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Are We All Just Gradually Reverting to Pictographs?

Change We Can Believe In

2006

2009

Hey, is Angela Merkel humanity’s Collective Unconscious?

Hey, That’s the Beer the Riggins Boys Drink on Friday Night Lights! (My Point Exactly.)

Every bit as tasty as it looks here.

Are you past the point in your life when any free beer is good beer? Hey, growing up doesn’t suck nearly as much as they say, does it?

Bars ’round here in Austin’ve been quite crowded lately- apparently there are some manner of music festival goings on (?!?), possibly to raise money to fatten and clothe itinerant twenty-somethings. Well, those kids are adorable in their little sneakers, I tell you, but it’s positively sobering to watch them gratefully guzzle down can after can of free Lone Star.

For whatever reason- the weather, the tacos, the taste of countless balding techies-by-day with acid jazz  bands practicing in their garages at night- beer is King in Austin. As you may have guessed from the title of this here blog, I moved to Austin from a small but well fortified mountain stronghold in Utah. One can only assume the local chieftains were sad to see the likes of me go. But in a disturbingly ironic twist, not only did I find myself missing something back in Utah, that something missing from my new Austin life was (gasp)… really really good beer.

The technical term for really really good beer is ‘microbrew,’ or ‘craft beer.’ Now, I’m not a beer scholar- merely a respectful acolyte- so I can’t speculate here as to why the Southwestern U.S. is almost completely bereft of microbreweries. I know it ain’t for lack of a market. In contrast, three of the five most widely recognized* breweries credited with the emergence of the American Craft Beer movement- Anchor Brewing, New Belgium, and Sierra Nevada- are in Western States. (The other two were Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head, from up there in the squished together-y states, which kids from the spread out-y ones seldom learn to distinguish from one another.)

This is all to say, though the default beverage of Austin, TX, beer was in a sad state of affairs when I arrived here from the Rockies, where Teva-clad bicyclists have apparently stumbled upon the universal secrets of brewmastery. But since 2003, Austin has gained Independence Brewery (whose Bootlegger Brown was the first to scratch that local microbrew itch left behind by the likes of Wasatch Brewery’s Polygamy Porter). Then we requisitioned Real Ale, which is, strictly speaking, in Blanco, but we simply must have as our own because of its Fireman’s #4. Fireman’s is so universally loved  here that it threatens Austin’s penchant for the tacky and tasteless, as embodied by Lone Star, “The National Beer of Texas.”

About that: Dolly Parton once said of her appearance “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap,” but she may as well have been describing the belabored act of getting dressed up to hit the town of Austin, where one can easily find hisself scuffling in a thriftstore fracas over the right to pay twice as much for a threadbare New Kids On the Block t-shirt as the nine year old girl who originally bought it during their ‘88 tour. It’s enough to make me want to stay home most nights.

The good lord knows I’ve drunk my fair share of Lone Star, but then I went and got spoiled. On the other hand, I never got mannered or gained a taste for being hit on by men my dad’s age, so despite my love of wine I don’t much care for wine bars as a whole. I drink mostly on the patio at Billy’s, where I can show up still in running clothes and not get stared at for being the wrong kind of tacky- I guess that’s the kind there’s an explanation for.

So accordingly,  last week I’m celebrating St. Patrick’s at Billy’s instead of downtown, and a beautiful thing happens… it’s my turn to buy a pitcher, and I anxiously pour my 86-year old, Irish-as-all-fuck grandfather a pint of my new sweetheart, 512 Pecan Porter. After not missing the opportunity to give me the raised eyebrow, he takes a sip and proclaims it “better than Guinness.”

I have to agree. This is a creamy beer with as many flavors as most wines: roasted pecans, brown sugar, coffee, vanilla, hops, and chocolate. Welcome, (512) Brewing Company, and thank you for allowing me all the familial approval an Irish lass could ever ask for.

*that is, among those sitting at the same table as me right now drinking at Billy’s on Burnet.

Welcome To My Infant Blog, Paradigm of Some Stuff, Like for Example Fussing and On-lookery

Postmodern TeeVee Apotheosis!

As did Everyone Else last Thursday night, I tuned in to witness Jon Stewart’s definitive pummeling of Jim Cramer against the ropes of the media ring. This 20-minute or so gladiatorial onslaught of archived Fact and journalistic integrity made of Us all a sort of starved Roman audience salivating over a victory that was much needed in the absence of any feast on the horizon. (It seems that we, the little guy, have won so many battles- wars even- in the past year at the end of nearly a decade-long losing streak that we can hardly be blamed for wondering where the spoils are.)

As mesmerizing a spectacle as it was, the rhythm of Cramer being slammed again and again against the ropes became a kind of repetitive lull, like how the ocean violently crashing into rocks makes you happily sleepy. That, or WWF.

Despite the endless screeching of the networks devouring their own tails about this so-called “Brawl,” or “Rumble” (or, as in Far East Philosopher Michelle Malkin’s meditation, “Kerfuffle,”) the only truly jarring aspect of the Stewart/Cramer Thing aside from Cramer’s face itself (which was jarring before and will remain so), was the endlessly nested footage of it.

As I watched Stewart play a clip of Cramer watching Stewart comment on a clip of Cramer’s coverage of Stewart’s remarks, I suddenly sat up and wondered, HOLY SHIT, IS POSTMODERNISM BEING PRACTICALLY APPLIED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY IN A WAY THAT WOULD TOTALLY PISS OFF ALL ITS MANY WHINY DETRACTORS?

Which is of course to note, needlessly, Do Not Fuck with Jon Stewart, but also- surely they have basic cable in heaven- David Foster Wallace is Up There watching. And surely the man who wrote of television and American identity “if Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing it” would have a lot to say about watching ‘seeing itself seeing it’ be the way to crush the bad guy. A self-referential TKO.

But, unbelievably sadly, we don’t have David Foster Wallace to write about this. I’m not him, but I have cable and free time. So I thought I’d start this here blog instead of just yelling my thoughts out at the TeeVee, the process of which sometimes spills my beverage.

Welcome, my hypothetical readers, welcome.