AUGGGHHH!

This is a non-beer-related rant, so feel free to ignore. Today's Wall Street Journal includes the latest in its "Cheapskate" series.

This time, the reporter explains that he saves money by checking books out from the library. Great! I LOVE libraries. I've had a library card for fifty years. Libraries are a fundamental component of civilization. But then he goes on to say that in the few cases where he plunks down actual MONEY for book, he buys a used copy. Because, ya know, used copies are cheap and can be had for pennies and so why pay for a new copy?

AUGGGGHHHH. Augh.......... sob. snurfle. whimper. (Picture me banging my head on my desk and wailing.)

At no time does Mr. Cheapskate (aka Neal Templin, whom I'm SURE is a lovely man, a loving husband, and perfect father, son, and brother) mention the obvious and relevant point: Writers make zero dollars from the sale of used books.

That's right: when you buy a used book, the person who WROTE the book, the man or woman who created its content, gets nothing. As in: Zip. Nada. Zero.

Yes, I know. Times are tough. Money is tight. Still -- writing is a cornerstone of human existence. It matters. And that purchase is doable. Cut two Starbucks lattes each week from your budget (you could carry your coffe from home in a thermos). Take leftovers to work for lunch once a week, thereby eliminating a trip to a restaurant. Voila! You've "found" enough money to pay for a new book.

So, to cut this rant short because I could rant from now till midnight and then start again tomorrow: If you value the content of books, if you enjoy reading, if you like what your favorite authors produce, PLEASE, I beg you, BUY NEW BOOKS. Because if no one buys new books, writers will earn nothing, and after awhile there won't be any books left to buy.

Thanks.

Brief Detour From Beer

This is the kind of thing that makes me long for a nervous breakdown (because then I could retire to a darkened room with a cool cloth over my eyes and forehead):

According to this piece in the current issue of The Futurist, 70% of literary agents recommend that authors spend five hours a week blogging.

Okay. Sure. I’ll get right on it. I’ll squeeze that in between the speaking gigs, interviews, op-ed pieces, TV news contributions, and the rest of the activity related to my work as an observer of the business of making and drinking beer; and in between the job that consumes most of my time, namely the research and writing for my next book (a history of meat in America from 1870 to the present); and after I’ve finished buying groceries, fixing dinner, doing the laundry, and spending time with my family in, ya know, my three-dimensional life.

Oh, and after I get some sleep. (I’m not Buckminster Fuller or Thomas Edison; I NEED SLEEP.) And after I expend mental energy worrying about the fact that the kind of book I write requires years of research and writing and according to the experts on the digital future of publishing, that makes me a dinosaur. (If anyone’s interested, the beer book took five years and four months of my life).

And after I contemplate the idea of the book not as a printed object, but as a digitized entity consisting of text, interactive images, and hyperlinks, but hey, first I’ve got to wait for my publisher to decide that, in fact, the printed book is dead, and then someone needs to come up with a functional device for reading the new, groovy, sexy, interactive version of my books and then I’ll have to re-think the notion of “publishing" and what it means to be a “writer." (*1) Yes. I’ll get right on the five-hours-a-week-devoted-to-blogging thing.

Enough ranting. Seriously.

Anyway. I gotta go. Gotta write my next blog entry on my usual topic, beer. Five hours a week? FIVE HOURS?

Later addition to this entry: check out this New York Times article about a new e-reader with a "flexible" screen.  (*2) I rarely blog about the process of writing or the business of publishing. That’s the equivalent of Click and Clack devoting their radio program (or blog) to discussions about setting up the microphones and adjusting sound levels before each program, or to providing the minutes from the last meeting of the National Auto Mechanics Association. That’s NOT why we listen to them. (*3)

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*1. I ponder publishing’s (digital) future and my role as both reader and writer on a regular basis. I don’t have much choice. Publishing is changing. I have to change with it. The piece in The Futurist is worth reading.

*2:  I’m all over the idea of an e-reader. The pleasure I derive from reading is based on the content, not on the smell of the ink, paper, and glue. I want an e-reader and I want one now. (Mr. Jobs, are you listening???) The Kindle is a step that direction, but I gather it’s deeply flawed and that’s one reason that publishers are resisting a whole-hearted embrace of e-publishing.

*3:  To be fair, blogging has been good to me. Thanks to blogging, I’ve been contacted newspaper editors and television producers, and people who’ve hired me for speaking engagements, and of course, most important, readers. Still, it’s a challenge. Every day, I scramble to come up with a substantive but brief, comment on (usually) beer. (Because I know rule number one about blogging: the blog needs to be focused and topic-specific. Yeah, I keep breaking that rule because, you know?, life is interesting! Rants happen!)

The Human Face of the A-B/InBev Deal

Today's New York Times contains what I can only describe as a snarky piece about the A-B/InBev deal. Snarky because of the reporter's decision to travel the easy, but low, road. To judge August Busch IV now on his youthful past -- and find him wanting. You can read the piece for yourself, but it mentions two of Four's encounters with the police more than two decades ago. Hints that, as a young man, Four was a bit, um, dissolute. Wild. Prone to making stupid decisions. Etc.

Hey, whaddya know! I've got something in common with August Busch IV! I drank my way through my twenties, and when I wasn't drinking, I was ingesting every drug known to humankind. I've done every dumb thing a dumb kid can do (many of them illegal). By all rights, I shouldn't even be here, because this was the kind of stupid shit that leaves less lucky people dead.

Surprised? Most people are. Because those who know me now know me as a totally average, upright citizen who works hard, obeys the law, and, ya know, lives an ordinary (read: dull) life. Most people who know me judge me as I am, not as I was.

But back to this Times piece: According to the reporter, "it is perhaps not surprising" that A-B is "struggling" because of Four's "party-boy history."

