Thanksgiving

Ahh, Thanksgiving. As the name suggests, it means a time to give thanks for things.

It means slightly different things to Canadians and Americans. Same concept, just different timing.

The only places on the planet that celebrate this idea as an actual holiday are the USA and Canada. It is meant to mean "giving thanks for the fall harvest" ... not that very many Canadians and Americans are actually out there harvesting stuff, or even THINKING about that concept –  when they know they have a huge long weekend of drinking and misbehaving ahead of them.

Canadians have the first Thanksgiving of each year, in October. That's because our winter generally comes earlier than most of the USA's – and so, our fall harvest happens a bit earlier too. The USA celebrates their Thanksgiving later in November.

Many have said that's just too close to Xmas to be sensible. But then, many more just don't care. It's a long weekend.

Down here in New Zealand, there is no Thanksgiving.

So here's the rumpus. I'm implementing one here, and now – for me, anyway. So it's going to NOT be so much about harvesting, as it IS going to be about fun. (There's not much to harvest in spring ....)

As it's a lazy Sunday at home, and it's a nice warm spring day out there, I say now is as good a day as any to proclaim today, August 25th, KiwiCanuck Thanksgiving Day. For me, anyway. Feel free to drink along with me if you like!

And in the spirit of such a grand thing, I'm going to eat and drink, while I list off some of the many things I'm thankful for here.

As mentioned, this is going to centre around fun. Which of course means drinking, and the freedom therewith associated with said activity ... because, after nearly a baker's dozen years here (that means "13",  for you youngsters who don't know that old phrase) I still revel in all the little differences the drinking life offers me here, compared to Canada*.

*I'll tell one specific story here now, about how constricting, paranoid, senseless, and downright insufferable the drinking rules can be in Canada – so as to include some empirical evidence – to compare the good stuff of NZ life to Canadian fuckwittery: during one of my many trips to have fun in the famous BC ski resort town of Whistler, my mates and I had finished the day of skiing. And like clockwork, we'd kicked off the skis and took the 5 or 6 steps required to start drinking on the outdoor patio of a bar called "The Longhorn". The ski day finishes about 3 pm in winter months there, so you blast down the hill to arrive at the bottom around that time ... and in doing so, you have a good hour or so of daylight 'patio time' to enjoy a beer in the cool yet tolerable temperatures (providing you're still dressed in ski gear). Now when the sun goes down an hour later, so does the temperature, so everyone troops in to the inside of The Longhorn. Which on this day, we did. This of course resulted in a bit of a traffic jam at the one entrance for all us patio people ...  a double-door system with a small vestibule area between the doors of roughly 6' x 6' square dimensions. My mates and I all (of course) still had beers in our hands – which we'd purchased from the patio bar. Well, as my mates and I finally found ourselves far enough ahead in the line to be in said vestibule awaiting the doorman's approval for entry, he looked at the four of us holding half-finished beers, and freaked out. "You can't have beer here in this vestibule!" he suddenly barked. "We're not LICENSED for beer here in the vestibule!" Yep – we could drink on the big patio outside, we could drink INSIDE the bar, but not this tiny little 6' x 6' vestibule. Without skipping a beat, I said: "Well, you'd better let us in the bar then!" And he did. 

Just now, I was having a good yarn with my brother-in-(drunken)-arms, Don, over at Brew Ha Ha  ... and it reminded me why I found life in Ontario so distasteful. Besides the heinous climate, it's the omni-present and overwhelming nosy-parker-ness of that province's (and hand-in-glove, that country's) government, and their pesky rules. Like the beer one mentioned above. And that's just from a drinker's standpoint. If you're a clever and industrious person, they also have many silly rules to work through if you want to open a bar or a craft brewery.

The rules I cared most about in my youth, of course, are the ones that prevented MY specific fun. Or at least the ones that told me where, when and how I could have fun. Now I'm older and wiser ... and I also find myself caring about rules preventing people from setting up fun for me to have.

Specifically, here in New Zealand, I'm REALLY thankful for the much looser laws on where, when and how someone might want to open up a craft brewery, or a craft-beer-centric bar. It appears to be a basic and fundamental process. Want to open a brewery or a bar? Got enough dough and a good credit rating? Have at it!

The things I've found amazing here in the past 13 years (compared to living in Ontario, and to similar extent, living in Vancouver BC) go something like this.

In the past 6–7 years, there has been a multitude of new craft brewers cropping up in and around the Wellington area, as well as up and down both islands of New Zealand. And just as niftily (if that's a word), there have been an astounding number of pubs opening here that deal exclusively in said craft beer. And having these craft brewers and craft brew pubs crop up so rapidly, and so close to me, and consistently ... is FUN!

Meanwhile, back in Ontario, Don says the government has a hammer-lock on much of what happens there when it comes to breweries and pubs opening ... and hence, FUN ... and the one outlet to buy just beer, The Beer Store, has a similar hammer-lock on the rest of what happens.

A craft brewer can of course open up operations –  IF they work their way through the gargantuan pile of paperwork and permits ... spending assloads of money ... but then if that proves successful, getting their beer "out there" for the faithful to buy? Next to impossible.

That costs money – a LOT of money – to get shelf space in either The Beer Store, or the LCBO (the Ontario bottle shop that sells hard liquor, wine, and the more expensive imported and craft beers).  And those are the ONLY two places they CAN sell it, unless of course they somehow wrangled a much more difficult permit to open their own brew-pub.

Which would make it really neighbourhood-centric for potential sales.

Tyrion Lannister – short of stature, yet
large of  wit and beer swilling capacity.

