Christmas

Well, it's Christmas Eve and I'm back here in the Northwest for a few days. I randomly bumped into Emily Tomita in an Olympia coffee shop yesterday, and catching up with an old Whitman friend made me feel all nostalgic. I miss the hell out of all of you and I want to know what's new with everyone. Merry Christmas to some, happy belated Hanukkah to others, and festivus cheers for the rest of you.

Two Friends

Well, well, boys and girls, it appears as though Todd (for all of this girlfriend talk) has been spending a lot of time drinking in front of a computer monitor.

That is a recipe for a computer full of viruses.

I wanted to take this opportunity to announce the opening of the micro-est of microbreweries:

Two Friends Brewery was started in 2009 by one person in his now-estranged roommates' closet. In early-November of 2009, the entire brewing operation was moved from that closet to a communal closet because someone wanted to live in the (now-defunct) brewery.
With the change of scenery, Two Friends brewmaster released his first ever beer-that-doesn't-suck.

"Big, Sloppy Belgian" is a classic Belgian strong ale: a malt-forward dark ale with a pleasant sweetness and notes of licorice and darker fruits is shaded by an eggshell-white head and contains enough alcohol to lower the inhibitions of even the most guarded 18-year-old.

BSB is only available on-tap at Adam, Mike and Kevin's apartment. (You will have to move the cookbooks if you want to pour yourself a glass.)

Friend-of-the-brewery and artist-in-non-residence, Haas, is mocking up the brewery's logo. Merchandise (including t-shirts, full-zip hoodies, glassware and personalized autographed 8x10 glossies) are available by mail-order.

Please etch the item you would like and your size (if clothing) and gender/measurements (if glossies) on the underside of a LG 55-inch 1080p Backlit LCD HDTV and send to Seattle, WA. Please include $5.75 for shipping and handling.

Two Friends will be having monthly releases of its new line of product, including seasonals. Look forward to our upcoming signature Pale Ale "Knapped in the Closet: An American Ale-gory" and our "Tap It, Don't Whack It" Chocolate-Orange Porter.

Tastings will be held every night that it gets dark before 4 pm in front of the brewmaster's virus-infected computer.

Friends-of-the-brewery are always welcome to visit. Fun is mandatory; clothing, optional.

Winter Seasonals and a pleasant surprise.

So, I know I haven't had to say to much about beer in the last 6 months, but I had several occurances last night that I feel obligated to report:

First, Jubelale 2009 is back and better than ever. I'm predicted that this will be the Winter Ale of the year. It's much smoother and not nearly as offensive as it's predecessors. That is, you'll actually want to drink more than one of these at a time. It kind of has a hint of the Snow Plow of yore in it as well. Highly Recommended.


Second, the world of beer is changing before our eyes: Moose Drool and Fat Tire now comes in cans, Budweiser makes a Hefe, and it seems harder and harder to find legitimate "Microbrews."

Good beer in cans, to me, is a good thing. Now I don't have to drink Cole Smead's piss when I'm camping or hiking. Cans around going to make the hung-over pack out much easier. They're also easier to recycle. As Indy Z put it, "Victory!"

I know we all scoff at Bud's attempts to appeal to a market with a finer pallet, but what if they make something that actually tastes good? Given, it's unlikely, but that would really fuck with my beerality if it happened.

Lastly, it seems like the growing microbrew industry is it's own worst enemy. How can Widmer, Belgium, Pyramid, and Alaskan still qualify as microbrews when they produce millions of gallons a year? My only hope is that they don't sacrifice quality for market share as they grow from a nationwide into a global product. Thoughts?

Well, I suppose my semiannual update is slightly overdue. It’s winter here. Again.

The summer blazed by with my brother’s weddings in China and Oregon. Fairbanks enjoyed one of the driest, hottest summer’s on record. We even broke 90 for a day in July. Schmidt made a brief return to the frontier and had enough time to slay a couple dozen salmon and check out my new house. That’s right, I moved again. I counted the other night and I think this is the 13th time I’ve moved in 5 years. Fuck, this is getting old.

Anyway, the new place is awesome and even has running water, which I reckon means that I’ve moved in the early 20th century. I still have an outhouse, but I’m not complaining. I’d rather not deal with a sewage leak in the house at -40F. There are photos on Facebook if you want to get a better look.

I recently had an old friend, Rachel, visit me in Fairbanks. She was on her way to Dutch Harbor to work on the latest season of Deadliest Catch. She’s a real special gal that I met with studying in St. Andrews. We hadn’t seen each other in over two years so it was great to reconnect. I’ll be spending a week visiting her in LA over New Years. Sorry, Eli, this means you missed your window and I’m off the market again. I hope you guys get to meet her some day. If anyone else is in LA area the 31st through the 9th of January, let me know.

As for beer news, I’m still waiting for most of the winter seasonals to arrive. It seems like it’s taking long this years, doesn’t it? I’m more concerned about Powderhound and Jubilale returning than I am about getting my H1N1 vaccine.

I did go to a local Oktoberfest about two months ago and had some really tasty beer and grub. You know what goes better with an Oktoberfest beer better than anything? A scotch egg is what. It’s a hard-boiled egg coated with a sausage/breading mixture and deep-fried… on a stick. A gut bomb for sure, but Drunkard McSloppy is a huge fan.

Coming up to present, I just spent last weekend in Hawai’i for the 3-day Hopu ultimate coed tournament.

I’ve decided that arranging my vacations around Frisbee tournaments is a stellar way to travel. Three days of lodging, food, beer, and fun in paradise all covered for about a $100 fee. That’s hard to beat. And it’s not like any of it was skimped. We had Indian, Thai, and Hawaiian food catered for us and the beer never stopped. If you ever get a chance to get something from the Big Aloha Brewing Company, DRINK IT. DRINK IT ALL. Forget about Kona Brewing, Big Aloha is to Kona as Lacht Neppur in Waitsburg is to Widmer. This is an annual tournament, so if any of you are interested, we should do it next year, maybe hop on a spirit team, and stay longer than just the weekend. There were a couple of Whitties (Matt Stenovec and Molly Smith) down there already, so maybe we could put together an alumni team?

Now I’m settling in for another long Winter. I’ll be stirring in my den around April. Be thinking about coming up next Summer. I may be moving on next Fall…

I miss all of you . . .

Call It Stout, Though It Isn't

I'm glad such a venerable publication as the NYT shares my interest in both beer and assuring no misunderstood term remains so (misunderstood, that is). I'm also glad that the author has a "go-to midday brew."

And I'm most glad of all that I have only 26 days left in San Diego until I get to go home and mooch off my parents for the nearly two-month long Hanukah/Christmas/Birthday/New Year's season (because, let's be honest, now that we're on our own, we all know that paying rent really, really sucks the hairy root).

A Tribute to Dos Equis, the Most Inoffensive Beer

Dos Equis goes with everything. Dos Equis neither adds nor subtracts from any experience above and beyond its status as cold, wet, and laced with alcohol. It will quench your thirst. It will cool your brow. And it will get you drunk. Beyond this, it simply tastes like beer. Completely indifferent beer.

You may think I'm trying to bash Dos Equis, but this is far from the truth. Dos Equis should be your go-to beer for nearly every occasion. Here's why: if your goal is to get drunk, there are beers for that. They come in cans. We all know them. Every single one is at least mildly offensive to the taste buds in some way. You're not drinking a Key Ice with dinner, is what I'm saying. Only if your food is deep fried or slathered in BBQ sauce or both are these beers acceptable compliments to your meal.

At the same time, if you're trying to drink some fine-ass beer, there's a whole world of microbrews, and the Deschutes and New Belgiums of the world are forever coming out with new tasty treats. And old ones. I just picked up a Biere de Mars and I'm going to drink it in a sensory deprivation chamber because that shit tastes GOOD.

