STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

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2019 RANGE ROVER VELAR SVAUTOBIOGRAPHY DYNAMIC EDITION SUV

Range Rover's gorgeous Velar is getting an ultra-luxurious top-of-the-line trim package with the SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition. The ultimate Velar model gets a supercharged 550 horsepower V8 that sprints from 0-60 in 4.3 seconds and tops out at 170 MPH — all while capable of the offroad prowess inherent in the Range Rover name. The exterior receives a new front fascia with larger openings to aid in cooling the engine and larger brakes, and the rear bumper has been reworked to incorporate quad exhaust tips. An eight-speed transmission and all-wheel-drive system have been revised to take advantage of the increased power, along with tweaked suspension and electronic driving aids. The Velar SVAutobiography Edition will be available for one year only, so getting to the dealer early is imperative — and the exclusive Satin Byron Blue paint is an excellent choice.

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The Magic Barrel: The Art & Science of Aging Spirits

This handy guide breaks down the most important and least understood elements of aged spirits.

You may now pick up your pencils. Please fill in the circles completely.

A few weeks ago, the Macallan released a Scotch that had been aged for 52 years. A bottle costs $53,500.

Q: How much is a liquor-year worth?

If you answered $1028.85, congratulations! Your math skills are on point. Unfortunately, you’ve failed on liquor aging. Because the correct answer is: null and unknown.

Don’t feel bad if you’re confused. Barrel-aging liquor is one of the least understood, most elusive elements that goes into all of your favorite drams. A year isn’t always a year. Some years are more valuable than others.

How to make sense of it all? Here’s a primer on what to look for when seeking out the best aged spirits.

Unaged Spirits are Clear, and Aged Spirits are Dark, Right?

In theory this is correct. Historically, the barrel has provided the brown/gold color of aged spirits. The longer the liquor aged, the darker it got. This occurred because the water and ethanol that makes up a spirit leaches out tannins and other darker-hued elements from the barrel’s staves.

This rule of thumb still works today, but with more asterisks than the Milky Way. Some spirits are aged for a few years in barrels, and then filtered to remove the color. (Silver Bacardi rums, for instance.) Other spirit producers will make a young product look older (legally) by adding caramel coloring.

Aging doesn’t necessarily improve liquor—it only changes it. A whiskey that’s spent three years in a cask will taste very different from the same distillate that’s had eight years in a barrel. Yet you might prefer the younger to the older—it’s all a matter of taste. However, it’s a good bet the older will be more expensive—lots of capital is tied up in letting sleeping barrels lie, and those costs are, naturally, passed on to the consumer.

Barrel Basics

You are no doubt already aware that spirits and wine are very different beasts. Lower-proof, yeasty wine is still very much alive when it’s bottled. The flavor thus continues to evolve and at some point wine will pass its prime.

Spirits, in contrast, age only when in a barrel. Distillation strips out the yeast and the higher alcohol levels stabilize the liquid. When it moves from barrel to bottle, the liquor becomes relatively inert—the flavors hardly alter over time.

Assuming that a bottle doesn’t have a faulty cork or cap (exposure to air can degrade it), a whiskey bottled in, say 1935, will taste, by and large, the same today as when it was bottled in 1935. (Light and the slight presence of oxygen in the headspace can result in some subtle evolution of flavor.)

What Makes a Barrel So Special?

Barrels started out centuries ago as handy storage and shipping containers. But spirits traders early on noted that the flavor often improved when spirits spent time fraternizing with barrel staves while in transit.

Two things happen in a barrel: first, the spirit picks up some of the flavor of the wood, which in the vast majority of cases is made of white oak. Virtually all barrels are toasted or charred before use—the heat caramelizes some of the natural sugars in the wood, which can account for the butterscotch notes. And wood elements like lignin are chemically changed by heat to create chemicals called phenolic aldehydes, which can add flavors resembling vanilla.

Also, barrels are not fully airtight—they mostly keep the liquor in, but also allow oxygen to penetrate where the staves meet and through pores in the wood. (Barrels do slowly empty as vapor from the spirit escapes—about five percent a year in temperate climates.) Over time—it can take years—the oxygen interacts chemically with the distillate to create long-chain molecules and more complex flavors that are desirable in an aged spirit.

So barrels are essentially nano-factories—they have the means to alter the liquid at a molecular level, making it more complex.

Note that not all barrels are the same. A new barrel has far more flavor elements than a used one. Federal law requires that bourbon be aged in new oak barrels, which helps explain why many bourbons are so redolent of vanilla. Once used, the barrel is usually sold to makers of other spirits. Scotch distillers like once-used barrels because whisky made from barley is more delicate than the corn whiskey of bourbon, and would be overpowered by flavors in new wood.

Are Spirits Makers Required to Print an Age on their Labels?

No. When liquor makers do this, it’s usually for marketing purposes, not legal requirements. In fact, “age statements” on labels have become less common lately. The reason? Stocks of aged spirits have been depleted thanks to the high demand and low supply of quality aged products.

Many makers of aged spirits have chosen to empty barrels at a faster rate than they’d anticipated, and the find it’s easier to eliminate the age statement than lower the year on the label—which could potentially confuse or annoy customers. Cynics will note that by dropping the age statement, producers can also sell spirit aged for fewer years for the same cost as a longer-aged spirit.

Gong by the Label

Before many spirits are bottled, the barrels in which they aged are combined together—often the contents of dozens of different barrels are mixed in a large vat. The blender’s goal is quality, not necessarily to graduate a barrel class simultaneously. They’re seeking a balance of flavors, and different notes emerge during different parts of the aging cycle.

If a producer does choose to print an age statement, the year must reflect the youngest spirit contained in the bottle; per paragraph 5.41 of Part 5 of Title 27 of the Code of Regulations (because you asked), “Age may be understated but shall not be overstated.” For instance, in a bottled labeled as an eight-year-old bourbon, the blender may have opted to give it more body and nuance by adding small amounts of 10 or 12-year-old spirit.

This doesn’t apply to spirits labeled bottled-in-bond, which are filled from spirits all made the same year (and have been aged at least four years), nor to “single-barrel” spirits, which, as the name suggests, are the contents of a single barrel.

Owing to a series of arcane federal regulations, there are also a few other terms that are essentially code words for how old a spirit is if a year is not listed on the label. Chief among these is the term “straight whiskey.” This indicates that it has spent at least two years aging in new oak. (If the aging period was between two and four years, the number of years must be printed on the label—an exception to the no-federal-requirement mentioned above.)

A Year is a Year, Right?

Actually, no. Not only will a new barrel age its contents at different rates than a used barrel, but the location where the barrel is stored can make a significant difference.

Barrels stored in warmer climates age at a faster rate than those stored in cooler places. Heat speeds chemical reactions, while also leading to larger pressure differentials inside the barrels, which forces the liquid deeper in the wood to extract more flavors. Barrels essentially take winters off—not much happens inside a barrel when temperatures plunge. As a result, it takes longer for liquor aged in cooler Scotland to reach maturity than in warmer Kentucky. The late Dave Pickerell, former Maker’s Mark distiller and a craft industry consultant, once swapped barrels with a Scotch distiller, and after regular samplings concluded that one year of aging in Kentucky was equal to about three or four years of aging in Scotland.

So you often see Scotch that’s been aged 12 or 18 years, which is fairly rare in bourbons, which is typically aged six to eight years. And rums aged in the even warmer Caribbean typically undergo shorter aging still. In Mexico, tequila is considered aged after only a single year in a barrel. After three years it can be labeled as “extra old.”

So, This is All Fine and Well, But What Should I Look for When It Comes to Buying Aged Spirits?
Do carefully examine the label. Look for a number followed by the word “years.” Look for phrases such as “straight” and “bottled-in-bond,” which indicated minimum aging. Be wary of prominent numbers that make no reference to years—some crafty producers print a large numeral to lead you to think that refers to the minimum aging periods. (Looking at you, Ron Zacapa 23). A number can be part of a brand name, or it may refer to an obscure production technique, not the age.

Google is your friend. A search can help you sort out some of the minimum aging requirement linked to various terms, such as tequila designations, as well as for Cognac and Armagnac—if it says V.S. on the label, for instance, it’s been aged at least two years.

But the bottom line is this: it’s all about taste and your preferences. Some prefer the complex oaky taste that emerges and dominates long-aged spirits. Some prefer their liquor to taste more of the base ingredient—like grain in rye, or agave in tequila.

Your homework: Go to a bar and ask for a vertical flight of your favorite spirit—same brand, different age statements. Sip. Enjoy. Return to those you like best.

Well done. A+.

[MIKA27]

The Fascinating History of New Orleans’ Oldest Bar

We go all the way back to the early 1700s for the history of the Old Absinthe Bar on Bourbon Street.

