Holy shit, it's pretty much impossible to consistently write when you're stuck at home. Any talk I've made about "self-quarantine is the perfect time to write a review for Record Club!" can be tossed away at this point. Do what you can, folks, and if being stuck between four walls is too distracting to listen to music, then good luck, and I'll see you on the other side.
For the rest of you, those able to dig in and participate in some stupid fucking music group while the world falls apart around you, then welcome, and look below for this week's joy/task. If you wanna check out the Record Club playlist, you can find it HERE. If you wanna check out old albums, find the archives on the sidebar. If you wanna live in the moment, keep reading.
WEEK 61 — March 29-April 4, 2020
What we're listening to this week (Joe's pick):
ALBUM:Devotion ARTIST: Margaret Glaspy
RELEASED: March 27, 2020
WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Indie folk, I guess? Apparently this album is a departure from her last, so who's to say without listening to it.
WHY JOE PICKED IT: I tend to shy away from choosing the big-tent indie releases for Record Club, so that's why I didn't pick Waxahatchee's new Saint Cloud, even though I know that album is going to be fucking incredible, probably in my top five for the year when 2020 finally ends. Instead, let's use Record Club to explore another indie rock album from another great female artist who might get overlooked otherwise.
TRACKLIST:
Killing What Keeps Us Alive
Without Him
Young Love
You've Got My Number
Stay With Me
So Wrong It's Right
Heartbreak
You Amaze Me
Devotion
Vicious
What's the Point
Consequences
LENGTH: 41:33
READING SOME SHIT: Decent Billboard profile to be read if you want it.
I keep pressing upon y'all the importance of supporting the local businesses you know and love throughout this crisis, but yesterday I found out it was possible to discover new businesses as well—yes, even when you aren't allowed to actually visit and hang out at any business.
It occurred to me that I had read a few months ago an Inquirer article about how Harrowgate is up-and-coming, allegedly, and that the neighborhood featured a new brewery. I'd like to say that I looked it up because I wanted to try out a new beer, that I was taking this blog series seriously, but let's be real, I looked it up because I was bored as fuck at home.
There was indeed a brewery very close to my house. It's called Sacred Vice Brewery. It's a 13-minute walk from my quarantine spot (though it was pouring rain, so I drove). I know I complain about breweries being a dime a dozen, and I don't think that Sacred Vice Brewery will be any different, except for the fact that it's really, really close to me, and it's relatively unknown, so I have no problem rallying behind this place and claiming it as my own.
I wasn't allowed inside yesterday, for obvious reasons. I got their number from Instagram, and called them up at 1 PM, ordered my beers, and twenty minutes later I was double parking in front of their dock, where a dude yelled, "Joseph?" and I nodded, and he left the beer on the dock and waved goodbye from a six-foot distance as I grabbed the beer and waved back. That was that.
I would love to say that the beer I drank today from Sacred Vice blew my mind. It didn't, but that's okay. I'm going to keep going back to this place (it seems like, paging through their social media, that they are constantly introducing new beers, which is helpful when you're the type of person who is trying to drink a different beer every day). This is my neighborhood brewery. Fishtown who?
Admittedly, the first beer I split with Pam, Welcome Wound, was very interesting, if not particularly enjoyable. It's a double IPA, but the twist is that it's brewed with beets. The color was a deep purple-pink, exactly like beets. The first sip did not overwhelm with beet flavor, fortunately. By the last sip, however, the earthy overtones were a bit too much. I will remember this beer for a long time, but I will probably not buy it again.
The other one was more normal. Pale Succor was an English Pale Ale, and you could smell a strong aroma of hops, floral and nugget-y. The color was a straw-yellow, and hazy. It had a bit of a bite, but went down easy, with more malt flavor than an IPA. Plus, after I looked up what "succor" meant—"assistance and support in times of hardship and distress"—and boy, does that seem appropriate, doesn't it?
Because beer can be a support in a time of crisis. In moderation, obviously, but done right, it helps. Sacred Vice brews practically in my backyard. Buying beer from them is supporting the community, and it helps me get through the day. I'll call it a success.
NOTES (Beer #1)
BEER: Welcome Wound
GENRE: Double IPA ABV: 8.3%
BREWED BY: Sacred Vice Brewing LOCATION: Philadelphia, kind of near Frankford and Allegheny
PURCHASED AT: The brewery itself
PAIRED WITH: Aramingo's Best pizza
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
NOTES (Beer #2)
BEER: Pale Succor
GENRE: English Pale Ale ABV: 5.1%
BREWED BY: Sacred Vice Brewing LOCATION: Harrowgate (very close to Port Richmond)
Through the course of our March Madness Shuffle (previous entries HERE, HERE, and HERE), we attempt to answer an integral question: What makes a song "good"? This short-term project argues that we can attempt to uncover the answer by examining two completely different songs, dissecting them, figuring out what makes each of them tick, and then determining which song is better. The choice tells us what makes a song good, because the choice is based on the innate feeling you get when you really take a good hard look at a song.
Let's see if we can figure out what makes a good song. Enter the March Madness Shuffle Championship.
These are two very different songs, aesthetically. They both present similar real human concerns; the conclusions reached, however, stand in stark contrast.
Musically, here's where we stack up. "Why Do I Keep Counting?" is varied. It has layers. We start softly, with chimes, and Flowers' voice softly floating over the horizon. And then this shit builds, slowly but firmly. The drums come in—in fact, it's one of those songs when all the instruments come in at different times, building the tension. I think I hear a goddamn tympani in there at one point.
It's all rising action here. At one point, the drums are pounding away, Flowers is shrieking, and then everything drops out except vocals and piano plinks. It's a feint—the song comes crashing in even harder. This thing fucking soars, y'all. I mentioned before that this is the de facto conclusion to Sam's Town, and in that context, it works like gangbusters. It even features a false ending, with blaring chords to end in dramatic fashion.
"Into the Earth" is pretty rock solid, musically speaking. There aren't many changes in volume or intensity. The whole think just slinks along, with a tight syncopated drum rhythm. The only thing that comes in or drops out, really, is that sharp electric guitar strumming during the chorus—it's sparse during the verses, but gets real fluttery and beautiful in the refrain. If "Why Do I Keep Counting?" is being played to the cheap seats, then "Into the Earth" is being played somewhere there's no seats at all, you're just dancing right up there at the front of the stage.
But what is each song trying to say? That's important too. It's funny, because both songs seem to presenting the same conundrum: Why is life so long and hard? I suppose there's an argument to be made that every song in history presents that question, but not many as explicitly as these. "Am I strong enough?" asks the Killers. "I don't know what the future holds," confirms Bloc Party.
And to be honest, the solutions presented are actually in sync with one another as well. Both songs realize that maybe you need the help of another to get through it all. "Help me get down, I can make it" theorize the Killers. "I hope we face it together" responds Bloc Party.
I dunno, though, I find a contrast in the conclusions to each song. "Why Do I Keep Counting?" presents a sort of nihilism. It states that we're all going to die, so why bother? "Into the Earth" also admits that we're all going to die, but instead it implores you to "keep it fluid" and to "try to keep an open mind."
You might assume that I'm going to side with Bloc Party on this one, and when it comes to real life and how I personal try to operate, you'd be right. But think about the contexts for each of these songs, and you might be less inclined to make assumptions.
Sam's Town is not explicitly a "concept album" or anything bullshit like that, but the Killers do a pretty good job of presenting all these songs as stories. Of course the music one writes is going to be influenced by your own experiences, but not every song should be saddled with the "confessional" tag. Why should anyone assume that Flowers himself is being nihilistic? Why should anyone assume that Flowers isn't just telling a story about someone who is nihilistic? Isn't the presentation of such nihilism and my subsequent examination of such achieve the same anti-nihilism purpose anyway?
