Weirdness Upon Arrival Home

We left Sacramento after a week-long sojourn to have our little one meet family yesterday. We had been gone for a week, hung out in my brother's super air-conditioned house, did a little yardwork, visited (for the first time) and swam in Donner Lake with Norm and his boys, and spent Wednesday driving most of the day to arrive home again in Long Beach.

For this post, I'm using "weird" instead of "annoying."

Weird thing Number 1:

In our already-drastically-parking-impacted neighborhood, the forty spots across the street were taken up by a movie shoot. "Star Wagons", grips, teamsters grilling on the street...pretty cool if you don't live here ad need a place for a your car.

They left after midnight.

Weird Thing Number 2:

Tuxedo took issue with us leaving him with the infinity feeder for a week with Picasso, our still-rambunctious erstwhile kitten.

He showed this displeasure by spraying diarrhea all over the floors of the bedroom and litter-box room. He was smart enough to steer clear of the bed, or any actual furniture, and kept it mostly to the hardwood and linoleum.

So instead of relaxing after 10 hours of traveling from northern California to southern California, I spent an hour and a half devising ways to scrub the dried remnants of puddles of cat feces off of my floors.

It was the most gruesome thing I've ever dealt with, and I caught my baby. All night I couldn't get the smell of the plague ill-cat dookie out of my nose.

It was a horror show. Tux hasn't been avoiding us, but he knows he's on the List right now.

We were on his List, for sure, for a while there.

Now the apartment is almost back to normal, just in time for my father's visit. He arrives tomorrow.

I want to say a few things about Sac, but we'll see if I get to it. July was good for posts, my "Swamp Thing dissertation" (as my mother called it) notwithstanding, as I squeezed time in between naps for the Boy. August I decided a while back should be spent trying to get ready for work, so the posting may go back to a trickle.

Thanks to everyone we got to hang out with during our Sacramento---and Citrus Heights---trip: mom, Dan, 'Pita, Norm, Holly, Norman, Simon, and Jules.

Friday TV Marathons, Swamp Thing, and Sacramento Memories

One of the channels we get on our digital antenna is Ion TV, channel 30.1. Ahh, free Television.

Usually we just watch one of the various PBS channels, but since Cass arrived we haven't watched much of anything. Ion TV tends to show blocks of certain shows, like 8 or 9 hours in a row of "Criminal Minds" or "Blue Bloods" or any number of similar police procedural.

Fridays used to be "Cold Case" day, where from 1 pm until ending at 3 am, Ion would show thirteen episodes in a row of that particular police procedural. That specific show had a novel cast, great period music, and hit the exact same beats over and over with their formulaic premise that turned it into something unusually stomach-able.

On Friday evenings we may have checked which episode it was before going to dinner, then checked hours later after getting home, maybe even from after heading to the movies. It was easy, entertaining, and the music---as it needs to be said multiple times---was great. Each episode was split between the events that lead to someone's murder (the Past) and the cops trying to solve the case (the Present). The period music from the Past was where the show spent its budget.

Nevermind how difficult it is to actually solve a cold case...

Ion changed their lineup more than a year ago, dropped "Cold Case" entirely, and we've yet to really watch anything there since.

Anyway, one Friday after getting home from the pizzeria, we checked which episode was on and immediately an actress fired off my recognition sensors. Since each episode has both Past and Present versions of characters, this guest star was the older version of one of the friends of the victim. "Ohh," I said, "That's, eh...Adrienne Barbeau!"

She was older than I remember, like from this picture (thanks IMdb!), but I was pretty sure.

"Who?" Corrie responded.

"She was in 'Swamp Thing' and...um...other stuff I'm sure..."

So then I spent some time checking it out. Why was the 1982 "Swamp Thing" the only thing I remembered? I remember being quite obsessed with bayous and swamps and the like as a kid. Movies like "The Rescuers," "Flecth Lives," and "Swamp Thing" totally had my attention.

I remember thinking that Adrienne Barbeau may have spent some time at Music Circus, and this is why I really remember her. It turned our that she was from Sacramento, so it follows that she may have participated in Sacramento Light Opera Association's summer stock, Music Circus, theater in the round. I may have even texted my mom and asked her about it.

Adrienne Barbeau originated Rizzo in the first Broadway performance of "Grease."

Anyway, back to the swamp and Swamp Thing.

I can't remember the origin of my fascination, or how my obsession started, but it was strong for a while, tailing off as I hit puberty and started collecting comics, two events that weren't exactly simultaneous, but were in that strange time after the end of elementary school and before high school started, or I got my driver's license. In there sometime...

