By Dan O’Shea

There are seasonal beers, there are holiday beers and then there are pumpkin beers.
The pumpkin beer has somehow emerged as its own market-pleasing beer style and industry segment. Other beers brewed with fruit (yes, a pumpkin is a fruit) and seasonal spices just don’t seem to inspire the same kind of passionate following – or long list of brewers – as the great pumpkin.
I remember when Buffalo Bill’s Brewery in Hayward, Calif., made the only pumpkin beer I knew of, and it was not all that long ago. Now, there are at least a dozen well-known craft breweries that do seasonal pumpkin releases, and a few hundred breweries overall that have done a pumpkin release at some point and possibly still do.
And while you would think pumpkin beers would have a fairly limited range of flavor profiles, they run anywhere from bitter to sweet to spicy to bready to creamy – that’s right – creamy.

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Posted on October 31, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: “Hurricane Sandy stalls presidential campaign.”
News Headline: “Hurricane Sandy silences Wall Street.”
News Headline: “Hurricane Sandy takes down Gawker, Buzzfeed, HuffPo.”
Even a hurricane can have an upside.

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Posted on October 31, 2012

One Man’s Desires – And Heartaches

Gangs took his sons. God took his wife.

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Posted on October 29, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

QT Digest of Mitt Romney’s Friday Speech on the U.S. Economy (for Your Convenience):
“We . . . have changed . . . our . . . principles . . . before . . . and . . . will . . . in . . . the future . . .”
QT will admit these excerpts are out of context.
Sort of.
Eight days to go.

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Posted on October 29, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: “Mitt Romney: U.S. will stay ‘strongest nation on Earth.’ ”
News Headline: “Clint Eastwood: U.S. ‘just couldn’t survive’ a second Obama term.”
Add strongest nations on Earth to the list of things that aren’t what they used to be.

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Posted on October 26, 2012

Mission Impossible: Just Own Who You Are

“Kmart set up shop in the parking lot of Kmart’s Addison and Kimball location in Chicago and invited the neighborhood to watch dancer Monternez ‘Monty’ Rezell, from the Chicago Hip Hop dance crew Stick and Move, dance his way through eight hours of costume changes.”
We’d rather do our laundry. Or stick hot pokers in our eyes.

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Posted on October 25, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: “Man runs marathon in flip-flops.”
This is either about an athletic event or Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy.
Hard to say.
QT will get back to you.

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Posted on October 24, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: “Facts take a beating at second presidential debate.”
News Headline: “No debate over whether they twist facts.”
News Headline: “Presidential debates need format change.”
Too late for changes tonight.
But QT recalls a one-man play in theaters a few years ago.
The play was set up so members of the audience could push buttons to deliver slight electrical shocks to the performer.
This format could be adapted.
Or were you thinking of dunk tanks?
Might work.
The political process can always use a little tweaking.

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Posted on October 22, 2012

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: “Ann Romney: Mormon missions and U.S. military are ‘different ways of serving.’ ”
And while we are at it, Paul Ryan once had a summer job at a McDonald’s.
So he served, too.

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Posted on October 19, 2012

By J.J. Tindall

MERCURY IN RETROGRADE
Heart full of dew
and cinemas;
the contraption of memory
clattering;
autumn leaves turn to gems
and gazelles.
Under-appreciated oak and elm
transmogrify into blazing festivals
and suburban lanes
become shattered rainbows.

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Posted on October 18, 2012