Talk about a glass ceiling – and, a ceiling that's not very high at all. Like, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) of Game of Thrones-fame high. (He's really short).

Now I know what you're thinking: "Hey Steve, what about approaching other established pubs around the province, and convincing them to give up a tap or two for your amazing new craft beer?"

Ha ha. Good one!

Two problems here: (1) No pub is not going to shut down a proven tap that's making them money, to take a chance on a newbie-brew, that's got butt-loads of flavour and aroma and intrigue about it (aka: a proper beer). And: (2) Convincing the general beer-drinking public of Ontario to try something that isn't one of the established, same-as-all-the-other-beers beers would be like finding hens' teeth. (Protip: Those don't exist).

You see, following Prohibition, beer drinkers in both the USA and Canada (and New Zealand!) were beset upon by the

Nope. No teeth here!

"Big Boy" brewing companies of their respective countries. These were the big-money boys who only cared about profit – like Adolph Coors, and the money-grubbing swine who run Budweiser and Miller, along with Canada's Labatt and Molson – the fat-cats, who rushed to build massive factories (calling these operations breweries would be an offense to actual breweries) with mass-produced, pale yellow, fizzy, tastes-the-same, additive-and-preservative-laced crappy liquid passed off as "beer",  that many generations of people have now gotten used to. So trying to convince Bud or Blue drinkers to try a properly-made, hand-crafted IPA or Stout would be ... impossible. (See: the chicken over there, and her lack of teeth ----->)

So Canadians (and to much the same extent, Americans) who want to try making proper beer have nearly-impossible hurdles to surpass. In the USA, they have a bit more leeway, but that's ONLY due to the huge population there (there's more folks among the small % of folks who might like proper beer) than in Canada. Not saying there aren't beer aficionados in Canada. But not nearly as many as in the Excited States of 'Mer-ca.

But back to New Zealand. Something happened after decades of big-boy brewers monopolising things here. Craft brewers sprouted not so long ago ... because suddenly there wasn't a government hammer-lock on the distribution of said beer! Not only do we have many and various craft brewers now, beavering away, making fantastic and creative styles of beer. We have many pubs now exclusively dealing to serving JUST those beers.

This is the brewery in my hood – Garage Project – and their
"tasting room".  Just to the left in this photo
are the beer taps, featuring all they have on offer. You may
taste them all, fill up a flagon/jigger, or buy
bottles or cans, once you decide on a style you like.

The craft brewers have more free reign here too (fewer rules to adhere to, or permits to get and pay for, than in Canada), in how they promote themselves. With very little (permit-style pesky) trouble, then can open up a "cellar door"* tasting-style room within their breweries – offering up samples of their wares to anyone who wants to drop by to taste them and see what they're like. Folks can also buy and fill large containers (flagons or "jiggers") of draft beer from these cellar doors, to take home and enjoy. Lately too, these small breweries are experiencing success ... and, they're growing a bit, and investing in bottling and canning machinery – so you can also buy their packaged goodness directly from them. And of course there are some breweries with brew-pubs attached.

*The cellar door concept was first a winery thing – which also happens here a lot – so why not breweries too? Why not indeed! And so it began ... and so I vastly enjoy visiting these things!

Here is the beer aisle at a grocery store near me. The cheap
mass-produced stuff is on the bottom; as you go higher up on the shelves,
the local craft and import beer is featured.
And around the corner from this aisle are a few more featuring wines.

But that's not the only place you can buy good craft beer here. We don't have state-owned (nyet, comrade!) beer and bottle shops. It's all free commerce, with privately-run shops. And, we can buy beer and wine in grocery stores.

And the freedom to grow for craft brewers doesn't stop there. All the aforementioned craft beer pubs are open and just hankering to put their stuff on tap. And a vastly growing craft-beer-consuming public is eager to see these new craft brews show up in their favourite pubs, too!

Now comes one of the most interesting concepts here in New Zealand, that just doesn't seem to be happening in Ontario (or anywhere in Canada or the States it seems). The craft brewers here LIKE and PROMOTE each other. So much so, that they've formed a common bond with a society: SOBA (the Society for Beer Advocates), which promotes all and sundry craft brewers and activities in the country.

And not only that ... we beer drinkers can buy an annual SOBA membership card for $40, which gives us discounts at all participating pubs and breweries, a couple of private bottle shops – and, first crack at beer fest and event tickets when they go on sale.

The craft brewers all bond together in a friendly brotherhood, with no one brewer trying to undermine the other ... they're united against one thing – mass-produced, bland, crappy beer made by the fat-cats that still have their long-time substandard beer operations going strong.

Established craft brewers rally 'round newcomers to the craft-brewing game to help them out, too. They talk them up on their respective FacePlant pages. They DON'T ignore, bad-mouth, undermine, or try to out-manouevre newbies when they show up on the scene. It just makes sense – one more new craft brewer is another player (for the good-guys' team!) on the field, in the big never-ending beer game.

The many and varied beer taps – and craft and import
bottles in the fridge – at Hashigo Zake.

Craft beer pubs do the same. Any new craft brewer is a new supplier to their operations ... one that's going to bring something new and interesting to the taps and the available stock ... so of course, newbie brewers are greatly encouraged. New beer launches from new brewers (and established ones) happen frequently here in craft beer pubs (craft beer emporium and Cult Beer Bar, Hashigo Zake, has a regular Tuesday night feature every week, with a new beer launch). These are sometimes intermixed with a "degustation" style event, with food matched to specific beers. Outside food merchants, like the fantastic Big Bad Wolf company here, are often happily conscripted to join forces in the fun.

