Now that I have seen it and heard Craig was barred from it as a youff, though reviewers debate, I want to stay at this hotel. Warning: Hawaii 5-0 alert.
That’s Me In The Picture
My alumni mag came yesterday and I made it to the “does anyone know who the hell these people are” picture…except its was on the cover this time. Not a big thing as it was not a big school but odd to see me there at a reception in my grad week, skinny and young in the back next to my then beardy pal Jamie. Nice mod narrow ties. Sweet lid in the foreground, too. What I really like is that I appear to be speaking or yawning but if you look to the right and see big Johnny at the bar he is doing the same thing. Because we are probably singing “…everybody wang chung tonight…” or something. I am not so sad for the lost youth, the years or even the unattainable thin – I am just saddened that the world never learned the message of that song:
…On the edge of oblivion
All the world is babylon
And all the love and everyone
A ship of fools sailing onAcross the nation, around the world
Everybody have fun tonight
A celebration so spread the word
Ah, for the days of nuclear fear pop.
Alaskans Sue
You have to love Alaskans. Not only do that have a dreamy flag, they love their privacy. Somewhere around here I have written about their 1970s court case that found that the right to privacy extended to your personal appearance so the state can’t tell you how to dress. Now a bunch of upright citizens are suing for the right to see their files gathered to determine who is on the no flight lists:
Up till now, TSA has shown us nothing. To make matters worse, TSA has been destroying Secure Flight test data and says they will continue doing so. As TSA isn’t giving us the information we have every legal right to know, we’re asking the US District Court in Anchorage to force the TSA to do a search for our records and to halt the destruction of records while it is taking place.
One of the cornerstones of personal information record keeping is the right of a data subject to challenge veracity and that requires access to the recors the state has about the person – any person – like you. Way to go Alaskans. From Boing.
Where Are The 90s Bands
This strikes me as a telling indicator that I am getting to be an old fart. The BBC has a story up about the people in 1990s Britpop bands and where they are now. I never even had CDs of many of these bands being even then cranky that the stuff the kids were listening to was nothing like The Clash or The Jam of my teens. Who cares where they are if you never cared if they were.
Inch Worm, Inch Worm
If you are interested in nerds deciding to take on a dream, check out the blog at Route 2, a small group creating wireless interent on PEI on hill at a time.
Hand Of God TV
Something to think about when you look out the window on a Tuesday afternoon wondering why, why we Canadians are kept from Argentinian TV by the all seeing eye of the CRTC:
Maradona and Pele, who have rarely seen eye-to-eye, swapped national shirts and headed a football to each other as Maradona’s new career began with goodwill wishes from his guests. Both took to the stage: Pele playing guitar and singing a song he composed himself and Maradona singing an Argentine tango about football. Pele praised Maradona for offering an example of how to beat addiction, calling him an inspiration for his jailed son.
I expect they shared their secret preferences for grilled meat condiments as well.
The Lost Business
I was struck by this passage from today’s Globe and Mail on the murder of Canadian Zaid Meerwali in Iraq:
Mr. Meerwali was targeted because he was a Shia Kurd, his brother said. “We are Shia. Shia believe in democratic society.” Munir blamed former Baath officials and Sunni insurgents for the slaying. “They don’t like to see people from Canada coming over there. They lost their businesses.”…Mr. Meerwali’s family said he studied at Toronto’s Seneca College to become a chartered accountant and that he went to Baghdad six months ago to start a business importing food and computers.
Has it really come to being a turf war about the wholesale trade? This makes me very sad and I am not sure exactly why other than the obvious loss of a very promising person who tried to do the right thing.
Belgium: Six Lambics
There are a few times my good wife is very pleased with this hobby. One is when there is Guinness in the house and one is when there are lambics. These historic vestiges of a Belgian need to capture summer fruit are made without added yeast…because the valley of the Senne is loaded with airborn natural yeasts. In the winter when these beers can be made, the windows at fairly musty unsanitary breweries are opened to expose open wort vats of straight gueuze (or geuze) or fruited lambics in traditional flavours like cherry kreik or black current cassis and the beers undergo spontaneous fermentation after which they are casked. This handy web page will likely tell you more than you need to know about the process.
