Ranger is delicious. An immediate jump into my Top 5 favorite India Pale Ale’s brewed in Colorado. New Belgium claims there are 3 pounds of hops per barrel, and I’m thinking that’s accurate. Ranger is very hoppy. There are three hops used in the beer: Cascade (citrus), Chinook (floral/citrus), and Simcoe (fruity). Although the beer is extremely hoppy, Ranger finishes dry. It’s fantastic!

Ranger hits you hard with lots of insanely bitter citrus hops, and then — bam! — it dissipates as soon as it’s off the tongue.  It’s a fun beer.

The packaging for Ranger is different than anything I have seen from New Belgium. For a very long time, looking at a bottle of New Belgium was a bit like playing Where’s Waldo?.  In this case, replace Waldo with Horsetooth Rock, which towers above Fort Collins west of town.  You could spot Horsetooth Rock in most of New Belgium’s marketing efforts, including their beer labels, but there’s no such imagery in the new packaging.  A new look for New Belgium?

The alcohol content in Ranger is 6.5%, which is about average for an IPA.  Beer, in general, tends to have more flavor when the alcohol content is lower.  Ranger is no exception.  New Belgium’s website states Ranger will be available “where good beer is served and sold February 1, 2010.”  But trust me, it’s January 24th, and it’s on the shelves.  Got to your favorite liquor store and indulge today!

Lyrics: “Brother Sport” by Animal Collective

Open up your, open up your
Open up your throat
And let the all of that time
All of that time, all of that time go

I know it sucks that daddy’s gone
But try to think of what you want
You got to open up your
Open up your, open up your
Open up your throat
Matt

Open up your (Open up your)
Open up your throat

Open up your, open up your
Open up your throat
And let the all of that time
All of that time, all of that time go

I know it sucks that daddy’s gone
But try to think of what you want
You got to open up your
Open up your, open up your throat
Matt

Support your brother (sports brother)
Support your brother

You got to weigh what he said
To help you shape the way you play
You gotta get rid of the mourning
Sort out the habits of your mind

Until fully grown
You got a real good shot
Won’t help to hold inside
Keep it real keep it real shout out

AT&T’s network shortcomings, despite what a heftier Luke Wilson will tell you, is well documented. I was told by an AT&T rep that I would be lucky to receive a text message in the area I work, and certainly have major trouble with phone calls. Not good. It’s a map issue.

I stuck with Verizon and their map, which gave me 3G Broadband in the same area that AT&T could not guarantee text messages. I also was stuck with the Blackberry Storm. The multiple, daily urges to toss the Storm into the Arkansas River was too much to bear. I purchased the Motorola Droid two months ago and cannot be happier.

I am in Sales and spend most of my days on the road going from appointment-to-appointment.  I have a lot of clients who are very needy.  It is not uncommon to receive 50 calls in a day in addition to a full day of appointments.  It’s tough.  I had a very successful sales year and I attribute much of the success to the Droid.

The apps I use most often on the Droid is Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and GMail.   I live outside of my sales territory, so prior to activating Google Voice I was using a long distance cell phone number with my clients.   With Google Voice, I was able to pick a local phone number for my clients to call — for free! This makes a big difference on how my clients and prospects perceive me.  A local phone number is very beneficial.

The Droid has perfect integration with Google Voice. I am notified almost instantly after a message is left.  A few seconds later the message is transcribed into text. Perfect! This saves me a ton of time not having to dial into voice mail and then finding scratch paper to write down the message. A quick read and a press of the button and I’m returning the call.  Then another press of the button to the Calendar to view my next appointment and one more press of the button for step-by-step navigation to their front door.  Awesome!

Another great feature of Google Voice is that it saves all of my messages like email, so it’s easily accessible.  You can also add contact info on-the-fly and add notes to each individual message.  When you add the contact info it updates to your GMail contacts, as well as your contacts on your phone.  Beautiful!  And of course, GMail then syncs with Google Calendar, which in turn syncs with Google Maps for step-by-step navigation.  And all of this syncs with the Droid instantaneously.  It has streamlined and organized my day.  I love it!

The Droid has yet to fail me. I would do a “battery pull” with the Blackberry Storm at least ten times a day to get the phone working again.  I haven’t pulled the battery once with the Droid.  It just works.  Droid does, or something.

