The day in fanboy: pilgrimage to Bell???s Brewery
August 11, 2011
You’re going to have to live with a few goofy pictures of me. BECAUSE I WENT TO BELL’S!!! When I think back on it, my enlightenment via Oberon might have been my entry into my current beer obsession.
Unfortunately, my sojourn to Michigan was due to my visiting my cousin in the hospital. I knew I-94 would be taking me right past the mothership, but because of the timing regardless of the direction, it wouldn’t work out for me to experience much enjoyment. I’d have either 100 or 550 miles still to drive after having been there. The impetus of the trip was not pleasure so I didn’t feel like I could take an extra night to pause in Kalamazoo.
But I couldn’t not at least drive past the place. So on my way back to Minneapolis from Ann Arbor, I made it work as best I could. I had consulted the Bell’s website and thought I had learned that about all I’d be able to do would be to drive up to the place, take my picture, and drive off.
The brewery (the existing brewery in Kalamazoo, versus the new facility under construction just out of town in Galesburg) is conveniently located right on Business 94, minimizing the effort required to find it. It’s a very unassuming group of small buildings and, in fact, I almost drove right by.
I was delighted to discover that the General Store was open. I dutifully dropped a couple bucks on Oberon and Two Hearted t-shirts, as well as this bottle of Wedding Ale which is only available at the brewery.
I was excited when the guy in the store told me that the Eccentric Café, the brewery’s bar, opened at 11:00 rather than noon as I had been under the impression. That meant I only had twenty minutes to wait. As I had eaten breakfast at 7:00, I was ready for lunch.
In the meantime, I walked back to the brewery and saw a load of fresh barrels waiting to go somewhere. Kalamazoo seems to be pretty old and railroady; I wish I could have taken time to drive around and explore a little. I bet there’s a lot of neat architecture. Bell’s is situated where three tracks intersect.
At long last, the twenty minutes had passed and Carly opened the door to the café. She probably rolled her eyes behind my back when she saw me sitting on the steps, having slipped the Oberon t-shirt on over my other shirt. Oh well. It’s people like me who make her establishment a destination.
When I saw the beer board, I was supremely sad that I couldn’t partake. In addition to all the varieties that have made it to Minnesota, there were a bunch of others that are only available on draught at the brewery, the ones with the yellow tags by their names. I couldn’t stand it. Carly gave me a taste of the Le Batteur farmhouse ale. IT WAS SO GOOD!
I made do with my turkey croissant sandwich. Before I left, I discovered the gallery of Bell’s- and beer-related license plates in the restroom hallway. Ha! Then I realized that I hadn’t thought to look for a Hopslam t-shirt and promptly forgot about it because I walked around and looked at the rest of the space.
Up in the balcony, there was a variety of custom wrought iron work, including the wonderful Oberon sun. Out the back door, there was a garden for hanging out and enjoying a lovely Midwestern summer’s evening.
Then I realized that there were several installations of hop vines. HOP VINES! Squeeeeee! Hops! Alas, none of them had developed flowers yet, but oh well. Now I know what I’d be in for as I consider planting some decoratively at home.
It was a ninety-minute stop during a 650-mile drive that ultimately took me sixteen hours to complete (I make a lot of pit stops). But hey, that was better than the seventeen that it took me to get to Ann Arbor. I knew I’d have regrets if I hadn’t spent the time that I did.
The next beer pilgrimage will be to Odell in Fort Collns, Colorado, next summer.
Pet Instructions, August 2011
August 4, 2011
I got a free car wash with my oil change, yo
August 4, 2011
Even if you have the coupon for a $14.99 oil change and 7¢ per gallon off on gas, you still get a deluxe car wash for naught.
Yo.
It has been a week since my cousin and her fiancé were in the horrible car accident and it is time for me to drive from Minneapolis to Ann Arbor to spend a couple days being supportive. Crucial to the twelve-hour drive will be my third-generation iPod, a relic from 2003.
I haven’t researched it, but my personal anecdotal evidence indicates that this model of iPod was very hard on its battery. I’ve replaced the battery in mine twice; it seems to have the ability to retain a meaningful charge only for about six months, then the battery wears out. As such, I use the iPod plugged in 99.9% of the time. If I’m only driving a short way, say, the twenty minutes to bowling, I might dare to go unplugged. But on the way back home, I’m lucky if I get an additional five minutes out of it.
So you can imagine that I was bummed when the just-as-old cigarette-lighter power cord that I used with my iPod finally frayed its wires to nonfunctionality half a year ago. Toodling around town it’s not a big deal to have to listen to the radio, because the Twin Cities are home to the awesome Minnesota Public Radio station, The Current.
