Me and Mine – Page 20 – A Good Beer Blog

Holding A Proper Who-la-thon

Tired of the pap that has passed for children’s TV since the advent of “My Little Pony” and that damned purple dinosaur Barney? Needing an opportunity to introduce fear and other lessons into the lives of your kiddies in a controlled yet, err, meaningful way? Hold a Who-la-thon! And if you are going to hold a proper Who-law-thon, you need a number of things:

A room full of pre-teens ready to be fed junk food then unknowingly being prepared to be terrified. Sit said kids packed on to one sofa to maximize huddling in terror (HIT) effect.
A selection of Doctor Who episodes from a variety of eras and series. Avoid the first and second Doctors as black and white TV confuses people under forty. Prepare screening in an order to maximize HIT through developing a crescendo of fear. We chose 1975’s two-parter The Sontaran Experiment with the Fourth Doctor, a Sarah Jane Adventure with Slitheens followed by a two-parter from the Tenth Doctor, the most recent, featuring Cybermen.
Remove all pillows and hats from the immediate viewing area so as to limit the face hiding opportunities within the rec room.
During showing use phrases like “oh, you are not going to like this bit” and “make sure you see this bit” just before the bodies begin to pile up or a well loved semi-minor character gets zapped so as to encourage more HIT.
Adopt vocal tone of most evil character during mid-screening chit chat.
Remind children periodically that things always work out in the end never indicating clearly when the end shall come.
Leave lights off throughout the house and plan Who-la-thon so as to hours of darkness to provide for immediate trip in dark well past bedtime leaving little opportunity for answering of questions.

Remember, the Who-la-thon is a teaching moment with lasting consequences. Consider using the Who-la-thon as the moment to introduce cola drinks into your children’s diet to avoid the faint likelihood of nodding off after the spike of sugared snacks from the early hours wears off. Also, this is the time when the illusion of the perfection of parents can be helpfully dispelled so understand that the right answer to questions like “why did the Earth blow up, Daddy?” or “what happens if the invasion fleet isn’t destroyed” is a quietly spoken and slightly delayed “I have no idea.” Because you really don’t.

Friday Bullets For My Day Off In The USA

My three hours at the NCPR phone farm starts at noon so I should get my butt out the door about nine thirty. I wonder of they will let me play with the Twitter controls. Things I do in the states: eat jerky (I have a rule – no jerky in the homeland); buy a local weekly newspaper (they still report who was visting from away like a Maritime weekly); look for flags (I still need a NY state flag); and shop at grocery store for cans of butter beans and multi-coloured goldfish crackers. In America the goldfish crackers come in different colours than orange. That is what makes the USA great. When I hear the “USA, USA” chant I think of multi-coloured goldfish crackers.

I watched the last ER and hated it. I hate ER. I used to comment on ER usenet groups when it was a cool show (holy oldie olson internet reference!) but I stopped watching around 1998. Death and death and more death. If they were such good ER doctors, the death parade wouldn’t go on and on. Plus I get that Stamos guy mixed up with the guy from “Joanie Loves Chachi” – but at least one Doctor Who crossover moment so at least that was something.
I do not yet see the world from the perspective of Davros’ toggle switch but I must say that the words “anti-facist demonstrators” do equally warm my heart. The juxtaposition with this and this should be more publicly troubling than it is.
I don’t know what to make of Harper these days but there is plenty of evidence that Canada is doing well economically under his watch.
Today is also an edition of The Session and the topic is smoked beer. Never heard of it? Start with our man in Ireland and follow the links.
Mr. Taylor and I engaged in a very interesting dicussion of social software and the courts this week. Have a look. Maybe we are both wrong.
When was the last time a First Lady said something that you though was simply solid advice: She told the 240 girls about growing up on Chicago’s south side, and urged them to think of education as “cool.” “I never cut class. I liked being smart. I liked getting A’s,” she said. “You have everything you need. Everything you need to succeed you already have right here.” I am going to use that line. I wonder if she is also strong on the use of 1970s British TV Sci-Fi as a tool for teaching about ethics and the importance of blasting things freom outer space?
I was listening last night to WFAN and the discussion of baseball ticket prices. At their new palace, the stinky cheater Yankees, the average gret seat now costs over $500 compared to about $150 at the Mets and Red Sox. Another reason to engage in recreation ritual hate. By the way, I watched the 2004 Red Sox ESPN summary last night. I am now very ready for baseball to begin.

