Free (quality) beer in the mail :-)

It sounded too good to be true.
A beer company, for some reason, needed public relations help in getting the word out about its new brew, and my new friends, KKPR in upstate Pa., wanted ME to have a look at a press kit. Two weeks later, the package from East Coast Beer Company in Point Pleasant, N.J. arrived with three bottles of Beach Haus "classic American pilsner."
My expression here says it all. A crumb had fallen from God's table.
Smooth - check. Golden - check. Full-bodied - check. It's a craft brew without being too pretentious - a difficult balance to strike.
Even more scintillating is the two guys that run East Coast wanted Beach Haus to be something you'd want to leisurely sip at the beach, and something that hearkened back to the German-American type beers that were made before prohibition.
Prohibition was truly a dark time in American history. But then after our nation came to its senses, and the 21st Amendment legalized alcoholic beverages, beers were made with rice and corn. These ingredients did their job in the fermentation process, but made the mass produced American beers decidedly bland.
The skinny on Beach Haus is East Coast Beer Company is finally branching out from being Jersey-only, and into Pennsylvania and New York. I can't wait to get my hands on a case of this at local distributors!
Better still, East Coast's Beach Haus has a spinoff blog site, www.celebratetherealjerseyshore.com.
Haha - take that, MTV!!!

Oh those kooky kids!

Chester County sisters Cassandra, Anna Christie and Beatrice Sadler have been singing in one way or another since they were little. The three sisters - Sisters 3 - also have five other siblings, and Cassandra once told me in 2008 that she and her two younger sisters started singing as a way to keep all those young'uns entertained or lull them to sleep.
Released this month on the New York-based indie record label Modern Vintage Recordings is Sisters 3's second formal album, "Coruscate at the Meadow Gate." The group's quirky, vocal based, alternative folk/pop moves in rather esoteric directions at times, but the first five tracks on this CD are surprisingly accessible. The sisters' harmonies are tight and gorgeous and the production is first rate.
"You are the truest blue I ever knew/Never saw a shooting star fall as pretty as you do," they sing on "Wolfpack."
It's only with track 6, "Apocalypse," where things start veering off in odd lyrical and musical directions. Sisters 3's trademark weirdness comes to a crescendo with "Alien Baby," which ends with the sisters harmonizing the pat-a-cake/jump rope song "Miss Mary Mack," and breaking down in hysterical laughter (guess you had to be there). Closing tracks "My Little Heart" and "Pleased to Meet You" restore order once more.
Gotta give Sisters 3 props for being so fiercely original and individualistic.
Listen to The Sisters 3's "Coruscate at the Meadow Gate" here