One difficult thing about them, particularly the fruit beers like the raspberry – or framboise – by Mort Subite that I reviewed last March is that they really can come across as only an incredibly concentrated take on the fruit. One friend recently exclaimed when trying her first cassis: “the children would drink this for God’s sake!” Well, it is sort of the fruit juice the Lord made. The other difficult thing is buying something that calls itself lambic, is a wee bit cheaper only to find out that it is a syrup based brew and not the real deal with fruit gurgling in the ale through fermentation. I try to stay away from those. But let’s see how these work out:
Lindemans Kriek: This pours a bright red with brown tones with a whipped mousse head of pink. There is lots of cherry flavour but also a rustic hoppiness cutting through. It is a sweet cherry flavour but, as it to be expected from the style, a vineous sour tang to the beer.Lindemans lambics always seem to have more to them for me than others, something twiggy or a veracity to the fruit like you get when it is your hand that does the picking. This is especially the case when you drink them at room temperature. This 375 ml bottle from Vlezenbeek, Belgium probably cost 5.99$ USD so it is pricy but when you think about the real costs that go into production, it is not unreasonable. BAers rave.
Chapeau Exotic: Pineapple beer. Not this
sort of pineapple beer but still pineapple beer. By Brouwerij De Troch in Wambeek, Belgium. As still a beer as ever I have had. It smells like a jube-jube of a slightly overripe pineapple husk. There is fairly true pineapple flavour…truer than the aroma…but do you want that in a beer? Sharp acidic effect in the mouth like the real fruit. You know…I don’t think this is a syrup based lambic. I think some Belgians actually import pineapple to make this. What a weird world it is. 1.5% alcohol, too. Really weird. Advocates are rightly unkind. Thankfully only a 250 ml bottle. Hey…they make banana beer!Update: Having noted that the label on my bottle is not the label I see elsewhere on the web and noting the 1.5% alcohol content which would not sustain shelf life…I am wondering if the LCBO has been fobbed old stock? Look at the advocates comments. The ones who rate high say the head was huge or at least it was highly carbonated. Those that do not found it flat. Hmmmm….
Belgian Pêches: By the Lefebvre brewery at Quenast, Belgium.
At 3.5%, a whopping 133% stronger than the last one. A lightly pinked straw brew with a little cloud to it sits under white foam. The smell is pure ripe fruit. As with both of the previous beers, there is a orchard reality to the fruit, the flavour is textured and maybe a bit over ripe compared to grocery store stickered facsimile. The one advocate calls this syruped but, for me…ok…I dunno. The body is light otherwise and no real hoppy flavour. Hey – there is actually an ingredients list: water, malt, wheat, hops, yeast, peach juice (20%), sugar, flavour…FLAVOUR!?!? What the heck is that supposed to be? Ok – it’s got to be a phoney. Yet I have been offended by other lambic phoneys more.
Lindemans Gueuze: From Vlezenbeek, Belgium. 
I yapped about gueuze earlier this summer but only found this example a few weeks ago in Ithaca at the Finger Lakes Beverage Center. A fine white foamy rim over deep straw brew. This is a drier version of the style than the other two, juicy and maybe a bit cider-ish. More pear juice than apple in the fruit – maybe passion fruity, too, but have I had a real passion fruit? Have you? I’ve had a kid’s juicebox with the words “passion fruit” on it…and is it passion fruit or passionfruit? But not like added flavour. It is all coaxed out of the pale malt. Brightly acidic as well. Just 4% so the kind of beer your mother may like…ok, the kind of beer my mother likes. Plucky Belgians. But BAers seem to want more. More acid. More barnyard funk from the wild yeasts. Is there anything the advocates won’t demand?
Mort Subite Gueuze: By Brouwerij De Keersmaeker in Kobbegem, Belgium. This is one of the ones I yapped about last time. By the way, I have instituted a policy hereabout of benchmarking which is a fancy way of saying I get to repeat myself to figure out if any of this makes any sense. If you are going to be paranoid, I say you better do the checking up on yourself by yourself. It is sweeter and a bit richer or rounder in body than the Lindemans with a bit sour under it all. Less like cider, less brightly acidic, more barnyard perhaps. Still only 4.5% but that is three times that somewhat insanely odd pineapple thing above. The head was a nice off white and quite a rocky mousse of it all, the beer ever so slightly lighter in colour. There must be some quite beefy gueuzes out there as, again, many advocates find this comes up short.
Lindemans Cassis: This is the best of the bunch. Very fruit forward true black current flavour. 
Not sweetened like black current juice but full of the twiggy real berry flavour. I used to have 20 old bushes behind a barn I owned and this is the essence of a clear summer evening’s picking at the height of the season. There is a huge pink/purple lace-leaving mousse head over purple ale. Really lovely. Underneath, creamy yeast and French bready wheat framing the black current. Aged green hops accentualte the fruit. The finish is astringent. Wonderful.
A good introduction to the style. I am going to make a point of learning more and more.