Scandinavian Craft Brews

On Friday night, after nearly a month away [insert frowny face here], I was finally back at Tria Fermentation School for a beer-tasting. The session was led by brewer Anders Kissmeyer, from Copenhagen’s Nørrebro Bryghus (Bryghus is Danish for brewhouse), and importer Dan Shelton. Kissmeyer and Shelton served nine(!) beers, and nearly every one of them was something I’d buy. (The exception? Mikkeller’s Stateside IPA. It gets good reviews, but I just don’t need anything that hoppy in my personal stash.)

What did I like? Well, I particularly liked three of the Nørrebro brews. The Skärgaards Porter combined two of my favorite flavors—porter-style beer and honey. The Old Odense Ale, co-brewed with Dogfish Head, offered a sweet barleywine flavor. If my notes are correct (caution: this was six beers into the evening), the Odense Ale was flavored with fir trees…. And the North Bridge Extreme was one of the most balanced beers of the evening; it was both pleasantly malty and hoppy, a combination that’s all too difficult to achieve.

I enjoyed another Danish beer, Ølfabrikken’s Abbey Ale. I’m always drawn to Belgian-style beers, and the Abbey Ale qualifies. It’s brewed with Belgian yeast, and its funky sweetness reminded me of some of the best of Belgium’s beers. A nice butterscotch smell added to my interest.

But my favorite beer of the evening was probably Haandbryggerriet’s Norwegian Wood. The “Hand Brewery” is a tiny Norwegian brewery that was started by four farmers. Their Norwegian Wood is brewed in a traditional style—smoked with, of all things, juniper twigs. I didn’t get a particularly juniper-y flavor from the Norwegian Wood, but I certainly did get a pleasant smoky, spicy flavor from it. The beer was complex, with just enough hops to keep the smoked malt from being too much. I can’t wait to sample Norwegian Wood again.

It looks like it’s going to be a few weeks before I make another formal beer-tasting. Buy me a beer or two in the meantime?

Assassins

When Assassins, the Stephen Sondheim musical, opened off-Broadway in 1990, I was intrigued. How could it work? Would audiences really respond to a musical in which the principal characters were presidential assassins (or would-be assassins)? What would these characters have to say? How could the show not be perverse and macabre?

There were a lot of other skeptics, of course, and that iteration of the show didn’t make it to Broadway. I did purchase the cast recording, though, and I fell for it. The music—propelled by a sort of carnival theme—stayed with me. And just as importantly, I suppose, I decided that the characters had quite a bit to say. About disenchantment and loss. About social ills. About what America looks like from a very particular, skewed point of view.

When a new production 0f Assassins finally made it to Broadway in 2004, I really wanted to be there. Neil Patrick Harris (née Doogie Howser, M.D.) played Lee Harvey Oswald! But I just never got my act together, and soon Assassins was gone. I’ll be kicking myself for that for a long time…. Once again, though, I picked up the cast recording. The music still worked for me. (For what it’s worth, I prefer the recording of the 1991 Off-Broadway cast to the recording of the 2004 Broadway revival cast. On either, check out the bizarre “Ballad of Guiteau,” with its infectious refrain of “I am going to the Lordy.”)

So when the Arden Theatre, one of Philly’s best companies, announced that it was going to open its 2007-08 season with Assassins, I was psyched. And on Thursday night, two friends and I caught a performance. If you’re in Philly, I highly recommend the show. I’m sure the cast—with an exception or two—wasn’t quite Broadway-level, but I smiled, enjoyed the music, and found myself experiencing the peculiar, startling brand of Americana championed by Assassins.

Two of the actors really appealed to me. Mary Martello ably provided comic relief with her ditzy Sara Jane Moore (one of two would-be assassins of Gerald Ford). But it was Scott Greer as Sam Byck—the angry, Santa-suited would-be assassin of Richard Nixon—that I’ll best remember. In one of the best scenes in the musical, Byck tape records a message to Leonard Bernstein, telling the musical giant that what the world really needs is more love songs. Greer’s Byck is just a regular fella, sort of(!), but one who is profoundly and palpably both angry and vulnerable. What the world really needs is more actors like Scott Greer.

Assassins is edgy and wonderful, and I’m glad I—finally—had a chance to experience it.

Come out.

As you probably know, today is National Coming Out Day.

I’m 41 years old, and I first came out over 20 years ago. I say “first,” because uncloseted gay people are continually coming out. When you meet someone new and likeable, you come out. When you get a new colleague at work, you come out. When your great-aunt Mathilde calls you for the first time in 25 years because there’s a woman she really wants you to meet, you come out again. So, yeah, coming out is a process, and, in some ways, it’s a neverending one. When, in 40 years or so, it’s time for me to enter a retirement community, I’m sure I’ll be coming out again and again.