What big TEETH you have – on that sausage!

And lately, there's been a really nifty concept called a "Tap Takeover" happening among the many craft brew bars in Wellington. This is a concept where a single craft brewer is invited in to a pub for a night, to put all their beer options on all the taps. Hence, 'taking over the taps'. The people from the brewery show up and talk up their products, chat and meet with beer drinkers. Oh, and they drink, too.  There are give-aways. Everyone is extremely happy at these fun events. How could anyone NOT be?!

The many excellent beers of the Epic brewing company
were festooned along the bar at the fine craft brew establishment,
The Malthouse recently ...  a "Tap Takeover", where EVERYONE wins!

Tap Takeovers are of course promoted via SOBA too, and other brewers' FacePlant pages. The other brewers (and their staff) will show up to a Tap Takeover and cheer the newbies on. The atmosphere of camaraderie is vibrant, and fun.

Other fun things I'm thankful for with the breweries here are the "customer appreciation" days that breweries sometimes do for us – a mostly-free day of beer drinking at a brewery. The last one I went to was a sensational day of beer drinking and BBQ-eating fun, courtesy of Tuatara Brewing. For the meagre pittance of a bit of cash ($10) to offset the busses they hired to take us to (and from) the brewery, it was a landmark day of maximum fun. We came, we saw, we consumed excellent beer and food.

And of course there are a number of annual beer fests here, where all the crafty breweries gather to offer up their wares under one (big) roof. We've just had Beervana, and not long before that, a midwinter (aka "Matarkiki") festival. Coming up soon will be an Octoberfest one. The fun never ends!

Beervana is an annual event here – and it
goes without saying, maximum FUN!

Mentioning all this fun (and the accompanying creative business-growing concepts) to Don at Brew-ha-Ha in Ontario today ... well, he ruefully admits no such things happen there.

The Canadian craft brewers suffer from being under the oppressive and expensive thumb of the state-owned distribution centres (all two of them in Ontario), and, from having precious few chances to ever crack existing pubs' established taps ... because it'd cut the pubs' guaranteed profits, and, a downtrodden beer drinking population with no sense of what good beer is wouldn't go for something new (that's actually OLD – the proper way to make beer).

And just as sadly, crafty brewers there in Ontario feel compelled to be in direct competition with each other ... there is no brotherhood of camaraderie and helpfulness among craft brewers like there is here.

It's beer-dog eat beer-dog there. And that's just completely counter-productive and senseless.

So yeah ... I'm hella thankful to be one happy funster – and beer-drinking camper – here!

And you know what ... in 13 years here, I've never been told I can't drink a beer in a tiny vestibule between two 'officially licensed' beer-drinking areas, by a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal of a doorman. Call me crazy, call me off the hook ... but that's something I never want to have happen again!

Three Boys make one hell of a nice
Oyster Stout. And I'm glad. Otherwise
I wouldn't get to make that fine pun there.

Things are just about perfect here in New Zealand for me.

The world is my osyter-stout, if you will.

And on that merry pun, I bid you all a hearty "Cheers!" ... and here's hoping that, no matter where you are, you can get your hands on some properly made, tasty, fine beer – without TOO much grief!
















Until next time, I'm still

... in absuridtum extremis!

Playlist

So – I've covered the many and various (alcoholic) beverages consumed whilst rattling out these Blogs, on my ever-vigilant campaign to keep an eagle eye on all things absurd. And, of course, to alert YOU to these selfsame absurdities.

Because I share the love. I'm like that.

Now I reckon it's about time I share another love – my soundtrack. My 'jam', as they say now.

This is the ever-changing and wildly eclectic (some would say eccentric) playlist of music I have at hand at all times ... thanks of course to the astounding technology that's available to us these days.

I'm up to the point now where I'm immersed in a total sharing system (hmm, maybe I should have titled this one "Sharing"!) involving digital music and all my Apple gear, including iTunes, and numerous devices (as the new way of calling gizmos goes) to play the music on/with.

This includes an iPhone with built-in juke box, a Macbook Pro, an iPad, a desktop iMac, and the

The magic portal – a
net-surfing computer
and juke box in your pocket!

AppleTV doo-hicky that links any music, movies or TVs I have on my (many) hard drives to my home theatre system. (That's Panasonic).  My "ultimate lazy bastid" goal has been achieved: there is some sort of gizmo in every room, and one in my pocket, with which to access the net, hear music, and watch videos. Best of all ... it's all WIRELESS.

As comic Louis CK said not so long ago: "I don't know why people in first-world countries whine about anything. Everything is AMAZING!" Here's Louis on Conan explaining. (It gets specific at about 2:15).

And he's right ... what we have available at our fingertips right now, today, is simply astounding. A device as small as a cell phone can also contain a large amount of music (not to mention a wireless internet connection to allow you to connect to streaming apps like Spotify and Rdio to listen to whatever you want "on demand", for FREE). Not to mention, it's essentially a computer. In your pants.

Sadly yet inexplicably, Canadians can't
get Spotify, while the rest of the
world can. WTF, eh? 

Oh, commiserations to my Canadian compadrés – for some bizarre reason, you can't get Spotify yet ... what did you do to piss them off, anyway?

When I put it in Louis CK's perspective, and think about how astounding this all is, it sometimes makes me think back to the myriad ways I've listened to music in my life. (Anyone born into an existing technology doesn't fully appreciate how absolutely mu-phukkin' AWESOME this all is today, when you come from the cro-magnon era of music storage media from days of yore ...

