Category: Super Sweet Shirts

Cleveland Rocks?

    About two hours after we left ‘Weddings R’ Us,’ we arrived in Cleveland.  We drove through some pretty terrible areas….and then through more terrible areas.  Cleveland was pretty rough looking, nothing at all like Columbus.  It was like a larger Buffalo, but lacking that remaining charm and visible signs of progress.  I wasn’t going to base my assumption upon first glance though, I was going to see how the rest of our visit played out.  The first place we wanted to stop was “The Great Lakes Brewery.”
    Located at 2516 Market Ave, the brewery rests on the corner of a pleasant little block; a breath of fresh air from what we drove through.  The brewery was dealing with a nice lunch crowd with what appeared to be, a full out door eating area.  It was so nice outside, that it was tempting to eat out there but we had never seen the place before, so inside was where we were going to eat.  We got a table immediately, both frothing at the mouth for our first real escape from our diets.  I ordered a Reuben with fries accompanied by their own “Commodore Perry IPA“.  Nicole ordered the “Local and Fresh Plate” along with what I think was a Belgian White.  One thing I do remember clearly, is that Nicole’s dish was unreal.  It was so good.  She loved it so much.  She was so happy.

“I just ordered cheese!”

Her dish was an amazing spread of Hungarian hot sausage, Smoked Eye of Round, Mackenzie Creamery Chevre, Knight’s Vale Smoked Gouda, Seymore Dairy Aderkase Blue Cheese, Seasonal vegetables from their “pint sized farm,” and brewers barley bread crostini.  It was totally awesome.  My sandwich was also really good.

I’m not sure why the one side of my face appears to be melting…

   An older gentlemen approached our table and took the picture above for us.  He was there with his family celebrating the 50th anniversary of him and his wife.  He seemed sort of moved when he found out that we had gotten married 2 hours earlier.  He was a nice guy.  The first experience in Cleveland ended up being really awesome and lunch was great.  Totally stuffed from beer and food, we walked back to the car and started our short trip to the Inn we were staying at…
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We Are Home..and Married!

    We did some insane driving for two days and we are pretty beat, but our trip to Ohio was a success and we are now married.  We arrived in Columbus late Thursday night.  We stayed at the Red Rood Inn Thursday night which was centrally located and easy for us to get everything done Friday morning as it was only a few blocks from Columbus City Hall.  We were pleasantly surprised that Columbus was a really nice little city.  It was clean, modern, and everyone seemed to be nice.  Getting our marriage licence was a breeze, we literally just flashed our ID’s and we were good to go.  Once we got our license, we packed up our things and headed to Ohio’s Vegas style wedding chapel, “Weddings R’ Us.”  We pulled into the driveway to discover that this place was just a house.  We started to get weirded out but it was too late to turn around now, we had to ride it out.  We were greeted by a nice women and her poodle “Babar” and welcomed in.  The entire house was gutted for this business, the outside was deceiving.  She had a large room for bigger weddings, an office, and the Vegas Chapel for quick weddings.  It was decked out in tacky neon heart signs and had a little seating area in case there were guests.  When we first got inside, my tie was disheveled so she suggested that I “Go up the stairs and fix it in the mirror.”  I walked up the 4 stairs to exit the office and then proceeded to walk up the stairs into the bathroom when all of a sudden I heard the women yelling in full panic mode.
“Where are you going!?” she yelled
“You said at the top of the stairs..” I said, totally confused and trying to hurry back down the stairs before she really went nuts.
“I meant the top of these stairs..” she said referring to the couple of steps leading out of her office.
I totally didn’t think she meant that, but oh well.  After I fixed my tie, Nicole and I entered the Vegas Chapel, along with the women and the poodle which trotted right into it’s cage to prepare for the ceremony.

The lady put on her justice of the peace gown, and started the ceremony.  At that moment, everything that was insanely ridiculous about the entire scenario started to fade into the background and became completely irrelevant.  I was getting married.  Nicole and I held hands while this women began to marry us.  She was good, professional, and made it comfortable as Nicole and I stood there getting a bit teary eyed.  We repeated the vows that she spoke to us, at one point I was so nervous that I started repeating Nicole’s when it was her turn…I’m not the brightest some times.  When it was finished, we elected to buy the photo package and the woman took us into the backyard for some pictures.  The backyard was like a wedding wonderland, filled with flowers, tents, chairs, and different areas to take photos.  It was actually pretty impressive.

When it was finished we got into the car and headed to Cleveland fully married and excited to continue on with the rest of our weekend.

To be continued Monday….. (I need to keep the ratings up on my blog..)