But, one of the last things I did with my swamp obsession/fascination was to purchase, for the ridiculously large sum of $19.95 (a small fortune for me, especially in 1992) the following graphic novel collection:

It's telling that I have no recollection of the inner turmoil I must have went through when deciding to finally buy it. I have scant memories from that hormone fueled era of my life, and it's not like alcohol and cannabis wiped these memories---they were mostly gone halfway through high school, and conspicuously so: I had conversations then about how I could barely remember the minutiae of 7th and 8th grade, whereas 4th and 5th grades were still fresh.

The Swamp Thing collection I had purchased collected the first 8 page story that appeared in a horror anthology owned by DC Comics. The story was a horror tale about a murdered man who was re-spawned by the swamp, only as a swampy monster. He returns to save his beloved from the same fate, but she doesn't recognize him, recoils in horror upon seeing him, and he slinks away into the bayou darkness.

It was so popular that the idea was turned into a monthly horror-themed comic. The story was changed as were the characters, but the idea was set.

This collection has the first story from 1971 and then reprints the first ten issues of the original series of Swamp Thing from 1972.

I purchased it in 1992, maybe read the first 8 page story, and then let it sit on my shelf.

For almost a quarter-century.

It has been in my possession for more than 20 years. I guess you could say it was in my brother's possession after I left California and only took a fraction of my comics with me, but it has been "mine" for that long, and I never really attempted to read it.

For some reason lately, this summer specifically, as the number of books from my authors has dried up, and in between gifts from my mother, I got it in my head to power through it. What does it mean to be a monthly horror comic? Why were these ten issues (plus the OG 8 page story) so beloved?

Well, the reason it was the first ten issues is because it comprised the entirety of artist Bernie Wrightson's work on the character. That may have factored in to my decision back in '92, as Wrightson is a recognized horror master. That was more impressive to me 24 years ago than it is now.

It turns out it was because of these ten issues that Wrightson was given more horror opportunities and became the "horror master" that I had heard of in 1992. He was just a kid in the early '70s.

Okay. So, I read the entire thing, and it is cheesy and definitely from the seventies. Bu it was also really weird, and totally different than I was expecting. It was set in the modern time (of the 1970s), yet it introduced reasons for many a horror-trope.

I took a bunch of pictures and cropped them accordingly to share some of the weirdness. What follows is a rehash of the important visuals from the first ten issues of Swamp Thing (Volume 1).

[[This Friday-night-Cold-Case-Adrienne-Barbeau-Swamp-Thing-Sacramento-Swamp-Thing-review post idea has been floating around my head for years now...]]

This iteration of Swamp Thing is Dr. Alec Holland, botanical scientist trying to save the world through development of plants that can grow anywhere. His ideas generate destructive desires from many quarters, and his lab is blown up with him inside. Covered in his secret regenerative chemicals and on fire, he jumps into the swamp for respite. He emerges bigger than Shaquille O'Neal (7'4", 490 lbs), ultra strong, and mostly unable to speak. He has become the (oft used descriptor) "moss-covered man-brute:"

He gets revenge by the end of issue 1, as the guys who blew him up also killed his wife. By issue 2, some weirdo has been watching ol' Swampy through some kind of looking glass, and sends his minions to get the creature:

Hypnotizing him and bringing him back to some Balkan castle. The image below, of Swamp Thing crucified and being flown away caused me to look at Corrie and say, "This comic just went off the rails!"

And it got better, as the creatures use the cruciform as a row-boat:

This is the introduction of Anton Arcane, an old guy who wants immortality. He's been experimenting with creating human forms, mostly unsuccessfully. He even tried to fix his own blown up brother, who becomes a pretty good facsimile of the Frankenstein Monster, here known as the Patchwork Man:

Thus begins the bizarre events that keep the storytelling in the horror universe while also in the normal DC universe.

The Patchwork Man can't speak, and he initially tries to help Swamp Thing. Later he sees his daughter, who's now grown, and can only remember that he wanted to save her before he was blown up initially. So he grabs her and takes off, thinking he's saving her. Swamp Thing wants to help save her from this "monster", and since neither of them speak, they end up fighting, while the townspeople show up to kill them both.

It's a recurring theme in these stories: people's inability or unwillingness to discuss their conflict.

In the next issue, because of course it is, the conflict is with a werewolf:

After that Swamp Thing ends up in Maine, in a backwater village that still wants to burn witches at the stake. Enter Rebecca Ravenwind:

She's not a witch, like she keep saying, but it's her feeble-minded little brother who uses her as a conduit for her magic.

Another theme here is that the true monsters are the humans. Check out peg-leg Gideon, who blames his entire familial lineage of birth defects of witchcraft:

The little brother turns the angry mob into flowers. It turns out all he ever turns anything into is flowers. Damn hippie.