Music has always been a key element of my existence. From the moment my simple toddler ears tuned in to some '50s pop my mom liked to play on a console-style record player (Marty Robbins, Dean Martin et al), I was hooked.

Dean Martin was one suave mo-fo. Plus
he drank like a thirsty trout.

Not long after that, I started listening to AM Radio on a crappy little portable. I had a paper route then, and they had a contest for us paperboys to win stuff ... when I accumulated enough points to pick a prize from the catalogue, I chose a nifty thing that I could affix to my bike handlebars. It had an AM radio and a light on it! It was the size of a really BIG soup can, and weighed about twice as much with the 4 D batteries needed to power it. If I didn't centre it precisely on the handlebars, the bike had a noticable list to one side when riding it ...

And now in amazed retrospect .... that's when I preceded the "portable music device" trend of the Walkman! (a device I snagged soon after they appeared on the market ... and of course when they showed up, I graduated to a DiscMan too).

Yep. Have money, will spend. 

Right about then, I suddenly realised I was firmly in the grip of the genetic phenomenon: "Must ALWAYS have the BEST thing!" (thanks for that gene, dad ...)

At some point in my mid-teens (the early to mid '70s) I started spending every last cent I made on proper home stereo gear ... and upgraded whenever my bank account allowed for it. I took over a small space in our basement next to the huge oil-burning furnace (it was a bloodless coup) and turned it into what I dubbed "The Garden", where my mates and I

For those born after the cassette era – here's one.
On a 90-minute tape, you could fit
an average album on each side. 

would 'veg out' (catch-phrase of the day) and 'catch tunes'. I had a standard set-up by pro standards, but it was powerful and "kicked ass" – all that was required (for high-school kids) in those days. It involved an analogue amp (powerful), tuner (for those rare FM broadcasts on the CBC that would occasionally crop up), turntable (decent quality), speakers (BIG-ASS ones, of course) and a dual cassette deck. With Dolby!

Albums (LPs) and cassettes became my primary media, and remained so, until the advent of CDs years later. Cassettes were really my forté in those days, as I had a rudimentary 'file sharing' system going with three other mates – we'd go record shopping once a month or so, and we'd all buy different albums.

I hammered out those file pages on this
beast – it was my mom's, and that's
how I learned to type. Consequently the
keys on the first electric one I tried
took a serious beating ...

It was a great arrangement ... for spending $XX each, we all obtained three times the value in amassed music, because we swapped all the albums between us, to tape on cassette. I had respectable album collection, but I had a massive number of cassettes.

I had them in a cool interlocking cassette-shelving system I affixed to the wall of The Garden. Kind of like a Lego cassette rack.

I even spent an inordinate amount of time creating a catalogue for it all – typed out on my mom's manual Olivetti (the machine was circa 1875 I think), with the paper hole-punched, and sorted in a binder. Oh yeah. Nerd city. 

As you had to really slam the keys on a manual typewriter, the same force deployed on my first electric machine did some serious damage to the keyboard. Imagine the whacking I gave my first computer keyboard.

The physical size of the 12" LP also leant itself to other functions ... primarily, the ease of rolling a doobie with said album perched on your lap. Double albums worked best of course, as they were firmer ...  this could be one of the main reasons why the double live Frampton Comes Alive! album sold so well.  Two hit songs, double-album firmness, and that 12" platform for spliff rolling ... marketing magic!

I'm certain there were more spliffs rolled on Frampton's face
than any other album, ever. Although the first couple of Yes
albums may have been
up there ... and perhaps even
Deep Purple's Machine Head ... or Led Zep I ... or early
Genesis albums ...

Switching to CDs (officially) for me coincided with a move from Toronto to Vancouver in '86, when CDs also happened to become plentiful and less expensive in the early 90s.

At some point during the late 90s – early 'Naughties, when blank CDs got really cheap (and CD burners started to come standard in computers), I returned to the process of copying music CDs, in the same manner that I recorded LPs to cassettes – lo those many years previous.

I was also nuturing a developed pattern of boosting music and copying it, in lieu of actually paying for it ... nasty pirate that I am. Yarr-dee-harr-harr.

And now,  for the past 7-8 years, I've faithfully adhered to Apple's edict (because it makes so much sense), and I've trotted along with them obediently: CDs are cumbersome and occupy a lot of space on racks and shelves, and, take ages to burn – where digital music can be stored quickly and conveniently on a hard drive.  (Yarrrr! Avast, matey!) So the CD is now as archaic as that silly tiny floppy disc became after Apple ditched it in the late 90s (yet Windows soldiered on with it ...)

Now music (or any kind of files) can be copied over to said hard drive quickly (1/100th of the time it takes to burn a CD), and your playlist is instantly searchable. No more getting up and casting thine weary eyes across racks or shelves of CDs (or cassettes) looking for an album title ... or in the case of a few of my really slack friends, who never labelled their cassette or CD cases – the agonisingly long process of trying to randomly find a certain CD with no labels to go by. Yep, they had to play each one until they found it ...

So this is the new method – digital. It's searching, playing, copying ... instantly. And literally thousands of albums fit on a single hard drive that takes up no more space than a reasonably sized book ... and the hard drive can easily be unplugged and moved to a different location in seconds, if you're re-decorating.

It certainly was an epiphany for me: one small external hard drive of respectable storage size could hold everything you own or want! 