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Its almost here!

    One more day and Nicole and I will be married.  Its pretty crazy.  We take off tonight to Ohio where we will have our Vegas style wedding and return on Saturday.  It should be a fun 2 days, we are pretty excited to just get out of town for a few days, it seems like all we do is work sometimes. I will post some random pictures throughout the weekend from our getaway so keep checking in!

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Movie Review: "Hard Boiled"

   
    After my action rant recently, I had stumbled upon a few cool blogs from dudes that are really into action films:  http://www.allouttabubblegum.com and http://www.mattmovieguy.com/ , who refers to himself as the “Direct to Video Connoisseur” (I am jealous of that amazing title).  These blogs are loaded with information on great action films.  It was on the first blog listed that I came across their 2011 list of the greatest action films of all time.  Way down at the #1 spot was John Woo’s “Hard Boiled”.  I had never heard of this film being primarily a fan of domestic action films.  I had only little experience with director John Woo from Van Damme’s “Hard Target”.  I loved “Hard Target” and after reading other reviews for “Hard Boiled”, I had to see what the fuss was all about.  Sure you can go anywhere to find a review of this film, but I think you will find my take a little different.
    The film stars Chow Yun-fat who plays “Tequila” who is a cheesy, over the top, cop who’s partner is killed in a gang shootout.  One of the gang’s high ranked members is an undercover cop named Tony who teams up with Tequila to take out the crime syndicate.  The film builds up to an ultimate showdown at a hospital where they both need to fight an army of gangsters by themselves, while rescuing innocent civilians and all of the babies.
   Now before I get into what makes this movie awesome, lets take a peek at other movies that came out in 1992 in terms of action films:

Rapid Fire
Under Siege
Lethal Weapon 3
Universal Solder
Etc.

By looking at this list from 1992, you can also get an idea of what has already been released prior. Maybe I’m not quite understanding why people consider this the greatest action film ever made?  If the reason is that the movie is so awesomely terrible and unintentionally hilarious, then I can agree.  Here is something that made me laugh out loud; a little taste:

This is just a sample of the things that made me laugh loudly.  Among other things were men on motorcycles that would explode after being shot and the undercover agent, Tony, getting shot point blank in the back with a shot gun from 4 feet away, not even phasing him as he manages to take out a bunch of gangsters and then goes to the hospital to reveal a very minor looking back injury.  There was also repeated use of the curse word “effing”.  Every other swear word in the book was in the movie so when multiple characters said “effing”, it made me laugh.  There was also a scene where Tequila bursts into the Police superintendent’s office with a sketch of a suspect yelling and demanding to know who the person was.  The suspect drawing was possibly the worst thing I had ever seen, mostly because it didn’t at all resemble anyone in the movie.

“Who is this super generic picture of!”

All kidding aside,….ok maybe just one more:

All kidding aside, the action scenes were good in the movie, but legendary and amazing? No way.  If the movie were made in 1982, I would have thought it was pretty amazing, but this movie looked super cheesy and low rent in comparison to what had been already made leading up to 1992.  Legendary, this movie is not.  Do I suggest watching it? Yes, its a fun movie to sit through and poke fun at.  Will I be pushing for a Chow Yun-fat t-shirt to be made?  Indeed.

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The Last of a Dying Breed.

    Often I use this blog to write about completely random things, wether it be my addiction to candy, the beer I am most into, or what I’m doing around the house.  This post is serious and I suggest you have a seat so that you can take all this in.
    I grew up on action films.  It was a fantastic time and I will never forget what I was able to grow up seeing and experiencing.  Things have been ruined with all of the different political groups and everyone wanting laws and regulations for everything imaginable.  When I was young, I could go to the toy store and I could get a toy gun that looked as if I would wipe out an army of scum bag terrorists.  Now you are lucky if you can find a toy gun, and if you do, it’s neon orange or yellow.  I understand why this happened, but it still blows.

What fun is this toy gun if it feels like it should come with a  tutu.

Even the action figures are different.  Sure you have the comic book action figures, which I suppose are the coolest choice nowadays, but when I was young, we had action figures for kids that were amazing.  Action figures based on characters from R-Rated action films.