At the dawn of Prohibition there were three world-famous bars in New Orleans: Henry Ramos’s Stag Café, Chris O’Reilly’s Sazerac House and Pierre Cazebonne’s Old Absinthe House, perhaps the most famous of the three. Two of those bars enjoy truly mythical stature in the modern cocktail revolution. Their signature drinks are among the bedrock classics and their histories are recounted in bars from Sarasota to Singapore, St. Petersburg to Punta Arenas.

Conveniently for their legends, the Sazerac House, opened in 1851, and the Stag, successor to the bar that Ramos opened down the street in 1887, never came back after Prohibition; they never had to scrape by during the dry years, try to rebuild their clientele during the 1930s, pump cheap rum drinks into G.I.s and gyrenes, flyboys and swabbies during World War II, figure out what the visiting merrymakears wanted to drink during the buttoned-down 1950s or compete with hard drugs and hookers in the 1960s and 1970s. They’re not still keeping the lights on by selling Vodka Sodas to sorority girls and Bud Light to guys who look like their dads.

The Old Absinthe House, open pretty much continually since at least 1842 (there were a couple of years during Prohibition when the place was padlocked—but its actual bar was still in use, in a building down the street), has done all those things. It is a true survivor: the oldest bar in New Orleans and one of the oldest in America. In all that time, it has grown its own crust of myth and legend, a rough, patchy thing that is as neglected as it is ancient. The last time the bar’s actual history was investigated in any detail was in the 1930s. I think it’s time for an update, particularly since, as far as can be determined, 2019 is the 150th anniversary of its embrace of the word “absinthe” in its name.

Because we’re in the realm of mythology here, I’ll begin at the very beginning, in the Dreamtime.

The Place

In the beginning was earth and water, sun and wind—separated as God intended, to be sure, but perhaps not quite so well as they were separated in other, tidier places. Alligators and herons, frogs and mosquitoes, leeches and palmetto bugs, cypress, sawgrass and purple muscadine, all shared the sloppy patchwork of fetid water and the stinking muck that passed for land; all simmered together under a sun of balled-up fire and hunkered together against the howling winds and whipping rain that periodically blew the thick air clear.  

Then the humans came—“Nahchee,” they called themselves—and trapped some of the ducks and the deer and pried some of the fat oysters out of the ooze. In some places, where there was more earth and less water, they piled the dirt up into elegant ceremonial mounds and maybe planted some corn and squash and beans around them. But mostly they slipped silent and sure-footed through the swamp, hunting and fishing and reveling in the veiled bounty of what surrounded them.

In the fullness of time, other men came; French men. They did nothing quietly, hacking out a trading post here and throwing up an earth-and-log fort there, seizing dominion over a handful of the places where the earth was firmest and highest. One of those was on a bend in the great river that slowly bulled its way through the wilderness, a little way upstream from where the “Mississippi,” as the French rendered its name, spilled itself untidily into the Gulf of Mexico. By way of a branchy little channel, a bayou, the site offered a short and easy overland portage between the river and the grand lake that lay just to the north of it. Since time immemorial, it had been a key link in Natchee trade routes.

But now, in the year 1718, it was French, and to make sure it stayed that way the new inhabitants cleared the cypress and live oak off of a 400-acre rectangle, surrounded it with drainage ditches and heaped up some mounds of their own. Only theirs surrounded the clearing on three sides—the river closed the box—and had cannon-studded bastions at the corners. Within these walls, they laid out a grid of streets and began building wooden houses. “La Nouvelle Orléans,” they called the place, after the Duke of Orléans, who was acting as regent for King Louis XV, who was eight.

After a little adjustment to the walls, Nouvelle Orléans ended up with 66 square blocks. Not that it needed that many: a 1763 map shows houses clustered together in only about half of them. That same year, France ceded the town to Spain without a fight. In spite of—or maybe because of—being administered from Havana with a loose hand, the city quickly began to fill out. Even two devastating fires and a subsequent requirement that everything be rebuilt in brick instead of wood didn’t hold things back. In 1800, the city went back to France, which promptly turned around and sold it and the rest of French North America to the United States.

The House

As contemporary maps show, at some point between 1788 and 1817 one of the remaining empty blocks, over near the city walls, finally got some houses built on it, including one at the corner where Bienville Street met Bourbon Street. If you stood in Bienville with your back to the river, this house was on the near left corner (locally that’s known as the “uptown riverside” lot; in New Orleans, the normal compass rose has been replaced with “riverside” and “lakeside,” “downtown”—that is, down the Mississippi towards the Gulf—and “uptown”). It’s still there today, more or less: it’s been repaired, redecorated, remodeled, renovated, rebuilt, reopened and remojoed more times than Cher. But it’s still the same house, standing in the same place it’s occupied since some time around the Louisiana purchase.

Nobody’s sure precisely when it was built, which hasn’t stopped them from throwing out years; French Quarter historian Stanley Clisby Arthur, the last person to seriously investigate the bar’s history, gives the year as 1806, without evidence. There were some “edifices” on the property as early as 1797, but we don’t know if they included the house; on the other hand, an 1820 property transfer describes the building perfectly as it still stands. It’s entirely possible that it was built, or rebuilt, after the great hurricane of 1812, which wreaked havoc on the city and left most of it under water.   

The house is a standard New Orleans corner shop, circa 1800: a two-and-a-half story stucco-brick cube with two big, arched floor-to-ceiling windows on the Bienville St. side and two more on the Bourbon one, along with a separate kitchen extension and a walled-in courtyard that once held the house’s well. At some point in the late nineteenth century a cast-iron balcony was added, right under the top-floor windows. The high-ceilinged ground floor held two stores; the top floor was residential. The extra half-story—an “entresol” in the local terminology—was shoehorned in between them as a place to keep goods and servants, be they free or enslaved.

Whenever the actual house was built, in 1806 the property came under the ownership of a pair of Catalan business partners, Pedro Font (or Fon) and Francisco Juncadella. Catalonia was an uneasy part of Spain, and its people often found refuge in the colonies; New Orleans was one of the centers of their migration. At the same time, the partners built, or at least bought, another, humbler one-story house kitty-corner to that one. I don’t know who lived in which or if they actually lived in either. They may have run a grocery on the ground floor, as Arthur claims, or leased it to someone else who did, but Juncadella died in 1820, Font went home to Spain and by 1822 the house was occupied by Antoine Cruzat, the treasurer of the parish of Orleans—“parish” being Louisianan for county. There may have still been a grocery on the ground floor: city directories list one at the corner of Bourbon and Bienville, but of course every intersection has four corners and Cruzat was an important man, unlikely to live above someone else’s shop. But hey, it’s New Orleans.

The Bar: The Aleix Dynasty

The Cruzat family was still in the house when the “Racer’s Storm” of 1837 blew roofs off throughout the town and left much of it under water. In 1841, however, they ended their tenure when Antoine Cruzat built his own house over on St. Louis Street. Within a year, we find one “Mr. Aleix” disbursing liquors at the location (Francisco Juncadella’s widow, Rosa, was an Aleix, and she had inherited his share of the building). New Orleans local historian Ray Bordelon, an expert on all things Absinthe House, has uncovered a liquor license dating to January 14, 1843 for a “coffeehouse”—that’s New Orleans-speak for “bar”—issued to Jacinto Aleix and before that licensing for a “cabaret or commodities house.” These are two different kinds of establishment, but in New Orleans both of them sold liquors.

In any case, the first time the establishment appears in print is in April, 1842, when the men of Washington Fire Co. No. 4 took out an add in the Daily Picayune to thank “Mr. Aleix” for supplying them with “refreshments” while they were fighting a recent fire on Bienville St. (Back then, volunteer fire companies had a rough and tumble reputation and tended to be peopled by the sportier elements of society; the ones who kept corkscrews twisting and waiters stepping. If you ran a retail liquor dispensary, they were the people you wanted to butter up.) They could have come from a grocery, but the sending of iced drinks to firemen and other workers in the public interest was a fairly common thing for fancy nineteenth century bars to do.

As if that weren’t murky enough, there’s also the fact that various people, over the years, have claimed that the coffee house was open well before Cruzat moved out; years later, the bar gave 1836 as the year of its founding, although this later slipped back to 1826. It seems as unlikely that the county treasurer would live over a bar as a grocery store, but again, New Orleans.

The next time the bar turns up it is under a different Aleix: the Annual and Commercial Register for 1846 has Jacinto running a shoe store at the same corner and the coffee house under the proprietorship of the mysterious “A. Aleix,” who does not appear elsewhere in the contemporary records to which I have access. Three generations later, however, the brothers who were running the business—Ferrers, not Aleixes, but kinsmen nonetheless—believed that it had been founded by Antonio Ferrer, a great grandfather. It is possible they got their genealogy bollixed up and it was Antonio Aleix. Pending further research, “A. Aleix” will have to remain a mystery.

Whoever A. was, his or her tenure was brief: by 1850, Jacinto was firmly in charge.

