The beer comes in a long neck 1 3/4 pint (750 ml) crimpcap European styled bottle with a bold IRON FIST BREWING CO. imposed over a raised fist with Soviet propaganda esque shading and barley growing out of a city skyline in the background. It is an strong 9% abv, so I'm going to need to eat before I drink this or I'm going to be trashed by the end of the review. OOOH, bottle conditioned.
I was in the mood to hear "It's still Rock and Roll to me" so I put on the Billy Joel playlist on Youtube. While listening to this I realized that a great deal of the music I personally enjoyed as a small child was written by Billy Joel. Now, I'm talking '93-'95, so really young, but "Uptown girl", "You may be right", "We didn't start the fire", "In the middle of the night", and "The longest time" were much better than most of the crap my parents were listening to. Man, I was really into doo wap and 60's music as a child. It's funny the kind of things you remember from those times, I don't remember my cousin Stacy who was killed in a car wreck when I was a small child. It pains me to say that Stacy is as immaterial to me as George Washington or Hannibal. You can show me a picture of any of them and I'll know they existed, but I have no memories to confirm it.
It reminds me of my older sister Megan who died just before I existed. In fact, I would not exist if Megan had not been miscarried. It's a funny thing, you're very existence being reliant on someone else death. I suppose it is the case for everyone ultimately, but how many have it so direct? If Megan had come to term I simply would not exist. I almost cannot even contemplate it. I suppose it's rather convenient sometimes, my belief in predestination, Megan was always going to die and I was always going to live. Although I would like to thank God for modern medical science and the people who develop it, for if I had been born so much as two years prior, I could not possibly exist. It's kind of funny, we're all the products of certain things happening at certain times. Somebody survived a little too long, someone else not long enough. Some technology was developed just in the nick of time, some murderous social ideal was created too late. Some conflict between people history has forgotten. Godwulf takes his tribe from the steppes of Russia to the Scandinavian isthmus. The clan Fraser decides to move from county Anjou, France to the Scottish lowlands. Thousands of years ago, people from northwest Asia cross from modern day Russia to Modern day Canada and settle North and South America. Some of them move to north east America. Religious persecution forces the puritans to cross the Atlantic ocean to North America. An Irishman decides he's had enough of the damn Catholics but doesn't want to move to North Ireland, so he moves to Nova Scotia.Scott Ruben Keen Fights against the confederate Army at the battle of five forks right down the street from where his descendants will live in a hundred and twenty years for a paycheck while Abraham Lincoln suspends habeas corpus. A 40 year old French Canadian asshat knocks up a sixteen year old runaway and his wife and child move back to France after finding out about her and the fact that he proposed to marry her but her Irish immigrant grandfather, who left his homeland because he didn't like how the Catholics had taken it over but thought the northern part of the Island sucked, threatened to kill him with a firearm that those crazy Libertarian Revolutionaries in the United States said 151years ago said he could own. Allot of crazy, bizarre, unfortunate, and unlikely things had to happen to make you happen. Don't worry about that stupid pedigree, you are the result of a bizarre and sordid story, no matter who you are. You couldn't reproduce this in a lab.
I remember the song "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" by Manfred Mann, my mother and myself were walking past the Greenville Army Navy store when I told her that I really liked that song. It was the first time I remember expressing true appreciation for a song. Not just liking a song, truly appreciating it. Many of my earliest memories are associated with Military equipment and the aftermath of he 1950's-1970's. Whether it pertains to a place that deals in it like a pawn shop or one of the increasingly disappearing Army Navy stores, or when I stood in the Maine snow in my Grandfather Clement's 1970's insulated Navy deck boots which I bet he probably bought at one of the disappearing Army Navy stores. I guess I can thank my Mom's brother Mark for that. Allot of who you start out as comes from you're parents, but allot of who you become has to do with who you're surrounded by as a child. My Uncle Mark, my cousin Mike, Patric Earle, Chris Hilgar, the former Tommy Pazack. You know, I was looking for people in my old church, the Thomas's, at Woodruff road Presbyterian, in the church history it doesn't even list them in church history. I cannot even think of it as anything other than serendipitous that "Downeastern Alexa" by Billie Joel plays in the background as I search for this.
I remember Jamie Thomas. One of those girls you were in love with that nothing came about because of circumstance. Just like a few others. For some, they have found happiness by the grace of God and you wish them the best. Some have children, and they're beautiful, and all you can think is that the guys that have them don't even know what they've got. And they never do. But I suppose some of us aren't meant for this. Some of us are meant for a mission nobody will remember. Some people were made for a Goodnight in Saigon.
Anyways, Good beer. If you're ever on the West Coast, or Hawaii for that matter. check out IRON FIST. IT'S A GOOD DAMN STOUT. I give it my blurry seal of approval.
Officially dedicated to all of the women I've loved but was never meant to be.
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