Historian. Author. Ranter. Idea Junkie.
This a blog. Sort of. I rarely use it anymore.
This is a lovely, cogent essay about what happens when we read, and why the image we're "reading" matters. It explains, as it happens, why my own website looks the way it does. (I didn't write the coding, but I "designed" its appearance. There was a method to my madness.)
Tip o' the mug to the always enlightening and entertaining Alan Jacobs at Text Patterns.
Part 1 --- Part 2 --- Part 3 --- Part 4 --- Part 5 --- Part 6 --- Part 7 Part 8 --- Part 9 --- Part 10 --- Part 11 --- Part 12 --- Part 13
NOTE: When I moved to a new site, this "Beer Wars" series was mangled/destroyed during the move. I've reconstructed it by copying/pasting another copy of the original posts. I also lost the comments in their original form. I've copied/pasted the comments, but had to do so under my own name. So although it looks as though I'm the only commenter, I'm not. In each case, I've identified the original commenter.
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The point is that I knew that the critics would start in even before they’d seen the film. It’s all part of the deal. Fortunately, Anat also knew that would happen, and all she or anyone else could do was try to, well, educate people about how and why filmmakers and writers (and even brewers) make the choices they make.
So on April 16, Anat and I and others gathered in Los Angeles for the event. I should explain that up to that point, no one had seen the film except Anat, her crew, and Ben Stein. (She hired Ben as moderator because she needed someone who was experienced at public speaking and who was not involved in any way in the beer industry. Ben fit the bill.)
Digression: Anat hired Ben as moderator because he’s an experienced speaker and, more important, an outsider. He doesn’t make beer, sell beer, or promote beer. No surprise, the crowd of critics were annoyed. How, they demanded to know, could he serve as a moderator when he’s not a beer person? And what about his politics?, of which, apparently, many beer geeks disapprove.
They seemed not to understand his role in this event: He was there to MODERATE. Got that? MODERATE. He wasn’t there to share his brewing expertise (there were four other people on stage to do that). He wasn’t there because he was knowledgeable about the industry. He wasn’t there because he holds a specific political point of view (which, I might point out, was and is irrelevant to the proceedings.) He was there to ask questions and keep the half hour panel on track. End of story.
End of digression. The panelists — myself, Rhonda Kallman, Sam Caligione, Todd Alstrom, Greg Koch, and Charlie Papazian — spent that afternoon in the “green room” waiting our turn for makeup and talking. Those who had cell phones tweeted and blogged the green room activity. Etc.
It’s worth noting that I’d never met Rhonda or Sam or Todd. I’d had one brief conversation with Greg a few months earlier at the Great American Beer Festival, and have known Charlie for about four years (I interviewed him for the book). It was an interesting experience to be, in effect, stranded in the Green Room with what amounted to total strangers, all of whom have what can only be described as oversized personalities. Toss Anat and Ben into the mix and it made for an amazing and memorable afternoon.
(If I were Jane Smiley, I would have been taking notes for a novel titled Five Hours in the Green Room, a riff on her Ten Days in the Hills, which I loved.) (But I’m definitely not a novelist, so that’s one book that’s not gonna get written, at least not by me.)
Another (brief) digression: Makeup. I hate wearing makeup. I own almost no makeup (I keep a bit on hand for the TV gig I do, just in case the studio’s makeup person isn’t there.) But high-def cameras can make a 20-year-old with fabulous skin look like an aged crone. So: makeup. I asked the person doing my makeup (which, no surprise, took a looooooong time; I’m old) if men got as much makeup as women. “Oh, no,” she said. “Men usually only need a light touch. But people expect women to wear makeup, so we always put more on them.”
Oh?
About an hour before the film was to begin, we all trouped onstage for a run-through of the live event. The crew wired us, checked sound levels, checked camera angles, and so forth. Ben ran us through a series of questions (none of which he re-asked during the live event.) We all argued; a minor shouting match ensued (because many of us disagreed about a number of topics). (Not to worry; it was a friendly shouting match.)
(The crew, by the way, consisted of dozens of people. You want to know why tickets cost $15? Staging an event like this requires a HUGE amount of equipment and a lot of highly skilled theater tech people. The satellite trucks were marvels of mobile high-technity, and there were miles of cables, wires, and so forth all over, all of which required a human being to set up and operate.)
