Month: July 2010

Hooray – I Love Being Told I Am Stupid – So Should You

Update: To be fair, when I heard about their tattoo promotion I immediately thought “damn, you have to be at the pub on opening night….”

Am I supposed to cheer along with the giving of the finger to 99.998% of customers for the sake of marketing? Or is this supposed to be Dada beer? Who cares. All I know is I am far less inclined to buy any BrewDog beer. Why? Because of this short sentence:

A response to the haters.

“Haters”? Good Lord. Are you twelve? This has to be the stupidest new usage of a word that has been imposed upon the language and there is far too much use of it in craft beer circles. It denies the right to disagree. It tells us to stop thinking and start following. You call in to question my freedom from being your sycophant, I call into question your business model.

Not that there is anything wrong with the beer. BrewDog is quite good at making beer. As good as a lot of other great brewers. What makes it different is how it seems to be that it is brewed by pushy dullards with an over active interest in getting our money while letting us know we don’t “get it.” No thanks me thinks. This brewery has gotten too boring.

The 2010 Sackets Harbor NY Vintage Base Ball Tournament

Another great time was had by all even if we had to play 18 innings of 1864 rules baseball in a row on a 85 F day under the beating sun. The Kingston St. Lawrence VBBC tied the Sackets Harbor Ontarios 12-12 in the first game and lost 7-1 to the Genesee Nine of Rochester. Highlight was the nine run second inning in the first game. Low light was being on base and realizing I was not actually aware of the rules one needed to know when being on base. Got tagged out at home in the fourth inning of the second game. You know, one truly ought to give ‘er when one has the opportunity.

Do Olde Geuze And Oysters Go Together?

oysgeu1-1I was out hunting for some Caribbean stout to go with the PEI oysters I picked up at the incredibly jambi Mike Mundell’s shop this afternoon. Without success. What to do?

I love oysters. I used to live in view of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on PEI’s north shore and heading over to Carr’s at Stanley Bridge for a half dozen Malpeques to suck back with my home brew. Despite the trade’s odd view of what makes for a benefit, the oysters know not what is done in their name. Quietly in their rocky shells they ignore such things, preferring to be pretty damn tasty and – at a buck and change – a great value.

So, instead of a strong sweet stout, I thought I would try them with a geuze, in the case a half bottle of Drie Fontienen’s Oude Geuze, the beer I had last New Year’s Eve. This one was bottled back on Friday, February 1, 2008 when I was having an Old Guardian for the twelfth edition of The Session. Let’s see what happens in mid-summer two and a half years later..

Wow. That is quite a combination. The barnyard funk of the geuze hits the oyster’s wharfy skank head on in your mouth. One of my more intense taste experiences when I think of it – which is all I can do given it is happening in my mouth right now. All that is missing is an overly aged chunk of blue cheese to make this as overwhelming an experience as it could be. But the aftertaste is creamy, like two waves counteracting each other leading to calm. The oyster brings out the apple notes and places the acidity in context. I am happily reaching for the next meaty oyster.

Success. Each assisted through the difficulties the other can pose. A vital combination.

Friday Bullets For A Week Off In July

It’s been a weird week off. Chopped up. I even had to go to work but that was my fault. Didn’t check the schedule. Picked the wrong week. Assumed. But we carried on. A cold moved through but we carried on. Started in fine style at the Dinosaur BBQ, too. Vintage base ball coming up on Sunday. Spent the week being scared to hell by Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Still ate bacon and green onion cream cheese on bagels from Ithaca Bakery. But I knew it was wrong. And exactly how wrong: real wrong.

  • Construction paper 1930s Soviet arctic exploration art. Neato.
  • I don’t write that much about my town. I don’t write much about much come to think of it. But look at the video of Elton John at the rink. Where do rock bands play in towns without hockey teams?
  • Sox are 4-6 in July. Not pleased. Bought the lad Sox socks at Cooperstown and they play like this???
  • Still don’t know what to make of Obama. The Gulf oil crisis is his first crisis begun under his watch. If the oil has now actually been capped after 86 days, getting a 20 billion dollar fund mid-crisis is a pretty smooth move. No one is really talking about health care socialism anymore, either. He may pan out OK.

