Beer and football V — week two

The game: Patriots at Vikings
The beer: Shipyard Summer Ale
The result: Win, 30–7
The commentary: Hector, Ivan and I are all forty this year. In April we traveled to Portland, Maine to celebrate Ivan's turn. (Mine was at the New England Brewfest in New Hampshire. Hector's will be at the Chili's across from the Burlington Mall.) Before the trip I compiled a list of twenty or so restaurants, seven breweries/distilleries and a few tourist traps like the International Cryptozoology Museum, all for an overnight stay. Yeah. We did well on the booze front, starting at Allagash on the way into town (a cool spot offering better beer than I was expecting, given their Belgian tendencies) and peaking at the wonderful Rising Tide (please and thank you). In between was old mainstay Shipyard with the informative video, the fun gift shop (complete with children's books for some reason) and the wonderful free samples. I don't know what it is about Shipyard—everything I sample at the brewery is amazing. Amazing! Then I try a new bomber, whether it's the Prelude Special Ale or the Smashed Pumpkin Ale, and I'm unimpressed. (Exceptions are the Double Old Thumper Ale—a.k.a. Matt Light—and the Blue Fin Stout, which I already knew I liked.) The Summer Ale falls in the same category. Maybe it's the thrill of having machinery pointed out to you during the brewery tour that makes it all taste better there. It's also free. I guess we'll have to go back.

I'm starting to think A&J King puts cocaine in their pastries. Queue the chorus: No nap for G./My daughter never sleeps/I guess we'll watch the game/I'll never take the blame. She joined me before halftime and almost became a Vikings fan. "Purple!" "Dad, where's the purple guys?" "Purple!" "These ones are purple and these are white." "The purple guys fell down." "Purple!" It only took a minute of insisting she's a Patriots fan for it to take.

The hometown victory means I survive another week in the knockout pool. Three people are out after picking the Buccaneers against the lowly Rams. I like the application of my Texans–Redskins philosophy but they forgot that the previous sentence should have read "…the lowly Buccaneers against the lowly Rams." I'm glad the rules prevent you from taking the same team to win more than once instead of lose because I'm… leaving?… the Vikings again this weekend. No way the Saints drop three straight to start the season.

The internet is crowding me out as media left and right criticize a league that enables domestic abusers. Blowhards, as we know, make the best parents. Very brave, too, of Anheuser-Busch to loudly proclaim their dissatisfaction "with the league's handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code" and then quietly hope it all goes away. I see through your Shock Top bullshit and I see through this.

Up next: The Raiders purchase the flashiest jetliner to fly across the country but get bogged down along the way when the pilot struggles to understand basic flight patterns. Cheers!