Basement Bar Design post if I did not link to myself with some thoughts from previous posts. First off, how can I say this… The handles on the faucets you see on all these kits are… well… plain.
They are boring!
OK, they are boring. Consider investing in something like this to show some personality. And if you don’t have the money, space, or cordless drill needed to go the custom kegerator route, you could still use one of the tabletop mini kegerators you can buy for a couple hundred bucks.
If you are going to go this route, Beverage Factory has a free manual on how to convert a fridge to a kegerator. I’d advise reading it before you even think of buying any components.
If that is to dry for you, or you are still in the decision phase, Kegworks has a great demonstration video, featuring Bob Villa Robert Hess, that is less detailed and complete, but gives a more intuitive view of what this project would take:
If you want to follow this specific series of posts on the Pegu Blog, you can subscribe to our Basement Bar feed here. Or you can just subscribe to the entire blog, with all its brilliant content, here!
Here’s a list of the other articles in this series that have been posted so far:
