Anyone else believe the anti-Pelosi stance is an attack on Italian Americans? Fuck the election and read this.

Ah, what a fascinating topic beer is, unless placed in the hands of a WSJ business reporter in his 50's looking to relive the glory of that summer on the river when birds sang and fish jumped and cousin Willis spun yarns until them critters bit and Auntie Maybel fried 'em on up while Gramps spit chew on the freshly mowed lawn.

Forgive me, for sentiment falls heavily on the eyes of a man with banana/strawberry barf on his sandals. Book #2 in the exploration of ye newe Beere Culture is Ken Wells' Travels With Barley (get it, JS?), which would have been fine as a longish New Yorker piece on the brewing stars of the craft beer scene, but instead implodes quietly as a quest for the "perfect beer joint." Luckily, you can skip the chapters devoted to the search, as Wells is a profoundly unfunny man and one who thinks that reporting on bars should best be done around 4:00 pm- you know, when all the funny people are there and all those wacky things happen. OK, conning your Pinot-sipping boss into giving you three months to cruise south from Milwaukee to New Orleans deserves kudos, but how can you write a book about beer joints without a single laugh? Oh, show up at each new bar when folks are still sleeping it off, and then do some solid reporting. That beer waitress goddess with the Depeche Mode and Kiss Me I'm Outrageous buttons has got a really fat ass and a story to tell. Jesus, even that bi-polar dude with the laptop ain't there by 4:00.

The research chapters on the state of the industry are interesting, but as a whole this falls flatter than a Meister Brau after three hours in the Aussie sand. Nice to know that quality brew can come in at 24% and that the dude behind Dogfish Head is a modern Da Vinci, but boy there is a lot to plow through before you can extract the nuggets.

The Human Stain, by Phil Roth

Warning: The following "book review" was written by a middle aged man suffering from a nasty flu at 9 AM. Serious fiction aficionados and grammer cops may encounter so many misspelled, run-on and fragmented sentences, as well as a general unprofessional, even snide tone, as to cause them to collapse into uncontrollable kaniptions.

Have a nice day.

What Are You Listening To Besides Your Wife
Jay Reatard- Blood Visions- dude goes new wave without the goth and delivers some ganglia-grabbers, even if it's not the greatest catcher since Berlin's "Masquerade"

Hank IV- Third Person Shooter- can't quite fathom how this is the same band that nearly ruined my return to the Chameleon way back when, cuz this record is a monster. An amalgamation of influences like The Fall and The Electric Eels and Cleveland Browns parking lot three hours before gametime but delivering something all their very middle-aged and distinctive own.

King Khan and BBQ Show- What's For Dinner- of course it's not as good as the first one- how could it be? Only a tone deaf jackass like the Tuna could miss the genius.

Pissed Jeans- Swallow- smarter and angrier and weirder than even I first gave them credit for- jazz freakouts for the hardcore lover who hates hardcore.

Fe Fi Fo Fums- uh, in keeping with their idiocy theme, I don't know the record title, but this is the record of the year even if you're too drunk to remember you heard it.

Scientists-all- still godhead after all that ocean and all these years. Kim Salmon is your master, swamp bitch.

Original Sins- all- eat my Oakland taint, Ms. BYATCH!

Charlie Rich- bought five more records bringing my collection to 18, roughly, and perhaps slipping by Bowie for number uno in the Derr collection of emotionally damaged artistes creating to make me feel better about myself. Take a posthumous bow, dead man.

Lee Hazlewood- the fantods been rearing their blueheads and when I feel the urge to bury 'em in darkness I reach for the Sandman instead who brings the sound of the sea and the mist the southern comfort glow and the dark clouds retreat behind just that smidgen of light that commands that sliver of hope.

Easy Action- The Friends of Rock n Roll- John "Negative Approach and Laughing Hyenas" Brannon falls just below Dexter and Brother JT in my pantheon of personal musical heroes, and while this is essentially bar hard rock raised by the glory of JB's shredding shriek, it's still worth it if only for their contender of HATE ROCK song #2, "I HOpe it gets Worse For You," which may beat 'Hard For You" in the all-time break-up fuck-off roller rink of justify myself, my lonely self, anthems.

The Monkees- so fucking singalongable- give in, elitist

About 20 more records, but it's time for bed. This public service effort has been brought to you by the referees of tonight's Sharks' debacle, who handed the game to the Predators in what can only be deemed a country music grammy theft. Lucas has officially lost his innocence. Thanks a lot you hungover zebras- selling Santa will be a bitch this year.

http://www.anti.com/catalog.php?id=69

My beer snobbery has reached new frothy mountaintops- I'm now reading books about the shit. The latest confirms I knew absolutely nothing about the evolution of the American brewing industry, and reading Maureen Ogle's Ambitious Brew in just two days this past weekend attests to its quality. I kept shaking my heading and saying, "Ya don't say." I ain't got the time and you probably don't have the interest for a summary/analysis, so let's just throw out some questions that she answers to mostly humble nodding.

