Monday, October 26, 2009

Good Beer, Bad Loss

Quick hits:

Darkness Day at Surly Brewery started for myself around nine a.m. after picking up a McGriddle and a hot chocolate in preparation of standing outside in not-so-warm weather for three hours. I sent a picture to a few bloggers as to the line assembled to purchase the once-a-year bottled Russian Imperial Stout. To give people a visual for those that have visited Walt Disney World, take a line for Space Mountain during the prime time of day, now lay those lines back-to-back five times and you'd come close to amount of people waiting for those wax capped bottles yesterday.

Mind you, each bottle cost $18 at face value but as I gander at Ebay just this morning... yeah $80 plus $15 shipping. I'd love to bring one to the blogger gathering in December for NFL Sunday as there's six bottles sitting in my basement (but one is spoken for and being shipped to Chicago soon). The people out there covent beer as many would fine wine as we chatted it up with a guy who drove from St. Louis to get there by six am. There were so many different styles of brew that I sampled in those three hours before I made the purchase that any lover of beer should make this event even if you're just going to camp out (place number one went to guy from my local liquor store that set up a full camper trailer on Friday afternoon and proceeded to camp overnight like we did for Metallica tickets back in the day).

There were various tents, tables, vendors offering beers from all over and once you were lucky enough to fork over $108 for the 6-pack, there were limit edition Surly beers on tap including its awesome SurlyFest and Smoke blends. And after a few games of bean bags in the parking lot, I left a little over an hour later and people were still an hour away from getting into the brewery's door. Crazy people.

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On to Sunday, as you know I was working last night at PokerStarsBlog.com but during the day it was a big test for this year's Vikes.

Most people who only saw the highlights on Sportscenter would think OMG FAVRE YOU SUCK, but truth be told if you saw the entire game and thought the Steelers won the game versus the Vikes losing the game you shouldn't be allowed to comment on football in the future. The inane amount of yellow hankies at the Vikes (some earned, some were head-scratching, brick throwing, the-fix-is-on type penalty). The pass offense moved the ball well as the Steelers #1 run D played an excellent game shutting down Purple Jesus but note to cornerbacks who wish to tackle the Purple Messiah in the open field in the future.

Don't.

Get out of his way, say a few hail marys, and allow him to pass or you will get hurt. See the hate crime against Gay below:



BOOM!

The Vikes were rolling in one of the best AFC squad's home field and on a basic level shot themselves in the foot as described on the KFAN morning show. In game they were supposed to absolutely lose, and lose badly they had control of the game after a very slow start in the first quarter. Behind the Saints (who came back down by 21 over an very underrated/unlucky Dolphins team to win), the Vikes should be the #2 team to beat from the NFC after their performance at Heinz Field yesterday after a defense played lock down minus a last minute slant pass in the first half (which Big Ben nailed the opportunity provided), and without their star CB in Winfield.

On a side note, those attempts by Favre got high again as the Peterson/Taylor tandem isn't living up to their hype as the running game has struggled. The hope is by the time January gets here number four's arm is still slinging deep sideline patterns to Rice and Berrian.

If there's such as finding a win in a loss, the Vikes did it yesterday. And regardless of what happens at Lambeau next week, they've passed the test of the season and should be looking for forward to playing some football deep into January.

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