I loved this toy as a kid.  It was my all time favorite.  I had the mini version and then I also owned the gigantic version.
This was the only picture I could find online of the gigantic 16 inch Arnold.
This was one of my favorite movies as a child.  Every kid had to have this action figure because it was flat out awesome; “Commando” was awesome. Lets take a look at the origin of this kids toy shall we (I didn’t create this video but its pretty awesome)?
I couldn’t get enough of these movies as a kid, as these heroes like Arnold, Stallone, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, and Van damme – they always stuck with me as being my favorites. 
    Today we are living through the death of the R-rated movie which essentially means the death of really awesome action movies.  What is this post about exactly?  It’s a post about the movie “Safe” starring Jason Statham.  My friend Justin and I went to go see this movie opening weekend.  We support Jason Statham because not only is he a great action star, but the torch was handed to him by the founding fathers of action in the first “Expendables” film.  While we were in the theater, I mentioned to Justin that I was still pissed off at the PG-13 rating that currently hangs over the “Expendables 2” movie coming out this summer.  Justin spoke of the fact that PG-13 is still super violent and that basically its lacks bad language.  At that moment I thought about it, and I agreed.
    An hour and a half later, filled with a nostalgic glee, we left the theater laughing and talking about what we just saw.  What did we see?  An absolutely awesome, balls out, no holds barred, action film.  This is something I have not seen in a theater for as long as I can remember.  Yeah I know, “The Expendables” was an action film, and yes it was great, but its a novelty act.  This movie was for real, and it was awesome.  My stance on the PG-13 not making much a difference accept for the language, had totally changed.  It had been so long since I had seen a real action film on a big screen that didn’t care about a rating, and the difference was clear to me.  The film was violent and it had bad language, which are essential in maximizing the fun of a straight up action film.  
   Statham plays an ex-cop/cage fighter who is pretty much the toughest guy ever.  Without giving anything away, he finds himself down on his luck and forced to be homeless. It is here he gets himself caught up in protecting a little Asian girl he finds in the Subway that is running from multiple criminal organizations because she is a math genius and has memorized a super long number containing the combination of a safe.  The movie is an hour and half of Statham protecting this girl by means of murdering criminals, point blank, in broad daylight, in large crowds of people.  It is absolutely awesome.  If you are a fan of action movies, especially old school action movies, get to the movies before this leaves because films like these are few and far between these days on the big screen.  Statham continues to carry the dwindling torch of a dying era.

   

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Phase 1: 90% complete!

    This weekend was big in terms of production.  Nicole and I set out to “start” the fence, but ended up going balls out and finished almost all of it.  There is just a small section on the other side of the yard to complete but the majority, the large side, is now finished.  We had never really done anything like this, so it was a totally fresh experience.  I have to say, it went as smooth as it could have possibly gone.  I started putting the posts in, while Nicole blasted the concrete blocks with a sledge hammer that were remaining from the original patio walkway that came with the house.  It was super thick so this was the only way.  The rest of the process was pretty easy.  We didn’t have to use a post digger, home depot sells these 3 foot spikes that the beams set into and then you bolt them in place.  They are heavy duty and sort of expensive, but they made things pretty easy and we only needed a few.  We used 2×4’s to go across the fence.  I saw a guy at Home Depot who was also getting fence supplies, he suggested using them over anything else for the strongest, best quality build.   Putting the actual fence portion up was not really the challenging part.  The hardest part was creating the gate door.  I was able to YouTube a video that Lowes had created about how to build a gate.  It gave me some really good pointers and suggested that you build the gate right onto the fence, then once its built, you saw off the extensions that were holding the gate to the fence.  I still had some issues and needed to shave down the door a bit to get it to comfortably close.  In the end, gate came out nice, and its super heavy.  Phase 1 of our back yard transformation is now just about complete!

Nicole destroyed this concrete.  I was pretty impressed that she was able to take care of this project.

Ric likes to help with the grass removal,

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Things have been a bit crazy!

    I haven’t posted in a while, things have been super crazy.  Nicole and I are trying to get married by June 1st, and the State of NY has made it impossible.  We were denied a marriage license.

To make a long story short, Nicole’s biological last name is on her birth certificate, not her adopted last name which she has used her whole life.  After two trips to city hall they told us she had to get a legal name change which is outrageous and ridiculous, especially because she was just issued a US passport no problem, using that same birth certificate.  We stormed out of city hall super annoyed. At first we were determined to book a flight to Vegas while giving the much deserved middle finger to New York.  We could have afforded the trip but it would have been tight.  We cooled down, and started to do some research.  Buffalo is about 4 hours from Cleveland, and Ohio issues same day marriage licenses with only a photo ID requirement.  No waiting day, no B.S., you’re in and your out.  I called down there and confirmed so that there would be no surprises.  So on May 4th, we are heading to Ohio.  The Vegas style wedding chapel is actually in Columbus, so we are driving there first, then driving to Cleveland to spend the day/night.  I’ve personally never been to Cleveland so I am actually excited.  If anything, the State of New York has given us an excuse to get away for a fun weekend.  We will have a good time.  Among the destinations during our wedding weekend, is this:

Not sure what this is?  Look in the window… that’s right.  Ralphie’s house restored!

