I confess that, particularly when The Girlfriend has to leave for work, my lifestyle sometimes strikes me as unrealistic. I may well have enjoyed more “freetime” in my adult life so far than many people will enjoy pre-retirement. I have weeks- and months-long periods with only minimal structured obligations — I work a lot, but outside of class and meetings, I plan out my own time as I choose. I feel lucky, but I’ve never felt guilty — I honestly think that everyone’s lifestyle could and should be more like mine. I am the change I want to see!!!

I confess that I can already tell that teaching in a discussion-centric environment is going to prove very helpful in moderating my perfectionism. Classroom dynamics can always be improved, and especially at this early stage of my career, I’m continually seeing things I can do (or should’ve done) to help matters — but there’s an inherent limit to what any one person can do to improve a group discussion. Indeed, that’s the entire point. And this makes me think that there’s an important ethical or even character-formation issue at stake in the kind of pedagogy Shimer does.

Ashley Routson, aka the Beer Wench, just launched a new website at beermixology.com, devoted to the crafting of beer cocktails. The site is a collaborative effort intending to provide more resources and recipes to help demystify this unconventional refreshment. The Huffington Post provides an immediate response.

But the beer cocktail isn’t really a new concept, and over the past few years we’ve seen it come onto the scene, only to quickly vanish. Esquire featured it in 2010 (although those recipes mostly just sweetened average beer), and last spring the New York Times followed Borough bars to see who listed beer cocktails on their menu. I first came across a Michelada in Brooklyn, November of 2010, and couldn’t get through half of it (naturally I was devastated as beer and hot sauce, independently, are two of my favorite things).

Many of the drinks of Beer Cocktails Past have been mixes that essentially diluted or flavored the beer: the traditional Shandy combining ale and soda; or the previously mentioned Michelada made from lager, lime, tomato, and hot sauce. The new beer cocktail, hopefully the one with staying-power, uses quality hard alcohol that compliments whatever beer it joins. It is not meant to overshadow flavors or make drinkable that which is not. It is meant to harmonize and highlight features of each component to achieve a well-balanced, innovative drink.  I’m keen to think of it like a proper food pairing– the flavors of one develop those of the other.

Opinions are heated as to whether this marriage is a bastardization of a finished product, or whether the combination provides an innovative vehicle for the consumption of well-made booze. There is also a question of respect to the brewers and distillers, who worked hard to produce something that is then manipulated by the consumer. Many beer enthusiasts rant against adding a citrus wedge to a wheat beer– imagine what they would say about sugar, vodka, and half a lime. While I wouldn’t dream of mucking about with a Kentucky Breakfast Stout or George T. Stagg, I am happy to experiment with more affordable, more available selections.

But the only way to form a tasteful opinion, literally, is to get to the kitchen and fix up a drink. From the beermixology website I selected the Shake Radler Roll for its masterly blend of citrus and ginger with witbier. It also allows me to highlight two elements of my backyard that I have yet to feature: lime and orange.  You can check out the recipe on the website, but here are the ingredients I used:

• 2 ounces navel orange-infused vodka
• 1/2 ounce ginger simple syrup
• juice from half a lime
• 4 ounces Flying Dog’s Woody Creek (any witbier or golden ale)

Simply shake the first three ingredients with ice, pour over rocks, and top with beer. Garnish with citrus peel.

I selected Flying Dog Woody Creek for its mellow flavor profile and low alcohol content (adding  two ounces of vodka to a 7% beer would have me pink in the face and giggling for days).  Combined with a navel orange vodka infusion I had on hand, the resulting drink is the picture of a warm, sunny day, fit for January Santa Ana winds.

Citrus is the strongest flavor present, imparted by the orange peel and addition of lime juice, but there is a significant floral nose, and toward the end a warming sensation from the ginger syrup. I would characterize the cocktail as more bitter than sweet– perhaps due to my homemade infusion. The addition of the witbier in lieu of a soda or tonic is inspired. Soft sweetness from the malt tempers the vodka, the carbonation adds body and volume, and the beer is responsible for all the subtle aromatics.

NOTE: I haven’t had a cocktail shaker the last few weeks, I have three collecting dust in storage and can’t justify buying another, but improvised with my Kleen Kanteen. The metal body provides a hard surface for breaking up ice, without risking chips and cracks in your pint glasses.

Where do you stand on the debate? Is perfection better left untouched? Or is bliss found only by bringing together two good things?

I do hate however that many of these bright men and women take their mathematical models and then romanticize their variables into waves of  partying particles and dens of densities. Nothing they can do can beat Gene Roddenberry. All this vulgarizing are nothing else than rotten berries for those easily inclined to mistake the cosmos for an alternative to some self made critical thinking. As if dividing by zero can be meaningful to anybody else than a zero.