But both ends of the extreme are few and far between in our post-college lives. The endless days of Keystone Light are behind us (right?) and we're not so grown up we can both afford and are pretentious enough to drone on about microbrews all the time.

So, for the 90% of the time when you want a beer that doesn't complicate your life, try Dos Equis. Just drink that shit all the time. But not really all the time because then you'd be an alcoholic. But drink it a lot.

Dos Equis: It goes down your throat

Squick

UPDATE BELOW

So I take the bus to work every day, and I've come to recognize the four or five drivers who man the route during the week. There's the tiny Armenian lady who has some kind of rhythm-related mental disorder, because she both accelerates and brakes in these tiny, rhythmic tap-tap-taps. There's the overweight black guy who thrusts out his hand like he's warding off vampires if you attempt to board before someone gets off. And then there's the completely generic looking 75 year old man who calls out every stop in his best train conductor voice. It's this man that I now turn to, because today he did something that, for lack of a better phrase, gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies.

For some reason that I can't figure out most people interpret proximity and repetition as a license to talk to me. This guy has started making inane comments to me as I get on and off the bus every day. "Did you order this heat?" he'll say, waving his hand vaguely at the outside world as I swipe my bus pass. "Yes, and I got them to throw in a tornado and three lightning bolts. Where do you live again?" I fail to say as I mumble something incoherent and walk to my seat. "Hey, didn't see you last Thursday!" he'll remark. "Yes," I again fail to say, not shooting him an off-kilter grin, "I was busy burying hookers in shallow graves."

Anyway. Today, he apparently upgraded me in his mind from Acquaintance to Close Personal Friend, because today as I was getting off the bus, he said - and I quote - "One of these days, I'm going to give you a surprise."

This is one of the creepier things an old man can say to you, I would argue. I must have stood there without moving or saying anything for a good four seconds, because he then apparently felt the need to add, "A good one." After a few more seconds of frozen silence, I said, quote, "'kay," and then got the fuck out of there.

So, here I sit, half-thinking that this guy is going to show up at my apartment with a chainsaw and a Buffalo Bill suit. I mean, the bus stop is right across from where I live.

UPDATE:

I found out what the surprise was. In a twist worthy of an M. Night Shyamalan movie, it turned out that what he wanted to give me was not a drink from his roofie-laced water bottle, but a $15 gift card to a local smoothie cafe. Seriously. A guy whose primary interaction with me consisted of watching me scan my bus pass and making banal comments about the weather gave me a $15 gift card. Why, you ask? Well, fuck you for thinking there needed to be a reason. If you don't think that I'm the kind of smooth-talking, charming, engaging, instantly likable person that you immediately want to shower with gifts, then you're a bad friend and you can go hang yourself.

No but seriously, I'll tell you the actual reason.

After profusely thanking him because I am a human being and not a robot, I asked him, "Why are you giving this to me?" Here's what he told me: about a month before this, he'd stopped me one day and made me pour out my cup of ice. For the past few weeks I'd been bringing a cup of ice to the bus stop because summer afternoons in Austin never dip below 100 degrees. I'd been taking ice onto the bus for weeks, but one day the driver stopped me and told me to pour it out. The rules had changed. No liquids on the bus. I helpfully and not at all sarcastically pointed out that ice was not a liquid. He thought about it for a second, and, unable to come up with a counter-argument, said, "It's in a cup." Further arguments on my part proved useless, as I had to admit that, yes, the ice was in a cup.

A month later, he gives me a $15 gift card and tells me that he felt sorry about having to enforce what he saw as an arbitrary and stupid rule. Ah, sweet victory. Still, $15 seemed a little much for a trival inconvenience. Putting myself in the bus driver's shoes, I probably would have felt $5 bad, not $15 bad. So I thought about it. Maybe it wasn't just that he felt bad for me, maybe it was that he felt a little bit of guilt.

That's when I realized what I'd been doing for a month. Every day I would still bring out a cup of ice to the bus stop. When I'd see the bus coming, I'd stand up. What was it that made the driver feel guilty? Not the stupid rule. Not the fact that he inconvenienced me. No, it was the expression on my face as, every day for a month, the bus would pull up to the bus stop, I would stand up, turn to the left, hold the cup out from my body, look at the bus driver through the windshield, and slowly, ever-so-slowly, turn the cup upside down and pour out my ice all over the ground.

I suggest two very different books, Indy:

1. The Little Prince

2. The Autobiography of Malcom X

I am extremely jealous that you get to read/listen to books all day. I thought this year "off" would afford me such luxury. Instead, here's how my 45 hours/week can be summed up:

Just now, a 4 year old came into the teacher's room and asked me for some "Sciticky."

"Excuse me? One more time."

"Scitickity."

"Hmm. I don't know if I have any of that...Let's see...Pencil, marker, umm color paper...nope. No stickity."

"Aahhh teeacheeer! Stickiiittyyy!"

"Oooh, right. Of course, scotch tape!"

I will be home in 2 weeks. Anyone in Seattle area should find me so we can toss back a few and chat.

Eli Does the Dominican . . .

But not like you're thinking (that would require way more flexibility than I possess, and also a set of uneven bars, a tarantula, and a rusty, old broadsword). Check out the other blog I'll be keeping for the next week-and-a-half as I travel to the Dominican Republic with SDSU Sports MBA program, attempting to open the Najayo-region for micro-credit operations: Eli Does the Dominican.

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer!

Help me

Right now, there is one little thing that transmutes work into a tolerable experience from one that would result in a hastily planned and executed suicide, and that is an iPod. It's the nature of my work that you can listen to headphones for 8 hours straight. It's also the nature of my work that it's so simple you don't have to think about it, not really at least, so you can pay attention to what you're listening to.

Since even I get stir-crazy sitting in a chair listening to music for 8 hours straight, I've started listening to audiobooks. With 40 hours a week you can burn through some serious material.

But I'm running out of ideas. I've put a serious dent in my "always meant to read it" list, and all that's left are those books that, while they're classics, don't look like they'd divert me, which is what I'm looking for. Anna Karenina might be one of the best books ever, but a lot of what it's famous for is the style, not the story, or so I understand. I don't know, though. If anyone has actually read Anna Karenina and wants to put in a good word, I'll listen.

So, please help me - what are your favorite books? What books capture you? What books won't you hear a word against? What books did you borrow for a class and then buy a copy of later because it was so incredibly good? I honestly don't care about the era, style, content....just give me a good story, a well-written work of fiction. Airport-fare or literary genius, as long as it spoke to you. Best-selling author or virtual unknown. Sci-Fi or dreary, Grapes of Wrath realism.

So leave a comment, or send me an e-mail if you're embarrassed that your favorite book ever isn't considered a literary masterpiece. I've read more books than anyone I know, and there are decent percentage of them that are obscure as fuck.

Also don't worry if what immediately pops into your head is something that everyone has read. Basically, what I'm trying to get across is that the only thing I care about is if you personally thought it was a great book.

I don't know about you guys, but there are some books for me that I like so much that they become intensely personal. I almost don't want to talk about them because of the severity of feeling I have for them. Two of those books for me are The Sun Also Rises and Sometimes a Great Notion. I'd recommend them to anyone, unconditionally. If you have a book like that, by all means let me know. You don't even have to give a reason.

So, please help me make going to work not grounds for suicide. Thanks.

-Indy Z

A Familiar Location/Brew

While scanning the NYT on-line I stumbled across this article: "Frugal Portland" (fake Portland, not real Portland)

It refers to some familiar brews (and gives the Widmer hef a seriously backhanded compliment--although I'm not sure what cru means), a few vaguely familiar places, and really, really makes me miss the Northwest. . .

