More Scotch

In my continuing attempts to destroy my liver - soon to be ably assisted by AndrewS and Psychochicken - I went to the Regional Wines Scotch Tasting. Another fun night with B and M, as usual my tasting notes are vague, although somewhat more descriptive than normal. This tasting was run by the fabulous Whisky Galore in Christchurch (which our fav chicken has been to as well) and included the following (all no chill/colour):
Bunnahabhain heavily peated 9yo signatory refillbutt 5275 46%
Ben Riach 16yo 43%
Ben Nevis 10yo 46%
Edradour 1993 cask 251 59.8%
Highland Park 22yo 56.6% duncan taylor cask 1731 orkney matured bottle
laphroaig 17yo OMC 50% refillhogshead 1710
Port Ellen Provence win83 refull butt 3229 23yo
+ a mystery one which i didn't write down :)

My pick? strangely not the most expensive one (see other Scotch blog), rather the Edradour which came in at a 9.5 for me. And I was right pissed off when I ordered it, only to discover they had no bottles left :( Normally from that list I'd have picked the HPark but really didn't like that one, describing it as too sweet and caramel on the palate, and not liking the nose much either (chlorine according to me!).
The Edradour had a huge nose with big notes of caramel, and the palate was 'velvet caramel', nice long finish too.

In what appears to be a continuing theme, I've just noticed Neil is also a fan of Edradour. The trip to Scotland may turn out to be expensive. Oh and my #2 was the Laphroaig (8.5-9), I was (apparently) very impressed with the 'texture' and the 'oily noise).

Love, me

Stardust

Suz and I wandered along to Stardust last night - the movie adaptation of the Neil Gaiman book. I'm sure there are masses of reviews out so mine's a vibe based review. I liked it. A lot. It stuck pretty much to the story (as I remember it anyway) and it's a fun movie. The cameo's are excellent - and thankfully Gervais isn't in it too much - de Niro is by far and away the highlight of the movie. His timing is wonderful, and worth the price of admission alone.

I'd have liked to have seen more asides from the rapidly increasing ghost contingent, as they were pretty special. I enjoyed the pacing of the movie which certainly isn't hurried, but meanders along nicely. The one complaint is that the music wasn't the best, seemed a bit too repetitive.

I can see this becoming a bit of a cult classic, kinda like Princess Bride. Definitely recommended.

B.

KPW Helloween Hell II

Martin and I wandered along after some QI and Boss Nigger to the KPW 'Helloween Hell II' as we'd enjoyed the previous KPW event. Obviously there for the legend that is Dr Diablo, we managed to sit through the matches before the herculean man muscle of Diablo cantered to the stage. We were awestruck!!
Is that man on the juice? Surely not!
A glorious victory ensued, the second in his amazing career. Surely he's in line for a title shot? We must start a fan club - Lil' Diablos?
Some action shots of the big man in action, locking in the leglock and inflicting the pain - he's got a PhD in it ya know.





Big calls by the big Blair too - possibly our favourite "I'm in Newtown and a fights broken out!"

B

Movies

Our intrepid band of Bgrade fans tracked down Boss Nigger and watched it yesterday. For those of you who watched the preview from YouTube (see earlier post) the movie doesn't disappoint. Great performance by Fred Williamson - the gags and oneliners are great. Bill Smith takes the role as the bad guy. It's worth checking out his IMDB entry he's a bright wee boy, and has very diverse talents. Aside from acting he's: Guiness record-holder for reverse-curling his own body weight; Performed over 5,100 continuous sit-ups over a five hour period etc. And he's been in some classics.

So the movie, um blaxpoitation western. Funky soundtrack with black sheriff cleaning up white mans town.

Worth watching. We headed to the KPW event afterwards and I'll blog about that soon, should be with some pictures too.

This blog has been brought to you by the metal show with Anathema playing "Phantom of the Opera" and now Opeth riffing out on 'Deliverance'.