Born in Catalonia in 1800, give or take a year, he had emigrated to Havana in his youth. There, he worked as a sailor on the New Orleans run. He appears to have settled in the city for good in 1823 and later spent at least a decade running a shoe store on the next block of Bourbon St., until he got tired of smelling feet.

We know vanishingly little about Aleix’s operation beyond the fact that he had a large mirror behind the bar and a big old clock. While the city had a number of showplace drinking establishments, elaborate temples to Bacchus such as Hewlett’s Exchange, the St. Charles Bar, and the Gem, Aleix’s was not one of them. It received no mention in the survey of the city’s best and most popular bars the Weekly Delta printed in 1850. Just about the only time it made it into the newspapers was in August, 1851, when word reached the city of the failure of Ecuadoran revolutionary Narciso López’s latest attempt to liberate Cuba from Spain. That failure was followed by the public execution in Havana of 50 of his men, most of them Americans, many of them recruited in New Orleans. Anti-Spanish feeling ran high in the city, and on the night of the 24th rioters swept through the French Quarter, sacking the Spanish Consul’s office and a number of Spanish-owned businesses. Aleix’s was among them. “The mirrors, bottles, decanters and liquors were cast into the street,” the Weekly Delta reported, and the place was “completely sacked.”

Odds are it wasn’t Aleix’s French-Quarter neighbors who did the damage. By the 1830s, the old city had grown a whole new city, across Canal Street, which ran from the river toward the lake on the Uptown border of the old town, where one of the city walls had been. Now that old town was known as the “French Quarter,” while the new part was the “American Quarter.” The French Quarter was peopled largely by French and Spanish families who had been there before the Louisiana Purchase—the city’s famous “Creoles”—and their compatriots who had come over to join them.

The American quarter, technically a separate municipality from 1836 until 1852, was full of hard, charging, “go ahead” Americans, manifest-destiny types from New York and Boston and Hartford and such who regarded the less-driven, tradition-obsessed French-Quarter Latins with suspicion and more than a little contempt. The feeling was mutual. Lopez had recruited mostly among the Americans, and they were most likely the ones who rampaged through the French Quarter.

The American-Creole divide stretched through the bars the city’s residents drank in. French-Quarter residents tended to prefer “cabarets,” as they called them, to the more elaborate American bars of the day. These were low-key places, “modest in pretension” and “plain in furniture,” as the Daily Picayune observed in 1850, where most of the clientele shared an ethnicity with the owner; where French and Spanish wines—Burgundies, Garnachas, and the like—were far more popular than bourbon and old Monongahela and you were much more likely to find a vermouth or an Anisette and Water on the bar than a Gin Cocktail or a Mint Julep. For those, you’d need to amble over to a bar like the Sazerac House, opened by Aaron Bird in 1852 half a block below Canal (for all intents and purposes, the American Quarter actually began a block before the official Canal Street border), where you could stand at the bar and throw down Whiskey Cocktails and Brandy Smashes and all the other potent gum-ticklers characteristic of the American school of drinking.

At any rate, Aleix put his business back together, with no help from the city authorities, whom he sued unsuccessfully for the $3,500 damage he claimed the mob caused. He ran it more or less without incident for the next few years, unless the Bernardo Attores who was arrested in 1856 for “selling liquor to slaves” at the corner of Bourbon and Bienville worked for him (it should be noted that Charles Ogilvie, the grocer across the street, was arrested two years later for precisely that offense). Some time around 1860, Jacinto brought his son Pierre Oscar in as a “clerk,” the genteel way of saying “barkeeper.” Despite the events of 1851, Oscar, as he was known, and his brother Leopold seemed to have no hard feelings toward the local Anglos, since when Louisiana joined the Confederacy in 1861 they both enlisted immediately, serving in local militia units until New Orleans fell to the Union in April 1862.

By then, Jacinto had been dead for almost a year and his widow, Severine Espinoso Aleix, was running the bar in his name. When we next see it, in 1865, Leopold had taken over the day-to-day operation, sometimes with Oscar’s help, but the business was still in Jacinto’s name. But now the bar had acquired a new nickname: “The Absinthe House,” which first appeared in an advertisement in the New Orleans Times that August (the bar had ice, and wanted to let the world know). By the late 1860s, the Aleixes’ old cabaret was starting to get noticed: in 1869, the Times-Democrat dubbed it a “popular resort.” Although it wasn’t old enough to be truly picturesque, the bar had still been around long enough to be a familiar survivor, and a small counterweight to the modernization that was beginning to transform the big American saloons in the city, and the Americanization that was beginning to rob the French Quarter of some of its distinctive flavor.

A big part of that counterweight was Aleix’s promotion of absinthe-drinking. To the average American of the day, absinthe-drinking was, as one of the city’s American-Quarter newspapers reminded its readers in 1868, a form of “dangerous dissipation.” The seductive green liquid was known mostly as the thing that drove Parisian café-loafers to the poorhouse and then the madhouse, a powerful, mind-altering nerve toxin that left people hollow, gibbering wrecks. For the next 40-odd years, the newspapers, and particularly those aligned with American-Quarter interests, published frequent reminders of its toll, usually translated from the more sensationalist segments of the French popular press.

Meanwhile, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, here was a quiet little neighborhood bar—Bourbon Street in 1865 was not the Bourbon Street of 1965 or 2015—proudly identifying itself as a place to drink absinthe. New Orleans had been importing absinthe since at least 1821, but if it caused any fuss it didn’t make the papers. It’s significant that the Aleixes didn’t take a stand in favor of it until the 1860s, when it was becoming an identifier for Bohemian tendencies and worse; when it was singled out as foreign and un-American.

I don’t want to make Leon Aleix out to be some hero of diversity: in the most important things, he was anything but. A small December, 1874, ad in the New Orleans Bulletin is co-signed by him as an officer of the “Ogden Invincibles,” one of the many political clubs that sprang up to support one political candidate or another. This one supported Frederick N. Ogden for governor. Ogden, a former Confederate officer like Aleix, had served under Nathan Bedford Forrest and shared his virulent views on race. In July, 1874, he founded the Crescent City White League, dedicated to naked white supremacy.

At first glance, there seems a disconnect between Leon’s repugnant, reactionary racial politics and his promotion of some decidedly un-American drinking customs, but New Orleans is a complicated place and the Anglo-Creole divide had been largely wiped away by the Civil War and the enthusiastic enlistment of young men like Aleix in the Confederate cause. Rather than fighting each other, the two groups had banded together to fight the Yankees, and now their black fellow citizens (the Spanish, after all, had historically hardly been paragons of racial enlightenment, and indeed listed among Francisco Juncadella’s property when he died were “Paul and Joseph,” two human beings).

Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with Leopold Aleix anymore, as the Absinthe House was about to change hands, and families, and move to new heights of popularity. For that, and the rest of its history, including Absinthe Frappes, Prohibition, Fake Pirates, the unstoppable Brennans, and much more, see Part II, coming soon.  

[MIKA27]

New Dumbo Trailer

 

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Hugh Jackman Calls Ryan Reynolds a Real 'F**king Asshole' In Their Hilarious New Commercial

Wolverine and Deadpool—sorry—Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds called a truce to their long-standing (playful) social media feud at the end of January, but old habits die hard. After the two announced they'd celebrate their friendship by making ads for each other's companies, the whole thing fell apart. Fast.

Outside of Deadpool and other onscreen projects, Reynolds is the face of his own Aviation Gin, which is pretty well known for its outrageous commercials. Jackman launched his own coffee brand, Laughing Man Coffee, in 2011. So when the two set aside their differences to make commercial spots for one another, Reynolds came through and made Laughing Man quite the ad. He goes into full detail about the quality of Laughing Man's coffee, the good work the company does, and what a loving and caring man his friend Hugh Jackman is. A+ on the assignment.

And Jackman... well. Here's a screenshot.

Yeah. That's the positive part, too. In his ad for Aviation Gin, Jackman says, "Ryan Reynolds is a complete and total fucking asshole... The gin's pretty great though. I'll have to try it some day," before pouring the entire bottle out on the coffee table. Cue Aviation Gin logo. Scene.

A true masterpiece.

There you have it: if you're a coffee guy and you're looking for a cup of joe whose owner donates a portion of the proceeds to scholarship funds and making the world better, you know what to buy. And if you're looking for gin made by a f**king asshole, then you're all set as well. Check out the hilarious clip below and join us in hoping that the feud never ends.

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David Fincher's World War Z Sequel Has Been Zombified

Any dreams we had of a big budget David Fincher zombie movie are now probably as dead as a zombie, too.

The Playlist is reporting that the planned World War Z sequel directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt has been killed by Paramount Pictures. We did some digging and found out that pre-production on the film has, indeed, stopped. And while that’s not a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s 100 percent “dead.” On the other hand, it could mean just that—and considering the film’s history, it’s certainly the most likely bet.

