Doing History-By-The-Group

Oh, this is fun! Yesterday I began, and today added another installment to, a series about the early years of the American Homebrewing Association.

Today, one of the actors on that historical stage, Charlie Papazian, weighs in with commentary on those events, as well as a couple of photos. (Including one of him in what is, hands down, one of the best '70s era images I've seen.) You can find his entry here.

I also added that link to the post from yesterday, and if there are more forthcoming, I'll post all the links together in a separate blog entry so that they can all be accessed from each section of this history as I post it here. (And I hope that makes sense...) Thanks to Charlie for joining in to help create some e-inspired history here on the web.

Early Photo of Charlie Papazian

Earlier today, I posted part one of what will become a multi-part series about the early years of the American Homebrewers Association. (I'll be posting the rest of it over the course of the next few days.)

Charlie Papazian has kindly offered up a nice bit of primary documentation of that moment in beer history: a photo of him, keg in hand, at one of the Beer & Steer events waaaaaaaaaay in the 1970s. I wrote about Beer & Steer in my book and as part of an earlier blog series about the event that led up to the creation of the American Homebrewers Association. (You can find links to that entire series here.)

Enjoy! (Sort of related: earlier today I finally got around to placing links to all of  my multi-part blog series on the Other Projects page of my site.)

Get Your [Beer] Moog On

If you were born after, oh, 1975 or so, this won't seem quite so groovy. Otherwise, a great way to start your Saturday: moogin' and groovin' with Schaefer beer. Tip o' the morning mug to Astute Reader Dexter for sending this my way.

Enjoy a Martini and Go . . . Green?

I love The Big Money, if only for its consistently acerbic wit (to say nothing of its content value). (Hell. Did I just use the word "content" to refer to a source of information? Ugh.)

Anyway, I just read this entertaining take on a pitch from a spirits manufacturer. For all I know, the whole thing was an elaborate April Fool's gag, but it's still worth reading. And of course if it's not a gag, that makes the whole thing even, well, weirder.

Now: off to enjoy some spirits (bourbon, thank you very much) and savor the fruits of today's labors (those, ahem,  images [rss icon and poster for "Beer Wars"] in the left-hand sidebar). Holy maloley, I may get the hang of this new blogging platform!

Wanna Be A Paperback Writer? (Paaaperback WRIIIterrrrrr)

"Dear sir or madam will you take a look?" (Headline to this blog entry my attempt to write the chorus the way it's sung.)

David Nygren came up with what he calls a nutty idea a few weeks ago: Writing a novel using an excel spreadsheet. But the more he thought about it and the more other, equally nutty people thought about it, the better it sounded. So he created a system for doing so. You can see it here.

As McCartney and Lennon said: It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two. I can make it longer if you like the style, I can change it round but I want to be a paperback writer, Paperback writer.

Helen Levitt, 1913-2009

I love photography, especially black and white images, and even more especially, ones taken between c. 1920 and 1960 or so. They often have a lush but mysterious texture and sensibility.

 

She left a remarkable body of work. Perhaps my favorite image is this one, taken c. 1945. You can find links to more of her work at the Wikipedia entry.