Green Genius

Rob reviews "Dans Paris"

2011-12-07T18:14:00.000-05:00

Today I watched Dans Paris (allow me to translate for you "Inside Paris") starring Romain Duris, and Monsieur Duris is the reason I checked this out from Netflix. Duris was the titular "Heartbreaker" in that movie starring Vanessa Paradis, and during the moments I was able to take my eyes off her -- well, I couldn't take my eyes off her, but during the moments she wasn't onscreen I noticed that Duris was a pretty good actor too. I've seen him in several other movies "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" "Moliere" "Paris" "Russian Dolls" and pretty much anything else of his I could track down. The London Guardian says " He does have a completely transformative smile, capable of changing his face in the flick of a lip: from sexy to silly, brooding to buffoonish." And I agree. Romain Duris joins William Powell as the only male actors who I will watch in anything.
Here he plays Paul, a man suicidally depressed after his girlfriend breaks up with him. Why they broke up I am not sure. French people break up some times for reasons that don't translate well. Suffice it to say that he was not easy to live and she was only slightly easier than him. He seemed a little depressed before they broke up actually, as in the scene where she nudges him with the car to try to get him to get in and he lies down in front of the car. I can certainly understand his being depressed. Joana Preiss is not a classic beauty but she is certainly sexy as she dances unselfconsciously here.

He heads home to Dad and little brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel) intending to wallow in self-pity, and maybe work enough gumption to kill himself, but they have other plans. They know he's in trouble cuz he lays around the house all day in his underwear listening to Kim Wilde's "Cambodia" (without a doubt the saddest 80's synth-pop song ever). Actually the whole family is still dealing with the fallout from the suicide of only daughter (sister) Claire several years previously. Dad fixates on everyday chores -- making soup, buying a Christmas tree. etc. Jonathan tries to help Paul; he makes a deal with his older brother that if can make it to Le Bon Marche in 20 minutes, Paul will put on his pants and meet him there. It ends up taking him seven hours but only because he runs into an old girlfriend (Alice Bataud) and makes two new girlfriends on the way. Naturally he has sex with all three. This definitely seems like the healthiest way to deal with depression.
Near the end this movie contains one of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen, as this rather dark comedy turns into a musical when Paul calls his ex and they sing to each other. Don't roll your eyes, it works. I would include it here but you really need to see the whole movie to see why this works.
I'll give this movie 4 out of five stars -- docked one star because Vanessa Paradis is not in it.

Rob's restaurant reviews: Chick Fil-A

2011-12-03T21:32:00.000-05:00

I love Chick Fil-A. It is about the only fast food chain I patronize. (Five Guys isn't fast food, is it?)

You can get a grilled chicken breast on a whole wheat bun, which is a nice healthy option and my usual entree. I can also count on them to have some great unsweetened iced tea too. Unsweetened iced tea is not an option at most places, and if they do offer it you can bet it's been sitting around getting funky for days. But it's always fresh at Chick Fil-A. They even have lemon slices to go with it.
So no complaints about the food, but that doesn't mean I don't have complaints. Their motto (or slogan or whatever you call it) "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich" bothers me in several ways. First I don't believe it. It's been three hundred years since the Earl of Sandwich gave the two-slice comestible its current title, and of course people have been eating sandwiches for thousands of years before that, they just didn't know what to call it. Does it really seem likely that in all that time nobody thought to put a piece of chicken between two pieces of bread until some Georgia cracker in 1946?
And second, it's kind of patronizing, is it not? Do they think we really might believe that Chick Fil-A invented chickens? I mean, come on, chickens have been around for longer even than sandwiches. That is not an urban legend that is crying out to be debunked. "Oh, you poor lunkhead customers of ours, we did not invent chickens."
And okay, even if he did invent the chicken sandwich, there's a saying on the wall of most Chick Fil-A's that just makes me shake my head every time I see it:

Not exactly poetry, is it? You have to eat so you might as well eat food that tastes good. Wow, thanks, Mr Cathay, I was going to eat this pile of dog doo till you said that and made me think. You're pretty smart. Are you sure you didn't invent the chicken?
One more complaint. I always know when it's Sunday even without any other clues cuz that';s the day I crave Chick- Fil-A. And it's the day they're closed. I understand the Sabbath day stuff, but can't we compromise? Have some Jews or Muslims or atheist teenagers run the place on Sunday I mean, food is essential to life on Sunday too, is it not?

Rob's Reviews "Helena From the Wedding."

2011-12-03T10:08:00.001-05:00

If they ever decide to teach a course in how to make a movie Robert Loy hates, the students will do well to study this turkey. 3 or 4 couples get together, they are all whiny and self-absorbed, and are all either having an affair, trying to have an affair, or dealing with the repercussions from the affair they just had. Nobody really likes any of their "friends" (and who can blame them?) Throw in a pointless fake British accent from Gillian Jacobs that fades in and out like an AM radio station at night, and an ending where two people who have a lot they need to talk about say absolutely in the climactic scene -- if a movie where nothing happens can be said to have a climax. Ostensibly this is because they're too emotionally overwhelmed for words, but it feels like the writer and director were just lazy and wanted us to do their work for them. (Most egregious example of this I can think of is "Lost in Translation"; they can study that one in this class too.)
Speaking of Gillian Jacobs, she is not pretty. I don't care what anybody at Greendale Community College thinks. I did watch some of the extras on this DVD just to see if the cast said all the usual "I just loved the script, it was so intelligent and different" and they did, with a straight face, which means they saved all their best acting for the extras reel. Jacobs added that what she loved about her character was that she was an enigma. That girl needs a dictionary, "enigma" does not mean "half-baked character from lazy writers."

Rob's Reviews "Home"

2011-11-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

I watch a lot of French movies these days and not just because I've fallen hopelessly in love with Vanessa Paradis. Even though I've seen some English-speaking movies lately that I've really enjoyed ("Bridesmaids" was hilarious, Paul Giamatti was great (as always) in "Win Win" and I actually went to the theater and saw "Moneyball" and was not disappointed) the general level of quality in French films seems to be higher -- maybe because the real dindes don't make it to our shores.
Yesterday I watched "Home" which was about a very happy family that lived an isolated existence right beside an abandoned highway.Their idyllic lifestyle is ruined when they open that stretch of highway for traffic again. In a matter of hours there's no way for the kids to cross the street to go to school without risking their lives and they have to go way out of their way and use a tunnel even though it's "full of creepies" according to youngest daughter Marion. The poor cat, who's probably never seen a car is strangling himself tied to the clothesline pole. And everybody starts to go a little crazy.

All Judith the oldest daughter ever wanted to do was sunbathe, chain smoke and listen to horrible French death metal music. Hard to do when truck drivers are honking at you every few seconds. Marion counts cars and is convinced that every mosquito bite is a cancerous lesion. The youngest kid, a boy, goes into a depression cuz the few friends he had around there all had sense enough to move. Mom may suffer the worst but she's the reason they can't leave. There's something unsaid wrong about her and this is the "only place she feels well". Dad tries to keep it all together but eventually his efforts to save his family end up endangering every one of their lives.
This light-hearted movie took a real dark turn toward the end but never lost his appeal. I thought it had some interesting things to say about home, how we get attached to places and also just how far we will go to take care of the ones we love.
My only complaint is that Vanessa Paradis was not in it.

Meanderings about math and music

2011-10-16T16:35:00.004-04:00

I can't remember where I heard it -- probably on "Radiolab" the podcast that blows my mind every time I listen to it -- and I probably misinterpreted it anyway; but I sorta remember some mathematician somewhere saying there's really no such as random numbers -- or maybe no such thing as a random number generator. Anyway, I contend there's no such thing as random shuffle on an Ipod. Most of the time when I have mine on shuffle I don't really think about any underlying theme to the supposedly-random songs, but the other night I was driving and a song from the Monkees came on ("What am I Doing Hanging Round?")
followed by Eddy Raven's "I've Got Mexico."
I've got like 1600 songs on my Ipod. What are the odds that a song about a man who left Mexico and lost a girl would be followed by a song about a man who lost a girl and moved to Mexico? I was anxious to see what the next song would be, and it turned out to be Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" which has nothing to do with Mexico (although it does reference Texas and "San Antone" neighbors of Mexico. I got home before it could start another song but I'm sure it would have been Johnny Rodriguez's "Riding My Thumb to Mexico".
Unless of course the Ipod realized that I was onto this little game it was playing to amuse itself. I believe this is called the Observer Effect but I could be wrong and I'm willing to bet that I am. Today I got in the car, first song up was "Ragged as the Road" by Reckless Kelly,
and #2 was "Going Mobile" from the Who. And I thought to myself -- I might have even said it out loud -- "oh, so we're doing road songs, eh?" But then the next song was the mega-depressing Christmas song "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Dan Fogelberg, by no means a road song -- unless, and this just occurred to me, you count the road the wise men traveled to give the baby Jesus those useless presents they had for him. (A few songs later when the Ipod thought I had forgotten it did try to sneak "Highway 61 Revisited" by me.)

Rob's Reviews: "A Ship Made of Paper."

2011-10-04T11:42:00.004-04:00

Scott Spencer writes about obsessive, all-consuming, damn-the-torpedoes Capital-L Love. That is why, although I recommend all of his books, he is probably never going to top "Endless Love", because that kind of love is most common to teenagers -- although most of them don't try to burn down their girlfriend's house to prove their love.
(I don't want to start talking about "Endless Love" because it's one of my favorite books ever, and I probably wouldn't get around to reviewing "Ship," but I will say this, whenever people look at me with confusion because I am unhappy that one of my favorite books is being made into a movie, well, here's a perfect example: "Endless Love" is a magnificent book, but a putrid motion picture. And more people are familiar with the film and when they think of Jade Butterfield they see Brooke Shields -- and that is a shame.)
In this book the protagonist is in his thirties, and living proof that when you chase after your heart's desire a lot of innocent people get hurt. Because of his obsession with a woman, this dude loses a girlfriend who really loves him, the love of his four-year-old stepdaughter, his house, his money, most of his law practice, the vision in one eye, and any semblance of self-respect. He also accidentally (no, really) shoots his girlfriend's husband in the throat with a bottle rocket, causing him to have a stroke. Ruined lives everywhere you look. And all for a woman whose appeal was impossible for me to see -- a woman he could never completely have, and he was okay with that. Well, as okay as this fool was about anything.
When I read "Romeo and Juliet" as a young man, I thought it was a tragedy of two star-crossed lovers whose love was too much for their narrow-minded world to contain. When I reread it now it seems like a tragedy of two knuckle-headed hormone-riddled teenagers who kill themselves rather than wait a week for their feelings to cool off. Sort of the same deal here, with David and Jade in "Endless Love" you understand those feelings -- heck, you've experienced those feelings at that age. But with the couple in "A Ship Made of Paper" you just want to shake these people and tell them to grow up.

2011-08-22T14:18:00.004-04:00

One of the things that interests me is to go back to books I've read before and see what I underlined or highlighted. Sometimes I wonder what the heck I was thinking, and sometimes I think "Great line (or good point): I certainly am an astute reader." I picked up "Precious and Few: Pop Music in the early 70's."

It looks like I only highlighted two lines in this book when I read it a few years ago. This one I think because, even though it's about a horrible song "Seasons in the Sun," the point the Brothers Breithaupt make about it is valid and funny.

When the narrator admits to "Pa-pa" (emphasis on second syllable) in a repentant, defeated voice that he was the "black sheep of the family" you have to wonder just how much of bad seed this starfish-collecting, bird-watching, tree-climbing nature boy could have been.

This next line is about the O'Jays' "Love Train" and about how sincere people were peace, love and understanding, how sure they were that we could make a better world. ". . . not since the early 70's have statements like "form a love train" been made without irony." And I think I underlined this one for a diametrically different reason that the first one. This one made me a little sad.

More of Rob's RomComs

2011-07-10T21:04:00.003-04:00

The other day I watched "Elizabethtown" and it really did not do it for me. Cameron Crowe's directorial debut was "Say Anything" and he must have said everything he had to say in that movie, cuz he hasn't done anything near that level of quality since. He has chosen to work with Kate Hudson and Tom Cruise (twice!) which should tell you something about what he understands about acting. One thing I've noticed in all his films (other than "Say Anything") is that the guy has no idea how to portray genuine emotion, which is why his soundtracks are so extensive: "Here, this song will tell you what you should be feeling now."
The biggest problem with "Elizabethtown" is its 2 hour and 3 minute running time. There may be some romcoms that need that much time, but I doubt it. Let's face it, the fun of watching romantic comedies is watching these people that we know should be together try to figure it what we know. If it takes more than ninety minutes than you are just too stupid for me to care whether you find true love or not.
Kirsten Dunst's character is evidently supposed to be quirky and endearing, but she was just weird and annoying, maybe mentally ill. She had an invisible camera that she kept taking snapshots with until I wanted to strangle her with the invisible strap.
And logistically this movie made no sense at all. In just a few days the grieving widow Susan Sarandon (way too good for this celluloid turd) took auto repair, organic cooking, plumbing repair and several other classes including tap dance -- which she learned well enough to perform at her husband's memorial service. (Hey, we all have our own ways of expressing emotion, some people tap dance, Cameron Crowe plays Tom Petty records.)
Speaking of that memorial service I really don't think any band in the world would keep playing "Freebird" after the auditorium caught fire, the sprinklers came on and all the guests left.
Oh, and scattering your dad's ashes all over the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated (while U2 plays "Pride (in the Name of Love)" of fricking course) looks like it should have some meaning -- until Orlando Bloom trivializes it by scattering some more of the ashes on a rusty metal dinosaur in some forgotten roadside attraction, and you realize -- if you haven't by now -- Cameron Crowe has no idea what he's doing.
This movie ends with a long drawn-out road trip that Kirsten sends Orlando on from Kentucky to Nebraska with a series of perfectly-timed mix CDs she made for him. This would never in a million years time out right, of course. She would have been waiting for days for him to show up at that Farmer's Market in Nowhere, Nebraska if Orlando had decided to skip that one step or if he hadn't been the one that found those clues in dog books and shoes that she left for him.
Enough. There's a lot more to hate about this movie but I gotta stop somewhere. I don't want to write a completely negative review so I will say that Paula Deen does an almost credible job of playing herself.

Romcom Review "How Do You Know"

2011-06-14T12:23:00.005-04:00

"How Do You Know" is not a great movie, not even a great romcom -- for one thing, Owen Wilson is in it. (What a talentless nudnik he is; he's also the reason I haven't seen and may never see Woody Allen's new movie "Midnight in Paris" even though it's about my favorite era -- the 20's -- and Ernest, F. Scott and Zelda are in it. But OW plays a writer in it and I'm sure they'd throw me out of the theater for booing and jeering such heinous miscasting.) And Jack Nicholson really hams it up here, leaving no scenery unchewed. Not to mention the fact that it's obvious from the very beginning where we're going, not only who the heroine will choose but who the real bad guy is behind our hero's misfortunes.
That being said, I really liked it. Saving graces include Reese Witherspoon -- who makes every movie she is 800 per cent better than it would have been without her -- and a baseball/softball backdrop. Paul Rudd's character took a while to grow on me -- he seemed a little self-absorbed, morose and insensitive at first -- but when he did I was really pulling for the guy. My wife's question when I tell her about a movie I liked is "Did you squall?" and the answer here is yes, twice. Once, when the B couple (Kathryn Hahn and Lenny Venito) got together at the hospital, that was really well done. In fact, I think it took coaching them into re-enacting it after Rudd forgets to record it that teaches our hero how to do what psychiatrist Tony Shalhoub says is the secret to happiness -- "Finding out what you want and learning how to ask for it."
(Who says romcoms aren't educational?)
I realized while I was watching this movie why I love this film genre so much. People in romantic comedies think and behave the way I think people should -- but don't -- in real life. Rudd has a choice he can either go to jail for three years for something he didn't do or he can let his no-good father, for whom he still feels an inexplicable affection go to jail for "twenty-five years to death". And he makes his decision based on whether or not he feels he has a shot with Reese Witherspoon after he gives her a jar of Play-Doh and his impassioned speech. If she doesn't throw him out on his ear, it's up the river Dad time. If she does he might as well go to jail, he's going to be miserable wherever he is anyway. That makes sense to me.
And Reese eventually chooses this unemployed, living over a bakery, under indictment schlub over a pro baseball player making 14 million dollars a year. True the ball player is a womanizer and a narcissist, and he looks like Owen Wilson but most women in the real world would stick with him. But not in romcom world, and that's why I like visiting there so often.

My 24 favorite songs

2011-05-31T10:34:00.004-04:00

Actually, I wouldn't say these are my 24 favorite songs, but it's hard to argue with the fact that they are the songs I listen to most on my I-Pod. Some are favorites, some are surprising -- embarrassing even if I believed in guilty pleasures, but I don't; I believe in pleasures. If you like a song then enjoy it, whether it's cheesy or not.
Two caveats. One, I do not count the song that is far and away the most listened to because it's not really a song; it's some surf sounds and violins I listen to at night to drown out the tinnitus so I can go to sleep. Two, my counts were somehow wiped out a few months ago and reset, so these are only my top recent choices.
2. I Was Made For Sunny Days by the Weepies. (I'll stand by this one. I love that song. And I love the Weepies and their simple, romantic but thoughtful and tuneful songs. I also love sunny days.)
3. Don't Forget Me by Harry Nilsson (Before my wife and I went on our recent trip to Belize, we finally got around to making our wills. Hers was all about property distribution and minor child care. Mine was about what music to play at my funeral. Specifically, this song.)

BTW this song might rank even higher cuz I also listen to Neko Case's cover, which is great but nowhere near Nillson's masterpiece
4. Cornbread and Butter Beans by the Carolina Chocolate Drops (I don't even know what to tell people when they ask me what kind of music I like best. I usually just tell them real country or old-timey or I say like the The Carolina Chocolate Drops.)
5. I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash. (Absolute classic, belongs on everybody's playlist)
6. Bad Romance by Lady Gaga (For the most part Lady Gaga's appeal escapes me, particularly her wardrobe evidently picked up at Elton John's yard sale, but I like this song. Even though it makes no sense.)
7. Blame it on the Rain by Milli Vanilli (Yeah, I know this band was a sham, but whoever that is singing and playing on this track made a catchy tune.)
8. Bullet by Steel Train. (Oh yeah, now you're talking. This is my absolute favorite song to listen to driving down the road with the windows down. Steel Train is my second favorite band from the Garden State. Even though they're not on this list, Gaslight Anthem is my favorite.)
9. Yes to Booty by Elizabeth Cook.
10. I'll Drink Cheap by The Fox Hunt. (Another example of my favorite type of music. "Two Yuenglings for me, two Jaeger bombs for you; Darling, I'll drink cheap so you don't have to." Now that's gallant.)

11. Love Thy Will Be Done by Martika.
12. A Little Bit Me by the Monkees (Not sure how that got on there. Not my favorite Monkees song.)
13. Bloodbuzz by The National. (If you're not familiar with this band, do your ears a favor and get familiar with them.)
14. Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith
15. Let's Just Fall by Reckless Kelly
16. Plundered My Soul by the Rolling Stones (The best of the recently- released outtakes from "Exile on Main Street.")
17. Could I Have This Dance by Anne Murray. (Before they play #3 at my funeral, I intend to dance with Kim to this one at our 50th wedding anniversary.)
18. Black, Brown and White by Big Bill Broonzy. (I was not familiar with Mr. Broonzy until I heard Tom Jones (Yes, that Tom Jones) talking about his desert island discs of which this was one. Thanks, Tom.)
19. White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes (I've always been a sucker for beautiful harmonies.)
20. All the Pretty Girls by fun.
21. Without You by Harry Nilsson. (The only solo artist with two songs on the top 24 -- there's a band with two coming up in a second -- does that mean he's my favorite singer?)
22. Bare Feet on the Dash by Jackson Taylor and the Sinners (Because when I'm driving down the road listening to "Bullet" with the windows down, Kim's bare feet on the dash is what I want to see.)
23. So What if we're Out of Tune (With the Rest of the World)? by Marah.
24. My Heart is the Bums on the Street by Marah. (Criminally underrated band. Search for them on Youtube and you get mostly misspelled Mariah Carey. Before my I-Pod counters got reset I am sure that Marah's "Angels of Destruction" was the song I listened to most.)
25. Kerosene by Miranda Lambert.