If we apply the same logic to "Into the Earth," then it's possible that we don't have to talk about how uncomfortable all the quasi-religious imagery makes me feel when I read the lyric sheet. It's eastern religion, sure, what with psychedelics and "higher planes" and all that stuff. I prefer my optimism to be a little more grounded, thank you. But again—this is not necessarily a confessional piece, it's just a song. It's possible to take it too seriously.
So where do we stand now? The Killers present a more dynamic tune, but leave the listener desiring more, whereas Bloc Party sticks to the groove, and insists that you'll find enlightenment in there somewhere. Which is preferable?
The short answer is, I have no fucking clue. Choosing favorites is hard. However, I do love the idea of some song that I have dismissed in the past being crowned "the best" at anything, even if it's in some dinky homemade tournament made with scotch tape. So out of that love, I award the win of the tournament to Bloc Party. Congrats. We did it.
One of the most interesting things, sociologically speaking, that has popped up during the stay-at-home order has been the rise of webcam socializing. Obviously, this has been a thing for a very long time, but with COVID forcing us to stay away from our friends and family, seeing loved ones in video chat rooms has become normalized, possibly even necessary.
And while we can half-jokingly call group chats "happy hour" or a "party" or whatever, I'm discovering there are enough key differences between hanging out online and hanging out in person that my online experience has been a little uncomfortable so far.
I want to discuss those difference briefly, just for something to write about honestly (there's only so much you can write about fucking Miller Lite), but I want to be precise in anything negative I have to say about it. Let's be real, I'm fucking blessed beyond belief that anyone gives enough of a shit about me to even want to see my ugly mug on their computer screens. I don't want anything I write here to seem like I am pushing these loved ones away. I am grateful to be included in the mayhem. Anything negative I have to say probably has more to do with my own personal flaws than anything else. I simply want to talk about it from a sociological perspective, and even if the gist of it is "webcam hangs kinda suck," that won't mean that I'm not appreciative to be there, and that won't mean I won't accept the next invite to the next virtual happy hour.
The most prominent difference between a gathering in person and online is the inability to fracture into smaller groups when the time comes for it. I'm finding that the ability to do that can be comforting in large groups, as a way to feel heard and feel known by your peer.
Think about any gathering you've been to in person that's featured more than, say, ten people. If that gathering lasts two hours, there is a zero percent chance that the entire two hours consists of a single conversation involving all parties. No, instead, you break up into smaller groups when there are specific subjects that only apply to certain sub-groups, you have one-on-one niche conversations that work better privately, and then you come back to the big group when those smaller conversations run dry, or the bigger conversation starts to pertain to you.
This is not something that I ever even noticed, let alone appreciated, until the virus forced us indoors. But being one segment of a sixteen-square monolith has forced me to consider the value of fracturing groups. It's not possible to break up into smaller groups during a happy hour, or have one-on-one convos, because everyone is on the screen all the time, hearing everyone else speak. The larger the group, the more it starts to feel like performing, as opposed to just hanging out. All fifteen other people are listening to everything you say. Fifteen people are ceding the bandwidth to allow you to speak, so it better be worth it.
And the alchemy of a particular group is way more fragile because of this. Think about it—you're at a party with ten other people, and someone shows up whom only two other people know. You don't know this guy. At an actual party, more likely than not this dude is going to mostly stick with the people he knows. There is no pressure for you to go over and talk to this guy, or listen to anything he has to say. It would be nice to do so—obviously, there's no reason to be a dick—but there's no obligation.
If you're hanging out in a Zoom Meeting, and someone like that shows up, then the entire makeup of the group dynamic shifts violently. It's no one's fault, it's just what happens. Now there are two people there, and you don't know either of them, and now it would feel really weird to try to talk somebody one-on-one while these literal strangers are watching you and listening to you, and now it really feels like you are performing, and it doesn't feel like a happy hour at all, it feels like you're just waiting your turn to do whatever you wanna do and then duck out again, too uncomfortable to stare at the screen and see all those staring faces back. You're being watched.
Okay, alright, now I'm being extra. Clearly, this is something that's wrong with me personally. I have always felt self-conscious in these types of settings, when all eyes are on me. I feel awkward. I can't usually do it sober, at least... and note that I've drank more in the three days I've participated in gang hangs online than almost every other day in 2020 so far.
So more than anything, the blue screen filled with the faces of my favorite people is bizarrely laying all my self-doubt and flaws right out there. I can see myself on the screen too, and I do not like what I see. I have to look away.
Anyways, it's something to work on, seeing as this is the only way I'm going to see any of my friends during the next few months. Worse than being self-conscious would probably be being lonely.
NOTES
BEER: Miller Lite
GENRE: American Light Lager ABV: 4.17%
BREWED BY: Miller Brewing Co. LOCATION: Milwaukee, WI
PURCHASED AT: Oh boy, these guys have been in my fridge for a couple months now. They are either from the beer distributor at Tioga and Thompson, or the beer distributor at Tioga and Aramingo.
PAIRED WITH: Zoom
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
BEER COUNT: 134 (two Miller Lites, plus three Guinness and one Blue Moon, and now I'm two above par, so I got some work to do this upcoming week)
Mountain Brews kinda sound like what people that listen to Phish think Phish actually sounds like instead of three hours of warming up. I like the Dead, Phish are okay, and I still listen to Vampire Weekend, so why shouldn’t I like this? Plus we know all of the aforementioned are fans of Bernie so I have no choice but to STAN. Let It Grow gets 3 pints of Ben & Jerrys out of 5 that immediately hurt my stomach but the pain tastes so good and I can’t afford to go to a GI doctor until we pass Medicare 4 All. Fifteen minutes well spent.
It's obvious this is some dude's Grateful Dead cover band turned original. Even if the dead vibe doesn't register, the low production would give it away. The EP doesn't do anything special or bring up any new ideas.
Still, it passes the bar for chill listening with themes of life, history, and drinking tequila. And in this current moment in history that sort of thing provides cool comfort. It's certainly not a very good album, but it's a fine album I don't mind listening to on a do-nothing morning.
2.5/5
PS sorry for breaking the record club rules; down with the old rules, long live the new rules.
A short review for a short album. ("This is short?!" —Pam, probably)
Thought #1: The Grateful Dead-iness of it all is both explicit (name-checking Dead songs on the excellent "Sweet Chili Heat") and implicit (overall laid-back, jammy vibes). This seems to be a trend in indie rock these days, though maybe I'm just saying that because Vampire Weekend did the whole jam band / indie band fusion album last year, and that band just stands so tall in the indie rock scene that it feels like they dictate what general trends are. This would make sense, that Mountain Brews follows in their footsteps, since this dude is on the damn podcast with Erza Koenig, so it's all connected. It's also possible that I'm making this "jam bands are influencing indie" claim because one of my favorite indie rock music critics, Steven Hyden, has such a fucking hard-on for jam bands, that maybe I'm inundated with that theory just by following this dude on Twitter. In any case, do you like the Grateful Dead? If so, you will like the Let It Grow EP. I do, so I did.
Thought #2: I don't think I can separate the themes in this album from the themes of our current boring dystopia. Yeah, it's kind of a kick in the ass to hear about the joys of drinking tequila around a campfire with your friends while in actuality we are all stuck at home, isolated, doing jack shit, certainly not chilling around a campfire among the great outdoors. If you're looking for an album that is going to speak to you in your quarantine, then you are probably going to have to look elsewhere. If you are looking for a nice relaxing break from staring at your work laptop, and you find it possible to close your eyes for fifteen minutes and achieve some type of escape via music, then here's the album for you.
Thought #3: The question that comes attached to all EPs (a question we might not have to ask ourselves for a while after this) is: "Would I listen to more of this?" Because Let It Grow is only fifteen fucking minutes long. To ask it a different way, does Mountain Brews have more in them, enough equally fun tunes to fill a full LP, or are their abilities so limited as to only be able to produce maybe three and a half solid songs? It doesn't help that the worst song out of the four is unquestionably the last one, "The Dead Don't Count." I don't know if Mountain Brews ran out of steam already, or this is just a sequencing issue. Based on Let It Grow, I would absolutely give these guys another shot, if I had the chance, even if it turns out there's no gas left in the tank.