I bought a new cord that I thought would cover my dinosaur, but it didn’t (but it works for my iPhone, so I didn’t return it). When I talked to my dad and made the decision to drive to Michigan, urgency in finding a new old cord online set it. I didn’t have much luck and the shipping options wouldn’t have gotten it to me in time anyway.
I got out my loupe—by which I mean, I took off my glasses that correct my extreme nearsightedness and which now need their third update on the bifocal part, so when I need to see something clearly at extreme closeness I just remove them from my face and it’s perfect—and examined the old cord more carefully. Where the cord meets the Dock Connector end had been frayed forever, but I now perceived that one of the five or six tiny-gauge wires contained within had broken. There was enough of an end sticking out from the Dock Connector that I knew I could strip the two ends of it and twist it back together.
I did so and took the cord and my iPod out to my car. As I walked across the street to the parking lot, I crossed paths with a gang of six of the type of ne’er-do-wells who frequent my quiet block just off the main street to do their druggy nefarious deeds. As displeased as I am that those sorts impose themselves on my neighborhood, it must be said that they usually keep to themselves and don’t often engage with anyone else who might be present and move on after fifteen or twenty minutes. I traversed the thirty yards to my car unfettered.
I plugged in the cord and iPod to the cigarette lighter and held my breath. Yes! The iPod gave the cheerful trill that meant it was receiving power and its screen shone with that cool blue backlight! (Yes, yes, as a graphic designer I know that all blues are cool.) I gave myself a mental pat on the back and eyed the six guys who were loitering against the fence across from my place. They were eyeing me back and when I got out of my car rather than driving away, they sauntered off.
I am most happy that I’ll be able to use the iPod in my car again because I’ve gotten into listening to the Harry Potter audio books, as some of you know. What better venue than as a captive audience on the interstate? I’ll also be able to crank the The Asteroids Galaxy Tour.
I didn’t used to have interest in Harry Potter. I had never read the books, didn’t go to the theater to see the movies, and when I’d come across a movie on TV I just couldn’t get into it. Then my newish co-worker Aaron casually mentioned that he had all the audio books (I have subsequently learned that he’s quite the HP nerd, in the good way). He brought me the first one and I started listening, without any expectation of caring at all. I was quite surprised to find that I like Harry Potter a lot!
The audio books have been the perfect way for my particular self to enjoy this magical universe. Even though I’m halfway through listening to the fourth book and am loving it, I’m fairly certain that if I had the paper book in front of me, I’d be snoozing within seven minutes of the start of any reading session and wouldn’t have made it a quarter of the way through the first book. When I finish a book, Aaron brings me his DVD of the movie so that I can watch it on the weekend.
I’m kind of rambling, and vacillating between serious and frivolous, because though I’m going to visit my cousin in the hospital, and my uncle and aunt and other cousin, I’m unsure what I’ll be supposed to do once I arrive. I guess it’s just the act of being there that matters. I’m also nervous because everybody who’s been posting on the CaringBridge and Facebook pages has seemed really religious miracle-hoping, and I’m really not. I’m atheist. An optimist, usually, but an atheist. My biggest apprehension is that I’ll be asked to participate in prayer. It will be awkward if I don’t, and I’ll feel hypocritical if I do. When your daughter is lying in the intensive care unit with little practical hope of a meaningful recovery and you want to pray, I don’t imagine that you want to hear that your family member doesn’t.
So here’s a photo of my side of the family—my uncle and aunt and cousins, me and my parents—in a happier times, at my grandmother’s birthday in 2002 and at her funeral in 2009. Happier, because my grandmother died simply of old age at 105, and because nobody had been in a car accident.
Aliens in a Buick ate my pi??a colada in the rain
July 29, 2011
I was all set to write a lame entry in which I whined about how my current cats snuggle only fifty percent as much as my former cats, and that neither of the newbies sleep on my head like both of the oldsters did. But that about covers it.
Let’s move on to “The Piña Colada Song.”
I have previously extolled the virtues of Justin Currie’s (Del Amitri) lyric-writing prowess and I stand by that. He is an amazing conjurer of images. But my friend Kimberly reminded me of one of the great storytellers. She caused a few of us tonight to zoom back to the turn of the 1980s and Rupert Holmes.
I immediately dug out my two Rupert Holmes albums because I was determined to have a bit of nostalgia even though I should really be going to bed. Then I had a major anticlimax when, unlike six months ago when I played the eponymous only album by the British duo Metro, the twenty-year-old belt in my turntable decided that it couldn’t make it up to full speed. I’m pretty easy-going but even I have my limits. Seventy-percent of normal tempo just doesn’t cut it.
