Plenty in the Land of Want

Epilogue

2010-01-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

I just realized an epilogue occurs when you wrote a bad ending. Or no ending. Or you just forgot to really end.

I think a moral comes in an epilogue.

I'm drinking my third beer of the evening. My chains have been loosed. I'm free. I can drink as many beers as I want and never have to report them again and they taste a little less important now.

In 09, I drank beers in fifteen different states with one hundred nineteen different folks. There's no telling how many more beers I wish I'd have had with others who I didn't make it to see. But that's life.

I learned this past year to be patient. To follow though. To think.

But, I don't think I ended up saving any natural resources. For ever beer I passed over I made up with some distilled spirit mixed with something or wine shipped from France. I might not have, in retrospect, saved anything except for my kidneys. And then not even. I lost no weight. I still can't travel through time.

What then, do I take away? Anything? Nothing?

That time is short. Plans are fickle. Friends are better than beer or money or houses or jobs or anything except for family and wives. To have family around, whether I avoid them or not, makes me better off than not. To have Marianna by my side makes me the luckiest one.

Thank you to those who shared a beer with me this year.

And cheers to those who will in 2010.

No. 99

2009-12-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

Beer: Bad Penny Brown Ale
Date: December 30th, 2009
Place: Applebees, Durham, NC

This blog couldn't finish. Not without Todd.

His swine flu subsided ha! and he made the drive down and in the last forty-five minutes of our Christmas vacation Todd saved it. Me. The blog. The year. This whole damn project.

I met Todd several years back in church. He was sitting by himself. I was sitting by myself. It sounds like, the way I'm writing this, as if we were about to date. But no. He was alone because his fiance was up in Michigan getting ready to be wed. And Todd was on his way up a couple of weeks later.

He was wearing some shoes I also owned. So I thought he seemed like he could be an okay guy.

I invited Todd out for a beer. Which I probably do too often. Asking guys out for beer.

Nine times out of ten, the beers I've had with complete strangers have leveled the field and opened up the conversation have led to something bigger. Beer does that. Vikings knew it. Drunks know it. I do.

From that beer came several more. Over the next year that I was still in Durham, we spent a lot of time with Todd and his wife, Rebecca. Each time there were beers. Every time there were.

Not too many. Not too few.

We went camping once and I think there were just Margaritas. There should have been ale.

I miss Todd. His wife. The times they and Marianna and I spent together.

But those days are over. Like this year. This project.

I can look back and see the good times. I will forget the bad. Time does that. Selective blogging does that. Remembers the good. Blocks out the bad.

There wasn't much of anything to block out with Todd. He's a great guy. Now he's a dad. Loves it. He wouldn't go back and trade this new life, this new responsibility and parenting, for those olden days, where we'd grab some nachos and beers and kill hours. And I don't blame him.

Anyone who would trade life and all it means for a pint of beer is an idiot.

No. 98

2009-12-31T15:17:00.000-08:00

Beer: Fat Tire Amber Ale
Date: December 28th, 2009
Place: Shiki Sushi, Durham, NC

Swine flue evidently doesn't care about my plans.

Me, being a planner, had it all set up. I'd have beer number 98 with Todd who was going to drive down from Cincinnati and we were going to drink a beer and then go to the UNC basketball game and then I was going to have number 99 as a reflectional.

Dude, I'm not going to be able to make it. I think I have H1N1. Yeah, um, okay. So... I'll see you at like 7:30? No, for real. I left Cincy an hour ago, and got all the shakes and thought This ain't going to happen. So I came back. I'm sorry dude.

Don't you die on me.

Etc. Click.

I wasn't going to let swine flu have the last word. Just like the CDC didn't let it have a pandemic, and farmers didn't let it kill their harvest but burned the pigs alive gross.

I flipped the script. Ordered a beer with dinner.

The alcohol should kill off the virus.

No. 97

2009-12-30T07:32:00.000-08:00

Beer: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Date: December 27th, 2009
Place: The Stuarts, Raleigh, NC

Holidays that begin with C.

Christmas morning. 10:03am. I open a package from my older brother. He's mailed me a gift basket from Florida to North Carolina, but the company that packed it is from New Hampshire and it might've made sense for me to just drive up to the White Mountains and picked it up.

Contents: Three beers (Sierra Nevada, Leinenkugel, Samuel Adams), a bag a pistachios, a bag of trail mix, a bag of nuts, packing paper, a note (Congrats on only drinking 100 beers this year! Have a few on me!!! -Breshen) all contained within a bucket; the bucket could have easily held four more beers had they put less confetti inside.

The beers are somewhat cold due to the package being left out in the garage. I could open one up right here. Right on the floor in front of the fireplace and beside my stocking. Or drink all three. But I can't drink all three. I don't have three left in me for the year.

I have to be diplomatic about the situation. I've not planned any beers with the family. Or, any more. And I haven't planned any with Ann and John. Which is shallow. Weak. Poor planning. Lack of leadership.

Sticky things that begin with T.

But I can't not have one. I can't just a) leave them or b) ship them in my luggage back up to the commonwealth. Some terrorist foiled my plot to take the beers back. He ruined it for us all. And the beer lobby hasn't been strong enough to overturn the 3oz. limit. Or, in the past three years, perhaps, they've lost vision.

So I put my other plans on hold. Planned beers exit. Unplanned enter. This is Christmas and Christmas is about family and my family sent me beers and my family is playing Scattergories Bodies of water that begin with R, J, E and I'm going to drink a beer and answer questions and figure out later what to do with the two that are left in the refrigerator.

Thanks for the beer, Breshen. Merry Christmas.

No. 96

2009-12-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

Beer: Budweiser
Date: December 25th, 2009
Place: The Griffins, Fayetteville, NC

I've been meaning to have a beer with Dan for a couple of years now.

Dan is family. Or, in the typical convoluted family connection description paradigm, he is my wife's aunt's husband, or my father-in-law's brother-in-law, or my wife's cousin's dad. Or, in the proper business sense, Dan is our financial planner.

After the Madoff debacle, the family member as money shepherd is somewhat of a creepy thing. You ship crates of money their way, trust they put it where it would benefit you most. Talk to them monthly and view statements and ask advice and hope that the whole of it isn't built of cards but of more - as if our monetary system is backed by something real and something other than simple trust.

As well as our money going through that man's hands, he seems like a good guy.

At every holiday we are in Raleigh, I can't help but feel like he's gotten the short end of the stick. He's accepted a heck of a lot of responsibility for the family and has taken it with no bitterness. He drives his inlaws and wife and kids up to Raleigh, two and a half hours round trip, for all the holidays and all the Sunday afternoon meals and whatever else transpires between family, between houses. And as it's the case, it's never been a good time to sit and have a beer. Dan is a man on a schedule and a mission and an interstate.

But I've been promising that I owe him a beer for months now. So as we pulled into their house, I unloaded a sixer of Budweiser, straightened my tie, and celebrated the holiday.

After the dinner was eaten and the presents were opened and before the dessert sweetened the deal, I was able to crack open a brew with Dan. And we were able to chat for a few minutes about nothing in particular.

And about as quickly as it had started, it was over. Because for a man on a mission and a man on a schedule and a man like Dan, who saddles up responsibility of families and monies, there isn't much time to slow down and have a beer.

For there are still desserts to be out out and dishes to be cleaned and families to be hugged and weekends to be squeezed before enduring another week of an economy that had soured years ago.

No. 95

2009-12-26T16:02:00.000-08:00

Beer: Harpoon Winter Warmer
Date: December 20th, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

In a number of ways, my life is like a movie. Except for the paycheck. Or the notoriety. Or the stalkers in the bushes.

Apart from those three things, and maybe a couple hundred more, my life and that of the top names in Hollywood are virtually indistinguishable. Oh, and maybe the square footage of my apartment.

But this weekend, when Christmas travelers were snowed in, airports turned into waitports, roads out of the Midwest and New England clogged up and snarled, and the holidays were starting to become less bright for some souls, the scenario I've only watched on the big screen made a debut in my neighborhood.

One of those souls was down the street. Trying to make it home to Maryland out of Boston but the snow was bad in Boston and far worse eight hours down the seaboard. Bryan was stuck and burning vacation days and family days and holy days and there wasn't anything I could do to get him to DC any sooner.

So we rented Christmas Vacation. Had Bryan over. And Pete down. And made dinner. And had seasonal beers. And got into the spirit of the Christmas season while we were all at least 500 miles from where we hoped to end up in the next few days.

The snow didn't melt much over the next few days.

But the warmth of friends and family sure made it seem like it did.

No. 94

2009-12-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

Beer: Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout
Date: December 12th, 2009
Place: The White Horse Tavern, Newport, RI

One beer.

On December 12.

In the oldest tavern in America.

Built in 1673.

No. 93

2009-12-14T19:29:00.000-08:00

Beer: Newcastle
Date: December 11th, 2009
Place: The Thirtsy Scholar, Cambridge, MA

I'm not good at waiting.

Unless I don't know that I'm waiting.

I was able to wait for my wife. Because I didn't know she was coming along. I can wait for Christmas. I can wait for thirty.

But when I'm sitting, waiting on someone to show up, that's when I fidget. When I pull out my phone and pretend that I've gotten an important message. When I shallowly yawn. When I keep looking at a door to see who is there. And then look away when the person there makes eye contact to see if I'm their blind date or business meeting or the like.

So we are waiting, Marianna and I, on a bitterly cold Friday night, in a neighborhood pub, trying to decide whether or not to go ahead and order a beer, trying to buy a few minutes from the waitress who wants to get drinks on our table and amounts on her tab that we might add 20% at the night's end.

And we are meeting neighbors. Neighbors who I don't know (50%) or have met twice (the remaining 50%). The remaining 50% I met in Mississippi. Jacob. The older brother of Lee, who I spent a lot of time with in years past, and a little time with within the last month. I knew Lee's brother was at Harvard, after getting his masters at Yale, after getting his something at Ole Miss.

I'd say he's on the up.

And now I've got my beer. A hearty Newcastle. And a Marianna, sitting right across. And we've got a couple of hovering SoCo reps who are trying to get us to take shots. (Spoiler alert: I do.)

The last time I saw Jacob, he was about a buck twenty five despite clocking in at over 6'2". I think he had a scarf over a t shirt. I can't quite remember. Just that he looked like the kind of guy who should be tucked away in a library in New Haven or Cambridge, with a pipe, thicker scarf and a thesis.

Now, years later, as Jacob and his wife come into the pub, I finally see the 50% who I've not met yet, but emailed frequently to set up our evening, and Jacob, who's now built more like a linebacker, but who could still pull off a professor.

It's a quick pint. Jacob is on a schedule; three papers that must all be longer than books I read, due within the next forty eight hours. Katherine is on his schedule too. We only have a pint, but I find we've got four years before he finishes up. Four more years of pints and professions - twelve hundred miles and nine years removed from where we first met.

I patiently wait for the next pint.

At that point, I suspect it won't be numbered.

No. 92

2009-12-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Beer: Ruination IPA
Date: December 5th, 2009
Place: Craft Piano Gild, Boston, MA

It started out as a gross rain, but as the SEC championship game progressed, the rain made up its mind to become something better, something bigger, something that would make kids jump up and down and make adults act like kids and cars slide in a good way, not in a rain way, and that would allow the plows to start singing their scraping songs and the salt move from piles into lanes, and would make Christmas seem closer (and more real) and make lights, even the dimmest lights, feel warmer and cheerier, make the rabbit lined hats move from irony into utility, make sherling lined boots move from basements onto feet, make carols move from our bellies onto the tips of our tongues, no two alike, swirling, enveloping us in four months of bitter cold while none of us are bitter yet, but holly, jolly, red cheeked and chattering teeth welcoming the white.

No. 91

2009-12-02T05:40:00.000-08:00

Beer: BBC Steel Rail Pale Ale
Date: November 29th, 2009
Place: 21st Amendment, Boston, MA

I remember the day Michael moved to Athens.

Possibly not the day, but the occasion. I was in elementary school, and we got a couple of new kids in school. Ben and his brother Michael. Michael was (still is) older and Ben was my grade and they had moved from Nashville and were quite tan (mother is Ecuadorian) and Ben wore nothing except Nike apparel and for whatever reason I can remember that Ben had some really neat soft foam pencil grips on every one of his NFL branded pencils.

The only thing I really knew about Michael is that he had a Digable Planets cassette tap that had scantily clad ladies on the cover and to a young boy that made Michael a bit intimidating and a lot grown up. I'd seen it at his house once when I was visiting Ben and trying to convince him to give me one of his soft foam pencil grips. Which he did.

It's funny to think of growing up. And how there are age strata that one dare not cross. A few were able to pull it off. And those individuals mainly had questionable character. As such, I never really had many interactions with Michael.

A year or so ago, I realized that Michael was a damn fine photographer now living out in Seattle. I sent him an email. Hooked him up with a friend of mine who moved to Seattle. Read his blog. Looked at his work. Became awed.

Michael was in Boston for sixteen hours last week for an editorial photo shoot. Which is how we came to be sitting in a bar, next to the State House, drinking a pint and talking not about our shared past but what our present and futures look like.

Mike escaped from our small town and is doing quite big things. His future looks, to me, to be about as well lit as his work that he is becoming so well-known for.

No. 90

2009-11-30T06:59:00.001-08:00

Beer: Dos XX
Date: November 25th, 2009
Place: Mom's House, Huntsville, AL

This year I had to do it and to be intentional about spending time with family.

Now that I live a couple thousand miles away, and only make it south once a year, if that, and I’m getting on up there, as is my family, I realized that it was due time, past time, to give to the family and to show that they are important and to act like someone who loves his family and gives time to them and makes it a point, a point, a point, to be there.

This choice, I reckon, was prompted by scares. My grandfather was a few centimeters from death months ago. I needed to see him. My brother was struggling with some issues and was in the hospital. I needed to see him. My sister is making what I believe are some poor choices. I needed to see her (even if she didn’t care to see me, or the rest of us, and didn’t show up). My brother has been on special ops (perhaps) but even if not gets shipped all over the planet on no minutes notice and then has to cancel plans and gets shot at and is in danger all the time and is around at times and not around at times and he happened to be home. And my mom, my dad, aren’t getting any younger. As I spent my high school and middle school and possibly even my elementary school years running I haven’t given them the time that I should. They won’t be around forever.

Maybe these choices was also prompted by guilt. For lost time that I won’t make up. Don’t have time to make up. Don’t have location to make up. Don’t know if I have the self-control and selflessness to make up.

But small steps are victories.

And this trip South was spent avoiding friends and sitting idly in my mother’s house, with no television or internet, and my dad’s farmhouse, with no heat (nor plumbing, nor television, nor internet), and grandparent’s houses, with no distractions, burning time, breaking down walls.

No. 88 & 89

2009-11-29T14:23:00.000-08:00

Beer: No. 88, Sam Adams Boston Lager, No. 89, Sam Adams Boston Lager
Date: November 22nd, 2009
Place: The Whitts, Athens, AL

My family no longer lives in the town I was raised.

But, as bad as I feel, my hometown was never about family to me.

It was about friends. To whom’s houses I’d escape to not feel poor. Or ill kempt. Or irrelevant.

I feel like I was raised more by my friends and their parents; which to a large part I was, as I was always with them if I was not at work. I think my family would have liked to’ve spent more time together, but I was running.

When I get to Athens, I call friends. Find a house and some beer. Burn hours with the guys who are now bigger, now with less hair, now with more tax credits, now with less time to spend together, and now, just as then, still responsible for my upbringing.

No. 87

2009-11-29T14:19:00.000-08:00

Beer: Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Date: November 21st, 2009
Place: Two Stick, Oxford, MS

Forward, Rebels, march to fame,
Hit that line and win this game
We know that you'll fight it through,
For your colors red and blue.
Rah, rah, rah!
Rebels you are the Southland's pride,
Take that ball and hit your stride,
Don't stop till the victory's won
for your Ole Miss.
Fight, fight for your Ole Miss!

Louisiana State University - 23
The University of Mississippi - 25

No. 86

2009-11-29T14:15:00.000-08:00

Beer: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Date: November 20th, 2009
Place: The Morrison's, Oxford, MS

It took me eighty-seven beers, but finally a few were drained in the capital letter ‘S’ South.

Jim and I watched the Ole Miss/Kansas State basketball game at his house on the north side of town. Jim isn’t just a huge Ole Miss fan, but was senior class president at Ole Miss, the most recognized name on campus (Jim Morrison), the youngest and biggest gun working in the Lyceum in a senior role, an Ivy League grad school guy. Probably will run the University one day. Next year, he’s in charge of all game day operations. That’s like saying you are the mayor and police chief and head surgeon of Mississippi’s second largest city 8 times a year.