My iPhone envy has not completely diminished, though.  It’s too bad the iPhone is still exclusive to the AT&T network.  It’s also too bad Google Voice is not compatible with the iPhone.  I’ve read conflicting reports of who banned the Google Voice app from the iPhone, either Apple or AT&T.  Either way, a phone without Google Voice is a deal killer for me.  Perhaps the best compromise is to purchase an iPod Touch.

I will continue writing about my experience with the Motorola Droid and Android in the near future.  I have discovered a ton of great apps that I’ll share, most of which are free.  It’s a wonderful phone that has made my life better!  I say this with confidence.

Pop Autopsy Intro: Pop Autopsy Intro

John had the only talk show on the now defunct Alpha Radio. At every show he had a room full of people, five or six guests at a time, and would lay to waste any-and-all pop culture figures. It was quite entertaining.  My favorite segment of Pop Autopsy was the movie reviews based on the trailer.  I loved that.  They were spot-on with every review, all based on nothing more than a 2 minute trailer.

South Stands Denver Fancast

John recently started a new radio venture at South Stands Denver.  And it’s very good.  John hosts a podcast every week with Colin Daniel and producer Aaron X (who also produced Pop Autopsy).  It is a Denver Sports podcast, or as they call it… the Fancast.  Most of the talk so far has been dominated by the up-and-down season of the Denver Broncos, but they also discuss other Denver area sports teams like the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rockies, DU Pioneers, and CSU Rams.  It is the only area sports podcast that despises the Colorado Buffaloes, which earns them extra points in my book.

In addition to the sports talk, they delve into pop culture.  Perhaps my favorite segment of the South Stands Denver Fancast is “Raiders Fan or ICP Fan”.  I have learned it is very difficult to tell apart a Juggalo from a Raiders fan.  I also enjoy the conversation about commercials.  Local Yokel is always fun, too.   They came up with my favorite new sports nickname recently, which is BM “The Turd” for Brandon Marshall.   It’s a clever, entertaining show and one of the few podcasts I listen to every week.

South Stands Denver posted their 18th show this week which features the fantasy football guru, Cecil Lamey from Footballguys.com and 9News.  Surprisingly, there wasn’t much fantasy football talk.  But that’s what I like about the Fancast.  I find my self laughing out loud (the kids do the LOL) while driving to work.  By the way, the South Stands Denver Fancast is available for download at iTunes.  The only trick is that they break up the podcast into two segments, so you must manually add the second segment to download the entire show.  Here is a link to the latest show:

1st half of the Fancast:  Part One

2nd half of the Fancast: Part Two

I must add that the Fancast is not appropriate for all ages.  The language can be a little rough.  The topics can also can be a bit suspect, especially the talk about what happens to young men in prison.  But hey, it is certainly not your average sports podcast.  Give it a listen!

The idea of a cover album is a curious one.  Phish covered albums live every Halloween, at least this is what I have been told.  Beck has his Record Club that records cover albums, most notably the Velvet Underground & Nico.  Outside of those examples, I don’t think the cover album has been attempted very often by popular artists.   And certainly with not much success.  This is why I am even more impressed with the final product of Dark Side of the Moon.

I have read several reviews of this album from popular media outlets and have found that rock critics do not care for this at all.  I don’t understand why.  It may just be loyalty to the original album, which, of course, is a timeless classic of epic importance.  Or maybe most critics are dinosaurs that will pay homage to the new Ringo Starr album before even listening to anything remotely adventurous. Or different.

My take is this: The Flaming Lips reinvent the Pink Floyd classic with a more sprawling, raw, psychedelic, and funk driven landscape.  I like all those things.  The original album simply became a road map.  It’s a great reinvention.  And different than the original.

The Flaming Lips received help from Stardeath and White Dwarfs, Henry Rollins, and Peaches.  Henry Rollins plays the part of the Roger Waters over-dubbed voice that permeates through Dark Side of the Moon.  Peaches plays the part of Doris Troy, emulating her soaring wails during “The Great Gig in the Sky”.

The Flaming Lips played the Dark Side of the Moon in it’s entirety on New Year’s eve in Oklahoma City.  I am hoping they take that show on the road.  An evening with the Flaming Lips at Red Rocks performing Dark Side of the Moon would be an epic event.  They could even play the Wizard of Oz on the rocks during the show.  I think the Flips need to silent their critics by making this happen. Until then, download the album and enjoy. Don’t listen to the dinosaurs.

