Into the Drink

Need a new holiday tradition? Of course you don't. So do this instead:

Get your hands on two science fiction films from the 1950s, specifically, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Monster on the Campus. Then get your hands on a few of your favorite alcoholic beverages. Don't drink yet!

First a few words about these films.

Creature and Monster are united by their director, Jack Arnold. But they're two very different movies. 

Much like watching James Whale's Frankenstein, any reasonable viewer will root for the monster in Creature. The story concerns a crew of scientific researchers who find evidence of a missing link-type beast, an amphibious humanoid swimming the waters of the Amazon River. The men decide they need to bring the creature -- popularly referred to as the Gillman -- back to civilization for further research.

Naturally, Gillman does everything he can to avoid being kidnapped. Trouble is, Gillman can't stop oggling Julie Adams, the token damsel who enjoys leisurely swims in the Amazon.

About those swims: The underwater photography in Creature is just lovely. Arnold and cinematographer William E. Snyder use the swimming sequences like tension-filled ballets. Creature is fun on it's own, but it's also fun to look at.

Monster on the Campus packs a big mess of fun too, though it's hard to imagine, once you've seen it, that the same man directed this and Creature. The plot of Monster is simple: A scientist studying a coelacanth, the primitive fish long thought to be extinct, cuts his hand on the beast's fangs. Yadda, yadda, yadda, he transforms into an equally primitive primate and proceeds to terrorize various co-eds.

Modern sensibilities may cause us to giggle at Gillman's appearance. But the brute running around in Monster prompts guffaws. He's a sloppy blend of werewolf and Neaderthal. And that's cool. Monster on the Campus never reaches beyond it's B status. Audiences surely laughed when it raged across drive-in screens in 1958.

Now you have the movies and know a little bit about them, what to do with that booze? Reader, you are in for a treat as we instruct you in the ways of Jack Arnold's Double Feature Monster Creature Drinking Game. [caps ours]

Gather some friends and the liquor. Watch Creature first, because it's worth your (mostly sober) attention. Every time Gillman appears and that terrifying blast of trumpets plays, take a drink. When the scientist throws his cigarette into the Amazon, do a shot. Did Julie Adams just scream? Drink. Has she fainted in the grip of Gillman? Shot.

By the time the credits roll, your team will be properly lubricated to take on Monster on the Campus. No rules at this point, just make sure there are some snacks too and craft your own commentary as you go, or maybe try to remember how to spell coelacanth.

***BONUS CREATURE STUFF***

Though Creature from the Black Lagoon was released in 1954, the appearance and design of Gillman has become iconic enough that he's often referenced in popular culture as if he were part of the roster of classic Universal Monsters of the 1930s and early '40s. 

How iconic? He was painted by the amazing Basil Gogos:

Apple Is the New Pumpkin

Hard cider is everywhere and with it, apple-flavored malt beverages that are to cider what Pat Boone was to Little Richard.

Yet Shock Top beer, a craft-y arm of the Anheuser-Busch behemoth, did something that no other cider pretender has done. At least not that we've encountered.

Their Honeycrisp Apple Wheat brew combines a Belgian-style wheat beer with cider-ish flavor. A daring drinker could probably get the same effect, and maybe better results, by pouring specific amounts of a favorite wheat beer and a tasty hard cider into a mug without letting anyone else dictate the taste.

But Shock Top's effort does the work for you and the result is refreshing and not nearly as sweet as we anticipated. The wheat beer isn't as prominent, it's more like a cracker with a big slice of Granny Smith apple on it. And in a pleasant divergence from the typical big-brewery attack, the fruit isn't sticky with sugar.

It's worth a try for something different. The light, almost sour taste -- for the apple element is much closer to Granny Smiths than Honeycrisp -- made for a good contrast to the heavy, dark beers that stock shelves during the winter.

And ignore that ridiculous label too.

What're We Having?

Everybody's in a lather about pumpkin-spice/pumpkin-flavored things. We like actual pumpkin quite a lot, both savory and sweet. And we'll even entertain a pumpkin-infused coffee beverage now and then because, why not? We got nothing to prove.

However, there's more than one "flavor of autumn" and tasty fresh apples are part of that array. Fall is also a time for bourbon. So if pumpkin can be attached to all manner of food and drink in the name of seasonal spirit, why not apple?