Two Movies Today

2011-05-07T21:52:00.008-04:00

One category of movie I've been using as a romcom palate cleanser are movies that I always felt like I should have seen but never actually got around to.
Most of them are movies that I've avoided because I didn't think I like them -- I recently watched "Midnight Cowboy" for the first time; I hadn't watched it before because I thought it would be bleak and dark and depressing. It actually turned out to be even worse than I thought -- not only was it bleak and dark and depressing, but Jon Voight's character of Joe Buck was so broadly drawn that he could have fit right into a Snuffy Smith comic strip, I mean, just ridiculous. It was interesting to me cause I couldn't figure out how anybody stayed awake long enough to give this thing an X rating, and because it might be the original bromance, but other than that not much to recommend it.
And there are movies that just slip through the cracks. "The Last of Sheila" which I also saw recently. This originally came out at the one time in my life when I actually saw most movies that came out in the theaters, but somehow I missed this one. I really liked it even though Raquel Welch is in trying to act, one of those mysteries that once it's all explained you want to go back and watch it again just so can kick yourself for missing all those obvious clues.
But I digress. Today's first movie was "Shaft" which must be an important film because In 2000 it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Maybe, but it was really just a typical detective story, and could have played out much the same with a white detective (minus all the "jive" and "soul brother" talk) In fact, it was originally conceived with a caucasian lead but after the success of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" they darkened it up. ("Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song", BTW, had the record for most consecutive esses in a movie title word until 1973 when Sssssss, the story of a mad scientist who turns men into snakes was released. This was during the time when I saw most movies and I saw this one -- maybe this was what I was watching when I should have been watching "The Last of Sheila")
Anyway I thought Shaft was an ass. And I know he's a "sex machine" and all that, but he had the single gayest piece of art over his bed I have ever seen -- a white man in a colorful dress with padded shoulders and hoops at the hips. The only poster that might possibly be gayer would be one of Ratso and Joe Buck strolling New York together. The chicks are crazy about him anyway, and even the police lieutenant must have lusted after him. Why else would he keep supplying Shaft with information and getting nothing from him but attitude? I did enjoy the early 70's background stuff -- the reverse Coppertone poster with the dog pulling down a black girl's bathing suit to expose her white bottom, and the movie theater showing a double feature of "Patton" and "MASH".
Ah, the 70's.
I also watched "The Parking Lot Movie" which I enjoyed. It was great hearing from other people who realize what jerks most people who drive cars are.

Rob's RomComs

2011-05-06T16:17:00.006-04:00

I've expanded my movie-watching tastes a bit lately, in that I will occasionally watch something other than a romantic comedy. But it's still by far my favorite genre. I like the envelope-pushing boundary-breaking ones as much as I like the slick by-the-numbers Hollywood pix -- unless Kate Hudson is in it, can't stand her. I have no problem with cliches if they're done with competency and respect. Perfect recent example: "The Switch" It's obvious from the second scene (if not from the poster and the title of the film) exactly where how this is going to end, but Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston and a great supporting cast (Jeff Goldblum is hilarious as the wacky friend who gives dubious advice) just reel me in. (BTW, there are quite a few actresses I like, some I will go see anything they are in, but I haven't had a favorite actor since William Powell (Google him, you young whippersnappers) but I have to say everything I've seen with Jason Bateman in it was better because he was in it.)
Yesterday I watched "Heartbreakers" and I loved this French film, best romcom I've seen in a while. Two things I really like about foreign films (three, if you can't the fact that the DVD will always have subtitles so deafies like me can follow the action, something not always true of American motion pictures -- why do some DVDs have Spanish and Portugese subtitles but not English. The second thing I'm going to do when I become President is make it a law that all movies must be subtitled for the deaf and hearing-impaired) : One, is that most of the time I don't recognize the actors (although I've seen enough French movies that now I do recognize some of l'acteurs) so I don't have the distraction of trying to follow a movie while wondering why nobody points out to the lead character "You know you look just like Robin Williams" or Brad Pitt or (God help us) Kate Hudson. You have to be a pretty good actor to make me forget I've seen you in a dozen or so other films and read about you in People magazine. Two, the actors look like real people. One problem I have with American films and TV (even my favorite show "Bones") is that you have all these cops and lawyers and doctors and people not know for their good looks all looking drop dead gorgeous. Vanessa Paradis, the star of "Heartbreakers" has a humongous gap between her two front teeth and a flat chest, two "flaws" that would have to be "fixed" before she could even get a walk-on role in Hollywood, but she's absolutely stunning (and Johnny Depp evidently agrees, she's his baby mama) and the movie gains verisimilitude because she does look like a real person and and not a botoxed, siliconed Tinseltown cyborg. Same for the male lead Romain Duris, who is handsome but not nearly as studly as he thinks. Instead of playing his part broadly for laughs every second he brings some nuance. I didn't even recognize him as the titular character in "Moliere" until the movie was over. (He was great in that one too, by the way.)
Not that this one wasn't predictable too. Alex and his sister and brother-in-law make their living by breaking up romances. Say you don't like the guy your daughter's about to marry, whip out your checkbook and call the heartbreaker team.
Since Alex is in debt to a mobster he and his team take a case that violates one of their tenets -- never try to break up a happy relationship, only one where one of the partners is unhappy, although maybe not aware of that fact yet. Juliette is in love with her handsome, rich, generous fiancee and she takes an instant dislike (of course) to Alex, who pretends to be her bodyguard. Gradually he comes to care for her -- not just to love her, that's too easy, but to like her and to want to not do anything that could spoil her chance at happiness -- and so even though he knows it means he won't get paid -- and will take one hell of an ass-cutting from the loanshark's goon -- he pulls back just before he succeeds in seducing her, which is when we realize that she has feelings for him too.
I won't say any more about how it gets to where you know it's going, other than to say that I am a connouiseur of those scenes where the guy and the girl realize where they belong and run from an airport or their own wedding back to the girl or guy that seemed so inappropriate 90 minutes ago, and this movie contains my new favorite of said scenes.
I guess I'll use a scale of one to ten stars on my movie review scale, and I have to give Heartbreakers a 10. I wouldn't change a thing. See it now, because Universal Pictures and Working Title have reportedly snapped up English remake rights to "Heartbreakers" and you know they'll mess it up, probably cast Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler to bozo it up.

Adventures in homebrewing

2011-03-08T16:04:00.005-05:00

I just got my sixth batch of homebrew into the primary fermenter today, and I thought it might be good to take a look back before they all start to melt together in my memory. The first two batches -- an Irish red ale and a raspberry wheat -- were learning experiences and as such they were successes. Actually they were not exactly failures as finished product either. The Irish red was fine if nothing spectacular, the raspberry wheat had a whinge of artificial fruit flavor from the raspberry extract, but both were drinkable -- they must have been, they're all gone.
But I think I really hit my stride with batch #3, a double chocolate stout. This was my first full boil (i.e. in a kettle big enough to boil the full five or more gallons rather than adding water after the boil to make it to the five gallon mark) and I think that's a big part of the reason it turned out so well. I've tried to do something different with each batch but nothing has resulted in a giant leap in quality the way full boil has. And another reason may well be that I freaking love chocolate, love stout and lovelovelove chocolate stout. This beer tasted great after two weeks in the bottle, but now after two months I honestly believe it is as good as any chocolate stout I've ever purchased in the store. And I'm very sad that I only have a handful of bottles left.
Batch #4 was an imperial IPA (India pale ale) and it turned out very nicely. This was my first dry hop and my first partial mash. It's very good, very hoppy and just a little darker than an IPA should be. Not sure what the problem is there, but all my brews seem to come out darker than the style guides would have. (Another reason to love Stout: it can't be too dark.) And I have every reason to believe that like the stout it will get better with age -- if I can keep my hands off it long enough to let it age.
I did a Cascade pale ale for my fifth batch, and I experimented with this one a little. I had some frozen blueberries that my son Dylan and I picked last summer and I wanted to use some of them in here. I heard a homebrew podcast where a guy was talking about brewing with blueberries and he said he didn't do anything to them (other than thaw them out) and they just floated on top of the fermenter and did not add much in the way of flavor or color. So I decided I would mash mine up some and this seemed to work out well; they did not float to the top and they turned my formerly straw-colored brew purple.
So I felt good about my decision to mash the fruit -- until bottling day, where bits of blueberry clogged up everything -- my siphoning tube, my bottling wand (as a a matter of fact, my bottling wand has still not recovered and I may have to buy another one) -- and I eventually ended up straining the beer through an old (but very clean t-shirt) and even so I ended up with only 4 gallons instead of five. Worst of all, I was half way through the bottling process when I realized I had not added any priming sugar -- which is the stuff yeast eats to carbonate the beer -- so I poured it all back in and started over, with a sick feeling because I know the more you handle the beer the more chance there is of something going wrong. And I think something did. I opened one blueberry beer today just to see how it was coming along and at least half of it fizzed out all over the counter. Overcarbonated to say the least. The second one I popped open had absolutely no carbonation whatsoever. So I'm afraid I've got a batch that's half berry wine cooler and half blueberry seltzer. But maybe I just happened to grab the two beers that got the yeast extremes and the others will be fine. Time will tell.
What I made today was a hibiscus honey wheat and so far no problems. It's pink and I'm done for a while with Crayola beers. I'm trying to decide what to do for my next batch -- maybe a mead, maybe another chocolate beer, or maybe it's time to go all grain, maybe brew in a bag. . .

2011-03-05T11:38:00.002-05:00

In 199o Charlie Sheen shot and wounded his fiance Kelly Preston. In 1994 he was sued by a college student who alleged that he struck her in the head after she declined to have sex with him.In 1996 he assaulted a porn star. In 2006, his wife at the time, the actress Denise Richards, filed a restraining order against him, saying Mr. Sheen had shoved and threatened to kill her. In December 2009, Mr. Sheen’s third wife, Brooke Mueller, a real-estate executive, called 911 after Mr. Sheen held a knife to her throat. And on Tuesday, Ms. Mueller requested a temporary restraining order against her former husband, alleging that he had threatened to cut her head off, “put it in a box and send it to your mom.”

What I want to know is why is this guy on the cover of People and US, all over television and not in prison? Hey Media, he's not a "bad boy" and there is nothing cute about this. He's a psychopath.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/opinion/04holmes.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=charlie%20sheen&st=cse

The Riotous Return of Rob's Rotgut Reviews.

2011-03-03T17:33:00.005-05:00

Today I'm trying a Smoked Porter from Stone Brewery. I like Porter, I like everything I've tried from Stone -- some of their stuff is desert island beer, stuff I would want with me if I were a castaway -- but I'm not sure what it means when a beer is smoked. Obviously it's not smoked the same way as ham, is it? I'll be having this with a smoked Gouda as well, and I don't know how they smoke cheese either. ( I tried to smoke cheese once back in the 70's but I couldn't keep the damn thing lit.)

APPEARANCE: Pours a deep, dark brown. Almost black but if you hold it up to the light you can see some ruby around the edges.

AROMA: I'm not really getting much in the olfactories. Maybe some oakiness.

TASTE: Well, no, let me do mouthfeel first:

MOUTHFEEL: Thinner than I expected -- but that's what I get for having preconceptions about a beer I know nothing about. I'm sure it's because I expect black beers to taste and feel like stout.

Okay, now TASTE: Well, one sip is enough to teach me what smoked beer is all about. You know how a good barbecued potato chip tastes. This is like that, tangy and (duh!) smoky. The smokiness lingers or dissipates briefly and then reappears again -- kind of an after-aftertaste. It's interesting how the malt and the hops are noticeable but definitely playing second or third fiddle to the smoke. The smokiness of the Gouda is even more in-your-face but maybe not as long-lasting - but I'm not sure because I've got that smoky taste in my mouth now and I'm not sure which is cheese and which is ale. (By the way, Gouda recently replaced Swiss as my number one favorite cheese -- so congratulations to Gouda.)

DRINKABILITY: Hard to say. At the Brewvival this weekend I complimented the rep from the Bruery on their sweet potato beer, and he said he liked it too, but he could only drink like one a year. I can definitely see myself drink more than one smoked porter a year; I can even see myself have two back to back, although a palate cleanser in between might be a good idea.

2011-01-05T11:38:00.004-05:00

Most movies I watch these days go in one eye and out the other, an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours even if tomorrow I don't remember much about it. Some movies stick with me though, and the documentary "Who is Harry Nilsson (and why is everybody talking about him?) is one of them.

Probably all I knew about Harry Nilsson before I saw this movie was "Everybody's Talking at Me" the theme song from Midnight Cowboy and his beautiful "Without You" and the novelty hit "Coconut" (as in "You put de lime in the coconut"). If I'd thought a little harder I might've remembered that he sang "Best Friend" the theme song of a sitcom I watched as a kid called "The Courtship of Eddie's Father." Oh, and he and John Lennon got kicked out of a nightclub for heckling the Smothers Brothers.
But now I know this guy was a true musical genius. John Lennon and Paul McCartney both said that their favorite American band was Harry Nilsson, and I think it's because he had as much talent as four very talented guys. He could write complex, witty lyrics or get right to the heart of the listener with a few perfectly-chosen words. His gift for melody was equally prodigious, and his voice was angelic and powerful.

He had something else inside him though, something that compelled him to sabotage first his career, then his talent and finally to destroy himself. Right after Nilsson Schmilsson became a huge hit, Harry split with his producer and made sure that all the tracks on he next album were too raunchy ("You're breaking my heart, you're tearing it apart, so fuck you" which Harry actually wanted to be the first single, probably because he knew there was no way the radio was going to play it) or too uncommercial to sell. He got his wish, Son Of Schmilsson was a flop, and he set to destroying his vocal instrument with drugs and alcohol and nioctine -- it's physically painful watch this guy smoke two cigarettes at a time. By the time he got together to record with John Lennon, these two seemed to be having a contest as to who could blow out their larynx first. Nilsson bragged to a friend that there was actual blood on the microphones.
What's even sadder is that by the time he meets the love of his life, the events he'd set into motion were unstoppable and he died at age 53.
And I just can't figure out why he wanted to do that.
If you can write and sing like this:

I mean, damn, isn't that a reason to live?

Day 31 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-31T18:10:00.002-05:00

Last night the mildly hoppy Dortmunder Lager felt good on my sore throat, so today I wanted to go with one that was even hoppier, and I opted for Bear Republic's Hop Rod Rye. I've had and enjoyed Bear Republic's Black Bear Stout. My review for this one is going to be brief and here it is -- I liked it, and it did exactly what I wanted it to do, which was make my sore throat feel a little better. The reason for such a wimpy review is that the sore throat has pretty much spread to the rest of my body and the mucus makes it impossible to do any kind of real review.
Even though this project is going out with a whimper and not a bang, I've enjoyed doing it very much and feel like I've learned a lot. I'll probably try something similar in the near future.

Day 30 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-30T19:48:00.003-05:00

So, a guy pulls into the parking lot today, Ohio plates and he's wearing a Great Lakes Brewing Company shirt. I had never heard of this outfit -- probably because none of their beers are yet available in South Carolina, but we talked for a few minutes about beer, and then he went on his touristy way. But later on, when he was leaving he handed me a bottle of Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold "A handcrafted Golden Lager From Cleveland, Ohio." A very friendly gesture and serendipitous because I hadn't decided what beer I was going to review tonight. From the label: Not as dry as a Pilsner or as malty as a Munich-style lager, our golden lager is a balanced beer named after Dortmund, Germany, the city where the Dortmunder style originated.
Sounds good. Let's go for it. By the way, my already puny taste buds are in worse shape than usual as I have a cold. Here's hoping I can do this beer justice. And thanks again, Ohio man.

APPEARANCE: Rich golden color with a hint of ruby. Inch and a half of white pillowy head. Not much in the way of bubble action. Lace from the top of the glass to the bottom.

AROMA: Sour with some citrus notes.

TASTE: Nicely balanced. I don't know what kind of hops they use but I like them -- although maybe it's just because the bitterness feels good on my sore throat -- subtle but pungent and the flavor lingers.

BURP TASTE: As might be expected from a beer with as few bubbles as this, there have been no eructions.

DRINKABILITY: As you may have noticed, I don't drink a lot of lagers, and I guess that's because lager to me means BudMillerCoors junk, but this I could drink -- well, if I lived in Cleveland.

Day 29 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-29T17:00:00.004-05:00

For day 29 let's try a -- no, not another Chocolate Stout. I spent all afternoon yesterday brewing up a batch of Chocolate Stout, and I'm in the mood for something a little different. So let's go with Rogue Brewing's Mocha Porter.
What? It's not the same thing. I mean, yeah, it's similar. I said I wanted something a little different, not a lot different. And Porter is not Stout and mocha is not chocolate. Is it? I'm not sure what mocha is, hang on. According to Dictionary.com, mocha is a flavoring obtained from a coffee infusion or a combined infusion of chocolate and coffee. It's also a seaport in Yemen and a glove leather, finer and thinner than doeskin, the best grades of which are made from Arabian goatskins. So I'm hoping Rogue is referring to the chocolate coffee thing. If this beer is made from glove leather it might be hard to handle.

APPEARANCE: All right, stop me if you've heard this one. It's black, though it fades to dark dark brown when held up to the light. Thin off-white head.

AROMA: Roasted malt, coffee and chocolate in that order.

TASTE: A lot more coffee than chocolate in this mocha, and more hops than I'm used to most porters and stouts -- still not a lot, but with the coffee and the roasted malts, it makes for a bitter brew. There is some dark chocolate but for some reason most of that ends up in my moustache and does not make its presence known until I lick my lips.

BURP TASTE: Pretty much all coffee.

DRINKABILITY: I've always said I like a balanced beer, but maybe I like unbalanced beers even better -- a bitter beer like this makes me crave something a little more malty, so I get to enjoy another beer.

Day 28 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-28T22:49:00.004-05:00

On day 28, we took the beer show on the road, to La Hacienda Mexican restaurant. This is one of our usual haunts and I usually get a Dos Equis -- Grande. But I wanted to try a cerveza I had never tried before, so I got a bottle of Pacifico. Big mistake, it smelled like water, tasted like watered-down water. I had to order a Dos Equis just to make sure my taste buds still worked.

Day 27 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-27T18:52:00.005-05:00

We're in the home stretch now, only five beers to go. Tonight what do you say we go with a stout? What's that? You say I've already had plenty of stouts this month. I know, I know. It is my favorite I won't deny. If all goes according to plan I intend to brew my first batch of stout tomorrow -- I want to have it ready to toast the birth of my grandson in February.
This one is different -- I mean, yeah, it's a chocolate stout but it's brewed with vanilla beans too. And vanilla is a flavor I recognize. (Which reminds me I bought some coriander the other day because it seems to pop up fairly regularly in beers and I wanted to be able to recognize it next time. Tastes like sand. So if your beer tastes like you're trying to drink it on a windy day at the beach that's coriander.)
Anyway, Aphrodite is an import, it's brewed in Quebec, Canada. The label is kinda sexy, I guess, a topless woman with vanilla in her hair and a cocoa bean necklace, which is kind of worrisome cuz I've learned not to trust sexy labels. It's an 11.5 oz bottle -- chintzy Canadians, where's my other half ounce? -- and it cost $5.99 at the Charleston Beer Exchange.

APPEARANCE: Black (of course) with a one inch brown head with slowly expanding and then bursting sinkholes.

AROMA: All chocolate, dark chocolate.

TASTE: Take that vanilla out of your hair, young lady. The taste is all cocoa. Even the mildly bitter finish feels more a dark chocolate bitterness than hoppiness. A little bit of chocolate history for you: Aztecs believed that wisdom and power came from eating the fruit of the cocoa tree, and also that it had nourishing, fortifying, and even aphrodisiac qualities. The Aztec emperor, Montezuma drank thick chocolate dyed red. The drink was so prestigious that it was served in golden goblets that were thrown away after only one use. He liked it so much that he was purported to drink 50 goblets every day! Montezuma would have loved this beer. I'm not sure how he'd feel about malted barley since the Aztecs did not have any sugar and drank their chocolate thick, cold and unsweetened, but I think he'd get used to it. I can see us now, me and Monty, toasting each other with our golden goblets after a day of building pyramids and cursing those conquistadors.

DRINKABILITY: Very, but as we've already established, I'm prejudiced.

Day 26 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-26T16:36:00.003-05:00

I can't feel too bad about never having tried this next style of beer. Black IPA hasn't been around long enough for people to even agree on what to call it -- it's also called Cascadian Dark Ale, Dark IPA, India black ale and several other things. I'm cheating a little -- well, no, not cheating, I'm changing the rules a little. Up till now I haven't looked at descriptions or other reviews of the beer I'm sampling because I didn't want it to influence my taste buds. But I'm interested to know more about this oxymoronic sounding beer and what I should be looking for when I taste it. Here's a description from the Great American Beer Fest judges: medium high to high hop bitterness, flavor and aroma with medium-high alcohol content, balanced with a medium body. . . moderate dgree of caramel malt character and medium to strong dark roasted malt flavor and aroma."
The one I'm sampling is Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale (purchased at eth Charleston Beer Exchange for $6.69), which has 90 IBU. which is high even for this high-hoppy style. But I'm not scared.

APPEARANCE: Black, with a a frothy off-white head that's not going anywhere fast. The black blocks all light so I'm not sure what the bubbles are doing.

AROMA: Pine. I smell pine. Lots of pine. And some old but not rotten plums. And I guess that's hops behind the pine and the plums.

TASTE: Wow, I just might turn into a hophead after all. I wouldn't say this is exactly balanced, because the hops do dominate from start to finish, but there is a definite undercurrent of malty, citrus sweetness fighting to get up. Not sure what happened to the pine I smelled as I don't really taste it. The black color is not the only thing different from a typical IPA. The mouthfeel is thicker too.

BURP TASTE: Oh, there's the pine!

DRINKABILITY: This is the perfect beer to drink when it's snowing outside and -- unusual for South Carolina -- it is snowing outside.

