Ah, remember those glorious fall school days, when Teach' would pour you a nice pint of porter before getting down to the Three Rs. ...
Here’s something you don’t see every day: The fine folks at Bristol Brewing and the Blue Star want to turn a shuttered school into a brew house, bakery and community center.
I got wind of this a while ago and my only complaint is that this project isn’t happening in my neighborhood. We got schools out the wazoo around here — surely we can afford to shut at least one of them down, make a happenin’ hangout out of it. One is an easy two-block stagger along a bike path from Chez Dog.
God knows what passes for education in this country these days lacks a certain value. We might as well get drunk and enjoy the decline and fall.
Meanwhile, early returns indicate that this WordPress blog is at least acceptable to the literati (which is to say that while it remains largely content-free, at least it will load on both Macs and Windoze boxes). More as it develops. Any Linux weenies out there? Leave your thoughts in comments, please.
One shot, three seasons: Summer in the lawn, fall in the trees and winter on Pikes Peak.
Deadlines suck. Like The Turk, I’ve been indoors more than I care to be lately, in my case generating bicycle comedy for fun and profit (well, for profit, anyway, and only just barely). This is particularly irksome because we’ve been enjoying a stellar fall here in Bibleburg. It’s 76 right now — 76! — at 5:45 p.m. on Oct. 15. Imagine my amazement.
This will change, as it must. Tomorrow and Sunday look pretty damn’ nice, and wouldn’t y’know, I have to clock in for a couple of shifts in the old VeloBarrel. Come Monday, the weather should become a bit more seasonal, as in 50-something with a chance of showers. Ick.
After that, it’s the Colorado lottery, which means exactly what it sounds like — a total meteorological crapshoot, which I must say keeps life interesting, like the wining jug in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” a punch blended by understudy barkeep Eddie using any booze left in glasses by the patrons of La Ida. A Palace Flophouse roommate, Jones, first pans, then praises the concoction:
“You take whiskey,” he said hurriedly. “You more or less know what you’ll do. A fightin’ guy fights and a cryin’ guy cries, but this —” he said magnanimously — “why, you don’t know whether it’ll run you up a pine tree or start you swimming to Santa Cruz.”
That’s the sad part. Pine trees we got. But Santa Cruz … not so much.
Today’s was a long and unproductive stint in the old VeloBarrel. VN.com remains a little twitchy — envision a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs — and this afternoon in addition to the usual hitches in its digital gitalong I started having trouble simply staying connected to the site.
This is problematical if you’re one of the people being paid to stuff bits and bytes up the digi-tubes linking France, Colorado, Wyoming and California. Thus I accomplished very little beyond rearranging the order in which I repeatedly delivered a short selection of choice obscenities.
Bring me one of these every 15 minutes until I pass out and every half hour thereafter.
Beats me what the problem was (and still is). My other usual haunts — The New York Times, Political Animal, DrunkCyclist and this miserable site — are chugging right along. And this site and DC are both WordPress-based models, too. So go figure.
“Is it too early to start fuckin’ drinking?” I IM’d web editor Steve Frothingham around 1:30. “It’s 9:30 p.m. in France,” he replied.
Speaking of booze, Frank Bruni has an item on the Bloody Mary over at today’s NYT.com. Writes Mr. Bruni: “The bloody mary bridges the speakeasy and the herb garden; it’s a liquid salad into which you can not only pour pretty much any kind of base alcohol you like but also sprinkle parsley, basil or cilantro, and, while you’re at it, cram in hunks of vegetables, usually pickled, of many types.”
He then goes on to describe an appalling series of effete East Coast beverages served up by sissified Noo Yawk bistros that must make a Sonoma County wine bar look like a Hell’s Angels clubhouse by comparison.
I was never big on Bloodies, myself. Back in my morning-drinker days the crowd I ran with favored the lowly red beer as a palliative for the daily brain sprain. This was simply whatever cheap lager was on tap at the nearest dive bar mixed with Snap-E-Tom tomato-and-chile juice, repeated as necessary. A wedge of lime upped the vitamin-C content while adding much-needed roughage.
Maybe I’ll have one tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll just get straight into the smack.
That's kind of a funny-lookin' beer there, son. All pink an' stuff. That from San Francisco or sumpin'?
The Fourth of July and that little three-week jaunt around Frogland are nearly upon us, and strong drink is a must, if only to endure the faux patriotic blather from both right and left and the endless keening of LANCE LANCE LANCE from the cretins in the media. This last is certain to be especially irksome since Big Tex has announced (via Twitter, of course) that the 2010 edition will be his final Tour.
But back to important stuff, like booze. We’ve been deep into the rosés for a while now here at Dog Central, and since I don’t recall whether I passed along Eric Asimov’s paean to this oft-derided beverage and am too lazy to search the site for it, I’ll chuck in a link to his June 6 Wines of the Times column.
But the Fourth means beer to the average Yank — and so does the Tour, to the average Belgian — so here’s a link to Asimov’s latest Beers of the Times column, which takes up the American pale ale.
I was surprised to see the Flying Dog Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale take top honors from his tasting panel. I used to drink it in some quantity come summertime, in part because of its Ralph Steadman label, but lost interest after encountering hoppier beers, like Lagunitas IPA. Even the much-lighter Mirror Pond Pale Ale (a summertime fave of mine) seems a step up from Doggie Style. But it’s been a while, so maybe it’s time to revisit an old friend.
Asimov’s fondness for Dale’s Pale Ale continues to mystify. Maybe I just got a bad 12-pack that one time, when I was camping in a place that forbade glass, but I’ve come to believe that the best thing about Dale’s is that after you’re done drinking it, you can shoot at the cans.
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