Next Swampy makes it to  very eerie Swiss village in New England with a creepy clock-maker/mayor:

He's been making all the people who live in this village---very elaborate automatons that are more wind-up toy than robot. He uses people from the obituaries, which is very odd for Swamp Thing to be saved by Dr.s Alec and Linda Holland, himself and his former wife. There's a pretty cool scene where his "wife" is dying after being shot and Swamp Thing's holding her and watching her die for the second time, and losing his shit.

It was a little maudlin for this collection.

The real badguy from this issue is a giant robot:

Next, Swamp Thing makes it to Gotham, because it was the '70s and everything ran through either Metropolis or Gotham. He had another can't-explain-himself unfortunate encounter, this time with Batman:

But of course they're on the same side---they just don't know it. Here they are getting to the same place, a confrontation with a secret mob boss, the portly dude in frame three:

In the next issue Swamp Thing is on his way back to Louisiana, hears screams from a cave during a snow storm, and eventually has to kill a bear. Can't say I'm a big fan of that, but to his credit, neither is Swampy:

Eventually Swamp Thing is tricked into trying to save a kid in an abandoned mine, only to be sent to feed the monster there, a blobby-thing called, eh, M'Nagalah:

This thing wants to take over the universe, one galaxy at a time, one planet at a time, and Swamp Thing does it in by collapsing the mine. Powerful critter, that M'Nagalah.

Finally he makes it back to the swamp, back to his rebuilt lab, looking for a solution that may turn him back into a non-moss-encrusted human form again. His lab has been taken over by someone also searching for solutions:

That's an alien, in case you were wondering.

An entire political story plays out as the military crew sent to dispatch the alien captures it, but only because it was aghast at hurting a soldier, at its own strength. The soldiers discuss liberalism versus jingoism, and it devolves into fisticuffs. The alien has seen enough, and learned enough English to tell off the military group. It said it was going to leave great gifts, but has decided to just leave.

The ship crashes on its own. Bummer

The last of the ten issues is next, and it stars Arcane, the weirdo from the first and second issue, who has found a suitable body for the short term. He's tracked our green friend down to get his skin:

Who comes to save the day?

If you said an entire graveyard full of the ghosts of murdered slaves, you win!

Who knew Swamp Thing had such a varied collection guest stars in the first year: facsimile of Frankenstein's monster; a werewolf; a witch; a large robot in a town full of clockwork people; a mob-boss assist with Batman; the weird blob M'Nagalah; an alien; and full circle with Arcane's new body with an assist from a whole bunch of former slaves.

The sadness permeates throughout, and it is real, and it mostly makes up for the repetition of things like "moss-encrusted man-brute," people calling other things, "Hey, ugly!", and the super annoying plot device named Lt. Mike Cable, a federal investigator who thinks the swamp monster killed Alec and Linda Holland (Cable's only friends) along with the murderous mobsters (he only killed the mobsters). He's in every issue saying things like, "When I find that swamp monster, I'll make him pay!" at the end of, like, every issue. That may be hyperbole, but it's because he's close-minded and annoying, and it grates on a reader.

I get the sense that writer Len Wein was trying to say something about society-at-large with these issues. He mostly succeeds.

It was time period when comics were not important pieces of art yet, and were not seen as respectable work. Are they those both those things now? Back at that time, in the early '70s, an editor needed to have a human element like Lt. Cable to keep audiences interested, as the companies hadn't yet grown to respect their readers enough.

But maybe the readers were more kids and less adults...still, I can't imagine kids giving a shit about that Cable guy.

There are comics that everyone can get behind, especially people interested in he artform who don't normally partake but may be interested in important artifacts. I would not suggest reading these: they may be too cheesy and plodding. Consider this post is a highlight reel.

**

Considering the news on my grandfather today, this seems like an ill-timed project. It just happened that way, as I've been working on this for a time. And I know he would want us all to carry on with our lives and various projects.

Feels Like 1998: Pokemon Confusion

I don't remember the commercials on Television in the dorms in 1998 like I remember the commercials on Television in the Jungle, at Valencia apartments later that same year.

They were advertising some show, and accompanying card game and video game...it was all so confusing. Tony and I would look at each other and confusedly say out-loud, "What the fuck is a 'Pok-ee-mon'?"

The entire concept was lost on us. It was so foreign and dense, and we were generally so blitzed that even folks In The Know couldn't make the information digestible. Maybe it was just me.

After I returned to Sac to get my scholasticism in order, and talking with Norm and his brother Tyler did the real picture start to gel.