Then I remembered that last night I got my Spotify invitation. This afternoon my coworker explained to me that unlike Pandora (which I adore), Spotify lets you choose what you want to listen to, and lets you listen to whole albums. Spotify to the rescue! I’m having my Rupert Holmes fix.
I have never though of Rupert Holmes as a favorite artist, even though I like everything he does. Then, by the end of the first verse of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”, I realized that the reason why I like his music is because, by and large, he’s one of those clever weavers of a tale accompanied by the perfect tasty melody. The entire “Partners in Crime” album is like that.
My other example of such an artist is Thomas Dolby, on his “Aliens Ate My Buick” album. Sheer genius, that one is. Every song is a story with an ironic twist that advances the plot. Even if there’s not much of a plot, there’s still some clever turn of phrase that is never in danger of being mundane. Not necessarily subtle, but reasonably clever.
As I write this, I’m realizing that Justin Currie is a great storyteller. What he doesn’t do, that the other two tend to, is thump you over the head with precious self-awareness. Justin Currie is just snarky and cynical—and also clever—but not particularly ironic.
When I was a college English major, in one of my classes we learned to think of “irony” as “a cruel twist of fate.” I don’t mean the above ironic like that. I mean it like Alannis Morrisette’s—you know, “like ray-ee-ain on your wedding day.” Obvious.
Quite a lot of the time, you end up wondering some time later if Justin Currie really meant that, or if he meant the other way you could think of it. Not obvious. If you want the zinger, look up the lyrics to “Plus Ça Change,” which he recorded as The Uncle Devil Show. He’s in a league of his own.
There’s a lot of between-the-lines going on with Justin Currie. Rupert Holmes and Thomas Dolby put it right out there. Honorable mention goes to Dan Wilson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic), though he deals more in metaphor and double entendre. Honorable mention also goes to Bernie Taupin (Elton John) and Kate Bush and the kids in Nickel Creek. So on and so forth. I’m not attempting to be all-inclusive. I know there are many others. I’ve lost a little focus.
What all these folks have in common is that they don’t write the simpering “ooh baby you’re so fine I’m glad you’re mine let’s bump and grind” kind of lyrics to the bump and grind kind of beat.
So thanks, Kimberly, I’ve had some fun music memories this evening.
Inside looking out
July 28, 2011
I have spent a lot of time in my life feeling like I’m on the outside looking in. As a kid, I wasn’t popular—not unpopular, but not part of what I perceived to be the in-crowd, and now that I think back on who at the time I thought those people were, there probably wasn’t as much of a difference as I might have thought. In high school I didn’t really feel like I was part of any particular crowd, neither in nor out, just there, with my little circle of friends.
——–
24 hours later:
Just as I thought I was getting into the swing of things last night, I got a phone call from my dad. I think I’ve talked before about how small my immediate family is. My dad was calling with the unfortunate news that the older of my two first cousins and her fiancé had been in an awful car accident earlier in the day and that they were in intensive care with head injuries. My other cousin, her younger sister, was traveling to be with her via Minneapolis and was at the airport with a long layover, and I needed to go get her.
All of a sudden I was the sole representative of the in-crowd.
I wouldn’t call my relationship with my family close. That undersells it. It isn’t close, it isn’t far, it just is. We all like each other well enough but don’t bust our butts getting together. My aunt and uncle do the best job of making the effort to stay in touch. My parents have always seen more of my cousins than I have of my aunt and uncle.
The two parts to my relationship with my cousins is that the older of the two, the one who was in the accident, is seventeen years younger than I. Her sister is twenty years younger. And we were geographically separated by hundreds of miles. Last summer was the first time that I got together with either of my cousins without any of our parents around, when the older happened to be in town for a professional engagement. Last night was the first time I met up with the younger, one-on-one. Her layover was long enough for us to come back to my place so that she could close her eyes for a few hours.
I’ve never had to do the family thing before but I know that she appreciated it, even though we don’t come close to needing a full two hands to count the number of times we’ve seen each other during the course of our lives.
For forty-eight years, it was always somebody else who had extraordinary personal circumstances. Now it’s me and my six people. It’s a weird sensation.
My favorite piece of clothing is my air conditioner
July 23, 2011
My air conditioner doesn’t count? Okay then, my favorite piece of clothing is the one I’m not wearing. No? Your favorite piece of my clothing is the one that I didn’t take off because I do have air conditioning.
