The Houston Astros held their championship parade on Monday after taking down the Philadelphia Phillies in 6 games in the World Series to win their second title in the last six years.
Among the participants in the parade was Ted Cruz, noted Houston native, despicable human being, and U.S. Senator, who got booed resoundingly by Astros fans (weeks after getting booed and heckled by Yankees fans in New York while watching the Astros in the ALCS). Not only was he booed, but at one point a fan chucked a beer at him, which led to charges being brought against the man for assault with a deadly weapon (which is a not normally something I’d classify a beer can as).
On Wednesday, the attorneys for the fan who threw the beer, whose name is Joey Arcidiacono, released a statement (confirmed to be the real thing by the Houston Chronicle) insisting that this was not an act of political violence but instead just a man giving out beers for folks in the parade to chug.
A statement from Houston attorney Bill Stradley regarding his client Joey Arcidiacono.
The purpose is correct and add some context to publicly shared information regarding Joey’s arrest at the Astros 2022 Championship Parade. pic.twitter.com/vaJdC7KJ3c
The statement even cites a text sent prior to the parade in which he details his plans to hopefully get a player to chug one of his beers, as that has become a regular element of championship parades in recent years, with players Stone Colding beers tossed to their buses by fans. Unfortunately for Arcidiacono, if you take him at his word, his act of kindness and goodwill was taken as an attack on a sitting U.S. Senator and he now faces some legal trouble for simply being a nice guy who wants everyone to partake in the fun.
I will say if the goal was to get Cruz to chug the beer, it certainly came in a little hot for that, which hurts his case here. You’d normally see a beer can lobbed in rather than giving him a heater, but maybe in all the excitement he was just trying to put a beer on target and Ted just couldn’t see the generous nature because, well, he’s never been generous in his life.
There’s a decent chance that when you hear the phrase “barrel-aged beer” your mind tends to immediately conjure images of bourbon or other whiskey barrels and dark beers like stouts and porters. And while you’re not wrong to think that, there’s a lot more to barrel-aged beer than simply bourbon-flavored bangers. While the fall is definitely a time for the aforementioned whisky barrel-aged beers, brewers are also experimenting with tequila, wine, and other barrels as well.
There are so many barrel-aged beers on the market, it’s tough to pick just one.
“Now, that’s tricky,” says Enrique Vittorino, brand manager at Wynwood Brewing Co. in Miami. “It’s like asking ‘what’s your favorite band?’ which is an impossible question to respond to, at least for me. Sometimes you want Rush, other times High On Fire. Don’t forget about Casiopea. What about early Genesis?”
The same goes for barrel-aged beers. Picking just one is a tough ask. Still, we decided to try. We got twelve brewers and craft beer experts (including Vittorino) to tell us their favorite barrel-aged beers to drink this fall. Keep scrolling to see them all.
Fundamental Observation BA Imperial Vanilla Stout from Bottle Logic. While I tend to enjoy non-adjunct BA stouts more, this one expertly blends the traditional barrel character (oak, char, bourbon sweetness) I love and the florally, perceived sweetness that comes from the vanilla beans.
Goose Island Bourbon County Stout
Goose Island
Chris Spinelli, co-founder and brewer at Roc Brewing in Rochester, New York
I do enjoy Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. I particularly enjoy the different variants each year. It has a great chocolate and oak flavor from the beer and the barrel. It was the first and it’s still one of (if not the) best.
Starry Noche, the annual pastrified version of Weldwerks Medianoche barrel-aged stout. I first tried it a year ago, and the flavor was so rich and intense that I think it might still be stuck somewhere in my soft palate. Composed of multiple vintages of Medianoche that are then conditioned with toasted coconut and hazelnut, it’s a beer so thick you almost have to drink it with a spoon. The flavor’s akin to a bourbon hazelnut chocolate graham cracker mocha milkshake.
Cucapá Tequila Barrel Aged Ale. You get the best of both worlds: beer and tequila. This beer gives you agave notes, along with the characteristic vanilla and oak aroma present in an aged tequila with a fantastic finish of malt profile and great mouthfeel on the aftertaste.
3 Sheeps The Wolf
3 Sheeps
Garth E. Beyer, certified Cicerone® and owner and founder of Garth’s Brew Bar in Madison, Wisconsin
The Wolf by 3 Sheeps Brewing is my barrel-aged beer of choice. It balances the warm wood tannins of the bourbon barrel with notes of sweet caramel and dark chocolate. The drinkability is dangerous with this one, too. This is one of those BA stouts you want in a larger format, but not quite because you want to share it.
