The Phillies: Beer and Baseball

The Phillies start their title defense as they play host tonight to the vis­it­ing Atlanta Braves in the sea­son open­er at Cit­i­zen’s Bank Park. Helen and I did­n’t get tick­ets to tonight’s game, so we decid­ed to catch the first of two On Deck pre­sea­son matchups against last year’s World Series run­ners-up, the Tam­pa Bay Rays.

It was an amaz­ing, if blus­tery, night. We sat under the over­hang in sec­tion 137 and watched Pat Bur­rell warm up on his old left field stomp­ing grounds. It was an emo­tion­al moment for Helen and me. We both felt that we real­ly got to “know” Pat in his last sea­son as a Phillie, and sup­port­ed him in our cus­tom­ary seats in sec­tion 143 with rau­cous cheers. We did the same for him last Fri­day, even though he now wears a Rays uniform.

The Phillies hon­ored Pat’s career with a pre-game mon­tage that start­ed when he signed with the team in 1998 right up until he spoke at last fal­l’s World Series cel­e­bra­tion. It was chock full of great mem­o­ries, both good and bad. Pat walked out of the dugout and doffed his cap at the Phillies faith­ful. Pat may not have the great­est rep­u­ta­tion, but on the field, he’s a true class act.

On a lighter note, I was able to enjoy one of three new addi­tions to the Cit­i­zen’s Bank Park beer selec­tion, pair­ing a Troegs Sun­shine Pils with one of Hat­field­’s finest processed meat prod­ucts. Deli­cious! I fig­ure if you’re either pay­ing near­ly dou­ble for Bud­weis­er swill, or you can get one of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s finest craft brews for $6.75. I fig­ure it’s a great ratio­nale for choos­ing the good stuff when you’re out at the ballpark!

The Running Man

If you fol­low me on Twit­ter or Dai­ly Mile, or by some strange twist of fate bump into me in real life, you know I start­ed train­ing for and suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed the Philadel­phia Marathon last Novem­ber. I’ve tried to keep it up over the course of the win­ter, but it has­n’t been easy. Cold weath­er and icy side­walks aren’t the most invit­ing aspects of the mid-Atlantic region, and I can’t stand to run on a tread­mill. I often opt­ed out of a morn­ing run rather than risk break­ing my neck on some black ice I did­n’t see (or to just stay in my nice warm bed a lit­tle longer.)

I’ve lost a step, thanks to that, but I’m con­fi­dent know­ing that the time I lazed will like­ly keep me from over­train­ing at an unsus­tain­ably high lev­el. I’m a lit­tle frus­trat­ed by the set­back, but I’m still aver­ag­ing a sub‑8 minute mile, so it won’t be long before I’m run­ning com­fort­ably at clos­er to 7 minute miles all the time.

Now that the weath­er’s start­ing to get warmer and the sun is up before I’m at the office, I’m back out on the streets of Port Fish­ing­ton again. (I know, I’ve said I hate that term, and I do, but I use it here because I’m run­ning from my house into Port Rich­mond, and occa­sion­al­ly Brides­burg. There are now no few­er than four names for my neighborhood.They include Olde Rich­mond, which is total­ly bogus, brought to you by ORCA; there’s Flat Iron, the name most of our neigh­bors call the area; and last­ly, Cione, which derives from the play­ground at the neigh­bor­hood’s north­east­ern bound­ary at Aramin­go and Lehigh.) My route right now takes me up Rich­mond St., which is usu­al­ly pret­ty emp­ty (and always flat) when I get out there in the hazy pre-dawn hours. It can be a bit bor­ing, and it’s not exact­ly pic­turesque, but it’s con­ve­nience that dic­tates the terms here.

I’m look­ing for­ward to April, when it’ll be even warmer and I’ll feel more com­fort­able rid­ing my bike down to the Com­cast Cen­ter. Then I’ll be joined by my friend Bri­an from the Food Trust on morn­ing runs dur­ing the week. We’re already run­ning togeth­er on week­ends and it’s been great. I can think of few things more reward­ing than get­ting out ear­ly on a Sat­ur­day or Sun­day morn­ing for a good long run. It’s actu­al­ly pret­ty beau­ti­ful if you can get out there before every rollerblad­er and week­end cyclist descends on Kel­ly Drive.

I’m already look­ing for­ward to those 14+ mile runs that take us into Wis­sahick­on Creek Park. It’ll be amaz­ing to get back out there in the late sum­mer and ear­ly fall.

Elysian Avatar IPA


Elysian Avatar IPA

Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

Helen and I stopped in at the Abbaye for brunch this morn­ing and I stum­bled upon yet anoth­er inter­est­ing brew from the good peo­ple at Elysian.

