Well That's Cool

In celebration of the 200th episode of Well That’s Cool, we are giving you a chance to win a pair of tickets to The Tuscaloosa Get Up!

Were you planning on coming but you are low on funds? Don’t like ordering things on the internet? Or are you  just lazy, live out of town and/or all the on-line tickets are sold out? Never fear… We have you covered. It just takes is a little work on your part and you just might win tickets!

All you have to do is write a three paragraph essay on any topic you choose. Any topic! These essays will be read by our very own grammatoligist Eric St. Clair and resident elementary school teacher Matt King Smith. The judges will choose a winner based on whatever criteria they choose.

Judges St. Clair and Smith can not be be bought but that should not stop you from trying!

The winner of the essay contest will not only win a pair of tickets to the Tuscaloosa Get Up; they will have their essay read on next week’s podcast and posted to wellthatscool.com. As if that was not motivation enough, the night of the show you will also have a chance to take a picture with the judges (you just might get a beer outta this too!).

The contest deadline is Wednesday Feb. 22 at noon. E-mail all entries to wellthatscool200thepisode@gmail.com

Need some help coming up with a topic? We made a list to help you jump start ideas!
Anteaters
BEER
Cat Videos
Didgeridoos
Eric St. Clair
Freedom (AMERICA! Fuck Yeah)
German Engineering
Hewlett Packard
Indigo Girls
The word Janky
Kelly Lebrock
Lake Titicaca
MOXIE!
Noaa Weather Service
Oak City Barber Shop
Pudding Pops
Q-bert
Race Cars
Steve Holt
Travelocity Gnome
Uranus
vuvuzela
Wankers
Xylophones

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Well it’s that time of the year again…

A time were we start gearing up for spring by knocking the dust off the lawnmower that has been shuttered away for the past six months and plan to get all that cleaning and work done.

Sounds like a bummer right?

Well this is also the time of the year for Tuscaloosa’s own celebration of southern beers.  Yes my friends, it is time for Suds of the South III.  For those who have come to the first to can attest this is a great event with a focus on southern breweries.  The goal is show people that good beer does not only have to come from the west coast, Colorado or any where else.  We are lucky enough in the south to have some of the best breweries around. This event is also a fundraiser for freethehops.org, with out their work we would have so many less choices.

Suds of the South III will take place on Saturday March 10th from 4pm to 7pm.  Attendees will receive a keep sake glass on entry and receive samples from each brewery throughout the event.  A limited amount of early bird tickets are available for $15 and after that they go to $20 . Many of the breweries bring special extremely limited releases just for this event.  We will have a full list of beers in the coming weeks, but here is a list of the breweries involved:

Alabama

Good People (Birmingham)

• IPA
• Brown
• Coffee Oatmeal Stout
• Special rare batch announced the week before

Back Forty (Gadsden)

• Naked Pig
• Kudzu Porter
• Truck Stop Brown
• Freckle Belly IPA
•  Special rare batch announced the week before

Avondale (Birmingham)

Straight to Ale (Huntsville)

• Monkeynaut IPA
• Lily Flagg Milk Stout
• Montesano Maibock
• Rocket City Red (Irish Red)
• Special rare batch announced the week before

Blue Pants (Huntsville)

Yellow hammer (Huntsville)

Georgia

Terrapin (Athens)

• Hop Karma (India Brown)
• Rye
• Hopsecutioner
• Special rare batch announced the week before

Sweetwater (Atlanta)

Tennessee

Yazoo (Nashville)

• Hop Project
• Slye Rye Porter
• Special Cask announced week before event

Mississippi

Lazy Magnolia (Kiln)

Louisiana

Abita (Abita Springs)

Nola (New Orleans)

• Blond
• Hopitoulas IPA

North Carolina

Highland (Asheville )

Our sympathizer from outside the south

Tallgrass (Manhattan Kansas)

• 8 bit hop Rocketed Pale Ale
• Velvet Rooster Triple
• IPA
• Buffalo Sweat

Here are some highlights from the last few years events!  Be sure to get your tickets soon.  You don’t want to miss out on one of the best beer events in the state!

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A few days after the April 27th tornado, we called our friend Elliot McPherson of the Dexateens with the idea of trying to organize a benefit  show to help in the recovery. It was decided that any sort of concert should be put on hold and the help the city needed most at that time was definitely more hands on. So with the one year anniversary approaching, we would like to announce the “Tuscaloosa Get UP”

The Tuscaloosa Get Up will take place at the Bama Theatre in downtown Tuscaloosa on Friday March 23rd at 8pm. The event is a partnership between us, the Tuscaloosa Arts Council and Tuscaloosa’s own Dexateens. It will showcase the music of the Alabama Shakes, The Dexateens and Lee III and the Glory Fires.  The event is all ages and will be $15 for general admission with a limited amount of VIP tickets for $50. The VIP tickets will entitle attendees to early entry to a preparty at the Bama featuring light food, free local beer and limited edition poster and a short acoustic set from the some of the bands.