At this writing, I have a 4 TB drive – that's "Terabyte" – as the main drive, containing the epicentre of all my music, movie, TV shows and photographic entertainment. (There are a few other drives containing backups). I can play anything from this one drive through iTunes on my main desktop iMac, which automatically outputs to any of my devices I choose – iPhone, Macbook Pro, iPad, or most often, through AppleTV and out through my home theatre system ... which of course, sounds great, can be turned up loud, looks monumentally awesome, and KICKS ASS! (Yep, we're back to that high school rating!)

I have a certain number of albums and mixed playlists on my iPhone, which I can easily swap around for new material any time I want ... and I transport selected albums to my work iMac to play while I merrily toil away on work-type things.

And all these transfers and processes happen wirelessly. More wizardry! Pure MAGIC!

So – that's how I store all my tunes, and, how I listen to them. But what's on there? What's on my playlist? You knew I'd eventually get here ... took the long way around, but what the hell.

Here's the rumpus.

Pretty much almost everyone stops listening to/looking for  'new' music around the time they either graduate from University or College – or high school, if a trade came along and derailed you from proceeding to post-secondary education.

Classic 70s rock is a great thing – but it's not the only thing.

This is why "Classic Rock" and oldies radio stations are so popular. Music appreciation dies a sad and lonely death at this time of most peoples' lives. They establish an anchor at a young age, and cling to it for life.

Most people I went through school with, who graduated high school in the late '70s (and then Uni or College in the early to mid 80s) continue to primarily listen to music from the 70s and 80s. The unbridled lust for finding new music from those halcyon high-school days fades fast when pesky things like marriage, careers, buying a house/car/boat and popping out sprogs suddenly (and inexplicably) becomes much more important ... in MOST people's lives.

I'm an exception (as are a few other folks I know).  My unbridled lust for new music/music styles continues to this day. My disdain for doing what is socially expected of me (all that other boring stuff) was entrenched back then ... and grew as well. It continues to this day. No, seriously. It does! Ask anyone. Ha.

Sure, I still love the music of my formative years. The hard rock of the '70s forms the cornerstone of my tastes ... but as time marched on, I discovered I liked learning about where that rock n' roll came from, and then, where it progressed to.

Early rock – like the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who and the Stones – grew on me fast, and then the source material for THAT music – early blues – became a favourite and permanent entry on my life's playlist around about the mid to late 80s.

Of course I was weaned on the pop of AM radio, and before that, classic 50s pop like Dean Martin – who became 'hip to like' in later years. And why not? He was great! A soulful crooner, well-dressed, with a whisky glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a twinkle in his eye ...

That bled over into the phenomenon of 80s pop. And to this day, if you're putting together a playlist for a house party, it'd better be heavily laden with 80s pop ... unless you want to spend the entire party being yelled at to "Ooo, can you change the music to ...."

Yep, '80s pop is the one singular music style that will keep 98% of people somewhere on the "this is OK" to "Oh this is FANTASTIC" music spectrum at a party. Any guy* who might prefer harder rock, punk, alternative, or jazz will put up with '80s pop IF there are single girls at the party.

*This rule of course totally falls apart, if the party consists of nothing but guys. Then it's a struggle to see what metal band gets played ... but then – what the

Sausage party? How about ... NO, you crazy Dutch bastard?!

hell are you doing at a sausage party like that, anyway? Get the hell out of there and go to a bar, where there's women!

As my ear matured (along with the rest of me getting gamier) I twigged to jazz in the early 90s – the jazz reflected in the playing of legends like Miles Davis, Django Reinhardt, Ornette Coleman, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane ... the list is endless. I found a particular taste for the tenor sax, and never lost it.

Paul Simon merged American style folk/rock with African
beats and rhythms with amazing results.

Then I discovered music from other nations – "World Beat" stuff. Intriguing and infectious music, foreign and new, but still with soul ... laced with the traditional beats and rhythms of the respective cultures (eg: the African music of Ali Farka Touré). Certain respected musicians cottoned on to this as well (like Paul Simon) when he infused his later music with African rhythms (Rhythm of the Saints).

Ry Cooder suddenly embarked on a world-wide mission to find excellent musicians to play with everywhere, and expose/promote them to the 'first world' –  and he did so with many, including the most famous sets with the Cuban Buena Vista Social Club.

One of the finest examples of fusion music, featuring American
rock and American Zydeco from an entrenched USA culture.

Then along came an era when American musicians like John Mellencamp looked inward to certain types of cultural but lost American music – that was a beat to dance  to for certain American people – with the heavy Cajun/Zydeco influence he peppered his magnificent Lonesome Jubilee album with.

Now, well into my 30s, I began to love this mix/infusion style of music, from any artist willing to give it a go – as well as the pure, unfiltered material from the cultures making the original music.

So now here I am with a massive butt-load of music sitting on my hard drive (and of course backed up on a 2nd hard drive ... safety first!) – music from pretty much every genre going.

The common denominator of it all is SOUL. There has to be heart, a pounding rhythm, a driving beat, but at the centre of any kind of music I like, there has to be soul. There has to be the musicians' total love and respect for the music.

Sometimes when asked what kind of music I like, I find it easier to list what I don't like.

Hip-hop/rap never ever appealed. It's thin, repetitive, one-note stuff, sexist and homophobic, violent, and usually featuring one guy rabbiting on a-tonally, in iambic pentameter (remember learning about that in English class?), while a chorus of yo' homies dance about nearby, baseball caps askew, pants half-dragging on the ground to display most of their underwear, yelling affirmations to the "singer" ... while "musicians" in the vicinity thump on large tubs and throw metal trash-cans down long flights of stairs (to paraphrase PJ O'Rourke).

