Month: August 2010

A Thank You to Readers

I’ve been butcher­ing this blog in one form or anoth­er since about 2003. My pas­sion for it has fluc­tu­at­ed over time, rang­ing from those heady days when I’d try my best to write about pol­i­tics, or when I ditched that and wrote about movies for a time, or when I just got caught up in the notion of need­ing a blog for some­thing as elu­sive as “per­son­al brand­ing.” I feel like I’m still recov­er­ing from that last one.

In the past week I’ve got­ten three com­pli­ments from folks who check in here from time to time and I have to say that’s immense­ly mean­ing­ful to me. I can’t tell you how reward­ing it is to know that even in an age where we’re just zip­ping one-lin­ers at each oth­er, some folks will take the time to read a para­graph or two. I nev­er ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed actu­al­ly engag­ing an audi­ence in that way until blog­ging became passe. Thanks again for reading!

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We Ate at Zahav

I promised Helen at least 12 date nights last Christ­mas and I’ve been doing my best to keep up my end of the bar­gain with the help of friends and fam­i­ly. We final­ly got around to Zahav last Fri­day. (Fair warn­ing: their web­site enables sound. It’s loud.)

We got the three course tast­ing menu, along with the wine pair­ing. We weren’t dis­ap­point­ed. Tried lamb tartare, called kebbe naya, and it blew my mind. It was so lus­cious it just melt­ed in my mouth and the grilled avo­ca­do was a pleas­ant fin­ish. Drank arak for the first time, too. If you’re into licorice-fla­vored liqueurs, I high­ly recommend.

If you’re look­ing to try some­thing new, def­i­nite­ly hit it up. They have some great hap­py hour spe­cials if you’re just look­ing to try it out before you get a reservation.

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It’s Time for a Sixers Blog

I’ve been telling peo­ple for a while that it’s time for Philly bas­ket­ball fans to start blog­ging the Six­ers. I know it sounds like the most excru­ci­at­ing pun­ish­ment short of hav­ing to actu­al­ly play for the team, but that’s how you make this work. See, it’s like this: the team can’t plum­met much fur­ther and it’s pret­ty clear that Philadel­phi­ans can’t be both­ered with them. That’s why you, enter­pris­ing sports writer, need to step into the breach and blog the beje­sus out of the team. They’re so per­fect­ly pathet­ic I’ve been tempt­ed to do it myself.

I fig­ure that it’d be best to draw on what works with the great Phillies blogs I fol­low dogged­ly, but give them a lit­tle bit of every­thing, rang­ing from the hilar­i­ous “per­son­al­i­ty” dri­ven posts over at The Fight­ins, the keen­ly-observed prose that you get from Beer­lea­guer and just a dab of the heady analy­sis you find at Crash­burn Alley and you’d prob­a­bly have the best Six­ers blog in the city overnight.

If any­one is already doing this, I’d love to read along. I feel like this is also the time to bite the bul­let and start watch­ing. If you’re over 30 like me, chances are you sur­vived the Clarence Weath­er­spoon and Shawn Bradley years. Can this be any worse than that?

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A Quick Housekeeping Note

Tell me what you think about that fol­low suite my good friend Roz helped me snag from Eric’s blog! I did some addi­tion­al tweak­ing and feel good about how it turned out.

An aside: remem­ber when it seemed sen­si­ble to lifestream stuff, flood­ing the blog with con­tent from every chan­nel imag­in­able? Glad that’s passed.

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In Praise of Two Guys on Beer

There’s some­thing amiss in the Philly beer blo­gos­phere, if you ask me. Lew’s been crazy busy with more impor­tant things, like send­ing his son to col­lege, not to men­tion fin­ish­ing up that book. (Con­grats on both, Dad!) Ram­blin’ Jack has been a lit­tle heavy on the press releas­es late­ly in anci­ti­pa­tion of launch­ing a new site, which has been post­poned, per his lat­est post. Beer­lass has been doing her thing, but her blog tends to make me more hun­gry than thirsty. Love Joe Six­pack, but hate philly.com too much to find his stuff.  Where do I turn for more beer insight?

I’ve been tweet­ing recent­ly with Dave Mar­torana, half of the Two Guys on Beer duo. They have a video pod­cast, which you can also view at their YouTube chan­nel. Nat­u­ral­ly, I’m eat­ing crow here as they haven’t record­ed since the World Cup end­ed, but I think that’s due to some shenani­gans at Indy Hall. Dav­e’s been great about rec­om­mend­ing oth­er video pod­casts to me, like Beer Tap TV and Two Beer Queers.

Thing that’s great about video pod­casts now? They look great on your iPhone 4. Seri­ous­ly. Amaz­ing. I was total­ly over pod­cast­ing. The word just turned me off and the prod­uct often was­n’t much bet­ter. You know what changed all that? HD tech­nol­o­gy. Every­thing looks and sounds awe­some, and you can watch while you ride the train to work! Per­fect, bite-sized morsels of beery goodness.

But you know what? I want more! Rec­om­mend your favorite beer writ­ers and pod­cast­ers. I love local folks, but I want to know who your favorites are. It always helps to refresh sources and I feel like I’m long over­due for some good­ies. Drop your rec­om­men­da­tions in the com­ments so I can check ’em out!

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