Various iterations of the sequel had been in development since soon after the release of the surprise 2013 hit, which was directed by Marc Forster. J.A. Bayona was originally attached but left the project due to its rapidly approaching 2017 release date. 

That was back in 2016, and reportedly around that time, Pitt began fighting hard to get Fincher, his Fight Club and Benjamin Button collaborator, on board. Which, eventually, he did. Development continued, the script was worked on, release dates shifted, and the rumor was production was ramping up for production later this year. It seems now, though, just as the final stamps of approval had to be set, the film was shut down.

Variety reports the main reason for the stoppage was a budget issue, and though the Playlist suggested the proposed budget was under the $190 million of the first film, Collider says it was in fact over. If that’s true, you can understand a company being cautious about spending $200 million on an R-rated sequel to a movie that could be eight years old when it came out.

Another educated, but unconfirmed, guess would be that the script simply wasn’t what it needed to be. That’s almost always the reason why a movie fans hear about never ends up making it to the big screen. It’s just not ready or good enough. And if a company is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars making and then promoting a movie, it wants to know it has a strong base. If the script was really good, chances are it would happen.

But could World War Z 2 still happen? At some point, maybe. However, it seems like any chance of David Fincher directing is all but done. And it’s certainly not going to film this year.

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A New Pet Sematary Trailer Reveals The Remake Will Scare You In A Slightly Different Way

The strongest argument against letting a young person ever have a pet is that, eventually, they’re likely to become emotionally attached to it, which’ll almost invariably become a problem once the pet in question decides to die.

Everyone knows that there’s a certain amount of risk involving emotional trauma whenever kids are given the chance to bond with animals, but of course, that doesn’t stop the Creed family in Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary remake where the Creed actually has more than just pet problems.

 

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Mountain Lion Attacks Runner In Colorado, Runner Strangles It To Death

An unidentified man who was running on Horsetooth Mountain Open Space’s West Ridge Trail near Fort Collins, Colorado had a nasty encounter on with a juvenile cougar on Monday, which ended with the runner wounded and the animal strangled to death, the Coloradoan reported this week.

According to the Coloradoan, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) has confirmed that a male cougar (Puma concolor couguar, also known as a mountain lion, puma, or catamount) weighing at least 36kg attacked the man and managed to inflict bite wounds to his face and wrist — before the tables turned and the man managed to suffocate it with his bare hands.

The runner sustained “serious, but non-life threatening injuries,” CPW wrote in a statement, while wildlife officials took the corpse of the cougar for a necropsy.

Per the New York Times, a parks and wildlife spokesperson said that other animals had scavenged on the cougar’s corpse by the time they located it, though officials confirmed on Tuesday that it had indeed died from suffocation (and that it was, fortunately, not rabid).

“The runner did everything he could to save his life,” CPW Northeast region manager Mark Leslie said in the statement. “In the event of a lion attack, you need to do anything in your power to fight back, just as this gentleman did.”

According to CNN, the Larimer County Department of Natural Resources said that trails at the Horsetooth Mountain Open Space were closed on Tuesday due to rangers’ detection of “more mountain lion activity in the area.” They will reassess the situation on Friday, CNN wrote.

Though cougars were once hunted to near-extinction in the U.S., researchers believe their Western populations and those of other apex predators such as wolves and coyotes are beginning to rebound (though how much is still a matter of contention).

Scientists once categorized regional populations of the cats as distinct subspecies, though that view has diminished due to genetic research in 2000 that concluded all are the same subspecies. According to National Geographic, the Eastern variant has declined to the point of effective extirpation for at least the past 100 years, though Western cougars have been sighted moving into the Midwest, and a few males have been “found closer to the East Coast.”

There is one East Coast population that still exists, though it is not doing so hot. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has considered the Florida panther as a endangered subspecies (Puma concolor coryi) since 1967, when the Department of the Interior ruled it was approaching extinction and needed protected status.

Taxonomic debates aside, one of the researchers who published the genetic study, Melanie Culver, told the Tampa Bay Times in 2017 it should continue to enjoy that status.

It unfortunately appears to be headed towards total extirpation regardless, in no small part due to collisions with vehicles.

Colorado wildlife officials emphasised to the Times that mountain lions have only caused three confirmed deaths in the state since 1990, and under 12 in North America in over 100 years. However, the CPW website advises that interactions between the animals and humans have been increasing in recent years, with factors including encroachment on cougar territory, a measured increase in deer populations and a “presumed increase” in cougar populations, and people simply being more aware of their presence.

The CPW website advises that humans should travel in groups within the cats’ established ranges and never approach a cougar, ever, as they usually want nothing more than to be left alone by people and “will try to avoid a confrontation.”

If the cougar approaches, the website advises people to talk “calmly and firmly” to it while backing away slowly, as well as to avoid running and attempt to appear larger (such as by raising arms or expanding a jacket) if possible. If it appears to be behaving aggressively, CPW further advises people to try and dissuade it by throwing objects “without crouching down or turning your back” and to fight back with any available weapons, tools, or other objects in the event of an attack.

[MIKA27]

Welcome To The Wild World Of Tokyo's Underground Lowrider Culture

“No Music, No Life.” In the heart of Shibuya, home of Tokyo’s youth culture, there’s a massive multi-story Tower Records shop with that sign hung in the middle of it. Much like that outdated shop standing tall in Tokyo’s hip district, Tokyo’s lowriders have resisted fading away.

The record shop is where they have their monthly meeting, and it can’t be a coincidence it happens there — many of these owners got into lowriders because of the American hip-hop musicians they listened to growing up.

Lowriders aren’t exactly what you’d expect to be a perfect fit for Japan. Huge, classic American cars are relative rarity here, and it’s hard at first to imagine how lowriders themselves — a product of the car cultures of mostly Latinx and black gearheads on America’s West Coast after World War 2 — could gain a foothold here.

That’s what I thought, at least. But apparently I’ve been missing out because it seems there’s a big and strong following for lowriders in Japan. The people who’ve embraced the hilariously large (for this country) lowriders have also taken in the whole culture that goes with them. From the clothes, the accessories, and of course the meetups, the Japanese lowrider people would make their American counterparts proud.

I was first introduced to the lowrider scene in Tokyo by a friend who had gone to a couple of their monthly meets and uploaded videos on YouTube. After watching about 30 seconds of a video I knew I had to go check it out for myself.

They meet at Shibuya every first Saturday night of the month. Things kick off around 10 PM and go on until 1 AM or so, well past the last train. What made this particular night last year even better was it was on the last weekend of Japan’s Golden Week holiday, and it was on Cinco de Mayo. I was expecting great things.

What you have to keep in mind is Shibuya is one of the busiest parts of Tokyo. It’s often compared to Times Square with the bright billboards, high-rise buildings and masses of people. Shibuya is home to the famous Shibuya Scramble, one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in Japan. So for a car meet to happen in this area is a disaster waiting to happen.

At 10 PM on the dot — because it’s still Japan and promptness is critical—lowriders started trickling in to their usual meeting spot. Seeing the first couple of lowriders cruise around the block with Shibuya’s neon forest was as much contrast as I’d seen in all my time in Japan. These lumbering American land yachts bouncing up and down one of the most famous neighbourhoods in Tokyo was something I never thought I’d see.

Eventually more lowriders showed up. There were probably 20 or 30 of them at one point. As the night progressed somehow even more came. One of them, who called himself Yu-Ki from the Whodies Car Club, said the reason why there were so many of them on this night was because of it being on Golden Week national holiday weekend.

Yu-Ki and his friends made Whodies Car Club to represent their take on lowriders. His favourite part of the cars are their hydraulic systems, “rare and attractive,” as he put it. Domestic cars these are not.

Still, it wasn’t just lowriders showing up. There was also a matte army green Lamborghini Aventador, a lone pink Toyota HiAce, a high-riding Land Cruiser, a few muscle cars, and some USDM-style Hondas—Japanese cars done up to emulate the import tuner scene in America, a perfect example of how cultures converge and influence and bounce off one another. There was even one of those yellow school buses I’ve only seen in movies. It was a great mix of cultures that complimented all the lowriders.

What brought all these guys together was wanting to express their own individual style. It’s a bit like the bosozoku counter-culture in Japan, where these people have taken ordinary cars and repurposed them into something quite different. Driving around in an old Chevrolet Impala or Cadillac Fleetwood would make you stand out in Tokyo. Installing hydraulics and candy paint just drives the point home.

According to Yu-Ki, “Interest in lowriders started around 1980s but it was popular around 1990.” I got the idea lowriders in Japan peaked in the dawn of the ‘90s, which makes sense as that coincides with the end of Japan’s Bubble Economy.

“Recently I feel that the number has increased by the influence of social media. But I think it is temporary.” These guys are looking at magazines from overseas, YouTube videos, and Instagram for inspiration.