Then I read an article about it and it helped so much more: Pokemon, a Japanese amalgam word with English origins---literally "pocket monster"---was the name for both the video game/television show and the main stars of both, the little pocket monsters.

The game and accompanying show appealed to kids for a few reasons: there was collecting; there was discovery; there was social competition; and there was the gradual upgrading through Pokemon evolution to better specimens.

Fast forward 18 years. Some websites with articles I read have entire Pokemon Go headings (one is a sports site). Other places are going crazy with Pokemon Go content. The articles under the Pokemon Go heading have strange titles like "The Pokemon Go Injury List Grows" and "Pokemon Go: Your New Fitness App." Then I noticed the folks over at Cinemassacre have a Pokemon Go video, and I found myself talking to my computer screen: "What the fuck is Pokemon Go?"

I didn't really say that, I just took the artistic liberty to make the scene parallel the one from 1998. It was more like (out-loud at least), "All of a sudden people won't shut-up about this Pokemon Go, whatever the hell that is..."

That's when I watched the Cinemassacre video and it started to make sense.

Nintendo finally has put content onto pocket devises, in this case partnering with Google. It looks like you play as an avatar of Ash, the main character from Pokemon, but you literally have to go places, either on foot or by car, and find Pokemon. The places you can find them are all around, hence the Google aspect of using their mappery. And the social aspect is back: it turns out many people with be out and about in the exact same places you are with their phones out looking around for the same Pokemon you're looking for.

It looks like it has reached cultural phenomenon status, and the amount of traffic has crashed the servers Nintendo and Google have set aside for it a few times already in the first two weeks of it being a public thing.

It's the first real immersive-reality type game to tap the potential of that style of game and "take off." It certainly has captured the public's attention.

Usually with my gig I have advance warning about this kind of phenomena, but here I was Johnny-come-lately for at least two obvious reasons. The First: Cassius. We've been hunkered down in the bunker of our Long Beach apartment for five weeks now with a newborn just figuring out the early stages parenting. The Second: This game looks to be more geared towards adults, as in players having to really travel to find the "best" or most unique Pokemon. If you're stuck hanging out on a corner or in a particular neighborhood, the gameplay seems less rewarding.

In any case: ol' Sherweezy again tries to lift the veil of ignorance...

Dickensian Name Alert: Krakatoa

I noticed an article recently along the sidebar to some website I was reading. The subheading stated: "The loudest sound ever recorded would probably have killed you."

I don't think "probably" needed to be in that sentence.

Anyway...

The article was an answer to a question asked by a young student: What was the loudest sound ever?

The answer started with something like, Well, we can discuss the loudest sound ever recorded. And oh my...

I ended up following some links and reading a little on my own about the volcanic eruption of the wonderfully-named Krakatoa in 1883.

Krakatoa exists as a volcanic archipelago in between Sumatra and Java, ostensibly a part of Indonesia. But really, nobody owns Krakatoa.

In 1883, an eruption so mighty occurred that it blew two-thirds of the volcanic island to nothingness. Seriously, it literally destroyed the island. Check out this graphic:

Inside the outline near the top, labeled "Anak Krakatau," is the newest volcanic part that has since emerged from the sea. In 1883, only the Rakata existed after the eruption.

And, of course, "eruption" does a disservice to the event, downplaying the cataclysm.

Now to the sound. There happened to be a decibel gauge in Batavia, in a Dutch holding, one hundred miles away. It recorded a decibel reading of 178. The "sound" made from the shock-wave from the eruption was close to the same as standing next to a jet engine.

But one-hundred miles away.

On a British vessel only 40 miles away, the captain wrote of how the blast destroyed more than half his crews' eardrums and that he was sure the apocalypse was on.

People on two separate continents three-thousand miles away craned their necks to the sky, fearing a cannon blast or rifle shot, as the sound reached them.

I read that this event pushes the limit as to what we understand as "sound."

Anyway, the Earth's atmosphere rung like a bell for four days afterward, as sub-audible waves circled the globe a full three and a half times, being recorded seven times (coming from alternating directions) by newly designed sub-audible sensors.

Pushes the limit of our understanding of sound. Ringing the atmosphere like a bell.

Things like this bring back the wide-eyed wonder in me of learning something new and very cool.

Krakatoa in 1883 reduced the global temperature for two years and caused global weatehr patters to go haywire.

Do Lives Really Matter in America?

Mass shootings. San Berdoo, Orlando.

Police kill some more unarmed young people.

Police themselves are killed during a demonstration.

What are we to make of this?

An oppressed people watch the police kill another of their young boys. The boy was unarmed. The oppressed people have had enough, and band together and cry out in their loudest voice "Stop killing us! We are humans! We are American citizens! WE MATTER!"