It’s good to remember, too, that it’s sometimes perfectly ok not to come out. If you’re financially dependent on your fundamentalist parents, this is probably not the right time to come out. If your boss is a homophobic jerk, today may not be the day to come out on the job. You get to decide when, and whether, it’s safe to come out. Although I came out to most people 20 years ago, there were some people who just weren’t ready for the information. So I used my best judgment, telling people when they and I were ready. It worked for me.

I’ve rarely regretted coming out to someone. It’s such a relief not to have to live a lie. Or to feel like you have to segregate important parts of your life from the important people in your life. After you come out to enough people—i.e., when you reach a critical mass—you just don’t have to worry about it much anymore. Suddenly, you realize that your great-aunt Em has called because there’s a man she really wants you to meet. Suddenly, you realize that your own life has been honestly and openly embedded within the lives of your friends and family. That’s a relief.

So if you’re ready and able to do so, come out. It’s a good idea.

Come out, too, if you’re straight but gay-friendly. That helps makes our lives better. Having allies is always good.

Wiki Wednesday #28

Obviously, I haven’t done much blogging lately. Sorry about that! Last week, I was feeling more than a little run-down, and I just didn’t seem to have the energy to blog. Just when I was feeling a little better, I impulsively decided to spend the long weekend (my office was closed for Columbus Day [sorry, American Indians!]) in D.C. I enjoyed myself there. But when I got back to Philly on Monday, I found myself in the doldrums—a little bit, anyway. The sweep of the Phillies by the Rockies didn’t help. All over again, I didn’t feel much like blogging. Ugh.

But I have a duty tonight, and that’s the Wiki Wednesday! I’m here to do my duty.

1.) Go to Wikipedia.
2.) Click on “Random article.”
3.) Report on the outcome.

Hopwood Park services

Hopwood Park services is a motorway service station in Worcestershire, England situated off Junction 2 of the M42 motorway on the A441 road to Redditch south of Birmingham. It opened in August 1999. There are many services at the large BP petrol station on the site, such as toilets and retail facilities. The cashpoint machine on-site charges for cash withdrawals.

It is operated by Welcome Break. It has a retail watch shop, coffee lounge, Burger King and a KFC which opened in May 2006.

The independant [sic] Motorway Services Online has Hopwood Park down as the most popular service station, with visitors giving it an average rating of five stars (as of 2007).

Bizarre—it’s an entry for a service stop (er, motorway service area, I guess) on a highway! I’ve included the entire entry here, so we even know what brand of gas we’ll get, that there’s an ATM (thank goodness!), and that we’ll have to make due with a Whopper or some Original Recipe.

Ordinarily, I’d have to ask whether this kind of information is really, well, just too much. After all, the topic of the entry doesn’t seem very noteworthy. But, of course, those crazy, obsessive, thorough, building-their-own-culture Wikipedians have already considered whether these motorway stops are worthy of their own entries, and the answer—after an obsessive, thorough, highly democratic process—was yes. Wow.

Sadly, the service plazas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike don’t seem to have their own separate entries. Some Wikipedian should get to work on that….

P.S. I’ll try to get my act together and blog about my trip to D.C.

Free Burma

Wiki Wednesday #27

1.) Go to Wikipedia.
2.) Click on “Random article.”
3.) Report on the outcome.

Flint Rasmussen

Flint Rasmussen is perhaps the most famous “rodeo clown” or “rodeo barrelman” in the sport of bullriding.

Long associated with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Rasmussen earned the title of PRCA Clown of the Year for eight consecutive years and won the Coors Man in the Can honors seven times.

Hey, this is someone I know. Well, not personally. But I’ve seen him in the flesh. And if I’d wanted to, I’m sure I could’ve shaken his hand or gotten his autograph. Hmm, why didn’t I? Suddenly, for probably the first time, I sort of regret not being an autograph hound….

Anyway, as you may know, I’m a rodeo fan. Each December, I head off to Las Vegas for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association‘s National Finals Rodeo. And that’s where I’ve seen Rasmussen (you can find his official website here). Now, as I understand it, Rasmussen works Professional Bull Riders (PBR) events instead, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him at some off-the-field event in Vegas this December.

Actually—and, yes, I’m getting a little far afield now—I don’t think the PBR has been particularly good for rodeo. The PBR fetishizes its single event, bull riding, at the expense of the seven other cool rodeo events. (Random “fun” fact: Steer wrestling, a/k/a bulldogging, is my favorite rodeo event.) It may be good for bull riding, but I don’t think it’s good for rodeo.

I also just don’t think all that bull riding provides particularly good spectating. I probably haven’t mentioned this, but about 20 years ago, and for about 20 minutes, I did some sports writing. During that time, I covered a pre-PBR event that consisted solely of bull riding, and there just wasn’t enough variety to sustain my interest. It was a long night (actually two long nights), punctuated only the briefest of moments—seconds, literally—of excitement. I yearned for some variety.