I also met with Hoshito-san, a fellow who attends nearly every lowrider event. He’s been running the nin_jap_apparazi account on Instagram since 2011. There, he documents Japan’s lowrider culture.

By day he has a regular job. At night he comes to these meets to share his love for lowriders with the Internet.

“It makes me feel connected with fans all over the world,” he said. “I love watching lowriders. It’s fun and exciting. I like the smell, the presence… everything. It’s wonderful culture.”

His love for lowriders came from basically the same place as Yu-Ki, from magazines and the Internet.

Yu-Ki’s car is a 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS Convertible. He’s spent countless hours working on it and had dreamt of owning once since he was in Junior High.

“I saw Dr. Dre’s music video and I thought the lowrider in the video was so cool. So that’s why I had to buy one,” he said.

Yu-Ki’s car was immaculate in that very Japanese sort of way. It certainly seemed like all the other lowriders were taken care of properly, you could almost call them concours ready. It’s weird to think one of the strongest advocates for classic cars in Japan are the lowrider drivers.

Yu-Ki says that there’s still a negative stigma towards the lowrider culture in Japan, that people think they’re “involved in dodgy business” and must have a lot of cash. But it’s quite the opposite, he said.

“Everyone has decent jobs and use their savings on their hobby,” he told me.

These sorts of meets are just their release. They were all very nice people and welcoming to their world. Some spoke a little English and were keen to talk about their favourite American rappers with me.

While I was there a couple of police cars drove by just to check the scene out. I’m not sure if the cops have caught on to their gathering every first Saturday night of the month, but it’s kind of hard to miss 50 or so lowriders in the middle of downtown Tokyo.

This was the closest to an American-style car meet I’d seen in Japan. There were lowriders literally flexing around corners going on three wheels, there were Mustangs and Camaros doing burnouts on the smooth tarmac, and of course there were crowds of zombie-like photographers egging the drivers on. It reminded me of the circus I saw in Los Angeles a while back.

The influence of American culture is deeply felt in Japan. It ranges from something as everyday as the infinite number of Starbucks stores to something as distant as the country’s postwar constitution. (Luckily Japan hasn’t adopted the concept of tipping.) But lowrider shops and clubs are definitely an import that’s a welcome change.

Like other aspects of Japanese car culture, lowriders are doing everything they can to survive. The aim of these clubs in various regions of Japan has been to spread their passion and hobby with others, especially young people.

Arguably, the oldest and most famous of the lowrider car clubs is the Homies Car Club. They started out as a small club in Saitama Prefecture in the early 1990s and since then have grown with members throughout Japan and overseas. These people aren’t just fans of lowriders, but the whole California lifestyle and are bringing some of that over to Japan. A couple of their cars attend things like the Daikoku New Year’s meet.

According to Yu-Ki, young people in Japan are becoming less interested in cars, not just lowriders. Increasing economic problems for young people combined with affordable and efficient public transportation, narrow roads, and the cost of parking means car ownership in the city is less appealing.

Holding regular gatherings like this, meets and events are all done in the hope of showing young people the fun and interesting side of cars. They don’t all have to be tools to get you from A to B.

For Tokyo’s lowrider crews it’s more about getting together and trying to show off their pride and joy with everyone. That’s why Shibuya was chosen, because of its density and foot traffic. Several wandering and unassuming tourists didn’t know what they walked into but still watched in awe and of course had to get the video and photo to upload on social media.

Every third Saturday various lowrider clubs and groups have meetings throughout Japan, not just in Tokyo. I’ll definitely have to venture out to one of these meets one day to see what they’re all about.

In the end, these very American-inspired lowriders capture one of the great things about the Japanese car scene: It’s inclusive of a lot of various subcultures. There’s a lot of blending what was done in the past with the current trends of today. This ethos applies to everything from humble domestic cars to the most exotic imported supercars. Nothing is off limits here.

 

 

[MIKA27]

‘El Chicano’ Poster Shows a Different Kind of Vigilante from Co-Writer Joe Carnahan

Briarcliff has released the poster for the upcoming thriller El Chicano. Directed by Ben Hernandez Bray from a script he co-wrote with Joe Carnahan (The Grey), the film focuses on twin brothers Diego and Pedro who go their separate ways as adults with Diego becoming a cop and Pedro becoming a criminal. However, when clues connected to Pedro’s death connect to a case of Diego’s, a mysterious vigilante figure of their youth, “El Chicano”, resurfaces.

Here’s what Carnahan had to say about why he decided to co-write the film and why he has so much faith in it:

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“My best friend and former stunt coordinator Ben Hernandez Bray had been talking about EL CHICANO for over 10 years and having lost his own brother to gang violence, there was a very real life corollary with the story. Ben always said that as a Latino, he never really identified with Batman, or “a billionaire white boy who worked out of a cave”. I was working on BAD BOYS FOR LIFE and got kind of fed up with that process and really believing in my friend and the story he wanted to tell, I threw myself into EL CHICANO and now, two years later and our pockets drained, here we are, with this fantastic movie, opening Cinco De Mayo weekend, right after THE AVENGERS: ENDGAME. I think this date, at the top of the summer, speaks volumes about how good the movie is and how much confidence Tom Ortenberg and everyone at Briarcliff has in EL CHICANO.”

El Chicano opens May 3rd and stars Raul Castillo, George Lopez, Aimee Garcia, Marlene Forte, Marco Rodriguez, and Jose Pablo Cantillo.

Here’s the official synopsis for El Chicano:

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Growing up in East LA, twin brothers Diego and Pedro always knew they had each other, from goofing off on bikes to spying in on parties. As adults, Diego became a police officer looking out for the streets he used to play on, while Pedro turned to a life of crime. When clues start connecting Pedro’s death to a case Diego is working on, the mysterious vigilante figure of their youth—“El Chicano”—returns, drawing Diego in deeper than he ever expected.

Director Ben Hernandez Bray puts his skills with action and authenticity to good use, balancing adrenaline-filled beats with moments of emotional connection. Writers Bray and Joe Carnahan offer up a socio-political allegory within the framework of the superhero genre, taking advantage of audience’s familiarity with what they see in the movies and what they see in the news.

 

And here’s the trailer:

 

[MIKA27]

ANGEL’S ENVY OLOROSO SHERRY-FINISHED BOURBON

While there are a lot of excellent bourbon whiskeys out there, small batch limited editions really catch our attention, as we know they won’t be around forever. That goes double if the distillers have gone to the trouble of imbuing that whiskey with a unique flavor profile, which is exactly what you’ll find with the Angel’s Rest Kentucky Straight Bourbon Finished in Oloroso Sherry Casks.

Already famed for their production of hand-crafted, small-batch whiskey, this is the first new Angel’s Envy release since 2013, according to the brand. And, while that would make it special already, it’s even more desirable thanks to the remarkable flavors imparted by Spanish Oloroso sherry — giving it a sweet nose of raisin and hazelnut, a dry palette marked by vanilla and caramel, and a lingering floral finish. If that sounds as good to you as it does to us, you’ll want to act quickly, as only 3,600 bottles of this 100-proof spirit are being made available to the public at a price of $200 a piece.

[MIKA27]

An Aquaman Spinoff Is Happening Without Any Of Aquaman's Stars

James Wan’s Aquaman was such a hit that not only will it get a sequel, even its tertiary characters are getting their own movies. Just not the ones anyone expected.

Writers Noah Gardner and Aidan Fitzgerald have been hired to write The Trench, a horror-themed DC movie focused on the creatures who attack Arthur (Jason Momoa) and Mera (Amber Heard) toward the end of Aquaman.

All that’s known about the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, is that “it will be set in the kingdom of the Trench and will not feature the main cast of Aquaman”.

Wan will produce along with Peter Safran, and the film will be “much more modestly budgeted than the normal DC superhero tentpole,” according to the trade.

Look. The trench scene in Aquaman was super cool. The visuals were great, the world was obviously interesting, and yes, there is more lore that can be drawn from the underwater landscape and the comics.

But you have to wonder, why the hell are the Trench people the first to get a spinoff in this insanely vast, expansive world?

Well, probably because none of the stars are in it. It’s a world that’s almost completely sealed off to anything happening in Atlantis or on the surface, so there’s no need to worry about Aquaman, Mera, or Orm having to get involved, let alone Shazam or Batman.

Plus, this is James Wan we’re talking about here. The guy who directed an awesome, relatively small horror film called The Conjuring and has since spun it off into its own franchise thanks to films such as The Nun and Annabelle. If anyone knows how to create a world within a world, it’s Wan.

[MIKA27]

Will Smith Blue Himself in the New Aladdin Trailer - This will haunt your dreams

 

 

[MIKA27]

‘The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot’ Review: Sam Elliott Shines in Surprising Drama

You hear a title like The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot and you might get a certain idea in your head about what kind of movie you’re walking into. You probably think silly, campy, maybe with a dash of Grindhouse (especially after you see the gorgeous poster.) You would be wrong. This Sam Elliott showcase isn’t the camp creature feature you’re expecting, it’s something much more interesting, if perhaps not as fun.