While I do not drink barrel-aged beers all that often, I liked Real Ale’s El Guapo, a Gose aged in tequila barrels. I love margaritas and this beer had great hints of smoky tequila with hints of salt. It’s the kind of beer that reminds you there’s more than just bourbon barrel-aged beers out there.
Hill Farmstead Art
Hill Farmstead
Daniel Gadala-Maria, brewer at Finback Brewing in Glendale, New York
ABV: 6%
Average Price: Limited Availability
Why This Beer?
Art by Hill Farmstead, hands down. This is the wine barrel fermented and aged version of Arthur. Consistently available, reasonably priced, and genre-defining quality. It nails the balance of present but not aggressive acidity, and approachable complexity, and does not lose the malt flavor amongst everything else.
Roble Blanco from The Bruery. Modeled after a margarita, which is one of my favorite beverages outside of beer, and I really do appreciate tequila. The complexity of the sour base beer coupled with the use of lime zest gives a different dimension of tartness for the salt to balance out in comparison to just the standard lime juice used in a margarita.
Back to the task at hand, I recently had Oskar Blues BA22 volume eight, and it was just perfect. A rich, roasty, and balanced beer. This imperial stout gets its bold flavor from being barrel-aged in two different barrels before being blended together. It gets sweetness from port barrels and peppery spice from rye whiskey barrels.
Hands down Allagash Interlude. The flavors dance between great wine and great beer which is why I like the liquid, but the reason it’s my favorite is because it was the first real beer that got my now wife interested in beer.
I don’t drink a ton of barrel-aged stuff, but I remember always loving Brooklyn’s Black Ops. Just an amazing imperial stout that wasn’t cloyingly sweet and overbearing. Boozy but drinkable. This 12.4% ABV imperial stout is barrel-aged in Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon casks.
Whatever Cory King is blending over at Side Project, particularly the Beer, Barrel, and Time beers when they are released. Collectors/traders sit on those, but in my experience, they’re best within a year, maybe two tops of release. The amount of flavor and the huge mouthfeel in these are impressive, without coming across as a syrupy mess, which can definitely happen when you’re talking about finishing gravities that would be considered fairly high starting gravities on a normal tap list.
A great pick is the recently released Side Project Rye Beer: Barrel: Time 2022 Blend. This rye whiskey barrel-aged imperial stout is known for its sweet chocolate, vanilla, and spicy rye flavors.
His rendition, which was done live in a SiriusXMU Session, is haunting and beautiful. It sounds like his own song as his voice quivers against deep, eerie chords. It ends with him repeating the fragile line, “All you wanted was somebody who cares.”
Branch made headlines in September when news broke that she was arrested for hitting her husband and Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney after he allegedly cheating on her. This was followed by a series of even more chaotic events: Branch filed for divorce, the domestic assault case against Branch was dismissed, and then she revealed in an interview that they were putting their divorce on hold in an attempt to save their marriage. Though this was stressful, many took it as an excuse to return to her music, which reckons with the complexity of love; maybe Alex Giannascoli can say the same.
In October, Drake announced he would make his Apollo Theater debut in Harlem on November 11. The intimate concert is in partnership with SiriusXM, home to Drake’s Table For One show and Sound 42 station. SiriusXM hinted that tickets could only be won by listening to Sound 42 and entering a contest. Those 1,500 lucky fans will now have to wait a little longer to witness history because Drake needs time to grieve an unimaginable loss.
“The Apollo show has been moved to allow us to pay respect to our dear friend this weekend. We have added a second date for the fans,” Drake shared yesterday (November 8) on his Instagram story, as captured by Rolling Stone. He was referencing Takeoff, the 28-year-old Migos rapper who tragically passed on November 1 after being fatally shot in Houston. Takeoff’s funeral is scheduled for Friday, November 11, at State Farm Arena in his native Atlanta. A suspect has yet to be identified in the shooting that killed Takeoff and injured two others.
Around the release of his and 21 Savage’s collaborative album Her Loss last week, Drake took a moment to honor Takeoff on Table For One.