Sometimes an oppressed people feel like they do not matter, and sometimes it borders on impossible to convince them that they do matter. Sometimes banding together for solidarity and trying to make your voice loud is the only way to be heard. This is the organic manner in which the "Black Lives Matter" movement manifested.

It's almost as if the call if as much for themselves, to convince themselves that they have a right to demand accountability for grievous mistakes made by police officers.

Notice I shy away from calling what the police do "murder." Their job is ridiculously difficult and dangerous, and training can always be better. Sometimes it is murder. Sometimes decisions are made in split seconds and mistakes happen.

Only these mistakes shred entire families. And these families know that "justice," in the Platonic sense, is not something they will ever taste.

They can't even expect others in law enforcement to acknowledge that a mistake was made.

So they get together and shout to the world that they matter.

Is that point arguable?

One of the demonstrations I saw recently was a group of folks get together and block traffic. I saw footage of this on one of my rare-ish trips to Facebook, only it was posted by people who lauded the drivers who drove through the demonstrations, in many instances running over demonstrators.

"That's what those 'Black Lives Matter' bullies get!" someone said.

"Black Lives Matter" bullies.

Seriously.

I've seen the backlash to this organic demand for relevance in the form of "All Lives Matter." Okay, sure. While I don't disagree with the sentiment, I sometimes think the very ethos of psyche of America disagrees. And in any case, it ignores the long history of oppression and brutality meted out on minority groups---not just the initial "Black" group that started the issue.

Where were all of the "All Lives Matter" people in Ferguson standing tall with the demonstrators there? Was justice being demanded then by everyone?

The Facebook chain of comments on the crowd-crashing video, including me, was nearly exclusively white. My comments were in opposition to the "Good for those drivers!" and "That's a form of kidnapping!" voices that populated the chain. I know that none of those guys really care what a bleeding heart like myself has to say about it.

Sure, your night may be inconvenienced, or even ruined, by a demonstration clogging traffic. That sure does suck, and I'm not even being facetious. But, please, please remember, that these demonstrators are under the impression that any day they leave their house, they may be killed by the police. And worse yet, nobody really cares.

Now, is their concern legitimate, their concern for possible bodily harm by the hands of law enforcement?

Isn't it too bad that that's not even the right question to ask? The right question is: Can we do anything to change the impression that they need to be wary of law enforcement?

As a white guy, I know I certainly haven't lived under the same threats that many minorities experience. But, I have lived in a predominantly black neighborhood for three and a half years, in Brooklyn living off Malcolm X Blvd, and I did teach in South-Central LA for a year, in the unincorporated area of Westmont, at the school where one of the founders of the Crips attended.

And I have to say, having grown up in suburban Sacramento and attending college in lily-white San Luis Obispo, with a little authority on the subject, that Black USA is nearly a different country.

One thing I wanted to ask white people who use phrases like "'Black Lives Matter' Bullies" is this: How many black people live in the one-mile circle radius around your house? Maybe there really are minorities empowered into the realm of obnoxious.

If there is any actual lesson or conclusion that can be taken from Thomas Pynchon's post-modern masterpiece Gravity's Rainbow, it's that America is not in love with winning as much as it's in love with death and killing.

Do lives really matter in America, any lives? People say they do, but I remain unconvinced. This country just has too much violence in its history to buck it off so easily.

Remember Sandy Hook? Guy machine-guns a kindergarten class and we can't even discuss common sense gun-control laws.

I mean, seriously, if a madman machine-gunning a kindergarten classroom doesn't start any actual dialogue, what will?

I Think My Baby Has Night Terrors

I joke, of course, but only to mask the feeling of helplessness.

Our baby Cassius came over a month early, and despite this fact, despite his difficult time getting enough food and the hard time with jaundice, despite the extraordinarily aggressive feeding regimen, we were able to keep him out of the hospital during his first month of breathing air.

Happy Month-day, Boy!

Part of the aggressive feeding schedule was that we'd have to wake him every three hours (if he was asleep, and most of the time he was), put him to the breast for only five minutes so he can get used to it, then Corrie'd hand him over to me and I'd hit him up with the bottle.

What about nipple preference? we'd ask. That's where babies who get the bottle don't want to return to the breast because it's so much more work. They told us: "Don't worry about that. That's more for full-term babies, and your baby needs a ton of calories, and you're going to have make sure he gets it."

The numbers that we had to get him were so high, impossibly so in the beginning...discouragingly so...

We kept at it; Cass got better and better and bigger and bigger, and now we don't need to supplement with the bottle. Cass mostly directs the feedings.

But then Corrie got sick.