As a Minnesotan who writes a blog, you have no doubt noticed that I must periodically dwell on the weather. This is much easier to justify if we’ve just gotten fourteen inches of snow in one twelve-hour shot, or if, as it has, it has been 300° (Fahrenheit or Celsius, take your pick) with humidity that would make a Swedish sauna proud for all but two non-consecutive days in the last three weeks.
What inspires such things as my grouse about elevators is that my mother passed her overheated physiology right on to her only child. What got from my father, who is exactly the opposite of my mother and runs for sweaters when it dips below 80°F/27°C, is a better ability to cope with the heat. What I bring to the table on my own is my understanding that the better hydrated I am, the less uncomfortable I will be. That, and my acceptance of having to sequester myself within the air conditioned bubble.
It’s all relative, I know. Just today, a native-Floridian friend (actually, I think he’s Equadoran before Floridian, the point being tropical, or close to it) quipped that he “never understood people suffering in heat waves.” But he’s currently visiting New York City to where my Minnesota heat wave has moved, allowing him to commune with people who don’t usually experience 104°F/40°C temperatures and high humidity, and suddenly he has a different perspective. Of course in Florida it’s humid and hot. Here in the north, it gets pretty hot for a while and kind of humid sometimes, but not the extremes of both days on end.
We must complain.
But can you blame me? Two days ago, we set a new high dewpoint record of 82°F/28°C, during an air temperature of 95°F/35°C, resulting in a heat index of 114°F/45°C.
Now we’re on the same page, aren’t we?. There are only so many garments one can remove when one is overheated. My favorite piece of clothing is my air conditioner!
If you???re going up, you???ll piss me off
July 21, 2011
As a random act of kindness goes, it’s not much, holding the elevator door for someone. Unless you’re me and it’s my work elevator and it’s in the morning when I’m dashing in.
If you’ve been following along on this blog, you’ll recall (perhaps) that I have attempted to establish myself as a socially maladjusted individual who has a hard time thinking of others. In the mornings, this goes only partway toward explaining the lengths I’ll go to to make it seem as though I had not a clue in the world that you were running to catch my elevator. This, despite the fact that every surface inside the elevator and its door frame is reflective and it’s actually rather difficult to position yourself to see nothing on the outside.
If it’s morning and I’m just arriving, there are one to two additional factors working against your chances of having me hold the door for you. The first is simply that I’m nearly always cutting it close to the time by when my boss wishes for us to arrive, a rather cushy 9:30am. I’m not a morning person. More often than not, I pack my breakfast because that’s fifteen minutes more of sleep. What can I say?
The second comes into play if it’s summer, as it now, hence the increased kindness factor of the act. In the summer, I ride my bike to work. That heats me up. Our elevators have zero air circulation. That exacerbates the effect of my suddenly having no wind in my face and being trapped in a small container with no moving air. I wish to exit after the minimum amount of time possible. My office is on the top floor. Every person who rides up with me creates an extra stop. The length of my imprisonment increases. I do not look kindly upon this. I will attempt to ignore your approach unless I happen in my peripheral vision to recognize you as also working on my floor.
Now, having said the preceding three paragraphs, if it is unavoidable that you are entering the carriage, I will say hello. A long time ago I had a friend who was very friendly to everyone he met on the street. His explanation was that if a fellow human being is three feet away, it’s just rude not to acknowledge his or her existence. Three feet is very often the long dimension of an elevator car.
I was humbled a little while ago this evening when I realized that I did a true random Act Of Kindness, uncontrived. Love you, too. Things will be A-OK.
I live the life of a bachelor
July 20, 2011
If I were a single man, no one would give much thought to the life I lead. And since I am not close to very many people, I can probably guess on one hand how many people have given it even something resembling even half of a passing thought.
But I am a woman in my later forties. That should at least give me myself and Irene pause, if no one else.
Over the last few weeks I have come to the realization that I live the life of a bachelor man. Not even a bachelorette. I’m not looking to hook up with anyone. I’ve never been married, I’ve never had a relationship that lasted for more than six months. I’m not sure either of those things will happen, and I’m not sure I care, as in, want.
But, a bachelor minus the one-night stands. Or any stands. We’re all older now, right? But there is plenty of beer. But not in a drunk-on-MichGoldenLight(is that even possible?)-with-my-buddies kind of way.
So maybe it’s not so much like a bachelor after all. I like beer with actual flavor. I read an article earlier today that in the UK, Molson Coors is launching a beer targeted at women that comes in the clear filtered, crisp rose, and zesty lemon varieties. What the heck, gals? Real women drink IPA (that’s India Pale Ale for you pisswater drinkers). Man up!