Thus, we created a new cocktail that everyone at The Typing Monkey office has been enjoying. We're calling it Betty's Little Helper, in reference to and reverence for both Ms. Crocker and apple brown betty. Here's the recipe so you can mix one up for yourself:

Betty's Little Helper
1.5 oz bourbon
1.5 oz spiced apple cider, chilled
Club soda, chilled

In a 6 to 8 ounce tumbler, pour the bourbon and cider in together, then top it off with club soda. Don't bother with a top-shelf whisky. Buffalo Trace was what we had, and it's good for blending. Any mid-level sipper does the trick.

You'll want to go nuts with the cider though and get something quality. R.W. Knudsen Cider & Spice* is our favorite, as it's 100 percent juice and isn't overly sweet. The spice levels in Knudsen's brew are well balanced too -- a glass of the juice on its own tastes like a slice of homemade apple pie.

We put the bourbon in the freezer for an hour to make sure it was corpse-cold, but that's a personal preference. The club soda dials down the bourbon's bite and relaxes the cider's sweetness. Plus, the bubbles tickle our nose.

If fancy is your goal, add a cinnamon stick for garnish. And though we haven't tried it, a splash of Tuaca would make a Betty's Little Helper a la Mode. Scumps!



*Knudsen's label says their cider is "Prepared in the New England Tradition." We don't know what that entails so we'll just imagine it involves barrel presses and John Forsythe standing around in a sweater-vest, flirting with Shirley MacLaine.

Cider When Cider Wasn't Cool

According to various tastemakers, hard cider is the cool drink right now. Which means it's not at all the cool drink right now. We say, drink what you like and stop thinking about what it says about you.

Unless you're drinking turpentine, in which case, please, seek help.

We are enthusiastic fans of hard apple cider, especially those craftier brews that skip the sticky sweetness of some of the big-batch manufacturers. But let's not get weird about it. The following video has put Wilkins Farmhouse Cider on our radar. Let's all take a field trip to Somerset.


Thirsty Work - Memories of a Somerset Cider Farm from Thom Huxtable on Vimeo.

We're in love, f'reals.

A Fellow of the Fuzzy Sort

Summer break is over, mostly because we ran out of rum and some jerk from accounting couldn't hold his liquor. His negligence resulted in a band of raccoons getting all the hollowed-out pineapples we'd been drinking from.

To ease back into the grind, and let this hangover fade, enjoy the fun video from an album we reviewed.


Françoiz Breut - "Nébuleux Bonhomme" from charlie mars on Vimeo.

Oh Hey, the Blog

... riiight.

On Friday Nov 4 Typing Monkey Int'l, the gloabal syndicate that owns Typing Monkey Industries, which in turn has among its holdings The Typing Monkey, decided to "enact cutbacks."

That's rich white guy code that translates roughly to "Odin's Beard! It's midway through the second quarter of our fiscal year and we're bleeding money. Let's fire employees and sell off anything that's not turning a profit."

To his credit, our publisher, S.L. Kreighton booked time with the TMI board of directors to make his case for preserving The Typing Monkey. There were PowerPoint decks, spreadsheets with pivot-tables, a reminder that we're the only TMI entitiy that requires our mailroom staff to become Six Sigma black belts.

We lost the helicopter -- the helipad on the roof of our Seattle office has been turned into a community p-patch which sounds eco friendly and responsible but is nothing more than a tax write-off wrapped in good PR. There were layoffs and most of the editorial staff has been bumped to freelance status so TMI can avoid paying for benefits.

We no longer enjoy free Bumble Bars in the snackateria, coffee is now 15 cents a cup and the company-subsidized Classic Cinema and Cognac Club has been disbanded.

Kreighton convinced TMI to keep him on under the title "advising editor" and we retained a small support staff and our intern Eileen.

We apologize for the break in publication and will soon be back to providing you with our usual amount of pop-culture navel gazing, links to the best content on the Web, and pictures such as this one:

It's a poster by artist Albert Gantner, crafted in 1910 to protest the ban on Absinthe in Switzerland. A Christian zealot has stabbed the Green Fairy in the heart and stands victorious over her corpse. Please note that the jaundiced murderer is male and clothed in repressive garb resembling that of the Puritan.

Traditionally artists depict the Green Fairy as an etheral woman recalling the Greek muses, or sometimes with wings like a sprite. She is the mascot of the alcoholic drink, embodying the purported hallucination-inducing properties of Absinthe.

Gantner retains her green-toned flesh here but she is not a transluscent apparition. She is nude save for stockings and shoes of the sort we imagine may have been worn by Victorian courtesans. But that's pure speculation on our part.

The order-craving male has slain the chaos-welcoming female, austerity has triumphed over a good time, the buzz has literally been killed. We are funny monkeys.