arnold palmer

ESPN "This Is Sports Center" commercials are hilarious. Michael and I have spent hours upon hours watching and deconstructing them.

So, what better excuse do I have than Arnold Palmer's Half and Half (Light!) bottle cap, to show a great Sports Center commercial here:

This is brilliant, as is the bottle cap. If only the actual drink tasted as good as a real Arnold Palmer: half iced tea, half lemonade. They sort of ruin it by putting the booze in, if that is possible (I honestly can't believe I'm saying that!).

If only Shaq would make a bottled drink with a cool bottle cap. Then I could show this commercial:

assorted soda

You may recall last fall my sqee'ing over the Barn Sale and my fantastic haul from that trip upstate. It's taken me a while to actually get to these, and I needed to figure out a good way to write about them. There are too many to do one post per crown, so I needed a theme.

In my opinion, the best of the lot can be found in this post. We have assorted regional and national sodas from back when there was more than just Coke and Pepsi. All of these crowns are cork-lined, and I just love the variety. These crowns really show (in some cases) the kind of beverage you're about to drink.  Don't just rely on the label. Check out our crowns, too, they seem to say.

There are three basic categories. The first is miscellaneous: we have a Blue Bird Grape Soda (why can't it be Purple Bird?) with a lovely blue bird in a top hat on a branch. Fun! They were putting birds on things before Portlandia even thought of it. And then there's Dodge City Sarsaparilla. When Michael and I went to Kansas City, we kept talking about going to Dodge, and then getting the hell out. But who even needs to go there when you have the bottle cap with a cowboy hat on it?

Next category: flavors. Bitter Lemon Dandy Soda--I like that it's DANDY; Cranberry Cola, which actually looks like it might have cherries on the crown; and Lemon Blossom Soda, which looks like something out of Brooklyn or Portlandia with those dainty little flowers.

But best of all, we have the crowns with people on them. There's a dandy with a top hat and a bowtie on Dandy Cola; a guy giving some sort of pointy finger and who clearly has some Old Fashioned Moxie; and to top it off, a creepy clown named Corky. What on earth was THAT soda?!

great divide brewing co.

Michael and I have been having a great time exploring our new neighborhood. Everything feels new, even though we aren't that far away from our old place. New commute, new neighbors, new restaurants that are *just* around the corner, and best of all, new grocery stores.

Sure, I had seen Euro Market from our elevated train for years, but I just assumed it was a poor-man's Titan, and never bothered to go in. I was a silly girl then. I am wiser now. And looking for bottle caps.

Euro Market has an entire back wall devoted to beers from around the country/world. It wasn't quite New Beer Distributor, but it came pretty darn close. Everything was available by the bottle, and damn they had selection. Michael and I were like kids in a (foreign) candy store.

We came away with a few good finds, but the first beer we actually cracked open was Great Divide Brewing Co.'s Samurai. An unfiltered beer, it was a nice conclusion to a rainy night. And the bottle cap? Check this out:

Great Minds Drink Alike! An excellent saying. Words to live by. Thank you, Great Divide for putting those words in my mouth (and some tasty beer).