That must be it for today. Where will I go by the end of the day? Maybe to the mall? Woot!

Being A Beer Hound Without Any Sense Of Style

When I was a lad and knew a thing or two about hoofing a ball, we would arse around by playing “soccer without style” – playing the game without any of the conventions which quickly collapsed into just arsing around. I think I do the much the same thing when I think about beer as I am not really that much interested in style. I am not strongly against style like, I think it is fair to say, Ron Pattinson whose entertaining research has pretty much proven that the historic antecedents for much of what is accepted as stylistic gospel is just not there. But, even without Ron’s passion and critical eye, I am still not sure why I would care that much ago beer taxonomic classification system over, for example, assessing according to a beer’s quality control standards or a brewer’s sense of innovation. I thought about that when I read this passage from a post by Philadelphia’s own Jack Curtin from Friday (and again today):

When asked by a lady at his Philly Beer Week dinner the previous night at the Four Seasons how she could tell the difference between “stouts, porters and ales,” Fritz said he told her “it’s easy, you read the label.” He then repeated an argument that I’ve heard from him before, that beer styles are considered much too important these days, that the beer is what matters, not some arbitrary level of IBUs et al. He looked around and said it was all the writers’ fault, “you just want something to write about.” Lew countered by blaming homebrewers and I said, more correctly I believe, that it’s the fault of the Brewers Association, who need all the categories for GABF. “Okay,” said Fritz, “it’s all Charlie Papazian’s fault then.”

I came to beer in a number of ways: being a child of immigrants and wanting to try what was good in the old country, being the sort of omnivore in all respects that will pop anything in his gob and – for about five years – being a fairly active homebrewer. But I never really cared if something was to style even if I collected a small library of home brewing guides that I would pore over incessantly. For me, the interesting thing was the odd ingredient – making a pale ale…or a porter…or a Scotch ale with this hop then that one, finding out what smoked malt or torrified wheat added. I really didn’t care what style my beer matched. Interestingly, that playing with style was what I found most of all in Papazian’s guides.

I think my lack of style continues in these my days of being a beer hound. I do not want to take a beer judge course nor become a cicerone. Neither do I tick or rate. I don’t think that this makes me just a poor fan of beer, either. I truly do just want a good beer in my glass, whatever that beer is, and I trust no one but me to make the final assessment. It takes some effort, as with the sour beer studies, to hunt out and learn what “good” might mean to me but I fully expect that one day a stout laced with the essence of roast lamb might interest me as much as those historically accurate Victorian ales Ron has been toying with developing. All I care about is whether the beer is interesting or not… and, I suppose, whether its level of interest to me is reflected in the price I have to pay to consume it. Does that leave me adrift of the norm? A voice in the wilderness? I don’t know. But, given there are so many things that I can say that about, it does give some comfort. After all, there is only one person who can swallow a beer for me.

Adam Dunn Apparently Does Not Suck So Much

It was one of the best games I have ever attended in any sport. Bizarrely, this morning Canadian sports media are not covering it as their lead story. Had Bay hit the run and Canada gone on to win, the nation would have gloated for years. But the outcome was immaterial to the quality of the game. Perhaps Canadian sports fans can’t appreciate the glory of achievement even in a close loss. If so, that wouldn’t be the case for those who were there. Conversely, the New York Times appreciated the moment the US reliever Putz faced in the ninth: “From the start, though, Putz could tell this game would be different from any he had experienced in a decade of professional baseball. The Rogers Centre throbbed with noise — it was the loudest crowd Putz said he had ever heard.” That is the big moment up top in the ninth – a man on second, two outs and Jason Bay at the plate fighting off pitches only to fly out in the end. The place had been going crazy for an hour up to that point after Canada’s minor league relievers twice got out of bases loaded situations. Heroic moments.

My children learned new words and new ways to use words. Many of those words were directed at USA right fielder Adam Dunn who spent the first half of the game parked in front of us before sending the game reeling with his three run homer. But I knew he did not suck as I saw him at Cooperstown in the home run derby in 2006 jack more than one out of the park. I have a deep belief that seeing sports live in a crowd is a very good thing and an important part of childhood. Fodder for character and an education that your classmate junior peewee “elite” soccer players are pretty much being led down a path.

Seeing a fan of the other side slagged by your crowd mates and then seeing him turn on them victorious and finger pointing is a life lesson. Seeing ultimately good natured but rough talk between adults should be shocking spicy thing. Watching reactions to great achievements and huge disappointments provides a foundation for future personal experience.