I remember meeting Jim. We were in a business class and he was sitting in the back and had a cast on his arm. He might have gotten it from when he walked on the track team. Or when he walked on the basketball team. But I thought he looked like he needed friends. I think it’s like when you see a puppy with a cast on. You realize that the puppy needs no attention from you, cause the dog is awesome and everyone already knows who he is. And what he’s about. So I ask Jim what happened, and he told me, and now I forget, but it was enough to get the conversation started, and I think Jim probably actually felt sorry for me, a junior in college who had only recently figured out who he was, and had no friends, and was just looking for a way to find people to connect with.

We would go ride mountain bikes on the hills near campus a few times a week. And through that we became friends.

Jim graduated the next year; moved to NYC to get a degree at Columbia. Got married and then he and his wife moved to Chicago for a few years. Then Ole Miss came calling and he and Mitzi packed it up and built a house and have a child and another on the way.

Jim was on the committee to get the Presidential Debate to come to Oxford. And he succeeded. Much like everything else he tries.

I look up to Jim and watch how he lives his life and how he gives time to everyone and how even when he’s partially broken he’s helping others heal.

And if I ever lack motivation or drive or inspiration, I just look South, and he’s nearby.

No. 84 (cont'd) & No. 85

2009-11-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Beer: No. 84, Krusovice Imperial Lager, No. 85, Rebel
Date: November 17th, 2009
Place: Gulu Gulu, Salem, MA

I find myself on the train, in a knee length black wool coat. In this way, I'm not much different from the other men on the 6:45 train to Newburyport.

The man beside me could have been me fifteen years before. Or sixty pounds earlier. Or less bald. He in his floor length black wool coat You like it? Thanks. No, mine's actually cotton. and wedding band and house in the suburbs with a wife and a dog and a commuter rail schedule committed to memory.

But this man isn't like me. He doesn't have a score to settle. Or he might. There might be a bookie waiting for him at the Monserrat stop. Smoking a cigarette. Waiting to give this man two options: a) pay up b) the dog gets it. The bookie would have started out well intentioned and he'd, too, wonder how he got into this situation when he'd studied business for two years but then life caught up and he had to make a living somehow and now the train is at the station and the me man gets up, queues in the aisle, disappears down the stairs.

I don't meet a bookie at the Salem stop. I descend from the train, tail between my wool No, they are really cotton lapels, and look for Glenn who is there to pick me up and collect on the wager I confidently made and soundly lost.

Clearing my debt, salvaging my name before my debtor, warms the cool air of the Czech beer bar, as we catch up on days past and talk of times ahead and even though I lost the bet, spending an evening with new friends over brews in Salem Town makes me realize how I really am the victor.

No. 84

2009-11-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

Beer: TBD
Date: TBD
Place: TBD

The wheels have already been set in motion for 84.

Hopefully, it isn't motion before the snap - dead ball foul - five yards, replay first down.

I'm playing Glenn in Fantasy Football this weekend. He is projected to win by a fair margin. I'm second in the standings and Glenn is in 3rd.

The loser must drive to the winner's town (Glenn lives up the shore in Salem) on Tuesday night and buy the winner a beer.

Simple as.

I'm pulling for the Massacres.

No. 83

2009-11-14T11:01:00.001-08:00

Beer: Squall IPA
Date: November 10th, 2009
Place: Our kitchen, Somerville, MA

My life, this day, by the numbers, on the last birthday of my twenties.

29. Years, to the date, I've been alive.
28. Best year of my life. (Each one keeps getting better.)
27. Age when I was wed.
26. Age I finally made it above the Mason Dixon line.
25. Oz. of Squall IPA.
24. When I lost my best friend.
23. Age I moved to Atlanta.
22. Number of roommates I've had in my adult life.
21. Amendment that allows this blog to flourish.
20. When I finally understood God. Or at least realized I wasn't him.
19. Toughest / loneliest year of my life.
18. Age I had my first beer.
17. Age when I shook the President's hand, in the Oval Office.
16. Brews I need to finish within a month and a half.
15. Number of years I've got until I hit my midlife crisis. If, indeed, I hit one.
14. When I got my first job.
13. Years driving without a speeding ticket. (Just jinxed myself.)
12. Number of places I've paid rent.
11. Years I've been living on my own.
10. Age when my parents divorced.
9. Phish concerts I've seen.
8. Countries I've visited. (Mexico, Canada, Puerto Rico, Ireland, England, Italy, St. Lucia, New Zealand)
7. Games I've won so far in Fantasy Football in 09.
6. Pack. Which I've not bought in at least 314 days.
5. States in which I've held a drivers license. (Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts)
4. Siblings.
3. Of us, at the house, having a birthday dinner.
2. Years I've been in Boston. +.5 margin of error.
1. Times I'm going to attempt sticking to 99 beers.

No. 81 & 82

2009-11-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

Beer: No. 81, Heavy Seas Big DIPA, No. 82, Natty Boh
Date: November 7th, 2009
Place: The Baltimore Taphouse, Baltimore, MD

Ten years ago, I met two different people.

One I remember meeting reletively well. The other I'm not completely sure of. I introduced myself to one; the other my roommate introduced me to. Neither of the two knew each other, then, a decade ago. Now, they are married. Living in Baltimore. Sharing beers with old friends.

Lee and I met on a Tuesday night the first week of college. We both made it into the Chancellor's leadership Class - an exclusive enclave of incoming freshmen who showed an aptitude for leadership. Or just showed they were able to write an essay well. In hind site, I realize (in both mine and Lee's case) a leader is one who takes out a lot of loans for school, works more than plays, and moves on up the East Coast.

I recognized him again in the hall of our dorm. Or at least that's what my memory tells me. We might not have even lived in the same building. Ten years will cloud a lot of specific memories. At any rate, I somehow learned that he and his roommate played spades. My roommate and I played spades. For some time, Daniel and I went to their dorm, holed up, and prayed for the ace or the two of clubs.

I knew within a week that Lee was going to go places. After Ole Miss he went to Tulane for med school, and is now a resident at Johns Hopkins. Full discloser: one day, when Lee is quoted in every major medical journal and revered more than the rest of his peers, I'm going to name drop.

My memory of meeting Mary Chaney is a little less clear. I know that she and Daniel met someplace - maybe a sorority house, maybe the student union - maybe through mutual friends, maybe by happenstance. But she came into our dorm room, and thus into my life.

I never fully understood her and Daniel's relationship, as to whether is was romantic or friendly, casual or formal, but she is, to this day, my favorite person who he spent lots of time with and never married. She has a huge heart and a cuter than a cute giggle. I miss hearing it multiple times a week.

I don't know when she and Lee met. I just remember one day they were a couple and after a brief courtship, they were married.

In the four years since, we've seen them in New Orleans and visited them in Baltimore. I think they, like us, will move a few more times and then settle someplace.

I consider it my privilege to know friends like these who will take time away from their upward and onward trajectory to have a brew or two with an old friend, in a new town, far away from Dixie.

No. 80

2009-11-11T05:40:00.000-08:00

Beer: Asahi
Date: November 6th, 2009
Place: Chiu's Sushi, Baltimore, MD

Things in life I inherited, but don't remember when:

The Whitson nose.

A thick Southern accent, which has since been kept at bay - until whiskey is introduced.

Things in life I inherited, and do remember when:

1,200 dollars when my great grandmother passed away.

A desk that my grandfather allegedly pulled from an old flaming barn. Later I find out it wasn't a barn, wasn't flaming, and might not have been my grandfather who saved it not from the flames not of the barn.

A stepmother.

Things in life I inherited, due to marriage:

Two new sets of grandparents, two new parents, two new step parents, a sister, brother, small dog.

A pillow top mattress.

Social graces.

Marianna's friends.

Concerning the last item of the list, we spent the weekend in Baltimore with one of Marianna's longest friends, from Raleigh, and her husband, a pilot, whom I'd just met, soaking up the Indian summer still in the 70s having inexpensive relative to Boston meals in a blue-collar town who'd've known? where there are happy hour deals unknown to us in the Commonwealth thanks Puritans! and watching the hometown football team, who Kerry and Jason had inherited with their most recent move and taming of a row house, crumble into a mess of mediocrity.

No. 79

2009-11-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

Beer: Sam's Light
Date: October 30th, 2009
Place: Johnnie's on the Side, Boston, MA

Open Scene: Halloween Party.

Enters Max from Where the Wild Things Are.

Dancing commences.

No. 78

2009-11-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

Beer: I'm going to have to get back to you on this one
Date: October 29th, 2009
Place: The Thirsty Scholar, Somerville, MA

Number 78 is either the heaviest or lightest beer I've had all year.

I met with a new acquaintance, Regina, and we had a pint and talked about Christianity. Regina is an atheist, or on further discussion, a motivated agnostic. But beyond that, she's a neighbor – a wonderfully pleasant Somervillian who had shown up to our community group (essentially a Bible study) because she's a person searching; looking for answers and looking to escape loneliness and searching for what this is all about. As we all are.

And after coming a week or two, she sent an email. Said she felt like maybe it wasn't the right place for her to find answers. That the stories she hears and the stories that she has are different, that maybe to learn more about Jesus it would be better to look elsewhere. I wanted to sit with her, talk with her, learn her story and tell her mine, get past the surface and get into the parts of our struggles that are real and that are scary and that are messy and that can use hope.

Because in the end, the Bible, the redeeming of man, is just a story. A story of a loving God who gave man a choice, because he is a gracious God, a loving God, a merciful God. But also a wrathful God. One whose heart broke when man turned his back. A God who wipes out those who oppose him. Like any great story there's that tension, that give and take, push and pull, those parts that we can figure out and those parts that give us no clarity (How could a good God let there be suffering?), the great To Be Continued: at the end.

And the part of the story that lives in the world. The story of Christians who bring heaven to earth by serving their fellow man and those who use the name of Christ to justify horrible acts in the name of God. It's real and it's messy and it's scary and it's big and huge and I can't understand it but I believe it.

The only complete grasp I have is mine – and a very slight understanding of God's – so I told my story. My choice. My decision to believe it. To buy into Jesus. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I got duped. And I don't want anyone to think Well, he lived a decent moral life if when it all ends I find out that Jesus was just merely a story, an allegory. I want them to pity me and I want to feel like I was an idiot. Because I really believed it, because I went hard out and I tried to live it. It's heavy.

Yet in the story of Jesus I feel complete and I feel whole and the loneliness has been lifted and it's my faith that sustains me and I sleep at night with no worries and with total clarity and purpose and meaning. It's light.

Thursday was just my story coming into contact with Regina's. Both ours will continue, whether they walk the same theological lines or not. Maybe we'll just be neighbors who agree to disagree on the purposes of our lives and the reason God created man and why He allows things to happen and why He doesn't give us what we always want, or even more frightening, when God gives us precisely what we have been asking for.

Or maybe one day we might be sharing other stories in heaven.

Which I hope for with all my heart.

No. 77

2009-10-27T06:16:00.001-07:00

Beer: Three Philosophers
Date: October 25th, 2009
Place: The shores of Wangunbaug Lake, Coventry, CT

We have six months of cold in New England and six months of less cold and as we head towards either end of that spectrum there are two other seasons that makes themselves known and both expose explosions of color – reds and whites in the spring, oranges and yellows in autumn – that show we are not yet where we are going but that’s exactly where we’re headed, and we’re all going that way together and it’s going to be.

So we embraced that truth, or half-truth, loaded up the wagon and drove to Connecticut to see John and Stephanie and their newest addition, Arabelle, who came much as the seasons – to fanfare, anxiety, and the promise that tomorrow is better than today even if today was perfect. We wanted to make the trip before the oranges were brown, the ground was white. And as New England is compact, we were in the countryside of central CT in an hour and a half.

We toasted the seasons, life, as the sun dropped behind us and the trees were ablaze on the opposing shore.

No. 74 & 75 & 76

2009-10-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 74, Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold, No. 75, Unknown, No. 76, Lone Star
Date: October 17th, 2009
Place: No. 74, Fette Sau; No. 75, Spuyten Duyvil; No. 76, Unknown

This night was not about beer (thus the lack of proper notes or camera equipment).

It was about people.

I took the bus to New York City to have dinner and drinks with friends.

Taylor:
We met freshman year in the dorm, in Oxford, MS. We lived together sophomore year with Train. In a house called the Velvet Launchpad. It was great and it was drunken and it was fun and it was hard and tumultuous and we all were looking for ourselves and who were we and that made for friction and it made for growth and it made us grow closer in some respects and further apart in others.

I'd not seen Taylor in six years and it was amazing to sit with him and drink a beer and feel like whatever was in the past was in the past and we are both now different people, yet the same, but the things that bothered us before (money, girlfriends) have been taken cars of (jobs, wives) and that makes it easy to look past and to just spend time together and laugh and hope that it won't be another six years before we do it again.

Scott:
I met Scott one of the first days of my job in North Carolina. It took me no fewer than five weeks to remember his name. I kept describing him as the dude with blond hair. We flew up to New York to see Train a few years back. We drove up to Vermont and went snowboarding. Scott had never been to New York until then. He then said he was going to move up. I don't know if I believed him or not, but within a month he was gone. We still spend time together frequently, primarily when there is snow on the ground and boards in hand.

Daniel R & Daniel B:
It isn't fair to lump these guys together as if they are the same person. But I met them together, see them each time I visit the City together. They are roommates and bandmates and became fast friends when they met and they were in a band with Train when he lived up there. Daniel B and another Daniel (F) wanted to start a band and Daniel (Train) answered an ad and they were a threesome of Daniels, and they one night, at a bar, started talking to a nice fellow and when they found out his name was Daniel they asked him to join and then it was four Daniels in one band.

R & B are guys who in four years will be famous beyond belief and will be known not only for their celebrity but also their gentle spirits and their down-to-earthidness and I will, for the next twenty years, refer people to this blog to prove that I know them, that I count them among my friends, and their bigger than life personas will not overshawdow their sincerity and their drive.

They will start a chidrens home in India and teach music when they are not touring.

Charlotte:
I've already talked about how great Charlotte and how fortunate I am to know her. The newest development is that she moved from Boston to NYC and she came out to meet these guys who I care so much about.

I continue to wish her well and only now realize how much more I wish we would have spent time with her while she was in Boston.

UPDATE: The Lone Star was at the Levee, and the unknown beer was, indeed, Blur Point October Fest. Later corroboration with Daniel and Scott put the final pieces into the puzzle.

No. 72 & 73

2009-10-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

Beer: No 72, Sam Adams October Fest, No 73, Shipyard PumpkinHead
Date: October 15th, 2009
Place: Coogans Pub, Boston, MA

A Thursday night in October in Boston. I'd not had any seasonals yet and I didn't know that it was to snow later that night and signal a certain end to our summer and a temporary end to autumn.

It was October and I met a hearty group of gentlemen out where we proceeded to tie for 2nd place in trivia and were only one point off the leaders and had we the wherewithal to know that Sumo Wrestlers toss salt into the ring before they enter we'd have been tied for first and if we kner that Mt Fuji was the world's most summited mountain we'd be sitting in first place.

Instead, our Japanese culture was not polished up and we played the roverbial second fiddle, a team of nine of us, which was split in two due to rules but acted like one giant team, a thinktank with three architects, a Microsoft computer programmer, three graphic desgigners, a medical resident and a grocery store manager, who evidently know a good amount across a breadth of subjects, in a town of great thinkers, present and past.

The regret I have is not in being unable to answer a question or two, but in trying the Shipyard OctoberFest beer in which was given an F rating, an avoid at all costs, and it was my second beer of the night, my second-place celebration ale, the close of our gloomy summer and a welcome to another gloriuos New England fall.

No. 71

2009-10-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Beer: Fat Tire Ale
Date: October 3rd, 2009
Place: San Antonio Taco Company, Nashville, TN

Day three.

Subtract Blair.

Add an Ole Miss victory over Vanderbilt.

Continue with the revelry.

Five beer in three days with four friends makes me feel like it's oh eight again.

The most beer I've had all year.

The most I've seen these guys in a decade.

No. 69 & 70

2009-10-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 69, Corona Extra; No. 70, Guinness 250
Date: October 2nd, 2009
Place: No. 69, Rhythm at Music Row; No. 70 Dan McGuinness, Nashville, Tennessee

A continuation of the previous post. Save this time two days in.