Sleep deprivation is a real thing, for sure. I'm not the same pulling-all-nighters young man anymore---this not having more than three hours of sleep in a row for a month wears on you. Conversations you think you've had with people never happened. The days bleed together into one long, weary routine. On top of that, your body slowly deteriorates and you become far more susceptible to sickness, like your older cat sneezing directly in your face.

Corrie's fever broke, but she's the most run-down I've seen her since the last few months of senior year at Cal Poly when she slept only 10 hours a week. So she feeds the boy, pumps, bottles it, and gets some sleep, and later I feed the boy with the bottle, then crash myself.

Teamwork!

Now, in the random wee hours of the darkness, when I get my boy out of his crib and he's looking like he's about to lose his shit, I pop that bottle in his gob and his little eyes widen.

And he crushes the bottle. He destroys 70 cc like a college freshman downs cans of the cheap stuff during spring break. Goes through it in four or five minutes. Proud papa over here.

THEN, after the obligatory holding-him-upright-to-help-with-digestion period (incidentally three times as long as it took him to chug the booby-juice), I put him down to sleep and he becomes a shell-shocked World War II vet with searing constipation.

At least that what he sounds like.

Grunts and wails and more grunting and "aaaarrrrgghhrrgghhaa"s followed by the sound of a tiny raspberry being blown permeates the room. It's a perplexing mix of frustration (what the hell can I do for you?) and laughs (sleep deprivation-induced gleeful cackling for FART NOISES).

The poor guy.

So, in years past my Google searches may have veered towards the fringes but now are closer to "baby farting, too much?" and "beano okay for baby?"

I've got a shade of Luddite in me in that I still use the question marks in Google searches.

I wouldn't give my kid Beano, but the dazed and weary brain begins to look at everything...what the hell can I do for you?

Wild American Ales: Sour Beers are Now "Official"

Back in September of 2012, after I was told to ditch my crutches and start the road to walking "normal", Corrie and I went with Ryan and Jules to a sour beer festival in San Diego county. "It's like Skittle-brau for sure, " Ryan was telling me.

Uhhh-huuh. At the time I was a little skeptical. Here's a picture from that day. Check out the tightly wrapped bandage on my left ankle, trying to aid in support:

I remember for this picture needing to use Corrie to help me stand up straight after throwing my walking-stick cane out of frame...

Now I'm a fan, probably obnoxiously so.

But the term "sour", when used for beers, has been ambiguous and undefined at best. In general, at the base kernel, it has been used to describe beers that have a noticeable amount of acidity.

And now, as the popularity of these beers has been steadily rising, the terminology is beginning to catch up.

One of the major issues is that the spectrum of what causes acidity in beer is quite varied. Sometimes it is a wild yeast that has floated in on the wind and "ruined" an entire batch of some beer. Sometimes brewers have made a regular beer that at the last minute added a souring agent. Sometimes the beer is not a normal sour at all, but rather a fruity beer that has a touch of funk.

Normal beer descriptors and stats like final gravity (a measure of residual sweetness), color (a maltiness measure), alcohol, and IBU (bitterness measure) are used to categorize the wide varieties of beers that are coming from our country's many brewers.

Except they don't apply to sours.

And because of people's love and desire for sour beers, a new vocabulary structure has been in development so the differences between a rafter-fermented lambic and a stout that was turned in the last week of fermentation can be quantified.

The Beer Judge Certification Program has officially recognized as a label "Wild American Ales" to encompass the entire swath of styles that encompass interpretations of the Belgian tradition of brewing with wild bacteria, wild yeasts, fresh fruit, unique spices, unique barrels, and experimental technique.

"Wild American Ales" kinda doesn't do justice to the variety. But it's a start.

It is broken up into three categories: Brett Beer (named for the brettanomyces yeast strain); Mixed Fermentation Sour Ale; ans Specialty Sour Ale. Essentially: Brett, Sour, and Fruit/Spice Sour.

The march towards tasty beverages continues on unimpeded.

Random Sports Stories

1

It was 2010 and we were in the backyard at Dwyce. It might have even been the night that I took "Picture 1000" with the new Cannon:

We were having some beers and talking with one of Rachel's people, somebody we ended up befriending, and friending on the Facebook. His name is Geoff and he's a good guy, even if the stink of BRO is all over him. It's the same way that Texans can smell the stink of CALIBOY on me.

Anyway, this was during the time before LeBron James had had his (ill-advised) Television special "The Decision," when he announced he would be leaving Cleveland and "taking his talents to South Beach." If ever a cheesedick quote was made for TV, that was a stellar example.

That night I was sure he would be sticking around Cleveland---he's from Akron and hd been the gold boy since early high school.