No, not really. I've never been a huge fan of Asian beers, but I don't yet have the beer knowledge to adequately describe why that is. I've always speculated that it was because of the fact that a lot of them use rice in the brewing process, which would give it a different flavor, but that theory can be tossed aside as of today—Tsingtao does not use rice.
There's also the important matter of how old this particular bottle of beer is. It's been in the back of my fridge for a very long time. It's possible that it's been in there since my 30th birthday. I turned 31 this past December. So while it wasn't completely ruined by age, it did have a little bit of that papery taste that beers have when they are this old, and the carbonation was a little on the low side. (I know we just talked about aging beers, but that does not apply to light lagers.)
WAS IT BAD?
All that being said, I'll drink anything, including eastern-brewed beers that have been in my fridge the entirety of my 30s so far. What saved it was that it was paired with Chinese food from our local joint, Spice Grill. In discussing beer/food pairings in Tasting Beer, Mosher makes a big point that we should look toward local customs for an indication of what pairs well. Drinking a Chinese beer with Chinese food makes sense because that's literally what they do in China.
I suppose now would've been the point where I'd make the joke like "It would probably go well with bat too," but I think we're past all that nonsense at this juncture, right? Like, we get enough of that bullshit from our president being a racist. Here on March 27th, COVID is no longer a Chinese concern, it's a global concern. (Fuck, remember when Kenney purposefully ate dinner in Chinatown to show that there was no connection between Chinese food in Philly and the coronavirus? God, that feels like that happened three years ago. It was less than two months ago!)
So you have to be a fucking moron to be any more concerned about eating Chinese food or drinking Chinese beer than you would be eating any other international cuisine. But I would also be a moron if I were to try to draw a line between the beer I drank and some virtue signaling about what people should and shouldn't drink. Whoops.
No, I didn't like this beer, but it had way more to do with my own personal palette, as well as lack of freshness, than it had to do with the beer itself. I can recommend that you buy from your local Chinese restaurant, and that you drink a Chinese beer to go along with it, but I cannot recommend that you go about that the way I did.
(I also cannot recommend that you go about it the way our delivery driver did—I'm pretty sure he had his grandmother in the passenger seat? Which seems like a death wish on her part... but now I'm getting completely off track.)
NOTES
BEER: Tsingtao
GENRE: Light Lager ABV: 4.0%
BREWED BY: Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd. LOCATION: Qingdao, China
PURCHASED AT: I have to speculate that my parents got this for me from Chase's Hop Shop back in late 2018
PAIRED WITH: Pork fried rice, General Tso's, crab rangoon, shrimp mei fun, eggrolls
I think enough time has passed (almost exactly three years) that I now have the proper perspective on everything that happened when I got my phone stolen in Fishtown. There are no heroes in this story—not the police who responded, not the bike gang that snatched a phone, and definitely not the idiot who was crossing the street with a phone in his hand, ripe for the taking. I suppose the purpose of this personal essay is to describe what happened in full details—because it's a great story—but also to catalog all the ways the characters in the story messed up. Everyone is human. Everyone is flawed. It just so happened that a myriad of flaws overlapped on this day in such a way that a phone was stolen, arrests were made, a man went missing, and everyone remained painfully sober.
Let's set the scene. my old friend (and friend of the blog) Jamie G******* had spilled the news a few weeks prior that he was making the unfortunate decision to move to New York to pursue... whatever people who move to New York to pursue. To celebrate one last night in the greatest city on earth (Philadelphia, duh), he gathered kith and kin to drink and be merry before he took the plunge. The plan was to meet at Garage Fishtown in the afternoon, and then see where the night takes us.
This was back when I could actually go out on a Saturday afternoon, free from all child-related responsibilities, to drink at my leisure, and I was gonna miss having Jamie around, so of course I was planning on attending. Pam had work until 7 PM, so the plan was to drive our car to the gathering at 2PM (being fashionably on time), take it easy on the drinking, pick up Pam after her shift, and then come back to the party (maybe even leaving the car in Fishtown if both Pam and I wanted to let loose).
We had a nice little afternoon. Garage has about 300 different beers available for purchase, so of course everyone was drinking PBR pounders. Jamie was doing an admirable job of juggling his time between the different friend groups. Everyone was getting a bit of a daytime shine on. These were the halcyon days. The only thing that would've made it better, I thought, was a hot and fresh cheesesteak in front of me. As it turns out, the best cheesesteak in the city is sold catty-corner to Garage Fishtown, at Joe's Steaks, and as it also turns out, Garage has a B.Y.O. Cheesesteak policy. 3 PBRs in seemed like a great time for an American Wit'out—let's do this shit.
No one ever accused Joe's Steaks of being slow with their orders, but at the time, even fifteen minutes seemed like a while to go without taking a sip of beer, so after placing my order, I decided to walk back to Garage, drink a little PBR, and then return shortly thereafter to get my steak. Seems dumb, but even I couldn't predict how dumb the decision would turn out.
Because at around the same time I was telling the cashier what sandwich I wanted, a group of about twelve teenage boys were riding their bikes east on Girard from Front Street. Cut to me, opening the front door. Cut to the bike gang, passing McDonald's. Cut to me, pulling out my phone, planning to text my sister a happy birthday. Cut to the bike gang, baring left as they passed Kosta's. Cut to me, walking across Frankford on the north side of Girard Street. Cut to the bike gang, making a sharp left onto Frankford, on a collision course for manbun with his head down, staring toward the phone.
Now, look, I was a teenage boy at one point too. I know how the group mentality operates. You get your kicks from making passersby look stupid. Intimidation is typically harmless and hilarious. Being on the other side of it now, having large groups of teenagers try to make you feel dumb for kicks, the trick is to just show them that it doesn't bother you. You don't even have to yell back or anything like that. Just ignore them. Nothing will ruin the joke more than pretending that these little shits don't even exist.
That's been my m.o., anyway. I realize that I am fortunate enough that I have never been actually beaten up by a group of teens, as just ignoring the situation would probably not be helpful in that type of scenario. I also realize that I am fortunate enough to be tall and a male, and so there are far fewer times in my life when strangers try to intimidate me, so it's easier for me to say that that's how I "typically" operated. But it's all true, and my point is that, when the teen boys were whipping around the corner, riding perilously close to me, to try to get a reaction out of me, my immediate reaction was to just ignore them. Just keep walking, keep staring at the phone, pretend they don't even exist, try to turn the tables and make them feel small by completely refusing to acknowledge them at all.
And if that had worked, then there wouldn't be a blog post that you are reading now. It didn't work, however. It completely backfired. I ignored these kids so hard that I didn't even notice when one of them put his hand outstretched, and snatched my phone right out of my hand.
This is one of those fight or flight moments that you learn about in high school biology. There is an immediate influx of adrenaline, and your brain shuts off completely, and you act based on pure instinct. For the first time in my life, and possibly still the only time in my life, my instincts were to choose FIGHT.
My chuck taylors took off, following the group of kids on bikes north on Frankford. Here's something to consider at this juncture—the perpetrator who stole the phone was not the last in the line of bikers, but instead more like in the middle. And considering that, no matter how much adrenaline is coursing through my veins, I am certainly not faster than a kid on a bike, by the time I had run to the street in front of Frankford Hall, the kids biking in the back of the gang had caught up to me. There was one particular kid on a bike to my immediate left, between me and a car parked in the loading zone. I checked him, hard, into the car. He falls off the bike.
Here's what I've been told when you are solo and you are facing a threat made up of multiple parties: isolate one person from the herd. The theory is that the group mentality that allows assholes to feel protected is the same group mentality that is going to force the group to stick around and not separate from one of its members. Most of how we act is due to our ancient mammalian nature, but not abandoning a friend is what separates us from the beasts.