Add Matthew.

Continue with the revelry.

No. 67 & 68

2009-10-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 67, Heineken; No. 68, Sweetwater 420
Date: No. 67, October 1st; No. 68, October 2nd 2009
Place: No. 67, Rhythm at Music Row; No. 68 Tin Roof, Nashville, TN

The last time I was with these guys and the purpose was to celebrate these guys and these guys all came out I got black-out drunk.

It was bad.

We were in Mississippi and Daniel was going to get married the day after the day after and it was my fifth year senior year. Or my forth year junior. Either way. But all the guys made it to town and it was Daniel’s bachelor party and I hadn’t seen the guys much over the last two years, as I had found Jesus and they had found what they usually found and I’d made other friends and they, too, and we were getting together to drink and get rowdy and make it like old times.

The thing I’d forgotten was that my liver and my tolerance were in new times, and those times and the old times weren’t on speaking terms but I was drinking like they might be, or at least should be acquainted. And the college buddies from sophomore year were there, and I was used to pounding brews with them, and Bofel and Train were there, and I was for sure used to the drinks with them, from Penny Pitcher nights freshman year A Penny for a Pitcher of Beer and I never even had a fake ID and I was in a bar drinking at eighteen and the night started with a happy hour at 5pm with a Rogues Beer $3 for whatever you want at the bar. Well, then I want that pint and a half of strong beer, kind sir and ended it at 4am sitting in a parking lot across from Willie’s house, head in hands, thinking nothing but thinking something about where I’d gone wrong.

My family had come in town and I was to take them out to a nice lunch the next day, and they came to spend time with me and I was burrowed into the couch and I could hardly move and in my haze I wasn’t sure if I saw hunger in my mama’s eyes or if I saw disappointment and even though she doesn’t judge I knew I’d let her down even if it was beyond her to tell me.

And then Daniel’s rehearsal dinner that night was me walking to the bathroom and back to the table and to the bathroom and I didn’t touch a lick of what was on my plate. Not a bit.

The third day I arose from the grave.

That day, Daniel was wed and he said that he’d take all his groomsmen to Nashville at some point in the future, and we’d have a big time of it.

And while it was not all his groomsmen and we didn’t all make it Daniel held true to his word and six years almost to the date later we were as we were then – sans wives, ready to see where the weekend might take us - but knowing it was going to be markedly less rowdy and knowing these times would only roll along once every decade.

No. 66

2009-09-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

Beer: Pretty Things
Date: September 27th, 2009
Place: Bryan's Apartment, Somerville, MA

I haven't had a neighbor in years.

Ignore college. The dorm. The 15 floors of testosterone and drunk and ducks being cleaned and prepared in the sinks. Take that year away, and my premise stands.

Not in Oxford. Not in Atlanta. Not in Durham.

Not since elementary school have I been able to walk down the street to a friend's house to play.

Which isn't to say that I wouldn't love to know my neighbors. On one side we've got a Portuguese family who gives me tomatoes when mine, that they have been critical of, don't grow (rightly so - the criticism pertained to my lack of watering, which has a profound impact on the little guys) and whose arbor makes our neighborhood smell like grape juice.

But even though I know them by site, the older man doesn't recognize me out of the context of in my yard, pulling weeds, surrounded by a rusty fence. I see him at the corner store and smile - but he ignores. And I don't know his name. His wife calls me neighbor.

I don't even know the neighbors on the other side.

Outside of Manhattan, Somerville is the most densely packed neighborhood in America. Thousands and thousands of people all on top of one another. With the exception of our friends from North Carolina who live a couple of miles away, I don't know anyone else in town.

And then a new kid starts at work. Kid in a great way. Young guy. Bryan. Just moved from Manhattan. Scoped out all over town. And moves in 24 houses west of us. Maybe not even that much. We're at 50 Street Name, he's at 118.

So Sunday I packed up a beer (and one for him - a welcome to Somerville gift), walked three minutes, and watched my fantasy team lose to my new neighbor.

Who also happens to be my fantasy football general manager, my co-worker, and for all intents and purposes, my cube mate.

If there happens to be a street fight that breaks out, I know someone who has my back. Or, at least, someone who is close enough to come watch the beat down.

Much like elementary school.

No. 65

2009-09-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Beer: Heineken
Date: September 23rd, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

2:17 am.

Knock on the door. Startled, I awaken.

My brain is swimming in dreams, even though I don't think REM sleep starts for another few hours. Logic is muddled. Why is anyone at my door?

Knock.

This time it's on the glass. More like a scratch. If this is a horror movie, the glass shatters in a moment.

But nothing.

Who is out there?

I don't know I say frustrated. How am I supposed to know who is outside.

I have found my glasses. Slide the curtain to the side, careful not to make much movement. Zombies and robbers are trained to look for curtain movement.

There's a body on the porch. On the stairs. Hunched over. Rocking back and forth.

Back. Forth.

I need to get to the door. I need to find out who is out there. Is it Liam? Pete?

We don't own a baseball bat. But we should. For times like opening the door to fend off zombies at 2:24 am on a Sunday morning.

I open our door and walk into the hallway. I turn on the porch light. I brace my feet at a 45 degree angle and slide the lock. It pops.

I pull open the door. Slowly.

It turns around. Blood shot eyes. Mumbling.

Hulkj hjkeu u ahjakhtu jaklj oiu , hjaiouortyh.

Poor guy I think.

I don't know what you are saying, Ese.

Did I really just say Ese? It's late. Or early. I don't know. My synapses are misfiring and I might have just made a racial slur. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say that.

Especially to a lost, drunk, tired, scared-looking hispanic man on my steps who either thinks he's at the right place or someplace where someone can help him.

The nuance of Spanglish alludes me.

Well, I'm going to leave this light on. So, in case, you know I say aloud to him, careful to leave off in case you die on my porch.

It's out of my jurisdiction now, kind of. I just rent. If someone is going to be legally responsible for a man passing out, it isn't me. I think morally, though, I signed some kind of contract when I acknowledged him.

At any rate, my eyes are closing as the door is.

Six hours later. The sun is up.

Don't be dead. Don't be dead. Don't be dead.

I open the door. No man. Good. But there's something. Two somethings.

An opened, fully undrank Heinken on the top step. An unopened, banged up can of Heienken on the bottom step. In between them, no man.

That was months ago. The beer has been in my fridge since then.

And was cracked open Wednesday night when we played Mexican train dominos with our friends the Velazquezs.

True story.

No. 64

2009-09-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Beer: Switchback Ale
Date: September 5th, 2009
Place: Battery Street, Burlington, VT

I have an amazing wife and an amazing life and an amazing God and we found an amazing patio and had a beer and soaked up the waning sun of summer in Vermont.

It's time like this that I realize I'm the luckiest.

And I've not got much more else to say about it.

No. 63

2009-09-04T09:30:00.001-07:00

Beer: Shipyard Imperial Porter
Date: September 3, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

If it weren’t for the world heating up so much and everyone fearing that land mass will dissolve and we will dissolve then I think the biggest threat facing our planet is how it gets smaller every day.

Observe: a girl from my high school lives down the street from me.

Now, this isn’t some massive high school in some community where people are transient and move all over, and this isn’t some she lives down the street from me as a metaphorical device to say I have a friend in Connecticut.

It’s a God honest, denim wearing confession that a girl from my little 800 person high school in the cotton fields of Alabama lives down the street from me in my little city of Somerville, north of the formerly swampy Shawmut Peninsula.

And since college football was on we and since she is from Bama and I’m from Bama and she went to Tennessee and that’s next door to the Carolinas, and my wife is from North Carolina (and hates NC State, who we chose to cheer against – despite being the place where our high school quarterback from our little town in Alabama quarterbacked in college before he became an NFL superstar), we had a friend from Louisiana who went to LSU who I know from some Illinois friends come over and a friend from Texas (who I sat next to at Arnold) and a guy from California, but his brother married a girl from Alabama, and in a small world feat of itself is living upstairs with my landlord, who I have no connection to, other than I drove through his Irish hometown a few years ago {and I pay him monthly}, I wanted to open a beer.

A beer I couldn’t, for the life of me, find a kinfolk connection to.

No. 62

2009-08-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Beer: Yards Pale Ale
Date: August 22nd, 2009
Place: PHL, Philadelphia, PA

I don’t know if I’ve ever loved anything more that maps.

Absolutely love them. Parts of them and wholes of them. Moving, marking, finding, remembering them. The colors. The lines. Their impact they have on the world and space and time.

Don’t cross this map line or you can be thrown in prison. Don’t cross that map line or you will be free from communism. Don’t cross this color or instead of standing on land you are standing in a swamp, that line contains 9 million people, that line contains a mile. On that side of that line there is an opposite season even though it’s on the same line that’s a mirror image of this line.

See the map on the right? It’s there and I’m the only person who has clicked on it and that is fine with me because it’s my map and while I’m not Captain Cook and I didn’t ever draw a map and I never used a sextant I can fill it and fill it is what I intend to do.

So when I found myself with my bosses in the airport in Philidelphia, a city filled with love, not map love – but love nonetheless, I thought it fitting to have a beer and populate my map, blog, stomach.

No. 61

2009-08-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Beer: Beamish Stout
Date: August 22nd, 2009
Place: Daedalus, Cambridge, MA

The market finished up 4.23 points today.

It’s finished up over 3,000 points off its March lows. But it still isn’t finished making sure that the folks I know are all done chewed up and laid off and moving out.

I had a beer on Saturday night for Julie’s going away.

She was at a place working on some neat things that will probably be less neat now that she is headed back to Arkansas before ending up in South Carolina, and she was up here in the first place before the consumer confidence tanked and working in careers like fashion and advertising made sense.

But now they don’t make sense, like banking doesn’t make sense (although we can all see it now) and lending doesn’t make sense and real estate bubbles don’t make sense and the only thing that seems to make sense now is 70% off sales that the few who saved money can afford to frequent, yet those same people who saved are the same ones who didn’t really frequent those shops in the first place, so they are probably still saving unless they are getting televisions for cheap I’m talking.

So with Julie gone, Boston is seeming to be just a little more rugged, now that our community and our friends and those others are all someplace else and the winter isn’t here yet but New England already seems cold.

But there is a little spark on the horizon.

No. 60

2009-08-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

Beer: Bass Ale
Date: August 12th, 2009
Place: People's Republik, Cambridge, MA

I'm not a bar game kind of guy.

I lack the skills necessary for pool. I always feel my bravado isn't quite there and that everyone can see through me when they say You play pool? and I say Yeah and they suggest I break and then I'm found out when I can't just break already.

I don't do poker. I find it mind numbingly boring and I don't like to gamble. I have limited money as is, and prefer not to give it to the man with a mustache and sunglasses.

I watch the people who play the machine that uses the hand to pick up (not pick up) the stuffed animal/adult DVD and wonder where they get that many quarters. I never can find them when I need a laundromat.

I thought darts would be in the same category. But they weren't. I can get into darts.

With a few stipulations:

a) I can't be drunk (usually not a problem). My aiming ability is too low and my tosses too high when the beer is flowing.
b) I can't be playing anyone with swagger. And with swagger I mean someone who actually plays. And by someone who actually plays, I mean the old man with the mustache who has moved on from poker and is now trying to hustle a college kid in a graphic tee.
c) Best results come when playing someone like Tony - who is good enough to keep the game moving along but not great enough to leave me in the wings while he runs the board.
d) When the primary purpose isn't darts.

I'd met Tony for a beer and we talked about our wives (we met he and his at our pre-marital counseling), his career (Navy first, now several balls in the air), my blog (this one), the Red Sox (losing), and after two hours, we thought it would be a fine time to toss a few darts, talk a good game, drink a pint, promise to do it again.

I lost. But only by a single bulls eye.

No. 58 & 59

2009-08-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 58, Smuttynose Summer Weizen; No. 59, Innis and Gunn Oak Aged
Date: August 5th, 2009
Place: The backyard, Somerville, MA

I was planning on having beer 59.

Bought it a few weeks back. Knew the wife had book club and I'd have some bros over in the backyard and we'd drink beers and talk about nothing and enjoy the summer that took far to long to get here and will be gone far before we wish and one of my favorite things in the world behind Jesus, my wife, and honest employment is a beer with buddies so I knew that 59 would be good. I got something special that I've been wanting to try that is aged in old Scotch barrels and I'd suggest you give it a swig before you judge.

The thing was, I completely expected it to be beer number 58. And it was going to be, until a car pulled into the driveway.

It was my landlord, Liam. He lives upstairs with Pete and owns the whole house and has to be about the nicest damn landlord in all of Middlesex county. I'm sure if it was up to him we'd lose the lord and replace it with some other word probably of Irish lineage - as he is - that still implies that he's in charge, but comes off a little less insistful.

Liam, you want a beer? I have some extra in the fridge is what my mouth said before I could even think about it and within five minutes I'm sitting in the yard with the man who's mortgage I half pay and I'm pregameing my oak beer with a wheat beer.

In the yard. Feet up. Talking about the garden. The past month of searching for housing to no avail we'll be sticking around. Renovations. Jobs. KFC, but only after the guys who I was having beer 58 (now 59) showed up with boxes of chicken.

Liam scooted out early, but it totally makes sense.

He didn't want to lord over my beer, his yard, or our conversation.

No. 57

2009-07-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

Beer: Old Speckled Hen
Date: July 31st, 2009
Place: The house, Somerville, MA

The sky has just opened up. Not unlike that day it swallowed my best friend.

The first time I went to Lee's, it was Christmastime. We both had managed dates with seniors in high school, while we were only freshman, but freshmen who'd been to our first rock concert the month prior - it was Primus and we were legends and rode to Nashville and knew that all of lives were going to change, the most obvious change was that we now had license to date seniors and talk about all the shows we'd been to (1) and all that we planned on going to soon (2).

We talked for twenty minutes about it and I was still unable to establish where he lived. Somewhere in Indian Trace on a road down the street from someone with a lot of Christmas lights. Finally, Beverly got on the phone and gave me the street address and we were there within the hour.

An hour later, we realized an important life lesson: one cannot go to an R rated movie with seniors when they themselves are fifteen, no matter how uncool it actually is. So while our dates watched Seven Monkeys we watched Grumpier Old Men, which is what I thought we'd become.

We lived together in Mississippi and in Georgia. I was with him at three in the morning when we found out that Princess Diana died. I've personally taken him to the hospital no fewer than 3 times. I've fought with him and gone on roadtrips to Charleston and to Mentone and to San Francisco and Nashville. I got a tattoo with him. I've watched him blow off tests and seen him with a goatee that looked like he should have been in Pantera. I watched him get grounded. I saw him fall in love a number of times and the last time was it, the time, he committed and was going hard out and it was going to be something.

I can't tell all the stories of Lee and how much I loved him and how I miss him or how I weep, openly, when I stop my life for just a minute and remember that I had a friend, who was closer than anyone I've ever been to, who encouraged me and cheered me on and was there and was there and was there until he just wasn't.

He's never met my wife. That's what really breaks my heart.

The fact that the one person who I am closest to in my life will never know the other person who I was closest to.

I was at her house when I got the call.

They were driving home from his bachelor weekend, a weekend I would have been at had I not just started a job a month before, and the sky opened up. It opened up and Lee was asleep in the back seat and he was dreaming of his wedding and then he was gone.

That was four years ago.

And it is pouring here and I am crying and drinking a beer (an Old Speckled Hen, one of Lee's favorite in the last three months we lived together) and remembering and had I not ever known Lee I would not have gotten the call I feared most and Marianna would not have taken me to the airport to bury my best friend and a bit of me, too, and then I wouldn't have been so alone and she would not have been there for me and then it would all be different.

Lee was my best friend.

And he saw to it that when he left, I'd have another one.

No. 55 & 56

2009-07-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 55, De Ranke Noir De Dottignies; No. 56, Victory Prima Pilsner
Date: July 22nd, 2009
Place: The Brick Store, Decatur, GA

There was a time where people didn't use the internet.

It wasn't useful. It was there, sure, but there like benches are there along the side of a freeway. It serves a purpose but that purpose isn't fully realized until there is something else there. An ice cream stand, or another person with which to chat.

No children, we didn't use the internet in the year two thousand for much other than stealing intellectual property, searching for unclothed people, email.

If you wanted something, you had to search it out in other ways. Like message boards. The real kind. The kind with felt and thumbtacks and $7 an hour summer job listings and expired happenings that were only partially attended and those who came gave the event mixed reviews, but reviews that you'd have to seek out elsewhere, like at a party, because there wasn't user generated content or consumer reviews based on a five star system, and you'd have to be at that party, in order to have friends, and even more importantly to show you had friends because in the year two thousand there wasn't a Facebook and nobody knew who you knew or how many you knew and they only knew about you if you were there, in person.