You get variety at an actual rodeo. You get bareback and saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, team roping, calf roping (euphemistically known these days as “tie-down roping,” so you’ll forget a calf’s involved), barrel racing, and bull riding. (And maybe steer roping, too.) That’s a night of entertainment.

But, um, back to Rasmussen. He’s one of the premier rodeo clowns. In modern rodeo, that means he entertains the audience from the barrel (that only occasionally gets used to interfere with a grumpy bull). It’s the bullfighters who typically do more of the nasty business of getting between bulls and the cowboys who find themselves in the dirt.

Wiki Wednesday #26

During last week’s travels, I forgot to do the WW. Did you miss it? Hmm. Well, to catch up, you’re getting two doses today.

As always, I go to Wikipedia, click on “random article,” and report on the outcome.

Tradertalk

TraderTalk is the language used by the cultural group Traders in Tamora Pierce’s fantasy world Emlan [sic] (Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens ).

Huh? Gosh, I feel so out of it. Since the Wikipedia entry is so spare, this required some research to understand.

Tamora Pierce, it seems, is a fantasy author who set a couple of her series in Emelan (not Emlan, as the Wikipedia entry for TraderTalk indicates). Traders are apparently an unpopular race of, um, beings. TraderTalk, anyway, is their language. There are a few TraderTalk words in the entry (lugsha means artisan, for instance), but I don’t think you’ll learn very much from the list.

Perhaps Probably more interesting than any of this is the warning that a Wikipedia editor slapped (in May 2007) on the entry for TraderTalk:

The subject of this article may not satisfy the notability guideline or one of the following guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.

Basically, the “notability guideline” asks whether a Wikipedia entry is worthy of notice. With all due respect, I tend to think TraderTalk probably doesn’t merit the attention of even a comprehensive online encyclopedia.

But, hey, I’m not saying that Pierce (you can find her official website here) and her work—which is apparently for young readers—aren’t worthy of mention in Wikipedia. By itself, though, TraderTalk seems pretty darn obscure.

I’ve never heard of Pierce, but that doesn’t mean much. Does anyone out there follow her work?

The Ozarks

As my last post indicated, I’m back in Philly after spending the week with family. After flying into Oklahoma, I spent much of the week with my parents and sister in a condo in the Missouri Ozarks.

Does that sound bad? Well, it was definitely a little bit bad. I didn’t entirely enjoy chaperoning my elderly parents as they (and I!) attended my dad’s Navy reunion. For one thing, the reunion’s organizers tapped the nearby talent pool in Branson for several courses of uplifting, patriotic music. Now, I’m as patriotic as the next guy, probably more so, but how many Tributes to the States can a guy be expected to endure in a week? I sat through three. (There are only a couple of really good state songs, one of them being “Oklahoma!,” of course, and I heard it every time.) That’s at least two too many.

My Dad is a WWII veteran, and—as you can imagine—he and his shipmates are showing some age. Traveling each day on a tour bus with all those bad knees and walkers tested my patience at times. That said, most of the guys were pretty cool. I could pretty much imagine them as 18- and 19-year-olds on a ship in the Pacific. (And that was before my dad told a sexually explicit joke to all the guys and their wives and families on the bus.) I adopted a new family, too, a sweet vet from Oregon and his lady-friend, and I just generally played the good son. So it wasn’t all bad, and it was certainly nice to be able to spend some time with my parents and sister (who, unfairly, didn’t have to attend the reunion events with her brother).

It’s so beautiful in the Ozarks. When I was a kid, we used to spend some of our vacation time in the area (frequently at my sister’s condo). I loved Silver Dollar City, the area lakes, the country music (but only the good stuff), and the pine trees. In fact, I can imagine renting a cabin there for a vacation now. But, then, all the local entertainers feel like they have to pander to the most conservative, most religious elements in the audience. That’s how one guy ends up in three Tributes to the States in a week…. Ugh.

What the Ozarks need—actually, what Branson needs—is a Queer touch. It needs a little more “Harper Valley PTA” and fewer Lee Greenwood wannabes. It needs a little more upscale food and a little less, um, fudge and pecan logs. More galleries, fewer buildings shaped like the Titanic. More bed-and-breakfasts, fewer cheap motels. My people can help, I’m telling you.

And, for that matter, I’m sure there a lots of gay people in Branson already. Several of the entertainers who performed for my dad’s reunion, well, set off my gaydar. But Gay Branson is just too subterranean (in the closet?) to be palpable, it seems. If there were some organized gay tourism in Branson, some good things would follow. Unfortunately, until there’s a little bit more going for it as a gay vacation spot, the bland magic shows and bad flea markets are going to win.