Oh, and speaking of missing the Northwest, I don't know if you're all on the Whitman jobs list-serv, but for those of you who aren't, let me share an opening which came in today . . .

WHITMAN COLLEGE ADMISSION OFFICER

The Office of Admission seeks a motivated, imaginative individual to join our eighteen-person admission team as an Admission Officer. This is a full-time position beginning July 1, 2009.

General responsibilities for the position include traveling to high schools and college fairs, interviewing candidates for admission, preparing correspondence, reviewing applications for admission, and contacting secondary school personnel and alumni admission volunteers. This Admission Officer position will work with the Dean of Admission & Financial Aid and the Director of Admission on various recruitment programs in the Office of Admission.

The successful candidate will enjoy travel, be a team player, have effective public speaking skills, possess strong writing skills, be able and willing to work long hours and weekends, speak about and demonstrate a commitment to the value of a liberal arts education, and be comfortable working with a variety of people. Computer proficiency is required. A sense of humor is appreciated.

Qualifications: A bachelor’s degree from a selective liberal arts college and a valid driver’s license.

Application: Submit a letter of application, official college transcript, resume, names and telephone numbers of three references, and a 250 word statement on the value of a liberal arts education to the Human Resources Office, Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA 99362. Review of applications will begin mid-May and the position is open until filled. Candidates selected for an interview are asked to prepare a 20 minute persuasive oral presentation on Whitman College or their undergraduate institution.

Mary Luckstead | Administrative Assistant | Human Resources | 509-527-5172

Margaret Robison Ely
Career Center Administrative Assistant
Whitman College, Reid Campus Center
345 Boyer Avenue
Walla Walla, WA 99362
elymr@whitman.edu
Office: 509-527-5183
Fax: 509-527-5934

Anyone up for a little reliving the past?

I've joined the NRA

So it’s been a while since I’ve made my mark. I suppose my last post was shortly after the first dusting of snow. Well, six months later and I’m pleased to report I’ve survived the bitter cold and crippling depression and have emerged into the light of Spring as not much worse for wear. There is still a ton of snow on the ground, but we are enjoying nearly sixteen hours of daylight at this point.

So a couple of weeks ago my friend, Clyde took my ptarmigan hunting in the mountains north of Fairbanks. Clyde, as Loren would confirm, is quite a winner. Here’s a guy who has some really poor decision-making skills (as evidenced by the fact that he has to start his car by blowing into a breathilizer) but at the same time is willing to wake up at 6am, after three hours of sleep and still drunk, and drive 80 miles to trudge through waste deep snow to find small, white tundra-pigeons. Many of us would hit the snooze button and roll right back over to that dream about Jay Davidson in a squirrel suit selling balloons on an aircraft carrier. The short of this is, this kid would make a great TKE if he was ever able to get into college.
Anyway, we drove two hours up the Steese Hwy and hiked another hour up the slopes of McManus Mountain. (No joke TKE's. That’s what it’s called.) There I spotted my first ptarmigan sitting still in the snow. It should be mentioned here that ptarmigan have evolved their survival strategy around the assumption that you cannot see them. (This may have worked for Dr. Grant against the T-Rex, but the same is not true for the sharp eyes of the T-VO.) Therefore, they are very easy to get close to and even easier to shoot. My excitement overrided my sense of sportsmanship and I proceeded to literally blow the head off the first one with my 20 gauge. Feeling a little guilty, I decided I would let the next one take flight before I shot it. So after happening on the next little whiter-than-snow dot on the mountainside, I tramped right up to it, hoping it would spring up when I got too close. But the goddamn bird just sat there. After about a minute I kicked my snow shoe at it and frightened it into flight before taking it down. This wasn’t hunting, it was like playing Wack-A-Mole if the mole’s didn’t move.

The next day, I got an email from a friend of mine in Scotland who is a nature photographer and he sent me a link to a photo essay he’s doing on the threatened Scottish Highland Ptarmigan.
More at http://www.chrisjohnstonephotographic.co.uk/latest/ptarmigan/ptarmigan.html.

As if my conscience needed any more badgering. So, I decided the most appropriate response was to send him this photo:


I haven’t heard back from him.

Anyway, I’d like to end this my offering a new beer to the mix. Alaskan Brewing has just released Alaskan White, a new wheat ale. I don’t know if I’ve had an Alaskan beer that has been bad, and this new one certainly fails to disappoint. It’s smooth and full like a Munich weisbier with the refreshing citrus finish of Blue Moon. It goes great with a slice of orange or lemon and compliments a basket of fried halibut and chips marvelously. It’s a great take on a European beer with and an American microbrew twist. This is definitely going to be my Summer beer of choice.

I look forward to hearing more from the rest of you all. Chad, keep it up, your posts are great. And I’ll say this again at the risk of sounding lonely and desperate, any of you are welcome to come visit in Alaska. My cabin is open even if I’m not around. You’ve got a 4-1/2 month window.

Cheers,
Todd

An Unlikely GBN Moment

What up ya'll? Hope this post finds you all scurrying around industriously at your various places of work and study, or as the case might be, at your residence of unemployment. I, for one, am still gainfully employed, though for the past ever so long I have done nothing that could either be considered scurrying or industrious. This week I've done roughly one hour of work while getting paid for upwards of 32. I have, however, said the word "Hello!" to at least 987 Japanese kids, taken the requisite number of breathes to continue on this mortal coil, learned 40 some new vocabulary words, and read about 48% of a Haruki Murakami novel (I was recently gifted a kindle by my parents and so now things like page numbers have become utterly obsolete). THIS JOB IS SO EASY!!! I also drank a beer. Let me tell you about it.

Let me preface telling you about it by saying that if it weren't for an utterly random link between this beer I drank and one of our fellow GBN bloggers it would be a fully uninteresting story. It is, however, fairly illustrative of the dearth of Good Beer to be had in this country. Cutting to the chase. Last week we had a gathering, not unlike all those GBN's I never attended but heard vague details about, I imagine, of some English teachers in the city I work in. Bring some beer, bring yourself, come to my apartment, be quiet enough so that you don't wake my crotchety old neighbor who will call the police on us. That's me heavily paraphrasing my friend Jordan. So, I mosey my way on over to Jordan's place, stopping in at the supermarket next to his house on the way to pick up some beer. Generally the selection of beers anywhere in Japan is quite pitiful. You've got your Asahi, which is pretty much Budweiser, your Kirin, which floats somewhere between, well, no it's also Budweiser, and then you've got your Yebisu, the Emperor of Beers, but unfortunately, you got it right, it's just the King of Beers dressed like a Shogun. If you're lucky sometimes you can find Guiness. In a can.

This supermarket, however, has a couple beers that aren't made in Japan and so therefore aren't boring as fuck, so I stumble my way over to the beer aisle (I'm still pretty jet-lagged at this point and have been awake since probably 4 AM), head straight to the foreign section and select the most expensive thing I can find without looking at it. I'm still unfortunately pretty well brain-washed into thinking that more expensive is always better, and at around 600 yen (six bucks) for beer about 2/3 the size of your standard Deschutes product I'm expecting this shit to be ambrosial. I buy a tall boy of one of the Bud-clones to complete the package (yep, the total of 2 beers is a standard night out for me theseadays) and get over to Jordan's apartment.