There was a time before online identity.

I found an ad for a bicycle, and I drove to Tony's house to see the bicycle, for there was no viewing it online (there was even a time before digital cameras), and I had to actually listen to him give me directions, for Google Maps didn't exist, and then when I saw it and decided I wanted it and I had to give him money, cash, because PayPal wasn't very useful, and we ended up seeing each other around and we became friends (not virtually, but actually) and I don't know why we've kept in such good touch as we have but I guess because we kept in touch when it wasn't so easy and now we have the internet and ways to connect and I see his status daily when he is sitting in traffic and he sees mine when I'm at Fenway and we can be connected all the time and having a beer after four years of not seeing each other isn't quite so strange, anymore.

I had that bike for a couple of years. Once I was ready to move on, I sold it.

Through a paper flyer.

No. 54

2009-07-23T13:53:00.002-07:00

Beer: Sweetwater 420
Date: July 21st, 2009
Place: La Fonda, West Midtown, Atlanta, GA

Ben is single-handedly responsible for 456 lost man-hours of productivity over the past four years.

You see, Ben is a man of opinions. Opinions like This album is amazing, you’ve got to hear it or I can’t believe that thing happened in that semipopular sporting event or Your choice for President sucked for multiple reasons, among them (reason a, b, c, etc).

And the thing is, Ben is one of those guys whose opinions you want to hear. Mainly because it’s either right (music, articles, Onion videos), neutral (GT football), or wrong (all politics, climate change policy) – and in the instances of me thinking it’s wrong we get a great argument going (one in which he is well informed and I crash-and-burn on despite reading some article that said something about the subject at hand, yet I can’t pull it to my frontal lobe in time [or ever again in most instances]), when I’m neutral I just ignore his emails/IM and when it’s right we get shared pop culture references to sprinkle into conversations that now happen quite infrequently as I don’t use IM at work, which I think is much akin to the colonists not using horses or growing corn or even coming over from England – which is a lie and a violation of their entire connected & alive being.

The shame is that I didn’t spend much time with him in Atlanta until my last six months or so, and Ben's a quiet guy if he doesn’t know you, so for the year we didn’t know each other that much I thought he was probably going to have me offed by some group of Tech assassins, and then I left, and now we see each other once a year or so, and the emails are less frequent as he’s a dad and got a super great house to take care of and all I want to do is argue with him but mainly I just want to hear his opinion and hear what I need to listen to, see what I need to read, and think about what I need to learn.

Hardly another could sport a red beard, wear a seersucker suit and talk about hip-hop with 100% accuracy and 0% irony.

No. 53

2009-07-23T13:53:00.001-07:00

Beer: Sweetwater 420
Date: July 20th, 2009
Place: Fellini's, Atlanta, GA

Both Matt and Andy spent time where I did out in the Sangre de Chritso mountains in Colorado. Matt did the same year as I; Andy, a year before.

Both are UGA fellows. Both now live in Atlanta. Both are avid beer drinkers, college football appreciators, red pant wearers.

Matt and I were counselors one term of camp together. One of our campers said he thought Matt was the same age as his dad are you? to which I couldn't stop laughing, internally, of course, for we were working at a Christian camp and that would have not been nice, to laugh, and I wasn't laughing at the fact that Matt looked as old as this kid's dad, in particular, but in the fact that when I was a kid I thought everyone looked older and I probably had the same threshold for ages that this kid did, and some people really just grow into their look, like Ronald Regan, who looked old until he was, and then looked boyish again.

Matt was my one friend who I knew in Atlanta when I moved there, and we got together frequently for dinners and I think I probably owe him several as he was working and picked up the check more than once.

We don't talk as much as I'd like, and we see each other less frequently than that, but the four years didn't seem that long as we shared a pitcher.

Andy, on the other hand, I talk to all the time. Part of it is the fact that he is my accountant and the other part is that he and I are much alike.

Whereas Matt and I worked together at this camp, Andy was kicked out the year before. Maybe for drinking. Maybe for cussing. Maybe just because he is a thinker and doesn't accept crap and lives the considered Christian life and if there was one guy who won't just sit around and listen to idle theology or hypocrisy or who thinks Jesus is bigger than religion but who also doesn't cram it down anyone's throat, as someone dying of starvation or AIDS (not that Andy comes into contact with those people daily, but you know) doesn't care about Jesus, as much as they care about food or medical attention, and that's what Jesus calls us to anyways, to care for the widow and orphan, the oppressed.

I was told about Andy at camp (You hear about those guys who got kicked out last year?) and met him the next year as he came to Ole Miss to work in campus ministry and he was the voice I needed as a new Christian who was looking to make sense of it all but still had a bad taste from those who I knew where Christian who lived lives that I can't image were too much like Jesus'.

Andy left the ministry-as-a-paycheck and went back into accounting-as-a-paycheck the month after I left Atlanta, and we hadn't spent any time together in four years, either, but since we talk so frequently it didn't seem like it had been long at all, and I was lucky to be able to sleep on his couch in his loft right above a strip club.

No. 52

2009-07-23T13:52:00.002-07:00

Beer: Sweetwater 420
Date: July 19th, 2009
Place: La Fonda, Atlanta, GA

“Micah. I was playing golf with your father-in-law. He was really good.”

I met Greg in New Zealand. He was wearing a red Patagonia R2, and I thought if there was ever a lad I should introduce myself to, it should probably be the one who had on the right gear.

Greg was in college at Denison in Ohio, and was abroad with the Butler program. Myself and two other guys were the pariah: Ole Miss had a direct exchange and we didn’t know anyone except ourselves. Butler, on the other hand, had their x hundred students come down a week early and get to know one another. They were a well-oiled machine - connected, complete with shared experiences before the real experience even began.

I don’t know when or how, in particular, but we became fast friends after that introduction in Maori. It might have been in the pub after class. Or at Wiatiata. It was certainly before the epic 2500km two week drive around the south island that got us taken advantage of (Stewart Island), sick (Hamilton), stranded (someplace), soaked (Franz Josef Glacier).

Greg is one of two peers who I really admire above others.

Fact:

Greg had never sailed before he walked onto a pier in NZ and told the crew he was there to help. He won no fewer than half a dozen elite sailing titles and was asked for by name as The American. After one sure race, a rum runner, Greg celebrated the victory drinking too much rum for the trophy, woke up under an interstate overpass, and still managed to meet me to climb at the gym by 10am.
Greg was a religion major. Out of the blue, he aces the Series 7, becomes a financial expert, and within two years is a vp of a very important someplace that does something very important with someone’s money. I bet you $5 it’s a non-profit. I’d expect nothing less from him.
One morning at 8am I get a call from Greg. He is smitten with a young lady from North Carolina, which drove him to get in his car at 1am with his roommate, Scott and a stranger, Vince (no lie, complete stranger), and drive to her graduation the next morning at Wake Forest. He was looking for someplace to sleep a few hours before he showed up unannounced.

Turns out this young lady is my father-in-law’s best friend’s daughter.

Sometimes, when you've been halfway around the world to realize how big it is, you're also shown how small it is.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Greg and I one day are neighbors in North Carolina. Raising our kids and telling them stories of the days when their dads were young and full of life and taking it by the horns every day and wrestling it to the ground.

No. 51

2009-07-23T13:52:00.001-07:00

Beer: Negra Modelo
Date: July 19th, 2009
Place: Uncle Julio's, Atlanta, GA

I've lived with a lot of people.

In no particular (yet particular) order, there is/was Daniel, Taylor, Lee, Kris, Grace, Brandon, Ben, Danny, Jake, Jared, Whit, Matt, Ryan, Mitchell, Marianna.

But none of them have been so connected as Mitchell.

Observe:

I met Mitchell my sophomore year of college, despite him being a graduate of UGA and living someplace between Atlanta and Wyoming. He, for a brief spell, was seeing one of my bosses at Ole Miss. While that might have only lasted about five or seven minutes, it was four years later that I ran into him while having dinner with a few guys I worked with at Patagonia. He walked in, sat down, let me know that we had met, walked me through the above story, we remet, this time far from him dating my boss, who was married, and had some stick-t0-yer-ribs ribs, and sometime after that we became roommates - he the chillest roommate a guy could ask for, when guy is building miniature models of cities on roommate's table in the kitchen, thereby preventing roommate from eating his egg-in-a-hole, for a school assignment that lasts for 50% of the tenancy of guy and roommate.

For everyone involved, I'm glad he and my boss didn't work out. If they did a) Mitchell and I would not have been roomies b) Mitchell would not be in Atlanta, surprising his girlfriend who became his fiance on Friday night c) lists usually come in at least threes, and I didn't have a good third reason.

Mitchell drove one night from Philadelphia to stay with us. We had a big time.

While I certainly am glad I'm done with roommates, I'm glad that came after I got to live with this guy for nine months.

No. 50

2009-07-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Beer: Miller High Life
Date: July 19th, 2009
Place: The Whitt's, Athens, AL

I could have gone all philosophical with this one but I didn't want to think about my halfway beer.

I just wanted to have one with Daniel and it be like old times which is was since it was 3am, we were looking for anything we could to eat, sitting on the floor in his kitchen just talking a bunch of nonsense about a bunch of nonsense and remembering ten years ago when we'd just moved away for the first time.

I've got almost fifty more to go.

No. 49

2009-07-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

Beer: Uncertain. Keg beer of some sort.
Date: July 18th, 2009
Place: Laucourt, East Limestone, AL

I reckon I got out at the right time.

I was class president for three years of high school. The last year, I flipped the script, went for student body president and won it by what I'd like to think what was a landslide but was probably an apathetic let's give it to him, he's prolly gonna win anyways.

You see, all I had to do as student body president was negotiate for us to get an exclusive contract from Coke vs. Pepsi, letting Coke win, and then I got to get a LED billboard that we could broadcast messages on alongside the highway: the temperature is so and so many degrees, dance on Friday, buckle up, woot, honk if you're happy, school's out for summer, who reads these things?, a cynic knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing, etc. etc. etc.

Nobody cared about that. Nobody remembers I was anything and nobody can judge my work. Because I was an eighteen year old who still couldn't buy cigarettes.

But if I were class president, well then, I'd have responsibilty come calling every ten years from now until eternity. And the judgement would be there every step of the way. Not that I was judging. I was quite thankful that I didn't have to do a thing save give someone twenty dollars.

However, if someone were to be judging, here are the facts:

Our reunion was in an Old Church of Christ fellowship hall, five miles from our town, in the county, someplace none of us had ever been, with drop ceilings, a too-loud DJ, a road name that took me a few minutes to place where it was, cheap beer, little wine, little to no ambience - what ambience was there was marked by the Ten Commandments on the wall and a baptism pool behind the too-loud DJ, which was over just as soon as the beer ran out, as ten years later there is still a good bit of anxiety, bitterness, jealousy, accents, judgement and a not good amount of alcohol.

The judgement (not judgement) will undoubtibly flare up again in 2019.

No. 46 & 47 & 48

2009-07-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 46 & 47, Heineken, No. 48, Miller High Life
Date: July 18th, 2009
Place: Cale and Casey's, Athens, AL

It's always strange to come home and to see that beer is sold.

The law changed while I was at college.

Limestone county was dry and had been for thousands of years, or maybe just since Prohibition, which was no doubt the brainchild of some knitting circle of Southern Baptist ladies (no offense to Southern Baptists, plenty of offense to knitting club founding members), and from growing up I remember when mom would make a beer run she would have to drive 8 miles to the next county over and bring back her brew.

Not that I was really concerned with it. I didn't drink until I'd gone away to college - which doesn't make me a saint but just makes me three years less a delinquent.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to grow up in a place where there are bars, and people stay out past 9pm, and if your parents are missing well, maybe go check the pub.

I don't know if it would have changed much of anything, really. I think I'd still be trying to both run from and embrace my birthplace and having the option of mulling it over a pint matters to me now, wouldn't have then. And would have gotten Johnny Barowner in the slammer.

I was having it on the porch of Cale and Casey's townhouse. One of exactly sixteen such towhnhouses in Athens. In Athens, you are either wealthy enough to afford a house or poor enough to live in an apartment and the middle ground is composed of those being foreclosed upon (mom's house ten years ago) and those owning townhouses (all sixteen couples).

Daniel and Jennifer were there. Daniel is my best friend. He was my best man. If not for Daniel, I think I would not ever had seen a CD player, would never have been to Nashville, would never have moved away. I'm inspired by him and he's the only person that I don't think has just thrown in the towel who lives in Athens. He and Jennifer had done their three year stint in NYC and had a kid and needed something, somewhere, that could afford them a quality upbringing for Stella.

Matt and Ashley were too, and are in the transition of moving from Memphis to Atlanta. Matt is the only guy who I know who never studied, but did well enough of the time to impress the teachers and pass the tests - never in the middle of the class, never quite at the top. He's got his MBA and Law degree and I think is driven appear successful as much as I am. He puts on airs at times, but that swagger has served him well. I wasn't very close to him as we were in school, but as the years have moved on in age and we've gained weight and lost weight (and by weight I could also mean: hair, mortgages, friends) I begun to really appreciate who he is and the wife he chose for himself.

Cole. We were fast friends and were inseparable in middle school. We dressed alike, both tried to rebel by wearing shirts of rock bands (Green Day, Pearl Jam), dated girls who were best friends so we could always be together. I always loved going to his house and his house had Tommy Hilfiger accessories and bowls of potpourri and was three stories and was equally a place we praised and cursed, we got in trouble (pot, beer), we grew. Then one day we just stopped. I don't really know why or how. Someplace around 9th grade the whole deal changed. At this point we see each other once a year or once every eighteen months. I still feel like he's a stranger - albeit one who looks familiar, but whom I can't place in the present. I miss him often.

There was a smattering of others around; Cale and his girlfriend, Britt and his wife, Casey asleep getting ready for a 6am clock in at the factory (bank).

Admittedly I'm totally critical of those who stay here or who move back because I simply have no idea of what family ties are, can't imagine never leaving, don't want to raise a family here. What success I've had in life I don't I attribute to Athens except in a very perverse way: by growing in me such a strong desire to leave that I've made what I have of myself.

But each time, as I dissolve into the cotton fields and we all accept our roles and the same inside jokes from fifteen years ago play out in real time and in the past I think that I can't escape this, this that I am, and for two or three days I accept that.

No. 45

2009-07-14T05:50:00.000-07:00

Beer: Berkshires Brewing Company Hefeweizen
Date: July 11th, 2009
Place: Mohawk Trail State Park, Charlemont, MA

Some things you can’t plan for.

You can’t plan for the rain if the weatherman told you not to worry about it and then you find yourself in a deluge with no rain gear AT ALL in jeans barely having had the time to put the rain fly on the tent and laughing to yourself as you are standing under an umbrella trying in vain to keep the campfire going under an umbrella thinking of the time you were a guide in college and you totally would have been prepared but for this trip you just brought suede shoes. And jeans. And beer.

You make the most of your situation. You take one of the tents that collapsed because the heavens opened and poured out the goods, and you toss it over the popped gate of a 97 Ford Explorer. You crack open a cold one that you happened to get in town before the dry wasn’t. You notice the overtones of bananas. The undertones of beer.

You talk with friends who are about to leave town.

Friends of a friend who you sent a Facebook message to, not expecting much, meeting them one morning for a brunch. One of those weird “We’re meeting a friend of a friend and the most we can talk about is that friend who you all realize that you didn’t know for too long” brunches. Where you try to not let the silence sit along too long, or it gets stale, and the brunch is over and you don’t argue over the check –split it right down the middle, thanks – and you leave and you decide whether you liked those people and if you’d ever hang out again.

You do. And you find yourself seeing them at church, and you go skiing with them, and you invite them over for pizza or Christmas, and before long two years have passed and they’ve got their masters from MIT and they’re moving on and you are happy for them and a little sad for yourself, that your friends are moving, but you are thankful for the times that you spent together and you are suddenly glad that you have been forced to sit in twenty eight square feet that smells like campfire, rain, banana beer.

And you wait for a break in the storm. Planning your dash to the tents.

No. 44

2009-07-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Beer: 21st Amendment IPA
Date: July 10th, 2009
Place: Bukowski's, Somerville, MA

After a June in which we received more rain than clouds, more clouds than sun, more sun than nothing.