Nicole found out about this online.  I visited their website and they sell things from the movie, so of course I will be buying a full sized leg lamp for our dining room bay window so that the next Christmas rules.  Also in Cleveland, I’d like to stop here for lunch:

The Great Lakes Brewery Brewpub

For dinner that night, we will do something special to celebrate our successful out of state marriage, something fancy, we haven’t yet decided on a place.  
     As crazy as everything has been, this should be fun and we are pretty excited.  More to come!

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Van Damme is still awesome.

    If you’re a casual fan, you probably know Van Damme from his classics like “Universal Soldier”, “Kickboxer”, “Bloodsport”, etc.  Die hard fans, like myself, have seen everything he’s made, which during the later years have been 80% garbage.  After the release of “JCVD”, Van Damme displayed  (to everyone that saw the movie) that he could act.  His main problem seemed to be the projects he was taking on.  Not all of the in the later year films were like “JCVD”, in fact 99% of them were not.  In  “Assassination Games”,  Van Damme is at his best again.  He is definitely a guy that looks way cooler the older he gets.  He goes from this:

To This:

    The film stars Scot Adkins and Van Damme.  I’ve never seen Scott Adkins in anything else but I was fairly impressed with him as an action star, he was pretty awesome.  Van Damme and Adkins play two rival assassins, one has a personal history with the target, the other is purely business.  The two have great chemistry and both play their parts perfectly.  Without getting too detailed, the film quality, action scenes, acting, and violence were better then most action films I’ve seen recently.  Its a shame these movies go straight to DVD as I think that people would go to the movies to see action flicks like these.  Instead we get watered down action movies full of teen heartthrobs and bad CGI.  Watch “Assassination Games” if you are in the mood for a good action film, its currently on Netflix streaming.

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Bottling Weekend for Batch 1

    This weekend was bottling weekend for my first batch of home brew.  Last Thursday I made my way out to the home brew store to get some bottling supplies.  I really only knew the basics for what I needed when I walked in there so instead of making it a terrible experience from forgetting things or buying the wrong things, I asked the guy at the counter for some advice.  He actually took the time to bring me into the back to show me a few things about bottling.  If you are in Buffalo, NY and want to get into home brewing, I highly suggest going to Niagara Tradition Home Brew Supply.  After watching him show me a few things, I was introduced to a few cool gadgets that make things easier, one being this:

This thing is awesome.  You basically fill the bowl portion with about an inch of sanitizer, place the bottle on the thing in the center, and push down.  It projects a forceful spray of sanitizer inside the bottle.  This made it very easy to sanitize 2 cases of bottles in minutes. 
    I used the auto-siphon which was recommended to me over using a bottling bucket.  Its a lot better for the beer.  Starting the siphon was a bit of a challenge for me because I had never used one before.  I ended up blowing the tip off my filler wand and sprayed beer all over, but hey, you live and learn.  Once I got the siphon going it was super easy.  

Ignore my pants, It’s Sunday, a day where normally we have things to do but this particular Sunday was a total day off so I was in no hurry to get dressed.

After a while, I got the hang of it and set up a little bottle stand.  This allowed me to cap while the siphon slowly filled the bottles.
    The bottle capping device was fairly easy to use.  Again, I’m no expert so the first 5 minutes I looked like a cave man.
    Overall my beer had a nice color and smelled good.  I now have to keep the bottles in a 65-70 degree environment for 6-7 more days before moving them to the basement where they will be in a 50-60 degree environment.  I hope its good.  The guy at the brew store said that if he knew this was my first brew he would have advised against me trying to brew a beer this complicated, but its the type of beer I love, so its the one I want to be good at making!

In a little over a month, I find out if I’m any good!
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Week 8 Weight Watchers

     Week 8, the weekend following Easter.  Last weekend I drank a ton and ate more than normal, although I stayed within my point allowance.  I thought for sure I was going to gain some weight but I didn’t!  I broke even.  So next week I should hopefully lose some more, now that there is no holiday weekend.
      This weekend is bottling weekend for my home brew.  Its tough to remain optimistic about my first batch, for some reason I still feel like its not going to go well.  I have to hit up the home brew store when Nicole gets home because I need bottling supplies.  I’ll be sure to snap some pictures of the process.  Also this weekend Nicole and I are going to tackle a few things in the back yard as we prepare it for the fence we are putting up.
More pictures to come!

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