Do you remember how cool it was when the Rainforest Cafe first opened at the mall?  Or how awesome it was when you first saw Jurassic Park?  Well, imagine if the two were combined.  Yes, T-Rex Cafe!

On a Sunday night at approximately 5:30, there was about a half-hour wait to get a table.  Not too bad.  While you are waiting, you can conveniently spend money at the insanely large gift shop and Build-a-Dino Workshop (you got it, the same exact thing as Build-a-Bear Workshop but with Dinosaurs).  Or you can opt to play in the bone yard and unearth dinosaur bones.   My kids are experienced dinosaur excavators from our many trips to Cañon City, Colorado, so they jumped right in to strut their paleontological skills.

As we were walking to our table in the oceanic section of the restaurant, the hostess told us about the end-of-civilization-dramatization that was happening at that very moment above our heads in T-Rex Cafe.  Every 20 minutes the lights dim in the restaurant and meteors light up the ceiling to demonstrate how the dinosaurs were eliminated from our planet.  Bitchin’.  Here is a video of the dinosaur extinction exercise.

There were at least 20 animatronic dinosaurs gyrating and pulsating throughout the restaurant.  I was very impressed.  I posted more pictures of these empowering T-Rex Cafe beasts on my Picasa Site.  There is also a room that reminded me of the ice palace in Superman.  The room has a giant fossil embedded into the icy walls that change color every few minutes.  You have to walk through that room to get the bathrooms.  And get this — even the bathrooms have dinosaur fossils.  Total class.

We also ate food at T-Rex Cafe.  I had a Stegosaurus Steak & Cheese Sandwich for $13.99, which was quite good.  I have a theory, though, about food at restaurants like this.  I firmly believe that we psychologically embellish the taste of the food in outrageous theme restaurants to justify spending twice the amount of money that we would normally spend for a mediocre dinner.  That being stated, the sandwich was delicious and well worth 14 bucks.  Heck, I would have paid $20.00.  The kids had Cosmo’s Cheesy Macaroni and Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.  Mmmmmm…. Jurassic Chicken Tidbits.

Since this is my first restaurant review, I should make it official and throw down some stars.  The official Scott Stafford [dot] Com Rating for T-Rex Cafe is Five Stars (but I refuse to list out of how many stars…).

I loved our trip to Florida and could totally live in a beach house if the opportunity arose.  I also feel that Florida receives a lot of undeserving criticism.  Yeah, there’s a lot of old people.  Yeah, there’s like 100 different kinds of deadly, man-eating snakes.   Yeah, the mosquitoes are the size of small birds.  Yeah, there’s like a 90 percent chance when you hear about a missing-child-found-dead-at-the-bottom-of-a-lake-after-being-molested-by-his-mother’s-boyfriend that it happened in Florida.  But, c’mon, the beaches are awesome!!

We only explored two beaches, so I can’t say with certainty that Fort de Soto State Park has the best beach in Florida, but I’ll say it anyway.  North Beach at Fort de Soto State Park is the best beach in Florida!!

The main reason I love Fort de Soto so much is because it is an amazing escape.  In an area of 3 million people, you can drive for 20 minutes from St. Petersburg and find yourself on powder-like white sand collecting sea shells, building sand castles, fishing, sunning, and swimming in complete solitude.  No restaurants, no hotels, no broken glass, no cigarette butts, no washed-up band-aids… no people.  Pure awesome.

I swam out to a sandbar and spoke to a local couple who were diving for sand dollars.  I dove down and grabbed some myself.  They told me that the secret to preserving sand dollars is to use a half-water and half-bleach solution and let them soak over night.  We never got around to buying bleach, but it’s supposed to make the sand dollars bright white.

I’m not the only one who loves Fort de Soto.  Both Dr. Beach and Travel Advisor have named it the best beach in America.  Probably for similar reasons.

A few days later we ventured over to St. Pete Beach which — as a pelican flies — is only about 6 miles north of Fort de Soto.  But what a difference!  St. Pete Beach is more like a California beach, but with about 1/3 less people.  That still means that there are a lot of people, but you can easily find a place to lay your towel or blanket with a 30 to 50 foot buffer or so.   The waves were bigger at St. Pete Beach and it was certainly more lively.  There were kids running around, teenagers throwing a football, locals leathering their skin,  a gang of skimboarders, and general beach stuff.  We were in walking distance to restaurants  and hotels, as well.  Alcoholic beverages are not allowed on St. Pete Beach.  From my research, alcohol is only allowed on Treasure Island Beach, which is only a couple miles north.