The feature debut from writer/director Robert Krzykowski technically lives up to its title — Elliott stars as a man who, many years ago, killed Hitler and ultimately kills Bigfoot — but the end result is much more pensive and lyrical than the cheeky title lets on. Instead of a midnight movie, we get a meditative drama that hones in on regret, infamy, and the legacy of violence.

Elliott is Calvin Barr, the titular man; a lonely, aging veteran who quietly bides his time in solitude and reflection, chatting with the local bartender (which might happen a little too often) at night and wandering about town with his dog by day. He’s a sad old man; not the triumphant, mythic badass you’d expect to see in the man who killed Fuhrer, and between his moments of solitude, he remembers the incidents from his past — including the assassination — that brought him to this life of stoic sadness.

When he remembers, we share the moment with him, bouncing between the present and flashbacks to the younger Calvin (Aidan Turner, doing a damn fine young Sam Elliott without seeming like an impersonator), when he as a solider in World War II. A surprising amount of the film hones in onto how that service comes between a romance with the lovely Maxine (Caitlin FitzGerald), a charming young woman he would have married if he wasn’t struck with the curse of being a hero. But a hero he is, begrudging or no, and we follow him through his time at war, which isn’t quite the alternate history you think (he does kill Hitler, but how that fits into our reality is explained with a clever, thematically rich touch.)

The film hinges two moments of great service and sacrifice –nwhen he is called on to kill Hitler as a young soldier and, years later, when he’s called on to kill Bigfoot as a grizzled veteran — but it doesn’t spend much screen time on those “accomplishments.” In fact, his legendary feats are a curse, and Calvin takes on both of these missions with sadness and severity, learning the hard way that there’s a man behind every myth and it’s a lot easier to kill a man than an idea.

Kryzkowski’s leans into heavy dialogue and slow-burn suspense, which works about half the time. Elliott does a magnificent job carrying the film even through the slow bits, shrugging under the weight of greatness and regret always on his shoulders, and Turner matches him with his dialogue action in the flashbacks, but the constant rumination veers into indulgence, making otherwise poignant moments feel bloated and overwrought. Unfortunately, the dual timeline structure does little to carry that weight, bouncing between emotional moments before you can fully invest. It makes for some great vignettes, including a “cursed” straight razor shave early in the film, but the impact of Calvin’s lost love doesn’t hit as hard without the time to fall in love with the couple.

That’s not to say The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is all work and no play. Kryzkowski makes sure to throw in a little fun amid the mythological deconstruction.  Elliott gets to throw down against three tough guys to the tune of Bill Withers’ ‘Use Me’, which checks off a very specific set of my favorite things, and when Calvin finally squares off against the beastly Bigfoot (who looks different and nastier than you might expect), it’s brief but rewarding with some thrilling action.

However, this isn’t a movie to turn to for light entertainment or camp spectacle. It’s an introspective character piece that allows Elliott to deliver one of the most grounded, nuanced performances of his career. That makes it a must-watch for a certain set of film enthusiasts, and Elliot’s unexpected performance is worth the price of admission alone, but The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is also a fascinating experiment; a dark drama that treats pulp genre with the earnest emotional weight of an awards contender. It’s uneven and the recipe doesn’t always work, but when it does, the film feels like a rare treat that’s unlike any other movie you’ll see this year.

Rating: B-

The Man Who Killed Hitler and The Bigfoot is now available in theaters, on Digital, and On Demand.

 

[MIKA27]

Man Caught Stealing Houston Couple's Van For Other Crimes, Returning It Every Night

In the kind of situation that would make anyone think they were imagining things, Houston-area resident Beverly Havard started noticing changes to her van each time she got in: An out-of-place seat, some adjusted mirrors — you know, things that could easily feel imagined.

But she wasn’t imagining anything. Authorities arrested a man caught in her van last week, saying he repeatedly took the van while Havard and her husband slept and returned it before the end of the night.

Houston-area news station ABC 13  reports that Havard, who said she misplaced her extra key recently, started tracking the van’s mileage after she noticed the changes. The numbers changed overnight, she told the station:

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“I said, ‘Somebody’s driving my car and bringing it back. I know I’m not crazy,’ Beverly said.

All the while, people in an area neighbourhood reported a chain of thefts.

ABC 13 didn’t say whether Havard contacted the authorities about the changes, but that they caught a person believed to be connected to the thefts, identified as Michael Armando Lopez, in her van. The thefts went on for several days, the station reports, but the van didn’t come back after the last one.

From ABC 13:

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Deputies said when they tried to stop him, he sped off and crashed into a pole.

Now, the Harvard’s are left without a vehicle, which was specially designed for Beverly’s disabled husband, Rick.

 

Since Rick Havard uses a motorised wheelchair to get around and needs the specially designed van in order to get in a vehicle, Beverly Havard told ABC 13 she’s unable to take him anywhere right now.

“I had to cancel his doctor’s appointment,” she told the station. “I hope he’s satisfied that he took advantage of an elderly person that’s very sick and that can’t be transported to go anywhere.”

[MIKA27]

Russian Authorities Declare State Of Emergency After 'Mass Invasion' Of Polar Bears In Remote Settlement

Russian authorities have declared a state of emergency in the remote, sparsely populated Novaya Zemlya islands in the Arctic Ocean, the BBC reported this weekend, after “dozens” of polar bears whose food sources are limited due to climate change started rooting through homes and other buildings near the settlement of Belushya Guba looking for something to eat.

According to the BBC, officials said that the bears no longer fear either police patrols or the signals used to keep them away from humans, and that they have even crossed onto the grounds of the local air defence garrison.

Though the animals are considered endangered by Russia (the IUCN Red List classifies them as “vulnerable,” with a decreasing population), officials said that if non-lethal means fail to drive the bears away, they may be forced to cull the animals, the BBC added.

Videos circulating on social media and posted by the Russia-based Siberian Times appeared to show bears rummaging through parts of the settlement, as well as sort of wandering around and staring at people through windows, though these videos were not independently verified by Gizmodo.

However, no order has been given to kill the bears and federal authorities have declined to issue licenses that would allow locals to kill them without legal repercussions.

Deutche Welle reported that Russian leadership in Moscow said they have sent a team of investigators to look into the situation, while deputy chief of the local administration Alexander Minayev said in a report to regional officials that some 52 polar bears have been spotted since December, Agence France-Presse wrote.

In the past hundreds of disused military structures had to be demolished after the bears took a liking to them, AFP reported, but the current wave is unprecedented.

The bears are displaying “aggressive behaviour,” Minayev wrote, including “attacks on people and entering residential homes and public buildings... There are constantly 6 to 10 bears inside the settlement.”

“I’ve been on Novaya Zemlya since 1983 and there’s never been such a mass invasion of polar bears,” local administration head Zhigansha Musin added, AFP wrote.

In a statement to the state-run media agency TASS, Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution lead researcher Ilya Mordvintsev said that the bears are migrating north, but were lured to the settlement of Belushya Guba by the likelihood of finding food:

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“Compared to previous years, they come ashore in the southern part of the archipelago, where the ice is changing. They migrate through Novaya Zemlya heading north, where the ice is solid,” the expert said. “It is migration from the south to the north. They are staying in that location [near Belushya Guba] because there is some alternative food. They could have gone past but for the food. But as there are bins with edible waste, they stop to flock.”

According to TASS, local authorities have installed extra fences near school grounds, employees and military personnel are riding “special vehicles” to work, and patrols have been stepped up, but these measures “yielded no tangible result.”

As the New York Times reported in 2017, the worldwide population of polar bears (estimated at 26,000 or so) is expected to decline due to climate change. The bears use ice to hide themselves while hunting seals, their primary food source other than scavenging.

But warming temperatures mean ice that melts quicker and earlier in the warm season, depriving them of food and forcing them to hunt on land. Some populations have remained relatively stable, the National Post wrote in 2017, but others are getting hammered.

Some research has painted a grim picture, with the species’ outlook heavily influenced by whether humans stop contributing to climate change.

[MIKA27]

New ‘Curse of La Llorona’ Trailer Is Creepy AF

New Line Cinema has released a new trailer for the upcoming horror movie The Curse of La Llorona. The tale of La Llorona tells of a young woman who drowned her children in a fit of jealousy, only to commit suicide when she realized what she’d done. Now, her spirit haunts the earth, sobbing and cursed to search for her children in the afterlife for all eternity. And if she can’t find hers, she might take yours.