This event is a fundraiser for Tuscaloosa Habitat for Humanity. All proceeds from the event will go towards our goal of rebuilding a whole house for a family that lost theirs during the storm. We want to harness the power of music to help heal Tuscaloosa.

General admission and VIP tickets are available here

If you can’t make it but still want to help, you can make a tax deductible donation here.

Here is a little wellthatscool.com taste of what you have in store.

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Update on Santa suit

I’ve heard some people have been mourning the absence of Party Makers. You can still order from our website and pick up your order at our warehouse on Greensboro Ave. Just choose “pick up at warehouse” from the shipping options at warehouse, and you won’t be charged any shipping and handling. You can pick up til about 4:45 on Friday.

Here’s the link for our Santa Suits:
http://candyapplecostumes.com/santa_suits.html

And our general costumes:
http://candyapplecostumes.com/holiday.html

And our sexy elfie-type costumes:
http://candyapplecostumes.com/christmas_sexy.html

Thanks to Kristin for the info!

One of our favorite events every year is happening this Friday night, SantaCon 11. Here is how we described it last year and I bet it will be the same.

“Come join all the other Santas for the only annual Santa themed pub crawl in the Tuscaloosa area. We will start out at the Wellthatscool.com taping (The well that cool Studio space above the oak city barber shop downtown. It’s across the street from CHOM a few doors down from the Mellow Mushroom. If you can’t meet us there at 8:30 the first stop sould be at the downtown pub at 9ish) and continue on from there. Here’s how it works, we all meet up dressed as Santa and go on a night long pub crawl grabbing a drink at each bar until we are drunk enough that we forget what we were doing and just spend the rest of the night at Egans or the like. CVS, Walgreens & Target etc all carry $15-20 Santa suits, remember that you will be drinking all nite in the suit so you may not want to go all out on a nice Santa suit that be nearly ruined by the next day.”

In a pinch you can even make your own Santa suit or be an Elf be creative it’s part of the fun.

What better way to show your X-mass spirt then by wondering around super dunk and relatively anonymously clocked in the vestige of childhood innocence. This is also a great opportunity to give chunks of coal to all the naughty bartenders*. So come out the the biggest and best disguised bar crawl in west Alabama. Warning not dressing as Santa or an Elf will lead to public mocking and being added to the permanent naughty list. Please dress if you’d like to join us. Hope to see you there!!

*Wellthatscool.com in no susports the giving of chunks of coal to bartenders, unless they are super mean or that you hide money under the coal.

for more info or any questions email us at wellthatscool@gmail.com

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One of our favorite times of the year is Halloween. Who doesn’t like getting tipsy while dressing as their favorite video game charter or internet meme?  (why yes Matt Smith I do think those tights would really pull your Link costume together)  But we also love that it’s the time of year that we get to partner with the lovely ladies and handsome gentlemen of the PBB for The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This year’s show is on Sat Oct 29th at the lovely Bama Theatre at 9pm. It’s not just a screening of the movie,oh no, it’s a full on stage show with  crowd participation, props,  dancing and a heaping tablespoon of innuendo with the movie as a backdrop. It would be a terrible shame to get there late. Starting at 7pm when the doors open you can watch “Haxan”, a creepy 1922 Swedish documentary about witchcraft followed by the always super rad costume contest with over $300 in prizes at 8:30. Admission is just $15 with prop bags for $5 and that is money well spent in our book. We hope to see you there!!

*update*

8pm: Special Guests, the Voodoo Saints!!

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It hasn’t been all bad, though. In Alabama I was going to school full time and working 3 jobs. In Texas, The Art of Unemployment: A New Wellthatscool.com Craft Column

This past April, my worst nightmare became a reality. Now, I’m not talking about the tornado that ripped through our beloved Tuscaloosa (although that was pretty damn scary, too). I’m talking about finding myself at age 25, unemployed, and living with my parents. Overnight I went from graduate student with a great set of friends and a cozy apartment to asking my Dad if I could borrow the car on a Saturday night.

I don’t clock in anywhere and I’ve made a significant dent in my pleasure reading list. At first this was absolutely thrilling, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly and I went looking for productive ways to use my newfound wealth of time.

This is where the “Craft Bucket List” comes in.  There are a million and one projects I’ve been putting off for years—doing derogatory needlepoint, making homemade toothpaste, constructing a bottle tree, etc. Now I’m finding all of the coolest DIY projects out there, taking the time to refine them, and sharing them with you.

