Here comes the King

October 7, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Lance Armstrong says he's excited about his three-year association with Michelob Ultra, because it complements his active lifestyle by injecting it with a shitload of money.

Just think — if Bristol Brewing made worse beer and more money, they could have Lance Armstrong as their celebrity spokesperson.

Instead, the former Shiner Bock drinker will be pimping Michelob Ultra, one of the jillions of brands belonging to industry titan InBev, and a concoction described as “a great-tasting beer with lower carbohydrates and fewer calories.”

Uh huh. I haven’t sampled an Anheuser-Busch product in many a moon, since I discovered what actual beer tastes like. But I suppose that given the proper incentive — a Brinks truck full of greenbacks and free Michelob Ultra backing up to the house every Friday — I could learn to lower my standards, too.

As a much younger dog I would drink pretty much anything as long as it was cheap — Falstaff, Buckhorn, longneck Buds. But as it is written in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” Including watery beer.

In my dotage, I favor IPA from Bristol, Lagunitas or Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe, when I happen to be in town. Anchor Steam or Anchor Porter. Guinness, of course. And the Deschutes beers are all excellent, whether you’re talking ale, porter or stout. I’d recommend any of them for free.

In fact, I just did. No wonder I remain so distressingly unwealthy. I will never be smart.

• Extra-credit snark: This is not Anheuser-Busch’s first marketing coup, of course. More Americans can recognize the Budweiser Clydesdales than can find Afghanistan on a map. I recall enjoying a semantic analysis of the original Budweiser jingle in college. Don’t recall if it was in journalism class or semantics, but the gist of it was that the jingle said absolutely nothing about the beer — it was a series of empty statements punctuated with references to Anheuser-Busch trademarks.

Think about it for a second:

“When you say ‘Bud,” you’ve said a lot of things nobody else can say.” (That’s because ‘Bud” is a trademark.)

“When you say ‘Bud,’ you say you care enough to only drink the King of Beers.” (“King of Beers,” another trademark.)

“There is no other one.” (One what?)

“There’s only something less.” (Than what?)

“Because the King of Beers . . .” (That trademark again.)

“. . . is leading all the rest.” (Of what?)

“When you say Budweiser — you’ve said it all.” (The complete name, which is also a trademark.)

Air today, gone tomorrow

October 6, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

This is where the rubber meets the road (or, more precisely, the goatheads).

It’s autumn, all right. Blustery outside and beggary inside, with the local NPR affiliate entering the seventh day of its fall pledge drive with about fifty large yet to raise.

KRCC-FM used to be able wrap up these biannual annoyances in a day and a half, but no longer — money is as tight here as it is everywhere else, despite our vigorous embrace of ham-and-egger tourism, the military-industrial complex and corporate Christianity. Just ask anyone living in a cardboard condo alongside Fountain Creek.

My last few bike rides have required knee and arm warmers, and once an actual long-sleeved jersey, which was something of a shock to the system. They have also featured one flat each, as the goatheads are out and about. And big mothers they are, too. Once you hear that tick-tick-ticking and spot the thorn affixed to the tire, you’re just a few seconds from becoming a pedestrian.

On Sunday I hear the ticking, spot the thorn and start looking for a comfy place to sit while replacing the tube. But the first tube I pull out of the saddlebag won’t hold air, and neither will the second. Ay, Chihuahua, I think. Brain damage. You’ve been stuffing the flats back in the bag instead of a jersey pocket, you idiot.

Happily, the third tube was the charm — I pumped it up and headed for home, because I could feel the rear softening up, too. I foresee a morning rich in adhesives and patches if I wish to ride that bike again. Happily, it has many cousins in the garage. Never do today what you can put off ’til tomorrow.

Hot plate

October 4, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

There's a heart attack on a plate for you.

A light dinner last night called for a medium-heavy breakfast this morning. I’m talking eggs scrambled with chopped green chile and minced garlic, diced spuds with green chile, red bell pepper, scallions, garlic and cilantro, shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, and a hunk of leftover grilled flatiron steak. Plus coffee, of course. A day without the velvety black goodness is a day without sunshine.

