Hey it’s Friday… Spring has sprung and you’re ready for some fun. Well good, because we’re all about it and we’ve got all kinds of ideas. From the nation’s coolest beer festivals to movies, music and cutting edge TV – we’ve got your back big-time. We’ve also a Weekend Beer Pick for you too, because we know you’ll be drinking.

So welcome to our awesome Weekend Picks…

An Extreme Situation (Boston, MA) One of craft beers most extreme events is taking place this weekend and authorities are no doubt concerned. That’s because the bros in Boston are presenting their 11^th annual Extreme Beer Fest tonight and tomorrow (3/21 -22) and it doesn’t appear that anyone can stop them! This year’s two-day three-session event at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston will feature an expanded selection of more than 240 “extreme” beers from over 60 of this country’s most reckless brewers and will also include “extreme session beers.” For more info on one of the nation’s most extreme situations check out: 2014 Extreme Beer Fest

On The Big Screen – It appears we may be coming out of the late-winter movie doldrums where all the Hollywood studios dump their bombs almost unnoticed. This week there are two movies opening this weekend that you might honestly want to pay attention to.

Divergent is the latest entrant into the YA sweepstakes that hopes to harness some of that Hunger Games mojo and takes place in a futuristic world where people are divided into distinct factions based on human virtues. Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) stars as the young heroine who is warned that she is Divergent and will never fit into any one group and therefore becomes an enemy of the state.

Nymphomaniac: Volume I is the latest “art film” from Denmark’s “enfant terrible” director Lars von Trier and it’s been generating a lot of international buzz undoubtedly due to its un-ignorable name and subject matter. Nymphomaniac tells the storyof a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac played by Charlotte Gainesbourg who recounts her erotic experiences to the man who saved her after a beating and, oh yeah, there’s a Volume II…

The Queen City’s Craft Beer Week goes out Bang (Charlotte, NC) – The inaugural All Ale to the Queen Beer Carnival is being held this Saturday, March 22^nd at the North Carolina Music Factory and you don’t want to miss it. This event, which officially closes Charlotte Craft Beer Week, will feature more than 100 of the region’s best brews along with live music, aerial artists, hula-hoopers and costumed carnival performers. For more info on this festive beerganza check out: Queen Beer Carnival – You can thank us later.

TV Time – For those of you that have already finished Season II of House of Cards there’s another interesting series on Netflix that you might want to check out. Orange is the New Black (which recently debuted its second season) is an audacious drama-comedy that tells the story of Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a middle-class woman living in New York City who is sentenced to 15 months in a women’s federal prison for transporting a suitcase full of money to her former girlfriend who just happens to be an international drug smuggler.

Our Awesome Weekend Beer Pick

Goose Island Beer recently introduced the first of three new beers, all part of their Goose Island Imperial Series. The Illinois is a massive 9% ABV Imperial IPA brewed withChinook, Cascade, Citra and Meridian hops that’s also a homage to “The Mile High Illinois,” a skyscraper Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the great city of Chicago in 1956 that was never built. This one’s out there now – but once it’s gone, it’s gone- so you know to do.