I also hate the real black hole of government funding of science, to wit: money spent on what is so traditionally called innovation. Whether it is in the American form of asking corporations to develop some novel means of more effectively killing or restraining people or whether it is in the European form of those orgies of red tape known as research programs, the bottom line of them is to increase the bottom line of companies which complain of excessive pampering of citizens but want as much of their taxes (or electoral funding) back in the form of this or that innovation support.

I am starting to hate innovation with a vengeance because it is quickly becoming the anti-matter to creativity in support of the profit-maximization of companies too lazy and too sterile to convince themselves of trying to do something for the world. There is no pride on the dark side.

Why does the silent era still hold such fascination? The inability to sync image and sound lasted for the first thirty-five years of the motion picture, still more than a blip but looking more and more like an oddity. The most enduring artworks will be the physical comedy of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. The dramas look more and more like a historical phase. The real story is about the first generation of Hollywood royalty being led to the guillotine by their own voices. It’s been told before:

The Artist tells a similar story. Jean DuJardin plays George Valentin (standing in for Douglas Fairbanks), a silver screen adventurer who falls for Peppy Miller, an actress who parlays a meet-cute with George in front of his paparazzi into a film career that nimbly adjusts to talkies while George scoffs and watches his career melt away. Unlike Singin’ In The Rain, which is amazing in its own right but comparatively superficial in its relationship to the silent era, The Artist weaves form and content together in its celebration of the art and technology. Its rules are flexible. It mostly plays as a silent with intertitles and a sweeping score (about whose own pastiches see Richard Brody).  In a nightmare, Valentin (and we) hears the clink of a glass and the slam of a door, then walks outside his dressing room to hear the laughter of chorus girls. And of course, there is a final joke using a few of the actors’ spoken dialogue.

The best thing about  The Artist is the use of faces. DuJardin is a consummate ham. As Peppy Miller, Bérénice Bejo is mesmerizing–she’s got an endless mouth and sequoias for teeth, and when she pops up mugging in front of Valentin’s cameras, it’s hard to read her appearance–at first I couldn’t tell if she was being made fun of for being ugly (she’s not). Director Michel Hazanavicius has great taste in finding known actors whose faces translate to the idiom. John Goodman is the jowly and glowering director. Jamie Cromwell is the kindly, loyal chauffer. Malcom MacLarenMcDowell [thx oudemia] shows up randomly in an audition line, but he looks good.

There are lots of moments that are intelligently self-aware without being cloying, especially in an opening sequence set in a movie hall that layers shadows on projections on actors behind screens. Overall, the story is charming and clever, though not as deeply affecting as it’s gotten credit for.

• Magic Moment: Anything between Valentin and his sidekick Jack, played by a Jack Russell terrier named Uggie.
• Screenwriting tips: Valentin is kind of a schmuck. At times it seems as if his tragic flaw is pride, which in itself can grow tiresome to watch. The balance between internal and external obstacles was never quite dead-on; he had too many problems that could have been solved by being a little less schmucky or self-pitying.
• Health tip: Burning a huge pile of silver nitrate film stock will take your skin off, not leave you recuperating gently from smoke inhalation.

Imagine history as a marble tracing a trajectory on a slightly tilted plane, flat although somewhat dented. Mostly it runs its course, erratically but without significant deviations in speed nor in direction. Nevertheless, every once in a while it hits a bump or gets stuck in a bigger depression. For a short time then history is on a roller coaster ride or, as presently, stuck for a long time in a seemingly stable condition.

The marble wants to continue its descent as the wasp wants to continue its flight across the glass of the window.

It can’t; not without help.

There will be a time when the marble will be in a place where the laws of nature have been unified under the humanities. I know, I am from that time. Imagine, Guido, a world in which you are a talented, gifted writer. Now picture the space with the dented plane with the marble on it. The world you imagined is one of the points in the space you pictured. It’s alas not also a point on the dented plane.

Our words penetrate worlds our history can never realize. History, however, does not take place in a vacuum. Worlds imagined through words make waves in space, waves influencing the marble’s trajectory.

You, Guido, waste a lot of those words. The world is stuck in a depression and you continue to waste precious words.  We need to get the marvel rolling again, towards us and beyond. We need you to focus because you  can make sense of this, which is  why you. Remember: notation is everything. Choose ‘Q said’ as title. Three hundred. The journey must continue. There can be no end.

]]> http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/sunday-stories-q-said/feed/ 0 guidonius http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/friday-afternoon-confessional-its-always-something/ http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/friday-afternoon-confessional-its-always-something/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:55:49 +0000 Adam Kotsko http://heteronomy.wordpress.com/?p=9423 ]]> I confess that the holiday season is my least favorite time of the year, and I always feel a profound sense of relief when I wake up in the morning on January 1 — finally it’s over. The Girlfriend and I had enjoyed a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, and we hit the ground running with the new year, cleaning out our closets and thoroughly cleaning the apartment. I enjoyed a week of relative bliss, working steadily on class prep and research-oriented tasks.