The inaugural project is an adaptation of the New York Times’ famous No Knead Bread Recipe.  The original recipe calls for an 18-24 hour prep time, but this recipe yields a fabulous loaf of bread in as little as 8 hours. The ingredients are cheap, and the prep is fast.  Once you bake one of these babies, it’ll be hard to ever go back to buying from the store!

You’re going to need:

3 C Bread flour  

1 ¼  TSP Salt

¾ TSP Traditional dry yeast

1 ¼ C Warm water

Mixing bowl

Kitchen towel

Baking sheet

Dutch oven or all-metal pot with lid

Olive oil for greasing pans

Get it together:

A.  Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

B.  Add water and stir until all ingredients are well blended. The resulting dough should still be a little bit sticky.

C.  Cover the bowl with a damp towel and place it in the warmest part of your kitchen to rise for 6-8 hours. I leave my dough outside to rise because the stifling summer heat gives an excellent rise at around 6 hours. Prepping the dough only takes about 5 minutes, so you can set it out before a shift at work, and when you get back it’ll be ready!

D.  Once the dough has risen, transfer it onto a baking sheet that you’ve spread with olive oil. Give the top of the dough a little wipe with olive oil as well, and then cover it with a towel for an hour.

E.   While the dough is expanding, preheat the oven to 450 F. You’ll need to put your Dutch oven or lidded pot in the oven while it is getting hot. The cold dough hitting the hot vessel is what is going to create the nice crunchy crust on the bottom.  It is SUPER important that if you aren’t using a Dutch oven, you are using a pot that with no plastic parts. You can always call the cookware manufacturer to make sure that it can withstand the temperature.

F.  Drop the dough from the baking sheet into the vessel. Don’t worry about the way the dough lands in the pot! The cruder the drop, the more “rustic” the look of the finished loaf. You can carefully wipe the inside of the pot with a little olive oil to prevent sticking if you’d like. Bake at 450 F for 30 minutes with the lid on.

G. At the 30 minute mark, remove the lid from the vessel and continue to bake for 15 minutes. The fifteen minutes without the lid is going to give the loaf a beautiful golden crust on top.

H. After the total bake time of 45 minutes, remove the loaf from the oven and let cool for a few minutes. Now you’re ready to enjoy your beautiful loaf with butter, jam, or whatever your heart desires! Enjoy!

Ed. Note  We are so happy to be working with Ally again. Even if she is in Texas now (because she crawled out out her hose with just her backpack left after storm) she is always with us in sprite. We can’t wait to see what else she will craft for your reading pleasure.

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Before The Gloslabi Challenge at Little Willies, we were lucky enough to have The Howlies and Dead Fingers join us for a live, in-studio session. The first installment is Dead Fingers. Dead Fingers is composed of Taylor Hollingsworth  (Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Taylor and the Spider Eaters and SDX) and Kate Taylor ( from the super Musical Taylor family in Birmingham, also having played in her sister Marie Taylor’s band as well as solo). We were very lucky to have them up in the studio. We’ll have more from Dead Fingers and The Howlies in the next few days.

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To celebrate Alabama Beer Week . On Tuesday at 5pm come to Egans see, talk and drink with  Xandy from Craft Beer Consulting, Brian from Tommy Knocker Brewery, or Tripp for Back Forty. They will have the following draft to choose from: Tallgrass IPA, Great Divide 17th Anniversary, Naked Pig, Back Forty Porter (new beer not even released yet), Great Divide Hoss, and Tommy Knocker HopStrike. Come out and enjoy a pint of your favorite craft beer and feel free to ask any questions to our guests. All the drafts will be $3.50. There will be neat giveaways and if word on the street is correct general merriment. You can not beat that with a stick, not even a great big stick. We’ll be there, which I know is shocking because you know how much we dislike beer and general merriment.

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Tuscaloosa magazine has a piece up detailing the making of the Coach Nick Saban statue. It turns out that the artist was right here in Tuscaloosa the whole time. I don’t know why but we just assumed that the thing was sculpted by some far off company that had no idea of the importance of the whole thing. Jeremy Davis a senior art student at the U.A with help from Craig Wedderspoon and Daniel Livingston, professors at the art department created the statue over the past year . Even Coach Saban himself and Ms. Terry seemed very pleased with the results.  How many times have we seen Coach Saban smile like that well it’s somewhere between -42 and fucking never (even if he looks a little uncomfortable doing it). If it can make Coach Saban smile like that you know it has to be awesome. So if you see Mr. Jeremy Davis tell him good job. If  your on twitter and want to tell the statue itself you can find it here.  Big thanks to the Tuscaloosa news for having such awesome pictures and to the power brokers that be for keeping this local. Remember to get a whole gallery of 50 photos taken by the Tuscaloosa news go here and for a three minute time lapse video of the creation head here

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