“And Now On BBC…”

You never know what is out there waiting to enrich your life in unexpected ways. The DVD sets of Dr. Who include clips of BBC “continuity” – meaning the bits between shows telling you what is coming up. Suddenly, I am back in my grandparents house in the 1970 visit to Scotland face glued to the inordinately sharp TV screen with all those extra lines and only four buttons for four channels.

Countdown To Christmas: I am Bagged

Bagged, I tell ya. Walking around the mall last night with a ten year old who was walking around the mall making sensible selections for a bunch of people as I handed out five dollar bills at the proper moments without flinching, discussing how Rihanna’s “Shut Up And Drive” has echos of Gary Newman’s “Cars” in the phase-shift syth, stopping at every grocery store around looking for large cuts of meat on sale, noting beef is on sale everywhere but never seen gia-norm-ous cuts (including a $55 joint the size of six cats tied together) are being placed on offer, standing in a line up at Tim Hortons only to be told that the mug someone wants for someone in all the TV ads sold out yoinks ago, enjoying the fact that my new YakTrax work so well, waiting to get home to post another thirteen prizes in the 2008 beer blog photo contest, staying up to midnight (even though I got up before five) to figure out the final seven prizewinners so that I don’t have to stay up to midnight tonight, eating the first duck we ever roasted for a vary late supper, marveling at how nice the house smells as the duck stock steeps.

I am bagged.

Pre-Drinking: What Is Old Is New Again

I am not sure what it is about journalists these days but they seem to have entirely forgotten what life was like in the 1980s. People seem to think that, you know, the special friends relationship of hooking up was invented by those with a Blackberry and that facing economic tough times is something that no one has coped with before. Odder, however, than forgetting the lax ways of amore and getting together with pals over a pot of weak tea is the idea that “pre-drinking” as described by the Toronto Star this morning is new:

Young people are engaging in a “new culture of intoxication” that even has its own buzzwords – “pre-drinking” or “pre-gaming.” If you’re a confused parent looking for a simple definition, just click on YouTube, or on urbandictionary.com, where it’s described as the “act of drinking alcohol before you go out to the club to maximize your fun at the club while spending the least amount on extremely overpriced alcoholic beverages.” This new form of binge drinking goes far beyond a warm-up to a night out with friends, says a new report by Centre for Addiction and Mental Health researcher Samantha Wells and two colleagues at the University of Toronto and University of Western Ontario. It’s an “intense, ritualized and unsupervised” drinkfest, in many cases perfectly timed so that the booze hits the bloodstream within minutes of stepping inside the bar, Wells said in a telephone interview from London, Ont.

Wow. They are “unsupervised” when they do this?!?!? Imagine that.

Did anyone involved with these studies ask a Maritimer who was in university a quarter century ago? Frankly, I still find it odd to be in a pub before ten in the evening given that the Halifax social scene required picking up a case (Nova Scotian for 12 beer) on the way home, having something for supper like K-D or oven fries and then landing at one house or another to, frankly, pound them back until it was time to get the taxi downtown. But these days I get all snoozy well too early for this sort of thing. I hardly make it to the end Num-Three-Ers on Friday night at eleven now. Yet somewhere some part of me is happy that gangs of the young are still being safely dumb in fun packs within reasonable parametres, singing at the tops of their lungs, turning into bags of seat as they slam-dance or whatever the kids are up to today.

Considering My Own Inherent Irrelevance

Sifting the tea leaves of the place of oneself in the blogosphere and in life is entirely a mug’s game. Only idiots care. Yet, I am an idiot. It struck me yesterday when I reviewed the detailed commentary James Bow has written on the 2008 Canadian Blog Awards. Admittedly, it has been some time since I was nominated for these sorts of things and I can take my ego massaging from other sources but something struck me when I read the candidates for Best Blog in Canada – and realized I never heard of any of them. They may well have never heard of me either as they were blogging in a different way, not using the cut, paste and comment format that I along with most Oldie Olson bloggers use. They are pretty good, too.

Then, I got fiddling with the settings on Google Analytics to figure out what that could tell me. One of new features with mt bloggy systems upgrades is the server stats are gone. Once upon a time, back around the summer of 2005 or so, I think I could count almost 11,000 visits a day to this blog according to mt server stats. Now Google Analytics tells me that on 23 November 2008 Gen x 40 had 118 visits. The beer blog gets almost seven times that traffic now. I know it is all apples to oranges. Back in the day, every bot and spam was counted and now RSS readers are left out. Yet the message is clear. I write on this site for Hans and a few others. Yet I write and I enjoy the writing.