I get there, and immediately locate a bottle opener with which to crack my prize purchase and savor the nectar within. A couple minutes of searching and I'm plopped down on the coach, breathing in the heady scent of my as of yet untasted, even unnamed beer. I look around at everybody else, drinking their gin and tonics, or their Sapporos, quickly looking past my friend Taylor, a beer guru who has good beer imported from America so he doesn't have to drink Kisutone Raito like the rest of us plebians, and finally come back to the beer in my hands, mentally patting myself on the back for going the extra mile and getting myself this treat. I think you know where this is going. Down the hatch and OH FUCK THIS IS GROSS! Shit, what the hell does this taste like? Skull Splitter? No, not that bad, but jesus christ it's a barley wine that's been stuffed with daisy petals and left in a some foppish flemish dude's perfumed basement to rot. I look down at the bottle and here is what I see.
ai


A beer with a picture of a medieval chick on it that claims to be a product of the flemish art of brewing. Rathwell, don't ever try to brew a flemish beer. They are doing something very wrong. Something strikes me about the bottle that I, in my airplane induced daze and god-knows-what-induced inability to be a discerning consumer, didn't look at before. Looking at the label closer....



Duchesse De Bourgogne. Good luck pronouncing that shit. But something tells me I shouldn't be so hasty with this label. Something is familiar... Maybe you guessed immediately, but I stared at it for about 10 minutes, my taxed brain going in and out of consciousness until a bell finally rang and this silly string of words snapped into sense. Duchesse De Bourgogne... Duchess of Burgoyne! Haha, how about that? What are the chances. Marnie, you've got yourself a flemish beer that I'm sure nobody in... Flames? Where the hell do Flemish things come from? Scandanavians, at any rate, sure don't drink it, but dummies in Japan will. Cheers, folks, hope everything is going well and the blessed combination of a burgeoning spring and the Mariners running away with the AL West (just knocked on wood) has got everybody on cloud nine.

First Annual Good Beer Festival, July 2009 Proposal:

Austin, Texas. July 3rd-5th (the 4th is the Saturday).

You are all, of course, welcome anytime. So if you had more time off you could come earlier or stay longer depending on your vacation time. Our apartment will be a little cramped, but I'm sure Indy Z would have no problem spooning with Schmidtle; I, as always, have no problem spooning with Woodsie. We have two couches. We have an inflatable mattress. We have sleeping bags and air pads.

We also have a rather significant dearth of really tasty beer in Texas (or, at least, tasty beer that is native to Texas)... maybe you could all bring some of your local fare with you.

Thoughts? Comments?

-Luke

I feel I have been somewhat derelict in my duties

As both the person who started this blog and its greatest advocate, I am ashamed to admit that I recently went over a month without checking it (despite the over-so-convenient RSS feed which [I believe] Luke added--thanks!). And believe me, when I did check the blog I was saddened to see that we went the entire month of February without any activity. Although this isn't such a horrible thing (after all, bears go into hibernation during the winter and they're super sweet--except the one that ate Timothy Treadwell . . . he's a fucker) I was thankful to see that Tamara had recently gotten bored and Chad had recently gotten existential (and entertaining . . . ?), and thus they felt the need to awaken the GBN blog from its six-week(ish) slumber.

But, anyway, enough with the meta-blogging crap. I'm here to check in. And, in the spirit of this blog, I am going to do it in a beer-related way. So, ladies and gentlemen, fellow GBN stalwarts, Indy Z, I present to you "Things That Have Happened to Me Since I Posted Last in Terms of the Beers I Have Been Drinking." The way I view this post progressing is that it will start with the shitty* things that have happened to me/beers I have been drinking, and progress to the better ones. But we'll see how that pans out; it is admittedly a shoddy conceit.

1) I'm Back in School and Classes Don't Suck . . . Too Hard (High Life Cans)

So, as some (all?) of you know, I'm back in school. In early January I started at the SDSU Sports Business MBA Program (which several of you should think about looking into *cough* Rathwell *cough*), and so far, so not terrible. I'm not necessarily enamored with all of my classmates (I don't think I've ever liked everyone in a room with more than five people in it), but there are some pretty sweet dudes. As far as classes go, I'm currently taking Statistics (which isn't too bad since it's the third time I've taken it), Sports and Society (which is the one soft science class and is taught by a total bro, Scott Tinley--who looks like a skinnier version, un-mustachioed version of the Busey character in "Point Break" and won Ironman Hawaii in '82 and '85), and Accounting (which pretty much makes me want to kill myself).

All things considered, though, it's not too bad. While many others are struggling to find jobs, or have moved back in with their parents, or have been found by their roommates with their pants around their ankles (if, for any reason, you haven't read this post, please go back and do so--especially the edit at the end), I'm back in college. It might not be Whitman, but at least it's not the real world. One might not quite be able to say I'm living the high life, but neither are people who drink Miller cans, either.

2) I Had a Pretty Sweet Weekend at Rugby 7s (Steinlager)

For those of you who don't know much about Rugby, most of the big events you might have heard of (6 Nations, Superleague, etc) are 15-on-15, the fastest-growing version of the game is 7-on-7 (called 7s), and the beer of choice at events of both types is Steinlager (which, while a bit watery, isn't half-bad). Rugby is making a push to get into the Olympics, and, because the Olympics is worried about becoming too bloated, its the Sevens version that is being considered.

One of the tournaments on the 7s world tour (called the IRB Sevens World Series) has been in San Diego the last few years, and since it has been here people in my program have been volunteering at it. So about a month ago I spent all weekend out at Petco Park(which is usually where the Padres play and is a fucking beautiful stadium)volunteering with the Rugby 7s media relations department, which mostly entailed just standing down on the field. So I got to spend the weekend watching world class athletes-slash-big, burly men run around in short shorts and tackle each other. I mean, it was 7s, not 15-on-15, so it was a little bit watered down but not too bad.

3) My Living Arrangement, While Not Ideal, Isn't Intolerable (PBR Cans)

I will admit to being a little bit worried about my liing arrangement before I moved in. I'm sub-letting a room in an apartment, which isn't too abnormal for someone my (our) age, but what is abnormal is that one of the two other bedrooms is occupied by an entire family: a husband, a wife, a toddler, and a baby. And by baby I mean baby: D'Honi (which I'm sure I spelled wrong) was born about four days after I moved in, and is now about 9 weeks old.

Also a cause for worry was that I'm living in one of the sketchiest parts of San Diego: City Heights. As you would see if you read that Wiki (which I'm sure none of you will do), the average income of a household in City Heights clocks in at $19,393**--pretty much right at the poverty line--and, although things have gotten slightly better since then, in 1993 three teenagers were killed in a gang fight at Hoover High School (a half-mile away from me) which prompted the City Heights Business Improvement Association to erect billboards that reading "Welcome to City Heights, San Diego's Crime Capital. Won't Anybody Help?" to attract the officials' attention.

The living arrangement, though, has turned out to be okay. Home is mostly where I eat, sleep, and do a bit of studying, and occasionally (very occasionally), when I get home from the library or the gym at 10:30 or 11 at night there's no one in the living room and I can watch some SportsCenter (or Baseball Tonight--fuck yes I love the Spring) and or the Daily Show while I make (what is as likely as not some ramen noodle soup for) my dinner. So it's not quite home (which PBR bottles would be), and, in fact, it's not even that close to home by any reasonable standard, but it does what I need it to do. So my tolerable living arrangement is PBR cans.

4) My Dad is Going to Visit (Pyramid Apricot)

I guess this isn't as much something that has happened to me as it is something that is going to happen from this Thursday to next Tuesday***, but, it's my list so it makes the cut. I'll definitely be happy to see him, but I'm not necessarily ecstatic about the logistics of the arrangement: he's not staying at a hotel but instead with me. This means that one of us will be sleeping on my floor, and I'll give anyone 20-to-1 odds if they're willing to bet that it'll be my Dad.

Still, I'll be able to do some of the things that I wouldn't do on my own because they're too expensive (for thirty-five bucks a pop the zoo had beter kick ass as much as everyone says it does), he's bringing my golf clubs, and he is my Dad, so I'm excited to see him. I don't know what this has to do with Pyramid Apricot, except for the fact that my dad wears bow ties which is kind of fruity.