“Before I get into the pleasantries, I’d just like to send our deepest condolences from the family to the entire QC, to our brother Quavo, to our brother Offset, to the friends and loved ones of the legendary, unprecedented Takeoff, a guy that I knew for a long, long time,” Drake said. “I’m sure people know how we started, of course, with ‘Versace,’ and from there, you know, we formed a brotherhood. I always talk about the fact that this was one family. My friends in the music industry are not friends; they’re family. So, our deepest condolences. Tragic loss for all of us and, you know, a dark cloud over this business that we love so much. I just encourage everybody to lock into that mindset, no matter where you are, you know? It’s just really… you know, it’s a life that’s worth living, and everybody deserves that chance, so it’s unfortunate that one of our dear, dear brothers had to leave us this week. And it’s tough to even talk about.”
Not all of the midterm election results have been finalized, as of this writing, but one thing’s clear: that promised/threatened “red wave” that would make the GOP the sworn enemy of President Joe Biden never happened. Among the disappointments were scores of Trump-picked candidates either underperforming or bombing. It was so bad that by the next day there were already prominent Republican rags calling on the GOP to dump Trump.
This is his fault. Without Trump to run against, Biden and the Democrats would probably have been roundly rebuked by voters. According to the exit poll — the same one that showed 74% of voters either “dissatisfied” or “angry” about the direction of the country — the only person more disliked than Biden was Trump.
As such, it was time for the GOP to release the guy who’s commandeered their party for the last six, incredibly long years. “These midterm elections have made it crystal clear that voters want to move past the chaos and dishonor of the 45th president,” they wrote. “They want the security and sanity that a competent and effective leader can provide. The Republican Party needs to recognize that, too, and act accordingly.”
The National Review (as per Raw Story) was even more blunt. “It’s time for Donald Trump to go,” wrote Charles C. Cooke. After Tuesday night’s “profoundly disappointing midterm-election result,” Cooke argued, Republican voters should tell “the Republican establishment to pound sand.” He also railed against the Trump wing of the party’s “frivolous, low-energy, old-boys-club complacency,” and called Trump’s attacks on Florida governor Ron DeSantis “classic establishment gate-keeping.”
But Cooke held the most ire for the big guy himself. “Trump is a loser. He squeaked past the most unpopular woman in America in 2016, he presided over a blue wave in 2018, he lost to a barely breathing Joe Biden in 2020, and he hand-picked a bevy of losing Republican nominees in 2022.”
Instead, Cooke charged that Republicans should turn to DeSantis, who won big in his re-election bid: “He beat the Democratic wave in 2018, he got the biggest challenge of the last four years — the Covid-19 pandemic — almost exactly right, and he won reelection by the largest margin achieved by any Republican gubernatorial nominee in Florida’s 177-year-history.”
Is this the end of the guy who gave the GOP such classics as the orb, the McDonald’s spread, and the attempted overthrow of democracy? Maybe, maybe not. After all, Teflon Don has weaseled out of trouble before.
It’s been nearly two years since the Jan. 6 riot, and Mike Pence has been pretty quiet about it. When he’s spoken about it, he’s been clear not to drag the man who helped start it: Donald Trump. He’s even defended him, despite Trump suggesting he deserved what he almost got. It’s all been a bit odd; after all, he was nearly killed by Trump’s amped-up supporters. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journalpublished an op-ed in which Pence opened up about that fateful day. And who did he appear to blame? The Lincoln Project, of course.
The former vice president spent part of his piece detailing the events leading up to the Capitol riot, and he singled out December 5, a month after the 2020 election, as a turning point. For one thing, that was when he first heard Trump vow to challenge the results. For another, it’s when the band of anti-Trump Republicans put out another of their attacks:
An irresponsible TV ad by a group calling itself the Lincoln Project suggested that when I presided over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to count the electoral votes, it would prove that I knew “it’s over,” and that by doing my constitutional duty, I would be “putting the final nail in the coffin” of the president’s re-election. To my knowledge, it was the first time anyone implied I might be able to change the outcome. It was designed to annoy the president. It worked. During a December cabinet meeting, President Trump told me the ad “looked bad for you.” I replied that it wasn’t true: I had fully supported the legal challenges to the election and would continue to do so.
Is Pence suggesting that Trump wouldn’t have happened upon the (erroneous) idea that Pence could simply overturn an election had it not been for Trump critics? Sure seems like it. His entire op-ed goes out of its way to blame everyone but Trump for what happened. Elsewhere, he lays into John Eastman, architect of the byzantine plot that Pence refused to carry out (thanks, improbably, in part to Dan Quayle). On January 5, Pence recalls, the following happened;
The president’s lawyers, including Mr. Eastman, were now requesting that I simply reject the electors. I later learned that Mr. Eastman had conceded to my general counsel that rejecting electoral votes was a bad idea and any attempt to do so would be quickly overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court. This guy didn’t even believe what he was telling the president.