2010-12-25T11:59:00.009-05:00

A break in the beer action to talk about Christmas.
I enjoyed the Krampus beer yesterday and learning more about the Christmas Krampus. Since then I've done some more research and learned about an even odder European Christmas tradition. The Caganer is a part of many manger scenes along with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, wise men, shepherds and angels. Who is he? As near as I can determine, the name translates as the pooper and he is the guy taking a dump in the stable or somewhere in the nativity scene.(Sometimes the adults hide him and let the kids find him -- kind of like a game of "Where's Waldo Pooping"?) Although this one at a Spanish mall is not hard to find.
And this is not a new thing, the caganer has been around since the 17th century. There are lots of theories as to why he gained a place in this sacred scene -- everything from he's fertilizing the earth to a demonstration that we're all equal (cuz everybody poops).
You can also get little statues of famous people pooping to decorate your home at the holidays.
You can get presidents and popes pooping.

Even reigning royalty

This may seem odd to people like us who did not grow up with this style of Christmas decoration. But I think it's a great family tradition.

The Christmas Beer - Old Foghorn

2010-12-25T11:08:00.006-05:00

I'll never be able to try all the beers in the world; there's just too many and more and more being made all the time. But that's a good thing, it's good to live in a land of plenty. But there are also some types of beer that I have never tried -- and that's a bad thing, so I'm going to try to rectify that at least somewhat. Tomorrow I plan to have my first Black IPA, (and for those of you who don't know, IPA stands for India Pale Ale, so I'm very interested to see how a beer can be both black and pale), and today I'm going to introduce myself to Barleywine.

Or am I? Now that I look at the label of this bottle of Old Foghorn a little closer, I see it says "Barleywine Style" not "Barleywine". Ordinarily I wouldn't think anything of it, but this is from Anchor Brewing Company, who already got off on the wrong foot with me by trying to slip me an Old Milwaukee in the guise of their flagship brew Anchor Steam. So I don't trust them completely, but I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.

All right, I know nothing about barleywines, so this time I'm going in with a true Zen mind.

APPEARANCE: Dark copper in color, pillowy white head that is in no hurry to go anywhere. Lace that you could make light-blocking curtains out of, bubbles that mosey up to the top.

AROMA: You can definitely smell the alcohol, some fruitiness -- maybe grapefruit.

TASTE: Very interesting combination of flavors. First alcohol, then hops and finally -- and I don't know how they do this, since I understand it the back of the tongue is where you experience hop bitterness the most -- a malty taste at the finish.

MOUTHFEEL: This one lingers with you, and you can feel it warming your frozen Wintery bones.

BURP TASTE: So far no burps. Kind of surprising because there are a lot of bubbles.

DRINKABILITY: I really like this. A great Winter warmer. Maybe I need to give Anchor Steam another try.

Merry Christmas, y'all. Don't let the Krampus get you.

Christmas with Krampus

2010-12-24T10:04:00.009-05:00

In the USA the worst thing that can happen to children whose names are on Santa's "naughty" list is they may get a lump of coal or maybe a bundle of switches in their Christmas stockings. But in Austria, Hungary and some other European countries Saint Nick brings along a companion -- a demon called the Krampus, a cloven-hooved goat-horned demon with a tongue that would make Gene Simmons hang his head in shame who punishes bad children, beating them with sticks and chains -- if they're naughty enough he throws them in a basket and hauls them off to hell.

That coal's looking pretty good right now, isn't it?

Southern Tier Brewing Company -- who sound like they might be local (or at least regional) but who are actually headquartered in Lakewood, New York -- have a Christmas lager honoring this dark Christmas tradition.

This review is by request for my brother-in-law, Jamie.

(When he's not torturing and murdering children, Krampus is lusting after women -- though he seems a bit perplexed by this one. Can anybody translate?)

All right, let's go:

APPEARANCE: Light copper color, frothy head.

Oh by the way, this is one of those rare occasions when my girlfriend Kim and I are off on the same day so I've roped her into co-reviewing.

AROMA: Kim says it smells a little fishy and a little citrusy. I agree but then she smelled first and my olfactories are very susceptible to suggestion; so much so that if I smell a beer after India it smells a little bit like soy sauce.

TASTE: Very hoppy and, at 9% ABV, very warming. My co-reviewer says that beers -- for lack of a better word -- are either tight or broad to her taste buds. She says that this beer is tight but not as tight as Anchor Steam. Asked to elaborate she says tight beers are more crisp and refreshing. An example of a broad beer would be Blue Moon. I think I would like to have more co-reviewers. It's interesting to me how other people taste -- well, that didn't sound right, but you know what I mean.

BURP TASTE: Amazingly enough the burps are warming too. Now that's a first.

DRINKABILITY: Not a session beer at all, but a great Winter warmer. And the warmth of the burps is an added bonus.

Merry Christmas, everybody -- or as Southern Tier prefers it, "Merry Kramp-mas and to all a good pint."

Day 23 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-23T16:40:00.006-05:00

John Lyda, Brewmaster and vice-president at Highland Brewing Company in Asheville, North Carolina recently said, "If you don't have to guess what flavor is in the beer, there's too much!"
I found this enormously encouraging, because as you know my beer reviewing is almost all guesswork. Tonight I'm going to guess with a beer brewed in Asheville, although not from Highland. It's Wee-Heavy-Er, a Scotch Ale that I must have picked up at Total Wine cuz it doesn't have a price tag like the Beer Exchange's do. It was a while back so I don't remember how much it cost. (Actually, I just remembered I bought this at Earth Fare -- still don't know how much, not much around 5 bucks.)

The first thing that stands out about the label is that it says "French Broad" but it actually depicts a Scottish dude. That, I say that is a joke, son. It's actually from the French Broad Brewing Company. According to exploreasheville.com:

Asheville has long been famous for its stunning scenery, lively mountain music and famous attractions such as Biltmore and the Blue Ridge Parkway. And now, it’s become the craft-brewing center of the Southeast. Asheville’s brewing scene has garnered so much enthusiasm that it was named the winner of the Examiner’s "Beer City, USA" poll in 2010.

The Asheville area is home to ten craft breweries. On any given day, about 50 local beers can be enjoyed in Asheville, served on draft and in bottles. Tourists regularly travel here to sample and savor Asheville’s beer flavors, ranging from creamy, mild golden ales to robust Belgian-style brews.

So if you're planning your next beer vacation. . .

All right, enough messing, let's get to guessing.

APPEARANCE: Very interesting color. Dark brown, almost cola colored but held up to the light it turns a deep amber, and I swear it looks redder and slightly darker at the top of the glass than the bottom, but that could be a trick of this glass's shape. Small off-white head that faded fairly quickly though not entirely. And not even enough lace to make a g-string for Barbie.

AROMA: Moss, some nuttiness or something equally earthy -- but again, I'm guessing.

TASTE: Nice balance of flavors, more malt than anything else but hops demand your attention as well. For those of you keeping score at home this ale's specs are (according to the label) IBU - 24, SRM 14.5 and OG 17 degrees P. IBUs are individual bittering units or something similar, OG is original gravity, and I have no idea what SRM means, but since we're guessing I'll go with "Scottish Real Manliness."

I really do like a balanced brew like this. It's more fun to sip and pay attention to than one that's overbalanced one way or another. Here the second it gets a little sweet a little bit of bitter pops up.

MOUTH FEEL: Nice medium body. It feels chocolatey even though it doesn't taste like chocolate if that makes any sense. I mean, it leaves your tongue happy, like it had some chocolate.

BURP TASTE: Satisfying enough that you wish it had more bubbles.

DRINKABILITY: If you can't tell from this rave review, I find this beer very drinkable. The ABV is not sky high at 7% but it could sneak up on you because the alcohol taste is not pronounced.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and -- assuming I don't run off to Asheville and hop on one of their brews cruises -- we will find out what happens to bad little boys and girls. Stay tuned.

Day 22 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-23T08:02:00.003-05:00

I first had Leinenkugul's beer when we took a trip to Wisconsin a few years ago. At that time it wasn't available here. In addition to their original lager, I also sampled their Honey Weiss, Berry Weiss and Sunset Wheat. When it became available here I also had their Summer Shandy. I had never tried their seasonal Fireside Nut Brown Ale (available only in November and December.) I picked up a six-pack at Harris-Teeter for $7.99.
The Jacob Leinenkugel is the seventh oldest brewery in the United States, even though it is no longer the family owned business it once was since it was purchased by Miller several years ago -- or "merged" with Miller as Leinie puts it on their website.

And away we go --

You know, a good beer blogger is not just a beer reviewer, he's a graphic designer as well. I thought it would be cool to have a picture of Fireside Nut Brown Ale by my fireside. Clever, eh?
Yeah, well my FBFF (Feline Best Friend Forever) didn't think so either. She thought I should pay attention to her and she has remarkably good aim with her tail.

APPEARANCE: Frothy head, nice effervescence. Color could not get any more copper.
(Well, that's a little better picture.)

AROMA: I'm looking for nuts, but I'm getting soap. But good soap, not cheap stuff.

TASTE: Again I think my expectations are messing me up. This feels more like an Autumn ale than a Winter. This is thinner, no warmth, very mild hop bitterness. I've recently been introduced to the concept of session beers -- which I take to mean beers you can drink several of, unlike a lot of craft beers which can be a little overwhelming after a couple. This would be a good session beer. It's quality stuff but nothing really stands out.

BURP TASTE: On the other hand, the burps are very refreshing -- and there are a lot of them, I did mention this brew was bubbly, did I not? More hops evident on the eruction than on initial intake.

DRINKABILITY: I think on another night this might have hit the spot, but I worked eleven hours, the sun never really came out and I was looking for something more in the way of alcoholic solace.

2010-12-21T09:40:00.008-05:00

Tonight's beer is Entire Butt, and I've been waiting all day to do this joke, so let's get it out of the way -- there is no way this beer could be half-ass.
Ha ha! Get it? Entire Butt? Half-ass?
Oh, and despite what you might think, this beer is not related to Full Moon either
Ahem, but seriously folks, show some respect. This beer is made by a crack team of brewers.

(Oh, also if you do a Google image search for "entire butt" make sure you have safe search enabled to avoid retinal meltdown.)

Entire Butt is actually an old-fashioned term. As I've mentioned before, an exact definition of porter is hard to find but it used to refer to a blending of different beers that porters liked to drink. This ale is imported from Shropshire, England. From the importer's website:

Salopian’s Entire Butt is a bold recreation of a historical porter, which was blended from a variety of ales. The original English term for porter, “Entire Butt,” means essentially “the whole barrel.” This translates roughly into American English as “everything but the kitchen sink.” And this beer surely is that. It is made with 14 different malts and 3 hop varieties to achieve the effect of a blend of ales. Overkill? Perhaps, but it is hard to argue with the results.

APPEARANCE: Looks black as stout when you pour it, but if you hold it to the light it changes to a dark dark brown with a little bit of ruby round the edges. Head that dissipates rather quickly, but the lace has a little more staying power.

AROMA: Malty for sure. Something else going on in there but I'm not sure what. And this is probably as good a place as any to announce that I won't be doing daily beer reviews in January, but I'm not stopping at 31. I'll still be reviewing, just irregularly. One thing I want to do is work on my taste buds. Taste some coriander and some of the other spices that show up regularly -- eat some raw hops, as Anonymous is urging me to do. That way these reviews will hopefully be a bit more insightful.

TASTE: Misleading, because from the color I'm expecting something chocolatey or roasty and it's all malt. Get a lot of malt flavor and it's kind of like raw bread dough, one of my secret vices.

BURP TASTE: So far, no burps. Now that I think about it, there's not a lot of bubble action -- whoops, spoke too soon. Just had an eruction. It tasted very mild but biscuity.

DRINKABILITY: There is like no hop action at all, and this beer does not have a high ABV (so it won't knock you on your ass -- false advertising!), and I could see drinking a few of these.

BTW Paste Magazine recently released its list of the 25 best new beers of 2010, and I've only tried one of them. This is a hipster magazine and a lot of them are only available regionally but I would love to try all of them particularly #11.
Oh, the one I have tried? #12 Sexual Chocolate. Who could turn that down?

It's Day 20 -- Let's Thai one on.

2010-12-20T17:07:00.006-05:00

Okay, here's one I bet you haven't tried. Westbrook Brewing Company is a brand new brewery in Mount Pleasant. In fact, as near as I can tell, their facility is still under construction. But they must have the important stuff in place already, because today at the Charleston Beer Exchange they had a tasting and growler fill event. They had three beers available for tasting -- Batch #1, which as the name might imply is the first batch they brewed, a Belgian pale ale (that's the one you'll want to try, Anonymous) and a White Thai. I sampled them all -- by the way, it was only a short time ago that a beer tasting like this would have been illegal in South Carolina, and it's evidently still heavily regulated, no more than 2 ounce samples, et cetera -- but I opted for the White Thai when it came time to fill my growler.
Edward Westbrook, the founder and CEO was on hand, and he seemed like a nice young man. Kind of low key, not a hard sell kind of guy at all, but friendly and knowledgeable.

Here we go:

APPEARANCE: Now that is a white head -- and I don't mean a blemish, it's beautiful and fluffy, like looking down on clouds from heaven. More lace than a Victoria's secret catalog. The color of the beer is pale and cloudy.

(Yes, I know I'm not pointing at the head. Give me a break, I just learned how to work the timer on my camera.)

AROMA: Spice -- but which spices other than ginger I couldn't say. I am going to research spices and at least learn what coriander and these other things taste like.

TASTE: Your tastebuds get a double tingle as the hops come in right after the ginger starts to fade. There is a lot of spice going on, but it's almost all undertones. Nothing overwhelming. There's something lemony in the finish too.

BURP TASTE: Nondescript.

DRINKABILITY: The warming effects of the ginger make it nice for a winter brew, and the lemony finish make it a possible summer ale as well. Westbrook, I am impressed.

(Look at that lace!)

By the way I also picked up a beer called Entire Butt which I hope to review in the next day or so. I know nothing about it but I couldn't resist the combination of white Thai and tails.

Day 19 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

2010-12-19T21:07:00.004-05:00

It's been a busy weekend -- weddings and parties, and believe it or not, I'm a little tired of drinking beer. But don't worry, I won't let you down. For day 19, I'm going with Ephemere from Unibroue which is an ale brewed with apple juice, coriander, curacao peels and other natural flavors. I confess I haven't done my coriander and curacao homework so it's unlikely I'll be able to pick them out, but I love apples so maybe I've got a shot there.

APPEARANCE: Looks like unfiltered apple juice. What color is that? Not much head or lace, but a busy effervescence.

AROMA: Apples and not just any apples -- but green apples, sour green apples, Granny Smith apples. Hey hey, how about that?

TASTE: Plums and Band-aids. No, I'm kidding. It tastes like apples, but it's not sweet, or not overly sweet. The hops jump in there and make their presence known before you start thining you're drinking apple juice.

BURP TASTE: All apple. It's weird to have your breath taste fresher after a burp than before.

DRINKABILITY: A good choice for when you're tired of drinking beer. If it was a little sweeter it would be a good summer ale.

2010-12-18T20:56:00.003-05:00

Man, it is cold out there today and I've been out in it most of the afternoon. You know what that means -- time for a beer that can warm you up a little. Yep, a stout. This one is from Dogfish Head and it's got chicory and organic Mexican coffee in it.

APPEARANCE: Yep, that's stout, all right. Black as der fuhrer's heart. The label says it has a bone white head, but that's not how I'd describe it. It may look white compared to the beer's blackness, but it's really more of a tan and it didn't last long enough for me to get a second opinion. No lace to speak of either.

AROMA: Coffee, and something like vanilla. I've never tasted chicory, so maybe that's what that is.

TASTE: Tastes like cold coffee, only not nearly as bitter. There is some bitterness there, but it's not as pronounced as it is in coffee, or as tingly as hoppy bitterness usually is. I'm going to assume that's the chicory. According to Wikipedia, chicory is used as a coffee substitute, so that makes sense. I made my wife take a sip of this. She doesn't like stouts, but she is a big coffee drinker. She voluntarily took another sip -- which means she liked it.

BURP TASTE: No burps. I'm surprised at how much this disappoints me.

MOUTHFEEL: Not as thick as most stouts, maybe because it lacks that chocolatey richness that I associate with this style.

DRINKABILITY: If you like coffee and beer, you'll love it. Me, I guess I'm more of a beer and hot chocolate man.

Day 17 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-18T11:01:00.008-05:00

Yes, yes, I know I'm late. If you want to ensure this never happens again, donate enough to this blog so that I can ditch that pesky job that interferes so much with my beer-drinking and blogging time.
Day 17's beer is Affligem, a Belgian Tripel. This beer was chosen and purchased by my brother John, who often comments here anonymously -- well, anonymously until just now. There is an important lesson in this, folks. If you have a request for a beer that you'd like the Green Genius to review, if you buy that beer and bring it to my house, your request shoots all the way up to the top of the list.

I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do justice to this beer for several reasons. One you probably already about it and that is I'm not really able to do justice to most of the beers I've reviewed this month, my palate is quite an ignorant little thing -- but it's learning. However my inadequacies as beer reviewer were brought home when John -- who has a nonchalant attitude toward beer reviewing and says all that matters is whether you like it or not -- nonetheless after one sip of Backwoods Bastard he described its "pillowy head" and the tastes of blackstrap molasses, chocolate and coffee. Which brings me to the second reason for the tardiness of this review -- we didn't stop after Affligem (which is 9.5% ABV) but had a Backwoods Bastard (10 %) and then a Pabst Blue Ribbon (?!). Also I couldn't find a pen or a good cartoon movie to occupy John's kid, Hannah Banana. And I was enjoying his stories about his trip to Belgium too much to take much notes even after I found a pen.

Enough excuses? Okay, here we go:

This is a great label. It not only tells you what glass to use but how to pour it so the yeast at the bottom of the bottle does not go into the glass -- though they point out if you like a nuttier flavor, then pour the yeast out too, which is what John did. It won the World Beer Cup in 1996, 2004, and 2008. This is an abbey beer, brewed by monks, and the Affligem Abbey was founded in 1074 and "Artifacts indicate the abbey was brewing beer for pilgrims as early as 1129." Wow, that makes Guinness's 1759 (which I use as a benchmark for venerable brews) look like a Johnny-come-lately.

APPEARANCE: Beautiful copper color. We were using different style glasses and mine appeared more orange than John's. I hate to sound so unoriginal but I think the perfect term for the head on this beer is "pillowy."

AROMA: I smelled oranges, but I'm not sure if that's because there was anything orangey in he bouquet or if I had oranges on the brain because I had seen orange in the glass.

TASTE: Prefect blending of malts, hops and alcohol. Nothing dominated and nothing faded. I really enjoyed this beer, but I think the difference in where each of us are in beer journey became obvious after we shared one of my new favorites the Backwoods Bastard, and I could see that what John really likes is a clearing away of extraneous flavors and I like all that molasses and chocolate and stuff.

BURP TASTE: It seems sort of sacrilegious to talk about abbey ale belches, but the Belgians do like bubbles and you know what bubbles do. The burps were mild and enjoyable.

DRINKABILITY: This beer is very smooth, so easy to drink. According to Wikipedia the Affligem brewery (though not the abbey) is now owned by Heineken. Hopefully they won't dumb it down too much.

2010-12-16T19:16:00.006-05:00

Halfway through the 31 Beers of Christmas Project and what have I learned so far? I don't like beers with sexy snakes on the label, but I do like Scotch Ales. And I'm going to have another one tonight. This is Kilt Lifter from Moylan's Brewery in Novato, California. The label is adorned with all the many championship trophies this ale has won, at the World Beer Championship where it won Gold in 1997, 1998, 2003 and 2009. Add to that some Best of the West bling and California Champions at the US Beer Tasting Championships 7 out of the last 8 years. All of a sudden that blue ribbon Pabst won back in 1896 don't look so impressive, does it?
Moylan's also wants me to "drink safely" and apparently that entails getting a good grip on your mug.
I'm ready.

APPEARANCE: A very dark brown, no light gets through it but it's not black like stout. So dark it's hard to see what the bubbles are up to, but they keep coming up and the head is lasting so I assume the bubbles are doing their job.

AROMA: Is dark a smell? No, then let's go with mulch -- mulch with a dash of sweetness.

TASTE: A nice balance of malt and hops. Usually on beers with a higher ABV -- this is 8% -- you taste alcohol first, but here it's actually the last thing you taste. I really like this, but it seems to be lacking something that Backwoods Bastard had. I know BB was a Wee Heavy and this is a Scotch Ale so maybe it's not a fair comparison. But I think what I liked about the Bastard was the bourbon flavors that came through from being aged in bourbon barrels.
Hey, maybe in January I'll review a bourbon every day.

BURP TASTE: Not very gaseous, and the burps are almost tasteless, just a little maltiness.

DRINKABILITY: Very nice. If I hadn't had a Backwoods Bastard first this probably would have made a bigger impression on me.

