"I've been thinking about it for several weeks but gave notice yesterday. Everyone in the band is being very supportive and seem to recognize I need this for both the health of my family and my personal musical growth. A jazz musician can only pretend to be a rock-star for so long..."
Forbes magazine ranks Memphis as the third most miserable city in America in terms of quality of life.
The 200-city list is topped by Cleveland, with last year’s No. 1, Stockton, Calif., slipping to second place.
Living only 80-some miles from Memphis, we get the Memphis TV stations on our cable system and the newscasts are wall-to-wall murder and mayhem with a liberal sprinkling of governmental corruption. I realize there are lovely places in the metropolitan Memphis area, but a lot of it scares the hell out of me.
I’ve not spent any time in Cleveland, but I have been to Stockton. Back in July 2001, Rich Nathan and I rode U.S. 50 from Indiana to its terminus in Sacramento. Since we planned to ride through Big Sur the next day, we had targeted a Motel 6 on the south side of Sacramento.
By the time we got to the motel, we’d covered 450 miles from Ely, Nev. that day. But one look at the neighborhood and the folks staying/living at the motel convinced us we should get the hell of there as fast as possible.
The next Motel 6 opportunities were about 50 miles south at Stockton. I think we got off of I-5 too soon, because we rode down what seemed like endless dark city streets until we finally arrived at the motel, which was situated a short distance from the Interstate.
I didn’t see enough of Stockton to form an impression, but I’m in no particular hurry to go back.
St. Louis, the other major metropolitan center in our part of the country, ranks seventh on the Forbes list.
The rankings only include cities of 250,000 or more, so there’s no danger of Jonesboro showing up on any of the major lists.
Little Rock, for what it’s worth, is on somebody’s list as the seventh most dangerous city in the nation.
This half-liter lidded stein was an award I received from the Indianapolis BMW Club for my services to the club as newsletter editor in 1995.
I have two other similar Munich steins. They, however, have the BMW roundel embossed into the pewter lid. This one has a small button-size BMW roundel affixed to a plain pewter lid. All were produced to be sold at BMW motorcycle and car dealerships in the 1990s.
I was surprised to learn that the Wolverton Mountain in the 1962 hit song of that name by Claude King really does exist. And it’s here in Arkansas.
The song is about Clifton Clowers, who lives on Woverton Mountain and has a pretty young daughter. But would-be suitors stay away because Clifton is “mighty handy with a gun and a knife.”
There really was a Clifton Clowers and he did live on Wolverton Mountain. He died Aug. 15, 1994 at the age of 102. The mountain is named for the Wolverton family who still live there and operate a dairy farm. The summit is 1,063 feet above sea level and the mountain is in Conway County in northwest Arkansas.
The video shows Clifton on his 101st birthday, sitting on his front porch and listening to Mike Redmond (no relation to my friend of the same name in Indiana) sing Claude King’s song.
This half-liter lidded stein bears the coat of arms of the German state of Bavaria. The lid has a small BMW roundel affixed to it because it is part of a series of steins offered for sale at BMW motorcycle and car dealerships back in the 1990s.
Another box of steins surfaced today, so I’m briefly reviving the Stein of the Day feature.
This half-liter lidded stein celebrates the oldest brewery in the world, the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan, founded in 1040 by Benedictine monks. This particular stein was produced for sale by BMW motorcycle and car dealers and has a BMW roundel on the pewter lid.
Weihenstephan was in the news last fall:
Freising, Germany (October 21, 2009) - Dr. Josef Schrädler, managing director of Germany's Weihenstephan Brewery, and Jim Koch, brewer and founder of Samuel Adams, announced today their partnership and plans to unveil a new style of collaboratively brewed beer next spring. Weihenstephan is the world's oldest brewery, founded by Benedictine monks in 1040. The brewery is the guardian of a centuries-old beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot and it has brewed according to this law since its beginning. Every batch of Weihenstephan's beer is evaluated by a panel of experts for color, aroma, froth consistency and flavor. Founded in 1984, Samuel Adams is an American craft beer pioneer. The brewery's original style, Samuel Adams Boston Lager®, helped spark the American Craft Beer Revolution by leading a return to flavorful beer brewed in small batches. While keeping an eye on tradition, the Samuel Adams brewers continue to innovate and explore boundary-pushing beer styles and brewing techniques. Both breweries share great passion for the art and science of brewing and pride themselves on using only the highest quality ingredients to produce award-winning, world-class beers.
"The Weihenstephan Brewery is a mecca for brewers and people around the world who are passionate about beer and brewing. No brewer can stand at the site of this brewery without feeling a sense of reverence for what has been done here," said Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Samuel Adams® beers. "It is a great honor to work together on this mission to explore the limits of the Reinheitsgebot and to brew a beer that represents the platinum standard in the art of brewing."