5) Doing an Internship with USA Canoe/Kayak at the Olympic Training Center (St. Pauli Girl)

It's probably going to be a bit of a stretch to relate my internship to St. Pauli (there are no lovely, blond German ladies there--although there have been some burly, male Czech paddlers doing a camp there for the last few weeks), but since the other posts were tenuously tied (at best!) to their accompanying beers, I won't let these difficulties stop me.

USA Canoe/Kayak, while based in North Carolina, has its primary training center at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. It is also a grossly understaffed organization (as many Olympic sports NGBs are, especially ones that haven't won any medals recently), and the head coach, Nathan Luce(who is Canadian, and thus awesome****), came into the program and was looking for help over the next few months organizing their World Team Trials and thier European World Cup trip, and I jumped at the chance.

So now I spend most Fridays out at the OTC, which is basically an elite athlete summer camp, and thus basically heaven for me. I've got a little office next to Nathan's down by the lake from which I can secretly gawk at all the Czechs massive pecs as they carry their boats in (and also get a little bit of work done). And, to top it all off (I would say best of all, but, as we all know, being around Olympians and aspiring Olympians all day is prety much a wet dream of mine come true), I get lunch in the dining hall every day when I'm out there. It's similar to the Whitman dining hall, if the Whitman dining hall were 3 notches better, had twice as many choices, and had 5 TVs in it (and, also, an absurd amount of nutritional information posted everywhere instead of table-toppers, which is the one down-side--I always kind of like those table-toppers).

So, yeah, this post has nothing to do with the affilliated beer except for the fact that I like both my internship and St. Pauli Girl. So it's got that going for it, which is nice . . .

6) GBN California Chapter Reunions (PBR Bottles)

Last, and certainly not least, I would like to inform you all that the California Chapter of the GBN Society***** (consisting of me, Marnie, and Carolina) has had several reunions--either two or three, I'm not really sure since I was pretty hammered most of the time they were going on. These reunions, like PBR bottles, were fucking awesome (the only problem with these reunions was how hard it was to find PBR bottles to drink at them--apparently they barely exist in SoCal).

The reason these reunions happened was that Carolina's work, which is usually in the Bay Area, shipped her off to Los Angeles three times over four weeks in late January and February. The sites of these reunions were Marnie's house (where Carolina stayed a few times and I stayed once), Merryl Farrar's house (where Carolina and I stayed many times, but Marnie, perhaps scared that one of the many blacked out people would in some way do her bodily harm, never stayed), and the Westwood Brewery (which we went to in honor of the GBN craft brewery tradition only to find out that it is, in fact, no longer a brewery).

Serendipitously, one of these reunions fell over Super Bowl Sunday, during which time much meat/veggie equivalent was eaten, much beer was drunk, much football was watched, and much Bruce Springsteen halftime show was enjoyed. A good time was had by all involved. Just like every time I drink anywhere from one to seventeen PBR bottles (although, now that I think about it, that's probably only a good time for me and is likely a horrible time for anyone around me).

Okay, that got long, and, frankly, kind of trailed off at the end there. Sorry about that. Time for some of you folks we haven't heard from to let us know what you're up to. Are you still lost in the wilderness, Todd? Did you get into UC-Davis, Marnie? Are you alive, Jay/Bhattface? Are you still tall, Schmidt? I need answers, dammit!

Be well, my friends.

*Shitty, is of course a relative term--nothing really terrible has happened to me since I posted last, and, as long as it gets you drunk and doesn't make you go blind, there's no such thing as a shitty beer.
**And as we all know, I, like most Whitman kids, am scared of poor people.
***The reason he's coming on these dates is because I have an extra long weekend this upcoming weekend. We usually have classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but because we're all dumb jocks and the NCAA tournament starts on Thursday our program head moved our Thursday class to an open time-slot on Wednesday so we could fully enjoy one of the best sports weekends of the year. In order to take full advantage, some of my classmates are driving to Vegas Wednesday night.
****And also worth only $.75 on the US dollar

Ask and You Shall Receive

Something really boring! Who wants to read a 10 page essay I wrote about the JET Program!!! Tamara, I guess it'll be an indicator of how just how dull geology grad-school is if you jumped at that. But, yeah, I wrote this for an essay contest that I'm hoping nobody else submits to because the grand prize is a cool 10,000 yen and I don't have much confidence in a victory that involves competition. I tried to send this to Marnie but for some reason her computer won't download my email attachments, so she suggested I post it to my blog (www.mylinktothewesternworld.blogspot.com) but I figured that this blog has seen nothing but Luke and Indy's Texan jackassery for too long. So here it is, all 2,999 words of it (leave it to me to push a word limit to... well, to the limit). Also, happy birthday to me.

It’s approaching 3:00 and I can’t do it anymore, so I gently but decisively snap the cover of my textbook shut and try to reclaim my wits from the cracks and crevices between verb conjugations and vocabulary words into which they’ve fallen over the past few hours. Today is a test day, which, as any JET participant past or present would tell you, means that I have absolutely nothing to do, so since roughly 10:30 I’ve been doing my best to stay stuck to the slippery shapes of kanji and the real-world stuff they signify, but it’s been five hours and I can feel the slashes and swoops getting slick, so there’s no use trying to hold on anymore. Studying isn’t going to do me any more good today.

Looking up from my closed book, the ambient sights and sounds I’ve been trying to muffle for the past four or five hours resolve into the still mostly incoherent hustle and bustle of the teachers’ room I inhabit a corner of. Closing my textbook for the day is a simultaneously exultant and rueful act; there is nothing more satisfying than marking out another chapter of vocabulary words and grammar points like previously undiscovered intellectual topography on an adventurer’s chart; but, at the same time, refocusing my attention upon the scattered eddies of conversation in the teachers’ room immediately takes up all notions of progress and sweeps them out to sea. Sometimes it seems like I don’t understand anything. Nine years of this and the map still seems mostly blank. This language is a vast territory of signs and symbols and sentiment that can’t be traversed in a day. Or even a decade.

But then again, what language can be? Certainly not English. It’s 3:20, the tests are finished, and students have started to trickle into the teachers’ room to collect the various keys, rosters, and file folders necessary for the extra-curricular activities that are in turn a pretty necessary part of the lives of Japanese middle school students. My Japanese middle school students. My students. As a twenty-two year old kid fresh out of college I still wonder what right I have to be pretending to teach anybody anything, let alone something as trackless and monolithic as a foreign language, but nevertheless, four times a week I stand alone in front of a room full of these very same kids now running off to put on kendo skirts or basketball shoes and do my best.

Hamamatsu city in Shizuoka Prefecture offers something of a unique experience to its resident JETs in that in addition to the standard Team-Teaching classes most JETs participate in, we are also asked to teach a number of so-called “English Conversation” classes on our own. To put it simply, Team Teaching pairs a main Japanese Teacher of English (JTE, not to be confused with JET) together with a native English speaking ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) who occupies what is very much a supporting role in the classroom. Some teachers are better at using their ALTs than others, but it seems that I, at least, often end up standing silently in a corner like a neglected doll, waiting lifelessly and listlessly to be animated by my Japanese teacher’s signal to read some lines from a textbook. In a Team Teaching class I’m not much more than an expensive piece of talking furniture standing plugged into the wall; sometimes I certainly feel like I have as much impact on the kids as an American-themed mood lamp. However, “English Conversation,” or, “Eikaiwa,” as it is commonly referred to, doesn’t allow me the excuse to fall into such a passive position, because an “Eikaiwa” class is entirely mine, and standing silent in the corner would most likely end with me perishing at the hands of an angry mob of restless 14 year-olds, wielding erasers instead of stones but expressing their discontent just as effectively. Or fired. Teachers are generally paid to teach, not to just stand there.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I am “teaching English,” but that’s a bit of a disingenuous and misleading statement that I wish to clarify. I teach “English Conversation,” which is an entirely different matter. I can’t teach grammar, I don’t give tests, I’m not responsible for or even really capable of imparting new knowledge to my students about the complex, contradictory organizational system that is the English language. However, that’s not really a JET’s job. It is a JET’s job to stand outside the lifeless organizational system as living, breathing, human proof that there is more to English than lines in a textbook or chalk on a board. I study Japanese like a demon not simply because I like the shapes kanji and verb conjugations make, but because the language is my link to the thriving, energetic world I find myself immersed in every day; Japanese students studying English in Japan don’t have that same incentive, so, in reality, it is a JET’s only job to be him or herself and make studying English relevant. There is no better place for me to fulfill this role than in my own “Eikaiwa” classroom.