The latest horror picture from New Line Cinema comes from producers James Wan, Gary Dauberman, and Emile Gladstone, and tells the tragic and terrifying tale of the legend of La LLorona. Set in the 1970s, the film stars Linda Cardellini as a social worker who finds her self trapped in La Llorona’s nightmare when children start going missing. Written by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis, and directed by Michael Chaves (who is set to take the helm of the Conjuring franchise from Wan), this is poised to be the next big horror hit from the studio behind The Nun and It.

This new trailer offers a closer look at the creepy atmosphere that Chaves has conjured, and it’s mighty impressive. There are also a couple of solid scares here, and given the success of recent New Line horror films, I have no doubt this movie’s going to be a huge hit.

Check out the new Curse of La Llorona trailer below. The film also stars Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen and newcomer Roman Christou, and arrives in theaters on April 19th.

[MIKA27]

FUSELAGE WILDERNESS CABIN BY TREE TENTS INTERNATIONAL

Modular tiny homes and camper trailers have struck quite a fancy among nomadic travelers all over the world, and with their popularity garnering more attention for the industry, it wasn’t long before companies started creating unique designs to rival some of architecture’s best-built spaces. Britain’s Tree Tents International has unveiled their latest interesting design with the Fuselage Wilderness Cabin, a minimalistic space made for off-the-grid living.

The Fuselage is an adaptable glamping structure that features a fully insulated structural frame, aluminum outer shell, double glazed windows, and a handsome marine ply hardwood floor that compliments the dwelling’s birch liner. It houses two single bunk beds and plush mattresses alongside convertible seating, a micro wood-fire stove, and energy efficient heating and solar panels — providing inhabitants with everything they need for a life outside the hustle-and-bustle of the city. An integrated air conditioning system works alongside the Fuselage’s WC, shower, and kitchen facilities to provide much-needed quality-of-life amenities, while the interesting cylindrical layout (inspired by modern aerospace design) and expandable modular construction give you the option to move from one location to the next with ease.

[Fuzz]

4 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

Russian Authorities Declare State Of Emergency After 'Mass Invasion' Of Polar Bears In Remote Settlement

 

Finally! Russia gets a taste of their own medicine! Here's to the Polar Bear invasion forces!!

[MIKA27]

Curiosity Rover Says Goodbye To Its Home Of A Year With Superb Panoramic

The twisting terrain of Vera Rubin Ridge on Mars has been home to NASA’s Curiosity for over a year, but it’s time for the rover to move on. As a final gesture before trekking toward a nearby region rich in clay, the probe captured a stunning 360-degree panorama of its final worksite at the ridge.

Along with NASA’s InSight lander, Curiosity is now one of only two functioning probes on the Martian surface.

The Opportunity rover has been incommunicado since a massive dust storm encircled the planet last summer, knocking it out of commission, possibly forever. Curiosity, which has been exploring the Martian surface since 2012, continues to truck on, despite badly worn wheels, a drill that required some serious jerry-rigging last year to make it work again, and a memory glitch that limited its capacities.

Curiosity is in Gale Crater where it’s been exploring iron-rich minerals in Vera Rubin Ridge for well over a year. Data gathered by the probe suggests rocks within this ridge formed from sediment that collected at the bottom of a now-dried up Martian lake. As to why these rocks aren’t eroding at the same rate of the bedrock around it, however, remains a mystery.

Having explored the area in detail, project scientists at NASA have now directed the probe to head towards a new region — a “clay-bearing unit” dubbed Glen Torridon, according to a NASA release. The rover will spend around a year exploring this region in its ongoing search for signs of prior habitability.

On December 19, 2018, Curiosity used its Mast Camera to capture a 360-degree panoramic image of its final work area at Vera Rubin Ridge, specifically a drill site known as Rock Hall. The composite image consists of 112 photographs, showing the future work area, the floor of Gale Crater, and the majestic Mount Sharp in the background. The colours in the image were adjusted to show what the rocks and sand would look like under daylight conditions on Earth.

Curiosity’s new work area, described as a trough between Vera Rubin Ridge and the mountainous area surrounding the crater, looks promising in terms of its scientific potential. Prior surveys made by NASA’s Mars orbiter suggest the rocks in this region are filled with phyllosilicates — clay minerals that form in water. Data collected at Glen Torridon could tell us more about the ancient lakes that once peppered Gale Crater during the early history of the Red Planet.

“In addition to indicating a previously wet environment, clay minerals are known to trap and preserve organic molecules,” Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada said in a statement. “That makes this area especially promising, and the team is already surveying the area for its next drill site.”

Curiosity took this selfie on January 15, 2019. 

Indeed, Curiosity has already uncovered traces of clay minerals and organic molecules on Mars. On their own, organics aren’t suggestive of life, but they are the raw ingredients required for life. The prior presence of liquid water and organic molecules on the surface suggests the planet was once capable of fostering life, but more data is required to prove it. By exploring the clay-rich deposits at Glen Torridon, Curiosity may uncover evidence of the prior environments in which this hypothesized Martian life could have emerged.

If scientists can ever prove that Mars was once habitable (as opposed to actually fostering life—those are two different things), it means our Solar System once hosted at least two planets capable of hosting life. That’s a huge deal if true, with serious ramifications to our understanding of the Universe’s potential to bear life in general. To that end: Trek on Curiosity, trek on.

[MIKA27]

Saber Interactive’s World War Z Game Receives an April Release

After months of wondering when we’d get a release date, Saber Interactive finally dropped a new trailer and date for World War Z. You can now pre-order the game for PC, PS4, and Xbox One to be released on April 16th. If you’re not familiar with the game, this is a co-op shooter based on the 2016 film, which was adapted from the book of the same name. But by all accounts, the game has very little to do with the novel at all, and more with the survivor aspect of the zombie hordes that act more like fire ants than people. Enjoy the trailer!

[MIKA27]

‘Child’s Play’ Reboot Official Trailer

For more than three decades, the name Chucky has not been given to a child anyone planned on liking because of the nightmare-inducing doll that was the star of the Child’s Play series of films that started in the late 80s. Since we live in a world where everything that defined our childhood is getting rebooted, Child’s Play is on its way back with a brand new film that’s certain to terrorize as many people as it did when the original came out. The trailer for the reboot leaves everything surrounding the possessed Buddi doll to the imagination, but the premise seems to be same. Family gets hardest-to-find doll for kid. Doll is possessed. Doll goes on murderous rampage. Despite the fact that our initial reaction is “nope. nope. nope.”, we look forward to a modern iteration of the films terrorizing people that might have missed out on the originals. Child’s Play hits theaters June 21

[MIKA27]

Rare Spider Fossil Preserves 100-Million-Year-Old Glowing Eyes

A new spider fossil discovery included a surprising find: remnants of reflective eye tissue.

Though common today, spiders don’t appear much in the fossil record because their soft bodies don’t preserve well, according to the paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. This is the first time one family of spiders has been spotted outside of amber, and the first time that the reflective eye tissue of a spider has been found in a fossil.

“It’s opening up a whole new world about how these things lived and how they would have caught their prey,” Paul Selden, one of the paper’s authors and director of the Paleontological Institute at the University of Kansas, told Gizmodo.

A Korean high schooler and amateur fossil hunter named Kye-Soo Nam first found the fossils in 112-million-year old Cretaceous-period rock called the Jinju Formation in South Korea. The formation has yielded tons of other fossils, including plants, mollusks, fish, and dinosaurs, and an unidentified fossil spider species.

The new research analysed 10 spider specimens in dark grey shale, viewing and measuring them under microscopes. The scientists determined that they represented seven different species. That alone is surprising, and demonstrates that there are probably a lot more extinct spider species out there yet to be discovered.

The spider specimen

Some of the fossils came from the Lagonomegopidae spider family, the first time such fossils have been found outside of amber. But finding the spider preserved in stone, rather than in amber, let the researchers see structures they hadn’t seen before, such as the reflective eye tissue. This discovery allowed the researchers to infer quite a bit about these spiders’ behaviour.

The specimens showed “quite remarkable preservation” of canoe-shaped pieces of reflective tissue in the spiders’ eyes, both apparently visible in the fossil itself and highlighted when the researchers analysed the chemical makeup of the fossil. They interpreted this reflective tissue as the tapetum, which the eyes of some animals (but not humans) use for seeing in dim light. It’s why pets and other mammals often have bright, laser-like eyes in photos taken with flash.

You might wonder how the researchers determined that they were looking at the tapetum and not anything else. According to the paper, since the spider tapetum is formed from crystals of the molecule guanine, it would be more likely to be preserved than other soft tissues. “Moreover, the shape of the structure—clearly canoe-shaped,” confirmed their suspicions, they write.

Each new fossil discovery adds more details to the story of life on Earth—a story that may never be complete. But in addition to learning more about ancient spiders, it’s pretty awesome to see the glow of 112-million-year-old spidey eyes.

[MIKA27]

Inside the Secret World of High-Net-Worth Scotch Drinkers

From pricy 70-year-old whiskies to $1 million bottles, our columnist takes a look at why prices for single malts are skyrocketing.

