A Must-Read Unemployment Journal

I love every­thing about the Awl (and have been mean­ing to pitch them, too), but one of my favorite reads there has been Sam Bid­dle’s Diary of an Unem­ployed Class of ’10 Phi­los­o­phy Major in New York City. Is it wrong to think it sounds like Goethe’s Werther? Just hope he does­n’t meet a woman named Lotte.

You can read his entries here.

(N.B. Must be said that this strikes awful­ly close to home, hav­ing spent the bet­ter part of ’02 in a hot Brook­lyn apart­ment won­der­ing what it was I was going to do with my life.)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 0

Quick Shout to Some Locals

Want to know the secret to qual­i­ty blog­ging? It’s easy: pub­lish or per­ish. It’s a les­son I’ve tried to give myself here, off and on, for a good, oh, six (sev­en?) years since the days I was an under­em­ployed ex-grad stu­dent rail­ing on Blog­ger. With every relapse I promise to write more. To recom­mit to this often very reward­ing, if lit­tle read, blog. Too often it’s in vain.

I know I’m not alone. One of the meth­ods I think I’ll employ to revive Kens­ing­ton Blues is to reach out to the local blo­gos­phere more fre­quent­ly. You know, the pow­er of pos­i­tive rein­force­ment. Not only is it good to encour­age the folks you like most online, it’s mutu­al­ly reward­ing. Just the sort of thing to make you get back into the game.

In light of this, I thought I’d men­tion two folks whose work has­n’t gone unno­ticed by this read­er. Marisa has brought her old stand­by, Apart­ment 2024, back to life with a love­ly assort­ment of pho­tos and brief descrip­tions. It’s the sort of thing that I often dream of doing, a thought that usu­al­ly cul­mi­nates in me won­der­ing if it would look bet­ter on Word­Press or if I should just ditch and move to Tum­blr. It’s the per­fect way to doc­u­ment a life. No hifa­lutin man­i­festos here, just great pic­tures and notes on a sim­ple, ele­gant life. Hats off!

I’d be remiss if I did­n’t men­tion my co-work­er Karl Mar­ti­no’s work over at Philly Future. Kar­l’s been the care­tak­er there since my ear­li­est days of dis­cov­er­ing the Philly blo­gos­phere. You want some­one up to their ears in hyper­local? Kar­l’s been doing it before that became a buzz­word. Hell, I’ve often thought that if philly.com were seri­ous about rein­vent­ing itself, they’d ask Karl what he was able to fig­ure out so long ago.

Late­ly, Kar­l’s been play­ing cura­tor once again, bring­ing a bit of that Dar­ing Fire­ball mojo to the site. If you’re a cyn­ic like me who thinks blog­ging is, like, total­ly dead, think again. Kar­l’s still find­ing great folks doing cool stuff in the Philly area. Stop over there and spend some time catch­ing up.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2

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.

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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!’)

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 2