So what I did is I corner this one kid after he falls off his bike. "Where's my phone! You little shits took my phone!" and so on, all in a very thick Northeast Philly accent that only comes out when I'm this angry. And of course, this is happening right in front of the most popular bar in Fishtown on a fucking stunning Saturday afternoon, so about three dozen 20-somethings who Ubered down from Warminster get a front-row view of this grown fucking dude looking like he's going to murder a teenager.
Hold up. Stop the tapes. Let me make something clear. I was not trying to get in an actual fight. I was pissed, I was ready to throw punches, but I was also able to comprehend one unequivocal fact—if this conflict escalated into a physical altercation, then I would absolutely get my ass beat. No doubt about it. Ten kids against one me, and I would have no chance.
So, I'm not trying to sound like I was a "badass" in this situation. I was scared that I was going to end up in the hospital. But also, I was pretty pissed that someone just took my goddamn phone right out of my goddamn hand, and I was going to do everything I could to try to get it back.
For the moment, then, the plan was to just try to keep the group there as long as I could until the police got there, without, ya know, getting punched in the face. The original kid I had pushed into the car, he was able to push past me, but by that time, other kids were doubling back. So I would go to another bike, get right up in front of it, tell the kid he can't leave. Eventually, that would escalate, and I would try another kid. The group started circling. One poor sap preteen seriously mumbled that his "dad was going to beat me up" (For reals!). Then, the self-proclaimed toughest of the group, a short kid with his earbuds still in his ears, finally escalated the situation by putting his fists up, ready to throw down. There wasn't much more I could do at that point, and so the kids biked away.
If any of that sounds like I'm exaggerating, then you're in luck, because I have short video evidence of this incident. A part of it, anyway. Billed on Facebook as "Watch Joe K*** fight a bunch of teenagers," with more likes than I got when I changed my relationship status to "engaged." Enjoy.
I'm trying to explain why this is funny without seeming full of myself. Let's say that it's funny because... of the characters involved? People come face-to-face with wild crowds of unruly teenagers seemingly every other week in Philadelphia, and I never read one of those news articles and laugh. This is only funny because it's fucking Joe K*** out there, with the manbun and the accent, trying to seem all tough, trying to intimidate some fucking teenagers, and looking foolish. All this on top of the fact that the choice of FIGHT in the flight/fight dichotomy was decidedly out-of-character for me. All of it adds up to something that's really funny, in retrospect.
Three years later, this video is funny as shit. Hell, even 24 hours later, that video was funny. But at the time, it wasn't really funny. A crime had been committed against me by a group of cocky hotshot little fucking shits, and I wasn't going to just let that go.
Figuratively wasn't going to let it go, because again, I did literally let them go eventually. But remember, this all happened in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, in front of dozens of on-lookers. Plenty of people were calling 911. Having worked in the call center for 911 dispatch, I can still clearly see in my mind the switchboard lighting up with the same red word over and over—THEFT, THEFT, THEFT, THEFT. Theft in progress. The police coming over the radio, one after the other, saying that they were headed to the scene of the crime. Sure enough, maybe a minute after the kids flee, two or three cop cars with their lights and sirens blast past, following them north on Frankford.
In a scene right out of a bizarro Fast and the Furious movie, the last police car screeches to a halt in front of me, the door opens, and the police sergeant says, "Get in." I get in. The SUV peels off.
The radio is going crazy. Somehow, at least four different teens on bikes were caught at different points around the neighborhood. All appeared to be fleeing the scene of the crime, but the needed the complainant to identify the suspects. So me and the Sarge (a very nice woman) drove around the backstreets of Fishtown, and each respective cop asked me "Was this kid part of the incident?"
The story has been all laughs and cheesesteaks up until this point, but here's where the tale curdles just a little bit. I've actually even been a little reticent to tell this section in my retellings over the years, because I feel like I betrayed myself in the decisions I made from this point forward.
Remember how I said the adrenaline caused me to turn my brain off and act purely on instinct? That wasn't an exaggeration. Even five minutes later, coming face-to-face with teens in police custody, I could barely remember what any of the teens looked like. The teens I had just accosted! The teens who just stole my fucking phone! Besides the one kid who put his fists up and forever burned his image into my brain, I wouldn't have been able to pick these fuckers out of a lineup. My brain was off. Short-term memory had short-circuited.
I'll preach often about what it means to be a real American, about how this country was founded on fairness. What would've been fair would be to admit to all parties that I didn't know who was who for the most part, and to only give a definitive yes to the only fucker I recognized, the tough guy. I should've said "I don't know" to the other three. But instead, in the heat of the moment, I said that all four kids were involved.
Guessing that all four kids were involved in the fracas was a logical leap, sure. Same age group, same area as the occurrence that happened mere minutes prior, each found riding his bike away from the scene of the crime. But that's not enough, in a fair and just system. It's not enough to guess. I didn't have enough in my brain to be able to say that three of these kids were absolutely, positively there. And yet I told the cops that they were.
There's no excuse for this. Saying that I was frustrated, that I was intimidated, that I was thirsty for vengeance, saying any of that would be technically true, but none of it is an excuse. The fact of the matter is that I gave into my worst, most basic instincts. I was a hypocrite in that moment. There's a chance that I ruined some poor kid's day, some kid who was just riding his bike innocently, and then all of a sudden some fucking manbun is telling the cops he committed a crime, and he's being taken to the 26th District for processing.
It was not right for some asshole to take my phone. It was not right for me to abuse the system because I was upset about it.
Let's pause and recap where all the major players are at at this moment in the story. Me and the police and the kids and their bikes are all headed toward East Detectives for interviews. Some poor schmuck in Joe's Steaks with a cheesesteak in his hand is calling out the word "Joseph!" over and over, with no answer heard. A group of Philly kids and one future New York kid are drinking beers at Garage, horrifically assuming that their pal found something better to do and just disappeared. Pam is wrapping up a shift at Jefferson, receiving no response from her husband after multiple texts. A group of 21-year-old girls from Doylestown just witnessed a crime and are wondering why they ever decided to take a $60 Lyft ride to Philly in the first place. A now-smaller group of teen boys make a sharp left turn down a small Fishtown street, avoiding the police for another day.
Cut to the police station. Nothing is ever easy when it comes to the police. I'm told that I need to give testimony as to what happened, and they make me wait in the waiting room for two fucking hours. I'm pissed, because now I'm sober, and phoneless, and no one knows where I am. I ask a police officer if I can use his phone, and he obliges. I leave Pam a voicemail, because a general rule is that she doesn't answer calls. Has never, will never. She didn't even listen to the voicemail. Meanwhile she's taking an Uber to Fishtown because her husband isn't answering on his own phone, and her friends back at Garage ominously state that they haven't seen him in hours.
But I'm still stuck at the fucking police station. Finally, the goddamn detective, who has a huge stick up her ass and looks at me like I'm fucking slime, calls me to her desk. She starts asking me very specific questions about the suspects—height, weight, complexion, clothing. I already told you—you the reader—that I could barely remember a single person from the incident, let alone what color some schmo's fucking hat was. Plus, if you know me, you know I already have a hard time judging how tall someone is, due to the simple fact that I'm taller than mostly everyone. I don't even know how tall Pam is, so how the fuck would I know how tall Random Teen #2 is?
And all the while, the police are putting tremendous pressure on me to give the "right" answers. I'm telling you that the police officers who caught the suspects are literally surrounding me in a circle as I talk to the detective. Some of them even roll their eyes when I give a "wrong" answer or say I don't know, and they try to give hints. I.e. "How tall was suspect #3?" "I dunno, 5'6?" *police officer looks toward the ceiling* "Um, actually, maybe like 5'8?" *officer nods*
So that wasn't right. I felt like I was wasting everyone's time, even though I was the fucking victim here, and what's worse, no one disavowed me of this notion. I was a shitty complainant, it was made clear to me. I had nothing. And not only that, but the D.A. probably won't even do anything about this anyway.
