This Week in Quakertown – Newspaper Ceases Publication

It is a sad day in hickville: The Quakertown Free Press, the newspaper that I have used a source of information on the town I live in and mocked relentlessly for the past year, has ceased publication. This economy has certainly done a number on the newspaper industry, and small town papers are no exception.

It’s bad enough that major papers are laying off science writers or outsourcing the Obituaries to India, but when the Free Press closed its doors, Quakertown lost its only paper.

Not only that, but I lost my only source of news for this place. It’s not like I go out and interact with people. How am I to get news to relay to you, my adoring fans?

Do not expect this column to continue. But if I do get wind of something interesting, or just silly, happening here, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Clos du Smith

There’s a fine line between oenophile and wino, and it’s not just snooty spelling.

One of the drawbacks to living in Pennsylvania is the state of affairs with regards to alcohol. The liquor stores here are state-run (fuck you, unions) and we all know where lack of competition leads: lousy hours, high prices and crappy selection.

Even though they have improved since I moved away from here a decade ago, they still can’t hold a candle to California (or even New Jersey). For those of you who live in rational states, let me give you a little taste of the PA liquor laws:

• Beer distributors can sell beer and soda, but only by the case.
• If you want less than a case of beer, get it from a bar, and prepare to be anally violated at the cash register.
• Wine and liquor is sold at the “state store”, usually titled “Wine & Spirits”. Oh, how creative. Any given town, other than a major city, has at most one of these. Some of them are even open on Sundays!
• No booze is sold anywhere else.

So, if you are preparing for a party, you need to go to the grocery store for food, the beer distributor for beer and the state store for wine and liquor. In California, it’s all at the grocery store. Which is open 7 days a week. Some of them 24 hours a day. And they compete with the other grocery stores and liquor stores on price and selection.

The end result of all this is that the wine that I drink costs twice as much here as it does in California. And the bottles are spoiled at a higher frequency, in my sampling.

Oh, and don’t even think of subscribing to some winery’s wine club – you can’t ship it into PA.

Why this lesson in backwards blue laws? Because that’s one of the reasons I decided to start making wine again. (I’m actually surprised they let you make your own wine here). The last time I made wine was when Anne and I made it for the wedding favors (still have a couple bottles left, too, and it’s pretty good).

The process of making wine is actually pretty simple, if you use a kit:

1. Mix juice concentrate with water.
2. Add packets of stuff as instructed.
3. Add yeast.
4. Let sit.
5. Siphon to another container to get rid of sediment.
6. Add more packets of stuff.
7. Bottle.
8. Enjoy!

The hard part is making sure every surface that touches the wine is clean and sanitized. Which means laboriously washing everything (buckets, siphon tube, thermometer, stirrer, hygrometer, airlock, bottles) and then soaking it in either bleach or some other sanitizing agent. I use an iodine solution, which you don’t even need to rinse off. If you use bleach you’d better make damn sure you rinse it all off. Yecch.

Oh, the other hard part is, if you’re cheap like me, you re-use wine bottles instead of buying new ones. Which means removing labels. Some of those asshat winerys use some serious glue on their labels (I’m looking at you, Coppola). I have, at times, resorted to using Goof-Off, which, while yes, it will remove anything from anything, is pretty darn toxic, and since I didn’t know better, I didn’t wear gloves, and my hands burned and smelled like solvent for two days.

Since I got rid of all of my used wine bottles before moving back here, and hadn’t been saving them, I tried to beg my friends for bottles, but I think I overestimated the lushness of my friends, because I actually had to go buy some bottles this time.

But I digress.

Last weekend, I bottled a batch of Chardonnay. I also have a batch of Sangiovese ready to go, but I didn’t have enough corks, so that will wait until this weekend.

It won’t be ready to drink for at least a month, maybe three. I sampled a bit while bottling, and it definitely needs to age.

I love the sight of rows of pristine Chardonnay bottles. That should last at least a few weeks. Long enough to make another batch.

