Month: April 2008

Monday Morning Quarterback: I Watch TV A Lot

Not just TV, but I listen to the radio, too. I listened to golf on the radio at about 7 pm yesterday. 620 AM out of Syracuse had the end of the Masters going. Golf on the radio is hard to follow. Apparently there is a tradition and a guy playing lounge piano involved.

  • A guy from South Africa won the Masters. Good for him. He broke his major duck. Sadly, it was all nice-nice. Long gone are the days of Tom Kite blaming all around him for the failings of his game. That always was fun watching his thin veneer fade as things went wonky. No sniping from the crowd either like when Woosey won in 1991.
  • The Sox took 2 of 3 with Wang beating them on a four pitch complete game Friday. Big Papi is having a hard time of it. Pray for Big Papi.
  • Curling is over for another year. Thanks God. Now I can get some work done at the office. Curling this. Curling that.
  • The Morton have not yet made their big move to get out of the relegation zone. Arsenal lost, too, with our correspondent noting both Man U goals coming off cheesy set pieces.
  • I watched twelve minutes of NASCAR and learned of its proud moonshine connections.
  • I didn’t watch much hockey. The correct teams seem to be winning. I want a Montreal v. Rangers series and a Detroit victory over the Rangers in the finals and that seems to be on track. Ottawa is looking like it will be four losses and then summer. Did I pick Calgary in the pool? No I didn’t.

There you have it. MMQB edition #2 is over. The tradition continues.

The Anonymous Brewers Speak: Rating The Raters

anonbrew2aFrom Alan: Recently I was contacted by a brewer who wondered if he, too, could write for A Good Beer Blog. Sure, no problem I thought. If Knut and Travis can, why not a craft brewer? But the brewer wanted to do it under the cloak of anonymity. I wavered. I wondered. I let it go for a while. Brewers usually stay silent like the one to the right. Then, quite a while later, unbeknownst to the first, I got a message from another brewer a world away asking for exactly the same thing. I knew then that there was a venue needed. A way for brewers to share what they really felt. So, from time to time they, too, can post here and share their thoughts. This is the first, a message from someone I will call Brewer A.¹ Please feel free to comment as you would in response to any post.

Well, how to get started? Sites like R(H)atebeer.com are a thorn in the side for many brewers. They are dominated by a handful of posters that don’t reflect the opinion of the general public. As with most critics they go off half cocked and I think often fully pickled. They pretend to know grain and hop varieties that they feel were used in a certain beer. I have seen the same poster rate the same beer twice in the same day and give it very different reviews. Hiding behind the mask of anonymity (like I am now) instills false bravery into these fellas (mostly boys but not all.) I have witnessed raters backing up a certain opinion to follow later in the same paragraph with “but I have not tried it yet.”

These raters looking to increase their numbers will will gather at fests to collect single mouthfuls of a new beer in the same way they once collected mint condition action figures. No need to engage the brewer or enjoy the beer for the sake of it – just get “Han Solo in the original packaging” and never open it up.

This involves further discussion. Maybe nine RateBeer guys and I could split a six pack and talk.

¹Stan’s point is excellently made: it’s Secret Brewer XJ17 from now on.

My Last 24 Hours

I was within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 for around 18 hours not counting the drive to and from Toronto. It was very much like spending 18 hours within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7. The oddest thing was getting out of the hotel room to go to where I was speaking to the conference only to learn that the conference was at another hotel. I know the strip malls and industrial parks of the area within more than a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 very well now. I am enriched.

Hockey Pool 2008 And The Monday Morning Quarterback

A taunt. All it takes is a taunt. Looking for meaning with a blog that is approaching five years of its troubled existence, a glimmer of hope and purpose shows up in a 27th comment:

Temujin [12:19 AM April 7, 2008]
http://hockey-madness.blogspot.com

How about a special Monday Morning Bullet Points highlighting the Blue Jays sweeping the Red Sox :=)

Did you know the Jays are on pace for a record of 107-55?
Did you know Jeremy Accardo is on pace for 81 saves?
Frank Thomas is on pace for 28 grand slams!

Oh, the joys of being a Jays fan. April is always so much better than September.

It is a sad state of affairs but let’s review how odd this spring is:

OK, that last one is not a big surprise even if it is a disappointment. But that pool. I never even got the final stats done last year. It got too complex. And I didn’t watch one playoff game last year as the natural reaction of a lifelong Leafs fan is actually to reject the game in its entirety.

So, just to keep the continuity, I give you the Gen X at 40 NHL hockey pool 2008:

Pick five scorers, one goon, one goalie, eight teams and a dark horse.

  • A point for a goal by a scorer.
  • A point for an assist by a scorer.
  • A point for a penalty minute by a goon. If your goon is kicked out of the playoffs and thereby the pool, you double the penalty minutes he has achieved to that point. The logic here is that the goon is a nut-bar. The later that he freaks and gets tossed for the balance of the playoffs, the more nut-bar like he is, the more he is the essential goon.
  • A point for each thousandth save percentage over .900 by your goalie
  • 5 points for picking each of the teams in the second, third and fourth rounds.
  • 25 bonus points for picking the dark horse – the team with the lowest regular season points to go the farthest in the playoffs. The dark horse must be seeded in the lower half of their conference.

Get your picks in my, err, Friday at 10:00 am. That’ll even give you a few games. Just hockey, just NHL. Anybody in?

Beer Fan Terminology Update

What with all the April’s Fools joke posts as well as at least one seemingly authentic blog funeral announcement, it was good to see an true advance in the thinking about being a beer nerd/fan/geek and, as usual, the news comes out of Scandinavia as Knut describes:

I don’t care much what I’m called. When I talk to my wife, I refer to (in Norwegian) my beer friends or beer mates. I would not use the words connoisseur or aficionado, either, but it is probably the most spot on description. There is a Norwegian term that is slightly old fashioned – beer dog. I kinda like that.

The word in Norwegian is even better: ølhund. So “beer hound” is born. It has the nerdiness of “rock hound” as well as the cool of “You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog”. While pivar is pithy, can any other language group top ølhund?