I understand the last part, in the general scope of things. It would be a pretty weak case. No city is gonna string up teens based on one complainant who is stating that he can't even remember what anyone looks like, all over a fucking $20 phone. But then the question becomes, why was I even put through this whole thing? Why was it made to seem that I had no choice but to kill my entire day waiting in a detective's office for something that everyone knew was pointless? It wasn't fair to anyone. It was a fucking clown show. P.S., if every 26th District cop is here, who is patrolling the streets?!
I don't mean to degenerate the police too much in this piece, even though I thought they acted on about the same level as I did and as the bike gang did (i.e. mostly shitty). Some of them were nice to me too. One of them took about an hour to check the surveillance tapes from the Frankford/Girard camera, but it rotates every few seconds, and of course it was facing Garage when the actual incident took place at the other end of the intersection.
And I got a big laugh out of everyone when they asked me where I was going next, and I asked for a ride back to the scene of the crime—"Why are you going back there?" "I still have to close my bar tab."
So at around 9 o'clock, I made a less-than-triumphant return to Fishtown in the back of a squad car. It was probably weird for the Garage bouncer to see someone get out of a police vehicle and get in line for the bar (usually it's the other way around). Somehow, my jacket was still in the same seat I had left it. I closed my tab, and met up with my pals at Kosta's, where I breathlessly told the tale of where the fuck I'd been for the past six hours.
My story here is winding down. I told you how random teenage strangers ruined my day. I told you how I threw away my core beliefs at the mere chance of revenge. I told you how I was exposed to the inner-workings of a police squad carelessly misusing their office in the so-called name of justice. Even Pam was pissed off when I met her at Kosta's, even though I left her a voicemail explaining that I was the victim of a crime. It was a pretty awful day, all things considered, even though I got a pretty hilarious video to show for it.
But there's still one hanging thread. What ever happened to the phone? Its travels, as it turns out, make for an excellent postscript to this sorry tale. The thief, the actual kid who took the phone out of my hand in the first place, must've heard the whoop of a police siren and ditched the phone down a random street (Boston Street, specifically). A random passerby spotted the phone, and couldn't unlock it, but was able to see that there were multiple texts from a "Pamela K***." This good samaritan looked up Pam on Facebook, and saw that they shared a mutual friend in my cousin's husband, a co-worker. He dropped the phone off at my cousin's house. I walked around the corner and got the phone from my cousin the next night. Easy peasy.
It's a great postscript because it shows in bold and underlined font how connected we all are, and how small the world is. Whether I want to be or not, I will always share a connection with some fucking little shitbag who decided to pluck my phone, and with the police who acted tough when a $20 phone was snagged out of some assholes hand, and with the Joe's grillmaster, who legend has it is still trying to find the Joseph who ordered a cheesesteak and disappeared. (High Maintenance is the best and most accurate show on television.)
But it's a shitty postscript too, because it shows how senseless and pointless the whole fucking ordeal was. The cops wasted their time with a dunce complainant who got his bargain bin phone stolen from some do-nothing asshole. I no longer want to waste my time with the police, the kids are embittered that they had to get picked up by their parents at a police station for a crime that a friend committed, the police continue to beat their chest over petty crime, I was forced to be sober on a beautiful spring afternoon because I decided to act tough, etc., etc., etc. None of it matters. Everyone sucks.
Honestly, all I can do is laugh. If everything eventually ends in tragedy, then we might as well spend our time trying to turn it into a comedy.
I feel like I'm kind of losing the thread here, on This Is My Blood. There's too much fluff. Too many entries in this column talk about bullshit that has literally nothing to do with the beer that I drank itself. I don't want this to devolve into just an excuse to blabber on about anything. I want to talk about beers too. I want to deep dive into specific beers that I'm drinking, figure out where it comes from, and where it's going (my stomach). So, my promise is this—once a week, when Pam is working her night shift, I'm going to drink and beer and tell you everything I possibly can about that beer. The flavor experience, the brewery that made it, etc. Let us begin.
I purchased a tall boy of Suspended Disbelief from IGA in Port Richmond on 3/19. I didn't buy it because I needed it, per se; I bought it because I wasn't sure when the next time I'd make it back to a six pack store would be, and I wanted to be prepared. I don't know what percentage of craft beers are stamped with a brew date, but this one wasn't. It had a stamp on the bottom that read "PASD2-A1," though I could not find online what that meant. I really just impulse bought this thing because I felt like a can reading "Public Access Suspended" fit thematically to the world we were currently living in.
Thankfully, it ended up being a great beer. It was my favorite kind of IPA—strong (it was a double), with tropical aroma, but a crisp and clean bite to it (i.e. the tropical-ness of it only overwhelmed with the aroma, not the taste). There were stone fruit and mango(?) flavors, but it wasn't like it tasted like juice. It tasted like a bitter fucking beer with some fruity hoppiness to balance it out just a touch.
It poured opaque yellow (probably at 3 degrees SRM on the beer color scale), and had a tall foamy head that faded slightly, but left plenty of lacy foam on top. I poured it into a no-nick pint glass, which isn't recommended for DIPAs, but I said fuck it, because I think those glasses look cool, and I feel cool drinking out of them, even if the beer in them is yellow instead of dark brown or black.
I paired it with a tuna melt, which was a great pairing, with the salty fish balancing nicely with the sweet aroma, with just enough carbonation to scrub away any fishy aftertaste. (As always, take my food pairing conclusions with a grain of salt, since I would probably say that anything was a good pairing before trying to retroactively try to prove myself right with bullshit.)
Suspended Disbelief comes from a brewery called Public Access Liquids in Boston (boo!). They are... well, I'm not sure there's much information I can provide for you about them. They don't have a website. Boston Magazine literally uses the word "mysterious" in describing them (when they won "Best New Brewer" a month ago, you know, when the world was normal). A local Virginia blog offhandedly mentions that Public Access Liquids is a "contract brewer," which is a new term for me. Apparently, this means that the dude who runs Public Access rents equipment from other established breweries to brew and package, so it doesn't have a permanent location. Right now, according to BeerAdvocate, they are contracting through Dorchester Brewing Co., in Boston.
Whatever the case may be, Public Access is doing something right. This was a good fucking beer, perfect for drinking while the kids are asleep and I'm having a virtual happy hour with some friends.
I'll do this again Monday, when Pam works on the front lines next (she is my hero). I anticipate that I'll be able to write more then than I did tonight, as Martha is stirring right now, so...
In honor of it almost being April Fools' Day, I badgered the current Collegian staff at La Salle over the course of about two months to please, please scan a copy of the 2011 edition of the Foolegian and send it to me.
Every year, the school newspaper would feature an eight-page wraparound filled with satire, in honor of the high holiday. In 2011, my final year at La Salle, I committed to the bit, and submitted some content that may or may not hold up nine years later. Here is that content, provided to me by the current Collegian staff, finally, after months of bothering them, provided to me probably mere days before La Salle shut down for the semester.
[Editor's note: I should also be clear that I am passing this content off to you on my blog simply because I have like three hours a week to blog these days, which makes it tough to write fourteen posts a week, so here's a copy and paste and let's just get on with it.]
NEWS BITES
Holroyd Floods Again, This Time Students Bring Swim Trunks
For the second time in two years, Holroyd's pipes burst, issuing an onslaught of water into its various halls and classrooms. This time, however, students were prepared.
"Dude, it was sick!" proclaimed senior geology major Pat T********* as he scuttled across the quad. "It's always been my dream to boogie board into chem lab, and now my dream has been fulfilled."
La Salle officials were not so impressed. Assistant Dean of Students Anna A**** claimed, "The water is going to cause millions of dollars in damage. Still, though, at least now we don't have to repair Kirk Pool."
Dean of Students James Moore could not be reached for comment, probably due to the fact that, as we were trying to interview him, he was catching some gnarly waves in the DART lab.
