Denmark Fifteen Years Later

How have fif­teen years already passed? Has it been that long?

In case you’re won­der­ing, that’s me with some of my Rotary exchange friends, includ­ing Sarah and Jeff, whom I’m both in con­tact with again thanks to the won­drous pow­ers of Facebook.

I don’t remem­ber the exact date we left Newark air­port for Den­mark, but I remem­ber how it felt. It was the first time I’d been away from home for more than a week or so. I was ner­vous and excit­ed. I was glad I was­n’t fly­ing alone. I remem­ber meet­ing up with all the oth­er gawky exchange kids in the ter­mi­nal. I was car­ry­ing around a copy of A Clock­work Orange. Yes, I was THAT guy. Are you surprised?

(Ed. note: Turns out that day is today! I guess I could’ve checked my old pass­port, but Jeff was kind enough to remind me over on our exchange class’ Face­book page.)

That it was an amaz­ing time goes with­out say­ing. I made some great friends while I was there. Our trip back last year was fab­u­lous and I was thrilled to recon­nect with my host fam­i­ly and friends. For me, Den­mark is the sort of place I could vis­it every year and not be dis­ap­point­ed. I love it that much.

My exchange year had its ups and downs. It was a glo­ri­ous sum­mer that end­ed in drea­ry dis­ap­point­ment. It was a bru­tal win­ter that year, but I was warmed by a lov­ing host fam­i­ly and some won­der­ful new class­mates, to say noth­ing of the Gam­mel Dan­sk and Tuborg beer they plied me with!

The year end­ed with a fran­tic tour around Europe. 14 coun­tries in 17 days. In a bus. Some­how that seemed like a good idea at the time. In the pic­ture above, we’re about mid-trip, on a fer­ry ride to or from Venice, a city I did­n’t like for rea­sons I can’t artic­u­late today. I got very drunk that night.

Wish I still had that Ill Com­mu­ni­ca­tion-era Beast­ies tee.

2010 Phillies Near the Break

Man, it’s been a tough sea­son. When I first thought about writ­ing this post I thought it would be about just how idi­ot­ic it was to trade Cliff Lee. He’s been trad­ed again, now to the Texas Rangers, and I think I’m just about ready to make peace with his depar­ture. Do I think it’s a move that will plague the Phillies front office for gen­er­a­tions to come? Absolute­ly, but what more can real­ly be said?

No, I want to talk about the team the Phils have field­ed since Helen, Char­lie, Flo­rence, Eileen and I attend­ed Open­ing Day. It’s been a snakebit­ten sea­son, to say the very least, with play­ers reg­u­lar­ly shuf­fling off the ros­ter and onto the DL for stints of var­i­ous lengths. It’s been things like Polan­co get­ting plunked on the elbow, or Mad­son kick­ing a chair in dis­gust. It’s been nag­ging injuries like Jim­my’s calf and big blows like Utley’s thumb. To make mat­ters worse, the NL East has improved dra­mat­i­cal­ly, with the Braves and Mets play­ing much bet­ter than they have the last sev­er­al sea­sons. Yet some­how, the Phils are still in the thick of it.

If I’d start­ed this post like I’d planned, a few days ago, it would’ve been about who was chas­ing after Lee and how the Phils should maybe just shut it down for 2010, see where they could improve, and retool for the 2011 sea­son. Find a pitch­er, pro­mote Dom Brown, bol­ster the bullpen and get ready to come out swing­ing next year. Fun­ny how things can change so quick­ly in baseball.

I know, it’s a long sea­son, but fans have been mak­ing excus­es for the Phillies lack of urgency since Daisuke near­ly no hit them back in May. I was at that game and have been to sev­er­al since. It’s been a bru­tal stretch of near­ly bril­liant pitch­ing with prac­ti­cal­ly no run sup­port. Last night’s game was no excep­tion as the Phillies near­ly fell vic­tim to a nobody toss­ing a per­fec­to, com­ing close to squan­der­ing anoth­er of Roy Hal­la­day’s pedes­tri­an com­plete game shutout performances.

(Can I just add how amaz­ing it was to watch some­one take a per­fect game that far? My heart was in my throat for the Phillies to get a walk off hit in the 9th, but man, it was hard not to want to see some­thing so rare in base­ball. I has­ten to add that Helen and Char­lie were still at the game. We have a fam­i­ly rule that we don’t leave no hit­ters or per­fect games. They were real troop­ers stick­ing it out until the bot­tom of the 11th.)

