There’s a contest going on at the Flying Dog Blog, and the winner gets a sweet Gonzo beer gift set. Read on for details from flyingdogblog.com:

We recently had a visit from our good friend, Matt Mosley, who brought this HST mannequin that he had commissioned for his recent birthday party. This thing is scary real and even has an original “Free Lisl” (Google it) button to boot. To make a long story short, after a week of freaking out Matt’s wife, she made him get it out of the house and he was nice enough to let Flying Dog Brewery become Hunter’s temporary home. Matt, who knew Hunter personally, told me, “He would have hated this thing.” So here’s my question to The People’s Republic: What do we do with this mannequin of the late, great, Dr. Gonzo?

Email your answers to bullshit@flyingdogales.com, or you can leave a comment on the blog (registration required, unfortunately). I submitted my entry a few days ago and so far I think I’m the only one to answer. Hopefully this post will give them a few more page views.  Head over to the Flying Dog Blog.

In honor of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie opening today, I thought I would share a story told by Jim Hill, an entertainment writer who specializes in all things Disney.

Did you know the first movie, “Curse of the Black Pearl,” almost never got made? I remember thinking it was a pretty lame idea to base a movie on a theme park ride – isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? But it turned out to be an excellent movie, and the second installation, “Dead Man’s Chest,” broke all previous opening weekend records.

Well, the weekend hasn’t even begun yet, and the new movie, “At World’s End,” has already broken a record; widest opening release. I don’t think anyone will be surprised when Pirates re-breaks the opening weekend totals, even though Spider-Man 3 raised the bar just a few weekends ago.

Pretty impressive for a movie that almost didn’t see the light of day. From JimHillMedia.com:

At one point during pre-production, Michael Eisner himself canceled the first “Pirates” film. Saying that the movie — as Gore & Jerry envisioned it — was going to be far too expensive (I.E. A then-whopping $120 million). Plus what with all of those undead pirate skeletons walking around and all the throat slashing, stabbing and shooting, this motion picture was going to automatically wind up getting a PG-13 rating. And Walt Disney Pictures — as a rule — never released anything racier than a PG.

And then there was the cold hard fact that it had been 50 years since Hollywood had last produced a successful pirate picture (I.E. Burt Lancaster’s “The Crimson Pirate” Which Warner Bros. released back in 1952). Every modern attempt to reviving the swashbuckling genre — 1976′s “Swashbuckler,” 1980′s “The Island,” 1983′s “Yellowbeard,” 1986′s “Pirates” and 1995′s “Cutthroat Island” — had all been miserable (more importantly, expensive) failures. So why even bother to try?

Eisner also (correctly) believed that the whole “movie based on a theme park ride” would be a major hurdle to overcome, so he told Verbinski and Bruckheimer to edit the script to take out some of those tongue-in-cheek references to the ride.

Well, now that the franchise has proved to be a success, it seems like the tongue has been firmly placed back inside the cheek. In the trailer, they show a ship falling over a waterfall, something that was specifically cut from the first installment.

And then there’s the whole bit about the Green Flash. Continue reading →

I saw something similar at the Whole Foods in Evanston, IL. It was this vat of circulating water, you could throw a few bottles of beer or wine in there while you do your shopping, then come back and have ice cold beverages. I always wondered how it worked. Genius. (Video is after the jump) Continue reading →