Still no word as to how long classes will be canceled. There was some discussion, however, about the possibility that all physics classes could just be converted into water polo classes.
[Editor's note: I guess Holroyd was prone to flooding? This joke does not hold up well. Glad that Pat T. made the cut, though, and I'm always ashamed to post on this blog about how noxious certain administrators were.]
Students, Faculty and Administration Begin to Represent Their Ghetto
Following the lead of star athletes/rappers "J-Will" and "T-Will," many members of the La Salle community have begun to represent their ghettoes.
When asked what exactly was meant by "representing one's ghetto," Brother President McGuinniss said, "Oh yeah, uh huh, you know what it is." When asked where his particular ghetto was located, he said, "Paterson, New Jersey up in this b****!"
Pete Lafferty of the Students Affairs Office, when talking about his own ghetto experience, said, "Black skully, yellow Tims. I'm reppin' Paterson, b****, I get it in!"
Rik Lennon then offered to produce a rap video for Alan Wendell of Community Development, otherwise known as "Big Wen."
[Editor's note: Please view the video embedded below to get the joke. This bit ABSOLUTELY holds up well. It'll never get old. Rep Ya Ghetto FOREVER.]
Resident Student Written Up, Life Is Pretty Much Over Now
Sophomore Nursing major Sam Hilakos was written up early Friday evening for the solitary beer sitting on her bathroom sink. The write-up took place in St. Basil's Court during a routine fire drill safety check. After the incident, Hilakos might as well give up.
"Her life is pretty much meaningless now," said her R.A. Michael Parillo. "With a La Salle underage drinking charge, there's pretty much no way she'll ever get a job, have any friends or find any morsel of happiness for the rest of her life."
Indeed, those unlucky students that find themselves in the crossfire of a fair and just disciplinary system at La Salle University often go on to become worthless in all other day-to-day activities. Often, at the behest of Community Development, these students are simply told to "give up, it's just not worth it after you are written up."
Hilakos was unavailable for comment, as she was too busy coming up with a bunch of lies to tell the J-Board so she could escape the charge.
[Editor's note: Holy shit, I completely forgot that Mark Badstubner of Community Development had literally told me to drop out and "give up." Get fucked, bro.]
Local Man Misinterprets Alcohol and Other Drug Education Center's Purpose
Early Tuesday morning, local resident Kevin Connell totally misunderstood the purpose of the Alcohol and Other Drug Education Center. He walked out, much to his chagrin, without any of the free alcohol or drugs he assumed he could procure there.
"I didn't see the word 'Education' in the title at first. This is disappointing."
While Connell did not get his daily hit of smack that he so craved, he did take the time to do the eChug challenge, and found that he drank in alcohol the equivalent of 37 cheeseburgers per week.
[Editor's note: I clearly spent a lot of time in the Alcohol and Other Drug Education Center.]
Explorer's Den and The Point Under New Management, Continue to Suck
Both of La Salle's restaurant-style dining options are being outsourced to new management, with whom they will continue to suck badly.
"We temporarily ran them over a year while we searched for a new tenant," said Bob Nyce, Director of Food Services, "and during that time, Explorer's Den and The Point have gone from bad to worse."
Although La Salle acquired the property from Explorer's Den in late 2007, it was leased to Andy's Steaks and Hoagies until spring 2009, when the lease expired and was not renewed for the new school year. La Salle then reopened the business as the Explorer's Den. It has continued to serve awful food and provide piss-poor service in every single one of its incarnations.
Students shouldn't expect to see changes to the dining experience and environment under the new management. "[The new tenant] is making some custom renovations to The Point to enhance the customer's experience," said Nyce. "Despite these hollow claims, The Point will continue to make the worst pizza in the city, and the workers will continue to provide the laziest service imaginable."
[Editor's note: This particular gripe is not new to even this blog.]
Even Though Class Officially Over for at Least Three Minutes Now, Student in Front Insists He Has Something Important to Say, Puts Hand Up
Despite the fact that the class period has indeed ended three full minutes ago, junior philosophy major Larry Johnson raised his hand to say something, further upsetting his fellow student.
The official class schedule is set up by the registrar's office every semester, and each particular class meeting time for each individual class is marked clearly on the syllabus handed out at the very first class of the semester. The class ending time is known by each and every student. Nevertheless, Johnson still felt that his question about Plato's Republic was important.
In Wister 303, where Johnson's Greek Philosophy class meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 11 AM until 12:15 PM, the clock hangs clearly on a stark white wall for everyone to see. Assuming that everyone in the class was taught how to read analog clocks in second grade, and assuming that Johnson's view of Wister 303's clock was not blocked or obscured by some sort of bird or hazy mist, Johnson clearly knew that 12:18 PM was three minutes past the time that the students normally exit the classroom. Johnson, however, put his hand up, and consequently extended the class time even more.
Johnson's professor applauded his enthusiasm for the classwork. His fellow students, in the meantime, will continue to roll their eyes and stare menacingly at Johnson until he shuts the hell up already.
[Editor's note: Out of everything, this is the most universal truth featured in that year's Foolegian.]
FOOTPUNCH
click to enlarge
[Editor's note: I was in charge of creating the crossword puzzle every week, but this bit was more of a commentary on the fact that I was continuously told to curb my language in the pages of the Collegian. Even more specifically, an ongoing joke was that I always tried to sneak the word "blumpkin" into every issue, and was always told to take it out. Even for this, there was a clue that said "a cross between a blueberry and a pumpkin" that I was told to cut. La Salle hates blumpkins!!!]
Get out of my townhouse, pussy catby: Joey Porkroll
There's a lot of things I really wish I could change about La Salle,. I wish I could attend my third floor Wister Psychology class without swimming in a pool of sweat. I wish I could eat the pizza they sell at the Tom Gola arena without getting the Hershey squirts. I wish the shuttle was there when you needed it, and especially when you need it in the rain. I wish I could enjoy a nice cold brew at the end of the day without worrying about getting written up because my 20-and-a-half-year-old friend happens to be present.
I wish I could have all these things. Most of all, however, I wish this f****** cat would get out of my townhouse.
For the past seven months, this stray cat has been living in my townhouse in Saint Miguel Court. I'm allergic to cats, and he is ruining my senior year by refusing to leave my abode.
My friends all love him. They call him "Steve." I hate Steve. I want to punt him out of the third floor window. I yell at Steve all the day long. "Steve!" I scream. "Get out of my townhouse! I pay good money to live here, Steve, and I'm sick of having to clean up cat poop every time I come home!"
But Steve does not listen. I know he's ignoring me out of spite. Either that or his little cat ears are clogged.
Oh, he's the star of the party, all right. We have parties at least once a weekend, and everyone who comes over thinks that Steve the cat is the... um... cat's meow. Meeting women is damn near impossible. I've kissed zero girls on the lips this year because they're all too busy giving Steve their love and affection.
Meanwhile, I'm relegated to the corner, covered in cat hairs, eyes puffy, back of my throat itchy, penis flaccid. My senior year has been a cat-tastrophe, and it's all because of this damn stray cat living in Miguel A19 with me.
I've gone to Community Development about the matter, but they care little. They've never cared about me. They'd rather have a cat live on campus then a trouble maker like me, wouldn't they?
Alan Wendell admitted that "the policy on cats could be clearer."
Every time I go to an R.A., they write me up for a noise complaint. They say they keep hearing meowing coming from my townhouse late at night.
I don't know how the cat got in my house. I just came home one night from an AWESOME LATE NIGHT LA SALLE EVENT, and he was there, staring at me.
I tried bribing the cat with some catnip. He mocked me and urinated all over my bean bag chair. I tried putting a leash on the cat and dragging it out onto the stoop. He clawed my leg up so badly that I had to go to the Student Health Center (they gave me Tylenol and salt).
I just want Steve to leave. I can't stop sneezing. My grades are suffering. My grades! My grades are so important! My GPA is in the toilet. Judging by everyone's reaction, you'd think Steve the cat made the Dean's List.