Steamy Day 15

2010-12-15T14:20:00.007-05:00

Now here's one that I'm a little embarrassed to admit I've never tried. Anchor Steam holds a very important place in American brewing history. It's been made in San Francisco since 1896, which makes it only 137 years younger than Guinness, and only 67 years younger than Yuengling, America's oldest brewery. So they've been around for a while.
More importantly, most people agree that the whole craft beer movement started in 1965 when Fritz Maytag bought the Anchor Steam Brewery and -- well, I'll let a San Francisco beer blogger explain it:
Maytag’s and Anchor’s contributions to the microbrewery revolution cannot be overstated. They gave us the first authentic American beers since Prohibition by brewing beers with real flavor and body. Today, there are once again 1,500 craft breweries in the US, and nearly all use stainless steel, brew all malt ales (instead of cheaper adjuncts such as rice and corn), experiment with whole hop cones and dry-hopping for added bitterness and fragrant aromas, and create dozens of styles. But it all started with Anchor during its first decade under Maytag’s watch and wallet. While California Commons (Anchor trademarked the word “Steam” beer), porters, American pale ales, barleywines, and wheat beers are pedestrian today, imagine trying one for the first time. That’s exactly what area beer drinkers did back in the ‘70s entirely due to Anchor.
It should perhaps be noted that Fritz retired this year and sold the brewery to the Skyy Vodka people.
Okay, let's get to drinking:

APPEARANCE: Pours a deep, rich amber with ruby highlights tat show when held to the light. Nice head of about an inch that leaves lace as it slowly dissipates.

AROMA: Mild maltiness, like the kitchen when your grandmother baked biscuits three days ago.

TASTE: I don't know what happened to that malt I smelled, because all I taste is hops -- well, hops and a sort of metallic taste. I know it came from a bottle and even modern cans don't leave the beer tasting like tin anymore. But I swear this tastes a little like 1970's cans.

BURP TASTE: Yes, I'm adding my own category. The can taste is even more pronounced as an eruction.

MOUTHFEEL: Nice level of effervescence. Enough alcohol that I'm starting to not mind the metallic taste.

DRINKABILITY: Most of the beers I've been drinking this month are not ones that either my wallet or my waistline could afford to drink on a regular basis. This one feels more like an everyday beer. For somebody else not for me.

It occurs to me that this beer might work better paired with some foodstuff. This is something else I'm interested. Beer-food pairings. I've got some gouda, hang on.

Well, no, that didn't help much, but the cheese did sop up some of the metallic taste.

CONCLUSION: Damning with faint praise is about all I can do here. I don't hate this beer and I certainly will not be adding it the list of beers I will never try again, like I did with beer #6. But I'm not going to seek it out either.

Getting delirious on Day 14

2010-12-14T17:25:00.005-05:00

My brother John is kind of my sherpa on this trek through the worlds of interesting craft beer and homebrewing. He knows a lot about making beer, been homebrewing since the early 90's and can talk IBUs and Specific gravities with the best of them. And he knows a lot about drinking it too. He gave me my first Guinness and even though it was decades ago I'm still a little embarrassed to admit that my taste buds were not mature enough to handle it and I poured all but two sips down the drain. When I announced that I would take requests on this journey, my brother had several suggestions, most of which I couldn't pronounce and have been unable to procure, but one of his recommendations I did track down. It's Delirium Tremens a strong Belgian Ale imported from Belgium and I got this at the Charleston Beer Exchange for around 10 bucks.

I can tell you before we even start if I decide to give awards to the beers I've tried in December, it's going to be hard to beat this one in the best-looking bottle category. A beautiful ceramic bottle, foil wrapper, pink elephants, dragons and sunglass-wearing alligators dancing all over the label. It is truly a work of art. If rednecks drank this beer you could find empies for sale at the Ladson Flea Market like you now see empty empty Arizona Iced Tea bottles.

John said in his request that this beer tastes like bubblegum to him, and that's a new one on me. But having tried and enjoyed sweet potato and banana beer I think I can handle bubblegum beer.

One more background note before we get started. Wikipedia thinks the pink elephants don't belong on the label because "Although it is commonly thought that sufferers hallucinate pink elephants, which may explain its use on the beer's label, the most common animals seen in delirium tremens hallucinations are cats, dogs, and snakes." But that wouldn't make nearly as pretty a label now, would it, Wiki?

All right. Enough thinking. Let's get to drinking.

Well, it took me a minute to get it open. The foil doesn't really peel off and you have to use the barbed wire contraption underneath. Then there's a cork, which pops off with a satisfying champagne-y pop!

APPEARANCE: I'm a little disappointed that it's not pink. I mean what color would you expect a bubble gum beer to be? It is in fact a very pale tan with a nice inch or so of head that doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon. And I don't think I've ever seen so many bubbles in a glass of beer -- there's thousands of them and they just keep coming.

AROMA: Sweet. Actually I'm getting more fruit than I did from any of the fruit beers. If I had to try to guess what fruit dominates I'd go with peach.

TASTE: Well, I think I may taste what John is talking about, but I don't think bubble gum is how I would describe it. It's a kind of fruity sweetness that dances on your tongue just long enough to counterbalance the strong alcohol taste and then disappears. Maybe more than any beer so far this month, this one really makes me feel inadequate in my descriptive powers. As soon as I think I've got a handle on a flavor something else comes to the surface. It's complex but fun, how about that? There's a lot going on, and all of it is enjoyable.

MOUTHFEEL: Again, see TASTE. I have a hard time telling the difference. I can tell you that it is very bubbly and therefore very gaseous. The burps taste as complex as the beer.

DRINKABILITY: Honestly I feel like I've had a four course dinner. Very filling is what I'm trying to say.

Day 13 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-13T20:07:00.002-05:00

This one's gonna be brief. Not only was it a long work day and a long ride home but I woke up at 4:00 am with a toothache and it's been paining me all day. I can't wait to dig out the heavy duty pain killers and no doubt my taste buds will get caught in the crossfire.
Meantime, I've got Harvest Ale from Founders. I've enjoyed everything from these guys especially Backwoods Bastard, my favorite beer so far this month. Harvest Ale is wet-hopped, which means the hops are fresh not dried,and it has 70 IBU's, which is a respectable amount for sure, 6.5% ABV. I picked this up at Total Wine but I don't remember how much I paid for it -- 2 or 3 bucks.

APPEARANCE: One of the lighter beers I've tried this month, only slightly darker than your typical BudMillerCoors. Nice 1/4 inch head with some legs on it.

AROMA: Hops. Maybe some pepper. Hops always smell kinda peppery to me, so take that with a grain of. . .well. . . salt.

TASTE: Hmmm, I don't know that I've ever had a wet-hopped ale, and there's a definite difference. That back of the tongue tingle is less obvious but it does linger on the tongue for some time afterwards. There aren't really any other flavors that I'm picking up. And a burp tasted like nothing but hops.

MOUTHFEEL: Like most hoppy beers -- wet or dry -- you can't really drink a lot of this at one go. Hops kind of demand that you slow down and pay attention to them.

DRINKABILITY: I like it. It's very overbalanced on the hoppy end of the scale so it makes me crave malt, but as a hoppy beer -- and a change from the malty ones -- it's quite nice. I'm not 100 per cent on wet hopping yet though. I need to try a few more before I make up my mind.

Tomorrow -- assuming I'm not in the dental emergency room -- another request, this one from my brother. Delirium Tremens, which he says tastes like bubble gum. Can't wait.

Banana Bread Beer for Brunch

2010-12-12T12:10:00.006-05:00

I've got a Christmas party to go to tonight, and I've got a feeling it's going to be alcohol-free. And even if it's not I don't think a good guest sits in the corner sipping and sniffing beers with his eyes closed, wishing he had a better nose and scribbling down his rambling, barely cohesive thoughts on the beverage he's supposed to be enjoying. But since I don't want to get behind again on my reviews, just for y'all, I'm going to make the ultimate sacrifice -- I am going to have beer for brunch.
It's okay, don't worry, this stuff is healthy - made with real bananas, which is good (potassium and some other healthy junk) and they're fair trade bananas, so it's good for your karma too. (It also says in the fine print says "banana flavor added" so that's a little less good.)
From the label: "Tempting banoffee aromas (banoffee? what is that? some kind of banana coffee, what have I got myself into? Hang on a minute, I gotta Google that -- oh well, that's okay, according to Wikipedia Banoffee is " is an English pastry based dessert made from bananas, cream, toffee from boiled condensed milk (or dulce de leche), either on a pastry base or one made from crumbled biscuits and butter. Some versions of the recipe also include chocolate and/or coffee. Its name is a portmanteau constructed from the words "banana" and "toffee" That sounds delicious.) and flavors are balanced by the rich silkiness of a masterful malt bland and the peppery spice of the freshest, ripest hops. (That sounds good, I like balance in my beers.) I also learned that "long ago, ale was known as "liquid bread," back in the good old days when you could literally drink a toast. Ha ha.
This is our first import; it's from Wells and Young Brewery Company in Bedford, UK. I picked it up at Total Wine for $4.99 (minus a dollar, I had a coupon.) It's ABV is 5.2%. And it's by request for Lisa the Librarian.

Enough preliminaries. Bring on the bananas.

APPEARANCE: Pours a nice copper color, with a thin head that lingers and leaves lace. Nice effervescence.

AROMA: Not surprisingly, it smells like bananas. Not overwhelmingly but definitely. Mild spice aroma too, but since it's not cinnamon I can't identify it.

TASTE: Not nearly as sweet as I'd been thinking it might be. You get hit with banana as soon as it hits your lips, but it's not cloying as some fruit beers can be, and by the time it finishes its trek through your mouth you finish with a pleasant mild hop tingle. So the label didn't lie. This beer is nicely balanced.
(Update: If you burp afterward the taste is all banana.)

MOUTHFEEL: Honestly, I am having a hard time differentiating mouthfeel and taste. It feels wet and fruity (no, that's taste) and bubbly.

DRINKABILITY: Very smooth, goes down easy. Unlike a lot of fruit ales, I wouldn't mind having more than one. Like most fruit ales, I can see how this would be even better in the summertime.

Now I just wish I had a banoffee for dessert.

On the 11th beer of Christmas. . .

2010-12-11T17:05:00.003-05:00

Wasn't sure if I wanted another stout tonight or a fruit beer, then I realized I don't have to choose. I've got a cherry stout in the fridge -- which I picked up at Total Wine for $3.49. I've had cherry stout before but not many, not for a long time and not from Bell's. This cherry stout like the previous one is brewed in Michigan which must the only place in America cherries grow.
Kind of skimpy on art and info on the label. A picture of a tree with only three cherries (which have fallen off the tree) which doesn't sound like much but they are enormous. Each one as big as the entire tree trunk; it's a wonder the tree could hold them at all. On the back it says "A mysterious dance of tart Michigan cherries with the dark, roasted malts of a big and bold stout."

Enough thinking; let's get to drinking:

APPEARANCE: Pours inky black with a caramel-colored head that dissipated before I could photograph it. I held it up to the light to see if there were any ruby tints but no, it's all black. Not much in the way of bubbles either. This doesn't look like cola, flat or fluffy. It looks like a glass of ink or -- I hesitate to say it -- soy sauce.

AROMA: Dark chocolate, dark fruit.

TASTE: Very interesting. It seems like I can taste cherries first, but they're sour cherries, not sweet. Then the bitter dark chocolate taste takes center stage and then when you swallow the cherry taste returns, this time cleaner and lighter than before. I can't detect any hops at all. The bitterness is all from the cherries. How can I tell? Hop bitterness feels different like a tingle on your taste buds, especially at the back of the mouth. This is more of an all-over tongue experience.

MOUTHFEEL: Not nearly as thick as most stouts. The aftertaste of sour cherries and dark chocolate lingers for a long time.

DRINKABILITY: Very refreshing. But as I'm learning about my beer tastes, whenever I drink something way overbalanced one way or the other -- in this case malts -- it makes me crave something with a little of what's missing -- in this case hops.

Random beer question

2010-12-11T10:54:00.005-05:00

I think it's cool that so many craft breweries sell hats and shirts and stuff with their logo, but why do they all sell lip balm? Is it for those times when you can't drink but miss the taste of beer on your lips?

Just wondering. . .

Day 10 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-10T17:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I mentioned the raspberry wheat ale homebrew that I bottled recently and I said I'd probably review it next week. But talking about it got me thinking about it, and thinking about it got me impatient to try it. So even though it really should sit for another week, I'm going to try one tonight. If it's nasty I've got an excuse and a slender hope that it might get better.

APPEARANCE: Nice inch to an inch and a half head. It looks darker than I was expecting. ( Come to think of it, my first batch, an Irish red ale, turned out darker than it should have. Any of you homebrewers have any thoughts on why that might be?)

AROMA: Definitely fruity. If I didn't know better though I would probably guess blueberries.

TASTE: Well, modesty forbids me from getting too exuberant, but it's definitely not nasty. (Yay!) The fruit and the sweetness are not overwhelming, more of a strong undertone. Although successive sips do seem sweeter than the first, and try as I might I can't find the hops. Still, I was already nostalgic for summer, and this intensified that feeling. This would be delicious on the beach when it's 85 degrees outside. I drank this at room temperature because I hadn't decided I was going to drink it yet, and it would be even better cold -- even though room temperature the last couple days feels pretty cold too.

MOUTHFEEL: My only complaint -- and this maybe should have gone in the previous section since it's a taste issue and not a textural one -- is that the raspberries have that artificial sweetener aftertaste. My next fruit beer will be made with all fruits. I've got a freezerful of blueberries I picked last summer, maybe we'll use them.

DRINKABILITY: Very easy on the tastebuds. I can see knocking back a few of these, unlike so many of the more complicated beers I've had this month.

Day 9 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-09T17:55:00.000-05:00

One day next week I will try a beer that nobody has ever tried before. I know because I made it, it's a raspberry wheat -- admittedly more of a summer ale than a winter warmer, but I have high hopes for it. I am really looking forward to the homebrew project after that, which is a chocolate stout. Dark beers like porter and stout are my favorite -- but of course, wee heavies are making their move on my personal hit parade and there are some styles I haven't even tried yet -- like barleywine, which I'll probably get to next week as well.
Anyway, I was thinking about chocolate and about stouts when I chose the beer for day 9. It's a -- surprise -- chocolate stout. No, I take that back, it's a double chocolate stout. And it was purchased at Earth Fare for $4.99.
I have a stout glass. It's actually an Old Rasputin glass, but since we're not in Belgium, I think it'll be okay to pour Young's into it.

APPEARANCE: Now that's some head. More than a third of the glass and lingering. Big bubbles that turn slowly to lace. As "Blak as a fende in helle" to quote Geoffrey Chaucer. (I think he means "black as a fiend in hell.". Geoff was a great tale-teller but not much of a speller.)

AROMA: Dark chocolate, no question about it. Apparently the way to get my taste buds' attention is to double up on the ingredients you want to emphasize. There's something else there that I can't get a handle on, mainly because the chocolate overwhelms it -- No, India, it's not soy sauce.

TASTE: Not surprisingly, it tastes like chocolate. Not overly sweet like milk chocolate but not as bitter as dark chocolate. If this were an actual chocolate bar I'd estimate it at around 60% cocoa. Other than that, not much. The chocolate is overwhelming -- not that that's a bad thing. If my homebrew tastes anywhere near this chocolatey I'll be ecstatic.

MOUTHFEEL: Thinner than Guinness and some other stouts.

DRINKABILITY: I eat dark chocolate every day, but today maybe I won't. I feel like I've already had it. In other words, very edible -- I mean drinkable.

Day 8, a day late

2010-12-09T17:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know I missed a day -- I've got a great excuse -- worked 12 hours, came home and hosted a dinner party. There will probably be some more days where this happens. I work some nights in addition to long days and holiday stuff going on. But we will do 31 beers in December even if takes me till January.
So, I blew off blogging but I did not shirk on my beer drinking.
I even forced my dinner guests to give their opinions on this next brew. (And if you think my opinions are vague and inane, wait till you hear theirs.)

Okay. Everybody's got pumpkin in their Fall seasonal beers and I like a lot of them -- particularly Dogfish Head Punkin. But hey, pumpkins aren't the only Autumn vegetable. How come nobody makes a parsnip beer -- or rutubaga? I don't know, but somebody is stepping up and trying something different. I am referring to the Bruery Autumn Maple. (from their website) Brewed with 17 lbs. of yams per barrel (in other words, a lot of yams!), this autumn seasonal is a different take on the “pumpkin” beer style. Brewed with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, molasses, and maple syrup, and fermented with our traditional Belgian yeast strain, this bold and spicy beer is perfect on a cold autumn evening.
(Note to Anonymous: Purchased this ale at the Charleston Beer Exchange for eleven bucks.)

As I said, I was hoping to get a panel discussion going on this beer, but I did not choose my dinner guests on the basis of their discerning tastes in hops and malt. One guest is 7 months pregnant with my grandson so I didn't let her have more than a sip. One evidently can't tell beer from soy sauce, because every beer I give her to smell she says smells like Kikkoman. She's either a hopeless alcoholic who pours alcoholic beverages all over her Chinese food or the Olfactory Fairy who is supposed to favor females somehow passed her by. And the other one thinks that Michelob Ultra is something one should voluntarily put in one's mouth.

So here are some of their comments on the taste and smells --
"Sweet, citrusy."
"Soy sauce." (see?)
"Sour Sunny-D"
"Rotten bread."
"Grass clippings mixed with teriyaki sauce."

Unfortunately I was so busy writing down these words of wisdom I did not have time to record my own thoughts. I remember being impressed by the big frothy head. I remember thinking that sweet potatoes in beer taste a lot like pumpkins. And I remember picking out my old friend cinnamon, something my lazy-ass taste buds are evidently very sensitive to. And I remember feeling and enjoying the sensation of a cold beer somehow magically making you warmer inside.

31 Beers of Christmas, Day 7

2010-12-07T19:15:00.002-05:00

Short and sweet today, folks. It's been a long day and then a long ride home. Hopefully it won't be too sweet though; actually I had planned to bust out my bottle of Autumn Maple which is brewed with sweet potatoes and molasses, but I really don't want something quite that sweet. So I'm going with Brown Shugga from Lagunitas.

APPEARANCE: amber-brown with a good lingering head and lace.

AROMA: Definitely brown sugar, but there's something else that smells like grapefruit to me in there.

TASTE: Way more hop taste than I expected, but that's good. It's just what I was looking for. Not too sweet, not too bitter, as Goldilocks said when she finished off Baby Bear's beer "It's just right." I'm not a hophead, maybe I'm not a malthead either. Maybe I'm a middle of the roader, looking for balance.

MOUTHFEEL: It tastes so good and I am so thirsty it's not staying in my mouth long enough to really feel, but I'd say it's got a medium body.

DRINKABILITY: It's gone, so draw your own conclusion. So far this is my second favorite beer this month. Almost as good as Backwoods Bastard.

Day 6 of the 31 beers of Christmas

2010-12-06T10:50:00.006-05:00

One of the things I find most distasteful about American advertising is the shameless way they use sex to sell products. I made up my mind when I started this beer review project that I would not let my choice of beers be influenced by advertising and especially not by someone trying to draw attention away from the taste of their brew with subliminally tittilating graphics. So the fact that this next beer has an exotic-looking woman with remarkable cleavage getting ready to kiss a snake that looks like its head has been circumsized was chosen only because I was in the mood for a white lager with spices.
No, really.

APPEARANCE: Pours with almost no head -- and that's the snake's fault not mine. The last ounce or so had some clumpy cloudy stuff in it and most of it seems to be settling to the bottom of the glass. I don't think it's anything poisonous, I'm hoping it's a clump of spice. Oh, wait a minute that's what I get for staring at Lily Munster kissing Herman's snake and not actually reading the label first. It says right here it "may have a dusting of yeast. Agitate gently before serving." This is by far the palest beer I've had this month, almost as pale as the BudMillerCoors we beer snobs love to scorn. It looks like a urine sample from somebody who doesn't drink enough water and peed into a glass that somebody left orange juice pulp in.

AROMA: fruity, some pepper.

TASTE: The dominant spice is definitely pepper. Which is just a tad weird. It's got an apple juice or cider taste and feel to it. Maybe that's coriander, not pepper. The ginger that I was hoping to find hasn't materialized. This really does not taste like beer. It's getting better by the middle of the glass, might have even had a taste of ginger before it -- like the beer taste -- was overwhelmed by the coriander -- or pepper.

MOUTHFEEL: As previously mentioned, it feels like cider that somebody prankishly poured pepper in.

DRINKABILITY: It probably won't come as a surprise to hear that this is not going on my list of beers to have more of.
I would however like to have a poster made of the label.

31 Beers of Christmas, Day 5

2010-12-05T18:20:00.005-05:00

It just occurred to me that this blog is kind of like an advent calendar except behind every door is a bottle of beer -- and we will go past the 25th. Behind door #5 is Samuel Adams Double Bock. Basically a strong dark lager is what it looks like to me. You know I love to read labels. This one says it's brewed with "a half a pound of malt per bottle, almost enough for a loaf of bread." Y'all know I'm a malthead and I'm looking forward to this one, but even I might be ready for a Hop Devil palate cleanser after drinking a whole loaf of wet alcoholic bread. The Sam Adams website has a lot of info on this beer -- like its whopping 323 calories per 12 ounce bottle and its 9.5% alcohol by volume, but no suggestion as to type of glass to use. So you know what that means.
It's time for Oliver Queen to spring back into action.