Then we went backstage again to wait for the screening to begin. When it was time, we — the panelists, Anat, and Ben — took our seats in the auditorium so we could watch the film. (Again, note that only Anat and Ben had seen the film. The rest of us were “Beer Wars” virgins.)
The lights dimmed. The screen lit up. The film rolled. We watched. Five minutes before the film ended, we crept from our theater seats, returned to the stage (which was concealed by the movie screen), took our assigned seats for the panel discussion, got re-wired, received still more makeup (ugh). The film ended, the screen rose, and the panel discussion began.
Next: You want depth? You're not gonna get it in a half hour.
I started writing a reply to an email from Loyal Reader Dave who asked a good question and I decided I'd post my reply here because I think it might be relevant to other readers. (Or not.)
He wondered if it bothers me to spend so much time on beer, given that I'm writing a new book that has nothing to do with beer ( Carnivore Nation: Meat and the Making of Modern America is the working title.)
And the answer is no: It took me awhile, but I finally accepted that beer is now part of my life (although, ahem, I'm sure some beer geeks wish I would just go the hell away.) Yes, keeping tabs on the beer world takes time, but that's okay. Once I made the decision to blog regularly, I knew that might happen.
So -- be careful what I wish for.
But I'm also careful to organize my time. It may seem, for example, that I spend huge amounts of my day blogging. In fact, I spend 85 to 90 percent of my working time on the meat book, and the rest of it on beer.
Speaking of which, at some point in the next month or so, I plan to add a website page about the meat book and to start talking about it more here at the blog. I haven't said much up to now about the new book because I was still finding my footing, but that project is now far enough along that I'd like to start sharing some of what I've learned. And THANKS for reading the blog. I really do appreciate it.
Okay, after being urged by Loyal Reader Dave, I watched the "I Am A Craft Brewer" film. You can see it here.
Nice piece of filmmaking. Lively, well-paced, well-filmed, and well-lit. Music aimed straight at the heart. Did what it's supposed to do: Rally the craft beer troops.
Content? Hmmm. . . . Well . . . . Hmmmmm. Astounding lack of historical perspective -- or, alternatively, "historical perspective" constructed so it matched what the filmmaker wanted to say rather than historical reality.
Once again, the drumbeat of "We are the American dream" (as if somehow the rest of us who don't make beer or earn livings by working for larger companies can't possibly represent that dream).
I was surprised that the film avoided mentioning the Big Talking Point that everyone who's anyone in craft brewing always make: The number of American craft brewers. Craft brewers love to roll out the numbers. "We are 1489 strong!" they say. (Or whatever the current number is. Just under 1500.)
Except, ya know, they're not. Because that number includes every outlet of every chain restaurant that claims to be a "brewpub."
So, for example, every Rock Bottom outlet is counted as a separate "brewery." Every Granite City outlet is counted as a separate brewery. Strip those down to what they are --- a single brewing "company" selling its beer in a number of retail outlets --- and the number of "craft breweries" plunges. I
ndeed, it's not clear to me why those are even counted as "breweries."
But hey, it's not my organization and it's not my turf to protect. And you gotta love the tiny core of "real" craft brewers who are doing just that: honoring and protecting their turf. Now --- what was it someone in the film said about "snakeoil salesmen"?
And he took the words right outta my keyboard. I've not watched the video because frankly I'm too swamped with other things (not least of which is commenting on Stan's post). But, yeah . . . will anyone engage in anything but swooning raves? And I would be remiss if I did not also add a link to Alan's lovely, and no, not unexpected, response to the same issue. (And I love that he roams the 'net reciting poetry. I was delighted by his poetry-laced comment on one of my earlier posts.)
So I look at Twitter this morning, and what I find are a string of tweets about how annoying it is that many people's Facebook "updates" consist of their own tweets and/or their own blog entries.
Um, that would be me. I thought it was amazing, incredible, and astonishingly cool that I could use Twitter to alert anyone who cared to new blog entries and then use that same tweet to update my Facebook page. So that, ya know, the Facebook page doesn't required much care or feeding from me. Silly, silly me.
Sigh. I'm really never gonna "get it," am I? This brave new world of interconnected connectivity. Must go now. Must wander off to some dark corner and ponder my mental density. Or alternatively, ponder which of the two "connections" to sever: The Twitter connection to Facebook, or the blog feed to Facebook. Hmmmm.... What to do? What to do?
Website of Maureen Ogle, author and historian. Books include Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer; In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America; and Key West: History of An Island of Dreams.
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