Ida and Dactyl

I don't know what the hell I was doing when I came across a photo on the Internet. How many cool stories start out like that I wonder? Well, out of all the directions I could go with that, I'll let you down easy...here's the picture, taken by the Galileo spacecraft:

This is one of the random things that occur in the universe, and specifically in our Solar System. The large rock is asteroid 243 Ida. She lives in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is much thinner and sparse than I used to imagine when I was a kid. The smaller dot is Dactyl, Ida's moon.

Isn't that cool? Am I the only person who hadn't ever really thought about asteroids having moons?

Ida is about 35 miles long with an average diameter of about 19 miles. Dactyl, an average of 50 miles away and taking over four years to make a rotation, is an egg shaped rock with the longest axis 1 mile long.

Astronomers think it's highly unlikely that Ida captured Dactyl, that it makes more sense that it's the remnants of a collision from eons past.

Also, my godfather's mother is named Ida, and one of my brothers once had a cat that had many toes that they named Dactyl.

Earthquakes are Cool Until They Destroy Your House

Maybe a half-hour ago I was sitting on the couch when it started to rumble. It slowly, but noticeably, shook the couch for maybe thirty or forty seconds.

At first I thought it was kinda cool. It was exciting and almost massage like. As it kept on, though, the adrenaline started to flow, and a weird dread began to emanate from my gut. How exactly could I get about with this leg and crutches?

Our apartment building, a '20s era four-plex, is a solidly built cube, and we aren't nervous about its status during a quake. But tonight was the first time I could feel it in a few years.

It turns out it was a magnitude 4.4 quake centered in Yorba Linda, a city in Orange County. Here's a map I snatched from a local news website, and the star is where the epicenter is located.

I'm ready for the Big One.

Well...eh, I'll be ready for the Big One, in a couple of weeks when I can put weight on both my legs.

Happy Birthday Ryan!

My good friend Ryan celebrates his birthday today. I found an old photo the other week when an old roommate of both of ours was out visiting. The old picture was of Ryan and I, during out time in the dorms. It was night, we're wearing shorts, sandals and jackets, probably loaded. I'm thinking of sending it to Ryan.

Here's an old picture from Ryan's birthday in 2004. See how I screwed up the colors on my old PC trying to "fix" things? Dennis and Meagan round out the picture at Hudson's, which doesn't exist anymore (Moe's BBQ is in the location now).

In any case, Happy Birthday brother.

Usain Bolt Inspired Memories

I stayed up and watched the replay of the 100m finals although I known who'd won. The "Fastest Man Alive" remains Usain Bolt, king of tiny Jamaica, until maybe the 200m final, and we see if he can take that race as well, becoming the first man to win both the 100m and 200m at consecutive Olympics.

Watching the qualifying heats for the 100m sprint I saw American Justin Gatlin run his ass off, take his heat in commanding fashion. You didn't have to look close to see his muscular frame pumping for every iota of energy.

The next heat featured Usain in the first race I'd seen him in since 2008. He won it easily, looking like he was just out for a jog, his tall and slender shape easing along the track, needing less steps than everybody else. The differences between their style was striking, and two things crossed the brain: 1) talking with my old comrade at work in Manhattan, a Jamaican named Denton, about Bolt; and 2) an essay from David Foster Wallace about watching Federer is a religious experience.

For a person like me, watching a specimen like Usain Bolt is an experience; somebody just that much better than everyone else, knows he's that much better, and then acts like it. That part I think angers Americans, that he acts like he's the top sprinter and fastest man on Earth. I think he's earned it, but, knowing West Indian Islanders, and Jamaicans specifically, his whole act makes sense.

For a person like me, watching a specimen like Usain Bolt is an experience, but absolutely a different thing that what my friend Denton experienced. When the Beijing Olympics were going on, we'd chat about it. Well, I'd bring it up, and then he'd explain what running means to Jamaicans, how the biggest sporting event of the island of less than three-million is the annual high-school track championships. I wouldn't call how he spoke about Bolt as reverence, per se.

It was an implicit understanding about something in the world, something that was true and just a fact of life: payday is Friday, my Throggs Neck apartment is off the 6 train, and Usain Bolt is the most important and exciting Jamaican on the planet. To say that he was a sense of pride would colossally underestimate his impact on the Jamaican people.

When Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce became the first Jamaican woman to win the gold medal in the 100m in Beijing, the men and woman sweep complete, Jamaicans were soaring.

That they both defended their gold medals was mostly expected by Jamaicans, but not in the cynical way Yankee fans expect postseason births. It's the pure joy of expectation, the kind you can still get over-the-moon excited about, the kind that will still payoff emotionally. Like the little boy from St. Louis who "knew" last October that the Cardinals would win the World Series, even when Texas was down to a single strike to win the whole enchilada.

Usain Bolt to me reaffirms that humans have the capacity to be...to be...to be able to fulfill a certain high level of ability, like an artist or wordsmith that can still blow your mind.

Is that a what a religious experience is like?

Who Likes Mister Boffo?

I grew up with two of Joe Martin's comic strips in my paper, "Mr. Boffo" and "Willy 'n Ethel". I was thinking about them recently as I read two very good strips in my Long Beach local paper.

"Get Fuzzy" is always good, but the two that have (relatively) recently caught my attention are Tony Carillo's "F Minus" and the award winning "Cul de Sac" from Richard Thompson.

I first noticed "Cul de Sac" while living in Texas. It was a weird and twisted and starred kids, and then I noticed that one of the kids' friends was named Loris Slothrop, and I was hooked. Anyone who'd name a character "Slothrop" was going to be a fan of mine.

I noticed "F Minus" while living in Brooklyn, and it appeared in the Daily News. One strip remains one of my  all time favorites: a woman is in bed and she's telling her fella "Be careful if you go out this late honey; there's a strangler on the loose," while he's got a hat low on his brow, his jacket's collar turned up and he's holding a length of rope.

The off-beat style of "F Minus" had me thinking of "Mr. Boffo" and the comics I grew up with. I started looking up information in Joe Martin, and found that he still writes three daily strips and appears in many, many papers.

"Mr. Boffo" and "Will 'n Ethel" are the ones I know of, while the third is "Cats with Hands", a strip depicting a world where cats have opposable thumbs. There are some classic examples in the "Cats with Hands" archives.

I then heard about the strangest and rarest of the appearances of Mr. Boffo. Joe MArtin and his son Jay got together and produced a comic book adventure, half drawn by Joe and half drawn by Jay, an aspiring comic book illustrator. In it, Earl, the name usually associated with the main character in "Mr. Boffo", turns into a huge superhero while his little dog, Weederman, gets turned into a big heroic werewolf type creature.

I was able to locate, and procure a copy of this rarity. The seller must not have had any idea what he had. But with this weird thing, does anyone really have an idea?

Earl Boffo and Weederman go to hell. Well, not really...a thing from another dimension falls to earth and gives them special powers, and a marauding trio get their due from the newly minted super Boffo and his lovable dog-monster. It is really something else.

This is the kind of comic book I collect nowadays: weird, random shit that means something to me.

There are no ads inside, and the black and white artwork from Jay looks a little amateur, but it is still something that I'd never imagined.

Here's the back cover, with one of Joe Martin's oldest variant jokes, the "I think he's quitting", with people looking out onto another person making an 'F' in grass or snow.

One of my favorite "Mr. Boffo" strips from when I was a kid had a little banner in the upper corner that said "The Award for the Laziest Man in the World", and we see Earl sitting up in bed saying to himself "Didn't I do this yesterday?"

For those uninitiated, you might want to check out Joe Martin's site.

Big Beer, Part 2

I printed a long list of beers brought to market by the InBev/Anheuser-Busch monster in the last post, and I wanted to make sure that people know that there are plenty more beers that are released in Asia and Europe and South America that I didn't print.

With the majority of the beer market being taken by InBev and Coors-Miller, another two forms of Big Beer are around that I'm going to highlight here.

Pabst Brewing is the first. Pabst Brewing Company was founded in 1844 in Milwaukee, but was renamed Pabst in 1889. At one point it was the largest brewer in America and sold the most beer out of everyone. The current namesake, Pabst Blue Ribbon, resurrected by hipsters calling it PBR, is named such because of the blue ribbons the company tied around the necks of the bottles, a practice that lasted from 1882 to 1916. Originally it was called Best Select, and then Pabst Select.