Since then, however, I have been in a state of continual worry. First, it was my teaching evaluations (which were actually fine but — horrors! — contained some critical comments), then it was the grim prospect of a regularly-scheduled early morning meeting time that would require me to come to campus a full six hours before my first class, and then it was an error with my direct deposit that delayed my paycheck by a week. What was strange about this is that the objective events overlapped somewhat, but I didn’t start worrying about the next thing until the previous one was resolved — i.e., only once it was settled that the regular meeting time would be more convenient did I begin to worry in earnest about my paycheck. This “wait in line” feel is especially odd given that the paycheck issue seems to be objectively much more important than the meeting issue.

I confess that last night I deposited my replacement paycheck after what felt to me like a strong end to a pretty solid first week of teaching, so hopefully I can calm down.

I confess that my fascination with sartorial concerns has not died down in the new semester and that I have in fact entered into a new experimental phase. I’ve ventured into the risky brown-plus-gray combo and attempted to subtly coordinate apparently clashing plaid prints (on jacket, tie, and shirt!). My students seem to find it amusing to comment on such matters.

I confess that The Girlfriend brought up the possibility of foreign travel during the summer this morning. Though we’ve discussed it many times, this morning I suddenly decided that I would renew my passport today, right now. I confess that this process led to the revelation that The Girlfriend possessed a previously unknown stapler, a piece of office equipment that I have been lacking for over a year — this made me happy.

“Supernatural” had another solid episode. Through hunting Chronos, the god of time, Dean ends up in 1944… hunting Chronos with Elliott Ness. Many references to “Back to the Future” and “The Untouchables.” I was afraid that Sheriff Mills was going to try to get her MILF on with Sam by roofying him. Fortunately she did not.

Without Michael Scott, “The Office” is in the midst of a renaissance because rather than having every episode centred on Michael, with Dwight and Jim as competing sidekicks, it is now an ensemble cast as it was in the better episodes from the first two seasons. “Parks and Recreation” was middling at best, which is appropriate because, as a show, it is middling at best. The best scenes continue to be the ones without Amy Pohler.

The most recent episode of “Arctic Air” was just as bad, if not worse, than the first episode. Fortunately, I elected to be in the kitchen for most of the episode and was spared too much harm. After three episodes of “Rizzoli & Isles,” Angie Harmon has completely managed to avoid food at every opportunity–her mom brings her a sandwich at work and she gives it to someone else, she goes to a restaurant but doesn’t order anything, is offered some cheese but passes on it, even has dinner with Donnie Don Wahlberg (cooked by her mom) but manages to eat nothing. All I’ve seen her eat so far is a few flakes of tuna. On the other hand, she’s almost always got a drink in her hand. So, an anorexic and a drunk. I twatted @angie_harmon, but I’ve yet to receive a reply on what is going on. And, really, that’s the best I can say about this show!

Great news–no joke–”Game of Thrones” is back on April 1 (as is “The Killing,” which is very unfortunate). We’re finally getting the second season of “Luther” in Canada in February.

I started with an Orchard Old Fashioned while I waited for a friend. Arriving solo to a packed house allowed me to grab the only empty seat at the bar right in front of Paul McGee, the man behind the drinks. There I watched him shake and stir, muddle and measure, while I sipped from a drink built of rye and apple whiskey, Demerara sugar and Angostura bitters.

Now, you have to understand much of my finest mockery material has been based on subjects ostensibly belonging to the ‘hipster community’ (stemming from an insecurity that these people are simply cooler and more put-together than me). And this heavily bearded mixologist in a bow tie would be no exception. But there’s just one thing: the man makes the most exquisite drinks. It seems in poor taste to parody an expert of his craft in the same breath that you ask for another.

So I held my tongue and politely ordered the Rosemary Collins. A spin on the classic Tom Collins, this bright and herbaceous drink sucked me into a Proustian sense-memory vortex of such intensity I didn’t even notice the band playing. A huge sprig of rosemary greets the senses as you raise the tall glass for sampling. It is so piney and resinous that I was instantly transported to the dense Sequoias of Kings Canyon National Park where I’ve taken numerous backpacking trips. The light citrus and sweetness in the drink reminded me of the powdered sweeteners we add to filtered water to make them taste less of pond. But the Hendrick’s gin is so floral and fresh, from the rose petal and cucumber notes, you can’t help but picture a favorite rose garden– the Mission in Santa Barbara comes to my mind.

I hate the lack of time to do anything substantial. It seems like the world is conspiring to always find some way of getting in between you and doing something quietly and thoroughly. I hate that it only seems so but is just an illustration of my own lack of staying power and impatience.

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