What made this IPA stand out is its sub­tle fla­vors. Elysian’s Avatar IPA does­n’t bowl you over with high alco­hol con­tent or over­pow­er­ing hops. A hint of jas­mine makes this an insane­ly refresh­ing IPA and at just 5.6%, it’s prac­ti­cal­ly eli­gi­ble for ses­sion beer status!

This could be a sta­ple at my house this sum­mer, if I can find it locally.

The Sky Is Falling!

Here’s my absurd, reduc­tion­ist view­point on why edi­to­r­i­al will sur­vive the demise of the music indus­try: just because big con­glom­er­ates won’t make mon­ey sell­ing music does­n’t mean peo­ple will stop mak­ing it. Artists will keep doing all sorts of beau­ti­ful, irra­tional things, often at con­sid­er­able per­son­al expense, even if there’s no one to buy it. Some­one still needs to dig around to find what’s great, right?

If we as crit­ics con­cen­trate sole­ly on solv­ing the music indus­try’s prob­lems, we won’t be able to ade­quate­ly address our own. Jason Gross and I have been going back and forth quite a bit about this on Twit­ter. He wrote, “Music biz = our bread/butter (& our love). As for sav­ing crit­i­cism, do you mean the whole scribe trade or our just our own turf?” Con­flat­ing the music busi­ness with music itself is sil­ly. (I’m sure Jason agrees, but his tweet is illus­tra­tive nonetheless.)

If crit­i­cism sur­vives it will be as a cul­tur­al fil­ter. It sounds imper­son­al, but it’s of cru­cial impor­tance to an audi­ence. We have to stop think­ing of our­selves as ser­vants of the music indus­try and con­cen­trate on being of val­ue to an audi­ence with pre­cious lit­tle time to spend think­ing about our pas­sion. Remem­ber, crit­ics have always been cul­tur­al cura­tors, so it’s not a rad­i­cal change in job descrip­tion. We just have to think of our role in broad­er terms.

Our love is writ­ing about music. Let’s not for­get that.

Welcome to My New Blog!

I’m cur­rent­ly try­ing to wrap my head around an idea that best con­veys “my per­son­al brand.” It’s not easy. It also requires an embar­rass­ing degree of self-aware­ness. I think that the end­ing of Bar­ton Fink prob­a­bly sums it up best.

In the mean­time, I’m going to be exper­i­ment­ing here on my new blog. What’s it going to be about? Well, me, and the peo­ple and things that come into my life. It’s a wel­come change from Black­mail Is My Life, which I’ll be shut­ter­ing in the near future. I have no inten­tion of import­ing that con­tent. It, like most of the work I’ve done on the web, will be left in the pixel­lat­ed past.

After care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, I decid­ed to keep my own name as the blog’s title. It’s not as sexy and enig­mat­ic as Black­mail Is My Life, but it’s much eas­i­er to find out what I’m up to, which isn’t easy when you’re blog­ging under an alias for rea­sons that were nev­er real­ly clear. I’ve tried as best I can to claim the web ser­vices I use in my own name, or a pho­net­ic approx­i­ma­tion like “jay­teer­am­say.” That way it’s abun­dant­ly clear that I’m post­ing in my own voice and stat­ing my own opinions.

I want to give a shout to Kei­th Fitzger­ald, who’s been the cap­tain of this ship so far. He’s a gen­tle­man and a schol­ar, not to men­tion the sort of tech­nol­o­gy geek who’s not foolin’ when it comes to know­ing his stuff, and know­ing what’s best on the web.

This blog will be devel­op­ing apace as Kei­th and I col­lab­o­rate on what makes best sense for what I want to do with my new home on the net. My goals are mod­est: I want to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that com­bines my con­tent from around the web with­out clut­ter­ing the blog. I want it to be as social as pos­si­ble, which means I’m look­ing for your feed­back every step of the way. I want it to be exper­i­men­tal in the sense that I’m going to be try­ing some new things, like incor­po­rat­ing more video con­tent as I see fit.

One thing I will point out is that I intend to make the cat­e­gories a use­ful part of this blog. Instead of attempt­ing to lit­er­al­ly cat­e­go­rize any­thing I write, I’m going to put my mus­ings in cat­e­gories defined by the action verb that best describes what I’m up to. For exam­ple, if I’m writ­ing about a blog or a book I liked recent­ly, you can find that under “Read­ing.” I think it’s far less clut­tered and con­fus­ing that try­ing to put every­thing in its own box, don’t you think?

I’m pret­ty excit­ed about what’s to come.  I’ll show you the life of the mind!