But it isn’t really just about the blog, is it. We all know that. David sent me a link by Twitter the other day that proves it. In itself, even the choice of medium was telling. He didn’t leave a comment because blogs are really so 2004. The link he sent me was to a Washington Postarticle entitled “The Dumbest Generation: The Kids Are Alright. But Their Parents …” in which my cohort, early Generation X, are shown to be the biggest bunch of losers in recent decades, maybe centuries. Now, to be clear, we knew that already. That is the whole point of me and my peeps. The slacker generation was not a slacker generation out of choice. Growing up in the era of recession after recession, there was no point in effort. But the article is perhaps a little to close to the bone on this core generational fact:

Whatever you call them (I’ll just call them early Xers), the numbers are clear: Compared with every other birth cohort, they have performed the worst on standardized exams, acquired the fewest educational degrees and been the least attracted to professional careers. In a word, they’re the dumbest. Obviously, we’re talking averages. No one would apply the word “dumb” to Barack Obama (born in 1961) or Timothy F. Geithner, his nominee for secretary of the Treasury (born in the same month). Yet the president-elect himself has written eloquently about how hard it was for him and his peers to obtain a serious education during their dazed-and-confused teen years. Like it or not, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (born in 1964), who stumbled over basic civics facts during her vice presidential run, is more representative of this group. Early Xers are the least bookish CEOs and legislators the United States has seen in a long while. They prefer sound bites over seminars, video clips over articles, street smarts over lofty diplomas. They are impatient with syntax and punctuation and citations…

Ouch. Kick in the goolies ouch. Yet here I am in pajamas, waylayed by a cold my grandfather would not recognize as a cold, writing on a blog no one reads, torturing the language as my grade 8 teacher told me I did and sluffing off of the things I ought to be doing on a Sunday morning. I am as I ought to be: looking forward to a game on the TV so that I can nap through more than half of it as the snow collects outside, unshovelled.

Now With More Greenock Than Ever!

One of the more actually useful things on the internet is the opportunity to find family records of some sort. Three years ago I found – and bought – a picture of my Grannie who passed away over 50 years ago. Eldest brother has been doing some digging as has Faither and an interesting observation can be made. My mother’s grandparents were married at “A” above. My father’s grandparents were married a few streets away. Both weddings occurred around 120 years ago.

Even in that era, each party might still have gone to the Morton game after as part of the celebrations, the club then about a decade into existence.

Apparently Beer Is, In Fact, The Affordable Luxury

Last December, I suggested that we may see a bump of sorts in beer sales in response to the recession in the US. In another in a series of events that prove that, yes, if enough monkeys used typewriters one could write sonnets, it appears I may well have been right as The Washington Post notes, via a twittery h/t to Cizauskas:

…this time around is different. Smoking has fallen into such ill repute that many municipalities ban it. Fuel costs have made driving or flying to a casino a pricey proposition, and gambling has become almost an afterthought at many of the lavish new ones. Now it seems the only acceptable — and affordable — sin left is alcohol, namely beer. “It’s really considered a consumer staple kind of industry,” said Dan Ahrens, author of the book “Investing in Vice.” He put it on par with toothpaste, or, say, soap. “People gotta drink no matter what’s going on with the economy.” More than 16 million barrels of domestic beer were sold in the United States in July, and annual sales through that month are up 1.4 percent, the largest increase since 1990, when the economy was headed toward a recession…

So not only is beer affordable but, in this time of downturn or at least stagnation, there are fewer and fewer acceptable sins available to the average American, who on average, has a bit less to spend. I still think this means craft brewers need to focus on the low-price end of the their brands.

The high end of beer pricing is moving in the wrong direction, however. When I was beer shopping down south this year, I saw beer in the $20 and even over $30 range for the first time. I declined even though I have some advertising support for my sin spending. I did buy a $20 De Ranke Kriek but that was only because I am obsessed. But I was not snookered at all by those offerings as a quick review of my sales slip shows a great number of great beers for a great price – Harviestoun Ola Dubh 12 for $8, a small bottle from Meantime for $3.50, large Bernardus 12 for $10 plus a large number of great new New England craft beers for even less than half of those prices.

My point? Beer is the affordable sin not just as a budget recourse to easy mindless comfort but because it still can provides great value for extraordinary products in tight times.