We’ve already mentioned a handful of them, but today being Halloween, perhaps reading about one particularly excellent pumpkin beer will inspire some of you homebrewers not to waste the chunks of gourd left behind from carving your jack-o-lantern.On the other hand, the scary results of a pumpkin experiment gone awry…
We’ve finally beaten the Germans at their own game. That’s the only rational conclusion one can draw from the results of Oktoberbest 2011, in which the lone Teutonic entry got its ass handed to it. Paul Hightower and Brian Brown, Craft Beer Examiners for Dallas and Plano, respectively, narrowed down…
Last year, inspired by the all-night Nuit Blanche celebrations of art in Paris, Santa Monica and other cities around the world, artist Shane Pennington and partner Joshua King decided Dallas deserved its own version, so they created Aurora and set it in Dallas Heritage Village. Installations projected colorful lights and…
Aerobatic pilots are a different breed of human than you and I. This is clear from the moment Sean D. Tucker saunters into the spotless Alliance Airport hangar, all cool confidence and swagger as he flashes a toothy grin and grips my hand in a firm shake. While he’s probably…
The judges have spoken. The Elite Eight of our Oktoberbest 2011 have been winnowed down to the quaff-able quartet to be sent on to the Final Pour. And in our quest to determine the best Oktoberfest beer available in North Texas, Dallas Craft Beer Examiner Paul Hightower, Plano Craft Beer…
Many of our most brilliant artists and musicians are also among our most damaged; the very passions that inspire their works can also lead to deep depression, addiction or suicide. But not everyone accepts this as intractable or, worse, glorifies it. Friends and family members of “Frankie 45” Campagna and…
Not only is Reindeer Manor Abusement Park in Red Oak the oldest haunted house attraction in the world, having opened in 1974, but it is also the first of its kind, according to property owner Alex Lohmann. In fact, he says, before it opened as a haunted house, there really…
Most of us think first of beer when it comes to Oktoberfest, following that thought with images of Teutonic hotties in dirndls or lederhosen. But at BlackFinn American Saloon (4440 Belt Line Road in Addison and 4001 Bagpiper Way, Suite 101 in Arlington), German food is no O-fest afterthought. Through…
Never in the dozen-plus years that I’ve been of legal drinking age have I seen beer as cheap as the $2.99 six-pack of Big Flats 1901 I espied at Walgreen’s the other day. Not even the Schlitz, Natty Light or Beast we drank in college was that cheap. There was…
With a population of nearly 1.3 billion people, it’s not surprising that China is home to some of the most talented folks on Earth. Luckily for us talent-appreciators here in North Texas, a handful of those folks — The National Acrobats of the People’s Republic of China — are stepping…
Tom Six, director of The Human Centipede, claims that The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence outdoes its predecessor as “the sickest movie of all time.” We certainly hope so, as we actually managed to keep our dinner down during the first Human Centipede film. A deranged doctor sewing three people…
First off, a big thanks to Observer art director Alexander Flores for the beautiful bracket above. As you can see, Round One of Oktoberbest 2011 is complete; Dallas Craft Beer Examiner Paul Hightower has determined the Texas Division winners, and Plano Craft Beer Examiner Brian Brown has picked which two…
… and were delicious. The end. What, you were expecting a Polack joke? This is Texas, where the butts of our jokes are Aggies or blonds, not Polish people. Not that we have many Polish people to offend, anyway. Apparently, there isn’t enough demand to import Zywiec or Okocimskie beers…
An inverted Eiffel Tower in place of the heel on a woman’s shoe. Drops of water strung on a needle and thread like beads. The moon suspended from a gong stand. These images, shot in evocative black and white, are just a few of the surreal, thought-provoking and rich photographs…
The first round of Oktoberbest 2011 is halfway over, with a couple of surprising upsets and a couple of shocking, bit-spitting failures by favored programs to even make the sweet 16. (Well, actually, they’re just too hard to find in stores, but that doesn’t quite have the same drama.)Plano Craft…
We’re doing well if we don’t take our breakfast straight from the bottle. Coffee and a banana is as good as it gets most hectic mornings, and when we have time for more, we’re mostly limited to scrambled eggs and Bisquick pancakes. If you’re like us, you could use some…
The idea that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is especially true at yard sales. But if anyone has the eye to discern gems from junk, it’s an artist. So the Gems & Junk sale 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (3120 McKinney Ave.) should…
Now that I’ve graded more than 50 beers since introducing the Hophead Beer Scoring System, it seems a good time to take a look back at all of them and list them in order. The system (which I have called by a different name in every post, a running gag…
An annoyance that 0.01 percent of you will care about: Beer companies sometimes call certain offerings “Belgian” regardless of their origin when “Belgian-style” is more accurate. Belgium being home to amazing breweries, marketing beers — even American-brewed ones — as “Belgian” carries serious cache. But Cooperstown, New York-brewed Ommegang is…
Like most parents probably do, we just dump cash into our kids’ school lunch account and plead with them not to throw away whatever fruit or vegetable gets plopped onto the plate. But Amy Kalafa, a nutritionist and the creator of the documentary Two Angry Moms: Fighting For The Health…
The Ochre House earned the “Best Place To See A Weird Play” distinction in our 2009 Best of DallasTM(r)(c) awards, and it doesn’t look like Matthew Posey’s theater is giving up its hold on that claim any time soon. The current production, written and directed by Posey, concerns the dysfunctional…
What with Central Market’s Brewtopia beginning today, Addison’s Oktoberfest starting tomorrow and several beer dinners planned for the rest of the month, there are enough brew events in the next couple weeks that your liver should be in fighting shape by the time October rolls around. Gotta build that tolerance…