Steve the cat is my enemy. I've never hated anyone more.
This pussy cat's got to go.
[Editor's note: This was one of those "oh shit it's Wednesday night and we still have space to fill before tomorrow's printing so let's bang this out while drinking Hurricanes in the office" type essays. I've never lived with a cat. This thing is littered (pun unintentional) with inside jokes, but I'm not going to go through each one, because that would be pathetic, that I still remember them all. Also, this was clearly an attempt to get the word "pussy" into the pages of the Collegian. I remember being told at the last minute to add the word "cat" into the last paragraph.]
Smells like Team Spiritby Robert L. Schmidt III
Staring around the Tom Gola Arena during any given men's basketball game, I was shocked to see how embarrassingly empty the stands were. One might assume that the low attendance was due to the subpar basketball team. However, a new student poll reveals the true reason no one wanted to go to the Hayman Center.
The Explorer mascot smells awful.
The mascot costume, adorned by some unlucky student during every home game, was first purchased in 1998, and due to the budget or something, they didn't have enough money to get it dry-cleaned. Not once. Unacceptable.
Coach Giannini, revealing the scars from his constant use of nose plugs, commented, "While I'm disappointed attendance was low, I can't deny that it makes sense. Our mascot smells truly atrocious.
"I mean, I knew our basketball team wasn't to blame for the empty stands," he went on. "Week in and week out, our boys delived a stunning display of basketball talent, hard work and dedication to their craft. Such great basketball simply shouldn't be ignored by the student population.
"That is, unless your mascot f***ing reeks."
Students expressed similar feelings. Anthony G*********, La Salle's superfan, has been to every game this seasons, and sometimes comes dangerously close to sitting within 50 feet of the Explorer mascot. When questioned on how the hell he can stand the foul odor, Giacometti explained, "I was in a car crash when I was a young lad, and I lost my sense of smell.
"So yeah, I'm the biggest superfan because I'm the only one who can't smell the mascot, and consequently, I'm the only one who doesn't want to claw my olfactory bulbs out whenever I'm near him."
"The issue of the Explorer mascot's putrid funk has been addressed from time to time," said Michelle DeLong of the Athletic and Recreation Department. "However, we just kind of thought that if we had enough Dunkin Donuts Coffee Race Challenges, the fans would come to Tom Gola regardless."
It remains to be seen where the mascot's fate lies. Some have suggested that it be sent to NASA to study its rancid odor that defies most human logic. Others have talked about burning it in effigy in the quad to promote school spirit. Still others say that we should simply re-gift it to Aaric Murray as his going away present.
Everyone agrees, however, that something needs to be done about the mascot's repugnant scent, and quickly.
"I mean, we have a great team, right?" asked one would-be fan. "I would love to be able to go see our nationally ranked basketball squad wow me with their raw talent. I just can't do it with that Explorer mascot running around the arena. He smells like he pooped his pants or something."
The Explorer mascot himself declined to comment because, well, I mean, he's a mascot, and they don't talk much.
[Editor's note: The best jokes are rooted in truth.]
I probably overshot my opportunity to talk about aging, i.e. the process of letting certain beers sit for weeks/months/years and have them grow stronger and acquire different flavors. This was how Chapter 6 of Tasting Beer ended (Chapter 7 is the beer/food pairing, which is what I'm on now). I tried to buy a beer that I thought might apply to this process, but I kind of forgot about it when the coronavirus turned everything upside down. I drank that choice, a lambic, tonight, lambics being what beers that spontaneously ferment in a very specific region in Belgium are called. It's a sour-ish beer, not overwhelmingly so, but with a nice tart bite. Also, it had mad raspberry flavor, like, it felt like someone poured Juicy Juice into my sour beer. Anyways, we're talking about aging. Aging is typically applied to strong beers, i.e. higher than 7% ABV. E.g. Belgian dubbels, which have high ABVs, apparently lose their sweetness, dry out, and become way more complex after it sits for two years on your shelf. Lambics, per Mosher, are the exception, because of that wild yeast. They are aged for years at the brewery, but the yeast in the bottle keep making the beer more and more acidic. I can attest to this, based on this lambic that I drank. I can't imagine drinking a sixer of these—splitting one with Pam was enough. I did feel fancy drinking it; it had a cork top and everything. Fucking wild. All this for a 2.5% ABV beer—that's like Hamm's Special Light levels of alcohol. Definitely more for the experience than anything. I wonder, though, what would've happened if I had forgotten about this beer for even longer than two weeks, and maybe kept it on a shelf instead of the fridge. Would it have become tastier? Less drinkable? More alcohol? Maybe all three, I dunno. Just don't try aging your Miller Lite, folks. It doesn't work. There's plenty more to learn about aging, I'm sure, but I'm probably not the guy to find out. I'm not the guy that can leave beer on a shelf for years at a time. That shit's getting drank. Fuck aging.
NOTES
BEER: Framboise Raspberry Lambic
GENRE: Belgian Fruit Lambic ABV: 2.5%
BREWED BY: Brouwerij Lindemans
LOCATION: Vlezenbeek, Belgium
PURCHASED AT: Capital Beer
PAIRED WITH: Pork roll, egg, and cheese sandwiches (actually a worthy pairing, possibly because the fruitiness and the savory pork roll creating such a contrast)
Should I Watch This? Sam S******* wades through the glut of television content to offer his view on whether a TV show is worth your time. The only connective tissue for this column is that Sam watched it.
Show:Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season: 5 (released 2017)
Episodes: 22; each between 21 minutes and 22 minutes (look at that network TV consistency)
How to Watch: Hulu
Genre: Cop comedy
You'd Enjoy This Show If You Like: Seasons 1 through 4 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine; being a fan of Die Hard; Terry Crews' muscles.
You'd Hate This Show If You Dislike: network comedies; frequent commercial interruptions; jokes about cops; police procedurals.
People Involved: Michael Schur (The Good Place, Parks & Recreation) and Dan Goor (The Daily Show, also Parks & Recreation) offer up another installment of this forever feel good ensemble cop show starring Andy Samberg.
The Pitch: Art in any medium has a spectrum of results. No matter how much snobs may scoff, there are good Lifetime movies and bad ones; stellar pun-filled porn parodies and limp ones. The same is true with by-the-numbers sitcoms. And this is a good one.
In these scary days, do you want to be challenged or consoled? While at times Brooklyn Nine-Nine can be moralizing, in most instances, it's silly and fun. This show has mastered the A-plot, B-plot, C-plot formula; weaves in season-long narrative arcs; and incorporates returning guests for wacky adventures. On that last point, fans of the show will again enjoy guest spots from Craig Robinson, Jason Mantzoukas, and Dean Gerard Winters (aka Mayhem from the Allstate commercials or Liz Lemon's shitty ex-boyfriend).
Plot-wise, Season 5 follows Captain Raymond Holt's (Andre Braugher) pursuit to become police commissioner. This arc pits him against Allison Tollman, playing a slightly different type of cop than her role in Fargo Season 1. Also, Detective Jake Peralta and Amy (Melissa Fumero) prepare for marriage, so there's a slew of normal wedding stuff they have to deal with (look for fun parent cameos from Bradley Whitford, Jimmy Smits, and Katey Sagal).
Also happening this season: Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz) comes out as bisexual, and Charles (Joe Lo Truglio) opens a food truck. The only buzz kill is that Chelsea Peretti begins to downshift her role on the show. Season 5 is her last season as a main cast member. This means an uptick in Hitchcock and Scully episodes, which is akin to more plots on The Simpsons following Disco Stu or Gil.
You also may recall the "Save Brooklyn Nine-Nine" online crusade where FOX chose not to renew after this season. Unlike in Arrested Development, that off-stage drama never made into the show. NBC picked it up for Season 6, so that drama was short-lived anyway.
