So Long 15

You ever see "The Family Stone"? Stella and I watch it every Christmas season and is one of our favorites. It has some obvious flaws like Dermot Mulroney, but Luke Wilson is great and more than makes up for Mulroney. If you haven't seen it, it's the basic family home for Christmas with a new, controversial girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) movie, only this family is the politically correct family ever (does the one son really have to be gay, deaf and married to a black guy, if you needed someone to be deaf, you could have chosen Mulroney). The twist and heart of the movie, though, is the matriarch of the family, Diane Keaton, is "sick", presumably from cancer which she has survived before.

Diane Keaton is wonderful in the movie, she's not a one note sticky sweet movie mom. She has complexity, she doesn't like Sarah Jessica Parker and seems a little too concerned with her daughter's (Rachel McAdams) cherry breaker. They don't overdo her illness and she only brings it up to one child (Mulroney absolutely murders the scene). It's just a real subtle role and you really care for her in the end when they unwrap the present that Sarah Jessica Parker bought for everyone in the family, a stunning picture of a pregnant Diane Keaton sitting in front of a sunny window. It's just a great movie moment. The movie closes with the next Christmas and the family decorating the tree without Keaton but with that picture hanging on the wall by the Christmas tree.

Maybe I'm a sap, but I was drinking the last Schlafly No. 15 in my possession. I'm not sure if there are any more out in stores or not, but, even if there are, they're not going to last until next Christmas. Schlafly is killing the beer, scratch that, they've killed the beer. It's out of production now. What's in stores now is all that's going to be available. I'm going to miss it. I love that beer, that beer is Sybil Stone to me.

Schlafly No. 15 I'm going to miss you.