Really hurtin' C&W is something I can't take either. Nor does "new country" interest me. ("It's just pop music with violins", said some wag – exactly who, I cannot quite remember now).

Bog-standard, over-produced teeny pop (featuring auto-tune to cover for lack of actual singing talent) is horrendous as well. There is such a thing as GOOD pop. (See: Cheap Trick, Squeeze/Paul Carrack, Bruno Mars, et al ).

However I have grown to appreciate a few bands who throw more soul into a branch of the C&W genre ...

A sense of humour with some soul and talent ... good
honky-tonk can be quite fun.

... Honky-Tonk music. Dwight Yoakam's first album is a prime example, as is a current group centred around the lead guitar player for Foo Fighters (Chris Shiflett & the Dead Peasants). You just have to like a band with a sense of humour finely tuned enough to call an album All Hat and No Cattle.

The no-talent wanking of "death metal" is nowhere to be found on my playlists, either. Give me a solid punk band like the Sex Pistols, Ramones, the Stooges, Sonic Youth, the Clash, and most lately The Dropkick Murphys ... any day. They (mostly) have SOUL at the root of their thrashing. They also blow the other noisy pretenders right off the stage.

So yep – my music taste is vastly eccentric. At work with headphones on, I am either tuned into the wildly eccentric net radio station radioparadise.com, or I've got one of my zany mixed playlists on.

Those playlists contain anything from 40s – 50s jazz, 60s rock, 70s hard rock, funk (loves me some funk!) pop from the 60s – 90s, world-beat, honky-tonk, R&B, psychedelic rock, some folk, reggae, ska, or anything that might be un-classifiable due to it's originality (but of course, it has soul).

My only complaint now is, finding the time to really listen to music. Yeah, yeah ... white-people problems.

I have set aside a few hours every Saturday/Sunday morning to play whatever new music I've acquired, or to travel back in time to a mix of a certain band or style I really like, and haven't heard in ages.

It's like reading actual books for me now. Thanks to the shiny new toy of being able to find and watch ANYTHING video-related (movies and TV shows) on the net ... and, surfing the net itself ... the simple things I used to do as a kid (like putting a record on the turntable, or a cassette into the machine, or a CD into the player, or picking up a printed book – and just sitting there for hours, enjoying) have long-since fallen by the wayside.

I'm forever racing through a music-listening session while surfing the net or IM-chatting with mates over the net ... to get to a few hours of watching new eps of TV shows, or new movies.

Then of course the ultimate distraction – going outside and having fun with friends, in bars – has a heavy hand in waylaying me, too. This growing up business can be rough ... but THIS part of it is certainly fun!

But hey. That's all fantastic, astounding stuff we have at our disposal. The trick is to filter it and pick a good mix of stuff to get knee-deep in.

Louis CK sure nailed it.

Life these days IS pretty damn amazing.

Until next time, I'll continue being

in absurditum maximus!

Beer-blocked

Last weekend featured a large amount of cross-hemispheric fun, as both myself and Don over at Brew-ha-ha attended beer festivals.

Same time, different time zones!

As we are wont to do, Don and I discussed our mutual impending fests online with much anticipation. Mine was the well-established and ever-expanding Wellington feature, Beervana – a two-day event (Friday and Saturday) with two sessions each day.

Don's was a fairly new affair down on the right side of the Toronto tracks, a cool and crafty shindig dubbed the Roundhouse Craft Beer Festival.

Each had their distinct advantages. Don's occurred at the peak of the summer season in Toronto – which meant wandering around outside in the warm sun while consuming beer. Mine could ALMOST have been outside, as it was warm and spring-like here ... but organisers hedged their bets and kept it contained within the large Westpac Trust Stadium's concourse.

Heading into the Beervana fest, –a warm springlike day in
Wellington outside, and many, many fine beers (and food!)
awaiting inside. 

Beervana's advantage:  far more local (and a few Aussie!) craft brewers on hand than the Toronto one, offering up their wild and wonderful takes on traditional beer styles like IPA, Porter, Stout, Lager and Pilsner.  We had no less than 31 brewers' wares on offer, and each one had some new and surprising "purpose brewed" ales just for this fest.

Both festivals of course were outstanding and scored A++, because hey – it's a beer fest! It's fun and there was no end of good food and music to soak up as well.  It was almost as if me and my bro-in-beer-and-fun (Don) were festing in the same place.

The session I attended was almost perfect. There were just a couple of niggling things (stuff that seems to go hand in hand with large fests) that seemed annoying – someone (a stinking, no-good penny-pinching accountant, no doubt) decided this year, we wouldn't get ANY beer tokens to start out with. In previous years our $45 entry fee got us a tasting glass, a guidebook, and 4 or 5 tokens to start the fun. This year – nada. Seems a bit greedy, Beervana guys.

Then nearing the end of the fest, we were practically bums'-rushed out of the fest, with sales of beer tokens stopping a full 45 minutes before the designated end-time of 4 pm ... and then further thug-like bouncer-ish announcements telling us that 3:45 was the last time we could spend ANY tokens we had left. Not quite as user-friendly as before ...

A Beervana volunteer leaps on the first broken glass of the day,
mere moments after the doors opened.
The rube in question who dropped said glass
quickly fled the crime scene in pursuit of another glass.