A June in which I understood that seasonal depression was a thing (or at least could be a thing, a very real kind of thing) - when summer lasts at best three full months and one had just slipped away, grey, under the watch of a calendar that might as well have been eleven months (which would have thrown off the Aztecs) a somber mood overtakes the Commonwealth and the businesses are less than busy and the first snowfall is getting closer by the day.

After that - Friday was sunny. Friday was warm. Friday was summer.

I was able to share it with a few guys who’d just moved in from New York City and my wife. Who were all equally as willing to shed the grey for July.

No. 43

2009-07-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

Beer: Geary's London Porter
Date: July 4th, 2009
Place: The backyard, Somerville, MA

I was embracing the thought of my country and living in the land of the free and thinking about how we, WE, are the ones who built this country (I really mean them, THEM, those Massachusettians, those Puritans, those ruffians), and it was sunny for the first time in a month.

Coincidentally, it was also the first beer I've had in over three weeks. Which might lead one to believe that I'm only in the business of consuming beers when the weather is favorable. Correction, fine sir. If that were the case, with our bitterly cold winter and plentiful rained late spring, then I'd have only had about five or so beers.

I wanted to stick it to the Brits and the rain by sitting in the yard and drinking a London porter from an American brewer - it was like an American revolution, 233 years after the fact, three miles from the heart of the discontent.

No. 42

2009-06-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

Beer: Spaten Maibock
Date: June 11th, 2009
Place: Jacob Wirth's, Boston, MA

The journeys of life all begin with a nudge.

Maybe a small step (as most say), but as a wagering man I’d say most begin with a little shove, a poke in the side, an all out abandonment of reason and a jump for your life.

Then, clinging on to the side of the opposing cliff, before pulling yourself up and realizing that you are in a new place and all you can do is walk forward, into the unknown, without the benefit of a bridge or a vine to go back, to retreat to that place you knew so well, you just have to man up and go for it.

Such is, I think, the case with Families-In-Law. Those people who at one point were just window dressing in the merchandised window of your love, who have become, for better or worse, sickness or health, a whole ‘nother family. A walking, talking, breathing group of others who you now will see at least once a year from now ‘til eternity forever and ever amen; a nuclear group who will collide with your nuclear group and fission and fusion have made you all one. One, big, one. The synapses fuse more as you holiday together, have babies whom they will coo, ask for confidence as you make big decisions – buying a house, trading a field – as you disagree, as you decide to go here for this event or not for that one, as they have expectations and you rise to some and fail some, as they want you to have a better life than they did (parents) or a worse life than they do (siblings), as you deal with cancers and sitcoms and life.

And while my journey didn’t just begin – although, more recently than most - it was nice to stop in at a pub, have a pint with the Father-in-Law and Brother-in-Law and the Step-Mother-In-Law and let the fission and fusion of yeast and hops and spring water supply the soundtrack to our families’ new life.

No. 41

2009-06-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

Beer: Negra Modelo
Date: June 8th, 2009
Place: Toth Brand Imaging, Cambridge, MA

It's been ages since I've been at work at a quarter of ten.

Four years ago, I was at work until that late or later five times a week, cranking out work and trying to make a name of myself and make my bosses look good and listening to pirated tracks and playing Foosball and drinking many beers and working out zero percent and expensing meals on the agency and trying to woo a young lady who at this point is all wooed out and sleeps in my bed every night.

Score one for the junior art director.

Mainly underpaid and mostly overworked, I liked being there in the midst of a lot of others who were trying to prove something and who were expensing meals too, which at that point was probably about 10% of our salaries, and forming the backbone of something that we believed in. Sadly enough, too, I saw a number of marriages fail because of too many hours on the clock and too few where it ultimately mattered.

Now I come in, mostly undistracted thanks to no instant chat, and work for the full nine hours I'm here. Having a beer at the office is the last thing I want to do. Especially one of one hundred.

The work life balance of 1 in 41 struck me as about right and the cerveza hit the spot and the lights were turned off and I was in my own world doing my own thing - sipping on a beer, the first solo beer I've had all year - was just what I needed on Monday night.

And sleep was what I needed on Tuesday morning.

Negra from Trimming Society on Vimeo.

No. 40

2009-05-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

Beer: Warsteiner
Date: May 30th, 2009
Place: Old Magouns Saloon, Somerville, MA

I went to Matt's to go get a pint, but the number I was on meant that I couldn't have a beer unless I found a very specific one.

I needed a forty.

It was that or it was some Jack on the rocks.

And while I thought finding 40 oz. of beer in one bar, in one container might be one hell of an adventure, it turned out to be easier than I thought.

a) Put Matt in charge.
b) Walk down the street into the pub, tell the man you need a 40 or you are headed elsewhere.
c) Watch a 40 oz. glass come out of nowhere.
d) Drink beer from boot.

No. 39

2009-05-31T13:56:00.000-07:00

Beer: Whale's Tale Pale Ale
Date: May 28th, 2009
Place: The house, Somerville, MA

Leave it to us to throw a barbecue with friends on the one day where it gets colder than it should rightfully be in the summer, the day where 50% chance of rain is realized, the one day out of a year that we could finally get with Andi and Tony. The day right before they took off for Spain.

We'd put it off long enough weather be damned and thought that if we didn't just finally get together then it would never happen. Like volunteering or going to prison: until you finally just do it, it seems so hard to accomplish – the second you do, you get it.

The one thing that we thought would be great, at the time, when we forgot that we didn't live on the beach or in an arid or even seasonally warm place was to have a barbecue. What the weather didn't scare out of me the responsibility did.

Cooking is one thing I've never felt really accomplished in nor even really adequate. It's a skill that I think in my head belongs to those kids who have dads who teach them what to and how long to and why to grill certain things and not others and if those kids have dads who are not there or into museums or whatever else then they never learn. As of press time no one has ever died from eating my grilled bits and I reckon while I might not be a great cook I'm sure not a killer, and I don't plan on starting that up now.

So I sipped my beer talking with Tony by the grill as the chicken sausage sang, the coals died, and the party moved inside to panfry the death-factor out of the links.

No. 38

2009-05-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

Beer: Miller High Life
Date: May 24th, 2009
Place: The Moffit's, West Hartford, CT

The fact that I was in the wealthiest state in the union, thereby being one of the wealthiest places in the entire world - and by the default the wealthiest place in the history of mankind - and I was drinking a a Miller High Life in a 46oz. plastic cup made my Memorial Day Sunday the most ironic in recent memory.

Our retreat from the liberal right coast wherein we reside took us to John and Stephanie's house in Connecticut. They are with child and due in a matter of weeks. If there is anything that I know about babies is that they put mommy and daddy out of the social sphere for a minute or two. I decided to seize the moment and head down west, after about .008% convincing for my wife. She wanted to get out into the open road as well.

I met John at the Patagonia store in Atlanta. We worked together. John was one of the people who showed me that a college degree didn't matter and if you were smart and well read and nice and with it you could hang in any crowd any time. After meeting John, I was kind of bummed that I'd spent so many years in college. This guy is going to go places. I don't know where. But somewhere.

John reminded me that I went to his apartment one night and watched a very sad and very disturbing movie. I had. Because we somehow ended up being neighbors in Atlanta for a few months, and I'd walked over and seen Charlize Theron acting sad and disturbing and I also think I watched Vertical Limit there, too, at some point.

Well, John did go places. For one, he went to Connecticut. To the wealthiest state in the union, to stock up on cheap beer, keep true to his roots, and get his something important degree at UConn where he sits in a lab and grows bacteria and sees what they do when introduced to other bacteria and write papers and get really well known in certain circles and become a dad.

We were both excited that he was going to be on the blog and we were going to share a beer in what we hope would become a much more frequent occurrence.

No. 37

2009-05-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

Beer: Hop Rod Rye Ale
Date: May 23rd, 2009
Place: The Other Side, Boston, MA

Good stories interest me. Good ideas excite me. And since there was a great idea and a good story, I was ready for a beer. The story? Seven ballparks in seven days, all via Amtrak.

The boys from Seven Inning Stretch were in town, on another journey of trains, dogs, beers, baseball, tours, beers, double beds, beers, beers. I was glad to host them and glad that one of them was among my former roommates.

If I had an extra minute to think about it, I'd count and then tell you for sure that I've had 22 roommates over the years. A Brit, A Korean, a guy who ran the Boston Marathon twice, a man afraid of stickers, some lady from Malaysia, a UGA grad. But since I'm not counting, I'm going to say 21. One of those was Jonas. And even though we just lived together for about nine months, we were in two different houses and had far fewer beers than I thought we would.

See, I'm fraid Jonas and I became roommates right as Jonas was trying to figure out what was next in life. Those critical junctures are ones full of uncertainty and I don't blame the man for having fewer than a dozen beers on the porch with me at our second house after we struggled though the hottest summer on record (Google it) in a gorgeous house that had a serious air conditioned problem only eclipsed by a landlady problem. I can't tell you how miserable that house was, amidst a history professor's books - a man from Duke who was on sabbatical for a few years who left this books in the house - bookcase after bookcase filled with fire and ideas and the combustion was resulting in heat heat heat.

Enough about that.

The fellas came to town and we had a beer - they had a lot more than a, but I a single, and arguably the finest beer to date, a "high performance, turbo charged, alcohol burnin' monster ale with dual overhead hop injection that revs out the hop-o-meter at over 90 IBUs" - after the Freedom Trail and before we watched the Sox lose in a last ditch ninth inning rally.

Other Side from Trimming Society on Vimeo.

No. 36

2009-05-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

Beer: Gritty's Pub Ale
Date: May 14th, 2009
Place: Freeport, ME

I was going to write a book. That was my plan, at least. Or, if not a book, a blog. It seems it’s a lot easier to write a blog. Then you can pay someone to print it and bind it. Which becomes a book.

The book was going to be about my brother and I. About how we became best friends.

We weren’t close growing up. He moved back and forth from my mom and dad’s house, and I stayed put. He moved away and made new friends and learned about new bands and moved back in and had a shirt with a Philly Blunt logo and it and I was sure that meant he was currently doing drugs and the bands he listened to made me think the same. I remember sneaking his Weezer tape into my player and I loved it. He had a trunk with all his stuff. It moved West 20 miles then back. I don’t know how many times it happened. It seemed like a lot. When he moved out the first time, I guess that’s when I decided we weren’t friends any more.

I can’t remember a lot about growing up with Breshen. I remember blind rage at times. I remember fighting, him getting hit with a board in the head and how I would have taken a bullet for him, walking to the store to get Fireballs, hot summers and him leaving.

He went to sea at seventeen. I went to college the year later. We saw each other every few years. He got married. I skipped his wedding because I was in New Zealand. I got married and he skipped my wedding because he was in Iraq. He became a Chief and I became a designer.

I found out he was moving to Maine for a year and I was going to document it. My book was going to be about us. I was going to write about getting to know him more and learn about what he thought of our childhood and how was it on his side, in Huntsville and in the Navy, how was being a husband? A soldier?, what do you like in particular, damn I’d realize there’s so much I don’t know about him, come to think of it, there’s so much I don’t know about me, who are our ancestors? What boat did whomever come over on? I know part of us if Indian, but what about the rest? I live on a genetic island, I don’t know my brothers, I don’t know my family, I have run and I have made something of myself and I haven’t shared that with any of them.

Instead, over the past year, we’ve had a weekend, a lunch, a dinner, and a beer.

Trying to cram twelve years worth of life into twelve ounces of beer is far too much. So we didn’t - just sipped our brew, hugged, drove off.

No. 35

2009-05-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

Beer: Tsingtao
Date: May 13th, 2009
Place: Kowloon, Saugus, MA

Marianna drove us.

We had dinner off Route 1 - the New England equivalent to Route 66 – at a Polynesian/Cantonese/Water Chestnut Asian lovechild that could have been a teepee if we were in New Mexico. Route 1 is famously bad and I’d only recently driven on it up to Maine, passing a 70ft cactus, putt-putt, a pirate ship, another Asian fortress masquerading as a restaurant, a Subway who’d saved the 50s roadside diner sign and put in their logo. I’m sure there was a castle at some point. What there was not; tact, restraint, median crossing.

Marianna drove because we just got a car. An automatic. And since she was driving, we went to find a place with a parking lot, a giant wood tiki statue, flaming entrees.

And now a tribute to the cars I’ve owned, in reverse chronology – and by default by price highest to lowest.

2003 Mazda Protégé

Procured on Monday with 26,000 miles.

2000 VW Golf

Purchased once I got my first real job. Which means I couldn’t afford it. Tis truly amazing how I managed a car payment while earning the same salary as a short order cook.

1994 Geo Tracker

Invincible. Never had to make one repair to it, except for replacing something on the wheels. Which was probably messed up the Thanksgiving that I got it stuck mudding before the Ole Miss / MSU game. It had no carpet, giant wheels, zero safety features, the radio was stolen in Atlanta (but it was broken and that dude got 0.16 for it at the pawn shop), I think it ran solely on the fusion of air and Teal and rattling seats.

1969 VW Type II

A bus. I bought it and didn’t know how to drive a stick so Daniel manned it back from Macon, Georgia as I kept asking how she drove. Correct answer: like a bus. Smelled heavily of gas fames except when overpowered by joints being smoked in it at the house. I enjoyed humoring the stoners. Was in mint condition until it broke and no one in North Mississippi could fix it and just the same because I didn’t have the money to fix it and I slept it in for a while and smelled like petrol. I sold it in its broken state to a man who drove up from Dallas and loaded it onto his trailer and drove off.

Epilogue: Seven hours later I get a call that the man’s truck broke down as he was towing the bus. He attempted to drive the broken bus to get help, and the engine seized up or caught fire or fell out and he was planning on suing. I never heard anything else from him.

1984 Toyota Camry

This is the car I had in high school. It had close to half a million miles on it (or maybe slightly over a million). I was hit in it while in high school by a man who had no insurance so I went to the junkyard (tetanus!) and walked around until I found a car that looked like mine and bought a door that didn’t match but it was on the passenger side so I never really saw it.

1982 Honda Accord

Crap car. Bought for $600. Loved for the 3 weeks it ran. Doors weighed 700 lbs each. Solid Detroit muscle.

No better place to savor a bad beer while thinking of bad cars and praying the VW I just sold ninety minutes before didn't explode into flames.

No. 34

2009-05-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Beer: Stone IPA
Date: May 4th, 2009
Place: Common Ground, Allston, MA

I had a beer the other night with Isaiah out by his apartment in Allston. He'd asked me to go have a beer after Lent, because he gave up beer and meat and I'm sure had a miserable month and a half except maybe he thought more about the suffering of Christ so I bet the month and a half was long but quite introspective. We went to Common Ground which has a) amazing selections of beer on tap b) trivia, apparently, on Monday nights c) huge televisions.

I bought Isaiah’s beer. He’d just been laid off. His company, a big one that you can find in most of the cities in the United States, is cutting x% of stores because we are up the creek and our paddle was actually tossed overboard in the early 00s and we’ve all started to realize that so few of us make goods but rather are in services and oops.

Isaiah didn’t ask me to cover his beer. I did it because it falls into my guilt tax. I pretend that it makes up for having a job. How uncomfortable are we all nowadays? Those who are without a job who say they are free to do whatever they want and now is the time to fly and those of us with jobs saying we are thankful to have them and us all having guilt/anxiety tinged conversations while we try to see what the score is in the Capitals hockey game Hockey? as if we care but the thing that brings us relief is normalcy and triteness and dealing with the small things because the big things are scary.

Those big things don’t faze Isaiah. He moved from Chicago to plant a church in Boston. He didn’t have a job. Didn’t have any prospects. Just a tank of gas and the courage to drive East until he hit the ocean. He isn’t worried about a job now either. Just figures something will come along. Which it will.

It always does to those who don’t ask for anything.

No. 33

2009-05-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

Beer: Pabst Blue Ribbon
Date: May 3rd, 2009
Place: Bukowski's Tavern, Cambridge, MA

I should have seen it coming from a mile away.

A fantastic beer bar lives just around the corner from us. It is called Bukowski's - named after the author and not a simple misspelling of the '98 cult bowling film.

It's a 21+ place that makes you feel like a total badass when you walk in to get a burger, and to get that burger you have to prove you've lived through a minute or two of Regan, twelve years of Bushes, a Clinton scandal and one hundred days of Obama. Even to think of the fries you must have some street cred.