Maybe I should start my own tour company…. Any investors out there?

Philadelphia Phillies 6, Washington Nationals 1

They did it.

For several years in a row, I’ve had tickets for the final game of the season. And I’ve sat through a string of cold, dreary, meaningless games. Today was different. The Phillies and the Mets were tied for first, and the game with the Nationals mattered.

I got to the ballpark in time to stand in an absurdly long line for crab fries before heading out to the outfield (I sat in Section 103, if you’re [inexplicably] keeping track). It was a gorgeous, more-like-summer-than-autumn day. In fact, in the late innings, as the sun found just the right place to get to me, I might’ve gotten too much sun on my face. The ballpark was packed, of course; it was a sea of red and white—and rally towels.

By the time I was in my seat, the Mets—whose game started 25 minutes before the Phillies’—were already way behind. The Phils took an early lead (thanks, primarily, to Jimmy Rollins, who got on base and then stole two bases), and they never trailed. As the game progressed, and especially after the Phillies took a 5-1 lead in the sixth, it started to sink in—with me and everyone else, it seemed—that the Phillies were going to win the Division. “Wow,” I kept hearing people say. And they were right. Wow.

It was an amazing season. The Phillies had a dreadful April, but they recovered and hung tough. During most of the season, I figured the Phillies would finish, inevitably, as they so often do, two or three games out of the Division lead. Indeed, at the beginning of September, the Mets were seemingly a sure-thing to win the NL East, leaving only a possible wild card for the Phillies. As everyone knows, though, the Phillies played like demons in September, and the Mets collapsed in spectacular fashion, becoming the first team to lose a seven-game lead with a mere 17 games to play.

When the game was over, fireworks accompanied the players’ on-field celebration. In the stands, there were high-fives aplenty and at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted cheering. I’ve never been a part of anything like it. Noisy, communal joy. Today’s game absolutely made up for all those dreary, end-of-the-season games.

Wow.

41

I’m celebrating my 41st birthday today. And I’m doing it from Oklahoma. Yup, yesterday, I poured myself into one train, then another, then an airplane, then another, to arrive at Tulsa International Airport to find my parents waiting for me. Unfortunately, there was still an hour’s drive to my parent’s house—and I was pretty much bushed by then. Traveling is hard work.

But I woke up this morning in my hometown, just a short distance from the hospital where my mom and I spent some fairly eventful time 41 years ago.

As much as I’ve become attached to Philly, and I have, I love being from Oklahoma. It’s a cool place. Really! The drive south from Tulsa yesterday evening was gorgeous. Miraculously, it’s still green here—it has apparently been a rainy late summer—and there was lots of baled hay and happy-looking cattle in fields. The accents sounded right, too. I moved to Philly in 1996, but I’m still taken by surprise sometimes by what words sound like. Here, they sound different, of course, and in a way that sounds right to me. When an Oklahoman struck up a conversation on the plane ride from Dallas, she sounded country, and—somehow or other—I relaxed.

And as much as I hate to say it, men might even be handsomer here. To my eye, anyway. I’ve spent significant chunks of my adult life in Philly, New Orleans, northwest Ohio, and Oklahoma. In each of those places, it seemed to me that the men were just built differently. There were lots of fit, tall, clean-shaven, muscular farm boys (and grown-up farm boys, too) in Ohio. In New Orleans, my 5’7″ frame seemed a lot more normal. And in Philly, men frequently have a more obviously, um, ethnic look than anywhere I’ve lived before. (When I first moved to Philly, I’d be completely puzzled when someone asked me about my background. “No, I’m not Italian,” I’d say, once they explained their question. “I’m not Polish. I’m not Irish. I’m from the South. We stopped being ethnic a long time ago.”)

In the other places I’ve lived, it has taken me awhile to adjust my taste in men to the local flavors. (Recently, for instance, I realized that I’m now truly into Philly guys. Of course, that could just be Middle Age talking.) In Oklahoma, though, the guys have always just generally looked good to me. Whether they’re country ranchers, or Tulsa businessmen, or the Muscogee man who sat near me at the airport yesterday, I’m interested. I guess that’s not all that surprising; Oklahoma’s where I developed my Queer Country™ aesthetic.

Gosh, that was quite a digression. Anyway, so I’m in Oklahoma…. I don’t expect much fuss to be made over my 41st birthday. That’s just not the way my parents roll. I used to wish they’d make a bigger fuss, but I know better than to expect it. I will see my sister today, though, and there’s a fair chance I might get some birthday cake from her.

I probably won’t do any blogging for two or three days, so don’t worry about me. My family and I and going to head off on a little adventure in the Ozarks. (I still can’t believe I’m doing it.) I imagine I’ll have lots to blog about when I get back.