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Beer and Zombies |
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My Beer and Home Haunt PagesTwo of my passions are beer and zombies. First, beer. My love for beer started in Germany. That's where I discovered that German beer tasted so much better than American beer. In Budingen, I was getting familiar with four types of German beer: Pilsner, Export, Alt, and Doppelbock. My favorite being Export. We had a man that would deliver beer and soda to our house. We just left the empty bottles with a note what we wanted outside the door. Then on military pay day, he would collect the bill. In Budingen, I found a beer distributor that had a large variety of beer. There, one beer label caught my eye, Budweiser, but this wasn't the American label. It was Czechoslovakian Budweiser Budvar. This beer is brewed in the Czechoslovakian town of Budweis. Interesting. I bought a case and determined this was the best beer I ever had. Later, I found out that Anheuser Busch had nothing to do with this beer. In fact, Anheuser Busch fought to prevent Czechoslovakian Budweiser Budvar from being imported into the U.S. They succeeded until 2002 at which point it was allowed to be imported if they removed the name Budweiser from the label. At that point, Czechvar was born. In 2006, I found another Budweiser beer label that caught my eye: Budweiser Brew Masters Private Reserve. This beer was only sold to the public from 2005 to 2007. It was originally given to Anheuser Busch employees as a Christmas gift. This was the best, smoothest beer I've ever had. My preferences were pilsners and lagers. I documented, evaluated and took pictures of which beers I tried. By 2019, I documented over 250 beers on a website (which no longer exists). I was quite the beer geek. Now, zombies. This is my passion, to create a zombie-themed Halloween display. In 2006, I set up my first display. I only had two rules: everything had to look real and be life-size. I liked horror movies and Fearnet was a horror TV channel at the time. In 2008, they sponsored a contest for the best home haunt. I figured I can do this. I submitted my 2-minute video, but didn't win. Either way, I decided to make my display bigger and better every year. Sounds, lighting, animation. Before small MP3 players were available, I used portable CD players. I even placed a CD player down the street that played 'mood' music before the trick or treaters came to our house. Every year, I added to and improved on my zombie horde. Preparing for Halloween became a year-round hobby for me. I conducted 'zombie surgery' to improve my display pieces. Initially, I tried motion-triggered animation, but that wasn't working the way I wanted it to. I needed to trigger my animation on demand. So I constructed a box with switches and push buttons, and ran wires from the animation back to the box. That worked, but I had WAY too much wires laying around the yard. I needed to change my animation to remore control. That's explained in my Creating a Home Haunt page. I was putting up my display for 2012. My front yard had 10 standing zombies. A taxi pulled up and the driver asked me, "Is this the place?" I wondered what he meant, then replied, "It will be tonight." The driver explained he was told to pick up a group of people in front of my house. I guess a neighbor wanted to play a joke. My display was becoming huge. By 2018, I had 28 zombies in my horde, and a full-sized cemetery complete with a metal fence. I had changed my animation triggers from wired to wireless. I configured one wireless remote to operate 15 pieces of animation. In the beginning, I could set up everything in one day; but now, it took me four days to set up everything. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved it, but it was becoming really physically tasking for me. It was a heart-breaking decision to make, but I decided that 2018 was the last year for my display. I just couldn't physically do it anymore. People loved my display and I loved seeing their reaction. My passion for Halloween can be summed up in Alice Cooper's song: "Hello Hooray":
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| My Military Display Case | |