That’s a little too much

I went to check out any news on the new Star Trek movie recently to see if there was anything new.

The headline said “See the New Trailer” so I clicked it. It ended up being the same trailer I saw a few months ago, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is, is that when I went to watch the trailer, which is essentially a commercial for the movie, I had to wait 15 seconds while I watched an actually commercial for AT&T wireless before the trailer played.

I’m already annoyed that I have to wait for commercials on-line, particularly when they went from under 10 seconds, to 15 seconds, and now they are starting to pop up as full 30 second commercials.

But now I have to watch a commercial in order to watch a commercial?

Another good thing ruined.

I’m looking forward to the day I get that government sanctioned neural implant that plays a commercial in my head before I can restart recalling a memory.

But yeah, I can(and you can too) always watch “Fan Film The Series” on-line anytime, commerical free here.

Fan Film The Series Episode 1

Finally! It’s Here! Fan Film The Series has finally launched, along with its new website.

The NeoZAZ.com original production is now on-line.

After all the filming, editing, and numerous troubles with… ah, forget all that. Just CLICK HERE.

Best. Phobia. Ever.

This poor girl is deathly afraid of (wait for it) … pickles.

Man, I gotta start watching daytime TV again.

Six Degrees of Historic Separation

For those that didn’t know, or didn’t hear it on the podcast, my wife was fortunate enough to have gone to the historic inauguration of President Obama this week. Long story short, her best friend was attending to report the event for her news station which gave my wife the perfect excuse to go – which was further enhanced when she become one of the lucky attendees to actually have a coveted silver ticket.

So, though NeoZAZ was not there directly, we’re happy to provide this handful of pictures from a firsthand account of this historic event.

The Day before the inauguration – the only chance to get this close to the Presidental parade viewing booth ever again on this trip.

“Can you point me to a bath… oh, nevermind”

“Follow the guy in the winter jacket”

“Ah crap, we all went the wrong way” (That’s not a joke, that’s really what this picutre is about.”

Road way tunnels – there not just for cars anymore

At least we beat the crowds.

Could you move up a little? There’s about 3.5 million more people that need to get in.

George Hussein Bush

This is one of my favorite images from the inauguration festivities:

Countdown to Liquor Day

The new Trailer Park Boys movie is official enough to make it to IMDB so far. It’s current working title is “Trailer Pay Boys:  Countdown to Liquor Day“.

Not a whole lot of information out there on it yet, but if you’ve seen “Say goodnight to the Bad Guys“, it’s resonable to assume at this point that it will pick up with the events “Bad Guys” ended with.

Rest assured, I’ll be posting anything I find when I find it.

FAIL!

I didn’t hit the midnight deadline for Fan Film Episode 1. I’m trying, I really am – footage is rendering as I write this. But alas, it’s not going to happen by midnight (EST at least).

I’m gonna chalk this particular delay on Quicktime and Premiere no longer playing well together, at least at the moment. I’m getting a not so informative “Error: API Failure” when I try to export to an MOV. I’m reduced to exporting to a WMV for the time being, which sucks – not only in length of time, but in quality as well. If anyone happens to know how to fix that damn API Failure, let me know, please! The “fixes” I’m finding in google haven’t helped at all.

I’ll keep chugging along with what I got. The first post of the first episode might not be in all it’s glory, but it will be up as soon as the thing finished rendering.

This Could Actually Happen

With my latest “deadline” for the release of the first episode of  “Fan Film” looming ahead, there is a possibility that I may actually get it done and posted before midnight tomorrow night.

It’s pretty much down to how fast can my machine render the final footage AND how fast will my internet connection let me upload it.

We’ll see.

Personally, I’d suggest watching the inauguration tomorrow instead, and check back for Fan Film over the weekend.

Side note: Even if by some miracle I do get the episode uploaded – the new website is not at all ready. That maybe done by the weekend and it may not. Again, we’ll see.

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