Beer has as much or—*gasp*—more variety than wine. You should try something different sometime.
It’s true that I don’t leave the toilet seat up, or squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle. But I do go for weeks without scrubbing the sink, scrubbing the bathtub, vacuuming, doing laundry, folding laundry, months without putting clean clothes away because it’s just as easy to grab clean underwear from the laundry basket. I didn’t realize how gross my toilet was until I had friendly houseguests a few weeks ago and, when I had the brief chance, used the visit as an excuse to investigate the situation. Well, I never lift up the toilet seat. I didn’t realize what was going on under there. The situation has been rectified.
I do keep up with doing the dishes. I don’t want my cats to get any fancy ideas. Before you ask, I only have two cats. And a rabbit.
Maybe I keep up with doing the dishes because there are fewer and fewer of them these days. I love cooking. One of my favorite ways to spend a day used to be making lunches and suppers for the upcoming week during Sunday afternoon. But due to a combination of laziness and the awakening of my enjoyment of eating out, particularly at lunchtime, homecooking has become an endangered species. I have a friend who says that if it doesn’t beep, he doesn’t make it. I’m not to that point, but it really is appalling how little I cook at home right now.
Part of that, particularly with regard to lunch, is because it’s summer and the food trucks are out. I adore the food trucks. But that’s a whole other topic.
I have enough socks and underwear to easily go a month or more without doing the aforementioned laundry. I hate doing laundry. That’s not a guy thing, that’s a chore thing. Nobody likes chores.
What is just a single thing, and not exactly a guy thing, is that I am independent and can do whatever I please. I like that. When I’m feeling non-antisocial and actually want to do something, I’m not the one who has to consult with someone else for permission (though I do believe in communicating and having the courtesy to stay in touch if plans are changing, not that I have a lot of experience with such matters). I just do it. A lot of the time that means that I do it by myself, and that’s okay. I’m comfortable with that.
I also don’t have to put stuff away around the house because there’s no one else here to see whether I did or didn’t. You know, except the cats.
I have NASA-TV on in the background. I really like it when the show “earth views” from the cameras in high orbit. I see that the space shuttle Atlantis has completed over one complete Earth-orbit since I started writing this (you do the research to see how long that is). I have to get up in five hours so, though there’s nobody waiting in bed and nagging me, I’d better wrap this up.
It should be noted that a man-bachelor wouldn’t have such a snazzy shower curtain.
The most interesting man in the world, or not
July 18, 2011
I kind of like finding new music via television commercials. The most recent song that I love is, I have learned, “The Golden Age” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, a Danish outfit. The song is featured in a Heineken beer commercial.
Part of the reason why I like the commercial is because of how the main character interacts with each person he comes upon. Then I started thinking about it more. Do I like the commercial in general because I am influenced by loving the song?
No. I like it because it’s well done all the way around. It’s essentially Heineken’s version of Dos Equis’ The Most Interesting Man in the World. Only Heineken got it right. (Links to all videos at the end.)
The problem with the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World is that he just sits there, attempting to exude smugness but coming off as arrogant, as he or the announcer tells you why you should be creaming your pants over this guy.
On the other hand, the dude in the Heineken commercial actually does interesting stuff. Clichés become clichés because there’s some element of truth in them. Actions do speak louder than words. The Heineken guy is doing interesting stuff and the people around him are reacting in a way that lets the viewer know that they adore this fellow. And so do I. Well, I’d at least like to be at that party.
The Most Interesting Man in the World just sits there looking creepy, assuming that the voiceover will convince us that he is. Interesting, that is, not creepy. But creepy he is. I would not like to be one of his arm candies.
I do try to be fair and give credit where credit is due. While watching the Most Interesting Man in the World compilation, I smiled when the voiceover said, “People hang on his every word, even the prepositions.” But that doesn’t make up for the rest of it.
And in the interest of point-counterpoint, as a flute player myself, I do not believe for an instant that the Heineken guy is actually playing that flute. Twirling it perhaps (though most likely computer generated), but not playing it. You can always tell by how they hold it and how unbent their fingers are. The rest of the commercial/video more than makes up for that. Everybody knows actors don’t really play their instruments.
So check them both out and tell me what you think.
Oh, and I do know that when I’m finished posting this, I’m running right to iTunes to buy everything The Asteroids Galaxy Tour have for sale. You should, too, says I!
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour/Heineken full-length video
Heineken commercial (1:30 version)
Dos Equis The Most Interesting Man in the World compilation
photo by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (Facebook)
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