It's hard to get past the sheer stupidity of that causal chain: There's not now and never will be a causal link between Four's youthful stupidity and the company's stagnant/slumping stock price, which stems from corporate decisions made back in the 1990s and a fifteen-year-pattern of stagnant national beer consumption (thanks to birth rates and demographics) (over which, I'm certain, Four has no control...)

But hey, it makes better newspaper copy if you can paint a CEO as a scoundrel and wastrel and a human being incapable of change.

So here's an idea: let's take a little tour through A-B history, shall we? Let's start with August Busch, Sr. (1865-1934), son of Adolphus Busch and the man who steered the company through the nightmare of Prohibition. As a young man "Gussie," as many people called him, wasn't much interested in the company business. Wanted to be a cowboy, he did. So after a wrangle with his father Adolphus, he headed west and worked on a ranch. Eventually grew tired of what was, he discovered, a very tough life, and returned to St. Louis, still less-than-interested in working for his imperious, willful father.

But then his older brother and the brewery's heir apparent, Adolphus Busch, Jr. (1867-1898), died young and unexpectedly. The only other surviving brother, Peter (1869-1905), had dedicated himself to living the life of a ne'er-do-well playboy of the first order. (Father Adolphus, Sr. disowned him).

That left Gussie as the new, but reluctant, heir apparent. And guess what? He shook off his youth and resistance and marched into the job. Grew up fast. Learned how to run one of the world's largest breweries. He saved the company during Prohibition, and in the 1920s, reinvented it so that the brewery could survive the new demands of a changed consumer market once Prohibition ended. Not bad for a playboy with cowboy ambitions.

How about his son, Gus Busch, Jr. (1899-1989)? (Also known by some as Gussie.) As a young man, Gus was a typical rich boy: Prone to play. Allergic to work. Fond of women and drink. Nominally he was the brewery manager in the '20s and '30s™, but he didnt't take the company or his job too seriously. He left the heavy lifting to his brother Adolphus III ((1891-1946).

But when brother Adolphus died unexpectedly in 1946, Gus ended up in the president's office. By his own admission, it took him several years to grow up and into the job. To gain command of the company and its many problems. (And in the 1950s, there were problems galore, not least of which was the fact that national beer sales had plunged after WWII and showed no signs of going anywhere but deeper into a rut.) He made mistakes. And apologized publicly for them to his employees and his shareholders. But by god, he turned the lemon of the fifties into highly profitable lemonade in the sixties and beyond.

So before we all get carried away with our assumptions that the August Busch IV of age forty-four is the same man as he was at twenty-one. . . . well, how about we ponder this bit of company history. And then let's all stand in front of a mirror and think about the kind of people we were twenty years ago. My guess is there'll be a whole lotta cringin' goin' on. And maybe a bit more compassion for a guy who has five generations of family legacy sitting on his shoulders. (*1)

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*1: He is the sixth generation to serve as head of the brewery; I'm including his maternal great-great-great grandfather, Eberhard Anheuser.

Tim Russert

I don't usually get too bent out of shape about the deaths of people I don't know -- but I mourn the death of Tim Russert. He was a guy who obviously loved what he did. The passion came through every time he appeared on television.

He was here in Iowa for the caucuses, of course, and I saw him at several of the political events I attended. He wore a khaki windbreaker and jeans or khakis, which rendered him nearly invisible in a crowd of people dressed more or less like him. He always stood off in the back or at the side, away from the other reporters and cameras. Never made a big deal out of his presence. (Sometimes the candidate would point him out, but it was clear Russert would prefer they not do so.

But he was unfailingly polite to the fans who sought him out to shake his hand.) And there he'd stand during the entire rally, hanging on every word from the candidate, every question from the audience. He didn't have to go to Iowa. Didn't have to attend those rallies. He'd heard it all before.

But it was clear from the look on his face that all of it still thrilled him to the bone. This was his lifeblood. This was the thing that got him out of bed every day. This was the place he wanted to be and the work he wanted to do. He was a guy who loved his family, his religion (he was a devout Catholic), and his sports teams. He was smart, incredibly hard-working, and fearless in his determination to bring big egos back to earth.

I'm genuinely saddened by his death. I'll miss his shrewd commentary and all those politico-geek charts of his filled with the numbers and circles and arrows. I'll miss his passion for life.

On The Road And Not At Home -- Or On The Blog

My neglect of the blog isn't intentional. It's just that, well, I'm not here. I've been traveling more than usual (mostly research-related) and I don't own a "wired" device that I could or would use while on the road. So for the moment -- a "moment" that will stretch into June -- I won't be home much, and therefore don't have access to a computer (or to much free time). Translation: I won't be blogging until I'm back home.

Blogging IS Bad For Your Health

I dislike blogging. I do it, but I don't particularly like it. It's a necessary evil, part of the writer's deal these days, blah blah blah. I dislike because of the anxiety it provokes. This chronic unease that I must. post. something. TODAY.

Turns out, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, that I'm not imagining my blogging-induced anxiety. Mind you, unlike the people mentioned in the article, I'm not trying to make the top ten on Technorati or earn money from blogging. Either goal would deposit me for all eternity in a pit of insanity and anxiety. I try to save my angst, anxiety, and neuroses for the books I write.

But still................ I often wonder if, in, say, another ten years, people who are in their 20s and 30s now will experience an epiphany along the lines of: the incessant flash, scroll, glare, ding, ping, and hum of their email, cellphones, blackberries, and whatever else they're chained to visually and aurally has permanently wired them for anxiety and they've lost the capacity for "calm." Has left them, in short, about the same place as humans were 15,000 years ago when our species existed in a constant state of anxiety induced by the equally constant need to fight or flee.

Now THAT is a scary thought.