It has taken me a very long time to come to that conclusion, however. Turning Eikaiwa into what I think it is supposed to be has been a long process in many phases, characterized by misconceptions, constant struggles, rare triumphs, and countless failures, but, even though naivety had more to do with it than anything else, my first impression was the right one. I was excited. We were told about Eikaiwa classes shortly after getting off the train from our orientation in Tokyo, over a month before we would actually teach our first one, and to my boggled brain, preoccupied with the sights and sounds of a new life in a new country and entirely innocent of the actualities of a class of my own, it sounded perfect. What better way to promote foreign language learning and internationalization than at the head of a class? I imagined rows of enrapt children listening to my lectures about the regional diversity in America, rows of inquisitive children puzzling over the strange, cultural objects I had packed into my suitcases like relics from the American temple, and rows of energetic children conversing with me about… well, I didn’t know exactly, something in English. The details didn’t matter then; it was August, my first lesson was a month away, and I basked in the anticipation of being a real teacher with a real class.

To say nothing of what I was going to do with that real class. It’s 3:30, and leaning back in my chair, my hands behind my head, feet pretty much up on my desk, I recall those distant weeks in August. They started out in a similar sense of repose, but as the clock ticked and the first day of school began approaching, the tension started mounting. In trying to plan my first lesson, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. What do my kids already know? What should I teach? How should I teach it? Do I play games? Flashcards? Music? Are these kids visual, tactile, or olfactory learners? Wait, what? Olfactory? I’m not qualified for this. With every day my excitement for Eikaiwa lessons began to teeter, and then, as my mental waste-basket began to fill with discarded lesson plans, tipped into a deep dark chasm of panic and fear. On the fourth of September I walked into my school with a lesson plan clutched in my sweaty palms, but little hope of executing it effectively.

My first lesson was an unmitigated disaster. It was excruciating. It was one of the sorriest excuses for a “teaching performance” the world has ever seen. I… don’t remember what it was about. Some sort of self-introduction. In truth, all I really remember are shattered expectations and the sense of a long road ahead. My opinions were met with blank stares, my pictures with disregard, and my attempts at English Conversation with mute incomprehension. When I was daydreaming about discoursing on the differences in mentality between people from the Pacific Northwest and people from Texas I was overlooking something crucial; my students are 14 years old and couldn’t care less. When I was envisioning opening said students’ eyes to the mysteries of American culture, I was forgetting something obvious; McDonald’s, IPods, and baseball are already doing pretty well for themselves over here. However, when I was anticipating classes brimming over with fluid English conversation, I guess I just wasn’t thinking at all. As of my first lesson, my students had only been studying English for about 18 months, and I, of all people, should know that language is a vast territory of signs and symbols and sentiment that could never be traversed in such a short amount of time. As my JTE put it, my students were really “just babies” in their English ability, and I was going to have to radically redefine my methods in order to accommodate that fact.

That adjustment was hard to make, and after that first day my illusions for Eikaiwa gave way to a surprisingly harsh reality. Actually teaching these kids turned out to be a lot more difficult than dreaming about it. My lessons weren’t coherent, or they weren’t useful, or they weren’t fun, and I started to hate them because of it. My visions of walking in and teaching Faulkner were (understandably) gone, but there were other hang-ups, too. As I’m sure is the case with most JETs, giggling followed me through the hallways, silence accompanied me in the teacher’s room, and it seemed like Otherness and a sense of irrelevancy hung around me everywhere. In class, in the halls, in the teachers’ room, I was a free radical floating through the veins of an otherwise integrated body, fully out of place and unable to attach myself to anything. For the first time in my life I felt marginalized by my Americanness, by my English-speakingness, and as I passed lonely day after lonely day, my students ignoring me in class because they couldn’t understand me, my teachers ignoring me in the teacher’s room because they had no reason to talk to me, and everybody giving me a wide berth because they didn’t know how to interact with a 22 year-old quasi-teacher from Seattle who speaks only enough Japanese to make conversations awkward instead of non-existent, I began to worry that I was never going to be able to fulfill my only role as a JET. How can you be a living, breathing, human representative of a foreign country if nobody treats you like a living, breathing human-being? It’s nobody’s fault, but as a JET your most apparent characteristic is your foreignness; as such, your biggest asset also becomes your greatest obstacle. I wanted more out of my relationships with my students than the giddy waves, cautious “hallo’s,” nervous squeaks, and hasty pounding of foot-falls down the hallways that I was getting over my first few months, but in order for that to happen, my kids would first have to stop thinking of me as that strange gaijin roaming the halls of their school, and start thinking of me as their teacher, Chad.
Even though Eikaiwa was my best way to achieve that paradigm shift, change was slow in coming. In my students’ attitudes, yes, but more importantly in my own teaching methods. 3:50 and I find myself rooting around in my desk for no particular reason except maybe in hopes that the shuffle of papers will drown out the tick of the clock, and a single sheet covered in my scribbling catches my eye. Curious, I pull it out and scan the first few words at the top. “I hate lesson planning.” Uh oh. Reading further down, I feel the frustrated ramblings of a teacher with no more ideas like the inexorable pull of a black hole tugging me into the past, and all of a sudden it’s no longer almost closing time and I’m standing in front of a class of rowdy second-years, a sheet of simple questions clasped in my fists, a meaningless roar of Japanese in my ears, and a headache blooming in my brain. Shaking my head to clear out the ringing, I raise my voice to be heard over the din, and yell, “ Ok! Now, the next question! What… food….do…. you like?” The kids’ desks are arranged into rows and I’m trying to get them to play a relay game as a warm up; answer my question correctly, and you can pass your flag to the person behind you. First team to make it to the end of their row wins. Sounds simple enough. Looking out over the sea of inattentive faces, however, it’s clear that I didn’t communicate myself as well as I’d thought. They don’t really seem to get it, and I can’t help but mistake incomprehension for resistance; this class is supposed to be about working together, but, as I suppose teachers across all disciplines sometimes do, I feel like I have to battle for every answer I get. After a few awkward seconds of waiting for something to happen, one of my kids mercifully, if tentatively, raises her flag, and I immediately call on her. “Sushi.” She passes her flag, and as I scan my sheet for the next question (“what sport do you play?”) something in my brain pops and I can feel myself giving in to the existential crisis I’ve been holding off since early September. Is this all there is? Is this really what it all amounts to? Being pointed and laughed at in the hallways? Endlessly asking stupid, vapid questions that nobody listens to anyway? When’s your birthday? What color do you like? What fruit do you like? What subject do you like? Is this what they meant by internationalization, by foreign language education? Is this all I’m here to be doing? May 5th, blue, strawberries, recess, where’s the transcendent moment of cultural contact, where’s the communicating across borders, where’s the feeling that I’m anything more to these kids than a fleshy tape-recorder emitting a bunch of crazy things that somebody else is forcing them to listen to? Screw cultural contact, where’s the flesh and blood, where’s the human contact in this mechanical exchange of proscribed phrases?