Was American beer always shitty before the craft beer mini-revolution?

What drove Americans away from heavy German beers toward lighter Pils?

How come Anheuser-Busch finally got the Budweiser name, and why does that beer now taste nothing like its far superior older brother in Ceske Budevicie (sp?-you think I'd know- I went there on my honeymoon for hell's sake)?

What the hell happened to Schlitz?

What the hell happened to Pabst?

How did Coors became the hippie beer when that family is far right of Reagan?

How come a liquor license costs so damn much?

How did Americans go from consuming 90% of their suds in saloons to 80% of the righteous in their homes?

Why did the turn-of-the-century temperance movement focus on saloons and not outright Prohibition?

How did WWI turn Americans against the big brewers?

How did Bud and Pabst win the taste test at the World's Fair?

Did Americans really drink more during Prohibition?

Did Americans really drink way more in all our days past?

How did A-B, Miller, Schlitz and Pabst come to dominate in the post-WWII era?

How did the auto revolution hurt local brewers?

How did television help lead to crappy beer that came to be most closely associated with American beer of the 50's-70's?

How did the microbrew thang get started?

Are craft brewers any real threat to A-B and Miller?

Are two beers a night really that good for you?

I could go on. If these questions intrigue, I've got a heavily marked copy with three swilling fat men on the cover. It's yours for two Moylan's Hopsickles and a Stone IPA.

Once in a lifetime, you get a chance...

Get Back To the Good Stuff

BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU DREAM OF, 'CAUSE IT MAY COME TRUE AND SEND YOU REELING FOR 3 YEARS.

Thursday, October 19
King Khan and BBQ Show
The Stork Club
Oakland, CA

3rd Time's a Charm?

I'm Reading: It's About Fucking Time

I'm 1/3 through Maugham's The Razor's Edge, a book I thought I read. I don't remember any of this. It's great, I'm loving it, and can't wait to see what happens to Larry the Loaf. I needed this book 15 years ago. Who's got the Murray movie?

Also finished Kennedy's McCarthy review. Pretty good, but I'm gonna wait until the hoopla dies down. I went for No Country rather quick and still don't think I should have liked it as much as I did. According to Kennedy, Mac's got a bunch of unfinnished manuscripts lying around. My guesses are they're titled Holden Scold 'em and How the West was Lost.

Hail Beane!

Once I Kill "Em All, Lindsay and I will play special games forever

So, while folks are getting it on all over the Bay Area this weekend under a perfect sun enjoying Blue Angels and bad bluegrass and Bear football and A's hangover rollin' benders, I'm stuck in a house where illness hangs its hat. We have the bronchial, the sinus, the ear, and the throat. But worst of all, we have the self-pity. I just stared wistfully at a church. My grass is dying and I don't care. I graded papers for two hours while a warm sun beat gently on my neck and I was afraid. I listened to the new KK & BBQ record with indifference. I was instructed on a message board to take the cock out of my eye. A deference to my gargantula, I'm sure, but discomforting nonetheless.

The Tigers beat the Yankees. The A's beat the Twins. Cop cars are rolled and burned. Naked burning bodies in the street in full flaming coitus. Photos show faces alive, saturated with the satisfaction of vicarious victory, regular life selling short for most on that account. I sip a Duvel, golden blond, 8.5%, blow out a wad of venomous green phlegm, and ponder Adam in the garden, naked, lacking self-consciousness, doing as beasts do, when that bitch Eve couldn't think her way through an obvious trap. Bring free will to this species? I shudder at our own incapacity for it. Self-consciousness, one differentiating human element and what does it get us- shame. And guilt. Evolutionarily useful perhaps and yet, so painful. And I ain't down with the suffering is educative jive. I don't need to learn that I can't do it myself and that submission to the omnipotent sky daddy is what that suffering teaches. What I need is a stack of ribs so high you couldn't see the hooters on that new waitress if you leaned down and pushed the lesbians next door off their chairs. Yes, a big slab of beef and some thin glasses filled with Moylan's Hopsickles clocking in at 9.2 on the buzzgun, and some decent, thick-skinned conversation.

It don't sound like much.

Get It on, Bitch

SERIES STARTS TUESDAY AT 11 AM WEST COAST TIME IN MINNEAPOLIS.