They had a drinking club - the Dead Author's Club - where if you drank all hundred plus beers in a year then you'd get a mug and they'd engrave your favorite author on it and since we're in the cradle of education there are plenty of people who'd drink all those beers not because they like beers but because they'd like to prove they love books. Turns out, so many people did the deal and got the mugs and then got jobs or just ran out of money, being literature students and whatnot, and moved out of town that Bukowski's reportedly has a warehouse full of those mugs that are engraved with Tolstoy, Joyce, Dickens that they can't get rid of because they made a promise that if you drank the beers and got a mug you could come in and get a beer in your mug and if they threw out their mug then they'd be breaking a promise so they just stopped the club are are trying to figure out what to do with it.

In the meantime, there is a wheel you can spin, and then you are required to drink and buy whatever beer the wheel lands on. No complaining allowed. Which is mostly all I've done when I've spun the wheel. I've traded a cider and then complained about a Coors. But there's just something about leaving beer choice to fate.

The scary part is that there are a few $15 beers on the wheel. Which are fun to drink, but less fun to pay for. I convinced our waiter to give me a pass if I landed on a fifteen dollar beer. He didn't look happy about it, but he knew that I've lived through Regan, twelve years of Bushes, a Clinton scandal and one hundred days of Obama so he let me have an out.

What he said: If you land on a fifteen dollar beer, you can spin again.

What he thought: Punk.

Fate and logic and universal irony and a bit of an unfortunate spin left me savoring my second Pabst Blue Ribbon of the year.

No. 32

2009-05-04T05:30:00.000-07:00

Beer: LongTrail Ale
Date: April 30th, 2009
Place: Coogan's, Financial District, Boston, MA

Neptune and Uranus. What are the two ice giants?

Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut. Name three of the four states that allow same sex marriages.

Cirque du Soleil. This organization, founded by 20 street performers in Montreal, has been seen by over 10 million people worldwide.

Bangkok Dangerous. Something about Nicholas Cage and a movie being panned.

Book club. Why would a man sit in a bar playing trivia, apart from his wife, on a Thursday night?

Cider. Name the taste your beer gives on the back end, which would make you question whether you were poured the correct one or not.

Loud. One adjective to describe the speakers which are right in your ears, that would prohibit you from having any extracurricular conversation.

Cheap. The 1.99 PBR on draft.

Lost. How Micah feels in the Financial District.

Hungry. This would be the way one might feel if they were at the end of the month, and had spent all their allowance, yet really wanted a burger.

No. 31

2009-04-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Beer: Heineken
Date: April 26th, 2009
Place: Yankees v. Red Sox, Fenway Park, Boston, MA

Scene begins in Fenway Park. A coolish 62. Twilight. Faint smell of hickory smoke looms in the air.

Bleachers: filled with extras. All who responded positively to at least one of the following criteria:
1)
Must have two beers. One in each hand. Due to the lack of cupholders, extra must hold the beers at all times. If ever out, extra must procure two more.
2)
Inability to find seats. Extras must always be in the wrong seat. When confronted, extra must pull out ticket, realize that they are in the row directly behind the row they should be in. They must then confront people in front of them. Row one will be empty until the 6th inning, thereby allowing this subplot to play out roughly forty times.
3)
Boston accent. Must be willing to use it when referring to the Yankees as Retahds.
4)
Loud friend. If anyone gets angry at friend, extra can just say she’s had too much to drink. Although, no one is allowed to get angry at friend. Because she keeps berating Jeter, Teixeira and the entire Yankees franchise/fanbase.
5)
Smattering of Yankees. Must have diamond stud earrings (m) or silver loops (w), unnaturally colored hair (black, w: blond, m), jean skirts. Prefer wine coolers to beer. Pool halls to pubs.

Enter hero. Holding two beers. Could be mistaken for an extra - don’t write him off just yet.

Enter Yankee’s fan. She is carrying a bag with a NY insignia on it. Black hair. Heavy mascara.

Whitsons, stage left. In observance.

Hero, looking at bag: Good. You brought your trash bag.
Yankee’s Fan: It’s heavy. Filled with all our championship rings.
Hero: So you collect antiques?

Hilarity ensues.

End scene.

No. 30

2009-04-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Beer: Harpoon Brown
Date: April 24th, 2009
Place: Somerville Theater, Somerville, MA

I can't figure out why more theaters don't sell beer.

Potential gripes from the management:
1) It will get spilled.
False. No one wastes beer. Not like soda.
2) It will encourage roudy behavior.
True. Probably something like laughing at a funny part. Or crying during a sad part. Or falling asleep during a boring indie film. So... false.
3) People will smell like alcohol.
Push. However, I do smell plenty of liquored up folks coming into theaters, already, because they can't buy booze there.

At least one place has their head on the shoulders which allows me to keep mine on, er, mine - so I spent Friday night with Zack at the Somerville theater watching a movie on Johnny Cash. Cash is one of those people (like Pachino) or bands (Led Zeppelin, The Who) or movies (Fellini, The GodFather) or ideas (Libertarian) or cities (Chicago, Los Angeles) or sports (hocky) or colors (purple) or companies (Bank of America) that heaps of people like but I can't just get behind it. And each time it is the same response I can't believe you don't like ... and I'm all Sorry, I don't and then they try and tell me how awesome it is or was or continues to be and I keep nodding my head and thinking about how it doesn't matter and they are going to try and talk me into it, still, still, even though I'm not going to go and give that person/band/movie/idea/city/sport/color/company another look/listen/watch/thought/move/play/shirt/business.

For the record, Cash is so much more badass than Bank of America. I had my thirtieth beer to show that I truly belive that.

No. 29

2009-04-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

Beer: Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Date: April 17th, 2009
Place: The Barking Crab, Boston, MA

Three drinks later, we were having dinner by the channel, looking at the city lights - which we rarely do - laughing and eating lobster and drinking beers and thinking that this is going to be an amazing summer. At least, that's what I was thinking. I don't know what the others were.

We'd gone for a drink with Pete and Charlotte after work.

I'd met Charlotte in line one late night a couple of summers ago. The line was one of three lines that I've ever waited in in my life for anything that doesn't end in -coaster, -wheel, -a-rama. I imagine if the guy I was with hadn't hit on a few ladies in front of us and they were at least accommodating and in the same boat and trying to also kill an hour then two years later I wouldn't be having a Goldrush while my wife had a Gimlet and Pete dealt with a strong Tennessee and Charlotte had a Mint Julep in a real Julep cup that was exploding with mint and making this whole night just feel right. That night I'd exchanged emails with Charlotte and her friend who'd shown up later had promoted The Station Myth - Daniel's band - so I was feeling rather connected to my new town and turned in Charlotte's resume at work and she got a job there the next year. And has held on despite all these recessionary waves.

It's funny to think of what twists and turns life holds. How someone can be a stranger, even if you've know of them for years and they you, if you've never been introduced and shaken hands. Or how someone can become a friend just because you shared breakfast once. I think of all the people who I've just happened to know by chance. How if not for this thing or that thing we'd not know each other and they'd be just a face in a crowd but how amazing is it when you see a face in that crowd that you recognize and it's color in the sea of black and white just because you are aware of each other and that's someone who is around to deal with this life and battle through the battles and whatever else.

It's so infrequent that we just go out on a Friday night and let the night take us where it may.

And they are so special when they start with let's go get a drink and then you end up, two drinks later, getting dinner, having a beer, then why let a good thing go to waste, hop in a cab and pay a super inflated rate, then pay a cover at a dance hall and having a couple'a more drinks and a dance or two and then we really have to get home.

On Saturday morning I was feeling about 78%. And I was glad I'd left that other twenty two with Charlotte and Pete and Marianna and a pint of Rogue.

No. 28

2009-04-16T15:28:00.001-07:00

Beer: Sol
Date: April 14th, 2009
Place: La Verdad, Fenway, Boston, MA

Without looking back at the calendar, I’m going to say this is the first Tuesday beer of the year.

Tuesdays don’t really have a good beer reason built in – sports, must see tv, sports, the weekend, going out for the weekend, lest we not forget sports – but they have certainly become my least likely night to have a beer because that is the night we go to our community group which the neu church now calls a Bible study.

Clearly (or clearly you’ll see in a minute) I don’t have a problem mixing church and beer. Jesus was one to make water into wine, lepers stop falling apart and sinners into salvation. And as I follow Jesus and his teaching and find there is a lot of baggage in the word Christian but I will still sport the title if bestowed on me and if I’m just talking myself I’m a follower of Christ I realize that going to heaven is so much simpler than whether I choose to have a drink or not. It really is. It’s about faith and faith is easy. You just choose to believe. You set aside what you think you think and decide to think something else. But then it quickly becomes way complex with actions and decisions and bringing heaven to earth. This is not the blog about that.

At any rate, we’ve been blessed to have found an amazing community of Believers of the Way in our church, Reunion, and in our Tuesday night community group. I really couldn’t ask for more in our church other than to have a few more blue haired ladies in the crowd but good luck finding any of those in Boston. Everyone here is a beautiful and young and single and post church.

As we’ve grown to know these sometime six and sometimes twelve and usually split down the middle people, we’ve gotten to know more about our community. Our church. Gotten to see people come together in marriage. And fall apart in despair. And search for hope and meaning and a way to figure out what this life is all about.

And I’ve found that there are a lot of reasons to drink beer on Tuesday nights. Which all pop up when you have a Tuesday commitment. Like the limited edition cask the brewery near my work releases every Tuesday night. Or the Heels games that all came on during the early spring. Or dollar taco nights at La Verdad.

We’d gone to our group on Friday night for Good Friday and then Tuesday seemed so close and that we needed a break. So our community group went to eat those dollar tacos, those forbidden for the past year by nature of their chosen night tacos, those taste better with a beer tacos, those too sweet to eat just three or four tacos.

Forty eight tacos and several beer and mixed drinks later, our community disbanded and walked into night. To reunite a week later. Or if something unthinkable were to happen, to reunite in heaven.

No. 27

2009-04-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Beer: Arrogant Bastard Ale
Date: April 13th, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

It had just been in the fridge, staring at me for three weeks.

I'd bought the Arrogant in Freeport, ME as I was waiting for a meeting at L.L. Bean and I was down the street and had a few minutes to kill and I successfully killed it by buying beer at a wine store. I browsed around and pretended that I was looking at wine labels and where they came from and chatted up a vendor a second before I b-lined to the beer section and grabbed a bottle and then, as a penance, ended up talking with the propreitor for at least nine minutes as he kept my beer from me and talked about the difference of distribution of wines WINES! in New England in general and in Maine vs. the Commonwealth, in particular.

I'd just come back from a full day of meetings again -weeks later - at Bean and it was just the right time to crack open a beer and sit in front of the telly and hang out with my wife and play a game of Rummikub. Or play two games. Both of which I lost. My wife is better than me in a lot of ways one of which is staying focused and beating the snot out of me as I try to form sets of three or fours or runs as I'm drinking a strong ale. Other ways in which she is better than me: self control, naps, eating french toast.

It's been a struggle over the last few months trying to determine when is it the right time to have a beer, are the times I don't have one any less special, the times I do any more special, the thought that I put into it making me any more considerate, can a Monday night just like any other Monday like any other day be a beer day?

The only answer I know for sure is yes. It was a beer day.

The irony was not lost as I sipped my Arrogant Bastard whilst an interview of George W. came on in the background.

No. 26

2009-04-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

Beer: Anchor Steam
Date: April 4th, 2009
Place: The Goode's House, The Mission, San Francisco, CA

It started with an air mattress.

Well, I guess the follow up was an air mattress. It really started with porch painting.

The ad agency I'd started at had taken on a Habitat House as a project and I'd signed up to paint with an art buyer and a retoucher and an interactive producer or admin or whatever any of those account side jobs are.

We showed up early on a Saturday morning and made the best of it. I think whenever you are doing something for someone else the best of it is made because your heart knows that it is best even if your eyes are closing and telling you to sleep it off. Seems like those opportunities to help someone out are earlier than later. Character building, it's called.

That had broken the ice and a few weeks later we decide we're all pals now, let's go to the beach which also started early and built character or at least two marriages we'd come to find out.

We are at this friend of a friend's house and he has a guest bed and an air mattress and we have to draw straws to figure out what will happen and I reckon, in hindsight, that's what made Ian and Lori our choicest couple to play games with.

I guess we all won, because Marianna and I got the real bed and Ian and Lori ended up as a burrito in the air mattress because those things lose air overnight and you sink the the middle by then and I wasn't sure about being in a bed with Marianna but by now I've dealt with my demons about that decision.

Within a year Ian and Lori were married.

We'd play dominoes with them. We'd play board games, card games. I don't think we ever played card games. As we've grown closer over the years we've elevated our gaming and it's gotten tougher to see them and spend time and play games but they are our sister couple and I figure no distance is great enough to keep us all apart for very long.

Much like sleeping on an air mattress.

No. 25

2009-04-09T05:07:00.000-07:00

Beer: La Cerveza del Pacifico
Date: April 3rd, 2009
Place: El Matate, The Mission, San Francisco, CA

I wasn't really sure about Ian.

It was my first day of my first job in a town that I'd been in for 35 hours after I'd driven late through the night from Atlanta after a last minute red eye from Seattle. I'd closed up all my relations and jobs and apartments in Georgia and driven up and taken a job and was sleepy, scared, excited.

Ian took me to the photo studio to take my picture. That's what they do the first day of a new job in which you are underpaid (unknown at the time) and soon to be overworked (also unbeknownst). He was chattty. Threw out a number of pop culture references. I laughed. I wasn't sure about this guy.

My photoshoot was crap. But that's how all my photoshoots are. If you are an extrovert like I was when I was 25, you try to capture all you intelligence and wit in one picture. And then you just get a bad picture.

That following weekend, there was a theme party at an art director's house. I only knew my roommate, who'd started the same day as I had, and the guy who'd taken my picture a few days before. I talked with the chatty guy and threw out a number of pop culture references and laughed and thought what a lot of shallow, self preservationist types think Is this Ian guy cool? Or is he just being nice because he needs friends? Will I be the laughing stock of this party if I only talk to him? Where'd he get his shirt?

At some point my brain got the best of my and I decided to break off the conversation and meet someone else. Or many someone elses. Fortunately for us all, one of the elses I went to talk to was a petite Greek girl named Marianna.

As the weeks went on, I realized that Ian was chatty and threw out a number of pop culture references because he was simply one of the nicest and with it people that I've met in my life. He's a genuine guy. He trusts in people and does the right things and operates his business and marriage with self effacing humor and humility and tact.

As time went on I realized that Ian didn't need friends. He had plenty. All over the place. He never meets a stranger because he's got one of those personalities that makes you think that all in well in the world and if we all just smiled more and gave more of our time we could all be pals the world over and the wars would stop and the birds would sing a few weeks earlier and global warming is just a big opportunity.

Ian wan't chatty and throwing out pop culture references that first day because he needed friends.

He was doing it because I did.

No. 24

2009-03-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

Beer: Shipyard Old Thumper
Date: March 28th, 2009
Place: Fore Street, Portland, ME

I didn’t mean in particular to have a beer or have an expensive dinner or eat a duck’s testicle but all three happened Saturday night after we’d driven up to Portland, ME to see Pete Miller and his friends play a show at the Empire.

And to be quite honest, I’d like to not talk about the testicles any more and so while I’m at it I will just say they weren’t half bad and tasted a lot like a scallop with a bit of salt, gamey one might say, exciting our waitress might say, and more than might, that is precisely what she said, and that might be why we got them, I can’t be sure.

We’d shown up to a place that was recommended by a friend and it was such such a neat place and the kitchen was in the very middle and you watched everything get prepared and there was like a beet closet or a produce time-out booth or something but it had clear windows and you could see all the vegetables they used for the day because the farmers just drive them up in the morning and they cook just what they have and what they have at times is a bit intense (beef hearts, duck’s testicles) but is such a cool place and I’d suggest Googling Fore Street in Portland now and read about it and then get inspired and then drive up.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about the ‘Duck Fries.’

No. 23

2009-03-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Beer: Gouden Carolus Ambrio
Date: March 25th, 2009
Place: Novare Res Bier Cafe, Portland, ME

Micah is to beer bar what underage college student in a bar is to security guard.

Beer bars scare me.

I say How is the Poperfienden and they say It is a lot like the Whosit with the heart of a Thistledowner and I say That sounds really good, I think I'll have that and so long as they don't ask me what a Whosit is or how a Thistledowner tastes I'm safe but I try to avoid eye contact so I don't have to have that converstion because the other thing about being in a beer bar is that people really really want to talk about beer and they think I so want to talk to someone about the HarpoonStallion and all I can think is that I really want to drink a beer. If I wanted to talk, I'd have phoned my order in.

