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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The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Had this song stuck in my head on Tues­day morn­ing. Odd, because I learned that the man respon­si­ble for writ­ing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” George David Weiss, had died the night before.

As I thought about it, I looked up Matt Per­pet­u­a’s exhaus­tive Pop Songs ’07-’08 and found this entry for the song. So maybe that’s not the most illu­mi­nat­ing piece ever writ­ten about an R.E.M. song, but it remind­ed me that Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple was such a down­er of a record.

I know I’ve said it before else­where, but I can’t even try to lis­ten to this absolute pill of a record any­more. Maybe it puts me back in a weird spot, remem­ber­ing all the awk­ward moments it sound­tracked while I was a gawky teen, but it’s so one note that even tracks like “Sidewinder” and “Ignore­land” can’t shake me from my sleep. Going back to that place is one weird trip, let me tell you.

This album is to me what I think an album like Lucin­da Williams’ Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road would be just six years lat­er: a sol­id adult con­tem­po­rary record that lulled peo­ple into a false sense of sophis­ti­ca­tion. (How I avoid­ed buy­ing that Williams record I may nev­er know.) As much as I used to think Auto­mat­ic was a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on death, I real­ize today that that had every­thing to do with me know­ing noth­ing about the sub­ject mat­ter. It’s the muzak disc Stipe cursed the Bea­t­les for mak­ing. How he can even sing “Every­body Hurts” with a straight face at this point in his career is beyond me.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 13

Facebook Places or Foursquare?

Face­book Places. Game, set, match. Why? Because even though every last des­ti­na­tion I vis­it has­n’t been loaded into Face­book, it means acti­vat­ing one less wonky app that crash­es unex­pect­ed­ly and then scolds me if I try check­ing in again. Anoth­er plus? Peo­ple I know actu­al­ly use Face­book. Foursquare? Not so much.

Face­book Places does to Foursquare what Twit­ter’s acqui­si­tion of Tweet­ie did for every­one else in the mobile Twit­ter app mar­ket: killed ’em dead, at least on the iPhone. I know Foursquare’s try­ing to put on a brave face, but if Face­book want­ed to intro­duce badges and oth­er rewards, it would­n’t be hard and it gives peo­ple the all-in-one con­ve­nience they want in a mobile experience.

I used Foursquare off and on for months, some­times delet­ing it from the phone, then rein­stalling it if a friend con­vinced me to do so. It was point­less. The loca­tions are sil­ly, as are the tips and rewards. I know how it feels to be a reg­u­lar at my local bar. It’s great. I don’t need an app to dri­ve that point home. As I tweet­ed after Face­book Places was launched, “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” At the same time, I like to let friends know that I’m out if they’d like to join me some­place. Revive the drop-in vis­it! How fun!

Do your­self a favor and delete Foursquare already. You’re wor­ried about pri­va­cy con­cerns? Here’s a thought: don’t both­er check­ing in! I’ll go a step fur­ther and say that you should real­ly cat­e­go­rize all of your Face­book con­tacts in a way that pro­tects you from weirdos. That should be a no-brain­er at this point in the game. As in so many things, be care­ful and have fun!

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I Threw a Home Run Ball Back

I arrived a bit late to last night’s game, miss­ing the first inning, but I was there for the fol­low­ing 15. What hap­pened in the top of the 4th is some­thing I’ll prob­a­bly remem­ber — and maybe regret — for the rest of my life. I talked to Enri­co over at The 700 Lev­el about it ear­ly this morn­ing. He post­ed our chat in full here.

It was a pret­ty amaz­ing, if con­fus­ing expe­ri­ence. I knew the ball was head­ed direct­ly at me from the moment it left the bat. It just loomed large as it approached. It seemed to be mov­ing slow­ly right before it com­plete­ly explod­ed into the seats next to me. Even though it end­ed up being a beau­ti­ful night, I’m hap­py Helen and Char­lie weren’t with me because I don’t know what we would’ve done as the ball approached. Duck and cover!

Instead it land­ed harm­less­ly in a cuphold­er. I grabbed the ball and tossed it back onto the field. It near­ly rolled to the infield. Should I have turned and hand­ed it to the young girl keep­ing score behind me? In ret­ro­spect, yes, I prob­a­bly should’ve. But I’m not sure any­thing will feel quite as euphor­ic as hear­ing a sta­di­um full of peo­ple cheer the one time you throw a ball inside a major league ball­park. That was amazing.

I’m con­fi­dent that if we hang on to our seats in left field we’ll prob­a­bly get anoth­er shot in the future. We don’t have many right­ies who pull or hit for pow­er, but I’m going to guess that sit­ting in the heart of the low­er left field seats gives me as good a chance as any of catch­ing one in the future. (As I wrote this, Jayson Werth hit a ball that snuck over the left field wall. See!?)

You can help the poor Astros out by watch­ing this video of Car­los Lee’s homer here. Look for me at the :18 and lis­ten to the cheer go up. Tell me that isn’t awesome!

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