Where was any of that? It may have been my fault for not approaching them correctly, but in the depths of winter, in the middle of classes like that, I guess I didn’t feel like the Eikaiwa or JET Programs were worth much at all.

But they are. I wish I had a moment to call out of my memory like a thunderbolt from the sky that would punctuate that point with a hail of sparks and a sonic boom, but the shift from Eikaiwa as a waste of time to Eikaiwa as the best use of it has been accompanied by nothing so dramatic. All I have are faces and names: Shiori, Shunya, Shuhei; Ryo, Ryouji, Ruri; Hirokazu, Hirofumi, Hiroyuki, Hina. These names and dozens more summon up smiles and something that seems like communicating. Something that feels like that authentic moment of human connection I was so craving while officiating robotic row relays in the wintertime. Ultimately, I’m left with the realization that acclimation is slow to come in the most comfortable of situations, and being cast in front of a group of teenagers who can’t speak your language isn’t comfortable at all. But acclimation comes, and as I’ve gotten accustomed to the mob of children I find in front of me on an almost daily basis, their numbers have seemed to dwindle, their shadows have shrunk in the lights of the florescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling, and they look a lot less like enemy hostiles and a lot more like regular old kids. Kids with personalities, kids with quirks, kids with hearts; weird kids, cool kids, hopelessly shy kids, brilliant kids, struggling kids, but all kids just the same. I don’t know what’s changed except for the date on the calendar, but somehow it is kids I now see staring back at me in class instead of unresponsive, kid-shaped automatons. I see life in them now where there’s never been any, light in eyes that are usually glazed-over, and I can’t overstate the significance of that change. My teaching methods are still by no means perfect, but I can work with kids; I can’t with robots.

I wonder if this warming trend isn’t indicative of something else. Maybe they are starting to see me as Chad, instead of that American guy who tries to teach them English. Maybe after eight months together my nationality has been subsumed by my humanity, and they just see me as that guy who tries to teach them English. It’s 4:10 and as I gather my things to leave, I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t the heart of internationalization; not necessarily effacing cultural identities, but seeing through the local trappings that make us citizens of a nation and seeing into the universal traits that make us co-residents of a globe. Are we there yet? Have I shattered misconceptions and ethnocentrisms and all sorts of other paradigms on the way to turning Maruzuka Junior High into cultural enlightenment on Earth? Ha, eight months and I’ve hardly had a moment to breathe, let alone blow down that house of bricks. I know I’ll never have a conversation with my kids that isn’t a little bit jerky, awkward, or grammatically suspect, but even if English is a vast territory that I’ll never see them cross, the road to not looking at each other as gaijin is short, and as long we can travel it hand in hand, as it were, one Eikaiwa lesson at a time, it’s one we can see the end of together.


If you're still reading this, god bless you.

Entertain me

I sit in a cubicle all day thinking about magma and lava and eruptions. Somebody write something and give me something else to think about! I desperately need some sort of GBN distraction.

Non Sequitur

Usually, the audio files I transcribe make sense to me. The moderator is representing some company, and they're developing a new product: a new toothbrush, a new drug, a new car - whatever. The moderator asks probing questions designed to get honest opinions about various aspects of the product with as little bias as possible. Pretty simple. And since I have to listen to the audio file in order to type it, I can't help but analyze it as I go, trying to figure out what each question is really designed to do.

If I'm very, very lucky, I can get myself into a mental state where I'm not actively listening to what I'm hearing, yet am still able to type it in a kind of dazed state as my wind wanders. Of course, since I'm typing it and hearing it, sometimes I'll get jolted back into reality when I miss something or don't understand something.

Recently, I was typing a long, long file (3 hours, which is about 10 hours of work), and I was cruising, about an hour through, really in the zone, just typing with nary a care in the world. From what I'd gathered, the moderator, a woman with a thick German accent, was talking to 3 men about their hair, or lack thereof. Apparently all three of these guys were balding. They talked for an hour about going bald, how it felt to lose hair, how they approached their stylists, and how they felt about approaching their stylists. It was pretty gay. But thankfully I was in the zone, not really listening. Then something happened - it was not just a shock, it was a lightning bolt, as I was jarred back to reality and went, "Wait - what? Did I just hear that?" Here is what the moderator said, typed verbatim, and when you read it, hear it in your mind being spoken by a woman with a thick eastern European accent:

Moderator: OK, guys, let’s take a trip to the board back there. We’re going to actually leave this galaxy. We are going into the hair loss galaxy, and while we’re there we’re going to visit 4 planets. On the first planet, we’re going to visit the anti-thinning planet. The anti-thinning planet in the hair loss galaxy. You’ve just landed: get off your space shuttle, or whatever we’re traveling in, and we step on this planet, what do we see?

As I rewound the tape, making sure I'd heard correctly, my mind went through this rapid-fire series of thoughts: Did I just hear that? OK, I did. I feel stupid even typing this. I'm worried I might actually get dumber if I type this. Holy shit - serious people with actual jobs wrote this question. People in charge of things at a major company. Fuck. Somebody at this company thought this was a good idea, and other people agreed. There were probably memos. Holy shit, people are fucking idiots. I hate people. I hate people, so, so much.

But wait, it gets even better. The three guys don't even blink. They just jump right in, albeit with fairly predictable answers:

Respondent 1: People with a lot of hair.

HAHA! ZING! Got 'em. Can't argue with that! On the anti-thinning planet in the Hair Loss Galaxy, there will be PEOPLE WITH LOTS OF HAIR. Oh, Respondent 1, you clever, clever man. Next, the moderator starts probing about the planet. What's it like there? What colors do you see? What do people do there? There's a lot of hair stylists there, says one of the guys. Then we get this exchange:

Moderator: Any other professions that we observe on planet anti-thinning?

Respondent 2: Models.

Moderator: Hair models?

Respondent 2: No, just models.

Moderator: What are they doing there?

Respondent 2: Modeling.

Moderator: And why, why are they on this planet?

Respondent 2: They’re tanning.

Moderator: And just to be sure I understand why they’re models there –

Respondent 2: Because they have beautiful hair.

Respondent 3: They could have an ugly face, but they have beautiful hair.

What the fuck kind of inane bullshit is this? Again, I am forced to ask myself, WHY are you asking these questions? It almost sounds like she's getting the backdrop for a commercial, but are you really going to script a commercial based on the first thing that comes out of the mouths of 3 random guys from Chicago?

Now we get to what I consider the best part of this unfolding saga:

Moderator: I’m afraid we have to leave that planet. We’re going to the medical planet. The medical planet, in our hair-loss galaxy, so you step off the medical planet, what do we see there?

Respondent 1: People walking around in coats, I don’t know.

Moderator: Why coats?

Respondent 1: With scissors, and samples of our hair.

Moderator: Mike, I’m afraid with this pen I can’t hear you. What did you say?

Respondent 1: They want to take samples of our hair, maybe trying to look at the DNA, trying to see if there’s any similarity in the genetic code of hair. Trying to find similarities with women and men’s hair loss, and maybe seeing if there are similarities regardless of sex.

Respondent 2: There’s no models. There’s probably more people that are having more problematic hair that don’t have a lot, that are trying to save what they have.

Respondent 3: There are a lot of people with treatments on their scalps, bandages on their heads.

Respondent 1: There’s electrodes going on there too. Oils, lasers –

............