Here we go.

APPEARANCE: Pours a deep rich brown with ruby highlights. Almost a full inch of head that fades but not completely, thin lace.

AROMA: Smells like chocolate to me. That might be wishful thinking on my part. I have a girl in the house and I gave it to her to whiff. She sighed and said it smells like beer. (I think she's a little worn out from her weekend trip to Tybee Island.)

TASTE: Well, it doesn't taste like bread if that's what you're wondering. There's a lot of tastes going on here. There's definitely some sweetness -- caramelly, I guess -- but the hops make themselves known too. And you can definitely tell there's a lot of alcohol in there too. But surprisingly enough they balance out pretty well. The first couple of sips I wasn't too crazy about -- mostly because I wasn't expecting much from the hops, but it's growing on me as I let the beer just be what it is. There's also something smoky and something chocolatey going on too.

MOUTHFEEL: Full, very full. Appropriate I guess from a beer with as many calories as a filet mignon.

DRINKABILITY: I can't say it goes down easy. That doesn't mean it's not tasty, it just means it's complex.

Tomorrow we put sweet potatoes in our beer.

By Special Request

2010-12-04T16:48:00.009-05:00

All right, y'all ready to get festive? Today we're sampling Frosted Frog's Christmas Ale from Hoppin' Frog Brewery out of Akron, Ohio. This is the first of their beers that I've tried, I believe, but I checked out their website and they have a lot of great-looking brews that I'm looking forward to trying. I'm doing this one by request for my cousin Lori Day Marshall, and I actually had to go to two different places to find it. The Charleston Beer Exchange was out of it, but that's okay; I'm like a kid in a candy store at that place and I picked up a couple confections that I will be sampling soon. I also got to watch the hard-working proprietors there trying to satisfy a woman who said she wanted a Christmas ale but not with any spices, and although I held my tongue I did want to ask her what the hell was wrong with her, trying to bland up Christmas like that. What does she think makes an ale a Christmas ale? Correct answer -- spice.
(She wouldn't have wanted any Frosted Frog for sure. This thing looks spicy -- specifically, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg and I can't wait to see if my olfactory Olympics are paying off and I can pick these flavors out.)
So, then I went to Whole Foods and they not only had the Frog I was looking for, they had some kind of food fair going on and I got even samples to make a whole, free meal.

All right, let's get to drinking. The recommended glass for this ale is a pint glass. Green Arrow's in the dishwasher trying to recover from his battle with the Hop Devil last night. So I'm going with a Dogfish Head pint bottle. This might get me arrested in Belgium, but we live in the land of the free. (I read somewhere that in Belgium it's supposed to be very important to drink a beer in that brewery's glass and if said glass if unavailable because another barfly is using it, you have to either wait or choose something else.)

APPEARANCE: Pours a dark brown with almost no head (although this might be me falling back on my Old Milwaukee pouring habits). Looks almost like a porter but I can tell (though I don't want to jump ahead to the mouthfeel section) that it's not near as thick. Since there's no head there's no lace.

AROMA: OMG I can actually smell the cinnamon!! I am so proud of my nose. There's something else there too, something sweet but comforting, not cloying like the way the kitchen smells when your grandmother makes candy apples.

TASTE: Very interesting. You can definitely taste the spices. It's like a pumpkin pie without sugar -- except that a pumpkin pie without sugar would probably taste boring, but beer is not pie and being able to separate those autumnal spices from the deadly white powder we all snort is an experience I'm glad I've had. Hoppin' Frog is kind enough to give aspiring beer geeks like me some specs on this ale -- 8.6% alcohol by volume, 84 OG (20.1 oP) (your guess is as good as mine) and 12 IBU. IBU stands for International Bittering Units and 12 is very very low. It means the hop taste is not at the forefront like it was last night. But I must be very sensitive to IBUs because I can definitely taste some slight hoppy bitterness. BTW, 8.6 % ABV is pretty high and this is a large bottle, so if this post makes less and less sense as we go on that's why. Also BTW, because it is such a big bottle I was able to pour a second glass and this time we got a 3/4 inch that quickly dispersed. Still not much in the way of lace.

MOUTHFEEL: As I could tell from the APPEARANCE it is thinner than the porter it resembles, but it packs such a potent spice punch it feels big in your mouth.

DRINKABILITY: Like most strong beers, strong in taste and alcohol, this is not something you want to swill like BudMillerCoors. But this very festive-feeling ale forces me to paraphrase the great Tony the Tiger: Frosted Frogs? They're Gr-r-r-eat!

Hop to it -- Day 3 of the 31 beers of Christmas.

2010-12-03T17:17:00.006-05:00

After yesterday's very successful first date with Backwoods Bastard, a wee heavy ale from Founders, I decided to go for something with more pronounced hops this time. Backwoods Bastard was malty, Scotchy, bourbony and caramelly, but not hoppy. I've been impressed with the other beers I've tried from Victory Brewing so I picked up their Hop Devil Ale. From the label: The mythical HopDevil resides in the lore of farmers. Our HopDevil is the real deal. Bold, Spicy and menacingly delicious. He’s the product of distinctive American hops and meticulous craftsmanship. Arising from the heady winds of our hopback and gently tamed with time, this devil makes a great companion!

I don't know what most of that means, but I'm not scared. I can't find any suggestion as to what type of glass to use with this, so I'm going back to my old faithful Green Arrow Toon Tumbler.

SMELL: Still no females in the house, which is just as well as I'd be embarrassed if anybody saw me with my nose deep in this glass audibly sniffing -- okay, snorting, if I was smelling any harder I'd be inhaling this through my nose. I think I detect some pepper and some flowery scents.

APPEARANCE: Very pretty color, I'd call it amber. I have a chart here but I'm too lazy to use it right now. I will check on it later and if it's ruby or something else I'll report back to you. Nice head (again you're on your own for cheap jokes) a good half inch that had some staying power and lots of lace.

TASTE: Okay, yeah, that's hoppy, all right. Here's the thing about hops; you don't taste them right away; at least I don't. They don't make their presence known until you swallow the beer and that's when you notice a bitterness rising from the back of your tongue, filling your mouth and stopping just short of your sinus cavities. (Too bad, if the hops could get to your sinuses they could no doubt clear up congestion.) In most beers hops and malt compete for your taste buds' attention, and it's ideally not too sweet or too bitter. But there are hopheads who really like the bitter taste and prefer to minimize maltiness. (By the way, "hophead" is a word that has completely changed definition during my lifetime; when I was a kid "hophead" referred to a heroin addict.) And of course others who prefer not to hear much from the hops. I don't know what you call these people. I googled "malthead" and only got 13,000 results, none of which seem to refer to people who like a more malty beer, a far cry from the 150,000 for "hophead."

MOUTHFEEL: It's very thin compared to the porter of day one, and my beloved Backwoods Bastard from yesterday.

DRINKABILITY: It's very drinkable, although I don't think I'm a hophead. Not yet anyway. (As a matter of fact, I'm pouring a porter right now, to rinse out some of that bitter aftertaste.)

Tomorrow who knows? I have no idea who reads this blog, but if you have any suggestions or requests as to beers you think I should try, send them my way. If I can find 'em I'll drink 'em.

31 Beers of Christmas Day 2

2010-12-01T21:36:00.006-05:00

Up next is Backwoods Bastard from the fine folks at Founders. It doesn't actually say what kind of beer it is on the label other than it's "ale aged in bourbon barrels." According to Beer Advocate Backwoods Bastard is a Scotch Ale / Wee Heavy. This didn't tell me much, (but "wee heavy" is my new favorite oxymoron) so I did some research and learned that Wee Heavies traditionally go through a long boil in the kettle for a caramelization of the wort. This produces a deep copper to brown in colored brew. Compared to Scottish Ales, they'll be sweeter and fuller-bodied, and of course higher in alcohol, with a much more pronounced malty caramel and roasted malt flavor. A low tea-like bitterness can be found in many examples. Best served in a "thistle" glass.
Well, I didn't know what a thistle glass was, so I had to do some more research.
A "thistle glass" is a modified tulip glass that resembles Scotland's national flower.
I wasn't sure what a tulip glass was either but I didn't look it up. All this research was making me thirsty. And I already knew enough to know I don't have a thistle glass. I think I might have a tulip though. It's a souvenir from the Rain Forest Cafe in the Mall of America, and I swear I don't believe I've ever drank out of it.
Bring on the wee heavy.

All right, my first impression is that I need a smaller glass since this thing only fills up two thirds of my Mall of America souvenir. (Depending on the taste I may decide that rather than a smaller glass I need a bigger wee heavy.)

SMELL: I'm on my own here, no females in the house. I definitely don't detect any soy sauce. It's got a nice fresh baked bread kinda smell. Is that yeast or malts?

APPEARANCE: A nice little head, with just enough lace to make the glass look festive. More bubbles than our first contestant, and this is more caramel colored. So this looks like a Coke that hasn't gone flat. (Do you think I'll ever be able to become a professional beer critic if I keep comparing everything to colas?)

TASTE: Wow! That is some strong stuff. It has enough flavor that you don't really taste the alcohol until after you swallow and by then your taste buds are wondering what the hell was that? Beer? Liquor? Some weird beer cocktail concoction Rob has dreamed up? I really like the flavor, but I don't know how to describe it. Time to cheat. Here's what Founders says I should be looking for.

Expect lovely, warm smells of single malt scotch, oaky bourbon barrels, smoke, sweet caramel and roasted malts, a bit of earthy spice, and a scintilla of dark fruit. It’s a kick-back sipper made to excite the palate.

10.2% ABV 50 IBUs

Yep. What he said. Although I don't know how you get a Scotch taste from bourbon barrels. Scotch is just about the only liquor I can't stand, but it's been years since I tried any and if this is what it tastes like, maybe my taste buds have matured enough that I can appreciate it. I definitely do taste the caramel and the spice and OMG maybe even the smoke. Trying to get hold of the dark fruit, not finding it. Maybe it's at the bottom of the glass.

MOUTHFEEL: All I can tell you is that this stuff makes my mouth feel very happy. It's smooth. If I had to describe it I would compare it to Baby Bear's bed in the Goldilocks story. Not too thin, not too thick, it's just right. And very comforting. And warming on a cold winter night.

DRINKABILITY: Not something you want to just swill without tasting. This is a beer to savor, to fall in love with.

All right, well, obviously once love comes into it I've lost my objectivity. Time to watch "Bones" anyway. Tomorrow is Friday, and anything can happen.

31 Beers of Christmas Day 1

2010-12-01T10:52:00.006-05:00

So far I've only managed to quit farting around on Facebook and eBay long enough to put up 20 posts in 2010, down from 89 in 2009, 99 in 2008 and a staggering 294 in 2007. There's no way that this year is going to go down in Green Genius history as anything but paltry, but I'm going to try and salvage what I can and have a little fun at the same time.
My excuse for not writing more is the same as every other lazy occasional blogger -- no time and nothing to write about. But the truth is I do have time, I just spend it doing other things like drinking beer -- which gave me the idea for something to write about and wiped out both of my excuses.
What I am going to do is try a new beer every day in December and just write down my thoughts here. Don't expect much. I've recently started brewing my own beer and it's daunting how much there is to learn. As part of my research I bought a book on tasting beer -- and man oh man, I have a lot to learn there too. I've never tasted oak or peat or toast or bleach or "hints of Band-Aids" in my brew. But I've never let ignorance stand in my way -- in fact, I consider it an advantage since I do love to learn. I really want to taste the Band-Aids in my beer. I hate to think I'm drinking Band-Aids without even noticing.
All right, here we go. Our first beer is Exodus Porter from SweetWater Brewing Company out of Atlanta, Georgia, close enough that I think this would be kosher for Lowcountry Locavores. I just had my first Porter a couple of weeks ago. That was from Bell's and I liked it. My impression is that Porter is a lot like Stout, only not quite as thick or as black.
Judging by the label the Sweetwater guys like to fish. In fact, judging by this note on the 12 pack box ("This box contains some or all of the beers you see, depending on what we drank. What we didn't finish is inside this 12 pack. Hope the fishing is good.") they evidently love to fish. (For the record, I got lucky and all twelve of my beers were in there.)
Let's get to it, shall we? The real beer pros at Beer Advocate and Rate Beer break down the beers they judge into categories, and I'm going to do my feeble best to follow in their footsteps.

Appearance: It's pretty black, I mean you can't see through it, not much of a head but that might be due to my pouring technique. When I learned to drink beer my mentors scorned head and complained if any pitcher pourer didn't slant the glasses and pour slow enough to prevent this. It's a habit I can't break even though as I've grown older I've come to appreciate a good head. (In fact, I've grown so old I'm not even going to include the obvious joke here. If you feel deprived, feel free to insert it on your own.) It has a few bubbles around the edges and a few more escaping from the inky darkness and rising to the top. If I have to compare its appearance to something else I'd say it looks a lot like a nearly-flat Coca-Cola.

Aroma: Here my limited understanding and vocabulary fails me already. It has a nice aroma but I have no idea how to describe it. Let me whiff it again. Nope, still just smells like beer. Fortunately I have some women around here and women have much more highly evolved olfactories. Hang on.
Okay, my wife and my daughter both say it smells like soy sauce. So let's go with that. Looks like flat Coke, smells like Kikkoman. Your mouth is watering already, isn't it?

Taste: I'm happy to say that it doesn't taste like Band-Aids (unless it's supposed to and my crappy taste buds are letting me down.) I like the way it tastes. In fact, I just finished the first one. I'm going to have a second. (This will give me another chance to get some head -- and nope, still no joke.) All right, wow, that's some good head there and the beer tastes even better filtered through it, but I'm still stymied for adjectives any more descriptive than "good" or "mighty tasty."
Okay, I'm going to cheat here. I'm going to look on Rate Beer and see what I should be looking for. First of all the commercial description:

This is a classic American Porter, poured on tap it has a good head that stays and leaves a nice lace. It is defined by its chocolate malt, medium body, and smooth mouthfeel. Balanced by the Golding and Columbus hops on the finish is a hint of bitterness. Don’t be afraid of the dark.

(Okay, the part of that I understand I agree with. I just said it had good head. If lace is the (sorry) saliva-like remnants that cling to the glass then yeah, I got that too. It has a smooth mouthfeel and a mild chocolatey taste. I'll take your word on the hops.)

The first guy to review it says: "Clear, ruby-tinted chocolate with a lasting creamy head and sticky lace. Mild nose of char, cocoa, fig, and a sour caramel twang. Flavor is prickly green herb, plum, espresso with lightly soured cream, charred wood, and cocoa. Maybe a hint of caramel apple as well. Medium-heavy body is smoothly carbonated, sweet and almost sticky, but balanced by roast and a light hop tingle."
Damn, I've never tasted espresso or charred wood, so I cannot comment. Caramel apples I have had and I don't taste it here. Prickly green herb I do not know what that means. I don't even see the ruby tint. I can hold it right up to the light and some of the blackness goes dark brown, but ruby I am not seeing. I agree it's sweet and almost sticky but balanced by something that is probably roast and a light hop tingle.

Palate: I'm sorry I don't even know how this differs from Taste, but I will find out and do better in future reviews.

All right, that's it for review number one. Tomorrow a Band-Aid Brown Ale. Just kidding.

My four favorite love songs

2010-11-30T16:52:00.006-05:00

(Four is just a random number, by the way. I love love songs, but I'm just too lazy to figure out my top five -- or top ten, or top forty.)

"Evening up the Odds" by Lorrie Morgan. I guess I should start with this one, since it's our song, Kim's and mine. This was not a hit, and is not even available on I-Tunes, part of a long out of print album from Ms. Morgan. Why is it our song? Maybe because it acknowledges the difficulties of creating a love that lasts, at least as much as it does the joys of doing so.
Maybe I just think we deserve to pat ourselves on the back occasionally.

"And the odds are we're all gonna get our hearts broken someday
And the odds are some of our dreams will get left along the way
And every time you hold me close, it's the light against the dark
And here we are, evening up the odds, evening up the odds."

"Austin" by Blake Shelton. Yeah, I know, it's corny, it's overdramatic, it's over the top, it doesn't even make much sense. But add to that -- it emotionally overwhelms me every time I hear it. Half the time when it pops up on my iPod I skip it because I don't have time to pull off to to the side of the road and try to compose myself. (I'm not going to quote any lyrics so I can get through this post emotionally intact.)

"Brownsville Girl" by Bob Dylan. I might be stretching the definition of love songs to include this one, but I don't think so. Despite the inescapable presence of Gregory Peck, this song seems to me to be about a love that transcends time. Every time I hear it, there's another great line that stands out (the last time I listened to it it was this one -- "And you know there was somethin’ about you baby that I liked that was always too good for this world / Just like you always said there was somethin’ about me you liked / that I left behind in the French Quarter") and the last line is consistently devastating.

"So What If We're Out of Tune With the Rest of the World" by Marah. Add to the long long list of things I don't understand -- Why is Marah not the biggest, most popular band in the world? These guys and gals can do everything from hard rock to ballads to irresistible jump rope rhymes. I love this song cuz I do sometimes think that Kim and I are out of touch with the rest of the world, and belong in a world where people stay married and happy together.

"A tenner between us
And nothing to lose
By leaving everyone behind us
Silent and confused

‘Cause oooh lover
I only sing for you
So what if we’re outta tune
With the rest of the world"

The only comic strip I ever saved

2010-11-28T20:04:00.002-05:00

So, you know I love the comic medium, the combination of words and pictures seems to me the best way to tell a story. I've been pruning my comic book collection, putting a lot of stuff up on eBay, and in doing so I recently came across a comic strip from several years ago. It is interesting for several reasons. One, it's the only comic strip I ever saved. Two, it is not funny, not at all. It's Sally Forth, a strip which has never struck me as funny but this particular episode doesn't even try to be amusing. It tries -- and succeeds -- to be exceedingly depressing. Damn near suicide-inducing. But I saved it because I can empathize. Like Ted, I have seasonal affective disorder.

Greetings from the world's worst blogger

2010-10-31T19:28:00.002-04:00

As symbols of love go, this one is pretty unobtrusive. It must be, it has sat on or around our kitchen window for more than seventeen years and I don't think anyone's ever mentioned or asked about its significance. It's a bottle -- well, a mini bottle -- of Midori Liqueur that I bought for Kim back in late 1992, maybe early '93. We were in cosmetology school, I was madly in love with her but she was involved with someone else. We used to go the bar next door when school let out, usually with some other friends, occasionally just the two of us. One night I remember she said how much she loved Midori, although she was drinking something else at the time. Thinking it might be a way to earn a few points with her, I bought a mini bottle of the stuff after she left for the night and put it on her desk next morning -- probably with some green M&M's, another gift I presented her with frequently (because the green ones are supposed to be aphrodisiacal, you know, and I was trying to get her to warm to me.)
Anyway, it didn't work. Kim was not pleased that I put something I knew she wanted on her desk, as I'd hoped. She was mortified that I'd set her up with alcoholic beverages, which could conceivably get her in trouble with the school. She forgave me though, and I guess it must have meant something to her after all because we still have it.
Two more things you may not know -- Green is my favorite color, and the Japanese word for green is "midori."

2010-06-06T20:45:00.003-04:00

I seemed to have stalled out on the index of my book collection (although I do intend to get back to it), but I thought I'd try something similar with my Ipod. Pick a letter, go through the songs, see which ones I want to keep, which ones I want to let go, which ones make me wonder what the hell was I thinking?
All right, random letter generator says "P".
Here we go:

"The Painter" by I'm From Barcelona. Not to sound like what music critic Steve Almond calls a "drooling fanatic" but I freaking love I'm From Barcelona. I don't even know how to describe their sound. It's like a rock and roll glee club, in that there's about 50 members in the band and the music always makes you feel good. I realize that that description does not do justice to their unique, fun music. Wow, we're on out first song and I already realize Elvis Costello was right "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

"Pantry" by Lyle Lovett. This was one of Amazon's free weekly downloads. Not one of Lovett's best, but interesting, where a guy leaving town is concerned that his girl might have something cooking while he's gone:

Don’t cheat on me with cornbread,
Don’t cheat on me with beans
And don’t cheat on me with bacon, cooked up with collard greens
Don’t cheat on me with biscuits with jelly sweet and blue
Keep it in that place where
you know you will be true
Keep it in your pantry

"Paper Planes" by I'm From Barcelona. Okay, I'm a drooling fanatic, as I like this song even better than "The Painter." (And no, I'm From Barcelona doesn't just do songs that start with P) (And they're not from Barcelona or anywhere in Spain, the band name is a nod to the classic Britcom "Fawlty Towers". They're actually from Jönköping, Sweden.)

"Paradise" by The Blue Ridge Rangers (John Fogerty) This is a remake of a John Prine song, and I would advise anyone thinking about remaking a John Prine song to reconsider since you're never going to come close to sounding as good as the original. The lone exception to this rule? John Fogerty.

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf. A novel (with baseball commentary from Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto) as we follow a couple from first passionate gropings to ultimate disillusionment.

"Paradise City" by Guns and Roses. You've all heard this one. I have nothing to say about this song, but I am wondering if I'm the last guy in the world to realize that "Axl Rose" is an anagram of "oral sex."