Speaking of beef, here’s a story you don’t want to read if you’re big on mystery meat. It’s straight out of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” I forwarded it to my man Hal, a meat-eater who is intensely interested in eating well and locally, and he replied, “This is why we raise our own.”

Hal was cooking for a couple dozen folks at a neighbor’s birthday party last night and drank wine with the gent who owns the plant that processes his beef, which when still on the hoof meanders around the neighborhood eating grass at 8,800 feet. Not many of us live this close to our grub, which goes a long way toward explaining how a young girl can wind up paralyzed from the waist down by eating a shitburger.

Interestingly, Hal also claims that there are “many more cases of food-borne illness from produce than from meat, fish, chicken and eggs combined.” I don’t know whether he’s right, but I do recall the salmonella-tainted jalapeños of 2008 and E. coli-contaminated spinach of 2006, clear indications that vegetarianism does not guarantee one a clean bill of health.

Didn’t I say this on the other side of the record?

October 3, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Here’s an interesting article in The New York Times about a pending reunion of the five surviving members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which will kick off a six-hour IFC documentary titled “Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut).”

Now, don’t get me wrong; I love the Pythons. I started watching them in college and have a closet packed with DVDs of their TV show and movies. But when I read a line like this — “To find the equivalent of the Pythons’ kind of wordplay and punning (verbal and visual) you have to turn to written humor, which may be where some of the Pythons’ inspiration came from in the first place.” — I feel badly for Philip Proctor, Phil Austin, Peter Bergman and David Ossman, a.k.a. The Firesign Theatre, a homegrown outfit I first encountered in high school. I have a second closet full of their vinyl and a pretty substantial collection of CDs.

The Firesign Theatre took to the airwaves on Radio Free Oz at KPFK in 1967, two years before the Pythons cranked up their BBC act, and were regulars on KRLA a year later. Anyone who enjoys wordplay and punning could do much, much worse than listen to Firesign classics such as “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus,” “Everything You Know Is Wrong” or “The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra” — which has its roots in, of all things, the British author Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series (a tale for which the world is not yet prepared).

And therein lies the rub. You pretty much had to listen to the Firesigns, which requires more imagination than watching TV, the same way reading does. They were never as good as the Pythons in front of a camera, but then again the Pythons were never any great shakes as an audio act. At least half of what makes the Pythons funny is their physical, visual comedy.

I never saw the Pythons live, but I saw the Firesigns in Denver once, and it was a memorable experience, with a great deal of (and perhaps too much) audience participation, especially from me and my pals. They’re still performing today. But drop a Firesign Theatre reference into a casual conversation and someone will probably suggest you pop in to the local ER for regrooving. Do a dead-parrot quip and you’re the life of the party.

We may not all be bozos on this bus, but at least some of us are.

One Gran Fondue, hold the napalm

October 3, 2009November 16, 2010 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

A glimpse of the changing colors in Dog Country.

Legolas Leipheimer is leading a Gran Fondue through Sonoma County today, accompanied by some 3,500 of his closest friends, and embedded in the merry band is my old pal Chris Coursey, formerly a columnist for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa.

Via e-mail, Chris notes that he is doing the 65-mile Medio Fondue, which features only 3,500 feet of climbing, as opposed to the full kettle of cheese — 110 miles with 6,500 feet of up, including the dread Coleman Valley Road. Going up is plenty tough — and don’t forget, what goes up must also come down.

Writes Chris: “The descent on the other side is hairpinned and potholed in some places, smooth and screaming in others. It demands a bit of skill, discretion and common sense. And I’m going to be sharing it with 3,499 other humanoids. When is the last time you saw 3,500 skilled, discreet and sensible people together in the same crowd?”

Uh, that would be never, which is only one of the many reasons I will go out for a short, solo ’cross-bike ride here as soon as the temps reach the knee-warmer stage.

Still, it could be worse — instead of cycling alone or in a crowd, we could be pounding ground along the Arghandab River in Afghanistan, a garden spot that the grunts of Bravo Company describe as “Vietnam without the napalm.” Sounds lovely. I’d rather do the backside of Coleman drunk on a unicycle with a rucksack full of nitroglycerin.