Note I said almost. If you’ve seen the news, the Phillies won their third game against the Reds on a walkoff hit in extra innings. There’s no telling what will hap­pen. Maybe they’re final­ly turn­ing the cor­ner! It’s hard to say. Every time it seems they’ve fig­ured out hit­ting, they come back the next night and strug­gling to get a hit, much less scratch some runs across the plate. It’s been an infu­ri­at­ing sea­son that way. How­ev­er, I would be remiss if I did­n’t admit that I’d giv­en up on the 2010 cam­paign. The Phillies haven’t yet and nei­ther will I.

Worst case sce­nario? It’s a repeat of 2006, which was the agony before the ecsta­sy of our three con­sec­u­tive post­sea­son appear­ances. In case you’ve for­got­ten, we made a valiant run and then got stung by the hap­less Mar­lins, only to see our post­sea­son hopes dashed in Flori­da. It was a bru­tal fin­ish to a reward­ing sea­son, and look­ing back, a sign of things to come.

I will say this: I should prob­a­bly start tak­ing blood pres­sure med­ica­tion if they’re going to play the sec­ond half like this. I look for­ward to them claw­ing their way back into the divi­sion­al race with the Braves. It’s going to be an excit­ing sea­son. I look for­ward to watch­ing with the likes of The Fight­ins, Beer­lea­guer, and Zoo with Roy.

My Two Cents on Philly Beer Week

Philly Beer Week real­ly works for a select con­stituen­cy, main­ly the guys who are cov­er­ing the local beer scene. The rest of us can par­take in the bajil­lion events hap­pen­ing all over the place if we like, but if arti­cles like this one are any indi­ca­tion, Philly Beer Week has more in com­mon with the local music scene in Octo­ber than any­one would like to admit. Guys, all these events do is just can­ni­bal­ize each oth­er! (Hat tip to Lew Bryson for shar­ing that link on Face­book. I would’ve total­ly missed that piece in all the hoopla.)

I noticed an insight­ful tid­bit from Mithras, a great Philly blog­ger I’d not read in a lit­tle while. He wrote:

I under­stand that bars have to pay a fee to PBW to par­tic­i­pate. One bar own­er told me it was $500. With 1,000 venues, that’s a lot of rev­enue. Of course it’s in PBW’s inter­est to have more and more events — but it’s not in bar own­ers’ or in beer drinkers’ interests.

So there’s the fol­low the mon­ey angle, if PBW orga­niz­ers have no skin in the game for week to be a suc­cess­ful one from a stand­point of curat­ing a great city­wide beer experience.

Of course, I’m with the folks who just think that hav­ing Philly Beer Week dur­ing the first week of June is just sil­ly. I man­aged to get over to Mem­phis Tap­room — which is lit­er­al­ly around the cor­ner from my house, as I’ve writ­ten repeat­ed­ly — exact­ly twice. Helen and I squeezed in a quick din­ner and drinks before the Erykah Badu con­cert and I made it back over one evening for a hasty Hap­py Hour with Char­lie in my lap. I prob­a­bly drank three beers total at Mem­phis Tap­room that week, which is actu­al­ly few­er than most weeks.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of mak­ing a fuss over Philly Beer Week. When I talk to beer-lov­ing friends who live else­where they nev­er for­get to remind me just how lucky I am to be a Penn­syl­van­ian, PLCB notwith­stand­ing. We need to cel­e­brate what makes this state so spe­cial to the micro­brew cul­ture that’s matur­ing into a sus­tain­able busi­ness and not just lux­u­ry brews for beer snobs. But aren’t we cel­e­brat­ing that very thing night­ly in this town? Do we real­ly need big­ger, bet­ter, faster, more? Philly Beer Week is verg­ing on SXSW Music in terms of sheer scope and insanity.

Jack Curtin seems to feel the same way. Sure, March can be tricky, too, what with the whole St. Patrick­’s Day thing, to say noth­ing of the impend­ing 96 team field for March Mad­ness, which may add an addi­tion­al week­end to the pro­ceed­ings. Fac­tor in the lousy weath­er we had this win­ter and maybe Philly Beer Week dodged a bul­let by mov­ing to June. With any luck, the orga­niz­ers will work some of the kinks out for next year and it’ll be the dream event every­one wants it to be.