"Party on the Everglades" by Jim's Big Ego. I ordered Jim's Big Ego's CD "They're Everywhere" only because immortal comic book artist Carmine Infantino did the cover artwork (Jim (he of the ego) is Carmine's nephew) and there was a song about the silver-age Flash Barry Allen on it. Turned out to be a nice surprise as this is a great CD.

"Party Pit" by The Hold Steady. Here's what I like about the Hold Steady -- Great, intelligent lyrics, and lead singer Craig Finn does not look, act, move or sing like a rock star (more like a CPA.) The only thing I don't like? their melodies are nowhere near as good as their lyrics.

"The Pass" by Rush.Yeah, I know even some Rush fans don't remember this one, but it's probably my favorite of theirs. (And I'm a big Rush fan, even though I think Ayn Rand was a selfish moron.)

This song helped me get through a difficult break-up in 1990, and I will always be grateful to Geddy and the guys.

Okay, that's all for now. I hear a Guiness calling my name. I'll be back soon. No, really.

Not Quite

2010-06-04T11:05:00.001-04:00

For reasons you don't need to know I was at http://thesaurus.com looking for a synonym for "spittoon." This is the result of that search:

No results found for spittoon:

Did you mean spoon?

yuck.

Come here, Watson, I need you.

2010-03-13T09:38:00.002-05:00

Amazing how quickly things become quaint these days. Going through my old old documents folder I found this list from the days when kids didn't all have all cell phones and there was such a thing as a busy signal:

PHONE RULES FOR KIDS

The phone belongs to the people who pay the phone bill. That is not you.

The phone is not a toy. It is a communication tool.

You are allowed to use our phones but it is a privilege not a right. (The difference is a right is something no one can take away from you.)

If you forget any messages for the people who own the phone your phone privileges will be cut off.

When Kim calls, give the phone to Rob unless she specifically states that she does not want to talk to Rob, she wants to talk to you.

Sometimes when we are out we need to communicate with you. We can’t do this if you are tying up the phone. Rob will call once. If it’s busy he’ll call again in five minutes. If it’s still he’ll call again in five minutes. If it’s still busy somebody better have a good explanation.

Lying is not a good explanation. If Rob calls for an hour and a half and it’s busy for an hour and a half you were not talking to your friend for “a coupla minutes.”

Thank you

There she is, Miss America

2010-03-02T13:02:00.002-05:00

My favorite photo blog is Shorpy. They just have these great old pictures that really give you a feel of what it felt like to live in another era. Take this 1921 photo of three beauty queens and some gawkers at Union Station in Washington. Go to Union Station today and I bet you won't find any little kids dressed like James Cagney, only in knickers and bare feet. (You really should go to the website and see the picture full-size.) And you won't find such a dead-ringer for Jed Clampett anywhere either except maybe on Halloween. Nor will you ever see any American beauty contestants dressed so modestly.
I have to admit that it was a jarring experience going from 1921 to our modern, much ruder and coarser time. Some of the comments about the young ladies refer to them as "homely", refer to them as "gym teachers in the making" and wonder how anyone could have ever thought them attractive. My god, are we that far removed from nature and from reality that the only kind of beauty we can appreciate is our modern botox-and-boob job semi-cyborgs? Those are three lovely young ladies there (Miss Washington on the right was actually the very first Miss America) and if we can't see it there's something wrong with us, something that makes me wish I lived in another era.

More Beers I drank in 2010

2010-01-31T21:14:00.003-05:00

My favorite kinds of beer at least in the Winter months are the Stouts -- those thick, black Guinnessy things. I've tried a lot of different ones and a lot of variations on the formula -- I like the chocolate stouts, but not the cream stouts which taste like somebody poured milk in my beer, and ever since a bad experience with white Russians I've firmly believed that alcohol and dairy products do not mix. On a recent trip to Total Wine -- probably my second favorite browsing place after a good bookstore -- I saw a type of stout I'd never seen before. A cherry stout. I hesitated a second before taking it home because my luck with fruit-y beers hasn't been so good. I mean I don't mind a lime in my Corona or even an orange in my Blue Moon (although I like it better sans fruit) but most beers brewed with fruit are too sweet for my taste. (Come to think of it, I seem to recall liking my beers a little fruity in the Summer time, like Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss, but it seems like years since Summer was here and I've forgotten what it was like.)
Anyway, I did buy this beer and I must say I am impressed. This beer is from Michigan, where they know a little something about cherries, and evidently about beer too. You could definitely taste the cherry, but it wasn't overly sweet, not was it overwhelming. It just lightened things up with a hint, a tinge of sweetness that canceled out the sometimes bitter aftertaste of stouts. I am already looking forward to my next six-pack.
There is one thing I don't understand, and I hope somebody who knows more about these things can enlighten me. (That's a hint to my alcoholic brother, by the way.) How come this is referred to as a "malt beverage" on the label instead of a beer?

More books I've read in 2010

2010-01-30T11:07:00.003-05:00

I picked up "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader" because I like Neil Gaiman, and because Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" (after which this boook is obviously patterned) is one of the classics of Western literature (in my book anyway). This is very different from the "last" Superman book though, as Batman dies not once, but many, many times -- and yet never dies. It was a hard concept to pull off satisfyingly and kudos to Gaiman and Kubert for making it work.

Also on the graphic novel shelf I got "Defenders: Indefensible" because I liked what the creators -- Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire -- did with the Justice League many moons ago (although now that I think about it, a little of that went a long way) and I thought the childish, petulant, argumentative characters that these guys can't help but create would work well with the Defenders, who never really got along anyway.

I was wrong though. Although there were a few laughs in it, humor in super-hero comics is probably best utilized like meat in Chinese cuisine, i.e. as seasoning not the main dish. And it is misleading in the extreme to have the Silver Surfer on the cover as he does not help his compadres fend off the Dread Dormammu's latest attempt to conquer the universe, but instead hangs out on a beach with some surfers who for some reason speak the "rad" and "gnarly" lingo of 80's wave riders.

Oh, and I did read one book with no pictures in it. "Inconceivable" by Ben Elton. I had never heard of the author before, but I saw him compared to Mil Millington somewhere and you know I love Mil. This book is about a couple trying to conceive a child without much luck. In addition to barrenness there are also break-ups and betrayals -- and it is hilariously funny, maybe not Millington level funny, but enough so that I didn't mind the absence of pictures and I will be reading more from Mister Elton.

A great book I read in 2010

2010-01-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

I almost stopped reading Steve Hely's "How I Became a Famous Novelist" in that crucial first fifty pages. I'm so glad I didn't. It's a devastating satire of the current state of literature in America. But it's also a love story and that kept me going through the beginning where it seemed things were going to get too snarky for me. An amoral, cynical slacker takes a look at the best-seller listand decides that he can write a best-seller using every popular cliche in the book, so to speak. His goals for doing so are fame, fortune and winning back his ex-girlfriend Polly who is planning to marry someone else. It's not as easy as he thought it was going to be:

Writing a novel -- actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs -- is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV's so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it's damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.

But he eventually does write a book The Tornado Ashes Club that does become a best-seller. But things don't turn out near as nice as they did in his fantasies. And by the end of the book this oh-so-cynical novel has become a love song to the power of literature:

You get lost in the language of it, but not because it's trying too hard. It's not. What it's really about. . . is how the cruelties we inflict on each other start out so small but become inevitable. It's about what kind of creatures we are and how we came to be this way. These fictional characters that only exist as words on a page somehow seem to know better than I do how to live your life.

A stunning turnaround. I also really appreciated the movie mogul character's one moment of clarity when he realizes how wrong it would be to make Madame Bovary into a movie

. . . here's the problem: it has to be internal. You can't dramatize it all. And there's no actress, not even Kate Winslet, who's that good. There never will be. There's always going to be that distance. You can watch a movie. But you can't live it. And Madame Bovary, you need to live it.

Exactly, and that is why I never want to see movie versions of books that I've loved -- after living in them watching just doesn't cut it.

More movies I watched in 2010

2010-01-18T13:57:00.002-05:00

If left to my own devices I would never watch anything other than romantic comedies, boy meets girl in some interesting locale is endlessly fascinating for me. Thank goodness my wife is more culturally broadminded. Otherwise I would have missed out on "Young at Heart." By now most people know about this musical band of seniors and have even seen clips or watched one of their videos, but if you haven't seen the movie and gotten to know these people and seen for yourself how passion for something can keep you alive then you should.

But when it was my turn to choose again, I went with -- you guessed it -- a romantic comedy taking place in an exotic location. In this case India.

This movie is more than a fish-out-of-water, boy-meets-girl deal, although it does both of those very well. It also has something to say about corporate America's callous attitude towards its employees It also has Ayesha Dharker, who is seriously beautiful.

“…a film bursting with affection for its characters and for India. It never pushes things too far, never stoops to cheap plotting, is about people learning to really see one another. It has a fundamental sweetness and innocence…And in a time when the word ‘chemistry’ is lightly bandied about, what they generate is the real thing.” -Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Classic Rock Doesn't Make Any Sense Either

2010-01-17T15:40:00.002-05:00

"Sent a letter on a long Summer day,
Made of silver, not of clay."
Journey, Wheel in the Sky

I know nobody writes letters anymore but people still did back in 1978 when Journey released the album Infinity from whence Wheel in the Sky debuted. But I have to wonder if any of the members of the band ever actually penned an epistle. They seem very confused about the type of substance on which it's best to write a thank-you note to Grandma.
I recommend paper, guys.

Classic Country Music Makes No Sense

2010-01-17T15:36:00.002-05:00

"Good whiskey never lets you lose your place"
Johnny Lee, Cherokee Fiddle

C'mon, Johnny, have you ever tried to drink and read? Good whiskey always makes you lose your place -- and forget what you just read too.

And then I read. . .

2010-01-16T17:17:00.002-05:00

The trend of favorite authors letting me down continues with Richard Russo's "Bridge of Sighs." Russo usually writes about working-class people in decaying small towns of the Northeastern United States. Here his subject is Louis C. Lynch (AKA Lucy) and the problem with the book is that he's a perfectly nice, normal boring guy and the book is 600 pages long. That's a long time to spend in the company of a boring person. Especially since this is one of those sprawling multi-generational tomes and we also have to live with Lucy's equally boring father and eventually boring son. His childhood friend Bobby Marconi is not boring but he's not very likable either and he's not onstage all that much. I liked the book well enough to finish it, but I'd have liked it twice as much had it been half as long.

Poor Doug Tennapel, he catches hell no matter what he does. He's an outspoken Christian who writes graphic novels like "Black Cherry" about gangsters, murderers, strippers, drug addicts and demons. All of whom are pretty foul-mouthed. So the Christians give him hell about glamorizing sinful lifestyles (and for his potty mouth) and the heathens resent the religious symbolism that's never far below the surface in his work. I liked the book; I have no problem with pious characters or demonic ones, for that matter. My only complaint was that to me this book at heart was a love story, as gangster Eddie Paretti -- when not fighting demons or resisting two rival mob chapters after his head -- searches for his lost love, the titular Blackl Cherry. He finds her but in the end he leaves her and I personally did not buy his line of reasoning for doing so.
Well, now that I think about about it I have one other minor complaint -- for such a book of almost nonstop action, the cover of Eddie just standing there is pretty boring.

Almost Purr-fect

2010-01-14T21:37:00.003-05:00

I've just about given up on my autograph collecting -- at least the through-the-mail portion. It's not that I've lost interest, it's just that it takes a lot of time to do it right and that pesky damn job is demanding more and more of my time.
Another thing it requires besides time is patience. I wrote to Julie Newmar requesting an autograph back in July 2003. Last week, six and a half years later I got it. I would say it was worth waiting for, Julie Newmar's Catwoman was the subject of my first several erotic dreams, and I have still carry a torch for her, but the postal service messed me up. This is a postcard and they cancelled the stamp on it so hard some of the lines came through, making Ms. Newmar look like she was drunk when she put on her mascara.
Do you think I should try to get a replacement? I should have it by Summer 2016.

My Favorite Day of 2009

2010-01-05T18:02:00.002-05:00

My favorite day of the year just past was May 2nd. That was the day of the Charleston Dragonboat Festival at Brittlebank Park. So there was the human drama of athletic competition, the thrill of victory (we won our first heat) and the agony of defeat (we got smoked in our final two races). And there was a cooler full of beer, grilled burgers, friends and family, beautiful warm weather. But the best part I think was that we had the whole Summer in front of us. It was a day that we hated to see end. And when I say "we" I mean me and Kim. We stayed out there after all the competitors and spectators had gone home. After the clean up crews had gone home. That's how much we hated to admit that this perfect day was not going to last forever.

The First Book I read in 2010

2010-01-03T12:41:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in the previous post the only two comic series I currently follow are "Fables" and "Jack of Fables", but that's because "Halo and Sprocket" is no longer published on a regular basis. This story of a young woman living with an angel and a robot, both of whom try very hard without a lot of success to understand the idiosyncrasies of human beings, is one of my all-time favorites. To quote Phil Hester, this "Halo and Sprocket" is "funny without being cruel,. . .sweet without being syrupy, . . .smart without being cynical."

2009 Literary wrap-up

2010-01-03T12:11:00.002-05:00

No big pseudo-suspenseful countdown here. I'll just tell you right off the bat the best book I read in 2009 was "The Great Gatsby" by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. But I may have to disqualify it -- because I've already read it several times, and technically I didn't read it this year; I had the audio-book read to me.
Other than that, 2009 held a lot of literary disappointments for me. Several books that I had been anxiously anticipating let me down, among them, "B is For Beer" and "Villa Incognita" by Tom Robbins, "Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch" by Dai Silje, "My Tango With Barbara Strozzi" by Russell Hoban and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home"by Joss Whedon. (That last one probably my fault, as I didn't do my homework.) It should also be noted that even though Tom Robbins struck out twice, I also read his "Skinny Legs and All" and if we disqualify Gatsby, that was probably the best book I read in 2009.
One author who didn't let me down was Nick Hornby. I loved "Slam" and "Juliet Naked."
I read three biographies this year. Craig Ferguson's was the best, Micky Dolenz's was the worst.
I discovered a couple of new authors that shot up to my list of favorites -- Jonathan Tropper and Paul Quarrington. Two graphic novel series that I was following -- "Astonishing X-Men" and "She-Hulk" -- either came to an end or got new creative teams that I have no interest in following, leaving the only series I currently follow "Fables" and its spin-off "Jack of Fables."
I also did an experiment in rereading, going back to "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks" for the first time in decades, and it was brought home to me once again that I have completely lost communication with my sixteen-year-old self, as I do not see the appeal of this book at all, even though I used to love it.

The last two books I read in 2009

2010-01-01T10:32:00.004-05:00

Closing out the year with the latest volumes of a couple of old favorites. "Americana" is the latest in the Jack of Fables series. Jack (Horner, the giant-killer, Frost, be nimble) and his friend Gary the Pathetic Fallacy along with Paul Bunyan and one of the Page sisters patch Humpty Dumpty back together and go in search of treasure in the land of American folk tales and legends. We meet Huck Finn, visit the Salem Witch trials and the antebellum South, and run afoul of the book-burning librarian and his zombie Keystone Kops. Great stuff.

If you don't know about Post Secret go check it out right now. This latest collection of people's postcard confessions is alternately hilarious, heartbreaking and life-affirming. My favorite was the one from the woman who keeps a flannel shirt hung on the back of her bedroom door so when she's making love with her husband she can pretend he's MacGyver.

I really hate this song

2009-12-23T12:34:00.005-05:00

Believe it or not, I try hard to become a Christmas curmudgeon. I actually try to ignore my seasonal-affective disorder and the crass madness that infects America at this time. But it's hard to come up to the level of Cloud Ten blissfulness that the ubiquitous Christmas music demands of us. Like if you're not "happy in a million ways" during this "most wonderful time of the year" and don't list "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes" as one of your favorite things then there's something wrong with you.

So, I concentrate on things that I am grateful for. In the area of Christmas music I am glad that I no longer seem to hear the single worst Christmas song ever inflicted on mankind. They played it all the time when I was a kid -- they even forced us to sing it -- and I hated it with a white hot second-grade passion.

The song is "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" and it's ostensibly from the mouth of a greedy, obsequious little suck-up trying to con Santa into thinking he's a good kid deserving of many fine gifts instead of the ass-cutting that I would have loved to have seen him get. I'm not going to post the lyrics -- I can't take a chance on getting this festering turd stuck in my head -- but they're not hard to find online should you be feeling brave and/or masochistic. The first verse is pretty straightforward, a kid talking to Santa Claus and trying to suss out what the old guy might be planning to bring him Christmas night. But in the second verse he sells his siblings up the river and tries to pass himself off as some kind of unselfish saintly child. Referring to the family stockings he says "Mine will be the shortest one, you'll be sure to know." Right, kid.

Then in the third verse, the little hellion really pulls out all the stops. After violating protocol by telling Santa what the other kids in his household want for Christmas (probably getting it all wrong intentionally just to eff up their holiday) he has the audacity to tell Mister Kringle:

"As for me, my little brain isn’t very bright;
Choose for me, old Santa Claus. What you think is right."

Pul-leez! Who the hell do you think you're kidding? This entire monologue is nothing more than an attempt to get more presents by using reverse psychology on the jolly old elf. i.e. knowing he brings more toys to good boys, trying to pass yourself off as someone who only cares about what his siblings want, and very self-deprecatingly allowing Santa to choose your gifts for you -- obviously assuming that what Santa will think is "right" for such a perfect little cherub is half the contents of the sleigh.

It was an obvious ploy to me even when I was a kid, and no doubt Santa will be able to see through your cheap ruse just as easily and fill your "shortest stocking" chock full of coal. Maybe if he has time he'll even knock you in the head with a lump of it. Maybe that'll knock some sense of decency into your "not-very-bright" brain.

One beer I won't be trying

2009-12-19T18:28:00.003-05:00

I love sampling new beers. I'll even sample some Winter brews even though, as I'm sure you know, I loathe this season we're in. However I saw a beer today at Total Wine that I won't be trying. The sight of this thing literally chilled me to the bone:

More books I've read in 2009

2009-12-19T09:32:00.003-05:00

This was such an interesting reading year for for me -- lots of books that I'd looked forward to that disappointed, but just as many great ones that came from out of nowhere -- that I think I'll do a year-end wrap-up. Unlike every magazine and media website however, I will actually wait until the year is over to do so. Who knows, maybe the best book I'll read this year is the one I read on New Year's Eve. (And yes, I will be at home reading on New Year's Eve with any luck.)

Anyway, I may remember 2009 as the year I discovered Jonathan Tropper. I first read The Book of Joe and really liked it, then I read How to Talk to a Widower and loved it. And I just recently completed Everything Changes and . . . uh . . . I didn't like it that much.

Part of it's probably my fault. You read that much of an author's work in a short period of time, his stylistic and thematic quirks become obvious. In Tropper's case, his protagonists are always guys in their early thirties who do not have their shit together, partly because of their inability to let go of the past, and they are all headed -- though they don't always know it -- for a giant emotional showdown slash public humiliation.

Although all three of the protagonists were similar, their differences were the critical factors in determining whether or not I liked them and ultimately their book. The guy in Widower had just lost his wife who he loved very much, so I cut him a lot of slack. Joe was jerky and self-absorbed but he took a lot of his anger and wrote a novel. (The Widower guy was a writer too, come to think of it.) In Everything Changes, Zach King seems to have everything going for him -- a rent-free NYC apartment, a beautiful, rich fiancee who is nuts about him, a good job -- and all he does is wallow in self-pity and try to sabotage all these blessings. True, he did have a rotten dad who abandoned him and his brothers, and his best friend died in a car wreck a couple years ago. But come on! All in all, things are going pretty good for you, Zach. And isn't it obvious to you that as much as you hate your father you're following in his footsteps, hurting everyone who makes the mistake of caring about you?

I'm going to forgive Tropper this misstep. I'm still looking forward to his newest one This is Where I Leave You, but I am going to wait a while before I read it and cleanse the palate some first.

Pivotal Fitness is Completely Clueless

2009-12-15T19:23:00.002-05:00

I think most gyms are evil. And Pivotal Fitness more than most. They make you sign a long-term commitment because they know most people are going to drop out after a few months. So they make money on fat quitters, people who don't even come to the gym but have to pay for months, if not years, for something they got a little too excited about in January around resolution time. If you're one of those people who actually does use the gym, then they look for more ways to soak you -- personal trainers, (and BTW Pivotal Fitness has some out-of-shape trainers, who would sign up for that?) or classes or some other way to separate you from your hard-earned money. For a while now, Pivotal has been putting signs up all over the place advertising some new weight loss training program (cost extra of course) designed to teach you all about nutrition.
Then tonight they have a members appreciation party and they serve refreshments. Great, I'm always interested in nutrition and I was wondering what Pivotal Fitness thinks people who want to lose weight and get fit should eat.
So what nutritious food did Pivotal Fitness set out for its members that it appreciates so much? Pizza, fried chicken wings, pork barbecue and all the fixings! And to wash all that healthy goodness down? Diet Coke and sweet tea.
Now, that is insane. I am embarrassed to belong to a "health" club that would serve such unhealthy food to its clients.
Now, you can say, well, it was a party, they're not saying you should eat like every day, all things in moderation, right?
To which I say if that's the case then why not move all those weights and machines out of the gym, set up a bar and let's smoke cigarettes and watch television. That's what people do at parties, isn't it?
No, Pivotal had a chance to make a point about nutritious food and how you can eat healthy and still have fun and they utterly blew it. And they blew it for one of two reasons -- either they don't know any better or they have such contempt for their customers that they figure the only thing those fatties understand is junk food. And I think it's the latter; I'll tell you why.
There was, I must admit, also a vegetable tray available, albeit with a fat, creamy dip. And the carrots and celery were almost gone by the time I got through working out. Which means that a lot of my fellow gym goers opted for the healthiest thing available and ignored the tempting crapola that Pivotal tried to entice them with. Which means that they're smarter than the nutrition "experts" at Pivotal Fitness.