Gotta go get the car in for a tune up. That outta spice things up.

Teach Your Children Well – BBQ Version

1956

Every holiday should include a lunch at Syracuse’s Dinosaur BBQ. I had a Tres Hombre but as I I left meat (I’m embarrassed even thinking of it) I was not as hombre as I might have been. The beer is an Ape Hanger Ale that’s made, I am pretty sure, by Middle Ages as a special house brew. It followed a Syracuse Pale ale that I had standing out in the street waiting for a table. You go to hell and/or prison in Canada for standing in the street having a beer waiting for your table. That was the best Mac and Cheese I ever had, by the way. The lad knew enough to not leave any.

Friday Bullets For A Heat Wave And The Heat

I watched Lebron. Then I didn’t. Yawn. Going to The Heat. Yawn. Stay in Cleveland? Jump up and down saying “Cleveland Rocks!” and bring out Drew Carey to sing “Cleveland Rocks!” with you and then promise to make something big happen in your home state and screw big cities and screw big money and look in the camera and say “I am the greatest” invoking Ali himself…. that’s what you do when you call a personal hour long press conference live on TV. Going to the Heat? Yawn. Burn baby burn.

  • Hey, I Like This Gig Update: new Tory Senators suddenly not backing Harper’s Senate reform.
  • Jack Hughes Update: Cavs owner goes absolutely MENTAL over Lebron’s decision.
  • Spy Swap!!! I don’t really care that much except that it is fun to write “Spy Swap!!!” I so knew that Flea’s cake candidate Anna Chapman was Anna Kushchenko. I did. I just didn’t tell you.
  • This is a fun web toy to play with at work today … until you remember that it describes out the history of nuclear testing.
  • Will the US catch up to Canada on same sex marriage? Isn’t that so 2004?
  • You know you have been suckered by the seduction of mobile internet when you actually think you can walk around France streaming a radio station from Alberta for free.
  • How do you “challenge” the plain words of the constitution?

Out into the oven again today. Thanks God I got that deep long and restful sleep.

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Entitled Elites Bashing Entitled Elites

Preston Manning and other members of the conservative entitled elite have certainly done their job well. Remember how not a few years ago, the Tories were the big bad clique that met behind closed doors and made decisions for us all in board rooms from Bay Street to Calgary? Well, it appears that all the time it was actually the Grits that were the real enemy of the people. Just look at this splendid piece of journalistic revisionism:

Sometime during the Trudeau years, the Liberals ceased to be the party of the individual and became the voice of special interests, the face of elitism. The transformation began under Lester Pearson, when the Liberals launched huge new social programs — universal medicare and pensions — that were uncharacteristically collectivist for the party. Their central characteristic was the suspension of personal responsibility. Canadians were to be guaranteed health care and retirement income regardless of whether they had made plans and sacrifices during their healthy working years for the time when they became sick or old. They were have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too programs.

Never mind that conservative elites (and United Church ministers) gave us much of socialism long before the 1960s. Never mind that we are still crippled by the national debt built up mainly under the secret Conservative socialism compact of the Mulroney years. No, don’t trouble your pretty head about that stuff. The conservative entitled elite have their story down and it has to be repeated and applied.

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Sad News With The Passing Of Bernie Rivers

Beer fans in central New York are mourning the passing of Bernie Rivers who ran Galeville Grocery in Liverpool near Syracuse. The shop hails it self as “your complete historical neighborhood grocery store since 1888.” I met Bernie this past January on a beer run into Syracuse and enjoyed a few minutes with this cornerstone of the community as well as the CNY beer scene. I’ve been shopping at Galeville for almost six years so far and have always been struck how dependent we beer fans are on the passion and risk taking of the shop keepers like Bernie who stock the shelves, hoping the locals will support the decisions and selections they make. I’ve rarely been anything less but excited with my finds there.

Tributes can be found at the Facebook pages for his store.