(In case you’re won­der­ing, I drank a delight­ful impe­r­i­al stout from Brew­Dog called Tokyo. I thought it’d do me in. Need I men­tion what an amaz­ing job Leigh, Bren­dan and the crew do over at Mem­phis Tap­room dur­ing Philly Beer Week? No Repeat Beer Week for me is the epit­o­me of what makes Philly such a great beer town. My neigh­bor­hood bar can cre­ate the entire expe­ri­ence in a micro­cosm! As they say where I grew up, ‘Nix besser!’)

I Need a New WordPress Theme!

Clean­r’s been great to me. Taught me the val­ue of a clean inter­face, with dead sim­ple nav­i­ga­tion. The prob­lem? It’s not sim­ple enough. Not a year goes by that I don’t real­ize how impor­tant it is to present infor­ma­tion com­plete­ly free from noise when­ev­er pos­si­ble. What does that mean? An end to two-col­umn theme, at least for me.

Thus, I throw myself at the mer­cy of the Inter­net to help me find the fol­low­ing: an ele­gant one-col­umn theme with dead sim­ple nav­i­ga­tion and a beau­ti­ful­ly inte­grat­ed “fol­low” suite where I can plug in links to my Twit­ter, Flickr, and oth­er accounts. To be per­fect­ly hon­est, if Flavors.me offered some­thing akin to Tum­blr, I’d jump in a heartbeat.

Why not Tum­blr, you ask? Too insid­ery for my tastes. Sure, I don’t try to gen­er­ate bat­ty pageviews here at Kens­ing­ton Blues, but I’m not try­ing to impress an arma­da of fol­low­ers either. Influ­ence ped­dling is not some­thing I want to get too wrapped up in out­side of work, if you catch my drift. More impor­tant­ly, I have yet to find a Tum­blr theme that does­n’t make actu­al words seem like unwel­come guests on the page. I think Tum­blr’s great for meme gen­er­a­tion and is home to a lot of fun stuff on the web, but I just don’t think I can com­mit to Tum­blr as my sole out­let online. (Don’t even get me start­ed about main­tain­ing sep­a­rate chan­nels in my per­son­al life.)

Hav­ing said all that, I do appre­ci­ate Tum­blr’s ele­gance. Be gone, use­less blogroll! No one clicks on you any­way! Good­bye, archives! The peo­ple will use search instead! You get the picture.

Ide­al­ly, I’d love to strip the extra­ne­ous ele­ments out of this theme and adapt it for my pur­pos­es. If you’re the sort of per­son who reads this and thinks that is pos­si­ble, let me know!

The Future of Television

I work for a tele­vi­sion com­pa­ny. When I start­ed at Com­cast three years ago, I was real­ly in the dark about just how com­pet­i­tive tele­vi­sion and film would become. Sure, lots of peo­ple were beat­ing their chests, root­ing for Hulu like the G.E.-owned prod­uct was some kind of under­dog, but then Com­cast bought that. Aside from Net­flix’s efforts with stream­ing video — some­thing I love watch­ing on my HDTV via my Xbox 360 — there weren’t real­ly any oth­er com­pa­nies real­ly try­ing to make hay online.

How times have changed. Just as Com­cast jumped in the pool with Fan­cast Xfin­i­ty TV, so has every­one else. The basic con­cept was always sim­ple, but how do you get your tele­vi­sion to play nice with the Inter­net? There are pesky rights issues! That seems to be chang­ing, too. Now that com­pa­nies like Google and Apple are involved, you can bet that it’s going to be all out war and con­sumers may come out winners.

But is it too much noise? Let’s talk about music for just a sec­ond. Think back about, oh, two years. Remem­ber when every Tom, Dick, and Har­ry jumped into stream­ing music online. It was a ver­i­ta­ble bonan­za. The ser­vices may have been wonky and were like­ly incom­plete, but users could cob­ble togeth­er a pret­ty exten­sive online music library that as total­ly legit. Flash back to the present: effec­tive this week­end, the num­ber of full length free stream­ing on-demand music ser­vices will be zero.

Maybe it’ll be dif­fer­ent this time and we’ll all be liv­ing in a la carte utopia in just a year or two. It’s great that some of the big tech­nol­o­gy play­ers like Google and Apple are in the mix. You know them for their most prod­ucts, but it’s some­times easy to for­get that both of them have armies of lawyers who are try­ing to gain any toe­hold they can against the big cable providers. Ulti­mate­ly, it push­es every­one in the right direc­tion and we will all reap the benefits.