More books I own in 2009

2009-12-12T17:55:00.000-05:00

Been a while since I did an update on my book collection.

Okay, picking up where we left off (in autographed art books): I started reading Mad before I started reading Marvel comics and even after I became what I then considered too old for comics -- about 10th or 11th grade --- I still read Mad. This big book has bios on all the artists whose work has appeared in Mad, as well as examples of some of their best stuff. Hard for me to pick just one favorite, but if you put a gun to my head, I'll say "Jack Davis -- no, wait, Will Elder. . . although Mort Drucker's caricatures are just phenomenal. . ."

One of my favorite comic books is Legion of Super-Heroes, and like a lot of my favorite comics I no longer follow it. The problem with being a long-time fan is that you're there when a series hits its peak, and sometimes it's hard to get excited about it once those golden days are over. For me the Legion peaked when Jeff Moy was the artist on that book. His characters -- particularly the females -- have such a sweetness about them. His art can seem somewhat simplistic when compared to some of his torturous contemporaries, but don't kid yourself, it takes a lot of talent to draw this cleanly and simply. I met Moy at a convention somewhere, purchased this sketch book and commissioned a picture of Shrinking Violet which is on the wall in front of my desk. I'm not going to take it out of the frame and scan it, but I'm sure after seeing these other samples of his work you'll have no problem taking my word for it that it is gorgeous.

This next one is a retrospective on the life and art of George Perez. If you don't know who George Perez is you know nothing whatever about comics. He is probably most famous for doing books with tons of characters -- JLA, Avengers, Teen Titans -- and making all of those characters distinctive.And just a couple samples of his magnificent artwork (cuz that Modern Masters cover really doesn't do him justice):

Another former-favorite series that I no longer read is Spider-Man. I'm actually a little bitter about this one. You see, I used to like John Romita's Spider-Man, but I loved his Gwen Stacy. Really loved. I'm not going to go on and on about her, mainly because I already have here, among other places. Suffice it to say I never cared about the book after she died. It just seemed pointless.
All right, that's all for now. I'm going to go light a candle for Gwen Stacy. We'll finish up the autographed art section next time.

More Books I've had read to me in 2009

2009-12-10T09:45:00.005-05:00

Audible.com got caught up in the holiday spirit and offered me a free audiobook -- really free, no commitment, no credit card. I chose one I knew I would like. Every time I've read "The Great Gatsby" I've been amazed by Fitzgerald's accomplishment. (Not counting the first time, when I was in the tenth grade and more sophomoric than most sophomores and forced to read it.) When I think about it though, it's kind of surprising that I love this book as much as I do, given my propensity for romance and optimism. I mean, Gatsby was the ultimate romantic. His belief in love and its transformative powers never wavered; he lived his whole life believing in the American dream and where did it get him? Dead at the bottom of his swimming pool. Even before he was murdered he was unable to enjoy any of the parties, cars and beautiful friends that his wealth afforded him.

For me, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" is The Great American Novel, but "The Great Gatsby" is the only one that gives it a run for the title. And in many ways they are exact thematic opposites. In Huck's America you do the right thing even if means going to hell (i.e. catching the scorn of one's contemporaries) and things turn out all right for you in the end. For James Gatz though, you do what you have to do to win the woman you love and it ends up killing you. And I guess if you get right down to it, I prefer Huck's world cuz I believe -- I want to believe, I need to believe -- that that's the way it works, that you do what you have to do for the people you love and it saves you, not damns you like it did Gatsby.
So, why do I love this book? Because it is so beautifully and so compellingly written. Because every time I read it I find new things to marvel at. Even though it's a short book and I've read it several times I always find something in there that I hadn't really noticed before -- or, I should say, I find something else that affects me emotionally each time. (This time I was thinking about Nick Carraway, the narrator, and what a clueless nebbish he is most of the time (and the perfect narrator for that reason by the way) but he has an astonishing moment of clarity the last time he sees Gatsby alive:

"They're a rotten crowd," (referring to the rich and famous that partied at Gatsby's house most every night) I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."
I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end.

And maybe because I'm a father, the scenes with Gatsby's dad after his son's death, how proud he was of his "Jimmy" and the guilt he still bore for beating him once, those scenes just absolutely emotionally flay me alive.
Just an amazing work of art. Perfect as so few things are in this world. And even if I refuse to let myself believe that ". . . we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past" I believe it when I read it in "The Great Gatsby."

Blue about berries

2009-12-05T19:02:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite memories from the Summer of 2009 was the day Kim and I went to pick blueberries. It was a beautiful sunny day and we went in the morning before it got too hot. We picked three big buckets full, and I probably ate several handfuls too -- they are irresistible right off the bush like that. Anyway we kept a few fresh ones around and froze most of the berries. A couple of days ago I ate the last ones. A sad day. I was hoping they might last all winter. It's my own fault though, I didn't pace myself on them at all. I put frozen blueberries in my protein shakes, in my cereal and sometimes I just ate a handful of frozen berries. (You don't have to thaw them or anything.)
Maybe next year we'll pick a few more buckets worth. Or maybe I'll just try to show some self-discipline.
No, definitely more buckets.

Hey Ali, I (finally) found that picture

2009-12-04T14:27:00.003-05:00

A while back I promised my brother's girlfriend that I would show her a picture of my brother with a honkfro or whatever it is you call a white boy afro. That was a while back and I didn't find it until today when I was cleaning out my office. Anyway, here it isThat's my late lamented grandmother and my sister Susan trying to get out of the way of that hairdo. And I think John stole both of those shirts he has on from me.

More books I've read in 2009

2009-12-03T18:21:00.003-05:00

Esquire A.J. Jacobs decided to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica, all eight bajillion pages of it. In "The Know-it-all" he tells the story of his year-long foray into the fount of all earth's knowledge. This was something I wanted to do when I was a kid -- actually at one point my goal was to read every book in the Richmond Public Library -- and if I was going to do it I should have done it then back when I had a working memory. Now I'm lucky if I can remember what happened in the Buffy comic book I read last night, so my reading the encyclopedia would be like pouring water into a bottomless pit. But I enjoyed reading Jacobs's account. It's not just about what he learned in the EB, it's also about his life at Esquire, his jealousy of his super-smart brother-in-law, his stint on "How Wants to be a Millionaire", the frustrations he and his wife are having with infertility, and the problem his wife is having with his habit of spouting off irrelevant facts at inappropriate moments. But it's got plenty of useless facts he learned too. And some not so useless -- like the fact that man and dalmations are the only mammals that produce uric acid. So if you're worried about a drug test, just see if you can borrow your local fire-station's mascot. Jacobs also wrote "The Year of Living Biblically" which I enjoyed and his new one is "The Guinea Pig" which I am looking forward to.

I also read "Connective Tissue" by Bob Fingerman, who did a comic many years ago called Minimum Wage that I liked a lot, and not since that has done anything for me. Connective Tissue just proves my theory that if you leave male artists alone and let them draw whatever they want, all they'll ever draw is naked women and monsters. This book is about a video store clerk who is transported to a world where nobody wears clothes and monsters roam the street. Problem is the naked people are as grotesque as the monsters. Fingerman continues his streak (so to speak) of disapppointing me, and I'm beginning to think Minimum Wage was a fluke.

I also read "Mean Seasons" the fifth volume of Bill Willingham's Fables and enjoyed it very much. But it's been a couple days since I finished it and don't remember that much about it already (see what I mean about my memory) only that Snow White had six kids and they float around in the air.

If we make it through December. . .

2009-12-01T16:03:00.003-05:00

My picture of choice for this month on my homemade Bones calendar is an obvious one -- from one of the best episodes ever "The Santa in the Slush":

Musings on Marketing

2009-11-21T21:54:00.002-05:00

If I ever open a drinking and/or dining establishment I don't think think I'll name said establishment after the street it's located on. It will just lead to confusion and headaches among my clientele if I am successful and branch out.
The King Street Grille downtown on -- what else -- King Street is a nice little bar/restaurant. My daughter Leah and I have been there a couple times and I really like their burgers on those pretzel buns. Umm, carbolicious. But now the owners have opened a couple new locations on Kiawah Island and in Mount Pleasant. These new locations are both called King Street Grille too, even though they're on Freshfields Drive and Hungryneck Blvd. (And really don't you think the Hungryneck Grille is a better name anyway?)
The Market Street Saloon has scantily-clad women dancing on the bar. Not surprisingly this has become a popular nightspot, so popular they've opened up a new location on Northwoods Boulevard. No, it's not called the Northwoods Boulevard Saloon, but the Market Street Saloon.
And now there's an East Bay Deli now on Dorchester Road across from my church, despite the fact that it's a long way from East Bay Street. (And I realize it's not called the East Bay Street Deli, but it's in North Charleston; I don't know what bay it's supposed to be east of.)

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-11-18T12:35:00.003-05:00

It's rare that I stay up late enough to watch Craig Ferguson's show, but when I do I'm always impressed not just by how funny he is -- lots of guys on television are funny -- but by how genuine and honest he seems. Honesty is a rare commodity in show business and especially on television, and it shines like a beacon. I do believe this is the second most amazing thing I've ever seen on a talk show. Watch how at first people are laughing nervously because they don't know how to take a guy speaking to them from his heart. Keep listening. You can hear the audience change.

Anyway, I didn't have to stay up late to read Craig's book, and like his TV show, it's funny and honest. Honesty is pretty rare in the world of autobiographies too. He doesn't gloss over or glamorize what a wastrel he was, and his love for America is genuine.

I also read Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked. I've read all of Hornby's fiction and it's interesting to watch him grow. Here he returns to the world of music-obsessives moving from the mix-tapes of High Fidelity to the Internet, which may as well have been custom-made for obsessive types. Hornby is often credited with inventing "lad-lit" the yang alternative to chick-lit, so it's interesting that his most fully-realized character in this book is Annie, the female lead.

More movies I've seen in 2009

2009-11-14T08:48:00.006-05:00

I heard so much about Twilight I felt like I had to see it. (Well actually at first I felt like I had to read the book, but a brief sample of Stephanie Meyer's writing style convinced me that the movie was probably a better bet.) Everything I heard was either praising it for being a great romantic work or damning it for being ridiculous and corny. Nothing was lukewarm.
Well, I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either. So I guess here is Twilight's first tepid review. I had no problem with the unusual habits of Twilight's vamps -- the lack of fangs, the ability to go out in sunlight and suffer nothing more than a mild case of sparklies. I figured this was just some weird northwestern mutation of the vampire virus. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure Edward ever called himself or anyone his family the V word, so maybe they were just sparkly, fangless, immortal monster weirdos. My problem was the chemistry -- or lack thereof -- between Bella and Edward. I just didn't feel it. How could any girl actually fall for a guy who looks like the Joker in the old Batman TV show?
Minus the painted-over moustache of course. I mean that was one fugly fella. And why the hell was a girl from Arizona as pale as a Washington state vampire? Was that explained in the book? It sure wasn't in the movie. The only "suspense" in the film when the bad vampire was after Bella was not very suspenseful.
But in the absence of romantic chemistry or cinematic suspense, I did enjoy seeing how vampires play baseball. Although even then the fact that they could only play during a thunderstorm because the crack of their bats sounded like thunder did not ring true. I mean you may be stronger than a roided-up A-Rod but your bat's not.

Baseball and brewski

2009-11-10T08:30:00.004-05:00

Everybody who knows me knows at least two things about me: 1. I love baseball. 2. I hate the New York Yankees. (I think those two facts are related, by the way. In other words, because I love baseball I hate the New York Yankees, as there are so many ways the Bronx Bummers are bad for the game, but that's another post for another time.)
So it may surprise you to learn that I won a case of Guinness betting on the World Series. Of course I didn't bet on NY to win, nor did I bet on some side issue such as how many buckets of Brylcreem Chase Utley would go through or how many times Derek Jeter would make some easy routine play at short and the announcers (who've been bought off as surely as the officials) would just go nuts praising him. What happened was a Yankee lover at work bet me that the Yankees would sweep -- win the series in four straight games. I'm not a big gamber but even I can't pass up a sucker bet like that, especially when Guinness is at stake.
Now maybe I should feel bad taking advantage of someone suffering from a man-crush on Derek Jeter. Here's a quote from my betting partner: I'm not a Yankee fan! However I do believe that Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez are larger-than-life beings who transcend athletics. We are fortunate to be alive today to see them play. How about this: Jeter/Rodriguez 2016? (What that last sentence means BTW is he'd like to see those two run for president in 7 years.) But I don't feel bad cuz I don't like most Yankee fans either.
So stop by the house for a glass of Arthur Guinness's pride, we'll toast the great American pastime and count the days till Spring training.

2009-11-09T16:46:00.003-05:00

There must be something like 9 million different kinds of calendars available at this time of year, including several for popular TV shows both past and current. But the calendar I want evidently doesn't exist. At least I've looked everywhere for a Bones calendar and been unable to find one. So I make my own each month. Here's November.

Rob keeps on rereading

2009-10-26T19:35:00.003-04:00

(Continuing my revisitation of one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)

All right, well, QED is really starting to get on my nerves. It's not just the fact that he's rich, but that's certainly one strike against him. This dude is so rich he has somebody who types up his scribbled diary or letter to his unborn grandson or whatever it is. He's also a snob:

We ate Laura's bread with lots of margarine, and I thought how Mommy never even buys margarine. Probably divorced ladies have to compromise, even with alimony.

The only thing I can think as to why I identified so much with QED was because I figured I was going to be rich too and I was looking for some pointers as to how to behave. I have no such illusions today and it's just as well. If I had been rich and followed in QED's footsteps I'd have been just another rich, snobby arsehole and the world doesn't need any more of them, for sure.

I didn't like him having sex with the diary-typist either, a married woman. But his girlfriend thinks it's great. She's the real hippie, not this spoiled rich poser QED.

But it's impossible to completely dislike the guy. Even if he does say things that leave you scratching your head, things like "Worrying about the wrong problem is like jacking off with sandpaper." I mean, does that make any sense?

Well, I've finished the book now, and the main feeling it leaves me with is bewilderment. Why did this book mean so much to me when I was a lad? Nothing happens in it -- this spoiled, rich 17-year old smokes a ton of grass and that's about it. The action -- such as it is -- do not present the protagonist in a positive light. He steals his best friend's girlfriend, loses his virginity to a married pregnant woman -- who works for him, typing up his diary, because even though he has no job and no responsibilities he can't type up his own scribblings. It's not at all romantic or erotic, so I hope it was meant to be comedic. It fails at that too, but it's less creepy considered that way.

The one part that should have been comedic -- QED's GF's father railroads him into participating in a sailboat race -- fizzles out when our hero overturns the craft before he gets to the starting line. This event makes him sexually climax but only because the author wants to use the pun "Nautical emission."

Oh, and his grandfather dies, but this is not dramatic or poignant. The old man is ready to go. I can see how most people who had to spend their days with Quintus Ells might long for death's embrace.

So the book stands or falls on QED's personality. If you like him you'll like the book. I don't like him very much. He's selfish, ignorant, racist and, as previously noted, spoiled, rich, snobby and immoral.

I must have liked him when I was 15 though. Maybe because back then I believed that rich people could still be decent and down-to-earth. I labor under no such delusions nowadays.

But, I would still say that this reread was success. It was good getting in touch with my 15-year-old self (and good saying good-bye to that knucklehead too). Some books are only great at certain times in your life. I loved Thomas Wolfe as a young man. Now I found him pompous, flowery and verbose. When they made me read "The Great Gatsby" in high school I thought it was putrid. When I reread it in my 40's it blew me away. So let's just say that "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks" is not a bad book, but for me it's past its expiration date.

Rob Rereads, part 4

2009-10-22T12:33:00.003-04:00

(in which I revisit one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)

Wow, QED is this weird combination of stoner and preppie. His family is mega-rich, old Connecticut money, there are these massive family croquet games going on the south lawn of the estate. He calls his parents "Mommy" and "Father". But he smokes dope constantly.

And he's kind of a racist too (discussing Vietnam and his older brother who recently returned from there):

"Well, I'd rather get burned buying dope in Seattle than be picked off by a dink in Nam."

Tunis goes, "You mean a gook?"

Ells shakes his head; the dust from marijuana makes him sneeze. (QED also sometimes refers to himself in the third person) "Naw, everyone's a gook, friend or foe. Dinks are a sub-set, being all gooks after your ass."

Rob Rereads, part 3

2009-10-20T12:50:00.008-04:00

(in which I revisit one of my favorite literary relics from my misspent youth -- Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks by Ralph Blum.)

Well, I'm only on page one, and I see where my memory has failed me once again. His name is not Quentin Ells, as I remembered -- it's Quintus Ells. I'd also forgotten his nickname -- Fiver -- not sure how he got it since he's 6'6''. I was right about how much he loves his grandfather.

"If you don't have a grandfather, go adopt yourself. Almost any old man who has really lived a life will do. But every kid should have a grandfather, and preferably one like mine."

And here are some words of wisdom from Quintus's grandfather: "I am all but convinced, Quintus, that our life is actually the container in which we keep our death."

Obviously, I remember the format very well. Here's how Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks begins: I'm 17, fighting a case of the munchies, and trying to crank out an opening page to someone who won't read it for a hundred years.

And here is how my first novel A Bridge to the Moon Begins: Dear Son,

Happy Birthday!
I wish I could be there with you at your party and all, but I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. You see, I'm trapped here at 2:27 in the morning twenty-five or thirty years ago.
About the only thing I can do is send a senile old buzzard with my name there in my place. It won't be the same, I know, but I'll try to make sure he brings you a nice present - like a new Porsche or something. A Porsche and this letter.
You can go for a ride later. You can even do us both a favor and run over the senile old buzzard wearing my name if you want to. But first you gotta read this letter. It's important.

pg, 18 -- OMG, I'm even more of a plagiarist than I thought. QED gives himself a deadline to finish this letter -- his 18th birthday 38 days away. My protagonist Todd Burwell gives himself a birthday deadline too -- his 15th coming up in a few days.

I had also forgotten that QED was rich -- although if I'd thought about it, I might have wondered what he was doing on Air Force One. (Actually I'm still wondering about that -- haven't got to that part yet.)

And QED -- one lasting impression that the book left me with. I had never heard of QED in its original Quad Erat Demonstrandum sense -- Hey, I went to school in South Carolina, we don't cotton to a lot of Latin and suchlike. The first time I did see it that way, I totally thought the ancient Romans were ripping off Ralph Blum. And to this day, every time I see QED, I think of Quintus Ells and hope he's not deceased.

Almost all of my literary heroes are romantics and QED is no exception: I love Laura a lot, Grandson. I do that best. It's the only thing I do half right. (That last statement is false modesty, by the way, Quintus is a very self-confident young man.)

Later he says, I walk behind Laura whenever I can. Her hips kill me. She has this sway to her walk, a kind of stately way of moving her ass that practically puts me in Zone 99.

And, Kim, if you've ever wondered why I usually let you go up the stairs first, it's not because I'm a gentleman. I just love how you send me to Zone 99.

pg. 25. Now I know why he was on Air Force One. His father is some sort of diplomat and they were headed out to San Clemente for a meeting with President Nixon. You don't see many books with protagonists as wealthy as QED -- I mean, this guy is loaded, his family's been in the banking biz for a long time. But I don't think there many in 1972 either. Rich folks are so rarely heroic.

More later

Rob Rereads, part 2

2009-10-19T11:32:00.003-04:00

No, I still haven't begun my reread of "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks", haven't even opened it yet. But I will soon. For one thing, I want to give the book every chance to be what I remember it as, and I know that too much anticipation can make even the world's greatest book something of a letdown.

While preparing for the big reread, I have been researching the author Ralph Blum. All I knew about him was that he quit writing fiction to write books about runes -- self-discovery and divination with, well, with rocks. And that's about all the Internet knows too. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University with a degree in Russian Studies. He's written several books about runes, and co-authored books about UFOs and zen and other new-age subjects. Most of his books are out of print. He evidently only wrote one other novel "The Simultaneous Man" a science-fiction work that predates "Old Glory" and is even harder to find. He is 77 years old and he has a new book coming out in early 2010, called Invasion of the Prostate Snatchers: No More Unnecessary Biopsies, Radical Treatment or Loss of Sexual Potency. According to the co-author bio, Mr. Blum has been living with prostate cancer for 20 years without radical treatment, which makes me think he must know something.

