Comic: If Vengeance Be My Destiny 5

If Vengeance Be My Destiny is The Cincinnati Man’s Sunday Comic.  This is installment #5.

The Saturday Rock Box

As goofy as he is, and as much as the white-clothes-dragged-through-a-mud-puddle look is just plain ridiculous, Andrew W.K. gets me God-damned juiced.  This live version of “Party Hard” reminds me of what punk rock shows used to be when I was a kid.  Am wishing I were 17 again.

More AWK madness here, here, and here.

The Saturday Dump Festival

The Saturday Dump Festival is The Cincinnati Man’s weekly linkdump of the things we found to be awesome over the past week.

• Go on a date with a Cincinnati Rollergirl.  Do it!
• Just think of the awesome shootouts you could have with this.
• As much as I just don’t care about the Rock Band Beatles game thingy, the intro looks freaking awesome.
• Sharapova.  You’re welcome.
• Planning a road trip?  You might want to check here to plan some extra curiosity pit-stops.  Seriously, this website is awesome.
• These forum posts contain every rumor and urban legend in professional wrestling.  Ever.  Seriously.  It’s alarming, disturbing at times, and way too long to read in one sitting.
• Ever want to watch a video of people’s faces jerkin’ it?  Here you go.  Warning: probably NSFW, and it’s also artsy.
• Bloomsday was this week, so BoingBoing posted this.  Neat.
• The zombie menace hits Legoland.
• Let this week’s Marioing begin.
• And continue…
• And continue…
• And continue…
• If you’re into looking at photos of women in various states of undress, you’re welcome.  And thank With Leather, while you’re at it.
• And here I thought it was just a clever Wu-Tang Clan song…
• This guy caught his dad with his GF, and boy, is she hot.
• If you ride a bike on a regular basis, you know about Yehuda Moon.  Well, it came back this week, and I couldn’t be happier.

Enquirer is Ohio’s WHAT?

There was sort of a mixed sense of pride and dread when I saw this article on the Enquirer’s website this morning.  The headline: “Enquirer Named Ohio’s Best Paper.”  Yep.  I was just as flabbergasted as you are right now.  I can think of at least two papers that I’d call better.

To be sure, as much as I criticize our fair paper, and as much as it probably deserves the criticism most of the time, it’s nice to see it win something every now and again.  But “Best Paper?”  Really?  How difficult is it really to put together a paper that often seems to be 75% AP and Reuters stories?  This isn’t entirely fair–I haven’t counted stories and don’t know this to be an accurate number–it just seems that way much of the time.  At the same time, though, pretty much every paper is currently in the same state.

It should be noted that the awards came from the Press Club of Cleveland, an organization that I’ve never heard of.  This means that I’m not certain how “prestigious” these awards actually are.  It also exposes me a bit–I’ve never worked in the media, and it’s not gonna happen anytime soon.  I’m interested to hear from someone who works in, or has formerly worked in the media, though.  What can you tell us about the Press Club of Cleveland?  This deserves some deeper looking-into, I feel like.

Apparently Italy Makes at Least One Beer. Who Knew?

The Newport Italianfest photobooth.

Last weekend was Italianfest in Newport, and Le Wif and I made it out a couple times.  If you’ve been to festivals around the Cincinnati area before, you pretty much know what to expect.  It’s your standard themed festival, with a slew of food booths, all Italian-themed.  The great majority of the food, as you might guess, was pasta/marinara/meatball fare, all good, and all certainly worthwhile.  Most notable, in my book anyhow, was the roasted ravioli from Mama Vita’s, and the sausage sandwich from Frankie’s Catering.  Amazing.

The major difference between Italianfest and every other festival, is that there’s a clear family theme that drives Italianfest–Newport has a pretty rich Italian history, and the festival’s crew makes no bones about the clarity of this message.  This is evidenced by the photo booth (it’s a very large tent, actually) that documents most, if not all, of the Italian families in Newport over the years.  It’s pretty impressive, in terms of size, and it’s actually reasonably likely that you’ll find pictures of someone you know in here.  We’re talking a *lot* of photos.

At any rate, as Le Wif and I were walking around, we came across a beer booth unlike the others–it was a “good” beer booth, selling Warsteiner and something called Peroni, which I’d never heard of before.

“What is this?  Italy makes a beer?”  I couldn’t pass it up.

So, I paid the festival price for one.  The attendants running the booth were very pleasant and were happy to serve us, which was nice.  It was also the first day of Italianfest and I’m certain that this had to wear off at some point or another.  How much crowd can you take, really?

On to the beer.  It’s a light golden color with a too-carbonated head.  I’d attribute this to the fact that it was a draft beer, at least for now.  As flavor goes, Peroni Nastro Azzurro is a reasonably standard pilsner with a slightly hoppy bite, and a somewhat bitter finish.  As a draft beer, it’s safe to say that I can tell this is a good beer.  At the same time, though, I don’t know that I can solely judge Peroni based on this.  Not sure how much it’d change the taste, but being able to drink it out of a bottle, or at least pour it from one, can make the experience a lot different.

Overall, Peroni gets a “Decent” on the CTS scale as a draft beer.  It’s possible that I’ll revisit this beer again out of a bottle just to see what it really has to offer.  Newport Italianfest?  This year, it gets a “Very Good.”  Mostly because I got a good look at this guy, though.

Hofbrauhasepoirhafsdpgihaus German Pilsner

Before I started this now-about-six-months-old beer journey, I’d had a particular distaste for Hofbrauhaus’s beer.  Not sure whether I’d just had a drink from a bad batch, or what, but it smelled terrible to me, was just too big, and didn’t particularly taste good.  So I didn’t go there for a couple years.

Being a fan of pilsners, I decided to get out and try Hofbrau’s beer of the month for June–a German Pilsner.  Le Wif and I made it out for a lunch date with a sleeping Le Bebe.  It was more or less hitchless, except for one thing: I didn’t bother to think about the fucking metric system.

“One liter or a half?” The pleasant waitress asked, smiling.

The size of one liter of beer didn’t cross my mind.  For the record, it’s almost 3 beers.  6-something percent, I think.  Awesome.  “One liter, please.”

The wife and I both ordered the pretzel sandwich, which heaps on a particularly good ham (I usually dislike ham) and bier cheese.  It’s around $8, as I remember–affordable, and you get pretty much what you’d expect for the cost.  Nothing earth-shattering, but a good, solid, messy sandwich.

The beer?  Yeah, that’s the important part here.  It’s good.

It starts with a hearty, fluffy white head that gives way to a nice, golden beer that’s clear and full-bodied, as pilsners go.  It’s very well made.  I’d compare it to all those adjuncty, cheap pilsners you’re used to, save for the fact that it’s a good bit hoppier, and you can really taste the difference in quality.  Hofbrauhaus’s offering for the month of June is head and shoulders above that crappy stuff you usually drink, even though it might be somewhere within the neighborhood of the same category of beer, even if only in terms of color.

The tradeoff: it’s pretty damn filling.  I had to push myself to finish it within the hour that we were there.  I did manage to leave a couple TCM business cards behind, so if you’re reading this right now, miss waitress, hello!  I told you I was going to talk about you on the Internet, and here it is.  I’d mention you by name if I could remember you.