Pence also tries to explain away one of the more chilling unexplained episodes of the day: when he refused to get into a secret service car that would ferry him to safety:
I told my detail that I wasn’t leaving my post. Mr. Giebels pleaded for us to leave. The rioters had reached our floor. I pointed my finger at his chest and said, “You’re not hearing me, I’m not leaving! I’m not giving those people the sight of a 16-car motorcade speeding away from the Capitol.”
Pence met with Trump at least two more times after Jan. 6, and paints a picture of him as remorseful, speaking with “genuine sadness” about what had occurred. They even chatted in person on Jan. 14, the day after Trump was impeached for a second time. Pence claims he said a strange thing to him. As Pence stood to leave, Trump told him, “It’s been fun.”
And to think, none of this would have happened without a satirical anti-Trump ad.
Because fate hates everyone, it decided that the most talented late-night host of all time should also be done the dirtiest. Yet long before his ascension to the big desk at The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien took over for David Letterman’s old digs hosting Late Night With Conan O’Brien. It’s the show that most fans grew to love him in, but it was a rocky start in the apparently high stakes of past-midnight chat programming.
Near its launch, Washington Post critic Tom Shales wrote a scathing takedown of the show, aiming most of the vitriol at “fidgety marionette” O’Brien, only being charitable enough to say he should be the head writer but not the star. On his latest appearance on Howard Stern‘s show, O’Brien detailed how Charlie Rose read the review during their interview for some reason and the embarrassment was enough to make him lie down under his office desk for some alone time before getting back into the groove.
“From underneath the desk, I said ‘I’m fine, I just need to lie here under the desk for a while. I’ll start having meetings in ten minutes.’ That, to me, is when the needle got to the lowest,” O’Brien said. He followed up the anecdote with wisdom from his father, who told him at the time, “If you can survive this, it’s gonna make the whole story that much better.”
For even more wisdom, O’Brien revealed that Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks are two of his all-time favorite guests because they put in the work and were gracious to the entire team. They came early, brought ideas, and learned all the camera operators’ names. Charlie Rose would probably never do such things!
Pickleball, a sport with absolutely no real food involved despite its name, is getting a major celebrity push in a big way thanks to Stephen Colbert. The hybrid sport is gaining in popularity across the country, and later this month CBS viewers will get the chance to see celebrities take the court and play a bit of pickleball themselves.
Honored to be named Sexiest Man in Pickeball (which is what I assume this means). Check out InPickleball magazine and #PICKLED on @CBS on Nov. 17th. pic.twitter.com/Ro9sAtDqOu
The full list of pickleball rules is here if you want to get specific, but essentially it’s a combination of tennis and table tennis, played on a modified version of the former’s court. There’s a net, there’s a line you can’t cross without penalty in front of said net. And, importantly, there’s surprisingly expensive and specialized equipment necessary if you want to give it a try.
If that’s too much work, however, you can just watch celebrities play for charity in a two-hour special hosted by Stephen Colbert. Airing on November 17,
As Variety detailed, the two-hour special event will Colbert hosting along with basketball broadcasting legend Bill Raftery and Cari Champion. A pretty impressive list of celebrities are slated to participate as well, including Emma Watson, Sugar Ray Leonard and Will Ferrell among the participants. The latter’s Funny or Die is helping CBS and Colbert make the show a reality, of course, so that makes a lot of sense. And Colbert seems pretty excited to showcase a sport he fell in love with earlier in the year.
The Midterm Elections aren’t quite over yet. As of this writing, there are still a mess of races that have yet to be called. It’s still unclear which party will take control of the House or the Senate. But there was one clear winner in one case: According to IndieWire, Fox News drew the largest number of viewers on Tuesday night. But that only means a lot of Republicans tuned in to watch that much-promised “red wave” never materialize.
Here’s the breakdown, as per IndieWire:
Fox News drew an average of 7.170 million total viewers last night across primetime (8 p.m. to 11 p.m.), according to early Nielsen numbers, more than doubling its closest competitor, MSNBC (3.102 million). NBC proper was nipping at the heels of NBCUniversal’s cable news channel, with an average of 3.096 million viewers. ABC News coverage was not that far behind with 3.030 million viewers. Bringing up the rear was another tight race, this one between CBS News (2.504 million viewers) and CNN (2.476 million).