I always feel like I'm going to get found out.

I love beer, but I've still not figured out beer. I've also never figured out football. I don't care what the defense is reading or what package they are in or if there was a block in the back. I know I know enough to sit down an entire Saturday and watch the hell out of football. But I'm not there to discuss nuance. I'm not at a coaching clinic. I'm at a Saturday in the Fall. With two things I've not figured out. And I don't feel the least bit guilty.

So I ended up at Novare Res in Portland on a cold spring day sharing a beer with Pete who I've really just met recently becuase I know his sister. I thought it would be great to stop on my way back to Boston from an undisclosed location (business related) and talk about not beer but music, design, the complexity of eating olives and how they don't go with Belgian beer. I think we equally avoided talking about beer, even though at some point I went off on a Scotch Whisky tangent which is a third thing I don't know about but like anyways.

No. 21 & 22

2009-03-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

Beer: No. 21, Pabst Blue Ribbon, No. 22, Trader Joe's Bavarian Hefeweizen
Date: March 21th, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

The PBR I had as an official co-host of an unofficial corn dog party. The Bavarian I had as an apology to all those beer lovers who'd question how PBR can make it into my top ninety nine what the hell are you thinking man?.

It'd been almost two months since I'd had two beers in one day. Think about that. Fifty seven days passed, and I'd had only 10 beers - not more than one per sitting. Of course, I'd learned my lesson well back in January, when I thought beer grew on trees and I could just have a couple any time I had a good excuse and then ended up overdrafting (pun intended) from my beer balance.

To put my last two months into perspective and prove to myself that I'm really sacrificing and blah blah blah my friend Dave had 10 beers in six hours.

If I'd had ten beers, I'd be on the floor. Praying to sweet self control and Jesus and mumbling incoherently while people pass me and avoid making eye contact and wondering when the last time I bathed was. Not Kuhl. He's a real man. A man who can kill and easy dozen. Or, in the case of Saturday, on National Corndog Day, can slam 10 corndogs, 10 PBR, and 10 servings of 10 tater tots. It's only been done a handful of times over the last five years. And it was done in our fair Commonwealth on Saturday.

I'm approaching the quarter mark of beers, the quarter mark of months, the first 25% done of the hardest exercise in self control that I can imagine. Clearly I'm not in the armed forces and was born into a fairly entitled civilization.

The slowing down and considering and just thinking about my consumption has spilled over into a number of areas of my life. I'd already mentioned the water saving shower head we'd gotten. We now save a gallon of water a minute. And for the first time, I think I bartered for something.

I'd been coveting an old vintage looking bike since I'd seen my friend Jen's at the North Carolina Beach. While that bike is made in America GO 'MERICA! and that helps my current protectioist agenda that I've gotten into it doesn't help that any time we get something new it came from something else someplace else and one day will end up in another pile of else in someone's backyard spilling else into water systems and dumping (x-1) gallon a minute in a shower someplace provided someone bought a lower flow shower head that was made from else and if not than simply x number of gallons.

So I traded an old snowboard in my basement for an old bike that was made in the seventies and creaks and has one speed and is made of pure Detriot muscle (fine, English steel) and lets me slow down and just consider everything on my now 16% longer ride to work.

I didn't spend any money. Didn't go out of my way. Just got what I wanted by giving someone what they wanted. And what I wanted is hard to pedal on windy "spring" days like today.

Which is good. I can use the extra pedaling to burn off those corndogs.

No. 20

2009-03-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

Beer: Wachusett Quinn's Ale
Date: March 15th, 2009
Place: The Coppertop Lounge, Wachusett Mountain, Princeton, MA

“I wish the economy would stop eating my friends.”

That was a status update from a friend who sat next to Robertson and across the hallway from Kuhl.

I think statistically I’m starting to feel it. One in ten friends of mine are out of work. Probably less. But it’s getting up there. I know it would be far worse if I were in the manufacturing sector or if I worked in a mine or if I were a gypsy. But I’m none of those things, and the eating of friends is starting to leave me feeling lonely and sad for them and hopeful that at some point soon we’ll hit the upswing.

Sunday night we headed an hour west to board with our friend Dave Kuhl. Our laid off friend Kuhl. Our eternally optimistic keeps getting up when he eats it that was just what I needed I really needed to get something to kick start me there are some good things in the pipeline I’m going to be fine Kuhl. I’m humbled by my friends who are rolling with the punches, masking any fear they might have – or simply trusting that there isn’t anything that worry or fear or lost sleep will make any better.

After a dismal loss in the ’07 Boston Kickball Finals, after a lost key forced him to ride in a tow truck with me from Vermont, after losing to UNC as an Illinois alumni, Kuhl is used to rolling with it. He’s just the kind of person that you love to have a beer with.

While the economy is eating my friends, I’m drinking them.

No. 19

2009-03-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

Beer: Harpoon Celtic Ale
Date: March 14th, 2009
Place: Cleary's, South End, Boston, MA

It was supposed to be a shared beer at six. Chris was late because he was talking to a guy from Nevada. Trying to buy an Airstream to drive around the county.

Times like this, scary times that make you refocus, have a tendency to make you want to do things that you haven’t done before. Things you couldn’t have done before. Things that were inhibited by other things. Things like a family. Or a job. I bought Robertson a beer on Saturday night because he had become a statistic.

He’d been laid off.

Not that this was the first layoff that I’ve experience with Robertson. He was laid off in North Carolina as well. And as a friend summed up ‘If they let Robertson go, you know its getting bad out there.’ That was true in North Carolina, as I took off eight months later. And true now, as trillions of bits of wealth are moving to different columns.

Robertson is Creeper to most here in Boston. A nickname that came from his state (Virginia) as well as an isolated event one late evening, prompted by his creative director, that creeped someone out. Chris, Crepeer and Robertson are all interchangeable. Creep works too. Especially on a kickball field.

We’ve done so much with that guy over the past four years that I can hardly believe it. I’ve been boarding with him a bunch. Went to the Chesapeake Bay one July 4th when it was 104 out. He came down to our wedding. He’s such a part of our social interactions that I forget that he hasn’t always been one of my buddies.

Cue flashback music: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

And now, with some credit default swaps and some shady dealings, he’s going to be gone. Driving into the sunset, into some uncertain future.

I bought him a beer because on one government report he’s a statistic. But on mine, he’s a brother.

Pouring one out for you Creep.

Image stolen from Chris's Flickr stream.

No. 18

2009-03-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Beer: Hen's Tooth Ale
Date: March 13th, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, MA

If there was a week that I needed to come home and have a beer, it was this one. If there ever was a week in which I deserved to come home and have a beer, it was this one.

Marianna's work laid off fifty people this week. It was a slow death layoff, too. Three days in which people - close friends among them - were picked off one by one. This one now can't pay rent. That one is moving back to Virginia. I don't know this one, but he is old and a proofreader and I don't know what jobs are available to those who make a living finding mistakes. Maybe he can be a consultant and let people know when they made mistakes. Like they made a mistake by giving someone a mortgage that they can't afford. Or they made a mistake of thinking that a house is more than just a house. Or they made a mistake giving Bernie all their money. Or that they mistook the American Dream - which is also the undoing of the dream.

Mariana made it. Just got her salary, 401(k) match and summer Fridays cut. But not as much as some. I heard a group in the agency got cut to a four day workweek. A full 20% less cheddar to take home. Who's better off? Those let go or those hanging on? The ones free to look for a shrinking number of jobs? Or those in tied to sit in a place for a shrinking salary? I think the answer is the latter, though I can feel the fear in those places knowing they could have just as easily been in the former - or might be in a matter of quarters.

It was with a heavy heart that I drank half my beer.

I've always been a line item on a company's balance sheet. One which I feel quite honestly hasn't been very profitable. I bust my tail at times, and sit on it others. I sit in little rooms, rack my brain for ideas or images or words come up full sometimes and full of it most of the time. I toil for something I think it new and fresh and I'm told that it was seen last week, last year, in the late eighties. Nothing new under the sun.
I've pitched a dozen clients and billed hundreds of hours to agencies and been a liability and a drain on the ole coffers. For I've never been anyone who has brought new business into an agency. Not one account.

But twenty minutes after a meeting that came after two weeks of hard work three weeks after our own layoffs after a housing bubble burst after a few good years after a terrorist attack after a very entitled decade after we fought out of a time that looked eerily similar to our own after an embargo I went from the debit column to the credit column by winning a small bit of business. A bit of business that wasn't as big as the hope in everyone's eyes who knew, that for a minute or two, their job was safe and they could pay their rent and not have to move to Virginia.

It was with a content heart that I shared the second half of my beer with my wife.

No. 17

2009-03-04T05:48:00.001-08:00

Beer: Flying Dog Imperial Porter
Date: February 28th, 2009
Place: The Hideaway Chalet, Killington, Vermont

And then there was Pete, Julie, Kat, Kay, Kay, Kelly, Jocelyn, Janet, Jonathan, Justin, Caitlyn, Allison, Paul, Marianna, Scott, Allison, Courtney, Dave, Braum, Sarah, and Doug. Twenty one twenty (and thirty) somethings in a small (huge) cabin tucked away (on the main drag) in Killington (Killington).

Our trip planned our trip months ago - the best way to go about finding lodging for two dozen twenty (and thirty) somethings on a mountain. Turns out, our timing was one week off. The week before, the mountains of Vermont got three feet of snow. We got rain the entire drive up. On Saturday, we got glorified ice cubes for the ride down.

High points:

Scott, Allison, Courtney and Dave driving in from Brooklyn. I’d not seen Dave in a year and half. We’d worked together at McKinney. I was sitting on the couch, looked up, and thought That mystery person there hugging Marianna looks a lot like Dave from behind. Turned around and there he was.

Saturday afternoon. The side of the mountain facing the sun turned to slush. And we turned into stuntmen. Jumping off of everything and landing some things. Sometimes on people.

Talking beer with Doug and Jonathan. Who shared the porter with me. And gave me lots of ammunition for my trial. Like where an amazing beer store is in Newton. And what the top ten beers are in the world.

Talking about my blog. Seems like it struck a nerve with a few.

Sharing a cigar with Pete, Paul and Justin.

Bananagrams. Namely spelling serifs.

The sunny drive out on Route 4. New England at its finest.

Low points:

Limiting myself to one beer.

The rain and fog.

The ice cube flume.

Feeling bad on Sunday morning. Could have been the screwdrivers, the cigar or the lack of sleep.

No. 16

2009-02-27T05:11:00.000-08:00

Beer: Boston Local Flight (Fishermaster, Cisco Whales Tale, BBC Coffeehouse Porter, Honest Red)
Date: February 26th, 2009
Place: Sunset Tap and Grill, Allston, Massachusetts

Met Chris, Christian and DJ to have dinner before going to see Theophilus London.

Ordered a flight of local beer. Four 5oz. tastings. It was one beer on the menu. Don't judge me.

The beers lasted longer than London. Who after 22 minutes left the stage. Probably to sulk - the crowd was quite anemic.

Too bad he hadn't been with us. Because we had a blast.

No. 15

2009-02-27T04:28:00.000-08:00

Beer: Hobgoblin
Date: February 22nd, 2009
Place: Carolina Beach, North Carolina

The thought of doing anything for any serious amount of time is daunting. Mainly because time seems so fluid. It moves whether you do or not. I think a lot of us just get tired of holding on to whatever is affected by time and we just move on to something else that time begins to toll on. Case in point: I've not kept a job longer than two years. Because the thought of staying the same, of not progressing, makes me claustrophobic.

Fortunately, time doesn't seem to matter to Marianna's grandparents, who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in North Carolina on the sixtieth year and second day of their wedding.

What's exciting in this whole time thought, is that the exponentiality of time makes it such that we are winners. Observe: as of last week, Marianna's GM+GP were married one hundred and twenty time longer than we have been. In six months, that time becomes only ~sixty times. I think we've got the cat by the tail.

I extended my ticket and extra day to see my friends Hal and Jen down the coast on Carolina Beach.

I first met Hal on the phone. I was riding my bike on a trail in Atlanta, and I happened to get a call when I stopped to rest. Hal was calling because I'd put in my resume at Patagonia. Hal wanted to set up an interview.

And he called on the one day in which I happened to be doing something related to the job that I would start in a month.

I started the week that Hal and Jen were on their honeymoon. Which was almost five years ago now. Which is twelve times less than GM and GP. Which is also exponential.

I got into a Bible study with Hal and worked with him (or for him, as the manager/employee relationship is perceived) and rocked out to music and shared meals and went to church and became close, fast friends and fell in love with his dogs and felt like they were family.

Hal and Jen were right there with me on my last night in Atlanta. After I'd packed up the UHaul and got ready for my move to North Carolina. When I was excited and scared and broke and missing them already and thinking that time was such a cruel thing - that we'd known each other a year but that we didn't wring more out of our times together. And that time was such an amazing ally. That in a year, I became lucky enough to become fast friends with such a solid couple.

So I had Number 15 on the coast of my wife's home state. In honor of time.

No. 14

2009-02-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

Beer: Coors
Date: February 15th, 2009
Place: Manchester-By-The-Sea, Massachusetts

Four years ago, when I'd flown into North Carolina for my first job interview, I had lunch with the folks who were interviewing me. It was in the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, and McKinney was the job in question. We went downstaris to Symposium, and had a beer with lunch. How great must a place be if you get to have beers at lunch? Pretty great, it turned out.

A great place to start out. A great place to burn out. A great place to meet a wife. All of those great things.

One of the guys who was with me that day was Matt. Who had been at McKinney for a bit. Months ago, Matt moved up here to take a job. A job which is out in the country (or ocean, rather) for now, but is moving into the city later. While we could, we took the trip up that way. Wishing it was cooler, but taking a beachfront stay any way we can.

I thought it fitting to share a beer four years later with the guy (and his wife) who got me a job and by transitive property, a wife.

No. 13

2009-02-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

Beer: Sam L. Smith Organic Ale
Date: February 11th, 2009
Place: The House, Somerville, Massachusetts

The last time I didn’t do something for two weeks was years ago.

I think I gave up coffee or beer (theme?) for Lent. No. Chocolate. I gave up desserts for Lent. And it was six years ago. And I was on a plane to New Zealand and I’d forgotten that I had nixed the desserts and starting eating my cake and realized what had happened but figured that Lent wasn’t enforceable over international waters so I kept eating. If there ever were an easy time for God to smite me, it would have been right there. On the far left side of the International Date Line.

The most recent time has been now. It’s been two weeks and two days since I’ve had a beer. I’ve met friends out and cooked a number of times and had happy hours at work and all these times are times where I would love a beer but I’ve had to settle for Scotch or wine or tea. Yes. Last Friday as the masses were reveling in a mixed case of Sam’s seasonal beers I was having English Breakfast.

Now, I’ve had to abstain because in my fervor to spend time with friends and share a brew I’ve spent too many beers – I was really on pace for a 144 year. Which is about 44% too many. I stopped the carnage before it resembled Wall Street. There is no beer bailout program being debated in the chambers.

This is the first time, as well, that I’ve really been aware of my cutting back. It’s hurt a bit. It is tangible. There is less that I can have. There is a beer sitting in my fridge staring at me telling me it’s time and me telling it that it is indeed not time, not yet, and please take this watering our of my mouth. I’ve realized what I’ve come to –although not anywhere near it’s fullest – there is a limit on earth, and the further we back away from that limit through wise decisions the more there will be from everyone.

Abstaining from beer has caused me to buy a low flow showerhead.

There is, however, one grand reason to break my fast this evening. The UNC / Duke game. With Marianna and Kelly and Roy Williams.

If I were more of a man, I’d wait until the end of the game, to make this not an observational beer but a celebratory brew. However, if I did that, based on consumption trends over the last fortnight, I think I might wake up with a headache.

No. 11 & 12

2009-01-29T05:52:00.000-08:00

Beer: No. 11, Erdinger Weissbrau, No. 12, Craftsman I.P.A.
Date: January 24th, 2009
Place: No. 11, Red Lion Tavern, No. 12 El Prado, Los Angeles, California

That I was having beers with Dustin in Los Angeles and not in Portland was and still is mind boggling to me. But it happened and I can only be thankful that it did.

Of the 2,869 hours I worked at McKinney, 85 of them were spent playing foosball. Those might have been the most productive hours I had. If we fail to count the Travelocity Troll or The Secretary of Steak campaigns which I slaved over that died cold, violent deaths on magnetic walls.