Recently, I tasted six newly released whiskies. While this wasn’t an unusual occurrence, the difference was that their accumulated age was 312 years: a Glendronach 27-year-old, a Caol Ila 50-year-old, a Glenlivet 64-year-old, a Glen Grant 70-year-old, and two Macallans, one a stripling at a mere 29 years old and the other having lain in cask for 72 years—the oldest official bottling ever from the distillery. The cost of this set would have been $112,000. To be fair, the 72-year-old Macallan alone goes for $60,000.

They were truly remarkable. And so they should be you might respond. It’s hard, I realized, for a humble hack like myself to try and enter the mindset of the person who’ll actual buy these rarities. Both the whisky and the purchaser exist in a different realm than the one I inhabit. One where the notion of value takes on a new meaning, if it even exists.

At the risk of appearing curmudgeonly, it wasn’t always like this. I’m backed up on this point by Stephen Rankin, director of prestige at storied independent bottler, Gordon & MacPhail (which bottled the Caol Ila, the Glen Grant and the Glenlivet I tasted).

“We’ve played in single malt for a long time, and always thought long-term,” he said. “My grandfather was seen as unusual for filling distilleries’ spirit into his own casks, but the philosophy was to bring to market whiskies of superb quality.”

But, of course, the top-end bottlings didn’t carry five-figure price tags back then. “When my uncle David [Urquhart] retired after 40 years, we found a price list from when he started. Blends were £1.50 to £2.20, single malts were £4, and there was a 35-year-old 1937 Macallan for £4.54.”

“The market has changed,” he continues. “People are more affluent and education about whisky is greater. From the early 2000s people started seeing ‘single malt’ as a term meaning luxury and sophisticated. Today’s consumer is interested in context, provenance, and heritage. There’s a consequent desire for single malt.”

The elision of “single malt” and “luxury” has not only convinced brands to release ever older whiskies, but has created a new customer base of high-net-worth individuals [HNWI] and exclusive opportunities geared to them.

Macallan’s En Primeur campaign offers the chance to select a cask and fill it with spirit distilled from Macallan’s estate-grown barley. Rival Diageo’s Casks of Distinction program offers a select number of rare casks to a select number of clients. Most of the major brands operate similar programs, but this private client business is shrouded in secrecy. The buyers may have the money, but they don’t believe in conspicuous consumption.

“We’ve been releasing old whiskies for a long time,” says Kirsten Grant Meikle, U.S. commercial strategy director for William Grant & Sons. “I created the prestige team in the UK in 2014 when it became clear that the traditional channels, which included everyone from discount retailers to Harrods was not the way forward. It didn’t make sense that the person that was selling you Grant’s was also offering Glenfiddich 50-Year-Old.”

The development of the prestige market rankles the sensibilities of many drinkers. After all, the price of a bottle of the Macallan 72-year-old Lalique could, according to CNBC, see you living comfortably for a year in Atlanta, Louisville (ideal for the whiskey lover), or even Cleveland. You could buy a house in Akron or Wichita Falls, or splurge on a second home (in need of some work) in France, Italy, or Spain. I suspect, though, that isn’t the mindset of the people who buy these pricy bottles.

But this irritation goes deeper and is often rooted in the belief that single malt is increasingly becoming unattainable. This opinion ignores the fact that most single malt Scotch is still underpriced considering how long it ages, but still, I understand that this focus on prestige can be painful to witness. The love affair has ended and your former partner has shacked up with a billionaire.

So how are those astronomical prices set after all? “We consider a wide range of variables,” says Macallan’s marketing director Glen Gribbon. “Scarcity of the stock is one consideration. Our recent 52-year-old was 250 bottles from a single cask. Once these are gone, we have no more. The pricing will reflect this.”

For Grant Meikle, it came down to rarity and scarcity. “There isn’t a lot of the older whiskies around,” she says. “We have a very good inventory, but it’s not infinite. It needs careful custodianship to ensure continuing supply.”

The rapid development of prestige Scotch and often dramatic price hikes for more common 18- to 20-year-old single malts prompts the question, has whisky taken leave of its senses, or come to them?

“Heads can get turned by high-profile auctions and events,” says Gribbon. “In reality, there’s been strong growth in prestige Scotch for many years. What’s encouraging is this growth is fueled as much by consumption, as collecting and gifting.”

“Coming to senses?,” asks Rankin, “Absolutely!”

But what are these high-net-worth drinkers doing with these rare malts? “Over the last five years, we’ve seen many more ‘investors’ enter the market,” observes Grant Meikle. “We’re often approached by ‘syndicates’ and investor groups who are buying solely to make money. My personal feeling is, this is effectively commodity trading. I’m really not keen to sell our rare and precious liquid for this kind of transactional purpose. A lot of time and effort from committed people goes into these products. I’d prefer to sell them to people who loved the product, and actually might drink it one day. This is what it is for!”

The “it’s for drinking” line is oft-repeated, but the secondary market is booming. Last year, a bottle of Macallan 1926 sold for £1 million ($1.28 million), one of a number of record-breaking auction prices that year. In 2001, the same vintage Macallan sold for just $21,874. And it was only in 2016, that the $100,000 mark was broached by a Yamazaki 50-year-old.

“The secondary market is an important route to HNWI consumers,” says Gribbon. “I think the industry has a huge amount to learn from [auction houses’] success in other luxury categories, particularly wine. My sense is there is still a long way to go in terms of growth. Managed in the right way, prestige Scotch can rightly take its place beside wine.”

Macallan, in his view, is now no longer just a single malt (often in a lovely bottle) but part of a “prestige whisky experience.”

“There are two important customer groups,” he adds. “HNWIs and a group seeking high-quality products that deliver a unique experience. They both want prestige whisky experiences, which they can share and recommend. Our new distillery, visitor experience and the wider Macallan Estate is the perfect embodiment of this. If we focus only on the actual product and not the broader experience, I think the opportunity within prestige Scotch will be limited.”

Today, a conversation with a Macallan executive is as likely to include a discussion on what Ferrari is doing as the strategies of rival whisky firms. In their eyes, the competitive set has shifted.

But don’t count out drinkers yet. “There are a lot of people purchasing high-end whisky because they’re fanatical about it,” says Grant Meikle. “The common misconception is that people who buy expensive whisky are HNWIs (a term I dislike). It’s simply not the case. Many people who spend higher than average on our products are enthusiasts and collectors who may save up to buy something they have their eye on.”

Has the allure and promises of prestige blinded distillers to the reality that single malt brands are built on the back of considerably younger (and significantly lower-priced) offerings?

As a recent profile of Victoria Beckham in The Guardian pointed out, “successful luxury businesses are not built on the market for silk day dresses at £1,500 a pop…but on the halo effect that catwalk glamour has on sales of underwear (see Calvin Klein) or lipsticks (Chanel), wallets (Paul Smith) and stationery (Kate Spade).” That, of course, makes 12-year-old Scotch the Calvin Klein briefs of the liquor industry.

“Luxury Scotch creates a powerful halo,” says Gribbon. “This has a greater value to the brand overall than the commercial value and underpins some of the most important elements of brand image, in particular quality.”

Today, prestige is taken to mean quality. Its original meaning, though, was illusion, a term which poked fun at those deceived by glamour’s glitter. Prestige was no more than a conjuring trick. As Scotch’s boundaries shift it would do well to remember that. 

[MIKA27]

‘Breaking Bad’ Movie Coming Directly to Netflix

With news dropping in November that Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad would be returning to screens, there has been a ton of speculation regarding how and when that would happen. Now, we at least now the how.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Netflix will be airing the new Breaking Bad movie when it debuts, which will then move on to AMC, where the series originally aired.

The distribution move is unique, but not surprising, considering the factor Netflix played in Breaking Bad’s success- as the series grew in popularity on the streaming service, more viewers tuned in to keep the show afloat on AMC.

The plot of the Breaking Bad movie supposedly revolves around the escape of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) from his kidnappers. The film is set to be a sequel to the Emmy Award-winning series, which may tie up some loose ends, according to Bryan Cranston:

Quote

It’s a great story and there are a lot of people who felt that they wanted to see some kind of completion to some of these storylines that were left open [in the series finale],” Cranston said. “This idea, from what I’m told, gets into those — at least a couple of the character show was not completed, as far as their journey.

Cranston, who was appearing on the Dan Patrick Show, confirmed that he would jump at the chance to appear in the movie:

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I don’t know if there’s an appearance — flashbacks, flash forwards — but I’m excited about it because it’s Breaking Bad and it was the greatest professional period of my life and I can’t wait to see all those people again, even if I just come by to visit.

The new Breaking Bad movie will be written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan, who is joined again by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul producers Mark Johnson and Melissa Bernstein.

A release date for the Breaking Bad movie hasn’t been announced yet, but we’ll keep you updated as we learn more!