Fox News famously draws an older crowd, but even amongst adults 25 to 54, they crushed it, averaging 1.78 million in that demographic. Even Fox Business did comparatively well, averaging 598,000 viewers, 214,000 of those from the 25-54 demo, which helped them beat CNBC.
Again, what did they wind up watching? Well, they got to watch in horror as one Trump-picked candidate after another had their butts handed to them. They got to see the attention-nabbing race between Dr. Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman end with the former trailing hilariously behind the latter. They got to watch Doug Mastriano, the extremist MAGA candidate running for governor of Pennsylvania, crash and burn. They even got to watch Lauren Boebert come up short (in a race that hasn’t yet officially been called). And they got to watch scores of Fox News talking heads looking increasingly verklempt.
But hey, they could have been watching Mike Lindell’s “real-time crime” streaming nonsense succumb to one technical snafu after another, which might have been more entertaining television.
The United States men’s national team’s 26-man roster for the World Cup in Qatar is finally here. On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Soccer held an event in Brooklyn to unveil the players that will be tasked with wearing the red, white, and blue on the sport’s biggest stage for the first time since 2014.
There were a few surprises, but for the most part, things played out the way that USMNT fans would expect. Here’s the list of players who are headed to the World Cup:
GK: Ethan Horvath, Sean Johnson Matt Turner DEF: Cameron Carter-Vickers, Sergiño Dest, Aaron Long, Shaq Moore, Tim Ream, Antonee Robinson, Joe Scally, DeAndre Yedlin, Walker Zimmerman MID: Brenden Aaronson, Kellyn Acosta, Tyler Adams, Luca de la Torre, Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah, Cristian Roldan FW: Jesús Ferreira, Jordan Morris, Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna, Josh Sargent, Tim Weah, Haji Wright
Arguably he biggest surprise comes in goal, where Berhalter’s preferred option for his entire tenure, Zack Steffen, missed out on the squad altogether. On recent form, this makes sense — Steffen has struggled for consistent playing time for years due to his role as a backup at Manchester City, while his recent move to Middlesbrough in search of time has been up-and-down. In the face of all that, Berhalter has rode with him, but Roger Gonzalez of CBS Sports reported on Tuesday that Steffen would stay home.
This clears a path for Turner, the best shot-stopping option in the player pool, to get the No. 1 shirt in Qatar. It seems a foregone conclusion that he will play every meaningful minute in the World Cup. Johnson is a steady hand from NYCFC of MLS, while Horvath, the hero in the Americans’ Nations League triumph over Mexico last year, rounds out the trio.
The defense is largely to be expected. Berhalter’s two preferred choices next to Walker Zimmerman in central defense, Miles Robinson and Chris Richards, are out due to injuries, so the second spot in the back will come from someone in the Carter-Vickers, Long, and Ream trio. Dest and Robinson are believed to be the first-choice options at fullback, Yedlin is a veteran option, Scally has impressed in Germany this year, and if there is a surprise, it is Moore — Zimmerman’s teammate in Nashville — getting the nod over another Berhalter favorite, Reggie Cannon.
A pair of midfield options, de la Torre and McKennie, have been dealing with injuries, but neither were expected to miss out on a roster spot assuming they would be healthy in time. As such, the presumed starting midfield — McKennie, Musah, Adams — is in tact, while Aaronson’s been a top player for Leeds United this year. Acosta comes off of an MLS Cup win with LAFC, while Roldan is another Berhalter favorite whose ability to play in the midfield or on the wing is valued.
The other big surprise comes in the forward pool, where Haji Wright, who has played twice for the national team under Berhalter and converted a penalty in his last appearance, gets the nod over options like Jordan Pefok and, more notably, Ricardo Pepi. The latter’s exclusion seems to clear the way for Ferreira or Sargent to be the first-choice option in Qatar. Beyond him, the Americans have their three dangerous options in Pulisic, Reyna, and Weah all on the roster, while Morris is the veteran in the group.
The Americans will kick off their time in Qatar on Nov. 21 against Wales, have a showdown with England on Nov. 25, and end group play on Nov. 29 against Iran. All of their games kick off at 2 p.m. EST.
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