Really the only two things that seemed a tad absurd at Beervana was to do with patrons' behaviour. I got in the door right as the fest opened, grabbed my gear and bought some tokens, and had my first beer on the go – when some rube walked in and immediately dropped and broke his glass before even filling it once. (OK that was funny more than absurd ... )

What was more absurd was the overall number of numb-nuts guys who seemed completely clueless about breaking Bar Ordering Guidelines: Rule #1 – Don't stand there after you get your beer admiring it, or talking to your pal standing next to you, or taking a photo of said beer. There are at LEAST 38 people behind you waiting their turn. Step lively and get the hell out of the way, dumb-ass!

Considering those were the only two things that weren't 100% positive, Beervana was a pretty decent affair. I tried loads of new beers, cleansed my palate between new-beer tastings with the tried n' true favourites (eg: 8Wired Hopwire, C¡tra, Tutatara Hop Zombie), munched on a few really tasting things, saw some folks I knew, met a few new folks, and had a great time. My homies who run the

Garage Project's booth shone like a giant beacon of beer-laden
hope for the crowd to gather 'round and take solace in.

Garage Project brewery in my 'hood had the best and brightest booth going, and even worked so far outside the box that they were offering up ingeniously refreshing beer-laden treats like the Beer Slushie, and the Beer Jelly.  They also fronted up with a technique wherein they jammed a red-hot poker into a glass of beer for a moment, thereby super-activating the flavours, hops and aromas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wishful thinking becomes happy reality

In my last Blog entry, I mentioned the creative folks down in the StevilStEvil™ Labs R&D Dept. had concocted a nifty app called "Where's My Goddamn Beer?" Well, it seems market testing has proven that a more demure name for said product might prove better ... and now here we have the multi-purpose (but certainly, it's mostly for tracking your beer) device called Tile. Strap one of these babies on things you might be prone to misplace, and you can instantly track the thing using the smart-phone app.

Welcome to a brave new world of never losing your drinks ever again!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Government (weasel) spies and anti-gay commies

NZ PM John Key (right) having some fun with his
new GCSB legislation. Said Key: "It's GOOD to be king!"

Two items in the news these past couple of weeks feature the New Zealand government jack-wagons pushing through a blanket spying legislation deal (GCSB), wherein they give themselves the right to peek at anything you do over the internet or on the phone. (Oh, they also unanimously voted to give themselves another raise).

Meanwhile, not to be outdone as being  relegated to "2nd-

Here's the shirtless wonder next to a horse. The horse was,
of course, standing in a trench, so Putin could appear taller.

place ass-clown on the world stage", shirtless horse-back riding he-man leader of Russia, Vlad Putin (never mind that he's practically a midget), decided to rule against gay rights. In fact, he made being gay against the law. Which of course is even more nonsensical as communism.

It's only a matter of time before anti-weasel-activity-on-the-net group Anonymous takes the NZ Government to school on why it's a really bad idea to make rules up about stuff they have NO idea about. That'll be fun to watch.

Exceptionally funny and smart guy, Stephen Fry,
led one of many demonstations against the
jack-assery of the muscular Russian hobbit.

And thanks to famous gay rights advocates like Stephen Fry and Dan Savage, and loads of other clever people, lots of anti-Putin demonstrations have cropped up ... mocking them, of course, and also demanding that the next Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, be boycotted. And even girl-cotted.

The crosswalk outside the Russian embassy in Sweden was
festooned with the trademark colours of Gay Pride!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But hey it's not all government stupidity in the news – a new super-cute animal is discovered!

Just today in the news, scientists (they MUST be scientists, they have lab coats on and they're holding clip-boards!) found a fuzzy wee creature down in the jungles of Ecuador and Columbia heretofore unknown to lab-coat-clad, clip-board bearing types: the impossibly cute Olinguito!

They're not very big – about .6 meters long, and weighing a bit less than a kilogram. They're nocturnal, and merrily spend their nights leaping about in trees in search of fruit. Scientist Labby McClipboard said they actually had one in captivity back in the '70s, but didn't realise it was a totally different type of creature than the ones he was caged up with. Thankfully neither of the two species fancied each other for lunch, so there was no carnage back then.

Here's a happy, fuzzy, mega-cute Olinguito. All he and his
kind want is to frolic through the trees and
eat some fruit. So let's leave them alone!

One US zoo has already commissioned plush toys of the critter, to sell in aid of raising funds to try and make sure no rat-bastard types rush on down to the Olinguito's habitat to kill, torture, eat, or generally bother them, or to try and spy on them to see what they might be talking about, or to rudely stare and see if they're up to any gay shenanigans.

Not that there's anything WRONG with that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A post-script on the whole beery-themed past couple of weeks

Besides the Beervana fest, Wellington has been positively frothing with tons of other beer-like activity this past fortnight.

There was an amateur brewer's contest, some prize-giving to deserving craft brewers, media types invited to try and concoct weird and wonderful new beers for consideration at the beer fest, and a parallel festival among eaters and drinkers here called Wellington On A Plate ... this one being a "degustation" sort of affair where local food and wines/beers at many Wellington restaurants were paired up and on offer for a good price.

The Fork & Brewer makes its own beer, has an excellent menu, and
features no less than 40 different beers from New Zealand brewers on tap.

The overlapping two fests meant that certain craft beer and brew pubs had some interesting food and beer up for grabs, too. I partook of one at the Fork & Brewer brew pub, as it was Gill's birthday and we thought: "What better than to imbibe in something that's been sort of organised and thought out a bit?" And so, we did.

We also partook in one other Welly On A Plate event, a pinot noir wine tasting at the Museum Hotel. This was an educational and fun tasting of several local (Martinborough mostly) pinots, along with some of the Museum Hotel's excellent and creative tasty appetizers. This of course de-evolved near the end of the session with the organisers fleeing the room, leaving many half-filled bottles of wine on a table for us ... which we swarmed over and finished in less than polite style.