This guy Geoff pretty much halted the conversation in a very BRO-y way: "Nah, nah. He's going to Miami. He's going to join Dwayne Wade and Bosh and they're gonna kick ass for a while." This was before Chris Bosh had even signed if I remember correctly.

I remember thinking Fuck you, Geee-Offf. Then "The Decision" happened and, of course, Geoff was right.

Fast-forward six years, and we're at the next biggest moment for free agency in the NBA. Kevin Durant, one of the three best players in the NBA and (formerly) the starting point-forward (if such a thing exists) for the Oklahoma City Thunder, spends a few days taking meetings with a handful of hand-picked teams in a palatial Hamptons spread. He meets with the Clippers, the Celtics, the Heat, the Warriors, and his own Thunder.

For nine years now, Durant has been this franchise. He was picked while they were still the Supersonics, before Clay Bennett stole the team from Seattle and moved them to OKC. I have many people I love in OKC and don't begrudge them their love of their team, but that was a sheisty deal at best.

Durant took the meetings, was "blown away" by the Clippers, recognized the value of the Celtics offer, listened intently to Pat Riley, and imagined another run with Rusty in OKC.

He released his statement on The Player's Tribune (incidentally the website started by Derek Jeter after he retired from baseball): Kevin Durant would be joining the Golden State Warriors.

Being a northern California guy living in southern California has been difficult at times. Folks here take the weather for granted. They don't respect, on the whole, revolutionary intellectual pursuits like you get in Berkeley or the City. They don't read (that may be a west coast complaint coming from an east coast POV).

I've celebrated the San Francisco Giants World Series victories. The Sacramento Kings have Boogie Cousins (awesome) but in general are in a constant state of flux. The Dubs, playing over in Oakland, are fantastic, have the greatest shooter ever in Steph Curry (he just made 403 three-pointers!), have a top-five shooter ever in Klay Thompson, and just finished the greatest regular season ever, winning 73 games out of a possible 82,

They won more games than the best Jordan Bulls team. 

They also lost the finals to LeBron and his sheer will power.

The greatest regular season team ever just added one of the three best players in the game in his prime.

Next year in basketball will be silly.

2

I started reading an article about three NFL teams that will be interesting this season, if not actually contenders for the Ring. One of the teams was my Giants, specifically because of their additions on their defensive line, and in general the upgrades made to their abysmal defense.

One line caught my attention: Dick LeBeau is the new defensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans.

Dick LeBeau spent the last decade-and-a-half (I think) as the defensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and is well known for his exotic blitzing schemes. I'd forgotten he was such an integral part of today's NFL.

He was a defensive player for this team:

He played on the Detroit Lions in 1963 (fifty-three years ago!), the year that George Plimpton showed up to pretend to be a QB and write about the National Football League and the experience of being a player.

That's my copy and it's a pretty cool read. One of the main things I took from it was: Holy shit, they would never in one-billion years let anyone do this again.

Hell, Goodell's power got Bill Simmons fired, so...sheeeeeiiittt.

3

In the past I have been supportive of the new playoff system, with two Wild Card teams and a play-in game. Why, I felt, should we be against things that make the game more exciting?

I wasn't the only person who felt this way.

But one unintended consequence of this setup is the unusually large number of teams "in the playoff hunt." This means that less teams will be in a "selling" mood when it comes time to the trade deadline at the end of July.

One exciting time of year (the trade deadline) is supplanted for another (meaningful games being played in September).

That's good, I suppose.

I just have to be okay with my middling Yankees, who don't totally suck at 42-43, and are "in the hunt" and won't flip good relievers for future talent...

Weirdness from the Simpsons Universe

I came across something a while back that I decided, when the time was right, I would get my hands on it. 

It started as an art project by Ryan Humphrey in 2013. His goal: recreate every page of Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark manga "Akira" using characters from the Simpsons. A few years later, and many conversations later, a volunteer group of at-present-count 700 artists have completed about three of the six volumes, making it about halfway through.

The project is called "Bartkira":

This is the "Nuclear Edition". It is an oversized hard-bound collection of some of the pages that these artists are working on. The original is over 2000 pages, and this little copy has maybe 50. They are lovingly composed.

Seeing as how neither Fox, Matt Groening, or Katsuhiro Otomo were contacted about this project, the artists involved decided to make whatever proceeds generated by this particular piece of the project are donated---half to Otomo's charity of choice: OISCA Coastal Forest Restoration Project in Miyagi Prefecture; and the other half to Sam Simon's charity of choice: Save the Children.

