The Phantom Observer has done a masterful job with the latest issue of the Red Ensign Standard, a group of which I am proud to be a early adopting member though only an editor once. Go have a read of some interesting writers many of which are, admittedly, to the right of where I stand but who try to raise the discourse a wee bit more than is usually for we pajamistani.
Author: Alan
Dang!
I wasn’t paying attention and I’ve already missed the pre-pre-game show for Super Bowl Extra Large. I hope the pre-warm-up-show is still on the other channel.
Predictions? The team I pick will lose. That makes it Pittsburg. Jerome Bettis, however, will win MVP for guys with guts everywhere. My newly discovered but slowly loading pal Deadspin has a post on what you might watch on TV other than the Super Bowl this evening.
I now officially approve of Deadspin. Govern yourselves accordingly.
Germany: Aventinus, Schneider And Sohn, Kelheim, Bavaria
The classic wheat double bock or weizenbock from Munich – and not a dunkel weizen! The high test version of Schneider Weisse. The brewery’s bottling hall was on Aventine Street according to Michael Jackson’s Great Beer Guide.
This beer has all the moreishness supreme of the mere weisse but with even more zow-ka-pow and zam! It pours that funny grey tinged brown that reminds me of gravy with a tan head. In the mouth it is a cacophony of spices and creamy malts and yeasts: nutmeg, all spice, clove plus caramel from brown malts, raisin from crystal malt and a good bread crustiness from pale malts. There is a cutting hop as well that is below much of these flavours as well as a bright acidity that may have a lime tone. The water feels soft but there is so much going on it is a little hard to tell. In the cream yeast, banana and soft apple like Golden Delicious.
One of my favorite beers.
Screw You Pluto!
Hah! The new newest planet is also bigger than the old newest planet:
An icy, rocky world reported last year to be orbiting the Sun in the distant reaches of the Solar System really is bigger than Pluto, scientists say. New observations of the object, which goes by the designation 2003 UB313, show it to have a diameter of some 3,000km – about 700km more than Pluto.
This is great. I have always really really hated Pluto. The most extreme…sorry…X-treme planet without really anything to really show for itself. What other ball of methane gets such good press? Anyway, 2003 UB313 or Vulcan or whatever they choose to call it (I prefer “Marzipania” myself…the planet of marzipan) kicks Plutos arse all over town. Soon we will be hearing no more about Pluto than Uranus and that ain’t much.
#8 – Centre Block
Who gets my old office? Where do I put all this stuff?
Being Asked
For an old school radio nerd like me, getting the chance to join other listeners to give feed back to the staff at NCPR yesterday was quite the thing. Well loved by its fan base, the station is apparently one of the best rural stations in the NPR system. It was interesting having come across the border and after a drive of one and three-quarter hours to find that I was not the person from farthest away, that the station reaches all the way south-east to Saratoga Springs, NY, not to mention into Vermont at Burlington.
Lots of good talk about new technology but it was very interesting to sit in a room of people from another country and listen to them discuss their views on what the local community could benefit from – the notion and scale of both local and community not quite being the same as what Canadians might think. Interesting to note with well experienced staff that they were very concerned about the realistic and possible as opposed to the e-dream. All hopeful.
When morning news host Todd Moe introduced himself I immediately said “I love your voice” then “when else could a man tell a man that” – he laughed but it was true. There is something about the immediacy of radio that means that is how it works. Oddly, though, I did have this feeling that the data on the screen below to the upper right was incoming from Castle Flea.
Tobin’s First Prize Hots
I lived a little dream. One stage in my investigation of the NY hot. This may seem odd to those that do not know me but I like this sort of stuff. I find it very interesting to have a very basic food item which in Canada would not be the focus of a restaurant and would really be considered a kids food here but in the states is more like getting a pizza slice. It’s a hold over perhaps.
The street Tobin’s sits on is a poorer street in a poorer part of town. Down the way there are a few very small bars each probably sustained by a side street or two. I mentioned this street to portland once and he, too, had noted it as being an American classic of a sort: run-down sure but also a neighbourhood which had likely seen far better days yet which still acted like a neighbourhood, if a hard one. In Tobin’s itself there were five or six people plus two pleasant staff sharing five or six counter stools and maybe three table. There was still wainscotting walls, narrow tongue and groove lathe ceiling with one small grill at the back with the burgers (each a “Whimpy”) and hots. It likely looked like that in 1949 and 1974.
Off To Canton
Off to do my part for NPR by helping NCPR think about what it might do with the internet. I am really looking forward to this but I am a bit worried about my Cantonese.
On the up side, I have established where the ales are, have scoped out First Prize Hots for the way home and also plan to buy some tickets for the big game against Yale on the 20th. It has been two years since we were there for a game.
Trucks On Sand Dunes
From Dirk von Zitzewitz’s Blog and Dakar 2005.
It is that week again and the channel formerly known as the Outdoor Life Network is playing the Lisbon to Dakar rally as a four night summary. Apparently on Saturday there is a four hour repeat broadcast starting 2 pm, a festival of broken drive trains and motorcycles flying mid-air into jagged rock faces.
Last year I promised myself to take this on by moped. This year I renew that pledge for 2007 but with sidecar mopeds. Vintage experimental Italian ones.