The Museum Hotel itself is worth mentioning, as it is designed as a bit of an art gallery – the lobby features many interesting and wildly eye-catching pieces of art. You can grab a beer or a glass of wine and wander around, taking all the blazing creativity in. Here are a couple of shots in the lobby I took prior to entering the wine tasting room.:

A 3-D Rolling Stones mosaic, with an autographed
guitar, hangs behind a  futuristic looking
motorcycle. For scale, the guitar
is a real one (actual size).

Willie Nelson's portrait occupies a corner
near the bar. It's a huge painting!

Well – that's a blog and a half! As I've already touted Don's "Brew-ha-ha" blog up there, here's where I also mention my brethren and fellow journalist, and mate Glenn Hendry and his excellent blog "Shwa Stories"!

Until next time, I'm still

** PS – As I was re-reading this for blatant screwups, Wellington just got hit by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake, followed by a 5.2 shortly after ... and a non-stop swarm of them after that. The first one rolled on for a good minute. Its epicentre is the same place as the big one we had a few weeks ago, Seddon, out in the ocean between the North and South islands.

Nothing broken, no injuries or deaths, but the office I'm in shook and rolled pretty hard. Everyone's panicking a fair bit though. First time I actually got under my desk when I saw a building out the window reallllllly sway and wobble!

There'll likely be more shocks. There's one now! More news on FacePlant as events warrant.

Behind the curtain

There comes a time with every scientific setup when the general public needs to know what's going on behind the curtain.

You know, to assuage any fears that we might be working on something so totally evil, so completely heinous, that everyone would be in mortal danger.

Be assured, gentle shareholders. We aren't up to THAT level of no good. Not yet, anyway! (Pause for the general laughter to subside). 

Here at 5Foot19 Labs™, we aim to please. The Faithful (our loyal shareholders and readers) need to know just what the rumpus is here.

For those of you who don't know, 5Foot19 Labs™ is a wholly-owned subsidiary of StevilStEvil, Inc.®. 

This is a rapidly-growing scientific endeavour that will soon be global in scope. Established some time in the early '80s at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada (exactly when remains a foggy, unattainable detail ...), the scope of both StevilStEvil, Inc.®, and 5Foot19 Labs™ is, of course, world domination ... of the good, fun kind, of course.

Please don't confuse us with those amateur bumblers Pinky and the Brain. We're far more organised, and way less bumbling that those clowns. Plus we have the swagger, and we make this look good.

Our successes here at 5Foot19 Labs™ this past quarter have been myriad. We now have the brewery, distillery and winery operations running at 98% capacity. This is just managing to keep up with the ongoing intake/demands of the 5Foot19 Labs™staff.

A professional bartender was hired two months ago, and she seems to be handling the crazy, 24/7 schedule (not to mention the wildly surprising demands and "on location" needs) of the staff.

We are, however, still searching for a house band. The ink was almost dry on the contract we had with The Pogues, but it was then discovered that lead singer Shane McGowan had been ousted from said band for being too much of a drunk. While that sort of achievement is admirable, we wonder if Mr. McGowan is indeed still alive. That is an almost unmeasurable level of magnificence.

Tenders are once again open, and all applicants will be considered.

Meanwhile, those young upstart geniuses over at StevilStEvil, Inc.®'s R&D Division have been up to the usual "no good", and "top speed fun", as those wacky kids like to say.

Following the raging success of developmental technology like the "Find my goddamn beer already!" app for both iPhone and Android, and the laser-sighted "Deep-fried-cheese-ball-into-your-mouth remote launcher" (which boasts a target accuracy of ± 98% at 100 meters), R&D is currently working on some more top-secret things to continue to "better improve your evil leisure time", they say.

I don't badger them for too many details; they have their fingers on the button of some serious technology in there, and both they and I know it wouldn't take much to unleash all sorts of maniacal (yet fun) hell on me if I got too pushy. They pretty much have a license to go "carte blanche" on the world, at their whim.

The R&D kids can also bask in the glory of the multiple awards they took home for that smartphone app. Let's face it ... how many times have you found yourself stumbling around your home, wondering where you put your beer? You know, you just had the thing in your hand. Well, this wee app eliminates all that time-wasting frustration!

Our field operatives have been having a banner year, too. In Burlington, Special Evil Agent and Beer Store Guy Don Redmond continues to undermine and usurp all things normal and politically correct with his blog Brew-Ha-Ha. Check it out ... if you dare. And in the Oshawa zone, Special Evil Agent and Pizza Dude Glenn Hendry maintains his cloak of skullduggery with his blog, 'Shwa Stories.

Other junior operatives like Rob Martin in Rotorua, New Zealand (lurking behind his secret identity as Dairy Farm Apprentice) and Pete Bell (aka "Rebel Cat", who operates out of both London and Sarnia, Ontario) continue to fight the good fight, having evil amounts of fun at all costs.

We at 5Foot19 Labs™look forward to an equally-prosperous and wildly amusing 2nd half of 2013, with the usual shenanigans and carryings-on boiling over well into 2014, before most people are over their New Year's Eve hangovers.

And finally, always keep in mind the StevilStEvil, Inc.® slogan: We are the good, FUN kind of evil!

Yours, in evil absurdity,

This is only a test: Ireland Irish Hot Redheads, Scottish Scotland Hot Redheads, Welsh Wales Hot Brunettes, Hot Czech Babes.