Day 8, a day late

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

(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

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

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."

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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.