1. Last Sunday, I enjoyed seeing
Arsenal dismantle
Aston Villa 4-0 to win the English FA Cup for the second year
running. The result means that Arsenal is the most
successful club in the world's oldest soccer tournament,
with twelve wins. In addition, Manager Arsene Wenger is himself
now tied for first among managers with six wins.
2. Given that I first quaffed
Ayinger
Celebrator in my Houston days, and perhaps even before I started
blogging, this beer recommendation might seem ... belated.
Beer
Advocate rates it
world-class, but I like the
commercial
description supplied at
RateBeer:
Celebrator has
a creamy head of tight bubbles contrasting beautifully with its
profound dark robe. It is full-bodied and velvety from half a year's
aging. Although it is strong, it is not overpowering. There is a
wonderful and complex balance between the various malts, the alcohol
and the subtle hops. A complex fruitiness of roasted malt and whole
hop flowers make Celebrator great as a party drink with friends and
family at celebrations. Despite its richness, it has a faintly smoky
dryness in the finish.
Chalk up the delay in part to my not
having had it in so long: When I spotted it at my local beer emporium,
I purchased a bottle out of nostalgia. I was floored by how good it
really is, and glad that pleasant memories from an earlier time
prodded me to become reacquainted with something my then-less-educated
palate didn't fully appreciate at the time.
3. A
cute commercial by Nationwide,
featuring a huge baby made an
appearance at the
end of a cartoon show my daughter likes. Being a parent of a two- and
a four-year-old is a recipe for distraction, so I wasn't clear at the
time that the baby was supposed to be a car, but I thought I did okay
explaining why there was a baby when Pumpkin asked.
It's a
joke, sweetie. Babies don't really know what they're doing, so a
parent has to work hard to make sure they don't hurt themselves or
other people, or break anything. It's an ad for insurance. If an
accident happens, it can cost lots of money to fix, but of you pay for
insurance, they can pay for you if that happens.
I was
less impressed with my off-the-cuff explanation of insurance than the
fact I was having such a conversation with someone who didn't even
exist four years ago.
4. I enjoyed seeing
San Andreas with
Mrs. Van Horn on a date night last week. The movie was good for what
it was, and I found that Scott Holleran's
review left me with a realistic level of expectation:
The
uncomplicated San Andreas from Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema is
not really about the big one, the fault line, the seismology or the
typical disaster movie themes of enlightenment through trauma, trial
and error. It's about rescuing one's values at the end of the
world.
As a couple, we are the opposite of stereotype in
that
she likes the action movies and, if either of us could be
described as "artsy-fartsy", I would be the one. For movies, if I
don't have a clear first choice, I do what I did when we picked out
wedding gifts: I ask her to winnow the field down to a few acceptable
candidates, then I pick from among those. With movies, I usually draw
on the opinions of a small group of reviewers and friends whose
opinions I respect to make my final selection.
-- CAV