Love, B

Munro, Smith, Berlin and Dean - Review

Thanks to the lovely people at CT, I had tickets to the Chamber Music New Zealand gig last night. For those of you local, the Smith is ex-concertmaster of the NZSO, Wilma Smith. The programme was interesting. Kicked off with Mozart Piano Quartet in Gmin K478. Regular readers will know my dislike for Mozart. This one was no different, I keep thinking Mozart's like a pretty but vacuous chick, good to look at but ultimately you have to talk to her, and it's all downhill from there. Usual Mozart motifs, repetition, kinda dancey vibe, and when he feels the variation has gone on enough - he hammers the main theme. I thought it was well played. But certainly not what I was there for.

I got the feeling that this was a young quartet, not so much hesitancy as enjoying the novelty of playing together. And this was apparent in the second piece, the Copland (Piano Quartet 1950). I really enjoyed this piece. Interesting, quirky and challenging. All the things I like in classical music, and all the things missing from the Mozart (yeah I know I should stop harping on about it, but meh!). I should buy more Copland as I like everything I have of his. And ELP covered him. There ya go prog-readers, a hook-in for you lot and evidence I do listen to pre-1980s prog.

The second half was the Schumann Piano Quartet in Eb Opus 47. Now I'm not the biggest Schumann fan either (jeez i'm a picky bastard), but this was great. Again with the interesting rhythms, but more lyricism than the Copland. As you'd expect from Schumann.

Performance was excellent, I got the feeling there was a bit of unsure playing in the Schumann, but the excellence of the Copland more than made up for it. Excellent balance as well. Well recommended.

B.

Ancient Reptiles

Ok, so I'm a bit bored at work at the moment and may put up a few blogs today.

The first is a subject close to my heart, reptiles. In particular archaeic reptiles. There has been some controversy about when reptiles started wandering around, previous to the current work the oldest fossil was dated to 315 MYA. Molecular work suggests that around that time the Testudines (turtles) split from the reptilian lineage. And that's separate from the anapsid:diapsid split issue. Sphenodontidae were also about to start their big diversification (heh heh- not so much), so the 315 MYA date has been largely ignored in evolutionary discussions. Even the main morphology players don't use it much (Lee, Benton et al). So the recent finding of rocks 1 - 3 MY older pushes the date back. It may not seem like much, but it supports earlier dates and the authors acknowledge that this era is poorly studied.
More support for the molecular side.

Nature summary here.

Article here.

Love, Sergeant Sphen

Ngauranga & Effluent

Please note the ampersand between those two. I was sitting on the train and noticed the weird contraption next to the Ngauranga station, labelling on it says it's a place for dumping effluent from stock trucks and mobile homes. I never knew these things existed, and there's one I ride past. Exciting!!
Other interesting facts about Ngauranga. There's a boat carcass up there somewhere, probably around the lights. I read something in the DomPost some time ago about it - it was on the beach front, but that got lifted during the big quake. Some guy in Wgtn had been trying to find it for sometime. I think that kinda thing is cool, I often think I'd have liked to have been a historian, or at least done more local history. I really enjoy Peter Kitchin's columns each week in the Sat paper.

All those thoughts were inspired by the absolutely wonderful album, Up by Peter Gabriel. If push came to shove I think that album would make it on my top10. Ever. And I don't like early Genesis. It constantly disturbs me how many ppl presume I like early Genesis and Yes, and I gave up trying to explain the concept of 'neo-prog' to them. Sticking to 'I like Radiohead' seems to work better.

Love, B.

Up the Irons!

Far be it for me to suggest that your average Iron Maiden/metal fan is a smelly, unkempt individual, but one could certainly draw that conclusion from items in the IM merchandise collection, namely:



For those of you playing at home, yes that's right, IM branded incense. that beat the IM branded candle holder, wrapping paper and coasters as my favourite item. More information on this stunning example of niche marketing here!

Can you smell what the Eddie's cooking?

me x

Oct 19

1943. Streptomycin was discovered.

Which is surprising given how recent that was, and how important it's discovery has been - particularly for tuberculosis. And another example of supervisors f'ing over their grad students. For a brief summary read it here.

Watching the Argies deal to the Frogs at the moment :)

b.

I should find this movie

The preview suggests it has everything I need in a movie


Me x