BELGIAN CAFÉ FOR DOWNTOWN OAKLAND (from Bill Brand's blog)
Downtown Oakland's beginning to rock. Clubs, restaurants and excellent pubs continue to open. For beer lovers like me, a pub slated to open in early fall is great news.
It's the Trappist Cafe, 460 8th St. in Old Oakland, just around the corner from Broadway. Owners Chuck Stilphen of Lafayette and Aaron Porter of Oakland, plan to specialize in Belgian beers -- including all the Belgian Trappist beers they can get, of course. Stilphen owns a chain of music rehearsal studios, Rehearse America; Porter's an architect in Berkeley.
But their real love is Belgian beer. They spend their holidays in Belgium, and although they have their Oakland and state ABC permits, Stilphen says they're not going to open until fall because they want to tour the many beer festivals in Belgium this summer.
Tough job, but someone has to do it.
The Trappist Cafe will be modeled on one of those tiny dives found all over the Lowlands, in Amsterdam and Bruges. "We've got this funky place, it's 10 feet wide and 50 feet long," Stilphen said.
They plan to stock from 120 to 150 Belgian bottled beers and 15 beers on tap, a mix of Belgian and American craft beer. Stilphen admits being fond of Russian River's Pliny the Elder.
They're certain of one thing: There will be no beer from InBev, the Belgian corporate giant. "There'll be no Stella Artois, no Leffe, no Hoegaarden, no corporate beer at all," he said.
Among their draft beers, he says, will be De Koninck (****), the malty, stony ale from Antwerp. Wow. I can hardly wait. Stay tuned.

Oprah Winfrey To Interview Reclusive Author Cormac McCarthy
by Mary K. Brunskill

Chicago, IL (AHN) - Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist who authored "The Road," will be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey on June 5. It will be the first television appearance McCarthy, well-known for his reclusivity, has ever made.
"The Road" has been on the New York Times Bestseller List since it was announced that Winfrey had picked his novel for Oprah's Book Club in March. The book is a post-apocalyptic tale that chronicles a journey undertaken by a father and son after most of life on earth has been destroyed by an unnamed disaster.
During McCarthy's taped interview the author shares his ideas regarding "notoreity, women and life's necessities."
McCarthy writes in the Southern Gothic, western and post-apocalyptic genres. "The Road" has appalled and fascinated readers with its exploration of subject matter including cannibalism, child rape and suicide.

The most frightening non-fiction book ever written is called The Hot Zone, and it was penned by the New Yorker’s Richard Preston. The book was a true story of monkeys and Kenya, Ebola and Virginia. It scared the living hell out of me, and the only book surpasses it in describing fear and terror is Blood Meridian.

Preston’s new book, The Wild Trees, has no infected monkeys, but it does feature the tallest trees on earth, and paints a decent picture of life in Arcata, perhaps my next home. Preston follows dedicated arborists who decide, after sober thought, to climb these 370 foot monsters, poke around in the crown, and harvest the previously undiscovered life forms residing there.

These neo-hippies love to climb, jump, and fuck in the trees, and though I’ve only shagged at base level, Preston’s prose as it relates to the behemoths is fair. Trying to describe what it’s like deep in the groves – the dead silence, the lack of light, the springy beds, the height – is kinda dumb once you’ve spent time there, because words fail the tallest living things on the planet. If pagans have a cathedral, it’s there, north east of Arcata along the prairie creek.

The best part of the book details the history and biodiversity within the crown, and the fun these human-chimps have bouncing around the canopy. I want to get up in one of these bad boys, and if it’s only my ashes that get tossed there, that would be just fine. Someone rent me a dirigible.

Spring Blahs Continue- what d'ya got?

Bay to Breakers Highlights: Courtesy, the Old Man

WHERE'S THE BALD LADY?

Another must read Lawrence article for ya...

To his once dear friend Katherine Mansfield, suffering from tuberculosis and alone in Italy, he writes, "I loathe you, you revolt me stewing in your consumption," and later asks another correspondent, "Spit on her for me when you see her, she is a liar out and out." "I hate humanity so much," he writes during the torment of World War I, "I can only think with friendliness of the dead."

Won't you let me walk you home from school
Won't you let me meet you at the pool
Maybe Friday I can
get tickets for the dance
and I'll take you

Won't you tell your dad, "Get off my back"
Tell him what we said 'bout 'Paint It Black'
Rock 'n Roll is here to stay
Come inside where it's okay
And I'll shake you

Won't you tell me what you're thinking of
Would you be an outlaw for my love
If it's so, well, let me know
If it's "no", well, I can go
I won't make you

Having tried and failed to enjoy Trout Mask Replica, loved Safe as Milk, and appreciated the Early Recordings, I've always wanted to dig deeper into the magic of Captain Beefheart. Getting really fucking sick has always been my finest research tool, so the other day I finally got around to watching a two-hour BBC documentary that is a perfect initiation to the barely initiated, walking chronologically as it does through each album with all focus decidedly on the music and leaving the dirty gossip for the biographers. I got so excited at the end that I blew out a glob of greenish brown blob and proceeded to download me the top six record recommendations that I could gather from the film. Ain't quite done with the Townes Van Zandt obsession, but I'm gonna try and have an overlapping one with the good Captain and it's in in in we go. Anybody got a fave to push?

Thanks, guys!

A Litany of Tuesday's Pain

Lower back spasms

Minor sinus infection

in-grown toenail

three odd-looking sores on my elbow that spontaneously appeared and portend some kind of crop circle visitation or impending doom