OK, so is it just me, or does this sound less like three guys talking about hair-care products and more like the delusional ramblings of three paranoid lunatics with alien abduction experiences? I was having a hard time typing this section, as I was giggling pretty much nonstop. I kept expecting one of the guys to just snap, Travis Walton-style, and start screaming, "THEY COME FOR ME AT NIGHT! SPACE SUITS...SPACE SUITS!!!!!!1"

Actually, what I really wanted wanted was for one of the guys to stand up in the middle of the moderator's rambling narrative about the fantastical Hair Galaxy and the mythical anti-thinning planet, just stand up and say, "Hey, wait a second! This is BULLSHIT! Let's get right the fuck out of here! YARRGH!" (that last part is him transforming into a dinosaur. I have a very active imagination)

Anyway. My job has no redeeming qualities other than the fact that I don't have to go anywhere, but my loss is your gain. And by "gain," I mean, "Wasted a full 6 minutes of your time, or 15 in Luke's case because he's a slow reader who I'm pretty sure still sounds out the longer words."

Going International: Snow Monkeys, Temples, and A Couple Swigs of Supposedly Summer Mikans

Well, that was quite the long title, I suppose, but once you get going with colons and shit it's hard to stop. Yes, this is Chad, posting from a far distant land much better known for it's sake than it's beer, and for temples and geishas and other cultural treasures even more than that, perhaps, but nevertheless, I'm writing to say that good beer night can in fact transcend national boundaries. Or should I say, we're writing? Well, right now it's just me because Marnie is busy cleaning my breakfast dishes (and seeing how she can't really type for beans it'll mostly be me anyways) but the sentiment is certainly plural.

So, beer? I suppose there are a few ways we could break Marnie's trip out here into segments, but for the purposes of the good beer blog I guess it makes sense to use the few times we drank alcohol as landmarks. This is going to be a long fucking post.

Stage One: Sapporo Gold



We started things off right with this delicate amber blend of hops (?) and barley (maybe?) that tastes like nothing less than the dregs of a thirty rack of the Best Chest. Yep, in general Japanese beer looks like piss and tastes like it too, so, hey, Keystone goes international, too, it seems. Wanna comment on that Marnie? No. Spot on.

However, a lot has to be said for the effect of atmosphere in improving the quality of an otherwise thin, barely alcoholic can of water sprinkled with yellow food-coloring, and we had atmosphere in spades. Picture this intimate scene: you find yourself walking down a brilliantly lit festival street, shop keepers to either side hawking Hello Kitty purses, cheap samurai-swords, postcards plastered with images of Fuji, the Kinkakuji, Harajuku at night and various other popular spots, and maybe a few pokemon-themed carnival masks, people calling out to you in a language that manages to communicate a headache, but not much else. Take a left, and escape into a side-street. The stalls are gone, but the lights and hanging lanterns aren't. Take a right, and stumble into relative blackness. The party's over. Or is it? Look up, and in the darkness you see a bright white sign that says something Chad can read but you can't. It says, "Kamogawa Family Inn." You've arrived. Our room was a study in the elegance of the marshes: tatami mats, tree-branches stuck directly to walls, thin paper walls enclosing two ... Ok, thankfully Marnie is here to look over my shoulder and tell me when I get too apostrophic and retarded, so, let's skip to the beer. It sucked. But we drank it out of teacups like dilletantes and it felt... classy? Whatever.



Stage Two: There's no Beer here, just Monkeys and Magic Apples

I defer... Hey, it's marnie. Chad's too wordy, so I get to do this part. So, we went from tokyo to nagano to see the snow monkeys (aka japanese macaques). They like to lounge around in hot springs and it's the cutest thing ever. In this monkey park that we went to, they get fed 3 times a day and their monkey bath gets cleaned daily. They have a pretty cushy life and in return they ignore all the people taking pictures of them with cell phones about a foot away from their faces and just go about their monkey business. They just scurry about your feet and fight and hug each other for warmth and just be freaking adorable. As, chad said, there is no beer in this story, but I really like the monkeys.




This picture is sort of misleading because it doesn't show how close you can really get to the monkeys (or how close they get to you), but chad's camera died before we got close so that's all we got. I have a lot of pictures and videos, but I can't put them up. Oh well, just look them up on youtube. They're great. We almost saw one rip a japanese baby's face off when her parents let her toddle off and she tried to pet a monkey. That's it about monkeys for now. We also discovered that this part of japan grows great apples. I mean really fucking good. UNBELIEVABLE. I'm addicted to them like crack. Here is a picture of it.



As you can see from that ecstatic face, they're good. So good, in fact, that fifteen minutes later...




You'd think that look of long-suffering might be a result of being dressed up like a Japanese doll, but, it's actually just apple-withdrawal. She stole at least three more after that.

Stage Three: New Years Eve

You'd think Japan would be a crazy place to party on New Year's Eve, but it turns out that you might find more energy and excitement in a small village in Ghana. 11:35 and aside from a few lonely sheets of paper fluttering around in the wind there was nothing moving on Hamamatsu's main party street (which is usually just rocking, let me tell you). There was a drunk British guy raving about "getting holy," which I think is a euphemism for boning his Japanese girlfriend in a public toilet, though I'm not sure. He claimed he went to a temple to hear the bells, but the hands he kept enthusiastically clapping on my shoulders smelled a little fishy, that's all I'm saying. Like he wasn't telling the truth about something, you know? Whatever, that story was stupid and mostly a lie (there's really little doubt that that dude went to a temple to "hear the bells"). To cut to the quick, we did some stuff with some people, it was sort of unremarkable, we tried to go to a bar, they were pretty much all closed, we found one that was run by a very affable Turkish man who gave us free apple kool-aid that he claimed was champagne, then left the bar and told us we could go behind and just help ourselves, then shit got boring and we left to drink the good beer that I had been saving for months, just for this very occasion. Was it good, Marnie? "Meh." That about sums it up. Shizuoka Summer Mikan Ale.



It tasted a lot better than Sapporo Gold, that's for sure, but I wouldn't exactly say that I was smacked in the face with a blast of tangeriney-freshness, either. It tasted like a Red Hook ESB. Good, but otherwise unremarkable. Sigh. Check out this fucking cake, though. It's fucking cute.



It's a Christmas cake. Japanese people think we eat them in America.

Last Segment: Sake in Welch's Jam Cups (really pretty ones)
So this is marnie again. We were in a train station and there was a liquor store and we went in and were immediately drawn to these cheap glass cups of sake. We spent about 10 minutes picking out the prettiest cups (mine has lilies and chad's has fireworks and mountains). Well, we took them back to our inn, but it's against the rules to drink or eat in our rooms so we had to be silent and most importantly, we had to finish the entire thing once we opened them because they was no way to get rid of it otherwise. They were about 16 percent alcohol, but they weren't that big, so we just prayed they would be drinkable. Well, they sort of were. It tasted like soy sauce with the salt replaced by alcohol. The worst part was that they got nastier and nastier as we powered on. By the end we were shuddering as we gulped it down completely sober.

Surprisingly sober, actually. You'd figure after downing a sizable glass container of clearly alcoholic liquid we'd at least be feeling a little bit stumbly, right? Especially Marnie, her limit is usually about two sips of beer, so three plus shots of sake should have seen her singing Kelly Clarkson songs at the top of her lungs while doing somersaults around the room. But, yeah nothhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiii oh fuck. When the drunk hit, it was like a bullet of giggle gas, and considering that the walls of that inn were made of millenia-old papyrus, if the other guests didn't know we had been drinking in our room, than they must have thought we were both really fucking funny people. Then we found 5,000 yen.

Well, that's that in a pretty large nutshell. Tomorrow we're going to my school, so maybe there will soon be another post on here entitled "When Marnie met the kid who humps fire escapes," but that'll have to wait for another day. May the fifty foot tall spirit of the Vairocana Buddha be with you always.