A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
Consider this a trial balloon of sorts. I'll loft it here at NA Confidential, primarily because a fair number of folks regularly read this blog, even if they deny it afterward, and even as they're responding directly to what they never seem to be able to admit they’ve read.
It’s okay. I’m accustomed to it ... and it makes me laugh.
And no, this isn’t a trial balloon about running for office. I’ve already made the definitive statement on this matter, and look forward to the coming months organizing an insurgency. Or not.
This trial balloon is about beer, and a perennial itch to educate, pontificate and lance various boils pertaining to it.
Those among you with longer memories will recall the “Mug Shots” beer column I wrote for LEO a few years back, roughly from 2007 through 2010. It ended amid a slight disagreement with the editor at the time, who did not favor my habit of abusing one of the publication’s key advertisers (read: Anheuser-Busch, later AB-InBev) with facts related to its perpetual villainy.
During the same period, 2009 – 2011, I wrote weekly non-beer guest columns for the pre-merger New Albany Tribune. This portal closed when the New Albany and Jeffersonville newspapers were combined at the behest of semi-literate pensioners in Alabama, and my good faith proposal at the time to help the incoming editor economize his operation by swapping my civic guest column for a new beer column has met with dead air until the present day.
The key element for me both times, at LEO and the ‘Bune, was the fact that my work resulted in remuneration, albeit it scant. Writing isn’t easy, at least not the way I must go about doing it in order to get it done. We cannot all be Isaac Asimov.
In much the same way as "On the Avenues" replaced the Tribune column, I eventually used the Potable Curmudgeon blog to do a "Wednesday Weekly" beer column for a year or so (2010-2011), which then segued into a space called "Baylor on Beer" at LouisvilleBeer.com.
It was my good friend and former NABC salesman John Campbell who originally brought me into LouisvilleBeer.com when it began in 2011. He subsequently departed, but my column has been there ever since, as barter for a small NABC advertisement. At some juncture the name of the column was changed to "The Potable Curmudgeon," and then I transformed it into a weekly (on Monday mornings) instead of every other week. Given that writing is hard work, deadlines and regularity help boost the work ethic.
My quarterly beer writing gig at Food and Dining magazine has not changed, and has been a constant for ten years. I get a few farthings for that one, too.
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So, it is now 2014. At this point in time, in my chosen profession of all things beer, I'm in roughly the same position as Willie and Waylon were in 1973. I'm out of synch with the new normal, and as good as outlaw, if not an outright crank.
I find that it suits my inner Socrates somewhat gloriously.
What’s more, being invited to participate in the University of Kentucky craft beer writing symposium this past February, and having the opportunity to be openly contrarian and counter-cultural before a crowd of bona fide listeners, proved to be crazily stimulating (and frankly, vindicating) in ways that have taken a bit of time to register.
In short, I’ve spent more than two decades writing about beer in my own peculiar way, and it’s high time I recognized that my writing has value. To be sure, we are compelled to live in an age when the prevailing expectation is that “content” of variable quality will not be remunerated in the form of cash (content providers, you have nothing to lose but your chains, although it might help to be factual now and then), and as such, I’m prepared to accept self-aggrandizement in a venue like NA Confidential -- something indisputably me, and totally mine.
Therefore, in the case of my beer column, I've been thinking that maybe it needs to move to Potable Curmudgeon and stay there. Damn the torpedoes, and full speed ahead. My audience (all six of you) will find me, or it won't. Beer “geeks” don't do long-form these days, anyway -- and my selfies are abysmal.
Lest there be any misunderstandings, I've got no deep-seated beef with the guys at LouisvilleBeer.com, and will continue to support their efforts. Maybe an op-ed on occasion. In the end, John King was right: It's not about them; it’s about me, and my recent experiences have added up to a pressing need to be solo, and to go it alone. Perhaps there comes a time when it's time to move on, revisit the grassroots, and to try something different. Maybe I’ll become a wine snob, instead.
That was a joke.
It seems that I'm doomed to this compulsive writing affliction. It's about the only skill I possess, if scattershot and incompletely self-taught for the most part. It is glaringly obvious, and has been for quite some time, that when it comes to beer, I'm not in harmony with substantial elements of contemporary beer geekery, and when I try to be, analogies of pigs and dancing spring to mind ... in both directions. It's past the time to do it by myself and for myself, in the hope that it spurs greater insight.
Up went the trial balloon, and back down it came again. Of course, I knew what I intended to do before the first paragraph was written. I’ll be transitioning my beer column to my own blog, and trying to use Potable Curmudgeon more systematically, as a platform for my out-of-touch, stubborn, contrarian tendencies.
Time to get liberated.
It’s always a refreshing and necessary act.
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