I’d say the most productive, because through all the sh!t talk, all the bank shots, all the ‘it’s too loud so we are replacing your plastic ball with a cork ball’, through all the off season games at Tylers’s Taproom, I really got to know a group of five guys. One of which was Dustin.

He is a quiet guy. Doesn’t say a lot if he doesn’t know you. Which might lead you to assume that he’s planning your demise. (At least, in advertising, anyone who doesn’t talk much is suspect. If we worked at an accounting firm I’d think differently). But much like an onion, as the layers go deeper, you realize there is a truly caring, genuinely witty, fairly selfless onion in the middle. I never really got the onion analogy cause it still ends with onion.

I think Dustin is the only guy I know who doesn’t ascribe to any set religious belief who regularly volunteers to make other’s lives better. And you know that comes straight from the heart and not from a Gospel.

After his roommate was laid off from McKinney, Dustin moved in and slept on my couch. For something like four months. He and his dog Dewey. Dustin was trying to figure out his next steps and what life held for him and where to next and can I do something somewhere for someone that will matter. One day he just packed up his Jeep and his dog, and drove to Oregon. That was a very lonely day, it seemed.

Portland didn’t work out for Dustin. Both to his surprise and mine and to anyone who finds out Dustin isn’t in Oregon but instead in LA.

“Wait, you are going to hang out in LA with Dustin? Dustin? In…LA?”

I can state for the record that yes, Dustin…in LA, is doing fine.

No. 10

2009-01-25T15:43:00.001-08:00

Beer: Fuller's 1845 Celebration Ale
Date: January 24th, 2009
Place: Our House, Somerville, Massachusetts

I met Marianna over some beers.

I was new in Durham. Didn't know where the post office was. Or where to get groceries, gas, coffee. One way streets from a time when there might have been critical mass downtown made it that much tougher to get anyplace. I was two blocks from work and that was the extent of what I knew.

But I also knew that my future wife lived in the same apartment number one building over. I'd been introduced to her the first day or work and found out she lived where she did and where that was was close to where I was and if I was going to fill my nights I needed friends and I needed them quickly. She extended an invitation to help if I needed anything. Which I did.

Like a hammer. A vacuum. One trash bag.

I continued to find reasons to invite myself over to this shy girl's apartment. She was quiet. Clean. Lonely? I hoped.

One night she offered a beer.

“My friend got married. The wedding was here. And since everyone traveled, I was given the beer. No one else could take it. You want one? It's probably a year old. Maybe not that old.”

Yes. I'd love a beer. Along with groceries, gas, coffee. It was a Michelob I think. And it was the finest beer I've had in my life.

So Saturday night we made dinner and I had another beer with this girl. Only this time she was less shy. Less a stranger. Three and a half years after offering stale beer in her loft in an old tobacco warehouse, she was my wife.

No. 9

2009-01-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

Beer: Otter Creek Vermont Lager
Date: January 23rd, 2009
Place: Mountain Home, Stowe, Vermont

Friday did not end the way I expected when I woke up Friday.

I had a plan to drive to Connecticut to see my friend John. We were going to drive up to Mt. Snow in Vermont the next morning and do some snowboarding. There was the possibility that something might come up.

John and his wife don't use credit cards. If they don't have cash, they don't have stuff. Don't do things. Don't make plans. They are adults. They are responsible. They delay gratification. They play when they can pay. I respect the heck out of them for that and think that we could learn a lot from John. Wall Street system can learn from him. But Wall Street doesn't have jobs.

As a grad student, John gets loans. Which come in on Mondays and not Fridays. So my Fridays, when arranged around say, snowboarding, and around friends, say John, sometimes take left turns when I thought they were going to go right.

One of those turns led to me being on the road for four hours on Friday night, listening to Obama's Dreams of my Father, thinking about how long it had been since I was in the habit of taking road trips. Spontaneous ones, at that. Ones that start at 8pm on a Friday and end a quarter shy of midnight.

I had one beer with a friend from work, Zack, and a couple of his buddies from college. Turns out, their school and the Otter Creek I had were in the same town. Which I didn't know when I had bought the beer twenty five minutes before at a filling station off the side of a snowy state road.

I left five beers behind at the cabin Saturday. Hoping that someone who didn't use credit would find them and consider them a gift. A gift from their future, frugal self.

No. 8

2009-01-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

Beer: No.8, Peak Organic Maple Oat Ale
Date: January 21st, 2009
Place: Sunset Tap and Grill, Allston, Massachusetts

She borrowed them and used them in Colorado and punctured oh about 67 holes in them and then gave them back and then three years later when I moved to New England I decided I should get them repaired and took them to Patagonia and that’s how I met Rob.

He has a couple of cool tattoos on his wrists. One is maybe Aramaic. One is clearly in English: a cross written in black letter with the verse ‘That they may have life and have it abundantly.” We started talking about churches and I found out he moved to Boston to plant a church and was an electrical engineer from Tennessee and was working there to pay the bills. I didn’t want to go to his church, but I did want to hang out. So we did.

We went one weekend last year with Rob and his house church to extreme northern Maine to camp and hike and cook over a campfire. There was a moose involved. Allegedly. It wasn’t at my campsite. I just operate based on the knowledge that I heard screams.

That’s how we really got to know him. He’s got a big heart and he really tries to know his neighbors and better his community and I think he and his wife’s plan is to move to Africa and serve those who are less fortunate. Now I have beers with him once a month or so. Just to catch up.

Rob got married a week after we did. Also back in the South. So we will think of each other, I reckon, each time our anniversaries roll around. Until we are too old to think or celebrate and then we can look forward to getting our eternal reward and seeing each other once a month or so in Heaven. Just to catch up.

No. 6 & 7

2009-01-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Beer: No.6, Boddingtons; No. 7, Red Stripe
Date: January 16th, 2009
Place: The Thirsty Scholar, Cambridge, Massachusetts

My buddy Pete is an interesting guy.

He was the RA at Wesleyan to the guys who years later would be the band MGMT. He is a monster Oakland Fan. He is well read (always suggesting a book, I read the Nine based on his review) and well written (he's a copywriter at Arnold). He once got mugged by a man with the same name. After several months of prodding, he even got me to go to New Hampshire to knock on doors on election day.

I actually had lunch on my first day at Arnold with Pete. I didn't know of anyplace to go, and we headed to a place near his then apartment in the South End. We didn't really strike it off, in particular. I think Pete is one of those people who you misread as being one thing, as you are just trying to unpackage them, and find out they are another. He's a pretty sarcastic guy, and I've grown out of sarcasm over the past several years. So for a while, I really just thought he disliked me. Not in a "You'll rue the day you ever crossed Pete" kind of way, but just in a "You do your thing, I'll do mine."

I ended up working on a number of assignments at Arnold with him. The first several he was out of town for, on shoot, so the thought that I crossed him and that I really should rue the day and he was never coming back and I better learn to be a writer crossed my mind more than once.

Then, we spent about 4 months together in a room, 19 floors up, staring at the Charles River, watching the snow, thinking thinking thinking about a good idea for a bad product. Most ideas ended with us talking about how this widget wasn't necessary and we were just shills and what good are we doing to the planet and to people and then on a practical level what would we do if we just didn't do anything and how would we operate if the paycheck stopped coming because we told people that they didn't need this and would that reverse psychology really work and who cares it's just advertising.

Through that experience I really got to know him. And realized that he is a great guy. And realized that I'd been selling him short. And felt bad for thinking he hated me. I've found it to be true a number of times: we don't take issue with people; we take issue with our own issues. And once we get past our own hangups, we realize that the people are who they were, and it's us that have changed.

Pete had been trying to figure out a number of things with life and in the process his apartment came up for renewal and he just kind of decided to let to cards fall where they may. So, a few months ago, Pete moved upstairs with our landlord. So he's kind of like Joey from Friends now. Except better read.

He'd been gone for a month, back in the Bay area for Christmas and then in LA for a shoot. So once he got back in, it took a couple of beers to catch up and talk about inauguration day and college football (which he doesn't care for but I sure as heck do) and the neighborhood and the jobs and toss back and forth ideas on a number of random bits.

Like the lunch on the first day of work. With beer. And instead of with a acquataince, with a dear friend.

No. 5

2009-01-17T09:46:00.000-08:00

Beer: Guinness
Date: January 16th, 2009
Place: Warren Tavern, Charlestown, Massachusetts

It's June 16th, 1775.

Charlestown, right across the Charles River from Boston, is really starting to come into it's own. It was at one point the head of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It's still one hundred years before it becomes annexed by the city of Boston. Everything is fine. Until the Brits show up and raze the city. The Battle of Bunker Hill is on the 17th. Everything is burned. Shot. Killed. Whites of eyes and pops of muskets and bye bye homestead.

According to historians, the Warren Tavern was probably the first building back after that battle. It was established by Captain Eliphelet Newell (presumably of the same Newell family who founded Charlestown in 1628) and named after a Dr. Joseph Warren - a hero who was felled at the Battle five years before.

The Tavern was the favorite watering hole of Paul Revere. George Washington drained a few pints in his day as well.

Not to anyone's surprise really, there isn't a British beer on tap.

Which is why, in a dark room dating back to 1780, I had a Guinness with my wife and her sister, who'd just gotten into town from New York City.

Quite a fitting day to have it, turns out. My fifth beer of 2009 came on the fifth month of being married to my wonderful wife.

Note: The picture below was not last night. Where there was way more snow on the ground and a temperature of 7.

No. 3 & 4

2009-01-12T04:44:00.000-08:00

Beer: Sam Adams Winter Lager
Date: January 10th, 2009
Place: Panthers Party, South End, Boston, Massachusetts

I'm four for four on beers at football games. Which I think is going to shape up interestingly in August, when the preseason top #10 Rebels take the field.

But this isn't about that, this is about this. My friend Dan and his inexplicable love for the Carolina Panthers.

Dan grew up in Chicago. Home of the Bears. And Pizza. And Blagojevich. Some time around '95, Dan's dad brought him home a shirt for a soon to be established team in the Carolinas called the Panthers. Whether is was the teal or the cat or the combo or the dismal performance of the Bears every year, Dan jumped on the bandwagon - which is still quite roomy - and became a Panthers fan.

Not one of those fair weather guys, either. One of those Every bit of sport paraphernalia in the house that has a sp0rt team is the Panthers. Throw pillows? Meow. Credit card? Meow. I have even heard he and his wife discussing a Panthers cruise in the Caribbean.

I decided that beer No. 3 would be well spent watching the outmatched Cardinals get owned by Delhomme + Co. with Dan and his wife and another 10 friends.

Three picks later, I thought it might be well to empathize with Dan and have No. 4. The final score (33-13, Cardinals) didn't even reflect how poorly the Panthers played. Which was hard to watch, there in the presence of Dan.

I think if the Panthers knew they had fans out there like Dan, with no ties to the state or the franchise, who just love pro ball and want to pick a team and stick with them throughout life through good or bad or sickness or injury or trades or unsportsmanlike conduct penalties or parades or playoffs or expansion team colors they would have played harder.

No. 2

2009-01-08T15:45:00.001-08:00

Beer: Victory Prima Pils
Date: January 8th, 2009
Place: Southie, Boston, Massachusetts

I'm panicked.

Like the time when I decided that I was going to be a vegetarian. What do you tell the Grandparent's at Thanksgiving when they offer ham and you are in Alabama where there are no liberals and even fewer vegetarians and the whole reason for pigs is ham and if you ain't having ham then what the dammit do you 'spect you're having?

It's like that. Tonight we are heading to a friend of a friend's house in South Boston to watch the FedEx Championship game betwixt the Gators of Florida and the Sooners of Oklahoma. I could seem, in about 56 minutes, like the most pretentious person south of Tremont street, as I walk in not with a six pack of cheaps but a one of Prima. And, much like being a vegetarian – no one else really cares about the reason that they don't eat this and do eat that and the ins and outs of the industrial farm complex – you can either choose to a) explain why you are weird or b) just sit quietly and naw on your leaf. Or in my case, hops.

I'm sure no one is going to give a second thought to it, but if some guy I didn't know showed up to my house with one beer and was rooting for the opposing team, well, I reckon he'd be on his way out the front door around the corner on to a bus stop or a trolly stop or the drive way (if he lived below the Mason-Dixon).

This is precisely where this resolution has gotten me at this point. Sitting in the beer store, looking for the singles (which are all either 40s or pints) that can go along with a theme (which I got with the name) or a season (which I missed [voted one of 10 best summer beers]) or a storyline or a flavor and realizing that this is way better than mindlessly grabbing a six of this or that. Even if it might destroy me.

Don't count it as No. 2 yet. Give me till about 9:30 EST, and then chalk it up. Win or loss, the name says it all.

No. 1

2009-01-04T17:55:00.000-08:00

Beer: Rogue Double Dead Guy Ale
Date: January 2nd, 2009
Place: Cabin, near Quint, New Hampshire

The first one was tough. Knowing the start has to be the start and that start will start when you start and the start isn’t the trickiest part. But the finish is. Once there is one then there are only 98 more.

But I decided to go for it on the second day of the year. I was with Marianna, Kay, Kelly, Jack, Scott, Sara, Braum, Sara, Dave, Chris and Jessica and we had just made it back from the mountain. We had been up boarding on Attitash mountain and the week before had been quite intense as was the weather for the drive up. We had 6” in Boston and less as we went further north. The mountain was fine but by mid afternoon the snow had given way to faint blue ice sheets the length of the mountain. That’s really how is it back East.

As the ice got icier and the day started to get over itself and the crew was bruised and sore, and the Cotton Bowl was on television 16 miles away, we packed up and drove back to Quint. We might have come back earlier, but I didn’t let people know that my bowl game started two hours before the lifts quit lifting. Figured we could catch the last quarter.

But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. We were playing Texas Tech who had only lost one game and it was to a great Oklahoma team and they might have been waxing us as we were sliding down the mountain. But the text messages coming to my phone let me know that was not the case and that the best place for me was on the couch with a beer and with some friends and a fire in the place.

That’s how #1 happened. With a victory on the 2nd.

And I spent the remaining two days watching as others had as many beers as they wanted. With a pang of jealousy, but a little bit of excitement

UPDATE:
I keep getting questions about what one beer is. Or what one beer counts for. I’m not about rules. One beer is what comes in one container, despite how small or big that container is. Sure, I could drink a keg and count it as one beer, but that’s not going to happen.

99 Bottles.

2008-12-30T13:29:00.000-08:00

I've been torn this season. Thinking about the phrase "Live simply so that others may simply live." I've realized that while I think about this and spout it out and try it on and mull it over it isn't what I'm doing.

Take Christmas. I've been drinking Eggnog. And drinking Christmas tea. And eating cookies. And then what would Christmas be without turkey and ham and three casseroles and Christmas cocktails - the kind the wisemen drank I'm sure - and a tree and a natural wreath and light and a new Christmas CD and a tree skirt and and and.

All these things are just automatics. I can have them all, so naturally, I do.

I'm not loaded. I'm well off at this point. Especially just because I am an American. I have money and a savings account and a 401(k) and the ability to pay my heat bill and a house full of everything I could ever need. Not want. But need.

I've realized that I can have most anything when I want it in any quantity that I want it.

Which is why I must stop.

Or at least slow. I need to gain perspective. I need to spend more time with people. I need to live with less (on a lot of levels). I need to focus. I need a resolution this New Year that will bring a little introspection and a lot of sacrifice.

I'm going to have 99 bottles of beer this year.

I know, I know. This isn't really a sacrifice of anything. You are thinking that I am lame and that I'm a coward and that my New Year's resolution is full of crap and is boring and you know what? Stop reading now. Yeah. Just leave. Don't care. I mean, I'll miss you, but I will catch you in 2010.

My thought is that, when you put limits on something, it becomes a lot more thoughtful. There is something in knowing that your days are limited. That you have precisely 31 more times to wake up. Or 15 more showers to take. Each one is a little more intentional. Which is what I want to do with this experiment.

It isn't about the beer so much as the company. Maybe this weekend will be a blast and I will have 25 beers. And then realize that while that was fun, I've used up a quarter of my allocation for the year. And there better be an interesting tale. Or maybe I will have a beer each week with an old friend and just talk. Spend some time with a stranger. Buy him a beer. Sit down and chat with my wife over a Sam's Light. Or just go watch the sun set by myself. With one of my ninety nine. I don't know.

All I know is that I am going to chronicle this whole adventure. This whole year of having a bit less. Not quitting. Not throwing in the towel. Just being aware.

Cheers t0 2009.

-Micah