"This journey we've embarked on with Samuel Adams is unprecedented in the beer world," says Dr. Josef Schrädler, managing director, Weihenstephan. "We are making history with Jim and his team of brewers; turning our traditional brewing techniques on their head will result in an innovative beer that is ground breaking, delicious and unique."
Working in tandem for almost two years, the brewers from Samuel Adams and Weihenstephan are perfecting an innovative beer style that explores new brewing techniques within the boundaries of beer law. Their yet-to-be-named crisp, pale brew is slated to debut in the United States and Germany next spring in cork-finished bottles. This effervescent, Champagne-like beer will weigh in at more than 10 percent alcohol by volume, yet remain very dry and crisp, shattering the preconceived notions of what can be done following the Reinheitsgebot Law.
The Weihenstephan/Samuel Adams beer marries new thinking from the world of American "extreme beer" with tradition and respect for the Reinheitsgebot, a German beer purity law that dates back to 1516 and states that all beer must be brewed using only the four ingredients: malt, hops, water, and yeast. By tapping 1000 years of brewing knowledge and coupling it with American innovation, the brewers at Samuel Adams and Weihenstephan will brew a complex, higher alcohol beer of distinction with only the four classic ingredients. This new beer will be ready to share with beer aficionados throughout the world in the spring of 2010.
THE BOSTON BEER COMPANY BACKGROUND:
The Boston Beer Company began in 1984 with a generations-old family recipe that Founder and Brewer Jim Koch uncovered in his father's attic. After bringing the recipe to life in his kitchen, Jim brought it to bars in Boston with the belief that drinkers would appreciate a complex, full-flavored beer, brewed fresh in America. That beer was Samuel Adams Boston Lager®, and it helped catalyze what became known as the American craft beer revolution.
Today, the Company brews more than 21 styles of beer. The Company uses the traditional four vessel brewing process and often takes extra steps like dry-hopping and a secondary fermentation known as krausening. It passionately pursues the development of new styles and the perfection of its classic beers by constantly searching for the world's finest ingredients. While resurrecting traditional brewing methods, the Company has earned a reputation as a pioneer in another revolution, the "extreme beer" movement, where it seeks to challenge drinkers' perceptions of what beer can be. The Boston Beer Company strives to elevate the image of American craft beer by entering festivals and competitions the world over, and in the past five years it has won more awards in international beer competitions than any other brewery in the world. The Company remains independent, and brewing quality beer remains its single focus. While Samuel Adams is the country's largest-selling craft beer, it accounts for just under one percent of the U.S. beer market. For more information, please visit www.samueladams.com.
ABOUT WEIHENSTEPHAN:
The Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan. Nearly one thousand years ago it was the monastery brewery of the Benedictine monks, then the Royal Bavarian State Brewery. Today, as a regulated enterprise of the Freestate of Bavaria, it is a company run according to the precepts of private business. As the oldest existing brewery in the world, the brewery occupies an exalted site atop Weihenstephan Hill in the Bavarian city of Freising, surrounded by the comparatively still very young Weihenstephan science centre of the Technical University of Munich. Yet it is precisely this unique combination of tradition and custom, proven knowledge, and modern science, which gives the brewery its incomparable identity and permits it to brew beers of the highest quality. www.weihenstephaner.de
It’s 58 springlike degrees under a partly sunny sky here in northeast Arkansas. It’s actually 1 degree warmer here than it is in Las Vegas at the moment. And 18 glorious degrees warmer than it is in Crawfordsville, Ind.
It’s tempting to declare winter to be over, but I know better. I postponed my departure for Daytona last Feb. 28 when we got the last snowstorm of the winter.
And I was up to my eyeballs in ice storm debris at this time last year and paid a tree crew from Illinois to do some serious chainsawing a year ago today.
We’re nowhere near out of firewood from that storm and I’ll probably spend some time this weekend collecting and burning the most recent deadfall – branches broken in the January, 2009 ice storm that only recently hit the ground.
For the moment, though, I’m hanging out at Barnes & Noble, blogging, surfing and listening to my iPod.
So I dug out both bikes and rode my first motorcycle miles of 2010 – taking the K75S and then the K1200GT down to the Brookland Citgo station to top off the gas tanks. Total combined mileage: 6 miles.
Well, it’s a start.
I don’t give a rat’s ass if he was/is a man-whore and I don’t give a rat’s ass if he apologizes. I don’t even give a rat’s ass about golf or any of his sponsors.
This media bullshit can’t go away soon enough.
Here we see some guy name Achmed, making a video of his buddy, Achmed, as he fires mortars at British and American troops. Since our countries have actually evolved out of the bronze age, the Allies use computer technology to track incoming mortar rounds back to the launcher’s precise location.
Ruthie went yesterday and today was Pete’s turn.