Now Pabst Brewing Company is a holding company for old brands of beer, many coming from Milwaukee. It's almost like the French company that own the rights to the name Atari and its logo (which, by the way, is a very cool logo). PBC locally sources the beer titles they hold. They do not brew beer; they hire breweries to brew it.

When I saw a list of the brands the hold, I was surprised: it read like a list of the beers we were able to get at the local supermarket in Bed-Stuy in 12-pack form. All of those beers were brewed in Saranac, NY, an upstate brewery town that likely makes most of the North Atalantic's slate of PBC beers.

Here's the list: (Some of the beers or brewed by Miller in some spots...)

Pabst Blue Ribbon
Schaefer
Schlitz
Jacob Best (named for the original founder of the 188 brewery that became Pabst)
Old Milwaukee
Stroh's
Old Style
Olympia Genuine Draft
Ranier
St. Ides
Colt 45
National Bohemian
Lone Star
Ballantine Ale

Schaefer, Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, and Ballantine were all pretty much available to us in the Stuy. So were St. Ides and Colt 45, of course. Schaefer, Schlitz, and Old Milwaukee were the only ones ever to be seen in 12-pack form that weren't one of the A-B/Coors/Miller beers. And while we lived in Texas, sometimes the allure of the five-dollar sixer of tall-boys from "The National Beer of Texas" was too strong, so I've had my share of Lone Star.

So that's Pabst, and my second example of Big Beer. Likely it's beer being brewed in an Anhueser-Busch style, or, in a large scale setting. At least there's enough business to keep breweries open in places like Saranac and Rochester and San Antonio.

But, that's also kind of how Anheuser-Busch works, outsourcing their production to other "local" plants.

I guess that's a mixed bag.

So, this whole little discussion I was inspired to write because I drank a beer. Corrie had picked up two six-packs of bottles, both from a company called Wild Range, one IPA and one Amber Ale. The bottles had a picture of a howling wolf, but they used different color schemes. I was holding the IPA with the gray color scheme. It was cold and covered in condensation. I took a sip.

Whoa! Did Corrie slip me a boiler-maker? My next mouthful made it more clear.

Remember the last time you had Scotch? Didn't you think that that warm gasoline awesomeness would be so much better if it were cold and carbonated and 6.5% percent instead of 50%? That's the best way I could describe that "IPA": it was like carbonated Scotch. I'm not the biggest fan.

Corrie thought it was sweet and weird. The Amber Ale was cold and plain, and to me didn't taste like much of anything. We decided from then on out to pull out our pint glasses and split one of each beer between the two and mix them. It made it mostly palatable.

Has anyone heard of a beer called Steel Kettle Whistle? I found a twelve pack of cans at a Fresh & Easy grocery store marked at $5.99. I had never heard of it, and I was sure it wasn't very good, but the price was right to give it a go. When I went up to buy it, the machine told me it was actually only $4.99. It was like it knew.

It was pale and had less flavor than even Lone Star, but wasn't bad in any real sense. You get what you pay for.

I started to do some research. I still haven't found the location of the brewery, but it's being distributed by something called World Brews. Headquartered in Novato, the generically named World Brews is a subsidiary of Winery Exchange. Winery Exchange, according to their website is a wholesaler who supplies stores with brands. They have wine, liquors, and beers. Currently some of their beers can be found in Fresh & Easy grocery stores.

Steel Kettle Whistle can be found only in Fresh & Easy. Wild Range, my Scotch bottle, is another one of the Winery Exchange beers.

This is another face of Big Beer, my third example. They try to make it seem like they find small breweries and get them wholesaled to stores (like Fresh &Easy), and that may prove to be the case, which seems like it would be the best use of Big Beer power. If it's true, of course. I'm not totally convinced it's not like the PBC-style Big Beer from earlier.

Here's a link to the beers available from the shadowy World Brews, it's just too much to write here. The link has all variations on their 26 brands, but since you'd need to go to specialty stores in the random states to even find them, it seemed less important than the long list of InBev beers from the first post.

This makes me want a nice, big beer. As a relative once said, describing us all and using the first person, "I'm a vehry thearsty man."

Big Beer, Part 1

I drank a beer the other day that inspired this post, rather, two posts, but really it had been cooking for a while.