Then there's this quote from quotationsbook.com that makes me think maybe he doesn't:

"Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self."

Okay, yeah, whatever you say; no, I don't want to buy a flower.

I also found a 1972 review in the New York Times "In Old Glory and the Real Time Freaks, Ralph Blum. . . maps the self-guidance, self-adjustment and self-landing of a 6-foot-6 17-year old. . . He is a funny writer, his jokes expose hypocrisy, shorten social distance, suggest a more decent order of values in our society. . . his novel is likely to elicit a complicated set of responses. For me, the range goes from amusement and delight to compassion and anger."

This is the cover to the hardback version, not the paperback. The PB cover was better, if you ask me.

Rob Rereads, part 1

2009-10-18T10:15:00.007-04:00

I read a lot when I was a kid, started before I began school because I just didn't want to wait that long. My first literary love was biographies and I plowed through every one that Jackson Davis Elementary School Library had --- which pissed off my Elmira Gulch-esque librarian, but that's another story for another time -- but somewhere along the line I graduated to fiction and it's still by far my favorite genre. Most novels I just plowed through on my way to the next one, but some of them made a bigger impression on me. Some of them I had to go back and reread, either because I missed something or because I wanted to go on living in that world with those people. One of the first books I remember that sort of blew me away was "If I Loved You, Am I Trapped Forever?" by M.E. Kerr, which is about this boy in high school who seems to have everything going for him -- he's popular, he's got a hot girlfriend -- and this new kid (Duncan Stein, nicknamed "Doomed") who starts school. He is a weirdo and a misfit, but he and his philosophy of unrequited love being the only kind of love that's real become a phenomenon at that school, much to our hero's chagrin. I think the reason I had to keep going back and rereading it was because it may have been the first book I ever read that did not have a happy ending and that fascinated me.
I reread this book a couple years ago and I'm happy to say it was just as good as I remembered it. I wrote to M.E. Kerr to tell her how much I liked that book and I received a very nice letter from her in return. Kerr never attained the status of her contemporary Judy Blume, but all her books -- and she was quite prolific -- are worth seeking out.

On the other hand, I also used to just devour Carter Brown books. Part of the reason was the great covers by the incomparable Robert McGinnis, but I also thought the books were funny, sexy and exciting. My favorite of his protagonists was Danny Boyd, who was always talking about how irresistible his profile was. But when I try to reread these, I can't get even halfway through. Carter Brown uses so many damned adverbs -- several per page, nobody ever whispers, they state "softly" -- that I find myself tensed up waiting for the next one like a prisoner expecting another lash from the whip. Not a pleasant experience.
Although the McGinnis covers are still breathtaking.

So, my results with rereading favorites from my youth have been mixed. So maybe you'll understand why I'm feeling a little trepidation about revisiting "Old Glory and the Real-Time Freaks" by Ralph Blum. You want to talk about being blown away by a book, this is the one that did for me. It's about a guy named Quentin Ells. (And isn't it interesting that I can't remember the names of the characters in the book I read last week -- not to mention the names of many of my co-workers -- but I cannot forget Duncan Stein, Danny Boyd and Quentin Ells?) Quentin is a teenager, but the book is a letter to his unborn son (or grandson maybe, I forget) and spends most of the book high; he tokes up on Air Force One, drops acid with his grandfather. He refers to himself as QED (Quentin Ells Deceased) because he expects he'll be gone by the time his grandson reads the letter.
How much did this book affect me? It made me decide I wanted nothing more than to be a hippie, and for better or worse, I've pretty much stuck with that career plan. When I decided I wanted to write a book I basically stole the letter to unborn progeny format.
I've been looking for this book a long time -- and by looking I mean looking for a cheap copy -- thanks anyway, Alibris) -- and I've finally found it and ordered it. Now I'm a little nervous. So much so that I haven't even opened the package and it arrived last Thursday and that is not like me at all. I usually rip open packages while standing in front of the mailbox. Will it be as good as I remember like "If I Love You. . . " or will it be adverb-addled crap like Carter Brown? Or will it be somewhere in between, just your typical mediocre novel? I'm going to find out soon, but for now I'm enjoying the anticipation. While we're waiting here's some more Robert McGinnis art. Is this guy good or what?

How did I do at the Library book sale?

2009-10-10T14:35:00.019-04:00

Great, actually; thanks for asking. This year I decided that going to the pre-opening Thursday night party was not good enough. To really get first crack at the books you've got to volunteer to help with the set-up on Thursday morning, which is what I did. It's very exciting opening up those boxes and not knowing what kind of treasure -- or Grisham-Patterson-Brown crapola -- you might find therein. (Well, it's exciting if you're a book nerd.)

The best thing I got this year was the book "Baseball" the companion to Ken Burns's magnificent documentary. This thing is gorgeous, truly a thing of beauty and a joy forever. A 60 dollar book in great condition for four dollars.

I also picked up "Excelsior" Stan Lee's autobiography, which I have read before but did not own

"Mad Cover to Cover" cuz I just can't get enough Norman Mingo:This beautiful oversized poster book

I also got the Buddy Chronicles from Peter Bagge, I can't find an online copy of the cover, and I'm too lazy to scan it, and it's not that impressive, so here's a shot of Buddy Bradley with some other comic immortals. For those of you not in the know, Buddy is the one with bones made of rubbber.

Evidently this a Quality Paperback Book Club edition, which collects "The Bradleys" "Hey Buddy" and "Buddy the Dreamer." I already possess all three of those books, which collect issues of the comic series "The Bradleys" and "Hate". I also possess all of those comics too. I might have a problem.

What else did I get? "Powerhouse Pepper" from Basil Wolverton. Wolverton's frenetic, nonsensical, punny style of humor is currently out of vogue, but not with me. Wolverton did a lot of comics work, but he's probably best known for winning the contest sponsored by Al Cappp and "Li'l Abner" to draw Lena the Hyena, the ugliest women in the world. A celebrity jury panel consisting of Salvador Dali, Boris Karloff and Frank Sinatra picked Wolverton's entry over thousands of others. I think you can see why.

I also got "Bufffy the Vapire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide, Volume 2".
I bow to no one in my appreciation of Whedon's slayer, and I will fight anybody who says the show ever jumped the shark. All seven seasons were great -- the eighth season in Dark Horse comics is great too. That being said, I have to say that as a shipper, the show was never as compelling for me after Angel left at the end of the third season. This will give me yet another way to relive season three.

I got this book cuz I used to love those celebrity roasts, and I want to see if a certain portion of Milton Berle's anatomy is actually mentioned at every roast.

And this book, which is nothing but pictures of naked people, cuz you know I love art:

I also love A.J. Jacobs, and I'm looking forward to reading about him reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica. (I did mention that I'm a book nerd, did I not?)

And the Marx Brothers Scrapbook, which looks great if you love Groucho, Chico and (especially) Harpo as much as I do.I've been reading "Bizarre Books" which is just what it sounds like, a bunch of books with weird titles, subjects or authors. My favorite so far is "How to Put Constipation and Hemorrhoids Behind You" so if you ever find that book pick it up I'll reimburse you.
So when I saw a book entitled "Through the Alimentary Canal With Gun and Camera" I had to get it, to add to my fledgling bizarre books collection:

And it seems like at every book sale, there's always one book that I come home with and wonder what I was thinking. This time it "The Guru's Guide to Serenity" which seems to be about how celebrities relax. The only thing I can figure is that I was getting a little stressed from digging through all those books and at that knuckleheaded guy in the Games and Humor section who insisted on displaying the books upside-down.

Also at every book sale there's one that gets away. This time it was Tom Robbins's "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" which I hid but forgot to go back and retrieve.

So anyway, not bad, eh? Oh, and with the volunteer gift certificate and the newby cashier who rang all my paperbacks up at a dollar even though all of them were priced higher than that, these books set me back only 14 bucks.

I went back on Friday of course. I'll tell you about that later.

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-09-30T16:38:00.003-04:00

"Slouching Towards Kalamazoo" by Peter DeVries

Peter Devries is a writer once hugely popular, now largely forgotten -- though not completely, I still read his stuff. I'm afraid his books are no longer popular because we as a people have gotten too fat and stupid to understand them. This is highbrow humor, y'all, and it requires some cultural literacy. On page 179, a guy is talking about native Americans destroying their possessions to show off to their neighbors how much they have:

"This is conspicuous consumption. Like you ain't seen since -- since -- "

"Garbo in Camille?" I piped up.

"What? Oh, I see what you mean. All those expensive gowns, box at the opera, holidays in country houses."

"And somebody having to cough up for it?"

That cracked me up. But if you haven't seen the Divine Garbo waste away in the movie Camille you won't get it. And a lot of it I don't have the cultural wherewithal to get either, but when it works I think he's hilarious.

I must have read this book before although I don't remember much about it, because this passage is highlighted, and I was a militant vegetarian for many years:

"The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then passes a law saying "Thou Shalt not kill" is so monstruously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long."

And since it was already marked up anyway, I highlighted this too. The protagonist considers it the "Most Beautiful Sentence in the English Language":

"Though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise, and Eve miscarried of me before she had conceived of Cain."

I consider it interesting.

DeVries books make good palette cleaners for me. Most of the books I read take place mostly in the emotional realm. Devries's characters are witty and urbane, but they are not warm and cuddly.

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-09-17T16:40:00.003-04:00

I've read all of Nick Hornby's books -- well, that's not entirely true, I don't know enough about soccer to get through "Fever Pitch" (although I loved the switched-to-baseball American version movie). I've read all of his novels. I loved "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy". I loved "How to Be Good" until the last sentence, and I liked "A Long Way Down" a lot. He's got a new one coming out September 29th called "Juliet, Naked" which as much as I can't wait to read is only my second most-anticipated book coming out that day. (I'm referring of course to Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmetry") .

Anyway, while I'm waiting for Juliet to disrobe I picked up "Slam" Hornby's YA book that I passed up when it first came out. And I thought it was great, not written any differently than his other novels. The only thing that makes it a YA is the protagonist's age -- 15 when the book begins. He's just a kid obsessed with skateboarding -- to the point that he talks to his Tony Hawke poster -- who manages to get his ex-girlfriend pregnant. In addition to all the drama that situation presents, there are also aspects of the fantastic in this book as the kid occasionally time travels into the future.

Good stuff.

More books I've finished reading today

2009-09-12T15:10:00.002-04:00

The last Alan Moore book I read was nigh incomprehensible (even with extensive annotations), so it was kinda nice to go back to a time before he got so smart even Einstein couldn't comprehend one of his comics. There's actually a lot going on Captain Britain -- parallel worlds, an unstoppable superhero killing machine, the outlawing of superheroes, and a villain who can alter reality at will, but these stories were originally published in 8-page segments and they're pretty easy to follow. Alan Davis's art starts out horrible, gets tolerable but is nowhere near the mastery level he is at today.

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-09-10T15:49:00.003-04:00

While I was wallowing in the overwrought romanticism of Four Letters of Love I told my wife Kim that I was probably going to have to watch an action-adventure movie to cleanse my palette. But of course things weren't actually that dire. All it took was a book of the "lad lit" (or more vulgarly "dick lit") which deals with emotions from a male perspective and of which Nick Hornby is probably the most well-known practitioner. I chose "The Book of Joe" cuz I read something somewhere about its author Jonathan Tropper, and the story about a writer returning for the first time to the old hometown he savaged in his first novel sounded interesting. And that turned out to be an excellent choice. I found this book compelling for several reasons. It's laugh out funny; the protagonist has no sense of self-preservation and cannot resist smarting off even when he knows it's going to result in an ass-cutting -- or maybe even death. But there was some depth there too, as it slowly dawns on Joe Goffman that, although he may have legitimate beefs with his family and classmates, they might be right in their opinion that he is an asshole. After all, he wasn't a great brother, friend or son either. Here he is after the funural of a friend. Dugan is the high school basketball coach in a town where high school basketball is the only thing that matters:

"I thought the book was a load of horseshit," Dugan continues without missing a beat. "The malicious work of one miserable son of a bitch looking for someone to blame."
I nod again. . . "You'll understand if I don't ask you for a blurb on my next book jacket."
"You're an asshole, Goffman."
"Well, it's always a pleasure to hear from one of my readers," I say. . .
"I'm an asshole too," Dugan says. . . "Nothing wrong with being an asshole as long as you do it responsibly."
"So I'm doing it wrong?"

Now that I think about it, that may be the theme of the novel: Joe learns how to be a responsible asshole.
P.S. One of the characters in this book makes the case that Bruce Springsteen's "Backstreets" is some sort of gay anthem, and I'd never thought of it that way, but looking over the lyrics it sure could be:

One soft infested summer me and terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in
Catching rides to the outskirts tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house getting wasted in the heat
And hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
With a love so hard and filled with defeat
Running for our lives at night on them backstreets

Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at stocktons wing
Where desperate lovers park we sat with the last of the duke street kings
Huddled in our cars waiting for the bells that ring
In the deep heart of the night to set us loose from everything
To go running on the backstreets, running on the backstreets
We swore wed live forever on the backstreets we take it together

Endless juke joints and valentino drag where dancers scraped the tears
Up off the street dressed down in rags running into the darkness
Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me terry
It don't matter to me now when the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went
Away

Laying here in the dark you're like an angel on my chest
Just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness
Remember all the movies, terry, wed go see
Trying to learn how to walk like heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time to find were just like all the rest
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets
We swore forever friends on the backstreets until the end
Hiding on the backstreets, hiding on the backstreets

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-09-05T20:38:00.003-04:00

Is it possible for a book to be too romantic? Before I read Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams I would have at least hesitated for a moment before reluctantly admitting the possibility. But now I answer with a resounding "Yea, verily, forsooth, it can indeed."
Four Letters comes with blurbs singing its praises, blurbs from the likes of The New York Times, Redbook, Men's Journal, The Boston Globe and Marianne Faithful. And they're right, it is "lush" "lyrical" "delicate" "graceful" and "sparkling." In spots. But then it gets ridiculously over the top. On page 202 the protagonist is spending the night with some people he just met. He is sleeping in the room of their daughter who hasn't lived there for some time:

"He turned in the covers and stirred up the perfume of the young girl's dreams. He thumped the pillow and let out without realising the tortured half-sleep of all the nights she had lain there blaming herself for what happened to her brother. Her guilt swirled in the air like a fine dust; it caught in his throat and he began a coughing fit."
You read that right; he can't sleep because he's choking on a big pile of old stale guilt. Believe it or not it gets better. The coughing leads to crying:
"He hushed himself and tried to swallow the gasps in case others heard him, not yet knowing that . . . the island air was glassy and sharp with sorrow. Men coming home from Coman's bowed and were struck by flying shards of it."
Don't you just hate it when you're walking home from the pub and get struck by a shard of sorrow?
I guess it goes to show what a glutton for punishment I am that I didn't fling this book into the fire but kept reading to the bitter end. Judging by the paucity of dialogue in this book I'll bet Mr. Williams has trouble writing it. And since we never ever see how the lovers meet -- heck, we never even see them together -- he evidently doubts his ability to write a convincing love scene. As do I. Those moments that should have been the heart of this novel are only recalled after the fact in long, overwrought letters that the boy writes to the girl and the girl's mother --- who obviously knows more about literature than the New York Times and Marianne Faithful -- burns. A young man who hasn't walked or spoken in many years is miraculously healed and starts hiking all over Ireland immediately as though there were no such thing as muscle atropy. Everything is resolved in one hurried paragraph on the last page, and it left me with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd been cheated.
Either that or a shard of sorrow just cut into me.

Peace Supplies

2009-09-01T12:48:00.004-04:00

I've always loved bumper stickers; I guess it's because I grew up in the 60s and 70s when bumper stickers were first becoming popular. I remember in the days before I got my driver's license how I spent more time daydreaming about what bumper stickers I would put on the car I eventually hoped to have than I did about what kind of car that might be. The bumper sticker that I had that got the most attention was one that said "Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft: The Real Axis of Evil." Hoo boy, that got me some attention here in red state South Carolina, let me tell you -- everything from thumbs up to middle fingers up to threats of physical violence. The bumper sticker on my car right now is less confrontational. It says "Power to the Peaceful" and I got it at a Michael Franti concert.

I have another bumper sticker and I'm hesitant to put it on my car -- only because my wife will probably refuse to ride in the car with me. (I think she thinks President Obama can do no wrong.) But when I read stories like this in the New York Times today, I have to speak out and here's what I want to say:

I just can't understand why we can't have a president who learns from the past. When we leave Afghanistan and Iraq those countries are probably going to begin an era of chaos, but that will happen whether we pull out today or ten years from now. Let's pull out now before any more Americans die. Hey, even conservative columnist George Will agrees with me.
If you're interested in peace and free speech you should check out PeaceSupplies.org. Not just bumper stickers, they also have patches, buttons, t-shirts and fair trade goods like soap and coffee. Definitely a cool place and a business worthy of your support.

More Books I've read in 2009

2009-08-26T16:59:00.005-04:00

Religion. Art. Sex. The Arab-Israeil conflict. Politics. Marriage. Terrorism. And - oh yeah -- the end of the world. Tom Robbins had some heavy stuff on his mind when he wrote "Skinny Legs and All" and that's good cuz, unlike most people who get either depressed or confused when pondering such weighty matters, TR loves thinking about that stuff. So deep and palpable is that joy he felt writing that you can literally feel it when you read his words. I think I had a smile on my face the entire time I was reading this book. I was certainly in no hurry for it to end when his asides are as enjoyable as they are -- I mean Tom Robbins throws away lines that other writers would kill for. All along I thought the book was headed for a big showdown in the Promised Land, but that was an illusion. Where Robbins was actually going was so much better than that. And speaking of illusion, the ending where Salome does the dance of the seven veils -- removing one by one the misperceptions that keep us blind, broken and bound is just an astonishing 13 pages. The removal of the religion veil by itself was worth the price of admission:

Religion was an attempt to pin down the Divine. The Divine was eternally in flux, forever moving, shifting shape. That was its nature. It was absolute, true enough: absolutely mobile. Absolutely transcendent. Absolutely flexible. Absolutely impersonal. It had its god and goddess aspects, but it was ultimately no more male or female that it was star or screwdriver. It was the sum of all those things, but that sum could never be chalked on a slate. The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. . . The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world.
Thus, since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known.

Read this book. Now. Then read it again.

I am so happy that I live on the same planet as Tom Robbins.

Total eclipse of logic

2009-08-22T13:31:00.002-04:00

I mentioned how much I enjoyed the literalism of seeing Mick Jagger sing "I'm just standing in a doorway" while he's just standing in a doorway, and that has led me to the discovery of literal videos. If you've never heard of literal videos check this out. Hilarious:

Green Genius

Rob reviews "Dans Paris"

Rob's restaurant reviews: Chick Fil-A

Rob's Reviews "Helena From the Wedding."

Rob's Reviews "Home"

Meanderings about math and music

Rob's Reviews: "A Ship Made of Paper."

More of Rob's RomComs

Romcom Review "How Do You Know"

My 24 favorite songs

Two Movies Today

Rob's RomComs

Adventures in homebrewing

The Riotous Return of Rob's Rotgut Reviews.

Day 31 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 30 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 29 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 28 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 27 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 26 of the 31 beers of Christmas

The Christmas Beer - Old Foghorn

Christmas with Krampus

Day 23 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 22 of the 31 beers of Christmas

It's Day 20 -- Let's Thai one on.

Day 19 of the 31 Beers of Christmas

Day 17 of the 31 beers of Christmas

Steamy Day 15

Getting delirious on Day 14

Day 13 of the 31 beers of Christmas

Banana Bread Beer for Brunch

On the 11th beer of Christmas. . .

Random beer question

Day 10 of the 31 beers of Christmas

Day 9 of the 31 beers of Christmas

Day 8, a day late

31 Beers of Christmas, Day 7

Day 6 of the 31 beers of Christmas

31 Beers of Christmas, Day 5

By Special Request

Hop to it -- Day 3 of the 31 beers of Christmas.

31 Beers of Christmas Day 2

31 Beers of Christmas Day 1

My four favorite love songs

The only comic strip I ever saved

Greetings from the world's worst blogger

Not Quite

Come here, Watson, I need you.

There she is, Miss America

More Beers I drank in 2010

More books I've read in 2010

A great book I read in 2010

More movies I watched in 2010

Classic Rock Doesn't Make Any Sense Either

Classic Country Music Makes No Sense

And then I read. . .

Almost Purr-fect

More books I read in 2010

My Favorite Day of 2009

The First Book I read in 2010

2009 Literary wrap-up

The last two books I read in 2009

More Books I Read in 2009

I really hate this song

One beer I won't be trying

More books I've read in 2009

Pivotal Fitness is Completely Clueless

More books I own in 2009

More Books I've had read to me in 2009

Blue about berries

More books I read and stuff I found cleaning up

Hey Ali, I (finally) found that picture

More books I've read in 2009

If we make it through December. . .

Musings on Marketing

More Books I've read in 2009

More movies I've seen in 2009

Baseball and brewski

Rob keeps on rereading

Rob Rereads, part 4