If you know Akira, from either the great manga collection or the wildly popular and influential anime film from 1988, then the following information will not be lost on you:

• Ralph Wiggum is Akira
• Milhouse is Tetsuo
• Bart is Kenada

Some of the other characters are recognizable, like the following picture: check the crowd in the bottom frame (Bart, Skinner, Eddie and Lou, Flanders, Otto, Laura Powers, Bumblebee Man...)

I wanted to share some of the images from the various artists just so you can get a sense of the scope and work that goes into a cultural mashup/labor of love like this.

Here's another one, with a dead Marge, the busted out Sprawl-Mart, and the "Embrace Nothingness" at the church:

Milhouse as Tetsuo beginning to lose his shit:

Ralphie as Akira, near the end of the story...this two page spread cracks me up:

If you haven't see the film Akira, I suggest taking the two-plus hours it takes and watch it. The Japanese don't have the cultural hold-up that Americans (generally) have about animation being only for young people. It is a very serious sci-fi look at disenfranchised youth, rebellion, and government testing on psychically-abled kids.

It is the film, nearing thirty years now, that all Japanese animated films is measured against, and rightfully so.

The Simpsons has so profoundly shaped American humor values that it remains a cultural phenomena.

That these two things came into existence at nearly the same time probably says more about the combined global society than luck and happenstance.

If you have the time and desire, this is a pretty cool way to toss less than thirty bucks to some charities.

Life of the Party

On our various San Diego beer-tasting runs, Ballast Point was a regular destination. They were bought out last fall by Constellation---an alcohol brand holder---for a cool billion. Wow...good ob, folks.

Anyway, they brew solid beers, and have an entire line of both conventional beers, like IPAs, lagers, and stouts, but they also experiment and have an whole line of what they call "R&D Beers".

The new influx of cash has enabled them to open a tasting room/restaurant in our neck of the woods (mostly), down at the eastern side of town, at the marina that butts up to Seal Beach and Orange County. This past weekend was their grand opening. Which was also the 4th of July weekend. Yikes.

Anyway, Corrie and I were invited out for some fun and beer tasting at Ballast Point's new digs over here, and Sunday was the designated day.

Corrie and I were wrestling with the idea of taking the boy out to do things, and, well, we decided that it would be better to get out into some loudness earlier rather than later, when the sounds and stranger-danger might sully an otherwise exciting time out.

We packed the boy up in the car, got plenty of diapers and booby-juice bottles ready, and drove to the other side of town. Because of the impending fireworks, the area was a disaster for the stashing of cars, and we had to drive a few blocks into Seal Beach in the OC to park. Then we had to wait in line at the place even though we had friends and a table inside. That they were trying to "keep the kitchen from crashing" was the excuse. A noble cause even as it irritated me to no ends.

Once inside, though, Cassius was the star of our evening. Workers would come up and jokingly ask for his ID, and we'd tell them, "No worries, he's 23," and the Ballast Point folks would confusedly nod before we'd finish with, "--days old."

Even the president of the company came out and greeted tables, thanking folks for their patronage. Most everyone was very excited that our tiny baby was quietly enjoying himself. And he was. It was rather noisy, but Cass didn't care.

One of the brewers came over and talked with our table---and it was like Ryan was talking with us. After he congratulated us on the baby, he offered us a special R&D taster. He brought by six 4oz glasses of their experimental red-velvet cake stout. It was a nitro-carbonated beer, so the head was that stouty-leather/velvet you expect, but it was mostly red in color, like a fruity-hibiscus beer, but it was very clear, like it had been clarified like consomme.

A stout that you could see through like a lager or IPA, that was red-pink in color, that had the typical stout-head, and tasted like a red velvet cake cupcake. It was out of this world.

The hospitality was grand.

When the fireworks started out over the ocean, most people left their seats to get a look. I sat in place and gave Cass his own bottle. We're trying to avoid the bottle, in any case, but the doctors tell us to make sure we supplement with the bottle so he gets his full intake of calories (on account of the difficulties of a pre-term baby's feeding issues). So there we were, him at the bottle and me happy as a clam to be missing the fireworks.

When he finished I was making faces at him, and all the other goofy shit fathers do with their infants, and occasionally I could feel eyes on me. I'd look up and see some twenty-something girl staring doe-eyed at us with a goofy smile, who'd then get flustered being noticed and try to play it off.

We never really considered what we'd do with the baby when we wanted to go do social activities---like trips to beer-tastings. Cass came so early that our talks never got there. So...so apparently we just go and try to acclimate the boy to the outside world. One of our friends who were with us last night is a mother of three. She said that we were totally right in bringing him out this early. She said, "Oh, if you didn't take him out until later, and he wasn't used to the noises, you'd regret it so bad."

Word. I guess.

We just do what we do, and he'll learn. It helps that he's so tiny and quiet at this point, still before his due date.