Should I Watch This? Yes. Allow Hulu to let those episodes flow from one to the next. This show is the model of consistency, and Season 5 still rides high. I don't know how long they'll be able to pull it off, but the ha-has have not yet waned.
[I wrote this before the goddamn coronavirus wiped out spring baseball. But I'm going to leave this Top Five list for y'all to read. Now, instead of a celebration, consider it a mourning.]
The Phillies are back, baby! Opening Day is Thursday! Get fucking pumped!!!
Every year I write about how excited I am for the upcoming baseball season. I look forward because the season that just passed was usually a disappointing one, so it's tough to look back. 2008 was the last year that the Phillies won a championship, so that's a lot of disappointing years (some certainly more disappointing than others).
But I want to do differently this year. I want to look back. The 2019 season concluded as a bust, but even if we didn't make the playoffs, things still felt different. 2019 felt like the start of something, ya know? Gone are the slow, steady decline of 2009-2011 and the frustrating floundering of 2012-2018. 2019 felt like the start of an upswing.
So to celebrate the start of the 2020 season, I want to look back one last time at last season, and remember the good times. Watching these clips makes me hopeful that there will be many more moments like these in our immediate future. Go Phillies.
Adam Halsey made a worthy catch in the outfield, snagging that shit as it sailed over the wall. But the best part about the catch was how hilariously nonchalant he was afterward. There's a time and a place for showing off in sports, but humility makes me laugh more, especially when it's this egregiously humble.
Me and Jim attended a pathetic late-April loss, where the only memorable thing that happened on the field was the dude who neither of us had ever heard of hit a home run (they lost 3-1 to the fucking Marlins). But that dude stuck around the rest of the year, and in August, Sean Rodriguez hit a walk-off home run. This is good. After the game, frustrated with how the season was going overall, Rodriguez called Phillies fans "entitled." This is bad. I didn't hate Rodriguez after that, because he was technically right; all sports fans feel entitled to a championship ever year, and they are going to bash a team when they don't deliver. Rodriguez became a villain after that, and it added an interesting wrinkle to the slowly sinking ship.
Back in June, despite the injuries piling up, we thought we still had a shot at this thing. See: the bamboo. Some fucking dude Brad Miller was joking around, saying that he had a lucky bamboo plant, and that he was going to bring it to the clubhouse to improve the Phillies' luck. The Phillies immediately swept the Mets in a four-game series, capped off with a game-tying Franco homer and a game-winning Segura (almost crashed my bike listening to Franzke call the winning dong). Bamboo Fever was on. (Spoilers: it didn't last.)
You're a fucking idiot if you are currently complaining about Harper. He was a little streaky in the first half, but he generally put up numbers that were worth the paycheck he gets. And he has a knack for providing "those" moments, ya know? Just insane feats of strength that leave everyone in awe. The best of these was a walk-off GRAND SLAM against the Cubs in mid-August. Everyone had the same reaction to the mammoth blast, but John Kruk said it best: "Oh my god." He didn't yell it. It was more a surprised reaction than anything. Shock and awe. That's what Bryce Harper provides during key moments.
Game 3, and Bryce Harper still didn't have a home run. You could just feel the pressure building that weekend. We needed the first one to be over with. The pressure exploded when Bryce fucking CRUSHED his first HR as a Phillie. Me and Pam and Willow went fucking nuts. It wasn't even that important of a home run in the context of the game (the Phillies walloped the Braves in the opening series, with or without Harper contributions), but it is more about what that home run symbolized. It's like I already said—there's better times just around the corner. This is merely the start of something great. We got Harper, after all.
I know it's only Day Two of the stay-at-home order, but things are getting a little claustrophobic at home. We are trying to find ways to pass the time besides drinking copious amounts of alcohol—trust me, if I was childless and a little younger, we'd be getting fucking loaded every night. But I can't do that anymore. I split a beer at dinner, which was bought from local Mexican restaurant Nemi (support local!), but that was the extent of my drinking today.
Instead of drinking ten more beers in the afternoon (which, I cannot stress enough, would've been so fucking easy under different circumstances), Pam and I instead played one of our favorite games during Willow's naptime. We don't have a name for it, but I guess you could call it "The iPod game" maybe? Basically, we pass Pam's phone back and forth, and pick the next song to listen to. Your pick has to be somehow related to the previous song, however flimsy that connection is. In fact, I'll argue that the more convoluted the connection is, the better.
So here's the results of yesterday's game. It killed like two and a half hours, and we had a great time doing it, picking songs and shooting the shit about music and about life. The only thing that was missing was about four double gin and seltzers... alright alright I'll stop. We get it. You're sober, Joe. Give it a rest.
Pam has the odd numbers, I have the even, and I explained each connection in the latter song's parenthetical. Enjoy.
"Express Yourself" by N.W.A. (because R.E.M. and N.W.A. are both three letter acronyms)
"Vogue" by Madonna (because "voguing" is a specific way to "express yourself")
"Ending the Mission" by Don McCloskey (because "Don" is in "MaDONna"—I know, a stretch, but that's what this is all about)
"Pretty Pimpin" by Kurt Vile (because McCloskey was raised in Philly, and Kurt Vile is obviously a Philly guy)
"I'm Goin' Down" by Bruce Springsteen (because the album that "Pretty Pimpin" is on is called b'lieve i'm going down..., and also because the apostrophe is a concern in all three titles)
"Chicken Fried" by Zac Brown Band (because the song mentions "a pair of jeans that fit just right," and Springsteen's jeans seem to fit just right on the cover of Born in the U.S.A.)
"What Goes On" by Sufjan Stevens (because it's a cover of "What Goes On" by the Beatles on their album Rubber Soul)
"Touch of Grey" by the War on Drugs (because it's another cover of a classic rock artist by an indie rock artist for a charity album)
"Crystal Blue Persuasion" by Tommy James & the Shondells (because War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel's girlfriend Krysten Ritter and also this Tommy James song were both featured on Breaking Bad... and yes, Pam was technically correct by pointing out the drug connection too)
"Love Minus Zero / No Limit" by Bob Dylan (because Dylan used to say that this song's title was a fraction, and percentages can also be fractions)
"Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (because the previous song is featured on Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home)
"Swing Swing" by the All-American Rejects (huge stretch, bear with me—because Crosby is the name of an artist for "Our House," and is also the name of a character in the very This Is Us-like show Parenthood, and in that show, Crosby and his brother Adam opened up a recording studio, and their big artist was the fictional band Ashes of Rome, whose frontman was portrayed by Tyson Ritter, who is also the frontman of the actual real-life band the All-American Rejects)
"Six Feet Under" by Billie Eilish (because Adam from Parenthood is portrayed by Peter Krause, who also plays Nate Fisher in Pam's favorite show of all time, Six Feet Under)
"Hummingbird" by Wilco (because that song is from their album A Ghost Is Born, and I assume that's what happens when someone is buried six feet under)
"Evergreen" by Barbara Streisand (because it's from her version of A Star Is Born, which sounds like A Ghost Is Born)
"Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros" by Flight of the Conchords (because Bret McKenzie wrote both, and because Pam accused me of not picking enough funny songs)
"Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads (because of the word "killer," but also "Heads" could continue the theme)
"Hate, Rain on Me" by AJJ (because that song is from their album Knife Man, and I think of the chick getting stabbed in the shower in American Psycho when I hear "Psycho Killer")
"Rainbow Connection" by Kermit the Frog (because of "rain," and because this was a great song to end it on)
NOTES
BEER: Icelandic White Ale
GENRE: Belgian Witbier ABV: 5.2%
BREWED BY: Einstök Beer Company
LOCATION: Akureyri, Iceland
PURCHASED AT: IGA in panic mode ("what if craft beer stores are closed?!?!") PAIRED WITH: tacos and chips/guac from Nemi (great food, give them some love from your quarantine!)
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
BEER COUNT: 125.5 (I split this one, but I also split another Blue Moon in beermosas with Pam)