St. Pete Beach has very easy access and good parking.  It’s a fun place to hang out for a few hours.  The place really fills up around 4:00 pm, when the kids get out of school.  Not a bad way to grow up.  Oh, and there is a great restaurant called Middle Grounds Grill in Treasure Island.  Some of the best fish I have eaten.

Here is the link to the pictures at Fort de Soto State Park and St. Pete Beach in case you missed it.

Norm MacDonald, much like his movie Dirty Work, is very funny and under-appreciated.  My wife and I saw Dirty Work in a massive cineplex outside of Boulder.  To this day, it is the only movie I’ve seen where the theater was completely empty.  Just the two of us.   Well, actually, one random guy came in about an hour into the film, sat down for 5 minutes, then left.  But that’s it.  Awesome.

Alright, here it is.  My favorite Norm MacDonald clips from YouTube and Hulu.

Don Rickles and Norm in Dirty Work

I love this clip.  Not really a “Norm” video, but it’s great.

Early Norm MacDonald Stand Up

Norm Hijacks Conan Interview

This is a clip from Late Night with Conan O’Brien where he interviews the girl from Melrose Place.  Norm completely  hijacks the interview from the guest couch.  This one gets real good about 5 minutes in.

The Norm MacDonald Fan Club

Norm on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

More Early Norm MacDonald Stand Up

It’s too bad NBC removed all of the Weekend Update video from YouTube.  I am hoping they will appear in their entirety over at Hulu soon.  Until then, enjoy the other video.

I gave Hulu a spin about a year ago, but really did not like it.  It was slow, awkward, and had limited viewing options.  In fact, I completely forgot about it.  It’s funny what a clever commercial during the Super Bowl with an A-list actor can do to promote a website.  So here I am again, after Alec Baldwin turned into an alien, checking out the site.   And I have to say… it’s the bee’s knees.

My Internet connection on the road is my Blackberry Pearl tethered to my MacBook Pro (there will be another post on how to successfully tether a Blackberry to a MacBook later).  I use VZAccess from Verizon and get decent speed, but certainly not broadband speed.  That being said, the buffering speed from Hulu is very fast within the “natural” segments of the show.  There are 30 second commercial breaks before each segment, as well.

The Hulu video player is close to perfect

The flash-based web video player is fantastic!  The stream buffers when the player is paused, which is essential.  There is a buffer meter to help those on slower connections, like myself, to know when it is safe to start playback without worrying about the stream stalling.  You can watch it in full screen 480p if you have a fast connection.  You can also pop the screen out in real-time.  There are embedding options to post on websites, as well.   There is even an option to “lower the lights” to darken the browser surrounding the video player.  It’s pretty slick.

Hulu movie and TV clips

One of the things I really love about Hulu is the ability to watch and post movie and TV clips.  Although, it’s hard to navigate without some trial and error.  If you search the “most popular” or “highest rated” movie clips, for example, you will find that various frat-favorites like Porky’s, Animal House, and American Pie dominate the search results.  So if you have kids, you may want to save the Ice Age clips in your queue, instead of searching for it with them.  I did a search for the Three Amigos and found this clip below.

Full length, commercial interrupted movies and TV shows

There’s actually a decent amount of movie titles, especially for independent films.  Each movie has commercials inserted, just as if you were watching a movie on a network television station.  Personally, I think it’s great.  I would much rather endure a few 30 second commercials than pay a monthly subscription fee for a service I may or may not use.

The amount of TV shows Hulu has to offer is ridiculously good.  Almost every NBC and Fox show is represented, as well as favorites from other networks such as Comedy Central, PBS, USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, SPEED Channel, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, E!, G4, Versus, Noggin TV, Nick Jr., PBS KIDS Sprout, Disney Channel and Oxygen.  The only catch is that most TV shows only provide the last five episodes.

Scott Stafford [dot] com subscription recommendations

Alright, it’s time to set-up my queue.  Here are some quick recommendations for new TV shows for all you road warriors and non-digital converters out there.  In alphabetical order:

24, 30 Rock, Chuck, Colbert Report, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Fringe, Heroes, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Medium, The Office, The Simpsons, and Spaceballs: The Animated Series.  Have fun!