Since dogs aren’t about to sit still for this process, they knock them out. Ruthie seemed OK when I picked her up yesterday afternoon, but Pete was a different story.
He didn’t seem particularly pleased to see me when I picked him up and he was downright mopey and sullen in the car. He just sat with his back to me, leaning up against the passenger seat backrest and stared vacantly out the window.
I found myself wondering what horrible thing they had done to break his spirit.
When we got home and I released him into the back yard, it became apparent that he was still buzzed from the general anesthetic.
Hours later, he seems to be back to his old playful, responsive self.
That’s a huge relief. I’d hate to think he was harboring a grudge over what happened at the vet’s today.
An Yahoo group message board to which I subscribe carried one of those hysterical Internet scare messages this morning – this one about the risks of returning calls to area codes that turn out to be outside the U.S.
The message ends with:
Please forward this entire message to your friends, family and colleagues to help them become aware of this scam.
AT&T VERIFIES IT'S TRUE:
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=6045
SNOPES VERIFIES IT'S TRUE:
http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/809.asp
Well, first of all, the request to forward the message to everyone you know should be a tipoff that it’s time to do some checking.
And anyone who goes ahead and forwards it after checking the AT&T and Snopes links has serious reading comprehension problems, because both sites emphasize that the message grossly overstates the problem and the risks. Like, for instance, people who fall for the phone scam do not incur charges of more than $2,400 a minute. It’s more like $25 to maybe $100 total.
I agree that it’s good to know schemes to rip you off, but people need to have a little discrimination about what they pass on.
Unless the weather forecast changes dramatically, I’m going to pass on Daytona Beach Bike Week this year.
The Weather Channel 10-day out look for here and for Daytona indicates I would be very uncomfortable riding to and from Florida and would freeze in my tent every night. That’s not my idea of a good time.
I spent two miserable nights shivering in my tent last year before I gave up and fled for home. It was an unacceptably high price to pay for being able to sit and stare at the ocean at Flagler Beach, ride down A1A and Main Street and visit Daytona BMW for a shirt.
My trip records show Daytona Bike Week 2009 cost me $348.34, including $108.90 for gas and $164.44 for lodging. I’d have to eat whether I went to Daytona or stayed home, so the food expense is pretty much a wash.
I might reconsider if it looks like temperatures will warm up by 10-15 degrees across the board, but as it stands right now, count me out.
(But they do have a very nice logo this year.)
As I prepared to synch my new iPod Touch this morning, I started exploring the little tabs across the top of the iPod page.
I’d seen them before but never clicked on them to see what they did.
They do what I’d been expecting iTunes to do automatically. Like it used to do in earlier versions. They add video and podcasts to the synchronization process.
Doh!
So much for my two days of cranky bitching about Microsoft and Apple’s alleged shortcomings.
So, as embarrassed as I am about being a technofeeb, I’m almost giddy with delight over having my videos and podcasts on my new iPod. Woo-freaking-hoo!
Fortunately, my del Sol doesn’t take up a lot of space, so I was able to slip into what was left of the parking space and still squeeze out of the car.
Then I went over to Office Depot to buy padded envelopes for my Amazon.com used book store.
What the hell is it with these people?
I absolutely love these commercials for the KIA Sorento. The use of “How You Like Me Now” by The Heavy is brilliant.
I want a Sock Monkey suit.
We saw Avatar in 3D Sunday evening. And we enjoyed it.
After hearing so much criticism about the alleged Green propaganda in the movie, I came away a little puzzled at all the controversy. It didn’t strike me as especially preachy.
As far as I’m concerned, Avatar is just a sci-fi version of Dances With Wolves. And, like Dances With Wolves, Avatar is longer than it needs to be. At 162 minutes, it’s 19 minutes shorter than Dances With Wolves. Mel Brooks once opined that no movie should be longer than 90 minutes. I tend to agree.
Less than 24 hours after I got my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 working again last weekend, it showed me the Blue Screen of Death and crashed.
The BSD advised me to remove any recently installed software and hardware as a first step to sorting out the problem.
I recalled that I never had any of these problems before I installed Photoshop a few weeks ago. So I deleted Photoshop from the 32GB SSD and I’ve not seen the BSD again.
Yet.
Evan Bayh, the two-term junior Senator from Indiana and a Democrat announced today he won’t seek a third term.
I am amazed. Bayh is a whole lot smarter than I thought. In announcing his decision, he said his true vocation is as an executive, like when he was governor of Indiana for two terms.
FOX News political analyst Brit Hume said this evening that he didn’t think Bayh was comfortable all of the Washington bullshit and was especially uncomfortable as a moderate in a party controlled by leftist radicals like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
And, like all Democrats – incumbents especially – he faced almost certain defeat this fall.
I suspect he’s harboring presidential ambitions – maybe not in 2012, but eventually.