I'm a fan of beer. I love beer, maybe not as much as I love coffee, but it's close. I've even made my own beer, which is so microbrewery that it makes my friend Ryan look like a legit company.

One thing I basically avoid is Budweiser, as any craft-beer fan/snob willingly does. I did have some Budweis, from Budvar in the Czech Republic, while visiting Prague, and it was good. They have an agreement with Anheuser-Busch that their Budweis and American Budweiser won't appear in the same country. That stable of countries is shrinking for the brewery from Budweis, I'm sure. It used to be continental Europe had no Anheuser-Busch, but I think they're slowly letting it in. It probably has something to do with the Belgium-Brazilian conglomerate InBev's acquisition of Anheuser-Busch a few year's back.

So...off topic for a second...

The alcohol market in America is massive, and the industry for beer is around $95 billion.

Anheuser-Busch has pretty much always had the largest market share, but they've been on a splurge since the '60s, and really going crazy in the last decade. They've grown from 16% in the mid-sixties to just under 50% nowadays.

They have almost half of an almost hundred-billion dollar market. They're one of the main suppliers of advertising cash. One person I remember hearing during a documentary said that it makes sense that they have to spend that much money--they have to convince people to drink beer as horrible as they make.

If you look in the beer aisle of your local supermarket you'll see huge swaths of Bud, Bud Light, and many other brands from the monster.

While A-B was out gobbling up market-share, American beer-lovers developed their tastes and began looking for other options. The fastest growing section of the alcohol market is microbrewery and craft beer. It's getting so crazy that A-B went bought up popular local brands (like Rolling Rock) and filled the bottles with their own beer, and then started a series of craft-beer-like brands that do their bit to make you think they're truly microbrews. One way to tell, though, is that they're far cheaper than other micros.

Watching an interview with the founder of Dogfish Head Brewery discuss how they're making that particular batch--the passion obvious as he stands above a glass chamber filled with hops and the beer is slowly filtered over and out the bottom--is fun and refreshing. Now, contrast that giddyness to the CEO of A-B, a robotic looking weirdo talking in monotone about their "master brewers concocting specialty brews, you know, adding a little of this, a little of that," and you get the creeps. You know they're in their with their esters trying to make a chemically strange malt beverage.

A-B has also sued Dogfish Head for their use of the word "Punkin'" in one of their seasonal ales. A-B says it's too general. This is a case that Dogfish Head will likely win, but they'll spend buckets of cash on lawyers and court fees. Another aspect of how the "chiller effect" works, where major companies sue for reasons that are lost causes, just to tie little folks up in court until they go bankrupt.

InBev is obviously threatened by consumer's desire for better beer, and is looking to quash the little brewery.

Support your local or microbreweries!

There are a few things you can do, as intrepid beer drinkers, or non-drinkers who like to mess up supermarket manager's days:

1) Ask your supermarket to place the microbrews in a better spot on their shelf (unless that's not a problem)(it usually is);
2) If you have lots of time, you can demand from your congresspeople an end to the current three-tiered system of brewery/distributor/marketplace. This system screws everybody who's not InBev/A-B or Coors/Miller (in an effort to combat A-B, Coors and Miller merged);
3) Use your purchasing power to simply not support InBev or A-B.

That's the number one thing you can do without any real effort.

Here's a list of beers to avoid, and it is surprisingly long:

InBev had a long history in Europe, but since their acquisition, they became part of the problem.

Obviously, anything with Budweiser in the name (Bud, Bud Light, Bud Ice, etc)
Bass
Beck's
Boddingtons
Bohemia
Brahma
Busch
Franziskaner
Goose Island
Green Valley (fake microbrew)
Hoegaarden
King Cobra
Kona
Labatt
Land Shark
Leffe
Lowenbrau
Michelob
Natural Ice, Light
Old Dominion
Rolling Rock
Schooner
Shock Top
Spaten
St. Pauli
Stella Artois
Tequiza
Ziegen Bock (big in Texas)

And also, you can avoid the beers that they have a minority ownership in as well:

Modelo
Red Hook
Widmer Brothers

That list has a lot of beers I used to drink, but there's still lots of beers out there. Next time you're in the supermarket check out how much shelf real estate goes to Anheuser-Busch/InBev. Makes you think.

Also, I didn't get to the part where I talk about the beer I had the other day.